David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Lady?" said Memet. He was thinking as Cashel did: whoever the woman was and wherever she came from, she wasn't a peasant girl. "Aren't you afraid to be here with so many soldiers?"

"Afraid?" she said. She sniffed. "Afraid ofyou?"

"Not me," the soldier said, blushing. "But all these other people. Men."

"No," the woman said, "I'm not."

Cashel stood eyeing her closely, his staff planted upright at his side. She turned her attention to him but before she could speak, he said, "Lady, who are you?"

From any distance he'd have guessed the woman was thirty years old. Something at the back of her eyes was much older than that, for all that her complexion was as perfect as a baby's.

"You can call me Mab," she said, "but that doesn't matter. What matters, Cashel or-Kenset, is that your mother is in great danger. Unless you help her, she'll have no help and no hope. Will you come with me?"

"Mymother?" Cashel said. He turned his head and looked down. The shore below was the same jumble of ships and bustling men that it'd been a moment ago. He wasn't dreaming, then. "Lady, I don't have-"

He broke off before he finished what would've been as silly a thing as he'd ever said in his life. Everybody had a mother, whether or not they'd met her.

"Lady," Cashel said. He swallowed. "I don't understand."

Memet was looking from Cashel to the woman, his mouth slightly open. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, so he must've been wondering about being awake or dreaming too.

"There's very little to understand," Mab said in a thin tone. "You'll come with me now, before the portal closes, or you'll leave your mother to her fate. If you choose the latter, you won't be man enough to help her in this crisis anyway."

Cashel laughed. "I said I didn't understand, not that I was afraid," he said gently. "I still don't understand, but I'm used to that. When will we leave?"

"We'll leave immediately, from this place," Mab said. "The shrine will make it easier. Are you ready?"

"Yes," said Cashel. He smiled at the soldier and said, "I guess you'll have to take care of the ewe yourself, Memet. But before you do, please tell Sharina that I've gone-"

He wasn't sure what to say next. "Well, tell her what you heard here," he said, "because that's as much as I know. That's Princess Sharina of Haft I mean."

"Come now, or you won't be able to come," the woman said crisply. She stepped around to the side of the boulder where the carving was. Her bright nails traced a pattern in the air. "Here, stand facing the shrine."

Cashel grimaced and obeyed. He'd rather a lot of things, but he knew there were times you had to act without worrying about the details. Mab didn't seem any more the sort to exaggerate than Ilna was, or Cashel himself.

She was standing behind him, murmuring Words of Power. Her hands moved above Cashel's head, then to both sides of him. He felt the tingle of energies building.

The air danced in a cocoon of red and blue wizardlight. The solid rock gaped into a doorway.

"Tell Sharina I love her!" Cashel said. He strode into the opening with his quarterstaff before him.

Sharina sat as primly as she could with the other specialists ready to advise Prince Garric. The servants had fixed her a throne of sorts: a wide-mouthed storage jar, upended and covered with a swatch of aquamarine silk brocade. Though backless, the result was attractive enough to pass muster in a real palace.

Unfortunately the potter'd left a central lump when he cut his work off the wheel. Normally that'd just mean the jar rocked if it were set on a hard surface instead of being part-buried in sand. It was a real problem during the jar's present use, however. Sharina knew now to check with her hand the next time before sitting down to listen to hours of negotiation.

One of Lord Waldron's aides was speaking to Liane. She'd turned her head sideways but continued to take notes in the tablet in front of her. Liane's expression showed mild interest, but her stylus scored quick, brutal marks in the wax.

Lord Waldron was still missing. He'd gone off with the courier, his head bobbing in angry argument. He'd given no explanation, just snarled over his shoulder that his staff should remain under the marquee. Sharina'd seen Waldron in circumstances where he reasonably expected to die in a short time, but his expression had never before been so bleakly miserable.

"I'm sorry, Marshal Renold," Garric said in the same calmly reasonable voice he'd have used on a merchant who was sure he could get a private room during the Sheep Fair if only he kept saying so long enough. "Three regiments is the minimum which Sandrakkan must supply to the Royal Army and provide the upkeep for."

Lord Tadai leaned forward with a stern expression and added, "I'll tell you frankly that according to my estimate of Earl Wildulf's potential revenue and manpower, Sandrakkan should be providing four regiments. It's only King Valence's unwillingness to insult the Count of Blaise, who's supplying three regiments, that decided him to reduce the Sandrakkan levy."

In her fatigued discomfort, Sharina took a moment to parse exactly what Tadai had just said. Because of that delay, she managed not to chortle in amusement. You couldn't even call Tadai's words a lie because nobody was expected to believe them. He'd been polite, but he'd made it perfectly clear to the Sandrakkan delegation the direction in which the Royal position would move if they kept belaboring the point.

Lord Morchan thumped his fist on the table, making the Sandrakkan side bounce wildly. "Curse it, we shouldn't be here!" he blurted. "Everybody knows Volita's cursed. That's why none of this makes any sense!"

It seemed to Sharina that the negotiations, though tedious, had been very productive. They'd involved the Sandrakkan envoys giving way on one point after another, of course, but that was primarily because Garric's position-the royal position-had been reasonable to begin with.

Admiral Zettin drew himself up straight and said in the drawl affected by the Valles nobility, "Quite the contrary, my good man. We've made great headway and we'll make more. That's surely better than sweeping all Sandrakkan commerce from the Inner Sea and burning the estates within five miles of the shore. Not so?"

"Look, I'm just saying that we ought to get off Volita," Morchan insisted truculently. "It's an uncanny place, that's all. Everybody knows that if you go up to the top of the Demon-"

He bobbed his head, presumably indicating the granite spike that wasn't visible from under the marquee.

"-you'll see a wonder-but you may never come down again!"

"Morchan," said Lady Lelor in a poisonously calm voice. "If you'd give us just a little help, we'd all pretend to ignore the fact you're a superstitious ninny. Do you know a soul who's climbed-"

"Everybody knows what I say is the truth, milady!" Morchan snapped. Marshal Renold, seated between them, leaned back from the table with a sour look and his eyes unfocused.

"Everybody isn't such a fool!" the priestess said. "Do you know even asheep who's climbed the Demon, Lord Morchan?"

Morchan stood up, his face white. His mouth opened and closed silently. He repeated the process, then sat-collapsed into his seat like a pricked bladder-again, blushing furiously.

Sharina looked at the embarrassed nobleman with a rush of sympathy which surprised her. Morchan was superstitious, and he was a ninny-which he'd proved amply in the course of the negotiations. But he was also more right than wrong in what he'd said about Volita.

Sharina would've known that even without Tenoctris' warning as the fleet landed. Volita was a center of power. Sitting here was like being in a wind blowing sand too fine to see but which prickled through your tunics. Her eyes felt scratchy no matter how often she blinked.