Mistress of the Catacombs (24 page)

Guards stood with their backs to the man on the couch. He stared at the bowl of water on the table before him, his expression cold and angry.

"Do you know him?" Cashel said. "I don't."

"I've never seen him before," Tilphosa said. "That's a scrying bowl, so he must be a wizard."

After a further moment's consideration, she added, "Is he a eunuch, do you suppose? The way his flesh hangs looks like he is."

"I wouldn't know about that," Cashel said shortly. They didn't geld men in Barca's Hamlet. Cashel had learned things were different in some other parts of the world, but that wasn't knowledge that pleased him.

He frowned at the man in the watery image. "He looks like a guy I saw once," he said. The fellow who'd been talking to Garric on the bridge when he fell over and Cashel jumped in to save him.... "But it's not the same guy. He's too young and the fellow I saw was thinner by a lot."

"Are we stopping here, Master Cashel?" Hook asked with nervous politeness.

Cashel turned. Captain Mounix was holding Ousseau. The wounded man looked rather better than he had when Cashel last noticed him. The captain flinched, shifting to put Ousseau's body between him and Cashel.

Cashel nodded. "No," he said, "There's nothing here to hold us."

A fairy glow showed in the further distance and just maybe another hung at a slightly higher level beyond that; though the second could've been a patch of the sky itself. The ground was rising, though gradually enough that nobody who hadn't followed sheep for a living would've noticed it. Sheep can find a slope where a drop of water'd hesitate.

Cashel started on. Tilphosa walked with him—the forest was open enough for two side by side most places—and the sailors followed. Cashel smiled. They followed at a respectful distance.

"I've never read about this place," Tilphosa said, picking her words carefully to seem, well, not worried. "Have you, Cashel?"

He smiled. "Mistress, I can't read," he said. "I can spell out my name with a little time, that's all."

"Ah!" said Tilphosa. She probably hadn't thought about that sort of thing. Well, she wouldn't, being a lady and all.

"I wasn't educated as a wizard, of course," she said. Cashel wasn't sure if she was changing the subject or if she just needed to talk. "I haven't any talent for it. Some of those who came to the temple did, and they were trained to be Children of the Mistress. They had much reading to do for what they had to learn."

She linked her fingers and clutched them over her stomach, the way she'd have done if she was cold. Cashel didn't think she could be. The air was warm; besides, they'd been walking at a good pace, and there wasn't a breeze.

Cashel saw what she was hinting at. He swallowed and said, "Mistress—"

"Tilphosa," she corrected him.

"Tilphosa," he said, "I'm not a wizard like you think. I can do things, sure, but I don't know how it happens. I just do them."

She gave a little laugh. It didn't sound forced. "I'm told that Metra is very skilled, very powerful," she said. "As a wizard. That's why the Council chose her to accompany me. And you freed us from her enchantment, Cashel."

He smiled. "It looked like a wall," he said. "Sometimes you can break a wall down if you hit it hard enough."

They were close to the light by now. This one seemed to have color, or anyway a different color: a hint of red instead of blue to its silvery grayness. Ilna would be able to say for sure; there was nothing about shape or color that she didn't see.

In the light a man knelt before a pentagram scratched on the narrow deck of a galley. Cashel could see a few of the rowers on the benches beyond the fellow. They leaned into the oarlooms with faces set in a fierce determination not to watch what the wizard was doing.

"I know him!" Cashel said. "This is the guy I asked you about, the one who looks like Metra. He was going to take a piece of statue away from me."

Cashel frowned with a realization. It wouldn't have been the statue the fellow was after, just the ruby ring the statue wore. And that was here in Cashel's purse.

"He's a Son of the Mistress," Tilphosa said, frowning also at some thought of her own. "I don't recognize him, Cashel. He does look a lot like Metra."

Cashel glanced back at the sailors. They were keeping up all right. As they should: Cashel was walking at the pace that a herd of sheep would've set.

"Let's go on," he said aloud.

Cashel didn't understand this, but he was used to things he didn't understand and to going ahead anyway. He might not like the scenery on the way, but eventually he'd always gotten to a place where he wanted to be.

There was another fog of light ahead, and Cashel supposed there'd be more after that one. He wondered if they'd ever come out of this forest. He had bread and cheese still in his wallet. With the frugal reflex of growing up poor—and poorer yet—he'd bundled the leftovers away before he started down to deal with Metra's wizardry.

He smiled. That seemed a long time ago, now.

"Do you suppose they're all looking for me, Cashel?" Tilphosa said. "All the wizards whose images we've seen? Metra is, we know that."

"Um?" said Cashel. He thought about the question. "I don't see how they can be, Tilphosa. That last fellow was somebody I met in Valles. He... I mean, that was...."

What would Tilphosa say if he told her he came from a time farther in her future than he could imagine himself?

"I'm from a long way away, Tilphosa," he said. "A long way ahead in time."

She turned her head to study him as they walked along. "I see," she said, but Cashel wasn't sure that she meant anything by the words. "Well, I'm glad the Mistress' powers enabled Her to go even through time to bring me a champion."

"I wish you wouldn't talk about the Mistress bringing me, Tilphosa," Cashel said. He looked straight ahead to avoid the girl's eyes but he flushed regardless. "I mean... my sister and I never had much to do with the Great Gods. Well, we couldn't afford to, that was part of it, but with Ilna it was more besides. And, well... I just wish you wouldn't say the Mistress is moving me around. I don't feel right hearing that."

"All right, Cashel," Tilphosa said. She didn't sound angry or even hurt. "I'll be more careful about what I say."

Either Cashel had started walking faster in embarrassment or this time the image of light was located closer to the previous one. The scene within was a barn, a big one. There were horses stabled there, so it belonged to rich people. A man sat on an upturned wicker basket, talking to a circle of many other men.

The one talking shared a family resemblance with both Metra and the fellow who'd tried to take the ring back in Valles. He wore a coarse tunic now, but his black-and-white robe was hung to dry on a rafter.

Most of the audience were strangers to Cashel, but—

"That's Garric!" he cried. "That's my friend Garric! But what happened to his head? He's got scars on his scalp!"

"Maybe it isn't really your friend, Cashel?" said Tilphosa. She was frowning when he turned to look at her, but she smoothed her face at once. "I mean... the men who look like Metra? Perhaps...?"

Cashel grimaced. One of the beastmen of Bight, a female, fawned at the feet of the fellow he'd thought was Garric. That didn't seem like something the real Garric would've let happen.

The wizard in the center talked urgently, gesturing repeatedly toward the ring held by the older peg-legged man at the side of maybe-Garric. The ring looked a lot like the one in Cashel's purse, but the when the light caught this one right it winked blue.

"I don't know," Cashel said harshly. "Let's get on. There's nothing here for us."

He turned. When the girl didn't follow him at once he reached out—then jerked his hand back.

Cashel's body was cold. Had he been thinking of pulling Tilphosa along against her will? All he knew was that it frightened him to see his friend changed that way; frightened him as he'd never feared death.

"Yes, of course, Cashel," Tilphosa said. She stared at his horrified expression with obvious concern. "Let's get away from here. We'll get to the edge of these woods soon, I'm sure."

Cashel wasn't sure of anything except that he was jumpier than he'd been since, well, a long time. "Sorry," he muttered.

"I haven't heard the night bird recently," the girl said brightly, changing the subject for sure this time. "Have you?"

"Um?" said Cashel. "Oh, you mean the music? No, not since just after we got here. These woods are quieter than the ones I'm used to."

"Is that because there's no wind?" Tilphosa asked. She looked about her as they walked along, swaying a little closer to Cashel. She was nervous, but she was keeping it well inside.

"Partly that, I guess," Cashel said. "There's always something happening in the woods, though. Squirrels running about, limbs squealing as they grow.... You can hear the trees breathe if you take the time to listen."

"But not here?" said Tilphosa.

"Not that I've noticed," Cashel said; walking steadily forward, but keeping his eyes on the things around him as he always did. He noticed most things, though he didn't generally talk about them.

He cleared his throat. "You can generally tell when there's something wrong with your flock, you know," he said. "Things don't feel right, even if you can't see what it is that's wrong. I don't feel like that here, for what it's worth."

"Thank you, Cashel," the girl said. She laid her fingertips briefly on his arm.

They'd reached the next of the scenes in light. This one was smaller than the others, scarcely the size of the shelter a shepherd might weave for himself from sticks and branches in bad weather. Cashel squinted, waiting for the image in his mind to focus.

"That's Tenoctris!" he said. "It couldn't be anybody else! Oh, if she's looking for us, then everything's going to be all right!"

Tenoctris sat at a table in her cottage in the palace grounds, reading a scroll by the light of a three-wick oil lamp hanging at her side. Most of the room's furnishings were simple, but the lampstand itself was a scaled, sinuous body of gilded bronze. Each wick projected like a breath of flames from a dragon head.

"She's a very powerful wizard, Cashel?" Tilphosa asked. She bent her head as if to read over Tenoctris' shoulder, but of course you couldn't see anything that small in the light here. It was clearer than what you saw through the rounds of bull's-eye glass in the casements of Reise's inn, but not much clearer.

The sailors had fallen farther behind, so Cashel figured to wait here for a time anyway. And if there was a way to get into this vision, then that'd be a very good thing.

He pushed his quarterstaff into the light. He was careful for fear there might be a spark when the iron touched it or even that the whole scene might vanish with a blaze and crashing.

The metal-capped hickory blurred and vanished; then it hit something and stopped. Cashel pushed harder, but whatever it was was solid. He couldn't see either the end of the staff or anything in the image that ought to be blocking it.

"Cashel?" said the girl, watching him closely.

"Wait," he said tersely. He heard the rustle and whispering of the sailors joining them, but he didn't look around.

Withdrawing the quarterstaff, Cashel thrust his bare left arm into the image of light. His fingers touched—

Cashel laughed and withdrew his hand. "Let's go," he said. "There's nothing here except what we see, and that won't help us."

"But what was it?" the girl said, a trifle sharply.

"Just a tree," Cashel said. "That tree."

He pointed upward. Branches like the stems of ancient wisteria twisted out of the image at about the height Cashel could reached by raising his staff. At the ends were sprays like the whips of a weeping willow though much shorter.

"Tell him," Mounix whispered.

"You tell him!" Hook snapped back. "I'm all right."

Cashel turned. Tilphosa turned with him but moved a little back. "Tell me what?" he said. His voice was a growl, almost angry; he wasn't pleased to be reminded of the sailors' presence.

"Master," Hook said after a quick glance at Mounix. "The captain wants me to say that Ousseau's pretty well done in. He really means he wants to stop, is what I think."

Cashel looked at them. Ousseau's eyes were open; so was his mouth. There was as much intelligence in the one as the other. Mounix forced a smile that looked like he was dying of lockjaw; Hook tried to lean on the sword he'd taken from the captain and fell sideways when it slid into the soft ground. He barely caught himself.

As for Tilphosa—

"How are you feeling?" Cashel asked, turning to the girl. "Do you want to go on?"

"Yes," she said, though she seemed to be trembling. "We can.... Maybe a little farther. I'd like to get out of these woods if we could."

Cashel sucked in his lower lip as he thought. "We'll go to the next of these lights," he said after a moment. "The one up there."

He nodded in the direction they'd been heading. "Then we'll bed down if we don't see something better close by. All right?"

"Of course it's all right," Tilphosa said, glaring at the desperate sailors. She touched his arm. "Let's go, Cashel."