by David Drake
"I'm all right now!" Garric said. He thought he was. He started to sheathe his sword but changed his mind. "I can walk myself!"
A great head broke the surface of the asphalt, raising its trunk high as it struggled to mount the causeway. It would've been an elephant if not for the shaggy hair covering its body. It trumpeted shrilly as Kore raced past with Garric. The pitiless moonlight gleamed as more creatures broke from their ancient bondage all across the lake.
"Quickly!" cried the aegipan. The ogre's clawed strides struck sparks with each leap over the crumbling asphalt surface.
* * *
Ilna'd expected either a landscape like the valley she was leaving or a swamp like the one where Garric'd found catmen preying on the Grass People. In the event, when she stepped through the portal her bare feet scrunched into coarse sand. It was the color of rust, but the small red sun exaggerated the hue.
The terrain was largely barren, but there was water despite the lack of ground cover. What Ilna first thought were sedges—on closer look they weren't—grew in a pool a few double paces to the left, and the swales were studded with what seemed to be ferns springing from woody knobs like cypress knees.
"Well, no doubt which way they came," said Karpos. He nodded toward the track worn into the sand, not so much a line of footprints as a parallel double ridge thrown up to either side of the path. It reminded Ilna of the way ants wore trackways in gritty soil after a rain.
"Not that there was anyway," said Asion, who'd bent down to gather pebbles from the sand. He used his stubby left index finger to sort through possibilities before suddenly flicking four smooth chunks of quartz into the other palm. He transferred them to his bullet pouch.
Less than half a mile ahead stood a structure of glass, all flat planes with the same number of sides as a hand has fingers. The dim sun easing toward the western horizon turned some facets rosy while others reflected the sky or the ground, but the glass had no color of its own.
Karpos sighed and unstrung his bow, then hung the staff across his chest by the slack string. He hadn't had time to retrieve any arrows from the beasts he'd shot.
"I'll lead," he said, swinging out ahead of the rest of the party. He walked beside the Coerli trackway instead of obliterating it, though here the care was reflexive rather than purposeful. As much for courtesy as any better cause, Ilna followed to the side also; Temple was across the track from her.
"Think you can hit a cat with those rocks you're picking up?" Karpos said quietly.
Ilna glanced over her shoulder at Asion. He was watching their back trail with a pebble in the pocket of his sling. He shrugged and said, "It makes me feel better."
"Yeah," said his partner. "I do know what you mean."
There were no trees in this place, though unfamiliar plants with straight stems and a crown of short leaves—they sprang from the trunk like the flowers on the stalk of a hollyhock—grew taller than she was, or even than Temple and Karpos. Mats of rootlets supported them, often standing proud where winds had scoured away the surrounding sand.
"I saw something move!" Asion called. "One of them scales on the house, it moved!"
"I thought it was just the light," said Karpos. "But if you say it moved, I believe you."
They reached the structure. From a flat to the opposite point, each pane was as high as Ilna or a Corl. The trail led to one whose bottom edge was along the ground. Sand'd been brushed away in the recent past. Ilna could see into the glass, but its ripples distorted the things inside so that she couldn't tell what they were.
Karpos pushed gingerly with his left fingertips; he held his long knife ready in his right. The glass didn't move.
"Temple?" he said. "Do you know how to make it open?"
"Asion," Temple said. He'd drawn his sword and held his buckler advanced. "Shoot into the center of this pane; that should do it."
He glanced at the rest of them. "I'd expect all the warriors to have been in the raiding party," he added, "but I could be wrong."
Ilna nodded, lifting her hands slightly to call attention to the pattern she'd just knotted. She didn't spread the fabric yet; it'd paralyze her companions if they looked at it.
Asion backed a pace, automatically checking to the sides and behind him; a sling's arc covered a lot of area. He swayed the stone at the end of its tether, settling it in the leather cup.
"Karpos?" Temple warned quietly. He held his buckler out, putting it between Ilna's face and the panel, then turned his own head away. Karpos covered his eyes with his left forearm.
Asion's thong snapped through the air. Glass shattered almost simultaneously in a Crack! like nearby lightning. The panel puffed outward in a cloud of rainbow dust which left a few sparkles in the air even after most had settled on the red ground.
"I'll lead," said Temple, stepping into the building. His bronze sword was point-forward at waist level, and the buckler was advanced in his left hand.
"Follow me," Ilna said curtly to the hunters as she entered in turn. The air within was moister than that of the sand wastes outside, and it smelled strongly of the Coerli.
The flooring was fibrous but rock; remarkable as that seemed, it wasn't a mistake Ilna's bare feet couldn't possibly have made. The material gave her sensations not of pastures or ripening flax but rather of heat and fire and pressures beyond what anything living could bear.
Could rock feel pain? Ilna smiled. It pleased her to imagine that it could.
The glass walls muted the light, but they let through enough to see by. The building was partitioned inside, but Ilna found she couldn't be sure whether the walls ran up to the roof—or indeed, if there was a ceiling below the roof. Everything was distorted, much as though she'd been trying to see things underwater.
"They're up ahead!" Asion called, though he was watching the rear. "Temple, I smell'em!"
Temple stepped around a corner. Slipped around it, rather; Ilna didn't see the motion, only the big man's presence here and then there.
"This is the nursery," Temple said mildly, though he didn't lower his sword. "The kits. None are older than six weeks."
Ilna moved to his left side. Yes, kits; as many as the fingers of one hand. They were in a waist-deep pit sunk into the floor, too deep for them to climb out on their own. All but one snapped and snarled at the humans, jumping and clinging to the rim of their prison for a moment before slipping back; the remaining one cowered against the back wall.
"Four males, one female," Temple said. "There's at least one female of breeding age also, probably two. They'll be hiding somewhere, probably in the larder."
He quirked a smile at her. "The Coerli aren't like humans, Ilna," he added. "Or at least like you."
Ilna sniffed in disgust. A generalized disgust, she supposed: at the catmen, but at people and at life itself. She shook her head and said, "There's a wizard here, you said. Do you know where he is?"
If she wove something to answer her question, she'd have to put down the defensive pattern she carried. For choice she wouldn't do that.
"He'll be as high up as he can get, I would guess," Temple said, looking upward. "The building had a peak on the outside, so there must be something above the flat ceiling we see."
Ilna followed his glance. She didn't see a ceiling, flat or otherwise. The combination of reflection and distortion in the glass panels threatened to give her a headache.
"All right," she said, more harshly than deserved by anything Temple'd said or done. "Take me there, if you will."
"Mistress?" said Karpos uncomfortably. "What should we do about—"
He gestured toward the kits with his little finger rather than the knife in that hand.
"—these?"
"Kill them, of course!" Ilna said. She glared at Temple to see if he dared object, but the big man's face remained impassive. "But you're not to take the scalps."
"I think it'll be this way," Temple said as though he hadn't heard the exchange. He nodded in the direction they'd been going since they entered t
he building. Without waiting for a reply, he walked around the pit to the corridor she could see from where they stood.
She followed, listening to the shriek of a kit. It'd dodged Asion's knife by enough that the stroke wounded instead of killing quickly. The sound didn't give Ilna the touch of cold pleasure that she usually got from knowing that the beasts were in pain.
The rooms—the spaces—of the strange building were irregular in fashions Ilna couldn't understand. She must not be seeing them properly; she'd always before been able to grasp patterns, even in the rocks she hated. Her failure suddenly spilled over in a gush of self-loathing that made her dizzy.
"Here're the stairs," Temple said, nodding toward what she now saw was a diagonal panel standing an arm's length out from the wall. She hadn't recognized it as separate until the big man tapped it with the rim of his buckler. "Shall I lead?"
"No," said Ilna, stepping past him with her yarn held up but still not extended. "I will."
"The pantry's beneath the stairs, behind another baffle," Temple said.
"They'll wait!" said Ilna. Her unjustified anger at Temple made her angry with herself.
The steps were both shallower and taller than they'd have been for people; the Coerli had smaller feet but their legs were springier. For Ilna it was almost like climbing a ladder. She kept her eyes upward so that she'd be ready if the cat wizard suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.
The kits had stopped squealing. She found herself hoping that the hunters wouldn't discover where the females were hiding until after the wizard was dealt with. Her lips pursed, but at least the anger had slipped back into a more usual state of mild disapproval of herself and the world.
Ilna stepped onto a round platform. Until she'd mounted high enough that her eyes were above its rim, she hadn't been sure that the staircase didn't end with the roof itself. In the center of the flat surface sat a male Corl. He had the flowing mane of a chieftain and what'd obviously been a powerful physique many years ago.
Many decades ago. The beast facing her was by far the oldest Corl she'd ever seen. His mane was white and now scraggly, and he'd worn the fur off every joint. The mottled, purplish color of his skin showed through the remaining fur, turning it dirty gray.
Ilna held her pattern taut before her. The beast's eyes were closed.
"Do not bother with that, animal," he said. She'd never before heard the cats make sounds that she could understand. "I know all things, so I know my doom. I will not struggle."
He coughed a laugh. "How can one struggle against fate?" he asked. "Even I, Neunt, the greatest wizard of all time, cannot defeat fate."
Ilna laughed, though there was little humor in the sound. "I've always thought braggarts were fools," she said. "You've proved that better than most, beast, choosing to tell me how powerful you are now."
"You can lower that," said Temple quietly, indicating Ilna's pattern with his left index finger. He'd slung his buckler, but he held the sword ready .
Ilna started to snap that she didn't trust others to determine what was safe or wasn't, especially when dealing with wizards . . . but she did trust Temple, she found to her surprise. She folded the pattern into her sleeve without picking the strands apart, then immediately took out a fresh hank to determine the direction they must go next.
Neunt opened his eyes. They were a milky blue in which Ilna could barely see the pupils; if he hadn't made a point of closing them, she'd have assumed the wizard was blind.
"The Messengers gave me the power I demanded of them," he said in a harsh, cracked voice. "Everything I asked for . . . and now you're here and you will kill me, because you are a thing I did not foresee."
He laughed again, but the sound trailed off into wheezing. He's going to die shortly whether we kill him or not, Ilna thought. Though of course we'll kill him.
"Do you know the Messengers?" Neunt asked when he had control of his voice again. "You do not, I suspect. I did not, I could not—"
Suddenly anger snarled in his broken voice.
"No one could foresee you! No one!"
Ilna looked at Temple. "Kill him," she said. "I'll determine what we do next."
"I will tell you your course," the wizard said calmly. "That's why I waited for you instead of ending my own life as I'd planned. I will tell you how to reach the Messengers, who will give you the power you desire. Every power that you demand, they will provide."
Ilna stared at the ancient Corl, absorbing his words. From the floor below, Karpos called, "Mistress? We've taken care of the females. What do you want us to do now?"
"You can come up here," Temple said, surprising Ilna both with what he'd said and the fact that he'd spoken at all. "This is where we'll be leaving from, I believe."
Ilna looked at him angrily, then snapped to the wizard, "Do you think we'll spare you? I won't. I won't let you believe a lie even if I didn't tell it."
"Of course, animal, of course," Neunt said. "I've failed, which means I deserve to die."
He made a sound that might've been the start of a laugh, but it choked off a moment later. "I failed millennia ago, when I forced my way into the Messengers' presence and didn't protect myself against you. Do you think you will be wiser, animal?"
"I don't care about wisdom!" Ilna said. She heard the hunters mounting the steps behind her. Without looking around she shuffled forward to give them both room to stand safely on the platform. "I want to kill every one of your race, every murdering beast. Do you understand that?"
"What is that to me?" said the wizard, coughing again. "I'll already be dead, will I not?"
He pointed to the floor of the platform. He sat in the middle of a circle etched into the coarse, glassy surface; around the inside were the curving forms of letters in the Old Script.
"Stand within and speak the words," he said. "Nothing more. The powers are focused here as nowhere else."
"We'll have to find a different way," Ilna said, glancing aside to Temple. She was as much relieved as disappointed; Neunt was disquieting in a fashion she couldn't fully explain. "I can't read those letters. I can't read anything!"
"I can," said Temple. He didn't raise his voice; she'd never heard him raise his voice. "Will my voice be sufficient, Chief of the Coerli?"
"Even a child would be sufficient in this place," the wizard said. "It will be as easy as stepping off the edge of this, my sanctum."
He ran his fingers over the grooves of the words of power. "Every bit as easy."
Rousing from his reverie, the wizard turned his milky eyes on Temple for the first time. "But you are scarcely a child, are you?" he said. "I did not foresee you either. My, what a fool I was when I thought myself so clever, so powerful."
"Mistress?" Asion murmured from behind her. "Shall we . . .?"
He didn't finish the question, but there was no doubt what he was asking. Even the Corl knew.
"You need not kill me, creature," Neunt said. He rose to his feet with more grace than Ilna'd expected from his difficulty speaking. "I do not wish to be defiled by your touch."
With a final bark of laughter, the ancient wizard stepped off the platform.
"Watch him!" Ilna said, expecting a trick. She looked over the edge.
Neunt crashed into the top of a partition which framed one of the rooms. His ribs crunched, and though his broken body flopped down on the side nearer the stairs, sprays of blood dripped slowly down both.
Karpos cleared his throat. "I don't guess either of us gets his scalp, right?" he said.
Ilna ignored the hunter. "What do we do now, soldier?" she asked Temple.
"Now we all stand within the circle," Temple said, as calm as a frozen pond. "And I read the spell."
He gave Ilna a faint smile. "Then it's up to you, Ilna," he added.
* * *
Sharina used her fingers to spread a gap in the brushwood screen so that she could look out. The citadel of the Last glowed faintly yellow in the darkness, a little brighter along the edges where the pentagons joine
d. The color made her think of fungus but—
She grinned at herself.
—that was only because it had to do with the Last. She'd seen walls distempered the same pale shade and found it attractive.
Occasionally Sharina heard the bang! as artillery released. When the fitful breeze was in the right direction, she could even hear the slap of bows and the rattle of swords when human soldiers closed hand-to-hand with the black invaders.
The Last were extending their faceted fortifications around Pandah, moving only sunwise rather than in both directions as they'd done before the royal army arrived. They took terrible losses from the artillery's bolts and heavy stones, but slowly, panel by panel, their walls advanced.
