David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Virdin paused before entering. He said in a soft voice, "I wonder what it's going to be like to rest? Others have done it, so I suppose I can learn; but…"

"You've earned it, Virdin!" Mab said harshly. "Never has anyone earned his rest more than you have!"

Virdin looked at her. He had the features of a young man, though Mab said he'd been old when he came down to the temple the first time. The look in his eyes now was older even than that: it was older than the rock of this mountain.

"It hasn't anything to do with what's earned or not earned, mistress," he said, his tone that of a mother to her sleeping infant. "It's granted or it isn't granted. And if there's any justice in the decision, then it isn't justice as men see it. As you know well."

"Yes," said Mab. She smiled, an expression that took Cashel's breath away for its mixture of love and sadness and cold, bright certainty. "But sometimes there's man's justice also, if only by chance. You have your rest now, Heroes; and the thanks of one who used you hard in the past."

"Come on, Menon," Dasborn said to the living twin paired with him. "The lady has much to do; and unlike us, she'll have no more rest than she's had the past thousand years. Not so, milady?"

Mab's smile became a mere twitch at the corners of her mouth. "Not for a time," she agreed. "Ronn uses her servants hard. But perhaps even for me, one day."

The Heroes walked into the temple, three and then three. The living men set their dead comrades against the side wall, then began stripping off their own equipment. Dasborn's right arm dangled from a broken collar-bone. Cashel hadn't noticed the injury while the sardonic Hero wore his armor.

"Well, Cashel," Mab said as they waited. "You've done as much to save Ronn as anyone has, myself included. What would you like as your reward?"

"Reward?" Cashel said, genuinely surprised. The word took his mind out of here-and-now immediacy to a world where people made plans and agreements. "Oh, ma'am, I have everything I need and more. Just take me back to my friends and, and Sharina."

Mab gave him a funny expression. It was a smile, he supposed, but there was more to it than that.

"Ah, ma'am?" he added. "You said when you brought me here that my mother needed help. Was that really true, or were you just saying to get me to come along? I guess that wouldn't be a lie the way most people look at lies."

"Wouldn't it be?" Mab said tartly. "I'dcall it a lie."

She smiled and in a gentler voice went on, "Your mother was in the worst sort of danger, but when you saved Ronn you saved her as well."

She looked like she might say something else, but in the end she didn't. Cashel waited a moment longer, then said, "Ma'am, it'd have been all right. I guess Ronn has better folks and worse ones, same as any place does; but the things the King made weren't… ma'am, they shouldn't'vebeen. The King had the power to make them and he made them, but they hadn't any more reason than that. I'm sorry so many folks got hurt wiping the earth of them-"

He glanced at the Heroes returning their gear to the racks it'd come from. The temple's interior had a soft glow of its own, not sunlight brought down to the cellars through crystals.

"-but it had to be done; and I'm glad for anything I did to help."

Mab nodded, but she was frowning at thoughts a long distance from the present. She looked sharply at Cashel and said, "Cashel, how well did you know your father Kenset?"

He shrugged, frowning in turn. "Ma'am, not real well," he said. He let his eyes drift off because this talk embarrassed him, but he went on, "He was around, but he didn't have much to do with me and Ilna. Sometimes he got a little money ahead and gave something to our grandmother, but more likely he came by to cadge the price of ale from her-and got sent away with a flea in his ear."

Cashel cleared his throat. "We weren't ashamed of him," he went on. "Only he made it clear he didn't want to be around us, and we didn't have any call to be around him."

Mab didn't speak for a moment. Her face had the stillness of a statue's, a poised but emotionless expression. "Yes," she said. "I can see that. Though it was his own choice!"

Suddenly fiery, she looked at Cashel. "What did Kenset say about where he'd been?" she said. "Where he'd been, and who your mother was!"

"Nothing, ma'am," Cashel said. "Not to grandmama, not to me and my sister. Not to anybody."

"What's happened to us?" said Herron-not Virdin but Herron, who'd just set Virdin's sword on the rack from which he'd taken it a day or a lifetime before.

He and his friends walked out of the temple uncertainly. "What's-Orly, the Queen's back!"

"Yes," said Mab. "You brought me back. You and your fellows-"

She turned her head back toward Cashel.

"-and Cashel here. Now it's time to return to the Assembly Hall, fellow citizens, and give thanks for the city's survival."

"But…," Herron said, his face white. He was limping worse than Virdin had when the Hero wore Herron's flesh, and he leaned sideways to favor the bruises on his chest.

"Manza's dead," said Enfero, looking back at his friend's corpse, laid out in front of the twin Minon's gaudy armor and equipment. "Manza'sdead. And Stasslin!"

"Yes," said Mab, "and many others as well. But Ronn and her people are safe, today and in the future, because of their sacrifice and of yours."

"It's not worth it!" Orly said. He was clutching his right arm to his chest with his left to keep it from swinging and making the pain of his broken collar-bone worse. "I thought it was when we were playing at heroes, but it isn't!"

Mab shrugged. "I don't know whether it's worth it or not," she said. "It's done, for now and forever."

She nodded to the bodies on the temple floor. "It's fitting for them to remain in the shrine," she said. "They earned the right."

She made a glittering azure gesture with her right hand; the temple doors swung closed with the smooth assurance of a wave climbing the shore.

"If I'd known…," Orly said, his body turning but his face cast down to the pavement of living rock.

"It was worth it for men," said Cashel. He stepped over to Herron and offered the wounded man his arm. "It was worth it for you and your friends. You proved you were men when you came down here. Your city 's lucky to have you in it."

"Thanks, but I can make it," said Herron, forcing himself to straighten. He touched Cashel's shoulder but then released it to shuffle along on his own.

They walked toward the shaft that would carry them to the surface again. The stone plaza had an inviting bright emptiness as sure as it'd threatened before. The Sons stood taller than they had when they came through the darkness; they were no longer boys.

"In addition to sending you back, Cashel," Mab said, "I'll come along for a time. Though you may not need anything yourself, I believe you'll find that your friends do."

She laughed, a sound more cheerful than any that can have echoed in this place for long ages since. "And your world is lucky to have you as well," she added with the same merry lilt.

"Glad to see you again, your highness," said Under-Captain Ascor, holding the horse's reins while two of his men lifted Tenoctris down from the pillion. "I wasn't sure how I was going to explain to Commander Attaper how it was I'd managed to lose you."

Ascor sounded aggrieved. Bodyguards felt the folk they guarded shouldn't just disappear on them. Sharina more or less agreed, but she had more important things on her mind than trying to explain to the soldier a situation that she didn't fully understand herself.

She swung herself out of the saddle once Tenoctris was clear. "Lord Bolor's troops are reinforcing the royal forces," she said, remembering that none of the troops gathered under Waldron's banners realized that the rebels of a few moments before were now valued allies. "It's very important that Tenoctris reaches the temple where all this started. Lord Waldron's sending me a company of the troops he brought from Volita with him, butI'll be in command. My orders to you-"