David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Ilna saw Gaur's tongue move, but she wasn't sure he was speaking further. Images formed in the air between his hands. Chalcus ran naked across a barren plain. Things came out of the darkness at him, never quite to be glimpsed even when they struck. Each tore away a strip of flesh. Chalcus continued to run, but he was stumbling…

Chalcus laughed. "A good one!" he said. "A touch on me indeed, Master Wizard. Now, Commander-may I hope that your hospitality to your guests extends to the wine I see on your side of the table?"

Gaur sat heavily. Ilna eyed him for a further moment, then put her cords away. The exchange was over-for now. Servants were filling her goblet and Chalcus' with an expensive perfumed wine from Cordin. Ilna didn't like the vintage, but it showed that Lusius wasn't stinting his guests with second-rate drinks.

Gaur was a braggart, a type of person that Ilna found offensive even when she had no better reason to dislike someone; in Gaur's case she was fairly certain that she'd have no trouble in finding better reason. What he had done, however-without preparation or tools-was a remarkable piece of wizardry. Whatever else the Red Wizard might be, hewas a wizard.

"You ask about visitors here, Captain," Lusius said as servants set fish soup in front of the diners. "We have very few, as the ships in the Carcosa trade are too large to enter Terness harbor. It's a good shelter for those of us who struggle against the flying demons, though. Have you heard of the Rua?"

The man to Ilna's left seized his bowl and drank the contents down. Under other circumstances Ilna might have done the same, but out of pride she ate her soup with the spoon of silver and alabaster which she'd been offered. It was scarcely a point of pride to show that she was more refined than this lot, she thought with a grim smile.

"Indeed we have, Commander," Chalcus said. He'd sopped a torn chunk of rye bread in his bowl and was eating it that way. "Saw them as well, on the horizon as we came up on Terness. Odd creatures, to be sure, but I wonder…?"

He paused, chewing his mouthful as his laughing eyes held Lusius.

"Though they're big for anything flying, these Rua," Chalcus continued, "I wonder that they'd prey on ships so large and well-manned as those that've been their victims. The pirates of the Southern Seas are terrible indeed, they tell me; but they'd never attempt ships the size of those the Rua take. Eh?"

"They're wizards," said Gaur in his grating voice. He'd recovered enough to sit upright, though he wasn't eating. Before him on the table was an agate tureen, silver mounted and covered with a lid polished from the same block of stone. "I struggle, but I am one and the Rua are many hundreds."

The Rua might very well be wizards; they'd arrived here by some means and wizardry was as likely a cause as any other. Ilna doubted the story about them looting the ships, or at any rate doubted that was the whole truth, simply because Gaur had said it. Liars sometimes tell the truth, just as occasionally a stage magician tricked out in red robes could show himself to be a powerful wizard, but she had a bias against believing it.

The food kept coming: a fruit compote; mutton roast; a dish of rice with raisins and ginger. Ilna began to peck at dishes instead of cleaning them, then began to wave courses off untouched. The offerings generally tasted good though unfamiliar-even the fish soup had been remarkably spicy-but there was far too much for a sensible person to eat.

And drink. There were various vintages, some of them doubtless stronger than others, but the total would fill a cauldron big enough to wash the garments of everyone in the hall. Ilna sniffed: if the castlehad a washing cauldron, it was cobwebbed from disuse.

Ilna asked a servant for beer; he went off-even the servants were male-and returned not long after with a quite passable lager. She nursed her goblet, but even so they were long at the table. The last thingshe needed to do was to drink enough that she lost control of her behavior.

Chalcus was drinking his share. In the middle of a story about a storm blowing him south so far that he saw icebergs like those that split from the glaciers of the far north, he began to sing, "The cuckoo, she's a happy bird, she sings as she flies…"

He was probably putting on a show for their hosts, but again-quite a lot of wine had gone down his gullet. Well, Chalcus knew how to take care of himself, drunk or sober, and he had the scars to prove it.

"So, Captain Chalcus…," Lusius said. He drank, belched heavily, and banged down his empty goblet. "Have you space in your holds for additional cargo, do you think? We here in the Calves do a fine business in the shell fisheries these last few years."

"She brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies," Chalcus sang, completing the stanza and raising his cup to drink. He blinked in apparent surprise to find it empty.

Setting it down he said, "Oh, we've no cargo to speak of, but no need for more than we've got. One chest is all, folderol for one of the lords who's the prince's bosom companion, Tadai his name is. He didn't tell me what was in it, just said it was to go to Chancellor Royhas in Valles. I'm be well paid for the voyage, so I asked no questions."

A servant filled his cup with wine. As the fellow took the pitcher away, Chalcus drank deeply again.

"Now, I shouldn't 've have said that, I know," he went on through a giggle. "I shouldn't be here at all, but our mast is sprung. I need to step a new one before I try the Inner Sea all the way to Ornifal, for all that the worst of the weather should be past by this season. You can't trust the weather, you know."

He tapped the side of his nose with an index finger. "No farther than you can trust men!"

"You're not afraid of the Rua, then?" Lusius said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

"Poof!" said Chalcus. "What do I care about some funny-shaped bats? We've bows on theBird of the Tide and men who know how to use them. If these Rua of yours come too close, they'll find they're sprouting goosefeathers!"

"Indeed," Lusius said, "indeed. I'm sure that's just what will happen, captain-but if you have a day or two, would you care to come out with me to the reefs where we fish for shell? I'll be there in my vessel, theDefender, because the fishermen daren't to go without my protection. And even so it can be a tricky business, as you'll see."

"I'll be honored to join you, Commander!" Chalcus said. "I and Mistress Ilna, if you don't mind. Sometimes her eyes catch things that mine have not."

"She's welcome, of course," Lusius said. "TheDefender 's no royal barge, but then, I don't suppose yourBird is that either."

Ilna had listened to the exchange with a frown she didn't attempt to conceal. If Chalcus was blabbering for a purpose, her concern was in character; and if he wasn't, if it was the wine talking-then all the better reason to frown.

Gaur had remained silent for most of the meal, glowering at a corner of the vaulted ceiling as though in deep meditation. Now, seeming to awake, he gestured imperiously to a servant and snapped his fingers. The servant brought a canister of gold filigree from a sideboard and set it before the wizard, next to the covered bowl which had been there throughout the dinner.

All eyes were on the Red Wizard, as he no doubt had intended. Ilna heard the man seated next to her curse under his breath and gulp down the rest of his wine.

"Our visitors will have noticed that I myself did not eat," Gaur said, his voice again that of a priest declaiming to an audience of laymen. He lifted the cover from the agate tureen; it was filled to midway with an amber fluid. "I never eat in the presence of others, but in the name of fellowship I like tofeed, shall we say? Would you care to watch?"