Ah, there's the baron's brontothere coming!" said Ascelei, letting out anger as well as informing Ilna and Cerix, "You could buy every house on this street for what that animal cost, and out of our taxes!"
Cerix squirmed to get a better look at the great beast pacing slowly around the angle of the street. Ascelei's house stood on the Parade, the broadest thoroughfare in Divers, but even the Parade bent and wriggled on its course from Baron Robilard's palace to the harbor.
Ascelei the Mercer, Ilna's host and employer for the past four days, was one of the most prosperous men in Divers. He'd added an ornate railing to what had probably been an open balcony when the house was built a century or more in the past. The flat, pear-shaped banisters were attractive and made the balcony safer for people who needed mechanical help to avoid falling into the street. Cerix in his cart could see more through the slats than if he'd been at street level behind the legs of the other spectators, but only a little more.
"Do you want me to lift you?" Ilna said. She kept her eyes on the procession so that the cripple could avoid embarrassment by pretending she hadn't spoken if he wanted to.
The brontothere resembled a horse more than it did any other animal Ilna had seen, but it weighed several tons and its head looked like a gigantic saddle. A broad, side-forked horn stuck up from the nose like a pommel, and the forehead was dished in to curve upward to the thick neck. Despite the beast's great size, the skull didn't have much room for a brain.
"No, I can see," Cerix muttered, drawing himself up to look over the railing. He had to use the strength of his upper body to keep his weight off his stumps, but he clearly preferred that to accepting help from somebody else.
Ilna smiled wryly. She didn't have a lot in common with the cripple and she despised the weakness that caused him to drug himself for the pain; but she could at least applaud his desire to do without the help of others.
The crowd cheered to see the brontothere, though there was less enthusiasm than Ilna would have expected for a spectacular parade. There'd already been a troop of cavalry in polished armor—only twenty of them, but Third Atara was a small island which had to import the grain that horses needed to stay healthy. Then came a band with horns, cymbals, and even a copper kettledrum carried in a frame between two men and beaten by two more who walked to either side. Next were nearly two hundred sailors keeping step as they marched in tight companies.
The sailors surprised Ilna till Ascelei mentioned that they were from the baron's war galleys. The fixed rhythms of rowing made them better able to keep pace than most folk.
And now the brontothere, a striking sight even had it been alone. The only folk in the street who seemed to be cheering unreservedly, though, were ragged fellows who probably had nothing to be taxed on. Very possibly it wasn't just wealthy merchants like Ascelei who felt the burden of Robilard's shows.
"He claims to be descended from the Elder Romi," Ascelei said bitterly. "Him! His grandfather was a bodyguard for my grandfather when he was trading to Sandrakkan. If Robilard's a real noble, then I'm the Lady! And everybody knows Romi was celibate anyway."
Cerix cocked his head to look up at Ilna. "Romi was the wizard who ruled Third Atara after King Carus drowned," he explained. "During the hundred years Romi lived, he kept Third Atara peaceful while the rest of the Isles fell apart."
"You know about the Elder Romi, Master Cerix?" Ascelei said with for the first time a degree of respect for the cripple. He'd allowed Cerix to view the procession from the second story—the sleeping loft—of his shop only because Ilna had insisted and Ascelei was afraid to lose her services.
The mercer was a sour man, though astute and scrupulously honest in his dealings. Ilna had gained a place in his household minutes after she and the two wizards had arrived in Divers four days earlier. The mercer was having a gastric attack. Ilna had cured it with a quickly knotted pattern that settled Ascelei's stomach as no healer's nostrum had managed in the decades previous.
"I've visited Third Atara in past years," Cerix said. "But Romi I know from my studies. He was one of the greatest wizards of all time."
The brontothere paced stolidly down the center of the roadway, crushing the coarse limestone gravel into dust with its three-toed feet. Two men walked beside the creature holding beribboned cords attached to its collar, but no one could imagine that they'd restrain it should it decide to bolt. The horsemen riding to either side with lances leveled at the brontothere's rib cage were the real control on its behavior.
"Robilard, Baron Robiman," Ascelei said. "He claims he's going to regain the glory of his ancestor the Elder Romi. If it would bring back Romi and the golden age, I wouldn't grudge the way taxes have risen, but all we get for our money is pomp like this, gilded armor and brontotheres from Shengy!"
He gestured down toward the handsome young man with a goatee, a spike mustache, and—as the mercer had said—gilded armor, brilliant in the sunlight. Ilna had thought the chariot in which Robilard stood was harnessed to the brontothere, but she saw now that the double line of footmen following the vehicle pushed it along by means of a pole. The baron was apparently doubtful enough about the brontothere's tractability that he didn't choose to tether himself to the beast.
"What a ridiculous display!" Ilna said. She'd seen too much human folly to claim that this example surprised her, but familiarity didn't keep her from feeling disgust at each latest manifestation.
"Romi isolated Third Atara from the rest of the Isles," Cerix said. He'd exhausted the strength of his arms, so he lowered himself awkwardly onto his chair again. Breathing heavily he continued, "While he lived, he could do that: no ship reached the island without Romi's permission. If they tried, though they sailed forever the island would move away as quickly as they moved forward. But when Romi finally died, Third Atara was no different from any other place, and the pirates came here too."
Ilna saw movement behind the line of spectators. She leaned over the railing for a better view. Because the lofts of this and other houses facing the Parade overhung the ground floors, it was difficult to see pedestrians who walked close to the building fronts.
She'd been correct in her identification, though. "Here's Halphemos coming at last," she said. "He wasn't required to, of course. An invitation isn't a command."
She heard the bitterness in her own voice and grimaced. "A truth that I should listen to myself, I see," she added.
Halphemos and Cerix had lodged at an inn, the Dog and Cat, with the last of their money. Ilna had become the guest of her employer as part of her wages. The wizards had held street shows while Ilna returned to weaving as a way to earn a living until she got a sense of the situation.
Ascelei had quickly judged the value of the feelings of well-being which Ilna's woven panels brought. He'd have advanced her money to lodge at the Dog and Cat if she'd wished to. She didn't see any reason to do that; but she had expected both the wizards to accept her invitation to watch the spectacle from the vantage of the mercer's house.
Cerix had wheeled himself to the house under his own power, explaining with some embarrassment that Halphemos had another engagement but would be along shortly. Cerix hadn't been willing—or perhaps able—to say what the other engagement was. Ilna assumed it involved a woman. Though she didn't have the least romantic inclinations toward Halphemos (the boy!) she was irritated to note a flash of jealousy in her reaction.
"Your other guest, mistress?" Ascelei asked.
The chariot had passed Ascelei's house and was nearing another bend in the Parade that would take it out of sight. Baron Robilard had remained perfectly still during his progress.
Ilna's lip wrinkled. The baron might better have dressed a statue in his glittering armor and used the time to do something useful himself—like clean the palace chamber pots.
Behind Robilard's chariot came a dozen or so litters and sedan chairs carrying courtiers of both sexes. Some of the nobles had the decency to look embarrassed—though from what Ilna knew of the nobility, those were probably folk who feared their display wasn't as splendid as that of their rivals in other conveyances.
Ilna hadn't had any contact with the nobility when she lived in Barca's Hamlet; if she thought about them at all, it was to wonder why people believed that what their ancestors had done somehow made them better than anybody else. Nothing she'd seen since she'd entered the wider world had given her a better opinion of the class.
Third Atara, the last of the smaller islands trailing Atara proper, exported its wines and the colored marbles of its quarries all over the Isles. Ilna noted that perhaps as a result of its far-flung trade, court dress here ran to marine colors. There were blues, greens, and even a pale violet that must have come from eggplant rind. The aubergine's smooth consistency impressed her with the dyemaster's skill.
Silks purchased by the nobility's agents on Seres and Kanbesa predominated among the fabrics. Ascelei's clientele came mostly from the class to which he belonged, wealthy merchants who favored woolens and fur trim. The small panels Ilna had been weaving from fine wool were already bringing queries from the palace, though—a matter of considerable satisfaction to the mercer.
The majordomo stepped onto the balcony and whispered in Ascelei's ear. The mercer gave an irritated wave of his hand and said, "Yes, of course he should be admitted. It doesn't matter that he came separately!"
He looked at Ilna in apology. She nodded curt understanding. Ascelei had a dozen servants in addition to the clerks in his shop below. He needed them because of his position in society, he'd explained to Ilna. Her opinion was that if Ascelei had at least ten fewer of the officious busybodies in his house, his position would have been a great deal more comfortable.
The very tag-end of the procession was passing, a pair of drummers and a body of palace servants on foot. The latter were probably only those who could afford impressive clothing, but there were still scores of them.
Ilna grinned. She imagined a horde of ragged scullery maids, stableboys, and undergardeners following to demonstrate just what it took to maintain one young fop in gilded armor in what he deemed his proper state. From what Ascelei had said, at least the taxpayers of Third Atara were already well aware of the cost.
"Master Halphemos, who does not give his patronymic," the majordomo announced, making clear his disdain for a man he classed a common mountebank for all the young wizard's silk robes. To be fair, the red brocade was considerably the worse for wear since Halphemos had been jailed in it.
Ilna wasn't in a mood to be fair. Halphemos had left what he thought was paradise for her. In a cold rage she turned and grasped the collar of the majordomo's robe. She ran her fingers across the fabric, lace over a tight serge. With closed eyes she let its patterns flow into her conscious understanding.
Ilna opened her eyes again, taking her hand away from the garment and reentering the waking world. The majordomo was gabbling; Ascelei watched with questions but no concern in his expression, and Halphemos slid past the tableau with his right hand in his left sleeve.
"Do you know who your father was?" Ilna asked harshly, her eyes holding the servant's. "I do."
"I'm Othem or-Almagar!" the majordomo said. "My father was Baron Orde's personal valet!"
He patted his collar to make sure that Ilna hadn't torn it. As if she'd take her anger out on innocent fabric!
"Your father was named Garsaura and he was a groom in the palace stables," Ilna said, raising her voice so that the several servants standing beyond the balcony door could hear clearly. "Would you care to learn more about your real ancestry, Master Othem?"
"That's not—" the majordomo said. He didn't finish the thought. His mouth remained open as he turned. He left the balcony faster than his dignity of a few moments before would have allowed him to do.
Halphemos grinned appreciatively, though he seemed a little embarrassed to have needed a woman to stand up for him. "Thank you, mistress," he said. He nodded in the direction the majordomo had vanished and added, "He won't sleep till he's proved there wasn't a groom named Garsaura in the palace forty years ago, will he?"
Ascelei's eyes moved in quick increments from Halphemos to Ilna. It was Cerix, looking over his shoulder because there wasn't room on the balcony for him to turn his chair, who said, "But there was a Garsaura in the palace then. Wasn't there, mistress?"
"Yes," said Ilna with a smile that could cut glass. "As a matter of fact there was, Master Cerix."
"She doesn't bluff, boy," the cripple said to his gaping ward. "She doesn't lie. And by whatever gods you believe in, don't get her angry."
"I apologize, Master Ascelei," Ilna said, feeling the knot of self-loathing begin to form in her stomach. It always did after she realized she'd used her abilities for an end she couldn't justify as having made the world a better place. "I'm a guest in your household. It isn't my place to discipline your servants, and I shouldn't have done it in that fashion anyway."
"Othem has been known to insult guests—friends and good clients of mine—when he doesn't feel their lineage is sufficiently exalted," the mercer said. He spoke with perhaps more care than he would have shown if he didn't understand what Ilna had just done. "I didn't know how to break him of the practice without dismissing him, and in general he's a very useful servant. I'm still further in your debt, mistress."
He dipped his head to Ilna in gesture that was almost a bow.
Ilna grimaced. It bothered her obscurely that she appeared to have done exactly the right thing when she knew perfectly well that her intentions had been bad. She didn't expect to find justice, but it seemed deeply wrong to be unjustly good.
Halphemos, his right hand still clutching whatever it was he hid in his other sleeve, sidled close to Ilna. "I have something to show you in private," he announced in a barnyard whisper.
Ilna could have slapped him. Instead she said in a voice that came all the way from the Ice Capes, "My host Master Ascelei invited you here as a favor to me. If you have secrets you don't wish to share with him, boy, please take them and yourself out of his house. I'll join you when I'm able to stomach your discourtesy—which won't be in the near future, I assure you."
Halphemos opened his mouth to protest, then looked stricken. He'd let his excitement run away with him, but he did know better.
"I'll leave the three of you here," Ascelei said equably. "I'll see that you're not disturbed."
He smiled. The mercer's sense of humor—indeed, his personality—were not dissimilar to Ilna's own. "I don't think Master Othem was going to be intruding anyway."
Ilna started to protest, then shrugged. This balcony was as good a place to talk secrets as any in Divers. The spectators were dispersing, but the normal traffic along the Parade formed a blanket of noise to smother words quietly spoken in the open air. Of course a servant might lean against—
"But do explain to your household...," Cerix said loudly. He'd backed his cart around into a corner so that he could look directly at the others on the narrow balcony. " ... that Mistress Ilna would never use her powers to strike a spy deaf and blind."
"What?" said Ascelei, looking at the cripple in surprise. He smiled again. "Yes, I see. I'll inform them."
The mercer closed the balcony door behind him. When Ilna had quenched the instant's anger at what had been implied in her name, she smiled also. It was a clever trick, and harmless.
Halphemos knelt and withdrew a bag of soft red leather from his sleeve. "Look at this!" he said as he opened the drawstrings. "When I sell it, we'll have passage for three to Valles and a fortune left over besides!"
He poured a pearl the size and shape of a pigeon's egg onto his palm. It was mounted as a pendant with a gold cap, though the chain or cord was missing.
"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" Halphemos said.
"Occasionally," Ilna said, though the pattern of light through the jewel's iridescent layers spoke to her as to few others, she suspected. "And I've seen things that were even more dangerous for castaways in a foreign land to hold, Halphemos. Occasionally."
"Where did you get it, Alos?" Cerix said quietly. The cripple's hands kneaded his thighs just above the stumps. He looked as worried as Ilna was furious.
"I can't tell you that," Halphemos said, defensive against his companions' unexpected lack of enthusiasm. "It's not stolen, that's all that matters."
"No," Ilna said coldly, "it's not all that matters. The best thing you can do with that is throw it in the sea."
Halphemos stuffed the pearl back in its bag with trembling hands. He stood, white with anger. "You're just jealous!" he said. "Well, Mistress Ilna, it's time you realize that there's other people who can do things even when you can't! I'll buy us all passage to Valles. You can decide if you want to come search for your brother or stay here and sulk because I earned the money. By my art!"
He jerked the door open. Seemingly, Halphemos had forgotten the small sack he now held openly in his hand. "Cerix," he said, "come along with me. The mistress doubtless has things to discuss with her wealthy friends."
Cerix wheeled himself into the loft proper, bumping over the sill. He threw Ilna a worried look; Ilna nodded a reply. Halphemos flounced out angrily without meeting her eyes again.
Ilna hoped the boy would allow Ascelei's servants to help Cerix negotiate the stairs instead of doing it himself. In his present state, Halphemos was apt to tip his friend all the way down. That would be all the situation needed!
Though flinging Cerix down the staircase was less dangerous to the cripple and all of them than what Halphemos proposed to do with the pearl. Jewels like that one screamed an owner's name louder than a summonsing bailiff did.
Maybe Cerix could talk the boy out of his foolishness. Ilna didn't see a better hope.
Though it wasn't a very good one, as determined as Halphemos had sounded.
"Awaken, Cashel or-Kenset," the cracked voice said. "Your body is renewed, your spirit is refreshed. Awaken now and aid me as I have aided you!"
Cashel was drifting in a fog of purple smoke. He wasn't worried; the smoke buoyed him up like salt water, but he could breathe its tendrils as well.
"Awaken, Cashel," the voice said. "I, Silya, command you by the virtues I have arrayed to tend your hurts!"
"Who are you?" Cashel demanded groggily. He felt his lips move, proving that he was speaking aloud. He opened his eyes, though the effort to do so amazed him.
He lay on his back on a board. He patted the surface with his fingertips, noted the chill, and realized it was polished stone instead of wood. So. He lay on a stone slab, stark naked, in a vault lighted by braziers which puffed rich-colored smokes as well as a lurid glow into the air.
He was lying like a corpse laid out for burial.
"Hey!" Cashel said. He kicked his legs over the edge of the slab and stood, looking around wildly. No one was in the room with him except for Silya, the woman wearing the bones through her ears in Dalopan fashion. She was naked as well, but tattoos covered her body like a garment of knobbly lace.
"Cashel or-Kenset," she said, waving a bone rattle at him. The box was made from a dog's skull, but the thigh bone laced to it for a handle was human or Cashel was blind. "I've brought you back from the portal of death. Now you will help me and—"
She thrust the rattle directly at Cashel's face; he suppressed an urge to crush the ugly thing in his fist.
"—between us we will be the Beast's overlords in this world!"
"Where are my clothes?" Cashel said. The smoke was making him gag, though he supposed it was meant to be soothing. "And where are my friends, Zahag and Aria?"
He looked around without seeing his tunic or anything else he could throw over himself for the moment. The braziers' flickering illumination hid as much as it revealed. On the floor about the slab was chalked a many-sided figure with words on the margin.
The wizard looked puzzled. Cashel supposed Silya had expected some other response than simple disgust and a desire to leave her presence. He wasn't afraid of her, and he certainly wasn't grateful. "You're the one who sent me and Zahag to the other Pandah, aren't you?" he said. "Keep away from me with that toy you're holding or I'll feed it to you, by the Shepherd I will!"
"That was a mistake," she said. "Here, I have clothing for you in the next chamber."
Silya walked to a door which, with its frame, seemed to have been knocked together recently: the wood was still oozing sap. Similar wooden barriers closed the five other archways, though they didn't have doors set into them. The vault had been blocked out of the foundations of a large building, probably Folquin's palace.
Cashel slammed the door behind him, thankfully closing off the still-smoldering braziers. He coughed loudly to clear the cloying fumes from his throat.
This room was also a vault walled off by partitions, but here the bricks were covered with mats of colored grasses woven in attractive geometric designs. Ilna would be interested in those, he thought.
A hammock hung from hooks set across one corner. Patterned baskets with covers stood along the walls, and a pole stand held a variety of tools. Those could be intended either for cooking, torture, or wizardry.
A bronze oil lamp lighted the space. The lobes for the three wicks were each shaped like a man's private parts. Cashel's nose wrinkled.
"I thought your woman Sharina was the important one," Silya said as she lifted the lid from a storage basket. It was cunningly made, requiring a twist rather than a straight pull to release it. "That's because my brother believed the girl was the scion of the old line who could lead him to the Throne of Malkar."
She paused, then plucked a tunic from the basket and shook it open for Cashel. It was of simple pattern—indeed, it had probably been sewn from an awning—but that was fine with him.
He took the garment. Cashel knew he didn't owe anything to this woman, but he always felt good toward somebody who was helping him. Of course, it was Silya's interference that had caused all the trouble to begin with....
Cashel draped the tunic over him. As he shrugged the heavy cotton down past his shoulders, he digested what the Dalopan wizard had just said.
When his head emerged from the tunic, Cashel looked at her. In a very quiet voice he said, "What have you done to Sharina?"
He took a step forward. The world he saw was gray except for the startled wizard and the expanse of brick wall behind her.
Silya's eyes flicked toward the stand of tools, then wisely met Cashel's again. She even tossed aside the bone rattle in her hand. "The girl's unharmed!" she said. "She was nothing to me after all, so I let her go with the boy wizard I replaced here on Pandah."
Cashel took a deep breath. "But you said..." He tried to remember exactly what Silya had said. Everything had blurred for a moment. He looked at his hands and clenched them to work the tension out.
"My brother thought she was important," Silya said, taking quick, relieved breaths herself. "He was drawing her to him. I traced his work and thought I'd forestall him here on Pandah. But he was wrong, so I let her go."
She wasn't lying. Cashel was used to people trying to lie to him. It wasn't as easy as strangers thought, but sometimes they succeeded.
They never succeeded when Cashel was angry, the way he was now. He could see right to their heart.
Silya started to pick up the garment she'd draped over the hammock, then dropped it to return her attention to the young man before her. "My brother Silyon stole the Stone of Connection from me," she said. "He communicates with the Beast through it. You and I will take the Stone back from him and we will be the Beast's viceroys!"
Cashel wasn't sure hold old the wizard was. At first he'd thought she was quite old, fifty at least, but Silya's voice was that of a much younger woman. The tattoos aged her. Besides, travelers' tales claimed that the folk of Dalopo looked ancient by the time they were thirty—which was old enough in all truth.
"Where did Sharina go?" Cashel asked. "And where are Aria and Zahag?"
"Don't you hear me?" Silya shouted. "I offer you half of all power and you ask about girls and beasts. You can have every woman in the world if you join me!"
Cashel stepped toward her again before he was even conscious that he was moving. She shouldn't have talked about Sharina that way.
"The girl Aria is fine!" Silya said hastily. "She's with the king and quite the favorite. The ape's probably all right too, though why you should care is beyond me. The meat's stringy at best, and the males are gamy besides."
Cashel forced himself to relax. "And Sharina?" he asked.
"She went off to Valles with the other wizards," Silya said. "The boy and the cripple. My brother was drawing her, as I told you, but he was wrong about her power. She's just a girl."
"Yes," said Cashel in a guttural voice as he started for the door out of this chamber. "She is."
"Cashel or-Kenset, wait!" the wizard said. She raised both her hands, palms outward, though she stepped out of Cashel's way. "You brokethrough the planes by your own main strength. With me to guide you, no one can stand against us! We'll take the Stone, and perhaps we'll be able to rule the Beast instead of ruling this world beneath him!"
"I'm going to find my friends," Cashel said. His tongue was so thick with anger and disgust that he could barely understand his own words. "Don't get in my way."
He turned the latch and pushed the door. It stuck. He pushed harder, smashing the whole wall down. The door had been meant to open inward, he saw, as he glanced down at the ruin of heavy balks.
"Don't ever get in my way!" Cashel repeated as he strode toward the light glimmering from outside the vaulted basement.
A group of children giggling with fright ran out of the basement ahead of him. Cashel's crashing exit had scared them away. They'd been playing, not spying, among the brick pillars.
Cashel grinned. It'd scared Silya too, if she had as much sense as the Lady gave a goose. The grin faded. It'd be good to hold his own hickory staff again, though the fir replacement from the other Pandah was a fine piece of work too.
The steps up to ground level were littered with dirt, leaves, and human debris. There were holes in the stone sill where doors had once pivoted, but the panels were long gone.
Cashel paused at the top of the steps, slitting his eyes against the bright sun as well as shading them with his left hand. It was near noon, though he realized he didn't know what day it was. He was at the back of the palace; the children and adults socializing in the large open space were all looking at him.
Though Cashel smiled to show he was friendly, children gathered close and their parents circled them with their arms. He wondered what sort of stories were going around about him. It bothered him to realize that people probably thought he was a friend of the Dalopan wizard. He'd as soon be friends with a seawolf.
The walkway around the palace was railed off from the grounds, a mental barrier though not much of a physical one. Cashel put a hand on a vine-wrapped pillar to hop over.
Zahag dropped from the roof in three spider-limbed jumps. They were very nearly the last moves the ape made in this life. Cashel, still tense and a lot more angry than he'd realized, shouted "Hey!" and threw his great hands up to meet what reflex was treating as an attack.
"Hey!" Zahag echoed in fear. Instead of landing at Cashel's side, the ape bounced upward from the railing to grab a pillar five paces distant.
Children and adults too were stampeding away from the bellow. Cashel rubbed his forehead in embarrassment. It was as bad as the day a horsefly stung Piri's off-ox under the base of the tail.
"I didn't mean ...," Cashel mumbled. He'd known before he was seven years old not to get angry. Now look at him! All because he was worried about Sharina, but Sharina didn't need an ox running around kicking and goring, that was sure.
"I had to hide all the time you were sleeping," Zahag said in the hurt tone which had quickly replaced his fear. He dropped off the pillar and sidled toward Cashel, ready to flee again if he found he'd misjudged the situation. "Now you come after me too. It's not fair, you know!"
Cashel didn't speak for a moment. Then, as the ape started to wilt, he said, "I'd rather you didn't surprise me that way, Zahag. I'd feel bad if I'd swung you into the ground so hard you splashed, the way I started to do."
"Oh, no, chief, no, that'll never happen again!" Zahag said. He turned his back and peered at Cashel upside down from between his own legs. From a human the posture would've been insulting, but there wasn't anything but belly-crawling submission in the ape's tone. "No, no, no!"
Cashel nodded. "Where's Aria?" he said. "Is she all right?"
"Oh, you're going to fix him now!" Zahag said, capering in joy. "Come on, chief, he's up in the courtyard. Oh, he's going to be sorry now!"
He grabbed Cashel's right hand and tugged with friendly enthusiasm. The ape's mood changed about as quick as a summer breeze, but that didn't bother Cashel. Sheep were the same way, so he was used to it. Farmers wouldn't need to pay shepherds if all animals were as solid and mannerly as oxen. Most times.
Cashel climbed over the railing. Zahag hopped from the ground to a pillar to the walkway—and back, all nervous motion like flies over a fresh side of meat. The children and palace servants in the plaza whispered among themselves, now that there didn't seem to be a prospect of immediate bloodshed. They ducked away when Cashel swept them with his eyes, even though he smiled as warmly as he knew how.
Cashel paused. "I asked if Aria was all right," he said to Zahag. "Who's this that's going to be sorry?"
The ape was already halfway into the passage to the courtyard. He turned and momentarily wrinkled his lips in a snarl of frustration. "Folquin, of course!" he said.
Even as Zahag growled his words, he remembered who he was talking to. He gave a grunt of apology and went on clingingly, "King Folquin, who told his guards to kill me for the trouble I caused, when it was all that Dalopan savage's doing. And she's his new wizard, wouldn't you know? Folquin who's trying to take your female, chief!"
"Take my—" Cashel blurted. He blinked. "Oh," he said, "you mean the princess. Well, let's go see her."
He hummed a jig as he sauntered down the passage behind Zahag. He was remembering the dances at the very start of Heron when the plowing was over.
Cashel didn't play pipes or the lyre, and his steps were simple ones in contrast to the hops and handstands some of the more agile youths demonstrated to the crowd's applause; but Cashel could dance the feet off the other lads in the borough, and any of the girls save Sharina herself. Many's the time he and she turned and turned about in Finnan's Reel while the others cheered in exhausted amazement.
The ape hunched along on all fours, frequently glancing over his shoulder at Cashel. A servant with a tray of empty cups came the other way, saw them, and bolted back into the courtyard. He could have squeezed by; there was plenty of room.
Aria Cashel's female indeed! How long would the princess have kept her feet as the hamlet danced?
Zahag stepped aside and let Cashel enter the courtyard ahead of him. It was already in commotion. Folquin had jumped up from his backless stool. The servant stood beside him; a line of cups sprinkled on the ground from there back to the passage showed what haste the fellow'd made to warn his king that Cashel was coming.
The six guards stepped between Cashel and Folquin. One of them put his knee against the belly of his bow to string it, but his officer snarled, "Put that down and stand straight!"
Aria had been seated beside Folquin. She rose with regal grace. She wore a tunic of violet silk gathered beneath the bosom and again at the waist. The excess material wobbled like breeze-blown moss dangling from a tree branch.
To Cashel's utter astonishment, the princess held his fir quarterstaff in front of her like a flagpole. Its sizable weight wavered even though she'd butted one end on the ground. She turned to Folquin and said in a carrying voice, "Your Majesty, I see that Master Cashel, my champion, has regained consciousness. May I have the honor of formally presenting him to you?"
"It's all right, Aria," Cashel said. "The king and me met before. Before, you know, I met you."
The idlers and petitioners were all watching him, just like they had when he'd grabbed Zahag that morning a lifetime ago. Silya wasn't in the crowd, though. Cashel looked over his shoulder to make sure the wizard hadn't followed. She hadn't, but Zahag was backing his chief with bared teeth and a growl that made bubbles of spit form on his lips.
"Yes," Folquin said. He cocked his head to the side, apparently trying to peek around Cashel's solid form to find the wizard also. "Ah, Master Cashel kept that horrid monkey from attacking me at considerable risk to himself. I trust you're well, Master Cashel?"
"I, well, I'm glad to be back," Cashel said. "Zahag's all right, though."
He turned his head and snapped, "Zahag, stop that! Mind your manners!"
The guards parted for Cashel at their officer's whispered command. That man stood sideways, his eyes darting from Cashel to his king, tense as a drawn bowstring in hopes that he'd made the right decision.
Aria gave Cashel the quarterstaff. "I trust you're well, Cashel?" she said. She really did seem glad to see him, but there was more than just formal reserve in Aria's careful words. She was wearing sandals of silvered leather that laced high up her calves.
"I'm fine," Cashel said; because it was true, and anyway he had to say something. He smiled at the staff. He'd have liked to spin it to make sure he hadn't gotten out of shape during his long sleep—too long for nature, it must have been more of the wizard's doing—but he was sure to start a panic and maybe clip somebody.
Cashel frowned and looked at the king again. A secretary standing beside Folquin gave a squeak of terror and closed his eyes.
"Ah," Cashel said, "not to be picky, but I wonder if the hickory staff I left when I was here before is still around? I made that myself when I was a boy and I'd hate to lose it."
Aria looked at the servant holding the tray from which the cups had spilled. "You heard Master Cashel!" she said. "Find that staff and bring it to him at once. Go on! Why are you standing there looking at me?"
Folquin opened his mouth, apparently to repeat the princess's order. The servant didn't wait for it. He even flung away the tray as he scampered toward the passage into the building calling, "Wyckli! Abdorn! Her Majesty—"
He plunged into the passage. His voice reverberated back, "—wants the pole from the big barbarian's room!"
Cashel smiled. He'd been called worse, though the folks who did so generally had reason to regret it before the bout was over.
Aria was sure in her element, here. That was the awkward part about what had to happen next.
"Ah, King Folquin," Cashel said, "you've been kind enough to guest me and the princess. I think you ought to know that it was that Dalopan woman Silya who caused the trouble before she was in your service, not Zahag; but I didn't hold it against you anyhow."
"Silya?" said Folquin, frowning. "No—"
To shut the king off, Cashel thumped the staff against the packed soil. He was frustrated with himself. He wasn't a speaker and he'd let himself wander off the track.
"Anyhow," Cashel went on, "I appreciate all you've done. But now I've got to go on, because I need to find my friend Sharina."
He took a deep breath. "And I need to take Princess Aria with me," he continued, "because I told her mother—"
Folquin, Aria, and about six other people started to speak at the same time. What Cashel actually heard, though, was Zahag's growled, "No, you didn't, chief. You told her mother you'd get her away from Ilmed. That wizard hasn't been the least trouble to Aria since he met you."
"Ah," said Cashel. "Well, but what I meant..."
He wasn't sure what he had meant way back then when he stood before Queen Sosia. It was hard to get his thoughts straight because the others kept chattering at him, most of them.
Princess Aria had listened to Zahag also. "Be quiet, all of you!" she said. "Remember you stand before your king!"
Cashel grinned wryly. True enough, but King Folquin fell silent with the rest of those who'd been yammering away.
In the silence Aria put her hand on Folquin's wrist for attention, then nodded him toward Cashel. There wasn't much doubt about which of that pair would be guiding the plow and which would be pulling it; assuming they were a pair, which at the moment Cashel didn't see them being.
"Master Cashel," the king said. From the many times Cashel had carried Aria he knew she was just a wisp of a girl, but right now her presence shrank everybody else around. "I regard Princess Aria's arrival on Pandah to be a manifestation of the will of the Gods. She is clearly the woman they intend for my wife and to become Queen of Pandah. Therefore—"
"You were sure as sure that Sharina was meant to be your queen too," Cashel said with a touch of anger that he hadn't been expecting. "You were wrong that time, and I'm not about to call you right this time either. I'm no clerk to play with words, what I said to Queen Sosia—"
He looked over his shoulder. The ape was combing himself for fleas and cracked those he caught between the backs of two claws. He didn't seem to notice his chief's threatening frown.
"—or anybody else. I'm going to protect—"
Aria began sobbing. Cashel stopped as short as if somebody'd felled a tree on him. Aria flung herself into his arms and wailed, "Oh, Cashel, do you have to test me more? Even Muzira didn't have to go through the things I've done!"
"But Aria..." Cashel muttered helplessly.
"If you tell me I have to go, I'll go," the princess said. Her tears were already spreading into a wet spot on his new tunic. "But please, Cashel!"
King Folquin exchanged a glance with the captain of his guard. The soldier frowned and patted his left cheek, the gesture that meant, "No," here on Pandah.
Half of Cashel regretted the soldier's warning, because a fight would be a lot simpler to figure out than the mess he'd somehow managed to get himself into. Why wasn't life simpler?
"I'd say there were plenty of females with more meat on their bones," Zahag remarked as he continued to crack fleas. "But this one's better than I used to think. She kept the guards off me when we came back, not that I trusted them when I was out of her sight."
Cashel looked at the ape. Zahag resolutely paid him no attention. Two servants bustled out of the passageway, carrying the hickory quarterstaff between them with as much pomp as if they were hunters with a deer instead of a bare pole.
Aria stepped back and raised her face to Cashel. It hadn't been a trick, her saying she'd go on if he told her she had to. And it hadn't been a joke, either, saying that she'd gone through more than Patient Muzira had. No, sir, it hadn't.
"Aria," Cashel said. "Princess? Are you really sure staying here is what you want to do? Because I don't care how many there are, I won't let—"
Aria laid her finger vertically across Cashel's lips to silence him. "I know you wouldn't, Cashel," she said. "This is where I belong. I think Folquin will make a very nice husband. Just the sort of person the Mistress God would choose for me."
"Ah, Master Cashel?" the king said. Folquin was Cashel's senior by a little. Right now he seemed just a mite of a boy, barely old enough to wear a rag over him when he ran around in the summer. "I want you to know that you're welcome to any position you wish in my palace. Captain of the Guard, perhaps, or—"
"No, no!" Cashel said. He had to laugh at Folquin's earnestness. Why, the boy would probably buy the first flock of sheep ever to graze on Pandah if Cashel said he wanted to be the royal shepherd! "Your, ah, Majesty, I really need to leave as quick as I can. For Valles, I guess, if that's where Sharina went."
"You won't be staying for the wedding?" Folquin said with a suspicious enthusiasm. "Of course, the preparations for an event like that will take some time."
Cashel caught Aria's sharp glance at her husband-to-be, so he needed to speak fast before the princess decided to speed the preparations. The only thing Cashel wanted speeded was himself getting off Pandah and then back to his friends. "If there's a ship in harbor that'll take my labor for the passage, I'll board right now," he said.
The servants with Cashel's hickory staff were standing close, but they didn't want to interrupt the proceedings by speaking. Cashel reached out with his right hand and took it. The smooth, denser wood felt like coming home.
"Master Cashel," Folquin said, "if you can wait till the morning, I'll put one of the royal biremes at your disposal."
Apologetically he added, "It really will take that long to prepare the crew. But it will be a great deal faster than any sailing vessel could be."
"Ah, well," Cashel said. "That'd be good, I guess. I'd be beholden to you if you'd do that, ah, Your Majesty."
Folquin turned to one of his aides. In a crisp voice, very much the king again, he said, "See to it, Mousel. At once."
"Well, I...," Cashel said. He felt pretty silly holding both quarterstaves, but he wasn't sure what to do with the extra one. "If there's a place I can get something to eat, I'm famished with hunger."
If he'd been sleeping for four days, it was that long since he'd had anything to eat. His last breakfast had been a mess of egg and fruit, tasty enough but not the sort of thing to stick to your ribs for the time it'd had to.
The king didn't even bother to speak an order this time. He gestured to a servant, who trotted off like dogs were chewing at his heels. "Well, I'll—," Cashel began.
"Cashel?" Aria said. "You aren't going to keep the staff you had when you rescued me, are you?"
"What?" he said. He held the fir staff out at arm's length and examined it closely. The brass end bands winked in the sunlight; they'd been polished a treat while Cashel was asleep in Silya's chamber. "Well, it's a nice piece and it's lighter than my hickory, but..."
He paused without completing the thought. "Thing is," he said, "I'd hate for it just to prop up somebody's fishnet. I know, it's just a piece of wood, but—"
"It won't prop up a fishnet," said the princess. "If you would give it to me, Cashel, I would be honored."
"And of course I'll pay you—" Folquin blurted.
Aria turned to look at her husband-to-be. "Be silent," she said without raising her voice.
Cashel couldn't help but grin. Ilna couldn't have done it better, no sir. "Sure, of course you can have it, Princess," he said aloud. "I wish I had something better to give you for your wedding and all, but..."
He shrugged. He didn't even own the tunic he was standing in.
Servants were coming from the passage with trays of food. Cashel hadn't meant to eat here in the courtyard since it was more or less Folquin's throne room. As hungry as he was, though, it didn't seem to call for objection.
"Cashel?" Aria said. "Is your Sharina beautiful?"
Cashel paused with a ball of fried dough halfway to his mouth. "Is she ever!" he said. "And graceful? You never saw anybody so graceful!"
"She's very lucky," the princess said as she turned away and began talking to Folquin about nothing in particular.
Cashel—with Zahag's help—was nearly done with the first tray of food in dainty bits, sitting in a corner of the courtyard, when Aria's words went through his mind again. He frowned.
"Zahag?" he said. "She must have meant I'm lucky, didn't she?"
"Chief," the ape said through a mouthful of flat bread smeared with nut paste, "I told you before I've met sheep that were smarter than you are. But it doesn't seem to matter."
Sharina stood in a red-lit chamber cut from the living rock, as motionless as an image of the Lady in its niche by the hearth. She could see and hear. The thrum of chanting voices was deeper than ears alone could sense, so perhaps ears were no part of the impression.
There were vertical slits in the walls around her. Beyond each opening was a different scene, viewed as though through a panel of flawless ruby. Of the half dozen Sharina could see from her frozen vantage point, four were or might have been of the world she knew; two were certainly not.
On Sharina's far left, a plain stretched to the horizon under a black sky. A jumble of long crystals covered the surface like straw on the threshing floor.
There was no movement anywhere in the scene. The stars remained static in their unfamiliar patterns, and their reflections along crystals lay in lines as rigid as those of door lintels. The sky was airless so that not even the light trembled.
The next opening looked down on a town of some size. Not very long ago Sharina would have thought it a metropolis as huge as Carcosa or Ragos on ancient Cordin—places Sharina had read about in the epics, but which she'd imagined in the form of Barca's Hamlet writ large because her home was the only community she then knew.
A single figure hunched his way along the moonlit streets: Cerix, rolling his wheeled cart over the gravel with thrusts of the short poles he used when outside. A dog roused by the clatter of tires lunged to the length of its chain from a doorway, barking silently and pawing the air.
The same chill that kept Sharina motionless seemed to lie on her heart as well. She could see, but she didn't care about the events taking place beyond the ruby curtain.
The third slit showed figures carrying dirt from a pit and up the slope of a mound. It had taken Sharina hours with nothing to do but look at the scenes in front of her before she realized that this vision was not of an anthill roiled by disaster. Rather, humans were laboring under the control of demons with claws like hands full of knives.
Then, because she had visited Erdin on Sandrakkan, she recognized the ruined buildings on the far horizon. When Sharina last saw them they had been the residences of wealthy nobles fronting Palace Square. The image was an hallucination, not reality; an hallucination, or perhaps a prophecy.
Through the fourth window Sharina saw Cashel lying on boards from which he'd thrown all the bedclothes. At home in Barca's Hamlet Cashel slept on the ground or the stone floor of the rooms he shared with his sister in the ancient millhouse. The softness of feathers and fine-spun fabric was foreign to him, and the night must be warm besides.
At the foot of the bed, curled in a nest of the cast-off blankets, was an ape—perhaps the one Sharina had played chess with in Pandah. Sharina remembered him, just as she remembered the emotions she had felt toward Cashel after he fought a demon to save her; but she felt nothing at all in her present state.
A web of bright lines quivered about Cashel, though he was unaware of them. A tattooed woman with bones through her ears chanted and danced where the lines conjoined, at a point outside Cashel's chamber by the laws of normal space and relationships.
The naked wizard spun, shaking her bone rattle, and the net of red light tightened over the sleeping youth. Cashel tossed fitfully but neither he nor the ape at his feet awakened.
The fifth opening showed a building of black stone which Sharina recognized, though she had never seen it in waking life. She viewed not only the exterior but also saw through the thick basalt walls. A pair of humans prowled in the vaults many levels below the ground.
The thing that watched in the darkness was not in the same plane of the cosmos as the human intruders. It interpenetrated the stones of waking reality. Its heads bobbed and its tongues tasted the edge of the insubstantial wall separating it from Tenoctris and Garric.
The old woman sat cross-legged, scribed a circle on the stone, and whispered an incantation. The watcher tensed. Its mouths opened and its claws slipped in and out of their sheaths. Barriers thinned, but never quite did they fail completely; and Garric, squatting beside the wizard in the vaults of the queen's mansion in Valles, rested his hand on his sword pommel by habit rather than concern.
Tenoctris rose. Garric replaced the stub of his candle with a fresh one and followed, holding the lantern for her. The watcher slavered; and Sharina shifted her attention to the remaining window, as unmoved as a statue of ice.
The view through the final opening had remained the same from the time Sharina had found herself frozen in this rock chamber. It was a room containing only a waist-high stand on which rested a game board. She couldn't tell for sure how many stone pieces stood on the vast expanse. They were of unfamiliar shapes, no two of them the same; but each time Sharina's attention returned to the motionless tableau, the arrangement seemed different. The question didn't concern her, because now nothing caused her concern.
Sharina looked again at Cashel, whom the tattooed wizard was binding even closer in meshes of light. Motion touched her peripheral vision. Sharina's mind—for not even the pupils of her eyes could move—focused on the sixth opening in the rock.
A woman with features as cold and perfect as the glint of a hawk's eye had entered the chamber. She wore a long-sleeved white gown, gauzy but as opaque as the granite walls of the room in which she stood. A girdle of golden silk cinched her waist, and the hem and throat of her garment were of gold lace.
She looked at Sharina and smiled. "Do you know who I am, Sharina os-Reise?" she asked. Her voice was a liquid contralto that made the very cosmos quiver to its sound.
"You are the queen," Sharina said, but she knew her lips did not, could not, move.
"Yes, Sharina," the queen said. "And soon you will take me to the Throne of Malkar."
She touched one of the tourmaline game pieces. Sharina felt ice tremble through every cell of her being.
The queen laughed and lifted her finger. "But not quite yet, Sharina," she said. "I have other business first."
The perfect female form shriveled away like frost in the bright winter sunlight. For a moment an armature of something else, a thing only vaguely human, stood in her place; then that too was gone.
But the game board remained; and the queen's laughter hung in Sharina's mind, echoing down the chill corridors of memory, eternal and inescapable.
There were no rats here; no insects even. That surprised Garric.
"Tenoctris?" he asked, raising the lantern so that her shadow and his didn't cover any of the expanse the old wizard was viewing. Pillars supported square-sided vaults. So far as Garric could tell, each one was identical to every other vault on this level and on the two basement levels above it. "Are we looking for anything in particular, or...?"
He didn't mind being in the cellars of the queen's mansion; in fact, it was the closest thing he'd had to relaxation since he and his friends had arrived in Valles. He could have sent an escort of soldiers with Tenoctris when she said she needed to search the building's lower levels. A prince, a king in all but name, had more important things to do than prowl through dust and darkness while creatures skittered out of sight.
But Garric had gotten used to being the physical arm on which Tenoctris' unbreakable spirit depended. It made him feel needed in a way that talk could never do. He understood the need for planning, and he accepted that "Prince Garric" was a symbol of the new government to members of the priesthoods, of the Valles guilds, and of the nobility who might be inclined to go their own way at a time of crisis if they thought they'd been relegated to an underling.
But standing with a sword on his hip, supporting and protecting a frail old woman on whose wisdom rested the fate of the Isles—that was real.
King Carus chuckled at the back of Garric's mind. "You're not the first to feel that way, lad," he said, whispering down the corridors of time. "And so long as you keep it under better control than I did, there's no harm done. Neither I nor the Isles would have much use for you if you thought talk was the thing that mattered most.''
Garric smiled. Besides, there were threats that might paralyze even a battle-tested veteran. Garric had faced wizardry in the past, and faced it down or cut it down.
Tenoctris settled herself on the floor of basalt hexagons. The pavers had been cut from naturally six-sided columns rather than shaped by the hand of man. "I'm looking for passages, Garric," she said. "And I'm determining where they lead."
She looked up with the grin that never failed to brighten the world about her. "I don't mean secret passages in the walls. I mean my kind of passages, routes through planes other than the one on which we're standing. The queen fixed her mansion in a node with several such connections and I think built more. She's very powerful."
Tenoctris scratched a circle on the floor with one of the bundles of bamboo slivers Garric carried for the purpose. "I suppose I could use the same one for each incantation," she muttered apologetically. "It's such a slight thing I'm doing, after all. But even a twig gathers some degree of power with each incantation, and in this place particularly I'm afraid of doing more than I intend."
"I don't mind the load," Garric said mildly. Each sliver was the length of a man's hand. All together the bamboo weighed about as much as the buckle of Garric's sword belt, a massive construction of iron ornamented with tin and niello. "And I surely don't mind the fact that you don't take chances you can avoid."
Tenoctris marked a few words of power around the margin of the circle. He heard her murmur, "Asstraelos chraelos phormo ...," but the rest of her chant was as lost to him as it was empty of meaning.
Faint blue glimmers formed and fled in the air around the two of them. They never lasted as long as the sparks struck off by a blacksmith's hammer, and some were so brief that Garric wasn't sure whether it was his eye or his mind that witnessed them.
Garric looked about him as he waited, though he didn't expect there to be anything visible to his eyes. According to Royhas, human laborers had built the queen's mansion; and perhaps that was true for the portions above the ground. These cellars were far too extensive to have been built by men in a few months. The volume of earth and rock excavated would have been sufficient to fill the harbor if it had been dumped there. Instead, it had simply vanished, and the very existence of the lower levels had remained unguessed until Garric led the assault that drove the queen away.
Tenoctris sighed and laid down the sliver she'd been using. She put her hands flat on the floor to help push herself to her feet. Garric quickly reached out to support her, keeping the lantern at arm's length so that the hot metal frame didn't burn either one of them.
"No luck?" he asked. He lifted slightly, but for the most part he simply provided a firm post on which the old woman could pull herself erect.
"Oh, no, my problem's the other way around," Tenoctris said. "From what I've found thus far, the queen had at least a dozen routes to other locations in this plane and elsewhere in the cosmos. Simply tracing which entrance went where is..."
She grinned again. She always looked a generation younger when she smiled. "I was about to say that it was impossible, but I'm going to have to do it if we're to be safe. If the Isles are to be safe."
Tenoctris nodded Garric toward the next archway. He walked alongside her, still providing support if she needed it. He wondered how many more examinations she intended to make in this cellar, and whether there was yet another level beneath them.
Their shadows trembled in a score of fanciful patterns on the stone. The pillars' contours distorted the human silhouettes. Garric was almost sure that was all he was seeing.
"Tenoctris?" he said as they passed beneath the round-topped arch into a nearly identical vault. Seepage glistened along the junction of two hexagons in the center of the floor. "The queen meant to travel through the passages you're finding, didn't she?"
"Yes," Tenoctris said crisply. She looked around her, analyzing aspects of a reality Garric couldn't see. She nodded him forward again instead of seating herself here. "That was certainly why she constructed her mansion at this location."
"But that isn't what happened," Garric said. "She flew away when we broke in. She didn't, well, go through a passage. Didn't she have time to chant the right words? Or...?"
Tenoctris paused directly beneath the next arch and settled onto the cold basalt. "I should have brought a pad," she murmured, "or at least a thicker robe."
She turned her face toward Garric again. "I don't think the queen's concern was time," she said. "Opening a passage is quite a simple matter, even for a person with no more power than I have."
She smiled; Garric tried to smile back. He failed because of the tension.
"I think the problem," Tenoctris continued, "is that one of the passages leads by a short route to another ... being. A being that even the queen was unwilling to face, and which she feared was strong enough to break through to her if she opened the passage from her side."
"You mean the Beast," Garric said.
Tenoctris began drawing another circle of power. The bamboo left a silvery tracing on the coarse black stone. Only the person who drew the symbols could recognize them with any certainty; that person, and the forces which the symbols commanded.
"Yes, the Beast," Tenoctris said as she drew. "I would guess that the queen was waiting to gain some additional article of power before she attempted to return the Beast to a place that would hold it. She's a great wizard, but she wasn't sure she was powerful enough to defeat that creature alone."
"But we have to defeat her and the Beast," Garric said. His index finger touched the pommel of his long sword.
Tenoctris smiled at him again. "Well," she said, "we have to try."