"Tenoctris," Garric said, facing the old wizard beneath a wicker lattice covered with grape vines, "I had a dream. Another dream."
He reached out and touched Liane's hand without meeting her eyes. This was the first she'd heard about the business also.
The roof garden was the closest thing to a private park available to Garric in Carcosa. Trees and brambles covered the mounded ruins of much of the Old Kingdom city, but those tracts were pathless and far more dangerous than a rural woodland like the one which the householders of Barca's Hamlet owned. Rats, feral dogs, and humans as degraded as those beasts lurked in holes they'd dug into ancient tombs and palaces. At night they came out to scour the streets.
Garric had always been more comfortable outside than in, whether he was doing manual labor or reading one of the Old Kingdom texts his father had taught him to love. Rather than discuss the matter in a palace room, he'd asked Tenoctris and Liane to join him in the garden. The dream had made him uncomfortable, so he was easing the process of talking about it by choosing the setting he found most congenial.
Tenoctris nodded, pursing her lips. "Did this one tell you to do something?" she asked. She opened the satchel beside her on the bench and began to finger through the books within it.
A treefrog screamed from somewhere within the grape leaves; rain had fallen just before the dawn, making the frogs active. Garric marveled once again that a gray-green lump no bigger than the first joint of his thumb could make so much noise.
"No, nothing like that," he said. "I was standing in a garden. There was an altar and some offerings on it. I picked up a crystal and… saw, Ilived; I don't know how to explain it. I lived a life that somebody like me might have lived if things had been different. Had been normal."
"A nightmare?" Liane asked, folding her hands in her lap. What he'd said had worried her, so in response she was acting more than usually calm.
"No," Garric said, shaking his head. "Normal life. Taking over the inn, marrying a perfectly nice local girl-"
He grinned wryly; Liane loosened up enough to grin back.
"-and raising a lot of children. If the dream was right, I'd have made a better innkeeper than I do a prince."
"Then the dream was wrong," Tenoctris said calmly, "though I'm sure you'd have been a fine innkeeper as well. Did you recognize the garden, Garric? From other dreams or in the waking world, either one?"
"It could've been here, it could've been in Valles," he said. "Or somewhere that I've never seen at all. It was old and overgrown; there were bananas on an altar, and I thought that the things I saw worshiping were animals instead of men."
He rubbed his eyes, working to recall images that his mind had tried to shut out while he was dreaming. "I'm not sure what they were. I'm not even sure there were real figures instead of just shadows."
Tenoctris closed her satchel again. "I see," she said, getting cautiously to her feet. "I'll admit that this puzzles me, Garric. I'm certain that nobody is working an incantation against you now."
Liane frowned in disbelief; Garric frowned also, but he realized he hadn't felt threatened as he stood in the garden. It was wrong, and it'd disturbed him because he knew how wrong it was, but A world where he didn't have the responsibilities of a prince was attractive, even though that world didn't have Liane in it either. That thought was the real reason the dream made Garric so angry.
"Oh, yes," Tenoctris repeated. "Quite certain."
She shrugged. "I might well not be able to do anything about an attack," she explained, "but I'd know it was happening. Nothing of the sort is, not through wizardry, that is."
Garric stood, clearing his throat in embarrassment. "I thought I ought to tell somebody about it," he said, "because I didn't the other time. And that one meant something."
"Oh, this dream means something too," Tenoctris said with crisp assurance. "I certainly don't think it's a coincidence, Garric; I just don't believe it was an attack on you or even directed at you… which is particularly puzzling."
She smiled again, then went on, "Lord Attaper's been kind enough to provide me with an escort to the Temple of the Lady of the Sunset. I'm told there's an extensive library there. If it doesn't hold the information that I'm searching for either, perhaps there'll be something in the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock."
"Yes, there may be," Garric said. Liane had risen from the bench beside him; he put his arm around her and hugged her close while still grinning at Tenoctris. "I have some business with the priests of the Shepherd today too. I do, and the army does!"
When Sharina was twelve, she'd seen the Northern Lights in the depths of the coldest winter in the living memory of Barca's Hamlet. At first she'd thought that was what she was seeing now, but the sheets of azure and crimson flared too constantly across the heavens for that.
"Is it always like this at night?" she asked Franca as she added wood to the fire he'd lit with the bow drill he'd made. "The sky, I mean. There's no moon, but it's bright enough to read by."
"The sky?" the youth repeated. "Yeah, it's always like this."
He frowned. "Maybe it wasn't when I was younger, though. Mother used to talk about the stars. I remember seeing them, but not for a long time."
Franca wasn't any better clothed than she was, but he'd apparently become acclimated to the cold. Though he said it was late spring, the wind skirling through the walls of the dry-stone sheep byre seemed as bitter as anything Sharina had felt at the turn of the year at home.
"She makes it this way," said the axe. "Her power lights the whole world, but She drains away all warmth to do it."
He giggled; the sound was like hearing slates rub. The hairs on the back of Sharina's neck stood up.
"One day the ice will have everything," the axe said, "and even the sky will be cold. But until then Beard will drink, won't he, mistress? You'll feed Beard, and Beard will make sure that you eat too, just like today. Until the very end."
Sharina laid another dead limb on the fire. She was afraid to go to sleep, even though she was bone tired. They were burning pieces of trees which the cold had shattered. Though the wood blazed up easily, the fuel had sunk to a pile of ash after what seemed only moments instead of forming a bed of glowing coals; freezing seemed to have robbed it of all its virtue.
They'd found food on the way: a store of hickory nuts dug from the trunk of a hollow tree, and the small animals which Beard had sensed cowering in holes. The axe could see through hard soil; with its help Sharina and Franca had blocked exits, then used rusty spearbutts from the Hunters' hoard to dig out victims.
The war axe was a clumsy tool for dispatching a rabbit, let alone a vole, but blood was the price Beard charged for his aid. Sharina couldn't object: without the fresh rabbit skins covering her feet, they'd have frozen before now.
"How much farther do we have to go, Sharina?" Franca asked diffidently. He was older than she was, but he gave her the feeling of being the same child he was when She arrived.
Sometimes Sharina thought her companion was stupid-a halfwit, even-but then he'd surprise her with his observations. Franca had identified the nut store and shinned up to the high entrance like a squirrel himself. Like the world he lived in, Franca had been blighted by Her coming; but there was good left in both of them.
"I've only made this trip once," Sharina said. She smiled; she was very weary, but memory of those spring days with friends warmed her in this cold, friendless place. "That was in the other direction, and anyway, what was true in my world may not be in yours."
Though it certainly seemed to be. Except for Her.
"But I think we should be very close by now, if thingsare the same," she said. "I thought of going on tonight, but I decided it was better to arrive by daylight to see…"
To see what? Sharina was afraid of what she might find, but there was no better, noother, place from which to start her search for friends in this world. She expected to get bad news when she reached what had been her home, but she preferred to know the worst rather than have an unformed fear looming over her as a bleak, black weight for the rest of her life.
"We never left Penninvale," Franca said. "Till we had to. We shouldn't have left then."
He seemed to have spoken without emotion, but tears began to dribble down his cheeks again. Sharina cleared her throat; she wasn't sure whether to respond or not. At last she said, "I'm hoping that we'll find people in Barca's Hamlet. People I knew in my world."
And what if one of them were Sharina os-Reise? What would that be like? Or Cashel; would hebe Cashel in this world?
"There's nobody left," Franca said, blubbering openly now. "Nobody in all the world except us and the monsters. Mother, we should have stayed!"
"There's a sound…," Sharina said. It's just the wind, she thought; but if she'd really thought that she wouldn't have spoken.
"Oh, mother, mother-"
"Be silent!" Sharina said, rising to her feet with Beard balanced in front of her body. The walls of the byre were better shelter than she'd realized until she took the buffeting unprotected. The sound could be wind after all, or "It's a man and he's trapped!" said the axe. "Oh, he needs help, mistress! He'll surely die if we don't help him!"
"Which way?" said Sharina, squinting against the east wind. She couldn't judge the direction of the cries, let alone the distance. It they'd been blown down on the wind, the fellow might be a mile or more distant.
"The way we've been going!" Beard said. "Not far, mistress, and he needs us badly!"
"Come along, Franca!" Sharina called. She might need an extra pair of hands, especially if the fellow they were going to rescue had been injured in a fall. She thought of herself in the ruined palace; if the walls had collapsed while she was still inside, she might have died in a worse way even than the Hunters had intended for her.
"Don't leave me!" Franca wailed as he staggered to his feet.
Sharina didn't wait for him. Wizardlight pulsing across the heavens gave better illumination than a full moon, so she had no trouble following the path through the woods. It hadn't been used recently, but the encroaching undergrowth didn't keep Sharina from running.
She came out of the trees onto a slope that was still clear. She saw the mill, roofless now, and the inn where she'd grown up; the walls had fallen in and brambles grew from piles of fire-blackened bricks.
Sharina'd found Barca's Hamlet. It was what she'd expected, but she'd prayed in her heart to the Lady that this time she'd be wrong.
The cries were coming from the ruined mill. A male voice cursed and begged the Shepherd's aid, the sort of foolish mixture that desperation dragged from the throats of ordinary people. He didn't sound as though he really expected help to come.
"He's in that stone building!" Beard said. "But be ready, mistress, for you'll need me to-"
The mill pond stored water from high tides and released it to drive the wheel at a measured pace. It was the oldest building in Barca's Hamlet, built in the Old Kingdom of stones so hard and well-fitted that they'd withstood well over a thousand years of weather. During all that time it had continued to serve the surrounding borough at a handsome profit for generations of millers.
The side door, a hundred feet from Sharina, was double height and wide enough for a wagonload of grain to be driven into the milling chamber. The bear that came through that doorway wouldn't have fit anything sized merely for humans. Franca's scream diminished as he turned and ran.
"Blood for Beard to drink!" the axe cried. "Blood for Beard!"
At the Sheep Fairs there was often a peddler from Shengy with a cinnamon-colored bear. When it stood upright to shuffle in a slow dance, it was as tall as a man.
The rangy animal now padding out of the mill was that tall at the shoulder; it must have weighed more than a large ox. It saw Sharina, whuff ed, and launched itself at her with no more hesitation than a stooping hawk.
"Blood for-" the axe called.
There wasn't time to think. Five feet short of its victim, the bear lifted its right forepaw for a crushing blow. Sharina stepped within the bear's reach and brought the axe down in an overhand blow. The blade crunched through bone, burying itself to the helve in the bear's broad, flat forehead.
The bear reared onto its hind legs, lifting Sharina until her hands slipped from the shaft and she cartwheeled sideways. Will it dance now? she thought hysterically. She was screaming with laughter when she slammed onto the hard ground. Her shoulder went numb, and the world around her had a fuzzy haze as though gray mold grew on everything.
The bear voided its bowels in a gush of liquescent feces. The stench was choking. It toppled slowly forward, then hit like a building collapsing. The ground shook. Except for the initial grunt when the bear saw what it thought was prey, it hadn't made a sound.
The man was still calling from the mill; he didn't realize he was free now.
Sharina could also hear Beard's gurgling joy, muffled by the skull it had split.
The castle was both older and more substantial than Ilna had expected to find in a village on the fringes of the kingdom. Though the two- and three-story buildings that housed Lusius' troops and their families were new, the core of the complex was lichen-covered gray stone that must have been as old as the mill where Ilna lived in Barca's Hamlet.
"An Old Kingdom watchtower," Chalcus said, noticing Ilna's surprise. "Used as a fisherman's hut most of the time since then, I shouldn't wonder, but it seems our Lusius has put it back in shape. A dozen men could hold off an army, as long as they had food."
He grinned at her. "The right dozen men, mind," he added. "But that's true of any fight, isn't it?"
"It's true of more than fights," Ilna said. "Unless to you all life is a fight, and I don't know that I'd argue with that notion."
Chalcus laughed merrily, but the touch of his hand on hers was more than mere whim. "Not everything's a fight, dear heart," he said. "I must learn to save my strength for the times it's needed."
He meantshe must learn. Well, both of them should; Ilna didn't doubt the truth of that. It seemed very unlikely that she'd ever succeed, however.
The pair of trumpeters stood on the tower battlements, high enough that four levels of arrow slits pierced the stone below them. Their fanfare was slightly out of tune and time with one another. Ilna didn't take a great deal of pleasure in music, but she had no difficulty in telling good from bad. Most was bad, of course, just as with every other form of human activity. These trumpeters fit in quite well with her expectations.
The soldiers who'd met theBird of the Tide on the quay were now drawn up in a double line framing the walk to one of the new buildings rather than the stone tower. When their officer snarled a command, they thumped the butts of their spears into the ground and shouted, "Hail, Captain Chalcus! Hail, Ilna os-Kenset!"
Ilna's face set. She disliked pomp at any time. Here it was obvious besides that their host was toying with them, pretending deference to the high rank he knew they held.
The humor struck her. She chuckled, drawing a glance and a raised eyebrow from Chalcus.
"You said Lusius wasn't a fool," she explained under her breath. "You were wrong: only a fool would mock us if he knew who we were, you and I."
Chalcus laughed again. "True enough, dear heart," he said. "But there's knowing andknowing, you see."
They walked side by side through the double rank of soldiers-the Sea Guards, Hutena said they were called. Wealthy drovers and merchants attending the Sheep Fair generally had bodyguards, so even before Ilna left Barca's Hamlet she'd seen a variety of men who made their living by arms. These Guards were a sorry lot despite being turned out with plumes on their helmets for the occasion. Most of them were out of condition; they were dirty, and some of them were already drunk.
The tall doors were open. The building was a single large hall, set now for a banquet. The walls were hung with tapestries which'd been chosen for gaudiness rather than quality. They were of very high quality nonetheless, but Ilna found them an odd mixture. There were hangings from Sandrakkan, Ornifal, red silk from Seres, and a large panel from Pare where they wove goat hair into geometric designs.
Lusius and his aides, a few more than a handful, stood on both sides of a table at the short end opposite the entrance; the two places opposite Lusius remained open. The benches down either long side were for the soldiers; they tramped in after the guests. Servants waited with drink pitchers and hand-barrows loaded with food.
"Come in, my honored guests!" Lusius cried. "I greet you not only in my own name but in that of Prince Garric of Haft, whose loyal servant I am!"
Ilna thought of how easily she could kill this smirking man; kill him or better yet knot a pattern that would show him his own soul-thereby causing him to kill himself in horror and despair. She smiled, cheerful and assured.
Chalcus gave his sash a little hitch that settled the sword and dagger held in its folds. For the occasion he wore a short woolen outer tunic of Ilna's own workmanship. From a distance it looked plain, but there was a subtle pattern to the threads that distracted an eye trying to focus on it. It wouldn't protect Chalcus from a chance arrow or a thrust in darkness, but it was the best gift Ilna knew to give to a man like her man.
His inner tunic was orange silk, cut a little longer and higher than the wool one; it matched his sash and the twist of silk about his temples perfectly. His sandals were gilded leather cutwork, a trifle larger than a perfect fit. Ilna knew that if there was trouble Chalcus would kick off his footgear and fight in his bare feet just as he worked on shipboard, but they looked festive.
Ilna's only concession to the occasion was to wear an outer tunic over the woolen undergarment which would suffice alone on shipboard or in a rural village. The unadorned garments were clean and of the finest craftsmanship-her own. In place of a belt or sash she wore a loosely-gathered silken rope which doubled as a noose when she needed one. Because of the cobblestone streets she wore shoes, though she'd have preferred to be barefoot in this warm weather.
Chalcus offered Ilna his elbow for her hand; together they walked to the seats prepared for them-her primly, Chalcus with a swagger. "I'm honored indeed to be the guest of great men like yourself and Prince Garric," he said. "But do you deal in so open-handed a fashion with all your visitors, Commander?"
Lusius snorted. He gave a little wave of his hand; his courtiers and troops seated themselves with a scuffling of chairs and-for the common soldiers-benches, as Lusius sat down himself. The only people still standing were his guests and the red-robed figure to his right where Ilna had expected to see the Commander's consort.
Her eyes narrowed as she and Chalcus sat as well. She was the only female in the hall, though there'd been women and children in the usual numbers in the dirt plaza in front of the soldiers' quarters. The women were slatterns and their offspring screaming brats; fit companions for men of the quality of the Sea Guards, she supposed.
The figure in red threw back the cowl of his robes. "I am Gaur, the Red Wizard!" he said, making the words sound like a prayer. He wore silk brocade woven in a flame pattern by someone with a great deal of skill. The garments had been embroidered much less ably with gold and silver thread; Ilna supposed the symbols had meaning-very likely were words of power-but they seemed an afterthought.
Gaur was taller than Garric who'd been the tallest man in Barca's Hamlet once he got his growth. He had wiry black hair and black eyebrows which nearly met on his beetling forehead. He looked rangy and powerful, but the whole ensemble was so clearly intended to impress the ignorant that looking at him made Ilna's lips curl in a sneer.
"And I'm Chalcus, the captain of theBird of the Tide, sir," Chalcus said cheerfully. Leaning back in his chair he went on to Lusius, "So, Commander-you provide entertainment with your banquets, eh?"
Ilna took cords from her left sleeve and had started plaiting them before anyone else understood just how calculated had been the insult Chalcus delivered in his pleasant voice. Lusius had been drinking from his embossed gold cup, watching Chalcus over the rim. His eyes opened. He snorted, spraying wine from his nostrils, and doubled over in a coughing fit.
Gaur's hands moved as though he was holding a globe in front of him. "One day, captain," he said to Chalcus in a grating voice, not loud, "you and I will entertain each other. We will see who laughs the louder then. Eh?"
Ilna saw Gaur's tongue move, but she wasn't sure he was speaking further. Images formed in the air between his hands. Chalcus ran naked across a barren plain. Things came out of the darkness at him, never quite to be glimpsed even when they struck. Each tore away a strip of flesh. Chalcus continued to run, but he was stumbling…
Chalcus laughed. "A good one!" he said. "A touch on me indeed, Master Wizard. Now, Commander-may I hope that your hospitality to your guests extends to the wine I see on your side of the table?"
Gaur sat heavily. Ilna eyed him for a further moment, then put her cords away. The exchange was over-for now. Servants were filling her goblet and Chalcus' with an expensive perfumed wine from Cordin. Ilna didn't like the vintage, but it showed that Lusius wasn't stinting his guests with second-rate drinks.
Gaur was a braggart, a type of person that Ilna found offensive even when she had no better reason to dislike someone; in Gaur's case she was fairly certain that she'd have no trouble in finding better reason. What he had done, however-without preparation or tools-was a remarkable piece of wizardry. Whatever else the Red Wizard might be, hewas a wizard.
"You ask about visitors here, Captain," Lusius said as servants set fish soup in front of the diners. "We have very few, as the ships in the Carcosa trade are too large to enter Terness harbor. It's a good shelter for those of us who struggle against the flying demons, though. Have you heard of the Rua?"
The man to Ilna's left seized his bowl and drank the contents down. Under other circumstances Ilna might have done the same, but out of pride she ate her soup with the spoon of silver and alabaster which she'd been offered. It was scarcely a point of pride to show that she was more refined than this lot, she thought with a grim smile.
"Indeed we have, Commander," Chalcus said. He'd sopped a torn chunk of rye bread in his bowl and was eating it that way. "Saw them as well, on the horizon as we came up on Terness. Odd creatures, to be sure, but I wonder…?"
He paused, chewing his mouthful as his laughing eyes held Lusius.
"Though they're big for anything flying, these Rua," Chalcus continued, "I wonder that they'd prey on ships so large and well-manned as those that've been their victims. The pirates of the Southern Seas are terrible indeed, they tell me; but they'd never attempt ships the size of those the Rua take. Eh?"
"They're wizards," said Gaur in his grating voice. He'd recovered enough to sit upright, though he wasn't eating. Before him on the table was an agate tureen, silver mounted and covered with a lid polished from the same block of stone. "I struggle, but I am one and the Rua are many hundreds."
The Rua might very well be wizards; they'd arrived here by some means and wizardry was as likely a cause as any other. Ilna doubted the story about them looting the ships, or at any rate doubted that was the whole truth, simply because Gaur had said it. Liars sometimes tell the truth, just as occasionally a stage magician tricked out in red robes could show himself to be a powerful wizard, but she had a bias against believing it.
The food kept coming: a fruit compote; mutton roast; a dish of rice with raisins and ginger. Ilna began to peck at dishes instead of cleaning them, then began to wave courses off untouched. The offerings generally tasted good though unfamiliar-even the fish soup had been remarkably spicy-but there was far too much for a sensible person to eat.
And drink. There were various vintages, some of them doubtless stronger than others, but the total would fill a cauldron big enough to wash the garments of everyone in the hall. Ilna sniffed: if the castlehad a washing cauldron, it was cobwebbed from disuse.
Ilna asked a servant for beer; he went off-even the servants were male-and returned not long after with a quite passable lager. She nursed her goblet, but even so they were long at the table. The last thingshe needed to do was to drink enough that she lost control of her behavior.
Chalcus was drinking his share. In the middle of a story about a storm blowing him south so far that he saw icebergs like those that split from the glaciers of the far north, he began to sing, "The cuckoo, she's a happy bird, she sings as she flies…"
He was probably putting on a show for their hosts, but again-quite a lot of wine had gone down his gullet. Well, Chalcus knew how to take care of himself, drunk or sober, and he had the scars to prove it.
"So, Captain Chalcus…," Lusius said. He drank, belched heavily, and banged down his empty goblet. "Have you space in your holds for additional cargo, do you think? We here in the Calves do a fine business in the shell fisheries these last few years."
"She brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies," Chalcus sang, completing the stanza and raising his cup to drink. He blinked in apparent surprise to find it empty.
Setting it down he said, "Oh, we've no cargo to speak of, but no need for more than we've got. One chest is all, folderol for one of the lords who's the prince's bosom companion, Tadai his name is. He didn't tell me what was in it, just said it was to go to Chancellor Royhas in Valles. I'm be well paid for the voyage, so I asked no questions."
A servant filled his cup with wine. As the fellow took the pitcher away, Chalcus drank deeply again.
"Now, I shouldn't 've have said that, I know," he went on through a giggle. "I shouldn't be here at all, but our mast is sprung. I need to step a new one before I try the Inner Sea all the way to Ornifal, for all that the worst of the weather should be past by this season. You can't trust the weather, you know."
He tapped the side of his nose with an index finger. "No farther than you can trust men!"
"You're not afraid of the Rua, then?" Lusius said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.
"Poof!" said Chalcus. "What do I care about some funny-shaped bats? We've bows on theBird of the Tide and men who know how to use them. If these Rua of yours come too close, they'll find they're sprouting goosefeathers!"
"Indeed," Lusius said, "indeed. I'm sure that's just what will happen, captain-but if you have a day or two, would you care to come out with me to the reefs where we fish for shell? I'll be there in my vessel, theDefender, because the fishermen daren't to go without my protection. And even so it can be a tricky business, as you'll see."
"I'll be honored to join you, Commander!" Chalcus said. "I and Mistress Ilna, if you don't mind. Sometimes her eyes catch things that mine have not."
"She's welcome, of course," Lusius said. "TheDefender 's no royal barge, but then, I don't suppose yourBird is that either."
Ilna had listened to the exchange with a frown she didn't attempt to conceal. If Chalcus was blabbering for a purpose, her concern was in character; and if he wasn't, if it was the wine talking-then all the better reason to frown.
Gaur had remained silent for most of the meal, glowering at a corner of the vaulted ceiling as though in deep meditation. Now, seeming to awake, he gestured imperiously to a servant and snapped his fingers. The servant brought a canister of gold filigree from a sideboard and set it before the wizard, next to the covered bowl which had been there throughout the dinner.
All eyes were on the Red Wizard, as he no doubt had intended. Ilna heard the man seated next to her curse under his breath and gulp down the rest of his wine.
"Our visitors will have noticed that I myself did not eat," Gaur said, his voice again that of a priest declaiming to an audience of laymen. He lifted the cover from the agate tureen; it was filled to midway with an amber fluid. "I never eat in the presence of others, but in the name of fellowship I like tofeed, shall we say? Would you care to watch?"
"I'm always ready to be entertained, Master Wizard," Chalcus said in a light tone. He touched his fingertips to the table before him, then lowered his hands to his sash.
Gaur glared at him. His eyes were a black that looked deep red in the lamplight. He twisted off the lid of the filigree container and reached in with thumb and forefinger. "These are flies," he said. "I've pulled off one wing already."
"Ah, every man should have a hobby," Chalcus said brightly. "I knew a fellow once who collected butterflies, so he did."
Gaur's rage couldn't have been fiercer if his eyes had filled with molten lava. He held a fly above the agate bowl. Other flies were beginning to crawl out of the open container, though of course they couldn't go far.
"Watch!" Gaur thundered, dropping the mutilated insect. It twisted on one buzzing wing as it fell into the bowl. The fluid rose to catch it, snatching down the victim while it was still a finger's breadth above the original surface. The fly disintegrated as it sank, leaving a blood-red blotch in the amber. After a few moments the color dissipated.
"Amusing, isn't it?" said Gaur, pinching another fly out of the canister. "They must be alive, you see. My little pet may look like a bowl of water, but it's only interested in living prey."
He dropped the second fly.
Even Ilna who was sober or nearly so saw Chalcus' movement only as a blur. His right hand came up from his sash with the curved dagger and swept across the table. Lamplight turned the steel edge into a shimmer of gold. The stroke was past before anyone else moved.
He slid the blade back into its scabbard.
Gaur snarled like a beast and leaped backward, knocking over his chair. "Ha!" Lusius shouted. He flung down the cup in his right hand and covered his eyes with his left forearm, as if he couldn't be hurt if he didn't see the threat.
There were two tiny splashes in the liquid: Chalcus had cut the fly in half as it fell. The portions sank to the bottom of the bowl: as the wizard had claimed, the livign fluid ate only live food.
Chalcus stood with an easy motion; Ilna rose with him, her fingers knotting a pattern swiftly.
"My pardon, Commander," Chalcus said. "I fear I've drunk so much that I might become discourteous were I to stay. We'll join you in the morning for a visit to the reefs to see the Rua."
He offered Ilna his arm; they turned and walked out. The soldiers were babbling at increasing volume, but through that Ilna continued to hear the sound of Gaur's bestial snarls.
Cashel threw the jewel against the slab of bare rock behind him; it should've been the mouth of the tunnel by which he'd left Lord Bossian's manor, but by starlight at least it looked as much a part of the mountainside as any other. A stunted cedar tree had draped surface roots across one side of it.
This ruby shattered with the same silent flare as the first one. A tiny image of Kakoral scurried up, then down the rock face like it was a horizontal tabletop. Finally the homunculus paused and glared at Cashel.
"I want to go back to my-" Cashel began. He almost said, "home," but he didn't really know where that was any more. "I want to go back to my friends. Point me the way."
Still without speaking, the sparkling homunculus made the sweeping introductory gesture of a showman. The shadowed rock became transparent, a window onto the cellar in which Cashel had seen Kotia's mother with her demon lover. Laterna sat on a stool, reading from a thin beechwood plate which she held so that the light of the hearth fell on it. She was alone until the door behind her opened.
Laterna turned to glance over her shoulder. Her face had the look of an ivory carving; it became even harder, even colder.
The man who'd entered was small and trim, fit-looking rather than muscular. His flowing robes had vertical stripes of white alternating with many colors. In the dark cellar the white gave off light, illuminating both the man and his immediate surroundings.
As before, Cashel watched a silent pantomime. The man gestured curtly toward the door with his left hand. He was as angry as the woman, and far more busily so. Laterna flicked out the fingers of her free hand as if she were shooing a fly. She returned to her reading.
The man's robes darkened. If her face had been ivory, his was a waxen death mask. He stepped forward, raising his right arm. He'd been holding a narrow-bladed ice axe along his thigh. He brought it down, spike forward.
Laterna leaped from her stool, flinging the beechwood plaque in the air. It bounced off the ceiling and spun back to lie face down on the black tile floor. A corner had chipped, but the sheet was mostly whole. Its back was decorated with a gilt sun in the center and a symbolic figure in each corner.
The woman tripped and fell forward. Her arms and legs jerked, the left side at a quicker tempo than the right. The axe handle waggled for a moment like a pigtail. The body arched, then lay flaccid.
The man hadn't moved since he struck Laterna. Now he raised both hands to his face and stroked his eyebrows with his fingertips. As he started forward, Cashel's window onto the past began to fade.
The last thing Cashel saw before rock replaced the images was the hearth that Laterna had been reading in front of. In its glowing embers, he saw the outlines of Kakoral's face.
The homunculus bowed mockingly to Cashel. It held up both hands, then brought them together overhead in a soundless clap. Streams of red wizardlight curled from each fingertip, spreading into a net that converged on Cashel's chest.
With a cackle of laughter, the little creature vanished. Wizardlight continued to play across Cashel's Oh. Not his chest. The lump of coal blazed with cold scarlet light to which the close-woven wool was transparent. Cautiously Cashel reached down the throat of his tunic and brought the coal out. He sat on his haunches, examining it with a care he hadn't taken in Lord Bossian's workroom. The wizardlight slowly faded.
Like any other piece of coal, this one had fracture lines. Even if it'd been whole while it lay in the ground, the process of smashing chunks out of the seam would've twisted it, spreading tiny cracks from where a leaf stem or a grain of sand had been trapped in the mass.
Cashel saw the patterns with great clarity despite having no light but that of the unfamiliar stars. Maybe there was a map? Or…
He squeezed with his thumb and forefinger at opposite corners of the irregular lump. Another man would have used a hammer, but steady pressure was enough if you saw the fracture lines as he did, clear as furrows in a fresh-plowed field; and if you were strong enough.
Cashel had always been strong enough.
The lump popped faintly, shearing along a seam too fine for human eyes. Cashel lifted the upper half, holding the lower portion in the palm of his left hand. Inside was a cavity not much bigger than a walnut. Something stirred in it; then, very carefully it extended a long hind leg and splayed its webbed toes.
There was a toad within the block of coal. It was still alive.
The toad turned its head, looking up at Cashel with one eye, then the other. It drew its outstretched leg back under it.
"It must have been a very long time," the toad said in a rusty voice. "Tell me-who is the King of Kish in this day?"