by David Drake
He gestured. The ridge snapped and shuddered. Dust blew out of the crack in the rock; then the jambs of the entrance smashed together. The whole trembled again as it settled into silence.
“What about the Messengers?” Ilna said.
Temple shrugged. “They remain,” he said. “They’ll remain for all eternity. But though I’m sure men will find a way to reach their vault again, I don’t think that will happen soon.”
“Ah, Temple?” said Asion. “What do we do now?”
“I thought that for the time being you might want to stay with Ilna,” Temple said with a smile. “And Ilna? I thought you might want to go home. Return to the friends you left after the Change.”
Ilna looked at him without expression. The kit mewled and tried to nuzzle her breast. That wasn’t going to do any good, but there’d be a milch goat or even a wet nurse in Valles or wherever Garric was.
“Yes,” Ilna said. “I’d like that.”
Smiling like the statue of a God, Temple raised his arms toward the sun.
“ALL RIGHT, HERE you go,” Cashel said, standing beside the black slab. He lifted Tenoctris with his left palm; his right hand, clenched on the quarterstaff, gave her shoulder something to lean back on. “I can’t put you up on your feet, though.”
Saying that reminded him of the way he’d tossed her onto the corniche. He felt embarrassed all over again, though at the time, well…as she’d said herself, he didn’t see there being any choice.
“I can stand, thank you,” Tenoctris said. She swung lithely upright and walked to the center of the block, her wooden soles clacking.
Running his fingers over the Fulcrum made Cashel wonder what it really was. He’d thought rock when he saw it from the shore, but it had the chill of metal to the touch. It was as smooth as the blade of an axe, and even the color was wrong. He didn’t have Ilna’s eye for that sort of thing, but he could see the black was too pure to be natural.
Well, that was a question for some other time. Cashel thrust the staff into the sea and wriggled it, making sure it was butted firmly in the bottom. With the hickory for a brace, he took a tall step onto the slab himself. Though he wasn’t going to slip, he’d still rather’ve been back in the cold salt water than walking on this slick surface.
“What would you like me to do, Tenoctris?” he asked.
She’d been looking over the slab carefully, the way Cashel’d check the grain of wood before shaping it into something. Whatever it was made of, it was not only polished but perfectly round.
“I won’t need to scribe a figure after all,” Tenoctris said. “If I could, even with this—” she waggled the sword “—which I’m rather inclined to doubt, now that I’m here.”
Tenoctris drew back her arm and flung the sword into the sea. “There,” she said. “I’ve never liked to use athames. There’s an implied threat in them, though they’re effective in their way. Do you understand what I mean, Cashel?”
“I think so, ma’am,” he said. “But it makes no matter. There’s a lot of things I don’t understand, but it all works out anyway.”
She gave him a cold smile. “Simply remain close, then,” she said. “That helps more than you may realize. And one more thing?”
“Ma’am?”
“I gave you my locket to hold,” Tenoctris said. She held out her right hand. “I need it back now. I must be whole to accomplish this task.”
“Oh,” said Cashel. “Right, it’ll take me a moment.”
He leaned the quarterstaff into the crook of his elbow so he had both hands to work with. The iron cap was likely to skid on the slab, so he held it between the toes of his right foot.
“Are you just going to give me the locket?” Tenoctris said, her voice sharp and rising.
“Yes, ma’am,” Cashel said, concentrating on what he was doing. He had to be careful or he’d pull the thin chain in half. “Here you go.”
He held out the locket and chain in the palm of his hand instead of dropping it into hers. That’d let her use both hands to put it on without snagging her hair.
“Cashel, I have a demon inside me!” Tenoctris said. “Didn’t you wonder where my new power came from? With this locket in my possession, there’ll be nothing and no one who can control me!”
“But you’ll control yourself,” Cashel said. He felt silly holding the locket and her not taking it. She’d even lowered her hand so he couldn’t just drop it in her palm after all.
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Tenoctris,” he said, “I saw the demon. He didn’t want to try conclusions with me, and I don’t guess he got very far with you either. At any rate, you’re still Tenoctris. So here’s your locket back, if you need it.”
Tenoctris took the locket. “You were a very good shepherd, weren’t you, Cashel?” she said.
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “And I hope I still am.”
He took the wool out and wiped his staff, especially the part he’d stuck into the salt water. He hoped he’d be using it for many years to come; and if he wasn’t, well, at least at the end he wouldn’t have to be ashamed that he hadn’t taken care of his tools.
Tenoctris starting chanting words of power. A disk of wizardlight flickered between her upraised arms and began to extend into a tube.
Cashel put away his wool and watched his friend. He just stood where he was, smiling faintly with his feet braced. To anyone looking at him, he was as solid as the Fulcrum of Worlds itself.
“ALL RIGHT,” LORD Attaper said. He sounded irritated and a little bored, but certainly not frightened of the behemoth crawling toward them. “Captain Ascor, get Her Highness out of here fast. Get her back to Valles, I think. I’m afraid you’ll have to improvise on logistics.”
“No,” said Sharina. She nodded to the Corl wizard. “I need to stay with Rasile.”
The ground shook as the creature lurched toward the siege lines. Four paddle-like legs drove it, so it as much swam as walked. It’s certainly not a crab, the back of Sharina’s mind noted. Her mouth smiled at the way people think about trivia when they have only moments to live.
“Ascor, I said—” Attaper roared, blasting his anger out at his subordinate because he couldn’t, even now, shout at the Princess Sharina.
Sharina stepped between the men, facing the guard commander at inches distance. She was tall for a woman, tall enough to meet his eyes or nearly so.
“Attaper,” she snapped, “the world will live or die because of what that wizard—”
She pointed toward Rasile without turning her head.
“—is able to do right now. If she needs help with her art—with her wizardry, Attaper—are you going to understand what she’s asking for?”
Attaper edged backward. His expression had gone from furious to neutral; when his eyes flicked to follow Sharina’s gesture, he frowned in concern. A few of the Blood Eagles were comfortable around wizardry, but their commander wasn’t among them.
“Right,” said Sharina, turning away. “You do your job, milord, and leave me to mine.”
And the crab would do its job or anyway take its pleasure, and then Sharina wouldn’t have to worry about the problems of ruling the kingdom or much of anything else. She stood with one hand on the wicker battlement, facing Rasile. If the wizard did unexpectedly request something, Sharina’d be ready to supply it.
Rasile held the First Stone out at arm’s length as she wailed her chant. A faint azure circle began to sparkle in front of her. Sharina had the feeling of depth and distance, but the incantation was obviously far from complete.
Removing the talisman had freed the creature. She wondered if it was following the stone. There was no one to ask save Rasile, who’d shortly be as much beyond answering as Sharina herself would be beyond asking the question.
The monster hunched thunderously closer. It could’ve ripped the siege works apart with its pincers; that it didn’t was likely out of contempt for them as a barrier. Sharina glanced up at it coldly, showing the soldiers n
earby that she wasn’t afraid to face the thing.
She was afraid. It was like looking at an avalanche sweeping everything before it. But she was Princess Sharina of Haft, standing with men who’d repeatedly put their lives on the line, literally, for the kingdom they served. She served it also.
“Sharina, I can still save you!” cried the face from the gleaming shield on the ground.
Sharina looked down and said, “Vorsan, if you deserved the title ‘Prince,’ you’d have saved your own world or died with it!” Like Attaper, she was venting her anger and fear on someone it was safe to attack. “Now, leave me to my duties!”
Rasile stood at one end of a tube that spanned more than merely space. At the unimaginably distant other end hulked a gigantic figure, shadowy but sharpening as the wizard chanted. The blue wizardlight joining the termini sparkled brighter with each syllable.
“I can’t live if you die,” Vorsan said, but Sharina wasn’t looking at him anymore. It looked as though the rock of Pandah itself were crawling toward them. The monster’s single glittering eye swept the world from horizon to horizon. It was too high to hit with even a catapult stone.
Attaper shouted, “Loose!” The volley of javelins his troops arced out was as harmless as a spray of rain. For the most part, the missiles glanced off the thick headshield; the few which stuck wobbled like whiskers on a giant’s chin.
Each time Sharina looked from the monster to Rasile or the reverse, she felt disoriented. The tube which the wizard held didn’t lead in any direction of the world where Sharina stood in the shadow of a creature bigger than anything alive could become.
The figure holding the other end of the tube was equally out of scale with present reality. It grew clearer as the wizardlight brightened. It was human, was a woman—
By the Lady, that’s Tenoctris since she made herself young!
The monster’s paddle legs tensed, preparing to lift the massive body onto the siege works and beyond. Nearby, soldiers held their swords ready; they’d thrown their javelins.
A small ballista cracked; its crew had reloaded it in time to snap out a final bolt, which drove to its wooden fletching in the headshield. That was a testament to courage and professionalism in the face of certain disaster.
“I’ll save you, Sharina,” Vorsan called from the fringes of Sharina’s consciousness. Then—
Everything turned amber, as though she were viewing the world through a sheet of thin tortoiseshell. The crab thing shrank—
But it didn’t. The shield Lires had thrown off the parapet was the size of the sky. An iris opened in its face. The monster flowed into it the way salt vanishes into water.
Soldiers were shouting in amazement and fear, though they’d been stolid in the face of oncoming death. The monster was gone. Remaining was the broad track its advance had carved from where the fortress of the Last had been.
Sharina looked down. The shield lay as it’d fallen, gleaming in the bright sunlight.
“Maybe he’s…,” she whispered, but she didn’t finish the foolish comment. The antediluvian prince wasn’t all right, couldn’t possibly be all right. Even now she couldn’t pretend she liked Vorsan, but he’d given her reason to respect him.
“Lady, take unto You the soul of Vorsan, who sacrificed himself for others. Nonnus, be a brother to one who died for me as you died for me.”
Rasile’s long muzzle worked as she shouted the final words of her incantation, but a hush had fallen over the scene. Neither the wizard nor the troops could break it.
The tube of light became a pulsing sapphire bar, so intense it was almost opaque. Rasile thrust the First Stone into it, while the colossal figure of Tenoctris reached from the other end. Their hands met at the midpoint.
There was a thunderclap. The tube vanished. The Corl wizard staggered forward and would’ve fallen if Sharina hadn’t caught her.
It was midday on the plain outside Pandah, from whose walls men and Coerli stared down in wonder. Nothing remained of the Last who’d been attacking the city, save body parts at the edge of the pit from which the crab thing had emerged.
On the surrounding horizon, scarlet wizardlight trembled.
TENOCTRIS STOOD LIKE a statue, her upraised arms touching a tube of wizardlight as dark as the depths of the sea. Instead of the sparkles and flashes Cashel expected from wizardry, this blaze was dense, almost solid.
Part of him thought he ought to look outward in case something crept up on them, but there hadn’t been anything that way since the crabs scrambled back into the water. Even if they returned, they couldn’t climb up the slab’s slick wall.
Cashel watched Tenoctris instead. What she was doing was dangerous and no mistake. He didn’t pretend he’d be able to help much if things went wrong, but he’d try.
“Astraelelos!” Tenoctris shouted. “Chraeleos!”
At each syllable, the little wave tops flattened in a circle expanding away from the Fulcrum. Tenoctris hadn’t grown but she seemed larger; like a mountain, even.
An ancient Corl female stood like a mirror image of Tenoctris at the other end of the tube. She was chanting too, but in her right hand was a ball of crystal with red pulsing fire at its heart.
Tenoctris shouted again, but there was only silence in Cashel’s world. The cat woman held the crystal and Tenoctris reached to take it. Their hands met.
Red, roaring wizardlight absorbed the world and expanded. Cashel stood with Tenoctris. Together they looked into the heart of the cosmos.
The wizard’s face was calm as a God’s. With her left hand cupping the blazing crystal, she pointed her right toward a star. Its white light turned scarlet and swelled from a speck to a shimmering ball.
For a moment the Last continued to crawl across the world on which Cashel had lived. He saw everything. Lines of fierce black figures marched from the icy crater where they’d arrived in the Land.
The light of the red star fell on them and they burned, igniting forests and plains. Those who’d been crossing deserts melted sand into glass as they dissolved. The lens of ice where the Last stood shoulder-to-shoulder exploded in steam as violent as a new eruption from the volcano’s cold heart.
Tenoctris lowered her hand. The red star burst, then vanished like smoke in a gale.
She turned and looked at Cashel, smiling faintly. She held the crystal out in her left hand. Is she asking me to take it?
“No, Tenoctris,” he said, but he couldn’t hear the words even in his own head.
Still smiling, Tenoctris pointed her right index finger toward the crystal. It twisted, shrank, and was gone.
The scarlet light disappeared with the crystal. Tenoctris fell forward. Cashel caught her and lowered her carefully. Rather than lay her head on the polished black slab, he sat also and pillowed it against his left thigh. A gull high overhead called.
There was a breeze from the west. Cashel wondered if it’d been there all the time but he hadn’t noticed it before. There’d been a lot going on.
“I couldn’t trust myself with the First Stone,” Tenoctris whispered. She opened her eyes, but just a little bit. “I couldn’t trust anybody but you, Cashel. And you didn’t want it.”
She must mean the crystal. “Well, I don’t need it, Tenoctris,” he said. “Are you comfortable here? I could take you ashore.”
Tenoctris laughed. “No, I suppose you don’t,” she said. “And after I rest a little while, I’ll take us back home. Back to Sharina.”
Cashel beamed. “That’ll be nice,” he said.
The gull called again. Funny. Even the bird’s cry sounded cheerful to Cashel just now.
Epilogue
THE PRIEST NIVERS rose from a couch of green velvet so old that the pile was worn to the ground in many patches. “They’re returning!” he shouted in a cracked voice.
“If you’re planning to invite somebody to dinner, Nivers,” said Salmson, “then they’d better like turnips. The rats got at the last of the ham, but it was going bad anyway.”
&
nbsp; Salmson was officially an under-priest of Franca, the Sky God; in fact he was Nivers’ steward. He’d entered with a carafe of watered wine when he heard Nivers awakening from his prophetic trance. Those two and an old cook who mumbled to herself in the dialect of the hinterlands were the only residents of the priestly mansion attached to the Temple of Franca.
“No, you fool!” Nivers cried. “Franca and His Siblings are returning! There’ll be blood running on the altars for Them to drink, and the finest delicacies for me!”
He stumbled on the sash of his robe; it’d become untied while he sent his soul in quest of a future better than this ruined present. He went through the ritual at every new moon, but never till now had his dreams reached a destination.
“Come!” Nivers said, hiking up his garments. “Help me find my sandals. The good ones, mind! I have to see the emperor. Palomir will be great again!”
“And pigs will fly,” Salmson muttered, but he set the carafe on a stone-topped table and followed his master down the corridor to the suite they lived in. This hadn’t been one of Nivers’ ordinary dreams fueled by sniffs of lotus pollen. Those fantasies didn’t last as long as it took the priest to get up from his couch.
Arched windows here on the third story looked out on the city of Palomir, set like a jewel against the dark mass of surrounding jungle. Light glittered from thousands of spires and peaks. Because the sun was so near the horizon, shadows and refractions concealed much of the ruin of the glass towers.
But just perhaps…, thought Salmson. A rat ran down the corridor ahead of him.
GARRIC STEPPED FROM a sunlit mountaintop into the shade of the tarpaulin covering the regent, Princess Sharina, and her council. The camp was behind very impressive field fortifications, but he didn’t have the faintest idea where it was.
“That’s Pandah, but it was an island in my day,” said Carus, whose eye for terrain was unmatched in Garric’s experience. The ghost’s image frowned. “In yours too.”
“Prince Garric, you’ve returned!” Lord Tadai said enthusiastically. He was seated across the council table, two doors resting on trestles and covered with baize, so he saw Garric appear.
