Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  Wildulf had an unexpected bald spot in the middle of his scalp. Garric set the crown on his head carefully and cried, "Arise Wildulf, Earl of Sandrakkan!"

  The sky darkened. Garric and everyone else in the great plaza looked upward. A cinder-black cloud had appeared as suddenly as a thunderbolt. It spread, forming into the shape of a vast, shambling demon. A woman screamed and a thousand throats took up her terror.

  Garric had his sword out though he didn't remember unsheathing it. Instinct wanted to put him between Liane and the creature of smoke and darkness, but since it was in the sky he couldn't really do that.

  The shape spread wider. No sunlight leaked through the form though the heavens surrounding remained bright morning. The misshapen head turned and the right arm reached down toward the altar, spreading clawed fingers. The crowd surged away. Garric, glancing into the plaza, was glad to see that the Blaise regiment held, although its ranks had become disordered.

  It didn't occur to Garric to run. There was nowhere to run. If he was going to die, then it might as well be with his feet planted and his face to the enemy.

  The shape vanished, not the way a cloud dissipates but instead like a soap bubble—in the sky one instant, then gone utterly. A few flickers of blackness, what would've been sparks if they hadn't been the absence of light; then not even that.

  "It's the Ornifal oppressor behind the portent!" Lord Tawnser shouted in a voice as jagged as a saw-blade. He pointed his whole arm toward Garric, his good eye blazing with fury. "It's the tyrant Garric summoning his monsters to destroy Erdin! Death to the Ornifal tyrant before he destroys us!"

  "Get that man!" shouted Attaper, but Tawnser was already gone, vanishing around the corner of the temple porch.

  A squad of Blood Eagles started forward. They'd already snatched the blunts off their spears. Sandrakkan courtiers milled, some picking themselves up from the pavement where they'd flattened when the shape appeared.

  "No!" bellowed Garric as he would've called across the pasture south of Barca's Hamlet. "Don't chase him! Let him go!"

  What he'd have really liked would be for Lord Tawnser to slip and break his neck. The chance of that happening was very slight, but it was more probable than any good result of scattering handfuls of royal troops through the streets of a hostile city.

  Lord Attaper must've come to the same conclusion as soon as thought had a chance to overrule reflex. He ordered, "Return to ranks!" even as his soldiers glanced back to see if they should obey Garric. They were beyond question loyal to their prince, but they took direction from their own commander.

  Lady Lelor and her two aides stood close together. Her face was set and she didn't appear to see Garric when her eyes swept over him. The courtiers, led by Earl Wildulf and his wife, were streaming down the broad steps of the temple. They didn't look back at Garric, or if they did their gaze slid quickly away when he tried to meet their eyes.

  In the plaza the crowd disappeared like a chalk drawing in the rain. From a dozen corners came the faint echo of, "Down with the Ornifal oppressors!"

  CHAPTER 9

  Earl Wildulf greeted Garric at the door of his suite with an unintended belch which embarrassed the black scowl off his face. He'd been drinking and still held the silver-mounted bison horn full of wine because he couldn't put it down. His hand gripped the flaring lip, and its long tapering length rested on his forearm.

  "Milord, he insisted!" the commander of the squad on guard said quickly. He kept his eye on the horn with a degree of concern that suggested he thought it might be slung at him.

  "He's the Prince, you backwoods numbskull!" snarled Lord Attaper, who'd taken charge of the escort personally when he learned that Garric intended to interview the Earl in his apartments. "And the only reason the Prince didn't have us use your head to batter the door down is that he is a more forgiving man than I am!"

  "Gently, milord," Garric said. "Earl Wildulf, I'd like to talk with you privately about what happened this afternoon."

  Generally Attaper was perfectly professional, but the business at the coronation had rattled him. He knew how dangerous it would've been if the whole city turned on the 'Ornifal oppressors', and he seemed to have taken as a personal failure the fact it hadn't been possible to capture Lord Tawnser. Attaper really had come very close to letting out his anger and frustration when a mercenary in Sandrakkan pay denied the Prince of the Isles access.

  Wildulf snorted. "Talk?" he said bitterly. "All right, we'll talk. Are you behind those accursed demons in the sky?"

  "No, milord, I am not," Garric said evenly. "My understanding is that they've been appearing since long before my companions and I arrived on Sandrakkan. Now, shall we sit down and talk like gentlemen?"

  Garric didn't add an "or else", because he was trying hard to calm the situation instead of fanning Wildulf's anger and resentment... and fear, no doubt, as there was good reason for fear. He found it very hard to keep a bridle on an angry retort, though, since he'd been frightened too. Who wouldn't feel frightened, watching a smear of evil blackness reaching down out of the sky for him?

  The Earl's suite was a south-facing bay, a central space surrounded by three wedge-shaped rooms where the occupant could determine how much breeze and light he wanted at any time of day. Wildulf huddled in the central round. The outer rooms were shuttered and curtained, so the only illumination was by narrow clerestory windows of ribbed glass. Garric would've been luxuriating in the returned sunlight if he hadn't needed to see Wildulf, but he understood perfectly why the Earl wanted to avoid all sight of the sky for a time.

  A pair of sad, nervous servants stood against a wall. They watched with silent concern as Garric and his guards followed Wildulf into the suite.

  There was a square table in the middle of the room. The top was patterned marble, pretty enough to be decorative but able to function for meals and conferences as the need might be. Liane had explained that Sandrakkan etiquette was based on circles of intimacy. Visitors of the very highest rank were admitted to the bedchamber, which therefore had the most ornate and expensive decoration in the house.

  Garric hadn't brought Liane with him. This discussion was between men.

  "Ah," said Wildulf. He gestured to the bench across the table from where he'd been sitting. "Ah, be seated, your highness. I, ah, there's wine if you'd like. And I'm drinking ale, though I don't suppose...."

  When the Earl hadn't appeared at the planned reception in the courtyard—the Countess and her wizard were present, and about half the nobles who'd attended the coronation—Garric had decided to go find him.

  Wildulf couldn't ignore what was going on. If he tried to, Garric didn't dare let him.

  "Where I was born, on Haft," Garric said as he pulled the bench a little out from the table before sitting down, "Sandrakkan ale was the drink of the Gods according to the folks who'd travelled enough to have drunk it. I'd like some—but in a mug, if you please."

  He added the last with a grin and a nod to the Earl's drinking horn. Wildulf turned to bark an order at the servants, but one of them was already bringing Garric a goblet of carnelian carved with ivy leaves and berries. A far cry from the masars of polished elmwood in which Reise served customers in his taproom in Barca's Hamlet; but the ale was smooth. When he drank it, Garric thought of other men all over the Isles drinking similar beer and dealing with the problems that were just as important to them as his were to him.

  Wildulf took a deep draft from his horn. "I suppose you think I'm a coward," he said with a morose belligerency. "Because those cursed clouds scare me. Scare me!"

  "Well, they scare me too," Garric said. "Maybe it's just a cloud, but you can't tell me it doesn't mean something—and mean something bad. There's evil in this world, milord. It doesn't like men, and it'll wipe us away if we don't fight it with all the strength there's in us."

  "I'm not afraid of anything I can fight!" Wildulf said. "Only—"

  He looked at Garric, drank, and went on, "What good's my sword against a c
loud, eh? Tell me that!"

  Garric nodded. "Milord, I can't give you an answer to that," he said. "But there's a place for swords. And if men stand together, then we have only the monsters to worry about. If you stand me with and with Count Lerdoc of Blaise and with all the other rulers. Working together, for the sake of our families and our subjects and of Mankind."

  He sipped and smiled. The ale was good beyond question, but maybe it was too good for a boy raised on dark germander bitters brewed in a peasant community where hops were an expensive import.

  "Milord," Garric continued. "If we fight each other, the blackness that waits outside will take us all, sure as death. For a thousand years the separate Isles have been squabbling with one another, holding each other back. That's going to stop now, either because we stop it ourselves or because the Dark comes in from outside and stops everything. Come with me to the reception. Stand beside me, and know that I'll stand beside you with all the strength the Shepherd gives me. For Mankind's sake."

  Wildulf drank and dropped his empty horn clattering on the table. He rose to his feet. "Right," he said. "We'll go. Now!"

  Instead of leaving through the formal entrance to the suite, Wildulf strode toward the back stairway obviously intended for servants. When Attaper realized what was happening, he spoke a curt order that sent two Blood Eagles sprinting ahead with a clatter from their hobnails and their skirts of studded leather straps. He himself followed Garric as Garric followed Earl Wildulf: the stairs were too narrow for two to walk abreast.

  At the bottom, four landings below his suite, the Blood Eagles stepped aside so that Earl Wildulf could push back a hanging woven from coarse grasses. The squad of guards at the entrance stepped aside, then stiffened when they saw Garric following. Attaper glowered at them as he fell into step at Garric's side.

  They were in a service hall. To the left were the palace's inside kitchens, while on the right were the backs of tables placed in arches of the central courtyard as they had been during the reception of the previous day.

  A senior household functionary wearing a silken snood noticed the Earl and his unexpected entourage. She snapped an order. All the servitors turned and bowed, some of them dropping or spilling food and beverages.

  Wildulf ignored them as he strode through an archway that wasn't blocked, but Garric offered servants a smile and a dip of his head. He'd served guests in the inn for too many years not to think of servants as human beings.

  The nobles and officials already in the courtyard turned with a flutter of sound to greet the newcomers. It was like watching brightly colored geese change direction, the heads twisting around and then the bodies following. The locals were even more rigidly segregated from the royal officials than they had been the day before.

  They'd all been watching something on the other side of the courtyard. The crowd parted as Wildulf stepped through with Garric pointedly at his side.

  The focus of attention had been a tented table on which dozens of small figures moved. A puppet show, Garric thought... but they weren't puppets, they were live mice and frogs, wearing armor and standing on their hind legs as they battled with tiny swords. Wizardlight, faint azure sparkles, danced over the helmets and sword points.

  Lest there be any doubt that they weren't illusions, a number of fighters sprawled dead or dying on the stage. A frog leaked pale blood from a throat wound, its broad mouth opening and closing spasmodically. Nearby was a mouse whose belly had spilled intestines for a hand's-breadth before death stiffened its little limbs.

  Countess Balila's great bird prowled behind the stage, fluffing its stub wings and making angry metallic sounds deep in its throat. It smelled the blood and didn't like it—

  Any better than Garric did.

  Balila herself stood beside the stage with the naked cherub prattling at her feet. She spoke through the side of the tent, then gave Garric a cold smile and said, "Does our entertainment impress you, your highness?"

  The wizardlight vanished. The frogs and mice reverted to their natural selves, capering and rolling in desperate attempts to free themselves from the equipment hooked about them. Their terrified squeaks would've roused pity in a butcher's heart.

  Dipsas stepped out of the tent. She looked worn, but her eyes were feverishly bright. The reptile-scale athame hung loosely from her right hand.

  "Your entertainment disgusts me!" Garric said. He spoke much louder than he'd intended, but he didn't regret the outburst. Liane was at his side, touching his arm to reassure herself and him as well.

  "Aye, he's right," Wildulf said. In the heat of the moment, Garric had forgotten the Earl's presence. "You! You're a wizard, you say?"

  Dipsas backed from the threat in Wildulf's voice, looking surprised and frightened like a rat startled in the middle of a large room. In her place the Countess said, "She's a great wizard!"

  "Then let her do something about those damned clouds!" Wildulf said. "Portents or not, I want them stopped. And you, wizard—"

  He groped unconsciously at the place on his belt where the hilt would be if he were wearing a sword.

  "—if I thought for an instant that you were behind those things, if I ever learn that, your best hope is for a quick death. Because you'll be luckier than you deserve if I grant you that kindness."

  "She's not responsible, Wildulf!" Balila cried. "Lady Dipsas is going to save us and get you your deserts! You'll see. You'll all—"

  She turned and swept Garric with a blazing glance.

  "—see. You will!"

  The Countess laid an arm around Dipsas' shoulders. She walked through another archway, half hugging and half supporting the old wizard. The bird thrust out its black tongue in a hissing skreek! and stalked off behind them. When the cherub noticed they were leaving, he burbled in terror and followed—stumbling and paddling forward, half the time on all fours.

  Garric hugged Liane close without taking his eyes off Balila and her wizard until they'd disappeared from sight. In a quiet voice he said, "Do you suppose Dipsas is behind the portents? Or whatever the clouds are?"

  "I don't know," Liane murmured. "But I'll have more information shortly, I believe."

  A few of the frogs and mice were still pawing at the fine wire screen closing the front of the stage, but for the most part they'd subsided into trembling misery against the walls of the enclosure. Occasionally a mouse flailed against its armor, then gave a whimpering squeal and stopped.

  I understand how they feel, Garric thought; but he didn't allow the words to reach his lips.

  * * *

  The wall stretched east and west to both horizons. It was stone and taller than a man—taller than either of Ilna's companions, at any rate. They could easily climb over, but the watchtowers every few furlongs were obviously intended to prevent that from happening without discussion.

  A wooden trumpet called from the nearest tower. It was a blat of sound, not in any sense music, but it seemed to have done the job. A gong rang from the manor house that sprawled on the opposite ridge. Ilna could see the figures of men running toward the stables.

  Chalcus waved his left arm enthusiastically. "May as well convince them we're friendly," he said in a cheerful tone. "And I surely am friendly, since I see how many of them there are: and them having bows too, or I'll be pleasantly surprised."

  They started down the slope of sharp-edged grass and flowers on central spikes. The plantings on the other side of the wall were darker green. The figures working among the rows straightened to watch the strangers until the wall cut off further view.

  "The fields are irrigated," Davus said. He held a fist-sized rock in his right hand, but he didn't convert his sash into a sling at present. Like Chalcus—and Ilna herself, of course—he was of the mind that fighting was a last resort against such obvious power. "There must be several hundred people in the community. Maybe more, depending on how far north it stretches where we can't see."

  "Is there a habit of being hospitable to wandering strangers here, Master Davus?"
Chalcus asked. "Strangers who come in peace, I mean, of course."

  Davus shrugged. "In my day the Old King enforced such a custom," he said. "But my day is long past, as we all know."

  The estate's southern gate was hung in a high archway, but there were no guard towers nor was the wall wide enough to stand on and throw things down on an attacker. Even Ilna—not by any stretch of the imagination a soldier—could see that it would be impossible to defend from a single determined person with a hatchet, at least until after he'd managed to whittle his way through a gate-leaf.

  As they approached, Ilna walked a little ahead of the men flanking her. Chalcus could be charming, but looking harmless was completely beyond him. Davus, she'd begun to realize, wasn't any better in that respect for all that she couldn't have asked for a more polite and pleasant companion.

  The gate creaked inward, then jerked open further. The tall leaves hogged, so the inward corners plowed curving furrows in the ground. Two horsemen with swords and quivers of short javelins rather than arrows hanging from their saddles rode through. They pulled up just outside the enclosure, trying to look menacing while the four men who'd opened the gate remounted and followed them.

  When all six were in a line, a man so fat that Ilna felt sorry for his poor horse—he'd have done better on an ox—came out, keeping carefully behind the others. This last fellow wore a sword, but he looked as though the horse would be more dangerous wielding it.

  He was overdressed and badly dressed, both. His cloak was of blue wool dyed in several different lots, and his black tunic had started to fade in patches. Both were embroidered with gold thread. The seamstress who'd worked on the left side of the garments was skilled enough to receive Ilna's silent approval, but that only served to point out the childish incompetence of the two different hands who'd done the rest of the embroidery.

  The leader of the six horsemen wore a mail shirt and trailed a red pennant from the peak of his helmet. He looked at the fat man, then glowered at Ilna and said, "Get on with you! Lord Ramelus doesn't allow vagabonds on his land!"