David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

Near Cashel and Sharina was Tenoctris, looking about with her usual bright curiosity. Liane followed Garric's gaze and said, "Does she know what's happening? She seems to, don't you think?"

No, Garric thought. She's Tenoctris and she'd show the same interest in runes on the blade of an axe brought to behead her.

But he'd heard the carefully controlled hope in Liane's voice. He didn't think she was afraid, exactly; but Liane defined herself by the things she knew. What was happening now was beyond her understanding. Probably beyond human understanding, but if anybody knew, Tenoctris would.

"We'll ask," Garric said, and with Liane clinging to him started toward to his sister and friends. It was like walking across the flats when the tide is in, pulled and twisted at the whim of forces whose full strength would've been beyond human imagination.

King Carus was a silent presence in his mind. Carus had drowned a thousand years before when a wizard had split the sea bottom with his art and sucked the royal fleet into it. If this was a similar disaster, the result would be worse than the centuries of chaos which had followed Carus' death. The Isles hadn't really recovered from the fall of the Old Kingdom; a second collapse would end civilization forever.

Garric's skin tingled. Patches of air cleared momentarily, but once Garric saw clearly a two-legged creature which held a jeweled athame and stared back at him through faceted insect eyes.

"Tenoctris!" Garric said. He had to shout to be heard, but tension would've raised his voice anyway unless he'd fought the tendency very hard. "Do you know what's going on?"

Tenoctris turned her head and smiled to acknowledge their presence, but she didn't respond to the question; either she didn't have an answer or she simply couldn't hear him. Garric grinned: probably both, since if Tenoctris had heard she'd have shaken her head out of natural politeness.

The sound ceased so gradually that even after it was gone Garric heard echoes in memory. Around him reality shifted, flowed, and at last stiffened like grain shaking down in a measure.

He looked southward, blinked, and looked again: the Inner Sea was gone. In its place was a forest of unfamiliar trees. On the horizon lifted mountains, purple and misty with distance.

Liane bent and plucked a bell-shaped purple flower. There were scores of them, growing among the knee-high grass covering what had been a mud flat when the Fortress of Glass marched toward them.

Men shouted. A Corl warrior bounded from a grove of straight-stemmed shrubs with feathery leaves. The only weapon he carried was a flint dagger with a bone hilt, but his leather harness was beaded in a complex design.

"Watch him!" Garric shouted. He still held his naked sword, but he had no illusions about being able to outfence a Corl in open country. "They're quicker than you can believe!"

The warrior bounded straight toward Garric, but it wasn't attacking. Its eyes were wide and desperate. It wailed, "Who are they? So many!"

I understand him! thought Garric as the Corl changed direction at the last instant-and flew headlong as Ilna's noose, spun out in perfect anticipation, tightened about his right ankle. The Corl gave a despairing shriek and slammed the ground. Before Garric could get to him, Cashel had rapped the cat man behind the ear with his quarterstaff.

"Is he still alive?" Garric said, sheathing his sword. "Good, tie him and mind his teeth if he comes around. I need to question him. Apparently I can still understand Coerli speech even though the Bird's gone."

He glanced toward the empty sky to the south. Was the Bird gone? He didn't see the crystalline creature or hear its voice, but it might have left a legacy of its presence. The Bird had been more than a helper: it had been a friend.

Tenoctris watched as Garric tied the Corl's wrists behind its back with his sword belt. He looked back and asked her, "Do you know where we are?"

"Garric, nobody knows this place," the old woman said quietly. "This is a land that's never been before. It's many times, mixed together. It has no history; none."

Garric thought of the dream figure he'd met when Marzan summoned him to help the Grass People. "The Kingdom of the Isles?" that one had said. "The Isles have been gone for a thousand years…"

"We'll give it a history," Garric said. "It'll have the history that we make now."

Ilna had retrieved her noose. She knelt beside the trussed Corl and twisted his harness up.

"Careful," said Garric. "They're fast and they're really dangerous."

"This one won't be," Ilna said calmly as she slid the warrior's dagger from its sheath. The flint blade was so thin that light wavered through it within a finger's breadth of both edges.

"Wait!" said Garric. "We need-"

Ilna gripped the Corl by the topknot and slit his throat with a quick, firm stroke. Blood spurted arm's length, a hand's breadth, and finally the width of a finger as the cat man died thrashing.

Ilna straightened, leaving the dagger on the ground. She wiped the back of her right hand on the Corl's harness; she'd managed to avoid most of the spraying blood with her usual foresight.

"Ilna," Garric said, trying to understand what'd just happened. "We needed the prisoner. There must be more Coerli here, and he didn't look like those I saw hunting the Grass People. This may be the Coerlihome, or part of it. There may be thousands of them!"

"Good," said Ilna in a voice that rustled like a snake's scales. "Then there's a reason for me to live after all. I'm going to kill all the Coerli."

"Ilna," said Liane. "Please. You can't do that?"

"No?" said Ilna. She shrugged. "Perhaps you're right."

Something huge and hungry bellowed from the depths of the great forest. The sound echoed, bringing swords to the hands of the soldiers who didn't already carry their steel bare.

"But I can try," Ilna said, and her smile chilled Garric in a fashion that the monster's cry had not.

An unfamilar bird wheeled high in the heavens. In Garric's mind the ghost of Carus repeated, "…the history that we make now…"