David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Liane nodded to the messenger-one of her spies, obviously-and stood expectantly. Nobody but Garric paid any attention.

Garric stood also and slapped the table. Everyone jumped; Lord Waldron reached reflexively for the hilt of the sword which he wasn't wearing.

"Gentlemen," said Garric. His tone and expression were stiff, just short of angry. "Lady Liane has an announcement."

"An emergency requiring Prince Garric's presence with troops has arisen at the Shrine of the Sister," Liane said. As she spoke, she set her scrolls back each into its place in her travelling desk, then closed the inlaid lid over the cavity.

"Right," said Waldron, no longer angry. To an aide he went on, "Alert Lord Tosli. We'll take the whole palace regiment, so go next to the camp and tell Lord Mayne or whoever's on duty in his headquarters to bring his regiment at once to replace Tosli's men."

"But about the point we're discussing…?" said Tadai.

"For the time being…," Garric said. "That is, until I give different orders, Lord Insto's regiment-" which had the highest number of sickness-related casualties; they'd suffered badly on the voyage from Valles and hadn't recovered yet "-will be billeted on the northern arm of the harbor-" which the troops could easily fortify with a short wall across the base of the peninsula before they had time to build a proper fort. "They'll cause less irritation to ordinary citizens there than if they were living in the middle of the city. They'll be concentrated, but they can deploy either by land or sea to wherever they're needed."

Reise nodded; Waldron shrugged, impatient to get moving. Garric knew from Liane's phrasing that this wasn't an emergency in which seconds counted, so he could use the summons as a way to finish a discussion that would go on for many further hours if merely adjourned.

"But the source of the regiment's pay hasn't been decided," Tadai said. "I-"

"If I may?" Liane said sharply, looking toward Garric. She reopened her notebook but didn't glance down at it.

"Speak," said Garric, curtly formal.

"Two-thirds of the regiment's pay might come from the Vicar's revenues," Liane said, "with the remainder from the royal treasury in acknowledgment of your right to withdraw the troops without notice should the need arise."

"Done," said Garric. "Lord Tadai, prepare the decree for my signature. Lord Insto will be under the command of the Vicar until and unless I recall the regiment to the royal army."

"I don't like the idea of my legates taking orders from civilians, your highness!" Waldron said, frozen in the middle of his stride toward the door.

"Mylegates, if you please, Lord Waldron," Garric said coldly. "And I prefer that system to having two competing authorities in one jurisdiction."

He broke the chill rebuff with a smile. "Since the Vicar, Lord Uzinga, is your wife's nephew and the man you recommended for the post, Waldron, I think you ought to be able to work things out. Now, let's get moving."

"Well, but there's the principle…," Waldron was muttering as he and Garric stepped into the hall together. It was a silly enough comment that the old warrior choked off the rest of the thought before he embarrassed himself further.

His aides and Garric's-Lord Lerdain was carrying Liane's travelling desk; from what Garric could tell the youth was besotted with Liane, but he was too much in awe of her to get himself into trouble by saying the wrong thing-were right behind them. The rest of the guard detachment formed around them in the hallway. The captain on duty handed Waldron his sword; during military operations the rules changed, even for the Blood Eagles.

The door slammed, leaving Reise and Tadai behind to wrestle with the problem of converting Garric's decision into the legally appropriate arrangement of words. The whole entourage started down the corridor in an echoing crash of hobnailed boots and jangling armor.

"Your highness!" Liane said, shouting to be heard.

"Eh?" said Garric, gesturing her forward into the space between him and Lord Waldron. "What is it that's going on at the Shrine of the Sister?"

"Nothing, your highness," Liane said, not quite so shrilly as before. "I want to call on the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock, but I didn't want to say that in the room with the mechanical birds in it."

"The birds?" Garric said, frowning. "The present from the priests of the Shepherd, you mean?"

"Yes, in a way," said Liane. "But it occurred to me that just as Lord Anda didn't know about the urn, so the birds you were given in the name of the Shepherd may not have been what Lady Estanel and her colleagues thought they were sending you. I've just received information that my guess was correct. That doesn't tell me why someone wanted to put that cage of birds close to you, but one of the possibilities is that they were listening to what was said in their presence."

"Can't say I'm sorry," snapped Lord Waldron, who'd heard as well. "I don't need anything to do with the Sister except send the kingdom's enemies to greet her!"

"Can't say I do either," agreed Garric. And, as they burst out of the side entrance to the courtyard where the duty regiment was already drawn up, he lifted Liane with his left arm alone and kissed her.

Cashel looked about the windblown waste to get his bearings. To tell the truth, that didn't put him much ahead of where he'd been at the start. The sun was a bright blur beyond veils of fine yellow dust. Since he didn't know the time of day, all that told him was which direction wasn't north.

"Walk toward that boulder on the right," Evne said in a muffled voice, crouching on a fold inside his inner tunic. This must be an awful place if you were a toad. It wasn't a good one even for Cashel, who'd gotten used to most kinds of weather.

Cashel obediently turned and started walking, though he couldn't see any boulder. He was headed into the wind now, so he had to close his eyes to slits to see anything.

"This doesn't seem much like a ship, Evne," he said.

"The Visitor doesn't use a ship of the sort humans build when he goes from world to world," the toad said. "His device, if you prefer that word, already exists in all of the places where he makes his home. He merely changes his present reality to appear in one place or another."

She paused, then added, "Well, I see you haven't understood a single word that I've said."

"Ma'am," corrected Cashel, "I understood all the words, I think. I just don't see how they fit together; but that's all right because you understand."

He didn't see the boulder till he was just short of clacking it with the ferrule of his staff, slanted out in front of him. "Where do we go now, Evne?" he asked.

A thing with a hard gray carapace and many legs stood up on the other side of the boulder. It was far the biggest thing in the landscape. For a moment it towered motionless over Cashel; then a jointed proboscis with two savage fangs at the tip unfolded toward him.

"It's an illusion!" warned the toad. "Touch the boulder with your bare hand. If you back away, you'll never be able to leave this place, nor will I!"

Cashel pressed his left palm against the warm, wind-scoured limestone. The creature's fangs sure looked real. They were as white as old bone, and the ends had a slight corkscrew shape.

The rock didn't so much give way as suck him in, turning inside out and engulfing Cashel. He gasped with surprise; the part of his mind that he didn't control had been expecting the fangs, so the shock of sudden change seemed like the fatal stroke. Realizing how he'd tricked himself, he burst out laughing.

"I'm glad you're so pleased," Evne said sourly as she crawled out onto his shoulder again.

Cashel looked around. They were on a rocky slope. Besides tufts of short grass, there were bushes and some good-sized pine trees scattered among the outcrops. The wind was noticeably cool, though not enough to be a problem, and wisps of clouds trailed across the pale blue sky.