Queen Of Demons

by David Drake

  It made Cashel acutely uncomfortable to hear Sharina referred to as his beloved. She was, right enough—he certainly wasn't going to correct the king—but it wasn't something he talked about.

  Cashel gripped his quarterstaff harder. He'd sure never used the word to Folquin. Did everybody in the world see what to Cashel was the most private feeling there was?

  “Yes, I appreciate exactly how you're looking after my friend Cashel, Your Majesty,” Aria said. Judging by her tone, she didn't think much of Folquin's word choice either.

  Aria turned to Cashel and put her fingertips on the backs of his hands. “Cashel,” she said, “I know you'll succeed in whatever you set out to do. You brought me here where I belong. No one else could have done that.”

  She looked to the side for a moment as if collecting her thoughts. Without meeting Cashel's eyes again she continued, “Still, I'll pray to the Mistress God for your well-being. And you know—”

  Aria faced him squarely. She was a tiny little thing but by Duzi! he'd seen weasels that weren't half so fierce as the princess when she was in the mood.

  “You know that you'll always be welcome on Pandah,” Aria said. She looked at Folquin. “Doesn't he, dear?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” the king said, staring at the pattern the toe of his sandal was tracing on the brick quay. “Ah, I think the captain is ready to cast off now, Master Cashel.”

  “Right,” said Cashel, thankfully turning away from his hosts. The gangplank creaked and the ship rubbed her bumpers of coir matting against the quay as Cashel's weight shifted it. “May the Lady keep you well, Princess. And you too, King.”

  Crewmen bow and stern had already singled up the lines. The piper seated cross-legged in the far stern blew a shrill note; all the oarsmen along the right side shoved the vessel away from the dock with the ends of their oars.

  Cashel looked for a place to sit; there was barely space to stand on the narrow deck with the extra rowers all squeezed aboard. Zahag hopped onto the sternpost which curved up over the steersman and captain. The former yelled in surprise, but the captain shushed him with a snarl.

  The piper began a two-note call, changing it by fingering the stops in his single reed pipe. The oarsmen fell into a rhythm, though their strokes were short ones until the ship began to slide forward.

  Cashel waved once toward the figures on the quay, then eased his way back to stand beside the piper. There wasn't really room, but by gripping the sternpost with his free hand he could sit on the gunwale and lean out safely enough.

  Zahag was still looking shoreward. “Except for being so scrawny, Aria isn't bad at all,” the ape said. “I'll be interested to see what this Sharina's got that Aria didn't.”

  Cashel looked up. “Don't say anything like that again,” he said, “unless you want to swim to wherever you're going. Understand?”

  The ape hunched to the post as tight as a barnacle. The water was already hissing past the bireme's hull. “You bet I do, chief,” he said. “No, no, never again.”

  Princess Aria was wearing a layered white dress as much like what she was used to as the seamstresses on Pandah could make. It was funny how far away Cashel could see that white speck in the sunlight, still waving.

  Ilna paused to get a closer look at where her guides were taking her. The afternoon sun slanted across an entrance porch set into the face of a limestone hill. The delicate carvings on the roof were thrown into sharp relief despite the effect of long weathering.

  One of the six pillars supporting the porch had fallen into the road leading up to it. Ilna’s eyes narrowed when she noticed that the shaft had split at an angle instead of falling into separate stone barrels.

  “This whole place was cut out of the front of the hill,” she said. And very ably cut, too. No one could fault the craftsmanship of Third Atara's stonemasons.

  “Yes, that's right,” Hosten said. He and his troops had become more and more taciturn as they approached the tomb. “The Elder Romi had it built before he died.”

  “It was finished the very hour he died,” one of the soldiers said. “He'd foretold his death that close.”

  “That's a legend,” Hosten said sharply. “It may have happened, it may not.”

  He looked at Ilna and added, “There are many stories about the Elder Romi both before and after he died, mistress. If I were you, I'd go back to Divers immediately and find a ship.”

  “That's if he died,” muttered another of the soldiers. This time Hosten didn't rebuke him.

  “It hasn't been such a pleasant jaunt that I'd care to have had it for nothing,” Ilna said as she strode toward the entrance. “Besides, I said I'd do it.”

  They'd come most of the two miles from the palace by carriage. Hosten had offered her a horse, but Ilna had never ridden an animal before and didn't think that making a fool of herself by falling off during the journey was going to improve her mood.

  They'd walked the last hundred paces. Earthshocks like the one that threw down the pillar had broken the roadway into tilted blocks. The jumble was hard enough for humans to traverse, let alone a horse or the wheels of a carriage.

  “It's a natural cave,” Hosten explained as he followed a short distance behind her. “Only the entrance was shaped. People say that it goes all the way down under the sea.”

  The Inner Sea wasn't visible from where Ilna stood, but she could hear the whisper of waves on the shore now that it was called to her attention. She wasn't concerned about the cave extending underwater. If the stone walls had lasted this long, it wasn't likely that the sea would rush in just in time to drown Ilna os-Kenset.

  She smiled slightly. That event would end her responsibility to Halphemos and Cashel and all the people she'd wronged in the past year, of course. Well, if the Gods existed, she doubted that they were going to let her off so easily.

  “The coffin was ice cold,” a soldier said. “They—”

  “That's enough!” Hosten snarled.

  Ilna turned her head. “Let him speak,” she said. “Legend or not, I want to hear it.”

  Hosten turned his back, his hand squeezing and releasing the hilt of his sheathed sword as he tried to work off tension and anger. “Go on,” Ilna said to the soldier who'd spoken.

  The man cleared his throat. His hair was a carrot-colored tangle that stuck out to all sides beneath the rim of his simple iron helmet. “The story...” he said. “It was my uncle who told me when I was a little boy. They put Romi in a silver coffin.”

  “He didn't have any friends,” volunteered another soldier. “All he had was servants and they were none of them from Third Atara. None of them human, some said.”

  “Anyway, the coffin got cold as cold could be,” the first man continued. “They carried him down in the cave, all the way to the end, and there was a pool of water there. They put the coffin in the pool of water and it started to boil. They all ran back out of the cave, and the steam was coming up after them all the way to the surface again.”

  “And who told this story that your uncle told you, Digir?” Hosten said in an angry voice. “Was it one of those servants who weren't human, is that it? It's all legend!”

  “Did you go down in the cave, Lord Hosten?” said the man who'd talked of Romi's servants. “When you were a boy, I mean; on a dare? I did.”

  Hosten turned to face the others. The afternoon sun shone on him, but his skin looked sallow. “Once. I went to the first bend, where it starts to slant down steeply. My torch went out. I ran back as if the Sister herself was snatching at my heels.”

  He looked squarely at Ilna. “Don't go in there, mistress,” he said. “Maybe there's nothing really down there, but it's the coldest feeling on earth. Don't go.”

  Ilna shrugged. To the man who'd brought the lantern with him she said, “If you'll light that, I'll take care of my business and the rest of you can go home.”

  The men looked at their commander. “We'll wait for you, mistress,” Hosten said. “We'll wait till the moon sets. Midnight, that
is.”

  The soldier opened a little shutter on the back of the lantern's brass frame. He inserted the glowing punk which he carried in a tube on his belt, then blew gently. Here in the sun it was barely possible to tell that the wick had caught. He handed the lantern to Ilna.

  “I'll hope to see you, then,” Ilna said as she turned and walked up the three shallow steps to the entrance. One of the soldiers muttered a response—or he might have been talking to his fellows.

  Only the first short distance of the cave had been squared by the hand of man. That was as far as light from outside penetrated as well. Though the lantern glowed, it illuminated little except its own horn lenses so far as Ilna was concerned. Her eyes seemed slow adapting to changes in the light; perhaps it was her recent diet.

  “Down” was an easy direction, anyway. There were no obstacles except a leather cap lying on the ground twenty paces or so from the entrance. Ilna remembered her escorts' tales of boys daring one another to enter the Elder Romi's tomb. Girls had better sense than that sort of nonsense.

  She smiled faintly. Though what was she doing here, unless it was accepting Baron Robilard's dare?

  Ilna found she could see better as she proceeded. The walls of the cave were damp. Beneath the moisture was a layer of flow rock, limestone dissolved and redeposited in opalescent layers. Both reflected the lantern light in a bright haze that hid details.

  Here and there symbols and perhaps names were carved into the rock. For almost a thousand years the folk of Third Atara had been trying prove that they were braver than a dead man—and proving instead that they were fools and destructive fools besides. Not that this island or any island had a monopoly on fools.

  Ilna reached the bend Hosten had mentioned. The cave twisted left. The rock was grubby from the hands of youths gripping it as they peered around the corner and down the steep descent beyond. There were no deliberate markings here, though; visitors hadn't lingered long enough to make them.

  Water gurgled in the far distance. Ilna felt a gust from the depths. Did the cave rise again to the open air?

  As Hosten had said, it was very cold. Probably because of the damp rock... and anyway, Ilna had been cold before. She started down the slope.

  Ilna didn't like stone, and stone didn't like her. The path's wet slickness made her feet slip. She caught herself by slapping her left palm against the rounded sidewall.

  She smiled again. Dislike—her own or that of others for her—wasn't a new experience. She didn't let it bother her, either way.

  The cave kept going down. Ilna wondered how those bearing the Elder Romi's coffin had managed to keep their footing. It wasn't a difficult path apart from the steepness, though.

  Ilna was starting to see things in the walls, as though creatures had been entombed in the flow rock. That was nonsense, she knew: discolorations in the underlying rock were further distorted by the lantern light passing through the glistening surfaces of water and translucent stone. She glared at the shapes because she thought that keeping her eyes down on the path might suggest she was afraid.

  Ilna laughed. Suggest to who? To the soldiers waiting a lifetime away in the sunlight, perhaps? She patted what would have been the snout of a gaping monster if the shadows hinted the truth.

  It felt so cold that the slime on the walls of the cave would have frozen had the sensation been real. Something was toying with Ilna's mind, threatening her with illusions. Her fury when she realized she was being played with warmed her. Prayer might have done the same for someone who had more belief in the Great Gods than Ilna os-Kenset did.

  The lantern was growing dimmer. Ilna stopped and examined it. She could feel a sufficiency of oil sloshing in the reservoir. She tried adjusting the wick, first up and then down. She tilted the lantern slightly in case there wasn't a proper length of wick within the tank.

  The flame sank to a faint blue glow. Ilna set the lantern near the side of the cave, where a knob would keep it from skidding down on its own. She proceeded without it, touching the left wall with her fingertips.

  It grew colder. Ilna’s lips pursed in a moue of anger.

  Ilna would be the last to deny her responsibility for the two wizards who'd followed her from the Garden, but she knew now that she wasn't doing this for Halphemos or Cerix. She was doing it because Baron Robilard was a boy with more power than judgment. He wasn't evil at heart, but he squeezed his subjects and browbeat his associates because there was no one to stop him from doing it and no desire to stop himself.

  He'd just tried to do the same thing to Ilna os-Kenset. When this business was over, Baron Robilard would have learned something. Granted, he might not have long to profit from his lesson.

  Ilna heard water plashing ahead of her. She supposed it was a persistent drip from the cave roof, amplified by echoes. She continued downward at a measured pace, guiding herself by the touch of her hand.

  She was beginning to see again. The cave walls glowed a blue as pale as starlight. Perhaps the light had always been there and it had taken her eyes this long to adapt to it.

  The floor of the cave leveled out. Ahead of her was a pool. Water patted the margins, making the sound Ilna had taken for dripping.

  There was no question of going on: the cave ended at the pool.

  Ilna walked to the edge and knelt. She was trembling uncontrollably. The feeling of cold was real, though her breath didn't hang in the air before her as it would on a winter morning in Barca's Hamlet.

  Ilna bowed as she would have done on being presented to any person of age and respectability. Gazing into the pool, she said, “Master Romi, I am Ilna os-Kenset.”

  The water was as clear as a diamond. It had the same vague glow as the walls of the cave. Bubbles rose trembling through it and burst with plops when they reached the surface.

  “Baron Robilard, who now rules this island,” Ilna continued, “has sent me to invite you to dinner tonight in his palace. He claims you as his ancestor.”

  Laughter filled the domed chamber. Ilna looked up. She couldn't see a source for the sound. A bass voice said, “Ilna os-Kenset, are you afraid?”

  Ilna rose to her feet. “I'm afraid of my own will, master,” she said truthfully. The chill was passing; her muscles no longer trembled. “I'm afraid of the evil I can do when I'm angry.”

  “Is there nothing else you fear, woman?” the disembodied voice demanded. It rose to a thunder that echoed and re-echoed within the hollow walls.

  Shapes began to form in the air around Ilna. Some were terrible, and some were far worse than that. The light congealed into dead flesh and flesh that had never been alive.

  “Nothing else, Master Romi,” Ilna said to the lowering darkness. “My own evil is quite enough for anyone to face.”

  The voice burst into rolling laughter that filled all the world around it. The water in the pool shivered at the spasms of fearful joy.

  “Go back to the palace of the man who calls himself my descendant, Mistress Ilna,” the voice said. “Tell him that the Elder Romi, who had no descendants of the flesh, will grace his banquet tonight. I look forward to the entertainment.”

  Ilna bowed again. “I will give him your message, master,” she said.

  She turned and started up the cave again. Before she reached the point where the floor slanted steeply the voice added, “Tell Baron Robilard that 1 will come when the moon sets, Ilna. I hope he will be ready for me.”

  Ilna trudged upward. The return wasn't as difficult as she'd thought during her descent that it might be.

  The rippling laughter followed Ilna to the cave entrance. She too smiled, every step of the way.

  The slit in the rock wall to Sharina's right showed the white room and the game board, nothing else. The other five windows visible from her frozen vantage displayed the sea. Sunset painted the clouds with rosy light. It reflected like blood onto the water beneath.

  The aspects were distant from one another by miles, judging from the swatches of sky overhead. The raft covered with
Hairy Men filled all five scenes. In the distance beyond, an island humped in silhouette against the sun.

  A fleet of fifty warships was attacking the raft. The vessels were under oars, their sails and mainmasts landed onshore to lighten them for action before they set out. From the ships' jibs floated banners bearing the eagle symbol of the royal house of Ornifal, but crossed with a bend of red fabric.

  When Sharina saw the floating forest for the first time from her prison, the Hairy Men had wandered it as they chose. Now phantasms prowled the timber mat and drove the brutish humans with gestures and eyes which smoldered like live coals. Instead of running forward to gibber at the warships or fleeing back in wild panic, a phalanx of Hairy Men hunched with crude weapons just beyond the outer barrier of interlaced branches.

  On the narrow decks of the ships, archers stood with nocked arrows. They didn't have any better targets than vague movement that might have been the breeze wobbling shrunken leaves. Some of them loosed anyway. The arrows clipped branches, thudded into tree boles, and occasionally struck one of the Hairy Men. For all the real difference the rare success made, the archers could have emptied their quivers into the sea.

  Many of them aimed at the phantasms stalking over the timber in plain sight. The missiles that intersected those demonic figures snapped on through as they would the empty air. If anything, the fiery eyes burned brighter.

  The flagship was a massive quinquereme that wobbled because its hull had to be high enough to carry five banks of oars. Signalers around the brazier on its stern platform sent up a plume of purple smoke that all the fleet could see. The triremes that made up the rest of the fleet carried catapults on their bow platforms. Catapult arms slammed forward, sending firepots deep into the mass of floating timber.

  Here and there, a splotch of burning oil spread on a tree trunk and struggled to ignite the thick, wet bark. More often the pots splashed into open water and either sank unnoticed or formed a patch of harmless iridescence.