by David Drake
Cashel drew the satchel with her gear from behind the seat as Tenoctris dismounted. She moved carefully, but she didn't need his help like she used to for doing common things like, well, getting up and down from a gig.
"I thought there'd be guards still here," he said, looking down at the excavation. In truth he'd been surprised that they'd been able to leave the Coerli city without having an escort of soldiers. Things were different with Garric gone. It wasn't that Sharina didn't care about him and Tenoctris, it was just that she didn't believe Cashel or anybody Cashel was looking after needed other help.
Cashel smiled, standing with the staff in one hand and the satchel made from a rug in the other. He wasn't as strong as Sharina seemed to think; but he doubted a soldier or an army—could handle any likely trouble better than him alone.
"I'm going to lie in the sarcophagus again," Tenoctris said, taking short steps down the slope. "I don't need it the way I did the other night, but it's such a powerful focus that it'll reduce the process to a few minutes."
She chuckled. "That concentration of powers is the only thing of value here," she explained. "And it's of no more use to ordinary thieves than a vat of molten steel would be."
Cashel scrambled to get in front, just in case the old wizard slipped. There was next to no chance of his own bare feet going out from under him, but he slanted the quarterstaff out for a brace anyway.
He paused at the top of the trench to judge the sun. It'd be down soon, but the twilight would last long enough to see by for another hour.
"I'm going to make myself younger," Tenoctris said.
Cashel stepped into the tomb and turned to make sure Tenoctris didn't have trouble in the doorway. She maybe thought he was surprised to hear what she'd said, because she went on, "Oh, not for vanity, I assure you. It's just a practical response to the difficulties of what we'll be doing. I need a more supple body, you see."
Cashel helped her onto the bench and held her hand as she got into the coffin. He looked again at the carvings and wondered about the man who'd wanted to be buried in such a thing.
Tenoctris opened her satchel and took out a simple stylus of lead. With it she marked a triangle on the bottom of the stone box down at the end where her head'd lain when they came here before, then wrote words on each of the three sides. She looked at Cashel with a little grin and said, "Well, maybe a little from vanity too. Just a little."
Cashel smiled again, but he didn't say anything. She was joking; she wasn't any more vain that he was. Sure, Cashel was a good judge of what he could do, so he knew he could do a lot. He didn't go around bragging to other folk, though, and all the same things were true for Tenoctris.
She lay in the coffin and started murmuring her words of power. Cashel turned toward the entrance. His job was to make sure nobody came in while she was in a trance.
Cashel thought about the man who'd been buried here, if he was a man and not the demon his shadow made him. He took his left hand from his quarterstaff and touched the locket from Tenoctris. He wasn't sure why he was keeping it, but there was bound to be a good reason. Tenoctris always had good reasons.
The hair on his arms and the back of his neck lifted. Bright wizardlight lit the tomb with a crackle like lightning ripping down an oak tree. The iron ferrules of his quarterstaff spun off whirling blue whiplashes.
Cashel turned, his hands spread on the shaft so he could strike right or left as need required. Tenoctris lay in a tube of pure blue light, her hands crossed peacefully on her chest. Her lips moved, but Cashel couldn't hear her words over the tearing sound of wizardry.
He backed slightly; the cocoon of light made his chest prickle, like being too close to a blacksmith's fire. He could stand it if he had to, but he didn't see any need.
The coffin glowed with the wizardlight that leaked from Tenoctris. As Cashel watched, the figures on the side got fuzzy and began to flake, the way marble does when it's left in the weather a long time. Patches of rotten stone shelved out like fungus, then dropped away.
The light cut off, again lightning-quick. Cashel blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. If something came at him now while he couldn't see—
His brief blindness gave way to shadows, then real shapes in the twilight. For a moment Cashel wondered if he should've lit a lamp after all, but then he could see Tenoctris sitting up with a smile on her face.
Then things really fell into focus. "Wow!" Cashel said.
He was looking at Tenoctris because the lines of her face were the same, but this Tenoctris was his age. She couldn't 've been more than 20 years old. "Tenoctris, it worked!"
The young Tenoctris got to her feet. She bumped the coffin and the whole front of it crumbled like a wall of sand in the tide. Laughing merrily, she stepped down from the bench.
"So . . .," she said. "Do you like me, Cashel?"
Raising her arms overhead, palms out so the fingernails touched, Tenoctris pirouetted. She was so small that she didn't touch the ceiling, even on tiptoe.
Cashel blinked. This was really amazing. Tenoctris still had fine bones, but her face was rounder than it'd been when age wrinkled her cheeks. He couldn't tell the color of her hair, but it fell in long curls instead of being in a tight bun on top of her head.
"That's really good, Tenoctris," he said. "That's really you, then? I mean, it's not just changing how you look?"
"A glamour, you mean?" she said. "No, no—this is how I looked when I was twenty-one. If you'd like a glamour, though . . . ."
She turned her palm toward her face and murmured. Part of it was, " . . . brimo maast," or something like it.
Scarlet wizardlight twinkled. When Tenoctris lowered her hand, she had lustrous black hair, full lips, and a bosom that noticeably bulged her silk brocade robes.
"Do you like this better?" she said. The voice was still Tenoctris, but nothing of the woman Cashel'd known so well for two years was there in the features. Smiling, she lifted her hand again. "Or this?"
The dusting of wizardlight was blue again this time, mild compared to the glare that'd dissolved the stone coffin but still bright enough to leave afterimages on Cashel's eyes. Tenoctris lowered her hand.
Cashel's mouth opened in amazement. Sharina, tall and blond and as perfect as she'd been when he saw her a few hours before, smiled back at him.
"You're really something to do that!" he said. "I think we'd best get back to the gig, though. We're losing the light, and there's some bad potholes till we get back to the main road."
"So . . .," said Tenoctris. "You don't find me attractive, Cashel?"
He couldn't have said how the change happened, but what hadn't been Tenoctris slumped away or soaked in or something. She was back to being herself, only young.
"What?" said Cashel. "Sure I do. You're really pretty, as yourself or any of the other ways. But I don't want us to break a wheel on the way out."
He smiled. "Though I guess we could walk back if we had to now," he said. "Since you're young again."
Tenoctris gave a funny little laugh. "Yes," she said. "That was the point, after all, wasn't it? And you're right, we need to get started. We have a great deal to do, my friend."
She picked up the satchel herself and walked out of the tomb. Her strides were quick and birdlike, and her back was very straight.
* * *
The three men would've been more than happy to open the mound themselves, but Ilna insisted on joining with the digging stick which Karpos had cut for her from a cedar as thick as his wrist. The fresh cedar oozed sap so her hands were now sticky, but that just gave her a better grip. She stamped the wedge tip into the dirt and levered upward.
Asion's mattock clinked on rock; he worked it sideways. "I've got something here," he said. "It's not pebbles, it's fitted stones!"
"Here," ordered Ilna. "Let me."
They'd carved down to the depth of her forearm through the turf at one end of the mound. It was certainly artificial, made of topsoil instead of changing quickly to th
e yellowish clay that underlay the surrounding meadow. That didn't prove the truth of what Merota'd said, that the Youth who'd sucked Ilna into that dream world was buried here, but it made that more likely.
Had it really been Merota? And Chalcus, his arms as strong and supple as they'd been before the cat beasts'd swarmed over him slashing and stabbing . . .?
"What is it you expect to find, Ilna?" asked Temple. They'd been piling loosened earth onto Ilna's outer tunic. The big man had lifted each bundle out of the excavation and dumped it well from the mound where it wouldn't get in the way later.
Ilna chopped fiercely at the dirt, opening a crevice between two large rocks. She didn't have to spare her implement the way Asion did the mattock: if she broke the end off the stick, Karpos would simply sharpen it again.
"I don't know," she said. She didn't look around, concentrating instead on the task she had in hand. As usual, of course; as she'd done all her life. "Perhaps bones, perhaps nothing."
The chest-sized stones under the layer of turf hadn't been shaped by tools, but they'd been laid with a good deal of care. She drove the digging stick into a crack she'd cleared, then put her weight against it.
The cedar was too supple to make a good crowbar, but she lifted the upper stone enough to notice those around it crunch and grate. This wasn't simply a heap: the individual rocks were wedged together into a dome of sorts.
"What will you do when you find what you're looking for, Ilna?" Temple said.
Ilna jerked out the digging stick and turned. "I don't know that either!" she said. The sun shone from directly behind Temple's head, turning his blond hair into a cloud of blazing light.
The hunters stood back slightly. Their expressions showed they were afraid that no matter what they did or didn't do, Ilna was going to flay the skin off them. Ilna glared and opened her mouth; they cringed.
She closed her mouth again. She'd been about to snarl at them simply for existing, which was precisely what they'd been afraid she was going to do.
Ilna barked a laugh. It wasn't a very good laugh, but she didn't have much experience with the process.
"We're going to have to lift the rocks off carefully before I can see what's inside," she said in a calm voice. "Otherwise the dome will collapse into a worse mess."
"I can lift this stone, Ilna," Temple said. He leaned forward and tapped the block whose edge she'd cleaned with her stick. "Then you can look inside."
Ilna felt her anger returning. There was something so assured in the man's tone that it made her want to snap at him—or worse.
She placed the yarn back in her sleeve. She'd started to knot a pattern that would've doubled the big man over retching; nobody could sound self-assured while vomiting his guts up.
"All right," Ilna said. "Since you believe you can."
She didn't believe he could do it; neither did the hunters, judging from the sidelong glances they offered one another. Temple smiled faintly and bent to the stone block, easing his fingers into the cracks on either side.
"You're going to have the weight of the ones it's touching to lift too, you know," Karpos warned, frowning. He'd locked his hands together and was flexing the fingers hard against one another.
"Yes," said Temple calmly. "It's going to be difficult."
His shoulders bunched; the tendons stood out on his arms. Ilna stepped farther off to the side. Temple had the same calm assurance as her brother Cashel. Though she couldn't believe he was really strong enough to pull the block out by himself . . . .
Temple stood like a sun-drenched statue, bent and motionless save for drops of sweat dribbling from his hair. They ran down his back and massive arms.
Stone ground on stones. Temple began to straighten, his arms withdrawing toward his body by a hair's breadth at a time.
"It's coming!" said Asion. "By the Lady, it's coming!"
The hunters scrambled up opposite sides of the mound, obviously expecting Temple to let the stone bounce away wherever its angles and gravity took it. Instead he dropped to one knee, rotated his palms upward, and tilted the block onto them. Straightening his legs cautiously, he set the block on the turf to the side of where they'd cut into the mound.
"May the Lady shelter me," Karpos said softly. "I didn't think anybody . . . . I just didn't think anybody could lift . . . ."
Karpos, who was more than ordinarily strong himself, was even more amazed at what Temple had been able to do than Ilna was. Ilna didn't know what the stone weighed; more than three men certainly, and perhaps a great deal more.
Temple turned, flexing his hands. His fingertips were bright red with the fierceness of his grip. He smiled and said, "You may look inside now, Ilna. And make up your mind."
She stepped past him without speaking. Though irregular, the block had come out as neatly as a cork from a bottle; the stones around it remained as firm as a window casement. Those who'd built the mound were quite skilled despite their crude materials.
Ilna smiled tightly. She'd always give craftsmanship its due, even when the craftsmen had used stone.
She looked down into the chamber. The sun shone past her, and the crystal coffin within spread its light throughout the interior.
It was indeed a tomb. Despite the dust of ages and the scattering of dirt that'd fallen in while they prized at the stones, the coffin was clear enough for her to see the body of the man within. His skin was the hue of ivory, and there were no signs of decay.
Ilna looked at her companions. "Chalcus was right," she said. "It's the man who took me . . . ."
She shrugged angrily, trying to find the right word. "To wherever it was," she snapped at last. "To a dream world. It's the Youth."
"Did the Youth harm you, Ilna?" Temple said.
It was just a question; there was nothing more in the words or tone than Ilna'd have expected if he was asking for a water bottle. Despite that it took conscious effort to keep her voice level as she said, "I told you: he snatched me away."
"Yes, and you returned," Temple said. The hunters were watching the discussion warily. "I assume you were allowed to return. That's not surprising, since he appears to be a God of peace. You lost a few minutes of your time with us, then?"
"He . . .!" Ilna said. She stopped and felt a wry smile lift one corner of her mouth.
"He gave me a chance to forget my duty," she said. "That's what you mean, isn't it?"
"I don't mean anything, Ilna," Temple said, but he smiled also. "I was just asking a question."
"And if an opportunity was all I needed to forget my duty," Ilna continued, "then I'd be a poor excuse for a human being."
She sniffed. "Well, there's enough of that sort in the world already," she said. "So no, I wasn't hurt."
"Mistress?" Asion asked. "What do we do now?"
"Do?" said Ilna. "Cover up the tomb again, I suppose. Temple, do you want help in replacing the stone?"
"I don't think that will be necessary, Ilna," the big man said, flexing his hands again with his palms out at arm's length. His smile was very broad now, and as warm as that of a mother looking at her newborn.
Ilna turned and walked a few steps away from the men as they started undoing the work of the afternoon.
"Goodbye, Chalcus," she whispered to the setting sun. "Goodbye, Merota. I hope you understand."
But in all truth, Ilna wasn't sure that even she really understood.
* * *
Sharina stood near the marsh, watching Rasile take knuckle-sized chips of quartz from a leather bag and space them in a circle on the wet soil. The Corl wizard glanced at her and said, "I'm marking the points of a twelve-sided star around us."
"Ah," said Sharina, nodding; a polite response to a polite explanation. Then she said, "Is this better than drawing the lines out the way, ah, others do?"
She'd started to say, "the way Tenoctris does," but she'd caught herself. She didn't know Rasile—or the Coerli more generally—well enough to know what might be read as an insult.
Sharina smiled. It wa
s bad enough dealing with human beings whom you didn't know very well; and often enough you could say the wrong thing with people you did know.
Rasile smiled also, though her pointed teeth made the expression a trifle equivocal. "The figure in this world doesn't matter, Sharina," she said, "except for what it evokes in the wizard's mind."
The Corl gave her growling laugh. "For someone as powerful as your friend Tenoctris," she said, "I doubt any material symbol would be necessary to perform a task as simple as this."
"Ah," Sharina repeated. She almost said that Tenoctris hadn't always been so powerful, but on consideration she let the thought rest unspoken.
