by David Drake
It was wizardlight. And not only the illumination but the passage itself must’ve been formed by wizardry.
“That shouldn’t be a surprise, should it, Garric?” said Shin without turning his head. “You knew the Yellow King was a wizard. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”
Carrie’s mouth was dry. “I knew the Yellow King was a myth,” he said. “That’s what I really believed, as you must know. I came because Tenoctris told me to come.”
He laughed without humor. “I came because Tenoctris gave me an excuse to walk away from the duties of being king, which I hate because I’m afraid I’m going to do the wrong thing and break everything. That’s why I came, Master Shin.”
“Well, I don’t suppose the reasons matter, do they?” said the aegipan cheerfully. “The important thing is that you came.”
He stepped into a chamber. Its ceiling rose so high that it was lost in a haze of wizardlight. A helical staircase circled it, rising out of sight. The floor was stone, polished like the walls, and over a hundred feet in diameter.
In the center, facing the entrance, was a huge throne on a three-step base. It’d been carved as a whole from the living rock. On its empty seat was a cushion of yellow fabric. There was nothing else in the great room.
Carus would’ve drawn his sword in an instinctive response to a situation he didn’t understand. Garric kept his hands in front of him with his fingers tented, but he certainly didn’t understand what was going on either.
“Ah, Shin?” he said. “Are we to wait here for the Yellow King’s arrival? Or…?”
“Oh, as for that…,” said the aegipan. He turned a double cartwheel to the base of the throne, then mounted it. At each step he appeared to grow larger. When he lifted the yellow fabric—it was a folded robe, not a cushion—he was of a size with the throne.
Shin smiled and bowed to Garric, then settled onto the stone seat. “I’ve arrived. More to the point, you’ve arrived to meet me, Garric.”
Carus was calculating how to attack the aegipan, but that was Carus. Anything big enough to be dangerous was to him a potential threat. That was a useful trait in a subordinate, but not a good one for the person in charge.
Garric was in charge. He cleared his throat.
“Ah, Your Highness,” he said, looking up at the great figure enthroned before him. “I came to ask your assistance in dealing with the Last, the invaders, as you know. I—”
The absurdity of the situation struck him. He laughed, knowing that he must sound a little hysterical. “Will you help us, Your Highness?” he said. “Will you help Mankind, now that you’ve brought me all this way to ask you?”
“I’ve been Shin to you during the journey,” the great figure said. “I’ll remain Shin to you and Mistress Kore, if you don’t mind. Shin has a more interesting life than the Yellow King does.”
Garric bowed. “I came to like Shin,” he said. “I’d be pleased to have him back.”
The aegipan rose and walked down from the throne again, shrinking at each step just as he’d grown. At the bottom the neck of the robe slipped over his body. He walked out of the garment.
His tongue lolled in a smile. Garric wondered if he were going to cartwheel toward them.
“Another time, perhaps,” said the aegipan, his hooves clicking on the floor.
“The test wasn’t of how bold a warrior you were, Garric,” Shin went on. “Though you certainly proved that well enough. What I needed to determine was how fit a ruler you’d be for a land in which ‘people’ means more than members of the human race. You satisfied me ably on that score.”
And if I hadn’t? Garric thought. He didn’t voice the words and Shin didn’t answer the unspoken question.
“You know the answer, lad,” said the ghost in his mind. “This one’s as hard as I am, and he has no more reason to love us than he does the Last.”
“Perhaps a little more, Brother Carus,” said Shin with his mocking smile again. “But that’s of no concern now since your descendant has succeeded where a more physical ruler would not have. I’ll go to my…well, you could call it an altar, on top of this ridge. Those are the steps to it.”
He gestured toward the staircase circling the room.
“There’s only one problem,” Shin went on. “The wyvern we saw breaking out of the ice will make for the highest point also. And while I could deal with him, I can’t both deal with the wyvern and accomplish what you’ve asked me to do. In the time that remains, I mean. In the time that remains for humanity.”
King Carus began to laugh. His image stood arms-akimbo, looking merrily at the aegipan through Garric’s eyes.
“I suppose you wouldn’t fancy my chances of arriving here the way Garric did, eh, Master Shin?” Carus said. “To tell the truth, I don’t fancy them either. I figure it’d have ended in a stable with a dead ogre and my head pulled off my neck.”
He nodded toward Kore. The ogre squatted with an elbow cocked on her knee to support her chin. She nodded back, as comfortable in dealing with the ghost as she was with the Yellow King.
“So fair enough, I wasn’t the man for that job,” Carus said. The lines of his face hardened, though his smile remained. “But I’ve fought a wyvern. You get on with your business, wizard. I and the boy here’ll keep the beast busy for you.”
“You haven’t fought a wyvern as big as this one,” said Kore.
Garric shrugged. He didn’t need his ancestor to tell him what to do now. “This is the best way to get to him?” he said, gesturing to the stairs circling the wall.
“Far and away the best,” Shin agreed. “Even if you were a rock climber. I’ll follow you up, then.”
Kore stood and stretched. “Follow me instead, Master Shin,” she said. “I think I’ll go too.”
Garric looked at her without speaking.
The ogre grimaced, an amazing expression on her long face. “It’s my business what I do, you know,” she said. “I’m not your horse anymore!”
She made a dismissive gesture with her right arm. It looked like a derrick swinging.
“Wyvern flesh is quite tasty,” she added. “The young ones are, at any rate. I’ve never eaten one this big myself, but I’m hopeful.”
“Right,” said Garric quietly. “I’m hopeful too, my friend.”
He strode to the base of the stairs. He was nervous. He’d have liked to rush up them, but he was going to need all his strength and wind very shortly.
In truth, he and Kore were probably going to need more strength than they had; but they were going to try.
ILNA COULD NO longer see light when she looked over her shoulder, and the gray glow ahead wasn’t strong enough to help her choose her footing. She walked on, her face set and grim; more or less as usual, she supposed.
The worst thing that could happen would be for her to fall into a chasm and break her neck, and she wasn’t disposed at the moment to consider that a bad result. She’d go on as long as she lived, but life had held no pleasure for her since she’d watched the cat men kill Chalcus and Merota.
The light was growing brighter. She’d heard things scuttling along the floor beside her for some minutes; now she was able to see distorted shadows the size of dogs. She didn’t bother to pretend that they were dogs.
“Oh, she’s very strong,” whispered a voice.
“The Messengers will bow to her,” another voice rustled. “Not like us, not poor weak failures like us.”
The light was stronger. This time she could tell that the speaker was one of the scuttling things. For a moment it stood and she thought it was a man; but then it hunched again. There was nothing human about it, though there might once have been.
Ilna remembered what Temple had said about those who sought the Messengers but didn’t have the strength to compel them. Asion and Karpos deserved better of her.
Indeed, there wasn’t anyone Ilna could think of who didn’t deserve better, though there were no few she’d met who she’d send to a clean death without scrup
le or hesitation. But these despicable creatures were here on their own responsibility, not hers.
She smiled. She wasn’t responsible for anybody’s presence save her own.
She was descending. Because she’d been in caves before, she expected at least a hint of dampness if not water running along the floor. The air here was as dry as that of the sere grasslands above.
And of course the rock was sandstone, not limestone where natural caves appeared. There was nothing natural about this place. Well, she’d known that.
“The Messengers will bow before her!” the little voices chittered. “Oh, what power she has!”
When Ilna didn’t look at the creatures, their sounds made her think of rats. Even to her eyes, the way they scuttled was ratlike.
The walls of the cave were wide near the ceiling but bulged in before spreading again at the bottom. There was plenty of room to walk, but Ilna had the feeling that the walls were reaching for her. She hated rock and she hated this cave; but she hated the cat men more. She expected to pay to get the things she wanted.
“What will she demand?” the voices twittered. “Oh, such power! She will rule the Messengers as they rule wretched creatures like us!”
The light had no source and no color. It was gray, the gray of the Hell Ilna’d walked in till she surrendered her soul to evil and gained skills no human could have mastered. In the Hell-light Ilna saw deep into the rock, the patterns locked there in crystalline horror: death and doom and chaos, all drawn in detail.
Oh, yes. She had power. And soon perhaps she would have the power to kill every Corl there was.
The light became fiercer at each step. How deep had she gone? Into the earth, into the mountain? Usually Ilna had a feeling for time—if not for distance the way her brother Cashel did—but the rock confused her.
She’d been buried in this place. She’d buried herself.
And she wasn’t alone. The creatures scampered when her eyes fell on them, crawled when they thought she wasn’t looking. They wore no-colored clothing and she never saw their features.
“She’ll put out the sun/move the stars from their courses/bring back the age of fire and ice!”
The walls of the passage began to sprout spiky nodules like sea urchins. At first Ilna thought it was lichen, but when she paused for a closer look she found that the growths were crystals extruded from the rock itself. She’d never seen anything like that on sandstone. It was as unexpected as finding maggots in a melon.
She continued on, trying not to look to the sides. Her mouth was set in a line of fierce disapproval, and her fingers knotted and picked out patterns in yarn.
She’d done the same things when she stepped into Hell and became lost to the world. She’d done the same things the previous time she stepped into Hell. Her smile quirked. This time at least she knew the way.
The smile faded. Garric wouldn’t arrive to save her here, though. That didn’t matter. If she destroyed the Coerli as she’d come to do, then nothing else mattered.
“She will meet the Messengers!” the voices chirped. The distorted creatures covered the floor of the corridor behind Ilna. Rats the size of dogs, large dogs…. “She is meeting the Messengers and they will bow to her! They will bow!”
Ilna stepped into a spherical chamber. It was huge, far too big for her to judge its true size. All the buildings and groves and terraces of the palace in Valles could fit into it.
In the center hung a spinning pink glow. It lit the cavern the way the sun did the surface world.
Ilna noticed that the sandstone walls were banded as far up as she could see. The markings were more vivid than those she’d seen on the bluffs before she entered the passage, but she must be far beneath the surface of the world she’d left.
YOU HAVE COME TO US, said voices in her head, each echoing the other and switching order from syllable to syllable. The sticky pink light trembled in measure with the words. WHAT DO YOU WISH, WIZARD?
Ilna focused on the light with the eyes of her mind just as she would a pattern she intended to weave.
The light had a pattern. It shifted as the separate nodes wound around and even through one another. The nodes had shapes, but what Ilna saw of them were the constantly changing parts that they showed to this world for a particular instant.
And the lights were speaking.
WE ARE THE MESSENGERS, the silent voices said. WE HAVE ALL KNOWLEDGE, WIZARD, AND WE OFFER IT TO YOU.
“She is powerful,” the gray figures moaned softly. “Never was there one so powerful as she, or almost never.”
They spread across the floor of the cavern like mold on rotting fruit, never coming as close to Ilna as her foot would reach if she lashed out. Their smell was overpowering. It seemed to be compounded of old urine and rancid sweat.
How long had wizards been coming here? The squirming mass seemed the size of an army assembled for review; greater than the largest crowds that came to hear Garric speak in the plaza before the palace.
“I want you to kill all the Coerli!” Ilna said. She raised her voice, but it still became lost in the chamber’s vastness. “I’m told you can do anything. Can you? I want you to kill them all!”
WE DO NOT ACT, WIZARD, the voices said. WE CANNOT ACT, FOR WE ARE IMPRISONED HERE APART FROM YOUR UNIVERSE. BUT WE HAVE KNOWLEDGE, AND THAT WE WILL SHARE.
A vast sigh stirred the air of the chamber. Perhaps it came from the assembled creatures, things once human but fallen from that state when they reached the Messengers. It seemed, though, that the world itself had breathed out its despair.
YOU WISH TO KILL THE COERLI, the voices said. WE WILL SHOW YOU HOW….
She was no longer seeing the whirling lights. Instead—
A band of Coerli, two handsful less one, ringed a human family. The father held a spear. He lunged at a warrior, who leaped aside with contemptuous ease. Warriors to either side spun out hooked lines. One wrapped around the man’s throat and jerked him backward; the other line lashed the spear-shaft to the man’s wrist while the beast who’d thrown it pulled in the opposite direction.
The man thrashed and choked until a third warrior stabbed him up through the diaphragm with a flint knife. Then—
A group of Coerli chieftains—grizzled, bearing the scars of age and harsh living—sat on a circle of rocks. Around them stood more of the beasts, too many to count. They were howling in blood-maddened passion. Then—
A female Corl even older than the chiefs stood in a roofless wicker enclosure. She chanted and marked time with an athame carved from slate. Around her paraded images, ghosts of ghosts to Ilna’s eyes.
Most were man-shaped black creatures like the corpses Ilna’d seen when they found Temple. In the distance, though, a nude woman poised at the edge of a pool. The black things seemed to ignore her. Then—
Coerli were devouring their prey. The band’s fur was subtly different from the spots and striping of the first cat men the Messengers had shown her, though few other humans would’ve been sure of that. A beast stuck an infant’s arm into his mouth and drew it out, stripping the flesh from the bones the way a man might eat a chicken wing. Then—
The Messengers hung in the center of the cavern again, pulsing at the rhythm of blood. Their voices said, BRING HER A KNIFE.
“A knife for the wizard,” chorused the rat voices. There was motion in the carpet of hunched foulness. “She must have a knife, and we will bring it.”
“I have a knife if I need one!” Ilna said, taking the bone-cased paring knife from her sleeve and drawing the blade. It was fine steel, worn thin but sharp enough to split hairs.
A golden sickle appeared at the entrance to the passage; it shimmered forward from hand to unseen hand. One of the creatures bent closer, depositing the blade in the cleared space around Ilna. He shrank back into the mass of his fellows. The curved blade reflected the light of the Messengers as a putrescent hue that Ilna wouldn’t have thought possible from gold.
“I said I have a knife!” she repeate
d.
BRING HER THE SACRIFICE, the Messengers said. The light they cast clung like treacle to everything it touched. SHE WILL GAIN HER DESIRE. SHE WILL KILL ALL COERLI.
Ilna used her foot to deliberately shove the sickle back into the crowd of servitors. She looked up at the spinning pink blurs. “Why must I sacrifice to you?” she said harshly.
“She will kill them all!” mewled the servitors. “Oh, such power, power beyond any other’s!”
YOU DO NOT SACRIFICE TO US, WIZARD, said the voices. THE BLOOD IS POWER. YOU STAND WHERE THE WORLDS TOUCH, SO YOU ACT THROUGH ALL WORLDS.
Ilna heard a rustle. She turned to see the gray once-men handing toward her what she first thought was a bundle of fur. It stirred in the pink light: it was a Corl, a kit no more than four or five weeks old. Its eyes were still closed. When the servitors deposited it in the cleared space, it mewled uncomfortably.
TAKE THE SACRIFICE, the Messengers said. CUT THE CORL’S THROAT. Then they repeated, THE BLOOD IS POWER.
“She will kill it,” the servitors whispered exultantly. “She will drain the blood of the Coerli, every one of them!”
A gray creature pushed the kit with an arm or leg, Ilna couldn’t be sure which. The little victim yowled and tried to bite.
“Get away!” Ilna said, bending forward. If the servitor hadn’t instantly flung itself back into the crowd of its fellows, she’d have slashed it open with the knife she still held.
Ilna paused, then scooped the kit up with her left hand. She expected it to snarl, but instead it writhed against the warmth of her bosom.
YOU MUST LET OUT THE BLOOD OF THE SACRIFICE, said the thunderous voices. ONLY WITH ITS DEATH CAN YOU GAIN YOUR WISH AND GO FREE.
Over the years Ilna had killed unnumbered animals—mostly doves from her own cote, but sometimes chickens bartered from other householders in the borough. Since she’d set off on her mission of wiping out the cat men, she’d killed them too, old and young; as young as this.
She’d mostly knocked the kits’ brains out against rocks; their teeth were too sharp to hold by the head and snap their necks as she did with poultry. She could use the paring knife easily enough, though she’d have to hold the kit so that its blood didn’t spurt on her tunics.
