by David Drake
He cocked an eyebrow at Ilna. "Not so, mistress?"
She snorted. "More true than not, I suppose," she admitted. "That doesn't predict the future, you know."
"Ah, we've had that discussion already," said Chalcus as he strode forward, checking the sea to his right as well as the foliage at the edge of the tideline to their left as they followed the shore.
Ilna watched also. She didn't spend much time in the raw countryside, but anything that violated the normal pattern would be as obvious to her as a bonfire.
She smiled. Although... what was normal in this place might be dragons with mouths large enough to swallow the triremes. Still, dragons that big should be obvious enough even though they did fit in.
The smell was the first warning. "Merota," Ilna said, "something's been killed here and the chances are it was a man. Maybe several men. Don't scream when you see it."
"Keep the girl back!" Chalcus said.
"We can save her life if we keep our minds on our work!" Ilna said sharply. "But we can't hide the kind of place this is, and if we try to do that, we'll make mistakes we can't afford!"
"It's all right, Chalcus," Merota said. "I saw my parents. After the fire."
They walked the three steps to where Chalcus stood. "That's far enough," he said. "Or you'll trip on his guts."
The corpse hung upside down from the crotch of a sapling, its fingers touching the ground. One of the sailors, Ilna supposed, though she wouldn't have been able to identify the victim even in better light. Besides being stripped and gutted like a trout, something had bitten his face off.
The skiff was smashed to bits on the mud, with pieces lying thirty feet from the main pile of wreckage. Ilna hadn't heard the boat's violent destruction. Perhaps the laughter had masked the crackling wood.
The mixed odors of blood, feces, and fear made the beach stink like a slaughter-yard. Back home the blood would've been sopped into a bowl of oatmeal for sausage and puddings. Of course back home the cadaver would have been a sheep or a pig.
Though the lungs and intestines had simply been dragged out across the sand, the heart and liver were missing. "Ah!" said Ilna.
Both her companions were looking at her. Ilna made a moue of displeasure--she shouldn't have made her surprise public--and said with scrupulous honesty, "I was just thinking that the killer's tastes didn't run to puddings and sausage."
Chalcus laughed and squeezed Merota's shoulder with his left hand. "You'll be all right with us, child," he said. "I swear you will!"
Merota looked at the chanteyman. "Was he a bad man, Chalcus?" she asked.
"Three-finger Sinou?" he said, looking at the victim. "He's a lazy bugger who couldn't keep stroke if his life depended on it... which it didn't, not when he was rowing for me, but I was glad when they moved him to the Ravager and made him Plestin's problem. Maybe Plestin's discipline is tighter than mine, do you think?"
He laughed. Ilna wasn't sure whether he really thought his joke was funny or if he was just trying to jolly the child along. Both, she suspected; and she found she was smiling also.
"There's a gap in the woods here," Chalcus said, gesturing with his sword. "The others likely went off through it, since we'd see their tracks in the mud if they'd gone up the beach. My thought is that we wait here till we get some light and then head inland."
"Instead of going back to the ship?" Ilna said.
"Every decision Vonculo's made has put us deeper in the muck, Ilna-darling," the chanteyman said. "I think we're better on our own."
"I suppose you're right," Ilna said. "Particularly since the locals appear to have had dinner already."
She found a hollow at the roots of a fig whose stems would make a springy rest for her back. She wouldn't sleep, but she might as well be as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.
"Come here, Merota," Ilna said. "Put your head in my lap and get some sleep. It's been a long day."
"Indeed it has," Chalcus agreed cheerfully. He positioned himself at the head of the track through the vegetation; moonlight danced as he wiped the blade with his wad of fleece, again and again as he waited.
As Merota settled herself, Ilna heard the chanteyman sing in a low, lilting voice, "'So I will marry who I please, as you can do as well.'"
Chapter Fifteen
Garric leaned his elbows on the table of the conference room and put his head in his hands. He knew there were people around him--he could hear Liane murmuring to Chancellor Royhas and three senior aides. The City Burgesses of Herax in the east of Ornifal had challenged the imposition of royal law in their community, citing their charter from Duke Valbolg the Strong as proof of their judicial independence.
Valbolg had died seven hundred and five years ago. According to Royhas the government's position was that even if the charter was legitimate, the assumption of kingship by the ducal line had voided all contrary acts of the dynasty previous thereto. The matter would be in the courts for at least five years, however, if not twenty, and it imperiled the whole process of rationalizing the judiciary until it was resolved.
"Oh, Shepherd help me," Garric moaned. His lips moved, but nobody outside his own head could have heard the words. "I know it's important but I just can't keep my eyes open."
"I'd have mounted my bodyguard and ridden all night to Herax," King Carus said. "Pull the burgesses out of their beds, march them to the main square, and hold them in a ring of swords while I informed the citizenry what the law was going to be henceforth."
"I'm not going to do that," said Garric, though he grinned.
"I shouldn't have either," Carus said with a bellowing laugh. The king wore service garb, but though the cloth was sturdy wool, the short tunic was bright yellow and the breeches tucked into high boots were dyed orange. He stood like a flame in Garric's mind, cheerful and vibrant. "I did it twice, and both cities closed their gates to me the next time a halfway credible usurper appeared on the scene. You're too smart to let your anger make worse trouble down the road for you, lad."
"At any rate, I'm well advised," Garric said, grinning tiredly at the thought of his ancestor.
He rose to his feet. The others looked around in surprise. They're probably expecting me to fall on my face, Garric thought. They might be right, too.
"Gentlemen!" Garric said. They jumped, even Royhas who'd gotten to know Garric pretty well over the past months. Garric hadn't meant to shout, but he'd been concentrating so hard on getting intelligible words out that he'd managed to bellow.
Liane, who knew Garric better than anybody else, wasn't startled, but worry underlay her smile of greeting. She recognized the signs of Garric being asleep on his feet.
It wasn't this business with Herax, though even by itself that was enough to bore anybody to tears. The day, starting in the watch before dawn, had been a series of similar problems. Cordage for the fleet, promotions within the military, floods in Tall Springs County that had washed out the barley crop--the locals said; the treasury beadle for the district was sure that the harvest had been complete and the grain secreted.
Those things and at least a dozen more; every one of them important, every one of them intractable--what was Garric supposed to do? Search every cave and cow byre in Tall Springs County looking for baskets of barley?--and in concert they were mind-numbing beyond the imagination of Garric or-Reise.
Prince Garric had been here before, and the life he saw ahead of him was an unending procession of similar days.
"What I suggest is this, gentlemen," Garric said more quietly. His vision blurred, then refocused. He tried a smile, though he wasn't sure it worked. "Ask the burgesses to stipulate that the royal justices will remain in place pending the outcome of the matter in the high court. The government will post bond in the amount of, oh, one year's tax revenue from Herax and the surrounding district. The amount is negotiable."
"They'll never agree to that, your majesty!" said one of the chancellor's aides before Royhas could shush him. "We've already made a similar, a very sim
ilar offer."
"In the same communication as the request for a stipulation," Garric continued, "you will politely request a list of accommodations for up to eight thousand soldiers. You'll explain that the government is considering a plan to quarter the army outside the capital, and that Herax will be the first site so chosen if the plan comes into effect."
"Are we planning that, your majesty?" another aide blurted in surprise. "Herax has only four hundred and twelve assessed houses, and--"
Royhas pointed his index finger. The aide swallowed the rest of his observations.
"On my oath by Duzi!" Garric said. "We will consider it if the burgesses don't accept a reasonable compromise!"
"Which I rather think they will," Royhas said. "I'll see to drafting the documents, your majesty."
Then to his aides, crisply, he added, "Come! We needn't trouble Prince Garric any more today!"
Garric sat down again. Sat or slumped; he was lucky he'd managed to brace himself with his elbows on the table. Bright sunlight slanted through the window jalousies, but Garric saw only a faceted blur. He heard Liane speak--to him? To Royhas?--and then close the door.
"Aye, you have good advisors, lad," King Carus said. "But we have a good prince as well."
Garric laughed with his ancestor; and, laughing, fell with no transition into his dream of movement. He and Carus beside him walked through the wall of the conference room, following a course in which time as well as the streets of Valles unreeled before them.
Night and daylight interchanged randomly from one step to the next. Occasionally Garric recognized someone on the street, but more often even the fashions people wore were unfamiliar. Once he glimpsed a procession bearing the great chryselephantine statue of the Lady, the work of the sculptor Gudgin of Charis, which had burned with the temple of The Lady of Valles generations before Carus himself was born.
Carus grinned at his descendent. As before the ancient king showed the strain of joining Garric on a journey meant for Garric alone; but as before, Carus came along. They were going toward the river and the wizard-bridge; that alone was beyond question.
With their first steps onto the structure, the images of Valles past and present faded away. The bridge was solid and splendid with spiked finials rising from the supports. Long pennons fluttered in breezes that didn't stir Garric's clothing or that of his companion.
Others were crossing, mostly pedestrians but some on horseback. There was even a high-sided carriage with outriders before and behind. Garric could see the other travellers, but instead of jostling they interpenetrated. Everyone was crossing a different bridge, a structure whose existence was immaterial but real nonetheless, across multiple planes of the cosmos.
Garric clasped hands with Carus. There was no worse feeling than to be alone in a strange and hostile world. Whatever else happened, Garric was spared that.
This time the controlling power whisked them through the time-eaten shell of Klestis, then the stone fabric of Ansalem's palace, without the charade of climbing the external staircase. They stood in Ansalem's chamber. Soft illumination poured through the alabaster and more vivid light gleamed on the electrum grating of the window to the east.
"Oh?" said Ansalem, rising from the couch of patterned marble. He peered at Carus. "Why, I think I know you, don't I, sir? Of course, you're the king!"
"We met during my lifetime," Carus said, standing straight and clasping his hands at the small of his back. Garric suspected Carus was preventing himself from grasping the hilt of his sword. He hated wizards in general, and he had no reason to love Ansalem. "And we've met since, in this place."
"You brought us here before, Lord Ansalem," Garric said. He found it hard to concentrate with the amphisbaena shifting in and out of the travertine couch. It was like light flickering from a mirror onto the corner of his eye while he was trying to think. "What is it you want us to do, sir?"
Ansalem walked to the outside window, shaking his head. "I really don't recall summoning you, young man," he said. "I don't remember you at all, to be honest."
He looked over his shoulder at Carus, his face changing slightly. "I remember you, though. You wanted me to become a man of blood. Like yourself."
Carus shrugged. The tension in his muscular frame would have been obvious even to a stranger, let alone Garric.
"I wanted things of you that you didn't want to provide," Carus said. "And I've let blood, sometimes when I shouldn't have. I made a lot of mistakes in life; but fewer, I hope, as I am now."
"What did you want, Lord Ansalem?" Garric asked. "Did you bring us here to help you with your plans?"
"Oh, I don't think so," Ansalem said with a half-concealed smile. "You're not a wizard, are you? And I didn't need any help anyway. Come see."
He gestured to the grating and moved aside to make room for the others. Garric looked at his ancestor. Carus forced a wry smile and squeezed Garric's shoulder; they stepped together to look out over Klestis.
King Carus had seen wizardry as the cause rather than the symptom of the stresses tearing apart the Kingdom of the Isles. He knew now that he'd been wrong, but he couldn't help his feelings; and it took as much willpower for Carus to be polite to Ansalem as it would for Garric to let a spider run across his face.
The view through the electrum filigree wasn't the ruined Klestis on this side of the bridge, nor yet the living city that Carus had seen when he visited Ansalem in the flesh. Garric looked down on citizens gathering fruit and nuts from trees in the parks among the gleaming buildings. Gardens with a profusion of vegetables as well as flowers graced rooftops and boulevard medians. Even the balcony railings were green with lush plantings.
Cattle, plump and sleek, wandered among the people in the streets, browsing at will on the vegetation. The bounty was sufficient for them and the human residents of Klestis as well.
Occasionally Garric saw a man or woman with a cow on a milking tether, a little stake and halter meant not to hold the beast but merely to show it where to stand while its udders were stripped. Ewes provided most of the dairy products for Barca's Hamlet, but Garric knew the quantity that a good milch cow gave. The folk below drew bucket after bucket from their herd, many times what was possible.
"That isn't real," he said. "The milk, the fruit on the trees--that's not real."
"It could have been real," said the plump wizard with a brief frown. "It would have been real, except...."
Ansalem looked back at his stone couch. "I thought it was a mistake, but it really can't be," he said. "I went to sleep after I took Klestis out of time, and my acolytes knotted the amphisbaena to hold me in my chamber forever. Why would they have done that?"
"Because they wanted your power to use for their own ends," Carus said harshly. "Because they wanted to rule the Isles, I shouldn't wonder. And because you thought you were too good to concern yourself with any world but the one you wanted to create, they were able to do it."
"Purlio did that?" Ansalem said. His face screwed up into a look of wondering horror. "But I suppose he must have, him and the others."
"My friend, the wizard Tenoctris...," Garric said. "Says that you'd gathered objects of power that didn't affect you; but others weren't as strong as you are. She met you once, but she left Klestis for fear of what the forces here would do to her."
"I don't remember your friend," Ansalem said, shaking his head sadly. "I don't remember very much, I'm afraid. I did pick up baubles here and there. I liked to have them, and it did no harm. Besides, some of them could have been very dangerous in other hands. I have one of the Great Ones from a time before ours, changed to marcasite but still alive in its own way. I couldn't leave that where someone else might get it, could I?"
"Somebody else did get it," Carus said. His face was granite hard, and his lips chipped out the syllables. "Your Purlio, it seems."
"I made a mistake, didn't I?" Ansalem said softly. He looked into the king's cold eyes. "Should I have done what you wanted me to, sir?"
For a mo
ment Carus didn't move or speak. Then he laughed, a gust of honest humor, and took the wizard's hands in both of his. "No, you shouldn't have done that, Lord Ansalem," he said, "because I didn't know what I was doing any better than you did. Together we could have made things different--for a time, at least. But it wouldn't have been better. I know that now."
Carus shook his head and stepped back from Ansalem; he was no longer tense. "I just wish," the king said, "we'd both had somebody to tell us what to do. I meant well, I swear it."
"Sir?" Garric said to Ansalem. "Can we get you out of this... trap? Cage? Maybe that's why you brought us."
"The encystment has to be broken from outside," said the wizard sadly, "and the amphisbaena itself is the only key. It's here with me, you see."
Garric forced himself to look at the serpentine form shimmering in time and space. Sometimes both heads were visible; often the stone couch and the air above it were bare, untenanted except for a pulsating imminence as real as the amphisbaena's physical form.
"Sir, can we take the talisman to our friend?" Garric asked. "Maybe she can open the encystment--or she can find someone more powerful if she can't do it herself."
"I appreciate the thought, young man," Ansalem said in the sort of tone an adult uses to a child who's asked why the sky is blue, "but you see, you're not real. Nothing here is real except me."
The chamber dissolved, or Garric dissolved through it. He was crossing the bridge again with Carus at his side. Klestis was a ruin behind them, trapped in an eternal twilight without hope or future.
"I feel sorry for him now," the king said. He shouted, but Garric as much read the words on his companion's lips as heard them. "I wish he could have another chance, the way I do through you, lad."
An army was marching across the bridge in the opposite direction. Garric saw the troops clearly this time: the corpses of men on the corpses of horses. Crab pincers and the teeth of fish had nibbled away here a nose, there the skin from a finger, but the cold abyss had held at bay the normal processes of decay.