The Fortress of Glass: Chapter Three

    Garric took another step forward. The air was chill and humid, suddenly filled with the odors of life and decay. His foot splashed ankle-deep in muck, throwing him forward. His brain was too numb to keep him upright, but at least he managed to get his arms out. He landed on all fours instead of flopping onto his face.

    Endless grayness had become fog-shrouded sunlight.

    Something hooted mournfully beyond the mist. He couldn’t tell how far away it was or even be sure of the direction. The sun was a bright patch in the thick clouds almost directly overhead.

    Garric stood carefully. He was stark naked, but so far as he could tell he hadn’t been hurt by whatever’d happened. He had a memory of falling into the cloudy heart of the topaz, but he also recalled seeing the diadem bouncing on the ground beside his helmet and tunics. Both those things couldn’t be true.

    “And maybe neither is, lad,” said King Carus. “But we’re not on First Atara now, nor anyplace I’ve been before.”

    The animal hooted again. It didn’t sound especially dangerous, but it was certainly big. Even if it were vegetarian, whatever hunted it would be large enough to be dangerous to an unarmed man....

    Garric made a more focused assessment of his surroundings, looking for a weapon. A branch stuck out from a fallen tree. He gripped it with both hands, but it crumbled instead of providing a club.

    Trees three or four times Garric’s height were scattered over open marsh. The trunks all tapered upward from thick bases, but their foliage varied from needles and fronds to long serpentine whips.

    He generally couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction, but swirls and eddies in the mist gave him occasional glimpses out as far as a bowshot. The distant terrain was low-lying and muddy with patches of standing water, more or less identical to the patch on which Garric stood.

    It was raining, though it’d taken him a moment to realize that because the air was already so sopping wet. He started to laugh. Aloud, though there was nobody around save the king in his mind, he said, “Well, I’ve been in worse places, but I won’t pretend this is a good one.”

    “Keep your eyes open, because this is the sort of place that can get worse fast,” said Carus. His image grinned in amusement. He and the blue sky above the rose-twined battlements where he stood were all created by Garric’s imagination. “There’s times I don’t mind not having a body any more.”

    The breeze was from the south. Garric thought he smelled smoke, so he started walking in that direction for lack of a better one. It could’ve been a fire lighted by lightning, of course; or a meteor.

    Or nothing at all; the air was thick with rot and unfamiliar plant odors, so he might be imagining the smell. But smoke would linger in a thick atmosphere like this.

    A dozen pairs of small eyes watched him from the edge of the pond he was skirting. When he turned to face them, they disappeared in a swirl and a series of faint plops.

    “I never cared for raw fish,” said Carus, watching as always through Garric’s eyes, “but it’s better than starving. Unless peasants—”

    He grinned again.

    “—know how to build cook fires in a swamp?”

    Garric smiled also. “This peasant doesn’t,” he said.

    Thinking about raw fish, he stepped into a grove of a dozen or so stems sprouting from a common base. The trunks ranged from thumb thick to three fingers in breadth. He twisted one in both hands. It was springy and so tough that even his full strength couldn’t bend it far out of line.

    One of these saplings would make a good spear shaft or fire-hardened spear if he could cut it free. He hadn’t seen any exposed rock, even a slab of shale or limestone he could use to bruise through the wood. Maybe there were clams whose shells he could--

    A man in a cloth tunic, a cape, and a plaited hat stepped out of the mist on the other side of the grove. He was bearded; a scar ran down the left side of his face from temple to jaw hinge. He carried a spear with a barbed bone tip, and a fine-meshed net was looped around his waist.

    “Wah!” the stranger cried. Other men were following him. The nearest carried a club. He stopped, but two spearmen spread out to either side.

    Garric felt the king in his mind tense for action. Carus was judging weaknesses and assessing possibilities: grab the spear from Scarface and kick him in the crotch to make him let go of it; stab the man to the left with the spear point, then slam the butt into the face of the man on the right; back away and use the point again on the fellow with the club. Most people don’t react quickly enough to instant, murderous violence....

    Garric raised his empty right hand, palm forward, and said, “Good day, sirs. I’m glad to meet you.”

    “If only you had a sword!” King Carus muttered.

    If only I had a breechclout, Garric thought.

    The strangers halted where they were; the pair on the sides edged closer to their fellows. They began to jabber to one another, punctuating the words by clicking their tongues against the roofs of their mouths. The language was nothing Garric had ever heard before; nor had Carus, judging by his look of stern discomfort.

    Garric lowered his right arm and laced his fingers before him, resisting the urge to cover his genitals. Maybe one of the strangers would loan him the short cape they all wore? Though for him to tie it around his waist might be seen as an insult....

    Scarface kept his eyes on Garric while he talked to his fellows. He seemed to be the leader, though he was only in his mid-twenties and one of his fellows was easily a decade older.

    The discussion ended. Scarface clapped his left palm on the knuckles of the hand holding his spear, then spoke slowly and distinctly to Garric. The other three men watched intently. The words were as meaningless as the rhythmic glunking of a frog.

    Garric opened both hands at shoulder height. “I don’t understand you,” he said, smiling pleasantly, “but I’d like to go with you to your village. Perhaps we can—”

    The strangers to either side dropped their spears, then walked forward and grabbed his wrists. One tried to twist Garric’s arm behind his back while freeing the length of rope looped over his shoulder.

    “Please don’t do this!” Garric said, stepping backward to keep the strangers from surrounding him. He continued to smile, but he didn’t need his ancestor’s instincts to make him tense. He was half a head taller than the biggest of the four; but there were four of them.

    The man gripping Garric’s right arm snarled something and twisted harder. Garric had fought—and won—his share of wrestling matches in Barca’s Hamlet. He let the stranger pull him to the right, then pivoted and lifted the fellow off the ground in a swift arc, using the man on his left as an anchor.

    The stranger gave a bleat of fear. Garric let him go at the top of the arc and turned to watch him splash head-first in the nearby pond. A pair of fingerlings squirted out of the water and danced across the surface for a yard or more on their tails before diving back in. The man who’d been struggling with Garric’s left arm backed away showing his teeth.

    Garric smiled and raised his hands again. He was breathing hard and he was afraid his expression looked like a wolf’s slavering grin, but he was trying to be friendly.

    “I’d be pleased to go with you,” he said. Obviously the strangers couldn’t understand him any better than he could them, but he hoped his quiet tone would make an impression. “But I won’t allow you to tie me up. You don’t need to do that.”

    Scarface grimaced and called something to his companions. The older man at his side, standing with his club raised, looked at him in surprise and protested. Scarface repeated the command, this time in a growl.

    The man Garric’d thrown into the water stood up, wiping the muck from his forehead with the back of his hand. He glared at Garric, but when Garric looked squarely at him he paused where he was with one foot raised instead of getting out of the pond.

    Garric bowed to Scarface, then gestured back in the direction the strangers had appeared from. “Shall we go?” he said.

    Scarface guffawed loudly, then broke into a broad grin. He called something to the man standing in the pond. That fellow scowled, but he undid the fishbone pin at his throat and tossed his cape to Garric. The others laughed.

    Scarface made a fist with his left hand, then touched the knuckles to Garric’s. He gestured southward and turned. Garric clasped the cape around his midriff and walked alongside Scarface, matching his strides to the other’s shorter legs.

    “Now for a sword,” murmured King Carus; but his image was smiling.

 

---

 

    Ilna wasn’t impressed by the quality of the tapestries covering the council chamber’s walls. Still, they were tapestries instead of wall paintings like she’d found in most of the cities she’d been to. She wondered vaguely who or what the council on First Atara might be, but that didn’t matter much.

    Ilna stood at the back, moving slowly sideways as she followed the woven patterns more with her soul than with her eyes. At the table in center of the room, members of Garric’s court argued about what to do now that the prince had vanished. Everybody had an opinion and every opinion was different, which struck Ilna as absurd. There was only one possible answer to fit the present pattern.

    Her face was hard. By virtue of the fact that Ilna os-Kenset was one of Prince Garric’s oldest and closest friends, she could state her opinion; which everyone else would listen to politely and as politely ignore. None of these nobles, whether soldiers or civilians, cared what an illiterate peasant thought. Therefore Ilna looked at a marginally competent tapestry while her social superiors nattered pointlessly.

    “It’s not just food for the personnel,” Admiral Zettin was saying forcefully. “If there’s a serious storm—and in this season, we could get one at any moment—the ships aren’t safe just drawn up on shore like they are. I won’t answer for the losses if we don’t return to Valles immediately.”

    Sharina was at one end of the table; Cashel sat at the corner to her left, the quarterstaff upright beside him and an expression of placid interest on his face. At this sort of event, Cashel looked like a well-trained guard dog, quiet and calm and not at all threatening unless someone did the wrong thing.

    Ilna grinned faintly. Cashel was a well-trained guard dog. His silent bulk was the reason the others nattered instead of snarling, even the two military rivals seated across from one another at the opposite end of the table: Lord Waldron, the army commander, and Lord Attaper who commanded the bodyguards, the Blood Eagles. Without Cashel’s presence, they’d have been bellowing at each other, ignoring the presence of Princess Sharina.

    Several people began talking all together, disagreeing with Zettin in as many different fashions as there were voices. None of the questions really mattered, and they were dancing around the question that did matter: who would rule until Garric returned?

    Who would rule if Garric never returned?

    Ilna looked at the tapestry on which a peasant plowed behind a span of oxen. On a hill in the background rose a castle whose corner turrets had red conical roofs. It didn’t look anything like this palace nor any building Ilna would expect to find on First Atara.

    She touched the fabric—wool on a warp of linen—and felt a warm impression of the hills of Central Haft. She might well have passed close to where the tapestry’d been woven when she walked from Barca’s Hamlet to Carcosa on the opposite coast a few years before.

    She might’ve been physically close, but the tapestry’d been woven unthinkable ages before she’d been born. It was ancient, a relic of the Old Kingdom like some of the books Garric and Lady Liane read; Garric’s fiancée, Lady Liane....

    Ancient or not, the weaver hadn’t been very skilled. First Atara must always have been the sort of backwater it was today, a quiet place where folk grew grain and minded their own business. Barca’s Hamlet had been that sort of place, but then it all changed. That would happen on First Atara too, whether the folk here liked it or not.

    Ilna smiled, this time without humor. It didn’t matter what people or what threads, either one, thought of the pattern they were woven into.

    “With all due respect—” said Lord Tadai. From the tone of his voice, that meant no respect at all. He stopped because he heard loud voices outside the door.

    The soldiers at the table rose. So did Cashel, still placid but holding his staff in both hands.

    It was Chalcus, though, standing at Ilna’s side who murmured, “Stay, child,” to Merota. He swaggered to the door and pulled it open with his right hand. Only someone who knew the man Chalcus was would have noticed that the movement put his hand very close to the hilt of his incurved sword.

    The six guards outside were Blood Eagles. They’d backed to keep as far as they could from the pair of men coming toward them across the courtyard. Now there was no farther to retreat, so they’d lowered their spears. The men approaching would run themselves onto the points unless they stopped.

    Ilna didn’t care for soldiers as a class: a life spent in killing other men seemed to her at best unworthy. The Blood Eagles were the best of their sort, however, and she appreciated good craftsmanship in any line of work.

    “Please, your highness,” begged the chamberlain, Lord Martous, as he stood wringing his hands behind Cervoran. “Please, another time?”

    Cervoran—King Cervoran—looked much as he had that morning when Ilna dragged him from the pyre. His garments’d been changed; the trousers and tunic he wore now weren’t singed and smoke-stained. Nonetheless the same bluish cast underlay Cervoran’s pallor, and his fingers looked like suet-stuffed sausages. He walked normally now, except for a slight hitch in his step of a sort common in old people and not unknown in younger ones.

    “Sir!” the under-captain commanding the guards said to Attaper. “We told him to stop, but he just keeps coming!”

    The Blood Eagles were brave men by definition: they’d volunteered to protect a warrior prince who regularly put himself in the hottest part of the fight. This officer and his men had watched Cervoran get up from his bier, though.

    Wizardry was the only cause Ilna could imagine that would’ve allowed a dead man to rise. The guards were clearly of the same opinion, and the courage to face death didn’t necessarily mean the courage to face wizardry.

    Cervoran stopped just short of the spear points. Those in the council chamber watched him; some calmly, some not. The smile on Chalcus’ face was probably genuine, but there was sweat on Lord Waldron’s brow. The old warrior wouldn’t run from what he feared, but his fear was no less real for his ability to master it.

    Sharina looked past Cashel’s left shoulder; the quarterstaff was a diagonal bar protecting her from anything that might come through the doorway. Cashel’s expression was as placid as that of an ox in his stall, but Ilna could see the way the muscles tensed in her brother’s throat and bare forearms.

    Cervoran raised his right arm and pointed a doughy finger at Cashel. “You,” he said, piping like a frog in springtime. “Who are you?”

    “I’m Cashel or-Kenset,” Cashel replied. His face didn’t change. He didn’t add a question of his own or put a challenge in his voice, the way a less self-assured man might have done.

    “Come with me, Cashel,” Cervoran said. “It is necessary.”

    Attaper stepped forward, his hand on his sword hilt. “Lord Cervoran,” he said in too loud a voice, “you have no business here. This is a royal council!”

    “Come with me, Cashel,” the former corpse repeated.

    “Sharina?” said Cashel. “Do you need me? Because I wouldn’t mind going along with him, Lord Cervoran I mean. Since he says it’s necessary.”

    “Yes, all right, Cashel,” Sharina said. She put her right hand on his shoulder, squeezed, and released him. “I trust your judgment... and your ability to deal with any problems that arise.”

    Cashel grinned. “Let me by, please,” he said to the guards, but they were already stepping sideways to let him past.

    “It is necessary,” Cervoran squeaked. He turned and started back toward the opposite wing of the palace—the servants’ quarters and storage rooms. Cashel walked at his side, the quarterstaff slanted across his body; the chamberlain followed nervously behind them.

    Ilna looked at the pattern her fingers had knotted during the tableau that’d just ended. “Close the door if you would, Chalcus,” she said in a clear voice.

    She turned and eyed the room, the gathering of the most powerful folk in the Kingdom of the Isles. “Now,” said Ilna. “I think it’s time to acknowledge Princess Sharina as regent until her brother the prince comes back.”

 

---

 

    Sharina was startled at Ilna’s words, but it was very like her friend to speak her mind. Admiral Zettin—a good man, but one who didn’t know Ilna as well as Waldron and Attaper had come to do—looked at her with an irritated expression and said, “I don’t think—”

    “That’s nothing to brag about, milord,” Liane broke in, emphasizing by her nasal, upper-class Sandrakkan accent that she was Lady Liane bos-Benliman. “If you did think, you’d realize—as we all do, I’m sure, in our hearts—that the kingdom needs someone in Prince Garric’s place as regent if it’s to function, and that the princess is the proper choice. If Garric could’ve done so, he’d have appointed his sister, as he’s done when necessary in the past.”

    Sharina grinned, but only in her mind. She didn’t want the job, but she knew Garric didn’t want it either. He was the correct person to hold the mutually antagonistic nobles together—nobody’s man, and therefore the man for everyone. While Garric was gone, Sharina was almost the only one who could take his place.

    Almost the only one: Liane too had the knowledge and intelligence to rule. But Liane was from Sandrakkan, while the strength of the royal army and fleet came from Ornifal. Haft, where Garric and Sharina’d been born, had been unimportant since the fall of the Old Kingdom. The haughty rulers of Ornifal and Sandrakkan and Blaise could bow to someone from Haft as representating the Kingdom without losing face to a rival island.

    Besides, Liane preferred to work behind the scenes. She sat quietly at Garric’s elbow, ready to hand him necessary documents or whisper information; and she worked more quietly still in managing the kingdom’s spies. When Liane spoke it was to the point— and occasionally very pointedly, as to Zettin just now—but that wasn’t her usual style.

    “I have the greatest respect for the princess,” said Lord Waldron, making a half bow toward Sharina, “but Prince Garric’s disappearance may mean there’s a military threat looming. While the army will be loyal to whoever stands in the prince’s place—”

    “I’m sure Princess Sharina will be able to delegate military affairs,” said Liane tartly, “as she and indeed her brother have done in the past. I consider it very unlikely that Prince Garric was snatched away by a hostile army, though, milord—if that was really what you were implying?”

    “Well, I didn’t mean that, of course...,” Waldron muttered. He scowled, looking around the room angrily as if searching for a way out of his misstatement.

    Lord Attaper opened his mouth, probably to gibe at his rival Waldron. Before he got a word out, Liane said, “I believe we’re in agreement, then. Lord Attaper, are you ready to serve Princess Sharina loyally?”

    Attaper stiffened as though slapped, then grinned at the way Liane had outmaneuvered him. “Yes,” he said. “Princess Sharina is clearly the best choice to fill what we hope will be a short-term appointment. Ah, are we any closer to knowing just what did happen to the prince?”

    Liane could’ve answered that, but it was properly a question for Sharina herself. She nodded to Attaper and said, “Tenoctris is searching the, ah, former king’s library, which I gather is rather extensive.”

    She cleared her throat. She’d started to say, “the late king’s library,” and part of her still thought that might be the correct term.

    “At any rate,” Sharina continued, “Tenoctris will tell us if she learns anything useful. When she learns, as I hope and expect.”

    Cashel’s presence had kept the previous discussions quiet but not calm. Much as Sharina appreciated having Cashel close to her, it was a good thing now that he’d left. The dynamic of the meeting had changed abruptly when Ilna spoke. Power had shifted from the males in the room to her, Ilna and Liane. If Cashel were still here, the tension between him and the three military men would’ve prevented that from happening.

    “Ah, your highness?” said Zettin, glancing warily toward Liane. “The matter of the ships still remains. If we return to Valles in the next few—”

    “We’ll remain here until further notice,” said Sharina with crisp certainty. “Garric, ah, departed from here. Unless Tenoctris says otherwise, I believe this is the place he’s most likely to return to. I regret the risk to the ships, but Prince Garric is our first concern.”

    Lord Waldron glanced sidelong at Lord Attaper. He smiled slightly when their eyes met.

    Lord Tadai touched together the tips of his well manicured fingers before him and coughed for attention. Tadai didn’t have a formal title, but he carried out the duties of chancellor and chief of staff for Garric while the prince was travelling.

    “Milords Waldron and Zettin?” he said in his butter-smooth voice. “I’d appreciate it if you’d direct your provisioning officers to meet with me as soon as we’re done here. My staff has made preliminary contacts with local officials regarding our initial requirements, but I’ll need more detailed information if we’re going to remain on First Atara.”

    He bobbed his chin to Sharina.

    “I believe we’re done for now,” Sharina said, glancing toward Liane and receiving a minuscule nod of agreement. “If each of you will leave a runner with me, I’ll let you know as soon as I hear what Tenoctris has to say. I’m going up to see her now.”

    As the others present started to rise, a scream sounded outside. Heavy wood cracked, then masonry fell with a rumbling crash. A beam had broken—had been broken—and the pediment it supported had come down with a roar.

    Chalcus threw open the door and slipped into the courtyard, his sword and dagger in his hands. The council’s military officials followed, drawing their weapons also. Lord Tadai and the other civilians got up and eased toward the back wall.

    Sharina’s eyes met Ilna’s. Ilna patted Merota’s head and said something; the girl ran to Liane and took her hand. Together Ilna and Sharina, friends from earliest childhood, stepped into the courtyard behind the armed men to see what was going on.

    The palace was built around three sides of the courtyard. Besides the portico where the palace clerks and laundrymen worked in good weather, there was an herb garden for the kitchen and benches shaded by nut trees for nobles. The eight-foot-high back wall had double doors opening onto an alley leading to the nearby harbor. Sharina supposed furniture and bulk foodstuffs normally came in that way. An innkeeper’s daughter noticed things like that.

    The thing coming through the wall now, having torn out the transom and burst the gate leaves, was green, barrel-shaped, and taller than the wall. It held a soldier in one of its feathery tentacles and folded another over his face. A twist tore the man apart in a gush of blood.

    There were troops in the alley and others pouring into the courtyard from the palace. Everyone was shouting.

    The under-captain at the door to the council chamber turned and saw Sharina. “By the Lady!” he cried. “Princess, you’ve got to get out of here!”

    Because this had been a working meeting of Garric’s closest advisors, Sharina’d been able to change out of court robes into double tunics not terribly different from what she’d have worn on very formal occasions back in Barca’s Hamlet. The fabric was bleached instead of being the natural cream color of ‘white’ wool, and the sleeves had black appliqués of Ilna’s weaving.

    Ilna said the patterns were unconsciously soothing to anyone who looked at them. Sharina believed her friend, but given the rancor of some council meetings it was hard to imagine how they could’ve been much worse.

    Between her outer and inner tunics Sharina wore a heavy Pewle knife, her legacy from the hermit Nonnus. He’d used it to save her life at the cost of his own. She didn’t carry the knife as a weapon—though she’d used it for one—but rather because touching the hilt’s black horn scales invoked the hermit’s quiet faith, and that calmed her mind.

    She reached through the slit disguised as a pleat in her outer tunic and brought out the knife. Right now it was both a weapon and a prayer.

    Half a dozen spears sailed through the air and squelched into the monster, burying in every case the slim iron head and stopping only at the wooden shaft a forearm’s length back of the point. The creature continued to advance. The spears wobbled like tubular wasp larvae clinging to the body of a squat green caterpillar.

    A soldier just come from the servants’ wing dropped his shield and charged with his javelin gripped in both hands. He twisted at the moment of impact to drive the point in, putting all his strength and weight behind the blow. Half the wrist-thick spear shaft penetrated; sludgy green fluid oozed out around the wood.

    The soldier’s wordless grunt of effort changed to a scream as tentacles wrapped him. The monster lifted him, pulling his limbs off with the same swift dispassion as a cook plucking a goose for dinner. The screams stopped an instant after the fourth bright flag of arterial blood spouted from the victim’s joints.

    “Use your swords!” an officer shouted. As he spoke, the monster gripped him. He slashed through one of the feathery tentacles, but another tentacle tossed him with seeming ease twenty feet in the air. He didn’t scream until he started to fall back toward the alley. Three soldiers who’d started forward at his order backed instead and raised their shields.

    The creature crawled forward on hundreds of cilia each no bigger than a man’s foot. It was a plant—it had to be a plant; the tentacles were very like fern fronds though huge and hooked with thorns on the underside—but it was a plant from Hell.

    Ilna had knotted a pattern from the cords she kept in her left sleeve. She held it up, facing the hellplant.

    The creature squished onward, unwrapping a tentacle suddenly to grip a soldier’s ankle. He slammed the lower edge of his shield down to cut the frond off against the pavement. Its tip uncurled, leaving a bloody patch above the soldier’s heavy sandal. He retreated, his sword up but his face in a rictus of terror.

    Chalcus put his left hand on Ilna’s shoulder. She tried to shake him off. The sailor kept his grip and shouted, “Come away, dear heart, for you’ll do no good here!”

    Sharina found herself backing toward the doorway from which she’d entered the courtyard. The hellplant didn’t move quickly, but it’d proved it could tear a passage through thick walls.

    And thus far, there was no evidence than any human device could stop it.

 

---

 

    “Lift that,” Cervoran said to Cashel, pointing at the door set at a slant in the back of the pantry. The housekeeper hadn’t been in when her visitors had arrived, and her two assistants had fled with looks of trembling terror when they saw their king.

    Or whatever Cervoran was now. Did Protas go back to being a kid that everybody ignored because his father’d returned? There were worse things that could happen, Cashel knew.

    “That leads to the bulk storage for liquids, your highness,” Martous said in a chirpy voice. “We keep the large jars of wine and oil in the cellars so that they won’t freeze during the winter as they might in a shed. But there’s nothing down there which matters to you.”

    Whatever other people thought of the business, the chamberlain was sure determined to act as if nothing about Cervoran had changed. Maybe he was right.

    “Lift that door,” Cervoran repeated, but he could’ve saved his breath. Cashel had only paused to loosen his sash. He didn’t want rip a tunic if the weight required him to bunch his muscles.

    He bent, gripped the bar handle with his free hand, and lifted the panel in a smooth motion. The door was sturdy but nothing that required his strength. The air swirling out was cool at this time of year, but Cashel understood what the chamberlain meant. Folk in Barca’s Hamlet had root cellars for the same reason, though none—even the inn’s—was as large as this one. The darkness had a faint fruity odor.

    “Ah, your highness?” Martous said. “If you’re going down there, should I have a servant fetch a lantern? There are no windows, you see.”

    Cashel smiled faintly. Anybody looking down the steps into the cellar could see there were no windows; it was dark as arm’s length up a hog’s backside.

    Cervoran started down, ignoring the chamberlain as he’d done ever since Cashel saw the two of them together this afternoon.

    “Follow me,” Cervoran said; echoes from the cellar deepened his voice.

    ‘Leave the staff; you will need both hands.”

    Cashel had already started down the sturdy wooden steps behind the king. He paused, trying not to frown, and said, “Sir? I’d rather—“

    “It is necessary,” Cervoran said.

    Whatever else he might be, Cervoran wasn’t a fellow who talked for the sake of talking. Cashel sighed and set the quarterstaff against the back wall of the pantry. He’d come this far, so there wasn’t much point in starting to argue now.

    The cellar was what Cashel’d expected: brick pillars in rows, and big jars lined up against the masonry wall at the back. The ceiling was way higher than Cashel could reach and maybe higher than he could’ve reached with his staff stretched out above him.

    The light that came down the pantry door was enough once Cashel’s eyes had adapted. Cervoran seemed to get along all right too, moving at his usual hitching stride down the line of jars. They were two different kinds, Cashel saw, one with a wider mouth and a thickened ridge for a rope sling instead of double handles at the neck like the other.

    As he followed, Cashel’s eyes caught the least sliver of light from the ceiling in the depths of the cellar. That must be the trap door onto the alley where the jars’d be lowered down from wagons. A cart with solid wood wheels for shifting them here sat beside a pillar.

    Cashel grinned with silent pride. If these jars were full of liquids, they’d be work for two ordinary men to shift.

    “You highness?” Martous called from the pantry. The quiver Cashel heard in the chamberlain’s voice wasn’t just the echo. “I have a light here if you need one.”

    “Lift that jar and follow me,” said Cervoran, pointing at the first of the wide-mouthed jars in the rank. His fingers were puffy and as white as fresh tallow.

    “Yes sir,” Cashel said. He looked at the jar and thought about the path he’d be carrying it by. The stairs wouldn’t be a problem because the pantry door was hung at a slant, but if Cervoran took him back into the courtyard he’d have to lower the jar from his shoulder to clear the transom. “Is it wine?”

    He rocked the jar to try the weight. It’d be a load and no mistake, but he could handle it. The base narrowed from the shoulder, but it still sat flat. The pointy bottoms of the other pattern of jars had to be set in sand to stay upright.

    Cervoran walked toward the stairs, ignoring the question. His voice drifted through the dimness, “It is necessary....”

    Cashel grinned as he squatted, positioning his hands carefully. He’d taken orders from his share of surly people before, and that’d never kept him from getting his own job done. The others hadn’t had Cervoran’s good excuse of having been dead or the next thing to it for a while, either.

    When Cashel was sure he had the weight balanced, he straightened his knees and rose with the jar against his chest. He had to lean back to center it. There was enough air at the top of the jar for it to slosh as it moved, but he had it under control. It was tricky, but it was under control.

    Cashel walked toward the stairs, not quite shuffling. He could only see off to his left side, the direction he’d turned his face when he lifted the jar. He’d had to pick one or the other, of course, unless he wanted to mash his nose against the coarse pottery. He’d be all right unless somebody put something in his way, and anyway he’d be feeling his way with his toes. It was under control.

    Funny that Cervoran’d picked him for the job. As best Cashel could tell, the king hadn’t set eyes on him till they saw each other through the doorway to the council room. Cashel didn’t know another man in the army who could do this particular thing—fetch and carry a full wine jar alone—better than he could, though.

    Cashel heard Cervoran climbing the stairs—skritch/thump; skritch/thump. A moment later he touched the bottom riser with his own big toe. Cashel slid the other foot upward, planted it, and then shifted his weight and the jar’s onto it while he brought his right foot up and around to the next tread. He’d thought of leading with his left foot on every step, but he decided he’d be better off climbing with a normal rhythm. He took the steps with ponderous deliberation.

    “Oh, my goodness, what’s going on here?” the chamberlain chirped from close at hand. “Should I get somebody to help, or—goodness, is that a full jar?”

 

---

 

    It certainly was a full jar. Cashel felt a jolt every time his heart beat.

    Judging from the way it got brighter, he must be near the top of the staircase. He hunched forward slightly to make sure the jar was going to clear. It did and he could see the pantry, the shelves and bottle racks and then the chamberlain staring at him in amazement.

    Cashel smiled. This jar was a weight, the Shepherd knew it was, but nobody was going to learn that from anything Cashel said or showed. Part of the way you won your fights was not letting the other guy know you were straining. Cashel didn’t understand quite what was going on, but it was some kind of fight. Otherwise Cervoran’d be moving the jar by the usual fashion, a couple guys and a derrick up through the alley door.

    A lot of people thought Cashel was dumb. He guessed they were right: he couldn’t read or write or do lots of the other things Garric and Sharina did, that was for sure. But sometimes Cashel thought he saw things clearer than most folk did, just because his brain didn’t put a lot of stuff in the way of the obvious.

    “Follow me, Cashel,” Cervoran said from right ahead. Cashel turned a little to his right so that he could see where he was going. The king was walking out of the panty with a brass-framed lantern in his white hand; he must’ve taken it from the chamberlain. Cashel wondered why he’d bothered now that they were upstairs. Light streamed in through the layer of bull’s-eye glass set in the wall just below the trusses supporting the floor above.

    Cashel had to turn straight on to get through the pantry door with his load, but he sidled again as soon as he was clear. Something was going on ahead of them, out in the courtyard he supposed; shouting and the clang of metal falling onto stone.

    There was a scream too, so shrill that Cashel’d have said it had to be a woman if he hadn’t heard men sound the same way when the pain was worse than anything they’d felt or dreamed of feeling. Red Bassin sounded like that the time the ox fell on him and thrashed, trying to get to its feet. It was while the ox was struggling that Bassin screamed; he stopped when his thighbone cracked and he fainted instead.

    Cervoran led through the indoor kitchen. It was full of people jabbering, all of them looking out onto the courtyard through the big doors.

    “Make way!” Cervoran piped. A pot-boy turned, saw the king with Cashel following, and bawled in terror. Cooks and other palace servants scattered to either side in fright, but they didn’t run outdoors.

    Cervoran, ignoring the panicked servants the way he seemed to ignore everything that wasn’t part of his immediate purpose, marched through the doors to the courtyard. Cashel followed. He heard the battle clearly but he didn’t see anything because he was concentrating on not banging the jar. The trusses supporting the portico sloped, so the lower edge of the roof tiles didn’t have as much clearance as the kitchen ceiling.

    When Cashel stepped off the edge of the pavement and his feet touched grass, he looked up at last. Soldiers stood all around something that was way taller than them and bigger than a full-grown ox.

    The thing was green. Its barrel-shaped trunk, thicker than the widest Cashel could stretch with both arms, turned with the slow deliberation of a whale broaching. It started toward Cashel, moving on yellowish squirming roots covered with white hairs like a mandrake’s.

    “Master Cervoran!” Cashel said. He wasn’t scared, exactly, but this wasn’t a time he wanted to be standing around with a tun of wine in his arms and his staff somewhere back in the pantry. “Sir I mean! What is it you want me to do?”

    The thing crawled toward them in the certainty of a honeysuckle twisting its way along a railing. Except for the fact it moved, Cashel’d have said it was a plant. He guessed watching it that he was going to have to admit it was a plant anyhow, even though it did move.

    The ring of soldiers’d been keeping a good distance between themselves and the plant, though the blood and mangled bodies scattered over the ground showed that hadn’t always been the case. Cashel didn’t blame them for backing away a bit now.

    “Throw the jar at the Green Woman’s creature, Cashel,” Cervoran said. He didn’t shout, but his voice cut like bright steel through the noisy air.

    The plant was definitely coming toward them. Coming toward Cervoran, anyhow, and Cashel stood just behind and a bit to the side of the revived corpse. He shifted the jar, feeling it slosh. He’d have to loft it with his body and right arm like a heavy stone, using his left hand only for balance.

    Positioning the jar showed Cashel how much it’d taken out of him to get this far, but he could still manage the throw. He couldn’t do it with the troops in the way, though.

    “Give me room, you fellows!” Cashel called. “Give me a clear shot!”

    One of the soldiers closest to Cashel turned his head back to see who was giving orders. The roots the plant crawled on moved no faster than earthworms, but a feathery tentacle uncoiled like a bird striking. It caught the top of the man’s shield while he was looking the other way.

    The soldier shouted as the tentacle jerked his shield toward the monster. He dropped the staple at the right rim, but his forearm was through the loop behind the shield boss. The plant slashed side to side, using the screaming man as a flail against the other troops.

    “Throw the jar,” Cervoran said, standing like a statue with the lantern in his hand. “It is necessary.”

    The third stroke flung the man loose to tumble onto the ground near the wing on the other side of the courtyard. He lay there moaning. The plant continued to wave the shield for a moment, then flipped it away and started toward Cervoran again.

    The man’s arm was broken, probably broken in several places, but the circle of ripped-off limbs around the creature showed that the fellow was lucky anyway. Sharina knelt beside him, cutting a bandage from his tunic with her Pewle knife.

    Being thrown around that way had been hard on the soldier, but it’d given Cashel the clear path he needed. The plant was about twice his height away. He stepped toward it, bringing the wine jar up and around as he moved.

    The strain drew a blood-red mask over Cashel’s vision; then the jar was out of his hands and he was falling backward in reaction. He felt light-headed, barely aware of the tentacles uncoiling toward him from either side. His shoulders slammed the ground—if he’d landed on the edge of the pavement he might’ve broken his neck, but he hadn’t—and as his legs rocked down he could see normally again.

    The jar squelched into the center of the plant’s body without breaking, then fell back to smash on the ground. It’d been filled with olive oil, not wine. The dent in the great body where it’d hit was bruised a darker, oozing green, but the creature resumed its crawl toward Cervoran.

    Cervoran threw the lantern. It broke open, spreading its flames across the oil-sodden ground with a gradual assurance much like the way the plant itself moved. For a moment the plant continued to come on, now shrouded by a pale yellow column. The tiny rootlets burned away from its feet and the tentacles reaching toward Cashel shrivelled; the creature stopped.

    Heat hammered Cashel’s feet despite their thick calluses. He tried to get up but found he was still dizzy. He lifted his torso slightly and shoved himself backward with his hands. When his forearm touched the edge of the pavement, he set his palms on it and managed to lurch into a sitting position.

    The flames were still too close. He crossed his left hand over his face to keep his lips from blistering, but he continued to watch even though he could feel the hairs on the back of his arm shrinking and breaking in the heat.

    A blazing cocoon wrapped the plant. Blackened layers seared off, laying bare the green beneath that charred away in turn. Cashel thought he heard the plant scream, though maybe that was only the keen of steam boiling out of the shrivelling body.

    Cervoran hadn’t moved. Cashel stood and eased him back from the flames. The wizard obeyed with the waxen calm of a sleepwalker. The front of his clothing, the new set of tunic and trousers, was already singed brown.

 

---

 

    Civilians had come out into the courtyard to join the soldiers, but more than the heat of the flames kept them at a distance from the dying plant. Sharina looked across to Cashel. Her face was set as she rose from her patient, but now it brightened into a smile. Two soldiers were leading off their injured comrade, his arm splinted with lengths of spear shaft.

    The side of the plant’s body ruptured, gushing more sea water than would’ve fit in the jar Cashel had thrown. It gushed onto the burning oil, stirring the flames for a moment into greater enthusiasm. Things slithered in the water, swimming or skittering on flattened legs; each held pincers high.

    “Crabs!” shouted a soldier and jabbed his javelin at the thing that squirmed toward him through the dying flames. The point missed, sparking on a pebble in the soil. The soldier recovered his weapon, but the pallid creature ran swiftly toward him. He raised his foot to stamp on it, but it sprang upward to fasten its pincers on opposite sides of his ankles where the sandal straps crossed.

    It isn’t a crab, Cashel thought as he snatched up a javelin lying against the pavement with its slender iron head bent. It’s got a tail, so it’s a crayfish or--

    The tail curled into a nearly perfect circle, burying its hooked sting a finger’s length in the soldier’s knee joint. He fell backward, screaming on a rising note.

    Cashel whipped the spear butt around, snatching the flat-bodied scorpion away from the soldier’s leg and squashing it on the ground. The yellow horn sting broke off in the wound.

    No male peasant was ever without a knife for trimming, prying and poking, but Cashel wasn’t carrying one at the moment because the simple iron tool wouldn’t have looked right among all these folk in court robes and polished armor. He knelt and worked the sting out of the soldier’s flesh with the point of the man’s own dagger.

    The knee had turned black and swelled up big as the soldier’s head, and his body was thrashing in four different rhythms the way a beheaded chicken does. Well, you did what you could.

    Cashel straightened. Sharina was standing beside him. He dropped the dagger and hugged her to him with his left arm. He still held the dripping javelin in his right hand, and his eyes searched the dying fire for any more scorpions that might dart from the charred ruin of the hellplant.

 

---

 

    Several times Garric stepped into muck that would’ve sucked him down if he hadn’t jerked back quickly, but he didn’t have any real trouble keeping up with Scarface and his companions. The pasture south of Barca’s Hamlet had marshy stretches, and there’re some sheep that seem determined to bog themselves thoroughly every chance they got.

    He grinned. Celondre, one of the greatest poets of the Old Kingdom and of all time, had given Garric a great deal of pleasure. His pastorals of shady springs and gambolling lambs never included the shepherd struggling out of a bog with a half-drowned ewe bleating peevishly on his shoulders, however.

    A bird belled like an alarm and shot straight up, almost at the feet of the man who was leading. He cried, “Wau!” and jumped backward, tangling his legs and falling over. Garric was startled also, dropping into a crouch. His ancestor’s reflex swung his hand to the sword he wasn’t carrying.

    Scarface at the end of the line was the only one who didn’t react. He called a good-natured gibe at the man who’d fallen, then added something in a harsher tone to get the line moving again.

    “That one’s a hunter,” Carus said, assessing the situation. “The others are fishermen, maybe, or just farmers. Scarface I’d pick for a scout.”

    Why isn’t he leading, then? Garric asked silently. He wasn’t arguing, exactly; just trying to understand what Carus saw and he did not.

    “Because they all know where they’re going, lad,” the king explained. “I’d guess that means it’s not very far. And it also means that they’re more worried about what might be following them than they are about what’s ahead, which is something to keep in mind.”

    As Carus spoke, the path wound around a clump of snake-leafed trees. Ahead rose a series of hummocks some four feet above the general level of the landscape. The hummocks stood in water and were edged with walls made from vertical tree trunks; pole-supported walkways connected them. The surrounding ponds must’ve been spoil pits from which the dirt had been removed to fill the raised beds.

    A man on one of the hummocks saw Scarface’s group coming. He waved a hoe and called, “Urra!”

    The leading spearman raised his net and spun it in an open circle in response, then looped it back around his waist. Other figures cultivating the raised beds, men and women both, straightened and looked toward the newcomers. A few waved.

    “There’s the fort,” Carus said. “Well, fortified village.”

    He snorted mildly and added, “It wouldn’t be hard to carry, not unless the ones inside are better armed than anything we’ve seen thus far. And even then it wouldn’t be hard.”

    It was raining again, but even without that Garric wouldn’t have been able to differentiate the stockade from the smaller planting beds spaced in front of it. We aren’t planning an attack, are we? he thought, amused by his ancestor’s focus on the military aspects of any situation.

    “No, but somebody is or the defenses wouldn’t be there,” Carus responded crisply. “And if that somebody knows what he’s doing, those defenses won’t be much good.”

    The group reached a walkway like those between the beds—and connected to them, Garric saw as he looked ahead in the mist. Scarface clucked something to Garric and took his arm, leading him to the front of the line. The bed, saplings lashed to stringers of heavier timber, was barely wide enough for them to walk abreast.

    The gate in the stockade opened. A man standing on the platform above it raised a wooden trumpet to his lips and blew an ugly blat of sound. The people who’d been in the fields started trooping toward the village in response.

    An old man wearing a headdress of black feathers stepped into the gateway, ccompanied by a much younger woman. She held the man’s left arm, apparently helping to support him. In the old man’s hands was a jewel which gleamed yellow even in this dull light.

    “Wizardry!” muttered King Carus in disgust.

    Well, we knew somebody brought us here, Garric thought calmly. Now we’ve got a good idea who it was.

    The feathered wizard raised the giant topaz, a duplicate of the one in the crown of First Atara, and cackled in triumph.