by David Drake
Diora stood by the door, holding the lamp that burned in her sleeping alcove through the night. “Mistress?” she said, her voice rising.
“Stay here,” Sharina said, taking the lamp out of the maid’s hand. “I’ll be back.”
Burne was perched on an unlighted sconce. He dropped onto her shoulder, saying, “Some clod will trample me if I’m running about on the floor.”
“Let’s go,” Sharina snapped to the under-captain commanding the guards in the corridor. “And Burne, a little warning before you jump on me might help us both live longer lives.”
“Your Highness?” said the officer as Sharina trotted down the corridor in the middle of a cocoon of black-armored guards. “Do you know what’s going on? Ah, just so that we can be prepared for, ah, whatever it is.”
“I don’t,” said Sharina. “I think it’s on the floor below.”
They started down the west staircase. It was narrow and unembellished, meant for servants. The Blood Eagles wore plain soles instead of hobnails while they were on duty in the palace, but their boots slapped and banged on the wooden treads.
“The cells are in the cellars on this end,” said one of the troopers. “The ones Lady Liane’s people use. They’re convincing somebody who didn’t want to talk, I’ll wager.”
“They’d better not be!” said Sharina. She wasn’t squeamish, but she’d given orders that Platt was to be transported to Tenoctris. It’d been obvious to her—and she thought to Master Dysart as well—that the priest had nothing more to give to ordinary questioning. Crippling Platt—or worse—before the wizard could use him as a focus of her art would be both cruel and counterproductive.
The screams had ended, but servants standing agog in the hallways pointed them toward the basement. As the trooper had said, they were headed toward Master Dysart’s suite.
The spymaster and four of his agents reached the barred door to his domain at the same time Sharina and her guards did. “Get out of the way!” the under-captain snarled, but someone inside was already pushing the door open for Dysart. It had been remounted to swing into the hallway, so smashing the latch out wouldn’t be enough to move the panel.
“I haven’t opened the cell in case it’s a trick!” said the agent inside.
“Open it now!” said Dysart. He carried what looked like a short ivory baton-of-office. The cling when it touched the stone jamb told Sharina that it was painted metal.
The small cell was off the other end of the suite from Dysart’s private office. Two of the agents who’d arrived with Dysart positioned themselves on either side of the door. Each held a cudgel in one hand and raised an oil lamp in the other. The man who’d been on night duty lifted out the heavy bar, then turned his key in the separate lock.
He jerked the door open. A trooper shouted.
The interior of the cell seethed with scorpions, ranging from tiny ones to monsters bigger than Sharina’s spread hand. Still more of the creatures were crawling in through the barred window that slanted up to street level.
Platt’s corpse was hidden beneath the writhing blanket. When the door swung, the chitinous mass surged toward the opening like a single entity.
Sharina smashed her lamp in the doorway. The olive oil splashed, then bloomed into pale yellow flames spreading from the wick across the surface.
“Burn them!” she shouted. “Quickly, fire!”
One of the agents hurled his lamp toward Platt and jumped away. The other man threw his weight against the door and slammed it closed. Firelight flickered across the thin crack under the edge of the panel.
Burne leaped from Sharina’s shoulder to the jamb and came down with a scorpion which had scuttled out before the door closed. The snicking of the rat’s teeth mimicked the muffled crackle of oil flames within the cell.
“We may have to evacuate the palace,” Sharina said, suddenly sick with horror. She hadn’t liked the renegade priest, but nobody should die from the stings of a thousand scorpions. “The fire may spread.”
“I think not, Your Highness,” said Dysart. “The walls are stone, and the floor and ceiling are concrete.”
“I have the fire watch coming,” said Lord Tadai, who’d appeared unexpectedly. “Though I think Master Dysart’s correct about there not being a serious danger.”
Burne dropped the remains of the scorpion he’d caught. It had been a big one; the tail, still twitching on the floor, was longer than Sharina’s middle finger.
“You seem to have been right, Princess,” the rat said. “The priest would’ve been useful to Tenoctris. At any rate, the priest’s master thought he would.”
CASHEL STEPPED IN front of the women with his quarterstaff ready to strike. The woodsprites, more than a double handful of them, paused their dance in the middle of the clearing to stare at him and his companions. There were about as many men as women, slender and perfectly made. They wore garments woven from gossamer, bark fibers, and the down of small birds.
“Oh, look at them!” said a sprite who wore an acorn cap on his head. “He’s a big one, isn’t he?”
“And the girl’s lovely. Could we bring her to join us, do you think?”
“The other one looks like a cat. Is she dangerous, do you think? She seems old.”
“We won’t harm you,” Cashel said. “We’ve come to find Gorand, is all.”
The sprites trilled like a dovecote when a snake squirms in. Some ducked into clumps of grass; others stood with their hands squeezed to their cheeks.
He can see us! How can he see us? Oh, what will we do?
The trees of this forest were like nothing Cashel had seen before. They weren’t especially tall, but some had snaky boles, and the leaves of all were outsized.
The black bark of the nearest was as smooth as a palace floor; its simple oval leaves were the length of Cashel’s leg, and the varied foliage of some of those across the clearing were even larger. One huge tree had a trunk bigger than two men could’ve spanned with spread arms, but its grassy leaves reminded him of bamboo.
“We’ll not hurt you!” Cashel said. It made him uncomfortable to scare innocent, harmless people. “Please, can you show us to the hero Gorand?”
“Cashel, who are you talking to?” Liane said, trying not to sound frightened. The goat was nervously trying to pull the lead out of her hands. It wasn’t used to breathing air that didn’t have the poisonous bite of brimstone.
“The little people can’t help us,” Rasile said dismissively. She looked without affection at the dancers. “They know nothing and do nothing; they merely exist.”
“We dance, cat woman,” said a tiny female with quiet dignity. “We are very lovely.”
“Go dance somewhere else, drones,” Rasile said. “I don’t want to listen to your twittering.”
She rubbed her muzzle with the side of a paw, then added in a softer tone, “You won’t want to watch this, little ones. Dance in another clearing tonight.”
The sprites gathered, their heads together. They whispered for a moment, sounding like crickets behind a wall hanging.
The female turned and faced Rasile again. “We will go,” she said. “But you would do better to watch us dance. We are very beautiful.”
The troupe faded off through the strange trees. The little man in the acorn cap paused for a moment in a patch of moonlight, staring at Cashel; then he too was gone.
“They were sprites, Liane,” Cashel said. “Woodsprites.”
To Rasile he added, “I like their dancing. It’s like watching my sister Ilna weave.”
The wizard’s lips drew back in a grin of sorts. “Perhaps it is,” she said, “but our sacrifice would disgust them.”
She lolled her long tongue. “Either they don’t belong in the universe,” she said, “or I don’t. And it disturbs me to think that they may be the ones who belong.”
An animal screeched. It was hard to tell distance in woods so thick, but Cashel didn’t think it was very close. He gave his quarterstaff a trial spin. The cry sound
ed like a cat, a big one, though it could just as easy be a night bird.
Rasile scratched at the loam with her long toe. “Cashel,” she said, “can you cut through this to the clay underneath? We need a trough that will hold liquid for a time.”
Cashel prodded the soil with his knife. He’d thought there might be tree roots, but it seemed just to be just leaf litter and grass as soft as a kitten’s fur. He scraped the dirt carefully away. His knife would do the job, but cutting too thick a slice of the heavy clay would snap the crude iron blade.
The goat bleated peevishly. Liane said, “Rasile? Do we have to do this? I don’t . . .”
Cashel had met Liane’s father, Benlo. He’d been so powerful a wizard that he didn’t let even his own death stand in the way of bringing his wife back from the grave. Liane was as brave as you could ask for, but she wasn’t going to forget that her father had tried to sacrifice her.
“Yes, we do,” the wizard said. She squatted, taking her yarrow stalks and black athame from the basket which held her gear. “We were fortunate that the folk of the anteroom kept goats, though no doubt Warrior Cashel and I would’ve been able to find something suitable here.”
“Not a sprite,” said Cashel, concentrating on his shallow trench.
“Not a sprite,” Rasile agreed. “But there are apes here who wouldn’t disturb you to use for the purpose, not if you got to know them.”
She looked sidelong at Cashel. “Don’t let the little drones mislead you,” she said. “There’s more darkness than light in this land, whatever they may pretend.”
Cashel stood. The trench was as long as his forearm. He’d dug it a hand’s breadth wide and about a finger deep in the clay beneath the leaf mold. “Is that enough, Rasile?” he said. “Or should I go deeper?”
“That will do well,” Rasile said. She placed the yarrow stalks around the trough, seeming just to throw them down. They formed a neat figure against the black loam, however.
“Hold the goat and keep your knife out, warrior,” she added. “By the horns, I think. When I begin to chant, it will try to break loose. The cord may not hold.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cashel said. He took the goat by the right horn and drew it toward him, lifting the animal slightly so that its forehooves didn’t have purchase as it tried to resist. It gave another whistling blat, but a peasant doesn’t worry about the feelings of farm animals.
He wiped the knife on his bare thigh. Liane backed away, her face set in silent misery.
“The True People . . . ,” said Rasile, looking into the dark distance. “My people. We very rarely use blood magic. Blood is too likely to madden us.”
She turned to Cashel again and dipped her head to acknowledge him. Her tongue wagged a moment, then withdrew. She said, “I’m past that by now, I trust.”
Rasile faced the trench and tightened like a lute string being tuned. “Cut its throat when I give the order,” she said; then without pausing she began to wail her incantation.
Shadows rippled in the night air. Cashel sensed movement across the clearing, but the patches of moonlight were empty when he looked squarely at them. Only with his head cocked to the side did he see the long-necked buzzards stalking and croaking among the debris of a battlefield. There were no trees, only half-grown oats that’d been largely trampled into the furrows. There were oats, and swollen corpses, and the buzzards.
“Now, Warrior Cashel!” said Rasile.
Cashel twisted the goat’s chin up, then stabbed it in the throat. The goat kicked violently. The wizard resumed chanting, though at a higher pitch.
Cashel sawed the blade down. It was dull, but he was very strong and he knew the work. He forced the goat’s head forward so that the blood splashed and spilled into the trough. Back in the borough, the woman of the house would hold a pan of cooked grain under the beast’s throat to make a pudding.
The goat spasmed, then spasmed again and went limp. Cashel lifted its hind legs so that the last of the blood could drip downward. He wiped the blade, then tossed the drained carcass aside.
Standing, he looked about him for the first time since he’d taken charge of the goat. He could barely see the trees. A deep fog had gathered about him and the wizard. It eddied and thickened in harmony with the chant.
Rasile gave a final cry and plunged her athame into the trough of blood. The grayness shattered into terrible figures, all fangs and grasping claws and hunger. Cashel snatched up the staff he’d had to lay behind him.
“Let us drink!” the figures said, their combined voices whistling like wind through a cave of ice. “We must drink! You have called us back, so we must drink!”
“Guide us to Gorand and you may drink,” said Rasile, sounding just as cold as these things of elemental hunger. “Until then, I bar you.”
“We have no power over Gorand,” the voices wailed. Their forms were smoke and fog, but as they writhed Cashel caught the hint of something human or once human beneath them. “You must let us drink!”
“Guide us to Gorand,” said Rasile. “Until you do, there is nothing for you but want and longing. Guide us!”
“We cannot speak-k-k . . . ,” the voices cried. “We can not-t-t. . . .”
Rasile twisted her athame in the clay. The figures shrieked, shrieked like damned souls; and so they were.
“We cannot-t-t!”
The figures blurred and melded, like sand statues slumping to repose when a wave washes the shore. “. . . not-t-t . . .” echoed in Cashel’s mind, though perhaps it wasn’t a sound.
“Guide us to Gorand!” said Rasile.
The gray figures congealed. “Gorand rules all!” they cried. “We cannot speak against Gorand-d-d. . . .”
One of Liane’s sandals lay on the grass beyond the ghastly circle. The girl herself was nowhere to be seen.
“Liane!” Cashel said. He lunged through the creatures, his staff spinning. Screaming in frustrated terror, they surged away like dust motes before an ox. “Liane!”
The animal screeched from the darkness again. It sounded closer than it had before. Other than that, the night was silent.
GARRIC EYED THE path and touched his sword hilt. Straight-trunked tulip poplars and spreading chestnuts that rose to a hundred and fifty feet dominated the forest; redbud and white dogwood, both in gorgeous bloom, formed the understory.
“You won’t need that here,” said Tenoctris. “The dangers are of a different sort.”
“I’d feel better with it in my hand,” Carus muttered in Garric’s mind. “Needed or not.”
Garric grinned and dropped his right arm to his side again. Ah, but you don’t have a hand anymore, he thought. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Though if it’d been him alone, he’d have drawn the blade. Garric wouldn’t be here now if he were alone, of course, and Tenoctris had just told him what she wanted as clearly as if she’d given him a direct order.
He looked over his shoulder. The boat that brought them had vanished, and even the gray sea was fading into a forest like the one stretching before them. “What would you like me to do?”
“We’ll follow the trail,” she said, nodding. “It won’t be far.”
The path wasn’t wide enough for them to walk side by side, so Garric strode ahead. He grinned wryly. There wasn’t any reason to believe that danger waited in ambush ahead of them instead of creeping up behind, but at least he could pretend he was doing the bold and manly thing.
Tenoctris’ feet and his own scuffed the leaf litter, but that was the only sound. There should’ve been the patter of dead twigs dislodged by a squirrel, or the rustle of a brown thrasher searching for grubs and beetles. This forest was as silent as a painting.
Garric reached the mossy edge of a lake so smoothly rounded that he was sure it had a stone coping. Instead the bank was black loam, crumbling slightly under his weight into the clear water.
“We need to get to the island in the center,” Tenoctris said.
Garric shaded his eyes. Though the sun wa
s bright, the mist over the water’s surface obscured the other side. He hadn’t realized the dimly glimpsed temple was on an island rather than simply across the lake.
“I can swim it,” Garric said. “Ah—”
Tenoctris had become young and active when she decided that her aged body couldn’t carry out the duties required to save mankind. That didn’t necessarily mean that she could swim.
“Or I could build us a raft, Tenoctris,” he said. It would make him wince to cut trees with his sword, but in fact the keen, never dulling sword would do a better job than any axe.
“Not just yet,” Tenoctris said, making a tiny movement with an index finger.
Garric’s eyes followed the gesture: a perfectly formed youth with green skin was swimming toward them. To his either side swam a long-eared eel wearing a golden collar.
King Carus’ instinct gripped the sword hilt. By an effort of will, and despite his ancestor’s fierce scowl, Garric drew his hand away. He stood with his thumbs tucked in his broad leather belt.
“We have business at the Gate of Ivory,” Tenoctris said in a cold voice. She’d taken an athame carved from amber out of her satchel. When the light struck it at the correct angle, Garric saw that not only a spider but its web were frozen in the honey-colored blade. “Let us cross.”
The youth laughed and twisted onto his back with his head raised. Garric wondered how he managed to float; the slimly muscular body beneath his green skin should’ve sunk like a bronze statue.
“I’m not preventing you, Tenoctris,” the youth said, his voice holding a silvery reflection of an Ornifal accent. “I don’t imagine it’s up to me to let or hinder so great a wizard as yourself.”
Tenoctris dipped the athame very precisely, lifted it, and dipped it again. The amber point was never directed at the youth, but it described an arc around him. His hands spread as though they were pressing against the side of a boulder. There was translucent webbing between the fingers.
The eels had been writhing in complex knots to the youth’s either side, like the supporters of a coat of arms. As the athame moved, they drove downward like rippling arrows. Their collars winked even after the sinuous bodies were out of sight in the clear depths.