David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

You get on with your business, wizard. I and the boy here'll keep the beast busy for you." "You haven't fought a wyvern as big as this one," said Kore. Garric shrugged. He didn't need his ancestor to tell him what to do now. "This is the best way to get to him?" he said, gesturing to the stairs circling the wall. "Far and away the best,"

Shin agreed. "Even if you were a rock climber. I'll follow you up, then." Kore stood and stretched. "Follow me instead, Master Shin," she said. "I think I'll go too." Garric looked at her without speaking.

The ogre grimaced, an amazing expression on her long face. "It's my business what I do, you know," she said. "I'm not your horse any more!" She made a dismissive gesture with her right arm. It looked like a derrick swinging. "Wyvern flesh is quite tasty," she added.

"The young ones are, at any rate. I've never eaten one this big myself, but I'm hopeful." "Right," said Garric quietly. "I'm hopeful too, my friend." He strode to the base of the stairs. He was nervous.

He'd have liked to rush up them, but he was going to need all his strength and wind very shortly. In truth, he and Kore were probably going to need more strength than they had; but they were going to try. *** Ilna could no longer see light when she looked over her shoulder, and the gray glow ahead wasn't strong enough to help her choose her footing. She walked on, her face set and grim; more or less as usual, she supposed. The worst thing that could happen would be for her to fall into a chasm and break her neck, and she wasn't disposed at the moment to consider that a bad result. She'd go on as long as she lived, but life had held no pleasure for her since she'd watched the catmen kill Chalcus and Merota. The light was growing brighter.

She'd heard things scuttling along the floor beside her for some minutes; now she was able to see distorted shadows the size of dogs.

She didn't bother to pretend that theywere dogs. "Oh, she's very strong," whispered a voice. "The Messengers will bow to her," another voice rustled. "Not like us, not poor weak failures like us." The light was stronger. This time she could tell that the speaker was one of the scuttling things. For a moment it stood and she thought itwas a man; but then it hunched again. There was nothing human about it, though there might once have been. Ilna remembered what Temple had said about those who sought the Messengers but didn't have the strength to compel them. Asion and Karpos deserved better of her.

Indeed, there wasn't anyone Ilna could think of whodidn't deserve better, though there were no few she'd met who she'd send to a clean death without scruple or hesitation. But these despicable creatures were here on their own responsibility, not hers. She smiled. She wasn't responsible for anybody's presence save her own. She was descending. Because she'd been in caves before, she expected at least a hint of dampness if not water running along the floor. The air here was as dry as that of the sere grasslands above. And of course the rock was sandstone, not limestone where natural caves appeared. There wasnothing natural about this place. Well, she'd known that. "The Messengers will bow before her!" the little voices chittered. "Oh, what power she has!" When Ilna didn't look at the creatures, their sounds made her think of rats. Even to her eyes, the way they scuttled was ratlike. The walls of the cave were wide near the ceiling but bulged in before spreading again at the bottom. There was plenty of room to walk, but Ilna had the feeling that the walls were reaching for her. She hated rock and she hated this cave; but she hated the catmen more. She expected to pay to get the things she wanted. "What will she demand?" the voices twittered. "Oh, such power! She will rule the Messengers as they rule wretched creatures like us!" The light had no source and no color. It was gray, the gray of the Hell Ilna'd walked in till she surrendered her soul to evil and gained skills no human could have mastered. In the Hell-light Ilna saw deep into the rock, the patterns locked there in crystalline horror: death and doom and chaos, all drawn in detail. Oh, yes. She had power. And soon perhaps she would have the power to kill every Corl there was. The light became fiercer at each step. How deep had she gone? Into the earth, into the mountain? Usually Ilna had a feeling for time-if not for distance the way her brother Cashel did-but the rock confused her.

She'd been buried in this place. She'd buried herself. And she wasn't alone. The creatures scampered when her eyes fell on them, crawled when they thought she wasn't looking. They wore no-colored clothing and she never saw their features. "She'll put out the sun/move the stars from their courses/bring back the age of fire and ice!" The walls of the passage began to sprout spiky nodules like sea urchins.

At first Ilna thought it was lichen, but when she paused for a closer look she found that the growths were crystals extruded from the rock itself. She'd never seen anything like that on sandstone. It was as unexpected as finding maggots in a melon. She continued on, trying not to look to the sides. Her mouth was set in a line of fierce disapproval, and her fingers knotted and picked out patterns in yarn.

She'd done the same things when she stepped into Hell and became lost to the world. She'd done the same things theprevious time she stepped into Hell. Her smile quirked. This time at least she knew the way. The smile faded. Garric wouldn't arrive to save her here, though. That didn't matter. If she destroyed the Coerli as she'd come to do, thennothing else mattered. "She will meet the Messengers!" the voices chirped. The distorted creatures covered the floor of the corridor behind Ilna. Rats the size of dogs, large dogs… "She is meeting the Messengers and they will bow to her! They will bow!" Ilna stepped into a spherical chamber. It was huge, far too big for her to judge its true size. All the buildings and groves and terraces of the palace in Valles could fit into it. In the center hung a spinning pink glow.

It lit the cavern the way the sun did the surface world. Ilna noticed that the sandstone walls were banded as far up as she could see. The markings were more vivid than those she'd seen on the bluffs before she entered the passage, but she must be far beneath the surface of the world she'd left. YOU HAVE COME TO US, said voices in her head, each echoing the other and switching order from syllable to syllable.

The sticky pink light trembled in measure with the words. WHAT DO YOU WISH, WIZARD? Ilna focused on the light with the eyes of her mind just as she would a pattern she intended to weave. The lighthad a pattern.

It shifted as the separate nodes wound around and even through one another. The nodes had shapes, but what Ilna saw of them were the constantly changing parts that they showed to this world for a particular instant. And the lights were speaking. WE ARE THE MESSENGERS, the silent voices said. WE HAVE ALL KNOWLEDGE, WIZARD, AND WE OFFER IT TO YOU. "She is powerful," the gray figures moaned softly.

"Never was there one so powerful as she, or almost never." They spread across the floor of the cavern like mold on rotting fruit, never coming as close to Ilna as her foot would reach if she lashed out.

Their smell was overpowering. It seemed to be compounded of old urine and rancid sweat. How long had wizards been coming here? The squirming mass seemed the size of an army assembled for review; greater than the largest crowds that came to hear Garric speak in the plaza before the palace. "I want you to kill all the Coerli!" Ilna said. She raised her voice, but it still became lost in the chamber's vastness. "I'm told you can do anything. Can you? I want you to kill them all!" WE DO NOT ACT, WIZARD, the voices said. WE CANNOT ACT, FOR WE ARE IMPRISIONED