The Mirror of Worlds

by David Drake

  The ground here was lower and wetter; Lord Waldron had sited their camp on the highest terrain besides the rock of Pandah itself. The elevation was no more than ten feet, but that was the difference between dry bedding and living in a bog.

  Sharina splashed for a few steps before she slowed and took more care about how she placed her feet. The eyes she watched through moved slightly to the left of the line she’d been taking, so she moved that way herself.

  The Last curtained the entrance to their fortress with a separate baffle built in front of the main wall of the fortress. Two of the creatures stood in its shelter, concealed from the human siege works. They were as motionless as statues.

  Sharina paused to let her heart and breathing settle. Her viewpoint edged forward but stopped when Rasile understood what Sharina was doing.

  Sharina smiled. At any rate, the wizard must’ve understood that she wasn’t going to be dragged into moving faster than she thought was safe.

  When she decided she was calm enough, Sharina walked past the silent guards and into the fortress. The touch of amusement at her wordless argument with Rasile had been more helpful than any number of deep breaths.

  From outside, the walls were opaque black in daylight and opaque yellow at night. They were clear with a hint of green from the inside. A troop of forty-odd Last warriors stood near the entrance, ready to respond if humans attacked. They’d turned their backs to the sun and held their arms raised, spreading the membranes between their arms and pelvises. It made them look batlike, though such short vans couldn’t possibly carry man-sized bodies through the air. Sharina remembered Tenoctris saying the creatures lived on sunshine rather than food and water.

  The Last looked much less human close up than they had at a distance. Their lower abdomens were merely girders to connect their legs and upper torsos.

  Sharina strode on, trying to keep at least a double pace away from the Last. Partly she didn’t trust her sense of distance while seeing through Rasile’s eyes, but she also wondered how good the Last’s sense of touch might be. Would the breeze of her passage rouse the interest of the black monsters?

  Besides, she didn’t want to be close to them. That they were humanoid made them even more disgusting. It was like seeing apes dressed as courtiers, smirking and mowing in a parody of palace manners.

  The fortress was roofless; though the walls were transparent, the Last seemed to prefer to absorb the sun’s rays unfiltered. The side facing Pandah was higher, jointed together from three or even four layers of pentagonal facets. A score of warriors stood along the southern wall with their membranes spread. At this time of year the sun was high enough to shine into the interior, but come winter it would not be. The battle’d be over before winter, though.

  Sharina walked cautiously past the warriors feeding on light. She realized she was instinctively afraid that she’d cast a shadow on them, but they seemed as oblivious of her as their fellows at the east entrance had been.

  Perhaps the greatest difference between the opposing camps was that there was always some activity among the human soldiers. The Last stood as black statues while they were waiting to act.

  The two creatures on the west end of the line folded their arms, turned, and drew their swords. Sharina froze, though Rasile’s eyes moved on a step before stopping to wait for her. The pair strode away from her with a lithe briskness, not quite loping but with none of the jerky angularity that Sharina’s mind expected from things that stood like so many marionettes when they weren’t moving.

  They were going toward the western entrance, preparing to attack the human defenses as thousands of their fellows had attacked over the past days…and had died and been replaced, as this pair would die and be replaced.

  Just ahead of Sharina was a pool. The Last had cleared its margins as meticulously as a king’s robe of state. Nothing impeded the line of sight from it to the southern horizon. There the new white star shone, though concealed for the moment by the noon sun.

  For an instant the reflection of a warrior shimmered on the pool’s surface; then the creature strode out, black and grim and as implacable as sunrise. As it walked to the line where its fellows stood absorbing sunlight before joining the battle, an identical reflection grew sharper on the water from which the first had stepped.

  Sharina took a deep breath and pulled off her singlet. She tossed it on the ground. Would the Last see the garment now that she wasn’t wearing it?

  It didn’t matter: they’d see the splash. Wearing only the Pewle knife on its sealskin belt, Sharina dived into the pool. Her body shattered the image of Prince Vorsan, staring up at her somberly.

  Lady, aid me that men may live!

  ILNA STEPPED ONTO a moonlit slope, facing a ridge of rock thrusting up from the surrounding grassland. She was alone for only an instant before Temple strode through on her left and the two hunters on her right.

  There was no sign of the portal on this side. Her companions appeared out of the air, swelling like drops of water condensing on cold metal.

  Asion quickly turned with a stone in the pocket of his sling. Karpos, holding his long knife, looked up the face of the rock without expression. “What is this place, then?” he asked.

  “It’s the Tomb of the Messengers,” Temple said, letting his eyes follow the hunter’s toward the peak. He pointed with his left hand to a wedge of shadow just above the line where the soil was too thin for oat grass. “The entrance is at the base, however. There.”

  “It looks like close quarters,” Karpos said. “Not the sort of place I’d look forward to tracking a cat I’d wounded.”

  “We did the once, though,” Asion said with a quick look back at his partner before resuming his survey of the moonlit oats studded with occasional thorn trees. “That striped demon with a pouch that kept stealing our bait way down in the south.”

  “This could be worse’n that ever was,” Karpos said. “Temple, the mistress shouldn’t go down in that. Should she?”

  “Karpos, you’re not to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do,” Ilna snapped. “And Master Temple, you particularly shouldn’t be giving me direction.”

  “I can’t answer that question, Karpos,” Temple said. He was pretending he hadn’t heard her speak. “That’s the only way she can reach the Messengers. If that’s her goal, she hasn’t any choice.”

  “My goal is to rid the world of Coerli!” Ilna said. “As you should know by now.”

  She started up the remaining slope toward the long sandstone ridge. She didn’t look behind to see if the men were following her, though of course they were. “And,” she said, “you should also know that if I wanted your opinions, I’d have asked for them!”

  “Well, it’ll be all right, I guess,” said Karpos, trying to sound nonchalant. “Only I think I better go first, mistress. You know, because I’m…well, I’ve done this before.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Karpos,” Temple said quietly, “though the thought does you credit. To approach the Messengers requires a kind of strength that you and Asion don’t possess. If you were to attempt it, you’d lose your humanity.”

  Ilna’s leg brushed the shrub growing in front of the cave. The leaves were small and plump; bitter to the taste, Ilna was sure, because all the vegetation of this sort was. They had horny tips which she hadn’t noticed till they clawed her.

  She grimaced, then found her lips curling into a tight smile. The shrub’s white flowers showed brilliantly in the moonlight. It was just another proof that attractive things came with a price.

  “Look, I guess I can take a chance if I want to!” Karpos said sharply. He was a big man—as big as Garric—but no physical match for Temple. Nonetheless there was a challenge in his tone.

  Instead of replying to the hunter, Temple said quietly, “Ilna, you may go or stay as you wish. If these men accompany you, however, they’ll be transformed like those who came to question the Messengers and who lacked the power to compel answers. They’ll become …
servitors, I suppose. You know your own mind, but these men have been friends to you.”

  Ilna stopped at the mouth of the cave. She could enter without ducking her head, but only barely. She wondered how far she’d have to follow the passage. The patterns she knotted for protection wouldn’t be effective in the dark either.

  The air rising from the depths of the cave carried a hint of spices. Perhaps priests were working rites within? Or the odors could be from a tomb. A waste of expense either way, but nobody’d asked what she thought about the matter.

  “Look, I’m not afraid!” said Asion. The high pitch of his voice made a lie of the words, but Ilna didn’t doubt that he and his partner would act the part of fearless men.

  Temple didn’t reply. He wasn’t arguing with the hunters, of course.

  Ilna turned and took eight strands of yarn from her sleeve. She began to knot them. “Temple,” she said, “how deep is this? Should I take a torch?”

  “There’ll be light before you go much farther,” the big man said. “You’ll have a long way to go, but being able to see won’t be one of your problems.”

  She’d never asked Temple how he knew the things he did. She disliked people who asked personal questions, and she had no intention of behaving that way herself.

  “All right,” she said, backing into the cave. She held up the pattern she’d just knotted so they all saw it, then dropped it across the entrance. “You three can wait a reasonable length of time for me. Temple, you probably have a better idea of what that would be than I do. If I don’t return, then go on your way. I, ah, I’ve been glad of your company over the past weeks.”

  “Look, I’m coming with you!” Karpos said, climbing the last of the slope. He stopped in midstride, short of the entrance. Asion, just behind, would’ve collided with his partner if he hadn’t been as quick and agile as a sparrow.

  “No, you’re not,” said Ilna. “I’ve put a blocking spell here. It’ll work in pitch darkness in case you were wondering, since I’ve showed it to you in the light.”

  She cleared her throat. “Temple?” she said. “Asion and Karpos may need a guide if I don’t come back. Can you do that?”

  Temple shrugged. “I’ll lead them if the situation arises, Ilna,” he said.

  She turned. To her back Temple added, “May the Gods accompany you, Ilna.”

  “There are no Gods!” Ilna said. Her voice echoed between the stone walls. She shouldn’t have gotten angry, but the man had an incredible talent for saying the thing that would reach all the way to the cold depths of her heart.

  Ahead, Ilna saw a hint of light. She smiled as widely as she ever did. What a weaver Temple could’ve been with an instinct like that!

  Chapter

  15

  CASHEL WAS PRETTY sure that if he’d been able to close his eyes, he wouldn’t have felt any motion at all. He couldn’t do that while he was guarding Tenoctris, so he felt a twitch of vertigo when the world stopped spinning beyond the edge of the perfect circle she’d drawn in the middle of an oak grove.

  The oaks were gone. The sun’d been directly overhead when Tenoctris began her spell, but now it was close to the southern horizon. Its light brought no warmth.

  Cashel and the wizard stood on a beach of rock broken from the ragged cliff, the corniche that the sea battered against during winter storms. The water was too quiet even to show a line of foam, but the low sun lighted it to gleaming contrast with the dull black shingle.

  Tenoctris looked about her with a critical expression. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come closer than this,” she said. “The altar’s a focus of great power, but that in itself prevents me from using my art to bring us directly onto it. We’ll have to walk.”

  Cashel smiled faintly. “I don’t mind walking, Tenoctris,” he said.

  He stepped aside and gave his staff a tentative spin, sunwise and then widdershins. Mostly he was loosening his muscles, but it didn’t surprise him to see that the ferrules trailed wizardlight in spirals which faded slowly when he put the staff up.

  “Something doesn’t want us here,” Tenoctris said. She looked out to sea, then at the sky. The sunlight was so faint that Cashel, following her eyes, could pick out constellations from knowing their brightest stars.

  Cashel spun the quarterstaff again. “That’s all right,” he said. “Do you know which way we’re going, or should we climb that—”

  He nodded to the corniche. Though barely higher than he could reach, it was what passed for a vantage point in this barren landscape.

  “—and take a look around?”

  Tenoctris looked at him. She wasn’t angry, but her eyes went all the way to his heart.

  “We’ll see the altar when we reach the angle of the cliff ahead of us,” she said calmly. “It’s just around the headland and quite obvious.”

  They started along the shore. A pair of gray-headed gulls had been looking out from the edge of the sea. One, then the other, flapped into the air and circled to gain height. They shrieked at Cashel and Tenoctris, sounding peevish as gulls always did.

  The black shingle wanted to turn under Cashel’s bare feet, but other than that he preferred it to the brick or cobblestone pavements he walked on in cities. These stones were rough, but they didn’t have spikes or sharp edges.

  He glanced at Tenoctris. She wore wooden-soled clogs, though the high uppers were of leather tooled with fashionable designs. She met his eyes, smiled, and said, “Yes, I dressed for what I expected to find.”

  Her expression sobered. “I should’ve warned you,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m used to you being able to deal with anything.”

  Cashel beamed at her. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I am. Or anyway, I’ll try to.”

  He cleared his throat and said, “I shouldn’t’ve spoken about you knowing where we were. I knew you did.”

  “You wanted me to get on with our business,” Tenoctris said. She wore a faint smile, but he wasn’t sure of what was under it. “You were right to remind me of that. We both have things we want to return to.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cashel said, thinking of Sharina and feeling warm all the way through. “But I still shouldn’t’ve said it.”

  A crab longer than Cashel’s foot came out of the surf ahead of them. Its shell was the dirty yellow-brown color that sulfur gets when you heat it.

  “Those pincers could take your finger off,” he said, bending to pick up a piece of shingle. He threw it, hard but not trying to hit: his missile cracked into similar stones a hand’s breadth from the crab. For choice Cashel didn’t kill things, even unpleasant things.

  Instead of scuttling back into the water, the crab charged them side-on. Frowning, Cashel stepped forward, putting himself in front of Tenoctris. A double pace from the ugly creature he shot his quarterstaff out like a spear. The crab hopped in the air, but it wasn’t quick enough. The iron butt cap crushed the edge of its shell and all the legs on that side.

  The crab landed on its back, scrabbling with its remaining legs to turn over. Cashel stepped closer, judged the angle, and flipped the creature into the water with his staff.

  He knew crabs. That one’s fellows’d make a meal of it before any of the other predators got a chance to.

  “That was funny,” he said to Tenoctris. “I’ve had ’em come for me plenty times before, but not from so far away. Do crabs get rabies, do you think?”

  A double handful of crabs came out of the sea, all the same ugly color and just as big as the first. Their clawed feet clicked over the stones as they sidled toward Cashel and Tenoctris.

  “I think we’d better—” Cashel said. More crabs appeared. The sea boiled with them. There were too many crabs to count, piling onto the shore like bubbles of filthy yellow foam.

  THE COLD BIT Garric’s hands and ears. He laced his fingers and twisted them to get the blood flowing. He wondered if Kore thought he was nervous.

  He chuckled. Shin looked back and raised an eyebrow. “I am nervous,” Garric said over his shoul
der. “But that’s not why I’m wringing my hands, Mistress Kore.”

  The ogre laughed. The sound made Garric think of bubbles rising through a swamp.

  It’d gotten chilly during the night as they crossed the strait in the barge, but since the sun came up only heat had been of concern. It probably wasn’t that cold here under the ice, but the contrast with the dry wasteland they’d just crossed made it seem a lot worse than it was.

  The aegipan paused at a round-topped opening in the side of the rock. The edges were as smooth as those a cobbler made when he sliced leather. It didn’t have a door nor could Garric see any sign that a door’d ever been fitted.

  “You’ve reached the resting place of the Yellow King,” Shin said. The portal was easily twelve feet high, but through a momentary trick of the light Garric thought the aegipan’s slim form was filling it. “Come in, then, Garric.”

  “And I’ll come as well,” Kore said. “I’m no longer your steed, man thing. We’re agreed on that?”

  Garric looked back at her. Was Kore warning that she was about to attack him?

  No. And if she did, well, you couldn’t live like a human being and still distrust everyone and everything you met. If the Shepherd chose that an ogre Garric trusted should pull his head off from behind, so be it.

  “Yes, mistress,” Garric said. “You’ve been a good companion and an excellent steed. You’re released from your oath. I release you from your oath.”

  “Very well,” said the ogre. She set the net of provisions down in the rubble-strewn track. “Then I’m free to become a spectator. I think Master Shin is about to show us wonders.”

  The aegipan laughed. “Wonders indeed,” he said as he walked into the mountain with the others following.

  Garric touched the side of the passage: it was as smooth as glass. There was light all around him, but he couldn’t tell the source. It was blue, but a purer, clearer blue than what penetrated the ice outside in the valley.