by David Drake
The anteroom was meant for show. The coffered ceiling was the full height of the building, with the curving staircase to the private suites a seeming afterthought along the right side.
The walls had been recently redecorated. The fanciful painted arches and porticos of the earlier style were reduced to red lines on a cream background, framing a winged messenger to one side and a sea nymph on the other. To Sharina the design looked skimpy, but she noticed Ilna eye it with obvious appreciation.
“They'll be upstairs, ladies,” said one of the guards stationed here. He looked uncomfortable.
Sharina's sturdy sandals—her feet weren't hardened to the city's stone pavements, and she didn't limit her walking to carpets where court slippers were appropriate—slapped on the stair treads. Attaper had insisted there be soldiers around Prince Garric during every moment. They hadn't saved Garric from the Intercessor's attack, nor were they any present help to the man now wearing Garric's flesh.
“Tasks for each of us,” Ilna repeated with grim pleasure. She must have been thinking the same thing as Sharina.
A passage skirting the anteroom connected the north and south corridors; the occupant could choose a room to suit the season and personal taste. Garric's quarters were to the right, where the windows of the main bedroom looked east.
Sharina smiled faintly. It was as close as one could come in a palace to the garret room of the inn where her brother had slept until everything changed.
“Your highness, Lady Tenoctris is inside!” called the leader of the squad outside the open door. He and most of his men flattened against the corridor wall as the women passed.
One fellow, middle-aged and bearing the scars of hard service, tapped his helmet visor to Ilna in salute, and said, “You going to sort 'em out, ma'am?”
“I'll do what I can, Osnan,” Ilna said. Her tone was noncommittal, but the glance she gave the soldier was—for her—affectionate.
“Then they don't have a chance!” the guard said, stepping past his squad leader to close the door behind the women. Through the panel Sharina heard him say to his fellows, “Mistress Ilna won't leave enough to bury, boys. You'll see!”
As they walked through to the master bedroom, Ilna said in an undertone, "Osnan was a guard at my bungalow for a few weeks. I think he's as much afraid of wizards as the rest of them, but he appears to trust me.”
Sharina laughed and hugged her friend. “So does everyone who knows you, Ilna,” she said.
The heavy bronze headboard of Garric's bed was chased with scenes illustrating the courtship of the Lady by the Shepherd and—on the footboard—the Lady's descent into the Underworld. It'd been pulled out from the wall, and the canopy had been removed. The room looked much larger though it still contained clothes chests, a table, chairs, and several lampstands—an unusual amount of furniture.
A lighted brazier stood between the eastern windows. It'd been brought in since Sharina left.
A section of fresco had fallen away sometime in the past. The plaster had been patched but merely distempered instead of being fully repainted.
Garric had sketched a votive figure in charcoal on the plain surface. A stranger would have thought it was a drawing of the Shepherd, but Sharina recognized her brother's much simpler intent: this was Duzi, the little God of shepherds like Garric, who tended flocks around Barca's Hamlet. The bed-curtains would have concealed it until now.
Tenoctris stood and gave the younger women a bright smile. “Your timing's perfect,” she said. “I've just finished with the preparations.”
She beamed down at the floor. She'd drawn a circle around the bed—that was why it'd been moved out—with powdered lime, then used the pot of vermilion to draw around it in the Old Script.
Tenoctris stoppered the vermilion and set it on the circular table with the rest of her paraphernalia. There couldn't be much left, even though she'd written the characters too small to be read from any distance.
The flames of the multiple lamps paled as dawn came through the windows. The rosy softness still hid as much as it displayed.
“Ilna, Sharina's told you what I'd like you to do?” Tenoctris said. As she spoke, her eyes traced her preparations in quick motions. Another person would have seemed nervous, but the old wizard was simply showing her normal, sparrowlike intensity.
Ilna shrugged. “You're to put me in a trance,” she said. “You'll send my mind—”
“Your soul,” Tenoctris corrected.
“My soul, then, to a dreamworld,” Ilna said. “There I'm to follow a path of some sort and come back to tell you what I've found.”
“I didn't know how to describe what she was to do,” Sharina said apologetically. “I don't really understand about that part.”
Tenoctris flashed a smile. “Nor do I,” she admitted. “Amalgasis and Princess Querilon both described the process very clearly, but those are things I've read, not experienced. I hope—I trust—that the pattern will be clear to one of Ilna's abilities.”
“A soldier named Osnan shares your confidence,” Ilna said, her tone too dry for even Sharina to be sure whether she was joking. “You want me on the bed?”
“Yes,” said Tenoctris. “And if you wouldn't mind, I'd like you to chew some lettuce cake first. To help you relax.”
“I need all the help I can to do that,” Ilna said, this time with a faint smile. “Whatever you think is best.”
Sharina shaved the cake of narcotic with the great knife she wore under her cape tonight. It was the knife she'd gotten from Nonnus, the healer for Barca's Hamlet and the surrounding borough; it was while helping him that Sharina had learned to judge a dose of lettuce cake and other basics of the healing art.
Ilna pinched up the drug and swallowed it, making a wry face. “Let's get on with it, then,” she said. She sat on the edge of the bed, then slid into the center and lay flat.
Sharina rarely thought of her friend as small, but Ilna looked tiny in the center of the pale blue coverlet. Her weight wasn't enough to make the ropes supporting the mattress creak.
Sharina backed against the wall. Behind her was a scene of happy peasants shearing sheep in springtime. She pressed her shoulders against the plaster and thought of other times.
“Malaas athiaskirtho,” Tenoctris chanted. “Nuchie uellaphonta steseon... .”
She tossed a pinch of powder onto the brazier. It flared white with a smokeless crackle.
“Kalak othi lampsoure...” the wizard continued.
The room was growing cold again. Sharina waited, her eyes turned toward the sunrise and her hands clasped on the hilt of the Pewle knife.
Eight sailors astern of Cashel worked an oar apiece, while he sat where the bow narrowed and rowed with two. He lifted his oarblades and carried the looms forward with his arms and whole torso to prepare for another stroke. The sun was low behind him and would set within half an hour.
“Land!” said Tilphosa, standing ahead of Cashel in the far bow. “Under that cloud on the horizon!”
“Yes, by the Lady!” cried Hook, rising to his feet in the stern beside the captain. As the ship's only surviving officers, they'd been trading off with the tiller throughout the hot, windless day. “Real land this time, not another cursed reef!”
The oarsmen were at the thwarts to bow and stern. Stores and baggage saved from the wreck filled the middle of the pinnace; Metra and the off-duty crewmen perched on it however they might. The wizard can't have been comfortable, but the sailors gave her plenty of room.
Tilphosa hadn't wanted to risk how she'd have been treated in the close quarters of the ship's belly. She'd chosen to place herself with Cashel sitting between her and all the others aboard. The pinnace had been under oars the whole way from the islet where they'd wrecked, so the bow never lifted high enough to smack spray over her. Even if they'd been spanking along on a strong wind, Cashel guessed the girl would've made the same choice—and been wise to.
A breeze—the first since dawn—ruffled the sea, then filled the li
mp sail. The pinnace heeled slightly to starboard. Sailors looked up with bare interest.
“Well, get it trimmed, damn you!” Captain Mounix shouted. “Posal and Kortin, tighten the lee brails! Don't you have eyes?”
Two sailors grabbed lines and began to shorten them, obedient but not enthusiastic. The men seemed cowed, but whether by the wreck itself or events on the islet Cashel couldn't say; he hadn't known them before the trouble. Cashel wasn't the sort to think ill of folks he didn't really know, but he was pretty sure his sister Ilna would've said they weren't any great shakes ever in their lives.
Cashel pulled his oars aboard through the rowlocks twisted from cordage and crossed the shafts before him. He rubbed his palms together, then checked them. He didn't row often even when he lived in Barca's Hamlet, but the calluses he'd developed from other tasks had protected him today.
“Hey you!” Hook called. “Farmer! Nobody told you to ship your oars!”
“No,” Cashel said. “You didn't.”
Another man might've argued that he'd done as much as any two of the sailors during the long, brutal day. Cashel didn't bother. There were people who could give orders that he'd obey, but none of them were aboard the pinnace.
The sailors were bringing their oars aboard also. The breeze continued to freshen, so rowing was pointless even if Cashel hadn't wanted to turn toward the land. He squinted, hoping he'd see something that'd make the shore look more attractive.
“I thought there'd be more than just wilderness,” Tilphosa said. “If we've really found Laut, I mean.”
“I don't know about Laut,” said Cashel. “This is a big place, anyhow.”
He paused, letting the shifting light and the pinnace's motion confirm what he'd suspected. “Anyway, there's a building on that headland," he said. “It could be a temple, I think. A little one.”
“Wizard, where is this that we've fetched up?” Mounix snapped. “Hook, take the tiller, will you? Where's the cities you told us about?”
“I don't know,” said Metra, turning from her view of the shore to look back at the captain. “When we reach land, perhaps I'll be able to learn more. Through my art.”
She spoke deliberately, using the words as a weapon to threaten and silence Mounix. Cashel was sure that the crew hadn't known Metra was a wizard as well as a priestess when they'd signed on for the voyage.
“Cashel?” Tilphosa said quietly. “This morning, were you thinking about the sea serpent that wrecked us on that terrible island?”
He shrugged. “I thought about it,” he said, drawing his quarterstaff up from where he'd stored it along the boat's side. “I'd never seen one before, though, and I don't expect to see another one anytime soon.”
The staff's iron butt caps already had a light coating of rust. Cashel drew out his wad of raw wool and began to polish first the metal, then the hickory itself.
“But what if it had been sent?” the girl asked. “It could've still been waiting for us.”
“Well...” said Cashel as he continued his task. It relaxed him, even if he hadn't needed to do it for the staff's sake. “I didn't plan to spend the rest of my life in that place, mistress. I guess if the snake had showed up again, I'd have tried to do something about it.”
“Yes, I suppose you would have,” said Tilphosa. She giggled. For a moment Cashel thought she was getting hysterical. After reflection, he still wasn't sure she wasn't.
The tide was going out, though low water wouldn't be till well into the first watch of the night. A narrow beach sloped gently to a limestone escarpment never more than two or three double paces high. There was vegetation on the rocks, ordinary woodland from what Cashel could tell in the dimming light. The one stone building was either a small temple or a tomb made to look like one.
“Well, it doesn't seem like much,” Cashel said, “but we ought to get a night's sleep. In the morning, we can go look for your Prince Thalemos or somebody who knows about him.”
The shore was rushing up at a surprising rate. Mounix called orders that meant more to the crew than they did to Cashel. With a rattle of brails, several men hauled the sail up to a quarter of its original area. They were going to chance grounding without unstepping the mast, though.
“We could've used some of this breeze at midday when it was so hot,” Cashel said, but it wasn't a real complaint. No peasant expected the weather to do the thing that best suited him.
The shore was already in darkness, but arcs of white foam outlined the waves' highest reach. Mounix had the tiller to starboard, bringing them in at a slant that would ease the impact.
“Get out quick when we ground,” Cashel said as he judged where the pinnace would touch. “The less weight in the bow, the better.”
He slid his quarterstaff back for Tilphosa to take. “And hold this for me,” he added. “Ah, if you would, I mean.”
It bothered Cashel when he wasn't always polite when he was working on a problem. Things weren't happening so fast at the moment that he couldn't ask properly instead of just ordering the girl around.
“You men in the bow!” Mounix called. “Get ready to drag us up the beach when we ground!”
“I have the staff, Cashel,” Tilphosa said clearly. She gripped it in both hands, putting just enough pressure on the hickory to assure Cashel that he could safely release it.
“I'm ready!” Cashel said, though the other forward oarsmen didn't bother to reply. Mounix waved a sour acknowledgment to him.
Metra sat on the pile of canvas over the storage jars amidships, her expression unreadable. Her eyes met Cashel's; she was watching him and Tilphosa, not the land. Cashel nodded the way he'd have done with a chance-met neighbor he didn't care for, then returned his attention to the shore.
The keel grated, then bumped momentarily harder as Cashel vaulted the port side. To his surprise Tilphosa was in the shoaling water just as quickly, but she'd judged his intent and leaped out to starboard so that she wouldn't be in his way. She scampered through the foam and up the beach with the staff crosswise before her. It was more weight for a slight-built girl than Cashel had realized.
Cashel had his own job, though. The pinnace heeled toward him. He gripped the gunwale and his port oar at the rowlock, then strained forward.
The furled sail thumped down amidships, raising an angry shout from Metra. Cashel smiled faintly. The wizard hadn't been quite under the sail and spar when Hook released them, but she was close enough to have been surprised. That was all right with Cashel.
Another wave curled up the sand. With the weight out of the far bow and the water lifting, the keel broke free from the trench it'd dug. Cashel strode forward, dragging the pinnace three short paces up before the wave sucked back. The sailors were tumbling out also; with their help the keel slid on several paces more before sticking where only the tide could lift it farther.
Two sailors staggered inland with the anchor, a section of ironwood trunk. The prongs of two branches had been cut to form flukes and a ball of lead was cast above the forks for weight. The men carried it to the edge of the escarpment and set it as firmly as they could. It wasn't a safe tether—the sand wouldn't hold the flukes—but it'd do till someone ran a line around the trunk of a tree above.
It was growing dark. Tilphosa's face and the smooth, pale shaft of the quarterstaff were blurs against the weathered limestone. Cashel sloshed toward her, stepping over the anchor cable on his way.
He heard a sailor mutter something; he didn't turn to make something of it. Most of Cashel's life people had been calling him a dumb ox or some variation on the notion. Knocking people down wouldn't make them think he was any smarter, so he didn't bother.
“Cashel,” the girl said as she handed him his staff, “I don't want to stay with the sailors tonight. Do we have to?”
Cashel ran his hands over the wood, checking it by reflex. “I don't guess so,” he said. “I've got food in my wallet, enough for both of us. Biscuit, cheese, and a bottle of water is all, though. They'll probably heat up
a fish stew, you know. Well, salt fish.”
“I don't care,” said the girl. “I heard the men carrying the anchor talking. They want to go back home, and they think if I'm with them, they'll be safe from Metra.”
Some of the sailors were unloading the pinnace, but a good number of them had clustered around Mounix and Hook near the vessel's prow. Their voices were lower than honest men would have needed to use, and their heads turned frequently in the direction of Cashel and the girl.
He couldn't see their features. The sun was down, and the cliff threw a hard shadow over the beach.
“Let's see what the temple's like,” Cashel said. “It's got a roof, anyhow.”
Storm-tossed waves had undercut the escarpment. Tilphosa was standing at a place where the limestone had collapsed into a slope of sorts—steep and irregular, but good enough even in the dim light. It wasn't more than twice his height where they stood; well, maybe a little more.
Cashel expected to have to help the girl, but she turned immediately and started up using her hands as well as feet. She wasn't as agile as Sharina would've been, but there wasn't any doubt about her being willing.
Cashel waited for Tilphosa to crawl onto flat ground, then clambered to join her, using his staff as a brace. Metra, identifiable from the bleached white slash across her outer tunic, walked northward up the beach. She was carrying the satchel of silk brocade which held the implements of her art.
“Cashel?” Tilphosa said quietly. “I don't think...”
She licked her lips, her eyes following the other woman's progress. In a hollow, distant enough to be concealed from the pinnace, Metra squatted and began to draw on the damp sand.
“I knew the Children of the Mistress weren't telling me everything about my marriage,” Tilphosa said. “But now I'm not sure that the things they did tell me were all true. If Prince Thalemos is a great and powerful leader, shouldn't there be more than—”
She gestured toward the temple. Cashel had been wrong about the roof. It looked all right from below, but up close to the side he could see that several trusses had fallen and taken the tiles with them.