by David Drake
She turned, righting the candle in her hand. One of Lord Tadai’s clerks stood at her elbow, looking nervous.
“Jossin here will take that back to the guards, your highness,” Tadai said. “I was remiss in not dealing with the situation myself earlier.”
“It’s not part of your job, milord,” Sharina said. “And it has been part of mine.”
She turned her attention to Liane, saying, “Do any of your sources know where the creature might have come from, Liane? Or who sent it?”
Cervoran moved. He held the uncut topaz, and it threw foggy highlights across the room as he lowered his hands. He’d been so still that Sharina hadn’t noticed him until then.
“Not yet,” said Liane, “though—”
“The Green Woman sent it,” Cervoran said. “She made it in her Fortress of Glass and sent it to attack me.”
His voice was rising in pitch and volume. The oil lamps gave his complexion a yellow tinge and brought out blotches beneath the skin that daylight had concealed. Neither Sharina nor Liane moved away from the recent corpse as most of the others in the room did, but Liane had her right hand between the folds of her sash.
“She will attack me while she lives and I do,” Cervoran said.
“There’ll be more of those hellplants?” Sharina asked sharply. Waldron and Attaper with their aides had entered the chamber behind her; the soldiers’ faces were taut with the instinct to attack or flee.
“There will be many more!” Cervoran said. His fingers moved over the topaz like maggots crawling on a yellow corpse. “But I will prevail!”
Ilna looked at the man she’d saved from death on his own funeral pyre. If he was still a man, of course; and if she’d saved him.
“A meteor struck the sea yesterday,” Cervoran said. “We must find it. The Green Woman is there, and I will defeat her.”
“The sling stone struck, right enough,” said Chalcus with cheerful bravado, the backs of his wrists against his hipbones and the fingers turned outward like flippers. “And I or anybody who was with the fleet can show you where, easily enough; any sailor, at least. But it won’t do you any good, I fear.”
Cervoran looked at him. Ilna had begun picking apart the pattern she’d knotted from lengths of twine as the hellplant slithered across the courtyard.
“Take me to the meteor,” Cervoran said. Only his squeaky voice and the muffled breaths of the others in the room could be heard. “It is necessary. I will defeat her!”
The pattern would’ve frozen a man in his tracks. A man’s eyes don’t see: they gather patterns that his mind turns into sight. The patterns Ilna wove in fabric had a greater reality in the minds of those who saw them than a mountain or the blazing sun above.
“I can take you there right enough, my friend,” Chalcus said. He feared the Gods—he didn’t worship but he feared. He feared no other thing in this world as far as Ilna could tell, beast or man or wizard. “But the place I’ll take you is the deepest trench in the Inner Sea. A full league down a wizard said, or so the rumor has it. If your Green Woman’s on the bottom of that, then you’ll not be going to her unless you’re a fish, not so?”
Ilna’s pattern hadn’t stopped the plant. Now she was beginning to wonder what effect it would have on the recent corpse.
“Do you think to mock me, little man?” Cervoran said. It was odd to hear so shrill a voice speaking as slowly as a priest praying while the villagers came forward with their offerings during the Tithe Procession. “Take me to the place. It is necessary!”
“Your highness?” Chalcus said, looking past Cervoran to Sharina. “This is a thing I can do well enough in the Heron, should you wish it. But…?”
“It is necessary!” Cervoran repeated shrilly.
Cervoran, king or man or corpse, took Cashel out of this room and brought him back with a jar of oil in time to destroy the hellplant—which nobody else had been able to do, Ilna herself included. That didn’t make Cervoran a friend to the kingdom and its citizens, but at least it made him an enemy of their enemies.
“Master Chalcus…?” said Sharina. From the set look on her face she was thinking the same way as Ilna was. “Would a larger ship be better? I could send him out on the Shepherd or one of the triremes.”
Chalcus snorted. “And what could a fiver do that my handy little Heron could not, eh, milady?” he said. “We can turn twice around in the time it’d take a cow like the Shepherd to change course by eight points only. We’ll take him.”
“At once,” said Cervoran.
“Indeed not,” said Chalcus. “In the morning. I’ll find the spot by the angles on the Three Sisters east of here and Mona Headland itself, but I can’t do that till sunrise.”
“In the morning, then,” Sharina said, giving an order rather than commenting. “And Master Chalcus? Don’t set out until I’ve had a chance to learn Lady Tenoctris’ opinion on the matter.”
“Master Cervoran?” Ilna said. She’d reduced the knotted pattern to the cords it’d started as. She held them in her right palm and stroked them with the fingers of her left hand. “There was a sling stone, a meteor, hitting the sea as we approached the island yesterday.”
“Yes,” said Cervoran. “But I will go to her and defeat her.”
“There was a second stone, meteor, this morning,” Ilna said. She had the odd feeling that she was standing outside herself and hearing someone else speak. “During your funeral. It burst in the air above us. What did that meteor mean?”
“It means nothing,” said Cervoran, his voice becoming even more shrill.
“It exploded in the air,” Ilna repeated, “and then you rose from your bier. What does that mean?”
“I am Cervoran!” the former king cried. He lowered his eyes to stare into the topaz again.
“What?” said Ilna.
But Cervoran remained as motionless as a statue; and when Chalcus murmured, “We’ll be up betimes, dearest. Best to get some rest now,” Ilna left the chamber with him.
“There’s a pattern too big for me to see the ends of it,” Ilna whispered. Chalcus listened, but she wasn’t so much speaking to him as to the cosmos itself. “But we’re part of it, like it or not. And I don’t like it at all!”
Chapter 5
Sharina awakened in shocked awareness that something was wrong. She sat bolt upright, hearing low-voiced chanting nearby. She didn’t know where she was, and the sun was already up behind the shutters.
She was out of bed, gripping the hilt of the Pewle knife with her right hand and its sealskin sheath with her left, when she remembered. She relaxed with a sigh, then giggled at what a fool she’d have looked if there’d been anyone to see her.
There wasn’t, of course. Sharina had been an inn servant herself too long to want anybody serving her when she didn’t need it.
The bedroom of the Queen’s suite where Sharina slept had a door to Cervoran’s Chamber of Art. Tenoctris had that room now, sleeping on a simple cot and rising at intervals in the night to browse Cervoran’s collection of books and objects by lamplight. That’s what was happening now.
Sharina shot the knife back in its sheath, but she didn’t hang it on the bedpost before she walked to the connecting door and opened it. Tenoctris sat on the floor, chanting over a flattened bead of green glass that’d been in the late king’s curio cabinet.
Cashel stood close by, his quarterstaff planted firmly on the floor. He’d turned his head when he heard the door open. He didn’t speak because that might’ve disturbed Tenoctris, but his smile was as warm as sunlight on the meadow.
A sparkle of blue wizardlight dusted the air above the glass bead, then vanished like a puff of warm breath on the polished face of a mirror. The old wizard sagged, setting down the split of bamboo she’d used for a wand. She disposed of each sliver after she’d used it once, because she said otherwise the influences it’d absorbed from previous spells would affect later ones in directions she couldn’t foresee.
Most wizards made wands and athames
, dagger-shaped implements of art, from materials chosen to concentrate power; then they covered the tools with symbols of art to increase the effect still further. Those folk could perform far greater wizardry than Tenoctris could… but as Sharina herself had seen, eventually they did something they hadn’t intended. A very great wizard had brought down the Old Kingdom a thousand years past—and was drowned in a reaction to his spell which he hadn’t predicted and couldn’t control.
Tenoctris’ smile had a hint of fatigue. She put her right hand on the floor to brace her as she rose, but Cashel instantly squatted and supported her. For the most part Cashel ambled along at the pace of the sheep he’d spent most of his life caring for, but he moved with amazing speed when he needed to.
“This comes from the moon,” Tenoctris said, dipping a finger toward the glass bead she’d left within the five-pointed star drawn in powdered charcoal. She wasn’t using the figures Cervoran had inset in the floor any more than she was using an athame carved from a dragon scale. “It’d fallen into the sea, struck off the moon’s surface by a meteor. Cervoran located it through his art and sent divers to bring it up for him.”
“What does it do, Tenoctris?” Sharina asked, looking at the vaguely greenish bead with greater interest. “Does it increase your powers?”
“It doesn’t do anything at all, dear,” the old woman said, smiling faintly. “But it’s from the moon.”
She gestured toward the shelves and bookcases which covered the workroom’s outside wall. They were a hodge-podge of objects, codices, and (in pigeonholes) scrolls. None of the jumbled contents were labeled.
“That’s generally the case with Cervoran’s collection,” she explained. “Many of the objects I’ve examined are quite remarkable, but they’re not really good for anything. They’re not important.”
Sharina cleared her throat. “Tenoctris,” she said, “King Cervoran wants to go out to where the meteor fell as we approached the island. Chalcus is ready to take him if I agree. Should I let him go?”
Tenoctris stood motionless for a moment; then she dipped her head three times quickly like a nuthatch cracking a seed. “Yes, I believe so,” she said. “But I’d like to go along.”
“To see what Cervoran’s searching for, Tenoctris?” Cashel said. “Or to watch Cervoran?”
Tenoctris chuckled. “A little of both, I suppose,” she said. “He’s a greater puzzle than any of the objects in his collection. The divinatory spells I’ve attempted haven’t helped me to understand him better.”
Sharina’s right hand touched the Pewle knife. The cool horn scales settled the gooseflesh that was starting to spring up on her arms.
“I wonder if he was always like he is now?” she said. “I don’t see how he could’ve been. I think he changed during the time he was, well, the time he seemed dead.”
“I don’t know, dear,” Tenoctris said in a regretful tone. “The wizard who amassed this collection was of considerable power but no real focus. He was a scholar of a sort, one who preferred to use his art to learn things rather than to search them out in books as I’ve always done for choice. But he wasn’t a man with interests beyond his studies, and he certainly didn’t have an enemy who would send a creature like that plant to kill him.‘
She gave Sharina one of the quick, bright smiles that took twenty years off her apparent age. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know who the Green Woman is either.”
“Maybe we’ll learn today,” said Cashel. He looked at Sharina.
“I know you have to stay here and, well, be queen,” he said. “But do you mind if I go with Tenoctris? I think there ought to be somebody with her that was, well, hers.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Sharina said. She stepped quickly to Cashel and hugged him, careful to hold the knife out in her hand so that the sheath didn’t prod him in the back. “We need Tenoctris. But Cashel?”
“Ma’am?” Cashel said, his voice a calm rumble like the purr of a sleeping lion.
“Be careful of yourself, too,” Sharina said, still holding herself tight against his solid bulk. “Because I need you, my love.”
Garric awakened in shocked awareness that something was wrong. Somebody shouted! he thought.
Somebody screamed, but Garric was already worming his way out from under Marzan’s house. The dog was gone and an angry yapping sounded from the direction of the village gate. That was where the scream’d come from, too.
It was dark: cloud-wrapped, moonless, starless dark. Even so the house had a presence in the darkness.
Garric reached up the sidewall, groping. The fishnet hung where he remembered it. He jerked it down, pulling a wall peg out in his haste. The size of the house showed that Marzan was a great man for this village, but that didn’t save him or his wife from having to catch their own fish. He wondered if they had to work in the raised fields as well, or if wizardry at least saved them from that back-breaking drudgery.
Heartbeats after the scream, a dozen or more things shrieked from around the whole eastern circumference of the village. They weren’t human and they weren’t in pain: they were beasts, hunting.
“Coerli,” the ghost of Carus said in Garric’s mind. “They looked very quick.”
Neither he nor Garric had any doubt about what was going on, though thus far they’d only seen the cat men in silent topaz visions. This must be a larger band than the five who’d raided the field before, though.
Garric stepped to the fence, moving by memory and instinct. He felt along the top rail to an upright and gripped it firmly. The railings were cane, but the support posts were wrist-thick and of a dense wood probably chosen to resist rot.
Garric half-squatted, then straightened his knees and pulled the post up with a squelch of wet clay. The railings were bound on with cane splits. A quick shake right and left snapped them free.
A sword’d be better, but even that probably wouldn’t be good enough. The Coerli were inhumanly quick, impossibly quick; but you did what you could.
Marzan’s door opened and fanned out light, shocking in the previous darkness. Garric risked a glance over his shoulder. Soma stood in the doorway with a rushlight: a reed stripped to the pith, dried, and soaked with oil or wax. It lit quickly and wasn’t as easy to blow out as a candle, though the flames didn’t last long either. In her right hand was a knife made of horn or ivory.
There were more screams in the night, all of them human. A pair of yellow-green eyes flared in the rushlight’s circle, ten or a dozen feet from Garric. He spun the net out as though he were casting for minnows, keeping hold of the drag. He couldn’t reach the Corl with it, but he saw the spinning meshes bell as the cat man’s own hooked line tangled with them.
Garric pulled his left arm back hard while swinging the sturdy post outward, a crushing blow directed at the empty air in front of him. He felt the weight as the slack came out and the net brought the Corl with it.
The beast shrilled in startled fury. Like the cat men Garric had watched in the topaz, this one had wrapped the end of its casting line around its wrist for a more secure grip. Racing charioteers regularly did the same thing with their reins—and were regularly dragged to their deaths when they fell or their vehicle broke up beneath them.
The cat creature was lithe and muscular, but its slight frame weighed less than a human female; Garric’s furious strength could’ve overmastered an opponent twice as heavy. When this one realized it couldn’t resist the pull, it twisted in the air and leveled its delicate spear at Garric’s face. Garric’s club brushed the light shaft out of the way and smashed the Corl’s left arm and ribs.
The cat man slammed to the ground, instantly curling face-up despite its injuries. Garric kicked at its face with his heel. He missed because the Corl ducked its head aside faster than a human could’ve thought.
Garric spun the net widdershins. Despite its speed, the wounded creature couldn’t completely avoid the spreading meshes. It yowled again and—Gods! it was fast—stabbed Garric in the thigh w
ith its spear. His club stroke had broken the flint blade straight across, but this thrust was a strong one and tore into the muscle.
Garric swung the club a second time. The Corl would’ve dodged but Garric scissored his arms, tugging the net toward him at the same time he brought the club down. The cat man’s skull was large to give the strong jaw muscles leverage, but the bones were light and crunched beneath the powerful blow. The creature’s saw-edged scream died in the middle of a rising note.
There were glowing eyes to right, left and center. Garric flattened and heard the spiteful bwee! of a thorn-barbed line arcing through the air above him.
He started to roll. A Corl landed on his back and looped his neck with a garrote.
Garric’s throat was a ball of white fire. He gripped the Corl’s calf with his left hand, then swung the creature like a flail into the ground beside him. It bounced with a moan of pain, losing both ends of the garrote.
Garric stabbed with his pole, using it as a blunt dagger instead of a club. Ribs cracked under the Corl’s brindled fur.
Garric’s arm went numb; he saw the post drop from his hand though he couldn’t feel his fingers release. The Corl standing above him raised its stone axe for a second blow like the one that’d already stunned his right shoulder.
Garric kicked sideways. The Corl leaped over the swift attack with no more difficulty than Garric would’ve made in hopping from rock to rock in crossing a stream. Garric had saved his skull for a few moments, but perhaps only that.
Soma threw her rushlight at the Corl in a blazing whirl. The cat man wailed, its eyelids blinking closed and its arms crossing in front of its face. The pithy stalk bounced away in a shower of sparks.
Garric lunged upward, still seated but his torso straight and his left hand spearing out to grab the Corl by the throat. It struck clumsily with the axe, but he jerked its face down onto the anvil of his skull. A fang gouged Garric’s forehead painfully, but the Corl’s nose flattened with a crackling of tiny bones.
Garric tried to lift his right hand to twist its neck like a chicken’s; the muscles of his bruised arm didn’t respond. He shook the Corl one-handed, showering blood from its ruined face for the instant before the world flashed in negative: charcoal shadows on a sepia background becoming white on pearl.
