Mistress of the Catacombs (33 page)

"Quickly!" said Metron.

Garric felt the beginning of another shift, of down preparing to become a plunge of fifty feet to the base of the tower. He sprinted forward, clearing his sword. If Thalemos couldn't hold on by himself, Thalemos was going to have to learn how to fly.

The snake twisted like a straw touched by flame. It couldn't reach Tint but it battered her against the side of the tower. She hung on at the first impact, but the second flung her loose. She sailed through the air, already balling her limbs beneath her for a safe landing.

The snake struck, snatching the beastgirl out of the air. Her bleat ended in a crunch of bones. The snake curled its forebody to the ground, lifting its head slightly. It tossed the frail corpse and caught it again, headfirst this time for easy swallowing.

Garric felt the ground rising to meet him. He jumped, flexing his knees, and fell the last ten feet without harm. The shock pulled Thalemos away from him, but that was a side-benefit. Garric stepped toward the snake.

"Get over the wall!" Metron was saying. "It won't climb the wall!"

The snake's jaw hinge dislocated, letting its mouth open still wider. Its left eye glittered at Garric beneath spike-scaled brows. A membrane slid sideways, wiping the cornea. Only Tint's feet were still visible.

Garric slashed as though he were splitting wood, striking the small scales on the back of the snake's neck; bone grated beneath his edge. A spasm rippled down the whole long body, throwing distant plantings about as if a tornado had struck the garden.

The snake twisted onto its back, exposing its broad, pale belly scales. Its midbody struck the tower with a whack like cliffs meeting. Someone in the street shouted.

Tint's feet vanished. The slight bulge of the beastgirl's body shivered farther down the serpent's throat, drawn by reflexes inexorable even in death. Garric paused with his sword lifted for another blow; he shot the blade home in its scabbard instead.

He turned. Thalemos was watching aghast. Garric caught his arm.

"Follow me!" he said as he started back the way he'd entered the garden. "Put your feet where I do!"

As Garric ran, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. If he missed his path for the tears, then Tint would have died for nothing.

* * *

Though Sharina stood beside the flutist who blew time for the sailors launching the nearby trireme, even she could scarcely hear the notes over the bedlam of the fleet loading. Either the sailors had better hearing or, more likely, they could have kept pace in their sleep by virtue of their repetitive training.

Across the U-shaped Arsenal, another trireme splashed into the water. The men who'd launched her with block and tackle gave over to a separate crew on tow ropes, drawing the ship to the boarding quay. There most of the hundred-plus crewmen waited, holding their oars upright like a thicket of blighted saplings. Only the helmsman and a dozen rowers were aboard, ready to fend the lightly-built vessel away from trouble.

Pulleys squealed; pine keels shrieked in a chorus against the polished limestone draw-ways, despite the buckets of water passed hand to hand up the ramps and poured at the top for lubrication; petty officers snarled commands at men who weren't where they were supposed to be or were sloppy in getting there; and louder than all the rest, the huge crowd of watching civilians chattered a deafening susurrus of excitement.

King Carus broke away from his circle of advisors and walked the short distance to where Sharina stood. He wore the field uniform of this day: short tunic, shoulder cloak with hood, and sandals laced to mid calf. He'd wanted to don the breeches and high boots in which he'd campaigned when he was in his own flesh, but Liane had pointed out that the best that would do was puzzle people. Other possibilities started at, "Prince Garric has gone mad," and went downward from there.

"Are you impressed?" Carus said, bending his lips to Sharina's ear.

She didn't know what he expected her to say, so she told the simple truth: "It's confusing. And it's not just me, lots of people are confused so it's taking a long time."

She didn't point, but the clot of soldiers on the boarding quay across the harbor was self-evident. The two banks of oarsmen had boarded smoothly, but the heavy infantry who'd be riding as passengers in the inboard banks tripped angrily over their fellows and the oar looms as they tried to reach places in the center of the vessel.

A flash of light made Sharina squint, then shade her eyes with a hand to see better. Lord Waldron himself was on the boarding dock, using his bare sword as a pointer. After she'd seen him, Sharina could even make out the rumble of the old soldier's furious commands.

"Right," said Carus approvingly. "Though they're doing better than I'd expected. If efficiency were all that mattered, I'd have taken the ships downriver with just their crews and boarded the infantry off temporary stages at the Pool."

An officer was trying to get past the Blood Eagles screening Carus; his breastplate was not only gilded but picked out with six very respectable jewels. The fellow's voice was rising.

Carus paused in what he was saying to Sharina and turned his head, glancing toward the guard commander and the irate officer beyond him. The latter cried, "Prince Garric—"

"Lord Ghosli," Carus said, thundering above the general noise, "get aboard the Lady of Valles now or surrender your command—and surrender your honor as well, so far as I'm concerned! Do you hear me, milord?"

Sharina blinked. Lord Waldron across the harbor could hear that order. Ghosli looked aghast, then furious. He turned and stamped away.

Carus shook his head in disgust. "Shouldn't have said that, should I?" he muttered to Sharina. "Ghosli wants to take his horse aboard, can you believe that? But he uses his own money to buy extras for his men, and his regiment'd follow wherever he led them because of that. I shouldn't have snapped his head off."

Sharina cleared her throat; she didn't have to repeat what Carus had already said, so instead she put her hand on his elbow and remarked, "It's my duty to remind you to be Prince Garric, your highness, so the fault's mine."

As she'd expected, Carus looked stricken at the thought his outburst had hurt her. Quickly Sharina went on, "Why aren't you boarding at the Pool then?"

The just-loaded trireme moved away from the quay on short strokes by a dozen oarsmen. The slender hull wobbled badly as the infantrymen seated themselves on the cramped inner benches, but the noncoms were sorting matters out. A tow crew slid another vessel into place.

Carus didn't answer for a moment. Instead he put his fists on his hipbones and stood arms akimbo as he viewed the scene. A broad grin spread across his face. Though his laughter didn't boom out the way Sharina half expected, she knew it wasn't far beneath the surface.

Two vessels moving downstream on the push of the current started to converge; their officers' attention was turned to the disorder inboard. The crowd pointed and began to shout at increasing volume. The starboard trireme heeled as its helmsman leaned into the tiller of his steering oar; bellowed warnings from that ship woke the crew of the second to the danger also. Men in the bows of either vessel used oars as poles to fend off the other hull.

An oar cracked under the misuse, but the ships steadied on their separate courses with no greater damage than that. The crowd's concern turned to cheers.

"That's why I'm doing it, Sharina," Carus said, pitching his voice to carry to her but not beyond. "I'm letting everybody, pikeman and swordsman, soldier and civilian, see that it's one army and one kingdom."

He gestured with a sweep of his left arm, fingers straight. "There's men from Haft and Shengy and Seres aboard these ships," he said. "They're going off to deal with a danger that threatens every citizen of the Isles—whether or not they can afford to pay taxes. The people here can see that, and they'll tell the story to others. We're rebuilding the kingdom at this moment."

Carus put his great hand on Sharina's shoulder, steadying himself against a sudden surge of emotions. "When I was king in my own name, girl," he said, his voice and arm trembling, "I talked about my army and my kingdom. As the Shepherd knows, I smashed every foe I faced, smashed them and ground their bones into the mud—until the day I died and the kingdom died with me."

Sharina put her hand flat on the hand of the dead king. She kept her eyes on the harbor so she wouldn't embarrass him with her concern.

"Garric knows better than that, and I know better than that now," Carus said. "It's the army and the kingdom of everybody in the Isles. Kings who remember that don't have to rule with their fists and their swords. And when they die, it doesn't mean chaos for all."

Carus laughed, shakily but still a gusty release of tension. "Mind, girl," he went on, "this skin is a borrowed suit. I intend to return it to your brother with no worse than a scar or two that he might've gotten tripping into the cutlery when he got up from the table. Eh?"

A trumpet blew; the last trireme from the opposite arm of the Arsenal now floated in the harbor, ready to begin boarding. Only The King of the Isles remained under the shed roof on this side, the great five-banked flagship that Sharina and Tenoctris would board along with the king.

"But until Garric comes back," Carus said, letting his voice rise more than he probably realized, "while I'm watching the kingdom for him—"

His hand gripped his sword and drew it in a shimmer of sunlight. The crowd bellowed in delight.

"Until then," Carus shouted over the sound of thousands of throats, "by the Shepherd! the kingdom's enemies will die in the mud as surely as they did in my day!"

* * *

Cashel stretched, enjoying the light which dappled the ground beneath the gnarled trees. He'd awakened at sunrise, but he'd been tired and Tilphosa was worn down to a nub of the girl he'd helped ashore during the storm a seeming lifetime ago. This grove of ancient olives had been a good place for them to catch up on their rest.

Tilphosa had never been plump, but it bothered Cashel to see the way the girl's cheeks had sunk inward in the time he'd known her. Her alert interest in all around her concealed her condition while she was awake, but she looked like a victim wasted by the flux now when her head was pillowed on springy branches covered by a corner of her cloak.

Cashel rose quietly and began shaking fruit from low-hanging branches. He stretched out the skirt of his tunic as a basket. To avoid the noise he didn't rap the limbs with his staff, but the rustle of leaves woke Tilphosa up anyway. She jumped to her feet, her teeth clenched. She was holding the broken sword close to her body ready to stab whichever threat was approaching.

"Oh!" Tilphosa blurted as she lost her balance. She toppled backward, trying to grab a tree for support.

Cashel let the olives spill and lunged to catch her. He caught her all right—when he needed to move, he was a lot faster than people expected—but the jerk he gave her right arm might have hurt as bad as the scrape she'd have gotten on the treebark.

Tilphosa straightened and he released her. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'd been having a dream."

She smiled wryly, massaging her right elbow with the other hand. Without meeting Cashel's eyes she continued, "A nightmare, I suppose. About a snake trying to swallow me."

She looked up at him finally, still forcing a smile. Her left hand caressed the crystal disk on her necklace. "I don't think it was sent by the Mistress."

Cashel squatted, thinking he'd pick up the olives he'd lost when he grabbed for the girl. He had to give it up as a bad job, because most of them had sailed out of the grove when he jumped. He rose and brushed his staff through the tips of the nearest branches. The twigs were heavy with fruit, almost ripe; olives dropped like a soft hailstorm about Cashel and the girl.

"I haven't seen any snakes about here," he said, popping olives into his mouth and stripping the meat before spitting out the pits. Tilphosa was more ladylike, holding each olive in her hand and nibbling the meat off it, but she was hungry too. "There aren't any birds, either, and that's funny. I'd think these trees'd be thick with daws and magpies, but I don't hear a single one."

Tilphosa had put the broken sword—the dagger, you could call it; the blade had snapped into a point of sorts—under her sash, but at Cashel's comment her fingers toyed with the brass hilt again. "Cashel?" she said. "Do these trees just grow or were they planted?"

Cashel eyed the grove carefully. "I'd guess somebody was keeping them up, whether or not they planted them," he said. "There's no fruit on the ground except what I knocked down."

He cleared his throat. Olive trees, even very big ones, don't form a solid canopy; the ground should've been covered in grass. Instead he saw ivy and wildflowers. The soft leaves weren't being browsed by animals, neither domestic goats nor voles and rabbits.

"I guess we could get on, now," Cashel said. The sun was halfway to zenith, time and past to be moving; not that there was any clear place to be moving to. "If you're up to it, I mean?"

Tilphosa smiled broadly around a mouthful of olive; juice trickled from a corner of her mouth and she wiped herself with the back of her hand. "I'm fine, Cashel," she said. "I was just dizzy from jumping up the way I did."

Cashel wasn't sure that was the truth or anyway the whole truth, but if it was what Tilphosa wanted to say, then he wasn't about to call her a liar. "Walking toward the east has got us here," he said, "and it's a better place than some we've seen. I guess we should keep on going."

Tilphosa nodded with determination, her mouth again full of olives. She held the skirt of her outer tunic up awkwardly to carry a further supply. Cashel wondered if the girl—if Lady Tilphosa—had ever used her tunic that way before Cashel demonstrated the method a few moments before.

She set off quickly, apparently to show that she was in good shape. Cashel smiled. All it proved was that Tilphosa had a good heart, which he'd known before now. "If you'll slow down, mistress," he said, "I'll be able to keep up with you. I'm used to following sheep, remember."

"Oh," Tilphosa said, looking back in concern. She saw his smile and blushed. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"We'll get there," Cashel said as they fell into step together. "Wherever it is, I mean."

Tilphosa turned to look at him as they walked. "Where do you want it to be, Cashel?" she asked. "What are you looking for?"

He shrugged as he popped another olive into his mouth. "Well, the way home," he said, his words a little slurred at the beginning. "I'll get there. I've always had a good sense of direction."

He smiled broadly at Tilphosa. "But I guess I'll see you safe to your Prince Thalemos, first, mistress," he added. "We'll find the place you want to be, never fear."

"The place I want to be," Tilphosa repeated without emphasis. Her eyes were on the ground. When she looked up again her expression was hard. Her voice rang as she said, "Cashel, I can't trust Metra. I'm not even sure I can trust...."

Her face worked like she'd bitten something sour—or something worse than that. She continued firmly, "I'm not even sure I can trust the Mistress. What if we reach Prince Thalemos and find he's in league with the Archai? They aren't friends to human beings, whatever Metra seems to think!"

Cashel shrugged again. "I guess things'll work out," he said. He didn't know what else to say. This was the sort of conversation that other people liked to have but he'd never seen much use for.

"Do things always work out for you, Master Cashel?" the girl said. "Because I haven't been so lucky myself!"

He'd finished the olives so he had both hands free again. He wiped his left palm on his tunic and let his fingers find their places on the smooth hickory of his quarterstaff.

"Things pretty much work out, yes, mistress," Cashel said. He started the staff in a slow spin off to his left side to keep it clear of Tilphosa. "Maybe not at first, but after a while I generally find a way."

Tilphosa made a sound, a funny kind of whoop. He looked over in concern, but she waved her left hand at him for reassurance. She was laughing, he guessed, though it still bothered him because he didn't see why.

"It's all right, Cashel," Tilphosa said through her laughter. "I'll just trust things to work out, you see? So long as I'm with you, I'll trust things to work out."

Maybe because Tilphosa had asked if the olives had been planted, Cashel began noticing signs of cultivation immediately as they resumed their way eastward. There was nothing overt, no stone walls nor grain growing from plowed furrows, but a mixture of tulips and periwinkles wandered like a stream of red and blue across the landscape in a fashion that Cashel couldn't imagine without cultivation. The boxwoods beyond them, though not trimmed into a hedge, still grew too tightly for nature.

"Cashel—" the girl said. Then, frowning, she went on, "No, I guess not. I thought I saw somebody behind those little trees, but there isn't room to hide."

Cashel looked. "They're pears, it looks to me," he said. The trees were off to the right of the course he'd been setting, but there was no reason not to bend a trifle in that direction. He angled toward them, stepping behind Tilphosa.

"Pear trees that small?" she asked. She fell in with him again, this time on his other side. He noticed her hand rested on the daggerhilt.

The trees were no taller than his shoulder, but they were perfectly formed and full of ripe fruit. The soil had been lightly turned and composted around each one in a circle that would just contain the branches, about where the rootlets would reach. There was somebody here who knew trees, no doubt about that, and who used what he knew.

"I haven't seen them like this before," Cashel said, "but the fruit's full sized. Here—the juice'll be good till we find a stream to drink from."

He twisted a pear from its branch and handed it to Tilphosa. As he did so, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He jerked his head around quickly, but even so he saw only a motion rather than a shape.

"Cashel, what was it?" Tilphosa said, her voice clear. She'd drawn her dagger.

"I don't know," he said, frowning. "It ran into the hollies there. I don't guess it could've been bigger than a rabbit and slip through them like that, but it seemed...."

He picked a pear for himself without looking down at the tree. "Well, anyway...," he said. "Let's keep on going. I'd like to find water, and chances are there'll be a path or something we can follow."

Cashel looked about them and frowned. He wiped his fingers clean of sticky pear juice on his tunic before he took the quarterstaff in both hands again.

"I don't think there's a tree or bush I can see that people aren't caring for," he said as he considered the landscape. "There must be quite a village close around here. I've seen more wildness in the palace gardens in Valles."

"It doesn't look like a garden to me," Tilphosa said, frowning as well. She wasn't so much arguing as making a comment.

"It's a different sort of taking care," Cashel explained. "It's doing the things the plants want, do you see? Feeding the roots and trimming off dead limbs, but not making things look like people want in a garden."

He cleared his throat. "Let's keep going," he said. "I mean, if you—"

"Yes, of course," Tilphosa said, stepping off briskly. She didn't put her dagger away, though Cashel didn't feel anything hostile in the setting. He'd have been hard put to imagine a more peaceful place.

The ground rose slightly; as soon as they came over the rounded crest they saw the village. It was laid out in a circle, more huts than Cashel could have counted on his fingers twice over. They looked like straw beehives, though they were woven of leaves instead of proper straw thatching.

"Have you seen any grass since we woke up this morning?" Cashel asked.

"I don't remember," Tilphosa said. "Does it matter?"

He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I haven't seen any myself—nor any grain or reeds either. It's just... well, different from what I'm used to."

He cleared his throat. "That's probably why it bothers me," he said. That was true enough: "different" generally meant "bad" to a peasant, whether it was the weather or the way a neighbor offered to pay you for the work you'd done for him last season.

There weren't any animals bigger than bugs in this place either. Not except for the folks who'd built the huts, and he hadn't seen them yet except for maybe a flash in the pear orchard.

He and Tilphosa walked toward the village. There was no sound of people and no woodsmoke either, which was surprising too. Smoke always lingers, especially since Cashel hadn't been around a fire in some days and his nostrils were primed to notice it.

The huts were side by side, as close together as rooms in a city. Houses in Barca's Hamlet weren't big, but even the poorest people had more space between them and their neighbors than these folks lived. There were no windows. The doorways were small—even for the size of the huts—and faced the empty courtyard in the center.

Cashel walked around the curve of the village. The only passage into the courtyard was on the eastern side.

"Is anybody here?" Tilphosa asked. She held her elbows close to her sides as she looked about herself, like she was worried that she'd bump something nasty if she wasn't careful.

Cashel frowned, then let his face smooth. Tilphosa wasn't asking a fool question: she was saying that the silence worried her and that she'd like Cashel to say it was all right... which it was, as far as he could tell.

"Somewhere close, I'd guess," he said. He pointed to the drying racks fixed to the back of the huts. They held fruits and vegetables of all sorts, though he didn't see any meat. "Some of those apple slices haven't been cut more than an hour."

Cashel eased through the alley into the courtyard, brushing the hut to either side though he moved sideways. He held his staff high, to clear the domed roofs and just possibly so he could swing it if he needed to.

"Given the size they are," he said, "and the size we are—"

He smiled slightly to the girl following him, for she too was a giant compared to the folk who'd built these huts.

"—I don't blame them for being nervous about whether we're friends."

Tilphosa knelt to look into a hut's open doorway. She must not have seen anything to interest her, because she rose with a dissatisfied expression and faced Cashel. Her mouth started to open for another needless question, then spread in a smile instead.

"Those are willows further on the way we've been going," Cashel said, matching her smile with one of his own. He dipped his staff toward the east; not far away a line of trees rose above the shrubbery. "There's likely a stream there; open water anyway. Maybe when the folks here see we're not doing any harm, they'll come out to see us."

They started off again. He hadn't yet seen a path, not even the little tracks that voles made running through a meadow.