by David Drake
Eyes watched them. Sometimes Cashel could see the head and back of the fish also, sometimes not.
He turned and cleared his throat. "Protas?" he said. "I have some bread and cheese in my wallet, and there's a bottle of ale besides. Would you like something to eat?"
This wasn't a good place for it, but none of the places they'd been were any better. They'd been a long time since standing in the room with Cervoran, and Cashel didn't know when the boy'd last eaten anyway.
"I'm not hungry, Cashel," Protas said carefully. "But, ah, thank you."
He's scared to death but too much a man to say so, Cashel thought, smiling inside. Aloud he said, "Well, maybe later then, after we've gotten where we're going."
Then because it was his nature, he added, "Ah, Master Guide? Would you care for something yourself? It's coarse fare, but it keeps me going on the road, I've found."
"Eat your food?" the fellow said, turning his long face with a sneer. "No, not that. But perhaps you'd like to share my meals? Shall I offer you that? That would be in keeping with my obligation as your fellow man, wouldn't it? Shall I offer you food?"
"Carry out your duties, sirrah!" Protas said sharply. "We want no more of you than that!"
There was a deep rumble through the ground, then in the air as well. The surface of the water ahead of them puckered. Their guide stopped, his face frozen into a half-snarl.
"Come along!" he said, splashing onward at a quicker pace than before. His feet left narrower tracks than those of Protas following behind him, though the mud was so soft that Cashel couldn't be sure of the details.
"What's that sound?" said Protas. "Is it thunder?"
A second shock trembled across the landscape ahead of them. This time the ground lifted ankle high, whipping the ferns violently. A line of shattered white foam burst over the water.
"Come along!" the guide shrieked, raising the hem of his tunic in order to run. The book in his left hand rocked and wobbled, but it didn't fall into the muck as Cashel thought it might.
Cashel started running also. He didn't like it and he wasn't any good at it either, but for a lot of reasons he didn't want to fall too far behind the others. Fortunately the guide setting the pace was even less of a runner than Cashel.
Over these flats Cashel could follow the wave as it lifted on the horizon and spread toward them at the speed of a galloping horse. He judged his time, then jumped to have both feet in the air when the ground rose beneath him.
The ground settled with a gelatinous quiver as the wave passed on. Cashel landed and sank in deep. Protas had tangled his feet and gone down, while the guide had fallen forward with a despairing shriek. His cloak and tunic had flown up; he smoothed the garments back over his tail with his right hand before rising and turning to glare at the humans he was guiding.
Cashel helped Protas to his feet. The boy's face had gone into the mud, but he'd clutched the crown to his temples with both hands.
"It's not done," said Protas in a small voice. He pointed with his right hand.
Cashel looked ahead. The third wave spreading toward them across the flats was taller than he was.
With the staff vertical in his right hand, Cashel wrapped both arms around Protas and lifted him. He kept his own legs slightly flexed. He thought of telling Protas to keep hold of the crown, but the boy'd been doing that fine the whole while he'd been carrying it. Telling him to be careful would be slighting him, and Protas didn't deserve that.
The wave threw Cashel in the air with a roar as deep and loud as a building falling. If his balance hadn't been perfect the shock would've spun him head over heels like a pinwheel. Cashel had jumped across streams from one wet rock to the next while carrying a ewe on his shoulders; he didn't tumble this time either, just rode the wave up and came down again as smoothly as if he'd stepped from a bank onto soft ground.
Verysoft ground. The shock'd shaken the mud to nearly a liquid, like well-sifted flour only more so. Again Cashel sank in, this time almost to his knees.
He set Protas down, then pulled his legs out-the right and then the left. He looked around first to see if there was a rock or a log or something he could butt the quarterstaff against to push on; but there wasn't, not anywhere in this world that he'd seen so far.
The thunder of the wave rolled off in its wake. Ahead, the direction it'd come from, there was a wasteland even more barren than it'd been when Cashel first saw it. The smears of algae were now mixed unrecognizably with the mud they'd covered, and the shallow roots of the ferns had been ripped up as the plants were flung in windrows like seaweed at the tide line.
Their guide got to his feet. His dirty brown eyes had a look of fear, like a dog who'd been kicked often and expects to be kicked again, only harder.
"I can't help you now," he said. Then, angrily, "It isn't my fault! Even if I'd known she was going to act, what could I have done? If I hadthat power, would I be here?"
'We're all right," Cashel said. He nodded in the direction they'd been heading. "It'll be harder walking with this muck all stirred up, but we can do it. I'll carry you if I must. And anyway, it's settling already."
Their guide's feet were narrow so they might sink in worse than Cashel's, but the main trouble was that hauling your feet through a bog was work about as hard as anything Cashel remembered doing. But hehad done it, and he was ready to do it again if he had to.
"You don't understand!" the guide said. "She's cut the path to the portal, I'm sure of it! And I'll be punished even though there was nothing I could do, nothing!"
"Let's go on and see what things look like," Cashel said quietly. He didn't really doubt what the rat-faced man was saying, but he'd learned long since that there could be a big difference between what people thought'd happened and what'd really happened. "Then we'll decide what to do."
"There's nothing to do!" the guide shouted. "Didn't you hear me? I'm doomed!"
"You are our guide," said Protas in a funny tone that Cashel hadn't heard from him before. The boy had his left hand on the jewel even though nothing was going to jiggle him just now. "Guide us as you're compelled to do."
"I know my duty!" the guide said peevishly. "All right, since you're so sure of yourself."
The mud was shaking down inside itself, just as Cashel'd figured it would. A skim of water formed on top and drained sluggishly toward the inlets on either side. He could see fish lifting their heads from the muddy water every once in a while. Occasionally one took a gulp of air before sinking out of sight.
The guide set off at a good pace. The sun was brighter, burning through the haze as a distinct disk instead of being a smear of light beyond the overcast. The flats reeked before the earthquake, but the shocks had stirred them to worse. Death, very old death, was so present that Cashel thought he ought to be able to see it.
Protas stumbled along with his arm over his face so that his sleeve covered his nose. Cashel doubted that helped, but the boy wasn't complaining.
The guide didn't seem to notice the smell, which was about what you'd expect. Cashel tried not to look at the tear in the fellow's back, but he couldn't avoid seeing the gnats curling from the wound and back like a cloud of smoke.
"I see something," said Protas, lowering his arm to speak. "Cashel, I see a rock!"
"Yes, a rock and on it the portal that would take you to where you'd trouble me no more!" said their guide. "And the water that cuts you off from it, do you see that too? You'll never reach it, and you've doomed me by your failure!"
Cashel didn't say anything till he'd reached the new shore. The shocks that'd stirred things up came from the land slipping here to let the water through. The channel wasn't terribly wide, no more than a bowman could span with a good chance of hitting his target on the other side… but it could've been the whole Inner Sea and not been a worse barrier.
"Cashel, I can't swim," said Protas in a small voice.
"Nor can I, lad," said Cashel. "So we'll have to find another way."
He turned to thei
r guide and gestured toward the channel. He said, "Is there a way around this?"
"How would I know?" the guide snarled. "It just appeared, didn't it? But even a louse should be able to guess that if She cut the pathway once, She can do it again-if that's even necessary."
Cashel smiled. The little fellow had a right to be sarcastic. Besides, it reminded Cashel of his sister. He thought about how Ilna was doing, and especially he thought about Sharina; but he had other things to deal with before he was back with them.
There wasn't anything to build a raft out of. They could maybe make floats out of their clothes and buoy Protas up, but Cashel knew from experience that he himself'd sink like a stone without more than that. People tended to think a lot of his bulk had to be fat, not muscle; but they were wrong.
Of course if the new channel was shallow enough to wade A fish lifted its head from right in the middle, where the path to the rock must've gone before the land sank. It was the biggest fish Cashel had seen in this place; apart from whales, it was the biggest fish he'd seen ever.
Its mouth gaped open, showing a long arched tunnel with the bright red pillars of the gill rakers to either side at the back. The mouth closed. The fish sank back slowly, leaving a swirl of water that lapped at Cashel's feet.
The fish didn't have teeth. If it hadn't been the size of a good-sized ship and had a mouth that could swallow a wagon, that might've been reassuring.
"Master Guide?" said Cashel, his lips pursed as he thought. Ordinarily he'd have said "friend" when he didn't know a fellow's name, but not here. "Is there a place anywhere around that we can find trees to build a raft?"
The forest might be a month away and besides, that wouldn't solve the problem of the fish, but "There are no trees here," said their guide. "There are cattails and there are ferns; and there is mud, that is all."
"Well, we'll gather cattails, then," Cashel said, nodding as he worked the business out in his head. "They'll float, and with enough of them we can-"
"That would take too long," said Protas in his funny voice. His left hand was back on his head again. He stretched out his right arm with the fingers tight together.
"It's the quickest way I can come up with, Protas," Cashel said, not loud but making it clear to anybody listening that he wasn't looking for an argument. "The fish is another thing, but maybe if we set the raft on fire at one end-"
The boy's lips didn't move, but somebody started chanting words of power in a voice like a cicada shrilling. Cashel couldn't hear the sounds as words, but the rhythms were unmistakable to anybody who'd heard wizards in the past. He looked at Protas in surprise and started to speak.
He shut his mouth again. Whatever the boy was doing and however he was doing it, interrupting him wasn't going to change things for the better.
Their guide stared in wide-eyed horror. Cashel had wondered if maybe he was doing the chanting, but the expression on the fellow's nasty little face proved that wasn't so.
"Do you know what's happening, then?" Cashel asked. The guide didn't seem to have heard the question.
Wizardlight as bright and blue as a sun-struck glacier shivered over the surface of the channel. The water stirred and humped as the great fish started to rise again. The keening insect voice shouted a syllable that Cashel almost could hear.
A blue flash lighted the channel to its muddy bottom, showing the fish as a shadow with its bones as darker shadows. It was even bigger than Cashel had guessed. It dove toward the bottom with a convulsive flip of its serpentine tail.
The water was opaque for a moment. Then it froze into yellow ice.
Protas swayed; Cashel caught him in the crook of his left arm. He'd had a lot of experience with the way wizards wore themselves out with their art, but he hadn't had a hint of Protas being a wizard himself…
The boy opened his eyes. "What happened, Cashel?" he said. Hard as he tried to hide it, he sounded scared.
"We've got a way across the channel now, Protas," Cashel said. He looked at the guide. Try as he might to be charitable, he loathed the foul little man. "That's right, isn't it?" he demanded.
"You didn't tell me you could control the talisman," their guide whispered. "You should've told me. I didn't think anyone could…"
Cashel's expression was getting harder. "Yes, I heard you," the guide said. He licked his lips; his tongue was forked. "Yes, you can cross. We must cross, yes."
He walked onto the ice without speaking further. Cashel patted the boy's shoulder. "Let's go, Protas," he said. "We've got our path."
"Yes, Cashel," said the boy. "Ah-is it safe?"
"Safer than staying around here, I'd judge," Cashel said, stepping onto the cold, hard surface. The ice was a maze of cracks, not slippery and not even unpleasant to walk on after the warm mud.
Protas winced as he followed. His feet didn't have Cashel's calluses, but this short hike wouldn't give him frostbite. They walked across quickly. Cashel glanced over his shoulder to make sure nothing was following them; the mud flats were the same steaming wasteland they'd been before.
The rock was just that: one rock, a spike of basalt sticking up like a fingertip from the mud on the other side of the ice bridge. It was chest high on Cashel and a little above the boy's head. There was a symbol on the top of it, but this time it had one more angle than a hand has fingers.
"We're to get up on this?" Cashel said politely, pointing.
"Yes, unless you plan to stay here," snapped the rat-faced man. Then he wrinkled his short nose and said, "Get up there, of course! Leave here before you cause me even more trouble."
Cashel lifted the boy onto the rock. He prodded the ground with his big toe to find a suitable spot to butt his staff. It was firmer here than it'd been anywhere on the other side of the channel.
Their guide looked back. The ice was already turning to slush, and bits were breaking off the edges.
"I don't know how I'll return," he said. "And I don't care! You'll be gone, that's all I ask!"
"That's all we ask too, Master Guide," Cashel said. With his left hand on top of the stone and his right braced on his quarterstaff, he lifted himself to sit beside Protas, then got to his feet.
"You should have told me you commanded the talisman," the guide whispered. He held out the book in both hands. "Methan meruithan man!" he boomed in a voice whose resonance didn't seem to come from his narrow, broken chest.
The points of the figure lit like rubies and the light spread rapidly through the lines connecting them. Protas clung tightly to Cashel's belt with one hand and the crown with the other
"You should have told me…," the guide's voice came as a ghostly murmur. The stone underfoot vanished.
***
Sharina kept her right arm around Tenoctris as the convoy jerked and squealed up track into the hills surrounding Calf's Head Bay. A Blood Eagle officer drove the gig this time. Tenoctris had protested at first, but she'd agreed when Sharina pointed out that her strength was better conserved for her art.
"Lord Waldron planned to have his soldiers improve the road," Sharina said as the gig jounced around a particularly bad switchback. It'd be a wonder if all the wagons behind them made the corner without losing a wheel or overbalancing. "I suppose he needed them too badly against the plants."
As much as anything, she was speaking to take her mind off the thoughts that swirled about in her mind. The last minutes before dawn could be a bad time. Sharina's fears didn't have faces or even forms, but in the gray dimness they were all too real.
"I wish there were more I could do," Tenoctris said. "The forces Cervoran and the Green Woman are arraying are…"
She turned to Sharina. The lantern held by the groom leading the gig threw just enough light back for Sharina to see her friend's wan smile.
"They're like the Outer Sea," Tenoctris said. "Each of them is. I find it hard to imagine two such powerful wizards being perfectly balanced in strength, and yet that's their weakness as well. Because I can see their structures while I remain outside the
m, I could undercut either one and bring him down."
She grinned, this time with her natural good humor. "Or her down, I suppose," she added. "Though I'm not sure gender is really a valid concept with Cervoran and the Green Woman."
"While they both exist," Sharina said, filling in what Tenoctris had left unsaid, "they control one another. But if one destroys the other, we have nothing but our own devices to oppose the remaining wizard."
They'd reached the top of the ridge. The new track led north and west along the curve of the hills; their wheels bumped over stumps. The crest had been wooded a few days ago, but the trees had been cut for fuel during the fighting. In the darkness to their left, soldiers were putting on their armor and forming ranks with muted grumbles and clanking.
"Yes," said Tenoctris. "And while Cervoran claims to be our only defense against annihilation by the Green Woman, I don't trust his good faith so far that I'd choose to be the instrument of giving him unbridled power."
In the gig ahead, Double pointed toward a place on the summit of the final hill of the range. The ground beyond sloped raggedly toward the sea, visible now as lines of foam picked out by the graying sky. The driver, a Blood Eagle who never let his eyes rest directly on his passenger, obediently pulled up. Sharina noticed with a smile that he immediately jumped out of the vehicle, almost certainly without direction.
"Pull in beside them," Sharina said to their own driver, raising her voice as the wheels bounced them noisily over rock from which the soil had been worn by recent traffic. To Tenoctris, more quietly as they swayed together with the gig, she said, "You say Cervoran, Tenoctris. You mean Double, don't you?"
The gig rocked to a halt; the women waited. Their horse backed a step as Double lurched in their direction as he got down from the other vehicle.
"Doubleis Cervoran," Tenoctris said in a dry undertone. "Is Cervoran or is the mirror image of Cervoran. I don't know whether or not another Cervoran exists, but I'm sure of what's in our presence now."
The six heavy wagons following the gigs pulled in one by one, guided by Double's imperious gestures. Five carried long posts, most of which had until the previous day been the roof trusses and ridgepoles of houses in Mona. Many of the city's residents now lived in stunned misery under tarpaulins in the ruins of what had been their dwellings. After the crisis was over they'd be paid compensation and perhaps they'd understand the necessity of what'd happened to them; but perhaps they wouldn't understand even then.
