The Gods Return (42 page)

He tittered as he wrapped the sinew he'd used as a sling around his waist again. It didn't have a pocket, so he must balance each missile on the heart of the loop.

"—nearly as wonderful as I myself am. Which is why Brincisa sent you to fetch me, you see."

Ilna grimaced at the boasting, though it might well be true. Certainly she would've had a more difficult—and probably fatal—time in the cave if it weren't for the little man's help and guidance.

Ingens stood between an upright mummy case and a black stone carved to look like a leering human with breasts and a prominent male member. It had once been a pillar, but it wasn't supporting anything here.

Ilna's lip curled in disgust as she walked over to Ingens. His eyes were open but lifeless, and his cheek felt cold to her fingertips.

Usun hopped down from the table. He grabbed Brincisa's big toe through her openwork sandals and twisted hard. She yelped in surprise and jerked her foot away. By throwing her torso forward, she managed to sit upright and curl her feet under her.

The little man put his hands on his hips. His posturing should've looked silly, but Ilna got the impression of a much larger figure standing in Usun's place.

"You thought you'd use me like you do that statue of Thrasaidon, did you, Mistress Brincisa?" he said, nodding to the black pillar. "Because Hutton used me, you thought you could?"

He laughed like an angry wren. "Hutton would've made a mistake one day too, you know," he said. "He's meat in the belly of a dead ghoul now, but he's better off than he would've been if it'd been me who repaid him. And you thought to use Mistress Ilna as well!"

"What do you want from me?" Brincisa asked. Ilna couldn't hear any emotion in the words—not even resignation. It was like hearing the statue speak.

"I'd as lief have put that stone through your head, you know," the little man said. "If I'd had a proper lead bullet, that's what I'd have done. You're lucky it was only a pebble from a stream."

"What do you want?" Brincisa repeated in the same calm, empty voice.

"Release Ingens," Ilna said. She was reducing the pattern to lengths of yarn, now that she had leisure to do so. "You can do that, can't you?"

"Yes," said Brincisa, glancing toward Usun. "But you'll have to untie my hands. I won't make trouble for you."

"No," said Ilna, squatting behind the other woman. Her fingers pulled and twisted, a deceptively simple movement which loosed the knot that a strong man couldn't have broken. "You certainly won't."

Brincisa stood up carefully, then touched fingertips to her head. Her hair was matted with blood, but it'd begun to clot into a mass that was probably as good as a lint bandage.

Either the wizard agreed with Ilna's dismissive judgment on the injury or she rightly assumed that her wishes didn't matter, because she turned to Ingens without commenting about her head. She touched the secretary's forehead with the fingers which had explored her scalp and said, "
Cmouch arou rou!
"

Ingens cried, "Wah!" and threw up his hands to ward off something that only existed in his memory. Brincisa folded her arms and turned to Ilna.

"Are you all right, Master Ingens?" Ilna said. He certainly looked all right.

Ingens patted his cheeks in wonder. The wizard's touch had left two dabs of blood on his forehead.

"How did I get back here?" he said. "I was—weren't we on top of the mountain? Or did I dream that?"

"Mistress Ilna," Brincisa said calmly. "I told you I would send you and your companion here—"

She nodded toward Ingens with a look of distaste.

"—to the place where the man you're seeking disappeared. Let me do that now."

"I don't trust you, mistress," Ilna said. She stared at Brincisa. The wizard's lips tightened but she didn't flinch. "I didn't trust you even before you betrayed me."

"All I want now," Brincisa said, "is to send you on your way. I'll help you go anywhere you wish, just to have you away from here. I'll save you weeks in your search for Master Hervir."

"There's a way," Usun said. He twirled the coil of fine hair that had bound the box to Hutton's torso.

They looked at him. "Now, I wouldn't mind stretching my legs," the little man said. "I've spent a long time in that casket, a very long time. Cutting Brincisa's throat and hiking north to this village would be fine with me. But—"

He caught the coil and held it up. The candles waked not only gold but rainbows from the heart of each strand.

"—if you tie one end of this around Brincisa's neck and hold the other, then you'll be able to pull her into the place she's sent us. And if that's a bad place, so much the worse for her."

Ingens frowned. "Can't she just untie it herself?" he said.

Ilna gave him a cold glance. "No," she said. "Not if I've tied it."

Brincisa shrugged; her face was still as wax. "I'm in your power," she said. "If getting free of you means wearing a hair of the Lady around my neck for the rest of my life, then I'll do that."

A flash of fiercer emotion transformed her face, but only for an instant. "I'm not trying to bargain," she said. "I know I have nothing to bargain with. I'll help you in any way you wish. To keep you from killing me, which would gain you nothing."

"Nothing?" said Usun. He cocked a tiny eyebrow. "Well, there'd be satisfaction in killing you, mistress."

"I don't take any particular satisfaction in killing things," Ilna said, making up her mind as she spoke. "Give me the line, Master Usun."

The little man tossed her the coil. "No satisfaction?" he said. "Perhaps. But you've never hesitated to kill when you needed to, have you?"

Brincisa lifted her chin for Ilna to loop the shining filament around her neck. Ilna's fingers danced in a pattern that dazzled her even as she created it.

"I've never hesitated to do anything that I needed to," she said quietly. "Anything at all."

* * *

Sharina shot upright in bed. She'd been sleeping dreamlessly, as she had every night since Burne took up his patrolling, but these screams—

Another scream ripped the heart out of the night. It reminded her of the day a rabbit had leapt onto a sharp stake and spitted itself in the kitchen garden of the inn, but this was much louder.

—would wake the dead.

She drew the Pewle knife and started for the door. She didn't bother to put on slippers—in Barca's Hamlet she'd gone barefoot every year till the ground froze—nor with any garment beyond her sleeping tunic. It was modest enough in cut, and propriety didn't count for much when someone was being disemboweled nearby.

Diora stood by the door, holding the lamp that burned in her sleeping alcove through the night. "Mistress?" she said, her voice rising.

"Stay here," Sharina said, taking the lamp out of the maid's hand. "I'll be back."

Burne was perched on an unlighted sconce. He dropped onto her shoulder, saying, "Some clod will trample me if I'm running about on the floor."

"Let's go," Sharina snapped to the under-captain commanding the guards in the corridor. "And Burne, a little warning before you jump on me might help us both live longer lives."

"Your highness?" said the officer as Sharina trotted down the corridor in the middle of a cocoon of black-armored guards. "Do you know what's going on? Ah, just so that we can be prepared for, ah, whatever it is."

"I don't," said Sharina. "I think it's on the floor below."

They started down the west staircase. It was narrow and unembellished, meant for servants. The Blood Eagles wore plain soles instead of hobnails while they were on duty in the palace, but their boots slapped and banged on the wooden treads.

"The cells are in the cellars on this end," said one of the troopers. "The ones Lady Liane's people use. They're convincing somebody who didn't want to talk, I'll wager."

"They'd better not be!" said Sharina. She wasn't squeamish, but she'd given orders that Platt was to be transported to Tenoctris. It'd been obvious to her—and she thought to Master Dysart as well—that the priest had nothing more to give to ordinary questioning. Crippling Platt—or worse—before the wizard could use him as a focus of her art would be both cruel and counterproductive.

The screams had ended, but servants standing agog in the hallways pointed them toward the basement. As the trooper had said, they were headed toward Master Dysart's suite.

The spymaster and four of his agents reached the barred door to his domain at the same time Sharina and her guards did. "Get out of the way!" the under-captain snarled, but someone inside was already pushing the door open for Dysart. It had been remounted to swing into the hallway, so smashing the latch out wouldn't be enough to move the panel.

"I haven't opened the cell in case it's a trick!" said the agent inside.

"Open it now!" said Dysart. He carried what looked like a short ivory baton-of-office. The
cling
when it touched the stone jamb told Sharina that it was painted metal.

The small cell was off the other end of the suite from Dysart's private office. Two of the agents who'd arrived with Dysart positioned themselves on either side of the door. Each held a cudgel in one hand and raised an oil lamp in the other. The man who'd been on night duty lifted out the heavy bar, then turned his key in the separate lock.

He jerked the door open. A trooper shouted.

The interior of the cell seethed with scorpions, ranging from tiny ones to monsters bigger than Sharina's spread hand. Still more of the creatures were crawling in through the barred window that slanted up to street level.

Platt's corpse was hidden beneath the writhing blanket. When the door swung, the chitinous mass surged toward the opening like a single entity.

Sharina smashed her lamp in the doorway. The olive oil splashed, then bloomed into pale yellow flames spreading from the wick across the surface.

"Burn them!" she shouted. "Quickly, fire!"

One of the agents hurled his lamp toward Platt and jumped away. The other man threw his weight against the door and slammed it closed. Firelight flickered across the thin crack under the edge of the panel.

Burne leaped from Sharina's shoulder to the jamb and came down with a scorpion which had scuttled out before the door closed. The snicking of the rat's teeth mimicked the muffled crackle of oil flames within the cell.

"We may have to evacuate the palace," Sharina said, suddenly sick with horror. She hadn't liked the renegade priest, but
nobody
should die from the stings of a thousand scorpions. "The fire may spread."

"I think not, your highness," said Dysart. "The walls are stone, and the floor and ceiling are concrete."

"I have the fire watch coming," said Lord Tadai, who'd appeared unexpectedly. "Though I think Master Dysart's correct about there not being a serious danger."

Burne dropped the remains of the scorpion he'd caught. It had been a big one; the tail, still twitching on the floor, was longer than Sharina's middle finger.

"You seem to have been right, princess," the rat said. "The priest would've been useful to Tenoctris. At any rate, the priest's master thought he would."

* * *

Cashel stepped in front of the women with his quarterstaff ready to strike. The woodsprites, more than a double handful of them, paused their dance in the middle of the clearing to stare at him and his companions. There were about as many men as women, slender and perfectly made. They wore garments woven from gossamer, bark fibers, and the down of small birds.

"Oh, look at them!" said a sprite who wore an acorn cap on his head. "He's a big one, isn't he?"

"And the girl's lovely. Could we bring her to join us, do you think?"

"The other one looks like a cat. Is she dangerous, do you think? She seems old."

"We won't harm you," Cashel said. "We've come to find Gorand, is all."

The sprites trilled like a dovecote when a snake squirms in. Some ducked into clumps of grass; others stood with their hands squeezed to their cheeks.

He can see us! How can he see us? Oh, what will we do?

The trees of this forest were like nothing Cashel had seen before. They weren't especially tall, but some had snaky boles, and the leaves of all were outsized.

The black bark of the nearest was as smooth as a palace floor; its simple oval leaves were the length of Cashel's leg, and the varied foliage of some of those across the clearing were even larger. One huge tree had a trunk bigger than two men could've spanned with spread arms, but its grassy leaves reminded him of bamboo.

"We'll not hurt you!" Cashel said. It made him uncomfortable to scare innocent, harmless people. "Please, can you show us to the hero Gorand?"

"Cashel, who are you talking to?" Liane said, trying not to sound frightened. The goat was nervously trying to pull the lead out of her hands. It wasn't used to breathing air that didn't have the poisonous bite of brimstone.

"The little people can't help us," Rasile said dismissively. She looked without affection at the dancers. "They know nothing and do nothing; they merely exist."

"We dance, catwoman," said a tiny female with quiet dignity. "We are very lovely."

"Go dance somewhere else, drones," Rasile said. "I don't want to listen to your twittering."