by David Drake
She paused, then plucked a tunic from the basket and shook it open for Cashel. It was of simple pattern—indeed, it had probably been sewn from an awning—but that was fine with him.
He took the garment. Cashel knew he didn't owe anything to this woman, but he always felt good toward somebody who was helping him. Of course, it was Silya's interference that had caused all the trouble to begin with...
Cashel draped the tunic over him. As he shrugged the heavy cotton down past his shoulders, he digested what the Dalopan wizard had just said.
When his head emerged from the tunic, Cashel looked at her. In a very quiet voice he said, “What have you done to Sharina?”
He took a step forward. The world he saw was gray except for the startled wizard and the expanse of brick wall behind her.
Silya's eyes flicked toward the stand of tools, then wisely met Cashel's again. She even tossed aside the bone rattle in her hand. “The girl's unharmed!” she said. “She was nothing to me after all, so I let her go with the boy wizard I replaced here on Pandah.”
Cashel took a deep breath. “But you said...” He tried to remember exactly what Silya had said. Everything had blurred for a moment. He looked at his hands and clenched them to work the tension out.
“My brother thought she was important,” Silya said, taking quick, relieved breaths herself. “He was drawing her to him. I traced his work and thought I'd forestall him here on Pandah. But he was wrong, so I let her go.”
She wasn't lying. Cashel was used to people trying to lie to him. It wasn't as easy as strangers thought, but sometimes they succeeded.
They never succeeded when Cashel was angry, the way he was now. He could see right to their heart.
Silya started to pick up the garment she'd draped over the hammock, then dropped it to return her attention to the young man before her. “My brother Silyon stole the Stone of Connection from me,” she said. “He communicates with the Beast through it. You and I will take the Stone back from him and we will be the Beast's viceroys!”
Cashel wasn't sure hold old the wizard was. At first he'd thought she was quite old, fifty at least, but Silya's voice was that of a much younger woman. The tattoos aged her. Besides, travelers' tales claimed that the folk of Dalopo looked ancient by the time they were thirty—which was old enough in all truth.
“Where did Sharina go?” Cashel asked. “And where are Aria and Zahag?”
“Don't you hear me?” Silya shouted. “I offer you half of all power and you ask about girls and beasts. You can have every woman in the world if you join me!”
Cashel stepped toward her again before he was even conscious that he was moving. She shouldn't have talked about Sharina that way.
“The girl Aria is fine!” Silya said hastily. “She's with the king and quite the favorite. The ape's probably all right too, though why you should care is beyond me. The meat's stringy at best, and the males are gamy besides.”
Cashel forced himself to relax. “And Sharina?” he asked.
“She went off to Valles with the other wizards,” Silya said. “The boy and the cripple. My brother was drawing her, as I told you, but he was wrong about her power. She's just a girl.”
“Yes,” said Cashel in a guttural voice as he started for the door out of this chamber. “She is.”
“Cashel or-Kenset, wait!” the wizard said. She raised both her hands, palms outward, though she stepped out of Cashel's way. “You broke through the planes by your own main strength. With me to guide you, no one can stand against us! We'll take the Stone, and perhaps we'll be able to rule the Beast instead of ruling this world beneath him!”
“I'm going to find my friends,” Cashel said. His tongue was so thick with anger and disgust that he could barely understand his own words. “Don't get in my way.”
He turned the latch and pushed the door. It stuck. He pushed harder, smashing the whole wall down. The door had been meant to open inward, he saw, as he glanced down at the ruin of heavy balks.
“Don't ever get in my way!” Cashel repeated as he strode toward the light glimmering from outside the vaulted basement.
A group of children giggling with fright ran out of the basement ahead of him. Cashel's crashing exit had scared them away. They'd been playing, not spying, among the brick pillars.
Cashel grinned. It'd scared Silya too, if she had as much sense as the Lady gave a goose. The grin faded. It'd be good to hold his own hickory staff again, though the fir replacement from the other Pandah was a fine piece of work too.
The steps up to ground level were littered with dirt, leaves, and human debris. There were holes in the stone sill where doors had once pivoted, but the panels were long gone.
Cashel paused at the top of the steps, slitting his eyes against the bright sun as well as shading them with his left hand. It was near noon, though he realized he didn't know what day it was. He was at the back of the palace; the children and adults socializing in the large open space were all looking at him.
Though Cashel smiled to show he was friendly, children gathered close and their parents circled them with their arms. He wondered what sort of stories were going around about him. It bothered him to realize that people probably thought he was a friend of the Dalopan wizard. He'd as soon be friends with a seawolf.
The walkway around the palace was railed off from the grounds, a mental barrier though not much of a physical one. Cashel put a hand on a vine-wrapped pillar to hop over.
Zahag dropped from the roof in three spider-limbed jumps. They were very nearly the last moves the ape made in this life. Cashel, still tense and a lot more angry than he'd realized, shouted “Hey!” and threw his great hands up to meet what reflex was treating as an attack.
“Hey!” Zahag echoed in fear. Instead of landing at Cashel's side, the ape bounced upward from the railing to grab a pillar five paces distant.
Children and adults too were stampeding away from the bellow. Cashel rubbed his forehead in embarrassment It was as bad as the day a horsefly stung Phi's off-ox under the base of the tail.
“I didn't mean...” Cashel mumbled. He'd known before he was seven years old not to get angry. Now look at him! All because he was worried about Sharina, but Sharina didn't need an ox running around kicking and goring, that was sure.
“I had to hide all the time you were sleeping,” Zahag said in the hurt tone which had quickly replaced his fear. He dropped off the pillar and sidled toward Cashel, ready to flee again if he found he'd misjudged the situation. “Now you come after me too. It's not fair, you know!”
Cashel didn't speak for a moment. Then, as the ape started to wilt, he said, “I'd rather you didn't surprise me that way, Zahag. I'd feel bad if I'd swung you into the ground so hard you splashed, the way I started to do.”
“Oh, no, chief, no, that'll never happen again!” Zahag said. He turned his back and peered at Cashel upside down from between his own legs. From a human the posture would've been insulting, but there wasn't anything but belly-crawling submission in the ape's tone. “No, no, no!”
Cashel nodded. “Where's Aria?” he said. “Is she all right?”
“Oh, you're going to fix him now!” Zahag said, capering in joy. “Come on, chief, he's up in the courtyard. Oh, he's going to be sorry now!”
He grabbed Cashel's right hand and tugged with friendly enthusiasm. The ape's mood changed about as quick as a summer breeze, but that didn't bother Cashel. Sheep were the same way, so he was used to it. Farmers wouldn't need to pay shepherds if all animals were as solid and mannerly as oxen. Most times.
Cashel climbed over the railing. Zahag hopped from the ground to a pillar to the walkway—and back, all nervous motion like flies over a fresh side of meat. The children and palace servants in the plaza whispered among themselves, now that there didn't seem to be a prospect of immediate bloodshed. They ducked away when Cashel swept them with his eyes, even though he smiled as warmly as he knew how.
Cashel paused. “I asked if Aria was all right,” he sai
d to Zahag. “Who's this that's going to be sorry?”
The ape was already halfway into the passage to the courtyard. He turned and momentarily wrinkled his lips in a snarl of frustration. “Folquin, of course!” he said.
Even as Zahag growled his words, he remembered who he was talking to. He gave a grunt of apology and went on clingingly, “King Folquin, who told his guards to kill me for the trouble I caused, when it was all that Dalopan savage's doing. And she's his new wizard, wouldn't you know? Folquin who's trying to take your female, chief!”
“Take my—” Cashel blurted. He blinked. “Oh,” he said, “you mean the princess. Well, let's go see her.”
He hummed a jig as he sauntered down the passage behind Zahag. He was remembering the dances at the very start of Heron when the plowing was over.
Cashel didn't play pipes or the lyre, and his steps were simple ones in contrast to the hops and handstands some of the more agile youths demonstrated to the crowd's applause; but Cashel could dance the feet off the other lads in the borough, and any of the girls save Sharina herself. Many's the time he and she turned and turned about in Finnan's Reel while the others cheered in exhausted amazement.
The ape hunched along on all fours, frequently glancing over his shoulder at Cashel. A servant with a tray of empty cups came the other way, saw them, and bolted back into the courtyard. He could have squeezed by; there was plenty of room.
Aria Cashel's female indeed! How long would the princess have kept her feet as the hamlet danced?
Zahag stepped aside and let Cashel enter the courtyard ahead of him. It was already in commotion. Folquin had jumped up from his backless stool. The servant stood beside him; a line of cups sprinkled on the ground from there back to the passage showed what haste the fellow'd made to warn his king that Cashel was coming.
The six guards stepped between Cashel and Folquin. One of them put his knee against the belly of his bow to string it, but his officer snarled, “Put that down and stand straight!”
Aria had been seated beside Folquin. She rose with regal grace. She wore a tunic of violet silk gathered beneath the bosom and again at the waist. The excess material wobbled like breeze-blown moss dangling from a tree branch.
To Cashel's utter astonishment, the princess held his fir quarterstaff in front of her like a flagpole. Its sizable weight wavered even though she'd butted one end on the ground. She turned to Folquin and said in a carrying voice, “Your Majesty, I see that Master Cashel, my champion, has regained consciousness. May I have the honor of formally presenting him to you?”
“It's all right, Aria,” Cashel said. “The king and me met before. Before, you know, I met you.”
The idlers and petitioners were all watching him, just like they had when he'd grabbed Zahag that morning a lifetime ago. Silya wasn't in the crowd, though. Cashel looked over his shoulder to make sure the wizard hadn't followed. She hadn't, but Zahag was backing his chief with bared teeth and a growl that made bubbles of spit form on his lips.
“Yes,” Folquin said. He cocked his head to the side, apparently trying to peek around Cashel's solid form to find the wizard also. “Ah, Master Cashel kept that horrid monkey from attacking me at considerable risk to himself. I trust you're well, Master Cashel?”
“I, well, I'm glad to be back,” Cashel said. “Zahag's all right, though.”
He turned his head and snapped, “Zahag, stop that! Mind your manners!”
The guards parted for Cashel at their officer's whispered command. That man stood sideways, his eyes darting from Cashel to his king, tense as a drawn bowstring in hopes that he'd made the right decision.
Aria gave Cashel the quarterstaff. “I trust you're well, Cashel?” she said. She really did seem glad to see him, but there was more than just formal reserve in Aria's careful words. She was wearing sandals of silvered leather that laced high up her calves.
“I'm fine,” Cashel said; because it was true, and anyway he had to say something. He smiled at the staff. He'd have liked to spin it to make sure he hadn't gotten out of shape during his long sleep—too long for nature, it must have been more of the wizard's doing—but he was sure to start a panic and maybe clip somebody.
Cashel frowned and looked at the king again. A secretary standing beside Folquin gave a squeak of terror and closed his eyes.
“Ah,” Cashel said, “not to be picky, but I wonder if the hickory staff I left when I was here before is still around? I made that myself when I was a boy and I'd hate to lose it.”
Aria looked at the servant holding the tray from which the cups had spilled. “You heard Master Cashel!” she said. “Find that staff and bring it to him at once. Go on! Why are you standing there looking at me?”
Folquin opened his mouth, apparently to repeat the princess's order. The servant didn't wait for it. He even flung away the tray as he scampered toward the passage into the building calling, “Wyckli! Abdorn! Her Majesty—”
He plunged into the passage. His voice reverberated back, “—wants the pole from the big barbarian's room!”
Cashel smiled. He'd been called worse, though the folks who did so generally had reason to regret it before the bout was over.
Aria was sure in her element, here. That was the awkward part about what had to happen next.
“Ah, King Folquin,” Cashel said, “you've been kind enough to guest me and the princess. I think you ought to know that it was that Dalopan woman Silya who caused the trouble before she was in your service, not Zahag; but I didn't hold it against you anyhow.”
“Silya?” said Folquin, frowning. “No—”
To shut the king off, Cashel thumped the staff against the packed soil. He was frustrated with himself. He wasn't a speaker and he'd let himself wander off the track.
“Anyhow,” Cashel went on, “I appreciate all you've done. But now I've got to go on, because I need to find my friend Sharina.”
He took a deep breath. “And I need to take Princess Aria with me,” he continued, “because I told her mother—”
Folquin, Aria, and about six other people started to speak at the same time. What Cashel actually heard, though, was Zahag's growled, “No, you didn't, chief. You told her mother you'd get her away from Ilmed. That wizard hasn't been the least trouble to Aria since he met you.”
“Ah,” said Cashel. “Well, but what I meant...”
He wasn't sure what he had meant way back then when he stood before Queen Sosia. It was hard to get his thoughts straight because the others kept chattering at him, most of them.
Princess Aria had listened to Zahag also. “Be quiet, all of you!” she said. “Remember you stand before your king!”
Cashel grinned wryly. True enough, but King Folquin fell silent with the rest of those who'd been yammering away.
In the silence Aria put her hand on Folquin's wrist for attention, then nodded him toward Cashel. There wasn't much doubt about which of that pair would be guiding the plow and which would be pulling it; assuming they were a pair, which at the moment Cashel didn't see them being.
“Master Cashel,” the king said. From the many times Cashel had carried Aria he knew she was just a wisp of a girl, but right now her presence shrank everybody else around. “I regard Princess Aria's arrival on Pandah to be a manifestation of the will of the Gods. She is clearly the woman they intend for my wife and to become Queen of Pandah. Therefore—”
“You were sure as sure that Sharina was meant to be your queen too,” Cashel said with a touch of anger that he hadn't been expecting. “You were wrong that time, and I'm not about to call you right this time either. I'm no clerk to play with words, what I said to Queen Sosia—”
He looked over his shoulder. The ape was combing himself for fleas and cracked those he caught between the backs of two claws. He didn't seem to notice his chief's threatening frown.
“—or anybody else. I'm going to protect—”
Aria began sobbing. Cashel stopped as short as if somebody'd felled a tree on him. Aria flung herself int
o his arms and wailed, “Oh, Cashel, do you have to test me more? Even Muzira didn't have to go through the things I've done!”
“But Aria...” Cashel muttered helplessly.
“If you tell me I have to go, I'll go,” the princess said. Her tears were already spreading into a wet spot on his new tunic. “But please, Cashel!”
King Folquin exchanged a glance with the captain of his guard. The soldier frowned and patted his left cheek, the gesture that meant, “No,” here on Pandah.
Half of Cashel regretted the soldier's warning, because a fight would be a lot simpler to figure out than the mess he'd somehow managed to get himself into. Why wasn't life simpler?
“I'd say there were plenty of females with more meat on their bones,” Zahag remarked as he continued to crack fleas. “But this one's better than I used to think. She kept the guards off me when we came back, not that I trusted them when I was out of her sight.”
Cashel looked at the ape. Zahag resolutely paid him no attention. Two servants bustled out of the passageway, carrying the hickory quarterstaff between them with as much pomp as if they were hunters with a deer instead of a bare pole.
Aria stepped back and raised her face to Cashel. It hadn't been a trick, her saying she'd go on if he told her she had to. And it hadn't been a joke, either, saying that she'd gone through more than Patient Muzira had. No, sir, it hadn't.
“Aria,” Cashel said. “Princess? Are you really sure staying here is what you want to do? Because I don't care how many there are, I won't let—”
Aria laid her finger vertically across Cashel's lips to silence him. “I know you wouldn't, Cashel,” she said. “This is where I belong. I think Folquin will make a very nice husband. Just the sort of person the Mistress God would choose for me.”
“Ah, Master Cashel?” the king said. Folquin was Cashel's senior by a little. Right now he seemed just a mite of a boy, barely old enough to wear a rag over him when he ran around in the summer. “I want you to know that you're welcome to any position you wish in my palace. Captain of the Guard, perhaps, or—”