Queen of Demons (56 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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“I apologize, Master Ascelei,” Ilna said, feeling the knot of self-loathing begin to form in her stomach. It always did after she realized she'd used her abilities for an end she couldn't justify as having made the world a better place. “I'm a guest in your household. It isn't my place to discipline your servants, and I shouldn't have done it in that fashion anyway.”
“Othem has been known to insult guests—friends and good clients of mine—when he doesn't feel their lineage is sufficiently exalted,” the mercer said. He spoke with perhaps more care than he would have shown if he didn't understand what Ilna had just done. “I didn't know how to break him of the practice without dismissing him, and in general he's a very useful servant. I'm still further in your debt, mistress.”
He dipped his head to Ilna in gesture that was almost a bow.
Ilna grimaced. It bothered her obscurely that she appeared to have done exactly the right thing when she knew perfectly well that her intentions had been bad. She didn't expect to find justice, but it seemed deeply wrong to be unjustly good.
Halphemos, his right hand still clutching whatever it was he hid in his other sleeve, sidled close to Ilna. “I have something to show you in private,” he announced in a barnyard whisper.
Ilna could have slapped him. Instead she said in a voice that came all the way from the Ice Capes, “My host Master Ascelei invited you here as a favor to me. If you have secrets you don't wish to share with him, boy, please take them and yourself out of his house. I'll join you when I'm able to stomach your discourtesy—which won't be in the near future, I assure you.”
Halphemos opened his mouth to protest, then looked stricken. He'd let his excitement run away with him, but he did know better.
“I'll leave the three of you here,” Ascelei said equably. “I'll see that you're not disturbed.”
He smiled. The mercer's sense of humor—indeed, his personality—were not dissimilar to Ilna's own. “I don't think Master Othem was going to be intruding anyway.”
Ilna started to protest, then shrugged. This balcony was as good a place to talk secrets as any in Divers. The spectators were dispersing, but the normal traffic along the Parade formed a blanket of noise to smother words quietly spoken in the open air. Of course a servant might lean against—
“But do explain to your household … ,” Cerix said loudly. He'd backed his cart around into a corner so that he could look directly at the others on the narrow balcony. “ … that Mistress Ilna would never use her powers to strike a spy deaf and blind.”
“What?” said Ascelei, looking at the cripple in surprise. He smiled again. “Yes, I see. I'll inform them.”
The mercer closed the balcony door behind him. When Ilna had quenched the instant's anger at what had been implied in her name, she smiled also. It was a clever trick, and harmless.
Halphemos knelt and withdrew a bag of soft red leather from his sleeve. “Look at this!” he said as he opened the drawstrings. “When I sell it, we'll have passage for three to Valles and a fortune leftover besides!”
He poured a pearl the size and shape of a pigeon's egg onto his palm. It was mounted as a pendant with a gold cap, though the chain or cord was missing.
“Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Halphemos said.
“Occasionally,” Ilna said, though the pattern of light through the jewel's iridescent layers spoke to her as to few others, she suspected. “And I've seen things that were even more dangerous for castaways in a foreign land to hold, Halphemos. Occasionally.”
“Where did you get it, Alos?” Cerix said quietly. The
cripple's hands kneaded his thighs just above the stumps. He looked as worried as Ilna was furious.
“I can't tell you that,” Halphemos said, defensive against his companions' unexpected lack of enthusiasm. “It's not stolen, that's all that matters.”
“No,” Ilna said coldly, “it's not all that matters. The best thing you can do with that is throw it in the sea.”
Halphemos stuffed the pearl back in its bag with trembling hands. He stood, white with anger. “You're just jealous!” he said. “Well,
Mistress
Ilna, it's time you realize that there's other people who can do things even when you can't! I'll buy us all passage to Valles. You can decide if you want to come search for your brother or stay here and sulk because
I
earned the money. By my art!”
He jerked the door open. Seemingly, Halphemos had forgotten the small sack he now held openly in his hand. “Cerix,” he said, “come along with me. The mistress doubtless has things to discuss with her wealthy friends.”
Cerix wheeled himself into the loft proper, bumping over the sill. He threw Ilna a worried look; Ilna nodded a reply. Halphemos flounced out angrily without meeting her eyes again.
Ilna hoped the boy would allow Ascelei's servants to help Cerix negotiate the stairs instead of doing it himself. In his present state, Halphemos was apt to tip his friend all the way down. That would be
all
the situation needed!
Though flinging Cerix down the staircase was less dangerous to the cripple and all of them than what Halphemos proposed to do with the pearl. Jewels like that one screamed an owner's name louder than a summonsing bailiff did.
Maybe Cerix could talk the boy out of his foolishness. Ilna didn't see a better hope.
Though it wasn't a very good one, as determined as Halphemos had sounded.
 
 
“Awaken, Cashel or-Kenset,” the cracked voice said. “Your body is renewed, your spirit is refreshed. Awaken now and aid me as I have aided you!”
Cashel was drifting in a fog of purple smoke. He wasn't worried; the smoke buoyed him up like salt water, but he could breathe its tendrils as well.
“Awaken, Cashel,” the voice said. “I, Silya, command you by the virtues I have arrayed to tend your hurts!”
“Who are you?” Cashel demanded groggily. He felt his lips move, proving that he was speaking aloud. He opened his eyes, though the effort to do so amazed him.
He lay on his back on a board. He patted the surface with his fingertips, noted the chill, and realized it was polished stone instead of wood. So. He lay on a stone slab, stark naked, in a vault lighted by braziers which puffed rich-colored smokes as well as a lurid glow into the air.
He was lying like a corpse laid out for burial.
“Hey!” Cashel said. He kicked his legs over the edge of the slab and stood, looking around wildly. No one was in the room with him except for Silya, the woman wearing the bones through her ears in Dalopan fashion. She was naked as well, but tattoos covered her body like a garment of knobbly lace.
“Cashel or-Kenset,” she said, waving a bone rattle at him. The box was made from a dog's skull, but the thigh bone laced to it for a handle was human or Cashel was blind. “I've brought you back from the portal of death. Now you will help me and—”
She thrust the rattle directly at Cashel's face; he suppressed an urge to crush the ugly thing in his fist.
“—between us we will be the Beast's overlords in this world!”
“Where are my clothes?” Cashel said. The smoke was making him gag, though he supposed it was meant to be soothing. “And where are my friends, Zahag and Aria?”
He looked around without seeing his tunic or anything else he could throw over himself for the moment. The
braziers' flickering illumination hid as much as it revealed. On the floor about the slab was chalked a many-sided figure with words on the margin.
The wizard looked puzzled. Cashel supposed Silya had expected some other response than simple disgust and a desire to leave her presence. He wasn't afraid of her, and he certainly wasn't grateful. “You're the one who sent me and Zahag to the other Pandah, aren't you?” he said. “Keep away from me with that toy you're holding or I'll feed it to you, by the Shepherd I will!”
“That was a mistake,” she said. “Here, I have clothing for you in the next chamber.”
Silya walked to a door which, with its frame, seemed to have been knocked together recently: the wood was still oozing sap. Similar wooden barriers closed the five other archways, though they didn't have doors set into them. The vault had been blocked out of the foundations of a large building, probably Folquin's palace.
Cashel slammed the door behind him, thankfully closing off the still-smoldering braziers. He coughed loudly to clear the cloying fumes from his throat.
This room was also a vault walled off by partitions, but here the bricks were covered with mats of colored grasses woven in attractive geometric designs.
Ilna would be interested in those
, he thought.
A hammock hung from hooks set across one corner. Patterned baskets with covers stood along the walls, and a pole stand held a variety of tools. Those could be intended either for cooking, torture, or wizardry.
A bronze oil lamp lighted the space. The lobes for the three wicks were each shaped like a man's private parts. Cashel's nose wrinkled.
“I thought your woman Sharina was the important one,” Silya said as she lifted the lid from a storage basket. It was cunningly made, requiring a twist rather than a straight pull to release it. “That's because my brother believed the girl was the scion of the old line who could lead him to the Throne of Malkar.”
She paused, then plucked a tunic from the basket and shook it open for Cashel. It was of simple pattern—indeed, it had probably been sewn from an awning—but that was fine with him.
He took the garment. Cashel knew he didn't owe anything to this woman, but he always felt good toward somebody who was helping him. Of course, it was Silya's interference that had caused all the trouble to begin with … .
Cashel draped the tunic over him. As he shrugged the heavy cotton down past his shoulders, he digested what the Dalopan wizard had just said.
When his head emerged from the tunic, Cashel looked at her. In a very quiet voice he said, “What have you done to Sharina?”
He took a step forward. The world he saw was gray except for the startled wizard and the expanse of brick wall behind her.
Silya's eyes flicked toward the stand of tools, then wisely met Cashel's again. She even tossed aside the bone rattle in her hand. “The girl's unharmed!” she said. “She was nothing to me after all, so I let her go with the boy wizard I replaced here on Pandah.”
Cashel took a deep breath. “But you said …” He tried to remember exactly what Silya
had
said. Everything had blurred for a moment. He looked at his hands and clenched them to work the tension out.
“My brother thought she was important,” Silya said, taking quick, relieved breaths herself. “He was drawing her to him. I traced his work and thought I'd forestall him here on Pandah. But he was wrong, so I let her go.”
She wasn't lying. Cashel was used to people trying to lie to him. It wasn't as easy as strangers thought, but sometimes they succeeded.
They never succeeded when Cashel was angry, the way he was now. He could see right to their heart.
Silya started to pick up the garment she'd draped over the hammock, then dropped it to return her attention to
the young man before her. “My brother Silyon stole the Stone of Connection from me,” she said. “He communicates with the Beast through it. You and I will take the Stone back from him and we will be the Beast's viceroys!”
Cashel wasn't sure hold old the wizard was. At first he'd thought she was quite old, fifty at least, but Silya's voice was that of a much younger woman. The tattoos aged her. Besides, travelers' tales claimed that the folk of Dalopo looked ancient by the time they were thirty—which was old enough in all truth.
“Where did Sharina go?” Cashel asked. “And where are Aria and Zahag?”
“Don't you hear me?” Silya shouted. “I offer you half of all power and you ask about girls and beasts. You can have every woman in the world if you join me!”
Cashel stepped toward her again before he was even conscious that he was moving. She shouldn't have talked about Sharina that way.
“The girl Aria is fine!” Silya said hastily. “She's with the king and quite the favorite. The ape's probably all right too, though why you should care is beyond me. The meat's stringy at best, and the males are gamy besides.”
Cashel forced himself to relax. “And Sharina?” he asked.
“She went off to Valles with the other wizards,” Silya said. “The boy and the cripple. My brother was drawing her, as I told you, but he was wrong about her power. She's just a girl.”
“Yes,” said Cashel in a guttural voice as he started for the door out of this chamber. “She is.”
“Cashel or-Kenset, wait!” the wizard said. She raised both her hands, palms outward, though she stepped out of Cashel's way. “You broke through the planes by your own main strength. With me to guide you, no one can stand against us! We'll take the Stone, and perhaps we'll be able to rule the Beast instead of ruling this world beneath him!”

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