by David Drake
He bent to pick up a stone fallen from the facade. It was a gargoyle's nose, hooked and distorted. He would have shied it at the Great Ones, but his fingers slipped through the limestone.
The creatures lifted on lashing tentacles, moving as though parts of the same entity. When they'd risen above the courtyard walls, their siphons drove them backward and away. Their shells had the opalescent beauty of rainbows in the skies of Hell.
The last Garric saw of the Great Ones was their glaring, angry eyes.
He stepped into an anteroom which would have seemed dingy in the upper world. The thick walls and narrow windows required for defense meant a dark, narrow interior. The Duchy of Yole hadn't been rich enough to build on a scale that gave even this sort of architecture a stark majesty.
Light didn't matter to Garric any longer. He had one task remaining before he went down to the Sister's realm forevermore. Garric had failed the kingdom, but he would not fail to accomplish this thing.
He passed through a pointed archway; the curtain which once had closed it was a tangle of gold and silver wires, still clinging to a few of the linen warp threads. At the end of the high room beyond, a figure sat on the duke's throne.
"Greetings, brother," the figure called. Its lips didn't move, for it had no lips. "Greetings Garric, King of the World and of All Time."
Garric laughed. "Greetings, Purlio," he said. "I've come to kill you."
"No, brother, no," Purlio said. The ammonite which replaced his head waved its tentacles in a subtle pattern. "You can't kill me, because I'm already dead. But--"
"I can kill you, liar," Garric said.
He smiled as he might have done at a particularly fine roast before he started to carve. He didn't have a sword in this existence, but that wouldn't matter.
"I'm not responsible for your death, Garric!" Purlio said. "But I can give you life again. Together nothing can stand against us!"
"You can't stand against me now, Purlio," Garric said as he continued to walk forward. He supposed movement was as much an illusion as the body he imagined himself wearing--but perhaps not. The drowned city seemed real, though the hand with which he'd tried to touch it was not.
The tentacles where Purlio's face should be grew agitated. "You wanted to be King of the Isles, really king. I can give you life and domination, brother. Garric, King of the World! Garric, Immortal!"
The throne stood in a bay framed on three sides by windows. It was intended to light the duke while his petitioners remained in shadow. Originally the casements had held colored glass, but only the twisted lead strips holding the pieces had survived the earthquake. Purlio looked as though he sat in a grape arbor after a killing frost.
"I'd have died before I became king on your terms, wizard," Garric said. He laughed. "I did die. Now the only thing keeping me in this world is the chance to see you out of it forever. Goodbye, Purlio!"
Garric leaped. The tentacles of Purlio's face wrapped Garric's right hand and drew his fingers toward the crushing beak.
Garric flung the wizard sideways. To his amazement, the throne crumbled under the impact of Purlio's body. Flakes of ivory inlay and gold leaf separated from the sodden framework. Purlio--or the monster that had taken control of Purlio--existed in the realm of the dead where Garric could reach him, but a part of the wizard still had a connection to the waking world.
Garric laughed and broke free. That connection was Purlio's doom.
The Great One's tentacles writhed. Ilna would understand the spell of binding they were trying to weave, but the pattern was a thing for flesh and the living. Garric stepped forward unfazed.
He'd been trying to fight a man, but the man Purlio had been no longer mattered. Garric grabbed the wizard by the waist. A human would've countered by seizing Garric by the throat or shoulders, but Purlio still didn't move his arms. The wizard bent, trying to bring the tentacles close enough to grip Garric's face.
Garric stepped into his opponent, shifting his weight. Running and wrestling were boys' chief sports in the borough, and Garric had excelled at both of them.
The Great One screamed in Garric's mind like a saw cutting glass. Garric's vision blurred with agony, but he threw Purlio head-first into the sandstone pillar beside the throne.
The ammonite shattered. Fragments of marcasite, eggshell thin and the color of burnished gold, fluttered up in the turbulence. The flesh within the shell dissolved into a rosy pulp, the constituents from which the Great One had molded its physical being.
Purlio lay dead. His dried muscles were as fragile as his brittle bones. Flakes of the wizard's flesh drifted out of his robes, sloughed as a result of the mishandling they'd received from Garric.
Garric felt a force drawing him. The ruined city lost color, then its gray forms blurred into the grayness of eternity.
With the last spark of something that cared about success and failure, Garric shouted, "You'll never touch my world again, Purlio!"
And there was blackness.
Sharina felt the head pillowed in her lap stir; she prayed silently to the Lady that it wasn't a spasm in dead muscles. "He's coming around!" she said aloud.
"Master Krias wouldn't lie to me," Cashel said. "He said I'd need the fruit, after all, and he was right about that."
Cashel squatted with his quarterstaff upright beside him, pointedly a little apart from the group tending Garric. Sharina didn't think Cashel's concern that he'd smash things by accident was justified, but it was no less real for that.
Dalar was on the other side of the tent, directly across from Cashel. He remained perfectly still in this gathering of tense humans.
Liane held the plum Cashel had taken from his wallet. She squeezed a last drop into Garric's open mouth. He spluttered and his eyelids twitched, though they remained closed.
"Oh, Lady," Liane whispered. She'd remained dry-eyed, but now tears ran down her cheeks. "Thank You for Your mercy."
Tenoctris sank back against the support of Ilna's arm. "I wish I could believe in the Gods," she said, "so that I'd have someone to thank also. Perhaps you can pray for me, Liane."
She looked at Cashel. "I don't doubt the honesty of your demon friend, Cashel," she continued. "Not now, at least. But I don't understand why if the fruit was to work, it didn't work until now."
Garric mumbled like a man coming out of a deep sleep. He was speaking words, but they were too slurred for Sharina to understand them.
"Because it wasn't yet time to work that thread into the pattern," Ilna said, her eyes on Garric--and Liane. Ilna's smile meant as much as her smiles ever did: a great deal, but nothing that anyone else would be able to read. "Who do you suppose is at the loom, Tenoctris?"
"I would say rather," said Ilna's scarred friend Chalcus, "that Master Garric delayed to finish his work. Which may be the same thing, do you think?"
He smiled at Ilna in a way nobody had ever smiled at Ilna; but Sharina had seen Chalcus' sword move. Of all people, that man knew what Ilna was in her heart.
Garric coughed. His eyes opened in amazement. Sharina felt her brother start to lurch upright, but another fit of coughing interrupted him. He turned on his side instead so that he wouldn't choke.
At last Garric straightened. Liane threw her arms around his neck. She was trying to speak but the words were lost in her sobbing. Sharina got up, feeling a little embarrassed, and settled again at Cashel's side.
Liane pulled away, red-faced and smiling. She dabbed with a lace handkerchief from her sleeve, then nodded thanks as Ilna silently handed her the square of tight-woven linen she carried.
"But I'm dead," Garric said in wonderment.
"No," said Tenoctris, "but you were."
Garric held his hands out in front of him and flexed them, watching the play of muscles and tendons. He looked around the circle of his friends with a terrible smile.
"I see," he said. "But Purlio is dead, Tenoctris. And he's going to stay that way."
Chapter Twenty-Two
On the floor of Ansa
lem's chamber lay shattered fragments of an ammonite fossil and a corpse wasted to skin over dry bones. The corpse was headless.
"Clear this rubbish!" Lord Attaper snapped to his detachment. His face froze. He looked at Garric and added, "Unless, your majesty...?"
Garric shook his head. "Clear this rubbish," he said, deliberately echoing Attaper. "I'd say give it to the dogs to eat, but there aren't any dogs in Klestis."
"I like dogs," Liane said, eying the corpse with cold distaste.
Two soldiers grabbed the body. Purlio's right arm came off in the hand of the man holding it. He swore, but his partner didn't notice he was carrying the rest of the body by himself. The desiccated corpse weighed almost nothing.
Ilna spread her kerchief and brushed the bits of marcasite from the floor with it. She folded the fabric over the shell and handed it to a soldier. "Dispose of the cloth also," she said. "I don't want it back."
Garric exchanged glances with Tenoctris. He turned to his guard commander and said, "We're ready to proceed, Lord Attaper. If you'll hold your men on the roof garden, they'll be able to intervene if required."
"We can't possibly need soldiers," Tenoctris said to Garric in surprise.
"Humor me," Garric said with a smile. While I humor Attaper. If I told him he was useless, he'd argue with me. If I tell him to hold himself in readiness but out of the way, he'll obey without question.
King Carus chuckled, lounging in a garden of his youth where beech trees were espaliered against a brick wall. "Half of kingship is considering what the other fellow is going to hear, rather than what you're going to say. You're better at it than I ever was, lad."
The troop of guards filed out through the shattered screen. After the troops and Cashel had gotten done with it, you could drive a mammoth through what had started out as delicate filigree.
The atmosphere changed when the soldiers had left. It wasn't so much that the troops had crowded the chamber as the fact that they were more or less strangers to Garric and his friends.
Garric looked around the remaining group, smiling. There were still strangers present: the bird Dalar, whom Sharina said was a warrior and who certainly moved like one; the young Lady Merota, who met Garric's eyes with an aristocratic calm that extended quite a way--but not all the way--below the surface of her face; and Chalcus.
Chalcus grinned back at Garric. The sailor wore a broad leather belt dyed to match his equally new high-laced sandals. Those accessories and Chalcus' pair of embroidered tunics must have come from the personal effects of some of the wealthier Blood Eagles.
King Carus chuckled knowingly. "Oh, yes, we can find a place for that one,' he murmured to Garric. "But an independent command--somewhere that he won't be meeting camp marshals or the city watch either one."
Tenoctris shook her head slightly. She took the packet Cashel carried for her and opened it.
The wizard had rolled Sharina's snakeskin in layers of fabric--a discarded tunic--to protect it. The skin was sepia with occasional golden highlights. The amphisbaena had been proportionately thicker than an ordinary snake; though less than six feet in length, it was well over a foot in diameter.
"I'm afraid to do this," Tenoctris said, trying to smile. "But it's not going to get easier if I wait."
"Is there danger?" Garric said. His hand twitched toward his swordhilt, though his conscious mind knew that a blade was unlikely to remedy any danger here.
The old woman shrugged. "Only of failure," she said. "My failure. In which case the continuing disruption will destroy the kingdom, I'm afraid."
Cashel frowned. "You won't fail, Tenoctris," he said. His tone would've seemed threatening to anyone who didn't know Cashel.
Ilna looked at Garric, then toward Tenoctris. "It isn't my pattern," she said, "but I doubt the craftsman at the loom would choose to weave disaster here."
"You're sure there's a pattern?" Tenoctris said sharply.
Ilna held her palms up, then laced her fingers together. "As sure as I am of these hands," she said. "As sure as I am of anything in life."
"You're sure Good will defeat Evil?" Tenoctris demanded.
"I don't know about Good and Evil," Ilna said calmly. "I know about patterns; and craft."
Tenoctris gave a crisp nod. She walked to the empty bier and spread the snakeskin over the travertine surface. The translucent scales blurred the stone's pattern of brown blotches in a yellowish matrix. Lips pursed in concentration, Tenoctris adjusted the lie of the skin.
The mottled surfaces, skin and stone, merged into a single pattern.
"It's words," Liane whispered. "It forms words in the Old Script!"
Cashel beamed with calm satisfaction. He handed Tenoctris the sliver of bamboo he had ready.
"Tenoctris, can we help?" Sharina asked softly. "To speak the words, I mean?"
"One voice is enough, I think," Tenoctris said. "And... while you, while several of you can read the Old Script as well as I can, I think this spell requires a wizard to speak it. Though I hope a wizard of my slight power will be sufficient."
Tenoctris took a deep breath. She had to stand to read the symbols on top of the bier. Garric stepped toward her but Ilna was already there, putting her arm around the old woman for support if the effort of the enchantment overcame her frail physique.
Since Tenoctris didn't need him, Garric turned his back. He knew his mind would try to pronounce the words of power if he let himself watch. Past experience had taught him that a spell formed for a wizard to speak would dry his throat and glue his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
"Horses for courses, lad," Carus said with a false laugh. "The lady isn't much of a swordsman that I've noticed."
Garric lacked a wizard's powers, but Carus had hated and even feared wizards during life. Carus' sword alone hadn't been enough to save the Isles; but it was true as well that no one, not even a wizard far more powerful than Tenoctris, could defeat the rising threat of chaos with only wizardry.
Garric flexed his swordhand and laughed. Horses for courses, indeed.
"Phouris chphouris on," Tenoctris said. "Thala matro armatroa...."
Garric looked at the ruin of the alabaster screen. It saddened Garric to see such a work of art smashed, but there'd been no time to find another way to reach Purlio. Men had died that afternoon because only their sacrifice stood between the Isles and chaos. It would be perverse to mourn the mere product of a stonemason's craft and forget the lives.
Liane put her hand on Garric's shoulder. He took his right hand off his swordhilt and flexed it, working out the stiffness from his fierce grip. He put his arm around Liane and managed to chuckle.
"Alaro alo aa," Tenoctris was saying. "Marta max soumarta...."
Dalar gave a croak of wonder. Garric turned instinctively. The bird was staring at the bier; so was Chalcus, his in-curved sword bare in his hand. So long as Ilna stood beside Tenoctris, Chalcus didn't have Garric's option of turning his back on the proceedings. Wizardry obviously frightened him, though.
A shimmer like that of a golden waterfall quivered above and through the stone bier. For an instant Garric saw a snake's head, its tongue darting to taste the air. That image vanished, but at the other end of the flowing light--
"Zochraie satra!" Tenoctris said, striking her slender wand in the center of the snakeskin. She stepped back and would have fallen if Ilna hadn't been there to catch her.
Ansalem the Wise lay on the bier, cushioned by a velvet pad. He turned his head toward his visitors and blinked in surprise.
"Who...?" he said, trying to lift himself. Cashel put an arm behind the wizard and helped him straighten into a sitting position.
"Lord Ansalem?" Garric said. The kingdom's safety was his responsibility, not that of his friends. "We've awakened you so that you can remove the bridge that threatens our world."
"I remember you," Ansalem said. His expression had been slightly vague; now it sharpened into focus. "From my dream. Where are my acolytes?"
"Dead," Garric said
bluntly. "Before they could do more damage. Though they did enough."
Ansalem sighed. "Yes, I was afraid of that," he said. Placing his sandaled feet carefully on the floor beside the bier, he stood up. "I don't understand why they shut me away like that. I only wanted what was best for them and all my people."
"They weren't as strong as you," Tenoctris said. She seemed to have recovered herself, though Ilna was ready to catch her if necessary. "What to you were toys warped them in ways that... made them less than human."
"I know you too, don't I?" Ansalem said. His gaze was disconcertingly sharp. "But from before I took my city out of the coming collapse. You're a wizard of sorts yourself."
"Yes," said Tenoctris. "I visited Klestis, but I didn't belong here so I left before it was too late."
"You would have been welcome," Ansalem said in puzzlement. "You didn't have to leave just because you didn't have the strength Purlio and the others did."
"Your power was enough to doom all the citizens who trusted you, Lord Ansalem," Garric said. He didn't know if the words came from his own horror at what had happened or if King Carus spoke with Garric's lips. Either way, Garric was certain that the wizard had to know the truth in all its brutal clarity. "Without your art, the plants and animals here couldn't produce a tenth of what the people needed to live. They ate all there was, and then they must have eaten each other. And at last they died."
Ansalem's mouth dropped open. "But I didn't mean--" he said.
He stopped and swallowed. His cherubic face was suddenly gray. "I'm sorry, Carus," Ansalem said. "I was wrong. I was terribly wrong."
Garric clasped the wizard's arm, hand to elbow. "Everybody was wrong then," he said without trying to explain that he was Garric, not Garric's ancestor. "What's important is what happens now. Can you remove the bridge you formed to my world?"
Without comment, Ansalem walked to the window looking out over the city. He apparently expected people to get out of his way automatically--as they did, Sharina in one direction and Chalcus with Merota in the other.
Chalcus chose to sheathe his sword now; with a grin, but also with enough of a flourish to make the gesture a comment. In this gathering, Ansalem didn't have a monopoly on arrogance.