David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"I'm always ready to be entertained, Master Wizard," Chalcus said in a light tone. He touched his fingertips to the table before him, then lowered his hands to his sash.

Gaur glared at him. His eyes were a black that looked deep red in the lamplight. He twisted off the lid of the filigree container and reached in with thumb and forefinger. "These are flies," he said. "I've pulled off one wing already."

"Ah, every man should have a hobby," Chalcus said brightly. "I knew a fellow once who collected butterflies, so he did."

Gaur's rage couldn't have been fiercer if his eyes had filled with molten lava. He held a fly above the agate bowl. Other flies were beginning to crawl out of the open container, though of course they couldn't go far.

"Watch!" Gaur thundered, dropping the mutilated insect. It twisted on one buzzing wing as it fell into the bowl. The fluid rose to catch it, snatching down the victim while it was still a finger's breadth above the original surface. The fly disintegrated as it sank, leaving a blood-red blotch in the amber. After a few moments the color dissipated.

"Amusing, isn't it?" said Gaur, pinching another fly out of the canister. "They must be alive, you see. My little pet may look like a bowl of water, but it's only interested in living prey."

He dropped the second fly.

Even Ilna who was sober or nearly so saw Chalcus' movement only as a blur. His right hand came up from his sash with the curved dagger and swept across the table. Lamplight turned the steel edge into a shimmer of gold. The stroke was past before anyone else moved.

He slid the blade back into its scabbard.

Gaur snarled like a beast and leaped backward, knocking over his chair. "Ha!" Lusius shouted. He flung down the cup in his right hand and covered his eyes with his left forearm, as if he couldn't be hurt if he didn't see the threat.

There were two tiny splashes in the liquid: Chalcus had cut the fly in half as it fell. The portions sank to the bottom of the bowl: as the wizard had claimed, the livign fluid ate only live food.

Chalcus stood with an easy motion; Ilna rose with him, her fingers knotting a pattern swiftly.

"My pardon, Commander," Chalcus said. "I fear I've drunk so much that I might become discourteous were I to stay. We'll join you in the morning for a visit to the reefs to see the Rua."

He offered Ilna his arm; they turned and walked out. The soldiers were babbling at increasing volume, but through that Ilna continued to hear the sound of Gaur's bestial snarls.

Cashel threw the jewel against the slab of bare rock behind him; it should've been the mouth of the tunnel by which he'd left Lord Bossian's manor, but by starlight at least it looked as much a part of the mountainside as any other. A stunted cedar tree had draped surface roots across one side of it.

This ruby shattered with the same silent flare as the first one. A tiny image of Kakoral scurried up, then down the rock face like it was a horizontal tabletop. Finally the homunculus paused and glared at Cashel.

"I want to go back to my-" Cashel began. He almost said, "home," but he didn't really know where that was any more. "I want to go back to my friends. Point me the way."

Still without speaking, the sparkling homunculus made the sweeping introductory gesture of a showman. The shadowed rock became transparent, a window onto the cellar in which Cashel had seen Kotia's mother with her demon lover. Laterna sat on a stool, reading from a thin beechwood plate which she held so that the light of the hearth fell on it. She was alone until the door behind her opened.

Laterna turned to glance over her shoulder. Her face had the look of an ivory carving; it became even harder, even colder.

The man who'd entered was small and trim, fit-looking rather than muscular. His flowing robes had vertical stripes of white alternating with many colors. In the dark cellar the white gave off light, illuminating both the man and his immediate surroundings.

As before, Cashel watched a silent pantomime. The man gestured curtly toward the door with his left hand. He was as angry as the woman, and far more busily so. Laterna flicked out the fingers of her free hand as if she were shooing a fly. She returned to her reading.

The man's robes darkened. If her face had been ivory, his was a waxen death mask. He stepped forward, raising his right arm. He'd been holding a narrow-bladed ice axe along his thigh. He brought it down, spike forward.

Laterna leaped from her stool, flinging the beechwood plaque in the air. It bounced off the ceiling and spun back to lie face down on the black tile floor. A corner had chipped, but the sheet was mostly whole. Its back was decorated with a gilt sun in the center and a symbolic figure in each corner.

The woman tripped and fell forward. Her arms and legs jerked, the left side at a quicker tempo than the right. The axe handle waggled for a moment like a pigtail. The body arched, then lay flaccid.

The man hadn't moved since he struck Laterna. Now he raised both hands to his face and stroked his eyebrows with his fingertips. As he started forward, Cashel's window onto the past began to fade.

The last thing Cashel saw before rock replaced the images was the hearth that Laterna had been reading in front of. In its glowing embers, he saw the outlines of Kakoral's face.

The homunculus bowed mockingly to Cashel. It held up both hands, then brought them together overhead in a soundless clap. Streams of red wizardlight curled from each fingertip, spreading into a net that converged on Cashel's chest.

With a cackle of laughter, the little creature vanished. Wizardlight continued to play across Cashel's Oh. Not his chest. The lump of coal blazed with cold scarlet light to which the close-woven wool was transparent. Cautiously Cashel reached down the throat of his tunic and brought the coal out. He sat on his haunches, examining it with a care he hadn't taken in Lord Bossian's workroom. The wizardlight slowly faded.

Like any other piece of coal, this one had fracture lines. Even if it'd been whole while it lay in the ground, the process of smashing chunks out of the seam would've twisted it, spreading tiny cracks from where a leaf stem or a grain of sand had been trapped in the mass.

Cashel saw the patterns with great clarity despite having no light but that of the unfamiliar stars. Maybe there was a map? Or…

He squeezed with his thumb and forefinger at opposite corners of the irregular lump. Another man would have used a hammer, but steady pressure was enough if you saw the fracture lines as he did, clear as furrows in a fresh-plowed field; and if you were strong enough.

Cashel had always been strong enough.

The lump popped faintly, shearing along a seam too fine for human eyes. Cashel lifted the upper half, holding the lower portion in the palm of his left hand. Inside was a cavity not much bigger than a walnut. Something stirred in it; then, very carefully it extended a long hind leg and splayed its webbed toes.

There was a toad within the block of coal. It was still alive.

The toad turned its head, looking up at Cashel with one eye, then the other. It drew its outstretched leg back under it.

"It must have been a very long time," the toad said in a rusty voice. "Tell me-who is the King of Kish in this day?"

Commander Lusius'Defender was similar enough to theFlying Fish that they might have been built in adjacent slips. Ilna hadn't liked travelling on theFlying Fish, but it was as clean as you could expect of a wooden box that carried so many men.

TheDefender was stinkingly filthy. Even Freya, the wife of Ilna's uncle and as lazy a slattern as ever was born, would have said the ship was disgusting.

Ilna smiled faintly. It would've been embarrassing if a man she disliked as much as she did Lusius turned out to share her passion for cleanliness. Not that she'd foreseen much danger of that.