The Fortress of Glass (5 page)

At least the beaches of First Atara seemed to be sand, not the fist-sized basalt shingle that lay beyond the ancient seawall of Barca's Hamlet. That was hard on keels, and for all their size warships were built lighter than the fishing dories that were the only ships Cashel'd known while he was growing up.

"I've seen bigger places, palaces and temples and even the main market-building in Valles," he said. "I don't know I've ever seen a nicer one. Still, I'm not one to talk. I spend most of my time outdoors when people let me."

Cashel had thought about the question instead of just saying something. Sheep were better than people about waiting for you to think before you said something; people were likely to push you to answer right now. Cashel's mind didn't work that way, that quick, unless there was danger. Besides, it seemed to him that the folks who were quickest with words were likely to be the last folks you wanted beside you when danger came at you-out of the woods, up from the sea or maybe roaring down through the heavens like just now.

Lord Martous stood nearby. The barge wasn't so big that you could be on it and not be close to everybody else who was, but he was kind of pretending that he wasn't anywhere in shouting distance of Cashel and the prince. Martous hadn't been best pleased when Protas asked Cashel to come ashore with him, but whatever he'd started to say dried up when Protas gave him a look.

Chances were Martous had done pretty much as he pleased in the past, with Cervoran was off in his own world of studies and Protas a boy whose father didn't pay him a lot of attention. Things were different now, and Martous was smart enough to see that. Maybe Cashel standing behind the prince like a solid wall had helped the fellow understand.

Cashel didn't like bullies. Cashel particularly didn't like folks bullying children, even if they weren't being especially mean about it.

Sharina had said for Cashel to go along with Protas on the barge. He guessed it had something to do with the politics she and Garric and the others had been talking about to Martous, but Cashel couldn't be sure. She might've just been being nice to the boy.

Sharina was a really nice person-and smart too, smarter than a lot of people thought so pretty a woman could be. He'd seen it happen with fellows, treating Sharina like she didn't have anything behind her blue eyes except fluff and then bam! learning she'd been two steps ahead of them the whole way.

The palace sat on a platform built up from the edge of the harbor. Most of the frontage was a limestone seawall with statues-Cashel counted them out on his fingers: six statues-set up along it. The bronze was old enough to be green, but that didn't take long in salt air.

The barge was pulling up to where a ladder with broad wooden rungs was set into the wall. The big way had swept off the bunting and almost swamped the boat.

Cashel grinned, thinking about Martous huffing and puffing up the ladder to reach dry land. It wasn't a bad climb, not as much as a man's height, but chances were it wasn't a kind of exercise the courtier got very often.

The palace itself was a series of long buildings with colonnades facing the sea across a strip of lawn. Behind the ones on the seafront were other buildings with two or three stories; all the roofs were red tile. The lawn must've taken a lot of work to keep so smooth.

In the cities Cashel'd visited before, swatches of green were planted with flowers and fruit trees. Back in the borough, of course, anything that wasn't fenced off for a kitchen garden had been pecked and trampled to bare clay. It was all a matter of taste, Cashel knew, but so far as his taste went grass ought to be in a meadow with sheep grazing.

Lord Martous yipped little orders to the barge crew, which they seemed to be ignoring. Two of them tossed lines ashore to servants who snubbed them on bollards, then leaned into the ropes. That took the shock of stopping the barge in a few hand's breadths and sucked it against the seawall.

Cashel'd known what was coming. He spread his feet, butted his staff down on the deck, and put his free hand on Protas' shoulder. The boy swayed. Martous yelped as he fell forward and had to grab the ladder; the servant stumbling into his back didn't help his temper any either.

Protas turned and looked up at Cashel with wide eyes. "Could you lift me up to the ground, Cashel?" he said.

Cashel chuckled. He turned his staff crossways and said, "Sit on it, then, between my hands. No, face away from me."

"What are you doing?" said Lord Martous. "Oh my goodness, you mustn't-"

Lifting wouldn't have been enough unless the prince crawled onto the stonework. Instead Cashel launched him, lobbed him like a bale being offloaded. The boy cried in delight, but when he landed he overbalanced and went down on all fours. There was no harm done, though. Protas hopped to his feet again and turned, dusting his palms and grinning wider than he had since Cashel met him.

"Oh, Cashel!" he cried. "I wish I could be as strong as you!"

"You don't have your growth yet, Protas," Cashel said. "Anyhow, it was no great thing."

Nor was it; the boy was small for his age. Half the men in Barca's Hamlet could've done what Cashel just had, if not quite so easily.

He had to admit the praise from a nobleman pleased him, though. Granted, a young nobleman; but one born to the rank, not like he'd have been if he let people call him 'Lord Cashel'. It was funny that something he didn't want for himself looked like a big thing in another fellow.

"Let me show you around the palace, Cashel!" Protas said cheerfully. In a colder tone he added, "Lord Martous, kindly take yourself out of Cashel's way so he can join me."

Martous, still holding onto the ladder with a dumbfounded expression, opened his eyes wide in dismay and irritation. "I-" he said. "I don't-"

A servant touched him on the arm and eased him back from the ladder. Martous didn't fight the contact, but he didn't seem to know what was going on. This'd been a hard afternoon for the poor fellow.

Cashel climbed carefully, placing his feet near the ladder's uprights. Salt and sunlight ate the strength out of wood, and if he bounced his weight down in the middle of the rungs chances were he'd break them to kindling.

He could've set his staff on top of the seawall to wait for him, but instead he held it between his right thumb and little finger and used the other three to climb with. Nothing was likely to happen that he'd need the staff for; it was just a habit. Besides, 'not likely to happen' wasn't the same as 'couldn't happen.'

A dozen royal vessels were already hauled up on shore within the harbor. The crews had made room by tossing out of the way cargo waiting to be loaded on merchant ships and pushing down sheds.

That was inconvenient for the folks who lived in Mona, but travelling around with Garric had taught Cashel that it always was inconvenient to have an army come calling. It was just one of those things, like winter storms or your sheep getting scrapie. He figured the locals understood that, or anyway they knew better than to make too big a fuss about it.

Four wooden wharfs reached out a little way into the harbor. They were big enough for small merchant ships, tubs with one mast and a crew of half a dozen, but they were no good for warships that had to be brought up out of the water every night. Otherwise their thin hulls'd get waterlogged and rot before you knew it.

Mona didn't seem to be a very busy place; that fit in with Sharina saying that First Atara pretty much kept to itself. The goods Cashel saw were mostly salt fish in barrels and barley packed in burlap sacks instead of big terra cotta jars like grain came into Valles down canals from northern Ornifal.

The pottery packed in wicker baskets had likely been landed from other islands but not moved out of the way before the fleet arrived. The owners were probably moaning about it now, but they'd soon learn that Prince Garric paid for the damages he knew there'd be just as sure as the sun rose.

"Oh....," said Protas, looking about the harbor, his eyes wide. "Oh.... I don't think I've ever seen so many people. At one time."

Cashel grinned, following the line of the boy's eyes. Soldiers swarmed over the foreshore and more were packed aboard ships waiting to unload.

"I never saw a place with more houses together than you could count on your fingers and toes till I went the first time to Carcosa," he said. "That was like seeing the sea, only all the little wave-tops were people. I didn't know there could be that many people."

The ships that had landed first were starting to slide back into the water, making room for new arrivals. Protas frowned and said, "What's happening, Cashel? Why did these warships come in if they're just going to leave again?"

"Well, they're not warships exactly," Cashel said. "They're triremes, all right, but they're only rowed from one set of benches. The other two have soldiers on them-or they carry cargo, of course, but all of these have soldiers. They're putting them ashore to, well, in case there's something that'd be dangerous to G-, to Prince Garric. The rowers will haul them out again a little ways off so there's room for others to unload."

Two years ago Cashel hadn't seen a trireme or heard the word, but here he was talking about them like he was a sailor himself. Well, he wasn't; but he'd learned enough by being around Garric to answer the boy's question. He wasn't a weaver either, but Ilna's brother knew something about cloth.

"What danger could there be in Mona?" Protas said in puzzlement.

"Well, not from you folks," Cashel said. "But things do happen, that's so. It isn't that Garric worries; but you know, the people around him have their own ways of doing things and he's too polite to make a big fuss about it."

Lord Martous had gotten to the top of the ladder, helped by two of the servants who'd climbed up ahead of him. Protas glanced at the fellow and said, "Yes, I see that." He cleared his throat and added, "Well, come along, Cashel, and I'll show you the inside."

Protas set off for the nearest portico. Cashel paused just long enough to wave his left hand toward Sharina and his other friends on The Shepherd of the Isles, easing toward a wharf with a lot of angry shouting from the sailing master. Two sailors in the ship's bow held a long board covered with red cloth.

The aides and stewards with Garric didn't think it was right that the prince should climb over the side and splash to shore in the shallows. They'd made a gangplank, probably a hatch cover that they'd nailed a cloak onto or something of the sort. Like Cashel'd said, the folks around Garric had their own ways of doing things.

Soldiers milled around everywhere, but they were all part of the royal army who'd just landed. All the local people standing in the colonnades gaping at the fleet or hanging from the upper-story windows that overlooked the harbor were civilians. The women wore blouses and trousers same as the men did but they also had bonnets, some of them dangling with ribbons.

Nobody seemed to stand much on ceremony, even here in the palace. Cashel didn't feel at home, exactly-he never would with this many people around. But he didn't feel near so out of place as he did back in Valles.

Protas led Cashel through the portico and into the tall building on the other side. They were connected with a little covered walk; a dog-trot, Cashel would've called it back at home, but he supposed it had a fancier name if it was made of stone and the ceiling was painted with girls and bearded men with fishtails who swam with a sea serpent.

"King Cervoran's apartments are up on the top of this building," Protas said. A servant curtseyed to him as they walked through the central hall; there were stairs up on either side of the room. "My rooms are in the east wing. Where will they put you, Cashel?"

"Protas, I couldn't say," Cashel said. He thought about adding, "Close to Sharina is all that matters," but he decided he wouldn't. There wasn't much privacy either in a palace or a village like Barca's Hamlet, but Cashel wasn't one to talk about things that weren't anybody else's business.

They went right on through to the other side of the building. There was a big plaza here, bare dirt but with occasional clumps of tough grass managing to survive.

"This is where we hold the first-day markets every week," Protas explained. "The farmers come in from the fields with produce, and people in Mona sell what they've made too."

There were new-made bleachers along the south edge; the wood was still raw and some planks oozed sap. That was nothing compared to the three-layer pyramid in the middle of the plaza, though. It'd been built from brushwood hurdles covered with boards and bunting. On the very top was a chest or cabinet that'd been draped with cloth of gold. Something lay on it, but Cashel couldn't tell what from down below.

The boy stopped and looked at Cashel, apparently expecting him to say something. He didn't know what that should be, so he asked, "What's that, Protas?"

"That's the pyre," Protas said. "Tomorrow it'll be lighted and King Cervoran will rise to the heavens. He'll be a god, then."

The boy looked desperately unhappy. Cashel put an arm on his shoulder and turned them both back toward the building they'd walked through.

"Let's see if we can find Princess Sharina," he said quietly. It was the first thing he could think of that didn't involve looking at a wizard's corpse.

* * *

"This is the queen's suite, ah, princess," said Lord Martous. He pulled open the door to the left at the head of the stairs. "It hasn't been used in, well, twelve years since the late queen passed over in childbirth, but I directed that it be aired out and put in order as soon as we learned that.... I hope you find it...."