Mistress of the Catacombs (27 page)

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"Nosabao steseon phontaueella...," Alecto chanted, using the flat of her athame's blade as a mirror to direct firelight into the branches of the cedar tree she and Ilna sheltered under. "Aiphno ohtikalak...."

Ilna squatted primly, watching Alecto blank-faced but with a feeling of distaste... which made her angry at herself. She'd watched other wizards work and had aided them. The only reason this business bothered her was that she intensely disliked the woman who was performing it.

"Chphuris on sankiste...," said Alecto.

What if Chalcus were here with them? How would he get along with this wild girl?

Ilna snorted. Well enough, no doubt. Far too well for her own comfort, that she was sure of.

"Lampse seison souros!" Alecto cried. She made a final flourish with her knife, an intricate pattern in the air. There was a rustle from above.

The fire was a small one, built from the stems and branches of a wild olive which had sprung up at the base of the great cedar. The wood was green but oily; it caught quickly when Ilna struck sparks from the back of her knife into the wad of milkweed fluff Alecto provided.

The milkweed wasn't ripe either here—wherever 'here' was—or in Valles when Ilna went into her trance. Alecto came from a place distant in time; by a season at least, but very likely from farther than that. She eyed Ilna's steel knife with as much fear as envy.

A dove toppled end over end to the ground. It hit with a thump, its beak opening and closing slowly. Alecto snatched the bird's head and broke its neck with a quick jerk.

A second dove flopped down, like the first stunned but not dead. Ilna killed it, then slipped her paring knife from its case of yellowed bone and began to skin the bird. If they'd had a pot to scald the doves she'd have plucked them instead, but this would do. Alecto was proceeding in the same fashion, gripping her athame by the end of the blade with a careful gap between the edge and the heel of her hand.

"I was in Valles on Ornifal when I came here," Ilna said, keeping her eyes on her work. "Where did you come from, mistress?"

Alecto shrugged. "I was at home, outside of Hartrag's village," she said. "I put myself into dreamworld to find a nightmare to send to Brasus."

She chuckled. "He said he was leaving me to go back to his wife and sons," she said. "So I thought fine, I'll let him dream about the bitch and her whelps too—with their guts around their necks and their eyes gouged out. See how he likes that!"

Ilna spilled the offal on the bird's skin, then threaded the giblets on a long splinter that she set over the flames. They'd grill more quickly than the rest of the bird, small though it was. Her empty stomach was already twitching in anticipation of the hot morsels.

Alecto shook her head in mingled disgust and disbelief. "I'd never've troubled the Pack," she said. "Oh, sure, I knew I was going into territory close by theirs, but that didn't matter unless they'd already been roused. Who'd 've imagined that?"

Ilna thrust a peeled withe the thickness of her little finger through the squab and set it on the supports she'd prepared while Alecto called the birds down. She'd bound straight sticks in a pair of X-frames instead of bothering to find forked twigs of the proper size and angle.

"Yes, Hartrag's village," Ilna said, for the sake of information but also to get her mind off her companion's casual boasts. "But what island are you from? And who's the King of the Isles in your time?"

"Island?" Alecto repeated. "I don't live on an island. I told you, I'm just a bowshot north of Saller's hut, on the path to Queatwa's village."

Ilna's lips tightened in anger. Then she looked at herself with her mind's eye and snorted in disbelief at her foolishness.

A year ago she herself had been only vaguely aware that she lived on the island of Haft. She'd had no idea that there was a King of the Isles and had known little more of the Count of Haft in Carcosa. If Alecto now was as ignorant as Ilna had been so recently, that was no reason to scorn her.

Ilna had much better reason than that to scorn Alecto.

"Ah...," she said, thinking about the connections Barca's Hamlet had with the greater world. She turned her spit a notch. She'd squared the withe where it rested on the supports, then beveled the corners to double the number faces to give her precise control of the way the bird faced the fire. "Do priests come to your village in the spring to collect tithes for the temple in—"

Not in Carcosa, surely.

"—whatever place has the chief temples of the Lady and the Shepherd?"

"I've heard of priests," Alecto said. "Somebody paid to pray for you, you mean? Not in Hartrag's village! Sometimes a hermit comes through and some folks give him a meal. Mostly hermits had better be able to knock over a rabbit or a squirrel for themself, though."

She'd butterflied her squab with twigs and was holding the skewer in her hand instead of using a frame as Ilna did. The firelight threw harsh shadows onto the planes of her face; despite that she looked tired and, to Ilna's mind, perhaps a little less bestial. Calling doves down to the ground by art was work as surely as climbing the tree to fetch them would have been. Besides, the stress of hiding in the temple must be telling on her muscles as well as Ilna's.

The reason Ilna so disdained Alecto... the real reason did Ilna no credit, and she was far too honest to hide the truth from herself.

"I was lucky to meet you, I don't mind saying," Alecto said, rubbing her eyes with the back of her free hand. She shifted her legs slightly, then reached under the front of her skirt to scratch herself. "I could run, but I couldn't have run much farther. And the Pack never stops when they've taken up a trail."

"Do you know anything about the people we watched there in the temple?" Ilna said. "If I'm correct, they may call themselves Moon Wisdom and this may be Tisamur. The island of Tisamur."

"Never heard of them," Alecto said. She yawned. "Either one."

She glared at the fire. Ilna turned her squab again, then took the skewer of giblets from the fire and waved it to cool the meat.

"You know it wasn't just the ones we saw in the room who raised the Pack, don't you?" Alecto said unexpectedly, looking directly at Ilna. Her eyes winked like beads of polished chert. "They were just focusing it. There were people outside praying with them, too."

In a softer voice she added, "More people than I'd ever thought there were. All together."

"I didn't know there were other people," Ilna said. She thought back on the day not so very long ago when she'd entered Carcosa. There were tenements in the city that held more people than lived in all of Barca's Hamlet. "I'm not a wizard, you know."

"Don't give me that!" Alecto snapped. "You wouldn't be here—you wouldn't have been where I found you!—if you weren't a wizard."

"Believe what you please!" Ilna said. She bit the dove's gizzard from the skewer and chewed it. The tough muscle, only half-cooked, gave her an outlet for her irritation.

Alecto lapsed back to staring at the fire. "I suppose they think they control the Pack because there's so many of them," she said morosely. "They're wrong, though. If they keep doing it, eventually they'll let something slip. And then...."

She shook her head. In Alecto's voice Ilna heard the tone she herself would have used in describing the craftsmanship of another weaver, one who'd attempted more than her skill would permit her to succeed with. Ilna looked at her companion with new interest.

"The Pack doesn't quit," Alecto said to the fire. "The people we saw, they think they're the Pack's masters. The Pack doesn't have a master. All it has is hunger. And if you let the Pack loose, before long it'll come back to feed on you."

Ilna chewed the dove's liver. She said nothing.

She wasn't thinking about the Pack or the nearer dangers of this place in which she found herself. She was thinking about another sort of pattern altogether, a pattern and perhaps a duty.

Chalcus has asked me in every fashion but words, Ilna thought, and I've pretended that I didn't hear him. This girl, this woman, would've said yes to Chalcus before she was even asked.

And for that I hate her.

"What're you looking at me that way for?" Alecto said in sudden alarm. The keen-edged athame was suddenly in her hand.

"What?" said Ilna. "Sorry, I wasn't looking at you at all. I was thinking about a conversation that I'm going to have when I get home. As I expect to do."

Alecto grinned like a snarling dog. "The guy you're planning to talk to isn't going to like it," she said approvingly. "Or is it a woman?"

"He's a man," Ilna said. "And I think you're wrong."

She bit down on the dove's heart. "More fool him, perhaps," she added. "But I think he'll be very pleased."

* * *

"Dawn!" whispered Tilphosa. "Oh, Mistress, You've blessed us with the return of light!"

Cashel staggered. He was just as glad as Tilphosa to have daylight again, but the change from dusk to sunrise caught him in mid-step. Ousseau muttered in the crook of Cashel's left arm, but he didn't wake up.

A waterfall drummed nearby. When he looked for it, Cashel saw edges of white spray through the leaves. That'd be water, which they all needed bad by now.

"Oh!" Tilphosa repeated. She looked at Cashel. Now that there was real light, her face looked almost as gray as it had in the twilit woods they'd come from.

"Ah...?" she said. "Would it be all right to rest now, Cashel?"

He hadn't realized Tilphosa was so close to being done in. She'd kept plodding along beside him, not saying much but never complaining.

"Sure," he said. "I'll be glad to stop myself."

Cashel turned to look over his shoulder. Hook and Captain Mounix were a stone's throw behind. They seemed to be managing all right. Anyway, they had enough energy to complain, though they stopped it quick enough when they saw Cashel's eyes on them.

"We're stopping?" Mounix croaked. "By the Lady, I can't go on any farther! Unless—"

His expression grew guardedly hopeful.

"—you want to give me a hand instead of Ousseau. He's had ease enough, I'd say!"

Cashel squatted expressionlessly and laid Ousseau on the ground. The injured sailor did seem to be doing well. The swelling in his hand and forearm below the bandage was down, and his breathing seemed normal. The touch of cold leaf litter awakened him with a snort.

"You did a good job bandaging Ousseau up," Cashel said to Tilphosa as he rose. "He was lucky to have you around."

Tilphosa smiled and laid her fingers on Cashel's elbow for a moment. "I think we're doing well," she said. Her smile tightened as she looked back at Mounix and Hook. She added, "Even them. For what they are."

The woods back the way the party'd come were still in shadow. The dawn breaking ahead had to do with more than just the time of day.

Cashel shrugged, working stiffness out of his back muscles. He gave his staff a trial spin, mostly to feel the smooth wood shifting among his practiced fingers. It reminded him of home. That was always a good thing; at times like this, the memory of home was one of the best things there could be.

Mounix and Hook had caught up. Ousseau got to his feet and joined them, standing a staff's length back from Cashel and the girl.

Cashel dipped a ferrule toward where he heard the waterfall. "We'll head that way and likely camp," he said. "We need water, and I figure we ought to walk a ways and get a look at what things're like around here before we bed down."

"What's wrong with it?" Hook said, worried rather than belligerent. His eyes moved nervously. "I thought it looked fine."

"There's nothing wrong that I know about," Cashel said patiently. "It's different, is all, and I thought we best take a look while we're awake."

There hadn't been anything bad even about the woods they'd finally walked out of, but Cashel hadn't recognized a single one of the trees in the whole long time. Around him now were maples and sourwoods, well leafed out. They were well spread apart, maybe because the clay soil was so stony.

Tilphosa drew herself up like a queen. "Come, Cashel," she said. "I'm thirsty."

Her hand on Cashel's arm, she set off toward the sound of water falling. Cashel, warned by the pressure of her fingers, stepped off when she did. He didn't know where Tilphosa had picked up her skill, but he guessed she'd be better than fair at driving a yoke of oxen.

Cashel grinned at the thought as they strode along, but as they got closer to the falls the smile left his face because his skin had started to prickle again. Oh, there wasn't anything dreadful about that; he'd felt it, kind of an itching like when he'd had too much sun, all the way through the woods they'd just left.

It meant wizardry, or anyway it seemed to. Cashel'd gotten used to being without the feeling for the little while he'd been free of it. He didn't guess he could complain, given the way they'd come to this place. He thought of home again and thought of herding sheep.

"Let me go ahead," he murmured to Tilphosa, taking the quarterstaff in both hands. The sailors were far enough back that they wouldn't be getting in his way.

Tilphosa stopped and knelt. She'd been carrying the half-rotted stick ever since she picked it up. She worked at the clay now with the end of it, digging out a stone the size of her foot. It had a fractured edge.

Good girl. A really good girl.

The water draped a sheet of itself over a smooth cliff maybe three times Cashel's height; it pooled, then drained away to the side. A stand of yellow birches grew on the near side of the pool. Cashel stepped through them, his eyes on the water. Because of how the falls roiled the surface, anything could hide in the pool and not be seen till it wanted to be.

"Hello there," said a slurred voice behind him.

Cashel spun, the staff crosswise and his right arm cocked to slam the end forward in a blow that'd bend iron. His mouth was open, but he'd managed to avoid—barely—a shout of surprise. He couldn't see who'd spoken.

"Ooh, he's quick, too," said another voice, again from behind. It was a little clearer than the first. "And so—"

Cashel whirled.

"—big!"

The bark of the nearest birch was stained at head height. You could imagine a face there if you tried... and as Cashel watched in amazement, it was more and more a face. The knot that had squirmed during the last word was now a pair of pouting lips.

"Cashel?" Tilphosa shouted. She'd gotten the rock out of the ground. She held it edge-first in her right hand as she ran toward the grove. "I'm coming!"

"Oh, my, he's gorgeous, isn't he?" called another voice. "Oh, it's been so long!"

All the trees were changing. It wasn't fast, nothing you really saw happening. It was more like the water was going down and uncovering the thing that'd been underneath. In place of bark the trunks showed tawny skin and human features.

"Cashel!" Tilphosa said. She put her back to his. "Are they dangerous?"

"Hey, there's girls in there!" Hook said. He trotted into the grove, holding his sword up beside his ear like he wasn't sure if he'd need it or not. The other sailors joined him, Ousseau a step before the captain.

The birches laughed, a musical sound but with something catlike about it. Their faces were continuing to form, taking on human roundness instead of being outlines that might have been drawn on bare wood.

"Dangerous?" said the one who'd spoken first. She had high cheekbones and lips now the color of leaves just before they turn brown. "Not to you, girlie. We're not interested in you."

"They shouldn't be interested in her either," said a face whose eyes slanted upward at the corners the way the eyes of Serians did. She winked at Ousseau. "We're much nicer than she is, boys. And she's so skinny!"

Hook touched the cheek of the birch beside him. "It's real!" he said. "It's not wood, it's a real girl!"

The face shifted slightly and the lips pursed. They kissed Hook's fingertip.

"Of course we're real," the face said. "Real in every way, for a handsome man like you."

"Cashel, I think we ought to go," Tilphosa said in a small voice. "Sometimes nymphs can be...."

Cashel glanced at her. Her left hand gripped the crystal lens on her necklace, trying to find comfort in the God she'd been raised to worship. She'd stopped speaking, but her lips continued to move in silent prayer.

Mounix caressed a tree with an expression of wonder and delight. Not only were the faces growing clearer, hinted torsos were beginning to appear on the trunks. Ousseau stood open mouthed, listening to what a nymph whispered into his right ear.

"Come on!" Cashel said in sudden decision. "Drink as much as you can and I'll fill my bottle. Then we'll go on back to sleep where the maples were."

"Leave?" Captain Mounix said. He was fondling the trunk as the face above moaned softly with pleasure. "Not just yet. Look at this!"

Cashel grabbed Mounix by the arm and turned him about. "Now," he said. "Now."

Hook looked over his shoulder as if to protest. Cashel said nothing, but Tilphosa made a curt gesture. "Bring him too," she said, nodding to the wounded sailor.

The carpenter gave her a stricken look but touched Ousseau's elbow. Ousseau ignored him until Hook seized his bandaged upper arm.

"Hey!" Ousseau screamed. He slapped Hook away with his good hand, then glared at Tilphosa with the expression of a child about to cry. "What's it to you?" he demanded.

"Come on," Cashel said brusquely. He shifted Mounix in the direction he wanted him to go and gave him a shove; not hard, but hard enough to get him moving. "We'll go to where the water comes out downstream and get our drink."

Cashel and Tilphosa followed the sailors out of the grove stone-faced. Behind them laughed the bright, cruel chorus of the birches.