Mistress of the Catacombs (53 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

By the time the sun had risen a finger's breadth above the horizon, the fog had burned off. Cashel looked over his shoulder and for the first time saw the other bank of the river. He chuckled.

Tilphosa, curled in the stern of the boat, jerked awake at the sound. "What?" she said. "Cashel, is everything all right?"

"I don't know about everything," Cashel said with a shy grin. "But better off than a little bit ago, sure. See the land, Tilphosa?"

"Yes," she said, squinting into the low sun. She sounded doubtful. "It looks marshy, doesn't it?"

"Right," said Cashel, "but it's land. I've been rowing all night. I was beginning to think it wasn't a river at all but a lake that I wasn't going to get across in this lifetime."

"Oh!" said Tilphosa. She turned and looked west, toward where Soong ought to be. The city was still there, Cashel supposed, but it was long out of sight in their wake. "Cashel, you've been rowing all night? What do your palms look like?"

She leaned forward and unwrapped the fingers of his right hand from the oar loom. "I'm fine, mistress," Cashel said in embarrassment. "I'm used to this sort of thing."

That was true enough. His calluses had faced worse than a night of rowing, and the same was true of his shoulder muscles. Even so, Tilphosa looked at him with mingled anger and sympathy.

"Well, stop right now!" she said. "It isn't right that anyone be worked like that!"

"It isn't somebody making me do it, mistress," Cashel said calmly. "It's me doing it. I choose to."

"Well, then choose—" the girl said sharply.

"Mistress," said Cashel, loudly enough to be heard. "I don't want to float here in the middle of a river till we starve. It's that or else me rowing us the rest of the way to land. All right?"

Tilphosa's eyes flashed; then she lowered them and quietly said, "All right, Cashel. Are you going to take us to the city there?"

"Huh?" said Cashel, looking over his shoulder again. The buildings rising out of the mud and mists were several stories high, gleaming as sunlight struck their wet stone. Granted that the fog was still clearing, he'd have thought he'd have seen them....

"That's funny," Cashel said. "But sure, we'll head for the city. You guide me if the current pulls us off course, all right?"

He resumed rowing. That last was just a way to be friendly to the girl after he'd told her to stop mothering him. The chance of this river's sluggish current drifting him downstream unnoticed was about the same as Cashel sprouting wings and flying to the city.

He smiled at Tilphosa. He'd had his sister to mother him, and Ilna wasn't one to claim hard work was a bad thing for a man—or a slip of a girl like herself, either. Tilphosa was tough and in her way strong, but she didn't have any notion of what was normal for peasants like Cashel.

"I lost my dagger," the girl said suddenly. "I don't have...."

She had the tunic she'd worn to bed, period. Well, there hadn't been any time since then to do more than to keep moving.

"Maybe you won't need it," Cashel said calmly. When you really didn't know what was going to happen next, there was no point in deciding it was going to be bad. "Anyway, I've still got my staff."

Tilphosa smiled vividly again, the first time Cashel had seen that expression since they went to sleep in the Hyacinth. "Yes you do, Cashel," she said. "And I've got you."

"Till we get you home," Cashel agreed. His arms and upper body moved with the steady grace of a mill wheel, long pulls that sent the water swirling away each time he withdrew his oarblades. Dimples of foam marked the surface behind them, staying where they were while the wake made a vee outward across them. "The Shepherd granting, of course."

"There was a time I'd have said, 'The Mistress granting,' Cashel," Tilphosa said in an odd tone of voice. "Now I think I'll just depend on you. You haven't failed me yet."

She cleared her throat and went on, "We're getting very close to the quays along the bank. But I suppose you know that."

"Thank you, m-mis...," Cashel said. "I mean, thank you, Tilphosa."

He looked over his shoulder, picking the point where he'd land. There were steps down into the water squarely ahead of them. If there'd ever been bollards, they'd rotted away by now, but he could haul this little skiff up the stairs easily enough. It wouldn't hurt the flat bottom to bump a little.

He had known the bank was close, of course. Tilphosa was smart in people ways, not just out of books. Cashel himself was always being surprised by what people did and said, because mostly it didn't make any sense. The best Cashel could do was learn to deal with surprises.

He braked the skiff by reversing his stroke, then turned them so that they drifted stern-first to the stairs on the last of their momentum. Mud, poisonously bright with river algae, was slumping away from the stone. Where the sun had dried it, it turned a sickly gray-green.

"If you'll just hop—" Cashel said, but Tilphosa had already judged her time. She stepped lightly to the stone tread, then bent to hold the boat's transom.

Smiling approval, Cashel paddled the skiff broadside and got out himself. Despite his care, water sloshing from beneath the hull soaked Tilphosa's feet. She didn't appear to notice.

Cashel pulled the skiff up the few steps and set it on the drying mud of the quay. He'd told the fisherman he'd leave the boat when he was through, but now he didn't imagine the fellow would ever see it again. That's what the fisherman had expected, but it still bothered Cashel to reinforce somebody's bad expectations.

A different thought struck him; he grinned. "Cashel?" Tilphosa said.

"The fellow I got the boat from knew how wide the river was even though I didn't," Cashel explained. "I guess when I said I'd leave it for him, he thought I was a fool but not a crook."

Tilphosa frowned, trying to understand what he was getting at. "You see, mistress," Cashel explained, "I'm used to people thinking I'm dumb. That's all right."

"No," said Tilphosa, "it's not. But for now let's see if we can find something to eat."

"Right," said Cashel. "Let me...."

He slid his quarterstaff out from under the thwart. Stepping back from the girl, he began to spin it; slowly at first, but building speed as he worked out the kinks rowing had put in his muscles. He whirled the staff in front of him, reversing direction with a skill that only another man familiar with the heavy weapon would appreciate. He brought it over his head, then jumped and let the staff's inertia carry his body around in a full circle.

"There," said Cashel breathlessly. "There!"

Tilphosa looked at him with wide eyes, the back of her right hand in her mouth. "Cashel," she said. "That was amazing!"

"Huh?" he said. He seemed to say that a lot when he was around Tilphosa. "It wasn't.... I mean, I was just loosening up, that's all. Anyway, let's get going."

He really didn't see what the big deal was... or maybe he did, and it wasn't flattering.

"Ah, Tilphosa?" he said. "Did you mean that it's amazing somebody as big as me's not clumsy?"

"No, Cashel," the girl said. "I meant you're as graceful as a God when you move. I thought I was... inventing memories about how you held off the sailors in the temple. But I wasn't."

Cashel still didn't understand, but he had to say it made him feel good. Prince Thalemos was a lucky man; or anyway he would be, when Tilphosa finally reached him.

They walked into the city. The streets were slimy where the mud hadn't dried yet, but gray-green slabs were cracking off east-facing walls. The stone underneath was pinkish, highly polished, and as hard as granite. The air smelled of slow death, but it wasn't as pungent as that of salt marshes drying at neep tide.

"The river must have covered all this until just now," Tilphosa said. She paused to duck through one of the doorways: low, narrow, and wider at the bottom than the top.

"Nothing there," she said as she returned, still frowning. "Nothing but mud."

"I don't think we're going to find anything to eat here," Cashel said, "unless a carp maybe got stranded. We could go down the river a ways, maybe?"

Tilphosa shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked up. "East was a good way before," she said. She smiled. "At least it was a good enough way, since you were there. I think we ought to keep on as we've started."

Cashel grunted. He was glad to hear her say that, because it was pretty much what he was thinking. He didn't have a reason to go somewhere in particular, but it seemed to him it was important that they anyway went on.

The streets twisted worse than the ones in the old part of Valles. When they met, it was always in odd numbers: generally three but sometimes as many streets as the fingers on a man's hand. Cashel tried to keep the sun before him, but he knew he and Tilphosa were doing a lot of backtracking.

They came out into an open courtyard, different from any place they'd seen before in this city. The entrances through the circular wall all had slanting jambs and a big stone across the top instead of being real arches. Cashel walked into the clear space and stopped with Tilphosa at his side.

"It doesn't feel like a ruined city," Tilphosa said. "The walls are standing and the edges aren't even worn."

"I guess the mud covered it," Cashel said, feeling uneasy. "It would've weathered if it had been above ground, but buried...."

He started forward, picking the archway that seemed to go more east than the others. The streets into the courtyard all kinked so you couldn't see down them any distance from inside.

Tilphosa scraped her foot through the soft mud. "The plaza's got a design carved on it, Cashel," she said. She waggled her bare toe. "I wonder what they used it for? Whoever built the city, I mean."

Metra stepped out of the entrance Cashel was walking toward. "The Archai built the city," the wizard said. "They never occupied it, however. Until now."

Archai warriors, their forearms raised, entered the courtyard from all the other entrances. Cashel lunged toward Metra, his quarterstaff outstretched like a battering ram.

Tilphosa shouted in fury rather than fear. Archai swarmed over Cashel from both sides and behind, grasping with their middle limbs instead of hacking him apart with their toothed forearms. He strained forward, but too many Archai held him; it was like trying to swim through an avalanche.

Cashel toppled sideways. He felt chitin crunch beneath his weight, but the grip of countless tiny, hard-surfaced fingers held him beyond the ability to do more than wriggle.

The Archai rolled Cashel over. He fought without any plan beyond wanting to resist whatever the creatures did. His struggles didn't make any difference, except to prove that he wasn't giving up.

They lashed his wrists and ankles together with fibrous ropes, then tied his wrists to his ankles. When they had him securely bound they stepped away, chirping among themselves. Cashel rolled sideways so that he could see again.

Four Archai held Tilphosa; she hadn't been tied like Cashel. Metra watched the girl with the grin of a cat over a fish bowl. More Archai than even Garric could have counted stood around the edge of the courtyard and looked down from the surrounding wall.

"You were wondering the purpose of this courtyard, Tilphosa," the wizard said. "It was a temple; it is a temple, now that you've arrived."

"Lady Tilphosa to you, mistress!" the girl said. Cashel had heard hissing snakes that sounded friendlier.

"I think we can dispose of titles now, Tilphosa," Metra said; a tic at the corner of her mouth showed the insult had gotten home. "The moon will be full tonight, but you and I only have to wait for high noon."

Metra looked down at Cashel. "While I waited...," she went on, "I performed a location spell. You had the ring all the time, didn't you? If I'd known that...."

She shrugged and made a sound with the tip of her tongue against her palate. Two Archai bent over Cashel. He twisted, but one of them ripped his tunic cleanly with a forearm and the other clipped the silken cord which held the purse around Cashel's neck. The Archa's delicate, three-fingered hand passed the purse to Metra.

She took out the ring and held the tiny ruby to the light. Its facets scattered rosy blurs around the courtyard.

"Yes...," she said. "The Mistress has been waiting a very long time, but the wait is over now."

Waiting like a spider in her web, thought Cashel; and he tugged at the ropes, but they were tight and had no more give than steel chains would.

* * *

Garric started for the corniche, tugging at the sleeve of Thalemos' tunic to hustle him along. Vascay, his face bleak as Garric had never before seen it, was already moving. His step had a hitch in it; he hesitated each time his peg leg came down on the coarse soil.

"Wait!" cried Metron, looking up from his incantations. A litter of flaccid, bloodless animals lay at his side; his hands and ivory blade were red with the blood that hadn't dripped onto his words of power. "Thalemos, it isn't time yet!"

Thalemos didn't turn at the wizard's voice. His expression was calm, but his face was set.

"It's time and past time, I think!" Vascay said. He poised at the edge, waiting for Garric to choose their path downward.

"This way!" said Garric from the notch where the recently-fallen bank provided a steep ramp down to the sea which had undercut it. He pointed toward the rectangular shadow to the left where the catacomb lay open. He and his companions could pick their way across the slope, though they'd have to be careful not to slip into the sea.

Archai rose from the water like fishflies hatching. They clambered up the escarpment directly in front of them, regardless of the slope. Occasionally the bank gave way; the ones who'd pulled it down tumbled into their fellows, then rose and crawled upward again.

They brushed past Garric and his companions with no more regard than a creek has for the men wading it. Their limbs were slick and cold, like marble statues touched in the evening.

There were hundreds of the chitinous warriors already. Garric supposed more would appear for so long as Metron continued his chant and sacrifices.

The wizard thrust his lips out and gave a fluting call. Archai gripped Garric, three of them before him and more from behind where he couldn't see them. He heard Thalemos shout and Vascay curse.

Garric tried to pull away. The scores of cold fingers held him firmly. He tried to force his way forward, over the cliff in the hope that gravity would tug him free. All he managed to do was to cut his shoulder by shoving it into an Archa's raised forearm.

Relaxing, Garric looked at his companions. Vascay stood with no expression, his head turned back toward Metron. His arms were pinioned, but he still held his remaining javelin. Though the chieftain seemed relaxed, Garric knew that if the Archai relaxed their grip on him for an instant, his javelin would skewer the wizard's throat.

Thalemos was spreadeagled, his feet held off the ground and his arms straight out from his side. His face was set in aristocratic resignation, but a muscle at the back of his jaw pulsed.

Metron resumed his chanting. His athame thrust, then tore. The ivory edge wasn't sharp enough to cut, but the point could pierce a vole's body and a quick twist of the blade let out the little creatures' blood and entrails in a gush.

Wizardlight blazed again. Another wave of Archai emerged from the sea.

The leading ranks of lizardmen spread sideways as they approached the Archai. The insect monsters were individually shorter and slighter than most men, but the reptiles were shorter yet. They had bronze helmets and swords, however, and a few of them carried small wicker shields covered with scaly leather.

The two lines made savage contact. The bronze swords were sharper than the Archai's fanged forearms, but the insects could parry with one arm and hack with the other.

Lizardmen and Archai both continued to chop at their opponents when horribly wounded, their limbs severed or coils of their intestines cascading around their ankles. Even after falling they twitched and tried still to strike. More Archai came from the sea; but the column of lizardmen continued to pour through the distant notch in the hills.

The Intercessor hung in a chair suspended between a pair of reptilian quadrupeds like nothing Garric had ever seen before. The beasts had small heads, long necks, and even longer tails. Each of them was many times the size of the biggest ox in the borough.

Echeon held a long staff of amethyst or purple glass. He chanted, stroking his staff through the air in time with his words of power. The lines of his face had a eunuch's softness, but the features underneath were identical to those of the Intercessor Echeus, whose wizardry had flung Garric's soul forward to this time.

Metron squeezed the corpse of the last vole in his left hand, then tossed it aside. He trilled another order. Garric expected the Archai holding him to react. Instead, a group of warriors seized Ademos, who'd been kneeling in prayer ever since he realized he was trapped between the Archai and their reptilian opponents.

Ademos mewled and flailed like a newborn baby as the Archai dragged him toward the wizard. Vascay said in an expressionless voice, "All those times I thought of cutting the little weasel's throat myself but didn't.... Maybe I didn't do him a favor after all, eh?"

He chuckled, but it sounded like a death rattle.

Metron gripped Ademos by the hair and twisted the bandit's head back. Garric looked down. He'd seen worse, but it wasn't something he wanted to watch. Ademos' scream became a bubbling gurgle.

Crimson radiance flooded the plain, penetrating stone and sky alike. For an instant all sound ceased. Garric hung in transparent red light, staring into the bowels of the earth where he saw buried treasures and the bones of creatures more ancient than man. Just at the edge of Garric's vision was a moving thing: alive but not of this world. Its jaws slowly devoured the rock in which it swam.

The flash passed, and the images it had showed became dreams rather than memories in Garric's mind. Their reality was specious, the sort of truth into which wizards delved by blood magic.

The sea boiled with Archai, climbing onto the shore for as far as Garric could see to right and left. Once the Archai had ruled the world. Their civilization and race had perished in the distant past, but Metron had the skill to recall the dead in numbers limited only by his power.

The wizard swayed; his efforts had drained him as white as the bloodless corpse of Ademos in the grip of four Archai. They tossed the bandit onto the litter of lesser bodies, all dead in the service of Metron's wizardry.

The lizardmen had been pressing close against the diminishing rank of Archai. Now they gave back again as insectile warriors clambered over the cliff edge beyond both flanks of the Intercessor's troops.

Echeon lowered his staff with a dazed expression. He hooted an order. The beasts carrying his chair had been cropping mouthfuls of grass from among the tombs as they waited. Their heads rose; they gave startled whuffs, circled in clumsy unison, and moved twenty paces back from the battle line.

Metron stood swaying with his head bowed, his left hand over his eyes and his right pointing the athame at the ground. The line of fresh warriors marched by him, mincing on their spindly legs like automatons. They hurled themselves into the lizardmen, driving them back in an orgy of mutual slaughter.

More lizardmen trailed down from the hills, their bronze equipment glinting. Garric didn't know if the Intercessor had an infinite number of troops, but the total of those on or approaching the field was great enough to overwhelm Metron's present forces before long.

Metron raised his head. He pointed his bloody athame at a spiky shrub and spoke a word unheard in the chaos. A spark of scarlet lightning snapped from the ivory, blasting the shrub apart.

The wizard stuffed his athame under his sash, then bent and lifted one of the stems. The base burned with an oily yellow flame.

Holding up the torch, Metron walked toward Garric and his companions; he was wobbling with exhaustion. His left hand made a gesture toward the Archai, who let go of their prisoners. The former guards strutted toward the battle line. The fight was already turning back in favor of the Intercessor's forces.

Vascay shrugged, loosening his shoulder muscles. Garric put a hand on the older man's arm and said, "No, Vascay. There's still a chance."

He grinned; the excitement made him cheerful. "Though I'm not sure what it is," he added.

"Is there?" Vascay said, but he didn't put his javelin through Metron's throat.

Lord Thalemos looked at his former advisor with an expression more of amazement than loathing, though loathing as well. He turned his back in a deliberate snub, which the wizard was far too tired to notice.

"Come on," Garric said, leading the way down and across the slope. "At least it'll be harder for them to get at us if we're down in the tunnels."

Half trotting, half skidding, he reached the mouth of the catacombs. The sea had carved the the soft rock back to a burial niche; a coffin of polished granite tilted out over the curling water. There was nothing among the eddies below except boulders. The last of the Archai were already fighting on the field above.

Garric stepped into the tunnel and paused, letting his eyes adjust while his companions joined him. He liked the catacombs even less than he liked the sunlit plain, but these tunnels were the only choice save death.

He grinned. A choice didn't have to be good to be easy.