by David Drake
Ilna was smart, no mistake. Sometimes Cashel thought that he and his sister had about two people's amount of brains between them, but they'd mostly gone to her. He loved Ilna, but he was glad most people in the world didn't think the way she did. He was pretty sure Ilna was glad of that too, whatever she might say aloud about how most people behaved.
"Here, we got a stone!" called the soldier at the far end of the trench. He and his partner were down over their heads; other soldiers from where the cut was shallower had been carrying away baskets of dirt and emptying them for some while now.
The man who'd spoken dragged the pick on the other end of his tool into the crevice between the block and a doorway cut in the tuff bedrock. "Hey, it's two stones," he said. His partner shoved the handle of his shovel—not the blade, which would've bent—into the opposite crack. They levered the stone out alternately, working like a perfect team and all without needing a word between them.
The officer looked up. Cashel smiled at him, then nodded toward the soldiers now lifting the top block up for two more men waiting at the lip of the cut to take it. The officer beamed, pleased that somebody who understood the work was watching his men do it.
The lower block was twice the size of the upper stone that'd wedged it in place. "Hey, Top?" the man with the mattock called. "I think we're going to need ropes for this one."
"Let me try it," said Cashel. "Tenoctris, will you hold this?"
He gave her his quarterstaff. He could've laid it on the ground, but he'd rather give it to a friend when he couldn't hold it himself. It was just a length of straight-grained hickory, but he'd had it a long time. It'd been a friend when he needed a friend.
"Let me try," Cashel repeated as strode over to the cut. The soldiers had ignored him the first time. That didn't bother him; it was the sort of thing you got when somebody new tried to join a group that'd been together for a while. It happened just the same with sheep.
The trench was three double-paces long and sloped down to the depth of a man's head at the doorway end. Cashel squatted, looming over the men there. "I can maybe lift that without ropes and people pulling from up here," he said.
"He might at that," one of the soldiers muttered. "What d'ye think?"
Instead of answering, his partner called, "Top, is that all right?"
"Yes, of course it's all right," said Tenoctris testily. "I'll tell Lord Waldron that haste was important, if you like. Or I'll ask Princess Sharina to tell him. I'd like there still to be natural light when I enter the chamber!"
"Right!" said the officer. The men beneath Cashel were already moving away to give him room. "If you want to try, sir, go ahead. But it looks like a load even for somebody as big as you."
"Well, I'll try," Cashel said. He dropped into the trench with his left hand on the lip so that he didn't come down with his full weight on his toes. He touched the block. It'd been chipped from the same soft stone as the trench was cut out of. Cashel wasn't one to brag, but this wasn't even going to hard.
He rocked the block forward a little to make sure it was loose; it was. He squatted, placed his hands, and then straightened up from the knees. Everything was smooth as you please till the block was at the top of trench and Cashel started to fling it down the slope.
"Get out of his way!" Tenoctris shouted. Cashel didn't understand what she was talking about till he realized four soldiers had stepped into what'd been an empty space. They had their arms out, ready to take the block from him the way they'd've done if their friends had been lifting it.
The soldiers moved fast when they saw what was happening, but it was still close. Even Cashel couldn't hold that much weight with his fingertips alone when he'd started it flying, but he was able to brake it enough that the men all scrambled clear before it thumped the ground and tumbled away.
"Sorry," Cashel said. His breath was coming hard, as much from almost crippling a couple people accidentally as the weight of the stone. "I didn't expect anybody to be there."
"By the blessed Lady," said one of the soldiers who'd almost been in the wrong place. He didn't sound mad. "If you throw stones like that, maybe we can carry you along with us instead of a catapult, hey?"
"Sorry," Cashel said in embarrassment. "I wouldn't make a good soldier."
The men laughed. Cashel realized it'd been a joke, but that was all right since they thought he was joking too.
Tenoctris came down the opened trench, bringing her bag of gear and the quarterstaff both. Usually Cashel or somebody carried the satchel for her, but she was really a lot stronger than you might think to look at her.
"Please go inside, Cashel," she said as she held out the staff to him. Though she smiled, she was also reminding him that he was in the way. "I'm quite sure I'd be more able to move the stone door than I would you."
"Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. He took the satchel, holding it in front of him as he hunched through the doorway. "Careful, there's a step down here."
Though the air inside was cool, it was dry and musty rather than dank as Cashel'd sort of expected. The covered passage a double pace long, leading to a doorway with posts and a lintel. It was all cut from the living rock. Beyond was a step down into the tomb chamber. Cashel could stand upright there.
Tenoctris followed him in. There was a low bench on either side. Each had legs and a frame, but all it was rock. One was empty; the other had a stone coffin whose lid had been slid off. It'd broken when it hit the floor.
Cashel peered inside. The box was empty.
There was plenty of light in the tomb to see by for the moment. The doors and trench beyond lined up due west, so the low sun came right in.
Tenoctris looked around with the perky cheerfulness of a wren. She peered at the ceiling, then touched the carvings on the coffin with her fingertips.
"Where'd you like me to put the bag, Tenoctris?" Cashel asked. He hefted the satchel to call attention to it.
"Oh, just set it on the other bench, if you would," she said with another quick nod. "I won't need tools to summon the former resident, I'm now sure. I hadn't fully appreciated just how powerful he was, Cashel."
She smiled in a way that made her for just that moment look more like a puppy than a bird. She added, "How powerful he is, I should say, though for the moment he's not present in this world."
"Is that a problem?" Cashel said. He spread his feet a little out of reflex. This'd be tight quarters to fight with a staff, but a straight thrust with the butt could finish things quick even if there wasn't room for tricks and spinning.
"No, quite the contrary," Tenoctris said, but her smile seemed almost forced. "We came here to gain a powerful ally, after all."
She cleared her throat and said, "I think I want something from the satchel after all; a lamp."
As Tenoctris searched in the bag, Cashel eyed the coffin. It was made from alabaster carved so thin that you must've been able to see light through it when it was freshly polished. Even protected underground it had the frosty look marble gets when it's open to the air for a while.
The long side toward Cashel was decorated with people in a city. When he looked closely at the carvings, he saw they were all dead or dying; from a plague, it looked like. Some were sprawled at the altars in front of temples, some lay in bed or in the streets. A family held hands on a flat rooftop, all dead.
Cashel generally liked sculptures as much as he did paintings. He didn't like this one, though, and he guessed he wouldn't have liked the fellow who wanted it on his coffin.
He stepped around to look at the end toward the doorway. The carvings showed dead people again, this time being torn to bits by weasels. There didn't seem much point in looking at the other end, let alone worry about the side against the wall.
Tenoctris's lamp was flat earthenware, the same as any house in Barca's Hamlet—or anywhere—had, except words in the curvy Old Script were molded around the oil hole in the middle. She'd filled it from a stoppered bottle, also in her bag. Now she pointed her finger at the wick, whic
h lighted with a pop of blue wizardlight.
"There," she said, turning to Cashel with a pleased smile. "Before I get into the sarcophagus, Cashel, I have a favor to ask you."
Tenoctris brought out the locket again from under her robe. She looked at it for a moment in the palm of her hand, then lifted it on its thin gold chain over her head.
"Please keep this, my dear," she said. She pursed her lips, then touched a catch on the bottom and spread the two leaves of the gold case. In each side was a face painted on a disk of ivory. They were small and the sun was setting fast, but Cashel thought they were a man and a woman.
"My parents," Tenoctris said. She closed the locket and placed it in his left palm. "I didn't know them very well. I'm afraid I must've been a trial to them."
She smiled with the touch of soft sadness Cashel'd seen before. "Not because I was bad, of course," she explained, "but because I was very different from them and the children of all their friends. I embarrassed them."
"Tenoctris?" Cashel said. "How long do I keep it for you? Just tonight?"
"Keep it until you feel it's the right time to give it back to me, Cashel," the old woman said. "And if ever I cease to be myself, destroy it immediately. Promise me this. There's no one else I could trust with this duty."
"Yes, Tenoctris," Cashel said. He thought for a moment, then hung the chain around his neck.
Tenoctris hopped to the bench, then stepped into the coffin—the sarcophagus—by herself. She seemed brighter, stronger than she had been.
"Now, Cashel," she said as she laid herself flat in the stone box, "all you have to do is wait and watch while I sleep."
With her head on the stone bolster carved in the bottom of the coffin, Tenoctris began to chant softly. The words had the rhythm of words of power, though Cashel couldn't make out the separate sounds.
He walked to the door to the chamber and stood there, watching the sky turn darker. He rubbed the shaft of his quarterstaff, but the familiar touch of the hickory didn't settle him.
Cashel didn't mind not understanding what was going on around him; he was used to that. But this time he was pretty sure he did understand, and that worried him a lot.
* * *
"Yes, I'm sure I'd rather deal with a wyvern alone, Master Asion," Temple said. He gave "sure" just a hint of emphasis. "None of you are equipped to fight the beasts at close quarters, and I'm unable to fight them any other way."
He bowed slightly to Ilna and added, "This is your first experience with wyverns. You'll find the three of you have enough to do with the beast which doesn't go after me, I believe."
"We'll know soon enough," Ilna said. To the hunters she added, "Come along."
Dew congealing out of the clear air made the morning dank. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, however. The day'd shortly be hot enough and dry, for those who survived the next few hours.
The villagers were up but silent save for whispers as they watched the strangers prepare to fight the monsters. They stood on the slope above their shanties as if to make clear that they weren't part of the business in case it went wrong. Occasionally a child wailed.
Ilna didn't think about whether Temple and the hunters were accompanying her. They were, of course; but once she'd set out to do this thing, the choices other people made no longer mattered.
If she attacked two wyverns by herself, they'd kill her as surely as sunrise. She could freeze one in its tracks, but the other'd snap her up like a caterpillar in a wren's beak. That would end the problem to which Ilna saw no solution: how she could kill all Coerli, wipe out the beasts to the last kit and gray-maned ancient?
The hunters began to angle out in front of her, one to either side. "No," Ilna said firmly; she wouldn't get angry if they obeyed immediately. "I have to lead. It's necessary that the brute comes straight at me."
Temple was well to the right, heading toward the abandoned village. His long strides gave the impression of being languid until you noticed how much distance each one covered. The wyverns had torn the thatch roofs off several houses and the front wall of another had collapsed inward, so it didn't seem to Ilna that the buildings brought much safety.
She shrugged mentally. The big soldier had the confidence of a man who knew his business. Often enough that meant very little, but Temple had proved to be an exception in the past.
The wyverns lounged beside the altar in front of the temple. They'd made a kill during the night and brought it back to eat; by now they'd torn the carcass to a scattering of bloody bones. The mottled wyvern was lying on its right side. It lifted the stripped remains of a thigh to its jaws with the talons of its left leg, then bit; the bone cracked in half.
"I guess that's a goat?" Karpos said.
"I guess," said his sharper-eyed partner. "It's past caring, whatever it was."
The pale wyvern had been following Ilna and the hunters with its eyes. It got to its feet without haste. Its claws folded up against its ankles so that the points stuck out forward; that was how they stayed sharp when the creature walked.
Ilna had knotted her pattern of yarn before she started into the valley. That was the sensible thing to do, of course, but she'd have preferred to have the task yet before her to keep her fingers busy. The thought irritated her because it showed weakness.
She smiled minusculely. She wasn't weak enough to allow discomfort to affect her reactions, of course.
The pale wyvern raised its head to the sky and shrieked, vibrating its black tongue. Its mottled partner sprang to its feet in a single motion and started downhill. The knob of the bone it'd been eating sailed high in the air, flung away unnoticed. The beast was striding toward Temple, who'd just started up the north slope toward the village.
The pale wyvern crouched, vibrating like a plucked lute string. Ilna continued forward at the deliberate pace she'd set herself to begin with. She kept her eyes on the creature she intended to kill, ignoring the stones and sharp leaves her bare feet touched as she walked. There'd be time enough for lotions and poultices after the job was done; if she missed some foreshadowing of the beast's intentions, however, it might be her thigh that they cracked tomorrow.
A woman came out of the shrine. She stood on the porch to watch what was happening. Her hair was dark blond and tangled, and her only tunic had a stiff, russet stain down the right side.
Temple began to run uphill, moving easily. He hadn't drawn his sword, and he held the buckler close to his body. The sky was bright enough to show color, but the sun hadn't risen to wink highlights from the polished metal.
The pale wyvern launched itself toward Ilna like a stooping hawk. Its wings stuck out from its shoulders, tilting like the pole of a rope-walker as they and the tail balanced the creature's downward career.
This early in the year, the creek at the bottom of the valley was still running. Ilna walked through the water, grimacing at the feel of pebbles washed smooth and slimed with cress. She started up the north slope, holding the pattern folded between her clenched hands. She heard the whirr of Asion's staff sling, and the corner of her eye told her Karpos had raised and half-drawn his bow.
The wyvern shrieked as it kicked off from an outcrop of grayish limestone. Each leap took the beast twice its own length toward Ilna and her companions. One more and it would be on them.
Ilna opened the pattern between her hands and raised it overhead.
The oncoming wyvern stiffened in the air. Instead of skimming toward Ilna and the hunters, it tripped and crashed to the ground. After skidding nose-first for a moment in a spray of coarse dirt, it rolled over on its left side. Its frozen muscles couldn't correct for the angle it'd been leaning at when Ilna's pattern struck through its eyes like a thunderbolt.
The wyvern had small ears. The right one vanished in a splash of blood, shot away by a sling bolt that'd just missed crushing the skull. Karpos' broadhead buried itself to the fletching at the base of the creature's right wing.
The wyvern continued to slide, its powerful hindquarters slewing a
head of its half-open jaws. A pall of yellow-gray dust rolled downhill ahead of it. Ilna turned to keep her pattern toward the beast. Its eyes were a brilliant blue and had vertical slits for pupils.
Karpos shot the wyvern in the throat; Asion's second bullet punched a dimple in the fine gray scales of the creature's chest. Blood splashed, but the impact didn't shatter the wyvern's breast keel as Ilna'd hoped it would.
She continued to turn as the beast slid past. Asion straightened to shoot again, putting his torso between Ilna's pattern and the wyvern's eyes. It sprang uphill toward the hunter as though it hadn't been wounded at all.
Asion threw himself aside. As the wyvern snatched at him, an arrow snapped between its open jaws and banged out the base of its skull.
The beast bent double, its head almost touching its long, tendon-stiffened tail. The legs kicked violently, the right one clawing a divot the size of a bushel basket from the soil; Ilna closed her eyes reflexively as the grit sprayed her. The wyvern thudded downslope, then rolled till its head lay in the stream. Blood trickled from its mouth. The right leg continued to twitch, but its eyes didn't react to the fine dust that was drifting over them.