by David Drake
Still, the fire tower was a hollow pillar with many tens of tens of steps shaped like wedges of pie on the inside. Lots of younger people, catmen and humans both, would've had trouble climbing it. Cashel didn't mind. Rasile scarcely weighed anything to begin with, and besides, it made him feel useful. Cashel's friends were all smart and educated. Nobody'd thought that Garric would get to be king while he and Cashel were growing up together in Barca's Hamlet, but he'd gotten as good an education from his father, Reise the Innkeeper, as any nobleman's son in Valles got. Likewise Garric's sister Sharina. Cashel smiled at the thought of Sharina. She wasso smart andso lovely. If there was wizardry in the world-and there was; Cashel had seen it often-then the greatest proof of it was the fact that Sharina loved him, as he'd loved her from childhood. Cashel's sister Ilna couldn't read or write any better than he could, and like Cashel she used pebbles or beans as tellers if she needed to count above the number of her fingers. But there was more to being smart than book learning, and nobody hadever doubted that Ilna was smart. She'd been the best weaver in Barca's Hamlet since she'd grown tall enough to work a loom, and the things she'd learned on her travels had made her better than any other soul. None of that had made her happy. Her travels had been to far places, some of them very bad places. She'd come back maybe missing parts that would've let her be happy. Still, Ilna was much of the reason that the kingdom had survived these past years; why the kingdom survived and, in surviving, had allowed mankind to survive.
Cashel, well, he was just Cashel. He'd been a good shepherd, but nobody needed him to tend sheep any more. He was strong, though; stronger than any man he'd met this far. If he could use that strength to help people like Rasile who the kingdom depended on, then he was glad to have something to do. "I'm setting you down," he said, just as he'd have done if he'd been carrying a bogged sheep up to drier ground. The sheep couldn't understand him and the Corl wizard didn't need to be told. Still, a few calm words and a little explanation never hurt. "It's supposed to be the highest place in Pandah and-" He looked around. The top of the tower flared a little, but it was still only two double-paces in diameter. "-I guess the folks who said that were right." Rasile stepped to the railing. From a distance the catmen didn't look much different from humans, but close up you saw that their hands and feet didn't use the same bones. As for their faces, well, they were cats. Rasile was covered with light gray fur which had a nice sheen since she'd started eating properly again. Cashel grinned. If Rasile was a ewe, he'd have said she was healthy. Of course back in the borough she'd have been butchered years ago; there was only fodder enough to get the best and strongest through the winter before the spring crops came in. "I'll never get used to the cities you beast-men live in," Rasile said. She flicked the back of her right hand with the left, a gesture Cashel had learned was the same as a human being shaking her head. "All those houses together, and so many of them stone. None of the True People ever built with stone." "Well, you don't use fire, so you can't smelt metal," Cashel pointed out. "That makes it hard to cut stone." He didn't add, "And you catmen aren't much interested in hard work, either," though it'd have been true enough. The Coerli were predators. All you had to do was own a housecat to know that most of the time it'll be sleeping; and when it isn't, it's likely eating or licking itself.
"Anyway…," Cashel continued diplomatically. Rasile didn't mean anything by "beast-men" and "True People;" it was just the way the Coerli language worked. "I don't guess I'll ever get used to cities either. I was eighteen before I left Barca's Hamlet, and it wasn't but three or four tens of houses." Pandah had been a good sized place when the royal army captured it back in the summer, but that was nothing to what it'd become now. All around the stone-built citadel, houses were going up the way mushrooms pop out of the ground after the spring rains. There were wood-sheathed buildings, wattle and daub huts, and on the outskirts any number of tents made of canvas or leather. Before the Change, travel for any distance meant travel by ship. The Isles were now the Land, a continent instead of a ring of islands about the Inner Sea, and Pandah was pretty nearly the center. It'd gotten to be an important place instead of a sleepy little island where ships put in to buy fruit and fill their water casks. The Corl wizard cleared her throat with a growl that had sounded threatening before Cashel got used to it. She paced slowly sideways around the tower, seeming to look out over Pandah. Cashel had spent his life watching animals and figuring out what was going on in their minds before they went and did something stupid. He knew Rasile hadn't asked to come up here just to view a city she disliked even more than he did. That was why he'd asked Lord Waldron, the commander of the royal army, to put a couple soldiers down at the base of the stairs to keep idlers out of the tower while Cashel and the wizard were in it. "Warrior Cashel," Rasile said with careful formality, though she still didn't meet his eyes.
"You are a friend of Chief Garric. As you know, the wizard Tenoctris summoned me to help your spouse Sharina while Tenoctris herself was occupied with other business." "Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. "I know that." "There is no wizard as powerful as Tenoctris," Rasile said, this time speaking forcefully. Cashel smiled. It was a good feeling to remember a success. "Ma'am, I believe that's so," he said. He could've added that it hadn't been true before Tenoctris took an ancient demon into her while Cashel watched. Risky as that was, it'd worked; and because it'd worked, the kingdom had a defender like no wizard before her. "Even she says that, and Tenoctris isn't one to brag." "And now she has accomplished her other tasks," Rasile continued, turning at last to look at Cashel. "It may be that with a wizard of his own race present-and so powerful a wizard besides-Chief Garric may no longer wish to keep me in his council. Do you believe that is so, Warrior Cashel?" Cashel chuckled, glad to know what was bothering the old wizard. "No ma'am, it'snot so," he said, making sure he really sounded like he meant it. He did mean it, of course, but with people-and sheep-lots of times it wasn't the words they heard but the way you said them. "Look, Garric's job is fighting against, well, evil. Right?
The sort of evil that'll wipe out everybody, your folk and mine both.
And the fight isn't over." The sound Rasile made in her throat this time really was a growl, though it wasn't a threat to him. "No, Warrior Cashel," she said, "the fight is not over." She gestured toward the eastern horizon. "A very great fight is coming, I believe.
But-you have Tenoctris again." "Ma'am," Cashel said, hearing his voice drop lower because of the subject, "what with one thing and another, I've been in a lot of fights. I'venever been in one where I wouldn't have welcomed help, though. I figure Garric feels the same way."
Rasile gave a throaty laugh. "I am relieved to hear that," she said.
"During the time I accompanied your spouse Sharina, Warrior Cashel, I became accustomed to not being relegated to filth and garbage. While Icould return to my former life with the True People, I don't feel the need to reinforce my sense of humility to that degree. Wholesome though no doubt it would be to do so." The laughed together. Cashel looked down at the city, holding his quarterstaff in his left hand.
There were all sorts of people below, walking and working and just idling along. They made him think of summer days in the south pasture, sitting beneath the ilex tree on the hilltop and watching his sheep go about their business. In the past couple years Cashel had gone a lot of places and done a lot of things, but he was still a shepherd at heart. He'd learned there were worse things than sea wolves twisting out of the surf to snatch ewes-but he'd learned also that his hickory staff would put paid to a wizard as quickly as it would to the sort of threats his sheep had faced. He tapped the staff lightly, clicking its iron butt-cap on the tower's stone floor. To his surprise, a sizzle of blue wizardlight spat away from the contact. Rasile noticed the spark also. Her grin bared a jawful of teeth that were noticeably sharper than those of a human being. "I told you the fight was not over, Warrior Cashel," she said. "I felt but I did not say that Chief Garric would be wise to keep me by him. I cannot do as much as his T
enoctris does, but I can do some things; and he will need many things done if he and his kingdom, our kingdom, are to survive the coming struggle."
Cashel nodded without speaking. From this vantage he could see birds fishing the pools that now dotted the plains where the Inner Sea had rippled before the Change. Most were the white or gray of seagulls, but there were darker shapes which flashed blue when they caught the sun right: kingfishers, he was sure. "Would you mind staying here a little longer, Warrior Cashel?" the Corl wizard said. "I would like to work a small spell. Both our height above the ground and your presence will aid me, I believe." "Whatever you want, ma'am," Cashel said. "And I'd appreciate you just call me Cashel. I'm not a warrior, you know.
I'm just a shepherd." Rasile snorted mild laughter as she squatted on her haunches. She took a handful of yarrow stalks out of a bag woven from willow withies, so fine and dense that Cashel thought it would shed water. The catmen were good at weaving; even Ilna said so. "You see what you see, shepherd," Rasile said. "But I see what the world sees. If you do not want me to say 'Warrior,' I will not say the word.
But the truth does not change, Cashel." She tossed the yarrow stalks into a pattern on the stone, then began mumbling words of power.
Cashel didn't pay much attention to her. He kept watching the sky and the land beneath, the directions that danger might come from. He was a shepherd, after all. *** Sharina looked around the apartment in which Tenoctris lived and worked. She hoped her shocked dismay didn't show in her expression. The small room had been let into the outer wall of the citadel. The walls wept condensate, and the only window was the small one in the iron-braced door. In all, the place would've been suitable for a prison cell-and had probably been used as one in the past.
Besides being a friend of Prince Garric and Princess Sharina, Tenoctris was the wizard who through advice and skill had done as much to preserve the mankind as had any other single person. Though Pandah's population was increasing by the day, she could have any quarters she wanted. "Oh, dear," Tenoctris said in obvious dismay. She looked like a woman of twenty-two or three, pert and pretty without being beautiful. Apparently Sharinahadn't kept her face blank. "I'm sorry, dear. I chose this room because it's what I'm used to. I didn't mean to suggest that you wouldn't give me better or, well, anything.
You have to remember that for most of my life-" She shrugged.
Tenoctris had been a woman of seventy when she'd washed up on the shore of Barca's Hamlet, flotsam flung a thousand years forward in time by the cataclysm which ended the Old Kingdom. She now appeared to be the woman she'd been in her youth, but that was true only physically. She'd gained both knowledge and wisdom over a long life.
She retained those virtues and had now added power that few wizards ever could have claimed. "-I was considered rightly to be a wizard of very little power. I prided myself on my scholarship, again I think rightly, but-" Tenoctris grinned. Her cheerfully wry expression would've been enough by itself for Sharina to identify her, no matter what features she was wearing. "-scholars aren't lodged or fed as well as wizards who can split mountains with an incantation and a gesture."
"Well, speaking as an innkeeper's daughter rather than as Princess Sharina," Sharina said, keeping her tone light, "I'd rather a friend of mine had better lodging. But I understand the attraction of the familiar. I wish I had the same freedom in what I wear." She tweaked her silk robe. It was a relatively simple garment compared with full court dress weighing as much as a cavalryman's armor, but contrasted with the tunic she'd ordinarily worn in Barca's Hamlet-both an inner and an outer tunic for unusually formal occasions-it was heavy, hot and confining. A squad of soldiers talked in low voices as they waited outside in the passage. They were Bood Eagles, members of the royal bodyguard. Sharina had come to accept that, because she was a princess and regent in her brother's absence, she would always have guards. She grimaced. It wasn't that she wanted to be alone-nobody in a peasant village expected privacy, especially in the winter when even a wealthy household heated only one room. She wasn't used to people actuallycaring what she did, however, day in and day out. Well, there was no help for it; and the dangers were real enough. Sharina smiled faintly. Though she doubted men with swords would be any help against the wizardry which had been the worst danger to the kingdom these past two years. "What's your opinion of Rasile, Sharina?" Tenoctris asked abruptly. She fluttered her hands, also familiar-though it seemed odd to see a young woman making the gesture an old woman used to make. "I know she's a powerful wizard; that I can judge. What sort of person was she to work with?" Sharina took time to frame her reply. The room's low-backed chair was stacked with codices. The bed likewise, though there was room enough for a slim person to sleep along the outer edge. And the three wicker baskets of scrolls, though of a height to be sat on, struck Sharina as too flimsy for that to be a safe option. There was room to squat, however. She squatted, just as she would've done back home while popping open peapods for dinner.
"Rasile doesn't waste words," she said. She grinned. "Or mince them.
Which I actually appreciate. She's brave, calm, and good company."
Sharina met the gaze of the old/young wizard who'd seated herself on the edge of the low bed, putting their eyes on a level. "She wasn't you, Tenoctris," she said. "But you couldn't have left me with a better helper." "No, she isn't me," Tenoctris said with a quirk of her lips, a smile that wasn't quite humorous. "She's a great deal more powerful than Iever was. And equally precise, which is why she hasn't precipitated a cataclysm the way so many powerful wizards have done in the past. Also, I don't think she cares much about her power." "She isn't as powerful as you are now, though?" Sharina said carefully. She wasn't trying to be flattering, but she needed to understand the tools that preserved the kingdom. Tenoctris and Rasile were among those tools, just as surely as she and her brother and all those who took the side of Good were. She was Princess Sharina. Shehad to think that way if she was to do the best possible work in the struggle with evil, and there was no margin for anything but the best possible work.
"Cashel is accompanying Rasile at this moment," Tenoctris said, looking squarely at Sharina. "I thought that might be a good pairing for the future, if the kingdom's safety required a wizard with suitable protection to act at a distance from the palace and army."
Sharina didn't mean to turn away, but she found her eyes were resting on the top codex of the pile on the chair. It'd been bound with the pebbled skin of a lizard. There was no legend on the cover, but on the edge of the pages was writtenHybro in vermillion ink. The word didn't mean anything to her. She pursed her lips. "You mean the sort of thing you and Cashel did just now, while I led the army against Pandah," she said without emphasis. She looked at the wizard again. The young, pretty, very powerful wizard. "That went very well, I believe." "Yes," said Tenoctris flatly, "it did." She paused. "I always found Cashel impressive," she said. "I find him even more so now that I have-" She twisted a lock of hair to call attention to her gleaming, sandy-red curls. "-more capacity for appreciation." This time it was Tenoctris who looked away. She cleared her throat and continued, "Sharina, I have powers that I wouldn't have, couldn't have, dreamed of in the past." She smiled wryly. "In a verylong past life. I hope that this power hasn't caused me to lose my judgment, however. Specifically, it hasn't caused me to miss what Cashel is: a rock which will stand though the heavens fall." "I never doubted you, Tenoctris," Sharina said. She didn't know if that was true. Her lips were dry. "If you're wise," Tenoctris said, smiling again, "then you never doubted Cashel.
You never should doubt Cashel, Sharina. Though the heavens fall."
Sharina rose, feeling a trifle dizzy. That was common after squatting, after all. "I'm sure Rasile will find him a good companion and protector," she said. "If there's need, of course." There would be need. Sharina was as sure of that as she was that there would be a thunderstorm. She didn't know when or how violent it would be- But she knew that the storm was coming. *** Ilna's fingers knotted short
lengths of cord as she looked at the four people across the desk from her. She was angry, but that-like the fact the sun rises in the east-wasn't unusual enough to be worth comment. Directly before her were a pair of plump young women, Carisa and Bovea, foster nurses employed by the Lady Merota bos-Roriman Society for Orphans; they were crying. A man of thirty named Heismat, originally from Cordin, sat to their left. He'd wanted to stand, but he'd obeyed when Ilna ordered him onto the third low stool. Despite his bluster and the angry red of his face, Heismat's eyes were cold with fear. Ilna smiled, though nobody could've mistaken the expression for humor. Heismat knew he was in trouble, though as yet he didn't understand how serious the trouble was. It was hard to convince some people that they shouldn't knock children around, and even more people thought a Corl kit was an animal rather than a child.
Mistress Winora, the manager of the Merota Society, stood beside the door with her hands crossed at her waist; her face was expressionless.
Winora was fifty, the widow of a merchant from Erdin who'd been killed in the chaos that followed the Change. She'd kept the books and managed the Erdin end of the business while her husband traveled, so she-unlike Ilna-had the skills required to run the day to day operations of the Society. Carisa and Bovea were among the many other women who'd lost their spouses recently. There were even more orphans than there were widows, so it'd seemed perfectly obvious to Ilna to put the two together to the advantage of both, paying each pair of nurses a competence sufficient to care for a handful of children.
She'd done so in the name of Merota, who'd been an orphan also until Ilna and Chalcus took charge of her. Ilna's fingers knotted, forming a very complex pattern. It calmed her to knot and weave, but she had a specific purpose this time. She wasvery angry. Merota and Chalcus had died during the Change. If you believed in souls, then Ilna's soul had died with them-with her family. Ilna didn't believe in souls or gods or anything, really, except craftsmanship. And she believed in the death that would come to all things, though perhaps not as soon as she would like. "Look, I'm sorry," Heismat snarled. He glared at his knotted hands. He'd been a laborer before the Change and had come to Pandah to work in the building trade. "Isaid I was sorry, didn't I? I didn't mean to do it!" "Mistress," blubbered Carisa. Heismat was her boyfriend. "It was only because he was drinking, you know. He's a good man, agood man, really." "Mistress Winora, how is the kit?" Ilna asked. Her voice was thin and as cold as the wind from the Ice Capes.
