She'd put the little knife away, though Cashel didn't doubt she could have it in her hand quick enough if she had to. "No ma'am," he said.
Liane knew a lot of things, but she hadn't travelled with wizards as much as he had. "They didn't see it happen, they just saw us walking toward the gate. And if theyhad been looking right at us, they still wouldn't have seen it happen. They think we just came over the hill."
As they walked through the scrub toward the gateway, Cashel spread a big smile across his face like he was a bumpkin who didn't have a lick of sense and wasn't any kind of danger. He was a bumpkin, all right, but he had more sense than to make trouble with a group of soldiers unless he had to. If he really had to, well, they'd see how much danger he could be. The guards were all looking at Rasile. They picked up the spears that'd been leaning against the wall and started cinching up breastplates of linen stiffened with glue. The fellow who'd decided not to put his helmet on now changed his mind again.
Cashel waved his right hand, grinning like a fool. This wasn't much different from his usual expression. The thought struck him as funny, so he grinned even wider. "Not everybody thinks we're a threat," Liane said, not whispering but not speaking any louder than for her companions to hear. "The moneychangers look glad to see us." She sniffed. "They'll be disappointed." Some of the folk Cashel had taken for loungers had little tables in front of them. They whisked coverings of baize cloth off stacks of money and small scales. "Best rates here!" one called. "Best rates on all Charax coinage!" said another in a voice like a cracked trumpet. "All islands accepted and bullion by weight!" The city wall was pretty impressive, though by now Cashel had seen better ones a number of times in the past. The stones in the courses were pretty small and seemed to have been reused from older buildings. The gate itself was flat-topped, but it was set in a pointed archway rising a good three times Cashel's height. The top of the wall was that much again. Instead of simple square battlements for archers to shelter behind while they shot through the gaps, these went up in curvy steps like ornaments. Cashel guessed they'd still work, though. There weren't guards on the wall, though people there were looking down at him and his friends. Looking at Rasile mostly, he didn't doubt. It was a hot day, and the walls were probably as good a place to catch a breeze as you'd find in Dariada. "Where have you come from?" said the guard whose fancy bronze breastplate and sword made him the commander. From what Cashel had learned about soldiers since he left Barca's Hamlet, the other men did this for a living but the commander, middle-aged and not only well-groomed butsoft, was a citizen. Probably one of the richer ones, too. "I'm Lady Liane bos-Benliman," Liane said, putting on the voice that told anybody hearing it that they were so many crickets that she could step on if she felt like it. "Prince Garric has sent me from Pandah to view the Tree Oracle." She nodded toward Cashel, then Rasile, as she took a ribbon-tied sheet of parchment from her scrip. "These are my assistants," she said, handing the parchment to the officer. "And here is my authorization from Prince Garric. Now sir, what isyour name?" He took the sheet doubtfully. "Ah," he said, "I'm Bessus or-Amud. Ah, Captain Bessus. But you can't enter the city, milady. Dariada is independent. We've sent envoys to Prince Garric to explain that to him." Liane glared at the regular soldiers. "Master Bessus," she said, her voice even snootier than it'd been before, "will you please tell your men to stop pointing spears at Mistress Rasile? An old woman is scarcely a threat to Dariada." "She's not a woman at all!" said one of the guards, his knuckles mottled on the shaft of his spear. Liane had said there weren't many catmen on Charax, but from the way this fellow sounded he mightnever have seen one before. "As old as I am, you're probably right," Rasile said. The Coerli laughed by wagging their tongues out the side of their mouths; fortunately, she didn't do it this time. It didn't look like laughing to human beings the first time they saw it. "I was never a warrior, though, and I don't think you need worry about me tearing down walls like these." She curled the back of her forepaw up to her mouth and puffed across it like she was trying to blow the walls down. One of the guards jumped away; another laughed at him. They tilted up their spears, though they didn't lean them against the wall. "I'm not here to discuss Dariada's independence," Liane said with a dismissive flick of her hand. "And I very much doubt whether your City Assembly-" Trust Liane to know just what to call the people who ran things in a place she'd never been before! "-placed you here at the gate to precipitate the crisis which your envoys in Pandah are trying to avoid. Now, unless you really want to be responsible for bringing a royal army down on Dariada, please conduct me and my assistants to the Priests of the Tree. I have business to discuss with them." Bessus held the parchment gingerly between the fingertips of both hands. "I don't…," he said and stopped. He probably didn't know where to go from there. The regular soldiers were moving a bit away from him. They'd straightened and brought their spears upright, too. Folks who heard Liane using that voice didn't want her to turn it on them. "Oh, all right," Bessus snapped. "You're scarcely an invading army, are you?" To one of the spearmen he said, "Obert, I'm leaving you in charge while I take Lady Liane to the Priests' Office. I'll be back promptly." He bowed to Liane. "Milady, if you'll come with me, I'll take you to the Enclosure. I believe only Amineus, the high priest, will be there at the moment, but he can make such further arrangements as are required." "Yessir, we'll handle things," said the soldier, obviously relieved that the problem was going away. Bessus strode down the street, with Liane beside him. He was talking to her. Cashel would've liked to be close enough to hear-he wouldn't have said anything, of course-but he figured it was best he follow at the back behind Rasile.
The streets of Dariada were mostly narrow and always crooked as a sheep track. In lots of places, the street vendors and people walking the other way couldn't have kept clear if they'd wanted to. Some of the men seemed to think they ought to grab Liane as she walked past them. Cashel held his staff by one end and kept the length of it stretched out alongside Liane like a railing. If somebody didn't take the hint, they learned that Cashel was strong enough to slam them back against the wall despite the awkward way he had to hold the staff.
Rasile made everybody stop and stare-that, or sometimes run the other way. Nobody did anything really hostile, though, not even spit. Maybe they just didn't have time to react. Because of the way the old wizard walked with two people in front and Cashel behind, people generally didn't see her until they were right alongside. Bessus led them out into a plaza, sort of, though it straggled along a curving wall more than being square or any real shape. In Carcosa it wouldn't be much more than a wide street, but there hadn't been anything close to it in Dariada. It was the town market, with people selling ordinary goods and produce to either side. In the middle where Bessus took them, folks hawked souvenirs made of everything from pottery and embroidered cloth to silver and gold. Dariada's houses had mostly three floors-stone on the bottom course, concrete mixed with broken chunks of brick to make it lighter as you went up. The walls were painted, but patches had flaked bare lots of places. Occasionally there was a top floor of plastered canes too. There were so few windows that Cashel thought they must have courtyards or most rooms wouldn't have any light at all. The building Bessus was heading toward across the plaza was round and covered with a tall copper dome; it didn't look anything like others in the town. The tile-roofed porch on all sides was held up by pillars; the web between them at the tops curved and stepped like the battlements of the city wall. It wasn't the building that really caught Cashel's attention, though. It was set in a old brick wall just a trifle too high for a man to reach with his arm stretched up and standing on tiptoes. That wasn't new to him either: it was a lot like the wall around the royal palace in Valles, only that one was half again as high. The tree spreading over the wall in all directions, though, that was nothing Cashel had seen before. At first he thought it was a whole grove of trees, but occasionally the branches-and some of them were as thick as his waist-joined a different bole from the one they sprouted from. Tiny little leaves sprouted from long tendrils that dangled over the plaza in a ragged curtain. Some branches-never ones with leaves-had what looked like pea pods hanging from them instead. A few pods were as long and thick as Cashel's forearm; those were beginning to turn from green to brown.
Broad as the tree was-and if it filled the enclosure the way it seemed to, it was at least a furlong across-it wasn't especially tall. Cashel eyed it critically, the way he'd have judged if he'd been hired to fell it and needed to know what it would cover when he laid it down.
None of the tree's joined trunks would run to half the height of a big white oak. Bessus pushed his way through the hucksters and their customers, a wide assortment of folk with the dress and manners of every part of the Isles and beyond. A servant-he wasn't a guard; he wore a bleached tunic and a red vest with gold embroidery, but he didn't have a weapon-stood in the doorway of the round building.
"Yes?" he called. "Go fetch your master," Bessus ordered, skipping up the three steps of the temple's base. Liane and Rasile followed just below him, but Cashel stayed down on the ground for now. He turned sideways so that he could keep the building's doorway in the corner of his eye but still watch what was going on in the plaza. "Is Amineus on duty today? Fetch-ah, there you are, Master Amineus!" A very large man-he was certainly fat, but he was so tall that he seemed more massive than plump-stepped onto the porch. He'd probably have cleared the transom, but he ducked as he passed under it nonetheless. He was holding a cylindrical loaf of bread in his right hand and a serrated knife in his right. "What is it, Bessus?" he said. "And couldn't it wait till I've had my lunch?" With Cashel in front of the round building was a slab of granite about as tall as he was. It was gray, though flecks of white sprinkled the darker crystals. The surface was as uniformly rough as that of a weathered boulder despite obviously being a worked stone. "Amineus, I've brought you Lady Liane bos-Benliman, the envoy of Prince Garric," Bessus said, showing that he'd been paying more attention than Cashel'd thought when Liane introduced them. "She says her business is with you, so I'll leave her in your capable hands. I'm getting back to my duties, now." The slab's edges on the side toward Cashel had been rounded over, but on the back they were sharp: it must've stood in a sandy place once, where the wind had worn off whatever'd been on the side toward it. He thought about the desert they'd crossed to get here. Had Dariada been there before the Change-or maybe been there much, much longer ago than that?
"Say there, what is this?" boomed the big priest. His voice had the rumble of a bull calling a challenge. "Bessus, if she's an envoy, then she needs to go before the assembly, not come to me!" People in the plaza were listening to the argument, but that wasn't any danger. The same folk would gawk and laugh if an old woman slipped in sheep droppings. They wouldn't mean any harm by it. Cashel moved around to the sheltered side of the slab to see what was there. "Master Amineus, my business is with you and your colleagues as priests of the Tree,"
Liane said crisply. "I believe we can take care of it without difficulty. However I strongly suggest that we go into your dwelling-"
She nodded to the doorway. "-and discuss it there." The other side of the slab showed a giant with a walled city between his spread legs. He was holding a snake by the neck with both hands; strangling it, like enough. The snake's coils writhed over the stone's curved upper edge.
Around the bottom of the picture were the little spikes that stonecutters used to mean waves. Cashel wondered if the city was supposed to be Dariada, back before the Change when it was a port.
Amineus looked from his bread to the knife, then scrunched his face up in frustration. "All right, come in, milady," he said. "I'll leave you to it," Bessus said, turning and striding back through the crowd.
"Bessus, you come back here!" the priest said, but he didn't sound like he thought the guard captain was going to pay any attention. He was right about that. Amineus shook his head in disgust. "Come in to the Priests' House, milady," he repeated. "You'd best bring your servant and the animal with you or there might be trouble." The priest gestured them to go ahead of him. Rasile dipped her head politely as she stepped into the building after Liane. Cashel had thought of saying something about how the fellow ought to talk to respectable old folk like Rasile, but that wasn't what they were here for. He thought, I wonder if Rasile could turn him into a pig? And because that was a funny image, he was chuckling as he entered. *** Sharina realized she was holding the Pewle knife bare in her hand. She slid it back in its sealskin sheath. "Thank you," said the rat. "I thought that it was a little excessive. Though flattering, I suppose, to be considered so dangerous." "It wasn't for you," Sharina muttered in embarrassment. "I was having a bad dream. Though-" She grinned at the rat. He seemed quite ordinary, save for the little vest and pantaloons. "-I don't suppose it was going to help much with a dream either. Ah-thank you for waking me up, Master Burne." "Don't mention it, Princess," the rat said. "Now if you'll pardon me, I'll take off this absurd clothing. Nothing against clothing of course, but for human beings. And-" He pulled off the vest and dangled it critically from the, well, toes of his left forepaw. "Well, I must say, I can't imagine wearing something like that even when I was human. Could you?" Sharina swung her legs over the side of the bed and tucked her feet into the sandals waiting there. She didn't stand because she was already looking down at the rat-at Burne. "You haven't always been a rat, then?" she said. "No, no," said the rat, tossing the pantaloons on top of the vest and then beginning to groom himself.
Between licks he said, "This was my mother's idea, I'm afraid. She thought it was time I took a wife. I wasn't interested in any wife, and as for the woman mother had picked, well, I absolutelywould not have anything to do with her. So mother lost her temper and cursed me." Sharina wondered if she was dreaming. The knife she still held had real weight, and out in the street she heard cartwheels clattering on the stone. The royal palace in Valles constructed of many small buildings within a walled compound; it was well insulated from the great city beyond. The houses of the pirate lords of Pandah, though certainly luxurious, were built around courtyards with their outer walls on the public streets. "Ah," she said. "Your mother is a wizard, then?" "Oh, something like that," said Burne. He eyed his tail critically, straightening it and then curling it closely around him again. "Anyway, being a rat isn't such a bad life. Certainly it's better than being married to the very strong-willed lady mother picked for me. A harridan in training, I called her." He looked up at Sharina and chuckled. His eyes twinkled in the moonlight streaming through the jalousies. "I'm afraid I have something of a temper too, you know," he said. "Maybe if I'd been a little more diplomatic, mother wouldn't have become quite as angry. Still, what's done is done. And as I said, it isn't so bad. I quite like my fur, don't you?" "It's, ah, very smooth," Sharina said. She wondered if she ought to pet him-and recoiled at the thought. Not because he was a rat, but because hewasn't a rat. "I joined that family of mountebanks as a more comfortable environment than living with rats," Burne said. "Not that I couldn't have done so, but quite frankly the norms of rat society aren't much to my liking. And then there's the matter of the females.
I'd have been the leading male, I assure you, but that entails duties which I would have found quite unpleasant. Even more unpleasant than my mother's blond termagant." He wiped his whiskers in front of his muzzle and licked them also, right half and then left. "No," he said,
"I preferred a cage and rather better food than the mountebanks themselves were eating. They valued me, you see. They'll be quite distraught to learn that I've escaped, as they'll view it." "Ah," said Sharina. She seemed to be saying that a lot tonight. "You're leaving them? Leaving the show?" "Now don't you go thinking that I'm treating them unfairly!" Burne squeaked sharply, sitting up straight on the pillow. "They didn't capture me, of course, and the fact they believe they did is an amazing insult. Surely it would be obvious to the meanest intellect that no lock a human could open would be beyondmy -"
He raised a forepaw and spread the toes with their tiny claws.
"-delicacy and intelligence to open also." "I think…," said Sharina, answering the implied question instead of treating it as a rhetorical device. It settled her mind to deal with the business on an intellectual level. "That they weren't able to think of you as other than an animal. Even when you spoke and practiced the tumbling routines with them. They didn't let themselves believe what they really knew." She pursed her lips. "I guess you practiced, I mean."
"Ofcourse we practiced," Burne said waspishly. "No matter how skilled one might be-and I'll admit that the Serulli family was skilled; it wasn't by chance I picked them for my purposes, you know. But despite that, the timing can only come from practice." He settled himself onto his belly, his limbs drawn up under him. "They treated me well-except for the lack of intellectual companionship, of course. But they more than got value from my association with them. I owe them nothing, Princess, so you needn't feel that you've harmed them because I've decided to associate with you instead." "I beg your pardon?" Sharina said sharply. She got up, rocking the bed on its rope suspension.
Burne waited till the bed had stilled before sitting up on his haunches. "Yes, I'm joining you now," he said. "I won't pretend that I don't have my own reasons for doing so, just as I preferred the mountebanks to living with rats. Other rats. There's a difficult time coming for this world, and I suspect that there'll be more safety with you than there will be anywhere else." He groomed his right whiskers again and added, "In the long run, of course. The immediate future is likely to become unpleasantly exciting." On a silver tray by the bedside was an earthenware jar with a tumbler up-ended over its neck.
Though the tumbler was glazed, the jar itself was not; water wept through the sides, cooling the remaining contents. Sharina filled the tumbler and drank. "I'm rather thirsty myself," the rat said pointedly. Sharina paused. If I were home in Barca's Hamlet and found a rat in my bedroom, I'd have – But Barca's Hamlet wasn't home any more, and even when Sharina was an inn-servant she'd probably have hesitated before trying to crush atalking rat. She grinned. I hopeI'd have had that much sense, she thought. She poured a little water into the tray. It wasn't perfectly flat, so a shallow pool formed along one raised edge. "All right," she said. Burne hopped from the pillow to the table. He bent, his tongue lapping quickly but his bright black eyes still focused on Sharina. "You'll find me good company," he said, raising his head again, "as well as being useful. For example-" Burne shot up from the bedside table, rattling the tray with the suddenness of his leap. Sharina jerked back instinctively, but the rat struck the wall more than arm's length from her and dropped to the floor. Gripped in its forepaws was a finger-long scorpion. The chisel teeth made a quick snap, shearing off the sting. His paws shifted their grip; the teeth clicked twice more, nipping the scorpion's pincers. "One this size isn't really dangerous," Burne said conversationally, "but it can send information to places we'd prefer should remain ignorant." He began eating the scorpion, starting at the head; bits of black chitin sprinkled the marble floor around him. He paused, cleaning his muzzle with his long tongue. "Useful, as I told you," he said. Sharina giggled. She supposed it was reaction. She sheathed the big knife for the second time tonight. "All right, Master Burne," she said. "Though Iwill make a payment to your former, well, associates. A considerable payment." She giggled again. The scorpion's tail fell from the rat's jaws. It was still twitching. "I can see," Sharina said, "that you're not going to be expensive to feed."
Chapter 8 "Barak knephi…," said Brincisa, kneeling before a basalt nodule originally the size of a child's skull but now split in half. The hollow interior was lined with amethyst crystals. She used it instead of drawing a figure like most of the wizards that Ilna had watched. "Baricha!" Instead of a flash of wizardlight, a bluish haze spread from the nodule in all directions. It was as faint as the sheen of moonlight on nacre; Ilna saw only the boundary between light and non-light, moving outward at the speed of a man running. It vanished through the walls of the workroom She felt only a faint tingle when the light passed through her body, and even that might have been the expectation that sheought to feel something. Ingens stood facing an alcove so that he wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of what Brincisa was doing. He didn't react at all to the haze; he probably didn't see it. The wizard rose to her feet, then paused with her eyes closed and swayed. "No no," she said sharply when Ilna reached out to support her. "I'm all right. Come, the effect should last till dawn, but we don't know how long our business with the tomb will take.
Master Ingens, bring the rope." Ilna nodded curtly. She found Brincisa's manner brusque and unpleasant, which would amuse her former neighbors in Barca's Hamlet. On the other hand, Brincisa was commendably businesslike and obviously skilled in her arts. Perhaps Ilna's distaste was simply a matter of like being repelled by like.
Though- Ilna had eventually broken the link to the powers of Hell from which she'd gained her skills. Brincisa may well have had the same teachers; but if so, Ilna doubted that she'd turned her back on them.
Brincisa led the way down the stairs. Until she got to the first landing the wizard used the railing for half her support, but she had full control of her balance from then on. A dark-clad servant waited in the entranceway. Ilna expected him to open the street door for them, but instead the man remained where he was. As they passed, she realized that the servant's eyes were open and staring: he'd been paralyzed by the incantation. The full moon lighted the path up the bluff. Ilna wondered if the moon's phase had anything to do with the other business that was going on, but Brincisa was the only person who would know. Brincisa would say no more than what suited her-and would be pleased that Ilna was concerned. Which she was, of course. She wasn't afraid to die, and she wasn't worried about meeting the test that waited for her in the tomb. Ilna didn't think she was arrogant, but she believed down to the marrow of her bones that she would succeed at any task having to do with fiber or fabric. The night was silent except for the rustle of breezes through the needles of pine trees clinging to the rock. Their feet scraped on the path, and sometimes Ingens grunted from the burden of the coil of rope; those were the only animal sounds. Theuncertainty of what Ilna was facing-they were facing; she and the secretary were together in this at least-was what disturbed her. As they climbed, her fingers played with patterns: some that would guide her, and others that would deal with threats they might face. As quickly as she'd tied one, she picked it out and started another; they only occupied her fingers. The answer would come, but it wouldn't come that way. "Here," said Brincisa.
They'd reached the top of the bluff. "We'll roll back the stone first.
Ingens, set the rope by the post. You can tie it later." Two guards sat by a fire which had sunk to a pile of white ash and the ends of billets smoldering around it. The men were as stiff and mute as Brincisa's servant. A spear, a wicker shield, and an iron cap sat on the ground behind either man, but their real purpose here was the large bronze bell hanging from a yoke nearby. A stroke on the bell with the mallet beside it or even a flailing hand would rouse the whole town to deal with tomb robbers. The silence made Ilna uncomfortable. Unlike her brother she didn't think much about nature, but its chorus was a constant backdrop to night in a hamlet: birds calling and rattling their flight feathers, the varied trills of insects, and frogs making every sound from the boom of a bullfrog to narrow-mouthed toads bleating like a herd of miniature sheep.
Brincisa's wizardry had stilled all that. Though Ilna didn't particularly care for the sounds, she disliked being without them. The stone closing the entrance wasn't a slab as Ilna had assumed. It was a roller as long as she was tall, a large version of the querns women used in villages that didn't have watermills to grind grain. It was limestone like the hill beneath it, pierced through the center so that the thick hardwood pole sticking out on either end acted as a handle for the men moving it to and fro. A fist-sized rock waited on either side to chock the tomb open while bodies were being lowered into the cave. "We have to move that by ourselves?" Ingens said doubtfully.
"We'll manage," said Ilna curtly as she eyed the situation. Ingens probably hoped that Brincisa would use an incantation to open the tomb. Very probably the wizard could've done that if necessary, but Ilna knew that wizardry was better left for matters which nothing else could accomplish. Physical effort was less draining for any task that you could do either way. Brincisa turned to the stone roller. The pole extended far enough that two people could push on either side if they didn't mind rubbing shoulders. "Mistress Ilna," the wizard said, "help me on the left side. Your secretary can take the right." Ilna looked at her. Brincisa was still breathing hard. She hadn't stopped to rest on the climb up the hill, but she was far from having recovered her strength after the incantation. "Ingens and I will move the stone,"
Ilna said. "You brought along a lantern for me? Light it now." She squatted and braced both hands on the pole. It was smooth from long wear, fortunately. Even if it hadn't been, Ilna's palms weren't soft like a fine lady's who might be gored by a splinter. "Ready?" she said to Ingens. He nodded. Behind them, metal clicked on stone; Brincisa was striking a spark with steel on a chip of pyrites instead of using wizardry to light the wick of the candle she'd taken from the lantern.
Ilna and the secretary shoved forward together. The roller moved more easily than she'd expected; though the track sloped very slightly upward, years-centuries?-of use had polished it. Ilna's only problem was that she was too small to easily extend to the stone's resting position, but by hunching forward from her squat she was able to get the chock in place on her side. She stood and looked back at the hole they'd uncovered. There'd been gaps big enough to stick an arm through when the stone was in place, but now that it'd been removed the opening didn't look any too big. She could crawl through without difficulty, but she wondered how much trouble it would've been to bury her Uncle Katchin-a pig in all senses. She frowned. The air inside the cave was dank, like the interior of a well. She didn't smell rotting flesh, however. Three days even deep in rock should've been enough for Hutton to turn, quite apart from the reeking corruption of centuries of previous dead bodies. "Mistress Brincisa," Ilna said, "I don't smell death." What she really meant was that she didn't smell corpses, but she was being polite since the woman's husband was one of them.
"There's a special property of this cave," Brincisa said with a flash of irritation, there and then gone. "It's of no consequence. Master Ingens, tie the rope around this post. And you, mistress, may want to tie the other end around your waist." The 'post' was a thick bollard.
Ilna rang it with her knuckles and found what the moonlight had led her to expect: it was bronze, not wood or even iron. It was set too deeply in the rock to quiver when she threw her weight against it.
Lowering bodies into the cave was obviously so familiar a practice that considerable preparation had been made to make it easy and dignified. More dignified than simply tossing them down a hole in the rock as though they were so many turds falling into a close chest.
Ingens threw his rope around the post. He started to loop the free end around the main length, then paused. "I'll take care of that," Ilna said, trying to keep the disgust out of her voice. Ingens could read and write, after all. She'd have to be out of her mind to trust a knot he'd tied, however. "Since I'm the one who'll be hanging from it."
Ingens stepped out of the way obediently. Brincisa rested on one knee, her face set; presumably she was still recruiting her strength. Ilna let her fingers run over the rope for a moment; it was linen, new and easily strong enough for Ilna's slight weight even though it was the diameter of her fourth finger. It would do. She tied it with two half-hitches, simple and satisfactory, then rose. "I'm ready," she said. "Give me the lantern." "Mistress, how will you carry it?" Ingens asked in concern. Ilna glanced into the hole. The moonlight showed that it slanted slightly for about the length of her body before dropping away. She couldn't see beyond the initial slope. The rope would rub, but not badly; and anyway, it was new. She wore a silken lasso around her waist in place of a sash. Now she uncoiled a two-ell length and tied it around the lantern's loop handle. "I'll carry it in my hand till I'm over the drop," she said to the secretary. Brincisa remained silent, watching like a cat attending the actions of human beings but holding aloof from them. "Then I'll let it hang so that it lights the floor of the cave before I reach it." "It's not far," the wizard said. The fact she spoke was by now a surprise. "Twenty feet, no more." "Fine," said Ilna, "but I still want light." She supposed she'd be dropping into putrid corpses, the remains of centuries. She wasn't squeamish, but if she could avoid putting her weight on a spike of rotting bone, she would. "Shall I lower you, mistress?" Ingens said softly. He seemed genuinely concerned, which made no more sense to Ilna than the other parts of this puzzle. Well, her own task was simple enough. "No," she said. "I'll climb down myself." She turned and started down the rope backward. The linen filled her mind with memories of terraced fields rising from a broad brown current-not the North River, at least not the North River of the present. The sun was bright and hot, and little blue flowers nodded from long, kinked stalks. It was good to have the rope to touch, because it insulated her from the narrow rock about her. Below, waiting for her, was ancient death. But for now, flax flowers smiled at the sun. *** "Since you have an oracle here…," Liane said. "Please sit down, milady," Amineus said, gesturing to the cushions along the left wall of the single round room. He must've been sitting on the other side, for the table there had a bowl of fruit, a wedge of deep-yellow cheese, and a lidded silver flagon with matching goblet.
"Ah, would you like some refreshment?" The door across the room had three lock plates in it, all set together in the middle. The panel looked heavy enough to be the street door in a city where folk had to worry about robbers smashing their way in. "There's no need of that,"
Liane said, flicking the suggestion away with her left hand. "Nor time, I dare say. My colleagues and I need to question the Tree Oracle. And what I was saying-" She froze the start of the priest's protest with a raised finger. "-is that since you have an oracle, you are aware that the Worm is approaching Dariada. The city is doomed unless we stop the creature." Other than the second door, the room didn't have much to see. Solidly joined storage chests sat along the walls, two and two, and above the cushioned seats the plaster'd been frescoed with pictures of fountains. Cashel liked paintings; they were the one thing he'd found in cities that he'd have regretted missing if he hadn't left Barca's Hamlet. There didn't seem much reason to paint a fountain when you might've had the real thing about as easy, though.
"You don't understand the difficulties in what you're saying," Amineus said, shaking his head in slow frustration. "The College of Priests-all three of us, not just me alone-has to consider the petition and-" "I don't care about the difficulties," said Liane, slapping the words out. "I certainly don't care about your procedures-and neither should you, since you and your whole city will be destroyed unless my associate Lady Rasile-" She gestured to Rasile, who grinned but kept her tongue inside her long jaws. "-who is a wizard, is able to find a solution. To accomplish this, she believes she needs to see the Tree." "Awizard?" Amineus said in amazement. He stared at Rasile, then back to Liane. "You mean this-" "Stop!" said Liane. "If you use the word 'animal' again to refer to a friend of mine, Master Cashel will knock you down. You can do that, can you not, Cashel?" "Yes ma'am," Cashel said. A cudgel would be handier, but short-gripping the quarterstaff would do the job too. He figured he could probably handle the big man without a weapon at all, but wrestling around inside chanced squashing the women like shoats when a brood sow rolls over. "As to your question, yes," Liane continued more calmly. "Rasile is a wizard. Now, take us to see the oracle." Amineus sighed and set the bread and knife down on the low table. "You may as well," he said. "It's improper, but what does that matter if the danger's as bad as we think? As bad as you say, milady. But I warn you-" He looked around the three of them. "-we've tried ourselves, following all the rituals. And the Tree has told us nothing. Nothing!"
"We'll go now, if you please, Master Amineus," Liane said. She wasn't near as harsh as she'd been a moment before, but she didn't expect an argument. "Yes, yes," the priest said tiredly. He turned to his servant. "Ansco, go tell Masters Hilfe and Conwin that I'm taking a noblewoman and her retinue into the Enclosure. If they want to join us, they'd best hurry." He paused, frowning. "Better see Conwin first," he said, correcting himself. "I can't imagine Hilfe will be willing to tear himself away from his counting house so early in the day." The servant nodded and trotted off. From his look of disappointment, Cashel guessed the fellow wanted to watch whatever happened next. Amineus lifted the key he wore chained to a heavy leather belt. Cashel expected him to go to the back door, but instead he knelt beside one of the storage chests. "The priests of the Tree are elected to three-year terms, you know," he muttered as he fitted the key to chest's lock. Maybe Liane knew that; Cashel certainly didn't. "One a year, and the senior man is high priest. I took it for an honor and thought it worth the trouble, but this business now…" He lifted the lid. There was nothing in the chest but three more keys. "Idon't know what to do, none of us do!" Amineus said. "An army of ruffians coming toward us with a monster-everybody says they're coming for the Oracle! We've got refugees from Telut, they tell us what's going to happen. I'm responsible and I don't know what to do!" He rose with the three keys in his hand. They were the kind that had thin pins sticking out from the end to fit and turn in arcs cut in the face of the latch plate. "We're each supposed to keep our key with us at all times," he said, "but the gardeners have to go in and out at any hour. That's, well… There's always one priest in the office. That's inconvenience enough." "You're doing what you needed to do, Master Amineus," Liane said firmly. "You're putting the problem of the Worm into the hands of those who may be able to solve it." The priest sniffed. "Am I?" he said, fitting the three keys into the locks. "Well, I hope you're right, but it doesn't really matter.
Since I don't know of anything else to do that would be better." He turned and looked at Liane. From his expression, he might've just learned that his whole family had died. "I don't know anything at all to do!" Amineus said. "Except run, and I won't do that." Liane stepped past the big priest and turned the keys one after the other. Each bar withdrew with a solidclack. She looked up at him. "We won't run either, Master Amineus," she said. "That's why we're here. Now, lead us to the Tree." Instead of pushing the panel herself, Liane gestured and stepped aside. Amineus smiled crookedly and opened the door, leading them through. Beyond was what seemed like another room, only this one was as big as a stadium and the roof was the branches and leaves of trees growing around the inside of the wall. The one tree.
Each trunk was joined to the trunks on either side, just like it'd looked from outside the wall. The limbs arched overhead like the beams of an impossibly great hall, linking to one another in a wooden spiderweb. "This way," the priest said, taking them to the left around the curve of the enclosure. "The Stone of Question is across the enclave." The ground was bare, dry and packed from ages of exposure.
The only undergrowth Cashel saw, if you wanted to call it that, was moss in places where rock had broken through the top of the dirt. The soil under these leaves and branches didn't get any more sunlight than it would on a thatched porch; that was why it was barren, not because the gardeners Amineus talked about had dug out everything but the Tree's own roots. Though the roots were everywhere. Amineus kept wide of the boles by longer than Cashel could touch with his staff; even so it was like they were walking on a floor of ridged wood, the roots lay so thick. Cashel would've avoided stepping on them, but there wasn't any way he could; and the priest wearing leather-soled sandals-Cashel was barefoot-didn't seem concerned about it himself. The reason for going around the side of the enclosure was to avoid what was left of a building in the center. It'd been a temple, Cashel guessed, but not a very fancy one even before it'd all fallen in. A foundation course of rough limestone showed a rectangle three times a tall man's height on the long sides and not quite that wide on the front and back ends.
There'd been two stone pillars framing the doorway at the front, but extensions of the side walls had carried the ends of the porch roof.
There wasn't any sign of a roof or the rest of the walls, either one.
If there'd been a statue, it was gone too. All there was inside the base course was a litter of fallen leaves and husks from the Tree's seedpods. "Sir?" Cashel asked. "The temple there in the middle? What is it?" Amineus had been lost in his own thoughts. He gave Cashel a look that was peevish if not quite angry. "That's no matter of ours," he said. "It's a temple, yes, but it's very old. Nobody knows who it was dedicated to." He cleared his throat. "We avoid it," he added,
"out of courtesy for those who worshipped here in former days."