by David Drake
The shaggy Elders muttered among themselves. Sharina could hear some of the words, but they were too cryptic for her to understand what was being said without a context.
The oldest Corl got down from his boulder. "I will take you to the house of the council, beast," he said. "But I can tell you, none of our wise ones have the power you do."
Tenoctris laughed triumphantly. "That's all right," she said. "Until very recently, I didn't have such power either."
She went along after the Elder on her own feet instead of getting back in the litter. "No," said Sharina with a quick gesture to Attaper as he and his men tried to surround Tenoctris. "Follow us, but you and your men wait outside the building."
She'd seen how Tenoctris' enchantment of the canal water had left several Blood Eagles trembling. They were brave men beyond question, but wizardry had the same subconscious effect on many people that snakes or spiders did. Sometimes that overwhelming fear came out as violent rage. The last thing the kingdom needed now was for a berserk soldier to begin slaughtering the catmen's chiefs and wizards.
With Cashel behind her, Sharina entered the shingle-roofed longhouse to which their guide led. She had to duck to go under a transom meant for the Coerli.
The last thing she glimpsed over her shoulder as she entered was the canal. It was full again, and as black as the heart of Evil.
Chapter 8
"That's a strange thing to find in the middle of a bog," Garric said, eyeing the tower half a furlong to the left as they passed. After a moment's further thought he added, "And rather an unpleasant one."
Kore looked as she jogged along. Her gait wasn't uncomfortable once Garric'd gotten used to it. Riding her was more or less equivalent to standing in a horse's stirrups while holding onto the reins, though he had to lean back rather than forward. The "reins" were a leather harness over the ogre's shoulders, supporting her burden like a knapsack.
"I would say that perhaps they have trouble with ogres here," Kore said, "though I don't scent my kind."
The ghost of Carus laughed. "It's a peel tower, lad," he said. "There's more sorts of raiders than ogres, and when such ride up, here's where the locals folk hide. Or if you prefer, here's where the raiders come to divide the loot when they return."
The tower could have three stories, though the only windows were narrow ones around the top level; the lower portion may've been a single room with a vaulted ceiling. The door facing the road was massive and had two iron-strapped leaves.
"Just what you'd need to drive the cattle in quickly, lad," Carus commented. "Though I'd have said the ground hereabouts is too soft for cattle."
"The tower was not part of this region before the Change," said Shin. The aegipan trotted alongside Kore without difficulty, though his hooves twinkled through three strides for ever one of the ogre's. "There are other anomalies of the sort. Generally they involve a concentration of powers which wrench the site from its previous period. That was certainly what happened in this case."
"Wizardry, you mean," said Garric.
"Perhaps wizards," Shin said.
The tower disappeared behind them as the track curved down a slight hill. Garric took his hand away from his sword hilt.
He had no reason to feel relieved: there hadn't been signs of life in the tower, let alone hostility. Besides, few bullies or bandits would bother a swordsman riding on an ogre.
Nonetheless, it was an unpleasant place.
* * *
Cashel paused to let his eyes adapt when he stepped inside the door at the end of the longhouse. Triangular windows under the peaks of the saddle-backed thatch roof were the only openings except for the door. The wicker walls hadn't been caulked with mud, though, so they let in air if not much light.
The wicker wasn't woven any old way, any more than his sister's woolens were. The withies of split willow were twisted around the vertical posts in patterns that Cashel could sense but not really follow. It'd have meant something to Ilna, though.
It was a shame Ilna'd gotten it into her head that she needed to kill all the catmen. Cashel didn't think that way about things. He didn't mind killing when he needed to, but once an enemy gave up, Cashel was willing to let the business end. He didn't like to fight, for all that he'd done plenty of it, and he sure didn't like to kill.
Ilna was smarter than him, no doubt about that. But Tenoctris and Garric and Sharina were smart as they came, and they felt the same about it as Cashel did. Still, there'd never been any point in arguing with Ilna; and if it'd been Sharina instead of Chalcus and Merota that the catmen'd killed . . . .
Cashel didn't let his thoughts stay there very long. He moved closer to Sharina, though, as Tenoctris said to the catmen squatting at the other end of the longhouse, "Wise ones of the True People, I've come to pick one of you to advise the golden-furred female beast during the time I must be absent from her. She rules the kingdom of which you are now part."
Sharina leaned toward Cashel and whispered, "I've never seen Coerli in a mixed group before, have you?"
Cashel thought about it. "No," he said.
He hadn't noticed it because he'd been thinking of the catmen as people. There was nothing funny about a group of people—human people—having old men and boys, old women and young mothers. That was what these catmen were. One of the females cradled a kit in each arm. They suckled as she listened to Tenoctris still-faced with her fellows.
But Sharina was right: catmen didn't mix the same ways as humans. The young males, the warriors kept to themselves, and females with kits didn't mix with other females. The crowd outside in the Gathering Field was split in wedges like a pie.
These catmen were together because they were wizards. That was more important than age or sex or anything else, just like with humans.
"A female cannot rule a kingdom," said an older male with the bulk and mane of a clan chief. "A woman cannot rule the True People!"
The chiefs ate a diet of red meat, which they allowed only sparingly to anybody else. Cashel didn't know what extras the catmen gave their wizards, but the handful of other males in this group were ordinary warriors, even the one with gray streaks in his fur who looked pretty old.
"And yet she rules you, vassal!" Tenoctris said. "The golden-furred one is Sharina, litter-mate of Garric, the warlord and chief of chiefs. As surely as Garric killed your champion with his bare hands, so will his litter-mate give you all to fire and the sword if you foreswear your oaths."
Her voice was richer than Cashel had heard before, but it was still Tenoctris speaking. Thing is, somebody powerful isn't the same as they were when they were weak, even though they're the same person. The Tenoctris haranguing the catmen now wasn't the bent old woman Cashel had waited in the tomb with the day before.
The chief who'd spoken rose to his feet and looked at his squatting fellows. There were more of them than Cashel could count on both hands and maybe twice that many.
"I am Komarg!" he said, glowering at Tenoctris. He waggled his wooden mace overhead; it was carved with all manner of designs, but the dried bloodstains on it showed that it hadn't stopped being a weapon. "I am a great chief and also chief of the wise ones. I will go with the blond-furred one and advise her."
Komarg was taller than Tenoctris, as tall as a good-sized man, in fact. Not as tall or near as strong as Cashel himself, of course.
"I'm not interested in braggarts or fools, Komarg," Tenoctris said contemptuously. She took a cast snakeskin out of her sleeve and waggled it. It was pale brown and crinkly.
Cashel had met his share of people like Komarg, and in this he guessed catmen were just the same as humans. Oath or no oath, Komarg was going to swipe at Tenoctris. The quarterstaff was already swinging down to stop him when Tenoctris shouted, "Saboset!" and flicked the snakeskin like a whip.
Blue wizardlight blazed through the longhouse. Cashel saw the bones of his hands gripping the staff. His ears wanted to flinch at the crash of thunder, but this lightning was silent.
In the place of Tenoctris stood
a two-legged snake with a body the size of an ox. Cashel backed with the staff crossways in front of him. He didn't look behind, trusting Sharina to keep out of the way. They could retreat to the doorway, then he'd figure out what next to do. A beast this size wouldn't make anything of going through even the best-woven wattling.
"Demon!" the catmen were screaming as they scrambled backward. "Demon! Demon!"
Komarg half turned but the snake darted its head at him. He knew he was too close to get away, so he swung his mace at it with both hands.
The snake took the blow with its flaring wing and grabbed Komarg around the waist. He screamed as it flung him in the air. Blood splattered from his belly; it looked like somebody'd laid him open with a saw that cut in and then back at a different angle.
Komarg bounced off the ridge pole, losing his mace. As he dropped the snake caught him again, this time by the head, and shook him like a dog with a rat. When it tossed him over its back into a corner, he was limp as a rug. Blood oozed from his wounds; his heart had stopped.
What Cashel'd thought was a solid wall behind the pack of catmen turned out to be a curtain of woven straw covering a door. All of them had run out that way except a scraggly old female. She'd spilled dust on the board floor and drawn a curving zigzag design in it. The pattern didn't close, but when Cashel followed the ends of it with his eyes he felt a broad oval.
The Corl wizard squatted where she'd been from the start, snarling words. Cashel recognized the rhythms as those of a wizard chanting spells.
He'd reached the door they'd entered by, but he didn't back into the open air yet. Tenoctris had either raised the demon or was the demon, and it hadn't gone after anybody but the catmen. He knew Garric said that humans and catmen were all part of the same kingdom now. That was fine, but Cashel was still going to wait till he knew more before he mixed into what didn't seem to be a fight for human beings.
The snake—the snake-demon, he guessed, because it sure wasn't just a snake—bent close to the old female and shrieked like a hawk. Well, a really big hawk. She blinked but kept on chanting.
The snake-demon reached its right leg out with the long middle claw extended; its wings quivered to balance the big body. When the sickle-curved claw crossed the line on the floor, there was a blast of crimson wizardlight. It was nigh as bright as the blue when the creature appeared. Dust flew in all directions like a whirlwind'd swept it up.
The Corl leaped to her feet and swiped at the demon's muzzle with the slate wand she'd used to scribe her line. Old as she was, the motion was still quicker than any but a handful of men Cashel'd met—and maybe quicker'n them too.
The wand didn't strike anything because the snake-demon wasn't there—wasn't anywhere, in fact. Tenoctris stood back where she'd been to begin with, tucking the scrap of snakeskin away in her sleeve and smiling faintly.
"So, my fellow wizard," she said. "My name is Tenoctris. What's yours?"
The Corl drew her lips back in a snarl. Cashel was beside Tenoctris again, though after what he'd just seen he didn't doubt she could take care of herself. Still, he raised the quarterstaff slightly to stick it in the way if he needed to.
The catman looked at the wand in her hand, then threw it onto the floor. It clacked, rolled against the wall, and rolled back.
"I am Rasile!" she said. "But why would you care, Tenoctris?"
"You just demonstrated why I care," Tenoctris said. "I knew there was a powerful wizard among the True People. I came to meet you, Rasile."
She eyed the Corl critically; Cashel did the same. Rasile wasn't much to look at, that was sure: her fur was worn thin on the joints, and the flesh sucked in between the bones of her forearms. You didn't often see an animal that old in Barca's Hamlet; they aren't good for much, and peasants are too close to the edge even in a good year to feed useless mouths. Of course Rasile wasn't an animal, exactly.
"You could make yourself young again," Tenoctris said. "Why haven't you?"
Rasile growled with disgust. "Why would I want to extend my life in this misery of a world?" she said. "I'll live the years the fates have given me, but I don't like pain so much that I'll willingly extend them."
Tenoctris laughed. "It's not such a bad world when you look at it in the right way," she said, "but I'm not here to argue with you."
She picked up the wand and handed it to the catman. "You'll be needing this," she said.
Turning, she went on, "Sharina, allow me to present your new wizard and advisor, Rasile of the True People. I think you'll find her very satisfactory. And now, Cashel, you and I must go back immediately to the tomb where we spent last night."
Tenoctris smiled in a funny way and said, "I have nothing further to do with the one who was interred there, but it's a concentration of the power that will be useful for the next stage of our business."
* * *
"You've come, Ilna, you've come at last!" cried Merota. "Chalcus, look, Ilna's here!"
Ilna opened her eyes. Her mind was blank. Merota threw herself into Ilna's arms. "Oh, Ilna!" she said. "We're all together again and I'm so happy!"
Merota was a warm, solid weight who squirmed against Ilna as she always did when they'd been apart for a longer time than usual. And though Ilna might've been imagining something she wanted as much as to be with her family again, she felt the holly oak's coarse bark against her shoulders felt completely real.
My family . . . .
Ilna stood, holding the girl close. Chalcus was striding toward her, coming from the round temple that faced them across a pool.
"I never doubted you'd come, dear heart," he called. "Though I don't mind saying that the wait was the hardest thing I've known in a life that's—"
Chalcus grinned with the hint of wolfishness under the pleasure that Ilna remembered so well.
"—had its share of hard things, and not all of them things that I did to others."
Ilna ran to him, holding Merota's hands, and they embraced. Chalcus' hard muscles were as rippling and tender as they always had been. "It's been a long time," he whispered, but perhaps Ilna was hearing her own whisper instead.
When she blinked the tears out of her eyes, she stepped back slightly and looked around. She didn't see any building save the temple, but smoke rose from hearths hidden in the trees beyond. There was a handful—more than a handful—of other people in sight. One was a shepherd on the nearby hilltop, watching the sheep on the slope below him.
The curb and the temple were well made but very simple. Both were built of yellowish-gray limestone, and the temple's pillars weren't fluted.
A halved log lay as a bridge across the brook in the near distance. On it knelt a small boy drawing with a stick of charcoal, while a woman in white robes kept her eye on him. She felt Ilna's stare and looked up, then waved.
Ilna looked at Chalcus again, this time taking in the details instead of letting herself be swept away by a fierce tide of love. He wore a loose shirt of crimson silk, the sleeves pinned back by gold armlets; a brocade sash, silk again but dyed a fierce blue that made Ilna squint when her eye tried to follow the line where it met the shirt; and black leather breeches decorated with suede appliqués of dancing girls.
Ilna'd never seen any of the garments, but they added up to Chalcus in his dress finest. He'd been a sailor, after all, not a delicate aesthete from Valles—and most certainly not a prim girl from Barca's Hamlet with a loathing for self-advertisement.
In that respect and many, Chalcus was the other half of Ilna os-Kenset; far more than half of her soul had died when the cat beasts killed him. And here he and Merota were, complete to every stitch and placket except—
"Chalcus, where's your sword?" Ilna said, speaking quietly. There was nothing in her expression that might suggest to anyone watching that she was concerned. "And the dagger?"
"Oh, you dear silly heart!" the sailor said. He raised her hand and made as if to twirl her, but she stayed where she was and met his eyes with fixed determination.
"Dearest Iln
a," he said, "nobody's taken them away from me, but the sword isn't needed here. Come, I'll show you. I hung them in the temple as an offering to the Youth. I wear them if you'd like. Come!"
"You don't need to prove to me that you're telling the truth!" Ilna said. "Of course I believe you."
"Oh, do come," Merota said, tugging Ilna's sleeve. "The statue's lovely, you'll see. And it's real gold!"
Chalcus laughed and tousled the girl's hair. "When you've had as much gold drip through your fingers as I have, child," he said, "in taverns and mayhap less suitable places, then you'll better understand how slight a thing it is. But yes, dear heart, let's look at the statue, for it's very beautiful."
Ilna walked widdershins between them around the pool, Merota holding her left hand and Chalcus' fingers lying warm on her waist. He said, "The Youth—the man himself, I mean—is buried in the mound where you came back. I shouldn't wonder if that's how you were able to join us without . . . ."