Garric rested his head on his hands, feeling as tired as he'd ever been. Rural labor was sometimes backbreaking and often brutally long—harvesting went on from dawn to the dusk of long summer days, because the next morning might bring rain.
What he felt now was a sort of mental exhaustion, though, that was completely different but no less punishing. For the past ten hours, he hadn't been out of his chair.
He smiled faintly. That wasn't quite true. He'd used the close chest in an alcove off this room, the queen's former reception hall and now his office. Liane had suggested it was more politic for Garric to make his headquarters in the queen's mansion rather than Royhas' town house.
"The next petitioner is Nimir bor-Nummerman, a landholder from the Routan Peninsula, that's on the west of the island," Liane said, holding the wax tablet on which she'd jotted notes at a slant to the three-wick oil lamp. "He told me he was here simply to offer loyalty on behalf of his district, but Tadai says that he's in an inheritance struggle with his two half-brothers."
"We may still want to support him," Garric muttered into his hands. "His brothers could have gotten the inheritance through the queen. May the Lady guide my steps!"
Garric hadn't thought so often about the Great Gods since he was a little boy watching the Tithe Procession. Priests from Carcosa drew carts with giant statues of the Lady and the Shepherd around the borough annually, collecting the temples' due. Garric knew now that the images were only painted wood, but their colored silk robes and gilt accoutrements looked dazzlingly divine to eyes that hadn't seen much of the world.
Now he thought about the Gods because he needed to believe there were powers who understood the things that he did not.
"Shall I send him in?" Liane said. Royhas—any of the conspirators—would have provided Garric with an experienced secretary who already knew the ins and outs of Ornifal politics. Liane was a better choice. Garric could trust her to have her first loyalty to the same things he was loyal to, fuzzy though the concepts were.
Garric rubbed his temples. "Liane," he said, "I don't think I can talk to anybody else today."
He took a swig of water laced with citrus juice from a jug decorated with a pair of heroes fighting winged demons. It was Sandrakkan ware, red figures on a black background rather than black on cream as was the convention here on Ornifal.
He looked up and smiled at Liane. She'd bought all the office furnishings the day before. "Has the shipper you found to take the letter arrived yet?"
"His name's Ansulf," she said, rising. "I don't think so but I'll check the waiting room. Shall I tell the others you won't see anyone else today?"
"Would you?" Garric said. Of course, the petitioners would be back tomorrow, along with hundreds of other people who thought they had something to gain from Garric or-Reise. "I haven't written the letter yet. I..."
"I'll leave you alone," Liane said, responding to the request he hadn't voiced. He needed some time to himself; to himself and Carus. "When Ansulf arrives, I'll knock on the door. All right?"
Garric nodded. Prince Garric, he supposed he was. It made his stomach knot to think of that. Lady, please guide my steps, he whispered as the door closed softly behind Liane.
He walked to the window. The street beyond had been dark for hours. The other conspirators were busy in the work of government—Royhas, Tadai, and Waldron were, at any rate. Pitre should be contacting the king to arrange a meeting, and Sourous was supposedly arranging an assembly of the city's trade guilds. His family controlled the Ornifal cloth trade. Royhas said that whatever one thought of Sourous himself, his staff was excellent.
No matter how good an underling was, and even if the underling was a noble who traced his lineage back two thousand years, there were going to be people who insisted on dealing with the man in charge. Garric groaned. Things were going to be awful when he really was in charge.
He leaned on the window ledge and grinned tiredly. He let his mind go blank, then slipped into the reverie that brought him to the side of King Carus.
Below them was a crowded plaza bordered by monumental buildings. Garric thought he recognized the temple in front of him, though only three of the six high columns still stood in the Carcosa of the present day.
"The temple of the Shepherd Who Guards the Kingdom?" he said.
Carus nodded.
"That's my adoption ceremony," Carus said. "King Carilan adopted me as his son and heir presumptive. I was only a second cousin. He had closer kin, but he and his advisors thought I'd provide the strong hand necessary to hold the kingdom together in a time of rising stresses."
Smoke rose from the altar built on a low platform midway up the temple steps. Priests and courtiers in gold and varicolored robes of state stood to either side. Carilan and the teenaged Carus, kneeling before him, wore the bleached white wool of ancient formality.
"How do you like being king, lad?" Carus asked with a grin.
"I hate it," Garric said flatly. "The people I'm dealing with now are the ones who're so desperate that they're coming to me because they couldn't get redress from Valence."
He laughed without humor and added, "Or much of anything else from Valence, apparently. Royhas says the king hadn't been seen in public for six months, though occasionally he'll call in somebody to assign a special task. The way he told Royhas to murder me, for example."
Carus nodded, his face no longer smiling. "You say you hate it, lad," he said bitterly. "I hated all the business of governing so much that I looked for excuses not to do it. Any excuse would do, but going on campaign was the best one. That's what I'd been made king for, wasn't it? To be a strong hand!"
Carilan was a slender man who looked seventy years old, though Garric knew from Adiler's History that the king was barely fifty though in bad health. In the vision below, Carilan took a massive gold ring from the middle finger of his left hand and placed it on Carus' finger while the youth continued to kneel.
"The ring weighed half a pound," Carus said, shaking his head in bemused memory. "It was only worn at these ceremonies. It disappeared when Dalopan pirates sacked Carcosa after my fleet and I sank. I suppose some slave hammered the ring into foil to cover the throne of a king with bones through his nose."
"But you were crowned to be a strong hand, weren't you?" Garric asked, troubled by the anger he'd heard in the voice of a king who laughed even in situations where others ran screaming. "You had to be."
"I had to be," Carus said, "but I had to be more than that. And I wasn't. If the only tool you have is an axe, then you turn all your problems into trees to be chopped."
He shook his head, wistful but no longer angry. "I told the lords of Ornifal that I'd harry their island from one end to the other if they didn't stop bribing my enemies to spare Ornifal's trade. What was I thinking of? Why couldn't I see what would happen, the way I understand it now?"
"They stopped sending taxes to Carcosa?" Garric guessed. "Because they thought they'd just be braiding a rope for you to hang them with?"
"And they doubled the subsidies they were paying under the table to the Earls of Cordin and Blaise," Carus agreed ruefully. "Figuring if they were ready to revolt, I wouldn't dare take my fleet across the Inner Sea to Valles."
"But you did," Garric said. On the temple steps, Carilan raised Carus by the hand. They stood, their arms lifted together. Underpriests came carefully up the steps leading a garlanded bullock with gilt horns. "You crossed the sea to crush the Duke of Yole."
"I wasn't the only one who could miscalculate," Carus said, grim again. "I figured I could smash Yole with a surprise attack, hang a dozen nobles in Valles on my way back, and then deal with Blaise and Cordin. It might have worked. Moving faster than the other man expects wins campaigns as surely as it does duels, lad."
"Only the Duke of Yole had a wizard," Garric said. He thought of the Hooded One, standing in black majesty as the world crumbled about him. "Or the other way around, perhaps."
"Either way, they put paid to me and my fleet," Carus said. "And the kingdom, and all society higher than three huts together and an ox to plow with. If it hadn't been Yole, it would have been another place I overreached, using my sword when I should have used my tongue."
A priest brought a spike-headed hammer down on the bullock's forehead. The animal kicked out in a death spasm, then collapsed on the platform. An underpriest drew a gilded knife across the beast's throat while another priest caught the blood in a flat bowl.
Blood sacrifice had disappeared in the poverty following the collapse of the Old Kingdom. Garric was just as glad it hadn't returned as wealth increased during the ensuing millennium. Pans of hot, fresh blood had nothing to do with the Lady he envisioned, and wanton slaughter was even more alien to a Shepherd's duties.
"I made enemies of the Ornifal nobles," Carus said softly, "when all they'd been before were fools. Though not so great a fool as I, to think my sword could solve all my problems. You'll do better, lad. You're doing better already."
The scene below them was dissolving. From far away Garric heard the sharp tap of Liane's bronze stylus on the door. "Master Ansulf is here," her voice whispered.
"But for the problems that do need a sword," said Carus, smiling again, "they'll find there's a strong hand on the throne to swing one. By the Shepherd and the honor of Haft, they will!"
Garric was alone in a high-ceilinged room of the queen's mansion. The stone under his palms was polished alabaster, as cool and smooth as the visage of the queen as she fled Valles two days before. A night breeze blew through the open casement. On the streets below, linkmen guided a happy group who were caroling about sunshine and freedom.
"Bring him in please, Liane," Garric said, turning from the window. He still hadn't written the letter.
He sat at the desk but smiled over his shoulder in greeting to Liane and the man with her. Ansulf was blond and sallow. His tunics, the inner one hanging a hand's breadth beneath the outer, were of Ornifal style and bore Ornifal embroidery, but the man himself was from Cordin or just possibly Tisamur.
"Master Ansulf," Garric said as he dipped and wiped his pen nib, "forgive my delay. I'll have this for you in a moment."
Ansulf had spent most of his adult life in the service of Serian merchants. The Serians, separate by both culture and religion from the rest of the Isles' population, were always viewed askance and often the subject of persecution. Their industry, craftsmanship, and business acumen made them more, not less, hated.
Serians were nonviolent as a matter of religion and used pygmy cannibals from their isle's highlands to guard their ships and buildings in the outer world. In much the same way they hired men like Ansulf to act as business agents where native Serians would be robbed or killed. Liane's family had used Serian bankers, and it was through that contact that she had found the messenger Garric required.
Garric wrote in the swift, neat hand his father had taught him:
If you are well, it is good. I also am well.
In this place I have some friends and many who call themselves my friends. If the Gods permit, I will tomorrow be a prince and will act in all ways as though I held the office of King of the Isles. I have an abundance of people who say they can teach me to run a kingdom; but I have a palace to staff and run as well, and there is no one here whom I trust to do that for me.
I need you. The bearer of this letter will provide whatever funds and facilities you request for the journey. I cannot overstate the dangers you will face, but there is no one else whom I can ask. I hope you will come at once.
Garric or-Reise
Given at Valles on Ornifal, the Queen's house.
Garric folded the letter into three crosswise. He wrote the address on the flat side, then turned the document and reached for one of the candles to seal the folded edge with wax. He paused, then opened the letter again and blotted or-Reise from his signature. Above his given name he wrote in tiny script, Your loving son. Only then did he seal the letter and give it to Ansulf.
The shipper looked at the document with professional appraisal, then tucked it into a pouch whose leather was stiffened by iron wire. "I've discussed the anchorage with merchants who know the district, Your Lordship," he said.
"At Barca's Hamlet?" Garric said in surprise. "There isn't an anchorage. I mean, not for anything bigger than a fishing boat."
Ansulf shrugged. "I think we can manage," he said. "Landing on the east coast will save at least a week over going overland from Carcosa. It's in the hands of the Lady, of course, but—"
He smiled with the sort of quiet confidence Garric had seen on the face of every man he'd be willing to dignify with the name professional.
"—you've been recommended highly to me. I dare say the same people have told you I can be trusted."
Garric laughed. He stood up and clasped arms with Ansulf, gripping one another hand to elbow. "May the Shepherd watch over you," he said. "And—when you're in Barca's Hamlet, would you crumble a bit of cheese on my behalf to Duzi? My father can show you the hill where he stands."
The shipper grinned. "I've never been too proud to ask the Gods for help," he said as he opened the door to leave. "And it's never done me harm that I can see."
The latch clicked behind him. Liane leaned against the door and said, "We've had messages from all the others except Waldron. Basically, the reorganization of the bureaucracy is going even better than we'd hoped. Sourous has arranged for you to meet Papnotis tomorrow in the king's palace. If matters go well, you'll see the king immediately."
Garric nodded absently. He was dizzy from trying to remember everything he'd done and said today.
"I don't know what Waldron's silence means," Liane said, watching Garric closely.
He shrugged. "That Waldron is as proud as any three other men," he said. "Which we already knew. If there were a real problem with levying troops in our name, Royhas would have told me. He's got spies close to Waldron, I'm sure."
"Then—," Liane began.
"I wonder if he'll come?" Garric said. He hadn't noticed Liane starting to speak. "I'm not really his son, after all."
"The man who raised you," Liane said quietly, "isn't going to refuse his duty. And as for not being Reise's son—why do you say that?"
Garric frowned, feeling awkward. He was sure that he'd told Liane that... "I'm Countess Tera's child," he said carefully. "Reise was just her secretary. He pretended I was his son to save me as he fled Carcosa during the riots when the count and countess were killed."
Liane nodded. It suddenly struck Garric that Liane, raised as a noble while he was tending sheep in Barca's Hamlet, was enormously more sophisticated than he was.
"I know Countess Tera was your mother," she said. "That doesn't tell me who your father was, Garric."
She stepped close, hugged him, and backed quickly away. "Anyway, Reise will come as quickly as he can. Now—"
The door opened, fast and without warning. Garric, driven by reflexes honed in another man's lifetime, had his sword clear of the scabbard before Royhas halted with a startled expression. Waldron, half a step behind him, eyed the tableau with a hint of the first amusement Garric had seen on the old warrior's face.
"Sorry," Garric said as he slipped the long blade back into its scabbard.
Royhas was in court robes, plain beige silk with the broad red stripe of the chancellery sewn down the right side. The stripe was a recent addition to a garment which, though not shabby, was well broken-in. "Lord Waldron's brought news," he said, nodding to let the other man speak for himself.
"The commanders of the four regular regiments—not the Blood Eagles—had agreed to join us," Waldron said. His face worked in disgust. "Though the cowards weren't going to do anything until Valence capitulated on his own. I was waiting for the first installment of the bribe to arrive from Tadai's bankers."
Garric nodded in understanding. The Ornifal standing army—calling it "the royal army" gave Valence too much credit—was ill paid, ill led, and badly understrength. The four regiments based near Valles totaled only about fifteen hundred troops when they should have had a thousand apiece.
They could make the next days difficult if they opposed the conspiracy, though. If the local regiments backed the king, he might resist at least until levies from the northern landholders reached Valles to give Waldron the muscle to overawe them. Without their open support, Valence would have to come to terms with Garric.
Garric didn't expect fighting. Besides, he wasn't—nor was Carus—concerned about the outcome if it did come to sword strokes; but he believed Tenoctris when she warned that there was very little time.
"The cart with the money chest was in sight," Waldron said bitterly. "Then a messenger came from the Naval Arsenal saying that the fleet on Eshkol had just proclaimed Admiral Nitker King of the Isles and that he'd be arriving shortly to take charge. The regiments marched to the Arsenal. 'To await developments,' that brainless twit Pior who commands Harken's Regiment told me."
"There's ten thousand men in the fleet base on Eshkol," Royhas said with a frown.
"Eight," Liane said, reaching for one of the score of notebooks in her valise but sure of the figure without it. "They're understrength as well, though not as badly as the army."
"We'll crush them like bugs when the levies from the north get here," Waldron said impatiently. "The nobles are coming with real soldiers, not rowers with swords in their hands."
Garric had both history and Carus' vivid memories to warn him that Waldron was making the sort of assumptions that could lead to disaster. A body of disciplined men experienced in working together might be more than a match for a ragbag of noble retainers, even though the latter had better armor and perhaps more experience in fighting on land.
Aloud he said, "Well, in the short term it doesn't matter to us. We'll—"
The hallway behind the two nobles was packed with their armed guards and the petitioners who hadn't gone home despite Liane's attempt to dismiss them. Smoke from the extra lamps brought in by the newcomers merged with that of the wall sconces. The haze hovered a foot beneath the coffered ceiling.
"What?" Waldron said, more in anger than surprise. "Nitker isn't as great a fool as most of the naval sort and he's obviously ambitious. If—"
"In the short term, I said," Garric resumed. Fatigue had ground away the layers of civilized politeness that might have softened his response. Waldron being Waldron, politeness would have gotten in the way of the necessary message. "Our concern was that the regiments in Valles not support Valence against us. Who they do support is immaterial for the moment, so long as it's not him. We'll come to terms with the king tomorrow, as planned, and deal with Nitker—"
He grinned, then broke into a booming laugh that was as much that of his ancestor as it was Garric's own. " 'Deal with him at leisure,' I was going to say," Garric continued, "but I don't expect any of us will have leisure for longer than I care to guess. What I will have—"
Garric grinned again, a rakish but not unfriendly expression that raised Royhas' eyebrow and cooled Waldron's anger into wariness. They were wondering if stress had driven Garric mad.
"—is sleep, which I need if I'm going to be of any use when I see Valence. I hope you'll forgive me, but for the moment there's nothing I can do that will more greatly benefit our cause."
He bowed. Liane stepped between Garric and the nobles; and they, nodding, closed the door behind them.
Sharina waited until she was sure that one of the two men was Hanno. She half-hopped, half-swung down from the hiding place she'd found for herself, the stub of an araucaria whose trunk had sheared a dozen feet in the air. "It's all right," she called. "There are no enemies here."
Hanno stepped out from behind the buttress roots of a silk cotton tree where he'd sheltered when he heard the flies. "Unarc," he said, "this is the girl I told you about. Guess I wasn't lying when I told you she was a perky one. Missie, here's Unarc, and I guess he's not quite as dead as I figured him."
The man with Hanno was short and built like a stump. He was completely bald. His beard and mustache were so full that his head would look more normal if it were mounted upside down on his neck.
Unarc held a knife the length of his forearm; its heavy blade curved inward like that of a pruning hook. His right arm was bound to his chest by leather wrappings which were both sling and bandage.
"He'd got his boat raised when the Monkeys who'd burned his hut caught up with him," Hanno explained. "There was more fuss—"
His spear dipped toward Unarc's injury.
"—and when it was over, the boat was farther out than a fellow with one arm could swim to it."
"Pleased to meet you, miss," Unarc said. It was perhaps the most obvious lie Sharina had ever heard from the mouth of an adult. The bald hunter dug his big toe into the soil and stared at it all the time he was speaking. "Guess I'll look...."
He didn't so much drift away as jump toward the baobab tree. The presence of a woman embarrassed him beyond words.
Hanno's spearbutt touched the body of a soldier with a sword in his hand. The skin of the corpse looked sallow; the pool of blood beneath the deep slash in his thigh was still tacky.
"I see you kept yourself busy while I was gone," the hunter said. Apologetically he added, "If I'd thought there'd be trouble, I'd not have left you."
"By the Shepherd's holy staff!" Unarc said from the echoing interior of the baobab. "There's four more of them here!"
Hanno raised an eyebrow, though he didn't speak.
"It wasn't me, exactly," Sharina said. "My friend Nonnus ... Nonnus helped me."
She was tired and uncomfortable at talking about the slaughter. She slid the Pewle knife into its sheath and stood, wishing that she'd had time to bury the bodies. She couldn't have hidden what had happened, of course.
Unarc came out of the tree's shelter, his mouth open to shout some further revelation. He saw that the others were talking and remained silent.
"You mean he taught you to use a knife that way?" Hanno said.
A creature in the treetops began to call: who-oop, who-oop, over and over. The hunter glanced upward with a hard glint in his eyes. Just as suddenly his spear arm relaxed from the insane cast it was about to attempt. He gave Sharina a faint smile. He was uncomfortable too.
"No," Sharina muttered, looking away. She'd washed her tunic in the stream. Cold water had sluiced out most of the blood, but the hunters' practiced eyes weren't going to be deceived. "He came back and did ... what he did for me. Alone. But he's gone again now."
Hanno nodded as though he understood. Unarc quietly rejoined them. "Nonnus," Hanno said reflectively. "He'd be the friend you said could have me for supper, would he?"
"I'm sorry," Sharina said. "I shouldn't have said that. I was upset and I thought you were another enemy."
The big hunter smiled in a sort of humor. He toed the soldier's hand to see if he could loosen the sword, but the hilt was in a death grip. "Oh," he said, "I don't know that you misspoke, though it'd be a fight folks'd pay money to see. What do you figure, Unarc?"
"Horsefeathers, Hanno," the bald man said uncomfortably. "You could take him. Unless he got inside, and then, well, it'd be a fight."
"Anyhow, missie," Hanno said, businesslike again, "your Nonnus is a right good man. I'm proud to know a friend of his."
He gestured with his spear. "Now," he said, "Unarc and me figure that since we can't get off the island for a bit, we ought to learn something about what's going on. Are you up to joining us?"
"It don't seem she'll be slowing us down as much as I'd figured," Unarc admitted, speaking to the ground. "Sorry to doubt you, Hanno."
"Yes," Sharina said. "I think we need to learn what's going on. And maybe to stop it."
When they'd landed the previous afternoon, Cashel had been so glad to have firm land under his feet and an ordinary sky overhead that he hadn't given much thought to where they were. This is, he hadn't wondered whether they were back in the world he and Zahag had been booted out of in the courtyard of King Folquin's palace.
The sea rolled in much the same way as the surf did on the coast of Haft. The constellations were right, more or less; the common ones were much higher in the sky and there were stars on the southern horizon that even Cozro had never seen before, though he said he'd sailed as far south as Shengy when he was younger. All that meant was that they were a distance beyond where the captain had been, not that they were in another world.
But Cashel's skin still prickled in a fashion that he'd come to associate with things being ... wrong. With wizardry. There, he'd gone and thought it.
"Wow!" called Zahag, who'd ambled up the beach out of sight. "Come see these eggs!"
Cashel looked up from his work. They hadn't found sign of anything more dangerous than stunted pigs on this island, but it wasn't as though they'd had time to really explore. Zahag wasn't in danger and Cozro—even without the cutlass, which Cashel was using as their only woodworking tool—was probably safe as well, more's the pity; but Cashel didn't like leaving Aria alone.
"Would you like to take a walk, Princess?" Cashel asked.
Aria sat in the shade, gripping her knees and staring at the sand between her feet. She looked up without enthusiasm. Saltwater had gummed her hair and made her eyes bloodshot. Abrasion wherever cloth rubbed skin had raised rashes and even welts.
"What does it matter?" she asked. She got up, though.
"Here, you carry the cutlass," Cashel said, handing her the weapon. "I'll take the staff, hey?"
Cashel was planing a length of palm trunk into an oar. The result was pretty good. Better than he'd counted on being able to manage, anyway. He hadn't decided whether he was going to build a larger boat or if they'd just leave the island on the dinghy when he'd made oars and had stepped a mast.
"You'd drag me if I didn't, wouldn't you?" the girl said bitterly. At some time in the recent chaos she seemed to have lost the belief that she was being tested like Patient Muzira. That was a shame, but Aria was a lot sturdier now than the fluffball Cashel and Zahag had rescued from the wizard's tower. She'd done things and she could do more, though she thought it was terribly unjust that she had to.
They set out along the sandy beach in the direction Zahag had called from. There must be a vein of sweet water somewhere under the island, because the vegetation was lush instead of the bitter, small-leafed tamarisks Cashel had seen on similar islets in the Inner Sea. For now the castaways had quenched their thirst with fruit, but maybe he could dig a well for drinking water when they sailed away from the island.
Cashel wasn't sure they could carry enough food and water for four in the dinghy; but neither was he sure that he could build a serviceable boat all by himself, and it looked very much like that's how it would have to be made. Aria was worthless; Zahag wouldn't pay attention to anything for as long as two minutes straight; and Cozro ... well, Cozro had found a fruit the size of a peach with a hard rind. Opened, it fermented in a couple of hours, and that was all he'd shown interest in from that moment on.
"I wondered if you were coming!" Zahag said angrily when Cashel and Aria appeared. The ape stood on a six-foot mound of seaweed just above the tideline. He'd tossed away the top layer and was grubbing down into the interior with both hands. "If you think I'm going to do all the work, you'd better think again!"
"I didn't think that," Cashel said dryly. He'd gotten used to the ape. Zahag and Aria both did about the best they could. A lot of times that wasn't very good, but the contrast with Cozro made Cashel appreciate his longtime companions better. "You've found eggs, you say?"
For answer, Zahag raised in both hands a pale cream egg the size of a watermelon. "What kind of bird laid this, do you suppose?" he asked. With the question, he looked skyward in sudden concern.
Cozro strode out of the foliage toward the interior of the island. "Say!" he said. "But that's not a bird egg, it's a turtle. A bird that big couldn't fly."
The captain was drinking his punch from a scooped-out coconut shell. He had a line of similar containers fermenting in the sun near where Cashel had dragged the dinghy up the beach. Preparing the coconut shells and filling them with fruit pulp was the only work Cozro had done since they landed. Zahag set the egg on the mass of vegetation which had been keeping it warm. It didn't look like any bird's nest Cashel had seen either, but—
"It's got a hard shell," he said. "Turtle eggs are leathery. Besides, it'd be a real big turtle."
Cozro snorted. "There's plenty of things in the sea bigger'n what laid that," he said, slurping a draft of his punch. "You won't see a bird bigger'n an albatross, though, and for all their wingspread they don't weigh much more'n a chicken. Turtle eggs are fine eating, though."
He finished his cup of punch, belched, and walked away without taking further notice of his companions. Off to get the next shell in the line, and perhaps to refill the empty.
Cashel had tried the punch. He knew his tastes were pretty narrow compared to those of people who'd lived in bigger places and traveled more, so he tried to make allowances.
The beer Reise brewed for his inn was bound with germander from the woodlands of the borough, not hops imported from Sandrakkan. Germander made beer dark and bitter, but it was the taste Cashel had grown to expect.
Wine was rare and expensive in Barca's Hamlet. He'd had sips and didn't much care for it, though cider mulled with spices could be a pleasure on winter nights.
Making allowances didn't help. Cozro's punch tasted like rotten fruit, it was that simple. Cashel would've drunk seawater before he'd suck down more of that oily, sticky liquid.
"Are there many of them?" Aria asked, stepping closer to Zahag but unwilling to climb onto the mass of decaying vegetation. "Can we really eat them?"
The princess could be peevish with Cashel and the ape, but she didn't seem to recognize that the captain even existed. So far as helping was concerned, he didn't; but Cashel figured Cozro would be quick enough to claim a share of the egg after Cashel had lit a fire with the firebow he'd made as his first project after landing.
"They're four to a layer," Zahag said. "I'd say three layers."
He hopped down from the mound with the egg in his arms. "As for eating it," he went on, "I don't see—"
"Don't smash it!" Cashel shouted. He was too late. Zahag dropped the egg; it crunched but didn't smash. The ape quickly rolled the dished-in portion uppermost.
"What's the matter?" the ape said in puzzlement. He thrust his hand through the broken shell and drew it up dripping with both white and yolk. "I didn't lose any in the sand; and anyway, there's plenty more."
"Ugh," Aria said as Zahag started to lick the egg's contents off his hairy hand with a tongue like a blanket. She turned her back.
"Yeah, but I wanted to save the shell," Cashel said. "To hold water when we get away from here."
"Well, there's plenty more," the ape repeated with his usual unconcern. He climbed the mound, sucking at his fingers.
"No, they can stay in the nest for now," Cashel said, organizing their escape in his mind. Maybe he could build a raft to hold the supplies. He'd been wondering what to do for water butts, so the giant eggs looked like a gift from the Gods.
Cashel couldn't understand the ape. Though he could read and talk as well as Garric, Zahag just didn't see why you planned for the future.
"I'm getting hungry," Aria said, looking over her shoulder toward the egg. "But all runny like that...?"
Cashel scooped the egg up in both hands; he could carry it in one, but he was afraid the crack Zahag started in opening the shell would spread and spill the contents on the ground.
"I'll put it on a slow fire," he said to Aria. They didn't have a pot to boil it in. Even back in Barca's Hamlet, the only containers big enough would be the laundry cauldrons that several of the wealthier households had. "And maybe we can fry some if we can find a rock flat enough."
They trudged back toward the fireset and the upturned dinghy. Cashel could hear Cozro swearing as he pricked himself while gathering more fruit for his punch.
Three would be easier to plan for than four were, but Cashel knew in his heart he wouldn't make that decision. Once in a while, though, he wished was the sort of man who could leave the captain behind—and sleep nights afterward.
Ilna was drowning. She reached up a hand with glacial slowness. It broke surface. She thrashed violently, awakening as her head thrust upward. Sputtering and suddenly conscious that she was nude, she looked around her.
Several willowy, perfect humans stepped back with grave smiles as liquid splashed from the trough Ilna was lying in. It wasn't water but something thicker. It was as viscous as olive oil to the touch, but it vanished into miniature rainbows when it dripped from Ilna's body. She hadn't been drowning, either, though all but her nose and lips must have been under the surface until she awakened.
"Where am I?" Ilna demanded. "Who are you?"
The bearded man holding a cup and ewer opened his mouth to reply. Before he could get a word out, Ilna added, "And where are my clothes? I want my clothes!"
She was even more determined about that because none of the strangers around her were clothed. The air was balmy and breathed perfumes like those of flowers at evening. Her skin tingled with a healthy feeling when she stepped from the trough.
"Of course, we'll bring your clothes as soon as they're ready," the bearded man said. "They're being cleaned now. But you're welcome to fresh garments if you'd like, though we ourselves don't see the need."
"This is the Garden, mistress," a girl of about Ilna's age said. "I'm Cory. This is Wim—"
The bearded man nodded.
"And I'm Bram," said a youth who might have been Cory's twin brother. "Ah ... we call ourselves the People of Beauty, but that sounds pretty boastful, I guess. You don't have to call us anything."
"Except friends," Cory said with a bright smile. She stepped close and hugged Ilna. She looked so perfect that Ilna expected her flesh to be as cool as beeswax, but in fact Cory felt completely normal.
Another slender woman walked toward them, carrying Ilna's tunics draped over one arm. She wasn't running but her clean strides covered ground swiftly. A herd of deer with long, backward-sloping fangs in their upper jaws ran across the meadow behind her.
"The Garden" seemed as good a name for this place as Ilna could have come up with, not that it told her anything she wanted to know. Fruit trees grew, separately and in small groves. Goats and miniature deer browsed beneath them but didn't seem to strip the bark as Ilna would have expected from her own experience.
Water ran in profusion. From the large pond in the near distance sprang a fairylike pink fountain that was all spines and curlicues. Birds rested on it and occasionally dived into the water. When they rose again, they carried fish or frogs in their bills. The Garden wasn't entirely a place of peace.
Though it seemed very close to that. A giraffe, a creature Ilna recognized as a motif on fabrics from Cordin but which she'd never before seen living, walked to the pond in stately fashion and splayed its forelegs out to drink. A pair of scimitar-horned antelopes moved aside but continued drinking.
Ilna looked up. The sky burgeoned into rich color in the west, while the eastern horizon sparkled with what looked like stars.
"Where are we?" she demanded. The woman had come up with her tunics; Ilna took them, but it was somehow more embarrassing to dress in front of these strangers than to stand here nude as a plucked chicken. "I thought I was being taken underground."
"That's right," said Wim. "That's the cavern roof above us. It's covered with flow rock that glows according to the time of day it would have been in the upper world, back in the days before we had to come here to the Garden to survive."
He poured fluid from the ewer into the goblet of chased metal and offered it to Ilna. "This is wine," he explained. "It will help your throat and lips. They're terribly dry."
"That's why we put you in the bath when we brought you down," Bram said. "Your poor skin had been scoured, just scoured, by being on the surface unprotected for so very long."
Ilna grimaced. She lifted the inner tunic over her head and wriggled into it quickly.
With the cloth covering her eyes, she could think. This whole place was wrong. Not hostile, not dangerous, but wrong—it shouldn't be here. It didn't fit the pattern of the world across which she and the wizards had been walking.
Ilna's head reappeared from the neck of the tunic. The fabric had been cleaned perfectly—better than Ilna herself could have done. The tunic was cleaner than when the wool first came from the bleaching vat, she would have said.
"Where are my friends?" she asked, suspicious again. "Halphemos and Cerix?"
Bram offered Ilna his hand. "We'll take you to them," he said. The four People of Beauty—the woman who'd brought the garments was tagging along—set out toward another pond a quarter mile distant.
A group of young men and women passed in the opposite direction riding bareback on a variety of animals, none of which were horses. A deer with Y-shaped horns branching from its nose, and a griffin with a beak and bird's legs in front and the hindquarters of a dog, were among the stranger mounts. The large billy goat wasn't unusual in itself, but the fact that a laughing girl controlled it by ribbons was more amazing than the griffin.
The second pond was fed by a pair of streams running from pink tracery fountains which poured water out of dozens of holes. Ilna could follow the pattern which the pink strands wove among themselves, but she doubted that anyone else in Barca's Hamlet—and perhaps anyone else in the world—could have done so.
She smiled grimly. Wherever "the world" she meant by the term was, it wasn't here. And she very much doubted that the Garden was really a part of any world, even the one into which the wizards had flung her and themselves.
At the pond's edge grew a wrist-thick vine which sprouted translucent growths like pea pods the size of human beings. Several of the People of Beauty stood nude near one of the pods; with them but clothed in a red silk robe was another man.
"Halphemos!" Ilna called, louder than she'd meant to. Ever since she awakened she'd been suppressing the fear that she was alone in this place.
The youth stood and turned with a beatific smile. "Ilna!" he called. "Come and look what they're doing for Cerix!"
Ilna lengthened her stride. Her companions kept up with her effortlessly. It was worse than when Ilna walked with long-limbed, free-striding Sharina on the beach at Barca's Hamlet. These really were the People of Beauty—and of grace, and of kindness, and apparently of all manner of other desirable attributes that Ilna was too honest to claim for herself.
Halphemos gestured toward the pod. The People of Beauty with him moved aside to afford Ilna a clear view. Though the sky was growing darker, the structures from which the water poured were suffused with a soft pink glow that lighted the meadow around them.
Ilna bent to look into the pod. A man floated inside with his eyes closed. For a moment Ilna didn't recognize him, though Cerix's face should have been familiar enough.
Cerix didn't have legs, though. This man did: hairless and the same color as the light itself, but unquestionably legs.
Without speaking, Ilna looked up at Halphemos.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Halphemos cried while the People of Beauty looked on with indulgent smiles. "They're giving him back his legs! He'll be normal again!"
Ilna nodded to show that she was listening. She was trying to organize her thoughts, trying to find the pattern; and the pattern wasn't there.
In the pond, a gloriously blond mermaid cavorted with another creature that was half-fish. The upper parts of the second form were insectile, a chitinous carapace and a head with great multifaceted eyes.
"Yes," Ilna said at last. "Our hosts appear to be very skillful. They cleaned my garments better than I could have done myself."
Her comment probably sounded inane to anyone who didn't know her well. Anyone who did know Ilna's fierce pride in her own skills would see how deep was her praise.
She gestured Halphemos to follow, wondering if the People of Beauty would fall into step. They, as tactful as they were lovely, turned their backs and murmured among themselves in soft, cultured voices. The youth, puzzled but too cheerful to object, walked along the margin of the pond with her. "I came around sooner than you did, mistress," Halphemos said apologetically. "I'm afraid you must have been doing most of the work during the last hour or more, even though you're ... I mean, I'm bigger than you."
Ilna waved her hand in disinterest. Lights glimmered in the depths of the pond. Tiny human forms rode fish that looked like swollen bladders. They glowed in a variety of pastel colors.
"I don't think this garden is real," she said bluntly. "Or the people who live here."
"But...?" Halphemos said. He pinched the flesh of his arm, then offered his hand to Ilna. "Touch me," he said. "I'm real and you are too."
Ilna squeezed the youth's hand perfunctorily and released it. "I dare say we are," she said. "But what we see around us..."
Above them a creature like a vast winged fish floated across the starlit sky. Trills of laughter drifted down from the riders on its back.
"Halphemos," she said, "I think we're in a hallucination. Your friend's hallucination. His delirium is so strong that he's woven a dream of paradise around all three of us. It's almost the only thing that could fit the pattern."
"But...," Halphemos said. They were nearing one of the streams which fed the pond. They slowed slightly. "What do you think should we do, mistress?"
Ilna shrugged. "We set out to find my brother," she said. "I can't tell you what to do, but I intend to keep looking until I find him; or I die. And I won't find Cashel here."
"Yes, I see that," Halphemos said. A lizard with three heads swam down the stream into the pond, singing multi-part harmony as its tail oared from side to side.
Halphemos straightened with a firmer expression. He turned on his heel, forcing Ilna to turn with him. "You said that us living in Cerix's hallucinations was almost the only explanation," he said. "What are the other possibilities?"
"There's one," Ilna said. She smiled faintly. "That we're dead. That my brain is drying out on the bottom of a sea older than time, and this place is the last thought that goes through it."
Black and white swallows in equal numbers traced a curving line across the sky. They chittered merrily. Halphemos looked up at them as he walked.
"I see," he said at last. The pod had opened and Cerix, waving enthusiastically, was getting out.