by David Drake
Ilna looked at the other woman with a loathing that made her stomach roil... but she'd let Alecto lead, and Alecto's actions when the caretaker appeared showed a quick mind—though a disgusting one.
Ilna had alerted the caretaker by slamming the temple door. There was no question of whose fault the sprawled body was.
“Let's get out of here,” Ilna said quietly. She nodded toward the countryside visible beyond the squat blocks of houses. “There's woodland out there to the west. We can hide until daylight and then...”
Then what?
“Then make plans,” Ilna concluded. After all, that was what most of life was about: going on until, she supposed, you couldn't go on anymore.
Cashel heard pipe music, a skirling high-pitched sound very different from the golden tones of the wax-stopped reeds Garric had played to the sheep in Barca's Hamlet. He got to his feet with an easy motion, the quarterstaff crosswise in both hands; close to his chest, not threatening anybody but ready for whatever trouble chose to come.
“Cashel?” said Tilphosa. She was already standing, a pale figure in the shadows. “How did you bring us here? Where are we?”
“Mistress, I'm not sure,” said Cashel. He was polite by nature, but since he didn't have any idea where they were or how they'd gotten there, he thought there were better uses for his time than talking about it.
Three sailors had come through with them: Hook, Captain Mounix, and a stocky fellow named Ousseau whose right arm and chest were bleeding from a deep cut. Ousseau cursed between moans; the two officers lay on the ground, turning their heads quickly in the direction of every noise. Mounix had retrieved the sword Cashel'd knocked from his hand; Hook was unarmed.
The pipe wasn't playing a melody, just sequences of notes that had the same mindless quality as a brook flowing over rocks. Perhaps it was a natural sound, something the wind did in a hollow tree or the song of a night bird.
“Where'd the temple go?” Mounix said, rising to one knee cautiously as if he was afraid that were his head to come up the roof'd fall in on him. “And these trees aren't like what they were on Laut. Where are we?”
“The bark's smooth,” Tilphosa said quietly as her left hand stroked the trunk beside her. She still held the block of stone close to her body; the weight must be straining her by this time, but she didn't seem ready to give up her only weapon.
They were in a forest with no sign of the temple or the Archai who'd surrounded it, and the many sorts of trees were different from any Cashel had seen before. None of them were as tall as a crab apple. The trunks were straight, some as thick as Cashel's own body. Large leaves sprayed from the ends of branches that mostly kinked instead of curving. Some limbs carried balls that might be fruit, hanging just above easy reach.
He looked up. The sky was as bright as if the moon was full. The heavens were featureless—a gray-glazed bowl with neither moon, stars, nor the streaking of clouds to give them character.
Hook came over to Cashel; the carpenter's eyes held a new respect. “Did you bring us here?” he asked, glancing around with the nervous quickness of a woodchuck foraging when hawks are about. “Are you a wizard too, Master Cashel?”
“All I did was break a hole in the wall,” Cashel said, maybe a bit more harshly than he'd meant to. Tilphosa stood to his side and a little behind, her place and posture showing that she was with him and against the part of the world that included the sailors. “Well, I broke a hole in the light that Metra raised. I don't see any opening from this side, do you?”
“I watched you grow out of the empty air,” Tilphosa said quietly. “First you were a shadow, then it was you all whole, and you fell to the ground. And I thanked the Mistress that She'd returned my champion to me.”
Cashel glanced at her in surprise. “I don't know...” he said; but the truth was, he didn't know much about the Mistress, so there wasn't any point in him talking about Her.
“There's nothing there,” Mounix said. He and Ousseau, the latter clutching the torn skin over his right biceps with his left hand, had joined Hook. “I hope to the Lady that means the wizard and her monsters can't come after us.”
“I sure don't want to go back there!” Hook said, and even Cashel nodded agreement with that thought.
They were all looking at him. Cashel didn't think he was much of a leader, but the sailors had proved they were no good at trying to think for themselves. As for Tilphosa—well, Tilphosa hadn't any reason to complain about sticking with him.
Cashel cleared his throat. Mounix still held his sword. The blade was twisted sideways, so he probably couldn't have sheathed it if he tried. “Straighten your sword out,” he said. “It won't be much good like it is. And we better do something about that cut of yours, Ousseau. Maybe—”
“I've been taught some healing in the temple,” Tilphosa said. She dropped her stone and brushed her hands on her tunic. “I wonder if the light's better over...”
The sailors turned their attention to the girl. Ousseau allowed her to guide him toward a tall tree whose spindly, needlelike foliage blocked less of the sky's faint illumination.
“Hook?” Cashel said. He didn't raise his voice much, but he spoke loud enough all the sailors had to hear him. “You weren't respectful to Lady Tilphosa back at the other place, on Laut, but I let you live.”
“Yes, Master Cashel, we know we were wrong,” Captain Mounix said before Hook decided what or whether to reply. “We—”
Cashel shifted the quarterstaff in his hands very slightly. Mounix's mouth shut in mid-babble; Hook said nothing but spread his hands to show, perhaps unconsciously, that they were weaponless.
“That's good,” Cashel said. “Because I wouldn't leave you alive a second time.”
He turned his back, mostly because he didn't want to look at the sailors for a while, but it was also a good way to end a conversation that had gone as far as he figured it needed to. He was pretty sure there was light ahead through the forest. It wasn't as sharp-edged as a lamp in an open window, just a glow that couldn't be the sky even though it was about the same texture and brightness.
A will-o'-the-wisp, maybe? Cashel worked his big toe into the ground to test it. The soil had a spongy lightness, but in his experience it wasn't wet enough to breed that sort of ghost light.
He didn't know how he felt about the sailors deciding he was a wizard. Ilna always said that what other people thought was their own business; but she really meant "so long as they kept their thoughts to themselves," because she'd always had a short way with anybody she thought was lying about her or Cashel.
Cashel's own concern was a little different: he didn't want it to seem he was claiming credit he didn't deserve, and he knew that he wasn't a wizard the way Hook and the others meant it. He scowled into the forest, trying to grapple with the problem.
There'd be less trouble for Tilphosa if the sailors thought Cashel could turn them into monkeys. He didn't want to kill the trio, which he'd surely have to do if they did try something with the girl again. He guessed he'd let them think what they pleased; but he'd be really glad when he saw the last of them.
“I've done what I can for the wound, Cashel,” Tilphosa said from close behind him. “I don't recognize any of the leaves, and I didn't find any spiderwebs to pack the wound, but I made do.”
She paused, then added, “What... what do you suppose we ought to do now?”
Cashel shook his head slowly, mostly as a way of settling his thoughts. “The woods seem pretty open,” he said. “Even though it's night, I thought we'd head toward the light there.”
He nodded, suddenly wondering if what he saw was more than imagination.
“Anyway, I think it's a light,” he went on. “Maybe we'll find a better place to bed down than here. And I don't feel much like sleeping.”
He looked at the sailors. “That all right with you?” he asked.
“Let's go, Cashel,” Tilphosa said, touching his elbow. She turned to Mounix again, and in a cold voice said, “Captain,
you were told to straighten your sword; do so at once!”
Cashel blinked. He'd started off when Tilphosa told him to, then stopped again when he heard her tell Mounix to fix his sword. Put it on a fallen log and hammer it with the heel of his boot, Cashel wondered? Because there wasn't a proper forge anywhere about, and no flat stones on the ground here either.
“Let's go,” Tilphosa repeated, this time murmuring close to Cashel's ear. She gave his biceps a light pressure in the direction of the light.
Cashel stepped off on his right foot, smiling faintly. Now he understood. He'd warned the sailors in his fashion, but Tilphosa—Lady Tilphosa—was repeating the message by training them to jump when she whistled. Mounix was hopping around, trying to fix his sword and follow the others at the same time.
It wasn't the way Tilphosa preferred to be, not judging from the way she'd handled herself around Cashel. He'd seen before—when she hauled up Metra—that she could put on the Great Lady when it suited her, though. Of course...
In a quiet, apologetic voice, Cashel said, “The thing about reminding people who's boss is, well... Metra came back with her own ideas, you know.”
“Yes,” said Tilphosa cheerfully. “I was glad that you and your staff were there to protect me, Cashel.”
She stroked the hickory with the tips of two fingers.
“I'm even more glad that you're still with me,” she added.
Cashel cleared his throat but didn't say anything. When he thought about it, there wasn't anything to say.
There were various kinds of trees. Every one of them was a different sort, it seemed to Cashel, but that wasn't something he'd have wanted to swear to till he saw them by daylight.
"How long do you suppose it is before sunrise, Cashel?" Tilphosa asked in a falsely bright voice. In those words he could hear the question she really meant but was afraid to speak: "Do you think the sun ever rises here?”
“I don't know,” Cashel said. “I've been wondering if we wound up underground when I went through that wall. But there's light enough to get along by, even if it never gets brighter.”
“No,” Tilphosa said, the tension gone from her voice. “Things growing in a cave don't have leaves and all these trees do. But you're right, Cashel, we have plenty of light now. I'm sorry to have been...”
She didn't finish the sentence. If the word she'd swallowed was "worried,” then Cashel didn't see it was anything to have been ashamed of.
The bright blur was close now and the size of a house, but the edges were just as fuzzy as they'd been when Cashel first saw it. It wasn't in a clearing, exactly. The light took the place of trees that should've been there, even though the roots and upper branches showed outside the glowing field.
“Something's moving in the light,” Cashel said, speaking a little quieter than he might normally have done. “I don't think it's just the trees.”
“Cashel, I see Metra,” Tilphosa said. Her voice was calm, but she gripped his arms fiercely. “If you look—
“Right, I see her,” Cashel said.
It was funny: when he squinted just right, it all fell into place. After that he could see the wizard even if he straightened and opened his eyes wide.
She knelt holding her athame on the porch of the temple which Cashel had defended not long ago. She'd spread one of her silk figures on the stones. The scene was washed out and ripply, like Cashel was watching her on the bottom of a pond, but it was Metra all right. Around her stood—
“By the Sister, you fool!” Captain Mounix squealed. “You and the bitch've led us straight back to those monsters!”
Hook took one look at the light and another at Cashel's face as he shifted and brought his staff up. The carpenter grabbed Mounix by the shoulder and clamped the other hand across his mouth.
“Shut up, will you!” he screamed at the captain. “Did you doubt what he told us? I didn't! He don't need monsters to finish us if he wants to!”
Ousseau, looking misshapen in the dimness because of his bandaged chest, was still stumbling along after them. His head was lowered; he probably didn't know what was going on.
Mounix's eyes widened. He tried to scramble back. Hook twisted the sword out of his hand and let him go.
Cashel relaxed, taking a couple of deep breaths. He nodded to Hook, and said, “Yeah, she's there with the Archai, just like we left 'em.”
“I don't think she can see us,” Tilphosa said. She put her hand on Cashel's shoulder the way he himself might've calmed a plow ox who'd startled a wildcat in the stubble.
The thought made him chuckle. “I don't guess they can or they'd be trying to do something about us,” Cashel said. “But there's no reason for us to hang around here regardless.”
He nodded in the direction they'd been going thus far. “It looks like there's another light up there,” he said. “Maybe if we keep going, we'll find a place we want to be, huh?”
“Yes, let's go,” Tilphosa said with a grateful smile. The hazy globe didn't make the woods around it any brighter, but Cashel wasn't having any difficulty seeing things by the light of the sky or roof or whatever it was.
Cashel held a hand up to stop her, then called into the darkness, "Hey, Mounix! Give Ousseau here a hand, will you? We're not leaving anybody behind unless they want to stay, got that?”
They started forward. Tilphosa said very softly, “You're a remarkably gentle man, Master Cashel.”
He snorted, but he was more pleased than not by the comment. “When you're my size, you better be,” he said. “Otherwise, you break things.”
The second blur of light was much the same as the first, though this one appeared in a clump of saw-edged grass that Cashel wouldn't have tried to fight through. He cocked his head slightly; the shadows condensed into the image of a man in a green robe, seated on a couch spread with the lush, dappled pelt of some animal. Curtains hung on the wall behind him; the embroidered figures of strange beasts cavorted on the cloth, tossing six-horned heads or screeching from bird beaks on antelope bodies.
Guards stood with their backs to the man on the couch.
He stared at the bowl of water on the table before him, his expression cold and angry.
“Do you know him?” Cashel said. “I don't.”
“I've never seen him before,” Tilphosa said. “That's a scrying bowl, so he must be a wizard.”
After a further moment's consideration, she added, “Is he a eunuch, do you suppose? The way his flesh hangs looks like he is.”
“I wouldn't know about that,” Cashel said shortly. They didn't geld men in Barca's Hamlet. Cashel had learned things were different in some other parts of the world, but that wasn't knowledge that pleased him.
He frowned at the man in the watery image. “He looks like a guy I saw once,” he said. The fellow who'd been talking to Garric on the bridge when he fell over and Cashel jumped in to save him ... "But it's not the same guy. He's too young, and the fellow I saw was thinner by a lot.”
“Are we stopping here, Master Cashel?” Hook asked with nervous politeness.
Cashel turned. Captain Mounix was holding Ousseau. The wounded man looked rather better than he had when Cashel last noticed him. The captain flinched, shifting to put Ousseau's body between him and Cashel.
Cashel nodded. “No,” he said, “there's nothing here to hold us.”
A fairy glow showed in the farther distance, and just maybe another hung at a slightly higher level beyond that, though the second could've been a patch of the sky itself. The ground was rising, though gradually enough that nobody who hadn't followed sheep for a living would've noticed it. Sheep can find a slope where a drop of water'd hesitate.
Cashel started on. Tilphosa walked with him—the forest was open enough for two side by side most places—and the sailors followed. Cashel smiled. They followed at a respectful distance.
“I've never read about this place,” Tilphosa said, picking her words carefully to seem, well, not worried. “Have you, Cashel?”
He smi
led. “Mistress, I can't read,” he said. “I can spell out my name with a little time, that's all.”
“Ah!” said Tilphosa. She probably hadn't thought about that sort of thing. Well, she wouldn't, being a lady and all.
“I wasn't educated as a wizard, of course,” she said. Cashel wasn't sure if she was changing the subject or if she just needed to talk. “I haven't any talent for it. Some of those who came to the temple did, and they were trained to be Children of the Mistress. They had much reading to do for what they had to learn.”
She linked her fingers and clutched them over her stomach, the way she'd have done if she was cold. Cashel didn't think she could be. The air was warm; besides, they'd been walking at a good pace, and there wasn't a breeze.
Cashel saw what she was hinting at. He swallowed and said, "Mistress—”
“Tilphosa,” she corrected him.
“Tilphosa,” he said, “I'm not a wizard like you think. I can do things, sure, but I don't know how it happens. I just do them.”
She gave a little laugh. It didn't sound forced. “I'm told that Metra is very skilled, very powerful,” she said. “As a wizard. That's why the Council chose her to accompany me. And you freed us from her enchantment, Cashel.”
He smiled. “It looked like a wall,” he said. “Sometimes you can break a wall down if you hit it hard enough.”
They were close to the light by now. This one seemed to have color, or anyway a different color: a hint of red instead of blue to its silvery grayness. Ilna would be able to say for sure; there was nothing about shape or color that she didn't see.
In the light a man knelt before a pentagram scratched on the narrow deck of a galley. Cashel could see a few of the rowers on the benches beyond the fellow. They leaned into the oarlooms with faces set in a fierce determination not to watch what the wizard was doing.
“I know him!” Cashel said. “This is the guy I asked you about, the one who looks like Metra. He was going to take a piece of statue away from me.”
Cashel frowned with a realization. It wouldn't have been the statue the fellow was after, just the ruby ring the statue wore. And that was here in Cashel's purse.