David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

The New King had been a smooth, shimmering thing of liquid obsidian, vibrant even when it was at rest. The corpse was still black, but it had become the dull black of basalt; silent and dead and opaque. The spell flung at Ilna had rebounded, killing the creature who'd killed so many in the past.

Ilna sank to her knees. She wanted to cry but she couldn't, and tears wouldn't have brought Chalcus and Merota back anyway.

The jewel on top of the stone corpse winked. Her eyes blurred, and she found that she could cry after all.

She heard whistling, the clear notes of the ballad she'd heard in Barca's Hamlet asThe House Carpenter but which Chalcus sang under a different name: Well met, well met, my own true love…

Ilna wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then dried them properly with the shoulder of her tunic. Rising, she stepped around the frozen creature and looked down the corridor. Davus was sauntering toward her, his lips pursed as he whistledThe Demon Lover. When he saw Ilna, he smiled.

"Well met indeed, Mistress Ilna," he said. "And a deservedly ill meeting for the creature that thought to rule men, I'm glad to see."

Ilna's face contorted. "Aren't you afraid that snakes will make this place their home, Master Davus?" she said, her voice echoing the sneer on her lips. "Now that you've left your post?"

Davus chuckled. "There'll be no danger from snakes, Ilna," he said as he stepped past her. He lifted the gleaming jewel from the head of its last victim, careful not to prick himself on the hedge of black stone points. "The King is back, you see."

Smiling, Davus placed the jewel on his head. It hovered, denting his brown hair without quite touching his scalp.

"A wizard named Dromillac drew me to the world where you found me," he said calmly. "He forced me to set a troll on the enemies besetting that place."

He laughed again. "Those enemies were no friends of mine nor of any man," he continued, "so I wasn't sorry to scotch them. Only when I'd done that and before Dromillac loosed the geas by which he'd bound me to his will, the creature whose egg I'd stolen for my tool-"

Davus touched the jewel with the tips of his right fore and middle fingers, still smiling.

"-caught me unaware and snatched my talisman. With which it turned me to stone and took my place."

Ilna nodded coldly. "I thought as much," she said. "After I began to understand the situation, of course."

She thought for a moment, then continued, "Master Davus, you said that you'd allowed that creature-"

She nodded toward the angled basalt corpse, unwilling to touch the thing even now that it was dead.

"-to live because you'd taken its offspring and were unwilling to wrong it further. That's what you meant. at any rate. Is it not?"

"Yes," said Davus, setting his feet slightly apart. "That's what I did. I suppose you're going to tell me I'd best change if I'm to resume the rule of the land, not so?"

"Not so," Ilna said, as cold and formal as Davus-as the King-had become when he thought she was challenging his judgment. "Don'tchange. The land, as you call it, survived a thousand years of rule by a creature that didn't care about humans. I don't believe it would've survived a ruler like you if he didn't sometimes let mercy soften what reason told him was the sensible course. A ruler like you, or like me."

Davus didn't speak or move for a moment, though fire pulsed in the heart of the great jewel above him. He chuckled again and said, "Well, no matter, girl. I'll go on the way I've been going because I'm too old to change."

He bent over the statue of the mongrel dog. "What were you doing here, I wonder?" he said, stroking it behind the basalt ears.

Light flooded the corridor, burning bone-deep through Davus and Ilna both. The dog gave a startled yelp. It turned, snapped at Davus' fingers-he jerked his hand back in time-and went running up the corridor trailing a terrifiedyi-yi-yi! behind it.

Davus straightened and grinned at Ilna. "Shall we find Merota and our friend Chalcus, now, Ilna?" he said. "I've a thousand years of misrule to correct, but first things first."

Ilna swayed, more stunned than she had been by the bolts the creature had flung at her. Then, blind with tears of joy, she began stumbling toward the statues of her family.

Tenoctris lifted herself from Sharina's lap. Mogon's blow hadn't hurt the old woman seriously, though the balas-ruby he wore in a gaudy ring had left a welt along her cheek.

"Graveyards focus even more power than temples do," she said with a smile of gentle pride. "Hani knew that, of course, but I don't think he understood that when he raised Stronghand's body he was also calling back Stronghand's spirit. When wine bottled from grapes grown on Stronghand's tomb was uncorked at a portal that Hani'd used his great power to open… well, I'd hoped something helpful would occur, but the result was beyond my expectations."

Horns called among Lord Waldron's regiments. Here in the rebel army there were shouts but no proper signals because the commanders were arguing. Bolor and the cousins who'd been with him on the island were talking with Lord Luxtus and his officers. Sharina noticed the courier who'd brought warning of the rebellion to Lord Waldron on Volita.

Sharina touched her scalp. Her hair had begun to grow back, but it'd be years before the present soft fuzz became the blond banner she'd had a few weeks ago. The courier's vessel had made a good passage to return to Ornifal so quickly without the aid of nymphs…

"Here, help me up," Tenoctris said, but she'd rolled onto all fours before Sharina could react. They rose together, the old woman smiling brightly-and Sharina smiling also, a little to her surprise.

This was a bad situation and might well become a fatal one, but Sharina was back among human beings. Bolor and his confederates were rebels and her enemies, but compared to a monster like Valgard-well, there were worse things than death.

Three horsemen under a white flag rode out from the royal lines. Sharina's lips pursed when she realized that Waldron himself was one of the envoys. They'd presumably intended to meet a party from the rebels midway between the armies, but Bolor's return-and what had come with it-had thrown the parley awry.

A lance with a white napkin tied to it for a flag was butted into the ground near the rebel nobles, but they were too lost in their own discussion to take notice. Calran seemed to have forgotten he still held his sword in his right hand; his excited gestures would've looked like threats to anyone at a distance.

The rebels had forgotten other things as well. It was time for Princess Sharina to remind them. A mace dangled from the pommel of the nearest of the drop-reined horses. Sharina lifted the loop of the weapon free, then rapped the butt against the boss of a shield leaning against a lance. The din cut through the argument and jerked around the heads of all the rebel commanders.

"Well, milords," she said, holding the mace head and patting the butt into her left palm. "Are you going to fight for mankind against monsters today, or do you intend to leave all that for Lord Waldron? I'd say-"

She pointed the reversed mace toward the lines of People marching from the city gate in perfect order. Their bronze armor was unadorned, but every piece shone like a curved mirror. In the sunlight their ranks were a brilliant golden dazzle.

"-that there're enough wizard-made monsters to giveevery human somebody to fight, but if you lot prefer to watch instead of playing the man, I'm sure Lord Waldron will take care of the matter himself. Or die trying, of course. He's a credit to the bor-Warrimans!"

Bolor scowled in red-faced embarrassment. "Milady, we don't recognize your brother as the rightful King of the Isles!" he said. "He's, well-"