Mistress of the Catacombs

by David Drake

  “—this?”

  “We'll know more by daylight,” Cashel said. “And after a good night's sleep.”

  He led the girl the rest of the way to the temple. It was only ten double paces, but it was pretty steep in the darkness. He tapped the end of his staff ahead of him; they didn't want to go over the edge of the cliff.

  The sailors had climbed the escarpment also. They were shouting to one another, though Cashel couldn't make out what they were talking about. He heard Hook's saw rasping, and also the sound of chopping from several places.

  Firewood, he guessed, but his eyes narrowed. There was only one small hatchet in the carpenter's tool chest, so they must be using the adze and probably the captain's sword as well. That seemed a lot of effort when there were plenty of fallen branches available. You didn't have to cut wood to length for an open fire.

  Cashel rubbed his staff absently again. He wasn't sure he'd be sleeping tonight after all, though he wasn't the sort to borrow trouble that might never come.

  The temple was small, but the masonry was well finished, and there'd been lots of carvings on the triangular front of the porch roof. They'd weathered badly, so Cashel didn't guess he'd be able to tell much even by daylight.

  He walked into the nave. The God's image was gone, though the base remained. There was no writing on it.

  The moon was rising out of the sea, painting a white road across the water. Cashel could see pretty well, but he found the light didn't make him feel... comfortable, he guessed he'd say. Full moons always made a herd restless, so maybe that was his problem.

  “Look at this reredos!” Tilphosa said. “This is marvelous!”

  There'd been a thin wall made from a single sheet of pale stone behind where the statue had stood, dividing the public part of the temple from the back where the priests stored things. It'd split and later fallen to pieces on the floor, probably when the roof right above it collapsed. Tilphosa was bending over a triangular piece, one of the larger fragments.

  Cashel stepped closer. He'd have guessed that the girl was talking about something he couldn't see from where he stood in the doorway, but it turned out a reredos was the stone screen itself.

  “The sculptor was illustrating the Demonomachia, the Battle of Demons,” Tilphosa explained, easing to the side to keep from blocking the light as she pointed with a slim white finger. Sure enough, the public side of the wall was as full of carved figures as an ungrazed meadow is of dandelions. “See? Have you ever seen art so involving?”

  “Yes,” said Cashel. “But I guess I don't know how you mean the word.”

  Cashel knew his sister's fabrics, not only the arras she'd woven as a votive to hang behind the statue of the Protecting Shepherd in Valles but also the lesser drapes and ribbons that carried no image at all when you first glanced at them. Ilna made people feel things. This was just carved stone.

  And it wasn't what Cashel called pretty carving, either.

  Six-limbed monsters, generally standing upright on the hind pair but sometimes on the bottom four legs, fought with monsters that walked like men but had the heads and tails of lizards. They weren't animals, either: they were using swords and spears, and as best Cashel could tell in the light they wore armor besides.

  “The guy who did it knew his business, though,” Cashel said, hoping that he didn't sound grudging. Tilphosa obviously liked the thing, and the fact he didn't was no reason to spoil her happiness.

  “Pendill describes the battle,” the girl said. She was excited about the carving, picking up one piece after another to see how they fit together. “In his Changes, not the Love Lyrics, of course. But look at this, Cashel!”

  Tilphosa started to hold out another slab, then changed her mind and got to her feet again. “Here, where the light is better,” she said as she went back onto the porch.

  Cashel smiled faintly. The expression felt good; he hadn't been smiling as much as he ought to since he'd gone into the palace pond and wound up here. This wasn't anything he understood, much less cared about, but it was giving the girl a lot of pleasure.

  “This is the Queen of the Archai,” Tilphosa said, tilting the stone in one hand so that it caught the light the right way. “But you see, she's not an Archa. She's human!”

  “Right, I see that,” Cashel said. The fragment had been lying facedown so the carving was as sharp as you could ask. It was a woman all right, her right arm raised and her left hand stuck out like she was signalling somebody to stop.

  He squinted and bent closer. “What's that on her head?” he asked. “Does she have horns?”

  “Cashel, I think she's meant for the Mistress!” Tilphosa said. She touched her silver-mounted crystal pendant. “In Her guise as the Lady of the Moon, you see!”

  Cashel didn't see, not really, but he was glad for the girl to be so excited. “I wish Sharina was here,” he said. “She'd understand better than I do.”

  Tilphosa lowered the stone but didn't look up for a moment. “Sharina is your wife, Cashel?” she asked.

  “What?” said Cashel. The smile that had blossomed across his face when he thought of Sharina now faded slowly.

  “Well, not that,” he continued, turning over in his mind how he ought to explain. Deciding that the simplest way was best—at least for Cashel or-Kenset, and probably for more people than tried it—he said, “I love her, though. And I think she loves me.”

  “Let's sit down, shall we?” said Tilphosa, walking out to the second of the four pillars holding up the porch. She seated herself with a graceful motion.

  Cashel butted the quarterstaff on the littered floor beside the third pillar and lowered himself carefully, controlling the motion by his grip on the staff. He angled his legs onto the temple's three-stepped base so that while facing the girl he could watch Metra on the beach below as well.

  “Do you miss your Sharina, Cashel?” Tilphosa said.

  “Well, I miss talking to her,” he said, frowning as he tried to understand the question. “But I don't...”

  He balanced the staff across his lap and shrugged. “Tilphosa," he said, “she's not really gone, you know. She's always with me, and I know that when I get back to Valles or wherever she is, she'll be there. Do you see?”

  Tilphosa didn't, he could tell that from the carefully neutral expression on her face. Well, they'd both managed to puzzle the other tonight by talking about things the other didn't understand.

  He looked down at Metra. The wizard had drawn her symbols across at least three double paces of wet sand. They were in a line rather than a closed figure the way Cashel had seen these things done in the past. Metra walked behind them, turning when she reached the end and starting back.

  He could hear her chanting, but he couldn't tell what the words were. She wasn't using her athame, but on every third step she tossed a pinch of glittering dust toward the words in the sand.

  “I wonder if I'll feel that way about Thalemos,” Tilphosa said, her face turned out to sea. She was looking at the moon or the path it drew on the water. “I've never even seen a picture of him. He's supposed to be exactly my age, but...”

  She shrugged. “Laut isn't like what I was told,” she said, "so I don't know if Thalemos or anything else is.”

  “Tilphosa?” said Cashel. He pointed with his staff. “Do you know what Metra's doing there?”

  The girl leaned forward, then shifted the way she was sitting so that she could see around the pillar. She said nothing for a moment, then turned to Cashel with worried eyes.

  “Cashel?” she said. “When Metra was in the woods this morning, before we boarded the boat—could she have gone back to the top of the hill where you killed the thing?”

  Cashel stroked his staff as he considered. “I guess she could've,” he said. “There was time enough, and she knew the way. I wasn't paying any attention to her.”

  “Because I wonder...” Tilphosa said. “If she went back for the amulet the thing was wearing.”

  “There's no amulet, Tilph
osa,” Cashel said. He spoke calmly, just as if he didn't know the girl had watched him grind it to dust. Maybe she'd gotten too much sun on the pinnace? “I smashed it, remember?”

  “Yes, I know you smashed it,” Tilphosa said with a little of the sharpness that Cashel had carefully kept out of his voice. “But that didn't make it vanish—or its power either, I'm afraid. What do you suppose Metra is dusting onto her words of power?”

  She grimaced. “Oh, I'm sorry, Cashel!” she blurted before he could speak. “I'm just mad at myself for not thinking of that before it was too late. It's not your fault.”

  “I don't know that it's too late, either,” Cashel said, rising to his feet like an ox. He shrugged his whole body, loosening the muscles for what he might have to do after he went down and rubbed Metra's symbols out of existence.

  “Cashel,” Tilphosa said, not loudly but with a hint of urgency. She was looking inland around the north corner of the temple.

  Cashel, his staff held close along his side, stepped past to look for himself. Sailors were coming through the woods toward the temple in groups of three or four men, each with a lighted pine knot for a torch.

  “Mounix!” Cashel said. “I don't need your company tonight. We'll talk in the morning, if you think you need to.”

  “Stand aside, farmer!” Hook called. “You don't need to get hurt, but it won't bother us if you do.”

  He carried a sapling with a chisel lashed to the end to make it a spear. Other sailors had spears tipped with the belt knives that had been their only weapons when they landed, or sections of branch shaped into cudgels. Mounix had his sword out, but he let his carpenter do the talking.

  “I'm not standing aside,” Cashel said. “And you're not getting past me either, Hook.”

  He knew there were sailors to the south side of the building where he couldn't see them; there was no chance of getting to the shore the way he and Tilphosa had come up. As for trying to climb straight down at night from where he and Tilphosa stood at the highest part of the cliff, he'd likely break his neck even without sailors dropping rocks on his head.

  There wouldn't be much gain to being down on the sand. And besides, he didn't feel like running.

  “We're not going to hurt the girl!” a sailor said. “We just want her with us while we go back to Tisamur where we belong. The wizard stays here, and the girl comes with us so we're sure she doesn't send anything after us!”

  Tilphosa had stepped sideways into the nave, where the sailors couldn't see her until they came around the front. She fingered her crystal pendant and watched Cashel with wide-open eyes.

  “I told you no!” said Cashel. Tilphosa gasped at the volume of his growling bellow. “If I need to crack heads, I'll do that. It won't be the first time!”

  The dozen men Cashel could see from where he stood had reached the back of the temple. He risked a glance to the side; torchlight flickered around the southern edge of the masonry, showing that the rest of the crew were close to being able to rush him from behind.

  “Get inside,” he snarled to Tilphosa. There'd been a door through the back wall to the storage room, but half the roof had collapsed across it. Beams and broken tiles blocked the opening. Given time, the sailors could clear a passage, but Cashel didn't guess they'd try that for a while.

  “We're coming for you, farmer!” Hook shouted.

  The girl had obediently moved to the center of the nave. She nodded when Cashel's eyes glanced across her. She'd picked up a jagged piece of the screening wall, small enough to throw but big enough to hurt if it hit somebody.

  Cashel placed himself in the middle of the opening, just back of the porch. It was some three times as wide as he was tall, about the right width to give him free play with the quarterstaff but not let the sailors get around him to the sides. The raised steps gave him an advantage too.

  Sailors edged into sight on both sides, staying close to the cliff edge until they were sure where Cashel stood. One of them waggled his torch between two pillars, then jumped back. A fool's trick, a nervous fool's trick.

  Cashel started to spin his quarterstaff slowly before him, waiting for the moment one of the gang milling in front of the temple would get up the courage to rush him. He was a lot better at this kind of fight than any of the sailors dreamed of being, but there was a right herd of them.

  “We're coming!” Hook repeated, holding his spear by the butt instead of the balance to make it reach longer.

  “Then come!” growled Cashel.

  A heavyset sailor with a club bounded up the temple steps. Cashel's staff struck—half spin, half thrust—and broke the man's knee as the rest of them came on.

  Red wizardlight mushroomed from the beach below. It wrapped the ruins of the temple, and the stones began to change.

  “No like water, Gar,” Tint whimpered. “Gar, take Tint to land? Tint smell land close.”

  “We'll be ashore soon, Tint,” Garric said, seated in the fishing boat's stern with the beastgirl hunched against his legs like a hound frightened by thunder. “We're just looking for the place to land.”

  “Shut that monkey up,” snarled an oarsman, “or by the Lady she goes over the side!”

  The vessel the Brethren had stolen for the voyage was undecked but broad and beamy. There was a mast step amidships, but Vascay had decided they'd row instead. “You can see a sail for a long ways,” he'd explained when Garric raised an eyebrow on first seeing the boat.

  “Gently...” Garric said. It took him a moment to dredge the man's name from Gar's damaged memory. “Alcomm. We'll all be happier when we get to shore.”

  The sun had set an hour before. The air was cooler, but rowing an uncertain course in the darkness was more uncomfortable than the glare of sunlight reflected from the calm sea. Except for Hakken, a fisherman before his wife had gone off with one of the Intercessor's officers, the bandits were landsmen.

  A few households in Barca's Hamlet supported themselves by fishing. Garric had pulled an oar on occasion himself, though never one as long as the sweeps of this Laut craft which the men sculled standing.

  “Aimal,” called Vascay to the lookout, standing with a foot braced on the stempost and a comrade holding his belt for safety. “Can you see anything?”

  “There's lights, Vascay,” Aimal said. “Hearthfires through a window, or maybe shepherds on the hillsides. I can't tell any more than that there's lights.”

  “We've got to go in,” a man in the belly of the boat said. He wasn't being belligerent; just tired and maybe frustrated. “We can't hang around out here till dawn. The Protectors'll see us sure and wonder what we were doing out all night.”

  “Yeah, we drifted bugger knows how far in the mid-channel," said another bandit. “Best to get ashore any which place and head for Durassa overland when we figure out where we're at.”

  Vascay squinted at the shore, then looked up at the sky. The stars were bright points in the clear night, but even the most skilled navigators—none of whom were aboard this vessel—could draw only direction, not location, from them.

  He sighed and cocked an eyebrow to Garric. Garric nodded minutely in agreement.

  “Aye,” said Vascay, cramping the steering oar to head the boat toward shore. “Put your backs in it, boys. And keep your eyes open in the bow. We don't want to run up on the private dock of one of Echeon's cronies.”

  The vessel had four sweeps, each worked by a single man; they creaked as the oarsmen leaned into them. Metal chinked and whispered as the others readied their weapons.

  Garric drew his new sword a hand's breadth out of the scabbard, then let it slip back with a faint chime. It moved freely.

  Vascay lifted a bundle of three short javelins from the boat's bottom, leaning them points up against the gunwale beside him. He caught Garric's eye and shrugged.

  “Take the tiller, lad,” he muttered. “One of us needs to be in the bow, and you've got your dog to care for.”

  Garric gripped the steering oar's crossjack as the chieftain
took the javelins in his left hand. He ducked under Alcomm's sweep, and called in a loud voice, “Make way, brothers! I'm coming forward.”

  Garric craned his neck to see past his poised fellows. The shore was rocky, and there was no beach at all.

  “We'll break her ribs if we come in here, Vascay!” a man warned nervously. “We're leagues east of where we ought to be! This must be somewhere in Haislip Parish, not Matunus.”

  “Then we'll stave her in, Hakken,” Vascay snapped. “The District Clerk we stole her from isn't any friend of mine or of any decent man. And as for a few leagues, I'd rather walk them than row.”

  “Aye!” Alcomm grunted as he put his back into his oar.

  “Ready yourself!” Aimal warned.

  Garric laid the fingers of his left hand between the shoulders of the whimpering beastgirl. “We're going to land now, Tint,” he said. “There'll be a scrape—”

  They ground into the rocks with the crash of a door being broken down. All the men lurched forward, Garric included. The impact was much worse than he'd expected. The boat wasn't moving fast, but it was so heavy that it took a great deal of stopping.

  Garric would've sprawled into Alcomm's oarpost if Tint hadn't held him firmly while bracing herself with a three-limbed grip on the boat's ribs. So much for taking care of the poor animal... .

  Men carrying their personal gear jumped to the shore with more haste than grace. The crumpled bow was filling, but the boat wasn't properly aground; sinking, it started to slide backward into deeper water. Hakken cursed and threw a bight around one of the taller rocks as his fellows splashed past him.

  As the last of the bandits splashed into the bow, Garric said to the beastgirl crouching at his feet, “All right, Tint, let's go—”

  Tint leaped to shore in a single twenty-foot movement, as smooth as a cat. She whirled, and chattered, “Come, Gar! Come quick!”

  The bow had settled to the bottom with only a hand's breadth of the hull above water; the stern continued to fill. Garric hefted the blanket roll with his belongings and hopped onto the port gunwale. It was no great trick for him to walk to land dry-footed.