The Mirror of Worlds (41 page)

"No," said Shin. "But I believe these men—"

He jogged his chin toward six figures who'd appeared from the warm fog. They were armed, though for the moment they seemed watchful rather than openly hostile.

"— will be able to guide us."

Kore grunted disgustedly. "The stink of asphalt keeps me from smelling anything!" she muttered. "It's worse than being blind, or next to it."

"I'll dismount!" Garric said in an urgent whisper. Kore knelt; the strangers backed away with some shouted disquiet. They must've thought the ogre was crouching to charge.

"We're friends, good sirs!" Garric called and he walked forward, his left arm raised in greeting. "Don't be put off by my mount. She's quite harmless, I assure you."

"Yes, yes, rub it in, why don't you?" Kore murmured in the background. "It's possible that my humiliation hasn't yet been as complete as it could be. Utterly harmless, yes."

"I'm Garric or-Reise from Haft, travelling southward in hopes of visiting a wise man," Garric said, keeping his tone brightly cheerful. "I'm not wealthy, but I can find a silver piece for the man who leads me and my companions through this—"

He gestured, still with his left hand.

"—lake or tar pit or whatever you call it."

The six men looked a right lot of villains, to tell the truth. Though probably no better disciplined than the troop his party'd met on the northern edge of the teak forest, these were better armed and as growlingly dangerous as a pack of cur dogs.

"You're in Lord Holm's domain now," said the man whose fore-and-aft bicorn hat was decorated with a long feather, now bedraggled but originally pink. He held a cocked crossbow which, unlike the fellow's clothing, looked very well maintained. "Watch your tongue when you discuss his possessions, if you know what's good for you."

"I will indeed, sirs," Garric said, standing arms-akimbo with his head high. The most dangerous thing he could do would be to act subservient to these men; they'd be on him like sharks if they decided he could be bullied. "Now, which of you will guide me through to the other side?"

The leader turned to the older man at his side, a fat fellow whose thinning hair was blond but whose beard was russet with streaks of gray. "What do you think, Platt?" he asked. "Do you suppose he's the one?"

"He could be, Leel," the fat man said, scratching his groin with his left hand. "It's not like Milord gave us much of a description, is it? 'There'll be a hero coming; bring him back to me.'"

"Milord's a wizard," said Leel forcefully to Garric. "He can foresee things."

"Then he foresaw us," said Kore, who'd walked up directly behind Garric while he was talking with Leel and his men. "Who but the hero Garric or-Reise could tame a mount as handsome and powerful as myself?"

"
She's making them think it's a joke
," said Carus, looking critically at the ogre through Garric's eyes. "
But when you think how it came that you're riding her . . . she's a clever lady, whatever she looks like
."

"I've had greater compliments than any a human ruffian is capable of giving me," Kore said, puzzling the locals who hadn't heard the ghost's observation. "But thank you just the same."

"I would be honored to meet Lord Holm," Garric said politely. "Though as I say, my wish is merely to pass through his territory, paying for food and lodging. We'll of course do no harm to anyone on the way."

"Bloody well told you won't," the leader said, gesturing with his crossbow. The bow was horn-backed wood rather than steel, but Garric didn't need his ancestor's assessment to know that it'd send its square-headed quarrel through a man's chest at short range.

"What is there to harm, Leel?" another man demanded. "They're not working any but the south islands, and you know half the grubbies've run away by now."

"Shut up, Wagga!" Leel said. "Sister bite your tongue out, you fool."

He looked up to judge the position of the sun. "All right, we'll take them back. The big one, whatever it is—"

"The ogre, my man," Kore said with a note of chill. "Your ignorance is pardonable, but your lack of courtesy is not."

"Like I say, whatever," Leel growled. "He can't get across unless he flies. There's a little solid ground and most of the surface is okay for a man if he moves along. But a horse can't make it, and that brute's bigger'n any horse."

"So I am," said the ogre, raising her left hand and spreading the clawed fingers. Their span was enormous, easily that of the ribs of a parasol. "But on all fours, as I will deign to go under the circumstances, I spread my weight more broadly than a horse or even a man. Lead on, sirrah!"

Leel shrugged. "I figure it'll sink to the bottom of the tar," he said. "Which is no business of mine. And you'll—"

He looked directly at Kore for the first time. Leel obviously disliked the ogre, though he didn't seem to be as fearful as many of those Garric had met since he began riding her.

"—have plenty of company down there, much good may they do you. Trying to get through the lake without us to guide you, well—it's been tried."

"Look, Leel," said Platt, scratching his groin again. It seemed to be a nervous mannerism. "It's pretty late already. Don't you think we should maybe wait till morning?"

"No, I bloody well don't," snapped Leel. "Let's get going. Wagga, you lead."

A ratty little man nodded and slipped forward. He carried three javelins in a bundle and wore a hat made of leaves bent onto a frame of willow shoots. Leel gestured Platt ahead of him, said to Garric, "You lot follow me," and stepped onto the yielding, barren surface.

Shin hopped ahead, dancing rather than walking. Garric shuffled onto the path behind him. He noticed the lake's warmth on the backs of his calves before it seeped through the soles of his boots, but it wasn't dangerous in itself.

Dust, vegetable matter, and gravel were worked into the bitumen. The men ahead of Garric moved swiftly, so he fitted his pace to theirs. He was used to marshes, but he'd have been more comfortable if he had a staff to probe and to vault and—if worse came to worst—to spread his weight if he slipped into a sucking cavity. He didn't suppose hot tar would release a victim as easily as the mud of Pattern Marsh in the borough, either.

The aegipan turned and raised an eyebrow in question.

Garric grinned, his mood suddenly lightened. "I was just thinking that I'd like a tar bath even less than I did a mud one when I tended sheep," he said. "So I'll avoid it."

"Hey, what if the big one falls through, Leel?" called man toward the rear of the party.

"Then you find a way around the hole, don't you, Tenny?" said the leader, for the moment a wraith in the mist. "Or you wait here on the lake till the bogeys come to get you."

Tenny snarled a curse, but he didn't raise his voice enough to force Leel to notice him.

"Or again," Kore murmured, "I might decide to spend my final moments savoring a meal of human flesh. We can never be sure of the future, can we?"

The ogre didn't sound concerned. Carus laughed, but Garric wasn't sure the comment had been meant as a joke. On the other hand—

Garric grinned. The thought was amusing even if it weren't a joke, if you looked at the world in a particular way. He'd become enough of a warrior himself to understand that sometimes grim jokes were the only kind available, and those were the times you really needed a joke.

The mist largely cleared, though Garric hadn't noticed a breeze or patch of cooler air to explain it. They'd reached an island. Tar had soaked into the dirt of the margins, forming a black crust. Wagga was trotting across a field of bromeliads with squat, scaly trunks like palmettos. They grew in straight lines and must've been planted deliberately.

"
Pineapples
," Carus said. "
Saw them on Tisamur my first campaign
.
You cut the trunk open and it's sweet and sour both at once. Any cold at all kills them, but I guess this steam bath takes care of winter
."

Garric eyed the plants critically as he strode between the rows. They hadn't been tended in weeks or more, judging from the way vines were curling around the trunks. He wondered about the bogeys Leel had mentioned; then he wondered just what Lord Holm wanted a hero for.

They were on the asphalt again. The paths led from island to island. A lead of dark water eight or nine feet wide cut the surface. Wagga and Leel splashed through. Shin leaped it gracefully, landed on his hands, and somersaulted onto his hooves again.

Garric could've jumped across too, but he didn't trust the surface on the other side. Slamming down with his full weight might crack it. The very least he could expect then would be to lose a boot that he'd want after they'd crossed this stinking blackness.

The water was warm, the bottom slimy but less than knee deep. He hopped up the other side and sloshed forward. Their bare-legged guides showed no interest in stopping to allow Garric to pour the water out of his boot.

The path across the bitumen jogged repeatedly. Once Wagga led them in a wide circuit. The mist chanced to clear again long enough for Garric to see a single bubble of fresh tar in the midst of the otherwise unbroken gray expanse which they'd just avoided.

They crossed three more islands of normal soil, each planted with fruit trees. The light was failing; the sky was too bright for stars, but all below was in heavy shadow. Neither Garric nor Carus could identify the fruit on the last island, and they didn't tarry long enough in the dimness even to guess at its kinship. Part of the crop was rotting neglected on the ground.

Garric glanced over his shoulder. Kore was close behind, pacing easily on all fours. She'd stripped palm fronds to weave between the long fingers of either hand, increasing their surface area the way the webs of a frog's feet do. She grinned, though her long face touched the expression with savage horror.

"Leel, it's getting
bloody
late!" Platt called. "We should've waited till morning."

"Shut up, you fool, or you needn't worry about bogeys!" Leel snarled back.

Lights winked ahead, then vanished in a curl of mist. "About time," one of the men muttered.

"
Look to the left, lad
," warned Carus, seeing more with Garric's eyes than the owner did. At first Garric thought he was seeing another island half a mile away. The outlines were too square, though, and when the mist cleared momentarily he thought he glimpsed window alcoves and turrets on two corners.

"Master Leel?" Garric called. "Is that a palace out in the lake there?"

The leader's feathered bicorn jerked around. "Just shut your mouth, fellow!" he said in a tone of desperate anger. "Anything you want to know, keep it to ask Milord, you hear?"

Garric didn't reply. Leel was obviously frightened; there was no point in taking offense at what he blurted.

"
He's not a man I'd judge to be easily frightened, either
," Carus said. "
Well, it could be he doesn't like the dark. Some folk are that way
."

The ghost laughed again. Neither he nor Garric thought Leel was afraid of the dark; but a sword and the will to use it could get you through a lot of situations, frightening and otherwise.

They'd come close enough to see that the lights were pots hanging from poles and leaping with smoky, deep red flames. "Faugh!" growled Kore. "It's tar they're burning."

Garric hadn't doubted her, but the breeze curled smoke toward him and he coughed uncontrollably. Even after he was clear of the wisps, the back of his throat felt flayed.

"Milord!" Leel cried. "We've found travellers! It may be one's the man you seek!"

It was fully dark, now. The flares stretched a furlong both east and west along the shore of the tar lake, though only those toward the middle were hung from poles. People, primarily men but some women and a few children, passed in partial silhouette against the low flames.

The men beneath the hanging lights were armed, several of them carrying shields as well as wearing bits of armor. The man they clustered about wore a striped cape of thin silk and a helmet decorated with the tail plumage of some flightless bird.

"Milord, he rides on a giant!" Platt cried, obviously trying to curry favor. "I guess that proves he's the one you're looking for, right?"

"Milord," said Garric, walking toward the man in the plumed helmet. He bowed, low enough to show deference without cringing. "I'm Garric or-Reise, a traveller from the north and just passing through your remarkable domain."

"Bring him up into the light where I can see him," Holm grumbled. He stepped back to make room, his gauzy cape fluttering. It was obviously for ornament rather than warmth in this steamy bowl.

Garric had thought Holm's apparent height was a trick of the plume and perhaps buskins, but even in thin silk slippers the fellow stood a hand's-breadth taller than Garric. He was thin as well, though not particularly healthy: his cheeks were puffy and his hand trembled where he gripped his cross-belt.

Holm's eyes moved from the ogre—squatting placidly on the ground, a coarse mix of gravel and bits of clam shell—to Shin, and finally to the hilt of Garric's long sword. He looked up abruptly and said, "I'm a wizard, you know!"

"Master Leel had mentioned that," Garric said easily. The situation wasn't dangerous yet, but it could very quickly get that way. From the look of Holm's retainers, the fellow supplemented the income of his groves with banditry. The tar lake with its hidden paths would be as safe a lair as any mountain crag. But Holm appeared to have a use for him . . . .

"Leel also said I might be able to do you a favor of some sort," Garric continued. "While my companions and I are merely passing through, we're certainly willing to show our gratitude to you for passage."

"You'll need more than gratitude, you know," Holm snapped. "Unless you can swim the strait—"

He pointed behind him. Garric could smell salt in the air, and waves sounded faintly on a strand.

"—and that's three miles wide. The only ship that can cross it is mine. You see your position, fellow?"