The Gods Return (35 page)

This wasn't doing any good! She needed help
.

"Diora, come help me get out of this!" she called. "And bring the Pewle knife!"

"Your highness?" said Dysart, his eyes widening.

"I'm coming with you, Master Dysart," Sharina said. "And while Captain Ascor won't like it, at least with Lord Attaper's deputy present, I won't have to sneak out of this room to prevent the whole squad on guard from tramping along with me in their full gear!"

* * *

Garric stood within a coarse brushwood fence, watching as Tenoctris examined the dead ratman that they'd brought back to the camp. All the screen did was permit the soldiers not to watch wizardry if it made them uncomfortable—as it did almost all laymen.

They'd strapped the corpse to a lance carried by pairs of skirmishers who traded off the burden. Lord Waldron had thought there'd be at least one horse that didn't mind the rats' smell, but he'd apparently been wrong.

Master Ainbor—who'd chuckled to be referred to as "Master"—had volunteered that his men wouldn't mind carrying one of the rats they'd killed. He'd been quite obviously twitting Waldron, but Garric—and Waldron, from his sour nod—figured Ainbor had a right to do that. His skirmishers had saved the lives of scores of the cavalry, not to mention the life of Prince Garric.

"
We might've fought our way clear, lad
," Carus muttered.

Right, the way you swam to shore when a wizard drowned your fleet a thousand years ago
, Garric thought.
No, I'm pretty clear on why I'm standing here, and it's not because I have a strong sword arm
.

As it was, Garric's left thigh throbbed as though a horsefly had bitten him. Master Daciano, the Blood Eagles' surgeon, had sewn shut the lips of the wound and then bandaged over it a poultice of lettuce which was supposed numb the pain. Maybe that was true, but if so it would've been
very
uncomfortable without the drug.

Tenoctris had said she'd do something for him as soon as she had a chance. Right now, both she and Garric thought that the first priority was learning as much as possible about the rat army of Palomir.

"That's odd," Garric said. "The rat isn't as big as it was when it was alive. As any of them were. Can it be shrinking, Tenoctris?"

Instead of answering, Tenoctris murmured a spell of which Garric caught only a few snatches: " . . .
sethri saba
. . ." Blue light sparkled over the corpse and around the edges of the pentagon the wizard had drawn on the ground with corn meal.

For a moment wizardlight drew an image of the ratman as it had been when a javelin took it through the throat: half again as tall as the present figure and several times the bulk. Garric said, "Yes, that's—"

The image became
different
instead of changing. The sparkling azure shell of a young man with big bones and a vacant expression swelled about the furry corpse. He looked ordinary, a farm laborer or a common soldier. Garric had never met him, but he'd met the type a thousand of times.

The dusting of light dissolved into the air. Garric found himself blinking away orange afterimages: the blue shimmer had been brighter than he'd realized until it vanished.

Tenoctris rose and turned to face him. The spell she'd cast hadn't completely drained her the way it would've done the Tenoctris whom Garric had first met: an old woman with a great deal of wisdom but limited power. Nonetheless the tightness at the corners of her eyes hinted that what she'd just done had required effort, even for the demon her will had bound within her.

"They're not shrinking, exactly," she said. The weariness was evident in her voice also, though it gained strength with every syllable. "They're returning to what they'd been before the rite that turned them into warriors."

"An incantation, you mean?" Garric said. "A wizard enchanted ordinary rats and made them as big as men?"

"Not a wizard," Tenoctris said. "And not a priest either, except that as a priest he summoned the God. It was the God Franca who turned rats into ratmen, Garric. A very evil God."

"Ah," said Garric. He started to speak further, then swallowed the words.

"
Of course we can fight a God, lad
," said the ghost, answering the unvoiced question. Carus smiled with grim insouciance. "
I don't see any way we can win, but that doesn't stop us trying
."

Garric looked at the corpse again; it was smaller yet. From the way it stank, the extra bulk was being lost in the form of noxious gases.

Garric grimaced. He said, "Tenoctris, do you need this further? Because if you don't . . .?"

"What?" she said, looking over her shoulder with a critical expression. "Oh, yes, you can bury it. And I have no more incantations for the present, so I suppose we can go outside—"

She nodded to the screen of brush.

"—this."

It struck Garric that Tenoctris, though born to an aristocratic family, paid almost no attention to her surroundings except as they had bearing on something she wanted to accomplish. A peasant might have ignored the stench because he was used to worse; Tenoctris had simply been oblivious of the fact the corpse stank.

The fence curled past itself like the coils of a snail's shell. Garric stepped out the open end and said to his aide, "Lerdain, have a detail burn the offal outside the camp. They can use this—"

He patted the screen they no longer needed.

"—for fuel if they like."

The camp was crowded and though as sanitary as possible—by Carus' order through Garric's lips, the latrines were dug before the troops were released to build personal shelters—it was a trampled, barren waste. It would've been far worse if it'd been raining.

"
A soldier lives in dust or mud
," Carus said. "
Unless the winter's particularly cold and there's ice instead. Even then it's mud inside the tents and around cookfires
.
If he's got a tent and a cookfire
."

Garric laughed and said aloud, "Who'd be a soldier, eh?"

Tenoctris looked at him. "Who indeed?" she said. "But why do you mention it now?"

"Because . . . ," Garric said, answering both the rhetorical question and the real one. "A soldier is told where to go and who to fight. He doesn't have to think about anything, so he's without responsibility for the result. Even if he's killed, he's not responsible for it. Whereas—"

He looked into the wizard's eyes. "—I'm responsible for defeating an empire that turns rats into soldiers. And I know how fast rats breed."

"Your highness, if I might have a moment with you," said Lord Acer, newly appointed to the command of an Ornifal cavalry regiment. There was no question whatever in his tone. "The food—"

"Master Acer!" Garric said. He was angry and frustrated at the greater situation. It was probably a good thing that this young fop was providing a legitimate outlet, though Garric wouldn't release his feelings—

King Carus laughed at the thought.

—with a sweep of his sword, the way his ancestor had been known to do.

"I am in conference with Lady Tenoctris, on whom the survival of mankind depends. Report to Lord Waldron, if you will, and inform him that you're to be reassigned to an infantry regiment at Pandah as of this moment!"

Acer's mouth dropped open. Other aides, waiting to talk to the prince when he was free, stifled laughs—or didn't, in the case of Lord Lerdain, a husky youth and the son of the Count of Blaise. If Acer wanted a duel, Lerdain was very much the boy to give him one.

Acer went pale and stumbled blindly away. He'd have tripped over a tent rope if another officer hadn't guided him around it.

"That was excessive," Garric muttered.

Tenoctris shrugged. "My mother always told me that high birth doesn't exempt one from basic courtesy," she said. "I'm inclined to agree with her, though it's not something I worry about a great deal."

She cleared her throat and resumed, "You're right that we can't attack the problem by preventing Palomir from finding rats. That's only one aspect of what's going on, though. The rats provide a physical core around which the priest and his God can form a warrior. He also needs human souls to animate the forms. Otherwise they'd still be rats—large ones, but no more dangerous or disciplined than so many wolves."

"We've heard that the priests are sacrificing everyone they capture," Garric said. His lips moved as though he were sucking on a lemon. "That's why, then? To make an army of rats?"

They were standing in the middle of the camp, close to the headquarters tent. The location was about as private—and comfortable—as anything available. The guards kept everyone else out of earshot, which a tent's canvas walls would not. Not that it seemed to matter whether anybody overheard them . . . .

"Not in the way you mean it," Tenoctris said. "The blood sacrifice increases Franca's ability to affect events in the waking world, but the souls themselves are those of the dead."

She grinned. Tenoctris had always had a bright smile and a whimsical sense of humor. "The innocent dead, I suppose you might say," she said. "Though I don't know that any human being is completely innocent. The dead weren't worshippers of Franca and His siblings, at any rate."

She nodded back to where they'd been. Lord Lerdain watched proprietarily as a Blaise file-closer and a squad of armsmen under his command tramped toward the main gate, carrying the remains of the ratman on the mat of brush that had concealed it.

"Any more than the rats who supplied the physical form were Franca-worshippers, you see," she concluded.

Garric nodded. "All right," he said. "I understand the situation. What can we do to change it?"

"We need to prevent the priest behind this," Tenoctris said, "from haling souls out of the Underworld. We need to close the Gate of Ivory. And that will require a very particular hero."

Garric lifted his sword slightly and let it slide back, unconsciously checking to be sure that it wouldn't bind in the scabbard if he needed to draw it quickly. "Well, I don't know that I'm particular enough," he said. "But I'll try."

The wizard laughed merrily, making those waiting beyond the line of Blood Eagles look up eagerly.

"Garric, in most respects you'd be ideal for the task," she said. "You lack one necessary attribute, however: you're not dead. The late Lord Munn is therefore a better choice."

"I, ah . . . ," said Garric. "Can I help you reach Lord Munn, then?"

"If you mean, 'Can I help you go to the place where Lord Munn's body rests,'" Tenoctris said, "no; I'll get us there. But Lord Munn won't accept orders from a woman, not even a woman who's a wizard—"

She smiled, but the harshness of her expression was very unusual for Tenoctris.

"—and who has the power to plunge his soul beneath the deepest Hell. Of course, if Lord Munn did not have such a strong, ah, will, he wouldn't be any good to us. That will require the presence of a warrior king."

Garric grinned and stretched. "Then take me to him, milady," he said.

Tenoctris nodded. "There's a sacred grove within a mile," she said. "It focuses a useful amount of power. We'll go now, if you're ready."

"Lord Attaper!" Garric called. "Lady Tenoctris and I are leaving the camp immediately, and I suspect you'll want us to have an escort."

* * *

Not even Chalcus could climb a smooth rock wall and shove that roller out of the way
, thought Ilna as she looked at the roof of the cave. It was solid black; only memory told her where the opening might be.
But I wish he was here
.

She lowered her eyes to where Usun probably was, though she couldn't see him either. "My name is Ilna os-Kenset," she said. "A wizard named Brincisa lowered me into this cave to fetch the box you were in. She left me here when I wouldn't send the box up ahead of me."

She sniffed and added, "She'd have left me anyway, obviously. Well, this way I have company. Besides the ghoul."

The wizened little man laughed like an angry squirrel. "Oh, you have much more than mere company, Ilna!" he said. "You have Usun! And as for that Brincisa—"

He snapped his fingers.

"—she fancies herself a wizard, true, but Hutton could stand her on her head when he wanted to. He did that! Hutton had me, you see."

Ilna thought of the last time she'd seen Hutton; probably the last time anybody would see Hutton. Smiling faintly she said, "It doesn't seem to have done him a great deal of good. Unless his final wish was to become dinner for a ghoul."

As Ilna's eyes adapted, she became aware of a faint blue glow in the direction the ghoul had disappeared. She heard or at least felt a low hum. She couldn't tell where it came from or even be sure it really existed.

Usun cackled again. "Oh, no, Hutton had great plans!" he said in his harsh, high-pitched voice. "He didn't really die, you know."

"He certainly seemed to be dead, Master Usun," Ilna said tartly. "Even before the ghoul began to eat him."

"Ilna, I'll burst with laughing!" Usun said, chortling loudly enough to make it seem a possibility. "You're right, you're right, but Hutton didn't imagine you. Well, who could, eh?"

He paused. Ilna could now see a hint of the little man, squatting on his haunches at her feet. He was doing something with his hands—coiling the thin filament that'd bound the box to Hutton's corpse, she suddenly realized.