by David Drake
Sharina felt the tears start. Oh Lady, I am so alone. I am so alone.
Nothing that she could have described changed, but Sharina knew suddenly that she was being watched. That wasn't the sort of companionship she'd been hoping for, but it gave her something to do besides cry about the past.
Sharina got up from where she'd been working in the patch of sunlight that fell near Ansule's grave. Wiping the knife's blade on fluff she'd pulled from a large seed case, she walked nonchalantly past the headboard she'd carved with a figure of the Lady.
The path to Hanno's tree nest wasn't really marked, but the hunter had cut a few rhododendron stems off flush with the ground. The remainder of the thicket twined dark leaves and sweet magenta flowers above the tunnel, but a human could easily pass through what would otherwise have been a solid barrier.
Sharina ducked into the rhododendrons. She crawled halfway down the passage, then hunched out of sight in the nook she'd made before going to sleep the night before. Those watching her would have to come through the thicket one by one, and the leader would be almost on the point of the Pewle knife before he realized—
Someone was behind her.
Sharina twisted. She'd thought the rhododendrons were impenetrable, but the bulk among the twisted stems proved that she'd been fatally—
“Morning, missie,” Hanno said. He was belly to the ground. “I thought I'd surprise you since you hadn't listened when I told you to shimmy up the tree. Guess I been so used to the Monkeys that I forgot there's folks beside me who know what they're doing in these woods.”
She couldn't imagine how a man so big had wormed through the thicket, but even Hanno had had to leave his great spear behind. To reach her with his butcher knife would require that he crawl closer yet; in the time that took, Sharina could have run out the open passage to freedom of a sort.
“I didn't know it was you,” Sharina said in a shaky voice. “I'm glad you're back, Hanno.”
She nodded to the passage, then backed down it to the clearing. The hunter joined her moments later. She hadn't heard the leaves rustle this time either.
Hanno glanced at the graves and the whetstone; he smiled with grim approval. He looked much as he had when he vanished into the forest two days ago, but he carried a set of steel weapons besides his own: a slender-bladed spear, and a short-hafted axe with a head whose smooth curve made it a thing of lethal beauty. Because the helve balanced the light head, the axe could be either thrown or swung.
“Ansule don't need his gear now,” Hanno said with the deadpan humor Sharina already knew to expect, “but I didn't figure to leave it with the Monkeys.”
He tossed down a crude bag. He hadn't been carrying that when he left either. “Not that the Monkeys needed it neither, when I left them.”
Sharina bit her lower lip. She knew what she was going to find, but she squatted to open the bag anyway. It was a swatch of knobbly rawhide which she supposed must have come from a reptile. The corners had been twisted over the contents, then bound with a length of sinew.
The sinew was probably human.
“I see you dug the pot out of the cabin,” Hanno said conversationally. “That's good, though I guess we could boil these clean in the little pan that's still down in the boat.”
Sharina had found a five-gallon bronze kettle in the ashes, twisted but not split when the cabin's roof collapsed. She'd hammered out the worst of the dents with lengths of wood as punch and mallet, then filled the container with water and put it on a low fire.
She opened the bag. It held eyeteeth, about thirty sets of them. The roots were still red with the flesh from which they'd been ripped a few hours earlier. Sharina's rush of nausea wasn't a reaction to the stench, but the stench was bad enough.
“They was heading straight away from here,” the hunter said. “Never saw Monkeys act like that before. Mostly they wander all over the landscape.”
Sharina stood up. “They're not Monkeys,” she said in a clear voice. “They're men. Human beings!”
Hanno shrugged. “All right, missie,” he said. His voice was calm, but beneath that surface he was as tense as Sharina herself. “They're men. Who burned my cabin and ate my partner before they moved on.”
“Some of them were children!” Sharina said.
“Every one of them that was weaned to solid food is right there!” Hanno said, pointing to the bag of teeth. “The baby ones, well, they're with their mothers but I didn't take the teeth. There's no Monkey going to grow up to tell the rest how good a human being tastes!”
Sharina took a deep breath and turned away. She didn't know what was right. She knew what was right for her, but she hadn't lived in this jungle.
If the body had been hers, not Ansule's... what would Nonnus have done to the band who killed and ate her?
She unbuckled her belt and knife and set them on the ground. She walked to the grave's headboard with tear-blind eyes and knelt. “Lady, guide me in Your ways,” she whispered. “Lady, forgive me for the wrongs I do others, and forgive others for the wrongs they do for my sake.”
“I don't take the teeth normal times,” Hanno said behind her. His voice was thick with embarrassment. “There's a good market for them in Valles, they sell them on to the Sedans to grind up for medicine, but not me. Only, for Ansule, I figured I ought to do something special. Guess I'll string the lot and hang them on his grave.”
“No,” Sharina said. She stood and turned to face the big hunter. She was no longer crying; she wiped her cheeks with her fingers unself-consciously. “Or do—I won't tell you how to remember your friend. But first take the Lady away. She has no part of that sort of thing.”
Hanno frowned, in concentration rather than disagreement. He knelt beside the cairn and ran his finger over the headboard. Sharina had stained the fresh, white wood with the juice of nut hulls, then used the point of the Pewle knife to carve the Lady's outline.
“A pretty piece of work, missie,” he said to the eucalyptus wood.
“Thank you,” Sharina said tightly. The grave marker was simple and wouldn't last long in this climate, but she too thought it was surprisingly attractive.
Hanno stood and shrugged. “Guess we'll leave things stay the way they are,” he said. He picked up the piece of hide, carried it to the trench where Hairy Men lay, and spilled the raw teeth onto the dirt.
“Thank you, Hanno,” Sharina said. She paused, then stepped over to the hunter and hugged him. Both of them kept their faces resolutely turned away from the other. As they parted Sharina added, “I'm sorry about your friend.”
“I never thought Ansule was careful enough,” Hanno said. He coughed to clear his throat. “I figured it'd be one of the hunting lizards got him, though, not a Monkey. He'd go after them with this toy—”
He'd butted the spears in the soil when he knelt at the grave. He plucked Ansule's out, balancing it in his right palm. Only to a man like Hanno could the other hunter's seven-foot spear be considered a toy, though it weighed barely half what his own broad-bladed weapon did.
“—and I tell you, missie, some of them big lizards take a right lot of killing.”
Hanno gazed reflectively at the spear, then back to Sharina. “Do you want Ansule's gear, missie?” he asked. “I don't figure to pack it back to his kin—and anyhow, they didn't bury him.”
“The spear's too big for me,” Sharina said. That she might have need for weapons for as long as she stayed on Bight was beyond question. “As for the axe, I think my knife will do me. My friend's knife.”
The hunter nodded noncommittally. He set the spear-shaft across the eucalyptus stump, then struck it a foot from the butt with Ansule's axe. Sharina could see that Hanno's blow was delicate for him, but a chip sailed up from the seasoned hickory. He rotated the shaft and chopped cleanly through from the opposite side.
Displaying the shortened weapon to Sharina he said, “Like this? Or another hand's breadth off? I'll fit the butt spike once I've rubbed away the wood whiskers.”
&nb
sp; “It should do very well as it is now,” Sharina said. The offhand strokes had been as precise as the movements of the stars. Hanno's strength was perhaps less amazing than the way he controlled that strength.
“Guess I'll keep the axe myself,” he said judiciously. He slid the helve under his belt. “I'm like you, missie, I'd sooner use a knife for the close work, but I guess Ansule'd like to know it had a good home. Set great store by this axe, he did.”
“I brought a peck of grain up from the boat,” Sharina said awkwardly. “Would you like me to fix ash cakes? Or porridge?”
She wasn't such a fool as to doubt that Hanno cared about his friend's death despite the nonchalant way he discussed it, but she didn't know how to respond. She supposed it was best to ignore the matter and let Hanno deal with his grief in the way he chose.
“Ash cakes would be a treat!” the hunter said. “I'll see if I can find us some meat for one meal, at least. And we can decide what we do next.”
He squatted, rubbing the shortened spearbutt against the side of Sharina's whetstone. He worked absently, keeping his hands busy while his mind was elsewhere.
“I don't know what's happening since I've been gone to Valles,” Hanno said. “Ansule maybe wasn't so careful as me, but he'd been here five years. I'd never have thought Monkeys would get him the way they did.”
He bobbed his bushy beard toward the surrounding forest. “They crawled up in the night and laid around the clearing, waiting for him to come out in the morning. If they'd charged the cabin straight, the door and walls would've held them till Ansule was good 'n' ready to come out. Chances are he'd have cut his way through.”
Hanno looked at the grave and shook his head. “He was a quick little fellow, I swear he was.”
“Is it unusual for them to attack hunters?” Sharina asked, showing that she was interested. The fact that there was a trade in the Hairy Men's eyeteeth suggested that hunters on Bight regarded them more as prey than as enemies.
Hanno shrugged. “It can happen,” he said. “But you can have a limb drop on your head, too, and that's more of a reason to worry. Anyway, even if they wanted to, they couldn't think far enough ahead to lay up for Ansule like that. Only they did.”
He rose and tossed Sharina the spear. “You going to be all right while I find us a lizard?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Hanno nodded. “Figured you would,” he said. He looked around the green wall of jungle that surrounded the clearing. “I ought to talk to some of the other fellows who hunt this end of the island and see what they've got to say. I'll sleep here, and then maybe the next few days I'll spend visiting.”
He grinned. “That's if there's anybody alive to visit, I mean,” he said.
Sharina grinned back at him, though there was a knot in her stomach. “I'll get some more headboards ready,” she said. “In case there aren't.”
“Are you sure you're ready for this, Tenoctris?” asked Liane as she carried the silver serving dish onto the roof garden. Royhas hadn't objected to the old wizard scribing symbols of power around the platter's rim so that she could use it in her incantation.
Garric set a small intarsia-topped table between a miniature fig and a planter in which narcissi were already blooming. He shivered. Royhas' town house was taller by half a story—the extra height of the third-floor banquet room—than the buildings around it, but the servants had strung the sunscreen of saffron-hued canvas overhead as well. The cool spring afternoon wouldn't usually have required the cover.
Garric supposed the caution was reasonable. The chill in his bones didn't have much to do with the weather anyway, and sunlight wouldn't have warmed it.
“I believe I've recovered well enough for a simple scrying ceremony,” Tenoctris said as she seated herself on the curving bench that faced the table. She looked at her companions with a faint smile. “And I certainly believe that we have less time than I would wish.”
Liane swallowed. She placed the dish in the center of the low table. Almost the center of the table: Liane hadn't been raised by an innkeeper who expected perfection.
Garric grinned, his bleak mood broken. He sat across from Tenoctris, leaving room for Liane to sit between them.
The platter was polished to a smooth luster. Garric saw Tenoctris reflected in it. Beyond her was the garden wall, topped with a trough from which ivy spilled down the building's facade.
Tenoctris touched the cool metal. “Silver should prevent the queen from coming to us through my spell,” she said, “unless her wizardry's of a more benign form than I expect.”
She looked at her companions, her smile fading to an expression of quiet concern. “I won't need your help with the incantation,” she said, “but I can't be sure that I'll remember what the silver shows. I hope you'll be able to help there.”
“We're fine,” Garric said heartily. “You do the hard part and we'll sit here and watch.”
Tenoctris was talking to put off the task a few moments longer. Garric didn't think the old woman was afraid. Tenoctris had said she didn't care about her life or her body, and Garric had never seen any sign that the words were false; but she was very weary from the trek along the shining road to here. He knew that he found it easier to face danger than to return again and again to a grinding task that wouldn't be finished any time soon.
Tenoctris grinned. “Sasskib,” she said, turning the platter with her index finger. The smooth metal rotated easily on the smooth wood. “Kabbib sady knebir.”
Garric was afraid. Since the incantation in the First Place of the Ersa, he knew firsthand of the things that waited at the fringes of the paths between the planes. Somewhere that Garric couldn't see, a female of pearly light waited for him. Tenoctris was a careful craftsman; she didn't leap into darkness hoping for a good result. Even so, this spell might open the waking world to the force whose Hand had formed the Gulf.
Liane feared the same thing. She sat with her fists clenched beside her. When Garric touched her she linked fingers with him fiercely.
“Sawadry maryray anoquop,”Tenoctris said. She lifted her finger from the platter's rim but the silver disk continued to revolve. “Anes paseps kiboybey.”
Royhas had provided everything Garric asked for, including a valuable dish to be scratched into a magic mirror. Neither he nor any of the other conspirators wanted to be present at the scrying, though; and only very senior servants, Maurunus and two others, were aware that Garric and his companions were in the house.
The guards knew, though; and the huntsman. Word would get out one way or another. If Silyon could predict the trio's appearance in the palace ruins, he could surely find them again if he turned his art to it.
“Banwar!”Tenoctris said. The dish spun faster, too fast for anyone to read the letters scribed around its rim. “Nakyar nakyar yah!”
The silver dish was a blur. In it—through it—Garric saw the queen, a coldly beautiful woman, standing in a gown of rainbow silk before a slab of polished tourmaline. The crystal staff in her hand glittered. Around the tableau, words of power were set as a circular mosaic in the floor.
Tenoctris continued to mouth her incantation. The image held Garric the way a weasel holds a rat.
The queen was chanting also. No sound passed to Garric's side of the silver dish, but he felt the rhythms. It was their compulsion rather than his own desire which forced him to watch the scene.
The queen raised her staff of flashing crystal. As if severed by its stroke, a ghastly image drifted from her body. The thing had the features of a demon. Its body was gray, and its eyes were yellow hellfire.
The queen continued to chant, tapping the air with her wand. Beyond the circle was a columnar table. On it Garric sometimes thought he saw a chessboard, but the image wasn't clear. Another phantasm shivered away from the woman, penetrating the chamber's wall unhindered.
A third phantasm separated and passed from the field of polished silver. The queen stood, imperious and cold, but her flesh was losing defi
nition as each avatar sprang from her substance. Tenoctris' voice had dropped to a murmur.
“In the mirror,” Liane whispered. She was struggling vainly to stand. “Look in the stone mirror.”
Garric forced himself to rise. He stepped over the bench, moving clumsily because he was unable to look away from the spinning platter. When he stood behind Tenoctris, he looked into the mirror just as the queen herself did.
Tenoctris gave a sigh. She rubbed her eyes, looking dazed. The platter wobbled from the table and clanged onto the stone flags of the roof garden. Though the silver continued to quiver with one pure tone and a dozen harmonics, the images vanished as soon as Tenoctris ceased intoning the words of power.
The old woman toppled forward, asleep or unconscious. Garric caught her by the shoulders to keep her from cutting her face on the inlaid table.
“Did you see it?” Liane demanded. Garric was swaying also. Only his need to hold Tenoctris kept him from falling over himself. “What did you see in the stone?”
“I didn't see the queen,” Garric whispered. “All I saw was a demon. And it was looking at me.”
Maidus hadn't cried since the night his mother's current boyfriend beat him almost senseless and he crawled from her door, never to return. He was crying now as he sat, head bowed, on the floor of the room Cerix and Halphemos rented by the day.
“Put my last pellet in wine and give it to him, Halphemos,” Cerix said as he concentrated on sewing up the boy's scalp. The club had left a cut a hand's breadth long. It had resumed bleeding profusely as soon as the two wizards sponged away the blood clotted in the coarse, black hair. Without attention, the boy would faint or even die from blood loss.
“He's not crying from the pain,” Halphemos said tightly. “I knew I should have gone down to the docks instead of Ilna!”
“Give him the pellet!” Cerix repeated. “It's not only the body's hurt it dulls, boy.”
His left thumb and forefinger pinched closed the wound; his right guided the needle through the twin edges of skin. The suture was a thread unraveled from Halphemos' robe. Because the silk was red, the fresh blood soaking it wasn't noticeable.