David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

She handed the ring to Sharina. The sapphire was as large as her little fingernail and seemed to be perfect. It was set in dense gray metal, lustrous but heavier than silver.

"Sharina," the wizard said, "your eyes are younger than mine. Can you make out what's written around the bezel?"

Sharina adjusted the ring against the angle of the light. There were tiny letters encircling the diamond; at first glance she'd taken them for brushed ornamentation.

"It's in the Old Script," she said. "I think…Ereschigal aktiophi -"

"Sharina, stop!" Tenoctris cried. "Don't read-"

But the Words of Power had already gripped Sharina's tongue. The stone's facets threw dazzling highlights across the cellars.

"Berbiti baui-" Sharina shouted, her lips speaking the words despite her mind's desperate attempt to control them. Tenoctris covered the ring with her own hands, but the light burned through her flesh and through the fabric of the waking world.

"Io!" Sharina shouted, spinning down into a vortex of adamantine light.

Ereschigal aktiophi! thundered from no human throat. The Words of Power filled Sharina's mind as she whirled out of the cellars, out of Valles, out of the sidereal universe.

Berbiti baui-

She still held the ring. Tenoctris had vanished into the white mist. Everything had vanished except Sharina herself and the clothes she was wearing.

Io!

The ring couldn't have been a trap. It was a tool meant to carry the user from where he was, where she was, to another place. It was a tool but not Sharina's tool, and she didn't know how to use it properly.

Ereschigi-

Beneath Sharina a plateau rose through the white mist, an island lapped by a sea of clouds. Squared fields covered the rolling surface, and many of the gleaming watercourses feeding or fed by the lake in the center were laid out in straight lines also.

Aktiophi The island swelled quickly beneath her. A building of polished marble with a two-story colonnade lay beside the lake, embracing half the shore in its spreading wings. Sharina didn't see any other structures, but except wooded stretches along the canal margins the whole surface appeared to be under cultivation.

Berbiti-

The ground was a hundred feet below, fifty feet below, twenty feet below. Pale men bent over their hoes in fields of squash shaded by maize. The laborers didn't look up.

Baui The laborers weren't men. They were People, wizard-made creations. The People captured in the Battle of the Tides had said they came from a floating island…

Io!

Sharina landed so lightly that her sandals barely sank into the soft earth. Then she fell backward.

A horn called.

Ilna stared at the Citadel, feeling impressed the way she'd been the first time she'd looked west over the Outer Sea from the heights above Carcosa. A thick growth of hardwoods and pine covered the base of the spire, but from midpoint the rock was bare and black and as sheer as a house wall.

It was beyond her to judge how tall the thing was, but it was very tall. The crystal crown overhung the basalt, though from this angle Ilna saw only the glittering points and arcs which projected beyond the black shaft.

Chalcus was standing arms-akimbo, leaning back from the waist to view the Citadel instead of just tilting his neck. He straightened and barked a laugh, "I'm happy that we're not going up the outside ofthat , dear heart," he said. "I've known a few men who could manage it-or could've, for the most of them are dead now-but I wasn't among them."

Davus smiled and set down the three rocks he'd carried as weapons. He took the bit of snowflake obsidian from a fold of his sash, caressing it with his thumb.

"Don't claim you're happy till you've seen what the choice is," Davus said in a voice as wan as his smile. "But it's the choice regardless, I'm afraid."

He nodded to the right. "Time we get to it," he added as he started off in the direction he'd indicated.

There wasn't a path, even an animal track, but because the ground was stony the undergrowth was too sparse to be a barrier. "I hear the sea," Chalcus called from behind Ilna, sounding surprised.

"Aye," replied Davus over his shoulder. "A lake, more properly, but too broad to see the other side."

"Well, perhaps we'll be able to do that from the top, eh my friend?" Chalcus said with a laugh. "We'll learn when we're there, shall we?"

"Not even from the top," Davus replied. "Which I'll willingly prove to you, Master Chalcus, as soon as we have no greater demands on our attention."

They came out of the woods onto rock bare even of leaf litter. The basalt was rippled like pond ice. It'd weathered into shades of lighter and darker grays, with patches of the original black where winter had cracked a flake loose. Ahead was the ragged edge of a cliff overlooking water which the sunlight turned a chalky ultramarine; to the left rose the chimney-straight shaft of the Citadel, splotched here and there with blue-gray lichen.

In the basalt wall was an oval hole taller than a man. The lower half was blocked with squared stones set in mortar. Over the wall, her arms crossed before her, a bare-breasted woman watched the companions with a thin smile.

"Did that come by nature or did someone, a wizard mayhap, drill it, eh?" Chalcus said as he surveyed what was clearly the next stage on their journey. He grinned like a jester, his hands on his hips.

"The hole's natural," Davus said, rubbing the obsidian again before slipping it back into his sash. "The lady there that we must treat with is another matter. The Citadel draws in a great deal of power. Part of it leaks back down this channel; and for that reason alone, she'd be uncanny. Her name is Arrea."

"Is she human?" Ilna asked bluntly. Her fingers were knotting cords without any specific intent.

"Less than many of us, I'm afraid," Davus said. "But we need her permission to go further."

"Well, there's ways and ways of treating with a lady," Chalcus said, sauntering forward. Though his clothes were worn by the hard journey, he was every inch the gallant as he said, "So, Milady Arrea, you see before you travellers who want only your good wishes as we pass by to deal with the tenant above. I trust you'll grant us that slight boon."

"For a price," the woman said. Her voice was clear with a pleasant sibilance. She shrugged her shoulders, sending waves down her long, coppery hair. "Everything for a price, traveller. And for that great thing you ask, a great price."

Ilna walked forward also, keeping a little back from Chalcus and a double-pace to his left. She knew how wide a swathe a blade swept when wielded in the flashy, curving style the sailor favored.

Davus, an equal distance to the sailor's right, tossed his obsidian point high in the air. "Arrea bargains from the certain knowledge," he said, "that killing her would close the passage. She'll bargain hard, of that I have no doubt."

He turned up his other hand: the point dropped into it. His nonchalant gaze had been on Arrea the whole time, without so much as a glance to judge the trajectory of the bit of stone.

Chalcus looked at his companion with a blank expression which hinted nothing of the fury Ilna was sure lay beneath it. Davus had blandly removed any chance they had to bargain. That would've disturbed Ilna also if she'd had only the words on the surface to go by, but she felt what she did not hear-a pattern weaving, subtle and deep.

"Certain, you say, my dear friend?" Chalcus said, his voice a song like the ringing whisper of a blade drawn from its scabbard.

"As certain as the rock-"

Davus rubbed the ball of his right foot against the basalt, an oddly sensuous gesture.

"-beneath us, friend Chalcus," he replied. "We must find the price she demands, not the one we wish to pay. Whatever that demand may be."