Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  "They're none of them men I've ever seen before. The uniforms are right, but they're not Blood Eagles," Carus said, seeing through Garric's eyes. That put the seal on what Garric had known in his heart—in the pit of his stomach—already.

  The guards were all watching him. That wasn't right: two men should've been looking the other way down the corridor in case the 'servants' were a deliberate distraction.

  Garric had expected to be recognized on his return tonight—well, this morning—despite the proper pass stamped with the wax bulla of his personal secretary, Liane bos-Benliman. Being identified now wouldn't have mattered much. Attaper would probably hear about it and complain in forceful terms about what Garric had done, but he couldn't stop what'd already happened. Garric hadn't expected the guards to be waiting for him, though. But of course these weren't guards.

  Liane held out the pass, a palm-sized potsherd with the information brushed in ink on the inner side. She bent her head away with the shy propriety of a modest girl meeting a group of men.

  The man wearing the white horsehair crest of an officer grunted, "Go on," He didn't touch the pass or demand that Liane and Garric look him in the eye.

  Garric caught the scent of decay. It was very faint, but he was sure of it.

  "Dead men," Carus said, his image tense and grinning. "Cattle and horses smell different, not so bad; but dead mules stink even worse."

  Liane reached for the latch lever calmly, then snatched it down and leaped inside. Laundry spilled from the handbarrow as Garric followed her, dropping the handles so that his dagger was free.

  He tried to slam the door shut behind him but a heavy body hit it from the other side before the latch clicked. An arm pushed through the gap, swinging a sword blindly.

  Garric slashed through the elbow tendons.The forearm sagged at the joint, then dropped to the floor. The muscles were rotten tatters hanging from the bones, oozing putrescent fluid.

  Garric's sword dangled in its scabbard from the back of the chair in which a servant was intended to sit in case the prince needed something during the night. As Garric reached across his body to draw the longer weapon, the weight of several men crashed into the doorpanel. They threw him backwards, off-balance with the tip of the blade still caught in the sheath. Three black-armored guards shoved in, one slightly in front. His javelin was raised to thrust through Garric's chest.

  Liane hurled the bedroom lamp into the guard's face. Oil splashed as the three-headed silver dragon bounced away. The one lighted wick didn't ignite the spilled fuel, but it blinded the guard for the instant Garric needed to stab up through his throat.

  Garric's dagger-point jammed in the guard's spine at the base of the skull. He let go of the hilt and grabbed the chair with his left hand, then skipped backward into the doorway between the anteroom and the main part of the suite. He had the sword clear now.

  The guard with the dagger in his throat fell forward. The appearance of normal flesh sloughed away, leaving a corpse so decayed that both arms separated from the shoulderblades when the torso hit the floor.

  Two more guards came on, their spears raised over their shoulders. The remainder of the detachment bunched behind them. The one on the left thrust. Garric caught the javelin point on the chair seat. He twisted chair and spear to the right as he lunged low, stabbing the other guard beneath the cuirass.

  His sword grated into the hip joint. On a human enemy—and the guards weren't human now, whatever they'd been in life—Garric's thrust would've severed the great artery in the thigh. He jerked his point free in a gush of decay, not blood, but the effect seemed to be the same: the guard's body rotated as his leg collapsed. It was a rotted corpse by the time it hit the floor.

  Thought would've made Garric retreat a step into the bedroom so that he could use the doorway to constrict his enemies. He wasn't thinking. There wasn't time for thought, only for the instincts his warrior ancestor had honed in vicious battles a millennium past. He drove forward again, hacking through the leg of the guard who'd let go of his stuck javelin to draw his sword. Garric's stroke threw the guard sideways, over the body of his fellow. The fluids of their decay mixed as their stinking corpses partially disintegrated.

  Now Garric jumped back. He was gasping through his open mouth and his lungs were on fire. Guards pushed forward, slipping on the bodies of those who'd been in the lead.

  "Watch out!" Liane screamed. She and the male servant banged the door into its jamb, brushing Garric's left arm because he wasn't quick enough to get clear. The female servant slid the bar through the staples.

  Bodies hit the door from the other side, but the panel was sturdy and through-bolts anchored the staples. Garric bent forward to breathe with the least constriction. Liane and the servants were doing something, sliding a couch against the door he supposed, but all he saw for the moment was the blurred grain of the cherrywood doorpanel. There was nothing he needed to see just now, so his body was putting all its effort into recovering so it could meet the next test.

  Sharper blows shook the door. A spearbutt squealed through a crack which widened as the guard levered his shaft sideways. A sword and another spearbutt struck the panel together, breaking a board out of the core which had been covered on both sides by veneer.

  Garric backed a step. A guard reached through the opening to pull the bar. Garric thrust, aiming for his throat. His point glanced off the flare of the guard's helmet but gashed flesh through the shoulder straps. The arm jerked back quickly.

  Two more guards rammed the door with their shoulders. The panel bowed inward between the upper and lower crossbraces. Garric lifted the chair to use it as a shield again. The javelin had cracked the seat; only half remained attached to the back.

  Guards smashed through the door, swords raised. Liane hurled a quilt over the first pair. Garric thrust home and jerked his blade free in a cloud of white goosedown. His ears rang with shouts and the thunder of his own blood.

  Garric backed and stabbed again, hitting a gorget but punching through the thin bronze in a gush of foulness. The guard collapsed, but the anteroom was full of black-armored bodies. There were more in the hall trying to force their way in. It was going to be over very quickly.

  Garric stepped forward again, his legs wobbly but his decay-smeared blade thrusting straight for the next guard in the doorway. This one parried expertly, locking Garric's crossguard with his own. Garric tried to knee the guard in the groin but his bare foot slipped in fetor and he went down instead. It was over now beyond question, but Garric dropped the chair and seized the guard's sword-wrist with his left hand.

  "Your highness!" Lord Attaper cried. "Your highness!"

  Garric's eyes focused: he was struggling with the commander of his bodyguards. The other men, in the anteroom and now slipping past Garric and Attaper to search for further dangers within the suite, were real Blood Eagles. In the corridor behind, Blaise armsmen shouted questions.

  Garric tried to wheeze a greeting. The word wouldn't come out. He'd have fallen sideways if Attaper hadn't held him up.

  "What in the Sister's name is going on!" Attaper said.

  Garric could only shake his head. He was smiling, though. The only thing he was sure of was that he was still alive; but that in itself was reason to smile.

  CHAPTER 12

  "I swear I didn't have anything to do with it!" Earl Wildulf said, sweating profusely. He tried to drink but found his mug empty. With his face twisted into a snarl he turned to shout at the servants whose job it was to keep those at the table supplied—and remembered that Garric hadn't permitted servants into the conference room.

  Wildulf got up and stepped to the wine jars along the wall, repeating but in a chastened voice, "I swear I didn't."

  "I assure you, milord," Garric said, "that nobody in this room believes that you called up a squad of corpses to murder me."

  "I wouldn't be so sure about your wife, though," Attaper said with a grim eye on the Earl. "Or that wizard of hers, anyway."

 
"Balila wouldn't have done that!" Wildulf snapped, though the anger in his voice as he filled his mug proved that he'd been thinking the same thing. Instead of mixing water in equal or greater amount with the wine in normal fashion, he slurped down half of what he'd just poured straight. Even angry and defensive, he hadn't bothered to deny the accusation leveled at Dipsas.

  "Countess Balila and her wizard weren't involved in the attack," Liane said calmly, sorting through documents she'd taken out of the travelling desk. It was the only thing she'd brought from the suite which she and Garric had abandoned for what had been an office corridor on the second floor.

  Liane half-smiled. "I don't say that out of any affection for Mistress Dipsas. Blaming the wrong party prevents us from identifying the real threat, and I have trustworthy information as to where those two ladies were tonight."

  They were in what had been the private office of Earl Wildulf's treasurer, a commoner named Ardnon who probably wouldn't be best pleased in the morning when he learned that his Bureau of Revenue had been ousted to provide living quarters for Prince Garric and the entire detachment of Blood Eagles accompanying him. The troops were cleaning out the other rooms on the corridor, and from what Garric had seen they were doing so with greater thoroughness than care. Desks, files, and other furnishings were all going into the back stairwell, leaving Attaper's men only one direction to guard.

  Wildulf himself and Marshal Renold were the sole Sandrakkan officials present, facing not only Garric and his councillors but six Blood Eagles as well. The Earl kept trying to grasp his sword-hilt. The guards had disarmed him and Renold; every time Wildulf's hand closed on nothing, rage flushed his face.

  "My men were asleep," Attaper growled, looking through a window out over the dark city. His profile was stony. "The real midnight relief, I mean. Look, I'm not making excuses, but—"

  He grimaced and forced himself to meet Garric's eyes.

  "—I think there must've been wizardry involved. Somebody got in and took their weapons and equipment without them waking up. I can't believe they were just derelict."

  "Of course there was wizardry!" Garric said. "No blame attaches to you or your men, milord. And I need scarcely point out that you did save my life and Lady Liane's. I was on my last legs when you arrived to finish the assassins."

  He wished now that he'd kept Tenoctris by him. Though the Shepherd alone knew what was going on in Ornifal. He'd weighed the choices when he sent Tenoctris with Sharina and Waldron, and the chances were still good he'd made the right decision.

  Attaper looked like a rocky crag trying to smile. "I don't know about your legs, your highness," he said, "but your hands were still in good shape. I have the bruises—"

  He raised his right wrist which Garric had grabbed as he tried to wrest away Attaper's sword.

  "—to prove it."

  "Do we know who the attackers were?" said Lord Tadai, cutting through an exchange that was so far removed from his life that he thought it was meaningless. "That is, they were dead men who I gather didn't look dead at the time, but surely the bodies came from somewhere?"

  "Serjeant Bastin was talking to an old buddy who's serving in the local garrison," Lord Rosen said unexpectedly. "The fellow says he recognized one of them as a housebreaker who'd been hung three months back. The body'd have been buried in the potter's field or whatever they call it here in Erdin."

  Marshal Renold nodded glumly. "The Sister's Hundred, west of the city wall," he said. "All unclaimed bodies go there, not just people who're executed. They're dumped in a trench and covered at nightfall every day. Nobody'd notice if a few were taken out after dark."

  "Wizardry!" Wildulf said, half despairing and half furious. Lord Attaper nodded forcefully in agreement

  Liane looked up from the beechwood notebook she'd been reading, holding it close to the light of the candle lamp she'd set on the table before her. "Earl Wildulf?" she said. "Two years ago—"

  When Liane was being taught at Mistress Gudea's Academy for Girls, here in Erdin.

  "—the best collection of Old Kingdom manuscripts in Erdin was the library attached to the Temple of the Shielding Shepherd. Is that still the case?"

  Garric noticed that Liane dismissed empty complaints about wizardry as brusquely as Lord Tadai had trampled through the camaraderie of warriors reliving past battles. She and Tadai were correct, of course: there was serious business to conduct and no time for small talk. Yet it was small talk that eased the friction of folk squeezed together in hard times, and these times were hard beyond question.

  He grinned wryly. Sometimes it was a mistake to be too correct.

  "Library?" the Earl repeated, frowning as he tried to get his mind around the concept. "I don't know. Renold, do you...?"

  "I could ask someone," the Marshal said, frowning in turn. "My wife's secretary, he's the sort who'd know, I think."

  "I think we can take it that there've been no changes in governmental policy toward the library since you left Erdin, milady," Garric said, grinning a little wider. "And I assume a major fire would've attracted attention also. Are you looking for a particular document?"

  "I hope there may be more information on the cataclysm that struck Erdin a thousand years ago," Liane said. "Besides the Bridge Island account, that is. Perhaps if we knew more about what happened then, we'd have a better notion of what we're facing today."

  Her reserved stiffness melted in a smile. "I can't help with wizardry," she said, sweeping her gaze across the room. "But I can search records as well as Tenoctris, or almost as well. And it's something to do."

  "Yes," said Garric. Something to do instead of waiting for an enemy to strike again from the darkness. "Yes indeed."

  He rose to his feet. Dawn was breaking, turning pink the side of the building visible through the west-facing windows. "I don't think there's anything more to be gained by discussing what happened tonight," he said. "Last night. Lady Liane, do you want to wait till later in the day to visit the library, or—"

  "No," said Liane forcefully. She cleared her throat, and went on, "That is, I certainly don't intend to go to bed. I wouldn't be able to sleep. Though I'll need the help of the library staff, and they won't be present at this hour, I'm sure."

  "Nor could I sleep," said Garric. He'd only napped before going down into the caves beneath the palace, and he'd fought an exhausting battle besides; but he certainly wouldn't sleep now. "But I would like to bathe. With luck—"

  He nodded to Wildulf, who he thought would understand.

  "—I'll scrub off some of the memories as well as what splashed me during the fight."

  He looked around the room more generally. "Lord Tadai, Admiral Zettin," he said. "You and your staffs will continue working with Earl Wildulf and his officials on the details of Sandrakkan's return to full membership in the kingdom. If there're any questions for me, I'll deal with them when I return from the Temple of the Shielding Shepherd where I'll be accompanying Lady Liane."

  "And where I'll be accompanying both of you," said Lord Attaper grimly. "And every bloody one of my men will be with us!"

  * * *

  Cashel wasn't afraid of heights—or long drops either, which'd been more to the point when he gathered guillemot eggs on the sheer islets off the coast of Haft. Even so it made his lips purse to look down from the top of the... well, what would you call it?

  "Ma'am?" he said aloud. "Mistress Mab? Is this a cave we're going down into?"

  "An artificial cave," Mab said. "It was the Lower Commons, back in the days when men lived on these levels. The Upper Commons is the plaza on the roof of the city, and the King carved this from the fabric of mountain itself while he was building the Ronn."

  The Sons had been looking down into the cavern, all but Manza who'd taken one glance and jerked back from the railing. When Mab spoke, they'd turned to watch her instead. None of them spoke, but they didn't look comfortable.

  Truth to tell, Cashel didn't like the view either. It was less the height than the shadows, g
ray on gray on gray—and none of them soft shades like those of a normal twilight.

  Aloud he said, "Well, there's water, at least. I could use a drink."

  "After I purify it," Mab said in a thin undertone. "This high it might be all right; but again, it might not. I don't care to take chances."

  So speaking, she took what seemed a flat disk from the purse on her belt and gave it a shake. The plate slipped into a cup, its slanting walls locked open in tiny steps.

  Mab walked toward the watercourse which cascaded over the rim of the gallery and fell by a series of pools into the far distance. Cashel followed, balancing his staff crossways before him. As he'd expected, the Sons fell in behind—Herron leading and the rest following after.

  He looked across the cavern again. He wasn't sure he could see the other side, the place was that big, but white arrows in the distance were the flumes of more little cataracts like the one near by where they'd come out of the rock-cut tunnel leading from the shaft that'd dropped them through the crystal part of Ronn.

  The great cavity wasn't completely empty, though: paths slanted out into it. Some were wide enough for a cart, often with water running through a channel down the middle, but a lot of them looked so narrow that people'd have to walk one ahead of another. Sometimes they crossed each other like the cords of a spiderweb, and generally they dropped either by gentle ramps or a flight of stairs and another waterfall.

  The Sons were whispering among themselves, wondering if they'd be going down that way soon. Cashel supposed they would, though of course Mab might have another notion entirely. He didn't bother asking her; they'd learn soon enough.

  Mab knelt at a stone coping more like the mill flume in Barca's Hamlet than a stream bank. She dipped her cup full of water. It looked clear as it ran down the channel—you could see bits of leaf litter from the upper levels tumbling along in the swift current—but it started to bubble when it filled the cup. Cashel smelled brimstone and a hint of decay.