by David Drake
Cervoran raised his right arm and pointed a doughy finger at Cashel. “You,” he said, piping like a frog in springtime. “Who are you?”
“I’m Cashel or-Kenset,” Cashel replied. His face didn’t change. He didn’t add a question of his own or put a challenge in his voice, the way a less self-assured man might have done.
“Come with me, Cashel,” Cervoran said. “It is necessary.”
Attaper stepped forward, his hand on his sword hilt. “Lord Cervoran,” he said in too loud a voice, “you have no business here. This is a royal council!”
“Come with me, Cashel,” the former corpse repeated.
“Sharina?” said Cashel. “Do you need me? Because I wouldn’t mind going along with him, Lord Cervoran I mean. Since he says it’s necessary.”
“Yes, all right, Cashel,” Sharina said. She put her right hand on his shoulder, squeezed, and released him. “I trust your judgment… and your ability to deal with any problems that arise.”
Cashel grinned. “Let me by, please,” he said to the guards, but they were already stepping sideways to let him past.
“It is necessary,” Cervoran squeaked. He turned and started back toward the opposite wing of the palace—the servants’ quarters and storage rooms. Cashel walked at his side, the quarterstaff slanted across his body; the chamberlain followed nervously behind them.
Ilna looked at the pattern her fingers had knotted during the tableau that’d just ended. “Close the door if you would, Chalcus,” she said in a clear voice.
She turned and eyed the room, the gathering of the most powerful folk in the Kingdom of the Isles. “Now,” said Ilna. “I think it’s time to acknowledge Princess Sharina as regent until her brother the prince comes back.”
Sharina was startled at Ilna’s words, but it was very like her friend to speak her mind. Admiral Zettin—a good man, but one who didn’t know Ilna as well as Waldron and Attaper had come to do—looked at her with an irritated expression and said, “I don’t think—”
“That’s nothing to brag about, milord,” Liane broke in, emphasizing by her nasal, upper-class Sandrakkan accent that she was Lady Liane bos-Benliman. “If you did think, you’d realize—as we all do, I’m sure, in our hearts—that the kingdom needs someone in Prince Garric’s place as regent if it’s to function, and that the princess is the proper choice. If Garric could’ve done so, he’d have appointed his sister, as he’s done when necessary in the past.”
Sharina grinned, but only in her mind. She didn’t want the job, but she knew Garric didn’t want it either. He was the correct person to hold the mutually antagonistic nobles together—nobody’s man, and therefore the man for everyone. While Garric was gone, Sharina was almost the only one who could take his place.
Almost the only one: Liane too had the knowledge and intelligence to rule. But Liane was from Sandrakkan, while the strength of the royal army and fleet came from Ornifal. Haft, where Garric and Sharina’d been born, had been unimportant since the fall of the Old Kingdom. The haughty rulers of Ornifal and Sandrakkan and Blaise could bow to someone from Haft as representating the Kingdom without losing face to a rival island.
Besides, Liane preferred to work behind the scenes. She sat quietly at Garric’s elbow, ready to hand him necessary documents or whisper information; and she worked more quietly still in managing the kingdom’s spies. When Liane spoke it was to the point—and occasionally very pointedly, as to Zettin just now—but that wasn’t her usual style.
“I have the greatest respect for the princess,” said Lord Waldron, making a half bow toward Sharina, “but Prince Garric’s disappearance may mean there’s a military threat looming. While the army will be loyal to whoever stands in the prince’s place—”
“I’m sure Princess Sharina will be able to delegate military affairs,” said Liane tartly, “as she and indeed her brother have done in the past. I consider it very unlikely that Prince Garric was snatched away by a hostile army, though, milord—if that was really what you were implying?”
“Well, I didn’t mean that, of course…,” Waldron muttered. He scowled, looking around the room angrily as if searching for a way out of his misstatement.
Lord Attaper opened his mouth, probably to gibe at his rival Waldron. Before he got a word out, Liane said, “I believe we’re in agreement, then. Lord Attaper, are you ready to serve Princess Sharina loyally?”
Attaper stiffened as though slapped, then grinned at the way Liane had outmaneuvered him. “Yes,” he said. “Princess Sharina is clearly the best choice to fill what we hope will be a short-term appointment. Ah, are we any closer to knowing just what did happen to the prince?”
Liane could’ve answered that, but it was properly a question for Sharina herself. She nodded to Attaper and said, “Tenoctris is searching the, ah, former king’s library, which I gather is rather extensive.”
She cleared her throat. She’d started to say, “the late king’s library,” and part of her still thought that might be the correct term.
“At any rate,” Sharina continued, “Tenoctris will tell us if she learns anything useful. When she learns, as I hope and expect.”
Cashel’s presence had kept the previous discussions quiet but not calm. Much as Sharina appreciated having Cashel close to her, it was a good thing now that he’d left. The dynamic of the meeting had changed abruptly when Ilna spoke. Power had shifted from the males in the room to her, Ilna and Liane. If Cashel were still here, the tension between him and the three military men would’ve prevented that from happening.
“Ah, your highness?” said Zettin, glancing warily toward Liane. “The matter of the ships still remains. If we return to Valles in the next few—”
“We’ll remain here until further notice,” said Sharina with crisp certainty. “Garric, ah, departed from here. Unless Tenoctris says otherwise, I believe this is the place he’s most likely to return to. I regret the risk to the ships, but Prince Garric is our first concern.”
Lord Waldron glanced sidelong at Lord Attaper. He smiled slightly when their eyes met.
Lord Tadai touched together the tips of his well manicured fingers before him and coughed for attention. Tadai didn’t have a formal title, but he carried out the duties of chancellor and chief of staff for Garric while the prince was travelling.
“Milords Waldron and Zettin?” he said in his butter-smooth voice. “I’d appreciate it if you’d direct your provisioning officers to meet with me as soon as we’re done here. My staff has made preliminary contacts with local officials regarding our initial requirements, but I’ll need more detailed information if we’re going to remain on First Atara.”
He bobbed his chin to Sharina.
“I believe we’re done for now,” Sharina said, glancing toward Liane and receiving a minuscule nod of agreement. “If each of you will leave a runner with me, I’ll let you know as soon as I hear what Tenoctris has to say. I’m going up to see her now.”
As the others present started to rise, a scream sounded outside. Heavy wood cracked, then masonry fell with a rumbling crash. A beam had broken—had been broken—and the pediment it supported had come down with a roar.
Chalcus threw open the door and slipped into the courtyard, his sword and dagger in his hands. The council’s military officials followed, drawing their weapons also. Lord Tadai and the other civilians got up and eased toward the back wall. Sharina’s eyes met Ilna’s. Ilna patted Merota’s head and said something; the girl ran to Liane and took her hand. Together Ilna and Sharina, friends from earliest childhood, stepped into the courtyard behind the armed men to see what was going on.
The palace was built around three sides of the courtyard. Besides the portico where the palace clerks and laundrymen worked in good weather, there was an herb garden for the kitchen and benches shaded by nut trees for nobles. The eight-foot-high back wall had double doors opening onto an alley leading to the nearby harbor. Sharina supposed furniture and bulk foodstuffs normally came in that way. An innkeeper’s d
aughter noticed things like that.
The thing coming through the wall now, having torn out the transom and burst the gate leaves, was green, barrel-shaped, and taller than the wall. It held a soldier in one of its feathery tentacles and folded another over his face. A twist tore the man apart in a gush of blood.
There were troops in the alley and others pouring into the courtyard from the palace. Everyone was shouting.
The under-captain at the door to the council chamber turned and saw Sharina. “By the Lady!” he cried. “Princess, you’ve got to get out of here!”
Because this had been a working meeting of Garric’s closest advisors, Sharina’d been able to change out of court robes into double tunics not terribly different from what she’d have worn on very formal occasions back in Barca’s Hamlet. The fabric was bleached instead of being the natural cream color of ‘white’ wool, and the sleeves had black appliqués of Ilna’s weaving.
Ilna said the patterns were unconsciously soothing to anyone who looked at them. Sharina believed her friend, but given the rancor of some council meetings it was hard to imagine how they could’ve been much worse.
Between her outer and inner tunics Sharina wore a heavy Pewle knife, her legacy from the hermit Nonnus. He’d used it to save her life at the cost of his own. She didn’t carry the knife as a weapon—though she’d used it for one—but rather because touching the hilt’s black horn scales invoked the hermit’s quiet faith, and that calmed her mind.
She reached through the slit disguised as a pleat in her outer tunic and brought out the knife. Right now it was both a weapon and a prayer.
Half a dozen spears sailed through the air and squelched into the monster, burying in every case the slim iron head and stopping only at the wooden shaft a forearm’s length back of the point. The creature continued to advance. The spears wobbled like tubular wasp larvae clinging to the body of a squat green caterpillar.
A soldier just come from the servants’ wing dropped his shield and charged with his javelin gripped in both hands. He twisted at the moment of impact to drive the point in, putting all his strength and weight behind the blow. Half the wrist-thick spear shaft penetrated; sludgy green fluid oozed out around the wood.
The soldier’s wordless grunt of effort changed to a scream as tentacles wrapped him. The monster lifted him, pulling his limbs off with the same swift dispassion as a cook plucking a goose for dinner. The screams stopped an instant after the fourth bright flag of arterial blood spouted from the victim’s joints.
“Use your swords!” an officer shouted. As he spoke, the monster gripped him. He slashed through one of the feathery tentacles, but another tentacle tossed him with seeming ease twenty feet in the air. He didn’t scream until he started to fall back toward the alley. Three soldiers who’d started forward at his order backed instead and raised their shields.
The creature crawled forward on hundreds of cilia each no bigger than a man’s foot. It was a plant—it had to be a plant; the tentacles were very like fern fronds though huge and hooked with thorns on the underside—but it was a plant from Hell.
Ilna had knotted a pattern from the cords she kept in her left sleeve. She held it up, facing the hellplant.
The creature squished onward, unwrapping a tentacle suddenly to grip a soldier’s ankle. He slammed the lower edge of his shield down to cut the frond off against the pavement. Its tip uncurled, leaving a bloody patch above the soldier’s heavy sandal. He retreated, his sword up but his face in a rictus of terror.
Chalcus put his left hand on Ilna’s shoulder. She tried to shake him off. The sailor kept his grip and shouted, “Come away, dear heart, for you’ll do no good here!”
Sharina found herself backing toward the doorway from which she’d entered the courtyard. The hellplant didn’t move quickly, but it’d proved it could tear a passage through thick walls.
And thus far, there was no evidence than any human device could stop it.
“Lift that,” Cervoran said to Cashel, pointing at the door set at a slant in the back of the pantry. The housekeeper hadn’t been in when her visitors had arrived, and her two assistants had fled with looks of trembling terror when they saw their king.
Or whatever Cervoran was now. Did Protas go back to being a kid that everybody ignored because his father’d returned? There were worse things that could happen, Cashel knew.
“That leads to the bulk storage for liquids, your highness,” Martous said in a chirpy voice. “We keep the large jars of wine and oil in the cellars so that they won’t freeze during the winter as they might in a shed. But there’s nothing down there which matters to you.”
Whatever other people thought of the business, the chamberlain was sure determined to act as if nothing about Cervoran had changed. Maybe he was right.
“Lift that door,” Cervoran repeated, but he could’ve saved his breath. Cashel had only paused to loosen his sash. He didn’t want rip a tunic if the weight required him to bunch his muscles.
He bent, gripped the bar handle with his free hand, and lifted the panel in a smooth motion. The door was sturdy but nothing that required his strength. The air swirling out was cool at this time of year, but Cashel understood what the chamberlain meant. Folk in Barca’s Hamlet had root cellars for the same reason, though none—even the inn’s—was as large as this one. The darkness had a faint fruity odor.
“Ah, your highness?” Martous said. “If you’re going down there, should I have a servant fetch a lantern? There are no windows, you see.”
Cashel smiled faintly. Anybody looking down the steps into the cellar could see there were no windows; it was dark as arm’s length up a hog’s backside.
Cervoran started down, ignoring the chamberlain as he’d done ever since Cashel saw the two of them together this afternoon.
“Follow me,” Cervoran said; echoes from the cellar deepened his voice.
“Leave the staff; you will need both hands.”
Cashel had already started down the sturdy wooden steps behind the king. He paused, trying not to frown, and said, “Sir? I’d rather—”
“It is necessary,” Cervoran said.
Whatever else he might be, Cervoran wasn’t a fellow who talked for the sake of talking. Cashel sighed and set the quarterstaff against the back wall of the pantry. He’d come this far, so there wasn’t much point in starting to argue now.
The cellar was what Cashel’d expected: brick pillars in rows, and big jars lined up against the masonry wall at the back. The ceiling was way higher than Cashel could reach and maybe higher than he could’ve reached with his staff stretched out above him.
The light that came down the pantry door was enough once Cashel’s eyes had adapted. Cervoran seemed to get along all right too, moving at his usual hitching stride down the line of jars. They were two different kinds, Cashel saw, one with a wider mouth and a thickened ridge for a rope sling instead of double handles at the neck like the other.
As he followed, Cashel’s eyes caught the least sliver of light from the ceiling in the depths of the cellar. That must be the trap door onto the alley where the jars’d be lowered down from wagons. A cart with solid wood wheels for shifting them here sat beside a pillar.
Cashel grinned with silent pride. If these jars were full of liquids, they’d be work for two ordinary men to shift.
“You highness?” Martous called from the pantry. The quiver Cashel heard in the chamberlain’s voice wasn’t just the echo. “I have a light here if you need one.”
“Lift that jar and follow me,” said Cervoran, pointing at the first of the wide-mouthed jars in the rank. His fingers were puffy and as white as fresh tallow.
“Yes sir,” Cashel said. He looked at the jar and thought about the path he’d be carrying it by. The stairs wouldn’t be a problem because the pantry door was hung at a slant, but if Cervoran took him back into the courtyard he’d have to lower the jar from his shoulder to clear the transom. “Is it wine?”
He rocked the jar to try the we
ight. It’d be a load and no mistake, but he could handle it. The base narrowed from the shoulder, but it still sat flat. The pointy bottoms of the other pattern of jars had to be set in sand to stay upright.
Cervoran walked toward the stairs, ignoring the question. His voice drifted through the dimness, “It is necessary…”
Cashel grinned as he squatted, positioning his hands carefully. He’d taken orders from his share of surly people before, and that’d never kept him from getting his own job done. The others hadn’t had Cervoran’s good excuse of having been dead or the next thing to it for a while, either.
When Cashel was sure he had the weight balanced, he straightened his knees and rose with the jar against his chest. He had to lean back to center it. There was enough air at the top of the jar for it to slosh as it moved, but he had it under control. It was tricky, but it was under control.
Cashel walked toward the stairs, not quite shuffling. He could only see off to his left side, the direction he’d turned his face when he lifted the jar. He’d had to pick one or the other, of course, unless he wanted to mash his nose against the coarse pottery. He’d be all right unless somebody put something in his way, and anyway he’d be feeling his way with his toes. It was under control.
Funny that Cervoran’d picked him for the job. As best Cashel could tell, the king hadn’t set eyes on him till they saw each other through the doorway to the council room. Cashel didn’t know another man in the army who could do this particular thing—fetch and carry a full wine jar alone—better than he could, though.
Cashel heard Cervoran climbing the stairs—skritch/thump; skritch/thump. A moment later he touched the bottom riser with his own big toe. Cashel slid the other foot upward, planted it, and then shifted his weight and the jar’s onto it while he brought his right foot up and around to the next tread. He’d thought of leading with his left foot on every step, but he decided he’d be better off climbing with a normal rhythm. He took the steps with ponderous deliberation.
