Mistress of the Catacombs (6 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Garric hit the water face first. He wasn't unconscious, just numb as though he'd been drugged.

The shock and splash freed him. His throat had tightened for a shout when he looked into the pool; the sound turned into a choking gurgle from a mouth filled with water and leaves.

By reflex Garric's arms brought his head up with a breast stroke. He and Sharina both swam like otters, a skill that few of their neighbors in Barca's Hamlet had learned—not even the fishermen who took their dories out beyond the sight of land and every day risked an unexpected storm.

Leaf mold stained the water black. Great branches interlaced overhead, their lush foliage hiding all but speckles of the bright blue sky. He'd fallen from a ruined building into a meandering stream; the bank before him was completely overgrown.

His body didn't feel right!

A female figure leaped screaming to the cornice from which he'd fallen, shrieking, "Gar! What happen?"

He could understand her, but he shouldn't have been able to because she wasn't human. Not fully human, at any rate: she was one of the hairy half-men of Bight. "Tint save you!" she cried, and she dived into the water beside him.

"I'm all right!" Garric said, but that wasn't true—though he wasn't at risk of drowning, he could swim as well as he ever could. His arms were a deeper tan than they'd ever been except at the end of a summer's plowing; these last few months of living as a prince rather than a peasant had left him as pale as someone with a swarthy Haft complexion ever got.

He was alone; King Carus no longer shared his mind as a constant companion and advisor. Garric clutched for the ancient coronation medal that should hang around his neck. There was nothing, not even a tunic; he was naked except for a breechclout of fabric as coarse as sacking.

Memories flooded in. They weren't Garric or-Reise's memories. Wedge-shaped jaws the size of a bread oven closing on his head—

There was a moment of disorientation as stunning as the shock that had paralyzed Garric on the bridge railing. His face slipped into the water.

Fingers strong enough to bend iron gripped his right shoulder and lifted him. "Tint save you!" the beastgirl screamed in his ear. "Tint save you!"

Tint paddled strongly for the bank from which he'd fallen. Garric stroked with his left arm, but he didn't try to break the beastgirl's grip on the other. He wasn't sure he could.

The stream's current was sluggish, but it had carried them past the ruins as Garric spluttered. The ornate building had ten feet of frontage on the water and was about that height despite the ruined condition of the cornice where he'd been standing, but it was only five or six feet wide. It was an altar or perhaps a monument, where statues had once sheltered beneath porches at either end. Thick vegetation hid any structures that might have been placed nearby.

A root was twisted over the bank. Tint caught it with her free hand and brought a gnarled, hairy leg up so that a prehensile foot could double her grip.

Garric put his legs down, expecting to touch bottom. Instead he stubbed his toe on the channel's masonry wall. He'd have gone under again had not the beastgirl raised him up like a sack of grain and deposited him on the bank.

She sprang up beside him and squatted on all fours. Her legs bent more naturally into that posture than they did when she stood upright.

"Tint save," she announced proudly. "Gar safe."

"Thank you, Tint," Garric said. The image of jaws closing on his head was still the most vivid of the new memories, though unfamiliar human figures also shuffled hazily through his mind. Most often the figures were shouting at him, striking at him, or kicking him the way some men would kick a dog.

Garric's belly muscles tensed over a cold lump. He wouldn't kick a dog; and nobody would kick him, unless they were trying to learn whether Garric could break their leg with his bare hands. Garric figured he probably could, if he were angry enough.

But the jaws....

Seawolves, giant marine lizards whose legs were little more than flippers to steer the beasts through the water, sometimes came ashore near Barca's Hamlet to prey on the flocks. Garric had killed seawolves, and once a seawolf had seized his leg and very nearly killed him.

He touched his calf. His body would bear the scars of those long fangs for the rest of its life, but this body did not. The muscles were rock hard, if anything stronger than Garric's own, but he no longer wore the form to which he had been born.

"Gar?" said the beastgirl nervously, sensing Garric's feeling of trapped horror.

"It's all right, Tint," he said, hoping he sounded reassuring. He stood up. There was nothing wrong with this body; it just wasn't his own.

There was nothing wrong with this body, but the mind that had used to wear it—

Garric raised his index fingers to his temples, probing gently. He found what he expected: a line of indentations on either side where the jaws of a huge seawolf had closed, driving its fangs deep into the bone. Into the bone, and into the brain beneath.

It was a wonder that Gar's body had survived a mauling like that. His mind had not survived.

"Gar, what wrong?" Tint said, standing also. Fully erect, she only came to the middle of Garric's chest. She began grooming him with her fingers. His scalp was as shaggy as a ram's fleece in winter, and now he had an unkempt beard as well.

"Nothing's wrong, Tint," Garric said, staring in bleak despair at the jungle of palmetto and larger trees choking the landscape around him. He saw squared stones under the network of surface roots supporting a large magnolia; as he'd guessed, there were extensive ruins in the vicinity.

"Nothing's wrong that you can help with," he added.

And very possibly no one could help. No one in whatever world this was.

* * *

As he sat above the tide line, Cashel ran a swatch of raw wool slowly over his quarterstaff. In part he was polishing the hickory, but mostly he used the familiar task to settle his mind. He carried the pad of wool under his belt. It'd sloshed through the breakers with him, but the fibers' coat of lanolin kept them free from salt water.

The girl was coming around. Cashel had wrung out his sodden outer tunic and rolled it into a pillow for her. The beach here was mostly sandy, but there were rocks in it.

"Mistress...," the girl murmured. Her left hand closed on the amulet hanging from her neck by a silver chain.

The storm had broken up; the remaining clouds scudded across expanses of clear sky. Cashel had already looked at the amulet by the light of the stars and the waxing moon: a lens of rock crystal whose silver mounting mimicked a spider lying on the disk and encircling it with her legs.

It wasn't something Cashel would have wanted to wear; but then, nobody was asking him to.

The girl sat up sharply. "Are we safe?" she said, peering at Cashel. She knuckled her eyes, trying to rub away the salt that blurred her vision. "Are you one of the sailors?"

"I think we're safe enough," Cashel said. He sounded hoarse and his stomach felt queasy; he must have swallowed seawater while he was fighting the surf, though he didn't remember it now. "I'm not a sailor, but there's other fellows here with us. I guess some of them may be sailors."

The light wasn't good enough to tell much, and Cashel didn't have the energy to go about meeting strangers in a place so new to him. Debris from the ship, human as well as cordage and timber, littered the beach. Not all the bodies were alive, of course, but some of them were starting to move.

"Ah," Cashel said. "My name's Cashel or-Kenset."

The girl was quickly regaining her composure. She touched the ground lightly, apparently judging whether her muscles had recovered enough from her struggle to shore that she could stand up again.

They hadn't; she didn't try. "I'm Lady Tilphosa bos-Pholial," she said with dignity. "Are we on Laut, Master Cashel?"

Cashel frowned. "Laut?" he said. "I don't think so, ah, Lady Tilphosa. But I'm not from around here either."

Up the beach had grounded a great wooden lump, either the ship's dinghy or a portion of the hull; one end rose and sank in the pull of the surf. A ball of blue light flickered beside the wreckage, then rolled a ghostly course down the sand toward Cashel and the girl.

Cashel hadn't been planning to move for a while yet. He decided he would after all, rising to his feet in a smooth motion. He gave his quarterstaff a trial spin. Funny how something like that brought his strength back better than a day's rest.

"Master Cashel!" the girl called. "What's the matter?"

"The light coming this way," Cashel said. "That's wizard's work."

He stepped forward to keep Tilphosa clear of the staff if he had to move quickly. Cashel and his seven feet of iron-shod hickory took up a lot of room.

The ball of light was the size of a man's head. It half-floated, half-bounced; never quite touching the ground, but never rising a hand's breadth above it. It was a blue haze just bright enough to show the texture of the pebble-strewn sand it crossed.

"It's all right, Cashel," the girl said. She grunted softly as she stood. "That's just Metra trying to find me."

"Lady Tilphosa!" called another female voice from the shelter of the wreck. "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right, Metra!" the girl said. She started up the beach, wobbling for the first few steps but then getting full control of her legs. The glowing ball dissolved like a shadow in sunlight.

Cashel followed, grimacing because he'd been worried about something that wasn't a threat after all. Still... he slanted his quarterstaff across his chest instead of leaning it on his shoulder as he walked. Metra might not be a danger, but there was danger enough in this place: the great serpent writhing out beyond the breakers for one.

Coming toward them was a youngish woman, in her early twenties perhaps. She was plump, dark-haired, and wore a black robe slashed white across the front. The garment was much the worse for the usage it got during the wreck.

Cashel's eyes narrowed. The light wasn't good, but the woman looked a lot like the fellow who'd set the workmen on him this morning.

"Lady Tilphosa!" the woman said. "Thank the Mistress you're safe!"

Tilphosa embraced her and said, "Yes, She saved me through the agency of Master Cashel here. Cashel, this is Metra, Daughter of the Mistress. She's an acolyte at the Temple of the Lady, Mistress of the Moon, in Donelle—and accompanies me as advisor until the marriage."

"I'm Lady Tilphosa's guardian," Metra said in a distinctly cool tone as she appraised Cashel. "Who are you, sir?"

"I'm Cashel," Cashel responded, setting his feet a little wider. His voice was growing hoarse again, but his bath in sea water was no longer the cause. "I'm from Barca's Hamlet. Do you have an older brother, lady? The sort of guy who thinks if he can't buy what he wants, he'll buy toughs to take it for him?"

"What?" said Metra in surprise. "I have three sisters, two still-born and one died as an infant. What are you talking about?"

She held a knife-shaped thing covered with symbols in the Old Script. It was a wizard's tool, an athame. Well, Cashel already knew Metra was a wizard, even if she claimed to be a priestess besides.

"I met a man in Valles," Cashel said, still harsh but now embarrassed again; this time by the women's identical expressions of puzzlement. "He looked like you. And he was dressed like you, too."

Metra lifted her chin in a gesture of denial. "I know nothing of Valles," she said curtly. "As for my robe, it's what the Children of the Mistress wear. Perhaps another of us has journeyed to Valles, but he wasn't a relative of mine."

Her eyes locked with Cashel's again. "Now, sir," she said. "Tell us what you're doing here."

"I'm not sure," Cashel said, wishing that he didn't feel so defensive. Other survivors were moving in groups. Light winked; not wizardry this time but an honest bonfire kindled with handfuls of dry grass and fed with pandanus stems. "I went to help a friend who'd fallen into a pond, and then I was here."

"Where is 'here'?" Metra demanded. "Are we on Laut?"

One of the men around the fire stood up. In a loud voice he called into the darkness, "Did the priestess get to shore? Get her over here if she did! I want to talk to her."

One of his companions called in an equally loud voice, "I don't want to talk to her. If there's any justice, she's feeding that demon snake that wrecked us. You know it was because of her!"

Metra turned toward the fire, her lips forming a hard line. Her expression reminded Cashel again of the fellow who'd tried to take the statue from him in Valles. She didn't speak.

The sky had continued to clear. Cashel could recognize most of the constellations, but they didn't look quite right. The space between the Calves was too wide, and the feet of the Huntsman were above the Drinking Cup instead of below the way they should've been.

Metra's eyes focused again on Cashel. "Well?" she said. "Are we on Laut?"

"He says he's a stranger too," Tilphosa said, frustrated and a little angry because of her advisor's attitude. "Metra, he saved my life. He pulled me from the sea!"

Cashel cleared his throat. "I was in Valles," he said. "Something... brought me here. I don't know what."

"You're a wizard?" Metra said. She took a half step back and made an obscure movement with the athame. A splutter of blue wizardlight picked out the symbol the point had drawn in the air. "You are a wizard!"

"Cashel?" said Tilphosa in surprise, raising her eyes to look at him.

"I'm not," Cashel said. He'd growled and he didn't mean to. He planted his staff firmly in front of him and twisted it as if he was trying to screw the ferrule into the gritty soil. "I'm not a wizard, but I've been told.... Well, sometimes stuff happens when I'm around, that's all."

Cashel didn't want to think about what he was. He'd done fine being a shepherd and a man folks in the borough called on for heavy lifting. That's all he wanted to be: normal.

He sighed. The world had never much cared what Cashel wanted. This business was just another example of that.

"Mistress Metra!" bawled the leader of the men around the bonfire. "If you're alive, get over here or may the Sister take me if you don't wind up back in the sea!"

The fire was drawing the survivors together. Sailors from farther down the beach straggled by, eyeing the two women and Cashel as they passed.

"That's Captain Mounix calling," Tilphosa said. It was obvious that in a few moments someone would tell the captain that Metra was standing close by.

"Do you want me to go along when you talk to them?" Cashel said. He swung his staff level and brushed the ferrule clean with the hem of his inner tunic. He felt calm again, both because the subject had changed and because it looked like he'd have a chance to do something he understood.

"To handle them?" Metra sneered. "No, I'll take care of those fools myself."

"We're going to Laut because I'm betrothed to Prince Thalemos," Tilphosa said, in explanation but with a hint of understandable pride. "He's the ruler of Laut."

"Thalemos?" said Cashel. "I thought the ruler was named Echeus. I just saw him in Valles, talking to Garric."

Metra had started for the bonfire, but she was still close enough to hear Cashel's words. She turned sharply, holding the athame in a fashion that reminded Cashel it was a weapon—though not a material one.

"What did you say?" she demanded. "What do you know of Echea?"

"Echeus," Cashel corrected. His hands slid apart on the shaft of the quarterstaff, one to either side of the center where they were ready to make it spin and strike. "And I don't know anything about him, lady, just that he was talking to my friend Garric."

There was a moment's tense silence. Tilphosa put her hand on Cashel's forearm. "Echea was an enemy of ours," she said calmly. "An enemy of the Mistress, really. But she's dead now. You're sure of that, aren't you, Metra?"

"I was sure," the priestess said, with slight emphasis on was. "You saw someone named Echeus in Valles, you say? Was he the wizard who sent you here?"

Cashel made an angry gesture with his right hand, then gripped his quarterstaff again. "I don't know who put me here," he said. "I don't know where I am."

Instead of shouting, Captain Mounix crunched over the sand toward Metra and her companions. Most of the gathered survivors came with him.

Cashel looked up at the skewed constellations. "Who's the King of the Isles?" he said. "Do you know?"

"The king?" Tilphosa repeated. "Why, King Carus, of course. Who did you think it was?"

The arriving sailors saved Cashel from answering that question.