by David Drake
Mostly with herself. As usual.
Chalcus jumped aside as quickly as he’d come. The dog was already backing with the heads on either side turned away. The middle head was frozen in a look of slavering fury, like a trophy stuffed and nailed to the wall. The beast’s right foreleg dragged and there was a hitch in the movements of the left hind leg as well.
“This is my territory!” snarled the left head.
“You have no right to—” began the right head.
Ilna spread her fabric. The dog took the new pattern through the open eyes of its middle head. It dropped where it stood.
“Now,” said Ilna crisply. “You’re going to answer the questions we ask or my friend Chalcus will cut pieces off you. I’m going to change my pattern enough to allow you to speak. If you choose not to help, we’ll ask one of your fellow Princes, but we won’t do that so long as you’re alive.”
The dog’s breath stank of rotten meat. Knowing that the meat had been human wouldn’t change Ilna’s behavior, but neither did it dispose her to like the creature better. Instead of adjusting a knot of the pattern, she simply put the tip of her little finger over one corner.
The dog’s left head jerked around to glare at them. “This is an outrage!” it snarled. “You—”
Chalcus stepped forward and flicked out his sword. One ear of the head that’d spoken spun into the quickset hedge. The dog yelped much louder than before; the head thrashed violently but the creature couldn’t get away.
Merota gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth. Then she looked up with a distressed expression and said, “I’m sorry, Chalcus. He deserves it!”
“Ah, child,” Chalcus said. He grinned broadly. “This one deserves far worse, I’m sure; and if he’s stubborn I’ll take pleasure in giving worse to him, that I will.”
“We want to leave this tapestry,” Ilna said, “this garden if you prefer. What is the way out?”
“I don’t know—” said the dog. It jerked its head with a howl as Chalcus shifted minusculely.
“No!” said Ilna. “Not till I decide it’s not answering. Dog, where do you think the exit is? You Princes talk to each other, don’t you? You must talk about that!”
“We don’t know,” the dog said, speaking very carefully. Its tongue licked out of the narrow muzzle, trying to reach the blood slowly creeping from the severed ear. “No one has ever left the Garden. But some think…”
It licked again, this time swiping into the blood. The fur above where the tongue reached was matted and glistening.
“Some think, I say…,” the dog continued. “That perhaps the One built the temple in the center of the Garden to Himself. And perhaps when He finished the building, He took leave from the Garden at that place.”
“I saw the temple!” Merota said. “I was looking at it when I fell into the maze!”
“Aye,” said Chalcus. He’d sheathed his dagger so that he could very deliberately wipe the tip of his sword clean with a folded oak leaf. “And I too. What does it look like inside, this temple, good beast?”
The dog’s chest rose and fell as it breathed; Ilna had been careful to paralyze only the creature’s conscious control of its muscles. It would be very easy to freeze all movements, though, and to watch the dog slowly smother. How many little people had gone down those three gullets over countless years?
“I’ve never been there,” the dog said, its eyes rolling desperately. Perhaps it’d understood Ilna’s expression. “None of us have! It’s, well, we don’t know, of course, but some think, some imagine, that the other lives in the temple when it’s not hunting somewhere. None of us know, nobody knows, but if the other has a particular place, it could be there.”
“The other,” Ilna said. “The Shadow, you mean.”
She’d spoken with deliberate cruelty, so furiously angry at her prisoner that she risked summoning the Shadow just to make the dog howl in terror. As it did, voiding a flood of foul-smelling urine on the ground and its own hindquarters. Like breathing, that was an unconscious reaction. Merota squeezed her hands together and stared at Ilna.
“Gently, Ilna, dear heart,” said Chalcus, a look of concern in his glance. “If you want him killed, I’ll do that thing without regret; but if it’s answers we’re after, then he’s giving us those.”
“Yes, all right,” said Ilna coldly. “The other, then. What makes you think it lairs in the temple? Have you seen it there?”
“We don’t see it anywhere else, that’s the thing!” said the dog. “Except when it strikes. We’ve none of us been to the temple, I told you that! But there’s nowhere else it could be, is there?”
Ilna sucked her lower lip between her teeth and bit it. She knew what to do—what she would do—and she’d almost stated her wish as an order. She had to remember that hers was only one opinion among three, now.
“Master Chalcus, what would you that we do?” she asked formally.
“The longer we stay here,” said the sailor, “the likelier it is that we’ll meet something we’d sooner leave to itself. If the way out’s through this temple, then I’ll gladly go to the temple whatever it may be that lives there. I’d sooner we met it at home at a time of our choosing than from behind at a time of its.”
“Merota?” Ilna said. She could give orders to her companions and force them to agree as surely as she’d bound this three-headed dog to her will. She’d been that person once, in the days just after she’d come back to the waking world having journeyed to Hell.
Never again. No matter what.
“I want to leave, Ilna,” Merota said in a small voice. “I’m not afraid. When I’m with you and Chalcus, I’m not afraid.”
Ilna sniffed. “Aren’t you?” she said. “Well, I’m certainly afraid.”
But not for myself. If I was sure that I alone would die, I’d smile and go on.
“All right, then,” she said. “We’ll find the temple and then do as seems best.”
Chalcus flicked his sword so that the tip brushed the dog’s curling eyelashes before it could twitch its head away. “And this one?” he asked. “Shall we have him guide us, then?”
“I don’t need a guide to find a pattern, Master Sailor,” Ilna said in a tight, dry voice; her lip curled as if she’d swallowed vinegar. “There’s nothing about this beast that’ll please me as much as his absence. Stand back—and you, Merota.”
Her companions edged aside. Chalcus was trying to keep Ilna, Merota and the great dog all in view at the same time—and to watch lest something come up behind them. “I’m going to release you now,” Ilna said to the panting dog. “I don’t want to see you again. If I do, I’ll kill you. Depending on how I’m feeling at the time, I may or may not kill you quickly. I hope you understand.”
She folded the fabric between her hands and stepped back. The dog gave a spastic convulsion, its legs finishing the motions they’d started before Ilna’s pattern cut them adrift. The big animal lurched to its feet and blundered sideways into the quickset hedge. Spiked branches crackled, but despite the beast’s weight and strength the hedge held.
The dog got control of itself and backed away. “You belong with the other!” its middle head snarled. “The other has no honor and no courtesy. It’s a monster that kills. You belong with it, monster!”
Ilna started to raise her hands, spreading the pattern again. The dog turned and bolted out of sight, its great paws slamming back divots of sod.
Ilna shrugged, trying to shake off memory of the dog and its stinking breath. “To the left here,” she said, nodding to the junction of paths ahead of them. She sighed and began picking out knots to have the yarn ready for use the next time. “And to the left again at the next turning. Come! I have no wish to stay here.”
Merota put her little hand on Ilna’s arm as they strode off. “You’re not a monster, Ilna,” she said quietly.
“You’re wrong there, I’m afraid,” said Ilna. “But I’m your monster, child; and in this place, you need one.”
; Cashel heard the scholar get up, so he rose from his bedclothes also. It was still before dawn but light gleamed through the eastern wall where adobe hadn’t perfectly sealed the chinks between mastodon bones.
He reached over and tousled the boy’s short hair. “Wake up, Protas,” he said quietly. “We’re going off shortly.”
“I’m tired!” the boy said screwing his eyes tightly shut, but a moment later he threw off the tapestry covering him and sat up. He kept his face bent down, until he’d scrabbled under the covers and come out with the topaz crown. When he’d set it firmly on his head, he grinned shyly at Cashel and stood.
Antesiodorus was placing objects from his collection on a rectangle of densely woven cloth—a saddlecloth, Cashel guessed. It was figured in geometric patterns of black and white on a wine-colored ground. The scholar had already packed several books and scrolls; now he was choosing among the phials and caskets scattered along the sidewall.
“I can carry that for you if you like, sir,” Cashel said. The bindle would be pretty heavy over any distance at all, and Antesiodorus looked like a high wind’d blow him over.
“I would not like,” the scholar snapped. “You have your duties, I’m sure. You can leave me to mine.”
Cashel nodded and walked to the pottery water jar. It’d been glazed red over a black background; winged demons with female heads were tormenting a man tied to the mast of his ship.
“I’m sorry, Master Cashel,” Antesiodorus said to his back. “I’m upset because of what I’m being required to do, but that’s not your fault.”
“It’s all right,” Cashel said, smiling deep within himself. “Prince Protas and me know we’re strangers. We appreciate your help.”
He refilled the cup and gave it to the boy, who gurgled the water down greedily. This air was dry as could be.
Antesiodorus paused, then took a wand with a tentacled head from its shelf. Cashel thought first it was a plant, then realized it must be a sea lily like the ones that weathered out of a limestone bluff on the road from Barca’s Hamlet to Carcosa. Those were all turned to rock, though. The lily Antesiodorus slipped under his sash was dry, but it was fresh enough that Cashel could smell salty decay clinging to the hollow shell.
“Do you need something to eat?” Antesiodorus said, taking the cup from Protas and edging past Cashel to dip it full again. “It’s not far. That is…”
The scholar drank, paused, and finished the water. He looked doubtfully at the jar, then set the mug down.
“We’ll be there in at most two hours,” Antesiodorus said, looking squarely at Cashel. “If we can reach it at all. I assume that since you’ve been sent to me, there may be those who wish to prevent your journey?”
He raised an eyebrow in question.
Cashel shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I’m here to help Protas, but nobody told us what was going to happen.”
With a broad grin he added, “I’m used to people not telling me things. I wish it didn’t happen that way, but it does.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it matters,” Antesiodorus said with an angry scrunch of his face that made the words a lie. “We’d best be going. The sun’s up. That will keep the worst in their dens, but the more quickly we get the business over, the better off we are.”
He gestured them through the doorway and followed. Outside the scholar fingered the cape over the opening. He frowned and straightened, turning his back on the long dwelling.
“We’re going eastward,” Antesiodorus said. “I know it’s difficult to hold direction in these eroded gullies, but there’s a white peak on the horizon. You can orient yourself by it.”
Cashel grinned, thinking of what his sister would’ve said to a comment like that. “Yes, and I can breathe air, you city-bred fool,” or perhaps something more insulting.
But that was Ilna. Cashel being Cashel, he said instead, “I thought you might wear the cape this morning, sir. Instead of leaving it over the door.”
“Did you?” snapped Antesiodorus. He set off at a brisk pace among the rotting hills. Cashel could keep up, though he usually travelled at the rate a ewe ambled. Protas, walking ahead of him, wasn’t having trouble either. Occasionally he touched the crown, but it was firmly seated.
After a moment, the scholar said in an apologetic tone, “The cloak would only protect one of us. Better that it stay where it is so that if I don’t return, those who investigate can see that I was faithful to my trust.”
He looked over his shoulder at Cashel. “Do you understand that?” he said.
Cashel nodded. “I guess I do,” he said mildly.
The stretch of mounds and gullies gave way to short prairie. The grass was yellow-brown, but its roots were healthy enough to hold the soil. A small herd of browsers saw the three humans and fled northward in a gangling canter.
“Were those deer?” Cashel said. “They looked different from the deer I’ve seen before.”
“They were camels,” Antesiodorus said, “if it matters. You can be thankful if you see nothing worse.”
“Are the birds dangerous?” Protas said. He was looking up at the sky where three dots circled slowly upward on the morning breezes.
“Not unless you’re dead,” Antesiodorus said. “Or until you’re dead, perhaps I should say.”
“They’re buzzards, Protas,” Cashel explained quietly. “Though I’ve never seen buzzards so big. If I’m right about the size, they’d weigh as much as a man.”
The scholar had no need to snap at the boy that way, but he was obviously keyed up. People did that sort of thing.
“They’d weigh more than I do, at any rate,” said Antesiodorus. He looked back at the boy and then Cashel. “But they don’t kill prey themselves. There’s plenty of others to do that, but perhaps we’ll avoid them.”
A mixed herd was grazing on the southern horizon. There were horses for sure but the other things could be… well, could be a lot of things, none of them familiar. “Those deer have six horns, Cashel,” Protas said.
“They’re antelope,” Antesiodorus said, correcting him.
The land to the north sloped down slightly. In the middle distance was the bed of a stream, probably dry in this weather. Bushy cottonwoods fringed both banks, and deeper in the gully grew alders. The trees pulled water from the currents flowing under the ground.
“There’s a deer in the gully,” Cashel said. “Three of them, I think. See, Protas? Under the cottonwood that still has some of its leaves?”
He didn’t point; shepherds mostly didn’t. If you pointed at a ewe, she was likely to run off in a blind panic. That hurt the meat and made her give less milk both, and that was if she didn’t manage to tumble down a ravine and break her fool neck.
“Stand very still!” Antesiodorus ordered.
Cashel froze. “What—” said Protas, turning to Cashel in worried surprise. Cashel didn’t move or even scowl, but the boy took the hint from his perfectly blank expression.
“I never wanted to be a wizard,” Antesiodorus said softly, his face turned toward the watercourse. “I’m a scholar. I found things, that’s all. Found them in space and even in time, but only to study them.”
The three deer-headed humans stepped up from the gully to stand beside the big cottonwood. Two were men and one a woman. Like reindeer, she as well as the males had antlers. They were browsing the alders, plucking leaves off with their narrow muzzles.
“There were twelve of us in our sodality,” Antesiodorus continued. “Our brotherhood, I suppose I should say if I want you to understand.‘
“I know what a sodality is,” Protas protested in an injured tone.
Cashel frowned. He hadn’t known, but could generally figure out what people meant from the way they said it. Anyhow, when their guide was telling them things they might need to know, they shouldn’t interrupt.
The trio of deer-men stopped eating and stared intently in the direction of Cashel and his companions. After a moment they vanished into the gully so
suddenly that there didn’t seem to have been movement: they were on the bank and then they were gone.
Antesiodorus breathed out. “All right,” he said, “we can go on now.”
“Were they dangerous, sir?” Cashel asked, falling in behind Protas as he had in the past.
“No,” said Antesiodorus. “But when something’s hunting them, they’re in the habit of leading the hunter across the trail of prey that can’t run as fast as they do. And then running away.”
“What a cowardly act!” said Protas.
“What do you know about it, boy?” Antesiodorus snarled. “Do you know what it’s like to be hunted? Really hunted!”
“I’ve been hunted, Master Antesiodorus,” Cashel said. He didn’t raise his voice or let any emotion into it, but his tone made it clear that he was stepping in front of the boy now. Protas had put a foot wrong, which was a pity, but it wasn’t a thing he’d meant to do.
Their guide looked over his shoulder; his lean face was anguished. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose you have. But you always knew you could fight, didn’t you, Master Cashel?”
“Yes sir,” said Cashel. “But I haven’t known that I’d win every time. I just knew I’d rather die than live knowing that I’d handed my bad luck off to somebody else.”
Antesiodorus faced front and shifted a little to the left of the line he’d been following; a faint buzzing and a glitter of wings in the air showed that they’d been about to walk over a yellow-jacket hole. He said, “Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Being able to live with the person you find behind your eyes when you wake up in the darkness. But you haven’t had that problem, have you?”
“No sir,” Cashel said quietly.
There was a herd of big animals to the northeast, grazing in close company. There were more than Cashel could count on both hands. They acted like cows, but they were bigger and they had dark wool over their forequarters and horned heads. One of them watched the humans for a moment, then went back to its food.
