Garric rose in his stirrups to stretch his legs; his gelding whickered without enthusiasm. "First things first," he repeated. He was just tired, he knew, but he was very tired; in body and now, thinking of the Great Gods, soul. I wonder when it stops? "For folks like you and me, lad," Carus said, standing arms akimbo on the battlements of a dream caste, "it stops when we're dead. And it seems that for some of us, it doesn't stop even then." The ghost of the ancient warrior-king threw his head back and laughed, but it was a moment before Garric was able to laugh also. *** Three large antelopes whose horns curved like the arms of a lyre stood on the bank and stared wide-eyed at the riverboat as the Dalopans rowed past. They seemed terrified. "Captain Sairg?" Ilna said. "There's a chance for some fresh meat." The captain's face was set in a rictus of anger; he pretended not to hear her. The crewmen mayreally not have heard. They'd been stroking with the regularity of a waterwheel ever since the land started to quiver a little after dawn. The sky was pale and its tinge reminded Ilna of a frog's yellow throat. She disliked it, and she disliked the vibration even more, though she didn't suppose it hurt anything. Instead of being muddy and opaque, the river's surface had become as finely jagged as the blade of a file. It was still opaque, of course; not that she thought there was much reason to want to look at the bottom of a river. Ilna didn't know where they were beyond that they'd come several days north of Pandah; she'd never had much concept of geography. That had puzzled some folk when she was growing up, because Ilna os-Kenset had the most connection with the outside world of anybody in Barca's Hamlet. Her fabrics were sold in Sandrakkan, Ornifal, and even to the Serians who spun silk from the nests of caterpillars and shipped it to nobles throughout the Isles. Merchants told her the size and thickness of the cloth they wanted for the places they would sell it. The patterns were Ilna's own, and the names of the islands to which the cloth went were merely that, names, to her. Ingens muttered numbers as he laid down the cross-staff with which he'd just taken a sight on the rocky hill to the northeast; it was the first real feature the landscape had displayed since they pulled away from Pandah. He extended the parallel lines he was drawing on a strip of paper and added a note in the margin. "It's a map of the river," he muttered to Ilna. "For later voyages." "I see," said Ilna, then frowned because she wasn't sure that was true. She understood that the markings on a map told people where things were in the world-but they didn't tellher anything. She was always aware of direction, but place-here rather than there-had never been part of her world. Ingens pointed to the hill which seemed to Ilna to be in their general course, though the way the river twisted across this flat landscape kept anyone from being sure.
"That's Ortran," he said. "The island of Ortran before the Change. It didn't have anything on it but fishermen then. I don't know what they do now that the sea's gone. Fish in the river, perhaps, since they're in a bend of it." As he spoke, Ingens was unrolling the strip between two sticks like an ordinary reading scroll. The portion he'd already written on was an ell long, the width of the largest loom Ilna kept at home. Kept wherever she decided home was at the moment, that is. "Is it going to be helpful?" Ilna said. "Because it appeared to me that the river bed's changing constantly. Even in the center of the channel we've gone aground." Underscoring what she'd just said, a section of the bank ahead of them toppled slowly into the river, carrying with it a pin oak of considerable size. Foaming water lifted and swelled outward, though it didn't seem that it'd be any danger to the vessel.
The tree twisted and rolled as it moved downstream; mud was slumping off its roots and unbalancing it. "I don't know!" the secretary said.
Then he grimaced and continued more calmly, "It's something to do, mistress. This sound is, is very disturbing." "Was it like this when you were coming upstream?" Ilna said. She'd never been on this stretch of the river before and she'd assumed the way everything shook was normal. It was unpleasant, of course, but that wasn't unusual. "There was nothing like it!" Ingens said. "I thought, I wondered I mean… He composed his expression and met Ilna's cool gaze. "I wonder if it has anything to do with Master Hervir's disappearance, mistress?" Why in the world should it? thought Ilna, but she decided it was a legitimate question. She began plaiting the cords already in her hands into an answer. Everything was connected with everything else, of course, but it didn't appear that Hervir had any more to do with the shaking than he did with the price of wool on Sandrak- "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pried into your affairs," snarled Ingens in a tone of embarrassed anger. He uncapped the brass inkwell pinned to his collar to resume writing on his map. Ilna looked at him more in surprise than anger. Oh, he thinks I ignored his question and started weaving instead even of telling him it was none of his business. "I'm sorry, Master Ingens," she said. Shewas sorry: she hadn't communicated adequately, which was a problem she regularly had when dealing with people. That was a good reason to avoid dealing with them, of course, but there was no excuse for doing a bad job of what she'd started.
"I've been looking for an answer if the pattern here. It doesn't seem that-" Ilna lifted the loose fabric which her fingers had continued knotting as she spoke. As she did so, she looked at it- And looked again. The pattern which she'd seen initially had formed into something quite different because she'd continued it beyond what she'd normally have done. "Thereis a connection," she said. She hoped she hid the anger she felt. It was entirely directed at herself for having seen a pattern merely by good luck. Her anger was usually directed at herself, of course, but other people didn't generally understand that.
"But it's distant, and they're both parts of a whole that's very much larger. Two knots in a carpet, so to speak; but thereis a carpet and-"
The vibration stopped. The river was as still as the pond which drove the mill in Barca's Hamlet. A dozen lightning bolts ripped across the southern horizon, brightening the yellow sky to the color of melting sulfur. One of the Dalopans in the bow dropped the oar and jumped up, shouting in a language that sounded like the chattering of a magpie.
Ilna looked over her shoulder at him. All four crewmen were yammering now, looking more than ever like birds as they hopped about. They didn't disturb the balance of the boat, though. Sairg called to the Dalopans in their own language; they ignored him. He let go of the tiller and rose to his feet, holding the short, broad-bladed spear which Ilna must've missed among the spars and cordage of the stowed rig. Ingens started to get up also, but he paused when the boat began to wobble. From a half crouch he cried, "Sairg, what's going on?"
Pointlessly, it seemed to Ilna, but most of what people did seemed pointless to her. As though the secretary had shouted an order, the Dalopans dived into the brown water as gracefully as so many kingfishers. A violent tremor to the south sped across the flat landscape, lifting land and water as high as the waves of a winter storm. A line of alders, spared by the eroding riverbanks, jumped skyward and toppled flat. Ilna tucked the yarn into her sleeve and tugged loose the silken cord she wore in place of a sash. Sairg was blind with terror: she'd seen the signs too often not to recognize his condition. She rose to her feet unwillingly, hoping she wouldn't upset them but certain that even for her-she couldn't swim-a ducking wasn't the worst present danger. "Wizard!" the captain screamed. He raised his spear. "You've done this!" How he'd come to that conclusion was beyond Ilna's imagination, but the fellow was mad now or the next thing to it. She took the cord's running noose between her right thumb and forefinger, holding the remainder of the lasso looped against her palm. "Sairg, put that-" Ingens said. The captain cocked the spear back to throw. Ingens lunged, grappling with him as the wave struck, lifting the riverboat on its crest. The first wave. What had been the flat plain to the south now rippled like brown corduroy. It was sprinkled with vegetation uprooted when the ground itself flowed.
Ingens and Sairg pitched over the side, their legs flailing in the air. Ilna spun her lasso out sidearm. She drew back, tightening the loop around the secretary's right thigh, and threw herself into the belly of the ship. Though she braced her heels against the gunwale, for a moment she felt her buttocks lifting from the wet planks: she was fighting the weight of both men. She wouldn't let go while she still lived, but all the determination in the world couldn't prevent them from pulling her into the pitching river with them. The boat slid off the back of the wave. The flat bottom slapped down with what might've been a deafening crash if it hadn't been for the overwhelming roar of the world shaking itself like a wet dog. Ilna bounced as if she'd been struck by a swinging door. Ingens' head and torso lifted over the gunwale; he'd shaken himself loose from Sairg. His face was white and empty. The boat rose again on the next tremor. The lashings that held the rigging had loosened, so the mast was jerking about.
Ilna grabbed Ingens' collar with her left hand and leaned back, bracing her feet again on the side of the boat. Ingens' eyes had no more intelligence than those of a fish, but his muscles moved with an instinctive urge to survive. His right hand scrabbled blindly in the boat until it closed on a thwart; then, with a colossal lurch, he rolled over the gunwale and into the belly of the vessel. Ilna toppled back, but her grip on the lasso kept her from falling over the other side. The humor of the thought struck her. She didn't laugh often, but she barked one out now. The boat crashed down, bouncing Ilna upright again. Ingens had his arms and legs wrapped around the mast as though he was adrift in the waves. The boat scudded forward more swiftly than any normal current could drive it, lifting on the next throbbing pulse. The landscape was brown and splashed to either side, mud-choked water merging imperceptibly with land shaken to a liquid. The earthquake throbbed, mastering the land the way a winter storm rules the sky: harsh, merciless, overwhelming. Ilna gripped the thwart she'd been seated on and looked in the direction the cataclysm drove them.
Ortran was a rocky wedge thrusting from a landscape that otherwise was no more solid than the sullen yellow sky. A pulse lifted theBird of the River again, rushing the vessel toward an end of the disaster's own choosing. Ilna thought of a squirrel being sucked slowly and inevitably down the gullet of a snake. The dark mass of Ortran loomed close ahead. Ingens' eyes were closed as he prayed in a singsong; Ilna could hear his voice only as rhythm woven into the roar of the earth tearing itself apart and reknitting. Her own face was calm. If this was death, well, then she'd die. She'd have regrets, but the thing she'd regret most was that she'd ever been born. When she was dead, she wouldn't have to remember Chalcus and Merota laughing, or Chalcus stabbed through a dozen times and falling beside the corpse of Merota.
The boat scraped and skidded up the slope of coarse gravel which had been Ortran's shoreline. The shock didn't break Ilna's grip, but it lifted her over the thwart and slammed her numbingly to the planking on the other side. Like a squirrel going down a snake's gullet…
Chapter 6 It seemed to Cashel that the moon was bigger than it ought to be, but this way it threw plenty of light on the sandy hills even though it was just in the first quarter. Liane's shadow stretched back toward him, and ahead of her Rasile's did also. The moon phase bothered him more than its size did, because back home it was only two days past the full. He knew that was silly: he was in a completely different world from where he'd been last night. But a shepherd takes the moon and stars as certain when nothing else, not even the seasons, ever is. Something croaked from line of horsetails in the low ground to the right. It might've been a frog, though Cashel didn't suppose it was. To see wild animals, all you really have to do is sit in one spot and not do anything at all. If you were moving, though, even somebody as sharp-eyed as Cashel was would be lucky to catch sight of more than a squirrel on a high branch or maybe a rabbit. Rabbits didn't have any more sense than sheep did. Rasile's slender legs scissored along quicker than a human's, which made it seem like she was really striding out in the lead. She took short steps, though, so really they weren't moving any faster than Cashel would when he was following a flock of sheep. Liane suited her pace to the wizard's. Cashel looked at the thick woolen socks she was wearing and tried again to understand why. He guessed it wasn't just being nosy since they were going to be together in any kind of condition, so he said, "Liane, are your legs cold here?" She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. "No," she said, "but my feet aren't used to the kind of walking I thought we might be doing." She smiled even wider. "Walking like this, in fact. I wore the socks so that the sandal straps wouldn't chafe my feet, especially in loose sand." "Thank you," Cashel said. "I should've guessed that." Though thinking about it, he wasn't sure that was true.
There weren't a lot of people like Liane. She usually rode horses or even in a carriage, but she was willing to hike across a wasteland if she thought that might help other folks. Cashel didn't doubt having Liane along was going to help. He saw movement. At first he thought he'd seen a reflection from the surface of a bog a couple furlongs to the east, but the gleam shook itself together and paced along parallel with them. "Rasile, we've got company on the left," he said, just loud enough to be sure the wizard heard him. He wasn't nervous. This wasn't a new situation to Cashel, and it might not even turn out to be a bad one. Because itwasn't new to him or any shepherd, he turned and scanned the hills to the right instead of focusing on the thing that'd let him see it. Sure enough, another gleam was there behind a reverse slope. Just the top of it showed now and again as it followed along beside Cashel and his companions. "And the other side too," he said.
He began spinning his staff in slow circles. Blue sparkles spiraled off the iron butt-caps, bright enough that they raised purple reflections from the sand. "Wait," said Rasile quietly, pausing on a dune that something the size of a rabbit had crossed recently. Tracks like little hands marked the wind-scallops. To the thing moving on the east she called, "Come join us or take yourselves away. If you choose to follow us, we'll treat you as enemies." The creature laughed and walked toward them. "We're not your enemies, wizard," it called. "We know our strength; we do not challenge such as you." Shecalled, Cashel thought. The voice was female and perhaps even human. "And the other," said one of the figures who'd come out of concealment on the right.
There were two of them, much closer than the first. They looked like women wrapped in shining gray silk, but they moved too smoothly to be walking on human feet. "Yes…," said her companion. "He's magnificent. Can you imagine…?" They both burst into laughter as shrill as the cries of screech owls. "Stay where we can see you,"
Rasile said harshly. She resumed walking southward with quick, steady steps. Liane followed, tilting her head toward the figure who'd spoken to them first. Cashel kept his staff spinning and watched all directions as he brought up the rear. Every few circuits he fed in a figure-8 just to keep his wrists supple and show whatever the figures were how quick he could make the heavy hickory change direction. "What are you doing in this place, wizard?" asked the figure on the left.
"Are you hunting? There's little to hunt here." "So very little," said one of her fellows. "We're hungry," said the other. "We starve, we always starve, and there's nothing here to hunt." "They're empusae!"
Liane said. Then, to the creature on the left, "You're an empusa."
"What do names matter, little one?" the empusa said. She'd come close enough to touch with the quarterstaff and was moving parallel with Rasile. Her passage didn't mark the sand. "She would be our prey if she were alone," said one of her sisters. "Easy prey…," the third creature whispered. "Not easy," Liane said. She flicked a hand toward the speaker, the point of her knife glittering like a jewel. "I have a charm against your like." The empusae fell into shrieking laughter. Cashel noticed that they backed away, though. "What do you hunt, wizard?" said the figure on the left. The empusae's voices were cool but sweet, like they were speaking through silver tubes-except when they laughed. "We have business in another place," Rasile said.
"And our business is none of yours." The wizard didn't turn her head to either side when she spoke to the creatures, but Cashel didn't doubt she knew exactly where each of them was. If she wanted to, she'd finish the things. Just as Cashel would, though they'd use different ways to do it. The empusae laughed, but they drifted outward by a half pace or so. Rasile's course took her companions along the edge of standing water as broad as a millpond. The empusa on their left slid through the horsetails without making their stems waver or touching the surface. When the moon shone on the creatures, they looked like human statues polished out of blocks of lead. In reflection from the water- "Duzi!" Cashel said, turning to send the staff through where the empusa had been an instant before. There was a blaze of blue wizardlight but the creature swirled to the other side of the pool without evident motion, more like a puff of breeze than anything physical. The reflection he'd seen was tall, twice as tall as Cashel and taller than anybody could be. It was dead, too: strips of skin were hanging down like bark from a sycamore tree, and some places he could see through gaps in its rib cage. But it wasn't human anyway.
The limbs had too many joints, the skull slanted up a high forehead to a point at the back, and the long fangs in the upper and lower jaws crossed like a crocodile's. "You are not our prey, splendid one," called one of the pair of empusae in her clear, liquid voice. They'd dropped back only a pace when Cashel swiped at their fellow. "We bow before you," echoed her companion. "You are our lovely master…"
Cashel grimaced. "I'm not your master," he muttered. "But I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry." He'd swished his staff out without thinking, because what he'd seen was ugly beyond his mind's ability to grasp. He didn't think he was wrong, exactly, because he didn't have the least doubt that the empusae were evil; but Rasile didn't think they were worth the effort of killing, and he knew he'd struck because he was startled, not because of any better reason. That wasn't something people ought to do. "Did the Gods of Palomir send you, wizard?" asked the creature that Cashel had swung at. It'd moved closer again now that they were past the pond, but it was drifting along with Rasile instead of staying beside Cashel at the end of the line. "They have returned, you know." "They are great and powerful," another empusa said. "The old Gods are dead," chorused the third.
"They banished us to this hungry waste, but They are gone." "The Lady is no more!" the empusae sang together in triumph. Their voices were beautiful. "Franca and His Siblings rule the waking world, and we will return to feast on men!" Rasile looked at the pair of empusae, then toward the single creature drifting along to their left. Her tongue lolled out in the Corl equivalent of laughter. "Not yet, I think," she said. "Not quite yet." Turning back to Liane and Cashel, she said,
"This is where we will return to the waking world. I'll step forward, and you follow me." Liane nodded. Her face was fixed like an ivory carving, and the little knife was steady in her hand. "Yes, ma'am,"
Cashel said. He didn't see anything different about this place-a ridge of sand with a low outcrop a furlong to the right and a pool and dark vegetation about the same distance to the left. He didn't worry, though: Rasile knew what she was doing. The wizard paced forward, blurred, and disappeared. Liane followed just as steady as could be-and blurred, and disappeared. Cashel kept the staff spinning and his head swiveling from one side to the other. He didn't trust the empusae, not even a little bit, and if they tried to come close- He stepped into fog. He couldn't feel the hickory in his hands for an instant. He was back with Liane and Rasile, and the stone walls of a city loomed before them. The shrieking laughter of the empusae still rang in Cashel's ears. *** "There's something out there, lad," said Carus. The ghost's hand caressed the memory of his sword hilt. "I can feel it." We know they're out there, Garric thought. But we've got pickets out and a palisade. If the rats attack tonight, we'll be in better shape than any time in the past three days. "I don't like it," Carus said, then laughed and added, "But maybe it's just that when I'm on campaign like this, I miss the flesh more than other times." "I wonder what kind of tree this is," Garric said aloud to Tenoctris, looking up in the moonlight as he kneaded the backs of his thighs with hard fingers. The grove of tall trees on this slope had branches that came out straight from the trunk, though some turned upward at a right angle; they were covered with needles for their whole length. "There were a few in the garden of Duke Tedry," Tenoctris said. The moon silhouetted the strange branches, making them look hairy. "They weren't native to Yole, though; an ancestor had planted them. I heard a gardener call them monkey-puzzles, but I don't know if he'd heard the name or made it up." Lights shone below, hundreds of yellow-orange campfires sprinkled across the darkness like dandelions in a meadow. The army was camped on what before the Change had been a nameless rocky islet in the Inner Sea. Now it was a forested limestone ridge rising from rolling plains. The ground was better drained than that near Pandah a few days previous, so the marching was vastly easier. The soldiers slept in their cloaks, but none of them would've objected if Prince Garric had travelled with not only a tent but a full entourage of servants. They knew Garric led from the front. If he lived as well as a man could on campaign, that was what a generalought to do. "Servants are a Sister-cursed bother," Carus muttered in Garric's mind. "And a tent doesn't help a bloody bit unless you're going to skulk in it all day, in which case you may as well have stayed home!" Garric grinned and seated himself carefully. His back was to the low limestone cliff that ran down the spine of the former island. Blood Eagles were on guard ten feet above him on top of the ridge, and there was another detachment on the slope below with lanterns on poles. Nonetheless, the solid rock behind Garric provided a slight illusion of privacy. Aloud he said, "I've been thinking about how nice it would be to be home in Barca's Hamlet. I'd probably be worrying about whether I need to drain the cesspool this fall or if it can wait till spring. And thinking what a terrible job it'll be." He, Tenoctris, and the ghost of his ancestor all laughed. Garric ached in muscles which two years before he hadn't known existed. Carus' reflexive skill made his descendent as good a horseman as an experienced Ornifal noble, but Garric's muscles hadn't been hardened by a lifetime of daily exercise. Sure, he was strong-but the particular stresses of horsemanship were different from those of walking, digging, or any of the other things that a peasant did. His mind slipped away from the simple physical problems that he'd been unconsciously trying to keep it to. "Tenoctris?" he said.
"We've-the kingdom has, but you and I have too… we've survived a lot of things." "Yes, Garric?" Tenoctris said. The lanterns were twenty feet away, sufficient to see by but without the detail of bright sun. In the soft yellow glow, Garric could imagine that Tenoctris was the aged wizard she'd been when she washed up on the shore of Barca's Hamlet. Her new youth and vibrancy were positive advantages in all ways, and it was that rather than vanity which had impelled her to regain that youth. But- Garric had grown used to the old woman. The additional change, even though it was for the better, was disturbing at a level well below his consciousness. The thought was so foolish that he grinned. It was good to do that, but it didn't lead his mind away from the question. "Every time we survive, something new comes at us," he said. "Eventually, wewon't survive. You and I won't, and the kingdom won't. Isn't that so?" Tenoctris laughed.
She'd laughed often throughout the time Garric had known her, but this full-throated, youthful chortling was new. And a little embarrassing, truth to tell, because Garric had the strong impression that he was more the subject of her good humor than the person she was sharing it with. The guards didn't face around to watch, but he could see their heads turn slightly in hopes of learning why the pretty young woman was laughing so hard. "I think, now that you've suggested it…,"
Tenoctris said. She'd choked off a giggle and seemed contrite at her behavior. "I think that perhaps Icould become immortal. That's certainly one of the things the wizard whose powers I've borrowed intended to do. But I don't believe I could remain human, or that anyone human would want what immortality entails if they understood it as well as I do." She pressed three fingers of her left hand into the palm of her right while she considered how to proceed, then looked up with an affectionate smile. "The kingdom will be replaced, yes," she said. "Not necessarily fall, but no human creation lasts forever. Nor does anything else last forever, of course. Even cliffs-" She patted the face of rock. Light reflected from the pale limestone softened her silhouette, thrown onto it by the moon. "-will wear down to dust, then be squeezed up again in a different shape and place. Yes you'll die, Garric, though I hope it will be 'full of years and wisdom.' Certainly that's the result I'm striving for, for mankind's sake. But death's a natural part of life, not the triumph of evil." "But that's what I mean," Garric said with more heat than he'd intended. "Chaos, evil, will eventually win, won't it? We have to win every time, but if chaos wins even once, the fight's over. Forever." "Ah," said Tenoctris, nodding with a look of understanding. "Garric, these past few years have seen a great deal of disruption-a unique amount, even for the thousand year cycle, because this time it brought us to the Change.
But the preferred state of the cosmos isn't chaos, it's stasis: things remaining more or less as they are. I think-" She paused, apparently looking down past the scattering of strange trees to the encamped army. Garric doubted she was really focusing on her immediate surroundings, though. A trumpet blew, announcing a change in the guard detachments. "-Ihope, Garric," she said, "that when the Gods of Palomir have been returned to their rest, this world will rest also.
Now, I don't mean there'll be perfect peace!" Garric laughed. "Not unless people vanish too," he said. "Which I wouldn't regard as a good thing, though I suppose one could." "Yes," Tenoctris said. "But if-"
She waved a hand in the air. "-the priest-kings of Seres raise an army and conquer the Land, it doesn't matter in a cosmic sense. The Serians are human, and they'd be fighting for human reasons-the same kind of reasons that cause dogs to fight or boys when they're let out of school." "The Serians!" Carus snorted. "Not in this world or any worldI'min!" Which is missing the point, Garric thought, or perhaps illustrating it perfectly. Aloud he said, "I'll fight ratmen or lichs or demons, I suppose. I've fought them, and other men have fought them and won. But I hope if there're Gods to be fought, you'll handle the business, Tenoctris. I don't…" He rubbed his cheekbones to give himself a moment to put into words the thought he was struggling with.
"Tenoctris," Garric said, "when I think about fighting with Gods, I feel like there's a wall of crystal stretching up to the sky. There's nothing I can grip, nothing I can even see." "I'd like to say I know exactly how to deal with that problem," Tenoctris said with a wry smile, "but I don't think that lying to you would be helpful. I do hope that we can continue to gain information which will give me a better idea of what to do." She chuckled, though this time Garric thought the cheeriness was a bit forced. "And I also hope we survive the process of getting the information." "Yes," said Garric. "I-" His face was turned toward Tenoctris. The shadow of her head in profile lay softly on the limestone behind her. Rippling over the pale stone was another shadow. It was faint as undulations in still water, but it wasthere. "Hoy!" Garric shouted, leaping to his feet. He'd shifted his swordbelt to the front of his body so that he could sit comfortably on the ground, but his ancestor's reflexes had the blade clear in a singing arc before he was fully upright. "Tenoctris, watch out!" But there's nothing to see! The slope down twenty feet to where the guards stood was bare. Something might've been hiding against the trunk of the monkey-puzzle tree, but the moon would surely have shown anything approaching close enough to throw its shadow on the wall.
It's clear! Tenoctris had snapped a twig off a shrub growing at the base of the outcrop, ignoring the spines. Using it for a wand, she was murmuring words of power. A spiral of dust lifted from the gritty soil. Garric slashed the air in front of him. His long sword cut higher than it would've done against a human enemy, judging from the moon's angle to where the extra shadow had hirpled on the stone. To his utter amazement, the blade met a faint resistance as though he'd cut a jellyfish floating in clear water. Half the guard detachment ran toward Garric with weapons ready for use; the remainder of the platoon was faced out as before, though with their spears raised. Blood Eagles above on top of the ridge were standing to, their boots and equipment clashing. "Your highness!" said the commander. He must have thought the swipe of Garric's sword was directed at him and his men. "Friend!
Friend!" An overpowering stench flooded the night, thrusting Garric and the captain back in opposite directions. The next trooper got a long stride ahead his commander before he drew in a breath. He stopped, wobbled to his knees, and threw up on the inside of his shield. "Neber saudry rish!" Tenoctris shouted. The tip of her makeshift wand flashed brilliantly red, turning the air a lingering rose color for a dozen double-paces around. In its pale warmth, a bloody splotch dissipated into rags where Garric had cut at nothing.
Two dirty-looking creatures of serpentine horror swam through the air toward him; each was over ten feet long. Instead of fangs, their mouths were circular pits. In the wizardlight, the rows of teeth within gleamed like rusty iron. "Duzi!" Garric cried, jumping sideways more in disgust than fear. He held his sword between him and the nearer creature. A Blood Eagle stepped forward and hurled his javelin.
The head was a four-sided pyramid, slender enough to punch through a bronze cuirass and the ribs it covered; it slid through one of the floating hagfish without slowing, then chipped rock from the cliff face twenty feet beyond. The creature began to deflate around the exit wound, spilling a brighter color out in tendrils. "Sister!" Carus said. "I've smelled mules that'd burst after a week in the sun and they weren't as bad!" The stink was something you could touch, worse than a tanyard at the height of summer. Even the worst smells quickly dull the ability of people to sense them, though. Garric had his equilibrium back. The haze of wizardlight was fading, and the third creature was blurring back into the air through which it wriggled.
Garric could still see it undulating toward him. He lunged to meet it with his sword point. The captain and two of his troopers struck at the same time. The creature parted like gossamer at the touch of multiple weapons. It drifted away in pieces that dissolved as they sagged toward the ground. As they did so, the rosy glow vanished and with it Garric's ability to see the floating monsters. Only the smell remained, and even that was disappearing. Garric sank down on one knee. The physical effort hadn't been excessive, but his blood was seething from the attack. Now that there was nothing left to fight, he was afraid he was going to throw up. "What were they, Tenoctris?" he asked, his eyes on the ground. He was taking deep breaths, trying to cool down. All his muscles were trembling. Men had come running, Lords Waldron and Attaper among them, but Garric wasn't ready to talk to them yet. "They were invisible!" "They weren't invisible," said the wizard, "but they were the same color as air, at least in this light.
How did you see them?" Garric's body was beginning to settle again.
There were soldiers all around them. "A rag!" he said. "Somebody find me a rag to wipe my sword blade!" "Here, your highness!" someone said, handing Garric a cloth. It was the sleeve of his tunic; Garric could've torn his own sleeve off, but he hadn't thought of that because he was still reacting to what had happened. "I saw the shadow on the wall beside you," he said. "Please, give us some room.
Everybody! Back away if you please." A moment before he must've sounded like the worst sort of nobleman ordering his servants about.
He'd apologize later-not that anybody else would care that the Prince had barked out orders. "Carus knew something was wrong, though," he said, looking up to meet Tenoctris' quiet gaze. The ghost of his ancestor beamed from his mind. "I don't know how. Experience, I suppose." "Your highness!" Lord Attaper said forcefully. "Captain Willer says there were snakes in the air. Do we need to get you out of this place? Lady Tenoctris, do we?" Garric raised an eyebrow toward the wizard. "No," she said. "There were only three and they're dead, thanks to his highness. It must've taken weeks to prepare this attack and it would take even longer to prepare another one." Her expression became unusually serious. "Garric, this wasn't precisely wizardry, because the creatures are natural. But they're not natural in this world and time, and therecertainly was wizardry behind their presence here. I should have been ready. I'll not fail you in this fashion again." "I don't think anybody failed," Garric said. "Except the wizard or whatever in Palomir who was behind this." He got up. Lurched up, really, but he felt better with each movement. He sheathed his sword and held up the borrowed sleeve. "Thank you, whoever gave this to me," he said. "But I think it'd better be burned immediately. I couldn't see what I was wiping with it, maybe nothing, but I'd burn it just in case." "At once, your highness!" a Blood Eagle murmured, snatching the rag from him. He'd say the same thing if I ordered him to jump off a cliff! "Just asyou'djump off a cliff if the kingdom required it," Carus said with a hard grin. "Duty is duty." Garric grimaced, but he knew that was true. Well, he'd work not to be the sort of leader who ordered men to jump off cliffs. "We'll be meeting the first contingent of militia from Haft tomorrow, your highness,"
Lord Waldron said, putting up his sword also. "Before they arrive, I'd like to discuss with you my plan for how we'll use them, if you would." "Yes, we'll do it now," Garric said, seating himself against the rock face again. And how many boys from Haft would he have to order over cliffs? Because the kingdom required it… *** Ilna lurched to her feet. The boat shifted with a scrunch of gravel, throwing her down again. This time her bruised right knee landed on the gunwale. The additional sharp pain on top of the battering she'd just taken made her dizzy, but she managed to catch herself before she tumbled onto the beach. She closed her eyes and steadied herself. She supposed she should've gotten up more carefully, but if she'd been seriously injured she wanted to know about itnow.
Besides- Ilna smiled, not widely but widely for her. -while she wasn't rash, she generally acted on her initial impulse. Once that had taken her to Hell, but who was to say that she wouldn't have gotten there anyway? Anyway, that was in the past. The beach was shingle like at Barca's Hamlet; here the fist-sized chunks of rock were red sandstone instead of the black basalt she was used to. Though by this time, Ilna supposed she was used to anything the world could put her into, as well as some things that had nothing to do with the waking world at all. Ingens groaned. He was still holding onto the mast, so he hadn't been clubbed unconscious while the vessel was being thrown around.
Ilna leaned over the secretary and removed her lasso. She had to lift his right leg to get the silken noose clear. "Ouch!" Ingens cried, twisting his head to look up at her. He'd bloodied his nose, though it wasn't broken or he'd been giving it more attention than he did the leg he was kneading with both hands. "What did you do me?" "Beyond saving your life?" Ilna said coldly as she looped the cord so that she could loop it around her waist again. "If I hadn't taken it off when I did, you'd have died of gangrene in a week or two. What you're feeling is the blood coming back into your leg." "I'm sorry," the secretary muttered to his hands. "I wasn't… I didn't mean to complain. I wasn't thinking clearly. Wasn't thinking." People were coming from huts to the right, above what would have been the shoreline before the Change. Ilna saw nets drying on racks; the men of Ortran must still fish, though now in the river rather than the Inner Sea. Two men, then a third, began to trot when they saw Ilna was watching. "Good day!"
Ilna said as they approached. "We've been thrown here by the earthquake." Her fingers were knotting a pattern that would sear anyone looking at it like a bath in boiling oil. That was her reflex when she met new people, but in this case there was more than the usual reason for it. The whole village was coming, down to babes in their mothers' arms. The villagers didn't look hostile, precisely, but they certainly didn't seem friendly. The men wore the crude knives that were as much a part of peasant dress as a tunic. "You're on Ortran, now!" called a burly man whose beard was lopped off square a hand's breadth beneath the point of his chin. He'd lost his right ear in the distant past; only a lump of gristle and scar tissue remained.
"You're under our laws!" The three leaders paused a double-pace short of the boat. Ingens got to his feet, but he seemed willing to let Ilna talk for both of them. He usually travelled with Hervir, of course. "I don't see any sign of damage here," he murmured, nodding toward the village. "Those flimsy huts should've been thrown down. Can the earthquake just have followed the river?" "We have no intention of breaking your laws," Ilna said coldly, letting bigger questions wait on immediate need. "We're only here because we were caught by the earthquake. We'll go on as soon as we're able to arrange a crew for our boat." This place must be about the size of Barca's Hamlet, several double handfuls of huts. The villagers lacked the bits of ornamentation-a bracelet of carved wood, a ring mounted with a pretty piece of quartz-that some of them would've had back home, but they seemed well fed. "I want enough cloth for a tunic!" said a woman with a voice like stones rubbing. She glared at the woman beside her as she spoke; they both could've been any age from twenty to forty beneath the grease. "I want cloth fortwo tunics, because I got shorted last time. You know I was, Achir!" "We don't take slaves here on Ortran," said a pale blond man, another of the three leaders, "but you're castaways and all you come with is salvage to us. You have the tunics you're wearing, no more." "Aye, that's the law of Ortran," said the third leader, a fat old man who'd taken this long to catch his breath after scurrying to reach the vessel. He nodded solemnly. "The law of our fathers and their fathers before them." "You're under royal law now," said Ingens sharply. "You can't rob travellers simply because your fathers used to rob them!" A boy from the back of the crowd shied a stone. It missed Ingens' head, but he shouted and ducked away. Ilna held up the pattern she'd knotted. The villagers staggered back screaming as if she'd flung live coals in their faces. The fool who'd been nattering about the laws of his fathers gasped twice, clutching his chest. His face flushed so red it was almost purple; he toppled forward onto the shingle. Good, thought Ilna. Maybe you'll have a chance to chat with your ancestors about why they should've come up with different laws. "I curse you!" she shouted to the departing crowd. The words didn't have any effect except to frighten the unpleasant fools further, but that was worthwhile. "May your limbs burn till they fall off!" Not everybody had been looking when she'd displayed her loose pattern, and those at the edges of the mob hadn't gotten the full effect. They all joined the panic as their neighbors fled in screaming agony. The only remaining villagers were the red-faced fellow, now breathing in snorts like a hog, and a girl of eight or nine who'd been knocked down. She was bleeding from a cut on the forehead. "What did you do?" Ingens said. "Have you killed them?"
"No," said Ilna, folding the pattern into her sleeve. There were more people coming, but these were on a path through the hills farther inland. "Well, not most of them. The effect wears off in an hour or two." She climbed from the boat and knelt beside the trampled child.