The Fortress of Glass (46 page)

"It's a very inefficient way to rule, your highness!" said Tadai. "The clerks-"

"The clerks will cope," Sharina said. "You will cope. Because the soldiers out there-"

She gestured to the south wall of the tent. Beyond the canvas wall was the slope to the battlefield and then to the sea from which they could expect more hellplants at sunrise.

"-are coping with something much more difficult than a seven mile journey over a bad road. So long as they're here fighting, I'll be here too. Just as my brother would've been. As you know well."

"You can't do anything, your highness," Tadai said, but his protests had lost their fierce edge. He didn't agree with her, but he knew by now that she wasn't going to budge.

"I can be seen, Tadai," Sharina said. She smiled; it wasn't something a man like Lord Tadai could understand. "The troops can see me watching them as they fight to save the kingdom."

Though salvation was in Double's hands, at least for now. If the wizard failed, the army would at best delay the attacking plants.

More wood, brush and heavier timbers as well, had been brought up during the night; it filled the trenches in front of the breastworks. That would hold for a time, and the soldiers' swords would hold for a further time. The phalanx had marched across the island; perhaps its twenty-foot pikes would prove more useful than the shorter spears of the regular infantry.

But after that, human resources were exhausted. Without Double, it was simply a matter of how fast the hellplants could walk and how many more would come out of the sea. Not that there was any reason to fear failure after the wizard's triumph the previous day....

"If you'll excuse me, milord," Sharina said, stepping out of the tent past the nobleman. "It'll be dawn shortly, and I want to talk to Tenoctris beforehand."

She and Tadai had discussed everything there was to say about her location. In truth she didn't have any important business with Tenoctris either, but the old wizard was a friend in a fashion that Lord Tadai-smart and skilled and completely loyal though he was-could never be to someone who never forgot she'd been raised as a peasant.

Tenoctris was a noble also, but all she'd ever cared about was her studies. She'd spent much of her life in garrets and the dusty basements of libraries, oblivious of her surroundings and completely untouched by notions of birth and family. Tadai was plumply sleek and studiedly cultured. Like Waldron, a noble of a very different sort, Tadai was brave and hard working-but neither man could look at another person without first determining where that person ranked in the social order.

Friends are equals. Sharina was no more comfortable with Tadai's deference than she'd have been with with him ignoring her if she were waiting tables in her father's inn.

The tent didn't have a charcoal brazier, but the dozen candles for lighting and the watchful Blood Eagles-present by Attaper's order no matter who was talking to Sharina-must've warmed the interior more than she'd realized. The dank sea wind was stronger than she'd expected. She hugged herself and started back inside for a wrap.

"Here you go, Princess," said Trooper Lires, one of the guard detail. He swung the cape he must've brought from the wardrobe in the tent's curtained anteroom. "I figured you'd want this, so I grabbed it."

"In the Lady's name, my man!" Tadai protested. "Show some respect for your ruler."

"He's keeping me warm, which is better," Sharina said, letting the soldier help her on with the garment. Blood Eagle officers were noblemen, but even they weren't courtiers. It hadn't occurred to Lires that it wasn't more important to give Sharina the cloak than to do so in a properly subservient way—

And Sharina agreed.

It was a formal garment, black velvet with a lining of crimson silk. That didn't prevent it from blocking the chill breeze as well as cruder, cheaper fabric could've done. Sharina walked to where Tenoctris sat cross-legged on the ground.

.One of the wizard's guards had spread his half-cape beneath her, though Sharina was sure Tenoctris hadn't thought to ask for it. She'd drawn a figure in the dirt; in this light Sharina couldn't describe its shape, let alone the words of power drawn around it. The older woman looked up as Sharina approached.

"Have you learned anything?" Sharina asked, squatting beside her friend.

"I feel like a mouse between a pair of granite mountains," Tenoctris said with her usual cheerful humility. "I can see the-"

She gestured with the bamboo split in her hand.

"-structures, call them, which Cervoran and the Green Woman are preparing, but until they act I have no way of judging their intent."

She grinned. "Except that it's unlikely that the Green Woman plans anything that will benefit humanity," she added. "And I'm more than a little doubtful about Cervoran as well."

Sharina looked to where Double stood with his head down at one end of where he'd raised the mirror. The post-and-canvas form remained, shuddering in the wind, though the silver had vanished into the ground.

"Has he moved since the battle yesterday?" Sharina asked quietly. Then she added, "I haven't seen him eat."

"No," said Tenoctris without being specific as to which comment she was replying to. "He'll be rousing soon. It's almost dawn, and I can-"

She looked at the sky, faintly gray though the brightest stars were still visible.

"-feel the balances shifting. I wish I could really describe what I see, Sharina, but I suppose it doesn't matter since I don't know what it means myself."

"Here they come!" a soldier bellowed. Horns and trumpets blew Stand-To in shrilly. So far as Sharina could tell the whole army was already in position behind the earthworks. She hugged her friend again and stood up.

The tide was coming in and with it dark ugly lumps. More hellplants bobbed farther out to sea. They stretched so far into the distance that Sharina couldn't tell the shapes from those of the waves. Spume flew inland, driven by the sea breeze.

Double shook himself like a dog coming out of a high wind. He gave Sharina a fat-lipped grin, then pointed his athame at the ground.

"Eulamon," he said. "Restoutus restouta zerosi!"

As the words of power sounded, blue wizardlight twinkled coldly along the ground before him. The wind, already strong, picked up. It drove dust and leaves and mist.

"Benchuch bachuch chuch...," Double chanted, the same words as on the day before. He lifted the point of his athame; silver rose from the soil into which it'd sunk at the end of the previous day's battle. The sun, just above the horizon, flared red on the film of metal. "Ousiri agi ousiri!"

Some of the soldiers began cheering. The sound was scattered, but there was no misgtaking what it was.

Tenoctris looked down the slope. The sun spread the shadows of the oncoming hellplants in long blurred masses.

"I think that's the first time I've heard laymen cheer a wizard," she said in a musing tone.

"It's only the troops who were here yesterday," Sharina said. "The ones who survived the battle."

"Yes, well...," Tenoctris said. She gave Sharina a wry smile and shrugged. "I started to say that I hope there'll be even more cheering tomorrow, but I think instead I'll just hope for the best result."

Sharina opened her mouth to ask what that would be. "Ah," she said instead, nodding. If Tenoctris had known what the best result was, she'd have stated it. Looking at Double, his face waxen and grinning like a badly molded doll's, she understood why Tenoctris would be unwilling to hope outright for that creature's victory.

The mirror was complete, a silver shimmer as precise as the edge of a sword. Even as low as the sun still was, the metal waked a dot of light that tracked the plant on the southernmost end of the attacking line. The creature began to smoke, but the fog was thickening.

Something swirled past Sharina on the breeze. Spider silk, she though; gossamer; one of thousands of strands drifting from the sea. She'd seen its like often in springtime: egg sacks hatched and tiny spiderlets sailed across the meadows, lifted on long threads of silk. But this—

A strand, many strands draped themselves on Sharina's arms and hair. They were blowing up the slope in numbers beyond any hatching in her memory. They didn't support spiders, and they seemed to be of coarser vegetable material rather than silk. The breeze carried them onto the mirror where they clung, squirming across the metal and linking as though the wind were weaving them.

The silver film deformed as the threads squeezed wrinkles into the surface. The dot of light searing the distant hellplant blurred into a vague brightness quivering harmlessly through the fog.

The initial line of monsters squelched closer. A second battalion was already marching up from the sea.

"Olar akra!" Double shouted, suddenly agitated. "Zagra orea!"

The mirror shook violently and smoothed itself, bursting vegetable fibers and flinging them aside. For a moment the dot of light steadied again on a hellplant, but more threads wriggled through the air and took the place of those which'd been broken.

Though Double continued to chant, the fibers poured up on the wind in ever-increasing quantities. First like chaff on a threshing floor, then thicker yet and knotting into a mat which covered the silver. Only when the fabric was opaque did it begin to squeeze again, this time inexorably.

"Audusta!" Double snarled. The mirror collapsed, though the vegetable mass continued to twitch and tremble where it'd been. Double turned away and clumped back toward his ancient oak work chest.

On the plains below the mist grew thicker, and the plants marched on.

* * *

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mistress Auta," said Chalcus with a sweeping bow. "Who is it that you're to be saved from, if I may ask?"

The sailor's gestures were always excessive by anybody else's standards, but somehow he carried off what would've made a courtier look absurd. If I made the world, Ilna thought, gray and brown would be all the colors needed, and people would behave as if they too were gray and brown. There'd be no Chalcus in that world... and very little for me, despite that's what I think I'd want.

"Why, from the Princes!" said another little man. He'd edged into plain sight, sitting cross-legged on a holly branch near where Ilna'd caught and released his fellow. There were differences among the little folk: this one's hair rose in a pronounced widow's peak, for example. Because they were so small and quick, distinguishing marks were hard to catch.

"From the other Princes!" Auta said instantly, shooting the man a fierce glance. "Prince Ilna, did the One bring you here to rid the garden from those who have preyed on us from time out of mind?"

"We're here because someone wanted us out of his way," Ilna said. "I doubt he intended to help you or anybody besides himself. He may not even know that you exist."

She hadn't snarled, but she'd probably frowned as she considered the situation. She hadn't meant anything by it; she generally frowned when she considered the world and the things that happened in it. Auta'd taken the expression personally, though, so she'd shrunk back toward the hedge.

"Our main concern's to get out of this place and back to the world of our friends, that's so, little lady," said Chalcus. "We're glad to meet you, but no one sent us to be saviors."

Ilna walked to a birch tree growing out of the Osage orange, taking out her paring knife. She hadn't seen the little people use tools, but there were rocks in the soil of the hedges. Even without skill the little people could hammer stones together till they chipped an edge on one.

"Is Dee all right?" Merota asked, squatting on the grass. "Really, we weren't going to hurt him."

Two of the little people, a man and a woman, dropped to the ground instead of watching from the hedges. Their heads were just on a level with the kneeling child's.

Ilna pulled down a branch and nicked it. She peeled away the papery outer covering-it was of no use to her-and stripped off four strands of the fibrous brown inner bark.

"Dee, come show yourself!" Auta called commandingly. "Our Princes think they've hurt you. Come out!"

Ilna could understand the little people's language, but besides having very high-pitched voices because they were small, they had an accent that reminded her of the clipped way people spoke on Cordin. She wondered who'd woven the tapestry and how long ago that had been. Perhaps when she got back to the room where it hung in Mona, she'd have time to examine it properly.

The couple who'd left the hedge minced over to Merota. The woman reached out with one hand, holding her male companion's wrist with the other. More of the little people stepped onto the grass.

"Go ahead," Merota said soothingly. "You can touch me, little person."

Ilna wiped the blade of her knife and slid it again into its bone case. She returned to the gathering, now crowded around Merota like doves feeding on grain beneath their cote. The woman who'd first come forward was running her fingers through the child's fine hair while the others watched admiringly.

"Prince Merota," Auta said, though Ilna noticed that her eyes were really on Chalcus. "Can you not help us, great Prince? The Princes, the other Princes, take us one at a time or several together. We who escape hear screams and then the bones of our friends breaking. We are helpless, but you are strong and can save us."