Mistress of the Catacombs (13 page)

"Unless we all vote to change our laws," said Vascay, holding out the red bead, "that's just what we'll do, Brother Ceto. Which do you choose, that Gar takes the ball first or that you do?"

"He doesn't talk like an animal," Toster said. "He talks better'n me."

"Yeah, the Ball of Truth," said Hame, a short, bandy-legged fellow whose ears had been notched—for theft, Garric supposed; though, looking on the band with civilized eyes, they didn't seem to be the illiterate bravos he'd expected. Several of them, Hame for one, were city-dwellers by their appearance.

"All right, give him the ball and watch him spit his lies up!" Ceto snarled. "I don't care!"

Gar might have been present at previous trials, but if so the experience had passed through his ruined brain like rain fallen on parched sand. Garric didn't know what was going on—

But he did know he had Vascay on his side. The peg-legged chieftain touched his hands together, transferring the red bead from his left to his right. He held it toward Garric and said, "Put the Ball of Truth under your tongue, Brother Gar. Speak your story, and if you lie the words will poison you."

"I'm not lying," said Garric.

"Then you'll hand the ball to Brother Ceto and he'll do the same," Vascay said equably. "A man who tells the truth has nothing to fear from the ball."

He looked around the circle of watchful men. The whole band was present, twenty or so. Many of them were mutilated, like Hame and Vascay himself.

"I still don't know about this truth stuff, Vascay," Ademos muttered, his eyes jerking side to side without lighting on the man to whom he spoke. "I know what you say, but I don't see how a little ball knows who's lying."

"With you, Ademos," said Hame, "it's whenever your mouth's open."

"Stuff it!" said Ademos. He kept his hands carefully clear of his weapons. "Stuff you, Hame!"

"I served a saintly hermit in my youth," Vascay said, reinforcing the story he'd obviously told often in the past—and incidentally informing Garric for the first time. "The Ball of Truth was his legacy to me. Not wizardry but faith gives it the power to see men's souls, Brother Ademos."

"Get on with it," Ceto snarled. "Just get on with it!"

"Yes," said Garric. He took the red bead from Vascay. "Let's do that."

It was surprisingly light, more like wood than the stone he'd expected. The surface was hard but slightly pitted.

"Be brief, Brother Gar," Vascay said. "And on your life, tell the truth."

Vascay nodded expressionlessly. Garric put the bead under his tongue.

"I dug the ring out of the ground," Garric said. The lump under his tongue slurred his words. He could feel the bead starting to dissolve. "Ceto sucker-punched me and stole the ring."

He spat the bead into his left palm. He couldn't see any change except the glister of saliva, but he knew it had begun to come apart.

"Your turn now, Brother Ceto," said Vascay. "Give him the Ball of Truth, Gar."

Garric's belly muscles were tight. His tongue worked, trying to decide what the taste in his mouth was. It was dry, limy, and nondescript. Apparently harmless, but there was some trick connected with the business.

"Here, Ceto," Garric said, stretching his left arm out to full length so that he didn't have to approach the other man. The bead gleamed in the center of his upturned palm.

"I don't have to do this!" Ceto said, turning his head side to side like a beast at bay.

"It's your turn, Ceto," Toster said. The big man carried an axe with a long helve, a weapon that in hands like his could smash through any armor a man could wear and still be able to walk. He raised the axe slightly, holding it slanted across his body. "Take the ball."

"Sister drag you all down," Ceto muttered. He snatched the bead from Garric, hesitated a moment, and popped it into his mouth.

"I found the ring myself and—" he said. His face went white, then flushed red. He spit the bead onto the ground, then gagged up a mouthful of phlegm and saliva.

"You tried to poison me, Vascay!" Ceto shouted. He whipped out his curved sword in a slashing arc. "I'll send your soul to Hell!"

The other members of the band backed away. Ceto was a powerful man, and the long sword was a particularly dangerous weapon in the hands of somebody too angry to worry about self preservation.

Instead of drawing his knives, Vascay hopped sideways to put the cookfire between him and Ceto. He nodded to Garric with a sardonic grin. "Brother Gar," he said, "your opponent doesn't accept the verdict of the Ball of Truth. What do you say?"

Ceto whirled toward Garric, raising his sword. Garric gripped the near end of the rod supporting the soup and jerked it toward him. The pot tipped into the fire, hissing and fuming. Garric backed a step, judging his new weapon's weight and balance as Ceto came on.

The rod was iron, five feet long and thumb-thick beneath the scale and rust. By reflex Garric slid his left hand toward the center the way he would've gripped a quarterstaff.

A quarterstaff hadn't been holding a stewpot over a fire for the past several hours. There was a sizzle and a greasy feeling in Garric's fingertips. Grateful for Gar's calluses, he jerked his hand back to the end where the iron was cool enough to be safe.

Ceto slashed down at Garric. Garric raised the rod crosswise, blocking the stroke in a shower of sparks. The blade bit deep enough not to skid, but it'd take a stronger man than Ceto to hack through so thick a rod with a sword.

Garric heaved the rod up, lifting Ceto's swordarm with it. While Ceto was extended, Garric kicked him in the gut, near the spot where his punch had landed. Ceto woofed and doubled up, drawing both arms close to his sides.

Garric stepped back, judged his distance, and brought the rod around in a whistling sideways stroke. Ceto tried to raise his sword. The rod flung it away and thumped into the bandit's skull.

Ceto sprawled onto his left side, bleeding brightly from the pressure cut in his scalp. The sword spun end over end—Ademos jumped out of the way with a squeal—and stuck in the ground. It sang angrily until it had damped itself to silence.

Garric stabbed his rod into the dirt at his feet and rested some of his weight on it. He sucked in great gasping breaths, wavering slightly because his blood still raced with readiness to fight or flee.

To fight: Garric or-Reise wasn't running anywhere.

Smiling faintly, Vascay walked around the spluttering fire and pulled Ceto's sword from the ground. He held it up at a slant, peering along the edge. Garric could see from where he stood that there was a dent where his rod parried the blade, but the edge hadn't broken away. The smith had started with good steel, then cooled it slowly to a working temper instead of the brittle hardness suitable only for razors and fools.

Vascay swept his glance around the circle of his fellows, turning his body slightly so that he eyed each man squarely. Ademos and a few others looked away, but nobody spoke.

"Ceto didn't accept the verdict of the Ball of Truth," Vascay said; not shouting, but an open challenge to anyone who might disagree. He stared at Ademos, whose head was turned sideways as though he were fascinated by the bromeliads growing from the trunks of the great figs. "Does anybody want to take up where he left off?"

Garric had his breath back and his pulse under control. He straightened and lifted the rod again. The iron had cooled enough he could hold it by the balance now.

Tint came out of the ferns and crept to his side. She was whimpering. Garric reached down and rubbed her scalp, but he didn't take his eyes off the gang's leader.

"That's what I'd hoped," Vascay said with a broader smile. He walked to Garric and rotated the sword in his hand, offering him the hilt.

"Here you go, Brother Gar," he said. "Finish the oath-breaker and take the scabbard as well."

Garric took the sword. He'd never handled a curved blade before, so he was glad to find that this one at least balanced perfectly in his hand.

"He can live," Garric said. Ceto was unconscious and breathing in a ragged snore. "I won't kill a man in cold blood."

"Well, that does credit to your upbringing, brother," Vascay said. He bent and undid the two-tongued buckle of Ceto's heavy belt, then jerked it clear and tossed it to Garric. "You and I will take a skin of wine to a quiet place and discuss matters now, shall we?"

"Yes, all right," said Garric. Other members of the band nodded or murmured approval under their breath, even Ademos.

"Fine," said Vascay. He bent again and cut Ceto's throat from ear to ear. Blood like that of a slaughtered hog spewed out. There was no bowl of meal here to soak it up for black pudding....

"My upbringing, on the other hand...," Vascay said. He let out a full-throated laugh.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Vascay settled on a boulder whose angles had been smoothed by the freshets that swept the channel during every heavy rain; he gestured Garric to a similar slab which sloped to face his own. The stream was now only a milky gurgle at their feet. Fern fronds and the hard green foliage of large-leaf philodendrons spread overhead.

Garric eased himself onto the rock. It felt clammy through his tunic, but everything in the forest was.

The seat Vascay had chosen for himself was less comfortable than Garric's broader slab, but it was also a hand's-breadth higher. Garric grinned knowingly—upward—at the chieftain.

Vascay laughed and sucked wine from the stoneware bottle—a sip only, just enough to show it was safe—. He offered the bottle to Garric. "Now, my friend," he said. "Why don't you tell me who you really are?"

Garric's mouth had tasted foul ever since the fight with Ceto. He took a swig of wine, sloshed it over his cheeks and tongue, and spat it out. Then he bent and dipped a palmful of water from the stream. It had a milky tinge, but it tasted clean and cold.

He met Vascay's waiting eyes. "Ceto kicked me in the head," he said. "I regained my memory."

"I see the bruise," Vascay said pleasantly. "But Gar didn't start remembering a poet dead for two thousand years. I was a schoolteacher before this—"

He tapped his wooden leg.

"—and the rest of my problems with the Intercessor's tax men, and I could only spout half a dozen tags from Celondre. I say again, who are you?"

Two thousand years! Celondre had been one of the greatest poets of the Old Kingdom—but that was only a thousand years before Garric's day. Echeus had sent Garric's mind not only to a strange place but to a distant time.

"I'm Prince Garric of Haft," Garric said deliberately, watching for any change in Vascay's expression. "If the 'Intercessor' you're talking about is Echeus of Laut, then we share an enemy. I think he's the one who...."

Garric flicked his free hand in a circle, searching for the right word. He couldn't find it.

"Who sent me here," he said, close enough for Vascay to understand as much as Garric himself did.

The camp was within easy bowshot if the jungle hadn't intervened, but the rest of the band could have been on the Moon for all the sign there was from where Garric sat. Every few steps in this green maze put you in a separate world.

Tint hunched on the bank nearby, shivering but otherwise motionless. She stared fixedly at a liana which trailed crookedly across the stream. Garric followed the line of her eyes in puzzlement till he realized that the liana was unusually thick for part of its length. A python mottled brown on green lay on the vine; perhaps sleeping, perhaps waiting for prey to pass beneath it.

"I'll take the wine," Vascay said. He drank, deeply this time, and rested the bottle on his thigh. His lips smiled very tightly as he looked Garric up and down.

"Prince Garric of Haft," Vascay said musingly. "The last ruler of the New Kingdom. He died in battle on Tisamur, fighting the Count of Blaise. After his death and the destruction of both great armies, the Archai swept over the Isles. Only Laut was preserved, by the power of the Intercessor."

He drank again. Handing the bottle back to Garric he added with a wry grin, "That's the way we tell the story on Laut, at any rate."

Garric shrugged. "I don't know how I came here," he said. "I only know that I am Garric, though the body I'm in is Gar's."

He drank. Wine was an imported luxury on Haft. Reise kept bottles on hand for visitors during the Sheep Fair, but his family and the other residents of Barca's Hamlet drank the bitter beer he brewed with locally-grown germander.

This bottle had a wreath impressed into the clay before firing, showing that the vintner was proud enough of his product to make it identifiable. It was all a matter of what you were used to, though; to Garric the drink had a nasty aftertaste.

He wasn't sure he was going to like being a member of a bandit gang a thousand years after his own time; but like the wine, it was what he had at the moment.

Instead of responding immediately, Vascay pursed his lips and eyed the fabric of leaves overhanging the stream while he thought. After a moment he grinned again at Garric and said, "The question now is what to do with you, eh?"

"That isn't how I'd phrase the question," Garric said, "but I'll let it stand for now. Tell me how you worked the ball. Poisoning Ceto and not me, I mean."

Vascay laughed. "You don't believe I cared for a saintly hermit, my friend?" he said. "Indeed, I did just that."

His face changed minusculely; Vascay's lips still smiled, but he was no longer the jolly plump man. "That had nothing to do with Ceto, of course," he said. "It wasn't poison, just a wash of alum. Some beads have the alum on the outside, some under a thin layer of hard biscuit."

Garric considered what he'd just been told. "You didn't know that Ceto was lying," he said. "You didn't care whether he was lying or not."

Vascay chuckled. "Well, friend," he said, "let's just say that I've had my eye on Ceto for some time. He was getting a little too big to wear the cap I'd given him, so when you came along, well...."

He turned his hands palms-up in a gesture that only context made clear.

The buttress roots of the giant tree behind Vascay were wrinkled like a rooster's wattles, brown and gray and gray-brown. One of the folds formed a cup large enough to hold a firkin of beer. Garric suddenly realized that the pair of specks glittering on the rim weren't black-capped mushrooms but rather the eyes of another snake coiled in the hollow. There were a lot of snakes in this place.

"How did you know I'd be able to handle Ceto?" Garric said quietly. He already knew the answer; he was asking to hear the way Vascay responded.

"I didn't, to be honest," said Vascay—honestly, which was what Garric needed to know. "But I'd seen you face Ceto, and I'd seen the way you moved. I'd have bet on you, friend... and if I'd lost my money, well, you wouldn't have been much good for the job, would you?"

"Go on," said Garric. Snakes weren't the only thing cold-blooded in this place, but Garric had learned how cold a prince had to be many times. He could imagine that was true as well for a bandit chief.

"If you're a prince from another time," Vascay said, crooking his finger for the wine again, "and even if you're not—"

He smiled, but only partly in humor. The words were an open warning that Vascay was willing to accept Garric's story, but that belief was a different thing from acceptance.

"—you may not understand our situation on Laut."

"This is Laut?" Garric interjected. Neither he nor Carus in his own time had visited Laut. Liane would know more about the island, but—Garric felt his gut tighten—she wasn't here.

"This is Serpent's Isle, just off the south coast of Laut," Vascay said. "A place no one ever goes by choice, eh? Unless they've a very good reason."

He tapped his wooden leg again. "My reason, our reason," he went on, "is that Lord Thalemos has hired us to find a ring of power on Serpent's Isle. Thalemos has a wizard advisor who tells him that the ring will bring down Echeon the Tyrant and reopen Laut to the world beyond."

Vascay closed his left hand into a fist. When he reopened it, the sapphire ring winked on his little finger.

"That ring?" Garric said. "The one I found."

"So I hope and believe, my friend," the chieftain agreed.

Vascay closed and reopened his hand; the ring vanished again. "I keep in practice," he said softly. "You can never tell when you'll need the skill. Today, for example."

He met Garric's eyes squarely. "There's a lot I can do through sleight of hand," he said, "and a few things I can do with my knives as well; but Ceto would've become a real problem for me if you hadn't—"

Vascay's hand duplicated the questing circle that Garric's had made a moment before.

"—appeared when you did."

He held out the wine. When Garric's hand touched his on the bottle, Vascay added, "I need someone like you as my deputy, Garric. The man I can trust to do what I'd do every time... only maybe better, some of the time, because he's got the stronger arm."

Garric drank, paused, and drank more. The wine's astringence was what his mouth needed, and the aftertaste didn't seem so unpleasant now.

"You think I'd make a good bandit, Master Vascay?" he asked. "Perhaps so, but I don't have a taste for the work. We'll part after we return to the mainland."

Garric leaned forward very slightly. "Unless you have different ideas on the matter," he said. He wondered whether he'd have been quite so ready to carry out the threat implicit in his words if his red-handed ancestor Carus hadn't shared his mind for these past months.

Vascay burst into full-throated laughter. "Unless I choose to threaten the fellow I just watched use a rusty spit to put down the best swordsman among the Brethren, you mean?" he said. "No, no, I won't do that, friend Garric."

He gestured for the wine, but instead of drinking immediately he gave Garric a hard smile over the bottle. "And you're right, we're bandits," he said. "But we wouldn't have been, most of us, if honest men could live on Laut under the Intercessor. I wouldn't have been."

Vascay drank. His hands trembled slightly, and his smile when he lowered the bottle was sour with the thoughts behind it.

"We're not saints, Garric," he said. "We'll rob anybody with money—but that's pretty generally the Intercessor's agents and his friends. We're here now on Serpent's Isle—"

He too leaned forward, his face as hard as Garric's had been shortly before.

"—which has the name of being cursed, and where Kelbat or-Haysa died of snakebite before we'd been ashore an hour. Not for the money Metron is offering but because of what he plans to do. Thalemos' ancestors were Earls of Laut before the wizard Echeus set himself up as Intercessor before the end of the New Kingdom. The present Intercessor, Echeon, has ruled alone for the past hundred years; the greatest wizard and the worst tyrant of the line. But Metron says he can put Thalemos on the throne in Echeon's place with the help of this—"

The stone on his little finger winked blue fire.

"—ring."

Garric frowned. "Is Echeon immortal?" he asked.

The chieftain shrugged. "He hasn't changed in a hundred years," he said. "From the way he guards himself, no, he's not immortal, but it may be that he'll never die naturally. Which wouldn't be a problem if I ever got within arm's length of him, I promise you, or if any of the Brethren did."

Vascay laughed again, relaxing visibly. "But as I said, friend," he said, "we weren't saints most of us to start out with, and our tempers didn't change for the better when Echeon's tax gatherers broke us. I could use—we Brethren all could use—your mind and your swordarm; and you'd be better to have family, let's say, when you learn the realities of Laut. Even if your brothers are outlaws."

"Fairly said," said Garric, relaxing with a degree of surprise at how tense he'd been a moment before himself. Vascay was too smart to want to be on the wrong side of Garric, fair enough. But Garric had seen Vascay—and Vascay's knife—in action, and....

Garric grinned.

"Eh?" said Vascay.

"A friend of mine named Carus," explained Garric, "would've said that close in a man with a knife had an advantage over a man with a sword. Might have. But I don't guess I'll ever learn for sure."

Vascay spread his hands on his knees. "Listen, lad," he said, grimly serious. "If you please, you can leave now or the moment the boat touches the shore of Laut, without my let or hindrance. But there's no safety for any honest man on Laut, so unless you're going to offer your services to the Intercessor...?"

He grinned, but there was a hint of real question in his eyes. It vanished when Garric shook his head in fierce denial.

"Right, I didn't think so," said Vascay. "If you're not going to do that, then stay with us for at least a time. And if you stay long enough to help bring down the Intercessor..."

Fierce joy unexpectedly transfigured the bandit's face. "If we can do that," he said, "I'll count my leg well lost."

He slapped the peg leg with his hand with a sharp rap-rap: fingers against wood, and wood against the rock in which it rested.

"By the Lady, my friend," Vascay said harshly. "If we can bring down Echeon, then I don't mind if they hang me the moment after. Truly I do not."

Garric frowned. "You talk as though there's only Laut, Master Vascay," he said. "I grant it's your home, but if things are so bad—why don't you leave for another isle?"

Vascay frowned in surprise that came close to anger; then his face cleared. "I forgot it was Prince Garric from the New Kingdom who was asking," he said. "Echeon's a wizard, you see. Those who venture into the seas at the horizon from Laut, coming or going, are run down by the galleys manned by Echeon's Protectors of the Peace."

He grinned harshly. "And sunk, and all drowned with no more trial than the crabs give them," he added. "Nobody enters Laut or goes more than a league beyond the shore and lives. Some claim that the Intercessor uses his wizard arts to bring lightnings down on fleets too great for his Protectors to deal with, but I wouldn't know. I doubt there've been any such fleets in the Isles since Prince Garric died and the Archai brought down the New Kingdom a thousand years ago."