Lord of the Isles (33 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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Cashel looked from Jen to Frasa. The pair of them were as similar as the demon statues downstairs. Here, though, he was the demon … .
“I like the feel of this place,” Mellie said. “Oh, not to stay long, of course. But they really try to be nice—and they don't keep cats.”
She giggled.
Cashel thought about the Highlanders. Well, he supposed he could be Mellie's guardian demon inside the compound as well as Jen and Frasa's outside.
“I don't know what got into me,” he muttered to the Serians, lowering his eyes. “I said I'd take the job and there I was, going back on my word. Sorry, sirs. I'll stay around till you shift your goods.”
Frasa and Jen bowed, smiling; and Mellie hugged at Cashel's throat again.
S
harina woke up abruptly. She felt motion beside her and thought that Nonnus must be rising also.
Nonnus was already gone; the motion was the dugout heeling. The wind had backed and now blew from the north.
The hermit stood on the other side of the mast, freeing the lifting fall. Asera and Meder sat close together in the far stern. They didn't offer to help; Nonnus didn't need or want their help anyway. The nobles' eyes were bright and nervous. Their stance reminded Sharina of a pair of marmots tensely aware of the hawk soaring overhead.
Sharina knew why they were afraid. Her own heart thrilled to the change in the wind, but she was miserably ashamed that she hadn't prevented Meder from working the magic she knew had brought that change.
She climbed across the bundled supplies to Nonnus. He could get along without her help also, but she at least knew how to be useful. The fall was reeved through a single block at the masthead. Sharina gripped the spar with both hands and added her strength to the process of raising it and the wet sail while the hermit tugged on the rope. If nothing else, she took some of the strain off the mast.
The canvas began to fill as soon as it rose, shaking salt droplets over Sharina. The spar lifted above the reach of her hands and she stepped back. The breeze was steady though light.
“Not the weather I would have expected,” Nonnus said mildly from behind the curtain of the sail. He bent to snub the fall around the bitt at the foot of the mast. “It should serve our purpose so long as it continues; and if it ends, there's still the norther to expect.”
Sharina crawled under the lower edge of the sail. The sky was noticeably brighter but the sun hadn't yet risen. The horizon was a rolling unmarked darkness around them.
Asera held the tiller. Meder was tightly beside her, his hands clasped.
“Good morning, Master Nonnus,” Asera said as the hermit came back to take over the tiller and the sheets clewing the sail. Normally the nobles would have passed silently along the opposite side of the dugout's narrow hull; this morning they didn't seem ready to go forward at all.
“Good morning mistress, master,” Nonnus replied with careful neutrality. “I need to be in the stern to handle the sail.”
Meder swallowed and rose to a crouch. He scuttled forward without meeting the hermit's eyes. Asera released the tiller—it was lashed to move only in a short compass anyway—and said, “Yes, of course,” as she got up. Though her progress was as stately as the close confines allowed, Sharina could see tension in the line of the procurator's back.
Meder's chest of paraphernalia was tucked under the edge of a cargo net, but it wasn't under the same net as it had been at midnight when the wizard went sternward to take over the watch. Sharina swallowed as she noticed the change. The hermit's eyes flicked over the case but nothing in his set, bleak expression indicated that he'd noticed anything different.
And perhaps the sun would rise in the west this morning … .
Nonnus adjusted the angle of the spar, then unshipped the tiller and added the rudder's help to the dugout's slow change of direction. They heeled hard onto the starboard outrigger. Sharina handled the lines to the lower edge of the sail, flattening its angle gradually as the clumsy vessel came about. Too abrupt a change of tack wouldn't overset them—the outriggers prevented that—but it might crack or unstep the mast.
As Nonnus adjusted the spar, his eyes on the line at which spray flew from the canvas, he said, “There's a smear of blood here on the sternpost, Meder.”
“I cut my hand,” the wizard called in a high-pitched voice from behind the sail. “I cut the back of my hand on a splinter, that's all!”
Sharina turned her face outboard to hide her expression. She felt sick at her inaction the previous night; sicker yet that she was pretending to conceal what the hermit already knew. “Nonnus—” she began.
There was a line of white off the starboard bow. Sharina hopped onto the crosspole which attached the outrigger to the hull, gripping the starboard mainbrace. It wasn't an illusion, nor was it a line of white gulls waiting for full dawn to rise from the swell where they'd spent the night.
“Land!” Sharina called. “Land to starboard! Look, Nonnus, land!”
Nonnus jumped onto the gunwale and leaned outward. He didn't have a sheet or cable to hold on to, but he stretched his javelin behind him in his left hand to balance the weight of his head and torso. He teetered there, frightening for Sharina to watch.
The hermit dropped back into the stern and adjusted the set of the sail still further. He said nothing.
Asera and Meder ducked beneath the canvas as Sharina came back aboard. The nobles' expressions added a mixture of hope and puzzlement to the previous fear.
“Is it really land?” Meder blurted.
“It appears to be, yes,” Nonnus said. He tweaked a clew before Sharina squatted to take the line again. “There shouldn't be an island in this part of the sea.”
The procurator scowled. “How can anybody tell where we really are? The sky's been overcast ever since we left Tegma.”
“Yes, Tegma,” Nonnus said with a humorless grin. He handed the lines to Sharina. “I assure you, procurator, I know where we are. And I know that Tegma wouldn't have risen without wizardry.”
“I didn't make this island rise!” Meder said. “I had nothing to do with this!”
“I don't suppose it matters now, does it?” the hermit said without emotion. He adjusted the spar, holding the tiller between his side and left arm.
“I didn't do this,” Meder whispered, but the looks he and Asera exchanged were full of doubt.
T
he air of the tomb was hot and dry. The black candle's flame wavered slowly as Tenoctris moved, always keeping her boxwood twig before her. The candlelight was clear and smokeless, though the dull, dark stone drank it in without reflection.
Tenoctris crossed her legs and sat down. She looked with distaste at Benlo's corpse. The drover lay on his back; he'd been opened from pelvis almost to his throat. His face was set in a rictus of fear. The trauma of death had stiffened Benlo's body instantaneously into rigor mortis. Garric had seen that happen once before, when an ox leaping from a horsefly's bite had gored Zaki or-Mesli as terribly as this.
Benlo's arms were spread wide. His right hand still held the athame.
“Can we do anything?” Garric asked. He'd remained motionless on the bottom step while the old woman surveyed the vault.
“Possibly,” Tenoctris said as she turned her face toward him. “But anything we attempt will be very dangerous. You'll have to make the decision.”
“Then we'll act,” Garric said without moving.
“Let me explain,” Tenoctris said sharply. “This happened because Benlo opened the wrong door by accident. A demon, invulnerable on this plane, came through the opening Benlo
made and killed him; then the demon returned, taking Liane to its own plane.”
Garric met the old woman's eyes without speaking. She felt she needed to explain, so he'd listen to the explanation. Perhaps he'd have to understand what was going on before he took the action Tenoctris would set out for him; in any case, interrupting would only delay a resolution further.
But if the decision was Garric's to make, then nothing Tenoctris could say would change his mind.
“Because I know who the demon is,” she continued, “I should be able to reach its plane. Benlo used brute force to open the gate; I don't have the strength to do that, but I can reopen a way if I act promptly.”
Her twig waggled toward the pool of blood which was still spreading sluggishly. The word STRASEDON had blurred away within seconds of the time they'd entered the vault, but he knew what she was referring to. Garric didn't repeat the word aloud for fear of summoning the thing named.
“All right,” Garric said with a shrug. “You said he was invulnerable?”
He put his hands together because they were beginning to tremble with anticipation. He knew he ought to be afraid but all he felt was an urge to move, to act, to
finish
this—even if it meant his own finish.
“
Here
it was invulnerable. Strasedon can be killed on its own plane,” Tenoctris said, showing that it was all right to speak the name. The corner of her lip lifted in almost a smile. “But a tiger can be killed in its own jungle too, Garric. This is a difficult and dangerous business, and there'll be dangers besides Strasedon.”
Garric shook his head. “It doesn't matter,” he said. “Not because it's Liane, mistress. I'd say the same thing if it was Benlo himself. I'm not going to walk away and leave a human being in the hands of something that does—”
He bobbed his chin toward the corpse.
“—that.”
Tenoctris nodded. “Good,” she said, “but I had to tell you first.”
She took the athame from Benlo's hand. She had to work it back and forth several times to break the fingers' convulsive grip. “Get him out of the way, please,” she ordered crisply. “If we survive, then we can see to some proper disposal of the remains.”
Garric dragged the corpse to the back of the vault. Tenoctris dabbed the butt of the athame into the congealing blood and began to draw on the floor with it, partially covering the drover's own words of power.
“It's a good thing you can read the Old Script,” she said as she wrote. “For this conjuration two voices are necessary. I suppose that's why Benlo brought Liane with him. Of course, if he'd really known what he was doing …
Her voice trailed off without finishing the observation—or needing to.
Garric wondered whether Tenoctris used the blood for some special power or simply because it was the handiest material with which to mark the stone. The old woman had a streak of ruthless pragmatism that a youth raised in a rural hamlet could fully appreciate.
Tenoctris wiped up more blood. “Benlo must have made this athame himself,” she muttered. “Amazing, though iron's the ideal element if you have the power to bind it as he did. But what he bound was a skein of varied forces that even I couldn't untangle. No wonder it took him to the wrong plane!”
“You can't use it, then?” Garric said. While he watched the words she drew on the basalt he deliberately kept his jaws clenched to keep from accidentally subvocalizing them with untold result.
“Oh, I'll use my twig,” Tenoctris said absently. “A neutral athame is much safer. With the forces surging about this nexus, only a madman or a reckless ignoramus would use a tool designed to multiply their effect.”
She leaned back, having drawn two concentric circles of
words in the Old Script on the floor between her and where Garric stood. She gestured toward them with the point of Benlo's athame and said, “You can read these?”
Garric nodded. “Yes, mistress,” he said.
“All right,” Tenoctris said. She rose to her feet, cautious of her creaking joints. “I'll speak the words in the outer circle myself. When I come to the inner circle you'll speak the words with me. Follow the rhythm I set in the outer circle. Do you understand?”
“Yes, mistress,” Garric said. He felt poised and slightly outside himself, as if he were about to dive from a high cliff.
“When the portal opens we'll step through together,” the old woman said. “We must be prompt. Do you understand?”
“Yes, mistress,” Garric said. She was leaving nothing to chance. That was as it should be.
“Then,” said Tenoctris with a wan smile, “I'll proceed.”
Dipping the boxwood twig toward the writing at each syllable, she said, “
Anoch ai akrammachamari …”
Her voice was clear and had the relentless quality of a good sawyer stroking through wood.
“Lampsouer lameer lamhore …”
The last of the outer circle. Taking up the rhythm from the twig and the previous words of power, Garric and the old woman cried together,
“Iao barbathiaoth ablanathanalba!”
A pane of light as red and dull as iron after the smith's first stroke hung in the air beside them. Tenoctris reached across and took Garric's right hand in her left.
“Garric …”
Liane's voice wailed from a distance greater than worlds.
Hand in hand, Garric and the old woman stepped into the fire.

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