Mistress of the Catacombs (5 page)

* * *

"A quarter past the seventh hour!" said the crier standing like a colorful statue on his podium beside the flagstoned pathway. As Sharina waited for Garric, she glanced through the columns of the pergola toward the call. The servant turned his eyes aside so that he wouldn't seem to be spying on Prince Garric and his companions even though it was his job to call the time in their direction.

On hot days Garric often worked in this corner of the compound with its tall hedges and fountains. Now he bent over the table, signing short parchment documents one at a time as Liane put them before him. A gaggle of aides and runners waited against need just outside the pergola, and a dozen Blood Eagles stood just beyond.

Half the guards were turned outward, watching for threats which might lurk among the structures and plantings; the other six kept their eyes on those inside the pergola. Sharina smiled sadly. It wouldn't occur to Garric to worry that his sister might try to assassinate him; it wouldn't occur to a Blood Eagle not to worry.

Fountains on each of three superimposed terraces splashed and gurgled as they fed a stream running in a channel of cut stone. The landscaping was as old as the palace compound, but recent repairs meant that some blocks of the soft volcanic rock were clean though most wore beards of moss that wobbled in the gentle current.

An ascetic-looking man in sea-green silk knelt on the other side of the streamhead, apparently in prayer. He was a stranger to Sharina but from his dress not a servant.

Garric finished the last of the patents and looked up; his eyes followed Sharina's. "That's the ruler of Laut," he said. "My next meeting." He shook his head in frustrated wonder. "I'm supposed to be talking to him now."

"Echeus, the Intercessor of Laut," said Liane, amplifying Garric's statement rather than correcting him. She filed the sheaf of completed documents and closed her little desk. "I'll ready the next group for your signature while you're with Echeus; those will be the judicial appointments for the three Ataras."

"Garric, if this isn't a good time—" Sharina said, a little irritated despite herself. She knew the demands on her brother's time, but the only reason she was here now was that he'd said he wanted to hear about Moon Wisdom as soon as possible.

Her brother raised his hands. "Sharina, without the weight you take off me, and the organization Liane provides...," he said. He covered Liane's hand on the table; she turned it palm up and squeezed back fiercely.

"Without those things," Garric went on, "the kingdom could better run itself than be in the muddle I'd make of it. I don't mean to complain about the part of the job that's left for me."

He nodded, putting an end to the apology. "Now," he said crisply, fully King of the Isles in tone and manner, "tell me about Tisamur and Moon Wisdom."

"The Inspector of Temple Lands has only three Assessors under him...," Sharina said. She'd taken notes during the interview, but she didn't need to look at them. "For some reason he decided to send one to Tisamur."

"His wife has property there," Liane murmured. "Well, perhaps that's fortunate."

"I talked to the Assessor, Kidwal bos-Kidrian," Sharina said. "I believe she's a trustworthy witness."

Kidwal was a young woman from the minor nobility; smart, well-educated, and very plain. It'd seemed to Sharina that the barely-suppressed anger in Kidwal's presentation was more a reaction to life in general than at her difficulty in getting anybody to take action on her present report.

"She says that the regular temples on Tisamur, at least those within several days' journey from Donelle—" the island's capital "—are either deserted or 've been surrendered to Moon Wisdom. Most of the priests and temple functionaries have joined the new cult, though a few have gone into lay businesses or are living on their personal wealth."

"Moon Wisdom confiscated temple lands?" Garric said, frowning. "Is the... who is the ruler, a count? Is he behind this?"

"A Council of Elders governs Tisamur," Liane said. She touched her desk but didn't need to open it to withdraw a reference. "Wealthy individuals; all of them landholders, though many depend on trade for most of their income."

"Moon Wisdom is the government now," Sharina said. "It's not imposed by force, it seems to be what people want. Lady Kidwal says she wasn't attacked even though she'd arrived openly without concealing her, well, duties. But those she questioned were derisive."

Sharina paused to recall the assessor's precise wording, letting her eyes follow the barn swallows darting above the water. She could see several mud nests plastered to the underside of the three-arched bridge crossing the artificial stream. Most of the meandering channel was narrow enough to step across, but the architect had provided a lotus-fringed pool so that the bridge didn't look absurd.

"She said," Sharina continued, "that one former Elder told her, 'Whoever saw the Lady, except as a statue being pulled by purse-snatchers in priestly robes? But I've seen our Gods and so have many others.' And everyone listening nodded agreement."

"Did he say what these Gods looked like?" Garric asked, pressing the knuckles of his fists together. Liane looked particularly intent also. Sharina guessed they'd learned more from the vanished Hordred than they'd had time to pass on to her.

"No," Sharina said. "Kidwal asked a number of citizens, in Donelle and also outside the city. That was the only question that seemed to disturb them."

Sharina cleared her throat. "There's one thing more," she said. "Kidwal was permitted to go where she pleased—not into the temple during services, but apart from that. She could talk to anyone, and she doesn't think she was watched or followed. She says very clearly that she wasn't threatened in any way."

"Go on," Garric said. His expression was still but not calm. When Garric was in this—mood? But it was more than a mood—he seemed less like the brother she'd grown up with than he did a great cat, waiting for prey to come a few steps closer.

"Despite all that," Sharina said, "Lady Kidwal was frightened. Frightened enough to convince her chief to get her an appointment with me."

She swallowed. "Frightened enough to frighten me, Garric," she concluded.

Garric stood and braced his hands against one of the cross-beams supporting the pergola's roof. He bunched the muscles of his shoulders and thighs, straining upward to work the stiffness out of them. Echeus, waiting across the stream, turned toward the group in the pergola for the first time. He didn't get to his feet yet.

"Hordred frightened me as well, Sharina," Garric said. He grinned wryly at her. "That was before we saw him disappear."

He turned his head and added, "Liane, can this Intercessor wait while I talk to Lady Kidwal myself?"

"I'll meet with him if you like, Garric," Sharina offered. "If it's just a formal audience, that is. But I really don't believe that Kidwal knows any more than she told me and I've passed on to you. It's what she feels that's important, and she can't give a reason for that."

"There are reports from Laut that something... odd is going on there also," Liane said. "The Intercessor's coming to see you could be an opportunity to learn what he wants, if not necessarily what he plans."

Sharina's eyes narrowed very slightly. Liane was too polite to give Garric a direct order, but she was ordering him nonetheless. Still, it was for his good and the kingdom's, of that Sharina was sure.

"All right," Garric said. He hitched up his swordbelt so that the heavy weapon rode more comfortably. "I'll talk to Echeus."

Echeus rose also, tossing a glitter of powder into the stream before he started toward Garric. The men would meet in the middle of the bridge unless one stopped for the other to join him.

Two guards tried to precede Garric; he gestured them back with a curt command. The under-captain in charge of the detachment eyed the Intercessor's aged dignity. He frowned, but he didn't argue the issue of safety with his sovereign.

Movement from the side drew Sharina's attention. Escorted by another group of Blood Eagles, Tenoctris and Cashel were returning from their foray into the city.

Cashel waved his quarterstaff in greeting. On his left shoulder he carried a lump of stone. From the way his ripped tunics fluttered loose, he'd been to considerable effort getting it.

Sharina smiled as she walked out of the pergola to meet her friends. Cashel's presence was a wall of security. For the first time since she'd seen Hordred vanish screaming, Sharina felt safe.

* * *

Dragonflies and swallows whizzed over the sluggish stream, but they didn't get all the insects. When Garric stepped from sunlight into the shade cast by poplars near the water, a mosquito keened close to left ear. He swatted, hoping to drive it away if not kill it.

In Garric's mind, King Carus chuckled and said, "There's more honesty in blackflies than in courtiers, lad. The bugs are just as quick to suck the blood of a shepherd as a prince."

Garric smiled. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine that he was herding sheep near the marshes fringing Pattern Creek. Mosquito bites weren't something he'd ever have thought would make him feel nostalgic.

The Intercessor came from the other direction at a stately pace. Garric frowned, wondering who Echeus interceded with. Probably he interceded for the people of Laut or at least claimed to do so.

Reise had given his children a classical education which couldn't have been bettered by one of the academies in Valles or Erdin on Sandrakkan. Unlike Liane, however, who had attended one of those academies, Garric and Sharina knew little more about current events than did any other peasant from Haft.

Garric smiled again. His education taught him that 'prince' meant 'first'. It was an honest claim, if not an humble one.

Again Carus guffawed. "Princes don't have to be humble," he said, hooking his thumbs in his swordbelt and flaring his fingers. Carus was such a vibrant presence in Garric's mind that Garric had to keep reminding himself that others didn't see the ancient monarch—who had drowned a thousand years in the past.

The hump of the arching bridge hid Echeus from Garric when they were on the opposite approaches, though both men were tall. Garric looked over his shoulder. His detachment of Blood Eagles followed at a respectful distance. In the pergola, Liane and Sharina greeted Tenoctris and Cashel. They were looking at a rock—a small boulder—on the table. Whatever had Tenoctris found this time?

Echeus rose into view, step by step. He was an imposing figure: spare rather than powerful, but surrounded with an aura of enormous dignity. Garric had the impression of a person whose time scale was that of an oak, or possibly of the crag of a mountain.

"Lord Echeus?" he said when they were within a double-pace, right toe to right toe, of one another.

Echeus stopped and bowed slightly. "Thank you for meeting me, Prince Garric," he said in a thin, hoarse voice.

Unexpectedly Echeus turned and looked over the bridge coping. "What is that in the water, do you suppose?" he said.

Garric peered into the pool. A few leaves rotated slowly on the surface; at one stone edge glistened a mass of frog eggs. In the water directly under the central arch on which Garric stood—

For a moment, Garric thought he saw his reflection and that of the bridge he stood on. The reflected stonework was covered with lush, broad-leafed vegetation like nothing that grew on Ornifal, though, and the figure looking at him from the pool was—

"Get back!" King Carus shouted.

Too late. There was a flash of vivid red light like nothing in the natural world. The reflected figure was toppling upward and Garric was falling toward it.

They merged at the surface of the water. There was a crash like the cosmos splitting—

And Garric was alone in his mind.

* * *

"Set it here," Liane suggested, waving Cashel to the table under the pergola.

He eyed the surface doubtfully before he set the statue there, but she was right about it being sturdy enough. Though small, the table was polished granite and at least as solid as the plinth the statue must originally have stood on. Cashel placed his burden with his usual care so that it didn't roll off; stone scrunched on stone.

Sharina hugged him. "Cashel," she said, "I was just thinking how lucky I am to have you. You make me feel safe."

Cashel blushed. In front of everybody! He was even prouder than he was embarrassed, but he was so embarrassed he couldn't breathe for a moment.

"I'm all black from the stone," he said in a hoarse voice. He raised his hands; they were smudged with the residue of decaying marble.

"Cashel...," said Tenoctris, scrubbing at the block with the hem of her robe. Cashel was enough Ilna's brother to cringe at such a use of a fine silk garment. "Look at this! I hadn't noticed."

The statue's right arm, apparently raised, was broken off at the shoulder, but the left hand had been placed on its girdle. The marble fourth finger wore a real ring, a ruby on a simple gold band. While Cashel carried the statue, he'd flaked away the crust of corroded stone which had been covering the jewel.

"It's a pretty little thing, isn't it?" Cashel said. He waited for Tenoctris to tell him what to do. Instead she turned away from the statue to stare abstractedly toward the fountains in the near distance.

"Tenoctris?" he said.

Ignoring him, she took a bamboo sliver from her right sleeve. She knelt and began to scribe on the gritty stone floor with it.

Many wizards used athames of exotic materials for their spells; the tool gained power each time it twisted the forces of the cosmos to the wizard's will. Tenoctris instead picked a simple twig or split of wood, casting each makeshift wand away after one use. She said that no one could be sure of what they were doing if they practiced their art with an object in whose fabric they'd overlaid and braided past wizardry.

Tenoctris claimed she wasn't a powerful wizard. Probably she was correct—it wasn't a matter Cashel could judge. But she was a very, very careful wizard; and in the past that care had saved her and the Isles as well, to Cashel's certain knowledge.

Sharina and Liane were watching him expectantly. "Go on, Cashel," Sharina said. "It's yours."

With a grin of acknowledgment, Cashel gripped the ring between his left thumb and forefinger and gave it a twist. He didn't expect it to come loose—not unless he used more strength than he planned to, anyway—but it turned easily.

Still wondering, he pulled. The ring slipped free in a cloud of powdered lime; Cashel sneezed.

"I wonder why someone put a ring on—" Liane said, bending slightly for a better look at the circlet in Cashel's hand.

Tenoctris looked up from the simple triangle of words in the Old Script which she'd traced in the grit. "Garric!" she cried. "Cashel, stop him!"

"Garric!" Cashel bellowed, but he was already in motion. Garric stood on the bridge arch near a well-dressed stranger, looking down at the pool. Tenoctris couldn't shout loudly enough for him to hear her.

Cashel burst out of the pergola at a dead run, holding his staff crossways and close to his body. He didn't call again because he'd popped the ring in his mouth for safe-keeping. In common with most poor folk, that's where he'd generally carried the few coins he came by until he paid them out again. Faced with a sudden crisis, he treated the ring the same way out of reflex.

Red wizardlight flashed, unmistakable even in the bright sun. For a moment the ruby glare shone through the ancient stone of the bridge. Even after the initial flash, a rosy haze hung over the water.

Garric toppled forward, over the railing and into the glow. He fell like a half-filled wineskin, limply unconscious. One of the Blood Eagles at the foot of the bridge immediately jumped into the pool—and sank.

The water was a good deal deeper than landscaping required. From the way it clouded as the soldier flailed desperately, the bottom was gluey muck like that of a marsh. The man was in half-armor: thirty pounds of steel, leather, and blackened bronze since he hadn't even taken the time to unstrap his helmet. No amount of strength and good will was going to enable a man with no more fat than a rutting stag to swim while wearing that load.

Cashel wasn't going to be able to swim either: he was afraid of the water, so he'd never learned how. He was still afraid; that didn't make any difference now.

The distinguished-looking stranger who'd been talking to Garric raised his hands palms-upward. Two Blood Eagles grabbed his wrists and forced him down on his knees. The fellow didn't resist, not that it would have done him any good.

Cashel jumped as far out as he could get, the way he would've tried to cross a stream in spate. He landed feet first, legs pumping, as he sank through water and wizardlight. Holding his quarterstaff out to the side where he wouldn't slap Garric with it, he thrashed his way forward. He couldn't see properly. It had gotten dark and salt stung his eyes.

The staff was hickory and floated despite its iron ferrules. With luck it was long enough to touch bottom; if not, Cashel hoped to hold it out so that a soldier at the margin of the pool could seize it before he and Garric sank.

And if not that either, well, he'd tried.

The wind screamed. For an instant Cashel thought he heard Sharina call his name, but the gale carried her voice away.

Cashel's left hand caught fabric and closed on it. A lightningbolt lit the sky and reflected from the white frothing surf in which he struggled. More lightning slashed cloud to cloud. The shore was fifty double paces ahead of him and an undertow was trying pull him out.

Cashel didn't know where he was, but that could wait till there was more leisure. The person he dragged with him wasn't Garric; when the white flashes quivered from an upturned face, he saw he held a girl of more or less his age. Her expression was set but not panicky. She grabbed his sash with both hands.

Cashel set his quarterstaff on the firm holding behind him, then lumbered several steps forward on the thrust of the next wave. The girl managed to get her feet down and help, though when the water started to stream back she fluttered like a flag in a windstorm.

Cashel dug his staff in and waited, then resumed his march as a comber boiled over him and his burden. He didn't know what was happening but he knew what he had to do; that was all that mattered.

The reversing wave twisted him sideways. Over his left shoulder he saw a ship breaking up in the lightning-lit darkness. The surf sprang as high as the mast trucks from the fangs of a reef. More human figures struggled in the water, though it was hard to tell them from other flotsam in the blue-white glitter from the sky.

The current released him. Cashel and the girl strode forward, moving faster because the sea was no more than knee deep now. The girl lost her footing at the ebb, but Cashel continued to plod on. She pulled herself up on his sash, then scrambled the last few steps without his support.

Cashel heard a long, deep cry from out to sea. He turned, feeling wobbly. The effort of the last minutes had caught up with him now that he had time to be exhausted. He thought the sound was wind howling in the cavity of the ship as a hatch carried away and gave it passage; but he was wrong.

A reptile raised its wedge-shaped head from the breakers beyond the reef. Lightning gave its wet scales the sheen of opals. Then, with a sideways lurch seaward, the long body vanished again.

The girl had collapsed on the sandy beach. Cashel picked her up by an arm and staggered a few steps farther inland to where they'd be beyond even the strongest of the waves.

Cashel spat the ring into the wash leather purse he wore on a cord around his neck. His fingers were numb. His whole body was numb.

He'd build an altar to the Shepherd in thanks for his safety; but later. A little later.