Godess of the Ice Realm loti-5

by David Drake

  And drink. There were various vintages, some of them doubtless stronger than others, but the total would fill a cauldron big enough to wash the garments of everyone in the hall. Ilna sniffed: if the castlehad a washing cauldron, it was cobwebbed from disuse.

  Ilna asked a servant for beer; he went off-even the servants were male-and returned not long after with a quite passable lager. She nursed her goblet, but even so they were long at the table. The last thingshe needed to do was to drink enough that she lost control of her behavior.

  Chalcus was drinking his share. In the middle of a story about a storm blowing him south so far that he saw icebergs like those that split from the glaciers of the far north, he began to sing, "The cuckoo, she's a happy bird, she sings as she flies…"

  He was probably putting on a show for their hosts, but again-quite a lot of wine had gone down his gullet. Well, Chalcus knew how to take care of himself, drunk or sober, and he had the scars to prove it.

  "So, Captain Chalcus…," Lusius said. He drank, belched heavily, and banged down his empty goblet. "Have you space in your holds for additional cargo, do you think? We here in the Calves do a fine business in the shell fisheries these last few years."

  "She brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies," Chalcus sang, completing the stanza and raising his cup to drink. He blinked in apparent surprise to find it empty.

  Setting it down he said, "Oh, we've no cargo to speak of, but no need for more than we've got. One chest is all, folderol for one of the lords who's the prince's bosom companion, Tadai his name is. He didn't tell me what was in it, just said it was to go to Chancellor Royhas in Valles. I'm be well paid for the voyage, so I asked no questions."

  A servant filled his cup with wine. As the fellow took the pitcher away, Chalcus drank deeply again.

  "Now, I shouldn't 've have said that, I know," he went on through a giggle. "I shouldn't be here at all, but our mast is sprung. I need to step a new one before I try the Inner Sea all the way to Ornifal, for all that the worst of the weather should be past by this season. You can't trust the weather, you know."

  He tapped the side of his nose with an index finger. "No farther than you can trust men!"

  "You're not afraid of the Rua, then?" Lusius said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

  "Poof!" said Chalcus. "What do I care about some funny-shaped bats? We've bows on theBird of the Tide and men who know how to use them. If these Rua of yours come too close, they'll find they're sprouting goosefeathers!"

  "Indeed," Lusius said, "indeed. I'm sure that's just what will happen, captain-but if you have a day or two, would you care to come out with me to the reefs where we fish for shell? I'll be there in my vessel, theDefender, because the fishermen daren't to go without my protection. And even so it can be a tricky business, as you'll see."

  "I'll be honored to join you, Commander!" Chalcus said. "I and Mistress Ilna, if you don't mind. Sometimes her eyes catch things that mine have not."

  "She's welcome, of course," Lusius said. "TheDefender 's no royal barge, but then, I don't suppose yourBird is that either."

  Ilna had listened to the exchange with a frown she didn't attempt to conceal. If Chalcus was blabbering for a purpose, her concern was in character; and if he wasn't, if it was the wine talking-then all the better reason to frown.

  Gaur had remained silent for most of the meal, glowering at a corner of the vaulted ceiling as though in deep meditation. Now, seeming to awake, he gestured imperiously to a servant and snapped his fingers. The servant brought a canister of gold filigree from a sideboard and set it before the wizard, next to the covered bowl which had been there throughout the dinner.

  All eyes were on the Red Wizard, as he no doubt had intended. Ilna heard the man seated next to her curse under his breath and gulp down the rest of his wine.

  "Our visitors will have noticed that I myself did not eat," Gaur said, his voice again that of a priest declaiming to an audience of laymen. He lifted the cover from the agate tureen; it was filled to midway with an amber fluid. "I never eat in the presence of others, but in the name of fellowship I like tofeed, shall we say? Would you care to watch?"

  "I'm always ready to be entertained, Master Wizard," Chalcus said in a light tone. He touched his fingertips to the table before him, then lowered his hands to his sash.

  Gaur glared at him. His eyes were a black that looked deep red in the lamplight. He twisted off the lid of the filigree container and reached in with thumb and forefinger. "These are flies," he said. "I've pulled off one wing already."

  "Ah, every man should have a hobby," Chalcus said brightly. "I knew a fellow once who collected butterflies, so he did."

  Gaur's rage couldn't have been fiercer if his eyes had filled with molten lava. He held a fly above the agate bowl. Other flies were beginning to crawl out of the open container, though of course they couldn't go far.

  "Watch!" Gaur thundered, dropping the mutilated insect. It twisted on one buzzing wing as it fell into the bowl. The fluid rose to catch it, snatching down the victim while it was still a finger's breadth above the original surface. The fly disintegrated as it sank, leaving a blood-red blotch in the amber. After a few moments the color dissipated.

  "Amusing, isn't it?" said Gaur, pinching another fly out of the canister. "They must be alive, you see. My little pet may look like a bowl of water, but it's only interested in living prey."

  He dropped the second fly.

  Even Ilna who was sober or nearly so saw Chalcus' movement only as a blur. His right hand came up from his sash with the curved dagger and swept across the table. Lamplight turned the steel edge into a shimmer of gold. The stroke was past before anyone else moved.

  He slid the blade back into its scabbard.

  Gaur snarled like a beast and leaped backward, knocking over his chair. "Ha!" Lusius shouted. He flung down the cup in his right hand and covered his eyes with his left forearm, as if he couldn't be hurt if he didn't see the threat.

  There were two tiny splashes in the liquid: Chalcus had cut the fly in half as it fell. The portions sank to the bottom of the bowl: as the wizard had claimed, the livign fluid ate only live food.

  Chalcus stood with an easy motion; Ilna rose with him, her fingers knotting a pattern swiftly.

  "My pardon, Commander," Chalcus said. "I fear I've drunk so much that I might become discourteous were I to stay. We'll join you in the morning for a visit to the reefs to see the Rua."

  He offered Ilna his arm; they turned and walked out. The soldiers were babbling at increasing volume, but through that Ilna continued to hear the sound of Gaur's bestial snarls.

  ***

  Cashel threw the jewel against the slab of bare rock behind him; it should've been the mouth of the tunnel by which he'd left Lord Bossian's manor, but by starlight at least it looked as much a part of the mountainside as any other. A stunted cedar tree had draped surface roots across one side of it.

  This ruby shattered with the same silent flare as the first one. A tiny image of Kakoral scurried up, then down the rock face like it was a horizontal tabletop. Finally the homunculus paused and glared at Cashel.

  "I want to go back to my-" Cashel began. He almost said, "home," but he didn't really know where that was any more. "I want to go back to my friends. Point me the way."

  Still without speaking, the sparkling homunculus made the sweeping introductory gesture of a showman. The shadowed rock became transparent, a window onto the cellar in which Cashel had seen Kotia's mother with her demon lover. Laterna sat on a stool, reading from a thin beechwood plate which she held so that the light of the hearth fell on it. She was alone until the door behind her opened.

  Laterna turned to glance over her shoulder. Her face had the look of an ivory carving; it became even harder, even colder.

  The man who'd entered was small and trim, fit-looking rather than muscular. His flowing robes had vertical stripes of white alternating with many colors. In the dark cellar the white gave off light, illu
minating both the man and his immediate surroundings.

  As before, Cashel watched a silent pantomime. The man gestured curtly toward the door with his left hand. He was as angry as the woman, and far more busily so. Laterna flicked out the fingers of her free hand as if she were shooing a fly. She returned to her reading.

  The man's robes darkened. If her face had been ivory, his was a waxen death mask. He stepped forward, raising his right arm. He'd been holding a narrow-bladed ice axe along his thigh. He brought it down, spike forward.

  Laterna leaped from her stool, flinging the beechwood plaque in the air. It bounced off the ceiling and spun back to lie face down on the black tile floor. A corner had chipped, but the sheet was mostly whole. Its back was decorated with a gilt sun in the center and a symbolic figure in each corner.

  The woman tripped and fell forward. Her arms and legs jerked, the left side at a quicker tempo than the right. The axe handle waggled for a moment like a pigtail. The body arched, then lay flaccid.

  The man hadn't moved since he struck Laterna. Now he raised both hands to his face and stroked his eyebrows with his fingertips. As he started forward, Cashel's window onto the past began to fade.

  The last thing Cashel saw before rock replaced the images was the hearth that Laterna had been reading in front of. In its glowing embers, he saw the outlines of Kakoral's face.

  The homunculus bowed mockingly to Cashel. It held up both hands, then brought them together overhead in a soundless clap. Streams of red wizardlight curled from each fingertip, spreading into a net that converged on Cashel's chest.

  With a cackle of laughter, the little creature vanished. Wizardlight continued to play across Cashel's Oh. Not his chest. The lump of coal blazed with cold scarlet light to which the close-woven wool was transparent. Cautiously Cashel reached down the throat of his tunic and brought the coal out. He sat on his haunches, examining it with a care he hadn't taken in Lord Bossian's workroom. The wizardlight slowly faded.

  Like any other piece of coal, this one had fracture lines. Even if it'd been whole while it lay in the ground, the process of smashing chunks out of the seam would've twisted it, spreading tiny cracks from where a leaf stem or a grain of sand had been trapped in the mass.

  Cashel saw the patterns with great clarity despite having no light but that of the unfamiliar stars. Maybe there was a map? Or…

  He squeezed with his thumb and forefinger at opposite corners of the irregular lump. Another man would have used a hammer, but steady pressure was enough if you saw the fracture lines as he did, clear as furrows in a fresh-plowed field; and if you were strong enough.

  Cashel had always been strong enough.

  The lump popped faintly, shearing along a seam too fine for human eyes. Cashel lifted the upper half, holding the lower portion in the palm of his left hand. Inside was a cavity not much bigger than a walnut. Something stirred in it; then, very carefully it extended a long hind leg and splayed its webbed toes.

  There was a toad within the block of coal. It was still alive.

  The toad turned its head, looking up at Cashel with one eye, then the other. It drew its outstretched leg back under it.

  "It must have been a very long time," the toad said in a rusty voice. "Tell me-who is the King of Kish in this day?"

  Chapter 12

  Commander Lusius'Defender was similar enough to theFlying Fish that they might have been built in adjacent slips. Ilna hadn't liked travelling on theFlying Fish, but it was as clean as you could expect of a wooden box that carried so many men.

  TheDefender was stinkingly filthy. Even Freya, the wife of Ilna's uncle and as lazy a slattern as ever was born, would have said the ship was disgusting.

  Ilna smiled faintly. It would've been embarrassing if a man she disliked as much as she did Lusius turned out to share her passion for cleanliness. Not that she'd foreseen much danger of that.

  A seawolf was following close astern. It was a big brute, twice the length of a tall man. It swam with lazy sweeps of its tail, back and forth.

  Chalcus chatted in the stern with Lusius as one man to another. As one pirate to another, very possibly, so Ilna had made her way to the far bow where her presence wouldn't constrain the discussions. Like her, Chalcus was gathering information which would fit into a pattern-eventually.

  Besides, standing in the bow meant she breathed the sea air instead of theDefender 's stench.

  The fishing fleet was in sight, many handfuls of boats whose crews were a few men apiece. Though they were no more than half the size of theBird of the Tide, they had small central cabins; a skiff was tied to the stern of each one. The crews groped over the sides with long poles.

  The Sea Guards rowed theDefender, cursing, sweating, and fouling one another, but moving the vessel forward nonetheless. Most people weren't very good at their jobs; Ilna wasn't surprised to find that was true of oarsmen as surely as it was plowmen or weavers. It was neither accident nor charity that caused other women to bring the yarn they'd spun to Ilna, who did the weaving for all Barca's Hamlet. For the most part people arranged things so that a lot of them did the same thing. That way it got done well enough that everybody survived; more or less, and for a time.

  A crack crew of men chosen and trained by Chalcus could do much better than these Sea Guards managed, but they were goodenough. There was only one Chalcus; and one Ilna, for that matter.

  And one Prince Garric, Ilna was quite sure. They each had their place in the pattern Someone was weaving.

  "The shallows are just ahead!" cried the lookout clinging to the masthead. Neither the spar nor the sail were aboard, but theDefender 's mast was stepped to provide a vantage point. Lusius hadn't bothered to fit a platform, though. The sailor shinnied up unaided and clung to the stay rope with his legs wrapped around the pole. "We're entering the shallows!"

  Chalcus and the Commander walked forward, Lusius in the lead because there wasn't room enough for two to walk abreast on the catwalk between the oarbenches. He carried a light buckler in his left hand.

  "The Commander says that the bottom rose into these shallows when the Rua appeared for the first time," Chalcus called cheerfully, indicating the water with a wave fo his hand. "I've seen such a shade only once, in a lagoon far to the south."

  The railing didn't extend to the far bow; Ilna touched a forestay and leaned over. Though clear, the sea had a violet cast and seemed to be no deeper than the height of a tall man. Pinkish sea lilies waved their jointed tentacles; holes for the breathing tubes of clams pocked the sand covering most of the bottom. She saw no fish.

  "It doesn't look like the water I saw on the way north from Donelle," Ilna said, speaking for the sake of politeness rather than because she thought she had any useful knowledge to add. "I've never seen plants like these either."

  "Plants?" repeated Lusius. "Not a one of them, mistress! All these are animals, whatever they look like."

  Rincip, the one-eyed man who commanded the Sea Guards and acted as Lusius' chief lieutenant, snarled an order from the stern. Ilna couldn't understand the words, but the crew seemed to. The rowers of the upper bank brought their oars aboard and began arming themselves with weapons stored under the walkway. Most of them strung bows, short but stiff-looking.

  "I've got Guards aboard the fishing boats too," Lusius said, "but they're not much use-as you'll see, I shouldn't wonder. Sometimes they'll keep the Rua away till theDefender can come up, but mostly they're just there to make sure the men are really bringing up the shell. The bloody cowards are afraid that if they make a good haul, they'll be attacked!"

  TheDefender continued toward the fishing boats, driven by the lower bank of oarsmen. Though they were obviously trying to keep together, the boats had drifted some ways apart. A man couldn't shout from one side of the straggle and be understood on the other.

  "What happens if the Rua attack before theDefender joins the fishing fleet?" Chalcus asked, his voice a little flatter than usual. He and Ilna had expected to go out at first light whe
n the fishing fleet did, but the warship wasn't ready till midmorning. If Chalcus hadn't been careful, his tone would've held a sneer for the indiscipline of the Commander's force.

  "Oh, they never do that," Lusius said, scanning the heavens. "They've no reason to attack till the boats have a good load of shell, so we sleep in ourselves."

  The sea had become even shallower than when Chalcus called Ilna's attention to it, and the bottom now was coral. She still didn't see fish, but there were any number of odd-looking creatures both crawling and attached to the rock. Among them were the little belemites, walking on clumps of tentacles and dragging their brilliant shells behind.

  The reason that patrol vessels wobbled so unpleasantly was that they drew very little water, but even so Ilna wondered if theDefender would grind a hole in her hull on the coral. As shallow as this was she could probably stand on the bottom and breathe even though she couldn't swim, but it would be a very long walk to dry land.

  "I'd thought your Red Wizard might be with us today," Chalcus said, blocking the sun with his left hand as he surveyed the upper sky. "Struggling with the wizard-demons as he assures us he does."

  The Commander looked at him sharply, thought there'd been nothing of open mockery in Chalcus' tone. "Gaur has his sanctum in the castle," he said, still frowning slightly. "He works there. Never fear, he's doing whatever he can."

  "When do the-" Ilna said, but she swallowed the remainder of the sentence, "-Rua arrive." She suddenly understood what the dots Chalcus was watching really were. "I see," she corrected herself. "The Rua have been here all along."

  "Aye, the devils!" Lusius said with real venom in his voice. "They pick their time, too. They must have eyes like hawks!"

  TheDefender passed within a stone's throw of a fishing boat, close enough that Ilna got a good look at what they were doing. Two men used small nets on the end of poles to scoop belemites out of the coral. The little shellfish didn't move fast enough to evade the nets, but they were still hard to winkle out from between the coral and hard-shelled anemones. When a fisherman succeeded, he whisked the belemite aboard and dropped it into a large wickerwork basket in front of the deckhouse.