David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Willing?" said Hrandis, filling Cashel's cup again. Cashel didn't realize he'd drunk as much as he had. It did seem to perk him up some. "Are they willing to die for Ronn, Cashel?"

Cashel took a drink and swirled it in his mouth while he frowned over his answer. He swallowed and met Hrandis' eyes again. "I think they are, sir," he said. "They'd say they were, I know. But…"

He scrunched his face up over something he felt but couldn't point to. He couldn't say it so another person would believe him if they weren't disposed to.

"Sir, I don't think they know what that means," he said.

Dasborn laughed in honest amusement. "When we were their age," he said, "we didn't know either. But we know now."

"Aye," said Valeri. "We know a lot of things. Now."

Hrandis shrugged. "Ronn needed us," he said. "The citizens needed us. That's all that mattered."

Valeri looked at him. "Is it?" he said harshly. "Do you believe that, Hrandis?"

"Yes he does," said Dasborn. He smiled faintly, cruelly. "And so do you, Valeri, or you wouldn't be here."

"They've agreed," said one of the twins. "They're here and they're agreed. It doesn't matter what they understand."

"We didn't understand, but we're here," said his brother. He looked at Virdin and added, "Tell him the rest, Virdin. That's all that remains to do."

"Yes, I suppose it is," the white-bearded man said. "Go back to what men think is the Cavern, Cashel. You'll find your companions sleeping there. They'll awaken when you arrive. Tell them to take up the arms they find in the chamber with them. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir," Cashel said. He didn't know how he was supposed to go back to where the Sons were, but he supposed Virdin or whoever'd brought him here would take care of returning also. "What do I do then?"

Dasborn laughed. "There's nothing more for you to do, Cashel," he said. "You'll have saved Ronn for the last time-if the city can be saved."

"You can go now, Cashel," old Virdin said. He raised his hand in a salute.

The vast hall shrank down to the size of a pinhead, then vanished. Cashel lay on his back in a chamber.

He sat up. The room was lighted only by a rosy haze between Mab's left thumb and forefinger. The Sons slept on the stone floor.

Along the walls were six sets of armor. They stood as monuments to the skeletons lying beneath them.

Ilna kept her eyes on the horizon and let her feet choose a path down the lines anchoring the larva to the cliff. Usually silk carried the imprint of the tiny fingers of children who'd unwrapped the cocoons, then spun the long threads into yarn. Despite how thick these ropes were, they owed nothing to human involvement.

Spider silk carried with it a hunger as fierce as the noonday sun. Worms, though, both the little ones the Serians fed on mulberry leaves in the world Ilna knew and this huge one in the sea, had no desire save to exist. They and their silk were as bland as flour paste.

Ilna smiled. Worms had no personalities and no reason to exist-except that they created the most lustrous and beautiful thread in the world. That couldn't be of interest to the worms themselves. Only when Ilna felt whimsical-as now-did she imagine that there might be something in the universe greater than individual worms and sheep and humans.

More lines in bundles of three joined the ones she walked on. Sheets of steel-strong gauze bound the heavy strands together, twisting them into a trough which closed on itself near the surface of the water to become a tube. Ilna knew through the certain witness of her feet that the silk itself was no less intelligent than the worm that'd spun it, yet howcould the perfection of this creation not involve will and understanding?

She laughed again. There was no answer which her reason would accept. Therefore there was no answer.

Because she was looking outward, not down, Ilna noticed that the bird had changed its pattern from the slow circuits it'd been making on the horizon. Its wings stroked the air in slow unison, like the oars of a great warship making the first efforts toward driving the vessel into motion from a wallowing halt. The bird was so far away that it didn't swell in size even though it was flying directly toward her.

She frowned, but the bird's actions no longer mattered. The anchor cords and their wrapper of silk completed the tunnel. She entered, leaning against an outrushing breeze. It carried with it the ripeness of a plowed field fertilized with some indefinable manure. The light dimmed to that of an overcast morning.

Ilna walked downward. The footing was springy but agreeably firm. The light continued to dim, but her eyes adapted to it. The tube had a slight curve as it flattened from a slope to a plane, so she couldn't see the open sky when she glanced over her shoulder.

No matter. Her duty lay deeper, not up where she'd come from.

The wind soughed, rushing past her as if glad to be gone. Its odor was thick and unfamiliar but not anything a peasant woman found offensive. The tanyard in Barca's Hamlet cured hides with manure and lye. It was downwind of the houses when the breeze came from the sea, as it normally did; but sometimes the wind changed.

Ilna walked on. Some light still pierced the layer of water overhead, but it was a pale blue that made her hands look like those of a month-dead corpse. She smiled. That could be true, a month or so from this moment or the next…

Without warning she entered the larva's chamber. From the cliff above it'd looked like a spindle of yarn. Seeing it from the inside, she thought that somehow she'd taken a wrong turning that brought her to a place she'd never imagined. Only when her eyes absorbed the pattern did she understand the nature of the cocoon.

The interior was dimpled where lines attached to cables above and to rocks on the sea floor beneath pulled the skin outward. Otherwise the weight of water would flatten the bag and its occupants.

The larva was the size of a building, the size of a ship: a smooth mass moving with the slow majesty of a summer cloud. In direct sun its skin would be white with brown mottlings, but here the background was the leprous color of fungus on a tomb.

It lay in a pool of its own wastes. Hard-shelled, eyeless creatures browsed the fluid, their hair-like legs stirring the surface.

The larva's movements were as slow as the pulse in a sleeping lizard's throat, but when its head lifted slightly Ilna caught the needle-sharp flash of the jewel she'd come for. The creature shifted again, hiding the jewel, but now Ilna understood why there were highlights reflected onto the curved silken surface at the far end of the chamber.

And naturally, itwould be at the other end. Having come this far to fetch the jewel, Ilna wasn't going to complain about walking another furlong-even if she had to do so over the back of a giant worm.

The first problem was gettingonto the worm's back. It was easily twice, perhaps even three times, her height. From where Ilna stood the curve swelled out like the face of an undershot cliff. That meant she'd have to climb the cocoon and drop onto the creature.

Ilna turned her head, eyeing and then touching the silken wall. Immediately her stomach settled, though she hadn't been aware that she was queasy before then. The larva's movements made the whole cocoon undulate slowly. Ilna didn't like the feel of a ship at sea and this was worse-more like being in the guts of a snake. Focusing on fabric, even a fabric woven by a worm, brought the universe into a perspective Ilna was comfortable with.

The bag had several layers, each formed from three different sizes of thread: thumb-thick lines which alone or in bundles provided strength; straw-thick cords which formed a close framework within the heavy supports; and finally sheets of gossamer to cover the framework and make the bag watertight. Ilna thrust her left hand into the fabric, forcing the gossamer aside with her fingers to seize one of the heavy lines. When she was sure she had it, she reached a little higher and gripped with her right hand.