by David Drake
Light trembled over the instruments of brass and silver and even gold. Tenoctris glanced up; Garric followed her eyes. The sound of the second meteor, for now only a rasping undertone, reached his ears as he saw the fluctuating light and looked quickly away.
"May the Shepherd guard me!" a man called in a high-pitched voice.
The signallers blew together. For a moment, the shriek of their instruments filled the air, but the thunder of the oncoming meteor overwhelmed even that raucous blast. People throughout the crowd were shouting though their voices went unheard, and the ancient king in Garric's mind said, "Sister swallow me if it isn't coming straight at us!"
Protas didn't stop or look up. Lifting the torch from the bowl in which it rested, he touched it to the faggots. Yellow flames spread too swiftly for green wood: the bundled brush had been soaked with oil. Protas backed a step and paused, then hurled the burning bowl onto the pyre also. It shattered on the steps, igniting the red muslin.
The meteor exploded unthinkably high in the heavens. For a moment there was only the flash; then the sound reached the crowd, throwing everyone to the ground. Garric felt himself lifted, then slammed down hard. The crudely built throne cracked under his weight, and the casque bashed his forehead.
He stood up. His ears rang and he felt each heartbeat throb in his skull. There was a stunned silence over the plaza, relieved by the sounds of prayers and sobbing. The fire was beginning to bite on the funeral pyre. A crackling indicated that the olive oil and beeswax had ignited the wood.
Garric looked at the topaz crown in his left hand. His grip had twisted the soft gold circlet, but the big stone was more vividly alive than a diamond. The things moving in the brightness were no longer shadows but streaks of flame spinning sunwise around the white-hot heart of the stone.
Garric was spinning: not his body but his mind. He felt the suction and tried to throw down the topaz, but he couldn't open his grip. Voices cried wordlessly like a winter storm.
"Hold me!" Garric tried to say, but he couldn't make his lips move nor even form the words in his mind. The circles of light boring through his eyes wrenched his consciousness out of the waking world. He hovered for a moment above the plaza, watching his garments flatten on the ground where he'd been standing. His helmet bounced once and came to rest on its rim, the gilded wings shivering.
The plaza and the pyre were gone. Garric stood on a gray road, naked and alone, and fog swaddled his brain.
***
Ilna put her right arm over Merota's shoulders as what the girl called a meteor snarled like a landslide toward them through the bare sky. If it hit the plaza-and it certainly appeared that it was going to-there was nothing anyone could do that'd make a difference.
If Ilna'd been alone, she'd have taken lengths of yarn out of her left sleeve and begun knotting a pattern. She smiled wryly. Her powers were considerable but they didn't rise to ripping large rocks out of the sky, so that wouldn't have helped either.
The work made her feel more content, though.
She wasn't alone. She was responsible for Merota, and though the girl was putting a brave face on it she was understandably terrified. Ilna wasn't going to fill her last moments of life with the knowledge she'd just abandoned a frightened child.
She, Merota, and Chalcus had been seated on a middle row of the bleachers, down at the right end. The rows beneath them-three; she'd counted them off on her fingers as she stepped up-were the seats of the island nobility who were going to march up to the pyre and throw on incense. The rows above-two more-were nobles as well, but seated higher because they were less important and didn't have any duties during the funeral except to be part of the spectacle. They were rich farmers for the most part, judging by their talk and gaudy tastelessness.
Those folk were the problem now. They were trying to get to the ground, and in their panic they probably wouldn't have cared if that meant trampling a small woman and the ten-year-old girl in her charge.
They cared when Chalcus jumped onto his seat and faced them, though, sword and dagger drawn. One fellow tried to push through anyway; Chalcus' left hand moved too quickly to see. The panicked local clapped his hands to his face and sprang back, three long gold chains dancing as he fell on the bleachers. Blood from his slit nostril flickered in the air.
Ilna's smile grew minusculy wider: Chalcus understood duty also. If she was about to die, and it certainly seemed that she was, she was fortunate to do it at the side of a man in the best sense of the word.
The sling-stone-the meteor, since Merota was educated and doubtless knew the right word-exploded high in the sky. Ilna's face was bent down but she felt the flash on the backs of her hands. She braced herself because she remembered what'd happened when the earlier meteor hit the sea, but the shockwave this time was beyond anything she'd imagined.
Clutching Merota with one hand, Ilna turned an unintended cartwheel. The bleachers, raw wood beneath a drape of red muslin like the steps up the pyre-had flexed down and then sprung back again. She tried to grab Chalcus-for the contact rather than because it'd help in any material way-but he was spinning off in a different direction.
Ilna, Merota, and several handfuls of other spectators crashed down onto the bleachers together; boards broke. The whole structure collapsed in a tangle of splinters and torn cloth.
Ilna jumped to her feet. The back of her right wrist was skinned, but she wasn't really injured.
"Merota, are you hurt?" she said. The girl wrapped her arms around Ilna's torso and sobbed into the bosom of her tunic.
People were shouting and crying, but only a few of them had real injuries. A splinter as long as sword blade had run through a middle-aged woman's right calf. She stared at it in shocked amazement; Chalcus, glancing first to see that Ilna and Merota were all right, knelt at the victim's side. He sheathed the sword he hadn't lost in the tumult, then used the dagger to cut a length off his sash for a bandage or tourniquet.
Ilna looked around plaza. The troops who'd been formed by battalions in a semicircle around the bleachers had fallen like ten-pins, their armor and weapons clattering. Now they were picking themselves up and dressing their ranks. Some soldiers were gray-faced with fear, but instead of running they trusted their safety to discipline and their fellows just as they'd been trained to do.
Ilna supposed that sort of training was useful-for people who couldn't simply overcome their fears by will power. She was afraid of many things: afraid of failure; afraid of making a fool of herself; afraid of her own anger. She wasn't in the least afraid of death.
The locals weren't as fast to get to their feet as the soldiers were, and when they did they often stumbled away from the plaza. Ilna didn't blame them: the air had a metallic taste, unpleasant and rough on the back of her throat.
Her ears rang from the blast, but she could hear sounds again. A local screamed and pointed toward the pyre. Other islanders turned to follow the line of his arm, then screamed in turn. Their drift became a panicked stampede.
Ilna looked at the pyre also. The lowest level was burning, though the green brushwood made smoky flames. They crackled like sea ice breaking on the coast in an inshore gale.
The bier at the top of the third stage was disarranged. The corpse got to its feet, dragging away the cloth-of-gold drapery. It swayed, wax-pale except where it was rouged, and took a step by pivoting its whole leg at the hip. Its mouth moved, but any words it spoke were lost in screams and the sound of the fire. The corpse took another step to the muslin-covered staircase, then a third.
"Help…" it cried in a piping voice. It stumbled to its knees. "Me…"
The flames were rising higher. The fire had taken hold slowly, but before long the brush would dry and turn the structure into a dancing, orange-red incandescence.
"I'm coming, your highness," called a plump man whose tunic and trousers were decorated with silver gares. It was Martous, the chamberlain; the man who'd sent the boy prince to ignite the pyre. He tried to go forward but stopped, paral
yzed by fear and indecision.
Ilna weighed the situation coldly, as she did all things. She patted Merota's shoulder reassuringly, then gave the girl a little push in the direction of Chalcus. "Go to Chalcus, milady," she said. "Quickly now!"
The corpse got up again. It tried to walk and fell immediately, rolling down the stairs to the broader second stage. Flames were already licking up the wood on the adjacent side.
Ilna gathered her tunics above her knees and ran toward the pyre. Cashel was watching over Sharina whose court dress hobbled her as effectively as leg-irons would. Chalcus was saving a woman who'd bleed to death without his help. That was slight recompense for the many lives he'd let out with his sword and less merciful means, but it was something-and besides, somebody had to watch Merota.
Garric was… Ilna didn't know where Garric was. All she could see as she ran was his unique winged helmet lying on the ground near his broken throne, and beside it a tunic reeved through his ornate cuirass.
Where is Garric? But the question could wait for now. Ilna reached the side staircase and started up.
The steps were uneven, forcing Ilna to look down at her feet instead of keeping her eyes on the man she was rescuing. The corpse. She supposed she shouldn't complain. Only a desire for symmetry had caused the islanders to put steps on all four sides to begin with. The flight up the front had been sufficient for the procession placing the bier.
Ilna'd never seen the point of funerals in the first place. All that remained when a person died was meat, and human flesh was as useless as fallen leaves in autumn. For sanitary purposes it had to be disposed of-in a hole, in a fire, or simply by throwing it into the sea.
She glanced up as she reached the top of the first tier: the late King Cervoran had gotten to his feet again and was wallowing down the middle flight of steps. "Help…," he squeaked.
Ilna continued toward him. Apparently she'd been wrong about funerals. That wasn't her first mistake, but each one made her angry with herself.
She began breathing through her mouth. The wind shifted slightly and wreathed her in smoke; she felt the hair on the back of her neck shrivel.
"Me…," the corpse said.
Close up King Cervoran still looked like a corpse of several days, but he was quite obviously alive. The coins that'd covered his eyes were gone. The whites and irises both had a yellowish hue, but the pupils were feverish and bright; they focused on Ilna.
Cervoran's lips were violet under the smear of the undertaker's rouge; the tongue between them was black. He repeated, "Help… me…"
Peasants aren't squeamish. Ilna took Cervoran's left wrist in her hand and wrapped his arm over her shoulders. It was like handling warm wax which smelled of decay. She wondered if the arm would pull out at the shoulder; it didn't, at least not just now.
Heat hammered her as the fire roared to full life. A ball of flame flared at Ilna's side and vanished, an outrider of the main blaze. Before she started down, she pulled Cervoran along the tier to put the bulk of the pyramid between them and the fire. She could feel the back of her tunics searing and shrinking. The cloth would be brown and brittle after this, no use even for wiping rags.
Of course that assumed therewas an after…
Cervoran didn't fight her, but he was barely able to keep his feet under him. She dragged him along. "Yes…," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it pierced like a bradawl.
They reached the staircase down the north side, opposite where the boy'd lighted the fire which was now waving like a banner over the bier. Ilna was beginning to feel Cervoran's weight in her knees.
Because this was a formal event she wore sandals, which she wouldn't normally do in weather so warm. She caught her left heel stepping down and had to throw her right leg out to keep from pitching onto her face with the former corpse on top of her. Cervoran twisted, trying to help but unable to move his legs quickly enough. It was like carrying a desperately sick man.
They were midway down the middle tier, some twenty feet about the ground, when Ilna felt the pyre collapse with a roar behind them. A column of sparks shot skyward, then mushroomed and rained back.
The pyramid was a stack of hurdles with no internal structure. When the flames ate away the bundled brushwood on the south, the whole thing fell toward the bleachers.
Ilna felt the staircase tilting backward. The stringers were lifting from the ground, threatening to catapult her and Cervoran back into the flames.
Ilna leaped off at an angle, pulling Cervoran along with a strength that'd have surprised anyone who hadn't seen her work a heavy double loom with the regularity of a windmill turning. Her right shoulder brushed the top of the lowest stage. The impact rolled her and her burden so that the late king hit the ground sideways an instant before she did.
There was a shock and asmack like a bundle of wet cloth thrown onto stone. Ilna rolled reflexively and was up again before she knew whether she'd been hurt by the fall.
She hadn't. The pyre was still tumbling into a state of repose, bales of brushwood rolling onto the blazing coals of those that'd ignited earlier. Men were shouting. A soldier tried to grab Ilna, but she slapped his hand away.
The chamberlain and another palace official caught King Cervoran under the arms and began carrying him away from the fire. The fall didn't seem to have hurt him, but that was hard to tell. Cervoran's legs moved as well as they had before. Ilna walked along through eddies of soldiers and a scattering of local civilians, looking for someone she recognized.
"I am…," the late king said shrilly. "I am…"
"Your highness?" said the chamberlain, his own voice rising. "You're King Cervoran."
"I am Cervoran!" the corpse cried. "I am Cervoran!"
"Ilna!" Liane said, catching Ilna's wrists in her hands. Garric's fiancee was usually composed, but her features had a set, frightened look now. "Have you seen Garric? What's happened to Garric?"
***
Garric walked onward, certain only that he had to keep moving. He didn't feel his bare feet touch the gravel, but he supposed they must be doing so.
He was walking toward a goal. He didn't know what it was or how far away it was, but heknew he had to go on. His head buzzed and his vision was blurry, and he kept putting one foot in front of the other.
There was a figure beside him. He wasn't sure how long it had accompanied him. He turned to it and tried to speak; his tongue seemed swollen.
"Who are you?" the figure asked. It was a man, but Garric couldn't make out his features or clothing because of the spider web clogging his eyes.
"I'm Garric," he said, forcing the words past his dry lips. "I'm Prince Garric of Haft, Lord of the Isles."
"Prince Garric?" said the other figure. It was leaving him, fading into the hazy shadows the same way it had appeared. "Prince Garric was the last King of the Isles. He and his kingdom have been gone for a thousand years…"
Garric walked. There was light in the distance, but the foggy darkness was close beside and behind him.
Chapter 3
Garric took another step forward. The air was chill and humid, suddenly filled with the odors of life and decay. His foot splashed ankle-deep in muck, throwing him forward. His brain was too numb to keep him upright, but at least he managed to get his arms out. He landed on all fours instead of flopping onto his face.
Endless grayness had become fog-shrouded sunlight.
Something hooted mournfully beyond the mist. He couldn't tell how far away it was or even be sure of the direction. The sun was a bright patch in the thick clouds almost directly overhead.
Garric stood carefully. He was stark naked, but so far as he could tell he hadn't been hurt by whatever'd happened. He had a memory of falling into the cloudy heart of the topaz, but he also recalled seeing the diadem bouncing on the ground beside his helmet and tunics. Both those things couldn't be true.
"And maybe neither is, lad," said King Carus. "But we're not on First Atara now, nor anyplace I've been before."
The an
imal hooted again. It didn't sound especially dangerous, but it was certainly big. Even if it were vegetarian, whatever hunted it would be large enough to be dangerous to an unarmed man…
Garric made a more focused assessment of his surroundings, looking for a weapon. A branch stuck out from a fallen tree. He gripped it with both hands, but it crumbled instead of providing a club.
Trees three or four times Garric's height were scattered over open marsh. The trunks all tapered upward from thick bases, but their foliage varied from needles and fronds to long serpentine whips.
He generally couldn't see more than ten feet in any direction, but swirls and eddies in the mist gave him occasional glimpses out as far as a bowshot. The distant terrain was low-lying and muddy with patches of standing water, more or less identical to the patch on which Garric stood.
It was raining, though it'd taken him a moment to realize that because the air was already so sopping wet. He started to laugh. Aloud, though there was nobody around save the king in his mind, he said, "Well, I've been in worse places, but I won't pretend this is a good one."
"Keep your eyes open, because this is the sort of place that can get worse fast," said Carus. His image grinned in amusement. He and the blue sky above the rose-twined battlements where he stood were all created by Garric's imagination. "There's times I don't mind not having a body any more."
The breeze was from the south. Garric thought he smelled smoke, so he started walking in that direction for lack of a better one. It could've been a fire lighted by lightning, of course; or a meteor.
Or nothing at all; the air was thick with rot and unfamiliar plant odors, so he might be imagining the smell. But smokewould linger in a thick atmosphere like this.
A dozen pairs of small eyes watched him from the edge of the pond he was skirting. When he turned to face them, they disappeared in a swirl and a series of faint plops.
"I never cared for raw fish," said Carus, watching as always through Garric's eyes, "but it's better than starving. Unless peasants-"
