Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  * * *

  "One advantage of having been poor all of my life...," Tenoctris said, eyeing her sturdy leather satchel. It held the tools of her art and was the only luggage she was taking to Valles. "Is that I don't find it difficult to pack all I need."

  Sharina laughed. Tenoctris was a friend and colleague, but she'd been born into a noble family. An impoverished noble family, to be sure: but that meant there were only half a dozen servants in Tenoctris' household. Sharina'd served tables herself for the customers in her father's inn.

  "I never thought of myself as poor," Sharina said. "We weren't poor for Barca's Hamlet, of course; but nobody in Barca's Hamlet had very much. I didn't have trouble packing either."

  "People don't need very much," she added, watching the bustle as Lord Waldron's squadron loaded for the voyage east. By now she'd seen enough similar scenes to appreciate what was really going on instead of viewing it as a wildly chaotic swirl.

  For all the great weight of gear going into the five ships of the squadron, the individual soldiers had almost nothing of their own. Besides arms and a spare tunic, they might carry some little talisman of home or souvenir of a place they'd been and liked. A religious icon, a flute or ocarina; perhaps a letter or a girl's face painted on the inside of a folded wooden notebook.

  "A little peace wouldn't come amiss," Tenoctris said, a trifle wistfully. "I had that when I was poor, too."

  She laughed, back to her normal sprightly self. "Until the world ended, literally for tens of thousands of people and very nearly for humanity," she added. "In part because I was living peaceably with my books instead of helping whoever was trying to prevent the disaster."

  "King Carus was," Sharina said, looking down the beach to where her brother met with the second delegation from Earl Wildulf. She couldn't see Garric. He was encircled by Blood Eagles, and around them a thicker ring of people who wanted to talk with the Prince or be close to the Prince or just see the Prince. It was hard to imagine that....

  "Carus was trying," Sharina repeated, "but wouldn't have welcomed your help or any wizard's help. He was determined to hold the Isles together with his sword and army alone, and so he became part of the problem."

  As Carus himself would say—and had said, using the tongue of his distant descendent Garric or-Reise to shape the words.

  Tenoctris looked back into the distant past, her face turned in the direction of the granite knob. She focused on Sharina again with a smile of apology for her brief absence. "Yes," she said, "I suspect you're right. But that doesn't matter, dear. I should've tried and I didn't."

  "Well, you're trying now," Sharina said, getting up from a block of the fallen porch which also supplied the older woman's seat. She hugged Tenoctris. "We all are, and so far we're succeeding."

  She looked back the way Tenoctris had been facing, feeling an edge of disquiet. She'd expected Cashel to be back by now. The messengers she'd sent should've brought him if he hadn't simply returned on his own after stretching his legs from the confinement of being on shipboard.

  Barely aloud she said, "Of course Cashel has even less to pack than you and I do."

  Still, she wished she saw his big, comfortable figure ambling through the ruins with his quarterstaff over his shoulder. Cashel rarely moved quickly, but he never failed to get where he was going—no matter what was in the way.

  Instead of Cashel she saw a pair of soldiers from one of the line regiments approaching: a common soldier with a puzzled expression, and a half-angry, half-worried company commander whose horsehair crest was across his helmet instead of running front to back like the soldier's. They stepped purposefully through the stones and shrubbery, ignoring other soldiers except as obstacles to go around.

  Tenoctris watched the men also, her lips pursed. Soldiers who weren't on guard duty didn't usually wear their helmets in camp, let alone mount the detachable crests. The most likely reason for these two to be formally dressed was they were coming to see Princess Sharina....

  The six Blood Eagles loosely guarding Sharina and Tenoctris stiffened noticeably when they saw the men approaching. Lord Attaper had probably placed the guards by his own decision. Sharina hadn't protested, though she found their presence uncomfortable and probably pointless. She knew that she or Tenoctris either one could be attacked, even here in the midst of the royal army. She didn't believe there'd be an attack of a sort that soldiers could prevent, however.

  "I'm Lieutenant Branco, Third Company of Lord Quire's regiment," the officer said. He spoke to the under-captain commanding the guards but in a deliberately loud voice so that Sharina and Tenoctris couldn't help but overhear. Branco was at least forty, a commoner promoted to company command after long service instead of a noble on the first step of his military career. "Trooper Memet here says he's got a message for Princess Sharina from Lord Cashel."

  Memet had been looking straight ahead, uncomfortably waiting for his commander to sort things out while he pretended he was a piece of furniture. Now his eyes flew open. "Lord Cashel?" he blurted. "Enver bless me, I thought he was a shepherd like me!"

  "Memet," snarled the officer. "If you made this up, you're going to wish you were a shepherd. You're going to wish you were a sheep!"

  Branco looked at Sharina and, without even pretending he wasn't addressing Sharina directly, said, "Your highness, Trooper Memet here hasn't ever lied that I know. There's some who'd say he doesn't have brains enough to lie. His story don't make sense, but I brought him to you anyhow."

  Four Blood Eagles were lined up between the women and the two soldiers like thick bars across a window. The other two were behind them, watching the other way in case Memet and Branco were a diversion from the real attack. Sharina didn't imagine the guards really thought there was any risk—she herself certainly didn't—but they viewed their duties as putting themselves between the women and any possible danger. Branco and Memet were the closest thing there was to a threat, so they were making the most of it.

  The Blood Eagles didn't keep Branco from talking to Sharina, though. Unless she told them different, that wasn't any of their business.

  "Let the trooper talk for himself, Lieutenant," Sharina said, hoping the words weren't as harsh as they sounded in her ears. She was afraid for Cashel and afraid for the kingdom, because anything that could harm Cashel was a danger to far more besides.

  "Right," Memet said, standing at attention with his eyes on the far horizon. "Ma'am, this big guy, he said he was Cashel or-Kenset, not any kind of lord?"

  "She's a princess, you bonehead!" Branco whispered savagely. "Call her 'your highness!'"

  "That's all right, Memet," Sharina said. "Go on."

  Tenoctris had seated herself on the ground, tracing a figure in the dirt with a bamboo splinter. Bits of stone that'd crumbled off the ruins made the task difficult.

  "We were talking about sheep," Memet said. His eyes edged toward where Sharina stood before him, then jerked to the side as though sight of her had burned him."I'd been a shepherd on Ornifal, though I stuck with the army even after my dad died. A lady came and talked to us. I didn't see her come up but she must've done. She said her name was Mab and Cashel had to come right away or his mother was in trouble."

  "His mother?" Sharina repeated, shocked into speaking when she'd intended to let the soldier get his story out in the way he found easiest. Cashel didn't have a—

  But of course he did.

  "Right, his mother," Memet said. He wasn't relaxing but he seemed to have sunk deeply enough into telling the story that he could forget who he was telling it to. "So he said he'd go, Cashel did, and he told me to tell Princess Sharina what he was doing. And then...."

  He suddenly met Sharina's eyes squarely. "Ma'am? Princess, I mean?" he said. "Then they walked into the rock. It was just a rock, I swear, till she said words and they walked into it. And it was a rock again."

  The soldier scratched his scalp under the brow of his helmet. This unique experience had driven years of training out of his head. He
was a puzzled shepherd again who didn't remember he was talking to a noble because his sort never talked to nobles.

  Sharina's stomach knotted. She looked at Tenoctris, still sitting on the ground though she'd given up on the figure she'd started to draw. "Tenoctris," she said, "nobody who knows Cashel would expect him to do anything but go. Do you think it was a trap?"

  "Cashel always seems to make the right decision in a crisis," Tenoctris said. "His simplicity cuts to the core of matters that less... simple people get confused by. Myself, for example."

  She put one hand on the ground. Sharina knelt immediately and helped the old woman up. Leaning forward to see past the backs of the Blood Eagles, Tenoctris said, "Can you take me to where this happened, Memet?"

  "Sure, ma'am," the soldier said. He looked sideways at Branco. "I mean, if the lieutenant says it's all right?"

  "It's all right with Lieutenant Branco," Sharina said absently, taking a wax tablet and stylus out of her sleeve. "One moment, Tenoctris. I'll need to write a note to Garric, telling him what's happened. He'll want to know. And to Ilna. Then we'll both go with Memet."

  The under-captain of the guard detachment looked at her. "Then we'll all go, your highness," he said, "if that's what you're bound to do. And if anybody gets the notion that you and Lady Tenoctris ought to step into rocks too, well, they'll discuss it with us first."

  CHAPTER 4

  "Pardon me, milords," Garric said to Lord Tadai and the troupe of officials accompanying him to Erdin. "I'd like a word with the commander of our escort."

  "It's Lord Rosen," said King Carus approvingly as he saw the commander of the Blaise regiment that'd be crossing the strait. The sun was just risen high enough for even Garric's excellent eyes to distinguish one man in armor from another at a distance of thirty feet. "He was in charge when we had trouble at that temple in Carcosa."

  I recall, Garric thought, a little irritated to be reminded of somebody he remembered quite well. On the other hand, Carus was reputed to have known every one of the forty thousand men in his army by name—

  "Not so, lad," the king's spirit said with a smile. "But maybe everybody above the rank of file closer, maybe that."

  —and it was a very valuable trick for a commander who wanted troops to follow him into hard places.

  "Lord Rosen!" Garric said, stepping forward to clasp right arms with the Blaise officer. "I left the choice of the regiment that'd accompany me to Waldron, but I couldn't be more happy than to be working with you again!"

  That was all true. Rosen had proven to have a quick mind. Even more important, Rosen had enough of a grip on his temper that he hadn't taken offense when Garric snapped orders curtly. That wasn't a given among noblemen, especially those who'd chosen the army for a career.

  But it was also true that he was greeting Rosen with this warmth for political reasons. Garric wanted an officer who'd do what he was told promptly and without argument. If that officer was convinced the Prince really liked and cared about him, he was likely to behave the way Garric needed him to.

  In a way, this was no different from the way a successful innkeeper behaved to his guests. It wasn't exactly lying. By demonstrating enthusiasm that maybe you don't feel just at the moment with a lot of other things on your mind, you made the guest feel comfortable. Garric was actually better at that part of business than his father had been.

  "And better than I was, lad," Carus agreed, "for all I knew what I should do."

  "Pleased as well, your highness!" said Rosen, a plumpish fellow of average height with the flaring moustaches that Blaise aristocrats favored. "Honored, if I may say. The lads and I are rather looking forward to a chance to sort out these Sandrakkan weasels."

  "While I'm sure your men are capable of doing just that, milord," Garric said, smiling to emphasize that this was a friendly comment rather than a rebuke, "it'll be a disaster if that happens. I'm going over with your troops rather than an Ornifal regiment so as not to inflame the Erdin mob, but I'm sure there'll be provocations nonetheless. I trust your discipline not to repond to anything less than an outright armed attack."

  I pray to the Shepherd your discipline is that good, Garric thought, but he knew sometimes you simply had to face problems. There couldn't be parts of the kingdom into which royal officials couldn't go, not and it really be a kingdom; and if there was going to be trouble, then best it happen when the entire army was on hand to finish whatever the Sandrakkan mob might start.

  "You can count on us, your highness!" Lord Rosen said, stepping back. He raised his right arm straight up in a Blaise salute, then returned to where his regiment waited. It was on the shoreline, broken into companies alongside the triremes that'd ferry it across the strait.

  I have to count on them, Garric thought, continuing to smile while he felt a surge of bleak despair. Everything had to work, everyone had to do his or her job without getting lazy or angry. Otherwise the Isles would shatter into a hundred little principalities that squabbled among themselves till some great, united evil swept them all into oblivion. As it surely would.

  "You have to count on them, and they have to count on you," Carus agreed quietly. "And thus far, neither of you has disappointed the other."

  Garric glanced at the Sandrakkan delegation, the same four officials as before, who waited to return to Erdin with Garric and his escort. The priestess and the courtier talked to one another with stony expressions. The commoner kept to himself in the background, and Marshal Renold was watching the phalanx go through evolutions on the rubble-strewn foreshore.

  The demonstration—because that's what it was—was worth watching. The phalanx was formed sixteen ranks deep and armed with twenty-foot pikes. These were heavy, awkward weapons, difficult to handle even on a level field. That the phalanx kept good order as it advanced and countermarched across broken ground would impress any military man—and would seriously worry an enemy who realized there'd be at least five pike points aimed at the face of every soldier in his own front rank.

  "By the Shepherd!" Carus said, watching through Garric's eyes. "Yours are as good as mine were, lad. Ours are as good as mine were a thousand years ago!"

  Liane stepped close to Garric's right elbow. In the formal tone which she always used to him in public she said, "Your highness, I've just received some information that I'd like to go over with you in that tent—

  She nodded toward an ordinary canvas tent meant to hold an eight-man squad. The sides were lowered, which was unusual for this temperate weather even now in the early morning. The person waiting inside—the spy waiting inside—wanted to conceal his features as much as possible from the Sandrakkan traders now mingling with the royal army.

  "— as soon as possible."

  "Yes, of course," Garric said. Liane didn't say 'as soon as possible' idly.

  He glanced again at the Sandrakkan envoys. Their vessel was an ordinary river barge, draped for this occasion with tapestries over both sides. Sea water sloshing during the short voyage had soaked the fine fabrics.

  "Ilna won't like that," Garric said, grinning at a homely memory; and sobering at once. He didn't realize how despairing he must have looked until Liane touched his hand, a rare public display of affection. Well, he was better for being reminded just now that he had friends.

  His mind went back to the news he'd gotten the previous afternoon. "What particularly bothers me is that both Cashel and Ilna disappeared," he said to Liane quietly. "As if it was coordinated."

  A senior clerk stepped into Garric's path with his mouth open for a question. Lord Tadai said, "Morschem, come here. Now."

  The clerk's mouth clamped shut. He hopped sideways to Tadai in a motion more like a crab swimming in clear water than anything Garric had seen on land before. Tadai, who was in his way every bit as ruthless as King Carus, had no intention of letting somebody in his department disturb Garric now.

  "Cashel wasn't attacked," Liane said, mincing along so that there'd be time for her and Garric to talk before they met the spy. "
And Ilna and her friends may not have been attacked either, since the soldiers nearby are sure they heard someone shout a warning."

  She cleared her throat, then added carefully so she wouldn't sound as though she was being falsely optimistic, "Tenoctris says that there's a great deal of power focused here on Volita. That might explain what's happened without positing hostile action."

  "True," Garric said, because it was true.He grinned, feeling much better for an honest discussion of what'd happened. "And while that doesn't mean they aren't in danger, anybody who dares to threaten them is in a good deal more danger. So we'll take care of our end, and trust them to take care of theirs as they've done in the past."

  Two tough looking men in civilian clothes stood by the tent, one at either end. They were Liane's retainers, guarding her unobtrusively but probably as effectively as Blood Eagles. Attaper must have believed the same thing, because Garric's own guards kept discreetly to the side instead of thrusting themselves into the tent ahead of him to see that no assassin lurked there.

  The fellow who waited in the dimness wore a long hooded cloak over his clothing. He bowed slightly to Liane and said, "Mistress. I've brought a full report."

  He handed her a tight parchment scroll the diameter of a man's thumb. Garric didn't recognize his accent. The fellow failed to add, "Your highness," to his salutation the way a citizen of the kingdom should have done.

  "We'll go over this when we have leisure," Liane said in the coolly businesslike tone of a master speaking to a servant. "Give us a quick overview of the situation."

  The spy shrugged under his cloak. "Earl Wildulf doesn't rank with the Seven Sages," he said, "but he's got a shrewd grasp of the possible. He'll bargain for as much autonomy as he can get, but he won't rebel unless something happens to the royal army first."

  "Will he be able to work within the kingdom?" Garric asked. "I've heard a lot of people on Sandrakkan hate Ornifal because of the way the royal army crushed the rebellion last generation at the Stone Wall."

  Instead of replying, the spy turned his shadowed face toward Liane. "Answer him, Kaskal!" Liane said sharply.