Master of the Cauldron (48 page)

Sharina stopped abruptly; Lattus bumped her and recoiled with a half-swallowed curse. She pointed to the tank, and said, “I've seen him. He's real, he's not one of your monsters, Hani.”

The wizard tittered. “He's indeed mine, princess,” he said. The look in his gloating, glinting eyes was as filthy as Wilfus' touch had been. “And who knows? Perhaps not too long from now, one who looks exactly like you will be mine and will do my bidding.”

The figure in the tank was Memet, the soldier who'd brought Sharina word of Cashel's disappearance. He was tanned, stocky, and had curly black hair—as distinct from the People as Sharina herself was.

“We don't war on women, Hani,” Bolor said harshly.

“We war on anybody who stands in the way of our rightful king!” Mogon said sanctimoniously. “Anything less is treason to King Valgard. Isn't that right,
Lord
Bolor?”

Lattus turned his head, touching his sword hilt again. “Don't push your luck, dog,” he said.

His quiet menace made Sharina think of Cashel when he was very angry. She felt a surge of desperate longing, but even the memory of Cashel's strength and steadiness calmed her. She smiled, surprising the men around her.

When folk like Cashel or-Kenset supported the Good, what chance did Evil have? And others, including Sharina herself, would do what they could as well.

“No matter,” said the wizard. “No matter at all. It's time we finish the business on Ornifal and prepare the next stage.”

They'd reached the wall at the end of the building. A silver ring ten feet, two double paces, in diameter, was set in the smooth white stone. Cast into the ring's surface were same words in the curving Old Script that Sharina had read on the ring that had snatched her to this island.

A susurrus of shuffling feet had grown louder as Sharina and her companions walked along the line of tanks. She looked behind her. A solid line of men in armor—People, man
things
in armor—stretched back to the stairway in the center of the building. As the People paced slowly forward, more of their sort climbed the stairs from unguessed depths and joined the end of the line.

“Lord Bolor's army has marched toward Valles down the north road,” Valgard said. “Your friend Lord Waldron is facing them just outside the city with the garrison and the troops he brought with him.”

“I don't want a battle with my uncle,” Bolor said. “Besides…he's a stubborn old fool, but with him putting backbone in the royal army, it won't be an easy fight. That is, the usurper Garric's troops.”

“Especially with half our forces made up of cutthroats and gallows birds,” Lattus said with a sour look at Wilfus and Mogon.

Hani, holding the ring he'd retrieved from Sharina, began to chant words of power in an undertone; his copper athame beat time. The ring on
the wall began to rotate, at first slowly, then with increasing speed. The wall behind it blurred into a violet haze that grew steadily fainter.

“Not half my forces, not a tenth,” said Valgard. His voice was still soulless, but it grew louder with every syllable. “And the bulk of my army will arrive
behind
Waldron.”

The wall within the great silver ring had vanished. Sharina looked through the shimmer into the basement of the temple from which she'd been snatched to this island. The bodies and vats had been removed, but Tenoctris stood with her fingers tented, facing Sharina. As the image sharpened, Tenoctris smiled as though she was aware of what was happening.

The wizard-made People began marching through the opening, into Sharina's world. Tenoctris sat unmoved.

“We'd best go across ourselves,” Hani said, panting hard. Now that the portal was set, it continued to spin without his chanting. “To control the dispositions, Lord Bolor. So that we don't have another failure.”

“I hope Waldron has better sense than to fight,” Bolor said. “But it
has
to be. The kingdom and its rightful ruler leave us no choice, even if my uncle's too pigheaded to see reason.”

“And we'll kill them all!” Wilfus chortled. “Everyone who stands in our way. Everyone!”

 

The shaft halted. The doors drew open onto Ronn's rooftop plaza with the same magical smoothness as they'd closed to take Cashel and others down to the lightless, haunted cellars of the city. The Heroes stepped out, and when they had exited, Cashel followed at Mab's side.

The many, many people gathered on the plaza gave a swelling cry. Not even Garric or Sharina could've counted so many people. The ones standing nearest the shaft saw who'd arrived, and their excitement spread around the vast space like a ripple across a pond.

Mab raised her arms. She'd entered the shaft as an aged crone, but when Cashel glanced at her now he staggered as though a mule had kicked him unexpectedly: she looked exactly like Ilna. She had the slight, trim build; the black hair cut short; and the firm, disapproving set of the jaw. Only Mab's fingernails, dazzling with their own light in the bloody glow of sunset, were different from those of Cashel's sister.

“Citizens of Ronn!” Mab said. From the way the crowd reacted, everybody on the plaza heard her just as they'd heard those speaking in the
Assembly Hall. With different emphasis Mab went on, “
Men
of Ronn. Your Heroes have come to lead you. Will you follow them?”

The crowd breathed deeply, like a team of oxen facing an oncoming storm. One voice spoke across the plaza for all: “Lady, the Made Men are here. They're filling the plain, and soon they'll climb our walls.”

The sun was so low that only the upper rim showed where the hills to the west curved to meet the sea. There were no clouds, but the sky didn't have the crystal transparency Cashel remembered from the previous night there. The fairy lights that drifted over the crowd were scarcely bright enough to see.

“That's why you needed leaders,” Virdin said. His voice rumbled through the twilight like distant thunder. “That's why you sent for us.”

He and the other Heroes walked deliberately toward the knee-high parapet on the north side of the plaza. The spectators parted like water from the prow of a royal barge. Mab nodded agreement at Cashel's glance. Together they followed the Heroes at a respectful double pace, close enough that the citizens returning to where they'd stood before didn't crowd them.

The Heroes reached the parapet and stared down on the darkening plain. “It's the worst I've seen them,” Hrandis said. “Worse even than the last time. My last time before now.”

“There's six of us,” said one of the twins. “That's different as well.”

Dasborn touched Valeri's shoulder, moving him away, then nodded Cashel forward into the space he'd opened. “Go on, Cashel,” Mab said. “You're here, so take a look.”

Cashel looked down. The sun had fully set, and the sky was darker than it should've been at that hour. It was too shadowed for there to be shapes, but he could see, could
feel,
the movement on the plain below.

“There'd never be a bad time to finish this,” Valeri said. “It shouldn't have waited a thousand years. It won't wait any longer.”

“Tonight will finish it one way or the other,” said Dasborn. “I don't suppose it really matters which, in the greater scheme of things.”

“I didn't come here to lose,” Cashel said. He held his staff upright in his right hand; his thumb gently rubbed the smooth wood. He looked over his shoulder and saw Mab smiling. “Mab didn't bring me here to lose. Ma'am, what do we do next?”

“We attack them,” said Virdin. He stepped onto the parapet and
turned so that he could be seen as well as heard across the vast assemblage. “We attack and finish them once and for all, just as Valeri said.”

He raised not his arm but his long, straight sword. A flicker of blue wizardlight ran up the blade.

“Men of Ronn!” he said, silencing the whispers running like surf across the plaza. “Tonight we take back our city and gain our freedom forever! Go to your homes and arm yourself with the weapons your grandfathers' grandfathers left for you. In an hour, my companions and I will lead you onto the plain to sweep from the earth the monsters that claim the name of men.”

The crowd quivered but didn't move. Its collective will spoke in the voice of a young man, probably someone much like the Sons who Cashel'd led down to be changed into what the times required: “It's night. We should wait for dawn!”

“If you wait,” boomed Hrandis, “there'll never be another dawn for you and yours. The race of men will be extinguished from Ronn, and the king's minions will walk the city's halls forever!”

There was a murmur of wordless despair. They wanted a softer choice, but all the Heroes offered them was to do or to die.

“It isn't fair!” the voice of the crowd cried.

Cashel sighed. He felt sorry for the citizens, but they were trying to quarrel with the universe. A shepherd learns early that wishing there wasn't a blizzard won't save your sheep if you don't get them to cover in time.

Mab gestured before her and murmured softly. Her hands spread light across the sky. The glow was no brighter than a crescent moon, but by displacing the darkness it lifted people's spirits like a brilliant sunrise.

“Men of Ronn!” Mab said. “Arm yourselves and follow your leaders to freedom!”

“Freedom!” echoed the crowd's voice. This time the people were moving, dissolving down the stairs and shafts that would take the men to their weapons and the women to their homes.

The Heroes watched with varied expressions—Virdin approving; Valeri with an angry sneer; Dasborn smiling at the wry joke in his mind. Menon and Minon looked cheerful, and squat Hrandis checked the edges of his axes. They were six different people, not one man with six faces; but they were each of them the man for this work.

As was Cashel or-Kenset. He flexed his shoulders, waiting for the
crowd to thin a little more so that he could give his quarterstaff a trial spin.

He looked over the parapet. The plain still moved, but now that Mab's power had lighted it Cashel no longer thought of waves on the Inner Sea. This white mass seethed like maggots in rotting meat.

“Wildulf's left the palace, your highness!” Lord Rosen said, as Garric followed Liane out of Dipsas' dark cubby and into the windowed portion of the countess's suite. “I think he's gone to his army west of the city!”

“I knew we couldn't trust him!” said Attaper, behind Garric and thus forming the rear guard. “The attack this morning was probably his doing!”

“We don't know that,” said Garric in exasperation. “Anyway, it doesn't matter now. We've got to get out of this palace and set up a cordon around it, which'll take all the troops we can gather. If Wildulf brings his own forces in, so much the better!”

Garric didn't imagine Wildulf
did
have anything to do with the mob's attack. The frozen, frightened earl they'd found in the Audience Hall wasn't a man who'd been weaving cunning plots—and Wildulf's hatred of Dipsas, who certainly
was
involved in the plot, hadn't been feigned.

Attaper assumed the worst about the people around him. Garric supposed that was part of commanding the royal bodyguard, but it still made the man difficult to be around at times.

They reached the hallway. Servants stood against the walls, whispering in shock and horror to their fellows.

“Go on, get out!” Garric shouted to them. “The building isn't safe!”

When he'd come up from the tunnels he'd had a momentary urge to rip the screens of patterned fabric off the windows and let the sunlight blaze in, but it was more important to simply get out while they could. The ground beneath was a warren, and the things squirming through its
passages were far worse than rats. There was no safety within walls that might at any instant spew murderous creatures as white as fungus sprouting from a corpse.

“Your highness, I suggest we tell the City Prefect to get all civilians out of the city as quickly as possible,” said Liane. She held up a wax tablet with a few lines of writing and the impression of Prince Garric's seal—which she carried.

She must've composed the document in the moments since they'd reached the surface. That was amazing enough; it was beyond imagination that even Liane should've written the order while they were scrambling through the dark.

“Why in the Lady's name would we do that?” Attaper said, speaking more harshly than he normally would've. “Once we're out in the open, those slugs on legs won't have a chance!”

Attaper liked and respected Liane, which was enough to bridle his tongue in any circumstances short of the present chaos. In addition to his ordinary courtesy—well, Attaper wasn't a toady, but a sense of self-preservation should've kept him from snarling at someone so dear to Garric, especially when Garric was stressed also.

But the kingdom came first. That was true not only for Garric, but also for the ancient king watching through Garric's eyes. Carus was remembering for both of them the many times in his own reign he'd
failed
to put the kingdom first.

“Send the order,” Garric said. Liane was already giving the tablet to a waiting courier. “Lord Attaper, when these creatures appeared before, they took Erdin and held it for a year till a wizard drove them underground. I'm hoping we can do better than that, but we
don't
need civilians getting in our way. Besides, we owe it to give them a warning about what may happen.”

“Which most of them will ignore,”
noted Carus.
“But that's on their own heads, not ours.”

“Lord Lerdain?” Garric said, suddenly aware of his young aide. He'd refused to take Lerdain into the tunnels, so the boy'd been waiting with a pained, put-upon, expression when Garric returned to the surface. “Get to the harbor and cross to Volita. Order Admiral Zettin in my name to bring the whole army across as fast as he can. I want each ship to come as soon as it's loaded. He's not to wait till the whole force is ready.”

“
Yes,
Prince Garric!” Lerdain said, heading for the palace entrance
before he had the words out. He hadn't even taken time to re-form his expression from its sour pout.

Lerdain had been sulking to indicate his hurt at being denied a chance to do something dangerous under circumstances where his presence wouldn't benefit anybody. “Honor” might be an empty word, but it drove some men as surely as a love of money drove others.

“Aye, and honor drives the best men,”
Carus agreed with a smile.
“For all that I'll agree that personal honor shouldn't be the first thing on a king's mind, as it was on mine.”

Garric and the Blood Eagles had just reached the other side of the courtyard. They were entering the passage to the front entrance of the palace when the sky darkened. Scores of terrified people screamed from the rooms around the courtyard, servants and courtiers who hadn't heard the order to evacuate or had chosen to disregard it.

The cloud frightened them,
Garric thought.

In the artificial shadow, monstrous white creatures with stone and bronze weapons poured out of the Audience Hall and the front of the palace. Their gabbling was as meaningless as the croaking of frogs.

“Get out of the palace!” Garric shouted, as his escort locked shields. “Don't fight them here! We'll cut our way clear!”

The sword he'd sheathed when he left the tunnels was in his hand again. Carus' instant reflex had drawn it before Garric's conscious mind was aware of the need.

There isn't time to think about your actions in the middle of a battle. You act reflexively, doing what you're trained to do with no more consciousness than a heliotrope facing toward the sun.

Carus/Garric's trained reflex was to hit harder and faster than anybody believed could happen. He didn't have a shield, so he drew his long dagger in his left hand. The monsters in the entrance passage were the business of the forty-odd Blood Eagles ahead;
he
strode into those swarming from the Audience Hall.

An arm and the curved axe it held sailing off to the side, Garric's blade continuing through the creature's throat. Monster blood was as red and spouted as high as that from a human. Dagger catching a club, sword thrusting quick as an eyeblink; more blood, much more blood. Pivoting, striking right, backhand left, striking right; twisting the dagger and jerking it free of the single eye socket in the center of dwarf's sloping forehead.

And back, because the Blood Eagles had cleared a way through the
entrance passage, and the creatures that had attacked from the side weren't a threat anymore, were a wrack of distorted body parts; and blood, so much blood, sloshed over the stones.

But they weren't human, weren't human, weren't men.

And if they
had
been men, it would've had to be the same for the kingdom's sake….

“Your highness, in the Lady's name!” Lord Attaper shouted, putting himself between Garric and more corpse-skinned creatures surging from the side of the courtyard. “Out of the palace! Out of the palace!”

Garric ran into the passage; Attaper and the rearmost squad of bodyguards fell in behind him. A Blood Eagle'd fallen; over his corpse lay the six monsters who'd halted to hack at the victim while other humans slaughtered them in turn. Garric leaped the pile of corpses. Liane waited at the arched doorway, safe for the moment but unwilling to go farther without him.

“Abandon the palace!” somebody shouted from outside through what must be a speaking trumpet. “Abandon the palace!”

But when Garric ran out of the passage and under the soot-black sky, he could hear human screams coming from the building behind him. Many, many human screams.

 

The gate wasn't like the other parts of Ronn that Cashel had seen, even down in the fungus-blighted lower levels. It was tall and broad enough for six people to walk through together, but it had no decoration unless you wanted to say the heads of the rivets holding the iron cross braces onto the iron leaves. The metal showed a dusting of rust, and it didn't look like anybody'd been here in a long time.

At the hair-fine join of the gate leaves stood the woman who'd spoken for the Council of the Wise since the older man collapsed. She looked hopeless but resigned to it, like a ewe who knows she's going to be slaughtered and doesn't have the spirit to fight.

That happened a lot of the time—with sheep. Cashel knew it happened with people too, but not with people he thought there was any profit in knowing.

“Nobody's walked through this gate in a hundred and fifty years,” Mab said, glancing at Cashel without expression. “In the days just after Valeri's last great victory, citizens came down the stairs outside the walls
and played in the gardens for the day; but not for many years, and even then they didn't go out through the gate. It reminded them of things they thought were better forgotten.”

Cashel didn't much like the look of the gate or the bare, sheer-walled passage that led to it. Unlike most of Ronn except the roof terraces, this was open to the sky. The walls were living rock for half the way up, and above that, as crystal gray as the winter sea. You could tell where the one stopped and the other began by the sheen of their surface, but the color was all the same.

Virdin was leading the citizens massed behind this central gate; he glanced at Mab. “They'd have done better to have remembered and to have finished the job,” he said, speaking with no more emotion than a shopkeeper counting out change. “Of course that was true in my day too. I led the people out three times; but never all the way to the end, as if nine steps were enough when safety was ten steps away.”

Waiting behind Cashel, Mab, and Virdin were as many men as you could fit into the passage without squeezing to the point they couldn't breathe. They weren't talking in real conversations, but the mutters and prayers and the clink of armor touching armor were as loud as the rattle of leaves when a storm sweeps through woodland.

“You were at fault,” Mab said calmly. “And those who followed you were at fault as well; and most of all, the queen was at fault. The fault will end this day; in victory I hope, but end regardless.”

Women and children looked down from the parapet. Those on the highest terrace were so far away that Cashel couldn't see figures, just the shimmer of movement as hands waved scarves. They were trying to be encouraging, he knew, supporting the grown males of the city who had the muscles to swing the swords and bear the armor; but it was also desperate prayer.

Virdin laughed, deep in his throat. He looked at Cashel. “What do you figure to do, kid?” he said.

“I'll stay with Mab,” Cashel said. “I'll keep her clear of trouble the best I can.”

He'd heard the challenge in the Hero's tone, but he didn't let it bother him. Virdin was pushing a little because pretty quick other things were going to push a lot harder. You needed to know how the people beside you would behave before the trouble started, not after.

“I guess you will at that,” Virdin said. He quirked a smile at Cashel.
Maybe he'd have clasped arms if it weren't for the weapons. Virdin held his shield and bare sword, and Cashel had the quarterstaff in both hands. To Mab, he added, “Are the others ready?”

“Your fellows are,” Mab said, smiling in much the same way as the Heroes smiled at one another. “Whether anybody else is besides them and ourselves, that I won't swear to.”

“We'll learn soon enough,” Virdin said. Then in a loud voice he called, “Open the gates!”

A trumpeter in the crowd, the mob—not the army, nothing like what Cashel knew an army looked like—blew two notes, descending and rising. A trumpet answered from the distant roof of Ronn; then, very faintly, came the notes of another, a second, and finally a handful of trumpets.

The Councillor raised her wand and mumbled words of power. Her tongue caught in the middle of the incantation, bringing her to a stumbling halt. Mab frowned, her eyes glinting like the sun on frozen lakes, but the Councillor recovered enough to finish with forceful strokes of her wand.

Ruby light crackled up the joint in the middle of the door; the valves creaked inward. For an instant the Councillor stood in the opening, still beating the wand though her tongue was silent. Beyond her, covering the plain like white scale on a leper's hands, were the Made Men. In their midst, on a litter of human bones, hunched the king himself.

The Councillor squealed and pressed herself against the side of the passage where the folded-back door leaves provided a little concealment. The king swung his bone athame forward, and the creatures he commanded began to advance as a mass of purulent flesh.

“We mustn't be late to the party,” muttered Virdin. He lifted his sword at a slant, and shouted,
“Charge!”
as he strode through the gateway.

Cashel glanced over his shoulder as he and Mab followed. The mass of citizens in the passage behind were lurching forward too. The ones in the lead looked frightened, and the words they were shouting weren't always the sorts of things Cashel liked to hear from the folks fighting on the same side as him—“Mama!” was one of them, and some of the crowd kept saying, “God help us! God save us!” Still, they were coming, and that was more of a relief than Cashel'd have figured before the feeling rushed over him.

Mab looked calm and businesslike. As she walked, her fingernails traced brilliant patterns in the air. Cashel didn't know what she was doing until a dazzling blue thunderbolt shot toward them from the king's
athame. It vanished with an earthquake
crack!
midway between the armies.

Mab rocked back like she'd walked into a tree while she was thinking about other things. Cashel put out a hand to steady her, but she'd already got her balance and was walking on.

The king flopped onto his back in the litter, flailing the air with his athame. He looked like an overturned beetle kicking. Cashel grinned. He was just there to help, but it felt good to be proud of the lady he was helping.