The Gods Return

by David Drake

  “Do you mean that Gorand took her?” said Rasile. She’d set her basket on the ground, but she still held the yarrow stalks.

  “Keep away from me, cat!” the sprite said, darting between Cashel’s feet. “Don’t let her hurt me, big man!”

  “Rasile isn’t going to hurt you,” said Cashel, wondering if that was true. Well, it shouldn’t be necessary. “But ma’am, you need to tell us where Liane is.”

  “Milady isn’t Gorand,” the sprite said scornfully. She moved out from cover warily, but she still kept to his other side from the Corl. “She’s here, and Gorand just rules. Gorand wouldn’t care about the skinny girl!”

  Rasile bent close to the ground and wrinkled her nose. Cashel misunderstood for a moment, then realized that the Corl was catching a scent.

  “The apes were here recently,” she said, rising. “I should have noticed that before. While I was busy with the elementals.”

  “Of course Milady’s servants were here,” the sprite sneered, bending forward to watch the cat woman while keeping Cashel’s body between them. “I told you that. They took her to Milady in the castle, and you’ll never get her away again.”

  “Where is the—” Cashel started to ask. He looked up, following the line of the sprite’s eyes. A tower and a crumbling wall stood against the sky.

  The ruin can’t have been as much as a bowshot away. Maybe it was the angle so that Cashel now saw through a notch between the tops of the funny trees; but maybe it really hadn’t been there before.

  “Why don’t you come with me, handsome?” the sprite said. “Just for a little while, if you like.”

  Figures moved on top of the tower. Two were hulking apes. Between them—

  Haze shrouding the moon drifted away. The apes were holding Liane.

  “Cashel!” she called.

  He was already striding toward the ruin, his quarterstaff slanted across his body. Rasile was beside him.

  LEAVES BRUSHED SHARINA’S cheek. She sat upright and flailed mentally for an instant, trying to remember where she was.

  She’d been sleeping on the bench in the roof arbor, a soldier’s cloak rolled under her head for a pillow. It was near dawn; the eastern stars had faded, though the sun was still below the horizon. The grape leaf had tickled her because—

  “Hey, what’s that!” a Blood Eagle said.

  “Belt up, bonehead!” said Trooper Lires. “That’s the princess’s pet rat, don’t you see?”

  Burne, squatting on a wrist-thick vine on the back of trellis, lowered the scorpion he’d just trimmed to harmlessness. “I prefer to think of myself as her colleague,” he said, then finished his meal with two more clicking bites. He disposed of the remains over the porch railing.

  “Was it about to sting me?” Sharina said. She kept her voice calm, but that was an effort of will. She recalled the chitinous mass writhing on Platt.

  Burne squirmed onto her side of the trellis. Sharina’s slender hand wouldn’t have fit through the diamond-shaped openings, but the rat had no difficulty.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “He was listening, spying. They all were. There were three of them when I came back, so I disposed of them before I told you what I’d learned.”

  The guards were watching in all directions, including the pair at opposite ends of the trellis. They hadn’t noticed the—three, apparently—scorpions creeping along the brickwork, but Sharina didn’t imagine any human being would have. Except for the Blood Eagles, no one else was present.

  Sharina had taken off the Pewle knife when she stretched out to sleep. Now she stood and wrapped the belt around her waist again. She still wore her sleeping tunic as an undergarment, but Diora had brought up a pair of sandals and an outer tunic.

  “Tell me,” she said quietly.

  “The cult’s headquarters is the Temple of the Lady of the Grove,” Burne said. He sounded quite pleased with himself. “Clever, weren’t they? All the priests used to worship the Shepherd, but the leaders are in the oldest temple of the Lady here in Pandah.”

  “Oh, they’re clever,” Sharina said grimly. She fitted the tongue of the sealskin belt through its loop. “But thanks to you, Master Burne, not clever enough.”

  “If you send troops quickly, you may catch them inside,” the rat said. “But every scorpion is a spy, and they share each others’ minds.”

  “I’m not sending anybody,” Sharina said. “Captain Ascor, a company of Ornifal infantry was with us on last night’s raid. Where are they billeted?”

  “Right here in the palace, Your Highness,” Ascor said. “What with the riots, Lord Tadai thought there ought to be more than just the usual guards on duty here. I think, ah . . . it might’ve been the regiment’s camp marshals who suggested that to him.”

  “Yes,” said Sharina. “I rather think it may have been also. Well, Captain, let’s go find Prester and Pont. They already know the route.”

  Prester and Pont often said that they’d become old soldiers by not taking chances, but they weren’t men who’d hide if it looked like there was a prospect of action. The fact they’d chosen to be on duty here meant either that they’d thought somebody was likely to attack the palace, or that they’d expected something like what was happening. They’d seen the princess Sharina use her big knife, and they probably figured that she’d use it again given half a chance.

  They were right about that.

  Three aides stood at attention outside the first landing. The sound of voices on the roof had brought them to alertness, but the courier hadn’t buckled the lid of his sabertache; a dice cup poked out of it.

  To him Sharina called as she went past, “Tell Lord Tadai I’m going out with the ready company!”

  That was as much information as she was willing to give openly. She doubted it would be of much value to Tadai, but at least she would have something to point to when the city prefect complained bitterly that she’d disappeared without warning. The notion that a princess could do anything she pleased was only true for epic characters who didn’t live in a real human society.

  “No, left!” Lires shouted from the back of the guard detachment as the leading squad turned right at the ground floor hallway. “They’re in the west garden!”

  The little entourage changed direction with a degree of stamping and confusion. Sharina herself was in the lead for a moment before Ascor ran to the front, snarling a litany of curses.

  Burne rode on Sharina’s left shoulder with a tumbler’s grace; he laughed, but she thought as much from excitement as for the humor of it. This was exhilarating, especially coming after the formless threat of riots.

  The loud scramble provided a useful warning to the Ornifal company. “Stand to!” bellowed a voice through the shuttered windows lining the hallway. Sharina was sure it was Pont speaking.

  The door at the end of the hall slammed open before the leading guard reached it. Prester looked down the hallway with a lantern held high, then stepped back out of the way.

  “It’s the princess, boys!” he shouted to his men. “By the Lady, if you’re not on your toes, you better hope you’re killed! I’ll ride you harder than the Sister will if you screw up now!”

  The troops were shouldering their shields, donning their helmets, and falling into ranks. They were already wearing body armor; they’d been ready to react at a moment’s notice, which was just what was happening now. . . .

  “Marshal Prester,” Sharina said. The squat veteran carried a good deal of fat, but he carried it over more muscle than most men could claim. “We’re heading for the graveyard where we caught the priest last evening. We’ll be following the same route as we did then.”

  “Things being as they are tonight, Princess . . . ,” Prester said. He gave Burne, still perched on her shoulder, a funny look but didn’t say anything about him. “We’d likely get there faster going widdershins along the new Boundary Road.”

  “We’re going straight through town,” said Sharina, not raising her voice but holding the veteran with her
eyes.

  “Right you are, Princess,” said Prester. He turned to the company, some sixty men drawn up in four ranks.

  “Your Highness, I don’t think you understand,” said an eighteen-year-old ensign. He was a hereditary nobleman who reasonably expected in five or six years to command a regiment. “There’ve been widespread riots tonight, and the route through the city center may be—”

  Pont lifted the ensign’s helmet off. The boy jerked his head around and shrieked, “What are you playing at, you fool?”

  Prester slapped the back of the ensign’s skull with fingers hard enough to drive tent stakes. The boy yelped and staggered forward.

  Pont caught him and said, “Listen, you puppy! The next time you want to talk to the princess, you wait till she asks you!”

  He dropped the helmet back on the ensign’s head. Prester turned him around and bellowed in turn, “And then you ask us, so we can tell you if she really wants you do open your mouth—which I doubt she does.”

  “Face left . . . ,” Pont said, rattling the palace windows. “Face!”

  The company crashed around to the left. “Forward . . . march!”

  Sharina had seen troops in motion many times now. It thrilled and amazed her every time. She always compared them in her mind to a herd of sheep, since nothing in her life while growing up involved so many human beings doing any single thing.

  Sheep were never so organized. Not even bees or ants were organized, compared to what soldiers did daily by rote.

  “Double time, march!”

  Hobnails sparking, spears rocking back and forth at a slant, the troops jogged along the stone street toward the center of the city. The ensign, his helmet straightened again, was at the head of the company, but the two marshals were with Sharina and her section of Blood Eagles in the rear.

  She made a platform of her left arm and said, “Burne, hop down.”

  “I can see better up here,” the rat said.

  “Yes, but I can’t!” Sharina said. She was blind on her left side with the rat perched where he was. Grumbling, Burne dropped onto her arm.

  Sharina moved up between the veterans. “Marshals?” she said, hoping she was speaking just loud enough to be heard over the clash of hobnails. “You remember the Temple of the Lady of the Grove that we’ll pass in six blocks?”

  “The big one where the two-copper girls hang out after dark, that one?” Prester said.

  “I don’t know about the girls—” Sharina said, smiling.

  “Of course she don’t!” Pont growled. “Prester, don’t you have nothing but bone between your ears?”

  “But the big temple, yes,” Sharina resumed, trying to take charge of the discussion again. “We’re really going to raid it instead of going back to the graveyard, but I don’t want them to have any warning. It’s important that none of the people inside get away.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Pont said. “You want prisoners?”

  “Some, if you can,” Sharina said. The rhythm of her feet punctuated her muttered words.

  “Guess we can manage some,” Prester said cheerfully.

  “Prester?” Sharina said. She scowled at the thought. “Pont? I don’t know what we’re going to find in the temple.”

  Pont chuckled. “Princess, we’re soldiers,” he said. “We never know what we’re going to find. Except that there’s bloody few good surprises in this life.”

  “I guess . . . ,” said the other veteran. He and his friend both carried javelins tonight in place of their batons of office. He eyed his point and went on, “That it’s not going to be a good surprise for the folks in the temple neither.”

  Chapter

  14

  ILNA WAITED WITH her palms closed before her, holding a neatly folded pattern between them. She hadn’t woven the yarn for Princess Perrine’s arrival: her fingers had woven it because she had time and the situation might become unpleasant.

  Ilna found most situations more or less unpleasant. The only time she was regularly content was when she stood at her loom with no concerns but the work before her. Even before her trip to the Underworld she’d been able to create wonderful pieces, pieces that she could look on with pride.

  But instead of doing that, she was in a grove on northern Blaise, looking for a man she’d never met to help a man she didn’t particularly like. Well, be fair: she didn’t particularly like most people, men or women both. And though this was uncomfortable, she was usually uncomfortable. Ilna os-Kenset liked to make things work. She was so skilled a weaver that even a complex fabric didn’t really stretch her talents. Making people fit together properly was much more of a challenge—

  She gave Ingens a cold smile that made him stiffen.—and one where she was by no means sure of her success.

  A pair of apes wearing peaked caps and red vests walked through the dogwoods on their hind legs, lifting the lower branches out of the way for those following. Even upright they were shorter than a man—shorter than her, as a matter of fact—but their shoulders were broad. Ilna knew from experience that the apes’ muscles were more like wire ropes than they were to the flesh of humans.

  The apes looked as dull as field hands in the middle of the harvest. Not harmless, exactly: in Barca’s Hamlet there’d been brutal fights in the evenings every fall, some of them ending in cracked skulls or fatal stabbings by the knives all peasants carried. Well, the apes weren’t drunk at the moment.

  A youth and girl of twenty or so—they looked younger, but Ilna suspected their delicate features were fooling her—followed the leading apes. There were as alike as twins. Another pair of apes shambled behind them on all fours.

  “That’s the princess Perrine,” Ingens whispered hoarsely. “I don’t know who the man is.”

  “I’m Ilna os-Kenset,” Ilna said. “I’m here to return Master Hervir or-Halgran to his family in Pandah. Will you bring him to me, please.”

  No one listening to her tone of voice could’ve mistaken the final sentence for a question.

  “Mistress Ilna!” said the youth in apparent delight. The leading apes stopped and dropped forward onto the knuckles of their hands; he strode past them with his arms out and his hands spread. “I’m Prince Perrin and this is my sister Perrine. We’re so glad to meet you!”

  “And Master Ingens,” said the girl, mincing toward the secretary with quick little steps. She too extended her hands, but her arms weren’t spread so wide. “I was so afraid I’d never see you again. Oh, it’s wonderful that you’ve returned, Ingens.”

  Brother and sister wore matching shirts with puffed sleeves, red vests like the apes’ outfits, and baggy pantaloons. Their scarlet slippers had up-curling toes; there were little silver bells on Perrine’s, the only difference in their garb.

  “Master Perrin!” Ilna said, raising her hands slightly; she didn’t open them yet. “Please don’t come closer!”

  The youth halted as abruptly as if she’d pointed a pitchfork at his eyes. Either her tone had drawn him up, or more likely he at least suspected what the pattern between her palms would do to him if she displayed it.

  “Please, mistress,” the girl said, dropping onto one knee and tenting her hands toward Ilna before rising again. “We didn’t mean to offend you. We were just delighted to have visitors so pleasant as yourself and Master Ingens.”

  “Princess, we’re here to find Hervir,” Ingens said. “He didn’t return after he went off with you.”

  “Why, of course he returned,” Perrin said in apparent surprise. “We offered him refreshment and showed him the crocus fields, but he went back to the waking world by mid afternoon.”

  “He was supposed to visit us again before nightfall,” said Perrine. “To have dinner with us and our father.”

  “And to close the deal,” said the prince. “He said he’d bring the money when he came back.”

  “Though . . . ,” said Perrine, turning her face away but looking sidelong at the secretary. “I shouldn’t say this, but . . . I was hoping th
at he might send you instead, Master Ingens. There was something about you that, well . . . I’m embarrassed to say what I thought. What I’m thinking.”

  “Hervir didn’t come back,” Ilna said. “Fetch him to us now.”

  Part of her mind wondered what she’d do if the couple simply walked through the brush the way they’d come and vanished; she very much doubted that their plantation was on the other side of a band of dogwoods and aspens. But the fact they’d come in the first place showed that they wanted something from her and Ingens.

  “But mistress,” Perrin said, his face scrunched with worry. “We can’t ‘fetch,’ as you say, someone who’s already left us.”

  “Brother?” said Perrine, looking even more concerned. “You don’t suppose . . . ?”

  She looked from Ilna to Ingens and turned her palms up. “We offered to escort him to the waking world, Perrin and I,” she said earnestly. “There are . . . well . . .”

  “There can be dangers between the planes of the universes,” said Perrin, “but not often. Still, we offered to guide Master Hervir.”

  “Hervir wouldn’t hear of it,” said Perrine. “Why, you know how headstrong he was, Master Ingens. He slapped his sword and said he didn’t need a nursemaid.”

  “I think he was showing off for my sister,” Perrin said sadly. “Master Ingens, I don’t want to say anything against a friend of yours, but Hervir was clearly taken by Perrine. Understandably, of course, but he was distressed, distraught even, that she didn’t reciprocate his affections.”

  “He was a nice enough boy,” the princess said. “If I hadn’t met him first at your side, Ingens, I might not have found him so hopelessly callow.”

  She touched the secretary’s wrist, her face shyly turned to the side. Ilna glowered at her; Perrine jerked her hand away.

  “Please, we’re very sorry if anything’s happened to Hervir,” Perrin said. “I don’t know how we can convince you that he was in rude good health when he left us. Perhaps if you’d care to visit the plantation yourselves . . . ?”

  “Oh, please!” said the princess. She grasped Ingens’ hands, only to drop them quickly under the lash of Ilna’s eyes. “Our father would be so glad to meet you both!”