David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

Garric thought. He burst out laughing. "It doesn't matter whether you're serious or not," he said aloud, though he knew he could've saved his breath: Shin and Carus, his only companions, could hear his thoughts. "I'm glad you're so agile, Master Shin. I needn't worry about you if something comes up on the way." "Don't think I'll fight for you, champion," Shin said. It was hard to judge the aegipan's expression, but Garric thought it was more serious than perhaps it'd been a moment before. "You'll survive or fail on your own abilities.

You'll live or die, that is." "I don't recall ever asking someone to do my fighting for me, sir," Garric said quietly. "But I'm armed, so I have a responsibility for your safety as long as you're guiding me."

His fingers toyed with the hilt of his sword. He'd picked up the habit from the ghost of the warrior in his mind, but by now it was natural to him as well. Hewas a warrior, after all… though he'd been seventeen before he'd ever touched a sword. Indeed, he'd seen such weapons only during the Sheep Fairs. They hung from the belts of guards some of the wealthy drovers brought with them when they came to Barca's Hamlet to chaffer for wool and sheep. Shin gave his gobbling laugh. "Oh, don't worry about my safety, prince," he said. "Though the concern does you credit. No doubt you're a paragon among rulers, but you'd best put that aside for the present time." "Ihave put it aside,"

Garric said. "There's things I'll miss about leaving the kingdom this way-" Carus grinned broadly, but he knew that the emptiness his descendent felt was for the company of his friends-certainly including Liane, but not Liane alone. "-but I don't miss being ruler. Because I'm not such a paragon as I'd like to be." Clearing his throat and staring until the aegipan cocked his head up to meet his eyes, Garric continued, "And in as much as I'm not a prince any more, Master Shin, and that I like to be friends with whoever I'm around, I'd prefer that you call me Garric. And I'll call you Shin, if that's agreeable." Shin laughed again. "As you wish, Garric," he said. "Though I don't see what you expect to gain from friendship." "A more pleasant journey, Shin," Garric said. "Even if things turn out badly, I'd regret it if my last days alive were awkward ones." The road had been rising gently for the past several miles. Garric couldn't be sure, but he thought they were probably beyond what'd been the coast of Ornifal in his own day. Ahead to the south, wooded hills stretched into the far distance.

The path continued, but it shrank to a trail not unlike the one leading west from Barca's Hamlet. When he was a boy Garric had occasionally dreamed of going to Carcosa, the ancient capital on the far coast of Haft; he'd dreamed, but he'd never really expected it to happen. He'd been to Carcosa after all, and then he'd gone much farther before returning to Carcosa as ruler of the whole kingdom, the Lord of the Isles. But now the Isles themselves were as much in the past as Garric or-Reise, the innkeeper's son, was. Garric was riding into the heart of a continent that should've been the sea, in order to pass a test that hadn't been described to him and thereby to save mankind from a doom that wasn't rightly part of the world. He was lost and alone and afraid, all those things to a degree that he couldn't have imagined when he was a boy. But he was going on. That was all he understood: that it was his duty to go on. Laughing, Garric turned to look at the world he was leaving. The road wound back between the hedgerows and the bright green of sprouted wheat. His eyes narrowed at the other thing he noticed. "Whoa," he muttered to the gelding, lifting back on the reins to pause before riding down into the forest.

On the northern horizon, probably a good ten miles behind them, was a cloud with a faint golden brightness. Early in the morning he'd have guessed it was mist rising from a pond, but the sun was too high in the sky for that to be the case. "Shin?" he said. "Do you know what the fog back there is? I don't recall ever seeing something like it before." "Do you know the story of King Kalendar, Garric?" the aegipan said. He was standing on one leg with the other crossed on it; his hands were on his jutting hips. "The myth?" Garric said. "Well, I've read Pendill'sBooks of Changes. King Kalendar swore he'd wed Merui, the virgin priestess of the Lady, even though the Goddess forbade the match. He marched on Merui's temple with his whole army, but the Goddess trapped them in a maze of fog in which they marched until they all became spruce trees." He frowned, trying to get the details right.

He liked Pendill, but anawful lot of people seemed to have become trees or birds or springs when they got on the wrong side of the Great Gods. "After it was too late, Merui regretted refusing Kalendar and searched the forest for him," he continued. "Eventually she became an owl and now flies among the trees, calling out in mourning." "Merui was indeed a myth," said Shin, "and King Kalendar was actually a mercenary leader named Lorun who swore he'd sack the palace of a wizard." He gobbled laughter. "A great wizard, I will say. But the fog was completely true. Captain Lorun and his men walk in it to this day." Garric stared at the aegipan, trying to make sense of what he'd just been told. "Do you mean," he said, "that the cloud I'm seeing behind us is Lorun and his soldiers?" "No, Garric," Shin said calmly.

"Lord Attaper decided to follow you with a troop of Blood Eagles, ignoring my direction and your command. They now march in a maze which will hold them until they're released or the world ends." Garric went cold. His knuckles were mottled on the hilt of his sword, and his face was as tight as that of the ghost in his mind. "Release them, Shin," he said. His voice was so thick and harsh that he wasn't sure he could've recognized the words himself. "In good time, Garric," the aegipan said. "Now, by the Shepherd!" "No, Garric," the aegipan said,

"but when we're another day or two days gone and beyond any chance of them following us. Then they will be released, perhaps wiser." Garric lifted his hand from the sword hilt and massaged it with the other.

It'd been on the verge of cramping. He didn't speak, and he continued to look toward the glowing cloud. "It's that, or you may return to Valles now and preside over the doom of your world," Shin said. "The test is for the champion alone." Garric cleared his throat. "We'd best be riding on," he said. By the end of the sentence, he'd gotten his voice back to where it should've been. He faced around and clucked the gelding into motion. When they were below the brow of the hill and could no longer see the glowing cloud, Garric said, "Shin? If I hadn't noticed the fog and made a point of it, when would you have released Attaper and his men?" "You did notice, Garric," the aegipan said. "I cannot predict the future based on a past than did not happen."

"That's the sort of question you don't want to ask, lad," said King Carus. "You might've gotten the wrong answer. It'd be bloody difficult to reach the Yellow King if you'd just chopped your guide in half the way you'd need to then." The ghost paused, then added judiciously,

"Mind, it'd feel good at the time."

Chapter 6 It surprised Garric that the group of buildings in the clearing was an inn, because for over an hour he'd been smelling bacon curing. He'd been right about the bacon, of course-it wasn't the sort of thing you could mistake. Gray smoke blurred out of the last ground-floor window of the right wing and spread slowly through the forest. There were outbuilding of notched logs, but the timbers of the main structure had been squared with a saw. It bothered Garric to see such a waste of wood when clapboards would've sealed the interior as well, but he'd grown up in Barca's Hamlet which had been settled for thousands of years. There was no need to be miserly with wood in this dark wasteland of trees. The central part of the main building had a second story with a gallery. Three men sat on a puncheon bench there, looking down at Garric and Shin approaching; they didn't speak. The skull of a great-tusked boar was nailed over the door transom. A boy squatted on an upended section of treetrunk in front, cleaning a pair of knee boots with a brush of twigs. He watched them for a moment, then slipped inside through the open door taking the boots with him.