The Mirror of Worlds

by David Drake

  Ilna looked up at the Messengers. “I won’t make a blood sacrifice!” she said, thrusting her knife into its case and putting it away in her sleeve. She took out a hank of yarn. “Tell me another way or I’m leaving here.”

  YOU MUST LET OUT THE BLOOD OF THE SACRIFICE, said the voices. YOU CAME TO US. YOU CANNOT RETURN UNTIL YOU CARRY OUT YOUR TASK.

  “She must kill the Corl,” the servitors cheeped. She heard laughter in the high-pitched tones. “She must comply or she will join us-s-s…!”

  Ilna held the kit in the crook of her left elbow. Its presence was a handicap, but not a great one; she began knotting a pattern. The gray creatures had eyes. Her skill could reach them, paralyze them as she ran back up the passage that had brought her here. The passage that had returned her to Hell….

  She held up the pattern.

  HER WEAKNESS HAS BETRAYED HER, the Messengers boomed. SHE IS YOURS.

  The pink light vanished, leaving total blackness.

  “She is ours!” squealed creatures as numerous as waves in a storm. Warm, probing foulness swarmed over Ilna in the dark.

  “RUN FOR THE cliff!” Cashel shouted. The crabs could climb, but at least it’d slow them down a bit. Here on the shingle they were nigh as fast as a man. From the top of the corniche, he and Tenoctris could figure out what to do next. They could try to, anyway. If they let those crabs get hold of them, there wouldn’t be anything left but picked bones.

  Tenoctris had said something here didn’t like them. That was true enough, not that he’d doubted her before.

  The low cliff was less than a stone’s throw away, but even though Tenoctris was young again, she wasn’t much of a runner. It wasn’t something ladies did as often as village girls like Sharina, Cashel supposed.

  He kept behind her, which was a good thing because she tripped just short of the cliff. She’d have slammed straight into the rock if Cashel hadn’t grabbed a handful of tunic right between her shoulder blades.

  He yanked her back. Crab pincers carved into his heel. That hurt, which didn’t matter; but they could’ve caught him a few fingers’ breadth higher and cut his hamstring, which’d cripple him for life.

  There wasn’t time to talk or plan or do anything but act. One-handed—the other held his staff—Cashel straightened out his right arm fast and threw Tenoctris onto the corniche the way he’d have flung a heavy stone.

  He turned, stamping on the crab that’d caught him. It was good to feel it splash his calloused foot with juices as cold as the sea it’d crawled from, but there were more crabs than he could count coming right after it. He’d raised his staff, thinking he might be able to smash the crabs as they came toward him, but they were way too close and too many.

  A crab closed both pincers on his right calf, well above the ankle. More crowded close beside it. There was no time to plan….

  Cashel slammed a ferrule down on the crab that was holding him. He jumped upward, using his grip on the staff to lift him as he twisted his body around. If he’d had a running start, he might’ve been able to swing over the lip of the corniche. Flat-footed he was lucky to grab the top with his left hand. He hung there by one arm, supporting half his weight by the other balanced on the quarterstaff like it was a pillar.

  Tenoctris was chanting. Cashel didn’t know what she had in mind, but it was going to have to happen quick for it to do him any good. His right leg was bleeding and felt like it’d been whacked with a club. A pincer was still clamped in the muscle though the rest of the crab was mush down there on the shingle.

  Crabs crawled over one another, piling up at the base of the cliff, but some were starting to climb. Cashel didn’t have enough strength to lift himself over with one arm alone. He could make it if he let go of the staff, but he wasn’t willing to do that and let it slip down into that mob of clicking yellow monsters.

  It wasn’t just that the staff was a weapon that he’d need if he managed to get up the cliff. Cashel and that length of hickory’d been in a lot of hard places together and’d gotten through to the other side. He wasn’t going to leave it with the crabs.

  He was starting to wobble, though. Strong as he was, he couldn’t hold like this forever. He guessed if he had to he’d drop down onto the beach and smash as many crabs as he could before the rest pulled him under.

  “Schaked!” shouted Tenoctris, waving the sword she used for a wand. Cashel expected a flash of wizardlight, but instead he heard the bugle of a hound that must be bigger’n he could believe.

  Cashel looked over his shoulder. Around the headland came a beast with shaggy red hair and a skull longer than a man’s arm. It was as big as two oxen. Its canines, upper and lower both, were long, but the teeth farther back in the jaws were built to shear or crush. It loped toward the mass of crabs, spraying back the shingle with its flat-clawed feet.

  The crabs began to scatter toward the sea in spreading ripples. The great dog thing bugled again and was on them, lowering its long jaws to scoop them up on the run. It went through the scuttling yellow mass like a scythe through grain, slamming its slavering jaws to crush the crabs it’d caught in the moment previous. Legs, pincers, and parts of shell flew out the sides. Seabirds and surviving crabs would clean the shingle later.

  The great beast wheeled, making the beach tremble. It weighed tons.

  Cashel dropped to the ground. The only crabs near the cliff now were ones that’d been trampled in the first rush. Those still alive either twitched or tried to crawl back to the water; they weren’t a danger. He couldn’t get up on the corniche any better than he could’ve a moment before, and this big dog thing could snatch him from where he hung as easy as a man plucks a pear from a low branch.

  The beast whuffled. Cashel started his quarterstaff spinning, feeling twitches in muscles that he’d worked hard at awkward angles just a moment before. The beast bugled again; it must eat carrion or else a lot of each meal stayed between its teeth to rot. It loped off in a curve along the edge of the water, sweeping up a second helping of crabs.

  “It won’t harm us,” Tenoctris said.

  Cashel took a deep breath. He brought the quarterstaff to a halt at his side, then turned and looked up.

  Tenoctris smiled at him from the corniche. “If you’ll help me,” she went on, “I’ll come down. I don’t want to jump onto the rock.”

  “No, ma’am,” Cashel said. “And I don’t want you to do that.”

  He leaned the staff against the cliff. Tenoctris wriggled over the edge and hung by her hands; he gripped her around the waist and lowered her gently to the shingle.

  Cashel felt himself blush. “I’m sorry about the way I, well, tossed you,” he said, taking his staff again.

  The dog thing snuffled along the sea’s margin now, licking up crabs it’d crippled. It didn’t seem to notice the humans. From this angle Cashel saw that its hindquarters were brindled.

  “You saved our lives in the only possible fashion,” Tenoctris said sharply. “I don’t see that as being something you should apologize for.”

  She grinned. “I always knew you had a great ability to do things by art,” she said. “By wizardry. And of course I knew that you were strong the way laymen judge strength. But until I had a healthy young body of my own again, I didn’t really appreciate how strong you are, Cashel.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, keeping his eye on the beast that Tenoctris had called to save them. He started to say something more but caught himself.

  Tenoctris laughed. “And yes, we’ll get on with our own business,” she said. “So that you can return to Sharina. Come, the altar’s not far at all.”

  Together they set off again for the headland. Cashel stayed between the wizard and the dog thing. It bugled again, that was all. Maybe it was saying goodbye.

  SHARINA ENTERED THE pool cleanly and pulled herself deeper with paired strokes of her arms. She’d expected a shock, but the water was blood warm.

  Rasile’s viewpoint plunged also, apparently looking over Sharina’s lef
t shoulder but seeing farther down than eyes—man or Corl either one—should’ve been able to do. The water, the distorted fish which nudged close to Sharina before darting away with flips of their tails, and the distant mud shimmered with the red tinge of wizardlight.

  The pool was a thousand feet deep, but Sharina was seeing the bottom through the wizard’s eyes. She couldn’t possibly swim down that far, but she kept stroking toward it. She expected to fail, but she wouldn’t quit.

  The layer of silt and decay carpeting the pool became transparent in the rosy glow. Sharina saw the tiny blind animals living in it, worms and less identifiable creatures with shells or legs or jointed feelers.

  She swam downward. She didn’t need to breathe as she should’ve done. Her spread hands drove her deeper against the resistance of something, but she no longer believed it was water.

  The stones on the floor of the pool, eggs of granite that a stream had tumbled smooth in past ages, began to appear through the layer of muck. At first they lay in a scarlet shimmer. Wizardlight brightened around a single stone, a sphere of quartz the size of Sharina’s fist. It was very close. It was—

  Sharina’s arm plunged through the mud she could no longer see and grasped the First Stone. It was cold, then hot; she felt her burnt flesh slough away and the bones of her hand turn black and crumble, though she could see with Rasile’s eyes that she was uninjured.

  She kicked against the bottom and began to swim upward with her left hand alone. The surface was a point of sunlight far above, but still she didn’t need to breathe.

  The sunlit circle swelled; she could see ripples, the remains of the disturbance she’d made diving in. Six distorted blacknesses were spaced around the margin of the pool, soldiers of the Last drawn by the splash. Even if they didn’t see her, could they see the turbulence her body made in the water?

  Sharina reached across her body with her left hand and drew the Pewle knife. She didn’t want to take the stone in her other hand. She might drop it, or worse—she might cripple her left hand also, burn the flesh and bones away. Both her wrists would end in blackened stumps….

  She felt a great shock. The pool bubbled; the detritus that’d settled on the bottom over millennia swelled upward in a dark, spreading cloud. What had she done when she removed the First Stone?

  She porpoised up through the surface. If there’d ever been a stone curb, the Last had removed it when they’d prepared the pool for their own purposes. Sharina braced herself on the margin with her right elbow and the butt of her knife, then swung out of the water.

  The two nearest of the Last sliced at the pool. Their swords were so keen that the edges scarcely disturbed the water. Neither struck her.

  All the Last were alert now, their skin flaps folded. Sharina dodged between two who must’ve sensed the movement. They slashed toward each other, but their strokes cut only air. Sharina was past, and the perfectly placed blades came within a hair’s breadth of each other’s black flesh without touching it.

  Sharina sprinted for the entrance. Her tunic lay on the ground where she’d dropped it. Her mother, Lora, would be furious with her; Lora’d never understood the concept that reality was sometimes more important than appearance….

  When Sharina thought of Lora, it was always at a time like this: when she or Garric was doing something necessary for Mankind which their mother wouldn’t have approved of. She grinned despite the situation. Maybe Lora was a good mother after all. She showed us what to avoid.

  The Last formed a line across the width of the fortress, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. The roiling pool wouldn’t provide them with reinforcements for at least some minutes, but stolid black soldiers were returning from the siege lines through the west entrance. They must speak mentally to one another.

  Sharina reached the east entrance by which she’d entered. Five of the Last stood across it, filling the space completely. Their swords were raised to slash downward.

  No time to think….

  Sharina stabbed the warrior in the center through the eye. He convulsed, swinging his sword and shield out to the sides; his legs kicked upward like a frog’s. Sharina jerked back as his neighbors struck. The line of warriors forming behind her ran toward the entrance.

  Choosing her time, Sharina leaped over the thrashing body. She sprinted out of the fortress and ran full tilt toward the human lines because she didn’t need to hide her presence now.

  To her surprise, Attaper and a troop of Blood Eagles stood at the base of the wall; they’d climbed down by a sturdy ladder. Rasile stood on the parapet.

  “There she is!” Attaper shouted. “Get around your princess, troopers!”

  Sharina was seeing with her own eyes, which meant she could be seen. She didn’t care about men, not for the moment, but the Last could see her.

  She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to find a column of them rushing toward her. There was no artillery to support the troops who’d be pitting their flesh against swords which could cut steel.

  The Last weren’t following her. Something was going on in the fortress, though; a pair of distorted black bodies flew high in the air and dropped back.

  A soldier swung a cloak over Sharina’s shoulders and clasped it. It was a military garment and perhaps his own, but Rasile must’ve told him to bring it for the purpose: none of the other men were wearing them.

  Sharina climbed the ladder, balancing without using her hands. She couldn’t sheathe the Pewle knife until she’d wiped the purplish ichor off the blade, and she didn’t have any way to carry the First Stone except in her hand. The Blood Eagles formed in front of the ladder. They only started climbing when she’d reached the parapet.

  Rasile took the quartz sphere. Sharina’s right hand felt as though it’d been frozen, but she could see her fingers move when she tried to wiggle them. She stepped to the side so that the Blood Eagles had room to mount the parapet; Attaper was predictably waiting on the ground until all his men were up.

  “What do we do now, Rasile?” Sharina asked. She looked around for something to clean her knife on, a rag or a wad of dry grass. There was nothing in sight, and she didn’t want to foul some trooper’s cloak.

  The wizard stepped into a bay from which the catapult had been removed. She spread her yarrow stalks into a figure on the floor of packed turf. “Now,” she said, “I will deliver the First Stone to a person who’s capable of using it properly, Princess. Because I certainly am not.”

  “Your Ladyship?” said Trooper Lires, a man who’d regularly stood beside—and in front of—Sharina in bad places. He was offering a chammy, probably the one he’d used to bring the blackened bronze of his armor to a mirror gloss. “Use this. It’ll wash out.”

  Sharina reached for the swatch of goat hide. Another face was reflected beside hers on the shield boss. She jerked back.

  “Sharina, you must come with me now!” cried Prince Vorsan. “There’re only minutes remaining for you. You’ve loosed the creature that the First Stone drew to it. Dear Princess, it’s grown beyond anyone’s control!”

  “Get away from me!” Sharina shouted.

  Lires had been looking puzzled, trying to find where Vorsan’s voice was coming from. Shocked by Sharina’s words, his jaw dropped and he straightened to attention.

  “Sorry, mistress!” he mumbled. “Shouldn’t have spoke, won’t happen again.”

  “Not you, Lires, the—”

  “Sister take you, Lires!” shouted Attaper as he came up the ladder. “You’ve got a face on your shield and it’s talking!”

  “Sharina, there’s no time to waste. You must—”

  The fortress of the Last burst outward with a deafening crash. Plates that no human agency could harm now split and buckled, breaking across rather than where seams joined the individual pentagons.

  A cloud of opalescent smoke was rising from the wreckage. Sharina blinked: it wasn’t smoke. It was the carapace of a crab bigger than she’d have dreamed possible.

  It wasn’t really a c
rab. Tentacles around its mouth writhed, and the single eye at the top of the headplate was larger than the pool from which she’d taken the First Stone.

  The creature squirmed toward the human camp. Each pincer was the size of a trireme. One of the small ballistas remaining on this end of the siege lines snapped out its bolt. If it hit, the impact was lost in the immensity of the target.

  “Sharina, you must—” cried Vorsan.

  Lires spun his shield off the parapet into no-man’s-land. “Guess not having that won’t make much difference now,” he said nonchalantly, drawing his sword. “And the talk was getting on my nerves.”

  “Sharina, on your life, come!” cried Vorsan from beneath the wall. The shield had landed with the mirrored boss upward. “I don’t want to live through eternity without you!”

  The creature came on. Sharina glanced at Rasile, who chanted in a four-pointed star and held out the First Stone. Wizardlight played about her, blue and then scarlet.

  I wonder if she’ll have time to finish the spell, Sharina thought.

  She looked at the Pewle knife. She still hadn’t wiped the blade, but it didn’t matter now. Lady, be with me. Lady, gather my soul to You when I leave this body.

  The creature lurched forward, far overtopping the parapet.

  Chapter

  16

  THE TELCHINES STOLE the sign that takes a user to the Fulcrum,” Tenoctris said, looking toward the slab of black stone which the water lapped. “They didn’t dare use it themselves, of course. They just wanted to have it.”

  “Leisin of Hardloom Farm was a miser,” said Cashel. It seemed a very long time ago that he’d lived in the borough and hadn’t seen any city bigger than the straggle of huts making up Barca’s Hamlet. “He didn’t exactly steal, but he’d short your wages if he thought he could.”

  He’d never understood Leisin, a wealthy farmer who didn’t eat any better than Cashel himself or even as well. They started with the same cheap fare—whey cheese, oats or barley, and root vegetables—but Leisin didn’t have Ilna to prepare and season it with wild greens. Still yet he’d cheat a twelve-year-old orphan who’d spent three summer days resetting a drystone wall that’d collapsed in a storm.