by David Drake
“You wouldn't know that, Halphemos,” the crippled man said as his companion obeyed him. “Be thankful that you don't.”
“You're wizards, good masters,” Maidus said. He didn't flinch as the needle pricked, then dragged the thread through his skin, but the tears continued to run down his cheeks. “I hated you for taking Mistress Ilna away, but now it's only you who can help. Please bring her back, masters. She's the best thing that ever happened to the Crescent. She's the best thing that ever happened to the world!”
Cerix snorted. Halphemos glanced at him warningly, but Maidus seemed to ignore everything but his own misery.
“And as for negotiating in Ilna’s place...” Cerix said as his fingers worked. He'd lived for twenty years as a traveling entertainer; first aid was one of the skills that had kept him alive during that time. “Even if it weren't her own money involved, she'd think you were mad to suggest you could get a better deal than she would. As for her safety, I dare say she's in less danger now than whatever it is that captured her.”
Cerix pulled the needle off the end of the thread. “All right,” he said. “You can take a drink before I knot it.”
Maidus straightened and took the drugged wine. He swallowed it in three convulsive gulps. Breathing hard, he looked from one man to the other. “But can she come back?” he asked. “Can you bring her back?”
The cripple's hands were trembling; they hadn't been while he stitched the cut. The boy had come to them as soon as he regained consciousness, blurting his story of Mistress Ilna’s abduction by scaly monsters. Cerix could close his wound, but for the rest—for the real need that had brought Maidus to them—he was helpless and knew it.
“We have her cloak,” Halphemos said brightly. “We can use a location spell, don't you think?”
He picked up the garment that Maidus had been clutching to him. Dried blood crackled from the fabric. The wool was so tightly woven that drips from the boy's scalp hadn't penetrated.
Cerix looked at the box, empty now, where he kept his pellets of anodyne. “The spells we used to locate Ilna before would work again if she were close enough,” he said. “With your strength as a wizard we could probably find her anywhere in the Isles, though getting to her is another matter. We don't have the price of the room left.”
Or the price of Cerix's drug. He would willingly sleep under a stormy sky if he had half a dozen pellets to soften the spasms of his demon-tortured legs.
“We've earned money before!” Halphemos said. “I don't want to waste time, but we can earn our way to wherever she is. We owe it to her and to her brother.”
Cerix didn't know what was owed to anyone. He doubted that Ilna had been taken because of anything he and the boy had done; he doubted even that Halphemos was responsible for casting Cashel out of the waking world.
But he knew that he would have died long since if the boy who owed Cerix nothing in Cerix's own terms hadn't cared for a man whose arrogance and stupidity had left him a legless cripple.
“We can earn money, yes,” Cerix said. “Enough to take us anywhere in the Isles, I suppose. But if the creatures who took Ilna are what I think they are, she's no longer in the world we walk—”
His mouth quirked at the unintended humor.
“You walk, that is,” he said. “And she's not in a place where my knowledge can find her, let alone bring her back.”
Halphemos gave the older man a stricken look. “But...” he said. “We have to get her back!”
Maidus had curled up on the floor of the room, sleeping from trauma and exhaustion as much as from the drug. They'd have to get him to the watch captain whom Ilna had appointed his guardian.
A single pellet was a sizable dose for a boy who wasn't used to it. Perhaps they should have given him half or even less. Then Cerix could have—
He laughed harshly at himself. “Yes,” he said, “perhaps we do. But I don't know...”
His voice trailed off because he'd noticed the pattern on the cloak in Halphemos' hands when the light of the room's single candle slanted across it. “Stop!” Cerix said. “Don't move.”
Halphemos lowered the cloak fractionally. It was an unconscious twitch.
“Don't move the cloak!” Cerix said. He shifted the chair on which he sat, then cocked his head so that he could again see what he'd thought was there.
Halphemos stood like a statue. He was used to repeating incantations precisely, though the sounds meant nothing to him. He was calm, waiting for his friend to explain when there was leisure to do so.
Cerix leaned back in his chair. “Put the cloak down on the floor,” he said in a soft voice. “Don't fold it, though I doubt it would make any difference. Mistress Ilna doesn't do work that won't stand up.”
“The cloak?” Halphemos said as he spread it on the table.
“The fabric was stressed when the Scaled Men pulled it off her,” Cerix said. “Or perhaps she did it herself, I don't know.”
He wondered what it would be like to have such power. He couldn't imagine it. All the power Cerix really wanted now was the power to get a large enough supply of pellets to make his pain go away. Perhaps forever...
“Cerix?” Halphemos said.
The cripple smiled at him. “There are symbols in the Old Script in the weave, now,” he said. “When the light is right, I can read them. I suppose they'll form an incantation that can lead us to Ilna.”
Joy transfigured Halphemos' face. “The Lady has blessed us!” he said. He fell to his knees. “Oh, Cerix, I knew there'd be a way! There had to be!”
“I don't know about the Gods,” Cerix said. “I particularly don't know about them having anything to do with Ilna. I think she has more in common with the winds and tides than she does with anything you'd worship.”
Halphemos crawled around the spread cloak. He was trying to find the angle that would bring out the writing, not that he could read it. He wasn't listening...and that didn't matter, because Cerix knew he'd really been speaking to himself.
To have such power...
“I'll parse out the symbols,” Cerix said wearily. “It'll probably take days, so we'll have to go back on the street tomorrow for the rent money.”
Halphemos nodded without looking around. “No more visions of King Valence this time,” he said.
“No,” Cerix agreed. But he knew now what he'd seen in the globe of red light. An incantation that led him and Halphemos to Ilna would risk bringing them to that Beast in more than image.
Ilna os-Kenset might survive such a meeting. Ordinary humans couldn't possibly do so.
Such power...
The 22nd of Heron
Sharina awoke. The rain had stopped. She thought the time was probably closer to dawn than sunset, but the forest canopy concealed the moon and stars so she couldn't be sure.
Hanno slipped out the other side of the leaf-roofed shelter which Sharina had built wide enough for two. The hunter moved soundlessly, though his spear made a soft, sucking motion when he drew its butt from the ground.
Sharina joined him, tensely conscious that her feet squelched on the wet soil. A frog changing position on a leaf made more noise, but it wasn't frogs against which she judged her performance on this night.
A demon of gray light slid into the clearing. It passed through the buttress root of a forest giant. Though the phantasm's legs moved, its feet stepped sometimes over, sometimes under, the surface of the soil.
Its bright yellow eyes were almond-shaped and slanted. They were the only part of the creature that were real.
The phantasm paused. Neither Hanno nor Sharina moved. Sharina had left her own spear inside the shelter, she wasn't used to having it. She slid the Pewle knife from its case of black sealskin and waited.
The creature glowed enough to be visible, but Sharina could see the wrinkled outline of the tree's bark through the elongated torso. A dozen Hairy Men, all males, appeared at the edge of the clearing. They carried unworked stones or lengths of tree limb which had been pounded shor
t to make usable clubs.
The phantasm extended its arms to the side, then swept them forward in command. The Hairy Men lurched toward the two humans.
“Watch my back!” Hanno said.
The hunter let the leaders reach the creek, then rushed them. Instead of stabbing, he hooked his spear in a broad arc as if he were a reaper using a scythe. He jumped back, leaving a tangle of corpses in the rivulet. Three of the Hairy Men were dead; only one of the trio was long enough about his dying to scream before blood choked his throat.
Hooting with fear, the survivors recoiled from the carnage. Several of them had dropped to all fours in their panic. The heavy blade of Hanno's spear had cut sideways through the ribs of one of the victims, leaving the upper and lower portions of his chest joined only by the spine, The humid air stank of gore and feces.
Hanno drew deep breaths through his open mouth; Sharina panted quickly. Neither of them spoke.
The phantasm swelled and subsided. If smoke could have an expression, it was furious. It gestured the gibbering Hairy Men forward again.
Hanno bellowed. He leaped the creek and brought his spear around in another terrible cut, this time aiming at the shining wraith. The blade sliced the phantasm like water and drove all the way to the shaft in the tree behind.
The trunk shuddered. Hanno grunted with the shock of hitting something too massive for even his great strength to thrust aside. Two Hairy Men leaped toward him.
Sharina stepped forward, raising her knife to chop rather than stab. Hanno caught the club swinging toward him from his left. Simultaneously his right foot lashed out, flinging his other attacker sideways with a broken breastbone. The hunter pulled the club forward and put a hand on the wielder's rib cage. He flailed the Hairy Man against the tree and hopped back.
Hanno's victim slipped down the trunk, every bone in his torso smashed. The great spear still quivered in the living wood. Even a giant like Hanno would need to work the blade back and forth edgewise to free it.
The remaining Hairy Men crouched snarling, but the phantasm's gestures could no longer drive them forward. Sharina used the lull to snatch up her spear. “Here,” she said, holding the weapon out so that Hanno could grasp it at the balance.
“Keep it,” the hunter growled. He slid Ansule's axe from beneath his belt with his right hand and drew one of his long butcher knives with his left.
The phantasm paled and vanished except for its yellow eyes. The Hairy Men mewled in abject fear. One of them pressed his face on the ground and covered his head with both hands.
A corkscrew of fire bloomed in the air where the phantasm had stood. It was the dirty red of burning tar. In a moment the flames had filled a portion of air in the shape of a man.
The fire wraith staggered forward, moving with the stiffness of a stilt-walker. Its extended hands rained blazing droplets.
“Sister drag you down!” Hanno screamed. He leaped toward the creature, swinging the axe in a stroke so swift it was a glitter rather than a motion. The steel struck the wraith where a human's neck would have joined his shoulders.
The axe head exploded into white sparks. Hanno somersaulted backward. The hairs of his scalp and beard stuck out like the fluff of a ripe dandelion. Half the axe's wooden helve had been blasted into splinters. They burned a cleaner red than the wraith.
The creature moved forward. The wet soil popped and sizzled.
Hanno lay at Sharina's feet. His eyes and mouth were open, and his limbs twitched uncontrollably. The fire wraith hopped over the creek.
Sharina dropped her knife and spear. She lifted the kettle by both handles. Three gallons of water and the bronze container besides made a considerable weight.
The fire wraith reached for Hanno's throat. Sharina threw the kettle into the center of the creature's chest. There was a roar like water hitting boiling oil. Gobbets of flame blew in all directions.
The forest crashed as Hairy Men galloped away in blind terror, colliding with trees and tearing their way through lesser vegetation. Fires winked in a score of places, some of them high in the canopy. Damp foliage would shortly smother the flames.
The fire wraith had vanished. For a moment Sharina thought she saw the phantasm's almond eyes glaring from the empty air; then they were gone as well.
She didn't remember being knocked backward, but she sat on the ground several paces from where she'd been when she flung the kettle. The Pewle knife lay before her. She grabbed it and half-walked, half-crawled to Hanno.
The hunter was moving his arms with volition, but he wasn't strong enough to roll onto his belly. His beard smoldered. Sharina smeared it with a handful of muddy clay.
Hanno sighed and seemed to relax. He turned over with less effort than he'd expended in his failures moments before. He lifted his torso onto his hands and said, “Did you kill it, girl?”
“It's gone,” Sharina said. “I don't know if it'll come back.”
Sharina had bits and pieces of memory, like the fragments of a shattered glass bowl. She wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to join them into a connected memory of the attack.
She wasn't sure she wanted to.
The kettle's rim was of doubled thickness. It and the ring handles lay nearby, warped from the heat. The rest of the bronze had been blasted into streaks of green fire.
Hanno chuckled. “You'll do, missie,” he said. He got to his feet with the care his size demanded but with no sign of pain or stiffness.
He spread his right hand, the one that had swung the axe into the fire wraith. “Will you look at that?” he said, flexing it slightly.
Already Sharina could see the puffiness. Dawn would show the red of a bad burn, even though two feet of hickory had separated Hanno from the thing his axe struck.
Hanno grinned. “Well, it won't keep me from rowing,” he said. “Missie, I figure you and me are heading back to Valles in a couple days when my hands're in shape to climb down the cliff to the boat. Have you got any problem with that?”
“No,” Sharina said. The air of the forest was already brighter.
She used a wad of dry moss to wipe mud from the blade of her knife. “No,” she repeated, “I'd be glad to do that.”
Garric and his companions sat with the five conspirators at a semicircular table in the dining hall of the Glassblowers Guild. The room was rented anonymously for the meeting. They wore oversized theatrical masks of papier-maché and robes of nondescript brown velvet which concealed their features and even sexes. The trumpet built into the lower half of each mask was intended to project an actor's voice; it had the effect of distorting normal speech as well.
The man standing at the hub of the table's arc was in his early twenties. He wore his chestnut hair and mustaches long, and he dressed in a flashy mixture of silk, velvet, and gilded bronze.
His name was Gothelm or-Kalisind. He was one of the sixty servants in the queen's mansion, and his gambling had left him in debt to men who were more than willing to make an example of him.
“First the money!” he said. “I won't tell you anything without the money!”
“He's broken already,” said King Carus, watching the proceedings from the balcony at the side of Garric's dream self. “He's looking for an excuse to talk.”
“Why?” asked Garric. Because he needed to understand what the traitor was saying more than he needed to question the man himself, Garric had allowed himself to drift into a reverie. His fatigue had helped the process, but experience made him increasingly comfortable about sharing a psyche with his ancient ancestor.
The figure on the right end of the table—Tadai, though the full robe made his plump form indistinguishable from Waldron's lean muscularity—dipped a hand into the opposite sleeve. He came out with a purse which he tossed contemptuously to Gothelm's feet. The gold clanked musically on the stone floor.
“He's angry with the queen—or her steward, I suppose,” Carus explained, “for not bailing him out of the mess. It's their fault that he had to give information to these con
spirators, you see. Not his. It's never the fault of Gothelm's sort.”
Carus was smiling. It looked as though the king really thought the situation was funny.
Gothelm bent to pick up the purse, dropped it, and then snatched it with both hands. He tried momentarily to open the drawstrings, but his fingers were trembling too badly.
“All right!” the traitor said, speaking loudly to conceal his fear. “What do you want to know, then?”
Garric grinned at Carus. It was funny if you looked at it the right way. A rural village was a hard enough school that Garric could appreciate the sort of humor that Carus had picked up on battlefields. There were times that the only jokes were grim ones—and then especially, it was better to laugh.
“Describe the path to the gate by which you enter,” the midmost conspirator asked. The mask made Tenoctris' voice resonate. Oddly, the gravity of the false sound better fit Garric's impression of the old woman than her real birdlike tones did.
“It's bare cobblestones for the ten feet nearest the walls,” Gothelm said willingly. His hands continued fondling the purse, framing the outline of one coin after another through the thin suede. “When you step in, it's a hundred times that wide and it's a garden. The plants, I guess you'd call them plants, have teeth on the leaves and faces in their petals.”
“This is the same view that you see from outside when somebody else walks toward the gate?” Royhas asked. He kept even his hands hidden within his robe's loose sleeves.
“Yes, yes,” Gothelm said in irritation. “You can see it from inside too, when there's somebody in the garden. And you can see the stepping stones. You walk on them and you're all right. Only if you're not supposed to be there the stones let you get into the middle and poof! they're gone. I've seen that!”
Sourous nodded his head. The exaggerated height of his mask gave magisterial importance to the gesture. “Yes, yes,” he murmured. “It's a terrible thing.”
“How do you identify yourself to the maze?” Tenoctris asked.
