Though if Chalcus was here, he with his sword as sure as the sting of a hunting wasp and me with a silken lasso to tangle even a creature as big as this ghoul – Chalcus was dead. And Ilna wasn't dead, not yet, so she had duties. "There's another way, I think," said Usun. "I know you're a wizard, mistress, but wizardry won't work on him. How are your nerves?" Ilna sniffed. He wasn't trying to insult her.
"Adequate," she said. Saying more would be bragging. The little man giggled. "So I thought!" he said. "So I thought! Well then, Ilna, this is what we'll do…" *** "The most important thing in the world I'll tell you freely," Platt said, sitting upright on the couch in Dysart's office.
The desks at which several clerks would during the day transcribe documents had been moved into the hall, so there was room for the unusual number of people present. "Lord Scorpion is God. Worship Him or infallibly be destroyed!" "When did you leave your former position as priest of the Shepherd, Master Platt?" Dysart asked. He was quiet and polite, a clerk from the tips of his toes to his thinning hair.
Sharina had directed-over the protests of Lords Ascor, Tadai, and Quernan of the Pandah garrison-that Dysart should handle the interrogation. She'd accept Liane's judgment on most matters, and Liane had put Dysart in charge in her absence. "I didn't leave the Shepherd," Platt snapped. "The Shepherd is dead! All the old gods are dead. Lord Scorpion is Lord of the cosmos!" "Why, you puppy!" said Lord Quernan. He raised his hand and stepped forward. Two of Dysart's agents grabbed him by the elbows and thrust him back. "Out," said Sharina with a flick of her left index finger toward the door. "But that's blasphemy!" Quernan protested. Other spectators made way for him; one of Tadai's clerks even opened the door. "As well worship a dead donkey as your Lady!" Platt cried. Sharina had been afraid that other soldiers would protest, but instead of equally clueless aides, Quernan had brought Prester and Pont. They remained at attention, as if nothing important was happening. Knowing the two old soldiers, they might have brought themselves. They'd met Sharina in a hard place years ago. Because she'd performed to their approval, they seemed to have adopted her. She suspected that a number of junior officers over the years had had similarly good luck. Platt let out a broken laugh.
"Do you think to frighten me?" he said. "The disciples of Lord Scorpion need fear nothing. I am assured of my salvation!" "But you were trying to escape us in the graveyard, weren't you?" Dysart said.
"Your Scorpion didn't save you then, Master Platt. You're obviously a clever man. You know in your heart that he's not as powerful as what you preach to the rabble." "Salvation is of the soul, not the body,"
Platt muttered. He was sweating profusely. His thin hair was plastered down so that his pink scalp showed through. "Is your ankle comfortable?" Dysart asked. "I'm sorry about the injury, but we had no choice. For as long as you're in my charge I'll see to it that you receive medical care, though my department's facilities are too limited for any but the most important prisoners. I can only hope that the City Prefect will be able to manage something if you have to be transferred to the jail." "Are you out of your mind, Dysart?" Tadai said in a deliberately affected voice as he inspected the curve of his fingernails. "Mybudget doesn't stretch to doctors for a lot of drunks and vagabonds." "How often to you meet with your fellow priests, Master Platt?" Dysart said as though the previous exchange hadn't occurred. He sat in the chair behind his desk; the prisoner was in the couch beside him. Everyone else stood along the inside wall. Burne padded from door to window ledge and back, his whiskers twitching. "I don't," said Platt, squirming uneasily. He'd lost his bravado. "We don't have to meet, I mean. We, ah… I do at least, I suppose the others. God speaks to me in dreams, through his acolyte Black. I've never met another priest, though I know there's many of us. Preparing for the day!" "You claim to get detailed instructions from your dreams, Master Platt?" Dysart said. He didn't raise his voice, but Sharina could hear the hint of a frown in it. "Yes, that's true," the prisoner said. He'd lost the defiance that'd begun to creep back into his tone. "Black tells me where to preach and when. But I know there are many of us, throughout the world." As far as information reaching Sharina went-both from Liane's clandestine service and the reports of regional governors-Pandah was the only center of Scorpion worship. It gave her a feeling of comfort to know that Black lied to his own acolytes-but he was real enough in her own dreams, and she was responsible for Pandah besides. "Do you send messengers to chalk notices on walls to let the worshippers know where you'll be preaching?" Dysart said. "Or does somebody else do that? We've found the notices, you see." "I…," Platt said. He frowned in surprise.
"I don't know, I never wondered. Lord Scorpion speaks to me, that's all. I suppose He speaks to others. People bring me food and hide me during the day, but I don't know who they are. I'm not from Pandah, you see. I came here from Valles when Lord Scorpion called me in the night." "We'll need the names and lodgings of those who help you,"
Dysart said. His hands were tented on his lap, but clerks in opposite corners of the room were making notes on waxed tablets. "They'll already be in our records, but now they'll be cross-referenced with you." "I don't know any of them!" Platt said in agitation. "It wouldn't matter if I told you-Lord Scorpion rules the world. You can't harm Him with your foolish opposition. Join Him!" He raised his eyes from Dysart and swept them across the faces of those watching the interrogation. Sharina had never before seen such terror in a gaze.
"All of you!" Platt cried. "Worship Lord Scorpion! Worship the living God!" Burne leaped to the top of the window casement and came down with something squirming between his forepaws. His chisel teeth clicked efficiently. Platt screamed and fainted. Dysart grimaced and used two fingers to check the pulse in the prisoner's throat. "He'll be all right when he comes around," he said. "It can't be helped, I suppose." "No," said Sharina, "it couldn't be-unless we were willing to let Black's agents hear the rest of the interrogation. I don't think we were going to get any more of real value from him regardless." "Surely he's lying about how he communicates with the rest of his cult?" said Lord Tadai. "About Black and the dreams, you mean?" Sharina said. "I suspect that's true." "How does your highness wish to proceed?" Dysart said. His agents were tying Platt's hands and feet again; he'd been loosed for comfort during the interrogation, but Sharina had seen how quickly Liane's men could move when they had to.
"I'm going to send him to Tenoctris," she said, crystallizing murky thoughts into a plan of action. "I doubt that Platt knows any more than he's told us, but I think Tenoctris can use him as a focus from which she can learn a great deal more. I hope she can help us." She looked down at the unconscious prisoner. "The Lady knows we could use some help," she said. Burne sat upright, cleaning his muzzle. Scraps of black chitin lay scattered about him. "Oh, I don't know, Sharina," the rat said. "We're not doing so badly ourselves." *** Garric waited while Tenoctris dropped chips of white marble inside the ring of trees. They were bald cypress, their bases swollen.
The roots which thrust knees up to breathe in the wet season crawled over dry ground, now; the waters which must sometimes turn this place into a marsh had receded. The regiment that'd escorted them the mile from the main camp murmured in the surrounding darkness. The troops weren't within twenty double-paces of the trees, but nothing could pass through the scores of encircling watch fires without being seen.
Tenoctris and Garric had the privacy they wanted, and the laymen weren't compelled to witness wizardry. Tenoctris straightened. She'd placed only five pebbles, one between each pair of trees to mark the inner angles of a pentacle. The points were the trees themselves.
"It's the Grove of Biltis," she said. "Who's Biltis?" Garric said. He was fighting his instinct to lay his hand on the pommel of his sword.
He knew-not because Tenoctris had told him, but because of the feeling of quiet sadness he felt in this grove-that it wasn't a place for weapons. His disquiet-and King Carus' universal response to anything unusual-kept drawing him to the blade, though. "A very long time ago…," Tenoctris said, taking items out of her satchel. Besides a codex and two scrolls, she began to unwrap what turned out to be the silver statuette of a wasp-slim woman. "Biltis was a God. Biltis wasthe God, in fact. Later she was revered as an oracle whose answers were given in the ripples of her sacred fountain. By the time this grove was planted-and that was before the dawn of the Old Kingdom-Biltis was a spirit of the night who eased childbirth. The cypress as a tree of the waters was thought to be a proper attribute for such a spirit." Tenoctris let her fingertips drift over the curve of the figurine's molded hair. She met Garric's eyes again and smiled sadly. "It's a place of power," she said. "And it suited my sense of whimsy, if you will, to use a site created by ordinary women who had ordinary female concerns. Since both those things are utterly divorced from my own life." Garric cleared his throat. "I had a pretty ordinary life myself before you arrived in Barca's Hamlet, Tenoctris," he said.
"If you hadn't changed that, I guess I'd be dead by now. Along with all the other pretty ordinary people in the world. I'm glad you came."
Tenoctris chuckled. "I might as well complain that I was born a wizard instead of being a mighty warrior, I suppose," she said. "No doubt I'd have been far happier then." "Maybe until she drowned," Carus said.
"Because she didn't have a clever wizard and the other fellow did. No, I'm getting used to things being the way they are now." Tenoctris looked at the books she'd taken out, then returned them unopened to her satchel. "They were crutches," she said apologetically. She seemed to be speaking to the figurine, not to Garric. "I don't need crutches any more." Without further preamble she chanted, "Basuma bassa…"
The statuette bobbed in her right hand, a dip to each syllable. A wisp of violet flame shimmered from the center of the hinted pentacle, as pale as moonlight. Garric thought the first flickers were reflections thrown from the silver, but it mounted as quickly as real fire in dried vines. It was silent and gave off no heat. "Ashara phouma naxarama…," Tenoctris said. "Can the troops see the light or only us?" said Carus. His expression was as bleak as a granite headland, concealing the discomfort he felt even as a ghost to be a part of wizardry. Garric shrugged. The tempo of the guards' murmurs didn't change, nor did the sprightly galliard a musician among them picked out on a three-string lyre. If they'd noticed the flame, there'd have been silence or perhaps shouting. Tenoctris was facing Garric across the fire. Her lips continued to move but he no longer heard the words of power. The grove vanished. Instead of a fire, Garric and Tenoctris stood a pool of violet light. The statuette in her hand rose and fell to the rhythm of the unheard syllables. The charged atmosphere shattered into planes. Garric felt a rush of vertigo: there was no up or down, but there were infinite numbers of universes from which he and Tenoctris stood apart. A speck in one of the planes swelled. Everything shiftedagain. A blur of darker violet coalesced into a boat-a perfectly ordinary vessel, different from the dories fishermen had used in Barca's Hamlet but of similar size and utility. It had one mast, a tall triangular sail, and a single boatman in the stern. The boatman brought the tiller sharply over and at the same time loosed a halyard, dropping the sail as the bluff bow grazed to rest on the shore. The beach beneath Garric's boots was sand, not the black volcanic shingle of Barca's Hamlet and certainly not the expanse of roots, leaves and sedges of the grove they'd been standing in. The boatman stepped out, gripping the sides of his vessel to keep it from drifting away when his weight no longer held it onto the bottom. He was a slight man with thinning hair and ink-stained fingers; though he was obviously strong enough, he seemed incongruous in this job. He reminded Garric of his own father rather than the fishermen who drank in the inn of an evening. Tenoctris curtsied.
"Thank you for coming so promptly," she said. The boatman smiled faintly. "You have the right to command me, your ladyship," he said in a quiet, cultured voice. "Where is it you wish me to take you?" "To the Gate of Ivory," she said. "Can you do this?" "I can take you to the edge of the lake," said the boatman. "But no farther. Is that sufficient?" Tenoctris sighed and lifted her chin in assent. "I feared as much," she said. "But yes, if that's the reality, it has to be sufficient. We'll find our own way across, then. Are we free to board?" "Yes, your ladyship," said the boatman, offering the wizard a hand over the gunwale. She seated herself primly on a forward thwart.
"Ah," said Garric. "Sir, would you like help shoving off? I've done that, well, often enough." "That's won't be necessary, your highness," said the boatman. Neither Tenoctris nor Garric himself had told the man who his passengers were, but he clearly knew. "Though if you'll sit on the thwart just ahead of me, the boat will ride better.
Whatever you please, of course." Garric stepped aboard, placing his foot on the keelson so as not to rock the vessel any more than necessary. The hull settled slightly into the sand. He sat, facing the stern and the tiller rather than the mast. The boatman strode forward, leaning into the vessel and bringing the bow around. Even on sand, that required great strength as well as skill. Garric felt the hull bob free. The boatman took two more strides and clambered in over the transom. Keeping the tiller between his left arm and his body, he raised the sail of linen, tarred to hold the wind better. It filled with the breeze and drove the vessel into the seeming twilight. Garric looked to port, then to starboard. The beach was vanishing into the horizon; he hadn't seen anything above the strip of sand The sea lifted with the slow, powerful motions of a brood sow shifting in her sty. The water was gray with a hint of green where foam bubbled in the vessel's wake, but when Garric bent to look straight down over the side he thought he saw twinkles of the violet flame which Tenoctris had kindled. "I always liked the sea," Carus said. "Of course, that didn't keep it from killing me in the end." He chuckled. "If it hadn't been the sea," he added, "it might well have been a woman. And I liked them too, lad." The boatman eyed the sail, then let out the sheet he'd snubbed to a starboard stanchion. Garric couldn't imagine how the fellow navigated; the sky was the featureless gray of a high overcast.
"Sir?" he said. They faced one another, so closely that Garric could have touched the boatman's knees just by stretching out his hand. "I'm Garric or-Reise. May I ask your name, please?" "'The Boatman' will do," the man said, smiling again. "I don't have a name any more, only a task." Garric cleared his throat in embarrassment, though the fellow hadn't been deliberately insulting. Mainly to break eye contact, he looked to starboard as they crested a swell. Midway to the horizon, an enormous back humped out of the water. It continued for over a minute to drive forward in a shimmer of droplets, like the paddles of a millwheel. Neither the head nor the tail broke the surface before the whole dripping mass sank into the depths again. "Sir?" Garric said.
"What was that?" The boatman adjusted the sail again, this time taking it in slightly. "What you see," he said, "isn't the reality, your highness. It's the shape your eyes-your mind, really-gives reality."
"Sir?" said Garric. "Are you what you seem to be?" The boatman laughed without reservation. Sobering, he said, "Nothing is what it seems, your highness. Much as you or I might regret the fact." As the boatman spoke, he fitted a pair of looped ropes around the tiller to lock it centered. His hands freed, he worked the lid from the enameled tin box beside him and took from it a scroll made of split reeds. The fore-edge was vermillion, and the winding sticks had gilt knobs.
Garric couldn't have been more surprised if the fellow had pulled out a hissing viper. "Why!" he said. "That is, ah; you're a reader, sir?"
The boatman looked at him with an expression of disdain. "Yes, I'm a reader, your highness," he said. "At the moment I'm reading Timarion, if the name means anything to you. Perhaps her ladyship can inform you of who Timarion was, since like her he was of the Old Kingdom."
Tenoctris had been staring over the bow when Garric last checked. She twisted to look around the mast to the men, caroling a laugh. "I assure you both," she said, "that unless he happened to be wizard or write about wizardry, I wouldn't know anything about this Timarion. He could be the greatest poet of my day, and it wouldn't have mattered to me." "I know who Timarion is, sir," Garric said formally. "Though I've read him only as excerpted by Poleinis." He cleared his throat and added, "Even in Lady Tenoctris' day, there can't have been many copies of Timarion's work. It written nearly a thousand years before." Garric knew he shouldn't have been so surprised that the fellow owned a book of such high quality. It was nothing you'd expect of an ordinary boatman, but there was nothing ordinary about this vessel.
Still-neither was Garric an illiterate peasant who'd stumbled into kingship. The boatman laughed again. "I was raised to believe that the sort of work I'm doing now was beneath a gentleman, your highness," he said in mild apology. "There are obviously compensations, but Iam a menial when those who have authority require the services of this vessel. I'm afraid I sometimes allow myself to resent the assumptions that arise from my duties, however." "I apologize, sir," Garric said.
"You had the right of it." After a pause he went on, "Poleinis judges Timarion harshly, as I recall?" "Yes," said the boatman with a wry smile. "He would, wouldn't he? Since otherwise someone might notice that almost all his geographical information about the eastern portion of the Isles and the lands to the northeast of the archipelago was drawn directly from Timarion. What I've been doing for the…"
His voice trailed off; his expression became briefly melancholy, then returned to its normal quiet resignation. "Time isn't important any more, is it?" he said. He faced Garric, but he was apparently speaking to himself. "The problem is-" Now his gaze did meet Garric's. "-that when I think that way, I'm apt to think that nothing is important any more, not even the knowledge which I accepted these duties to gain.
That leads into troubled waters, your highness. Even for a philosopher like myself." "Sir," said Garric, "I know some philosophers deny there's any difference between good and evil, but I don't agree with them. I don't think anyone who really lives in the world could. By helping Lady Tenoctris, you're helping good against evil. Which is purpose enough for me." The boatman smiled. "I was never a man of action," he said, "but I'll bathe in your purity of purpose for the time being. Thank you." He handed Garric the scroll. "What I'm doing now," he said, "is annotating obscure portions of Timarion. For example, he speaks of permanent settlements far to the north, where fishermen not only winter over and salt their catches but also plant barley and onions." Garric adjusted the winding sticks to open the full width of a page. The writing was in an oddly narrow form of the Old Script, making it hard for a moment to determine which were loops and which were vertical strokes. "These capes are far to the north of the islands of the Ostimioi," he read aloud, "but nevertheless they have been settled by men from Wexisame who first followed the currents hither. The Wexisamians do not allow men of other tribes to fish in these waters, though they meet them on rocky islets midway and trade there." Garric looked up. "Surely that's the Ice Capes?" he said, handing back the book with the reverence it deserved. "I have never visited the Ice Capes when the glaciers didn't cover them down to the shore," the boatman said. "If you're right, your highness, then Timarion was using sources from a very long time before even his own age." He chuckled. "Or of course Timarion may have made the settlements up, as Poleinis predictably claims," he said. "With no evidence whatever. I will continue to search for a solution." "And then?" said Garric. "There are other cruxes, your highness," the boatman said. He closed the scroll and placed it back in its protective container. "I'm sure a scholar like me will never exhaust the possibilities of increasing his knowledge." He fitted the tin lid, then leaned out to look beyond the bow. Straightening, he unlashed the rudder. "We're approaching your destination, your highness," the boatman said. "I wish you and her ladyship good fortune in your activities there. I hope to return you to the waking world in good health." He loosed the half hitches holding the sheet but held the sail in place with his hand. Looking at Garric again, he said, "I don't feel a lack of company, Prince Garric. Nonetheless your presence has not been a burden on me." He threw the tiller to starboard and released several feet of sheet, though he didn't let the yard swing into Tenoctris. "I have brought you to your destination, your ladyship," he said; and as he spoke, the hull grounded on what this time appeared to be a muddy riverbank. *** Cashel spun his quarterstaff before him at a leisurely pace as he walked toward the blob of light. The vivid blue sparks crackling from his ferrules would've drawn the eyes of almost anybody, but the two little demons stared at the red blur between them instead. They didn't move, though the demons at even a short distance were clopping away as quick as their little hooves could move. They ran stiffly, bouncing like their legs didn't have any knees. The goats, the only other things in this landscape, didn't pay much attention. One blatted a nasal warning when another, smaller, goat moved toward the bush it was methodically stripping the small gray leaves from. A monster stood where the blotch of light had been, just as sudden as the flash when a mirror shifts to catch the sun. It was taller than Cashel, twice as broad as he was, and looked like a toad on two legs. Really like a toad. It had a broad mouth, goggling eyes, and a nobbly hide colored like bricks that had weathered to a pale, scabby red. Cashel kept walking toward it. The toad didn't move for a moment. The demons standing on either side of it tried to stay frozen, but the one on the right started trembling. The toad turned its head slightly; it didn't have a real neck. That demon shrieked, "The Lord!" and sprang away in a tremendous leap. The toad's black tongue shot out like a javelin.
The barbed tip spiked the demon two double-paces away. The tongue didn't look any thicker than a night-crawler, but to drill into the demon's bony chest like that it must be hard as steel. The demon's arms shot up into the air and its legs splayed like they'd been stuck on by a child who wanted his dolly to stand up. It was as stiff as a dried starfish. The demon on the other side took off running-well, bouncing-as soon as it saw that the toad was busy with its friend.
"That's over now," Cashel said. It wasn't exactly a challenge, but he thought there ought to be something beyond him just smashing the toad's skull. That's what he'd do to an animal, but he didn't think this "Lord" was an animal even if it acted like one. The toad drew its tongue back, hauling the demon with it. The spitted body was starting to deflate: the slender legs drew together and the torso slumped slowly down over the abdomen; the arms hung slackly. Cashel stepped off on his right foot, bringing the staff around in a horizontal stroke aimed at the toad's head. The toad vanished. The demon flopped on the ground, empty as a split bladder. The hole at the base of the torso where the tongue had gone in oozed what looked like thin red jelly. Cashel stepped forward to recover from the blow. His foot brushed the demon's corpse; it rustled. The skin had gone pale gray with a yellow underlayer. "Behind you!" Rasile shouted. He spun, leading with his right hand this time and punching the staff out like a battering ram. There was nothing when he started the blow save the wizard at a distance with Liane beside her, but the toad appeared a fraction of a second later-and vanished untouched by the driving iron butt cap as before. This time it gave a "Whuff!" of startled anger.
"Your right!" said Rasile. Cashel turned, pivoting on the ball of his right foot. He swept the staff around with his left hand leading, stepping into the blow. The toadwas not/was/was not standing before him, goggle eyes sparking with hate. Iron-shod hickory swished through where its head had been. "Your right!" That was awkward, but you couldn't expect the other guy in a fight to do the things that made it easy for you. Cashel punched the staff again, not a clean blow but he'd learned by now that the toad wouldn't be sticking around long enough to take advantage of him being off-balance. The creature was dodging the quarterstaff, but he didn't have time to think about it.
As soon as his eyes caught movement, he vanished. Like this time. The toad's size had been, well, a consideration-Cashel didn'tworry exactly in a fight-at the start, but it wasn't willing to use its bulk and likely strength. Its blotched mass swelled out of nothing and then disappeared in a flicker, making it seem more like a cloud than an enemy. That was a dangerous way to think, so Cashel made sure he carried through on every stroke. The last spin meant he was facing the canyon wall again, yellow-red sandstone with a surface that pretended to be crumbly. The corpse, really just the hide, of the dead demon was scrunched up against the rock where he must've kicked it. Or maybe the toad had? Did it really touch the ground when it flashed in and out of the air? "Behind you!" Cashel pivoted on his left foot; it meant a hair's breadth longer of an arc but it got him planted solider and moved him a little out from the side of the canyon. Hitting rock with the back of his stroke would end this fight right quick… Liane and Rasile were where they'd been. The wizard had spilled a figure of yarrow stalks on the ground in front of her. Where had she gotten the time? Cashel swung with his right hand leading. At the same time Rasile chopped down her athame of black stone. The toadwas not/was – Red wizardlight flickered over the huge body. It was barely a color, like dust lying on the bare blade of a sword. The toad didn't vanish.
The quarterstaff banged the left side of the toad's flat head. Cashel grunted; the heel of his right hand tingled as though he'd hit a full-grown oak tree. His blow would've dented the bole of an oak tree, and it was strong enough to crunch bones in the toad's skull too. The creature staggered, throwing up arms so small that they looked silly on such a big body. Black blood dribbled from where the staff struck and also from the toad's left nostril. Cashel spun the staff sunwise, pulling the stroke just a hair so that the ferrule would miss short if the toad jumped back. It did, just like Cashel figured it would.
Instead of following through with the arc, he drove forward. His whole weight rammed the staff toward the creature like he was thrusting a spear. His leading butt cap slammed the base of the toad's broad neck, crushing bones this time too. The toad was too big for the shock to throw it down, but it wobbled back a step and another step. Its tiny arms windmilled; the hands had sharp nails and only four fingers.
Cashel gasped in another breath. He swept the quarterstaff widdershins, trying to break the toad's left knee. The creature lurched toward him so the blow rapped its thigh instead. It had legs like an ox, so nothing happened aside from pain jetting through Cashel's tingling palm. The toad's broad mouth opened, but the tongue which had speared the little demon now tumbled out like a loosely coiled rope. The tip had a spike from which trailed three hollow bones, each about the size of a finger. It twisted along the ground toward Cashel. He stamped on it-his calluses were hard as hooves-and drove the staff into the toad's face. He didn't think the blow had landed squarely and maybe it hadn't, but the toad went over on its back and started to thrash. Cashel was still standing on the tongue; he felt it squirming like a snake's body. He took a full stride back so that the barbed end wouldn't cut him if it flailed around as the creature died. He didn't figure the toad was going to suck him dry like it'd done to the little demon, but Cashel had got banged and cut often enough in his life that he avoided it if there was a cheap way to. There wasn't much thrashing, though. The toad's arms and legs quivered and kept quivering, but it wasn't in any kind of a pattern like when you took a chicken's head off and it ran around. He guessed that straight jab to the throat must've crushed its windpipe. That wasn't a good way to die; but if it was going to happen, he didn't mind it happening to this creature. He didn't look like anybody's Lord, lying there on the gritty soil and trembling. Cashel kept his eyes on the dying toad, but he wouldn't have been much of a shepherd if he hadn't felt Liane and Rasile coming over to join him. By now he figured it was safe, but he still backed a double-pace so there wasn't any chance of the toad bouncing up and grabbing the women before he could stop it. "Thanks, Rasile," he said, turning his head just a little bit to show he wasn't being disrespectful. "For holding him like that. I don't know how long I could've kept it up if he kept bobbing like he was doing." "I think longer than he could have continued attacking, warrior," Rasile said. "Tenoctris spoke of your strength. I did not doubt the judgment of so great a wizard as she, but… she did not exaggerate." The demons were showing themselves, moving a bit out from the sandstone walls or just letting their hides change to the light blue-gray color that seemed to be what they were when they weren't trying to hide. A few came closer, picking their way along like lambs who weren't sure their legs would hold them up. "You have overcome the Lord?" piped the nearest. There was two on each side of him, a little behind. Cashel wondered if they were the same ones as before. Likely, he thought, but he couldn't be sure. Sheep didn't change color the way these demons did. "Lord Cashel has killed the monster you allowed to prey upon you!" Liane said in a voice that rang from the rocks. The sulfur in this air had roughened it, but she still sounded like a queen. "Lord Cashel has freed you!" She swept her right arm back toward where the toad lay. Cashel obligingly stepped to the side so that the demons could all get a look at their Lord twitching there on the ground. "He is dead?" said the leader. "He is dead?" the four behind him said all together. It was like watching mummers playing when they came through the district. The five demons trotted toward the toad. Others were coming closer too, though they weren't running. There was a lot of them, a ten of tens at least; more than Cashel had seen when they first arrived here. He moved farther out of the way. Stretching, he perched on his right leg to examine his left instep. He'd cut himself pretty good above the callus. There'd been something sharp in the soil, a shard of quartz he supposed, that he hadn't noticed while he was moving fast. Squatting, he took out the little gourd of lanolin ointment out of his wallet and daubed it on the cut. "He is dead!" the demons shrieked. They started jumping up and down on the toad's corpse, chopping with their little sharp hooves. "He is dead-d-d!" The whole herd of them came bouncing to the spot. Cashel rose quickly and stepped between the women and the oncoming demons. Rasile had been crouching on all fours, recruiting her strength after the work she'd done. Figuring where the toad was going to be next had taken wizardry. Holding the thing for Cashel to hit, well… The toad had obviously been strong. Cashel didn't doubt that the strength went beyond the muscles under that coarse warty skin, but Rasile had held it. The demons swept past, to trample the corpse or anyway to try to. There were too many all to fit. It was like tossing meal into a pond and watching carp boil to the surface after it. "They could have done that when the wizard was alive," Liane said. Her face was hard, which wasn't the usual thing with her. "But they were afraid." "Wizard?" Cashel repeated. "Yes," Rasile said. She raised her voice a bit to be heard over the demons shrieking and hooting. "The Lord, as they called him, was a wizard. Here in the place he'd made his own, I couldn't have defeated him." The Corl let her tongue loll toward Cashel in a smile. "Tenoctris might have been powerful enough," she said, "but I think she too would've been glad of your presence, warrior." Cashel looked at the scrum again, then turned away. "I'm not sorry to've put paid to that toad," he said. "But I can't say I much like the folk he was eating, either." Rasile stood upright; she seemed to be recovered from the work she'd done. She turned toward the milling demons and called, "Teliday!" Her voice was something between a shout and a screech. Cashel didn't know what she meant by it. "Teliday!" she repeated. A demon pushed his way out of the tramping herd. Maybe he'd been trying to do that since the first time he was called; it wouldn't have been easy. He limped a little as he hopped over to Cashel and the women. There was a long double cut on his foreleg, plowed there in the brawl by the hoof of one of his friends. "Lady?" the demon said. Cashel was pretty sure he was the one who'd been doing the talking since they arrived in this brimstone-stinking hell. He didn't sound more than barely respectful now, though these folks' narrow, deerlike jaws and shrill voices meant Cashel might be misunderstanding. "We've freed your people from the wizard who preyed on you," Rasile said briskly. "Now it's time for you to give us a goat and to lead us to the tomb of the hero Gorand." The demon made a curt bow. "I will take you to the place of Gorand," he said. "Our goats are valuable. It will not be possible to give you a goat." Rasile's equivalent of a shrug was to fluff the fur on top of her shoulders. "Very well," she said. "We don't need a goat. One of you folk will do for the sacrifice." She pointed her athame at the middle of Teliday's narrow chest. "No!" the demon cried, throwing his arms up in the air. "There will be a goat provided!" "See to it," said Rasile, lowering the stone knife. Her tongue's wagging was just a smile, but from the way Teliday hobbled off he hadn't taken the expression as a friendly. Cashel cleared his throat. "Ma'am?" he said to Rasile. "I don't hold with sacrificing people. I don't like Teliday and his friends, but they're people. I think." "Yes," said Liane, and you could've cracked walnuts on her tone. "They are." "I agree, friends," the wizard said, looking from one to the other and wagging fiercer. "Warrior Cashel, could you catch a goat yourself?" Cashel thought about it, eying a trio of goats on the cliff wall not far away. They weren't used to him, and just the fact he was human would likely spook them some. He figured he could work close enough to get a halter-his sash would do-on one, though. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "It might take a while, is all." "So I believed," said Rasile. "Therefore I spoke to Teliday in a fashion that would convince him to help us of his own free will." "Oh," said Cashel, embarrassed not to have seen she was bluffing. Liane sucked her lower lip in and nodded. She still didn't look happy. Teliday minced back, leading a half-sized demon who in turn led a goat by a strand of coarsely braided vegetable fibers.
The goat was scrawny, but even so it was bigger than the runt tugging it along. "The youth will guide you to the cave," Teliday said. He turned on his hind legs to leave. Cashel laid his staff on the adult demon's shoulder. It wasn't a blow, just a tap, but it got Teliday's attention just like it was supposed to do. "Sir?" said Cashel. "I think you better take us like you said. The boy can bring the goat, if you like." "This way," said Teliday, turning again without argument or even hesitation. "Lord." Cashel didn't have any special reason for saying with he did. He'd worked for a lot of crabbed, grudging farmers when he was a boy in the borough, though, and learned that you didn't ever let them out of a hair of what they'd promised. If you gave them the least break, then before it was over they'd leave you without two coppers pay for a month's hard work. Some people were just that way.
And like he'd said to Rasile, these demons were people. The valley Rasile had brought them to had branches off it, though the pattern was more like jagged spears of hoarfrost than like anything water had carved. Teliday took them up one of the angles, then into a third that was narrower yet. There weren't any demons or goats in that last branching, though there was more of the skimpy vegetation than there'd been till then. Cashel couldn't figure whathad made the valleys. There wasn't any sight of a river or even a dry streambed so far as he could tell. The rocks weren't worn, either, except by windblown sand. "The cave is just ahead," Teliday said, pointing with both arms together.
"Lead us," Cashel said, shifting the quarterstaff slightly. The canyon here was narrow enough that he could've touched either wall with a ferrule if he'd wanted to stretch the staff out at arm's length. The demon bobbed his torso. "Lord," he said obediently as he walked on ahead. His hooves made slow click/click/clicks on the rocky soil.
Cashel glanced over his shoulder. Rasile was close behind him, while Liane walked at the back. She still had her knife out, but with her free hand she clasped the little demon leading the goat. Cashel smiled at her and went back to watching what was ahead of them. Garric had found a good one, and Sharina had a good friend. "Lord," said Teliday, bowing again and pointing his arms toward a jagged opening in the canyon wall. "This is the entrance." Unexpectedly the demon splayed his four legs and sprawled flat on the ground. "Please, Lord!" he said. "I have brought you to this place at your request. Release me now." Cashel felt uncomfortable. "Ma'am?" he said to Rasile. "This is the entrance," she said. "The entrance to the entrance, I should say.
I know of no reason why Teliday and this boy shouldn't go back to where they'll be more comfortable. Though we'll need the goat with us." "Lord?" Teliday begged. "I have the goat's lead," Liane said in a clear voice. "Because Rasile says we must." "All right," said Cashel, turning to speak to the little demon. "You two can go. Thank you-"
Teliday went bounding past. The little fellow unexpectedly hugged Liane's knee before trotting off himself. "-for your help." Cashel cleared his throat again. The air in this place was fierce with sulfur, but he guessed he could stand anything a goat could. "Rasile, do you want me to lead?" "No," she said, "I will. It shouldn't be far." So speaking, the old wizard stepped into the cave. It was big enough for Cashel to walk upright, though he had to be careful how he slanted the staff so it didn't knock the walls. He wondered if he should've brought a torch, and wondered what he'd make one out of if he went back outside. Rasile paused; Cashel moved up beside her. The cave had opened out, though how far he couldn't be sure in the dim glow from the entrance. Liane joined them, holding the goat's harsh twine halter. "Together, now," Rasile said. She stepped forward.
Cashel waited just an eyeblink to make sure Liane was coming, but of course she was. Quarterstaff braced before him, Cashel strode into a forest of unfamiliar dark trees. Insects trilled in a night smelling of damp loam. In the moonlit clearing before him, sprites no taller than his ankle danced. *** Ilna walked deliberately onto the natural bridge. It wasn't as slippery as it looked from a distance, because the ghoul's great feet had worn a path through the flow rock which the drips of a thousand years had deposited in a thin, glassy layer. Though wet and fine-grained, the limestone beneath wasn't quite as dangerous a surface. Still, it was stone and she-Ilna smiled minusculely-was stone's enemy, at least in her own head. Regardless of whether or not stone really had an opinion. Ilna trailed the climbing rope behind her. It was only long enough to stretch a double-pace onto the upward curve of the arch. For choice she'd have been able to pass the centerpoint of the bridge, but for choice she'd have been home in Barca's Hamlet, weaving at her big loom on the porch while Chalcus and Merota chatted beside her. She didn't have to like the reality of the world-she didn't remember a time she had, save for the brief period when Chalcus and Merota were with her. No one had ever claimed that Ilna didn't accept reality, however. She didn't look over her shoulder at Usun. If things went as planned, he'd be out of sight anyway. Ilna smiled again. If things didn't go as planned, she'd be dead very shortly and probably buried in the belly of a ghoul. She supposed she could throw herself over the edge of the chasm to prevent that, but if suicide had had any attraction for her, she wouldn't have survived this long. If things went wrong, she'd attack the ghoul with the bone-cased paring knife she carried in one sleeve of her tunic. From what Usun had said, its hide was so thick with bony nodules that the little blade probably wouldn't be able to nick him. Still, it was something to do while the creature bit her face off. Ilna placed the loop precisely on the pathway and straightened. She rather liked the rope. It was of good quality linen, and it'd been wound tight and smoothly. A pity to dispose of it in this fashion, but all things end.
The rope presumably didn't care. She walked on, past the center of the span. The ghoul might be watching her through the falls, though there wasn't any obvious reason why it would keep its attention a secret instead of rushing out to rend and devour her. "Ghoul!" Ilna shouted.
How good was the creature's hearing, anyway? This close, the water snarled as it tumbled down into the gorge. "Come out!" She had only Usun's word that the ghoul was there. An almost-smile lifted the left corner of her lips. Indeed, she had only Usun's word that there was really a cave behind the waterfall. Well, she'd done far more foolish things in the past than shouting insults at a solid stone wall. "You visited me!" Ilna said. She took another cautious step. Her eyes were on the waterfall, and to slip here would be more than embarrassing: the chasm was many furlongs deep. "Now I've come to see you, filth-eater!" The curtain of water shivered aside. The ghoul stepped out, a hulking blackness against the blue shimmer. "Are you afraid of me, ghoul?" Ilna said. Could the creature even understand speech? It was hard to believe that something so huge and misshapen had ever been human. Usun had been right on everything else he'd said, though. The ghoul raised its bull-like head and roared, setting the waterfall atremble. Ilna stood where she was. She'd have to retreat shortly, but not just yet. The ghoul stamped down the path toward his side of the bridge. Its steps were deliberate but as certain as the approach of dawn. She wondered if shecould outrun the ghoul. Probably not, since its size would be an advantage in this waste of stone jackstraws.
Besides, there was nowhere to run, save to the pocket where Gaur deposited its dead. She wouldn't have a candle to drive the creature away a second time. Not that it mattered. Ilna wasn't going to run.