by David Drake
“I see being a guest of the Visitor has brought you more in touch with your father, girl,” Evne said as she walked down Cashel’s left arm and perched on the back of his hand where it held his staff. Her tiny claws prickled but her feet had a clammy stickiness that he found oddly pleasant.
“And who are you?” Kotia said, her eyes hardening as they focused on the little toad.
“She’s my friend Evne,” Cashel said, surprised at the hostility in Kotia’s tone. “I wouldn’t have gotten here without her, mistress. I wouldn’t have come close.”
“And I suppose you think she’s a toad?” Kotia said to Cashel, raising an eyebrow.
“I am a toad, girl,” Evne said in a tone every bit as cold as Kotia’s. “Unless you insist on having things a different way.”
Kotia laughed with a mocking undertone. “No, of course not,” she said. “I don’t suppose it matters.”
“Not for me, it doesn’t,” the toad agreed. “Nor for you either, I would judge.”
Cashel had heard every word of the exchange. The girl and the toad might’ve been chanting gibberish for all the sense he made out of it. He’d been around people—and especially around women—enough to know not to ask them to explain what was going on, though.
Kotia looked in the direction of the ceiling. The flickers of wizardlight were too distant for Cashel’s excellent eyes to make out, though he still felt the tremble of the accompanying roar through his soles.
“There’s no way to get out before it’s over, I suppose?” Kotia said to Evne.
“No,” the toad said. “But it shouldn’t be long now.”
Cashel saw the light again as she spoke: glittering, then glaring; blue and red intertwined in a savage purple rhythm, spinning around the edges of the vast room. The battle was descending as swiftly as the opponents had risen out of sight.
Not long.
“Mistress Evne,” he said. “Get back on my shoulder, if you please. Or get down so that I won’t hurt you if I move.”
“You’re going to fight the Visitor if he defeats a demon, master?” the toad asked in a mocking tone.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Cashel. “I am.”
“Of course,” said Kotia in a quiet voice. Evne hopped to Cashel’s neckline in a single motion, the most graceful thing Cashel had known her to do.
The thunder of the downrushing combat filled the air. Not long at all....
Chapter 19
Sharina awakened. The stars were dim points in a sky pulsing crimson and azure with light as cruelly cold as icebergs. She didn’t know what had aroused her. The night was silent, save for the sighing wind.
“The great wizard has gone off again, mistress,” said the axe her cheek rested on. “I wouldn’t care what happened to him, of course; but if we’re abandoned here, there’ll be only your companions for Beard to dine on.”
“Gone?” said Sharina, jerking upright and throwing off the bearskin wrapping her. “He took the ship?”
She leaped to her feet, then felt a surge of relief. She could see the Queen Ship’s mast through the branches of a birch tree, on the other side of the little island. She and the rest of the band had moved to the western edge to sleep out of the constant wind.
“Not the ship,” Beard said disdainfully. “He’s using the Key of Reyazel again.”
“But there’s no—” Sharina said.
“Is there not the sea chest, mistress?” the axe snapped. “Do you think it matters what the keyhole opens in this world? It does not! Only that there be a keyhole.”
All those in the camp were asleep in their furs. At Sharina’s side Scoggin and Franca shared the mantle of a huge bison; they hadn’t awakened during her conversation with Beard. She thought of shaking Scoggin alert, but there was no point in that: the only threat was that Alfdan would get himself killed, and with Beard she was as well able to prevent that as all the rest of the band combined.
Sharina strode to the crest of the island, directly into the wind’s cold buffeting. The birches rustled like malicious whisperers as she passed. She wondered if she’d have thought that in another place, or on a night that wasn’t lighted by ripples of wizardlight. Perhaps one day she’d be at another place again and thereby able to answer the question....
The lid of the sea chest had been flung back. The key winked in the gutted lock, gleaming red or blue as the light washed across the heavens. The chest’s interior was a shimmer of alien moonlight, a leprous white contrast to the present sky roiling with wizardry. The chest had become a passage.
Sharina hesitated. The world she stood in was an evil twin to the one where she’d been born, but her memory of the treasure-strewn beach was so powerfully unpleasant that even these surroundings were preferable.
“You’re right about the danger,” Beard said morosely. Then in a more cheerful tone he added, “Of course, if something happened to you there, somebody might come to the beach later and take me out with them. I’m a greater prize than any foolish poison antidote!”
“I’m glad you’re comfortable on that score,” Sharina said with a wry smile. “It’s good to have a companion who looks on the bright side.”
The chest was sunk almost to its lid in the gravel; she stepped over the slight lip and stood at the edge of the curving bay, under the light of a moon like none she had ever seen. It was huge, and instead of the familiar craters and seas the looming face was banded like the wall of a sandstone canyon. This wasn’t the world she knew, even in the distant past or future.
Alfdan walked slowly along the edge of the water, poking his wand into the sand in front of him like a woodcock probing for worms. A swell moved toward the shore, breaking into froth and fury as it reached the shallows.
“Alfdan!” Sharina called. The wizard turned and looked, then resumed his course.
“May the Lady help me!” Sharina muttered, furious and frightened both. She jogged toward Alfdan as the wave combed up the sand, spurting high as it struck the wizard’s legs.
Sharina splashed through the shallows, listening to the sea growl. Alfdan jerked his head toward her, raising his wand. “Get away from me!” he snarled. “It’s here and I’m going to find it!”
“Oh mistress, if Beard only could...,” the axe whimpered miserably. “When we leave the island, then can Beard kill him? Please, mistress, please let Beard kill him?”
“Silence!” Sharina said, speaking to the wizard or the axe or perhaps to her own angry desire to split Alfdan from pate to navel. She caught the whalebone wand with her left hand, then jabbed the butt of the axe into the wizard’s belly. He gave a despairing cry and fell to his knees. The last of the surf foamed seaward past him.
“Get up!” Sharina said. Alfdan dropped his wand when she punched him, but she held it. Her first thought was to throw the dense bone into the sea, but the wizard needed the tool for his art... and all the rest of them needed the wizard if they were to get off this barren islet, let alone reach Her dwelling.
Alfdan ignored her, bending over. Sharina thought he was going to vomit; instead he began to scrabble in the hard sand. She stuck the wand upright in the ground and grabbed the back of his collar.
“Here!” the wizard cried, rising to his feet without her having to pull him. “I knew it was here!”
He held a strip of vellum, curling but apparently undamaged despite the sand that clung to it. There was a drawing on one side, a map as best Sharina could tell by moonlight.
“It’s part of Master Amoes’ record of his travels through the world he found under the surface of the moon!” Alfdan said triumphantly.
Sharina blinked. “But you’re not going there, are you?” she said.
“Of course not!” Alfdan snapped, rolling the parchment without bothering to brush off the last of the sand. “The moon’s been dead for all the ages since Amoes’ day.”
Beard tittered mockingly. “It’d be an act of mercy for Beard to drink his blood, mistress,” he said. “But he’ll take us to better pastures, so
we will let him live.”
Sharina shivered. “Come!” she said, tugging Alfdan’s sleeve. He came without protest, pulling up his wand when he passed by.
Sharina stepped on something hard and square. She didn’t look down; her face was as rigid as an executioner’s. Whatever the thing was, it belonged to this place; and humans didn’t belong here.
The door to the world they’d left was a rectangle of gravel and flotsam, the beach where the sea chest lay. She motioned Alfdan through ahead of her: she’d come to bring him back and there wasn’t room for both of them to leave together. When she stepped onto the opening, the bay vanished and she was standing on the rocky island. The wizard reached for the key.
Sharina batted his hand away and took the key herself. Alfdan yelped in surprise.
Sharina was trembling with relief beyond anything she could put in words. “I’ll hold this till we’re done with you,” she said, putting the small golden key into a fold of her sash. She didn’t have a proper purse in this place, in this world.
Alfdan grabbed for it. She held Beard in front of her, the edge outward in a glittering warning more effective than a spoken threat. “It’s mine!” Alfdan said, recoiling.
“Yes,” said Sharina. “And when you’ve delivered me to Her palace, I’ll give it back to you. I won’t care what happens to you then.”
She started back to the sheltered side of the island. “But I warn you, wizard,” she added over her shoulder. “As bad as the place you’re taking me may be, you’ll be going to a worse one if you use the Key of Reyazel again!”
***
“Master?” said Evne, back on Cashel’s shoulder where she seemed to prefer to ride. “There’s a cauldron near the wall to the right, a hundred feet up. Do you think you could turn it upside-down if it were on the floor?”
Cashel looked upward. Kotia extended her index finger and muttered words Cashel didn’t catch. A red spark from her finger snapped to a great bronze curve.
“Oh,” said Cashel. He’d been looking in the right place, but he hadn’t realized anything so big could be a cauldron. He’d been thinking of something like the inn’s washing tub, the largest vessel in Barca’s Hamlet. That wouldn’t have been a shadow of the huge thing hanging from cobweb strands of light.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Cashel said. It depended on how thick the metal was, but even if it turned out to be a lot thicker than he expected.... “I guess I can, sure.”
Evne extended her left hind leg; a delicate pink membrane webbed the base of the three toes. Azure lightning crackled at the tip of the middle claw, just that; no more than the sound a man makes popping his fingers. The cauldron was on the floor instead of high in the air. It hadn’t moved, it just was.
“I don’t think we should wait,” said Evne, looking up at the descending thunder.
“Right,” said Cashel. He didn’t like to run or often do it, but now he broke into a lumbering trot. The cauldron was deceptively far away. The size of the room was really amazing.
The demon and the globe were in sight again, swirling in tight circles around a common center as they ripped at one another with weapons of light. Blasts that missed their targets tore across the room, as little affected by objects hanging in the way as arrows are of dustmotes.
Red wizardlight slashed a knot of crystal curves. Half the structure vanished in glare and molten gobbets; the rest—itself the size of any building in Barca’s Hamlet—crashed to the floor not far from Cashel and his companions.
He ducked instinctively. The jagged chunk that would otherwise have brained him sailed overhead.
Kotia stayed at his side without running; she’d picked up the golden disk on her way by. Her long legs scissored as quickly Ilna’s fingers moved when she was weaving, but her face retained a look of faint amusement.
Especially, Kotia never looked at Evne. The toad for her own part was singing what sounded like, “Send a flea to heave a tree.”
Cashel thought they were both being silly, but it sure beat screaming and carrying on about what was happening the way a lot of people would’ve done. He hadn’t been around toads enough—socially, that is—to know how they usually behaved.
Not all the blows the pair battling downward struck at each other missed. A spear of blue light stabbed Kakoral square in the chest. For an instant the demon gleamed translucent purple; then he was crimson again, carving at the Visitor with blades of hellfire from both clawed hands. The vast room pulsed with the echoing combat.
Cashel reached the cauldron. He could just touch the rim if he stood on his toes, but his weight wouldn’t be enough to make it move. It sat on its broad bottom, not on legs.
“I guess then...,” Cashel said as he considered the problem. He thrust the quarterstaff out to Kotia without bothering to face her. “Hold this for me.”
He squatted, placing his hands under the base where the curved sides met the flat bottom. He was counting on the cauldron to be heavy enough that he wouldn’t have to chock the opposite side to keep it from skidding along the floor, but that seemed a safe enough bet....
Something exploded not far overhead. A rain of greenish pebbles cascaded down, rattling on the bronze and making Cashel’s skin prickle wherever they touched.
“Now!” he shouted, straightening with the strength of his legs and shoulders both. The cauldron lifted smoothly. Cashel walked forward, placing his hands farther down the bottom as the inertia of the bronze helped to rotate it.
“Yes!” cried Kotia. The cauldron teetered past its far edge and began to fall onto its rim.
The globe rapped out blue spears as quick as a woodpecker taps, striking Kakoral in repeated thunderclaps. Cashel looked up. The demon swelled and thinned into a figure of fiery cloud; the girders of light and dangling objects were clearly visible through his body. The Visitor’s globe shrank and shimmered into a ball no bigger than a melon.
The cauldron hit with a bell note so clear and loud that Cashel could hear it through the cataclysm tearing the air apart just overhead. Kotia’s lips were moving, but no sound a human throat could make would be audible now.
“Under the cauldron!” Evne said. She didn’t shout; instead her words clicked out in pauses of the blasting chaos.
The cauldron’s near edge rocked waist high on the inertia that’d carried it over. Kotia ducked under; Cashel followed a half step behind. The bronze lip hung for what seemed a long time, then rang down again. It clanged back and forth repeatedly till finally coming to rest with only a tingling hum to remind Cashel of its presence.
With the cauldron’s rim flat on the smooth floor, there was no light at all inside. The roaring battle was a vibrating presence but no longer noise in the usual sense. There was plenty of room inside, so Cashel didn’t expect the air to get stuffy till long after something good or bad had happened to change things.
“Shall I provide a view?” Evne said in an arch tone.
“Don’t strain yourself!” said Kotia. Her golden disk suddenly appeared in mid air. Its light didn’t touch anything else, though: the hollow bronze was just as dark as it’d been before.
“Mecha melchou ael,” Kotia said. The disk began to spin, accelerating rapidly. “Balamin aoubes—”
The disk was a shiver of light, a golden reflection instead of a solid object. It made a high-pitched sound—or at least something did, raising the hairs on the back of Cashel’s neck.
“Aobar!” said Kotia. Beyond where the disk spun, the bronze became transparent. The crackling flames of the battle lit the interior. Kotia had a pinched look, though she seemed not so much weak as worn to Cashel.
The Visitor stabbed a jagged trident of blue fire, missing Kakoral because the demon was suddenly above the globe. The blast splashed the cauldron, igniting the bronze with quivering brilliance. The flash made Cashel blink, but he didn’t feel anything unusual.
“The uses this vessel’s been put to over the ages,” Evne said, “have... hardened it, let’s say. I won’t say that it’s inde
structible, but I don’t think anything we’ll see today could harm it.”
“Did the Visitor make it?” Cashel asked, frowning. He’d gotten out his wad of wool to polish his staff. Touching the hickory always steadied him.
“The Visitor makes nothing!” Evne said. She was angry; Cashel had never heard her angry before. “The Visitor takes and destroys, only that.”
“Until now, I think,” said Kotia, looking upward with a faint smile. “Until he met my father.”
The toad laughed appreciatively.
It didn’t look that way to Cashel. No longer did the Visitor jump nervously about the room: his globe was a diamond-bright glitter, hovering and unmoved. By contrast Kakoral had spread into a crimson fog, too thin to have shape. The Visitor’s bolts lanced through the demon’s substance unhindered, ripping whatever other objects they touched. Many girders had been severed, and the whole structure was beginning to shift around its axis.
“Yes,” said Evne. “He has him now.”
The red mist sucked down. Being swallowed, Cashel thought, but instead Kakoral coalesced again out of the vapor. For an instant he stood as a giant in whose belly the globe sparkled with evil fury; then the demon shrank again to the size of a man and the solidity of a blazing crimson anvil.
Cashel heard a muffled pop. Kakoral shook with titanic laughter. He raised his head and opened his mouth wide. Flames shot out, momentarily purple but shifting quickly to the same rose red that Cashel saw winking across the valley when the demon first appeared to him.
The jet of fire spread into a channel of Hell-light as broad as a mill flume. The objects suspended throughout the enormous space tumbled downward, untouched themselves but released when the threads supporting them flared away. The walls of the ship began to burn.
Kakoral closed his mouth. He turned and bowed to the overturned cauldron, his arms spread back like a courtier’s. Above the demon—unthinkably far above him and racing higher—scarlet flames continued to blaze in the portion of the Visitor’s ship that they hadn’t yet devoured.
