Mistress of the Catacombs (49 page)

* * *

Garric tumbled into sunlight on a landscape of rocks, flowering scrub, and stone boxes. The sea roared against a nearby coastline, and above him birds called.

His face was buried in coarse grass, each stem topped with a tiny white bloom. If he'd come through Metron's passage a hand's-breadth farther forward, the spiky leaves of something like a yucca would've been gouging his cheeks. He was too exhausted to feel relief.

At that he was better off than Metron who lay half under, half beside, Garric's body. The wizard couldn't have been more still if he'd been dead, though Garric found a pulse in his throat when he checked.

He heard voices, Vascay's among them, as the Brethren assessed the situation. Garric braced his hands and levered his torso up so that he could look around. He wasn't ready to stand quite just now.

"There you are, Brother Gar!" Vascay called, waving his javelin in greeting. "How about the wizard? I'd say I didn't care, but this time he brought us to a better place than some I've seen recently."

At a quick glance, it seemed that all the bandits on the millipede's back had made it here. Garric grimaced when he remembered Toster. All who'd dared the wizard's gateway, that is. Well, Toster had the right to make his own decision.

"Metron's here with me," Garric said. "He won't want to move for a while, but he's all right."

He stood carefully, finding as he usually did that he felt better when he started moving again after exertion. Small bees buzzed, trying the flowers. Even the spiky succulent sported orange starbursts that Garric would have guessed were giant asters if he'd seen them from a distance.

Vascay and Thalemos started over to him. Rather than meet them halfway, Garric waited—smiling faintly and looking around to get his bearings. The passage Metron had opened for them twice now seemed to affect some men more than others—and Garric more than most.

It was nearly noon here. Under the sun to the south ranged an arc of craggy hills: rugged, perhaps, but certainly nothing the band couldn't cross if it wanted to. In the middle was the notch of a pass. Garric thought the hills were less than two miles away, though that guess depended in part on how tall the trees sprinkling the slopes were.

The sea battered the shore north of where Garric stood. Near land the water was green, becoming a deep purple-blue toward the horizon. The plain must be eaten away into a steep corniche rather than a sloping beach, but Garric couldn't be sure without getting closer.

All around him, covered by flowers and grasses, were boxes hewn from the same coarse limestone that underlay the soil. Garric frowned as he recognized them: they were coffins.

More precisely, they were ossuaries to hold the bones of the dead whose flesh had decayed during a year or two's exposure on the shelves of common mausolea. That had been the practice in Haft during the Old Kingdom, Garric knew from his reading; though in his own day, the dead were buried in the ground and honored in a general ceremony at the Spring Equinox.

"We're in a graveyard," he said to Vascay. Thalemos had halted a few paces away, bending to look at an ossuary of alabaster or marble. "All of this."

Gesturing broadly, Garric went on, "It must have served quite a large city, but I don't see any sign of buildings except crypts and these, well—"

He touched an ossuary with his foot.

"—bone boxes."

Vascay shrugged, the gesture nonchalant but his expression guarded. "They might've built their houses of sticks and thatch but buried their dead in stone," he said. "It's a matter of what your priorities are, after all. And this place—"

He carried his glance around the sprawling plain; for as far as a man could see, ruined tombs and ossuaries dotted it. Flowers nodded in the slight breeze.

"—is old, whatever it is."

Magenta flowers that looked like zinnias—they weren't; the plants' leaves were wrong—grew in great profusion where Thalemos knelt and shaded worn lettering with his hand. He looked solemn as he rose to join Garric and the chieftain.

"That ossuary held a Magistrate of Wikedun on the north coast of Laut, washed by the Outer Sea," Thalemos said. He wore a slight frown. "The city doesn't exist any more."

"I've heard of the place," Vascay said, frowning also. "The rebels of Wikedun fought the Intercessor Echea, back when the Old Kingdom fell two thousand years ago. She defeated the rebels and sank Wikedun under the sea."

"Well," Thalemos said, "the Outer Sea ate away the land, but that was over ages instead of whelming the city suddenly. And the rebels were demon-worshippers."

He paused, considering what he'd just said. He added, "According to Ascoin's History, they were demon worshippers, I mean. I suppose his stories may be false."

Vascay snorted. "Or they may not," he said. "What I know for a fact—"

He looked toward the range of hills.

"—is that the present Intercessor has half the Protectors on his payroll patrolling the marshes south of here. And they say other guards as well, to keep honest men out of here. Why is that, do you suppose?"

All three men looked down at the wizard, snoring among the flowers at their feet. Presumably Metron knew the answer. He knew the same answer as Echeon did, at any rate.

"I don't think he's faking," Garric said morosely. "The spells Metron has been working would be impossible for anyone but a great wizard, and even then difficult."

"You know wizards, do you, Gar?" Vascay said mildly.

"I've known some," said Garric.

"I'd as soon I never had," Vascay said. He smiled. "But then, I'd as soon a lot of things that turned out differently."

He gestured toward the edge of the plain a furlong away. "Let's walk that way," the chieftain said. "I'd like to take a look at the sea, since I don't think we're going back through Echeon's patrols. Regardless of what else might be waiting for us south of the hills."

Thalemos glanced down at the wizard with pursed lips. "He'll be fine," Garric said. "He's just tired. There's nothing we can do beyond letting him sleep."

The ten remaining bandits were exploring their new surroundings with cheerful enthusiasm, mostly in groups of two or three. Hame stood alone on top of a ruin that may once have been a temple, shading his eyes with his hand searching the plain.

Looking for Toster, Garric realized. They were friends.... He started to call to Hame, then decided that for the time being he wouldn't do that. For one thing, it'd force Garric to recall the big man's last moments with greater clarity than he wanted to do.

Halophus disappeared, then popped back into sight holding a broad armlet. He'd apparently jumped or fallen into a sub-surface tomb; this necropolis held burials of a wide variety of styles. From the bandit's caroling joy and the way sunlight winked, the armlet was made of gold.

"We're all happy to be out of where we were before," Vascay said without emphasis. "I am myself. I don't know that this is a good place—"

He smiled knowingly at his companions.

"—but I know the other was a bad one, at least there at the end."

"Yes," said Garric grimly. They'd reached the edge of the cliff; the sea roared up at them, though it was a calm day. The waves didn't make enough noise against the crumbling rock to drown the screams in his mind, though.

"I've had a lot more money over the past ten years with the Brethren than I did for the twenty before when I was a schoolmaster," Vascay said, his voice barely loud enough for the others to hear him. "Had the money and had more of the things the money could buy. But one of the things I wish turned out differently is that I could've lived my whole life as an honest man."

The corniche was never more than twenty feet above the sea and generally only half that. Green water swirled and foamed about the scree of rocks broken away from the cliff face in the recent past. Garric had led his companions to a notch where the overhang had collapsed perhaps only hours before; the dirt showing at the edges of the fall was still moist and russet in contrast to the grayish yellow where the soil had dried. Standing anywhere else along the edge risked the weight of the spectators bringing down the overhang.

"Doesn't Echeon have ships on patrol off the coast here?" Garric asked. He couldn't see anything but sunlit water all the way to the horizon, but there must be something to prevent interlopers. The gold Halophus had found in practically open sight proved nobody came here.

Garric and his companions might still be able to escape by sea. Even with Echeon's art, the Protectors wouldn't be able to patrol effectively in the middle of a winter storm. Though... with a home-made boat and a crew of landsmen, Garric thought he'd rather take his chances walking south through the hills.

"I haven't heard of anything special on this coast," Vascay said. "There's the regular ships watching to keep people here from going out beyond fishing distance and anybody else from getting to Laut. Nothing in particular about this bay or Wikedun, though."

He shrugged. "My gang stayed pretty much in the south and east, that being where we all of us came from," he went on. "But I keep an ear out for what the Protectors're doing, and I'd guess I'd have heard about extra ships the same as I did about the patrols on the land side."

"What's that?" said Thalemos, suddenly pointing seaward.

"That's just a—" Garric said. He shut his mouth on "—shadow on the water," because there weren't any clouds in the sky.

It broke surface, or at least several hundred feet of its length did. Its lizardlike head was blunter than that of a seawolf, nor did a seawolf ever reach the size of this creature. The kinship was close, though. Gar's soul, by now buried deep in Garric's mind, begin to whimper.

The serpent looked at the three watching humans, then slid downward again with a sidewise shimmy of its whole long body. The green water covered all but memory of the creature.

"Did it happen to appear now, or were we being warned?" Thalemos asked. He sounded calm, but his clasped fingers writhed like the snake he'd just watched.

"Either way, we can save the effort of building a boat," said Vascay.

He turned. "Come on, lads," he continued. "Master Metron ought to be well enough to speak by now, and I've got some questions to ask the gentleman!"

* * *

"If we let you loose, Master Cashel...," said the fat, friendly fellow with ribbons dangling from his velvet cap. "Will you behave yourself?"

He'd come into the Hyacinth with four other townsmen: beefy, younger men who carried fishnets like the ones Cashel was already trussed with. No one of the men was Cashel's size, but he was willing to agree that all together the four could handle him. The folk of Soong weren't what he'd call harsh—back home, men preparing to release a maybe-madman would have cudgels to use if the fellow got out of hand—but they didn't take silly chances either.

Leemay came out from the bar and stood beside the man in the fancy hat—the mayor or whatever they called the head man here. "Master Cashel," she said, "I'm sorry about what happened here. There's free food and lodging for you in the Hyacinth this night or however long you want to stay."

She'd lit a lamp shortly before mayor arrived, and two of the huskies had carried in lanterns of iron and horn. Daylight in this place was somber enough, but Cashel already knew how miserable and dank Soong became after the sun set....

"Let me go and give me what's mine," he said to the woman. "After that, Duzi grant that you never see me again!"

His voice came out in enough of a growl that the mayor flinched back and his huskies stiffened as if they might have work to do. Leemay didn't move, just gave a little nod.

"You may change your mind," she said. "My offer remains."

The inn had been open for business during the day. Indeed, the stranger tied to a pillar had probably brought in half the trade. Cashel hadn't spoken to the locals nor had anybody spoken to him, but all the folk who came through the front door had let their eyes linger on him. Several were still inside, an audience watching from the bar or the tables along the back wall.

Cashel met the innkeeper's eyes, but he didn't speak. He didn't have anything to say beyond what he'd just said.

"Let him go," Leemay said to the mayor.

He looked at her in concern. "Are you sure?" he said. "Maybe tomorrow would be—"

"Let him go," she repeated with an edge in her voice. Cashel had the feeling that though Leemay got along well enough with her fellow townsfolk, nobody wanted to cross her. He could see why that might be.

"All right," the mayor said sharply to the attendant on his right. "Cut him—"

"Sister take you, Jangme!" cried the fisherman who jumped up from a table. "Not unless the Corporation wants to pay me and Long for two new nets!"

He knelt beside Cashel and loosed the tie cords with strong, skilled fingers. Cashel didn't move while the work was going on; if he bunched his muscles in anticipation, it'd just take the fellow longer to finish his job. Cashel knew how to wait.

The fisherman stood, lifting one of the nets with him. Cashel stood also, kicking his legs free of the other net now that the tension was off it. He stretched his arms, over him and out to the sides, arching his back at the same time. The mayor and his attendants watched nervously.

"If you'll give me back my staff," Cashel said, slurring the words because of the anger that he otherwise concealed, "then I'll take myself out from under this roof."

"Ah, Master Cashel," said the mayor, "I think we'd best wait till you leave Soong—in the morning, I suppose?—before we give you that again. While I trust—"

"When I came out last night with the friend the woman there murdered...," Cashel said. He spoke slowly, taking a deep breath between each burst of words. "And you tied me up because you thought I'd gone crazy.... Then I didn't want to hurt anybody but her—"

He nodded to Leemay, who stood impassively.

"—because the rest of you hadn't hurt me."

Cashel looked around the room. Only one of the mayor's companions would meet his eyes.

"But if you don't give me my staff," Cashel continued in a growl like thunder over the horizon, "then you're all of you no better 'n a gang of robbers. And I'll pull that—"

He pointed to the bar.

"—out of the wall and use it on you before you can stop me."

"What?" said the mayor. He looked around at his attendants. "He couldn't do that! It's pegged top and bottom!"

Cashel stepped over to the heavy hardwood plank. Two of the attendants danced aside instead of trying to stop him.

"Give him his bloody stick!" said the fisherman. "You weren't wrestling him this morning, Jangme."

"All right, all right...," the mayor said, letting his voice trail off as he turned away. "I just think...."

"When did you ever think about anything but how important you are?" the fisherman said.

Leemay stood for a moment, then stepped behind the bar through the open gate. She reached down and brought up the quarterstaff; it must have been lying all day where Cashel dropped it when he carried Tilphosa out of the bedroom.

He took the hickory. Leemay stroked her fingertips over the back of his right hand. She smiled at him as he jerked away.

"Come back when you decide you want my hospitality, Master Cashel," she said. She laughed from deep in her throat, a sound more like a cat purring than anything Cashel had heard from a human before. "I'll make you very welcome."

The mayor and his huskies were leaving the inn. Cashel had to wait for them to clear the doorway or else shove through; and it was only a lifetime of good manners that kept him from doing that second thing.

When Cashel was finally outside, he banged the double door shut after him. Leemay was still laughing, and he didn't like the sound.

He breathed deeply. It seemed like he hadn't been able to take in a real breath since Tilphosa's cries woke him up this morning. The locals hadn't tied him tight, and there wasn't anything wrong with the air of the inn; but....

Well, that was over. If he were his sister instead of himself, Leemay and the whole town would pay more than they might've believed possible in revenge. Cashel wasn't like Ilna in that way or many ways. Funny how different twins could be.

He crossed River Street to the wharfs along the bank. There were still people out, but they seemed to be hastening home. Though Soong was a big place, it pretty much shut down at nightfall the same as country villages did. In Valles the traffic didn't stop from dawn to daybreak, hooves and iron-tired wagons crashing along the cobblestone streets.

Wooden piers reached out into the sluggish river from a stone-faced embankment which ran the length of the waterside. Some of the boats had places for more oarsmen than Cashel had fingers, but most were relatively small—flat-bottomed and blunt on both ends.

A man was untangling his nets in the belly of a skiff midway down a nearby pier. Cashel walked out, keeping his feet over the stringers. Even so his weight made the structure sway and squeal.

The fellow looked up—and up—when Cashel stopped beside him; the water was a double pace below the level of the pier. "Yeah?" he said.

"Sir, I'd like to rent your boat for the night," Cashel said. "You don't know me—"

"You've got that right!" the local man said. "And I'm not going to rent you the boat I need to put food on my family's table. Maybe—no, I don't know anybody who'd rent a boat to a stranger."

As the man talked, Cashel tugged out the purse he wore on a neck thong. "Sir," he said, "could you buy another boat for three silver pieces?"

"Huh?" said the fisherman. "Three Ships? You don't mean three coppers?"

"These don't have ships on them," Cashel said, holding up the coins so they'd gleam in what wan moonlight filtered through the fog. "There's a man on a horse, I think. But they're silver, and I'll pay them to you for the use of your boat tonight."

The fisherman clambered onto the pier like a monkey. He snatched the coins and held them close to his eyes. Cashel didn't guess the fellow could see much—in this light you couldn't even tell the coins were silver—but they were coins and metal of some kind for sure.

"A deal?" Cashel said.

The fisherman clutched the coins close to his chest. That was fine with Cashel; he didn't want the money back, and if the fellow turned and ran away with it—well, he'd leave his boat behind, wouldn't he?

"You just want the boat?" the man said. "You aren't going to take my net and tackle?"

"The boat and the oars," Cashel said, figuring he'd better make it clear about the oars. "And I hope to give them back when I'm done, but you may have to go search where I left them."

The fisherman nodded in excitement. He hopped into the skiff—water sloshed out to all sides, but his aim and balance were perfect—and grabbed his gear up with one hand, using his left arm as a pole to drape the net on. His left hand wasn't going to let go of the coins for any reason.

Cashel had guessed that values here were the same as back home, where twenty coppers would buy a dory fit to fish out of sight of the land. Thirty coppers—only a few people in Barca's Hamlet would have the amount in silver, even in a good year—was enough to make the owner want to close the deal fast before the buyer came to his senses.

The fisherman climbed to the pier again and started for the quay. "A good evening to you, sir," Cashel called to his back. If the fellow replied, Cashel didn't hear it.

He stepped down into the skiff. It was small, but the way its owner jumped in and out proved it was sturdy and well-designed. Cashel slipped his quarterstaff under the single thwart, laying it over where the keel would've been if the flat-bottomed vessel had one. He set the oars into rowlocks of willow root, untied the frayed painter, and shoved the skiff out into the river with his hand against a piling.

The moon gave Cashel light to row by. There were enough snags drifting down the river that he hoped he'd pass unremarked in the fog, but that was a chance he had to take.

He was going into the Temple of the Nine to find Tilphosa. He wasn't sure what he'd do then, but he knew he wasn't going to leave the girl to be fed to the fish or whatever they did in Soong. By going in by the back he hoped to avoid trouble; but he was going in.

A peasant without land of his own does a little of everything to keep body and soul together. Cashel had rowed dories in bad weather; he wouldn't call himself a good oarsman, but he could make this skiff serve his purposes easily enough.

A fish slapped the water, nearby but unseen. Apart from that, he seemed to have the river to himself. A few lamps glimmered on shore; Soong must stretch quite a way up and down the river. The lights were blurs in the fog, and an occasional bay of deep laughter was the only human sound that reached him.

Cashel deliberately went out into mid-channel before he angled the skiff back toward the island on which the temple stood. He checked over his shoulder regularly as he rowed, but the lightless temple was completely hidden. Cashel trusted his sense of direction. He figured that if he had to, he could find the place blindfolded.

The skiff grounded sooner than expected. Cashel probed with an oarblade to be sure that he'd actually reached the island instead of colliding with a floating tree. A sheet of mud, glistening a little brighter than the river proper, stretched a long stone's throw up to a dimly-glimpsed low wall.

Cashel stepped out and hauled the skiff its own length to a stump around which he wrapped the painter. The muck squelched ankle-high, an unpleasant sensation but not a new one. He took his staff into his hands and started toward the wall.

Apparently the temple had an enclosed court behind it. That might even be better for concealment.... There was a gate in an archway, but Cashel didn't bother to try it. He set his staff firmly at the base of the wall and reached up with his left hand. He could reach the top, and it was smooth stone with no spikes or sharp flints set into the coping.

He swung himself up, his right arm thrusting against the staff and his left lifting by the wall itself. On top he paused, listening intently. Something plopped in the river behind him, but he heard nothing from the garden. The temple beyond was completely dark. Moonlight showed a tall, narrow door, but there were no windows.

The garden was planted with unfamiliar broad-spreading shrubs, though Cashel couldn't tell a lot in the foggy darkness. A path meandered through them, going from the gate in the wall to the temple's back door.

Cashel swung his staff around, butted it inside the wall, and let himself down by reversing the motion that took him atop the wall. He thought he heard something from the river again, but it didn't matter now.

The ground inside the courtyard was much firmer than the mud flats. Cashel started for the temple, following the path as it wove between the trees. Nuts hung in clusters at the tips of the spiky branches. If Cashel had gone straight ahead he'd have had to hunch, but the path followed living arches that would have let someone even taller walk upright.

He smiled; well, of course. The Nine were much taller than he was.

In the center of the garden was a large, mossy clearing. The path led to it and then away toward the temple on the other side. He stopped, stretching out his right foot to touch the moss with his big toe. The surface beneath quivered like jelly; it was neither soil nor water.

Cashel grinned. Things had been too easy thus far. He couldn't believe he was the first man to wonder what really went on in the temple, nor that the Nine were so innocent that they had nothing to hide. If he hadn't found a trap, it just meant that the trap was still waiting for him.