Mistress of the Catacombs (18 page)

Garric waited as they approached, smiling broadly. "I noticed it when I was getting a thorn out of my foot," he said in a loud voice. He was only half-turned, so that though he was speaking to Vascay he had the farmstead in the corner of his eye. "Come here and I'll show you."

"So, lad?" Vascay said as he walked to touching distance. He continued to scratch his back; his eyes flicked about him the way sunlight dances from running water.

"Don't look around," Garric said quietly. "There's a band of men behind the wall; they'll jump us any moment. They've got horses, so our only hope is to go for them first."

"They can't be waiting for us!" Ademos said. "We didn't know where we were going to fetch up on Laut. Nobody could've set an ambush here."

"Gar, we run!" Tint demanded.

Garric was ice cold and trembling; he wasn't consciously frightened, but the emotion racing through his veins had its own logic. "Let me borrow this," he said, taking the javelin from Vascay's left hand. The shaft was thumb-thick and three feet long, with a short fluted head and a length of cord tied just above midpoint to stabilize the missile when thrown.

"This don't make any sense!" Ademos said. "They can't be laying for us, it don't make sense!"

"Let's get 'em!" Garric shouted in the clear, carrying voice he'd learned from Carus for ruling troops. He turned and charged the farmstead, cocking the javelin back as he ran.

"Blazes!" a bandit squealed. "He's gone nuts a—"

Armed men stood up behind the stone wall, two at first and then a score. Garric loosed the javelin with the skill he'd learned hunting squirrels as a boy with similar weapons. The strength of Gar's right arm was behind the cast.

The first man to stand was the officer whose silver gorget gleamed in the moonlight. The javelin thumped into his breastbone, sinking to the knotted cord. The officer flopped over backward, his orders frozen in his throat by the shock of death.

"Carus and the Isles!" Garric screamed as he drew his long sword.

An archer went down with Vascay's remaining javelin in the eye. He'd started to draw his bow; the arrow wobbled into the dirt when his fingers spasmed open. Several others of those behind the wall had bows, but the dying man was the only one who'd been alert enough to respond instantly.

There were twenty Protectors along the wall. There must be others in the barn with the horses, but those didn't realize what was happening yet.

"Carus!" Garric repeated, whirling his sword in a moonlit circle. He knew from experience—his own and that of Carus before him—how frightening a ten-foot arc of edged steel looked when it was coming at you. The bandits' only hope of survival—Garric's only hope of survival—was to startle the ambushers so completely that they didn't react until their would-be prey was among them.

He wasn't quite successful.

An archer drew his arrow to the head while Garric was still ten feet from the wall. Both the Protector's eyes were open. He aimed at Garric's midriff, but the arrow's lift at the moment of release would take it through his heart.

The ambushers wore close-fitting iron caps, not real helms, and breastplates of quilted linen. Except for the archers they carried six-foot spears with a knob instead of spike on the butt; the latter would make a useful baton for crowd control. Echeon's Protectors were more closely kin to the City Patrols who policed Valles than they were to the Royal Army of the Isles. The bandits, most of whom had real swords instead of the long knives the Protectors carried, were armed as well or better than the ambushers.

But one arrow would be enough to end Garric's existence, in this time and probably all time. Still running, he tensed himself to receive the missile—

Tint bounded past in the same sort of flat leap that had carried her to shore. Her long jaws closed on the archer's throat as they tumbled backward together. The man didn't have time to scream.

Garric bounded to the top of the wall, slashing to right and left. His edge cut deep into the forearm a Protector flung up reflexively to cover his face; the back of Garric's curved blade wasn't sharpened, but it rang on the skullcap of the fellow short-gripping his spear to jab at the sword-swinging demon who towered over him. The Protector staggered sideways, sprawling onto the wall; his cap fell off. Vascay, swift despite his peg leg, beheaded him. Prada's sword turned out to be serviceable after all.

Except for Vascay the bandits had been almost as surprised by events as the Protectors were, but they reacted with the desperate suddenness of men who'd long been hunted. Several hurled javelins as they rushed the wall. The hail of missiles dropped two more ambushers, and others ducked or flinched away. The Protectors' knobbed spears couldn't be thrown, so they'd lost the initiative even before the bandits closed.

Blesfund squealed as he took an arrow and doubled up. The archer tried to nock another, then turned to flee. Toster jumped the wall and sank his axe—an ordinary forester's tool—helve-deep in the Protector's back. He jerked the axehead free with casual ease.

The barn door opened. A Protector stood there, one hand on the door and the other holding a horse's bridle. He stared bug-eyed at the carnage: most of his fellows were down, and the few still upright were trying to run.

"Don't let'em break out!" Garric said. He ran toward the barn, raising his bloody sword. He was gasping for breath.

"Shepherd guard me!" the Protector cried. The javelin Vascay had retrieved from a dead man's eyesocket took him in the hip joint; the point had bent so that the missile didn't fly true, but it was true enough. He fell over screaming.

A man already mounted spurred his horse out of the barn, trampling his comrade. His spear jabbed at Garric. Garric hunched and chopped the rider's left knee as he passed. The fellow toppled over his horse's right shoulder as it shied because of the reek of fresh blood.

Garric started into the barn, then jerked back to safety. The interior was full of horses, pitching and kicking in terror. With the door open they forced their way out two abreast. A powerful roan gelding struck the jamb with his shoulder and knocked it skew, causing the sagging structure to lean still further.

"Catch the horses!" Vascay called. "By the Lady, we'll ride to Durassa tonight on the Intercessor's bounty!"

The last of the animals, a flea-bitten gray, plunged into the courtyard dragging a Protector whose left hand was tangled in the reins. The horse circled, trying to free itself from its living anchor.

Garric grabbed the beast's headstall and held it steady. He pointed his sword at the Protector's face and shouted, "How many of you are there in the barn?"

"Mercy!" the man cried, lying on his back with his hand lifted in the reins. "No more, nobody more, just three of us!"

"Here's the mercy you lot gave my sister," Hame said. He set one of the Protectors' own spears against the man's breastbone.

"Don't!" said Garric.

Vascay took Garric's right wrist, his sword wrist, in a grip that would grow firmer if it needed to. "Aye, boy," he said. "We must. And Hame would anyway, with good reason."

Hame leaned his chest against the spear's knobbed butt, driving the point through the man and deep in the ground beneath. The Protector thrashed wildly, then went limp.

Garric turned his head. He'd seen worse, and he understood the kind of reason Hame might have had, but....

He let go of the gray's harness. Somebody else could hold the beast—or not, he didn't care.

One of the Protectors had been wearing a short cloak. Garric pulled it off the body and wiped his sword. There was a nick in the belly of his blade; he'd have to polish it out with a stone. His first victim wore a wristlet in the shape of a curling snake; the sword had struck one of the ornament's ruby eyes.

"That's a rare bit of luck, isn't it, brethren?" Vascay said in a satisfied voice. "Mount up and let's get going. Oh, and Toster—lead one of the extras for Prada when we catch up with him."

"Gar safe?" Tint asked, rising on her hind legs to stroke Garric's neck.

"Gar is fine," Garric said. If he'd had anything in his stomach he'd have thrown it up, from reaction and from the slaughterhouse stench.

"I'm fine, Tint," he said, squeezing tight the beastgirl whose warning had saved all their lives. "Thanks to you we're all fine."

Tint purred contentedly as she licked her muzzle. Her bloody muzzle.

* * *

Ilna stood above her body, though the only reason she recognized the still figure on the bed was that it wore her clothing: a bleached inner tunic beneath a heavier garment of blue yarn with a gray pattern woven, not embroidered, into the hem. Her own work, of course, so that was her body as well: slim but sturdy, not willowy—that was a word they used for tall blondes like Sharina—but showing the supple strength of a hickory switch.

Mirrors of polished metal were for rich folk. In Barca's Hamlet, girls filled buckets and looked at themselves in the water's reflection; but not Ilna, she'd never cared about that....

She was surprised to see how attractive her face was. The cheekbones, her cheekbones, were visible instead of being cushioned by fat; flecks of gold floated in the depths of her brown eyes; her lips were severe and thinner than some might choose, but in all ways they suited Ilna herself.

She sniffed. She supposed it was all right to be vain about your body when you weren't wearing it any more.

Tenoctris sat—had collapsed, more properly—on her ivory-legged chair; she looked utterly drained. Sharina stood close behind the older woman, supporting her by holding one forearm and the opposite shoulder. They both looked with concern toward the waxen figure on the bed. Despite the smoke of the charred parchment, the edges and colors of the scene were vivid to Ilna's present eyes.

But her business wasn't in the room where her body lay, nor even in this world. A gray curtain hung around her. She stepped toward it, walking through a corner of the bed.

The grayness resisted for a moment; the curtain wasn't a fabric but rather a blurring of light and of all proper existence. Ilna grimaced sourly—the touch reminded her of putting her hand on a slug's trail in the dark—but pushed on through.

That was her responsibility, after all. What was there in a decent person's life besides carrying out her responsibilities?

The grayness closed around Ilna . She swallowed and continued walking. She'd been in this place, this clammy gray limbo, before. That time the way back to the waking world had led through Hell, and Ilna had brought a portion of Hell back with her. Tenoctris would never have sent a friend back to that place, but Tenoctris hadn't, couldn't, walk this route herself.

Ilna took the hank of cords out of her sleeve and began knotting them. She had no pattern in mind, but it gave her fingers something to do as she walked and stared into a self-lit emptiness, a place without shape or color or hope.

As the pieces of cord joined into fabric, a line of jagged darkness drove a schism through the gray. Ilna walked toward it, without confidence or even hope. She would face her future as she faced all things, without complaint or flinching. If that future meant this place, this non-place, for all eternity, then so be it.

She stepped into the crevice in the gray; and through it, into a world of color again. This wasn't the waking world Ilna had left a seeming lifetime ago: the hues were washed out like those of vegetable dyes left in the sun, and when Ilna tried to touch the oak beside her, her hand passed through the bark with only the slightest resistance.

That didn't matter. This was a world, even if it wasn't hers.

Breathing deeply, she stood among the trees on top of a hill otherwise grassy. On one horizon—the sky was bright but there was no sun, so she couldn't tell directions—rose the hulking stone forms of great buildings, spires and cylinders and domed roofs carried on pillars. The movement along the ramp circling the outside of a tower was a line of human beings climbing it; at this distance they were ant-sized.

In a swale below Ilna, two chastely-dressed women talked with what would have been a man—he was nude, so that wasn't in doubt—if he'd had a human head instead of a stag's. Ilna thought first he was wearing a mask, but the beast's pinched-in skull was narrower than a man's.

The stag-man extended a hand. One of the women took it tentatively. They turned and walked together toward a nearby glade. After a moment, the other woman followed them.

Ilna's lips tightened, but it was nothing to do with her. Tenoctris told her there would be a track somewhere....

Yes, of course; and quite obvious when she looked for it. A discontinuity trailed across the landscape—across this world, moreover, because the sky itself showed the same distortion. It was an absence and bunching, like the damage caused by pulling a single thread from a fabric.

In the middle distance, a procession of humans mounted on beasts Ilna had never seen or imagined came riding across the strain mark. There were hogs the size of oxen, horses with the hindparts of lions, and a thing like a goat that walked hunched over on two legs—but saddled and ridden by a nude woman as lushly beautiful as Syf, the goddess of love whose image harlots wanted woven into their scarves.

Ilna grinned coldly. The customer could request any design she pleases; but the weaver refused some requests as she pleased.

The riders talked cheerfully among themselves. They didn't seem to notice the discontinuity as they approached, but when each crossed it he or she fell silent for a time. A man plucking a harp made from antelope horns fumbled his instrument and almost dropped it.

They passed out of sight behind a hill. One of the women had brought a curved brass horn to her lips several times as she rode along, but Ilna heard neither the horn call nor the voices some of the others raised in song. So far as Ilna was concerned, this place was as silent as the bottom of a frozen millpond.

She started off, following the distortion. It struck her that whatever had warped this world might be unpleasant company to meet. Tenoctris hadn't seemed to think that was likely; and if it happened, well, they'd see what came next.

Ilna smiled faintly. Her fingers were knotting another pattern, this time one she understood very well. If she met the thing, then it too might find it was in unpleasant company.

She continued in the direction of the strain. Her legs moved normally, but instead of feeling the touch of springy turf she found herself on a path circling a lake when her foot came down.

The water was so clear that only the ripples quivering from ivory boats shaped like fallen leaves showed that there was a surface. Couples and trios sat in the boats; a handsome older woman poled one while a youth smiled at her from a cushion in the bow, but the other vessels merely drifted.

A group of severe-looking bearded men stood on the shore a few feet away, talking among themselves with a solemnity obvious even without Ilna being able to hear them. One stared fiercely in her direction; she frowned and waved a hand toward him. He turned, having composed his mind, and resumed the discussion with his fellows.

So. She could see but not hear the inhabitants of this place, and they couldn't even see her.

The chasm in the world stretched across a distant building that looked as if it was teased from meringue. It was decorated with fanciful wings, puffs, and feathers of alternating pink and blue. A naked man was dancing on the tip of one of the flares; a bird, easily the size of the man, watched him with the solemn dignity which he so completely lacked.

Ilna's nose wrinkled. She stepped forward, wondering what would happen if she found herself within the dreadful structure. It disturbed her, and not merely because it was tasteless.

Ilna was used to tastelessness, after all. She'd now lived in cities as well as the countryside where she was born. She'd found people were generally the same anywhere, and even more generally without taste or decency—judged by Ilna's standards, of course, but she lived by those standards and saw no reason she shouldn't judge others by them also.

Her foot came down in a forest. Near her a stocky man with unkempt hair drew figures and symbols on a slab of rock, using his finger for a stylus and lees dipped from a wine cup for ink. He wore a calm, distracted look; Ilna suspected that he still wouldn't have seen her if they'd been fully in the same world.

Ilna understood that kind of focus. She practiced it herself, after all.

Tenoctris had called this place 'the dreamworld'. It wasn't what Ilna thought of dreams being filled with, but perhaps that was because she herself dreamed rarely and those few times were always unhappy.

The strain mark passed through the kneeling man's bare right foot. His big toe twitched to a rhythm controlled by the shimmer of the discontinuity, but his gaze never faltered and his finger continued to draw. With a nod of approval, Ilna strode on.

She was in a darkness lit by the fires of devastation. A city burned on the skyline. Its structures were silhouetted and picked out by flames leaping from roofs and through the windows.

A slender bridge arched between buildings. The figure crossing it was human or might have been, using a long pole to balance. The exercise seemed pointless as both ends of the bridge blazed like a rich man's hearth in the winter, but the figure struggled on.

Ilna smiled without humor. She'd never dreamed that particular dream, but she understood the mind from which it sprang.

She walked on. How far was she to go? Until she'd found an answer, she supposed. She could only hope that she'd recognize what Tenoctris had sent her after. Since the old wizard hadn't known what the thing was, Ilna might wander this landscape until she chose to turn back having failed.

She smiled again, even more harshly. She might well fail, but she wouldn't turn back.

She stepped into the boggy lowlands that fringed a river. Eyes peered through the reeds toward her, then vanished in a muddy bubble that popped silently. Did the things that weren't human—the things that lived in this place that dreamers visited—see what the dreamers' eyes did not?

Ilna took another step; she flinched despite herself when she found herself in a wasteland. The ground had been baked till it cracked. A few woody-stemmed plants twisted from it, their gray-green leaves wrapped into tight bundles in hope of better times. There'd been a creek large enough to be crossed by an arched stone bridge, but the channel was now so dry that a dust-devil swirled briefly over the silt-blanketed rocks.

To Ilna's right was a round tower; a fortress, perhaps, or a prison. The gate-leaves were open; an iron grate had slipped halfway down from its slot above the passage, then skewed and stuck. Ilna saw no sign of life, either in the structure or the surrounding landscape it was meant to dominate.

On the dust-blown path between the bridge and the tower stood a wagon carrying a large iron cauldron. The skeleton of a horse lay between the wagon poles; the beast's flesh and all but a few brass studs of the harness had wasted away.

The strain in this world's fabric ended at the mouth of the cauldron.

Ilna looked about her, seeing nothing more than she'd seen the last time she looked around. She glanced at the knotted pattern in her hands, nodded, and took a step. This time she remained in the same landscape, just a little closer to the wagon.

The tailboard lay on the ground; it had shrunk out of the mortise meant to hold it. Ilna stepped onto the wagon bed, paused, and looked into the cauldron.

Instead of rusty iron she saw below her the interior of a temple. A group of priests wearing robes of white-slashed black chanted around a pool which reflected the full moon.

"Thank the Sister!" called a voice behind Ilna. She whirled to see a girl dressed in animal skins running toward the wagon. "That goat I sacrificed to Her has saved me after all!"