David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

"Hold me!" Garric tried to say, but he couldn't make his lips move nor even form the words in his mind. The circles of light boring through his eyes wrenched his consciousness out of the waking world. He hovered for a moment above the plaza, watching his garments flatten on the ground where he'd been standing. His helmet bounced once and came to rest on its rim, the gilded wings shivering.

The plaza and the pyre were gone. Garric stood on a gray road, naked and alone, and fog swaddled his brain.

Ilna put her right arm over Merota's shoulders as what the girl called a meteor snarled like a landslide toward them through the bare sky. If it hit the plaza-and it certainly appeared that it was going to-there was nothing anyone could do that'd make a difference.

If Ilna'd been alone, she'd have taken lengths of yarn out of her left sleeve and begun knotting a pattern. She smiled wryly. Her powers were considerable but they didn't rise to ripping large rocks out of the sky, so that wouldn't have helped either.

The work made her feel more content, though.

She wasn't alone. She was responsible for Merota, and though the girl was putting a brave face on it she was understandably terrified. Ilna wasn't going to fill her last moments of life with the knowledge she'd just abandoned a frightened child.

She, Merota, and Chalcus had been seated on a middle row of the bleachers, down at the right end. The rows beneath them-three; she'd counted them off on her fingers as she stepped up-were the seats of the island nobility who were going to march up to the pyre and throw on incense. The rows above-two more-were nobles as well, but seated higher because they were less important and didn't have any duties during the funeral except to be part of the spectacle. They were rich farmers for the most part, judging by their talk and gaudy tastelessness.

Those folk were the problem now. They were trying to get to the ground, and in their panic they probably wouldn't have cared if that meant trampling a small woman and the ten-year-old girl in her charge.

They cared when Chalcus jumped onto his seat and faced them, though, sword and dagger drawn. One fellow tried to push through anyway; Chalcus' left hand moved too quickly to see. The panicked local clapped his hands to his face and sprang back, three long gold chains dancing as he fell on the bleachers. Blood from his slit nostril flickered in the air.

Ilna's smile grew minusculy wider: Chalcus understood duty also. If she was about to die, and it certainly seemed that she was, she was fortunate to do it at the side of a man in the best sense of the word.

The sling-stone-the meteor, since Merota was educated and doubtless knew the right word-exploded high in the sky. Ilna's face was bent down but she felt the flash on the backs of her hands. She braced herself because she remembered what'd happened when the earlier meteor hit the sea, but the shockwave this time was beyond anything she'd imagined.

Clutching Merota with one hand, Ilna turned an unintended cartwheel. The bleachers, raw wood beneath a drape of red muslin like the steps up the pyre-had flexed down and then sprung back again. She tried to grab Chalcus-for the contact rather than because it'd help in any material way-but he was spinning off in a different direction.

Ilna, Merota, and several handfuls of other spectators crashed down onto the bleachers together; boards broke. The whole structure collapsed in a tangle of splinters and torn cloth.

Ilna jumped to her feet. The back of her right wrist was skinned, but she wasn't really injured.

"Merota, are you hurt?" she said. The girl wrapped her arms around Ilna's torso and sobbed into the bosom of her tunic.

People were shouting and crying, but only a few of them had real injuries. A splinter as long as sword blade had run through a middle-aged woman's right calf. She stared at it in shocked amazement; Chalcus, glancing first to see that Ilna and Merota were all right, knelt at the victim's side. He sheathed the sword he hadn't lost in the tumult, then used the dagger to cut a length off his sash for a bandage or tourniquet.

Ilna looked around plaza. The troops who'd been formed by battalions in a semicircle around the bleachers had fallen like ten-pins, their armor and weapons clattering. Now they were picking themselves up and dressing their ranks. Some soldiers were gray-faced with fear, but instead of running they trusted their safety to discipline and their fellows just as they'd been trained to do.

Ilna supposed that sort of training was useful-for people who couldn't simply overcome their fears by will power. She was afraid of many things: afraid of failure; afraid of making a fool of herself; afraid of her own anger. She wasn't in the least afraid of death.

The locals weren't as fast to get to their feet as the soldiers were, and when they did they often stumbled away from the plaza. Ilna didn't blame them: the air had a metallic taste, unpleasant and rough on the back of her throat.

Her ears rang from the blast, but she could hear sounds again. A local screamed and pointed toward the pyre. Other islanders turned to follow the line of his arm, then screamed in turn. Their drift became a panicked stampede.

Ilna looked at the pyre also. The lowest level was burning, though the green brushwood made smoky flames. They crackled like sea ice breaking on the coast in an inshore gale.

The bier at the top of the third stage was disarranged. The corpse got to its feet, dragging away the cloth-of-gold drapery. It swayed, wax-pale except where it was rouged, and took a step by pivoting its whole leg at the hip. Its mouth moved, but any words it spoke were lost in screams and the sound of the fire. The corpse took another step to the muslin-covered staircase, then a third.

"Help…" it cried in a piping voice. It stumbled to its knees. "Me…"

The flames were rising higher. The fire had taken hold slowly, but before long the brush would dry and turn the structure into a dancing, orange-red incandescence.

"I'm coming, your highness," called a plump man whose tunic and trousers were decorated with silver gares. It was Martous, the chamberlain; the man who'd sent the boy prince to ignite the pyre. He tried to go forward but stopped, paralyzed by fear and indecision.

Ilna weighed the situation coldly, as she did all things. She patted Merota's shoulder reassuringly, then gave the girl a little push in the direction of Chalcus. "Go to Chalcus, milady," she said. "Quickly now!"

The corpse got up again. It tried to walk and fell immediately, rolling down the stairs to the broader second stage. Flames were already licking up the wood on the adjacent side.

Ilna gathered her tunics above her knees and ran toward the pyre. Cashel was watching over Sharina whose court dress hobbled her as effectively as leg-irons would. Chalcus was saving a woman who'd bleed to death without his help. That was slight recompense for the many lives he'd let out with his sword and less merciful means, but it was something-and besides, somebody had to watch Merota.

Garric was… Ilna didn't know where Garric was. All she could see as she ran was his unique winged helmet lying on the ground near his broken throne, and beside it a tunic reeved through his ornate cuirass.

Where is Garric? But the question could wait for now. Ilna reached the side staircase and started up.

The steps were uneven, forcing Ilna to look down at her feet instead of keeping her eyes on the man she was rescuing. The corpse. She supposed she shouldn't complain. Only a desire for symmetry had caused the islanders to put steps on all four sides to begin with. The flight up the front had been sufficient for the procession placing the bier.

Ilna'd never seen the point of funerals in the first place. All that remained when a person died was meat, and human flesh was as useless as fallen leaves in autumn. For sanitary purposes it had to be disposed of-in a hole, in a fire, or simply by throwing it into the sea.