by David Drake
Scarface shrugged uncomfortably. He made a little gesture with his free hand, indicating that Garric should follow the wizard who was stumping back into the village with the woman’s help. She looked over her shoulder at Garric.
“This lot don’t like wizards any better than I do,” muttered the ghost of King Carus.
Fortunately, thought Garric as strode after Marzan, I don’t have that prejudice myself. Because I can’t imagine how we’ll get back to our own place and time without the help of a wizard.
The village stockade was a single row of tree trunks sunk into the soil and sharpened on the upper end. An earthen platform on the inside gave defenders a two-foot height advantage over anyone attacking, but there were no towers or arrow slits. Garric realized he hadn’t seen bows or any other missile weapon.
Carus snorted when he realized that the palings weren’t pinned together. “With six strong men and a rope I can pull down a hole wide enough to roll wagons through!” he said. “I’m not sure I’d bother with anything beyond a straight rush by a company of my skirmishers, though.”
There were about two dozen oval houses with shake roofs and walls of lime plaster on a wicker framework. Each was raised a foot or so on posts; the ground was sodden already, and in a bad storm there must be a serious risk of flooding.
The windows had shutters, but most of them were open. In some birds on long tethers chirruped at Garric, nervous at the sight of a stranger. Fine-meshed fishnets hung under the shelter of the eaves.
The streets—the paths that twisted between the buildings—were paved with clamshells. Shells were probably the source of the plaster too; nowhere since he’d arrived in this land had Garric seen outcrops of stone that could be burned for lime. The quality of the woodwork was impressive, particularly because the people didn’t have metal tools, and he thought Ilna would’ve been interested in their skill with cords and fabrics.
Marzan and the woman led Garric to one of a pair of houses in the center of the village. Both were enclosed by waist-high openwork fences, adornments rather than meant for privacy or protection. Gnarled wisteria grew over one side of the fence around Marzan’s compound, but it wasn’t blooming at this time of year.
The woman opened the pole crossbar and stepped aside for the wizard to enter. As he shuffled past her into the compound, she looked at Garric and said, “Soma!” She touched her chest, then grinned widely and lifted the top of thin, waterproof cloth to show her breast before she followed Marzan.
Garric’s face was set as he closed the bar after him. He heard Wandalo speaking at a distance and looked back. The top of the chief’s head was just visible over the house roofs. He must be standing on the platform above the gate to harangue the villagers whom he’d called from the fields.
Garric wished he knew what Wandalo was saying. Though based on what he’d seen of the man and of rulers of Wandalo’s type elsewhere, he probably wasn’t missing much.
Garric had to duck under Marzan’s doorway, but the hut’s ceiling was generously high. Light came not only by the windows but through the roof itself: the shakes were placed in overlapping strips with air spaces between. The design wouldn’t work in high winds, so the current vertical drizzle must be the normal state of affairs.
The floor was of planks fitted with narrow gaps between them to deal with roof leaks and tracked-in mud. There were couches on both long walls. In the center of the room a small fire burned on an open hearth of clay laid in a wooden framework. There was no chimney, just the louvered roof: the three of them disturbed the air when they entered, making Garric’s nose wrinkle at the swirl of sharp smoke.
Marzan seated himself cross-legged near the hearth and motioned Garric down across from him. Garric squatted, the usual method of sitting in Barca’s Hamlet when there weren’t chairs. Soma went to the other end of the hut and took baskets from a pantry cabinet made of joined reeds.
The wizard placed his topaz carefully on the floor in front of him where strips of darker wood were inlaid into the planks. They formed a hexagon with the yellow stone in its center.
Marzan smirked at Garric and removed the longest of the three black feathers from his headdress. Using that as a pointer—as a wand—he touched it to the corners of the figure in turn as he chanted, “Nerphabo kirali thonoumen…”
The topaz glowed. The light at its heart was faint but brighter than the dimness of the rain-washed hut. Flaws in the stone became shadows that moved.
“Oba phrene mouno…,” the wizard said. He was using words of power, addressing beings that were neither humans nor gods but formed a bridge between them. “Thila rikri ralathonou!”
Garric had always thought of the words of power as things which a wizard read. Marzan was illiterate—there was no sign of writing in this community—but he rattled off the syllables in the same sing-song voice as Tenoctris used to chant the spells she’d written in the curving Old Script.
The cultured, scholarly Lady Tenoctris was part of the same fabric as this savage who probably didn’t understand the concept of writing. Different from them on the surface but at heart the same nonetheless were Cashel and Ilna. Their mother, a fairy queen or something stranger yet, had passed to them the ability to see the patterns which formal wizardry affected through spells and words of power.
Here in humid gloom lighted by the glow in the heart of a yellow stone, Garric had a brief glimpse of the cosmos interconnected and perfect. Do Ilna and Cashel always see this? he wondered; but there was no way to answer the question, and perhaps the question had no answer.
“Bathre nothrou nemil…,” Marzan chanted. “Nothil lare krithiai…”
The shadows in the topaz moved faster. Garric felt them grip him the way they had when he stared into the diadem on First Atara. Instead of drawing him down this time, the motion sucked a face up from the yellow depths of the stone.
A cat, he thought, but the forehead was too high and the jaw was shorter than a beast’s. The image opened its mouth in a silent snarl; the teeth at least were a cat’s, the long curving daggers of a carnivore. The eyes were larger than a man’s and perfectly round. The pupils were vertical slits.
“Corl,” a voice in Garric’s mind. The wizard’s mouth continued to chant the words of power.
Marzan’s chant was a barely heard backdrop, a rhythm outside the crystalline boundaries of the stone. The cat-faced image drew back to show Garric the whole creature: two-legged and as tall as a man, but lithe and as quick as light playing on the waves of the sea. It wore a harness but no clothing; a coat of thin, brindled fur covered its body. In its four-fingered left hand was a bamboo spear with a point of delicately flaked stone; in its right was a coil with weighted hooks on the end.
The cat man leaped onto a vaguely seen landscape from a fissure in the ground. Garric couldn’t tell whether the fog shrouding the figure was real or a distortion of the stone which the wizard used for scrying. A second of the creatures followed the first, then three more. They loped across the sodden landscape, moving in quick short leaps rather than striding like men walking.
The cat men were armed with spears or axes with slim stone heads, along with the hook-headed cords. They formed a widely spaced line abreast as they vanished into the mist. The images faded.
“Coerli,” said the voice in Garric’s mind as Marzan chanted. “Coerli…”
Garric’s mind had never left the boundaries of the crystal. A new image formed around him, a series of planting beds like those around this village. Oats grew on the nearest. The grain was still dark green, but it’d reached the height of the adults’ chests and must be near its full growth.
It was late evening, and with their tools in their hands the villagers were moving toward the walkway that led to the walled community. A family—man, woman, and a quartet of children ranging from five to ten years old—had been cultivating the nearest bed. All carried hoes with clamshell blades, but the father had a spear as well.
Coerli came out of a grove of scale-barked tr
ees, their long, narrow feet kicking up splashes of water. Their jaws were open and probably shrieking something, but Marzan’s chant filled Garric’s ears like the surf roaring in a heavy storm.
The youngest child was in the lead. She stopped transfixed and pointed; the hoe fell from her hand. Her mother clouted her on the side of the head and grabbed her wrist, dragging the girl with her along the narrow walkway.
The two boys and the eldest child, another girl, followed, their light capes flapping like bat wings. The walkway swayed but held, and the people running didn’t slip on the wet wood.
The father ran toward the wider walkway the led from the village to the solid ground where the Coerli had been hiding. He got to it just as the cat men reached the other end. There were five of them, perhaps the same band Marzan had shown Garric in the first scene.
Terror drew the skin of the father’s face taut over the bones. Villagers who’d been in the other planting beds continued running for the stockade; no one tried to help the family whom the Coerli had chosen. The human waggled his spear, then hurled it. The leading Corl dodged, then leaped and batted the man into the pond with a swipe of his axe. The motion was swifter and smoother than the spear’s wobbling flight.
As the father fell, the Corl made another great leap along the walkway and snapped out his weighted line. It curled over the heads of the older children to wrap the mother’s throat, jerking her backward. Her left arm flailed wildly but her right hurled the little girl away from her and the cat men. The child kept her feet and managed to run three steps before the last of the Coerli sprang onto her as the others were trussing the older children. Twisting her arms behind her back, the Corl thrust a thorn through both wrists to pinion them.
Fog rose to cover the images in the stone’s heart. Garric felt a sucking sensation as his mind returned to his own control. His eyes felt gritty, even after he’d blinked several times.
Marzan slumped. He would’ve fallen across the topaz if Soma hadn’t knelt beside him and reached an arm around his torso for support.
When Garric was a boy reading Old Kingdom epics, he’d thought wizardry was a matter of waving a wand and watching wonders occur. He’d seen the reality, now, the crushing effort needed to create visions like the ones Marzan had just shown him.
Garric grinned back at the ghost in his mind. Aye, he thought, the poets didn’t give me much feel for how bone weary I’d be after a battle, either.
Soma held a drinking gourd to the wizard’s lips, tilting it slightly as he slurped the contents. He laid his hand on hers; she lowered the gourd and shifted a little in preparation for lifting him to his feet.
Marzan said something to her, then looked at Garric. He began to speak, not loudly but with hoarse-voiced determination. The only words Garric could understand were his own name and one other: Coerli. He had no context, nor did it help when Marzan gestured or took Garric’s hands in his own and raised them.
At last Marzan gave up. He muttered to Soma, who helped him to one of the couches. He was shivering in reaction to his wizardry. Soma tucked a blanket around him with surprising gentleness.
Garric stood, working the stiffness out of his legs. The sun was down. The only light in the hut was an oil lamp—a gourd on a hook near the closed door with a twist of fiber for a wick-and the dull red glow of the hearth fire.
Two terra cotta pots waited at the edge of the hearth; Soma had cooked a meal while Garric was entranced in the topaz. No wonder Marzan was exhausted!
“Garric,” she said and gestured him to her. She sat down, using the hearth as a low table. He joined her, moving carefully. He was tired, not just stiff. It’d been a full day, if he could call it a day…
Soma broke off a piece of oat cake, dipped it into fish stew from one of the pots, and tried to feed Garric with it. He waved her away and took the remainder of the cake himself to dip. The stew was delicious, and so was the mixture of squash and beans that’d steamed in the other container.
“I’ve eaten harness leather,” Carus observed wryly, “and thought it was fine.”
Garric smiled and nodded to Soma in appreciation. She handed him a gourd of beer, thin but with a pleasant astringence. It cleared the phlegm from the back of his throat.
There was something in what Carus said, but this was a good meal. Garric had been unjust to the woman, assuming she couldn’t cook just because Katchin’s wife Feydra couldn’t.
When Garric had finished eating, Soma rose and gestured him toward the other couch. She drew back another thin blanket. He rose, suddenly so tired that he was dizzy, and thankfully walked to the couch. It was covered with a pad of fine wicker rather than a stuffed mattress; it gave pleasantly when he sat down on the edge.
Soma sat beside him and reached between his legs.
“No,” Garric said, jumping to his feet again. He made a wiping motion in the air as he’d done when he refused to let her feed him.
Soma tugged at his only garment, the cape he’d borrowed when he met Scarface and his band. The loose knot opened at the pull, but Garric snatched it out of her hand. “No!” he repeated forcefully as he backed away.
Soma stood and lifted her tunic over her head. Garric turned and scrambled out the hut, closing the door behind him. He heard an angry shout; then something hit the panel from the inside.
There were many reasons Garric wasn’t interested in Soma’s offer. The fact that Marzan was his best chance of returning to his own friends was only a minor one.
It was raining again. Well, that wasn’t a surprise. No lights showed in the village and the sky was black. Garric thought of stumbling to Wandalo’s compound next door, but nothing he’d seen when he’d arrived here suggested the chief would be a friend. Perhaps in the morning he could find Scarface.
For now, though… Garric crawled under Marzan’s hut. The clay was damp, but at least there wasn’t standing water. Yet, of course.
As Garric turned, trying to find the least uncomfortable position, he heard a whine. A dog snuffled him, then licked his hand and curled up next to him. Back to back with the warm furry body, Garric slept.
He’d been in worse places.
King Cervoran turned toward Cashel. It was his first action since he threw the lantern. He moved with the deliberation of something much larger: a tree falling or the ice covering the mill’s roof slipping thunderously when the winter sun warmed the black slates beneath it.
“Where is the diadem?” he asked in his odd, thin voice. “Where is the topaz?”
“You mean the crown?” Cashel said. “Lady Liane took it after Garric, well, Garric disappeared. I guess it’s in the room we were in when you came and fetched me.”
Without speaking further Cervoran started across the courtyard. The mess was worse than in Fall when sheep were slaughtered so there was enough fodder to winter the rest of the flock. There was blood and frightened bleats then too, but it was sheep, not men.
The oil flames had died, but the remains of the hellplant still smoldered; the air was hazy and rank. Green vegetation always stank when you burned it, but it seemed to Cashel that it wasn’t just memory of what the thing was that made this worse’n usual.
Sharina was talking to Waldron and Attaper. Well, they were both talking at her, loudly and not paying attention to what each other said. Cashel started to go to her—but she was all right, he knew that. He wanted to go back into the pantry and fetch his quarterstaff, but that could wait too.
He knew in his heart what he ought to do, so he did it even though it was about the last thing he’d’ve done for choice: he went after Cervoran, catching up with him in two quick strides and using the spear shaft to tap folks and make a passage. Anybody who saw Cervoran got out of the way, but in the noisy confusion people weren’t paying attention to much outside their own frightened imaginations just now.
It wouldn’t do to have the wizard trampled and maybe even killed. He’d been the only one who knew what to do when the plant attacked, and the fact he’d known what t
o do even before it happened was important too.
There were guards—again—at the door to the conference room, but they stepped out of the way with obvious relief when they saw Cashel. They’d have felt they had to stop Cervoran, and they really didn’t want anything to do with a corpse. Maybe Cervoran’d just had a fit, but even now he looked dead.
“Good to see you, milord,” said the officer, a man Cashel didn’t know. “I didn’t see how we were going to handle that thing till you took care of it.”
“It was really King Cervoran here,” Cashel said, but he opened the door and followed Cervoran into the room without trying to convince the soldiers. They’d believe what they wanted to believe, and they didn’t want to believe a walking corpse had saved their lives.
Liane and civilians travelling with Garric were busy inside. Lord Tadai stood in the middle of a whole handful of clerks from his department. Several of Liane’s assistants were waiting for a word too, but she was in a corner of the room talking to a fellow who was dressed like a servant here in the palace. He was a lot solider to look at than you generally saw carrying trays and announcing guests.
Liane had spies all over the Isles; this man must be another of them. The fact that she was talking with him right out in the open probably didn’t please either her or the spy, but at a time like this you might have to do lots of things you weren’t happy about.
Everybody looked up when the door opened. They kept on looking when they saw who it was who’d come in.
“Give me the topaz,” Cervoran said. His eyes weren’t really focused on anybody, but Cashel had the funny feeling that he saw everybody around him. “Give me the jewel Bass One-Thumb took from the amber sarcophagus. It is necessary.”
“He wants the crown, ah, Liane,” Cashel said in the immediate silence. “Ma’am, he was the one who knew to burn that creature outside.”
“It is necessary,” Cervoran repeated. His voice hurt to listen to, though it wasn’t loud or anything. Cashel wondered if the king had always sounded like that.
