by David Drake
She did expect them to be successfully completed, though. This one would be no different from any of the others.
The 24th of Heron
Cashel didn't know what had awakened him. It was a warm night and quiet except for the ape beside him. Zahag snored. Also his lips flapped each time he breathed out. Aria still complained about the noise, though it no longer kept her from falling asleep.
To Cashel it was a homey sound. Dantle—Dantle Longleg, not Dantle Squint at the other end of the borough—had a sow who snored just the same way while she slept under the wagon shelter beside the sheepfold. Many a time Cashel had heard that snore as he helped Dantle shear.
He got to his feet. Though he moved quietly, he was still surprised that Zahag didn't wake up. Cashel had seen the ape jump from midsnore to grab a scorpion crawling across the pebbles an arm's length from his head.
Zahag had swallowed the scorpion, then looked up to check whether his companions had seen him bolt the tidbit. Cashel wouldn't even have smashed the creature with his bare hand, let alone eaten it, so he'd pretended he hadn't been watching.
They were out of the swamp, and the landscape, though dry, wasn't the desert they'd found when they first escaped from Aria's prison. Cashel wouldn't have wanted to pasture sheep here, but goats shouldn't have a problem. He'd seen squared stones near the path today, the first sign they'd had of people since the causeway.
Of course, he couldn't be sure “people” was quite the word.
A fox whooped in the distance, sounding like something much bigger. Cashel slid the quarterstaff between his hands, reminding himself of how it felt. He still missed the hickory staff he'd left in Folquin's palace, but this one was serviceable.
He didn't like goats. They were smart, but brains weren't high on Cashel's list of virtues. Goats had nasty, peevish temperaments and were prone to doing things out of pure cussedness. A sheep would walk through an open gate to browse a garden. Goats would crawl through a fence that looked proof against mice and nibble the greens to the ground, even if there was plenty of proper fodder available.
Protecting Aria reminded Cashel powerfully of the times he'd had to tend goats.
The coals of the brushwood fire flared suddenly, then sank to their previous dull glow. Flames rose again, but this time they were a blue as pale an autumn sky. There was no sound at all.
“Zahag,” Cashel said. He didn't exactly shout, but even Aria—who slept like a seal—should have jumped to her feet. “Princess.”
His companions didn't awaken. Their chests were still. The only movement in the night was the fire's unnatural flickering.
Cashel heard the soft crunch of feet on dry soil. He looked into the darkness but saw nothing. Crossing his staff before him he called, “Who's there?”
Three women, not quite giants but as tall as Cashel could reach at full stretch, came into the firelight holding hands. Though they went barefoot like peasants, they wore tiaras and their robes were of silk so fine that it flowed like water.
“We've been waiting for you, Cashel,” the woman in the middle said. Her hair must have been ash blond because its present color was the same ghostly blue as the firelight. “Come dance with us.”
The woman on the left had black hair and white skin. “We should be four when we dance, Cashel,” she said in a voice as melodious as a distant trumpet.
They were beautiful. They moved with as much natural grace as Sharina did. When Cashel looked at them, he found it difficult to remember Sharina's face.
“Where do you live?” he said. He stretched his leg out and prodded Zahag in the ribs. It was like toeing a rock. The ape's hairy side was as hard and cold as a statue's. “We don't live here, Cashel,” the third woman said. She beckoned him with her free hand. He felt a pull like the current of a brook at flood. “We came to visit you.” “Dance with us,” the women said together. They began to circle slowly, stepping with the majesty of rams preparing to fight.
“No,” Cashel said. He tried to speak, anyway. He wasn't sure the intention made it as far as his lips.
The women joined hands as they danced, then parted. Each in succession pirouetted, but all the time they continued the common sunwise-circle. Each gestured to Cashel as she turned. Dance with us...
Cashel couldn't see the moon, or the fire behind him when he tried to turn his head. The dance was quicker now. Over the calm, lovely women lay a pale light that cast no shadows.
Cashel held the quarterstaff before him as though it were a rail overhanging a pit. The dance was approaching its climax. Motion continued but the three women were still and imperious in his mind's eye. They gestured to him.
Join us, Cashel. We should be four for the dance. Join us...
Cashel forced his head away. Aria was curled in the bowl of earth he'd scraped for her beside the fire, sleeping like the dead. He didn't like Aria, but she was in this place because Cashel or-Kenset had brought her here.
Sharina was a faint memory. His other friends and the struggle against Malkar's agents were empty names like fragments from an epic Garric read to him as they tended sheep in Barca's Hamlet. Duty remained.
“I can't,” Cashel whispered. “I'm needed here.” The dance accelerated. There were no figures any longer, only a pillar of indistinct light. The light expanded slowly, enveloped Cashel, and lulled him into dreamless sleep.
“We've done as you asked,” Royhas said. “Over a hundred of our agents are coming into the city with the rumor. By this time tomorrow, there won't be a soul in Valles who hasn't heard that King Carus is returning to put paid to the queen.”
He laughed cynically. “They'll believe it too, the mob will. And they're the ones we need.”
The bell on a barge riding at anchor rang nearby. They were walking along the River Beltis, down which goods from the interior reached Valles. Royhas didn't understand why Garric had insisted on meeting this way rather than in his mansion or at least a carriage. The noble's bodyguards were a dozen paces behind and not happy with the situation; though even unguarded, two sober men with swords would probably be safe enough from the low-class footpads who frequented the river path.
To Garric's right, an embankment supported the rear of a temple to the Lady of Abundance. The Beltis flooded in early spring; the great limestone blocks of the retaining wall were mud-stained for twenty feet above the roadway. This temple and the other public buildings to either side of it faced Merchants' Plaza—the center of Valles when it was a village.
“Some of them will believe,” Garric said. “More will believe when I appear. And eventually—”
He looked at his companion. He didn't speak for a moment to draw Royhas' eyes.
“—everyone on Ornifal and across the Isles will believe and join us, I hope. I don't believe in golden ages, Royhas. But I do believe in a government that tries to give everyone justice, and a King of the Isles who rules.”
Royhas was both intelligent and active; there wouldn't have been a conspiracy without him, though none of the others would have granted him primacy. His foot hesitated for a heartbeat; then he resumed walking.
Garric and the noble didn't have a linkman to light their way. The moon was sufficient here along the river, since the sky wasn't blocked by buildings rising shoulder to shoulder.
“You don't talk like a peasant from Haft,” Royhas said. His eyes were on the road in front of him. The hood of his cape hid his face from Garric. “You haven't from the beginning, as a matter of fact. I wonder if I should simply have had you buried in the woods, as I swore to Valence that I did?”
Garric chuckled. At least the sound came from Garric's throat. The memories were those of Carus. A sword that flickered until it clanged on bone; a cloak wrapped around the left forearm in place of a shield. Enemies too close to understand what was happening, gaping in surprise at wounds opening so suddenly that they died before they knew they’d been struck...
Bats chittered as they coursed the insects above the surface of the river. Occasionally
a splash and heavy wing-beats indicated a larger predator. The rural boy in Garric had already noticed Ornifal's night-fishing owls.
“No,” Garric said. “You shouldn't have given that order, Royhas.”
The nobleman gave a humorless bark of laughter. He'd understood the distinction between the question he'd posed and the answer that Garric gave. There'd have been slaughter in the forest if Royhas had ordered Garric's death, but it might not have been Royhas who walked away from the result.
Voices rose in singsong argument on the temple platform above. A bowl or bottle smashed. One speaker shouted louder recriminations; the other subsided into drunken sobbing.
The vaults that supported public buildings in Valles provided shelter for vagrants. On nights when the weather allowed, the denizens sat on the monumental steps to eat, drink, and fantasize in a society of their peers.
And how were they different from folk like Royhas bor-Bolliman and Garric, late of Barca's Hamlet on Haft, who dreamed of being King of the Isles?
Garric laughed. He couldn't even be sure that his dreams were greater than those that came out of wine bottles on the temple steps.
“What do you want?” Royhas said. “What do you want? I swear, you're as uncanny as the queen herself!”
“But I'm not evil,” Garric said, hoping that was the truth. He smiled again. It must be true: he wouldn't have friends like Liane and Tenoctris if he were a creature of Malkar.
“Lord Royhas,” he continued softly. “I intend to be King of the Isles. All of the Isles, ruling and serving all peoples of the Isles.”
Garric knew this was the moment he'd been waiting for. He'd maneuvered Royhas into a place where the noble felt alien and alone, despite being in the center of the city where he was born.
“I'm not going to do that because my ancestor was King of the Isles—though he was, just as Silyon told you,” Garric said. “I'm going to do it because if I don't, our whole world is going to sink into mud like the bottom of this river.”
He and Royhas continued walking; if they stopped, the guards would be on them in an instant, silently questioning. The two men, the noble and the youth with the insights of an ancient king, stared at each other, disregarding the stones missing from the pavement and garbage that had floated up from the river.
“Why are you telling me this?” Royhas said. He sounded unsure, perhaps even frightened. Garric represented something that the noble didn't understand, in a situation where ignorance was dangerous and the known risks for the conspirators were overwhelming.
“Because I want you to believe,” Garric said. “I want everybody to regain belief in the Kingdom of the Isles. The Old Kingdom fell because people stopped believing when Carus disappeared. If people can believe again in something more important than the size of their own money chest or the number of troops they can put in the field, then we can have real unity and peace.”
“Waldron will never serve you,” Royhas said. That was more proof he was the man King Carus had judged him to be: quick-minded, decisive, and brave in a way that had nothing to do with willingness to draw his sword. “My family are merchants for twenty generations. Waldron and the other northern landholders, though—their honor's the only thing that really matters to them. They'll never bow to a shepherd from Haft.”
By implication, Royhas was saying that he—and the city nobles like him—would bow or might bow. Garric smiled faintly.
“Will they bow to the crown of the Isles?” he said. “They acknowledge Valence, don't they?”
“Oh, yes,” Royhas agreed. “Valence is one of theirs, after all: his estates in the north and west are bigger than some islands, after all. And they fought for him at the Stone Wall, because whatever they might have thought of Valence as a man, he wasn't a pirate from Sandrakkan.”
“I want the Isles to be united in peace,” Garric said.
He smiled. “Well, as much peace as humans are likely to have. As I said, I don't believe in golden ages. Bad as the queen is—and bad as the thing Valence serves, as you know—”
“I don't know!” Royhas said, his voice jumping unintentionally louder. “I don't know anything about Silyon or whatever they're doing!”
“As you know,” Garric said, “for all your attempts not to know, because you wouldn't have preserved me unless you did know... All of that, I tell you, is minor compared to what we really need: a united Isles. Not everybody can be expected to help, especially at the beginning; but those who try to stop us out of local pride or personal honor or any of the other words people use when they mean they don't care about anything except their own will—they're just as much of a problem as the queen, Royhas.”
There were lights ahead of them. They were approaching a ferry landing serving the suburbs on the other side of the river. A bridge and causeway crossed the Beltis south of here where marshes split the channel into three streams, but there was a good deal of water traffic even at this time of the morning.
“I'm not a soldier,” Royhas said.
Though you're a good judge of them, if your guards are anything to go by, Garric thought. Aloud he said, “We'll have soldiers. What we'll need are people who can organize, who understand money and supplies, and who can make hard decisions fast when there's no time to refer to, say, the King of the Isles.”
Royhas laughed in open amazement. In a voice that still held a tinge of self-mockery he said, “You're asking me to be your chancellor, King Garric? What about Papnotis bor-Padriman, who wears the seal now? Quite apart from the fact his family can raise a thousand men with half-armor or better, he's rather good at the job. Considering what he has to work with.”
Royhas and Garric wore tunics with striped hems and light capes, nondescript clothing for a merchant out at night. The scabbard of Garric's long sword was unusual; Royhas wore a slim-bladed court sword that was as much statement of rank as weapon. Garric might have been an off-duty soldier, though.
They were close enough to the ferry landing to see the faces of the half-dozen people waiting for the next boat. At this time of the morning most traffic was inward—farm families bringing produce to the city's markets on donkey-back or their own.
Garric continued at his previous slow pace. He'd timed things well, or Carus had.
“Papnotis is chief administrator for Ornifal,” he said. “That's as much as the present kingdom governs, after all—on a good day. Ornifal will need an administrator in the future too.”
He hadn't known the chancellor's name until this moment; there hadn't been time. Carus' silent urgency drove Garric as surely as the king's measured advice guided him in moments of reverie. If Garric took the time to learn everything he needed to know before he acted, nothing would happen—except the complete and irrevocable end of civilization and perhaps of life in the Isles.
Royhas laughed quietly. “I think we've gone as far as we need to tonight,” he said. “After all...”
He made a hand gesture before turning on his heel. The guards stopped, dividing three and three to either edge of the path. They waited for their employer to pass before falling in behind again.
“After all,” Royhas resumed, “it's all moot if a fire wraith incinerates you tomorrow, isn't it? If you don't mind my saying, the survival of the man who led the uprising against the queen wasn't a major concern of ours when we were planning events.”
“If you're suggesting your priorities have changed tonight,” Garric said dryly, “then I'm particularly glad we've had this discussion. Tenoctris says the wraiths can't be formed quickly and can be quenched if you have enough water handy. You can even run away from one if you have room. And if you don't panic.”
“My personal experience,” Royhas said, looking straight ahead as he walked, “is that wizards generally aren't to be trusted.”
“I trust this one,” Garric said. “I trust her with my life. As I have before.”
Royhas nodded, as though he'd been discussing the menu for tomorrow's dinner.
“As for the defen
ses of the queen's mansion more generally,” Garric said, “Tenoctris says it's mostly a matter of not losing our way. The individual effects aren't very complex.”
“Your Tenoctris is the queen's equal, then?” Royhas said mildly.
Garric laughed wryly. “Tenoctris says she's not sure anyone is the queen's equal. Any human, that is. Tenoctris isn't sure the queen is human.”
Royhas looked at him. “You're serious, aren't you?” he said. “You're not just vilifying an enemy.”
“Tenoctris doesn't do that,” Garric said. “She believes that the... person claiming to be Princess Azalais is really a changeling—a demon in human semblance.”
He shrugged. “Tenoctris wants to understand her enemy so that she can counter her,” he said. “All I want to do is to lead the risen populace against the queen's mansion and remove the queen from Valles and from our world.”
Garric grinned. “And also to survive,” he said. “I'd like to do that.”
He sobered. “So long as civilization can survive too.”
The men walked on in silence. Above on the temple steps, men and at least one woman were singing about the vintage. Grapes weren't grown on Haft, but Garric had played the same tune at dances after the shearing.
“I'd appreciate the loan of a couple of your men to stay close to me tomorrow,” Garric said. “If they're willing to volunteer, that is. I suppose you'll be well out of the city yourself.”
“That was certainly my intention,” Royhas said easily. “No point in the five of us making ourselves targets for the queen's vengeance should you fail, after all. It's not as though we, the principals so to speak, would make much difference in a mob of thousands.”
Garric looked at him. “But...?” he said.
“But I suppose the duties of a chancellor involve some risk,” Royhas said. “Realistically, if you fail there won't be safety for anyone in the Isles before long. I've lived these past two years afraid of what the queen might do to me when it suits her whim, and afraid of what Valence's creature would do otherwise. My men and I will be with you tomorrow. King Garric.”