David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

The two boys who helped him, they skinned over the back wall and kept running, I guess. Anyhow they've not come back. Redmin stood in the gateway and told Bistona she couldn't enter the sacred enclosure because she was unclean." "I never gave Redmin credit for guts," a man said. Graia sniffed. "Ifigure he was blind drunk," she said, "seeings as he generally was." "Regardless," muttered Breccon, "the demons kilt him, tore him to bits and ate him. It was like two terriers on a vole.

And they've lived in the shrine since then, a moon and more." Ilna frowned. "What do they eat?" she said. If they weren't really demons then they had to eat, didn't they? "They hunt at night," said Breccon.

"Not people, I'll say that for Bistona, not if we stay on this side of the valley. But we can't keep goats any more, and the people who used to come for the oracle, well, all that money's gone, you can guess that." "She let us get our goods out of our houses the first day," the man with missing fingers said. "If anybody goes up there now, the demons come out. They don't chase you if you run, and nobody tried it who didn't run." "The Lady knows I ran," muttered a young fellow whose legs were nearly as long as Karpos'. "I must've been crazy t' think of going back for a stupid bracelet!" He glared at the girl beside him.

Her face sharpened; for a moment it looked as though she was about to say something, but she noticed Ilna's eyes on her and subsided. "We kept hoping Bistona'd take the demons away," said Breccon, "or anyway, that they'd wander off themselves. But all this time and they stay in the Lady's shrine." He cleared his throat and said with the cracked brightness of a certain lie, "I don't guess it'd be hard for three soldiers to drive the demons out, would it? And we'd pay!" "We'd all help you, you know," said the man with missing fingers. "All the men of an age to help. But we don't have swords or strong bows like you real soldiers do." "Mistress, we need help," said Graia. "There's more coined money here than you might guess, from the shrine being an oracle, you see. But if you won't help us, then we'll have to move, sure as sure. One of these days the demons won't find a goat or a deer, and then they'll come for whoever's nearest. We'llhave to move."

"Be silent for a moment," Ilna said. Her tone was sharp, not because of anything the villagerswere doing but because they might do something. She'd learned over the years that if she didn't tell people to shut up, they'd yammer at her while she was thinking. Given that as best she could tell most people didn't spend any time at all thinking themselves, she supposed the mistake was a natural one. Ilna didn't have any interest in killing demons-or wyverns, or men, or anything else except catmen. The oracle she wove each morning to give them direction had brought them here, though. That didn't mean they couldn't go on tomorrow, travelling to the southwest as she'd been doing since she left First Atara immediately after the Change, but perhaps. And besides, walking away from a problem had never been her way. She looked at her three companions. "I won't order you to get involved in this," she said. "If they're as big as you say, Temple, it may be more than we can manage even with the villagers' help." "Keep that lot out of the way," Asion said, looking over his shoulder in obvious disgust. "Farmers aren't good for squat on a hunt. They just stir up trouble and leave you in the bag onct they stirred it." "I don't mind taking care of this, mistress," Karpos said quietly. "It'll be a little different, I guess. But closer to what me'n Asion did before we met you." "Temple?" Ilna said. He was smiling at her again!

"I don't need to be ordered to rid the world of monsters, Ilna," he said. "I can occupy one of the wyverns while you and our companions kill the other. Then you can give me such help as I require." "Alone?"

Ilna said, feeling the start of a frown. "If they're as big as you say?" "I have some experience with the work," Temple said, as calm as if he'd said something about the clouds overhead. "And you'll be free to help me shortly." Movement across the valley drew Ilna's attention.

From the shrine's entrance stalked a wyvern, then the second. On the shadowed eastern slope the colors were indistinct, but Ilna had an eye for such things: the creatures were a light blue-gray and darker gray with brighter blue mottlings. They were so tall that they'd have scraped the building's transom if they'd stretched their legs to full height. A woman came out of the priest's dwelling and stood between the monsters. They were staring toward the new village of shanties.

Their stubby wings were scaly instead of being feathered. "Are they looking at us, d'ye think?" said Karpos carefully. One wyvern, then both, raised their beaked jaws and shrieked. They were as raucous and shrill as marsh hawks, but very much louder. "They will be in the morning," said Ilna, rising to her feet. "When we go across the valley and kill them." *** The two tracks in the road might look like wheel ruts to city folk, but Garric was a peasant: they were the cuts made by packhorses passing in opposite directions. If it'd been raining today as it would be in fall, his gelding would've sunk in to its belly; now it just clopped up dust to coat his breeches to mid thigh. "Before the Change, this all was swamp," Garric said. Since there wasn't much traffic, Shin walked alongside, easily matching the horse's measured pace. "The folk in these farms-" The hedges to either side of the road and between the long, narrow fields were boxwood, so ancient that the lower stems were the size of a woman's calf. On horseback Garric could look over them to stone houses in the distance; the roofs were turf, speckled white with daisies. "-lived at the very beginning of the Old Kingdom, Liane says. Before Ornifal was part of the kingdom, in fact."

"How do they take to you becoming their ruler, Prince?" the aegipan asked. "They're prosperous folk and you'll probably expect them to pay taxes." "The Coerli helped with that," Garric said with a wry smile.

Thesewere prosperous farms, growing wheat on rich black soil, but he wondered how Shin came to know that. The hedges were opaque, and they had solid wickets instead of barred stiles between them and the road.

"They raided several times after the Change; that stopped when we burned the keeps the raiders came from, with the raiders inside." In his mind, King Carus laughed. He said, "I never met anybody who liked to pay taxes. Given the choice, though, they'd rather fund the royal army than feed the cat beasts." An old woman came toward them, holding a little girl by the hand. When the pair got close enough to see what the aegipan was-or at any rate to see that it wasn't any of the normal things it might've been, a pony or a bent old man in brown homespun-they froze and flattened against the hedge. From the look on their faces, they were about to run back down the road till they dropped from exhaustion. Garric swept off his broad-brimmed leather hat and bowed low in the saddle. "Greetings, good ladies," he called.

"You brighten our journey early on a long day." Shin hopped in front of the horse and began walking on his hands, waggling his hooves in the air as he did so. The little girl stared with fascination, while the expression of the older woman-her grandmother?-at least faded from panic to neutral interest. They didn't speak, but when Garric was well past he glanced over his shoulder and saw they were still watching.

Shin back-flipped onto his feet again and grinned sardonically at Garric; he'd had no difficulty keeping up with the horse while walking on his hands. Apparently to underscore his abilities, the aegipan did a series of handsprings before settling back to walk beside Garric again. "I practice arts of meditation which require perfect mastery of my body," he said. "Fortunately, I've found that people will accept me as a mountebank when they wouldn't as a philosopher." Is he serious?