David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

"Can you swim, princess?" she said. "Yes, I see that you can." Her eyes met Sharina's. They were both smiling. "Yes," said Sharina. "I swim very well." "The Last enter this region through the pool in the center of their citadel," Rasile said, her voice getting a saw-toothed edge to it. "At the bottom of that pool is the First Stone. It is the focus which draws them to this place rather than to another. You must fetch the First Stone up from the pool and bring it to me." Rasile laughed. "It is well that you do swim, princess," she said. "Who else could we trust to do this thing without flinching? Your warriors are very brave, no doubt, but they-" She moved her index finger through the air as though tracing letters. Azure wizardlight trailed away from the stubby claw, each spark taking the flickering form of an armored soldier. "-wouldn't have stomach for what's necessary, would they? To deal with the Great Wisdom?" "Cashel would," said Sharina. She tried to keep emotion out of her voice, for fear of learning what emotion she might show if she didn't. "He's not afraid of wizardry. But he's not here; and anyway, he can't swim." She cleared her throat. "How will I getto the pool, Rasile?" she said. "There's only the two entrances and they're both guarded." "You'll have to be invisible," the Corl said. "And that means-" A catapult fired. The heavy stone smashed into ricocheting fragments almost as soon as the levers crashed against their stops. One and maybe several of the Last were surely dead, but an endless number of the creatures remained. Like water dripping against a cliff face, they'd eventually wear away the royal army. "-that you will be blind. Therefore-" "Blind?" said Sharina. She felt cold and nauseous, as though she'd been punched in the pit of the stomach. "I don't understand!" "If you cannot be seen,"

Rasile said, "then you can't see. You will use my eyes." She stretched. The old wizard seemed to have become more limber as a result of the exercise she'd gotten during the march. "If you say so,"

Sharina muttered, looking out at the night again. The thought of being blind still chilled her. "Ah… When will we do this?" Rasile repeated her throaty laugh. "Not until the morning, princess," she said. "I must sleep and replenish my strength. And even then, I will be able to accomplish the spell only because of what the Last have created, this strong pillar that I will climb." Sharina nodded. "I'll get to sleep also, then," she said. And in her mind, she whispered, Oh, Cashel. Please come back tonight. But she knew in her heart that she would sleep alone. *** The tar lake was a jumble of blocks broken upward as monsters crawled out of it, and the air was thick with the stench of bitumen. Garric would've felt queasy if he hadn't been so angry at being carried like a baby through the chaos. He'd managed to twist in Kore's arm so that he was at least facing forward, but he couldn't pretend he was in control of what was happening to him. The snarls of beasts rising from the lake were as loud as the howl of a winter storm. Torches were alight on the spit of hard ground ahead, twitching in agitation. No doubt Lord Holm's retainers were shouting, but mere human racket couldn't be heard in this cacophony. A hairy elephant stood facing them at the end of the causeway. It was much larger than the others Garric'd glimpsed in this place, easily twelve feet high to the top of its humped shoulders. It curled its trunk between its great tusks and lowered its head to meet the oncoming ogre. To either side of the monster the surface glistened with pools of liquid tar; there was no way around. "Drop me!" Garric shouted. He'd made the demand repeatedly during Kore's run for the shore, but now the ogre had no choice. She skidded to a sparkling halt and decanted Garric to the ground, surprisingly gentle despite the necessary haste. Shin was skipping down the causeway ahead of them. He turned a double somersault in the air, landed on his hooves, and sprang skyward like a stone flung from a trebuchet. The elephant's trunk uncoiled to swat him-but too late. The aegipan landed on the beast's bulging forehead, then backflipped to its shoulders. He grinned at Garric and Kore as he pointed toward the asphalt. Blue sparks shot from Shin's index fingers. Where each struck the tar, the surface bubbled. Saber-toothed cats hunched upward from both pools. The elephant started backward, swinging its head to one side and then the other. The cats sprang simultaneously, gripping the elephant's shaggy withers with their claws as their long fangs slashed into its neck. Laughing, Shin sprang free. The elephant screamed and stepped to its left, twisting as it tried to gore the cat on that side. Prey and hunters splashed into the gleaming asphalt with a burp; a wave surged onto the causeway. Garric jumped over the clinging blackness, reaching the gravel shore before Kore could gather him in her arms again. "This way, champion!" Shin called. The aegipan's tiny horns shone like sun-struck diamonds. "To the boat!" "What have you done, damn you?" cried Leel. Holm's henchman stood with an asphalt torch raised high in his left hand and his sword bare in his right. "Have you raised demons?" Shin pointed. A shaggy creature the size of an ox shambled past Garric and swiped Leel out of the way with a forepaw. Its claws were black and longer than a man's fingers, but it wasn't a bear as Garric first thought: the beast's narrow face and long tongue were those of a leaf-eating sloth. "This way!" Garric followed the bounding aegipan. A wolf with massive jaws loped toward them. Garric struck with Carus' reflexive skill, feeling the keen edge bite through bones as heavy as a lion's. The wolf sprang into the air, landed on its feet again, and stumbled into the darkness with its head hanging between its forelegs. Is eyes had glazed. They'd reached the southern edge of the gravel spit. The air smelled of salt instead of asphalt, and the moon picked out touches of foam on the slow surf. A barge with a rounded bow and stern was tied up on the end of a timber jetty. Shin darted up the planks well ahead of Garric and the ogre. He hopped to the vessel's railing and perched like a rooster on a fence, calling out in an amazingly loud voice. Garric didn't recognize the language. Lord Holm and a guard carrying a long-hafted axe reached the jetty. Holm snapped an order. The heavyset guard raised his weapon. Kore grabbed him by the back of the neck and snapped the body outward like a housewife killing a chicken for dinner. Lord Holm squawked and turned with his thin-bladed sword. The ogre smashed the dead man into him. Holm and the guard fell into the water and sank. Neither came up again. Shin continued to call from the railing. Garric jumped onto the barge. It rode high; the open hold was empty. There were four sweeps on either side, swung inboard while the vessel was at dock. The looms were long enough to be worked by two or three oarsmen apiece, standing on the port and starboard catwalks.

Kore stood at the end of the jetty, facing the shore. She leaned forward and spread her arms with the claws extended. From the front she'd be terrifying. People ran toward the barge. The ogre gave a hacking roar, bringing the oncoming mob to a halt. Garric was trying to get one of the sweeps loose. They'd been lashed to the railing with willow splits and he couldn't figure out the knot in the darkness. He heard children crying. "Kore!" he shouted. "Let'em pass!" "Yes, let them come aboard, Mistress Kore!" Shin said. "They're our crew!"

"Faugh!" Kore said in a thunderous murmur. "I'd rather share with a flock of chickens… and they'd be better eating than these swarthy runts, too." Despite the ogre's complaints, she stepped backward into the barge without looking. Garric'd realized as Kore carried him down the causeway that her balance was as good as Shin's. He'd always thought of himself as well-coordinated, but he was a toddler compared to his present companions. The crowd piled aboard the barge. All of them were laborers who'd been working in Lord Holm's orchards. The aegipan harangued them in their own language. The males untied the sweeps with none of the trouble that Garric'd had, while the women settled in the hold. Those with infants clutched them to their breasts. A pair of long-horned bison lumbered down the beach, kicking gravel. One lifted its head and bellowed like the wind blowing through a hollow log. No more refugees came toward the jetty, and the only torches Garric could see were blobs of tar lying motionless on the ground. There'd been hundreds of laborers in the camp; fewer than fifty had managed to board the vessel. Perhaps others had escaped to east or west along the strand. Regardless, there was nothing more Garric could do about the situation. The barge's ragged bow rope was looped around a bollard at the end of the jetty. Garric tried to twitch it clear. When that failed the second time, he cut it with the sword as easily as he'd split the wolf's spine as he ran. "Push off!" he said. Shin called something, perhaps relaying the order in the laborers' language. At any rate, those at the landward sweeps shoved them against the jetty. It probably wasn't proper procedure-one of the blades split-but the vessel wallowed out from the shore. A guard ran toward the jetty. He carried a bow and looked back over his shoulder in terror. "Come back!" he shouted to Garric. "Come back and take me!"