Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  Her skin flushed and then went cold. The lowest of the hanging poppets was moving its arms and legs.

  "In my day, the King would've disagreed," Davus said. He lifted the topmost of the green homunculi. Touched, it began to squirm also. Davus gently set it back against the lattice and walked into the shed.

  "The King is dead!" the wizard shouted. "It's every man for himself, now!"

  "Ah, but we're not dead, my friend," Chalcus said, stroking Nergura's cheek with a first and middle finger. The wizard jerked as though he'd been burned. "Nor are you, as things now stand."

  Three dolls like those on the vine hung from hooks on the wall between heavy shears and a bronze trowel. These were better formed in the sense of being more complete, though their proportions were those of a dwarf and their faces looked indescribably ugly.

  They mewed at Davus. He reached toward them. The nearest was formed like a female. She gripped Davus' index finger with both arms and tried to drag it toward her jaws to bite. He pulled his hand away.

  "Every man for himself, you say, wizard?" Davus shouted. "These are men, as you well know. You hang them here till you're ready, and then you boil them down into an elixir which you drink for what you claim is wisdom. What sort of wisdom do you get by drinking the lives of men?"

  "I had no choice!" Nergura said. "My safety depends on what the poppets' blood enables me to learn!"

  "If you think you're safe now, wizard," said Ilna as she stepped between Davus and Nergura, "then you're a worse fool that I already believed."

  She turned to Davus. "What now?" she said crisply. "Do we destroy the vines?"

  "Or perhaps do we destroy the gardener?" said Chalcus. "For it seems to me that if we do that, no problem remains."

  Davus sighed. In his anger he'd seemed a much bigger man, but now it drained out of him leaving a stocky, tired-looking fellow wearing a tunic that was cut a little too closely around his chest.

  "No," he said, "we'll not kill him. We'll free these sad, vicious creatures, because they're men; and we'll free Master Nergura, because he's a man as well. And then we'll leave here, because I don't choose to spend the night in a place that was built by that kind of wisdom."

  Ilna took the trowel from its peg and walked out of the shed with it. "Yes," she said as she knelt and thrust the bronze blade into the soil near the base of the vine. "I couldn't agree more."

  * * *

  "I've arranged a reception in the palace courtyard, your highness," Earl Wildulf said. "Unless you prefer to see to your apartments, of course. I've ordered the rooms on the west side of the ground floor to be cleared for you. They're, ah, able to be separated from the rest of the building and the outside."

  They're easily defensible, Garric translated silently. "No, your lordship," he said aloud. "A levee is an excellent idea. My staff can meet the officials with whom they'll be working out details of Sandrakkan's integration with the kingdom."

  King Carus chuckled as he viewed the palace of the Earls of Sandrakkan through Garric's eyes. Though on an impressive scale, it'd been built with an eye to defense rather than pomp. The main door was too narrow to pass three men abreast, and the ground-floor windows started six feet above street level; the gray stone walls below were solid. A few gleaming streaks remained on the sides of standing seams to indicate that the lead roof had once been silvered, but not in a generation. The swags and cartouches forming a frieze between the second and third stories were bird-daubed and beginning to crumble.

  Humans as well as time had damaged the building . Some of the grills on the ground floor windows had been replaced with others of a different and heavier pattern, and the stones of the door alcove showed signs of burning. They were granite, though, and hadn't been seriously damaged. Liane had said that there'd been months of rioting in Erdin before Wildulf had claimed the throne vacated by the slaughter at the Stone Wall.

  The crush at the palace entrance forced Garric and the Earl to halt in the street. Wildulf rose in his stirrups, snarling, "What's the hold up! Sister take the fools! I'll have the skin of somebody's back!"

  "I think the fault's mine, milord," Garric said smilingly. In all truth, he'd have been more comfortable on his own feet rather than on horseback. Fortunately they'd barely ambled from the seafront, since the procession moved at the speed of the infantry. "Lord Attaper's men are making sure of the arrangements. They'll be in tents in the palace gardens to the rear, I believe."

  "So I've been told," Wildulf agreed sourly, though he wasn't taking the situation as badly as Garric had feared he might. The Earl might have figured out that with a large army on Volita the negotiations were going to go the way the royal officials intended they should. The more easily they were concluded, the quicker Garric and that army would be out of his hair.

  Lord Attaper approached, talking over his shoulder to one of his own officers and a palace official. He broke away from them and said to Garric, "Your highness, I believe everything's in readiness. You can enter any time you please."

  Wildulf's expression quivered between fury and amazement before settling on the latter. "You let him talk to you that way?" he demanded as he and Garric dismounted.

  "I'm ordinarily willing to listen to anybody who's polite and who's speaking in the course of his duties, milord," Garric said calmly.

  He strode toward the entrance smiling faintly. He knew that Wildulf probably thought the Prince was weak because he didn't follow his own will without regard for his advisors' judgment. Well, you could find people of Wildulf's opinion in a peasant village, too; and the attitude didn't help them prosper.

  With the front door open, Garric could see all the way from the street through into the gardens behind the palace. A pair of Blood Eagles with balls blunting their spearpoints stood at each archway—five of them that Garric could be sure of, but the number of people waiting in the central courtyard probably concealed more of them.

  The walls of the vestibule were decorated with carvings instead of being frescoed. Garric smiled wryly, realizing he found the paintings of Valles and Carcosa to be more welcoming, more civilized, than these stones. He'd certainly learned to put on airs in the short time since he left a hamlet where most of the better houses were whitewashed over mud plaster.

  Liane joined him as he entered the court. Grass grew from seams between the stone pavers, especially around the edges.

  "His highness Prince Garric!" shouted a Blood Eagle noncom. Normally that duty would've gone to a palace usher, but lungs trained to call orders through the clash of battle made an impressive substitute.

  Well over a hundred Sandrakkan nobles waited, the men wearing tunics and breeches of contrasting color. The dozen officials in bulky Ornifal court robes who'd arrived with Garric had begun to mingle.

  Palace functionaries had placed serving tables between the arches along the left side for servants to dispense drinks. From the flushed look of some of the local men, the drinking had started well before the royal contingent arrived.

  "Lord Tawnser is very drunk," Liane said as she curtsied to Garric. Her bright smile belied the concern in her low voice. "Attaper has men watching him, but be careful."

  Garric scanned the crowd with a bland smile as though he were merely a friendly stranger surveying his surroundings. Tawnser, glaring from his one eye like an angry hawk, stood with several other grim-looking fellows by the serving tables. He was a tall man whose lean face that might've been fairly attractive were it not for his expression and the scar across his forehead and cheek, punctuated by the patch covering his left eyesocket.

  "Well," Garric murmured back, "if only a handful of Sandrakkan's nobles are that hostile, I'll take it as a positive sign."

  The two of them stepped forward, flanked by guards. Liane was guiding him with tiny gestures of the writing stylus in her left hand, though Garric doubted anybody else was aware of the fact. The three nobles who'd come to Volita to negotiate stood together with a certain distance between them and the other Sandrakkan courtiers. Th
ey'd straightened as Garric entered and now faced him with evident relief.

  "There's resentment of the terms they've accepted," Liane muttered. "Only Lord Tawnser and a few of his cronies would've refused them, but the people who didn't have to make a choice are now saying that the envoys made the wrong one."

  "Ah," said Garric. Of course, he thought. That was what people generally did, so he didn't suppose there was any point in thinking that they ought to behave in a different fashion.

  "Lady Lelor," Garric said, nodding. He swept the two male envoys with his glance. "Milords. Perhaps you'd introduce me to some of your compatriots? They can see I don't have two heads, but I'd like them to be certain that I'm not a raving lunatic either."

  There was a stir at the far end of the room. The pair of Blood Eagles guarding the corridor from the gardens snatched the balls from their spearheads. "Captain!" one shouted.

  "That's the Countess!" shouted Earl Wildulf. He pushed his way toward the arch like an angry ox from where he'd stopped to talk to a palace official about billeting arrangements while one of Tadai's senior aides watched sternly. "That's my wife, you Ornifal numbskull!"

  Garric was moving forward as quickly as Wildulf. He was well aware of the weight of the sword at his left side, but his hand resisted Carus' impulse to draw it. There were plenty of bare weapons present already; one more in the Prince's hand might spark the disaster Garric hoped to avoid.

  He and Wildulf reached the back corridor together. Countess Balila had stopped when the guards shouted and raised their spears. She'd apparently changed into lighter garments, a violet tunic and a mantilla of purple lace, on returning from the seafront. She looked furious, and Garric couldn't blame her.

  On the other hand, he didn't blame the soldiers either. Accompanying the Countess were a strikingly ugly old woman—

  "The wizard Dipsas," whispered Liane, who'd kept up with him.

  —a little boy, naked except for gilt wings and a chaplet of roses—

  "Cover your points again!" Garric said sharply. One of the guards was lifting his javelin to throw.

  —and a bird taller than the Countess. It had a huge hooked beak and clawed feet that could gut a horse with a single kick. It raised a tall crest—Garric saw where the feathers on Wildulf's helmet came from—and screamed, its tongue vibrating and its stub wings flaring out to the sides.

  "The bird's Balila's pet," Liane said. "I should've warned you."

  Duzi! But there's no accounting for taste, a thing Garric had known long years before he left Barca's Hamlet. Now that he had a moment to look, he saw that the huge bird wore a silver collar and that the cherub held the thin chain attached to it.

  Earl Wildulf put his right arm about his wife, a gesture at once protective and possessive. Balila touched her husband's cheek with one hand, then reached back and stroked the throat of the great bird. It quieted, tucking its wings against its torso and closing its beak. After a moment, it folded the bronze feathers of its crest also.

  "Odwinn, stand easy!" Lord Attaper said in a vicious snarl. "If you and Buros panic when somebody comes in with an oversized parrot, you've got no business in my regiment—or in Prince Garric's army, I dare say!"

  The guards clashed their hobnails as they straightened to attention. They banged the butt-spikes of their long javelins against the floor also, striking sparks. After a moment, one of the men snatched up the gilded wooden ball at his feet and stuck it back on his spear. Neither of them looked at their commander.

  Garric bowed. "Countess Balila," he said, "I'm pleased to see you in a more congenial setting than the waterfront. And I'm very impressed by your pet here."

  "Yes, Hero's a good friend," the Countess said archly, continuing to ruffle the bird's neck ruff with one hand while the other caressed the point of Earl Wildulf's jaw. The sight raised disquieting images in Garric's mind. "To those I deem worthy of his friendship, that is."

  Garric stepped back into the courtyard to clear the doorway for the Earl and Countess. The little boy dropped the chain and ran past, giggling and waggling his head from side to side. He was certainly old enough to speak, but he didn't seem able to.

  The bird had a certain beauty, but the wizard on the other side of Balila couldn't have been attractive even before time added its ravages to those of dissipation. Dipsas wore a peaked cap and a black robe of tightly-woven wool with silk cuffs and collar. Garric couldn't claim to be an expert, but he suspected Ilna would approve the garments' workmanship. The woman's face, however, was cruel and petty both.

  In Dipsas' right hand was an athame of black horn, carved with images of humans and beasts twined in sexual congress. Garric could imagine what Tenoctris would've said about the object, but he didn't need his friend's opinion to make his lip curl.

  Dipsas met his gaze and smirked. "You feel my power, do you not, Prince Garric?" she said.

  "I feel nothing but disgust," Garric said, blurting what he'd have managed to put a gloss on if the statement hadn't been so very true.

  Dipsas glared and raised the athame, posing like an orator about to declaim. Garric turned his back deliberately. If the wizard tried to stab him with what was after all a horn knife, Lord Attaper would break at least her arm before she more than started the stroke.

  Liane gave Garric an approving nod instead of grimacing at his outburst as he'd expected she would. Apparently her sense of decorum didn't require him to be diplomatic in the face of malicious filth.

  Lord Tawnser glared from just over arm's length away, between the armored solidity of the Blood Eagles who'd been following Garric until he turned on his heel. Tawnser's face was flushed, all but the narrow white line of the scar. Two of the cronies he'd been drinking with were beside him, while the third followed a double-pace back with a look of dawning concern.

  "You prefer to threaten our women instead of facing our men in battle, is that it, Master Garric?" Tawnser said, his voice rising in both pitch and volume. "But maybe our pigs would be even more suitable. You are a swineherd from Haft, isn't that so?"

  Lord Attaper turned with smooth grace. Instead of drawing his sword, he reached with both hands for Tawnser's throat. Garric grabbed Attaper's shoulder and jerked back with the effort he'd have used to turn a charging ox. It was enough, barely.

  "Lord Wildulf!" Garric said without shifting his eyes from Tawnser's face. Attaper relaxed but Garric didn't release him quite yet. "Put your puppy outdoors, or I'll put him out myself!"

  The open courtyard was a sea of babbling excitement. Blood Eagles were shoving toward Garric from all the entrances, and somebody'd managed to overset one of the serving tables. The friends who'd been flanking Tawnser backed away suddenly. Even Tawnser himself looked shocked as his sodden brain replayed the words that'd come out of his mouth.

  "Tawnser, you bloody fool!" Earl Wildulf snarled. He wasn't an intellectual giant, but he'd seen enough of war to know what would happen if real fighting started in a courtyard where only Garric and his guards had been allowed to carry weapons. "Get out of here and sober up. No, by the Shepherd—go back to your estates and don't leave them until I give you permission! Do you hear?"

  Tawnser didn't move for a moment; his face could've been cast in glowing iron. He turned abruptly and strode toward one of the arches on the east side, shoving aside the people in his way with as little thought as a man walking through a field of waving oats.

  The Blood Eagles crossed their spears to block that exit. "Let him go!" Garric called. The spears went vertical again. Tawnser stalked through, apparently oblivious of the guards and everyone else present. He disappeared into the hallway beyond.

  Garric took a deep breath and let go of Attaper. Liane picked up the stylus she'd dropped when she drew her small, razor-sharp dagger. It was back in its ivory sheath now, wrapped invisibly in the lustrous silken folds of her sash.

  Garric turned and gave Wildulf a trembling smile. "Well, milord," he said. "Now that we've taken care of that business, perhaps you'd be good enough to i
ntroduce me to your courtiers?"

  It's good to have advisors who make sure the room you're going sleep in tonight is defensible, Garric thought; and, thinking that, broke into a broad, real smile.

  * * *

  The Star of Valles sailed through the void. Constellations blazed down on Sharina and up at her. That depended on whether she leaned back and looked at what should be the sky or craned her neck over the side to peer toward what'd been the depths of the sea.

  She'd wrapped a shawl over her head. The air wasn't cold, but she wasn't used to feeling it on her bare scalp. She'd get used to it, she supposed, and of course her hair would grow back... but not as long as it had been. Not for a decade and more.

  The rowers had shipped their oars and were sitting with the vessel's deck crew on the outriggers and narrow catwalks. In a reversal of the order of things before the Star of Valles left the waking world, the soldiers were mostly huddled in the hollow of the ship with their eyes cast down so that they could pretend they didn't know what was happening.

  Sharina sat at the front of the starboard outrigger, overlooking Tenoctris in the ear timber and the nymph who perched on the frame of the box talking to the old wizard. There wasn't room for three in such tight quarters, and in all truth Sharina felt nearly as queasy about the situation as the soldiers did.

  She supposed that Tenoctris was able to see the nymph now, since they'd entered the void. She smiled to herself: it seemed a void to her human senses, but she didn't suppose it really was one. Certainly things lived in it, and swam....

  Master Rincale, the sailing master, chatted with sailors as he came forward. He nodded when he caught Sharina's eye; she smiled in response and looked forward again.

  The worm about whose bluntly-rounded head the trireme's anchor cable was tied had a broad, flat tailfin. Spines, scores of them, stuck out from its body. While the nymphs were harnessing the creature Sharina had seen that conical teeth ringed its circular mouth. The worm undulated as it drew the Star of Valles, its tailfin driving up and down just beyond the vessel's bronze ram.