by David Drake
An ice figure walked to the cradle beside which the nurse cowered. The creature's limbs moved in fluid curves instead of bending at the joints like a human's. It gestured the nurse toward the doorway, then reached into the cradle.
Cotolina cried out and would have risen. Another ice figure held her in place. The first lifted out the twins. Their shrieks sounded thinner, more distant, than was right for such agony of soul.
The ice man, moving with the deliberation of a storm cloud, handed the infants to their mother. Cotolina hugged them to her flat bosom. She whispered words of empty comfort while her tears dripped on their crying faces.
Halphemos had stripped curling leaves from a bracken stem. Using it as a wand he began to tap the symbols he'd drawn from memory on the iron. With his eyes closed to bring Cerix's training closer in his mind, he said, “Aeo io ioaeoeu, eeouoai...”
The tax gatherer squeezed his cup in both hands. Twice he tried to lift the wine to his lips, but his muscles trembled so badly that the contents spilled as soon as he lifted the base from the table.
An ice man tapped the tax gatherer on the shoulder. The man kept his eyes shut and pretended to be unaware.
The creature lifted him by the shoulder with one cold-fingered hand. The movement was as gently inexorable as that of a mother cat moving her kittens. The other hand plucked the chair away and set it to the side.
The tax gatherer still wouldn't open his eyes. With trembling lips he murmured the same prayer over and over. Everyone in the room but Halphemos was watching the tableau.
The ice figure released the tax gatherer and gave him a little push toward the door. The fellow stumbled, then at last looked around before breaking into a run. Twice his sandals skidded on the bracken; he caught himself on the doorpost, then vanished down the hallway bellowing hoarsely.
“Ouo ehe damnameneus,”Halphemos said. Rosy tendrils quivered around the lock. A simple bolt closed the cage but the iron plate and narrow bars prevented a prisoner from reaching the fastener.
Everything else within the huge room glowed blue or was in darkness. The lighted wicks were mere points on the lobes of the lamps, but the ice figures themselves gave off a cold radiance.
Footsteps came up the hallway. They didn't appear heavy, but the echoes persisted as though in a long tunnel.
The Elder Romi, a tall man holding a staff of some pale wood in his right hand, entered the banquet hall.
His robe was black with gold embroidery around the neck, hem, and cuffs. His face was lean though not cadaverous, and his hair the purple-tinged black of a grackle's wing. If Ilna had met him as a stranger, she would have guessed his age at thirty or a trifle less.
Romi's eyes were ancient and ageless.
He glanced at Ilna, gave her a nod and a sardonic smile.
He transferred his attention to Baron Robilard, sitting upright at the head of the table. Lady Regowara had stuffed the knuckles of both hands against her mouth. She was biting so hard that a drop of blood ran down the back of her white wrist.
Cotolina murmured to her infants. Apart from her voice and their wailing, the only one in the hall to speak was Halphemos. The youth was going on with his incantation as if unaware of the ancient wizard's presence.
“I've come at your invitation, Baron,” Romi said. “Where shall I be seated?”
The voice was the one Ilna had heard in the cave. It still reverberated, though Ilna had noticed that the acoustics of this great square room were wretchedly bad.
Robilard opened his mouth. He made gagging sounds, then vomited onto the table and his own right arm.
Romi smiled. “I'll just take the empty seat, then,” he said pleasantly. He walked over to where the tax gatherer had been. One of the ice men moved the chair into place. Romi sat, still holding the staff upright.
“Io churbureth,”Halphemos muttered. “Beroch tiamos!”
Spikes of rosy light played across the lock plate the way ghost flames sometimes wrapped tree limbs and the eaves of houses in Barca's Hamlet during cold winter nights. The bolt rasped back. The three staples fixing it to the plate cracked one after the other. With the last, the bolt as well fell clanging to the stone floor.
Halphemos reached for the door. Weakness overcame him. He slumped forward, unable even to sit straight after the exertion of the spell he'd cast. Ilna held the youth, supporting his head with her shoulder. The cage was a good enough place to stay for now.
Ice men silently filled the banqueters' cups. Several of the courtiers drank great slurping drafts; others wept or sat as though nailed to their chairs. Lord Hosten deliberately turned and shook his head at the creature miming an offer to top off a cup already full.
Lady Tamana stared at the wizard beside her. One of her hands was on the table; the other touched the breast of her silken dining chemise. Only the rapid flutter of a vein in her throat proved that Tamana was alive and not a statue like those placed in niches around the hall.
An inhuman servitor mopped the vomit from Baron Robilard's hand and sleeve with a napkin from the neat pile on a serving table. Solicitously, the creature then dabbed the baron's lips and mustache with the cloth. Robilard trembled but did not otherwise move.
The cup at the Elder Romi's place was pewter and without ornamentation. To Ilna's taste it was more attractive than the jewels and florid chasing that decorated the cups the courtiers had been given. Romi lifted the vessel; the wine bubbled into vapor, sizzling more like bacon frying than liquid coming to a boil.
Romi turned the cup over so that all could see it was empty. He set it back on the table. “Is this your hospitality, cousin?” he said in his rolling, laughing voice. “We are cousins, didn't you say?”
“Please,” Robilard said, his first words since the beginning of the visitation. “Please, I didn't know.”
Romi stood with a terrible grace. An ice man removed the chair more smoothly than a human footman could have managed. All eyes were on the wizard.
“I've accepted your invitation, cousin,” Romi said. “Now you and your guests will accept mine.”
Around the table, creatures of glowing ice withdrew the chairs of Robilard and the others. Some of the courtiers would have fallen except for the ice men's inexorable support.
Romi pointed his staff to the doorway. His narrow mouth smiled with the detached interest of an adult watching the antics of a group of children. The banqueters walked toward the door like a procession of the dead. Their legs moved stiffly; a few were being carried by the ice men on either side. Lord Hosten kept his back straight, but his eyes stared at the neck of the woman ahead of him.
Lady Cotolina hugged the infants to her. She stumbled because she was blind with tears. Every time an ice man touched her to offer help, she shied away with a cry of despair.
The line of figures, human and inhuman, passed out of the banquet hall. The Elder Romi nodded again to Ilna, then turned and followed the others.
Halphemos had recovered enough to raise his head. Ilna shook his hand out of hers and pushed the cage door open. “Stay here,” she said, though it probably didn't matter what the boy did.
She stepped out and stretched her limbs. The cage had been tight, but the tension of what she must do next was worse than stiff muscles. Ilna had acted in anger when she carried out Robilard's bidding; a chasm loomed before her if she failed now to correct her actions.
The lamps in the banquet hall had begun to burn normally again. They illuminated the debris—tableware, spilled wine; bits of clothing dropped and forgotten in the exodus.
Ilna glanced behind her. Halphemos was trying to get out of the cage, though his eyes didn't seem to focus yet. She strode out of the hall and up the empty corridor, walking quickly because Romi and his prisoners had moved faster than she had expected.
The procession had already exited the palace. Romi was walking down the last step from the platform. Ilna, standing on the unfinished porch, called, “Elder Romi! I have a question for you.”
The ice men s
topped. The Elder Romi turned deliberately. “Ask your question, Ilna os-Kenset,” he said. .
“Sir,” Ilna said. Her tone was clipped and assured. “What do you fear?”
Romi laughed, a rumbling sound that the sky gave back as thunder. “I feared nothing when I was alive,” he said. “I fear nothing now!”
“Do you fear your own anger and the evil it allows you to do?” Ilna said.
She stepped down toward the wizard. Most of the halted courtiers watched her, though no few remained hunched over their private desperation.
Ilna waved toward the line. “They're not innocent,” she said. “None but the babies, perhaps. But you know that they've done nothing to deserve this. Not even—”
Her eyes and the scorn in her voice identified Robilard.
“—that boy!”
The Elder Romi's face twisted in fury. He struck the butt of his staff on the stone-paved roadway. Lightning blasted upward.
The moonless sky had been clear. At the flash clouds boiled up from the four corners of the horizon. Further lightning stabbed between thunderheads, and a downpour like none Ilna had seen before slashed the ground.
None of the rain fell on the figures in front of Robilard' s palace. Ilna crossed her arms and met the Elder Romi's hawk-fierce gaze.
Romi laughed and made an absent gesture with his staff. The clouds vanished. The rain stopped with the suddenness of a lightning stroke, though pools of water stood in every hollow except those among the figures.
The icy servitors dissolved like will-o'-the-wisps caught in a sea breeze. Lady Regowara, no longer supported by the figures at her sides, fell to the ground laughing hysterically.
The Elder Romi began to bow. His form thinned to mist, then empty air. His laughing voice, full and strong, boomed, “When I had flesh, Ilna os-Kenset. When I had flesh!”
The echoes lasted a hundred heartbeats. After that Ilna heard only the last of the rain spewing through the gargoyles on the palace roof, and the sobbing joy of courtiers now alone on the road that would have led them to a tomb before their times.
She staggered with relief. There was a sound behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see Halphemos coming down the steps. His face was drawn, but he seemed to have made an adequate recovery.
The eastern horizon was lighter. The sun would rise soon.
Lady Cotolina, still holding the infants, threw herself on the pavement before Ilna and tried to kiss her feet. Ilna stepped back in angry embarrassment. “Stop that!” she said.
Baron Robilard came forward with Hosten at his side. Robilard put a hand on his wife's shoulder. She cried out, then looked up and saw that the touch was human. Hosten helped her rise, though she refused to let him take one of the babies from her.
Halphemos tried to step between the baron and Ilna. Ilna gestured him back curtly. The youth hesitated, but her glare finally convinced him. Did he think she needed protection?
Baron Robilard knelt. “What do you want?” he said. He'd aged a decade in the past hour. “Anything, anything.”
Before Ilna could speak—she hadn't thought beyond her confrontation with Romi—Robilard went on, “I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I swear by the Lady, I didn't know!”
“It never crossed my mind that you did know,” Ilna said. She gave a sniff of amusement.
Ilna looked around while she gathered her thoughts. A few servants reappeared, one of them the nurse. She paused for a moment, then broke into a bovine gallop toward Cotolina and her charges.
“Stand up,” Ilna said to the baron sharply. It was worse being knelt to than facing somebody who thought Ilna os-Kenset should kneel to them. “Do you think I like looking at the top of your head?”
The courtiers all watched her and the baron, though for the most part it was from a safe distance. They seemed as much afraid of Ilna as they'd been of the Elder Romi.
Her smile spread. And perhaps the courtiers had as much reason for fear.
Aloud Ilna said, “My companions and I want to go to Valles, Baron. If you can advance us passage money, I would appreciate it. You needn't worry about being repaid, at least—”
Ilna's smile returned.
“—if I survive.”
Robilard stood up as she'd directed him to. Ilna noted with amusement that he winced as his knees came off the pavement; perhaps he'd learned a lesson more general than that he shouldn't invent famous ancestors for himself.
“There's no question of you repaying me anything, mistress,” he said. His voice strengthened with every word, and he gave no indication of having spent the night drinking. “I—”
He glanced behind himself to include his courtiers.
“—all of us will be in your debt for as long as we live. I can't offer you passage on a merchant vessel, because none will sail to Valles since the troubles there, but—”
“What troubles?” Ilna said, interrupting before she could catch herself. Sudden fear for Cashel—for Cashel and others—drew the question. She knew she should have waited for the baron to finish what he was saying.
“There've been riots,” Hosten explained. He'd remained at the baron's side. Cotolina and the nurse sat on a step where they were still trying to quiet the infants. “There's been wizardry and worse. We have agents on all the islands where we do major business, and those on Ornifal have warned us not to risk cargoes until things settle down.”
“But of course that won't matter for you,” Robilard resumed briskly. “We'll go aboard one of my warships.”
He looked at the man beside him. “The Erne, I believe, Hosten?”
The courtier nodded. “Her or the Cormorant,” he said. “We don't have crews available for both at the moment, though in a few days I can gather something.”
“I'll accompany you, of course,” Robilard said nonchalantly. “Now, when would you like to leave?”
Ilna started to protest, then realized she had no cause to. She had wanted to get to Valles as soon as possible. News of the troubles confirmed her intention—and if Robilard thought he owed her his life... well, he was right about that.
“The sooner the better,” Ilna said. She looked at Halphemos. “When can you be ready?”
“Cerix and I have nothing to ready, mistress,” he said. “You're the only reason we have even our lives.”
“We'll leave in an hour, then,” the baron said crisply. “That is—can we have the crew ready by then, Hosten?”
“The crew will be ready,” Hosten said with a grim smile. “Or else I'll find a better use for the cage than the one you made of it, Baron. And we'll be in Valles before sunset.”
He trotted toward the back of the palace, shouting for grooms and a horse.
Garric bumped the jamb as he tried to follow Royhas through the doorway into the king's private apartments. Liane steadied him. Royhas turned with a look of concern and said, “Are you all right?” in a sharper tone than perhaps he intended.
“When this is over,” Garric said, “I'm going to sleep for a week.”
He chuckled and added, “That's assuming we aren't sleeping for all eternity, the lot of us.”
Liane winced. She'd come to recognize Garric's new sense of humor. She didn't fully appreciate it, though.
“The only humor there is on a battlefield, lad, is gallows humor,”Carus' voice whispered. “Or on a gibbet, I shouldn't wonder, though there I haven't been.”
The four Blood Eagles in the anteroom remained in front of the inner door when Royhas entered; when Garric appeared behind the chancellor they stepped to either side. The watch commander clenched his fist in salute and said, “He's in with the priests again, sir. He said not to let anyone through.”
He nodded Garric toward the door in implicit rejection of the king's orders.
Garric knew the Blood Eagles would without hesitation die to protect Valence. Protecting the king no longer meant obeying him when his orders conflicted with the wishes of the real ruler of Valles. He tapped on the burl panel, then pushed down the latch b
ar before one of those inside tried to wedge it shut.
Garric smiled. He was indeed ruler of Valles and most of Ornifal; and he had a start on ruling the whole Kingdom of the Isles, at least if he survived the next few days. It made herding sheep—stupid, contrary sheep that kept you out in all weather—seem an idyllic existence.
Valence bleated petulantly, “I said no one—” He fell silent when he realized that Garric was responsible for the intrusion. Instead of court robes or the thin silks a nobleman might wear in private apartments, he wore a horsehair tunic that must be almost as uncomfortable as rolling naked in a bed of nettles.
Garric had already dealt with the two religious figures who were closeted with the king. The Arch Hierophant of Ornifal was a seventy-year-old priestess with skin like ivory and eyes of chilled steel. Before her elevation she had founded a healing order which now maintained nearly a hundred hospices across the island. Her companion was director of the temple of the Shepherd Who Maintains Valles. He was a fat man with a mind that let nothing go—and hands similarly able to keep any wealth that they grasped.
“Your Majesty,” Garric said, “we have business to discuss with you.”
The priests were already leaving the room. The first time Garric had come for an interview with the king, the priests had expected to stay. They'd learned they were wrong.
Valence shook his head despairingly. “Must you?” he said. “You don't understand how important it is that the Lady forgives me!”
Garric felt his lip twitch, but he suppressed the sneer. In the literal sense, Valence was correct: Garric didn't think it was important whether the king received forgiveness from the Great Gods. But what Valence really meant was “You don't understand how much evil I've done.” That wasn't true at all.
“The restoration of your government is going as well as we could have hoped, sir,” Garric said, ignoring the king's whine. “In the west of the island we're receiving more of the queen's councillors under our warrants than I'd like to, but in most cases these are families who've led their vestries for generations. They'll have to be watched, but there isn't a great deal of choice.”
