by David Drake
He looked to the west, and as he did so there was a glint of vivid red light from the peak opposite. The sun reflecting from mica in the granite, Cashel thought.
The glare lit the whole opposite slope, then shrank again to a vivid dazzle. It capered on the peak for a moment, then flashed like lightning to an outcrop halfway to the valley floor. A clump of waist-high larches, stunted by the poor soil, exploded into flame.
"He's coming," Kotia said. Her voice had lost its edge of anger. "Now he'll kill me."
"Get into the cave," Cashel said, starting his quarterstaff into a slow spin in front of him. The broad ledge in front of the cave was the closest thing to flat ground anywhere in sight. "I won't be able to look out for you when things get moving."
Kotia said something, protested probably, but Cashel wasn't listening any more. He didn't want to clip her with a backswing of the staff, but there wasn't time to argue.
Kakoral flashed to the base of the valley, momentarily out of Cashel's sight among the slender willows. Steam gushed with a sound like rocks cracking.
Cashel placed hand over hand, spinning the staff gradually faster. The ferrules began to blur. He wondered if the demon would leap over him to the slope above and attack from behind. If the fool girl hadn't gotten into the cave, she'd be in serious danger…
The demon flared into view on the slope just below Cashel. He didn't move. There was nothing and then he was there, hunching forward; red and orange like light glinting from jewels, not the warmer color of fire. He stood in a tangle of wild roses; they shriveled away from his clawed feet.
"I am Kakoral!" he said. "I've come for my daughter!"
"If you mean the girl Kotia," Cashel said, speaking in the rhythm of his spinning quarterstaff, "then she's with me now."
The demon was the size of a man when he first appeared-rangy, tall despite his stoop, and with arms so long that his knuckles struck sparks from the ground. His form was of light, not flesh. In the blazing shimmer as Kakoral moved, Cashel glimpsed buildings and forests and spider-limbed monsters.
"With you?" Kakoral thundered. "Did my daughter tell you what she has done?"
"I don't care what she's done," said Cashel. He wasn't shouting, but his voice came out as a husky growl. "Go away and we won't trouble you!"
Without moving, Kakoral was suddenly the height of the peaks which hedged about the valley. His legs were the trunks of great trees, and his clawed fingers reached down from the heavens to pluck Cashel out of the way.
Cashel brought the staff up and around, still spinning. A buttcap smashed into the demon's index finger with a blast of azure wizardlight. To Cashel the shock was like hitting the side of a cliff, but he was used to that. He let the impact reverse his sweep from sunwise to widdershins, punching the other end of the staff into Kakoral's thumb.
The demon gave a great crackling roar. He was man-sized again, glaring at Cashel with a face like a burning skull. Diamonds of blue wizardlight dripped from the ferrules of the spinning quarterstaff and bounced across the landscape before slowly dissipating.
"She is mine," Kakoral said. "She ate the flesh of her mother, and for that I will have her!"
"Go away!" Cashel snarled. He was panting, but he could keep this up for a while longer. Maybe long enough; he'd know when it was over. "She's with-"
Kakoral leaped for Cashel's face and met a ferrule in blue fire and a thunderclap. The demon zigzagged downslope: a flash that disintegrated the trunk of a larch; a flash that cracked a boulder, leaving half standing and the rest a slump of jagged pebbles; a flash that split willows leaning over the streambank, their bark sloughing and the slender whips of their branches drawn up in coils like singed hair.
Kakoral screamed like trees breaking under the weight of winter ice. He flashed toward Cashel and the quarterstaff met him again. The blast shook loose rock from the slope for as far as a good archer could shoot an arrow.
Cashel stood unmoved, rotating the staff before him, sure of himself and now sure of his opponent. The demon caromed downhill again, then in an eyeblink stood where first he'd spoken. Dew wrung from the night air sizzled beneath his feet.
"Tell me your name, champion," Kakoral said, "and I'll give you a gift. Tell me your name, unless you're afraid to."
"I'm not afraid," Cashel growled. He could barely understand his own words; his voice rasped like the sound of nothing living. "I'm Cashel or-Kenset, and I don't want anything of you but your absence!"
The demon laughed like flames chuckling beneath a cauldron. "Perhaps not, Cashel or-Kenset," he said, "but I offer my gift anyway."
He reached into his pulsing chest and came out with what looked like a handful of fire. Cashel braced himself to dodge or bat away the missile, but instead the demon laughed again and opened his hand to let rubies spill onto the ground at Cashel's feet.
"My gift, champion," Kakoral said. "When you're in doubt about your course, break one and let it guide you. They will do no harm to you or my daughter, unless you're afraid of the truth."
"I'm not afraid of you, and I don't need you for a guide," Cashel said. He shuffled a step toward the demon, spinning the quarterstaff faster. "Go now, or I'll speed your way!"
Kakoral laughed; and, laughing, vanished as if he never was. Where moments before the demon had stood hunching, dustmotes spun in the first rays of the sun slanting down from the peaks behind.
Cashel let the quarterstaff slow to a halt, then butted it firmly on the ground and leaned onto it. He was shivering so badly that for a moment he was afraid that the staff wouldn't be enough support. Well, he'd sit if he had to.
Kotia walked in front of Cashel and faced him. "I chose well," she said. Her face was set, but a vein in her throat throbbed and her nostrils were flared. "At least if it was me who chose you, I chose well."
"I didn't have anything to do with it," Cashel said. His voice was coming back, but his throat was as dry as flaked granite. "I was fighting a snake and then I was here."
Kotia bent and began picking up the rubies, dropping each into the palm of her left hand. Cashel frowned, then said in more of a snarl than he'd intended, "Leave them! We don't need anything that comes from him."
The girl stood, facing him again with the same still expression. "Are you afraid of the truth?" she said, once again the imperious wizard who had dragged Cashel from the cave of choking fire.
"No!" he said. "Of course not!"
"Neither am I," said Kotia. She eyed an outcrop to the right of where she stood.
"Direct us to Lord Bossian's manor!" she cried, and hurled one of the rubies into the rock.
The jewel shattered in a sizzle of light. Cashel instinctively brought his staff across his body and stepped between Kotia and the flare of red. A tiny simulacrum of Kakoral capered on the outcrop, then spread its arms as though holding up something far bigger than its body. In the air, but as real as the rock and trees and sunlight, appeared a woman and the demon Kakoral. They stood in a workroom lit only by the coals of a great hearth.
"My mother Laterna," Kotia whispered, gripping Cashel's forearm. "That was her laboratory beneath our manor. She was a wizard."
The demon stood arms akimbo, his shimmering form brighter than the coals behind him. He lifted his head back in laughter which Cashel's memory supplied to the silent image. Laterna touched the broach on her left shoulder; a shimmering shift like Kotia's slipped from her body. She stepped toward the demon. He remained motionless except for the way his throat worked as he laughed.
Gripping Kakoral's shoulders with her hands, Laterna lifted herself onto him, then lowered her sex onto his. The demon's fiery arms encircled her while he continued to laugh.
The image faded slowly. The simulacrum on the rock grinned and pointed with one arm. A line of rosy wizardlight streamed along the slope to the north, then vanished behind the high ground.
Kotia stepped a pace back and met Cashel's eyes. "Here," she said, holding out the remainder of the jewels. "Put them in your wallet. We may wa
nt them again."
"Right," said Cashel. His skin pickled with the desire to say something to the girl, but he wasn't sure what the words should be. Instead he said, "We'd best be going, then."
The track of wizardlight remained though the imp had disappeared. They started to follow it. Neither of them spoke.
***
"You've missed the meeting with Vicar Uzinga that was scheduled for the fourth hour," Liane said, holding the four-leafed wax tablet on which she kept Garric's appointments. "And the meeting following it with Lord Waldron about integrating the Count's Household Troops into the Royal Army. We can take the vicar in place of dinner, but I suggest you tell Waldron to consider his recommendations to have been approved. He'll be more flattered by the tacit approval than offended that you've cancelled a meeting with him."
Garric frowned. "Frankly, I'd rather see Waldron than the vicar," he said. "I don't have anything to tell Uzinga except to take Reise's advice on every matter where Reise makes a recommendation-and that if he doesn't, he'll be lucky if heonly loses his office as vicar."
The doors of the reception room were open, waiting for the start of Prince Garric's afternoon levee. The presence of the usher standing in the doorway might not have been enough to keep back the would-be petitioners who packed the hall beyond, but those waiting knew that the detachment of Blood Eagles on guard would take up where the usher's authority left off-with naked swords if necessary.
"I think it's necessary that you-that Prince Garric-say just that to Vicar Uzinga," Liane said. She grinned. "Well, with a little more tact, perhaps."
She sobered and continued, "Remember that Lord Uzinga is a noble. No matter what other people have told him, he won't in his heart believe he's supposed to do what a commoner like Reise suggests. If you tell him that he's to obey yourfather Reise, then there's a much better chance that youwon't have to remove him from office."
Garric grimaced. "Right, Vicar Uzinga during dinner," he said.
With a sudden smile he added, "Liane, I've suddenly realized something. In any kind of governmental business, the correct choice is always to do the thing you least want to do. Now that I've found the formula, perhaps I can hand my duties over to somebody else and do something I'd like to do instead?"
The crowd in the hallway was noisy. Individually the petitioners spoke in hushed voices, each to his neighbor and supporters. In sum, the noise was like that of gannet rookeries on the spikes of rock off the east coast of Haft. Garric looked at the first hopeful faces in the open doors, sighed, and said, "I suppose we'd better start running them through. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll finish."
Though in his heart he knew he'd never finish, that even if he listened to complaints, prayers, and suggestions till midnight, there'd still be people waiting with more of the same. But he was more afraid of being cut off from the reality of ordinary citizens' lives the way King Valence had been than he was of being ground down by the minutiae of government.
"I miss you being able to read Celondre to me in the evenings," Liane said with a soft smile.
"I miss being able to get a good night's sleep," Garric muttered, rubbing his temples. He'd said what he meant without thinking, and he cringed even as he heard his response to his lover's gentle romance.
Acting quickly, he turned to Liane and took her small, shapely hands in his. "Liane," he said, ignoring the guards and petitioners and officials andeverybody else watching. "Tonight I'll read you Celondre. Maybe getting back into old habits will help me sleep without dreams that tell me to make a fool of myself, besides."
Liane looked at him with a shocked expression. What did I say now ? Garric thought, frustrated and a little angry that he didn't seem to be able to do the right thing even when he tried his hardest.
"Garric?" she said. "You mentioned your dreams. Did you suggest using the Shrine of the Prophesying Sister because of a dream?"
"Well, not that shrine, I didn't even know about it," Garric said, trying to call back the memories. "But yeah, it was a dream that made me think of the Sister at all!"
He could see where Liane was going-where she'd gotten ahead of him-and excitement had washed away his depressed lethargy of moments before. This was progress, this was a way forward that might lead past the wall between Cashel and his friends!
Garric stood. The usher at the door watched eagerly, ready to let through the first of the petitioners.
"Citizens of the Isles!" Garric said in the voice King Carus would have used to bellow orders through the clamor of the battlefield. "I've been called away by a sudden opportunity-"
He'd started to say "emergency" but he'd changed the word as it started to roll off his tongue. A prince can start a panic by an unfortunate choice of phrase.
"-greatly to the benefit of the kingdom! This audience is cancelled!"
"Close the doors!" Liane called to the guards. They probably couldn't hear her over the sudden uproar in the hall, but they got the idea. The usher squeaked, pressed between the door and the petitioners, but the soldiers put their backs into it. They slammed the valves closed, then slid the bronze bar through the staples to make sure they stayed closed.
Liane had already snapped shut the travel desk in which she carried important papers. She was at Garric's side as they turned to the door at the back which opened onto the courtyard. "To Tenoctris?" she said, less a question than an affirmation.
"Right," said Garric, stepping through the door which one of the guards on the portico had already thrown open. He took the desk out of Liane's hand into his own, his left. She could carry it, but they were moving fast and to him it weighed almost nothing.
Keeping his right hand free for his sword was a reflex from King Carus. It came to the surface when Garric was excited, even at times-like this one-when it wasn't necessary.
Though you never knew for sure when it would be necessary.
All the suites around this small garden were held by Garric and his immediate entourage-his friends, not members of the staff. The guards looked surprised but properly held their posts while Garric and Liane ran up the stairs that led to Tenoctris' suite on the second floor. The six guards from the reception room followed, their equipment belts and studded leather aprons clattering.
The noise-meant to frighten enemies when the royal army charged-brought Sharina out onto the landing with the Pewle knife in her hand. She and Garric both had learned hard lessons since they left Barca's Hamlet.
Garric thought of Ilna and Cashel. They'd changed as well, perhaps even more.
"It's all right," he said, stepping into the study as his sister hopped back from the doorway when she saw who was coming. "Liane had an idea and we need to tell Tenoctris."
"Yes?" said the wizard, looking up from the tile floor. She sat on a cushion, probably Sharina's idea because Garric had never seen Tenoctris pay attention to comfort when she had work to do. She'd drawn a large six-pointed star in cinnabar, then written words of power around its margin. On the floor inside the figure were codices, scrolls, and a few loose manuscripts.
"Tenoctris," said Liane, closing the door in the face of the guards following, "it was a dream that led Garric to suggest going to the Shrine of the Sister. I think it was a sending."
"I thought it was just…," Garric said. He was embarrassed because the idea hadn't occurred to him immediately. "I'd been worried about the two priesthoods and looking like I was taking sides. And I had a dream of the past, a fantasy I know-the sort of Golden Age that Celondre or Rigal would describe, a sunny day and happy peasants worshipping the Great Gods. But the priest of the Sister was there too, and I thought…"
"There's only one active temple to the Sister in Carcosa," Liane said, taking out a notebook that she didn't need. "Someone who wanted Garric-or Garric's friends-to enter a temple of the Sister wouldn't have to specify any particular temple."
"Wonderful!" said Tenoctris. She started to get up, then changed her mind and sank onto the cushion again. Leaning forward she started to shift
the books out of the hexagram but paused again.
"I think it would be better for me to do the directional spell from where you were when you had the dream, Garric," she said. "Could we-"
"Yes," said Garric, hoping he didn't sound curt. "What do you need with you?"
"Well, my satchel," Tenoctris said, "and-"
Garric snatched up the satchel and the pot of cinnabar sitting open beside it.
"-perhaps Cantorf'sDream of Scio, which should be-"
"I have it," said Sharina, reaching under an open scroll and coming up with the small codex which had been completely hidden beneath it.
"Then let's go," Tenoctris said, rising with Liane's help. "I wasn't able to trace the attack, but a wizard of my limited powers should be able to determine the source of the dream."
"Power's the easy part of any job," said King Carus, watching as Garric jerked open the door to the inner hallway and his own suite beyond. "Directing it to the right point is what wins battles-and saves kingdoms, if our luck's in!"
***
"The Bird of the Tide," said Chalcus, beaming at the ship lashed to the quay on which he stood with Ilna and Merota. "She's old, I grant you, but still tight as you please. In her day they built with pegs and tenons instead of just trenails holding the strakes to the frames. I'd trust theBird in storms that'd swamp any of the light-built coasters being tacked together on this coast in the past thirty years!"
Six solid-looking men stood together in the stern. They'd stopped murmuring among themselves when Chalcus and the three females appeared, but none of them had spoken to the visitors. Mistress Kaline stood two paces back in prim disapproval.
"She looks trim," said Ilna, which was closer to a lie than she liked to hear come from her mouth. "And of course I trust your judgment on ships as far as I do mine about fabrics, Master Chalcus."