by David Drake
"Alfdan!" Sharina called. The wizard turned and looked, then resumed his course.
"May the Lady help me!" Sharina muttered, furious and frightened both. She jogged toward Alfdan as the wave combed up the sand, spurting high as it struck the wizard's legs.
Sharina splashed through the shallows, listening to the sea growl. Alfdan jerked his head toward her, raising his wand. "Get away from me!" he snarled. "It's here and I'm going to find it!"
"Oh mistress, if Beard only could…," the axe whimpered miserably. "When we leave the island, then can Beard kill him? Please, mistress, please let Beard kill him?"
"Silence!" Sharina said, speaking to the wizard or the axe or perhaps to her own angry desire to split Alfdan from pate to navel. She caught the whalebone wand with her left hand, then jabbed the butt of the axe into the wizard's belly. He gave a despairing cry and fell to his knees. The last of the surf foamed seaward past him.
"Get up!" Sharina said. Alfdan dropped his wand when she punched him, but she held it. Her first thought was to throw the dense bone into the sea, but the wizard needed the tool for his art… and all the rest of them needed the wizard if they were to get off this barren islet, let alone reach Her dwelling.
Alfdan ignored her, bending over. Sharina thought he was going to vomit; instead he began to scrabble in the hard sand. She stuck the wand upright in the ground and grabbed the back of his collar.
"Here!" the wizard cried, rising to his feet without her having to pull him. "I knew it was here!"
He held a strip of vellum, curling but apparently undamaged despite the sand that clung to it. There was a drawing on one side, a map as best Sharina could tell by moonlight.
"It's part of Master Amoes' record of his travels through the world he found under the surface of the moon!" Alfdan said triumphantly.
Sharina blinked. "But you're not going there, are you?" she said.
"Of course not!" Alfdan snapped, rolling the parchment without bothering to brush off the last of the sand. "The moon's been dead for all the ages since Amoes' day."
Beard tittered mockingly. "It'd be an act of mercy for Beard to drink his blood, mistress," he said. "But he'll take us to better pastures, so we will let him live."
Sharina shivered. "Come!" she said, tugging Alfdan's sleeve. He came without protest, pulling up his wand when he passed by.
Sharina stepped on something hard and square. She didn't look down; her face was as rigid as an executioner's. Whatever the thing was, it belonged to this place; and humansdidn't belong here.
The door to the world they'd left was a rectangle of gravel and flotsam, the beach where the sea chest lay. She motioned Alfdan through ahead of her: she'd come to bring him back and there wasn't room for both of them to leave together. When she stepped onto the opening, the bay vanished and she was standing on the rocky island. The wizard reached for the key.
Sharina batted his hand away and took the key herself. Alfdan yelped in surprise.
Sharina was trembling with relief beyond anything she could put in words. "I'll hold this till we're done with you," she said, putting the small golden key into a fold of her sash. She didn't have a proper purse in this place, in this world.
Alfdan grabbed for it. She held Beard in front of her, the edge outward in a glittering warning more effective than a spoken threat. "It's mine!" Alfdan said, recoiling.
"Yes," said Sharina. "And when you've delivered me to Her palace, I'll give it back to you. I won't care what happens to you then."
She started back to the sheltered side of the island. "But I warn you, wizard," she added over her shoulder. "As bad as the place you're taking me may be, you'll be going to a worse one if you use the Key of Reyazel again!"
***
"Master?" said Evne, back on Cashel's shoulder where she seemed to prefer to ride. "There's a cauldron near the wall to the right, a hundred feet up. Do you think you could turn it upside-down if it were on the floor?"
Cashel looked upward. Kotia extended her index finger and muttered words Cashel didn't catch. A red spark from her finger snapped to a great bronze curve.
"Oh," said Cashel. He'd been looking in the right place, but he hadn't realized anything so big could be a cauldron. He'd been thinking of something like the inn's washing tub, the largest vessel in Barca's Hamlet. That wouldn't have been a shadow of the huge thing hanging from cobweb strands of light.
"Yeah, I guess so," Cashel said. It depended on how thick the metal was, but even if it turned out to be a lot thicker than he expected… "I guess I can, sure."
Evne extended her left hind leg; a delicate pink membrane webbed the base of the three toes. Azure lightning crackled at the tip of the middle claw, just that; no more than the sound a man makes popping his fingers. The cauldron was on the floor instead of high in the air. It hadn't moved, it justwas.
"I don't think we should wait," said Evne, looking up at the descending thunder.
"Right," said Cashel. He didn't like to run or often do it, but now he broke into a lumbering trot. The cauldron was deceptively far away. The size of the room was really amazing.
The demon and the globe were in sight again, swirling in tight circles around a common center as they ripped at one another with weapons of light. Blasts that missed their targets tore across the room, as little affected by objects hanging in the way as arrows are of dustmotes.
Red wizardlight slashed a knot of crystal curves. Half the structure vanished in glare and molten gobbets; the rest-itself the size of any building in Barca's Hamlet-crashed to the floor not far from Cashel and his companions.
He ducked instinctively. The jagged chunk that would otherwise have brained him sailed overhead.
Kotia stayed at his side without running; she'd picked up the golden disk on her way by. Her long legs scissored as quickly Ilna's fingers moved when she was weaving, but her face retained a look of faint amusement.
Especially, Kotia never looked at Evne. The toad for her own part was singing what sounded like, "Send a flea to heave a tree."
Cashel thought they were both being silly, but it sure beat screaming and carrying on about what was happening the way a lot of people would've done. He hadn't been around toads enough-socially, that is-to know how they usually behaved.
Not all the blows the pair battling downward struck at each other missed. A spear of blue light stabbed Kakoral square in the chest. For an instant the demon gleamed translucent purple; then he was crimson again, carving at the Visitor with blades of hellfire from both clawed hands. The vast room pulsed with the echoing combat.
Cashel reached the cauldron. He could just touch the rim if he stood on his toes, but his weight wouldn't be enough to make it move. It sat on its broad bottom, not on legs.
"I guess then…," Cashel said as he considered the problem. He thrust the quarterstaff out to Kotia without bothering to face her. "Hold this for me."
He squatted, placing his hands under the base where the curved sides met the flat bottom. He was counting on the cauldron to be heavy enough that he wouldn't have to chock the opposite side to keep it from skidding along the floor, but that seemed a safe enough bet…
Something exploded not far overhead. A rain of greenish pebbles cascaded down, rattling on the bronze and making Cashel's skin prickle wherever they touched.
"Now!" he shouted, straightening with the strength of his legs and shoulders both. The cauldron lifted smoothly. Cashel walked forward, placing his hands farther down the bottom as the inertia of the bronze helped to rotate it.
"Yes!" cried Kotia. The cauldron teetered past its far edge and began to fall onto its rim.
The globe rapped out blue spears as quick as a woodpecker taps, striking Kakoral in repeated thunderclaps. Cashel looked up. The demon swelled and thinned into a figure of fiery cloud; the girders of light and dangling objects were clearly visible through his body. The Visitor's globe shrank and shimmered into a ball no bigger than a melon.
The cauldron hit with a bell note so cle
ar and loud that Cashel could hear it through the cataclysm tearing the air apart just overhead. Kotia's lips were moving, but no sound a human throat could make would be audible now.
"Under the cauldron!" Evne said. She didn't shout; instead her words clicked out in pauses of the blasting chaos.
The cauldron's near edge rocked waist high on the inertia that'd carried it over. Kotia ducked under; Cashel followed a half step behind. The bronze lip hung for what seemed a long time, then rang down again. It clanged back and forth repeatedly till finally coming to rest with only a tingling hum to remind Cashel of its presence.
With the cauldron's rim flat on the smooth floor, there was no light at all inside. The roaring battle was a vibrating presence but no longer noise in the usual sense. There was plenty of room inside, so Cashel didn't expect the air to get stuffy till long after something good or bad had happened to change things.
"Shall I provide a view?" Evne said in an arch tone.
"Don't strain yourself!" said Kotia. Her golden disk suddenly appeared in mid air. Its light didn't touch anything else, though: the hollow bronze was just as dark as it'd been before.
"Mecha melchou ael," Kotia said. The disk began to spin, accelerating rapidly. "Balamin aoubes-"
The disk was a shiver of light, a golden reflection instead of a solid object. It made a high-pitched sound-or at least something did, raising the hairs on the back of Cashel's neck.
"Aobar!" said Kotia. Beyond where the disk spun, the bronze became transparent. The crackling flames of the battle lit the interior. Kotia had a pinched look, though she seemed not so much weak as worn to Cashel.
The Visitor stabbed a jagged trident of blue fire, missing Kakoral because the demon was suddenly above the globe. The blast splashed the cauldron, igniting the bronze with quivering brilliance. The flash made Cashel blink, but he didn't feel anything unusual.
"The uses this vessel's been put to over the ages," Evne said, "have… hardened it, let's say. I won't say that it's indestructible, but I don't think anything we'll see today could harm it."
"Did the Visitor make it?" Cashel asked, frowning. He'd gotten out his wad of wool to polish his staff. Touching the hickory always steadied him.
"The Visitor makes nothing!" Evne said. She was angry; Cashel had never heard her angry before. "The Visitor takes and destroys, only that."
"Until now, I think," said Kotia, looking upward with a faint smile. "Until he met my father."
The toad laughed appreciatively.
It didn't look that way to Cashel. No longer did the Visitor jump nervously about the room: his globe was a diamond-bright glitter, hovering and unmoved. By contrast Kakoral had spread into a crimson fog, too thin to have shape. The Visitor's bolts lanced through the demon's substance unhindered, ripping whatever other objects they touched. Many girders had been severed, and the whole structure was beginning to shift around its axis.
"Yes," said Evne. "He has him now."
The red mist sucked down. Being swallowed, Cashel thought, but instead Kakoral coalesced again out of the vapor. For an instant he stood as a giant in whose belly the globe sparkled with evil fury; then the demon shrank again to the size of a man and the solidity of a blazing crimson anvil.
Cashel heard a muffled pop. Kakoral shook with titanic laughter. He raised his head and opened his mouth wide. Flames shot out, momentarily purple but shifting quickly to the same rose red that Cashel saw winking across the valley when the demon first appeared to him.
The jet of fire spread into a channel of Hell-light as broad as a mill flume. The objects suspended throughout the enormous space tumbled downward, untouched themselves but released when the threads supporting them flared away. The walls of the ship began to burn.
Kakoral closed his mouth. He turned and bowed to the overturned cauldron, his arms spread back like a courtier's. Above the demon-unthinkably far above him and racing higher-scarlet flames continued to blaze in the portion of the Visitor's ship that they hadn't yet devoured.
Kakoral straightened; and, straightening, vanished.
"Oh!" said Cashel. He cleared his throat, then ran a hand along the rim of the cauldron. It wouldn't be hard to get enough purchase to lift it again.
"Ah?" he said. Evne and Kotia were still looking upward. "Would you like me to lift-"
"Not unless you want us all to die," said the toad.
"You'd better cover your eyes," said Kotia. She closed hers and folded the crook of her elbow over them. Cashel did the same.
The world beyond the walls of the cauldron went crimson. The light was as cold as the depths of the sea, streaming through Cashel's flesh and soul together.
Thought stopped, everything stopped. Cashel didn't know how long the light lasted; the flooding glare had the feel of eternity. He was squeezing the quarterstaff; if nothing else existed, that did and Cashel or-Kenset did while he held it.
Kotia touched his wrist. "It's over," she said. Her voice came from far away. "The power that drained into this basin over the ages has been voided back to where the Visitor came from."
Cashel opened his eyes. He, Kotia, and the toad on his shoulder were in the middle of what'd been bog like what he'd seen on his way to the Visitor. The rushes were sere now, and tussocks stood up from cracked mud rather than marsh.
"The process involved heat," said Evne. She gave a grim chuckle. "Not nearly as much heat as on the other end of the channel, though. I don't think there will be more Visitors to trouble us."
Kotia turned to Cashel. He couldn't read her expression. "Now, if you would please lift the cauldron again, milord?" she said. "We'll have callers shortly."
She saw his expression and quirked a smile. "No, not that kind," she said. "The display will summon folk from all the manors to see what has happened. Airboats can safely fly into the basin now."
Cashel handed the girl his quarterstaff again, politely this time because he wasn't in a hurry to get them all under cover. He squatted and positioned his hands under the curve of the rim.
"I wonder if Lord Bossian will be among those arriving?" the toad said.
"Yes," said Kotia. "I've been wondering that too."
They both laughed. It was the sort of sound that made Cashel glad the two of them weren't his enemies.
***
"Nobody's entered the Count's wing since Lady Liane sent the warning, your highness," Attaper said as he and a company of Blood Eagles met Garric at the west entrance to the palace. "A few servants came out on normal business, but we're holding them as ordered."
"As ordered?" said Garric, frowning in surprise. "Lady Liane?"
"Yes, her messenger arrived with your orders that nobody should enter or leave Count Lascarg's quarters," Attaper said, frowning in turn. "By the Shepherd, your highness! Were the seal and signature forgeries?"
"No, milord!" Liane herself said as she hopped from her sedan chair. Her bearers must've run all the way from the temple: they were covered in sweat but grinning. The coins Liane spun them winked gold. "Say rather that Prince Garric was too busy to be aware of all the details he was taking care of in the crisis."
Garric grinned. That was a charitable way of putting it. In truth it hadn't crossed his mind to send someone ahead to put a discreet guard on Monine and Tanus. Well, he didn't have to think about that sort of thing. He had Liane, praise be the Shepherd!
Garric took the steps two treads at a time. Guards trotted ahead of him. Lord Mayne, the legate commanding the regiment that'd just arrived from the camp on the harbor, had linked arms with Lord Waldron to exchange information as they both pounded along immediately behind. A pair of palace ushers holding silver-banded wands high led the procession down the branching corridors. The household staff was no longer the proper concern of Master Reise, the Vicar's advisor… but as he ran past, Garric saw his father watching alertly from an alcove, pressed between the wall and a statue where he wouldn't interfere with the Prince's haste.
The double doors to the wing of the palace which C
ount Lascarg still occupied were closed. In the vaulted hall outside waited a squad of Blood Eagles instead of a doorkeeper from the count's household.
"Get us in!" Garric ordered as the guards straightened to attention. He hoped the raid would take Monine and Tanus by surprise, but there was no time to waste.
The non-com of the guard detail pushed at the panels where they joined, seeing whether they were barred from the inside. They didn't give.
Four men of Garric's escort were already carrying an ancient statue from a niche down the hall. It'd been a caryatid, a woman's torso with a fish-scaled base, which might once have supported the roof of a loggia in an Old Kingdom water garden. As the non-com stepped clear, the men carrying the statue jogged forward and with a collective grunt smashed its flat head into the door.
The panels sprang open; the heavy oaken bar ripped out of its staples and crashed to the floor. The right-hand panel banged into the servant dozing on a stool at the side. He fell off with a cry of pain.
"This way!" cried one of Liane's spies, charging through the anteroom and down the corridor to the right. He wasn't the man who'd led the way into the Temple of the Shepherd. Soldiers, Garric, and Lord Waldron-who'd kept up just as he'd said he would-clashed after the spy in their cleated boots. A group of female servants-three or four of them-gossiping in a side hall squealed and ran the other way.
Lascarg's rooms looked dingy and had a smell of neglect. Garric wondered if that was a change or if the rest of the building had also been dirty and rundown before his own staff took over. He'd been too busy to care, but thinking back he remembered squads of servants working in the hallways with stiff brushes and buckets that breathed the biting tang of lye.
It wasn't just dirt creating the oppressive atmosphere, though. One side of this corridor gave onto a courtyard, but shuttered blinds closed the portico despite the pleasant weather. Only through cracks between warped panels did Garric see sunlight or foliage.
A servant in tawdry finery-his tunics stained but hemmed with cloth of gold-heard the crashing footsteps and peered from a doorway. He stared for an instant at what was coming toward him, bleated, and ran down the hall in the other direction. He carried a writing case until it brushed the wainscoting and flew free, scattering documents, quills, and rushlights unnoticed on the floor.