The Gods Return (43 page)

She rubbed her muzzle with the side of a paw, then added in a softer tone, "You won't want to watch this, little ones. Dance in another clearing tonight."

The sprites gathered, their heads together. They whispered for a moment, sounding like crickets behind a wall hanging.

The female turned and faced Rasile again. "We will go," she said. "But you would do better to watch us dance. We are very beautiful."

The troupe faded off through the strange trees. The little man in the acorn cap paused for a moment in a patch of moonlight, staring at Cashel; then he too was gone.

"They were sprites, Liane," Cashel said. "Woodsprites."

To Rasile he added, "I like their dancing. It's like watching my sister Ilna weave."

The wizard's lips drew back in a grin of sorts. "Perhaps it is," she said, "but our sacrifice would disgust them."

She lolled her long tongue. "Either they don't belong in the universe," she said, "or I don't. And it disturbs me to think that they may be the ones who belong."

An animal screeched. It was hard to tell distance in woods so thick, but Cashel didn't think it was very close. He gave his quarterstaff a trial spin. The cry sounded like a cat, a big one, though it could just as easy be a night bird.

Rasile scratched at the loam with her long toe. "Cashel," she said, "can you cut through this to the clay underneath? We need a trough that will hold liquid for a time."

Cashel prodded the soil with his knife. He'd thought there might be tree roots, but it seemed just to be just leaf litter and grass as soft as a kitten's fur. He scraped the dirt carefully away. His knife would do the job, but cutting too thick a slice of the heavy clay would snap the crude iron blade.

The goat bleated peevishly. Liane said, "Rasile? Do we have to do this? I don't . . . ."

Cashel had met Liane's father, Benlo. He'd been so powerful a wizard that he didn't let even his own death stand in the way of bringing his wife back from the grave. Liane was as brave as you could ask for, but she wasn't going to forget that her father had tried to sacrifice her.

"Yes, we do," the wizard said. She squatted, taking her yarrow stalks and black athame from the basket which held her gear. "We were fortunate that the folk of the anteroom kept goats, though no doubt Warrior Cashel and I would've been able to find something suitable here."

"Not a sprite," said Cashel, concentrating on his shallow trench.

"Not a sprite," Rasile agreed. "But there are apes here who wouldn't disturb you to use for the purpose, not if you got to know them."

She looked sidelong at Cashel. "Don't let the little drones mislead you," she said. "There's more darkness than light in this land, whatever they may pretend."

Cashel stood. The trench was as long as his forearm. He'd dug it a hand's breadth wide and about a finger deep in the clay beneath the leaf mold. "Is that enough, Rasile?" he said. "Or should I go deeper?"

"That will do well," Rasile said. She placed the yarrow stalks around the trough, seeming just to throw them down. They formed a neat figure against the black loam, however.

"Hold the goat and keep your knife out, warrior," she added. "By the horns, I think. When I begin to chant, it will try to break loose. The cord may not hold."

"Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. He took the goat by the right horn and drew it toward him, lifting the animal slightly so that its forehooves didn't have purchase as it tried to resist. It gave another whistling blat, but a peasant doesn't worry about the feelings of farm animals.

He wiped the knife on his bare thigh. Liane backed away, her face set in silent misery.

"The True People . . . ," said Rasile, looking into the dark distance. "My people. We very rarely use blood magic. Blood is too likely to madden us."

She turned to Cashel again and dipped her head to acknowledge him. Her tongue wagged a moment, then withdrew. She said, "I'm past that by now, I trust."

Rasile faced the trench and tightened like a lute string being tuned. "Cut its throat when I give the order," she said; then without pausing she began to wail her incantation.

Shadows rippled in the night air. Cashel sensed movement across the clearing, but the patches of moonlight were empty when he looked squarely at them. Only with his head cocked to the side did he see the long-necked buzzards stalking and croaking among the debris of a battlefield. There were no trees, only half-grown oats that'd been largely trampled into the furrows. There were oats, and swollen corpses, and the buzzards.

"Now, Warrior Cashel!" said Rasile.

Cashel twisted the goat's chin up, then stabbed it in the throat. The goat kicked violently. The wizard resumed chanting, though at a higher pitch.

Cashel sawed the blade down. It was dull, but he was very strong and he knew the work. He forced the goat's head forward so that the blood splashed and spilled into the trough. Back in the borough, the woman of the house would hold a pan of cooked grain under the beast's throat to make a pudding.

The goat spasmed, then spasmed again and went limp. Cashel lifted its hind legs so that the last of the blood could drip downward. He wiped the blade, then tossed the drained carcass aside.

Standing, he looked about him for the first time since he'd taken charge of the goat. He could barely see the trees. A deep fog had gathered about him and the wizard. It eddied and thickened in harmony with the chant.

Rasile gave a final cry and plunged her athame into the trough of blood. The grayness shattered into terrible figures, all fangs and grasping claws and hunger. Cashel snatched up the staff he'd had to lay behind him.

"
Let us drink!
" the figures said, their combined voices whistling like wind through a cave of ice. "
We must drink! You have called us back, so we must drink!
"

"Guide us to Gorand and you may drink," said Rasile, sounding just as cold as these things of elemental hunger. "Until then, I bar you."

"
We have no power over Gorand
," the voices wailed. Their forms were smoke and fog, but as they writhed Cashel caught the hint of something human or once human beneath them. "
You must let us drink!
"

"Guide us to Gorand," said Rasile. "Until you do, there is nothing for you but want and longing. Guide us!"

"
We cannot speak-k-k
. . . ," the voices cried. "
We can not-t-t
. . . ."

Rasile twisted her athame in the clay. The figures shrieked, shrieked like damned souls; and so they were.

"
We cannot-t-t!
"

The figures blurred and melded, like sand statues slumping to repose when a wave washes the shore. " . . .
not-t-t
. . ." echoed in Cashel's mind, though perhaps it wasn't a sound.

"Guide us to Gorand!" said Rasile.

The gray figures congealed. "
Gorand rules all!
" they cried. "
We cannot speak against Gorand-d-d
. . . ."

One of Liane's sandals lay on the grass beyond the ghastly circle. The girl herself was nowhere to be seen.

"Liane!" Cashel said. He lunged through the creatures, his staff spinning. Screaming in frustrated terror, they surged away like dust motes before an ox. "Liane!"

The animal screeched from the darkness again. It sounded closer than it had before. Other than that, the night was silent.

* * *

Garric eyed the path and touched his sword hilt. Straight-trunked tulip poplars and spreading chestnuts that rose to a hundred and fifty feet dominated the forest; redbud and white dogwood, both in gorgeous bloom, formed the understory.

"You won't need that here," said Tenoctris. "The dangers are of a different sort."

"
I'd feel better with it in my hand
," Carus muttered in Garric's mind. "
Needed or not
."

Garric grinned and dropped his right arm to his side again.
Ah, but you don't have a hand any more
, he thought. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

Though if it'd been him alone, he'd have drawn the blade. Garric wouldn't be here now if he were alone, of course, and Tenoctris had just told him what she wanted as clearly as if she'd given him a direct order.

He looked over his shoulder. The boat that brought them had vanished, and even the gray sea was fading into a forest like the one stretching before them. "What would you like me to do?"

"We'll follow the trail," she said, nodding. "It won't be far."

The path wasn't wide enough for them to walk side by side, so Garric strode ahead. He grinned wryly. There wasn't any reason to believe that danger waited in ambush ahead of them instead of creeping up behind, but at least he could pretend he was doing the bold and manly thing.

Tenoctris' feet and his own scuffed the leaf litter, but that was the only sound. There should've been the patter of dead twigs dislodged by a squirrel, or the rustle of a brown thrasher searching for grubs and beetles. This forest was as silent as a painting.

Garric reached the mossy edge of a lake so smoothly rounded that he was sure it had a stone coping. Instead the bank was black loam, crumbling slightly under his weight into the clear water.

"We need to get to the island in the center," Tenoctris said.

Garric shaded his eyes. Though the sun was bright, the mist over the water's surface obscured the other side. He hadn't realized the dimly glimpsed temple was on an island rather than simply across the lake.

"I can swim it," Garric said. "Ah—"

Tenoctris had become young and active when she decided that her aged body couldn't carry out the duties required to save mankind. That didn't necessarily mean that she could swim.

"Or I could build us a raft, Tenoctris," he said. It would make him wince to cut trees with his sword, but in fact the keen, never dulling sword would do a better job than any axe.

"Not just yet," Tenoctris said, making a tiny movement with an index finger.

Garric's eyes followed the gesture: a perfectly formed youth with green skin was swimming toward them. To his either side swam a long-eared eel wearing a golden collar.

King Carus' instinct gripped the sword hilt. By an effort of will, and despite his ancestor's fierce scowl, Garric drew his hand away. He stood with his thumbs tucked in his broad leather belt.

"We have business at the Gate of Ivory," Tenoctris said in a cold voice. She'd taken an athame carved from amber out of her satchel. When the light struck it at the correct angle, Garric saw that not only a spider but its web were frozen in the honey-colored blade. "Let us cross."

The youth laughed and twisted onto his back with his head raised. Garric wondered how he managed to float; the slimly muscular body beneath his green skin should've sunk like a bronze statue.

"I'm not preventing you, Tenoctris," the youth said, his voice holding a silvery reflection of an Ornifal accent. "I don't imagine it's up to me to let or hinder so great a wizard as yourself."

Tenoctris dipped the athame very precisely, lifted it, and dipped it again. The amber point was never directed at the youth, but it described an arc around him. His hands spread as though they were pressing against the side of a boulder. There was translucent webbing between the fingers.

The eels had been writhing in complex knots to the youth's either side, like the supporters of a coat of arms. As the athame moved, they drove downward like rippling arrows. Their collars winked even after the sinuous bodies were out of sight in the clear depths.

"
Show me
," Tenoctris said. She didn't raise her voice, but its timbre was that of a hawk's shriek. "I won't ask you again."

"You have no right," the youth muttered, but his hands clapped.

The surface of the lake shuddered. It took on a yellow cast, as though Garric were viewing it through the blade of the athame. Where the youth had floated, a muscular man kicked off from the bank. He was nude, but he pushed before him a float of reed stems. On it was a bundle of his clothing and equipment, including arrows and a short, stiff bow.

"
I'd do the same
," Carus said, his attention fixed on the saffron-filtered image. "
Only I'd have a dagger in my teeth, because the water's deep enough to hold things I wouldn't want to fight with my bare hands
."

The man swam with firm, effective kicks like a frog. He'd reached midpoint of the channel when his legs lost their rhythm. For a moment, Garric couldn't see what was wrong.

"
His pontoon's sinking
," Carus said. "
The canes must've gotten waterlogged. He's going to lose his gear
."

No
, thought Garric.
Everything's sinking. His head's barely out of the water now, even though he's started thrashing like a lizard in a pond
.

The float and its burden slipped beneath the surface. The balled clothing should've floated for some minutes at least, but it drifted straight down alongside the reeds and the bronze-pointed arrows.

The swimmer tried to turn back, though by now it was no closer to return than to go on. He sank inexorably, his flailing limbs seeming to have no more effect than they would have done in air. His face wore an expression of tortured anguish as he sank into the depths.