by David Drake
Ilna smiled faintly. She was thinking of how this flunky in armor would look dangling by his own intestines from a limb of one of the chestnut trees growing beside the manor house.
"We're travellers, not vagabonds," she said in a mild voice, hoping that her smile had been misinterpreted. "We'd appreciate a little food and drink, but we're more than willing to work for our keep."
She glanced at her companions, keeping her face bland. Chalcus grinned engagingly at a pair of the mounted men; Davus was digging at the ground with his big toe. To a stranger he'd look embarrassed, but Ilna noticed that he'd uncovered a wedge-shaped shard of limestone. A piece like that could very nearly decapitate a man if it was well-thrown.
The chief guard glanced again to the fat man who was obviously Lord Ramelus. Ramelus frowned, then said in a squeakier voice than his bulk suggested, "They can have water, Gallen. We don't need their labor—or their presence here, either one."
"All right, Lord Ramelus says you can have water," Gallen said, twisting to get the skin of water slung from the back of his saddle where it balanced the sheaf of javelins.
Ilna smiled again, her fingers weaving a pattern of cords. It struck her as amusing that Lord Ramelus and his flunkies were just as safe as they thought they were, but only because she and her companions didn't want to kill them all. It would've been quite simple, at least if Davus was what she thought he was; and possible even if he wasn't, given Chalcus' skills and her own.
But they weren't going to do that. There were far too many men—and women too, hurling loom weights and wielding turnspits—in the community for the three of them to take their simple needs by force, even if they'd killed the leader and his immediate guards. No, there were better ways to get food and something better than a drink of water from a sheepskin bottle.
The horseman leaned forward, holding out the skin. Ilna reached up, but instead of taking the water from him she spread the pattern she'd just knotted, saying, "I can weave a hanging that will make everybody who sees it feel better about themselves and their neighbors."
"Oh!" said Gallen, staring transfixed. The waterskin slipped slowly forward, forgotten in his amazement. "Oh, milady, that's wonderful...."
"What is?" Lord Ramelus demanded. "What are you doing there, Gallen? Seifert, what's Gallen doing?"
Ilna folded the pattern between her palms. It was a little thing, nothing of lasting effect, but Gallen groaned when it vanished.
"I can weave a hanging that will make your subjects happier, milord," Ilna said, stepping around the head of Gallen's mount so that she could meet Ramelus' eyes. The horse whickered; she touched its muzzle with her left fingertips. "For that we'll have food and drink while we're here, and another portion of food and drink to carry us on our way when I've finished the task to your satisfaction. Do you agree?"
"What is that?" Ramelus demanded. "The thing in your hands—show it to me!"
Ilna walked through the line of guards, stretching the pattern between her thumbs and forefingers again. Ramelus squinted, but he was apparently nearsighted. He leaned slightly forward in the saddle; he was too heavy and awkward to bend down the way a more supple rider might've done. "Hand it up!" he ordered in irritation.
Ilna frowned minusculely. "It only works if I keep the tension correct," she said. "The one I'll weave for you will be larger. It'll be able to hang in the open air and still have its proper effect."
Ramelus glared at her, then dismounted with a degree of care worthy of masons lowering a keystone into an arch. Wheezing slightly, he stepped around his horse and peered at the pattern in Ilna's spread hands.
For a moment, Ramelus' expression became hostile, even angry. It softened but almost instantly shifted to one of shielded cunning. Ilna folded her pattern and, by straightening, implied a greater separation between them than the distance itself involved.
The quickly knotted design lost its positive effect on a spectator who'd stared at it for a few minutes, but Ilna really could weave a larger panel that would act more subtly but for as long as it hung. Of course she could do that: she'd said she could, hadn't she?
"You're a wizard," Ramelus said, breathing hard and looking at her with an expression she couldn't read; couldn't read, and probably didn't want to read.
"No," Ilna said. "I'm a weaver. If your women will loan me a loom—"
All the garments she saw were homespun, with the possible exceptions of the Lord's own cloak and tunic.
"—I can do a thing like this—"
She held up the hank of cords that her fingers had already picked out again.
"—on a larger scale. For our keep while we stay here, a day or so should be enough; and for supplies to go off with, which we'll do as soon as I've finished the design to your satisfaction."
The horsemen had crowded together to hear their commander trying to describe what he'd seen in Ilna's pattern. In fact he hadn't seen anything, for all that he was waving his hands to suggest shapes and objects. All it'd been was a feeling of bliss and beauty, the sort of pleasure some people said they remembered from dreams.
Ilna wouldn't know of her own experience, of course. Mostly she didn't remember dreams at all, and when she did they were of a very different sort.
"Food and drink for you, that's your price?" Ramelus said. "That's what you said."
Ilna looked at him without affection. The landowner reminded her of her Uncle Katchin, the wealthiest man in Barca's Hamlet and easily the most disliked. Katchin had boasted of his own dignity and importance; but in his heart he'd known he was a joke to his neighbors, albeit a joke they told behind his back for fear of his malice.
"Food and drink for the three of us," Ilna said in a cold voice, seeing the cheat in the words. That was like Katchin also: the letter of the law, but by policy veering as far from justice as that law permitted him. "Space in a manger to sleep if you choose, though we can do without that. And food and drink for the three of us when we go off—tomorrow, I would hope, but whenever that is."
"Done!" Ramelus said. He clasped hands with her to seal the bargain. He looked around him at his guards. "You're all witnesses!"
In gripping the landowner's hand, Ilna let her fingertips caress the embroidered sleeve of his tunic. He's going to cheat us, she thought. For no reason other than to prove to his tenants that he can cheat a stranger and get away with it.
She backed away, dusting her palms together and smiling as she watched Ramelus struggle to mount his horse. Ramelus planned to cheat, and she planned to keep her word. And there was no doubt in Ilna's mind that she would have the better part of the bargain.
* * *
Either the dome of Ronn's vast Assembly Hall had become perfectly clear or it'd somehow been slid off to the sides since Cashel was here in the morning. The moon was overhead and looked bigger than he was used to seeing it. Nobody had a better chance to study the night sky than a shepherd. Maybe that had something to do with the dome, if the dome was still there.
"Citizens of Ronn!" said the female wizard. She seemed to've become leader of the Council of the Wise for all intents and purposes. The old man hunched in his chair, his limbs drawn up to his body like a dead spider. "We and our city face the greatest danger of all time!"
Mab, at this moment a slender, gray-haired woman, sniffed and said tartly, "Councillor Oursa is getting a little above herself if she believes she knows what the future will bring. And if she means, 'the greatest danger in the past thousand years,' that's true only because of our weakness, not the enemy's strength."
"The images of the Heroes no longer protect our walls," Oursa said. "We must protect ourselves!"
Cashel tried to imagine Oursa and the other Councillors waving swords as the Made Men charged across a field at them. The thought made him smile, which seemed to bother the people nearby in the big hall. For some reason everybody around him and Mab was looking at them instead of up at the stage.
The Councillor's voice sounded from the air like she was standing just arm's l
ength away, the way all the speakers had in the morning levee. The light was the same way, kind of: everything in the room, the walls and floor and even the air itself, glowed. No part of it was brighter than a firefly's tail, but from everything together Cashel could see all over just the same as he would during daylight.
There was a whisper of sound, nothing that the room picked up so that everybody could hear, though. Suddenly a voice rang out, "How can we protect ourselves? We don't know how to fight!"
Cashel saw the Sons of the Heroes coming toward him and Mab through the crowd. Herron turned toward the stage and shouted a reply. His words vanished in the great room, smoothed away by the air—though as close as the boy was, Cashel figured he should've been able to hear normally. He wondered just what—or who—decided what was said that was worth other people listening to.
Mab slashed her right hand through the air in a gesture that suggested more than it showed. A dazzle of wizardlight the same sapphire color as her nails struck skyward, marking her to everyone in the chamber. In a ringing voice she cried, "Your homes still hold the weapons and armor of your grandfathers' grandfathers. Go back to your hearths. Get the swords and spears of your forefathers and face the Made Men!"
In place of the night sky, the air above the hall showed giant images of what'd happened on the ramparts earlier: the Made Men coming on, and Cashel knocking them down with short, quick strokes that each ended an opponent with the certainty of a thunderbolt. Cashel'd never seen himself moving like that, from the outside. His lips pursed. He wasn't one to give himself praise—but judging what he saw with a critical eye, the first thing that went through his mind was that he wouldn't look forward to fighting somebody as good as the fellow he was watching.
Again there was a whisper of response, the brilliantly clothed folk of Ronn talking among themselves. The Sons clustered around Cashel and Mab, their expressions a mix of hopeful and frightened. Cashel understood: this was the big chance they'd hoped for, trained for; but they must have a good notion, at least since he'd taken them apart with his quarterstaff that afternoon, that they weren't up to the job they'd set themselves.
"We don't know how to fight!" the voice of the assembly said. The Council of the Wise remained silent on the stage, the woman still standing but none of them trying to lead the discussion. "The big stranger fought the Made Men. Will he fight them for us again?"
Cashel gripped his quarterstaff harder. Everybody was looking at him. Everybody: the floor of the assembly hall wasn't flat any more, it sloped up in every direction like a bowl with him in the center and Duzi knew how many people staring. He supposed it was some trick of the light, or else the Councillors were more powerful wizards than he'd been thinking they were. Regardless, it was happening and he sure didn't like it.
"Tell them, Cashel," Mab said with her cool smile. She spoke to him alone, her hands tented before her. No matter what the rest of her appearance was, Cashel could always tell Mab by those dazzling fingernails. "Tell them what you think."
This is none of my business! Cashel thought. But because he was more angry than he was embarrassed, he blurted aloud, "You people can fight these Made Men yourselves! You saw them up there—"
He waved his left hand toward where the images had stepped and swung; the moon was back now.
"They can't fight, they're no more real soldiers than you are. If you've got swords, get them. When the Made Men attack you just fight. That's all you have to do."
"We need a leader," the assembly said. Some body, some individual, had spoken the words but they were what the whole huge gathering thought. "In the past, the Heroes led the citizens of Ronn. Give us a Hero. Let the stranger lead us!"
Cashel looked at the faces, the tense and frightened faces, staring down at him. Suddenly he smiled. The answer was simple and so obvious that he didn't need the verbal push Mab was opening her mouth to provide.
"I can't lead you," Cashel said, "because you wouldn't follow me. You need one of your own people to lead, if you mean really lead and not stand out in front till I'm hacked to death and the rest of you turn and run."
He knew he was being more honest than they were going to like hearing. While Cashel wasn't as bad as his sister about not caring who his words hurt—nobody else was as bad as Ilna that way—he knew this was one of those cases where folks had to understand the truth. If they didn't really understand instead of just hearing words in a way that let them ignore them, they were going to die or face whatever other thing the King and his monsters decided to do instead of kill them.
"We'll lead you!" Herron cried, his right arm raised with the fist clenched. He'd been shouting, Cashel could see. When his voice boomed through the hall, he looked as though he'd been dropped into ice water. Stumbling on his tongue he managed to add, "The S-sons will lead you!"
"You're only boys!" replied the assembly; the massed faces staring down at Herron. The people sounded irritated but not too much so, much the way adults would be when a child piped up in the middle of a serious discussion.
They're as old as I am! Cashel thought, but he didn't say that or anything because the Assembly was right. Cashel couldn't lead Ronn because he wasn't part of Ronn; the Sons couldn't lead because they weren't fit to lead.
"Master Herron?" Mab said, speaking for the assembly in a tone of cool superiority. "Are you and your friends willing to serve the city by doing something that is within your powers? Are you willing to wake the Heroes in their cavern?"
The Sons went slack-faced in amazement. Enfero in particular had the look of a rabbit frozen by the eyes of a viper.
"You said you'd face the King and his Made Men," Mab said. Her words seemed carved from blocks of ice. "Do you have the courage to face the dark? Or are you little boys who'll shiver in the sunlight till the darkness comes to you?"
"We'll go," Orly said in an angry voice. "We'll find nothing but dust and bones, I think, but we're not afraid!"
"Yes, we'll go," Herron said to Mab, suddenly calm. "You'll lead us, mistress?"
"Of course," said Mab. "And I believe Master Cashel will accompany you as well, will you not, Cashel?"
Cashel wished there weren't all those faces looking down at him with desperate expressions, but he couldn't help that there were. "I said I'd help, didn't I?" he muttered, scowling because he sounded ill-tempered when he was really just embarrassed. "Anyway, I will. I'd be glad to."
And that much was true. If it really was a dangerous place to go, then maybe he could be of some real help for the first time since he came here to Ronn.
* * *
"Funny," said Trooper Lires, looking to both sides of the flagstone path with his usual bright interest. He grinned at Sharina to show he was speaking as much to her as he was to his fellow Blood Eagles. "In the old days there'd be half the clerks in the palace camped out here, hoping to get the king to sign something or do who knows what. It just about never happened, mind."
"Lires," said Captain Ascor, "the less talk about what happened here in the old days, the better I'll like it."
"Right, Cap'n," the trooper said. Perhaps he was mildly abashed, though Sharina couldn't be sure. The Blood Eagles were chosen from the line regiments on the basis of courage, military skills, and complete loyalty to whoever they were guarding. Social graces and the willingness to bow and scrape to their superiors weren't high in the selection criteria.
Sharina and her escort came around a high wall of prickly euonymus to see a low brick residence set near the wall of the palace compound. Two Blood Eagles were at the front door, alerted by the ringing of hobnails on the path. They smiled to see their fellows. "Hey Ascor," one of them said. "I thought you guys were off in Carcosa still."
Valence III had retired to this bungalow, within the palace grounds but at a distance from the Chancellery, while he was still as much of a ruler as the kingdom had. In the final days of his rule, he'd turned to wizardry and an alliance with black Evil to preserve his power. When his closest friends had transferred real power
to Garric with themselves as his advisors, Valence had sunk into religious mania and guilt over what he'd done and allowed to be done.
"No, we're with her highness the princess here," the captain said. "She needs to talk to himself-as-was. Any problem with that?"
"Not if he's sober enough to talk," the other guard said. "Which he generally is, not that he has much call to be. He spends most days with a couple old friends. They're with him now."
So speaking, the guard pulled the door open and called through, "Your highness? Princess Sharina's here to see you."
He nodded the newcomers forward. Ascor and Lires stepped inside ahead of Sharina, while the rest of her escort waited outside with their fellows.
There was no doorman in the anteroom, though with guards outside there didn't need to be. Sharina didn't see servants in the bungalow's single large room either, however.
Valence had just thrown the dice and was moving his pieces on the board, playing Bandits with two cronies. One was a former courtier named Geddes who hadn't been important enough either to promote or to imprison when Garric became prince, the other a very old man named Rylon who'd been chamberlain a decade before. At a sideboard stood Lord Lichter—still the royal chaplain, Sharina supposed, since nobody'd bothered to replace him.
The four men looked around in dull surprise. Valence frowned, then reached again for the game piece he'd begun to advance.
Ascor sized up the situation and thumped his heels on the thick carpeting. "Princess Sharina of Haft!" he announced loudly. That brought two startled servants out of a side chamber, tripping over one another. The male still held the jam-filled pastry his face showed he'd been in the process of eating.
Sharina pointed at them. With the anger of a woman who knew from personal experience how servants were supposed to behave, she said, "You two! Report yourselves to the chamberlain now. I'll discuss your situation with him later."