The Gods Return (51 page)

The arbor was a frame of braided pillars and brick arches covering a grassy lawn. The broad leaves of the grape vines planted at the base of each pillar shaded the ground, but many tiny droplets of sunlight leaked through. When Ilna looked up, she could see the hills rising steeply only a stone's throw away.

In the center of the lawn was a low table. Instead of chairs, cushions had been laid along both sides and at the far end; apes waited behind each of the five places. Fruit and nutmeats waited on platters, and in a water-filled tub of brass and copper stood a tall earthenware jug.

Ilna looked more closely at the tub. Chips of ice floated in the water.

"We bring ice down from the peaks to make sherbets and cool our wines," said King Perus, noticing Ilna's surprise.

"Mistress Ilna?" said Perrin. He lifted the wine-thief, a deep-bellied ladle with a long vertical handle, from the narrow throat of the jug. "Allow me to serve you myself."

He filled a goblet, then handed it to her with a bow. "Our finest vintage," he said, "for the most lovely woman ever to enter our valley."

Ilna frowned. Ingens was frowning also, she noticed, though no doubt—and the thought brought a hard smile back to her lips—for different reasons.

She sipped as Perrine showed the secretary how to recline alongside her on the cushions. The first touch of the wine seemed all right—too thick and too strong, but wine was normally diluted for drinking in those parts of the Isles where it was the usual beverage.

Ilna swallowed. Before she took a second sip she noticed the aftertaste of the first and grimaced. She put the goblet on the table and said, "I'm sorry, I don't have a taste for wines. Do you have ale? I'm not—"

What did she mean to say?
I'm not rich? I'm a poor orphan who drank stale beer most of the time but water often because she couldn't afford anything better
. Though nobody in Barca's Hamlet had drunk wine.

"Ale?" said Perus. "Why, no, we don't brew any kind of beer in the valley."

"Water, then," said Ilna. She was beginning to become irritated. She'd never have demanded something rare or expensive for her meals, but it ought to be possible to get something simple even in a palace.

"I'm so embarrassed, Mistress Ilna," Perrine said. She'd taken a filled goblet from an ape and was holding it for Ingens as he drank. "You see, the water here isn't safe. Our servants, I'm afraid, aren't very fastidious about their natural functions."

"We have other wines, Ilna," the prince said with a worried expression. "Perhaps you'd like a white?"

Now she
was
irritated. She took the goblet waiting at Perrin's place and scooped it full of melt water from the brass tub. "I trust
this
is safe?" she said, then drank deeply before her hosts managed a reply.

"Well, yes, if that's what you want, Ilna," the prince said after an exchange of silent looks with the rest of his family. "Whatever you like, of course."

"Thank you," Ilna said, refilling the goblet. "And if you don't mind, I'll sit instead of lying down. I've never learned to eat one-handed on my side, and I have no desire to make myself foolish in front of you."

"Of course, mistress," Perus said. He sounded gracious, but he had the look of a man who'd been kicked in the stomach. "Our only wish is for you to be comfortable here."

"And to convince you of our good intentions," Perrin said with his usual smile. "We'll do anything we can to achieve that."

As Ilna sat primly, Ingens said, "Well, I must say I like your wine very much, King Perus. I don't believe I've ever drunk a finer one."

He glared across the table at Ilna as an ape refilled his goblet. She ignored him and took a pear from the tray before her.

"Try this plum, Ilna," the prince said, plucking one from another tray. He took out a knife with a tiny gold blade and added, "Here, I'll peel it for you. I think you'll find it amazingly sweet."

"Thank you," Ilna said, making an effort to prevent the words from accurately reflecting her thoughts at the moment.
Could they
not
leave her alone?
"This pear is delicious."

Indeed, it was. So was the hard-boiled egg whose yolk had been ground with spices before being returned to the cup of its white. The ape serving her was silent and alert, bringing bowls of water to cleanse her fingers between courses. Rose petals floated in them.

The lace table covering and the napkins which followed the finger bowls were linen. Their quality was as good as anything Ilna had seen that she hadn't woven herself.

As for the food—food wasn't important to her, but craftsmanship was. The cooks in this valley were as skilled as the weavers. The base of all the dishes was mutton, rice, and lentils, but the spices turned what might have been simple fare into remarkable works of art.

The prince kept offering her dainties. Ilna kept refusing, as politely as one could be in the situation. Perrin was trying to use her courtesy as a way to bully her to his will, which of course made her more coldly certain in her refusals.

Ilna smiled. She was treating it as a game, she supposed. If she stopped feeling that it was a game, she'd snatch the pattern from her sleeve and display it. She hadn't picked out the knots.

Apes hung lanterns whose parchment screens had been dyed in attractive pastels. The sun had dropped below the rim of the mountains and the sky had faded enough for stars to appear. The constellations weren't familiar to her.

The servants brought pistachios, shelled and arranged in swirling patterns on their silver trays. As they carried them away after the guests had eaten, King Perus said, "I've had rooms prepared for you. It wouldn't be entirely safe to return to your own world after sunset, though of course you're welcome to do so if you prefer."

"Oh, I hope you'll stay," said Perrine, covering one of the secretary's hands with her own. "Oh, please stay, Ingens."

"Of course!" Ingens said. He'd drunk a fair amount. There was a challenge in his tone as he went on, "It's my duty to stay until we find Hervir. Isn't that true, Mistress Ilna?"

Ilna looked at him. This wasn't a game any more, but that meant it was even more important that she not lose her temper.

"Yes, I suppose it is," she said evenly. "For tonight, at least."

"Then allow me to conduct you to your room, Ilna," said the prince as he hopped to his feet.

Ilna rose, ignoring the offered hand, as usual. "Yes," she said, "I'm ready to sleep."

The room she'd been given was off a cross-hall, midway down the palace's right wing. Rugs and cushions were arranged for a bed; she'd certainly slept on worse.

Perrin, as expected, tried to delay her at the door. Also as expected, she dismissed him without difficulty.

The full moon shone through the row of windows just below the roofline. Ilna glanced at it, then used a tripod table to wedge the door. It wouldn't hold long, but it would awaken her.

She left a lamp burning. She'd sleep with a pattern bunched in her left fist. Any person who saw it would wish that they were being disemboweled with hooked irons, because
that
would eventually be over.

Ilna smiled grimly as she lay down. Of course, she could be completely wrong about the danger here.

And perhaps one day pigs would fly.

"Tomorrow . . . ," said the voice at Ilna's ear.

She jerked upright, raising her hands. Usun stood beside her pillow; she tucked the pattern into her sleeve.

" . . . you won't be able to drink the melt water either," the little man said, grinning like a fiend from the Underworld, "but I don't think we'll be here long enough for that to matter. Are you ready to go, mistress?"

"When I dress," said Ilna, getting up with an easy motion. From the position of the moon she couldn't have been asleep very long.

She'd slept in her inner tunic. She slipped the outer one over her head, then cinched the silken lasso around her waist. "Shall I take the cloak?"

"No," said Usun. "We'll be going down, so you'll want to bring the lamp. Another cave, I'm afraid, but you seem to do well in them for all your dislike."

Ilna sniffed. "I dislike most things," she said. "I certainly wouldn't find that an acceptable excuse for doing them badly."

"We'll go out through the door," said Usun, noticing her glance toward the missing lattice in the row of high windows. "I came in that way because I figured you'd have blocked it from this side. They didn't put guards in the halls, and they'll wait till the third watch, I'd judge, before they come for you."

"All right," said Ilna, lifting the table and setting it out of the way. She took the lamp from the terracotta ledge built into the wall.

"Ilna?" the little man said. "Is there any acceptable excuse for bad workmanship?"

She looked at him. "No," she said. "There isn't. Not to me."

Usun giggled. "That's what I thought," he said. "Brincisa was
such
a fool when she tried to make a pawn of you."

"Are you ready to go?" Ilna said flatly, her hand on the latch lever.

"Yes, mistress," Usun said. He giggled again. "We'll turn right and go almost to the end of the hallway."

He trotted past her as soon as she had the door open a crack. He wasn't tall enough to reach the latch even by jumping, though she didn't doubt that he could've gotten up there if he'd had to. He prowled along the right-hand side, blending amazingly well with the painted band at the base of the wall.

Usun held a stick the length of his outstretched arm. It had a short, sharp iron point and looked useful either for throwing or stabbing. She had no idea where it came from, because the little man hadn't had it when they were in the burial cavern.

Apes curled up, often two or three snuggling together, on rugs on the floors of rooms that Ilna passed. One smacked his lips in noisy delight at something in his dreams. A few may have been awake, but even so they didn't track her with their eyes.

Usun reached the second door from the end on his side of the corridor. Facing it, he thrust the point of his staff into the lower panel and lunged upward. The staff braced him as he turned the latch.

The door swung inward on his weight. Usun's arms were quite strong despite being as spindly as a spider's.

The steps beyond led downward. The little man took them in a series of controlled jumps, going down off his left leg, striding to the edge of the next step, and then down again.

Ilna hadn't needed the lamp in the hall since plenty of moonlight came through the open doorways. It was pitch dark after she closed the door behind her and followed Usun, however.

The stairs were made of bricks which had originally been glazed. Lamplight gleamed on edges where the finish had been protected, but elsewhere they'd been ground to their coarse rusty core. Ilna wondered just how old the stairs were.

Her feet whispered. Usun bobbed down ahead of her. He made less sound than even the bird he resembled as he hopped and paced and hopped. What he was doing required a good deal of effort, she realized, imagining herself going down steps of comparable size. He was certainly a wiry little fellow.

A moan came up the passage. Ilna thought it was some natural sound, a steam vent or the rush of air through a crack, distorted by its own long echoes. She had to admit that it sounded like a living thing in pain, though.

Ilna'd gotten into the rhythm of the descent, so that it was her feet rather than her eyes that told her when the steps changed from brick to being chipped from stone. It was granite and unexpectedly slick. Though the rock was hard, feet had polished it to a high gloss which the porous brick wouldn't take.

How many feet, and how many centuries, had been down this passage?

Usun led onward. He'd shifted so that he stepped off his right leg, letting the left side of his body lead. Ilna nodded in approval: she'd learned to vary her posture when she was throwing a heavy loom. You could hurt yourself badly with repetitive work like that; and it was work, no mistake, for the little man.

The passage had been squared to begin with; farther down it became rough save where generations of shoulders had brushed it. She didn't think it had been cut with metal tools: at this depth the stairs seemed to have been battered through stone by other stones.

Had there been a crack or a natural vent which the human builders had merely enlarged? She didn't know much about rocks—by choice—but she didn't remember ever having seen a vent in granite.

"Master Usun?" Ilna said. How long had it been since they started down? She was never good with time, and the stone all around had robbed her of such facility as she'd ever had. "How much farther does this go?"

"It goes this far, Ilna," the little man said. "We've arrived."

The stairs ended in a small anteroom, not a landing as Ilna had thought at first. She stepped out to stand beside Usun, facing an iron door. It was at least double her own height, but it was relatively narrow because it had a single valve instead of being double like most doors raised on this scale.

She couldn't see either latch or hinges; indeed, from the look of it this might be a panel set in the living rock as decoration or to be worshipped. A polished smear along the left edge at shoulder height suggested that it had been pushed open regularly, but how did you unlock it?