David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Cashel nodded to give himself time to decide just how to respond. He wouldn't want not to work himself, but he knew a lot of people didn't feel that way. After fitting the pieces together in his mind he said, "That sounds, well, pretty good, mistress. Did something go wrong back a thousand years ago, then?"

Looking at the comfortable people, well-fed and well-dressed, it didn't seem like very much could've gone wrong. There had to be something he was missing, or Mab wouldn't have brought it up.

"Something went right," Mab said. "The Made Men looked like real men except that they couldn't bear the light. They worked in darkness. At first they had windowless huts in the fields. Each dawn they went into their huts and hid from the sun. Little by little they began moving into Ronn, first in the lowest vaults but moving higher as time passed. They blocked the crystals that brought the sun and moon down from the sky to every level. And then a thousand years ago the people rose up behind a Queen, and they drove the King and his creatures into the hills."

Cashel looked at the other people waiting on the terrace. It was hard to imagine these folks driving anybody anywhere. All but the foreigners looked as smoothly plump as so many palace servants back in Valles. It made him remember what Mab had said before, about Ronn being a palace where everybody lived like the ruler.

"Well, it seems like things are fine now," he said aloud. He smiled at Mab. "People aren't starving, I can see that."

Food was on his mind, he guessed. He'd brought bread and cheese in his wallet, figuring that there must be water on Volita since it pastured sheep. It was past time that he'd have eaten if he'd stayed on the island, but he guessed he'd wait a while longer since it was just dawn here.

"The Queen was a wizard too," Mab said. "She caused crops to grow inside Ronn where the residents themselves could tend them without fear of the Made Men attacking during the night."

The spectators-despite their total numbers, they were too spread out to call them a crowd-gave a spreading sigh like the murmur of doves in their cote. A group of men and women wearing high golden headdresses walked toward the eastern edge of the terrace. There were seven of them, a handful and two fingers of the other hand.

"That's the Council of the Wise," Mab said in a quiet voice. The newcomers passed almost close enough for Cashel to have touched them with his quarterstaff. "They aid the Queen with certain tasks, including this one."

The Councilors reached the parapet and lined up along it. Together they turned westward, stretching both arms out as they began to chant.

"They're wizards?" Cashel asked, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Or just priests?"

"Wizards of a sort," Mab said. "Useful in their way, but only candles in the sun compared to the King."

She sniffed and added, "Though 'sun' is the wrong word to describe what the King's become in a thousand years of rule and a thousand more of exile."

The Councilors murmured a final word, their voices slurring together so that even though they spoke louder Cashel couldn't have repeated it. Not that it would've meant anything except to another wizard, of course.

A man who must be at least a mile high appeared in the middle of the terrace, facing the eastern horizon. His whole figure shone slickly. The feathered cap on his head by now should be catching sunlight the way tall trees do while the ground beneath them remains in darkness, but his boots had the same gleam. He raised a golden trumpet to his lips and blew a long call.

As the sweet, rolling note died out, the sun rose above the horizon and threw the dawn's first real shadows. The trumpeter melted back into the air.

The spectators resumed their conversations in quicker, brighter tones. The foreigners were jabbering among themselves in wonderment; one of the tall, fur-clad men had half-drawn a long sword before the spectral giant vanished.

"You're not afraid, Cashel?" Mab asked with a knowing smile.

"No ma'am," he said. "But it was a pretty thing."

The Councilors were silent. They'd drawn together like sheep in a thunderstorm; a couple of them were so tired that others had to steady them. It'd been an impressive illusion, but for seven wizards working together, well, Cashel saw what Mab meant about them not being powerful.

"Yes, very pretty," Mab said as she looked out toward the barren hills. The sunlight falling on them somehow made them seem all the darker. "There are many pretty things here in Ronn, but only the Queen could withstand the King when he led his Made Men back from the hills."

"The Queen's a wizard too, Mab?" Cashel asked. People were dispersing, either going down broad staircases built onto the city's gleaming flanks or simply promenading along the terrace.

"The Queen is a great wizard, Cashel," Mab said, still looking northwards. "For a thousand years she kept back the King, and her Heroes led the people of Ronn against the Made Men. But-"

She turned to face Cashel. For a moment he thought her eyes blazed with the same perfect blue as the nails of her right hand.

"-the Heroes all sleep in a cavern beneath Ronn… and yesterday, the Queen vanished."

Ilna felt momentarily as though her skin had been turned inside out and bathed in ice water. A flash of crimson light left her sitting on pebbly soil at the base of an escarpment. It was night, and blinking afterimages of the wizardlight filled her eyes.

There was another flash, silent but so vivid that Ilna's ears rang with the expectation of a thunderclap. Light rippled up a section of the rock face nearby.

"Don't move!" shouted a voice, unfamiliar but the same one which had warned them to get away in the ruined garden. Too late, of course, but Ilna couldn't complain since the person speaking was the one who'd been transformed from a statue when she severed the spell binding him. "The troll can't hear, but it sees well even in the dark."

What does he mean by troll?

A second flash outlined a section of the escarpment. It scaled off of the surrounding rock, crackling and popping like a much louder version of the sounds a treelimb makes when the weight of ice breaks it.

Landslide! Ilna thought, but she was wrong. It was a stonefigure, walking away out of the wall it'd broken free from. Her eyesight was returning, but from what she could see in the moonlight the creature was featureless-a lump of head on a squat torso with arms and legs as crude as a child's clay figure. It was easily four times her height, however.

"We're all right unless it happens to walk toward one of us," the voice said. "If it does, run-and pray if you're of that persuasion. Generally a troll will wander into the desert, though, so we ought to be all right."

"Ilna, my heart?" Chalcus called from Ilna's right, the other side from where the stranger was speaking. "Are you in this place as well?"

The figure-the troll-was between them, but as the stranger said, it was shambling away from the cliff without taking notice of the humans nearby. Its limbs bent where the knees and elbows would've been on a human being, but the joints made a squealing hiss. Its weight shook the ground.

"Yes," Ilna said. "Merota, are you here?"

No one answered, just the wind and the wheeze of the troll walking away from them. The girl had been standing just a little behind Chalcus on the other side of the wisteria when Ilna made the final cut. Was there a range beyond which the broken spell had no effect? There must be or all Volita would be here in this stony wasteland!

"Merota, child?" Chalcus called. She still couldn't see him or the stranger on the irregular ground, though they must be close. "Can you hear my voice, dear one?"

Still no reply. Perhaps the child was safe, then.