David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

The woman laughed. "My, so formal?" she said. "A small toll, stranger-a very small one. Few people visit me here and I never leave. If you would tell me a story, any story you choose, that would give me a pleasure I could revisit in the long days when I'm alone. But if you can't or won't-"

She shrugged, a graceful movement that shimmered down her whole covering of hair.

"-then what could I do to block a strong man like you from crossing with your companions? No, a story if you choose to tell a lonely woman a story, and free passage regardless of your courtesy."

The mist was clearing. Ilna saw the wooded island beyond the moat. In the middle of the woods gleamed a temple with a golden roof.

Chalcus glanced back, careful to keep the woman in the corner of his eyes. "Ilna, dearest one…?" he said.

"I'll never be known for courtesy," Ilna said, sounding harsh and angry in her own ears. The woman on the bridge was very beautiful, and her voice was as pure and lovely as a bird's. "Still, I've always paid my debts. Give the lady a story, Master Chalcus, and we'll cross her bridge."

The woman looked at her and smiled sadly. "You don't trust me," she said in a tone of regret. "You've had a life of disappointment. I see that in your eyes."

She gestured up the bridge beyond her and toward the island. "You and the child are free to pass, mistress," she said. Every gesture, every syllable, was a work of art and beauty, though there was nothing studied about her. "All three of you may pass freely, as I said."

"Come along, Merota," Ilna said. She hated herself-well, hated herself more than usual-for her jealousy and lack of trust. "Master Chalcus will tell the lady a story to pay our way."

Ilna walked briskly up the smooth surface. The slope was noticeable, but she didn't slip even though the mist had coated the gneiss.

She could've held onto the handrail, but that would've meant touching stone with her fingers as well as her feet. Ilnahated stone. Even if she hadn't, she'd have hated every part of the bridge that this lovely, graceful woman claimed.

"Well then, milady," Chalcus said in a cheerful, lilting voice. "If you'll not think me immodest, I'll tell you of the time in my travels that I found a woman chained to the face of a cliff at the seaside. She was more lovely than any other, saving your own good self and Ilna, my heart's delight."

He nodded to Ilna and Merota as they passed. Ilna nodded back; coldly she supposed, but she couldn't help that. Merota squeezed his hand as she went by.

The girl was grinning happily; to be reaching the center of the maze probably, but Ilna didn't ask. If she spoke to Merota, it'd sound as though she was saying, "What do you have to smile about?" And that's what shewould probably be saying, so she kept her mouth shut.

"Why are you smiling, Ilna?" Merota asked.

"Am I?" said Ilna in surprise. "Yes, I was. At myself, I guess you'd say. I was thinking that I'm never going to learn to be a nice person, but I'm getting better at not saying what I think."

Ilna stopped at the hump of the bridge, a polite distance from where Chalcus stood speaking to the woman. His voice came to her faintly, "… rising out of the sea, an island to look at save for its bulging eyes and its teeth as long as temple pillars…"

"It's hard to hear him, Ilna," Merota said, frowning.

"We have no need to hear him at all, child," Ilna said severely. "He's giving her a good story. When he's finished, he'll join us and we'll go on together."

She deliberately turned her face toward the island. The temple was a simple one: round and domed instead of the usual square floor plan with a peaked roof, but she'd seen round temples occasionally in recent years.

There weren't any temples, round or square, in Barca's Hamlet or in the borough beyond. People had shrines to the Lady and the Shepherd in their houses. There they offered a crumb of bread and a drop of ale at meals; most people did. On the hill overlooking the South Pasture was a stone carved into a shape so rough that only knowing it was an altar let you see that. The shepherds left small gifts on it to Duzi, the pasture's god, at Midsummer and their own birthdays.

Ilna refused to believe in the Great Gods, the Lady who gently gathered the souls of the righteous dead and the Shepherd who protected the righteous living. Ilna believed in Nothing, in oblivion, in the end of all hopes and fears. She'd had few hopes in life and those had been disappointed, every one. Death wouldn't be a burden to her; quite the contrary.

"You're smiling again, Ilna," Merota said.

"I shouldn't be," Ilna replied, "but that doesn't surprise me."

The mist was getting thicker; she could barely see the temple roof. She turned her head and found it moved glacially slow. Something was wrong.

Chalcus continued to talk with animation to the woman on the bridge below. His lips moved but Ilna could no longer hear his voice, even faintly. The mist between her and Chalcus was very thick, smotheringly thick.

Merota screamed, piercing the fog like a sword blade. The heaviness gripping Ilna's muscles released. Merota pointed into the water, suddenly clear where it'd been dark as ink since the bridge appeared. In its depths were bodies of the Little People, the Prey. There were more than Ilna could count, preserved by the cold stream; and they were all male.

Chalcus saw also. "By the sea-demon's dick!" he shouted. His sword flicked from its sheath and toward the lounging woman.

Swift as he was, the blade cut air alone. The woman-was she a woman?-slid into the stream like a water snake. For a moment she looked at Chalcus; then she trilled a musical laugh, gamboled for a moment among the drowned bodies, and vanished. Ilna couldn't tell whether she'd gone up or down stream, slipped into a hole in the bank, or passed from sight in some other fashion.

Chalcus joined them. His smile was forced and he dabbed his dry lips with his tongue.

"So, my fine ladies," he said. "Shall we cross the bridge as we planned?"

"Yes," said Ilna. "I'd like to get off it. I don't like stone."

And she hadn't liked the woman, either. She felt herself smile, this time because she'd had a better reason than mere jealousy to dislike and mistrust the creature.

"'Goodbye, pretty baby, I'll be gone,'" Chalcus sang as he finally sheathed his sword.

Although "'Goodbye, pretty baby, I'll be gone.'"

Because she was Ilna, she also had to admit that she'd been jealous.

"'You're gonna miss me when I'm gone.'"

Cashel felt Protas grip him harder, then release as a new world formed around them. It felt as if the void had frozen into the shape of a mountain pass opening down into a circular valley.

A woman with wings and a round, ugly face waited for them. Her hair was a mass of snakes. They twisted sluggishly, the way snakes do when they crawl out of the burrow where they've wintered and wait for sunlight to warm life into their scaly bodies. They were harmless sorts, snakes that eat grasshoppers and frogs and maybe a mouse if they're lucky; anyway, Cashel didn't expect to come close enough for one to bite him.

"I am your guide," said the woman. Her thick lips smiled. The only thing she wore was a belt of boars' teeth; her skin was the color of buttermilk, thin with a hint of blue under the paleness.

"Who are you?" Protas said. He had both hands on the crown; not, Cashel thought, to keep it on but because he felt better touching it. The way Cashel felt better for having the quarterstaff in his hands.

The woman laughed. Her voice was much older than her body looked, but she couldn't have been more ugly if she'd studied to do it for a long lifetime.

"You can't give me orders, boy," she said, "but that doesn't matter: a greater one than you commands me. I'm Phorcides, and I'm to take you to where you choose to go."