Mistress of the Catacombs Read online

  Tilphosa lifted her chin in agreement. “I don't want anything from this island,” she said. “It's a place of ill omen.”

  “You don't have to tell me about ill omen,” Mounix growled. He relaxed; Cashel let go of his tunic. “I saw what happened to your maid, didn't I?”

  He'd sheathed his curved sword because he needed both hands for the climb; he drew it again now. Cashel had met swordsmen. Mounix wasn't one.

  Costas joined them, saying nothing. He nocked one of his three arrows in the waxed string of his bow.

  Metra sat on the nose of the outcrop where only lichen grew. The crumpled golden framework lay before and beside her. Instead of scraping figures onto the rock, she took out a square of white silk embroidered with symbols in red. She began to murmur an incantation, her ruddy copper athame dipping and rising above each syllable in turn.

  Mounix grimaced and turned his back. “Sister take all this!” he muttered. “But if she can send whatever it was that ate the girl back to the Underworld, she can talk to a thousand demons for all I care.”

  “When we get off this island,” Cashel said, “it won't matter what it is that lives here. The boat looked like it came through the storm pretty well. Can't we leave in it?”

  “The dinghy, you mean?” Mounix said with a sneer of disgust. “Not like it is now, not if we want to get everybody aboard and take food and water for them. I guess that doesn't matter to you, since you're not with us, right?”

  “We're all strangers here,” said Cashel. “I figured we'd stick together for the time being.”

  “Master Cashel will accompany me, captain,” Tilphosa said coldly. “Will you be building another ship, then?”

  Light—red wizardlight—shimmered in the thicket where the framework lay. Metra raised her voice enough that the others could hear, “... iorbeth neuthi...”

  When Mounix heard the words of power, he snarled, “Sister take her!” under his breath. He was one of the people who lost all their courage in the face of wizardry; though it didn't seem to Cashel that the captain was particularly brave on a good day.

  Costas didn't seem to be bothered. “It's easier than that,” he said. “We'll just build up the gunnels of the dinghy so that we can load her deeper. We've got enough timbers salvaged from the wreck we can do that easy. Right, captain?”

  “Yeah, we can do that,” Mounix said. “I've got the crew working on it now. That's why I left Hook behind, to get going on the job. He's the ship's carpenter.”

  The air in front of Metra squealed; the sound didn't come from the wizard's throat. Red light coalesced into something almost solid, the way butter forms in a churn.

  Metra lowered the athame and slumped backward. She'd have fallen if Cashel hadn't reached out to support her; he carried the wizard back a double pace.

  She'd managed to hold on to her athame, but Cashel bent to pick up the embroidered silk with two fingers of the hand holding his staff. He didn't much like Metra, but he'd so often helped Tenoctris that caring for a wizard exhausted from working her art had become second nature to him.

  The rosy light expanded. Cashel couldn't judge its size; without any seeming change, what had been a globe became instead a hole into another place. A spindle-shaped object of ivory and mother-of-pearl floated on its side over a forest of giant horsetails and trees with limbs like green whips.

  “Is that a ship?” Costas said, squinting at the vision. “What kind of a ship is that? It's flying!”

  Captain Mounix glanced over his shoulder, then turned his head again with a look of thunderous misery. He sliced at a shrub with his sword. His blade cut into the wood, then sprang back.

  “The Third Race was able to fly, according to Asterican scriptures,” Tilphosa said quietly. She was composed: frightened but facing her fear.

  Cashel didn't know who the Astericans were, let alone the Third Race. “Did they live around here?” he asked. Though he didn't really know where "here" was.

  Metra had regained enough control of her limbs to stand without Cashel's help. She slid the athame under her sash. Cashel offered the silken document. She took it from him without thanks and folded the square into a tight bundle before replacing it in her sleeve.

  Tilphosa looked at Cashel. “The world was very different then," she said. “According to scripture. The Isles didn't exist.”

  Cashel frowned, trying to imagine how the Isles could not exist. It was like hearing that there was no sky.

  “The Third Race weren't men,” Tilphosa added. “According to scripture.”

  The vessel's hull began to glow with soft pastels that weren't just the sheen of the mother-of-pearl. The ship rose straight up, then sailed toward the horizon at gathering speed. Though the evening air was warm, Cashel felt a chill along his spine.

  The vision ended—or the window closed?—soundlessly. In its place was the brushwood thicket where incorruptible metal sparkled.

  “How old is the boat you just showed us, Mistress Metra?" Cashel asked. He squatted down for a closer look at part of the framework sticking clear of the undergrowth. He didn't touch it.

  “You couldn't understand,” Metra said with a shrug. Turning to Mounix, she said, “Captain, you can do what you please now. I have no further use for this trash.”

  Tilphosa gave the priestess an appraising look; while not actively hostile, there was no affection in it either. To Cashel she said, “It would be very old, Cashel. If it was from the Third Race, it was older than we have words to describe. A year wasn't the same thing when the Third Race lived.”

  Mounix and his henchman were listening to the girl also. The captain spat, then said, “Let's get back to the shore. It's getting late, and I don't want to be caught around this thing in the dark.”

  “But how about the gold, captain?” Costas demanded. He rotated his arrow and held it against the bowstaff instead of ready for use. “Aren't we going to take it with us? Some, I mean.”

  Mounix started down the slope. “You do what you please, Costas,” he said. “I don't want any part of that thing.”

  “I'll go in front of you like before,” Cashel told the girl. Metra started to speak, then decided not to. Cashel guessed the wizard was going to ask him to help her as well, but she figured he'd give her a short answer because of the way she'd been acting toward him.

  Cashel smiled faintly. Sure, he'd help Metra the same as he'd help most anybody. He couldn't change how other people were, but he didn't let them change how he behaved either.

  Mounix was moving faster than Cashel cared to do on this slope. There was some reason—it would be dark soon; dawn and nightfall were more sudden in this place than Cashel was used to. Cashel guessed the captain was afraid of more than darkness, though.

  On the outcrop, metal chimed as Costas tried to break off pieces of the gold. He'd have his work cut out for him: the tubes were hard enough that iron didn't scratch them and so tough that mostly they'd bent instead of breaking when the boat smashed into the rocks.

  “Metra?” Tilphosa said. She spoke without turning her head but in a clear tone so that the woman following could hear. “What did your dreams tell you? Does the wreckage up there have anything to do with why we wrecked on this island?”

  Cashel caught several geranium stems in his left hand. “Watch this,” he warned those behind him. “The clay's slick here.”

  The soil anchored roots solidly, though. Even Cashel's weight with Tilphosa's added hadn't threatened to pull out any of the bushes he'd used for support on the way up.

  “Captain?” Costas called from some distance above them. “I'm coming, captain. Which way are you?”

  Mounix didn't answer; he might not even have heard. “We've gone this way, Costas!” Cashel shouted. He knew what it was like to be alone in a strange place ... and this island was stranger than most.

  “Metra?” Tilphosa repeated more sharply.

  Metra spoke in a tired murmur. Tilphosa said, “I can't hear you. Please speak up.”

  It
struck Cashel that the girl was—or anyway felt she was—of a higher station than the wizard. Cashel had spent most of his life as a poor orphan, so for the most part he'd been on the wrong side of that division.

  It was kind of interesting to see how it worked from the top, so to speak. He hadn't told a stranger that he was Tilphosa's guardian; and maybe by now Metra was wishing she hadn't done that either.

  “This island, this place,” Metra said, “has always been a focus for Chaos. When the powers that work the cosmos rise, as they're rising now, the tendency toward... bad luck, call it, grows stronger. We were caught by that, and so was the vessel that crashed on the peak. But at an earlier time.”

  A lot earlier. Sharina would understand it better, though Cashel didn't guess it made much real difference. He wished Sharina was here, though.

  He could hear men's voices ahead of them, and the slope was leveling out. “We're getting close,” he said. He turned his head, and repeated loudly, “We've reached the shore, Costas!”

  Tilphosa let go of Cashel's belt; they walked together through the palms fringing the sand. Captain Mounix stood with half a dozen of his crew, talking in angry frustration. Cashel heard him say, “By the Lady, Hook! If you don't have the dinghy ready to take us all away before tomorrow midday, I'll take her with enough men to work her and leave you here!”

  Sunset lighted the beach, but the inland jungle was jet-black save for orange and pink tinges to the topmost foliage.

  “Costas!” Cashel called. “This way!”

  A terrible scream split the night—and stopped. Mounix fumbled as he tried to draw his sword. Several of the sailors ran toward the dinghy, then paused uncertainly.

  Cashel stepped toward the forest. “No, Cashel!” Tilphosa said.

  He halted. She was right. In the darkness he couldn't have found where the scream came from.

  And from the way it had broken off, there wasn't a thing anybody could do for Costas now anyway.

  Sharina watched past Carus' right shoulder as Ilna's close-coupled friend swaggered toward the conference room with a grin for the Blood Eagles. She murmured, “Will you be wearing your sword when you interview him, Carus?”

  The king—and Sharina didn't know how anyone could mistake the face for her brother's, for all that the physical features were the same—glanced at her and smiled minutely. “I'd insult him if I took it off, girl,” he said. “That one isn't afraid of my sword—or my temper, either one. Though I think he respects them both.”

  He faced Chalcus again. Out of the corner of his mouth, he added, "But I'll keep my temper on a checkrein; and you'll be here to tell me if I'm out of line, will you not?”

  “Yes,” said Sharina. She grinned. “Of course.”

  The guard officer snapped a command; two of his men stepped shoulder to shoulder across Chalcus' path.

  “Your dagger, please, sir!” said the officer loudly, his back stiff, and turned to Carus. He pointed to the weapon in Chalcus' sash.

  Carus frowned. “Captain Deghan—” he began.

  “Your majesty, on my oath I won't let him by while he carries that blade!” the guard officer said.

  Chalcus looked past the two Blood Eagles. He cocked an eyebrow at Carus, then handed his sheathed dagger to the officer without deigning to look at him.

  “Shall I give him my belt as well, my brave lad?” he asked Carus. “Many a man's been throttled with a leather strap, you know.”

  “I'll take the knife, Captain Deghan,” Carus said. He held out his left hand, palm upward.

  Deghan—young for a captain in the Blood Eagles, in his early twenties—turned, trying to control the emotions skating across his face. “Yes, your majesty,” he said; all he could say, on his oath.

  He placed the curved weapon in Carus' hand. The sheath and hilt were both tin, decorated in black niello with symbols that looked like writing—though not in a script that Sharina recognized.

  “Sorry for the rigmarole, Master Chalcus,” Carus said, gesturing the sailor into the conference room. Sharina stepped back to let the men enter. “There's wine on the sideboard, and I suppose we can find food if you need it.”

  He drew the hilt and sheath a finger's breadth apart to look at the steel, then clicked the blade home. He said, “A nice piece, though I don't fancy curved blades myself,” and gave the weapon back to Chalcus. Nodding to Captain Deghan, Carus closed himself in with Sharina and the sailor.

  “You've a good pack of hounds there,” Chalcus said, tossing his head slightly to indicate the black-armored guards on the other side of the door. He slid the sheath into the folds of his sash and walked to the sideboard.

  “Aye,” said Carus, walking to the other side of the table. “But sometimes I wonder which of us serves the other.”

  Chalcus laughed, an infectious sound that made Sharina realize how little laughter there was in the palace. Little of it in the presence of great ladies like the Princess Sharina, at any rate.

  “Oh, I don't think there's really much doubt, is there?" Chalcus said. “When it matters to you.”

  Two carafes of etched glass stood on the sideboard, one full of deep red wine and the other with a lemon-colored fluid. A mixing bowl, drinking cups, and a larger vat of water with a ladle—all of the same pattern as the carafes— were ranged tastefully behind them.

  Chalcus raised the red wine and said, watching Carus, “And this is such a vintage as the poets sing of, is it not? Sunlight pressed from grapes, a nectar fit for the Lady to offer the Shepherd in their bower?”

  Carus shrugged. “I suppose,” he said. “You'd have to ask somebody who cared.”

  “And if I cared, I would,” Chalcus said agreeably. He swigged from the mouth of the carafe to make his point, then set it down on the sideboard again. “So if we're not to talk of wine, what is it that you brought me here to discuss, then?”

  Carus put his palms on the table and leaned his weight onto them. “Would you care to go to Tisamur, Master Chalcus?” he asked; his tone challenging, though playful rather than hostile. “Lady Merota has wide holdings there, granted her by the crown to replace the wealth she lost when her parents were murdered.”

  Chalcus raised an eyebrow.

  Carus grinned. “No, she doesn't know it yet,” he said. “But it's true regardless... will be true as soon as I've talked to Royhas, anyway. You and Mistress Ilna would pass unnoticed travelling as the child's servants, of course.”

  “Would we indeed?” Chalcus murmured. His left hand reached for the wine again, then withdrew; his eyes never left Carus' face. “But you haven't discussed this with Mistress Ilna. Why is that?”

  Carus straightened, lacing his fingers together before him. He was watchful; not tense, exactly, but as controlled as an archer throwing his weight onto his left arm to bend a bow. Across the room, Chalcus' posture was identical.

  Sharina remained motionless. She understood now why Carus wanted her here. Though neither Chalcus nor Carus acknowledged Sharina even by a glance, her presence was a reminder of civilized behavior to men who were only by courtesy civilized.

  “Master Chalcus...” Carus said.

  “ 'Chalcus' will do,” he interrupted. “Or 'sailor' ... or such name as you choose, soldier, for I've had my share and more of different ones.”

  “Chalcus, then,” Carus said with a smile rather than a scowl at the baiting. “I know you wouldn't—and couldn't—force Ilna to your will; but I'm sure as well that she won't go to Tisamur if you refuse. I want you both on Tisamur; and I want her especially, because there's wizardry in that place and worse from the reports I've gotten.”

  Chalcus laughed. “You know a thing I don't, then,” he said. Sharina thought she heard bitterness underlying the banter, but it was hard to be sure.

  Chalcus took the carafe again, but this time filled a goblet—straight, no water to mix it—and drank it down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand and looked appraisingly at Carus.

  “Well?” said the king. He was sm
iling; with humor, but a sort of humor Sharina found more disturbing than most men's rage. “Will you go to Tisamur, sailor?”

  “You don't think duty would carry Ilna to Tisamur, whatever I said or said against, soldier?” Chalcus snapped.

  Carus walked to the other end of the sideboard and splashed some of the white wine into a goblet. He dipped a double measure of water into the wine, then smiled over at Chalcus.

  “If I had the power to convince Ilna that it was her duty to carry a child into such danger,” Carus said with an edgy lilt not so very different from the sailor's tone, “then I'd be the greatest of wizards, would I not? What I do believe is that if I tell her that Merota is willing to go for duty's sake, and you—”

  “For duty?” Chalcus said, his voice louder than before. “Will you say that, soldier?”

  “And you for the sake of adventure,” said Carus, calm and more nearly relaxed than ever since the moment he called Chalcus to him. “And for duty as well, I think, though I won't push the point with a red-handed pirate ... if I can say those two things, then perhaps Ilna will go despite her concern for the child, eh?”

  Chalcus fluttered a smile, the normal humor of his expression alternating with something as bleak as the gray steel of his dagger blade. “Aye, she might,” he said. “I don't doubt you read her as well as I can, friend soldier.”

  He stared for a moment at Carus, then said, “If it's a wizard you need on Tisamur, you could send Lady Tenoctris. Not so?”

  “Tsk!” Carus said between his teeth. “Sharina has a knife as long as my forearm, does she not?”

  For a moment the present world became a flat, colorless backdrop to Sharina's vision of Nonnus the Hermit: her protector, her friend; and at the end, her savior at the cost of his own life. Sharina had his memory—and she had the long, heavy knife that had served Nonnus and other hunters from Pewle Island for tool and weapon as needed.

  Sharina had used the knife also; for both purposes.

  “Nonnus,” she prayed in an unformed whisper, “may the Lady shelter you with Her mercy. And may She shelter me as well.”