Mistress of the Catacombs

by David Drake

  “And something to drink,” Hakken called in a frustrated, cracking voice. “A whole lot to drink!”

  “Yeah, all right,” said Orphin. “Get out of sight in the stables. I'll send over a hamper and a jug.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Most likely I'll bring the food myself,” he corrected himself. “Sister take 'em, they're all scared to so much as lift their heads.”

  A large death's-head moth flew toward Orphin's eyes, then away. The stablemaster scowled, then spat. His aim was as accurate as usual, but the moth hovered for a flickering instant instead of continuing its path uninterrupted.

  The gobbet sailed between Garric and Vascay, then splattered the ground near Toster's foot.

  “Sorry,” the stablemaster muttered. “Yeah, I'll take you back to the stables. Otherwise, Pusta and Jelf'll think you're coming for them, and the Lady knows what they'll do.”

  The death's-head moth flew toward Garric's eyes. He threw an arm up, startled. It circled his head.

  “Come on, brethren,” Vascay said over his shoulder. “We've got straw to sleep on and food coming.”

  Tint, aroused by Garric's sudden movement, came alert. Her head turned upward; her muscles bunched with the lethal certainty of a crossbow cocking.

  “No, Tint!” Garric said.

  She leaped, her arms outstretched to snatch the big moth. Garric, faster than he'd known he could be, grabbed the beastgirl's throat and held her back.

  “No, Tint,” Garric repeated as he relaxed his grip on the girl. The moth lifted a few feet higher, describing figure-eights between Garric and Vascay.

  “Is she all right?” Orphin said uneasily. “She hasn't got hydrophobia, has she?”

  “Gar mad?” the beastgirl whimpered, rubbing against Garric's leg. “Gar not mad, please?”

  “She's fine,” Garric snapped. “We're all fine.”

  He stroked Tint's back, and in a milder tone said, “I'm not angry, but you've got to do what I tell you. All right?”

  Ignoring her moans of appreciation, Garric swept Vascay and the stablemaster with his eyes. “Orphin,” he said, “take the men to the stables. Vascay and I have other business.”

  He crooked a smile at the chieftain. “Brother Vascay,” he said. “You and I are going to follow that moth”—he gestured with a casual finger—“and see where it leads. All right?”

  Garric knew he was on the verge of hysteria, but he had to keep going even though everything seemed ludicrously funny. His body was tired, and part of him wanted to break into peals of laughter. What was left of his reason told him that he couldn't drown the scrunch of steel on bone that way, maybe no way... .

  Vascay frowned, then twitched his javelins toward the puzzled stablemaster. “You heard him, Orphin,” he said. “Get the Brethren bedded down.”

  He turned his attention to his men. “Brother Hame, you'd be a good one to give orders when there's no time to vote. Not so, Brethren?”

  Ademos muttered, but the others nodded agreement.

  Vascay looked up at the moth. It was lengthening its twisted loops toward the villa's north wing. Moonlight threw the skull on the back of its wings into bright relief.

  “Sure, let's go,” he said, starting off in the direction the moth was indicating. “This something your friend—”

  His javelin butts wagged toward Tint, frisking at Garric's side.

  “—told you about?”

  “No,” said Garric. “Metron's a wizard, though. If he was powerful enough to get away from the Intercessor's men, then he'd find a way to bring us to wherever he's hiding.”

  “And you think this bug's our guide?” Vascay said.

  “I think I've never seen a moth act like this one does,” Garric replied quietly. “If it flies off into a redbud and ignores us, then we'll look for some other way to find Metron.”

  The moon gave good light for the moment, but he and Vascay would be in shadow if they went around the building. He supposed they'd manage.

  The moth kept closer. It wasn't worried about being eaten, Garric supposed; not that insects had brain enough to worry, but he remained certain that the mind animating this one wasn't an insect's. Moonlight turned the moth's gray wing scales silver and darkened the brown ones to black.

  “The Intercessor knew where we'd be landing,” Vascay said. He was favoring his left leg. He walked at his normal pace, but he hunched slightly every time the peg came down. “But he didn't know we'd win through. And though the Intercessor knew Lord Thalemos was getting the ring that'd break his power, he didn't know it until just before it happened.”

  “Eh?” said Garric. Even the brief time he'd been effective ruler of the Isles had taught him that you don't always act immediately on information you've received. Kingship is a complicated business. “He might've known long before he chose to move on Thalemos, mightn't he? To see who'd join the rebel.”

  “Aye,” said Vascay, glancing at Garric with a grin. “But he'd have sent an estate manager out with the troops if he'd been planning this for more than the time it took to alert a company of Protectors. Not so?”

  Garric laughed. “So.”

  Instead of curving back around the north wing of the villa, the moth's flutters and curlicues were leading them through a tract that had once been an ornamental garden but hadn't been kept up for a generation. The tightly planted clump of boxwoods, ragged but still retaining some of their original shape, must have been a maze.

  “So,” said Vascay, “while I'd sooner not be fighting a wizard, I knew what Echeon was before I started out. It therefore pleases me that he's got limitations despite all his powers.”

  He looked at Garric, this time not smiling. “And it pleases me that you came to us when you did, Brother Prince,” he added. “Because however much help Metron's wizardry may be to us, I put more trust in your wit and your sword.”

  Garric forced a smile of acknowledgment; he felt embarrassed. “You've honored me with your trust,” he said.

  As he spoke, he thought of all the others who trusted him, who needed him. One way or another, he would get back where he belonged.

  “Where Gar go?” Tint asked. “Tint sleep soon?”

  “It looks,” Garric said, “like we're headed for that copse of willows. There must be something there besides trees or there wouldn't be a path.”

  “House there,” said the beastgirl. “Pond there too. We sleep in house, Gar?”

  At least Tint didn't seem to be as hungry as Garric himself was. Though he hadn't let her eat the big moth, she'd been snapping down tidbits as they went along, like a boy walking through a berry patch. In her case it was mostly crickets, though.

  “That's the boathouse Orphin talked about,” Vascay said. “But he said the Protectors searched it, too. Can a wizard make himself invisible?”

  Garric shrugged. “Some can, maybe,” he said. “But I don't know why Metron would have to come out here instead of going invisible in the main house.”

  Vascay nodded. He took the javelins one at a time into his right hand, checking their balance. Tint would've warned them if anybody was waiting for them in the copse, but Garric raised his sword a few fingers' breadth and let it slip back in the scabbard. There was no harm in needless preparation, after all.

  The boathouse was an open-sided structure with a peaked tile roof; two small skiffs were stored upturned on the roof trusses. A short dock led from the building into a pond that extended at least a bowshot to right and left; better light might have shown it to be even broader. The water was shallow, though; the moonlight shimmered through cattails well out from the soggy margins.

  Vascay rapped a skiff with a javelin butt. The gesture was pointless, a mere placeholder while the chief's mind tried to puzzle out the problem.

  Tint leaped suddenly onto a truss. Vascay jumped back, cocking a javelin. Garric had his sword half-drawn before the men realized the beastgirl had just caught a tree frog. She popped it into her mouth.

  The moth was fluttering in tight
figures at the end of the dock. “Maybe he's breathing through a reed." Vascay said.

  He walked onto the structure—it was less than six feet long—and knelt. At first he fished in the water with his bare hand; then he thrust a javelin butt first under the boards to extend his reach. He brought it up with mud streaming from the ferrule and lower shaft.

  “Nothing,” Vascay said, rising heavily. “Maybe he was there and then moved when the Protectors had gone, but I don't see them not checking it themselves. Those scum have a lot of experience looking for folks who're trying to hide.”

  But the moth wasn't over the dock: it circled above the clear water beyond. Garric stepped past Vascay—the boards creaked but held—and walked to the end. All he could see on the water was moonlight.

  “Gar?” Tint called. She hopped to the floor of the boat-house with a thump.

  Garric lay flat and reached into the water. It was shockingly cold, spring-fed. He couldn't touch the bottom.

  He reached behind him. “Vascay, give me one of your—” he began and broke off, because Vascay was already laying a javelin in his hand. The missiles had bodkin points for penetration, so Garric didn't have to worry about cutting himself with an edge.

  Garric slid the shaft sideways through the water. It touched something and twisted back in his hand. Maybe a rock, of course: no hollow reed disturbed the pond's surface here. If the wizard was hiding here, he wasn't breathing... .

  But the moth drew tight circles over Garric's probing arm, fanning his biceps with its great wings.

  Garric laid the javelin beside him and rolled onto his back to unbuckle his sword belt. Vascay dried the missile on the hem of his outer tunic. “Find something?” he asked.

  “Something,” said Garric. “I don't know what.”

  He swung himself feetfirst into the water. The cold knotted his belly muscles. He bent down and grasped a plump man lying on his back under four feet of water. He lifted, surprised at the effort. When the figure broke surface, Garric saw the fellow had crossed his arms over his chest and was holding an anchor in either hand.

  “Got him!” Vascay cried, kneeling to help lift the wizard. “It's Metron all right. That's the clothes he wears!”

  They were both strong men, but it was a struggle to flop Metron onto the dock. His dark robe was slashed white across the front. It weighed as much as the body did now that it was waterlogged, but initially the anchors on which his fingers were locked would've been necessary to keep him down.

  “Is he dead?” Garric said, gasping in the pond for a moment before he heaved himself up. “I don't see—”

  Metron spluttered. His eyelids quivered open, then closed again as he turned his head sideways and vomited water.

  Garric lifted himself with a splash; water continued to run from his tunics. He glanced over his shoulder.

  The moth had fallen into the pond, lifeless. Its spread wings swirled slowly in the current.

  Cashel's skin tingled as the gout of red wizardlight washed him. For an instant he saw the world as a negative image of itself, the shadows bright but moonlight on the sea a streak of blackness.

  A sailor cried out in terror, though none of the men Cashel could see were any more injured by the light than he himself was. The fellow screaming wasn't afraid of any thing, he was just afraid.

  Though there might be plenty of real reasons for fear, of course. Cashel knew that from his past experience with wizards.

  The gush of light from the beach faded; the stones of the ruined temple now had a rosy glow, as if they'd been soaked with dye. Cashel sensed things happening at the corners of his eyes, but his focus was on the sailors before him.

  “Come on, you cowards!” Captain Mounix shouted. “If we're ever going to be safe, we've got to have the girl with us!”

  He paused, probably hoping that his men would rush Cashel without him. A sailor threw his club at Cashel's head. Cashel batted it back over the cliff edge with a quick twist of his left hand on the quarterstaff. The club missed Mounix by less than its own spinning width.

  “Come on!” the captain screamed. To Cashel's surprise he charged up the steps with his sword held out before him like a spear.

  Cashel could've stopped Mounix with a straight thrust; with his full strength behind it, the blunt ferrule would've gone through the captain's breastbone to smash his spine. Cashel killed when he needed to, but he couldn't take the sailors as a serious danger despite their numbers. He spun his staff horizontally, swiping the sword out of Mounix's hand.

  The blade rang off a pillar and rebounded. Mounix gave a cry of horror and jumped back, gripping his numbed right hand with his left. Another sailor, drawn to attack with his wooden spear by the captain's example, tried to backpedal also. Cashel reversed his spin and broke the man's knee.

  Two sailors pulled their screaming comrade off the temple porch. Cashel waited for the next attempt. He was panting, more to feed the emotions surging through his veins than because he'd really exerted himself.

  The temple was changing. The red light didn't just stain the walls, it was rebuilding them. The wear and fractures swelled with a liquid translucence that had the texture of stone when Cashel tested a pillar by brushing it with his elbow.

  “Come on, move up,” Hook said. “All together, slow and steady. Possin, Ruttal, Wallach ... with me, all together.”

  The carpenter slid his right foot ahead a half step, his spear advanced. Instead of waiting this time, Cashel strode forward with his quarterstaff spinning over his head. Hook screamed and jabbed blindly. The quarterstaff cracked the spearshaft in half just ahead of where Hook's left hand gripped it.

  The rangy sailor who'd moved up also now tripped over Hook and sprawled toward Cashel. Cashel broke the man's collarbone and stepped back.

  “Who's next?” he growled. They'd gotten his blood up by now. “Who wants his head cracked next?”

  “Monsters!” shouted a sailor. “There's monsters coming out of the sea!”

  “Lady help us!” another man cried. “They're all around! Lady save us!”

  Cashel couldn't see what they were talking about. The sailors he could see, however, were all turning to look behind them. Cashel took the opportunity to check how Tilphosa was keeping.

  The clinging red glow of the temple walls lighted her from all directions, but even its softness couldn't change the girl's stark expression. Tilphosa still held the block of stone she'd taken for a weapon, but despair had subtly eroded her spirit.

  “Metra's raised the Archai,” she said. “I was afraid that was what she was doing.”

  The pedestal for the God's image remained empty, but the screening wall behind it, the reredos, had returned to its full majesty despite the fragments of the stone original littering the floor. The carving was complete in solid light: on it insect monsters battled lizard monsters, and in the center with Her arms spread stood the Lady crowned as the Moon. Cashel saw no mercy, no comfort in Her cold visage.

  Cashel shrugged. “All right, then,” he said. “We'll fight the Archai. Whoever they—”

  Around the sides of the temple, pressing the sailors back from both directions, came one set of the monsters from the reredos. The Archai walked upright, and each was each was as tall as a woman, but they weren't remotely human.

  The Archai's legs joined their bodies in the middle rather than at the lower end as with men. Their abdomens wobbled beneath, making the creatures look a little like praying mantises. The middle pair of their six limbs ended in fingers, which they now clenched tightly against their chests to keep them out of the way.

  The Archai's uppermost arms had sharp, saw-toothed edges with small pincers in place of hands. These were outstretched as they came on.

  A sailor shrieked and charged the Archai, swinging his long club in both hands in a desperate attempt to break through. He crushed the wedge-shaped head of the first insect, but others leaped on him from both sides with their arms chopping.

  Blood splashed in all directions.
The sailor screamed; he continued to scream as his body sank under repeated blows. He must have been dead for some time before his slayers stopped hacking at the quivering corpse. Beside him lay the Archa he'd killed, its limbs twitching in six separate rhythms.

  More Archai joined those already confronting the sailors. The men backed slowly. One jabbed his spear at an Archa. The point glanced from the creature's chitinous chest. The Archa grabbed the shaft with its pincered fore-limbs.

  The sailor jerked back hard, dragging the Archa along with him. The sailor squealed and dropped his weapon, but another man smashed the Archa's shoulder with his club and jumped away before the other monsters could respond. The wounded Archa collapsed and began worrying the spearshaft with its beak.

  Shoulder to narrow shoulder, the insectile mass advanced without haste. The sailors backed up the temple steps, still rightly wary of Cashel's quarterstaff.

  “Tilphosa, have you got any ideas?” Cashel asked, his eyes on the closing ring of monsters. “Because you know these people, I mean.”

  “Cashel, they're not people,” the girl cried. “There's no help for us now!”

  Metra came up the track from the beach, swaying on a driftwood litter carried by four Archai. The wizard looked drawn, her plump features more washed out than moonlight alone could explain. Her eyes met Cashel's over the heads of the frightened sailors.

  “Barbarian!” she called, her voice cracking. “Master Cashel! Is Lady Tilphosa all right? Show her to me!”

  “Tilphosa's fine,” Cashel growled. “And she's going to stay that way. You aren't giving orders here, Metra.”

  The ring of Archai continued its slow pressure, squeezing the sailors inward the way a blacksnake's coils suffocate a vole. Friends had dragged the man with a broken shoulder back from the temple; he lay on the ground, unconscious from pain. As the sailors retreated, the Archai reached him on their spindly legs.

  Two of the insects knelt; their legs bent backward like a sheep's, not a man's. Their forearms hammered like cleavers, reducing the victim to a bloody carcase.