The Fortress of Glass coti-1

by David Drake

  Sharina opened her mouth to ask what that would be. "Ah," she said instead, nodding. If Tenoctris had known what the best result was, she'd have stated it. Looking at Double, his face waxen and grinning like a badly molded doll's, she understood why Tenoctris would be unwilling to hope outright for that creature's victory.

  The mirror was complete, a silver shimmer as precise as the edge of a sword. Even as low as the sun still was, the metal waked a dot of light that tracked the plant on the southernmost end of the attacking line. The creature began to smoke, but the fog was thickening.

  Something swirled past Sharina on the breeze. Spider silk, she though; gossamer; one of thousands of strands drifting from the sea. She'd seen its like often in springtime: egg sacks hatched and tiny spiderlets sailed across the meadows, lifted on long threads of silk. But this A strand, many strands draped themselves on Sharina's arms and hair. They were blowing up the slope in numbers beyond any hatching in her memory. They didn't support spiders, and they seemed to be of coarser vegetable material rather than silk. The breeze carried them onto the mirror where they clung, squirming across the metal and linking as though the wind were weaving them.

  The silver film deformed as the threads squeezed wrinkles into the surface. The dot of light searing the distant hellplant blurred into a vague brightness quivering harmlessly through the fog.

  The initial line of monsters squelched closer. A second battalion was already marching up from the sea.

  "Olar akra!" Double shouted, suddenly agitated. "Zagra orea!"

  The mirror shook violently and smoothed itself, bursting vegetable fibers and flinging them aside. For a moment the dot of light steadied again on a hellplant, but more threads wriggled through the air and took the place of those which'd been broken.

  Though Double continued to chant, the fibers poured up on the wind in ever-increasing quantities. First like chaff on a threshing floor, then thicker yet and knotting into a mat which covered the silver. Only when the fabric was opaque did it begin to squeeze again, this time inexorably.

  "Audusta!" Double snarled. The mirror collapsed, though the vegetable mass continued to twitch and tremble where it'd been. Double turned away and clumped back toward his ancient oak work chest.

  On the plains below the mist grew thicker, and the plants marched on.

  ***

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mistress Auta," said Chalcus with a sweeping bow. "Who is it that you're to be saved from, if I may ask?"

  The sailor's gestures were always excessive by anybody else's standards, but somehow he carried off what would've made a courtier look absurd. If I made the world, Ilna thought, gray and brown would be all the colors needed, and people would behave as if they too were gray and brown. There'd be no Chalcus in that world… and very little for me, despite that's what I think I'd want.

  "Why, from the Princes!" said another little man. He'd edged into plain sight, sitting cross-legged on a holly branch near where Ilna'd caught and released his fellow. Therewere differences among the little folk: this one's hair rose in a pronounced widow's peak, for example. Because they were so small and quick, distinguishing marks were hard to catch.

  "From the other Princes!" Auta said instantly, shooting the man a fierce glance. "Prince Ilna, did the One bring you here to rid the garden from those who have preyed on us from time out of mind?"

  "We're here because someone wanted us out of his way," Ilna said. "I doubt he intended to help you or anybody besides himself. He may not even know that you exist."

  She hadn't snarled, but she'd probably frowned as she considered the situation. She hadn't meant anything by it; she generally frowned when she considered the world and the things that happened in it. Auta'd taken the expression personally, though, so she'd shrunk back toward the hedge.

  "Our main concern's to get out of this place and back to the world of our friends, that's so, little lady," said Chalcus. "We're glad to meet you, but no one sent us to be saviors."

  Ilna walked to a birch tree growing out of the Osage orange, taking out her paring knife. She hadn't seen the little people use tools, but there were rocks in the soil of the hedges. Even without skill the little people could hammer stones together till they chipped an edge on one.

  "Is Dee all right?" Merota asked, squatting on the grass. "Really, we weren't going to hurt him."

  Two of the little people, a man and a woman, dropped to the ground instead of watching from the hedges. Their heads were just on a level with the kneeling child's.

  Ilna pulled down a branch and nicked it. She peeled away the papery outer covering-it was of no use to her-and stripped off four strands of the fibrous brown inner bark.

  "Dee, come show yourself!" Auta called commandingly. "Our Princes think they've hurt you. Come out!"

  Ilna could understand the little people's language, but besides having very high-pitched voices because they were small, they had an accent that reminded her of the clipped way people spoke on Cordin. She wondered who'd woven the tapestry and how long ago that had been. Perhaps when she got back to the room where it hung in Mona, she'd have time to examine it properly.

  The couple who'd left the hedge minced over to Merota. The woman reached out with one hand, holding her male companion's wrist with the other. More of the little people stepped onto the grass.

  "Go ahead," Merota said soothingly. "You can touch me, little person."

  Ilna wiped the blade of her knife and slid it again into its bone case. She returned to the gathering, now crowded around Merota like doves feeding on grain beneath their cote. The woman who'd first come forward was running her fingers through the child's fine hair while the others watched admiringly.

  "Prince Merota," Auta said, though Ilna noticed that her eyes were really on Chalcus. "Can you not help us, great Prince? The Princes, the other Princes, take us one at a time or several together. We who escape hear screams and then the bones of our friends breaking. We are helpless, but you are strong and can save us."

  "You can save yourselves," Ilna said sharply, moving to Merota's side. The little people skittered away, again like doves; their behavior made her angry. Unreasonably angry, she knew, but she felt the flush regardless. She held out the four ribbons of bark. "Watch what I do with these."

  As Ilna spoke, she began to knot the strips into a grid. She forced herself to let her fingers move slowly and deliberately so that the little people could see exactly what she was doing. When she'd completed the demonstration, she had a neatly woven net no bigger than the palm of her hand.

  Ilna held it out to Auta; after a moment, the tiny woman took it and bent close to puzzle over the joinings. They were simple reef knots, easy for even the untutored to make.

  "But what is this, Prince Ilna?" said the man sitting on the holly branch.

  "It's a net," Ilna said. "A very small one, of course, but there's trees enough in this garden to make a net any size you please. Now, how many of your folk are there? All of you together."

  Auta looked at the circle of her folk in consternation. "Great Prince," said the seated man, "we are simple folk. We couldn't answer such a question."

  "Many and many," said Auta. "The Princes prey on us every day, but still we remain."

  "So I thought," said Ilna with a crisp toss of her head. "Well, it's time for you to prey on Princes. I've seen you crawl through the hedges like fish swimming. You can hang nets before and behind these so-called Princes, then drop another net on top of them. Catch them one at a time."

  "Oh-h-h!" said the crowd, gasping as a single tiny person.

  "There's rocks here," Ilna continued, grim-faced. "You can kill the creatures with rocks."

  "Aye," said Chalcus with grinning animation. "And as a hint, tying a thong the length of your arm onto a rock for a handle'll give enough speed to your blow that you'll break bones instead of just bruising the devils when you hit them."

  "Oh, we could never do that, great Princes!" said Auta. She dropped the net and backed as if it was s
oaked in filth. "You're so brave and strong, but we are small."

  "You'll save us, Prince Merota," cooed the woman stroking the child's hair. "You're great and strong. It would be nothing to you to save us from the other Princes. You'll save us, won't you, great one?"

  "So many of us are gone," said a little man, his head bowed low. "A pounce and a crunch and then gone, nothing but a splotch of blood on the grass."

  Merota looked at the sailor. "Chalcus?" she said. "We could, couldn't we? You and Ilna could, I mean?"

  Chalcus laughed, but Ilna saw the veil go up behind his eyes. Talk of killing brought not only wariness to his expression but also a degree of professional calculation: Chalcus had always been a sailor, but for part of life he'd been one of the Lataaene pirates. He had a great deal of experience with killing, and from the scars on his body he'd repeatedly come close to learning about being killed as well.

  "We're not here for hunting, dear lady," he said with his tongue and his lips; not with his eyes, though, not so that Ilna couldn't tell the truth. "We're here only till we leave; and the sooner we leave, the better for ourselves and our friends back home. Though perhaps if Mistress Auta can tell us where the way out of the garden may be, we could do her and her friends a favor or two before we left, eh?"

  Chalcus grinned broadly. "And who knows?" he added. "Would Garric like a chimaera pelt to stuff for a throne cushion? That'd be a fine thing for the King of the Isles to sit on, would it not?"

  "There's no way out of the Garden, Prince Chalcus," said a little man.

  "No way at all," said another. "Except…"

  He looked around, frightened to have spoken-though hehadn't really spoken.

  "Except?" repeated Ilna, her voice harshly insistent. Hearing people talking around a problem, refusing to face it baldly, angered her more than a personal attack would. "Whatis the way out?"

  "Prince Ilna?" Auta said. The little woman laced her hands together, then held her arms out from her body and wriggled the fingers while looking down. The shadow of her hands hirpled on the grass as Ilna remembered another shadow-the Shadow-doing while one of the little folk screamed and vanished.

  Auta clenched her fists when she saw that Ilna'd understood the gesture. "That way only, Prince Ilna," she said in a small voice. "No way except for that: death or worse than death."

  The man in the holly hopped down and gripped Merota's knees. "Mighty Prince Merota," he cried, "please! Of your goodness save us, for we cannot save ourselves."

  "Chalcus?" the child said, her voice a mixture of pleading eagerness. "We could, couldn't we? It wouldn't take so very long. And we're here anyway, you know."

  Chalcus drew out his dagger, probably without thinking about it. The little people gave a collective gasp, but they didn't flee.

  Chalcus spun the dagger up in the air and caught it by the hilt when it dropped, without ever looking at the bright steel. His eyes were on Merota and the little people; and at last on Ilna.

  "So," he said. "What is it that you think, heart of my heart? There's something to what the child says, don't you think? Weare here for the time being, and it wouldn't hurt me to do a bit of hunting in a good cause."

  "They will save us," Auta whispered. Her assembled fellows sighed a wordless prayer of thanks.

  "We will not save you," said Ilna. She bent and picked up the miniature net she'd knotted as an example. "You can save yourselves. Look at this!"

  "Oh, no!" said Auta. Around her echoedno-no-no-no in piping whispers.

  "We cannot do that, Prince Ilna," said the man still bowed before Merota. "Youwill save us. Great Merota, tell your-"

  "No!" said Ilna in a fury. The little people scattered back from her like children frightened when a banked fire suddenly flares. "People who won't try to save themselves don't deserve to be saved. The world isn't meant to be safe for those who don't care!"

  Chalcus sheathed his dagger with a motion as smooth as the sun on still water. "Aye," he said. "I take your point, dear one."

  He made a sweeping gesture. "Since our little friends here don't know the way out," he went on, "and we've no other business with them, we'll take our leave. My sincere best wishes, Mistress Auta, to you and your fellows."

  The little people vanished, leaving the three of them were alone in the clearing. Ilna smoothed the net between her palms, then set it on the grass in case someone, some day, came back to look at it. People can learn; sometimes at least. Ilna os-Kenset had learned certain things, about people and about herself, in the course of her life.

  They weren't always things she was happier to know, but that couldn't be helped.

  "It seems to me," said Chalcus as he sauntered toward the next turning of the maze, "that though the little people don't know the way out of this place, those who prey on them may. At least if we put the question to them the right way."

  "Yes," said Ilna. Her face was rigid and her mind was a pit of burning rock. "I wouldn't mind convincing some of these Princes to tell us things they prefer to hide."

  Chapter 13

  Garric sneezed. The ruins of Torag's compound smoldered in a dozen places. Though the smoke hadn't affected him while the battle was going on, it did now.

  Besides the sullen haze, there was the stench of bodies. The blackened corpses of the Coerli looked more human than the creatures had in life, but their wet fur smoldered with a unique pungency.

  Soma lay on her back just inside the cross-wall. A warrior's barbed spear had entered below her navel and ripped upward, dragging her intestines with it. Her face was suffused with rage. Garric remembered what the Bird had said: that she'd thrust her torch through the mouth of the Corl who'd killed her.

  "Shall we leave her here or throw her into a bog?" Metz asked. "Donria's told me how she tried to kill you."

  "I'd like you to have her buried properly, or however you treat your dead here," Garric said. "The woman the Coerli killed was a valued ally to me and to all of us."

  Metz shrugged. "I never had much use for her," he said. "But if you say so, Lord Garric."

  "Lord Garric," said a woman's voice behind them. "Let me see your wound."

  Garric turned; the movement made his shoulder flame as if somebody'd just run a hot plow-coulter through it. It hurt so much that his vision blurred and his knees wobbled.

  "Stand still," said the woman-the girl who'd been helping Marzan. The wizard sat nearby, his back against the side of a bee-hive hut that'd housed some of the warriors.

  The girl was chewing a cud of something; green juice dribbled from a corner of her mouth. She gripped Garric by the biceps and the top of his shoulder, bringing her face close to the puckered entrance hole. She spat a wad of fibrous paste onto the wound, then worked it into the hole with a prod of her thumb.

  "Duzi!" Garric screamed. He tried to jump back, but the girl kept her hold on his forearm. She was ungodly strong.

  "Stand still!" the girl repeated. She popped what looked like a piece of root into her mouth and began chewing it with enthusiasm. It'd been about the size of the last joint of her thumb.

  "Lila's a good healer," Metz said approvingly. "People from other villages came to her mother for healing."

  His uncle Abay, the one with the lacerated face, grinned horribly. "Marzan should've married her instead of Soma when his first wife died," he said. "Guess he figures that way too, eh Lila?"

  The girl didn't reply, but juice squirted around the edges of her smile. "Turn around, Lord Garric," she said in a mushy voice.

  Garric obeyed, steeling himself for another piercing jolt. Lila spat. This time the pressure of her thumb felt more like a hammer blow than a blade. A pleasant warmth was already spreading from the wad of paste she'd packed into the entrance wound.

  "Are you ready to return to your own time, Garric?" asked the Bird.

  Garric looked up in surprise. The Bird was perched on the cross-wall of the stockade. Though he was within twenty feet of Garric, smoke and the omnipresent mist blurred his glittering shape. />
  "Yes," Garric said. He wondered if the villagers had heard the Bird's question. "Of course I am."

  "Are you going to leave us, Garric?" Metz asked. The hunter was trying to keep his face blank, but an expression of blind terror flickered on and off it. That answers the question of whether the villagers could hear…

  "I have duties in my own time," Garric said. The day before he'd wanted nothing so much as to leave this miserable gray bog; now he felt pangs of guilt at abandoning people who trusted him. "I have to get back, Metz."

  "But what will we do, Master?" said Horst, rubbing his heavy chin in concern. "We could never have beat the Coerli without you."

  Garric felt his face harden as his mind shuffled through options. He wasn't angry, but he'd been a king long enough to understand the sort of decisions a king had to make if he and his people were to survive.

  "You've had me," he said. "You've seen what I did, what you did yourselves when I showed you. You can do it again."

  "But Lord Garric," said a woman Garric didn't recognize. She'd been one of the captives, he thought. "There are so many Coerli and we are few. This was only one keep."

  "There's other keeps, sure," Garric said, "but there's many more human villages. Metz, uniting your neighbors is as important as attacking the Coerli. Youcan unite and the cat men never will. This-"

  He gestured at the smoking ruins of the keep.

  "-was a real fight for your village alone, but if there'd been three or four villages together Torag wouldn't have had a prayer. You've got booty for trade, Coerli tools and fabrics-"

  "And excess women," Carus added. "There's many a chief whose opinion could change if you offered him the sort of young, healthy woman that the cat beasts picked for their own uses."

  That was true, but it wasn't something Garric was going to say or even allow himself to think. He continued aloud, "-that'll help you convince other villages that this isn't a wild risk. And you've got Coerli weapons. They'll impress neighbors who aren't completely willing. It's theworld's safety at stake."