"You were right, priest," said Archas grudgingly as he and Salmson stared at the jungle-covered building. He wore his blond beard in two braids, curving outward like the horns of a mountain sheep. "Though it doesn't look like any temple I've ever seen." Before the Change that mixed all eras to reform the Isles into a single continent, Archas and his men had been pirates scouring the seas off Sirimat and Seres. Now Franca the Sky God had use for them. The underpriest Salmson shivered despite the muggy air and the runnels of sweat which had already soaked his robe. "Franca's revelation to Nivers His priest is always right, Captain Archas," he said. "Of course. Franca is lord of all existence; how can He not be right?"
Salmson looked up to mumble a prayer, but he couldn't see even a patch of sky through the layers of foliage. Nonetheless Franca was present, here and everywhere. All power is with Franca, and serve Him.
"Anyway, it's a temple and a prison both," Salmson said, wiping his neck where the robe chafed. Insects ringed the collar, not biting but drinking his sweat and making him itch. Other insects crawled into his eyes, though he kept blinking them away. "And it's your path to power, captain." Salmson had spent the past twenty years as steward and general dogsbody to Nivers, High Priest of Franca, in the glittering ruin which was all that remained of the Empire of Palomir. It frightened him to have suddenly become so close to unthinkably great power. That was true even though the power was his to control. The Gods of Palomir had returned. Deep in Salmson's fearful heart, he regretted his loss of the past when rats chittered in the crystal hallways of Palomir and the jungle inexorably devoured its margins.
Those days were gone forever, though. Now Salmson spoke with the voice and power of Franca. He grimaced and said, "Bring up the prisoners.
It's time we got started." The man-sized rat beside him turned and sent a clicking call back along the trail. A squad of ratmen chivied the captives out of the jungle, each carrying a pack. There was no formal division, but Archas and his men had taken the lead during most of the journey from their base on the eastern coast of the seaway which penetrated the new continent. The pirates didn't mix with Salmson's escort of ratmen, but they wouldn't have mixed with another band of human cutthroats either. The pirates were a pack of wild beasts which Archas ruled by being the most savage beast among them.
Whereas the rats were certainly beasts, but not wild ones: they were the minions of Franca, raised by Nivers to serve the place of the human worshippers which depopulated Palomir could not yet provide. The ratmen stood upright, carrying swords. They spoke their own language among themselves, but they took Salmson's orders and kept better discipline than most human soldiers; certainly they were better disciplined than Archas' pirates. The ratmen were as ruthless as the icy winter wind. Franca demanded that in His worshippers, and soon all the world would worship Him. The prisoners staggered forward and set down packs before sinking to the ground. The six-year-old boy and handful of elderly people didn't have burdens, but even so the trek had exhausted them to the point of collapse. This wasn't a clearing, but the canopy hundreds of feet in the air and the lesser canopy of saplings and palms thirty or forty feet up meant there were only ferns and fungi on the forest floor. Some of the captives stared fearfully at the ratmen and the pirates, each band more savage than the other; most turned their eyes to the ground. Here flowers fallen from a giant tree threw magenta patterns across the leaf mold. Only one prisoner, an old woman, bothered to look at the structure to which Salmson had drawn them. It was flat-topped, a massive table at least eighty feet long-both ends were hidden in the forest-and twelve high, built from the coarse red limestone which underlay the jungle's thin soil. The frieze along the top register seemed to alternate geometric designs with the heads of stylized beasts, though it was hard to be sure: fern fronds and the roots of major trees covered most of its length. Archas prodded the alcove in the center of the structure with one of his pair of curved swords. "This isn't a door!" he said. "It's carved out of rock just like all the rest of the thing. Where's the real door, then?" The altar block in front of the temple had a narrow ledge along the back side. Salmson looked up from laying out his apparatus there.
A pair of captives had carried the chest holding his paraphernalia of wizardry. It made Salmson uncomfortable to think of himself as a wizard. He felt even more uncomfortable in directing the powers of Franca, though… and that seemed to be the truth of the matter. He rose to his feet. "That's as expected," he said curtly. "It's the door, or will be. Now, get out of the way while I remove the seal."
Archas gave him a look of cold appraisal, flicking his sword like the tip of a lion's tail. He stepped aside, though. They were all on edge, even the chittering ratmen. The journey along jungle tracks or no track at all, the heat, the insects-all these things were uncomfortable enough. Beyond those normal miseries lurked fear of the unknown and the scraps of knowledge which were even more fearful.
There was no turning back; Salmson touched his apparatus, nerving himself to begin by raising his athame. That knife of art had been cut from a whale's tooth by a wizard of an age lost in dim time. Its yellowed ivory was inscribed with symbols which Salmson couldn't translate and with tableaux which were all too clear. No turning back… "Abriaon orthiare," Salmson chanted, dipping the athame's point at each syllable. He hadn't scratched a figure on the altar as he normally would've done, but he thought he saw a pentagram glowing in the heart of the opaque stone. "Lampho!" Wizardlight as blue as the heart of a glacier quivered along the edge of the alcove; it spluttered every hands-breadth as if igniting blobs of sealing wax.
Only when it had described the whole rectangular course did the cold glare fade away. "There!" Salmson cried. "Archas, get the shackle that I've freed. By Hili, man, don't lose it or you'll never control the-Hell blast you, I'll do it!" The priest scrambled around the end of the altar, tripping on tree roots because his eyes were focused on the wall from which a quiver of gold was drifting. He thrust his hand out against the stone and to his relief felt the ghostly caress of the gossamer which had held the portal closed beyond the strength of even a God to open. Carefully, he began to wind the fetter onto a tourmaline miniature of Fallin of the Waves. "What is it?" said the pirate chieftain. He'd stepped back when Salmson shouted at him, his sword raised against whatever might be coming from the tomb. Now he approached again, keeping the blade slanted across his body with the edge outward. "Is it a hair? It looks like blond hair!" "It's a hair,"
Salmson said slowly as he coiled the wisp of gold on the finger-long tourmaline statue of Franca's sibling. "It's supposed to be a hair of the Lady Herself." Salmson knew everyone's attention was on him. There were forty-odd pirates; two had died during the march, one in a fight too disorganized to be called a duel and the other screaming at the demons he'd swilled with his wine. The twenty ratmen groomed themselves as they waited. Though they didn't wear armor for this expedition, the jungle's mold and moisture had caused their harnesses to chafe. They licked the sores in their coarse fur methodically. "A god's hair?" said Archas. "That's impossible!" He glowered, then added, "And anyway, didn't you say the gods were dead? The Lady and the Shepherd and the Sister, all three?" Nearly a hundred human captives had survived the march, but they were too cowed even to run away. They watched with the dumb apathy of sheep at the gate of the abattoir. The black rooster trussed to a handle of Salmson's casket watched him with furious black eyes, though. Unlike the human prisoners, it hadn't given up. Slavery is a state of mind, thought Salmson. But we are all slaves of Franca. Even the cockerel. "I said,"
Salmson said as he finished coiling the impossibly long strand of hair, "that since the Change this world is without gods. As for what the hair is-perhaps you know best. But I warn you, captain, when I turn this over to you-" He raised the talisman to call attention to it. The filament was so clear that Fallin's carved features could be glimpsed in the pale green stone. "-don't lose it. Without it you won't be able to control the Worm. No one will be able to control the Worm." Salmson's lips smiled, though fear froze his mind for an instant at the thought behind his words. No turning back… "But no matter," he said, walking back around the altar. He placed the talisman on the ledge among the other implements and raised the athame again. "Bring me the cockerel." A ratman lifted the rooster. Instead of cutting the cord, he teased the knot open with delicate claws before handing the sacrifice to Salmson. The priest held the cockerel to the center of the altar stone with his left hand. It wriggled and tried to peck him, so he shifted his grip slightly. Salmson had noticed birds all the way from the seaway to here. They'd clattered and called in the foliage even when they couldn't be seen, but generally he'd seen them. Since he'd spoken the incantation to unshackle the portal of the Worm, the forest had been silent. He sighed, took a deep breath, and intoned solemnly, "Barbathi lameer lamphore…" This wasn't as trying as the previous incantation.
All he was doing this time was loosing the power of Franca. It was like lifting the trigger bar of a loaded catapult, childishly easy though it released a ball that could smash a gate or the hull of a ship. "Anoch anoch iao!" Salmson said. He stabbed the rooster with his athame. The edge of the ivory knife wasn't keen enough to slice flesh, but its point could split a bird's chest. Blood followed as he withdrew the blade, splashing the stone and his arm to the elbow. For a moment there was nothing but the thick smell of violent death. Then the rooster's blood began to steam from the altar, swelling into a misty figure the height of the sky. It didn't exist in the same world as Salmson and the jungle, but it was nevertheless visible. The figure bent to grip the stone door slab. There was no single scale of sizes in what Salmson saw; though he closed his eyes in sudden terror, the figure remained. Lightning flashed within its dim outlines, but the portal remained shut. "Bring me a prisoner!" Salmson said. Two ratmen seized an old man by the arms and dragged him to the altar. The prisoners who'd been carrying packs merely shrank back, but several of the old men would've tottered off if pirates hadn't grabbed them. The child sobbed in misery; the old woman held him by the shoulders. The rats threw the prisoner onto the slab face-up, gabbling in wordless terror. He was still wearing a tunic; Salmson gripped it with his left hand and pulled hard, but the cloth didn't tear. One of the ratmen slid the tip of his sword under the collar and sliced the garment open without touching the skin beneath. "Anoch anoch iao!" Salmson said and stabbed. The prisoner's back arched. The priest tugged, but the ivory blade had stuck between ribs. He levered the athame back and forth till it came out with another spray of blood. The sacrifice continued to thrash convulsively, but his eyes had glazed before his heart ceased pumping. The cloud-formed figure grew denser as it wrestled with the portal. When Salmson looked at it-his eyes were open again, since it didn't matter-he thought the figure stood in a cascade of planes which should've intersected but didn't, or didn't in the waking universe. Still the portal remained closed. "Another!" the priest cried. "Bring me a sacrifice!" Pirates held the prisoners, but none of them came forward at Salmson's command. The ratmen who'd brought the first victim now flung his drained corpse off the slab and minced toward the remaining supply. Before the rats could make a choice, the old woman shoved the boy toward them. He turned shrieking to run back, but the rats caught him and threw him onto the slab. The rats' limbs were slender by human standards, but they had the strength of whalebone. "Anoch iao!" Salmson repeated. He stabbed again and the boy's blood gushed. The cloud figure solidified into a black-bearded giant whose legs spanned the cosmos. Lightning crackled from its hands as they wrenched at the portal. The stone came away with a crash and flew skyward. The figure of Franca dissolved, but titanic laughter boomed across the sky. The portal was open. "Sister take it!" Archas muttered. He was staring into the forest canopy with his sword lifted, as though expecting the giant to reappear. "Sister take it and take you, priestling!" "Cap'n?" said a pirate holding a stout-shafted javelin. The weapon had a ring in the butt where a line could be reeved to grapple with a merchant vessel, but the barbed head was equally able to disembowel human prey. "What's that that's coming out of the hole now, hey?" Salmson's eyes followed the pointing javelin.
The square opening in the temple's face had been an empty blackness initially; now thin, violet smoke began to drift out of it. Archas took another step back. Salmson set down the bloody athame and raised the miniature of Fallin. The Worm crawled through the interstices of the worlds. Salmson gripped the talisman and faced it, too frightened even to think of running. We are the slaves of Franca. All power is in Franca. The portions of the Worm in the waking world were slate gray, pebbled, and colossal. A long tusk thrust from the circular mouth, then withdrew. The opened portal was ten feet square, but the Worm could never have passed through it in the natural course of things.
Sometimes Salmson saw a world beyond as though the Worm were squirming through a frescoed wall. In that other place cold, sluggish waves swept a rocky strand. Where the body of the Worm should have been was instead a purple mist, but it solidified as the creature writhed into the jungle. Some of the pirates had fled. Archas held both swords out, and the man with the barbed spear cocked it over his shoulder to throw. A fat, scarred pirate with one ear fell to his knees and began incongruously to call on the Lady. How much mercy did you grant to the prayers of your victims, savage? Salmson thought, but the past no longer mattered. He held up the talisman. The skein of golden hair blazed brightly, though no sunlight penetrated here in the jungle's understory. "In the name of Fallin of the Waves!" Salmson cried.
"Halt!" The Worm reared, its blunt snout penetrating the treetops.
Branches crashed aside, showering mosses and spiky airplants like a green rain. The creature was thicker than a five-banked warship and longer than Salmson could judge. Perhaps it was longer than the waking world could hold… Slowly the Worm settled back, shifting between the solidity of cold lava and the swirls of violet mist that Salmson had seen rippling in the world beyond the plane of this one.
The great body didn't seem to touch the temple from which Salmson had drawn it, but swathes of the jungle beyond shattered at the touch of the gray hide. A tree, its crown lost in the canopy two hundred feet above, toppled majestically; wood fibers cracked and popped for minutes. When the bole slammed down, the ground shuddered and knocked several pirates off their feet. The ratmen chittered and squeezed closer together; most of the prisoners lay flat and wept or prayed.
The pirate with the barbed spear screamed, "Hellspawn!" and hurled his weapon into the Worm; he must've gone mad. The spearhead barely penetrated; the creature twitched, causing the thick shaft to wobble.
Salmson pointed with the talisman. There must be a demonstration; as well to use the pirate for it as the surplus prisoners he'd brought for the purpose. "Kill," he said, though the God had revealed that he needn't speak aloud while holding the talisman. The pirate who'd thrown the spear stood where he was, babbling curses. The Worm's mouth opened like a whirlpool yawning. Inside was a ring of teeth and a gullet the mottled red/black colors of rotting horsemeat. Black vapor belched from the creature's gullet, enveloping the pirate. His scream stopped in mid note. His bright clothing crumbled like ancient rags; his body shriveled as it fell. The Worm quivered forward a few segments, furrowing the jungle like a warship being dragged onto the beach. Its maw engulfed the corpse with a cartload of soil and bedrock, then closed. The creature recoiled slowly to its previous position. In a moment of trembling anticipation, Salmson felt an awareness of the power he controlled-the power to destroy anything, everything, by directing the Worm. He recoiled: if he went any further down that path in his mind, he wouldn't return. There would be nothing as valuable to him as the thrill of universal destruction. He raised the talisman again. "In the name of Fallin," he said, "go back until you are summoned." The Worm began to dissolve into glowing mist: patches here and there, spreading like oil over a ridged gray seascape, iridescent but with foul undertones. The sizzle that accompanied the disappearance was too loud to speak over. At the end there was a violet speck in the air. It vanished with aclack like wood blocks striking. The forest was silent. Salmson still shivered. There was a fetid odor which he hadn't noticed while the Worm was present.
He looked down the swath cleared by the monster's body, mashed vegetation from which a miasma rose. Birds hopped among the crushed branches, hunting for prey stunned by the catastrophe. All this power… "Here, Captain Archas," Salmson said in a clear voice.
"Take the talisman. By the grace of Franca, God over all Gods, it is given to you to conquer the Kingdom of the Isles!" Archas reached left-handed for the offered statuette. Before he touched it, he paused and said, "And what then? When I've conquered the Isles, what of your folk in Palomir?" "We're all slaves of Franca, Captain," Salmson said.
"When the whole world worships Franca, then He will decide our fate."
Archas hesitated a moment longer, then snatched the talisman. "There's nothing more to it?" he demanded. "I just-use it as you did?" "The Worm is yours to command," Salmson said quietly. "But don't lose the talisman, or-" He shrugged and gestured with his head toward the gouge in the jungle. "-the whole world will look like this. Like the Worm's own world." And will it be any different for mankind when Franca is God of Gods? Salmson wondered. But there's no turning back…
Chapter One Cashel carried Rasile in the crook of his arm up the last few tens of steps to the top of the fire tower, the highest point in Pandah. The old wizard's people, the Coerli-the catmen-held the physically weak and aged in contempt even if they happened to be wizards. Since the Change, Rasile had been helping the humans who'd conquered the Coerli; her life and health had improved a great deal.
Still, the fire tower was a hollow pillar with many tens of tens of steps shaped like wedges of pie on the inside. Lots of younger people, catmen and humans both, would've had trouble climbing it. Cashel didn't mind. Rasile scarcely weighed anything to begin with, and besides, it made him feel useful. Cashel's friends were all smart and educated. Nobody'd thought that Garric would get to be king while he and Cashel were growing up together in Barca's Hamlet, but he'd gotten as good an education from his father, Reise the Innkeeper, as any nobleman's son in Valles got. Likewise Garric's sister Sharina. Cashel smiled at the thought of Sharina. She wasso smart andso lovely. If there was wizardry in the world-and there was; Cashel had seen it often-then the greatest proof of it was the fact that Sharina loved him, as he'd loved her from childhood. Cashel's sister Ilna couldn't read or write any better than he could, and like Cashel she used pebbles or beans as tellers if she needed to count above the number of her fingers. But there was more to being smart than book learning, and nobody hadever doubted that Ilna was smart. She'd been the best weaver in Barca's Hamlet since she'd grown tall enough to work a loom, and the things she'd learned on her travels had made her better than any other soul. None of that had made her happy. Her travels had been to far places, some of them very bad places. She'd come back maybe missing parts that would've let her be happy. Still, Ilna was much of the reason that the kingdom had survived these past years; why the kingdom survived and, in surviving, had allowed mankind to survive.
Cashel, well, he was just Cashel. He'd been a good shepherd, but nobody needed him to tend sheep any more. He was strong, though; stronger than any man he'd met this far. If he could use that strength to help people like Rasile who the kingdom depended on, then he was glad to have something to do. "I'm setting you down," he said, just as he'd have done if he'd been carrying a bogged sheep up to drier ground. The sheep couldn't understand him and the Corl wizard didn't need to be told. Still, a few calm words and a little explanation never hurt. "It's supposed to be the highest place in Pandah and-" He looked around. The top of the tower flared a little, but it was still only two double-paces in diameter. "-I guess the folks who said that were right." Rasile stepped to the railing. From a distance the catmen didn't look much different from humans, but close up you saw that their hands and feet didn't use the same bones. As for their faces, well, they were cats. Rasile was covered with light gray fur which had a nice sheen since she'd started eating properly again. Cashel grinned. If Rasile was a ewe, he'd have said she was healthy. Of course back in the borough she'd have been butchered years ago; there was only fodder enough to get the best and strongest through the winter before the spring crops came in. "I'll never get used to the cities you beast-men live in," Rasile said. She flicked the back of her right hand with the left, a gesture Cashel had learned was the same as a human being shaking her head. "All those houses together, and so many of them stone. None of the True People ever built with stone." "Well, you don't use fire, so you can't smelt metal," Cashel pointed out. "That makes it hard to cut stone." He didn't add, "And you catmen aren't much interested in hard work, either," though it'd have been true enough. The Coerli were predators. All you had to do was own a housecat to know that most of the time it'll be sleeping; and when it isn't, it's likely eating or licking itself.
"Anyway…," Cashel continued diplomatically. Rasile didn't mean anything by "beast-men" and "True People;" it was just the way the Coerli language worked. "I don't guess I'll ever get used to cities either. I was eighteen before I left Barca's Hamlet, and it wasn't but three or four tens of houses." Pandah had been a good sized place when the royal army captured it back in the summer, but that was nothing to what it'd become now. All around the stone-built citadel, houses were going up the way mushrooms pop out of the ground after the spring rains. There were wood-sheathed buildings, wattle and daub huts, and on the outskirts any number of tents made of canvas or leather. Before the Change, travel for any distance meant travel by ship. The Isles were now the Land, a continent instead of a ring of islands about the Inner Sea, and Pandah was pretty nearly the center. It'd gotten to be an important place instead of a sleepy little island where ships put in to buy fruit and fill their water casks. The Corl wizard cleared her throat with a growl that had sounded threatening before Cashel got used to it. She paced slowly sideways around the tower, seeming to look out over Pandah. Cashel had spent his life watching animals and figuring out what was going on in their minds before they went and did something stupid. He knew Rasile hadn't asked to come up here just to view a city she disliked even more than he did. That was why he'd asked Lord Waldron, the commander of the royal army, to put a couple soldiers down at the base of the stairs to keep idlers out of the tower while Cashel and the wizard were in it. "Warrior Cashel," Rasile said with careful formality, though she still didn't meet his eyes.
"You are a friend of Chief Garric. As you know, the wizard Tenoctris summoned me to help your spouse Sharina while Tenoctris herself was occupied with other business." "Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. "I know that." "There is no wizard as powerful as Tenoctris," Rasile said, this time speaking forcefully. Cashel smiled. It was a good feeling to remember a success. "Ma'am, I believe that's so," he said. He could've added that it hadn't been true before Tenoctris took an ancient demon into her while Cashel watched. Risky as that was, it'd worked; and because it'd worked, the kingdom had a defender like no wizard before her. "Even she says that, and Tenoctris isn't one to brag." "And now she has accomplished her other tasks," Rasile continued, turning at last to look at Cashel. "It may be that with a wizard of his own race present-and so powerful a wizard besides-Chief Garric may no longer wish to keep me in his council. Do you believe that is so, Warrior Cashel?" Cashel chuckled, glad to know what was bothering the old wizard. "No ma'am, it'snot so," he said, making sure he really sounded like he meant it. He did mean it, of course, but with people-and sheep-lots of times it wasn't the words they heard but the way you said them. "Look, Garric's job is fighting against, well, evil. Right?
The sort of evil that'll wipe out everybody, your folk and mine both.
And the fight isn't over." The sound Rasile made in her throat this time really was a growl, though it wasn't a threat to him. "No, Warrior Cashel," she said, "the fight is not over." She gestured toward the eastern horizon. "A very great fight is coming, I believe.
But-you have Tenoctris again." "Ma'am," Cashel said, hearing his voice drop lower because of the subject, "what with one thing and another, I've been in a lot of fights. I'venever been in one where I wouldn't have welcomed help, though. I figure Garric feels the same way."
Rasile gave a throaty laugh. "I am relieved to hear that," she said.
"During the time I accompanied your spouse Sharina, Warrior Cashel, I became accustomed to not being relegated to filth and garbage. While Icould return to my former life with the True People, I don't feel the need to reinforce my sense of humility to that degree. Wholesome though no doubt it would be to do so." The laughed together. Cashel looked down at the city, holding his quarterstaff in his left hand.
There were all sorts of people below, walking and working and just idling along. They made him think of summer days in the south pasture, sitting beneath the ilex tree on the hilltop and watching his sheep go about their business. In the past couple years Cashel had gone a lot of places and done a lot of things, but he was still a shepherd at heart. He'd learned there were worse things than sea wolves twisting out of the surf to snatch ewes-but he'd learned also that his hickory staff would put paid to a wizard as quickly as it would to the sort of threats his sheep had faced. He tapped the staff lightly, clicking its iron butt-cap on the tower's stone floor. To his surprise, a sizzle of blue wizardlight spat away from the contact. Rasile noticed the spark also. Her grin bared a jawful of teeth that were noticeably sharper than those of a human being. "I told you the fight was not over, Warrior Cashel," she said. "I felt but I did not say that Chief Garric would be wise to keep me by him. I cannot do as much as his Tenoctris does, but I can do some things; and he will need many things done if he and his kingdom, our kingdom, are to survive the coming struggle."
Cashel nodded without speaking. From this vantage he could see birds fishing the pools that now dotted the plains where the Inner Sea had rippled before the Change. Most were the white or gray of seagulls, but there were darker shapes which flashed blue when they caught the sun right: kingfishers, he was sure. "Would you mind staying here a little longer, Warrior Cashel?" the Corl wizard said. "I would like to work a small spell. Both our height above the ground and your presence will aid me, I believe." "Whatever you want, ma'am," Cashel said. "And I'd appreciate you just call me Cashel. I'm not a warrior, you know.
I'm just a shepherd." Rasile snorted mild laughter as she squatted on her haunches. She took a handful of yarrow stalks out of a bag woven from willow withies, so fine and dense that Cashel thought it would shed water. The catmen were good at weaving; even Ilna said so. "You see what you see, shepherd," Rasile said. "But I see what the world sees. If you do not want me to say 'Warrior,' I will not say the word.
But the truth does not change, Cashel." She tossed the yarrow stalks into a pattern on the stone, then began mumbling words of power.
Cashel didn't pay much attention to her. He kept watching the sky and the land beneath, the directions that danger might come from. He was a shepherd, after all. *** Sharina looked around the apartment in which Tenoctris lived and worked. She hoped her shocked dismay didn't show in her expression. The small room had been let into the outer wall of the citadel. The walls wept condensate, and the only window was the small one in the iron-braced door. In all, the place would've been suitable for a prison cell-and had probably been used as one in the past.
Besides being a friend of Prince Garric and Princess Sharina, Tenoctris was the wizard who through advice and skill had done as much to preserve the mankind as had any other single person. Though Pandah's population was increasing by the day, she could have any quarters she wanted. "Oh, dear," Tenoctris said in obvious dismay. She looked like a woman of twenty-two or three, pert and pretty without being beautiful. Apparently Sharinahadn't kept her face blank. "I'm sorry, dear. I chose this room because it's what I'm used to. I didn't mean to suggest that you wouldn't give me better or, well, anything.
You have to remember that for most of my life-" She shrugged.
Tenoctris had been a woman of seventy when she'd washed up on the shore of Barca's Hamlet, flotsam flung a thousand years forward in time by the cataclysm which ended the Old Kingdom. She now appeared to be the woman she'd been in her youth, but that was true only physically. She'd gained both knowledge and wisdom over a long life.
She retained those virtues and had now added power that few wizards ever could have claimed. "-I was considered rightly to be a wizard of very little power. I prided myself on my scholarship, again I think rightly, but-" Tenoctris grinned. Her cheerfully wry expression would've been enough by itself for Sharina to identify her, no matter what features she was wearing. "-scholars aren't lodged or fed as well as wizards who can split mountains with an incantation and a gesture."
"Well, speaking as an innkeeper's daughter rather than as Princess Sharina," Sharina said, keeping her tone light, "I'd rather a friend of mine had better lodging. But I understand the attraction of the familiar. I wish I had the same freedom in what I wear." She tweaked her silk robe. It was a relatively simple garment compared with full court dress weighing as much as a cavalryman's armor, but contrasted with the tunic she'd ordinarily worn in Barca's Hamlet-both an inner and an outer tunic for unusually formal occasions-it was heavy, hot and confining. A squad of soldiers talked in low voices as they waited outside in the passage. They were Bood Eagles, members of the royal bodyguard. Sharina had come to accept that, because she was a princess and regent in her brother's absence, she would always have guards. She grimaced. It wasn't that she wanted to be alone-nobody in a peasant village expected privacy, especially in the winter when even a wealthy household heated only one room. She wasn't used to people actuallycaring what she did, however, day in and day out. Well, there was no help for it; and the dangers were real enough. Sharina smiled faintly. Though she doubted men with swords would be any help against the wizardry which had been the worst danger to the kingdom these past two years. "What's your opinion of Rasile, Sharina?" Tenoctris asked abruptly. She fluttered her hands, also familiar-though it seemed odd to see a young woman making the gesture an old woman used to make. "I know she's a powerful wizard; that I can judge. What sort of person was she to work with?" Sharina took time to frame her reply. The room's low-backed chair was stacked with codices. The bed likewise, though there was room enough for a slim person to sleep along the outer edge. And the three wicker baskets of scrolls, though of a height to be sat on, struck Sharina as too flimsy for that to be a safe option. There was room to squat, however. She squatted, just as she would've done back home while popping open peapods for dinner.
"Rasile doesn't waste words," she said. She grinned. "Or mince them.
Which I actually appreciate. She's brave, calm, and good company."
Sharina met the gaze of the old/young wizard who'd seated herself on the edge of the low bed, putting their eyes on a level. "She wasn't you, Tenoctris," she said. "But you couldn't have left me with a better helper." "No, she isn't me," Tenoctris said with a quirk of her lips, a smile that wasn't quite humorous. "She's a great deal more powerful than Iever was. And equally precise, which is why she hasn't precipitated a cataclysm the way so many powerful wizards have done in the past. Also, I don't think she cares much about her power." "She isn't as powerful as you are now, though?" Sharina said carefully. She wasn't trying to be flattering, but she needed to understand the tools that preserved the kingdom. Tenoctris and Rasile were among those tools, just as surely as she and her brother and all those who took the side of Good were. She was Princess Sharina. Shehad to think that way if she was to do the best possible work in the struggle with evil, and there was no margin for anything but the best possible work.
"Cashel is accompanying Rasile at this moment," Tenoctris said, looking squarely at Sharina. "I thought that might be a good pairing for the future, if the kingdom's safety required a wizard with suitable protection to act at a distance from the palace and army."
Sharina didn't mean to turn away, but she found her eyes were resting on the top codex of the pile on the chair. It'd been bound with the pebbled skin of a lizard. There was no legend on the cover, but on the edge of the pages was writtenHybro in vermillion ink. The word didn't mean anything to her. She pursed her lips. "You mean the sort of thing you and Cashel did just now, while I led the army against Pandah," she said without emphasis. She looked at the wizard again. The young, pretty, very powerful wizard. "That went very well, I believe." "Yes," said Tenoctris flatly, "it did." She paused. "I always found Cashel impressive," she said. "I find him even more so now that I have-" She twisted a lock of hair to call attention to her gleaming, sandy-red curls. "-more capacity for appreciation." This time it was Tenoctris who looked away. She cleared her throat and continued, "Sharina, I have powers that I wouldn't have, couldn't have, dreamed of in the past." She smiled wryly. "In a verylong past life. I hope that this power hasn't caused me to lose my judgment, however. Specifically, it hasn't caused me to miss what Cashel is: a rock which will stand though the heavens fall." "I never doubted you, Tenoctris," Sharina said. She didn't know if that was true. Her lips were dry. "If you're wise," Tenoctris said, smiling again, "then you never doubted Cashel.