David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

He displayed them in his left palm as he walked toward the nearest soldier, a bowman. "As I said, my good sir, we're peaceful travellers," Garric said. "Can you tell me if we'll find an inn as we follow this road?" The local stared at the money, seemingly oblivious of all else. He didn't reach out to take it, though. "Here, fellow, it's yours," Garric said, jingling the coins in his palm. He didn't want to drop the money on the ground-it'd be demeaning, though he doubted the local man would care-so he took the fellow's right hand in his, opened it, and poured the coins into it. "Is there an inn on this road?" Garric said. A second soldier had been watching the whole event silently. Now he burst out, "There's nothing on this road but Lord Holm's domains." He spat on the ground and added, "Much good may you do each other!" *** Cashel put his hand on the trunk of the nearest tree in the grove, just to feel the familiar springiness in the plates of bark.

Even city folk could identify a shagbark hickory, at least if they'd ever seen one before. Which they wouldn't have if they'd spent all their lives on Ornifal, Cashel would've said-until just now when Tenoctris halted the gig beside this grove on the west side of the palace compound. "Tenoctris," he said, "did these trees come here because of the Change? Because I'd never seen hickories on Ornifal before, and these are old ones." "They were planted by a young woman,"

Tenoctris said, continuing to mark a five-sided figure as she spoke.

"She was a bor-Torial-a princess, in fact. Her lover was the emissary of the Count of Haft. He was lost at sea on his return to Carcosa."

Her scriber was the sword he'd taken from the Last. Cashel guessed she knew what she was doing. She paused and looked at him. "That was the story, at least," she said. "I think I might learn something else if I looked into the matter, but it was three generations ago, and it wouldn't help defeat the Last. In any case, she planted this grove."

Cashel pursed his lips in thought. "Is she buried here?" he asked.

Tenoctris was writing words around the edges of her completed figure.

Besides the leaf litter, a mixture of ivy and honeysuckle snaked across the ground. It'd be hard even for the person who wrote the words on a surface like that to read them, but from what Cashel'd seen, wizards thought it was important just that the words bethere.

They didn't have to be visible, at least to the eyes. She looked toward Cashel again with a soft expression that he wasn't used to seeing on her face. "No, Cashel," she said. "She asked to be, but propriety wouldn't permit it. She's buried with the rest of her family in the great bor-Torial tomb west of the city walls. But her… heart, if you will, her hopes are buried here. Her longing created a concentration which will help what you and I are going to do now." She patted her thigh. "Come closer," she said; and with Cashel standing beside her, she began to chant. Instead of listening to the words which were only nonsense syllables anyway, Cashel looked at the trees. The leaves had unfurled, though they hadn't reached their full size. Cashel didn't miss Barca's Hamlet, exactly, but he'd been pretty much content with his life there. He smiled: other people might've thought it was hard, but it'd suitedhim. That was what mattered.

Smiling wider, he let his palms slide on the hickory quarterstaff just to feel the polished wood. It was good to think about Barca's Hamlet.

And as he smiled, the tall gray trunks began to spin about him. They started swiftly, but they slowed till they stood frozen without even the normal tremble of a breeze ruffling leaves or an insect drifting past. The grove vanished. Cashel and Tenoctris stood at the base of a flat-topped hill. Around them stretched a plain of rust-colored oat grass, spotted here and there with acacia trees and low but equally thorny bushes. The vegetation moved in the dry breeze; in the high sky a single vulture wheeled on tipping wings. Tenoctris looked up the steep-sided mound, then turned to Cashel. The wind fluttered her hair into her eyes. She didn't wear it in a bun since she got young again.

She swept it back with a look of irritation, then laughed like the girl she appeared to be. "That's what I get for vanity, I suppose," she said. "Well, I think I'll simply accept the punishment." She nodded to the hill and went on, "This is the Tomb of the Messengers.

Supposedly two messengers were sent to guide Mankind out of darkness, but instead they became corrupted and were imprisoned beneath this escarpment." Cashel's lips pursed again. "Who sent them, Tenoctris?" he asked. "And who buried them here?" Tenoctris shrugged with a mocking smile. "Every religion has an answer to that question," she said, "but no two answers are the same. Your priests in Barca's Hamlet would say that the Lady sent the Messengers and that the Shepherd imprisoned them when they turned to sin. I'm not sure anybody really sent them, and I'm not certain that they're imprisoned; but they're here, and they teach arts of great power to wizards who can wrest the knowledge from them." There weren't priests in Barca's Hamlet, except in the Fall when they came from Carcosa for the Tithe Procession. They pulled the images of the Lady and the Shepherd through town and collected the money due the Great Gods for the year. Cashel didn't correct Tenoctris, though, since the mistake didn't matter; instead he looked at the long hill. It was layered sandstone without many plants growing on it. Where there were bushes, they grew in dirt the wind blew into crevices, he was pretty sure. Some sandstones weren't too hard, but even so it was going to be a job if they had to dig any distance into it. "Is there a tunnel already?" he asked. "Or do we make one?" Cashel wasn't worried. He guessed that if they needed tools beyond what they usually carried, Tenoctris'd have told him to bring them. And if for some reason she expected him to bash a hole in rock with other rocks that'd weathered off already, well, that's what he'd do. The wizard had been looking for something within her satchel. She looked up with a hint of humor, then let her face soften before she said, "We won't be entering the tomb, Cashel, though there is a way.

Everything the Messengers teach is evil, whether or not it seems that way on the surface." She paused, looked into the satchel again, and raised what was either a scriber or a thin wand; it was no longer than Cashel's hand. It glittered the way only a diamond can. She set it back with a funny expression. "Cashel," she said, "I was never tempted to visit the Messengers. I knew my capacities, and therefore knew I couldn't possibly force them to give me the knowledge I might seek.

Now, though-I actually could do that. It's odd, isn't it, that power itself leads to temptation?" Cashel thought about the question. "No, ma'am," he said. "It's always that way, any kind of power. Of course if you're a decent sort of person, it's not a problem. You just know that you don't go around starting fights, and if the other fellow's too drunk to have sense, you try to keep out of his way." Tenoctris looked like she might be going to laugh; instead she stepped close and patted his wrist. She hopped back again before he could do anything-he wasn't sure what he'd have done if he'd had time to think, to tell the truth-and said, "I believe I'm going to have you work the oracle yourself instead of me doing it." She gestured to the oat grass in which they stood, "Strip one of the seed-heads into your hand, if you would," she said with the sort of courtesy people use when they don't expect any answer except, "Yes, ma'am." "Yes, ma'am," Cashel said.

Shifting the quarterstaff to his left hand alone, he pulled his right thumb and forefinger up the nearest stem and collected the seeds in his palm. The grass head was sharp and hairy, but it wasn't going to harm his calluses. "Yes, ma'am?" he repeated, this time to tell Tenoctris he was ready for whatever she had in mind for next. The ground here was rocky, so even the hardy oat grass was sparse. It looked like a solid field when you looked across the tops, though, because the plain rolled so far into the distance. "Throw the seeds up in the air," she said. She tented her fingertips together, a gesture Cashel remembered from when she'd been old. "They'll fall pointing to the object I've come for." "Just throw them up?" Cashel said, thinking he'd heard wrong. In a breeze this stiff, they were going to scatter to the south at an angle away from the hill. "Yes, up," Tenoctris said. "Now, if you please." Cashel obeyed. After the way she'd snapped at him, he wasn't surprised that the seeds formed a triangle in the air like geese before settling to the ground. He was willing to bet that they'd stayed in order, despite the stems of other grass plants hiding the pattern. "Can you follow the direction that pointed, up the hill?" Tenoctris said. "Follow it exactly, I mean?" "Yes, ma'am,"