David Drake: Master of the Cauldron

"Yes," said Ilna, more tersely than she'd really intended. She understood Davus being pleased to recover the throne he'd been ousted from a thousand years before, but they too had been gone from their world longer than she cared to be. "I don't consider you to be in my debt, Master Davus; but as a matter of courtesy, I'd appreciate you sending us home as you said you would."

"Aye," said Davus. "You'll be in time, I promise you. But we can go now, if you like."

"In time for what, my friend?" said Chalcus, his fingers playing almost forgetfully with the hilt of his sword.

"In time to watch, is all, my friend," Davus said. "But I'll try to give you a proper show. It's my second trip to your world, you'll recall, and the first was memorable right up to the end."

Instead of continuing, Davus paused to rub his bare feet on the ground in obvious pleasure. Ilna turned her head, looking out over the land she hoped she was about to leave. It was much the same in all directions; some portions greener than others, some hilly. She could see the far shore of the body of water lapping the east of the Citadel, but it continued northward out of sight even from this high vantage.

There was nothing improper in what Davus was doing, but Ilna wasn't comfortable watching somebody else so wrapped in emotion. Ilna smiled faintly. She supposed being uncomfortable with emotion was a flaw in her, but she had enough other flaws that she didn't expect to have time to fix that one no matter how long a life remained to her.

"I'd never have built this myself," Davus mused, his mind returning to the same world as his three companions. "The crown, I mean. It's a marvelous thing, a lens to focus the powers that the jewel controls over a much wider range. Perhaps if it were finished, it'd control the whole cosmos. Well, we'll never know that for sure."

Chalcus detached his hand from Merota's, patted her on the head, and absently reached for the dagger in his sash. He was probably going to juggle it to settle him the way the cords Ilna plaited did her; but his conscious mind caught him.

He opened his hands, grinning wryly. "What did your pet do with his pretty palace, then?" he asked. "Not simply turn young ladies into statues, I suppose?"

"Not even that," said Davus. "The jewel alone suffices for such matters. From what the stone's memory tells me-"

He grinned, pausing a moment to allow his audience to protest at the notion stone could remember. Ilna grinned back, her finger stroking the hem of her tunic. She returned in that touch to the meadow south of Barca's Hamlet where the sheep had been pastured.

"-the poor beast did nothing whatever with his creation, just prowled about it and built it higher. The creature had purpose, you see; but not a mind as we humans talk of minds."

"It has less than that now," said Chalcus, "for which I'm thankful. I'm not a vindictive man-"

He too paused, smiling. All of them, even Merota, understood that in the sailor's mind the righting of wrongs wasn't vengeance but rather a necessity of life; and they all agreed with him.

"-but if I were to stay here longer, I'd take a maul to what our Ilna turned the thing into. I wouldn't risk that on some black day it returned to life, the way I did and Lady Merota."

"But Idon't want to stay," Merota said, hugging herself with one arm and holding Ilna even tighter with the other. "Please."

Davus sobered. "Yes, milady," he said. "You've been ill-treated because of my errors. I'll do my best to make that up to you-"

Ilna listened with her face stiff. There was no mockery in the King's tone; which was a good thing for all concerned.

"-and to your world. Chalcus, Ilna-friends. Join hands in a circle with me and Lady Merota, if you will."

Davus extended his arms, palms up. Ilna's left hand was free. She took his right without hesitation. Chalcus took his left so quickly and smoothly that only someone who knew him as well as Ilna did would've recognized that hedid hesitate. He grinned in wry apology to her over Merota's head.

Davus had the grip of a plowman-firm, with enormously strong muscles beneath the callused skin. "I'd expected this would require a degree more of ceremony," he said calmly, "but thanks to the lens my predecessor built it'll be very simple. I hope you're properly thankful to him, as I'm sure I am."

Chalcus laughed and said, "So long as I don't have to-"

They were standing on a high rock, not the Citadel's crystal crown, though they were about as high as they'd been before. There'd been no feeling of change: they justwere.

Far below the sea washed the shores of an island. A city was burning on the mainland across a narrow strait; the sky was a pattern of soot and streaks of bright sunlight like claw-tears in a dirty blanket.

"We're on the Demon!" Merota said. " We're back on Volita! Oh, thank you, Master Davus!"

Ilna quirked a smile. She didn't have much interest in geography-she divided the world into places she could weave and places she couldn't-but even granting Ilna's own inadequacies, it was obvious that Merota had a very good eye for her surroundings. She didn't doubt that Garric would find a use for the child's talents once she was a little older. He and the kingdom through him used weavers and reformed pirates, after all…

"I need to be down there," Chalcus said. His voice was controlled but very tense. "There's people fighting. I don't know who they are, but what they're fightingisn't people as best I can tell."

"You'd be only in the way," said Davus calmly. "They call this the Demon, you say, milady? In that they're wrong, for it's no demon. It's the-"

He bent and laid his hand flat on the weathered stone surface.

"-troll that I brought here when Dromillac summoned me."

Pure crimson light danced, cascading down through the rock in brilliant majesty. Ilna's hair stood on end. Merota cried out, but only once; standing then as a lady should. Chalcus said nothing. His sword and dagger were out and his eyes were trying to look in every direction at once.

As the wizardlight descended, brush and coarse grasses sloughed off the granite. With a crackling roar, the hunching troll began to straighten. Waves danced away from Volita's shores in expanding ripples as though the island itself had just dropped into the sea.

Davus squatted, keeping his spread hand against the stone. Though he continued to smile, Ilna saw a hint of tight concentration in the lines of his face. The jewel hovering over him pulsed brighter, dimmed, and grew brighter still.

The troll stepped forward, crushing the ruins of shore-side buildings thrown down by time or whatever it was that'd happened a thousand years ago. The movement was jerky but slow. Ilna's first instinct was to fall flat on what she supposed was the troll's scalp, but dignity made her stand since shecould stand. She held out her hand to Merota, who gratefully took it.

The odd thing was that the troll remained stone, a granite outcrop with only the roughest suggestion of a creature that walked on two legs. Yet itdid walk, swinging its arms alternately. Their motion balanced the movements of the legs; never far from the torso but shifting in a different rhythm from the larger mass.

The troll didn't speak but the rock of its body squealed so loudly that the splash as it stepped into the sea was lost in the greater sound. Spray shot as high as the creature's armpits, spattering a few salt droplets onto Ilna. Chalcus wiped his sword quickly dry on his sleeve.

The troll took another step, throwing the sea into fiercer motion. At rest the water would came only to where the troll's knees should've been, though its legs bent in arcs rather than angles.

Paired, dazzlingly intense bolts of wizardlight ripped the black sky: crimson followed in a heartbeat by azure. More daylight flooded down, lighting the crater in the heart of the city. Foul white parodies of men crawled from the basin, spilling to every side like froth from an overheated kettle. A ring of human soldiers stood against them, but already some of the creatures were penetrating into the wider city through gaps worn in the defenders' line.