by David Drake
“Show me,” Tenoctris said. She didn’t raise her voice, but its timbre was that of a hawk’s shriek. “I won’t ask you again.”
“You have no right,” the youth muttered, but his hands clapped.
The surface of the lake shuddered. It took on a yellow cast, as though Garric were viewing it through the blade of the athame. Where the youth had floated, a muscular man kicked off from the bank. He was nude, but he pushed before him a float of reed stems. On it was a bundle of his clothing and equipment, including arrows and a short, stiff bow.
“I’d do the same,” Carus said, his attention fixed on the saffron-filtered image. “Only I’d have a dagger in my teeth, because the water’s deep enough to hold things I wouldn’t want to fight with my bare hands.”
The man swam with firm, effective kicks like a frog. He’d reached midpoint of the channel when his legs lost their rhythm. For a moment, Garric couldn’t see what was wrong.
“His pontoon’s sinking,” Carus said. “The canes must’ve gotten waterlogged. He’s going to lose his gear.”
No, thought Garric. Everything’s sinking. His head’s barely out of the water now, even though he’s started thrashing like a lizard in a pond.
The float and its burden slipped beneath the surface. The balled clothing should’ve floated for some minutes at least, but it drifted straight down alongside the reeds and the bronze-pointed arrows.
The swimmer tried to turn back, though by now it was no closer to return than to go on. He sank inexorably, his flailing limbs seeming to have no more effect than they would have done in air. His face wore an expression of tortured anguish as he sank into the depths.
“Enough,” said Tenoctris.
Her voice recalled Garric to the present; he’d been lost in the yellow memory of the past. He took a deep breath. The youth and his attendants were no longer present, but the island and its temple were still visible through the haze.
“Very well,” said Tenoctris, seating herself cross-legged on the lake’s margin. The grass seemed normal, though Garric would’ve expected a coarser growth on ground so well watered. “We had to know what the dangers were before we could determine how to overcome them.”
She opened her satchel and took from it a cord of red silk which she examined critically. In direct sun it resembled a wire because no stray fibers escaped the tightly woven strands to catch the light.
“Here,” Tenoctris said, handing one end to Garric. “Tie this around your wrist. Don’t cut your circulation, but it mustn’t slip off.”
She looped the other end about her own left wrist and bent to the task of tying it. Garric looked at the cord, then said, “Ah, Tenoctris? Could it be my left wrist?”
Tenoctris raised her head with a frown of surprise, then smiled brightly. “Ah,” she said. “Yes, of course. Since it will apparently make you and your royal ancestor more comfortable.”
Garric grinned as he tied a bowline which he then slipped over his left fist and tightened. In this mind the ghost of Carus guffawed and said, “She’s bloody well told it’ll make me more comfortable. And I suspect she’s happier too whatever she says, knowing that you can get to your sword when you need it.”
Tenoctris had set down her athame in order to tie the cord. She took it in her left hand again and stood, picking up the satchel in her right. The silk connecting her and Garric was an ell long, or almost.
“When I walk forward,” she said, “walk with me. Just step normally, but don’t lose the cord.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Garric said. He realized he was treating the wizard as the aged woman he’d found on the shore of Barca’s Hamlet rather than as she now appeared, an attractive girl only a year or two older than he was. “Which direction will we go, if you please?”
“To the temple, Garric,” Tenoctris said with a grin that seemed impish on her youthful face. “Across the water. Well, over the water.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Garric said, eyeing the lake again as the wizard began to chant. The water was so clear that he could imagine he was seeing the bottom, but he remembered the stricken face of the swimmer as he sank ever deeper. By the end he’d been antlike and his limbs had ceased to struggle.
“. . . io mermeri abua . . . ,” Tenoctris was saying. Instead of merely bobbing up and down, her athame moved in a sequence as complex as the dance of knitting needles. The spider in the amber blade seemed to be weaving.
“. . . abrasax buthi . . .”
Light quivered in the depths, mimicking solidity. It was only a distortion of the irregularities in the glassy surface, though. “. . . mermeri . . .”
Tenoctris stepped off on her left foot. Garric moved with her, his eyes on the temple rather than the glassy water underneath. The surface was as firm as stone.
“. . . rasax buthi. . . .”
Side by side they strode toward the island. Garric hadn’t meant to look into the water, but at the midpoint instinct drew his eyes downward. He could see to the bottom with impossible clarity, as though the water were a magnifying lens. There were more bodies than he could count, uncorrupt but glaring upward in the final horror of their deaths.
With them were all manner of floats and buoys. There was even a boat of shining metal in which three young women lay with expressions of furious disbelief. Their long, blond hair framed their heads in sunbursts. Garric thought of Sharina and grimaced.
He was still thinking of his sister and of Liane when his boot came down on sod instead of water with the consistency of granite. He and Tenoctris had reached the island. Before them was a round temple with a gold caryatid on either side of the entrance. Inside the structure was a catafalque on which lay the skeleton of a tall man, clasping a long iron sword.
“That is Lord Munn,” Tenoctris said as she began to take the cord off her wrist. “Our business is him. Your business, Garric.”
Chapter
13
A TRUMPET CALLING Assembly awakened Sharina. The weeks she’d spent with the army on campaign made the sound familiar, but hearing it in Pandah threw her tired mind into deeper confusion. She had the odd feeling besides that it was an echo.
She got out of bed, wondering what time it was. She hadn’t been sure she’d be able to get to sleep again after they’d found Platt’s body, but she’d dropped off as soon as her head hit the pillow. Having both her previous responsibilities and Garric’s left her exhausted. Besides, she no longer found sudden, horrible death an unfamiliar experience.
Another trumpet sounded. There was smoke in the air, drifting through the slatted jalousies. What was going on? Lady, aid us in our time of need.
“Your Highness?” said Diora, stumbling from her alcove with a bleary expression. She held the lamp she’d borrowed from a hall bracket to replace the one Sharina had smashed into the mass of scorpions.
“I just heard a second regiment called to arms,” Sharina said. The maid didn’t understand military signals; why should she? “That’s half the capital garrison. I’m going to check on what’s happening.”
“That’s the fourth trumpet, Sharina,” said Burne from the floor. “And there’ve been horns.”
“Hop up,” said Sharina, curving her left arm into a cradle for the rat. She jerked the hall door open. To the waiting guards as well as Burne she said, “We’re going to the city prefect’s office at once.”
Tadai’s suite was at the far end of the same corridor. Its outer door was open, spilling light from the interior. A courier tried to exit as the leading Blood Eagles arrived; they pushed him aside without ceremony. Sharina winced, but the courier knew better than to resent it—and in fairness to the soldiers, there wasn’t a lot of time for politeness.
The waiting room of the large office was already crowded. Tadai sat behind a clerk’s desk instead of in his well appointed private chamber. “Lord Quernan,” he was saying, “Put three regiments at the disposal of the city watch. They’re to be under the command of the district captains, not their own officers, and they’re to use
only the butts of their spears. They’re not to use the points, and they’re not to carry swords.”
“Look here, Tadai!” Quernan said. The military advisor’s back was to the door; he didn’t see Sharina enter, though Lord Tadai struggled to his feet to greet her. “First, you’re wrong about putting real soldiers under the watch, and second, you can’t disarm them in the middle of riots like this. It’s not safe!”
“Your Highness,” said Tadai, bowing. He was as close to being disheveled as Sharina had seen since earthquakes and an army of monsters had destroyed Erdin while he was present.
“What?” said Quernan, turning. “Oh!”
“Lord Quernan,” Sharina said, “follow the prefect’s direction as to command. The troops are not to use points and edges unless their own lives are endangered, but they’ll carry their full equipment including swords. And if you will, don’t waste time. It’s obvious that things are in a serious state.”
“Your Highness,” Quernan muttered as he stumped out of the office with a train of aides following.
Lord Tadai grimaced. “Your Highness,” he said, “if you leave it to the soldiers themselves—”
“They’ll be making that decision regardless of what their orders are,” Sharina said. She realized her mind was the same place it would’ve been if she’d been discussing how to deal with rats in the inn: weighing alternatives in terms of cost and effectiveness and ignoring all other considerations. “This way they don’t go into action thinking they’re under the command of fools.”
She cleared her throat and added, “Besides, I’m more concerned about the safety of men putting their lives on the line for me than I am of people intent on burning down Pandah. That is what’s happening, isn’t it?”
“Some of them are,” Tadai said, sighing. He’d aged noticeably since their recent conversation in Dysart’s office. “There are riots in all parts of the city, and some involve fires. I have twelve separate reports, and there may be more.”
Sharina gestured Tadai back into his chair. He probably hadn’t been to bed tonight, and his duties as prefect required more physical activity than had ordinarily been a part of his life. She said, “What caused the riots? Do we know?”
Tadai settled with another sigh. “According to prisoners from all four districts of the city,” he said, “they’ve heard that you tortured to death a priest named Platt because he refused to recant his belief in Lord Scorpion, the true God.”
“May the Sister bite me!” blurted Trooper Lires. “Nobody could think the princess would do that!”
Lires had been part of Sharina’s guard in several hard places, and they’d saved one another’s life on occasion. That familiarity made him even less concerned about formal courtesy than most Blood Eagles, and propriety was well down Lord Attaper’s list when he was choosing men to replace those who’d fallen.
“Of course they could, Lires,” Sharina said, jumping in quickly so that nobody’d try to discipline an uppity guard. “Even in Pandah, not one in a hundred people have seen me closer than on the dais at an assembly. How difficult would you find it to believe a noble you didn’t know would torture prisoners?”
“Well, even those I do know, Princess,” Lires said in embarrassment. “But not you.”
Sharina quirked a smile at him. To Tadai she said, “Milord, what do you want of me?”
Tadai shrugged. “The trouble’s widespread, but I don’t think it’s very deep,” he said. “With the help of the garrison, we should have it under control shortly. By dawn, at any rate. I suggest that you get some rest, if you can.”
“Thank you, milord,” Sharina said, “but I tried that and wound up here. I think I’ll take a look from the roof.”
“I’ll accompany you if I may, Your Highness,” said Master Dysart. He must’ve entered behind her.
She nodded, already moving. Tadai needed his office.
The guards swept them through the crowd the way the hull cuts the water around a ship’s passengers. Captain Ascor allowed Dysart to walk beside Sharina, though she wasn’t certain that Lord Attaper would’ve approved had he known.
“The riots must’ve been planned at the same time as the murder of the captured priest, Your Highness,” Dysart murmured as they mounted the stairs. “They broke out in all parts of the city simultaneously.”
“Yes,” said Sharina. She considered options silently. There were really only two choices: to quit or to go on. She would go on, no matter how tired and frustrated she was. They all would.
Aloud she said, “The next time we capture a priest of the Scorpion, we’ll know we have to guard against his former master murdering him.”
How could they protect the prisoner? If they even managed to get another one. Their enemy and its minions were sophisticated and learned quickly.
Sharina looked out over the city. The moon had set, but several plumes of smoke rose into the starlit sky. Lanterns winked in the streets, but at least the fires weren’t burning out of control.
“Ah . . . ,” Dysart said. “I’ve directed my agents to look for the headquarters of the cult, rather than to spend their efforts in capturing another functionary.”
“There may not be a headquarters!” Sharina said, more sharply than she’d intended. “All the Scorpion’s worshippers may get their instructions in dreams and never see one another.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Dysart said quietly. “In that case, nothing we do here will be of any real value. I prefer to assume that my actions have meaning.”
We’re all trying, Sharina thought. We’re all doing the best we can.
She noticed something. “Master Dysart?” she said. “Ascor, any of you? Have you seen Burne? He’s not with me.”
“Your rat, Princess?” said Trooper Lires. “He went out through the window down in the prefect’s office.”
“Oh,” said Sharina. “Well, I suppose he knows what he’s doing.”
Silently she added, I only wish that the rest of us did.
BRINCISA TOOK A deep breath as she finished her second set of chants, then moved to the final side of the triangle in which Ilna and Ingens stood. Space was tight, so Usun sat on Ilna’s left arm.
The secretary was restive. Wizardry made most people uncomfortable, but the fact that they’d been standing in the symbol for long minutes without anything happening might bother him as well. It certainly bothered Ilna.
“Erek rechthi—” Brincisa said, gesturing with the athame she’d chosen for this work. It had been carved from jade with a faint greenish cast.
The words of power broke off in mid syllable. The world outside Ilna’s eyes went black—shapeless and opaque. Her grip on the coil of fine blond hair tightened. If it was as strong as she suspected, a hard tug would slice the loop on the other end through the wizard’s neck.
There was light. They stood in a grove of mature hardwoods: a pair of shagbark hickories, a white oak, and directly before them a huge red oak. Dogwoods and white birches grew outside the large trees, but the area within the stand was covered by knee-high fern.
The red oak stretched out a limb thicker than most tree boles. It grew from a point on the trunk that was a little higher than Ilna could reach by stretching to her full height. From it hung a stone gong supported by two bronze chains.
Usun hopped from the crook of Ilna’s arm but climbed onto a fallen limb to see over the fern. He sniffed deeply.
“Rabbits, squirrels, and a fox,” he said. He giggled and added, “Mistress Brincisa hasn’t put us in a tiger’s den, at least. Or found another ghoul for us to dispose of.”
“This is the grove where Princess Perrine came to us,” Ingens said in a dull voice. He walked away, keeping his back to Ilna. The ferns he brushed through gave off a faint odor of fresh hay. “The gong there . . .”
He gestured.
“Master Hervir tapped the center of it with his knuckles, and she came through the woods with four servants. The servants were apes but they wore clothes.”
�
��Apes, now?” said Usun. He tested the air again. “Well, they haven’t been here recently.”
Ilna looked about. There was no sign of the way Brincisa had sent them to this place. The hair stretching from the coil in her hand vanished somewhere in the air behind her, but she couldn’t be sure exactly what that point was.
“Do we agree that Brincisa has taken us where we asked her to?” she said to her companions. “And that there’s no immediate danger?”
Ingens nodded, his back still turned. “Yes,” he mumbled.
“No danger, certainly,” Usun agreed. “But if you want to pull on the hair and take Brincisa’s head off, then there won’t be many mourners. Not even those servants of hers, I’ll wager.”
“What I want to do,” said Ilna, “is to keep my word. Of course.”
She gave the coil an underhanded toss in the direction the strand tended. It vanished in midair, a golden flash in the leaf-filtered grove.
“All right,” Ilna said. “I’ll ring the gong, then. You said that I can ring it with a finger?”
“Before you do that, mistress,” Usun said, “there’s one thing we might check. There, midway between the two hickory trees. The ground’s been disturbed.”
“Has it?” Ilna said. She’d been walking toward the gong, but out of politeness she glanced where the little man pointed. So far as she could tell, the ferns grew in a feathery, unbroken surface across the floor of the glade. Cashel might’ve been able to tell more, but neither them had been a forester.
Oh.
Ilna stopped. “Master Ingens,” she said. “Face me.”
The secretary buried his face in his hands. He didn’t speak or look at her.
Ilna had taken yarn from her sleeve and was knotting it. That was more reflex than a conscious act, the way she’d have grabbed her weaver’s sword if it slipped from her hand.
“Master Ingens,” she repeated, “face me!”
The secretary turned slowly and lowered his hands. Tears streaked his cheeks, but his expression now was defiant.