The Gods Return

by David Drake

  “Hervir was completely healthy when I last saw him,” he said. “I didn’t kill him!”

  Usun cackled. He stood arms akimbo on his low perch.

  “Very well,” said Ilna. She was coldly furious. She’d regarded Ingens as . . . not a friend, of course, but an ally who’d help to the limited degree he was able. It now appeared that—

  Well, better to ask than to speculate. “Tell us what really happened to Hervir,” she said. Her voice was calm. “Tell us everything. Or I will not only tear the information out of you, I will tear your eyes from their sockets.”

  “Yes, mistress,” said Ingens. He sounded like a dead man. “I buried the money there.”

  He gestured.

  “I was going to bury it beside a tree, but I couldn’t because of the roots. I had only my stylus to break the ground and a wax tablet to scoop it away. I didn’t plan to do this! It just happened.”

  “What happened to Hervir?” Ilna repeated, though this time without her previous anger. Ingens was weak, but almost everyone was weak. Ilna os-Kenset was weak at times, which she hated as she hated few other things.

  “It was just as I told you,” said Ingens, getting control of himself better. “Hervir met the princess and her apes. They talked. He told me he was going with her but that he’d be back in the evening. I was holding the money he’d brought to buy the saffron.”

  He took a deep, shuddering breath. He was looking at Ilna’s feet, not her eyes, but he didn’t try to turn away.

  “The guards didn’t know that,” he explained. “Hervir always had me carry the money in a belt between my tunics. He didn’t like the weight, and it chafed his hipbones.”

  “He trusted you?” said Usun, laughter not far beneath the surface of the words.

  “He was right to trust me!” Ingens said. “I’d no more steal than I would have killed and eaten him!”

  He licked his lips and grimaced, trying to wet them. “He went with Perrine, just walked out of the grove—”

  He pointed with his full arm, toward the gong. “They were out of sight behind this big tree,” he said, “so I walked around it to see where they were going. I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see anything, and neither could the guards. Just as I told Lady Zussa. They were gone!”

  “And then?” said Ilna. She could hold her pattern in front of the secretary’s eyes and drag his very soul out, just as she’d said, but he seemed to be talking freely.

  Ingens licked his lips again. “We waited till evening,” he said. “Hervir didn’t come back. Nobody did. We had a room in Caraman—rooms, one for the guards and I slept on a truckle bed in Hervir’s room. In the night I came back to this grove—alone. I didn’t plan to . . . I just came to see if Hervir had returned. It was moonlight.”

  He turned away. Ilna didn’t jerk his head toward her. Ingens was talking; forcing him to meet her eyes would merely be punishment. That wasn’t her business.

  “Hervir wasn’t here,” Ingens said. “He might have been! But I thought . . . And I buried the money belt here between the trees. I still had the traveling expenses, the guards’ pay and food and lodging. But I hid the gold we’d brought to buy saffron.”

  “Why didn’t you just carry it with you to Pandah?” Ilna said. “Or back to Valles, for that matter? Since you were stealing it anyway.”

  Ingens winced but looked up. “I thought if I had the gold with me on the journey back, the guards might have suspected. We’d have had a different relationship without Hervir.”

  He gave her a crooked smile.

  “I was Hervir’s dog, you see,” he explained. “The guards believed that I thought I was better than a group of illiterate thugs with a modicum of skill at injuring people. If they decided to kick the dog in the absence of its master, they’d find the gold. Rather than lose both the gold and my life, I buried it here and planned to come back for it alone.”

  He started to cry. “I’m glad you caught me,” he said. “I’m not a thief. I should never have thought I could get away with this, this . . .”

  Ilna shrugged. “It sounds to me,” she said, “as if your main concern was saving your own life. And while I don’t put a high value on that—your life or mine either one—it’s not unreasonable that you’d disagree.”

  She took the remaining few steps to the gong. She studied it critically. It was made of greenish stone with gray veins crawling through it; at first glance, she’d thought it was corroded bronze.

  Looking back at Ingens, she said, “Did you try ringing it yourself after your master disappeared?”

  “Yes, mistress,” Ingens said. “We came back on the next three days, the guards and I. I struck the gong in the morning when we arrived, then in the evening before we left. No one responded, so we hired Captain Sairg to carry us to Pandah to report.”

  “They may not come for me either,” Ilna said, eyeing the stone disk. It was about three handspans across and as thick as her index finger. “Still, we’ll try this first.”

  She raised her right hand.

  “Mistress?” the secretary said in a desperate voice. Ilna turned in irritation. She held strands of yarn in her left hand; before she caught herself, she’d started to knot them in a fashion that would silence the fool while she had work to do. “Yes?” she said.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Ingens said. “About the money?”

  “I have nothing to do with money!” Ilna snapped. Her mouth worked sourly. In a milder tone she added, “And I have nothing to do with Halgran Mercantile, either. If we find Hervir, you can give the money back to him. If we don’t, I suppose you can take it back to Mistress Zussa. If you survive, of course.”

  “Thank you, mistress,” Ingens said. “That’s what I’d decided to do anyway.”

  He gave her the broken smile again. “I’m not cut out to be a thief, you see,” he said.

  “No,” said Ilna, “you’re not. Now, if you’re done with your questions, I’ll get on with the business that brought us here.”

  “Before you bring Princess Perrine and her little beasties . . . ,” said Usun. His voice managed to sound mocking even when he didn’t mean it to be. If there were times he didn’t mean it to be. “Why don’t you roll me up in your cloak so that they won’t see me?”

  Ilna looked at him, then knelt to open her slung cloak on the bed of ferns. “Yes,” she said. “That’s a good idea.”

  The wizened little man arranged himself on the densely woven wool. He’d somewhere found a hollow reed which he thrust toward the open edge, just as though he planned to hide under water.

  “What do you expect to happen?” the secretary asked as he watched in puzzlement.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Ilna, rolling the cloak again. “That’s why Master Usun’s idea is such a good one.

  She hung the garment’s strap over her shoulder. Usun was so scrawny that, even knowing he was there, she saw no change in its lines.

  Adjusting her tunics, Ilna faced the gong again. Taking a deep breath, she tapped the center with her knuckles. Though she disliked stone, she had to admit that the gong’s note was cool and melodious.

  Before the tone had died away, she heard the rustle of feet approaching through the dogwood and birch leaves.

  GARRIC WALKED DELIBERATELY toward the circular temple. He wasn’t gripping his sword hilt, but his right hand was closer to it than it would’ve been during a meeting with his council.

  The sky had a pearly radiance like nothing in his experience. The scattered clouds he’d seen through the trees while walking to the lake margin has been completely normal.

  Tenoctris walked alongside him, looking somewhat worn. Now in a youthful body, she worked to conceal the effort she expended in her art just as she’d done when she wore all her seventy years. That didn’t mean the effort wasn’t real.

  The temple had solid walls instead of a colonnade, set on a three-step base. It had been built from unblemished white marble, save for the gilded dome a
nd the pair of golden caryatids supporting the simple transom over the entrance.

  Garric walked into the lighted interior. The dome didn’t have an oculus in its center: the light, the same soft rainbow majesty as the sky, streamed from the circle of wall opposite the entrance. It swirled and diffused and seemed to seep through the stone.

  Garric frowned for a moment, then turned his attention to the marble bier in the middle of the room. It must have had velvet coverings once, but time had reduced them to greenish dust on the surrounding floor.

  Lord Munn was a skeleton, but the skeleton of a man with bones as dense as a deer’s. In life he must’ve been seven feet tall. His two-handed sword was the most massive weapon Garric had ever seen.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it either, lad,” said the ghost in his mind. “I’d use it if I had to, but I’ll tell the world I’d find it awkward.”

  Garric grinned. If Carus had to—when he’d had to—he’d tear out throats with his teeth. The warrior king’s standards for what constituted a practical weapon were broader than most people could imagine.

  “Garric, come out here if you will,” Tenoctris said. The request was polite in form but peremptory in tone. And why not? They were here by Tenoctris’ skill and in furtherance of her plan; if she thought he ought to be doing something, she didn’t need put frills on her direction.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Garric said, walking out to where the wizard stood examining the caryatids.

  The women who’d modeled for the golden statues were similar but not twins. The one on Garric’s left had fuller lips and a broader nose; her companion was taller by an inch or two, though their hair, bound with silver fillets, was piled to level the transom which they supported.

  Each held a codex open to the viewer. The book on the left read ask in the fluid Old Script, while the other read AND IT WILL BE GIVEN.

  “What do you think of them?” Tenoctris said, gesturing.

  The words or the statues? Garric wondered. The caryatids were smiling; smiling mockingly, one might reasonably think. Aloud he said, “Is it a code, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps,” said Tenoctris, her tone meaning, “No.” She looked from one statue to the other, then went on, “But I think . . .”

  She stepped back, motioning Garric with her. He was already following her lead. She bowed to each statue in turn, then said, “Mistresses, please help us in our trial.”

  With throaty chuckles that certainly sounded golden, the caryatids shut their books and stepped out from under the transom. The stiff marble beam remained where it was, bound in place by the weight of the roof resting on the walls.

  “Oh, it feels good, doesn’t it, Calixta?” said one. She executed a complex dance step on her toes, then pirouetted away. Reaching up, she removed the fillet so that her hair swirled as she moved. Her tunic was still gold, but it belled out like diaphanous silk.

  “I missed the grass between my toes, Lalage,” said Calixta, executing a mirror image of the same dance. Her loosened hair was noticeably longer than her partner’s. Each woman—each nymph? they certainly weren’t statues anymore—held her silver fillet in one hand to balance the closed codex in the other. “But I knew it would be waiting for me.”

  Tenoctris waited with her arms folded in front of her. Garric stood at her side. He noticed with wry amusement that he stood straighter than usual and sucked his belly in. The nymphs had golden skin and eyes, but they were very attractively female.

  “Come, Lalage,” Calixta said after a final delicate swirl. She transferred her book to the same hand as the fillet so that she could touch her partner’s wrist. “Our visitors asked us for help, after all.”

  Obediently Lalage walked with Calixta to face Garric and Tenoctris. “How can we help you, friends?” they asked in pure, melodious voices.

  “Our enemies . . . ,” Tenoctris said. “Enemies of life, really, have opened the Gate of Ivory. They’re calling out the spirits of the dead to animate the bodies of monsters which they create. We have come here to ask Lord Munn to close the gate again.”

  “He won’t listen to you, lady,” said Calixta. “Not a woman.”

  “He won’t listen to any woman,” Lalage agreed. “No matter what you threaten him with.”

  “With your help, I will raise him,” Tenoctris said firmly. “And then we will see who he obeys.”

  Lalage gave her deep chuckle again and handed her fillet to Tenoctris. “Put this on his right arm, then,” she said. “And wake him.”

  “And this on his left,” Calixta said, offering her fillet also. “We’ll see, just as you say.”

  Tenoctris bowed to the nymphs, then stepped into the temple with Garric at her side. The golden women were whispering, and in Garric’s mind King Carus watched with the grin he wore in battle.

  LIANE!” CASHEL SHOUTED. “Ma’am, where are you?”

  Something called, “Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!” in the distance. Cashel didn’t suppose it had anything to do with Liane’s wandering off, but he looked that way into the darkness anyhow.

  “Liane!” he called.

  With his staff crossways before him, Cashel shoved through a clump of plants whose sword-shaped leaves stuck up from a common center. He didn’t think they were grass, though they might be. The edges of the leaves were light against a dark core; yellow and green, he supposed, but he couldn’t tell by moonlight.

  He stopped. He hadn’t gone far from the trough he’d dug for Rasile, but already the forest was different. Here, instead of trees with boles like snakes, there were waisthigh trunks with scaly bark supporting flower heads a full arm’s length across. Some of the petals were darker than others, but again he couldn’t tell the real color.

  “Liane?” Cashel called again, but this wasn’t doing any good. He turned to go back to Rasile.

  He wasn’t worried about getting lost himself—he didn’t get lost outdoors, not even when the trees were strange and the stars were like none he’d ever seen before. He’d lost Liane, though, by not paying attention. He was responsible for Rasile too, and he’d best get back to her before something else happened.

  The foliage rustled. Cashel cocked the quarterstaff to slam it forward like a battering ram, but he said quietly, “Rasile?”

  “Yes, Cashel,” the wizard said, slipping between the standing leaves instead of pushing through them the way he’d just done. “I let the elementals have the sacrifice.”

  Cashel grimaced. “Ma’am, I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have run off like I did. I . . .”

  He’d made one mistake, and then he’d made another right on top of it. There wasn’t anything he could do now except go on and try to make things right in good time.

  “Ma’am?” he said. “Do we need to go back and fetch another goat?”

  The Corl’s tongue wagged her laughter. “That wouldn’t do any good, I’m afraid,” she said. “Had I thought that I could force the answer out of them, I would not have left the work to find you. Desperate as they were for the blood, they would not speak against Gorand. I do not think that even Tenoctris could have dragged that from them.”

  Cashel nodded. He was sorry that Rasile hadn’t gotten the information they’d come here for, but part of him was glad that he wasn’t the reason it hadn’t worked.

  “Well,” he said. “Before we go look for Gorand some more, we need to find Liane. Or I do, anyhow, because I should’ve been watching her while you were busy.”

  “She left one of her shoes in the clearing,” Rasile said. If she had any opinion about whether going after Liane was a good idea, she kept it to herself. “With that to work from, I believe that I can determine a direction. Or better.”

  They went back through the glade. Cashel had intended to lead and clear the way, but Rasile didn’t need help and didn’t give him the chance, either one.

  The clearing was the same as it’d been when they arrived, except for the scar Cashel had dug in the sod. The gray hungry things were gone, the elementals; he was glad of
that.

  Blood no longer glistened in the moonlight. He guessed that if he’d touched the bottom of the trough, he’d have found it dry as a skull in a desert. Not that he cared, or that he had any intention of checking.

  Rasile picked up the sandal and examined it critically, uppers and sole. She looked at Cashel and said, “I could probably get a clearer image if I placed this where the blood was to work my spell, but I don’t think I will.”

  “No, ma’am,” Cashel said. “Liane wouldn’t like that, so we won’t do it.”

  He was glad Rasile had decided that herself, but he’d have told her just as clear as he needed to. He figured Liane would rather die than be saved by blood magic. Cashel didn’t feel that way himself, but he could see that she had an argument on her side.

  “We’ll put it where she dropped it, then . . . ,” the wizard said as she placed the sandal back on the sod. She reached into her basket and brought out the yarrow stalks.

  “Why do you want to find her anyway?” asked a woodsprite unexpectedly.

  Cashel looked up. She was perched in the crotch of a sumac bush just inside the circle of trees. She rose and stretched, giving him a pixie grin.

  “You could do much better, you know,” she said. “A bull like you deserves the best.”

  “Ma’am,” Cashel said. “Liane’s my friend, and she’s the intended of my best friend. Do you know where she’s gone?”

  The sprite hopped to the ground and sauntered toward Cashel through the grass blades. “Then you’re free?” she said. “Come with me, bull man!”

  “No ma’am,” said Cashel, straightening up. She wasn’t any taller than his ankle, but size didn’t mean much here. He’d been in these places often enough before to know that. “Tell us where Liane is, please.”

  The sprite made a face at him. Small as she was, he saw her clearly. He supposed he wasn’t seeing with his eyes.

  “You’re no fun!” she said. “Well, you can just forget about your skinny little girlfriend. Milady’s servants took her, so you’ll never get her back!”