Garric sat on a fluted stone barrel, a piece of the little chapel's front colonnade. The pillars had fallen, carrying the pediment and the roof of the porch with them. Garric was breathing heavily and the big muscles of his thighs trembled.
He hadn't had a chance to relax since they'd entered the fane in the other place, a lifetime ago.
Liane walked over to him from the temple's interior. She seemed a trifle wobbly but nonetheless in better condition than Garric was.
His nerves were on the edge of failing him. Every time he looked into the undergrowth, he saw a figure striding toward him with a smile straight out of Hell on her shimmering face.
"Tenoctris is all right," Liane said. "She wanted to check on something."
Garric gave her a quick look. Liane nodded. "An incantation," she said softly. "I didn't want to listen quite yet."
She sat beside Garric. He shifted, though the round of stone was still close quarters. "Garric?" she said. "There was something with us, wasn't there? When we were coming here."
"She couldn't get to us as long as we stayed on the path," Garric said without meeting the girl's eyes. It wasn't a direct answer, and he couldn't even be sure it was true. He prayed it was true, though.
"And as long as Tenoctris could keep speaking," Liane said. She looked at the partial moon. It had the same luster as the nude woman who'd followed Garric with cold, silvery laughter....
"These must have fallen recently," Garric said brightly. He patted the section of pillar next to the one on which they sat. "The honeysuckle's grown around them, but there're no pine seedlings taller than my knee."
Liane grinned wanly at his change of subject. She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
"That was in the earthquake two years ago, I suppose," she said. "I was still at Mistress Gudea's Academy. There wasn't much damage in Valles, but the site of the old palace was badly shaken."
"Two years?" Tenoctris said from the doorway. The younger people jumped up, surprised. Garric jerked his hand out of Liane's.
"I would have guessed a little longer than that," Tenoctris went on, "but the force may have been obtruding for months or longer before it began to have an effect in the physical world."
"Effect?" Garric said.
Tenoctris smiled. She looked as though she'd been dragged a mile behind a wagon, but she was standing on her own legs. She held the willow whip Garric had cut into a wand for her.
Tenoctris let Liane take her hand, but the old woman walked to an adjacent fragment of column and sat as though she didn't need the help. "Something's come here," she said. She patted the stone with a hand which showed the delicate veins. "I mean this very place, not just our world. But I don't know what it is."
Garric and Liane faced the old wizard. Garric stretched his arms. Tenoctris didn't weigh very much, but he'd been carrying her for an unguessably long distance along the silver path.
"The thing that brought us here?" Liane asked.
Garric straightened. "Nothing could have brought us here!" he said.
Even he was surprised by his vehemence. Coughing, he went on, "I mean, it was all random that we came here. We were on the way to Valles, sure. But the Gulf, and then Liane happening to recognize the chapel in the other place where we were—that was just chance."
Tenoctris smiled vaguely. "As you know," she said, "I don't believe in the Great Gods—"
"I do," Liane said forcefully. "Tenoctris, this can't be just luck making these things happen. Luck doesn't work that way!"
Tenoctris shrugged. "Nor do I believe in fate," she continued in her usual calm tone. "But if I thought all these events were being manipulated by an enemy, the queen or some other person trying to work his ends through Malkar, the best advice I could give us is that we should surrender. An entity which can move us with such precision through such complex gyrations isn't going to be defeated by anything we or any other humans can do."
Garric smiled. The women looked at him with determinedly blank expressions.
Garric's smile grew slowly until it was as broad as it'd been the afternoon he'd won a bout at the Sheep Fair against a merchant's guard. The fellow fancied himself with quarterstaves—and fancied his chances with Sharina, for all she'd made it clear she didn't want him to bother her further.
"Well, that makes it easy," Garric said. "I mean, we're not going to quit, are we?"
"No," Liane whispered. Tenoctris merely began smiling herself. "So we may as well believe the Great Gods are on our side," he explained. "Or fate, or we've got some—"
Garric lifted his hands palms-up in a gesture of doubt. "—some friend, some player, who's smart enough to make all this happen. We're going to go on, so we may as well believe we're going to win eventually."
He'd always been conventionally religious, like everybody else in the borough. Atheism and free-thinking were for wealthy cities, not for hamlets where a hard winter or a bad storm could mean starvation for whole households.
Real belief was something different, though. The Lady and the Shepherd were far too fine for a little place like Barca's Hamlet.
As for Duzi, well, it did Garric good to believe there was someone with him when he watched sheep grazing the borough's meadows. Maybe the someone was named Duzi, and he—He—really appreciated the garlands and nibbles of cheese Garric and other shepherds offered to the stone carved with His rough image. A bit of cheese or a garland was no great expense, even for a shepherd.
Garric hadn't changed his beliefs, but he felt the same as he had about Duzi back home. If you're responsible for things that are too complicated to really control, no matter how hard you try, then it's good to feel that there's somebody watching alongside you who knows a little more.
"I'd offer a bite of cheese," he said, letting his smile return as a wry quirk of his lips. "A whole round of cheese, even. I just don't know where to leave it."
Liane stared at him with the expression of someone who's afraid her companion has gone mad. Tenoctris continued to smile; and somewhere in Garric's mind, the tall, tanned figure of King Carus was laughing.
"Will you need to carry out more, ah, researches here, Tenoctris?" Liane said stiffly. She thought she was being laughed at, which she certainly wasn't. Garric squeezed her hand again.
"I'm looking forward to researching a bed," the old woman said. "I've learned something by arriving in this place, but there's nothing more that I need do."
She half-smiled. Tenoctris wasn't a jolly person, but for the most part she seemed to Garric to be both contented and happy. That was a remarkable tribute, given the chaos and danger he'd seen threaten her many times.
She stood up carefully. "Everything seems to work," she said. "As well as it did before, that is. Though I wasn't an acrobat even when I was the age you two are now."
Garric frowned. "We're a mile from Valles proper?" he asked Liane.
She nodded, seeing at once what he was thinking. "At least," she agreed. "Half again as far from the harbor, where most of the inns are. I'll go hire a chair—a carriage, do you think?—while you watch Tenoctris."
She patted her waistline, hearing a softly reassuring clink. Liane carried the remnants of her father's wealth in gold, rolled within a sash beneath her tunic. There were enough Sandrakkan Riders in the silk to buy a ship, let alone rent a sedan chair and four bearers.
"I'll go," Garric said. "You'll be safe here till I get back. Unless Valles is a paradise compared to Carcosa and Erdin, it's not safe for a lone girl with a beltful of money to hire a chair at a drover's tavern."
The coins in Garric's purse were silver and bronze, but they were more than sufficient for the purpose. Except for his father, Reise, and perhaps Katchin the Miller, no one in Barca's Hamlet had ever seen as much money in coin as Garric carried; and in Reise's case, not since he'd left burning Carcosa with a wife and two newborn infants the day after the riots.
Liane's expression was technically a smile, but there was no humor in it. "No, Valles isn't a paradise," she said. "Particularly not the north side of the city where we'll be coming in. I forgot that in the past I always had either my father's servants or ushers from Mistress Gudea's Academy with me when I went out at night."
She nodded to indicate the chapel by which they'd arrived. "The door is aligned with sunrise on the equinoxes, of course," she said. "There's a paved road coming into what were the palace grounds only a hundred paces or so south of here. Mistress Gudea had to send a party out with brush hooks to clear a path before each field trip because it's so overgrown, but—"
"I think I can find my way in the woods, Liane," Garric said. "Even in the dark."
He was a little nettled at the girl acting like he was a city-bred fool who'd get lost on his way home without a street to guide him. Though—
Just maybe what bothered him wasn't Liane telling him things he already knew, but rather that she'd assumed he knew something he didn't. That temple doors faced east wasn't "of course" to Garric, though he'd felt a current of agreement from Carus. There weren't any temples in Barca's Hamlet; nor, for that matter, within a day's journey of Barca's Hamlet.
"Oh, I'm sor—" Liane began.
Garric hugged her fiercely. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm scared that there's something I'll need to know that I don't. And we'll fail because of what I don't know."
Liane kissed his cheek. "We're not going to fail," she said. "The Lady and the Shepherd are on our side, remember?"
"Right," said Garric as he stepped away. "Right!"
He strode off quickly, so quickly he almost walked into a full-sized beech tree. That'd be a fine answer to the way he'd boasted about being a countryman!
Garric laughed, happy down through to his heart, and then began to whistle a jig called "The Merry Plowman." He'd piped it a hundred times at weddings and harvest festivals. Danced it, too, hopping high and spinning in the air as Lupa os-Queddin rang the tune with a wooden spoon on three part-filled jugs. Had Mistress Gudea taught her charges to dance jigs?
The old road was closer than Garric expected. In truth, he hadn't been thinking much about what he was doing. Even the vines that caught in his long sword's crossguard and looped the scabbard couldn't put him out of his present good mood.
Roots had tossed the paving blocks into a pattern as irregular as the sea's surface. Garric tried walking on them, then decided to push through the undergrowth alongside instead. The old road helped with his direction, but the forest soil made easier going.
He heard dogs bark; hounds, he supposed, yipping to be let off their keeper's leash. This tract would make good hunting—though what Garric meant by hunting, wandering in the common woods with a bow and blunted arrows listening for squirrels, was very different from the vast royal drives that Carus recalled.
A stray thought from an earlier age made Garric wonder if the site of the old palace was still royal land. That would explain why it hadn't been built on again. Property so near Valles must be valuable for more than brush and ruins.
He continued to whistle. He thought about making himself a set of pipes when he got a moment. There must be reeds and wax on Ornifal....
A hound bayed, sounding birdlike and excited. Garric looked over his shoulder. The dog was very close by.
Three hounds burst from the undergrowth barking in shockingly high-pitched voices as they closed on Garric. Their mottled hides made them wraithlike in the dappled gloom.
"Hey!" Garric shouted. He wished he had a staff. "Get back from me, you!"
He wasn't frightened, just surprised and a little angry. They were good-sized animals, all together probably weighing more than even a large man like Garric. In Erdin savage, spike-collared guard dogs were chained in the door alcoves of wealthy houses or walked on leashes in front of sedan chairs to make sure that nobody jostled the woman of quality within. These were just hunting dogs, though.
Garric put his back to a tree. When two or more dogs were together, there was always a risk that they'd do things that none of them would do by itself. In that they were very like human beings.
These hounds had better go back shortly to their proper business—raccoon, deer, or whatever it was folk hunted on Ornifal. Otherwise Garric was going to trim a sapling with his sword and start rapping noses until they got the idea.
A huntsman in tight-fitting jerkin and breeches came out of the woods. He held a silver-chased hunting horn in one hand and, in the other, a spear with a bar just below the head to keep a boar or other dangerous game from slipping down the shaft onto him. The hounds redoubled the raucous yapping that was driving Garric wild.
"Are these yours?" Garric said. "Get them off me, will you?"
Instead of answering, the huntsman blew a two-note signal. His horn's twisted shape wasn't that of any cow Garric had seen, and if it came from a sheep or goat it was of a much larger breed than those raised on Haft.
"I said get your dogs away!" Garric said. "Is this the way you treat travelers on Ornifal? Sister take you all if it is!"
Carus' spirit coursed close to the surface of Garric's mind, as it always did when the youth was angry or frightened. He put his hand almost unconsciously on the hilt of his sword. The huntsman backed a step, leveling the boar spear on Garric's chest.
He shouldn't have done that. Garric imagined with perfect clarity his sword coming out of the scabbard in a quick sweep to behead the fellow. A right and left to the hounds, two of them flying sideways, their yelps silenced in gouts of blood, and a quick thrust behind Garric's back to settle the third beast, who'd be going for a hamstring....
A nobleman burst from the night. With him were six other men in helmets and mail shirts. The latter were soldiers, not huntsmen. Three held spears with slender points for piercing armor, while the others had drawn their swords.
Hand weapons were a better choice than bows with the undergrowth so thick, noted a coldly professional mind at the back of Garric's own.
"Watch him, Lord Royhas," the huntsman cried to the noble. "He's got a sword!"
"Whip your dogs away!" the noble said. "How can anybody hear themselves think?"
Garric was uneasily aware that his clothing, though of good quality to begin with, was very much the worse for wear. They'd been able to wash their garments in the place they'd gone when they escaped the Gulf, but the tunic had stains that wouldn't come out in plain water and they weren't able to mend tears properly.
The huntsman threw down his equipment. He caught two hounds and dragged them back by their collars. The third followed her master and companions, still whining with excitement.
"I thank you, sir," Garric said. He reached down to tap a clink from his heavy leather belt purse. "My name's Garric or-Reise from Haft. Though I'm afraid I look a little bedraggled, I'm not a vagabond."
He was glad to relax. The barking had gotten on his nerves in a way that an open threat wouldn't have done. The dogs hadn't been doing anything, so Garric couldn't properly respond to them.
"Yes, I thought you might be," the noble said pleasantly. "I'm Royhas bor-Bolliman, the Master of the Royal Hunt."
The soldiers moved in from either side, acting without haste. They were already too close for Garric to draw his long sword. Two had sheathed their own weapons. The spearmen were a pace back where one or both could easily stab Garric if he tried to struggle with the other four men.
"Let us take this, sir," a soldier said, kneeling to unwrap the sword belt's long double tongue as the first step to unbuckling it. The swordsmen put their free hands on Garric's wrists. Their blades weren't precisely threatening him, but the points were still close to his face.
"What's the meaning of this?" Garric snapped. He wasn't frightened; part of him was actually surprised at the feeling of cold analysis that drove all emotion from his mind. A year ago—a few months ago—he would have been shocked and afraid. The man he'd become since leaving home merely looked for the way out.
At this moment there was no way out.
"King Valence was informed that a pretender claiming to be a scion of the old royal line would be arriving here," Royhas explained. He was in his thirties and moved with the ease of a man who spent more time outdoors than he did at the table. "The Master of the Hunt was the obvious person to apprehend him. These men are members of my own household, by the way—not royal troops."
Royhas gestured to the men holding Garric. The kneeling soldier had the belt off. The swordsmen bent Garric's arms back with firm pressure but not violence; he didn't resist. The fourth man bound his wrists with a soft, strong cord. It was silk, Garric supposed.
"I'm not a pretender to anything," Garric said. He tensed his wrists as the soldier drew the bonds tight. The men knew that trick: the pair holding Garric's arms rapped his elbows with their sword hilts. As the youth's muscles spasmed, their fellow pulled the slack out of the knot.
How had Valence known that Garric would arrive here? And what did the king intend—
"Master Silyon, the king's wizard, apparently feels differently," Royhas said without concern. "A nasty piece of work, that one. But he was right about you appearing, wasn't he?"
The cord binding Garric had arm's-length tags. Two soldiers looped the
ends around their own belts, attaching Garric to them though he could still walk by himself.
"We'll get you into a closed carriage and then sweep the grounds for the friends you're supposed to have along," Royhas said. He smiled. "My royal master has ordered that you all be quietly put out of the way. As though you'd never existed."
Sharina squatted where the ground became flat enough to support a grove of giant tree ferns. Rhododendrons poked hard green leaves through the fronds. "Give me a moment," she called ahead to Hanno.
Sharina wasn't precisely winded, but her legs hadn't gotten much exercise during long days on the ship and Hanno's boat. The terrain from the cove on the shore of Bight where the dory sheltered was more a cliff than a slope. Previous travelers had notched handholds into the particularly steep portions. That made the climb possible, but Sharina wondered how the hunter was going to carry up his tons of supplies.
"It's not far, missie," Hanno said. "The rivers here flow north and east, but me and my partner Ansule figure it's better to climb a bit and save an extra two days of rowing to Valles. There's others that feel different, but they mostly use sails on their boats."
Butterflies with wings the size of Sharina's hands fluttered through the grove, dabbing into the flowers of air plants growing along the branches of the tree ferns. One of them landed on Sharina's shoulder. It felt heavy, and its spindly legs gripped with uncomfortable strength.
She sucked in her breath with surprise. The giant butterfly uncoiled its long mouth parts and prodded her skin.
"Looking for salt," Hanno said nonchalantly. He carried only his weapons, the huge spear and the knives in his belt. "I figure if there was a way to get the wings back to Valles, I'd be a rich man. They lose their pretty color if they get knocked around, though."
The insect on Sharina's shoulder was too close for both her eyes to focus on it. Its wings were striped black and white, and there were red dots on the bottom lobe.
Compared to many others in the grove, the butterfly was positively chaste in its patterning. The thought of it being pulled apart for a rich lady's headdress disturbed Sharina.
The butterfly stepped into the curve of Sharina's neck. "Ouch!" she said. Her index finger brushed it into the air with a determined shove. Scales like tiny feathers spun from the creature's wings, dancing in a beam of light.
Sharina grinned at herself. Aloud she said, "If I were a better person, I wouldn't let one pinch wipe away all my kindly thoughts."
Hanno smiled, more or less. "Don't get worked up about butterflies," he said. "They never helped a soul but themself, I figure. There's plenty of people who think it's good enough to sit around looking pretty, and I never had much use for them neither."
He rose to his feet. "Ready to go on?" he asked. Sharina stood in response.
"Me and Ansule'll rig the cable and pulley tomorrow to haul the goods up to the cabin," the hunter said. "No point in worrying about it so late in the day. Missing griddle cakes along with our meat for another day ain't going to kill us."
He led Sharina into a belt of pandanus trees. A skirt of stilt roots rising as high as Sharina's waist supported each scaly trunk. The ground was noticeably lower than at the cliff's edge, so the area probably flooded during storms.
"What about the boat?" Sharina asked. They'd left the dory tied bow and stern in a cove overlooked by giant palms. There wasn't even a hint of a shoreline. While the vessel could ride where it was during fine weather, the first storm from west or northwest would batter it to splinters against the rocky walls.
"Haul it straight up the trunk of one of them palms and lash it till we need it the next time," the hunter said. "With the mountain so close behind, the wind don't get enough of a run to pull down trees. That's how they got so big. There's the corniche to keep the waves off, all but the spray."
Sharina heard buzzing; she turned to look. A fungus the size of a man's head bulged from the stem of a woody vine. "What—" she began. When she spoke, a cloud of flies rose from the fungus cup with a terrible odor.
Hanno laughed. "You don't want to bump them stinkpots, missie," he said. "Though I tell you the truth, it gets mighty ripe around the cabin sometimes when we're curing a good crop of horn."
They crossed a slight ridge, noticeable more for the fact Sharina heard a brook purling than because the slope reversed significantly. The path Hanno followed didn't show on the ground. Thin soil and lack of light penetrating the forest canopy meant there was no ground cover to be marked by traffic.
The watercourse was a rivulet through blocks of basalt. Ferns, giant philodendrons, and knee-high curls of moss covered both shallow banks.
Sharina smelled wood smoke; she sneezed. "We must be getting—" she said.
The stench of rotting flesh hit her, shocking her mouth and nostrils closed. She thought, Hanno warned me, I guess, but this is awful.
Barca's Hamlet was no more fastidious a place than any other rural community, but meat was a valuable commodity. Very little offal remained after a hog or sheep had been butchered, and that was composted with vegetable waste to decompose before being spread as fertilizer on the house gardens. This was—
The hunter had disappeared. "Hanno?" Sharina called. She walked two paces upstream with her fingers resting on the butt of the Pewle knife. Her skin tingled.
She heard the flies.
The clearing lay under a beetling knob covered by bamboo and wisteria. The cabin had backed against the rock so that the brook washed one side of its foundation. The timbers of the wall on that side still smoldered, though the remainder of the building had burned out completely.
Flies rose in a dozen separate clouds. There were three complete bodies and the scattered remains of a fourth.
Sharina drew the big knife and felt behind her for a tree. She backed against the trunk. Her mouth was open, but she didn't speak.
Hanno came out of the foliage on the other side of the creek. His appearance hadn't changed in any way that Sharina could describe, but his face was as bleak as a tidal surge.
"They've been and gone," he grated softly. "Not so long ago that I can't catch up with them, I guess."
"Who, Hanno?" Sharina said. Her voice was steady; it was like listening to somebody else speak. The Pewle knife didn't tremble in her hand.
"Monkeys," the hunter said. He prodded with the metal-shod butt of his spear, levering one of the bodies up so that Sharina could see it clearly.
The body was more like a man than not, but it was covered with coarse russet hair. The chest was deep, the arms long, sinewy, and muscled like the forelimbs of a cat. By contrast, the bandy legs looked deformed, and the skull showed scarcely a shallow dome above the thick brow ridges.
The creature's lips were drawn back in a rictus of death. The yellowish teeth included long canines in both upper and lower jaws, though one of the latter had been broken to a stump.
"Hairy Men," Sharina said. "The Autochthones of Bight in Katradinus' Cosmogeography."
Hanno let the corpse flop down. A powerful stroke had opened its belly. Coils of intestine, purple-veined and swollen in the damp heat, spilled onto the moss beside the body.
"Monkeys," he repeated as he walked to a lump of the corpse that had been dismembered. He lifted the severed head of a young man with a scar up the right cheek. The dead man's hair was a butternut color except where the scar tissue continued across his scalp; there it was white and exceptionally thin.
"You're looking poorly, Ansule," Hanno said. "I guess you should've gone to Valles after all. The sea voyage would've been good for you."
Sharina squatted, using the tree's presence for support. She'd seen worse, but not when all the victims had been living humans. And this was bad enough in all truth.
Hanno set the head of his partner back on the ground. "We've got a stash up the trunk of that big monkey-puzzle tree," he said, nodding toward a huge araucaria across the creek from the burned-out cabin. "For all they look like monkeys, they don't like to climb. You can stay there till I get back."
He disappeared into the forest with the smooth silence of a shadow moving on the ground when a cloud slides across the sun. From the green luxuriance his voice returned, saying, "Or take the boat if you think you can handle it, missie. I won't be any longer than I need to be."
Then the only sound was the brook, and a spit of steam that came from the ruins of the cabin.
Sharina considered her surroundings. She wasn't frightened. Rationally she supposed she could trust Hanno to know whether there were any dangers in the vicinity, but her lack of fear went well beyond reason.
What Sharina really felt was irritation at the way the hunter had abandoned her, but she knew she didn't have any claim on his time. Besides, she could read Hanno's behavior as a compliment, proof that he thought she could get along without him.
And so she could.
Rainbow bark—orange and yellow tags flaking from the chartreuse underlayer—marked a nearby eucalyptus sapling that was about the diameter of her upper arm. She walked to it, put tension on the trunk with her left hand, and struck not far below the crotch with the Pewle knife.
The wood was soft with sap. Sharina reversed the angle and struck again. The sharp, heavy knifeblade hurled away a large chip. At home, Sharina's tasks included cutting kindling for the inn's fireplaces. She was used to making strong, precise cuts.
The fourth stroke severed the trunk, though its branches interlocked with those of neighboring trees and kept the sapling from toppling. Sharina pulled and shook the eucalyptus loose, then paused to listen for any change in the surrounding forest.
A tree behind her cried, "Fool you! Fool you! Fool you!" Sharina spun around, then realized she'd heard a bird or maybe a lizard. She grinned. Not that she felt like arguing with the creature's opinion.
She lopped off one of the trunk's branchings just above the crotch, then severed the remaining portion four feet higher. After a few judicious blows to shape the lower end into a paddle, Sharina had a serviceable digging stick.
She dug on the other side of the creek where stream-deposited sediment created a deeper layer of soil than elsewhere in this rain-leached land. The understratum was yellowish clay, dense and difficult to dig even when it was sodden. When it dried, as it did on the roots of toppled trees, it became a coarse, crumbly limestone.
Sharina's family had a real shovel whose hardwood blade was shod with iron, but less wealthy households in Barca's Hamlet did all their digging with sticks like this one. The branch she'd trimmed short made a shelf for her foot to bear down on. A pair of wooden-soled clogs would have made the task more comfortable, but Sharina's determination and calluses between them were sufficient.
She didn't try to make a proper grave, just a shallow pit to hold the fragments of Ansule's body. He'd been killed no more than two days before, but his flesh was already softly ripe in the steamy climate. Sharina gathered the parts without squeamishness, then wiped her hands on the hard, jagged leaves of a bamboo before she took up the digging stick again.
Ansule's bones had been gnawed, then cracked for marrow. Sharina's face was emotionless as she resumed digging, this time a trench between the sprawling buttress roots of a great tree.
It was good to have work to do. Hard work saved you from feeling sick or angry or desperately lonely and afraid.
The Hairy Men had been killed by a broad-bladed weapon wielded with strength. The wounds were terrible: a male disemboweled, another nearly decapitated, and the dead female split all the way from collarbone to diaphragm. The survivors—how many were there in the band Hanno was pursuing?—had left the corpses where they lay. The only sign of kinship with the dead was that those bodies hadn't been eaten.
Sharina levered the Hairy Men into the trench with her digging stick. It wasn't deep, just enough that the corpses lay below the surface level when she covered them with broad leaves and scraped loose dirt back over them.
She didn't owe anything to the Hairy Men, but if she was going to stay here she needed to do something about the smell.
When she'd closed both graves, Sharina carried head-sized stones from the stream and laid them in a simple cairn over Ansule's remains. She didn't know what kind of scavengers lived in this forest, but the cool, black blocks were heavy enough to keep out even pigs.
She didn't bother to protect the Hairy Men. Nothing would dig them up while she was staying nearby, and what happened afterward was no concern of hers.
Sharina leaned on the digging stick, breathing through her mouth. Her shoulders ached, her hands were raw, and the ball of her right foot throbbed even though she'd switched feet at intervals. She must not have used as much strength with her left foot... .
Nonnus had planted his garden every year with a digging stick.
The thought twisted Sharina's mind out of the safe channels she'd been keeping it in. She knelt on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. After moments, minutes—time no longer mattered—she began to pray to the Lady; and as she did so, she felt the placid, sturdy presence of Nonnus close by her.
Sharina raised her eyes. The forest chirped and hooted to itself, but the only movement she saw was mites whirling in a stray beam of sunlight.
She wasn't alone. Her friend Nonnus had died, but he hadn't left her. It was easier to remember that here in the immense green peace of the forest.
Sharina got up, smiling again. She'd seen fruit growing out of the trunk of a smooth-barked tree as she followed Hanno here. Bright-colored birds had been squabbling over the red pulp, so it seemed likely enough a human would find it safe to eat. If she didn't like the taste, well, going to bed hungry was no terrible thing.
The sun had been past zenith when she and Hanno found the cabin. It must now be low, but she should have time to weave a simple booth of leaves and saplings against the rain she expected.
She'd smooth a slab of wood, too, and carve the Lady's image on it for Ansule's grave. The headboard wouldn't last long in this climate, but it was what she could do.
Sharina whistled a soft tune, a lullaby that her father had brought with him from Ornifal to sing to his children. The words were nonsense, but they soothed her mind as no others could.
She needed to set a network of lines and pebbles to rattle if anyone tried to creep up on her in the dark. The inner bark of the eucalyptus would strip into suitable fibers.
Sharina wasn't really worried about being surprised in the darkness, though. Nonnus would be with her.
And nobody ever took Nonnus unaware.
Ilna had expected difficulty in finding a ship sailing direct from Erdin to Valles, since the Earl of Sandrakkan and King Valence were as hostile as they could be without open warfare. There was no difficulty at all: a lounging stevedore had immediately directed her and Maidus to the Pole Star, leaving on the ebb tide tomorrow afternoon.
The stevedore hadn't propositioned her—or the boy—after he took a good look into Ilna's eyes. She knew her duty to her brother and she'd do it—of course; but she was nevertheless irritated at being dragged from the path on which she'd set herself. Shadows from the low sun might have made her look angrier than she really was.
Ilna grinned. Or again, maybe they just underlined the truth.
Her nose wrinkled. Erdin was a river port. Though people in Barca's Hamlet weren't overcareful about what they dumped in the water, there weren't enough of them for their sewage to have the impact Erdin's did.
"I don't think I'll ever get used to this smell," Ilna said. "Well, if I don't return, I won't have to."
"Mistress," Maidus said miserably, "don't talk that way. You've got to come back!"
If Ilna had wanted to, she could have woven a tapestry that displayed her entire future and the lives of everyone she knew. She smiled, a grim expression even by her own standards. As if things wouldn't be bad enough when they happened, without worrying about them beforehand as well!
Ilna glanced down at the boy. "You'll be fine with Captain Voder," she said. "Better than you would with me, at any rate. Just remember to do what he says the first time. He's not one to threaten, that one."
Maidus sniffed. "You think he's scary, Mistress Ilna?" he said. "Ask anybody in the Crescent who they'd rather go up against, Voder or you!"
"Then they're fools," Ilna said mildly. "Though if more people behaved properly, Voder and I might find our lives quieter."
She wondered if that was true. Well, it wasn't a notion that was likely to be tested in her lifetime.
Ilna had bargained for nearly an hour to get passage for three at twelve Sandrakkan silver Earls—new-minted so that the earl's head and the wheat sheaves stood up sharply from the unworn surface. The Pole Star's captain had first demanded a golden Rider, twenty-five Earls in value, for each passenger.
Ilna sniffed. She could have paid the extortionate price; paid it a dozen times over, if she'd chosen to. That wasn't the problem. For a moment her anger that a worm of a sailor thought he could cheat her had almost overwhelmed her. She'd reached for a tuft of rope yarn to bind the fool's mind to whatever purpose she chose—
And then caught herself. The bargain took longer by haggling in normal fashion, but it was fair on both sides when Ilna and the captain spat on their palms and shook hands.
Her powers would pave a road straight back to Hell if she ever let her anger rule her.
"If I'd known what those wizards were planning," Maidus said, "they'd never have—"
"They came to tell me my brother was in danger," Ilna said sharply. "Would you have concealed that information from me, Maidus?"
The true answer to that was "Yes, in a heartbeat"; but the boy had the decency instead to mutter, "No, mistress."
Halphemos and Cerix had been smart enough to realize after a few preliminary inquiries that there were people in the Crescent who wouldn't want Ilna os-Kenset to leave. Instead of trying to find her by asking directly, Halphemos had worked a series of small locating spells, coming closer with each one.
"I wish I could come along," Maidus said.
"To get in my way?" Ilna said. "No thank you."
That wasn't true, but it was a reason the boy would accept with only an occasional sniffle of despair. Maidus had proved himself a clever fellow and a determined one.
The truth would have been "I don't want you with me because anything powerful enough to swallow Cashel is too dangerous for me to involve you with." If Ilna had said that, the boy would have managed to come along even if it meant tying himself to the blade of the Pole Star's steering oar.
Erdin's port didn't shut down completely when the sun set, but most of the remaining activity was from crews stowing the last of their cargo for a departure at dawn. Lanterns and the light of flaring torches were a poor substitute for the sun, and the risk of sparks on sun-dried wood and fabric made late work dangerous as well as difficult.
The sky was still bright enough to reflect from the brick wharfs. Delay in hauling or loading meant that some goods remained on the docks, piled under nets to deter pilfering. Each mound was guarded by a watchman with a lantern. Well before dawn the tallow lamp candles would have burned down and the men would be dozing in crevices among the bales and barrels, but by then the thieves would likely have gone to sleep also.
Ilna chuckled. "Mistress?" Maidus said.
"Laziness prevents more crime than conscience ever did," she said. The boy looked at her with a puzzled expression.
They were nearing a moderate-sized ship, much the same as the one which Ilna had watched carry her friends away. This vessel had a tin plaque nailed to the curving stem; the pattern punched onto the white metal was a gull touching a wave top, though Ilna doubted she'd have known that except for her familiarity with equally stylized designs in fabric.
Most of the docked vessels had a crewman on watch to rap the deck with a cudgel if anyone passed nearby. This one was silent. Either the watch was asleep, or the vessel was in such bad condition that the captain didn't worry about anyone stealing his cordage.
"I'll be back as soon as I can, Maidus," Ilna said in a gentler tone than she'd used on the boy previously. "My first duty's to my brother. Though—"
She threw back one wing of her cape and examined the sash cinching her tunic. Despite the poor lighting, she could see that the pattern remained smooth and unharmed.
Ilna laughed without humor. "My first duty," she corrected herself, "I should rather have said, is to Liane bos-Benliman. I treated her worse, and with less cause, than I did most people in the recent past. But Liane seems quite capable of taking care of herself."
"Mistress Ilna?" the boy said in a small voice. He was staring at his feet. "If I promise to—"
Four figures leaped from where darkness had hidden them in the bow of the adjacent ship. They weren't men, though they wore sailors' clothing and were manlike except for their bestial features and the faint shimmer of scales where their skin was exposed. Ilna hadn't seen the creature her brother had found in a cider royal cask, but she could recognize Scaled Men from his description.
The noose was free in Ilna's hands before she was consciously aware of danger. The Scaled Men carried hardwood belaying pins from the ship's furniture. All of them had daggers as well, and a curve-bladed sword was tucked beneath one's leather belt.
Maidus gave a shriek of anger that stopped with the toonk! of a head blow. Ilna turned, casting the noose as she did. There were two more Scaled Man behind her. She didn't know where they'd concealed themselves. Maidus was on the bricks, bleeding from a torn scalp, and the Scaled Man who'd struck him was raising a belaying pin for another blow.
The silken loop settled over the neck of the creature who'd knocked the boy down. Ilna jerked the Scaled Man into the path of its fellow, ducking as she did so. The club aimed by one of the quartet from the ship slashed past. The noosed creature flailed like a headless chicken, choking as it tangled its fellow.
Ilna snatched Maidus up by the sturdy tunic she'd given him. Her own cape pulled away, delaying her for an instant she couldn't afford. She dropped the noose and had her paring knife half out of its bone case when scaly hands caught both her wrists.
The creatures were silent. The Scaled Man on her right didn't make a sound even when Ilna drew her sunbeam-sharp blade across its arm.
Hands gripped her hair. She squirmed and bit flesh as dry as a snake's skin.
She didn't feel the club hit her, but she heard the hollow ring of the blow. The night went white. She was as blind as if she'd been staring into the noonday sun.
Ilna hadn't called for help. No one was likely to run to a frightened woman on the docks, except perhaps to demand a turn for himself. She would be damned before she wasted breath on a vain exercise.
Hands lifted her. She thought her wrists and ankles were being bound,
but she wasn't sure even of that. She could hear voices, and they weren't human.
She was lowered again. She lay on a wooden grate, smelling bilge water below. She was sure her limbs were bound, but the light behind her eyeballs still blinded her.
Mooring lines thumped on the deck. Wood squealed, a sound Ilna identified after a moment as sweeps being fitted into oarlocks. She felt the ship rock.
The River Erd was unbuoyed as a defensive measure: no enemy could sail up its winding reaches by night to take Erdin unaware. To attempt it was to go aground on a mudbank or nose into a blind slough.
But the Scaled Men were unquestionably under way, taking Ilna os-Kenset with them.