by David Drake
The Coerli didn’t like fire, but they’d followed the haze of smoke back to this farm, which they must’ve thought was abandoned. The blaze in front of Ilna wouldn’t keep them from leaping on her from the sides, of course.
She smiled with anticipation: the fire was to illuminate, not to protect.
The leader growled deep in his throat. His muscles were heavier than those of an ordinary warrior and his mane had begun to sprout, but that was true, though to a lesser degree, of the three Coerli accompanying him. In a fully fledged pack the chieftain limited the amount of meat his warriors ate, since without it the males remained sexually neuter and didn’t threaten the chief’s dominance. This hunting party probably ate only meat, so the members were on terms of dangerous equality.
The beasts weren’t going to live long enough to kill one another in dominance battles, however. Ilna jerked the blanket from its pegs, uncovering the pattern she’d laid against the wall.
“Now!” she cried to her companions. Her right hand loosed the silken lasso she wore around her waist in place of a sash.
The leading cat man had started his leap, his arm poised to pin Ilna’s throat with his spearhead, before he glimpsed the pattern of threads against the wood in the bright flames. His muscles locked, spilling him onto the ground sideways. The beast directly behind him fell also, as did the one who’d stayed farther out in case Ilna tried to run.
Ilna’s lasso looped from her hand, filling a pattern she knew though she didn’t yet see it. The cat man farthest to the left shrieked like a hawk as he loped toward her. He leaped, a stone axe raised in his right hand and a dagger carved from rootstock in his left. He moved quicker than a human could respond—
He shrieked again, tangled in the noose that hung in the air through which he’d tried to spring. Ilna jerked hard, turning.
The cat man twisted, but the silk’s pull spun him into the cabin wall. He lost his axe at the impact but still had the poniard when he slammed the ground.
He gathered his legs under himself to spring toward Ilna. Temple’s long sword slipped in above his breastbone and out through his spine at mid-back.
The warrior’s arms spasmed. He coughed a bubble of blood and, as it burst over his face, went flaccid.
Ilna let out her breath in a gasp. Asion rose, withdrawing the knife he’d thrust through the kidney of a paralyzed beast. The head of the most distant cat man was cocked at right angles to the rest of its spine. As Ilna looked up, Karpos wrung the neck of the pack’s leader the same way: one palm on the beast’s chin and the other at the top of his skull.
Temple wiped his sword with the edge of the blanket which’d hidden Ilna’s trap. “Don’t look at this,” she snapped as she snatched the sketchy fabric off the wall, bundling the yarn and support poles to break their pattern. She didn’t want to take time now to untie the knots and coil the strands into a skein.
“I didn’t know how powerful you are, Ilna,” Temple said as he continued to polish the hard bronze. “You have a remarkable ability.”
Ilna shrugged. She supposed she could toss the snare on the fire; it was of no further use, to her or to others. She chose not to do that, though it’d be the most efficient way to rid the world of something that’d be dangerous until it was destroyed.
The wool and the sticks were nothing in themselves, but they’d helped her kill four cat men. She’d disarm her trap, but if she decided not to destroy the materials that’d served her well—who could tell her she was wrong?
“I wondered when the one kept on coming, mistress,” Karpos said. He’d scalped the cat men’s leader, using his long dagger with the delicacy of a much smaller knife; now he was walking toward the more distant of his victims to take that trophy also. “I guess you just wanted the kill for yourself, huh?”
“No,” said Ilna, walking to the body of the beast Temple had stabbed. “My pattern didn’t work on him for some reason.”
She lifted the cat man by the scalp lock, the ridge of long hair down the back of his neck. One of his eyes was a normal muddy brown, but the other was as milky and dead as a chip of marble.
“Ah,” Ilna said, dropping the beast’s face in the dirt again. Nothing to be done about a half-blind attacker who didn’t see the same pattern as his fellows. Though if she’d adjusted two threads on the far left end of the fabric, she might’ve been able to—
Well, she’d keep that in mind the next time. There’d be many more next times, until she was dead or all the cat men were dead.
Ilna dusted her palms together, then slipped free the noose with which she’d caught the beast when her pattern didn’t work. She’d been afraid that Temple’s thrust had nicked the cord, but on examining it she found the blade had entered the chest above her lasso and exited below the back of the loop. The silk was untouched.
If the thrust had been calculated, it was a very pretty piece of work; and from what Ilna had seen of Temple, it’d probably been calculated. “Thank you,” she said. “My noose wouldn’t have kept him from jumping straight toward me.”
She cleared her throat. “And I appreciate you not cutting my noose, either. Though I could’ve spliced it if necessary.”
“There’s very little about fabric that you couldn’t do, Ilna,” the big man said. His voice was pleasant, but he didn’t mean the words as a question. “Yours is a remarkable power, whatever you choose to use it for.”
“Right now I choose to kill beasts,” Ilna snapped. The hunters had wiped their knives on the pelts of the dead cat men. They stood easily, bow and sling in their hands, waiting for her to tell them what to do next.
“We can go straight to the camp and end the business,” she said harshly. “Leave your packs; we’ll come back here.”
The hunters exchanged glances. Asion started toward the forested slope to the northeast. “I’ll follow,” Karpos said to Ilna, turning to watch the ridge behind them.
It’d be fully light by the time they reached the cat men’s day camp. That’d be helpful if there was more to do there—as Ilna suspected there would be.
CASHEL SQUATTED WITH his back against one of the two columns still standing near the southeast corner of the ruin. There was a stretch of the stone foundation course for a mud-brick wall, and the bases of other columns that’d fallen over. Otherwise, the Temple of the Mighty Shepherd was a lot of loose stones. Cashel’d seen enough temples by now that he could guess at what it might’ve looked like, but that was just guessing.
Tenoctris sat cross-legged way down at the other end, where the statue would’ve been in the days there was a statue. Cashel was uncomfortable about them being so far apart in case something happened, nearly two tens of double paces as he judged. She’d said it’d be all right, though, and that having him close might be a problem because he was so solid.
Cashel didn’t understand what she meant by solid—sure he was, but she was sitting on a slab of stone. There were lots of things he didn’t understand, though; he’d do what Tenoctris said. If more of the Last popped out of the ground the way they’d come from the pond the night before, well, he’d see how quick he could get to her. When he had to, he moved faster than people generally expected.
He held the quarterstaff crossways on his thighs as he polished it, smiling softly. He and the staff had surprised people, yes they had. They’d surprised people and things that weren’t people at all.
Sparks of wizardlight sizzled blue above Tenoctris, then vanished. Cashel watched intently for a moment, but it’d happened before and not meant anything. At each pop and crackle the tree frogs fell silent, but they were starting up again as usual.
Cashel listened to the frogs and the night birds, and he eyed the heavens. Once already tonight a shrew had perched on his foot and chittered as it ate a beetle; the wings and then bits of the beetle’s shell had tickled his bare skin before the shrew’d scurried off into the night to find something else to kill. Shrews were bloody little fellows, for all that they weren’t much longer than a man’s fing
er.
Tenoctris mumbled, or maybe somebody else spoke near where she was. Nobody Cashel could see, anyway. The old wizard’s eyes were closed. She wore a calm smile, but Cashel’d seen her smile when she thought Evil was going to overwhelm her and everybody she cared about. Folks who thought courage had something to do with being willing to hit other people needed to spend a little time around Tenoctris.
There were wispy clouds in the high sky, but mostly the stars shone clear. A shepherd spends a lot of time looking at the stars while other people sleep. They’re his clock as well as his companion: they keep better time than folk in the palace get from the clepsydra dripping water and a trumpeter blowing the hour when a cup filled and turned over.
The constellations were pretty much what he was used to. The Seven Plow Oxen were strung out a little, and a middling reddish star was in the place of the blue one in the head of the Farrier’s Hammer; nothing more major than those things.
Except in the south, where the new white star was so much brighter than anything but the moon. Cashel looked over his shoulder at it, then looked back. He figured that star was part of the problem, but it wasn’t for him to worry about till somebody told him it was.
A cardinal started singing merrily, though what it was doing up so late was more than Cashel could guess. It’d been dark for hours; Duzi, it’d been dark by the time Tenoctris stopped the gig here on the eastern outskirts of Valles.
Of what Valles was today, anyhow. Cashel was pretty sure that when he’d been driven through this part of the city before the Change, it’d been solid with many-story tenements.
Cashel didn’t miss the buildings—they were dovecotes for people; he couldn’t imagine how folks were willing to live like that—but he sort of wondered what’d happened to those who’d been in them. He hoped they were all back in their own time, as happy as anybody could be in tenements.
It was probably good there weren’t as many people around as he’d expected, partly because wizardry bothered folks. What Tenoctris was doing now seemed a lot like wizardry, even if she wanted to call it dreaming or meditation or whatever. The sparkles and the sounds showed that.
The other reason—and probably the bigger one—was that this way folks didn’t bother her. There was no way Cashel could’ve kept everybody away from Tenoctris if they’d been in the middle of buildings full of people, especially since he had to stay a distance back from her himself. Sure, most folks were scared of a wizard, but there’d always be a few, kids especially, who weren’t or were more curious than scared.
A girl stepped into the temple from the front. She looked at Cashel when she passed, though she didn’t say anything or even look interested. She was heading toward Tenoctris.
Isn’t that just what you get when you tell yourself things are going fine! Cashel thought as he scrambled to his feet. “Ma’am?” he said. “I wish you wouldn’t go any closer to my friend. She’s busy with, well, a thing that she’s got to think about really hard.”
The girl stopped in her tracks and turned to stare. She was older than he’d thought, but still not very old; sixteen, maybe, was all. She had flowing dark hair that spread like a cape over the thin shift that seemed to be all she was wearing.
“You can see me?” she said. Her voice was as thin and high as the trilling of chorus frogs.
“Yes, ma’am,” Cashel said. She had very fine bones; that and the way her legs moved made him think of a bird. “I know I’m not from around here, but I’d really be grateful if you didn’t talk to Tenoctris till she’s done.”
If the girl didn’t listen to him when he was being polite, he guessed he’d hold her. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, grab a stranger and make her do something because he was stronger, but Tenoctris was depending on him.
The girl just stared. Had he done something wrong? “Ah, my name’s Cashel or-Kenset,” he said. “I’m just here with my friend Tenoctris, Lady Tenoctris, that is. I carry things for her.”
“You see me!” the girl cried. She touched her hands to her face, covering her open mouth. “It’s been … why, nobody’s ever been able to see me! Not since the flood.”
“Ah, flood, ma’am?” Cashel said. “I’m not from Ornifal; I mean, I’m from Haft. I hadn’t heard about a flood here, I guess.”
“No, the Flood,” the girl said. “When the waters covered everything and everyone died.”
Her tongue touched her lips; Cashel couldn’t begin to read her expression. “I died then, but I didn’t go away like the rest of them. I’ve stayed here for ever so long. I don’t know why.”
“Ma’am, you’re a ghost?” Cashel said. She didn’t look like a ghost. He wondered if he could touch her if he stretched out his arm, but he didn’t try. It’d be impolite, and anyway it didn’t matter.
“Am I?” said the girl. “Perhaps I am.”
She licked her lips again. “Your name is Cashel,” she said wonderingly. “I used to have a name too. I don’t remember what it was, though. It was ever so long ago.”
“Do you live around here?” Cashel said. “Stay, I mean, if you’re not …”
“I think I came here after the Flood,” the girl said. He couldn’t believe that she was a ghost; she seemed just as real as real. “I don’t think I lived here before, but I don’t really remember.”
She shook her head, then gave him a rueful smile. “I don’t remember anything from when I was alive,” she said, “except that I had a name. I’m sure I had a name.”
A thread of ruby sparks trickled out of the sky to vanish again above Tenoctris’ head. She didn’t move or even notice it as best as Cashel could tell.
From what the old wizard’d said on the drive here, she wasn’t making things happen any more than the flume makes the water that turns the mill. She just put herself where things would happen and maybe pushed them a bit to one side or the other.
The girl was staring at Tenoctris. “Can she see me too, Cashel?” she said suddenly, turning to face him. Her eyes were very dark, but they seemed like real eyes.
“Ma’am,” Cashel said, “I don’t know. When she’s done we can ask her, I guess.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” the girl said, brushing the thought away with a sweep of her hand. “Nothing matters really, not if you take the time to look at it. Do you—”
She raised a hand and traced the line of Cashel’s cheek without quite touching him.
“Do you have feelings, Cashel?” she said coquettishly. “Love and hate, things like that?”
“I wouldn’t say I hated anybody, ma’am,” he said, feeling a little uncomfortable. Still, the girl wasn’t bothering Tenoctris and that was all that mattered. “I’ve fought people and I guess I will again. People and other things. But I don’t know about hate.”
“I used to feel things,” she said, turning away again. Whatever’d possessed her for a moment was gone now, thank Duzi. “I remember that too. When I’m around people I sometimes imagine I can feel again, but mostly I’m alone.”
The ground trembled, though the motion was so faint that afterward Cashel wasn’t sure he’d felt anything more than a distant wagon with a heavy load. “Now I feel sadness,” the girl said, her eyes fixed on Tenoctris. “Everyone in this world is going to be killed the way the Flood killed everyone in my world.”
She looked at him abruptly. “That’s right, isn’t it?” she said. “I should feel sad about that? Or should I feel something else?”
Cashel’s lips felt dry. “Ma’am,” he said, “that’d be sad, but Tenoctris and the rest of us aren’t going to let that happen. It’ll be all right.”
The girl trilled golden laughter. “Yes,” she said, “I remember now. There were scholars in my day who were going to stop the Flood, but the Flood came anyway. You’ll see that it doesn’t really matter, Cashel. When you look back as far as I do, nothing matters. And you feel nothing.”
There was a pop near Tenoctris, a dull sound. The air was suddenly clearer, though Cashel hadn’t noticed
a haze beforehand. The old woman slumped, barely managing to catch herself on her arms.
Cashel trotted to her, holding his staff crosswise before him. Tenoctris looked up and smiled when she heard his feet thumping on the turf. She stayed where she was until he was there to help her up.
“Tenoctris?” he said when he was sure she was all right and firm on her feet. “There’s somebody who’d like to meet you.”
Cashel looked toward where he’d been standing, but the girl wasn’t there anymore. For a moment he thought she might’ve hidden behind one of the pillars, but that probably wasn’t it.
“I guess she’s gone,” he said in embarrassment. “We were talking while you sat here, is all.”
Tenoctris nodded and started toward the gig. She touched Cashel’s wrist but didn’t really lean on him. “The girl was local, then?” she asked.
Cashel grinned. Tenoctris wanted to know more, but she didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. “I don’t know if she was,” he said. “She said she drowned in a flood so long ago that she couldn’t remember her name. She looked just like a girl, though. A pretty one.”
“Indeed?” Tenoctris said in delight. “The Primal Flood, then? My, that’s quite interesting, Cashel. And she’d become the spirit of this place, a genius loci.”
She smiled. “A genia loci, I suppose, since you say she was still a girl to look at.”
Cashel shrugged; the words didn’t mean anything to him. Not even “spirit of this place.”
“She couldn’t remember much,” he said, looking to both sides as they passed between the pair of pillars that were still standing. “She told me—”
He stopped and took a moment to reframe his words. He said, “I told her that you were going to stop the trouble that was coming now. Like her flood.”
“I see,” said Tenoctris, looking at him sharply. He guessed she really did see what he hadn’t said. “Well, while I myself can’t stop the Last, I think I’ve learned how to get the ally we need.”
She paused, still watching him as they neared the gig. “I’ll need your help again tomorrow, Cashel,” she said. “If you’re willing.”