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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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Ilna could see again, though her head throbbed and slow ripples drifted across the field of her vision. The pain brought on nausea. She fought down the surge of vomit, but it burned the back of her throat before it subsided.
The six Scaled Men squatted in a circle on the afterdeck. In their midst was a small pot buried in a tray of sand. It was the sort of simple brazier used on shipboard to keep live coals without risk to the vessel. They'd brought it out of the small aftercabin where the tray was normally pinned between frames.
The ship rocked in a sluggish current. The yard was raised with the sail furled about it. Ilna couldn't see over the gunwale, but an owl calling in the darkness indicated they were still within the river's winding course.
A Scaled Man wearing a headband of red and green silk pinched powder from an alabaster jar and threw it onto the fire. Purple smoke rose, as luminous as the throbbing afterimages caused by looking directly at the sun.
The creature added more powder as his fellows chanted. Though the powder came from the same container, the second plume was as orange as a fire's heart.
The Scaled Men chanted louder. Rising to their feet and joining hands, they began a grotesque step-dance circling the brazier.
Instead of dissipating, the plumes wove together like breeding serpents. The colored elements remained distinct in the merged column. It rotated sunwise, opposite to the dancers' motion.
The column began to swell, losing definition. The vessel shuddered. Ilna thought they must have gone aground, but she could tell by the motion of stars against the ship's mast that they were still moving. Her flesh tingled, much as it had in the moment when she'd regained consciousness.
Thin smoke enveloped the ship. Ilna sneezed at the dry, astringent odor, but it wasn't anything she would have described as unpleasant.
In the glowing mist the Scaled Men continued to circle, raising and lowering their arms as they stepped to the rhythm of their chanting. Ilna could still see a few bright stars above her.
The ship yawed. The motion had a greasy feel, like stepping on a flagstone coated with black ice. Ilna thought they were capsizing. She tried to sit up, but her wrists and ankles were tied behind her back. She managed to twist to where she could see through a scuttle, though nothing was visible except the haze.
A wave of distortion shimmered through the sky. Something cold as a knifeblade touched Ilna's marrow, then vanished before she could tense for the scream she would never have uttered.
The fog was gone. The hull rocked gently. The cloudless sky had an odd twilight appearance. None of the many stars were in constellations that Ilna recognized.
Muttering among themselves, the Scaled Men loosed the sail with a rattle of blocks. They worked expertly, sailors in all truth as well as in their manner of dress.
Ilna didn't feel a wind. Another pair shook out the small triangular sail on the foremast. It too expanded in the unfelt breeze.
The sea was faintly phosphorescent. The light had color, but it was so pale that not even Ilna's trained senses could be certain whether she saw green or yellow.
Spikes of rock stuck out of the calm sea. Some towered hundreds of feet in the air; others were little more than fangs, black exclamations against the luminous water. The tallest were flat-topped and looked like the metal nails which saw only occasional use in Barca's Hamlet, where wooden tenons served their place.
The ship got under way with a smooth motion that the gusty turbulence of a normal breeze could never impart. Froth curled around the cutwater, drawing eddies in the patch of surface Ilna could see through the scuttle.
The Scaled Man at the steering oar began to sing. His voice was the same shrill toad-croak as the chanting had
been. The words weren't meant for any human throat.
The ship slid onward, carrying llna through the twilight. She was tied too tightly for her fingers to find purchase on the ropes, but by slacking and tensing individual muscles she was able to affect the knots minusculely.
Everything had a pattern. Eventually Ilna would find the pattern that would free her. What would happen then depended on circumstances, but the image in her mind involved six nooses slowly tightening.
T
he causeway was corduroyed, but the logs had rotted so badly that at each step Cashel's feet crunched through after a momentary hesitation. It was as bad as walking on a snowdrift. The bark, like a snowcrust, gouged at Cashel's legs as he withdrew them for the next step. His shins were bleeding.
“Oh, Mistress God, thank You!” Aria cried, raising her hands sky-ward in joy. “Oh, please forgive me for taking so long to understand Your plan!”
The princess and Zahag were light enough to walk on the logs so long as Cashel's weight hadn't smashed them to pulp and splinters first. Cashel had made them go ahead of him ever since the path turned into this causeway across a slough. Aria kept drawing back. Cashel had already decided that he was going to prod her the next time she stopped, and he wasn't going to be overly delicate about
where
he prodded her.
This transport of joy was about as unlikely as Aria sprouting wings. Instead of extending the quarterstaff, Cashel said, “Understand what, mistress? And try to keep moving, please.”
Aria turned and threw her arms around Cashel's neck. “I understand that you're testing me, silly! Like Patient Muzira!”
“There's not been enough sun for it to be sunstroke,” Zahag called down. “My guess is that one of the bugs bit her and she's delirious.”
The ape was searching for eggs in the nest in an upper fork of a tree growing out of the slough twenty paces ahead. Or beetles, Cashel supposed; Zahag wasn't a particularly delicate feeder.
Cashel carefully detached Aria. Zahag's guess about why the princess was behaving this way seemed likely enough, but there weren't any swellings or hectic spots on her skin that Cashel could see.
“Let's keep walking,” he said in a neutral voice. He made a little shooing motion with his left hand.
“Of course, Master Cashel,” Aria said. She attempted a delicate curtsy. Her right foot was on a log that had already crumbled under Cashel's weight. The rim of bark gave way as the princess bent forward; her leg plunged into wood pulp, swamp water, and the insects that thought a mush like that was a
great
place to live.
Aria's expression went from shock through fury—to a bright smile that wasn't entirely forced. Cashel was amazed to see how she took the mishap, though he kept his own face blank. He lifted the girl out so that she wouldn't scratch her leg as well as covering it with muck.
“Of course, Mistress God,” Aria said to the dull blue sky. “I understand that the test must go on longer.”
She patted Cashel on the cheek—for a horrified instant he'd thought she was going to kiss him—and danced on off down the causeway. Shaking his head, Cashel resumed crunching his way along behind her.
Something belched in the stagnant water. Cashel glanced toward the sound. In a normal swamp it would have been a bubble of foul-smelling gas bursting to leave ripples and a flag of mud in the water. Here he stared back at a creature with human arms and its head and body
all together, like a face drawn on an egg. It picked its triangular teeth with a fingernail, grinning like a human after a satisfying meal.
Cashel sighed. There wasn't any law against being ugly, especially here. If the thing crawled up the causeway at them, Cashel would see if it smashed like the egg it resembled. None of the other monsters in the water had attacked, though, so he didn't expect his one would.
Zahag hopped from the tree and ambled to Cashel's side. His jaws worked on the last of whatever he'd found in the nest. The ape was their forager. He had a better eye for potential food than Cashel, and several times his broad, flat nose detected poison in fruits and mushrooms. Zahag made sure to gulp down particularly tasty bits before he brought the remainder to be divided.
That was fair. The ape's idea of “particularly tasty” wasn't Cashel's, and offering Aria her choice of—for example—a handful of grubs would give her dry heaves for the rest of the day.
“Have you got a good look at the bugs here?” Zahag asked. He eyed a miniature squadron buzzing low enough over the marsh to riffle the black water.
“Yes,” said Cashel. He didn't want to talk about it. They weren't insects, though a number had lacy wings or jointed legs like the bugs in Barca's Hamlet. Some of them had riders who looked awfully human, except they were about the size of a fingernail.
“They're quick,” Zahag said, “but they're not as quick as me!” He smacked his lips with gusto.
Cashel grimaced and stumped onward. The line of smashed logs in his wake stretched all the way to the western horizon. He wondered if anybody repaired the causeway. Somebody'd built it, after all.
“So who's this Patient Muzira that you're testing?” Zahag asked. The ape was walking with a rolling gait on his short hind legs alone. He stayed a half step ahead so that he wouldn't be on the next log when Cashel's foot plopped through it like a battering ram.
“Never heard of her,” Cashel said. Garric would probably know, or Sharina. Not that his friends were much like the princess in any way
except
that they'd all read a lot of books.
Aria turned and continued walking—backward. That wasn't the best idea on a corduroy surface, but Cashel wasn't going to complain so long as the girl kept moving. She could turn somersaults if she liked.
“Patient Muzira was the most perfect lady ever,” Aria said. Her face shone with animation. “She was so perfect that the greatest king in all the land decided to marry her, but first he carried her off and treated her like a slave. He made her sleep on the ground and gave her only—”
Aria missed a step and toppled backward. Cashel stuck his staff out for the girl to grab, but she didn't know to do that. She landed on her back with a thump. Water spurted from the soggy logs.
“Eek!” she cried.
Cashel leaned forward and set her on her feet again. The good thing about Aria's dress being so filthy was that at least he didn't have to listen to a rant about this latest stain.
“My, wasn't that clumsy of me?” Aria said. She tittered a laugh. It sounded as false as the stories Katchin the Miller, Cashel's uncle, used to tell about his private dinners with Count Lascarg when he went to Carcosa.
Zahag stared at her, then looked at Cashel. Cashel shrugged.
“Anyway,” Aria resumed, “the king made Muzira scrub all the floors of the palace and didn't give her anything to eat except lentils with worms in them.”
“Yeah, that's a nice thing about lentils,” Zahag said reminiscently. “A lot of times you get your meat right along with your vegetable.”
“And after seven whole years,” Aria said, ignoring the comment or perhaps blessedly unaware of it, “the king called Muzira out in front of all the people and ordered her to kiss his feet before he beat her in public with a
horsewhip. She did, and then he told her all the discomfort had been a test to see if she was worthy to be her bride. She'd passed, so he married her right then and made her queen!”
“That's disgusting!” Cashel said. There were bad husbands in Barca's Hamlet—more than there were good ones, if you listened to Ilna; not that she had any use for the wives either—but the sort of behavior Aria chirpily described was unimaginable. Even the biggest drunken brute had to sleep sometime, though the odds were that a few of the huskier men in the borough would have taught the fellow a lesson before then. In a rural village, everybody's business
was
everybody's business.
Aria started walking again. “I wonder, though, Master Cashel?” she said, this time without turning to look at him. “You aren't the king yourself, are you? You're his faithful servant.”
Cashel cleared his throat. “I'm a shepherd,” he said. “I don't know any kings, Princess. Well, your mother's a queen, sort of, I guess.”
“I understand,” Aria said. “You can't say. Well, I won't tell anybody that I figured it out before it was time.”
“She's doolally, huh?” Zahag muttered.
Cashel shrugged again. “Seems that way, I guess,” he said.
Boy, he'd take it, though. Aria crazy was a lot nicer to be around than she was in her right mind.
In the far distance, the sun glinted on the peaks of high mountains. Last night Cashel thought he'd seen blue light winking from that direction. He didn't know how far it was, but he guessed they'd make it eventually.
He plodded on with a
crunch/squelch
at every step.
Eventually. Which was good enough.
 
 
A bird in the canopy trilled variations around a central theme as Sharina sharpened the Pewle knife. It never repeated
itself and never—it seemed to her—took a breath.
Sharina drew the blade across a block of fine-grained basalt from the creek, edge toward her, in long, smooth strokes. She paused as she reached for the dampened wad of moss she used to keep the stone's surface wet. It struck Sharina that in this forest she couldn't be sure that what she was hearing was really a bird.
Haft was a backwater, and Barca's Hamlet was isolated from even the minor alarms and excursions that took place in Carcosa. Life in the borough went on much as it had done for centuries. Individuals were born and died, but the round of activities stayed much the same.
Now Sharina was out in the wider world where things were different to begin with and were changing besides. She couldn't
assume
things the way she had in the past. She might get killed by doing that—and worse, she, might fail the ones she loved and who depended on her.
She'd assumed that a man who looked and sounded like Nonnus had to be Nonnus. She'd stopped searching for Cashel in order to follow the impostor.
Sharina felt the tears start.
Oh Lady
,
I am so alone. I am so alone.
Nothing that she could have described changed, but Sharina knew suddenly that she was being watched. That wasn't the sort of companionship she'd been hoping for, but it gave her something to do besides cry about the past.
Sharina got up from where she'd been working in the patch of sunlight that fell near Ansule's grave. Wiping the knife's blade on fluff she'd pulled from a large seed case, she walked nonchalantly past the headboard she'd carved with a figure of the Lady.
The path to Hanno's tree nest wasn't really marked, but the hunter had cut a few rhododendron stems off flush with the ground. The remainder of the thicket twined dark leaves and sweet magenta flowers above the tunnel, but a human could easily pass through what would otherwise have been a solid barrier.
Sharina ducked into the rhododendrons. She crawled
halfway down the passage, then hunched out of sight in the nook she'd made before going to sleep the night before. Those watching her would have to come through the thicket one by one, and the leader would be almost on the point of the Pewle knife before he realized—
Someone was behind her.
Sharina twisted. She'd thought the rhododendrons were impenetrable, but the bulk among the twisted stems proved that she'd been fatally—
“Morning, missie,” Hanno said. He was belly to the ground. “I thought I'd surprise you since you hadn't listened when I told you to shimmy up the tree. Guess I been so used to the Monkeys that I forgot there's folks beside me who know what they're doing in these woods.”
She couldn't imagine how a man so big had wormed through the thicket, but even Hanno had had to leave his great spear behind. To reach her with his butcher knife would require that he crawl closer yet; in the time that took, Sharina could have run out the open passage to freedom of a sort.
“I didn't know it was you,” Sharina said in a shaky voice. “I'm glad you're back, Hanno.”
She nodded to the passage, then backed down it to the clearing. The hunter joined her moments later. She hadn't heard the leaves rustle this time either.
Hanno glanced at the graves and the whetstone; he smiled with grim approval. He looked much as he had when he vanished into the forest two days ago, but he carried a set of steel weapons besides his own: a slenderbladed spear, and a short-hafted axe with a head whose smooth curve made it a thing of lethal beauty. Because the helve balanced the light head, the axe could be either thrown or swung.
“Ansule don't need his gear now,” Hanno said with the deadpan humor Sharina already knew to expect, “but I didn't figure to leave it with the Monkeys.”
He tossed down a crude bag. He hadn't been carrying
that when he left either. “Not that the Monkeys needed it neither, when I left them.”
Sharina bit her lower lip. She knew what she was going to find, but she squatted to open the bag anyway. It was a swatch of knobbly rawhide which she supposed must have come from a reptile. The corners had been twisted over the contents, then bound with a length of sinew.

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