David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Who rules now, then," Ilna said, "if your wizard-king doesn't?"

"I don't know," said Davus with a smile. "I know only that the Old King wouldn't have allowed this to happen. Therefore-"

He turned his palm up as if holding the proof in it.

"-he no longer rules."

In a more sober tone he went on, "He wasn't perfect, the Old King. It's not good for any man to hold the power he did. He kept a loose rein on this land in the main, but he wouldn't abide kings or armies. When folk made enough problems that he took notice, he changed them into stone. Like enough he made mistakes; he was human, after all. But he took his duties seriously."

"If they say no worse of me when I die…," Ilna said. It was only when she heard the words that she realized that her thoughts had reached her lips. "Then I'll have no right to complain."

She cleared her throat and looked sharply at Davus, bringing her mind back to the present. She'd been lost in memories of the things she'd done in the past. "Was it your wizard-king who made you into a statue, then, Master Davus?"

Davus chuckled. "Not that I recall," he said, "and not that I believe, either. A wizard of your world drew me to him, for purposes that were none of mine. But who turned me to stone… I don't know."

"There's a thing I see in the distance there," Chalcus said. He pointed, his left arm to the first two fingers indicating a glitter where the dark gray sky met the black horizon to the north. "That looks like the face of a glacier; which is nothing I'd expect to see in these warm latitudes. Can you tell me what it is, friend?"

"I could say that it's new to me as well…," Davus said, following the line of Chalcus' arm with a grim expression. "For it's been built since I was snatched away. In my time the Citadel was in that place, the king's dwelling, on a tall spire of rock standing out from the plain."

Chalcus nodded. "That's the palace, then," he said, seeming to settle inside now that he had a name to give what had been unknown and therefore threatening.

"You can call it that if you like," Davus said, his tone cool but leaving no doubt of his disagreement. "They say the King lived as simply as any peasant, though; the King that was, I mean. And those crystal spires that're so high we can see them even from here on the rim, well, they're nothing that King built in the thousands of years he ruled this land."

He grinned with a sort of humor that made Ilna realize that Davus, whoever he was, wasn't out of place in company that included folk as hard as Chalcus and herself.

"So there's a new king in the land," he said, sweeping up more pebbles. "And he's a wizard too, a great one to have built such a splendid thing as we see. But he's not so good for the people of this land as the man he replaced, I fear; and maybe he's not a man at all."

He turned slightly. Instead of resuming his juggling he drew back his right arm, then snapped a pebble toward the base of a stand of thorn scrub several double-paces distant. Ilna heard thethwock! of the stone hitting flesh. A quail shot straight into the air, thrashing wildly but silent. It flopped back onto the dry ground, still twitching. It'd been dead from the instant the stone took its head off.

"Well thrown, friend," Chalcus said, his voice neutral but leaving no doubt at all the praise was sincere.

"It won't make much of a dinner for three," Davus said. "Still, it's something to sleep on, and at dawn perhaps we can do better."

Ilna grinned as she walked over to clean and pluck the bird. Davus was obviously proud of his skill, but the quiet fashion he displayed it was one she found familiar from her own life.

Chalcus began shaving twigs to make tinder into which he'd strike a spark from back of his dagger. Davus cleared his throat, looking at neither of them. "Mistress," he said uncomfortably, "I saw three persons around me in the moment you broke the spell. The third would be the child Merota you were calling?"

"Yes," said Ilna. Then, with emphasis, "Yes. But she wasn't caught in this… trap the way Chalcus and I were. That's right, isn't it?"

"From where Mistress Merota was standing," said Davus, his eyes on the far-off crystal glint, "I'm afraid she must have been caught as well. If she's not here on the rim of the land, close by the rest of us-"

"She'd have answered if she was," Chalcus snapped. "Unless she was hurt?"

"The transition would no more have hurt her than walking through a doorway would," Davus said, dipping his chin in negation. "But if she's not here at the edge, then she's at the center. She's at the Citadel."

Ilna eyed the jagged glitter on the horizon. Normally moonlight softened the lines of what it fell on. It wasn't softening that thing; or if it was She chuckled, a brittle sound in keeping with her present mood. She began to pluck the quail, anger and her strong fingers making up for the fact she hadn't been able to scald the feathers first to loosen them.

"If that's a mast of rock, then it's a very long way from here," Chalcus said as he laid his fireset methodically. He looked up at Davus. "Not so, sir?"

"Very much so," Davus agreed. "Since we've only our legs for transport it'll take us many days to get there."

"Us," repeated Ilna without expression. "You plan to come with Chalcus and me, Master Davus?"

"I'm the reason you and the child are here, mistress," Davus agreed. "It's only justice that I should help you as much as I can. Don't you think so?"

"Yes," said Ilna, thrusting the point of her bone-cased paring knife under the quail's breastbone and slicing its belly open. "I do. And the fact you do as well, Master Davus-"

She looked up at him with what was for her a warm smile.

"-is the best news I've heard in this place!"

"One advantage of having been poor all of my life…," Tenoctris said, eyeing her sturdy leather satchel. It held the tools of her art and was the only luggage she was taking to Valles. "Is that I don't find it difficult to pack all I need."

Sharina laughed. Tenoctris was a friend and colleague, but she'd been born into a noble family. An impoverished noble family, to be sure: but that meant there were only half a dozen servants in Tenoctris' household. Sharina'd served tables herself for the customers in her father's inn.

"I never thought of myself as poor," Sharina said. "Weweren't poor for Barca's Hamlet, of course; but nobody in Barca's Hamlet had very much. I didn't have trouble packing either."

"People don't need very much," she added, watching the bustle as Lord Waldron's squadron loaded for the voyage east. By now she'd seen enough similar scenes to appreciate what was really going on instead of viewing it as a wildly chaotic swirl.

For all the great weight of gear going into the five ships of the squadron, the individual soldiers had almost nothing of their own. Besides arms and a spare tunic, they might carry some little talisman of home or souvenir of a place they'd been and liked. A religious icon, a flute or ocarina; perhaps a letter or a girl's face painted on the inside of a folded wooden notebook.

"A little peace wouldn't come amiss," Tenoctris said, a trifle wistfully. "I had that when I was poor, too."

She laughed, back to her normal sprightly self. "Until the world ended, literally for tens of thousands of people and very nearly for humanity," she added. "In part because I was living peaceably with my books instead of helping whoever was trying to prevent the disaster."

"King Carus was," Sharina said, looking down the beach to where her brother met with the second delegation from Earl Wildulf. She couldn't see Garric. He was encircled by Blood Eagles, and around them a thicker ring of people who wanted to talk with the Prince or be close to the Prince or justsee the Prince. It was hard to imagine that…