The Fortress of Glass: Chapter Nine

    The sun was just below zenith when the gigs and the soldiers guarding them pulled up in the plaza behind the palace. Tenoctris hadn’t spoken on the way back except for brief, vague replies to the few questions Sharina’d asked. Though the wizard’s eyes were on the horse and the road before them, her mind was obviously other places.

    Sharina’d ridden in silence most of the way also. It seemed likely that whatever Tenoctris was considering was more important than answering questions about Double and the hellplants that Sharina suspected didn’t have real answers.

    A groom gripped the horse’s cheekpiece. Two Blood Eagles reached up for Tenoctris, but Sharina helped the old wizard dismount herself. She was a princess and for the moment regent of the kingdom, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t lend a hand to a friend.

    “Your highness!” said Lord Martous, bustling toward her—and stopping at the line of guards. “Lady Merota and her caretakers were nowhere in the palace, nowhere at all! One of the servants thought they’d gone down to the harbor so I’ve sent for them, but they’re not here yet!”

    “I’m sure they’re coming,” Sharina said. “When they arrive, direct them to my suite. Double—”

    She used the simulacrum’s name for itself. It was accurately descriptive, and they had to call the creature something.

    “—will be in the adjacent workroom.”

    “I wouldn’t want you to think I’d disobeyed your request to summon the parties!” the chamberlain said. He put enough high-pitched anxiety in his voice to make it sound as though he were reporting a disaster. Just as well he wasn’t delivering dispatches from Calf’s Head Bay. “As soon as your note arrived, I—oh! Here they come!”

    “Yes, thank you, milord,” Sharina said, turning to smile at her friends as they approached the paved walkway beside the palace. Chalcus smiled back and gave Merota, hanging from his arm, a delighted twirl. Ilna’s lips curved slightly, which was quite cheerful for her.

    “We’re loyal citizens of the kingdom here on First Atara!” Martous said determinedly. “You have but to request—”

    By the Lady’s mercy, will the man never shut up? Sharina thought. Aloud she said sharply, “Milord, speaking of requests—I requested that the remains of the pyre be cleared off the plaza here. The work doesn’t appear to have been started.”

    When the pyre collapsed, some of the hurdles had fallen clear of the flames and broken open when they hit the ground. That was merely messy, but the ashes swirling from the great pile in the center smutted everything. If it rained, they’d mix with the dirt in a gray, clinging mass.

    “Ah,” said the chamberlain in a muted voice. “Ah, the truth is, your highness, that since King Cervoran, ah, regained consciousness on the pyre, the common people have tended to keep their distance. I’m afraid they’re a superstitious lot, you know. Perhaps your soldiers could take a hand?”

    “I’m afraid the kingdom has better use for the royal army just now,” Sharina said, feeling a sudden chill as she heard her own words. It put Double’s equation too clearly into focus: the kingdom would run out of soldiers before the sea ran out of weed.

    Chalcus shifted Merota to his left hand, putting her between him and Ilna at the same time he made sure Double would have to go through him to get to the women. The sailor was still smiling, but he’s survived by being a careful man.

    “The Heron’s been repaired, your highness,” he said with a sweeping bow that kept his eyes on Double, hitching his way toward them from the other gig. “Just a matter of replacing some scantlings and cleaning her, you see. Would you have called us to take her off somewhere?”

    “I have need of you,” Double said. His swollen lips were formed in a smirk, though that might’ve been a chance of his condition like the unpleasant voice he shared with Cervoran. “Ilna, you will come with me onto the roof of the palace and view the sea.”

    “We’ll all view the sea, then,” said Chalcus heartily. He set his knuckles on his hipbones and stood arms akimbo, grinning falsely. “I dare say I’ve more experience of looking at the sea than any two other folk within bowshot, not so?”

    Double looked at him. “I have other uses for you and the child Merota,” he said. “There is a tapestry in my Chamber of Art. There are animals woven into the pattern of the maze. You must count those animals, both of you, and come to me on the roof when you are sure of their number.”

    “That’ll be easy!” Merota cried, looking up at Chalcus in delight. He was exchanging glances with Ilna; both of them showed hints of concern under studiously blank expressions.

    “I don’t need a chaperone to look at waves,” Ilna said with sudden brusqueness. “Tenoctris, will you be with us, or...?”

    “I was planning to examine Lord Cervoran’s library again,” the old woman said. “Though I could join you if—”

    “No,” said Ilna. “I’d rather you were with Merota and Master Chalcus. I haven’t had time to look over that tapestry properly, but it does more than just keep drafts from coming through the walls. I’m not sure....”

    “Count your waves, dear one,” said Chalcus. He leaned forward, miming an attempt to kiss Ilna’s cheek. She jerked back in scandalized surprise as he must’ve known she would; that broke the tension in general smiles. “Lady Merota and I will count woven beasts the while. We’ll see who has the more fun, will we not?”

    Quite a number of clerks, aides, and couriers were gathering just beyond the line of guards, waiting to talk with Sharina. The number was growing the way a lake swells behind a dammed stream. Lord Tadai was keeping the civilians in his department under tight control, but a number of the military personnel—particularly the younger nobles—would start raising their voices for attention shortly.

    “Lord Tadai,” Sharina said. “I’ll begin seeing petitioners in my suite as soon as I get up there. Please determine the order of audience among civilians at your best discretion. And who’s the ranking military officer present?”

    Three men—a cousin of Lord Waldron, a regimental commander, and the deputy quartermaster—all spoke at once, then stared at one another in confusion. “Very well,” Sharina went on, jumping in before the soldiers could sort matters out, “Lord Tadai, take charge of the ordering all the petitioners.”

    She grinned at Tenoctris and said, “Let me give you my arm. I’m going to be regent for the next I-don’t-know-how-long, so I’d like to be Tenoctris’ friend Sharina till we get up to the second floor.”

    Tenoctris laughed as they walked along in a cocoon of Blood Eagles. The petitioners—the smarter ones, anyway—had turned their attention to Lord Tadai so the guards didn’t even have to shove their way through a crowd.

    Sharina grinned at human nature: some of the black-armored soldiers probably regretted not having the chance to knock civilians down. That didn’t make them bad men, exactly, but it was fortunate for the kingdom that they’d been smart enough to find duties where external discipline controlled their aggressiveness.

    On this side of the palace a broad staircase led to the royal suites. Sharina helped Tenoctris up the left-hand flight to the king’s apartments and into the Chamber of Art, then walked through to the suite she was using. Tenoctris glanced at the tapestry on the shaded wall before going to the bookcase. Her steps were as purposeful as those of a robin hunting worms in the grass.

    Several of Lord Tadai’s ushers were already in the Queen’s Suite, arranging tables and notebooks for the influx of petitioners who’d be coming up the interior stairs. They nodded respectfully to Sharina but went on with their work. Tadai had sent them ahead with his usual efficiency. He and Waldron were as different as two rich male aristocrats could be—save in their ability and their sense of honor.

    “Shall I close this, your highness?” said a Blood Eagle officer at the door to the Chamber of Art.

    Sharina opened her mouth to agree, then heard Chalcus and Merota calling back to Ilna as they entered the chamber. A recent brick extension continued the outside stairs to the roof. The palace didn’t have a roof garden but Cervoran must’ve found the tiled surface useful, perhaps for viewing the stars.

    “Leave it open,” Sharina said. “In case I need to say something to my friends.”

    “Your highness?” Tadai announced from the door to the foyer. “If you’re ready?”

    “Yes,” said Sharina, settling on a backless stool in front of a table arranged as a barrier between her and the enthusiasm of those who wanted, needed, something from the regent. “Send them in.”

    Three clerks took seats to the right and slightly behind her, ready to write or locate information as needed. All together they probably weren’t the equal of Liane, but Liane was better placed with the army.

    Sharina felt a sudden twist of longing. She hoped Cashel was where the kingdom most needed him to be also, but she desperately missed his solid presence. Lady, she prayed silently, let my Cashel serve the kingdom as he best can; and let him come back safe to me.

    The first petitioner was a middle-aged female clerk, part of the financial establishment under Tadai. She had a series of cost estimates for damage done in the course of Liane’s lime-burning operation. The figure was astoundingly high—fees for stone, transport, and particularly the fuel which Liane had ordered to be gathered with minimum delay. That meant tearing apart buildings for the roof beams in some cases, and cutting down orchards that would take over a decade to grow back to profitable size.

    Sharina suspected Tadai wanted her to rescind some of Liane’s more drastic measures. Instead she signed off on them. The cost was very high, but the cost of failure would be the lives of every soul in the kingdom. Liane thought speed was of the first importance, and nothing Sharina’d seen made her disagree.

    “Oh, look at this one, Chalcus!” Merota called happily. “It’s a unicorn!”

    Her voice was as high-pitched as Cervoran’s, but Sharina found it as cheerful as birdsong. It wasn’t a surprise to realize that timbre wasn’t why she found the wizard—and his double—unpleasant.

    The second petitioner, an officer with the blue naval crest on the helmet he held under his arm, opened his mouth to speak. In the next room Merota screamed, “Chalcus, I’m—”

    “What’re ye—” the sailor cried. His voice cut off also.

    Sharina was on her feet and through the connecting door, slipping by the guard who’d turned at the shouts. The table she’d bumped with her thigh toppled over behind her.

    Chalcus was a flicker of movement, reaching for something with his left hand and the curved sword raised in his right. She didn’t see Merota, and as Chalcus lunged his body blurred into the tapestry on the wall. Then he was gone also.

    “Ilna!” Sharina shouted, running toward the tapestry. “Ilna, come here!”

 

---

 

    Double stood on the parapet chanting words of power, his face to the sea and his pudgy arms spread out to the sides. He’d thrust an athame from Cervoran’s collection under his sash, an age-blackened blade carved from a tree root, but he wasn’t using it for the spell.

    If there really was a spell. Ilna, standing to the side as Double had ordered her, felt if anything angrier than usual. She couldn’t understand the words the wizard was using—of course—but she did understand patterns. Double’s chant was as purposeless as a snake swallowing its own tail.

    She grinned slightly. Double reminded her of a snake in more ways than that. But if the fact she disliked a person doomed him, the world would have many fewer people in it. It wouldn’t necessarily be a better place, but it’d be quieter.

    From here Ilna could see the waves beyond the harbor mouth. Double’d said they were coming to the roof to do that, to watch the waves, but she suspected that was a lie. Certainly his incantation wasn’t affecting the sunlit water, and yet....

    And yet there was a pattern in the waves. Ilna couldn’t grasp the whole. It was far too complex, for her and perhaps any human being, but it was there. Perhaps she was seeing the work of the Green Woman spreading from the shining fortress on the horizon, but Ilna thought it was greater even than that.

    Ilna’s smile spread a little wider; someone who knew her well might’ve seen the triumph in it. She was glimpsing the fabric of the cosmos in the tops of those few waves. She saw only the hint of the whole, but no one she’d met except her brother Cashel could’ve seen even that. That didn’t make life easier or better or even different, but she granted herself the right to be proud that she almost understood.

    She felt herself sliding deeper into contemplation of the waves, following strands of the cosmos itself. Things became obvious as she viewed them from nearer the source. Double had brought her here: not to work a spell but to trap her the way a clover-filled meadow traps a ewe. The sheep could leave, but the pleasure of her surroundings holds her for a bite, and another bite, and just another—

    Merota screamed.

    Ilna’s concentration was a knife blade, smooth and clean and sharp. The pattern of the waves and the cosmos was for another time or another person. She jumped from the parapet to the stairs directly below her, though that meant dropping her own height to the bricks. To start down the stairs where they opened onto the roof, she’d have had to go past Double.... He stopped chanting, but he didn’t try to restrain her.

    Chalcus called something, his voice blurring with its own echo. He sounded as if he’d stepped into a vast chamber.

    Ilna reached the marble landing and the entrance to the king’s suite; the guards there jumped back to let her by. Her hands were empty. If she needed knife or noose or the cords whose knotted patterns could wrench any animate mind to her will, she would take that weapon out. First she had to learn what the threat was.

    “Ilna!” shouted Sharina. “Ilna, come here!”

    The entrance to the room where Cervoran did his wizardry was by a full-length window. The casement was open. Ilna stepped through, looking not at Sharina but to the tapestry on which Sharina’s eyes were focused.

    It was a panel as tall as she was and half again as long. Warp and weft both were silk; they’d been woven with a sort of soulless perfection.

    Normally a room’s rugs or hangings would’ve been the first thing Ilna examined, but this piece had been an exception. Bad workmanship merely made her angry, but the coldness of this undoubtedly artful tapestry had caused her to avoid it the way she would’ve stepped around the silvery pustulence of a long-dead fish.

    If she’d looked at the panel carefully, Chalcus and Merota might be at her side right now. If.

    Sharina and some soldiers were speaking, explaining that the child and Chalcus had vanished into the tapestry. Ilna ignored them, concentrating instead on the fabric itself.

    The design was of a garden maze seen from three-quarters above. Greens and black shaded almost imperceptibly into one another, just as foliage and stems do in a real hedge. There were fanciful animals: here a cat with a hawk’s head, there a serpentine creature covered in glittering blue scales, many others. They were what Double had sent Chalcus and Merota to count, but Ilna realized that they didn’t really matter. What mattered was—

    The maze had no exit: the outer wall formed a solid cartouche around the whole. The inner hedges twisted and bent, creating junctions and dead ends which seemed to blur from one state to the other as Ilna shifted her attention. In the center was a lake fed by tiny streams that zigzagged from the corners of the fabric; in the lake was an island, reached by a fog-shrouded bridge; and on the island was a circular temple whose roof was a golden dome with a hole in the middle.

    But the temple was only the end. Ilna needed the beginning, and she found it in the shape of the hedges. Their twists gripped the mind and souls of those who looked hard at the tapestry, making them part of its fabric. Ilna could’ve stepped back, but she knew now what had happened to her family, her real family, and she had no choice but to join them.

    “Double, what do you know about this?” Sharina shouted in the near distance. “Chalcus and Lady Merota walked into the wall! I saw it happen!”

    “Why do you ask me?” said the wizard’s double, a wizard itself.

    Ilna had no time for Double at the moment. He’d laid a clever snare. He’d known he couldn’t catch her in it, but he’d known also that she’d follow those she loved. Loved more than life, some would say, but Ilna’d never loved life for its own sake.

    She saw the pattern. She took a step forward, not in the flesh but between worlds that touched at a level beyond sight.

    “Ilna!” Sharina said.

    As Ilna’s fingers brushed the prickly branches of densely-woven yew, she heard the wizard pipe from a great distance, “I was Double. Now I am Cervoran.”

    And then very faintly, “I will be God!”

 

---

 

    Garric remembered how depressing he’d found this land when he first arrived in the rain. It was raining again, generally a drizzle but off and on big drops slashed across the marsh. Nonetheless his spirits were as high as he ever remembered them being.

    He laughed and said, “Donria, we’re free. That’s better than being an animal on somebody’s farm in sunlight, even if we’re kept as pets rather than future dinners.”

    Donria gave him a doubtful smile, then looked at the Bird fluttering from stump to branch ahead of them as a bright moving road sign. “Where are we going, Garric?” she asked.

    “We are returning to Wandalo’s village where Garric has friends,” the Bird said in its dry mental voice. “The Coerli will track us, but not soon. Smoke blunts their sense of smell and anyway, fire disconcerts them. It will be days before they pursue.”

    And what next? Garric thought, suddenly feeling the weight of the future again. It’d felt so good to escape that he hadn’t been thinking ahead.

    A tree had fallen beside the route the Bird was choosing. A dozen spiky knee-high saplings sprang from its trunk. As Garric trotted past, he became less sure that it wasn’t simply a tree which grew on the ground and sent its branches upward. Several blobs—frogs? Insects?—slid from the bole into the water. If they hadn’t moved, Garric would’ve thought they were bumps on the bark.

    “Bird?” Garric said aloud. “Where do you come from?”

    “I come from here, Garric,” the Bird said. “My people are coeval with the land itself, created when the rocks crystallized from magma. We lived in a bubble in the rock, all of us together. When the rock split after more ages than you can imagine, we continued to live in what was now a cave. We could have spread out but we did not, because that would have meant being separated from our fellows.”

    He laughed, the audible clucking sound Garric had heard before. It sounded like a death rattle in this misty wilderness.

    “Was the cave near here?” asked Garric. He didn’t care about the answer; he’d spoken instinctively because of the sudden rise in emotional temperature. He was asking what he hoped was a neutral question to give the Bird the opportunity to change the subject. Garric would’ve done the same out of politeness if he were speaking to a human being he didn’t know well.

    “I was the different one,” the Bird said, apparently ignoring the question. “The daring one, a human might call it; but we are not human. To my people and myself, Garric, I was mad.”

    The rain had stopped and the sun was a broad bright circle in a dove-gray sky. The Bird fluttered above a creek too wide to jump. The water was black and opaque. Garric tried it with his foot; Donria simply strode across.

    Garric followed feeling a little embarrassed. The water was mildly cool and only ankle deep. Well, I didn’t know what might be living in a stream like that.

    “I went into the depths of the cave,” the Bird continued. “This is the shape I wear now—”

    It fluttered its gauzy wings.

    “—but I can take any shape I choose. I followed the fracture into the rock until I was a sheet of crystal with granite pressing to either side. I wanted to experience separation, you see. I was mad.”

    Garric’s lips shouldn’t have been dry in this sodden air. He had to lick them anyway.

    “I could barely feel my people,” the Bird said. “They missed me, but they did not object to my choice. My people did not coerce: they were part of the cosmos and lived in their place and their way. They had no power because using power would have been out of place and therefore mad. As I am mad.”

    “Were,” Garric said. He didn’t amplify the word or put any particular emphasis on the way the Bird had used the past tense in referring to his people.

    “Before I decided to return to the bubble and my fellows, my birthmates, my other selves,” the Bird said, “two wizards arrived. My people ignored them, continuing to contemplate the cosmos and their place in it. The wizards killed them and took away their bodies to use in their art.”

    Garric licked his lips again. “I’m very sorry,” he said. When you’re told of a horror, words may not be any real help to the victim; but words, and the bare truth, were all there was. “Who were the wizards?”

    “They were not of this world,” the Bird said. “They were not human; they were not even alive as humans judge life. They came and they killed my people, then they left with our crystal bodies. I wanted to sense separation. For five thousand years now I have known only separation.”

    He gave his terrible rattling laugh again. “Is it a wonder that I am mad?” he asked.

    A breeze bringing a hint of cinnamon rippled the standing water to either side, clearing the air briefly. Ahead was a solid belt of cane waving ten or twelve feet in the air. The stems were as thick as a big man’s finger, and the bark had scales. We’ll have to go around, Garric thought; but the Bird fluttered into the cane, weaving between the closely spaced stems.

    Donria continued forward without hesitation, plowing into the wall of vegetation, breaking the canes like so many mushrooms. Either there were no windstorms in this place—and Garric hadn’t experienced any, now that he thought about it—or these plants grew to full height in a day or two. Perhaps both things were true.

    “Bird,” he said aloud. “You’ve helped me escape from Torag. If I can help you, I’ll do my best.”

    “I have purposes, Garric,” the Bird said. “Your survival suits my purposes. I am not human.”

    A stone’s throw down the path was a plant whose trunk looked like a pineapple with four leaves crawling from the top and across the ground. The Bird lighted on it and rotated its crystalline head to face back at Garric.

    “Thank you for treating me as though I were human, however,” the Bird said. “It does not matter to my people, but it speaks well of you and your race; and perhaps that matters to me after all. After so many years alone I am no longer wholly one of my people.”

    “I smell smoke,” said Donria abruptly.

    “Yes,” said the Bird, shimmering back into the air again. “Before sundown we will reach Wandalo’s village.”

    In a mental voice that wasn’t attenuated by distance, the Bird added, “The cave in which my people were created and died still focuses energies. The Coerli wizards use that cave to come to this place far in their past where they hunt. Some day I will revisit it myself.”

    The Bird clicked its laugh. “I have purposes, Garric,” it said.

 

---

 

    Cashel backed a step and raised his staff as the demon leaped into the air, beating its wings strongly. Something so big—and all right, the demon was thin as a snake, but it was still man-sized—shouldn’t have been able to fly on wings no longer than Cashel could span with his arms spread, but it did.

    Hanging like a hummingbird over Cashel and the boy, it called angrily, “Fly, then! You can fly, can’t you?”

    “Cashel, what do we do?” Protas said desperately.

    He’s afraid of failing, Cashel thought. He can’t do what the demon just told him to.

    Knowing that, and knowing that the demon didn’t really believe they could fly—it was bullying them, making them feel guilty—Cashel said harshly, “Come down, you! You’re to guide us, you say. Stop playing the fool and come do your job.”

    “You can’t command me, human!” the demon said, still hovering.

    “Maybe not,” Cashel agreed. “That’s between you and whoever set you to guide us. But as Duzi’s my witness, you can’t give us orders. If you won’t come down and do what you’re told, we’ll go our own way.”

    “Fools!” said the demon, but it cupped its wings and landed beside them. “We’ll go on foot, then. But it’d be easier to fly.”

    The business’d gotten Cashel’s back up quicker than it ought to’ve, maybe because of the noise the musicians were making. He wouldn’t call it music, not a bit.

    Instead of letting the demon’s posturing go, Cashel reached out quick with his left hand and pinched the flat scaly nose between his thumb and forefinger. The demon shrieked on a climbing note and tried to jump backward, which it had no more chance of doing than a snared rabbit has until Cashel opened his hand.

    “Remember who set you the job of guiding us, fella,” Cashel said, breathing deeply to calm himself down. He’d had his staff poised in his right hand so that he could use the short end as a cudgel if the demon’d tried to bite him. “And remember I’m Cashel or-Kenset, so keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to me and my friend.”

    “Yes, yes,” said the demon, sounding conciliatory now. A man would’ve massaged his bruised nose with a hand, but the scaly blue thing just shook its head. “Let’s get it over with, then. There’s risk for me too in this, you know.”

    They set off walking—eastward, judging from the way the sun’d moved in the little while since Cashel had come here. Protas put the crown on his head. It fit there, which surprised Cashel a good deal. It’d fit the much larger Cervoran as well.

    When they got a bowshot away from the grove and the musicians, Cashel felt a little embarrassed at the way he’d gone after the demon. All it’d been trying to do was save face.

    A fellow as big as Cashel was got a lot of that, people pretending they weren’t going to fight him just because they didn’t feel like it. He’d learned to let it go, mostly from temperament but also because if you humiliated or knocked silly everybody who got too much ale and started mouthing off, you got the reputation of being the sort of man Cashel didn’t like.

    This time the demon’d gone after the boy, though. Bullying kids was the wrong thing to do. Doing it in front of Cashel was really the wrong thing to do.

    “Master Demon?” Protas said. He was a courteous little fellow, which wasn’t true of every nobleman’s son Cashel’d met since he left the borough. “How far are we to go?”

    “An hour, walking,” the demon said. It turned to glower over its narrow shoulder at Cashel and Protas. “If nothing happens.”

    Cashel nodded, just showing he understood. He figured the demon might be trying to scare them over nothing, but in this place it wasn’t hard to imagine there were real dangers. He’d have been keeping his eyes open regardless.

    The ground was dry red clay. Grass grew on it on it in a sere yellow blanket; seed heads scratched at Cashel’s knees. Trees were sparse, and their gray leaves curled around their stems.

    Because Cashel was busy looking in all directions, it was Protas who first saw the town on the southern horizon. “Look, Cashel,” he said, pointing.

    At first Cashel thought it was a range of low hills, but as they walked along a little further he decided the humps were just too regular to be natural; they must be domed buildings. Something glittered on top of one, but it was too far away for even Cashel’s excellent eyes to tell any more than that something was shining.

    “Who lives in that city, Master Demon?” Protas asked. At least for as long as they held up, his trousers were better for this country than Cashel’s tunics and bare legs.

    The demon looked back again. “We have no business with them,” it said. “You’d better hope that they have no business with us, either. If you believe in Gods, boy, pray that reaching toward them doesn’t call them to us!”

    Protas jerked his hand down. Cashel frowned, then decided to let it pass. From the way the demon turned its sharp-featured face away it’d seen the frown and knew what Cashel’d been thinking. Maybe it’d remember to be more polite the next time it warned Protas.

    A grove of trees lay close by to the left of the line they were taking. They were bigger than those Cashel’d seen when they arrived here, but they were dead instead of just dry: most of the bark had sloughed away from the trunks and branches.

    Something could still be hiding behind the trunks, though. Cashel didn’t let the trees keep his whole attention, but he made sure his eyes flicked back to them often enough that nothing could rush out unnoticed even when they were within a stone’s throw.

    A woman’s hiding in that hollow trunk!

    “Halloa, mistress!” Cashel called, bringing his staff up crosswise. In a lower voice he growled, “Protas, get clear of me but don’t go too far!”

    She was clutching the trunk with her hands, her body pressed against the wood. She lifted her face in surprise, then smiled broadly. She’s not wearing any clothes!

    “Who are you, stranger?” she said, speaking to Cashel and completely ignoring his companions. She moved a step out from the hollow. “My, today blesses me as I never thought to be blessed again in this life!”

    Duzi, the tree’s been making love to her! Or likely she’s been....

    Cashel turned away. “Demon,” he said, “let’s walk on. This is no place for decent people.”

    “Where are you going, stranger?” the woman said. Her voice’d started out a pleasant coo like doves in a cote but it went all shrill. “You’ve come here and you’ll not leave until you’ve pleasured me!”

    “Demon, I said go on!” Cashel said, because their guide was standing on one leg with the other foot resting against his knee. He had clawed toes like a bird’s.

    “Go ahead and service her,” the demon said. “We’re not short of time, and it’s too dangerous not to now that she’s roused.”

    “I said go on!” Cashel said, thrusting the iron butt of his staff at the demon’s face. It jerked back or its nose’d have gotten a knock and no mistake.

    “Are you mad?” the demon cried incredulously. It sprang into the air again, hovering like a sparrow over a sunflower. “If you’re killed, what will happen to me?”

    Cashel poised the quarterstaff to prod again. The demon flapped higher, then turned and flew off in the direction they’d been going.

    “You must run, then,” it shrilled over its shoulder. “You’re a fool and worse than a fool!”

    “I guess we run, Protas,” Cashel said. “It shouldn’t be too far to where we’re going, given what he said at the start.”

    “Yes, Cashel,” the boy said. He put a hand up to hold the crown and started sprinting, though before Cashel could say anything he’d slowed his pace to a gentle lope.

 

---

 

    They didn’t know how far it was; lying on the ground throwing up at the end of your strength was the wrong way to be if something really was chasing them. Though Cashel figured his staff could deal with the woman if he had to.

    He looked back. The circle of dead trees were pulling their roots up out of the ground. The one she’d been making love to had bent down a big branch and lifted her up in it.

    “It’s too late now!” the demon cried. “You’ll regret this for the rest of your short life!”

    “I don’t guess I will,” Cashel said as he stumped along beside Protas. “Short or long, I don’t guess I will.”

    He concentrated on running. It wasn’t something he’d ever been good at, though he could move quick enough when he had to. Not for long, though; he wasn’t built for it, and watching sheep hadn’t given him practice.

    Cashel looked over his shoulder, just a quick glance. He faced front again so he wouldn’t stick his foot in what might be the only gopher hole in shouting distance.

    There wasn’t much he wanted to see going on behind them anyway. There were more trees than he could count on both hands. They didn’t seem to move fast, but their roots were each longer than he was tall. There were covering ground as fast as Cashel did trotting, and maybe covered it a little faster.

    He glanced back again. Faster for sure.

    “Run!” the demon called. “Run! You have to reach the rocks!”

    There was an outcrop up ahead, a lump roughly a man’s height in diameter every way. It looked natural, but the top and one side were flattened. Most of it was pebbly gray, but the hot sun’d flaked a slab off. Where that’d happened, the surface was pale yellow.

    It wasn’t far away, but it was too far for Cashel to make before the trees reached him. Well, he didn’t much care for running anyhow.

    “Keep going, Protas!” Cashel shouted. The boy was pulling ahead anyway; he ought to be fine.

    Cashel turned and faced the oncoming trees, spinning his quarterstaff in front of himself. Each of the however many trees there was had branches thicker than his hickory staff, but he’d do what he could. They squealed low like a forest flexing in a windstorm.

    The trees’d strung out some on the chase, but the big one that the woman rode on was closer even than Cashel’d feared. She stood in the crotch, laughing and gesturing, as the tree loped along. Its long branches had twice the reach of his staff.

    The demon let out a screech like a hog being gelded. Cashel didn’t look over his shoulder; the trees were plenty to occupy his attention. As he readied to step forward and bring his staff straight out of its spin into the tree bole, the demon swooped in front of him.

    The demon swept its arms apart. Blue wizardlight streaked from its fingertips to draw a blazing arc between Cashel and the tree. Grass flashed into soft orange flames. The roots skidded the tree to a stop, plowing furrows in the hard soil. Dirt and gravel sprayed over Cashel’s feet.

    “Begone!” the demon screamed toward the trees. “I will! I must preserve them!”

    Which it hadn’t said before. If Cervoran was the reason this was happening, then he was a powerful enough wizard to scare even demons.

    The woman swayed awkwardly when the tree stopped the way it did. She likely would’ve fallen if it hadn’t reached up a branch to give her something to grab onto. The rest of the grove was dragging to a halt too. Cashel didn’t relax, not yet, but he drew in a deep breath. He hadn’t seen any good way for things to work out.

    The crouching demon poised with its arms still spread. It turned its head and cried, “Get on, then! To the top of the rock. You can do that, can’t you, climb onto the rock?”

    Cashel turned and started jogging again. He wobbled for the first couple steps; he’d been closer to being winded than he knew. Stopping something and starting up again was a lot harder than just to keep going the first time.

    Protas was waiting with his back to the rock. Cashel thought the boy was clenching his fists in fear, but when he got close he saw he had a stone in either hand.

    Cashel grinned broadly. Sure, flinging rocks wasn’t going to do much good against trees the size of the ones chasing them, but neither was the quarterstaff he’d been ready to use himself. He was glad to see the boy thought the same way he did.

    “What do we do now, Cashel?” Protas said. His voice higher than it had been, but he was being brave just the same.

    “Drop the stones and let me boost you up!” Cashel said. He ought to’ve leaned the quarterstaff against the rock to free both hands, but instead he used just his left to grab Protas by the back of his garments—tunic, sash and trousers all together in a tight handful—and swing him up the side of the boulder. When Cashel let go, he realized he’d swung harder than he’d meant to, but the boy managed to grab on and not go sailing off the back side as he’d nearly done.

    Cashel looked back as he planted his staff arm’s length out from the boulder. The trees stood in a tight arc just beyond where the grass still smoldered. When the demon saw Cashel and Protas had reached the rock, it spun and sprang into the air. The trees surged forward again, at first looking like they were bending in a storm.

    Cashel jumped with a twist of his shoulders on the staff to swing his feet to the top of the boulder. There he straightened and brought the staff up across his body again. The stone’d been scribed with a star so long ago that the grooves were the same dirty gray as the flat surface.

    He grinned. Mounting that way was a neat piece of work. It took timing as well as strength, but it took more strength than most any two other men could’ve managed.

    The demon circled them, glaring fiercely. “You’ve cost me a kalpa of torment to save you as I did!” it cried. “But better that than all eternity. Get on with you and bring misery to some other wretched creature!”

    Hovering, it stretched out its clawed hands toward Cashel and the boy. Cashel tensed, remembering the blast of blue flame that’d halted the grove now rushing down on them again; dust rose in a dirty plume as their roots scraped over the ground.

    The star on the boulder glowed azure. The surface within that boundary vanished and the world beyond as well. Cashel was falling through starry space, conscious only of Protas’ desperate grip on his belt.