The Mirror of Worlds

by David Drake

  “They’re cats,” Cashel murmured as they strode through the muck. “They eat meat. I’d never smelled so much piss from meat-eaters as there is here.”

  “Oh!” said Sharina, and of course he was right. People in Barca’s Hamlet had thought Cashel was slow because he didn’t know a lot of the things they did; but many of the things other people knew were false.

  Tenoctris rode ahead of them in a litter carried by two of the twenty Blood Eagles. Attaper led the escort personally. He wasn’t happy with the situation, but he’d accepted that Sharina was regent in Garric’s place.

  Sharina smiled slightly. Attaper’d also learned that she was the prince’s sister in more ways than one: she’d listen to advice, but when she turned her decision into an order, she meant it to be obeyed. It was also possible that the day and a half Attaper had spent wandering in a mist with a company of his men had made him more willing to take direction than he’d been before he disobeyed Garric’s direct order….

  The eight Coerli chieftains who’d been guiding them through the warren turned. The leading squad of Blood Eagles spread out in the open space that Garric had described, the Gathering Field.

  The Elders hopped onto the rocks; Tenoctris got out of the litter carefully. The Blood Eagles’ spears were blunted with gilt balls. They held them crosswise to form a barrier against the Coerli spectators.

  The crowd pressed close, but the adult Coerli didn’t try to push past the guards. There were females and kits among the spectators this morning, though, and one of the latter kept reaching toward Sharina. The mewling kit’s mother gripped the scruff of her neck to keep her from squirming through the guards’ legs.

  Sharina looked around. Tenoctris had made the arrangements, so this was the first time Sharina had seen the complete human contingent.

  “Tenoctris?” she said, hoping her voice didn’t convey the frustrated amazement she felt. “You haven’t brought any interpreters.”

  Perhaps some of the cat men present had learned human speech, but Tenoctris still should have one or more clerks from Lord Royhas’ bureau to check the Coerli. Of course, now that Garric was gone, no one could communicate well between the two races of the new kingdom….

  Tenoctris glanced at Sharina in mild irritation. “Ah, I’d forgotten,” she said. “I’ll take care of it now. You’ll need to talk to your new wizard, of course.”

  Tenoctris spoke in the cat men’s own tongue. One of the Elders replied. Another, probably the youngest of the eight, rose on his rock with a low growl.

  Sharina realized she was clutching Cashel’s forearm hard, though of course he didn’t react. She opened her grip but continued to rest her fingertips on his solid muscles.

  A canal curved around the rear of the Gathering Field. Water flowed in it—bits of debris on the surface moved downstream, if not quickly—so it was the community’s sewer rather than a cesspool. Tenoctris walked between the seated Elders and pointed her right index finger toward the fluid which gleamed like fresh tar. “Pikran dechochoctha!” she cried in a voice that didn’t sound like hers.

  A bolt of wizardlight crackled from the wizard’s finger. For an instant the canal was a curve of crimson; then the water geysered upward, sizzling and still mounting. When it’d risen into a pillar that pierced the scattered clouds, it exploded outward in silver splendor. Sharina felt a faint dampness.

  “Golden-furred lady!” a tiny voice called through the clamor. “Golden-furred lady!”

  The Corl kit is calling to me, Sharina realized. And I understand her.

  Tenoctris walked back to them, smiling in satisfaction. “There,” she said. “That’ll take care of the communication problem, I think. For everyone who breathes the spray, that is, but the wind’s carrying it in the direction of Valles.”

  Tenoctris’ curt incantation had lifted only the water, leaving on the bottom the trash and foulness which’d been suspended in it. Oily sewage slowly began to refill the channel.

  “How …,” Sharina said, but she caught herself. She looked at Cashel. He didn’t say anything, but the hand that didn’t hold his quarterstaff touched the locket he’d taken to wearing.

  Tenoctris couldn’t explain how she’d ripped the water skyward and apparently done far more important things in the same action. That was wizardry, and Sharina wasn’t a wizard. She might as well ask a Serian philosopher to describe his doctrine to her in his own language.

  What Sharina’d really meant was “How did you gain such power, Tenoctris?” Cashel had already told her the answer to that, the being which’d met and merged with Tenoctris in the ancient tomb.

  Sharina looked at Tenoctris, then back to Cashel. She squeezed his arm.

  “What do we do next, Tenoctris?” Sharina asked calmly. If Cashel was satisfied, then she’d assume that the old woman beside her continued to be the friend who’d helped save mankind so many times in the past.

  “Now I find you a wizard to provide counsel while I’m busy elsewhere,” Tenoctris said. She gave Sharina a slight smile that wasn’t a familiar expression on her face, then turned to the Elders.

  “Chiefs of the True People!” she said, speaking in harsh glottals and sibilants which sounded in Sharina’s mind—though not her ears—like the old noblewoman’s usual cultured accents. “Take me to your Council of Wise Ones. The kingdom has business with one of them.”

  The shaggy Elders muttered among themselves. Sharina could hear some of the words, but they were too cryptic for her to understand what was being said without a context.

  The oldest Corl got down from his boulder. “I will take you to the house of the council, beast,” he said. “But I can tell you, none of our wise ones have the power you do.”

  Tenoctris laughed triumphantly. “That’s all right,” she said. “Until very recently, I didn’t have such power either.”

  She went along after the Elder on her own feet instead of getting back in the litter. “No,” said Sharina with a quick gesture to Attaper as he and his men tried to surround Tenoctris. “Follow us, but you and your men wait outside the building.”

  She’d seen how Tenoctris’ enchantment of the canal water had left several Blood Eagles trembling. They were brave men beyond question, but wizardry had the same subconscious effect on many people that snakes or spiders did. Sometimes that overwhelming fear came out as violent rage. The last thing the kingdom needed now was for a berserk soldier to begin slaughtering the cat men’s chiefs and wizards.

  With Cashel behind her, Sharina entered the shingle-roofed longhouse to which their guide led. She had to duck to go under a transom meant for the Coerli.

  The last thing she glimpsed over her shoulder as she entered was the canal. It was full again, and as black as the heart of Evil.

  Chapter

  8

  THAT’S A STRANGE thing to find in the middle of a bog,” Garric said, eyeing the tower half a furlong to the left as they passed. After a moment’s further thought he added, “And rather an unpleasant one.”

  Kore looked as she jogged along. Her gait wasn’t uncomfortable once Garric’d gotten used to it. Riding her was more or less equivalent to standing in a horse’s stirrups while holding on to the reins, though he had to lean back rather than forward. The “reins” were a leather harness over the ogre’s shoulders, supporting her burden like a knapsack.

  “I would say that perhaps they have trouble with ogres here,” Kore said, “though I don’t scent my kind.”

  The ghost of Carus laughed. “It’s a peel tower, lad,” he said. “There’s more sorts of raiders than ogres, and when such ride up, here’s where the local folk hide. Or if you prefer, here’s where the raiders come to divide the loot when they return.”

  The tower could have three stories, though the only windows were narrow ones around the top level; the lower portion might’ve been a single room with a vaulted ceiling. The door facing the road was massive and had two iron-strapped leaves.

  “Just what you’d need to drive the cattle i
n quickly, lad,” Carus commented. “Though I’d have said the ground hereabouts is too soft for cattle.”

  “The tower was not part of this region before the Change,” said Shin. The aegipan trotted alongside Kore without difficulty, though his hooves twinkled through three strides for every one of the ogre’s. “There are other anomalies of the sort. Generally they involve a concentration of powers which wrench the site from its previous period. That was certainly what happened in this case.”

  “Wizardry, you mean,” said Garric.

  “Perhaps wizards,” Shin said.

  The tower disappeared behind them as the track curved down a slight hill. Garric took his hand away from his sword hilt.

  He had no reason to feel relieved: there hadn’t been signs of life in the tower, let alone hostility. Besides, few bullies or bandits would bother a swordsman riding on an ogre.

  Nonetheless, it was an unpleasant place.

  CASHEL PAUSED TO let his eyes adapt when he stepped inside the door at the end of the longhouse. Triangular windows under the peaks of the saddle-backed thatch roof were the only openings except for the door. The wicker walls hadn’t been caulked with mud, though, so they let in air if not much light.

  The wicker wasn’t woven any old way, any more than his sister’s woolens were. The withies of split willow were twisted around the vertical posts in patterns that Cashel could sense but not really follow. It’d have meant something to Ilna, though.

  It was a shame Ilna’d gotten it into her head that she needed to kill all the cat men. Cashel didn’t think that way about things. He didn’t mind killing when he needed to, but once an enemy gave up, Cashel was willing to let the business end. He didn’t like to fight, for all that he’d done plenty of it, and he sure didn’t like to kill.

  Ilna was smarter than him, no doubt about that. But Tenoctris and Garric and Sharina were smart as they came, and they felt the same about it as Cashel did. Still, there’d never been any point in arguing with Ilna; and if it’d been Sharina instead of Chalcus and Merota that the cat men’d killed …

  Cashel didn’t let his thoughts stay there very long. He moved closer to Sharina, though, as Tenoctris said to the cat men squatting at the other end of the longhouse, “Wise ones of the True People, I’ve come to pick one of you to advise the golden-furred female beast during the time I must be absent from her. She rules the kingdom of which you are now part.”

  Sharina leaned toward Cashel and whispered, “I’ve never seen Coerli in a mixed group before, have you?”;

  Cashel thought about it. “No,” he said.

  He hadn’t noticed it because he’d been thinking of the cat men as people. There was nothing funny about a group of people—human people—having old men and boys, old women and young mothers. That was what these cat men were. One of the females cradled a kit in each arm. They suckled as she listened to Tenoctris still-faced with her fellows.

  But Sharina was right: cat men didn’t mix the same ways as humans. The young males, the warriors, kept to themselves, and females with kits didn’t mix with other females. The crowd outside in the Gathering Field was split into wedges like a pie.

  These cat men were together because they were wizards. That was more important than age or sex or anything else, just like with humans.

  “A female cannot rule a kingdom,” said an older male with the bulk and mane of a clan chief. “A woman cannot rule the True People!”

  The chiefs ate a diet of red meat, which they allowed only sparingly to anybody else. Cashel didn’t know what extras the cat men gave their wizards, but the handful of other males in this group were ordinary warriors, even the one with gray streaks in his fur who looked pretty old.

  “And yet she rules you, vassal!” Tenoctris said. “The golden-furred one is Sharina, littermate of Garric, the warlord and chief of chiefs. As surely as Garric killed your champion with his bare hands, so will his littermate give you all to fire and the sword if you foreswear your oaths.”

  Her voice was richer than Cashel had heard before, but it was still Tenoctris speaking. Thing is, somebody powerful isn’t the same as they were when they were weak, even though they’re the same person. The Tenoctris haranguing the cat men now wasn’t the bent old woman Cashel had waited in the tomb with the day before.

  The chief who’d spoken rose to his feet and looked at his squatting fellows. There were more of them than Cashel could count on both hands and maybe twice that many.

  “I am Komarg!” he said, glowering at Tenoctris. He waggled his wooden mace overhead; it was carved with all manner of designs, but the dried bloodstains on it showed that it hadn’t stopped being a weapon. “I am a great chief and also chief of the wise ones. I will go with the blond-furred one and advise her.”

  Komarg was taller than Tenoctris, as tall as a good-sized man, in fact. Not as tall or near as strong as Cashel himself, of course.

  “I’m not interested in braggarts or fools, Komarg,” Tenoctris said contemptuously. She took a cast snakeskin out of her sleeve and waggled it. It was pale brown and crinkly.

  Cashel had met his share of people like Komarg, and in this he guessed cat men were just the same as humans. Oath or no oath, Komarg was going to swipe at Tenoctris. The quarterstaff was already swinging down to stop him when Tenoctris shouted, “Saboset!” and flicked the snakeskin like a whip.

  Blue wizardlight blazed through the longhouse. Cashel saw the bones of his hands gripping the staff. His ears wanted to flinch at the crash of thunder, but this lightning was silent.

  In the place of Tenoctris stood a two-legged snake with a body the size of an ox. Cashel backed with the staff crossways in front of him. He didn’t look behind, trusting Sharina to keep out of the way. They could retreat to the doorway; then he’d figure out what to do next. A beast this size wouldn’t make anything of going through even the best-woven wattling.

  “Demon!” the cat men were screaming as they scrambled backward. “Demon! Demon!”

  Komarg half-turned but the snake darted its head at him. He knew he was too close to get away, so he swung his mace at it with both hands.

  The snake took the blow with its flaring wing and grabbed Komarg around the waist. He screamed as it flung him in the air. Blood splattered from his belly; it looked like somebody’d laid him open with a saw that cut in and then back at a different angle.

  Komarg bounced off the ridgepole, losing his mace. As he dropped, the snake caught him again, this time by the head, and shook him like a dog with a rat. When it tossed him over its back into a corner, he was limp as a rag. Blood oozed from his wounds; his heart had stopped.

  What Cashel’d thought was a solid wall behind the pack of cat men turned out to be a curtain of woven straw covering a door. All of them had run out that way except a scraggly old female. She’d spilled dust on the board floor and drawn a curving zigzag design in it. The pattern didn’t close, but when Cashel followed the ends of it with his eyes he felt a broad oval.

  The Corl wizard squatted where she’d been from the start, snarling words. Cashel recognized the rhythms as those of a wizard chanting spells.

  He’d reached the door they’d entered by, but he didn’t back into the open air yet. Tenoctris had either raised the demon or was the demon, and it hadn’t gone after anybody but the cat men. He knew Garric said that humans and cat men were all part of the same kingdom now. That was fine, but Cashel was still going to wait till he knew more before he mixed into what didn’t seem to be a fight for human beings.

  The snake—the snake-demon, he guessed, because it sure wasn’t just a snake—bent close to the old female and shrieked like a hawk. Well, a really big hawk. She blinked but kept on chanting.

  The snake-demon reached its right leg out with the long middle claw extended; its wings quivered to balance the big body. When the sickle-curved claw crossed the line on the floor, there was a blast of crimson wizardlight. It was nigh as bright as the blue when the creature had appeared. Dust flew in all directions like a wh
irlwind’d swept it up.

  The Corl leaped to her feet and swiped at the demon’s muzzle with the slate wand she’d used to scribe her line. Old as she was, the motion was still quicker than that of any but a handful of men Cashel’d met—and maybe quicker’n them too.

  The wand didn’t strike anything because the snake-demon wasn’t there—wasn’t anywhere, in fact. Tenoctris stood back where she’d been to begin with, tucking the scrap of snakeskin away in her sleeve and smiling faintly.

  “So, my fellow wizard,” she said. “My name is Tenoctris. What’s yours?”

  The Corl drew her lips back in a snarl. Cashel was beside Tenoctris again, though after what he’d just seen he didn’t doubt she could take care of herself. Still, he raised the quarterstaff slightly to stick it in the way if he needed to.

  The cat man looked at the wand in her hand, then threw it onto the floor. It clacked, rolled against the wall, and rolled back.

  “I am Rasile!” she said. “But why would you care, Tenoctris?”

  “You just demonstrated why I care,” Tenoctris said. “I knew there was a powerful wizard among the True People. I came to meet you, Rasile.”

  She eyed the Corl critically; Cashel did the same. Rasile wasn’t much to look at, that was sure: her fur was worn thin on the joints, and the flesh sucked in between the bones of her forearms. You didn’t often see an animal that old in Barca’s Hamlet; they aren’t good for much, and peasants are too close to the edge even in a good year to feed useless mouths. Of course Rasile wasn’t an animal, exactly.

  “You could make yourself young again,” Tenoctris said. “Why haven’t you?”

  Rasile growled with disgust. “Why would I want to extend my life in this misery of a world?” she said. “I’ll live the years the fates have given me, but I don’t like pain so much that I’ll willingly extend them.”

  Tenoctris laughed. “It’s not such a bad world when you look at it in the right way,” she said, “but I’m not here to argue with you.”