The Mirror of Worlds (40 page)

Temple glanced appraisingly toward her. "The Coerli use their quickness rather than strength," he said. "And they try to avoid enclosures where they'd be at a disadvantage."

He nodded to the villager and went on, "You're fortunate to have had this shelter, Master Gressar, and you've done a very good job strengthening it. But it's time to end the Coerli attacks once and for all."

"It's past time," said a young woman in a savage voice. "It won't bring back my Mira, will it? And you and my worthless husband didn't do a thing to save her, Gressar!"

"Now, Stuna, there was nothing to be done," said the headman with the sort of deliberate reasonableness that you use when you're trying to calm a child on the verge of a tantrum.

It didn't work with children as Ilna knew from watching over the years, and it
certainly
didn't work with the distraught mother. She gave a wordless shriek and threw herself at Gressar with her hands clawed. He backed a step, then turned and hunched over to escape Stuna's nails.

Two men took her by the arms, looking uncomfortable with the task. When she subsided into tears, they immediately let her go.

"Mira wasn't but four," said a man who hadn't spoken before. "It wasn't her fault, she was just too young to know better. She couldn't find her puppy inside, so she slipped out again while we were closing the door. It's so heavy it swings slow, you seen that. And the demons were already on us, or nearly. There was nothing we could do!"

He kept his face turned away from Temple as he spoke, which meant that Ilna got as good a view of his features as the dim light allowed. She'd spent time in one sort of Hell herself; this man was in a different place, but it was just as dark.

"Temple?" Ilna said. "The way to my goal is through the place those beasts come from;
that
my pattern tells me. I don't know what that place is, but I intend to go there."

"It's a cyst in time," Temple said, while the villagers listened in wonder. "A valley like this one—perhaps this very one—but in its own universe."

He smiled with a touch of sadness. "It might be much like the one in which you found me, before the Change brought it back into the present world. At an unfortunate time, one might say, but the Last themselves may have been responsible for the timing. There must be a wizard, a Corl wizard that is, who formed the cyst. That wizard rules the hunting pack that comes out when the conditions are right here."

"How do you recommend that we enter the beasts' world, soldier?" Ilna said harshly.

Her fingers were knotting and unknotting yarn. Each pattern she created was more terrible than the last. She knew exactly how the girl Mira died, because she'd watched the beasts kill Merota. In this valley they'd survived long enough to eat the child, unlike the band which had only seconds to savor Merota's slaughter before Ilna took a vengeance more terrible than their cat minds could've imagined before it happened.

Merota's killers had died, and these would die also. Not soon enough, as the child's mother had said; but soon.

"We'll go through their doorway," Temple said calmly. "But first we'll place ourselves in front of it while the warriors are at the far end of the valley. They have to get back into their enclave before the sun rises, so they'll come to us."

He gestured to the hunters. "And when they do, we'll kill them," he said. "Since there's no other way to deal with this band."

"There's no other way to deal with
any
of the beasts," Ilna snapped. "But why will they all be at the other end of the valley?"

"Ah," said Temple, nodding. "That's where the men of the village come in. If they're willing to help, that is. Otherwise I'll have to handle that part of the business myself while the three of you block the warriors' way home."

"Our men will help you," said Stuna. She gave a croaking laugh. "Or I swear by the soul of my Mira that I'll kill every one of them as he sleeps. Every one!"

"Lord Temple," said Gressar formally. "Tell us what we have to do."

Chapter 12

Metal clinked outside the tent, probably a buckle tapping against the bronze cuirass of the officer of the guard. It was a harmless sound, but Cashel felt Sharina stiffen in the darkness.

He didn't speak. Sharina suddenly began to sob. Cashel still didn't say anything, but he stroked her shoulder with one hand and held her firmly with the other. He wished she'd tell him what the problem was, but he wasn't going to badger her. She was having a hard enough time as it was.

Sharina sat upright. The bedding had been laid on the ground, which'd horrified the servants. She'd held firm, though, insisting that she as regent
was
going on the expedition to Pandah and that she was
not
going to burden the army with a gilded brass bed frame.

"Cashel, somebody's watching me," she said quietly. "His name is Vorsan, Prince Vorsan, and he's a wizard from before the Great Flood. Which apparently isn't a myth. I always thought the Flood was a myth."

Her voice broke with the last word and she started crying again. Cashel put his arms around her. "What did Tenoctris tell you?" he asked, taking it as a given that she'd talked to Tenoctris if a wizard was giving her trouble.

"She said not to worry!" Sharina said. "Cashel, he's taken me into his world. If I look into a mirror or any kind of reflection the wrong way, I'm there in his palace with him!"

"You told Tenoctris that and she just said not to worry?" Cashel said. What Sharina'd said didn't fit. There was something he didn't know, which was common enough, but this time it seemed like it was something he could learn.

"I said—" Sharina said, but the fright and anger in her voice faded by the end of the second syllable. Much calmer she went on, "Tenoctris said she didn't believe Vorsan would hurt me. And Rasile said she didn't think we should try to destroy him, because she couldn't tell the future perfectly."

Cashel rose to a crouch—the tent of even the Princess was a small one; common soldiers simply wrapped themselves in their cloaks at night—and pulled on his tunics. He was used to dressing in the dark; a lot of a shepherd's business was done in the dark and in the worst storms you could imagine.

His quarterstaff lay alongside the mattress stuff with horsehair rather than straw like a peasant's. He touched it. The hickory made him think of the borough; he smiled.

"That means Rasile thought she could tell the future
some
," Cashel said. "And maybe there'll be a time she wants Prince Vorsan around."

"You think I should just let him, well, do the things he does too?" Sharina said. "I've
told
him to leave me alone, but he doesn't."

They bumped elbows as she shrugged into her own tunic. She was trying to keep the irritation out of her voice, but Cashel heard it regardless.

"No, Sharina," he said calmly. "But I think I ought to talk to him myself. Do you have a mirror?"

They'd need a light, too. The guards outside the tent had a lantern he could borrow, but he'd just as soon leave them and everybody else out of this. Cashel didn't often get angry, but he was angry now.

He took the flint and steel from the tarred leather cylinder hanging from the tent's ridge-pole and struck sparks into a pile of mushroom spores. When the tinder flared, he touched the lampwick to it.

"He has metal men for servants," Sharina said softly. "I heard the sound when I was starting to go to sleep, and I thought . . . ."

"I'll talk to him," Cashel repeated quietly. "Do you have a mirror?"

"Here," said Sharina, holding the Pewle knife upright so that their lamplit faces were reflected on the flat of the polished blade. "I think this is . . . suitable."

Cashel saw shadows quiver in the steel; no more than that. Voices murmured outside the tent; rested guards were replacing those who'd been on duty.

"He's there," Sharina said in an urgent whisper. He didn't know whether she was speaking to him or just to herself. "I know he's there!"

"It's smaller than me," Cashel said carefully.

"So's the pupil of my eye," Sharina said. "But I can see all of you. The knife is enough."

"Prince Vorsan," Cashel said, speaking as if the knife blade was the man he was looking for. "My name's Cashel or-Kenset. I'd like to talk to you; it won't take long. You have my word that I won't harm you or yours if you let me in to talk."

A shadow solidified on the metal, seemingly the reflection of someone behind them. It had shape but not texture. "Vorsan, you can trust—" Sharina began.

Cashel touched her cheek with his left hand. "Hush, love," he said, watching the shimmering steel. "This is for men."

The shadow moved and was light, a round room beneath a glowing dome. The man on the other side wore robes of a blue Cashel'd seen only a few times on evenings when he looked into the depths of the sea. Across that backdrop moved clouds of perfect silver, shredding and reforming like an autumn storm drove it.

Oh, Ilna'd love to see that cloth!
Cashel thought; and blushed, because after all it wasn't what he'd come here about.

Vorsan was pudgy. He wore a wreath of silver flowers that matched the embroidered clouds, and on his right and left were the silver men Sharina'd mentioned. They didn't have faces or the kind of bumps and angles normal people had; it was sort like they were wax figures and they'd been heated just a little.

Each silver man held a club of metal that seemed to grow right out of his hand.

Cashel cleared his throat and raised his quarterstaff upright—it was too tall for the tent that way—but just held it in the one hand, not threatening anybody. "You don't need those," he said, nodding to the servants. "My word's good."

"Yes, yes, I'm aware of that," Vorsan said, making an expression like he was swallowing something sour. "Still, I'm not a man of violence myself and, ah, I felt it's better to be prepared when I explain the situation to you."

If you think those two metal monkeys'd stop me if I hadn't given my word
 . . ., Cashel thought; but he didn't speak, because it'd sound like a threat and he wasn't one to threaten folks.

But if I hadn't given my word
 . . . .

"Now, I'm sure you care a great deal for the princess," Vorsan said. "That's correct, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Cashel. "I care for Sharina."

"Well, you see, the point is that you can't protect her from what's about to happen to your world," Vorsan said. "I'm the
only
one who can protect her. I can't seem to get her to understand that. The Last will destroy your world as the Flood did mine, but this time there'll be no respite. Mankind is doomed forever—and the Princess Sharina is doomed as well unless you convince her to come with me. You do see that, don't you?"

"Sir," said Cashel, "I don't believe that we can't win. I'll never believe that Evil wins, not even if it kills me, and I don't think Sharina believes that either. But—"

"I'm telling you the truth, my good man!" Vorsan said. "Do you think I'm mistaken? I created this sanctuary. I'm Vorsan, and I don't make mistakes!"

Cashel laughed. He was still angry, but the little fellow was as funny as a bullfrog puffing himself up and trying to be an ox.

"You've made one mistake I know about, Master Vorsan," he said. He let the laughter stay in his voice. Laughing at the little fellow'd bother him more than shouts would. It wasn't a kind thing to do, but Cashel
was
angry.

"You thought that it'd matter to Sharina even if she thought you were right," he said. "Even if she was sure we were all going to lose and these black ugly Last were going to kill everything else in the world. She'd keep on fighting anyway, because that's what decent folk do when it's that or give in to evil. Which you'd know yourself if you were a man."

Vorsan gave an exaggerated shake of his head. "You can't really believe that?" he said, but though he made a question out of the words, his tone said he really was starting to understand. "The Princess Sharina is unique, so perfectly wonderful—it wouldn't be
right
that she throw her life away so pointlessly. She owes it to the world to be preserved!"

Cashel laughed again. "Do you listen to yourself?" he asked, meaning it for a real question. "Sharina's going to fight for the world, which you'd never do. Just keep out of the way. That's all she wants of you, Vorsan—your space."

"She can't really mean that," Vorsan whispered, looking down at his hands cupped before him. He raised his eyes to Cashel's and went on, "Very well, then; you may leave. Focus on your reflection in the mirror on either side of you."

"One thing more, Master Vorsan," Cashel said. "I gave you my word I wouldn't harm you if you invited me in; and I haven't. But sir—if you trouble Sharina again, I'll be back, without an invitation and without any promises. And I'll end it then, whatever Tenoctris says."

"You can't reach me unless I permit it!" the pudgy man said.

Cashel smiled. "The better part of me doesn't want to prove how wrong you are," he said. "But I'm not as peaceful a man as you maybe think. Good day, Master Vorsan."

Cashel looked into a mirror as clear as the air between him and its surface; and after a moment, he was falling back into Sharina's arms.

* * *

The lake was a dome of warm mist rising for as far outward as Garric could see from the ogre's back. Air currents opened vistas and closed them, occasionally showing him groves of fruit trees scattered into the distance. The air had an undertone, mildly unpleasant but not one of decay.

"You're smelling asphalt," Shin said. "Bitumen. It's seeped up to fill most of the bowl here over the centuries. Rain doesn't soak in as it would on normal ground, so the surface is cut with freshwater leads."

The aegipan nodded his little goatee toward the lake with a lolling grin. "And islands of dirt and rock remain where the hills were," he added. "They're planted with orchards, I see."

"I've never seen a place like this," Garric said, lifting his right leg from the stirrup and doubling it to stretch different muscles. "It's quite interesting, of course, but I don't see how we can get across it. Can we go around?"