Queen of Demons (36 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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There were lights ahead of them. They were approaching a ferry landing serving the suburbs on the other side of the river. A bridge and causeway crossed the Beltis south of here where marshes split the channel into three streams, but there was a good deal of water traffic even at this time of the morning.
“I'm not a soldier,” Royhas said.
Though you're a good judge of them, if your guards are anything
to
go by,
Garric thought. Aloud he said, “We'll have soldiers. What we'll need are people who can organize, who understand money and supplies, and who can make hard decisions fast when there's no time to refer to, say, the King of the Isles.”
Royhas laughed in open amazement. In a voice that still held a tinge of self-mockery he said, “You're asking me to be your chancellor, King Garric? What about Papnotis bor-Padriman, who wears the seal now? Quite apart from the fact his family can raise a thousand men with half-armor or better, he's rather good at the job. Considering what he has to work with.”
Royhas and Garric wore tunics with striped hems and light capes, nondescript clothing for a merchant out at night. The scabbard of Garric's long sword was unusual; Royhas wore a slim-bladed court sword that was as much statement of rank as weapon. Garric might have been an off-duty soldier, though.
They were close enough to the ferry landing to see the faces of the half-dozen people waiting for the next boat. At this time of the morning most traffic was inward—farm families bringing produce to the city's markets on donkey-back or their own.
Garric continued at his previous slow pace. He'd timed things well, or Carus had.
“Papnotis is chief administrator for Ornifal,” he said. “That's as much as the present kingdom governs, after all—on a good day. Ornifal will need an administrator in the future too.”
He hadn't known the chancellor's name until this moment; there hadn't been time. Carus' silent urgency drove Garric as surely as the king's measured advice guided him in moments of reverie. If Garric took the time to learn everything he needed to know before he acted, nothing would happen—except the complete and irrevocable end of civilization and perhaps of life in the Isles.
Royhas laughed quietly. “I think we've gone as far as we need to tonight,” he said. “After all …”
He made a hand gesture before turning on his heel. The guards stopped, dividing three and three to either edge of the path. They waited for their employer to pass before falling in behind again.
“After all,” Royhas resumed, “it's all moot if a fire wraith incinerates you tomorrow, isn't it? If you don't mind my saying, the survival of the man who led the uprising against the queen wasn't a major concern of ours when we were planning events.”
“If you're suggesting your priorities have changed tonight,” Garric said dryly, “then I'm particularly glad we've had this discussion. Tenoctris says the wraiths can't be formed quickly and can be quenched if you have enough water handy. You can even run away from one if you have room. And if you don't panic.”
“My personal experience,” Royhas said, looking straight ahead as he walked, “is that wizards generally aren't to be trusted.”
“I trust this one,” Garric said. “I trust her with my life. As I have before.”
Royhas nodded, as though he'd been discussing the menu for tomorrow's dinner.
“As for the defenses of the queen's mansion more generally,” Garric said, “Tenoctris says it's mostly a matter
of not losing our way. The individual effects aren't very complex.”
“Your Tenoctris is the queen's equal, then?” Royhas said mildly.
Garric laughed wryly. “Tenoctris says she's not sure anyone is the queen's equal. Any human, that is. Tenoctris isn't sure the queen is human.”
Royhas looked at him. “You're serious, aren't you?” he said. “You're not just vilifying an enemy.”
“Tenoctris doesn't do that,” Garric said. “She believes that the … person claiming to be Princess Azalais is really a changeling—a demon in human semblance.”
He shrugged. “Tenoctris wants to understand her enemy so that she can counter her,” he said. “All I want to do is to lead the risen populace against the queen's mansion and remove the queen from Valles and from our world.”
Garric grinned. “And also to survive,” he said. “I'd like to do that.”
He sobered. “So long as civilization can survive too.”
The men walked on in silence. Above on the temple steps, men and at least one woman were singing about the vintage. Grapes weren't grown on Haft, but Garric had played the same tune at dances after the shearing.
“I'd appreciate the loan of a couple of your men to stay close to me tomorrow,” Garric said. “If they're willing to volunteer, that is. I suppose you'll be well out of the city yourself.”
“That was certainly my intention,” Royhas said easily. “No point in the five of us making ourselves targets for the queen's vengeance should you fail, after all. It's not as though we, the principals so to speak, would make much difference in a mob of thousands.”
Garric looked at him. “But … ?” he said.
“But I suppose the duties of a chancellor involve some risk,” Royhas said. “Realistically, if you fail there won't be safety for anyone in the Isles before long. I've lived these past two years afraid of what the queen might do to
me when it suits her whim, and afraid of what Valence's creature would do otherwise. My men and I will be with you tomorrow.
King
Garric.”
Garric touched the medallion on his chest. The words “King Garric” echoed through his mind. With them came the boisterous laughter of the last and greatest King of the Isles.
“Not the last, King Garric,”
Carus' voice whispered.
“And as for greatest, well, we'll see, you and I!”
 
 
Hanno paused among the palms growing from the base of the cliff, leaning on the shaft of his spear. He looked so much like Cashel, watching the flock from a vantage point in the meadows south of Barca's Hamlet, that Sharina's throat swelled with longing.
She missed Cashel and she missed her home. She missed
having
a home.
“Well, I'll be,” Hanno said in a tone of mild surprise. He scratched his neck idly with a fingertip.
Sharina stepped to the side of the big man to see what he'd been looking at. Because the context was unfamiliar, it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.
A
shipwreck
, she thought. Storms threw debris onto the steep gravel shore of Barca's Hamlet: driftwood but also ships' timbers and sometimes deck cargo washed or cast from a vessel as the waves broke over it.
Once at dawn Reise had found a body on the black shingle. They'd buried it in the community graveyard. Every year at the Solstice Ceremony they'd fed meal and beer to the sailor's spirit along with the borough's dead. Perhaps other communities cared in the same fashion for fishermen who'd never returned to Barca's Hamlet.
“Them little beggars,” Hanno said wonderingly. “If I didn't know better, I'd say they'd got brains. There's never been a Monkey with brains!”
“Oh,” Sharina said, feeling her stomach congeal into a lump of cold lard. She was looking at the wreckage of
the dory. The Hairy Men had dragged it onto the corniche and methodically smashed to bits. At first she hadn't associated the fragments with the dory because there wasn't a piece remaining as long as her forearm.
For hammers they'd used head-sized lumps of rock, which now lay among the wood and scattered supplies. Hanno touched one of the rocks with his spearbutt; Sharina had already noticed that the hunter used his weapon the way a mouse tests the shape of the world with its whiskers.
“They're strong little beggars when they get worked up,” he said musingly. “They sure did a job here, didn't they?”
Sharina squatted to examine the end of a shattered thwart. The dory had been built of oak. As the hunter implied, destroying the vessel so thoroughly with crude tools had required enormous strength.
“The phantasm leading them probably told them what to do,” she said. By focusing her mind on little questions, she was able to avoid the huge doubt from which she shied away trembling.
Could they get off Bight, now? Would bands of Hairy Men and the accompanying creatures of wizardry hunt them to eventual death through these wilds?
“Well, I figure there's two ways for you, missie,” Hanno said as he turned to face her. He was calm, nonchalant even. “First choice is I build you a raft and you float to Ornifal, because that's how the currents trend. Now—”
He raised a hand the size of a bear's paw to forestall the protest she'd had no intention of making. Hanno had peeled off the blistered skin; the layer beneath looked healthy though tender. His ointment smelled like tar rather than the lanolin Sharina was familiar with from the borough, but it seemed to work.
“—I know that don't sound like much, but I know for a fact it'll work if there's not a storm. We can salvage
enough food so you can eat, and there's fish to catch besides.”
He shrugged. “I can't tell you it won't storm, but a bad storm here in spring would be the first one since I been on Bight, and that's past eighteen years.”
The hunter smiled. His remaining teeth—one of his upper canines was missing—were yellowish and as strong as a mule's. “Of course,” he added, “the Monkeys getting together this way, that's a first too. So you have to decide for yourself.”
“What are you going to be doing?” Sharina said. Hanno had offered only one option, but she thought she could guess what the other was.
“Well, I figure if the Monkeys are so fond of me they'd bust up my boat to keep me here,” he said with a grin as hard as the blade of his great spear, “I'd give'em reason to know I'm here. Beside that, Bald Unarc had his territory a couple days north of here. Unarc's boat is cypress and he sinks it in a creek's mouth to keep it safe between times he needs to use it.”
Hanno prodded a fragment of gunwale with his spearbutt, then flipped it high enough in the air for him to catch it with his free hand. The hunter moved with remarkable economy, just enough to accomplish the task he set himself.
“I always thought Unarc was a donkey who wouldn't trust the sun was going to rise in the east,” he said, shaking his head in wonder at the plank. Not only were the ends splintered, the whole length of the piece was dented and cracked from additional blows. “Just goes to show, don't it?”
He grinned again. “Mind, I don't figure Unarc was so careful that he's going to be around for me to ask his permission formal-like.”
Sharina wasn't afraid of the sea. This jungle's sounds and smells were as alien to her as the world beyond the sky, while in the past she'd spent weeks adrift in a dugout almost as crude as the raft Hanno said he'd build.
If Nonnus were here, he'd be searching for the answer to the puzzle of what was happening on Bight. Unless Sharina misread the man's character, the hunter was doing the same thing.
And for Sharina to drift away seemed—
“Cowardly” might not be quite the word, but it was close enough to stand until she could convince herself there was a better one.
“I'll go with you,” Sharina said, her voice steady. “If you'll have me.”
Hanno chuckled. “I'd move faster if it was me by myself, that's true,” he said. “But I wouldn't be moving much at all if you hadn't fixed that fire-thing. I'll tell the world! So I'd admire to have you along.”
“I'm glad you feel that way,” Sharina said. She felt better for the decision even though it was against her own deep wishes.
And she knew that so long as she survived, a part of Nonnus was present in her.
 
 
Ilna had been dozing. When her eyes snapped open, she saw that the full moon had risen. The cratered face was much the same as hung over Barca's Hamlet, but it was three times as large and as red as the coals of a dying fire.
The vessel was sailing between towers of rock. The islands were little more than bowshot to either side, closer than Ilna had seen them by what passed for daylight in this place. Pits and crevices marked the shafts. She didn't see how rock so soft could support the mushroom tops that swelled hundreds of feet above. They should have crumbled under their own weight.
The Scaled Men grunted in fear-muted voices. They were armed again. The ship drove on, the sail still filled by a wind Ilna could not feel. One of the sailors crouched at the steering oar, but the others scanned the sky instead of paying attention to the vessel or its course.
Something flew past the moon.

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