David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Carus was trying," Sharina repeated, "but wouldn't have welcomed your help or any wizard's help. He was determined to hold the Isles together with his sword and army alone, and so he became part of the problem."

As Carus himself would say-and had said, using the tongue of his distant descendent Garric or-Reise to shape the words.

Tenoctris looked back into the distant past, her face turned in the direction of the granite knob. She focused on Sharina again with a smile of apology for her brief absence. "Yes," she said, "I suspect you're right. But that doesn't matter, dear. I should've tried and I didn't."

"Well, you're trying now," Sharina said, getting up from a block of the fallen porch which also supplied the older woman's seat. She hugged Tenoctris. "We all are, and so far we're succeeding."

She looked back the way Tenoctris had been facing, feeling an edge of disquiet. She'd expected Cashel to be back by now. The messengers she'd sent should've brought him if he hadn't simply returned on his own after stretching his legs from the confinement of being on shipboard.

Barely aloud she said, "Of course Cashel has even less to pack than you and I do."

Still, she wished she saw his big, comfortable figure ambling through the ruins with his quarterstaff over his shoulder. Cashel rarely moved quickly, but he never failed to get where he was going-no matter what was in the way.

Instead of Cashel she saw a pair of soldiers from one of the line regiments approaching: a common soldier with a puzzled expression, and a half-angry, half-worried company commander whose horsehair crest was across his helmet instead of running front to back like the soldier's. They stepped purposefully through the stones and shrubbery, ignoring other soldiers except as obstacles to go around.

Tenoctris watched the men also, her lips pursed. Soldiers who weren't on guard duty didn't usually wear their helmets in camp, let alone mount the detachable crests. The most likely reason for these two to be formally dressed was they were coming to see Princess Sharina…

The six Blood Eagles loosely guarding Sharina and Tenoctris stiffened noticeably when they saw the men approaching. Lord Attaper had probably placed the guards by his own decision. Sharina hadn't protested, though she found their presence uncomfortable and probably pointless. She knew that she or Tenoctris either onecould be attacked, even here in the midst of the royal army. She didn't believe there'd be an attack of a sort that soldiers could prevent, however.

"I'm Lieutenant Branco, Third Company of Lord Quire's regiment," the officer said. He spoke to the under-captain commanding the guards but in a deliberately loud voice so that Sharina and Tenoctris couldn't help but overhear. Branco was at least forty, a commoner promoted to company command after long service instead of a noble on the first step of his military career. "Trooper Memet here says he's got a message for Princess Sharina from Lord Cashel."

Memet had been looking straight ahead, uncomfortably waiting for his commander to sort things out while he pretended he was a piece of furniture. Now his eyes flew open. "LordCashel?" he blurted. "Enver bless me, I thought he was a shepherd like me!"

"Memet," snarled the officer. "If you made this up, you're going to wish youwere a shepherd. You're going to wish you were asheep!"

Branco looked at Sharina and, without even pretending he wasn't addressing Sharina directly, said, "Your highness, Trooper Memet here hasn't ever lied that I know. There's some who'd say he doesn't have brains enough to lie. His story don't make sense, but I brought him to you anyhow."

Four Blood Eagles were lined up between the women and the two soldiers like thick bars across a window. The other two were behind them, watching the other way in case Memet and Branco were a diversion from the real attack. Sharina didn't imagine the guards really thought there was any risk-she herself certainly didn't-but they viewed their duties as putting themselves between the women and any possible danger. Branco and Memet were the closest thing there was to a threat, so they were making the most of it.

The Blood Eagles didn't keep Branco from talking to Sharina, though. Unless she told them different, thatwasn't any of their business.

"Let the trooper talk for himself, Lieutenant," Sharina said, hoping the words weren't as harsh as they sounded in her ears. She was afraid for Cashel and afraid for the kingdom, because anything that could harm Cashel was a danger to far more besides.

"Right," Memet said, standing at attention with his eyes on the far horizon. "Ma'am, this big guy, he said he was Cashel or-Kenset, not any kind of lord?"

"She's a princess, you bonehead!" Branco whispered savagely. "Call her 'your highness!'"

"That's all right, Memet," Sharina said. "Go on."

Tenoctris had seated herself on the ground, tracing a figure in the dirt with a bamboo splinter. Bits of stone that'd crumbled off the ruins made the task difficult.

"We were talking about sheep," Memet said. His eyes edged toward where Sharina stood before him, then jerked to the side as though sight of her had burned him."I'd been a shepherd on Ornifal, though I stuck with the army even after my dad died. A lady came and talked to us. I didn't see her come up but she must've done. She said her name was Mab and Cashel had to come right away or his mother was in trouble."

"His mother?" Sharina repeated, shocked into speaking when she'd intended to let the soldier get his story out in the way he found easiest. Cashel didn't have a But of course he did.

"Right, his mother," Memet said. He wasn't relaxing but he seemed to have sunk deeply enough into telling the story that he could forget who he was telling it to. "So he said he'd go, Cashel did, and he told me to tell Princess Sharina what he was doing. And then…"

He suddenly met Sharina's eyes squarely. "Ma'am? Princess, I mean?" he said. "Then they walked into the rock. It was just a rock, I swear, till she said words and they walked into it. And it was a rock again."

The soldier scratched his scalp under the brow of his helmet. This unique experience had driven years of training out of his head. He was a puzzled shepherd again who didn't remember he was talking to a noble because his sortnever talked to nobles.

Sharina's stomach knotted. She looked at Tenoctris, still sitting on the ground though she'd given up on the figure she'd started to draw. "Tenoctris," she said, "nobody who knows Cashel would expect him to do anything but go. Do you think it was a trap?"

"Cashel always seems to make the right decision in a crisis," Tenoctris said. "His simplicity cuts to the core of matters that less… simple people get confused by. Myself, for example."

She put one hand on the ground. Sharina knelt immediately and helped the old woman up. Leaning forward to see past the backs of the Blood Eagles, Tenoctris said, "Can you take me to where this happened, Memet?"

"Sure, ma'am," the soldier said. He looked sideways at Branco. "I mean, if the lieutenant says it's all right?"

"It's all right with Lieutenant Branco," Sharina said absently, taking a wax tablet and stylus out of her sleeve. "One moment, Tenoctris. I'll need to write a note to Garric, telling him what's happened. He'll want to know. And to Ilna. Then we'll both go with Memet."

The under-captain of the guard detachment looked at her. "Then we'llall go, your highness," he said, "if that's what you're bound to do. And if anybody gets the notion that you and Lady Tenoctris ought to step into rocks too, well, they'll discuss it with us first."

"Pardon me, milords," Garric said to Lord Tadai and the troupe of officials accompanying him to Erdin. "I'd like a word with the commander of our escort."