Lord of the Isles (38 page)
Authors: David Drake
T
he outward-spreading wave was a perfect visual echo of the shore, a vast wall across the sea's face that ignored the water's own swelling rhythms. The dugout had bucked and pitched when the tremor first struck; now it merely whispered urgently in the play of wavelets against its hull.
he outward-spreading wave was a perfect visual echo of the shore, a vast wall across the sea's face that ignored the water's own swelling rhythms. The dugout had bucked and pitched when the tremor first struck; now it merely whispered urgently in the play of wavelets against its hull.
Sharina stood up beside the vessel where she'd fallen at the initial shock. The wave had combed a hundred feet up the slope, dousing the fire, but Nonnus had snatched the handle of the bronze cookpot before it vanished into the rolling sea. The crabs still steamed with a memory of the flames.
Moving with practiced ease, Nonnus set the pot and his javelin into the dugout's bow cavity, then stepped to the iron shore fasts. He gripped one pin with both hands and kicked the shaft with the heel of his foot.
“Nonnus!” Sharina cried. “The others!”
The island shook itself again even more violently. Sharina leaped onto the port outrigger and wrapped both arms around the mast stay. The dugout lifted, fought the line, and crashed
again onto the rock with an impact that would have threatened the frames of a planked hull.
again onto the rock with an impact that would have threatened the frames of a planked hull.
“If we're afloat,” Nonnus said, shouting over the sea's bass roar, “we've a chance to pick them out of the water. If we're hard on shore and the next wave flips the boat over, we'll never right her again!”
Foam surged around Sharina's waist and spewed into her face. She blinked in the salt but didn't close her eyes. Nonnus stood like an outcrop of rock, unmoving in the white bubbling chaos.
The sea settled again in nervous anticipation. The surface had an oily sheen; tiny life-forms circled in the frothing water, feeding and fodder alike in the disturbed conditions. Though the water was gurglingly alive, Sharina didn't hear a volcanic rumble from the rocks beneath her. What was shaking it this way?
Nonnus kicked the shore fast again, working it in the crack where he'd set it. The pin came loose in his grip. He tugged it clear and tossed it into the bow as he stepped to the remaining iron.
Sharina could see the nobles struggling downslope with the chest between them. Whenever one slipped, they both fell. It took them longer each time to get up again.
“I'm going up there,” Sharina said, springing from her perch.
“No!” Nonnus called. “Child,
no
!”
no
!”
Sharina ran with a surefootedness that reason would have told her was impossible, bounding from one wave-wet rock to the next without slipping. Dissipating foam gleamed in the channels, marking them as clearly as they were by daylight. She managed to stay upright even during the third tremor. She was above the reach of the waves, though a halo of foam crowned the hillcrest from the other side.
She'd reached the nobles before they saw her coming. Meder cried, “Helpâ”
Sharina wrenched the heavy chest from his hands and swung it to her right shoulder. The wizard was probably
stronger than she was in absolute terms, but he didn't know how to carry a load. The nobles had made things worse by sharing the burden. If one fell, both did. Asera was holding her knee as she crawled out of the channel she'd fallen into.
stronger than she was in absolute terms, but he didn't know how to carry a load. The nobles had made things worse by sharing the burden. If one fell, both did. Asera was holding her knee as she crawled out of the channel she'd fallen into.
“Come on or you'll have to swim!” Sharina shouted as she started back, running as she'd never run before. The chest's inertia gave her leaps a ponderous majesty that would mean disaster if she put a foot wrong.
She didn't. Tonight she couldn't. With the nobles staggering in her wake, freed from each other and the heavy container, Sharina sprinted to the flank of the dugout as the fourth tremor sent the sea rising to meet her.
Sharina wrapped her left arm around the brace of the port outrigger. The wave poured in. Nonnus stood at the remaining shore fast with his legs locked on the hawser to free his hands. He grabbed both Meder and Asera by the wrist. They lost their footing and streamed at full length in the rushing current.
Sounds dissolved in the boiling water, but Asera opened her mouth in a scream of pain. She was trying to loosen the hermit's iron grip with her free hand. She might as well have tried to drag down the crescent moon just rising: Nonnus wasn't going to let her drown to save her wrist from a bruise.
The wave started to subside. Nonnus sent Meder, then the procurator, scrambling along the hawser and over the dugout's bows. He looked toward Sharina.
Sharina released the brace and stood upright with both hands holding the chest. She took two steps along the outrigger and hurled the magical paraphernalia seaward with all her strength.
She heard Meder scream like a balked eagle. The case rolled twice in the receding waves, then vanished forever toward the bottom of the Outer Sea. She turned to face the wizard. He was white: his mouth was open, his eyes staring.
Sharina clambered into the dugout and took the tiller. Nonnus' smile was brighter than the moon's. He kicked the shore fast free and hopped onto the vessel's bow, then ran sternward along the gunwale to join Sharina.
The dugout pitched bow-down as the rock tilted beneath it, then righted as the sea rushed in with a smash of thunder and foam. “We're sinking!” Meder cried. “We're sinking!”
The vessel wasn't sinking, though the violence with which the sea thrashed it threatened to capsize them despite the outriggers. The island was sinking.
The island had sunk; completely and utterly, into a salt waste tossed by its departure.
A vast bulk rose again above the surface to westward, streaming water. For a long moment moonlight gleamed on the eye of a creature whose shell was more than half a mile in diameter; a creature the size of an island floating in the sea.
The front flippers rotated forward again. With the gravity of something unimaginably ancient, the turtle dived out of the world of men.
E
very time Garric's heart beat, pain pulsed blindingly white, then deep bloody red. The buildings around the square blurred and sprang back into focus in the same throbbing rhythm. He lay on cobblestones. That would have hurt if his brain could make room for such lesser matters.
very time Garric's heart beat, pain pulsed blindingly white, then deep bloody red. The buildings around the square blurred and sprang back into focus in the same throbbing rhythm. He lay on cobblestones. That would have hurt if his brain could make room for such lesser matters.
Tenoctris knelt beside him, droning a spell. The moon was at zenith and the clouds of earlier in the evening had blown away.
Garric's back felt as though it had been minced for sausage. There were spectators, mostly workmen. One nobleman gaped from his sedan chair as his entourage of servants and toadies whispered and pointed. Liane, wobbly but upright, fumbled in the folds of her silken sash. She called to the grandee for help.
Garric's sight steadied and he realized that he was sprawling before the semicircular steps that ornamented the approach to the count's palace. The masonry had been quarried from Old Kingdom buildings, but the construction was regular and ornate in the modern manner.
The windows of the lowest story were small and protected by heavy iron gratings; those of the second story alternated arched and triangular pediments over the openings, while the third-story windows were framed with pilasters supporting flat brows beetling out from the wall. Towering above the real façade was a false front aping a temple of former times, crowned in turn by a gilded statue that gleamed in the moonlight.
Some of the lower windows were lighted; the count's bureaucrats lived and worked in the palace, and in these troubled times they worked late.
“How did we get here?” Garric mumbled. He wasn't sure he even spoke aloud. Tenoctris continued her chant, touching the tip of her boxwood twig to points in the air around Garric. A leaden numbness began to replace the pain of his wounds, and he wondered if he was going into shock.
He and Tenoctris had entered the demon's plane in the graveyard half a mile from here, the Government Square of modern Carcosa. The distance they'd traveled to where Strasedon waited was about right; the moon's greater height now in the sky also matched the time they'd spent searching the other dimension.
Garric couldn't guess at the direction they'd gone in that place of black sun. Perhaps that was right as well.
He was exhausted but he couldn't rest. His back was a mass of live coals, burning him to wakefulness. The demon's claws carried a fiery poison like the touch of certain caterpillars; he would never sleep again, he'd blaze forever until he died ⦠.
A pair of porters holding a handbarrow between them stared in horror. Garric and his companions must have dropped into sight directly in front of the men as Strasedon's plane dissolved. Giving up on the noble, Liane called to the
porters, “You there! Get this man on your pallet!”
porters, “You there! Get this man on your pallet!”
The man at the front of the barrow shied from the girl's attention, but his partner remained motionless in amazement. The barrow twitched but the men didn't go off down the street as the leader intended. They carried a roll of wet hide reeking with the stench of the tannery.
“Look!” Liane said, bringing her hands up from her sash. She let coins cascade from one palm to the other. Even if the porters didn't recognize the chime as that of goldâwhere would they have seen gold?âthe implication of even that much copper was enough to hold them now.
“Carry this man to the Captain's Rest,” Liane ordered. “You know where it is, don't you? Get him there alive and there's a gold Sandrakkan rider for each of you!”
“But mistress,” the man at the front of the barrow said. The pair had been too shocked even to lower their burden to the cobblestones as they gaped. “We have to deliver this to Chilsen the Cobbler in Boot Lane.”
“You idiots!” the grandee shouted in amazement from his chair. “A gold rider would buy Chilsen's whole shop and his daughter besides!”
The porter at the back raised his right handle and lowered the left one, dumping the roll of hide on the ground before his partner fully realized what was happening. The men exchanged glances, then set the barrow down beside Garric. They lifted him with surprising gentleness. They were workingmen, well used to injuries.
Tenoctris continued to chant as the porters raised their barrow with Garric aboard it. Pain faded slowly as waxen darkness diffused through Garric's mind.
I
lna os-Kenset stepped from gray limbo into the shadows of an alley too narrow for even a donkey to navigate. Wooden balconies were built out from windows in the walls above; from a few hung knotted ropes by which an agile occupant could come or go.
lna os-Kenset stepped from gray limbo into the shadows of an alley too narrow for even a donkey to navigate. Wooden balconies were built out from windows in the walls above; from a few hung knotted ropes by which an agile occupant could come or go.
One end of the alley was closed by a blank wall. Hazy light edged the kink in the other direction, where a knuckle of the building to the right pressed toward the wall opposite, squeezing the passage so that Ilna had to turn sideways to round it.
She walked out onto the street beyond. It was late afternoon; too little of the sky was visible from within the alley for her to have been sure. There was a good deal of traffic, both pedestrians and carts. A recent rain had left the pavement slick and pools standing where bricks were missing or sunken; it wasn't raining now.
Ilna had never seen this street before in her life. She didn't think she was in Carcosaâthe building styles, the brick street, the dress of the inhabitants all suggested otherwise. She caught the eye of a woman carrying a wicker basket of vegetables and a swatch of salt meat.
“Excuse me, mistress,” Ilna said. The woman turned her head aside and strode past grim-faced.
Ilna's own expression hardened. This was a city, not a hamlet where people were polite because everyone knew everyone else and knew that they'd be seeing the same faces for the rest of their lives.
She surveyed the street and began walking. A shop selling earthenware. A tavern; the pavement in front was stained dark by the dregs of beer pails emptied there by children fetching
fresh for the family's next-day use. A dairy used a butter churn for a sign. A ewe bleated from the yard in back, touching the part of Ilna that didn't remember it had no home in this world.
fresh for the family's next-day use. A dairy used a butter churn for a sign. A ewe bleated from the yard in back, touching the part of Ilna that didn't remember it had no home in this world.
The buildings were two and three floors high, some of them even taller. Upper-story windows had cards in the windows; from the uniformity of the characters she assumed they advertised lodgings.
Ilna had always wondered what it would be like to read. She didn't need that skill now. People would read for her. People would do anything she ordered them to do.
Ilna came to a grocer's. A handcart of turnips and parsnips stood to one side of the entrance, blocking the raised sidewalk. On the other side was a tray of oranges covered with coarse sacking to shield them from the direct sun. The proprietor sat just inside where he could keep an eye on the sidewalk display.
Ilna lifted the sacking and began to strip weft fibers from the edge of the cloth. She didn't recognize the material, but her fingers felt an image of dry soil and clumps of leaves like swordblades.
The proprietor was counting eggs into a housewife's basket. He took the woman's copper coins without checking them for weight and followed her out of the shop. “Hey you!” he said to Ilna.
Ilna ignored him. She had a dozen strands loose; her fingers began to plait them together.
The shopkeeper jabbed Ilna's shoulder with the tips of his fingers. Passersby eyed sidelong what they thought was an argument; no one stopped to intervene. “You!” the man shouted. “Are you some kind of booby? Get away from my store or I'llâ”
Ilna finished the design. She raised the fibers for the shopkeeper to see. The man froze mute, his mouth open but the threat frozen on his tongue.
A woman moved in the back of the shop. “Arrek?” she called.
“What city is this?” Ilna said in a voice as cold as a serpent's. She held the pattern rigid in the frame of her hands.
“This is Erdin on Sandrakkan,” the proprietor said. His words were only sound; there was no life at all in them.
Ilna nodded crisply, a reflexive acknowledgment that the shopkeeper couldn't even see. “Where is the nearest mercer's shop?” she asked. The woman was coming up the aisle of the grocery, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Beltar or-Holman has a shop in the next block,” the man said in the tones of the dead. “On the corner of the street and a close.”
“Arrek?” the woman from the shop said. She grabbed the man's shoulder. “Arrek!”
“Point the way,” Ilna ordered, ignoring the woman just as the man she controlled did. He extended his right arm.
She tossed the plaited fibers to the ground and strode away. She didn't know what a “close” was, but the shop would be obvious. Behind her the woman was chirruping to the shopkeeper in growing agitation. He gasped like a whale blowing and staggered into the cart of root vegetables.
Shops in Erdin weren't grouped like those of Carcosa. She passed a cobbler, a salt seller, and a cookshop selling fish stew. The pavement near the doorway glittered with iridescent scales.
The air was thick with smell of brackish groundwater as well as the recent rain. It was a hot day and the gutters reeked.
The mercer's was across the street; she hadn't asked that. The shopkeeper hadn't had the will to volunteer the information even if he'd had the desire to do so. The close proved to be a dead-end alley like the one she'd entered Erdin by.
Ilna crossed despite the traffic, never touching and never endangered by any of the pedestrians and carts clattering over the bricks. She'd always been good at judging patterns; now she knew how every moving object interacted with every other object.
She entered the shop beneath the swatch of bias-woven fabric that acted as a sign. The brown and blue dyes were
colorfast, though city grime had darkened the cloth to the point that you almost had to know the pattern to recognize it.
colorfast, though city grime had darkened the cloth to the point that you almost had to know the pattern to recognize it.
The shop specialized in fancy weaves, thin stripes and checks. Ilna had noticed similar fabrics on the better-dressed locals, though the patterns were too busy for her taste. No matter.
The shop assistant, a girl with a thin face and straw-colored hair, was showing a matron a roll of cloth from the rack on the other side of the display room. Ilna looked through the part-bolts stacked end-on along the counter, leaving only a yard of the wood bare for transactions. The selvage of loose warp threads hung from each roll.
Ilna found the one she wanted, a bolt of red cloth stacked on the bottom of the pile where its width couldn't easily be compared with that of others. She tugged it out a few inches. The assistant glanced over but continued dealing with her present customer.
A pair of shears lay on the counter; the backspring was inlaid with brass lilies. Ilna ignored them and drew her knife from its case.
“Mistress?” the shop assistant called. “Mistress, I'll help you inâ”
Una trimmed the selvage off the end of the roll, keeping the threads under firm tension as the steel parted them.
“Master Beltar!” the assistant screamed. The matron stared, backing against a rack of cloth. “Master Beltar!”
A middle-aged man with a broad face and reddish facial hair came from the back room. He held a pen and his fingers were stained with ink. “Yes, mistress?” he said sharply, following his assistant's eyes to Ilna.
She laid the handful of loose threads on the empty portion of the counter and began interweaving them. Windows along the two outside walls provided good illumination even at this time of day, but she could have worked in the dark. The matron took the opportunity to dart past Ilna to the street.
“Mistress!” Beltar said when he saw the bolt that had been
pulled out and trimmed. “What are you doing? Sarhad, get the Patrol!”
pulled out and trimmed. “What are you doing? Sarhad, get the Patrol!”
“Don't, girl,” Ilna said. She looked over at Beltar and continued, “This bolt was short width. You can lose your whole stock if you sell short cloth without marking it by cutting the selvage.”
The girl had already reached the street door. “Sarhad, stop,” Beltar snapped. “I'll take care of this. Ah, sweep out the back room and the stairs.”
Looking wide-eyed at her employer and the strange woman, the assistant vanished behind the curtain into the back. Ilna returned to her task. The red dye was a muddy hue; the fabric was shoddy in all respects and didn't belong in a shop with the pretensions of Beltar's.
“Are you from the chancellor's office?” he asked when Ilna remained silent. “I assure you that if any under-width cloth found its way into my shop by accident, I'm more than willing to correct the error in a reasonable manner ⦠.”
Ilna smiled coldly. He was offering a bribe. She'd quoted Valles commercial practice, since that was where her market and experience was, but apparently Erdin's regulations were equally stringent.
“I'm not from the chancellor's office,” she said. “I'm here to make you rich beyond your dreams. For now you'll set me up in a room above your shop. I'll need a loom and yarn.”
“Mistress,” Beltar said in frank puzzlement, “I buy clothâI don't hire weavers. If you've fabric to sell me I might be interested, but you'll have to find your own lodgings and materials.”
“No,” Ilna said, turning her face toward him again. “I won't. Look at this.”
She uncovered the pattern on the countertop. Beltar bent forward to get a better view. His eyes narrowed; then he jerked back as the image came in focus. He brushed his hands in front of his face, trying to grasp what he'd seen or thought he'd seen.
“That's your real future,” Ilna said without emotion. “That and a great deal more.”
The mercer stared at her in growing wonder. “Who are you?” he whispered.
A pair of women came in the street door. “Go away!” Ilna snapped without looking around.
“Yes, we're closed now!” Beltar said. “You'll have to leave!”
They backed out, gabbling complaints. Ilna waited until she and the owner were alone again and repeated, “I'm the woman who's going to make you rich. That's all that need concern you.”
The mercer touched the air again. His face was regaining its normal ruddy coloration but sweat beaded on his sandy eyebrows. “All right,” he said. “Mistress Nirari has a room open across the street. I'll rent it for you. I won't have you in my house, but you'll have your space.”
Ilna's fingers combed the red threads into two separate clumps, destroying the pattern as if it had never existed. “All right,” she said. “We'll go there now. I have much to do.”
She smiled. Beltar looked as though he might never smile again; but for all that his expression was warmer than hers.
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