David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

He threw the ruby against the rock, pretty much the same place that the previous one had hit. He couldn't be sure of that, because when the jewels burst all the bits vanished like dew in the sunlight.

"Ah!" cried the manikin this time. "You didn't need me, that was what you thought, wasn't it? That's what you said, at least!"

Cashel wondered if there was one sparkling little creature or if each ruby freed a different one. They sure didn't act the same; but neither do people, depending on when you catch them and what their day's been like so far.

"I still don't need you," Cashel said quietly, "but I'd appreciate your help if you'll give it. We're looking for a pool of water we can use for a mirror. Can you direct us, sir?"

"Can I?" said the little man. "CanI? Of course I can! But can you face the truth about the woman you protected, master?"

"Yes," said Cashel, holding his staff upright at his side. There was no point in saying more when a simple word would do.

The manikin snapped its fingers. A lightning-bright spark flashed into images in place of the solid rock.

When he watched the demon's earlier pictures, Cashel thought he was looking at a scene from the past. This time Cashel watched events that must've taken hours, but he felt no passage of time himself.

The murderer was butchering Laterna's body in the cellar. He'd brought down heavy knives and a stiff-bladed saw since the previous vision, but he was working in a stone tub which had been there beforehand. He'd dumped the dirt and lace-bodied fungus that'd been growing there into a pile on the floor.

The murderer worked with practiced skill, jointing the body and throwing the portions into the hearth that remained the cellar's only light. Fat blazed brightly at each new addition; after it burned away, the flesh continued to blacken and shrivel. The bones remained longer, but they too slowly crumbled.

The murderer never added fuel, nor did the coals change from the sullen red presences they'd been at the beginning. The occasional sparks and flares were always bits of the corpse: a bone cracking, or a globule of fat slipping onto the hearth.

Higher in the cavity a mechanism of pulleys and chains turned a spit. The rib roast there was cooking, not burning. With only the look of the meat to go by, Cashel might have thought it venison.

The silent heat of the hearth had devoured the body almost completely. The murderer took the roast from the spit and arrayed it on the serving platter he had waited to take it.

The last thing he did before leaving with the covered platter was to change his clothes, throwing the blood-soaked garments onto the coals where they blazed like tinder. Their flickering yellow light showed Cashel parts of the cellars hidden till then by the shadows. Laterna had collected statues and implements which he'd just as soon not have seen.

As the murderer left, the garments finished burning themselves out. Laterna's bare skull remained in the hearth, shrunken but not quite disintegrated, and the hinted face of Kakoral lowered from the coals.

The scene shifted. Cashel couldn't look away, couldn't even blink, though he wasn't sure that time had passed in the waking world. He couldn't feel his own heart beat, and the sky at the edge of his vision was a frozen painting.

The murderer stood before a round table; seated at the table were Kotia and a youth of Kotia's age but sharing the murderer's own features. Everything in the large room was of the same black, glassy substance, as smooth as the crystal walls of Manor Bossian but as opaque as granite.

There were no servants present. Rolls and vegetables waited on individual serving tables beside each place, but the murderer himself carved thin slices from the roast and set them on the others' plates. They ate, their expressions sullen and distrustful.

Evil glee transfigured the murderer's face. He threw his head back and began to laugh.

Kotia looked at the murderer in wild surmise. She spat out her second bite of meat; the youth looked from her to the murderer, still chewing as he frowned with puzzlement.

The scene faded to rock. Cashel stood in a nighted valley as thin clouds trailed across the sky above him.

"You see?" cried the capering manikin. "You see! Yousee!"

"I saw," said Cashel. "Where can we find a pool of water, sir?"

The little figure spluttered like a cauldron overflowing. "Don't you care, boy?" it cried. "Even a beast would care!"

"I care," said Cashel. "It was a terrible thing to do to Kotia. Was that Ansache? The man she thought was her father?"

Thinking about Kotia after what he'd seen gave Cashel a queasy feeling, but that wasn't anything he was going to admit to the little demon. He couldn't help how he felt, even if it was wrong, but he could make sure he didn't let that affect what he said or did.

"He was Lord Ansache," said the manikin. "With all the sins that blacken his hands, yet he isn't a cannibal-as the woman you defended is!"

"You have a duty to my master, poppet," Evne said, surprising Cashel and the little demon as well. "Fulfill that duty, or I will send you to the heart of a dead star for all eternity!"

Cashel turned to look at the toad. She'd climbed from the block of coal and had walked up beside him. He lifted her onto his shoulder so there wouldn't be any problem of him stepping in the wrong place. Somehow that latest threat didn't strike him as funny the way Evne's earlier fussing had.

The manikin must have thought the same thing, because in a flat voice it said, "In the hollow of the next valley is Portmayne, a manor vacant since the Visitor arrived a thousand years ago."

A streak of light raced from its tiny arm, off up the slope to the northwest. The line broke into separate glowing dots, then faded completely like the flash of a lightning bug.

"Portmayne had a pool, and it remains," said the manikin. "I tell you this because of my duty-but you will sweat, master, if you go there. Out of friendship I suggest that you follow this valley down to the river for your water."

Cashel looked in the direction the demon had pointed. None of the hills in this range seemed exceptionally higher than the others. It meant a climb no worse than that to Lord Bossian's manor and then downhill-which could be tricky, sure, but still easier than the climb.

"How far is the river?" Cashel asked, because he wasn't in a hurry to decide and he knew the right answer might not be as obvious as it seemed to him right now.

"Three days hike," said the manikin. "I say that because you'll be pushing the pace; but if hunger slows you, then four or even five."

Cashel shrugged. "I guess I don't mind sweating some to save my feet that long a scramble over rock," he said. "We'll go to Portmayne."

Cackling with hysterical laughter, the manikin extended his arm again. This time the line of light remained, though the demon vanished.

The night was still. The flashes and sizzle of wizardlight in the east had ceased, and no more shooting stars fell across the heavens.

Cashel let his eyes trace the streak that would guide him in the morning. He thought he could still hear the little demon's laughter.

"Good of you to join me, Lady Estanel," Garric said, bowing to the chief priestess of the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock. He gestured her to a cushion-spread chair at the corner of the roof garden. An ancient sand myrtle spread above her.

Estanel swished back her white robes and sat gracefully. Bees buzzing among the myrtle's small flowers seemed attracted by the lady's perfume; she ignored them with impressive aplomb.

"My fellow servants of the Shepherd and I are glad to save your time, your highness," she said. She had plump cheeks and her mouth smiled easily, but her eyes were as hard as those of Lord Attaper, who watched from Garric's side. "I'd have said the same even without the example of what happened to my colleagues who serve the Lady of the Sunset."