by David Drake
“Why are there so many people?” Ilna mused aloud.
“There wouldn't be as many coming into Valles at this time in the morning.”
Well, the numbers coming though any one gate would have been less; but Valles was entered by three major highways plus a network of minor roads linked to the western suburbs across the River Beltis. Valles was many times the size of this place, however.
The track was bare dirt. The meandering ruts had been made by animals driven to the city, not wheels.
“I never knew there were this many people,” Alecto said, so morosely that Ilna glanced at her again.
She's afraid, Ilna thought. Alecto was responsible for both of them being here, but she was far more out of place than Ilna was.
Even in the days Ilna expected to spend her whole life within a mile of Barca's Hamlet, she'd been in some way a part of the wider world. Priests and merchants came into the borough, and Ilna sold her textiles for use in the great cities of distant islands. She couldn't have described those cities, not ruined Carcosa and certainly not flourishing Valles, until she saw them; but she'd known they existed.
Alecto had never heard of a city. Ilna frowned in thought. Perhaps even if Alecto had travelled the length of the world of her time, she wouldn't have found a city. A wild girl from a wild time; and for all her powers and ruthlessness, she was frightened of the place to which she had come.
“Look here,” said Ilna sharply. “Can you send me back into this dreamworld the way Tenoctris did? You're obviously a powerful wizard, which Tenoctris claims she's not.”
Alecto shook her head with a sour expression. “I don't know how she did that,” she said. Her expression grew guarded. “Are you lying to me? Did you make the sacrifice yourself and draw the entrance in blood around you?”
“I did not,” Ilna said, momentarily so angry that she had the first knot in her cords before she caught herself. “Nor does anyone I'd associate with use blood sacrifice.”
She turned to the gate again. She'd hoped to learn something by watching the traffic, but all she'd seen was that it was surprisingly heavy. Well, back into the city, then, as a newly arrived visitor rather than the person who'd knifed the temple watchman in the night.
“If you like...” Alecto said. She sounded diffident, a little nervous. She was so afraid that Ilna would abandon her... . “I could get one of them to talk to you.”
Ilna looked sharply at the other girl. Alecto laughed, cheerful again. “No, not that way. Or that way too, if you like.”
“I don't want that,” Ilna said primly. She felt the blush move into her cheeks and scowled with fury. “Go ahead, if you can do it without causing trouble for us.”
Ilna could weave a pattern that forced whoever saw it to answer her questions, but she'd intended to wait for greater privacy than this busy road provided. Besides, she was interested to see what Alecto would do—and only slightly concerned that it would end in another swipe of the bronze dagger, bringing this time a more difficult flight.
The soil where they stood was loose and barren, cropped and trampled by traffic which had spilled from the roadway proper. Alecto squatted and drew a five-sided pattern on the ground, using one of the twin horns of her dagger's pommel for her scriber.
She drew other symbols around the pentacle's edges. Though Ilna couldn't read, her eye for patterns was unrivaled. These additions weren't in the curving Old Script that Tenoctris used for her art. She suspected they were tiny pictures rather than writing, and that if Ilna tried, she could probably understand them.
She turned her head. It wasn't something she wanted to understand.
“There!” Alecto said. “Stand in front of it so that they can't see it from the path. It'll take me a moment to set the charm. Then you just step out of the way when you see the fellow you want.”
She frowned. “It has to be a man,” she added. “You can manage that, can't you?”
“Yes,” said Ilna, too icy cold to be angry. She turned her back on the other girl and watched the traffic again. Her inner tunic was ankle length, an adequate curtain for the symbols behind her.
Alecto began chanting. Her voice was ordinarily harsh, but when she worked her art it dropped an octave and gained a resonance that Ilna might have found pleasant if it had come from a different source.
Ilna and her companion had attracted less attention waiting by the roadside than she'd expected. For the most part the travellers walked in an aura of joyless purpose, glancing at Ilna as they might have done a milepost and then looking again toward the gate. None of them greeted Ilna or even offered a proposition.
Whole families were coming to the city; young children, mostly tired and restive, were the only exceptions to the general rule. Many were being dragged along screaming with no more ceremony than the occasional goat on a tether. Mothers looked more drawn than the men did, but all the adults shared an attitude of gray determination.
Ilna thought of the numbers whose prayers Alecto said had been aiding last night's ceremony. Close proximity to the rites wasn't necessary, but it seemed to be desired.
Flocks, herds, and pack animals carrying grain made up much of the traffic, but even so a city this size couldn't sustain the increased population for long. The rites would climax shortly.
Ilna smiled coldly. The rites would climax one way or the other. She recalled what the wild girl had said about the Pack turning before long on those who had freed them.
Alecto was now repeating the words she'd used at the start of her chant. The sounds were nonsense to Ilna, but their repetition meant Alecto was ready to act. Ilna watched the travellers with a different intent.
A small flock of sheep ambled past. The beasts were more interested in her than the badger driving them, a solid young man whose full moustache must once have been his pride. There was nothing in his expression now but intent tempered with fear.
Ilna thought of choosing the badger, but following the flock was a well-dressed horseman who seemed frowningly poised to ride either around or through the sheep. Someone garbed and mounted like him should have had attendants, but an impatient man might have pressed on ahead of his retinue.
Ilna stepped aside. “All right,” she said in an aside to the girl behind her.
Reflected light flickered across the horseman's eyes. He straightened and stared in the direction of the flash. For a moment the reins slackened, and his body seemed on the verge of slumping from the saddle. Then he jerked his gelding's head to the side and rode directly toward the pentacle.
The horse shouldered to the ground the old woman in its path. She squalled. Turnips spilled from the tapering basket on her back, but the rider paid her no heed. He dismounted in front of the grinning, sweating Alecto and stood with his hands loosely crossed in front of him.
“He's yours,” Alecto said to Ilna in triumph. “Ask him anything you please.”
She got up shakily, trying to conceal the effort she'd spent in working her art. That was boasting, but it was the sort which Ilna preferred to that of those who'd claim whatever they did was hard beyond the understanding of mere mortals.
“What's this city?” Ilna said crisply, starting with a question that might arouse suspicion but was innocent in itself. The gelding wasn't trained to stand untethered. When it realized it was loose, it first edged, then walked toward the base of the wall where dew running down the stone watered rank grass.
“This is Donelle,” the man said. His eyes were downcast, fixed on the pentacle, and his voice had the slurred lifelessness of one talking in his sleep.
Donelle on Tisamur, much as Garric—probably Liane—had guessed. Ilna's smile would have gone unnoticed except to those who knew her very well. This was where she'd meant to come. She'd just reached the place sooner and in an unexpected fashion.
“Why are you coming to Donelle?” she asked.
“The Mistress has called all Her servitors to Donelle,” the man said, “to help with the great work of returning Her to the throne of
the world. We will join and pray at midday of the full moon, and She will reascend Her throne.”
Ilna frowned. The moon last night was near its first quarter. Seven days, as Garric would say; a handful of days and two days.
“How did the Mistress call you?” she said. “Did a priest tell you to come here?”
“Priest?” the man said. He blinked twice, slowly, as though his numbed mind was trying to find meaning in the word. “The Mistress called me. As I slept, She told me to come to Donelle to aid in the great work.”
Dreams, then; but more than just dreams, for the crowd of travellers was too large and too varied to be made up solely of religious fanatics. This fellow wore a cape embroidered in red, and his high leather boots were as well made as the slippers of courtiers in Valles. The band of his broad-brimmed hat was saffron silk and trailed behind him, and he wore a three-tiered gorget of gold and translucent stones.
A wealthy man might drop everything to follow God's call, but Ilna very much doubted that a fop—who remained a fop—would do so.
“Who's in charge of the, the great work?” Ilna said. She didn't know how much help the names of the chief conspirators would be to Garric and the others, but she might as well ask.
“Lord Congin!” a man called from the road. “Where's your horse, milord?”
“There it is!” another called, this time a woman. “Look, it's over by the wall!”
“The Mistress is in charge of the great work,” the man said. “We are servitors doing the Mistress's bidding.”
Three men and a woman wearing saffron ribbons from their shoulders trotted purposefully toward Ilna and their master. Several more men, coarsely garbed without the ribbon livery, continued to drive a train of packhorses toward the gate. They glanced only occasionally at their superiors.
Alecto wiped the pentacle away with a swift motion of her foot. Lord Congin looked wide-eyed first at her, then Ilna. He would've fallen backward if a retainer hadn't caught him.
“What have you done to his lordship?” shrilled the female servant. “He has no business with an animal like you!”
Ilna caught Alecto's wrist before it came up with the bronze dagger—as it surely would have done. To the servant Ilna said, “Go on your way. Now.”
She stepped in front of Alecto so that she could release the wild girl's wrist and take the hank of cords into her hands instead. Her eyes met the servant's. Lord Congin had his color back and was talking in puzzlement to the male retainers. The woman backed to rejoin them, and the whole party resumed their course to the gate.
“Can we leave this city now?” Alecto said.
“No,” said Ilna. “We'll go in and see what more we can learn.”
She had no money, and Alecto probably didn't know what money was, but it shouldn't be hard to find work with all this influx to care for.
There might not be time before the full moon to get a message back to Garric and Tenoctris in Valles, but that didn't mean Ilna's presence here was useless. Not if this Mistress had a neck that a noose could wrap.
Only six of the bandits besides Garric, Vascay, and Hakken had come out to the boathouse to hear Metron describe his plan for releasing Thalemos from the Spike. The others preferred ignorance to being close to wizardry when they didn't have to be.
Hakken wouldn't have been present either if he weren't one of those who'd be entering the prison.
Metron stood on the dock with the bandits facing him in a semicircle. Tint was splashing in the shallows nearby, pulling up cattails and stripping out the pith to eat. Garric looked around the willow-bordered lake. It was a sad place, even by daylight. He said, “Why here?”
It might be that the reason involved the creature Metron had been speaking to in the night. Garric wore his sword, and Hame carried the signal horn since Halophus was back in the stables.
The wizard shrugged. “To make my task easier,” he said. “I worked a great spell here when I hid underwater, and last night I came back while you all slept—”
Did Metron know he'd been watched? He didn't seem to care one way or the other.
“—and worked another, gaining us allies for later in our quest. A place holds some of the power that's evoked in it, so this little demonstration will take less effort.”
He seated himself cross-legged at the foot of the dock, his back to the lake's reed-choked margin, and began scribing the planks with his athame. Vascay looked at Garric; Garric gave a brief nod.
Tenoctris had described power lingering at sites of previous wizardry—and at sites of death and slaughter—just as Metron said. The difference was that Tenoctris had warned it was a danger which could cause a wizard to act in unintended fashions with disastrous results; Metron was concerned only with increasing the power of his spells.
Garric smiled faintly, his hand on the ball pommel of his sword. That didn't change anything; he hadn't trusted Metron's judgment from the first.
“You've got somebody else to break into the Spike so we don't have to ourself?” Hakken said. There was hope in his voice, though he was obviously worried by Metron's preparations.
Without lifting his athame from the soft wood the wizard had drawn a seven-pointed star, then bounded it with a circle. He worked freehand and with a skill that made Garric's lips purse.
“My art will aid you,” Metron said. “But not that way.”
He sounded condescending to Garric, but Hakken probably found reassurance in the wizard's delivery. “The allies I spoke of will join us after Lord Thalemos is free. They'll help us to establish Lord Thalemos on the throne of Laut.”
Garric thought that something else had almost slipped off the wizard's tongue. He was hiding something, though he might simply want to avoid frightening the unsophisticated bandits. Metron must be very tired from the wizardry he'd performed; and he must be a very powerful wizard indeed.
“Go on,” Garric said. There was no point in pressing Metron on questions where there was no way of telling what, or which, lies he was telling. “Show us what we're to do.”
Metron looked up, meeting Garric's eyes over the figures he'd drawn. The wizard smiled, but his expression only made Garric think about Tint's warning: He like you for food, maybe.
Metron took the sapphire ring out of his pouch and set it in the middle of the symbol. The stone was a sparkle too small to have shape.
Without writing words of power around the circle as Garric expected, the wizard said, “Ammo ammonio hermitaris... ." His athame dipped toward the ring at each syllable, making the ivory blade a suppliant to the jewel's majesty. “Apa apalla apallasso... .”
Fog lifted from the marshy ground beneath the dock. It grew darker, more solid. It tightened into a column as sinuous as a snake's body, then coalesced in the form of a building in the air above Metron's circle.
Metron's voice sank as he murmured a few words more. His athame continued to beat a fixed rhythm in the air, but his mouth smiled triumphantly as he looked up at the arc of spectators.
“The Spike,” he said. “Built in the center of Durassa by the first Intercessor as her palace and workroom... and as a prison.”
Fog continued to condense into the image. The building, a cylindrical structure in a walled garden, took on texture and the streaky grayIpink color of banded schist. The sheer-sided tower had no doors or windows, but a covered passage ran from the gate in the enclosure wall to the base of the tower.
“The outer wall should be no difficulty for active men like yourselves,” Metron said with a greasy laugh. “Even less so for your companion, Master Gar.”
Coarse bushes, vines, and—along the low-lying side opposite the entrance passage—bamboo appeared on the image, clothing the outer circuit of the wall. Only the twenty feet or so to either side of the gateway was clear.
Metron's left index finger indicated places where shrubbery completely concealed the stonework; his right hand continued to beat time with the athame. The wizard controlled his breathing carefully, but Garric could see s
train in his face and the sweat beading at his hairline.
“They don't keep it up,” Vascay said, nodding in recollection. “Occasionally Echeon sends out a squad of Protectors to cut back the worst of it, but he can't hire groundskeepers in the usual way.”
“I don't bloody blame them!” Hakken muttered.
“Inside the garden...” Metron continued, “are dangers that you could not pass without my art to help you.”
Vascay raised an eyebrow. Garric felt his own spirit quiver at the implied challenge.
He grinned at himself. What Metron said was probably true. The wizard might have been foolish to word the matter in quite that fashion in the midst of armed men whose lives had made them hard even if they didn't start out that way; but Garric would be a much greater fool if he let himself react to empty words.
Metron gestured, filling the space between the outer wall and the tower with carefully manicured vegetation. Trees stood in rounds of bright-colored flowers; hedges snaked and branched like water running across flat ground, sometimes encircling more flowers; and one star-shaped bed was of translucent, bell-shaped plants that looked more like jellyfish than anything Garric had seen before on dry land.
Tint wandered back, cleaning her teeth with a fingernail and holding an opened cattail for Garric in case he was hungry. It was probably an exceptionally fine cattail... .
Tint rubbed against his leg; he scratched the coarse fur between her shoulder blades in response. The more contact Garric had with the beastgirl the less human she seemed, but he'd have found his wizard-imposed exile much harder to bear without Tint's presence.
“Is that really what the gardens look like over the wall?" Toster said. The big man knuckled his beard with a look of deep puzzlement.
“It is,” Metron said. “What I show you here is the thing itself, not an image of the thing.”
“Then who keeps them up?” Toster said bluntly. “That's expert work, that is. My old dad would've been proud as could be to have Lord Kelshak's maze come out so neat and no bare holly twigs.”
“The garden cares for itself,” Metron said. His smile looked strained under its superiority, but the wizard was too proud to suggest an end to idle questions. “No human enters it, nor could a human survive without the help of one such as myself.”