David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

He paused, then added at a pitch even higher than his usual squeak, "I am Cervoran!"

The attendant looked at Tenoctris and blinked three times quickly, trying to get his mind around the thought. "KingCervoran?" he said in disbelief.

"It seems so," said Tenoctris, not putting any opinion into her tone. Cashel grinned. He'd probably have said, "I guess so," and meant the same thing: that they weren't sure.

Cervoran took hold of one of the doors' long vertical handles. The panel quivered when he tugged, but it didn't open. Something buzzed a loud, low note.

"I'll get it," Cashel said, stepping past the two wizards and gripping the handle. The door didn't have a bar or even a latch; nobody was going to break in or out, after all.

Cashel pulled. The door was heavy and fit tightly, but it swung sideways with a squeal.

A flood of flies curled out of the cave and back, like sparks when the roof of a burning building collapses. The stink was the worst Cashel'd smelled since the summer the body of a basking shark cast up on Barca's Hamlet, so rotten that the lower jaw had fallen off, the cartilage of the gill rakers had rotted into what looked like a horse's mane. He was used to bad smells, but he stepped back by reflex because he hadn't expected this one.

Tenoctris threw a hand to her face, then turned and bent over. "Tenoctris, are you-" Cashel started to say, but right then the wizard opened her mouth and vomited. She retched and gasped and tried to throw up again. Cashel stepped toward her but his sister was already there, supporting Tenoctris by the shoulders so she didn't fall on her face from sheer weakness.

It didn't affect Cervoran. Well, Cashel hadn't expected it would. He stepped into the cave and said, "I will use this body. Remove it from the cave for me."

Cashel pulled the other panel open to give better light than there'd be if his body blocked the half the doorway that was already open. Flies were whirling around like anything, brushing Cashel's face and even lighting on him. It was pretty bad and the stink was still worse, but he didn't let any of that show in his face.

From the entrance the cave sloped down for as far as Cashel could see. The stone floor was covered with bodies, bones, and the slick, putrid-smelling liquids that a body turns into if you just let it rot. The corpses near the entrance weren't as far gone as the ones further in, which'd probably slid or leaked downward as they rotted. The one just inside the door was a middle-aged woman who might've been asleep if you didn't know better.

Cashel squatted beside the body, judging how best to pick it up. It'd stiffened since she died, which'd make it easier to carry. It was a good thing the carriage was open, though, because with her arms spread like this he'd need to break something to get her in through the usual little carriage doors.

"Where d'ye want me to set her, Master Cervoran?" he asked, looking over his shoulder.

It'd have been a side-panel of the carriage that got broken if it'd come to that. The woman wouldn't mind and what nature was going to do to her body shortly was a lot worse, but Cashel would still've broken the side-panel.

"Carry her outside and put her on the ground," Cervoran said. "The presence of so much death aids my work, but I need more room."

Cashel glanced toward Tenoctris; she lifted her chin just a hair's breadth in agreement. Her face was tight and would've been angry if she'd allowed it to have any expression.

"All right," said Cashel, sliding his hands under the shoulders and hips of the corpse and lifting it. The dead woman wasn't heavy, but she stuck to what'd soaked into the stone. He had to rock her back and forth carefully so that he could pick her up without tearing her skin. He stood, turned, and set her down just clear of the arc the doors swung through.

In the cave it didn't bother Cashel that all the bodies'd been stripped before being thrown there. The sun was high enough now to shine on the little entrance plaza, though, and the woman looked different. It made Cashel feel like a bully to treat her this way, even though she was dead.

He shrugged, but his expression didn't change. Well, it had to happen.

Ilna stepped past and swung the doors shut. She didn't have any difficulty moving the heavy doors, though some of that was just knowing how to use your weight. Still, she was stronger than most people would guess.

Cervoran followed her with his dull eyes. "There was no reason to close the cave," he said.

"I choose to close it," Ilna snapped. "Just as I chose to pull you off the pyre. You may call it my whim, if you like."

Cervoran looked at her for a further moment, then bent and opened his oak case. He had no more expression than a carp does, sucking air on the surface of a pond in high summer.

Cashel grinned. Ilna was a lot of things that most people wouldn't guess. She hadn't said, "Tenoctris is a fine lady, not a peasant like me'n my brother, so the smell bothers her." That might've embarrassed Tenoctris, and Ilna wasn't one to lay what she did on somebody else anyway.

Cashel was proud to have her for a sister. She felt the same way about him, which made it even better.

Cervoran put on the topaz crown, then took other things out of his case. He hadn't started chanting a spell, but Cashel could feel his skin prickle the way it always did around wizardry. That was what they'd come here for, after all.

Cashel looked at his friends: Ilna and Tenoctris and also Chalcus, who'd backed against the rock face so he could look all the other directions without worrying that somebody was coming up behind him.

The sailor flashed Cashel a grin in response, but he was tense and no mistake. Chalcus wasn't afraid of wizardry, exactly, but he was nervous because he knew his sword and dagger were no use against it.

Cashel checked to make sure he had space, then started his quarterstaff in a series of slow circles, first in front of him and then over his head. There was alot of power around this place. The ferrules on the ends of the hickory shaft twinkled with sparks of blue wizardlight.

Cashel smiled as he moved. This quarterstaff had saved him and those he was watching over lots of times; and some of those times he'd been facing wizards. *** Ilna watched Cervoran draw a knife from his box and turn toward her. She knew it was an athame, a wizard's tool used to tease out incantations. The curving symbols cut into the blade were words written in what educated people like Garric called the Old Script. Ilna could recognize them as patterns, though she couldn't read them any better than she could the blocky New Script folk used today to write in.

Wizard's tool it might be, but this athame was a real knife also. The hilt and blade were forged from a single piece of iron, and the double edges were raggedly sharp.

"You, Ilna," Cervoran said. He stepped toward her, raising the athame. "I must have a lock of your hair for the amulet which controls my double."

Chalcus flicked his sword out and held it straight. The point didn't touch Cervoran's right eye, but if it would run the wizard through the brain if he took another step forward.

"Let's you take a lock of somebody else's hair, my good friend," the sailor said in his falsely cheerful voice. "A lock of your own, why not? You'll not want to pay the cost of raising that ugly blade of yours to Mistress Ilna."

"Do you think your steel frightens me, man?" Cervoran said. His head turned toward the sailor. "There must be a lock of my hair in the amulet to animate the simulacrum. The hair of Ilna is to control it. Do you think to build a double of me and free it uncontrolled?"

"Why hers, then?" Chalcus said. "Take hairs from my head if you like!"

He was angry in a way Ilna'd rarely seen him. Normally anything that disturbed the sailor as much as this did would've given him the release of killing something. The humor of the situation struck Ilna, though nobody seeing her expression was likely to know she was smiling.