Goddess of the Ice Realm (30 page)

“They're wizards,” said Gaur in his grating voice. He'd recovered enough to sit upright, though he wasn't eating. Before him on the table was an agate tureen, silver mounted and covered with lid polished from the same block of stone. “I struggle, but I am one and the Rua are many hundreds.”

The Rua might-very well be wizards; they'd arrived here by some means and wizardry was as likely a cause as any other. Ilna doubted the story about them looting the ships, or at any rate doubted that was the whole truth, simply because Gaur had said it. Liars sometimes tell the truth, just as occasionally a stage magician tricked out in red robes could show himself to be a powerful wizard, but she had a bias against believing it.

The food kept coming: a fruit compote; mutton roast; a dish of rice with raisins and ginger. Ilna began to peck at dishes instead of cleaning them, then began to wave courses off untouched. The offerings generally tasted good though unfamiliar—even the fish soup had been remarkably spicy—but there was far too much for a sensible person to eat.

And drink. There were various vintages, some of them doubtless stronger than others, but the total would fill a cauldron big enough to wash the garments of everyone in the hall. Ilna sniffed: if the castle
had
a washing cauldron, it was cobwebbed from disuse.

Ilna asked a servant for beer; he went off—even the servants were male—and returned not long after with a quite passable lager. She nursed her goblet, but even so they were long at the table. The last thing
she
needed to do was to drink enough that she lost control of her behavior.

Chalcus was drinking his share. In the middle of a story about a storm blowing him south so far that he saw icebergs like those that split from the glaciers of the far north, he began to sing,
“The cuckoo, she's a happy bird, she sings as she flies
. . .”

He was probably putting on a show for their hosts, but again—quite a lot of wine had gone down his gullet. Well, Chalcus knew how to take care of himself, drunk or sober, and he had the scars to prove it.

“So, Captain Chalcus . . .” Lusius said. He drank, belched heavily, and banged down his empty goblet. “Have you space in your holds for additional cargo, do you think? We here in the Calves do a fine business in the shell fisheries these last few years.”

“She brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies,”
Chalcus sang, completing the stanza and raising his cup to drink. He blinked in apparent surprise to find it empty.

Setting it down he said, “Oh, we've no cargo to speak of, but no need for more than we've got. One chest is all, folderol for one of the lords who's the prince's bosom companion, Tadai his name is. He didn't tell me what was in it, just said it was to go to Chancellor Royhas in Valles. I'm being well-paid for the voyage, so I asked no questions.”

A servant filled his cup with wine. As the fellow took the pitcher away, Chalcus drank deeply again.

“Now, I shouldn't've have said that, I know,” he went on through a giggle. “I shouldn't be here at all, but our mast is sprung. I need to step a new one before I try the Inner Sea all the way to Ornifal, for all that the worst of the weather should be past by this season. You can't trust the weather, you know.”

He tapped the side of his nose with an index finger. “No farther than you can trust men!”

“You're not afraid of the Rua, then?” Lusius said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

“Poof!” said Chalcus. “What do I care about some funny-shaped bats? We've bows on the
Bird of the Tide
and men who know how to use them. If these Rua of yours come too close, they'll find they're sprouting goose feathers!”

“Indeed,” Lusius said, “indeed. I'm sure that's just what will happen, Captain—but if you have a day or two, would you care to come out with me to the reefs where we fish for shell? I'll be there in my vessel, the
Defender,
because the fishermen daren't to go without my protection. And even so it can be a tricky business, as you'll see.”

“I'll be honored to join you, Commander!” Chalcus said. “I and Mistress Ilna, if you don't mind. Sometimes her eyes catch things that mine have not.”

“She's welcome, of course,” Lusius said. “The
Defender's
no royal barge, but then, I don't suppose your
Bird
is that either.”

Ilna had listened to the exchange with a frown she didn't attempt to conceal. If Chalcus was blabbering for a purpose, her concern was in character; and if he wasn't, if it was the wine talking—then all the better reason to frown.

Gaur had remained silent for most of the meal, glowering at a corner of the vaulted ceiling as though in deep meditation. Now, seeming to awake, he gestured imperiously to a servant and snapped his fingers. The servant brought a canister of gold filigree from a sideboard and set it before the wizard, next to the covered bowl that had been there throughout the dinner.

All eyes were on the Red Wizard, as he no doubt had intended. Ilna heard the man seated next to her curse under his breath and gulp down the rest of his wine.

“Our visitors will have noticed that I myself did not eat,” Gaur said, his voice again that of a priest declaiming to an audience of laymen. He lifted the cover from the agate tureen; it was filled to midway with an amber fluid. “I never eat in the presence of others, but in the name of fellowship I like to
feed,
shall we say? Would you care to watch?”

“I'm always ready to be entertained, Master Wizard,” Chalcus said in a light tone. He touched his fingertips to the table before him, then lowered his hands to his sash.

Gaur glared at him. His eyes were a black that looked deep red in the lamplight. He twisted off the lid of the filigree container and reached in with thumb and forefinger. “These are flies,” he said. “I've pulled off one wing already.”

“Ah, every man should have a hobby,” Chalcus said brightly. “I knew a fellow once who collected butterflies, so he did.”

Gaur's rage couldn't have been fiercer if his eyes had filled with molten lava. He held a fly above the agate bowl. Other flies were beginning to crawl out of the open container, though of course they couldn't go far.

“Watch!” Gaur thundered, dropping the mutilated insect It twisted on one buzzing wing as it fell into the bowl. The fluid rose to catch it, snatching down the victim while it was still a finger's breadth above the original surface. The fly disintegrated as it sank, leaving a blood-red blotch in the amber. After a few moments the color dissipated.

“Amusing, isn't it?” said Gaur, pinching another fly out of the canister. “They must be alive, you see. My little pet may look like a bowl of water, but it's only interested in living prey.”

He dropped the second fly.

Even Ilna who was sober or nearly so saw Chalcus's movement only as a blur. His right hand came up from his sash with the curved dagger and swept across the table. Lamplight turned the steel edge into a shimmer of gold. The stroke was past before anyone else moved.

He slid the blade back into its scabbard.

Gaur snarled like a beast and leaped backward, knocking over his chair.
“Ha!”
Lusius shouted. He flung down the cup in his right hand and covered his eyes with his left forearm, as if he couldn't be hurt if he didn't see the threat.

There were two tiny splashes in the liquid: Chalcus had cut the fly in half as it fell. The portions sank to the bottom of the bowl: as the wizard had claimed, the living fluid ate only live food.

Chalcus stood with an easy motion; Ilna rose with him, her fingers knotting a pattern swiftly.

“My pardon, Commander,” Chalcus said. “I fear I've drunk so much that I might become discourteous were I to stay. We'll join you in the morning for a visit to the reefs to see the Rua.”

He offered Ilna his arm; they turned and walked out. The soldiers were babbling at increasing volume, but through that Ilna continued to hear the sound of Gaur's bestial snarls.

Cashel threw the jewel against the slab of bare rock behind him; it should've been the mouth of the tunnel by which he'd left Lord Bossian's manor, but by starlight at least it looked
as much a part of the mountainside as any other. A stunted cedar tree had draped surface roots across one side of it.

This ruby shattered with the same silent flare as the first one. A tiny image of Kakoral scurried up, then down the rock face like it was a horizontal tabletop. Finally the homunculus paused and glared at Cashel.

“I want to go back to my—” Cashel began. He almost said
home,
but he didn't really know where that was anymore. “I want to go back to my friends. Point me the way.”

Still without speaking, the sparkling homunculus made the sweeping introductory gesture of a showman. The shadowed rock became transparent, a window onto the cellar in which Cashel had seen Kotia's mother with her demon lover. Laterna sat on a stool, reading from a thin beechwood plate that she held so that the light of the hearth fell on it She was alone until the door behind her opened.

Laterna turned to glance over her shoulder. Her face had the look of an ivory carving; it became even harder, even colder.

The man who'd entered was small and trim, fit-looking rather than muscular. His flowing robes had vertical stripes of white alternating with many colors. In the dark cellar the white gave off light, illuminating both the man and his immediate surroundings.

As before, Cashel watched a silent pantomime. The man gestured curtly toward the door with his left hand. He was as angry as the woman, and far more busily so. Laterna flicked out the fingers of her free hand as if she were shooing a fly. She returned to her reading.

The man's robes darkened. If her face had been ivory, his was a waxen death mask. He stepped forward, raising his right arm. He'd been holding a narrow-bladed ice axe along his thigh. He brought it down, spike forward.

Laterna leaped from her stool, flinging the beechwood plaque in the air. It bounced off the ceiling and spun back to lie facedown on the black tile floor. A comer had chipped, but the sheet was mostly whole. Its back was decorated with a gilt sun in the center and a symbolic figure in each corner.

The woman tripped and fell forward. Her arms and legs
jerked, the left side at a quicker tempo than the right. The axe handle waggled for a moment like a pigtail. The body arched, then lay flaccid.

The man hadn't moved since he struck Laterna. Now he raised both hands to his face and stroked his eyebrows with his fingertips. As he started forward, Cashel's window onto the past began to fade.

The last thing Cashel saw before rock replaced the images was the hearth that Laterna had been reading in front of. In its glowing embers, he saw the outlines of Kakoral's face.

The homunculus bowed mockingly to Cashel. It held up both hands, then brought them together overhead in a soundless clap. Streams of red wizardlight curled from each fingertip, spreading into a net that converged on Cashel's chest.

With a cackle of laughter, the little creature vanished. Wizardlight continued to play across Cashel's—

Oh. Not his chest. The lump of coal blazed with cold scarlet-light to which the close-woven wool was transparent. Cautiously Cashel reached down the throat of his tunic and brought the coal out. He sat on his haunches, examining it with a care he hadn't taken in Lord Bossian's workroom. The wizardlight slowly faded.

Like any other piece of coal, this one had fracture lines. Even if it'd been whole while it lay in the ground, the process of smashing chunks out of the seam would've twisted it, spreading tiny cracks from where a leaf stem or a grain of sand had been trapped in the mass.

Cashel saw the patterns with great clarity despite having no light but that of the unfamiliar stars. Maybe there was a map? Or . . .

He squeezed with his thumb and forefinger at opposite corners of the irregular lump. Another man would have used a hammer, but steady pressure was enough if you saw the fracture lines as he did, clear as furrows in a fresh-plowed field; and if you were strong enough.

Cashel had always been strong enough.

The lump popped faintly, shearing along a seam too fine for human eyes. Cashel lifted the upper half, holding the lower portion in the palm of his left hand. Inside was a cavity not much bigger than a walnut. Something stirred in it;
then, very carefully it extended a long hind leg and splayed its webbed toes.

There was a toad within the block of coal. It was still alive.

The toad turned its head, looking up at Cashel with one eye, then the other. It drew its outstretched leg back under it.

“It must have been a very long time,” the toad said in a rusty voice. “Tell me—who is the King of Kish in this day?”

Commander Lusius's
Defender
was similar enough to the
Flying Fish
that they might have been built in adjacent slips. Ilna hadn't liked traveling on the
Flying Fish,
but it was as clean as you could expect of a wooden box that carried so many men.

The
Defender
was stinkingly filthy. Even Freya, the wife of Ilna's uncle and as lazy a slattern as ever was born, would have said the ship was disgusting.

Ilna smiled faintly. It would've been embarrassing if a man she disliked as much as she did Lusius turned out to share her passion for cleanliness. Not that she'd foreseen much danger of that.

A seawolf was following close astern. It was a big brute, twice the length of a tall man. It swam with lazy sweeps of its tail, back and forth.

Chalcus chatted in the stern with Lusius as one man to another. As one pirate to another, very possibly, so Ilna had made her way to the far bow where her presence wouldn't constrain the discussions. Like her, Chalcus was gathering information that would fit into a pattern—eventually.