Queen Of Demons

by David Drake

  Scaled Men croaked in fear. The crossbow whacked. Something struck the ship.

  “Hold still,” Ilna said as the captain twisted to look at the other corner of the grating.

  The ship rocked the way a pond stirs when the first heavy drops of a thunderstorm hit and call down thousands more. Dozens, scores of the flyers were landing, on the deck and in the rigging. Their thumping impacts drowned the sailors' cries.

  “Three days out from Valles,” Cozro said, his face tight with fear, “they lined up in the bow to pray like before. I didn't say anything. I'd pretty well stopped talking to them anyhow. Then they turned around and came for me.”

  There was a choked shriek above; a sailor fell spread-eagled across the grating on his back. Winged men covered him, their bodies writhing like grubs in a week-dead rabbit. The killers blocked the light as their jaws crunched on and through bone. Blood dripped into the hold, and there was a charnel stench.

  “There wasn't a thing I could do,” Cozro said. He was shouting as much to conceal the sounds from above as so that Ilna could hear him. “I thought they were going to kill me. They argued and I think that's what it was about. Finally they tied me and threw enough oil nuts out of the hold so there was room for me.”

  The deckhouse door slammed. The flyers shifted away from the sailor's body, permitting a little moonlight to enter the hold. Only disarticulated bones and tags of cartilage remained of the corpse; that, and the fluids still dripping through the grate.

  “There,” Ilna said. “You're free.”

  “Lady save me,” Cozro muttered. “Please Lady save me.”

  Ilna took out a second hank of linen rope and frayed the end for splicing. She heard the rasp of teeth on wood; the flyers' fangs weren't meant for gnawjng through a ship's timbers, but she had no doubt they'd succeed before long.

  “There's a butt of water forward in this hold,” Cozro said. Sweat gleamed on his forehead. He refused to look up. “I stove the end in and let me tell you, that was a job with my hands and feet tied!”

  A flyer thrust the remains of the corpse aside and pressed its face against the grating. Its nose wrinkled like that of a horse scenting water. With increasing fury it began to bite the wood, all the time making a mewling sound.

  “I don't understand what's happening!” Cozro said. “I don't understand!”

  From the deckhouse came the sound of hoarse chanting. A whiff of bitter smoke drifted through the grating. The Scaled Men were at their rites again.

  More of the flyers dropped onto the grating. It was like watching foxes chew their way into a chicken coop—from the viewpoint of the chicken.

  Ilna sniffed. Her fingers spliced a third length of cord onto the growing noose. It wasn't the perfect weapon for tight quarters like this, but it would serve for a time.

  That's all you could say of anything or anyone, after all.

  Cashel sat up, stretched mightily, and grinned at his companions. “Umm!” he said. “I haven't felt this good since I don't remember when. Guess I needed that sleep.”

  Aria and Zahag were staring at him like—

  Like he was a ghost.

  Cashel stood, absently brushing gritty soil from his quarterstaff. “Look, I slept a little late,” he said defensively, “but I'm usually the first one up.”

  He glanced toward the horizon. The sun was still pretty low. “It's not like I slept half the morning—”

  The sun was low on the western horizon. He'd slept for the whole day.

  “Oh,” Cashel said. He shifted his posture, working all his muscles enough to know that he didn't have any stiffness. “Well, I don't know how that happened.”

  “You're all right?” Aria said. She continued to kneel near where he'd lain, some distance from the hole he'd scraped for his hipbone. “You're sure?”

  The princess held a wet rag—another scrap torn from her fluffy gown. She looked like a dandelion head after a thunderstorm, so bedraggled had the journey left her.

  “I'm fine,” Cashel said. He touched his forehead; it was damp. Aria had been mopping his brow to bring him out of what must been a deep stupor. He wouldn't have thought the girl had it in her. She must really have been afraid that he'd, well, left them.

  “We thought you were dead,” Zahag said, uncharacteristically subdued. “Your heart didn't beat but once in a great while. We couldn't rouse you any way we knew.”

  Cashel rubbed his right cheek, then his left. He'd been slapped hard—and pinched, he shouldn't wonder. Well, he might have done the same if it'd been Aria unconscious. The two of them sure weren't going to carry him like he carried Aria when she couldn't walk.

  He smiled broadly at the thought of him dangling over the princess's shoulder as she trudged up the mountain they had ahead of them. “Well, I'm all right now for sure,” Cashel said.

  His mood sobered. His image of the princess had brought to mind the three women of the night before. Any of them could have carried him as easily as he did Aria.

  “There's water close by here,” Zahag said, getting up on all four limbs and pacing a slow circle. “I guess we're not in a hurry, so another day isn't—”

  “The water tastes awful!” Aria said. She was still kneeling. “Oh, I thought something terrible had happened. I thought you were...”

  She couldn't get the word out. “Yeah, we both did,” Zahag said. “Dead as a stone. Your heart was going to stop the rest of the way and bing! you'd start to rot.”

  The ape shrugged, a gesture which the length of his arms amplified. “I didn't know what was going to happen next.”

  “Zahag?” Cashel said. “When you woke up, did you see tracks around the fire?”

  He waved a hand toward the patch of ground where he remembered the women dancing. Was that in a dream? “Over there, maybe?”

  “Huh?” said the ape. “What kind of tracks? I didn't see anything except you were sprawled on your back instead of your side like usual. And you wouldn't wake up.”

  Cashel walked into the brush in the direction from which the dancers had come. His legs pushed crackling stems aside. He didn't recognize the bushes, though they seemed pretty normal. He didn't suppose there was rain enough here to water the sorts of plants that grew near Barca's Hamlet.

  “Where are you going?” Aria cried on a shrilly rising note. “Cashel!”

  She started after him. This dry brush would catch on the gauzy remains of her dress and strip her stark naked if she wasn't careful.

  “I'm not going far,” he called. “I just want to see something.”

  It was closer than he'd imagined—a circle of pitted stone that might have been a well curb, only two or three double paces from the edge of the trail. If there was a shaft, windblown dirt had choked it long ago.

  “What are you doing, Cashel?” Aria said from just behind him. It was the first time he remembered her showing interest in what somebody else was doing except as it involved her.

  Come to think, she was probably worried he was going off and leaving her. He wouldn't do that. Of course, he'd never slept the sun around before either.

  “I'm just looking at, at this,” Cashel said. “I thought there might be something.”

  “Oh,” said Aria, moving around to his side. “It's a sacred precinct.”

  Cashel looked at her in puzzlement.

  “She means a temple!” Zahag snarled from across the little ruin. He muttered something else that might have been, “Strong back, weak mind!”

  “They're not statues,” Aria said. “They're caryatids. They held up the roof instead of columns.”

  The temple's roof had been tiled; at any rate, fragments of curved red tiles poked out of the soil nearby. The statues, the caryatids, had toppled, but the square bases were still in place on the curb.

  Cashel walked closer. Two caryatids lay on their backs. The marble had weathered to the point that all he could tell for sure about them was that they'd been women in flowing robes.

  The statue between those two lay face
down. Wind and rain had eaten the upper side as badly as it had those of the others, but the face was unmarked when Cashel rolled it over.

  He recognized the blond dancer's features from his dream the night before.

  Cashel laid the figure back the way he'd found it, then straightened. It was getting dark. When he looked up the slope ahead of them, he saw pale blue light wink.

  “Cashel?” the princess said in a subdued voice. “What are we going to do now?”

  Cashel thought he saw a light, anyway. There were a lot of illusions in this place.

  “I know it's late,” he said to his companions. “I think maybe I'd like to go on some tonight anyway. I, well... Maybe I see something!”

  “Nothing to keep us here,” Zahag said, sounding unusually agreeable. He clambered over the stone curb on his way back to the trail.

  Cashel and Aria followed him. Cashel glanced over his shoulder once.

  There were four bases but only three statues on the ground. He sort of wondered what had happened to the fourth one.

  The 25th of Heron

  Maurunus led two pages carrying a helmet and cuirass into Royhas' crowded stableyard where Garric and his immediate entourage were readying to attack the queen. “We've brought Master Garric's armor, sir,” the majordomo said to Royhas.

  Garric looked at the equipment winking in the early dawn. The pieces were silver-plated and decorated with scenes from the mythical founding of Valles: on the breastplate the Shepherd guided Val and his band of survivors from sunken Xadako to the mouth of the River Beltis, whose personification bowed to the newcomers. The helmet was chased with battles between Val and the autochthonous giants of Ornifal; on the crest, the Lady waved Her blessing over the carnage, an image Garric found blasphemous.

  Besides, the reliefs could catch a spearpoint. Not to mention that he'd feel like a poncing courtier wearing that gear.

  “It's beautiful,” said Liane, looking up from the slanted writing desk moved into the yard. She was checking off the messengers coming in from each district of the city. A pair of servants with short swords stood to either side of the small strongbox, but Liane paid each new arrival herself as soon as he'd given his information.

  “I can't wear that!” Garric blurted.

  “We've had it sized by eye,” Royhas said. “The straps have enough play in them that it ought to fit.”

  The nobleman was keyed up, but he wasn't peevish or frantic as somebody else in his place might have been. With the rebellion—attack, anyway—being launched from his town house, he'd at best be a fugitive if they didn't defeat the queen. Given the stories about the queen, death was by no means the worst possible result of failure.

  “Look,” Garric said. “If I've got to wear something, get me a proper set of battle armor.”

  Everyone in the stableyard looked at him: the six guards with dawning respect, most of the others in surprise.

  Royhas was simply irritated. “This isn't about a battle,” he snapped. “As you said last night when you were thinking more clearly, we can get people to do the fighting. Your job is to lead, and for that you have to be seen.”

  “Ah,” said Garric. Carus, very close to the surface of Garric's mind in these preliminaries to chaos, understood and agreed; though the disdain for the ornate gear had been as much his as Garric's own. “Yes, I see.”

  He unbuckled his broad sword belt without being asked. The cuirass rode on the flare of his hipbones as well as his shoulders. It wouldn't be a problem to wear the belt over the armor, because the long tongue had plenty of excess. The mind that had guided Garric as he chose his equipment was that of a consummate man of war.

  A guard took Garric's sword so that the pages could put the cuirass on him. The shoulder straps were riveted to the backplate and fitted onto hooks with pin closures on the front.

  As the pages started to lace the sides together. Garric said, “I'll do that myself. How can you decide how I want it to ride?”

  Liane gave him a tiny smile. Royhas frowned slightly and said, “Of course. We didn't realize you knew how to adjust armor.”

  Garric did up the leather laces—tight at the bottom but increasingly looser up the sides, trading the risk of a spearpoint through the gap for the greater flexibility the rig gave him. His fingers moved in practiced reflex—not his practice, but his reflex now.

  He smiled. Since Garric had begun wearing the medallion of King Carus, he'd had no privacy. No matter what he did, he'd had an awareness of another figure standing closer than his shoulder, watching through his own eyes.

  But there wasn't any real privacy for a boy growing up in a rural village anyway, so Garric didn't feel he'd lost much. He'd gained a world of knowledge and abilities.

  His fingers paused. His face must have changed, because Royhas said in concern, “Is there a problem with the armor?”

  Garric tied off the lace with a double knot. “No,” he said. “I was just thinking about the number of things I wouldn't need to know if I'd stayed the rest of my life in Barca's Hamlet.”

  “If you'd done that,” said Tenoctris, sitting on the cushion of the sedan chair in which she would ride, “there wouldn't have been a Barca's Hamlet for very long. Not that the parties who brought you into the wider world would have let you stay.”

  She smiled. “I'm afraid I'd have prodded you myself if I'd had to.”

  Garric's laugh was an echo of Carus' own. “Well, what's already happened doesn't matter now,” he said. “There's enough in the future to worry about, of that I'm sure.”

  Royhas spoke to a groom with a mustache whose tips drooped below the level of his chin. The man bowed and disappeared into the stone-built stables behind them.

  Garric took the helmet from the page, though for the moment he tucked it under his arm instead of putting it on. Helmets were miserably uncomfortable to wear. Carus had often gone into battle with only a diadem on his head, leaving the helmet in his tent.

  “I took risks I didn't have to, lad,” a voice murmured at the edge of Garric's consciousness.

  “Sometimes there're risks you do have to take,” Garric said aloud, looking around the company that was waiting for him to lead them. The others thought he was speaking to them; and so he was, in part. “Liane, how are things looking?”

  “We've had at least one report from all the districts but Fourteen and Sixteen,” she said. “The rumors have gotten around. People are out in the streets, and several of the queen's officials have been attacked.”

  Districts Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen were across the Beltis, cut off from the general business of the city. The queen's presence was light there anyway.

  The mustached groom came out of the stables, leading a tall gelding whose coat was colored a gray so pale that only a purist would refuse to call it white. It carried a parade saddle; the high pommel and crupper were covered in chased silver plates.

  Garric started to open his mouth, then caught his words and laughed again. He didn't need to be told twice. “Royhas, is that my mount?” he said.

  “Yes, ah...” Royhas said. “Ah, have you ridden a horse before?”

  “I'll ride the horse,” Garric said. “I understand. But get that rig off him—indeed, I'll be safer bareback.”

  “This—” the nobleman said.

  “That's designed to keep me from falling off a horse's back,” Garric said, overriding the explanation. “It'll keep me from jumping off in a hurry if something panics the horse, too.”

  “Ah,” Royhas said. “Yes, I can imagine a horse being less steadfast than you, Master Garric.”

  He gave the groom a curt nod. The man shouted something incomprehensible into the stable and uncinched the parade gear. A boy staggered out of the building carrying a saddle designed for light city use, perfectly satisfactory for the present tasks.

  “That may mean horses have better sense than men do, Lord Royhas,” Garric said. Somewhere close, King Carus was grinning broadly.

  There were at least fifty people in
the stableyard: guards, servants, bearers for Tenoctris' chair—the effort of wizardry would be bad enough without the old woman trying to run over cobblestones in the midst of a jostling crowd—and the principals themselves. Garric frowned when he noticed that not only stablehands but also the house servants, even pudgy Maurunus, carried wooden cudgels.

  “They're to defend the house while we're gone?” Garric said in Royhas' ear. He lifted his chin slightly to indicate the majordomo.

  Royhas snorted. “The house can burn,” he said. “I won't need it if we fail. Every man in Valles who owes me service will be with me this morning to make it less likely that we will fail. This is neck or nothing, Master Garric.”

  Garric clapped the nobleman on the shoulder. Royhas wore a cuirass also, plates of blackened iron riveted to padded leather backing. The cap he held was brown plush, but it had an iron cup under the soft exterior. It was excellent equipment for an urban riot: good protection without making the man wearing it stand out from the crowd.

  Standing out was Garric's job, after all.

  “This isn't a fight about who calls himself king,” Carus whispered. Garric could almost see his ancestor standing on the dreamy balcony, looking down on the courtyard with his face as calm as a boulder but his right hand playing with the hilt of his sword. “This is about having a chance to live in peace and die in your own home; and it isn't only for people with 'bar' or 'bos' in front of their names.”

  Female servants were coming out of the house also; not all of them but most. Some carried kitchen knives, and a woman's arm could fling a cobblestone.

  Garric grinned at Tenoctris and Liane. The younger woman had folded her account book and put it in her sleeve. She took the silver water bucket that she insisted on carrying herself and nodded to Garric.

  As for Garric, well, his horse was resaddled.

  The people of Valles were the key to success or failure. Liane had sensibly suggested they wait till midmorning so that the populace would be up and dressed; it was midmorning now, or close enough to make no difference.