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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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Gothelm's limbs thrashed. His voice rose into a despairing wail like that of a rabbit with its legs in a snare. The water coiled like the tongue of a toad, sucking Gothelm with it into the stone mouth.
The gargoyle's jaws closed. The scream stopped. Bones crunched.
Garric swallowed. He'd thought a quick killing would be the result he preferred.
The stone face turned and looked at them. The jaws opened and belched. The gargoyle and all the landscape around it faded from view. Garric and his friends were looking at the flame-eyed mansion across a stretch of cobblestones no wider than a man in good health could leap.
On the stones lay half a red leather boot, bitten off in the middle of the shaft. Gothelm's foot and part of his leg were still inside.
“We've learned all we can here,” Tenoctris said quietly. “And I for one will be glad to put some distance between myself and what we've seen.”
 
 
Ilna os-Kenset was aching, hungry, and angry. Still, when she cast her mind back she couldn't remember many times that she wouldn't have described herself as angry about something. She'd ached and gone hungry often enough too.
She barked a laugh. The sailor trimming the sail looked down at her. She thought of kicking his ankles but nodded instead, the sort of limited courtesy she'd have offered a neighbor in Barca's Hamlet.
The sailor wrapped the luff rope another turn around the bitt and walked forward. The Scaled Men had faces like frogs. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking or whether they thought at all.
Ilna had enough slack that she could have sat up, but that would have warned her captors of what she was doing to their knots. She was normally an active person; being forced to lie on her side made her stiff in every muscle.
The sun was slower making its way between the horizons than Ilna was used to. For the most part the sail shaded her, but even the direct light was reddish and only vaguely warm.
Her captors had twice let her drink by dipping a rag in a puncheon of water and putting it in her mouth so she could chew the moisture out. They'd have had to let her sit to use a cup, and they were taking no chances.
The water tasted foul. The rag had come from the breechclout of a man who'd been killed by a falling spar a decade earlier—the fabric told its story to Ilna whether she would or no. The drink would keep her alive; that was all that mattered.
She particularly wanted to survive for the next while. She had scores to settle.
Something drifted across the sky high above, shadowing them. She looked up. Among the clouds hung a creature with a pink body many times the size of the ship. Diaphanous wings undulated along both its sides like the fins of a turbot. Ilna couldn't see any eyes or other sensory
organs, but jointed rods and cavities trembled within the pink envelope.
The sailors grunted in agitation. One of them opened a chest built into the front of the deckhouse and distributed arms. The sailor who took the crossbow cocked it by putting his foot through the loop on the forestock and pulling back the ears of the short wooden bow until the cord slipped over the nut of the trigger mechanism.
It didn't look like a particularly powerful weapon to Ilna. She guessed the ordinary bow that Garric and most Haft countrymen used for hunting would send an arrow farther as well as being quicker to use.
But only an archer could use a simple bow with skill. Any fool could point a crossbow and send a missile in more or less the right direction by pulling the trigger bar.
Ilna sniffed. Human beings were good at finding ways around their lack of skill.
The creature took no notice of the ship. It entered a drifting cloud not much larger than itself, then came out the other side. Vaporous tatters quivered behind in the currents stirred by its long fins. The rest of the cloud had been swallowed.
The Scaled Men became calmer. The crossbowman uncocked his weapon and returned it to the arms chest, though several of the others continued to wear cutlasses hanging from loops on their broad leather belts.
Ilna heard a rhythmic thumping from the hold beneath her. There was a voice as well, but she couldn't hear well enough through the cover even to be sure that it was human.
The sound wasn't a major concern to her. Whoever or whatever made the commotion obviously couldn't free itself, so she needn't expect help from that quarter.
She continued working on her knots. A sailor was generally watching her, making the job more difficult, but Ilna had never expected her tasks to be easy.
She did expect them to be successfully completed, though. This one would be no different from any of the others.
C
ashel didn't know what had awakened him. It was a warm night and quiet except for the ape beside him. Zahag snored. Also his lips flapped each time he breathed out. Aria still complained about the noise, though it no longer kept her from falling asleep.
To Cashel it was a homey sound. Dantle—Dantle Longleg, not Dantle Squint at the other end of the borough—had a sow who snored just the same way while she slept under the wagon shelter beside the sheepfold. Many a time Cashel had heard that snore as he helped Dantle shear.
He got to his feet. Though he moved quietly, he was still surprised that Zahag didn't wake up. Cashel had seen the ape jump from midsnore to grab a scorpion crawling across the pebbles an arm's length from his head.
Zahag had swallowed the scorpion, then looked up to check whether his companions had seen him bolt the tidbit. Cashel wouldn't even have smashed the creature with his bare hand, let alone eaten it, so he'd pretended he hadn't been watching.
They were out of the swamp, and the landscape, though dry, wasn't the desert they'd found when they first escaped from Aria's prison. Cashel wouldn't have wanted to pasture sheep here, but goats shouldn't have a problem. He'd seen squared stones near the path today, the first sign they'd had of people since the causeway.
Of course, he couldn't be sure “people” was quite the word.
A fox whooped in the distance, sounding like something much bigger. Cashel slid the quarterstaff between
his hands, reminding himself of how it felt. He still missed the hickory staff he'd left in Folquin's palace, but this one was serviceable.
He didn't like goats. They were smart, but brains weren't high on Cashel's list of virtues. Goats had nasty, peevish temperaments and were prone to doing things out of pure cussedness. A sheep would walk through an open gate to browse a garden. Goats would crawl through a fence that looked proof against mice and nibble the greens to the ground, even if there was plenty of proper fodder available.
Protecting Aria reminded Cashel powerfully of the times he'd had to tend goats.
The coals of the brushwood fire flared suddenly, then sank to their previous dull glow. Flames rose again, but this time they were a blue as pale an autumn sky. There was no sound at all.
“Zahag,” Cashel said. He didn't exactly shout, but even Aria—who slept like a seal—should have jumped to her feet. “Princess.”
His companions didn't awaken. Their chests were still. The only movement in the night was the fire's unnatural flickering.
Cashel heard the soft crunch of feet on dry soil. He looked into the darkness but saw nothing. Crossing his staff before him he called, “Who's there?”
Three women, not quite giants but as tall as Cashel could reach at full stretch, came into the firelight holding hands. Though they went barefoot like peasants, they wore tiaras and their robes were of silk so fine that it flowed like water.
“We've been waiting for you, Cashel,” the woman in the middle said. Her hair must have been ash blond because its present color was the same ghostly blue as the firelight. “Come dance with us.”
The woman on the left had black hair and white skin. “We should be four when we dance, Cashel,” she said in a voice as melodious as a distant trumpet.
They were beautiful. They moved with as much natural grace as Sharina did. When Cashel looked at them, he found it difficult to remember Sharina's face.
“Where do you live?” he said. He stretched his leg out and prodded Zahag in the ribs. It was like toeing a rock. The ape's hairy side was as hard and cold as a statue's.
“We don't live here, Cashel,” the third woman said. She beckoned him with her free hand. He felt a pull like the current of a brook at flood. “We came to visit you.”
“Dance with us,” the women said together. They began to circle slowly, stepping with the majesty of rams preparing to fight.
“No,” Cashel said. He tried to speak, anyway. He wasn't sure the intention made it as far as his lips.
The women joined hands as they danced, then parted. Each in succession pirouetted, but all the time they continued the common sunwise circle. Each gestured to Cashel as she turned.
Dance with us … .
Cashel couldn't see the moon, or the fire behind him when he tried to turn his head. The dance was quicker now. Over the calm, lovely women lay a pale light that cast no shadows.
Cashel held the quarterstaff before him as though it were a rail overhanging a pit. The dance was approaching its climax. Motion continued but the three women were still and imperious in his mind's eye. They gestured to him.
Join us, Cashel. We should be four for the dance. Join us … .
Cashel forced his head away. Aria was curled in the bowl of earth he'd scraped for her beside the fire, sleeping like the dead. He didn't like Aria, but she was in this place because Cashel or-Kenset had brought her here.
Sharina was a faint memory. His other friends and the struggle against Malkar's agents were empty names like fragments from an epic Garric read to him as they tended sheep in Barca's Hamlet.
Duty remained.
“I can't,” Cashel whispered. “I'm needed here.”
The dance accelerated. There were no figures any longer, only a pillar of indistinct light.
The light expanded slowly, enveloped Cashel, and lulled him into dreamless sleep.
 
 
“We've done as you asked,” Royhas said. “Over a hundred of our agents are coming into the city with the rumor. By this time tomorrow, there won't be a soul in Valles who hasn't heard that King Carus is returning to put paid to the queen.”
He laughed cynically. “They'll believe it too, the mob will. And they're the ones we need.”
The bell on a barge riding at anchor rang nearby. They were walking along the River Beltis, down which goods from the interior reached Valles. Royhas didn't understand why Garric had insisted on meeting this way rather than in his mansion or at least a carriage. The noble's bodyguards were a dozen paces behind and not happy with the situation; though even unguarded, two sober men with swords would probably be safe enough from the low-. class footpads who frequented the river path.
To Garric's right, an embankment supported the rear of a temple to the Lady of Abundance. The Beltis flooded in early spring; the great limestone blocks of the retaining wall were mud-stained for twenty feet above the roadway. This temple and the other public buildings to either side of it faced Merchants' Plaza—the center of Valles when it was a village.
“Some of them will believe,” Garric said. “More will believe when I appear. And eventually—”
He looked at his companion. He didn't speak for a moment to draw Royhas' eyes.
“—everyone on Ornifal and across the Isles will believe and join us, I hope. I don't believe in golden ages, Royhas. But I do believe in a government that tries to give everyone justice, and a King of the Isles who rules.”
Royhas was both intelligent and active; there wouldn't have been a conspiracy without him, though none of the others would have granted him primacy. His foot hesitated for a heartbeat; then he resumed walking.
Garric and the noble didn't have a linkman to light their way. The moon was sufficient here along the river, since the sky wasn't blocked by buildings rising shoulder to shoulder.
“You don't talk like a peasant from Haft,” Royhas said. His eyes were on the road in front of him. The hood of his cape hid his face from Garric. “You haven't from the beginning, as a matter of fact. I wonder if I should simply have had you buried in the woods, as I swore to Valence that I did?”
Garric chuckled. At least the sound came from Garric's throat. The memories were those of Carus.
A sword that flickered until it clanged on bone; a cloak wrapped around the left forearm in place of a shield. Enemies too close to understand what was happening, gaping in surprise at wounds opening so suddenly that they died before they knew they'd been struck … .
Bats chittered as they coursed the insects above the surface of the river. Occasionally a splash and heavy wing-beats indicated a larger predator. The rural boy in Garric had already noticed Ornifal's night-fishing owls.
“No,” Garric said. “You shouldn't have given that order, Royhas.”
The nobleman gave a humorless bark of laughter. He'd understood the distinction between the question he'd posed and the answer that Garric gave. There'd have been slaughter in the forest if Royhas had ordered Garric's death, but it might not have been Royhas who walked away from the result.
Voices rose in singsong argument on the temple platform above. A bowl or bottle smashed. One speaker shouted louder recriminations; the other subsided into drunken sobbing.
The vaults that supported public buildings in Valles
provided shelter for vagrants. On nights when the weather allowed, the denizens sat on the monumental steps to eat, drink, and fantasize in a society of their peers.
And how were they different from folk like Royhas bor-Bolliman and Garric, late of Barca's Hamlet on Haft, who dreamed of being King of the Isles?
Garric laughed. He couldn't even be sure that his dreams were greater than those that came out of wine bottles on the temple steps.
“What do you want?” Royhas said. “What
do
you want? I swear, you're as uncanny as the queen herself!”
“But I'm not evil,” Garric said, hoping that was the truth. He smiled again. It must be true: he wouldn't have friends like Liane and Tenoctris if he were a creature of Malkar.
“Lord Royhas,” he continued softly. “I intend to be King of the Isles.
All
of the Isles, ruling and serving all peoples of the Isles.”
Garric knew this was the moment he'd been waiting for. He'd maneuvered Royhas into a place where the noble felt alien and alone, despite being in the center of the city where he was born.
“I'm not going to do that because my ancestor was King of the Isles—though he was, just as Silyon told you,” Garric said. “I'm going to do it because if I don't, our whole world is going to sink into mud like the bottom of this river.”
He and Royhas continued walking; if they stopped, the guards would be on them in an instant, silently questioning. The two men, the noble and the youth with the insights of an ancient king, stared at each other, disregarding the stones missing from the pavement and garbage that had floated up from the river.
“Why are you telling me this?” Royhas said. He sounded unsure, perhaps even frightened. Garric represented something that the noble didn't understand, in a situation where ignorance was dangerous and the known risks for the conspirators were overwhelming.
“Because I want you to believe,” Garric said. “I want everybody to regain belief in the Kingdom of the Isles. The Old Kingdom fell because people stopped believing when Carus disappeared. If people can believe again in something more important than the size of their own money chest or the number of troops they can put in the field, then we can have real unity and peace.”
“Waldron will never serve you,” Royhas said. That was more proof he was the man King Carus had judged him to be: quick-minded, decisive, and brave in a way that had nothing to do with willingness to draw his sword. “My family are merchants for twenty generations. Waldron and the other northern landholders, though—their honor's the only thing that really matters to them. They'll never bow to a shepherd from Haft.”
By implication, Royhas was saying that he—and the city nobles like him—would bow or might bow. Garric smiled faintly.
“Will they bow to the crown of the Isles?” he said. “They acknowledge Valence, don't they?”
“Oh, yes,” Royhas agreed. “Valence is one of theirs, after all: his estates in the north and west are bigger than some islands, after all. And they fought for him at the Stone Wall, because whatever they might have thought of Valence as a man, he wasn't a pirate from Sandrakkan.”
“I want the Isles to be united in peace,” Garric said. He smiled. “Well, as much peace as humans are likely to have. As I said, I don't believe in golden ages. Bad as the queen is—and bad as the thing Valence serves, as you know—”
“I don't know!” Royhas said, his voice jumping unintentionally louder. “I don't know anything about Silyon or whatever they're doing!”
“As you know,” Garric said, “for all your attempts not to know, because you wouldn't have preserved me unless you did know … All of that, I tell you, is minor compared to what we really need: a united Isles. Not everybody can be expected to help, especially at the beginning;
but those who try to stop us out of local pride or personal honor or any of the other words people use when they mean they don't care about anything except their own will—they're just as much of a problem as the queen, Royhas.”

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