Master of the Cauldron loti-6

by David Drake

  A trumpet and a long curved horn blew together, signaling that the ships were ready to carry the Prince and his escort to Erdin. Garric sighed. He didn't want to go, but it was his duty-and one he'd taken upon himself willingly.

  He rose to his feet and shrugged. "I suppose we'll learn for ourselves in good time," he said mildly. "We'll hope that the Countess realizes we won't harm her husband unless he initiates hostilities, and we'll hope that the Countess' wizard shows similar good judgment. If they don't, then we'll deal with the situation as it arises."

  Through Garric's mind cascaded more of Carus' memories, the faces of wizards who'd learned the spells they were babbling weren't sufficient to fend off either the king's long sword or the death that came on its edge and point. It was a comforting reminder just now.

  ***

  Ilna rose, feeling the chill and the emptiness of her belly as well. She'd always treated food as a necessity, not a pleasure in itself. But though an orphan thrown on her own and her brother's resources at age nine learns what it means to go hungry, Ilna hadn't missed meals in a long time. When the orphans are as able as Ilna and Cashel, they earn enough to feed themselves in short order.

  Well, she wouldn't starve for a good long while. Water was more of a concern, but not yet a serious one.

  "I heard rabbits running about all night," said Chalcus ruefully, looking across the brush and straggling trees around them. "I've fished for everything from whales to fingerlings for bait. If I'd spent a little of that time learning to lay snares, we might have breakfast waiting for us."

  He and Ilna had slept on pine boughs, a good enough mattress if they'd had a ground sheet to lay over it. As well wish for a down comforter, which would've been more use yet. The night air here was beyond cool.

  Davus had made do with a scrape for his hip in the coarse soil and a smooth rock for a pillow. He seemed no worse for the experience than they were, and all three of them were fit to meet the day and whatever it brought.

  Davus laid out a selection of pebbles, all about the size of a walnut, then picked three from the lot and left the remainder on the ground. "We should have lunch, at any rate," he said, tossing the stones from hand to hand in a pattern that was remarkably complex for only three stones. One was white quartz and served as a marker for Ilna's inexpert eyes.

  Davus gathered the stones into his left hand. "How do you choose to proceed, sir and madam?" he asked with polite formality.

  Chalcus raised an eyebrow toward Ilna. He could've spoken as easily as she-there was only one possible answer, after all-but since he put it to her Ilna said, "If Merota is at the Citadel, we'll go to the Citadel."

  "We won't lose our direction, whatever else we may lose," Davus said, his tone making the words approving rather than a criticism. He stepped forward, taking the lead without pointless dithering. Ilna could've had worse companions in a situation like this, whateverthis really was.

  "What are the people like here, Davus?" Chalcus asked from a double-pace behind Ilna, the same distance at which she followed Davus. There was no obvious reason why they shouldn't have walked in a close group like three acquaintances on the only street of Barca's Hamlet's, but it felt more comfortable to spread slightly so that everybody had an unobstructed view.

  "In my day, all sorts," Davus said with a chuckle. "On the grasslands, nomads and hunters. That's northeast of the Citadel, though, and we're on the southern rim so it's nowhere we'll be going-"

  He glanced over his shoulder and grinned.

  "-for a time, at least."

  A bird sailed through the high sky, a black cross against the pale blue. Though Ilna couldn't see any details at that height, the bird's wings were steady like those of a hawk instead of tipping on air currents the way a vulture would.

  A ground squirrel whistled from an outcrop ten double-paces distant. Davus flung a rock sidearm with no more hesitation than a trout taking a mayfly. The squirrel sprang into the air, as instantly dead as the quail of the night before.

  Ilna walked over to the dead rodent. She tucked it under her sash to clean when they next stopped. It wasn't a species she'd encountered previously, but she wasn't in a mood to be fussy. An animal that turned grass into meat was likely to be good eating, even if it didn't look much like a sheep.

  Davus rubbed the ball and big toe of his right foot into the soil. The action puzzled Ilna until he reached down and came up with a pebble which he juggled briefly along with the two remaining from his original trio. He caught Chalcus' eye and said, "It'll do till something better comes along, I think."

  "In your hands," the sailor agreed, "I dare say it will."

  "Here in the south," Davus said as they continued, "there's villages but not so many. Near the cliffs-"

  He crooked a finger back toward the rocky slopes behind them.

  "-there's a great deal of power and things happen, as the three of us know better than most. The folk we're apt to find here are mostly solitaries for one reason or another, those who don't fear wizardry or who fear other things more. In my day, the King didn't chase down outlaws who took themselves here to the Rim, so long as they didn't return to trouble others."

  "And the wizards who lurk here?" Chalcus said with a hint of challenge. "What of them?"

  "The same," Davus replied. "Those who kept to themselves were allowed to keep to themselves. Those who thought otherwise found themselves stone statues, as-"

  He turned his head, his lips but not his eyes smiling as he looked at first Chalcus, then Ilna.

  "-I was when you freed me, mistress. But in my case not, I think, because the Old King found me troublesome to my neighbors. Which you can believe or not believe as you choose."

  "What I believe, Master Davus," said Ilna, meeting the fellow's eyes and speaking with her usual lack of emphasis, "is that I'm glad to have your company. If others at another time felt otherwise, then I suspect they're not people I'd warm to myself."

  She laughed and added a further truth in a tone that made it a joke, "Of course it's easy to find people I don't warm to. No doubt most of them feel the same way about me."

  A brightly colored lizard the length of a man's forearm raised its head toward them from the trunk of a dwarf almond tree. "Do we eat lizards?" Davus asked.

  "We do not," Ilna said. "At least as yet."

  "I ate steaks from the tail of a sea-wolf, once," Chalcus said.

  "Sea-wolf?" asked Davus. If he came from this dry upland, he wouldn't have seen the long-jawed sea reptiles who'd occasionally come ashore near Barca's Hamlet to snatch a ewe or even a shepherd if he wasn't paying proper attention.

  "A lizard twice as long as I'm tall," Chalcus explained. "It weighed as much as a grown bull, I'd judge, and seemed hungry enough to eat one. It had similar thoughts about me, but as it chanced I learned that it tasted fishy instead of it complaining to its scaly kin that I was stringy. So I'll willingly forgo lizard today as well."

  Davus stooped and came up with another chip of rock, this one pinkish and jagged. He juggled as he walked along, all four stones for a moment; then one flew onto a patch of bare earth and the other three vanished into his left palm again.

  "There's good enough," he said, "and there's better. And sometimes there's better for a particular thing."

  "Even among rocks," Ilna said, in so flat a tone that she thought only Chalcus would catch her self-mockery.

  "Oh, especially among rocks, mistress!" Davus said, chuckling in full understanding. "Why, by the time we've rescued your friend Merota, I'll have taught you to appreciate the subtle delicacy of a bit of gneiss against the boldness one expects from an agate, eh?"

  The three of them laughed together. In a quieter, sober voice Davus went on, "I don't think the pattern of life here will have changed much since my time. The Old King didn't let men rule other men because he thought it was wrong that they should. The King who replaced him cares little for men, as we see from the fact he allows the trolls to walk, but he must care a great deal for his own safety
. He won't allow a power to rise that might threaten him. There'll be farmsteads and villages, nothing greater than that; and no king but the King, as he now is."

  A trio of small doves flew from a clump of laburnum, their flight feathers clattering together louder than the soft coos they uttered. Davus poised, then slipped the readied stone back into his other hand.

  "There's a patch of bright green on the horizon," he said. "Maybe a spring where we'll find food, maybe a settlement. Those doves are pretty things, and if we don't need them to eat then I'll let them go on being pretty till a hawk takes them or a fox takes them or perhaps they break their fool necks flying into a slab of mica that reflects the sky."

  They laughed again, all in agreement; but Ilna noticed that Chalcus slipped his sword and dagger loose in their sheaths. She began to plait cords from her sleeve into a pattern that would be of use if what waited in the green wasn't a friend to them. She and Chalcus were willing to live and let live if other parties were of a similar mind; but if the others weren't, well, she and Chalcus were ready for that as well.

  ***

  "Why are we here, ma'am?" Cashel asked, looking about the vast domed hall with the interest its magnificence deserved. The roof was clear crystal. You could see fluffy clouds through it, but though the just-risen sun filled the room with light it didn't heat things up the way Cashel was used to from working outdoors.

  Because the room was so big, the number of people inside didn't fill it any more than the terrace up above was crowed by a similar. A dais rose in two steps at one edge. The first level was just above the heads of the spectators. On it sat the seven wizards Cashel'd seen at the dawn ceremony, still wearing their golden headdresses and gold-embroidered robes.

  The step above was the same amount higher. On it was an empty throne of interwoven ruby and sapphire threads.

  "Every visitor to Ronn should see the Morning Levee," Mab said with a faint smile. "I'd be remiss in my duties as hostess if I didn't bring you."

  She paused, then added, "I expect to introduce you to a man here after the levee. But it really is an attractive pageant, even to me who's seen it often. I thought you'd enjoy it."

  "Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. "It's pretty, all right."

  "Ronn has many attractive pageants," Mab said, but she seemed to be talking to herself.

  They'd crossed to the north side of the terrace and gone down an outside staircase, then walked through any number of branching halls to get to this high room. Cashel found it like hiking through canyons, though, not a series of caves like it was in most big buildings. It wasn't just that the halls were wide and had high ceilings: the walls and everything seemed full of the same light as up on the terrace.

  Instead of being covered with paintings on plaster, the translucent walls of Ronn were molded inside with curves and sweeps and dadoes. Some panels were knots of leaves and flowers, but Cashel didn't see any birds or animals in the designs as he went along.

  Ronn was a pretty place to be, at least for a visit. The folks passing in the halls seemed happy too.

  That was pretty much true here under the crystal dome also, where he saw an even wider assortment of foreigners than on the terrace. As Mab and Cashel entered, ushers were guiding an animal toward the front. It was as big as an elephant, but shaped very different. Instead of a trunk and tusks, its head was curved in to make a saddle with a pair of broad, flat horns over the nose. A tasseled scarlet drapery covered the creature's back, and on that was a gilded palanquin in which rode two women.

  "They're ambassadors from Tiree, far to the west," Mab said. "They came overland along the coast road."

  Behind the ambassadors were more attendants than Cashel could count on both hands, wearing puffed white shirts and pantaloons. Two carried brooms and buckets. The creature must be well-trained to be trusted to walk through so large a crowd, but there were some things that a big plant-eaterhad to do, training or no. Their stomachs just worked that way.

  Cashel got a good look at all the traffic because Mab had placed them at the middle of the room instead of near the dais where the crowd was thicker. They were far enough from the walls that Cashel wasn't sure he could make himself heard to people just entering, even though he'd learned to throw his voice while calling to other shepherds across the hills of the borough.

  "The delegations from the eastern cities of Hyse, Ernle, and Renfell are coming in to your left," Mab said, nodding minusculely rather than point past Cashel toward another of the many, many doors into the chamber. "They came along the coast as well."

  Cashel's hands tightened a trifle on his quarterstaff. Each of the three eastern ambassadors rode on a sedan chair carried by two metal giants half again as tall as Cashel. The first pair were covered in copper and had agate eyes; the second silver and glinting sapphire eyes; and the third were shining gold whose eyes were diamonds cut to sparkle like a bee's.

  The giants stumped forward slowly without looking to either side. The third pair didn't march with quite the same pace, so the chair rocked side to side. The fat, smooth-faced man riding on it kept his expression as fixed as that of his metal bearer. He had to reach up quickly to keep his bulging turban from toppling off his head.

  "They're automatons, clockwork pieces," Mab said dismissively. "Clever toys, but merely toys. Of course the phantasms which the Councillors control are toys also, though of a different kind."

  As the ambassadors from the east clumped to places of honor near the dais, curtains fell from galleries to either side, just below the dome. Whole squads of trumpeters there began to call. Their gold-gleaming instruments were of different lengths, and the music sounding from them was just as liquidly complicated as the tunes Garric played on his pipes in the days when he and Cashel watched the borough's sheep together.

  The eldest Councillor rose from his ivory chair. "The Assembly of the City of Ronn is open," he said. His voice was thready, the way old men's voices often are, but to Cashel's amazement every word was clear as Mab's had been. "The Assembly will now receive the greetings of our brother cities."

  He sat down unsteadily, and the female Councillor on his left got up in his place. There was a brief hush; then a male voice, just as easy to hear as the Councillor's, said, "The Primates and People of the Nagaro greet the Assembly of Ronn and wish it eternal splendor."

  Cashel couldn't see who was speaking. The voice seemed to come from everywhere. Mab gestured with an index finger, saying, "There's too many people in the way to see them from here, but the delegates are in the center closest to the throne. The Nagaro's a river draining into the Great Sea on the opposite side of the continent."

  "The Assembly of the City of Ronn accepts the good wishes of the Primates of Nagaro," said the standing Councillor.

  "The ambassadors from the Nagaro came by sea," Mab said, speaking softly, her lips close to Cashel's right shoulder. "All the delegations from the north came by sea, just as those of the southern islands did. No one crosses the mountains to reach Ronn any more. Nobody's crossed them in a decade."

  More delegates, about a double handful though Cashel wasn't interested enough to actually count them off on his fingers, spoke and were recognized the same as the first one. Apart from the ambassadors from the cities of the south coast, lifted high by the mounts that'd carried them in, he couldn't see the speakers themselves. He mostly looked around at the hall and the spectators nearby.

  Cashel tried to guess how high the dome was, but he couldn't come any closer than being sure there weren't any trees in the borough that wouldn't have fitted inside without trouble. Since he left Barca's Hamlet he'd seen temples with domes, but they'd had a hole right in the top for lighting. Here it was solid, though in the center of the crystal swirled a pattern that had at least three strands and might be three threes.

  Mab made little comments about the ambassadors and the places they came from, but she didn't seem to be too interested in all this either. It was pretty, but pretty the way a painting is instead of being like Cashel'
s smooth, perfectly-balanced quarterstaff.

  The whole business reminded him of the Tithe Procession, when priests from Carcosa dragged big statues of the Lady and the Shepherd through the borough on carts. They wore fancy costumes and talked fancy words, but none of it came to anything.

  Unlike his sister Ilna, Cashel believed in the Great Gods. Whatever the gods were, though, he didn't figure they had much to do with a bunch of tired, red-faced city folk chanting words that meant as little to them as the color of the dust in the street.

  "The Assembly of the City of Ronn will now hear petitions from her citizens," the Councillor said. The woman who'd taken over from the old man was still doing the talking, not that there was much to it.

  "Normally there'd only be one or two Councillors at the Morning Levee," Mab said. As usual her voice was calm and sounded slightly amused, but that was a gloss over something else that Cashel wasn't sure of. "Because the Queen's absent, they decided they should all appear."

  "Has the Queen's reign ended as the legend says?" a man called. His voice filled the air just as those of speakers near the dais had, but he was actually standing close enough to touch with the quarterstaff if Cashel'd needed to. He was a sturdy young fellow of about Cashel's age. "Will the King now return to rule Ronn for a thousand years?"

  Spectators turned to one another and whispered excitedly; the motion reminded Cashel of a breeze dancing over a meadow of brightly colored flowers. The vast crystal room swallowed the sounds as completely as the sea drinks in raindrops.

  The standing Councillor stepped back, turning to her seated senior. The old man struggled to rise.

  Without waiting further for him, the female faced the audience again. "The legend is just that," she said. "Legend, myth! There's no truth to it. The Queen is tending to the welfare of the citizens of Ronn, as she's done for a thousand years and as she will continue to do forever!"