by David Drake
Close up, what'd happened to the back wall looked pretty impressive. The edge courses were squared stones fitted together, and the rest of the wall was rubble set in concrete which'd cured long enough to be pretty near stone-hard itself. The plant had pushed until it cracked off full-height slabs to either side of the gateway. Besides that it'd broken the transom, a squared oak timber two hand-spans on a side.
"Are there more of the monsters, Cashel?" the boy asked as they followed the hellplant's track back down through the alley. Local people-town dwellers and country folk both, standing in separate groups-talked in low voices and watched as Cashel and Protas walked past
"I don't know," Cashel said simply. He thought for a moment. "I guess we'd hear shouting if there were more of them close by, though."
The alley led straight to a notch in the seawall; it'd let you back a wagon all the way into the water if for some reason you wanted to. There was no question the hellplant had come up that way: the crushed limestone roadway was still dark with slime.
Two sailors had been talking on the seawall. They went quiet and watched when they saw Cashel and the boy walking straight toward them.
"May the Lady smile on you, good sirs!" Protas said, surprising Cashel. He'd been trying to figure how to open a conversation with strangers who didn't look very trusting. "This is Lord Cashel and of course I'm Prince Protas. Can you tell us how the creature appeared here? Did it come by boat then?"
The pair looked at each other nervously. "We didn't bring it!" said the man whose right arm was so tattooed he looked like he had a long-sleeved shirt on that side.
"Of course not, my good man!" the boy said scornfully. "But you saw it land, did you not? How did it arrive on First Atara?"
"I thought it was seaweed," said the little fellow with three gold rings in his right ear and the lobe of the left one missing. "Just drifting up, you know. And then it come to the wall and started to climb. And I took off running, I don't mind to tell you."
"There's no current could've drifted it to shore that quick," the tattooed man protested. "It had to be swimming, Goldie."
"I don't know what kinda currents there might be!" Goldie said angrily. "What with the Shepherd's Sling Stone whamming into the sea the way it did. Why, the one wave nigh cleared the seawall, and I've never seen that to happen no matter how bad a storm it is."
"That was this morning!" his companion said. "The sea was calm as calm all the past six hours."
"But you're sure the thing didn't come on a boat?" Cashel said, looking out along the track the low sun plowed glowing on the water. "It just swam?"
"Swam or drifted," Goldie said. "Swam, I guess. But I thought it was just something washed up from when the stone hit the sea."
Cashel looked out to the southwest, through the jaws of the harbor and down the sun's track across the open sea to where the meteor had landed. "You might be right at that," he said at last.
***
Though fire had devoured the outer layers of the hellplant, it seemed to Sharina that what remained was shrinking further the way frost-killed vine-leaves sink into a foetor and ooze away. There was nothing obviously unnatural about this mass, but it was certainly foul and ugly. So was much of peasant life, of course.
Tenoctris had moved from examining the plant to looking at the corpse of one of the three scorpions from inside it. Now she turned and got up, partly supported by Ilna. Sharina smiled at them, hoping Tenoctris had learned something useful-and getting a wan look and shrug that made it clear she hadn't.
Chalcus stood nearby but didn't burden his hands with the weight of an old woman. His lips smiled but his eyes did not, skipping over everything around him. Chalcus' gaze didn't rest any longer than the late sunlight glinting on the edge of his drawn sword. If his eyes had found danger anywhere they danced, that sword would strike with a speed and precision that were themselves just short of magical.
"I've never seen anything like that," Tenoctris said, nodding slightly in the direction of the hard-shelled creature. "It's meant to live in water: its legs are paddles and it seems to have gills instead of lungs. But it's a scorpion and not a crab or lobster."
"Master Chalcus?" Sharina said. "You're a sailor. Do you know where such things come from?"
"Nowhere in the parts of the world I've travelled before now, milady," Chalcus said. He turned his face and his smile toward Sharina, but his eyes continued their restless search. "Which is a good deal of the world. I'd as lief that Mona here had been without the small demons as well, though I wouldn't mind them so much without the mount they rode in on… which is new to me as well, I'm thankful to say."
"And new to me," Tenoctris said with a slight nod; she seemed completely wrung out. "Perhaps later, tomorrow…"
"There's nothing of immediate concern that you can see at the moment?" Sharina said. She raised the pitch of the final word to make it a question, but she knew that Tenoctris would've said so if she'd seen something. "In that case, why don't you get some food and rest? I've watched you do five separate divination spells, and I know how much effort that requires."
She smiled at the wizard with real warmth. Tenoctris was one of the strongest pillars on which the kingdom rested, but she was also a friend. In Sharina's mind, that was the more important thing of the two.
"We need you, Tenoctris," she said. "And we need you healthy."
"I did seven spells, not five," Tenoctris admitted with the same wan smile as when she'd risen to her feet. "And as for resting, I might've been asleep in bed for anything useful I gained from any of them. But yes, I'll see if I can't do better in the morning."
She dipped her chin in the direction of the plant's remains. The gesture was as quick and businesslike as a hatchet stroke. She added, "Don't allow this to be removed, if you will."
"Lord Waldron," Sharina said in a tone that was about as crisp as the wizard's nod. "Place a guard on this mess, if you please. Don't let anyone but Lady Tenoctris come near it."
The army commander barked a laugh. "As your highness wishes," he said. "Though I wouldn't worry about thieves myself. And if any of the palace staff are devoted enough to their duties to clean it up, that'll surprise me too."
"One of your own officers might've taken care of it, milord," said Attaper. His brief smile rang like a hammer. "Or mine, of course. Better safe than sorry."
Waldron snorted as he gave the orders. The two senior officers were in a surprisingly good mood. A creature that was physical if not exactly flesh and blood had attacked; the creature had been destroyed. That was how things were supposed to work in the soldiers' world, and by now the fact that something was unusual didn't bother them so long as it wasn't wizardry.
Soldiers tended to take a sharply limited view regarding what was their business, too. In the present case, that permitted both men to ignore the question of how a giant plant could've come to walk into the palacewithout wizardry. Sharina found that puzzling, but they were very good at their jobs.
A Blood Eagle, one of the squad Garric had detailed to guard Tenoctris, picked up the satchel in which the old wizard kept the paraphernalia of her art. He tramped along beside her, offering his free hand if she needed support on the way to her room and bed.
Most of the troops-like most civilians-were uncomfortable dealing with wizardry. There were a few, though, who didn't mind. All the Blood Eagles were ready to guard Tenoctris with their lives; this particular trooper was also happy to carry a bag filled with spells and potions, and to treat the wizard as though she were no more than an old lady with a pleasant personality.
Sharina was suddenly tired also, though she hadn't done any serious work today. It was the tension, she supposed. She giggled.
"Milady?" said Chalcus with a hard smile. "If there's a joke in all this business, I'd be pleased to hear it."
"When I got up this morning," Sharina said, "I was worried that my tongue would get tangled when I offered the hand of fellowship to Marquess Protas on behalf of the citizens of Haft. A
s it turned out, I needn't have worried since the coronation didn't take place. So many of our fears are empty."
She shook her head, grinning wryly. She looked around and added, "Does anyone know where Lady Liane's gone?"
"Not gone but stayed," said Ilna. "In the conference room Master Chalcus took me to when I proved useless here.."
She glanced at the knotted pattern she held between the fingers of both hands, then grimaced and looked up again. Ilna was short and dark and slim; pretty or at least handsome, but likely to be overlooked when she was in the company of her friend Sharina, a lithe blond beauty. If Ilna resented that, she kept the feeling well hidden-even from Sharina herself.
"Then let's go talk with Liane," Sharina said, offering Ilna her arm and starting toward the council chamber. "She may know something about this even if Tenoctris doesn't."
The chamber was unexpectedly dim. The sky wasn't dark yet, but it didn't send much light through the clerestory windows. Nobody'd lighted the lamps in the wall sconces. The guards hadn't let servants in to do that, Sharina realized.
Sharina stepped back outside. The guards had a lighted lantern dangling from the edge of the portico. The hook supporting it normally held a polished marble 'sparkler' that threw sunlight onto the interior as it rotated.
Sharina lifted down the lantern. "I'll borrow this if I may," she said, twisting the base away from the barrel to expose the burning candle. She walked into the council chamber with it.
"Your highness?" said the puzzled officer behind her. Of course nobody objected to Princess Sharina taking a lantern if she wanted to, but he was probably surprised that she knew how to take it apart.
Sharina knew how to light lamps too. She walked from sconce to sconce, holding the candle flame just below the wick of each oil lamp in turn. The Lady only knew how many winter evenings she'd done this same thing at the inn, though generally using a splinter of lightwood instead of a candle.
She turned, righting the candle in her hand. One of Lord Tadai's clerks stood at her elbow, looking nervous.
"Jossin here will take that back to the guards, your highness," Tadai said. "I was remiss in not dealing with the situation myself earlier."
"It's not part of your job, milord," Sharina said. "And it has been part of mine."
She turned her attention to Liane, saying, "Do any of your sources know where the creature might have come from, Liane? Or who sent it?"
Cervoran moved. He held the uncut topaz, and it threw foggy highlights across the room as he lowered his hands. He'd been so still that Sharina hadn't noticed him until then.
"Not yet," said Liane, "though-"
"The Green Woman sent it," Cervoran said. "She made it in her Fortress of Glass and sent it to attack me."
His voice was rising in pitch and volume. The oil lamps gave his complexion a yellow tinge and brought out blotches beneath the skin that daylight had concealed. Neither Sharina nor Liane moved away from the recent corpse as most of the others in the room did, but Liane had her right hand between the folds of her sash.
"She will attack me while she lives and I do," Cervoran said.
"There'll be more of those hellplants?" Sharina asked sharply. Waldron and Attaper with their aides had entered the chamber behind her; the soldiers' faces were taut with the instinct to attack or flee.
"There will be many more!" Cervoran said. His fingers moved over the topaz like maggots crawling on a yellow corpse. "But I will prevail!"
***
Ilna looked at the man she'd saved from death on his own funeral pyre. If he was still a man, of course; and if she'd saved him.
"A meteor struck the sea yesterday," Cervoran said. "We must find it. The Green Woman is there, and I will defeat her."
"The sling stone struck, right enough," said Chalcus with cheerful bravado, the backs of his wrists against his hipbones and the fingers turned outward like flippers. "And I or anybody who was with the fleet can show you where, easily enough; any sailor, at least. But it won't do you any good, I fear."
Cervoran looked at him. Ilna had begun picking apart the pattern she'd knotted from lengths of twine as the hellplant slithered across the courtyard.
"Take me to the meteor," Cervoran said. Only his squeaky voice and the muffled breaths of the others in the room could be heard. "It is necessary. I will defeat her!"
The pattern would've frozen a man in his tracks. A man's eyes don't see: they gather patterns that his mind turns into sight. The patterns Ilna wove in fabric had a greater reality in the minds of those who saw them than a mountain or the blazing sun above.
"I can take you there right enough, my friend," Chalcus said. He feared the Gods-he didn't worship but hefeared. He feared no other thing in this world as far as Ilna could tell, beast or man or wizard. "But the place I'll take you is the deepest trench in the Inner Sea. A full league down a wizard said, or so the rumor has it. If your Green Woman's on the bottom of that, then you'll not be going to her unless you're a fish, not so?"
Ilna's pattern hadn't stopped the plant. Now she was beginning to wonder what effect it would have on the recent corpse.
"Do you think to mock me, little man?" Cervoran said. It was odd to hear so shrill a voice speaking as slowly as a priest praying while the villagers came forward with their offerings during the Tithe Procession. "Take me to the place. It is necessary!"
"Your highness?" Chalcus said, looking past Cervoran to Sharina. "This is a thing I can do well enough in theHeron, should you wish it. But…?"
"It is necessary!" Cervoran repeated shrilly.
Cervoran, king or man or corpse, took Cashel out of this room and brought him back with a jar of oil in time to destroy the hellplant-which nobody else had been able to do, Ilna herself included. That didn't make Cervoran a friend to the kingdom and its citizens, but at least it made him an enemy of their enemies.
"Master Chalcus…?" said Sharina. From the set look on her face she was thinking the same way as Ilna was. "Would a larger ship be better? I could send him out on theShepherd or one of the triremes."
Chalcus snorted. "And what could a fiver do that my handy littleHeron could not, eh, milady?" he said. 'We can turn twice around in the time it'd take a cow like theShepherd to change course by eight points only. We'll take him."
"At once," said Cervoran.
"Indeed not," said Chalcus. "In the morning. I'll find the spot by the angles on the Three Sisters east of here and Mona Headland itself, but I can't do that till sunrise."
"In the morning, then," Sharina said, giving an order rather than commenting. "And Master Chalcus? Don't set out until I've had a chance to learn Lady Tenoctris' opinion on the matter."
"Master Cervoran?" Ilna said. She'd reduced the knotted pattern to the cords it'd started as. She held them in her right palm and stroked them with the fingers of her left hand. "There was a sling stone, a meteor, hitting the sea as we approached the island yesterday."
"Yes," said Cervoran. "But I will go to her and defeat her."
"There was a second stone, meteor, this morning," Ilna said. She had the odd feeling that she was standing outside herself and hearing someone else speak. "During your funeral. It burst in the air above us. What did that meteor mean?"
"It means nothing," said Cervoran, his voice becoming even more shrill.
"It exploded in the air," Ilna repeated, "and then you rose from your bier. What does that mean?"
"I am Cervoran!" the former king cried. He lowered his eyes to stare into the topaz again.
"What?" said Ilna.
But Cervoran remained as motionless as a statue; and when Chalcus murmured, "We'll be up betimes, dearest. Best to get some rest now," Ilna left the chamber with him.
"There's a pattern too big for me to see the ends of it," Ilna whispered. Chalcus listened, but she wasn't so much speaking to him as to the cosmos itself. "But we're part of it, like it or not. And Idon't like it at all!"
Chapter 5
Sharina awakened in shocked awareness tha
t something was wrong. She sat bolt upright, hearing low-voiced chanting nearby. She didn't know where she was, and the sun was already up behind the shutters.
She was out of bed, gripping the hilt of the Pewle knife with her right hand and its sealskin sheath with her left, when she remembered. She relaxed with a sigh, then giggled at what a fool she'd have looked if there'd been anyone to see her.
There wasn't, of course. Sharina had been an inn servant herself too long to want anybody serving her when she didn't need it.
The bedroom of the Queen's suite where Sharina slept had a door to Cervoran's
Chamber of Art. Tenoctris had that room now, sleeping on a simple cot and rising at intervals in the night to browse Cervoran's collection of books and objects by lamplight. That's what was happening now.
Sharina shot the knife back in its sheath, but she didn't hang it on the bedpost before she walked to the connecting door and opened it. Tenoctris sat on the floor, chanting over a flattened bead of green glass that'd been in the late king's curio cabinet.
Cashel stood close by, his quarterstaff planted firmly on the floor. He'd turned his head when he heard the door open. He didn't speak because that might've distrubed Tenoctris, but his smile was as warm as sunlight on the meadow.
A sparkle of blue wizardlight dusted the air above the glass bead, then vanished like a puff of warm breath on the polished face of a mirror. The old wizard sagged, setting down the split of bamboo she'd used for a wand. She disposed of each sliver after she'd used it once, because she said otherwise the influences it'd absorbed from previous spells would affect later ones in directions she couldn't foresee.
Most wizards made wands and athames, dagger-shaped implements of art, from materials chosen to concentrate power; then they covered the tools with symbols of art to increase the effect still further. Those folk could perform far greater wizardry than Tenoctris could… but as Sharina herself had seen, eventually they did something they hadn't intended. A very great wizard had brought down the Old Kingdom a thousand years past-and was drowned in a reaction to his spell which he hadn't predicted and couldn't control.
