The Mirror of Worlds-ARC

by David Drake

  Ilna's mind filled with buzzing whiteness.

  When she could see again, she was seated on a rock with a folded cape beneath her for a pad. When Temple was sure she was alert, he let go of her shoulders and stepped back. His expression was neutral, but he was watching very carefully.

  "Oh, mistress!" said Graia, who'd come back with a bowl of fresh milk. "A touch of sun, was it? Breccon, you fool, why'd you put them here in the open?"

  "Nothing of the sort!" Ilna said, embarrassed and therefore even more angry at herself than she usually was. This notch in the slope was indeed sunny, but the day had never been warm enough for that to be a problem. "I was simply dizzy, that's all."

  And because it wasn't all, and because she preferred embarrassment to lying, Ilna added, "I thought of something. Now, tell me about your demons."

  She'd thought about Chalcus and Merota. She could usually avoid that, but seeing children swinging on the arm of a very strong man had brought the past back with unexpected vividness.

  Temple went down on one knee beside her; the hunters knelt just beyond him. Personally she'd rather have stood than kneel on broken rock, but the men seemed to be used to it.

  The villagers squatted or sat on mattresses they'd brought from their huts. They'd had enough time to gather their household goods when they left the village across the valley. The bowl from which Ilna sipped goat's milk was glazed with interwoven green and white zigzags. She didn't know pottery, but looked like the sort of piece she'd expect only the richer households in Barca's Hamlet to own.

  "The demons," Ilna repeated. She was less forceful than she'd have been if the delay hadn't been caused by her own weakness.

  "Well, it's because of a woman named Bistona," Breccon began. The elders were closest to Ilna and her companions, but everybody in the village crowded around. More people were coming up from the fields as the sun dropped lower. "She was a wizard, but she'd never done any real harm before."

  "Be fair, Breccon," said the man who'd offered to take the spokesman in for the night. "We were all glad to have Bistona in the valley, and you were too. I recall her finding that necklace of Graia's you were so sure somebody'd stole, down in the big stewpot you don't use but once a year for the Lady's Feast."

  Breccon gave his wife a black look. "I still don't see how it got there," he growled.

  "Regardless, it was," said the man with missing fingers. "And she's done that for everybody, a scissors or a lost lamb or Pauli, Pauli's son, when he didn't come home. Isn't that so?"

  "My boy was still dead!" cried a woman shrilly from the fringe of the crowd.

  "Aye, he was dead, Arma," said the man, glancing back and pointing his damaged hand at her. "But you had him to bury, which you never would've done otherwise, him being down in that crevice which even the buzzards couldn't get at. And you were thankful, as you should've been."

  "And she was a good mother herself," said the woman who now held the girl and boy who'd been swinging on Temple's arm.

  "That's so," and, "None better," came from the villagers without seeming to involve particular mouths. It was as though the breeze had found a voice.

  "That was the trouble, I shouldn't wonder," said Breccon. "She was witching warts off her two boys last moon when everything around here went funny. Do you know what I mean?"

  His latest attempt to take control had the advantage of returning the discussion to its proper subject. Ilna'd learned over the years that prodding rambling speakers didn't bring information out any quicker, but there'd been times—and this was one of them—when she'd willingly have hung some fool up by the toes if she'd thought it'd help him get to the point.

  "Yes," she said aloud. "I've heard it called the Change, but I don't suppose the name matters. It happened everywhere."

  "Well, I happened to be walking up to see Bistona then," Breccon went on.

  "Right, old man!" said a younger man. "A love spell, was it?"

  "You shut your turnip trap, Treelin!" said Graia fiercely. "Unless you want the whole village to learn what I know about you'n your sister. D'ye hear?"

  Nobody actually spoke, though Ilna heard several snickers.

  "Go on, Breccon," Graia said. "Tell the lady your story."

  "Bistona lived just the other side of the hill, you see," Breccon said, gesturing vaguely across the valley. "Not that she wasn't welcome in the village, but she liked a bit of privacy. I was just starting down the path when it all happened. I thought my head was tearing apart, I swear I did!"

  "We all remember the Change," Ilna said. "Go on with your story, if you please."

  "Well," said Breccon, "around where Bistona sat it got misty on both sides. I heard one of the boys shout something but I didn't think anything about that, with what was happening to me. But then there were two demons! And they ate the boys, they tore them both to pieces and ate them right there."

  He made a face like he was swallowing something sour. "Well, I guess they did," he admitted, "but I turned around and ran back to warn people, you see."

  "You ran to save your neck, Breccon," said the friend with missing fingers. "That's what you did."

  "Well, wouldn't you've?" Breccon demanded in a rising voice. He looked at the faces of his gathered neighbors. "Is it any of you who wouldn't have run when he saw two demons?"

  Nobody spoke. There were even a few nods of agreement.

  "Well, I figured they'd put paid to Bistona too," Breccon continued. "And I did call folks to get out with their spears, though I didn't figure we could do much. They were big as houses, each one, and there was two of them. But then she come over the hill with them beside her like they was puppies."

  "Like they was her boys," said a woman who hadn't spoken before. "Seller on one side and Ballon on the other, each holding her hand. Only these didn't have hands."

  "Describe the demons, please," Ilna said. She wasn't sure what "big as houses" meant, but she'd get to that next.

  "They're snakes on legs," said a man.

  "They've got wings too, Chillin," said Breccon, "only they don't fly."

  He frowned. "Can't, I guess," he said. "The wings aren't near big enough."

  "The bodies're too fat for any snake, Breccon!" another elder objected peevishly. "They're as big around as a horse and not so very much longer than that—in the body, I mean, they got all that tail and neck."

  "A moment, good people!" Temple said. Ilna suspected the lungs in that big chest of his could've bellowed much louder, but he certainly made himself heard over the rising chatter. In the stunned silence he went on, "Breccon, are the demons two-legged with beaks like an eagle's?"

  "What?" said the old man, just a word to give his mind time to catch up with the question. His eyes scrunched together for a moment; then he continued, "Why yes, that's them. And they're blue, smooth and shiny and blue."

  "Aw, that's not really blue, it's gray!" a woman said.

  "The one of'em's blue!" said Breccon. "The other, all right, you could say it was gray, but—"

  "Silence!" Ilna said. Her voice was more of a whiplash than Temple's thunder, but she was pleased to note that the villagers quieted down. That was good, and good for them as well; her fingers had already begun knotting a pattern to use if the word alone hadn't been sufficient.

  "Temple," she said in the calm. "You recognize these demons?"

  "They're wyverns, Ilna," he replied with a nod. "Creatures from the far past of the Coerli. They aren't demons, just dangerous predators; though indeed the Coerli remember them as demons."

  Ilna'd never had much concern with the natural world: all manner of things hopping and chirping in hedgerows were to her 'little gray birds' and of no more interest than so many clods of earth. Images, though, even images carved in stone, were another matter.

  "The base of the statue where we found you," she said. "There were that kind of monsters on it, wasn't there?"

  Temple nodded with pleased agreement. "That's right," he said. "Demons attacking the sky-god Huill. But real
ly wyverns. If they're full-grown, they're probably three double-paces long and as high at the hips as I can reach stretching my arm up."

  "They do as Bistona says," Breccon said softly, looking into his hands. The old man was beyond posturing. He seemed to have sunk into the past, grasping feebly at thoughts that floated past him. "She marched up to the shrine with them. Redmin was the priest of the Lady's Oracle there. The two boys who helped him, they skinned over the back wall and kept running, I guess. Anyhow they've not come back. Redmin stood in the gateway and told Bistona she couldn't enter the sacred enclosure because she was unclean."

  "I never gave Redmin credit for guts," a man said.

  Graia sniffed. "I figure he was blind drunk," she said, "seeings as he generally was."

  "Regardless," muttered Breccon, "the demons kilt him, tore him to bits and ate him. It was like two terriers on a vole. And they've lived in the shrine since then, a moon and more."

  Ilna frowned. "What do they eat?" she said. If they weren't really demons then they had to eat, didn't they?

  "They hunt at night," said Breccon. "Not people, I'll say that for Bistona, not if we stay on this side of the valley. But we can't keep goats any more, and the people who used to come for the oracle, well, all that money's gone, you can guess that."

  "She let us get our goods out of our houses the first day," the man with missing fingers said. "If anybody goes up there now, the demons come out. They don't chase you if you run, and nobody tried it who didn't run."

  "The Lady knows I ran," muttered a young fellow whose legs were nearly as long as Karpos'. "I must've been crazy t' think of going back for a stupid bracelet!"

  He glared at the girl beside him. Her face sharpened; for a moment it looked as though she was about to say something, but she noticed Ilna's eyes on her and subsided.

  "We kept hoping Bistona'd take the demons away," said Breccon, "or anyway, that they'd wander off themselves. But all this time and they stay in the Lady's shrine."

  He cleared his throat and said with the cracked brightness of a certain lie, "I don't guess it'd be hard for three soldiers to drive the demons out, would it? And we'd pay!"

  "We'd all help you, you know," said the man with missing fingers. "All the men of an age to help. But we don't have swords or strong bows like you real soldiers do."

  "Mistress, we need help," said Graia. "There's more coined money here than you might guess, from the shrine being an oracle, you see. But if you won't help us, then we'll have to move, sure as sure. One of these days the demons won't find a goat or a deer, and then they'll come for whoever's nearest. We'll have to move."

  "Be silent for a moment," Ilna said. Her tone was sharp, not because of anything the villagers were doing but because they might do something. She'd learned over the years that if she didn't tell people to shut up, they'd yammer at her while she was thinking. Given that as best she could tell most people didn't spend any time at all thinking themselves, she supposed the mistake was a natural one.

  Ilna didn't have any interest in killing demons—or wyverns, or men, or anything else except catmen. The oracle she wove each morning to give them direction had brought them here, though. That didn't mean they couldn't go on tomorrow, travelling to the southwest as she'd been doing since she left First Atara immediately after the Change, but perhaps.

  And besides, walking away from a problem had never been her way.

  She looked at her three companions. "I won't order you to get involved in this," she said. "If they're as big as you say, Temple, it may be more than we can manage even with the villagers' help."

  "Keep that lot out of the way," Asion said, looking over his shoulder in obvious disgust. "Farmers aren't good for squat on a hunt. They just stir up trouble and leave you in the bag onct they stirred it."

  "I don't mind taking care of this, mistress," Karpos said quietly. "It'll be a little different, I guess. But closer to what me'n Asion did before we met you."

  "Temple?" Ilna said. He was smiling at her again!

  "I don't need to be ordered to rid the world of monsters, Ilna," he said. "I can occupy one of the wyverns while you and our companions kill the other. Then you can give me such help as I require."

  "Alone?" Ilna said, feeling the start of a frown. "If they're as big as you say?"

  "I have some experience with the work," Temple said, as calm as if he'd said something about the clouds overhead. "And you'll be free to help me shortly."

  Movement across the valley drew Ilna's attention. From the shrine's entrance stalked a wyvern, then the second. On the shadowed eastern slope the colors were indistinct, but Ilna had an eye for such things: the creatures were a light blue-gray and darker gray with brighter blue mottlings. They were so tall that they'd have scraped the building's transom if they'd stretched their legs to full height.

  A woman came out of the priest's dwelling and stood between the monsters. They were staring toward the new village of shanties. Their stubby wings were scaly instead of being feathered.

  "Are they looking at us, d'ye think?" said Karpos carefully.

  One wyvern, then both, raised their beaked jaws and shrieked. They were as raucous and shrill as marsh hawks, but very much louder.

  "They will be in the morning," said Ilna, rising to her feet. "When we go across the valley and kill them."

  * * *

  The two tracks in the road might look like wheel ruts to city folk, but Garric was a peasant: they were the cuts made by packhorses passing in opposite directions. If it'd been raining today as it would be in fall, his gelding would've sunk in to its belly; now it just clopped up dust to coat his breeches to mid thigh.

  "Before the Change, this all was swamp," Garric said. Since there wasn't much traffic, Shin walked alongside, easily matching the horse's measured pace. "The folk in these farms—"

  The hedges to either side of the road and between the long, narrow fields were boxwood, so ancient that the lower stems were the size of a woman's calf. On horseback Garric could look over them to stone houses in the distance; the roofs were turf, speckled white with daisies.

  "—lived at the very beginning of the Old Kingdom, Liane says. Before Ornifal was part of the kingdom, in fact."

  "How do they take to you becoming their ruler, Prince?" the aegipan asked. "They're prosperous folk and you'll probably expect them to pay taxes."

  "The Coerli helped with that," Garric said with a wry smile. These were prosperous farms, growing wheat on rich black soil, but he wondered how Shin came to know that. The hedges were opaque, and they had solid wickets instead of barred stiles between them and the road. "They raided several times after the Change; that stopped when we burned the keeps the raiders came from, with the raiders inside."

  In his mind, King Carus laughed. He said, "I never met anybody who liked to pay taxes. Given the choice, though, they'd rather fund the royal army than feed the cat beasts."

  An old woman came toward them, holding a little girl by the hand. When the pair got close enough to see what the aegipan was—or at any rate to see that it wasn't any of the normal things it might've been, a pony or a bent old man in brown homespun—they froze and flattened against the hedge. From the look on their faces, they were about to run back down the road till they dropped from exhaustion.

  Garric swept off his broad-brimmed leather hat and bowed low in the saddle. "Greetings, good ladies," he called. "You brighten our journey early on a long day."

  Shin hopped in front of the horse and began walking on his hands, waggling his hooves in the air as he did so. The little girl stared with fascination, while the expression of the older woman—her grandmother?—at least faded from panic to neutral interest. They didn't speak, but when Garric was well past he glanced over his shoulder and saw they were still watching.

  Shin back-flipped onto his feet again and grinned sardonically at Garric; he'd had no difficulty keeping up with the horse while walking on his hands. Apparently to underscore his abilities, the aegipan did a series of
handsprings before settling back to walk beside Garric again.

  "I practice arts of meditation which require perfect mastery of my body," he said. "Fortunately, I've found that people will accept me as a mountebank when they wouldn't as a philosopher."

  Is he serious? Garric thought. He burst out laughing.

  "It doesn't matter whether you're serious or not," he said aloud, though he knew he could've saved his breath: Shin and Carus, his only companions, could hear his thoughts. "I'm glad you're so agile, Master Shin. I needn't worry about you if something comes up on the way."