by David Drake
Cashel felt himself blush. "I'm sorry about the way I, well, tossed you," he said, taking his staff again.
The dog-thing snuffled along the sea's margin now, licking up crabs it'd crippled. It didn't seem to notice the humans. From this angle Cashel saw that its hindquarters were brindled.
"You saved our lives in the only possible fashion," Tenoctris said sharply. "I don't see that as being something you should apologize for."
She grinned. "I always knew you had a great ability to do things by art," she said. "By wizardry. And of course I knew that you were strong the way laymen judge strength. But until I had a healthy young body of my own again, I didn't really appreciate how strong you are, Cashel."
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, keeping his eye on the beast that Tenoctris had called to save them. He started to say something more but caught himself.
Tenoctris laughed. "And yes, we'll get on with our own business," she said. "So that you can return to Sharina. Come, the altar's not far at all."
Together they set off again for the headland. Cashel stayed between the wizard and the dog-thing. It bugled again, that was all. Maybe it was saying goodbye.
* * *
Sharina entered the pool cleanly and pulled herself deeper with paired strokes of her arms. She'd expected a shock, but the water was blood warm.
Rasile's viewpoint plunged also, apparently looking over Sharina's left shoulder but seeing farther down than eyes—man or Corl either one—should've been able to do. The water, the distorted fish which nudged close to Sharina before darting away with flips of their tails, and the distant mud shimmered with the red tinge of wizardlight.
The pool was a thousand feet deep, but Sharina was seeing the bottom through the wizard's eyes. She couldn't possibly swim down that far, but she kept stroking toward it. She expected to fail, but she wouldn't quit.
The layer of silt and decay carpeting the pool became transparent in the rosy glow. Sharina saw the tiny blind animals living in it, worms and less identifiable creatures with shells or legs or jointed feelers.
She swam downward. She didn't need to breathe as she should've done. Her spread hands drove her deeper against the resistance of something, but she no longer believed it was water.
The stones on the floor of the pool, eggs of granite that a stream had tumbled smooth in past ages, began to appear through the layer of muck. At first they lay in a scarlet shimmer. Wizardlight brightened around a single stone, a sphere of quartz the size of Sharina's fist. It was very close. It was—
Sharina's arm plunged through the mud she could no longer see and grasped the First Stone. It was cold, then hot; she felt her burnt flesh slough away and the bones of her hand turn black and crumble, though she could see with Rasile's eyes that she was uninjured.
She kicked against the bottom and began to swim upward with her left hand alone. The surface was a point of sunlight far above, but still she didn't need to breathe.
The sunlit circle swelled; she could see ripples, the remains of the disturbance she'd made diving in. Six distorted blacknesses were spaced around the margin of the pool, soldiers of the Last drawn by the splash. Even if they didn't see her, could they see the turbulence her body made in the water?
Sharina reached across her body with her left hand and drew the Pewle knife. She didn't want to take the stone in her other hand. She might drop it, or worse—she might cripple her left hand also, burn the flesh and bones away. Both her wrists would end in blackened stumps . . . .
She felt a great shock. The pool bubbled; the detritus that'd settled on the bottom over millennia swelled upward in a dark, spreading cloud. What had she done when she removed the First Stone?
She porpoised up through the surface. If there'd ever been a stone curb, the Last had removed it when they prepared the pool for their own purposes. Sharina braced herself on the margin with her right elbow and the butt of her knife, then swung out of the water.
The two nearest of the Last sliced at the pool. Their swords were so keen that the edges scarcely disturbed the water. Neither struck her.
All the Last were alert now, their skin flaps folded. Sharina dodged between two who must've sensed the movement. They slashed toward one another, but their strokes cut only air. Sharina was past, and the perfectly placed blades came within a hair's breadth of each others black flesh without touching it.
Sharina sprinted for the entrance. Her tunic lay on the ground where she'd dropped it. Her mother, Lora, would be furious with her; Lora'd never understood the concept that reality was sometimes more important than appearance . . . .
When Sharina thought of Lora, it was always at a time like this: when she or Garric were doing something necessary for mankind which their mother wouldn't have approved of. She grinned despite the situation. Maybe Lora was a good mother after all. She showed us what to avoid.
The Last formed a line across the width of the fortress, standing shoulder to shoulder. The roiling pool wouldn't provide them with reinforcements for at least some minutes, but stolid black soldiers were returning from the siege lines through the west entrance. They must speak mentally to one another.
Sharina reached the east entrance by which she'd entered. Five of the Last stood across it, filling the space completely. Their swords were raised to slash downward.
No time to think . . . .
Sharina stabbed the warrior in the center through the eye. He convulsed, swinging his sword and shield out to the sides; his legs kicked upward like a frog's. Sharina jerked back as his neighbors struck. The line of warriors forming behind her ran toward the entrance.
Choosing her time, Sharina leaped over the thrashing body. She sprinted out of the fortress and ran full tilt toward the human lines because she didn't need to hide her presence now.
To her surprise, Attaper and a troop of Blood Eagles stood at the base of the wall; they'd climbed down by a sturdy ladder. Rasile stood on the parapet.
"There she is!" Attaper shouted. "Get around your princess, troopers!"
Sharina was seeing with her own eyes, which meant she could be seen. She didn't care about men, not for the moment, but the Last could see her.
She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to find a column of them rushing toward her. There was no artillery to support the troops who'd be pitting their flesh against swords which could cut steel.
The Last weren't following her. Something was going on in the fortress, though; a pair of distorted black bodies flew high in the air and dropped back.
A soldier swung a cloak over Sharina's shoulders and clasped it. It was a military garment and perhaps his own, but Rasile must've told him to bring it for the purpose: none of the other men were wearing them.
Sharina climbed the ladder, balancing without using her hands. She couldn't sheathe the Pewle knife until she'd wiped the purplish ichor off the blade, and she didn't have any way to carry the First Stone except in her hand. The Blood Eagles formed in front of the ladder. They only started climbing when she'd reached the parapet.
Rasile took the quartz sphere. Sharina's right hand felt as though it'd been frozen, but she could see her fingers move when she tried to wiggle them. She stepped to the side so that the Blood Eagles had room to mount the parapet; Attaper was predictably waiting on the ground until all his men were up.
"What do we do now, Rasile?" Sharina asked. She looked around for something to clean her knife on, a rag or a wad of dry grass. There was nothing in sight, and she didn't want to foul some trooper's cloak.
The wizard stepped into a bay from which the catapult had been removed. She spread her yarrow stalks into a figure on the floor of packed turf. "Now," she said, "I will deliver the First Stone a person who's capable of using it properly, Princess. Because I certainly am not."
"Your ladyship?" said Trooper Lires, a man who'd regularly stood beside—and in front of—Sharina in bad places. He was offering a chammy, probably the one he'd used to bring the blackened bronze of his armor to a mirror gloss. "Use this. It
'll wash out."
Sharina reached for the swatch of goathide. Another face was reflected beside hers on the shield boss. She jerked back.
"Sharina, you must come with me now!" cried Prince Vorsan. "There're only minutes remaining for you. You've loosed the creature that the First Stone drew to it. Dear Princess, it's grown beyond anyone's control!'
"Get away from me!" Sharina shouted.
Lires had been looking puzzled, trying to find where Vorsan's voice was coming from. Shocked by Sharina's words, his jaw dropped and he straightened to attention.
"Sorry, mistress!" he mumbled. "Shouldn't have spoke, won't happen again."
"Not you, Lires, the—"
"Sister take you, Lires!" shouted Attaper as he came up the ladder. "You've got a face on your shield and it's talking!"
"Sharina, there's no time to waste. You must—"
The fortress of the Last burst outward with a deafening crash. Plates that no human agency could harm now split and buckled, breaking across rather than where seams joined the individual pentagons.
A cloud of opalescent smoke was rising from the wreckage. Sharina blinked: it wasn't smoke. It was the carapace of a crab bigger than she'd have dreamed possible.
It wasn't really a crab. Tentacles around its mouth writhed, and the single eye at the top of the headplate was larger than the pool from which she'd taken the First Stone.
The creature squirmed toward the human camp. Each pincer was the size of a trireme. One of the small ballistas remaining on this end of the siege lines snapped out its bolt. If it hit, the impact was lost in the immensity of the target.
"Sharina, you must—" cried Vorsan.
Lires spun his shield off the parapet into no-man's-land. "Guess not having that won't make much difference now," he said nonchalantly, drawing his sword. "And the talk was getting on my nerves."
"Sharina, on your life, come!" cried Vorsan from beneath the wall. The shield had landed with the mirrored boss upward. "I don't want to live eternity without you!"
The creature came on. Sharina glanced at Rasile, who chanted in a four-pointed star and held out the First Stone. Wizardlight played about her, blue and then scarlet.
I wonder if she'll have time to finish the spell, Sharina thought.
She looked at the Pewle knife. She still hadn't wiped the blade, but it didn't matter now. Lady, be with me. Lady, gather my soul to you when I leave this body.
The creature lurched forward, far overtopping the parapet.
Chapter 16
"The Telchines stole the sign that takes a user to the Fulcrum," Tenoctris said, looking toward the slab of black stone which the water lapped. "They didn't dare use it themselves, of course. They just wanted to have it."
"Leisin of Hardloom Farm was a miser," said Cashel. It seemed a very long time ago that he'd lived in the Borough and hadn't seen any city bigger than the straggle of huts making up Barca's Hamlet. "He didn't exactly steal, but he'd short your wages if he thought he could."
He'd never understood Leisin, a wealthy farmer who didn't eat any better than Cashel himself or even as well. They started with the same cheap fare—whey cheese, oats or barley, and root vegetables—but Leisin didn't have Ilna to prepare and season it with wild greens. Still yet he'd cheat a twelve-year-old orphan who'd spent three summer days resetting a drystone wall that'd collapsed in a storm.
Cashel smiled at a memory.
"Did Master Leisin amuse you?" Tenoctris asked with a guarded expression.
"No, ma'am," Cashel said, embarrassed now. He kept looking across the strait so he didn't have to meet her eyes. There was another headland about a mile distant, rising higher than it did on this side. "I was thinking that though I didn't have my full growth when I was twelve, I was still too big for Leisin to threaten whipping me if I didn't get off his farm without my pay."
"Ah," said Tenoctris. "I suspect Leisin and the Telchines would've understood each other better than you or I understand either one of them."
She glanced toward the strait again; Cashel followed her eyes. The slab rose waist-high above the surface, but they'd need to wade a furlong of water to reach it. There was no way of telling how deep it was.
The salt water'd make his cuts sting, though folks said a salt bath helped them heal quicker too. Cashel thought about the crabs and whether they'd be waiting just out from the shore. He'd know quick enough, he guessed.
"I can carry you over," he said. "It might be best if you rode my shoulders, so I'll have both hands free. If they need to be, you know."
"I'll walk, Cashel," Tenoctris said. She gave him a funny sort of smile. "I'm not an old woman any more, you know. I won't shrink."
She turned to the sea again. "A wizard standing there can shift the worlds," she said. "Just as the Telchines said. If she's powerful enough."
She raised an eyebrow toward Cashel.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. It wasn't really a question, but it seemed she wanted him to say something. "That's why you wanted to be here, isn't it?"
"Many wizards have wanted to be here!" Tenoctris said. She sounded angry, though why at him he couldn't imagine. "For a wizard with sufficient power and the proper tools, everything is possible. She could rule worlds. All worlds, Cashel! Not just this one."
Cashel looked around, moving his hands a little on his quarterstaff. The water was a dirty gray and colder even than the air, which he knew from stepping through leads the tide'd left. The corniche behind them and the hills on the other side of the strait were volcanic and too raw for anything to grow on. The big dog-thing that'd saved them must live on what the sea cast up, if Tenoctris hadn't brought it here from some place else entirely.
He thought of getting out his swatch of raw wool and polishing lanolin into the pores of the hickory, but Tenoctris might think he was pushing her to get on with things. She seemed in a bad mood already.
"You'd have to want to rule things awful bad to be willing to live here," Cashel said. "I guess I'm not the one to say. Though there've been times I wished I could get sheep to show a little better sense."
"I don't think the world has much to fear from you, then, Cashel," Tenoctris said softly. She raised the alien sword and looked at it critically, then lowered its point to the ground again. She was smiling as she met Cashel's eyes again.
"We'll cross to the Fulcrum now," she said. "And I think I'll have you carry me after all. In the crook of your arm. There's no danger in the water, I assure you."
"Yes, ma'am," Cashel said, making a seat of his left arm. She reached around his neck and he gripped the inside of her knee so she didn't roll off.
He splashed in. The water was cold, sure, but nothing that'd be a problem for a short hike. It didn't come up to the middle of his calves. The only problem was he had to walk slower than he'd have liked to because otherwise he'd be splashing onto Tenoctris' legs.
Cashel grinned. He was used to following sheep, so walking slow wasn't a new thing either. He strode on.
* * *
Garric stepped onto the high tor. Shin's altar must be the cube of quartz beside the opening that gave down into the cavern. The broken rocks of the ridgeline were beige and russet, and the dry grass in cracks between them had a sere absence of color. The sun was setting in the west, and on the southern horizon the strange white star gleamed like a demon's eye.
The wyvern looked out from the edge of the cliff fifty feet away, peering into the wind that roared up the rock face. From Garric's viewpoint it looked like a gigantic bird of prey. Its tail was rigid, trembling up and down to adjust the creature's balance. Its hide was the color of sullen flames.
The altar was nearly as tall as Garric and apparently equal in all dimensions. From a distance he'd have said it had to be artificial, but with the cube in reach he couldn't see any seam between its milky presence and the sandstone it rested on.
Garric started to his left, keeping his distance from the wyvern. It must've heard him, though, because it spun around and for a moment reared u
pright, spreading its stubby wings to make itself look bulkier. It glared, then stretched its long neck toward Garric and screamed. Its tongue was black, and its teeth were the color of old ivory.
"It doesn't really need wings to look big," Carus said calmly. "It's the size of a thirty-oared ship already. Well, nearly."
They were eye to eye with the wyvern. In turning it'd halved the distance between them. Garric kept his sword slanted across his body. His dagger was low and out to his left, ready to strike upward.
The wyvern's body lowered as its legs contracted to spring. Garric continued to circle slowly. He was just as tense as the monster, but his feet glided like snakes. His smile mirrored that of the warrior-ghost in his mind.