The Fortress of Glass (50 page)

With a broad grin he added, "I'm used to people not telling me things. I wish it didn't happen that way, but it does."

"Well, I don't suppose it matters," Antesiodorus said with an angry scrunch of his face that made the words a lie. "We'd best be going. The sun's up. That will keep the worst in their dens, but the more quickly we get the business over, the better off we are."

He gestured them through the doorway and followed. Outside the scholar fingered the cape over the opening. He frowned and straightened, turning his back on the long dwelling.

"We're going eastward," Antesiodorus said. "I know it's difficult to hold direction in these eroded gullies, but there's a white peak on the horizon. You can orient yourself by it."

Cashel grinned, thinking of what his sister would've said to a comment like that. "Yes, and I can breathe air, you city-bred fool," or perhaps something more insulting.

But that was Ilna. Cashel being Cashel, he said instead, "I thought you might wear the cape this morning, sir. Instead of leaving it over the door."

"Did you?" snapped Antesiodorus. He set off at a brisk pace among the rotting hills. Cashel could keep up, though he usually travelled at the rate a ewe ambled. Protas, walking ahead of him, wasn't having trouble either. Occasionally he touched the crown, but it was firmly seated.

After a moment, the scholar said in an apologetic tone, "The cloak would only protect one of us. Better that it stay where it is so that if I don't return, those who investigate can see that I was faithful to my trust."

He looked over his shoulder at Cashel. "Do you understand that?" he said.

Cashel nodded. "I guess I do," he said mildly.

The stretch of mounds and gullies gave way to short prairie. The grass was yellow-brown, but its roots were healthy enough to hold the soil. A small herd of browsers saw the three humans and fled northward in a gangling canter.

"Were those deer?" Cashel said. "They looked different from the deer I've seen before."

"They were camels," Antesiodorus said, "if it matters. You can be thankful if you see nothing worse."

"Are the birds dangerous?" Protas said. He was looking up at the sky where three dots circled slowly upward on the morning breezes.

"Not unless you're dead," Antesiodorus said. "Or until you're dead, perhaps I should say."

"They're buzzards, Protas," Cashel explained quietly. "Though I've never seen buzzards so big. If I'm right about the size, they'd weigh as much as a man."

The scholar had no need to snap at the boy that way, but he was obviously keyed up. People did that sort of thing.

"They'd weigh more than I do, at any rate," said Antesiodorus. He looked back at the boy and then Cashel. "But they don't kill prey themselves. There's plenty of others to do that, but perhaps we'll avoid them."

A mixed herd was grazing on the southern horizon. There were horses for sure but the other things could be... well, could be a lot of things, none of them familiar.

"Those deer have six horns, Cashel," Protas said.

"They're antelope," Antesiodorus said, correcting him.

The land to the north sloped down slightly. In the middle distance was the bed of a stream, probably dry in this weather. Bushy cottonwoods fringed both banks, and deeper in the gully grew alders. The trees pulled water from the currents flowing under the ground.

"There's a deer in the gully," Cashel said. "Three of them, I think. See, Protas? Under the cottonwood that still has some of its leaves?"

He didn't point; shepherds mostly didn't. If you pointed at a ewe, she was likely to run off in a blind panic. That hurt the meat and made her give less milk both, and that was if she didn't manage to tumble down a ravine and break her fool neck.

"Stand very still!" Antesiodorus ordered.

Cashel froze. "What-" said Protas, turning to Cashel in worried surprise. Cashel didn't move or even scowl, but the boy took the hint from his perfectly blank expression.

"I never wanted to be a wizard," Antesiodorus said softly, his face turned toward the watercourse. "I'm a scholar. I found things, that's all. Found them in space and even in time, but only to study them."

The three deer-headed humans stepped up from the gully to stand beside the big cottonwood. Two were men and one a woman. Like reindeer, she as well as the males had antlers. They were browsing the alders, plucking leaves off with their narrow muzzles.

"There were twelve of us in our sodality," Antesiodorus continued. "Our brotherhood, I suppose I should say if I want you to understand.'

"I know what a sodality is," Protas protested in an injured tone.

Cashel frowned. He hadn't known, but could generally figure out what people meant from the way they said it. Anyhow, when their guide was telling them things they might need to know, they shouldn't interrupt.

The trio of deer-men stopped eating and stared intently in the direction of Cashel and his companions. After a moment they vanished into the gully so suddenly that there didn't seem to have been movement: they were on the bank and then they were gone.

Antesiodorus breathed out. "All right," he said, "we can go on now."

"Were they dangerous, sir?" Cashel asked, falling in behind Protas as he had in the past.

"No," said Antesiodorus. "But when something's hunting them, they're in the habit of leading the hunter across the trail of prey that can't run as fast as they do. And then running away."

"What a cowardly act!" said Protas.

"What do you know about it, boy?" Antesiodorus snarled. "Do you know what it's like to be hunted? Really hunted!"

"I've been hunted, Master Antesiodorus," Cashel said. He didn't raise his voice or let any emotion into it, but his tone made it clear that he was stepping in front of the boy now. Protas had put a foot wrong, which was a pity, but it wasn't a thing he'd meant to do.

Their guide looked over his shoulder; his lean face was anguished. "Yes," he said, "I suppose you have. But you always knew you could fight, didn't you, Master Cashel?"

"Yes sir," said Cashel. "But I haven't known that I'd win every time. I just knew I'd rather die than live knowing that I'd handed my bad luck off to somebody else."

Antesiodorus faced front and shifted a little to the left of the line he'd been following; a faint buzzing and a glitter of wings in the air showed that they'd been about to walk over a yellow-jacket hole. He said, "Yes, that's the problem, isn't it? Being able to live with the person you find behind your eyes when you wake up in the darkness. But you haven't had that problem, have you?"

"No sir," Cashel said quietly.

There was a herd of big animals to the northeast, grazing in close company. There were more than Cashel could count on both hands. They acted like cows, but they were bigger and they had dark wool over their forequarters and horned heads. One of them watched the humans for a moment, then went back to its food.

"I knew so much," Antesiodorus said. "So very much. And that's all I cared about. I never used the objects I found except to find more. I let my brothers use them, but that was their choice. I never wanted to do wizardry. It's not fair now that I should be forced to!"

"Who's forcing you, then?" said Protas. That was an honest question, but the boy asked it in a way that showed he'd been bothered more than a little by the scholar snapping at him.

Cashel kept watching the wooly cattle. A couple of them raised their heads; they were looking due north. One of the big beasts gave a snort; the whole herd jerked its heads up. After a moment they started moving southward slowly while a big bull stood braced and looking the other direction.

"I found things and gave them to my brothers," the scholar said. "I never used them, never, except to find more... things. They gained by my actions, not me. You see that, don't you?"

"You did what you wanted to do," Cashel said. He glanced in other directions too, especially straight behind them, but mostly he kept his eyes on where the bull was looking. "You and your friends both got what you wanted."

"I found a spell," Antesiodorus said as though he hadn't heard the comment. "No one else could've done what I did-no one, I'm sure. It was carved on a plate of gray jade as thin as parchment. It'd been broken into six pieces, every piece as necessary as the next for the spell to work, and I found all six. I alone!"

"What did the spell do, then?" asked Protas. He'd lost his testiness and become a curious little boy again.

Cashel saw movement on the other side of the cattle. The ground rolled and whatever it was kept down in the grass besides, but things were watching him and his companions.

"The spell?" repeated Antesiodorus. "It permitted the user to control a demon. I'd never have done such a thing myself, of course. Never!"

He cleared his throat. "I found the sixth piece," he continued. "It was no use alone, none. Only with the other five did it have meaning, and only I could have searched out the entire plaque. But the one who'd possessed the piece heard me take it and followed."

"The owner," Protas said. "The owner caught you."

"How can someone own a thing that was old before men and which had no value to the possessor?" Antesiodorus said, his voice cracking. "It wasn't his, it was just a thing he had! And he didn't catch me, no."

He looked back at Cashel, not Protas, and said, "He didn't catch me then, because I left the piece with my brethren, the members of my sodality, and fled while they examined the plaque. They were delighted, you see; they couldn't praise me enough. We were sworn to support one another in all ways, and they all spoke of what a valued brother I was. They didn't know."

"You saved yourself by setting a demon on your friends," Protas said. There was nothing at all in the boy's tone, just the words. It was as though all the feeling had been shocked out of him.

"No!" Antesiodorus said. He laughed brokenly. "Or perhaps yes, if you look only at the surface. It wasn't a demon, it was much worse than that. And they weren't my friends; they were brothers of my oath, but not friends."

"And you didn't escape," said Cashel. "It caught you anyway, and you serve it now."

"You think you're so smart!" the guide shouted.

"No," said Cashel. "I don't. I'm not."

"I think perhaps you're wrong, my simple friend," Antesiodorus said in a broken voice. "You're too smart to find yourself in my situation, at any rate. Now that I've had time to think about it, I believe the way the jade was broken and scattered was a trap for... someone like me. Someone who liked to find things. I've had a great deal of time to think about it, as you'll appreciate."

"Sir?" said Cashel formally. "Look to the north, please. On the little ridge there. They've been looking at us ever since the cattle started to move."

The things watching them had risen into sight. They looked like dogs but they were the size of horses, and they had the huge crinkled ears of bats. There were five of them, one for each finger on a single hand.

"Oh," said Antesiodorus. He kept walking but he stumbled on a tussock of grass and almost fell, slight though it was. "Oh. Oh."

He took a deep breath. "One moment, please," he said, kneeling on the prairie and opening out his bindle before him. "I'd thought that by going by daylight we'd avoid at least them, but it seems that I was wrong. Wrong again."

The bat-eared dogs were ambling down the hill, spreading out slightly as they advanced. They were a pale color like mushrooms that grow in a cave; what Cashel'd thought when he first saw them were stripes seemed now to be wrinkles on their bare skin.

Antesiodorus rose, clutching his bindle under his left arm. He had a book open in that hand with his thumb marking a place. "Come along!" he said. "Don't run, but keep moving steadily."

Cashel began to spin his quarterstaff as he walked. It worked his torso muscles and, well, it made him feel more comfortable.

He wasn't afraid of a fight, but the dogs were big and there were five of them. It would be hard to keep Protas safe, and that was what he was along to do.

Cashel smiled a little. If things went the way he expected them to, he wouldn't be around for anybody to complain to. Still, he'd give the dogs a good fight.

As the beasts walked on, a little faster now, their mouths dropped open into clown smiles. They had long, pointy teeth like snakes did, and their lolling tongues were forked.

"Go on ahead of me now," said Antesiodorus, drawing the sea lily from his sash; he must use it for a wand. He focused on the book in his hand, then called, "Dode akrouro akete!" and slashed the sea lily down.

Scarlet wizardlight danced and crackled across the prairie. Nettles and thistles rose, spread, and interlocked, growing into a hedge as dense and high as a range of mountains. The ground shook and there was a roar like cliffs falling into the sea.

Antesiodorus staggered backward, dropping the book and the bindle but continuing to grip his wand. "Come along," he whispered. Then, more strongly, "Come!"

He bent to pick up the bindle. Cashel took it and the book instead and handed them to Protas to carry.

"Yes, all right," said the scholar. "But come."