I'm sending an extra bank of oarsmen, seventy-eight instead of fifty-two, Master Cashel," King Folquin said. He sounded both pleased with himself and defensive at the same time. "That way you'll be able to change half the crew every time the glass is turned and keep up full cruising speed all the way to Valles."
Cashel considered the trim warship and the men wearing only kilts or breeches who boarded her. There was surprisingly little confusion despite the crowding. He tried to imagine the sailors as sheep so that he could better judge their numbers, but men moved too quickly for that trick to work either.
Fifty-two and seventy-eight were just words to Cashel. When he counted above five, he notched a tally stick or—for preference—dropped pebbles or dried peas into a pan. Garric and Sharina could count to any number, and Garric had even showed Cashel how he could measure the height of a tree by taking sights from the ground.
"There won't be room enough to scratch your bum," Zahag said, considering the bireme. As he spoke, he scratched his bum. "Well, I guess anything that gets us back on dry land quicker is a good choice."
He rotated his head to look at Cashel. "Of course, some of the dry land you've taken me to, chief, isn't much to brag about either. You're not going to do that again, are you?"
"No," Cashel said. "Well, I don't think so."
"It does look very squeezed," said the Princess Aria, her eyes narrowing as she regarded the vessel. The ship's name was the Arbutus and Cashel was willing to believe the king when he said that she was the finest vessel in the squadron which kept pirates out of the waters surrounding Pandah. "Perhaps—"
"Master Cashel is in great haste to rejoin his Sharina in Valles, my dear," Folquin said. A tinge of desperation had entered his voice. "I'm sure that he'd prefer minor discomfort in order to reach Valles in a single stage. He'll be with his beloved before morning dawns."
It made Cashel acutely uncomfortable to hear Sharina referred to as his beloved. She was, right enough—he certainly wasn't going to correct the king—but it wasn't something he talked about.
Cashel gripped his quarterstaff harder. He'd sure never used the word to Folquin. Did everybody in the world see what to Cashel was the most private feeling there was?
"Yes, I appreciate exactly how you're looking after my friend Cashel, Your Majesty," Aria said. Judging by her tone, she didn't think much of Folquin's word choice either.
Aria turned to Cashel and put her fingertips on the backs of his hands. "Cashel," she said, "I know you'll succeed in whatever you set out to do. You brought me here where I belong. No one else could have done that."
She looked to the side for a moment as if collecting her thoughts. Without meeting Cashel's eyes again she continued, "Still, I'll pray to the Mistress God for your well-being. And you know—"
Aria faced him squarely. She was a tiny little thing but by Duzi! he'd seen weasels that weren't half so fierce as the princess when she was in the mood.
"You know that you'll always be welcome on Pandah," Aria said. She looked at Folquin. "Doesn't he, dear?"
"Yes, absolutely," the king said, staring at the pattern the toe of his sandal was tracing on the brick quay. "Ah, I think the captain is ready to cast off now, Master Cashel."
"Right," said Cashel, thankfully turning away from his hosts. The gangplank creaked and the ship rubbed her bumpers of coir matting against the quay as Cashel's weight shifted it. "May the Lady keep you well, Princess. And you too, King."
Crewmen bow and stern had already singled up the lines. The piper seated cross-legged in the far stern blew a shrill note; all the oarsmen along the right side shoved the vessel away from the dock with the ends of their oars.
Cashel looked for a place to sit; there was barely space to stand on the narrow deck with the extra rowers all squeezed aboard. Zahag hopped onto the sternpost which curved up over the steersman and captain. The former yelled in surprise, but the captain shushed him with a snarl.
The piper began a two-note call, changing it by fingering the stops in his single reed pipe. The oarsmen fell into a rhythm, though their strokes were short ones until the ship began to slide forward.
Cashel waved once toward the figures on the quay, then eased his way back to stand beside the piper. There wasn't really room, but by gripping the sternpost with his free hand he could sit on the gunwale and lean out safely enough.
Zahag was still looking shoreward. "Except for being so scrawny, Aria isn't bad at all," the ape said. "I'll be interested to see what this Sharina's got that Aria didn't."
Cashel looked up. "Don't say anything like that again," he said, "unless you want to swim to wherever you're going. Understand?"
The ape hunched to the post as tight as a barnacle. The water was already hissing past the bireme's hull. "You bet I do, chief," he said. "No, no, never again."
Princess Aria was wearing a layered white dress as much like what she was used to as the seamstresses on Pandah could make. It was funny how far away Cashel could see that white speck in the sunlight, still waving.
Ilna paused to get a closer look at where her guides were taking her. The afternoon sun slanted across an entrance porch set into the face of a limestone hill. The delicate carvings on the roof were thrown into sharp relief despite the effect of long weathering.
One of the six pillars supporting the porch had fallen into the road leading up to it. Ilna's eyes narrowed when she noticed that the shaft had split at an angle instead of falling into separate stone barrels.
"This whole place was cut out of the front of the hill," she said. And very ably cut, too. No one could fault the craftsmanship of Third Atara's stonemasons.
"Yes, that's right," Hosten said. He and his troops had become more and more taciturn as they approached the tomb. "The Elder Romi had it built before he died."
"It was finished the very hour he died," one of the soldiers said. "He'd foretold his death that close."
"That's a legend," Hosten said sharply. "It may have happened, it may not."
He looked at Ilna and added, "There are many stories about the Elder Romi both before and after he died, mistress. If I were you, I'd go back to Divers immediately and find a ship."
"That's if he died," muttered another of the soldiers. This time Hosten didn't rebuke him.
"It hasn't been such a pleasant jaunt that I'd care to have had it for nothing," Ilna said as she strode toward the entrance. "Besides, I said I'd do it."
They'd come most of the two miles from the palace by carriage. Hosten had offered her a horse, but Ilna had never ridden an animal before and didn't think that making a fool of herself by falling off during the journey was going to improve her mood.
They'd walked the last hundred paces. Earthshocks like the one that threw down the pillar had broken the roadway into tilted blocks. The jumble was hard enough for humans to traverse, let alone a horse or the wheels of a carriage.
"It's a natural cave," Hosten explained as he followed a short distance behind her. "Only the entrance was shaped. People say that it goes all the way down under the sea."
The Inner Sea wasn't visible from where Ilna stood, but she could hear the whisper of waves on the shore now that it was called to her attention. She wasn't concerned about the cave extending underwater. If the stone walls had lasted this long, it wasn't likely that the sea would rush in just in time to drown Ilna os-Kenset.
She smiled slightly. That event would end her responsibility to Halphemos and Cashel and all the people she'd wronged in the past year, of course. Well, if the Gods existed, she doubted that they were going to let her off so easily.
"The coffin was ice cold," a soldier said. "They—"
"That's enough!" Hosten snarled.
Ilna turned her head. "Let him speak," she said. "Legend or not, I want to hear it."
Hosten turned his back, his hand squeezing and releasing the hilt of his sheathed sword as he tried to work off tension and anger. "Go on," Ilna said to the soldier who'd spoken.
The man cleared his throat. His hair was a carrot-colored tangle that stuck out to all sides beneath the rim of his simple iron helmet. "The story..." he said. "It was my uncle who told me when I was a little boy. They put Romi in a silver coffin."
"He didn't have any friends," volunteered another soldier. "All he had was servants and they were none of them from Third Atara. None of them human, some said."
"Anyway, the coffin got cold as cold could be," the first man continued. "They carried him down in the cave, all the way to the end, and there was a pool of water there. They put the coffin in the pool of water and it started to boil. They all ran back out of the cave, and the steam was coming up after them all the way to the surface again."
"And who told this story that your uncle told you, Digir?" Hosten said in an angry voice. "Was it one of those servants who weren't human, is that it? It's all legend!"
"Did you go down in the cave, Lord Hosten?" said the man who'd talked of Romi's servants. "When you were a boy, I mean; on a dare? I did."
Hosten turned to face the others. The afternoon sun shone on him, but his skin looked sallow. "Once. I went to the first bend, where it starts to slant down steeply. My torch went out. I ran back as if the Sister herself was snatching at my heels."
He looked squarely at Ilna. "Don't go in there, mistress," he said. "Maybe there's nothing really down there, but it's the coldest feeling on earth. Don't go."
Ilna shrugged. To the man who'd brought the lantern with him she said, "If you'll light that, I'll take care of my business and the rest of you can go home."
The men looked at their commander. "We'll wait for you, mistress," Hosten said. "We'll wait till the moon sets. Midnight, that is."
The soldier opened a little shutter on the back of the lantern's brass frame. He insetted the glowing punk which he carried in a tube on his belt, then blew gently. Here in the sun it was barely possible to tell that the wick had caught. He handed the lantern to Ilna.
"I'll hope to see you, then," Ilna said as she turned and walked up the three shallow steps to the entrance. One of the soldiers muttered a response—or he might have been talking to his fellows.
Only the first short distance of the cave had been squared by the hand of man. That was as far as light from outside penetrated as well. Though the lantern glowed, it illuminated little except its own horn lenses so far as Ilna was concerned. Her eyes seemed slow adapting to changes in the light; perhaps it was her recent diet.
"Down" was an easy direction, anyway. There were no obstacles except a leather cap lying on the ground twenty paces or so from the entrance. Ilna remembered her escorts' tales of boys daring one another to enter the Elder Romi's tomb. Girls had better sense than that sort of nonsense.
She smiled faintly. Though what was she doing here, unless it was accepting Baron Robilard's dare?
Ilna found she could see better as she proceeded. The walls of the cave were damp. Beneath the moisture was a layer of flow rock, limestone dissolved and redeposited in opalescent layers. Both reflected the lantern light in a bright haze that hid details.
Here and there symbols and perhaps names were carved into the rock. For almost a thousand years the folk of Third Atara had been trying prove that they were braver than a dead man—and proving instead that they were fools and destructive fools besides. Not that this island or any island had a monopoly on fools.
Ilna reached the bend Hosten had mentioned. The cave twisted left. The rock was grubby from the hands of youths gripping it as they peered around the corner and down the steep descent beyond. There were no deliberate markings here, though; visitors hadn't lingered long enough to make them.
Water gurgled in the far distance. Ilna felt a gust from the depths. Did the cave rise again to the open air?
As Hosten had said, it was very cold. Probably because of the damp rock ... and anyway, Ilna had been cold before. She started down the slope.
Ilna didn't like stone, and stone didn't like her. The path's wet slickness made her feet slip. She caught herself by slapping her left palm against the rounded sidewall.
She smiled again. Dislike—her own or that of others for her—wasn't a new experience. She didn't let it bother her, either way.
The cave kept going down. Ilna wondered how those bearing the Elder Romi's coffin had managed to keep their footing. It wasn't a difficult path apart from the steepness, though.
Ilna was starting to see things in the walls, as though creatures had been entombed in the flow rock. That was nonsense, she knew: discolorations in the underlying rock were further distorted by the lantern light passing through the glistening surfaces of water and translucent stone. She glared at the shapes because she thought that keeping her eyes down on the path might suggest she was afraid.
Ilna laughed. Suggest to who? To the soldiers waiting a lifetime away in the sunlight, perhaps? She patted what would have been the snout of a gaping monster if the shadows hinted the truth.
It felt so cold that the slime on the walls of the cave would have frozen had the sensation been real. Something was toying with Ilna's mind, threatening her with illusions. Her fury when she realized she was being played with warmed her. Prayer might have done the same for someone who had more belief in the Great Gods than Ilna os-Kenset did.
The lantern was growing dimmer. Ilna stopped and examined it. She could feel a sufficiency of oil sloshing in the reservoir. She tried adjusting the wick, first up and then down. She tilted the lantern slightly in case there wasn't a proper length of wick within the tank.
The flame sank to a faint blue glow. Ilna set the lantern near the side of the cave, where a knob would keep it from skidding down on its own. She proceeded without it, touching the left wall with her fingertips.
It grew colder. Ilna's lips pursed in a moue of anger.
Ilna would be the last to deny her responsibility for the two wizards who'd followed her from the Garden, but she knew now that she wasn't doing this for Halphemos or Cerix. She was doing it because Baron Robilard was a boy with more power than judgment. He wasn't evil at heart, but he squeezed his subjects and browbeat his associates because there was no one to stop him from doing it and no desire to stop himself.
He'd just tried to do the same thing to Ilna os-Kenset. When this business was over, Baron Robilard would have learned something. Granted, he might not have long to profit from his lesson.
Ilna heard water plashing ahead of her. She supposed it was a persistent drip from the cave roof, amplified by echoes. She continued downward at a measured pace, guiding herself by the touch of her hand.
She was beginning to see again. The cave walls glowed a blue as pale as starlight. Perhaps the light had always been there and it had taken her eyes this long to adapt to it.
The floor of the cave leveled out. Ahead of her was a pool. Water patted the margins, making the sound Ilna had taken for dripping.
There was no question of going on: the cave ended at the pool.
Ilna walked to the edge and knelt. She was trembling uncontrollably. The feeling of cold was real, though her breath didn't hang in the air before her as it would on a winter morning in Barca's Hamlet.
Ilna bowed as she would have done on being presented to any person of age and respectability. Gazing into the pool, she said, "Master Romi, I am Ilna os-Kenset."
The water was as clear as a diamond. It had the same vague glow as the walls of the cave. Bubbles rose trembling through it and burst with plops when they reached the surface.
"Baron Robilard, who now rules this island," Ilna continued, "has sent me to invite you to dinner tonight in his palace. He claims you as his ancestor."
Laughter filled the domed chamber. Ilna looked up. She couldn't see a source for the sound. A bass voice said, "Ilna os-Kenset, are you afraid?"
Ilna rose to her feet. "I'm afraid of my own will, master," she said truthfully. The chill was passing; her muscles no longer trembled. "I'm afraid of the evil I can do when I'm angry."
"Is there nothing else you fear, woman?" the disembodied voice demanded. It rose to a thunder that echoed and re-echoed within the hollow walls.
Shapes began to form in the air around Ilna. Some were terrible, and some were far worse than that. The light congealed into dead flesh and flesh that had never been alive.
"Nothing else, Master Romi," Ilna said to the lowering darkness. "My own evil is quite enough for anyone to face."
The voice burst into rolling laughter that filled all the world around it. The water in the pool shivered at the spasms of fearful joy.
"Go back to the palace of the man who calls himself my descendant, Mistress Ilna," the voice said. "Tell him that the Elder Romi, who had no descendants of the flesh, will grace his banquet tonight. I look forward to the entertainment."
Ilna bowed again. "I will give him your message, master," she said.
She turned and started up the cave again. Before she reached the point where the floor slanted steeply the voice added, "Tell Baron Robilard that I will come when the moon sets, Ilna. I hope he will be ready for me."
Ilna trudged upward. The return wasn't as difficult as she'd thought during her descent that it might be.
The rippling laughter followed Ilna to the cave entrance. She too smiled, every step of the way.
The slit in the rock wall to Sharina's right showed the white room and the game board, nothing else. The other five windows visible from her frozen vantage displayed the sea. Sunset painted the clouds with rosy light. It reflected like blood onto the water beneath.
The aspects were distant from one another by miles, judging from the swatches of sky overhead. The raft covered with Hairy Men filled all five scenes. In the distance beyond, an island humped in silhouette against the sun.
A fleet of fifty warships was attacking the raft. The vessels were under oars, their sails and mainmasts landed onshore to lighten them for action before they set out. From the ships' jibs floated banners bearing the eagle symbol of the royal house of Ornifal, but crossed with a bend of red fabric.
When Sharina saw the floating forest for the first time from her prison, the Hairy Men had wandered it as they chose. Now phantasms prowled the timber mat and drove the brutish humans with gestures and eyes which smoldered like live coals. Instead of running forward to gibber at the warships or fleeing back in wild panic, a phalanx of Hairy Men hunched with crude weapons just beyond the outer barrier of interlaced branches.
On the narrow decks of the ships, archers stood with nocked arrows. They didn't have any better targets than vague movement that might have been the breeze wobbling shrunken leaves. Some of them loosed anyway. The arrows clipped branches, thudded into tree boles, and occasionally struck one of the Hairy Men. For all the real difference the rare success made, the archers could have emptied their quivers into the sea.
Many of them aimed at the phantasms stalking over the timber in plain sight. The missiles that intersected those demonic figures snapped on through as they would the empty air. If anything, the fiery eyes burned brighter.
The flagship was a massive quinquereme that wobbled because its hull had to be high enough to carry five banks of oars. Signalers around the brazier on its stern platform sent up a plume of purple smoke that all the fleet could see. The triremes that made up the rest of the fleet carried catapults on their bow platforms. Catapult arms slammed forward, sending firepots deep into the mass of floating timber.
Here and there, a splotch of burning oil spread on a tree trunk and struggled to ignite the thick, wet bark. More often the pots splashed into open water and either sank unnoticed or formed a patch of harmless iridescence.
The artillery crews began cranking their lever arms back with small capstans, readying their weapons for another volley. The fleet commander and probably every man abovedecks realized that it would be vain effort. A second smoke plume, this one reddish white, billowed from the signal brazier.
The strokes of a few oarsmen aboard each vessel had enabled the ships to hold their distance from the margins of the raft. At the red signal the vessels began to move forward, their rams toward the mat. Beyond the fringe of branches and yellowing foliage, Hairy Men crouched and phantasms laughed silently.
The fleet could have avoided the raft's slow progress forever, but the island behind them could not. Sharina didn't recognize the dim outline, now hidden in the greater mass of the sea as the sun dropped below the horizon. All that mattered to the entity which commanded the Hairy Men was that the raft would ground on that shore sometime during the night, nothing else appearing; and that the sailors, for their own reasons, didn't dare let that happen.
One after another the warships made contact with the raft. A few approached at ramming speed, a fast walk, and tried to punch their way through the tangled barrier. That was like trying to row through an island.
Most were caught in branches that gave the way a noose flexes when a rabbit runs full-tilt into it. A few were still less fortunate: these collided with the axe-severed trunks of trees that were often thicker than a man was tall. Even bow timbers reinforced for ramming splintered at the impact, crushing enormous holes in the hulls. The sea rushed in, engulfing the oar benches.
The other captains approached with the same caution as they would have done if docking. Their vessels nuzzled the edges of the raft while petty officers shouted nervous commands to the oarsmen. Marine spearmen and archers scrambled onto the floating mass; behind them followed sailors carrying axes and saws.
While the marines faced the bobbing maze of trunks and branches, the sailors tried to cut the raft apart. From Sharina's viewpoint, looking down on an expanse of floating timber miles across, the hopelessness of the attempt was obvious. Even the men working at sea level, unable to judge the full extent of their task, must have doubted they could ever succeed.
Phantasms all across the forward edge of the raft pointed their smoky arms forward. The Hairy Men obeyed, tens of thousands of them scrambling up from cover and falling on the clumps of civilized humans. To Sharina, it was like watching the surf boil over a gravel strand.
Archers loosed one or sometimes two arrows before being crushed down by a club or a stone wielded by a long hairy arm. Spearmen thrust home, then watched their victims crawl up spearshafts to tear their killers' throats out before dying themselves. Often the soldiers toppled from wet trunks into a sea that drank them down, burdened as they were by the weight of armor.
The sailors either tried to defend themselves with their tools or, throwing the equipment aside, to scramble back aboard their vessels. The Hairy Men had three or four gripping hands apiece and in their native jungles had become far more familiar with moving across tangles like this one. They leaped open water and nets of branches, sometimes covering twenty feet in a single bound.
Screaming sailors were borne down by savage enemies. Sometimes they lived long enough to feel two or three of the Hairy Men chewing into their bodies in search of kidneys or other particular delicacies.
Catapults fired into the mass, with no more effect than a few score raindrops would have in extinguishing a grass fire. Captains and petty officers stricken by the suddenness of the disaster shouted conflicting orders to the oarsmen still aboard.
A few of the triremes started to back away, but only a few. Fewer still got far enough clear of the raft that the Hairy Men leaping under the phantasms' command didn't catch railings or the extended oars.
When the Hairy Men swarmed aboard a warship, all was chaos and butchery. The rowers were free men, but they had no weapons except the belt knives every sailor—or rural laborer—carried. They were packed too tightly to fight, and too demoralized by the completeness of the catastrophe even to organize under the command of their officers.
Knives and the officers' swords killed, but stones, clubs, and inch-long canine teeth killed faster and more horribly. Triremes wallowed as slaughter washed across them, filling the bilges with steaming blood.
Sharina felt nothing but mild curiosity as she viewed the slaughter. In her present state she understood everything but cared as little as if she were watching the wind pluck white foam from the tips of rising waves.
Surviving Hairy Men squatted on oarbenches meant for the longer, straighter limbs of civilized humans and grasped the oarlooms. Directed by the phantasms, the new rowers brought those ships that had drifted a distance from the raft back against its ragged margins.
More Hairy Men, young and old of either sex, leaped aboard. The warships had been crowded under their own crews, but this influx of half-men squeezed the narrow hulls the way a sheepfold fills in winter. A phantasm in the stern of each vessel gestured the stroke. Despite the crush, the oars now moved with the precision of wooden cogs engaging to drive a mill wheel.
The captured triremes—forty or so from a fleet of fifty—backed, then swung as one and made for the island lowering in what was now near-total darkness. The raft holding more tens of thousands of Hairy Men drifted along the same course but at the speed that wind and current drove it.
The admiral's flagship and two companion triremes still under the control of civilized humans sped away as fast as oars could drive them. They were visible only because the moon shone on the foaming oarthresh to either side of the hulls. Their destination was not the small island from which they had set out but the greater mass to the north and west of it.
Sharina watched as she might have watched the rain begin to pelt a neighbor's house; knowing that the storm would sweep on to her own dwelling, but unconcerned by what that would mean for her and hers.
"The trouble we'll have in fighting the kind of army a wizard raises," said King Carus, leaning on his forearms with his lean, powerful fingers laced as he watched the battle, "is that they don't care if they're killed."
He turned his head to grin at Garric's dream self and added, "Of course, lots of times they're dead to begin with."
Garric had noticed how the king said "we'll have," a quiet reminder that he and Garric were as close as a man and his shadow now. Garric grinned back. Closer, even: there was no darkness so complete that Garric could be without his ancestor's experience, skill, and steadfast, laughing courage.
On the moonlit field below, Carus' army fought an army of liches. Skeletons of the drowned dead, clothed in translucent slime, threw themselves on the human phalanx with the mindless insistence of rocks rolling downhill. The attackers carried rusty swords and spears whose shafts were barnacle-scaled. Some wore armor or rotted scraps of the garments they had drowned in, but most of the sexless monsters were glisteningly nude.
"You think the queen will send liches against us?" Garric asked. He'd fought the creatures before. They struggled even after they'd been hacked to bits. Only a stroke through the skull or the spine would permanently end a lich's lethal malevolence.
Carus shrugged. "It'll be something that doesn't have a mind of its own," he said. "There's men who'll follow a wizard, but not many and not the sort with the discipline to make good soldiers."
The phalanx was formed in a hollow square so that eight ranks faced in every direction. A younger King Carus stood on a mound of equipment at the center of the formation. Moonlight winked on the blade of Carus' long sword and the circlet of gold binding his hair.
"I wondered what I'd do if they retreated and I had to pursue," the older Carus said, nodding toward the battle. "I needn't have worried: they kept coming as long as there was one left that could crawl. I never met a wizard I'd put in command of a company, let alone an army, and I don't guess you will either."
The ground on three sides of the armored square was littered with rotten bones and slick with the noisome ooze into which the liches' flesh dissolved when they died the second time. Rusty weapons lay among the foul debris.
None of the creatures had penetrated the hedge of spears. Though sometimes a lich hacked a pikehead off before another soldier rammed his point through the dead skull or spine, the wall remained unbroken. The jagged end of the pikestaff was still an effective weapon.
"But you've got a different problem, lad," Carus said, turning to look at Garric. "I had an army; you've got a city to defend, and that's going to be a lot harder."
"We're repairing the walls," Garric said. "Pitre's in charge of that, though Tadai's finding the money to pay the laborers. We're getting a loan from a consortium of Serian bankers."
He shook his head. Garric didn't wear the golden diadem when he slept, and thankfully it wasn't part of his dream either. The things that Prince Garric had to deal with made his mind spin.
"Wouldn't you think that people would just pitch in without being paid?" Garric said. He watched Carus' grin grow broader. "I mean, it's their lives if the queen comes back. They must know that!"
"They don't know it," the king said, "and if they did, they'd still want to be paid."
He shrugged. "And they still have to feed their families, after all. The folks you've got filling baskets with dirt and carrying stones aren't nobles and rich merchants who could live on their savings for a few days, lad. Most of them'll eat after nightfall when they're paid and dismissed, because they won't have anything to buy food with until then."
Garric squeezed his hands together. Below the battle was nearing its conclusion, though the remnant of the lich army still writhed like a lizard's severed tail.
"This is what being a king is about?" Garric said. "Finding the money to pay laborers, and then finding the money to pay the bankers back? I don't know how we're ever going to pay off that loan!"
"It's not much like the epics, is it?" Carus said. He laughed. "You'll manage, lad."
Suddenly grim he added, "Better than I did, at any rate, because I'll see to it that you don't let things slide the way I did."
The younger Carus bent to call an order to the signalers waiting at the base of his vantage point. A trumpeter blew a double call. Company officers turned to see the detailed commands passed by torch because the moonlight was too dim to display flags clearly. Two faces of the square fell in along the flanks of the battalion between them and began to advance in the direction from which the attackers came. The fourth face, the battalion that hadn't really been engaged by the liches, faced about also and followed the main body of the phalanx as a ready reserve. The rear ranks of each company carried a double load of equipment, their own and that of the men ahead of them.
"I didn't like to move by night," Carus said reflectively, "but I didn't want to give the wizard who was rebelling a chance to try again. His name was Abiba. Abiba the Great he called himself, until I hanged him that night. Maybe it was too easy to beat him."
Garric frowned at the battlefield. The victory had been complete and there were few human casualties, that was true; but a less skillful human commander or a less disciplined army could have been lost to a man.
"It didn't look easy to me," Garric said slowly.
"Ah," said Carus. "But it let me think that so long as I had troops who wouldn't panic when they faced wizardry, then I didn't have to fear wizards. The Hooded One sank me and my men to the bottom of the Inner Sea because I didn't judge the real risks, just the risks I'd beaten before."
"Ah," said Garric, nodding now that he really understood the king's point. "And what you said before about my job being harder because I have a city to defend instead of an army, you mean because the people will panic. A lot of them."
Carus nodded grimly. "It isn't that soldiers are brave and civilians aren't, lad," he said. "They're used to facing spearpoints, the veterans are, that's true; but my men and I had never seen anything like the liches before we tackled Abiba. It's a lot easier to face the unknown when you're standing shoulder to shoulder with people you trust. That's the advantage the soldier has."
Garric swallowed. "We'll do what we can," he said. "The walls should help, and I've got Attaper putting together a training scheme for a citizen militia. Even if they don't have much in the way of weapons, I thought people would like to feel they were helping. I thought of evacuating Valles, but I don't know that would make any difference. The queen could attack anywhere, after all."
"There's a satisfaction to hanging a wizard that I never got out of arguing tax policy with the rulers of the separate islands," Carus said, smiling crookedly. "I should've spent more time on the taxes, though, and learned more from the wizards I did hang. Well, you've got my mistakes to look at so you don't have to make them again."
The field was empty now except for grass trampled to mud and the wrack of broken equipment and long-dead corpses. Looking down at the moonlit waste, Garric said, "Sir, I feel like I'm a piece of copper. I'm being hammered out so flat that you could see through me. Everybody has something they want ... and I'm not sure there's going to be anything left unless they stop hammering."
"They won't stop, lad," Carus said softly. "Not till you're dead, and maybe not then."
The king drew his long sword. The tang and crosshilt were forged all as one piece with the blade; the edges had the sheen of oil trembling on water, smooth and as sharp as was consistent with the strength to shear through armor.
"I didn't have any choice about being king, Garric," Carus said. "The Isles needed a strong hand. My hand, Carilan and his advisors all told me, and I wish they'd been right. I failed in the end because I misjudged a wizard, and the kingdom went down in blood and chaos."
"Nobody could have done better than you," Garric said. He squeezed the coronation medal from King Carus which he wore around his neck. His left hand squeezed it.
"You don't know that!" the king said in a rare flash of anger. His face softened and he smiled, then continued, "But you might be right. Well, what matters now is what you do, Prince Garric. And you don't have any choice either. You'll be King of the Isles because the Isles need you. All the people who live on the Isles need you. That's the part that's important, the people you serve."
Carus raised his sword. Light came from no certain source to illuminate the dream balcony; it ran along the blade like a brook rippling over gray stones.
"This is a fine weapon, a marvel of craftsmanship," he said, speaking to the steel rather than to Garric. "It will do whatever it's asked to do, until the moment it breaks. As I did, Garric."
Carus turned to face the youth who was so nearly the mirror image of his own younger self. "And as you'll do. Because we do the jobs we have to, you and me and the swords in our hands."
The king from ancient times laughed; and as he laughed, he began to fade along with the setting of which he was a part. Garric raised his head from the arms on which he'd pillowed it while dozing on the desk of his private office.
"Garric?" Liane called through the door. "Attaper is here with a report on the militia. Can you see him?"
It was so dark outside that Garric could barely tell the open window from the casement framing it. "Bring him in, Liane," Garric called. He got up, feeling on the desktop for flint and steel to light a candle.
In Garric's dreams, with the strength of King Carus to support him, he could be a frightened boy. It was time to be king again.
Ilna's lantern burned normally when she retrieved it from the floor of the cave, but she was surprised at how little oil remained in the large reservoir. She would have expected it to last all night without being refilled.
She walked up the remaining slope at a brisk pace. She didn't feel as cold as she had while descending, though the air had the chill to be expected from damp stone.
She reached the bend and the floor became level. The cave mouth was only a dim blur. Unless a storm had blown in from the sea, it was much later than Ilna had judged it from the length of time she thought she'd spent below ground.
"Something's coming!" a man said. His nervous voice echoed down the tunnel. Weapons rattled on other equipment and the stones they'd been leaned against.
"I'm coming out!" Ilna said. "What's the matter with you?"
She stepped onto the porch. Her escort stood with their backs to one of the huge pillars. Hosten flashed his sword; the four soldiers had their shields raised and held their spears for underhand thrusts.
"Is it really her?" a soldier said.
"Of course it's me!" Ilna said, raising the lantern so that it shone directly on her face instead of lighting her from below. "You knew I was coming."
Hosten sheathed his sword. "We hoped you were coming, Mistress Ilna," he said, correcting her in a quiet voice.
He looked at the sky. The moon was well past zenith; Ilna had been in the cave much longer than she'd believed. "We'd best get back to the palace," Hosten said, "or they'll think we don't plan to return. Unless...?"
He looked at Ilna and raised an eyebrow.
"Of course we're going back," Ilna said, though in a milder tone than she might have used. She knew the courtier was trying to do her a service, the sort of act that made the world a better place. It wasn't Hosten's fault that Ilna found kindnesses much harder to accept than insults.
She handed the lantern to one of the soldiers. If it had been Ilna's decision she would have snuffed the flame and returned to the carriage by moonlight alone, but the man kept it lit. The quivering yellow glow was very little use for lighting the broken roadway, but perhaps he found warmth in it.
"How did you find the cave, mistress?" Hosten asked in a tone of deliberate disinterest.
"I did what I went there to do," Ilna said. They were in sight of the carriage. A horse whickered and the driver got up from where he'd been sleeping between the front wheels.
"So the stories are all just fancies after all," Digir said with a half-regretful sigh. "We were just a bunch of kids scaring themselves in the dark."
Ilna looked at him sharply. "No," she said, "it's not. I very much advise you to treat the Elder Romi with the respect due a man who served his community well for a long time."
"That's enough, Digir," Hosten said. "Anything more Mistress Ilna has to say, she should save for Baron Robilard."
"One more thing," Ilna said as they reached the carriage. "Digir, all of you: if a sense of respect isn't enough to keep your children from troubling the Elder Romi, then tell them they should be afraid of him. After tonight, they shouldn't have any difficulty believing you."