Lord of the Isles (18 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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C
ashel duckwalked slowly down the spillway, keeping his eyes on the flat bottom so that he wouldn't miss anything unusual. The stones were slick with residue from the seawater that roared down them when the mill was in use, though that hadn't been for some days. The morning sun wasn't high enough to clear the walls of the trough, but there was plenty of light to see by.
If there'd been anything to see, that is.
“I think it was about there,” Tenoctris called from the beside the millwheel, where she and Cashel had sheltered during the night to watch the drover.
He
was
in the right place: he could see the faint nicks Benlo's dagger had made on the stones. Had the drover picked up the object he drew the glamour from? Neither Tenoctris nor Cashel himself had seen him bend down to do that, but the only thing here—
“I found a pebble,” Cashel called. “Could he have been using a pebble, mistress?”
“Yes!” she replied. “Very possibly he could.”
Cashel climbed out of the spillway and walked toward the wizard. He wondered if Benlo would notice them going over the scene of his invocation of the previous night, though he didn't worry about the possibility. Despite the drover's denial and Tenoctris' doubt, Cashel was convinced that Benlo was behind the attack on Garric. If Benlo wanted to make a problem about what Cashel was doing, then he was welcome to try.
Terns skimmed the sea's surface and rose with small fish in their beaks. Their motion kept drawing Cashel's unwilling eyes to seaward. That was the direction Sharina had gone,
and he was sure in his heart that she would never return.
Tenoctris took the pebble from his hand and held it to the sun to see its details. “Marble,” she said. “Do you have marble around here, Cashel?”
He shook his head. “I thought it was a chip of quartz from the beach,” he said. Now that he looked carefully he could see that what he'd taken for natural weathering on one side of the pebble was really carving. The piece was no larger than the end of his thumb.
“I can't do what Benlo did with it,” Tenoctris said, eyeing the stone critically. “But I think I have sufficient power to learn what it came from.”
She sat down, crossing her legs beneath her instead of squatting the way a villager would have done. She plucked a stalk of the coarse grass growing in the angle between the millhouse and the spillway.
“My athame,” she told Cashel with a smile, holding up the blade of grass. “The tools Meder and Benlo use concentrate power wonderfully, but not power from a single source. Much better to use something neutral. Much safer at least.”
Cashel squatted beside her, nodding understanding. He didn't know anything about wizardry, but he understood forces the way anyone who worked with his hands did. If you used a long bar to multiply your strength, you needed to be very careful where you set the tip and what you used for a fulcrum—especially if you were as strong as Cashel or-Kenset to begin with.
Tenoctris put the pebble on the ground, then frowned and turned it over so the side with carven braiding was up. She drew a circle in the air around it with the grassblade.
Mitir's little daughter peered at them from the back of her house, then tossed out the remainder of the grain she was feeding to their chickens and went back inside. Cashel was vaguely uneasy that they were in plain sight to anyone on the south side of the mill, but Tenoctris clearly didn't care whether or not people watched her working her magic.
Too bad there aren't more folk
—
let alone wizards
—
as
willing to do their business in plain sight, he thought. The world would be a more honest place
.
“Miuchthan salaam athiaskirtho,”
Tenoctris murmured as she tapped the grassblade to the ground, one station as she spoke each separate word. “
Dabathaa zaas ouach kol
—”
Movement caught Cashel's eye. He looked up, startled. Benlo's pretty daughter watched them from the corner of the millhouse.
“Semisilam bachaxichuch!”'
Tenoctris said, raising her voice as she struck the pebble with the tip of the grassblade.
“I'm sorry,” the girl, Liane, said in embarrassment. “I didn't mean to intrude on—”
The form of a building in faint red light swelled from the pebble the way a puffer fish inflates. The ghostly structure had square sides, a low dome, and no opening except a single arched doorway. The corner moldings were ornamented with stone braid like that from which the pebble had come.
“Oh, that's—” Liane said.
Wizardry
, Cashel's mind supplied for the next word.
“—the Countess Tera's tomb in Carcosa,” Liane continued. “What a marvelous illusion, mistress!”
“Yes,” Tenoctris said dryly. “I'm sometimes mistaken for a wizard. By those who haven't seen the real thing, of course.”
The image vanished. Cashel realized he didn't know how large it had been. The size of a real building, he'd thought; but he and Tenoctris were only arm's length apart and it hadn't touched either one of them. Had the red form only existed in his mind?
“How do you come to recognize the tomb, mistress?” Tenoctris asked. She looked at the grassblade as if puzzled to find it in her hand, then dropped it on top of the chip of marble.
Liane's eyes narrowed slightly when she looked closely at Tenoctris. Even seated on the ground and wearing a patched tunic, the old woman's fine features marked her as something out of the ordinary for Barca's Hamlet.
“My father was interested in it,” the girl said at last. “I
suppose because it looks something like our family tomb in Erdin. He visited it several times while we were in Carcosa.”
Cashel rose to his feet. Liane was a pretty enough girl, though he didn't see what all the fuss the village women were making was about. She had her father's jet black hair and pale complexion, here covered by a broad-brimmed hat of stiffened linen. Her face was triangular, not round, and her fine bone structure must also have come from her mother's side.
“Your father's a wizard,” he said bluntly. Nothing in his stance was threatening, but he knew that whether he wanted to or not he loomed over the girl like an ox facing a kitten. “Did he bring that thing out of the sea to attack my friend last night?”
Liane blinked in shock, but she didn't flinch. “My father's a good man,” she said in a clear voice. “He said he didn't bring the lich here. He's never lied, not to me, not to anyone.”
Tenoctris got to her feet. Liane stooped and helped the older woman in a reflex that was controlling even now when she was angry and perhaps frightened.
Cashel cringed internally. She was a nice girl, whatever her father was. But—
“Tenoctris tells me I'm wrong too, mistress,” he said. “I'm sorry. But your father is a wizard, because I watched him here last night.”
Liane swallowed and closed her eyes. When she reopened them, they were focused on the sea and the far horizon. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “the nurse would bring me in and put me on Mother's lap, and my father would sing to us. Beautiful songs, love songs from all the lands he'd visited in his travels.”
She looked at Cashel with angry eyes on the verge of tears. “He's a
good
man,” she said fiercely. She turned and strode off the way she'd come, around the millhouse, where Katchin's wife screamed at their infant and the infant screamed to the world.
“I shouldn't have said that,” Cashel muttered. He felt his face redden with embarrassment as he thought of what he'd done under the goad of his slow smoldering anger.
“You're an honest man,” Tenoctris said mildly. “I've always believed that an honest man can say anything he feels ought to be said. Besides that—”
She smiled up at him. If Liane was a kitten, Tenoctris was a bird, a bright-eyed sparrow.
“—I found her answers interesting. Perhaps if I get enough pieces to the puzzle, I'll learn whether it was chance or something else that brought me here, now. The hermit would be amused.”
“Mistress?” Cashel asked in a thick voice. “Is Benlo as powerful a wizard as you are?”
Tenoctris laughed and patted him on the arm. “Cashel,” she said, “I'm not powerful at all. I've read and I see, those are both important. But the skill I have is that of a diamond cutter who knows where to tap to split a stone on the line of cleavage. If you want raw power—Benio could
crush
diamonds if he knew how to use the strength he has.”
Cashel opened his big, capable hands. “What good's a crushed diamond, mistress?” he asked.
Tenoctris laughed again. “You'd be amazed at how few people understand that, Master Cashel,” she said. “The Hooded One certainly didn't.”
She looked toward the sea, her face settling into lines of quiet determination. “Which still leaves the question of why the Hooded One did cast me
here
. Well, perhaps we'll learn that too.”
“
G
ently, girl, gently,” Garric murmured to the drover's tall bay mare at the watering trough by the well curb. She twitched her head anyway. It wasn't a serious attempt to break free, but if Garric's hand had slipped on the bridle she'd have been gone through the gate before he could blink.
The mare was mettlesome and apt to kick if he tried to feed or water her with the other animals. Though she was easily the finest horse Garric had ever seen in his life, he'd have preferred to ride Liane's gelding if it came to a choice. In fact he'd prefer to ride one of the saw-backed baggage mules.
“Good afternoon, Master Garric,” Benlo said as he walked out of the common room. His guards remained inside, where Garric could see them being served by his mother. “A bit of a handful, isn't she? Her name's Bright Angel.”
“I'm just not used to her,” Garric said, stroking the horse behind the ear with his free hand. “Come on and drink, Angel, you know you're thirsty.”
For one reason or another—perhaps she was just bored with being troublesome—the bay lowered her head to the stone trough and began slurping water. Garric rubbed her neck, up and down the side of the spine.
“On the contrary, Garric,” Benlo said. “She behaves better with you than she does with anyone else I've seen. You have a talent for animals, don't you?”
Garric was glad he had an excuse not to meet Benlo's eyes. Though the drover was trying to be friendly, his words had a
roundness
to them that made Garric uncomfortable. He sounded like the underpriest who usually led the Tithe Procession through the borough. He always talked about his sincere affection for Barca's Hamlet, but Garric had the feeling
that an aide whispered “Barca's Hamlet” to the fellow just before he spoke. Otherwise he'd get the name of the village wrong.
“Everybody here on Haft is used to animals, sir,” Game muttered, watching the fly that buzzed around Bright Angel's flank. “Here in this borough anyhow.”
“You know I'm buying sheep to carry to Sandrakkan,” Benlo said. “I'll need a likely lad to badger the flock to Carcosa where my ship's in harbor. How would you like the job, Garric? I'll pay a Haft silver anchor for every day on the road. That's a full man's wage at Carcosa rates.”
“No thank you, sir,” Garric said, feeling his throat tighten. The mare raised her head from the trough. Garric put his weight against the big bay skull and turned her to the left so that she was between him and her owner. The mare nickered in surprise at treatment rougher than Garric had shown her in the past. “My friend Cashel's the regular badger. He'll do the job for you better than I could; and besides, the pay would help him and his sister a lot.”
Garric walked briskly toward the stables, holding the bridle close to the mare's throat. He gave her a sharp jerk when she seemed to lag. Again she complained, though she didn't try to fight him. Strong as Garric was, a twelve-hundred-pound horse could always win a tugging match with a hundred-and-eighty-pound man if she cared deeply enough.
Two fishermen had wrapped the lich in an old tarpaulin and dumped it in a hundred fathoms of water, but the axletree still lay where Garric had dropped it in the early hours of the morning. He led Angel around it, so Benlo caught up with him again.
“Look, boy,” the drover said in a voice of command. “Your friend may be a fine badger but it's you I want to hire, not him. Now, I've offered liberal wages, liberal indeed, but if a little more will—”
“Listen, stranger!” Garric said. Maybe it was sight of the axletree, maybe it was just the roiling confusion of his life, but he felt fury rise in him like that he felt in the dreams
where he swung a sword. “I don't know where you come from, Carcosa or Erdin or the depths of the sea for all I care! But here in Barca's Hamlet we don't steal each other's livelihoods! If you want a badger, you can hire Cashel.”
Benlo's guards spilled into the courtyard in a trampling rush. Garric was seeing through two sets of eyes. He dropped the bridle and reached down for the axletree. The mare shied back but didn't run.
“Go back inside!” the drover shouted. “Rald, get the men inside at once!”
The chief of Benlo's guards, a stocky man with eyes the gray of cast iron, turned and put his hands on the chests of the men closest behind him. “You heard the boss,” he said in a loud, tense voice. “Come on, there's no problem. Let's finish our ale.”
Garric shuddered and straightened. He was alone again in his head; the laughing figure who'd measured the six guards for a single stroke of the massive axletree had gone back to wherever it was that he watched and waited.
“Come along, Angel,” Garric said in a rusty voice. “We'll find you some oats.”
“We'll talk again later, Garric,” the drover said in tone of glassy cheerfulness. He reentered the inn and shut the door behind him.
Garric closed the bay mare in her stall. Another time he would have stayed and fed carrots to both horses, but after talking to Benlo he felt quiveringly weak. He walked out of the stable, glad there was no one in the courtyard to see him, and into the street.
Everything was changing. He'd gotten angry as a way to hide his fear.
A silver anchor a day wasn't just a liberal wage, it was a remarkable one. Folk in this borough only saw silver during the Sheep Fair, and even then most payments were made in copper coins.
Benlo wanted more than a boy to chivy his flock to Carcosa. Garric wasn't afraid of Benlo, but the offer was one
more sign of the way everything he'd known for certain was shifting about him.
That
frightened him terribly.
“I want things to go back the way they were,” Garric whispered. He knew that wouldn't happen, that things never went backward. Chickens don't crawl into eggs, the sun doesn't roll from west to east. But he wasn't willing to give up hope of stability even though he knew the hope was false.
He strode along the path with his head down and his shoulders hunched. Folks glanced at him, but they didn't speak or it they spoke he didn't hear.
He needed to think. He'd almost reached the corral north of the hamlet when he noticed that Tenoctris waited there, watching his progress.
“I was just leaving,” Tenoctris called. “I come out here to think sometimes.”
Garric closed his eyes and shuddered, hugging himself close. He walked the rest of the way to the pen and said, “Mistress, can I talk to you? I don't know who to talk to. I don't understand
anything.
”
“Well, that's the first step to wisdom, they say,” the old woman said. She shifted slightly, adjusting her seat on the stone wall. “I only today learned that you were the one who pulled me out of the sea, Garric. I should have thanked you sooner.”
Garric threw one long leg over the wall and straddled it, facing her. Shadows were lengthening, and out to sea a bank of high clouds was turning pink.
“One of the fishermen. would have brought you in if I hadn't been there,” he said. He smiled. “If you like you can thank me for having a father who provides better accommodation for castaways than you'd have found in Tarban's hut, though.”
“The inn's roof trusses came from ships' timbers,” Tenoctris said with a look of vague marvel. “The wood is full of stories of the far past that's still the future of the person I was. I don't fit in this world. At least I haven't yet found the way in which I fit.”
Garric nodded fierce agreement.
“I
don't fit,” he said. “Or the world doesn't. Benlo just tried to hire me to take his flock to Carcosa, but that's not what he really means. And Sharina going off like that … Mistress, what's happening? I don't want things to change!”
“The trouble is,” Tenoctris said slowly, looking toward the sea, “that things are going to change. I liked things the way they were a thousand years ago. Most folk did, I think, though they might have wanted a pig of their own or a less grasping tax gatherer. But the Hooded One wanted more than that, and he brought the Kingdom of the Isles down in centuries of war and famine.”
She gave Garric a quirked smile. “Times like that make interesting epics,” she said, “but they're not the world in which most people want to live. And now that the Isles have finally settled into something closer to peace, Malkar is rising and the changes are coming again.”
“I thought you said the Hooded One had drowned,” Garric said, pressing his hands together. “That he was dead.”
“Malkar isn't dead,” Tenoctris said simply. “And the Hooded One lives also, at least in your dreams.”
Garric straightened. “Do you think Fate brought you to Haft to fight Malkar?” he said. His voice was harder than a moment ago; self-pity and self-doubt no longer colored it.
“Fate may be a myth,” Tenoctris said, firmer also. “The powers aren't myths, and the powers are building just as they did in my own day. I see them, Garric, just as you see the clouds turn black before the storm hits.”
She gave him a quick smile to show that she wasn't angry, at least with Garric. “As for Malkar—you don't fight Malkar any more than you fight the sun. But the sun can be eclipsed for a time, and Malkar's influence can be blocked as well.”
Tenoctris shook her head and forced a rueful chuckle. “I doubt Malkar's influence can be blocked by a poor stick like me, but I suppose I'm going to try anyway.”
Garric leaned forward and gently took the old woman's hands in his. Like holding a sparrow … “Mistress,” he said.
“What should I do? Should I go with Benlo? And don't tell me it's my decision; I'm asking for help!”
She bobbed her head once, twice, to indicate she was considering the question rather than ignoring it in silence. She took one of her hands from Garric's grip, patted him, and then folded both in her lap as he sat straight.
“If you were to stand in the spillway while the mill was turning,” Tenoctris said finally, “the water would sweep you away no matter how hard you struggled. You'd be better off to swim with the flow so that you at least had a little control over where you were going.”
Garric nodded.
“You're connected with King Carus, Garric,” she continued. “Through the medal at least, and I think by blood as well. Benlo used the royal line of Haft to identify you. If you stay where you are, you'll draw more things to you. To you and to your family and friends.”
“The lich,” Garric said.
“The lich,” Tenoctris agreed. “And other things better unseen. I wish I could tell you that wasn't true.”
Garric said, “Telling a man his barn's not on fire isn't a kindness to him if it is burning.”
He grinned at her. The situation was funny if you looked at it the right way. He'd laughed when drunken Sil screamed about the invisible spiders that were crawling over his face. If Garric told the other villagers what he was thinking now, Sil could have joined in the laughter and repaid the boy's unmeant cruelty of past years.
“I don't think Benlo's hostile to you, Garric,” Tenoctris continued with a frown, “but he certainly isn't your friend. He's seeking you for his own reasons and those reasons may be very like the one that sends a housewife into the yard to fetch a chicken before dinner.”
“Will you go with me, mistress?” Garric asked. “To Carcosa or wherever he really has in mind?”
“Yes,” she said.
Garric stood. There was light on the bluff, but the hamlet
below was in near darkness. “I guess I'll see if Benlo's job is still open,” he said. “May I walk you back to the inn?”
“I'll stay here awhile,” Tenoctris said. She smiled also. “I came here to view the alignment of a constellation which won't rise for another two hours. I lied in case you wanted to be alone.”
Garric walked down the path whistling. It was more bravado than cheerfulness, but it wasn't because he was afraid. If you were out in the rain, you got wet and there wasn't any point in whimpering about the fact. This business, whatever it was, had to be treated just the same.
Candles glimmered through the windows of some of the wealthier houses. The path was as safe and familiar to Garric at night as it was in bright day. He continued whistling through the courtyard and into the common room, where Reise had spelled his wife at the bar.
Local men in from the fields drank together before going home to their families. They noted Garric with only eye flickers; he was a settled and familiar part of their world.
Benlo rose from a table with his guards and called, “Master Garric? I've talked to your friend Cashel and he's agreed to drive the sheep to Carcosa for me.”
“Ah!” Garric said in surprise. He'd been so
sure
that the drover's interest was in Garric or-Reise, not in a badger for his flock. “Oh, well, that's very good. Cashel's the best man in the borough for sheep.”

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