Mistress of the Catacombs

by David Drake

  A heavy odor, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, hung in the air. Cashel sneezed as he stepped cautiously closer to the victim, ready to dodge if a limb slashed down at him. He heard leaves rustle or maybe something rustling in the leaves, but the tree didn't move.

  Though the little man's eyes no longer focused, a blood vessel throbbed in his throat. The leaf continued to fold, closing from his feet upward. Its deeply serrated edges meshed like the fangs of a seawolf.

  It was obviously tough. Cashel's crude knife might cut the pod while it was still green and flexible, but not, he thought, without carving the victim as well.

  He paused, letting the range of his senses expand beyond the silent man. Because of the way the branches curved down as they spread from the trunk, he had the feeling of being in a dimly lit vault. He judged the thickness of the limb which kinked where the pod attached, then raised the quarterstaff over his right shoulder.

  He punched the staff forward with all his weight behind the blow. If it'd been an oak—or worse, a dogwood—even Cashel's strength could have done no more than bruise the bark. This tree, though, had brittle wood like a pear's; it shattered at the impact of iron-shod hickory.

  The tip and half-engulfed victim fell to the ground; the stump of broken branch sprang upward. From the low shrubbery nearby came a many-throated keening like the wind blowing across chimney pots.

  Cashel bent and grabbed the little fellow by the shoulder with his left hand. That hand had been leading on the staff and was now in a state of prickly near-numbness. The pod was unfolding the way a cut intestine gapes as its own muscular walls pull it apart. When Cashel threw the man away from the tree, the pod and the scrap of attached branch fell off him.

  Cashel scrambled out from under the tree. Tilphosa had come toward him, but she'd carefully stayed beyond the tree's possible reach, where she wouldn't get in Cashel's way. She faced sideways, keeping Cashel in the corner of one eye while the other scanned the bushes around them.

  The rescued victim sucked in deep, gasping breaths as though he'd been underwater during the time the leaf wrapped him. He blinked; awareness started to return to his eyes.

  “I'll take care of him!” Tilphosa said, kneeling at the fellow's side. She lifted his head with the hand that didn't hold her dagger.

  Cashel straightened and surveyed their surroundings for the first time since he'd seen the man being eaten. The limbs of the strange tree were drawing up like the petals of a lotus at nightfall. The odor he'd noticed when he ran close had dissipated and remained only in his memory.

  He looked at the stump of the branch; it leaked dark sap. On the ground, the unfolded leaf was crinkling like leather dried near a flame. The bark of the attached bit of limb had already sloughed away.

  From a line of viburnum and lilac bushes that couldn't possibly have hidden them, people of the same stunted race as the victim rose into plain view. They were nude, both males and females, the latter often holding babies no bigger than six-week puppies. There were no weapons or tools of any sort in their raised hands as they came toward Cashel and Tilphosa.

  Cashel slid his hands apart on the staff as he faced the newcomers. There were a lot of them. If they all came from the village just to the west, then they must crowd more than a handful of themselves into each hut.

  “Great lord and lady!” cried an age-wrinkled male. “We Helpers greet you! Welcome to the Land!”

  “Welcome to the Land!” chorused all his fellows like frogs in the springtime. Cashel remained tense for a moment, but even he relaxed when the whole mob threw itself down on the ground before him and the girl.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sharina stood beside the four-arched fighting tower fixed to the quinquereme's deck between Captain Ceius and the steersmen in the stern and the mast amidships. Ordinarily the wooden tower—painted to look like stone—would've been struck until The King of the Isles prepared to go into action. Tenoctris sheltered within it now, working incantations that the sailors preferred not to see.

  Waist-high sailcloth curtains covered the lower half of the archways, concealing the seated wizard while allowing her light and air. Sharina was ready to hand Tenoctris anything she called for, though as yet she might as well have stayed in Valles. Occasionally wizardlight dusted the sunlight red or blue as Tenoctris chanted, but those escapes remained faint enough that the crewmen on deck could pretend not to notice.

  The captain spoke to the flutist seated on a perch built into the sternpost. That man lowered the instrument on which he'd been blowing time; at a nod from the captain, a petty officer blew an attention signal on his straight bronze horn.

  “Cease rowing!” said Ceius. “Shake out the sail!”

  Officers on deck and in the crowded hold beneath relayed the orders in a chorus, generally with the added obscenities that Sharina had learned to expect when somebody was directing soldiers or sailors. The difference between the methods of junior officers and of muleteers, so far as she could tell, was that the former didn't use whips—at least in the royal forces.

  While deck crewmen grabbed ropes to unfurl the sail to catch the freshening breeze, the oarsmen released from duty came boiling up from their benches in the hold through the open beams that supported the deck and allowed ventilation below. The first of them, squirming like a snake hunting voles, was King Carus himself. He sprang to the deck beside Sharina.

  Captain Ceius stepped forward in greeting, but Carus waved him back. “Carry on, Ceius!” he said. “You've got matters under control.”

  Petty officers were dipping cups of wine mixed with two parts water from great jars in the bow and stern. Their strikers held waxed rosters to check off the name of each man served. Military personnel didn't have to be scholars, but Sharina had been surprised to learn that even the lowest-ranking officers were able to read at least names or passwords scratched on a potsherd.

  Carus winked at Sharina, then took his place in the line forming for the drinks. The men ahead of him immediately scattered in surprise.

  “Get back as you were!” Carus roared, speaking so that the ship's whole crew could hear him. “When I'm acting as your commander, I expect you to jump into the sea if that's what I order you. But while I'm pulling an oar, by the Shepherd! I expect to be treated as an oarsman. Does anybody doubt me?”

  He raised his big hands, his palms gleaming with the resin he'd dusted on them before gripping the oarloom. Zettkin and his three aides in the bow, all noblemen, stared at the king in amazement, as did several of the nearby Blood Eagles. The bodyguards were recruited from the same class as the aides, though they were generally younger sons and of impoverished houses.

  The sailors who'd been in line ahead of Carus drank quickly and stepped away, watching the king sidelong. Carus took the cup offered him—one of four, each chained to a different jar handle—and held it as an officer dipped it full. The striker holding the roster looked at the king in terror, and bleated, "But chief! He's not on the list!”

  “As commander,” Carus said, “I'm directing that you make an exception in my case.”

  Laughing in loud good humor, he emptied the cup without lowering it and stepped away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The next man in line dropped the cup against the jar with clang of thin bronze on thick ceramic, then hid his blush as best he could.

  Carus grinned at Sharina, rubbing his palms together. “I do it to show that I'm willing to,” he said in a low voice. He nodded toward Zettkin and the aides, one of whom still stared as if transfixed. “I won't order them to do manual labor unless I need to, but I want them all to realize that I don't think any man's too good for any job. Some of my nobles may feel otherwise, but they won't dare say so now.”

  His grin spread even broader. He added, “But I also like to row, now and again. It's even better than fencing practice for using every muscle and letting your mind rest.”

  He sighed, no longer buoyant. “Which I need now even more than most times,” he said.

&nbs
p; “Have you been able to sleep any?” Sharina asked quietly. There was no real privacy on a two-hundred-foot vessel carrying four hundred men, but the very numbers created a background of noise that made it unlikely that they'd be easily overheard.

  Carus shrugged. “No more than usual,” he said, which meant scarcely at all. “We'll solve the problem soon, I expect.”

  Sharina followed the line of the king's gaze out over the sea, a sheet of pale green marked as far as she could see with ships and the white wakes foaming behind them. Most vessels had their mainsail set, though a few were proceeding under one bank of oarsmen and the pull of the small triangular boat sail set from their jib. The sky was clear except for a scatter of tiny clouds on the horizon ahead.

  Carus crooked a finger toward the sky. “Clouds like that usually mean land,” he said. “They're over the Dandmere Reefs, I'd guess. That was what we called them in my day, anyhow.”

  He smiled wryly. “I never claimed to be a sailor,” he said, "but at the end I was spending half my time on a ship. Some of it stuck, I suppose.”

  “I suspect Ilna's friend Chalcus knows something about using a sword, even though he is a sailor,” Sharina said straight-faced.

  The king's expression froze; then he realized she was joking. He laughed with the suddenness of a thunderclap, drawing the eyes of everyone aboard.

  “Oh, aye, I think Chalcus does indeed know swords,” Carus wheezed. “I'd say I wonder how he's getting on—and I do—but I don't worry, you see, the way I'd worry if I cared about any of those who might try to get in his way.”

  He eyed the fleet again. “We're scattered,” he said. “That'd be dangerous if the Confederacy had a fleet, but we're better off with room between us in a storm, and that's a greater risk.”

  Sharina looked at the sky and frowned.

  “No, not a great risk,” Carus said with a smile. “No, for now I'd say things were as much in proper order as any operation can be.”

  He rubbed his temples; as he did so, his face went still again. Even a man with Carus' spiritual strength and Garric's youthful body needed more sleep than he was getting.

  The interior of the fighting tower glittered azure. Sharina winced, hoping the king hadn't noticed it.

  He shrugged. “I didn't have a wizard with me the last time I walked a ship's deck,” he said with a grin that softened with use. “That was when the Duke of Yole's wizard drowned me along with every man and ship in the royal fleet. I may have mixed feelings about what our friend Tenoctris is doing; but not very mixed, I assure you.”

  Two of the quinquereme's five banks of oarsmen had been rowing her. Those men, Carus among them, had been the first released from the benches. Now they dropped back into the hold through planks removed fore and aft, while the oarsmen who hadn't been working came up around the side vents in turn. The oarsmen stayed below most of the time they were aboard ship: there simply wasn't enough room on deck to hold them all.

  Sharina looked into the eyes that had been her brother's, and said, “Your highness? Do you ... that is, are you glad to be—as you said, walking a deck again?”

  Carus met her gaze. He smiled, but this time his expression had the terrible majesty of lightning leaping between cloud banks.

  “Will I be sorry to give up the flesh again, girl, when Garric comes back?” he said. “For that's what you mean, is it not?”

  She nodded and swallowed. Her fists were clenched and her chest tight with fear of the answer.

  “Girl,” the king said. “I've killed men because I was angry, and there've been times when my blood was up and I killed for no better reason than that I had an excuse and someone was in reach of my sword. But my worst enemy never called me a thief.”

  He pinched the skin of his biceps with the opposite thumb and forefinger. “I've borrowed this from Garric,” Carus said softly. “I'll give it back to him the first chance I have. It doesn't matter whether I want to or not, girl. It's my duty, and I'll do it regardless.”

  “I'm sorry,” Sharina whispered. “I shouldn't have...”

  Carus laughed cheerfully again. “Do you think you need to apologize for worrying about your brother?” he asked. “Not to me you don't, Sharina!”

  He sobered. “Because I'm worried about him too,” he added. “And even more worried about what Ilna may be facing.”

  Ilna thought the rhythmic clacking from the darkness summoned worshippers to the temple, so she touched Alecto's shoulder before sitting up in the straw. She frowned; the light slanting through the loading door at the end of the loft meant that the moon was still well short of zenith.

  Alecto was on her feet with the dagger in her hand, as quickly and supplely as a cat waking. She didn't try to slash Ilna in half-wakened stupor; her weapon was simply ready if needed, and sheathed again quickly when the wild girl saw that it wasn't.

  “What's going on out there?” she said with an undertone of harshness. Ilna bristled, reading into the question an implication that the confusion was somehow her fault. Or not, of course—but everything Alecto did seemed to grate, on her.

  “I thought it was the call to the temple,” Ilna said, "but—”

  “Hey!” bawled the stablemaster from the stalls below. “You girls up there! Don't you hear the summons? Get out here now, or I'll come up with a whip!”

  “If he likes to hear his voice so much,” said Alecto in a deadly whisper as she started for the ladder, “then let's see how he'll sound as a soprano!”

  Ilna caught the other woman's knife wrist. Alecto turned, still catlike, and tried to jerk her hand free. Ilna held her, smiling faintly.

  “Hey!” the stablemaster repeated.

  “We're coming!” Ilna said, her eyes holding Alecto's. “And watch your tongue when you speak to us!”

  Alecto tossed her head and relaxed. “All right,” she muttered. She gestured for Ilna to precede her down the ladder.

  The stablemaster had already gone out into the night, leaving the door ajar behind him. The sharp rapping came again, closer. A horse whickered uncomfortably, as though awakened by the sound and nervous about it. With Alecto just behind her, Ilna stepped into the inn yard.

  A priestess in a white-on-black robe stood beneath the archway to the street. Several lower-ranking functionaries accompanied her—clerks, a lantern-bearer, and a brawny man with a flat hardwood block slung from a pole. He'd been hitting the block with a mallet as an attention signal. Ilna hadn't seen that method before, but the sound was distinctive and seemed to carry as far as the blat of the cow-horn trumpet her brother'd used while herding sheep in the borough.

  There were half a dozen soldiers in the priestess's entourage. They looked more bored than threatening, but they held their weapons with professional ease. Ilna had seen enough troops to know that these men weren't a militia of shopkeepers and day laborers, armed for the emergency.

  “Fellow disciples!” the priestess said. She was a hefty woman; judging by her voice, she might not be much older than Ilna herself. “Evildoers entered Donelle during the past night and have profaned the Temple of the Mistress with the blood of a believer. The Mistress says they're still in the city. They must be caught and punished before they can do further harm.”

  All the windows facing the inn yard were open. Faces, the staff and guests alike, leaned out to hear the announcement. The servants and hangers-on who'd been in the yard to begin with were quiet and alert as well. Ilna had the impression that the respect they showed was real, not something frightened out of them by the soldiers' presence.

  “In order to identify the evildoers,” the priestess continued, “the gates have been closed. Everyone in the city will join with at least three other people who have known them for a year or more. Each group will report to a Child of the Mistress, who will mark each person's forehead.”

  “But I'm from Brange!” called a man who'd been sleeping in the box of one of the coaches. “I don't know ten people here in Donelle!”

  “Those who've come as indivi
duals into the city from other communities,” said the priestess, “will report to the clerks with me. The Mistress has set gathering places here in the city for each region. Eventually everyone will have others to vouch for them—everyone but the evildoers!”

  Men—there were no women in the yard save for Ilna and her companion—shuffled and spoke to one another in low voices. The attendant with the wooden gong cried, “Come along, now! Do you think you've got all night? We have the whole Leatherworker's District to enroll!”

  “Yes, and you inside the building come out as well,” the priestess called, gesturing toward the faces watching from the windows. “Quickly. It won't take long, but you must get moving!”

  “What do we do?” Alecto whispered hoarsely.

  “Stand watch while I choose a route,” Ilna replied. She eased back toward the stable door, then slipped inside. The bustle in the yard would keep her from being missed for a time, but she and Alecto couldn't hide for long.

  The warmth of animal bodies and animal breath enfolded Ilna and calmed her. She wasn't in a panic, but these were dangerous straits. She squatted on the trampled floor, then pulled a handful of straw from a manger and began plaiting it. Ilna rarely used her skill to make decisions for her, but in this case she had no choice. She didn't know how the Mistress had learned the interlopers were still in Donelle, but there was more to it than mere intuition.

  Ilna's fingers wove straws in and around their fellows with a swift competence that would have seemed magical to anyone watching. The darkness of the stable didn't affect the work: this was a business for Ilna's soul and hands, not her conscious mind.

  Outside an attendant called, “Move along, now, do you hear me? Who's next?” The buzz of voices was louder, some of them now female. Someone shouted back into the inn proper. The words were blurred, but Ilna could identify the cook from her angry tone.

  She rose again to her feet, certain that the pattern was complete though she couldn't see it. As she reached for the door, Alecto whispered hoarsely through the crack, “There's a flunky coming this way. The fat pustule of a stablemaster was talking to him!”