David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

It was a remarkable piece of coordination. "Compare them with the dullness of the reliefs. Air doesn't act quickly on jet, but it acts; and this sarcophagus was made millennia ago." In all truth, Garric couldn't see the distinction-certainly not by torchlight and probably not in the full blaze of the sun. But neither did he see any reason to doubt Shin's judgment, on this matter or on anything else the aegipan chose to state with such assurance. He looked up at the dome. From where he stood, the rim of the oculus clipped a sooty edge from the moon's silver and gray. Shin examined the tapestries. They seemed to be well made, but the scenes had no obvious connection with this black palace. Garric wondered if Holm or one of his ancestors had looted them in a raid. Kore opened the door in the partition wall behind the throne and squatted to look down the passage to the living quarters beyond. She'd have to crawl to negotiate it, and from the blank disgust on her face she saw no reason to do so. Something sizzled.

Garric turned. The light of the full moon blazed straight down on the sarcophagus, flattening the reliefs. A figure formed, coalescing out of the air instead of rising through the stone lid. Garric stepped back, touching his hilt but not drawing the sword. Kore and the aegipan sidled around the edges of the hall, placing themselves beside Garric and close to the outside door. The figure, at least seven feet tall even without the pedestal of the sarcophagus to stand on, looked down at Garric and laughed. It was indeed a taller, more cadaverous version of Lord Holm. "You are the sacrifice?" the figure said. Its voice boomed as if from a vast cavern. "Not before time, I must say.

My blood must be thinning for matters to have waited so long." Garric drew his sword with a mutedsring of the gray steel blade. He backed another step, trusting his companions to keep clear without him having to waste attention on them. "Milord," he said to the robed wizard. "I told your descendent I'd spend the night in this palace. I'm not a sacrifice, to you or him or to anyone. My friends and I will go now and leave the night to you." The wizard laughed again and raised his left hand, knuckles out. On the fourth finger was a ring with a huge red stone. "Belia!" he said. A film of scarlet wizardlight covered the interior of the hall like the membrane inside an egg shell. Kore growled and hunched toward the open doorway. She rebounded from the red shimmer, snarled, and ripped outward at it with both hands the way one would try to tear a silk curtain. Her claws slid without gripping.

Garric lunged, thrusting for the wizard's right kneecap. It was the easiest target and, though it wouldn't be immediately fatal, it'd bring the tall man's vitals within reach of a second stroke.

"Eithabira!" the wizard said and wrapped himself in wizardlight like a cicada in its chrysalis. The edge that'd sheared hard limestone bounced away. The blade sang a high note; Garric's right hand and forearm felt as though he'd plunged them into boiling water. He damped the vibration by holding the sword against his thigh. The wizard's laugh boomed again. He clenched his left fist so that the fiery jewel pointed at Garric. Garric made an overarm cut into the sarcophagus lid between the wizard's feet. The jet shattered. The wizard toppled backward with a hoarse shout. The glimmer of wizardlight vanished like frost in sunshine. "Mount!" Kore shouted, turning and dropping to one knee. "Mount!" Garric wobbled. He was as dizzy as if he hadn't had anything to drink in three days. "Quickly!" said the aegipan, pausing in the doorway to look back. The building rocked, springing several panes of glass from their casements. The ogre took Garric in her arms and bolted out of the palace. Tremors shook the lake. Shin ran ahead, dancing over the blocks of the causeway as they rose and fell. In the palace behind them the wizard cried out again. He sounded like a rabbit in a leg snare, but very much louder. "I'm all right now!"

Garric said. He thought he was. He started to sheathe his sword but changed his mind. "I can walk myself!" A great head broke the surface of the asphalt, raising its trunk high as it struggled to mount the causeway. It would've been an elephant if not for the shaggy hair covering its body. It trumpeted shrilly as Kore raced past with Garric. The pitiless moonlight gleamed as more creatures broke from their ancient bondage all across the lake. "Quickly!" cried the aegipan. The ogre's clawed strides struck sparks with each leap over the crumbling asphalt surface. *** Ilna'd expected either a landscape like the valley she was leaving or a swamp like the one where Garric'd found catmen preying on the Grass People. In the event, when she stepped through the portal her bare feet scrunched into coarse sand. It was the color of rust, but the small red sun exaggerated the hue. The terrain was largely barren, but there was water despite the lack of ground cover. What Ilna first thought were sedges-on closer look they weren't-grew in a pool a few double paces to the left, and the swales were studded with what seemed to be ferns springing from woody knobs like cypress knees.

"Well, no doubt which way they came," said Karpos. He nodded toward the track worn into the sand, not so much a line of footprints as a parallel double ridge thrown up to either side of the path. It reminded Ilna of the way ants wore trackways in gritty soil after a rain. "Not that there was anyway," said Asion, who'd bent down to gather pebbles from the sand. He used his stubby left index finger to sort through possibilities before suddenly flicking four smooth chunks of quartz into the other palm. He transferred them to his bullet pouch. Less than half a mile ahead stood a structure of glass, all flat planes with the same number of sides as a hand has fingers. The dim sun easing toward the western horizon turned some facets rosy while others reflected the sky or the ground, but the glass had no color of its own. Karpos sighed and unstrung his bow, then hung the staff across his chest by the slack string. He hadn't had time to retrieve any arrows from the beasts he'd shot. "I'll lead," he said, swinging out ahead of the rest of the party. He walked beside the Coerli trackway instead of obliterating it, though here the care was reflexive rather than purposeful. As much for courtesy as any better cause, Ilna followed to the side also; Temple was across the track from her. "Think you can hit a cat with those rocks you're picking up?" Karpos said quietly. Ilna glanced over her shoulder at Asion. He was watching their back trail with a pebble in the pocket of his sling. He shrugged and said, "It makes me feel better." "Yeah," said his partner. "Ido know what you mean." There were no trees in this place, though unfamiliar plants with straight stems and a crown of short leaves-they sprang from the trunk like the flowers on the stalk of a hollyhock-grew taller than she was, or even than Temple and Karpos. Mats of rootlets supported them, often standing proud where winds had scoured away the surrounding sand. "I saw something move!"

Asion called. "One of them scales on the house, it moved!" "I thought it was just the light," said Karpos. "But if you say it moved, I believe you." They reached the structure. From a flat to the opposite point, each pane was as high as Ilna or a Corl. The trail led to one whose bottom edge was along the ground. Sand'd been brushed away in the recent past. Ilna could see into the glass, but its ripples distorted the things inside so that she couldn't tell what they were.

Karpos pushed gingerly with his left fingertips; he held his long knife ready in his right. The glass didn't move. "Temple?" he said.

"Do you know how to make it open?" "Asion," Temple said. He'd drawn his sword and held his buckler advanced. "Shoot into the center of this pane; that should do it." He glanced at the rest of them. "I'd expect all the warriors to have been in the raiding party," he added,