Mistress of the Catacombs

21

By the time the sun had risen a finger’s breadth above the horizon, the fog had burned off. Cashel looked over his shoulder and for the first time saw the other bank of the river. He chuckled.

Tilphosa, curled in the stern of the boat, jerked awake at the sound. “What?” she said. “Cashel, is everything all right?”

“I don’t know about everything,” Cashel said with a shy grin. “But better off than a little bit ago, sure. See the land, Tilphosa?”

“Yes,” she said, squinting into the low sun. She sounded doubtful. “It looks marshy, doesn’t it?”

“Right,” said Cashel, “but it’s land. I’ve been rowing all night. I was beginning to think it wasn’t a river at all but a lake that I wasn’t going to get across in this lifetime.”

“Oh!” said Tilphosa. She turned and looked west, toward where Soong ought to be. The city was still there, Cashel supposed, but it was long out of sight in their wake. “Cashel, you’ve been rowing all night? What do your palms look like?”

She leaned forward and unwrapped the fingers of his right hand from the oarloom. “I’m fine, mistress,” Cashel said in embarrassment. “I’m used to this sort of thing.”

That was true enough. His calluses had faced worse than a night of rowing, and the same was true of his shoulder muscles. Even so, Tilphosa looked at him with mingled anger and sympathy.

“Well, stop right now!” she said. “It isn’t right that anyone be worked like that!”

“It isn’t somebody making me do it, mistress,” Cashel said calmly. “It’s me doing it. I choose to.”

“Well, then choose—” the girl said sharply.

“Mistress,” said Cashel, loudly enough to be heard. “I don’t want to float here in the middle of a river till we starve. It’s that or else me rowing us the rest of the way to land. All right?”

Tilphosa’s eyes flashed; then she lowered them, and quietly said, “All right, Cashel. Are you going to take us to the city there?”

“Huh?” said Cashel, looking over his shoulder again. The buildings rising out of the mud and mists were several stories high, gleaming as sunlight struck their wet stone. Granted that the fog was still clearing, he’d have thought he’d have seen them….

“That’s funny,” Cashel said. “But sure, we’ll head for the city. You guide me if the current pulls us off course, all right?”

He resumed rowing. That last was just a way to be friendly to the girl after he’d told her to stop mothering him. The chance of this river’s sluggish current drifting him downstream unnoticed was about the same as Cashel sprouting wings and flying to the city.

He smiled at Tilphosa. He’d had his sister to mother him, and Ilna wasn’t one to claim hard work was a bad thing for a man—or a slip of a girl like herself, either. Tilphosa was tough and in her way strong, but she didn’t have any notion of what was normal for peasants like Cashel.

“I lost my dagger,” the girl said suddenly. “I don’t have…”

She had the tunic she’d worn to bed, period. Well, there hadn’t been any time since then to do more than to keep moving.

“Maybe you won’t need it,” Cashel said calmly. When you really didn’t know what was going to happen next, there was no point in deciding it was going to be bad. “Anyway, I’ve still got my staff.”

Tilphosa smiled vividly again, the first time Cashel had seen that expression since they went to sleep in the Hyacinth. “Yes you do, Cashel,” she said. “And I’ve got you.”

“Till we get you home,” Cashel agreed. His arms and upper body moved with the steady grace of a mill wheel, long pulls that sent the water swirling away each time he withdrew his oarblades. Dimples of foam marked the surface behind them, staying where they were while the wake made a V outward across them. “The Shepherd granting, of course.”

“There was a time I’d have said, ‘The Mistress granting,’ Cashel,” Tilphosa said in an odd tone of voice. “Now I think I’ll just depend on you. You haven’t failed me yet.”

She cleared her throat, and went on, “We’re getting very close to the quays along the bank. But I suppose you know that.”

“Thank you, m-mis…” Cashel said. “I mean, thank you, Tilphosa.”

He looked over his shoulder, picking the point where he’d land. There were steps down into the water squarely ahead of them. If there’d ever been bollards, they’d rotted away, but he could haul this little skiff up the stairs easily enough. It wouldn’t hurt the flat bottom to bump a little.

He had known the bank was close, of course. Tilphosa was smart in people ways, not just out of books. Cashel himself was always being surprised by what people did and said, because mostly it didn’t make any sense. The best Cashel could do was learn to deal with surprises.

He braked the skiff by reversing his stroke, then turned them so that they drifted stern first to the stairs on the last of their momentum. Mud, poisonously bright with river algae, was slumping away from the stone. Where the sun had dried it, it turned a sickly gray-green.

“If you’ll just hop—” Cashel said, but Tilphosa had already judged her time. She stepped lightly to the stone tread, then bent to hold the boat’s transom.

Smiling approval, Cashel paddled the skiff broadside and got out himself. Despite his care, water sloshing from beneath the hull soaked Tilphosa’s feet. She didn’t appear to notice.

Cashel pulled the skiff up the few steps and set it on the drying mud of the quay. He’d told the fisherman he’d leave the boat when he was through, but now he didn’t imagine the fellow would ever see it again. That’s what the fisherman had expected, but it still bothered Cashel to reinforce somebody’s bad expectations.

A different thought struck him; he grinned. “Cashel?” Tilphosa said.

“The fellow I got the boat from knew how wide the river was even though I didn’t,” Cashel explained. “I guess when I said I’d leave it for him, he thought I was a fool but not a crook.”

Tilphosa frowned, trying to understand what he was getting at. “You see, mistress,” Cashel explained, “I’m used to people thinking I’m dumb. That’s all right.”

“No,” said Tilphosa, “it’s not. But for now let’s see if we can find something to eat.”

“Right,” said Cashel. “Let me…”

He slid his quarterstaff out from under the thwart. Stepping back from the girl, he began to spin it; slowly at first, but building speed as he worked out the kinks rowing had put in his muscles. He whirled the staff in front of him, reversing direction with a skill that only another man familiar with the heavy weapon would appreciate. He brought it over his head, then jumped and let the staff’s inertia carry his body around in a full circle.

“There,” said Cashel breathlessly. “There!”

Tilphosa looked at him with wide eyes, the back of her right hand in her mouth. “Cashel,” she said. “That was amazing!”

“Huh?” he said. He seemed to say that a lot when he was around Tilphosa. “It wasn’t…I mean, I was just loosening up, that’s all. Anyway, let’s get going.”

He really didn’t see what the big deal was…or maybe he did, and it wasn’t flattering.

“Ah, Tilphosa?” he said. “Did you mean that it’s amazing somebody as big as me’s not clumsy?”

“No, Cashel,” the girl said. “I meant you’re as graceful as a God when you move. I thought I was…inventing memories about how you held off the sailors in the temple. But I wasn’t.”

Cashel still didn’t understand, but he had to say it made him feel good. Prince Thalemos was a lucky man; or anyway he would be, when Tilphosa finally reached him.

They walked into the city. The streets were slimy where the mud hadn’t dried yet, but gray-green slabs were cracking off east-facing walls. The stone underneath was pinkish, highly polished, and as hard as granite. The air smelled of slow death, but it wasn’t as pungent as that of salt marshes drying at neap tide.

“The river must have covered all this until just now,” Tilphosa said. She paused to duck through one of the doorways: low, narrow, and wider at the bottom than the top.

“Nothing there,” she said as she returned, still frowning. “Nothing but mud.”

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything to eat here,” Cashel said, “unless a carp maybe got stranded. We could go down the river a ways, maybe?”

Tilphosa shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked up. “East was a good way before,” she said. She smiled. “At least it was a good enough way, since you were there. I think we ought to keep on as we’ve started.”

Cashel grunted. He was glad to hear her say that, because it was pretty much what he was thinking. He didn’t have a reason to go somewhere in particular, but it seemed to him it was important that they anyway went on.

The streets twisted worse than the ones in the old part of Valles. When they met, it was always in odd numbers: generally three but sometimes as many streets as the fingers on a man’s hand. Cashel tried to keep the sun before him, but he knew he and Tilphosa were doing a lot of backtracking.

They came out into an open courtyard, different from anyplace they’d yet seen. The entrances through the circular wall, instead of being real arches, all had slanting jambs and a big stone across the top. Cashel walked into the clear space and stopped with Tilphosa at his side.

“It doesn’t feel like a ruined city,” Tilphosa said. “The walls are standing, and the edges aren’t even worn.”

“I guess the mud covered it,” Cashel said, feeling uneasy. “It would’ve weathered if it had been above ground, but buried…”

He started forward, picking the archway that seemed to go more east than the others. The streets into the courtyard all kinked, so you couldn’t see down them any distance from inside.

Tilphosa scraped her foot through the soft mud. “The plaza’s got a design carved on it, Cashel,” she said. She waggled her bare toe. “I wonder what they used it for? Whoever built the city, I mean.”

Metra stepped out of the entrance Cashel was walking toward. “The Archai built the city,” the wizard said. “They never occupied it, however. Until now.”

Archai warriors, their forearms raised, entered the courtyard from all the other entrances. Cashel lunged toward Metra, his quarterstaff outstretched like a battering ram.

Tilphosa shouted in fury rather than fear. Archai swarmed over Cashel from both sides and behind, grasping with their middle limbs instead of hacking him apart with their toothed forearms. He strained forward, but too many Archai held him; it was like trying to swim through an avalanche.

Cashel toppled sideways. He felt chitin crunch beneath his weight, but the grip of countless tiny, hard-surfaced fingers held him beyond the ability to do more than wriggle.

The Archai rolled Cashel over. He fought without any plan beyond wanting to resist whatever the creatures did. His struggles didn’t make any difference, except to prove that he wasn’t giving up.

They lashed his wrists and ankles together with fibrous ropes, then tied his wrists to his ankles. When they had him securely bound they stepped away, chirping among themselves. Cashel rolled sideways so that he could see again.

Four Archai held Tilphosa; she hadn’t been tied like Cashel. Metra watched the girl with the grin of a cat over a fish bowl. More Archai than even Garric could have counted stood around the edge of the courtyard and looked down from the surrounding wall.

“You were wondering the purpose of this courtyard, Tilphosa,” the wizard said. “It was a temple; it is a temple, now that you’ve arrived.”

“Lady Tilphosa to you, mistress!” the girl said. Cashel had heard hissing snakes that sounded friendlier.

“I think we can dispense with titles now, Tilphosa,” Metra said; a tic at the corner of her mouth showed the insult had gotten home. “The moon will be full tonight, but you and I only have to wait for high noon.”

Metra looked down at Cashel. “While I waited…” she went on, “I performed a location spell. You had the ring all the time, didn’t you? If I’d known that…”

She shrugged and made a sound with the tip of her tongue against her palate. Two Archai bent over Cashel. He twisted, but one of them ripped his tunic cleanly with a forearm and the other clipped the silken cord which held the purse around Cashel’s neck. The Archa’s delicate, three-fingered hand passed the purse to Metra.

She took out the ring and held the tiny ruby to the light. Its facets scattered rosy blurs around the courtyard.

“Yes…” she said. “The Mistress has been waiting a very long time, but the wait is over now.”

Waiting like a spider in her web, thought Cashel; and he tugged at the ropes, but they were tight and had no more give than steel chains would.

Garric started for the corniche, tugging at the sleeve of Thalemos’ tunic to hustle him along. Vascay, his face bleak as Garric had never before seen it, was already moving. His step had a hitch in it; he hesitated each time his peg leg came down on the coarse soil.

“Wait!” cried Metron, looking up from his incantations. A litter of flaccid, bloodless animals lay at his side; his hands and ivory blade were red with the blood that hadn’t dripped onto his words of power. “Thalemos, it isn’t time yet!”

Thalemos didn’t turn at the wizard’s voice. His expression was calm, but his face was set.

“It’s time and past time, I think!” Vascay said. He poised at the edge, waiting for Garric to choose their path downward.

“This way!” said Garric from the notch where the recently fallen bank provided a steep ramp down to the sea which had undercut it. He pointed toward the rectangular shadow to the left where the catacomb lay open. He and his companions could pick their way across the slope, though they’d have to be careful not to slip into the sea.

Archai rose from the water like fishflies hatching. They clambered up the escarpment directly in front of them, regardless of the slope. Occasionally the bank gave way; the ones who’d pulled it down tumbled into their fellows, then rose and crawled upward again.

They brushed past Garric and his companions with no more regard than a creek has for the men wading in it. Their limbs were slick and cold, like marble statues touched in the evening.

There were hundreds of the chitinous warriors already. Garric supposed more would appear for so long as Metron continued his chant and sacrifices.

The wizard thrust his lips out and gave a fluting call. Archai gripped Garric, three of them before him and more from behind where he couldn’t see them. He heard Thalemos shout and Vascay curse.

Garric tried to pull away. The scores of cold fingers held him firmly. He tried to force his way forward, over the cliff in the hope that gravity would tug him free. All he managed to do was to cut his shoulder by shoving it into an Archa’s raised forearm.

Relaxing, Garric looked at his companions. Vascay stood with no expression, his head turned back toward Metron. His arms were pinioned, but he still held his remaining javelin. Though the chieftain seemed relaxed, Garric knew that if the Archai relaxed their grip on him for an instant, his javelin would skewer the wizard’s throat.

Thalemos was spread-eagled, his feet held off the ground and his arms straight out from his side. His face was set in aristocratic resignation, but a muscle at the back of his jaw pulsed.

Metron resumed his chanting. His athame thrust, then tore. The ivory edge wasn’t sharp enough to cut, but the point could pierce a vole’s body and a quick twist of the blade let out the little creatures’ blood and entrails in a gush.

Wizardlight blazed again. Another wave of Archai emerged from the sea.

The leading ranks of lizardmen spread sideways as they approached the Archai. The insect monsters were individually shorter and slighter than most men, but the reptiles were shorter yet. They had bronze helmets and swords, however, and a few of them carried small wicker shields covered with scaly leather.

The two lines made savage contact. The bronze swords were sharper than the Archai’s fanged forearms, but the insects could parry with one arm and hack with the other.

Lizardmen and Archai both continued to chop at their opponents when horribly wounded, their limbs severed or coils of their intestines cascading around their ankles. Even after falling they twitched and tried still to strike. More Archai came from the sea; but the column of lizardmen continued to pour through the distant notch in the hills.

The Intercessor hung in a chair suspended between a pair of reptilian quadrupeds like nothing Garric had ever seen before. The beasts had small heads, long necks, and even longer tails. Each of them was many times the size of the biggest ox in the borough.

Echeon held a long staff of amethyst or purple glass. He chanted, stroking his staff through the air in time with his words of power. The lines of his face had a eunuch’s softness, but the features underneath were identical to those of the Intercessor Echeus, whose wizardry had flung Garric’s soul forward to this time.

Metron squeezed the corpse of the last vole in his left hand, then tossed it aside. He trilled another order. Garric expected the Archai holding him to react. Instead, a group of warriors seized Ademos, who’d been kneeling in prayer ever since he realized he was trapped between the Archai and their reptilian opponents.

Ademos mewled and flailed like a newborn baby as the Archai dragged him toward the wizard. Vascay said in an expressionless voice, “All those times I thought of cutting the little weasel’s throat myself but didn’t…Maybe I didn’t do him a favor after all, eh?”

He chuckled, but it sounded like a death rattle.

Metron gripped Ademos by the hair and twisted the bandit’s head back. Garric looked down. He’d seen worse, but it wasn’t something he wanted to watch. Ademos’ scream became a bubbling gurgle.

Crimson radiance flooded the plain, penetrating stone and sky alike. For an instant all sound ceased. Garric hung in transparent red light, staring into the bowels of the earth where he saw buried treasures and the bones of creatures more ancient than man. Just at the edge of Garric’s vision was a moving thing: alive but not of this world. Its jaws slowly devoured the rock in which it swam.

The flash passed, and the images it had shown became dreams rather than memories in Garric’s mind. Their reality was specious, the sort of truth into which wizards delved by blood magic.

The sea boiled with Archai, climbing onto the shore for as far as Garric could see to right and left. Once the Archai had ruled the world. Their civilization and race had perished in the distant past, but Metron had the skill to recall the dead in numbers limited only by his power.

The wizard swayed; his efforts had drained him as white as the bloodless corpse of Ademos in the grip of four Archai. They tossed the bandit onto the litter of lesser bodies, all dead in the service of Metron’s wizardry.

The lizardmen had been pressing close against the diminishing rank of Archai. Now they gave back again as insectile warriors clambered over the cliff edge beyond both flanks of the Intercessor’s troops.

Echeon lowered his staff with a dazed expression. He hooted an order. The beasts carrying his chair had been cropping mouthfuls of grass from among the tombs as they waited. Their heads rose; they gave startled whuffs, circled in clumsy unison, and moved twenty paces back from the battle line.

Metron stood swaying with his head bowed, his left hand over his eyes, and his right pointing the athame at the ground. The line of fresh warriors marched by him, mincing on their spindly legs like automatons. They hurled themselves into the lizardmen, driving them back in an orgy of mutual slaughter.

More lizardmen trailed down from the hills, their bronze equipment glinting. Garric didn’t know if the Intercessor had an infinite number of troops, but the total of those on or approaching the field was great enough to overwhelm Metron’s present forces before long.

Metron raised his head. He pointed his bloody athame at a spiky shrub and spoke a word unheard in the chaos. A spark of scarlet lightning snapped from the ivory, blasting the shrub apart.

The wizard stuffed his athame under his sash, then bent and lifted one of the stems. The base burned with an oily yellow flame.

Holding up the torch, Metron walked toward Garric and his companions; he was wobbling with exhaustion. His left hand made a gesture toward the Archai, who let go of their prisoners. The former guards strutted toward the battle line. The fight was already turning back in favor of the Intercessor’s forces.

Vascay shrugged, loosening his shoulder muscles. Garric put a hand on the older man’s arm, and said, “No, Vascay. There’s still a chance.”

He grinned; the excitement made him cheerful. “Though I’m not sure what it is,” he added.

“Is there?” Vascay said, but he didn’t put his javelin through Metron’s throat.

Lord Thalemos looked at his former advisor with an expression more of amazement than loathing, though loathing as well. He turned his back in a deliberate snub, which the wizard was far too tired to notice.

“Come on,” Garric said, leading the way down and across the slope. “At least it’ll be harder for them to get at us if we’re down in the tunnels.”

Half-trotting, half-skidding, he reached the mouth of the catacombs. The sea had carved the soft rock back to a burial niche; a coffin of polished granite tilted out over the curling water. There was nothing among the eddies below except boulders. The last of the Archai were already fighting on the field above.

Garric stepped into the tunnel and paused, letting his eyes adjust while his companions joined him. He liked the catacombs even less than he liked the sunlit plain, but these tunnels were the only choice save death.

He grinned. A choice didn’t have to be good to be easy.

The four men at the front of Lord Lerdain’s tent didn’t have uniform equipment like the Blood Eagles, nor was their varied armor as heavy as that of the line infantry they resembled. Most wore iron caps instead of helmets with visors and flaring cheekpieces, and they carried small bucklers instead of targets so heavy that they required a shoulder strap as well as the soldier’s left arm for support.

Regardless of their equipment, these were tough veterans. Merchants from one end of the Isles to the other hired Blaise armsmen as bodyguards. That’s what these men, now protecting the son of their count instead of acting as hirelings for strangers, were.

Two of the guards had short broad-bladed spears meant to slash rather than throw; the other two had hooked swords bare in their hands. They watched silently as Sharina and Carus approached.

The section leader, a spearman, had a heart tattooed on one cheek and a skull on the other. At the distance of a double pace he dipped his spearpoint toward Carus, and said, “That’s close enough. Sir.”

“Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, soldier,” Carus said in a bored tone. “The folks in Donelle sent the count a thank-you gift for arriving, and he’s passing her on to the boy.”

“Eh?” said the section leader doubtfully.

Carus touched the peak of Sharina’s cowl to draw it back. Sharina slapped his hand away. They hadn’t discussed this; Sharina was acting as seemed natural for the character she mimicked tonight.

“Hey, temper temper,” Carus said with amusement. He waggled his fingers to shake the sting out of them. “Show the boys the goods so they don’t think you’re some cutthroat out to scrag his lordship, eh?”

Glaring at him, Sharina jerked the cowl down herself. She shook her head side to side, spreading her blond hair in a loose cascade. Moonlight woke as fire from her diamond-studded combs. She’d had to place them herself and hastily, but she thought both her mother Lora and her maid back in Valles would give her efforts qualified approval.

Sharina transferred her disdainful glance to the section leader, then deliberately drew the cowl up to cover her face again. She continued to watch the guards coldly from beneath it.

“By the Lady…” the section leader muttered. In a normal voice he went on, “Does Lord Lerdain know she’s coming?”

Carus shrugged. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Ask him. And believe me, if he’s not interested, the little lady won’t go to waste.”

“You have a better chance of feeding the Mistress than you do of knowing me, dog,” Sharina said. The contempt in her tone roared straight down from the Ice Capes and the Pole. She turned back to the guards, and added, “Rouse Lord Lerdain and enquire what his will for me may be. This isn’t a matter for lackeys.”

The other spearman whispered something. The section leader nodded and rapped his spear into the little gong hanging from the tent’s ridgepole. A steward in an unbelted silk tunic raised the flap from the inside; he was barefoot but held a lighted lantern.

Sharina walked forward, tossing back her cowl again. No one tried to halt her.

“I am here at your master’s service,” she said to the steward before the guard could speak. “If he chooses to send me away, well and good; but no other will make that decision.”

The silver broach at the throat of Sharina’s cape was unpinned; she held the halves closed with her left hand. Now she slid that hand down the seam to grip again just above waist height. The front gaped open; the single tunic she wore under the cloak was of diaphanous silk with panels of lacework.

Smiling like a blond icicle, she closed the cape again.

“Oh!” said the steward. “Yes, of course. Please follow me, ah, mistress…”

He turned; Sharina stepped between the guards. Carus called, “Your ladyship?”

Sharina looked over her shoulder. Carus cleared his throat, and said, “Ah—shall I wait? In case, ah, Lord Lerdain doesn’t want your company?”

“I scarcely think that’s likely,” Sharina snapped. She followed the steward into the tent’s anteroom, which held clothes chests and an inlaid bed.

As the flap closed, Sharina heard the section leader say, “Not a bit likely with that randy bugger, sir. Mind, I’m a little surprised his old man gave her a pass hisself.”

A velvet curtain separated the anteroom from the tent’s inner chamber. The steward slid it partway open. Without entering, he said quietly, “Your lordship, you have a visitor.”

“Huh?” said a sleepy voice.

Sharina pulled the curtain back farther so that she had a good view of the inner chamber—and the reverse. A lighted lantern hung from a trellis anchored to the ridgepole. Lord Lerdain’s bed was of chased and gilded bronze, with a tasseled silk canopy.

The count’s son and heir presumptive, a husky youth with fair hair, sat up. He’d run to fat when he was his father’s age, but for the moment he was a well set-up fourteen-year-old who looked as if he’d give a good account of himself in a fight.

“Your father sent me, your lordship,” Sharina said. She looked at the steward. “I believe your master can handle matters from here. Or”—she glanced at Lerdain appraisingly—“perhaps not. You’re rather young, aren’t you?”

“By the Shepherd’s dick, I can!” Lerdain said, bounding out of bed. His long muslin sleeping tunic bore the lion symbol of Blaise woven in red. He reached for Sharina.

She turned her back and pulled the curtain closed. The steward hopped hastily away. Lerdain fondled her from behind.

Sharina twisted to face the youth. He tried to kiss her. She put the index finger of her left hand on his lips, and said, “Carefully, milord; not a sound.”

“What?” he said in puzzlement.

Sharina held his right wrist in her left hand and touched the point of her Pewle knife to the skin beneath his breastbone, just hard enough to prick. Lerdain jerked at the contact and stared down at the blade she’d hidden under her cloak. It was polished steel and as long as his forearm.

“If you stay quiet, you won’t be hurt, and your father won’t be hurt,” Sharina continued in the same low, pleasant voice as before. “Otherwise, there won’t be enough survivors from this army to bury the dead; but that won’t matter to you, because I’ll have spilled your guts right here and now.”

“You?” said the youth. He wasn’t shouting, but his voice started to rise from a hoarse whisper. “You can’t—”

The trellis was made from thumb-thick ash poles. Sharina held Lerdain’s eyes with her own while her right arm slashed sideways, so suddenly that her heavy blade was against the boy’s belly again before he could react. The guards and steward must have heard the whack! as the keen edge parted the trellis, but the sound wasn’t so untoward that it’d bring them rushing into the nobleman’s privacy.

“That could’ve been your spine,” Sharina said. It was good that she’d had an excuse to let out some of the emotions surging in her blood. Even so, her voice and the big knife trembled. “You’re no good to me or the Isles dead, but I’ll still kill you unless you do exactly what you’re told.”

Lerdain was taller and stronger than she was, but even so Sharina’s additional five years gave her more ascendency over the boy than the weapon in her hand did. He might have tried to struggle for the knife, but the firm assurance in Sharina’s voice cowed him. He’d have died beyond doubt if he’d grappled with her, but he wouldn’t have believed that.

“What do you want me to do?” he said in a husky voice. He probably wanted to turn his face, but Sharina’s eyes held him like a vole facing a blacksnake.

“Do you have a long cloak in here?” Sharina said. Garments hung on a rack at the foot of the bed, ready for the steward to offer in the morning; she didn’t dare look away from Lerdain to check them, though.

“I guess,” the boy muttered. The Pewle knife prodded him a little harder. “Ouch! Yeah, there ought to be a…”

He nodded toward the rack. “Can I look?”

“Yes,” said Sharina, nodding and drawing the blade back slightly so Lerdain could turn. She put her hand on his right elbow as he rummaged through the shadowed rack, warning the boy that no matter how quickly he turned he wouldn’t be able to grab her knife wrist. It would take a braver man than most to lunge at the Pewle knife with open eyes.

“Here,” Lerdain said, pulling down a campaign cloak of dark, closely woven blue wool. It was what a common soldier used for blanket and shelter when no other was available. “Is this all right?”

“Yes,” Sharina said. The only reason the count’s son would have such a garment was to become anonymous in event of disaster. “Put it on, but don’t raise the hood yet; and don’t do anything foolish. There’s no reason you shouldn’t live for the next half century if you don’t make me kill you tonight.”

She wondered how she sounded to the boy; like some sort of demon, she supposed. She wasn’t angry. She spoke the way the butcher did when he made his rounds through the boroughs north along the coast of Haft. The butcher killed hogs not because he was angry at them, but because it was his job to clamp the beasts’ snouts with toothed tongs and to thrust his keen blade into their throats while each owner’s wife held a bowl of oatmeal below to catch the blood for pudding.

The boy must have understood that; he shrugged into his cloak, careful not to seem hasty. The Pewle knife’s broad blade would slice him from kidneys to collarbone if Sharina needed to kill him.

“I’ve put the cloak on,” Lerdain said, stating the obvious to prod Sharina into giving the next order. She wasn’t quite conscious. Rather, the part of her mind in control wasn’t her intellect. That part of Sharina os-Reise wouldn’t have been able threaten to slaughter a boy, even to save the kingdom.

Lerdain was barefoot, but the cloak hid his sleeping garment. In this warm weather, many of the soldiers wouldn’t bother with footgear while they were at leisure.

“Step over to the back of the tent,” Sharina said, nodding. “I’ll open it. Stick your head out and quietly ask the two guards there to come over to you.”

“Open it?” the boy said with a frown. “It’s—”

“Move,” Sharina said. She guided him by her grip on his right elbow. “Now.”

When Lerdain stood by the tent’s smooth silk panel, looking sideways at her, Sharina made another lightning stroke with the Pewle knife. It went in and down, ripping the tough fabric as easily as it could have let out the boy’s life.

Lerdain’s mouth fell open. He must have had a similar thought.

Sharina gestured curtly with her left hand. Obediently, the boy leaned out through the slit, and said, “Ah—could you…? I mean, would—”

There was a clang like an ironbound chest slamming. “Oh!” said Lerdain as he jerked his head back into the tent.

King Carus forced two dazed-looking guards through the opening, tearing the fabric wider. He held the men by the necks. One had lost his iron cap; the other still wore his, but it’d been displaced when Carus slammed the guards’ heads together as they stared at Lerdain. There was enough construction noise, even at this hour, that the risk wouldn’t be great.

Carus tilted the latter guard so that his cap fell off also, then crunched their skulls into one another again. Sharina’s mouth tightened as though she’d bitten on a lemon.

“Is there time to tie them?” she asked.

“No need,” said the king. He’d taken off his helmet and sword belt. He’d waited in the shadows as planned till Lerdain drew the guards’ attention, then struck like a leopard.

Blood trickled from the guards’ nostrils and ears. Sharina thought of twenty thousand hogs being slaughtered—except that hogs don’t scream, “Mother!” and “Oh, it hurts, it hurts so bad….”

She was sorry for the guards. She’d pray to the Lady for their souls, if the Isles survived and she survived.

“All right, boy,” Carus said to Lord Lerdain. “We’re going to walk to the gate. You keep your face hidden and your mouth shut. Understood?”

“What happens then?” the boy said. He was standing very straight, with his eyes focused on the wall past Carus’ shoulder.

“Nothing bad,” the king said with a shrug. “The wizards of Moon Wisdom decorate a gallows, but that’s not something any decent human being ought to regret. Now—does the lady there with the knife scare you?”

“No!” Lerdain lied. “I’m not afraid!”

“Then you’re a fool,” Carus said with a smile. The smile changed, drawing the boy’s eyes and holding them. “And if I don’t scare you, you don’t have the brains of a maggot. Because I’ll do anything to save the Isles, do you see? Absolutely anything.”

The king’s voice had a gentle lilt. A weasel’s chittering had more mercy in it.

Carus drew up the boy’s cowl and snugged it over his forehead. “Good,” he said, still smiling. “I’m glad you understand. Let’s go, then.”

He left through the slit panel. Lerdain hesitated, then followed when Sharina prodded him with the tips of her left fingers. When she slipped out in turn, Carus already wore his helmet and was belting on his sword and dagger.

The tents crowding the area behind Lord Lerdain’s held common soldiers. They weren’t marshalled in straight lines, and their guy ropes interlaced as randomly as sticks in a squirrel’s nest.

A dice game was going on in one, spilling lanternlight out of the open flap. Carus guided his companions past, paused to check his bearings, and set off in the direction of the east gate at a swinging pace.

He began to whistle. Sharina’s memory supplied the words: Me oh my, I love him so; broke my heart to see him go….

“They sang that in your day too?” she asked.

Carus chuckled. “‘My True Love’s Gone for a Soldier’?” he asked. “Aye, girl, they did. And they’ll sing it or a song like it as long as there’s women and armies, I shouldn’t wonder.”

They were nearing the east gate. Several of the men on guard were talking to figures on the other side through gaps in the log gate. They continued their negotiations while their fellows straightened at the approach of Carus and the two cloaked figures a half pace behind.

“Where’s your officer?” Carus asked in a mildly irritated voice. The troops wore leather breeches and carried spiked halberds instead of spears; Sharina couldn’t guess which island they came from.

“Yeah?” demanded one of the men who’d been chatting through the gate. He wore a bright gold gorget decorated with polished—not faceted—jewels.

Sharina put the fingers of her left hand on Lerdain’s spine, just at the base of his neck. The only threat was what the contact implied about her other hand, hidden beneath her cloak.

“Moon,” said Carus. He gestured to the gate with his left hand. “We’re going out.”

“Did the sun addle your brains?” the guard commander said. “Why’re you doing that?”

Carus shrugged. “Tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you—if I make it back,” he said. “But if I make it back, you’ll already know. All right?”

Sharina marveled at the easy way the king handled the question: saying nothing but hinting that he was offering a great secret. Her fingers gently rubbed the boy’s back as though she were calming a nervous hound.

The commander shook his head in wonder. “Stars, then,” he said. “Come on, boys; we’ll crack this thing open enough that our loony friends can get out.”

The gate was of green wood, boles cut to length but not squared; it was enormously heavy and probably strong as well. Six guardsmen, one of them leaning on a crowbar to lift the end, dragged it narrowly ajar.

“You first, milady,” Carus said in a low voice. Sharina didn’t argue; she squeezed through at once.

Carus stood behind Lerdain, bracing his hands on the gate leaf and the jamb. He shoved hard, spreading the opening enough for the boy to climb through without having a notch pull his cape off. What would happen then was anybody’s guess.

The people outside the gate were all women, old enough that they were probably trying to sell something other than themselves. They backed away when Sharina came through, then stood staring at her.

Carus followed the boy out. He tipped his helmet in salute to the guards, then grinned at his companions.

“Let’s go,” he said. “There’ll be a patrol with horses waiting for us, but if we miss them in the dark, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

He tousled Lerdain’s hair under the cowl. “Cheer up, lad,” Carus said. “You’ve saved a lot of lives tonight, not least your own.”

They started eastward, feeling the eyes of the camp followers on them as long as the moon allowed. Before that, Carus started whistling again.

There were no Blaise patrols out, so Sharina sang in a cool, clear voice to the king’s accompaniment, “Only time can heal my woe, my true love’s gone for a soldier.”

Ilna’s fingers played idly with her cords as she sat on the bare basalt. Occasionally she raised her head toward the barrier in the sky, but her mind already had the information it needed.

She smiled faintly. Which is as much as to say that I have a loom and a roomful of thread, so the only problem is placing the individual strands where they belong. What else was there to weaving, after all?

This world was oddly silent. The wind sighed through branches, and she could hear trees creak as they swayed. There were no birds and no animals except the spiders themselves. Were there streams with fish in them? Ilna doubted it, because that wouldn’t fit the pattern she was forming of this world.

The spiders watched her. They didn’t interfere, they didn’t even move for the most part. Occasionally a long, hairy leg adjusted a strand of silk. In the far distance, a green-and-gold monster was decorating her web with a fine silk ribbon midway between the hub and the rim.

Ilna didn’t ask herself what purpose the ribbon might have. Everything had a purpose, everything fit into the pattern.

The thought made her pause, then smile wryly. She’d thought—she’d said—that she didn’t belong in this world, but of course she did. That was as surely true as every thread in her own simpler patterns belonged where she’d placed it.

She didn’t believe in the Great Gods, but she believed in craftsmanship and she knew craftsmanship. The pattern someone, Someone—perhaps the cosmos itself, Ilna neither knew nor cared—wove with human threads couldn’t be chance.

Ilna looked down at the answer her fingers had drawn in cords. The knotted pattern didn’t tell her that something was wrong—she already knew this world was wrong—but it told her where.

Ilna rose with her usual sudden grace and started toward the other side of the Mound. From where she’d sat on the barren rock, she could see only the distant slopes of the valley which the basalt divided. Across the plug she’d be able to view the whole of it.

ILNA OS-KENSET! thundered the mental voice of her black-and-silver guide. DO NOT GO THAT WAY! IT WILL BE FATAL FOR YOU IF YOU LOOK INTO THAT VALLEY!

Ilna strode on, tight-faced. Her fingers were unpicking the knots that had led her to do this. She might—she would—need the cords for other purposes shortly.

SHE MUST NOT LOOK! sang the chorus of thousands. IF SHE LOOKS, WE MUST ACT!

Ilna reached the edge of the plug and looked over. The basalt formed an equally sheer wall on this side.

The floor of the valley below seethed with giant spiders. These had left their webs to crawl into a ring surrounding two sheep and an aged man holding a crooked staff. The sheep blatted and bucked, kicking their forehooves into the air. They turned and turned again, looking for a way out. There was no way out.

The man fell to his knees and prayed to the Shepherd; fragments of his words, shouted in a cracked voice, reached Ilna on the Mound above. There was no way out for him either.

SHE HAS SEEN! cried the chorus. WE MUST SLAY HER BEFORE SHE ESCAPES!

The spiders had a facility with patterns second only to the skills Ilna had learned in Hell. Even here at the point of weakness beneath the Mound they couldn’t open the barrier some ancient wizard had set around them, but they could almost breach it. The combined strength of hundreds of spiders could loosen the mesh of wizardry enough that occasionally they could draw a victim into their world. Then—

The spiders rushed awkwardly forward. Their great legs weren’t made for walking on the ground, so the creatures jerked and stumbled as they jostled one another. They were mad with the need for blood. The few victims cowering below weren’t enough to slake the thirst of one of the giants, let alone all of them.

Ilna looked up at the barrier where the sky should be, then again into the valley. She couldn’t see the sheep in the maelstrom of fat bodies and long, hairy legs, but two of the largest spiders had risen belly to belly onto their hind legs, struggling for the shepherd’s corpse. The frail old body was already flaccid, but the spiders’ mandibles chewed on what remained to crush out the last juices.

KILL HER! ordered the black-and-silver monster. SUCK HER BODY DRY!

Spiders who’d missed a share of the three victims below were already climbing the valley sides to reach Ilna on the rock above them. If she went back to where the guide had first displayed the weakness in the barrier, she would see a similar flood of living feculence crawling toward her: huge, colorful bellies dragging, legs like jointed trees feeling their way across the ground.

There was no escape in this world from the spiders’ rending, dripping fangs. So—

Ilna seated herself and began to knot her pattern. It was complex, and she doubted whether she’d have time to complete it, but certainty on that point could wait on the event.

SUCK ILNA’S BODY DRY! shouted the chorus of minds maddened with bloodlust.