by David Drake
“He's a Son of the Mistress,” Tilphosa said, frowning also at some thought of her own. “I don't recognize him, Cashel. He does look a lot like Metra.”
Cashel glanced back at the sailors. They were keeping up all right. As they should: Cashel was walking at the pace that a herd of sheep would've set.
“Let's go on,” he said aloud.
Cashel didn't understand this, but he was used to things he didn't understand and to going ahead anyway. He might not like the scenery on the way, but eventually he'd always gotten to a place where he wanted to be.
There was another fog of light ahead, and Cashel supposed there'd be more after that one. He wondered if they'd ever come out of this forest. He had bread and cheese still in his wallet. With the frugal reflex of growing up poor—and poorer yet—he'd bundled the leftovers away before he started down to deal with Metra's wizardry.
He smiled. That seemed a long time ago, now.
“Do you suppose they're all looking for me, Cashel?” Tilphosa said. “All the wizards whose images we've seen? Metra is, we know that.”
“Um?” said Cashel. He thought about the question. “I don't see how they can be, Tilphosa. That last fellow was somebody I met in Valles. He ... I mean, that was...”
What would Tilphosa say if he told her he came from a time farther in her future than he could imagine himself?
“I'm from a long way away, Tilphosa,” he said. “A long way ahead in time.”
She turned her head to study him as they walked along. “I see," she said, but Cashel wasn't sure that she meant anything by the words. “Well, I'm glad the Mistress's powers enabled Her to go even through time to bring me a champion.”
“I wish you wouldn't talk about the Mistress bringing me, Tilphosa,” Cashel said. He looked straight ahead to avoid the girl's eyes, but he flushed regardless. “I mean ... my sister and I never had much to do with the Great Gods. Well, we couldn't afford to, that was part of it, but with Ilna it was more besides. And, well... I just wish you wouldn't say the Mistress is moving me around. I don't feel right hearing that.”
“All right, Cashel,” Tilphosa said. She didn't sound angry or even hurt. “I'll be more careful about what I say.”
Either Cashel had started walking faster in embarrassment or this time the image of light was located closer to the previous one. The scene within was a barn, a big one. There were horses stabled there, so it belonged to rich people. A man sat on an upturned wicker basket, talking to a circle of many other men.
The one talking shared a family resemblance with both Metra and the fellow who'd tried to take the ring back in Valles. He wore a coarse tunic now, but his black-and-white robe was hung to dry on a rafter.
Most of the audience were strangers to Cashel, but—
“That's Garric!” he cried. “That's my friend Garric! But what happened to his head? He's got scars on his scalp!”
“Maybe it isn't really your friend, Cashel?” said Tilphosa. She was frowning when he turned to look at her, but she smoothed her face at once. “I mean... the men who look like Metra? Perhaps ... ?”
Cashel grimaced. One of the beastmen of Bight, a female, fawned at the feet of the fellow he'd thought was Garric. That didn't seem like something the real Garric would've let happen.
The wizard in the center talked urgently, gesturing repeatedly toward the ring held by the older peg-legged man at the side of maybe-Garric. The ring looked a lot like the one in Cashel's purse, but the when the light caught this one right it winked blue.
“I don't know,” Cashel said harshly. “Let's get on. There's nothing here for us.”
He turned. When the girl didn't follow him at once he reached out—then jerked his hand back.
Cashel's body was cold. Had he been thinking of pulling Tilphosa along against her will? All he knew was that it frightened him to see his friend changed that way; frightened him as he'd never feared death.
“Yes, of course, Cashel,” Tilphosa said. She stared at his horrified expression with obvious concern. “Let's get away from here. We'll get to the edge of these woods soon, I'm sure.”
Cashel wasn't sure of anything except that he was jumpier than he'd been since, well, a long time. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“I haven't heard the night bird recently,” the girl said brightly, changing the subject for sure this time. “Have you?”
“Um?” said Cashel. “Oh, you mean the music? No, not since just after we got here. These woods are quieter than the ones I'm used to.”
“Is that because there's no wind?” Tilphosa asked. She looked about her as they walked along, swaying a little closer to Cashel. She was nervous, but she was keeping it well inside.
“Partly that, I guess,” Cashel said. “There's always something happening in the woods, though. Squirrels running about, limbs squealing as they grow... . You can hear the trees breathe if you take the time to listen.”
“But not here?” said Tilphosa.
“Not that I've noticed,” Cashel said; walking steadily forward, but keeping his eyes on the things around him as he always did. He noticed most things, though he didn't generally talk about them.
He cleared his throat. “You can generally tell when there's something wrong with your flock, you know,” he said. “Things don't feel right, even if you can't see what it is that's wrong. I don't feel like that here, for what it's worth.”
“Thank you, Cashel,” the girl said. She laid her fingertips briefly on his arm.
They'd reached the next of the scenes in light. This one was smaller than the others, scarcely the size of the shelter a shepherd might weave for himself from sticks and branches in bad weather. Cashel squinted, waiting for the image in his mind to focus.
“That's Tenoctris!” he said. “It couldn't be anybody else! Oh, if she's looking for us, then everything's going to be all right!”
Tenoctris sat at a table in her cottage in the palace grounds, reading a scroll by the light of a three-wick oil lamp hanging at her side. Most of the room's furnishings were simple, but the lampstand itself was a scaled, sinuous body of gilded bronze. Each wick projected like a breath of flames from a dragon head.
“She's a very powerful wizard, Cashel?” Tilphosa asked. She bent her head as if to read over Tenoctris' shoulder, but of course you couldn't see anything that small in the light here. It was clearer than what you saw through the rounds of bull's-eye glass in the casements of Reise's inn, but not much clearer.
The sailors had fallen farther behind, so Cashel figured to wait here for a time anyway. And if there was a way to get into this vision, then that'd be a very good thing.
He pushed his quarterstaff into the light. He was careful for fear there might be a spark when the iron touched it or even that the whole scene might vanish with a blaze and crashing.
The metal-capped hickory blurred and vanished; then it hit something and stopped. Cashel pushed harder, but whatever he'd hit was solid. He couldn't see either the end of the staff or anything in the image that ought to be blocking it.
"Cashel?” said the girl, watching him closely.
“Wait,” he said tersely. He heard the rustle and whispering of the sailors joining them, but he didn't look around.
Withdrawing the quarterstaff, Cashel thrust his bare left arm into the image of light. His fingers touched—
Cashel laughed and withdrew his hand. “Let's go,” he said. “There's nothing here except what we see, and that won't help us.”
“But what was it?” the girl said, a trifle sharply.
“Just a tree,” Cashel said. “That tree.”
He pointed upward. Branches like the stems of ancient wisteria twisted out of the image at about the height Cashel could reach by raising his staff. At the ends were sprays like the whips of a weeping willow, though much shorter.
“Tell him,” Mounix whispered.
“You tell him!” Hook snapped back. “I'm all right.”
Cashel turned. Tilphosa turned with him but moved a
little back. “Tell me what?” he said. His voice was a growl, almost angry; he wasn't pleased to be reminded of the sailors' presence.
“Master,” Hook said after a quick glance at Mounix. “The captain wants me to say that Ousseau's pretty well done in. He really means he wants to stop, is what I think.”
Cashel looked at them. Ousseau's eyes were open; so was his mouth. There was as much intelligence in the one as the other. Mounix forced a smile that looked like he was dying of lockjaw; Hook tried to lean on the sword he'd taken from the captain and fell sideways when it slid into the soft ground. He barely caught himself.
As for Tilphosa—
“How are you feeling?” Cashel asked, turning to the girl. “Do you want to go on?”
“Yes,” she said, though she seemed to be trembling. “We can... Maybe a little farther. I'd like to get out of these woods if we could.”
Cashel sucked in his lower lip as he thought. “We'll go to the next of these lights,” he said after a moment. “The one up there.”
He nodded in the direction they'd been heading. “Then we'll bed down if we don't see something better close by. All right?”
“Of course it's all right,” Tilphosa said, glaring at the desperate sailors. She touched his arm. “Let's go, Cashel.”
Cashel smiled as they trudged on. This one wasn't a girl to get on the wrong side of. He was used to that, of course, since you could say the same thing about his sister Ilna. Despite her being a lady and all, Tilphosa made Cashel feel pretty much at home.
“Cashel?” the girl said. “Are the lights a kind of window that you created when you broke down the barrier around us in the temple?”
Cashel shrugged. He didn't like that sort of question. It was partly that he didn't know the answer, and partly that he was afraid the answer was yes. Like he'd told Tilphosa, he'd always been careful with the strength of his arms because he knew the damage he'd do otherwise. If he was doing things that he didn't know about, then Duzi alone knew the harm he might cause.
“I don't know, mistress,” he said. “I didn't mean to, but I don't know.”
As they got closer to the pale blur. Alone of the images he'd seen since they came to this place, this was in a real clearing. It hung in the air, in the middle of six straight-trunked trees whose branches wove a kind of arbor overhead.
Cashel hadn't felt anything around the other images. No reason he should, of course, since he'd found that they were only there to his eyes, or maybe to his mind's eye; but this one—
This one didn't frighten Cashel; but he guessed the feeling he got would have frightened a lot of other people.
Tilphosa looked around with a set expression, then picked up a fallen branch and raised it as a club. The wood had rotted to punk, but it seemed to make her feel better to hold something she could at least pretend was a weapon. She must feel something here too.
There was only blackness inside the ball of light. Cashel squinted, then twisted his head to one side and the other, waiting for the image to appear.
“I don't see anything,” he said.
“It's dark wherever it is,” Tilphosa said. Her voice had a studied firmness. “Whatever it is. But it's there. It's watching us, Cashel.”
“Yeah, I think it is,” he said.
He turned. The sailors had stopped some distance back; they were watching him.
“Come on,” he said. “We're not going to stay here after all.”
They resumed walking. “Do you think the sky ahead is getting lighter, Cashel?” the girl asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “We'll know before long.”
Cashel felt the eyes on him long after the blur had vanished from sight behind them.
* * *
“Can't we have a fire?” asked Metron, shivering on bucket upturned in the middle of the stable floor. He wore an ostler's tunic, filthy but dry, while water pooled beneath the stall door from which his own robe of silk brocade hung. “It's not just the cold water, you see. I shut my whole body down when I sent my soul out of it.”
Garric smiled. Several of the bandits went grim-faced at the mention of wizardry, but others laughed outright at the absurdity of what they'd just heard.
“Can we have a fire in a barn full of straw?” Vascay mused aloud. “No, we can't. Anyhow, with all the horses in here you'd warm up quick enough even if it were cold out. Which it's not.”
He coughed to clear his throat. Garric, sitting beside Vascay, glanced at him to judge his expression.
Vascay's face gave nothing away. He opened and closed his left fist; at each movement, the sapphire ring appeared on or disappeared from his little finger. He didn't speak.
“That's the ring I sent you for, isn't it?” said Metron. He'd obviously been taken aback by Vascay's attitude but decided to deal with it by bluster. He held out his hand. “Well done. Now we have to release Thalemos before we can topple the Intercessor.”
Tint lay in the straw at Garric's feet, watching Metron intently. At first Garric thought the tremble of her rib cage against his ankle was purring, but after a moment he realized it was an inaudible growl.
“We'll listen to your proposal, wizard,” Vascay said nonchalantly. “But right at the moment, I'd say what my Brethren and I have to do is get out of this district by dawn ... and Thalemos, I'd say, could take care of himself.”
“I've been saying that!” Ademos said loudly. “This whole business was a bad idea from the first. We're lucky we didn't all die on Serpents' Isle instead of just Kelbat and Ceto, and now that the Intercessor knows what's going on, well!”
Other men openly agreed with him. From the expressions around the circle, Garric thought more would've called, “Right!” and "The quicker, the better,” if they hadn't disliked Ademos too much to willingly identify themselves with his position.
The wizard nodded to the Brethren, his expression bland. If the situation were what Vascay baldly stated, the gang would be gone already and Metron would still be on the bottom of the pond. Vascay was using the legitimate threat to restructure the relationship between him and Metron. If Metron called his bluff...
Except that Garric wasn't sure Vascay was bluffing; and if Garric wasn't sure, then Metron would be a fool to take the risk.
Metron wasn't a fool. He spread his hands, and said, “I'm sorry, Master Vascay, I got ahead of myself. This isn't the catastrophe it must seem to your good selves, arriving as you have on the tail of the Intercessor's troops. Echeon is flailing about, but he can't overcome foreordained fate.”
“Is fate going to keep the Intercessor's knife from cutting Lord Thalemos' throat?” Vascay said bluntly. “Why won't he do that, Metron?”
“If Echeon kills Thalemos,” the wizard said, leaning forward to seem more earnest, “then the real Thalemos will appear somewhere else. Echeon has seen the future, or at least a portion of it. He knows that Lord Thalemos becomes Earl of Laut, so his only hope is to bend him to his will first. When we rescue Thalemos, we'll be able to proceed with the plan.”
"Seems to me,” Hame said slowly, “that if it's as simple as that, we all oughta go back east where we come from and wait for the happy day. Eh?”
Metron spread his hands again and nodded gravely, his expression studiedly reasonable. “Lord Thalemos will become Earl of Laut,” he said. “But he'll surely do so as the Intercessor's puppet if we don't intervene. Echeon is a great wizard, I assure you; but with Thalemos and the power of the ring—”
He gestured toward Vascay's hand, at the moment empty. He wasn't demanding the ring as he had been before.
“—we can overturn him and return Laut to freedom and prosperity.”
Metron cleared his throat, and added, “I wonder if you'd be good enough to tell me how you found the ring, Master Vascay? I'm sure it was a difficult task.”
Vascay glanced at Garric and raised an eyebrow. The tiny sapphire winked on his finger.
“I found the statue of Thalemos,” Garric said. He saw more value in learning where Metron
would go with the information than he did in hiding it from him. “It'd been dragged a distance from its plinth and built into a later wall. The ring was on its finger, as you'd said.”
Metron's eyes narrowed minusculely. “There was no guardian, then?” he asked.
Instead of answering, Garric let his lips smile. He said, “Why did somebody put up a statue of Lord Thalemos hundreds of years before he was born, wizard?”
Metron's eyes were wary, but he reflected Garric's smile with an unctuous one of his own. “The statue was carved two thousand years ago, sir, not mere centuries. This was done by the command of the Intercessor Echea, every bit as powerful a wizard as her distant descendent of today. They both and all of their line wish to bind the fate they know they cannot change.”
The wizard turned his hand up; his smile a little harder, a little more real. Answer for answer...
“There was no guardian,” Garric said. “There was a poisonous snake, but there's a lot of snakes on the island. And growing near the site were puffballs, which I avoided.”
“Did you indeed?” Metron said. “A foolish question, of course: you wouldn't be here otherwise. You're a very clever young man, sir; very clever indeed.”
He returned his gaze to the chieftain. “Master Vascay,” he said, “Echeon will have placed protections of art over Lord Thalemos; these I can overcome. But there will be physical barriers as well, and against them my arts are useless. Will you help me, knowing that the risk is great but that on the other side of danger is freedom for yourself and your compatriots?”
Men murmured to their neighbors, but for a moment nobody responded directly to the wizard. Vascay kept his eyes on Metron, his own face impassive. At last he said, “So. We'd have to find Lord Thalemos first, I suppose?”
“Lord Thalemos is in the prison in the center of Durassa," Metron said. “The Spike, it's called. It's a tower.”
“We bloody well know what the Spike is,” Ademos muttered, staring blackly at the pounded-earth floor.
Metron raised a bead of clear quartz, one of several score round beads of various stones which he wore around his neck. “Thalemos had a similar necklace. Echeon took it from him when he arrived at the prison, but this"—he wriggled his necklace slightly, causing light to cascade from the highly polished beads—“has stored all the images it received before that moment.”