David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Then for Merota's sake..," Chalcus said, suddenly relaxing. "That is what we shall find. What is your great price, milady?"

Arrea laughed in a voice as cold as the winter moon. "I need a task performed," she said. "Look into the sea and tell me what you see. It may be that none of you is fitted to carry it out."

"I've looked at water before," said Chalcus as he swaggered to the edge. "So far I can go with you, milady."

Davus walked after him, tossing and catching the chip of stone as if his hands were wholly separate from the man himself. He glanced at Ilna with a soft expression; turned then to Chalcus and twisted his mouth into a broader, harder smile.

Ilna faced Arrea squarely. It was like looking at a snake, though the woman's features had the chiseled beauty of a temple statue. Ilna turned and followed her companions. Behind them, Arrea laughed triumphantly.

The men were looking down from the cliff. The fierce updraft ruffled their hair into the liquid curves of candleflames. Ilna stepped between them and peered over, holding her tunic to her thighs with her hands.

The cliff was sheer-undercut, even-but at present the lake a furlong below had only waves enough to dapple the light reflecting from it. It was deep, much deeper than the Inner Sea off Barca's Hamlet.

Chalcus scowled, then composed his face into a smile and looked over his shoulder at Arrea. "I look and I see water, milady. Water and a bird in the distance, a very large bird to look as big as a gull within bowshot but in fact be so far away. Is that what we're to see?"

Ilna frowned. In a voice meant for the sailor's ears alone she said, "Surely she means the cloud there in the water, don't you think? That cloud in the depths, and the silk strands glued to the rock and running down to it."

Wrist-thick cords, tens and tens of them, were anchored to the rock face for as far as Ilna could see in either direction. They looked like the lines supporting a spider's web, but these were as heavy as a ship's cordage. They slanted toward the water and wove themselves into a hollow tube just above the surface.

"What is it, dear heart?" he said, obviously puzzled. "The water's clear as a baby's conscience, I'd have said."

"Davus, what do you see?" Ilna said, irritated to hear a desperate undertone to her voice. "There, where I'm pointing? And the lines running down to it!"

"I see nothing, mistress," Davus said calmly. "The same nothing that Master Chalcus sees. But if you see something, then it's there and it's you who must go the next part of the way."

He stepped back so that he could look straight at Chalcus without Ilna between them. He crossed his arms behind his back, leaving his chest open to a blow or a sword thrust. "As I feared might be the case, though I hoped it would not. Still, the price is the price; and it has to be paid."

Ilna turned and walked the ten double-paces back to where Arrea faced them over the masonry wall. She could've shouted to the other, but Ilna didn't like to raise her voice; particularly when she was angry.

She grinned. She had more experience with being angry than most people did-or anybody should, she supposed.

"I see a cloud in the water," Ilna said. "A cloud or a silk bag, I suppose it must be, since silk cords hold it to the cliff. Is that what you wanted to know?"

Instead of answering directly, Arrea gave her a broad, tight-lipped grin and said, "You'll do, then. It's not a sack, it's a cocoon. In it you'll find a great jewel. Bring the jewel to me and in exchange I'll open the passage for you and your friends."

"I can see the cords," Ilna said, speaking in a cold tone to hide the anger blazing within her. "That doesn't mean that I can breathe water, mistress. Nor can I swim!"

That last was a little more tart than she'd intended. Shecouldn't swim, and the thought of suffocating as the waters closed over her filled her with a disgust that wasn't the same as fearing to die.

"The larva needs air," Arrea said in an arch tone. "It's a white bloated thing with no eyes and no limbs and no mind, so it will neither know nor care that you're breathing some of what was meant for it."

"And has it a mouth, milady?" said Chalcus, come to Ilna's side now as she had come to his. "A mouth to swallow those who've come to steal its jewels?"

Arrea laughed. "Have you nothing to worry about on your own account, Master Chalcus?" she said. "The larva is squirming blubber which eats nothing and knows nothing about the jewel. It will not be aware that your slip of a girl here has come and gone."

"On your life!" Chalcus said, the planes of his face rigid.

Arrea laughed again.

Ilna turned on her heel and walked to the cliff, eyeing the task she'd taken on herself. Davus, who hadn't moved from the edge, said, "The threads weave themselves into a floor you can walk on before you're a hundred feet out, and they twist over in a tube well above the water."

"And the larva isn't danger?" Chalcus said, come up on Ilna's other side.

"Not the larva," Davus said, "but there may be parasites in the cocoon sucking its blood."

He shrugged. "They're not lions or wolves, Master Chalcus," he said. "There'll be danger, but there's danger in life. And we cannot go in her place or even go with her, because we're blind to what must be seen."

"Yes," said Ilna. "And while I regret seeming to agree with Arrea, whom I neither like nor trust-"

Chalcus chuckled and even Davus, who hadn't known Ilna long, smiled.

Ilna grinned also, pleased that the unplanned joke had broken the tension. "Yes, I suppose that does put Arrea with the great majority of the people I've met," she agreed. "Nonetheless, I don't see that my going down to a room in the sea, for that's all it is, is so greatly more dangerous than you waiting for me up here."

"We'll keep our eyes open," Chalcus said. He stepped close and kissed her, then turned. "I'll watch our backs, Master Davus," he said. "You keep an eye on her and tell me if there's anything I should do. That way we'll come out all right, I think; or anyway, come out best."

"Right," said Davus, fitting a good-sized rock into the pocket of his sash. He swung it idly, watching the far horizon where the bird soared.

Ilna touched the nearest line, attached only a handsbreadth below the top of the cliff where she was standing. The cord appeared to have melted onto the stone in a splotch wider than Ilna could circle with both hands. Given that the strand was strong enough to tow a trireme, and as best Ilna could estimate there were more strands than there were rowers in that trireme, the risks she was taking didn't include the chance of the cocoon breaking loose with her in it.

Turning backwards and wrapping her legs around the silk, she started down. The slope was gradual and the cord so thick that she could probably have walked it like a rope dancer, but she didn't need to do that now.

That would've been showing off, behavior Ilna disliked and particularly disliked in herself. Besides, her companions both knew what she really was; and respected her, for what she was and-she felt-despite it.

I know what I am too. And if there was a God to forgive me, I would still never forgive myself.

Above her Chalcus began to sing, "Don't bury me here, in the cold gray sea…"

"Where the seagulls cry…," Davus joined in with his pleasant baritone.

Ilna reached a point that three strands joined. She turned and stood, walking down the widening pavement and luxuriating in the feel of the silk against her soles.

"…so mournfully…, " her companions sang.

Ilna began to laugh, a thing she did rarely and would never have imagined doing under the present circumstances. She'd been alone most of her life, for all that there'd generally been people about her.

She wasn't alone any more.