by David Drake
7
CASHEL WOULD RATHER’VE been outside under the stars, but he didn’t mind waiting in the tomb with Tenoctris. He had his back to the threshold with the quarterstaff across his knees. There was enough oil to keep the lamp at the other end of the chamber burning all night, and it’d be all right even if it went out.
When the breeze was right he caught snatches of the soldiers talking. Instead of standing around the trench, they’d moved onto the top of the hill. From there they could see anybody coming toward the tomb but still keep a little ways away from the wizardry.
The chant Tenoctris had started when she lay in the stone coffin continued as a rhythm well below the level Cashel could hear it as words. It wasn’t Tenoctris speaking now, or anyway her lips didn’t move: he’d leaned close to make sure.
Cashel smiled. Probably as well the soldiers had kept their distance. It’d been a treat to watch them dig the tomb open, but likely the sound would bother them if they’d been close enough to hear.
The lamp dimmed to the blue glow of the wick. Cashel leaned forward as he stood. If he’d hopped straight to his feet he’d have cracked his head on the stone transom. He could stand upright in the tomb proper, though.
It wasn’t quite high enough for the quarterstaff, so he held it crossways. He didn’t know what was coming, but he was as ready as he could be.
The lamp brightened again. Cashel frowned; he was glad of the light, but it wasn’t what he’d expected. The oil Tenoctris’d poured from her stoppered bottle ran thinner than any Cashel’d seen before. Maybe that was why it acted this way?
A man stepped from the air toward the other end of the tomb. He didn’t come out of a wall, Cashel was sure of that; there was an oval mistiness, then this fellow walking through it and standing at the foot of the coffin. He was young to look at, scarcely sixteen. His silk robes were so thin you could see the lamp through them; the cloth was bright blue with words embroidered on it in gold. Cashel recognized the curvy Old Script.
“My but you’re a big one, aren’t you?” the stranger said, smiling in a way Cashel didn’t like. “What’s your name, pretty boy?”
“I’m Cashel or-Kenset, sir,” Cashel said, shuffling his feet slightly to be sure they were set right. “Are you the fellow who was buried here?”
The lamp was burning brighter than ever, but the stranger’s features were sharp even where they ought to have been in shadow. And speaking of shadows—
Cashel glanced at the wall of the tomb on the other side of the stranger from the lamp. Instead of the shadow of a young man, it showed a spindly, lizard-headed demon. Lamplight shone through the wing membranes, casting lighter shadows than the body itself; they nicked open and closed as the stranger talked.
“Buried?” said the stranger. “Dear me, what a thought. But your friend came here to find me, if that’s what you mean.”
He looked down at Tenoctris and smirked. “I can certainly see why she wanted me to take charge of the business,” he said. “My, if I’d been such a pitiable weakling, I’d just have hanged myself.”
He smiled at Cashel, obviously waiting for a reaction that didn’t come. Cashel didn’t let words get him mad, especially when that was what the other guy was trying to do—like here.
Of course not being mad didn’t mean he wouldn’t take a quick swipe with the quarterstaff, slamming the fellow into the wall hard enough to break bones. Cashel wouldn’t do that this time either, because Tenoctris really had come here to meet him. Thinking about it made Cashel smile, though.
The stranger tittered, turned, and walked toward the back of the chamber before turning again. His shadow rippled over the rough-hewn wall with him.
“I wanted the First Stone,” he said musingly. “Well, of course I did—anyone would. But I knew where to find it and how to get it … almost.”
He laughed again but there was no humor at all in the sound, not even the joy of a torturer. “That ‘almost’ was expensive, pretty one,” he said. “It cost me time, more time than you can possibly imagine. I was beginning to think that it’d cost me eternity; all the time there ever will be.”
Briskly, cheerfully, he walked toward Cashel with his left hand out. “But now your friend has come,” he said. “I paid and paid well for my information, and at last I’m able at last to use it to get the First Stone. Give me the locket you’re holding for me, my little flower, and we’ll get on with the business I’ve waited so very long to complete.”
“No,” said Cashel. He didn’t raise his voice, but he heard it thicken. “Tenoctris gave me the locket. I’ll keep it.”
“Do you think you can threaten me, you worm!” the stranger said. “Threaten me?”
He was—he didn’t become, he was—a lion bigger than any real lion, a beast whose open jaws could swallow Cashel whole. Its gape reeked with the flesh rotting between its fangs.
Cashel hunched. He’d strike with his right arm leading in a horizontal arc, then bring the other ferrule around from the left in a blow that started at knee height. But not yet.
The lion was too big for the tomb chamber to hold. Cashel faced it on a flat, featureless plain—but the plain might not be real; and if it wasn’t, neither was the lion. A stroke at something that didn’t exist would pull him off balance, and that could be the end of the fight. The stranger might not be a lion, but he was something—and something very dangerous.
“Give me the locket, worm-thing!” the lion shouted.
Cashel twitched the quarterstaff just a hair, widdershins and then sunwise. He’d said all he had to say, so he didn’t speak again. There were folks who thought blustering before a fight scared the other fellow, but Cashel didn’t believe that. It didn’t scare him; and besides, he generally didn’t need help.
The lion tittered and was the slender young man again. “Oh, the fun I used to have when I was alive!” he said in the arch tones Cashel heard around the palace when courtiers were each trying to be snootier than the other. “Happy days, happy days.”
He smiled at Cashel; and as he smiled, his body flowed through the side of the stone coffin and merged with Tenoctris. It was like watching honey soak into a slice of coarse bread.
The lamp had sunk back to its usual flicker. There was no sign of the stranger. Tenoctris groaned.
“Tenoctris?” Cashel said. Should he have stopped the thing from touching her? But she hadn’t said so, and he wasn’t sure what he could’ve done anyway.
The old woman sat up carefully. Cashel offered his left arm; she gladly took it.
“Are you all right?” he asked, lifting her down to the tomb floor. She felt no heavier than a pigeon on his arm.
“I’ve gotten what I came here for,” she said softly. “Tomorrow we must go with Sharina to the Place; we have dealings with the Coerli. But tonight—”
She gestured to her satchel.
“—please bring that, my dear. Tonight I must sleep, because I’m as tired as I’ve ever been in a long life.”
GARRIC SAT ON the stump of a great tree in the clearing behind the stables, working a rawhide thong through awl holes to sew pieces of pigskin. He’d expected to cut the new harness alone, but Winces and Pendill, the trappers staying at the Boar’s Skull, were delighted to do most of the work for him.
“You could live to twice your age, boy …,” said Winces. He held a pigskin up in his left hand and stepped on the lower end, then sliced a strap freehand with a butcher knife. Garric had worked enough with leather to understand how strong the trapper’s wrists must be to do that in a single stroke. “And not do as much’ve this as Pendill’n me have.”
The other trapper—the men were cousins—chatted affably with Kore as he fitted her with the chest band and shoulder straps that they’d already cut and sewn. Garric glanced at them. “Ah,” he said, though he knew it was a silly question, “you and your cousin aren’t related to any poets, are you?”
“Poet?” said Winces, frowning. “What’s a poet?”
“Someone
who puts words together so they have rhythm and maybe rhyme,” Garric said in embarrassment. Carus was laughing in his mind, and Shin turned to laugh as well. “There was a famous poet of the same name as your cousin, but I realize he must’ve lived a long time after, well, you do.”
“I could’ve done a little better than friend Winces,” the ghost of Carus said. “But I won’t pretend I’d have cared any more about poetry than he does. It’s one of those things I never saw much point in, like learning to rule without keeping my hand on my sword all of the time.”
Orra came through the passageway carrying two saddlebags over his left shoulder; his tunic bulged with the bulk of the money belt concealed beneath it. He was trying to be unobtrusive about the fact he held a small crossbow. It was cocked.
“Master Orra!” Garric called. He waved but deliberately didn’t stand and walk the five or six double paces over to the other traveler. Orra was obviously nervous about seeing him; he’d kept his face turned, watching Garric only out of the corner of his eyes.
“Tsk!” Carus snorted. “Watching the ogre, more likely. And I don’t know that I’d blame him.”
“Ah, yes, Lord Garric,” Orra said, staying close to the wall of the inn. His posture hinted that he’d have liked to rush into the stables without speaking, but he knew that he couldn’t saddle his mount and ride out before Garric reached the entrance. “Congratulations! I saw you rush into the middle of things last night, and I’ll admit I didn’t expect a good result.”
Winces looked at Orra and snorted, then went back to his leatherwork. Shin, Pendill, and Kore hadn’t paid him any attention to begin with.
Garric rose slowly to his feet and stretched. “I didn’t expect this particular good result myself,” he said. “Assuming it’s a good one, of course. Be that as it may, I’ve a favor to ask you. Master Hann told me that you’re riding south?”
Orra looked even warier than before. “I’ve no taste for company, milord!” he said sharply. “These are hard times, and I hope you’ll not feel insulted if I say that a man’s better off by himself than at close quarters with a stranger. I’ve a crossbow here—”
He lifted it slightly.
“—that I loose off at anything that comes up on me. Anything or anyone.”
“It’s nothing like that, sir,” said Garric. He kept his friendly smile, but he couldn’t help thinking of how useful an ally with a crossbow would’ve been while he faced the ogre. “I’d like you to give notice that I’m on my way when you reach the next inn. I trust you can see your way clear to doing that?”
Orra frowned. He was a merchant of some sort, or at least said so. Neither Master Hann—who might have lied out of policy—nor Megrin—who’d have told the truth if only to spite his father—had been sure what Orra’s precise business was.
“What do you mean, notice?” he said warily. “Hostelries here in the Great Forest don’t have royal suites, you know.”
“I didn’t imagine they did,” Garric said, finding his smile increasingly hard to maintain. “But I’d like them to know that the man who’ll be arriving soon on an ogre is friendly and pays in good coin despite the strangeness of his mount.”
He reached into his purse and spilled coins from one hand to the other—copper and silver only, of course. Gold would be as difficult to change in this wilderness as it was in Barca’s Hamlet; a traveler might as well try to barter lodging with rubies.
“I don’t want to cause needless concern,” Garric said. Silently he added, Nor do I want to learn there are folk more willing to fight an ogre than you were last night.
“Yes, all right, I can do that,” Orra said. He paused a few heartbeats, then said, “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I must be off. Good luck to you on your journey, sir.”
“And to you, Master Orra,” Garric said, but the other man had already vanished into the stables.
“All right, let’s try this on,” said Winces, patting the strap he’d completed. His hand was scarcely less tough than the tanned pigskin. “If we’ve got the length right, then it’s only left to sew them together and you’ve a saddle.”
“Yes, dear master,” said Kore, standing at her full height. One leg strap with its stirrup hung from her chest band; the sling that Garric was to sit in was ready though not yet tied in place. “I’m so looking forward to displaying my talents as a beast of burden.”
“I didn’t ask you to kill my horse,” Garric said sharply. “I didn’t particularly care for the animal, but I didn’t have to worry about it being sarcastic.”
“You didn’t know what it was thinking,” the ogre said. “It would be dishonest of me to dissemble my feelings the way that brute beast did.”
Master Orra trotted out of the stables on his white horse. He turned through the passage to the main track without speaking further or even looking back.
Garric sighed. “Kore,” he said, “I’ve promised you I’d be a good master. I would appreciate it if you didn’t goad me into using the flat of my sword on you, all right? Because at some later point I’d probably regret having done so.”
The ogre laughed; Shin laughed with her. And after a moment, Garric laughed also.
“THIS IS FAR enough for today,” Ilna said, though the sun was scarcely midway from zenith to the western horizon. They’d been marching through evergreen scrub since daybreak, and this mound of grass and flowers under a holly oak attracted her. They weren’t in a hurry, after all.
Asion brought up the rear. He nodded, put two fingers to his lips, and blew a piercing summons. Karpos was out of sight ahead of the rest of the party today. The hunters said the whistle was a marmot’s warning call. Ilna didn’t doubt that, but she couldn’t see that the form of signal provided any concealment here where there weren’t any marmots.
“I’ll set some rabbit snares,” Asion said. “Maybe a deadfall too. There’s plenty of wild pigs, judging by the droppings.”
Ilna nodded. She was suddenly very tired. Asion vanished into the brush.
“What is our goal, Ilna?” asked Temple. He was laying a fireset around a dry hemlock twig which he’d furred with his dagger. He didn’t look up from his work when he spoke.
“My goal is to kill all cat men,” she said sharply. “You’re welcome to leave if you don’t approve of that.”
“I’ve joined you, Ilna,” Temple replied, smiling down at his neat workmanship. “It’s my destiny, I believe. But I was curious as to where we’re going.”
She snorted. “In the longer term, we’re going to die,” she said harshly. “Until that happens, I’m going to act as if life had meaning and kill cat men.”
Ilna turned and walked up the mound. She didn’t know what it was about the big man that irritated her. Perhaps it was that she got the feeling he was judging her, though he never said anything of the sort.
Temple glanced up at her. “You’ve earned your rest, Ilna,” he said. “We’ll rouse you when dinner’s ready.”
“I’m just sitting down,” Ilna snapped. “I’m not planning to go to sleep.”
When she sat and leaned her back against the oak, she felt a rush of weariness. She frowned; there wasn’t any reason for it that she could see. Every morning she knotted a small pattern to give them a direction of march. That took more effort than might be expected by someone who didn’t do wizardry—for she was forcing herself now to admit that her talent was wizardry rather than simply an unusual skill at weaving. Still, a trivial prediction wasn’t enough to explain her present longing for sleep.
Wildflowers brightened the mound like embroidery on a coverlet of grass. There were buttercups and pink and blue primroses. She thought she saw gentians as well, but she’d have had to get up to make sure. She didn’t care to find the energy to do that.
Merota had loved flowers. Chalcus would’ve woven the girl a chaplet if they were here now. Perhaps that’s why Ilna’d wanted to stop.
The mound was probably man-made. There were a number of rock outcrops scattered across the plain,
but this was earthen and too regular an oval for nature to have raised it.
There were no signs of a city on the plain they were crossing, no tumbles of weathered rock that had carvings on the protected undersides. Perhaps nomads had buried a chief and passed on in ancient times. The holly oak was very old, and there was no telling how long after the mound was raised that it’d sprouted.
Ilna could hear the crackle of Temple’s fire and smelled meat grilling. The hunters must’ve returned with rabbits, though she hadn’t noticed them.
Berries weren’t out at this time of year, but ordinarily Ilna would’ve plucked young plantains and dandelion leaves to go with the meat. She didn’t feel like getting up now, however.
I’m going to sleep after all, she thought; and presently she did.
SHARINA WORE BREECHES and knee boots. Her garb scandalized the wardrobe servants, but Lord Attaper would’ve insisted on it for safety even if she hadn’t made the decision herself on the basis of what Garric’d told her about the Coerli city.
She didn’t mind filth the way a delicately brought-up girl might’ve. The things that hid in the filth were dangerous, though. Sharina stepped carefully over a human rib bone that’d been cracked for the marrow. If there was a better way to get blood poisoning than by stabbing a sliver of rotten bone into your flesh, it’d thankfully escaped Sharina’s imagination.
Even Cashel wore wooden clogs as he tramped along like an ox on a muddy track. He looked about him at everything, as placid as a man could be.
If there were cause for alarm, Cashel’d see it before the soldiers did, and Sharina trusted his response farther than she did that of the soldiers. Not that trouble was likely. The cat men seemed fascinated by their human visitors, but there was no hint of hostility.
She brushed closer, though she didn’t try to hug Cashel while they were walking between the Coerli dwellings. She wasn’t afraid of an attack, but the close presence of this many Coerli was making her dizzy.
“The smell’s awful,” Sharina said. “I think it’s worse than the tanyard back home. Though I don’t see that it can be; maybe I’ve just gotten spoiled by living in a palace.”