The Fortress Of Glass

by David Drake

  Ilna’s ears took in the sounds, but her mind was focused outside the ship, outside even the universe. She saw the shadows merge and link. The light in the depths swelled and wove its own pattern across the cosmos. She understood what Cervoran was doing, and she understood that he would fail because what he faced was more powerful than he knew or could know.

  Ilna understood. Cervoran was a part of the pattern created by the light and the thing within the light. Very soon it would be complete.

  She couldn’t block the play of forces any more than Cashel could stand between two mountains and push them apart. She and her brother were powerful in their own ways, but the present battle was on a titanic scale. All Ilna could do was protect herself, wall herself off from the struggle.

  She raised the pattern her fingers had knotted, holding it before her eyes. Then—A flash of blue wizardlight penetrated the sea and sky, clinging to and filling all matter. Motion ceased, and the universe was silent except for the voice of Cervoran shrilling, “Iao obra phrene…”

  He was trapped in his own spell, weaving the noose to hang him and hang all the universe with him. Everything was connected…

  Ilna tucked the cords into her sleeve and climbed over the railing. The pattern was fixed in her mind, now. She no longer needed the physical object, and she didn’t have time to pick out the knots.

  The oarsmen stood like a jumble of statues, frozen by the spell and counterspell. Ilna hung on the outside of the railing for a moment to pick a spot to fall. She dropped to the outrigger between a man caught shouting desperately to Chalcus and one praying to the image of the Lady he held in his hands. She touched stepped down to the ice.

  “Akri krithi phreneu…,” Cervoran said.

  Ilna walked toward him, taking short paces on the slick footing. The ice humped and cracked the way the millpond in Barca’s Hamlet did during a hard winter.

  “Ae obra euphrene…,” Cervoran said.

  The ice groaned in an undertone that blended with the wizard’s voice. He’d been a fool to match himself against the thing beneath, but Ilna had been a fool herself many times in the past… and perhaps now. She loathed fools. All fools.

  As the light flooding up through the ice grew brighter, the sky blurred gray and the scattered clouds lost definition. Ilna wasn’t sure whether the spell had formed a cyst in time around Cervoran and those with him, or if the whole world was being changed by the pattern woven in words of power.

  “Euphri litho kira…,” cried Cervoran or at least Cervoran’s lips.

  Ilna was wearing suede-soled slippers because city custom, court custom, demanded that she not be barefoot. Nobody could’ve ordered her to wear shoes, but people might have laughed if she hadn’t.

  Part of Ilna would’ve said that she didn’t care what other people thought, but that wasn’t really true. The truth was that she’d do what she thought right no matter what anyone said or thought; but it was true also that if it was simply a matter of wearing shoes needlessly or being laughed at, she’d wear shoes.

  That was a fortunate choice now. She’d walked barefoot on ice in the past when she had to, but the layer of suede was less uncomfortable. She hadn’t dressed for deep winter this morning.

  The light beneath the sea throbbed in the rhythm of a beating heart. As the syllables fell from Cervoran’s lips it glowed brighter, faded, and grew brighter yet.

  “…rali thonu omene…”

  Ilna reached the chanting wizard. She was a weaver, not a wizard. She could do things with fabric impossible for anyone else she’d met, perhaps impossible for anyone else who’d ever lived. But any bumpkin in the borough could slash across one of Ilna’s subtle patterns, destroying it and its effect completely.

  Ilna grasped the golden wire and twisted the topaz diadem off Cervoran’s head.

  The wizard shrieked like a circling marsh hawk. His hands fell and his body went limp. She caught him as he slumped, then pulled his arms over her shoulders and turned, dragging him with her toward the ship. Cervoran was silent and a dead weight, but she’d done this before.

  Breaking the spell had freed the crew of the Heron. Ilna heard the men shouting and praying, all at the top of their lungs for the joy of being able to speak again. Someone called her name, but she saved her breath for what she had to do.

  The ice was breaking up, crackling and groaning underfoot. A great slab tilted vertical close by Ilna’s left side, then slipped back with a moan. Salt water shot up from the fissure in a rainbow geyser; the whole ice sheet undulated in a web of spreading cracks.

  Water as warm as blood sluiced ankle-deep across her feet. She paused, then stamped onward when the flow ceased. The ice, already slick, now glistened mirror-bright and smooth. She paced on because there was no choice and no other hope.

  The snapping grew to a roar and the ice began to shiver. A chasm was opening, rushing toward Ilna faster than she could walk away from it. She didn’t run because she couldn’t run with Cervoran’s weight to carry; and if she tried she’d fall; and if she fell, she’d fail.

  She was blind with effort. Her breaths burned as she dragged them in through her open mouth.

  Ilna had no God to pray to because she didn’t believe in the Gods, and no one to curse because her own choice had brought her to this. Curses would be as empty as prayers, and anyway she wouldn’t curse.

  Cervoran lifted away from her. Her eyes focused. Cashel was beside her, striding for the ship again with the once-dead wizard over this shoulder. Chalcus caught Ilna around the waist and snatched her overhead with an acrobat’s grace and a strength that belied his trim body. Together the men ran the last few steps back to the ship and handed their burdens aboard. A burly crewman took Ilna and lowered her to the hollow planking beneath the outrigger.

  She turned. The ice sheet was pulling apart in a torrent dancing with great yellow chunks. The split reached the Heron, lifting the ship and shaking it like a dog before dropping it to wallow freely in open water.

  “To your benches, buckos!” Chalcus shouted. “Panshin, give us the stroke on your flute! On your lives, my lads!”

  Ilna stepped up to a bench and jumped, catching the railing around the raised deck. Chalcus was mounting in a single smooth motion, swinging his feet over with a twist of his shoulders. Ilna wasn’t an acrobat or a sailor, but she heaved herself onto the rail, balanced, and rotated her body to stand upright. Tenoctris was beside her, holding the quarterstaff vertical in both hands.

  Cashel, methodical as always, lifted Cervoran to the deck like a sack of grain and pulled himself up. The ship pitched and yawed, but that always happened when oarsmen shifted back to their places.

  Cashel took his staff with a smile and a murmur of thanks. He looked past Cervoran toward the island.

  Tenoctris said, “May I look at the diadem, Ilna?” In a warmer tone she added, “You saved our lives, you know. At least our lives.”

  Ilna looked down in surprise. She was holding the crown in her right hand, the gold wire twisted into a knot by her grip. The big topaz winked, reminding her of the ice now shattered about the Heron.

  “I…,” said Ilna. She wasn’t sure what to say next so she just handed the crown to Tenoctris. It wasn’t really damaged. Pure gold was nearly as flexible as silk, so the band could easily be bent back into its original shape.

  The ship was getting under way. Only half the oars pulled water on the first stroke, but the remaining rowers were sliding onto their benches and picking up the rhythm. Chalcus called, “Aye, lads, your backs or your necks. Put your backs in it, sailors!”

  Tenoctris was examining the crown, turning it by the band but eyeing the play of light in the heart of the stone. Ilna wondered if she should’ve thrown the jewel into the sea, but if she’d done that… It must’ve had something to do with Garric’s disappearance, so it was the best chance they had for returning the prince to his kingdom and Garric to the friends who needed him just as surely as the kingdom did.

  Cashel kept his back t
o the two women; his quarterstaff stood upright like a supporting pillar. Cervoran sprawled ahead of him on the catwalk, his eyes open but unseeing. He might have been dead, Ilna thought; and smiled grimly. Dead again, that is.

  The sea leaped with violent ripples centered on the place in the near distance where Cervoran had stood to chant. Violent blows hammered the Heron’s keel. Oars clattered as a few of the rowers lost the stroke, but they picked it up again almost instantly. When Ilna looked down on the benches she saw faces set in fear and stony determination.

  Water bubbled, mounded, and finally climbed to the sky in the Heron’s wake. The rowers faced backward, so all of them could watch. This time they kept the rhythm, taking themselves farther from what was happening behind them with every stroke.

  The roar filled the sky and flattened the chop. The sea mounded in a huge circle, spreading outward from the rising dome. Fish and flotsam and yellow foam danced in the churning water.

  A gleaming, turreted crystal mountain rose from the surface, throwing shattered sunlight back in as many shards as the stars of a winter night. The sea heaved, exposing or distorting three legs that shimmered into the depths.

  The deepest trench in the Inner Sea, Chalcus had said. And this thing came out of it.

  “The Fortress of Glass,” Tenoctris said wonderingly. Ilna remembered the words from Cervoran’s mouth as he rose from his trance in the depths of the topaz. “There’s nothing in any of my records, but here it is.”

  Ilna put an arm around the older woman’s waist and gripped the railing with her other hand; Cashel knelt and grasped a handful of Cervoran’s collar. The spreading wave lifted the ship and flung it forward, but neither wizard went overboard.

  There was confusion on the benches but at least half the crew kept their oar looms and at least a semblance of the rhythm. Blades cracked together, but not badly; the men who’d been thrown down returned to their seats and their duty. They were trained men, picked men; men fit for a leader like Chalcus.

  The Heron drove back toward harbor. Chalcus gestured to Panshin; the flute-player increased his tempo. They were drawing away from the fortress, but it was high enough to be seen even from the island’s shore.

  Things slipped from the crystal battlements and splashed into the sea. Flotsam, Ilna thought. Scraps of seaweed and muck from the abyss, lifted when the fortress rose.

  Instead of bobbing at the base of the crystal walls, the blobs moved outward. They were hellplants like the one that had attacked the palace, and they were swimming in the Heron’s wake.

  “Captain Chalcus!” Cashel called. He’d gotten to his feet again and was looking over the bow. “Look ahead of us, sir!”

  Ilna bent outward to look also. Ahead of the ship, rising from the depths like foul green bubbles swelling from a swamp, were more hellplants. They moved toward the Heron on strokes of their powerful tentacles.

  Chapter 6

  Chalcus snatched a boat pike from one of the stern racks; the shaft was half again his height. Using it for a balance pole, he jumped to the rail. Looking out, he called, “Hard aport!” sharply. The steersman leaned into the tiller of the port steering oar.

  The Heron heeled toward the oar, making the blade cut deeper into the water and tightening the turn. Chalcus shifted his footing slightly, leaning further for a better view past the hull; the pike in his hands moved inboard to balance him.

  The show was as good as any troupe of the acrobats who’d entertained at palace dinners, but here it was in dead earnest. The rail was the only place where Chalcus could both conn them through the gauntlet of swimming monsters and be sure the steersman could hear his orders instantly in the likely tumult of the next minutes.

  “The plants ahead of us must’ve been going to attack the palace,” Tenoctris said, pursing her lips. She spoke loudly enough for to be heard, but it seemed to Ilna that she was organizing her own thoughts rather than informing her friends. “The person, the thing in the fortress must really control them to send them against us instead.”

  “The Green Woman,” Ilna said, though the name was only a sound without meaning. Did even Cervoran know what she was?

  “Tenoctris, can you do something?” Cashel said. “To fight the plants, I mean.”

  He gave the staff a trial spin overhead where he wasn’t going to hit anybody, then lowered it. They’d all seen the plant attacking the palace. A quarterstaff wouldn’t be much good against more creatures of the sort.

  Ilna’s fingers had been busy with the cords while her mind was on other things, hopeless things. When she looked at what she’d knotted, her lips pursed with surprise. She knew her patterns were useless as weapons against the hellplants, but this was no weapon.

  “I’ll try,” Tenoctris said. She grasped the railing with one hand and lowered herself to the catwalk. “I don’t have a great deal of power, though.”

  Cervoran was extremely powerful. He hadn’t been able to destroy the fortress in the depths, but saving the Heron from the creatures attacking was surely a smaller thing.

  “Cashel, let me by,” Ilna said. “To get to Cervoran.”

  Cashel stepped aside with the powerful delicacy of an ox lowering itself onto the straw. He didn’t ask what she planned to do; he knew she’d tell him whatever she thought he needed to know.

  Ilna smiled, though the expression barely reached her lips. Her brother had more common sense than most of the people who thought they were smarter than he was. In fact, thinking Cashel was stupid proved you didn’t have common sense.

  There was a sucking thwock from forward; the Heron staggered. A swatch of vegetation spurted up from the ram’s curve before falling back into the sea.

  “Stroke, lads!” Chalcus shouted. “A cable’s length and we’re through the devils!”

  Ilna squatted at Cervoran’s head and spread her knotted pattern before his staring eyes. For a moment nothing happened; then a shudder trembled the length of the wizard’s body. The design had penetrated to his stunned consciousness and wrenched him back to the present.

  Cervoran closed, then opened his eyes again. His irises were muddy and stood in fields of pale gold. The swollen lips moved, but no sound came out.

  “Stroke!” Chalcus shouted. As the word rang out, oars on the port side clattered together and the ship slewed toward them.

  Ilna glanced to the side, continuing to hold the tracery of fabric in front of the wizard. The Heron’s hull had cleared the nearest hellplant, but the creature grasped an oarblade as the ship drove past. The tentacle held, dragging the oar back into all those behind it in the bank. “Overboard with it!” Chalcus bellowed, springing from the deck to the outrigger. “Shove it out, we don’t need the bloody oar!”

  Chalcus’ dagger, curved like a cat’s claw, flashed; he bent and cut through the twist of willow withie that bound the oar to the rowlock. The rower pushed his oar through the port, but the hellplant’s tentacles had grabbed more blades. The Heron wallowed: the starboard oars were driving at full stroke, but half those on the other side were tangled. The hellplant’s bulk tugged at the ship like a sea anchor.

  Cashel stood amidships. He’d picked up the pike Chalcus dropped when he jumped from the deck railing. Some of the shepherds in the borough carried a javelin instead of a staff or bow, but Ilna didn’t recall having seen her brother with a spear of any sort in his hand before.

  Cashel cocked the pike over his shoulder, then snapped it forward as though it was meant for throwing instead of having a shaft thick enough to be used to fend the ship’s fragile hull away from a dock. The pike wasn’t balanced: the rusted iron butt-cap wobbled in a wide circle.

  The point and half the long shaft squelched into the hellplant, tearing a hole the size of a man’s thigh. The barrel-shaped body quivered, but the plant continued to pull itself up the oarshafts toward the ship.

  Half a dozen more oars slid through the ports as crewmen jettisoned anything the plant’s tentacles had caught. The Heron was under way again, limping but movin
g forward. The steersman had his starboard oar twisted broadside on, fighting the ship’s urge to turn to port where the hellplant lashed the water in a furious attempt to renew its grip.

  “Where is the jewel?” demanded a voice that drove into Ilna’s mind like a jet of ice water. “I must have the topaz from the amber sarcophagus.”

  Ilna looked at Cervoran, whom she’d forgotten for a moment. He’d raised his swollen body onto one elbow. His eyes had returned to the febrile brightness that’d been normal for them at least since she brought him off the pyre.

  “I’ll get it,” Ilna said. She put her knotted pattern in her left sleeve; it’d served its purpose by bringing the wizard out of his coma. Now the question was whether Cervoran would serve his purpose, and they’d know the answer to that before long.

  Tenoctris had set down the crown when she started her own spell. Ilna leaned past the three-cornered figure her friend had drawn in charcoal on the pine decking. Grabbing the wire band she drew it to her, trying not to disturb Tenoctris.

  The stone was awkwardly heavy; she couldn’t imagine wearing such a thing herself. Nobody was asking her to, of course. She gave the crown to Cervoran with a cold expression.

  Oars rattled. The Heron twisted, then shuddered to a stop. Two more hellplants had swum close enough to grab the leading oars on either side, binding the ship to them hopelessly. A third creature, the one that they’d struggled clear of moments before, swam up in the Heron’s wake and would catch the stern in a matter of seconds.

  “All right, lads!” Chalcus cried. “Swords out and show these vegetables what it means to play with men!”

  Cervoran rose to his feet. The great topaz winked on his forehead as if it was alive too. He picked up the silver-mounted skullcap that lay where he’d dropped it after the earlier spell froze the sea into yellow ice.

  A sailor screamed. A flat green tentacle started to lift him from the ship. Chalcus scampered down the outrigger like a squirrel, slashing with his incurved sword. The slender blade slit the tentacle neatly, leaving only the leafy fringe remaining. The sailor twisted with desperate strength and tore that apart also, tumbling back aboard the Heron.