Master of the Cauldron (19 page)

“A small price/price/price…,” called the chorus.

“Your golden hair, missy,” said the first nymph Sharina had seen in the water. “Only your lovely golden hair.”

“…hair/hair/hair…,” sang the others.

“All right,” Sharina said, because there was no other answer in the kingdom's need. “Master Bedrin, you'd better inform the captains of the other vessels that we'll be getting help to reach Valles quickly.”

Eleven of the nymphs had scattered laughingly when Sharina agreed, swimming with their whole bodies like otters as they swept into the far distance. The last spiraled down, snatched something from the glowing seafloor, and swirled back up in a smooth curve.

Sharina felt only minor pangs at the thought of losing her hair. She had to trust laughing, whimsical,
not human
creatures; but there was no choice.

“Yes, of course,” said Bedrin, his tone that of a man who's been told he'll be executed in the morning. “I'll order the squadron to lie to. And for the men not to be concerned.”

Bedrin strode back toward the stern, where the signal horn hung from a hook on the railing. He brushed Lord Waldron but seemed not to have noticed the grim warrior despite the contact.

Waldron met Sharina's eyes. “I don't see anything out there, your highness,” he said in a tight voice. “But I know there is…something. It's wizardry, isn't it, your highness?”

“Something like that, milord,” Sharina said. “It's an opportunity to get to Valles more quickly than the oarsmen alone could manage. I thought I should…I thought I
needed
to accept the offer when it was made.”

“Yes, of course,” Waldron said. He was looking at the horizon, now; or rather, trying not to look at their immediate surroundings. “For the kingdom's sake, we have to accept help from any quarter.”

The horn called, two short notes and a long one. The ship's officers shouted orders, and the timekeeper shifted to the pairs of quick notes that signalled the oarsmen to ship their oars.

“Ah…,” said Tenoctris softly. “Yes, it's changing….”

The nymphs who'd gone off were returning, leading in pairs and a triplet vast sinuous shapes. The nymph who'd stayed with the squadron sprang from the water like a trout leaping and caught the ear timber with one hand. Her other webbed hand held a flake of obsidian with an edge that looked sharp enough to cut sunbeams.

“Your lovely hair,” the nymph murmured as she seated herself on top of the boxing and lifted a handful of Sharina's tresses. “Your lovely golden hair…”

Ilna began to unknot her pattern now that she had no immediate use for it. “Who else is here inside your maze?” she said to the wizard on the floor. He'd risen onto one elbow, but Chalcus' rock-steady swordpoint kept him from trying to stand up.

“No one's here,” the wizard said, looking at her for the first time. His gaze started angry and shifted very quickly to wariness. “Nobody should be able to enter. How did you get in?”

Ilna ignored the question as she looked around the room. The fellow's answer was probably true. There was a single wooden chair at the table under a side window, and though the bed frame along the opposite wall was a work of art in etched bronze, it was only wide enough for one.

Davus walked to the throne and set the two rocks he carried on the floor. He seated himself, closing his eyes and running his fingers along the ornate armrests. Ilna knew how hard and fibrous chalcedony was, so she
marveled at the effort it must have taken to carve detailed scenes of men battling demons over every surface of the throne. On the left, men were winning; on the right, demons routed their human opponents.

The wizard noticed what Davus was doing. “Don't sit there!” he said in angry amazement. “You have no idea what you might do there by accident!”

“I'll do nothing here by accident,” Davus said, his eyes still shut. He smiled at whatever it was his mind saw.

Chalcus relaxed slightly, raising his sword vertical but choosing not to sheathe it just yet. “You can get up, I think,” he said pleasantly. “What would your name be, friend?”

“That's none of your business,” the wizard muttered. He stood and dusted his palms together. He kept his eyes on the floor.

Ilna opened a freestanding cabinet. It held bread, cheese, and a variety of dried vegetables. She wondered how the fellow obtained them. There wasn't room in this clearing for a grainfield of any size, nor had she seen any sign of animals for milking.

“Well,” said Chalcus, his tone still light but with an edge to it. He picked up the athame and appeared to examine the chip his blade had cut from the wood when he struck it out of the fellow's hand. “I thought it would be an alternative to cutting a grin in your throat so I could call you ‘Smiler,' but we can manage that if you like.”

“His name's Nergus but he prefers to be called Nergura,” Davus said. Only his lips moved; to look at him, he might've been talking in his sleep. “He believes the seven letters have a secret significance, you see. He didn't want to tell you lest knowing his name give you power over him.'

Chalcus laughed, then tossed the athame into the fire. Nergura gave a strangled cry and lunged toward the hearth. He stopped when he found the sword edge barring his way.

“I have all the power I need over him already,” Chalcus said, his voice as soft as a cobra's. “And people who take out a weapon when first they meet me can thank their stars if they lose nothing but that weapon by it. Eh, Master Nergura?”

The wizard shrugged with a sour expression and seemed to huddle into his robe. “What is it you want of me?” he said, looking again at the floor.

“Food and perhaps shelter,” Ilna said. She lifted the pottery lid that covered the cistern in the corner opposite the cupboard. She didn't know how deep it was, but there was certainly water for the three of them. A
bronze dipper hung from a cord within the shaft; she lowered it into the tank.

“And information, Master Nergura,” Davus said, his fingers spread on the armrests. “Tell us about the present king and what happened to the Old King.”

The wizard sighed. He leaned toward the hearth again, then caught himself when the sword twitched. “Let me swing my alembic off the fire,” he said in a tone of anger suppressed by well-justified fear. “No more than that!”

“Go on, Master Nergura,” said Chalcus, raising his blade vertical again. “You were going to tell us about the king.”

The wizard pivoted the iron hearth crane so that the pot hanging from it was out in the room. The flames burned brighter now that the athame had ignited. He stepped back, grimaced, and walked deliberately to the wooden chair. He turned it to face into the room and sat down.

“The King…?” Nergura said. “I suppose you can call it that if you like. The king that now exists isn't human. It was a beast, a pet I suppose, of the Old King who ruled this land in past ages.”

“Davus?” Chalcus said. “Do you know of this pet of your king?”

“There was a creature,” Davus said, leaning his head back against the chalcedony throne. “Supposedly from another world. It wasn't a pet, exactly. The king had gained his power through it. He kept the beast around afterward, though he needn't have done so.”

“Well, he was a fool then,” said Nergura, eyeing Davus sharply. “How is it you know about the Old King? Are you a wizard? You
must
be a wizard to have learned so much about the old times!”

“I'll let you be the only wizard here, Master Nergura,” Davus said, his closed eyes lifted toward the roof. “For myself, I'm merely glad to be flesh and blood. I spent the past thousand years as a statue, it seems.”

He paused, smiled wistfully, and added, “I wonder what I was thinking about while I was stone?”

“Aye, you can be the wizard,” said Chalcus. He took the dipper of water, drained it, and handed it back to Ilna without letting his eyes slip from Nergura. “But you should recall that though I'm no wizard myself, I can make your head vanish from your shoulders in a heartbeat. Eh, my friend?”

“Yes, well…,” Nergura said. It obviously unsettled him to watch Davus' hands on the wax-smooth surface of the throne. “I said the Old
King was a fool not to have killed the creature when he no longer needed it. It happened because his power lay in a jewel on his brow.”

Ilna refilled the dipper. She'd planned to offer it to Davus, but on consideration she drank the water herself. Davus was doing
something
. She didn't understand what, but she wouldn't have thanked anyone who broke her concentration while she was busy.

“Something happened,” Nergura continued. “I haven't been able to learn precisely what—it was a thousand years ago, after all! There was an attack or at any rate a summons that drew the king's attention. Because he was focused on other affairs, the creature was able to steal his jewel, then kill him.”

Ilna began slicing bread and cheese. She used her own paring knife instead of the longer—but dull—blade in the cupboard. The wizard glared at her for a moment, then looked at Chalcus, and said, “That's what the king deserved, since he should've killed the creature when he had the chance. Ever since, it's ruled this land. As much as anyone has.”

Ilna offered Chalcus a slice of cheese on bread—good wheat bread and baked no later than the night before. He gestured it away without taking his eyes from the wizard. “What does this new king do with the land he rules, then?” he asked. “His yoke is light, you say?”

He'd sheathed his sword, but Nergura had seen the steel come out once. He didn't seem fool enough to chance anything that would cause Chalcus to clear his blade again.

“It doesn't do anything,” the wizard said. “Mostly it stays in its Citadel and builds the walls higher. When it comes out, it wanders about and turns anyone it meets to stone. If there are reasons for what it does, they aren't human reasons.”

Ilna heard the bitterness in Nergura's voice. She smiled faintly as she chewed bread and cheese made from cow milk, the latter a rarity in Barca's Hamlet. If this wizard had the power the alien creature had, he'd have used it. Looking at Nergura's scowling face, Ilna suspected the other inhabitants of the land were better off bearing a beast's random violence than they would be under him.

“Much goes on in the land that the Old King wouldn't have permitted,” Davus said softly. His right thumb rubbed the glassy surface of the armrest.

“Who knows what the Old King would've allowed?” Nergura said sharply. “There's all manner of terrors walking the land now, and everyone is responsible for his own safety!”

Davus opened his eyes. He sat up straight, then rose from the throne with a graceful, controlled motion. He glanced at the stones he'd brought but smiled and left them on the floor.

“Yes, I see that's so,” Davus said. His tone was pleasant, but there was an undertone to it that reminded Ilna of Chalcus when he was poised to explode into action. “How is it that you gain your information, Master Nergura?”

The wizard frowned. “Does it matter to you?” he said. “I drink herbal potions. They wouldn't do you any good, you know.”

“I'm sure that's true,” said Davus, sauntering toward the back door. “But I think I'll see what kind of herbs it is that you grow in your garden.”

“You mustn't go—” the wizard said, bustling to put himself between Davus and the door. He shrieked as Chalcus pinched his earlobe between thumb and forefinger and jerked him back to where the sailor's dagger just pricked his cheek.

“Let's all go see the garden,” Chalcus said. He and Davus exchanged glances. Davus smiled, opened the door, and stepped out with Ilna behind him. Chalcus brought up the rear, leading the faintly whimpering wizard.

Ilna supposed she'd been expecting an ordinary kitchen garden like those every housewife in Barca's Hamlet kept, fenced off so that the chickens wouldn't devour the new shoots. Instead she was looking at an orderly jungle. The air was warmer than that of the wasteland they'd crossed to reach Nergura's maze, and more surprisingly it was as humid as when the sun comes out after a summer shower.

None of the plants and shrubs were familiar. The tall tree near the back looked like a sugarberry, but the fruit was bluish, not red. Besides, the sugarberries shouldn't have been present at the same time as the flowers on the shrub near the door with figlike leaves. Why hadn't she seen the almost-sugarberry when they left the maze if not before they entered it?

A path of white gravel set in marl entered the garden. It branched before it vanished into the vegetation in the near distance. Ilna could see the tiled room of a gazebo or work shed beyond a stand of what she'd have called holly were it not for the round leaves; there might be other structures completely hidden by the foliage.

There might be any
thing
lurking in the foliage.

“Maybe we'll let our host lead, shall we, Master Davus?” suggested Chalcus, whose mind must've been turning in the same directions.

He tugged the wizard forward by the ear. Nergura yelped and cried
and bent his face away from Chalcus to lessen the pain. “There's nothing here that can harm you!” he said in evident bitterness.

Davus must have agreed, for he sauntered up the path without waiting for Chalcus to push the wizard ahead of them. Ilna shrugged mentally. Davus seemed to know what he was doing—and anyway, Ilna had enough trouble making her own decisions. She wasn't about to start minding other people's business.

Davus reached the fork, rubbed the ball of his foot into the gravel, and turned to the right. Chalcus maneuvered the wizard in front of him so that he was sandwiched between the two men and let go of his ear. Gorgeous but unfamiliar flowers bordered the path. Beyond them were bushes with small leaves of a green so dark that an eye less well trained than Ilna's would've called them black.

They came to the tile-roofed shed Ilna'd seen from the door of the house. It was brick across the back with latticed end walls through which vines wound. The front facing the path was open. Tools leaned against the bricks on the left side or hung from pegs; drying racks reached from floor to ceiling on the right. Ilna heard a faint mewing sound and looked around for a cat.

“Yes, as I thought,” Davus said, gesturing with one hand toward the vine. “How do you justify this, Master Wizard?”

“There's nothing to justify!” Nergura said, and the very violence of his tone proved he knew he was lying. Davus' face was hard; Chalcus smiled. Neither expression was one Ilna would've wanted directed at her.

The vine crawling up the lattice had a stem and leaves like a cucumber. Instead of simple sausage shapes the fruit was bulged and distorted till it looked like misshapen dolls of green clay. Ilna wondered if it was diseased. Certainly if a plant like that had come up in her garden, she'd have grubbed it out before—

Her skin flushed, then went cold. The lowest of the hanging poppets was moving its arms and legs.

“In my day, the king would've disagreed,” Davus said. He lifted the topmost of the green homunculi. Touched, it began to squirm also. Davus gently set it back against the lattice and walked into the shed.

“The king is dead!” the wizard shouted. “It's every man for himself, now!”

“Ah, but
we're
not dead, my friend,” Chalcus said, stroking Nergura's
cheek with a first and middle finger. The wizard jerked as though he'd been burned. “Nor are you, as things now stand.”

Three dolls like those on the vine hung from hooks on the wall between heavy shears and a bronze trowel. These were better formed in the sense of being more complete, though their proportions were those of a dwarf, and their faces looked indescribably ugly.

They mewed at Davus. He reached toward them. The nearest was formed like a female. She gripped Davus' index finger with both arms and tried to drag it toward her jaws to bite. He pulled his hand away.

“Every man for himself, you say, wizard?” Davus shouted. “
These
are men, as you well know. You hang them here till you're ready, and then you boil them down into an elixir that you drink for what you claim is wisdom. What sort of wisdom do you get by drinking the lives of men?”

“I had no choice!” Nergura said. “My safety depends on what the poppets' blood enables me to learn!”