by David Drake
“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 of 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 cat men, 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 the 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, eve
ry 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 joined. 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.
The Last undermined Lord Waldron’s cross-walls, filled in trenches, and stolidly cut apart infantry sallying in attempts to demolish the fortifications from the inside. The army slowed the inhuman advance, but no human endeavor could halt it.
At Sharina’s decision—though with the enthusiastic support of all her officers—the army wasn’t cooperating with the brigands of Pandah. Those renegades were barely able to defend their own walls, and they’d do that to the best of their ability regardless.
Sharina sighed. She was looking out at the citadel because behind her Rasile talked with ghosts and demons. Sharina knew what was happening, of course, and she realized it was necessary…but it made her uncomfortable nonetheless.
The enclosure curtained Rasile’s wizardry from the eyes of the troops who’d be distressed by it. They knew what was going on—and indeed, anybody who wanted to could watch through the coarse wicker as easily as Sharina now looked out. The troops had laced brush together in much the same way as they made great earth-filled baskets which formed the walls of the encampment.
The Last weren’t present in great-enough numbers to attack the camp, not yet at any rate, but Lord Waldron was careful to prepare against unexpected dangers. There was nothing to be done against the expected danger, however.
In a few months, despite Waldron’s efforts, the Last would complete a ring around Pandah. They could then wipe out anyone still in the city…and simply wait and prepare behind polygonal walls which the troops hadn’t been able to breach. If the Last filled Pandah before they opened the sides of their glowing black fortress, they’d outnumber the royal army and any possible human army.
Sharina remembered Tenoctris’ vision of black monsters appearing on the lens of ice. Even arriving only one or two at a time in the fortified pool here, it wouldn’t be long before the black not-men were in overwhelming strength. That would be the end of Mankind.
Thinking that, Sharina turned to look at the Corl wizard. It’s not as though watching the Last grind their way through my world is comforting, after all. She grinned again.
Rasile stood in a figure drawn with yarrow stalks. She’d spilled them in what’d seemed an aimless fashion to Sharina, but the stiff yellow lengths had fallen into a real pattern: each stalk lay end-to-end with two others.
There was light with her inside the figure, occasionally as bright as a desert sun but more often a dim hint like the moon through overcast. Now it was a faint blue glow coming from something spindly and inhuman. The creature’s clawed arms gestured fiercely as it spoke to Rasile.
No sound crossed the figure. Sharina could see the wizard’s face: it was as calm as if she were ordering lunch.
The creature lifted its long jaws in what seemed to be a despairing shriek, threatening the sky with its claws; then it faded into darkness. Sharina expected another world, another denizen. Instead Rasile slumped.
Sharina jumped to the Corl’s side, careful not to disturb the yarrow stalks. She’d acted without thinking; she might’ve been jumping into a realm in which only a wizard could survive—
But nobody was safe unless the Last were defeated, and Rasile had a better chance of accomplishing that than Waldron and the whole royal army did. Besides, Sharina wasn’t one to worry about her own safety when a friend was at risk. By now the Corl wizard’d become if not exactly a friend, then at least a trusted confidante.
“Their own strength works for me,” Rasile murmured. She hunched with her eyes closed. If Sharina hadn’t caught her, she’d probably have lain scrunched together on all fours on the ground. “I could never have accomplished that if the Last hadn’t concentrated so much power in this place.”
“Are you all right, Rasile?” Sharina said. The Corl’s body felt hot and her heart was beating quickly, but Sharina reminded herself that the wizard wasn’t human. This might be normal for the cat men.
“I’m tired, Princess,” Rasile said. She didn’t open her eyes, but her voice sounded stronger. “I think even your friend Tenoctris would be tired after that. But I have an answer.”
The old Corl straightened. Sharina stepped away as she’d have done if she’d been supporting Tenoctris following wizardry. The initial shock to the system seemed to pass more quickly than would that of comparable physical effort, though sometimes Sharina got the impression that spells left mental scars that never healed.
Rasile took Sharina’s hands in her own and examined them closely. The Corl’s fingers were short and the palms narrower but longer than a human’s.
“Can you swim, Princess?” she said. “Yes, I see that you can.”
Her eyes met Sharina’s. They were smiling.
“The Last enter this region through the pool in the center of their citadel,” Rasile said, her voice getting a saw-toothed edge to it. “At the bottom of that pool is the First Stone. It is the focus which draws them to this place rather than to another. You must fetch the First Stone up from the pool and bring it to me.”
Rasile laughed. “It is well that you do swim, Princess,” she said. “Who else could we trust to do this thing without flinching? Your warriors are very brave, no doubt, but they—”
She moved her index finger through the air as though tracing letters. Azure wizardlight trailed away from the stubby claw, each spark taking the flickering form of an armored soldier.
“—wouldn’t have stomach for what’s necessary, would they? To deal with the Great Wisdom?”
“Cashel would,” said Sharina. She tried to keep emotion out of her voice, for fear of learning what emotion she might show if she didn’t. “He’s not afraid of wizardry. But he’s not here; and anyway, he can’t swim.”
She cleared her throat. “How will I get to the pool, Rasile?” she said. “There’s only the two entrances and they’re both guarded.”
“You’ll have to be invisible,” the Corl said. “And that means—”
A catapult fired. The heavy stone smashed into ricocheting fragments almost as soon as the levers crashed against their stops. One and maybe several of the Last were surely dead, but an endless number of the creatures remained. Like water dripping against a cliff face, they’d eventually wear away the royal army.
“—that you will be blind. Therefore—”
“Blind?” said Sharina. She felt cold and nauseated, as though she’d been punched in the pit of the stomach. “I don’t understand!”
“If you cannot be seen,” Rasile said, “then you can’t see. You will use my eyes.”
She stretched. The old wizard seemed to have become more limber as a result of the exercise she’d gotten during the march.
