Crown Of The Isles 02 The Mirror of Worlds-ARC

by David Drake

  Carus chuckled and Garric grinned wider. Well, I'd have tried to do it. Since I don't need to, I'm not going to break a leg or my neck showing off.

  "I wonder, noble master . . .," said Kore. To Garric's amazement, the ogre executed a handstand at the edge of the ravine. "What physical act do you imagine you can perform that would impress me?"

  So speaking she walked down the slope on her hands, pausing with her short legs quivering in between each of her three long 'steps'. At the bottom, spattered by the stream, she curled her legs under her again and stood normally.

  "Nothing, apparently," Garric said, smiling because he made a point of smiling instead of letting his face slip into the grim lines of his warrior ancestor when receiving a challenge. "Though remembering the discussion we had when we met, possibly there are a few things, eh?"

  The ogre bowed. Because her torso was so long, that brought her face within a hand's-breadth of Garric's. For a mercy, she'd been eating the mixture of millet and lentils which the barge carried for its crew.

  "As you say, noble master," she said. "Will the noble master ride or walk now?"

  "I'll walk, thank you, Kore," Garric said. "Though I hope that if I slip, you'll catch me before I fall into the water."

  A hundred yards ahead the creek seemed to spray out of a solid wall. When they got closer—Shin dancing ahead while Garric picked his footing cautiously; he didn't dare glance back to see how the ogre was faring—Garric saw that the valley bent sharply to the left. There was a ledge wide enough to walk on, but it was slick with cold spray.

  Shin looked back and called, "It's not much farther." He disappeared behind the rock face.

  Garric faced outward and sidled after the aegipan with his back to the rock. At home he'd crossed many a log bridge in the rain without thinking about it, but the cost of falling into this foaming melt water could be much worse than a soaking in Pattern Creek.

  It was only after the ledge widened enough for him to walk normally without knocking his left elbow on the slope that Garric looked up from his feet. A thick roof of ice covered the valley a hundred yards ahead. The creek poured from the opening beneath. There was light within, dim but probably sufficient for them to walk without torches. Garric couldn't tell how far back into the valley the cave went, though.

  Frozen into the face of the glacier just above the opening was a monster with wings and a snake-like head. Its leathery hide was a purple-red that made Garric think of maple leaves in the fall.

  "A wyvern," said Kore in a speculative tone. "I don't believe I've ever seen one so big before. Have you, Master Shin?"

  "Yes," said the aegipan, "but not often. He'd easily be fifty feet from nose to tail if he stretched out."

  Any hope that the creature was dead vanished when the great head twitched. Shattered ice fell away with a roar. Some of the chunks which the creek tossed downstream were as big as a man.

  "I'd say our timing was fortunate, wouldn't you, Garric?" Shin said. "Rather than a half hour later, I mean. But come along. We're almost there, and I'm sure you're looking forward to reaching your goal."

  He skipped onward, pirouetting every third step. The aegipan must dance simply for fun, because by now he certainly didn't think Garric doubted his agility.

  Garric entered the cave. The ogre tramped along behind him. She stood upright, though not much farther ahead she'd have to duck to clear the ceiling.

  The creek was deafening in the enclosure, and the air was as dank as winter rain. Illumination through the thick ice had a bluish cast, and it didn't show the loose rocks well. Garric stumbled, then stumbled again. He was glad he was wearing heavy boots.

  Shin looked back. He seemed to be laughing, though Garric couldn't hear over the roar of icy water.

  They walked on.

  * * *

  Rasile's chant sounded different from the words of power human wizards used, but the cadence was the same. It made goosebumps quiver on Sharina's arms the same way also.

  The figure Rasile'd drawn around them, this time using fine white sand rather than yarrow stalks, had twelve sides. Sharina'd had plenty of time to count them while listening to the incantation. Occasionally she let two fingers rest on the hilt of her Pewle knife.

  Outside the wicker screen Lord Waldron and his men fought the Last with the desperate courage of men who will die before they gave up . . . which meant only that they would die. By now the most pig-stupid trooper in the royal army could predict the result of a battle in which the other side's losses were constantly replaced.

  "Lady," Sharina prayed under her breath, "You are the Queen of Peace and my business is war; but if it be Your will, aid me so that mankind not be destroyed."

  Rasile's voice rose to a shriek like that of a cat in fury. Wizardlight glared blue above the figure, then vanished. All the world vanished.

  Sharina was blind.

  "Rasile?" she said. Did she hear terror in her own voice? It was her worst fear: not being able to see, not being able to read . . . .

  She reached out and touched the wizard's bony arm. The Corl was unexpectedly warm beneath the layer of fur. "Rasile, I can't—"

  Before Sharina could finish the sentence, sight began to return . . . but she was looking herself in the face. The world had a grainier texture. Reds and browns were deeper and more subtle, and her own blue irises vanished into the whites.

  "You have your task," the wizard said. "Carry it out as quickly as you can, Sharina, because I am not your friend Tenoctris. There are limits to my power, even in this place."

  Sharina opened her mouth to ask questions: "Will you come with me? What happens if I become visible inside the nest of the Last? What if I can't find the pool or the talisman, the First Stone, in the pool?"

  That'd be a waste of time, which Rasile had just said was in short supply. Sharina smiled as she walked quickly from the shelter. Instead of a door, the troops'd extended one end of the wall over the other.

  Sharina's viewpoint moved with her, though she could still see herself. It took some getting used to, but after she'd brushed the side of the passage once—sharp ends of the wattling scratched like a cat's claws—she didn't have trouble.

  The camp was quiet now in the sunlight. Off-duty soldiers were sleeping; the guards in the towers chatted in desultory fashion or simply stared in the direction of the Last's stronghold. Sharina could hear a fatigue party working on the southern wall, but the troops' shelters hid them from the eyes she was using.

  She trotted briskly between the guy ropes and wicker walls. Her feet kicked up dust, but nothing that couldn't pass for a whim of the breeze should anyone even notice; no one did.

  Sharina'd been concerned about getting out through the main gate, but foragers were driving in a score of donkeys carrying panniers of grain. There were villages of the Grass People within practical distance, though the food this party brought back wouldn't supply the army for very long.

  She slipped through the gate. A donkey whickered angrily, but the humans didn't see her. One way or the other, the army wouldn't need supplies here for very long.

  Waldron had laid out his siege lines a quarter mile from the eastern entrance to the black fortress. The parapet was manned, but all save three small ballistas had been moved to reinforce the other flank where the Last were active.

  That was a calculated risk: it minimized human casualties unless the Last changed the direction of their attack. If they sallied from the eastern entrance, many men would die holding them for the time it took to bring the artillery back.

  Waldron had explained and recommended the plan, but Sharina had made the final decision to adopt it. If things went wrong and a thousand brave men were hacked to death in a bloody hour, she'd blame herself.

  "Lady, help me," she whispered. Then, "Lady, bring my brother back so that he can make these choices!"

  There was no gate in the siege lines. Every furlong ramps sloped up to the guard walks eight feet above the ground, and there were simple ladders at inte
rvals between them.

  Sharina walked up a ramp to a salient which once'd held a large catapult; now a squad of infantry occupied it. The men wore cuirasses, but they'd taken off their helmets. Four were dicing while the rest looked toward the enemy and talked about food. They didn't notice Sharina step carefully past them to the wall midway between the salient and the next pair of guards.

  She gripped the vertical stiffeners of a basket, then climbed over the parapet. After hanging for a moment, she dropped into no-man's land and started for the alien fortress.

  The ground here was lower and wetter; Lord Waldron had sited their camp on the highest terrain besides the rock of Pandah itself. The elevation was no more than ten feet, but that was the difference between dry bedding and living in a bog.

  Sharina splashed for a few steps before she slowed and took more care about how she placed her feet. The eyes she watched through moved slightly to the left of the line she'd been taking, so she moved that way herself.

  The Last curtained the entrance to their fortress with a separate baffle built in front of the main wall of the fortress. Two of the creatures stood in its shelter, concealed from the human siege works. They were as motionless as statues.

  Sharina paused to let her heart and breathing settle. Her viewpoint edged forward but stopped when Rasile understood what Sharina was doing.

  Sharina smiled. At any rate, the wizard must've understood that she wasn't going to be dragged into moving faster than she thought was safe.

  When she decided she was calm enough, Sharina walked past the silent guards and into the fortress. The touch of amusement at her wordless argument with Rasile had been more helpful than any number of deep breaths.

  From outside the walls were opaque black in daylight and opaque yellow at night. They were clear with a hint of green from the inside. A troop of forty-odd Last warriors stood near the entrance, ready to respond if humans attacked. They'd turned their backs to the sun and held their arms raised, spreading the membranes between their arms and pelvis. It made them look batlike, though such short vans couldn't possibly carry man-sized bodies through the air. Sharina remembered that Tenoctris saying the creatures lived on sunshine rather than food and water.

  The Last looked much less human close up than they had at a distance. Their lower abdomens were merely girders to connect their legs and upper torso.

  Sharina on, trying to keep at least a double-pace away from the Last. Partly she didn't trust her sense of distance while seeing through Rasile's eyes, but she also wondered how good the Last's sense of touch might be. Would the breeze of her passage rouse the interest of the black monsters?

  Besides, she didn't want to be close to them. That they were humanoid made them even more disgusting. It was like seeing apes dressed as courtiers, smirking and mowing in a parody of palace manners.

  The fortress was roofless; though the walls were transparent, the Last seemed to prefer to absorb the sun's rays unfiltered. The side facing Pandah was higher, jointed together from three or even four layers of pentagonal facets. A score of warriors stood along the southern wall with their membranes spread. At this time of year the sun was high enough to shine into the interior, but come winter it would not. The battle'd be over before winter, though.

  Sharina walked cautiously past the warriors feeding on light. She realized she was instinctively afraid that she'd cast a shadow on them, but they seemed as oblivious of her as their fellows at the east entrance had been.

  Perhaps the greatest difference between the opposing camps was that there was always some activity among the human soldiers. The Last stood as black statues while they were waiting to act.

  The two creatures on the west end of the line folded their arms, turned, and drew their swords. Sharina froze, though Rasile's eyes moved on a step before stopping to wait for her. The pair strode away from her with a lithe briskness, not quite loping but with none of the jerky angularity that Sharina's mind expected from things that stood like so many marionettes when they weren't moving.

  They were going toward the western entrance, preparing to attack the human defenses as thousands of their fellows had attacked over the past days . . . and had died and been replaced, as this pair would die and be replaced.

  Just ahead of Sharina was a pool. The Last had cleared its margins as meticulously as a king's robe of state. Nothing impeded the line of sight from it to the southern horizon. There the new white star shone, though concealed for the moment by the noon sun.

  For an instant the reflection of a warrior shimmered on the pool's surface; then the creature strode out, black and grim and as implacable as sunrise. As it walked to the line where its fellows stood absorbing sunlight before joining the battle, an identical reflection grew sharper on the water from which the first had stepped.

  Sharina took a deep breath and pulled off her singlet. She tossed it on the ground. Would the Last see the garment now that she wasn't wearing it?

  It didn't matter: they'd see the splash. Wearing only the Pewle knife on its sealskin belt, Sharina dived into the pool. Her body shattered the image of Prince Vorsan, staring up at her somberly.

  Lady, aid me that men may live!

  * * *

  Ilna stepped onto a moonlit slope, facing a ridge of rock thrusting up from the surrounding grassland. She was alone for only an instant before Temple strode through on her left and the two hunters on her right.

  There was no sign of the portal on this side. Her companions appeared out of the air, swelling like drops of water condensing on cold metal.

  Asion quickly turned with a stone in the pocket of his sling. Karpos, holding his long knife, looked up the face of the rock without expression. "What is this place, then?" he asked.

  "It's the Tomb of the Messengers," Temple said, letting his eyes follow the hunter's toward the peak. He pointed with his left hand to a wedge of shadow just above the line where the soil was too thin for oat grass. "The entrance is at the base, however. There."

  "It looks like close quarters," Karpos said. "Not the sort of place I'd look forward to tracking a cat I'd wounded."

  "We did the once, though," Asion said with a quick look back at his partner before resuming his survey of the moonlit oats studded with occasional thorn trees. "That striped demon with a pouch that kept stealing our bait way down in the south."

  "This could be worse'n that ever was," Karpos said. "Temple, the mistress shouldn't go down in that. Should she?"

  "Karpos, you're not to tell me what I should or shouldn't do," Ilna snapped. "And Master Temple, you particularly shouldn't be giving me direction."

  "I can't answer that question, Karpos," Temple said. He was pretending he hadn't heard her speak. "That's the only way she can reach the Messengers. If that's her goal, she hasn't any choice."

  "My goal is to rid the world of Coerli!" Ilna said. "As you should know by now."

  She started up the remaining slope toward the long sandstone ridge. She didn't look behind to see if the men were following her, though of course they were. And," she said, "you should also know that if I wanted your opinions, I'd have asked for them!"

  "Well, it'll be all right, I guess," said Karpos, trying to sound nonchalant. "Only I think I better go first, mistress. You know, because I'm . . . well, I've done this before."

  "I'm afraid that won't be possible, Karpos," Temple said quietly, "though the thought does you credit. To approach the Messengers requires a kind of strength that you and Asion don't possess. If you were to attempt it, you'd lose your humanity."

  Ilna's leg brushed the shrub growing in front of the cave. The leaves were small and plump; bitter to the taste, Ilna was sure, because all the vegetation of this sort was. They had horny tips which she hadn't noticed till they clawed her.

  She grimaced, then found her lips curling into a tight smile. The shrub's white flowers showed brilliantly in the moonlight. It was just another proof that attractive things came with a price.

  "Look, I guess I can take a chance
if I want to!" Karpos said sharply. He was a big man—as big as Garric—but no physical match for Temple. Nonetheless there was a challenge in his tone.

  Instead of replying to the hunter, Temple said quietly. "Ilna, you may go or stay as you wish. If these men accompany you, however, they'll be transformed like those who came to question the Messengers and who lacked the power to compel answers. They'll become . . . servitors, I suppose. You know your own mind, but these men have been friends to you."

  Ilna stopped at the mouth of the cave. She could enter without ducking her head, but only barely. She wondered how far she'd have to follow the passage. The patterns she knotted for protection wouldn't be effective in the dark, either.

  The air rising from the depths of the cave carried a hint of spices. Perhaps priests were working rites within? Or the odors could be from a tomb. A waste of expense either way, but nobody'd asked what she thought about the matter.