The Fortress of Glass: Chapter Two

    “This is the palace,” Protas said, standing in the stern of the barge that was carrying Cashel with the delegation returning to Mona, the island’s capital. He cleared his throat. “I suppose you’ve seen much better ones, though? Haven’t you, Cashel?”

    Mona had a good harbor unless the wind came from the southwest, but it wasn’t big enough by half to hold the battered royal fleet. That wasn’t a surprise: Cashel didn’t guess there was a handful of places in all the kingdom that could. There’d be ships dragged up on every bit of bare shore for miles around the city tonight, trying to make good damage from the meteor.

    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....”

    Sharina stepped into the suite. Tenoctris and Cashel, the latter carrying the satchel with the paraphernalia of the old wizard’s art, followed her and Martous at a polite distance. Cashel was his usual calm, solid self, but Tenoctris was as silently tense as a cat sure there’s a mouse hidding somewhere nearby.

    The suite had a short entrance passage, three main rooms, and a curtained alcove for a servant; she and Cashel wouldn’t be needing that last. There was a hint of mildew in the air, but the walls were freshly washed. They were age-darkened oak wainscoting below a waist-high moulding with frescoes of fanciful landscapes from there to the ceiling. The damp had lifted out patches of plaster, leaving white blotches.

    Cashel smiled. “I like wall paintings,” he said.

    “I’m sorry about the water damage,” Martous said in a tight voice, “but there wasn’t time to order repairs. The funeral and coronation had to be the first priority, I’m sure you see.”

    “I like where the plaster’s gone, too,” Cashel said. “It looks kind of like clouds are drifting over the hills.”

    Sharina didn’t let her smile reach her lips. Lord Martous almost certainly thought Cashel was being sarcastic. Cashel was never sarcastic. Moreover, he had the perfect innocence that protected him from other people’s sarcasm. What somebody else would recognize as a cutting remark struck Cashel as praise, often from an unexpected quarter.

    “Yes, this will be satisfactory,” Sharina said in a coolly neutral voice. She knew the chamberlain’s type well enough to be sure that he’d want to talk—and argue—longer than she’d want to be in his company. That meant the less said, the better.

    Sharina’d been raised in a garret of her father’s inn, and during her travels since leaving Barca’s Hamlet she’d slept rough in hedges and on the bare stone floors of dungeons. She’d been in bigger, better appointed palaces than this one, but it was nonetheless a palace.

    The central room was lighted by a glazed dome in the ceiling; the two smaller rooms on the north wall had beds, the only furniture in the suite. Martous probably assumed that the royal party travelled with complete furnishings. That wasn’t correct: Prince Garric’s expedition from Ornifal to the islands of the west and north was diplomatic, a Royal Progress rather than a military campaign—but it could become a military campaign in a heartbeat. Garric travelled as light as his ancestor King Carus had. While his aides and servants might complain about the simplicity, his sister didn’t mind in the least.

    “Where does that go?” Tenoctris asked, looking at the door in the west wall. With her fingers tented before her, she looked more than ever like a cat hunting.

    “That leads to King Cervoran’s apartments,” Martous said heavily. “I’ve assigned them to Prince Garric, though I really wish he’d found time to approve the choice. Now, princess, I hope you’ll come with me and—“

    “In a moment, Lord Martous,” Sharina said. She walked to the door and opened it, finding another door behind it. That wasn’t locked either; she pushed it open. Beyond were royal servants arranging chests they’d brought up from the harbor. Trousered local people looked on and tried to help.

    Sharina moved aside as Tenoctris stepped briskly past with Cashel at her elbow. He grinned at Sharina as he went by, as placid and unobtrusive as a well-trained pack pony. Of course if trouble arose, Cashel was more like a lion.

    Ignoring Lord Martous’ chatter, Sharina surveyed Garric’s suite. She found herself frowning. There was nothing she could point to, but—

    “I won’t speak for my brother,” Sharina said, “but personally I don’t think that I’d be comfortable in these quarters. What other rooms can he use?”

    At the moment Garric was with Liane and his chief military and civil advisors in what’d been a courtroom in an adjacent building; they were consulting with Ataran finance officials. Part of the reason Martous was peevish was that he had nothing useful to add to such an assembly. Lord Tadai had told him so in a tone of polished disdain that’d crushed his protests more effectively than the snarling ill-temper Lord Waldron had been on the verge of unleashing.

    Sharina could’ve been present if she’d wanted to be. She hadn’t, and seeing to living arrangements and plans for Lord Protas’ coronation the next morning was a better use of her time from the kingdom’s standpoint besides. Tenoctris had asked to accompany her, and Cashel had joined them after he handed Lord Protas off to his tutors. Cashel’s own lack of education had made him more, not less, convinced of its value.

    “I don’t understand what you mean!” the chamberlain said. His horrified reaction was the first time Sharina recalled hearing something that could be described as high dudgeon. “Why, these are the finest rooms in the palace, the finest rooms in the kingdom! They were the king’s rooms!”

    “They were a wizard’s rooms,” said Tenoctris, seating herself cross-legged on the floor. Cashel set her satchel beside her, open; she took from it a bundle of yarrow stalks wrapped in a swatch of chamois leather. “The work Cervoran did here leaves traces behind which can be felt by people who aren’t themselves wizards. It affects Princess Sharina, and it might very well affect Prince Garric.”

    The queen’s suite had a floor of boards laid edgewise and planed smooth, solid and warm to the feet even without a layer of carpets over it. The king’s side of the building had probably started out the same, but at some point a layer of slates had raised it an inch. Words and figures had been drawn on the floor in a variety of media: chalks, paints, and colored powders. The fine-grained stone retained them as ghostly images.

    “Really!” said Martous. “It wouldn’t be proper to place Prince Garric anywhere else. These are the royal apartments!”

    “Protas said his father didn’t use spells to hurt other people, Tenoctris,” Cashel said. “Was the boy wrong, then?”

    Tenoctris held the yarrow stalks in the circuit of her right thumb and forefinger. She cocked her head quizzically toward Cashel with a expression.

    “No,” she said, “I think Cervoran was interested in knowledge for its own sake rather than for any wealth or power it could bring him. I’m of a similar mind myself, so I can sympathize. Only... only I’ve gained most of my knowledge by reading the accounts written by greater wizards than I. Cervoran searched very deeply into the fabric of things himself. He gathered artifacts as well as knowledge—“

    She nodded toward a rank of drawer-fronted cabinets against the west wall. Above them hung a tapestry worked mostly in green. It showed a garden in which mythical animals strutted among the hedgerows.

    “—and stored them here. To me these rooms are a clutching tangle, like being thrown into briars. Even to laymen, at least to a sensitive layman like Sharina, I expect this would be evident and uncomfortable.”

    “It’s like shelling peas in bed,” Sharina said, speaking precisely to emphasize her point, “and then lying down on the husks. Milord, I’ve become quite sure that my brother will require other accommodations.”

    “This is very unfortunate,” the chamberlain said, hugging himself in obvious discomfort. Sharina couldn’t tell whether he was complaining about her decision or if he felt the whirling sharpness of ancient spells also. Martous might not know himself. “Very. Well. I’ll give orders. There are rooms in the west wing, though that’ll mean....”

    He caught himself and straightened. “Be that as it may,” he resumed in a businesslike tone. “Are you ready to go over the arrangements for the apotheosis and coronation, in lieu of the prince?”

    “Tenoctris?” Sharina asked. The old wizard was looking into a drawer she’d just opened, holding her hands crossed behind her back as if to prove that she had no intention of touching the contents. The yarrow stalks lay on the floor where she’d been sitting. So far as Sharina could see, they’d fallen in a meaningless jumble.

    Tenoctris pushed the drawer shut. She looked up and said, “I’m done for the moment. There’s nothing acute to be dealt with, though—”

    She turned her head toward the chamberlain with her usual birdlike quickness.

    “—Lord Martous, I suggest you have these rooms closed until I’ve had time to go over the collection. There’s nothing that I’d consider dangerous in itself, but there are a number of items which could be harmful if misused. Also there’s a chance they could draw actively dangerous things to them.”

 

---

 

    The servants had stopped working and moved to the south wall when Cashel and Sharina entered. Sharina made a quick decision and said to the steward in charge, “Master Tinue, please move Prince Garric’s impedimenta back out of here and carry it to the west wing. Lord Martous will give you specific directions. I’m ordering this on my authority.”

    “I’ll take them!” one of the locals said eagerly. She looked at Martous and said, “You want them in the rooms over the old banquet hall, that’s right, isn’t it?”

    “Yes, yes,” said the chamberlain unhappily. The locals were already grabbing chests with far more enthusiasm than they’d showed previously. “If the princess insists, we have no choice.”

    He shook his head as the servants bustled out. “It won’t be hard to keep them away from this suite if that’s what you want,” he said in a low, bitter tone, the first hint that Sharina’d heard that he had normal human emotions. “The problem was getting them to go in and clean the suite decently. And King Cervoran was no help, no help at all! He didn’t seem to care if cobwebs and dust covered everything!”

    “I can imagine that would be frustrating,” Sharina said with honest sympathy. “Regardless, the real uncleanness was a result of your master’s art rather than mere dirt, so the lack of ordinary cleaning didn’t make much difference. There’ll be time to correct the problem after Lord Protas becomes marquess.”

    Sharina’d been chambermaid in her father’s inn while she was growing up. It was a job you could only do well if you convinced yourself that it mattered, that you were really making the world better instead of performing a meaningless ritual which the events of the coming night would completely undo. Martous didn’t have her personal experience with the work of cleaning, but they could agree that it was a worthy end in itself.

    “Yes, of course,” the chamberlain said. He opened both hands in a gesture that was just short of shooing the visitors to the connecting door. “We’ll do that now.”

    Tenoctris bent to retrieve her yarrow stalks; age asserted itself and the motion caught halfway through. Cashel touched her shoulder to indicate he was taking over, then swept up the spill with his left hand. He handed the stalks to Tenoctris, then lifted the satchel while she wrapped them again.

    Martous opened and closed his mouth. He was obviously fuming, but he had enough control not to say something which, when ignored, would underscore his complete lack of importance.

    “I thought a divination might direct me to the source of the power that surrounds us here,” Tenoctris said, shaking her head wryly as she put the stalks away. “It completely overwhelms me. I can’t determine a direction.”

    “You mean which object in Cervoran’s collection is causing it?” Sharina said as they returned to the queen’s suite. Her servants were opening the sole chest of clothing that accompanied her.

    “Cervoran didn’t have any talisman of such weight as this,” Tenoctris said. Her voice was carefully emotionless, which probably meant that she was worried. “This is... a very serious business. I don’t call it a threat, but the thing around us is so enormously powerful that we’re in danger even if it isn’t hostile.”

    She smiled cheerfully, breaking her own mood. “A hailstorm isn’t hostile to the flowers in a garden,” she added. “But it will flatten them anyway.”

    “You’ll find a way out, Tenoctris,” Cashel said calmly. It wasn’t bravado when he spoke: it was the belief of a mind so pure and simple that no one listening could doubt the truth of the words. “And we’ll help you, like we have other times.”

    Sharina gripped Cashel’s left biceps and hugged herself to him. It wasn’t the conduct expected of a princess in public, but it was what she needed just now.

    “Not that way please,” said Martous as Sharina and her companions moved toward the door to the stairs. He gestured toward the north facing room with the bed. “I can explain better from the balcony.”

    Sharina led. The chamberlain seemed to expect it, and Cashel as a matter of course brought up the rear—unless he thought there might be trouble ahead. It was the position from which he’d badgered flocks along the road. Sharina suspected Cashel felt much the same way about her and Tenoctris as he had for the sheep for which he’d been responsible back in the borough.

    The balcony ran the full breadth of the room, but it was narrow front to back. It was plaster-covered, but the way it creaked under even Sharina’s slight weight suggested that it was built from wattle and daub; the hollow clack she got from a rap of her knuckles confirmed the suspicion. An outside staircase led down to a plaza.

    “Cashel?” she said doubtfully, looking over her shoulder as Tenoctris and the chamberlain joined her on the balcony.

    Still standing in the solid-floored bedroom, he grinned. “I guess it’d hold me,” he said. “But I don’t see that it needs to now.”

    “I had a stand built for the gentlemen and ladies of the kingdom,” Martous explained, gesturing toward the plaza. “Now that you’re here, I suppose some of you Ornifal nobles will share it. And of course the two princes will be in the center of the lowest tier. I’m having another throne built for Prince Garric.”

    By ‘gentlemen and ladies of the kingdom’, he means the gentry of First Atara, Sharina translated mentally. She kept her lips neutrally together. It wouldn’t be proper to snarl at the chamberlain’s pretensions, but that might be less offensive than laughing at him as she’d come close to doing.

    The plaza spread broadly, covering perhaps ten acres without permanent buildings. On three sides of it were tents and kiosks, and to the south were bleachers--the stand Martous referred to.

    In the center of the plaza was a pile of brushwood nearly as big as the palace. On top of it, just lower than the eyes of those on the balcony, lay a corpse on a bier of gold cloth.

    Despite the distance, Sharina could see that the dead man had been middle aged; he was balding though not bald, and plump without being really fat. His cheeks were rouged, but the flesh was already beginning to slump from them. Silver coins covered both eyes.

    “When Lady Liane has a moment, she’ll give you direction as to the seating arrangements,” Sharina said firmly. “She has an excellent grasp of protocol, and I do not. She’ll consult with Lord Attaper, the commander of the royal guard, and I advise you not to argue with the decisions they make.”

    She cleared her throat. “There will be provision for guards,” she added. “Probably more guards than you think—“ Or anybody not himself a bodyguard thinks, Sharina added in her heart “—is necessary or even conceivable.”

    “If you say so,” the chamberlain said. He added fretfully, “Time is very short, you realize.”

    Sharina realized that perfectly well, so she didn’t comment. It was proper that the chamberlain should have his own priorities, but those weren’t the priorities of the Kingdom of the Isles as personified in Prince Garric and his closest advisors.

    Tenoctris glanced at the corpse, then turned her attention to the shacks and tents around the edges of the plaza. Country folk had raised them for shelter, in some cases forming little hamlets of half a dozen families around a single cook fire. Peddlers and wine sellers moved through the crowd, either carrying their stores on their backs or accompanied by a porter or a donkey. The gathering had more the atmosphere of a fair than a funeral.

 

---

 

    A fence of palings and rope picked out with tufts of scarlet wool marked off an area the width of a bowshot around the pyre. There were no guards to enforce the boundary. Either the peasants of First Atara were unusually obedient folk, or they understood just how big the blaze would be and had better sense than to come too close.

    Tenoctris fixed the chamberlain with her quick eyes. “Do the ceremonies you’ve mentioned involve wizardry?” she asked.

    “Oh, good heavens, no!” Martous said. “We’re not that sort of people here on First Atara.”

    He paused, connecting what he’d just said with what he and the visitors knew of the late king. “Ah,” he said. “Well, King Cervoran was, of course, but that was him. His father raised show rabbits, you know. My first job in the palace was as Page of the Rabbits. Ah. Really, there was no harm in the king, just, well, interest. And there’s nothing of the sort in the apotheosis ceremony, not at all.”

    Patting his hands together to close the discussion in his mind, Martous continued, “The ceremony actually started before you arrived in Mona. A delegation of nobles carried the late king from the palace while choruses of boys and girls lined the path to the pyre, singing hymns to the Lady.”

    He frowned. “The boys’ chorus might’ve been better rehearsed,” he admitted, “and there was some difficulty with the staircase up the front of the pyre, but I think things went well enough given how short my time was. Quite well!”

    Sharina smiled. The staircase Martous mentioned was a steep contrivance with notched logs for stringers and treads also fashioned from logs with an adze rather than a saw. Cloth runners—muslin dyed shades of red ranging from russet to pale pink—made the stairs presentable from a distance but also made them harder to climb.

    Sharina supposed it hadn’t seemed reasonable to waste effort on the details of something meant to burn in a day or two. The person making the decision—probably the chamberlain himself—might’ve considered the problem a group of out-of-condition country squires would have climbing the structure while carrying a laden bier, however.

    “Tomorrow morning at the ceremony,” Martous continued, “Prince Protas will light the pyre. I do hope it goes well. The brush had to be bundled while it was still green, I’m afraid. If only we’d had more notice about the king’s health so that we could’ve started preparations sooner!”

    “King Cervoran appears to have been very remiss,” Sharina said. She was making a pointed joke to remind the chamberlain to think about what he was saying. He merely nodded agreement, too lost in his own concerns to have any awareness of the wider world.

    “After the fire’s been lighted,” Martous said, “Protas will throw on a lock of his hair. I’ve already had one prepared by the palace hairdresser so that there’ll be no problem there. The chief nobles will file across the front of the pyre and sprinkle incense.”

    He looked sharply at Sharina as though she’d sudden become interesting. “How many of you Ornifal nobles will be joining the procession? A rough number, if you please?”

    “None,” said Sharina. “And I must remind you that we’re the delegation of the kingdom, not of the Island of Ornifal alone. I, for example, am Princess Sharina of Haft.”

    “Ah,” said Martous. “Ah, yes.”

    He turned his face toward the plaza, pressing his lips out and in several times. At last he continued, “The choruses will perform during the ceremony. I do hope we won’t have a repetition of the regrettable business with the boys singing that they’re ‘impure with vices’ as they did during the presentation. Anyway, when nobles have finished casting incense and the pyre is burning properly, a dove symbolizing the late king’s soul will be released from beside Prince Protas’ throne—“

    “From the throne rather than from the pyre itself?” Tenoctris asked. “When I’ve seen this sort of ceremony in the past...?”

    “Well, there was a problem with the cage opening during the rites of the late king’s father,” the chamberlain admitted. “In fact, some of the... the more superstitious members of the populace ascribed King Cervoran’s devotion to wizardry to, well, that problem. This is foolishness, of course, but I decided not to take a chance on having it happen again.”

    Tenoctris nodded. “My parents would’ve been glad of an excuse on which to blame my interests,” she said. “In their hearts, I’m sure they were afraid it was their fault. Though so far as I’ve ever been able to tell, there’s nothing more mystical about skill at wizardry than there is in preferring fish over mutton.”

    “As soon as the dove has flown...,” Martous said. He was looking at Tenoctris as he spoke, his eyes wide, but he suddenly flushed and jerked them back to the pyre. “As soon as that’s happened, I say, Prince Garric will stand and crown Prince Protas with the ancient topaz diadem—he’ll be holding that through the rites. There’ll be a general acclamation. I hope—“

    He looked coldly at Sharina.

    “—that we may expect the royal party to join in the acclamation?”

    “You may,” Sharina said in a neutral voice.

    Lord Martous took a deep breath. “Then,” he said, clasping his hands, “I believe we’re ready for the ceremony. Except for the seating arrangements. If you don’t mind, I’ll take my leave now. I need to talk with the master of the boys’ choir.”

    “I hope your discussions go well, milord,” Sharina said, but the chamberlain was already halfway to the door.

    She knew she should feel more charitable toward him. Only a fussy little fellow concerned with trivia could’ve made a good chamberlain. Given that, Martous was more than competent.

    Tenoctris faced the pyre, but Sharina couldn’t tell where the old wizard’s mind was. “How do the arrangements strike you, Tenoctris?” she asked.

    “What?” the wizard said, falling back into the present. “Oh. The arrangements seem perfectly regular. A little ornate for so—“

    She smiled.

    “—rural a place, but one finds that sort of thing in backwaters... if you’ll forgive my prejudices. I’ve always been more comfortable in communities that value books over turnips.”

    “I’m glad to hear it’s all right,” Sharina said. “I was worried that something might happen.”

    “So am I, my dear,” Tenoctris said. “The human arrangements are regular, as I said; but I’m by no means sure that we humans will have the final say in what happens tomorrow.”

 

---

 

---

 

    The combined signallers of the royal army, some fifty men with either straight trumpets or horns coiled about their bodies, stopped playing at a signal from Liane. It seemed to Garric that the plaza still trembled. Even so there was only an instant’s pause before the combined signallers of the fleet, fifty more men determined to outdo their army counterparts, took up the challenge.

    Garric groaned, looking down at the topaz crown resting on a pillow in his lap. The images in the heart of the yellow stone danced in the play of the sun. He hid a grimace and leaned to his left, bringing his lips close to Sharina’s ear. He had to be careful because he was wearing his dress helmet, a silvered casque from which flared gilt wings.

    “I should never have allowed them to do this,” Garric said. “It was Lord Tadai’s idea, a way that we could contribute something unique to the funeral ceremonies, but it’s awful.”

    “The locals seem to like it,” said Sharina. He more read the words on her smiling lips than heard them. “I’m sure they’ve never heard anything like it before.”

    Neither had Garric, though some really severe winter storms had been almost as deafeningly bad. The signallers were skilled beyond question, but they and their instruments were intended to blare commands through the chaos of battle. It was remarkable what they could do when grouped together and filled with a spirit of rivalry.

    But as Sharina’d said, the islanders filling the plaza seemed to love it. That went for both country folk and the residents of Mona itself. City-dwellers on First Atara tended to sew bright-colored ribbons on their dress garments, but there wasn’t as much distinction between urban and rural as there would’ve been on Ornifal or even Haft.

    Sharina wore court robes of silk brocade with embroidery and a cloth-of-gold appliqué to make them even stiffer and heavier. Garric’s molded and silvered breastplate wasn’t comfortable, but at least it wouldn’t prevent him from swinging a sword. The court robes were far more restrictive.

    Normally Liane would be seated slightly back of his left side, formally his aide because she wasn’t legally his consort. They’d planned the wedding over a year before—but events had prevented the ceremony, and further events had pushed it back again. The royal wedding would be an important symbol that the Kingdom of the Isles was truly united for the first time in a thousand years...

    But before he claimed the symbol, Garric had to create the reality. He grinned. Kingship was much more complicated that it’d seemed when he read Rigal’s epic Cariad. The hero Car had fought many enemies, both human and supernatural, in founding his kingdom, but he’d never had to settle a wrangle between the Duke of Blaise and the Earl of Sandrakkan as to the order of precedence of their regiments when the royal army was in full array.

    “I could handle that for you, lad,” said image of King Carus, shaking his head in rueful memory. “Nobody argued with me about anything to do with the battle line because they knew I’d take their head off if they did. Unfortunately I dealt with tax commissioners pretty much the same way, and I can’t tell you how much trouble that caused.”

    Today Liane was in charge of the royal involvement in the funeral and apotheosis rites. She had an instinctive feel for protocol and precedence, what should or shouldn’t be done in a formal setting. That was a better use of her talents than sitting beside Garric and calming him by her presence; but he half wished now that he’d left the arrangements to one of Lord Tadai’s stewards.

    The shrieking of horns and trumpets halted. Choruses of boys and girls came forward from behind the bleachers. The youngest singers were only six or so, and the choir masters and assistants trying to keep the lines in order looked more harassed than the children did. It was almost time to light the pyre.

    Lord Protas was to Garric’s right; Lord Martous was whispering to him. The boy looked stiff and uncomfortable, but that’s how he’d looked ever since Garric met him on the Shepherd. Garric realized with a touch of sadness that a 12-year-old boy whose father had just died was an obvious subject for sympathy, but he—Prince Garric of Haft—had none to spare.

    Protas seemed biddable. He could take over the government of First Atara with the ‘advice’ of a commissioner from Valles, leaving one fewer problem for Prince Garric to concern himself with.

    “There’s nothing wrong with sympathy,” said King Carus, standing on the balcony of a tower that might never have existed. “And don’t pretend that you lack it. The trouble comes from letting sympathy keep you from doing what has to be done. Anger does less harm than false kindness; and I’ve got plenty of experience of how much harm anger does.”

    Martous handed Protas a glass bowl in a filigreed framework; it held a pine torch lying on a bed of sand which’d been soaked with oil. Sluggish flames wobbled from the sand as well as the pine.

    “Go, your highness!” the chamberlain snapped. “Don’t delay the ceremonies!”

    Garric put his right hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed it, smiling at him. He didn’t speak. Protas nodded appreciatively, then got up and started across the broad cleared space toward the pyre. His back was straight and his stride firm except for one little stumble.

    “No sympathy!” repeated King Carus with a gust of laughter.

    Tenoctris sat cross-legged on the ground beside the bleachers where she’d asked to be. A lifetime of studies with no servants and little money had made her adept at making do with what was available. There was almost always a floor, but chairs and stools were harder to come by; she’d gotten into the habit of drawing her words and symbols of art on the surface she sat on.

    Garric glanced at the old wizard. She was muttering an incantation over a figure drawn on ground packed hard by the feet of generations of buyers, sellers, and spectators. The bundle of yarrow stalks lay by her left knee and a vellum scroll was partly unrolled to her right, but she didn’t appear to be using either one.

    The four Blood Eagles detailed to guard Tenoctris formed an armored U-shape on all sides of her but in front. They kept their eyes on the crowd and possible threats rather than looking at what Tenoctris was doing, but her wizardry didn’t seem to worry them the way it would most laymen. Lord Attaper had learned to pick the wizard’s guards from those who knew something about the art: men who’d had a nanny who worked spells or whose father’s cousin was a cunning man back in their home village, that sort of thing.

    Cashel stood behind Sharina’s throne, as placid as a resting ox and as impressively big at a quick glance. When Garric’s eye caught him, he smiled softly. He was unique among folk dressed in splashy finery: his tunics were plain except for a curling pattern in subtle browns that Ilna had woven into the hems.

    Spectators who’d seen Cashel brought their eyes back to him, though. That was partly because of the simple elegance of the man and his costume, but also because of that woven pattern. No fabric that Ilna wove was only a piece of cloth.

    Protas had covered most of the distance between his throne and the base of the pyre. Liane signalled the commanders of the ad hoc military bands; they in turn snapped commands to their units and raised the tools they used for directing. The fleet’s music master had a slim silver baton, but his army counterpart used the long straight sword he carried as a cavalry officer. The musicians lifted horns and trumpets to their lips.

    Light trembled over the instruments of brass and silver and even gold. Tenoctris glanced up; Garric followed her eyes. The sound of the second meteor, for now only a rasping undertone, reached his ears as he saw the fluctuating light and looked quickly away.

    “May the Shepherd guard me!” a man called in a high-pitched voice.

    The signallers blew together. For a moment, the shriek of their instruments filled the air, but the thunder of the oncoming meteor overwhelmed even that raucous blast. People throughout the crowd were shouting though their voices went unheard, and the ancient king in Garric’s mind said, “Sister swallow me if it isn’t coming straight at us!”

    Protas didn’t stop or look up. Lifting the torch from the bowl in which it rested, he touched it to the faggots. Yellow flames spread too swiftly for green wood: the bundled brush had been soaked with oil. Protas backed a step and paused, then hurled the burning bowl onto the pyre also. It shattered on the steps, igniting the red muslin.

    The meteor exploded unthinkably high in the heavens. For a moment there was only the flash; then the sound reached the crowd, throwing everyone to the ground. Garric felt himself lifted, then slammed down hard. The crudely built throne cracked under his weight, and the casque bashed his forehead.

    He stood up. His ears rang and he felt each heartbeat throb in his skull. There was a stunned silence over the plaza, relieved by the sounds of prayers and sobbing. The fire was beginning to bite on the funeral pyre. A crackling indicated that the olive oil and beeswax had ignited the wood.

    Garric looked at the topaz crown in his left hand. His grip had twisted the soft gold circlet, but the big stone was more vividly alive than a diamond. The things moving in the brightness were no longer shadows but streaks of flame spinning sunwise around the white-hot heart of the stone.

    Garric was spinning: not his body but his mind. He felt the suction and tried to throw down the topaz, but he couldn’t open his grip. Voices cried wordlessly like a winter storm.

    “Hold me!” Garric tried to say, but he couldn’t make his lips move nor even form the words in his mind. The circles of light boring through his eyes wrenched his consciousness out of the waking world. He hovered for a moment above the plaza, watching his garments flatten on the ground where he’d been standing. His helmet bounced once and came to rest on its rim, the gilded wings shivering.

    The plaza and the pyre were gone. Garric stood on a gray road, naked and alone, and fog swaddled his brain.

 

---

 

    Ilna put her right arm over Merota’s shoulders as what the girl called a meteor snarled like a landslide toward them through the bare sky. If it hit the plaza—and it certainly appeared that it was going to—there was nothing anyone could do that’d make a difference.

    If Ilna’d been alone, she’d have taken lengths of yarn out of her left sleeve and begun knotting a pattern. She smiled wryly. Her powers were considerable but they didn’t rise to ripping large rocks out of the sky, so that wouldn’t have helped either.

    The work made her feel more content, though.

    She wasn’t alone. She was responsible for Merota, and though the girl was putting a brave face on it she was understandably terrified. Ilna wasn’t going to fill her last moments of life with the knowledge she’d just abandoned a frightened child.

    She, Merota, and Chalcus had been seated on a middle row of the bleachers, down at the right end. The rows beneath them--three; she’d counted them off on her fingers as she stepped up--were the seats of the island nobility who were going to march up to the pyre and throw on incense. The rows above--two more--were nobles as well, but seated higher because they were less important and didn’t have any duties during the funeral except to be part of the spectacle. They were rich farmers for the most part, judging by their talk and gaudy tastelessness.

    Those folk were the problem now. They were trying to get to the ground, and in their panic they probably wouldn’t have cared if that meant trampling a small woman and the ten-year-old girl in her charge.

    They cared when Chalcus jumped onto his seat and faced them, though, sword and dagger drawn. One fellow tried to push through anyway; Chalcus’ left hand moved too quickly to see. The panicked local clapped his hands to his face and sprang back, three long gold chains dancing as he fell on the bleachers. Blood from his slit nostril flickered in the air.

    Ilna’s smile grew minusculy wider: Chalcus understood duty also. If she was about to die, and it certainly seemed that she was, she was fortunate to do it at the side of a man in the best sense of the word.

    The sling-stone—the meteor, since Merota was educated and doubtless knew the right word—exploded high in the sky. Ilna’s face was bent down but she felt the flash on the backs of her hands. She braced herself because she remembered what’d happened when the earlier meteor hit the sea, but the shockwave this time was beyond anything she’d imagined.

    Clutching Merota with one hand, Ilna turned an unintended cartwheel. The bleachers, raw wood beneath a drape of red muslin like the steps up the pyre--had flexed down and then sprung back again. She tried to grab Chalcus--for the contact rather than because it’d help in any material way--but he was spinning off in a different direction.

    Ilna, Merota, and several handfuls of other spectators crashed down onto the bleachers together; boards broke. The whole structure collapsed in a tangle of splinters and torn cloth.

    Ilna jumped to her feet. The back of her right wrist was skinned, but she wasn’t really injured.

    “Merota, are you hurt?” she said. The girl wrapped her arms around Ilna’s torso and sobbed into the bosom of her tunic.

    People were shouting and crying, but only a few of them had real injuries. A splinter as long as sword blade had run through a middle-aged woman’s right calf. She stared at it in shocked amazement; Chalcus, glancing first to see that Ilna and Merota were all right, knelt at the victim’s side. He sheathed the sword he hadn’t lost in the tumult, then used the dagger to cut a length off his sash for a bandage or tourniquet.

    Ilna looked around plaza. The troops who’d been formed by battalions in a semicircle around the bleachers had fallen like ten-pins, their armor and weapons clattering. Now they were picking themselves up and dressing their ranks. Some soldiers were gray-faced with fear, but instead of running they trusted their safety to discipline and their fellows just as they’d been trained to do.

    Ilna supposed that sort of training was useful—for people who couldn’t simply overcome their fears by will power. She was afraid of many things: afraid of failure; afraid of making a fool of herself; afraid of her own anger. She wasn’t in the least afraid of death.

    The locals weren’t as fast to get to their feet as the soldiers were, and when they did they often stumbled away from the plaza. Ilna didn’t blame them: the air had a metallic taste, unpleasant and rough on the back of her throat.

    Her ears rang from the blast, but she could hear sounds again. A local screamed and pointed toward the pyre. Other islanders turned to follow the line of his arm, then screamed in turn. Their drift became a panicked stampede.

    Ilna looked at the pyre also. The lowest level was burning, though the green brushwood made smoky flames. They crackled like sea ice breaking on the coast in an inshore gale.

    The bier at the top of the third stage was disarranged. The corpse got to its feet, dragging away the cloth-of-gold drapery. It swayed, wax-pale except where it was rouged, and took a step by pivoting its whole leg at the hip. Its mouth moved, but any words it spoke were lost in screams and the sound of the fire. The corpse took another step to the muslin-covered staircase, then a third.

    “Help....” it cried in a piping voice. It stumbled to its knees. “Me....”

    The flames were rising higher. The fire had taken hold slowly, but before long the brush would dry and turn the structure into a dancing, orange-red incandescence.

    “I’m coming, your highness,” called a plump man whose tunic and trousers were decorated with silver gares. It was Martous, the chamberlain; the man who’d sent the boy prince to ignite the pyre. He tried to go forward but stopped, paralyzed by fear and indecision.

    Ilna weighed the situation coldly, as she did all things. She patted Merota’s shoulder reassuringly, then gave the girl a little push in the direction of Chalcus. “Go to Chalcus, milady,” she said. “Quickly now!”

    The corpse got up again. It tried to walk and fell immediately, rolling down the stairs to the broader second stage. Flames were already licking up the wood on the adjacent side.

    Ilna gathered her tunics above her knees and ran toward the pyre. Cashel was watching over Sharina whose court dress hobbled her as effectively as leg-irons would. Chalcus was saving a woman who’d bleed to death without his help. That was slight recompense for the many lives he’d let out with his sword and less merciful means, but it was something—and besides, somebody had to watch Merota.

    Garric was.... Ilna didn’t know where Garric was. All she could see as she ran was his unique winged helmet lying on the ground near his broken throne, and beside it a tunic reeved through his ornate cuirass.

    Where is Garric? But the question could wait for now. Ilna reached the side staircase and started up.

 

---

 

    The steps were uneven, forcing Ilna to look down at her feet instead of keeping her eyes on the man she was rescuing. The corpse. She supposed she shouldn’t complain. Only a desire for symmetry had caused the islanders to put steps on all four sides to begin with. The flight up the front had been sufficient for the procession placing the bier.

    Ilna’d never seen the point of funerals in the first place. All that remained when a person died was meat, and human flesh was as useless as fallen leaves in autumn. For sanitary purposes it had to be disposed of—in a hole, in a fire, or simply by throwing it into the sea.

    She glanced up as she reached the top of the first tier: the late King Cervoran had gotten to his feet again and was wallowing down the middle flight of steps. “Help...,” he squeaked.

    Ilna continued toward him. Apparently she’d been wrong about funerals. That wasn’t her first mistake, but each one made her angry with herself.

    She began breathing through her mouth. The wind shifted slightly and wreathed her in smoke; she felt the hair on the back of her neck shrivel.

    “Me...,” the corpse said.

    Close up King Cervoran still looked like a corpse of several days, but he was quite obviously alive. The coins that’d covered his eyes were gone. The whites and irises both had a yellowish hue, but the pupils were feverish and bright; they focused on Ilna.

    Cervoran’s lips were violet under the smear of the undertaker’s rouge; the tongue between them was black. He repeated, “Help... me....”

    Peasants aren’t squeamish. Ilna took Cervoran’s left wrist in her hand and wrapped his arm over her shoulders. It was like handling warm wax which smelled of decay. She wondered if the arm would pull out at the shoulder; it didn’t, at least not just now.

    Heat hammered her as the fire roared to full life. A ball of flame flared at Ilna’s side and vanished, an outrider of the main blaze. Before she started down, she pulled Cervoran along the tier to put the bulk of the pyramid between them and the fire. She could feel the back of her tunics searing and shrinking. The cloth would be brown and brittle after this, no use even for wiping rags.

    Of course that assumed there was an after....

    Cervoran didn’t fight her, but he was barely able to keep his feet under him. She dragged him along. “Yes...,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it pierced like a bradawl.

    They reached the staircase down the north side, opposite where the boy’d lighted the fire which was now waving like a banner over the bier. Ilna was beginning to feel Cervoran’s weight in her knees.

    Because this was a formal event she wore sandals, which she wouldn’t normally do in weather so warm. She caught her left heel stepping down and had to throw her right leg out to keep from pitching onto her face with the former corpse on top of her. Cervoran twisted, trying to help but unable to move his legs quickly enough. It was like carrying a desperately sick man.

    They were midway down the middle tier, some twenty feet about the ground, when Ilna felt the pyre collapse with a roar behind them. A column of sparks shot skyward, then mushroomed and rained back.

    The pyramid was a stack of hurdles with no internal structure. When the flames ate away the bundled brushwood on the south, the whole thing fell toward the bleachers.

    Ilna felt the staircase tilting backward. The stringers were lifting from the ground, threatening to catapult her and Cervoran back into the flames.

    Ilna leaped off at an angle, pulling Cervoran along with a strength that’d have surprised anyone who hadn’t seen her work a heavy double loom with the regularity of a windmill turning. Her right shoulder brushed the top of the lowest stage. The impact rolled her and her burden so that the late king hit the ground sideways an instant before she did.

    There was a shock and a smack like a bundle of wet cloth thrown onto stone. Ilna rolled reflexively and was up again before she knew whether she’d been hurt by the fall.

    She hadn’t. The pyre was still tumbling into a state of repose, bales of brushwood rolling onto the blazing coals of those that’d ignited earlier. Men were shouting. A soldier tried to grab Ilna, but she slapped his hand away.

    The chamberlain and another palace official caught King Cervoran under the arms and began carrying him away from the fire. The fall didn’t seem to have hurt him, but that was hard to tell. Cervoran’s legs moved as well as they had before. Ilna walked along through eddies of soldiers and a scattering of local civilians, looking for someone she recognized.

    “I am...,” the late king said shrilly. “I am....”

    “Your highness?” said the chamberlain, his own voice rising. “You’re King Cervoran.”

    “I am Cervoran!” the corpse cried. “I am Cervoran!”

    “Ilna!” Liane said, catching Ilna’s wrists in her hands. Garric’s fiancée was usually composed, but her features had a set, frightened look now. “Have you seen Garric? What’s happened to Garric?”

 

---

 

    Garric walked onward, certain only that he had to keep moving. He didn’t feel his bare feet touch the gravel, but he supposed they must be doing so.

    He was walking toward a goal. He didn’t know what it was or how far away it was, but he knew he had to go on. His head buzzed and his vision was blurry, and he kept putting one foot in front of the other.

    There was a figure beside him. He wasn’t sure how long it had accompanied him. He turned to it and tried to speak; his tongue seemed swollen.

    “Who are you?” the figure asked. It was a man, but Garric couldn’t make out his features or clothing because of the spider web clogging his eyes.

    “I’m Garric,” he said, forcing the words past his dry lips. “I’m Prince Garric of Haft, Lord of the Isles.”

    “Prince Garric?” said the other figure. It was leaving him, fading into the hazy shadows the same way it had appeared. “Prince Garric was the last King of the Isles. He and his kingdom have been gone for a thousand years....”

    Garric walked. There was light in the distance, but the foggy darkness was close beside and behind him.