David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"We won't lose our direction, whatever else we may lose," Davus said, his tone making the words approving rather than a criticism. He stepped forward, taking the lead without pointless dithering. Ilna could've had worse companions in a situation like this, whateverthis really was.

"What are the people like here, Davus?" Chalcus asked from a double-pace behind Ilna, the same distance at which she followed Davus. There was no obvious reason why they shouldn't have walked in a close group like three acquaintances on the only street of Barca's Hamlet's, but it felt more comfortable to spread slightly so that everybody had an unobstructed view.

"In my day, all sorts," Davus said with a chuckle. "On the grasslands, nomads and hunters. That's northeast of the Citadel, though, and we're on the southern rim so it's nowhere we'll be going-"

He glanced over his shoulder and grinned.

"-for a time, at least."

A bird sailed through the high sky, a black cross against the pale blue. Though Ilna couldn't see any details at that height, the bird's wings were steady like those of a hawk instead of tipping on air currents the way a vulture would.

A ground squirrel whistled from an outcrop ten double-paces distant. Davus flung a rock sidearm with no more hesitation than a trout taking a mayfly. The squirrel sprang into the air, as instantly dead as the quail of the night before.

Ilna walked over to the dead rodent. She tucked it under her sash to clean when they next stopped. It wasn't a species she'd encountered previously, but she wasn't in a mood to be fussy. An animal that turned grass into meat was likely to be good eating, even if it didn't look much like a sheep.

Davus rubbed the ball and big toe of his right foot into the soil. The action puzzled Ilna until he reached down and came up with a pebble which he juggled briefly along with the two remaining from his original trio. He caught Chalcus' eye and said, "It'll do till something better comes along, I think."

"In your hands," the sailor agreed, "I dare say it will."

"Here in the south," Davus said as they continued, "there's villages but not so many. Near the cliffs-"

He crooked a finger back toward the rocky slopes behind them.

"-there's a great deal of power and things happen, as the three of us know better than most. The folk we're apt to find here are mostly solitaries for one reason or another, those who don't fear wizardry or who fear other things more. In my day, the King didn't chase down outlaws who took themselves here to the Rim, so long as they didn't return to trouble others."

"And the wizards who lurk here?" Chalcus said with a hint of challenge. "What of them?"

"The same," Davus replied. "Those who kept to themselves were allowed to keep to themselves. Those who thought otherwise found themselves stone statues, as-"

He turned his head, his lips but not his eyes smiling as he looked at first Chalcus, then Ilna.

"-I was when you freed me, mistress. But in my case not, I think, because the Old King found me troublesome to my neighbors. Which you can believe or not believe as you choose."

"What I believe, Master Davus," said Ilna, meeting the fellow's eyes and speaking with her usual lack of emphasis, "is that I'm glad to have your company. If others at another time felt otherwise, then I suspect they're not people I'd warm to myself."

She laughed and added a further truth in a tone that made it a joke, "Of course it's easy to find people I don't warm to. No doubt most of them feel the same way about me."

A brightly colored lizard the length of a man's forearm raised its head toward them from the trunk of a dwarf almond tree. "Do we eat lizards?" Davus asked.

"We do not," Ilna said. "At least as yet."

"I ate steaks from the tail of a sea-wolf, once," Chalcus said.

"Sea-wolf?" asked Davus. If he came from this dry upland, he wouldn't have seen the long-jawed sea reptiles who'd occasionally come ashore near Barca's Hamlet to snatch a ewe or even a shepherd if he wasn't paying proper attention.

"A lizard twice as long as I'm tall," Chalcus explained. "It weighed as much as a grown bull, I'd judge, and seemed hungry enough to eat one. It had similar thoughts about me, but as it chanced I learned that it tasted fishy instead of it complaining to its scaly kin that I was stringy. So I'll willingly forgo lizard today as well."

Davus stooped and came up with another chip of rock, this one pinkish and jagged. He juggled as he walked along, all four stones for a moment; then one flew onto a patch of bare earth and the other three vanished into his left palm again.

"There's good enough," he said, "and there's better. And sometimes there's better for a particular thing."

"Even among rocks," Ilna said, in so flat a tone that she thought only Chalcus would catch her self-mockery.

"Oh, especially among rocks, mistress!" Davus said, chuckling in full understanding. "Why, by the time we've rescued your friend Merota, I'll have taught you to appreciate the subtle delicacy of a bit of gneiss against the boldness one expects from an agate, eh?"

The three of them laughed together. In a quieter, sober voice Davus went on, "I don't think the pattern of life here will have changed much since my time. The Old King didn't let men rule other men because he thought it was wrong that they should. The King who replaced him cares little for men, as we see from the fact he allows the trolls to walk, but he must care a great deal for his own safety. He won't allow a power to rise that might threaten him. There'll be farmsteads and villages, nothing greater than that; and no king but the King, as he now is."

A trio of small doves flew from a clump of laburnum, their flight feathers clattering together louder than the soft coos they uttered. Davus poised, then slipped the readied stone back into his other hand.

"There's a patch of bright green on the horizon," he said. "Maybe a spring where we'll find food, maybe a settlement. Those doves are pretty things, and if we don't need them to eat then I'll let them go on being pretty till a hawk takes them or a fox takes them or perhaps they break their fool necks flying into a slab of mica that reflects the sky."

They laughed again, all in agreement; but Ilna noticed that Chalcus slipped his sword and dagger loose in their sheaths. She began to plait cords from her sleeve into a pattern that would be of use if what waited in the green wasn't a friend to them. She and Chalcus were willing to live and let live if other parties were of a similar mind; but if the others weren't, well, she and Chalcus were ready for that as well.

"Why are we here, ma'am?" Cashel asked, looking about the vast domed hall with the interest its magnificence deserved. The roof was clear crystal. You could see fluffy clouds through it, but though the just-risen sun filled the room with light it didn't heat things up the way Cashel was used to from working outdoors.

Because the room was so big, the number of people inside didn't fill it any more than the terrace up above was crowed by a similar. A dais rose in two steps at one edge. The first level was just above the heads of the spectators. On it sat the seven wizards Cashel'd seen at the dawn ceremony, still wearing their golden headdresses and gold-embroidered robes.

The step above was the same amount higher. On it was an empty throne of interwoven ruby and sapphire threads.

"Every visitor to Ronn should see the Morning Levee," Mab said with a faint smile. "I'd be remiss in my duties as hostess if I didn't bring you."

She paused, then added, "I expect to introduce you to a man here after the levee. But it really is an attractive pageant, even to me who's seen it often. I thought you'd enjoy it."

"Yes, ma'am," Cashel said. "It's pretty, all right."