Queen of Demons (49 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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“Wow!” called Zahag, who'd ambled up the beach out of sight. “Come see these eggs!”
Cashel looked up from his work. They hadn't found sign of anything more dangerous than stunted pigs on this island, but it wasn't as though they'd had time to really explore. Zahag wasn't in danger and Cozro—even without the cutlass, which Cashel was using as their only woodworking tool—was probably safe as well, more's the pity; but Cashel didn't like leaving Aria alone.
“Would you like to take a walk, Princess?” Cashel asked.
Aria sat in the shade, gripping her knees and staring at the sand between her feet. She looked up without enthusiasm. Saltwater had gummed her hair and made her eyes bloodshot. Abrasion wherever cloth rubbed skin had raised rashes and even welts.
“What does it matter?” she asked. She got up, though.
“Here, you carry the cutlass,” Cashel said, handing her the weapon. “I'll take the staff, hey?”
Cashel was planing a length of palm trunk into an oar. The result was pretty good. Better than he'd counted on being able to manage, anyway. He hadn't decided whether he was going to build a larger boat or if they'd just leave the island on the dinghy when he'd made oars and had stepped a mast.
“You'd drag me if I didn't, wouldn't you?” the girl said bitterly. At some time in the recent chaos she seemed to have lost the belief that she was being tested like Patient Muzira. That was a shame, but Aria was a lot sturdier now than the fluffball Cashel and Zahag had rescued from the wizard's tower. She'd done things and she could do more, though she thought it was terribly unjust that she had to.
They set out along the sandy beach in the direction Zahag had called from. There must be a vein of sweet water somewhere under the island, because the vegetation was lush instead of the bitter, small-leafed tamarisks Cashel had seen on similar islets in the Inner Sea. For
now the castaways had quenched their thirst with fruit, but maybe he could dig a well for drinking water when they sailed away from the island.
Cashel wasn't sure they could carry enough food and water for four in the dinghy; but neither was he sure that he could build a serviceable boat all by himself, and it looked very much like that's how it would have to be made. Aria was worthless; Zahag wouldn't pay attention to anything for as long as two minutes straight; and Cozro … well, Cozro had found a fruit the size of a peach with a hard rind. Opened, it fermented in a couple of hours, and that was all he'd shown interest in from that moment on.
“I wondered if you were coming!” Zahag said angrily when Cashel and Aria appeared. The ape stood on a six-foot mound of seaweed just above the tideline. He'd tossed away the top layer and was grubbing down into the interior with both hands. “If you think I'm going to do all the work, you'd better think again!”
“I didn't think that,” Cashel said dryly. He'd gotten used to the ape. Zahag and Aria both did about the best they could. A lot of times that wasn't very good, but the contrast with Cozro made Cashel appreciate his longtime companions better. “You've found eggs, you say?”
For answer, Zahag raised in both hands a pale cream egg the size of a watermelon. “What kind of bird laid this, do you suppose?” he asked. With the question, he looked skyward in sudden concern.
Cozro strode out of the foliage toward the interior of the island. “Say!” he said. “But that's not a bird egg, it's a turtle. A bird that big couldn't fly.”
The captain was drinking his punch from a scooped-out coconut shell. He had a line of similar containers fermenting in the sun near where Cashel had dragged the dinghy up the beach. Preparing the coconut shells and filling them with fruit pulp was the only work Cozro had done since they landed.
Zahag set the egg on the mass of vegetation which had
been keeping it warm. It didn't look like any bird's nest Cashel had seen either, but—
“It's got a hard shell,” he said. “Turtle eggs are leathery. Besides, it'd be a
real
big turtle.”
Cozro snorted. “There's plenty of things in the sea bigger'n what laid that,” he said, slurping a draft of his punch. “You won't see a bird bigger'n an albatross, though, and for all their wingspread they don't weigh much more'n a chicken. Turtle eggs are fine eating, though.”
He finished his cup of punch, belched, and walked away without taking further notice of his companions. Off to get the next shell in the line, and perhaps to refill the empty.
Cashel had tried the punch. He knew his tastes were pretty narrow compared to those of people who'd lived in bigger places and traveled more, so he tried to make allowances.
The beer Reise brewed for his inn was bound with germander from the woodlands of the borough, not hops imported from Sandrakkan. Germander made beer dark and bitter, but it was the taste Cashel had grown to expect.
Wine was rare and expensive in Barca's Hamlet. He'd had sips and didn't much care for it, though cider mulled with spices could be a pleasure on winter nights.
Making allowances didn't help. Cozro's punch tasted like rotten fruit, it was that simple. Cashel would've drunk seawater before he'd suck down more of that oily, sticky liquid.
“Are there many of them?” Aria asked, stepping closer to Zahag but unwilling to climb onto the mass of decaying vegetation. “Can we really eat them?”
The princess could be peevish with Cashel and the ape, but she didn't seem to recognize that the captain even existed. So far as helping was concerned, he didn't; but Cashel figured Cozro would be quick enough to claim a share of the egg after Cashel had lit a fire with the firebow he'd made as his first project after landing.
“They're four to a layer,” Zahag said. “I'd say three layers.”
He hopped down from the mound with the egg in his arms. “As for eating it,” he went on, “I don't see—”
“Don't smash it!” Cashel shouted. He was too late. Zahag dropped the egg; it crunched but didn't smash. The ape quickly rolled the dished-in portion uppermost.
“What's the matter?” the ape said in puzzlement. He thrust his hand through the broken shell and drew it up dripping with both white and yolk. “I didn't lose any in the sand; and anyway, there's plenty more.”
“Ugh,” Aria said as Zahag started to lick the egg's contents off his hairy hand with a tongue like a blanket. She turned her back.
“Yeah, but I wanted to save the shell,” Cashel said. “To hold water when we get away from here.”
“Well, there's plenty more,” the ape repeated with his usual unconcern. He climbed the mound, sucking at his fingers.
“No, they can stay in the nest for now,” Cashel said, organizing their escape in his mind. Maybe he could build a raft to hold the supplies. He'd been wondering what to do for water butts, so the giant eggs looked like a gift from the Gods.
Cashel couldn't understand the ape. Though he could read and talk as well as Garric, Zahag just didn't see why you planned for the future.
“I'm getting hungry,” Aria said, looking over her shoulder toward the egg. “But all runny like that … ?”
Cashel scooped the egg up in both hands; he could carry it in one, but he was afraid the crack Zahag started in opening the shell would spread and spill the contents on the ground.
“I'll put it on a slow fire,” he said to Aria. They didn't have a pot to boil it in. Even back in Barca's Hamlet, the only containers big enough would be the laundry cauldrons that several of the wealthier households had. “And
maybe we can fry some if we can find a rock flat enough.”
They trudged back toward the fireset and the upturned dinghy. Cashel could hear Cozro swearing as he pricked himself while gathering more fruit for his punch.
Three would be easier to plan for than four were, but Cashel knew in his heart he wouldn't make that decision. Once in a while, though, he wished he was the sort of man who could leave the captain behind—and sleep nights afterward.
 
 
Ilna was drowning. She reached up a hand with glacial slowness. It broke surface. She thrashed violently, awakening as her head thrust upward. Sputtering and suddenly conscious that she was nude, she looked around her.
Several willowy, perfect humans stepped back with grave smiles as liquid splashed from the trough Ilna was lying in. It wasn't water but something thicker. It was as viscous as olive oil to the touch, but it vanished into miniature rainbows when it dripped from Ilna's body. She hadn't been drowning, either, though all but her nose and lips must have been under the surface until she awakened.
“Where am I?” Ilna demanded. “Who are you?”
The bearded man holding a cup and ewer opened his mouth to reply. Before he could get a word out, Ilna added, “And where are my clothes? I want my clothes!”
She was even more determined about that because none of the strangers around her were clothed. The air was balmy and breathed perfumes like those of flowers at evening. Her skin tingled with a healthy feeling when she stepped from the trough.
“Of course, we'll bring your clothes as soon as they're ready,” the bearded man said. “They're being cleaned now. But you're welcome to fresh garments if you'd like, though we ourselves don't see the need.”
“This is the Garden, mistress,” a girl of about Ilna's age said. “I'm Cory. This is Wim—”
The bearded man nodded.
“And I'm Bram,” said a youth who might have been Cory's twin brother. “Ah … we call ourselves the People of Beauty, but that sounds pretty boastful, I guess. You don't have to call us anything.”
“Except friends,” Cory said with a bright smile. She stepped close and hugged Ilna. She looked so perfect that Ilna expected her flesh to be as cool as beeswax, but in fact Cory felt completely normal.
Another slender woman walked toward them, carrying Ilna's tunics draped over one arm. She wasn't running but her clean strides covered ground swiftly. A herd of deer with long, backward-sloping fangs in their upper jaws ran across the meadow behind her.
“The Garden” seemed as good a name for this place as Ilna could have come up with, not that it told her anything she wanted to know. Fruit trees grew, separately and in small groves. Goats and miniature deer browsed beneath them but didn't seem to strip the bark as Ilna would have expected from her own experience.
Water ran in profusion. From the large pond in the near distance sprang a fairylike pink fountain that was all spines and curlicues. Birds rested on it and occasionally dived into the water. When they rose again, they carried fish or frogs in their bills. The Garden wasn't entirely a place of peace.
Though it seemed very close to that. A giraffe, a creature Ilna recognized as a motif on fabrics from Cordin but which she'd never before seen living, walked to the pond in stately fashion and splayed its forelegs out to drink. A pair of scimitar-horned antelopes moved aside but continued drinking.
Ilna looked up. The sky burgeoned into rich color in the west, while the eastern horizon sparkled with what looked like stars.
“Where are we?” she demanded. The woman had come up with her tunics; Ilna took them, but it was somehow more embarrassing to dress in front of these strangers
than to stand here nude as a plucked chicken. “I thought I was being taken underground.”
“That's right,” said Wim. “That's the cavern roof above us. It's covered with flow rock that glows according to the time of day it would have been in the upper world, back in the days before we had to come here to the Garden to survive.”
He poured fluid from the ewer into the goblet of chased metal and offered it to Ilna. “This is wine,” he explained. “It will help your throat and lips. They're terribly dry.”
“That's why we put you in the bath when we brought you down,” Bram said. “Your poor skin had been scoured, just
scoured
, by being on the surface unprotected for so very long.”
Ilna grimaced. She lifted the inner tunic over her head and wriggled into it quickly.
With the cloth covering her eyes, she could think. This whole place was wrong. Not hostile, not dangerous, but wrong—it shouldn't be here. It didn't fit the pattern of the world across which she and the wizards had been walking.
Ilna's head reappeared from the neck of the tunic. The fabric had been cleaned perfectly—better than Ilna herself could have done. The tunic was cleaner than when the wool first came from the bleaching vat, she would have said.
“Where are my friends?” she asked, suspicious again. “Halphemos and Cerix?”
Bram offered Ilna his hand. “We'll take you to them,” he said. The four People of Beauty—the woman who'd brought the garments was tagging along—set out toward another pond a quarter mile distant.
A group of young men and women passed in the opposite direction riding bareback on a variety of animals, none of which were horses. A deer with Y-shaped horns branching from its nose, and a griffin with a beak and bird's legs in front and the hindquarters of a dog, were among the stranger mounts. The large billy goat wasn't
unusual in itself, but the fact that a laughing girl controlled it by ribbons was more amazing than the griffin.

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