by David Drake
The ogre stepped onto the causeway, lowering her weight carefully. Her clawed foot didn’t sink in. She paused, cocking an eye toward her rider for direction.
“And in the morning, Lord Holm will carry us across the salt water in his barge?” Garric said. “Is that correct, Master Leel?”
“Milord said he would, didn’t he?” the guard growled. He didn’t look up to meet Garric’s eye. “Anyway, why not? We don’t have any cargo since the grubbies won’t go out to the islands anymore. We may as well carry you and your beasts.”
“All right, let’s go across,” Garric said. He felt a grudging sympathy for Leel, who obviously didn’t trust his master but who was unwilling to lie for him. “If the fog covers the moon again, we’re going to have to feel our way.”
Shin gave a rippling, golden chuckle and made a motion with his hands. A ball of azure wizardlight swelled to the size of a cantaloupe just ahead of him. It was bright enough to show the seams between the blocks of asphalt. The aegipan danced onto the causeway, singing, “He who would valiant be, ’gainst all disaster…”
Kore followed at a measured pace. Her claws and the aegipan’s hooves clicked on pebbles on the causeway’s surface.
Garric glanced over his shoulder. For a brief time he could see Leel’s torch as a dull red spark moving west across the neck of land, but then the mist swept in at full thickness and swallowed everything beyond the glow of Shin’s ball of light.
“—and follow the Master,” the aegipan sang, then broke off into fresh laughter.
The night was thick but not silent. The asphalt surface groaned, and occasionally a bubble plopped hollowly. Such humid warmth made Garric expect frogs and insects, but nothing living made a sound.
Kore paced forward easily. They were silent for some time.
“Can either of you see the palace?” Garric said at last. “As best I can judge, we should be getting close to—”
The air grew noticeably cooler, though Garric didn’t feel the breeze that must’ve driven the change. The sky was clear; stars jabbed down around a moon which was within an hour of zenith. The black bulk of Lord Holm’s palace rose a few double paces ahead.
The aegipan made another gesture with his delicate hands, rather like crumpling parchment into a ball and throwing it away; the globe of wizardlight vanished. Useful as the illumination had been, it had given objects an unclean cast when combined with natural moonlight.
Mind, the palace was sufficiently unclean even in the moon’s pale purity. Like the causeway, it was constructed of blocks sawn from the lake’s surface. That they’d been carefully dressed and carved with pilasters and crude swags made the effect even more grotesque. Kore knelt without being told to so that Garric could dismount.
The windows were tall with pointed arches; the glass set into the openings in leaded frames may’ve been colored, but Garric couldn’t be sure in this light. The double door was of heavy oak and iron-strapped, but both valves stood open.
Torches like the one Leel had carried waited in sconces to either side of the recessed doorway, ready to be lighted. Shin lifted one, stared at it critically, and made a pass over the ball of tar with his cupped left hand. A red spark flashed and the tar began to burn with deep, smoky flames.
Shin offered Garric the butt of the torch, adding with a curl of his tongue, “Or would you prefer to treat me as your servant, Prince Garric? Shall I bear the torch for you?”
“You’re not my servant,” Garric said, taking the torch. He extended his arm slightly so that the acrid fumes were downwind of all of them. “And I’m capable of carrying this.”
“So long as you keep it in your left hand,” said Carus. He chuckled. “I wouldn’t like this place even if we hadn’t been told we were being sent because nobody else had the balls to come.”
“Foul though I find the odor of this hellpit…,” said the ogre. She bent almost double to step through the doorway. “I would know if there were anything alive inside. There is not.”
“I would find that more reassuring,” said the aegipan as he followed, “if I thought the living were the only or even the greatest danger we might face here.”
Garric paused in the doorway to peer at a blotch in the carved molding; it was the discolored knuckle of a bone from an ox or something even bigger. Of course animals—and no doubt men—would’ve fallen into the tar over the centuries that the asphalt lake had existed. The larger the beast, the more likely that its weight would break through the crust, especially if a skin of rainwater hid it.
He walked into the building. There was no anteroom, just a hall which rose to the height of three normal stories. The domed roof had a large oculus in the center.
Moonlight streamed through that round window and painted the west side of the hall. Tapestries showing horsemen hunting strange beasts across a mountainous landscape covered the bitumen wall; it would otherwise have absorbed the light almost completely. Reflection from the fabric of silk with metal threads illuminated the great room better than chandeliers did the feasting hall of the palace at Valles. That wouldn’t help during the new moon, of course.
There were benches around both sidewalls and a high wooden throne with gilt—or perhaps golden—dragon finials at the end opposite the entrance. Garric would’ve expected a clear space in the center of the hall. Petitioners would stand there during audiences and servants would set up trestle tables for feasts. Instead, a massive black sarcophagus stood directly under the oculus.
Shin and Kore stood at either end of the sarcophagus, staring at it hostilely. Garric joined them, bringing the torch close to get a better view of the ornate reliefs.
“Is it ebony?” he asked, but he was already reaching out to answer his own question. He tapped the lid with his knuckles.
“It’s stone,” he said in surprise. “It must be jet. It’s hard enough to take delicate carvings, at any rate. These are very good.”
As Garric eyed the reliefs more carefully, he realized their strangeness as well as the carver’s skill. There were two separate bands on the lid, arranged so that the figures’ feet were toward the door. In the center of the upper register stood a skeletally thin human figure, probably a man, wearing long robes. His arms were spread to either side in blessing. Though the features were stylized and in any case very small—the face was the size of the end of a man’s thumb—Garric thought he detected a similarity to Lord Holm.
The lower register was covered with a profusion of animals, each one identifiably distinct from its many fellows. The beasts fell into at least a dozen different species, each of them similar to an animal which Garric had seen or at least read descriptions of—but none really identical to anything familiar.
The largest of the carved animals were the elephants. These had unusually long, curving tusks, but that could be explained as artistic license. The hump of fat on the beasts’ shoulders, though, and the shaggy hair that covered their bodies were like nothing Garric had seen or heard of.
Likewise the lions seemed ordinary enough until you noticed the curved canines projecting beneath the lower jaw, the antelopes had four horns rather than two, and the wolves’ heads seemed too massive for even their unusually robust bodies. The circling vultures were far too big also, assuming the elephants and other animals weren’t pygmy versions of their present relatives.
“It’s an odd place for Lord Holm to keep his father’s coffin, wouldn’t you think?” said the ogre, who must’ve noticed the same resemblance that Garric thought he saw. “Of course, one never knows what humans will decide to do. I blame it on their skulls being so small that their brains get squeezed.”
“It’s not Holm’s father,” said the aegipan. “At least it’s not his father unless Holm is many thousands of years old. Ten thousand at least, I would judge.”
Garric stepped back and frowned. “Judge how?” he said.
Shin touched the hilt of the dagger Garric had found in the peel tower and said, “May I borrow this?”
“Y
es,” said Garric. “Of course.”
Shin drew the dagger and slid its point down the margin of the lid. Garric winced to see the blade mistreated, though on consideration he realized that jet wasn’t hard enough to dull good steel.
“Do you see how bright the edges of the scratch are?” the aegipan said, gesturing with one hand while the other replaced the dagger in Garric’s sheath. It was a remarkable piece of coordination. “Compare them with the dullness of the reliefs. Air doesn’t act quickly on jet, but it acts; and this sarcophagus was made millennia ago.”
In all truth, Garric couldn’t see the distinction—certainly not by torchlight and probably not in the full blaze of the sun. But neither did he see any reason to doubt Shin’s judgment, on this matter or on anything else the aegipan chose to state with such assurance.
He looked up at the dome. From where he stood, the rim of the oculus clipped a sooty edge from the moon’s silver and gray.
Shin examined the tapestries. They seemed to be well made, but the scenes had no obvious connection with this black palace. Garric wondered if Holm or one of his ancestors had looted them in a raid.
Kore opened the door in the partition wall behind the throne and squatted to look down the passage to the living quarters beyond. She’d have to crawl to negotiate it, and from the blank disgust on her face she saw no reason to do so.
Something sizzled. Garric turned. The light of the full moon blazed straight down on the sarcophagus, flattening the reliefs. A figure formed, coalescing out of the air instead of rising through the stone lid.
Garric stepped back, touching his hilt but not drawing the sword. Kore and the aegipan sidled around the edges of the hall, placing themselves beside Garric and close to the outside door.
The figure, at least seven feet tall even without the pedestal of the sarcophagus to stand on, looked down at Garric and laughed. It was indeed a taller, more cadaverous version of Lord Holm.
“You are the sacrifice?” the figure said. Its voice boomed as if from a vast cavern. “Not before time, I must say. My blood must be thinning for matters to have waited so long.”
Garric drew his sword with a muted sring of the gray steel blade. He backed another step, trusting his companions to keep clear without him having to waste attention on them.
“Milord,” he said to the robed wizard. “I told your descendant I’d spend the night in this palace. I’m not a sacrifice, to you or him or to anyone. My friends and I will go now and leave the night to you.”
The wizard laughed again and raised his left hand, knuckles out. On the fourth finger was a ring with a huge red stone. “Belia!” he said.
A film of scarlet wizardlight covered the interior of the hall like the membrane inside an eggshell. Kore growled and hunched toward the open doorway. She rebounded from the red shimmer, snarled, and ripped outward at it with both hands the way one would try to tear a silk curtain. Her claws slid without gripping.
Garric lunged, thrusting for the wizard’s right kneecap. It was the easiest target and, though it wouldn’t be immediately fatal, it’d bring the tall man’s vitals within reach of a second stroke.
“Eithabira!” the wizard said, and wrapped himself in wizardlight like a cicada in its chrysalis. The edge that’d sheared hard limestone bounced away. The blade sang a high note; Garric’s right hand and forearm felt as though he’d plunged them into boiling water. He damped the vibration by holding the sword against his thigh.
The wizard’s laugh boomed again. He clenched his left fist so that the fiery jewel pointed at Garric. Garric made an overarm cut into the sarcophagus lid between the wizard’s feet. The jet shattered.
The wizard toppled backward with a hoarse shout. The glimmer of wizardlight vanished like frost in sunshine.
“Mount!” Kore shouted, turning and dropping to one knee. “Mount!”
Garric wobbled. He was as dizzy as if he hadn’t had anything to drink in three days.
“Quickly!” said the aegipan, pausing in the doorway to look back. The building rocked, springing several panes of glass from their casements.
The ogre took Garric in her arms and bolted out of the palace. Tremors shook the lake. Shin ran ahead, dancing over the blocks of the causeway as they rose and fell. In the palace behind them the wizard cried out again. He sounded like a rabbit in a leg snare, but very much louder.
“I’m all right now!” Garric said. He thought he was. He started to sheathe his sword but changed his mind. “I can walk myself!”
A great head broke the surface of the asphalt, raising its trunk high as it struggled to mount the causeway. It would’ve been an elephant if not for the shaggy hair covering its body. It trumpeted shrilly as Kore raced past with Garric. The pitiless moonlight gleamed as more creatures broke from their ancient bondage all across the lake.
“Quickly!” cried the aegipan. The ogre’s clawed strides struck sparks with each leap over the crumbling asphalt surface.
ILNA’D EXPECTED EITHER a landscape like the valley she was leaving or a swamp like the one where Garric’d found cat men preying on the Grass People. In the event, when she stepped through the portal her bare feet scrunched into coarse sand. It was the color of rust, but the small red sun exaggerated the hue.
The terrain was largely barren, but there was water despite the lack of ground cover. What Ilna first thought were sedges—on closer look they weren’t—grew in a pool a few double paces to the left, and the swales were studded with what seemed to be ferns springing from woody knobs like cypress knees.
“Well, no doubt which way they came,” said Karpos. He nodded toward the track worn into the sand, not so much a line of footprints as a parallel double ridge thrown up to either side of the path. It reminded Ilna of the way ants wore trackways in gritty soil after a rain.
“Not that there was anyway,” said Asion, who’d bent down to gather pebbles from the sand. He used his stubby left index finger to sort through possibilities before suddenly flicking four smooth chunks of quartz into the other palm. He transferred them to his bullet pouch.
Less than half a mile ahead stood a structure of glass, all flat planes with the same number of sides as a hand has fingers. The dim sun easing toward the western horizon turned some facets rosy while others reflected the sky or the ground, but the glass had no color of its own.
Karpos sighed and unstrung his bow, then hung the staff across his chest by the slack string. He hadn’t had time to retrieve any arrows from the beasts he’d shot.
“I’ll lead,” he said, swinging out ahead of the rest of the party. He walked beside the Coerli trackway instead of obliterating it, though here the care was reflexive rather than purposeful. As much for courtesy as any better cause, Ilna followed to the side also; Temple was across the track from her.
“Think you can hit a cat with those rocks you’re picking up?” Karpos said quietly.
Ilna glanced over her shoulder at Asion. He was watching their back trail with a pebble in the pocket of his sling. He shrugged and said, “It makes me feel better.”
“Yeah,” said his partner. “I do know what you mean.”
There were no trees in this place, though unfamiliar plants with straight stems and a crown of short leaves—they sprang from the trunk like the flowers on the stalk of a hollyhock—grew taller than she was, or even than Temple and Karpos. Mats of rootlets supported them, often standing proud where winds had scoured away the surrounding sand.
“I saw something move!” Asion called. “One of them scales on the house, it moved!”
“I thought it was just the light,” said Karpos. “But if you say it moved, I believe you.”
They reached the structure. From a flat to the opposite point, each pane was as high as Ilna or a Corl. The trail led to one whose bottom edge was along the ground. Sand’d been brushed away in the recent past. Ilna could see into the glass, but its ripples distorted the things inside so that she couldn’t tell what they were.
Karpos pushed gingerly with hi
s left fingertips; he held his long knife ready in his right. The glass didn’t move.
“Temple?” he said. “Do you know how to make it open?”
“Asion,” Temple said. He’d drawn his sword and held his buckler advanced. “Shoot into the center of this pane; that should do it.”
He glanced at the rest of them. “I’d expect all the warriors to have been in the raiding party,” he added, “but I could be wrong.”
Ilna nodded, lifting her hands slightly to call attention to the pattern she’d just knotted. She didn’t spread the fabric yet; it’d paralyze her companions if they looked at it.
Asion backed a pace, automatically checking to the sides and behind him; a sling’s arc covered a lot of area. He swayed the stone at the end of its tether, settling it in the leather cup.
“Karpos?” Temple warned quietly. He held his buckler out, putting it between Ilna’s face and the panel, then turned his own head away. Karpos covered his eyes with his left forearm.
Asion’s thong snapped through the air. Glass shattered almost simultaneously in a crack!—like nearby lightning. The panel puffed outward in a cloud of rainbow dust which left a few sparkles in the air even after most had settled on the red ground.
“I’ll lead,” said Temple, stepping into the building. His bronze sword was point-forward at waist level, and the buckler was advanced in his left hand.
“Follow me,” Ilna said curtly to the hunters as she entered in turn. The air within was moister than that of the sand wastes outside, and it smelled strongly of the Coerli.
The flooring was fibrous but rock; remarkable as that seemed, it wasn’t a mistake Ilna’s bare feet could possibly have made. The material gave her sensations not of pastures or ripening flax but rather of heat and fire and pressures beyond what anything living could bear.
Could rock feel pain? Ilna smiled. It pleased her to imagine that it could.
The glass walls muted the light, but they let through enough to see by. The building was partitioned inside, but Ilna found she couldn’t be sure whether the walls ran up to the roof—or indeed, if there was a ceiling below the roof. Everything was distorted, much as though she’d been trying to see things under water.