David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

"Sorry, milady," the trooper muttered. "I mean, it's no different from us. I don't know why I said that." The leading regiments of the royal army were spreading into battle order as they advanced across the plain. The afternoon air rang with trumpets and horns, insistent and never tuned the same. Sharina supposed that made it easy for soldiers to tell their own call from those of other units, but it was gratingly unpleasant to a civilian. Rasile rose to a squat. Though her palanquin rocked as the bearers paced down the defile to the plain, the wizard balanced on her haunches as easily as a bubble bobs in the air. She pointed to the southwest. "There is the nest the Last have built around the entrance to this world," she said. "Are you able to see the powers which we wizards focus, Princess?" "No," said Sharina, following the line of the Corl's arm. Close to Pandah's western walls-so close they partly hid it-was what she'd taken at first to be a shadow. Closer attention showed it to be a structure of odd bumps and angles, higher than Pandah's walls though some of the towers within the city overtopped it. "Rasile, I haveno talent for wizardry."

Rasile's arms had angles at the wrong points, and her covering of fur-more gray than auburn and worn away in patches-was disturbing. She looked more like a beast in detail than she did when Sharina viewed her as a complete person. The Corl chuckled in her throat. "Seeing the fluxes is not wizardry," she said, "though the best wizards see the matter they work with. In this case-" She'd lowered her arm-her fore-limb. Now she tapped her clawed fingers twice more on the air.

"-I can see the threads of power spun into two great hawsers, scarlet and azure. But I could not affect them myself any more than you could.

The Last are using forces which could not be manipulated by any single wizard; not even by your friend Tenoctris, Princess. Their whole race must possess both the art and the ability to merge their talents the way ants together lift a dead grasshopper." Skirmishers from the head of the column began moving toward the alien fortress, spreading as they advanced. Small groups of the Last had been working in the plain, demolishing all human plantings and structures beyond easy bowshot of the walls. Now the black figures began moving back toward their citadel. "They're running!" Sharina said hopefully. "They're withdrawing until they've judged the strength of the new threat,"

Rasile corrected emotionlessly. "The walls of their citadel are impregnable. Only the open gates can be attacked, and the Last will close them with their bodies where your warriors cannot use their greater numbers. When you fight the Last one against one they will likely win; and if one of them is killed, another will take its place." The leading regiments of heavy infantry followed the skirmishers at a measured pace. Horns and trumpets skirled with cheerful enthusiasm. "Call back your warriors, Princess," the Corl said. "They will die to no purpose. Call them back." "Captain Ascor!"Sharina said to the commander of her guard contingent. She wasn't going to tell her military officers how to fight, but she would-shemust in good conscience-pass on important information which she'd gotten from other advisors. "Summon Lord Waldron to me, if you will!" The Corl wizard continued to squat on her haunches, telling a string of pink coral beads. Her long face was turned toward the black citadel, but her eyes were unfocused. "Rasile?" Sharina said. "If we're not to attack the Last, then how are we to drive them out?"

"I'll study the matter now that I've seen their nest," Rasile said.

"But the Last are very powerful, Princess. Perhaps we should attack their impregnable walls until they have killed us all." She laughed again. Sharina stared at the fortress. Her face felt frozen, and the knuckles of her right hand were mottled where she gripped the Pewle knife.

Chapter 13 Though the moon was well risen, Leel took a stick with a ball of tar on the end and lit it from a firepot. "Come along, then," he said to Garric unhappily. "Though you could find it yourself if you weren't blind." The remainder of Holm's guards had retreated swiftly to a pavilion. The sound of a drinking party came through the velvet sides. Garric didn't respond. Leel was unhappy at being ordered to lead them, but he was doing the job. Snarling at him- "Or knocking him flat," Carus interjected with a rueful laugh. "As I might well've done." -wasn't going to make that job go quicker. "What is it that you think a torch will chase away, Master Leel?" asked Shin in a mocking tone. "Not the thing that haunts this lake, I assure you." Leel muttered something and spat-though away from the aegipan and his companions. He pulled his torch back from the pot, rotating the tar ball slowly to spread the growing red flames across its surface.

"Mount, master," Kore said. She knelt beside Garric, holding the looped 'stirrups' open with her clawed hands. Garric glanced at her, then scuffed the ground. This gravel strand was as firm as a cobblestone street, but he wasn't sure what the causeway would be like. He opened his mouth to say he'd walk, then closed it. He'd far better learn whether the surface'd bear him mounted on the ogre now than later when other things might be happening. Particularly since the 'other things' were uncertain but certainly threatening. He set his left foot in the loop and gripped the ogre's shoulders to swing himself aboard. "Tell me, Master Shin," Kore said. "Am I correct in supposing that most warhorses have better sense than the noble heroes riding them? Or is my judgment warped by special circumstances?" The aegipan laughed. Garric grinned and said, "The epics don't generally discuss the matter, but the figurehead of the hero Klon's ship is said to have given him advice. When I return to Valles, I'll ask Liane to institute a search of the major temple libraries for more information on the question." Leel stared from Kore to Garric, then down to the aegipan. "Are you crazy?" he demanded. "Perhaps," said Garric, suddenly cheerful. Shin and Kore were not only companions but friends.

"It seems to help, though." Leel led them through the camp of the laborers, shanties of leaves lashed to twig frameworks. The small dark men watched in nervous silence as they passed. The laborers didn't carry weapons, not even the stones or asphalt torches that were available to anyone here. That must be the decision of Lord Holm and his guards. Eyes caught by torchlight gleamed from doorways, but Garric only once saw an adult woman. A naked brown child suddenly sprinted on chubby legs from a hut, gurgling laughter. His mother-who didn't look any older than fifteen herself-ran after him, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and began to spank him into screams with her slipper even before she got him back into the hut. She kept her eyes turned away from Garric and his companions, as if by ignoring the strangers she could prevent them from harming her. "Shin?" Garric said. "Do you know how wide this land is? I can smell salt water." "A furlong wide here, where Lord Holm has moved his household," said the aegipan. "It narrows to half that to the east and west where it finally joins the mainland to enclose the tar lake." "It's not wide enough," Leel muttered. "If we get a storm from the south, it'll wash clear over this little spit. That's happened three times since I been with Milord, only it didn't matter because we were a mile out in the lake so the sea didn't even wet the foundations of the fort." He cleared his throat and corrected himself, "The palace, we're supposed to call it. The palace." A vagrant breeze drove in from the sea, thinning a wedge of mist. The full moon blazed through the clear air, throwing a line of blacker shadow the length of the raised walkway stretching out into the lake. "All right," said Leel, pointing with the torch. "There's the causeway. It runs straight to the palace. Just follow it out and you can't go wrong." Kore drew up at the base of the causeway. In Ornifal men cut ice on the River Beltis in winter. Packed into pits with sawdust between the layers, the blocks remained to chill the drinks of the wealthy at the height of summer. The causeway was built with asphalt cut in the same fashion from the surface of the tar lake and stacked several layers high to form a road. The top layer of bitumen was mixed with dust and gravel blown onto the lake over the years, so that it became a type of concrete in which tar rather than lime was the binding agent. The ogre stepped onto the causeway, lowering her weight carefully. Her clawed foot didn't sink in. She paused, cocking an eye toward her rider for direction. "And in the morning, Lord Holm will carry us across the salt water in his barge?"