by David Drake
And so she could, though the reason she didn't think such a pattern was a work of evil was her certainty that Robilard would destroy it after a few days. The only folk who thought they wanted to know the truth were those who had no experience of it—and those few, like Ilna os-Kenset, who were willing to live with the consequences.
“Or another pattern that will benefit you and those around you,” Ilna added. “I realize that Halphemos misused his power, but you might take that as a warning not to make the same mistake yourself.”
Offering a pattern that compelled truth was a compromise between what Ilna thought Robilard would want and what he should want. She would much rather provide the baron with a panel like those she'd been spreading about Erdin before Cashel's disappearance called her away. The value of cheer and feelings of well-being wasn't as immediately obvious to most people as sex, wealth, and revenge. Those last were things Ilna wouldn't provide.
Wouldn't provide any longer.
“You're a wizard,” Robilard said. His voice rose with each syllable.
“I'm a weaver,” Ilna said. “I'm a decent woman of Barca's Hamlet on Haft, and I will do what I say.”
The buzz in the hall had silenced, though folk shuffling to get a glimpse of the newcomer raised rasping echoes of leather on stone. The guard captain had skulked around the edge of the hall to vanish outside again. Other soldiers looked confused; those who held polearms shifted them from one side to the other as they waited for orders.
“Another wizard,” Robilard said, his voice returning to normal. Cotolina looked at Ilna with cool appraisal; Lady Regowara had moved behind the throne and was fingering an amulet of her own. “You must be mad to have come here. Well, the same cure will do for both, I suppose. Hosten—”
“No!” Halphemos shouted. “She has no part in this!”
Halphemos tried to pull away from his handlers. They had a struggle to hold him but they didn't, Ilna noted, begin hitting the bound prisoner again.
“Halphemos, be quiet,” Ilna said. “I'm taking care of things now. You've caused enough trouble already.”
“She's completely innocent!” Halphemos shouted at the baron. “If you harm her, I'll—”
The Gods only knew what the boy thought he could do. Make empty threats, she supposed, and make the situation still worse.
She stepped in front of Halphemos and jerked the pattern of yarn taut. “Stand silent till I release you!” she commanded.
Ilna was furious, with herself and with the injustice of the universe. The boy had good instincts—and all the trouble he caused stemmed from those good instincts. It wasn't fair that someone like Halphemos should do so much harm!
The soldiers had flinched back when Ilna spoke. When she faced Robilard again, he spread a hand before his eyes. Ilna sneered and flung the length of yarn onto the dais.
“Baron,” she said, “I come to you for justice, not mercy. Release Halphemos to my custody and I will pay any reasonable price.”
It crossed Ilna’s mind that she and Robilard might mean different things by “reasonable.” Well, he'd learn her definition quickly enough if they varied excessively.
Robilard lowered his hands. He was trembling with fury—because he'd been afraid, and because this girl wizard had seen his fear.
“All right, weaver!” he said. “This is what you can trade me for the freedom of your friend, here. Tonight I'll celebrate the anniversary of my rule as Baron of Third Atara. Go to my ancestor, the Elder Romi, and ask him to grace my dinner. If he comes, I'll release—”
Robilard gestured toward Halphemos, struck mute and motionless between his guards.
“—that one, who thought to aim his wizardry at me. Otherwise, you'll join your friend if you haven't managed to get out of my kingdom by that time.”
“All right,” Ilna said. She was furious: at Robilard, at Halphemos, and not least at herself for what she'd committed to do. She didn't fear death, but she knew that doing what the baron demanded would bring her very close to the boundaries of evil and darkness which she'd sworn to avoid. “I'll need a guide.”
Hosten, the soldier, looked up at his baron with a worried expression. “Milord,” he said, “were you serious about...?”
Robilard glared at the noble imperiously. “Make it so, Lord Hosten!” he said. “Unless you're afraid?”
Ilna smiled faintly to hear the youthful bravado. It settled her own fear. She might be doing the wrong thing, but she'd said she would do it. Therefore the discussion was over.
Hosten's lips tightened. He turned to the nearest guards and said, “You four, come with me,” in a colorless voice. He walked over to Ilna, bowed, and said, “Mistress Ilna os-Kenset? We'll escort you to the Tomb of the Elder Romi.”
“Yes,” Ilna said. Ignoring the rest of the gaping, whispering crowd, she touched Halphemos' forehead and said, “You can awaken now, Alos. Don't cause any more trouble. I'll be back.”
She took two steps toward the door before she paused and turned. “On my honor,” Ilna said to Halphemos and the rest of the gathering, “I will be back.”
Cashel stepped onto the walkway behind the palace. Back in the room Zahag grunted and complained about the hour. In a world where servants provided food, the ape saw no reason to get up before noon.
Cashel wasn't forcing Zahag to rise. The ape wasn't quite sure of his safety on Pandah except when Cashel or Aria was there to protect him, though. He might be right, but Cashel wasn't about to change his own schedule because an ape was lazy.
Silya sat cross-legged on the railing, bowered among the grapevines. Because she was in public she had clothing on, a light cotton tunic instead of the richly decorated robe that she'd worn when Cashel fell back into King Folquin's court.
He stopped. “I said I didn't want to see you,” he warned.
Silya spread her empty hands in a gesture of unconcern. “I understand, Master Cashel,” she said. “Still, you're going to be dealing with my brother, whom I have no reason to love. I can give you some advice on that. It won't delay you since the ship won't be ready till the middle of the afternoon. But of course if you're afraid...?”
She gestured again. Whatever the wizard's age, she was remarkably agile to be able to balance on the narrow railing while shifting her weight as she spoke.
Cashel grinned, imagining Silya as a wren. They were pushy, quarrelsome birds apt to use their strong beaks on the eggs of their neighbors...
But Cashel wasn't an egg, and he wasn't afraid of Silya or anybody else on earth. “What do you want to show me?” he asked, holding his quarterstaff out to the side so that he wouldn't seem to be sheltering behind it.
“Come down into my quarters,” Silya said. “Don't worry. You proved you could leave easily enough, and I've only hung some matting for privacy instead of replacing the wall.”
“I wasn't worried,” Cashel growled.
He lifted himself over the railing, feeling as awkward as a hedgehog in comparison to the wizard's birdlike motions. Still, hedgehogs got where they were going, and so would he.
The palace cooks were already at work on the tables behind the main building. Stewards were chaffering with peddlers, mostly women, carrying fruits, vegetables, and some fish in baskets.
Cashel hadn't seen meat being eaten on Pandah. Here at the palace, at least, it couldn't have been a matter of cost alone.
He followed Silya into the basement. She hadn't brought a lantern, but light came from the rooms she'd closed off in the far corner. That was illumination enough to show Cashel where the pillars were. Sometimes his foot splashed in an unseen puddle, but he wouldn't have gone out of his way to avoid so minor an inconvenience in broad daylight. Mud and worse were so much a part of rural life that Cashel didn't really notice them.
“Hey!” he heard Zahag call from somewhere. “Wait for me!”
Silya had rearranged objects in the chamber where she'd kept Cashel; where perhaps she'd helped him recover. He didn't much care for the wizard, but he knew th
at when he fell back into Folquin's court he was about as wrung out as he ever remembered being.
Now the slab on which Cashel had lain supported a large tray covered with colored sand. Triple lamps of simple, unobjectionable design hung from all four of the pillars framing the chamber. As Silya had said, she'd provided a grass mat to replace the timber wall Cashel had wrecked. When Cashel entered behind her, she drew the mat across the opening.
“Or I can leave it open if you're...?” she said.
“No,” Cashel replied curtly. He knew Silya kept hinting that he was afraid so that he wouldn't back out the way he knew he ought to do; but her trick worked anyway.
“Very well,” Silya said. She shrugged out of her tunic, then took the bone rattle from the equipment rack. “I'll call out the incantation that I've written here.”
She gestured with her empty left hand toward symbols drawn in white sand against the tawny background. Cashel couldn't read anything beyond his own name and that with difficulty. Garric talked of the differences between Old Script and modern squared characters, but they were both hen tracks so far as Cashel was concerned.
“Occasionally I'll stop and ask you a question about what you see. You'll answer the question in your own words, and then I'll go on.”
“Why should you do that?” Cashel said. The many burning lamp wicks filled the air of this enclosure with a thick warmth he found disquieting. “And why should I?”
“This will protect you against my brother's wizardry,” Silya said. “He'll try to bind you to do his will.”
Cashel grimaced. Silya said, “You can leave any time you want to. You may not need my help. I can't be sure of the future, though. I don't see how
“Go ahead,” Cashel muttered. “I'll watch for a while.”
Silya bobbed the rattle down. Dried peas rustled in the brainbox. “Barouch ino anoch,” she said. At each syllable her rattle indicated another of the sand-written symbols. “Uoea eanthoukoia...”
The room grew warmer. The heat shouldn't have been enough to bother a youth who'd plowed in the summer when the furrows quivered, but Cashel found himself getting a little dizzy. It was probably because he'd been so tired from, well, the way he'd come back to Pandah from wherever it was that he'd been before.
“Arthaemmiem,”Silya said. She walked slowly around the long table, never looking at Cashel. “Thar barouch maritha.”
The sand in the center of the tray humped as though a hidden breeze had caught it and swirled it upward. There was a face in the moving specks. As the wizard continued to chant, the features of the sand image sharpened and became as clear as those of a real person standing before Cashel. “Garric!” he said in amazement.
“Cashel or-Kenset,” Silya said in a voice taut with strain. “Is the figure before you your friend?”
“Yes,” said Cashel. “Where's he now?”
The whirling sand collapsed into a mound, then smoothed like water poured into a pan. The wizard resumed her walking and chanting. “Uoea eanthoukoia, arthaemmiem...”
Cashel felt very warm now, though his body wasn't sweating. He rubbed his thumb against the dry wood of his staff, reminding himself of its reality and of his past life in Barca's Hamlet.
The sand rose again, this time in the image of Tenoctris. The glint of lamps on tiny whirling crystals was exactly like the twinkle in the old wizard's eyes when she looked at Cashel.
“Cashel or-Kenset,” said Silya. “Do you entrust yourself to the craft of the figure before you?”
“Yes,” said Cashel. He was feeling dazed, but he knew what he was saying. “I trust her. I wish she was with me now.”
The sand blurred. The table's surface was now in constant motion. The writing itself shifted without losing definition. The white symbols spun about the margin of the table. Silya continued to chant, her rattle striking down at signs that rotated past her instead of her walking to reach the signs.
“Thar barouch mariiha...”the wizard said. Lamp flames guttered as the mat behind Cashel moved. He didn't look around. He heard Silya's incantation, but the words no longer came from her lips. The dog-skull rattle twitched up and down in seeming silence.
An image was forming on the sand table. Blond hair, flowing the way honey rolls from a comb; laughing blue eyes, a high forehead, and the mouth from which came the sweetest voice in all the world. Cashel started to whisper Sharina's name. “Cashel or-Kenset,” Silya said. “Do you pledge your life to the figure before—”
Zahag hopped chattering onto the table. The tray was wider than the stone bier it rested on and tipped, spraying sand across the floor.
Silya shrieked and swung her rattle at Zahag. The ape, gibbering back at her, leaped to a lamp hanger on the opposite wall.
A welcome chill washed over Cashel's frame. Everything was in focus again. The tray had fallen with one edge on the floor and the other leaning against the bier. The colored sands were still shifting to reach a natural contour. The edge of the spreading pile covered Cashel's toes.
On top of the bier where the table had hidden it was a painting on silk. The toppling sand tray had rippled the fabric but Cashel could easily make out the remarkably good likeness of the wizard Silya.
“Yield to the figure!” Silya screamed in empty desperation. “Yield to me, Cashel or-Kenset!”
“I warned you!” Cashel shouted. He thrust his quarterstaff like a spear, not at Silya but at the wizard's silken portrait.
The staff's iron ferrule clashed against the hard stone and skidded off, throwing sparks onto the thin cloth. The fabric ignited with an unnatural violence; red flames rose and twisted as they devoured the silk.
Cashel braced himself with his staff before him. This chamber wasn't big enough for the full spinning dance of an expert with the quarterstaff, but solid hickory thrust by solid muscle could crush its way through any foe Cashel expected to meet. His hands tingled from striking the unyielding granite, but he could still grip his weapon.
Zahag shrieked, “There was nothing there! You weren't seeing anything that was really there, chief!”
Silya screamed on a rising note. A black blotch had appeared around her, not in the air but in the cosmos itself. Cashel saw both the wizard and the wall beyond, but he was seeing as though with different pairs of eyes.
Tentacles of red light emerged from the darkness. They fastened about Silya like the arms of an octopus pulling open the shell of a clam. Where the tentacles touched her, Silya's flesh turned black and shriveled.
“Say you yie—” Silya's voice wailed from the infinite distance; then the sound too was gone. The chamber was lighted only by the quivering lamps. The one the ape had swung from still gyrated wildly, splashing oil onto the stone floor.
The fire had completely devoured the silk portrait; not even ash remained on the slab. The mat Zahag had pulled aside to enter dangled askew from the remaining hooks.
“Let's get out of here;” Cashel muttered. He could see the gleam of daylight creeping through the forest of pillars. “Maybe the ship will be ready earlier than they said.”
“What was it that happened to her, chief?” the ape asked as he hunched through the cellar, keeping very close to Cashel's side. He sounded chastened. “Was it something you did?”
“I don't think so,” Cashel said. “I don't know what happened.”
He stopped just short of the outer door and took the ape's long hand in his. “Zahag?” he said. “Thanks.”
Cashel didn't remember daylight ever feeling better than it did as the two of them left the cellar.
A warmth that was more than physical flooded through Sharina, melting the frozen lethargy in which she'd been held since the smoky hand snatched her from the waking world. She turned. The slit window to her right was sweeping toward her, swelling to become her whole environment.
She stood in a windowless room of white marble. Before her was the board set with pieces of varicolored tourmaline. Even now that Sharina was alert, she couldn't view the full array of count
ers.
The queen stood across the board from Sharina. Her smile was as perfect and cold as every other aspect of her appearance.
“Good evening, Sharina,” the queen said: The voice was as Sharina remembered it from what now seemed the dreamworld in which she'd been held: a rich contralto that covered all feelings the way a velvet drape can cover the door to an execution chamber. “It's time for you to help me now. I'll have no difficulty in recovering my position against physical opponents...”
The walls of the room were marked only by minor imperfections. Faint gray flecks lurked within the whiteness, though the surfaces were polished to such a sheen that the play of light across them varied more than the stone.
The queen gestured minusculely with an index finger. The walls, floor, and ceiling faded to shadows, then became as transparent as a flawless diamond. Sharina gasped. Her feet rested on an unseen hardness fifty feet above the slow swells of an ultramarine sea.
She and her captor looked down on a raft as tangled and formless as the mats of seaweed that drifted slowly around the seas south of the Isles, More of the surface was open water than was timber, but the downed trees spread over an expanse too vast to encompass even from Sharina's high vantage point.
Twists of vine and interlocked branches bound the floating trees together. Some parts of the mass separated from others, only to merge with similar fragments into a larger mat again.
It was like watching water spread across the furrows of a flooded field. Individual rivulets might follow different tracks, but the whole was as surely one as an open-meshed net. All the portions moved on the same currents, at the same slow rate; and with the same certain destination.
The raft swarmed with Hairy Men in numbers that Sharina couldn't begin to count. They crawled over the branches, nursed their infants on the trunks, and shrieked at one another across the open sea in spats as fierce as those of two-year-olds.
The queen remained silent. Sharina refused to call the folk Monkeys even in her mind, though their antics on the raft made the hunters' term more innocent.
The Hairy Men were eating fruits, nuts, and tubers they'd brought with them. In some cases they plucked food still hanging from the branches of trees floating as part of the raft itself, though generally that source had been exhausted by this point in the sluggish voyage.