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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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He didn't mind being in the cellars of the queen's mansion; in fact, it was the closest thing he'd had to relaxation
since he and his friends had arrived in Valles. He could have sent an escort of soldiers with Tenoctris when she said she needed to search the building's lower levels. A prince, a king in all but name, had more important things to do than prowl through dust and darkness while creatures skittered out of sight.
But Garric had gotten used to being the physical arm on which Tenoctris' unbreakable spirit depended. It made him feel needed in a way that talk could never do. He understood the need for planning, and he accepted that “Prince Garric” was a symbol of the new government to members of the priesthoods, of the Valles guilds, and of the nobility who might be inclined to go their own way at a time of crisis if they thought they'd been relegated to an underling.
But standing with a sword on his hip, supporting and protecting a frail old woman on whose wisdom rested the fate of the Isles—that was real.
King Carus chuckled at the back of Garric's mind.
“You're not the first to feel that way, lad,”
he said, whispering down the corridors of time.
“And so long as you keep it under better control than I did, there's no harm done. Neither I nor the Isles would have much use for you if you thought talk was the thing that mattered most.”
Garric smiled. Besides, there were threats that might paralyze even a battle-tested veteran. Garric had faced wizardry in the past, and faced it down or cut it down.
Tenoctris settled herself on the floor of basalt hexagons. The pavers had been cut from naturally six-sided columns rather than shaped by the hand of man. “I'm looking for passages, Garric,” she said. “And I'm determining where they lead.”
She looked up with the grin that never failed to brighten the world about her. “I don't mean secret passages in the walls. I mean my kind of passages, routes through planes other than the one on which we're standing. The queen fixed her mansion in a node with several such connections and I think built more. She's very powerful.”
Tenoctris scratched a circle on the floor with one of the bundles of bamboo slivers Garric carried for the purpose. “I suppose I could use the same one for each incantation,” she muttered apologetically. “It's such a slight thing I'm doing, after all. But even a twig gathers some degree of power with each incantation, and in this place particularly I'm afraid of doing more than I intend.”
“I don't mind the load,” Garric said mildly. Each sliver was the length of a man's hand. All together the bamboo weighed about as much as the buckle of Garric's sword belt, a massive construction of iron ornamented with tin and niello. “And I
surely
don't mind the fact that you don't take chances you can avoid.”
Tenoctris marked a few words of power around the margin of the circle. He heard her murmur,
“Asstraelos chraelos phormo … ,”
but the rest of her chant was as lost to him as it was empty of meaning.
Faint blue glimmers formed and fled in the air around the two of them. They never lasted as long as the sparks struck off by a blacksmith's hammer, and some were so brief that Garric wasn't sure whether it was his eye or his mind that witnessed them.
Garric looked about him as he waited, though he didn't expect there to be anything visible to his eyes. According to Royhas, human laborers had built the queen's mansion; and perhaps that was true for the portions above the ground. These cellars were far too extensive to have been built by men in a few months. The volume of earth and rock excavated would have been sufficient to fill the harbor if it had been dumped there. Instead, it had simply vanished, and the very existence of the lower levels had remained unguessed until Garric led the assault that drove the queen away.
Tenoctris sighed and laid down the sliver she'd been using. She put her hands flat on the floor to help push herself to her feet. Garric quickly reached out to support her, keeping the lantern at arm's length so that the hot metal frame didn't burn either one of them.
“No luck?” he asked. He lifted slightly, but for the most part he simply provided a firm post on which the old woman could pull herself erect.
“Oh, no, my problem's the other way around,” Tenoctris said. “From what I've found thus far, the queen had at least a dozen routes to other locations in this plane and elsewhere in the cosmos. Simply tracing which entrance went where is …”
She grinned again. She always looked a generation younger when she smiled. “I was about to say that it was impossible, but I'm going to have to do it if we're to be safe. If the Isles are to be safe.”
Tenoctris nodded Garric toward the next archway. He walked alongside her, still providing support if she needed it. He wondered how many more examinations she intended to make in this cellar, and whether there was yet another level beneath them.
Their shadows trembled in a score of fanciful patterns on the stone. The pillars' contours distorted the human silhouettes. Garric was almost sure that was all he was seeing.
“Tenoctris?” he said as they passed beneath the round-topped arch into a nearly identical vault. Seepage glistened along the junction of two hexagons in the center of the floor. “The queen meant to travel through the passages you're finding, didn't she?”
“Yes,” Tenoctris said crisply. She looked around her, analyzing aspects of a reality Garric couldn't see. She nodded him forward again instead of seating herself here. “That was certainly why she constructed her mansion at this location.”
“But that isn't what happened,” Garric said. “She flew away when we broke in. She didn't, well, go through a passage. Didn't she have time to chant the right words? Or … ?”
Tenoctris paused directly beneath the next arch and settled onto the cold basalt. “I should have brought a pad,” she murmured, “or at least a thicker robe.”
She turned her face toward Garric again. “I don't think the queen's concern was time,” she said. “Opening a passage is quite a simple matter, even for a person with no more power than I have.”
She smiled; Garric tried to smile back. He failed because of the tension.
“I think the problem,” Tenoctris continued, “is that one of the passages leads by a short route to another … being. A being that even the queen was unwilling to face, and which she feared was strong enough to break through to her if she opened the passage from her side.”
“You mean the Beast,” Garric said.
Tenoctris began drawing another circle of power. The bamboo left a silvery tracing on the coarse black stone. Only the person who drew the symbols could recognize them with any certainty; that person, and the forces which the symbols commanded.
“Yes, the Beast,” Tenoctris said as she drew. “I would guess that the queen was waiting to gain some additional article of power before she attempted to return the Beast to a place that would hold it. She's a great wizard, but she wasn't sure she was powerful enough to defeat that creature alone.”
“But we have to defeat her
and
the Beast,” Garric said. His index finger touched the pommel of his long sword.
Tenoctris smiled at him again. “Well,” she said, “we have to try.”
I
lna made her bed on the shop level of Ascelei's dwelling in a cupboard with a slatted door. It had previously been used for extra storage, but the tags of cut rolls
removed to make room for her should have been used long since for garment edgings or to stuff pillows.
She recognized the clatter of iron tires on the stone doorstoop. Rising immediately, she donned a daytime tunic over her sleeping garment of fine linen. She'd have gotten up soon anyway; and the anger Ilna felt now was primarily because she knew she'd driven Halphemos to do something stupid.
Ascelei's doorkeeper was supposed to sleep between the inner and outer doors, but he and the cook—a widow—had paired off. He spent most nights in her hut attached to the oven behind the main house. That left Ilna as the real doorkeeper, and Ascelei would never have a better one.
Cerix hammered on the front door. “Open up!” he shouted. “I have to speak to Mistress Ilna!”
The inner panel was of larchwood planed smooth and decorated with rosettes of copper nails. Ilna jerked it open and stepped into the narrow alcove that separated it from the outer door of iron-bound oak. Servants were already chattering in alarm. She heard one of them wonder in a loud voice, “Should someone rouse Master Ascelei?”
Their racket would raise the dead. “Be silent!” Ilna said toward the upper hallway. “I'm taking care of this.”
It was her fault, after all. She'd treated Halphemos like a child, and quite naturally he'd acted childishly as a result. You can weave humans into a pattern as surely as you can wool; but you can't use the same technique, for humans balk at direction in a fashion that threads do not.
Cerix fell silent when he heard Ilna's voice within. When she threw out the latch cord he rolled his little cart aside so that the outer panel didn't hit him when she pushed it open.
Cerix looked at Ilna. His fear was so intense that it overcast the scowl of physical pain that usually dominated his features. “The baron's men came for him, mistress,” he said. “He'd made an amulet for Lady Tamana to use on Robilard.”
Cerix rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, then went on, “Tamana used to be the baron's favorite, but he's got another friend now.”
Someone tried to open the door Ilna had closed behind her. She slammed it back with her heel. “I'm handling this, if you please!” she said.
Cerix had thrown a rough wool blanket as a wrap over the tunic he'd slept in. In the confusion of Halphemos' arrest, the cripple had managed to make off with part of the inn's bedding. Well, his host probably considered that a cheap price for getting rid of an associate of the criminal.
“Halphemos made an amulet to harm the baron?” Ilna asked without inflection. If that was the case, then Robilard could pull the boy's guts out and drag him through the streets before Ilna would stir a finger to help her former companion.
“He wouldn't do that, mistress,” Cerix said chidingly. “Alos may be a fool, but you know he wouldn't harm anyone.”
He rubbed his mouth again and mumbled, “He might have made a love charm, though. He watched me do that in former days.”
Cerix's chin bobbed in a quick gesture to his stumps.
“And the Lady Tamana would have offered a great deal for a path back into the baron's affections.”
If it weren't for love, there would be far fewer fools in the world,
Ilna thought.
As I well know.
Aloud she said, “I see. Halphemos sold the pearl pendant to a jeweler. He recognized it, as who on Third Atara would not? The jeweler told the baron a vagabond had a pearl belonging to the baron's former mistress; and the baron asked the lady about the matter in a fashion that brought the truth from her.”
“I saw Tamana when she first came to Halphemos,” Cerix admitted sadly. “I wasn't worried. I thought she just wanted her fortune told or, well, he's a good-looking
boy. It's not my place to object to him having a good time.”
Ilna sniffed. “No doubt,” she said. Her tone would have suited a response to someone who'd admitted that he liked to rob blind beggars. “Will the Lady Tamana have told the truth, or will she say that the idea came from Halphemos?”
“That one might have said anything,” Cerix said with a grimace. “I don't imagine Robilard even had to slap her before she started blubbering whatever first came into her head.”
“Yes, there are women like that,” Ilna said without emphasis. “Well, I'll see what I can do.”
She pulled the latch cord, but someone pushed the door open from the inside before she started to tug on the ornate iron handle. Ilna's tongue was ready to snap a comment until she saw Ascelei silhouetted against the rushlights the servants behind him held.
“Master Ascelei,” she said with a contrite nod. She'd been about to snarl at her host. “I apologize for this disruption. I have to go out and I don't know when I'll be able to return.”
“I heard,” the mercer said gravely. “Ilna, I have a cousin with an inn on the west of the island, a quarrying village. If you'd care to stay there for a few days until you know more about the situation, that would be all right. No one would have to know your real name.”
“Hide, you mean?” Ilna said. “It hasn't come to that, thank you, nor will it while I'm still alive.”
Ascelei stiffened. Ilna heard her angry words play back in her memory. She knelt on the threshold, took the mercer's right hand in hers, and said, “Master Ascelei, your offer was meant as a kindness and I behaved as my uncle Katchin might have done. I apologize.”
She rose to her feet again and added, “If you knew my uncle, you'd understand how sincere that apology was.”
The mercer gave a nod of satisfaction. “I never doubted your sincerity, Ilna,” he said. “And while I don't apologize
for making the offer, I should have known better than to imagine you might accept it.”
Ilna glanced down at the cripple. “Ascelei,” she said, “could you shelter Master Cerix while I'm gone? This is none of his doing, but I doubt he'll be welcome at his lodgings.”
“I should go with you,” Cerix said in surprise. “I can help—”
“No,” she said sharply, “you can't. I'll have enough to worry about without you to push around also.”
Ascelei winced. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Cerix, if you'd care to come in … ?”
The cripple looked stricken. Ilna wasn't going to apologize for her comment, though. Cerix
would
have been in the way, and if the older wizard hadn't shown the boy how to make love charms then none of this would have happened. Love charms were abominations.
Ilna smiled. Ascelei had stepped out as Cerix poled himself into the dwelling without further comment. “Mistress?” the mercer said, surprised at Ilna's expression.
“I'm tempted to say that love itself is an abomination,” Ilna replied; an honest answer if not a particularly informative one. “But this isn't the time to talk philosophy—if there ever was one.”
She took a deep breath. “I'll be off to the palace, sir,” she said. “I appreciate your actions on my behalf and wish I were able to better repay them.”
“There's money owing you,” the mercer said as she turned. “And would you care to use my litter? It won't take a moment to rouse the bearers.”
“An honest woman like me would look a complete fool riding in a litter,” Ilna said, more tartly than she'd intended. “You can give any money I'm owed to Cerix. Or keep it yourself, Ascelei.”
She reached into her sleeve to check that the hank of yarn was there. “I have everything I need,” she called over her shoulder as she strode along the Parade.
Servants were up in most of the houses, sweeping and
emptying slops. The majority of buildings had a residence above and shop below; from these, night soil was carried out to the central gutter. Folk who didn't expect customers to be entering their front doors were less fussy about what their servants dumped where.
Ilna's nose wrinkled in disgust—at the practice, not the smell. In a decent community like Barca's Hamlet where folk kept house gardens, manure wasn't wasted.
She walked briskly. There were other pedestrians out already. The sky had grown pale enough to tell black from white, so folk who didn't care to pay for lantern light were on the road.
Baron Robilard's palace was half a mile south on the Parade; no distance at all to walk, though Ilna found the gravel unpleasant. Folk in Divers wore slippers with soft leather soles, adequate for this coarse crushed limestone.
It amused Ilna that she and Ascelei had been talking as though Ilna wasn't coming back from her meeting with the baron. Anything was possible, but Robilard didn't have a reputation for wanton cruelty. The baron had every right to be furious with Halphemos, but in her heart of hearts Ilna was sure that she'd find some way to buy the boy free. They'd have to leave the island, of course, but they'd been planning to do that anyway.
The palace of the Barons of Third Atara was a more modest structure than Ilna had expected. Oh, it was more building than the ego of any one man should have needed, but she herself had lived in a larger mansion in Erdin during the days when evil had no more skillful craftsman than Ilna os-Kenset.
A porch with huge columns of striped marble was under construction. If Robilard ever got around to rebuilding the rest in scale with his new porch, he'd have a residence larger than that of the Earl of Sandrakkan.
She turned down the semicircular drive to the porch. Here pavers of patterned limestone replaced the gravel. Grit clinging to Ilna's soles crunched against the slick, chill surface.
She grinned. Not as slick
or
as chill as the mud of early spring at home in Barca's Hamlet, though. Things weren't necessarily better simply because they were familiar.
There was light and bustle within the palace. The glass in the small-paned windows wasn't clear enough to show details, but figures moved by lamplight with more agitation than Ilna imagined was the usual thing at this hour of the morning.
Beneath a lantern fashioned in the form of a three-headed dragon, two soldiers guarded the door. The lamp's appearance made Ilna's guts tighten for no reason she could fathom; she scowled at herself.
The soldiers watched Ilna long enough to be sure that they didn't recognize her. One of them then knocked on the wicket set into one of the huge, bronze-plated door leaves. An officer came out, settling his plumed helmet on his head as he and the men murmured among themselves.
Ilna drew the hank from her sleeve, measured a sufficient length of yarn, and snapped it between her index fingers. That left the ends frayed, but this was no time to flash a knife even for the purpose of cutting thread.
The officer's breastplate was molded into the form of a demigod's muscled torso; the dawn light gleamed on it and on the tips of his waxed mustaches. He stepped forward and said, “Sorry, mistress. There's no peddlers being admitted today.”
“I'm not a peddler,” Ilna said as she walked to within arm's length of the man. “I'm here to talk to the baron about the wizard he's arrested. I think that after he talks to me he'll be willing to release the boy.”
“
Especially
nobody sees the baron about the wizard, mistress,” the officer said in a noticeably colder tone. “And if you've got anything to do with him, then I suggest you use what time you've got to leave the island. Swim if you don't find a better way.”
“If she wants to come back after midday when we're
off duty,” one of the soldiers said, “I might find the price for what she's got.”
The other soldier and the officer laughed. Ilna's expression didn't change as she worked the yarn among her fingers.
She raised her eyes. “Look at me,” she said crisply.
“What?” said the officer, turning toward Ilna again. She spread her hands, drawing the yarn into the pattern she'd chosen. The officer gave a smothered “Urk!” and went stiff.
“Take me to Baron Robilard,” Ilna ordered. The officer bowed, turned, and marched toward the wicket. He'd left it open when he came out.
“Hey!” said the soldier who'd joked about enjoying Ilna's favors. “What's happened to the captain?”
The soldier snatched at the halberd he'd leaned against the marble doorframe. He fumbled the weapon, which fell with a ringing crash on the lintel. He knelt to pick it up.
“Nothing that will harm him,” Ilna said. “If you act the fool by getting in my way, I'll deal with you in a different way. Do you understand?”
The soldier stared up at Ilna as his fingers felt for the halberd shaft. The other guard gripped him by the shoulder and pulled him out of the way. Neither man spoke as Ilna followed their officer into the palace.

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