by David Drake
Cashel shook his tunics out as much as he could, sending a pall of yellow dust down wind. He blew his nose with his fingers. That helped him breathe, but the back of his throat still tasted like alkaline mud.
"Well, this is a nicer place to be than where we just left," he said reasonably.
"Do you think so?" said Evne. "Thatisn't an illusion."
Ah! She meant the cat that had risen from the shelter of a ledge half a furlong up the slope from her and Cashel. Its coat had a mottled black-on-gray pattern. Cashel's first thought was that Ilna'd really like to see the creature… and could you turn the fur into yarn?
The cat flattened. Rather than relaxing out of the wind, it faced Cashel and pressed against the rock like a bolt in a cocked crossbow. Its tail began to twitch; the tip was a tuft of black.
"Where is it we want to go from here, Evne?" Cashel asked. The outcrop behind him looked exactly the same as the one he'd seen in the yellow wasteland, except that this one had gray-green lichen growing on it and blowing dust had scrubbed the other clean.
He rotated the quarterstaff in a slow figure-8 before him, working kinks out of his muscles. If the cat charged, he'd want to meet it with one ferrule and then the other.
"You see the ledge the cat is standing on?" the toad said. "You'll need to touch the rock face below her. Or not, of course, if you want to stay here for the rest of your life."
"No, that's not what I want," said Cashel with a sigh. He'd hoped that all he'd need to do was turn around and push against the rock behind him, leaving the cat to its-to her, apparently-own devices. He'dhoped that, but he hadn't expected it.
He started toward the outcrop. It was one step uphill for every two steps forward, and the footing wasn't the best either because of loose rock. He didn't guess it'd slow the cat down much, though; she must be used to it.
She watched Cashel coming toward her with tilted green eyes. Her head twisted; then she opened her jaws wide and screamed. The sound was metallic and so loud it waked echoes from the slopes for a mile down the canyon.
The cat's long fur made her look bigger than she was, but Cashel had lifted enough animals out of trouble on his shoulders to know that shewas big. He judged she'd weigh more than a ram though probably less than a yearling bull; as much as two men of Cashel's own size, which wasn't very many men.
Her eyeteeth were longer than his index fingers. They'd stab to his vitals if once they closed on his torso.
"You're just going to walk straight up to her, master?" said the toad. "That's your whole plan?"
"Yes'm," Cashel agreed. "I'm surely not going to turn my back, and I don't see any gain in waiting for her to decide how she wants to best work things."
The cat jumped to the slope beneath her ledge. Cashel's staff quivered. Part of his mind judged the path she'd trace to his throat: a leap tothere, and a second leap-spraying back pebbles and an uprooted clump of grass, arrow straight, black claws splayed out before her The cat stopped and screamed again. It was an awful sound, worse than the cry of a rabbit in a leg snare. She turned, as supple as a great gray-furred serpent, and bounded back uphill. She'd vanished over the crest before Cashel had time to let out the breath he'd been holding without knowing it.
"Well, I'm glad to see that," he said as he continued to walk up the slope, breathing more normally now. Mind, he wasn't letting down his guard.
"She could have killed you, you know," Evne said sharply. "You're strong, but she's stronger still, and she has claws and fangs."
"Yes'm," Cashel said. "I was worried about the way things were going to work out."
"Why did you just go walking on, then?" the toad demanded.
"Well, Mistress Evne…," Cashel said, frowning as he tried to understand the question. "She was between us and where we were going. I had to keep on."
The toad laughed shrilly. After a moment she said, "My first thought was that so complete a simpleton wouldn't remember to breathe. Then I recalled that you had, after all, taken the correct course and that 'simple' isn't necessarily the same as 'simpleton.'"
Cashel couldn't see anything useful to say, so he said nothing. Evne hadn't asked a question, after all.
As he came to the outcrop, he saw where the cat had been sharpening her claws on the pine tree a little way to the side. She'd torn the bark into fuzzy russet shreds for near as high up the trunk as Cashel could've reached with his quarterstaff. He guessed she'd been bigger even than he'd thought.
"Do I push on this the way I did the other one, mistress?" he asked, standing a little back from the rock and looking around him instead of staring in front. A slab of limestone wasn't ordinarily much of a threat, but other things in the valley besides the cat might be.
"Yes, touch the patch of white lichen," said Evne. "These are all worlds-"
Cashel set his palm on the blotch; it looked like a face. The world folded in and spat him out the other side of it, just as it had before.
"-where the Visitor dwells part of the time."
Cashel was standing in a forest of moderate-sized hardwoods. The trees were nowhere near as thick as the biggest ones in the common forest of Barca's Hamlet-he could've circled the largest of these with his spread arms-but a tap with his staff confirmed what he'd guessed: the wood was very dense, probably as hard as dogwood.
He looked behind him. Instead of a natural outcrop, he was in front of an ancient stone wall built from squared blocks without mortar. A patch of lichen much like the one he'd seen before spread across two layers.
Cashel frowned. "Evne?" he said. "There at the first place, in the dust; did the Visitor put that mirage there to scare off people like me?"
"Are there other people like you?" the toad said in a mocking tone. Then, answering the question, she said, "No, the race that used to live there used the illusions to drivetheir enemies away from nexi of power. It didn't work with the Visitor, of course; but it angered him."
"Ah," said Cashel. That explained what she meant by 'the race thatused to live' here.
Cashel judged it was early spring, though it felt as warm as summer in the borough. The trees hadn't leafed out enough to stunt the lush undergrowth. There were grasses, but lots of soft-leafed plants as well.
Sheep would love this forage, though woods were apt to hide dangers. Hide them from the shepherd, that is; if there was anything so obviouslydangerous that a sheepwouldn't walk into it, Cashel hadn't found it.
"In a moment!" Evne said peevishly, though Cashel hadn't gotten the question, "Which way do we go now?" beyond the tip of his tongue. "This is a maze, a very complex maze, and neither of us want me to misjudge."
Cashel smiled faintly. It wasn't the first time he'd been snapped at for asking a question somebody else wasn't ready to answer. Though it might have been the first time anybody'd snapped at him for what he hadn't gotten around to saying.
Instinct or maybe the sound made Cashel look to his left. For a moment there was nothing to see; then a clump of small-leafed stems growing from a common base disappeared. Where the clump had been was a round head near as big as a horse's, attached to a body covered with brown fur. It was a good-sized creature, though it didn't have any legs Cashel could see. It chewed sideways.
"Yes, in that direction, I believe," the toad said. She sounded-not hesitant butguarded, extremely careful in what she said. "Past that family of herbivores. Be careful; they can be dangerous."
At the sound of her voice half a handful of other brown heads rose through the undergrowth like sheep when they're alarmed. They didn't look like any animals Cashel had seen before. They reminded him a bit of huge caterpillars, but they had hides like cows.
The first one hissed like a kettle on the boil and lifted a row of spines from the mane down the middle of its back. Those just back of its head were as long as Cashel's forearm. The whole family did the same thing. The others didn't have spikes nearly as long, but they weren't anything Cashel wanted poking into him either.
"The spines are poisonous," Evne said.
"They won't kill you outright, but you may get gangrene when the wounds start to fester."
"I'll try not to let that happen," Cashel said calmly. He touched the top of the wall beside him. It wasn't as high as he was; he could vault to the top with the help of his staff if he had to, though he'd rather avoid that.
"Now, I'm going to leave you to your business, sheep," he said, walking slowly to his left. He kept one ferrule out between him and the animals, but he didn't point his staff so close at them that they'd take it for a threat. "I'm headed off where I'll never trouble you again."
They turned together to keep facing him as he moved, hissing louder than before. They were more like a sounder of hogs than a herd of sheep; he might have to get up on that wall "There was a wealthy merchant…,"sang the toad. "In Valles town did dwell…"
The animals went silent as suddenly as a hen when her neck's wrung.
"He had an only daughter…," Evne continued. "The truth to you I'll tell…"
Cashel sidled along a little faster, always keeping his face to the animals and his staff out. He put several good-sized trees between them and the herd.
"Lay the lily oh, oh lay the lily oh," sang Evne.
Cashel couldn't see any of the creatures. He'd just reached the end of the wall when he heard a thumping rush-diminishing. They were going in the other direction. From the sound, they were hunching along like so many inchworms.
Cashel grinned. That was something he'd like to see, but not so badly he was going to chase after the herd.
"Thank you, Evne," he said. "I'd just been thinking that if Garric was here, he could've played them a tune on his pipes like he did the sheep sometimes when they were spooky from a storm coming."
The toad sniffed. "Don't mention it," she said. "I certainly didn't want to walk the rest of the way to the nexus myself. Not to mention deal with what happens after that."
She pointed with a hind leg again and added, "A little to the right here. It shouldn't be very-"
Cashel saw the stone and nodded his staff toward it.
"Yes, that's it," said Evne brusquely. "Touch the bust of the god Ruhk there on top."
Cashel hadn't realized it was a worked stone. Now that Evne told him, he could see it was built from several layers rather than a single block, but he still couldn't imagine how she knew the lump was supposed to be anything or anybody.
He took a last look around the forest. It'd been a nice place compared to some, and it reminded him of home. If Ruhk didn't have a fancy statue, well, strangers seeing the scratches on the stone above the pasture south of Barca's Hamlet probably wouldn't guess the shepherds left offerings to Duzi there.
Cashel laid his palm on the stone. He felt himself sucked into a waste of blinding light and his own mirrored image infinitely repeated.
"He's trapped us!" Evne said from Cashel's shoulder. She spoke in a distinct voice, a little louder than usual. "I don't see a way out from our side."
The mirrored walls were flowing closed like cold honey. Cashel tried to swing his quarterstaff, but the ferrules were already fixed in the matrix. He couldn't move his feet, and the glittering pressure moved up his calves.
"The Visitor may keep us alive for a time," said Evne. She was still free on his shoulder, not that there was any place for her to go. "Or of course he may not."
Cashel twisted his staff again. The thick hickory flexed, but even he couldn't make it move any more than that. The mirrored faces crawled toward his hands, engulfing the wood on their way.
Cashel reached into his wallet and removed the last of the rubies Kakoral had given him. It wasn't much of a hope, but it was the best one going.
"Another thirty seconds, I'd judge," said Evne. "A little longer for me if I hop onto your head, but I don't know that I'll bother."
Cashel didn't trust the walls. They were hard enough where they held him, but he guessed that they'd suck in anything he threw at them. He held the red jewel over his head, squeezing it between his thumbs. Nobody was strong enough to break a ruby with his bare hands, but this wasn't exactly a ruby…
A thought struck him; he laughed.
"Yes," said Evne, "the Visitor knows he's in a fight this time."
And as she spoke, there was a red flash and the stone powdered between Cashel's thumbs.
***
The clumsy raft touched while it was still several yards out in the fjord; a length of driftwood had sagged out of its lashings to drag beneath the surface. Sharina roused herself as men from the shore splashed out to pull them onto the beach.
The fur she'd been lying on was soaked, but it'd kept her from being splashed from between the logs every time the paddlers slopped the raft forward. Scoggin glanced at her with concern; Franca was huddled in a ball with Neal's short cape over him. He doubtless would've been concerned, but he hadn't recovered from his own dip into the water.
"I'm all right," she said, and managed to stand up to prove it. 'All right' didn't necessarily mean 'good', but she was certainly feeling better. She thought she'd be able to keep food down shortly, and that should help a lot.
Sharina walked across the wobbling raft and hopped to the stone beach without stepping into the water again. Doing that was pointless except as an exercise, but proving that she had her strength and balance back was oddly more satisfying than the fact she'd retrieved the Key of Reyazel. Part of her wondered if the world wouldn't have been better off with the key remaining at the bottom of the fjord.
She grinned as she pulled her shift on, transferring Beard from one hand to the other so that she never had to put him down.
"You've got a right to be happy about what you've done, mistress," Neal said. He was helping-carrying would be a more descriptive word-Alfdan to dry land. The wizard's efforts had cost him as much as diving had Sharina, though Alfdan had a blankly beatific expression and was mumbling. Hs hands were clasped together over the key; he looked down at it through the opening between his thumbs.
"Do I?" Sharina said. "Perhaps. But what I was thinking is thatthis world can't be harmed very much by me bringing up the key."
"Get the mistress another fur!" Neal shouted, still supporting the trembling wizard. "By the Lady, don't any of you have sense?"
"I'm all right," Sharina said. "But get something for Franca."
Several men grabbed robes from their packs and trotted over to her. Sharina handed the first to Franca-he took it with a grateful smile-and wrapped a sheepskin around her shoulders wool side inward. It felt good, though she really hadn't been cold without the cover. She wondered if that had something to do with holding Beard; he was certainly more than an axe that talked.
Alfdan began hobbling up the slope toward the ruined tower. Neal followed him, protesting, "Sir, I think you should rest before you do anything more. You're not-"
"No, you fool!" the wizard snarled with more animation than seemed likely in his weakness. "I have the key now and I'm going to use it!"
Neal looked over his shoulder at Sharina, raising an eyebrow in question. Sharina laughed. Why not?
"Yes, all right," she said, starting after Neal and the wizard. " I may as well see what the thing does. Beard and I worked hard enough to get it."
She wasn't surprised that the whole band trailed along as soon as she said she was going with Alfdan. Nor was she surprised to hear the axe protest, "Oh, mistress, it wasn't work, it was the greatest pleasure Beard has had in all the ages of his life. You're a wonderful mistress to bring Beard an Elemental's life to drink! And there'll be more, Beard knows there'll be more before the ice takes all!"
Sharina smiled wryly. Beard was probably right about her having to kill additional things that she'd rather never have known existed. And he might be right about the ice too; but if he was, well, she'd have died long before it happened.
Alfdan had straightened and was taking quick, short steps like an old man who'd gotten into his stride. He held the Key of Reyazel out in his left hand as though it were a talisman. It flashed warmly as it j
erked back and forth in time with his steps.
"What's the tower for, mistress?" Scoggin asked politely. He and Franca walked on either side of her, staking their claim to her authority as well as being protective. "It doesn't make any sense to build a fort halfway up a hill, does it?"
"I don't know either," Sharina said. It was flattering that everyone here thought she was an authority, but it also seemed silly; she wasn't even from this world! Though "Beard," she said. "Do you know about the tower?"
"That?" the axe said dismissively. "A customs post, that's all. It was on the shore before the sea fell."
Beard sighed and went on, "Nothing there to kill. Nothing anywhere around here to kill… unless we go back into the fjord?"
"No," said Sharina firmly. "We're not going to do that."
The slope became abruptly steeper. Alfdan dropped onto one hand and the knuckles of the other, still clutching the key. Neal bent to help, but the wizard gained strength as he neared his goal. He stood upright again on the flat apron before the tower's door. It was on the landward side so storm surges wouldn't batter it.
"But it's open," a man said doubtfully. "By the Sister, it's only hanging by the one hinge!"
Sharina stepped to side of the wizard as he contemplated the door. It was thick oak, cross-braced with more oak, but the last occupant to leave the tower hadn't latched it. Years of wind battering the heavy panel back and forth had broken the upper hinge, leaving the door half-open and askew.
"I'd like to see the key," she said quietly.
"No!" Alfdan cried, hiding the golden sheen in both hands and clutching them tight to his breast. "It's mine!"
"It's yours," Sharina agreed, calm-voiced but frowning. "I'd like to look at it, though. I had other things on my mind when I saw it before."
"My mistress killed an Elemental to fetch the key to the surface," said Beard in an eager singsong. "A wizard's blood isn't much for taste, but Beard would drink it down regardless."