David Drake - The Gods Return

The streets of Dariada were mostly narrow and always crooked as a sheep track. In lots of places, the street vendors and people walking the other way couldn't have kept clear if they'd wanted to. Some of the men seemed to think they ought to grab Liane as she walked past them. Cashel held his staff by one end and kept the length of it stretched out alongside Liane like a railing. If somebody didn't take the hint, they learned that Cashel was strong enough to slam them back against the wall despite the awkward way he had to hold the staff.

Rasile made everybody stop and stare-that, or sometimes run the other way. Nobody did anything really hostile, though, not even spit. Maybe they just didn't have time to react. Because of the way the old wizard walked with two people in front and Cashel behind, people generally didn't see her until they were right alongside. Bessus led them out into a plaza, sort of, though it straggled along a curving wall more than being square or any real shape. In Carcosa it wouldn't be much more than a wide street, but there hadn't been anything close to it in Dariada. It was the town market, with people selling ordinary goods and produce to either side. In the middle where Bessus took them, folks hawked souvenirs made of everything from pottery and embroidered cloth to silver and gold. Dariada's houses had mostly three floors-stone on the bottom course, concrete mixed with broken chunks of brick to make it lighter as you went up. The walls were painted, but patches had flaked bare lots of places. Occasionally there was a top floor of plastered canes too. There were so few windows that Cashel thought they must have courtyards or most rooms wouldn't have any light at all. The building Bessus was heading toward across the plaza was round and covered with a tall copper dome; it didn't look anything like others in the town. The tile-roofed porch on all sides was held up by pillars; the web between them at the tops curved and stepped like the battlements of the city wall. It wasn't the building that really caught Cashel's attention, though. It was set in a old brick wall just a trifle too high for a man to reach with his arm stretched up and standing on tiptoes. That wasn't new to him either: it was a lot like the wall around the royal palace in Valles, only that one was half again as high. The tree spreading over the wall in all directions, though, that was nothing Cashel had seen before. At first he thought it was a whole grove of trees, but occasionally the branches-and some of them were as thick as his waist-joined a different bole from the one they sprouted from. Tiny little leaves sprouted from long tendrils that dangled over the plaza in a ragged curtain. Some branches-never ones with leaves-had what looked like pea pods hanging from them instead. A few pods were as long and thick as Cashel's forearm; those were beginning to turn from green to brown.

Broad as the tree was-and if it filled the enclosure the way it seemed to, it was at least a furlong across-it wasn't especially tall. Cashel eyed it critically, the way he'd have judged if he'd been hired to fell it and needed to know what it would cover when he laid it down.

None of the tree's joined trunks would run to half the height of a big white oak. Bessus pushed his way through the hucksters and their customers, a wide assortment of folk with the dress and manners of every part of the Isles and beyond. A servant-he wasn't a guard; he wore a bleached tunic and a red vest with gold embroidery, but he didn't have a weapon-stood in the doorway of the round building.

"Yes?" he called. "Go fetch your master," Bessus ordered, skipping up the three steps of the temple's base. Liane and Rasile followed just below him, but Cashel stayed down on the ground for now. He turned sideways so that he could keep the building's doorway in the corner of his eye but still watch what was going on in the plaza. "Is Amineus on duty today? Fetch-ah, there you are, Master Amineus!" A very large man-he was certainly fat, but he was so tall that he seemed more massive than plump-stepped onto the porch. He'd probably have cleared the transom, but he ducked as he passed under it nonetheless. He was holding a cylindrical loaf of bread in his right hand and a serrated knife in his right. "What is it, Bessus?" he said. "And couldn't it wait till I've had my lunch?" With Cashel in front of the round building was a slab of granite about as tall as he was. It was gray, though flecks of white sprinkled the darker crystals. The surface was as uniformly rough as that of a weathered boulder despite obviously being a worked stone. "Amineus, I've brought you Lady Liane bos-Benliman, the envoy of Prince Garric," Bessus said, showing that he'd been paying more attention than Cashel'd thought when Liane introduced them. "She says her business is with you, so I'll leave her in your capable hands. I'm getting back to my duties, now." The slab's edges on the side toward Cashel had been rounded over, but on the back they were sharp: it must've stood in a sandy place once, where the wind had worn off whatever'd been on the side toward it. He thought about the desert they'd crossed to get here. Had Dariada been there before the Change-or maybe been there much, much longer ago than that?

"Say there, what is this?" boomed the big priest. His voice had the rumble of a bull calling a challenge. "Bessus, if she's an envoy, then she needs to go before the assembly, not come to me!" People in the plaza were listening to the argument, but that wasn't any danger. The same folk would gawk and laugh if an old woman slipped in sheep droppings. They wouldn't mean any harm by it. Cashel moved around to the sheltered side of the slab to see what was there. "Master Amineus, my business is with you and your colleagues as priests of the Tree,"

Liane said crisply. "I believe we can take care of it without difficulty. However I strongly suggest that we go into your dwelling-"

She nodded to the doorway. "-and discuss it there." The other side of the slab showed a giant with a walled city between his spread legs. He was holding a snake by the neck with both hands; strangling it, like enough. The snake's coils writhed over the stone's curved upper edge.

Around the bottom of the picture were the little spikes that stonecutters used to mean waves. Cashel wondered if the city was supposed to be Dariada, back before the Change when it was a port.

Amineus looked from his bread to the knife, then scrunched his face up in frustration. "All right, come in, milady," he said. "I'll leave you to it," Bessus said, turning and striding back through the crowd.

"Bessus, you come back here!" the priest said, but he didn't sound like he thought the guard captain was going to pay any attention. He was right about that. Amineus shook his head in disgust. "Come in to the Priests' House, milady," he repeated. "You'd best bring your servant and the animal with you or there might be trouble." The priest gestured them to go ahead of him. Rasile dipped her head politely as she stepped into the building after Liane. Cashel had thought of saying something about how the fellow ought to talk to respectable old folk like Rasile, but that wasn't what they were here for. He thought, I wonder if Rasile could turn him into a pig? And because that was a funny image, he was chuckling as he entered. *** Sharina realized she was holding the Pewle knife bare in her hand. She slid it back in its sealskin sheath. "Thank you," said the rat. "I thought that it was a little excessive. Though flattering, I suppose, to be considered so dangerous." "It wasn't for you," Sharina muttered in embarrassment. "I was having a bad dream. Though-" She grinned at the rat. He seemed quite ordinary, save for the little vest and pantaloons. "-I don't suppose it was going to help much with a dream either. Ah-thank you for waking me up, Master Burne." "Don't mention it, Princess," the rat said. "Now if you'll pardon me, I'll take off this absurd clothing. Nothing against clothing of course, but for human beings. And-" He pulled off the vest and dangled it critically from the, well, toes of his left forepaw. "Well, I must say, I can't imagine wearing something like that even when I was human. Could you?" Sharina swung her legs over the side of the bed and tucked her feet into the sandals waiting there. She didn't stand because she was already looking down at the rat-at Burne. "You haven't always been a rat, then?" she said. "No, no," said the rat, tossing the pantaloons on top of the vest and then beginning to groom himself.