The Gods Return

by David Drake

“Are you afraid of me, ghoul?” Ilna said. Could the creature even understand speech? It was hard to believe that something so huge and misshapen had ever been human. Usun had been right on everything else he’d said, though.

  The ghoul raised its bull-like head and roared, setting the waterfall atremble. Ilna stood where she was. She’d have to retreat shortly, but not just yet.

  The ghoul stamped down the path toward his side of the bridge. Its steps were deliberate but as certain as the approach of dawn.

  She wondered if she could outrun the ghoul. Probably not, since its size would be an advantage in this waste of stone jackstraws. Besides, there was nowhere to run, save to the pocket where Gaur deposited its dead. She wouldn’t have a candle to drive the creature away a second time.

  Not that it mattered. Ilna wasn’t going to run.

  The ghoul started across the stone arch. It was walking upright, but it hunched forward slightly.

  Ilna began backing. She hadn’t thought about how she was going to retreat. If a vicious dog was advancing on her, turning her back would draw a charge. She didn’t know whether this ghoul would react like a dog, but it was certainly no less a beast.

  On the other hand, if Ilna slipped—or tripped over a mound of flow rock—and fell, the ghoul would also rush her. Unless it was laughing too hard. Or unless she simply went over the edge into the chasm, in which case it didn’t matter.

  The ghoul crossed the centerpoint of the bridge. It seemed even larger than it had when it was close enough to grab her with its long arm.

  She wondered if Usun would finish the creature if she was killed. She rather thought he would. The little man projected a sense of single-minded determination that Ilna found comforting.

  Ilna stepped into the loop she’d laid in the path, then out of it. She was very close to her side of the chasm.

  A stalactite grated over the rim of the gorge. White anger flared across Ilna’s mind. She was going to die in a moment or two, but that didn’t bother her.

  Too soon, you fool! You should have waited!

  Instead of uncasing her knife, Ilna knotted a pattern that would ease a troubled mind into sleep. Nothing she did would have any practical effect, so she did what gave her the most pleasure at the moment.

  The ghoul dropped onto all fours and sprang like terrier on a vole. It smashed down before her, stinking of a meal that had been rotten before it started to eat, and reached out.

  The weight of the stalactite Usun had levered into the gorge with his dagger snatched the rope taut. The loop closed with both the ghoul’s feet in it, yanking the creature with it. The bestial face was expressionless, but Ilna thought she saw fury glint in the great eyes.

  The ghoul grabbed at the arch as it went over. It was amazingly strong: the clawed forepaws actually plowed furrows in the rock as the stalactite dragged it to its doom.

  Ilna crossed her arms and leaned over the edge of the chasm. She couldn’t see the bottom. It seemed a very long time before she heard an echoing crunch, followed by a barely audible splash. She smiled in satisfaction.

  The little man walked up beside her. The dagger’s point was bent up at a sharp angle. He shook his head and tossed the weapon over the sheer cliff.

  “With all the gold chasing on the blade,” he said, “you’d think they’d have used better steel.”

  “I’m never surprised to find that people want something flashy rather than something useful,” said Ilna. “Though, given that the man who wore that dagger probably never used it for anything in his life, I suppose I shouldn’t fault his choice.”

  She cleared her throat. “Master Usun,” she said, “I thought you’d sprung the trap too soon. I apologize.”

  The little man chuckled. It was probably meant for a laugh, but because he was so small it sounded disquietingly like a titter.

  “He was tensing to pounce, mistress,” he said. “And there was a good deal of slack in the rope, which I had to allow for. I could have waited some seconds longer and still caught him, of course, but he would’ve started to eat you.”

  “Yes,” said Ilna. “That’s what I think also.”

  She looked about her. This was as bleak a landscape, so to speak, as she could remember seeing. Not even fungus grew here, and the rocks’ odd blue haze added to the feeling of death and ruin.

  “We’re no closer to getting out of here,” she said, “but disposing of that creature was worthwhile. Someone should have done it long since.”

  “Let’s see what we find in the ghoul’s lair, Ilna,” said Usun, starting across the bridge. His short legs moved so smoothly that he seemed to glide rather than walk. “He wasn’t always an animal, you know.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Ilna said, following him with less deliberate care than she’d needed to use when she was calling out the ghoul. Then she had a task to complete. Now, well . . . Despite Usun’s cheerfulness, it didn’t seem to matter whether she starved to death over a matter of weeks or plunged to her death in the gorge considerably sooner.

  The track up the rock face on the other side was surprisingly narrow, given that the ghoul had come down it with careless unconcern. Perhaps its claws had gotten purchase on the rock; there were gouges that could have come from that. They roughened the path for Ilna’s feet too, so in justice she should feel grateful to the beast. That’d be difficult, but if she lived long enough she might manage.

  The waterfall sprang far enough out from the cliff face that only its margin cut the path, splashing away in all directions. The cavern’s dead blue light didn’t wake a rainbow the way the sun in open air would’ve done.

  Usun paused just short of the spray. The water’s impact could sweep somebody his size into the chasm, however strong and skilled they were.

  “Here,” said Ilna. She tossed him one end of the silk rope she wore in place of a sash. The little man flashed her a grin, then stepped through the curtain without accident.

  Ilna followed, feeling the spray plaster her hair to her forehead and neck. It didn’t soak through her tightly woven tunics immediately, though it would before long.

  She expected the alcove behind the falls to be pitch dark. The cold, blue light was instead more intense than it had been in the main cavern. Its source seemed to be the convex circular lens which leaned against the sidewall. Shadows moved in its depths.

  “It’s a cyclop’s eye,” Usun said, looking at the crystal also. Even tilted, it was as tall as Ilna. “There are other things here as well, though I suppose a lot of them have moldered to dust.”

  He glanced deeper into the alcove. It wormed back deeper than Ilna could follow, narrowing visibly as it twisted away. The floor was deep in slime from which partial rib cages and skulls projected; there seemed to be other artifacts as well.

  “He was a great wizard, you know,” Usun said. He tittered. “He had to be great to destroy himself so thoroughly.”

  Ilna stepped over to the crystal. The squelching reminded her that she was walking in filth, but this wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t deep enough to drag the hem of her tunic, though that wouldn’t have stopped her either.

  The shadows looked almost . . . She bent closer.

  “No,” said Usun. “Stay at arm’s length, but look squarely into the center. That’s where it focuses.”

  Ilna straightened, then leaned back slightly. “That is Brincisa!” she said. “In her workroom. And there’s Ingens, but he’s not moving. Is he alive?”

  “Alive, yes,” the little man said; on him the slime rose to mid thigh. “But he won’t move until a wizard releases him.”

  He gestured proudly toward the crystal and said, “The Eye doesn’t only show images, you know. The ghoul used it as a portal in the days before he succeeded in making himself a deathless thing of death. I could do the same.”

  “You could walk through this crystal?” Ilna said. Her fingers paused in the pattern they were knotting.

  “We could walk through the Eye,” Usun said. “We could w
alk straight into Brincisa’s sanctum. The ghoul wasn’t the only wizard in this cavern, you see.”

  “Then,” said Ilna, “let us do that, if you please. I have business with Mistress Brincisa.”

  Chapter

  12

  USUN’S CHANT WAS a high-pitched warble, more like a chorus frog than anything human. Of course Ilna had only the little man’s own word for it that he was human.

  He continued to trill. Human or not, he didn’t look much like a chorus frog. The surface of the lens rippled like light falling on the dimples that a water-strider’s feet make in a pond’s surface.

  Ilna’s fingertips played lightly over the knots in the pattern she held doubled between her hands. She was ready to act as soon as there was something to do. Till then she’d wait.

  Usun hadn’t marked the cavern floor before commencing to chant. The slime wouldn’t hold lines, but he could’ve floated fabric or wood shavings on the surface if he’d thought he needed something.

  Ilna smiled wryly. Normally she’d occupy the time by making and picking out patterns, but she couldn’t do that now and still be prepared to face Brincisa. It served her right for using her fingers to control her nervousness.

  Instead of an athame or a wand, Usun spun a doubled length of sinew in time with his chant. It had been coiled around his waist, the way Ilna carried her lasso. She wondered how the little man had come to be trapped in the box with his lips sewn shut.

  If he really had been trapped, of course. Usun wasn’t a person to underestimate, though Ilna was confident that they were on the same side. As distressing as she found most of the world and her life, she didn’t recall ever having misjudged a person who she had to deal with. Mostly she judged people to be weak, treacherous, and stupid, of course, but Usun was an exception.

  The little man gave a muted screech and fell silent, though he continued to spin the loop of sinew. Shadows swelled across the crystal, blotting out first the background and then Brincisa herself in the center.

  “Now, Ilna,” Usun said. He was drawing in deep breaths. “It’s prepared. Step through the Eye.”

  It looks like a slab of polished stone. . . .

  Ilna strode into the crystal. Many handfuls of candles made Brincisa’s workroom a flood of light to eyes adapted to the blue dimness of the cave.

  Ilna raised her pattern. Brincisa threw her left arm in front of her face; her baggy lace sleeve distorted the knotted fabric that was meant to paralyze her.

  Something swished behind Ilna.

  Snap! / thunk!

  A pebble bounced from Brincisa’s scalp. She flung her arms wide and toppled backward. The stone that’d felled her ricocheted off the far wall, breaking a divot from the fresco. It left a spot of blood against the sudden whiteness.

  Ilna tucked the pattern into her sleeve and bent over Brincisa, jerking off her belt of braided leather. The strands were dyed black and each had a separate golden nib; despite the ornamentation, it seemed sturdy enough. Ilna flopped the wizard on her belly and tied her wrists securely behind her back with the belt.

  Usun hopped onto a table with a top of polished cedar, carried on three bronze legs cast into the form of elongated demons. “My, look at the artifacts of power,” he said, surveying the room. “She and Hutton had ages to gather them, of course. Though there’s nothing—”

  He tittered as he wrapped the sinew he’d used as a sling around his waist again. It didn’t have a pocket, so he must balance each missile on the heart of the loop.

  “—nearly as wonderful as I myself am. Which is why Brincisa sent you to fetch me, you see.”

  Ilna grimaced at the boasting, though it might well be true. Certainly she would’ve had a more difficult—and probably fatal—time in the cave if it weren’t for the little man’s help and guidance.

  Ingens stood between an upright mummy case and a black stone carved to look like a leering human with breasts and a prominent male member. It had once been a pillar, but it wasn’t supporting anything here.

  Ilna’s lip curled in disgust as she walked over to Ingens. His eyes were open but lifeless, and his cheek felt cold to her fingertips.

  Usun hopped down from the table. He grabbed Brincisa’s big toe through her openwork sandals and twisted hard. She yelped in surprise and jerked her foot away. By throwing her torso forward, she managed to sit upright and curl her feet under her.

  The little man put his hands on his hips. His posturing should’ve looked silly, but Ilna got the impression of a much larger figure standing in Usun’s place.

  “You thought you’d use me like you do that statue of Thrasaidon, did you, Mistress Brincisa?” he said, nodding to the black pillar. “Because Hutton used me, you thought you could?”

  He laughed like an angry wren. “Hutton would’ve made a mistake one day too, you know,” he said. “He’s meat in the belly of a dead ghoul now, but he’s better off than he would’ve been if it’d been me who repaid him. And you thought to use Mistress Ilna as well!”

  “What do you want from me?” Brincisa asked. Ilna couldn’t hear any emotion in the words—not even resignation. It was like hearing the statue speak.

  “I’d as lief have put that stone through your head, you know,” the little man said. “If I’d had a proper lead bullet, that’s what I’d have done. You’re lucky it was only a pebble from a stream.”

  “What do you want?” Brincisa repeated in the same calm, empty voice.

  “Release Ingens,” Ilna said. She was reducing the pattern to lengths of yarn, now that she had leisure to do so. “You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Brincisa, glancing toward Usun. “But you’ll have to untie my hands. I won’t make trouble for you.”

  “No,” said Ilna, squatting behind the other woman. Her fingers pulled and twisted, a deceptively simple movement which loosed the knot that a strong man couldn’t have broken. “You certainly won’t.”

  Brincisa stood up carefully, then touched fingertips to her head. Her hair was matted with blood, but it’d begun to clot into a mass that was probably as good as a lint bandage.

  Either the wizard agreed with Ilna’s dismissive judgment on the injury or she rightly assumed that her wishes didn’t matter, because she turned to Ingens without commenting about her head. She touched the secretary’s forehead with the fingers which had explored her scalp and said, “Cmouch arou rou!”

  Ingens cried, “Wah!” and threw up his hands to ward off something that only existed in his memory. Brincisa folded her arms and turned to Ilna.

  “Are you all right, Master Ingens?” Ilna said. He certainly looked all right.

  Ingens patted his cheeks in wonder. The wizard’s touch had left two dabs of blood on his forehead.

  “How did I get back here?” he said. “I was—weren’t we on top of the mountain? Or did I dream that?”

  “Mistress Ilna,” Brincisa said calmly. “I told you I would send you and your companion here—”

  She nodded toward Ingens with a look of distaste.

  “—to the place where the man you’re seeking disappeared. Let me do that now.”

  “I don’t trust you, mistress,” Ilna said. She stared at Brincisa. The wizard’s lips tightened but she didn’t flinch. “I didn’t trust you even before you betrayed me.”

  “All I want now,” Brincisa said, “is to send you on your way. I’ll help you go anywhere you wish, just to have you away from here. I’ll save you weeks in your search for Master Hervir.”

  “There’s a way,” Usun said. He twirled the coil of fine hair that had bound the box to Hutton’s torso.

  They looked at him. “Now, I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs,” the little man said. “I’ve spent a long time in that casket, a very long time. Cutting Brincisa’s throat and hiking north to this village would be fine with me. But—”

  He caught the coil and held it up. The candles waked not only gold but rainbows from the heart of each strand.

  “—if you tie one end o
f this around Brincisa’s neck and hold the other, then you’ll be able to pull her into the place she’s sent us. And if that’s a bad place, so much the worse for her.”

  Ingens frowned. “Can’t she just untie it herself?” he said.

  Ilna gave him a cold glance. “No,” she said. “Not if I’ve tied it.”

  Brincisa shrugged; her face was still as wax. “I’m in your power,” she said. “If getting free of you means wearing a hair of the Lady around my neck for the rest of my life, then I’ll do that.”

  A flash of fiercer emotion transformed her face, but only for an instant. “I’m not trying to bargain,” she said. “I know I have nothing to bargain with. I’ll help you in any way you wish. To keep you from killing me, which would gain you nothing.”

  “Nothing?” said Usun. He cocked a tiny eyebrow. “Well, there’d be satisfaction in killing you, mistress.”

  “I don’t take any particular satisfaction in killing things,” Ilna said, making up her mind as she spoke. “Give me the line, Master Usun.”

  The little man tossed her the coil. “No satisfaction?” he said. “Perhaps. But you’ve never hesitated to kill when you needed to, have you?”

  Brincisa lifted her chin for Ilna to loop the shining filament around her neck. Ilna’s fingers danced in a pattern that dazzled her even as she created it.

  “I’ve never hesitated to do anything that I needed to,” she said quietly. “Anything at all.”

  SHARINA SHOT UPRIGHT in bed. She’d been sleeping dreamlessly, as she had every night since Burne took up his patrolling, but these screams—

  Another scream ripped the heart out of the night. It reminded her of the day a rabbit had leapt onto a sharp stake and spitted itself in the kitchen garden of the inn, but this was much louder.

  —would wake the dead.

  She drew the Pewle knife and started for the door. She didn’t bother to put on slippers—in Barca’s Hamlet she’d gone barefoot every year till the ground froze—nor with any garment beyond her sleeping tunic. It was modest enough in cut, and propriety didn’t count for much when someone was being disemboweled nearby.