by David Drake
Indeed, there wasn't anyone Ilna could think of who didn't deserve better, though there were no few she'd met who she'd send to a clean death without scruple or hesitation. But these despicable creatures were here on their own responsibility, not hers.
She smiled. She wasn't responsible for anybody's presence save her own.
She was descending. Because she'd been in caves before, she expected at least a hint of dampness if not water running along the floor. The air here was as dry as that of the sere grasslands above.
And of course the rock was sandstone, not limestone where natural caves appeared. There was nothing natural about this place. Well, she'd known that.
"The Messengers will bow before her!" the little voices chittered. "Oh, what power she has!"
When Ilna didn't look at the creatures, their sounds made her think of rats. Even to her eyes, the way they scuttled was ratlike.
The walls of the cave were wide near the ceiling but bulged in before spreading again at the bottom. There was plenty of room to walk, but Ilna had the feeling that the walls were reaching for her. She hated rock and she hated this cave; but she hated the catmen more. She expected to pay to get the things she wanted.
"What will she demand?" the voices twittered. "Oh, such power! She will rule the Messengers as they rule wretched creatures like us!"
The light had no source and no color. It was gray, the gray of the Hell Ilna'd walked in till she surrendered her soul to evil and gained skills no human could have mastered. In the Hell-light Ilna saw deep into the rock, the patterns locked there in crystalline horror: death and doom and chaos, all drawn in detail.
Oh, yes. She had power. And soon perhaps she would have the power to kill every Corl there was.
The light became fiercer at each step. How deep had she gone? Into the earth, into the mountain? Usually Ilna had a feeling for time—if not for distance the way her brother Cashel did—but the rock confused her.
She'd been buried in this place. She'd buried herself.
And she wasn't alone. The creatures scampered when her eyes fell on them, crawled when they thought she wasn't looking. They wore no-colored clothing and she never saw their features.
"She'll put out the sun/move the stars from their courses/bring back the age of fire and ice!"
The walls of the passage began to sprout spiky nodules like sea urchins. At first Ilna thought it was lichen, but when she paused for a closer look she found that the growths were crystals extruded from the rock itself. She'd never seen anything like that on sandstone. It was as unexpected as finding maggots in a melon.
She continued on, trying not to look to the sides. Her mouth was set in a line of fierce disapproval, and her fingers knotted and picked out patterns in yarn.
She'd done the same things when she stepped into Hell and became lost to the world. She'd done the same things the previous time she stepped into Hell. Her smile quirked. This time at least she knew the way.
The smile faded. Garric wouldn't arrive to save her here, though. That didn't matter. If she destroyed the Coerli as she'd come to do, then nothing else mattered.
"She will meet the Messengers!" the voices chirped. The distorted creatures covered the floor of the corridor behind Ilna. Rats the size of dogs, large dogs . . . . "She is meeting the Messengers and they will bow to her! They will bow!"
Ilna stepped into a spherical chamber. It was huge, far too big for her to judge its true size. All the buildings and groves and terraces of the palace in Valles could fit into it.
In the center hung a spinning pink glow. It lit the cavern the way the sun did the surface world.
Ilna noticed that the sandstone walls were banded as far up as she could see. The markings were more vivid than those she'd seen on the bluffs before she entered the passage, but she must be far beneath the surface of the world she'd left.
YOU HAVE COME TO US, said voices in her head, each echoing the other and switching order from syllable to syllable. The sticky pink light trembled in measure with the words. WHAT DO YOU WISH, WIZARD?
Ilna focused on the light with the eyes of her mind just as she would a pattern she intended to weave.
The light had a pattern. It shifted as the separate nodes wound around and even through one another. The nodes had shapes, but what Ilna saw of them were the constantly changing parts that they showed to this world for a particular instant.
And the lights were speaking.
WE ARE THE MESSENGERS, the silent voices said. WE HAVE ALL KNOWLEDGE, WIZARD, AND WE OFFER IT TO YOU.
"She is powerful," the gray figures moaned softly. "Never was there one so powerful as she, or almost never."
They spread across the floor of the cavern like mold on rotting fruit, never coming as close to Ilna as her foot would reach if she lashed out. Their smell was overpowering. It seemed to be compounded of old urine and rancid sweat.
How long had wizards been coming here? The squirming mass seemed the size of an army assembled for review; greater than the largest crowds that came to hear Garric speak in the plaza before the palace.
"I want you to kill all the Coerli!" Ilna said. She raised her voice, but it still became lost in the chamber's vastness. "I'm told you can do anything. Can you? I want you to kill them all!"
WE DO NOT ACT, WIZARD, the voices said. WE CANNOT ACT, FOR WE ARE IMPRISIONED HERE APART FROM YOUR UNIVERSE. BUT WE HAVE KNOWLEDGE, AND THAT WE WILL SHARE.
A vast sigh stirred the air of the chamber. Perhaps it came from the assembled creatures, things once human but fallen from that state when they reached the Messengers. It seemed, though, that the world itself had breathed out its despair.
YOU WISH TO KILL THE COERLI, the voices said. WE WILL SHOW YOU HOW . . . .
She was no longer seeing the whirling lights. Instead—
A band of Coerli, two handsful less one, ringed a human family. The father held a spear. He lunged at a warrior who leaped aside with contemptuous ease. Warriors to either side spun out hooked lines. One wrapped around the man's throat and jerked him backward; the other line lashed the spear shaft to the man's wrist while the beast who'd thrown it pulled in the opposite direction.
The man thrashed and choked until a third warrior stabbed him up through the diaphragm with a flint knife. Then—
A group of Coerli chieftains—grizzled, bearing the scars of age and harsh living—sat on a circle of rocks. Around them stood more of the beasts, too many to count. They were howling in blood-maddened passion. Then—
A female Corl even older than the chiefs stood in a roofless wicker enclosure. She chanted and marked time with an athame carved from slate. Around her paraded images, ghosts of ghosts to Ilna's eyes.
Most were man-shaped black creatures like the corpses Ilna'd seen when they found Temple. In the distance, though, a nude woman poised at the edge of a pool. The black things seemed to ignore her. Then—
Coerli were devouring their prey. The band's fur was subtly different from the spots and striping of the first catmen the Messengers had shown her, though few other humans would've been sure of that. A beast stuck an infant's arm into his mouth and drew it out, stripping the flesh from the bones the way a man might eat a chicken wing. Then—
The Messengers hung in the center of the cavern again, pulsing at the rhythm of blood. Their voices said, BRING HER A KNIFE.
"A knife for the wizard," chorused the rat voices. There was motion in the carpet of hunched foulness. "She must have a knife, and we will bring it."
"I have a knife if I need one!" Ilna said, taking the bone-cased paring knife from her sleeve and drawing the blade. It was fine steel, worn thin but sharp enough to split hairs.
A golden sickle appeared at the entrance to the passage; it shimmered forward from hand to unseen hand. One of the creatures bent closer, depositing the blade in the cleared space around Ilna. He shrank back into the mass of his fellows. The curved blade reflected the light of the Messengers as a putrescent hue that Ilna wouldn't have thought possible from
gold.
"I said I have a knife!" she repeated.
BRING HER THE SACRIFICE, the Messengers said. The light they cast clung like treacle to everything it touched. SHE WILL GAIN HER DESIRE. SHE WILL KILL ALL COERLI.
Ilna used her foot to deliberately shove the sickle back into the crowd of servitors. She looked up at the spinning pink blurs. "Why must I sacrifice to you?" she said harshly.
"She will kill them all!" mewled the servitors. "Oh, such power, power beyond any other's!"
YOU DO NOT SACRIFICE TO US, WIZARD, said the voices. THE BLOOD IS POWER. YOU STAND WHERE THE WORLDS TOUCH, SO YOU ACT THROUGH ALL WORLDS.
Ilna heard a rustle. She turned to see the gray once-men handing toward her what she first thought was a bundle of fur. It stirred in the pink light: it was a Corl, a kit no more than four or five weeks old. Its eyes were still closed. When the servitors deposited it in the cleared space, it mewled uncomfortably.
TAKE THE SACRIFICE, the Messengers said. CUT THE CORL'S THROAT. Then they repeated, THE BLOOD IS POWER.
"She will kill it," the servitors whispered exultantly. "She will drain the blood of the Coerli, every one of them!"
A gray creature pushed the kit with an arm or leg, Ilna couldn't be sure which. The little victim yowled and tried to bite.
"Get away!" Ilna said, bending forward. If the servitor hadn't instantly flung itself back into the crowd of its fellows, she'd have slashed it open with the knife she still held.
Ilna paused, then scooped the kit up with her left hand. She expected it to snarl, but instead it writhed against the warmth of her bosom.
YOU MUST LET OUT THE BLOOD OF THE SACRIFICE, said the thunderous voices. ONLY WITH ITS DEATH CAN YOU GAIN YOUR WISH AND GO FREE.
Over the years Ilna had killed unnumbered animals—mostly doves from her own cote, but sometimes chickens bartered from other householders in the borough. Since she'd set off on her mission of wiping out the catmen, she'd killed them too, old and young; as young as this.
She'd mostly knocked the kits' brains out against rocks; their teeth were too sharp to hold by the head and snap their necks as she did with poultry. She could use the paring knife easily enough, though she'd have to hold the kit so that its blood didn't spurt on her tunics.
Ilna looked up at the Messengers. "I won't make a blood sacrifice!" she said, thrusting her knife into its case and putting it away in her sleeve. She took out a hank of yarn. "Tell me another way or I'm leaving here."
YOU MUST LET OUT THE BLOOD OF THE SACRIFICE, said the voices. YOU CAME TO US. YOU CANNOT RETURN UNTIL YOU CARRY OUT YOUR TASK.
"She must kill the Corl," the servitors cheeped. She heard laughter in the high-pitched tones. "She must comply or she will join us-s-s . . .!"
Ilna held the kit in the crook of her left elbow. Its presence was a handicap, but not a great one; she began knotting a pattern. The gray creatures had eyes. Her skill could reach them, paralyze them as she ran back up the passage that had brought her here. The passage that had returned her to Hell . . . .
She held up the pattern.
HER WEAKNESS HAS BETRAYED HER, the Messengers boomed. SHE IS YOURS.
The pink light vanished, leaving total blackness.
"She is ours!" squealed creatures as numerous as waves in a storm. Warm, probing foulness swarmed over Ilna in the dark.
* * *
"Run for the cliff!" Cashel shouted. The crabs could climb, but at least it'd slow them down a bit. Here on the shingle they were nigh as fast as a man. From the top of the corniche, he and Tenoctris could figure out what to do next. They could try to, anyway. If they let those crabs get hold of them, there wouldn't be anything left but picked bones.
Tenoctris had said something here didn't like them. That was true enough, not that he'd doubted her before.
The low cliff was less than a stone's throw away, but even though Tenoctris was young again, she wasn't much of a runner. It wasn't something ladies did as often as village girls like Sharina, Cashel supposed.
He kept behind her, which was a good thing because she tripped just short of the cliff. She'd have slammed straight into the rock if Cashel hadn't grabbed a handful of tunic right between her shoulder blades.
He yanked her back. Crab pincers carved into his heel. That hurt, which didn't matter; but they could've caught him a few fingers' breadth higher and cut his hamstring, which'd cripple him for life.
There wasn't time to talk or plan or do anything but act. One-handed—the other held his staff—Cashel straightened out his right arm fast and threw Tenoctris onto the corniche the way he'd have flung a heavy stone.
He turned, stamping on the crab that'd caught him. It was good to feel it splash his callused foot with juices as cold as the sea it'd crawled from, but there was more crabs than he could count coming right after it. He'd raised his staff, thinking he might be able to smash the crabs as they came toward him, but they were way too close and too many.
A crab closed both pinchers on his right calf, well above the ankle. More crowded close beside it. There was no time to plan . . . .
Cashel slammed a ferrule down on the crab that was holding him. He jumped upward, using his grip on the staff to lift him as he twisted his body around. If he'd had a running start, he might've been able to swing over the lip of the corniche. Flat-footed he was lucky to grab the top with his left hand. He hung there by one arm, supporting half his weight by the other balanced on the quarterstaff like it was a pillar.
Tenoctris was chanting. Cashel didn't know what she had in mind, but it was going to have to happen quick for it to do him any good. His right leg was bleeding and felt like he'd been whacked with a club. A pincher was still clamped in the muscle though the rest of the crab was mush down there on the shingle.
Crabs crawled over each other, piling up at the base of the cliff, but some were starting to climb. Cashel didn't have enough strength to lift himself over with one arm alone. He could make it if he let go of the staff, but he wasn't willing to do that and let it slip down into that mob of clicking yellow monsters.
It wasn't just that the staff was a weapon that he'd need if he managed to get up the cliff. Cashel and that length of hickory'd been in a lot of hard places together and'd gotten through to the other side. He wasn't going to leave it with the crabs.
He was starting to wobble, though. Strong as he was, he couldn't hold like this forever. He guessed if he had to he'd drop down onto the beach and smash as many crabs as he could before the rest pulled him under.
"Schaked!" shouted Tenoctris, waving the sword she used for a wand. Cashel expected a flash of wizardlight, but instead he heard the bugle of a hound that must be bigger'n he could believe.
Cashel looked over his shoulder. Around the headland came a beast with shaggy red hair and a skull longer than a man's arm. It was as big as two oxen. Its canines, upper and lower both, were long, but the teeth farther back in the jaws were built to shear or crush. It loped toward the mass of crabs, spraying back the shingle with its flat-clawed feet.
The crabs began to scatter, toward the sea in spreading ripples. The great dog-thing bugled again and was on them, lowering its long jaws to scoop them up on the run. It went through the scuttling yellow mass like a scythe through grain, slamming slavering its jaws to crush the crabs it'd caught in the moment previous. Legs, pincers, and parts of shell flew out the sides. Sea birds and surviving crabs would clean the shingle later.
The great beast wheeled, making the beach tremble. It weighed tons.
Cashel dropped to the ground. The only crabs near the cliff now were ones that'd been trampled in the first rush. Those still alive either twitched or tried to crawl back to the water; they weren't a danger. He couldn't get up on the corniche any better than he could've a moment before, and this big dog-thing could snatch him from where he hung as easy as a man plucks a pear from a low branch.
The beast whuffled. Cashel started his quarterstaff spinning, feeling twitches in muscles that he'd worked hard at awkwar
d angles just a moment before. The beast bugled again; it must eat carrion or else a lot of each meal stayed between its teeth to rot. It loped off in a curve along the edge of the water, sweeping up a second helping of crabs.
"It won't harm us," Tenoctris said.
Cashel took a deep breath. He brought the quarterstaff to a halt at his side, then turned and looked up.
Tenoctris smiled at him from the corniche. "If you'll help me," she went on, "I'll come down. I don't want to jump onto the rock."
"No ma'am," Cashel said. "And I don't want you to do that."
He leaned the staff against the cliff. When Tenoctris wriggled over the edge and hung by her hands; he gripped her around the waist and lowered her gently to the shingle.