by David Drake
"Yes sir," Cashel said. He wore his tunics but he didn't have his quarterstaff with him. The lack didn't bother him as much as he'd have expected it to. "Sir, where am I?"
He didn't ask who the men were, because he already knew that. He'd seen their images walking the battlements of Ronn when he was with Mab.
Virdin, the first of Ronn's champions, had spoken. To his right were the twins Menon and Minon, laughing at some joke between them as they watched Cashel over their winecups. At that end of the row was Valeri, lanky and glaring as fierce as a seawolf at Cashel.
The images of the two warriors on Virdin's left hadn't come by before the Made Men attacked, but Hrandis had to be the squat man, broader even than Cashel. That made the man beside him Dasborn, who had long limbs and a swordsman's wrists.
"You're in the Cavern of the Heroes, Cashel," one of the twins said. Cashel couldn't tell them apart, and he doubted their mother could've done that either.
"The real Cavern," his brother said, grinning broadly. "Not the hole in the rock that people see beneath Ronn."
Big Hrandis poured wine from a ewer into the rock crystal cup waiting in front of Cashel. "You had a hard trip here, I'll warrant," he said in a voice that rumbled like distant thunder. "Have some of this."
Cashel touched the cup. It felt solid, but… "Is it real?" he asked.
"It's as real as we are," said Dasborn with a sardonic grin that made Cashel think of Garric's father Reise. Reise had more education than just about anybody, but there was a sadness under even the jokes he told. "Or as real as you are in this place, if you prefer."
Valeri looked at Virdin and said with a sneer, "She sent us a talky one, didn't she? I'd have thought she could do better."
"If you've got a problem with talk, Valeri," the twin nearest him said with a hard grin, "then you can stop making so much empty talk yourself."
Cashel drank to separate himself from the bickering. He supposed these fellows had been together a long time. Folks can get on each other's nerves, even when they're all heroes.
Because he was thinking about something else, Cashel gulped down more wine than he'd meant to. It prickled; he hunched forward and made a muffledwhuff!
Duzi, he'd barely kept from sneezing the wine back out his nose! That'd have given Valeri something to sneer at, wouldn't it?
Virdin leaned back on his bench. He had a full white beard, but the lean face it framed looked like that of somebody younger by far. "What do you think of the men you came with, Cashel?" he asked.
"The boys, you mean, Virdin," Valeri said. "By Ronn, what a litter of puppies!"
"You were young yourself once, Valeri," Dasborn said, looking down the table with a deliberately blank face. Now that he'd met the Heroes, Cashel didn't doubt they were all their reputations said they were; but Dasborn was the one he'd watch closest if Fate put him on the wrong side of them. Dasborn was the sort who made up his mind without any sign at all-and then acted, quick and cold as a housewife wringing the neck of the chicken for dinner.
"I was young," said Valeri, "but I was never like that. If I'd been like that, I'd have hanged myself!"
Cashel drank again, then cleared his throat loudly. The wine was well enough, he supposed; but he preferred beer, and the cup had a gold rim besides. Cashel didn't like the taste of metal with his drink. Even the tarred leather jacks he and Ilna used at home would be better, if he couldn't get a wooden masar instead.
"They're a good lot," he said, looking straight at Virdin so it wouldn't seem like he was picking a fight with Valeri. He wasn't afraid of Valeri, mind; but it wasn't in Cashel's nature to quarrel if he could avoid it. "They're young, sure, but they're braver than it maybe seems just to come down here when it's all so different from anything they know. They're willing, I guess I mean."
"Willing?" said Hrandis, filling Cashel's cup again. Cashel didn't realize he'd drunk as much as he had. It did seem to perk him up some. "Are they willing to die for Ronn, Cashel?"
Cashel took a drink and swirled it in his mouth while he frowned over his answer. He swallowed and met Hrandis' eyes again. "I think they are, sir," he said. "They'd say they were, I know. But…"
He scrunched his face up over something he felt but couldn't point to. He couldn't say it so another person would believe him if they weren't disposed to.
"Sir, I don't think they know what that means," he said.
Dasborn laughed in honest amusement. "When we were their age," he said, "we didn't know either. But we know now."
"Aye," said Valeri. "We know a lot of things. Now."
Hrandis shrugged. "Ronn needed us," he said. "The citizens needed us. That's all that mattered."
Valeri looked at him. "Is it?" he said harshly. "Do you believe that, Hrandis?"
"Yes he does," said Dasborn. He smiled faintly, cruelly. "And so do you, Valeri, or you wouldn't be here."
"They've agreed," said one of the twins. "They're here and they're agreed. It doesn't matter what they understand."
"We didn't understand, but we're here," said his brother. He looked at Virdin and added, "Tell him the rest, Virdin. That's all that remains to do."
"Yes, I suppose it is," the white-bearded man said. "Go back to what men think is the Cavern, Cashel. You'll find your companions sleeping there. They'll awaken when you arrive. Tell them to take up the arms they find in the chamber with them. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir," Cashel said. He didn't know how he was supposed to go back to where the Sons were, but he supposed Virdin or whoever'd brought him here would take care of returning also. "What do I do then?"
Dasborn laughed. "There's nothing more for you to do, Cashel," he said. "You'll have saved Ronn for the last time-if the city can be saved."
"You can go now, Cashel," old Virdin said. He raised his hand in a salute.
The vast hall shrank down to the size of a pinhead, then vanished. Cashel lay on his back in a chamber.
He sat up. The room was lighted only by a rosy haze between Mab's left thumb and forefinger. The Sons slept on the stone floor.
Along the walls were six sets of armor. They stood as monuments to the skeletons lying beneath them.
***
Ilna kept her eyes on the horizon and let her feet choose a path down the lines anchoring the larva to the cliff. Usually silk carried the imprint of the tiny fingers of children who'd unwrapped the cocoons, then spun the long threads into yarn. Despite how thick these ropes were, they owed nothing to human involvement.
Spider silk carried with it a hunger as fierce as the noonday sun. Worms, though, both the little ones the Serians fed on mulberry leaves in the world Ilna knew and this huge one in the sea, had no desire save to exist. They and their silk were as bland as flour paste.
Ilna smiled. Worms had no personalities and no reason to exist-except that they created the most lustrous and beautiful thread in the world. That couldn't be of interest to the worms themselves. Only when Ilna felt whimsical-as now-did she imagine that there might be something in the universe greater than individual worms and sheep and humans.
More lines in bundles of three joined the ones she walked on. Sheets of steel-strong gauze bound the heavy strands together, twisting them into a trough which closed on itself near the surface of the water to become a tube. Ilna knew through the certain witness of her feet that the silk itself was no less intelligent than the worm that'd spun it, yet howcould the perfection of this creation not involve will and understanding?
She laughed again. There was no answer which her reason would accept. Therefore there was no answer.
Because she was looking outward, not down, Ilna noticed that the bird had changed its pattern from the slow circuits it'd been making on the horizon. Its wings stroked the air in slow unison, like the oars of a great warship making the first efforts toward driving the vessel into motion from a wallowing halt. The bird was so far away that it didn't swell in size even though it was flying directly toward her.
She frowned, but the bird's a
ctions no longer mattered. The anchor cords and their wrapper of silk completed the tunnel. She entered, leaning against an outrushing breeze. It carried with it the ripeness of a plowed field fertilized with some indefinable manure. The light dimmed to that of an overcast morning.
Ilna walked downward. The footing was springy but agreeably firm. The light continued to dim, but her eyes adapted to it. The tube had a slight curve as it flattened from a slope to a plane, so she couldn't see the open sky when she glanced over her shoulder.
No matter. Her duty lay deeper, not up where she'd come from.
The wind soughed, rushing past her as if glad to be gone. Its odor was thick and unfamiliar but not anything a peasant woman found offensive. The tanyard in Barca's Hamlet cured hides with manure and lye. It was downwind of the houses when the breeze came from the sea, as it normally did; but sometimes the wind changed.
Ilna walked on. Some light still pierced the layer of water overhead, but it was a pale blue that made her hands look like those of a month-dead corpse. She smiled. That could be true, a month or so from this moment or the next…
Without warning she entered the larva's chamber. From the cliff above it'd looked like a spindle of yarn. Seeing it from the inside, she thought that somehow she'd taken a wrong turning that brought her to a place she'd never imagined. Only when her eyes absorbed the pattern did she understand the nature of the cocoon.
The interior was dimpled where lines attached to cables above and to rocks on the sea floor beneath pulled the skin outward. Otherwise the weight of water would flatten the bag and its occupants.
The larva was the size of a building, the size of a ship: a smooth mass moving with the slow majesty of a summer cloud. In direct sun its skin would be white with brown mottlings, but here the background was the leprous color of fungus on a tomb.
It lay in a pool of its own wastes. Hard-shelled, eyeless creatures browsed the fluid, their hair-like legs stirring the surface.
The larva's movements were as slow as the pulse in a sleeping lizard's throat, but when its head lifted slightly Ilna caught the needle-sharp flash of the jewel she'd come for. The creature shifted again, hiding the jewel, but now Ilna understood why there were highlights reflected onto the curved silken surface at the far end of the chamber.
And naturally, itwould be at the other end. Having come this far to fetch the jewel, Ilna wasn't going to complain about walking another furlong-even if she had to do so over the back of a giant worm.
The first problem was gettingonto the worm's back. It was easily twice, perhaps even three times, her height. From where Ilna stood the curve swelled out like the face of an undershot cliff. That meant she'd have to climb the cocoon and drop onto the creature.
Ilna turned her head, eyeing and then touching the silken wall. Immediately her stomach settled, though she hadn't been aware that she was queasy before then. The larva's movements made the whole cocoon undulate slowly. Ilna didn't like the feel of a ship at sea and this was worse-more like being in the guts of a snake. Focusing on fabric, even a fabric woven by a worm, brought the universe into a perspective Ilna was comfortable with.
The bag had several layers, each formed from three different sizes of thread: thumb-thick lines which alone or in bundles provided strength; straw-thick cords which formed a close framework within the heavy supports; and finally sheets of gossamer to cover the framework and make the bag watertight. Ilna thrust her left hand into the fabric, forcing the gossamer aside with her fingers to seize one of the heavy lines. When she was sure she had it, she reached a little higher and gripped with her right hand.
Kicking holds for her bare feet, Ilna walked and pulled her way up the side as if she was climbing a silk net. It wasn't especially difficult even when she got high enough that the bag's curve meant that she was hanging upside down. Ilna was a good deal stronger than she was heavy, and this was only for a brief time anyway.
She looked down, then pulled her feet free. Her toes dangled close to the larva's back. If she slipped off the slick, pulsing body when she let go-and she might-she'd still scarcely injure herself on the yielding surface below. Though it would be unpleasant.
Ilna's mouth formed into a hard smile again. Shewanted to be punished when she made a mistake. It made it less likely that she'd do the same thing again. Falling into a pool of worm dung certainly qualified as punishment.
She dangled for a moment, then dropped. Her weight dimpled the worm's flesh. Slow ripples quivered out from her feet, reflecting and cancelling one another as they proceeded down the white surface.
The nearest brown blotch was only a double-pace from Ilna. It shifted slightly and focused six glittering eyes on her. What she'd thought was a skin discoloration was instead a flat parasite the size of a half-cape. Its beak was driven deep into the worm's white flesh.
There were more parasites than Ilna could count on both hands. They formed a diamond pattern across the larva's back, as regular as the studs an artisan might hammer into a leather box for decoration. Here the reason for the spacing was a matter not of craft but of survival: the parasites were territorial as serpents, each claiming an expanse of the worm's flesh sufficient to feed it to breeding age.
The nearest parasite withdrew a beak the length of a man's forearm from the worm's flesh; a drop of clear fluid oozed up before the wound puckered shut. All down the worm's back other parasites were moving, restive because of the disturbance to their careful hierarchy.
Beak lifted, the nearest parasite squirmed toward Ilna, the human who'd invaded its territory. It moved on more tiny legs than she could count.
***
Sharina got up from the ground. She'd landed without the forward momentum she'd been braced for. She'd been as active as that of any boy in the borough before she became a princess, but the reflexes she'd developed she'd developed running and jumping had played her false. The mechanism the ring used to bring her here wasn't bound by the laws of the waking world.
Men-People-were hoeing their way down every row of the broad field in which she'd landed. They were bent over their work, but the nearest were only twenty feet away. They came toward her a chop at a time.
Sharina looked for a weapon. The hoes had sturdy shafts and wedge-shaped bronze heads that could cut flesh as well as the roots of weeds. If she pretended to be submissive, she might have a chance to grab a hoe and The workers paid her no more attention than the corn and the peavines did. They worked forward, intent on their tasks and never looking above the earth they were cultivating. Sharina stepped aside cautiously, feeling the muscles of her abdomen tense. She expected that at any instant one or the other of the men passing her would turn and grab her.
They didn't. They hoed on with no sound except thechk! chk! of their tools and the occasional cling of bronze on a pebble.
A horn trilled a long, silvery note. It seemed to be far in the distance, but Sharina didn't know how sound travelled in this place. She looked at the ring. If she began to read the legend on the bezel, would it take her back to Valles or…?
Sharina slipped the ring onto her left thumb where she wouldn't lose it. "Or," was too likely for her to take the risk just yet. She'd been many places, in the waking world and out of it, since she left Barca's Hamlet. This island wasn't where she wanted to be, but experience had taught her that things could've been worse. Leaping somewhere at random might very well drop her into one of those worse alternatives.
Sharina looked around. From what she'd seen as she descended to the island, most of the surface was more or less the same as her immediate surroundings. Their field ran between a pair of irrigation channels marked by the pale fronds of the weeping willows growing on their margins.
The land wasn't as dead flat as it'd seemed from above. The surface rolled enough that Sharina could see at most a couple furlongs to the right, the direction of the lake and building she'd seen in the center of the island. Her only choices other than the fields were that building or the shore. The latter'd looked like it w
as lapped by clouds, not a sea of water, but Sharina understood little enough about this island that she wasn't going to jump to conclusions-especially to one that made it more likely that she was trapped.
She smiled as she jogged down the row, passing through the line of workers. They gave her no more notice than they had before. Her being trapped was likely enough already.
At least she wouldn't starve: she snapped off a peapod as she ran and popped it whole into her mouth, the way she'd have done as a child when she was cultivating the inn garden. The peas were ripe and crunched tastily. Pausing-the workers were far behind her already-she gathered a handful and trotted onward, eating them.
The horn called again. It seemed closer this time.
Sharina looked over her shoulder, but all she see were the green billows of the maize. She frowned, going over her choices as she continued to jog through the grain.
The field ended ten strides ahead in an irregular line willows and mimosas, a natural watercourse instead of a man-made canal. The horn sounded, by now in the near distance; another replied from much farther away to Sharina's right.
She reached the creek. Its pebble bottom was clearly visible through the turbulence caused by larger rocks breaking the surface of the water. The banks of the stream were low, though undercut, and the channel was never more than eight feet across.
Instead of leaping the creek and continuing on, Sharina lifted herself into the crotch of a willow and scrambled up one of steeply slanting main branches. It took her thirty feet into the air before it began to wobble dangerously from her weight. Gripping the slick bark with both hands she paused, calming her quick breaths. By craning her neck she found an opening through which she could look back the way she'd come while remaining concealed behind the curtain of fronds hanging from higher branches,.