Crown Of The Isles 02 The Mirror of Worlds-ARC

by David Drake

  "I'll study the matter now that I've seen their nest," Rasile said. "But the Last are very powerful, Princess. Perhaps we should attack their impregnable walls until they have killed us all."

  She laughed again.

  Sharina stared at the fortress. Her face felt frozen, and the knuckles of her right hand were mottled where she gripped the Pewle knife.

  Chapter 13

  Though the moon was well risen, Leel took a stick with a ball of tar on the end and lit it from a firepot. "Come along, then," he said to Garric unhappily. "Though you could find it yourself if you weren't blind."

  The remainder of Holm's guards had retreated swiftly to a pavilion. The sound of a drinking party came through the velvet sides.

  Garric didn't respond. Leel was unhappy at being ordered to lead them, but he was doing the job. Snarling at him—

  "Or knocking him flat," Carus interjected with a rueful laugh. "As I might well've done."

  —wasn't going to make that job go quicker.

  "What is it that you think a torch will chase away, Master Leel?" asked Shin in a mocking tone. "Not the thing that haunts this lake, I assure you."

  Leel muttered something and spat—though away from the aegipan and his companions. He pulled his torch back from the pot, rotating the tar ball slowly to spread the growing red flames across its surface.

  "Mount, master," Kore said. She knelt beside Garric, holding the looped 'stirrups' open with her clawed hands.

  Garric glanced at her, then scuffed the ground. This gravel strand was as firm as a cobblestone street, but he wasn't sure what the causeway would be like.

  He opened his mouth to say he'd walk, then closed it. He'd far better learn whether the surface'd bear him mounted on the ogre now than later when other things might be happening. Particularly since the 'other things' were uncertain but certainly threatening. He set his left foot in the loop and gripped the ogre's shoulders to swing himself aboard.

  "Tell me, Master Shin," Kore said. "Am I correct in supposing that most warhorses have better sense than the noble heroes riding them? Or is my judgment warped by special circumstances?"

  The aegipan laughed. Garric grinned and said, "The epics don't generally discuss the matter, but the figurehead of the hero Klon's ship is said to have given him advice. When I return to Valles, I'll ask Liane to institute a search of the major temple libraries for more information on the question."

  Leel stared from Kore to Garric, then down to the aegipan. "Are you crazy?" he demanded.

  "Perhaps," said Garric, suddenly cheerful. Shin and Kore were not only companions but friends. "It seems to help, though."

  Leel led them through the camp of the laborers, shanties of leaves lashed to twig frameworks. The small dark men watched in nervous silence as they passed. The laborers didn't carry weapons, not even the stones or asphalt torches that were available to anyone here. That must be the decision of Lord Holm and his guards.

  Eyes caught by torchlight gleamed from doorways, but Garric only once saw an adult woman. A naked brown child suddenly sprinted on chubby legs from a hut, gurgling laughter. His mother—who didn't look any older than fifteen herself—ran after him, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and began to spank him into screams with her slipper even before she got him back into the hut. She kept her eyes turned away from Garric and his companions, as if by ignoring the strangers she could prevent them from harming her.

  "Shin?" Garric said. "Do you know how wide this land is? I can smell salt water."

  "A furlong wide here, where Lord Holm has moved his household," said the aegipan. "It narrows to half that to the east and west where it finally joins the mainland to enclose the tar lake."

  "It's not wide enough," Leel muttered. "If we get a storm from the south, it'll wash clear over this little spit. That's happened three times since I been with Milord, only it didn't matter because we were a mile out in the lake so the sea didn't even wet the foundations of the fort."

  He cleared his throat and corrected himself, "The palace, we're supposed to call it. The palace."

  A vagrant breeze drove in from the sea, thinning a wedge of mist. The full moon blazed through the clear air, throwing a line of blacker shadow the length of the raised walkway stretching out into the lake.

  "All right," said Leel, pointing with the torch. "There's the causeway. It runs straight to the palace. Just follow it out and you can't go wrong."

  Kore drew up at the base of the causeway. In Ornifal men cut ice on the River Beltis in winter. Packed into pits with sawdust between the layers, the blocks remained to chill the drinks of the wealthy at the height of summer.

  The causeway was built with asphalt cut in the same fashion from the surface of the tar lake and stacked several layers high to form a road. The top layer of bitumen was mixed with dust and gravel blown onto the lake over the years, so that it became a type of concrete in which tar rather than lime was the binding agent.

  The ogre stepped onto the causeway, lowering her weight carefully. Her clawed foot didn't sink in. She paused, cocking an eye toward her rider for direction.

  "And in the morning, Lord Holm will carry us across the salt water in his barge?" Garric said. "Is that correct, Master Leel?"

  "Milord said he would, didn't he?" the guard growled. He didn't look up to meet Garric's eye. "Anyway, why not? We don't have any cargo since the grubbies won't go out to the islands any more. We may as well carry you and your beasts."

  "All right, let's go across," Garric said. He felt a grudging sympathy for Leel, who obviously didn't trust his master but who was unwilling to lie for him. "If the fog covers the moon again, we're going to have to feel our way."

  Shin gave a rippling, golden chuckle and made a motion with his hands. A ball of azure wizardlight swelled to the size of a cantaloupe just ahead of him. It was bright enough to show the seams between the blocks of asphalt. The aegipan danced onto the causeway, singing, "He who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster . . . ."

  Kore followed at a measured pace. Her claws and the aegipan's hooves clicked on pebbles in the causeway's surface.

  Garric glanced over his shoulder. For a brief time he could see Leel's torch as a dull red spark moving west across the neck of land, but then the mist swept in at full thickness and swallowed everything beyond the glow of Shin's ball of light.

  "—and follow the Master," the aegipan sang, then broke off into fresh laughter.

  The night was thick but not silent. The asphalt surface groaned, and occasionally a bubble plopped hollowly. Such humid warmth made Garric expect frogs and insects, but nothing living made a sound.

  Kore paced forward easily. They were silent for some time.

  "Can either of you see the palace?" Garric said at last. "As best I can judge, we should be getting close to—"

  The air grew noticeably cooler, though Garric didn't feel the breeze that must've driven the change. The sky was clear; stars jabbed down around a moon which was within an hour of zenith. The black bulk of Lord Holm's palace rose a few double paces ahead.

  The aegipan made another gesture with his delicate hands, rather like crumpling parchment into a ball and throwing it away; the globe of wizardlight vanished. Useful as the illumination had been, it gave objects an unclean cast when combined with natural moonlight.

  Mind, the palace was sufficiently unclean even in the moon's pale purity. Like the causeway, it was constructed of blocks sawn from the lake's surface. That they'd been carefully dressed and carved with pilasters and crude swags made the effect even more grotesque. Kore knelt without being told to so that Garric could dismount.

  The windows were tall with pointed arches; the glass set into the openings in leaded frames may've been colored, but Garric couldn't be sure in this light. The double door was of heavy oak and iron-strapped, but both valves stood open.

  Torches like the one Leel had carried waited in sconces to either side of the recessed doorway, ready to be lighted. Shin lifted one, stared at it critically,
and made a pass over the ball of tar with his cupped left hand. A red spark flashed and the tar began to burn with deep, smoky flames.

  Shin offered Garric the butt of the torch, adding with a curl of his tongue, "Or would you prefer to treat me as your servant, Prince Garric? Shall I bear the torch for you?"

  "You're not my servant," Garric said, taking the torch. He extended his arm slightly so that the acrid fumes were downwind of all of them. "And I'm capable of carrying this."

  "So long as you keep it in your left hand," said Carus. He chuckled. "I wouldn't like this place even if we hadn't been told we were being sent because nobody else had the balls to come."

  "Foul though I find the odor of this hell-pit . . .," said the ogre. She bent almost double to step through the doorway. "I would know if there were anything alive inside. There is not."

  "I would find that more reassuring," said the aegipan as he followed, "if I thought the living were the only or even the greatest danger we might face here."

  Garric paused in the doorway to peer at a blotch in the carved molding; it was the discolored knuckle of a bone from an ox or something even bigger. Of course animals—and no doubt men—would've fallen into the tar over the centuries that the asphalt lake had existed. The larger the beast, the more likely that its weight would break through the crust, especially if a skin of rainwater hid it.

  He walked into the building. There was no anteroom, just a hall which rose to the height of three normal stories. The domed roof had a large oculus in the center.

  Moonlight streamed through that round window and painted the west side of the hall. Tapestries showing horsemen hunting strange beasts across a mountainous landscape covered the bitumen wall; it would otherwise have absorbed the light almost completely. Reflection from the fabric of silk with metal threads illuminated the great room better than chandeliers did the feasting hall of the palace at Valles. That wouldn't help during the new moon, of course.

  There were benches around both sidewalls and a high wooden throne with gilt—or perhaps golden—dragon finials at the end opposite the entrance. Garric would've expected a clear space in the center of the hall. Petitioners would stand there during audiences and servants would set up trestle tables for feasts. Instead, a massive black sarcophagus stood directly under the oculus.

  Shin and Kore stood at either end of the sarcophagus, staring at it hostilely. Garric joined them, bringing the torch close to get a better view of the ornate reliefs.

  "Is it ebony?" he asked, but he was already reaching out to answer his own question. He tapped the lid with his knuckles.

  "It's stone," he said in surprise. "It must be jet. It's hard enough to take delicate carvings, at any rate. These are very good."

  As Garric eyed the reliefs more carefully, he realized their strangeness as well as the carver's skill. There were two separate bands on the lid, arranged so that the figures' feet were toward the door. In the center of the upper register stood a skeletally thin human figure, probably a man, wearing long robes. His arms were spread to either side in blessing. Though the features were stylized and in any case very small—the face was the size of the end of a man's thumb—Garric thought he detected a similarity to Lord Holm.

  The lower register was covered with a profusion of animals, each one identifiably distinct from its many fellows. The beasts fell into at least a dozen different species, each of them similar to an animal which Garric had seen or at least read descriptions of—but none really identical to anything familiar.

  The largest of the carved animals were the elephants. These had unusually long, curving tusks, but that could be explained as artistic license. The hump of fat on the beasts' shoulders, though, and the shaggy hair that covered their bodies were like nothing Garric had seen or heard of.

  Likewise the lions seemed ordinary enough until you noticed the curved canines projecting beneath the lower jaw, the antelopes had four horns rather than two, and the wolves' heads seemed too massive for even their unusually robust bodies. The circling vultures were far too big also, assuming the elephants and other animals weren't pygmy versions of their present relatives.

  "It's an odd place for Lord Holm to keep his father's coffin, wouldn't you think?" said the ogre, who must've noticed the same resemblance that Garric thought he saw. "Of course, one never knows what humans will decide to do. I blame it on their skulls being so small that their brains get squeezed."

  "It's not Holm's father," said the aegipan. "At least it's not his father unless Holm is many thousands of years old. Ten thousand at least, I would judge."

  Garric stepped back and frowned. "Judge how?" he said.

  Shin touched the hilt of the dagger Garric had found in the peel tower and said, "May I borrow this?"

  "Yes," said Garric. "Of course."

  Shin drew the dagger and slid its point down the margin of the lid. Garric winced to see the blade mistreated, though on consideration he realized that jet wasn't hard enough to dull good steel.

  "Do you see how bright the edges of the scratch are?" the aegipan said, gesturing with one hand while the other replaced the dagger in Garric's sheath. It was a remarkable piece of coordination. "Compare them with the dullness of the reliefs. Air doesn't act quickly on jet, but it acts; and this sarcophagus was made millennia ago."

  In all truth, Garric couldn't see the distinction—certainly not by torchlight and probably not in the full blaze of the sun. But neither did he see any reason to doubt Shin's judgment, on this matter or on anything else the aegipan chose to state with such assurance.

  He looked up at the dome. From where he stood, the rim of the oculus clipped a sooty edge from the moon's silver and gray.

  Shin examined the tapestries. They seemed to be well made, but the scenes had no obvious connection with this black palace. Garric wondered if Holm or one of his ancestors had looted them in a raid.

  Kore opened the door in the partition wall behind the throne and squatted to look down the passage to the living quarters beyond. She'd have to crawl to negotiate it, and from the blank disgust on her face she saw no reason to do so.

  Something sizzled. Garric turned. The light of the full moon blazed straight down on the sarcophagus, flattening the reliefs. A figure formed, coalescing out of the air instead of rising through the stone lid.

  Garric stepped back, touching his hilt but not drawing the sword. Kore and the aegipan sidled around the edges of the hall, placing themselves beside Garric and close to the outside door.

  The figure, at least seven feet tall even without the pedestal of the sarcophagus to stand on, looked down at Garric and laughed. It was indeed a taller, more cadaverous version of Lord Holm.

  "You are the sacrifice?" the figure said. Its voice boomed as if from a vast cavern. "Not before time, I must say. My blood must be thinning for matters to have waited so long."

  Garric drew his sword with a muted sring of the gray steel blade. He backed another step, trusting his companions to keep clear without him having to waste attention on them.

  "Milord," he said to the robed wizard. "I told your descendent I'd spend the night in this palace. I'm not a sacrifice, to you or him or to anyone. My friends and I will go now and leave the night to you."

  The wizard laughed again and raised his left hand, knuckles out. On the fourth finger was a ring with a huge red stone. "Belia!" he said.

  A film of scarlet wizardlight covered the interior of the hall like the membrane inside an egg shell. Kore growled and hunched toward the open doorway. She rebounded from the red shimmer, snarled, and ripped outward at it with both hands the way one would try to tear a silk curtain. Her claws slid without gripping.

  Garric lunged, thrusting for the wizard's right kneecap. It was the easiest target and, though it wouldn't be immediately fatal, it'd bring the tall man's vitals within reach of a second stroke.

  "Eithabira!" the wizard said and wrapped himself in wizardlight like a cicada in its chrysalis. The edge that'd sheared hard limestone bounced away.
The blade sang a high note; Garric's right hand and forearm felt as though he'd plunged them into boiling water. He damped the vibration by holding the sword against his thigh.

  The wizard's laugh boomed again. He clenched his left fist so that the fiery jewel pointed at Garric. Garric made an overarm cut into the sarcophagus lid between the wizard's feet. The jet shattered.

  The wizard toppled backward with a hoarse shout. The glimmer of wizardlight vanished like frost in sunshine.

  "Mount!" Kore shouted, turning and dropping to one knee. "Mount!"

  Garric wobbled. He was as dizzy as if he hadn't had anything to drink in three days.

  "Quickly!" said the aegipan, pausing in the doorway to look back. The building rocked, springing several panes of glass from their casements.