Servant of the Dragon (44 page)

Ilna gripped the door's bar handle; the bronze was dry and felt distinctly warm. Perhaps she should be pleased not to be touching metal that dripped with the swamp's cold sweat, but it hadn't been what she expected. Ilna doubted that the unexpected was ever a good thing in this place.

The door swung toward her easily. Ilna hadn't thought it would open. The panel's face was bare of anything but the handle, but she'd still thought there'd be a lock—concealed from any but a wizard, perhaps.

A staircase cut in living rock curved downward. Ilna grimaced. She didn't like stone, but neither had she come this far in order to turn around again. She started down.

Ilna was less than a full circuit below the ground when she heard a soft thump and the feeling of air being compressed. The wan light she'd had to that point cut off. The door had closed, perhaps pushed by the faint breeze. Perhaps. She paused for long moments, but there was nothing to hear save her heartbeats echoing through her bloodstream.

She went on, moving without haste. It wasn't likely that whatever waited below was something she'd want to hurry to meet.

Light shone into the staircase below. Ilna didn't walk faster, but she frowned slightly. The glow had the balance of sunlight outdoors, not the yellowish quivering of a lamp forty feet below ground.

With another turn of the stairs she came to the slit carved into the rock. If she'd been in a tower she'd have said it was a window looking out onto a bustling city. Folk shopped in kiosks and lounged in the open square below her. The three-story buildings were made of brick with red tile roofs. The women leaning out of windows to talk with their neighbors were close enough that Ilna could have shouted to them—if her apparent vantage point and the women themselves had been real.

A troop of armored cavalry rode through the square beneath a banner figured with a crab. People made way for the soldiers sullenly but without exceptional concern.

Ilna continued downward. Whatever the 'window' showed, it wasn't this island at this time. All the people she'd seen were alive.

There were more windows—onto fields worked by teams of horses and living humans; onto the sea across which a squadron of warships rowed swiftly; onto a palace courtyard in which a burly man in black armor and a crown harangued a crowd of courtiers and citizens alike.

Ilna gave them only passing glances. She was interested in reality alone, and they weren't part of her present reality.

She wasn't sure how far down she went. She hadn't been counting the steps, and anyway she couldn't have counted so far without a tally.

The door at the bottom of the stairs was wooden and stood ajar. There was no light in the room beyond, but enough of a subdued haze filtered from the slits into time and space above for Ilna's adapted eyes to view the portal clearly.

She pushed it open with her left hand and stepped inside. When her foot crossed the threshold, the walls themselves lighted to display a circular treasure room.

Ilna felt her diaphragm suck in. When she was a child she'd had to scramble to earn enough for her and Cashel to live on, but 'enough' was all that had concerned her. After she'd established herself as the finest weaver on the east coast of Haft—and beyond—she'd made a point of being paid what her work was worth, because she would no more let herself be robbed than she would rob another.

Ilna had never cared about other people's money, though; and because she was without avarice, the concept of wealth beyond avarice was meaningless to her. Even so, she had to gasp at the sheer volume coins and jewels and bracelets, the gleaming platters and vases of silver where they weren't solid gold. The white light, though not harsh, was shadowless because it flooded from all directions at once.

She gave a throaty chuckle. The stories with which Mastyn and Vonculo had lured the others to mutiny had been true after all; though the chance of any of this wealth reaching the hands of the sailors was as slight as that of Ilna letting treasure turn her from her duty.

Bags and pots of coins and other small items sat in piles. Some had split and spilled their contents again. Among the riches were objects whose value was less obvious: a small wooden coffin; a device of globes and spindles, made of brass; a clear disk the size of a plate but convex on both sides; and a score of others, all jumbled together with the gold.

Ilna noticed a rolled tapestry under a stack of plate. She grasped it, intending to pull it out to examine. When her fingers touched the slick weave, she felt a heart-freezing image of waves on all sides towering above houses as people screamed in their final terror.

Ilna drew her hand back with a grim smile. Her fingers tingled. Fabric had always spoken to her, and it did so with a particular clarity since she returned from Hell. More often than not what her talent told her was unpleasant. Rarely as unpleasant as this, however, feeling thousands die together as an island sank in a foaming sea.

When Ilna entered the chamber, the door had closed behind her of its own accord. The inside walls were unmarked and as smooth as polished flint, but she could find the door easily enough. There were other doors as well, hidden in the walls.

One of them opened. A figure all in white stepped in and the portal closed behind him.
Him
, though he was as sexless as a spindle; and as evil as a spider lurking in a tunnel of white silk.

"Welcome to Yole, mistress," he said. "I wasn't expecting to find a visitor, but I'm not sorry to see you. I am Ewis of Zampt."

He made a half-bow; his eyes never left her face. Ewis' pupils were the only parts of his person that weren't white.

"I'm Ilna os-Kenset," Ilna said. "I've come looking for the child who's in my care. Have you taken her?"

"Me?" said Ewis with a giggle. "Goodness, no, neither I nor any of my colleagues. I suspect the Tall Thing has your little friend. He's eaten recently, so there's no immediate danger."

Ewis took a faceted ivory bead from his sleeve and tossed it in his palm. "Besides," he added, "it rather likes little children. Not adults, though; and especially not wizards."

"Fine," Ilna said, though nothing about the situation was really fine. "Where will I find the Tall Thing? Is it a wild beast?"

"Oh, goodness, goodness!" Ewis laughed. "What shall I say? It's wild enough, and it's beyond question bestial—but a wild beast? I think not."

He sobered and focused eyes as black as a spider's on Ilna. "And I'm afraid I can't tell you where it is, either. We have to avoid it, you see, my colleagues and I. It's rather angry at us, I'm afraid."

"If you're avoiding the Tall Thing...," Ilna said. She viewed so much of life and the world with loathing that it was natural now to keep her tone emotionless as she spoke to this
creature
. "Then you have to know where it is.
Tell
me."

"Why, you might be right at that," said Ewis. "Yes, perhaps I should do that. Perhaps I should. But first, won't you look at the treasures my colleagues and I have gathered?"

He rummaged with his left hand in a tumble of silver salvers and brought out an earthenware bowl. "You could call anyone in the world to you with this," he said. "He would come. Alive or dead, he would come."

"I want the child Merota," Ilna said. Her fingers were still, but the soft supple noose they held restrained an anger that would otherwise, otherwise.... "That's all I want from you, wizard."

"Not amused by the Bowl of Longing?" Ewis said, tittering. "Goodness, goodness."

He set down the bowl and stepped over to the crystal disk Ilna had noticed already. "Perhaps this new acquisition will pique your interest, mistress. It's the Lens of Rushila, and it can show you anything in the cosmos. No wizard can protect himself from the eye of whoever wields this wonder. Is it not fine?"

In Erdin and Valles Ilna had seen windows of plate as smooth as human skill could roll it. Even so the glass distorted shapes. This crystal, though doubly convex, was as clear as air when Ilna looked through it straight on.

"If you're so powerful, wizard," she said, "then why do you fear the Tall Thing? Tell me where he has Merota!"

Ewis giggled, but Ilna noticed that his hand trembled as he set the lens down. He continued to bounce the ivory bead in his other palm.

"Ah, the Tall Thing," he said. "That's a bit of a problem, I said. We needed him—"

He looked at Ilna again, his gaze as disconcerting as before. "Him, you see," Ewis continued, his voice thin and insectile. "At the time he was still a man. His name was Castigan. My colleagues and I bound him and used his rage as part of the incantation that sealed our mentor Ansalem out of eternity. The anger was just as important as the blood, you see."

Ilna remembered the images of sparks quivering over Vonculo's campfire as the music box played silently. "You killed a child," she said. "You killed
his
child. As he watched."

"Well, we had to, you know," Ewis giggled. "If Ansalem had awakened, well, he wouldn't have been very happy, would he? But the trouble is, having bound the Tall Thing once we can't bind him again. He's no longer a man, you see. He's only rage... and hunger."

"Ewis," Ilna said. "Wizard. I'm going to leave here now. Tell me where to find Merota."

Ewis looked at her. His left hand still trembled. "You want to leave here, mistress?" he said. "Do you think you can find a door?"

"Yes," said Ilna. She let the noose out into a white circle spinning before her. The door by which she'd entered was behind where Ewis now stood, but she was beginning to see the pattern and it didn't take her in that direction after all....

"Do you really think so?" said the wizard in faint surprise. "Perhaps you can at that, perhaps you can. Then there's only one thing to do, isn't there?"

The ivory bead left his palm. Ewis didn't throw it, only freed it as though slipping the leash of an eager hound.

Ilna cast her noose. The silk fell short because light glancing from the bead's facets wove her into a soft cocoon; a gentle constraint now but one she could feel start to tighten.

Ewis grinned brightly at Ilna and said, "Now I have to kill you."

* * *

Valence III, King of the Isles, was playing chess with a footman when Garric and Liane joined him on the loggia overlooking an ornamental pond. Black swans paddled in graceful circles. Their flight feathers were clipped, but the birds were too well fed to fly anyway.

"Why, Prince Garric!" the king said. "It's always a pleasure to see you. And your lovely friend too!"

"He's put on weight since you took over the kingdom,"
Carus muttered, eyeing the king critically through Garric's eyes.
"He'd walked away from the responsibility long before you took it on, but he was a decent enough man to be ashamed of himself."

"I wanted to tell you about some recent occurrences, your majesty," Garric said, bowing to the king. Beside him, Liane curtsied gracefully.

"Nothing that I have to do, is there?" Valence said warily. He hunched away from Garric, threatening to overset the ivory stool on which he sat. The footman had hopped to his feet as soon as Garric entered; now he moved to the other side of the king to catch him if necessary.

"Not at all, your majesty," Garric said. "I just wanted your advice on a few matters."

He hoped he sounded reassuring instead of just disgusted. Garric was tired—he was always tired since he'd become ruler—and sometimes that made him snappish.

The notion of meeting with Valence at least once every ten days was Liane's. To most citizens of Ornifal the king was merely a symbol, no more a part of their daily lives than a visit from the Lady, Queen of Heaven. To that majority, Valence III was King of the Isles now as surely as he had been at his accession twenty years before.

That meant it was to everybody's advantage that Valence remain happy with the situation. For now, what he wanted to do was play chess, chat with old friends, and display himself in gorgeous robes at public functions. Occasionally Valence' adopted son and heir apparent, Prince Garric, stood at the king's right hand, but for the most part the king's presence was all that was required. Regular meetings with Garric lessened the danger that Valence would awaken some morning and decide he'd been kept in the dark—and that his honor demanded that he seize real power again.

"Good luck to him in that!
" Carus said, speaking with the disdain that Garric didn't dare allow to stain
his
voice.
"He couldn't hold power when it was handed to him at birth!"

Which was true, Garric knew, but it wasn't the point—as his ancestor knew as well. Valence couldn't rule the Isles, no matter how angry he got—but he could make it very difficult for Garric and his government to rule. It was always easier to prevent things from working than it was to make them work.

"Ah," said Valence, nodding agreement. He still had a wary look, but he eased forward so that the stool's four legs were all on the tile floor again. "Well, I'm very glad to see you, then."

"The reorganization of Ornifal continues to go well, your majesty," Garric said. "We've reasserted your authority in all the districts by now. Though there are complaints, we haven't met with anything that could be called rebellion."

He squatted at the king's feet. According to protocol, visitors should stand before the seated king; but that would have meant Garric towering over Valence. Garric—and Liane and Royhas—thought that implied threat would have risked worse than a technical breach of etiquette. Valence was still very fragile mentally.

"As I told you when we last met," Garric continued, "We're moving toward discussions with the rulers of Sandrakkan and Blaise as well. There's been a slight delay in the embassy to Erdin—Lord Tadai's crew mutinied and stranded him on a islet. He's been rescued, though, and he'll resume his journey shortly. With better results, we hope."

"Tadai lost?" Valence said, frowning in concentration. "No, that's not what you told me. You told me your
sister
had been lost, Lady Sharina. I remember you saying that very clearly!"

Garric cleared his throat and swallowed, giving himself time. Liane saw the veins pulsing and interjected, "That's correct, your majesty, Lady Sharina was carried off. Lord Tadai's mishap was more recent, but it's been cleared up already."

"I do hope nothing serious has happened to Sharina," the king said. He looked aside and noticed the game board, blinking as if seeing it for the first time. It was very hard to tell how much of any conversation would stick in his mind. "She's quite beautiful. A true princess, don't you think?"

"Indeed she is, your majesty," Garric said, forcing himself to smile. "Her fiance, Master Cashel, has gone after her. I have every confidence in Cashel's abilities—and in Sharina's abilities as well, of course. She'll be all right."

Taking nothing away from Cashel or Sharina either one, Garric wished he were really as confident about her safety as he tried to sound. Their best hope was that the creature which abducted Sharina did so for a purpose—beyond that of filling its belly, that is.

"You've mentioned this Cashel before," Valence said. He was frowning again, this time in brooding anger instead of mere concentration. "He's not of noble birth, is he?"

"Master Cashel's birth is shrouded in mystery, your majesty," Liane said quickly. "The wizard, Lady Tenoctris, suggests that the Lady may have sent him to support you in this crisis."

Garric turned to Liane in surprise, then blanked his face and hoped Valence hadn't read anything into his expression. Liane's words were just to distract the king from a line of thought that Garric would have found irritating even if Cashel hadn't been his friend.

"Really?" said Valence. "Oh, I hadn't realized that. I thought Master Cashel was just... well, he's so
rural
, you know."

Tenoctris didn't believe in the Gods, whether in the forms they took in temples or as philosophical abstractions called Fate, Chance or whatever. She certainly wouldn't have described Cashel as a gift of the Gods... at least not in those words. Neither Garric nor the Kingdom of the Isles would have survived these past months without Cashel's support, though.

"Only a few people are able to penetrate Cashel's disguise, your majesty," Liane said. The warmth of her tone was even more soothing than the words themselves, and in combination they were drawing Valence back from the peevishness into which he'd begun to retreat. "Lady Tenoctris is one of those; and Lady Sharina herself, of course."

"Ah, yes, I see," the king said, nodding sagely. Valence looked the perfect monarch when he was calm, but it took very little to upset him. When Valence was upset, no one would mistake him for anything but a puling coward. "Yes, of course, Sharina would know."

There was a mumble of low conversation in the room which opened onto the loggia. Liane looked over her shoulder, then turned back and made a tiny gesture with her hand to Garric.

"I hope I haven't disturbed your afternoon, your majesty," Garric said, rising to his feet and backing a pace. "But I did want to inform you of the generally positive way things are going."

"You have to go," said Valence. Was that sadness in his tone? "I understand."

Garric bowed deeply. Instead of formally dismissing him—or going back to his chess game without any acknowledgement—Valence said, "I really did stand at the Stone Wall, you know. It seems now as though it all happened to somebody else. I remember the Sandrakkan cavalry charge and thinking I was going to die. Do you suppose I did die then, Garric?"

Garric looked at him; really
looked
at Valence for a change. Considered him as a man rather than a bundle of whims and petulance which Prince Garric had to manipulate for the good of the kingdom.

"No, your majesty," Garric said. "You didn't die then. You're still the hub that holds the wheel together while Tenoctris and Royhas and all the rest of us try to fit the spokes into you. We need you. The kingdom needs you."

"Do you really think so?" said Valence, brightening like a woman complimented on the way her hair was arranged. "Well, perhaps. Keep me informed, Prince Garric."

Garric bowed again as he backed away. He didn't turn until he was through the door and a servant had closed it between him and the monarch.

He was in a semi-circular reception room with benches and low tables around the curved wall. Instead of tapestries, the wall was frescoed with a red ground and, framed by painted pillars, individual cells each holding a mythical animal.

Tenoctris stood with her hands folded. From the angle at which Garric saw her, the wizard seemed to have a golden hippogriff tangled in her gray hair. She smiled in greeting, but there was tension beneath the expression.

"Which we knew already, lad,"
Carus noted.
"Or she'd not have called you out of a conference with the 'king' in there."

With Tenoctris in the chamber were her guards, the guards accompanying Garric and Liane, and the four guards responsible for Valence's safety besides. Along with the servants, they made for a larger gathering than had been seen here in the last five years of Valence' reign—when power slipped from the king's fingers and he became increasingly reclusive. People avoid someone they see sliding downward, as though they think failure is contagious.

Now there was no lack of wealthy citizens who wanted to meet the king. Valence hosted formal dinners on a regular basis—that was part of the duties of his present position—but for leisure he played chess with a footman. Perhaps he'd learned something during his five years as a pariah.

"I've been examining the bridge," Tenoctris said quietly as Garric and Liane joined her against the red wall. "Through my art." The Blood Eagles formed an impassive semicircle between the trio and the rest of the world; even here, in the palace. Good guards don't take anything for granted.

"Can you?" Garric said. "That is, we weren't able to find...?"

Tenoctris smiled wanly. "I could learn more, and more easily," she said, "if I had the Lens of Rushila; but even I can accomplish surprising things when there's so terribly much power concentrated by the bridge itself."

Her face hardened. "Unfortunately, it takes a toll. I've slept the past six hours through. I interrupted you because I was afraid to let the information wait still longer. I think we're in danger of invasion from Yole."

"The island of Yole sank a thousand years ago, Tenoctris," Liane said. "Everyone on the island died but you yourself."

"Yes, I haven't forgotten that," Tenoctris said, smiling to take away the sting of what for her was a slashing reproof. "Someone has made Yole rise from the sea. I suspect it's one of Ansalem's acolytes or more likely all of them together, but that isn't important."

She sighed and suddenly looked very frail. "The ones who raised Yole," she continued, "are necromancers. They're raising the dead of Yole as well. We saw them ourselves when we returned from Alae."

"That was real?" Garric said. "Real in our time, I mean, Tenoctris?"

"Yes," she said. "I think so. And using the bridge from Klestis to here—which sooner or later, I think they'll be able to do—they'll be able to march straight into Valles. But that isn't the worst of it."

Garric felt Liane's hand in his. Her touch strengthened and relaxed him more than he would have believed possible. Acting on impulse, he reached out with his free hand and cupped Tenoctris' interlaced fingers.

"We can beat Yole," Garric said. In his mind, King Carus nodded with a grim eagerness that no one could misunderstand.

Tenoctris smiled brightly and held the smile as she said, "I don't doubt that you can. We can. But if the bridge stands, and if the necromancers are as powerful as all evidence suggests, then they won't be limited to Yole. Have you ever considered how much the dead of past ages outnumber those living at present?

"Ah," said Garric, nodding as he understood. He thought of Valence making the same gesture a few minutes before and managed a half smile. Never forget that you're only human, just like the other fellow....

"Then we'd best do something about the bridge immediately, hadn't we?" he said. "I'll take the army to Klestis. If the bridge is solid enough for material bodies to cross it, then we can free Ansalem by breaking down the walls around him."

"I don't think so," Tenoctris said. "But I hope I'm wrong, because I can't think of a better way. And judging from your dream, neither can Ansalem."