Master of the Cauldron (38 page)

“Sharina, stop!” Tenoctris cried. “Don't read—”

But the words of power had already gripped Sharina's tongue. The stone's facets threw dazzling highlights across the cellars.

“Berbiti baui—”
Sharina shouted, her lips speaking the words despite
her mind's desperate attempt to control them. Tenoctris covered the ring with her own hands, but the light burned through her flesh and through the fabric of the waking world.

“Io!”
Sharina shouted, spinning down into a vortex of adamantine light.

Ereschigal aktiophi!
thundered from no human throat. The words of power filled Sharina's mind as she whirled out of the cellars, out of Valles, out of the sidereal universe.

Berbiti baui
—

She still held the ring. Tenoctris had vanished into the white mist. Everything had vanished except Sharina herself and the clothes she was wearing.

Io!

The ring couldn't have been a trap. It was a tool meant to carry the user from where he was, where she was, to another place. It was a tool but not Sharina's tool, and she didn't know how to use it properly.

Ereschigal
—

Beneath Sharina a plateau rose through the white mist, an island lapped by a sea of clouds. Squared fields covered the rolling surface, and many of the gleaming watercourses feeding or fed by the lake in the center were laid out in straight lines also.

Aktiophi
—

The island swelled quickly beneath her. A building of polished marble with a two-story colonnade lay beside the lake, embracing half the shore in its spreading wings. Sharina didn't see any other structures, but except for wooded stretches along the canal margins, the whole surface appeared to be under cultivation.

Berbiti
—

The ground was a hundred feet below, fifty feet below, twenty feet below. Pale men bent over their hoes in fields of squash shaded by maize. The laborers didn't look up.

Baui
—

The laborers weren't men. They were People, wizard-made creations. The People captured in the Battle of the Tides had said they came from a floating island…

Io!

Sharina landed so lightly that her sandals barely sank into the soft earth. Then she fell backward.

A horn called.

 

Ilna stared at the Citadel, feeling impressed the way she'd been the first time she'd looked west over the Outer Sea from the heights above Carcosa. A thick growth of hardwoods and pine covered the base of the spire, but from midpoint the rock was bare and black and as sheer as a house wall.

It was beyond her to judge how tall the thing was, but it was very tall. The crystal crown overhung the basalt, though from this angle Ilna saw only the glittering points and arcs that projected beyond the black shaft.

Chalcus was standing arms akimbo, leaning back from the waist to view the Citadel instead of just tilting his neck. He straightened and barked a laugh, “I'm happy that we're not going up the outside of
that,
dear heart,” he said. “I've known a few men who could manage it—or could've, for most of them are dead now—but I wasn't among them.”

Davus smiled and set down the three rocks he'd carried as weapons. He took the bit of snowflake obsidian from a fold of his sash, caressing it with his thumb.

“Don't claim you're happy till you've seen what the choice is,” Davus said, in a voice as wan as his smile. “But it's the choice regardless, I'm afraid.”

He nodded to the right. “Time we get to it,” he added as he started off in the direction he'd indicated.

There wasn't a path, even an animal track, but because the ground was stony, the undergrowth was too sparse to be a barrier. “I hear the sea,” Chalcus called from behind Ilna, sounding surprised.

“Aye,” replied Davus over his shoulder. “A lake, more properly, but too broad to see the other side.”

“Well, perhaps we'll be able to do that from the top, eh, my friend?” Chalcus said, with a laugh. “We'll learn when we're there, shall we?”

“Not even from the top,” Davus replied. “Which I'll willingly prove to you, Master Chalcus, as soon as we have no greater demands on our attention.”

They came out of the woods onto rock bare even of leaf litter. The basalt was rippled like pond ice. It'd weathered into shades of lighter and darker grays, with patches of the original black where winter had cracked a flake loose. Ahead was the ragged edge of a cliff overlooking water that the sunlight turned a chalky ultramarine; to the left rose the chimney-straight shaft of the Citadel, splotched here and there with blue-gray lichen.

In the basalt wall was an oval hole taller than a man. The lower half was blocked with squared stones set in mortar. Over the wall, her arms crossed before her, a bare-breasted woman watched the companions with a thin smile.

“Did that come by nature or did someone, a wizard mayhap, drill it, eh?” Chalcus said as he surveyed what was clearly the next stage on their journey. He grinned like a jester, his hands on his hips.

“The hole's natural,” Davus said, rubbing the obsidian again before slipping it back into his sash. “The lady there that we must treat with is another matter. The Citadel draws in a great deal of power. Part of it leaks back down this channel; and for that reason alone, she'd be uncanny. Her name is Arrea.”

“Is she human?” Ilna asked bluntly. Her fingers were knotting cords without any specific intent.

“Less than many of us, I'm afraid,” Davus said. “But we need her permission to go further.”

“Well, there's ways and ways of treating with a lady,” Chalcus said, sauntering forward. Though his clothes were worn by the hard journey, he was every inch the gallant as he said, “So, Milady Arrea, you see before you travellers who want only your good wishes as we pass by to deal with the tenant above. I trust you'll grant us that slight boon.”

“For a price,” the woman said. Her voice was clear with a pleasant sibilance. She shrugged her shoulders, sending waves down her long, coppery hair. “Everything for a price, traveller. And for that great thing you ask, a great price.”

Ilna walked forward also, keeping a little back from Chalcus and a dou
ble pace to his left. She knew how wide a swath a blade swept when wielded in the flashy, curving style the sailor favored.

Davus, an equal distance to the sailor's right, tossed his obsidian point high in the air. “Arrea bargains from the certain knowledge,” he said, “that killing her would close the passage. She'll bargain hard, of that I have no doubt.”

He turned up his other hand: the point dropped into it. His nonchalant gaze had been on Arrea the whole time, without so much as a glance to judge the trajectory of the bit of stone.

Chalcus looked at his companion with a blank expression that hinted nothing of the fury Ilna was sure lay beneath it. Davus had blandly removed any chance they had to bargain. That would've disturbed Ilna also if she'd had only the words on the surface to go by, but she felt what she did not hear—a pattern weaving, subtle and deep.

“Certain, you say, my dear friend?” Chalcus said, his voice a song like the ringing whisper of a blade drawn from its scabbard.

“As certain as the rock”—Davus rubbed the ball of his right foot against the basalt, an oddly sensuous gesture—“beneath us, friend Chalcus,” he replied. “We must find the price she demands, not the one we wish to pay. Whatever that demand may be.”

“Then for Merota's sake…,” Chalcus said, suddenly relaxing. “That is what we shall find. What is your great price, milady?”

Arrea laughed in a voice as cold as the winter moon. “I need a task performed,” she said. “Look into the sea and tell me what you see. It may be that none of you is fit to carry it out.”

“I've looked at water before,” said Chalcus as he swaggered to the edge. “So far I can go with you, milady.”

Davus walked after him, tossing and catching the chip of stone as if his hands were wholly separate from the man himself. He glanced at Ilna with a soft expression, then turned to Chalcus and twisted his mouth into a broader, harder smile.

Ilna faced Arrea squarely. It was like looking at a snake, though the woman's features had the chiseled beauty of a temple statue. Ilna turned and followed her companions. Behind them, Arrea laughed triumphantly.

The men were looking down from the cliff. The fierce updraft ruffled their hair into the liquid curves of candleflames. Ilna stepped between them and peered over, holding her tunic to her thighs with her hands.

The cliff was sheer—undercut, even—but at present the lake a furlong below had only waves enough to dapple the light reflecting from it. It was deep, much deeper than the Inner Sea off Barca's Hamlet.

Chalcus scowled, then composed his face into a smile and looked over his shoulder at Arrea. “I look and I see water, milady. Water and a bird in the distance, a very large bird to look as big as a gull within bowshot but in fact be so far away. Is that what we're to see?”

Ilna frowned. In a voice meant for the sailor's ears alone, she said, “Surely she means the cloud there in the water, don't you think? That cloud in the depths, and the silk strands glued to the rock and running down to it.”

Wrist-thick cords, tens and tens of them, were anchored to the rock face for as far as Ilna could see in either direction. They looked like the lines supporting a spider's web, but these were as heavy as a ship's cordage. They slanted toward the water and wove themselves into a hollow tube just above the surface.

“What is it, dear heart?” he said, obviously puzzled. “The water's clear as a baby's conscience, I'd have said.”

“Davus, what do you see?” Ilna said, irritated to hear a desperate undertone to her voice. “There, where I'm pointing? And the lines running down to it!”

“I see nothing, mistress,” Davus said calmly. “The same nothing that Master Chalcus sees. But if you see something, then it's there and it's you who must go the next part of the way.”

He stepped back so that he could look straight at Chalcus without Ilna between them. He crossed his arms behind his back, leaving his chest open to a blow or a sword thrust. “As I feared might be the case, though I hoped it would not. Still, the price is the price; and it has to be paid.”

Ilna turned and walked the ten double paces back to where Arrea faced them over the masonry wall. She could've shouted to the other, but Ilna didn't like to raise her voice, particularly when she was angry.

She grinned. She had more experience with being angry than most people did—or anybody should, she supposed.

“I see a cloud in the water,” Ilna said. “A cloud or a silk bag, I suppose it must be, since silk cords hold it to the cliff. Is that what you wanted to know?”

Instead of answering directly, Arrea gave her a broad, tight-lipped grin, and said, “You'll do, then. It's not a sack, it's a cocoon. In it you'll find a
great jewel. Bring the jewel to me, and in exchange I'll open the passage for you and your friends.”

“I can see the cords,” Ilna said, speaking in a cold tone to hide the anger blazing within her. “That doesn't mean that I can breathe water, mistress. Nor can I swim!”

That last was a little more tart than she'd intended. She
couldn't
swim, and the thought of suffocating as the waters closed over her filled her with a disgust that wasn't the same as fearing to die.

“The larva needs air,” Arrea said in an arch tone. “It's a white bloated thing with no eyes and no limbs and no mind, so it will neither know nor care that you're breathing some of what was meant for it.”

“And has it a mouth, milady?” said Chalcus, come to Ilna's side now as she had come to his. “A mouth to swallow those who've come to steal its jewels?”

Arrea laughed. “Have you nothing to worry about on your own account, Master Chalcus?” she said. “The larva is squirming blubber that eats nothing and knows nothing about the jewel. It will not be aware that your slip of a girl here has come and gone.”

“On your life!” Chalcus said, the planes of his face rigid.

Arrea laughed again.

Ilna turned on her heel and walked to the cliff, eyeing the task she'd taken on herself. Davus, who hadn't moved from the edge, said, “The threads weave themselves into a floor you can walk on before you're a hundred feet out, and they twist over in a tube well above the water.”

“And the larva isn't a danger?” Chalcus said, come up on Ilna's other side.

“Not the larva,” Davus said, “but there may be parasites in the cocoon sucking its blood.”

He shrugged. “They're not lions or wolves, Master Chalcus,” he said. “There'll be danger, but there's danger in life. And we cannot go in her place or even go with her, because we're blind to what must be seen.”

“Yes,” said Ilna. “And while I regret seeming to agree with Arrea, whom I neither like nor trust—”

Chalcus chuckled and even Davus, who hadn't known Ilna long, smiled.

Ilna grinned also, pleased that the unplanned joke had broken the tension. “Yes, I suppose that does put Arrea with the great majority of the
people I've met,” she agreed. “Nonetheless, I don't see that my going down to a room in the sea, for that's all it is, is so greatly more dangerous than your waiting for me up here.”

“We'll keep our eyes open,” Chalcus said. He stepped close and kissed her, then turned. “I'll watch our backs, Master Davus,” he said. “You keep an eye on her and tell me if there's anything I should do. That way we'll come out all right, I think; or anyway, come out best.”

“Right,” said Davus, fitting a good-sized rock into the pocket of his sash. He swung it idly, watching the far horizon where the bird soared.

Ilna touched the nearest line, attached only a hand's breadth below the top of the cliff where she was standing. The cord appeared to have melted onto the stone in a splotch wider than Ilna could circle with both hands. Given that the strand was strong enough to tow a trireme, and as best Ilna could estimate there were more strands than there were rowers in that trireme, the risks she was taking didn't include the chance of the cocoon breaking loose with her in it.

Turning backward and wrapping her legs around the silk, she started down. The slope was gradual and the cord so thick that she could probably have walked it like a rope dancer, but she didn't need to do so.