Servant of the Dragon

by David Drake

  Thinking about that and grinning again, Cashel stepped into the building's domed anteroom alongside King Tiew. Servants ran up to them, several to each warrior, and began stripping off their equipment. The knights stood like horses being curried. The armor was made of metal tubes strung on light chains. When the men moved, they sounded like wind chimes on a blustery day.

  A pair of servants came toward Cashel on either side. Lia stepped away, which Cashel thought was a mercy, but when one of the little men tried to take his quarterstaff he bellowed, "No!" in surprise.

  Everything stopped for a moment. That was what usually happened when Cashel shouted, especially if he was indoors.

  "Did we give offense, Cashel?" the king said. "If so, my deepest apologies on behalf of Tian. We took the staff as a mere tool, but if it's a religious object that you must keep with you even when you eat...?"

  Cashel was blushing. "It's not religious," he muttered. "But if it's all the same, I'd like to keep it, you know, close by. It's, well, it reminds me of home."

  "Oh, that's darling!" Lia said. "You're so sensitive, dear Cashel."

  Which would've been embarrassing enough by itself. When Lia stood on tiptoes to kiss Cashel's cheek, he wanted to sink right through the floor.

  A consort of horns and pipes called from pillared lofts to either side of the anteroom. The inner doors opened and King Tiew entered the banquet hall beyond. Cashel, with Lia clinging and directing him all at the same time, followed the king.

  Side columns carried the arched ceiling so everybody in the hall could see the high table at the end. King Tiew seated himself at the center of it, beside a gravely beautiful woman of his own age. Lia led Cashel to the seat on the king's right hand.

  Cashel hesitated, but Tiew nodded welcome and even touched the high-backed chair--though a bowing servant pulled it out for Cashel. He couldn't keep holding the quarterstaff, much as he'd like to, so he leaned it against the wall back of him before he sat down.

  Lia sat beside Cashel. He'd expected that, but he sighed anyway. He really wished Sharina was here. Or Garric, or anybody who knew how to deal with this sort of business.

  The knights entered according to some order more complicated than who got his armor off first. A woman joined each knight at the entrance. The pairs were seated at the high table, alternately to the left or right of Tiew and his queen.

  Cashel grinned.

  "Cashel, dear?" Lia said, putting a finger on the lobe of Cashel's ear. "You're smiling because something pleases you?"

  "I was thinking," Cashel said honestly, "that it's a lot like watching a flock come in to be milked in the evening. In order, and all the others get upset if some ewe pushes ahead."

  "Very amusing!" Lia said with a trill of false laughter. "A flock, you say?"

  It occurred to Cashel that she'd never heard the term before. Did she even know what a ewe was? He hadn't seen a scrap of wool--or leather either, come to think--in the clothing here.

  A servant set before them porcelain goblets so thin that candlelight shone through the rims. Cashel seized his, glad both of a drink and the chance to avoid explaining to his companion what a sheep was. The wine was the clear red of pomegranate juice, but it sparkled on his lips and tongue.

  All the hall's many seats were filling with lithe men and willowy, beautiful women. The servants were everywhere but almost unnoticeable: they were deft, quiet, and seemed to blend into the walnut-paneled walls when at rest. Porcelain dishes, some white but others in a rainbow of pale hues, appeared and were whisked silently away when emptied or refused.

  Cashel was used to eating with his knife and his hands, but Reise offered horn spoons to the guests in his inn and Cashel had learned to use forks for banquets in Valles. The folk of Tian ate instead with skewers. All the food was bite-sized. Servers capped short tubes with their thumbs to pick up varied sauces and uncapped them to apply the contents according to the diners' taste.

  Cashel looked at Lia to see how to proceed. That was a mistake; she promptly began to feed him, like he was a baby just being weaned. Cashel colored--again--but there didn't seem anything to do about it that wouldn't make for a worse embarrassment.

  "Did you come to Tian because of the prophecy, Cashel?" Lia asked as she searched a platter for the next tidbit to feed him.

  Cashel quickly speared something and stuffed it into his mouth to forestall her. Around the morsel--it was a chopped paste of mushroom and spinach, he thought, fried in a wrapper of paper-thin dough--he said, "That a giant is going to destroy Tian? No, I'd never even heard of the city."

  He frowned as he tried to cast his mind back and found nothing but fog about the past. "I don't remember where I'm going, even, except that I'm to meeting Sharina.... Somewhere."

  "Well, I'm glad that you came," Lia said. She tittered. "Maybe you came to see me."

  In a more sober tone--though there'd been nothing casual about the way she'd watched Cashel sidelong at her last quip--Lia continued, "Anyway, I think the prophecy is just silly--ancient superstition, that's all. But I wish dear Liew would tear down the causeway."

  "You'll have time for that if I and my knights fail, Lia," Tiew said, leaning forward to see the woman past Cashel. "I expect that our courage and skill will protect the city, though it may be at the cost of our lives."

  "Oh, I wish you wouldn't talk that way!" said the queen, whose name Cashel hadn't heard. "It gives me shivers to think of watching you fight a monster tomorrow."

  "As you know, my dear...," said the man on the other side of her. He looked an older version of Sia, but his voice had the oily fullness of a much heavier man. "I and my immediate predecessors as Priest of the City believe that Lan Tee's so-called prophecy was an allegorical injunction to preserve the sacred rites on which our polity depends. 'A thousand years' is a figurative phrase which in context means, 'a very long time' or, better, 'forever'."

  "Shan, you know I find your commonsense so comforting," the queen said. "But I can't help worrying nonetheless about my Tiew. We women don't have the strength of you men."

  Cashel choked. Imagine somebody saying that to Ilna! For that matter, he'd met weasels with less predatory determination than Lia was showing; and if Cashel wasn't mistaking the note in the queen's voice, she didn't have much to learn about getting her way either.

  "When the giant comes," said Mah--shouting to be sure that Cashel could hear him; he'd been seated far on the king's other side, "he'll find we're ready for him. Mere size means nothing compared to the courage and true nobility of a Knight of Tian!"

  Cashel jabbed what looked like a small white carnation. It was a carved turnip, dusted with spices that Cashel decided he liked once he got over his surprise. He chewed stolidly, ignoring Mah's bragging and the gibes Sia cast at the other knight.

  "Are you happy now, Cashel?" Lia asked, her lips as close to Cashel's ear as they could be without her tugging him toward her.

  "Sure," said Cashel and washed the bite down with a draft that emptied his goblet. Emptied it again, he realized; the servants kept filling it up almost before Cashel set it back on the table.

  He didn't usually like wine, but this was refreshing without the aftertaste of vintages he'd drunk before. The food here was great, even though it came in bits no bigger than a nibble, but the wine, well, it almost convinced him that Tian was paradise.

  "I'm so glad," Lia breathed, leaning against him again. In a different voice she added, "Cashel, do you believe in the prophecy?"

  Frowning as he thought about the question, Cashel took another drink. "Well, I couldn't say," he said. "I just heard about it today, you know. I didn't even know about Tian."

  "But what do you think?" Lia said. She was suddenly a person, not just an appetite. "You've been out in the world, not like us. What do you think, Cashel or-Kenset?"

  Cashel turned to look at her, the refilled goblet in his hand. Lia was as lovely as a spray of orchids, but all he felt seeing her was loneliness.

  "Lia," he said, "I don'
t know about giants, and I don't think about things that I can't change. All I know is this."

  He drank, still meeting her eyes. "Tomorrow we'll all know the truth," he said. "And nothing you or I or a priest says tonight is going to change the truth one whit."

  Lia suddenly shivered. Her hand drew away from his arm as if of its own volition.

  Cashel didn't remember much more of the evening. Tian's wine, however fresh and clean-tasting, was a great deal stronger than the bitter beer of home. Cashel had a flash of awareness, sometime later in the night, of many small hands carrying him along a corridor; and later still, of a bed canopy above him as he lay on a mattress softer than he liked.

  But mostly Cashel slept, the sleep of the dead.

  As the wizard's net of power squeezed down on her, Ilna heard Merota calling from somewhere beyond the walls of the treasure room. A peal of manic laughter crashed over and through the girl's attenuated voice. That clutched Ilna's heart tighter than Ewis' bindings of red fire did her body.

  For the moment Ilna could still move. Instead of trying to reach the giggling wizard--useless; his spinning ivory bead would have choked out Ilna's life before she managed the second step--she twisted toward the creamy, almost-featureless wall behind her. She extended her index finger in a motion that seemed to her as slow as watching ice melt.

  Ewis must have understood. He stopped giggling and shouted, "No, you--"

  Ilna touched what looked like a swirling gray blemish somewhere beneath the surface of the stone. A door swung silently inward.

  "--mustn't do--" Ewis shrieked.

  A skeletally gaunt creature leaped into the chamber, flinging Ilna aside. Once it had been a man over seven feet tall; a sunburst medallion hung around its neck.

  It stank. It was covered in filth that no wild beast would have permitted unless it had been too desperately ill to clean itself.

  Ewis made a hand gesture; the twirling bead changed its pattern. Ilna shrugged free, and a cocoon of rosy wizardlight enfolded the Tall Thing. It laughed like all the demons of Hell and leaped across the room, trailing the would-be bonds like a wild boar slashing through gossamer. It gripped Ewis with hands like a crab's pincers and began to chew the wizard's face off.

  "Ilna!" Merota cried. Ilna got to her feet, coiling again the noose that she'd dropped as the net of light wrapped her. The girl ran through the doorway that had released the Tall Thing.

  "No, child!" Ilna cried, sweeping Merota back down the corridor from which she'd come. Other portals opened around the circumference of the treasure room. A band of men with swords and spears ran in, their equipment clanging.

  Ilna turned to shut the door. A dozen guards were hacking at the Tall Thing, but it continued its gurgling laughter. Bone splinters and brains dribbled from its mouth.

  The door slammed. Ilna could still hear the laughter. She hugged Merota fiercely. Holding the girl's right hand in her left, she started off down a lightless corridor. The walls had been blank stone for as far as Ilna could see before the door closed.

  "Ilna, I was afraid," Merota said.

  "I should hope you had enough sense to be afraid!" Ilna said. She swallowed. "I was afraid too."

  Not afraid for herself: afraid that she would fail Merota. But Ilna didn't--couldn't--say that aloud. The girl mustn't think there was ever a chance that Ilna wouldn't rescue her.

  "Someone's coming," Merota said, her voice rising. Ilna froze, holding the girl firmly. She herself didn't hear anything but the echoes of their footsteps, shuffling down the corridor ahead of them. That and her own pulse....

  "Ah, and would that be you, Ilna dear?" Chalcus called from the darkness. "And the child with you, I'm glad to hear. I regret coming back to you by such a twisty road, but I was looking for a way that I thought might be more suitable for the two of you than the spider's path I crawled down."

  "Oh, Chalcus!" Merota cried. "I'm so glad you're here."

  "As am I," said Ilna. "Though I hope you've a better notion of where 'here' is than I do--and a better route out of it than going back the way I came. I'm as glad to have left Ewis and his visitor, truth to tell."

  "We'll go the way I came, then," Chalcus said. There was no light at all in the corridor. The chanteyman was a presence in her mind nonetheless, down to his mocking grin and the gleam in his eyes. "If you'll give me a sash to hold or the like...?"

  "That won't be necessary," Ilna said. She didn't like the thought of being led like a milch ewe, and it seemed to her that Chalcus might need both hands quickly. "We'll follow well enough."

  They started down the corridor. Chalcus used his scabbard like a cane, tapping it along the wall to his left. Occasionally the iron chape struck a spark.

  "How did you find us, Chalcus?" Merota asked. "I was afraid I wouldn't see you again. I didn't think I'd see either one of you."

  "Well, child," Chalcus said, "I found an opening in the cliff and followed it back to a gallery above the biggest harbor I've ever seen in my life--and all cut in the rock, would you believe? The entrance they dragged our ships through, that closes with doors an army couldn't force in a lifetime... but there's vents above it, and one of those was my entrance."

  Merota said, almost whispering, "Everything was dark and smelly, and then the door opened and he let me go and I saw Ilna. And then you came, Chalcus. The Lady was with me."

  "I took another passage out of the gallery," the chanteyman said. "A vent on the land side I thought, and a chance to circle back and find you. As I did, thanks be to the Lady of Sailors. And perhaps to the Shepherd of the Little Ones, hey?"

  He was talking to Ilna: Merota was too obviously lost in wonder at her own survival to understand what he was saying. Ilna suspected the child was steadier, though, for hearing human voices after the time she'd spent as the captive of a laughing maniac.

  "Huh!" Ilna said aloud. "If the Great Gods step in and help people in this place, then that's a change from what happened when I was at home in Barca's Hamlet. You came to us in a treasure room that had many doors. I don't wonder that the passage you took led to one of those many."

  There was faint light ahead of them; so faint that only the sight of Chalcus in dim silhouette convinced Ilna that her mind wasn't tricking her with an illusion. She didn't fear the darkness, much less hate it; but they'd learned already in this place, this Yole, that hostile creatures could appear at any moment. Being able to see didn't guarantee a warning, but at least it might be some help.

  "Now here," Chalcus said, lowering the outstretched scabbard and sliding it again through the folds of his sash, "is the harbor. I wouldn't choose to leap about and wave my hands, but in all its hugeness there wasn't a soul save myself when I came through the first time."

  The trio stepped out of the tunnel onto a gallery eight feet wide, cut from the side of the enormous cavern it encircled. Light entered through slits in the rock ceiling. Though modest by ordinary standards, it seemed as bright as summer midday to eyes that had come from total darkness.

  The gallery had no railing. Merota squeezed against the back wall. Ilna, determined not to let the girl's fear infect her--terror spreads faster than croup does--walked to the edge and looked down.

  Far down. The dozen ships in their masonry cradles appeared as small as they had when Ilna watched the triremes from the top of the cliff.

  "How did we get so high?" she said in puzzlement. "I had to go down to reach the treasure room."

  "Did you, mistress?" Chalcus said with a raised eyebrow. "Water wouldn't have flowed in the tunnels I've been following, neither the vent nor the passage to where I met you fine ladies. The floors were that flat."

  The cavern was alive with echoes, most of them no more than the slap of water against the quays. Sounds could go on forever in this place, rebounding from smooth stone until the sun froze.

  "I see," said Ilna. "Let's get to the ships and see if there's sign of what's happened to the crews."

  The corkscrew staircase she'd followed in search of Mero
ta had worked on her mind in some fashion. She should have guessed. Those 'windows' showing scenes from the past weren't part of the normal world.

  "There's steps cut down just ahead here," Chalcus said, "and on the other side as well, you can see."

  He turned to Merota and went on, "Now take my left hand, your ladyship. We'll keep each other from slipping on the stairs, will we not? And you can turn your face to the wall as we go if you choose."

  His eyes met Ilna's over the child's head. Ilna nodded and took the lead. She held the noose in her hands in a loose coil; not that there was any reason to be concerned. She laughed harshly.

  "Mistress?" the chanteyman said.

  "I think that we're as safe here as we are anywhere on Yole," Ilna said. "And therefore we should expect to be attacked."

  Chalcus laughed; and a moment later, Merota laughed as well. If the poor child goes to court balls in Erdin laughing at the sort of things Chalcus and I think are funny, Ilna thought, they'll look at her like she has two heads.

  And that was funny as well, so Ilna laughed again.

  The stairs were cut into the rock instead of being built out from it, narrowing the gallery by half for the length of the descent to the waterside. The treads were narrower and steeper than was comfortable, more like a loft ladder than a proper staircase.

  "Did you notice the line of barnacles on the cliff face, mistress?" Chalcus said from a safe distance behind. Ilna didn't turn around; all her attention was on each next step down.

  "Barnacles?" she said. "No, but what of it? You said yourself that this island was under water as recently as last month."

  "Ah, but under a thousand fathoms of water, dear one," the chanteyman explained. "Barnacles fix themselves at the tide line, not so deep that they'd starve, the poor things. It seems to me that this island didn't rise so high when last it was above the surface, do you see? This harbor was under water."

  "Then who built it?" Ilna said. "It isn't new."

  Wizards might be able to excavate rock by their art, doing years of work in a day and a night. Ilna could see the tool marks on the stone here, however, and a coating of dried slime flaked off the walls whenever she touched them. This place had been made by hands.