by David Drake
A pair of women appeared in the doorway with a wooden bucket and a platter. Either could've carried the load by herself, but the way other women crowded behind them in the open hall showed that Garric was a matter of general interest.
Garric wondered how long it was till dawn. He couldn't get a feeling for his surroundings till there was more light.
"The sky will brighten in three hours," said the Bird silently. "Full sunrise is another hour beyond that. It still won't be as bright as you're used to, of course."
Of course, Garric agreed, but I'll never accomplish anything if I wait for perfect conditions.
Which left open the question of what he planned to accomplish. Well, getting out of this slave pen as a start, and then getting back to his own world as quickly as possible. He didn't have any idea how he was going to accomplish that, but he'd find a way or die trying; which wasn't a figure of speech in this case.
"Let me past!" someone called. "Make way or I'll make one!"
The big woman, Newla, shoved her way through the spectators with not one but two bolsters to lay on the bed. They had the smell of fresh straw, a hint of sun and better times in Garric's memory.
"Donria?" she said, a hint of hopefulness in her voice. "Could I stay tonight too? For after you, I mean."
"Please," said Garric, trying to be firm without sounding angry. He could only hope that the Bird translated tone as well as it did words. "I want to be alone. I need to be alone. I've got to rest. And I will rest."
Donria had taken the food from the women who'd brought it. She looked at Garric, though he couldn't read her expression in this light.
After a moment she said, "You are our headman, Garric," and put the pail and platter on a ledge built out from the interior wall. "Your will is our will."
She motioned Newla out of the room, then added quietly, "But Garric? Torag won't keep a headman who doesn't service his herd. The Coerli will eat any of us, but they prefer infants."
She closed the door behind her.
Garric took a deep breath, then sampled the food. What he'd thought was porridge was a mash of barley bruised and soaked but not cooked; the Coerli didn't allow their herd to have fire. The fish on the platter had been air dried.
And the Coerli ate their own food raw.
I'll find a way out, or I'll die.
"Aye, lad," said the warrior ghost in his mind. "But right now I'm more interested in killing cat beasts first."
***
Wizardlight as red as the heart of a ruby shot through Ilna's soul and the universe around her. She'd been squatting as she knotted small patterns. She wished she'd brought a hand loom, since it was hard to judge how long they'd be.
The light and the thunderclap which shook Cervoran's Chamber of Art jolted her to her feet. She folded the fabric back in her sleeve and uncoiled the noosed cord she wore in place of a sash.
"Cashel!" Sharina cried.
Lord Attaper and the under captain with him kicked the connecting door together, as smoothly as if they were practiced dancers. It was a light interior door whose gilded birch panels were set in a basswood frame. The hobnailed boots smashed it like a pair of battering rams. The soldiers rushed through, drawing their swords.
Impressive, Ilna thought dryly, but scarcely necessary. The door hadn't been locked or barred.
The interior was still dark. As Ilna and Chalcus slipped through in the midst of more soldiers, Attaper wrenched a set of shutters down with a crash, frame and all. The guard commander was angry and taking it out on the furnishings. Garric had disappeared, fighting was taking place a few miles away while Attaper's duties kept him from the battle, and three more people had vanished more or less under his nose.
Because there was no doubt that the room was empty. Cashel, Protas, and the wizard who'd said he was 'opening a portal' were gone.
Guards in the foyer opened the other door. "Did they go out past you?" Attaper shouted at them, and their blank looks were proof of the obvious.
The air had a faintly sulfurous smell. Ilna touched the floor in the middle of a triangular inlay where the stone looked singed. It was warm, at any rate.
"Do you see anything, Ilna?" Sharina murmured. Her face remained aloof, but she'd wrapped her arms tightly around her bosom.
"Nothing useful," Ilna said straightening. "What do I know of wizardry?"
She cleared her throat. "My brother doesn't know anything about wizardry either," she said. "But I'd trust him to take care of anything that could be taken care of. He's proved that many times."
"Yes of course," said Sharina and hugged Ilna, hugged her friend. In their hearts they both knew that it wasn't really 'of course' that Cashel would come safely through wherever Cervoran was taking him.
The copy Cervoran had made of himself entered the chamber, walking with the same hitching deliberation as the wizard himself had done. He silently stared around the chamber. Men edged away from him and dropped their eyes to avoid his gaze.
Ilna deliberately glared back at the fellow, angry even at thethought that she might be afraid of him. The copy's lips smiled at her, though his eyes were as flat as mossy pools.
"Where is the topaz?" he said. "Where is the amulet that Bass One-Thumb found?"
Nobody else seemed disposed to answer, so Ilna said, "Cervoran had it with him when he came into this room. He and it both have vanished, so common sense suggests he still has it."
The copy smiled again, this time toward a blank patch of wall. He turned his head to Sharina and said, "You are the ruler. You will take me to where the creatures the Green Woman makes from seaweed are coming ashore. I must see them to defeat them properly."
"The Princess doesn'ttake you anywhere, creature!" Attaper said sharply. "If she decides you can go, we'll arrange an escort to get you there."
"Milord?" Sharina said. "I'd already decided to view the invasion for myself. We'll set out as soon as I've arranged a few details with Lord Tadai. And if the…"
She paused, her face expressionless as she looked at the copy.
"… person here wishes to accompany us, I can see no objection."
"As your highness wishes," Attaper said. He looked away and shot his sword into its sheath with a squeal and a clang.
Tenoctris appeared at the door behind Cervoran's double. Instead of rushing into the chamber of art with the rest of them, she'd remained in Sharina's bedroom. Apparently she'd worked a spell there, since she was holding one of the bamboo splits she used for her art. She tossed it to the floor when she noticed it.
"What is your name?" Tenoctris said.
The copy turned to face her. "Who are you to ask?" he said.
"I am Lady Tenoctris, once bos-Tandor," Tenoctris said clearly and forcefully. "My line and my very epoch have perished utterly. What is yourname?"
"Do you think I fear to tell you?" the copy said. "You have no power, old woman. I am Double. I will be Cervoran."
Double gave a horrible tittering laugh. He said, "I will be God!"
***
Tenoctris couldn't ride as far as Calf's Head Bay on horseback and arrive in any kind of condition, so Lord Martous had found her a light carriage. Tenoctris coulddrive the single horse herself, though-that was a proper accomplishment for a noblewoman, along with fine needlework and accompanying her own singing on the lute.
Sharina rode with the old wizard. Horses had been rare visitors in Barca's Hamlet when she was growing up, and the training she'd gotten since then didn't make her either a good rider or a comfortable one.
"I smell smoke," Tenoctris said as the gig climbed a track meant for hikers and pack mules. She gave a quick twitch to the reins. "It's making the horse skittish."
"They'll be burning the hellplants," Sharina said. "That's all they can do, I suppose. I wonder if-"
She started to glance over her shoulder at the similar gig following theirs, but she changed her mind before her head moved. "I wonder if Double will be able to help?" she went on quietly. "Is he really a wizard hi
mself, Tenoctris?"
A second gig followed theirs, driven by Attaper's own son. The Blood Eagles were a brave and highly disciplined body of men, but Attaper hadn't been certain that any one else in the unit would've obeyed an order to drive the vehicle in which Double rode.
The guards who'd watched Double being created had described the experience to their fellows. The story had gotten more colorful when they'd passed it on, though the bare reality that Tenoctris described was horrible enough.
"Yes, dear," Tenoctris said. "Easy, girl, easy. Lord Cervoran created a true duplicate of himself to hold his enemy's attention while he himself left this world. Double has to be a wizard to succeed as a decoy; and besides, I can see the way power trails from him."
It took Sharina a few heartbeats to realize that, "Easy girl, easy," had been directed to the horse. Nervous from the smoke and perhaps other things-the hair on the back of Sharina's neck had begun to rise-the animal was threatening to run up the backs of the soldiers immediately in front of them on the narrow track. The hills framing Calf's Head Bay weren't high, but they were steep.
Three troops of Blood Eagles marched ahead of the gigs, and another troop brought up the rear. The soldiers were on foot but trotting along the rutted track double-time. Sharina hadn't thought that they could keep up the pace with three miles to cover, but with a few exceptions-men recently wounded and not fully recovered-they did. The royal bodyguards had been trained to be soldiers equal to any they might meet, not just a shiny black backdrop for the king on public occasions.
Sharina looked at the older woman. "I don't trust Cervoran," she said. "That means we can't trust Double either, if he's the same as his creator."
"They each have their own agendas," Tenoctris said, her eyes on the bay mare she was driving. "And as you say, their purposes aren't ours. But when I said Double was the same as Cervoran, I didn't mean they're allies. Double is as surely Cervoran's rival as each of them is opposed to the Green Woman. That gives us some…"
She let her voice trail off, then glanced at Sharina with a wry smile and went on, "I was going to say that it gives us some advantage, dear, but that isn't correct. It gives us a certain amount of hope, though."
Sharina laughed and squeezed her friend's shoulder. Despite the situation, she felt more comfortable than she had for longer than she could guess. She'd changed into a pair of simple tunics under a hooded military cape, and she wore the Pewle knife openly in its heavy sealskin sheath. At the moment, being able to move-and fight if necessary-was more important than impressing people with the majesty of the Princess of Haft.
The leading guards disappeared over the top of the ridge. A man shouted. Sharina touched her knife hilt, but the cry had been startlement rather than fear and there was no clash of weapons with it.
Tenoctris clucked the horse over the rise. They drove out of bright daylight into a dank gray mist and the smell of rotting mud; the change was as abrupt as going through a door. No wonder a soldier had called out in surprise.
"Hold up!" somebody called angrily. "Hold up! And by the Lady, what're civilians doing here!"
Tenoctris was already drawing the horse around to get the gig off the track. A Blood Eagle ran back to them and called, "Your highness? Lord Attaper says not to take the cart any closer, if you please."
Attaper was talking to-shouting at-one of Lord Waldron's aides. The topic probably involved the respect owed to Her Royal Highness Sharina, Princess of Haft. That wasn't fair: the mist blurred details, and she and Tenoctris really were civilians, after all.
"Milord Attaper!" Sharina said, jumping down from the gig while Tenoctris was still maneuvering it. "As I've heard my brother say, worse things happen in wartime. Where is Lord Waldron?"
And where's Liane, who'd be more forthcoming and probably more knowledgeable. Liane and the army commander were probably together; if not, Sharina could make further inquiries.
The shoreline and the barley field a hundred double-paces inland crawled with hellplants. Liane's estimate of three hundred seemed reasonable, but the gray undulations of mist prevented certainty.
A hundred fires burned on the curved plain below; some had dimmed to red glows. All had bodies of troops behind them. Through the swirling mist Sharina saw thirty men march forward carrying what'd been a full-sized fir tree, possibly one of those whose stumps grew in a circle where Tenoctris had halted the gig.
Under other circumstances the tree would've made a good battering ram. This one had a torch of oil-soaked fabric, probably a soldier's cloak, wrapped around the small end of the pole. On command, the troops slammed their weapon into a hellplant. The flames billowed, then sank beneath a gush of black smoke roiling from the point of contact.
The hellplant staggered back. Two of the tentacles that curled to wrap the pole shrivelled in the flame, but a third gripped closer to the men carrying the weapon. Squads of waiting infantry darted in and hacked the tentacle to green shreds.
Hellplants advanced with greasy determination on either side of their smoking fellow. The troops holding the pole retreated; the flame had sunk to a sluggish ghost of what it had been. Other soldiers came closer and threw hand torches which bounced off the barrel-chested plants. The creatures changed their course to avoid torches burning on the ground, but they continued to advance.
For a moment, the injured plant remained where it was, the wound steaming and bubbling thick fluids. Then that hellplant too advanced, though it was slower than its fellows.
Like trying to fight the sea, Sharina thought. Her guts were tight and cold.
"Your highness, my sincere apologies!" the aide said. "I didn't see-"
"Understood, Lord Dowos," Sharina said. The name had come to her unexpectedly, but at a particularly good time. "Now there are real problems. Where's Lord Waldron?"
"Lord Drian," Dowos snapped to one of the boys at his side to carry messages. Drian was probably Dowos' relative or the relative of some noble friend. "Lead her highness to the commander immediately."
To Sharina he added, "They're down by the pile of timber, your highness. Well, what used to be a pile. Most of it's been burned, I'm afraid."
The second gig pulled in beside the first. Double sat next to the driver, who was as stiff as the statues of the Lady and Shepherd which priests from Valles drew through the borough during the annual Tithe Procession.
Tenoctris joined Sharina, her arms over the shoulders of the two soldiers who were carrying her. Their shields were strapped to their back and they used their spears butt-down in their free hands as walking sticks. That wasn't necessary here, but it would be as they descended the slope which thousands of cleated boots had already chewed to slippery mud.
A third man, Trooper Lires, carried the satchel with the wizard's equipment in it. Sharina beamed at him and said, "I thought you'd been discharged wounded, Lires. After the fight in the temple in Valles."
The Blood Eagle grinned, delighted to be recognized. "Well, ma'am, I'm on light duty," he said. "But I figure a sword, that's not very heavy; and I guess Captain Ascor, you remember him, don't you? He felt the same way. Because he's here too."
In truth, she'd thought Lires had been killed in the wild slaughter while the guards protected Tenoctris as she closed the portal from which creatures would otherwise have overrun the Isles. It was amazing that a man could survive such serious wounds, but that he'd willingly return to the same dangers was more amazing yet.
Thank the Lady that men did. And thank especially the Shepherd and all the human shepherds, with their swords and their quarterstaffs and their courage.
Laughing in relief, Sharina followed the impatient Lord Drian, a thirteen-year-old who showed signs of growing out of his gold-inlaid armor. The situation was just as bad as it'd been when she was in despair a moment ago, but if ordinary men soldiered on cheerfully, how could their leader do less?
The slope wasn't as bad as Sharina'd feared, though she was glad Tenoctris was being carried. The mist smelled of salt and decay, like
a tidal flat but worse. It didn't get thicker as she went down the way she'd expected, and the whorls and openings in it didn't seem to be connected with the light breeze off the water.
"Your highness!" Waldron said. "Your highness, I don't think this is a safe place for you. Though we're holding them at present, as you see."
"I've given directions in your name to Lord Tadai, your highness," said Liane in a cold, flat voice unlike her usual pleasant tones, "to scour building sites in Mona for quicklime and to start burning any limestone he can find. Marble statues as well."
"Will quicklime be more effective than using the same fuel in open flames, the way you're doing here?" said Sharina.
She kept her voice calm, but she couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret at the notion of statues being reduced to the caustic powder that was the basis of cement. The only statues in Barca's Hamlet had been simple wooden ones of the Lady and the Shepherd in the wall shrines of the better houses. Sharina's first view of lifelike humans carved in marble was a treasured memory of her arrival in Carcosa.
"We can use pots of quicklime in our ballistas," Waldron said. He nodded at Liane. "It was her idea. Stones don't do much, and we can't shoot firepots at full power or it blows out the flame through the air holes. Before now I haven't had much use for artillery except for sieges, and I haven't had much use for sieges either; but quicklime driven into those plants to where they're full of water, that'll take care of them!"
"Admiral Zettin is taking the ballistas from the ships and sending them here also," Liane said. "The problem's transport, getting enough wagons and baggage animals together in Mona Harbor."
Three fit-looking men in civilian tunics stood nearby, separate from the aides and couriers around Waldron. Lady Liane bos-Benliman was the kingdom's spymaster. She alone controlled the movements of the agents and received their reports. She'd based the operation on her father's banking and trading contacts, and she paid for it entirely out of her considerable personal wealth.
