David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

She nodded unhappily toward Cervoran and his Double, dabbing their athames toward the brazier as they chanted.

"-can't stop the Green Woman, then we're doomed."

"I didn't say there's nothing I could do," said Ilna sharply. The only emotion she'd brought out of the garden was anger. She was back to where she'd been for the first eighteen years of her life, before she'd met Chalcus and Merota. "I said I couldn't see where any action I took fitted into the whole fabric, but I've decided that doesn't matter. I'll deal with the part of the pattern that's before me, and somebody else can worry about the rest."

"I don't understand?" said Sharina. She glanced from Ilna to the fortress, approaching with ponderous inexorability. It didn't move fast, but it didn't need to. She drew the Pewle knife from its belt sheath.

"The Green Woman hasn't harmed me, Sharina," Ilna said calmly as she drew the other knotted pattern from her sleeve. "I'm not fool enough to believe that makes her my friend, but I know very well who my enemies are."

Ilna nodded toward Cervoran and Double. Smiling, she loosed a knot of the second pattern.

The short noon shadows beneath the wizards and their brazier broadened and deepened. For an instant, no one else noticed. Cervoran screamed, and a heartbeat later his Double screamed in near unison.

The Shadow swelled over them. They turned their heads to stare at Ilna. None of the other victims had been able to move even that much after the Shadow had gripped them.

Ilna smiled. Good. They must feel every hair-fine detail of what was happening to them.

They screamed. The flesh melted and the bones as well, but still the screams hung in the air as unseen portions of the wizards continued to dissolve; and Ilna smiled.

The Shadow dimmed and vanished. Cashel and Garric broke out of their trance, looking around with the startled expressions of men who'd taken a step that wasn't there while climbing stairs.

"It was your choice, Mistress Ilna," said the silent voice of the bird on Garric's shoulder. "But if you hadn't acted, I would have. They did to me what they did to you."

"I'm sorry," Ilna said. "I'm very sorry to hear that."

She stepped over to the brazier and threw the fabric into it. The yarn shrank, blackened, and finally burst into flame. The pungency of burning wool struggled with the general vegetable stench of this soggy wasteland.

"You are destroying the garden?" the bird said. "You know that most of the denizens will die when they're freed back into their own worlds, do you not?"

Ilna shrugged. In the palace in Mona the ancient tapestry was smoldering to ash just as this fragment of her own making did.

"Everything dies eventually, bird," Ilna said. "Even you. Somebody cruel made a menagerie, and I've ended it. That's all."

"Even I will die," said the bird. "But not you, Mistress Ilna. Not for longer than you can now imagine."

"No?" said Ilna. "Well, I've had other disappointments."

She looked at the creature sharply and added, "Are you a wizard, bird?"

"No, mistress," said the bird. "I am a mathematician. Usually I would say that means I understand things that wizards do not, but in this case I do not think that is true. Still, I believe I understand enough."

All about them people were running, talking; praying, many of them. And to the south, the Fortress of Glass rose higher with every stride as the sea bottom shelved toward the bar closing Calf's Head Bay. Its steps thundered, and waves came rolling in.

Sharina rested her left hand on Cashel's shoulder; just for the stability, not for anything he could do or she even wanted him to do. Just because he was Cashel. The ground shook each time the fortress' shining legs paced forward.

Horns and trumpets were calling the army to Stand To. Soldiers who'd scattered during the chaos of the past hour were now forming back behind the standards of their units. Most of them had only swords: their spears, useless against the hellplants, were stacked far to the rear with their baggage.

Spears wouldn't be any use against the Fortress of Glass either. Nor would swords, of course.

Garric turned toward her and said, "Sharina? You've been regent while I was gone? Can you think of anything I should do? Because I've just fallen into this."

Liane hovered at Garric's side, face set but her eyes dry again. Had she been able to explain anything to him in the few minutes since he returned from wherever he'd been?

"No," Sharina said. "It's all-"

Suddenly the frustration gave way and she was again a girl talking to the brother she trusted completely. "Garric, it's been like falling off a cliff. Liane and I-"

She looked at Tenoctris, standing nearby with a cheerful, intent expression.

"-and Tenoctris, of course, and everybody, we've been trying to do something, but mostly it was Cervoran and the Green Woman, and now there's just her. It."

At the corner of her eye, she caught Ilna standing alone with a faint smile. Her fingers were weaving yarn into a pattern that only she could understand. Garric had been in a place where there were marshes and rain-and murderous cat men…

Sharina's fingers tightened on Cashel's arm. Cashel is here. He'll always be here. He won't die and leave me.

"That's what I guessed," Garric said. "I'll join Waldron, then. May the Shepherd protect you, sis. And you too, Cashel."

"But Garric…," Sharina said. She didn't know how to go on. Her brother wore nothing but a sword belt and a ragged tunic that seemed to have been made from sacking. He was bruised and scraped, and his shoulder wound should've been disabling; perhaps it would be as soon as he stopped moving and his body got a chance to remind him of its presence.

She coughed. "I don't think the army will be able to do much," she said. "Do you?"

"All the more reason for the prince to stand with his troops, don't you think?" Garric said, giving her a lopsided smile. He turned, gave Liane a quick hug with his left arm, and set off toward the royal standard. As he walked, he drew the borrowed sword again. Liane followed at his side, a half pace back.

The crystal bird hung in the air before Sharina. It was exactly where it'd been when Garric was talking to her. Its wings were motionless, but the play of light over and within the creature seemed to be more than merely sunlight on uncountable facets.

"Guess I'll get limbered up," Cashel said with a shy smile. He moved a few paces in front of her and began spinning his quarterstaff. As it rotated in slow circles, wizardlight trailed the ferrules in blue sparkles.

Sharina licked her lower lip; she'd drawn blood when she bit it. "Tenoctris?" she asked. "Will he be able to…?"

She nodded toward Cashel's back. About anyone else that would've been a joke or a madman's question, but Cashel's powers went well beyond the strength of his great muscles.

"No, dear," Tenoctris said. "The thing that you see-"

She nodded toward the oncoming fortress. Though it walked on its tripod of legs, rising increasingly high above the sea's surface, it didn't strike Sharina as a living thing. Watching it was like standing in the path of a vast landslide, swift-moving and terrible but not alive.

"-is only a surface. The real Fortress of Glass exists in many times. Nothing that happens to it in this world alone can affect any significant portion of the whole."

The old wizard looked at the hovering crystal bird and said, "Isn't that so, milord?"

"I am Bird, not a lord," said the glittering creature. "I was one of many equals, and now I am one. But you are correct about the fortress, Tenoctris."

It made a clucking, clicking sound with its body, then resumed in its mental voice, "Nothing I saw in the ages I lived with the Grass People suggested that I would meet humans who understood the equations that are my life."