The Mirror of Worlds-ARC

by David Drake

  The ogre didn't sound concerned. Carus laughed, but Garric wasn't sure the comment had been meant as a joke. On the other hand—

  Garric grinned. The thought was amusing even if it weren't a joke, if you looked at the world in a particular way. He'd become enough of a warrior himself to understand that sometimes grim jokes were the only kind available, and those were the times you really needed a joke.

  The mist largely cleared, though Garric hadn't noticed a breeze or patch of cooler air to explain it. They'd reached an island. Tar had soaked into the dirt of the margins, forming a black crust. Wagga was trotting across a field of bromeliads with squat, scaly trunks like palmettos. They grew in straight lines and must've been planted deliberately.

  "Pineapples," Carus said. "Saw them on Tisamur my first campaign. You cut the trunk open and it's sweet and sour both at once. Any cold at all kills them, but I guess this steam bath takes care of winter."

  Garric eyed the plants critically as he strode between the rows. They hadn't been tended in weeks or more, judging from the way vines were curling around the trunks. He wondered about the bogeys Leel had mentioned; then he wondered just what Lord Holm wanted a hero for.

  They were on the asphalt again. The paths led from island to island. A lead of dark water eight or nine feet wide cut the surface. Wagga and Leel splashed through. Shin leaped it gracefully, landed on his hands, and somersaulted onto his hooves again.

  Garric could've jumped across too, but he didn't trust the surface on the other side. Slamming down with his full weight might crack it. The very least he could expect then would be to lose a boot that he'd want after they'd crossed this stinking blackness.

  The water was warm, the bottom slimy but less than knee deep. He hopped up the other side and sloshed forward. Their bare-legged guides showed no interest in stopping to allow Garric to pour the water out of his boot.

  The path across the bitumen jogged repeatedly. Once Wagga led them in a wide circuit. The mist chanced to clear again long enough for Garric to see a single bubble of fresh tar in the midst of the otherwise unbroken gray expanse which they'd just avoided.

  They crossed three more islands of normal soil, each planted with fruit trees. The light was failing; the sky was too bright for stars, but all below was in heavy shadow. Neither Garric nor Carus could identify the fruit on the last island, and they didn't tarry long enough in the dimness even to guess at its kinship. Part of the crop was rotting neglected on the ground.

  Garric glanced over his shoulder. Kore was close behind, pacing easily on all fours. She'd stripped palm fronds to weave between the long fingers of either hand, increasing their surface area the way the webs of a frog's feet do. She grinned, though her long face touched the expression with savage horror.

  "Leel, it's getting bloody late!" Platt called. "We should've waited till morning."

  "Shut up, you fool, or you needn't worry about bogeys!" Leel snarled back.

  Lights winked ahead, then vanished in a curl of mist. "About time," one of the men muttered.

  "Look to the left, lad," warned Carus, seeing more with Garric's eyes than the owner did. At first Garric thought he was seeing another island half a mile away. The outlines were too square, though, and when the mist cleared momentarily he thought he glimpsed window alcoves and turrets on two corners.

  "Master Leel?" Garric called. "Is that a palace out in the lake there?"

  The leader's feathered bicorn jerked around. "Just shut your mouth, fellow!" he said in a tone of desperate anger. "Anything you want to know, keep it to ask Milord, you hear?"

  Garric didn't reply. Leel was obviously frightened; there was no point in taking offense at what he blurted.

  "He's not a man I'd judge to be easily frightened, either," Carus said. "Well, it could be he doesn't like the dark. Some folk are that way."

  The ghost laughed again. Neither he nor Garric thought Leel was afraid of the dark; but a sword and the will to use it could get you through a lot of situations, frightening and otherwise.

  They'd come close enough to see that the lights were pots hanging from poles and leaping with smoky, deep red flames. "Faugh!" growled Kore. "It's tar they're burning."

  Garric hadn't doubted her, but the breeze curled smoke toward him and he coughed uncontrollably. Even after he was clear of the wisps, the back of his throat felt flayed.

  "Milord!" Leel cried. "We've found travellers! It may be one's the man you seek!"

  It was fully dark, now. The flares stretched a furlong both east and west along the shore of the tar lake, though only those toward the middle were hung from poles. People, primarily men but some women and a few children, passed in partial silhouette against the low flames.

  The men beneath the hanging lights were armed, several of them carrying shields as well as wearing bits of armor. The man they clustered about wore a striped cape of thin silk and a helmet decorated with the tail plumage of some flightless bird.

  "Milord, he rides on a giant!" Platt cried, obviously trying to curry favor. "I guess that proves he's the one you're looking for, right?"

  "Milord," said Garric, walking toward the man in the plumed helmet. He bowed, low enough to show deference without cringing. "I'm Garric or-Reise, a traveller from the north and just passing through your remarkable domain."

  "Bring him up into the light where I can see him," Holm grumbled. He stepped back to make room, his gauzy cape fluttering. It was obviously for ornament rather than warmth in this steamy bowl.

  Garric had thought Holm's apparent height was a trick of the plume and perhaps buskins, but even in thin silk slippers the fellow stood a hand's-breadth taller than Garric. He was thin as well, though not particularly healthy: his cheeks were puffy and his hand trembled where he gripped his cross-belt.

  Holm's eyes moved from the ogre—squatting placidly on the ground, a coarse mix of gravel and bits of clam shell—to Shin, and finally to the hilt of Garric's long sword. He looked up abruptly and said, "I'm a wizard, you know!"

  "Master Leel had mentioned that," Garric said easily. The situation wasn't dangerous yet, but it could very quickly get that way. From the look of Holm's retainers, the fellow supplemented the income of his groves with banditry. The tar lake with its hidden paths would be as safe a lair as any mountain crag. But Holm appeared to have a use for him . . . .

  "Leel also said I might be able to do you a favor of some sort," Garric continued. "While my companions and I are merely passing through, we're certainly willing to show our gratitude to you for passage."

  "You'll need more than gratitude, you know," Holm snapped. "Unless you can swim the strait—"

  He pointed behind him. Garric could smell salt in the air, and waves sounded faintly on a strand.

  "—and that's three miles wide. The only ship that can cross it is mine. You see your position, fellow?"

  The tossing flames from the tar pots lighted hard faces and weapons close at hand. Lord Holm had twenty or thirty bodyguards—

  "Twenty-seven," interjected Carus. "And Holm himself, if you want to count him."

  —probably as much to control the laborers—the grubbies, Wagga had called them—who tended his orchards as to loot his neighbors. From beyond the ring of armed men, those laborers watched. They were slight folk wearing minimal garments and seemed the same type as the farmers Garric had seen north of the teak forest.

  "I've already told you, milord," Garric said, keeping his voice pleasant but making his control obvious, "that I'm willing to do you a courtesy. If you'll ask politely, we can settle the matter and proceed—I hope—to my purchasing food for me and my companions."

  Under normal circumstances life for the laborers under Holm wouldn't be much different than the living they scratched for landlords of their own race. Now, from what Wagga'd said, they were risking the guards' wrath to run away.

  "Yes, a goat would be very welcome," Kore said, startling those standing near her. A spearman jumped sideways, tangled his feet, and crashed to the ground
in a storm of curses.

  "Courtesy, you say?" Holm said. He shot a glance at Leel, then glared at Garric. "Very well. My palace—the palace of my family for seven generations—is out on the lake. Perhaps you saw it when my men guided you across?"

  "A fort made of bitumen blocks?" Garric said. "Yes, we did."

  "It's a palace," Holm said with a flash of irritation. "It's very well appointed. If the walls are asphalt instead of stone, what of it?"

  He cleared his throat. "But that's neither here nor there," he continued. "My laborers are a superstitious lot. They've gotten it into their minds that the shapes which wind twists the fog into are ghosts, so they refuse to go out to tend the orchards. And I must admit—"

  Holm made a sour face and looked around him. Guards dropped their eyes rather than meet his glance.

  "—that they've infected some of my retainers. What I want as price of your passage across the strait—"

  He stared at Garric. He looked something like a dyspeptic owl.

  "—is for you to spend the night in my palace. That will break the spell. The, ah, rumor, that is. No more than that. If you refuse—"

  Garric curtly waved Lord Holm to silence. If the fool kept on, he was going to say something that couldn't easily be ignored.

  "Milord," he said. "I have your promise of passage for me and my companions if we spend the night in that black palace? On your life, you swear?"

  "I do," said Holm. "That's all you need do, and I'll give you every help."

  "And a goat," said ogre. "A goat tonight. And other food, no doubt, as my master wishes."

  "Yes, a goat!" said Holm. The quivering light increased his look of agitation. "Do you agree, fellow? Do you?"

  "And one other thing," said Shin, his first words since they'd crossed the tar lake. "We will need a guide. Which of your brave men will guide us, milord?"

  "There's no need of that," said Leel. "There's a causeway from here on the south shore straight to the palace. The lake shifts some. They built a causeway so's it couldn't be cut off. Long ago. Long, long ago."

  Garric looked at his companions. The aegipan was smiling; Kore rose to her feet.

  "Then we agree," Garric agreed. "Master Leel, will you lead us to this causeway, if you please?"

  "After they bring the goat, dear master," said the ogre. "I feel a meal should be a good one if it might be my last, don't you think?"

  She began to laugh in a booming voice. In Garric's mind, King Carus laughed also with the joy of bloody anticipation.

  * * *

  Ilna stood in the mouth of the cave, looking toward the valley's slope. The sun behind her must be down, but she couldn't yet see stars above the shadowed land.

  "We ought to be out there!" Asion muttered from within the cave. "Karpos, you know we should."

  A child whimpered. Its mother crooned, "Hush little baby . . .," but Ilna could hear fear in the woman's voice also. All the men in the village were far from the cave and safety, certain victims if Temple's plan didn't work.

  "If we were all visible, we might draw some of the Coerli to us," Temple said calmly. "They won't come after Ilna alone in the doorway, not with easy prey elsewhere. She'll tell us when it's time for us to come out."

  The air grew hazy but brightened. In the high sky the alien sun formed the way blood seeps from a pin-prick. Four lines of red wizardlight quivered on the hillside, outlining a doorway, and a trio of hunters bounded from their world into that of humans.

  A villager beneath the dam at the far end of the valley began winding a bull-roarer through the air, making a rhythmic drone that echoed from the slopes. The leading Coerli had started toward the cave in their usual pattern, but the sound drew their attention to the men of the community gathered in the open. He began spinning his hooked cord, although he was nearly a mile from his intended prey.

  A warrior gave a yipping howl and bounded toward the men. More Coerli sprang from door of light. Those and the further catmen following spread to the flanks of the initial trio, widening the living net.

  More Coerli appeared in threes; then the final clot, the younger warriors, chasing after their elders as a rabble. The total number was beyond Ilna's ability to count on the fingers of both hands, but she identified the pattern of the hunters as being the same as what she'd seen the previous night when all of the beasts had left their lair.

  "All right," she said to her companions. She didn't look back into the cave. "They're all here. They're running toward the head of the valley."

  Temple raised the clumsy trumpet he'd borrowed from the villagers. It was a wooden cone as long as his outstretched arm, fitted with a mouthpiece carved from a goat's thighbone. He blatted a harsh call toward the men beneath the dam.

  The bull-roarer stopped with a brief moan. The villager spinning it—Gressar'd been carrying the device when they hiked to the dam this morning—must've just let go of the cord when Temple signalled.

  Ilna watched for a moment further to be sure the trumpet call hadn't affected the pack of Coerli. Then she said, "All right, they're still focused on the men."

  Temple set the trumpet upright on the ground. He and the two hunters swung out of the cave and started toward the outlined portal, letting Ilna set the pace. Behind them the women of the village dragged the heavy door closed. One had begun to sob.

  Ilna disliked running—and ran poorly, the main reason she disliked it—but it was necessary now. She'd learned that her legs and lungs wouldn't actually fail her if she was willing to keep on despite the pain. She couldn't imagine circumstances in which she'd permit pain to dictate her behavior, so she simply trotted along with an angry look on her face. The expression wasn't a new one for her, of course.

  The dam collapsed with a series of hollow klocks. Stones knocked against each other as they fell out of alignment and water pressure pushed the whole structure into ruin.

  Temple had arranged the project this morning, showing Gressar and his fellows where to place their levers. Ilna hadn't been sure the villagers would be able to execute the plan, but neither had she seen a practical alternative. If the villagers failed, of course, the catmen would kill them.

  She smiled faintly. And then they'd kill Ilna and her companions, whose lives also depended on the river's sudden return to the valley it'd been diverted from. She should be able to do for a few more Coerli even in that case, though. Since she neither expected nor desired to live forever, being slaughtered now rather than later didn't concern her greatly.

  The planted fields were even more unpleasant to cross going uphill than they'd been when Ilna'd run down them when she'd arrived in the valley. She couldn't say it was pleasant to get to the end of the furrows—she was still jogging uphill, after all—but it was less unpleasant. That was as much as Ilna expected from life, after all.

  Her lips twitched in another tiny smile. "Less unpleasant" was more than she expected from life.

  She glanced over her right shoulder. Pent-up water frothed and curled as it poured through the displaced stones. The flow built up as it ate away more and more of the dam that'd diverted it, shoving out blocks from both edges, but even so the volume wasn't enough to fill the valley as a solid wall. The catmen howled in surprise and anger, but they had no difficulty in bounding up either slope to avoid the oncoming water.

  The villagers who'd ripped the first hole in the base of the dam would've been surely drowned if they hadn't had the raft of massive timbers to clamber onto. Half the houses in the village were in ruins even before the water reached them and undermined their walls: the rooftrees had supplied the materials to make the raft.

  There were thirty-one in the labor party, Temple had said: thirty adult males and the woman Stuna. She'd insisted on coming even though she wasn't strong enough or heavy enough to add much to the task. The raft was big enough to hold them all, but the coiling, bubbling water rocked it so violently that several fell off as Ilna watched; they clung to grass ropes which she'd braided from roof thatch while Temple prepar
ed the dam for destruction and the hunters built the raft itself.

  "We're here!" said Asion, halting at the gate of light. Close up, Ilna saw a shimmering membrane within the brighter rectangular outlines. "Mistress, what do we do?"

  Temple looked at Ilna and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged. He understood the situation better than she did; she'd be a fool to give orders simply to prove that she could. She'd felt the impulse, but at least she'd fought it down before she proved herself a fool. This time.

  "We wait here and kill the warriors as they try to return," Temple said to the hunters. "When we've killed the last of them, we enter the world on the other side of the portal and finish the job."

  Asion looked toward Ilna doubtfully. "Yes," she said, as she determined the pattern she'd use this night. "It's not a complicated problem."