David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

He realized that he'd been frowning, or anyway hadn't been as cheerful as he usually felt. "I was just hoping my sister's all right," he said apologetically. Because he didn't want to talk any more about that, he bobbed his staff toward the gray figures and said, "Who are they, Tenoctris?" "These…," she said, sauntering toward them. She crossed her right wrist on her left to share the weight of the sword on both arms. "… are the Telchines. They've been exiled here because they're a nasty, treacherous lot, but they know certain things. In particular, they know the way to the Fulcrum of the Worlds." Close up Cashel saw that the creatures wore peaked robes that covered them all the way to the ground. He wasn't sure how they saw out. Maybe the cloth over their faces was woven thinner, but it didn't seem so when he looked at them now. Tenoctris walked along the straggling line of the Telchines, looking hard at each one as she passed. At the end, she turned and walked back, smiling impishly.

"We've done well, Cashel," she said brightly. "You bring me luck."

Tenoctris patted his arm again; then, without a change in expression, she leaned forward slightly. Using the breadth of the blade, she smoothed away one line of the symbols she'd drawn when they were on this beach the first time. "You tricked us," whined the creature standing nearest the word Tenoctris had changed. "We came to trade, and you trapped us." Its voice sounded like that of an injured fox, weak and angry and utterly vicious. Its body didn't move; Cashel couldn't see its lips to tell whether they did or not. "You're a treacherous liar, Telchis," Tenoctris said coldly. "All your people are. You'd have robbed me and returned to the world from which you were exiled for faithlessness." "We have kept faith!" the creature protested. "Folk leave goods on our beach and we offer goods in return. They take our goods, or they take back their own if they do not accept our offer." When he stood this close, Cashel noticed the Telchines' distinctive odor. It was a mixture of old parchment and the acid dryness of dead beetles. Tenoctris laughed harshly. "I offered the Key," she said. "What did you intend to pay me for the Key, Telchis?" Cashel held his quarterstaff upright, but his hands were spread at fighting distance on the hickory. He wouldn't insult Tenoctris by placing himself between her and these gray creatures; but if a Telchis did or said anything that Cashel read as threatening, he wouldn't wait for direction before striking. They reminded him of maggots writhing in a possum's corpse. "Anything," the creature wheezed. "Anything-g-g…," the troupe chorused. They sounded like feeding time in a fox's earth… "You would take the Key,"

Tenoctris said in the cold voice she'd used toward the Telchines from the beginning. "And you would return to your plane, where I could not follow you. And you would pay me nothing. Therefore I caught you here with words of power, and you will tell me the way to the Fulcrum as the price of your lives." "Not the Fulcrum!" said the creature who'd spoken first. "Anything but the Fulcrum," his fellows whined softly.

"Anything-g-g…" Cashel looked at the eastern horizon. He thought it'd gotten brighter than it'd been when they arrived, but that might be a trick his mind was playing. He'd like it to be dawn, and he'd like to be out of this place; but he'd stay for as long as Tenoctris wanted him to stay. "Do you think I'm here to negotiate?"

Tenoctris said. "I have no reason to love you, Telchines! The One who exiled you showed more mercy than you can expect from me. Tell me the way to the Fulcrum, or you will stand here till you die and your bodies waste to dust!" "From the Fulcrum you could shift the worlds," said the chief of the Telchines. "She could smash the worlds," his fellows echoed. "She could smash our world, even ours…" "You won't have a world!" Tenoctris said. "You'll freeze and die and your dust will blow across this beach. The Telchines will be only dust and a memory, and at last even your memory will vanish from the cosmos!"

"Tell her…," a Telchis said. Cashel couldn't be sure which one had spoken. "Tell her the way to the Fulcrum," whispered the chorus like aspens rustling in the darkness. "I will tell you the way to the Fulcrum," the leader said. His voice was as thin as the cold, cutting wind from the sea. "I must tell you the way…" For a moment, there was no sound but the wind and the cry of a distant seabird. A voice behind Cashel thundered, "Lonchar tebriel tobriel!" A word in the curving Old Script wrote itself in purple flame in the air between Tenoctris and the Telchis. The sound didn't come from either the leader or all the Telchines together. Despite not trusting the hunched gray figures, Cashel risked a glance over his shoulder. "Riopha moriath chael!" boomed the voice, and it was the sea itself speaking.

The sluggish waves puckered into a lipless mouth. Cashel turned to face it, bringing his staff around in a quick arc. Both butt caps trailed snarling blue sparks of wizardlight. "Mor marioth!" and the mouth blurred and vanished. The sea remained dimpled for a moment as though oil'd been spilled onto it; then that was gone as well. A moment later the surf resumed its slow march up the beach.

"Yes…," said Tenoctris softly. Cashel looked at her. Her profile was as pale and sharp as a cameo. The words of power were already fading from the air before her. As Cashel watched, the writing shimmered from purple to orange and back very quickly. Using her foot instead of the sword blade, Tenoctris rubbed out the words she'd written in the sand. The Telchines twisted into the forest like skinks writhing for cover. Tenoctris reached into her wallet and brought out the quartz key from the Tomb of the Messengers. She held it up to the eyes watching from the trees, then dropped it deliberately beside the pebble she'd left as a decoy. "Now, Cashel," she said. "We must go to the Fulcrum of the Worlds. It will be very difficult to get there even now that I know the way, and-" She laughed again like a happy child.

"-it'll befar more difficult to return!" *** A belt of thorny brush fringed the stream Garric and his companions were following toward the mountain. Even mounted on Kore's back Garric couldn't see the water, but there was no escaping the sound of its tumbling violence. Ordinarily it must've been a seasonal trickle across a parched landscape, but it was clearly in spate now.

"The glacier filled its valley during winter and retreated a hundred yards in the course of a hot summer," Shin said. "Since the Change, the ice has melted faster than ever before. The valley'll be clear in another year except for shaded crevices; and even there before a second year is out." He skipped ahead of Garric and Kore, idly nibbling foliage from a branch he'd broken from the brush. Garric couldn't imagine that the small gray-green leaves tasted any better than pine bark, but he'd seen goats strip the bark from pine saplings.

Apparently aegipans were equally catholic in their tastes. Shin chuckled. "You're fortunate that it's melting," he said. "The ice used to cover the entrance to the Yellow King's tomb. Though no doubt a true champion could've dug his way down through the glacier." "Horses don't dig tunnels in ice," the ogre said austerely. "If you were wondering, noble master." "I wasn't," Garric said, "but thank you anyway." The mountain rose like a wall from the plains. Garric cleared his throat and went on, "How much farther is it, Master Shin?" "Not far," said the aegipan. "We're almost to the mouth of the valley, and it's no more than half a mile beyond." The strait they'd crossed in Lord Holm's barge the night before was less than three miles wide; by daylight, they might've been able to see the far shore before they set out. After they'd landed, Shin-the only one who knew anything about the terrain-told the laborers to row westward where they'd find the considerable settlement within twenty miles. That was where Holm had sold his produce. The aegipan had led Garric and Kore directly inland across a barren landscape, taking their bearings from the multi-spired peak he pointed out on the horizon. Before midday they'd met the stream and followed it thenceforth. They hadn't tried to fight through the dense curtain of brush. The barge had been provisioned. Garric had taken half the total in a sling of cargo net, including a cask of water. The rescued laborers were headed for a settlement with food and water; he and his companions were not. The mountain was a wedge of volcanic rock with a faint greenish tinge. It'd emerged from a surrounding plain of shale which weathering had broken into a loose soil. From the luxuriance of the brush along the creek banks, it was apparently very fertile when it got enough water. Shin climbed a spur, his hooves sparkling. Kore grunted. "Steep, I would say," she said.