Mistress of the Catacombs (31 page)

Hakken, his eyes glazed and drool hanging from his mouth, walked slowly toward the clump of flowers. Garric stepped in front of the sailor and slapped his face left-handed. Hakken staggered back, gasping angrily as he groped for the short-handled axe in his belt.

His nose wrinkled. "By the Lady!" he said. "By the Lady! I've not smelled anything that stunk so bad since we raised the Erdin Belle with all the rats that'd drowned in the hold when she foundered!"

"Bad!" repeated Tint. The flowers were slumping back on their stems and starting to close. The odor dissipated as suddenly as it had appeared. If it hadn't been for the beastgirl....

Garric hugged Tint to his side, her shoulder against the point of his hip. She purred like a big cat. "Thank you, Tint," Garric said. "You saved our lives."

A moth of red wizardlight flew out of the crystal on Garric's breast. It went arm's length ahead of him, just above the grass, then paused to flutter in a tight figure-8.

"Follow the guide!" Metron squeaked. "Follow it precisely and don't waste time. The Intercessor's enchantments will react to your presence. What was safe before may close in on you."

Hakken drew his axe and looked at Garric. Garric said, "We're going to walk exactly where the moth flies, Tint." He stepped off, suiting his conduct to his words.

Instead of going directly toward the tower through the loose line of yucca-looking plants, the moth led them to the left around the circuit of the outer wall. The course took them close to the lizard—dead or just unconscious?—and the clump of bromeliads where it had hidden.

Hakken, closely behind Garric, hesitated. "The dust...?" he said. "If we stir—"

"Go on, go on!" piped the wizard. "Do you think I can hold this forever?"

Tint padded past Garric on all fours, glancing to either side but showing no concern about the residue of the spores. Her attention was focused primarily on the yuccas to her right. They quivered, but the beastgirl stayed beyond the trunk's height from the base of the nearest. Garric followed, more reassured by Tint's nonchalance than he was by Metron's wizardry.

The moth's quivering path took it over a bed of flowers that looked like red fangs with spiky black tips. Garric hesitated for a moment. Tint, pacing forward nonchalantly, saw his doubt and stopped also.

"Go on!" Metron said. "I've told you, time—"

The moth circled back like a dog trying to lead its master. Tint, her mind never far from the thought of food, tried to snatch it out of the air. Her fingers slipped harmlessly through the creature of light; she opened her hand and peered at its emptiness with a puzzled expression.

"—is short!"

Garric nodded Tint forward and walked on, reminding himself that things weren't always what they seemed. His feet sank into the loose earth of the bed, finding moisture below; the flowers brushed his shins harmlessly.

The moth jogged to the right, following the flower bed for two paces—for the first time directly toward the tower. The building loomed above, a presence in Garric's peripheral vision though his eyes were trained on the ground.

At the end of the flower bed grew a tree whose swollen trunk lay parallel to the ground for most of its length. Only the finger-thick upper stem was vertical, terminating in a spray of whip-like tendrils. They stiffened as the trio approached; Tint shied back.

The moth turned aside, bobbing over lush turf in the direction of a clump of rushes growing in a crystal-edged pool. Again Tint recoiled. She laid the side of her head on the ground, then hopped back and held Garric.

"Bad!" she said. "Teeth, Gar!"

She stroked his thigh and added pleadingly, "Gar, this bad place. We go away, Gar? Go now?"

Garric looked at the empty lawn. There were no bushes big enough to hide another of the lizards, nor was there any other evident danger. The moth circled and returned, insistently.

"Go on!" Metron said. "Follow the guide and there's no danger. But quickly, quickly!"

"Tint?" Garric said, his sword held low to the side so that the beastgirl wouldn't accidently fling herself onto its gleaming edge. "Where's the animal? Where's the teeth?"

"Go on, you fools!" said Metron. "The monkey knows nothing!"

"Gar, what are we going to do?" Hakken said. "Because I don't think we oughta just stand here, you know?"

"There, there!" Tint said, pointing furiously at the unmarked grass. Her long face turned quickly back and forth from Garric to the danger only she could see. "Teeth, Gar, bad!"

Garric stepped forward and swiped his sword in an arc at arm's length. The beastgirl's concern was so persuasive that he expected his edge to thoonk! into a monster where he saw only empty air. The blade whistled, meeting nothing.

"Must I drive you with my art?" Metron shrilled. "Shall I raise a wall of flame to sear the flesh from your bones if you will not obey?"

Hakken, muttering a curse, leaped onto the lawn with his axe held up in both hands. The moth danced ahead of him, leading him safely to a bed of Dead-Man's Fingers or some similar translucent fungus. "For the Lady's sake, Gar!" he said. "Come on, won't you?"

Garric stepped forward. Two more steps and—

Tint grabbed Garric by the waist and jerked him backward. Small she might be, but the beastgirl's strength was equal to Garric's own. Two pairs of interlocking fangs, each the length of a man's hand, sliced up through the turf and clashed together where Garric's foot had rested a moment before.

Tint shrieked in terror, hopping up and down. Garric lunged, stabbing into the ground with all his weight behind the thrust. Though the blade curved, its point was directly in line with the hilt. It grated along bone, then sank deep.

The turf shivered. The fangs pulled back with the same silent suddenness as they'd slashed upward. Garric gripped his hilt with both hands to keep the force beneath the ground from twisting the sword away from him.

The blade flexed, then sprang free. The tip was wet with blood turned black by the moonlight. Garric straightened. A line of dimples shivered across the sod as the creature thrashed its escape along the tunnel by which it had attacked.

Metron was yammering something; Garric hadn't time to wonder what. Hakken hopped from one foot to the other, gawping down at the ground in fear that another of the creatures was closing on him unseen. If he wasn't careful, he'd lop his own leg off and save the garden the trouble of killing him.

Garric stepped to the sailor's side and grabbed the axe helve above where Hakken gripped it. "Calm down!" he said.

Hakken tried to pull free. Garric had a weapon in either hand; he shouldered Hakken on the point of the jaw. That brought the sailor around; he relaxed and forced a smile to show Garric that it was safe to let him go.

"This place is part of the Sister's realm!" Hakken said as Garric eased back. He massaged his axe wrist with his free hand, looking around with an expression of renewed disgust.

"You can reach the wall now," said Metron's image. He'd had put aside his haughty manner, at least for the time being. "Wait there while I prepare you for the next stage."

They were within a sword's length of the tower, though a quarter of the way around from where they'd faced it when they entered the garden. Garric had been concentrating on each small stage of the moth's course, so it was a surprise to find they'd actually reached their goal.

Because of Tint, they'd reached their goal.

Garric put his arm around the beastgirl again and said in a mild voice, "Metron? If you call my friend Tint a monkey again, when I next see your physical body I'm going to beat it within a hair of its life. Understood?"

"Please, Master Gar," squeaked the image. "Time is short."

"Let's get it over with," Garric said to Hakken. The wizard was right, of course, but Garric didn't choose to say that in so many words.

They stepped to the tower, cautiously but without further incident. Plants with huge glossy leaves on soft stems grew against the wall. Nowhere did Garric see vegetation actually climbing the stone.

Metron began to chant again. Garric lifted the crystal from his breast to watch for a moment—the angle at which the amulet hung didn't affect the image within it. The wizard sat cross-legged, his athame dipping and rising to the rhythm of the spell. His other hand held the ring over the figure he'd drawn on the blurred surface before him.

Tint squatted beside Garric, rubbing her shoulder against his thigh and purring. She didn't seem concerned, but she remained fully aware of her surroundings. Her hand shot out unexpectedly and snatched a beetle from the wall to her mouth.

Garric looked at his sword. With a reflex gained during the months King Carus had shared his mind, he broke off one of the great leaves left-handed and folded it between his thumb and fingers. With that for a wiping rag, Garric rubbed the smear of blood from the upper hand's-breadth of the steel. He kept the back of the blade to his hand and was careful not to slice his fingertips while getting close to the keen edge.

"Abrasax," said Metron. "Rayasde belhowa hiweh...."

Hakken turned from eyeing the tower wall. "What do you think, Gar?" he said. "Is he going to float us up there with, you know, his words? Because it doesn't look to me like there's any other way."

"Sukoka nuriel gatero...," said Metron. The crystal was filled with rosy color, but it didn't shine onto the tunic of muddy blue that Garric wore for this assault.

Garric touched the wall. There was no need for his sword now, so he sheathed it while he thought.

Like the outer wall, the tower was built of banded gneiss. The striations between layers were the stone's only marking. Though Garric ran his fingers up and down for as high as he could reach, he couldn't feel separate courses. There were no interstices, not even so much as a crack he could have driven a needle into. Either the Spike was really pottery cast to look like stone, or it had been carved whole from a solid outcrop.

"Naveh!" Metron cried. "Badawa! Belhorwa!"

Garric's skin tingled as though he'd just stepped out of salt water. Hakken must have felt the same and been frightened by it, because he gave a shout, flailing his arms to shake something off him.

"Start climbing," Metron ordered. He sounded tired and his voice was even more distant than usual. "Just put your feet against the wall. But hurry, please hurry."

Garric lifted his right leg and set the sole firmly against the stone as if he were pushing off from it. His balance changed. He started to fall forward until he threw up his left foot as well.

"Duzi!" he gasped. He was standing on the tower's side, his body parallel to the ground below. The Spike stretched before him like the trunk of a felled tree, sloping to either side but an easy passage to a youth who'd walked fence rails for fun.

He wasn't sticking to the stone; it was as if the Spike had turned onto its side so that gravity held Garric and all his equipment in the normal way. Hakken cried out and fell against the tower. He rose onto his hands and knees, still against the stone, looking at Garric in wonderment.

"Gar!" Tint cried. She leaped to the wall beside him. Her nails scratched for purchase, but the stone was too smooth even for her. She slipped to the ground. "Gar, come back!"

"Wait, Tint!" Garric said.

He turned the crystal up to look at the wizard. "Metron," he demanded. "Why isn't Tint able to climb?"

"Do you think I'm the Mistress herself?" Metron snarled shrilly. "Do you know how much power it takes to shift the cosmos for the weight of just two of you? Get on with it! Don't keep delaying, please!"

Garric felt clammy. He thought his bare skin glowed with red wizardlight. The color was too faint for certainty, and it wasn't something he wanted to think about anyway.

He shivered. "Let's go, Hakken," he said. "Tint, I'll be back as soon as I can. Wait here for me, all right?"

"Gar!" the beastgirl cried. She poised to jump.

"No, Tint!" Garric said, but she leaped onto the smooth stone anyway. When she slipped, she tried to catch Garric's leg. He strode ahead to avoid her grip.

"Come on, Hakken!" he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the wail as Tint slid to the ground. He jogged up—along—the sheer tower, keeping his eyes focused on the sky to avoid seeing that the ground was increasingly far behind him.

Tint continued to jump and wail. There'd been no sign of human guards, but Garric still found the noise disconcerting.

The top, two hundred feet in the air, was as smoothly rounded as a sword pommel. Garric paused, wondering what would happen if he stepped over the end—down, as it felt to him now. Hakken joined him, walking carefully. The tower was broad enough that the two men could have safely stood side by side, but the business was already too uncanny to take further chances.

Metron was chanting. Hakken held his axe in both hands, his elbows close to his sides. His face was set in a rictus, beyond fear and probably beyond hope as well.

Tint still shrieked; the distance wasn't great enough to mute the nerve-wracking cries. Garric felt a surge of anger which he suppressed in embarrassment. Anger at the beastgirl's inability to understand was as foolish as getting angry at a rainstorm... and in this case, a rainstorm that had repeatedly saved his life.