Mistress of the Catacombs Read online

  Carus straightened, and continued, “So long as all but a few think Garric's hand is still on the reins of the kingdom, we'll have time—you'll have time, w-wiz... Tenoctris, that is. Time to bring him back in all truth.”

  “You can pass for my brother,” Sharina said. “You are Garric, in body at least.”

  “Aye, and I've looked through Garric's eyes in the months since he began wearing this,” Carus said. He waggled the medallion, then dropped it back beneath his tunics. “I have Garric's memories besides.”

  “You know everything Garric knew?” Sharina said.

  “No,” said Carus. “But I know everything he remembered. He's forgotten a lot of things, everybody does. But I'm not going to be tripped up because somebody greets me on the street and I don't know he's Cog or-Varsel who had the goose that followed him into the tavern every evening at sundown. Where the problem's going to be, though...”

  Carus grimaced. He touched the wall where painted birds perched on a painted trellis in the painted sunshine. He looked like a trapped cat again.

  “You see,” he went on softly, “it's not what Garric's done that'll trip me up, it's the things he'll be asked to do. I'll have to make the choices a king makes, handle usurpers in the kingdom and quarrels in the council. I've been king, ladies; friends, I mean.”

  He slammed his balled right fist into his left palm with a crack! like nearby lightning.

  “Been king and failed at it!” Carus said. “I thought all virtue lay in quickness, but sometimes I should have waited; I flew hot when things happened that I should've let pass, the first time they happened anyhow.”

  He grinned, an expression as common to Carus' spirit as it was to Garric's face—but forced this time, almost tentative. “And I hated wizards the way some men hate spiders,” Carus said. “Hated wizards and feared them, my friends, and so I let wizardry bring the kingdom down. I had no one to help me against the dangers that my sword couldn't cure.”

  Sharina put her hand on Tenoctris' shoulder. “You've a wizard to help you now—”

  Tenoctris nodded crisply. “For what my help is worth,” she said.

  “It's been worth the kingdom's salvation in the past,” Carus said. He touched his cheekbone with his finger. “As I've seen through these eyes.”

  “And I know my brother relied on Liane's advice regarding both the court and the kingdom,” Sharina went on. “In addition to what the royal council suggested.”

  “Liane's advice and your own,” Carus said. “Yes, I know that, and I'm relying on you to help me as well. But your first business, friend Tenoctris, must be to retrieve Garric so that I can go back to being only another of the prince's advisors.”

  He shook his head ruefully, and added, “Echeus isn't the first man whose head I took off in anger when he might better have lived to answer some questions. I regret that stroke, for all that I wish somebody'd taken him out of this world a few hours earlier and saved me trouble.”

  Tenoctris stood. “I think the Intercessor will give me some idea of what he was about,” she said. “His brain's still fresh, you see. If I may be excused, ah, Carus?”

  The ancient king winced as though the reference to necromancy had been a knife in his stomach. “Yes, milady, do what you must do,” he said. “So long as I don't have to watch—”

  His face hardened. “Though I'd do that if I must,” he said. “For the kingdom's sake, even that.”

  “There'll be no need,” Tenoctris said as she started for the door. “Though perhaps Ilna will help me?”

  She made the words a question. Carus nodded. He was neither smiling nor grim but... something. “Yes,” he said, “and I've business with her Master Chalcus next. Pray get Ilna to help. And whoever else you wish—that has the stomach for it!”

  Sharina and Liane rose to go out with Tenoctris. Carus raised a finger for attention. “Sharina?” he said. “I'd like you to stay during my interview with Chalcus. I think... it will be a more quiet affair, perhaps, with a young woman present.”

  Sharina smiled. “Yes,” she said as she settled back on the ivory stool. “I can see that it might be.”

  Liane was fiddling with a latch of her travelling desk so that she had an excuse not to meet Carus' eyes. She said, “Ah... your, that is Carus, you said that you watched everything that Garric ... ?”

  “If I said that,” Carus said, “then I lied, milady. Anything that may have passed between you and Prince Garric privately remains private. And you'll hear no other story from these lips though I die for it.”

  With a great laugh, he added, “Dying's a matter I've experience with too, you'll remember,” he said. “And in the end, I proved better at it than I did at kingship.”

  Still laughing, he escorted Liane and Tenoctris to the door, one on either arm.

  * * *

  The morning sun was so low behind Cashel that the island shadowed the reef on which Tilphosa's ship had broken up. The wind had dropped still further; foam outlined the rocks, but there was no high-dashing spray as he'd seen at the height of the storm.

  Barca's Hamlet was on the east coast of Haft. Until a few months ago, it wouldn't have crossed Cashel's mind that you could look at the sea and not be looking east.

  “Master Cashel?” Tilphosa said. “What are we going to do now?”

  Cashel turned, frowning. It was a good question, one he'd been turning over in the back of his mind, but he didn't see why the girl seated on a lava block would be asking him.

  “What's your wizard say?” he said. He frowned still deeper. Personally, he wouldn't trust Captain Mounix's judgment much farther than he would that of sottish Kellard or-Same back in the borough, but Tilphosa had boarded the fellow's ship. Maybe she felt otherwise. “Or the captain, I suppose.”

  “Metra's doing an incantation,” Tilphosa said, gesturing toward a stand of palms where a piece of salvaged sailcloth was rigged as a screen. A puff of orange smoke rose above the fabric and dissipated in the breeze. “She wants to learn whether our wreck was chance or if Echea struck at us from beyond the grave.”

  She didn't mention Mounix; her opinion of the captain must be pretty close to Cashel's own.

  “That big snake wasn't a common thing,” Cashel said, looking seaward again. The water shimmered like jewels now that the sun had risen farther. “Not where I come from, anyway.”

  Tilphosa shrugged. “In these times it could have been chance," she said. “The forces that turn the cosmos are peaking, you see. That's why I'm being sent to wed Prince Thalemos now and bring about the return of the Mistress to rule the world... but Chaos has power also, and creatures of Chaos can be met anywhere.”

  Cashel noticed the matter-of-fact way Tilphosa discussed wizardry and the powers wizards controlled or tried to control. She sounded like a peasant discussing the risk of a bad winter: potentially disastrous, but nothing unnatural in her scheme of things.

  About two double handsful of the crew had survived the wreck. They were combing the black-sand beach sullenly, dragging the more interesting bits of flotsam above the tide line to where tree ferns grew among lobelias and geraniums the size of shrubs.

  When the sailors looked toward the screen around the wizard, they scowled. Occasionally Cashel caught them looking at him and Tilphosa with much the same expression—until his eye fell on them.

  Cashel smiled. He guessed he'd be doing something wrong if this lot liked him.

  Captain Mounix was examining the ship's dinghy, still keel up on the beach. With him were two of his particular cronies: a tall but cadaverous fellow named Costas, and a runt with a fringe of red hair who went by "Hook,” probably because he'd lost the outer three fingers from his left hand.

  Cashel had done enough woodworking that he might have had something useful to say about the dinghy's condition, but he didn't suppose the captain wanted his company any more than Cashel wanted the captain's. Joining the beachcombers was an even less appealing prospect.

  “I guess I'll take a look around the
island,” Cashel said. “I'd like to find a stream or a spring, anyway.”

  Rain had pooled in a basin of rock just above the tide line. Cashel had drunk from it—Tilphosa was more squeamish than thirsty, at least while the darkness was still cool—but found the water brackish from windblown spray. The lush vegetation inland meant there was likely better available.

  “Ah...” Cashel added, balancing his quarterstaff as he thought. He'd just as soon not leave the girl alone with these sailors—or with her wizard Metra, if it came to that. “Would you like to come?”

  Cashel felt responsible for Tilphosa the way he'd feel for anybody who needed the sort of help he could give them. Folks in the borough stuck together, pretty much. A peasant's life was hard enough even when neighbor helped neighbor.

  Tilphosa nodded curtly, “Yes,” she said. “When I look at the sea, I remember the dragon coming toward us. Metra's wizardry kept it from pulling the ship under, but it drove us onto the rocks. I thought I was going to drown.”

  She flashed Cashel an embarrassed grin.

  “You weren't going to drown,” Cashel muttered. He looked at the captain, then toward the screen around the wizard and her dealings. Smoke rose from the enclosure again, this time a soft magenta. “Right, the ground rises enough to be worth following. We can always find our way back by striking for the shore.”

  He started into the tree ferns—a mistake. It was easy to push through the shoulder-high fronds, but they hid from sight the frequent head-sized chunks of lava littering the ground. The second time Cashel tripped, he shifted their route into the mixture of gnarled shrubs. There were woody-stemmed varieties of geraniums, violets, and even buttercups.

  Cashel had taken to wearing sturdy sandals to walk the stone pavements of Valles. They came in handy here; the soil, though obviously rich, was thickly sown with sharp-edged pebbles from the same volcanic rock that the sea had ground to sand to form the beach.

  “Who's this Echea you're worried about?” Cashel asked. He was curious; and besides, it was better for the girl to talk than brood. Because he was using his staff to hold vegetation aside, Tilphosa could follow closely without being slapped by stems that he'd released.

  “A great wizard,” Tilphosa said. “An enemy of the Mistress. She cut a jewel—or two jewels, rather. Their patterns combined will bring back the Mistress.”

  Cashel slipped through a gap between the stems of a tree begonia. Another man, certainly another man Cashel's size, would have needed an axe to hack through the tangles. Cashel got along well with wood. He'd always been able to judge the grain of the branch under his shaping knife or where he should cut to drop a tree in a particular line. The same talent helped him here.

  In his mind he moved around the girl's words the way he'd handle chunks of fieldstone for a wall. Not every piece would fit in every place, but generally if you shifted slabs this way and that, you'd come up with something that looked as tight as mason's work.

  A lot of times Cashel could also puzzle through a statement that didn't make sense when he first heard it. This wasn't one of those times.

  He said, “If Echea was against your Mistress—”

  When he first met her, Cashel had thought Tilphosa meant "the Mistress" the way Sharina would say "the Lady": the Queen of Heaven whose mate was the Shepherd. He wasn't sure of that anymore.

  “—then why did she make jewels that will, ah, help her?”

  He could hear water, but in forest like this you couldn't get any direction from sound. The trunks twisted the gurgling around till it could've come from anywhere. Still, if he hadn't heard it before and he did now, then they were likely getting closer.

  “The pattern only exists once in all eternity,” Tilphosa explained. “By forming it and then hiding the pieces, Echea keeps the Mistress from returning.”

  Climbing through this undergrowth was hard work for her, even with Cashel choosing the path and holding aside the big stems. After each few words, Tilphosa whooshed out a breath and drew in a fresh one before continuing.

  “But when Thalemos and I marry, our rings will hold the two jewels. The Mistress will reenter the world!”

  “Ah,” said Cashel. He didn't believe that or disbelieve it. The Great Gods didn't have much to do with the world Cashel lived in. “I guess you've got books that tell you this?”

  They'd reached a beech tree whose base was farther across than Cashel's own height. The trunk had split a generation ago; half had fallen, but the remainder was sprouting new growth.

  Wings the length of a child's arm clattered as creatures roosting in the upper branches launched themselves into the sky. The girl cried out, but the fliers were going the other way. They weren't birds, and peering through the small leaves, Cashel wasn't sure they were bats either.

  “Let's hold here for a bit,” Cashel said, not that he was winded. Tilphosa hadn't complained, but he saw now that the soles of her high-laced shoes were thin suede. They were meant for carpeting, not this pebble-strewn soil.

  She nodded gratefully, sinking onto the fallen half of the trunk to take the weight off her feet. The spongy, mushroom-covered wood couldn't do much to harm tunics that had come through a shipwreck.

  “The Mistress sends dreams to her worshippers,” Tilphosa said when she'd gotten her breath. “The priests see them most clearly, of course, but we all can feel her will. I know the truth of what I've said, because I've felt it myself.”

  “Ah,” Cashel said, nodding. He didn't have anything to say about that. He'd learned young that you'd do better to argue with a sheep than with somebody who knows the Truth.

  Another stand of ferns nearly concealed a limestone outcrop. He'd thought shadows thrown by the fronds caused the faint shimmer on the stone. Now, maybe because he was sitting still and looking in any direction except Tilphosa's face, Cashel saw that the water he'd been looking for was seeping between rock layers.

  “We've found—” he said, rising from the log.

  “Cashel, what's that?” the girl asked sharply. Then she said, "That's gold!”

  She pointed to a bed of plants with sword-shaped leaves and feathery crimson flowers. Twisted among their thin stems was a tracery of metal—gold, just as Tilphosa had said.

  The water could wait. Cashel checked his quarterstaff with his right, then his left hand, reflexively making sure that the shaft hadn't gotten splinters or sticky patches while helping him through the foliage. He moved forward, holding the staff slantwise before him.

  “Are these pipes?” Tilphosa said. “No, they can't be—it's just a framework, isn't it?”

  “I don't know what it is,” Cashel said. “What it was.”

  The forest's trunks and branches wove through a fabric of tubes ranging from thumb-sized to as thin as Sharina's blond hairs. Cashel pushed into the vegetation with careful deliberation, measuring the length of the thing: a handful of double paces, four times as long as Cashel was tall. The tubes connected several pods of the same shining metal. The largest of them was the size of a small canoe, smooth-skinned and featureless.

  The thing had hit the ground crushingly hard. The impact wrapped the nearer end around the outcrop, even gouging the rock in a few places. The top and back had flexed forward on their own inertia, warping the structure out of its original spindle shape.

  Cashel looked up. It'd fallen here; fallen from where, he couldn't guess. Waves could pick a boat up and fling it inland. Or again ...

  Whatever the cause, it had happened a very long time ago.

  “I guess it could be a frame,” Cashel said aloud. “Gold lasts when other things rot away or rust.”

  Tilphosa had followed Cashel along the crumpled tracery. With a careful lack of emotion, she said, “Then it would be quite old.”

  With the end of his staff, Cashel tapped a tube broken at the impact. His ferrule woke a musical chime from the gold. “See the root?” he said.

  “Oh,” said the girl. “Of course.”

  Another fallen beech, larger even than th
e half-ruined one, had sent surface roots over the tube. In human terms the life span of a tree like that would be measured by generations.

  Cashel looked again at the tube and frowned. His iron butt cap hadn't scratched the metal. As soft as gold was...

  He knelt and drew his knife from its wooden sheath. It had been made with ram's horn scales and a straight, single-edged blade by Akhita the Smith, travelling through the borough on his circuit; Barca's Hamlet was too small to support a resident blacksmith.

  Akhita had forged the blade from the same iron he used to shoe horses, but he'd hardened it with a fast quench. It wasn't fancy, but it did well for digging a stone from an ox's hoof, slicing bread at dinner, and all the scores of other tasks a peasant needed a knife for.

  The edge should have notched gold. It didn't; not this gold.

  “Let's get back to the others,” Cashel said, straightening. He put his knife away so he had both hands for his quarterstaff. He didn't think of a knife as a weapon; not that he needed a weapon here, not for any reasons he could point to. “We'll tell them about the water.”

  And they'd learn about the gold, too; but Cashel wasn't sure he'd mention that.

  He and Tilphosa started back the way they'd come, moving faster from familiarity with the route and because they knew where they were going. Both of them wanted to be away from whatever it was that had smashed up there on the knoll.

  “In ancient times, there were beings whose ships flew through the air,” Tilphosa said. “The scriptures say.”

  “I wouldn't know about that,” Cashel said grimly. He wondered what scriptures she meant, but he didn't ask. “I can't read.”

  He led on the descent as he had on the climb: if the girl slipped, he was there to catch her... and if he slipped, well, she wasn't in the way to get hurt.

  “Cashel?” she said. “Are you sure we're going the right direction?”

  “We're a little to the side of how we came up,” he explained. “The clay here doesn't have so many chunks of lava in it to trip over. We'll come out on the other side of the point south of where we started, but we can walk along the beach to get back.”