The Fortress of Glass (38 page)

The mat was crowded. Villagers with brushwood were coming forward. They got tangled with the nets their fellows stretched high on fishing spears whose springy, two-pronged heads were ideal for lifting the mesh.

The nets were supposed to form a barrier on both sides of the mat. That was more or less how it worked, but inevitably some of those holding the nets managed to tilt their spears inward, narrowing the walkway from its original six feet or so. There wasn't enough space for all the people and their gear unless everybody was careful-which would've been a greater marvel under the circumstances than the Lady coming down from the sky and declaring peace.

"Throw the-" Garric began but caught himself. "Throw the wood into the bog to get it out of the way," he'd meant to say, but that wouldn't work with the nets in place. He hadn't thought it through. The plan was falling apart and it was his fault!

The cat men's wicker bale lurched forward awkwardly, pushed by warriors rather than by their human slaves. They weren't used to the work, and their narrow pads didn't grip as well as human feet on the wet ground churned by past traffic; the roll jammed in the gateway.

Torag gave a great snarling roar and vaulted over the bridge. Warriors followed him in quick succession, each spanning the gap like a pouncing leopard.

Metz spun the minnow net he carried. Torag twisted in the air, avoiding the fine mesh but bowling the hunter over with his feet instead of braining him with the wooden mace as he'd intended to do. Metz fell back into the woman holding up one end of a heavy gill net, one of those the villagers used to drag their ponds; Torag tumbled on past into the bog.

Garric brought his axe around in a swift, slashing diagonal. Carus' instinct told him he couldn't miss the warrior leaping at him-but he did; it was like trying to cut a wisp of smoke. The Corl's long legs rotated away from the stroke; still in the air, the creature stabbed Garric through the right shoulder. His spear had barbs on the end of a stiff wooden point. It burned like a hot wire as it pierced the muscle.

The creature landed on its feet. Garric grabbed the Corl's right elbow so it couldn't bound away as it'd thought to do. He drove his right fist at the long cat face, using the butt of the axe helve because they were too close for him to swing the weapon normally. His whole right arm was afire, but the Corl's skull deformed at the blow and it lost its grip on the spear.

Garric hurled aside the twitching corpse and lifted his axe to strike again. Several humans were down, but besides the warrior he'd killed there were three more struggling in the bog and a fourth tangled on the inside of the gill net. Two women were methodically beating that one to death with their loads of firewood. The individual sticks were too light to make effective clubs, but the women were using their whole bundles end-on like giant pestles on the cat man's ribs.

"Throw them!" shouted Donria. A shower of burning brands spun over the fighters to land in the gateway. They'd been cut from an oily brush that lit easily and burned even when green, though with low, smoky flames. They were only sticks, not dangerous as missiles, but the Coerli, already uncomfortable to be fighting in broad daylight, feared and hated fire.

A warrior poising to leap from the wicker hurdle instead sprang backward with a howl. Those behind him shoved the rolled wicker out of the way and began pushing the gate leaves closed.

"Get'em!" Garric cried. He jumped forward and tripped to splash at the end of the villagers' own mat; his foot was tangled in a net.

The butt of the spear wobbling from Garric's shoulder hit the ground end-on, driving the point all the way in till the thicker shaft stopped it. He lost his grip on the axe and shouted in fury.

Torag dragged himself onto the matting; the strength in his shoulders was remarkable. He'd lost his mace. Metz cut at him with a sword edged with jagged teeth of shell. Torag avoided the blow easily and drew his hardwood knife. Donria stepped forward, swinging a torch in a smoky arc.

The Corl chieftain let out a despairing wail that was nothing like the other sounds Garric had heard from his throat. Instead of finishing Metz, he vaulted back through the gates of the stockade as they closed.

Garric looked around, trying to get his breath. His eyes blurred in and out of focus.

Three warriors were half submerged in the bog. Villagers, the ones who'd been holding up the net barriers, were now using the long spears to worry the Coerli to death. The springy fishing points weren't very suitable for the purpose, but enthusiasm and trapped victims were accomplishing the task. There's nothing neat about a battle....

Someone gripped Garric's arm from behind. He started to turn.

"Hold still!" Donria ordered. With her free hand she held the spear shaft firmly where it touched his shoulder. She bent and he felt her cheek against his back.

"What in the Lady's name are you-" he said. As he spoke, Donria twisted the shaft; he heard a crunch behind him.

Donria drew the spear out of his flesh almost painlessly. She brandished it in triumph: she'd bitten off the barbs and now spat them into the bog.

Garric took a deep breath. The gates were closed and the surviving cat men weren't showing themselves on the step of the stockade; the fighting was over for the moment.

"Now," said the ghost in Garric's mind, "we finish them!"

* * *

Ilna followed her companions onto a stretch of wet meadow, not very different from the tidal marsh near the mouth of Pattern Creek. She recognized many of the flowering plants-turtleheads, the great blooms of rose mallow, and sprays of Joe-pye weed. All the flowers were rose pink. It wasn't a color that much appealed to her, though—

She smiled at evidence of her own vanity.

-that might be because she'd never found a lightfast dye that would match it. Well, she didn't care for dyes anyway, even the best indigo. In Ilna's ideal world everyone would wear natural browns and grays and blacks; and whites too, white fleeces were natural, though white wasn't a favorite of hers personally.

She smiled again, amused at herself.

"Ilna, what time is it?" Merota asked in a small voice. "I'm getting tired."

Ilna glanced at the sun. At this season-late summer, judging by what was in flower-it should be about the second hour of the afternoon.

It'd been about the second hour of the afternoon when the three of them arrived in the garden, quite a while ago. She glanced at Chalcus.

"Aye," he said. "Not a bad time of day as such things go, though I might've chosen a later hour if I'd been asked. At least-"

He smiled to make the bald truth sound like a jest.

"-we needn't worry about things creeping up on us in the darkness, eh?"

He turned and jabbed his left hand into the hedge behind him with the speed of a striking cat. Quick as the sailor was-and Ilna had never seen a man quicker-his fist closed on air; the slender brown figure melted like liquid through the holly branches.

Chalcus sighed and drew back his hand. The spiky leaf-tips had clawed narrow trails the length of his forearm, but he hadn't jabbed the end of a twig through himself.

"Master Chalcus, what would you have done with it if you had caught it?" Ilna asked tartly. "I'm certainly not that hungry."

"Asked the little fellow some questions, is all, dear heart," Chalcus said. He gave her a broad grin and added, "And to be truthful as behooves the honest sailor that I am today, it gripes my soul that the little demons think they can snoop and scamper and spy on us and we can do nothing to let or hinder them."

"Can they really do that, Chalcus?" Merota said doubtfully.

"They can indeed, my darling girl," said the sailor. "Did I not just prove it?"

Ilna took a few steps out into the narrow meadow, looking about her. The vegetation was soft enough to make a good couch, but her bare toes squished water up from the soil. They'd best find a drier spot to rest.

"There's one!" called Merota, pointing with her right forefinger. A brown figure quivered from the east side of the meadow to the shaded hedge on the west, merging the holly as easily as the breeze that faintly ruffled the garden.

Ilna made a sour face. The little people were harmless, but so were the midges fluttering around her face and landing at the edges of her eyes. The insects tickled and distracted her. If there'd been a way to make them all vanish, she'd have—

The little brown man screamed like a leg-snared rabbit. He tried to leap back into the meadow, but the shadowed interior of the hedge closed about him. He screamed again, but faintly. His body was becoming misty. He turned his large eyes on Ilna in a look of desperate entreaty—

What does he think that I can do to help?"

-and faded completely away. For a moment Ilna thought she saw the little man's bones, as delicate as those of a dead goat picked clean by ants; then the skeleton too vanished. The knotted stems of the holly remained unchanged.

A cat the size of a horse stalked into the meadow from the aisle at the other end. Gossamer wings were folded tightly on its back; they were marked like oil-patterned paper and gave the impression of being feathered.

Growing from the cat's neck were a pair of viper heads on an arm's length of serpent body. They looked small compared to the cat, but Ilna didn't recall ever seeing another snake as big as these were.

Her fingers were knotting a pattern that instinct told her would be effective. She brought her hands up. The great cat spread a wing before its eyes. Soft pastel smudges distorted the creature's appearance to Ilna's eyes, and and they would also distort the effect of Ilna's pattern of mastery.

"Wait!" the cat said in a deep rumble. "I have no quarrel with Princes! If you wish to hunt in this meadow, you're welcome to it. Though-"

It sounded not so much hostile as aggrieved.

"-it's been part of my territory since the One brought me here."

"It's not hunting we're after doing, friend cat," said Chalcus in a lilting challenge. The dagger in his left hand drew fanciful little curlicues in the air. The glitter of the point drew an opponent's eye away from the sword in his right, rock steady and ready to thrust. "But it's not prey that we are either, do you see?"

"I think he's a chimaera, Chalcus," Merota said in a tiny schoolgirl voice. She was terrified and therefore going back to the routines of normalcy, of tutors and knowlege from books. "Only not exactly."

"I know you're not Prey," the cat-the chimaera?-said with a touch of irritation. "I'll back away and leave the meadow to you, if you like. What could be clearer than that?"

"Wait," said Ilna, folding the knotted fabric into her left hand. She walked forward, past where Chalcus had stationed himself. He frowned but wisely held his tongue. "If you've lived here for a time, then you can answer a question."

For an instant she'd been considering ways to modify her fabric so that the effect would pass the creature's veiling wing. That was merely a competitive reflex, a desire to prove to the chimaera that it couldn't escape Ilna os-Kenset by a trick like that.

And perhaps it couldn't, but life had brought Ilna enough real enemies that she didn't need to fight something which didn't want to fight her. The chimaera was ugly and probably dangerous if it wanted to be, but if it didn't threaten her or hers, then it could live or die without Ilna's involvement.

"Perhaps," the chimaera said. "We Princes owe one another courtesy. For the sake of quiet lives, if nothing else."

It partially folded its wing. Ilna wondered if the creature could really fly. Was it possible to fly out of the tapestry?

"One of the little people just ran into the hedge there," she said, gesturing-not quite pointing-with her left hand. She kept her eyes on the great beast.

"Yes, the Prey," the chimaera said. "Are you having trouble catching them? I'll willingly help fellow Princes, of course."

"That won't be necessary," Ilna said. Her voice sounded grim in her own ears; but then, it generally did. "What concerns me is that the little man vanished. Seemed to dissolve. There was nothing there that I could see, but...." She shrugged.

"Ah!" said the chimaera. Its head jerked toward where Ilna indicated, and it started sideways into the opposite hedge. "Ah. You saw that, did you? Well, it's safe enough now. It doesn't stay around after it's fed... or it doesn't seem to, anyway."

"Yes, but what was it?" Ilna said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice but not succeeding especially well. "I didn't see anything, just the man disappearing."

"We call it the Shadow," said the chimaera, "but...."

The big creature made a rumbling sound deep in its chest, apparently the equivalent of a man clearing his throat before he was ready to speak.

"It never comes for Princes," the chimaera went on, "or almost never. But most of us, certainly myself... we prefer not to use the name. Sometimes you call something to yourself by naming it, you know. Or they say so."

"They say a lot of things," said Ilna tartly, but her irritation was more at the situation than this great cat's fearful mumbling. "Is the-"

She waved her left hand in a quick circle. Using the word 'Shadow' wasn't going to help in getting information from the cat; and anyway, the concern might be correct. She knew very little about this place, and she knew nothing about the Shadow save that she didn't want to meet it. There was no point in using a name that could be harmful to herself and her friends.