Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  "I've fed you," Ramelus snapped. "Now, do what you promised. If you try to gull me, you'll regret it—that I promise you!"

  "I'll give you what I swore to give you," Ilna said. "A hanging that makes most of those who see it happier. I'll follow the rules you set. Depend on it!"

  The last sounded more like a threat—which it was—than Ilna'd intended, but Ramelus was too caught up in his own importance to pay attention to anybody else. "See that you do!" he said.

  Ilna stepped to the nearby table where she'd left her loom. Her two companions came with her as naturally as her tunic swirled—and almost as closely, too. Peasants who'd been staring in wonderment at the pattern moved back like little fish when a pike darts toward them.

  Ilna ran her fingers over the heddles of the borrowed loom. It was a good one, a loom she wouldn't have minded owning herself.

  She smiled as she made the final adjustments to her pattern, thread by thread: craft was in the craftsman, of course, not in her tools. And this particular work was a piece of craftsmanship that showed all there was that mattered in Ilna os-Kenset, the skill and the sense of justice as well. Charity was a fine thing, no doubt, but it wasn't a virtue Ilna claimed or even really desired.

  Mostera gasped in wonder as she saw what Ilna was creating. She and her sister might be the only spectators who realized that the fabric was a double weave with different patterns on the front and back. Ordinarily Ilna would've opened the finished piece at one selvedge to double the width of the finished cloth, but in this case she'd picked up threads from the underlayer to deliberately bind the patterns together. And when she was done—

  Ilna beat the fabric one last time, then withdrew the bar and paused. Her arms and shoulders were stiff. There was quite a lot going on with this business. Weaving itself was physical effort, particularly at the speed at which Ilna accomplished it, but there was more to her art than that. Everything had to be paid for, which was exactly the way it should be.

  "You're a demon," Malaha whispered. "You're not human!"

  "I'm human," Ilna said as she began to knot off her fabric. She'd deliberately left the selvedges long to make it easier to hang the piece above Ramelus' throne. She looked Malaha in the face and added, "There was a time that I was much worse than any demon, but I've always been human."

  Mostera put her hand on her sister's. Neither of them spoke.

  Ilna smiled, nodded, and stretched the fabric out toward Lord Ramelus. "I've met my obligation," she said, a statement instead of pretending there was any doubt of the fact.

  The chief of the landowner's bodyguards muttered what was a curse by the words of it, a prayer in its tone. Even Ramelus drew in a breath of amazement.

  The pattern was abstract both visually and in emotional effect. A bed of earth tones and grays zigzagged up the fabric till at midpoint the yarn dyed with berry pulp appeared—a few pink flecks, then a ripple, and from there to the top a hinted outline picked out by the insistence of the color rather than the weight of the line.

  When Ilna looked at the pattern she saw, she felt, a spring morning in Barca's Hamlet. Dawn was rising over the Inner Sea, and she had no pressing task in hand. Others who viewed it would feel other things. From the expressions on the faces of Ramelus and his guards, Ilna herself would find some of those things distasteful or even disgusting.

  But it wasn't her task to edit the fantasies of her fellow humans. As she'd said to Malaha, she had enough on her own conscience.

  "Wonderful!" a peasant shouted. Half the large crowd chorused, "Wonderful!" or started to cheer. Ramelus looked stricken, sick and angry and uncertain—but drawn despite himself by what he saw in the fabric.

  Ilna folded the panel closed. "Master Chalcus?" she said, nodding to the man at her side. "The posts of the chair back—the throne there in the kiosk? I believe this is sized to their span. Please tie it there."

  She handed the fabric to Chalcus but looked at Ramelus. "Do you agree, sir?" she said.

  The landowner had regained his composure after the pattern was folded away. "Yes," he muttered hoarsely. He cleared his throat and said in a firmer tone, "Yes, all right, put it there. Put it up behind me."

  There was a whisper of sound throughout the crowd, wonder and a delight which verged in some cases on awe. Ilna smiled bitterly. Her skill was a wonderful thing, no doubt about that; but she wondered how these peasants would react if they learned that skill had been purchased at the cost of the weaver's soul?

  Well, she had her soul back now. Worse for wear, of course, but the lesson that she must never lose control was worth the damage. Ilna wasn't enough of an optimist to imagine that there was no worse error she could've fallen into had she not learned from that one.

  The chair's gilded finials were an eagle on one side, a lion's head on the other. Chalcus hopped onto the chair seat, but even so he had to stretch to reach them. When he did, he tied the panel in place with quick knots.

  "And now, Master Ramelus," Ilna said. "The agreement was for our meals while I worked on the panel, and food for our journey when I completed it satisfactorily."

  "Yes," said the landowner, clearing his throat again. He looked at his guards and said in a harsh voice, "Three of you watch the one behind us!"

  "There's no need for that," Ilna said steadily. "Chalcus, come stand by me. Ramelus is nervous with you behind him."

  "Tsk," said Chalcus, dropping to the ground so smoothly that his feet didn't kick up dust. He smiled with engaging innocence as he walked through the locals to Ilna's side. "Does he imagine I'd besmirch my honor by stabbing a man in the back? Dearie dearie me."

  Ramelus looked half puzzled, half incensed. He apparently wasn't sure whether Chalcus was mocking him, which meant he had even less intelligence than Ilna's previous low opinion had assigned him. She had no doubt that in his day Chalcus had killed people from behind, people who were sleeping, people who were praying on their knees....

  Nor did she doubt that Chalcus could sweep away Ramelus and his guards, face on and smiling. But it wouldn't come to that, not this time.

  So thinking, Ilna smiled also. The expression made Ramelus blink, which suggested he might not be entirely a fool after all.

  "The rest of the bargain if you please, Master Ramelus," Ilna said calmly. The peasants had mostly turned to stare at the hanging. At noon the roof would shade it, but now the afternoon sun made the pink blaze.

  The landowner's face settled into a scowl. "Food, yes," he said. "Food for your further journey."

  He took from his belt a purse of embroidered silk, obviously prepared for this moment, and shook its contents into his palm. "A barley corn, a lentil, and a chickpea," he said loudly. "We didn't discuss quantity, you'll recall!"

  "I recall," Ilna said, smiling a little broader. "This is your choice, Master Ramelus?"

  "It's the bargain we made!" Ramelus said. He tossed the three seeds on the table beside the empty loom. "If you didn't think about what you were saying, that's no business of mine."

  Ilna raised the chickpea between her thumb and forefinger, looked at it, and set it back on the tabletop. "Then we've each kept our bargain according to our codes," she said. She nodded toward the throne, flashing the smile again. "I expect my pattern will bring a good deal of pleasure for as long as it remains here."

  She glanced at her companions. "Let us leave this place," she said. She walked forward; Chalcus fell into step, keeping between Ilna and the guards surrounding the landowner.

  Instead of joining them, Davus stood arms-akimbo. In a clear, challenging voice he said, "This is injustice, Lord Ramelus."

  "I kept my bargain!" Ramelus said. "If I'm too smart for you, that's too bad for you!"

  "This is injustice," Davus repeated. The peasants, all but an old woman who still stared at the fabric, watched the interchange in a mixture of fear and anticipation. "In the days of the Old King, you would be a block of basalt and a warning to others."

  "He's threatening me!" Ramelus said, his voice rising.
"Gallen, he threatened me! Deal with him!"

  "I don't threaten you," Davus said, upright as a stone pillar. "We'll all leave this place, because that's the desire of Mistress Ilna whom you cheated by your injustice. That is so, mistress?"

  "Yes," said Ilna. "And I would prefer to be leaving now, Master Davus."

  "Leave him be, friend Davus," Chalcus said in a tone of quiet urgency. "It's the lady's choice. And Davus? I won't have you put her life at risk for anything so empty as justice."

  Davus laughed suddenly. "Indeed, friend," he said, sauntering out from behind the table and touching Chalcus by the shoulder. "Though I'm less ready than you to call justice empty."

  "As am I," said Ilna tartly, "but we've done all we need to preserve it here."

  She looked at Ramelus. He responded by stepping behind Seifert and tugging another guard over into an actual human barrier. The utter fool.

  "Master Ramelus," Ilna said. This wasn't a man whom she would address as 'Lord', not though the choice was impalement. "I wish you all deserved pleasure from the panel I've woven for your community."

  Then to her companions, "Come." She strode off along the path curving around the house and continuing north through the barley and wheat. The men fell in step—but behind her, not at her side.

  "I didn't see any bows, did you, Davus?" Chalcus said in a cheery voice. "Though I didn't see any sign of them having the balls to try us, either."

  "With this sash I can outrange a bow," Davus replied in similar apparent unconcern. "But I too doubt we need worry."

  But they were walking behind her. Just in case. Ilna's mind wavered toward anger at being coddled, then decided to see the humor of it and chuckled instead.

  They were past the house; none of the peasants or servants were close enough to overhear. Without turning her head but loudly enough for her companions to catch the words, Ilna said, "I suppose you're wondering why I walked away from that?"

  "Yes, dear one," said Chalcus. "But I knew you had your reasons."

  "Yes," she agreed. "If Ramelus had kept the spirit of the agreement instead of the word alone, I'd have told you to turn the fabric over so that the other side was toward those looking at it."

  "But mistress," Davus said with quiet puzzlement in his voice, "the pattern's everything you said it was. To me, at least. I don't know that it'd please others as it did me, but I could feel a grotto in the side of a mountain with a waterfall rushing past the opening."

  "That was what you saw?" Chalcus said in surprise. "I was on a ship. We'd come through a storm, and a rainbow filled the horizon ahead."

  "Yes, you're both correct," Ilna said. She took the hank of yarn from her sleeve and began knotting a pattern that would show them what she meant. "For now. But the design on the back of the cloth is in permanent dyes. The pink on the front will fade into the natural gray of the yarn in a few weeks, there in the sun as it is."

  "Ah, you lovely darling!" Chalcus said. "So for his cleverness, Lord Ramelus will be left with no pattern in a short time, is that it?"

  Ilna snorted. "Oh, no," she said. "There'll still be a pattern, and it'll still give pleasure, I'm sure, to most of those who see it. But what that pattern is—"

  She straightened her hands out, stretching taut her knotted design. Swinging it left, then right, she showed both men what she'd done.

  Chalcus caroled in delight; a moment later, Davus burst out with a guffaw of laughter so loud that it startled into flight a covey of quail which'd been hiding unseen among the dark green barley till that moment. Still laughing, Davus bent to pick up a pebble.

  "Lord Ramelus himself!" Chalcus said. "And naked as the day he was born!"

  "Yes," said Ilna, picking her design back to bare yarn with quick, fastidious movements. "The woven pattern takes effect more slowly, and I don't think Ramelus himself will ever see it. But everyone else will, and once they've seen that image they'll never be able to look at Ramelus without seeing it again."

  In a cool tone Ilna added, "I thought he might change his mind there at the very end. After all his own people were angry, and what did a few firkins of pulse and grain matter to him? But in truth, and though I'm sure I should wish I was a better person—I don't mind missing a meal or two for the sake of serving out that self-important toad."

  The men laughed again. They continued laughing in bursts until the manor's pompous facade had dipped beneath a rolling hill of barley behind them. After a time Chalcus began to sing, "From this valley they say you are going...."

  "We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile...," Davus chimed in, to Ilna's great surprise. His baritone made a pleasant undertone to the sailor's light tenor.

  CHAPTER 11

  Though her mounted escort was quite willing to clear a path, Sharina was content that the carriage proceed back to the palace at the speed of ordinary traffic. They were returning by the next radial street to the east of the river. That was partly to spread Princess Sharina's public presence more widely through the city—but also partly, Sharina suspected, because Under-Captain Ascor hadn't wanted to risk an enemy preparing an ambush along the route they'd taken before.

  Tenoctris sat on the opposite bench of the compartment with a lap-desk across her knees. She'd checked several documents from her satchel as they rode along. Sharina had her finger in a scroll even now to mark a place, though she was pretty sure the old wizard didn't need it any more.

  At present Tenoctris was murmuring an incantation bove a seven-pointed figure she'd sketched on her desk. It must take enormous concentration to manage that in a rocking vehicle, but Sharina had already learned that doing anything well took concentration. A fuzz of scarlet wizardlight pulsed above the heptagram, barely visible even in the shade of the compartment.

  Sharina smiled and drew a bamboo sliver from the wizard's satchel. She marked the place in the scroll with it, then leaned out the window. By supporting herself with an arm, she kept from being bounced hard into the frame. Even at a walking pace, the iron-shod carriage wheels banged sparks from the cobblestones. She'd as soon have been on foot, though that wasn't comfortable on stone either.

  The Blood Eagle riding on the carriage step glanced at her, then returned to checking his side of the road for threats. Sharina didn't recall the soldier's name. She frowned: she should learn who all her guards were. It was the least she could do for men ready to throw themselves between her and danger at the first opportunity.

  This route passed through an affluent suburb instead of the concentration of commercial buildings across the river. The residences were single-family dwellings rather than apartment blocks, though the fronts at street level were rented to shops, taverns and restaurants. By now Sharina had been inside enough expensive city homes to know that the family rooms would face the courtyard and gardens inside.

  Among the residences stood a small temple. It must be very old, because the sides were of stuccoed brick—only the facade had a marble veneer. It was well kept, which was unusual for a neighborhood temple. The stone was white instead of gray from ages of city grime, and two workmen on a scaffold were touching up the pediment reliefs with red and blue paint.

  "Stop!" said Tenoctris suddenly. "Where are we? Stop, please, there's something wrong!"

  Sharina glanced over her shoulder. Tenoctris still held the sliver she'd been using as a wand, but the desk had slipped off her lap. Her face had the wide-eyed look of someone awakened from a nightmare.

  Sharina stuck her head out. "Stop the coach!" she shouted. She didn't know if the driver could hear her over the rumble of the tires.

  She'd have opened the door but the guard was in the way. Instead she wormed her whole torso through the window and said, "Stop now!"

  "Whoa!" bellowed Under-Captain Ascor, riding on the driver's bench. He grabbed the reins and heaved back hard. Unlike the driver, he didn't have gauntlets. Nobles generally had experience with horses, driving them as well as riding, while in Barca's Hamlet nobody did; even the plowing was done by oxen.
<
br />   The two horses rose onto their haunches, protesting with shrill whickers. The carriage bumped them from behind, slamming them forward in the traces. The off mare skidded and almost lost her footing. Behind the vehicle, the cavalry escort milled and shouted curses.

  The guard jumped to the pavement. One of his fellows on the roof handed down the shield and javelin he hadn't been able to hold while he rode on the step. Sharina flung open the carriage door.

  "What's happening, your highness?" Ascor demanded. He looked back toward the commander of the escort who was shouting questions. In a wholly different voice he snarled, "Shut your bloody mouth, you baboon! I'm talking to the Princess!"

  "Tenoctris?" Sharina said. The wizard had edged to the door to get out, so Sharina hopped down to give her room.

  "Is there a temple?" Tenoctris said. "Yes, there it is! Please, I want to go into it. I think there's something very wrong. There's forces here that aren't natural. And I think it's a recent thing as well."

  "Second platoon, dismount!" the escort commander said as Sharina helped Tenoctris out of the carriage. The Blood Eagles who'd been on the roof of the vehicle were forcing back the servants. Both groups were trying to do their jobs, but because the thing happening—whatever it was—was unexpected, the soldiers had decided that civilians no longer had any business with the two women.

  Ascor raised an eyebrow toward Sharina; she nodded. "Right, let's take a look," Ascor said. "Straight up the steps, your highness?"

  "Yes, if you please," said Tenoctris, replying to Sharina's glance. The entourage started forward like a wave curling shoreward. The escort led and swept to either side, while the black-armored bodyguards formed an inner casing around the nugget of the two women in the center.