Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  Garric walked toward Cashel and Sharina, leaving his sword on the table behind him. It was part of his present life, a tool on which the safety of the kingdom might depend; but there'd been a previous life when things were simpler. They hadn't seemed simple at the time, but they certainly did now that he looked back at them.

  Garric wished there were sheep around him, grazing on a sunny hillside. There weren't, but he had his friends from that time, which was even better.

  Cashel murmured something to Sharina. She brightened and slid the knife back in its sheath. They stood up together, graceful despite having gone through pretty much what Garric had, he suspected.

  Chalcus came through the brick archway from the interior of the adjacent mews, one of many surviving buildings which'd become temporary hospitals. His lips smiled as his eyes darted in all directions. Ilna and Merota walked slightly behind him, safe if there'd been some unlikely danger waiting in the plaza.

  Their clothing—the child's as well—was dusty and blood-splotched; they'd been helping with the injured, bandaging wounds and bringing water to men crying for it. There was nothing incongruous about Chalcus working to save lives: like any long-time fighting man, he must've had plenty of occasion to treat those injured by violence.

  Their faces and hands were freshly scrubbed. Trust Ilna to see to that.

  Garric gripped arms with Cashel, then embraced his sister and stepped away. He looked at his friend and said, "Cashel, you brought a wizard with you. Was she...."

  "Was she killed?" was what he meant, but he didn't need to say that.

  "Is she all right, that is?" Garric substituted.

  "Her name's Mab," Cashel said shyly. "And I guess she's fine, but she had to go back and take care of things back home. She's a queen, you see."

  He smiled to greet his sister, continuing, "And Ilna? Mab said to tell you that we're both credits to our parents. Do you know, part of the time she looked like the spit 'n image of you?"

  "Did she say anything else about your parentage, Cashel?" Tenoctris asked. She'd risen to a sitting position, looking rumpled but as bright as if she'd spent the day reading on a couch. Sharina helped her up.

  "No ma'am," Cashel said. "Not really."

  Ilna looked up from the pattern she'd just knotted with yarn from her sleeve. She met Tenoctris' calm gaze. The older woman nodded; Ilna shrugged in response, then began picking out her knots again.

  "Did you say she was a wizard, Cashel?" Ilna said as she put her yarn away.

  "She sure was!" Cashel said. "A really powerful one but, you know, good like Tenoctris."

  "If Queen Mab is who I think she is...," Tenoctris said, speaking with the careful neutrality of somebody trying not to say the wrong thing. "She's something very different from a wizard. As you and Ilna are, Cashel."

  Her expression loosened into her usual cheerful calm. She added, "But you're right about her powers. I wouldn't care to speculate on the limits of them."

  Garric looked over his shoulder at the ruins of Erdin. The despair that he'd avoided by refusing to think about the future suddenly crashed down on him.

  "We won the battle," he said in a bleak voice, "but a disaster like this is the end of the kingdom. Look at what we've done to the second greatest city in the Isles!"

  "Yes, look," said Liane as clearly as a trumpet. "A few buildings destroyed, but not a fraction of the city."

  "You're forgetting the dead!" Garric said, furious because the only thing he felt at the moment was despair and Liane was taking that away too.

  "I'm not forgetting them," she said, not angry but not in the least afraid of the man she faced. "A thousand civilians died, I know that. But not a hundred thousand civilians as died when the city fell a thousand years ago. And the reason most people here survived is because the Royal Army, the army of all the Isles and not just this island, stood between monsters and men!"

  Liane stamped her foot. "This Erdin grew back from total destruction a thousand years ago," she said. "Think of what can grow from the majority that survived today! Garric, if ever there was proof we need a united kingdom, you gave it today. Sandrakkan couldn't save itself, but the Kingdom of the Isles saved it. And the story will spread till all the Isles hear it."

  Garric felt his tight jaw muscles relax. For a moment he glimpsed a future in which the kingdom was united, not by force as King Carus had held it but by every citizen's knowledge that unless men stood together, Evil would crush them all individually under its heel. Not a certain future, nothing was certain, but—

  Chalcus whipped out his sword and pointed it skyward. "Garric and the Isles!" he called.

  Soldiers and civilians turned, in the plaza and in the buildings fronting it. "Garric and the Isles!" a woman shouted.

  The plaza filled with echoing shouts that spread beyond those who heard the first cry: "Garric and the Isles!"