Servant of the Dragon (33 page)

A man stepped out of the forest in front of Cashel. Stepped out of a giant beech tree? But maybe he'd just been in the shade beside it. He carried a bow made of gold instead of ashwood or yew, and the arrows in his quiver had silver shafts. He was tall but not as tall as Cashel, and his build was as slim and supple as a young girl's.

"Greetings, stranger," he said. "We People don't get many visitors."

His eyes kept drifting toward the iron ferrules of Cashel's staff and the glint of Krias on his little finger. The fellow had the same expression as old Kifer did, sitting in a corner of Reise's tap room staring at his neighbors drinking jacks of ale that Kifer couldn't afford since he'd drunk away his land and lived by casual labor.

Cashel spread his legs. He turned his head slightly, side to side; nothing furtive, just openly checking to see if he had more company.

He did. There were at least four hands-full of them, males and equally-willowy females, standing in a wide circle among the trees. Only the first would have been within reach of Cashel's quarterstaff.

"Good day, sir," Cashel said. "I'm Cashel or-Kenset, and I'm just passing through this region. I don't intend to trouble you."

The strangers were bare-chested, wearing kilts cut to hang lower on their right leg than the left. Most of them held golden bows like the fellow who'd greeted Cashel. Three had slender horns coiled over one shoulder and about their chests; these had swords thrust beneath their girdles. The blades writhed like snakes.

Only one of the group was unarmed, a lanky boy with a shock of red hair instead of the golden curls of the others. He carried a double-strung lyre, and he glared in disgust at Cashel.

"I am Wella, Cashel," said the man who'd greeted him first. He stared at the ring with hungry eyes. "We People are honored by your presence. You must stay with us tonight so that we can feast you as you deserve."

One of the females stepped toward Cashel, her slim-fingered hand reaching out as if to touch something perfect and fragile. He saw the movement and turned quickly. She sprang back immediately, smiling.

"I...," Cashel said. He didn't want to spend any longer with the People than it took his legs to carry him away; but there were a lot of them, and they had bows. He thought of asking Krias what to do, but he couldn't trust the demon to say anything helpful. Besides, the People were already a bit too interested in the ring.

"Come, Cashel," Wella said, stretching out the hand that didn't hold his bow. "Come to the home of the People."

Cashel moved slightly; the quarterstaff bobbed its iron cap a hair's breadth closer to Wella. He jerked back, his topaz eyes blazing.

"Elfin, lead our guest," Wella said.

The youth with the lyre stepped forward and put his hand on Cashel's arm. "Come, heavy person," Elfin said. His voice was as pure as the sound of ice cracking in a hard winter. "Come and we People will treat you as we should."

"Well, I guess I need to eat somewhere," Cashel said. The youth's touch was reassuringly warm. Cashel had expected something smooth and metallic, somehow.

The People turned and started off through the forest. Cashel was in the midst of the party; Elfin's fingers never left his biceps.

"I know and you're going to learn," chimed the ring's tiny voice.

* * *

"How old are you, my pretty little miss?"
sang Chalcus at one of the mutineers' pair of driftwood fires.
"How old are you, sweet marrow?"

Ilna thought of Garric's piping; and turned her thoughts back, because there was no sense and less joy in the direction they were going. Four sailors danced on the sand, their hands on their hips and their legs kicking high. The only accompaniment came from another man with miniature cymbals made from hollowed nutshells on his thumbs and forefingers. He clacked them together, giving the beat with his right hand and a complex rustling counterpoint with the other.

"If I don't die of a broken heart,"
Chalcus sang, now in a falsetto, "
I'm sixteen come tomorrow
."

Ilna looked down at the child sleeping beside her. Merota had a bit of her cloak's hem in her mouth and was chewing it as she dreamed. Ilna thought of tugging the cloth free, but there wasn't any real harm in what the girl was doing.

Ilna sighed also. She had to remind herself to pass over the many things might be wrong but didn't do any harm. And some of them weren't wrong, even though Ilna os-Kenset thought they were. Her head accepted that, but her heart would never believe it as long as she lived.

There was nothing wrong with the music, for example. Ilna wasn't in a mood to listen to it, though, and unlike Merota she wasn't so wrung out by the day's events that she could sleep despite it.

The provisions intended for Lord Tadai and his suite had still been aboard when Mastyn sprang his mutiny. Tonight the sailors had eaten food they'd never known existed—eaten some and wasted more, actually. To sailors from the south coast of Ornifal, eggs preserved in a sauce of rotted sheep's entrails were simply rotten eggs, while the tastes of the royal court ran to far more exotic dishes than that.

Ilna smiled faintly. Prince Garric's taste in food wasn't that different from the sailors', actually, though the one was heavier on mutton with porridge and the other on porridge with fish. The courtiers were appalled.

Tadai's wines had found universal acceptance, though. The vintages came from all over the Isles, some of them spiced and many fermented from fruits other than grapes, but that made no matter. The sailors' attitude seemed to be that when you'd drunk enough, it didn't matter if the stuff smelled like worms had died in the vat. The party would be going on till dawn. Vonculo and the other leaders would have their work cut out to get the ships relaunched by midday.

Ilna stood, glanced again to be sure Merota was still quiet, and walked toward the fire at the other end of the long crescent. Behind her a dozen sailors joined Chalcus to chorus, "
Ti di diddly di, ti diddle do
!"

It didn't disturb Ilna to hear other people having fun. Her lips quirked in an almost-smile. It shouldn't disturb her, at least.

Vonculo and four other sailors sat around the fire at the other end of the islet. They'd knocked the top off the long-necked jug that stood upright in the sand beside them, but the atmosphere here was in dismal contrast to that of the larger grouping.

Ilna had no intention of joining Vonculo. The common sailors were fools and presently drunk besides, but they'd still be better company than the men who planned this nonsense.

For now, all Ilna intended was to put distance between herself and noisy happiness until she mastered her anger enough to go back and sleep beside Merota. She didn't expect to be happy. Some people were, some people weren't. It didn't seem to matter what happened around them—it was how they were made inside.

Cashel was happy. Not all the time, but more of the time than any other person Ilna had met. She supposed that she and her brother had a normal amount of happiness between them; but you weren't going to mistake a garment with black and white stripes for a gray one.

Just now Ilna was furious at the world; and that in turn made her angry with herself for such a
foolish
reaction. Clouds didn't care who they rained on, and the world didn't care that Ilna os-Kenset saw life as a tangle of yarn greater than any human being could be expected to sort out.

The world didn't expect Ilna to sort things out. That was a duty she put on herself, more
fool
her.

Ilna seated herself against a hummock of sand cemented roughly by lime in the crushed shells that made up much of the whole. She looked up at the stars, wondering if the people who inhabited the heavenly spheres on which the stars turned were happier than she was.

She smiled again. The people like Cashel were, she supposed. No doubt there was balance in the heavens as well as here.

Vonculo and his fellows carried on a morose conversation without noticing Ilna. She hadn't made any attempt to conceal herself, but she'd been quiet and the dark blue cloak hid her better in the night than true black would have done.

Ilna was too far away to overhear the men's conversation, not that she'd have wanted to. They'd be making a series of despondent observations about the mess they'd put themselves in. At any rate, Ilna would have been doing that if she'd been fool enough to have joined them.

The
Ravager
's helmsman stirred up the fire with a salt-crusted pine bough, then tossed his poker on the rekindled flames as fresh fuel. Vonculo inserted the key in the music box and wound it.

Ilna's eyes had been drawn by the flare of sparks, but when she saw Vonculo with the device she continued to watch. She wasn't spying—she was in plain sight, after all, if any of the seamen bothered to look around—but neither was she particularly pleased with herself.

Vonculo released the key. It turned, glittering, and the box began a tuneless chime as if someone was tapping the blade of a good sword. The sound was empty rhythm—

But sparks rising from the fire whirled into images of flesh. Didn't Vonculo and the others see what was happening? Their eyes remained fixed on the music box, ignoring the fiery dance in their midst.

Ilna watched the patterns the sparks drew. Six wizards and a mummy stood in a circle chanting. She could hear the words—meaningless to her, meaningless to anyone but the powers they commanded—in the whorls of light.

Above Ilna the stars wheeled; before her the sparks spun. Together in the tinkle of the music box they made a purposeful unity, like cogs turning Katchin's millstones and grinding grain to flour. She wasn't on an islet of the Inner Sea, though part of her mind remembered that place; and remembered Valles and Barca's Hamlet and all her past.

Inside the circle of wizards knelt a seventh: his right hand raised with a dagger, his left holding a bound child on the floor in front of him. A man taller than anyone of Ilna's acquaintance was tied to a pillar beside the coven of wizards. He screamed, and his muscles were knotted like kinks in an anchor chain.

The wizards chanted, then paused. Their leader in the center shouted the final verse of the incantation and stabbed downward.

Wood cracked in the fire like sudden lightning. Sparks exploded upward, dissolving the scene. Ilna shivered in the warm night as the final note rang from the mechanism of the box.

Vonculo removed the key and wrapped the box again in its silk brocade. He and the others drank and talked and cursed the luck they had made for themselves.

After a time, Ilna got to her feet and walked toward the other fire, where Merota slept and Chalcus sang of a black-haired girl with lips as sweet as honey.

* * *

Sharina took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped out of the alley. A trio of women with market baskets on their heads bore down on her, chattering among themselves. She squeezed against the wall. The women swept by, giving her only a cursory glance. The trussed capon in the middle basket craned its neck to glare at Sharina as long as they were in sight of one another.

She grimaced. She didn't know what the bird had against her: it wouldn't be going into
her
oven.

Sharina wanted to sell the gold pectoral, but she wanted to know more about where she was first. She started walking, east so that the lowering sun would be on the faces and in the eyes of people coming toward her. She listened to talk and street cries, not for the information they contained but rather to be sure that she could understand and be understood here before she tried to do business.

She was getting awfully hungry. She passed a woman carrying a tray of wheat loaves under a piece of worsted cloth. Sharina's stomach cramped with longing at the smell of fresh bread.

The streets meandered. This city had been laid out by sheep walking to market or by men who had as little regard for straight lines as sheep did. The thoroughfare down which Sharina started split into two branches, each so narrow that the women talking to one another across the second-floor balconies could have touched hands if they'd wanted to. She went left.

The shops on the ground floor here sold pottery. It was utilitarian stuff, not even as good as the salt-glazed earthenware manufactured at Dashen's Place, on the road across Haft from Barca's Hamlet to Carcosa. The shapes were clumsy and the crudely-brushed slip decoration added color but no beauty to the beige field.

Sometimes shoppers glanced at Sharina. She was taller than other pedestrians, men as well as women, and her long blond tresses were an exception among swarthy, dark-haired folk.

The same had been true in Barca's Hamlet, of course. The people back home had had eighteen years to get used to Sharina's appearance, though. Still, nobody here screamed when they saw Sharina and she didn't think she'd have any trouble being understood.

She waited till she got to an intersection where three streets met and a fourth split off a few steps down the widest. A doctor had set up at a corner booth. His paraphernalia were displayed on the open counter before him: stoneware medicine jars and a rank of surgical tools. The blades were iron but had gilt and silver chasing on the bronze handles to lure custom by their flash.

At the back of the doctor's booth hung a creature like nothing Sharina had ever seen before. It had the shape and claws of a scorpion, but its many legs were flat paddles and the body was six feet long. She supposed it was for show rather than some part of the doctor's real medicaments. She certainly
hoped
it was for show, not that she intended to patronize the fellow professionally.

The doctor had just finished weighing the chunk of copper he'd gotten as his fee for putting ointment on the sores of a man with yaws. He wiped his spatula with a wad of straw which he tossed into the street as Sharina approached.

"What can I do for the lovely lady?" the doctor asked. His eyes narrowed slightly. "If it's a matter of a personal nature, we—"

"I need only information," Sharina said, hoping to avoid a discussion which would embarrass her. "Can you direct me to the street of goldsmiths?"

"Ah," said the doctor, settling back on his stool. "Where was the lovely lady born, if I may ask?"

Sharina would have liked to walk off, but that might be more dangerous than answering. She didn't know where she was or
when
she was, though at least the people of this day had iron tools.

"I'm from Ornifal," Sharina said curtly. Her blood father had been an Ornifal noble, and her looks favored his side of the family. She turned away and called over her shoulder, "I hope you get all the custom your courtesy deserves."

"My apologies, mistress," the doctor said. "If you'll follow Faggot Lane—"

Sharina looked back; the doctor was pointing up one of the intersecting streets.

"—to the plaza, you'll find the goldsmiths down the street on your left."

"Thank you," Sharina said. She smiled, but the expression felt stiff. She hadn't realized how nervous she was until she collided with something as innocent as a busybody's curiosity. And of course she was hungry.

She started down the street. "I wish you luck in your dealings, lovely lady from Ornifal," the doctor called to her back.

A well with a low curb and a stone trough for watering animals sat in the center of the plaza. Entertainers had set up where each of the treets entered the circular open space.

One man sang and played a monochord while a child of six or younger sang a descant beside him. Either the words were unintelligible or the pair were using their voices as instruments to make sound rather than convey meaning. Across the plaza a man juggled knives, occasionally snatching one from the air with his teeth.

Sharina turned to the left. Here a bird the size of a human being danced. Beside him was a strip of blanket on which spectators had dropped a few finger-length iron wedges.

Sharina looked around to find the owner of the performing animal. A balding fellow wearing a leather apron over his tunic was the only person who didn't glance and walk on, or simply walk on. He reached into his belt purse, fingered the money within, and then strode away quickly without dropping anything on the blanket.

The bird was its own master.

Despite the complaints of her stomach, Sharina stayed to watch. The creature moved with the same smooth grace as a gull flying along a shoreline. It had arms, not wings, though the short limbs bent the way a bird's did rather than those of a man or a dog. It was covered with fine down like a baby chick—though this was gray, not yellowish—and it wore a harness of coarse fibers knotted in the fashion of macrame.

The bird's head was slightly smaller than that of a human so tall: this wasn't a man wearing a clever costume. Besides, no human could possibly execute the creature's dance. Repeatedly it leaped high, aiming one blunt-clawed foot heavenward while the other pointed to the ground.

Unwillingly, Sharina walked past the dancer and down Faggot Lane. The bird paid her no attention. It continued its dance, rotating its body slowly and punctuating each sequence of mini-steps with another vertical kick.

In a line on the left side of the narrow street were five goldsmiths, each in his separate booth. They faced the blank back wall of a stone building, a temple judging from the corner of a pediment that Sharina had glimpsed over the roofs of buildings fronting the plaza.

The booths were open-fronted, but a husky guard with a bare sword or a broad-bladed axe stood at the street side of each. The smiths sat on their strongboxes behind a table, across from an ivory stool for the client. At the right front of each booth was a tiny shrine.

A chest-high curtain drawn across the front of one booth gave privacy for what was probably a pawn rather than a purchase. A personal maid waited in the street beside the guard, alternately wringing her hands and trying to look nonchalant.

Sharina looked over the smiths who were free for the moment. Three of them met her glance with stone-faced professionalism. The last raised an eyebrow in query. His guard was neatly dressed though not as ornately as those of his neighbors, and his shrine was a simple ivory plaque of the Shepherd in contrast to gilt and jeweled images of the Lady of Fortune.

Sharina generally prayed to the Lady, but it was more than thought of Cashel that sent her into the booth of the man with the Shepherd on his wall. His guard nodded politely to her, but his eyes hardened as they lighted on the vague outline of the Pewle knife under her cape. Instead of drawing the curtain behind Sharina, he stepped into the booth with her.

The goldsmith rose from his seat, looking quizzically at his guard. Sharina said, "Your man is concerned that I'm carrying a knife. If this concerns you as well, sir, I'll go elsewhere with my affairs."

The goldsmith smiled slightly. "Thank you, Tilar," he said to the guard, "but I think the lady and I can be left to ourselves. It's understandable that someone with valuables would take steps to protect herself."

To Sharina he went on, "I am Milco of Rasoc, milady." He extended a hand toward the stool.

The guard stepped away and slid the curtain across. Plenty of light still came through the wooden grate in the ceiling.

Sharina sat, carefully picking her words as she did so. The folk here didn't use the patronymic form of address that was general in the Isles of her own time.

"My name is Sharina," she said. Milco was thin, old, and very precise, with eyes that didn't miss anything. "I have an heirloom that I need to turn into money."

The goldsmith's mouth smiled; his eyes did not. "Since you're a stranger, milady—" either the accent or Sharina's appearance alone would have told him that "—I'll mention to you—without offense, I hope—that if you've innocently come into possession of a stolen object, I don't even want to see it. None of the dealers here would. I'll further mention that the chances of myself or my colleagues not knowing what's been stolen in Valhocca or the surrounding region isn't worth the risk a thief would run by displaying such an object to us."

Sharina smiled.
Very smart.
"I appreciate your candor," she said. "The object involved was given me by its owner for me to sell. Before we get deeper into details, though, may I ask about your attitude toward religion?"

She'd heard of Valhocca in epics of the Silver Age, the epoch following the thousand-year reign of the Yellow King; the city didn't figure in the geographical writings of Old Kingdom authors. Valhocca was the capital of the Sea Lords of Cordin.

Everything told about the Sea Lords was mythical. This city was real enough, though, and there was nothing impossible about an ancient kingdom uniting the southern isles millennia before King Lorcan welded together the whole archipelago.

If Valhocca was real, then Sharina had to wonder how real were the stories of the city's destruction. Supposedly the last and greatest Sea Lord, Mantys, put to death a wizard and threw his body into the sea. The wizard had returned with an army of sea demons which floated through the streets like airborne jellyfish. They'd stung to death everyone they met and tore down buildings with their tentacles.

That was all fancy, of course. The philosopher Brancome claimed to have found the story in ancient Serian records, but many thought he'd invented it to make a point in his essay on divine retribution.

Well, Sharina didn't expect to be in Valhocca long. With luck she'd never have to learn how much truth there was in Brancome's tale.

Milco nodded toward the ivory tableau of the Shepherd with two goats. "I worship the Shepherd," he said. "Most of us in Rasoc do, though worship of the Lady is more general in the city proper."

"I myself worship the Lady first," Sharina said, "but my concern is how you feel about artifacts of other faiths. Faiths of former times."

The settlers who'd chased her into the Dragon's ruined palace had been reacting to a supernatural event. Sharina didn't want to learn that their descendents, the folk of Valhocca, felt the same way about to the Dragon. If that was the case, she'd have to batter the pectoral shapeless with rocks before she tried to sell it.

"Ah," said Milco, nodding with understanding. "If perhaps you've been digging in ancient tombs, well... there are a differing attitudes on the subject, but my own is that when men return an object to the earth, then the one who rediscovers it is no more to be censured than the one who dug the ore in the first place. But you're right to discuss the possibilities beforehand."

Sharina threw back her cape. She pulled loose the neck of her tunic with one hand and fished out the pectoral with the other. She placed it, warm from her body, on the empty table between them.

Milco's eyes widened very slightly when he saw the size of the Pewle knife. "I did Tilar an injustice," he said mildly. "I couldn't imagine why he was concerned that a lady carried a dagger for protection. Not that I regret admitting you, milady."

"It was a friend's," Sharina said curtly. It still hurt to remember Nonnus. She set the thin gold stamping in the center of the table. "I carry it in remembrance of him."

And to use, if the need arose. As she had used it in the past.

Milco nodded absently, but he'd transferred his whole attention to the pectoral. "May I?" he asked. Sharina flicked her fingers toward him and he picked up the plaque.

"Quite a perfect example," Milco said judiciously, holding the piece by the edges and rotating it under the light. "Gold doesn't tarnish, of course, but I would still have expected discoloration from debris deposited
on
the piece."

Sharina shrugged, then smiled to soften her refusal to give any more information than the pectoral itself provided.

Milco took a steelyard from the shelf of implements behind him and hung it from a ceiling hook on a long copper chain. Next he took gold weights cast in the image of demons from the strongbox and set three of them against the plaque. To bring the two pans into perfect balance he adjusted the beam by one notch.