Lord of the Isles (20 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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By a wizard like him,
Sharina translated with a moue of distaste.
“Or of course, they may have been snakes,” Nonnus said straight-faced. “Using the arts at which they were so adept in place of the hands they lacked.”
Meder blinked, unwilling to believe the gnarled old peasant was mocking him. Sharina giggled despite a hand over her mouth to suppress the sound. The wizard's face went pale except for a blotch of hectic red on either cheekbone.
Doorways opened from each wall of the pentagonal foyer at the top of the ramp. The soldier who'd beckoned to them stepped aside. Asera looked over her shoulder through one opening and called, “Yes, come out here. Tell me what you make of it.”
She and Wainer were on a long balcony looking down the other side of the ridge. It was thirty inches deep and there was no railing, only a low curb like those of the paths up the slope from the shore. Sharina felt uncomfortable, though no breath of wind had stirred since the trireme landed on Tegma.
A valley in the mist stretched down the opposite slope. From the base of the citadel bubbled a spring, steaming and sulfurous, which gushed down the rocky slope. No vegetation grew within several feet of the water, though precipitated minerals painted its margins yellow and orange. An updraft from the seething fluid scoured the mist from the air above.
“I can see for miles,” Sharina said in wonder. Though there was nothing to see but forest like that on the shore side of the ridgeline.
“These might be the buildings I saw in the lagoon of Tegma,” Nonnus said quietly. “But the reefs had grown up around a small island, not …”
The point of his javelin gestured toward distances rippling in the heated air.
“Do you know anything about this, Meder?” Asera said bluntly. “Do you know where you've really brought us?”
She was tense in a different fashion from Wainer beside her. The soldier's concerns were for what might be lurking in this vast stone warren—an uncertain question but a limited one. The procurator was still thinking about the mission that
had brought her to Haft. She was trying to predict a vast and complex future which their landing on Tegma had thrown into confusion.
If they were even on Tegma.
“I didn't bring—” Meder said, but he caught the glint in Asera's eye and swallowed the remainder of his protest. He was right, of course; the storm was no doing of his. But the procurator was both frightened enough and angry enough to react violently if a colleague misspoke himself at this juncture.
“Mistress,” he went on, “Tegma is more ancient than any writings that survive. More ancient than Man himself, some have speculated.”
Asera frowned. “That's nonsense,” she said, tapping the wall beside her with a fingertip. “These buildings prove that's nonsense.”
“Despite the buildings, mistress,” the wizard said, though he nodded as if in agreement. “But as I say, everything was conjecture because until now it was impossible to reach even the lagoon above the sunken island.”
Nonnus had craned his neck to look up the sheer wall. He smiled faintly. Another balcony jutted from a doorway twenty feet higher and fifty feet to the side, but Sharina knew from her first sight from outside that the citadel had several higher stories inset from this massive base level.
“I'll begin studying the matter through my arts,” Meder said.
“You'll find us a way out,” Asera snapped.
“Yes, yes of course,” Meder agreed, “but first I have to determine where it is that the queen's wizards have brought us. I assure you that my abilities are—”
Boots clashed on the floor of the anteroom. “Wainer!” a soldier called. “Mistress Asera, look what's lying on the floors upstairs. Look!”
Two Blood Eagles paused at the doorway onto the narrow balcony and thrust handfuls of jewelry toward their superiors. Torques too strait for a neck, narrow fluted plates joined into
tubes tighter than a human torso but too long for even a tall man's limbs, bangles that Sharina's eyes couldn't fit onto a human form in any way her mind could imagine …
Made of gold. Gold so pure that it had survived the ages which devoured all else but the stones of Tegma.
“The sailors have been finding this all over, mistress,” a Blood Eagle said. The soldier who'd guarded the doorway onto the balcony hovered behind his two fellows, peering past them for a glimpse of the treasure. “They weren't going to say anything about it, I shouldn't wonder. Well, we taught them about discipline, Ningir and me.”
Meder lifted a torque so that it better caught the red light of the sun. He turned it, peering closely at the carvings on all surfaces. If they formed writing rather than decorative symbols, they were in a script like nothing Sharina had ever glimpsed.
“This is exactly what I need!” the wizard said. “We'll take this back to the ship—that'll save time over bringing my tools back here. We'll learn
exactly
what's going on here because the ancient inhabitants will
tell
us!”
Still holding the torque, Meder strode through the doorway so quickly that the soldiers could barely jump clear. Seeming to notice them for the first time, he said, “You three—I'll need animals for this, as many as you can catch. And don't kill them yet!”
As Sharina had noticed before, when Meder was wrapped in what he called his art he completely ignored the procurator except as a potential pair of hands to carry out his bidding. Asera looked startled, but her flash of anger faded quickly to one of hopeful interest.
“Come along, girl,” she said to Sharina. “If there's a way out of this place, I want to learn about it as soon as possible. Wainer”—turning her head toward the soldier—“I'M want at least six men. Join us at the ship immediately when you've rounded them up.”
The head of the guard detachment nodded. He left the balcony at a quick pace.
“Just as well,” Nonnus murmured as they went down the ramp to the main hall. “It's getting time to check on our fires.”
Sharina thought he sounded mildly amused. She was confident that she and the hermit would be getting off the Isle of Tegma, whatever happened to the remainder of the trireme's folk.
T
he sheep already in the stone corral made a warm, low sound as Garric approached with the last of the herd, a sound as Garric approached with the last of the herd, a dozen ewes from Beilin. Bodger, the white-eared milch ewe, angled away from the rest of the herd as soon as she saw that Garric didn't have his full attention on her.
He tightened his lips and reached over the backs of three more docile sheep to rap her sharply with the tip of his unstrung bow. Garric and Cashel didn't carry crooks. Attacks by seawolves were rare, but anybody minding sheep near Barca's Hamlet had to be prepared for them. The bow and Cashel's quarterstaff made adequate prods and levers for the normal duties of a shepherd, and that way the weapons were handy when the unexpected lizard writhed in from the sea.
Cashel waited by the gate into the corral with a pan and a bag in his hands. He clucked meaningfully and called, “Bodger!
Get
back here.”
The ewe who'd ignored Garric's touch immediately closed back with the rest of her fellows. They began passing the narrow gate. As each sheep entered, Cashel dropped a bean from the bag into the pan.
“There's twelve of them, like we expected,” Garric said.
“Good,” Cashel said. “I'd been afraid he'd hold out Bodger after all. Must be a hundred times I've heard him say,
‘Never had a milker like her, lad.' Let some poor fool on Sandrakkan worry about her breaking her neck or drowning herself,
I
say.”
He continued his tally, a bean for a sheep, just as if his friend hadn't spoken. Cashel was like that: finishing each job the way he'd started it, with no shortcuts and no mistakes. Sometimes he made Garric want to scream with frustration, but you never had to worry about the task being done right—eventually.
Garric gently headed off a young ewe who started to wander away when she wasn't able to enter the corral immediately. “No,” he said, “Beilin must have finally listened to you; or maybe it was just the price Benlo was offering.”
The last of the sheep passed inside. Cashel set the pan down and emptied the sack of counters into his palm as Garric placed the three wooden bars into slotted stones to close the gate. Beilin's sheep were the last of the fifty which the drover had purchased.
“You know,” Garric said, “Beilin's farm is right on the Carcosa Road. We could have picked them up when we passed tomorrow and saved a mile and a half either way.”
Cashel shook his head. “I want the whole herd to be used to moving together from the start,” he said. “Sheep take time to get used to new ideas.”
He popped the half-dozen extra beans into his mouth and chewed with quiet contentment. In the morning and at every halt on the drive, Cashel would count the beans out into the pan again.
Garric laughed. “Well, I'm your assistant,” he said. “I just do what you tell me, master.”
Cashel looked at him, though it wasn't until he'd finished chewing and swallowed that he said, “Garric, I'll be glad of your company, but I still worry about you coming along. I don't trust this Benlo. He's a wizard.”
“So you're safe but I'm not?” Garric said. “I don't see that.”
Cashel shook his head. “It's you he's after,” he explained.
“Tenoctris and I watched him raise a glamour to find
you.
Did she tell you that? Just before the lich attacked.”
“I figured something like that,” Garric admitted. He felt uncomfortable thinking of himself as somebody important to a wealthy stranger, much less talking to a friend about it. “I asked her to come along because she'll know better than I would if there's something we ought to, you know, be worrying about.”
“Anyway …” Cashel said. “I want to get away from here, so I'd take the chance to go with Benlo if he was a seawolf walking on his hind legs. Because of Sharina.”
“Well,” Garric said, looking out to sea. Neither youth wanted to meet the other's eyes at this moment. “I guess if that's what you want.”
Garric's life was being disrupted by outside forces. He fingered his calf where the seawolf had torn him; the twinge in the muscles was little more than he'd have expected from the day's normal labors.
And
the trireme,
and
Benlo, and even Tenoctris; though he felt as good about the castaway's arrival as he did about the fine spring weather.
But Cashel's life was coming to pieces as well, and in his case the blows were being delivered by his own mind. How could anyone care so much about a girl? Sure, Garric missed his sister too, but to
choose
to throw up your whole settled life because of Sharina … Well, Cashel's decision was nobody else's business.
“I wonder,” Cashel said, “what Benlo would have done if you'd refused to come.”
Garric nodded, glad both of the changed subject and the chance to discuss a question he'd puzzled over. “I don't see there was anything he could have done about it,” he said carefully. “I mean, he had his guards, but there's too many men in the borough for that to have made any difference. We wouldn't let one of our own be dragged off like a pig to the butcher.”
“He's a wizard, though,” Cashel said. “That doesn't mean much to you, I guess, because you were asleep through it. It
made me tingle all over to watch. I don't think you ought to count on being able to get free of Benlo once you go off with him. We're strong, you and me; but it isn't his guards I worry about.”
Garric nodded, pretending to watch the cloud bank paralleling the coast about five miles off shore. “Well,” he said, “shall we head back?”
“I'm spending the night here,” Cashel said. “I've got my cloak and supper. The sheep need to get used to me as part of the flock too.”
Garric punched his friend's shoulder gently, then looked at him with a wry smile. “It isn't just sheep that have trouble with new ideas,” he said. “But I guess I'll learn.”
He started down the hill toward the hamlet, whistling a jig that he'd learned from one of the trireme's sailors.
“
H
a
-he!
” Nonnus said as he stood on the edges of the dugout, his weight concentrated on his right leg. He swung the adze at the second syllable, sending back a spray of chips—some charred and some the natural ruddy white of the unburned wood.
“Ha-
ho
!” as he swung again, his weight centered. “Ha-
hi
!” and the adze made a third parallel stroke, completing the breadth of the hollow. Sharina knew that if she checked the work, she'd find it impossible to tell where the blade overlapped; the strokes were that well matched in depth. The hermit moved forward slightly, then bent to resume his cutting.
They'd borrowed the adze from the trireme's carpentry stores. The soldiers might have prevented Nonnus from taking the tool—because they were irritated at their humid misery and because a military man finds it easier to say no than yes
in any situation. The troops couldn't stop Sharina from taking the adze without involving Asera in the argument, however, and the procurator's equally short temper would probably have been directed at them. When Sharina chose to push the matter, everyone on the trireme treated her as a noble.
Everyone but Nonnus. Nonnus treated her as a friend.
The rain had stopped again; the sun was low in the western sky. Asera walked out of the shelter where she'd huddled, her face hard with rigidly controlled frustration. Thus far Meder's activities in the adjacent shelter had brought smoke, murmured chanting, and unexpected odors. One moment Sharina thought the air had the dry chill of an ancient tomb; at another she breathed perfumes that had nothing to do with the flowerless forests of Tegma.
But no results beyond those. The wizard hadn't even begun to slaughter the salamanders which the guards had gathered into a sack made from a dead man's tunic.
Sharina had continued to work through the rain, scraping clean the pole that would eventually be the dugout's mast. She didn't find the warm slow drops especially bothersome, at least in comparison with the general saturated humidity.
Nonnus ignored the weather also, smoothing the base and sides of the trough his fires had eaten in the log. Using fire alone would have risked the flames spreading through a crack to eat a hole in the bottom.
It was hard to imagine the weather affecting Nonnus one way or the other. As for Sharina, well, she'd been raised to do the work of a village inn. Her comfort had never been a priority for Reise if there was a job to be done.
Six Blood Eagles stood or sat nearby, talking to one another in a desultory fashion. They were bored and the need for them to be—at least to appear—on guard meant they couldn't get out of the rain or discard their armor. Even Wainer looked disgruntled. Sharina had already come to realize that contrary to the impression she'd gotten from the epics, a soldier's life was mostly a mixture of boredom and discomfort.
Asera glanced toward Meder, but she didn't go over the shelter in which he worked. He hadn't bothered to close the front of the three-walled stone structure this time: he needed the light, and the Blood Eagles kept their eyes rigidly averted from what was going on inside.
The procurator walked up behind Sharina as she removed bumps from the pole, using the hand axe as a plane. “What's this you're doing?” Asera demanded. Frustration soured her tone and she stood, probably deliberately, closer than any workman would like.
“Ha-
he
!” Nonnus said as he swung. He'd raised his voice minutely to underscore the fact that he existed in a world different from that of the nobles. “Ha-
ho
!”
“Something to pass the time,” Sharina said. She paused and stretched. If she continued to work while Asera was so close, she'd get angry and make a mistake. That could mean a splinter through the hand or even a gash, though the blade's edge wasn't sharp enough to do real damage when she was short-gripping the axe for the present task. “We're building a boat.”
Asera sniffed. “A waste of time is right,” she muttered. She was angry at the situation and to a lesser degree at the wizard's failure to correct it. She'd look a fool to sneer at the sky, and sneering at Meder would be counterproductive. Sharina and the hermit were safe targets.
It wasn't a new experience for Sharina: her mother had displaced anger in the same fashion, though most often her shrill rages were directed at Reise rather than the children.
“Quick!” Meder shouted. His voice reverberated from the shelter's open side before he turned his head to look out himself. “Bring me the animals. Now! May the Sister snatch you all down! Do you want me to have to do this again?”
The soldiers stiffened. The lines of Asera's face smoothed into an expression of bright interest. She stepped quickly, almost trotting, toward the wizard. Her hand hooked in a gesture to bring Wainer with her, holding the writhing sack.
“Ha-
ho
!” the hermit said. “Ha-
hi
!”
For all her disgust at what the wizard was doing, Sharina walked to the other side of the pole before resuming her work. From her new location she could watch the activities in the shelter.
Meder was chanting and gesturing with his athame. He'd scribed a circle on the ground around the gold torque. When he nodded, Wainer slit the belly of a salamander so that its blood and internal organs spilled onto the metal. The soldier's face was as impassive as the smooth rock surrounding him.
Asera held another salamander, a small one with orange markings. She scowled with discomfort at the feel of the slimy skin. When Meder nodded again she dropped the little creature into the bowl in which the wizard burned his powders on a bed of charcoal. The hiss and desperate croaking made Sharina's nose wrinkle.
The air about Meder crackled as loudly as a tree limb breaking. Red mist swirled above the torque, expanding and becoming denser. Wainer stepped out of the shelter so quickly that he bumped his head as he straightened. The procurator edged backward slightly, but her attention remained riveted on the twisting red glow.
“Nonnus,” Sharina said in a low voice. The hermit had already set the adze down. He hopped to the ground as she moved to his side. He took the javelin in his right hand; his fingers moved without a side glance from his eyes.
The glowing mist congealed into a spindle five feet high, darkening like a piece of iron cooling after it comes from the smith's hearth. The light took on features: limbs and a triangular head. A vaporous image of the torque encircled the figure's neck.
The figure had six limbs, not four. Two were splayed into jointed swordblades or toothed flails; two reached out, capable of manipulation with fingerlike cilia; two were legs, chitinous and insectile.
The creature wasn't even remotely human in anything but its upright posture.
“The Archai!” Meder shouted in delight. He scrambled
from the shelter, clapping his hands. “The inhabitants of Tegma were what Cassarion's
Manuscript
calls the Archai!”
The Blood Eagles had turned to watch. Asera and Meder both moved sideways to change the angle from which they viewed the motionless image. The procurator's expression was a puzzled frown in contrast to the wizard's smile.
“How are you going to—” Asera began.
The image expanded. For a moment the mist retained its shape; then it burst like a soap bubble. The rosy glow continued to spread outward, fading minutely. There was a noticeable boundary layer between it and the surrounding air.
“Step behind me, child,” Nonnus said in a guttural voice, brushing Sharina back with his right arm and the shaft of the javelin. He drew the Pewle knife and held its heavy steel blade vertically between them and the oncoming glow.
The mist flowed past the sharp edge and over the two of them unaffected. Sharina felt nothing at the contact. The rosy color was less evident now that they were within it.
“What was that?” Asera asked sharply. She plucked at her cheeks to see if the glow had left anything clinging to them. “You didn't tell me it was going to touch me!”
Wainer had his sword out. His eyes searched in all directions.
“It's nothing,” Meder said in dismissive irritation. “In order to get the information we need—”
Something twisted in the shelter where the wizard had worked. At first Sharina thought a salamander had gotten out of the sack.
“—I'll have to repeat the incantation—”
A figure humped upward from the shelter's stone floor as if dust was coalescing back into the original shape from which it had crumbled. This wasn't an image of light: it was the solid form of a living creature.
“—but it'll go faster this time because—”
The ground along the whole foreshore trembled; along the path as well. The glow continued to expand at a walking pace; the dust of ages shifted behind it.
“Look!” Sharina said, pointing to the shelter. Everyone's eyes followed her gesture.
A creature, the tawny, chitinous original of the image Meder had raised, lurched to its hind legs. Asera shouted and jumped back, almost stumbling. The Archa slashed at her. Wainer lunged, driving his sword a hand's breadth deep in the creature's thorax.
The Archa collapsed, its limbs thrashing. An upper limb slashed Wainer's forearm. The tip of his sword dripped purple blood when he withdrew it.
The ground seethed like the liquid in a pot coming to a boil. There must have been hundreds,
thousands
, of Archai thronging the port at the time Tegma ceased catastrophically to exist. Blood Eagles thrust furiously, but they might as well have been trying to stab a fire with their spears.
“Run for the city!” Nonnus called, as always the first to react to unexpected danger. “Get ahead of the spell!”
He was speaking to Sharina but the two of them bolted up the path only a few steps ahead of the others, Meder included. Only Wainer's shouted command kept his men from trampling the nobles in panicked haste. Courage against human enemies was one thing; this uncanny threat attacked the Blood Eagles at an instinctive level and momentarily overcame their pride. Recalled to duty, they formed a rear guard.
There had been Archai on the zigzag path when Tegma died also, though the six-limbed figures Sharina dodged on the trampled leaf mold were slightly less developed than those rising behind her. The difference was the matter of seconds by which the glowing touch of wizardry passed.
Sharina skidded at the first dogleg bend. Nonnus grunted in concern, unable to catch her because he held a weapon in either hand. She didn't need help; she balanced by thrusting the hand axe as a counterweight and dabbing down the fingertips of her free hand.
An Archa hunched in front of her, almost fully formed. It started to rise. She leaped over the creature and continued to run.
“Should we cut straight uphill?” she cried.
“We don't know the land!” Nonnus said. “All it'd take is a gully in the wrong place.”
Archai continued to coalesce on the path. Sharina heard behind her a clash of metal and a scream. She ran on.

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