Mistress of the Catacombs (50 page)

As another trap might be, of course.

Cashel backed two steps, then sprang forward. He slammed his staff into the firm ground at the edge of the bog and vaulted with seven feet of hickory as his pivot. He bent over as he came down on the other side so that he wouldn't tumble back. He'd cleared the trap by more than arm's length.

Still smiling but still careful Cashel made his way to the temple's high, narrow door. It was bronze but had only a simple latch rather than a lock of some kind.

Thinking it might be barred on the other side, Cashel lifted the latch gently, then pulled the door ajar. A pale greenish radiance marked the crack between the panel and its stone jamb; if there were sounds from within, they were lost in the river's faint gurgle.

Cashel opened the door the rest of the way and stepped inside, his shoulders brushing both jambs. He didn't close it behind him.

He was in a shallow room which ran the full width of the temple. It was for storage, he'd have guessed, except that nothing was stored here.

He looked up. Bars crossed the room the short way, spaced along the width. They were thick bronze, polished in the center by wear. Dark robes hung from hooks on the inside wall, one beneath each bar.

Cashel counted them: all the fingers of one hand, and the other hand except for the thumb. Nine.

Light just bright enough to have color came down a passage just a little longer than a man is tall in the center of the room. Carefully, walking left-side forward with his staff slanted across his chest ready to strike, Cashel moved toward the light.

There were faint sounds from the room beyond. It wasn't people talking, more like the clicks and slurps of dogs at the carcase of a—

"Duzi!" Cashel shouted. He leaped out of the passage, his quarterstaff raised. The chamber beyond was large and the height of the temple's peaked roof. The ceiling glowed the hue of pond scum in the summer.

The Nine looked up from the corpse they were devouring. Without their robes Cashel couldn't imagine he'd ever thought they were human. Their chitinous bodies had no color but that of the squamous light, and their beaked jaws were toothless.

Cashel stepped forward, spinning the staff. He wasn't sure how this was going to turn out, but he was going to try. The Nine didn't have weapons and their spindly limbs would shatter under iron-shod hickory.

The Nine curled their abdomens forward beneath the two pairs of legs on which they stood. From their tails squirted sticky fluid that hardened as it splashed over Cashel's head and torso.

Cashel strode forward, willing the staff to spin but feeling the thick hickory bend under the pressure of his arms. The ferrules were glued to his body; the staff couldn't move.

Three of the creatures sprayed Cashel's legs. He tried to take another step. Like swimming through molasses... and then not even that. Cashel toppled to the stone floor, as helpless as a trussed hen.

The Nine bent over him, chittering among themselves. One of them reached up delicately with a pincered forelimb and pushed a fragment of flesh back into its beak.

* * *

Sharina's sucked in her stomach as the dory lifted over the crest of an incoming wave. Unatis, the boatman, feathered his left oar and pulled hard with the right one. The rowlock squealed like a rabbit in a hawk's talons.

"Sister take it!" said Carus, sitting in the bow. "You'll wake Lerdoc in his tent with a racket like that!"

"We will not," said Unatis calmly, leaning into both oars now that he had the dory straightened to his satisfaction. "But if the lady would take the tallow block from the basket under my thwart and grease the pin with it, that would quiet the oars."

He grinned at Sharina, facing him from the stern. Unatis was an old waterman from Carcosa harbor; it took more than an angry prince to worry him.

Sharina found the container easily, but in the bad light it took her a moment to open the lid; it was pegged on through loops in the wicker. The tallow was in a wooden block; a screw base drove the column of grease up as it was used. It was a clever device, and a bit of a surprise to find here in a waterman's kit.

Carus laughed. "Aye," he said, "I'm worrying about silly dangers I could change instead of the big ones that I cannot. That's always the way while I'm sitting with nothing to do but wait."

"We'll be to where you told me soon," Unatis said calmly, spacing his speech between strokes of his oars. "A mile off the shore where the Blaise fleet is anchored. After that you'll have no waiting, unless you change your mind and have me take you back to dry land to sleep in a warm bed."

Carus snorted. "That's the last thing I want to think about," he said. "When we've settled this matter, though, I'll sleep for a week."

Sharina had tallowed the port thole pin. She twisted the screw and leaned to her right to daub the other too; if one squealed, the other might soon.

The dory lifted onto another swell. Unatis put the bow into it, then brought them back to the previous heading as they started down the trough.

"There's a westerly current tonight," he said. "Not strong, but a knot or two. If the prince doesn't mind taking a waterman's advice, you'd best start from here unless you plan on swimming to Cordin."

He glanced over his shoulder. "Or I could take you and the lady closer inshore," he said. "A mile is a long swim for a lady."

"I'll tell that to the next lady I meet," said Sharina. She'd already loosed her sash; now she ducked to pull off the tunic she'd worn for the long pull seaward from the royal encampment. "I'm from Barca's Hamlet, where the only Lady is the one we pray to."

Which I'll be doing tonight, that She may preserve me for the kingdom's sake and my friends' sakes, she thought with a wry smile.

Sharina lifted the oilcloth bundle holding the clothes she'd change into when they reached shore. Wrapped in the center of the silk tunics and embroidered cape was her Pewle knife. In part she'd brought it as a talisman, but the big knife was used to hard strokes and so was the woman who carried it now.

"Ready?" she said to Carus.

The boatman shipped his oars. His bushy moustache fluttered for a moment as he took in Sharina's slim, moonlit body; then he averted his eyes as if from an unexpected horror.

"Aye," said the king, raising his own much larger bundle. He'd stripped off his tunic also, but around his waist was a fabric belt and a dagger enclosed in sheath of leather boiled in wax and lanolin. "Now?"

Sharina slipped over the side, holding her bundle out in front of her. She'd picked her time well, with the dory sliding sideways into a trough that carried it away when she thrust for the shore.

Stretching her body out behind the bundle, Sharina kicked like a frog. Her legs alone would do the work. She could use the clothing to buoy her up if she needed to rest, but unless the current changed unexpectedly she doubted that would be necessary.

Unatis had been right about the current—of course. The pressure of the water on Sharina's right side was worrying, but her conscious mind knew that it was taking her to where she wanted to be. The awareness she was in the grip of a power greater than her own still made her uncomfortable.

She giggled, snorted seawater, and giggled again.

"Is everything all right, girl?" Carus called. The king was on her left side she couldn't see him so with her head cocked to the right to breathe, but he sounded close.

"Everything's fine," she said, raising her voice. She was a natural right-hander, so turning onto her right side would be uncomfortable. "I apparently just realized that the sea is bigger than I am. That doesn't say much for my perception, does it?"

Carus laughed—and choked silent on seawater in his turn. They kicked on in companionable silence.

Bonfires and lamplight gleamed for the full arc of the bay holding Count Lerdoc's vessels and army. The fires weren't large enough individually to silhouette a ship, but as Sharina slanted toward the coast she got a feel for the anchorage. Lights vanished and reappeared as her angle to this hull or that one changed.

The camp's size staggered her. From the land, by daylight, she hadn't appreciated just how big it was. She knew that Blaise discipline was loose so the number of fires was relatively greater than it would've been in the royal army; but she knew also that the Count's forces were very great.

The moon was nearly full, gleaming on the swells and turning foam to silver. A watchman in the stern of a moored transport blew his trumpet. He didn't see Sharina and the king; he'd been blowing the same long note at intervals since sundown. What he thought he proved, other than that he was awake, escaped Sharina.

The shore was coming closer. Sharina wasn't tired, but it was time to get a better view. She stopped kicking and lifted her chest onto the buoyant sack of clothing. For a moment she saw nothing but upward-slanting water; then she went over the crest and took in the shoreline less than three furlongs away.

Some of the biggest ships were anchored even farther from the beach than she and Carus—twenty feet to her left—had already penetrated. The shoreline here shelved more gradually than that of the smaller bay just north where the royal fleet had landed, so vessels too large to draw up on land had to stay well out.

Carus came over to her with kicks and three fierce sweeps of his right arm. "They can lighter the cargo and passengers ashore...," he said, nodding to the nearest of the thousand-tun vessels. "Those ships won't have a chance if a storm breaks, though."

Sharina glanced up at the clear sky and said, "Do you think the wizards of Moon Wisdom are still controlling the weather?"

Carus chuckled. "I think Count Lerdoc's a neck or nothing madman who's praying a storm won't wreck him if the danger even crosses his mind," he said. "The problem with an enemy who takes risks is that sometimes he gets lucky."

His moonlit smile was wry as he added, "Which my enemies have often learned."

The trumpet called again. The tock! tock! tock! of wood on wood sounded from the western arm of the bay. Sharina couldn't guess if it were a signal or just late-night carpentry to repair a shelter or a ship.

Carus pointed with his whole arm. "There, we'll come ashore where those boats are beached. The bigger ships might have somebody on board, but those lighters won't have anything but a watchman, if that."

"If there is a watchman?" Sharina said, kicking occasionally to keep her at arm's length up-current of the king.

"Then we'll deal with him," Carus said. "One good thing about a beach is we don't have to worry about how to get the blood off."

Sharina ducked and resumed kicking her way toward shore. In a peasant village, you slaughtered most of the herd at the first touch of frost. That way the remainder would be able to winter over on the fodder you'd stored. In a war it was men you killed, in order that the kingdom itself survive.

Maybe in another age it wouldn't have to be that way. Sharina had enough to do simply trying to save this age and the myriads of innocent people who lived in it. If a few rebels died, well, that was the way of the world.

Sailors on watch shouted to one other from ship to anchored ship. Sharina passed close enough to a vessel with a high rounded stern that she could've thrown a pebble to it; Carus was closer yet. A lantern burned on the deckhouse. Its light didn't illuminate the water, but it would blind a watchman to the blotches on a swell that were swimmers instead of driftwood or flotsam lost when the army disembarked.

The ships' boats were pulled up at the tide line and fastened to oars driven blade-first into the sand. Sharina lowered her head and with her left hand gripped the cords tying her bundle. She used her right arm and both legs to drive her the rest of the way ashore. The bonfire higher up the beach silhouetted the men around it and the boats below, but if there was a watchman he was asleep in the belly of one of them.

Sharina's left elbow touched sand. She hunched over her bundle and let the receding surf ground her. When it did, she ran in a crouch to where the bows of a large dory and a smaller boat formed a sheltering vee.

Carus was already there, untying his clothing with his left hand. He grinned at her.

At the nearby fire a sailor was shaking time on a tambourine while a comrade sang, "... just another fatal wedding, just another broken heart ..." No one was on watch at the boats.

That was just as well for him. In the king's right hand, shimmering in the moonlight, was a dagger. Its blade of polished steel would open a man like a trout before he even had time to gasp.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"You are staying at the Hyacinth," one of the Nine said to Cashel in a voice no more human than the speaker. The smell of rotting flesh puffed from its beak in time with the words. "You should not have come here."

"I couldn't let you eat my friend!" Cashel said. The spray had hardened on his neck and right cheek; his skin strained painfully when he spoke.

The Nine were right when they said Cashel shouldn't have come here. By Duzi! they were. There was nothing else he could've done, though; and even now, Cashel guessed he'd do it all over again if the only choice was that or doing nothing. He hadn't made any difference, but at least he wasn't going to have to live remembering that he didn't try.

A creature brought its abdomen close to Cashel's right hand. A pore opened. Cashel braced himself mentally for a gush of fluid that would harden over his mouth and nose.

Instead there was a stench of ammonia and the glue holding the quarterstaff to his hand dissolved. Cashel sneezed violently.

The creature tugged. There was still a hardened loop attaching the staff to Cashel's ribs. He couldn't turn his head to watch, but another of the Nine touched its body there and sprayed more ammonia till the staff slipped free.

"Your friend was the woman from the Hyacinth," a creature said.

"The woman from the Hyacinth was entranced, but she was not dead," said another. Their bodies and their voices were identical. Cashel could easily have called every sheep in Barca's Hamlet by name, but the Nine were indistinguishable.

"Our business is with the dead," a third creature said. "We would not harm your friend. We will turn her loose when she has recovered."

The creatures passed the quarterstaff from one to another. Each ran a delicately pincered 'hand' along the hickory before giving it to the next. Fresh ammonia bit as one cleaned a last daub of glue from the shaft.

"She has recovered now," said the first of the Nine to speak. "We will turn her loose with you, man from the Hyacinth. But you both must go away."

"What?" said Cashel, trying to understand what he'd just heard. He didn't suppose he ought to be complaining, but....

He said, "But you eat people!"

The Nine bobbed back and forth on their two pairs of walking legs, looking for all the world like a set of children's dipper toys. They rubbed their beaks sideways, back and forth, to make scraping sounds.

Cashel thought for a moment the Nine were laughing. On reflection, he decided he didn't believe they understood humor.

"We do not eat people, man from the Hyacinth," said a creature who hadn't spoken before. "We eat dead flesh."

Two of the Nine moved away. Trussed as he was, Cashel couldn't see what they were doing. He tried to roll and look back the way he'd come, but he couldn't shift his torso quite enough to overbalance.

"Hold still and we will release you," a creature said. It twisted its abdomen up, brushing Cashel's wrist. The touch was dry and scaly like a snake's skin, not hard.

A cool mist settled over Cashel's arms and torso. He closed his eyes but the ammonia odor set him sneezing again. The glue loosened. When Cashel twisted, chunks of it dropped away like ice from slates in the sunshine.

On either side of the passage were open-fronted alcoves. Stone couches complete with carven pillows were built into all three sides of each. The corpse of an old man lay across the left-hand alcove. Two of the Nine were helping Tilphosa up from a side-couch. She wore a dazed expression and kept trying to wipe her eyes with the back of her wrist.

"Well, who...?" Cashel said. He glanced at the meal he'd heard the Nine devouring when he burst in.

The creature who'd first spoken sprayed Cashel's fettered feet tinglingly. He closed his eyes in reflex, but he'd seen more than he wanted to already. The corpse on the floor had been a man; the beard on the half of his face remaining proved that. His body had been emptied, but uneaten coils of intestine lay beside him spotted with attached blobs of yellow fat.

"You will go from Soong, will you not, stranger?" said one of the Nine. "It is better that you should."

"We'll go," Cashel said. "Duzi help me, you bet we'll go!"

He wondered if Tilphosa was really fit to travel, then decided that he didn't care. He'd carry the girl on his back if that's what it took to get away from this city and its charnel house.

Cashel stood. His eyes watered from the ammonia and his stomach was turning. It wasn't just death in the air; he thought the glue was doing something to his lungs also, though the smell of dead meat was bad enough.

Tilphosa stood, wobbly and still supported by the Nine. "Can I...?" Cashel asked, starting toward the girl before he had an answer.

"Of course," said the creature who'd first spoken. His two fellows stepped aside for Cashel to take their place.

"Cashel, is that you?" the girl said. She clung to him like a spar in a shipwreck. Her flesh still felt cool, but she wasn't a statue of ice as she'd been when he lifted her from the bed this morning.

"Yes," he said. "We're going to leave in just a moment, when you're feeling up to it. I've got a boat. We'll cross the river and then walk a ways to the east."

He looked at the creature who'd spoken first and raised an eyebrow. Did the Nine recognized human facial expressions?

"That is a good plan," said the creature. "We wish you well on your way, but please do not return to Soong."

Cashel's quarterstaff had made it all the way around the Nine. The last to examine the wood held it out horizontally to Cashel. His pincers gripped the staff so gently that they didn't mark the hickory.

With the staff upright in his left hand and his right arm supporting Tilphosa, Cashel felt his stomach settle. Maybe it hadn't been the smell that was bothering him after all.

"Ah, thanks," he said, walking slowly toward the passage. Turning his back on the creatures worried him, though that was pretty silly given the way they'd handled him face on when he'd charged.

One of the Nine stepped out the passage ahead of the humans. He seemed to move by rocking his four clawed feet forward in a motion that reminded Cashel of gears in the millhouse rather than any animal he'd seen before walking. The legs scarcely moved at all.

Tilphosa's mind or vision must have cleared enough for her to take in the figure ahead of them. She stiffened, but she continued forward with Cashel's left hand lightly touching her shoulder.

"I thought I was dreaming," she whispered. "I thought I was having a nightmare, Cashel."

"We're fine," he said, words to sooth her. They were probably true, but Cashel himself wouldn't really believe what he'd said till they were across the river and going away.

A breeze had swung the outside door nearly closed. The creature leading them opened it fully and stepped through, holding the panel for Cashel and his companion. The remainder of the Nine followed slowly.

"Sir?" he said to the creature. It rotated its narrow, sharp-edged skull to face him.

"Sir," Cashel went on, "how is it that this... I mean, doesn't anybody guess what you're doing here? There's only the few of you. If as many people as there are in the city wanted to come into your temple, you couldn't stop them."

"We were here before humans came to Soong, stranger," the creature said. His voice seemed to come from the center of his chest; it had a buzzing undertone, sort of like a whole chorus of crickets were singing harmony to make the words. "The first settlers knew who we were; they built the temple we live in."

He paused. "Their children, the people of Soong, know also, but they prefer not to think about our necessities and theirs. It is better that you go rather than stay to tell a story that others do not wish to hear."

"But why did they agree to, to feed you this way?" Tilphosa said. As she spoke, her right hand tightened on Cashel's left biceps. He tensed the muscle, because otherwise her pinching was going to hurt. "Did you threaten...?"

The creature scraped his beak again. That had to be laughter.

"Woman stranger," he said, "look about you. This valley is marsh up to the ridges. The wood here burns poorly, and every year a flood would float out the contents of the graves."

Cashel nodded. The only real choice for burial was the river. There fish would dispose of corpses in much the same way as the Nine were doing... but with the likelihood of bloated, half-eaten bodies bobbing to the surface frequently. Cashel could understand the logic, though that last thought reminded him of the corpse on the floor of the main hall.

"We gave up our fish weirs," the creature said, "and the human settlers gave us privacy to deal with their needs."

"Right," said Cashel. No part of him felt it was right, but it was no more his business than some of the things old widowers in the borough got up to with their ewes. He wasn't going to be staying in this region; that was the only important thing. "I guess we'd best be getting on."

The creature nodded like he knew what Cashel was thinking; as he probably did. The Nine were pretty clear about understanding the locals, after all.

He and Tilphosa set out down the path, the creature walking ahead like a pull-toy on wheels. As they neared the center of the garden, Cashel heard a woman cry, "Is somebody there? Help me!"

He put his head down and slanted his staff before him, then charged through the hanging branches like a plow furrowing thin soil. The nuts his rush shook off scattered all around.

Leemay was in the bog. Only her head and the tops of her shoulders still showed. "Help me!" she said. "Pull me up!"

Cashel stretched out his quarterstaff. Something gripped it from behind and pulled it back.

He turned. Their guide released the ferrule it had gripped with its deceptively delicate looking pincers.

"This is not your affair, stranger," the creature said. "Let us go to your boat."

"Help me!" Leemay screamed. "Don't listen to that demon!"

"The Nine aren't demons," Tilphosa said. Her voice was as cold as her flesh had been when her scream roused Cashel this morning. "The Nine saved my life when a human sent me to die."

"Sir," said Cashel, looking from Leemay to the impassive creature. "I can't just...."

"We have no business with the living, stranger," the creature said. "But this one will be our business soon, and that is justice."

The rest of the Nine had followed them. They stood now on the path, unmoving and silent. There was no threat in their posture, but Cashel already knew he had no chance if he tried to fight them.

Tilphosa put her hand on his arm. "Come on, Cashel," she said quietly. "I'd like to get away from here."

"Yeah, I guess," Cashel agreed. He followed their guide. There was a path that took them around the bog with just a single screen of branches to brush aside.

Leemay shouted again, then began to scream. When Cashel glanced over his shoulder, he saw the Nine waiting around the bog. They were as motionless as buzzards on a branch.

Cashel was glad to close the courtyard gate behind him and Tilphosa, but Leemay had already stopped screaming.