Garric'd hung his belt with sword, dagger, and wallet over a finial of his chair back before he sat down. Carus winced every time the descendent whose mind he shared disarmed himself in a public gathering, but Carus wasn't in charge—and he didn't like civilian gatherings to begin with.
"Being in the middle of soldiers is fine, though," the king's ghost said, grinning. "Even if they're enemy soldiers. I know the rules we're playing by."
Garric stepped toward the chair. It hadn't fallen over, probably because Liane had put her hand on the back to keep it from tipping when he shoved it back. He held the aegipan's sword high but now he was just trying to avoid shaving pieces off those around him. The blade was as sharp as Shin claimed, even where the edge'd notched the stone.
"Give his highness room!" shouted Attaper, who seemed to've recovered from his strain. "Back away, I don't care who you are!"
Garric glanced at the guard commander, wondering how he'd taken the fact his prince had figured out a trick he'd missed. Attaper caught his eye and winked, grinning ruefully.
"Careful!" Garric said, drawing his own sword left-handed and setting it on the table. Duzi, this was no job to be doing in such a crowd, half of whom had no more experience with weapons than they did with Serian philosophy! Its watermarked blade shimmered in light through the clerestory windows.
Garric had carried that sword into more fights than he could say for certain; it'd served him well. Seeing it alongside the weapon the aegipan had brought was like comparing his father's inn to this palace.
Holding his scabbard in his left hand, Garric slid the new sword home with no more than the usual faint zing as the side of the blade rubbed the stamped bronze lip. He shook it slightly to see how loose it was in the new sheath; there was no more play between the blade and wooden battens than there'd been with the sword it'd been made for.
"Are you surprised, Prince Garric?" asked Shin, who was standing as close to Garric's left side as Liane was to his right. Attaper and the guards wouldn't have dared object to Liane's presence, but the aegipan must move like water in a brook. "The Yellow King forged it for the human champion to carry, after all."
"Then . . . I'm meant to use it?" Garric said, trying to keep the desperate eagerness out of his voice. The emotional jolt he'd gotten from the implied offer came more from Carus than from Garric's own soul, though the innkeeper's son had become enough of a warrior himself by now to feel a touch of greedy desire when he looked at the gray perfection.
"If you wish, you can offer it back to the Yellow King when you reach his cave," Shin said. "Until then at least it's yours—though you have to reach his cave, after all."
"Everybody sit down, please!" Cashel said. One of the clerks standing near the wall flung his document case in the air. Even Garric jumped—he wasn't sure he'd ever heard his friend shout in an enclosed room before. "And be quiet."
Tenoctris stood on the bench where she'd been resting. The extra height allowed her to see and be seen by everybody in the hall, but it didn't help her be heard over the confusion. Cashel had done that. He stood on the floor in front of her, looking a trifle embarrassed at the way everybody stared at him.
Garric grinned. For somebody who needed to be heard, the next best thing to having the strongest lungs in the borough was to have a friend with the strongest lungs in the borough.
"Thank you," said Tenoctris. She dipped her head in a tiny nod of satisfaction. "Garric, this isn't the portent I expected—I thought the image I saw in my scrying stone was allegorical. It wasn't. You must go with him."
"Prince Garric has a kingdom to rule," Tadai said. "Lady Tenoctris, I greatly respect your judgment, but in this crisis it'd be irresponsible for the prince to go off to—we don't even know where to!"
"Milord, he must," Tenoctris said. She was a tiny woman who looked now like a bird chirping from its perch, but just now she had a presence that no one else in the room could've equaled. "Or there won't be a kingdom for him to rule. The Last will be the only men in this world."
"I'm planning to go, Tenoctris," Garric said quietly. "I planned to from the first."
Carus grinned broadly in Garric's mind, waking Garric's grin as well. And maybe even a little before I knew I was the champion . . . .
He felt enormous relief. The weight of the crown had been lifted away from him. He was free to be himself again; just a man, a person who made decisions for himself alone.
"I felt that way in battle," Carus said, his face unexpectedly somber. "That was the only time I was free of being king. But it made me look for battles to fight, lad, and that made me an even worse king than I'd have been if I'd worked harder at the job."
"How many troops will you be taking with you, your highness?" Attaper said in a coolly matter-of-fact tone of voice.
"Ho, and you'd trick the Yellow King into accepting an army when he sent for a man?" said Shin in a trill of golden mockery. "Is that what you think, Lord Attaper? The champion will travel alone, as he knows and as you know also."
"He can fight alone in your tournament or whatever it is," Attaper said harshly. "As he did with the catmen, since he insisted. But he'll have an escort to get there!"
Three voices swelled toward a babble—and cut off sharply when Cashel cracked the butt of his staff twice quickly on the stone floor. "Tenoctris needs to talk!" he said, not quite as loudly as he'd spoken before when he called to get attention, but loudly enough.
The old wizard straightened, using Cashel's shoulder to brace her. She'd bent forward to speak into his ear so he could hear her. She flashed Garric a smile when their eyes met, but he thought he saw sadness under the bright expression.
"Our own efforts won't save the world for the things of this world," Tenoctris said. When she began to speak there were still whispers rustling, but at the first words of her thin voice they stilled. "Lord Tadai—"
Her eyes, momentarily those of a hawk rather than a sparrow, lighted on the commander of the Blood Eagles.
"—and Lord Attaper especially, all of you: we must have help. The Yellow King has offered an alliance at a price we can pay."
The aegipan, quivering in place as his hooves danced, made a half-bow of acknowledgment. The coarse black hairs of his beard seemed to twist more tightly together as though they had minds of their own.
Tenoctris dipped her head in response, smiling wryly. "The world is more important than the kingdom, milords," she said. "If we fail, every man and Corl and sheep in the world will die. There won't even be worms in the ground, because the Last will smooth and bake and kill it."
No one spoke for a moment. Garric nodded, stroking the hilt of the new sword with his fingertips. He said, "Lady Tenoctris, have you anything further to add or may we get down to the business of organizing the government during my absence?"
"One more thing, your highness," Tenoctris said. The formality wasn't for humor; she was recognizing that the kingdom did still matter even though it couldn't be their first priority. "We'll also need the help of a wizard far more powerful than I."
Garric started to speak. The old wizard waved the words back with a moue of irritation. "This is no time for pretty words. Yes, I've done things and we've all done things, but now we need help!"
"Sorry," Garric muttered, in apology for what he hadn't said. "What do you want from us toward finding a, the, wizard?"
The thought made him shiver inside, but he didn't let that show on his face. Liane recognized it, though; she shifted slightly so that he could feel the warmth of her body so close to his upper arm.
Garric didn't hate or fear wizardry the way many folk—the ghost in his mind among them—did. Nonetheless, with the exception of Tenoctris herself the wizards he'd met in the past two years were either unpleasant or dangerous or—very often—unpleasantly dangerous. The disaster that ended the Old Kingdom had been caused by a wizard; the cataclysm that shattered Garric's world into its present confusion had been caused by wizards; and the thought of trusting the safety of the world to a powerful wizard was profoundly disturbing.
He grinned. We've survived this long by accepting Tenoctris' judgment. I'm not going to stop doing that now.
"All I need at the moment is your permission to leave," Tenoctris said, flashing a brief smile that returned her face to its usual cheerful optimism. "I'd like to go to the Temple of the Mighty Shepherd. When I've done that, perhaps I'll have a better notion of what the next step will be."
"That temple's in ruins, is it not?" Liane said. She stiffened in sudden embarrassment. "That is, it was before the Change. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have spoken."
"It was in ruins in my day too, dear," Tenoctris said. "I intend to meditate or perhaps dream, I suppose, rather than sacrifice. And if I may . . . ."
She touched Cashel's shoulder again. He didn't turn to look at her.
"I'd like Cashel to accompany me," she went on. "In part because he is a mighty shepherd."
"If Cashel agrees—" Garric said, but it was toward his sister that his eyes shifted. She gave a quick nod of agreement, though her expression had frozen for a moment. "—then yes, of course."
"Sure, Garric," Cashel said quietly. His staff was upright beside him, as usual. "I like to help, and you don't need me here."
Though maybe Sharina does, Garric thought, but that was a matter between her and Cashel; and anyway, she'd agreed.
Tenoctris stepped carefully down from the bench, bracing herself on Cashel's arm. Garric looked around the assembly. "In that case, counselors," he said, "let's rough out the details of the administration during my absence."
A thought struck him; he glanced toward the aegipan at his side. "That is . . . how much time do I have to prepare, Master Shin?"
Shin chuckled, making his beard dance though his feet were still for the moment. "You have all the time you wish to take, Prince Garric," he said. "But I would advise you not to take very long if you wish your world to survive."
"Oh, Shepherd, hear me!" Ilna wailed hoarsely. "Guide my husband to the Realm of Peace. Protect him with Thy staff."
Her voice had a right to crack: she'd been calling in false grief since just before sunset and by now they were well into the fourth watch of the night. The moon had set, and within an hour the light that precedes the dawn would tinge the northeastern sky. Despite Asion's assurance, the catmen had waited.
Ilna glanced at the pattern her fingers were knotting and unknotting, just to keep themselves occupied during the delay. They wouldn't wait much longer, though.
"Oh, Lady, my daughter was a good child," she cried. "Hold her safe beneath the hem of Thy mantle."
To the best of Ilna's knowledge, the catmen couldn't understand human words any better than she could make sense of their yowls and shrieks. Though her present grief was as false as the belief in the Great Gods that she implied, she sang real words because they were part of the pattern she was weaving.
Chalcus would've understood what she was doing, and perhaps Merota would as well. Merota had learned from her and Chalcus to see the patterns that most people didn't, couldn't, see. Patterns in the way a sword blade shimmered, patterns in the way leaves rustled in a forest . . . .
Merota was a clever girl, smarter than either her or Chalcus, rich and educated. She'd have gone far.
Merota was dead, her skull crushed by a catman's axe. Chalcus was dead, pierced through by several points; dead on his feet but nonetheless cutting down his slayers and the girl's before he let himself fall. And Ilna os-Kenset had died also, killed by the same strokes that slew her family.
She caught herself. Her eyes were open, but for a few instants she'd seen only the past. The wordless cries which grief had torn from her memory were real.
Ilna tossed three billets of dry, pitchy pine knots on the sunken fire, the light-wood she'd kept ready for this moment. The waiting was over.
"They're coming," she said, speaking to the hidden men. She grasped the hem of the blanket she'd hung across the front of the cabin and waited.
The fire flared, its sudden light winking from the eyes of the four catmen who'd approached to the edge of the farmyard. One of the beasts snarled in angry discomfort, rising from his crouch. He carried what looked like a fishing spear, its two springy points spreading from where they were bound to the shaft. The thorn barbs were on the inside so they'd grip instead of killing the victim quickly.
The Corl stalked closer, bending his course to skirt the fire by more than his own height. His three companions rose also, though they were careful not to rush past their leader. The beasts hunted in packs, but from what Ilna'd seen they weren't much more social than cockerels. They fought for dominance frequently, brutally, and to the death . . . which saved Ilna a little trouble, though a kind of trouble she didn't mind.
The Coerli didn't like fire, but they'd followed the haze of smoke back to this farm which they must've thought was abandoned. The blaze in front of Ilna wouldn't help them from leaping on her from the sides, of course.
She smiled with anticipation: the fire was to illuminate, not to protect.
The leader growled deep in his throat. His muscles were heavier than those of an ordinary warrior and his mane had begun to sprout, but that was true to a lesser degree of the three Coerli accompanying him. In a fully fledged pack the chieftain limited the amount of meat his warriors ate, since without it the males remained sexually neutral and didn't threaten the chief's dominance. This hunting party probably ate only meat, so the members were on terms of dangerous equality.
The beasts weren't going to live long enough to kill each other in dominance battles, however. Ilna jerked the blanket from its pegs, uncovering the pattern she'd laid against the wall.
"Now!" she cried to her companions. Her right hand loosed the silken lasso she wore around her waist in place of a sash.
The leading catman had started his leap, his arm poised to pin Ilna's throat with his spearhead before he glimpsed the pattern of threads against the wood in the bright flames. His muscles locked, spilling him onto the ground sideways. The beast directly behind him fell also, as did the one who'd stayed farther out in case Ilna tried to run.
Ilna's lasso looped from her hand, filling a pattern she knew though she didn't yet see it. The catman farthest to the left shrieked like a hawk as he loped toward her. He leaped, a stone axe raised in his right hand and a dagger carved from root stock in his left. He moved quicker than a human could respond—
He shrieked again, tangled in the noose that hung in the air through which he'd tried to spring. Ilna jerked hard, turning.
The catman twisted, but the silk's pull spun him into the cabin wall. He lost his axe at the impact but still had the poignard when he slammed the ground.
He gathered his legs under himself to spring toward Ilna. Temple's long sword slipped in above his breastbone and out through his spine at mid back.
The warrior's arms spasmed. He coughed a bubble of blood and, as it burst over his face, went flaccid.
Ilna let out her breath in a gasp. Asion rose, withdrawing the knife he'd thrust through the kidney of a paralyzed beast. The head of the most distant catman was cocked at right angles to the rest of its spine. As Ilna looked up, Karpos wrung the neck of the pack's leader the same way: one palm on the beast's chin and the other at the top of his skull.
Temple wiped his sword with the edge of the blanket which'd hidden Ilna's trap. "Don't look at this," she snapped as she snatched the sketchy fabric off the wall, bundling the yarn and support poles to break their pattern. She didn't want to take time now to untie the knots and coil the strands into a skein.
"I didn't know how powerful you are, Ilna," Temple said as he continued to polish the hard bronze. "You have a remarkable ability."
Ilna shrugged. She supposed she could toss the snare on the fire; it was of no further use, to her or to others. She chose not to do that, though it'd be the most efficient way to rid the world of something that'd be dangerous until it was destroyed.
The wool and the sticks were nothing in themselves, but they'd helped her kill four catmen. She'd disarm her trap, but if she decided not to destroy the materials that'd served her well—who could tell her she was wrong?
"I wondered when the one kept on coming, mistress," Karpos said. He'd scalped the catmen's leader, using his long dagger with the delicacy of a much smaller knife; now he was walking toward the more distant of his victims to take that trophy also. "I guess you just wanted the kill for yourself, huh?"
"No," said Ilna, walking to the body of the beast Temple had stabbed. "My pattern didn't work on him for some reason."
She lifted the catman by the scalp lock, the ridge of long hair down the back of his neck. One of his eyes was a normal muddy brown, but the other was as milky and dead as a chip of marble.
"Ah," Ilna said, dropping the beast's face in the dirt again. Nothing to be done about a half-blind attacker who didn't see the same pattern as his fellows. Though if she'd adjusted two threads on the far left end of the fabric, she might've been to—
Well, she'd keep that in mind the next time. There'd be many more next times, until she was dead or all the catmen were dead.
Ilna dusted her palms together, then slipped free the noose with which she'd caught the beast when her pattern didn't work. She'd been afraid that Temple's thrust had nicked the cord, but on examining it she found the blade had entered the chest above her lasso and exited below the back of the loop. The silk was untouched.
If the thrust had been calculated, it was a very pretty piece of work; and from what Ilna had seen of Temple, it'd probably been calculated. "Thank you," she said. "My noose wouldn't have kept him from jumping straight toward me."
She cleared her throat. "And I appreciate you not cutting my noose, either. Though I could've spliced it if necessary."
"There's very little about fabric that you couldn't do, Ilna," the big man said. His voice was pleasant, but he didn't mean the words as a question. "Yours is a remarkable power, whatever you choose to use it for."
"Right now I choose to kill beasts," Ilna snapped. The hunters had wiped their knives on the pelts of the dead catmen. They stood easily, bow and sling in their hands, waiting for her to tell them what to do next.
"We can go straight to the camp and end the business," she said harshly. "Leave your packs; we'll come back here."
The hunters exchanged glances. Asion started toward the forested slope to the northeast. "I'll follow," Karpos said to Ilna, turning to watch the ridge behind them.
It'd be fully light by the time they reached the catmen's day camp. That'd be helpful if there was more to do there—as Ilna suspected there would be.
Cashel squatted with his back against one of the two columns still standing near the southeast corner of the ruin. There was a stretch of the stone foundation course for a mud-brick wall, and the bases of other columns that'd fallen over. Otherwise, the Temple of the Mighty Shepherd was a lot of loose stones. Cashel'd seen enough temples by now that he could guess at what it might've looked like, but that was just guessing.
Tenoctris sat cross-legged way down at the other end, where the statue would've been in the days there was a statue. Cashel was uncomfortable about them being so far apart in case something happened, nearly two tens of double-paces as he judged. She'd said it'd be all right, though, and that having him close might be a problem because he was so solid.
Cashel didn't understand what she meant by solid—sure he was, but she was sitting on a slab of stone. There were lots of things he didn't understand, though; he'd do what Tenoctris said. If more of the Last popped out of the ground the way they'd come from the pond the night before, well, he'd see how quick he could get to her. When he had to, he moved faster than people generally expected.
He held the quarterstaff crossways on his thighs as he polished it, smiling softly. He and the staff had surprised people, yes they had. They'd surprised people and things that weren't people at all.
Sparks of wizardlight sizzled blue above Tenoctris, then vanished. Cashel watched intently for a moment, but it'd happened before and not meant anything. At each pop and crackle the tree frogs fell silent, but they were starting up again as usual.
Cashel listened to the frogs and the night birds, and he eyed the heavens. Once already tonight a shrew had perched on his foot and chittered as it ate a beetle; the wings and then bits of the beetle's shell had tickled his bare skin before the shrew'd scurried off into the night to find something else to kill. Shrews were bloody little fellows, for all that they weren't much longer than a man's finger.
Tenoctris mumbled, or maybe somebody else spoke near where she was. Nobody Cashel could see, anyway. The old wizard's eyes were closed. She wore a calm smile, but Cashel'd seen her smile when she thought Evil was going to overwhelm her and everybody she cared about. Folks who thought courage had something to do with being willing to hit other people needed to spend a little time around Tenoctris.
There were wispy clouds in the high sky, but mostly the stars shone clear. A shepherd spends a lot of time looking at the stars while other people sleep. They're his clock as well as his companion: they keep better time than folk in the palace get from the clepsydra dripping water and a trumpeter blowing the hour when a cup filled and turned over.
The constellations were pretty much what he was used to. The Seven Plow Oxen were strung out a little, and a middling reddish star was in the place of the blue one in the head of the Farrier's Hammer; nothing more major than those things.
Except in the south, where the new white star was so much brighter than anything but the moon. Cashel looked over his shoulder at it, then looked back. He figured that star was part of the problem, but it wasn't for him to worry about till somebody told him it was.
A cardinal started singing merrily, though what it was doing up so late was more than Cashel could guess. It'd been dark for hours; Duzi, it'd been dark by the time Tenoctris stopped the gig here on the eastern outskirts of Valles.
Of what Valles was today, anyhow. Cashel was pretty sure that when he'd been driven through this part of the city before the Change, it'd been solid with many-story tenements.
Cashel didn't miss the buildings—they were dovecotes for people; he couldn't imagine how folks were willing to live like that—but he sort of wondered what'd happened to those who'd been in them. He hoped they were all back in their own time, as happy as anybody could be in tenements.
It was probably good there weren't as many people around as he'd expected, partly because wizardry bothered folks. What Tenoctris was doing now seemed a lot like wizardry, even if she wanted to call it dreaming or meditation or whatever. The sparkles and the sounds showed that.
The other reason—and probably the bigger one—was that this way folks didn't bother her. There was no way Cashel could've kept everybody away from Tenoctris if they'd been in the middle of buildings full of people, especially since he had to stay a distance back from her himself. Sure, most folks were scared of a wizard, but there'd always be a few, kids especially, who weren't or were more curious than scared.
A girl stepped into the temple from the front. She looked at Cashel when she passed, though she didn't say anything or even look interested. She was heading toward Tenoctris.
Isn't that just what you get when you tell yourself things are going fine! Cashel thought as he scrambled to his feet. "Ma'am?" he said. "I wish you wouldn't go any closer to my friend. She's busy with, well, a thing that she's got to think about really hard."
The girl stopped in her tracks and turned to stare. She was older than he'd thought, but still not very old; sixteen, maybe, was all. She had flowing dark hair that spread like a cape over the thin shift that seemed to be all she was wearing.
"You can see me?" she said. Her voice was as thin and high as the trilling of chorus frogs.
"Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. She had very fine bones; that and the way her legs moved made him think of a bird. "I know I'm not from around here, but I'd really be grateful if you didn't talk to Tenoctris till she's done."
If the girl didn't listen to him when he was being polite, he guessed he'd hold her. It wasn't something he wanted to do, grab a stranger and make her do something because he was stronger, but Tenoctris was depending on him.
The girl just stared. Had he done something wrong? "Ah, my name's Cashel or-Kenset," he said. "I'm just here with my friend Tenoctris, Lady Tenoctris, that is. I carry things for her."
"You see me!" the girl cried. She touched her hands to her face, covering her open mouth. "It's been . . . why, nobody's ever been able to see me! Not since the flood."
"Ah, flood, ma'am?" Cashel said. "I'm not from Ornifal; I mean, I'm from Haft. I hadn't heard about a flood here, I guess."
"No, the Flood," the girl said. "When the waters covered everything and everyone died."
Her tongue touched her lips; Cashel couldn't begin to read her expression. "I died then, but I didn't go away like the rest of them. I've stayed here for ever so long. I don't know why."
"Ma'am, you're a ghost?" Cashel said. She didn't look like a ghost. He wondered if he could touch her if he stretched out his arm, but he didn't try. It'd be impolite, and anyway it didn't matter.
"Am I?" said the girl. "Perhaps I am."
She licked her lips again. "Your name is Cashel," she said wonderingly. "I used to have a name too. I don't remember what it was, though. It was ever so long ago."
"Do you live around here?" Cashel said. "Stay, I mean, if you're not . . . ."
"I think I came here after the Flood," the girl said. He couldn't believe that she was a ghost; she seemed just as real as real. "I don't think I lived here before, but I don't really remember."
She shook her head, then gave him a rueful smile. "I don't remember anything from when I was alive," she said, "except that I had a name. I'm sure I had a name."
A thread of ruby sparks trickled out of the sky to vanish again above Tenoctris' head. She didn't move or even notice it as best as Cashel could tell.
From what the old wizard'd said on the drive here, she wasn't making things happen any more than the flume makes the water that turns the mill. She just put herself where things would happen and maybe pushed them a bit to one side or the other.
The girl was staring at Tenoctris. "Can she see me too, Cashel?" she said suddenly, turning to face him. Her eyes were very dark, but they seemed like real eyes.
"Ma'am," Cashel said, "I don't know. When she's done we can ask her, I guess."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," the girl said, brushing the thought away with a sweep of her hand. "Nothing matters really, not if you take the time to look at it. Do you—"
She raised a hand and traced the line of Cashel's cheek without quite touching him.
"Do you have feelings, Cashel?" she said coquettishly. "Love and hate, things like that?"
"I wouldn't say I hated anybody, ma'am," he said, feeling a little uncomfortable. Still, the girl wasn't bothering Tenoctris and that was all that mattered. "I've fought people and I guess I will again. People and other things. But I don't know about hate."
"I used to feel things," she said, turning away again. Whatever'd possessed her for a moment was gone now; thank Duzi. "I remember that too. When I'm around people I sometimes imagine I can feel again, but mostly I'm alone."
The ground trembled, though the motion was so faint that afterwards Cashel wasn't sure he'd felt anything more than a distant wagon with a heavy load. "Now I feel sadness," the girl said, her eyes fixed on Tenoctris. "Everyone in this world is going to be killed the way the Flood killed everyone in my world."
She looked at him abruptly. "That's right, isn't it?" she said. "I should feel sad about that? Or should I feel something else?"
Cashel's lips felt dry. "Ma'am," he said, "that'd be sad, but Tenoctris and the rest of us aren't going to let that happen. It'll be all right."
The girl trilled golden laughter. "Yes," she said, "I remember now. There were scholars in my day who were going to stop the Flood, but the Flood came anyway. You'll see that it doesn't really matter, Cashel. When you look back as far as I do, nothing matters. And you feel nothing."
There was a pop near Tenoctris, a dull sound. The air was suddenly clearer, though Cashel hadn't noticed a haze beforehand. The old woman slumped, barely managing to catch herself on her arms.
Cashel trotted to her, holding his staff crosswise before him. Tenoctris looked up and smiled when she heard his feet thumping on the turf. She stayed where she was until he was there to help her up.
"Tenoctris?" he said when he was sure she was all right and firm on her feet. "There's somebody who'd like to meet you."
Cashel looked toward where he'd been standing, but the girl wasn't there any more. For a moment he thought she might've hidden behind one of the pillars, but that probably wasn't it.
"I guess she's gone," he said in embarrassment. "We were talking while you sat here, is all."
Tenoctris nodded and started toward the gig. She touched Cashel's wrist but didn't really lean on him. "The girl was local, then?" she asked.
Cashel grinned. Tenoctris wanted to know more, but she didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable. "I don't know if she was," he said. "She said she drowned in a flood so long ago that she couldn't remember her name. She looked just like a girl, though. A pretty one."
"Indeed?" Tenoctris said in delight. "The Primal Flood, then? My, that's quite interesting, Cashel. And she'd become the spirit of this place, a genius loci."
She smiled. "A genia loci, I suppose, since you say she was still a girl to look at."
Cashel shrugged; the words didn't mean anything to him. Not even "spirit of this place."
"She couldn't remember much," he said, looking to both sides as they passed between the pair of pillars that were still standing. "She told me—"
He stopped and took a moment to reframe his words. He said, "I told her that you were going to stop the trouble that was coming now. Like her flood."
"I see," said Tenoctris, looking at him sharply. He guessed she really did see what he hadn't said. "Well, while I myself can't stop the Last, I think I've learned how to get the ally we need."
She paused, still watching him as they neared the gig. "I'll need your help again tomorrow, Cashel," she said. "If you're willing."
"Yes ma'am, I am," Cashel said. "When will you want me?"
He took the horse's reins in his left hand and gripped the frame of the light vehicle in his right so that it wouldn't skitter forward while Tenoctris climbed aboard. She didn't need his help for that, though.
Tenoctris took the reins. "Around midday, I'd judge," she said as he walked around the back of the gig to get in on the other side. "There are a number of things I'll need, and they aren't all in my apartments. We'll be going to the old tombs in the palace grounds."
"I didn't think people were buried inside Valles, ma'am," Cashel said, mounting with the care his weight required. He was a good load for one horse to pull, though the roads back to the palace were smooth enough and flat so he wouldn't have to get out and walk.
"The palace wasn't part of the city when the tombs were built," Tenoctris said. "The family, the bor-Torials, weren't even Dukes of Ornifal at the time."
She clucked to the horse and twitched the reins; he clopped forward immediately. It looked simple. Cashel was pretty sure if he tried it, the horse would either look at him or run off in some other direction.
"Well, I'll help however I can, Tenoctris," Cashel said. He'd have said the same thing regardless, but maybe listening to the girl made him put a little more force into the words.
The catmen had been sheltering from daylight in a ravine between two knobs of limestone that'd been a little harder than the surrounding rock. They'd built a low dome of boughs broken from the neighboring pines.
"There's caves all over here," Asion said in a tone of mild reproach. "Why d'they want to take the trouble to build a hut, d'ye suppose?"
"Maybe they don't like rock," Ilna said, speaking more harshly than the question required. She looked down at the shelter while lying on a slab of cracked, gray stone. Sun and frost had broken the surface into rough pebbles that anybody'd find uncomfortable, but no Corl could possibly dislike rock more than Ilna herself did. "How many are inside, do you know?"
Karpos looked at Asion. The smaller man shrugged. "There's one," he said, "but I don't think more than that. And he's got to be hurt or he would've gone after you with the others, right?"
He and Karpos exchanged glances over Ilna's head. "I figure," said Karpos carefully, "that with just one there and laid up, we don't need to be fancy. Besides, it's broad daylight and they don't like that. I'll go down and finish him off, right?"
"No," said Ilna. "I'll stand in front of the entrance. Asion, start a fire and get a torch going. When I'm in place, throw it onto the hut and I'll stop the beast when it tries to get out."
While they waited, Ilna'd knotted a pattern. It seemed right to use yarn from the disemboweled woman's tunic to dispose of the beasts who'd killed her. It shouldn't have mattered, but there are more patterns than those woven in cloth.
She looked past Asion to Temple. "Do you have an opinion?" she demanded.
"It's a good plan, Ilna," the big man said. He stretched. His sword was sheathed, but she'd seen how quickly he could draw it. "I'll stand with you in case the Corl is feverish and doesn't see as he ought to."
Ilna grimaced, but Temple hadn't said anything she could object to. There was no excuse for her mood. The rock bothered her, she supposed, and being awake all night; but there was something irritating in Temple's attitude. He seemed to be judging her as dispassionately as she'd eye a hen while planning dinner.
Ilna stood and walked half a furlong to the right so that she was at the head of the ravine, facing the hut's entrance. The door was merely a juniper bush pulled into the opening, but it was where the catman would come out.
It was important to stop him in his tracks. If he headed up the far slope instead of attacking directly, there was no certain safety. Even injured, a Corl was dangerous if you let him pick his time.
Temple paced her, keeping to the right so that he didn't block her view of the shelter. His sword was out and he'd released the strap so that the buckler was free in his left hand. His expression was one of mild interest, as though he was contemplating an attractive landscape.
Karpos stood beside Asion with an arrow nocked. Ordinarily that would've been pointless: the catmen reacted so quickly that arrows were no more likely to hit them than a human soldier'd be knocked down by a flung bale of hay. Sick or wounded, the beast might be more vulnerable, though. Besides, it gave the hunter a way to feel useful.
Smoke trailed up between Asion's hands; he rose and whipped his torch to full life. He'd bound branches to a limb wind'd broken from a scrub chestnut a year or more before.
Ilna met the hunter's eyes but started down the ravine instead of giving the signal immediately. She held the knotted pattern before her, where the Corl couldn't avoid seeing it if he looked at her at all. Only when she'd covered half the distance did she call, "All right, now!"
She expected the catman to charge out of the dome when she spoke. Indeed, it should've been aware of the humans even earlier, from the sounds they'd made if not their scent as well. The beasts' hearing and sense of smell were sharper than those of any human being.
The shelter remained silent. Asion sent his torch spinning end over end into the woven branches. They'd been drying in the sun for several days, long enough to become tinder. The torch bounced off the dome, but the sparks sprayed from the contact. Pitchy needles started burning.
Still nothing from inside. Ilna walked forward, her face set in angry puzzlement. Brush threatened to trip her at every step, but she kept her eyes fixed on the opening. Her feet could take care of themselves.
Had the beast died, or was Asion wrong about one of the pack staying behind? Or—and this was a real concern—had the catman tricked them? It could've left the bush in place over the entrance but hidden in the hills above, waiting to strike from behind when the humans were concentrating on the empty shelter.
As fire crowned the dome, the bush flew back from the entrance. "It's coming!" Ilna cried, but for the hunters—and Temple as well, she was sure—that was like someone telling her a warp thread was broken.
A catman came out of the shelter in a crouch, rose with a snarl, and froze in its tracks as Ilna'd intended that it should. It was two double-paces away. A part of Ilna's mind that was never completely absent considered the cat's russet fur and rejected it as too coarse for most weaving. As well use the long strands of aloe leaves.
The beast was female. A kit, probably less than a week old, nestled against her chest.
Karpos' arrow entered through the beast's right collarbone; the flared bronze point punched out below the ribs on the left side. The beast sprang wildly into the air. The shock had broken the pattern's effect, but that didn't matter now. It thrashed, spraying blood from its mouth onto the clumps of wormwood and broom, but it'd been dead from the instant the arrow hit.
Karpos came down the side of the ravine with the quick ease of a chamois. He stepped from one outcrop to another his own height below, instead of skidding and scrabbling the way most people would've done. Ilna smiled coldly: she certainly would've skidded and scrabbled.
"The kit is still alive," Temple said.
"I see that," Ilna said. She put the yarn she'd picked out of the pattern in her left sleeve.
The female gave a convulsive shudder and now lay as still as a pricked bladder. The infant continued to suckle, its forepaws—its hands, they really were hands; gripping the long hair of its mother's chest.
Ilna bent forward. The burning shelter was too close for comfort, but she wouldn't be here long. She caught the infant by the ankles. It mewled angrily and twisted to bite her. Even so young that its eyes were still closed, it had the instincts of its breed. Ilna couldn't grab it by the head the way she would've done a chicken.
She rose, jerking the infant away from its mother, and dashed its brains out on a rock. She dropped the little body, backed a step, and scrubbed her hands with grit from the floor of the ravine.
Karpos dragged the female's body back from the fire, then knelt to cut from the base of the neck up to the top of the skull, then back down in a single motion. He slid the point of his knife under the strip and trimmed the scalp lock free of the flesh while he pulled up on it.
Temple was looking at Ilna. She glared at him and snarled, "Do you have anything to say?"
Temple sheathed his sword. "No, Ilna," he said. "The kit was too young to live without its mother."
Karpos set the scalp down and began working his arrow out point first. He'd have to refletch it, Ilna supposed, but that was the easy part of making an arrow. There was no lack of birds to provide feathers. This far from towns a metal point couldn't be replaced and a straight, properly seasoned shaft was the work of more than a year.
"Do you think that mattered to me?" she said. "I'm going to kill all the beasts if I can. I don't care how old or young they are, all of them!"
"It's possible for humans and Coerli to coexist," Temple said, strapping his buckler over his shoulder again. He looked up and met her eyes.
"I don't believe that," Ilna said, "and anyway, I don't care. All of them!"
Temple said nothing. "Aren't you going to lecture me?" she demanded.
"Not now, Ilna," he said with a friendly smile. "Perhaps another time."
"Perhaps never!" she said.
He shrugged. "Perhaps."
Ilna picked up the dead kit by the scruff of its neck and tossed it into the fire. "Karpos," she snapped. "We'll burn the female too when you've gotten your arrow out. Asion!"
"Mistress?" the smaller hunter said. He remained where he'd been, watching while the others were in the ravine.
"Cut some more brush," she called. "We're going to burn the beasts before we leave here."
"I brought the adze along," Temple said quietly. "It'll cut brush."
He started up the side of the ravine, moving almost as easily as he walked on the level. Ilna followed, though with more difficulty. She was angry at the big man, though she was too logical to imagine she had any reason to be.
And she was angrier still at herself.
The linkboy skipped backward, holding out his short staff so that the pool of light from the lamp wobbling from the end of it fell on the ground where Sharina'd next step. The occasional glances he cast over his shoulder can't have done any more than make sure nobody was coming from the other direction. He must've memorized all the paths through the palace grounds, or at least all those on which Prince Garric and his close associates were likely to be walking at night.
"Make way for the Princess!" the boy cried. He was just showing off. Three men, probably treasury clerks going home after working very late, had already crossed the path on their way to the gate of the compound; there wasn't any chance they'd obstruct Sharina.
The clerks didn't have a lantern, and with the moon as bright as it was tonight Sharina didn't need one either. Protocol demanded it, though, as protocol demanded the squad of Blood Eagles accompanying her. She might not like either thing—and she didn't, any more than she liked the court robes or for that matter her just-completed meeting with Lady Faries, the Commissioner of Sewers—but they were part of the job of being Princess of Haft.
"All rise for the Princess!" the linkboy said as he hopped up the three steps to the porch of Sharina's bungalow. Lamps hung to either side of the door, and the pair of Blood Eagles waiting there were—of course!—already on their feet.
"I guess we can handle it from here, boy," the senior guard said.
"I have my duties!" the boy said.
"Right, and they're going to include getting a clout over the ear if you don't take yourself off, sonny," said the other guard. He wasn't being particularly unkind, but he sounded like he meant it.
Sharina grinned wryly as she climbed the steps. She too found the boy irritating at the end of a long day. It wasn't completely beyond possibility that she'd have clouted him herself if she had to listen to much more of his piercing self-importance.
Diora, her maid, opened the door holding a candle lantern; there were several lamps burning inside as well. A princess didn't have to skimp on lamp oil the way servants in a rural inn did; or at any rate, a princess' servants were of that opinion.
Diora made a deep curtsey. The formality was for the soldiers; she knew Sharina didn't care for it, but they were both actors for so long as there was an audience. "Master Cashel isn't back yet, your highness," she said.
Sharina felt her heart fall; she hadn't realized till Diora spoke how much she'd been counting on hugging Cashel and feeling his calm strength. Cashel made people feel safe. It was more than the reality of what his muscles and other powers could accomplish: his very presence seemed to drive back Evil better than walls of stone or any other device could do. He was a good man, good to the core, and around him you couldn't help but believe Good would triumph.
Diora closed the door. Sharina spread her arms to allow the maid to begin undoing the tucks and ties that bound Princess Sharina into her robes. "Would you like something to eat, your highness?" she asked as she worked.
Diora'd been Sharina's maid for as long as she'd been princess. They weren't precisely friends, less because of social status than differing interests, but they got along well with one another. Sharina had other people to discuss Old Kingdom literature with, and Diora no doubt knew folks who shared her passion for association horse-racing; but the maid didn't mind doing all the jobs for which another noblewoman would expect a whole phalanx of specialists, and Sharina didn't scream curses or slash her maid across the face with a hairpin because she'd tugged a curl a little too hard.
"No, no," Sharina said. "There's a pitcher and mug on the washstand, isn't there? I just want sleep."
I just want Cashel to hold me, but she wouldn't put that in words to anyone but Cashel himself.
"Oh, yes, your highness," Diora said, sounding—probably feeling—shocked at the question. That was like asking the maid if she thought Sharina should wear clothing when she went out in the morning.
Sharina chuckled. So that Diora wouldn't think she was being mocked, she said aloud, "The Pool below the city's turning into a large lake now that the Beltis doesn't have the Inner Sea to drain into. That means the sewers will shortly begin to back up every time it rains."
"Really?" the maid said. "I never imagined that!"
Neither had Sharina, but now the government was in her hands. The best solution to the problem was probably to abandon Valles; the site wasn't suitable for a large city since the Change.
They couldn't do that now, however. The Change had already worked too much disruption. To tear up the capital and displace the government on top of it would probably bring the kingdom down. In the short term, Commissioner Faries and a pair of army engineers seconded to her department said that the Beltis River could be diverted upstream of the city, though that would require many men—perhaps the former oarsmen of the fleet?—and also a rerouting of supplies to the city. Lord Hauk, Lord Royhas, and both Waldron and Zettin would have to be involved.
But that was for another day.
"Now, arms straight up, your highness," Diora said. Sharina obediently raised her arms; the maid swept the heavy robes up and off her with a single motion. So neat a job took considerable strength as well as skill. Sharina was very well served, and she knew it.
"What now, your highness?" Diora asked as she hung the garment on its wicker form. "Shall I wait till Master Cashel arrives?"
"No, no," said Sharina. "Just go home, Diora. You can take a lamp with you."
The maid laughed. "You think I can't find my way to the barracks with the moon so near full?" she said. "Well, have a good night, your highness. I'll be back in the morning."
Ordinarily at least one servant would sleep in the anteroom of a bungalow occupied by members of the royal entourage. Sharina didn't need or want that, and Diora had an arrangement with a pleasant young under-captain of the Blood Eagles. The guard officers slept with their men, but they had separate apartments in the barracks blocks. The situation benefited both mistress and maid.
Sharina left the lamp burning in the anteroom but she snuffed the lantern's wick between her thumb and forefinger before walking through the drawing room to the bedroom beyond. She didn't know when Cashel would be coming in; clouds might've covered the moon by then.
She'd have liked to go with him and Tenoctris, both because they were her friends and because she would so much rather be helping the wizard than making decisions about sewers—which she knew nothing about, but which would affect the health and comfort of tens of thousands of people.
What Tenoctris did affected all mankind, today and forever, but it was Tenoctris rather than Sharina who made those decisions. No matter how much the older woman denigrated her abilities, Sharina and everyone else trusted her completely.
A set of hair implements was neatly arranged on the dressing table against the outside wall. Sharina took a coarse comb and worked it slowly through her hair. There was a silver mirror, its back embossed in the same pattern as the brushes and other combs, but she left it where it was. Combing her hair was just a way to settle her mind; she wasn't tired after all, now that she was truly alone for the first time all day.
She stepped to the side and looked up at the huge moon. Diora had slid the upper halves of the casements down, leaving the windows open to the height of Sharina's chin.
She pulled at the comb, working it back and forth on snarls, as she thought about the life she was living now. Wealth and power hadn't made her happier; but Cashel made her happy. If they'd all stayed in Barca's Hamlet, the innkeeper's daughter wouldn't have been allowed to wed the poor orphan boy. Cashel wouldn't have asked her! Sometimes the things you gain from your choices aren't the obvious ones.
The panes of the casement were diamonds the size of Sharina's palm, set in lead. The glass had been blown and rolled out flat before being cut. It was as clear as expert craftsmen could make it, so in daylight she could've looked out with only slight distortion on the boxwood hedge separating this bungalow from the nearest building.
At night and doubled, the casements were at best translucent. When Sharina glanced down, she saw her blurred reflection. Except—
She stepped back and stared at the image. The images. She could see herself, but there was someone else with her.
Sharina glanced over her shoulder, raising the comb to strike. She was alone in the room. She peered again at the reflection, wondering if she saw herself in both casements simultaneously. But though she moved, the hazy other seemed to remain steady. She squinted, trying to make out the face of the second figure—
And she was hanging in space. She shouted, dropping the comb as she tried to fling herself back.
Her shoulders hit a wall that wasn't in her bedroom. She was in an apartment with high, peacock-patterned walls and swags of gold cloth. Smiling at her was an androgynous-looking man in a long crimson robe; behind him were two man-seeming creatures of featureless, silvery metal.
"Greetings, darling Sharina," the man said in a voice as smoothly pleasant as his face. "I've brought you here to save you."