Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  He leaned toward the army commander to add emphasis without raising his voice.

  "—trust Lord Olinus' ability to find his ass with both hands. I'm very glad to see you, milord, however many troops you've brought with you."

  Lord Waldron relaxed abruptly and barked a laugh. "Well, to tell the truth," he said, "when I was deciding who'd go with me to settle the rebellion in the West and who'd stay in Valles where nothing was going to happen, I may have left the garrison here a little short of brilliance. I ask your pardon for that, milord, but I'll try to correct it now."

  Servants hovered at the back of the room with trays and pitchers, but Royhas hadn't ordered them forward so they had no choice but to wait. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure the servants were still out of earshot, and said, "Whereas I assure you, milord, that the financial staff accompanying Prince Garric is skilled to the point of brilliance. That's because Lord Tadai is quite as capable of running the Chancellery as I am—and he'd be trying to do just that if he were in Valles, which praise the Lady he is not. But I understand the choice you faced; and as you say, you're here to deal with the problem now."

  Lord Waldron rose. "All right, Royhas," he said. "I think we understand each other. I'll call a military council and put some spine into the garrison, then we'll see about this Valgard. And if Titer's the problem you think he is, I'll sort him out myself!"

  He bowed curtly to the seated Chancellor and started toward the door. Only then did he remember that Sharina was the highest ranking person in the room—and save for Valence, pottering about somewhere in the palace, the highest ranking person on Ornifal. Waldron clacked his boots to a halt and stood stiff as a pikestaff.

  "Good luck with your business, milord," Sharina said, smiling at his back. "I'd appreciate a report when you've had a chance to appraise the situation."

  "Yes, your highness," Waldron said, too embarrassed by his gaffe to face her. "With your leave." He clicked his heels again, then strode out of the room much faster than he'd entered.

  Royhas, smiling also, turned to Sharina. "Your highness," he said, "what do you wish of me?"

  "Just to carry on as you've been doing, milord," Sharina said. "I think—and my brother thought—that I'll be of most use to you if I'm simply seen in public. In Valles to begin with, but perhaps we'll be able to widen our range later as Waldron gets the security situation under control. And of course—"

  She looked at Tenoctris.

  "—support Lady Tenoctris in whatever fashion she wants. Is there anything...?"

  Tenoctris nodded. "Yes," she said. "Since this Valgard is said to be the son of Stronghand, I'd like to see Stronghand's burial place. Is that possible?"

  "Easily," said the Chancellor, nodding approval. "It's on the Caldar Road, following the left bank of the Val just north of the city proper. Perhaps you'd like to accompany her, your highness? It's precisely the sort of public event you suggested making."

  "Yes," said Sharina, rising to her feet. She offered Tenoctris a hand, though the older woman seemed her best sprightly self today and didn't need the help. "But I want to see King Valence first."

  She smiled wryly in response to the others' looks of surprise. "I suppose it's silly," she explained. "But I'd like to hear what the king himself thinks about the notion that he has a half brother."

  * * *

  Ilna turned at the northern edge of the flax field. The villagers had cut patches of scrub for firewood beyond here, but the terrain was basically natural. "Thank you again for your hospitality!" she called.

  Polus and another of the men hoeing among the lentil fields to the south raised their heads and waved. The other men just continued working.

  "I wish we could've paid them," Ilna said, more to herself than her companions. "It was good to sleep with a roof overhead again."

  It was odd to find that she missed a roof, but she did. She'd grown up in an massive Old Kingdom mill, the oldest and most solid building in Barca's Hamlet. Her brother was in the sheep fold or out in the pastures as many nights as he wasn't, but Ilna herself hadn't slept under the stars until she left home.

  "It didn't seem they'd have had much use for money even if we'd been carrying our purses," Chalcus said. "Though coins make pretty bangles, which I'd judge our hostess wouldn't have turned down."

  "This village seems to exist apart from the world," said Davus thoughtfully. "They'll forget us completely in a few days, I suspect. Maybe they've forgotten us already, most of them."

  "Well, it's in the back of beyond," Chalcus commented. His blades were sheathed, but he kept his head moving in a fairly successful attempt to look in all directions. "I didn't see anything in the village that hadn't been made there, with the exception of a few iron knives and some perfume bottles."

  "Yes," said Davus, "but it shouldn't be that isolated. There's enough here to draw more than half a dozen peddlers over the course of... how long would you say? A generation at least."

  The women were back among the houses, preparing meals for their households. Simple as the food was, it required a great deal of effort. The oats were parched, then ground with the lentils and boiled as porridge. There was no miller; the work was done by individual housewives, grinding with pestles in bowls whose coarse inner surface was as effective as a stone and easier to manufacture.

  Ilna'd found the porridge filling and quite tasty for one meal. It was likely to pall as a steady diet, though, even for a person like her who ate to live instead the other way around.

  Preparing cloth seemed to take up the rest of the women's time. They rotted the flax stems in water, then separated the useful fibers from the pulp by a process not very different from the way they turned oats into porridge. After they'd spun the flax into linen thread, they wove it much the same way as Ilna did wool.

  She tried not to be overly critical—the villagers had been extremely kind to her and her companions, after all—but their weaving didn't impress her. It was all very well to say that they lacked Ilna's advantage of having the wide world to measure themselves against; but the truth was, these women were simply sloppy.

  "The cat keeps folk away, do you think?" Chalcus said in his usual pleasant tenor, calm and cheerful in this as in almost all things. "I'd thought we'd hear it snuffling about us in the night, but there were only the crickets and a nightjar. And no cat to greet us this morning, neither."

  Davus took off the length of linen which Polus' wife had given him; for a sash, he'd said, but now he looped it and dropped one of his fist-sized stones into the pocket of it. "Not in the village, at least," he said as he began to spin the simple sling in a lazy circle at his side.

  They entered open forest, walking between pines and broad-leafed trees a little taller than the scrub near the village. The land was rising. Ilna didn't fancy herself as a woodsman, but she judged it shouldn't be long before they were out of the valley.

  She weighed the choices, then put the hank of yarn back in her sleeve and readied the noose. Of course she might be quite wrong in her concerns....

  "There may be people just that innocent," Chalcus said, his sword and dagger drawn. "What would an old pirate know of basic goodness, eh? And I surely grant they might not know what their friend the cat—"

  Ilna was watching the pattern a juniper's branches wove as the breeze ruffled them. "Now, I think," she said.

  As she spoke the cat pounced from an outcrop three man-lengths ahead, unseen to the instant it moved. Its forelegs were flared, and its silver-gray claws were each the length of a man's fingers.

  She saw Davus move from the corner of her eye, but the lump of quartz was only a flicker. The sound of stone hitting bone was like a sledge on timber. The cat convulsed with a squall like nothing of flesh and blood. It'd been leaping for Chalcus. Momentum carried it toward the sailor, but it doubled up and pawed at its shattered left eyesocket.

  Chalcus dodged, slipping the curved sword in and out. His steel lifted a fluff of mottled fur from the thing's throat and then a spu
rt of blood.

  The cat struck the ground and got its feet under it, twisting its body to the right like an eel. The scorpion tail snapped forward like a catapult releasing.

  Ilna's noose settled about the stinger and drew taut. The force of the cat's stroke jerked her off her feet, but the needle tip ejected its yellow poison into the air instead of Chalcus' throat. He thrust again, this time piercing the creature's right eye.

  "Get clear!" Chalcus shouted, glancing to see where Ilna was. "It'll bleed out, I swear on my hopes of dying in a bed!"

  The blinded cat sprang toward the sound of his voice. Chalcus had made a flat-footed jump downslope that put a thigh-thick treebole between him and the cat. Ilna let go of her end of the lasso—it was good for nothing now but to lead the beast toward her—and rolled in the opposite direction.

  The cat's hearing must've been demonically good, because it twisted again, this time toward the scrunch of the coarse soil under her hips. Bright blood from the slit in its neck spurted farther than a man could reach.

  Chalcus cried out, lunging toward the creature behind the point of his outstretched sword. He needn't have worried: a second rock smacked the cat between the ruined eyesockets, crushing the skull.

  The missile ricocheted high in the air, its white quartz surface flecked with blood. The cat went suddenly limp. It slithered downslope a few feet, dead and as harmless as a rug.

  "I think we should leave this place quickly," said Chalcus. The quaver in his voice was mainly from the deep breaths he was dragging into his lungs.

  "A moment," said Ilna, gasping also. She rested on all fours, keeping the pressure off her chest and diaphragm so that nothing hindered her breathing. "I don't want to leave my noose, but I think I'll wait a trifle before I retrieve it."

  Though the monster was dead beyond question, its jointed tail moved spasmodically. Every time it jerked forward, the hooked sting spurted another firkin of venom.

  "Yes," said Chalcus softly. "I'd say I owe that rope my life; which I'd laugh at if I had my breath, for I never thought I'd find a noose my friend."

  And they all three gasped with laughter, at the joke and with a touch of madness as well.

  * * *

  "Duzi!" said Garric as he caught his first sight of the Temple of the Shepherd Who Overwhelms. "I've never seen a temple so big!"

  "In most cities the priesthoods of the Lady and the Shepherd are rivals," Liane said as she walked at his side. Garric had insisted she accompany him, for her knowledge—as now—as well as for the calm her presence brought him. "Here in Erdin, worship and wealth go almost entirely to the Shepherd. The Lady's only temple is on the waterfront for travellers from other islands."

  The flight of ten broad steps to the plinth on which the temple stood was on a scale with the building itself, far too high for a man to walk. Squads of trumpeters in priestly robes stood on the ends of each step. They began to call as Garric, Liane and their guards approached. The notes rose because the instruments shortened by a hand's breadth at each stage.

  Spectators filled the plaza and the buildings surrounding it. It wasn't a happy crowd like those which'd greeted Garric in Valles and Carcosa, but it was at least grudgingly respectful. Many in Erdin might think—or at least say—that their city was greater than Valles and by rights should rule the Isles, but in their hearts they were impressed that the Prince of Haft had dared to come to them.

  "Aye, and they're impressed by the size of the fleet and army billeted on Volita," growled the image of King Carus. "Don't think you'd get this peaceful a reception if that weren't in the minds of everybody with brains enough to pull on his tunic right-side to."

  Garric grinned. That was probably so, but it was acceptable. The people of Sandrakkan would learn in good time the advantages of being part of a unified kingdom standing against massed Evil. For now, all that mattered was that they acquiesced.

  The Blood Eagles marched in two sections, ahead of and behind Garric. There were fewer than two hundred men present because of losses in recent fighting, men detached for duty in Ornifal with Sharina and Valence, and the fact that Attaper hadn't had leisure to train volunteers from the line regiments to his exacting standards.

  That there were volunteers—more than enough to bring the Blood Eagles to peacetime strength of five hundred—was a mystery Garric still couldn't fathom. Everyone in the Royal Army had seen how extremely dangerous it was to guard a prince who led from the front in the fiercest battles the Isles had known for a thousand years. Nonetheless many of them begged for a chance to wear the black armor.

  In his mind, Carus chuckled. "Aye, lad," he said. "And you could be back in Valles running the government while folk like Waldron and Attaper lead the armies, not so? But you wouldn't be kin to me if you were."

  From a distance the actual stairs up to the temple looked like a narrow line separating the two halves of the stepped base, but in reality they were twenty feet wide. The altar was on the broad plinth in front of the building rather than inside. The small fire on it sent a trail of smoke into the sky.

  Lady Lelor and two male assistants waited at one side in full regalia, including jewel-encrusted shepherd's crooks. Across the ornately carved altar from her stood Lord, soon to be formally Earl, Wildulf and his wife. The plaza behind them, all the way back to the temple facade, was crowded with Sandrakkan nobles wearing elaborate costumes.

  "Only about two-thirds of the nobility is present," Liane said. She was speaking in a louder than normal voice, though her words were for Garric alone. It required a near shout to be heard over the vast crowd, even in the intervals between trumpet calls. "Some are ill, but a number of the most powerful have retired to their estates to see what happens."

  "But Wildulf called a levy of all his forces in case it came to a fight, didn't he?" Garric said in puzzlement.

  "Yes, he did," Liane agreed with prim amusement. "And some of his vassals are just as unhappy with his rule as Bolor seems to be with yours, your highness."

  Garric chuckled at his own naiveté. It was easy to assume that the other fellow didn't have the same sort of problems that you did. Wildulf had had to fight for his throne after the Stone Wall. Of course—now that Garric thought about it—there were going to be powerful people who'd be pleased if Wildulf lost power and his head along with it, even if it took an army from Ornifal to bring the change to pass.

  The trumpets blew a final call, all of them together, as Garric and Liane reached the last flight of steps to the plinth. Liane wasn't panting—Garric couldn't imagine her doing something so unladylike—but her face was set in a fashion that indicated she wasn't happy about the situation.

  "I should've thought of the height of the steps when we decided that Prince Garric would march in state from the palace while Lord Wildulf waited for him!" she growled under her breath. Then, in a slightly less irritated tone, "It was still the right decision, but I see now why Wildulf's envoys didn't argue with me."

  They stepped onto the plinth. The Blood Eagles who'd formed a line between the altar and the Sandrakkan courtiers shouted, "The Isles!" and their comrades coming up the stairs in ranks of four, repeated, "The Isles!"

  The sound of two hundred men in the midst of so many might have been lost, but the Blaise regiment under Lord Rosen in the plaza took up the cry also, hammering their spears against the bosses of their round shields. That was enough to trigger some of the crowd, then more of it in waves, a blurry but positive cheer: "The Isles-s-s..."

  This is working, Garric thought as he raised his right arm overhead, the fist clenched. He wore high boots like a horseman, with breeches and a short blue tunic whose puffed sleeves were gathered at the wrist. He slung his long sword on a shoulder belt, but he had neither body armor nor a helmet, only the simple gold diadem of Old Kingdom monarchs.

  Garric had dressed for the occasion as King Carus might've done a thousand years before. Most of the spectators wouldn't know that—but all but the most ignorant understood that he wasn't wearing V
alles court robes. Their Earl was submitting himself to a greater authority backed by the threat of force—but it was the authority of the Isles, not of Ornifal.

  "The Isles!" Garric shouted. To his amazement his voice echoed back to him. The plaza was brilliantly designed so that the temple steps acted as megaphone for anyone speaking from the plinth, and the facade of the palace on the other side formed a sounding board.

  The crowd, most of the local civilians now as well as the royal soldiers, cheered louder. This is really working....

  Garric turned to face Lady Lelor. The priestess with a bland expression dipped her crook but didn't curtsey as she'd been directed to do. She was pushing it, acknowledging royal authority over her temple—but only barely. And she was going to get away with it, because Prince Garric couldn't make a scene now without more provocation than that.

  He grinned, and the king in his mind grinned also. "She's got balls, that one," Carus muttered approvingly.

  One of Lelor's assistants stepped forward, holding a plush cushion on which rested a strikingly ugly crown of garnets set in heavy gold. Garric lifted the massive thing, thought Better the Earls of Sandrakkan than me, and turned to Wildulf. The soon-to-be-Earl looked glumly resigned like a traveller caught in a storm many miles from shelter.

  "Kneel, milord," Garric said, "and receive your charge as representative of the kingdom on Sandrakkan!"

  Wildulf knelt. As he did so, Garric caught Lady Balila's expression for an instant before she wiped it blank again. He hadn't seen such malevolence since the day a poisonous snake struck for his life.

  Garric felt his skin quiver as though lightning had struck a nearby tree, but his face remained unmoved. He stepped forward, the crown outstretched. The second male priest dropped frankincense and nard on the fire. Mixed with the aromatics was something that made the flame sparkle and lifted a plume of bright yellow smoke.