David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

Garric said quietly. "Which we won't know until Tenoctris is able to discuss the matter, of course. But if it was real and the Last are present in the numbers we saw, then they badly outnumber the whole royal army. Even if we could take the army to where the Last are appearing, in Shengy or wherever." "Well, they can't get to us either then, can they?" said Lord Holhann, the commander of the Valles garrison, in a harsh voice. He'd been frightened by the wizardry and he was letting out that fear in the form of anger. "Let'em have Shengy! It was never part of the kingdom except maybe in name. If we can't reach them, then they can't reach us either." Sharina glanced back to see if Cashel would speak. Seated as she was, she couldn't see him for the lesser functionaries standing in the way; and anyway, she knew Cashel wasn't the person to volunteer that sort of information to a group of educated people. "What Lady Tenoctris said last night…," Sharina said. There was no point in explaining that Tenoctris had spoken to Cashel and he'd passed the information on to her. "Is that the Last don't need food in the sense we do. They won't be stopped by the lack of supplies along the route from Shengy to the north and western isles, what's now the settled rim of the continent.

Though the sheer distance will delay them, of course." Half a dozen people began speaking, none to any point Sharina could make out. The door at the end of the room opened. Nobody seemed to notice except Sharina, who caught movement at the right corner of her eye and turned to focus on it. A figure the height of an adolescent boy stepped between the pair of Blood Eagles in the doorway. Sharina blinked. The guards were shoulder to shoulder; there wasn't space to walk or even to slide a napkin between them. At first glimpse the figure seemed to be wearing a shirt and breeches of goatskin, but that was his own hide: he was a brown-furred aegipan, with hooves instead of feet and two tiny black horn buds peaking up from the tousled hair on his head.

He carried a sheathed sword. "Hey!" shouted Lord Attaper, shoving himself between Garric and the creature. "Keep him away from his highness!" "I am Shin," said the aegipan in a musical tenor. "I am the emissary of the Yellow King." One of the Blood Eagles tried to grab Shin from behind. The aegipan moved slightly, and the guard's hands closed on air. The other man drew his sword and cocked it back for a slash that would cut Shin in half. Sharina had sprung to her feet.

Even before her chair could topple to the floor, she seized the guard's sword arm. "Wait!" she cried. "Didn't you hear? He said he's from the Yellow King!" *** "The Yellow King's a children's story, a myth!" Attaper protested, his sword bare. Sharina let go of the man she'd grabbed, but she continued to face the guards with her hands on her hips.

They'd sooner have charged a phalanx of pikes than defied her.

"Gently, milord," Garric said, touching the back of Attaper's right hand to prevent an accident which the commander would deeply regret afterward. "So are aegipans, you know, but that doesn't prevent this one from seeming to be real." He stepped past, which Attaper probably wouldn't have allowed if he hadn't been so taken aback by what was happening. There were guards outside the door who should've preventedany intrusion, let alone an intruder carrying a sword into the presence of Prince Garric… "Panchant'sHistory of All Nature claims that aegipans inhabit the mountains of the Western Continent,"

Liane said primly. She was close to Garric, moving so perfectly in step with him that he'd been aware of her only as a blur since his vision was tightly focused on the aegipan. "Of course, there's no reputable evidenceof a Western Continent and many geographers deny that one exists." The aegipan-Shin-was grinning. Seen face-on he looked almost human, but when he turned to dart glances around the hall, his long-jawed profile was that of a beast. "The Yellow King has awakened," he said. His voice seemed very full to come from so small a chest; but then, a bullfrog was louder still and a great deal smaller.

"He's sent me with an offer to save the men of this day-if you have a true champion among you." "Your highness," Attaper said, "pleasedon't stand so close to the creature, not while he's got the sword." Harshly he added to Shin, "You then, give me the sword. No one but the prince's bodyguards go armed in his presence!" "Take it and welcome, Lord Attaper," Shin replied, holding the sword hilt-first toward him.

His tongue lolled out. Garric couldn't judge from the aegipan's unfamiliar face as to whether there was as much mockery in his expression as there would've been in a man doing the same thing. "I have no business with arms. I'm only a messenger." Attaper snatched the sword away. A belt of heavy black leather was wrapped around the scabbard, but there wasn't a dagger or other equipment to balance the blade's weight on the wearer's right side. Though the grip was as rough as shagreen, to Garric's glance it seemed to be of the same dark gray metal as the cross guard and ball hilt. "What sort of champion?"

Sharina asked. Garric was amused at the way his sister's clear tones cut through the babble. It's as bad as the inn's common room during the Sheep Fair, though the accents here are more cultured. "Do you mean a soldier?" The Yellow King whom Rigal and other poets of the Old Kingdom described was certainly a myth. During the Yellow King's blessed reign, men and women ate fruits that sprang from the soil without planting. There was no winter or blistering summer, only balmy days that mixed spring with early fall; all was peaceful and golden.

At the end of ten thousand years the Yellow King had departed, promising to return when mankind needed his help again. Before he left, he taught agriculture and writing that men might continue to exist and to record the Yellow King's great deeds. From then till this day, the lot of mankind has been ever harsher, ever more miserable, and men would not be saved from that decline until the Yellow King returned. So much was myth; Garric knew that as clearly as Attaper did. But therehad been a government of men before the first recorded government. There were legends about the Yellow King on every island of the archipelago, even among the Serians and the swarthy folk of Shengy whose languages were nothing like those of the remainder of the Isles. Perhaps those who'd ruled in the days before the climate changed had all called themselves the Yellow King; the confusion of title might've concealed the details of their succession. The geographer Stane had thought so. As for Garric personally, it seemed to him that Stane or others with other guessesmight be right.

Certainlysome truth underlay a universal pattern of belief. Besides, Garric wanted to believe; and if every word of Rigal's myth was true and the Yellow King would return to save mankind in its greatest crisis-so much the better. He'd listen to Shin and hope. Though the aegipan stood in place, his split-hoofed feet tapped a complex rhythm on the slate flooring. The tiny motions made his body seem to tremble, but there was nothing frightened in his hairy, grinning face. "It's up to the men of this day to pick the champion they send to the Yellow King," Shin said. "The champion must surmount all the tests facing him, though, so it behooves you to choose well." He lifted his legs as though he were jumping, but his head didn't move; the hooves clacked down together, hammering a period to his words. Had he made a visual pun? Shin looked from Sharina to Garric. His brown eyes, as solid as chert, changed into caves that sank infinitely far into the earth.

Garric felt himself stiffen; the ghost in his mind snatched at the hilt of his ghostly sword with a curse. "So, Prince Garric?" the aegipan said. "Aren't furry myths from the Western Continent permitted to make puns?" "What sort of champion?" Garric said, repeating Sharina's question in a tone of command. "What sort of tests will the Yellow King put to him?" Shin sees my thoughts! And of course he did, but there was no point in saying that or worrying about it. Garric didn't try to deceive the people he dealt with, except by the sort of softening that made human relationships possible. There were generally ways to refuse requests that didn't involve saying, "No, you're too stupid for that post," or, "You'd turn the occasion into a disaster, you overbearing shrew." "The Yellow King will not test the champion, Prince," said the aegipan, "but the way to the cave in which the Yellow King slept will be hard. Perhaps too hard for any human, eh?"