Lord Attaper sloshed toward Sharina. The Blood Eagles who'd been with him-all those but the section with Sharina and Tenoctris-followed in a ragged wave.
"Ascor, you idiot!" he shouted in a voice loud enough to be audible over the general tumult. "Get her highness out of here! What are you standing around for?"
Attaper'd compromised between his duty and the desire of a warrior to be part of the battle instead of standing out of it as an observer: he'd placed the hundred or so men of the bodyguard regiment in the earthworks directly between the ridge where Princess Sharina stood and the direction of the hellplants' attack. At the time, of course, he'd assumed that her highness would be able to flee if the struggle went badly…
"No!" Sharina said-to Ascor, but then turning to Attaper she cried, "Milord, we have to defend Lady Tenoctris! She's our only hope!"
The guard commander probably couldn't hear her, but Ascor did. He hesitated. His orders came from Attaper, not from a princess who, though exalted, wasn't in his chain of command.
Sharina wasn't sure what Ascor would've decided if he'd made up his own mind, but Trooper Lires chuckled and said, "Don't you worry, Princess. The captain remembers how you'n Lady Tenoctris saved things back in Valles. He got promoted that time, and I guess maybe they'll make him deputy commander this time, hey cap'n?"
"That's if we survive, Lires," Ascor said in a taut voice. With a smile almost as sharp as his words he added, "Which I doubt we'll do, but you're right-I doubted it in Valles too."
Double had fallen with everyone else when the hills flattened. He got up slowly, as though he had to consider each separate movement, then staggered to his box of equipment. It lay on its side, half sunken in the mud.
The two trumpeters with Lord Waldron blew the quick, ringing notes of Stand To, halting the retreat. The cornicenes took it up, then signallers throughout the army. The soldiers Sharina could see-she didn't have the vantage point of the ridge to look down from-slowed and looked behind them, milling in indecision.
Lires chuckled. "Look at 'em," he said. "It's a bloody good thing that it's all gone to muck underfoot, ain't it, cap'n?"
Sharina looked from the trooper to Ascor in surprise. She'd heard all the words, but they didn't mean anything to her.
"Your highness," Ascor said, looking out at the advancing hellplants. "If the ground was firm, well…"
He shrugged. "Nothing against the line regiments, your highness," he continued, "but once troops start to run, it's next to impossible to turn them. Even good troops."
Lires stamped. His boot slurped ankle-deep in mud. "They couldn't get to running in this, you see?" he said. "Nothing to do but stand the way the trumpets tell'em to do."
Attaper was within ten yards, slogging on in silent fury. He'd widened the gap between himself and the soldiers who'd been with him, even though most of them were younger than he was. In the morning, if Attaper lived that long, he'd be in agony with pulled muscles in his thighs, but he didn't allow pain or the mud stop him now.
Thinking of what she was going to tell the commander made Sharina look back at Tenoctris. The old wizard continued to chant within the fence of soldiers' legs. How long will it take to -
With a sudden convulsive movement, Tenoctris stabbed her bamboo split into the center of the scooped basin in front of her. She cried, "Sabaoth!"
The air sparkled faintly blue. The water in the basin froze.
Ice spread outward in jagged curves from the basin, crackling and forming a white rind over the marsh. The soldiers guarding Tenoctris were taken by surprise. They leaped up and stamped, breaking their boots free of frozen mud.
Sharina saw the ice sweeping toward her. She tried to jump over the oncoming change, but she hadn't allowed for her fatigue. She stumbled forward and felt the mud congeal about her feet as the broad swathe slid past her and on. It left the rime behind it gleaming like a slug's track.
She tried to pull free, twisting against the soil's cold grip. Lires drove the butt of his spear into the ground beside her left foot, smashing the thick crust and allowing her to lift her feet out of it.
All around Sharina soldiers shouted in fear and amazement. As Tenoctris' spell spread outward, its effect speeded up. The soil froze to the edge of the bay, turning windblown foam into a coating of rime.
Men hopped up and down, freeing themselves, but the hellplants stopped where they were as if suddenly rooted to the ground. Their tentacles moved sluggishly, no faster than the blooms of the heliotrope following the circuit of the sun. Plants don't like cold any better than they like darkness…
"Lord Attaper!" Sharina said as the guard commander struggled to her side. "Now's the time to attack, while we can move and the plants cannot. Can you give the signal?"
Attaper looked first shocked, then puzzled. Then the meaning behind the words dragged his mind out of the set, angry rut in which it'd been running and he saw that she was right.
"You, cornicene!" he shouted to the signaller from a line regiment standing a few yards away. "Sound Charge!"
He turned. "Blood Eagles, follow me!" he bellowed. "Sharina and the Isles."
Sharina waved her Pewle knife in the air. "The Isles forever! Attack, attack, attack!"
The Blood Eagles turned around. Nobody else was paying attention to Princess Sharina; indeed, the Blood Eagles probably weren't either, but they saw their commander slant his sword toward the enemy. That was enough for them.
Sharina could've stayed where she was; should've stayed where she was, she knew, because there were ten thousand male swordsmen in the regiments assembled here. Every one of them was better for the purpose than a woman with a knife, even a healthy young woman with abig knife..
She advanced on the hellplants anyway, with Lord Attaper at her left and Lires on her right. The trooper had loosened his shield strap so that he could hold it out in front of the Princess if he needed to.
Lires wasn't a great thinker, but he knew battle and he knew his job. He had the ability many smarter men lacked, the knack of connecting his experience with the situation he'd be facing in the immediate future. Thus the shield strap.
The ground had occasional patches of greasy slickness, but the soil had been gritty enough that even frozen it gripped the soles of Sharina's sandals well enough. The soldiers' hobnails dug in; the texture of the ground was like that of the first hard freeze of winter, not the surface of a glacier.
Tenoctris had collapsed over her symbol and basin. One of the guards had lifted her head off the ground and was placing his rolled cloak under it; the rest of the squad stood around her as they'd been ordered to do, looking unhappy.
Seeing them allowed Sharina to relax slightly. If they hadn't been there, she'd have had to go back and stay with her friend; but then, if they hadn't stayed where they'd been ordered to, Attaper would've dismissed them from the Blood Eagles and very possibly had the squad leader executed. A princess has the right to determine for herself where duty lies. A soldier does not.
Lord Waldron was trying to reorganize his forces after the multiple disruptions caused by wizardry; his subordinate commanders had even more basic objectives, to halt men on the verge of panic and to get them to listen to commands again. Nobody had time for or interest in a single signaller sounding Charge on the horn wrapped around his body.
They noticed the bodyguard regiment, though-a hundred and some big men in black armor, advancing toward the enemy in a reasonably compact mass. Sharina's bright blonde hair hadn't regrown to the splendor it'd been before she'd had to shave it a few months earlier, but it still stood out like a banner in a sea of soldiers.
And even troops who couldn't see the Princess among her guards were drawn by the attack. Often it's easier to move toward danger than it is to wait patiently for imminent danger to come to you.
Once men looked in the direction the Blood Eagles were advancing, they saw that the terrible enemies they'd feared as even brave men fear were frozen andn motionless. They were no more dangerous now than so many cabbages.
The hellplants were ripe for revenge.
Sharina jogged and skidded over ground that was more solid than the week before when it'd been plowed fields. It was better footing this way too, since the furrows had slumped closed when the farm'd turned to marshland. It was tricky to run across furrows and almost impossible to run along them without stumbling in a soft spot or where a clod turned underfoot; Sharina knew…
Tenoctriscouldn't have done this! To undo the work of the Green Woman would've required a wizard of equal power, and only Double Sharina looked over her shoulder. The whole army was returning sluggishly to the attack; that was gratifying. But Double was where Sharina'd last seen him, standing beside his case of paraphernalia and wearing a look of blank incomprehension. She didn't think his legs had moved since the spell took effect; was he frozen to the ground?
Tenoctris had donesomething. Perhaps she'd summoned Cervoran? But she'd claimed that Doublewas Cervoran!
A hellplant had advanced a few yards ahead of its fellows; perhaps it'd crossed the earthworks at a place where the rampart had slumped. Three Blood Eagles and a line soldier fell on it just ahead of Sharina. One guard had come from a cavalry regiment and still carried his long sword; he thrust it deep into the hellplant's barrel and twisted as it jerked it back.
A crinkle of ice followed the steel; the reservoir in the creatures' bodies had frozen along with the fields. No wonder the plants had stopped advancing!
Four men hacking at one object, even an object as large as a hellplant, were enough. More blades without careful coordination meant the attackers would cut one another, and Sharina had seen too many battles by now to imagine that 'careful coordination' was possible in the midst of one.
She ran to the next plant. Attaper and Lires flanked her as before. She half expected Attaper to object, but instead he saved his breath for better uses.
The score of tentacles fringing the top of the hellplant's barrel were blackening from the cold already. One moved feebly toward Sharina; she sheared it with a side-stroke, then bent. As the soldiers slashed at the plant's vast body, she began methodically to chop off the white, wormlike tendrils on which the creature walked.
Each blow crunched the blade through into the ground beneath. She'd have to sharpen it after the battle, but there was no time for finesse. Nonnus would've understood that.
Lady, bless the soul of my friend and protector. Lady, make me worthy of the life he sacrificed for me.
"Back, your highness!" Attaper said. Before he had the last syllable out, he'd grabbed Sharina by the shoulder and dragged her away. There's no time for finesse.
The plant slumped like a mass of snow sliding off roof slates, a quiver building to a rush until it crashed into the hard ground. The green body burst at every point a blade had cut it. A slush of half-frozen seawater oozed out, smelling of iodine.
A javelin stood up from the mass, then fell free as the remains rotted with the usual suddenness. The spear hadn't been there when Sharina and the guards attacked the creature: one of the soldiers behind them had thrown it while they fought, missing the humans by the Lady's grace and doing no significant harm to the plant, as anyidiot should've known by now!
Sharina started to laugh. She took two steps toward the next hellplant, but there was already a squad of men around every one of the creatures in the immediate vicinity. She stopped, her laughter building hysterically. She knelt and set the Pewle knife flat on the ground; she was afraid she'd cut herself as she laughed uncontrollably.
"Your highness?" Attaper said. "Your highness!"
"I've read the Old Kingdom epics, Attaper!" Sharina said. Concentrating to speak helped her to regain self control. "They've all got battles in them. Sometimes they're mostly battles."
"Your highness?" Attaper said, this time in confusion instead of building concern.
"Not once in an epic, milord," Sharina said. "Notonce. Is the king killed when one of his own men accidentally sticks a spear through him from behind. I'm beginning to think the poets aren't trustworthy guides to the reality of battle!"
She dissolved into laughter again, resting her palms on the hard ground. Around her rang the triumphant cries of her men as they cleared Calf's Head Bay of living hellplants.
Garric paused at the lip of the abyss. He'd been expecting a narrow canyon-for no particular reason, he realized. It was just an assumption he'd made.
A foolish assumption, he saw now: the abyss was more or less circular as best he could tell through the mist. The walls were steep, crumbled back slightly around the rim but close to vertical in many places further down as Garric's eye tracked it. He heard water roaring over the cliff somewhere though he couldn't see the falls themselves. They were probably the reason that the depths of the abyss were even foggier than the general landscape.
"Is it a sinkhole?" Garric asked the Bird on his shoulder. He bent and rubbed the rock exposed on the track leading downward. "It can't be! This is hard, basalt I think. Sinkholes are in limestone that the water's eaten away."
"There was a bubble in the flow of a great volcano," the Bird explained. "The top wore away. That took longer than you can imagine-longer than this world has known life. But it happened."
It clucked audibly, then added, "There's an hour left of daylight. We should start down. It'll be more dangerous after sunset."
"All right," said Garric. "Ah-I won't be able to see any farther than my hand outstretched when we get anyway down in that, even now."
He wasn't complaining, just making sure the Bird understood the situation.
"A little farther than that," the Bird said. "But yes, I'll guide you. We'll keep to the trail as long as we can, but if we meet a party of Coerli we'll have to move to the side. The other creatures have generally learned to avoid the trail themselves, but even that isn't safe."
Garric chuckled as he started down. It was too narrow for a pack animal, even an unusually sure-footed donkey, but it was only moderately steep.
"Safe was when I was tending sheep back in the borough," he said quietly. He thought of the afternoon the pack of sea wolves had squirmed out of the surf, great marine lizards. "And even that had its moments," he added.
The dense basalt was slick with spray condensed on its surfaces. Though the path wasn't particularly regular-the footing humped and sagged, and at some points the track was undercut so that the side of the cliff bellied out above it-it certainly wasn't natural.
And it showed considerable wear. That would've taken a long time in rock so hard.
"Did men cut this, Bird?" Garric asked. Part of him felt silly to vocalize the question when he knew the Bird heard his thoughts, but he found it more comfortable to pretend this was a normal conversation. "It's too worn for the Coerli to've done it if they just arrived here a few years ago."
"A normal conversation with a crystal bird," Carus said, grinning. "In a land of swamps and shadows, with one really deep hole."
"Others than men built the path, Garric," the Bird said. He'd taken to flying ahead and perching on an outcrop or a tree just at the edge of Garric's vision; a dozen feet or so away. "The cave in which my people lived has drawn visitors since before there was intelligent life in this land, though those who made the path were intelligent."
Garric thought of asking more, then decided not to. The Bird had shown itself a friend. If it didn't volunteer information, there was probably a reason for its reticence.
"I am not your friend, Garric," the Bird said in a tone of dry disapproval. "Our purposes happen to coincide, that is all. But I will not harm you or yours by my own choice."
I wish I could be sure that was true for all the people who say theyaremy friends, Garric thought. And particularly those who say they're friends of Prince Garric. He grinned but he didn't speak aloud.
The walls of the cliff were covered with ferns and air plants, some of which draped broad gray-green streamers like tapestries far down over the rocks. When Garric saw tree tops jetting out from a central stem, he thought he must be nearing the bottom of the gorge. By the time he'd clambered down far enough to be among them, he saw that he'd been wrong: the trunks were dim pillars vanishing far below.
"The trees at this level are three hundred feet high," the Bird said. "It will be some time before we reach the floor. Unless you slip."
"Was that a joke, Bird?" Garric asked.
"No," said the Bird. Then it clicked two body parts together-not its beak-and said, "Stop. I hear something. A band of Coerli has started up the path."
As Garric climbed and slid down the cliff path, he'd heard occasional noises over the background thrum of the falls: a booming croak, a bell-like chiming, and once a shriek like a child being torn limb from limb. He'd left his axe and knife in his sash because he needed both hands free to move safely; even so he'd twitched toward the weapons when he heard the scream.
Now, hunching where a crevice the width of his palm crossed the path, he heard nothing. "What do you recommend?" he asked, moving his lips without letting any sound pass them.
"Get at least twenty feet off the trail and stay very still," the Bird said. Then it added in emotionless apology, "The Coerli have no fixed time to use the portal in the cave. Whether we met a party or did not was purely a matter of chance."
"You didn't tell me it was going to be easy," Garric mouthed as he crept sideways over the edge of the trail.
The slope here was more gradual than in many places, less than one to one, but the rock had a slick covering of hair-fine moss. He found a crack to stick his right big toe into, then settled his weight onto it as he reached down with his left hand. There was nothing better than a handful of moss to grip, short and slippery, but he clung to it as best he could.
"There is a root on your right side," the Bird said, fluttering in the air beside him. "It's narrow, but it will hold you."
Garric swept his hand over the rock and found the root, crawling up the rock from a plant lower down. It was no thicker than a piece of twine, but its suckers held it to the stone like ivy on a brick wall. He pinched the root between his thumb and forefinger, afraid to wrap his whole hand around it lest he pull it away from the cliff.
Garric could hear the Coerli now, the rasping rhythms of their voices. He couldn't tell how many there were, but he doubted he'd be able to handle one healthy warrior in his present condition.
"Though we'd try," cautioned the ghost in his mind; andof course he'd try and die trying. But better to avoid the problem.
"There are five warriors and their chief, Grunog," the Bird said. "Grunog has no females, but he hopes to gain enough prestige in this new land to make himself powerful in two years, or perhaps three."
Garric had stuck the axe helve under his sash, but when he squeezed himself to the rock face the blade gouged him over the hipbone. He'd have been all right if he'd shifted the axe before he left the trail, but he hadn't thought of the problem until it jabbed him.
Supporting himself by his hands alone, Garric removed his right foot from the crack and felt below him for another toe-hold. He was sure the axe was drawing blood. As soon as he got another safe foothold, he'd His right arm spasmed in response to the shoulder wound. Garric lost his grip and tore through plants as he crashed down the cliff side. He bounced from rocks to the bottom fifty feet below where he'd started. Above him the Coerli were calling excitedly.
My fault! Garric thought. Intellectually he knew it really wasn't anybody's fault: he was pushing himself to the limit, and if that sometimes meant he went over the edge-literally, in this case-that was inevitable.
But he still blamed himself.
"This way!" the Bird said, fluttering around the nearest tall trunk. Garric got to his feet and followed.
He'd lost the axe but the knife was stuck hilt-deep in the ground beside him. He snatched the weapon, a single piece of polished hardwood, as he ran. He'd probably been lucky not to put it the long way through his thigh.
It didn't strike Garric till he'd started running that he might be badly injured by a fall like that. Duzi, he could've been killed… and he'd known that, but he hadn't let himself think about it because that might've made it so. That was superstitious nonsense!
"And the soldier whoisn'tsuperstitious has the brains of a sheep !" said Carus. "No matter who you are, bad luck can kill you. You may pray to the Great Gods or trust your lucky dagger that you wore in your first battle, but there's going to be something."
Garric could see better than he'd expected. His eyes seemed to be adapting to the greater than usual dimness, but mostly it was the phosphorescent fungus coating patches of the trees and ground. The soil was loamy and damp with a thick layer of leaf litter. Many of the fallen fronds had been eaten away into blue, yellow, and vaguely red skeletons that would've been gray if there'd been even a little more ambient light.
Roots spread around the base of each massive trunk as though the tree had been flung straight down and had splashed. Instead of bark they were covered in scales, though Garric noticed that the patterns varied from slants to curves. One tree-otherwise no different from the others for as high as Garric could see-had flowers growing in the middle of diamonds of lighter scales, set off from the rest of the trunk.
Garric could hear the Coerli calling to one another as they pursued. They must've come down the side of the chasm also, though probably under better control than he'd managed. In the maze of trees he couldn't tell how close his pursuers were or even the exact direction their voices were coming from, but he didn't doubt they'd catch up with him soon.
"Can you swim?" the Bird asked.
"Yes," said Garric.
At least he hoped he could. Though he'd gotten up immediately and begun running, he was feeling the effects of his fall. Nothing was broken, but the bruises on his right ribs and the side of his left knee hurt worse than stab wounds. The chilliness of his right buttock almost certainly meant it was oozing blood that cooled in the air.
Working bruised muscles was the best thing he could do for them, and you don't really lose much blood from a scrape. Besides, if he was going swimming, that'd clean him up.
The Bird swooped in a jangle of light around the biggest tree Garric'd seen in the Abyss yet; at the height of his head above the ground, it must be twenty feet across. On the other side of it was a pond on which pads of fungus floated. There was enough current to keep the center of the broad channel clear of the scum of spores that covered both shorelines, but he couldn't see anything actually moving.
Garric started for the shore, a band of faintly glowing muck. "No!" the Bird said. "Not there-follow!"
It angled to the right and fluttered ten or a dozen yards to what seemed to Garric to be an identical piece of fungus-covered mud. "Here!" the Bird said, flying out over the water. "Cross it as fast as you can."
As I planned to do, Garric thought. In a manner of speaking it wouldn't have made any difference if he'd said the words aloud-the Bird heard him the same either way-but consciously at least he wasn't trying to win stupid verbal games in the middle of a real life-and-death struggle.
He thrust the wooden dagger under his sash and ran into the water. He didn't dive since he didn't know how deep it was. The far shore was about a hundred feet away; the only reason he could see it in this mist was that the pond was black, while rosy phosphorescence dusted the mud of the shore.
Garric splashed two steps in to reach knee height, then threw himself forward and began swimming. The water was warmish and had a cleansing feel, unlike the tidal millpond in Barca's Hamlet where he'd learned to swim.
He felt a flash of white pain when he stretched out his right arm for the first time in a crawl stroke, but then he settled into a rhythm. He supposed he hadn't stuck his arm straight overhead since he'd gotten the shoulder wound.
Stretching's good for it, he thought, his mind grinning though his mouth was too busy sucking in air. Of course if I'd fainted and drowned, that wouldn't have been so good; but it might not make a whole lot of difference. Unless maybe the cat men can't swim?
"They swim better than you do," the Bird said in its dry mental voice. "Get out of the water quickly. Run!"
Stagger rather than run was the word for the way Garric left the pond, but at any rate he got out as quickly as he could. Every muscle hurt and it felt as though his feet were sinking in deeper on this side than they had in the forest on the other side.
Maybe they were; certainly they were cutting ankle deep through the mud and leaving swirls in the fungus on the surface. Unless the cat men were blind, they'd be able to track him easily.
"Even if they were blind they could follow your scent," the Bird said. It landed in the crotch of a tree that branched like a candelabrum. "Can you climb to here?" it asked, fluttering its wings to call attention to itself. "It will help some if the Coerli manage to cross."
The crotch was only fifteen feet in the air, and the rough trunk provided a good grip. Ordinarily Garric would've been up it with a few quick hunches of his shoulders and kicks of his tight-clamped legs.
In the present circumstances it was much harder, but it was necessary regardless. If the cat men had to climb to get at him, it gave him a chance to kill one or two that he wouldn't have on the ground surrounded by creatures so lethally quick.
Garric made it, throwing himself into the crotch and letting his tensed abdomen hold his weight. He whooped for breath through his open mouth as the Coerli came like lithe ghosts from the trees on the other side of the pond.
The maned leader followed the tracks to the water with his eyes, then up the far bank to the tree where their prey sat wheezing. "There's the animal!" he cried. "The heart and lungs to the warrior who drags him down!"
Instead of depending on his warriors to do the job, Grunog leaped into the pond and started across. He moved as smoothly as an otter despite holding his wooden mace out in front of him. His warriors arrowed into the water to either side of their leader.
To Garric's surprise, he hadn't lost the knife in swimming. The Coerli didn't have bows and didn't throw their spears. They'd use their hooked lines at first, but by keeping close to the trunk he'd be able to keep from being wrapped by them and dragged down.
The hooks would probably pull off chunks of flesh, but pain didn't matter much now. The Coerli were going to kill and eat him before the business was over, after all.
The warrior on the right side of the line disappeared, thrashing all four limbs. The other cat men didn't appear to notice. They'd reached the middle of the slow stream.
"Bird?" Garric began.
Grunog let out a scream like skidding rocks. He twisted and raised his mace to strike. Before he could, he sank straight down. A moment later the mace bobbed to the surface; the wood was dense and floated very low in the water.
"Large salamanders live in the lake," said the Bird. It was clinging to the tree sideways, just above the level of Garric's head. "You crossed at the boundary between the territories of two of the largest. The splashing drew them to investigate, but they're sluggish. You'd reached the shore before they arrived."
Garric didn't ask how much clearance he'd had; it didn't matter, after all. There wasn't any other choice.
The remaining warriors milled uncertainly in the water. Garric stood on the branch, no longer exhausted and perfectly confident. He pointed his dagger at the cat men and shouted, "Begone, interlopers or I will loose the rest of my minions on you!"
A Corl gave a hacking cry and thrust his stabbing spear beneath him. Blood bubbled to the surface. He called out again and went down. From the roiling water rose a corpse-white creature with an oval head and a tail as fat as the body proper. It rolled under again and disappeared.
The surviving cat men paddled back the way they'd come. When they reached the shore, they scrambled up and vanished into the forest. They hadn't said a word after Garric had called his empty threat.
"I see what you mean about big salamanders," Garric said. He wasn't feeling pain, but his whole body was trembling from reaction. "That was a good six feet long, including the tail."
"That was a small one," said the Bird. "Normally they wouldn't come close to their larger fellows for fear of being eaten themselves, but when they smelled the blood they were too excited to keep away."
"Oh," said Garric. His blood. The Coerli themselves had been taken too recently for their blood to have spread far. "Just as well I scraped myself, I suppose."
"Yes," said the Bird. "Now to the cave. It's not far. I hope we won't have any more difficulties before we get there."
Garric lowered himself by hanging from the limb with both hands, then dropped to the ground. His knees flexed but didn't buckle as he'd thought they might, especially the left one.
"Yes," he said. "I hope that too."
"'Now some of these days and it won't be long,'" sang Chalcus, his voice soft in the still air. "'You'll call my name and I gonna be gone.'"
"I hear water close," said Merota, walking a step behind Ilna with her hands pressed tightly together in front of her. She was obviously very frightened, but she was trying in every way she could to hide the fact. "I hope we're near the lake."
Ilna pursed her lips. The child was talking because she was afraid, not because the words would do any real good at all. It made Ilna angry Because Ilna was afraid also, afraid that she wouldn't be able to get Merota and Chalcus out of the trap they were in because of her. Which made her want to snarl at whoever was closest to let out the anger and fear churning inside of her.
With a tiny smile of self-mockery, she said, "It's just the other side of the hedge to our left, I believe, but it may be some way before I find a passage through-"
The aisle kinked to the right. She stepped around it, her back straight and a knotted pattern closed in her hands ready for need. White mist rolled through the gap in the hedge, clean-smelling and the first thing in this garden that had felt cool.
The mist was as thick as a feather pillow. Ilna couldn't see through it.
Chalcus joined her in the opening, keeping Merota between them. He reached over the child's head and stroked Ilna's cheek as lightly as a butterfly's wing.
Merota knelt and thrust a hand down into the mist. "I can feel the water!" she said excitedly. "It's running really fast!"
"Stand up, dear one," Chalcus said. "We're not swimming out into that without being able to see more than I can now. Not unless we have to."
"There'll be a way across," Ilna said. "I just need to follow it through in my mind."
She sounded grim, even to herself, because she was frustrated that she hadn't already found the way to cross. That was the path she'd been following, the one that would take them to the temple. She was sure of it!
"'I wish I was a rich man's son…,'" Chalcus sang and let his voice trail off. To Merota he said, "I came from honest folk. Honest but poor as the dirt they scrabbled in to earn enough to eat, or almost enough. I swore to myself that I'd never be poor the way my parents were."
Ilna stared at the mist. She couldn't see through it, but there were currents as surely as there were in the stream she heard purling beneath its concealment. She followed a whorl, dense white on dense white but forming a pattern in her mind.
"I haven't always been honest, child," Chalcus said. He tousled Merota's hair, but it seemed to Ilna that he was speaking as much to his own younger self as he was to the girl. "And often enough I haven't had money. But I've never had to beg the straw boss for something to buy a crust for my family. Nor sent my wife to beg him when he wouldn't grant it to me."
Merota put her hand in the sailor's. He squeezed it, then released it and edged aside. He was carefully not looking toward Ilna.
Ilna's fingers were taking apart the pattern she'd knotted for defense-or attack, if you wanted to call it that. Defense to Ilna had never meant riding with the other fellow's blows.
There were probably ways to puff air or wave her arms in the mist to change the way it flowed, but there were other ways too. If she matched the rippling white on white with the right sort of links in the yarn she carried, it would She held up the pattern she'd created. There was movement in the mist.
"Ilna, I can see something!" Merota cried. "It's a bridge! I see a bridge!"
"Aye, a bridge," said Chalcus in a quiet, neutral voice. "And where, dearest Ilna, would you say it'd come from, eh? This bridge."
"It was there all the time, Master Chalcus," Ilna said. It was a humpbacked affair with a floor and railings of pink stone on a gray stone frame. The supports were carved with leaves and flowing stems, but the pink slabs which feet or hands might touch were mirror smooth.
"Heart of mine," Chalcus said, not testy but with a hint of restraint in his gentle tone. "The fog is thick, I'll grant you, but Lady Merota paddled her little fingers in the place where the abutments now rest, gneiss and granite and each harder than the other."
"It was always here, Master Chalcus," Ilna repeated. "I had to turn it so that we could see and touch it, that's all."
She smiled faintly, wondering if a person who had more words in her tongue could've explained what she'd done. Perhaps, but it might be that a person with more words couldn't have wrapped the mist in just the right way to wring the bridge into sight.
"Ilna?" Merota said. "Who's the lady?"
For a moment Ilna didn't know what the child meant: there was only the bridge arching its back to mid-stream before falling into the mist in the direction of the central island and the temple. On the railing, though, slouched and then straightening with the grace of a cat waking, was a woman.
Wearing silk, Ilna thought, but it wasn't silk. The woman was dressed in her own flowing hair; her hair and the mist. She looked at them but didn't speak.
"I'll lead, then, shall I, darlings?" Chalcus said. He made the words a question, but he was swaggering up the pink stone before they were out of his mouth. Though his hands were empty, Ilna knew he could have a blade through the woman's throat before she had time to suck in a breath.
Merota started to follow the sailor; Ilna put a hand on the child's shoulder and held her back. Merota sometimes needed guidance, but she never objected when matters were serious.
Everything in this garden was serious, to Merota's mind even more than to her guardians.
While Chalcus was still a double-pace away the sinuous woman smiled and said, "Welcome, strangers. Have you come to use my bridge?"
Her voice was musical but pitched a little higher than even a slender woman's normally would be. Her face and mouth were both narrow, but her smile was welcoming.
"Your bridge," Chalcus said easily, letting the words stand without emphasis. "Would there be a toll for that use, milady?"
The woman laughed. "My, so formal?" she said. "A small toll, stranger-a very small one. Few people visit me here and I never leave. If you would tell me a story, any story you choose, that would give me a pleasure I could revisit in the long days when I'm alone. But if you can't or won't-"
She shrugged, a graceful movement that shimmered down her whole covering of hair.
"-then what could I do to block a strong man like you from crossing with your companions? No, a story if you choose to tell a lonely woman a story, and free passage regardless of your courtesy."
The mist was clearing. Ilna saw the wooded island beyond the moat. In the middle of the woods gleamed a temple with a golden roof.
Chalcus glanced back, careful to keep the woman in the corner of his eyes. "Ilna, dearest one…?" he said.
"I'll never be known for courtesy," Ilna said, sounding harsh and angry in her own ears. The woman on the bridge was very beautiful, and her voice was as pure and lovely as a bird's. "Still, I've always paid my debts. Give the lady a story, Master Chalcus, and we'll cross her bridge."
The woman looked at her and smiled sadly. "You don't trust me," she said in a tone of regret. "You've had a life of disappointment. I see that in your eyes."
She gestured up the bridge beyond her and toward the island. "You and the child are free to pass, mistress," she said. Every gesture, every syllable, was a work of art and beauty, though there was nothing studied about her. "All three of you may pass freely, as I said."
"Come along, Merota," Ilna said. She hated herself-well, hated herself more than usual-for her jealousy and lack of trust. "Master Chalcus will tell the lady a story to pay our way."
Ilna walked briskly up the smooth surface. The slope was noticeable, but she didn't slip even though the mist had coated the gneiss.
She could've held onto the handrail, but that would've meant touching stone with her fingers as well as her feet. Ilnahated stone. Even if she hadn't, she'd have hated every part of the bridge that this lovely, graceful woman claimed.
"Well then, milady," Chalcus said in a cheerful, lilting voice. "If you'll not think me immodest, I'll tell you of the time in my travels that I found a woman chained to the face of a cliff at the seaside. She was more lovely than any other, saving your own good self and Ilna, my heart's delight."
He nodded to Ilna and Merota as they passed. Ilna nodded back; coldly she supposed, but she couldn't help that. Merota squeezed his hand as she went by.
The girl was grinning happily; to be reaching the center of the maze probably, but Ilna didn't ask. If she spoke to Merota, it'd sound as though she was saying, "What do you have to smile about?" And that's what shewould probably be saying, so she kept her mouth shut.
"Why are you smiling, Ilna?" Merota asked.
"Am I?" said Ilna in surprise. "Yes, I was. At myself, I guess you'd say. I was thinking that I'm never going to learn to be a nice person, but I'm getting better at not saying what I think."
Ilna stopped at the hump of the bridge, a polite distance from where Chalcus stood speaking to the woman. His voice came to her faintly, "… rising out of the sea, an island to look at save for its bulging eyes and its teeth as long as temple pillars…"
"It's hard to hear him, Ilna," Merota said, frowning.
"We have no need to hear him at all, child," Ilna said severely. "He's giving her a good story. When he's finished, he'll join us and we'll go on together."
She deliberately turned her face toward the island. The temple was a simple one: round and domed instead of the usual square floor plan with a peaked roof, but she'd seen round temples occasionally in recent years.
There weren't any temples, round or square, in Barca's Hamlet or in the borough beyond. People had shrines to the Lady and the Shepherd in their houses. There they offered a crumb of bread and a drop of ale at meals; most people did. On the hill overlooking the South Pasture was a stone carved into a shape so rough that only knowing it was an altar let you see that. The shepherds left small gifts on it to Duzi, the pasture's god, at Midsummer and their own birthdays.
Ilna refused to believe in the Great Gods, the Lady who gently gathered the souls of the righteous dead and the Shepherd who protected the righteous living. Ilna believed in Nothing, in oblivion, in the end of all hopes and fears. She'd had few hopes in life and those had been disappointed, every one. Death wouldn't be a burden to her; quite the contrary.
"You're smiling again, Ilna," Merota said.
"I shouldn't be," Ilna replied, "but that doesn't surprise me."
The mist was getting thicker; she could barely see the temple roof. She turned her head and found it moved glacially slow. Something was wrong.
Chalcus continued to talk with animation to the woman on the bridge below. His lips moved but Ilna could no longer hear his voice, even faintly. The mist between her and Chalcus was very thick, smotheringly thick.
Merota screamed, piercing the fog like a sword blade. The heaviness gripping Ilna's muscles released. Merota pointed into the water, suddenly clear where it'd been dark as ink since the bridge appeared. In its depths were bodies of the Little People, the Prey. There were more than Ilna could count, preserved by the cold stream; and they were all male.
Chalcus saw also. "By the sea-demon's dick!" he shouted. His sword flicked from its sheath and toward the lounging woman.
Swift as he was, the blade cut air alone. The woman-was she a woman?-slid into the stream like a water snake. For a moment she looked at Chalcus; then she trilled a musical laugh, gamboled for a moment among the drowned bodies, and vanished. Ilna couldn't tell whether she'd gone up or down stream, slipped into a hole in the bank, or passed from sight in some other fashion.
Chalcus joined them. His smile was forced and he dabbed his dry lips with his tongue.
"So, my fine ladies," he said. "Shall we cross the bridge as we planned?"
"Yes," said Ilna. "I'd like to get off it. I don't like stone."
And she hadn't liked the woman, either. She felt herself smile, this time because she'd had a better reason than mere jealousy to dislike and mistrust the creature.
"'Goodbye, pretty baby, I'll be gone,'" Chalcus sang as he finally sheathed his sword.
Although "'Goodbye, pretty baby, I'll be gone.'"
Because she was Ilna, she also had to admit that she'd been jealous.
"'You're gonna miss me when I'm gone.'"
Cashel felt Protas grip him harder, then release as a new world formed around them. It felt as if the void had frozen into the shape of a mountain pass opening down into a circular valley.
A woman with wings and a round, ugly face waited for them. Her hair was a mass of snakes. They twisted sluggishly, the way snakes do when they crawl out of the burrow where they've wintered and wait for sunlight to warm life into their scaly bodies. They were harmless sorts, snakes that eat grasshoppers and frogs and maybe a mouse if they're lucky; anyway, Cashel didn't expect to come close enough for one to bite him.
"I am your guide," said the woman. Her thick lips smiled. The only thing she wore was a belt of boars' teeth; her skin was the color of buttermilk, thin with a hint of blue under the paleness.
"Who are you?" Protas said. He had both hands on the crown; not, Cashel thought, to keep it on but because he felt better touching it. The way Cashel felt better for having the quarterstaff in his hands.
The woman laughed. Her voice was much older than her body looked, but she couldn't have been more ugly if she'd studied to do it for a long lifetime.
"You can't give me orders, boy," she said, "but that doesn't matter: a greater one than you commands me. I'm Phorcides, and I'm to take you to where you choose to go."
She laughed again and added, "Since you're fools."
Cashel grinned. He'd been told that many times before and it wasn't a judgment he argued with. But he knew too that the people, and not always people, who said that to him generally didn't have much to brag about in the way they ran their own lives.
Aloud he said, "Then let's be going, Mistress Phorcides. Unless there's reason we should wait?"
Phorcides looked Cashel over carefully. He met her eyes and even smiled; she wasn't challenging him, just showing curiosity for the first time since they'd met.
"My name's Cashel," he said. "And this is Prince Protas. In case you hadn't been told."
"Do you know what you're getting into?" the woman said carefully. The snakes squirmed slowly on her forehead; doing a dance of some sort, it seemed.
"No ma'am, I don't," Cashel said. He looked at Protas, but if the boy had different ideas he was keeping them to himself.
"But you think that you'll be able to bull through anything you meet," Phorcides said. "Is that it?"
"I think I'll try, mistress," Cashel said. "Now, should we be going?"
"We'll go now, which is what you mean," Phorcides said. Her belt of curved yellow tusks rattled softly as she turned toward the valley. "As for whether we should-I have no idea. Perhaps you'll come back and tell me after you've gotten where you're going."
She started down the slope into the valley. Her wings were large and covered with real feathers, but Cashel didn't see how they could possibly support a full-sized woman flying.
There were real birds circling in the updrafts from the valley walls, though. They were high-higher than Cashel could even guess-but he could make out wings and bodies instead of them being just dots against the blue sky.
The sides of the valley were pretty much raw rock with splotches of lichen, but there were a few real plants growing in cracks where wind-blown dirt had collected. Cashel didn't recognize the most common sort, pretty little star-shaped flowers, but there were bellflowers too.
On a distant crag, well above the pass the woman'd brought them in by, three goats with curved horns were staring at them intently. It made Cashel homesick for a moment, though "home" wasn't so much Barca's Hamlet as the life he'd led there. He and Ilna stayed in their half the mill; he'd tended sheep and picked up a little extra by doing whatever work required a strong man. There'd been nobody stronger than Cashel or-Kenset, in the borough or among the folk from distant places who came in the Fall for the Sheep Fair.
Protas picked his way carefully, his face set. Cashel frowned but he couldn't help. The path wasn't bad but it was rocky; not so much a path at all as a way to get down the slope through a carpet of low plants. The boy had only slippers meant for carpeted palace floors on his feet.
Cashel was barefoot, of course, but he was used to that. Even now that he wasn't a shepherd any more, his soles were near as tough as a soldier's boots.
When Cashel lived in Barca's Hamlet-when he was home-Sharina was the daughter of the innkeeper, educated and wealthy as people thought of things in the borough. She'd been far beyond the hopes of a poor orphan boy who couldn't so much as read his own name.
Cashel smiled, embarrassed even to have that thought in the privacy of his own mind. The present where Sharina loved him was better than anything he'd ever dreamed of at home.
They'd gotten down to where the rock was covered with grass and many little flowers-primrose, gentians, and buttercups. They made a nice mix of pink, blue and yellow in the green. There was hellebore too, though it was past blooming. Cashel wondered if Ilna would like the pattern the flowers made on the ground. She might, though she didn't use colors much in her own work. This'd be a fine pasture, but there didn't seem much in it to eat the foliage.
A gray-backed viper sunned itself on an outcrop, turning its wedge-shaped head follow their progress. Cashel started toward it from reflex, readying his staff to crush the snake's head; but then relaxed.
The viper wasn't close enough to hurt them, and Cashel didn't have a flock of sheep he needed to keep safe. He'd kill in a heartbeat if he needed to, a snake or a man either one; but killing wasn't a thing he did for fun.
The valley floor was flat and broad, wide enough that an arrow wouldn't carry to either side from where they walked in the middle of it. The walls were steep and gray; near as steep as the walls of the millhouse. At their base was a scree of rock that'd broken off the cliffs.
"Why aren't those sheep moving?" said Protas, nodding toward a lone pine under which three gray shapes clustered. "They haven't moved even their heads since I saw them."
"They haven't moved because they're stone," said Mistress Phorcides. "And anyway, they were ibexes, not sheep. Wild goats."
The boy opened his mouth to ask another question but glanced at Cashel before he did. Cashel shook his head slightly. Protas forced a smile, swallowed, and walked on without speaking further.
There were plenty of things Cashel wondered about, but he didn't think talking to the winged woman was a good way to get answers. The less contact they had with her, the better he'd like it.
He didn't doubt she'd take them to where they next were to go like the other guides had, but if they gave her the least opening there'd be something bad happening. Cashel trusted her the way he'd trust a weasel: you know exactly what a weasel'll do if you give it the chance.
Phorcides led them toward a rock face. Cashel thought the stand of beech trees concealed a cave or maybe even a bend in the canyon, but they came around the grove and found a sheer cliff. The rock layers were on end. A plate of mica that Cashel couldn't 've spanned with his outstretched staff gleamed in the solid wall.
Phorcides turned and smiled again. Cashel didn't like the smile, but that made it a piece with most other things about their guide.
"I've brought you here," she said. "I can't take you any farther."
"Do we go through the rock, then?" Protas asked. He was using his adult tone and holding the crown in front of him with both hands.
There was a man-the statue of a man-looking toward them around the trunk of a beech. Another-statue-was half-hidden in the stunted rhododendrons a stone's throw away, and a third crouched behind a juniper. Cashel didn't know if Protas had seen them. If the boy had, he was pretending he hadn't.
"Go through it?" Phorcides said. "That's up to you. I can't take you."
Her fat, pale lips spread even wider in a grin. "If I could," she said, "I would have gone myself."
Protas turned toward the mica and raised the topaz crown slightly. Cashel shifted sideways so that he could keep an eye on the boy and the woman both at the same time.
Phorcides opened her lifted hands toward Cashel like she was making an offering. The snakes on her brow were twining faster.
"I've carried out my duty," she said. "Now, Master Cashel-free me."
"I can't free you," Cashel said. His voice was harsh, surprising him. "I didn't bind you, mistress, so I'm not the one to free you."
"Cheun…," chanted Protas. It wasn't his voice. All ten fingers gripped the topaz, but bright lights glittered deep inside it. "Cheaunxin aoabaoth momao."
"Free me!" Phorcides said. Her grin changed to an expression Cashel couldn't describe. "Say that I am free, only that!"
"Nethmomao…," said whatever was speaking through the boy's lips. "Souarmi."
"Leave us," said Cashel in a growl. He lifted his staff. "Leave us now!"
The snakes in Phorcides' hair rose. She had a third eye in the middle of her forehead. It was closed, but the lid fluttered.
"Marmaraoth!" the boy's lips shouted. The cloudy mica was melting into the wall of a mirrored chamber that swelled to enclose Protas and Cashel too. There was a figure in the room already.
Cashel stepped so that he stood between Phorcides and the boy, holding his staff vertical before him. She gave a shriek of baffled rage and whirled away, her middle eye still closed.
The mirrored room closed about Cashel and the boy. In the entrance, the only opening, stood a creature the size of a man but with a cat's long face. It gave a cry like a hunting panther and leaped, its stone-bladed spear aimed at Cashel's throat.