The Gods Return (49 page)

On low pillars were marble busts of a man and a woman, facing each other instead of looking toward visitors coming through the doorway. They'd been handsome people, both of them, but they had nasty expressions.

"Ready, ma'am?" Cashel said, glancing toward his companion. Rasile held her athame in a fashion that reminded him that it really
was
a knife even though it'd been carved from black stone.

She nodded curtly. Cashel strode through the right-hand door into the circular room beyond. The floor was onyx. There were several closed doors off it, framed in colored marbles. The walls were otherwise plain, and there wasn't any furniture.

A woman's head was set into the center of the floor. Flames as blue as sulfur blazed from her nostrils as she breathed; that was what the light came from. She'd been the model for the marble face in the vestibule.

Another statue. It only seemed to breathe
.

"Have you come to help me?" the head demanded, spurting blue fire with each syllable. "Help me and I will help you . . . but you
must
help me."

"We were told Milady had taken our friend Liane," Cashel said. "We're here to bring Liane back."

Milady laughed like glass breaking. "I'll let your Liane go when I'm ready to, hero!" she said. "The woman came to me, and she'll stay with me till you've done my bidding. Help me and I will help you!"

Cashel looked at the head, just looked at it and thought. Rasile was standing back a little from him, but he didn't say anything to her till he figured things out for himself.

"Don't think you can strike me!" Milady said. From the way her voice went up in pitch,
she
thought he could do that and also thought he might try. "It wouldn't help you anyway! My servants will hurl her from the top of the tower if anything happens to me."

Every time Milady's mouth opened, another gout of flame licked out and the sharpness of brimstone got thicker. It might have been a mercy to dish in her skull with the quarterstaff, but Cashel wasn't going to do that to a woman without better reason than she'd given him so far.

Then again, he wasn't sure that smashing Milady's head would kill her. More was going on here than ordinary life and death.

"Ma'am?" Cashel said. "What is it that you want me to do for you? If I can, I'll do it. But you have to let Liane go."

Milady spat half of a coin onto the floor; it chimed cheerfully on the polished stone squares. Breaking a coin in two was a common way to seal a pledge in Barca's Hamlet, but Cashel had always seen bronze used when it was done there; this coin was silver.

"The matching half is through the door to your right," Milady said, turning her head and nodding. "Bring it to me and I will release your Liane."

Cashel picked up the coin. It was so hot that despite his calluses, he bounced it a few times in his palm. It had a man's head on one side and a pillar with two wings sticking out of it—they looked like wings, anyhow—on the other. He didn't say anything for the moment, but he tucked the pledge into a fold of his sash. As a boy he'd have carried something as valuable as this in his mouth, but—

He grinned.

—he'd seen a lot more silver now than even a rich man would in the borough. Besides, even if he cared about money, he didn't think he'd put
this
coin in his mouth.

This door and the one across from it had white panels set out with gilt borders, the sort of fancy thing you'd expect in a place like this. It hadn't weathered at all, though, despite the door standing ajar and the house on the edge of falling down.

Cashel pulled it open. The room on the other side looked pretty much like this one, though it was a rectangle instead of round and the floor was a pattern of brown and tan tiles instead of squares of black stone. There was a little marble shelf sticking out of the far wall, supported by scrollwork. The glitter on it was likely the rest of the coin in his sash.

Cashel looked back at the head; it had turned to watch him. "All right, ma'am," he said. "I'll do my best to fetch you the pledge, but you have to let Liane go now. She can stay with Rasile till I come back."

"You'll get your friend when you bring me the coin!" Milady said. She had a voice like an angry squirrel. "Go on, hero! Get the coin!"

"No, ma'am," Cashel said. He turned and spread his feet out to the width of his shoulders. Rasile was watching from just inside the doorway from the vestibule. She'd laid her yarrow stalks but she wasn't using them for anything just now.

Her tongue wagged in a laugh. The Coerli sense of humor was a good fit for this sort of business.

"Ma'am," Cashel said to the head, "you'll bring Liane back now or I'll look for another way to get her free."

"There is no other way!" said Milady, even more of a squirrel.

"Maybe, maybe not," said Cashel. "But you won't be around to learn which of us was right. Now, bring Liane down to us, please."

"Are you threatening
me
?" Milady shrieked, her face a mass of anger.

"No, ma'am," Cashel said. "I'm telling you to hand Liane over to Rasile here and then I'll go fetch your pledge."

"Doomed one?" Rasile said. "You picked this warrior because of his strength. You will underestimate that strength at your peril."

"Bring the woman here!" Milady said. She spoke in the same voice she'd done before, no louder, but Cashel wasn't surprised when the door on the other side of the circular room opened.

An ape shambled in on its hind legs. It reached one long arm behind it to hold Liane's wrist. She walked as straight as she could, but the second ape behind had the other wrist and they weren't in step with each other.

Cashel's face went very quiet. He'd swipe the head in the floor as he brought the staff around, then take two strides and with the second ram a butt cap into the—

"Let her go!" Milady said.

Her voice wasn't any more pleasant than it had been, but at least she was saying the right thing. The apes obeyed quick as quick, dropping down onto their knuckles.

Liane darted around the beast in front of her and started toward Cashel. She'd lost the other sandal too, or more likely kicked it off because she could move better barefoot than half shod.

"No ma'am!" Cashel said. She stopped: he hadn't meant to shout like that.

"Ah, Liane," he said. "I've got business to tend to in the next room. Stay with Rasile, please, and I'll be back just as soon as I can."

Cashel walked to the door to where the pledge piece was waiting. He skirted the head without looking down at it.

It wasn't right that Milady take Liane hostage to make him do this, but Cashel was a peasant. Talking about what's fair isn't going to put food in your belly during the Hungry Time in March. This was something he could do that got Liane free, so he was doing it.

There wasn't anything about the room beyond that looked funny, but if it was as easy as it seemed, Milady would've sent her apes to fetch the coin. Cashel poked his quarterstaff through the doorway and tapped the floor. It clacked duller than it would on stone, showing it really was pottery like it seemed.

But it also popped a bright blue spark every time the iron touched. There was wizardry involved, which wasn't much of a surprise.

Cashel smiled, sort of, the way he generally did before a fight. He wasn't one to start trouble, but nobody'd seen him run away from it yet.

Sideways with his left hand leading on the slanted staff, he strode through the doorway. All his hairs stood up.

The room was gone. Cashel stood on a narrow crystal bridge over a chasm of blue flames. In the depths beneath him stood the tiny figure of Milady, bathed in unquenchable fire. She laughed like a madwoman.

A man with the face of the other bust in the vestibule was coming across the bridge toward Cashel. He held a long crystal wand in either hand and chanted words of power.

* * *

"First Section with me!" bawled Prester, who'd trotted to the front as the company approached a plaza where five streets met. He slanted the leading troops to the right rather than following the boulevard they'd been jogging down thus far.

A group of men—mostly men—were sitting and drinking on the display windows of shops they'd wrenched the shutters from. When the troops appeared, most of the looters either ran up the street or vanished into the gutted shops in hope of hiding among the debris. The exceptions were two men lying on their backs with their arms linked, singing, "
She was poor but she was honest
. . . ."

Sharina kept close behind Pont, jogging to the side of the second section. As his portion of the company started around the plaza he shouted, "Guide left, Selinus, Sister take you! Come on, Second Section, don't embarrass me in front of the princess!"

The stone curb of the fountain in the middle of the plaza was crude, but the centerpiece was a delicate bronze statue of a nymph pointing one hand to heaven and the other toward the basin at her feet. She'd originally been gilded; swashes of gold remained as highlights in the folds of her tunic. The pirate chiefs of Pandah had looted the lovely nymph, but brute force didn't give them the skill to place her in a worthy setting.

"Are they going to get lost?" asked Burne, leaning forward in the cradle of Sharina's arm. She wondered if the rat was worried or if he was just keyed up with excitement like her. Like all of them, she suspected, though the two camp marshals certainly didn't give any sign of it.

"Naw, not Prester," Pont said, dropping back slightly to return titular command to the ensign who'd stayed with this section. "Me, now, I'm no good in cities and neither's Selinus, the file closer, but—"

He gestured with his javelin. "Abreci there in the first file, he's from Valles and he never gets lost in a city, not even in a back alley when he's blind drunk."

"There shouldn't be a problem for us since this street takes us right past the temple," Sharina said. "But Prester trying to arrive from behind."

Pont chuckled. "Don't you worry about Prester," he said. "And if anything should happen, well, I figure me and the boys can handle whatever a passel of priests throw at us."

Sharina started to object, then shut her mouth again. That was the right attitude. They had a plan, a good plan: to divide their force and surround the temple before those inside were aware of the troops' presence. If it went wrong, and even good plans did sometimes go wrong, they'd carry on with the force available.

And yes, thirty soldiers trained by Prester and Pont ought to be able to handle as many priests as you could cram into a temple, even a big temple like that of the Lady of the Grove.

As the troops jogged, they held their shields out from their bodies. Simply hanging by their straps, the cylinder sections of laminated wood would have battered the men bloody by the time they'd gone a mile. Each soldier's slanted javelin pumped back and forth, and the studs on their leather aprons jangled together with each stride of their hobnailed boots.

The section clashed into Convocation Square. The court building, a basilica whose eaves were decorated with painted terracotta dragons, was to the right. The walled compound that'd been the slave lines—slaves were most of the loot which pirates captured—was to the left; the contents had been sold weekly at auction in the square. Now it had been converted into barracks for the laborers engaged in Pandah's expanding building trade.

Directly across the plaza—it wasn't a square or even four-sided—was the Temple of the Lady of the Grove, now without a tree in sight. The sanctum was a narrow building surrounded by a pillared porch. There were six sharp-fluted pillars across the front and the shadows of six more just behind them.

"All right, troopers!" Pont roared, lengthening his stride to put himself ahead of the front rank where the whole section could see him. "Follow me! Prisoners if you can get them, but nobody escapes!"

"Yee-
ha
!" somebody called in the near distance. Prester's section appeared from a side street behind the building. They rushed toward it with their javelins lifted. The troops were in shadow, but their boots kicked sparks from the cobblestones.

A door thudded shut beyond the rows of pillars. Sharina drew her knife. She had to be careful not to sprint out ahead of the soldiers as they spread into a skirmish line. Even against priests, she ought to leave the fighting to the men in armor if she possibly could.

Pont's right arm came forward in a smooth, swift motion, loosing his javelin at the peak of the arc.
Why's he throwing at a building?
Sharina wondered.

A man wearing a priest's black robe—but without the usual white sash—lurched from the shadows between the pillars. He'd flung away his bow when the javelin transfixed his upper chest; his quiver spilled arrows as he sprawled down the three-step base.

"For the princess!" Pont cried, drawing his sword.

At the back end of the temple, Prester was shouting, "Come on troopers, show the princess what you're made of!"

The dead archer had been the only man outside the sanctum. The leading soldiers jumped over his body and bashed their shield bosses at the closed door, making peevish thuds. Several men dropped their javelins to draw their swords, but instead of hacking at the wood, Pont sheathed his blade.

"Selinus, with me!" he said, unstrapping his shield so that he could hold it by the edge. "The rest of you scuts keep back!"