The Fortress of Glass (35 page)

"Metz Scarface!" Opann said. "Get down here at once! The madman lies, and the foreign slut lies as well. Our only safety is to hide behind our walls. The cat men can't be killed!"

"I've killed them myself!" Garric said. "I killed two warriors the night they raided this village, and-"

He brandished the axe he'd taken from the Corl guard.

"-I killed another when I escaped to come here. Join me and together we can-"

"He lies!" Opann said. Was she simply frightened, or was she ignoring the Coerli threat in her concern about Garric becoming her husband's rival for leadership of the village? "No human can kill a cat man!"

"Some of you saw me do it!" Garric said. That probably isn't true in the darkness and confusion of the raid. And the Coerli carried off their dead.... "Together we can-"

"You lie!" said Opann. "I-uhh!"

Donria stepped away from her. Opann fell forward as though her joints had all given way. The hilt of a knife projected from just beneath her rib cage. From the angle, it'd been driven upward through her left kidney. Wooden knives couldn't cut very well, but they'd take enough of a point to be good poignards....

"Duzi!" said Garric aloud. "Donria killed her!"

"What?" said Metz. Garric put his hand on his shoulder, but Metz didn't seem so much angry as confused. "What? Did that really happen?"

"Our only safety lies with Lord Garric," Donria called in a ringing voice. "He will save us if we give him complete obedience. He tore his way alone out of captivity, bearing me on his shoulders, and with our help he will destroy the monsters entirely."

"I, Marzan the Great, brought the hero from the far future to save us!" the wizard said. "My power and the hero's power will join to rout the cat men."

The old man's cracked voice wasn't loud, but the words were vivid and compelling in Garric's mind. He didn't doubt that the Bird was projecting them to the villagers as well.

"You are correct, Garric," the Bird said, adding an audible cluck of laughter.

"Abay?" Metz said. "You and Horst, you're with me, right?"

"Why, sure, Metz," one of the bulky men said. "You've always been able to see as far into a mudbank as the next fellow."

"Right," said Metz with satisfaction. "Idway, Mone, Granta? You men trust me too, don't you?"

"Well, I guess," a man said. "If you want to be chief, I'll back you, but yesterday you said you didn't. Didn't you?"

"I don't want to be chief, that's right," Metz said. "But I want Garric here to be chief . He knows how to fight the Coerli and I sure don't. Does anybody want to argue that?"

The uncle who'd spoken before, Horst or Abay, turned to look back at the crowd. "You're arguing with me if you do," he said in a tone of low menace.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Unexpectedly Donria's clear voice called, "Chief Garric, I have a boon to ask of you. Grant me to your deputy Metz, the greatest of our warriors except yourself!"

Garric froze with his mouth open. Then he cried, "To Metz, the first of my warriors, I give Donria, a wife fit for a warrior and a chief. May they be happy together!"

Very quietly he added, "Metz, you may not always thank me, but you're better off with her than you'd be against her."

"And that," said the laughing ghost in Garric's mind, "is the truth if truth was ever spoken!"

* * *

Three-wick oil lamps hung from stands to Sharina's right and left. Before her on the long table spread reports and petitions. These ranged from a ribbon-tied parchment scroll in which the high priest of the Temple of the Plowing Lady objected in perfect calligraphy to the destruction of a shrine to the Lady by lime-burners, to a note scratched by those same lime-burners on a potsherd. The shrine's walls were brick and useless for their purpose, but the roof beams and the wooden statue itself had provided fuel to reduce lumps of limestone to fiery quicklime.

Sharina tossed the parchment to a clerk. The Temple of the Plowing Lady was on the spine of hills in the middle of the island. It, rather than one of the temples in Mona, was the head of the cult on First Atara.

"Request that they send a formal statement of damages to Lord Tadai for examination," she said. "Add the usual language about sacrifices in this hour of the kingdom's need."

Sharina slid the potsherd to a second clerk. "Noted and approved," she said, then paused to rub her eyes.

About a hundred documents remained. Long before she'd worked through them, messengers'd bring in that many more new ones. This was her third trio of clerks, but all they and the earlier shifts did was to transmit the decisions Princess Sharina alone could make. Sharina knew what Liane was doing now was necessary, but she remembered with wonder the smooth way in which this sort of task had vanished when Liane attended to it.

Lord Attaper had been talking with a messenger at the door of Sharina's suite. "Lady Liane's back, your highness," he said quietly.

"Lady, you have blessed your servant," Sharina whispered. The prayer was heartfelt and spontaneous. Then, louder, "Send her in please, milord."

She knew that Liane would be as tired as she was, but at least they could talk for a moment. The thing Sharina missed most in being regent was the chance to chat with equals. Garric was gone and Cashel was gone; and Ilna as well, though Sharina'd always felt restraint with Ilna.

With Ilna you were always aware that you were talking to someone who judged herself by standards harsher than those of the most inexorable God. Sharina had to suspect that Ilna in her heart of hearts applied the same standards to everybody else as well, no matter how good friends they were.

Liane looked worn. Her clothes were smudged and wrinkled, and the suggestion of fatigue in her posture would've been visible a bowshot away.

Sharina embraced her friend, feeling a rush of sympathy. She was embarrassed to've complained-even silently-about the stream of work she herself faced.

"The plants retreated to the plain as the sun set," Liane said. "They'd carried the first line of earthworks and were starting to fill them in, but now they're just standing in a circle. Waldron's going to attack when the moon rises."

She slumped into a straight-backed chair beside the door. It was one of a set of four whose ornate bronze frames matched that of the bed. Sharina'd thought the chairs looked terribly uncomfortable. Perhaps they were, but Liane was too tired to mind.

"More of them came from the sea after you left, Sharina," she said. She pressed her fingertips together, then straightened with a noticeable effort of will. "More hellplants. Still, Waldron's hopeful that tonight's attack will destroy those already ashore, and if more appear tomorrow we should have the artillery with quicklime projectiles in position. So long as they become torpid at night, we should be able to contain the attacks for the time being."

Till the kingdom runs out of soldiers, Sharina translated silently. That would happen eventually, but not soon. Not for the time being.

She'd planned to ask Liane to help with the petitions, but that was obviously impractical. Though Liane would try, she was sure.

"You need sleep," Sharina said. "Come, why don't you use the servants' chamber of the suite here? I'll wake you if there's anything that you should know about."

Particularly if Garric reappeared as unexpectedly as he'd vanished. Oh, Lady, bless me and the kingdom by returning my brother!

"Yes," said Liane, closing her eyes as she tensed her body to get up again. "I'll sleep for-"

"Do you wish to see the attack?" Double's scraping, squealing voice called from the Chamber of Art. "I can show you what your human forces can do, better even than the generals leading them see. Then you can decide whether your powers are sufficient to scotch the Green Woman!"

The door between the rooms was empty, but the pair of Blood Eagles on the other side hid Double from Sharina's eyes. One of the men advanced his shield slightly, a psychological attempt to fend the wizard away.

"Come into the chamber, Princess!" the wizard said. It giggled, a sound as unpleasant as the whistle of gas escaping from a bloated corpse. "Come and see how human might succeeds against the Green Woman!"

"Your highness," said Attaper forcefully. "We don't know what happened to Mistress Ilna and her friends, but it happened in that room. It's too dangerous for you to enter. And I don't trust that one-"

He nodded his helmet fiercely in the direction of the doorway and beyond it.

"-a bit. Not a bit!"

"If the Princess is afraid," said Double, "let her send a lackey to observe and report to her. Is the great Attaper afraid of me also?"

"I'll go," said Liane, rising to her feet. "I wanted to stay and watch the attack anyway, but Waldron said I'd only be in the way."

"We'll both go," said Sharina. She looked around the room. Clerks and guards and courtiers all watched her in silence. "Anyone who likes can come with Lady Liane and myself. Those of you who prefer to avoid wizardry stay here."

She grinned wryly. "And I won't blame you. Believe me, I won't."

Attaper took a deep breath. "Yes, I suppose...," he said.

He looked at Sharina with an expression of bleak humor that she didn't recall seeing on the guard commander's face before. "My father was sitting at table, no older than I am now," he said. "He'd just reached for his cup of wine. He shouted, 'Sister take me!' and jumped up; and died right there. She did take him."

Attaper took a deep breath and forced a smile. "There's no certainty in this life, your highness, except that we'll die some day."

Sharina laid her hand on Attaper's armored shoulder as they walked into the Chamber of Art together. "Perhaps, milord," she said. "But I expect to live considerably longer because of your care than I would without it."

The room's only light was a single oil lamp hanging from a central chain. Double had moved away from the door; he now stood beside one of the symbols inlaid in the flooring. Tenoctris joined Sharina with a nod and a crisp smile.

Sharina glanced over her shoulder. Half the staff from her bedroom was joining them, far more than she'd expected.

Double's lips twisted in an oily sneer. The figure he'd chosen was a triangle with a circle of the largest possible radius drawn within it. Words of power were written along each side in yellow chalk, though Sharina couldn't read them well enough to pronounce in the present light. A piece of cloth, probably a dinner napkin, lay over something slight in the center of the enclosed circle.

"He has a length of seaweed there," Tenoctris said quietly. "And a bone which I presume is human; I'm not an anatomist. He's using them as a focus."

Nothing in the old woman's dry voice suggested horror or disgust that Double was using human bone. Tenoctris was a wizard, and she'd used necromancy when that was the only way to get information which the kingdom needed. Sharina had asked her to use necromancy, though she'd been too squeamish to watch the incantation.

Remembering that morning, not so long before, Sharina gripped Tenoctris' hand and squeezed it. Friends did things you couldn't or wouldn't do for yourself. Tenoctris was a friend to the kingdom, and a friend to Good; and very certainly a friend to Sharina os-Kenset.

Double drew the ancient athame from his sash and lifted it above the figure. "Watch, Princess," he said, then chanted, "So somaul somalue...."

At each slow-spoken syllable he dipped the black blade, shifting the point from one angle to the next. The lights dimmed or seemed to dim. "Zer ze-er zeruesi...."

A clerk dropped her slate tablet with a clatter and ran sobbing from the room. Nobody else moved.

"Lu...," said Double. "Lumo luchresa!"

The lamp went out completely. Instead of plunging the room into darkness, a circular lens as bright as the full moon appeared above the center of the figures. In it was a marshy landscape on which every object showed as sharply as they would if carved on a triumphal relief.

Double stepped back. His hand trembled slightly as he lowered the athame, but he managed an oily smile and said, "You see my power, Princess. Now you will see the power your human forces have against the Green Woman."

Instead of staring into the lens as everyone else was doing, Tenoctris bent to peer at the words chalked around the figure. Sharina gave her friend's hand a final squeeze and concentrated on the image Double had created. She supposed Tenoctris was more interested in details of another wizard's art than she was of what was happening on a battlefield miles away. The first was her job, come to think of it.

In the lens Sharina saw the hellplants wedged as close together as sheep in a blizzard. Their bulky green shapes formed an arc with both flanks anchored on the bay. Though a heavy mist blanketed the valley, she could see every detail of the creatures with a clarity that would've been impossible at arm's length in bright sunlight.

She frowned. Her subconscious mind was sure the image was real. She wondered if Double was bringing distant events close or if instead he was merely tricking the minds of those watching. She could get details from Lord Waldron after the battle and see how well they jibed with what she thought she'd seen.

A trumpet called, thin and unimaginably distant. "Where's that coming from?" said Attaper, looking around angrily. "That's Charge! Are we hearing commands from Calf's Head Bay?"