David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

Chalcus grinned broadly. "And who knows?" he added. "Would Garric like a chimaera pelt to stuff for a throne cushion? That'd be a fine thing for the King of the Isles to sit on, would it not?"

"There's no way out of the Garden, Prince Chalcus," said a little man.

"No way at all," said another. "Except…"

He looked around, frightened to have spoken-though hehadn't really spoken.

"Except?" repeated Ilna, her voice harshly insistent. Hearing people talking around a problem, refusing to face it baldly, angered her more than a personal attack would. "Whatis the way out?"

"Prince Ilna?" Auta said. The little woman laced her hands together, then held her arms out from her body and wriggled the fingers while looking down. The shadow of her hands hirpled on the grass as Ilna remembered another shadow-the Shadow-doing while one of the little folk screamed and vanished.

Auta clenched her fists when she saw that Ilna'd understood the gesture. "That way only, Prince Ilna," she said in a small voice. "No way except for that: death or worse than death."

The man in the holly hopped down and gripped Merota's knees. "Mighty Prince Merota," he cried, "please! Of your goodness save us, for we cannot save ourselves."

"Chalcus?" the child said, her voice a mixture of pleading eagerness. "We could, couldn't we? It wouldn't take so very long. And we're here anyway, you know."

Chalcus drew out his dagger, probably without thinking about it. The little people gave a collective gasp, but they didn't flee.

Chalcus spun the dagger up in the air and caught it by the hilt when it dropped, without ever looking at the bright steel. His eyes were on Merota and the little people; and at last on Ilna.

"So," he said. "What is it that you think, heart of my heart? There's something to what the child says, don't you think? Weare here for the time being, and it wouldn't hurt me to do a bit of hunting in a good cause."

"They will save us," Auta whispered. Her assembled fellows sighed a wordless prayer of thanks.

"We will not save you," said Ilna. She bent and picked up the miniature net she'd knotted as an example. "You can save yourselves. Look at this!"

"Oh, no!" said Auta. Around her echoedno-no-no-no in piping whispers.

"We cannot do that, Prince Ilna," said the man still bowed before Merota. "Youwill save us. Great Merota, tell your-"

"No!" said Ilna in a fury. The little people scattered back from her like children frightened when a banked fire suddenly flares. "People who won't try to save themselves don't deserve to be saved. The world isn't meant to be safe for those who don't care!"

Chalcus sheathed his dagger with a motion as smooth as the sun on still water. "Aye," he said. "I take your point, dear one."

He made a sweeping gesture. "Since our little friends here don't know the way out," he went on, "and we've no other business with them, we'll take our leave. My sincere best wishes, Mistress Auta, to you and your fellows."

The little people vanished, leaving the three of them were alone in the clearing. Ilna smoothed the net between her palms, then set it on the grass in case someone, some day, came back to look at it. People can learn; sometimes at least. Ilna os-Kenset had learned certain things, about people and about herself, in the course of her life.

They weren't always things she was happier to know, but that couldn't be helped.

"It seems to me," said Chalcus as he sauntered toward the next turning of the maze, "that though the little people don't know the way out of this place, those who prey on them may. At least if we put the question to them the right way."

"Yes," said Ilna. Her face was rigid and her mind was a pit of burning rock. "I wouldn't mind convincing some of these Princes to tell us things they prefer to hide."

Garric sneezed. The ruins of Torag's compound smoldered in a dozen places. Though the smoke hadn't affected him while the battle was going on, it did now.

Besides the sullen haze, there was the stench of bodies. The blackened corpses of the Coerli looked more human than the creatures had in life, but their wet fur smoldered with a unique pungency.

Soma lay on her back just inside the cross-wall. A warrior's barbed spear had entered below her navel and ripped upward, dragging her intestines with it. Her face was suffused with rage. Garric remembered what the Bird had said: that she'd thrust her torch through the mouth of the Corl who'd killed her.

"Shall we leave her here or throw her into a bog?" Metz asked. "Donria's told me how she tried to kill you."

"I'd like you to have her buried properly, or however you treat your dead here," Garric said. "The woman the Coerli killed was a valued ally to me and to all of us."

Metz shrugged. "I never had much use for her," he said. "But if you say so, Lord Garric."

"Lord Garric," said a woman's voice behind them. "Let me see your wound."

Garric turned; the movement made his shoulder flame as if somebody'd just run a hot plow-coulter through it. It hurt so much that his vision blurred and his knees wobbled.

"Stand still," said the woman-the girl who'd been helping Marzan. The wizard sat nearby, his back against the side of a bee-hive hut that'd housed some of the warriors.

The girl was chewing a cud of something; green juice dribbled from a corner of her mouth. She gripped Garric by the biceps and the top of his shoulder, bringing her face close to the puckered entrance hole. She spat a wad of fibrous paste onto the wound, then worked it into the hole with a prod of her thumb.

"Duzi!" Garric screamed. He tried to jump back, but the girl kept her hold on his forearm. She was ungodly strong.

"Stand still!" the girl repeated. She popped what looked like a piece of root into her mouth and began chewing it with enthusiasm. It'd been about the size of the last joint of her thumb.

"Lila's a good healer," Metz said approvingly. "People from other villages came to her mother for healing."

His uncle Abay, the one with the lacerated face, grinned horribly. "Marzan should've married her instead of Soma when his first wife died," he said. "Guess he figures that way too, eh Lila?"

The girl didn't reply, but juice squirted around the edges of her smile. "Turn around, Lord Garric," she said in a mushy voice.

Garric obeyed, steeling himself for another piercing jolt. Lila spat. This time the pressure of her thumb felt more like a hammer blow than a blade. A pleasant warmth was already spreading from the wad of paste she'd packed into the entrance wound.

"Are you ready to return to your own time, Garric?" asked the Bird.

Garric looked up in surprise. The Bird was perched on the cross-wall of the stockade. Though he was within twenty feet of Garric, smoke and the omnipresent mist blurred his glittering shape.

"Yes," Garric said. He wondered if the villagers had heard the Bird's question. "Of course I am."

"Are you going to leave us, Garric?" Metz asked. The hunter was trying to keep his face blank, but an expression of blind terror flickered on and off it. That answers the question of whether the villagers could hear…

"I have duties in my own time," Garric said. The day before he'd wanted nothing so much as to leave this miserable gray bog; now he felt pangs of guilt at abandoning people who trusted him. "I have to get back, Metz."

"But what will we do, Master?" said Horst, rubbing his heavy chin in concern. "We could never have beat the Coerli without you."

Garric felt his face harden as his mind shuffled through options. He wasn't angry, but he'd been a king long enough to understand the sort of decisions a king had to make if he and his people were to survive.

"You've had me," he said. "You've seen what I did, what you did yourselves when I showed you. You can do it again."