by David Drake
The star on the boulder glowed azure. The surface within that boundary vanished and the world beyond as well. Cashel was falling through starry space, conscious only of Protas’ desperate grip on his belt.
Chapter 10
Oh Chalcus!” Merota cried. “It’s all right! Ilna’s here!”
It certainly isn’t all right, Ilna thought. Merota hugged her and she patted the girl’s shoulder, but she was ready to act if there was need.
Which there didn’t seem to be. She’d stepped from the wizard’s chamber into a maze with broad aisles. The hedges, twice her height, were holly, but trees and fruiting bushes grew among the interwoven, spiky branches.
Underfoot the grass was soft and curly. The ends were pointed so it hadn’t been cropped, but the blades were only high enough to brush Ilna’s ankles.
Chalcus was a double pace away, as close as he could be to Merota and still have room to swing his curved sword with reflexive speed. He didn’t have his back to a hedge, either, which surprised Ilna till she noticed faint rustlings and the way leaves occasionally quivered in the still air.
That might be ground squirrels, of course. It might also be a viper hunting ground squirrels, and it wasn’t hard to imagine worse things than vipers here.
“I heard the child call,” Chalcus said. His mouth smiled but his cheeks were set in hard planes and his eyes went every direction in quick jumps like a bird hunting. “I tried to follow her, but I got dizzy. Do you know where it is we are, dearest?”
“We’re in the tapestry Double set you to look at,” Ilna said. “It’s a trap, or at least Double used it as one. The pattern the hedges make draws you into it if you concentrate. Which of course you did.”
Poking through the holly beside her was what looked like blackberry canes with the usual mix of purple, red, and pink fruit on them. She picked a ripe one and tasted it. It was an ordinary blackberry, tart and tasty.
She looked at her companions. “It was my fault,” she said. She stood as straight as she’d have done if she was about to be hanged. She’d rather be hanged than to have made the mistake she had. “I should’ve looked at the tapestry myself. I would’ve known.”
“Dear one,” said Chalcus with real affection, though his eyes continued to search. Under other circumstances he’d have touched her cheek with the back of his hand, but now each held a naked blade. “When I think I need you to scout before I look at a wall or a field or it may be a stretch of sea, I’ll drown myself. I’ll have lived too long to be a man.”
He stepped toward the next angle of the maze; the path branched left and right. “What I don’t see…,” he said, looking down both paths. “Is why Double would want to catch me that way. I wasn’t a particular friend to him, but I wasn’t his enemy either. Not then.”
He glanced back and gave the women a hard grin. “That will change when we return,” he added.
“He didn’t care about us, Chalcus,” Merota said. She wasn’t looking at the ground or the hedges either, it seemed to Ilna. “He used us to draw Ilna here. He knew she’d follow us, don’t you think?”
“He wouldn’t need to be a wizard to see that,” Chalcus agreed. “But how is she his enemy?”
“The amulet,” Merota said. “Lord Cervoran set Ilna to control Double. Double sent Ilna away so that he isn’t under Cervoran’s mastery any more.”
There was a tiny note of frustration in her voice. Merota was a courteous and respectful child, but this was a strain for her as surely as it was for the rest of them. She clearly felt that what was obvious to her ought to be obvious to other people, at least when she’d pointed it out.
Ilna smiled coldly. The child might learn better, or she might not. Ilna’d never quite learned that lesson herself.
“Ah,” said Chalcus with a wry smile. “I see, I’d been getting too full of myself, thinking I was the target. A flaw I’m prone to, milady, and I’m thankful to you for catching me.”
He spoke lightly, but he wasn’t being ironic. Chalcus wasn’t the man to deny his faults. Now he turned to Ilna and said, “Is there a way out, then, dear one?”
“Probably,” Ilna said. That was the first thing she’d considered, of course; the thing she’d been puzzling over even as she stepped into tapestry. “Almost certainly. It’s a complex knot, but there’s no knot without an end somewhere. I haven’t found it yet, is all.”
She took another blackberry, realizing that she hadn’t eaten in longer than she wished was the case. Food wasn’t a great pleasure to her, but without it she was more apt to make mistakes. Lack of food, lack of sleep, cold weather or to a lesser extent hot weather—they all made her less effective than she liked. She regarded those requirements as weaknesses and disliked herself for them, but she wasn’t the sort to deny that she was weak.
“Is it best we stay here, dearest?” Chalcus said. “Or is there a direction you think we should go?”
“I don’t know anything about this place,” Ilna said, irritated to be asked questions she couldn’t answer. She’d known where they were, no more. “We’ll need food and there’s little enough here. Water too, I suppose. There were fountains and streams on the tapestry.”
She cleared her throat. To take the sting out of her previous tone she added, “Though the blackberries are good. Will you have one?”
Merota was standing primly with her hands tented together. Ilna glanced at her, then looked again: the child was terrified. Ilna reached into her sleeve for the twine she kept there. It’d be a simple thing, a few knots and a pattern to spread in front of Merota’s barely focused eyes to calm her… Ilna paused, put the twine away and instead hugged Merota. The child threw her arms around Ilna and squeezed hard before relaxing and stepping back.
“Thank you, Ilna,” she said formally. “I’m all right now.”
“There’s an apple tree to the right, Master Chalcus,” Ilna said, pretending nothing had just happened. “Since we have no better direction, let’s go that way. Perhaps we can see something from its branches, too.”
Her cheeks were hot. She hated embarrassment, hated it, and being around other people was one embarrassment after another.
“There’s little men in the hedges,” said Chalcus with a lilt as he led with his sword and dagger angled out in front of him like a butterfly’s feelers. “Brown and not so tall as my waist, short fellow though I am. But there’s a lot of them.”
He sounded cheerful, and perhaps he was. Ilna smiled grimly. Chalcus wasn’t a cruel man, but he regarded the chance to kill something that deserved it as the best sport there was.
What Ilna really hated was emotion. At least now she had some emotions besides anger, but a life spent suppressing anger left her uncomfortable with the softer feelings as well.
Insects buzzed and fluttered in the foliage, but Ilna didn’t see birds. There were sounds that might’ve been bird calls, but she thought they were more likely insects also—or frogs. They could’ve been frogs.
Her fingers began plaiting a fabric for occupation. Though she didn’t see the little men that the sailor had, she could feel movement in the way leaves trembled or the grass lay: everything was part of an interwoven whole.
Including of course Ilna os-Kenset. She knew that another person in her place might’ve learned how to leave this tapestry before following her friends into it; but that other person wouldn’t have been Ilna and very probably wouldn’t have been able to see the patterns that Ilna saw.
Ilna grinned to think what she’d never have said aloud: she hadn’t met anybody except for her brother who saw patterns as clearly as she did. Cashel would’ve gone bulling straight ahead just the way she’d done, if he’d known how to.
They’d reached the ground beneath the apple tree’s spreaing limbs. The trunk was hidden within the hedge, but the branches reached out from above the holly.
Apple cores lay scattered on the grass. Some were so fresh that though the flesh had browned it hadn’t started to shrivel. The mouths that’d nibbled the
fruit were no bigger than a young child’s.
“The little people eat apples,” said Merota, meaning more than the words.
“So do we,” said Ilna tartly, “but that doesn’t mean we’d turn down meat.”
She’d snapped at the child’s foolish hopefulness before she could catch herself—and regretted it as the words came out. Chalcus glanced at her with a hint of pain and probably irritation, completely justified. Of course the girl was being foolish, and of course the girl knew that as surely as Ilna herself did.
“Merota,” Ilna said, “I’m nervous; I’m afraid, I suppose. This makes me more unpleasant to be around than usual. Even more unpleasant. I apologize.”
“You’re not unpleasant, Ilna!” Merota said. She probably even meant it. She was a sweet child, truly nice, and she couldn’t understand what a monster her friend Ilna really was.
Chalcus cleared his throat. “I might be able to jump to the lowest branch,” he said, looking at the tree above them. “But I don’t think I can get through the prickles without leaving more of my skin behind than I’d choose to. The little folk have skills I do not.”
“I’ll go up,” said Ilna, slipping loose the silk rope she wore around her waist in place of a sash. “You stay with Merota.”
You and your sword stay here, but there was no need to say that.
She eyed the branches. The lowest, less than her own height above her, wasn’t as thick as she’d like but she’d try it for a start. She cocked the rope behind her, then sent it up in an underhand cast. It curved over the branch and dropped.
“Ah!” cried Chalcus, sheathing his dagger to grab the dangling end in his left hand. He’d been frowning, obviously wondering what Ilna expected to catch with the loop. There was nothing for a noose to close over, but it’d weighted the throw nicely.
Ilna scrambled up the rope with the strength of her arms alone: the silk cord was too thin for her feet to grip it well, but the present short climb didn’t require that. She pulled herself onto the branch, then stood and surveyed their surroundings.
“It doesn’t help,” she called, keeping the disappointment out of her voice. “The hedges are as thick as they’re tall. I can’t even see into the next passage. And in the distance there’s fog.”
The fog might be ordinary water vapor, but Ilna doubted it. She hadn’t imagined that they could get back to their own world by walking to the edge of the tapestry, but perhaps…
Ilna smiled grimly. She hadn’t consciously allowed herself to hope for anything, but obviously the part of her mind she couldn’t control had been hoping. The human part of her mind.
“No matter, dear one,” Chalcus called. “At least we’ve the apples.”
The branch swayed gently, but Ilna was comfortable with its support. She lifted the skirt of her outer tunic into a basket and plucked fruit from the branches above her into it. The apples were small but sweet; apparently they were fully ripe when half the skin was still green. Many were wormy, but she had no difficulty gathering sufficient for the three of them.
Because the hedge was so thick, the branches in the interior had leaves only on the tips. Ilna’d walked some way out in that direction to complete her foraging. As she turned, she saw faces staring up at her from among the knotted gray stems.
They were visible only for an instant, but she’d gotten a good look at a trio of naked brown-skinned people, adult in proportion but no bigger than a six-year-old. One was a woman. Their large dark eyes reminded her of rabbits, and they’d vanished like rabbits leaping into a brush pile.
Ilna walked back to where her friends waited and spilled the apples onto the ground. She hung from the branch by one arm and dropped. While Merota picked the apples up, she looped the rope back around her waist.
Chalcus continued watching in all directions. He hadn’t ceased to do that even when he was belaying the rope for Ilna to climb.
“I saw the little people,” she said quietly. “They don’t seem to have weapons. Or any tools whatever.‘
“Aye,” said the sailor. “They’re a fleeting, fearful lot and likely harmless. But it strikes me, dear heart, that they wouldn’t be so fearful were there nothing here in this garden to fear, not so?”
He stepped around the next corner of the maze, munching an apple in his left hand as his sword quivered like a dog scenting prey. Merota followed, holding the apples in her tunic with both hands, and Ilna brought up the rear as before.
Several trees grew in the opposite wall of the hedge. One was a walnut, she thought. Nutmeats would be a good addition to the apples, though the capsules holding the nuts would stain her hands indelibly when she shucked them. Perhaps—A fat-bodied snake stepped on two short legs from the opposite end of the aisle. The creature was the size of a man, pale red in front and its back and tail covered with vivid blue scales. It raised a neck frill as Chalcus lunged forward.
“Look away!” Ilna shouted, closing her eyes. Her fingers knotted a pattern that she understood perfectly though she couldn’t have described if her life’d depended on it. Words were for the world’s Lianes; Ilna had her own way of communicating.
Merota’s scream muted into the desperate wheeze of someone drowning. Ilna lifted her pattern of cords and looked.
A shock lashed her. It felt like what’d she’d gotten from touching metal after walking across wool in a dry day. Merota stood paralyzed with her mouth open; Chalcus had fallen as if his legs were wood. His sword was outstretched and his eyes stared in horror.
Instead of a snake’s jaws, the creature had a blunt, bony beak like a squid’s. A forked blue tongue trembled from it in a high-pitched hiss. Ripples of blue and red played across its broad frill in a sequence as wonderfully perfect as a nightingale’s song. The pattern caught every eye that fell on it and gripped with the crushing certainty of a spider’s fangs.
The creature, taking one clumsy stride forward, saw the open fabric in Ilna’s hands. The rhythm of color in its frill broke, bubbled, and subsided into a muddy blur.
“Basilisk!” Merota shouted. She flung an apple at the creature. It bounced harmlessly away. The rest of the harvest fell to the ground.
Chalcus rolled to his feet. The creature leaped backward. The sailor was still off-balance so his sword notched the frill instead of skewering the long snake neck.
“My pardon!” the creature cried. It leaped onto a limb of the walnut tree; the stubby legs were as powerful as a frog’s. “My pardon, I didn’t realize you were Princes! The One hasn’t added new Princes in an age of ages!”
Chalcus jumped upward, his sword flickering left to right. The creature sprang over the hedge and into the aisle beyond.
“I beg your pardon, fellow Princes…,” it called, its voice trailing off behind its hidden flight.
“It was a basilisk!” Merota said, staring at the scars the creature’s claws had left in the bark.
“What did it mean by calling us Princes?” Ilna said, trying not to gasp.
Chalcus shot his sword and dagger home in their sheaths. He leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees to breathe deeply.
“What I’d like to know…,” he said to the ground in front of him. “Is who the One is?”
It was so dark that Garric couldn’t see his own hand at arm’s length, but he knew they were being stalked. He didn’t hear the predator, but changes in the sounds other marsh creatures made showed that something was disturbing them.
“Donria,” Garric said quietly. He slid the axe out from under the sash that was his only garment for the time being. He hoped that mud he’d splashed on the grip wouldn’t make it slippery. “Something’s moving up on us from behind. I want you to take the lead, but don’t make a fuss about it.”
“You’d have made a good scout, lad,” Carus whispered in his mind.
Perhaps, but what Garric had been was a shepherd. He’d learned to absorb his surroundings: the color of the sky and the sea, the way light fell on the leaves or the swirls of fog over the creek on coo
l mornings. Garric didn’t exactly look for dangers. He simply noticed things that were different a few minutes ago or yesterday or last year.
He’d heard a shift in the pattern of trills, chirps and clicking. The little animals he and Donria’d disturbed were remaining silent after they were well past. Previously the chorus of frogs and insects had resumed as soon as they went on.
“There’s a human following us, Garric,” said the Bird. “His name is Metz, but you think of him as Scar. He’s been lying in wait on the route Torag used to attack Wandalo’s village twice in the past.”
Garric stopped and straightened. He couldn’t see a thing. Besides darkness, the rain was falling as it had more hours than not during the day. He and Donria’d been moving since they broke out of Torag’s keep, and fatigue was taking a toll of him.
“Metz!” he called. “Scar! This is Garric! I’ve escaped from the Coerli and I’m here to help you!”
He’d come back to join Wandalo and his people, at any rate. He might or might not be able to help, but he was going to try.
Nothing happened for a moment; then Metz sloshed up from the darkness and came forward. He held what’d started as a fishing spear. A single hardwood spike now replaced the springy twin points intended to clamp a fish between them.
“How did you learn to speak our language?” he asked, obviously doubtful. Then, frowning in real concern he added, “And how did you see me? Nobody could’ve spotted me, not at night!”
“I listened to the frogs,” Garric said. “I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors too.”
He didn’t say that he’d been a shepherd. That wouldn’t have meant anything to Metz, since the only large animals he’d seen here were humans and their dogs.
The Bird landed on Garric’s shoulder. Its feet were solid pressures, but the glittering creature didn’t seem to weigh anything. “I am helping you speak to one another, but I can speak to you as well.”
“Master Garric?” said Donria, “is this man the chief of the village?”
“No, the chief’s named Wandalo,” Garric said. “This is the man who found me when I came here from my own land.”
