by David Drake
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 arms' 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 nearby 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 any more. 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. "Ch
raeleos!"
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 a 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."
Salmson was officially an underpriest 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.
"I'll bet he thinks you just walked into the tent, though," said Carus, grimly uncomfortable with wizardry even now.
"Garric!" Sharina said, whirling and jostling the table as she tried to get up.
Liane simply kicked her stool over and threw herself into Garric's arms. She wouldn't have done that if she hadn't been very much afraid . . . .
"And she had reason," Carus said. "Though it worked out pretty well. There's not much a good sword can't take care of when a man swings it."
Spoken like a common trooper, Garric thought, but he was too happy to be tart. Carus was being ironic, after all. He did feel that way—but he knew he'd brought his kingdom down when he'd behaved that way as king.
They were all babbling greetings and congratulations. Garric let it go on for a time because he was drained by the sudden relief from stress. Holding Liane was all he wanted to do, and letting other people talk permitted him to do that.
But I've got a kingdom to run . . . .
Garric gave Liane a final squeeze and broke away. She righted the stool and seated herself primly. Sharina offered a chair—made here in the camp from stakes and wicker like the fascines, though covered with red baize—but Garric didn't want to sit just yet.
"You've marched to Pandah to put down the renegades?" he said, remembering the reports about the island from before he went off with Shin. He hoped he'd kept disapproval out of his tone, but this wouldn't have been the way he'd have used such a large proportion of the kingdom's resources.
"To put down a bridgehead of the Last, your highness," Lord Waldron said, forcefully enough to show that he'd understood the implied criticism. "We were meeting on how to deal with Pandah itself now that Princess Sharina has destroyed the Last."
"Rasile destroyed the Last," said Sharina. There was something odd in the way she said it, though. Garric didn't know who Rasile was, but he was sure he'd learn soon enough.
"And Tenoctris," said Cashel from beside Garric. "She just brought us back."
Garric turned fast. His ancestor's reflex took his hand to his sword, though he didn't draw the blade. His friend stood with a pert young woman whom Garric didn't recognize.
This time it was Sharina knocking her chair over as she leaped up to hug Cashel. Garric moved aside, smiling and glad something'd happened to take folks' minds off the way he'd gone for a weapon when his best friend appeared.
"My way you can apologize if you're wrong," Carus said, this time in dead earnest. "If something takes your head off because you thought it was harmless, you don't get a second chance."
"Garric was as responsible for success as any of us," said the woman who'd arrived with Cashel. When he heard the voice, Garric recognized Tenoctris—but much younger. "The kingdom's very fortunate in its ruler
."
"Your highness," said Admiral Zettin. "I was just pointing out that we have an opportunity to make an example of Pandah by hanging everyone we find there."
Despite Zettin's brashness he must've seen something in Garric's expression, because he quickly added, "Or all the males, of course, pirates and Coerli both."
"Milord," said Garric. Since Carus took residence in his mind, he'd learned that he didn't have to raise his voice to make it clear when he was angry. "I think we'll make a different sort of example of Pandah. We'll spare everybody, but we'll distribute the males among existing regiments with orders to the non-coms to watch them. And we'll hang the ones who don't take the warning."
"We'll hang a great many of them, I shouldn't wonder," Lord Waldron said, but he wasn't arguing with the plan. He smiled as he glanced at Zettin, a protégé of Attaper's and no friend of the army commander.
