by David Drake
"We'll stay here until dawn," Sharina said crisply. "There were some tapestries in the room where I-came here. Maybe we can dig them out for blankets. In the morning we'll go west toward…"
She didn't say the words, "Barca's Hamlet," from a sudden fear of what she might call down on the place that had been her home. That was superstition, ignorant foolishness; but the night was cold and she was very much alone despite Franca's helpless presence.
"May the Lady help me," she said.
"There's no point in praying to the Lady inthis world, mistress!" trilled the axe. "And you needn't pray to Her either, for She's a God who hates Mankind. But with Beard in your hand, ah, there's an ocean of blood to drink before the ice covers us!"
***
Moonlight streamed through the windows of Garric's suite as the mild breeze cleared the fumes of the recently-snuffed lamp. He was briefly aware of the linen sheets and the warmth of Liane beside him; then he slept and, sleeping, dreamed.
He stood in the ruins of a garden. Usually Garric was alone in his dreams; this time Carus shared his mind as the king did all Garric's waking hours. Phlox and trillium covered the ground, crowding the fallen statue of a winged female which some architect had placed here for interest.
"No place I've ever seen before," Carus muttered, his sword hand flexing. His image in Garric's mind wore a sword; but that too was only an image, an immaterial phantom like the ancient king himself.
"Nor me," said Garric. In the dream he wore the simple woolen tunic he'd gone to bed in. The air was muggy, but the stones underfoot felt cool.
At the back wall stood an altar; around it knelt a dozen or more figures. Men, Garric thought, but they slunk off toward the colonnades to either side, still hunched over. Apes, then, or perhaps bears.
Garric walked toward the altar. He wasn't sure his own mind guided his motions. Water pooled on worn flagstones and formed a marshy pond in the corner where cattails grew. Frogs trilled from the darkness, their calls punctuated by the coarsely strident shrieks of toads.
The altar was spotted with lichen and miniature forests of blooming moss; no sacrifice had been burned here in a human lifetime or longer, perhaps much longer. On it were heaps of apples, peaches, and a soft, fleshy fruit that looked vaguely like a catalpa pod, unfamiliar to Garric.
"Bananas," Carus said. "They grow them on the south coast of Shengy, but they don't travel."
Garric looked around. An ancient dogwood shaded the altar; its roots had forced apart the sides of the stone planter in which it grew. A stand of elderberries sprouted nearby. Was this Shengy? It seemed much like Haft, though warmer than normal for the season.
The odor of the shambling beasts hung in the air. It was musky; not unpleasant, but strange and therefore disquieting.
"The moon's closer than it ought to be," Carus said. "Or maybe it's just that the air's so thick. I've been in swamps that didn't seem so muggy."
On the altartop was a small ewer, perhaps a scent bottle. Originally it had been clear, but long burial in acid soil gave the glass a frosty rainbow patina. Garric touched it with his fingertip; the surface had the gritty feel he would have expected in the waking world.
Half-concealed behind the ewer was a four-sided prism the size of a man's thumb; Garric picked it up. It was so heavy that he wondered if it were metal rather than crystal, but his fingers were dimly visible through it.
When Garric looked into a flat, it returned a murky reflection of his own face. He rotated the prism slowly. For a moment he stared at an edge as sharp as a swordblade; then his life and his soul scaled off, separating him from Carus and from himself… and yet He was Garric or-Reise, son of the innkeeper of Barca's Hamlet. His sister, Sharina, was a leggy blonde girl who caught the eye of a drover from Ornifal who came to the Sheep Fair; the next year, when Garric and Sharina were eighteen, the drover returned and married her. It was a good match. Sharina wrote once or twice a year, though she never returned to Haft let alone the tiny community in which Garric remained.
When Garric was twenty-three, his father Reise slipped on ice in the inn yard and cracked his head on the pump. He lingered over a month but never recovered his senses. His wife Lora died not long after, apparently pining for her husband. It was a surprise to everybody; Lora was a shrew who'd seemed to dislike Reise even more than she disliked everybody else.
At his parents' death, Garric became master of the inn. It had prospered under his father; it flourished for the stronger, more active, and far more personable Garric. That summer Garric married the daughter of a wealthy farmer on the Carcosa road, and the next spring the first of their twelve children was born.
Garric continued to read the classics. He taught his children to read and write; and if none of them became the scholar he was, they were probably better wives and farmers because they didn't have so many romantic notions confusing them.
When Garric died, full of years and honor, four generations of his descendants attended his funeral. Representatives of the Count of Haft and both priesthoods came from Carcosa, and drovers from distant islands paid their respects at his grave when they arrived for the Sheep Fair in the fall.
He was long remembered as the greatest man ever to live in Barca's Hamlet.
The prism slipped from Garric's fingers. For an instant he was back in the ruined garden; the moon was near the horizon and the eastern sky was pale enough to hide stars. Two figures, immense but unseen, hovered beyond the heavens Garric was awake, stifling his shout behind clenched teeth. His muscles were taut and sweat soaked his sheets.
Liane murmured and shifted in the bed. Garric would have gotten up to rinse his face in the wash basin across the room, but he was afraid to waken her. He'd have to explain his nightmare, and no words he used could convey thehorror of what he'd just lived.
"What did they do to you, lad?" King Carus asked, a wild look in his eyes. His fists knotted and opened, dropping to his hilt and coming away again. "Did you see them? I did. There were two of them, and they were playing me like a puppet!"
I was innkeeper in Barca's Hamlet, Garric said in his mind. Immediately he began to relax. He wasn't alone; and even if he had been, the memory of Carus reminded Garric what a man very like him could face and had faced. But that life couldn't have been. The forces that we've been fighting ever since I left Haft would've overwhelmed Barca's Hamlet and the rest of the Isles long before I died in bed in my old age!
"Aye," said Carus, smiling at a grim memory. "I commanded the bodyguard of King Carlake. He put us where it was hottest, and we never failed him. The day an arrow struck me down during the siege of Erdin, my boys went over the wall and took the city. They buried me under a pyramid of ten thousand severed heads!"
His eyes met Garric's eyes in his mind; both men shuddered. "Lad," Carus whispered. "A thing like that could have happened. But it never did, I swear that."
I don't remember King Carlake, Garric thought. Was he a usurper?
"Carlake was the elder brother of Carilan, the King of the Isles who adopted me as his heir," Carus explained. "Carlake might well have made a better king for hard times than his brother did, but the same fever carried him off as did their father and left Carilan king in his place. That world couldn't be, inourworld."
Garric rolled out of bed carefully. He was calm now, able to reassure Liane if she woke, but she continued to sleep soundly.
I saw the figures you're talking about, Garric thought as he poured cool water into the tumbler on the wash stand. Felt them, at any rate. Who do you suppose they were?
"They're not Gods, of that I'm sure," Carus said. "I don't believe in Gods, and there's enough trouble without Them meddling too!"
I believe in the Great Gods, Garric thought as he drank greedily. But I don't believe They were who I saw. I believe we saw something verydifferent. And very evil.
***
The banquet had more courses than Cashel had fingers to count them on. All the food was good and most of it was better than that, thoug
h he found often enough that he was happier if he avoided looking at stuff before he ate it.
There was wine, too. Cashel had drunk ale when he and Ilna could afford it and water when they couldn't, which was often enough. He'd never had so much as a sip of wine till he left home and he hadn't much liked it when he did… but what Lord Bossian served was different, sparkly instead of tasting like juice that'd gone bad in the heat.
Syl and Farran pretended that Cashel wasn't at the table. They ate with their right hands only and kept their left raised at funny angles that they adjusted with each new course. Cashel supposed it meant something; to them at least, and the gestures were no more empty than their silly chatter.
Kotia talked to the others with an easy reserve. Cashel guessed she didn't have much use for Syl and Farran-he couldn't see any reason she ought to-but she was polite when she spoke to them and really friendly to Bossian.
The problem was that when Kotia said something to Cashel, Bossian puffed up like a cat when a strange dog comes into the room. She noticed it, all right, and while it didn't seem to make any difference to her, Cashel got uncomfortable. It made him want to pick Bossian up by the seat and scruff, then toss him a few times into the stream till he came to a better understanding of who he was glowering at…
And that wouldn't be right, seeings as Bossian was the host here and he wasn't doing anything wrong, just sort ofoozing the fact that he'd like to. Cashel started avoiding Kotia's eyes and concentrating on his food. And the wine, of course.
There was music playing, soft pipes and bowed strings; Cashel couldn't tell where the musicians were, but they made a lovely sound. The sky had grown dark but the palace itself glowed with light of the same color as the walls themselves: silver and rose and the pale green of drying hay. The water purling down its channel was steel blue; Cashel could see fish the length of his arm swimming in it.
He was content. Oh, soon he'd start wondering about how to get home, but Lord Bossian had said he'd take care of that. Cashel didn't figure there'd be much delay, what with the choice being to have Cashel for a guest until he did.
It felt good not to be hiking over bare rock and good to have a full belly after a day of hard work and fasting. Cashel swigged his wine and looked up at the stars, wondering if he'd be able to recognize any of the constellations tonight.
The stars began to vanish slowly from one side of the sky to the other, the way an eclipse devours the moon. Cashel blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his free hand, wondering if the wine had been even stronger than he thought. He felt a vibration too low to be sound; it trembled up throught the chair legs and the soles of his feet, and the walls of the manor shivered with the deep throb.
Syl rose to her feet and screamed. She pointed at the blank heaven, screamed again, and fainted. Cashel lurched up to grab her, knocking over the table as he reached across it. He grabbed the diaphanous sleeve of the woman's tunic, but it tore like spiderweb and left him with wisps as she fell face first on the pavement.
Farran clutched his throat with his left hand, perhaps to choke off a scream of his own. Diners were reacting in various ways, all of them fearful. The raised terraces emptied as they fled babbling, stumbling blindly over one another and the furniture.
Kotia rose and put her hand on Cashel's shoulder, standing close to him. "The Visitor has arrived," she said. "As I'm sure you realized."
Cashel lifted the quarterstaff that he'd laid on the ground behind his chair for want of a better place. He'd been afraid servants would kick it as they attended the tables, but they'd danced around the length of hickory nervously like it was a snake with a bad temper.
"What do you want me to do, mistress?" he asked Kotia quietly.
The blankness overhead flared with azure wizardlight. The stars hadn't disappeared: they'd been hidden behind vastness, a flying mountain passing overhead. But not a mountain either, for the whorls and ridges outlined in light were as surely artificial as the crystal magnificence of Lord Bossian's manor.
The light faded, leaving an afterglow like the smell of decay. The vast darkness passed on and the stars returned. The rumble continued long after the visible cause was gone.
Only Kotia and Bossian remained in the courtyard with Cashel; the three of them and Syl, sprawled unconscious among the tangle of dishes which spilled when Cashel knocked over the table. Kotia trembled, squeezing Cashel's shoulder fiercely. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moved silently.
Bossian looked at Cashel. "Our first business must be to send you home, sir," he said. "If you'll come with me to my workroom, we'll set about the matter immediately."
Kotia's eyes opened. She stepped partly away from Cashel but left her fingertips on his arm.
"Don't you think that perhaps Master Cashel should stay, Bossian?" she said. She gestured toward the now-empty sky with her right hand. "Until we know…?"
"He should not!" Bossian snapped. "Without suggesting your Master Cashel is in any sense responsible for the Visitor's arrival, Ido insist that he's out of his time and place. That makes him a point of stress at a time when we have very little margin. Besides, if you're really grateful to him for the help he provided you, why would you wish to subject him to the Visitor's attention?"
"Look, I'm not afraid of the Visitor," Cashel said. He felt extremely uncomfortable. Given the chance to fight something instead of standing here in a conversation where so many currents flowed, he'd have fought-anything. "Just tell me what it is I ought to be doing!"
"You're right, of course," Kotia said with a crisp nod to Bossian.
She took her hand from Cashel's arm and met his eyes. She said, "Go with Lord Bossian. He'll be able to help you return if anyone can. I'll leave you here, as there's no point in me becoming involved in a business where my skills would be of no service. Good day, Master Cashel; again, my thanks for your efforts on my behalf, and my good wishes for the success of all your future affairs."
Kotia bowed stiffly, turned, and strode in the direction of the silvery building. Bossian called after her, "I told the servants to ready the suite at the top of the tower. If they haven't, pick any rooms that suit you."
Kotia didn't bother to acknowledge the comment. Cashel guessed that a girl who'd slept out in the mountains with what she could carry wouldn't be too concerned about which room of a palace best suited her.
"Come along then," Bossian said gruffly. "Master Cashel."
He gestured Cashel to stand close to him on the tiled pavement where the table had been set. Cashel obeyed, feeling his guts tighten. He supposed they were going to fly away somewhere. He didn't want to fall off, and he especially didn't want to show Bossian that it bothered him.
Instead of lifting, the circle of pavement around them dropped straight into the ground.
Duzi, wasIwrong! Cashel thought, and he started to laugh. Streaks of deep red lighted the shaft they slid down, plenty to see Bossian's disgruntled expression by. That made Cashel laugh the harder.
He glanced up. The circle of sky became oval, then closed, so they weren't going quite straight down after all. He thought of asking Bossian how far they had to go, but it didn't matter enough to give his host the satisfaction of thinking Cashel was worried. He wasn't, after all; just curious.
The platform stopped. They didn't enter a room, theywere in it: where the stripes of red light down the sides of the shaft had been, now there was a dimly-yellow hall of great extent. The ceiling was low enough that Cashel could almost stretch up and touch it with a fingertip, but thick trefoil columns supported it at frequent intervals.
"Come this way if you will," Bossian said, the words polite but nothing in his brusque tone suggesting he cared whether Cashel wanted to obey. The echoes were funny. They made sounds muzzy, and they went on for a very long time.
Bossian led the way around a series of columns. There were benches and tables of various sorts built into the floor. When Bossian passed close, tables lit with one or another of the pastel colors of the crystal tower
s. The light held until Cashel too had stepped past, then faded. On each were instruments and other items, few of them anything Cashel recognized as a part of his world.
"Here," Bossian said, gesturing to where three curved tables were spaced to form a circle with openings. They glowed the same deep red as the shaft that led down to this place. Each section was crowded with objects: books, tools, and things that might either have been sculptures or trash dug from a midden. "Stand in the center here while I speak the incantation."
He reached into the seeming litter on the nearest table and withdrew a scroll of some shining material. It opened as he lifted it.
"You can send me back?" Cashel said as he walked between two of the raised islands. From what Kotia and Bossian himself had said earlier, he hadn't thought it'd be so simple.
"No, no, not that," Bossian said in irritation as he peered at the scroll. His index finger marked his place, but the winding rods on either end curled through the roll by themselves. "If I could do that, I could send the Visitor away! Iwill provide you with the tools to go by yourself, however."
He glared, at the scroll but not because of what he saw there. "Assuming that there are such tools. As I very much hope there are."
Cashel stood where Bossian told him to. The floor was glossy black, but a many-pointed star had lighted on it. Words in the curving Old Script appeared around the margin, changing as the wizard's finger moved across his scroll.
Cashel didn't like Bossian, but he trusted the fellow to do what he said. To do the best he could, at any rate, and that was as much as you could ask. There were plenty of guys out there who'd be willing to dump a rival in a bad place because of anger and envy. Bossian wasn't like that, and it wasn't just because he was afraid of what Cashel would do to him if he failed-or what Kotia would do if he succeeded.
Not that Cashel was any kind of rival, whatever the wizard might think.