Servant of the Dragon (55 page)

Dalar kicked him in the face. Bones crunched. Tiglath's torso hit the mast and bounced forward again, leaving the bully doubled over as though taking a seated bow.

Doccon let out an inarticulate cry and sprang onto the
Horn of Plenty
, grappling with Dalar from behind. The bird bent at the waist with acrobatic suddenness, flipping Doccon over his back. The thug hit the deck face-first.

"Dalar!" Sharina shouted as her hands came out from beneath her cloak swinging the Pewle knife. The bird leaped to the
Tailwind
with the grace of a curvetting swallow.

The men from the brothel and the two remaining members of Tiglath's crew jumped aboard the
Horn of Plenty
. Their man had lost the duel; they intended to win the brawl that followed.

Sharina's heavy blade sheared the post and both stays supporting the bow end of the awning. Falling ropes, canvas, and the brails that stiffened the fabric netted Tiglath's followers like so many fish in a weir.

Dalar, hooting and crowing like a whole chorus of cockerels, hopped back aboard the tavern barge. Every time a man tried to rise, the bird sprang onto the hump in the canvas. For some seconds his clawed feet danced swiftly; then the activity beneath the awning subsided to squirming and muted groans.

The women on the
Sweet Goddess
watched in amazement. The one with a family resemblance to the men running the barge began to cackle with high-pitched hilarity.

"Master Dalar!" Bantrus cried. "Master Dalar, stop that! You've won, don't you see?"

Dalar stepped back aboard the
Tailwind
and uncrossed his arms for the first time since the fight—could you call it a fight?—began. Sharina laid the bundle of weights and chain back in her champion's palm.

Dalar bowed to the four brothers around the barge's tiller, then faced Bantrus. "It may be that men understand war differently from my people, young human," he said. "Or it may be that I understand war and you do not."

The bird looked disdainfully toward the shambles aboard the
Horn of Plenty
. A man who'd crawled to the far railing poked his head out from under the canvas. He was anonymous, his features masked by his own blood. He saw Dalar looking and hid himself again.

"If you think that a fight with such bandits is over before they are plucked and hanged by their toes," the bird continued, "so be it. This place is yours; it is not for me to decide."

"He isn't serious, is he?" said one of Jem's brothers. "I don't like to hear things like that even as a joke."

Dalar's head rotated to stare at the man who'd spoken. The speaker flinched back. Dalar nodded, then faced Bantrus again. The youth looked queasy.

"So be it," the bird repeated. "But my master Sharina and I will not go to battle with you again, because you choose to fight the same battles twice when you need not."

"Let's get the lines loose," Sharina said quietly. The big knife trembled, shimmering with sunlight reflected from the polished blade. She sheathed the weapon carefully, using both hands.

"Yes," Bantrus whispered. He bent and cast off the line before him while Jem did the same for the other. "I think that's a good idea. We'll put you ashore in Klestis."

The barges began to drift apart. Injured men aboard the
Horn of Plenty
were crawling into the light with dazed expressions.

"Young humans?" Dalar said in a tone like that of a trumpet. "I will not tell you your business. But it is my belief that Prince Mykon and your Master Tiglath understand war in the same way as I do; and if you do not, you would be wise not to go to war with either of them."

As a coda, the bird kicked high with his right foot, then his left. The toes of both were bright with blood.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Please," said Colva, placing her hands in Garric's as she stood with him and Liane beside the River Beltis, "I'm still shivering."

Colva now wore a pair of tunics cut for women—they fell to just above and below mid-calf, instead of being knee-length as a man would wear—and a cloak, bought for her from a peddler who'd been lucky not to have his barrow overturned when Waldron's troops charged toward the stables and their prince. The garments were used, but they were of excellent quality and thick. Despite proper clothing and the warm evening, Colva's hands were icy.

Garric shook his hands free. "Tell us who we're facing," he said brusquely. From the corner of his eye he saw Liane relax minutely.

The Royal Astrologer stood beside the waterclock he and his assistants had erected on the bank, calibrating it with a portable sundial while there was still light enough to throw the gnomon's shadow crisply across the inscribed lines. He saw Garric glance in his direction and called in a self-important voice, "Twelve minutes to full sunset, your majesty."

Waldron and his officers were marshalling the available troops on the riverbank both up-and downstream. The bridge was already a shimmer of azure highlights above the water, but it wouldn't become sufficiently solid for ordinary humans to cross until the sun went down. Twelve minutes....

Garric had four battalions of the pike-armed phalanx, two battalions of skirmishers with bundles of light javelins, and two more of heavy infantry with swords, short spears, and full armor. He didn't have the faintest notion of whether they'd be enough for the army they'd face when they crossed the bridge.

"You never know, lad,"
King Carus said with resignation.
"You can plan and hope and pray, but you never know till it's over."

"They are necromancers, seven of them," Colva said. "They've raised Yole from the sea, but they do their works of real power in Klestis. They captured me after my husband Landure the Guardian entered the Underworld with a stranger named Cashel. I think they intended me for a blood sacrifice."

"Cashel's all right?" Garric blurted. He'd had no idea that Colva would have met his friend.

"Nothing in the Underworld can harm Landure the Guardian," Colva said with an odd smile. "They know that by now. They may try to escape past Landure to the waking world, your world, but few manage even that."

Garric grimaced. Apparently Landure had left his wife unprotected to go off with Cashel. That wouldn't have happened except that Garric had allowed his sister to be snatched away from his presence.

Liane touched the back of Garric's hand, just for the contact. He wished that Tenoctris were here so that she could tell him what was waiting on the other side of the bridge; but in his heart of hearts, he knew he'd rather have Liane's presence than Tenoctris' knowledge. He grinned wryly at the realization.

"The necromancers have an army of the dead," Colva continued. "Eventually they will have an army of all the dead of all times. Perhaps that's why they wanted your friend: to sacrifice a wizard for even greater power than they'd gain from a child, say, or from me."

"Eight minutes, your majesty!" the astrologer called. The bridge already had form, though it tended to blur into cloudy evanescence.

Garric wondered what would happen to a man who was standing on the structure of wizardlight when it vanished. He'd fall, certainly; but Garric suspected the victim would drown in something worse than the muddy waters of the Beltis.

"You're so brave to attack them, Prince Garric," Colva said. Her black eyes met Garric's with a molten intensity. "When I saw you fight the ice beetle, I knew there'd never been a hero like you."

"Don't say that!" Garric said, more harshly than the comment justified. The woman's flattering nonsense was understandable in someone whose life had been saved, after all.

The trouble was that although Garric knew the words were nonsense, it warmed him to hear Colva say them. He didn't need Carus glaring in his mind, nor the sudden hardness around Liane's eyes, to warn him how dangerous it would be to like flattery.

Lord Waldron strode over to Garric. Half a dozen aides followed like a swirl of dry leaves. Attaper saw Waldron coming and approached from where he'd been waiting ten feet away with the hundred-and-seventy Blood Eagles fit for duty.

"The army is ready for your command, your majesty," Waldron said with hard-lipped precision.

"Four minutes, your majesty!" called the astrologer as another of the waterclock's bowls filled and overturned.

Garric looked past his officers to the ranks of soldiers. The uplifted pikes stood like groves of twenty-foot saplings planted as far as eye could see, up and down the waterfront. The men's faces were bleak and frightened.

Garric grimaced, bitterly aware of his own fears.
Afraid of failing Tenoctris and the kingdom. Afraid of what'll happen to Liane and everybody who depends on me
if
I fail.

"I don't know how many will refuse to advance," said an aide, a blond young man with fine features and enough wealth that his armor was gilded. He shook his head. "They're afraid of wizardry."

"By the Lady, they took an oath!" Waldron said. "A soldier who isn't afraid is a fool, but they'll follow orders regardless—or they'll stay here decorating gibbets! I swear it on my honor!"

"They'll obey," Colva said with her odd,
expectant
, smile. "They'll follow Prince Garric. Everyone in the army's heard how he fought the ice beetle alone."

Attaper nodded. "She's right, Waldron," he said. "If Garric leads, they'll follow."

"We put plowmen and shopclerks in our phalanx, lad,"
Carus said. Memories of a score of battles seen through the king's eyes, against men and things not men, cascaded through Garric's mind.
"They'll follow you to Hell, because you said they were as worthy to defend the kingdom as nobles like Waldron.
And the other battalions of landholders and the noblemen's retainers—they'll follow too, because they're afraid of being shown up as cowards by plowmen and shopclerks."

Garric laughed, looser than he'd been since he'd stumbled back from the ice world and realized what he'd have to do to rescue Tenoctris. "Then it's easy enough, isn't it?" he said. "Because I'm surely going to lead."

"One minute, your majesty!"

Though the bridge of stone and timber had washed away centuries before, the abutments still remained. Garric grinned at his closest companions and jumped atop a waist-high buttress. Everyone in the army could see him even if they couldn't hear his voice. Blue wizardlight, grown firm and steady as the color died out of the sky, lit his features from the left and silhouetted him to the troops on his right.

"Men of the Isles!" Garric shouted. He drew his sword and waved it like a banner. "Fellow soldiers! Our kingdom, our families, and our honor lie across this bridge of light. Follow me!"

"Sunset!" cried the astrologer. Garric saw the man's lips move, but his voice was inaudible against the approval bellowing from the throats of eight thousand soldiers.

Garric jumped onto the structure of light. It was as solid as granite. Platoons of Blood Eagles double-timed past him to either side, shouting, "Garric and the Isles!"

Liane was at his side; Garric grinned at her. He hadn't even bothered to tell her not to come. They both knew there was danger on the other side of the bridge, but there was no safety anywhere in the Isles if this attempt failed.

He glanced over his shoulder. The regular army was behind him with a battalion of the phalanx in the lead. The front rank saw Garric's glance and cheered.

Colva was coming also, a step behind Garric and Liane. She smiled. Garric turned from her expression, blinking. He couldn't read the emotions on the woman's face.

The towers of Klestis gleamed in the distance. Garric raised his sword again and swept it forward.

Klestis and what waited there was enough to worry about for now.

* * *

Cashel recognized the cliff. He guessed he ought to, since he'd seen it in Valles and then at the entrance to each of the Underworld's to previous levels. This time a boulder had been rolled across the mouth of the cave in place of a proper gate.

"Is this the last one, Master Krias?" he asked, leaning on his staff as he eyed the situation. The stone would take a bit of effort, but nothing he couldn't handle.

"I told you it was!" the ring said. "Do you want me to tell you there's three more layers now? Or is the problem that you can't count to three?"

Cashel smiled. He could hear Elfin singing somewhere in the forest, close enough that you could just about make out the words. The youth seemed to be moving nearer each night since Cashel killed the King of the Forest.

"I can count to three," Cashel said. He leaned his quarterstaff against the bluff and let his hands explore the boulder. Touch would find them a better grip than his eyes would.

"I can move that," Krias said. He sounded hopeful.

"That's all right, Master Krias," Cashel said. He settled his left buttock against the face of the bluff to brace him, then leaned into the boulder.

It didn't come at once, but he hadn't expected it to: a stone so large would've dented a nest for itself into the ground. Cashel felt his face flush and the ligaments stand out on his neck.

"I don't know why you even bothered to bring me—" said Krias; and as the demon spoke, the boulder started to roll. Once Cashel had broken the soil's grip, it was no more effort than rolling an egg. He walked it two short paces to the side, gasping for breath.

He rubbed the ring affectionately. "I brought you for the company, Master Krias," he said, "and for what you know. But I also remember it was you that saved me from Elfin's folk."

Cashel brushed his palms together, then got off the last of the grit on the breast of his tunic. He picked up his staff, twirled it once, and stepped into a world of cold, purple light.

"They weren't his folk," the ring said in a pleased mutter. "They just kept him for a pet, though he didn't have sense enough to see it. Still doesn't,
I'll
bet."

Cashel started down a slope that had become as familiar as the bluff itself. There weren't any trees this time. There was no vegetation at all; things that Cashel thought at first were plants always turned out to be lumps of rock. Even what looked like vines snaking across the landscape were really veins of crystal.

There wasn't a watercourse at the base of the cliffs on this level of the Underworld. An undulating plain, broken only by outcrops, stretched for as far as Cashel could see into the purple distance. He wasn't hungry, but....

"Is there anything to drink down here, Master Krias?" he asked. "Ah, that's safe to drink, I mean. For me."

"There's water," the demon said. "The water of life itself, sheep-boy; water that will cure your ills and make you immortal if you bathe in it every day. But first you have to reach the fountain, and I doubt you'll be able to do that."

"I'd settle for plain water," Cashel said as he started off with his staff over his right shoulder. "But I'll take what I get, I guess."

To tell the truth, Cashel would a lot rather have plain water. If Krias said this 'water of life' wouldn't hurt him, then it wouldn't; but though the fruit from Tian hadn't hurt him either, he could've done without the dreams he'd had that night.

The good thing about the empty landscape was that Cashel didn't have to pick his way through undergrowth and around trees like in the woods of the upper levels. He felt cold, though; cold enough that he sort of expected to see his breath when he opened his mouth and puffed out. He didn't, though.

"Does anybody live here, Master Krias?" Cashel asked as he surveyed the bleakness again. He hadn't seen any animals either, though that might be just as well.

"Colva lived here, sheep-boy," Krias said. "Before you let her loose, I mean."

"Ah," said Cashel, nodding. He hadn't exactly let Colva loose, but it was his fault she stayed loose. He wasn't going to quibble about words when the truth at the bottom of them was that he'd made a bad mistake.

There was somebody ahead of him. A couple shaggy looking fellows at a campfire.

They stood up slowly, laughing from deep in their chests. Cashel could feel the ground quiver. The strangers weren't right over the slight rise he was climbing. They were farther away than he could fling a stone.

Which meant they were as tall as trees. The clubs they carried
were
trees.

One of the giants took a bite out of the human leg in his left hand; it looked no bigger than a pigeon drumstick. Juices dribbled down his bushy beard.

"Well, brother," the other giant said, "more dinner's coming before we've even finished what we had."

Cashel continued walking onward. His first thought was to bring his quarterstaff down across his body, but he didn't like to act hostile till he was sure there was need. He'd have plenty of time for that if things went on the way they looked they were going to.

Also he wasn't sure how much good the staff was going to be.

"Master Krias?" he asked. "What do you think I ought to do now?"

Even as Cashel spoke, he braced himself for Krias to give him a smart answer instead of a real answer. To his surprise, the ring demon said, "Since they're illusions, sheep-boy, what you ought to do is ignore them. Do you think you can do that?"

As if repenting the fact he'd spoken clearly, Krias added, "Using 'think' loosely, of course!"

Cashel chuckled. "Ignore them?" he said. "Sure. That's a
lot
easier than what I had in mind."

"We'll play bowls with his skull, brother," said the giant who'd spoken before. "After I've sucked his brains out, I mean."

The other giant stripped the calf muscle off the leg he was holding and tossed the limb away. Tendons still articulated the bones. "Say!" he said. "You got the brains of the last one!"

Their voices were like nearby thunder. Though... if the giants weren't real, then Cashel guessed their voices weren't real either. But maybe that didn't follow in this place.

"How far is it to the water, Master Krias?" he asked. He was walking right between the two giants. They stunk awful. It was as bad as the summer Old Todler hung himself and nobody thought to look in his hut for three days.

"A lifetime if you flinch, sheep-boy!"

Todler hadn't been much for baths even when he was alive, either.

"Oh," Cashel said aloud. "It isn't that bad."

One of the giants slammed the head of his club straight down in front of Cashel. It'd been a pine bole, though use had worn away half the scaly bark.

Cashel walked through it. He didn't feel anything at all, though for a moment he couldn't see. Then he was past and the giants had vanished, leaving him and Krias alone in the rocky wasteland.

"Will there be more of them, Master Krias?" he said.

The jewel in the ring sparkled brighter for a moment. The light down here brought the sapphire's color out better than the sun had back above ground.

"There might," said Krias. "I doubt it, though. You've passed the test, after all."

"Ah," said Cashel, nodding. "That was a test?"

"They're all tests, sheep-boy!" the demon said. "Do you think just anybody can visit Landure's castle?"

"I didn't think about it one way or the other," Cashel said truthfully. He thought he saw something on the far horizon. It might be a tree, which would be a nice change; but he didn't want to get his hopes up.

"Weren't you afraid?" Krias said unexpectedly.

Cashel shrugged. "You said they weren't real," he replied. "I guess I'd have been afraid if I thought they were real."

Cashel wasn't sure that was true, but he didn't want to sound like he was bragging. He'd been scared often enough, but it had always been for what might happen to somebody else—usually one of his sheep. He guessed he figured that he could handle most anything he ran into. And so far, at least, that'd been true.

"If you'd flinched, they
would
have been real," Krias said. "I didn't know what would happen if I'd told you that before we were past them."

Cashel laughed. "Well, I wasn't going to flinch, Master Krias," he said. "Whether they were going to eat me or not."

He thought about the situation for a moment and added in a sober tone, "Look, I'm not the brightest fellow around, and I don't even mean compared to Garric or Tenoctris. But I don't run away, Master Krias. I've never done that."

"No," said the ring demon in a voice Cashel didn't remember him using before, "I haven't seen any evidence that you would."

Krias made a metallic sound that seemed to be the way he cleared his throat. He said, "The Fountain of Life is right there ahead of us. You'll be able to eat and drink."

That really was a tree, then, growing on a little island in a pond. The branches were heavy with fruit, but it was fruit of all different sorts. Cashel had thought it was another illusion like the giants, though at least it was something he liked to look at.

"How long will it take us to get to Landure's palace?" Cashel asked. As best as he could see, the landscape on the other side of this little oasis was pretty much the same as what he'd crossed to get here. "I mean, if everything goes all right."

"It's gone all right thus far, hasn't it, sheep-boy?" Krias snapped. "At least it has since you decided that killing Landure the Guardian wasn't such a great idea after all."

Cashel didn't say anything. The little demon had as many moods as a ewe in the springtime.

Last week a lady in the palace had gushed to him about how placid sheep were. Cashel could only shake his head about how little some people knew.

"You should get there by midday tomorrow," Krias said as Cashel approached the oasis. "That's if you get up with the light and walk the way you've done in the past. If you hurry, you could get there even sooner."

Ankle-high vegetation covered the margins of the pond. Soft leaves caressed Cashel's feet; he squatted to look more closely. No two of the little plants were the same, and many looked like miniature versions of shrubs and trees.

He stood, wriggling his toes. It felt good. "Is there some reason we need to hurry special, Master Krias?" he asked.

"Not that
I
know of, sheep-boy," Krias said in a sneering voice. "But I thought you wanted to find your beloved Sharina?"

"I do," Cashel said, walking forward. "Thing is, I get along better by going steady than I do by rushing. And I break a whole lot less."

He prodded his staff into the pond to judge the depth. The bottom was firm. If it sloped at the rate it started out, the water wouldn't more than come up to his waist at the middle.

Cashel stepped in, keeping his staff slanted out in front of him. There was no point in taking chances of a sudden drop-off, after all. The water wasn't hot or cold either one, but it made him tingle.

The bottom rose just the same as it'd gone down, gentle and not even quite as deep as he'd figured. The island was covered with the same sort of vegetation as the pond's outer margin had been: real plants, but as soft and delicate as moss.

When Cashel lifted his foot, the foliage popped right up as well. He'd thought that he must be crushing the soft leaves flat, but you couldn't even tell where he'd been walking.

"The other possibility that you might want to consider...," Krias said. There was a lot of intensity in the demon's voice, but no anger for a wonder. "Is that you might want to stay here."

Cashel laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't want to do that," he said.

"You don't think so?" Krias said. "Look at your staff, sheep-boy!"

Cashel blinked. "Wow!" he said.

There was nothing in the world Cashel knew better than he did his quarterstaff. He'd felled a huge hickory tree for a farmer, taking one arrow-straight branch as his pay. He'd trimmed the branch down using first an axe, then a curved block with sand held in grease to smooth the wood better than a blade could; and finally he'd finished the job with wads of raw wool rich in lanolin, passing over and over the close-grained wood until the surface was as smooth as a stream-turned pebble.

The end that Cashel had dipped in the pond was sprouting leaves around the iron ferrule. Another unfolded as he watched, the bright green of new growth and bigger than you'd get on a mature tree.

"Is it going to keep on doing that?" Cashel asked. The staff wouldn't be much use if it did. How could he spin it if instead of bare wood he was swishing a leafy branch through the air?

"It'll shrink back to what it was unless you dip it in the Fountain of Life every day," the ring said. "But you could, you know. You could stay here forever, living on the fruit and bathing yourself in the water every day."

Mention of fruit reminded Cashel of how hungry he was. The tree's branches were so laden that they hung down to the ground like the fronds of a weeping willow. The foliage was more like a cherry's pointy ovals than the slender leaves were of a willow, though.