by David Drake
Sharina knew she didn't begin to understand wizardry, despite having been close to Tenoctris for years and having been too close to other wizards during that period. She decided she was better off not offering opinions to Rasile, who quite obviously understood a great deal.
The sun was fully down; stars would've been visible in the west if the mist hadn't already risen so thickly from the surface of the marsh. The fishermen Cashel had mentioned weren't out tonight; the only lanterns were those of the soldiers escorting Sharina and the wizard.
Sharina smiled faintly again. Attaper hadn't wanted her to accompany Rasile. When she'd insisted, he'd asked Lord Waldron to send a company of skirmishers from the regular army along with his Blood Eagles. He wanted to be prepared for threats that heavy infantry couldn't fight hand to hand.
The black-armored bodyguards waited in near silence, but the skirmishers—javelin-throwers from northern Cordin, shepherds in civilian life—squatted around small fires and chattered cheerfully. They'd melted cheese in a glazed pot and were dipping chunks of barley bread into it for supper.
Water dribbled from the pool from which the Last had attacked Cashel, though it'd been piled high with brush to prevent the white star from reflecting on its surface. Lord Waldron had been ready to tear the curb down and block the spring with boulders, but Tenoctris had said not to; it might be useful.
Sharina tugged her short cloak tighter around her; it was a cold night. She grinned at herself: anyway, it was a cold business.
She looked toward the southern sky but didn't see the white star. Hadn't it risen yet, or was the mist just too thick to see it?
The mist was very thick.
"Are you ready, Sharina?"
Sharina jumped; Rasile was standing at her side. "Yes," she said, smiling in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I was woolgathering."
Rasile chuckled deep in her throat. She nodded toward Sharina's hand, which'd reached for the Pewle knife hidden beneath a placket of her outer tunic.
"You are a female," the wizard said. "I feared that the females of your species were trembling breeders like those of the True People. I see you are not."
Sharina's smile widened a little. "Not all of us," she said. "Of either of our races, I'd judge. I watched Tenoctris pick you."
Rasile laughed again. "I am not female," she said. "I am merely old, and soon I will be done with this world. However before that—"
She walked to the center of the figure; it was about ten feet in diameter as best Sharina could judge in the rank grass.
"Come stand with me, Sharina," the Corl directed. "We'll go to a place that will test your courage in the fashion Tenoctris tested mine. I do not doubt that you'll pass."
She grinned as Sharina stepped to her side. "It may well be that we both will die, but your courage won't be wanting."
Rasile began to chant. The syllables weren't words as a human would understand them, even words of power, but the rhythm was that of every wizard Sharina had seen working.
The soldiers grew silent; the Blood Eagles fell into tighter ranks. The skirmishers' cook-fire flared as they added fuel and stirred it to quick life, but the mist rising from the black water seemed to thicken also.
The chips of quartz lit with sparks of wizardlight, blue and then red; the air grew charged. Incandescence too pale to have color quivered from the brush-covered spring. For a moment Sharina thought the nearby pond cypress and the oaks at a greater distance were waving; then she realized that the air was distorting them as it did on a hot day.
She and the Corl wizard dropped into a glowing gray haze. She didn't feel motion or vertigo: the world, including the muddy grass under her feet, was gone. She hung in a palpable nowhere.
Rasile continued to chant. Sharina almost found meaning in the wizard's wail, and the realization frightened her at a visceral level.
I'm not meant to hear that! No one is meant to hear that! For the first time she realized that the difference between wizards and laymen like herself might be the ability to understand certain things without going mad.
Shapes formed in the grayness. At first Sharina thought her eyes were tricking her into believing there was something more than endless fog around her; then she decided that she was seeing the moss-draped cypresses on the other side of the marsh, their shadows cast onto the mist as sometimes happens on mountain passes.
A shadow swept closer. For an instant she saw fangs as gray as the blotched visage they were set in. The horror gave a despairing shriek and was gone.
Rasile stopped chanting. She squatted, panting harshly. When she glanced toward Sharina, she lost her balance. She snarled and dabbed a hand down to avoid toppling sideways.
Sharina dropped to one knee and put her left arm around the Corl. She'd seen many times how exhausting major wizardry was, and whatever Rasile'd done to bring them here was major.
And how difficult will it be to get us back? But that was question for later, after they'd accomplished their business.
Another of the shapes approached but darted away—silently, though Sharina could hear a distant chorus of wails. The creatures were shaped as uncertainly as icicles. She was sure she could've seen through the diaphanous forms if there'd been any light.
Rasile looked at the Pewle knife and chuckled. "Sharina," the Corl said, "you are as brave as the mightiest chief of the True People, I do not doubt; but put your knife away, if you please. You could as well cut moonbeams. And besides, you may need both hands to hold me."
"Yes, all right," said Sharina. She sheathed the big knife with much more difficulty than she'd slid it out reflexively. She cleared her throat and said, "Rasile, what are they?"
Rasile stood; Sharina rose with her. She was ready to grasp the Corl by the arm or shoulders if she started to fall, but that wasn't necessary.
Three more figures swelled out of the emptiness. Their mouths opened like those of carp gulping air in the summer, but these gapes were jagged with teeth longer than a sea wolf's.
The one in the center screamed like a stooping hawk; the others joined a half-tone to either side of it. They drifted to the side and vanished.
"They were men," Rasile said. "Now . . . now, they're what you see. These were your folk, but they are very old. When spirits've been here for as long as these have, there isn't much difference between man beasts and True Men."
Something approached slowly, walking rather than sliding through the fog. It was still too distant for Sharina to make out its details.
"Are they ghosts?" she asked. Her voice was higher pitched than she'd intended. She cleared her throat. "Rasile, what good are they to us?"
"Those were only hunger," the Corl said. "But there are others, and they will come."
The walking shape approached, becoming a man who carried a long spear and a tall, curved shield made from the hide of a brindled bull. He stared at Sharina with vacant eyes.
"Sir?" Sharina called. She desperately wanted to hear a voice other than hers or the wizard's. "Who are you? I'm Sharina os-Reise."
The soldier walked past silently, though his head turned to watch her. He continued to look back until he was out of sight.
The wizard resumed her chanting, though this time the rhythm was subtly different. The fog coalesced into a blob which in turn slowly split into three figures which became increasingly distinct. They were old men, staring sullenly at the Corl.
"Why do you summon me?" one asked in a querulous voice.
"They are alive," said another. "They have no business with us, nor we with them."
"I command you to tell me of the creatures who killed you, the Last," said Rasile. "Your own kind and all life in the world depend on your help. Where is the most immediate danger from the Last to your race and mine?"
"We have no business with the living," a spirit wailed.
"I command you!" said Rasile. She began to chant, but the spirits screamed before she'd called out the third syllable.
"Speak!" Rasile said.
"Pan
dah!" said the middle figure.
"The Last will destroy Pandah," said the one on the right, "and from Pandah they will spread to conquer the world."
"The Last will conquer the world!" cried the third. "If not from Pandah, then from the great ice lens on Shengy. The Last cannot be halted!"
All three began to howl horribly. Their shapes blurred and became elongated; their mouths swelled into fanged caverns.
"Begone!" Rasile shouted. "I release you!"
As the three old men dissipated into the fog, the wizard began chanting again. Her harsh voice started weak but seemed to grow stronger.
Sharina squeezed her hands together, her lips moving in a silent prayer: "Lady, protect me if it is Your will. Lady, do not let me perish in this place far from those I love."
Lights glowed in the fog. With a rush of thankful delight, Sharina realized that the mist around them had risen from the marsh and that the lights were the soldiers' lanterns and campfire.
Rasile slumped, but Sharina caught her before she hit the ground. The Corl was very light, as light as Tenoctris.
"All praise the Lady!" Sharina shouted. "Praise the Lady Who brings us from darkness!"
* * *
The sun was still beneath the eastern horizon, but the sky was light enough to show that the peel tower's great double doors were open. Garric didn't see anyone nearby.
"Go!" Carus shouted in Garric's mind. "Don't waste the chance! Go! Go!"
"Go on!" Garric said, restraining his impulse to kick his mount in the ribs. That wasn't necessary with Kore. Besides, he wasn't sure the ogre's willingness to act like a horse extended to being treated like a horse. "Up to the door!"
He spoke urgently but he didn't shout. He had no desire to warn the people living in the tower until they'd noticed him on their own.
"I have it on good authority that there are horses who buck, master," Kore muttered, but she lengthened her stride from a jog to a jolting gallop. "Though most of those I've seen had an ogre rushing them."
The footing was uncertain. Kore slipped, spurning a flake of rock hard against an outcrop behind them; it cracked like a ball from a catapult. Her left arm went out while she tucked her right into her ribs, keeping her balance without slowing.
Garric had wondered whether to draw his sword—Carus' reflex and firm belief—or to leave it sheathed in case there was no need for it after all. He'd been reaching for the hilt as he spoke, figuring that a charging ogre would be viewed as an attack whether or not the man on her back waved a sword.
The first slamming impact of Kore's foot against the path changed his mind; he grabbed the flailing straps. Even Carus could see that they were certainly coming off their mount if Garric didn't concentrate on riding rather than what might happen after they reached the tower.
Where the track was narrow Shin followed them; he paced just to the ogre's left in the wider stretches. The aegipan's twelve-foot leaps easily matched Kore's strides.
"The tower's empty!" he called. "They're behind it, all of them!"
Garric heard the muffled whinny of a horse. He wouldn't have been able to tell for sure over the crash of the ogre's clawed feet, but it certainly could have come from the bog beyond the tower.
"Go around the building!" he ordered.
Kore left the main track, leaning to the side as she angled toward the peel tower. On the second stride her foot splashed ankle deep in wet soil. She staggered and Garric threw his left arm around her neck. The aegipan had dropped behind.
"The ground's soft!" the ogre said. Her feet splashed geysers of mud at every step. "It'll be softer yet behind the tower!"
"They got a horse back there, didn't they?" Garric shouted. Carus was a flaming presence in his mind, silent but pulsing with eagerness for battle. "Go around!
Beyond the doorway, the tower's interior was a dark void smelling of blood and fear. The air oozing from it was noticeably warmer than the dawn breeze following Garric down from the ridge.
Kore swung to the right, the direction Garric was leaning. Her right leg plunged to the knee in muck; she threw her arms back to keep from overbalancing. Her left leg, kicked far forward to brace her, sank to the crotch. She belly flopped, lifting sedges in a ripple of mud.
Garric flew clear and landed at the base of the tower. He'd tightened his rib muscles when he realized what was happening, so though hitting the soft ground was a shock it didn't knock his breath out.
He got up, drawing his sword as he started around the tower. At each step he sloshed to mid-calf. He couldn't imagine how the inhabitants'd gotten a horse over soil like this; it should've sunk to its belly.
"There are three men," said Shin, clicking along at his left side. The base of the tower flared outward in a skirt to deter battering rams. The aegipan's hooves sparkled as he ran on the stone, his inner leg tucked high to keep his slight body upright. "And the horse they are leading."
Garric came around the curve of the building. Two men in drab clothing drove a white horse like the one on which Orra had left the Boar's Skull. One hauled on the reins while the other followed behind, cracking a quirt viciously into the beast's hindquarters. The white horse pitched and whinnied, but the band tightly around its muzzle smothered the sound into a desperate whimper.
The third figure was taller and thin; his garments shimmered in the first light of dawn. He stood at the edge of the sinkhole Garric had noticed when they passed the tower on the previous afternoon.
When the tall figure saw Garric, he shouted to his servants in a language that sounded like birds calling. They turned, drawing curved swords from under their robes.
Freed, the horse bolted to its left and immediately mired itself. There was a firm path beneath the surface, though only mud with a sheen of algae showed to a stranger's eye.
Garric found the path, a causeway of stone barely below the mud. It was as slick as wet ice, but he still felt a jolt of triumph. He drew his dagger with his left hand and started forward.
He'd have rushed the trio just the same if he'd had to swim. After all, the servants didn't have any better footing than he did.
"You've decided they're enemies without parley, Garric?" Shin said judiciously. "Well, I think you are right in that."
The figure in gleaming robes held a silver athame in his left hand. He pointed it at Garric and chanted, "Churbu bureth baroch!"
The hair on the back of Garric's neck tingled, but to survive he had to concentrate on one thing at a time . . . .
The servant who'd been behind the horse made a series of wide, curling cuts in the air. "A farmer with a sickle could do better!" Carus sneered as Garric stepped in.
Garric held his sword low and the dagger advanced in his left hand. He had to finish the first servant before the other joined the fight. The hidden causeway was narrow, but the other fellow might be smart enough to splash through the muck and trap him between them. Don't underestimate your oppo—
The servant slashed. Garric blocked the cut with his dagger, his muscles poised to thrust the fellow through the body, topple him dying into the mire, and rush the remaining man before he was prepared for the attack.
Blade met blade with a squealing crash. Garric felt the shock to his shoulder and his left hand went numb. His body twisted with the blow, fouling the neat training-ground thrust he'd been ready to make.
He'd underestimated his opponent. Whatever the thing was, it wasn't human—or anyway was inhumanly strong.
Garric stumbled forward with the blades locked, shouldering the servant in the chest. He thought there was something harder than bone beneath the robes, but he didn't have time or need to worry about it. He punched the sword upward, in through the belly and out through the spine between the servant's shoulder blades.
The fellow spasmed but didn't let go of his curved sword. His tongue protruded from his pale lips and he began to grunt like a farrowing sow.
Garric pushed hard with his left hand—the feeling was beginning to come back—and jerked down on his
hilt to clear the sword. His cross-guard was against the servant's ribs. If the blade hadn't been uniquely sharp, he might not have been able to withdraw it from so deep a thrust. As it was, it cut bone as easily coming out as it had going in.
The dead servant flopped on the causeway. The living one recoiled slightly to avoid tripping.
Garric lunged, thrusting. His driving foot slipped on wet stone and he dropped to his left knee. His point didn't go home, but neither did the servant's roundhouse slash.
Carus—it was his reflex, not Garric's—flicked his blade up instead of recovering the way a swordmaster would've directed after a failed thrust. The sword's tip touched the servant's wrist and sheared muscle, sinew and bone.
