David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Cashel opened his eyes. He, Kotia, and the toad on his shoulder were in the middle of what'd been bog like what he'd seen on his way to the Visitor. The rushes were sere now, and tussocks stood up from cracked mud rather than marsh.

"The process involved heat," said Evne. She gave a grim chuckle. "Not nearly as much heat as on the other end of the channel, though. I don't think there will be more Visitors to trouble us."

Kotia turned to Cashel. He couldn't read her expression. "Now, if you would please lift the cauldron again, milord?" she said. "We'll have callers shortly."

She saw his expression and quirked a smile. "No, not that kind," she said. "The display will summon folk from all the manors to see what has happened. Airboats can safely fly into the basin now."

Cashel handed the girl his quarterstaff again, politely this time because he wasn't in a hurry to get them all under cover. He squatted and positioned his hands under the curve of the rim.

"I wonder if Lord Bossian will be among those arriving?" the toad said.

"Yes," said Kotia. "I've been wondering that too."

They both laughed. It was the sort of sound that made Cashel glad the two of them weren't his enemies.

"Nobody's entered the Count's wing since Lady Liane sent the warning, your highness," Attaper said as he and a company of Blood Eagles met Garric at the west entrance to the palace. "A few servants came out on normal business, but we're holding them as ordered."

"As ordered?" said Garric, frowning in surprise. "Lady Liane?"

"Yes, her messenger arrived with your orders that nobody should enter or leave Count Lascarg's quarters," Attaper said, frowning in turn. "By the Shepherd, your highness! Were the seal and signature forgeries?"

"No, milord!" Liane herself said as she hopped from her sedan chair. Her bearers must've run all the way from the temple: they were covered in sweat but grinning. The coins Liane spun them winked gold. "Say rather that Prince Garric was too busy to be aware of all the details he was taking care of in the crisis."

Garric grinned. That was a charitable way of putting it. In truth it hadn't crossed his mind to send someone ahead to put a discreet guard on Monine and Tanus. Well, he didn't have to think about that sort of thing. He had Liane, praise be the Shepherd!

Garric took the steps two treads at a time. Guards trotted ahead of him. Lord Mayne, the legate commanding the regiment that'd just arrived from the camp on the harbor, had linked arms with Lord Waldron to exchange information as they both pounded along immediately behind. A pair of palace ushers holding silver-banded wands high led the procession down the branching corridors. The household staff was no longer the proper concern of Master Reise, the Vicar's advisor… but as he ran past, Garric saw his father watching alertly from an alcove, pressed between the wall and a statue where he wouldn't interfere with the Prince's haste.

The double doors to the wing of the palace which Count Lascarg still occupied were closed. In the vaulted hall outside waited a squad of Blood Eagles instead of a doorkeeper from the count's household.

"Get us in!" Garric ordered as the guards straightened to attention. He hoped the raid would take Monine and Tanus by surprise, but there was no time to waste.

The non-com of the guard detail pushed at the panels where they joined, seeing whether they were barred from the inside. They didn't give.

Four men of Garric's escort were already carrying an ancient statue from a niche down the hall. It'd been a caryatid, a woman's torso with a fish-scaled base, which might once have supported the roof of a loggia in an Old Kingdom water garden. As the non-com stepped clear, the men carrying the statue jogged forward and with a collective grunt smashed its flat head into the door.

The panels sprang open; the heavy oaken bar ripped out of its staples and crashed to the floor. The right-hand panel banged into the servant dozing on a stool at the side. He fell off with a cry of pain.

"This way!" cried one of Liane's spies, charging through the anteroom and down the corridor to the right. He wasn't the man who'd led the way into the Temple of the Shepherd. Soldiers, Garric, and Lord Waldron-who'd kept up just as he'd said he would-clashed after the spy in their cleated boots. A group of female servants-three or four of them-gossiping in a side hall squealed and ran the other way.

Lascarg's rooms looked dingy and had a smell of neglect. Garric wondered if that was a change or if the rest of the building had also been dirty and rundown before his own staff took over. He'd been too busy to care, but thinking back he remembered squads of servants working in the hallways with stiff brushes and buckets that breathed the biting tang of lye.

It wasn't just dirt creating the oppressive atmosphere, though. One side of this corridor gave onto a courtyard, but shuttered blinds closed the portico despite the pleasant weather. Only through cracks between warped panels did Garric see sunlight or foliage.

A servant in tawdry finery-his tunics stained but hemmed with cloth of gold-heard the crashing footsteps and peered from a doorway. He stared for an instant at what was coming toward him, bleated, and ran down the hall in the other direction. He carried a writing case until it brushed the wainscoting and flew free, scattering documents, quills, and rushlights unnoticed on the floor.

Garric didn't blame the fellow. He supposed Lord Mayne's entire regiment was following down the hallway. Maybe the whole army was; Duzi knew how Lord Waldron's orders might have been garbled!

The spy reached the door the servant had run from and jumped inside. Garric followed, slamming a hand against the door jamb so that he didn't skid on the worn stone flooring. He wasn't wearing hobnails like the regular soldiers, but his boots had hard soles.

Count Lascarg sat at a table with a top of colored marble on massive wooden legs. Before him was a mixing bowl, a water pitcher, and an ornate gold cup whose stem was in the form of a couple making love. The pitcher was full: Lascarg had been drinking his wine undiluted, and drinking it in considerable quantity from the look of him.

A servant-a girl of no more than twelve years-stood beside him with a wine dipper. She stared at the doorway, her eyes so open they seemed to fill her white face. The dipper shook violently in her hand.

"You've come to kill me!" Lascarg said, lurching to his feet. His tunic hadn't been changed in days, perhaps longer. He fumbled at his side where the hilt of a sword would've been if he were wearing one. He wasn't.

"Where's your children?" Garric said. "Where's Monine and Tanus?"

"Go on then, just do it!" Lascarg said. He swayed and fell forward, knocking over the bowl and pitcher. Clinging to the table, he began to cry.

The girl pointed her dipper toward the small arched door in an alcove. Garric thought it was to a service staircase. The nearest soldier took two strides and kicked it down, staggering backward at the impact. Garric lunged through the opening.

He hadn't been conscious of drawing his sword, but it was out in his hand. The image of Carus watched through Garric's eyes, grinning and poised.

Garric grinned back. With a friend like that sharing his mind, he never need worry about being unprepared for battle.

He'd burst into an overgrown garden: the garden of his dreams, his nightmares. To the right was a pavilion which ivy was taking over; that was the building the ape men had shambled from. Seen by daylight, the altar was an ancient stone bench supported by stone barrels from a fallen pillar.

Moisin, the priest who'd brought the urn to Garric, lay naked across the altar. His back was to the stone. His wrists and ankles were tied to the barrels so that his chest arched.