by David Drake
“So the stories are all just fancies after all,” Digir said with a half-regretful sigh. “We were just a bunch of kids scaring themselves in the dark.”
Ilna looked at him sharply. “No,” she said, “it's not. I very much advise you to treat the Elder Romi with the respect due a man who served his community well for a long time.”
“That's enough, Digir,” Hosten said. “Anything more Mistress Ilna has to say, she should save for Baron Robilard.”
“One more thing,” Ilna said as they reached the carriage. “Digir, all of you: if a sense of respect isn't enough to keep your children from troubling the Elder Romi, then tell them they should be afraid of him. After tonight, they shouldn't have any difficulty believing you.”
The 4th of Partridge
The queen, her eyes as cold as the airless crystal plain, watched Sharina from the room of alabaster. “Come to me, girl,” she said. With dizzying suddenness Sharina stood in the white chamber with the game board separating her from her captor.
“I've been occupied with destroying the Royal Fleet, Sharina,” the queen said. She smiled with catlike irony. “I let you see so that you could know how useless it is to try to defeat my purpose. Now it's time for you to help me.”
Sharina said nothing. She was shivering uncontrollably. She kneaded her thighs with long, strong fingers, trying to work out a stiffness that she knew wasn't physical. Her body was no longer cold, but her soul held the memory of the icy chains which had held it so long.
The queen continued to smile, but her eyes were harder than the tourmaline counters on the game board. Her index finger hovered over one, then withdrew.
“Very well, girl,” she said in a mellifluous voice. “I'd hoped you would help me without further demonstration, but I don't require you to be wise. Only obedient, as you will be.”
“I'm not going to help you,” Sharina said. She knew she sounded petulant in comparison with the queen's mannered sweetness. The contrast made Sharina angry, and the anger warmed her as physical release had not done.
The queen moved her right hand as though wiping the wall, though the alabaster was several paces distant. “Watch, Sharina,” she said pleasantly.
“If you could force me against my will to do what you want,” Sharina said, her voice rising, “you would've done that. You can't, and I won't help you.”
“Watch, girl,” the queen said. A section of finegrained stone had opened into a window overlooking a starlit sea.
Two vessels, an oar-driven warship and a tubby merchantman, were underway on opposite courses. From her own travels Sharina knew that during the hours of darkness ships more often anchored on one of the tiny islands dotting the Inner Sea.
The warship's oars moved the way the feathers of a bird's wings do, forward and back together instead of rippling in bunches like a millipede's legs. The merchantman proceeded under a small sail from the slanting foremast and the close-reefed mainsail. The vessels were passing at a bowshot's distance.
Neither hailed the other. The Kingdom of the Isles had too many dangerous rivalries at present for any merchant to want dealings with an armed vessel, even if it wasn't an outright pirate, and the officers of this warship were too intent on their business to trouble themselves with passing strangers.
“Do you see who's aboard the Arbutus, girl?” the queen asked playfully. Sharina's viewpoint swooped toward the warship like a diving gull and the scene brightened.
The narrow catwalk serving the bireme as a deck was packed with men. For a horrid instant, Sharina remembered the captured ships she'd seen putting off filled with Hairy Men, but these were crewed by normal humans.
Most of them were normal humans. The queen raised her finger and the viewpoint focused even tighter. On the bireme's sternpost sat an ape. It gripped the curving timber with its hind legs while its fingers combed its belly fur for lice.
Sharina frowned. The ape reminded her of—
The queen's finger ticked down the way a choir director gestured with the rolled-up music. The viewpoint shifted slightly.
“Cashel!” Sharina cried.
Cashel sat on the railing, looking out to sea with his usual placid good humor. He was much the same as when Sharina had last seen him in the flesh, wrestling Zahag in the courtyard of King Folquin's palace. He held his familiar hickory quarterstaff upright between knees so that it wouldn't bump the ship's officers crowded close to him.
The queen's smile was as wide as a seawolf's. The viewpoint surged upward again. The ships were drawing apart. The merchantman's captain shouted a command; three sailors climbed the stays to let out another reef of the mainsail.
“What will you give to save your Cashel, girl?” the queen asked. “Will you guide me to the Throne of Malkar?”
Sharina looked at the perfect, evil woman. She didn't speak. There was nothing she could say that would make the situation better.
Again the silent anger flashed in the queen's eyes because she'd been balked of the cringing fear she wanted. Her finger pointed to the window onto the nighted sea. “Look,” she said in a venomous whisper.
For a moment Sharina continued to watch the wizard instead. But... to refuse to look was a child's trick, an attempt to hold back the reality outside by hiding her head under the covers. Sharina os-Reise wasn't a child—or a coward.
She turned her head. Lady, shelter Cashel in Your arms, her mind whispered while her lips remained still.
She was viewing the sailing vessel. The warship with Cashel aboard was in the far distance, visible only by the trails of its oarthresh. The sailors had shaken out more sail and dropped to the deck.
The ship shuddered to a halt. The steersman lurched forward against the tiller, and the lookout in the bow would have gone overboard had he not been able to grab the foot of the foresail.
Something thick as an anchor line crawled over the stern railing and wrapped the captain's ankle. He shouted and stamped his foot, trying to shake the touch from his leg. The steersman drew his belt knife and stepped toward the captain.
Two more tentacles gripped the steersman from behind.
Sharina had watched worse horrors from the windowed chamber where the queen had imprisoned her. This one, though, she not only saw with human eyes but understood with a human heart. A wave of dizzying horror gripped her.
Sailors flailed with bare hands or whatever weapons they could snatch up. There were dozens of tentacles, perhaps scores. Railings broke, the standing rigging snapped line by line, and men screaming helplessly vanished overboard.
The ship lurched, throwing its mainmast and sail into the sea to starboard. The deck was tilting under the grip of tentacles questing for prey that might have been missed thus far. They were unsuccessful: the vessel's whole crew had already been snatched into the sea.
The ship tilted further. From the water beside it rose a pearly mass: the shell of an ammonite, but an ammonite the size of an island. One of the mollusk's slitted eyes stared at Sharina while its beak swallowed the sailors its tentacles passed into it one after another.
The ship's hull flexed, then broke under the strain. Shattered timbers swam for a moment, then sank in a boil of foam and cargo.
The moon shone on the monster's opalescent shell. Tentacles groped over the flotsam which was all that remained of the vessel. Finding nothing more that was edible they withdrew. The whole creature sank slowly into the depths from which it had come.
“Which will it be, Sharina?” the queen asked. “Will you do as I ask you, or shall I feed Cashel to the Old Ones also?”
The wall had returned to smooth alabaster. Sharina looked at the monstrous, beautiful figure across the game board from her.
In a voice devoid of outward emotion, Sharina said, “What do you want me to do?”
The guards in front of Robilard's palace stood at attention when Lord Hosten got out of the carriage; their officer stepped from the anteroom and bowed low. Hosten was too preoccupied to acknowledge the honors being paid him.
He paused, struggling with the question of how much to say to an outsider. He gave Ilna a twisted smile. “Baron Robilard is a fine young man, but sometimes he's a trifle erratic when he's in his cups. Are you sure you want to see him now?”
“To the degree that I ever wanted to see him,” Ilna said. She shrugged. “I owe him a warning. He won't listen, but I owe him the warning.”
Hosten nodded curtly. “I'll take you through to the banquet hall,” he said. He turned to the palace.
“Sir?” said one of the soldiers. “Do we...? I mean, must we...?”
“Send them home,” Ilna said before Hosten could answer. “There's no reason they should be involved in it. And I can announce myself to the baron.”
“You're dismissed,” Hosten said curtly to the escort. The driver took the order as applying to himself as well; the carriage rumbled down the curving drive. The four soldiers trotted quickly after it as though the Sister were on their heels.
Ilna’s lips smiled. If she'd read the pattern correctly, that wasn't very far from the truth.
“I'll take you through,” Hosten repeated. His smile became even more crooked. “I'm a bor-Horial, mistress. I have no more choice in the matter than you do.”
Ilna laughed out loud for the first time in—well, in a long time, certainly. “Let's go, then,” she said, falling into step with the proud, straight-backed noble.
Ilna had never understood how people could have pride in their birth instead of their accomplishments. On the other hand, she was clear-sighted enough to know that Ilna os-Kenset, whose father had drunk away his inheritance before he drank himself to death, and whose mother had never been seen by anyone in Barca's Hamlet except—she supposed—Kenset, wasn't an unbiased judge of the matter.
Ilna had never expected to hear a noble claim kinship of a sort with her. And she'd certainly never thought that she'd feel vaguely honored when it happened.
The room where she'd met Baron Robilard this morning was empty except for a scurrying servant and the shadows flung by the six lamps, barely enough to light so large a space. Ilna frowned. She'd thought the banquet would be here.
Hosten either saw her face or guessed her question in some other fashion. “The banquet chamber was added at the back of the palace,” he said. “That was the baron's first expansion project on coming to the throne.”
Ilna sniffed. She could easily understand Ascelei's bitterness at the young ruler's taxes—and the works he spent them on.
They went down a hallway between sets of smaller rooms. From the doorway at the end came music, laughter, and the light of many lamps. A servant carrying out a tall wine jar by one handle—it must have been empty—stepped close to the wall to let them pass.
Long tables were set as three sides of a square with the guests on cushioned seats on the outside. Servants offered food and wine from the inner face, entering from the open side. The only food still being brought out was slices from a salt chine of beef to make the drinkers thirstier.
The hall was so large that not even the present gathering filled it. The floor was covered with bracken rather than the rushes which the better houses in Barca's Hamlet spread to pick up mud and debris dropped at meals; poor folk were more likely to rebuild their huts when the floor rose high enough to make headroom a problem.
The iron cage had been set in the middle of the square of tables. Halphemos sat cross-legged within, waiting with the morose resignation of a hen being carried to market with its legs tied over a pole.
For a moment few of the guests noticed Hosten and Ilna. Some of the courtiers were so drunk that their eyes didn't focus anymore. Baron Robilard wasn't quite that far gone, though his cheeks were flushed and his eyes had a hectic glitter. He sat at the center of the cross-table, with Regowara to his right and his blond wife Cotolina to the left.
Cotolina watched Ilna enter with a gaze as cool as glacial ice. There was a double cradle behind her. A nurse was suckling one of the twins while the other slept.
To Ilna’s mild surprise, Lady Tamana was at the banquet also. The surprise vanished when Ilna saw that Tamana was seated at the bottom of the table on Robilard's left, and that the man seated above her was clearly not a noble.
He was dressed with the flashy tastelessness of the clerk who oversaw the villagers' payments following the Tithe Procession in Barca's Hamlet. This man probably served Robilard in similar capacity. The only reason a tax gatherer would be present in this assembly was to make Tamana's disgrace explicit to the dullest intellect.
A harper stood in a back corner plucking an accompaniment. He declaimed, “As Tumus bore the war standard from the citadel of Meriem and the trumpets shrieked their harsh call—”
“My lord!” Hosten interrupted in a voice that everyone in the huge room could hear.
All eyes turned to him. Halphemos grasped the bars, then shook his head in misery.
“—he lashed his fiery horses—” the harper continued.
“Be silent!” Robilard said, raising his hand. “I thought you'd deserted me, Hosten. I think perhaps I should get another military advisor, since you carry out your duties in such a lackadaisical fashion.”
Hosten started to speak. Ilna stepped in front of him and crossed her arms.
“Lord Hosten carried out your orders, my lord,” she said. Her voice rang like cymbals from the high marble walls. “It took longer than I'd expected, but I've carried out your orders too. The Elder Romi informed me that he would come to your dinner when the moon sets.”
Robilard lurched upright and tried to stand. He fell back into his seat at the first attempt. He flung his silver cup to the table and stood with a nervous footman supporting him by either elbow.
Robilard pointed his finger at Ilna. “You're a fool!” he shouted. “And you're a liar?”
“I've often been a fool,” Ilna said, each word a whip-crack. “I’ve never seen the point of lying, though. And I warn you, Baron, I very much doubt that the Elder Romi lies either.”
“Put her in the cage with the other one!” Robilard said. “In the morning take them both out and dump them. Let them try their lies on the fish!”
“My lord?” Hosten said desperately. “I really think—”
“Be silent!” Robilard screamed. “Do you want to join them?”
The baron wavered and almost fell on his face. The footmen managed to catch him so that he flopped back on his chair instead.
Ilna turned to Hosten. “Yes, be quiet or I'll silence you myself,” she said. She half-smiled. “Besides, I think it's time for you to go.”
Hosten shook his head. “I pledged my honor,” he said in a stony voice. He led Ilna to the cage and slid the bolt to open it. Ilna curtsied to him, then ducked to enter the tight confines. The door clanged shut behind her.
Conversation resumed but the harper stood uncertain. He played with the tuning pegs, glancing frequently at the back of Robilard's head. The baron's last command had been for silence. He might or might not want the declamation to continue, but the harper wasn't alone in thinking it wasn't a good time to call oneself to Robilard's attention in the absence of a specific command.
Lord Hosten sat in the chair left vacant beside Lady Cotolina. A servant offered a cup of wine. Hosten accepted it, but he didn't drink.
“You shouldn't have come back,” Halphemos said in a wretched whisper.
“I don't expect to be here long,” Ilna said. “The moon has probably set by now.”
The atmosphere of the hall grew colder. Ilna puffed from her open mouth; she couldn't see her breath. “Not very long at all,” she said.
The lamps were fading also. Talk stilled; everyone turned toward the doorway. Lady Regowara, able to see down the hall from her position near the center of the cross-table, suddenly screamed and tried to get up.
A figure of blue ice entered the banquet hall.
It walked like a man, but it had only a featureless lump for a head. It proceeded around the side of the hall. Behind the first came a line of identical figures, each turning right or left like a parade of footmen taking their places behind the diners.
The harper flung down his instrument and stumbled toward the exit behind him. He snatched the curtain aside, then staggered back bawling in terror. Another of the ice men already stood in the doorway.
Robilard's servants stood transfixed. The intruders directed them toward the main door with deliberate gestures. The servants edged slowly toward the doorway, then broke into a stumbling stampede. Only when they reached the hallway did their terror break in cries of babbling relief.
The ice figure which had blocked the harper's escape stepped aside, then beckoned the man with his finger. The harper stood where he was, gasping like a freshly caught fish.
The ice man gestured again. The harper bolted past him. His screaming terror echoed up the service corridor.
Ilna thought of Garric reading out passages of epic whose majesty escaped her. All Ilna heard was a pattern of words—many of which she didn't know. Even a sniveling coward like the harper shared things with Garric that Ilna, who'd known him all her life, did not.
Ilna’s hand touched the loose end of her sash, the pair of the one she'd woven for Liane. Threads go where the weaver places them; and Ilna’s life wasn't a pattern of her own weaving.
Across the banquet table, Hosten noticed Ilna and tried to stand. The ice man standing behind him in place of a human servitor put his hand on Hosten's shoulder. The noble shouted, “Let go of me! I'm going to release her!”
For a moment they struggled, the man to rise and the not-man to hold him in his seat. Hosten, gasping and suddenly older than he had seemed before, gave up the attempt.
Halphemos' fingertip drew a circle on the rusty floor of the cage. Though freehand, it was as regular as another person could have managed with a compass. He began to sketch symbols around its margin.
“Cerix taught me to open doors,” he whispered to Ilna. “This is iron, but there's so much power around us that I think I can...”