by David Drake
“Ah, Garric?” Cashel said. He wasn’t comfortable butting into other people’s conversations, but this time he knew something that the others didn’t from chatting with Tenoctris in the gig. “Ah, what Tenoctris told me was that it isn’t just the ponds, it’s the ponds in a place with a lot of, you know, power. Wizard power. And those places always draw people or else it’s all the people that draws the power. Regardless, if you warn the cities, then you get all the places the Last are likely to come at.”
“Lady Tenoctris is very wise,” Shin said in his pretty voice. “If you follow her instructions, you will buy enough time for your champion to reach the cave of the Yellow King. Though she knows and you must know that this is only a temporary help. If they must, the Last will march to the northern coast of your continent from the glacier where they arrive. They’re on the way now, and they will not stop unless the Yellow King helps you stop them.”
“Sir?” said Cashel. “I hope you and Garric have a safe journey; we’ll be glad here for any help you can bring us from the Yellow King. But we’ve fixed other things without his help, and I guess we’ll do our best to fix the Last too.”
He thumped his staff down on the bricks harder than he meant. A spray of blue wizardlight shot from the top ferrule and made the clouds seem to dance.
Garric laughed and clasped Cashel forearm to forearm—using their left rather than the normal right because of the quarterstaff in that hand. “Watch yourself, Cashel,” he said.
“And you watch yourself too, Garric,” Cashel said, feeling embarrassed again. “We’ll be glad to see you riding back, all of us.”
Garric kissed Liane hard but quickly, then put his left foot in his stirrup. The horse whickered. It might’ve tried to lurch forward if Cashel hadn’t seen the look in its nasty brown eye and grabbed the cheekpiece of the bridle. He’d held oxen; holding a horse was no work at all.
Garric walked his mount through the palace gate with a wedge of Blood Eagles clearing a path for him. The crowd outside gave a great cheer.
Cashel put his left arm around Sharina, just holding her. As Shin ambled out at the horse’s side, he turned and stared at Cashel. His laughing tongue dangled, and then he too was gone.
ILNA FROWNED, ALL the men working in the barley fields of the valley below were armed. No hearth smoke rose from the village of considerable size nestled beneath the shrine on the western slope. The villagers had moved to a camp of huts made from hides, blankets, and brush on the other side of the valley—but why?
“Mistress?” Karpos said. He knelt nearby while his partner stood a distance back with a bullet in his sling.
Ilna disliked being prodded, but she didn’t let the irritation touch her lips. She’d made it clear to the hunters that she’d make all the major decisions and that they could leave if they objected. She couldn’t therefore complain if they wanted her to get on with her job.
“We’ll go to the village,” she said. “The new one. Karpos, leave your bow strung but don’t nock an arrow.”
She thought for a moment, then added, “And I’ll lead. I’m not as threatening as the rest of you.”
Temple chuckled. When Ilna looked at him sharply, he said, “People see what they expect to see, Ilna. But often that means that they see very little.”
Ilna sniffed and started off, picking a route among the outcrops. The slope wasn’t bad, but there wasn’t even a track to the new camp. A path leveled with terraces and cuts led to the shrine and the original village.
Her fingers knotted complex patterns as she walked. Mostly she was keeping them—and the part of her mind that most disliked rock—occupied, but the skeletal fabrics she created were a weapon if she needed one.
She thought about Temple’s comment and grimaced. She wasn’t a threat to anybody, so long as they behaved properly.
Most people, much of the time, didn’t behave properly. If they became a problem to her, then Temple was right in what he’d suggested. Ilna grimaced again, certain that if she turned she’d see the big man smiling. She didn’t turn.
The folk in the fields noticed the newcomers, but for the most part they continued with their work. Whatever had them carrying spears and long knives, it wasn’t fear of four strangers arriving in their valley. Two men who’d been pruning olive trees started up the slope; they’d reach the new village a little before Ilna’s group did.
“Hello, friends!” Temple called in a carrying voice. This time Ilna did glance at him. He was waving toward the men who hastened up from the field. After a moment one of them waved back.
“Do you know this village?” Ilna said. The crops and the way the people dressed were like those of the community where they’d found Temple.
“Not this particular one, Ilna,” Temple said. “Though I saw many like it once.”
She nodded curt understanding. The Change had wildly jumbled times, but people in the borough had raised sheep and grown the same crops for as long back as the books Garric and Sharina read told about. The same was probably true here.
Ilna’d gotten past the worst of the broken rock. The remainder of the way to the hut village was clear enough that she could eye the shrine across the valley while she walked.
It was round and, though not large, nonetheless more impressive than she’d have expected here. Most villages made do with a sacred grove or a wooden statue under a thatched roof. Barca’s Hamlet didn’t even have that, though the shepherds made offerings to the face of Duzi scratched on a hilltop boulder in the South Pasture.
This shrine and the altar in front of it were dressed stone, though the chest-high wall around the sacred enclosure was of fieldstone slabs laid in rough courses. The houses in the abandoned village were also built of fieldstone, but with mud chinking; the roofs were thatched.
The priest’s house inside the enclosure was like the rest, though bigger than some. Ilna thought she saw movement behind one of the small windows, but it was too far away to be sure.
For her to be sure. “Mistress,” said Asion from behind her. “There’s somebody in the house by the temple there, and there’s somebody in the temple too. Except I don’t know that what’s in the temple is people.”
“What do you mean?” Ilna said, hearing the edge in her voice. “If they’re not people, what are they?”
“Mistress, I don’t know,” Asion replied humbly. “It was just movement I saw, but it didn’t seem right.”
“Welcome, travelers!” called the eldest of the four men who’d come from the huts to meet them. The pair who’d been in the fields joined them, puffing a little from their scramble. “Have you traveled far?”
All the men had spears, though they were just knife blades bound onto poles with sinews. Each point had a little wicker cover so that nobody’d get poked by accident. The villagers were prepared for trouble, but they made it clear they weren’t going to start it.
“We’ve been traveling for more than a moon,” Ilna said. “May we shelter here for the night, or would you rather that we go on?”
If they turned her and her companions away, Ilna would think they were a sullen and miserly lot. She supposed people had a right to be sullen and miserly, because if she started punishing that sort of behavior, it’d be very hard to know where to stop. Besides, it wouldn’t help her with her real business in life, killing cat men.
There were women behind the group of men, the village elders, she supposed. There were children, too, some of them watching from trees and rocks higher up the slope where they got a better view.
“We notice that you’re traveling with soldiers, mistress,” the village spokesman said. He was bent and had a wrinkled face, but there were still streaks of black in his hair.
“They’re armed,” Ilna said. “We mean no harm to you or any other human, though.”
She halted two double paces from the villagers. Her hands were clasped over the pattern she’d woven, but she could spread it in an eyeblink if she needed to.
“Breccon, you’re an old fool!” said an ol
d woman who pushed herself through the line of men. Her red and blue striped linen sash was obviously expensive and well made, for all that Ilna sniffed at the garish color choices. “Lady, what my husband means is we’re hoping we can hire your soldiers to kill the demons troubling us. They’re your bodyguards, are they?”
“They’re my companions,” Ilna replied, more sharply than she needed to have spoken. It embarrassed her to have assumed hostility when none was meant. “We have nothing to do with demons—”
She paused, remembering that she’d just misjudged these people harshly.
“—but what demons do you have, then?”
“Come, bring them in where we can sit like decent folk and explain things,” said Breccon, obviously hoping to take charge again. “Ah, we don’t have a proper village hall to put you up in, but we can find you room in our shanties if you’re not particular.”
“We choose to stay together,” Ilna said. She was sure by now that the villagers weren’t hostile, but if something happened during the night—a fire could sweep through these crowded-together hovels in no time at all—she didn’t want to have to search for her companions in the confusion.
“That’s all right, Breccon, we’ll put them in ours,” said the old woman. “I’ll sleep with Mirra and Doan, and you can find a place for yourself, I guess.”
“Now, Graia—” Breccon said.
Ilna couldn’t see the look Breccon’s wife directed at him, but he and his fellow elders saw it. His mouth shut and his head jerked back as if he’d been slapped. The fellow next to him, missing two fingers on his left hand, grunted and said, “You can doss with me’n Weesie, I guess, Breccon. For the one night, I mean.”
“Well, let’s sit down and talk it over,” Breccon said, working at being cheery as he led the way between the straggling huts to where broken rock stuck out of the hillside. He paused, looking at the site, then growled, “For the Lady’s sake! Some of you bring straw and blankets for our guests to sit, won’t you?”
Ilna glanced at her companions. Karpos had his knee in the belly of his bow and was unstringing it; Asion had put the lead bullet back in his pouch and slid his sling staff under his belt. Temple—
That was odd. Temple didn’t look dangerous at the moment, though he was a big man even without the very serviceable sword and dagger on his belt. When he’d struck the Corl through, however, he’d been as surely Death on two legs as any man she’d seen besides Chalcus.
A village boy sidled up to him and whispered a request. Obediently Temple stretched out his left arm and let the boy swing from it. An even smaller girl, probably the boy’s sister, ran from her mother’s side and grabbed on also. The children squealed and laughed as Temple jiggled them with his arm straight out as if they weighed nothing.
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 it 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—”
