by David Drake
Attaper helped Valence onto the chair, then gripped the king's thigh with a powerful hand to steady him as the bearers lifted him into full sight of the crowd.
“Citizens of the Isles!” Garric shouted. “His Majesty King Valence the Third has adopted me as his son. He has proclaimed me regent of the Kingdom of the Isles!”
Valence was gaping like a hooked perch. He trembled dangerously despite the legate's support. Liane stepped to the king's other side and added her help, but Valence was likely to buckle at the knees at any moment.
Garric lifted the diadem and put it on his own head. He'd tried the circlet on when Royhas brought it to the queen's mansion, to make sure it would fit without looking ridiculous. Then it had been no more than a band of metal, heavy despite being so thin, and vaguely uncomfortable. Now—
Golden light suffused Garric's mind. In it sparkled images—not from his memory or even that of Carus alone, but from scores of generations of kingship. All the rulers of the Old Kingdom were with Garric momentarily, united like the facets of a diamond.
His vision cleared. The crowd shouted like a god trumpeting. Through the joyous sound Garric heard Tenoctris' voice.
He turned. Liane looked around also. Neither of them could understand Tenoctris' words, but Garric from his higher vantage point could see over the heads of the Blood Eagles.
A scrawny man wearing a robe embroidered with symbols in the Old Script had come up the path from the bungalow where Valence had hidden himself away. He had bones in his earlobes. Through the open gateway he saw Garric crowned and Valence beside him.
Garric pointed. “Stop that man!” he cried. “Stop Silyon!”
But the wizard, doffing his heavy garments, had vanished into the shrubbery in his loincloth before the Blood Eagles could turn to see him.
Halphemos wore a garment of gold. It weighed less than gossamer, but because each strand scattered light like an invisibly thin mirror, the youth was as modestly clothed as if he'd been wearing his own robe of silk brocade.
Cerix wore nothing at all. The older wizard was too delighted with his regenerated body to cover any part of it. The hair on his legs from mid-thigh was fine and blond in contrast to the black curls on his arms and torso, but the bones and musculature were complete. In the middle of a comment, Cerix was likely to lose his train of thought as he watched his toes stretch.
Ilna wore the tunic she'd woven in Erdin, cinched with the twin of the sash she'd given to Liane. Watching the men prance in what they'd gotten from the Beautiful People—Cerix no less than Halphemos—offended her, though of course she didn't interfere in the way her companions chose to act. Besides, she knew in her heart that she was a fool to feel the way she did.
So be it. Ilna os-Kenset didn't want to change.
Ilna swallowed the slice she'd cut from a strawberry the size of her head, juicy and meltingly delicious. She looked at the two wizards and the three People of Beauty who'd greeted her when she awakened here, then said, “I intend to return to the world from which I was kidnapped by the Scaled Men. If there was a way into this garden, there's a way out of it. Which I will find.”
“But mistress,” Wim said in puzzlement. “Why do you want to leave? Is there anything you need that we haven't offered you?”
Halphemos looked distressed; he fidgeted with the cuff of his vaporous tunic rather than meet Ilna’s eyes. Cerix glared at her angrily, knowing where the discussion was going to go and furious about what it would mean to him.
Ilna’s nose wrinkled. Cerix could see the right of it as clearly as she did, but he was letting personal considerations prevent him from acting.
“My brother's gotten into trouble,” she said to Wim. Glancing aside toward Halphemos she added, “Or been put into trouble by others. I'm going to try to help him, and for that I need to be back in my own world.”
“The boy wasn't responsible for what happened to your brother!” Cerix said.
“It doesn't matter,” said Ilna; and it really didn't. She didn't believe Halphemos had harmed Cashel or anyone else deliberately. “Can you help me, Master Wim, or must I find the path myself?”
A slim girl passed, playing a twin-necked theorbo to half a dozen youths who walked with her entranced. Ilna marveled at the girl's intricate fingerings—but though the lute strings vibrated, they made no sound.
“We can show you the path you seek,” Bram said. “But mistress, there's no place on that plane as full of joy and contentment as the Garden.”
Ilna almost laughed at the humor of it. “I daresay you're right,” she said, “but I can't imagine what bearing you think that has on me.”
She stood. She'd eaten her fill of the huge strawberry, but most of it still remained. The waste disturbed Ilna, as much as anything because it underscored the Garden's vast abundance, but there was nothing she could do. Perhaps the deer-footed unicorn walking slowly through the nearby orange grove would finish the fruit.
“Will you lead me, then?” Ilna said to Bram. The harshness of her voice and manner was out of place. The world didn't provide something for nothing. This place, this Garden, did. Therefore so far as Ilna was concerned, the Garden didn't and couldn't exist.
As a matter of faith, Ilna os-Kenset couldn't believe in a place so obviously good.
“I'll take her, Bram,” Cory said to the troubled-looking youth.
“We'll all go,” the bearded Wim decided, rising with the grace of a cat stretching. The People of Beauty reclined on the grass rather than sitting. The sward felt as soft and springy as a sack of wool beneath Ilna’s bare feet. “We don't spend much time in that grove, Mistress Ilna.”
“It's cruel to remind ourselves how wretched the existence of others is compared to our own,” Bram said. He lowered his eyes from the horizon to look straight at Ilna again. “I really wish you'd reconsider.”
He reached out to take Ilna’s hands. He was as tall as Garric. Though slimmer, he had a supple strength as all the People of Beauty did. Bram's features were as perfect as those of the image that the Shepherd's priests brought to Barca's Hamlet for the Tithe Procession.
Ilna stepped back quickly. “Good day to you, then,” she said to Halphemos and Cerix.
Halphemos stood. “I'm coming with you,” he said. He looked at the ground as he spoke.
“Sister take you, boy!” Cerix said as he too jumped to his feet. “You're not responsible! You didn't harm her brother!”
“Please,” said Cory. “We're all friends here and the trouble—”
Halphemos raised a hand to silence her. He faced the older wizard, his mentor, with a steadiness that wasn't a boy's expression. “Cerix,” he said, “I spoke an incantation to hold Zahag and her brother. They vanished instead. Neither of us believe that was coincidence.”
“But...” said Cerix. There was a tear in the corner of his left eye, and another running down his right cheek. “Alos—”
“And even if I didn't think I was responsible,” Halphemos said, “I'd go with her. As she would go to help us, even though I don't think she likes us—”
He gave Ilna a wry grin.
“—very much.”
Cerix shook his head in frustration and sadness. “Yes, of course we'll go,” he said.
He glared at Wim. The People of Beauty had drawn back from the strangers, the way sensible folk do from a dogfight. “You said you were going to lead us,” Cerix snapped. “Let's get it over with, then!”
Ilna looked at her companions, suddenly disgusted with herself. She'd maneuvered Halphemos and Cerix into a decision she and they knew they were fools to make. Because they were men of honor, despite the flaws they had because they were human, it had been easy.
“For what it's worth,” she said, “I like both of you better than I like myself. Though that isn't much of a recommendation.”
“Of course we don't want to prevent you from making your own decisions,” Wim said uncomfortably. “I... But of course, we'll take you to the grove.”
He gave a
hand each to Bram and Cory. Without looking back to see if the strangers were following, the three People of Beauty set off toward a nearby hill. Its perfectly rounded aspect looked as artificial as the bridge which crossed the stream at its foot.
Though not particularly tall, the trees on the hill's crown were thick-trunked. That made them unique in this place, where everything else Ilna had seen, plants and animals including humans, was willowy and graceful.
“There aren't any birds in the trees,” Halphemos said. “They don't fly overhead either.”
“It's the first place I've seen here that looks natural,” Ilna said. Cory glanced over her shoulder, just enough to see Ilna out of the corner of her eye. She didn't speak.
“What do you think, Cerix?” Ilna said deliberately.
“I don't think,” Cerix said. The slope was gentle; they'd almost reached the grove. The trees were oaks of many varieties. Some of them already carried budding acorns. “If I thought, I wouldn't be doing this.”
The People of Beauty stopped beside a pin oak and murmured among themselves. The younger pair stepped back. Wim turned to Ilna and said, “I'll take you the rest of the way, mistress and masters. There's no danger, and I don't suppose you'll even find it particularly unpleasant.”
Ilna gave him a curt nod. Bram looked at her imploringly as she passed, but she didn't turn her head. She could hear the feet of her companions rustling the dry leaves as they followed her.
Vertical cavities as high as a man split the trunks of each tree. Though light dappled the bark and the forest floor, the openings were swirls of dark mist.
“There's something inside here!” Halphemos said in excitement. Ilna glanced back. The young wizard tugged Cerix's arm to show him the landscape of gleaming metal shapes that formed if you focused on the mist in the cavity of a burr oak. Wim paused, his expression resigned.
Cerix refused to turn his head. He and Ilna exchanged glances. She resumed walking, stepping over a surface root writhing through the litter. Wim nodded gravely and went on.
Ilna had seen that image and all the rest, one at the heart of each tree they passed. For the most part the worlds inside didn't affect her: they were as inhuman as the interior of a flint nodule just cracked by a mason's hammer.
Some of the images were unspeakably foul. Ilna didn't let her expression change, but now she understood their hosts' reluctance to enter the grove.
“How much farther?” she asked.
“Not far,” said Wim. He looked over his shoulder. “You're sure...?” he said.
“Yes,” Ilna replied, but her tone was softer than it had been when she was first driving the People of Beauty to guide her. Perhaps they couldn't see any real difference between the world where Ilna had been born, and a world in which a monster with two legs and a spiked tail looked up from the human infant it was devouring in the ruins of a mansion.
Ilna smiled without humor. She knew there were places in her world where that scene, or scenes very like it, was just as real as the mud streets of Barca's Hamlet. Perhaps the People of Beauty were correct.
It didn't matter, of course. Ilna’s duty wasn't in the Garden; and she would do her duty.
“This one,” Wim said, gesturing to the bole of a white oak not very different from one that grew on the western outskirts of Barca's Hamlet, a tree that lightning had struck long before Ilna was born. The thunderbolt had torn off a branch and ripped a serpentine path down the bark to the ground. Here, instead of weathered sapwood, haze curled in the tear.
“If you don't mind,”, the bearded man said, “I'll take my leave of you now. But I'd rather that you come back with me.”
Ilna nodded curtly, intent on the pattern in the mist, glimpses of a street in an unfamiliar city. She could see steeply pitched shingle roofs and downspout decorations in the shape of fanciful animals. .
“Thank you,” Halphemos said earnestly. He gripped Wim's hand and wrung it. “For your hospitality, and especially for what you did for my friend Cerix.”
Wim hurried off, striding as though to escape an unpleasantness. The wizards watched him go and faced Ilna only when he was out of sight.
“You don't have to come,” Ilna said. “I suppose you shouldn't come.”
Without a word, Halphemos stepped past her and vanished into the mist. “Sister take—” Cerix said in surprise and anger.
Ilna stepped into the heart of the tree. There was no sensation except the touch of a cool breeze blowing down the street between wooden buildings. She stumbled.
The street was dirt, though there was a stone-lined open sewer in the middle. A dust devil curled around the corner, then dissipated.
A woman stood halfway through the doorway of the house to the left, holding buckets of slops which she was carrying to the sewer for the next rainstorm to flush away. She'd stopped, staring in horror at Ilna and Halphemos.
“There's nothing wrong!” Ilna said. She glared at the woman, holding her by sheer force of will. She noticed that Halphemos was wearing his own robe, not the one the People of Beauty had given him.
“What is this town, mistress?” Halphemos asked in a pleasant, worried voice. “Here, let me help you with your pails.”
“Why, this is Divers on Third Atara,” the woman said. She held the cypress buckets for a moment, then let the youth lift them away and walk to the sewer. Halphemos was simply being his natural self. That was more calming than anything Ilna could say.
The street wasn't busy, but a handcart rolled across the intersection two doors down. “Where did you come from?” the woman asked. “You weren't there, and then—”
Cerix appeared out of nowhere and tumbled into the street in front of her. His ragged tunic was black with the silt of an ancient sea bottom. He clasped the stumps of his legs and began to scream.
At that, the Ataran woman screamed also.
Cashel stared at the straight-trunked tree, considering how it would fit into the raft he was building. Zahag sat nearby, crunching red seeds he'd excavated from a fruit he'd found. The pulp was tasteless, but apparently the seeds were delicious—at least if you had molars like Zahag's.
A soft-leafed cactus curled up the tree bole. Several of the multi-petaled white-and-crimson flowers dangled flaccidly, like cuttlefish hung to dry; The blooms only lasted for a few hours, but last night their spicy perfume had drifted across the inlet to where the castaways slept beside the dinghy.
Cashel looked over to the camp. Corro lay in the shade on a mattress of withies while Aria tried to plait narrow leaves into a hat for herself. She was absolutely useless at the task, but at least she was trying.
The princess had even let Cashel show her the basics of rowing this morning before the sun got too high. She had something of a talent for that, though of course she'd have rubbed her soft palms raw on the oarlooms if they'd kept at it for more than a few minutes.
No doubt about it: the Princess Aria had changed a lot since Cashel first met her. Maybe someday she'd even forgive him for rescuing her.
Cashel pushed through undergrowth to the next tree inland, a eucalyptus of some sort. The trunk divided about four feet up. He guessed he'd be better off to use it as two poles than to take the tree down at ground level as he'd intended.
Kneeling, Cashel swiped the cutlass through brush that would otherwise get in the way of his cutting strokes. It was bad enough having to use a cutlass instead of a proper axe, but he'd make do.
Zahag hopped onto the latticework stems of a strangler fig. The tree which the fig had used for support during its first decade of life had rotted completely away, leaving no sign of its presence save the woody vine that had murdered it.
“What was wrong with the first tree?” the ape asked. His words slurred around the seeds he continued to munch.
“The cactus that grows on it,” Cashel said, feeling vaguely embarrassed. “There's—”
He paused. Numbers were a problem for him.
“Well,” Cashel said, “there's more buds on it than t
here ever was sheep in a flock I was tending. I figure most of them are going to bloom tonight.”
He wiped the cutlass blade with a palm frond, cleaning the steel of juices that might be corrosive. It wasn't a particularly well made weapon even if you liked swords—which Cashel didn't, not even a little bit—but it had a full tang and wasn't going to snap during the tough work of cutting trees.
Zahag turned to look at the cactus, wrinkling his long, expressive face in concentration. “So what?” he said.
“Well,” Cashel muttered, “I liked the smell last night. And in the moonlight the flowers were pretty as can be.”
He didn't want to talk to the ape about why he liked flowers. He didn't know why, he just did. Most of the people in Barca's Hamlet would have been as amazed to hear him say that as Zahag was.
He drew the cutlass back, using one hand over the other on the stubby hilt so that he could get the strength of both arms into the blow. Aria screamed.
Cashel stuck the cutlass point-first in the hard soil and left it as he lurched back to the edge of the beach. He didn't think of it as a weapon. It would just get in the way of using his quarterstaff, now leaning against the cactus-covered tree.
He didn't know what he'd see when he looked across the embayment toward Aria: maybe seawolves, great carnivorous lizards, squirming out of the water; maybe some sort of land predator, though they hadn't found any traces of one during the days they'd been on the island; maybe even a demon sent by Ilmed or some other wizard to snatch the princess away.
What Cashel saw was Aria holding an oar like a club and Cozro picking himself up from the sand. It wasn't hard to figure back to what had gone on during the time Cashel couldn't see his two companions.
Cashel's one companion. Cozro had just become a problem Cashel was going to solve very shortly. “Cozro!” he bellowed across the water. “Touch her again and I won't leave enough of you for the fish to finish!”
Cozro turned to look at Cashel. They were less than two hundred paces apart, but the water separating them was deeper than a man was tall. Cashel could swim, more or less, but if he tried to swim this distance he had a much better chance of winding up on the bottom of the inlet man he did of reaching Aria in time to be of service.