Goddess of the Ice Realm (44 page)

“You've been chosen because my advisors and I believe you're responsible men,” Garric said. “You have a responsible job. And be very clear, fellow soldiers, that I will
hold
you responsible for the way you perform this job!”

He put his hands on his hips. The company cheered—the cheers led, he noticed, by the veterans of the royal army, but joined quickly enough and with equal enthusiasm by the rest of the watchmen.

Garric saluted, thumping his right fist against his left forearm—the gesture made more sense if you knew that it had originated among soldiers with a spear in their right hand and a shield on their left arm—and turned on his heel. The company continued to cheer as the prince and his considerable entourage left the compound.

“We'll go to the barracks of the First Company now,” Liane said, her fingers flipping the boards of a notebook whose contents she had memorized, “then back to the palace for meetings until the tenth hour. We'll visit the Sixth Company before we eat, then get the rest tomorrow.”

Garric grimaced as he handed Liane into her sedan chair; she couldn't possibly walk any distance wearing thick-soled court buskins. Everyone—everyone concerned with protocol—would've been happier if Garric had ridden in another
chair or at least on a horse, but he wasn't a good enough horseman to risk that on the cobblestone streets. As for being carried in a sedan chair—he'd have died first.

“I'd rather be doing something real,” he muttered to her.

Liane touched the side of his chin to get his attention. “Your highness,” she said, her tone formal despite the intimacy of her gesture. “If you sail from island to island crushing opponents and public order collapses behind you as soon as you leave, the kingdom will fall just as surely as if you never left your palace in Valles. This
is
real. This is telling the men that you depend on that you
do
depend on them. Nobody else could tell them that and have them really believe it. And they need to believe it, or there'll be no more peace in Carcosa when you leave than there's been for the past thousand years.”

Garric patted her hand, then set it in her lap. “To the headquarters of the First Company of the City Watch, Under-Captain Houil,” he said to the commander of the escort.

The bearers lifted Liane's chair. The whole procession set off at a stiff pace through streets bordered both by modern buildings and the ruins of far more impressive ones.

“It's easier to go along with them, lad,”
said King Carus when he got control of his laughter.
“Especially when they're dead right. As I know to my cost from having done it wrong a thousand years ago when
I
was king!”

Does the Visitor have guards out here in the swamp, Evne?” Cashel asked as he probed the bottom of the stream. It was only a handsbreadth deep, but the water was so black with dissolved leaves that he could no more see through it than he could've seen into a stone wall.

“Jump over this,” the toad said. “Don't put your foot in it.”

Cashel butted his staff in the water and pivoted over it to the other side instead of crossing in two steps as he'd otherwise
have done. He landed on a sprawling mat of cypress roots and picked his way over them carefully; his mud-slick feet were likely to slide on the smooth bark.

“There's a flatworm in the water,” Evne said. Cashel hadn't been going to ask for an explanation, though he was interested to hear it. “Even if I had a chance to talk with it, which I wouldn't because it never comes above the surface, it probably wouldn't listen. Flatworms are very stupid, even by human standards.”

The trees, mostly cypress though there were others Cashel didn't recognize, crossed branches. They didn't exactly hide the sky, because the warm mist did that. In the few open patches above, the sun was just a brighter blur than the vapors around it.

“The Visitor neither knows nor cares what humans are doing until he has a use for them,” the toad said, getting around to answering Cashel's question. “He doesn't have guards because he doesn't see a threat . . . which is not to say that you'll be able to walk straight into his ship. That is protected against enemies he fears as he fears nothing on
this
world.”

“Evne?” Cashel said. He was frowning. “Why does the Visitor come here, anyway? And if he comes, why does he leave, then?”

The toad snorted. “Why does Lord Bossian have dinner now in the West Tower, now in the Plaza?” she said. “Whim, that's all. Merely the whim of one who thinks he's all-powerful.”

They'd reached another body of water, this one too broad to jump. Bubbles rose to the surface and hung there as a dirty froth before finally bursting; there was no current at all.

Cashel checked; he didn't find bottom at what would've been mid-chest if he'd jumped in. The jet-black water drained cleanly off his quarterstaff, leaving the hickory wet but not gummy.

“There's a fallen log to the right,” the toad said. “There, where the yellow iris grows on the bank. It's underwater, but only ankle deep.”

“All right,” said Cashel, making his careful way toward the nodding yellow flags. “Ah, that's a snake on the branch overhead.”

He didn't add, isn't it? to make a question out of the observation, because he had no doubt at all once his mind had registered the fact that one gnarled, blotchy tree limb was twice as thick as the others. Even so he wasn't sure which way the snake lay until the flicker of an inner lid wiping its gleaming black eye caught his attention.

“I wondered when you'd notice him,” the toad said, but Cashel thought he heard approval in her tone. The truth was he'd noticed the snake as soon as there was any reason to; if he'd been able to cross where he first struck the water, the long body wouldn't have been of any more importance to him than the branch on which it sprawled.

“Ho, serpent!” Evne called. “Do you know me?”

The snake turned its head, lowering it slightly to hang on an
S
-curve of its neck. “What if I do?” it said. Its forked tongue took several quick, nervous sips of the air. “You have no power over me here!”

Cashel didn't like the snake's tone—Duzi! he didn't like the fact he was listening to a snake talk!—but he kept walking forward along the overgrown bank, picking his footing carefully among the roots and knotted bog plants. It wasn't a time he'd choose to hurry, regardless.

“You're lucky I don't have any reason to show you that you're wrong!” said Evne with the archly superior tone she used when she was being formal instead of insulting people in a common fashion. “Am I correct that there are no creatures of a sort to be threatening in the waters near your ford?”

“You know there's not,” the snake said, letting more of his body loop down. It moved as smoothly as oil spreading. “You know I'd have killed them if there were.”

“So I hoped,” the toad said. “And I also hope you'll let us pass on our way without a problem.”

Cashel paused and wiped his quarterstaff with his wad of raw wool. It might be that he needed a clean grip on the hickory soon.

The snake hissed its laughter. “You may hope that all you like, but you've no reason to expect it,” it said. “This is my ford and my hunting ground.”

Cashel started forward again. They were getting pretty close. He wasn't sure how far the snake could launch itself, but it was a
very
big snake.

“I've two reasons,” said Evne. “First, because I've asked you politely—”

The snake hissed even louder. Its head began to sway back and forth, swinging a trifle lower with each movement.

“—and second,” Evne continued, “because my master will smash your head in if you don't!”

“Does he think that?” rasped the snake. When its jaws were closed, it seemed to smile, but the two fangs that unfolded whenever it spoke were as long as Cashel's hand.

“
I
think that, serpent!” said the toad. “Do you doubt me?”

Cashel raised his staff to mid-chest with his hands spread a comfortable distance for thrusting with one ferrule or the other. Nobody moved for a moment.

“Faugh!” said the snake. Its body slid back up on the branch as easily as it'd lowered. “I ate just the other day. Somebody else can have the pleasure of swallowing you.”

“We can go on now, master,” Evne said. Cashel was already picking his way forward, not fast but fast enough. His toes found the log and started forward, balancing with his staff.

He kept his face turned up, watching the snake. It stayed as still as the branch it lay on. Walking like this it was better not to look down anyway.

The ground on the far side was higher and a lot firmer than what Cashel had just come through. When he'd put a moss-draped pin oak between him and the snake, he said, “Do all the animals in this swamp talk, Evne?”

“None of them talk,” the toad said. “Not so that you could understand, anyway.”

“But—”

“Except that you're with me, of course,” she added. “That was too obvious to bother mentioning.”

“Ah,” said Cashel. There was a spiderweb in his path. He started to brush it away with his staff, then decided to go around the other side of the tree instead. A web that big would be a lot of work, even for a spider the size of both Cashel's hands spread.

“Evne?” he said. “Who are you?”

The toad laughed without humor. “Me?” she said. “I'm your servant, great master. Your guide and humble companion.”

Cashel sighed. He didn't suppose it mattered. He didn't doubt that Evne was on his side . . . in her own way.

A damselfly glittered past, an iridescent blue body and shimmering crystal wings. Cashel snatched with his right hand, then brought the trapped morsel close to his left shoulder.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said as he opened his fingers. The toad's long tongue patted his palm before the insect could flutter free.

They continued on for a time in silence broken only by the occasional slosh of Cashel's bare feet. After a while Evne began to sing about a frog who went a-courting.

She had a pleasant voice, for a toad.

Alfdan's band climbed aboard the Queen Ship. Their air of quiet resignation reminded Sharina of peasants heading for the fields on the third day of the harvest—tired from what has gone before and well aware that this day too will be long and hard, but that it must be faced.

Ordinary folk didn't like wizards or wizardry. These men were here because Alfdan was the closest thing they had to a hope of safety.

Scoggin was among the first to board. Sharina reached out to pull him up, but Scoggin had braced his spearbutt in the ground. To her surprise he stretched back his free hand to help Franca. They seated themselves to either side of Sharina, linking their hands around the mast to keep from sliding off.

Beard chuckled, muttering things that Sharina couldn't hear clearly and probably wouldn't have wanted to. Like Alfdan, the axe was a valuable associate but not a completely comfortable one.

“What do we do now, Mistress Sharina?” Franca asked.

“I've promised to help the wizard find a key,” she said. “I don't have any more information than that. He'll take me
where I request after I've found the key. I don't know where that is yet.”

Scoggin snorted. “Suits me,” he said. “Away from here is a good start.”

He looked at the men now crowding the ship's deck. There were seventeen in the band and Alfdan himself; plus now Sharina and her two companions. “They aren't a bad lot,” Scoggin went on in a low voice. “The rest of 'em, I mean. I haven't had anybody around since, well, for a long time.”

It struck Sharina that Scoggin and Franca had attached themselves to her for the same reason the wizard had been able to gather his entourage. She and Alfdan were willing to lead in a world where most of the survivors had lost purpose.

Alfdan stood in the stern of the vessel. Though the deck was crowded, there was a clear space in front of him for as far as he could have swung his bone staff. He tapped the deck and said,
“Aieth.”
There was a quick flicker of crimson.

Keeping a hand on the mast, Sharina stood to see over the heads of the men seated between her and the wizard. Scoggin cursed under his breath, but he braced her foot with his own.

A many-pointed symbol had appeared on—in—the shimmering deck before Alfdan. The figure and the words of power crawling around its perimeter were spaces in the plane of light, chill air through which Sharina saw the rocky beach without the intervening glow.

“Thotho squaleth ouer,”
Alfdan called. His staff was upright and motionless on the deck. The words of power spun around the symbol faster as he spoke them.
“Melchou melcha ael.”

He lifted his staff and pointed it out toward the distant sea. Though he continued to chant, a rushing sound like the winds of an approaching storm blurred the words. Sharina could no longer hear them clearly.

The deck came level. The prow rotated seaward in line with the staff as though the vessel were pivoting on its mast. The deck now had a tacky grip on the rabbit-skin boots when Sharina shifted her feet.

“Pissadara!”
Alfdan shouted. The unfelt wind roared
around them, making Sharina's marrow tremble; the Queen Ship slid forward.

She'd expected to hear the crunch and scrape of shingle against their keel as she would've done if an ordinary vessel were being dragged into the water, but the only vibration was the high tremble of the wind. She and the others on the ship's deck were in an existence of their own, cut off from the world around them as if by thick diamond walls.

The ship accelerated, moving faster than any real vessel could have done. They reached the new shoreline, at least a mile beyond where the coast had been when Sharina was growing up in Barca's Hamlet. The water had a sluggish, gelid appearance, and the surf seemed to cling a long time to the beach before rolling back. The Queen Ship sped outward, leaving the swells as unmarked by its passage as the land had been.