Servant of the Dragon Page 19

  The wizard rose again, watching Cashel with an expression of cold anger. His eyes were as black as chips of jet.

  He began circling to his right. He'd lost his headband the second time he hit the ground, so his hair hung in loose strands across his face. He brushed it away with his left hand; the swordpoint quivered in narrow circles in line with Cashel's heart.

  Cashel turned easily with his opponent; the woman kept behind him. She'd torn off the hem of her tunic and was binding it over the slash in her thigh as she moved.

  The wizard was a strong man to be able to keep his sword up the way he did, but he hadn't done a lot of fighting. The blade gleamed with a high polish. It'd rung like steel when Cashel struck it aside, but the sheen of the metal was more like silver or even glass.

  The high voice jeered, "He's right, you know, master. You're always pushing people around, telling them to do this, do that. And now it's time for you to--"

  "Shut up!" the wizard said in a voice like thunder.

  "Oh, sure," chirped the disembodied voice. "You're my master, so I'll shut up. But you're not his, that's for--"

  The wizard slid his booted right foot forward on the loam, extending his right arm and sword in a long lunge. Cashel's quarterstaff stabbed, the right hand guiding the hickory and the left ramming the shaft straight out like a battering ram.

  The staff was twice the length of the wizard's blade. The ferrule caught him on the bridge of the nose, smashing his skull and flinging his body back into the doorway in the bluff. Cashel felt the shock all the way up his left arm. He stepped back, wheezing from the tension of the fight.

  "You killed him," the woman said. She stepped past Cashel with a serpentine grace despite her wound. Her fingertips brushed the bunched muscles of his left arm, as gently as a breeze.

  "Keep away!" Cashel said. "He may not be...."

  But the wizard really was dead. Cashel knew that as surely as he knew the sun rose in the morning.

  "I didn't mean to kill him," Cashel muttered. "I don't even know who he was."

  The woman knelt beside the body. Cashel thought she was holding the corpse's left hand, but when she turned to face Cashel again he saw that she'd covered the ring with a wad of soft dirt.

  "He was a monster of the pit," she said, rising supplely to her feet. "He escaped while my husband Landure was absent for a few days. I tried to force him back into the Underworld, but he was too strong for me. If you hadn't arrived, stranger, he would certainly have killed me--or taken me down with him to a worse fate."

  She bent and deliberately wiped the dirt from her hands on the dead man's rich apron. Her eyes, large and honey-colored, were fixed on Cashel.

  "The ring is a demon," she explained as she straightened. "It speaks, and it's almost as dangerous as the demon-lord who wore it."

  Her tongue licked her lips. "My name is Colva," she added.

  Cashel cleared his throat. "I'm Cashel or-Kenset," he said. He was having a hard time collecting his thoughts. "My friend, that is, the wizard Tenoctris sent me here to find your husband. I, ah, I'm looking for my friend Sharina. Lady Sharina."

  Colva smiled at him. "The Gods must have sent you to me," she said. "Don't you think so, Cashel?"

  The sound of her voice made him feel like he was being licked by a cat's tongue, warm and tickling and sticky as well. It made it hard to think.

  "I don't know about the Gods," Cashel said. "I--can you direct me to Master Landure?"

  "Come," said Colva, putting her right hand in his left and leading him up the path by which she'd first appeared. "I'll take you to our mansion, where you can wait for my husband Landure to return. It'll only be a few days."

  Cashel glanced over his shoulder. "How about the, the dead man?" he said.

  Colva looked up into his eyes. "Let him stay where he lies," she said. "He'll be a warning to others of his sort who might want to come up to plague the waking world."

  She tugged Cashel's hand. Beneath the soft, pale skin, Colva had the muscles of a cat. "Come," she repeated.

  Hand in hand, she and Cashel went up the path. No birds or squirrels chittered in the leaves; the woodland had gone silent. Colva began to sing, but the tune was in a minor key and Cashel couldn't make out the words.

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as it was decently dark, Ilna crawled out of the luxurious tent Lord Tadai had forced on her. She didn't want to insult the nobleman, but she'd sooner have slept on a mattress of human bones.

  Bones didn't speak to Ilna. Fabrics did, and the flooring of silk rugs knotted by the fingers of tiny children--the knots were closer because the hands tying them were so small--spoke in tones of wailing misery.

  Ilna was no romantic. Farm labor was hard, and children in the borough worked almost from the time they were weaned. Even so, she preferred to sleep outside wrapped in the cloak she'd woven rather than on gleaming rugs under a canopy of silk and cloth-of-gold.

  The two triremes leaned on braced oars so that when the tide came in they wouldn't fill and sink. Their anchors were set high up the sand with the flukes pegged down to hold against the water's tug. They'd been beached on one of the many nameless islets which dotted the Inner Sea when the tide had just begun to ebb.

  A girdle of barren sand stretched down to the water, but there was thick vegetation in the center of the island which only the highest spring tides washed. Ordinary trees couldn't have survived the occasional baths in salt water, but beach plums and a number of other low-lying woody plants bound the soil with their roots.

  On the east side of the islet were mangroves, dropping roots into the shallow sea. Their gnarled stems and the driftwood carried from distant islands fed the sailors' fires on the wet sand, while the passengers dined in lamplit tents on the higher ground. Salt colored the sparks blue and green and sometimes a flash of gleaming purple.

  Carrying her cloak--the air was warm, but not so warm that she'd want to sleep under the sky with only her tunic--Ilna walked away from the circle of tents. Guards and servants may have noticed her, but none of them commented that she could hear. She'd wondered how Lord Tadai and his companions could manage to pack the ships with so much baggage, but when she saw the tents, betasseled and brocaded, begin to come out of the narrow hulls, she understood.

  Ilna had been looking for privacy, but as she started up the slope from a swale where the sand was fluid even with the tide this low, she realized that sailors had gathered on the other side of the ridge. They had a fire, but it was a low one and she was nearly to the line of groundsels on the top of the rise before she saw the sparks.

  Ilna paused, wondering which direction to go. She wanted the crewmen for company as she slept even less than she did the members of Tadai's suite.

  "There's no end to the riches," said a voice drifting to her on the breeze. "Gold lies in the streets, armlets and broaches and headbands of jeweled foil. If you want more, there's the treasure rooms of noblemen and of merchants richer than any who live today."

  Ilna knelt, dropping the cloak behind her as an encumbrance. She worked her way forward among the fleshy leaves of the groundsel to where she could see. Her face was a mask without feeling. Without thinking what she was doing, her hands twitched loose the silken rope she wore over her waist sash. On one end was a running noose which would do everything but talk when Ilna used it.

  There were thirty sailors in the depression. It was a cup, not a trough, shielding them from view on all sides. Vonculo, the sailing master of the Terror, squatted near the fire. He was the navigator and highest-ranking seaman on the vessel, though titular command was that of the noble captain, Lord Neyral.

  Vonculo wasn't in charge here either. Standing beside him to address the gathering was Mastyn, the bosun. Ilna had taken note of Mastyn already on the voyage: a close-coupled man who shaved his head and eyed the nobles with angry contempt when he thought none of them saw him.

  Ilna had no quarrel with Mastyn's opinion, but the man's furtiveness repelled her. Anyone who wan
ted to know where Ilna os-Kenset stood had only to ask her.

  A sailor anonymous in the crowd asked a question in a voice too low for Ilna to hear. The fire cracked out a gout of white sparks as if for emphasis.

  Mastyn hooked his thumbs in his broad belt. "Aye!" he said. The bosun's voice had a hoarse rasp from bellowing orders in storms where a missed command meant death and ruin. "What of the captains and the fine nobles that're drinking wine while we huddle here with hard bread and bad water? The only reason they did have us executed for mutiny when we followed Admiral Nitker is that they need us for a time. How much longer, though, do you think it'll be when the usurper Garric has his own crews trained?"

  "We've got pardons," a sailor called, with more doubt than denial in his voice. "All of us who survived."

  "All the handful who survived!" Mastyn snarled. "Pardons as good as the word of nobles who laughed when the beastmen killed our fellows, killed them and ate them! That's how good the pardons are!"

  "He should've been a politician, shouldn't he, our Mastyn?" murmured a voice at Ilna's side. She looked sideways, her fingers curving to cast the noose, but the chanteyman's fingers closed on her wrist before she could move. Not hard, but there was iron under the touch.

  "Gently, lass," the fellow said. He grinned. In the low moonlight, the scar on his right cheek seemed to continue the line of his mouth into the gape of a laughing frog. "They'd not care to be spied on, I think; by either of us, but especially you."

  Ilna nodded agreement and deliberately turned back to watch the gathered sailors. The chanteyman released her wrist. The calluses on his thumb and forefinger were tough as boot leather.

  "My name's Chalcus," he said. His voice was soft but clear. "And you're Mistress Ilna, the wizard."

  "Others have said that," Ilna said. "No such nonsense has come from my mouth."

  "The rulers of the place know how to reward bold men," Mastyn said. He bent to retrieve the bundle lying at his feet. The outer wrapping was of goatskin bound with the hair-side inward, but within was a layer of silk that gleamed scarlet in the firelight. "They have need of sailors, and those who join them early will live like the kings of other isles."

  "Oh, aye," murmured Chalcus. "The rivers run with wine, and roast ducks hop onto your platter, begging you to eat them."

  Ilna couldn't help but smile. The chanteyman's words were so close to what she'd been thinking that they might have come from her own mouth.

  A sailor asked a question; only worry reached the ears of those listening from above.

  "We'll take care of the guards," Vonculo said. He rose to his feet with the sudden catch of a man who'd been squatting too long. He swore under his breath, then continued, "There'll be no fighting. No harm to them, even, if you're squeamish about those who never cared about you."

  Mastyn unwrapped the last covering from the object he held. It was box of gold and mother-of-pearl, amazingly delicate in the bosun's hands. He raised the lid, then inserted a key into the side and began to turn it.

  Chalcus leaned forward, watching intently. He wore a gold ring in his left ear. Close up Ilna could see that his skin was pocked with more scars than were likely to come to most men. Honest ones, at any rate. The semi-circle of pits on Chalcus' shoulder was surely from an animal's bite.

  Mastyn removed the key. The slowly uncoiling spring drove the mechanism of the box. Tiny silver notes sang across the sand, waking false memories in Ilna's mind. She found herself thinking of drowned palaces, streets along which fishes swam. Treasure lay on the pavements, all the wealth that Mastyn had spoken of and more....

  The music slowed, then stopped with a final plangent tone. The gathered sailors were silent, and Mastyn himself seemed transfixed.

  Mastyn shook himself alert. "So, lads," he said, "what do you say? Will it be more gold than you can carry, or will you bow and scrape to fools like Neyral until they choose to hang you?"

  A sailor asked a question. Mastyn looked at the sailing master. Vonculo nodded twice and said, "Nothing for now. We're speaking to the rest of the men. When it's time, you'll be told."

  Ilna eased back from the ridge. Dried leaves crackled beneath her weight, though no one could hear the rustling at any distance. Chalcus backed also, making as little sound as a weasel.

  "So, lass," the sailor whispered. "Where do you stand? For wealth by the armload?"

  "The wealth may be there," Ilna said. "What comes with it though, I wonder? Nothing those monkeys prating of riches are going to talk about, of that I'm sure."

  She found her cloak and gathered it under her left arm, leaving the right hand free with the noose. Not that she expected to need it.

  "Aye," Chalcus said with a knowing grin. "Promises too good to be true are just that, I've found: too good to be true. I've come close losing my neck to such--"

  He continued smiling, but his index finger traced a scar running from the lobe of his right ear down his throat and under his V-necked tunic.

  "--and I don't choose to repeat the lesson. But most of the crews will jump for it, don't you think?"

  "I can't be bothered with what other people do," Ilna snapped. The sailor's grin irritated her. She had the feeling that Chalcus really did understand the things he mocked; Ilna os-Kenset among them.

  Ilna turned and walked quickly back in the direction she'd come. She didn't want to be caught by the conspirators as they dispersed.

  For all her brave words, Ilna was well aware that what others did might very well bother her. And the child Merota, if it came to that.

  Garric lay on a couch whose bronze frame was inlaid with ivory and ebony in an interwoven pattern. The black-and-white striped horsehair cushions had probably been chosen to match, but either color alone would have been a better choice. The fabric looked coarse in comparison with the subtlety of the intarsia as Garric gazed down at his sleeping body.

  He walked out of the palace, through solid doors, walls, and landscaping. Nothing was a barrier to him.

  It must have been midnight. The detachment of Blood Eagles on guard in the hall outside his sleeping chamber was changing. He'd walked through men who continued to watch his sleeping body.

  Time compressed, or at any rate didn't run the way it would have done in the waking world. Each step Garric took was in a different hour of the day, though noontide was as likely to preceed dawn as it was to follow.

  Garric reached the bridge. He'd known that was where he was going, though he had no control over his movements and no concern about what they implied. It made him vaguely angry to be shifted the way chessplayer places a pawn, but the force controlling Garric had stripped away all volition.

  The bridge was no tracery of light to Garric in his present state: rather it was solid gray sandstone, bound with iron cramps which had rusted red stains across the ashlars. Garric's feet slapped the pavement, jarring him even in his dream.

  Garric heard other feet echo faintly to his left. He turned his head and saw Carus, forcing a smile. The king wavered in and out of focus. He opened his mouth to call something, but the words were were lost.

  Garric shut his eyes and gripped the coronation medal hanging against his chest. For a moment he held the thin gold stamping, warm with his own blood's heat; then he was holding the callused right hand of a swordsman.

  Garric opened his eyes and grinned. He and King Carus walked together, hand in hand, across the hard stone. Lightning flashed among the clouds, but no thunder reached the pavement below.

  They were approaching the ruined city that Garric had visited before in this fashion. "That's Klestis, all right," Carus said. His voice seemed deeper than it had when Garric heard his ancestor in the silence of his own mind. "It's worse for wear, isn't it?"

  He chuckled. He opened his hand, releasing Garric's wrist. They continued to walk side by side. Caressing the hilt of his sword, Carus added, "Though Klestis is in better shape than my Carcosa is today, lad. There were hogs rooting in the Field of Monuments when you saw it, weren't there?" />
  "There's life in Carcosa," Garric said. "All that Klestis has is stones and the landscaping run wild. And Ansalem, I suppose."

  His left hand tingled with the strength of Carus' grip. Garric wondered what effort it had taken to draw the king through the barrier into an enchantment meant for Garric alone. Carus' worst enemies can never have doubted the king's strength and determination.

  The bridge ended at the esplanade in the center of Klestis. Garric was walking normally again, though he wondered what would happen if he tried to turn and run.

  His face hardened, though his expression was technically a smile. He wasn't going to run, from Ansalem or from anybody. Especially not when the eyes of his ancestor were on him.

  "There were people who next to worshipped Ansalem," Carus said musingly. "I heard them say that the Yellow King formed mankind out of dust, and that men would return to dust again when Ansalem died."

  He laughed, but there was a touch of unusual bitterness in the king's voice as he added, "It wasn't quite dust, what the kingdom fell into; but it was close enough at that. Maybe I should have listened to all those frightened doomsayers."

  "Most folk wouldn't say it was Ansalem's death that brought down the Old Kingdom," Garric said. "Besides, Ansalem seemed lively enough when I last saw him, as do you. And I've learned from you that it's never good to listen to fear."

  "Oh, I never told you that," King Carus said cheerfully. "Fear's a useful thing, lad; it keeps you from getting overconfident. But you can't let it rule you, no. Not and still be a man."

  They strode toward the palace, going forward boldly to avoid being driven. Pride wasn't worth much when you were completely in another's power, but it was all Garric had. Pride in himself, and in the ancestor who'd overcome the will of a great wizard to join him.

  "Klestis grew all its own food," Carus said as he and Garric entered the palace, this time through the small front entrance. "You can see the fields from the roof here; I caught only a glimpse when I was visiting Ansalem. Wheat kernals each the size of my thumbnail and oranges as big as melons. Ansalem's doing, I suppose."