Queen of Demons (43 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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She was physically and emotionally exhausted, as much from the preceding weeks as from the events of the day just ending. Morning would come. Her only choices then would be capture or suicide.
The Lady turned her face from those who took their own lives. And yet …
Sharina began to doze. The blade of the Pewle knife was beneath her cheek like a steel pillow. In a dream she
saw herself stand and walk through the door that opened for her into a woodland like that of home.
A hut stood by a stream whose bed had been scooped deeper to create a basin for filling pots and washing. The man who'd been planting in the garden knocked dirt from the tip of his dibble and walked toward her.
“Nonnus?” Sharina said.
“Such of me as there is since I died, child,” the stocky, smiling man said. “Sit down, please. It's all the hospitality I can offer you here. That and my company.”
Sharina squatted on her haunches as she'd done hundreds of times beside the hermit's hut. Nonnus sat across from her.
“I watch you always, child,” he said. “I hope you know that even when you can't see me.”
On the ground beside them, colored pebbles from the creek picked out the Lady's image. In the woods near Barca's Hamlet Nonnus had carved the Lady on the trunk of a great tree. Though he wore his familiar black goathair tunic, the Pewle knife Nonnus had taken off only while praying was nowhere to be seen.
Sharina looked at the knife she held, then met the hermit's eyes again. He smiled again. “I don't have any need for it here,” he said. “Besides, it's in good hands.”
Sharina slid the blade back into its sealskin sheath. “There's a man outside who … ,” she said. She swallowed. “Who claims to be you. He's a wizard.”
Nonnus nodded. “He's Nimet or-Konya,” he said. “And for perhaps the first time in my life I'm thankful for a wizard's work, child. I doubt we'd have been able to visit if it weren't for the magic Nimet and his mistress used to borrow my semblance. They made the barrier thinner than I suspect they knew.”
He chuckled with grim humor. “Wizards aren't the only ones to neglect the side effects of their actions, of course,” he added. “If I'd understood that when I was younger, I might have less to beg forgiveness for now.”
Sharina leaned forward and caught the hermit's powerful,
sinewy hands. She was crying. “Nonnus,” she said, “can I stay here with you? Please!”
He held her with the delicacy of a mother with her infant. “This isn't your place, Sharina,” he said softly. “When the time comes, and I pray to the Lady that it will be a long time, you'll have another home.”
“Nonnus, what shall I do?” she cried. She squeezed his hands, knowing she could no more hurt this man than she could a hickory tree. “I'll fight them, but I don't think I can …”
“Kill six soldiers and Nimet himself as well?” Nonnus said. He detached one hand and put it on top of the other, sandwiching Sharina between. “No, I don't suppose you could. Which I think may be why you're here.”
Sharina mopped her face on her tunic sleeve. She met the hermit's eyes and smiled. Trying to control her tremble of relief, she said, “Will you come back and help me, Nonnus?
Can
you?”
“I don't have flesh, child,” Nonnus said. “But you do. If you permit me, I can use your flesh in ways you yourself could not.”
He gave her a smile as hard as the crags that broke the seas off Pewle Island. He said, “I've repented of many of the things I did when I was young. But I haven't forgotten how to do them.”
They stood, still holding hands and laughing at the pleasure of each other's company. “I knew you'd help me, Nonnus,” Sharina said. She didn't know why she'd ever felt alone.
The hermit sobered and withdrew his hands. “This isn't a small thing for you to do, child,” he said. “This is a violation like no other you'll ever feel. You might be better off to go with Nimet to his mistress, the queen.”
“Nonnus,” she said. “I need your help. Do whatever your conscience permits you to do. I'll do the same. And may the Lady shelter us.”
Nonnus smiled; this time the expression was as gentle as a snowflake's touch. “For the last eighteen years of
my life, Sharina,” he said, “the only thing besides mercy that I wanted was to be able to help you. I think the Lady has just granted me both.”
He touched the girl's cheek with the fingers of his right hand. “Go and sleep, child,” he said. “And we'll see what happens when the dawn comes.”
 
 
The Scaled Men's chanting rose to a grunted crescendo; Ilna felt a ripple shiver through not the ship alone but also the world it rode in. Cozro shouted and the flyer which gnawed the grating inches from Ilna's face turned with an angry snarl to look over its shoulder.
The
Bird of the Waves
fell out of the twilit world and splashed jarringly as it landed. The hatch cover broke loose from the quick-and-dirty lashings the crew had applied after they flung Ilna into the hold. Sunlight lanced through the grate and around the frame lying askew on the coaming.
The winged creatures twisted upward like seared leaves. Their flesh turned black and sloughed away. The cartilage that articulated their bones shrank, knotting the skeletons into tight masses like the indigestible casts vomited beneath an owl's perch.
Ilna put her hands and right shoulder to the grating to shove sideways. Cozro simply flung it up, though without Ilna's direction the heavy cover might have toppled back again: the captain hadn't allowed for the weakness of muscles bound for days.
Ilna stepped out of the hold with the noose loosely coiled in her hands. The brazier, still dribbling the last of its varicolored smoke, sat in front of the deckhouse. The Scaled Men had set their fire and left it before they retreated to the poorly ventilated deckhouse. The flyers, beasts for all the humanity of their features, hadn't known or cared to quench the brazier as they swarmed over the craft.
The creatures in desiccated profusion hung from the
rigging and littered the deck.
Like mayflies,
Ilna thought again, smiling grimly. The corpse of the sailor she'd seen devoured lay beside the hatch where it slid when Cozro raised the grating. It had been chewed to red bones. The skull was very broad and flat, and the remainder of the skeleton differed more from that of a normal man than the Scaled Man had when alive.
The door to the deckhouse rattled as the crossbar was withdrawn inside. Cozro freed a cutlass that a desperate blow had driven into the mast.
The sky was a pale, cloudless blue. The sun was near the western horizon, but it still hammered the sea and the ship rocking on it.
The sail hung limp, its deep belly empty of the wizard-wind that had filled the linen across the sea of that other world. An island, small but heavily overgrown, broke the surface half a mile to starboard. A flock of seabirds startled by the vessel's splashing entrance rose into the air above.
The Scaled Men had to force the door open against the flyers piled before it. The shrunken corpses stuck to the decking as though melted into the wood. Cozro snatched up the brazier in his left hand.
Ilna had been ready to noose the first of the sailors while the captain dealt with the next. “Take the one on the right!” she said. She was furious that she'd so nearly committed herself by assuming that other people thought the same way she did in a crisis.
The first two Scaled Men out of the deckhouse had cutlasses. They were bleeding from deep bites but both looked well able to fight. Behind them came a third sailor with the spear; last was a heavily bandaged fellow struggling to cock his crossbow.
“None of this scum could swim when they were men!” Cozro shouted. “We'll hope they haven't learned since they changed. The dinghy's still astern. Swim to it and we'll paddle to that island with our hands.”
The four Scaled Men arrayed themselves in front of the
deckhouse. They were apparently waiting for the crossbowman to cock his weapon so that they could either shoot their escaped prisoners or threaten them into surrender.
“I can't swim either!” Ilna said. If the two of them rushed now, they might overcome the sailors; but it had to be both of them together. The Scaled Men were wounded to a greater or lesser degree, but she and Cozro were weak from days of hunger and tight bondage.
“Then I'm sorry for you!” the captain said. He turned and scattered the brazier's burning contents into the sail. The parched linen flared like tinder.
Cozro dived over the side. The Scaled Men shouted in guttural fear. Ilna was between the sailors and the roaring heat of the sail. The mast, cracked by long exposure to salt and sun, was beginning to burn also.
The sailor with the spear stepped forward. Ilna's noose settled about his neck and pulled tight. She'd acted on reflex rather than according to a plan. The only options that swine Cozro had left her were drowning or burning alive; she supposed she preferred to drown, but she wasn't quite ready to make that decision.
She kicked the spear free of the Scaled Man choking on the deck at her feet. Another sailor came for her with his cutlass raised; she whipped the free end of her rope across his bulging eyes. He jumped back with a blat of despair.
The air beyond the ship's port rail congealed into a disk of blue radiance, intensely cold.
Ilna looked at the disk over her shoulder. She kicked again, this time at the Scaled Man's crotch. She could see figures moving within the disk of light.
Without hesitation, Ilna stepped onto the railing and hurled herself into the blue glare. The disk might mean death, but staying with the
Bird of the Waves
was certain death.
Ilna regretted leaving her noose behind; but she'd had
many regrets in her lifetime and she'd learned to live with them.
 
 
Cashel could see his bones through the crackling blue radiance that suf-fused the night. He continued to concentrate on the boulder. It was moving, and any other considerations could wait till Cashel had finished the job at hand.
Zahag and the princess were shouting but their voices only buzzed like distant wasps over the roar of Cashel's pulse. He had the boulder over his head. He shouldn't have been able to lift it.
He rotated his body carefully. A load that was safe while it was poised could tear your back and knees apart if you shifted the wrong way. It was all a matter of balancing forces … .
When Cashel had turned just enough that the boulder wouldn't fall back on him and his companions, he rolled it off his spread fingers. It bounced away as he staggered forward.
Cashel's legs were too weak to support him; when he put a hand to the ground to steady himself, his elbow started to buckle. Aria grabbed his arm, but he didn't know if she was trying to hold him up or merely clinging out of fear.
The mountainside below them shook as though wracked by an earthquake. Blue fire crackled, splitting the rocky soil as far down the slope as Cashel could see. A skeleton bathed in sizzling light humped up from the long trench like a horse rising to its feet. It had the body of a lizard, but it stood on two legs the size of the largest oaks in the borough.
The creature turned with a dancer's grace, each joint sparkling with azure lightning. The tail of stiffly articulated bones swung, balancing the weight of the monster skull. It roared, shaking the heavens; then the jaws
snapped shut on the nearest of the trolls who had pursued Cashel and his companions.
“Is is yours, chief?” Zahag cried. The ape was hopping up and down as the ground shook. “Did you call it up?”
“I didn't … ,” Cashel said. “I don't know … .”
“Please!” Aria said. “Please, can't we go now?”
The creature stepped across the trench from which it had risen. Its tail was a whip of savage light. Clawed forelimbs snatched a troll, splintering his club and casting the mangled whole into a mouth easily able to hold him.
“My staff,” Cashel mumbled. He tried to stand. He wondered if he was dreaming that he was helpless while fantastic things went on around him.
The creature of stone and light followed the fleeing trolls, snapping with the precision of a serpent hunting mice. The saw-toothed plates along its spine waved from side to side.
“I have the staff!” Aria said. She did, too, though she'd just now picked it up. “Please! Please!”
His companions couldn't lift him, but they weren't willing to leave him behind. That was all right. He could walk. He could!
Cashel turned on all fours and began to crawl toward the cave mouth. The creature that had risen from the rocks shook the earth every time its foot came down. Like Cashel himself, it controlled its weight with a graceful delicacy that belied the strength involved.

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