by David Drake
It wasn't hard to walk. The red light was smooth, all right, but your foot didn't pressure-melt a film of water like when you stepped down on glare ice. All you had to do here was keep your balance. It wasn't any worse than the wet stepping stones when Pattern Creek was in spate.
Zahag had an even easier time: he went down on all fours. Cashel guessed the ape was mumbling tags of poetry again, but it wasn't loud enough for him to tell for sure.
“I didn't like being squeezed in the way that tunnel did,” Cashel said. He thought he saw clouds blowing above a layer of red haze, and he was pretty sure he could see real rocks and maybe grass under the surface of stony light on which he walked. “This is a lot better, don't you think?”
Zahag didn't reply. It hadn't really been a question anyway.
He didn't see the queen or anything else alive. Well, maybe in that spike in the center...
Cashel didn't lengthen his stride, but he twirled the quarterstaff just to loosen his shoulder muscles. Lines of blue fire trailed from the iron caps. That surprised him, but not very much. He already knew this was an uncanny place.
“Remember how we got Princess Aria out of the tower?” he said to Zahag.
“I remember,” the ape said. He couldn't have sounded more glum if he'd just heard his sister had died.
Cashel thought there was a sun overhead, but its light only marked a spot on the red sky. All the light here came from the shimmering surfaces, just as it had in the tunnel leading to this plain. You couldn't judge distance in the usual way, because there weren't any shadows.
Cashel didn't quite run into the base of the tower of light—but almost. “Whoa!” he said, chuckling at himself.
He'd been in a better mood since they came out of the passage. He was sure he was getting close to a result. A chance to do something, anyhow.
Cashel prodded the column with his left hand. It was straight up and as smooth as the staff in his other hand. The bottom part wasn't any thicker than many of the trees Cashel had felled over the years, but the top spread out into a ball. That was easier to see here, looking up against the paler sky, than it had been when the bowl's glowing wall was the background.
Even Zahag looked interested. He sniffed at the base of the column, running his left fingertips over the surface a little higher as he walked around the curve.
Cashel felt a rhythm. Chanting, he thought. Maybe Tenoctris, keeping the passage open behind them for as long as she could.
Maybe not Tenoctris at all.
“Well, do you think you can climb it?” Cashel said, hefting his staff in both hands. He looked over his shoulder, but he and Zahag were still alone in the bowl of light.
“It's fifty feet,” the ape said, looking upward. He saw Cashel glance at his fingers in reflex. “That's ten of your paces, chief, left foot to left foot. Both of your hands in paces.”
“Ah,” said Cashel. Zahag hadn't sounded peevish or even sneering when he put the distance in terms Cashel could understand. Better than any words could have, that proved how nervous the ape was.
“I can't get onto the top,” Zahag said, considering the problem again. “Not the way it flares out. But I could maybe get up the shaft, sure.”
“I'd be beholden if you did that,” Cashel said, running the hickory staff through his hands. “It looks like there's windows at the top, and maybe inside...”
Of course, even if the queen was inside, that didn't bring Cashel any closer to scotching her. He didn't have any better ideas, though; and if Zahag did, he sure wasn't offering them.
A pattern was coming together. Cashel figured it'd be time for him to fit his piece in pretty soon.
The ape hopped upward, grasping the column at Cashel's height above the ground. Cashel could have lifted him higher, using the quarterstaff as a prop, but if Zahag couldn't grip it was better to learn that before he was dangerously high off the ground.
Zahag did grip, though. His arms and his shorter legs spread to their full span, so that the ape looked like a crab spider waiting for prey in a flower's heart. His hands could squeeze against each other on opposite sides of the shaft, and even his hind paws stretched far enough to anchor him for the instant it took to slide his hands higher.
Hunching his body and sliding his limbs, the ape proceeded up the column not much slower than he'd accompanied Cashel across the plain of light. He looked about the same as he had rolling forward on all fours, too.
Cashel could hear him muttering verse again, but he was getting the job done.
“Duzi, help Zahag if you can,” Cashel whispered. He eyed the horizon to make sure that nothing was advancing on them unseen. “He's only here to help me, and he doesn't have Gods of his own to pray to.”
“I'm there, chief!” Zahag called. “I've gotten there!”
The ape lifted his torso to where the column widened like the sconce on a firedog that takes sticks of lightwood for illumination. In a shriller voice he said, “I see—”
Zahag did something Cashel hadn't thought was possible: holding on to the column with his hind legs alone, he threw his hands up to grip the part of the tower that swelled like an onion about to blossom. To Cashel it was like watching a fly walk on the ceiling.
Zahag weighed about as much as a man did. If he fell that distance—
“I see a woman!” Zahag cried excitedly. “She's a girl! She's blond and she's waving to—”
He went over backward and his hands shot out. The ape's timing was marvelous, so good that if there'd been any kind of a handhold on the shaft for him to grab he would have caught himself.
There wasn't anything, just a smooth surface that not even an ape could cling to when it wasn't just his weight but the speed of his fall he had to overcome. Zahag's hands slapped the column and held just long enough that his body was tumbling when it broke free.
Cashel dropped his quarterstaff, judging the distance. He moved a step to the side and a step out from the shaft. There was a risk to this, but not as great a risk as waking up in the middle of the night and remembering that he hadn't tried to save a friend.
The staff's ferrules spat blue sparks when they hit the ground. Cashel raised his arms, watching between his spread hands. At least in this place he didn't have to worry about the sun blinding him...
Cashel's feet were close under him, but his knees and the elbows too were bent. He needed to take the shock with his muscles, not his locked joints. That would serve to drive him into the ground like a tent peg, and it'd smash the ape up about as bad as if nobody'd caught him.
Zahag bawled, “Ahhhh!” and hit. Cashel's arms gave. He clutched the ape to his chest, rotating away from the shaft. He went down on one knee for an instant before toppling sideways and skidding on the smooth ground.
They fetched up several paces from the shaft. Cashel was still holding the ape. From the way Zahag gibbered in relief, there wasn't anything wrong with him worse than the whack Cashel had taken when the weight of the falling ape drove his own elbows into his stomach.
Cashel got up and walked back to where his quarterstaff lay. The rumble of chanting was louder now. It wasn't coming from anywhere that Cashel could point to; and anyway, he had his own business to tend to. Now he understood what to do.
“Is that the queen?” Zahag asked. He was hopping up and down in sheer joy of being alive, Cashel guessed. “Is it the queen up there, chief, and you're going to get her out?”
“I don't think it's the queen,” Cashel said, checking first one, then the other end cap of the quarterstaff. “I'm going to break something now, Zahag. I can't be sure what, so maybe you ought to head for the tunnel to get clear.”
Cashel traced his hands over the hickory, making sure there were no cracks that'd appeared since he tossed the staff down in haste. There weren't. It hadn't been likely, but Cashel liked to be sure of things.
He spun the quarterstaff over his head. He kept the revolutions slow as he warmed up, crossing his wrists one over the other at the staff's balance; and a
gain, and again.
Blue fire popped and crackled. It formed rings that hung in the air even after Cashel changed the staff's angle. The sizzle sounded like the laughter of an old man.
Cashel laughed too; and, laughing, stabbed the butt of the quarterstaff like a battering ram against the column of light. The blow had all the strength of both arms and the weight of his torso behind it.
The universe went white and silent. Even the chanting stopped for several heartbeats.
Roaring blue fire ripped the blankness like a lightning bolt. Cashel fell on his back. He couldn't rise, couldn't even blink for the moment, so great was his exhaustion.
Cracks spread across the shaft of red light. The surface dulled, losing the perfect sheen. A piece the size of a man's fingernail fell off, dissolving like a burned-out spark before it hit the ground.
Everything crumbled. Zahag's mouth opened and closed, but his shouts were lost in the crash of a universe breaking apart.
As the red light of the column rotted away, it left rough stone in its place. Instead of a narrow shaft and a larger sphere atop it, Cashel lay on rock and coarse grass at the base of a plug of volcanic rock that had been fashioned into a rough figure.
Angle and the crude workmanship kept Cashel from telling more about the statue than that it was one. Its hand clutched a ball of living rock into which windows had been cut.
Two men ran across the rough ground toward where Cashel lay. One was a huge, rawboned fellow with a big spear; the other was of more ordinary size, holding in his good hand a long knife hooked like a hawk's bill.
The change from ruby wizard-light to natural landscape spread like fire in a dry meadow, not especially fast but as certain as fate. Here and there cracks were appearing in the bowl's sheer walls.
A girl with streaming blond hair leaned from one of the windows in the stone ball the statue held. She climbed out, finding niches for her fingers and bare toes in weathered stone.
“Sharina!” Cashel whispered. His lips formed the name, but his voice was too weak to be heard even in a quiet room.
A crack ran across the soil. Pieces shook from the carven outcrop, and the ground bucked violently.
In the pause before the next shock, Cashel heard Zahag's voice. “The volcano!” the ape shrieked. “The volcano's about to erupt!”
The 5th of Partridge (later Still)
Cracks shivered across the wizard-light. For the first time since Sharina's capture, she could see objects in their own colors instead of through a filter of sullen red.
She crawled through the slot in the rock. It was a tight fit, even for her, but she would have squeezed out even if it meant flaying herself on the way.
Sharina understood now what it meant to be free. She'd never imagined restraint as complete as the queen's imprisonment. She'd rather die than undergo that again.
She swung out, clinging to the sides with both hands as her right foot felt for a ledge. She was on the carved outcrop in the center of the crater. A lifetime ago she'd seen it with Hanno and Unarc.
The two hunters were running toward her now. They must have waited on the crater rim instead of looking to their own safety after she was captured. Seeing them, Sharina wondered that she'd ever thought they might flee
Cashel lay on his back at the base of the outcrop; an ape was capering about him. He wasn't moving. “If he's dead...” Sharina whispered as her hand tried a knob of rock; it broke off under her weight.
The outcrop was porous and well weathered. Sharina's toes found a crack that supported her body long enough for her to get her fingers into it as well. She let herself down her body's length, fumbling for another grip.
Sharina laughed. Cashel wasn't dead. He wouldn't leave her that way.
The outcrop shook violently. Sharina flattened herself against the rock face by instinct. Chunks from higher up bounced past her.
The floor of the crater split across. The ground on one side lifted while that on the other sank; the portions twitched at different rhythms. Magma winked in the depths of the crack.
A ledge jutted out a dozen feet beneath her: the knee of the squatting statue. It was a long drop to a hard surface, but there wasn't much time.
Sharina jumped, landing safely on flexed knees. The crater shook again. The ledge slid away, carrying Sharina down with it in a rush and a roar.
She kept her feet, spreading her arms for balance. Dust and pebbles cascaded ahead of her. Hanno and Unarc had lifted Cashel between them. They—a big man and two huge men—lurched farther from the path of the landslide. The ape followed on its hind legs, carrying Cashel's staff in its hands.
The slab finished its thunderous skid to the ground. The choking cloud of the rock's destruction rose over Sharina; fragments from higher up were still falling. Sharina ran out of the snarling chaos, using the rush of her descent to speed her feet.
Chips pelted her: Sharina knew that if she tripped, the scree of sliding rock would bury her at least until the eruption turned the crater into a sea of fire.
She didn't trip. Her face emerged into sunlight before her screaming lungs forced her to breathe dust thicker than a sandstorm.
“Lady, I bless You for Your mercy!” Sharina cried. “Oh, Cashel, 1 knew you'd come!”
And as she heard herself say the words, Sharina knew that they were true.
Cashel couldn't have stood without Unarc's help, but his eyes were open and he held his head up. Hanno had started back toward the shattered outcrop, but he stopped when he saw Sharina already free.
“This way!” screamed the ape, gesturing toward the crater wall with the quarterstaff. “We can get to the passage before—”
A shock fiercer than those before shook the crater. It threw them all to the ground, even Sharina, who'd ridden a landslide without falling. More cracks ran across the bowl; throbbing, yellow-white lava began to ooze up from below. The queen's wizardry had checked the volcano's anger. Now that wizardry had failed, nature was reasserting itself with a vengeance.
“Let's go!” Hanno said. Unarc sheathed his hooked knife. Hanno tossed his spear to the bald hunter and took over supporting Cashel.
The ape loped toward a ring of ruby light at the base of the crater's wall. He was using three limbs now, dragging the bouncing staff behind him with the remaining hand.
Hanno pulled Cashel's left arm over his shoulders and gripped Cashel's wrist with his own right hand. Linked, the two big men broke into a lumbering trot. Even somebody as strong as Hanno couldn't have carried Cashel for any distance unaided, but Cashel was able to stumble along with the other man's help.
Cashel looked dazed. He smiled when his eyes met Sharina's, though.
She paced the three men. She could have outdistanced them easily, but the last thing she wanted was to be alone. Safety wasn't a place. Safety was friends.
“Is this your friend Nonnus you talked about, missie?” Hanno shouted. His face was set, but he looked as though he could keep running at his present pace until the sun froze.
Sharina's left hand rested on the hilt of the Pewle knife, though the wide belt gripped the sheath tightly enough that it didn't flop when she ran. “No,” she said. “He's my friend Cashel.”
“You got some right impressive friends, girl!” Hanno said. He bellowed with laughter.
The shimmering ruby had dissolved starting at its center, so now only the top of the crater's rim still shone with unnatural red purity. Even that vestige vanished as the group neared the rock walls. The tunnel mouth was the only remnant of wizardry in the volcano's sunlit bowl.
Instead of simply trembling, the ground rippled like a blanket being shaken out. Hanno stumbled; Cashel touched a hand down to keep them both upright. Cashel and the hunter still clung to each other, but they were more like oxen in yoke than an invalid and a nurse.
The ape reached the mouth of the passage and turned. His eyes looked up and he opened his mouth to shout. An enormous, wet plopping noise overwhelmed all other sound. The ground billowed and
the crater wall itself split to the sky.
Sharina looked over her shoulder. The central outcrop which the Hairy Men had carved into their own likeness sank into a bubbling pool of lava. Blazing rock spewed high in the air.
Within what had been the idol's head, now hobbling on the lava like a bladder in a millrace, was a sphere of ruby light. There was a figure within.
Sharina saw the queen raise her staff in a desperate attempt to stay the inevitable. Rock fountaining from the depths of the earth flung the ball of wizard-light in a wild careen. No one could stand, let alone chant in such a dance.
“Sharina, come!” Cashel cried. He stood at the mouth of the tunnel, holding his free hand toward her. Hanno looked back from his other side with a worried expression.
The ruby sphere sank into the sea of lava. Sharina expected it to bob up again. Instead livid rock sprayed outward in all directions, the way the water of a swamp does when a bubble bursts.
Sharina plunged into the tunnel with her friends.
Cashel and Hanno were directly ahead of her, filling the passage. They clumped forward in a way that transcended human effort.
Sharina had thought the tunnel led down—there was no other way to go from the point in the crater wall where it opened, after all. But the tunnel, like the bowl of light where the queen had made her lair, was separate from the geography of the waking world. She and her companions were climbing, or at any rate they expended the effort they would to climb.
Sharina felt the air compress with a dull thump. She glanced back. The lava that had followed them into the passage blazed behind her. For the moment they were staying well ahead of it.
She didn't say anything to her companions. There was nothing to do except what they were doing, after all.
Anyway, she'd outlived the queen.
Something changed ahead of her. Sharina had glimpsed Unarc and the ape occasionally between the legs of Cashel and Hanno. They disappeared. Hanno shouted; then he and Cashel too were gone, and Sharina sprang out into cool air and lamplight.