David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Well, dear heart," Chalcus said, grinning broadly again. "I'm an honest sailor with nothing on his conscience. But a man who looked a good deal like me sailed in past years with the Lataaene pirates… and I shouldn't wonder if that man did terrible things in his time."

"Chalcus?" Merota called. She was clinging to an ancient wisteria which grew where the rubble wall met the finished stones of the garden's original boundary, now half tumbled. "Why's this statue black? It's basalt! Nobody carves statues out of basalt, do they?"

Chalcus squeezed Ilna's right hand with his left and rose to his feet. "I've never seen such, child," he said as he stepped toward the girl. "Basalt has too coarse a grain, I'd have said; though I suppose sculptors can be struck by freaks as surely as honest sailors who wake up with a girl's name tattooed over their heart and no idea who she might be."

"I scarcely think you can stay that drunk long enough to carve a statue," Ilna said tartly as she followed Chalcus, setting the cords back in her sleeve.

She didn't like stone, just as other people didn't like snakes or spiders; but there was a good deal of stone in the world, so she didn't cringe when she had to deal with it. Likewise there was a sufficient number of people in the world that Ilna didn't like, and she dealt with them too when that was required.

The wisteria flowed upward into a mushroom of green tendrils. The curve of the shrub's three thick stems looked almost natural, but where they bound the black stone figure at the heart of their knot "Merota, step back!" Ilna said. "Chalcus, you too. Let me look at this."

In this warm weather Merota was wearing only her inner tunic-normal for a peasant but not up to Mistress Kaline's standards of what was proper for a young noblewoman in public. If the governess managed to get up, she'd be very testy; though of course she was usually very testy.

The tunic was woven from a fine grade of wool, but it was sturdy enough that it didn't tear when Chalcus grabbed a handful and jerked Merota around behind him. His sword was a curved flicker in his right hand. Instead of looking at the wisteria as Ilna did, Chalcus kept his head turning to watch for dangers in all directions.

"It's all right!" Ilna snapped. All she wanted was to concentrate on the problem, but by asking people to get out of the way she'd managed to alarm them. "It's a puzzle, that's all. I just don't want you confusing it."

Faugh! That wasn't what she should've said either! But time to apologize later…

The statue had fallen face-down. The wisteria grew around both sides of the chest, with the third stem curving up between the basalt legs.

Ilna squatted, trying to make sense of the pattern. The size of the enveloping vine showed the statue had been here long before the shepherd built his crosswall; indeed, he may have chosen the line simply to use the tree-sized shrub to anchor one end.

The wisteria was natural and had nothing to do with the reason the black statue was here. The way it grew, however, had been shaped by the same forces that bound the statue, the same spell that bound the statue…

Ilna rose and turned. The soldiers at work just the other side of the garden wall weren't paying attention to the civilians.

"You there!" she said to the man just straightening from chopping roots that his fellows couldn't shovel through. "Lend me that hand-axe, if you would!"

"This, mistress?" the soldier said, looking from Ilna to his hatchet with a puzzled expression.

"Yes, you ninny!" Ilna said. She regretted the word as it came out of her mouth but hewas a ninny. "The axe, please!"

Chalcus lifted away the tool with a graceful sweep of his left hand. He hadn't sheathed his sword, but he now held it unobtrusively down along his right leg.

"I can-" he said as he held the axe toward but not quiteto Ilna.

"You may not!" Ilna said. She snatched the axe with a good deal less grace than Chalcus had displayed. "If this isn't done injust the right way, we'll crush it instead of freeing it. Just give me a little room!"

Tenoctris talked of seeing the forces with which wizards work. She'd explained that wizards focused the lines of force with words and symbols, and with objects which'd soaked those forces into their substance. The best focus of all was the lifeblood pumping from a severed throat, but only the strongest could even hope to control forces of the volumethat created. From Ilna's observation, even the very strong were usually wrong when they thought they were that powerful.

Ilna couldn't see threads of force, but in this case she could follow the distortion they caused in the way the vine grew. It was like following the path of a cat through high grass by the waving seed heads.

She judged her spot, then chopped twice. The axe flicked out a thumb-deep wedge of bark and fibrous wood. She'd split kindling every day with a hatchet very similar to this one, and her loom's shuttle and beater board kept her wrists and forearms strong.

After the initial cut, Ilna edged around to get the angle she needed for the stem on the other side of the statue's torso. That meant climbing onto the knee-high remnant of the garden wall and bracing her left arm on the stem. She could go much deeper this time since by scoring the first stem she'd relieved the stresses that'd otherwise have been building opposite her strokes.

The stem began to wobble beneath her left hand. Wisteria this old tended to be more brittle than ordinary trees of the same thickness. Ilna paused, leaning back to take stock. Smiling, she stepped to the left side of the statue. The stem between its legs wasn't really part of the pattern; it was there for the same reason a blue thread and a yellow thread laid together made the person seeing them think of green.

Chalcus, holding Merota's hand, moved around to the side Ilna had just left. The child had a wide-eyed expression; if she'd been offended by the sailor's quick manhandling, there was no sign of it now.

Ilna touched the notch her first strokes had made. The hatchet was iron and completely of this world. Its presence severed the unseen veins of the binding spell at the same time it cut through the woody stem.

"Now…," she said, speaking to bring her concentration to the precise spot. She chopped into the center of the notch, twisted the hatchet free, and chopped again. Changing the angle, she made a third cut that spat out a chunk of wood the size of her fist.

The stem above the notch shook convulsively. Ilna bent it back with the flat of her left hand, then chopped a final time with all her strength. The stem broke, toppling sideways under the pull of its heavy foliage.

"There!" Ilna cried. She set the hand axe down.

The statue shifted. It twisted its face up, no longer basalt but a stocky man lying nude on the ground. "Get back!" he shouted. "You'll be caught when-"

Ilna plunged forward as the world around her blurred. She thought she heard Merota scream, but she couldn't be sure because the very fabric of the cosmos was shrilling about her.

The last thing Ilna saw in this world was the great granite spike glaring down at them. It looked almost human.

Cashel hadn't exactly been following the ewe, but he'd wandered around the granite spike alongside her, keeping two or three double-paces away. Now and again you'd find a ewe that was jumpy about lambs she'd suckled, let alone human beings. This was one such. Some sheep were just like that, and some people too, of course.

The ewe had a stye in her left eyelid that ought to be drained, but it didn't seem her regular shepherd had managed to do it. Cashel figured he would, at any rate if they stayed on this little island for a few days. It was a way to make it up to the shepherd who'd had to run when the fleet arrived; and anyway, the ewe would appreciate it.