Crown Of The Isles 02 The Mirror of Worlds-ARC

by David Drake

"I'm worried too, Master Hann," Garric said, rising to massage his thighs. "But if everybody does his part, we'll come out of it all right."

  "If enough of you do, you mean," said the aegipan sardonically. "And if you're lucky besides. Don't forget being lucky."

  * * *

  "And this is the warrant setting up the Fourth Regional Assembly," said Liane as she slid a perfectly indicted document on a piece of fine vellum before Sharina. "It'll meet in Carcosa. We have more information on Region Four than on most of the new lands, since the Viceroy of Haft was already beginning to explore the district before he got back in contact with Valles after the Change. It's mostly settled by Grass People."

  Sharina was very tired, but she made a point of signing these warrants carefully. They were too pretty to deface with a blotted or hen-scratched signature, and by the time they'd been decorated with seals and ribbons, they'd be works of art to be hung beneath the rostrum every time the assembly met.

  "I suspect Lord Reise, the viceroy's chief of administration, was responsible for the patrols," she said dryly. "My father isn't a dynamic leader, but he was certainly two or three steps ahead of anyone else in Barca's Hamlet at seeing what was going to be necessary."

  It seemed even more strange to call her father Lord Reise than it was to think of herself as Princess Sharina—in part of course because she didn't think of herself as a princess, though people called her princess and she did the sort of work a princess did.

  She looked across the table at which she and Liane were working. Cashel, sitting on the bench beside the door into the chamber, smiled back at her. The frieze just beneath the ceiling showed cherubs doing all manner of adult jobs from bottling the year's wine vintage to a fuller's shop where they trod woolens in troughs of urine to clean them.

  Cashel had been examining the paintings while he waited. Most of the cherubs' tasks were things Cashel wouldn't have seen in real life: every housewife in Barca's Hamlet baked her family's bread on her hearth, so the commercial bakery with big brick ovens was as alien as the cosmetics factory next door to it. Despite his ignorance, Sharina recognized in Cashel's expression the delight he took in all things whether or not they were familiar.

  "And here's the last warrant," said Liane, offering a fifth sheet of vellum. "We haven't had as much contact with Donelle as I'd like, though that's possibly because of the distance. Pandah's in the middle of the direct route, of course, so couriers have to swing widely around it."

  Sharina chuckled as she signed. When she passed the warrant back, she noticed Liane's lifted eyebrow.

  "If I'd been asked what a princess did when I was a girl in Barca's Hamlet," Sharina said, getting to the core of the implied question, "I'd have said she ate dainties and chose between suitors for her hand. That's what they did in all the stories I read, anyway. I don't think I'd have guessed she signed her name over and over again, setting up councils for tracts that haven't been properly surveyed, let alone brought in the kingdom."

  Liane blushed slightly. "I'm sorry," she said. "Garric, that is the prince, liked—"

  "He's been my brother Garric all my life, Liane," Sharina interrupted. She was tired or she wouldn't have misworded her comment that way. "He'll stay Garric among the three of us, please. And I wasn't objecting to what we're doing: this is the best way for me to learn what's really going on with the kingdom that I'm suddenly ruling."

  "Yes," said Liane with a grateful smile. She wiped her eyes quickly with a handkerchief; tears had started at the corners. We're all very tired. "That's what Garric says too. And really, the regional councils seemed the best way to incorporate folk from other periods. By offering the local leaders medallions of office—Lord Tadai's come up with some suitably gaudy ones—and scrolls of office signed by Princess Sharina—"

  Liane smiled, looking younger and happier than Sharina'd seen her in some time. Certainly since Garric rode off, any way.

  "—then they'll want to become part of the kingdom."

  "I certainly can't imagine a better plan," Sharina said. She rested her head in her hands. She was sure it was a good plan, but for the moment she couldn't imagine tomorrow's sunrise. She felt completely overwhelmed.

  Liane had asked to stay behind after the council meeting. Sharina had agreed gladly. They'd sent away even the clerks who were normally as much a part of the business of governance as the polished cherrywood table at which they were working.

  Cashel had stayed too, of course. He had no business here except to be Cashel, imperturbably solid; and the way Sharina felt at the moment, there was nothing in the world more valuable.

  "It's the army that's worst," Sharina said softly, her palms covering her eyes. Time with Liane in Cashel's silent presence was actually better than solitude. She desperately needed friends: completely trustworthy, sympathetic friends. "I don't know anything about soldiers. These appearances of the Last . . . ."

  "All the incursions have been stopped and the pools have been covered over," Liane said when she realized Sharina's voice had trailed off. "No one could've done a better job than you did, dear."

  "But there were almost eight hundred dead and wounded on Tisamur, Liane," Sharina said, raising her head and putting her hands flat on the table before her. "That's what the messenger himself says, anyway, and since Lord Lomar, the Resident Advisor, doesn't give a figure in his formal report I'm inclined to believe the messenger. That's terrible, isn't it? Someone must've blundered badly. Should I replace the military commander?"

  Liane put her right hand over Sharina's left. "We don't know," she said. "We can't know. And we don't have to worry about it now."

  She squeezed Sharina's hand and grinned. "Because we have far more important things to worry about," she added.

  Sharina smiled back. She felt relieved, though nothing had changed. "Garric would know what to do," she said, without the bitter despair that would've been in the words a moment before.

  "I really don't think he would," Liane said musingly. "But King Carus would, I'll agree. He had an instinct for that sort of thing. His technique for dealing with foreign envoys lacked subtlety, however."

  Sharina burst out laughing; an instant later Liane was laughing also. They'd both watched Carus behead the ambassador from Laut as part of the same motion in which he drew his sword. At the time, of course, it hadn't been funny; and perhaps they wouldn't find it funny now if they weren't on the verge of hysteria.

  There were voices in the hallway; the rhythms though not the words were audible through the chamber's thick door. Cashel got up silently, nodded to the women, and opened the door just enough to slip out. Sharina found watching him move to be a continuing wonder and delight. Cashel didn't seem to do anything quickly, but he never made a false step and he never slowed because he'd run into something solid or heavy.

  A moment later, he reappeared with Tenoctris. "I told the guards it was all right," he said. "You didn't mean her not to come in when you said they shouldn't let in anybody."

  "Of course!" said Sharina. The trouble with the way Attaper trained the Blood Eagles was that they tended to interpret orders very strictly. Thinking about it, she wasn't sure they'd have passed even Garric without discussion.

  Tenoctris always seemed alert, but this evening her expression had a febrile brightness that Sharina found disconcerting. Though she smiled toward Liane, it was to Sharina that she said, "Dear, I believe I'm as prepared as I can be. With your permission, I'll put my research to the test in the Old East Burying Ground now."

  Sharina nodded calmly, though her heart had gone to ice again. Aloud she said, "I told Lord Waldron to give you any assistance you wished. I trust he's done that?"

  "He offered me a regiment of soldiers," Tenoctris said with a twinkling smile. "Actually, he offered me my choice of regiments, as if I'd know one from another. I believe he was pleased that I'd gone to him rather than Lord Attaper. I asked him for ten men who were willing to dig if necessary, which he assured me they would be."

  She cleared
her throat. "And I would also like Cashel to accompany me, Sharina," she continued. "I believe I'll need his company for some time."

  "Of course," Sharina repeated. "We'd all assumed that, I think."

  She got up and waited for the dizziness to pass, then walked briskly around the table and threw her arms around Cashel. She hadn't expected Tenoctris to say "need," though. She didn't know what that meant, but she didn't see any advantage to pressing the old wizard for a detailed explanation.

  Cashel was as solid as a great oak. While Sharina was with Cashel, nothing could go wrong. And she was about to lose Cashel's presence.

  "Excuse me, Tenoctris?" Liane said from the world outside Cashel's arms. "I'm not familiar with the Old East Burying Ground."

  Sharina squeezed Cashel and stepped out of his embrace, though she continued to hold his hand. She looked between the women.

  "The name is from my age, not yours," Tenoctris said. "It was quite old even a thousand years in your past, however, and it'd vanished into the sprawl of shanties beyond Valles proper before the Change. I believe that in a tomb there I'll find the ally which mankind needs."

  Is it safe to drag an ancient wizard from his grave? Sharina thought, and of course it wasn't—but if Tenoctris was doing it, there wasn't a better solution available. The realization made her stomach churn.

  "We depend on you, Tenoctris," Sharina said aloud, gripping Cashel's hand hard. "Well, on you and Garric, but the Yellow King was a myth to me from before I could read. I'm afraid I still feel that way."

  "We'll both hope you're wrong, dear," the old woman said, smiling wistfully. "When I was very young, I read Hohmann's Grammar of the Powers in what was left of the family library. I found that I could make a feather lift in the air. I certainly never thought I'd be at a pivot of history, though."

  She shook herself or perhaps shivered. "Well," she said. "Cashel, if you're ready, shall we—?"

  "Excuse me, Tenoctris," Sharina said. She blurted the words without consciously meaning to, though they'd been on the tip of her tongue since the wizard entered the room. "I—something happened last night. Could I talk to you and Liane? It's sort of . . . a woman problem."

  She glanced at her companions. Tenoctris was brightly quizzical, Liane was carefully neutral.

  Cashel was Cashel, smiling softly and as firm as the bedrock. "I'll go chat with the guards," he said. "Besok was a shepherd on Cordin."

  He closed the door softly behind him. Sharina took a deep break. She couldn't have talked about Vorsan in front of Cashel.

  "Last night when I returned to my room I saw a reflection in the window," she said in a firm voice. "I fell into it, I don't know how; I was concentrating on the reflection and then I was in a room with a man who called himself Prince Vorsan. He said he'd made a place to preserve himself from the Flood. He wanted me to join him."

  Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips and went on, "He said the Last would destroy us as the Flood did his world."

  "How did you escape, dear?" asked Tenoctris quietly.

  "He didn't try to hold me," Sharina said. It sounded impossible when she tried to explain it. "He told me to look into one of his mirrors, and when I did I was back in my room."

  She paused, trying to focus on important details. "The mirrors seemed to be glass, not metal," she said. "I've never seen anything like them."

  Tenoctris shrugged. "Your Vorsan sounds very interesting," she said. "I wish I had leisure to learn more. Perhaps I could even meet him, but—"

  Her smile was perfunctory; a polite dismissal.

  "—I'm afraid I don't. He doesn't appear to be a serious threat, or indeed a threat at all. And other matters certainly are, I'm afraid."

  "I'm just to forget him, then?" Sharina said. She managed to keep her voice calm, but she was more angry than she'd have expected.

  "Yes, dear, if you can," Tenoctris said. "Or perhaps . . . ."

  She looked appraisingly from Sharina toward the door, then back. "If matters go as I hope they will tonight," she resumed, "Cashel and I will be doing a great deal of travelling until the Last have been defeated. You and the kingdom will need a wizard to advise you in day to day matters while I'm gone, though. That person, my replacement, may feel otherwise about Prince Vorsan. I won't be offended if you take his or her advice over mine."

  "You're leaving us!" Sharina said.

  "Yes, dear," said the old wizard. "We'll come back frequently, but I can't promise to be available to answer your questions in a timely manner."

  She gave Sharina a lopsided smile and added, "Unless I fail tonight, that is. If that happens, it won't really matter what else I do. I don't see any hope for mankind if I fail tonight."

  "I see," said Sharina, though she didn't see. Her head was filled with buzzing whiteness; she wondered if she were about to faint. "I'll pray for you."

  I'll pray for all of us.

  Tenoctris went to the door and opened it. "I think we'd best leave now, Cashel," she said. "I'd like to have everything prepared at the tomb before sunset."

  "Yes, ma'am," Cashel said, walking back into the room.

  Sharina threw her arms about Cashel again and kissed him hard. He was too shy to've taken the initiative, but he held her firmly and kissed her back.

  For what may be the last time.

  * * *

  Tenoctris looked down the hillside with a satisfied expression, then took three brisk steps to the right. Cashel followed, carrying the satchel with the books and powders she used in her wizardry. Instead of taking something out it, however, Tenoctris pointed at the ground.

  "Here," she said to the officer commanding the soldiers. "There should be a sloping trench leading southwest for about fifteen feet. Lay it open, please, and remove what I expect will be a stone blocking the doorway at the far end."

  "You heard the lady, lads!" the officer bellowed. "Make me proud of you or you'll never get off latrine duty!"

  The double handful of soldiers were already at work with mattocks and shovels. They had heard Tenoctris, after all; they were close enough to touch her and she'd spoken in a normal voice. Cashel didn't understand why soldiers—and sailors—seemed to shout whatever they were saying, but it was one of the things that made him glad he'd been a shepherd instead.

  He'd followed Tenoctris back so they weren't in the way of the digging. The men were good at it, no question; it was a treat to watch how one fellow broke ground with his mattock and the next shoveled the dirt into a wicker basket, all without getting in each other's way.

  They had nice tools, too, with metal blades. In Barca's Hamlet, most shovels were shaped from wood with only a shoe of iron over the cutting edge. Lots of folks used digging sticks, even.

  Cashel looked at Tenoctris. She'd taken a gold locket from under her silk robe and held it as she watched the soldiers. She looked, well, not as cheerful as usual, so he said, "I thought you might have to do a spell to find what you wanted."

  "Not here, I'm afraid," Tenoctris said, smiling though she didn't look around. "It's rather like saying, 'What sort of device do you need to discover a forest fire?' Graveyards often hold a great deal of power, but here it's not just death and reverence. The man buried there—"

  She nodded to the trench. The soldiers had cleared the layer of dirt and were now digging out the slot cut in the rock beneath. It was porous volcanic tuff, as easy to carve as the chalky limestone of the hills around Barca's Hamlet.

  "—was a very powerful wizard. I don't ordinarily care to work in a place where power is so concentrated."

  "What was the wizard's name, Tenoctris?" Cashel asked. It only seemed polite to know a fellow's name when you were digging up his grave.

  She smiled again and this time met Cashel's eyes. "I don't know, I'm afraid," she said. "I don't even know how long ago he lived. Though I'm sure he was male; that I can tell from what remains."

  Her eyes drifted across the slope spotted with small cedars and outcrops of tuff. It wasn't much to look at, it seemed to Cash
el. There were potsherds in the coarse grass; he turned one over with his toe and found it'd been painted on the underside.

  "That was a grave marker," Tenoctris said. "On Ornifal in my day, people were buried standing. An urn with a hole in the bottom put over the grave. On the anniversary of the death, relatives and friends dropped wine and food into the mouth of the jar."

  Cashel frowned, looking harder at the bit of pottery. He couldn't guess what the painting might've shown when it was whole: all he had left to judge by were the parallel strokes of blue and blue-green against the earthenware background. "If they were dead, it didn't matter, did it?" he said.

  "It mattered to the relatives and friends, Cashel," the old woman said. "And they were the ones doing it."

  "Ah," Cashel said, smiling at himself for not thinking of that. He was pretty good at figuring out what people'd do once he'd been around them a while, but not always about why they did it. Ilna was worse, of course: she got mad when folks didn't do things the way she thought they should.