David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

The Shadow vanished. Chalcus tumbled free. Only now did he shout: wordlessly, mindlessly-the bellow of a great beast loosed from a trap. His blades danced again, rippling the empty air and plowing razor-fine furrows in the soil. Grass and a dozen buttercups fell, yellow victims of the flickering steel.

Chalcus looked at Ilna, his eyes wide and full of horror. "Dear one?" he said.

"It's all right," said Ilna. "It's a-"

She nodded to her tunic. She'd woven the cloth herself, a simple fabric as fine and soft as the best silk.

"I disrupted the pattern," she said. "The Shadow's a part of this temple, really. Part of the tapestry, a necessary part, I see. I can deal with it."

Ilna looked at the knotted pattern in her left hand. She hadn't dropped it when she took off her tunic. She had no recollection of how she'd moved, just that she had. Her… her soul, she supposed. Her soul had known what to do and her body had done it, without her mind being involved.

"While your tunic's there, the thing's trapped? Is that what you're telling me, dear one?" Chalcus said. He jerked his head in a nod toward the garment she'd flung with deceptive ease to the pavement. "Is it then, we're safe?"

Merota stood silent, biting on the knuckles of her left hand and staring at Chalcus. She twisted her eyes for an instant to Ilna, then returned them to the sailor.

"We're safe, yes, I told you," Ilna snapped. She walked to the tunic, picked it up, and shrugged into it with more trouble than she'd had taking it off. "Not because of this-"

She tapped the pavement with her big toe. She disliked stone but she could use it. She could use the thing that laired in this pattern, too, though it was as cold and heartless as the tiny chips that gave it life. Gave it existence, at any rate.

"-but because I see it whole. It won't dare to bother us again." Ilna started to smile but swallowed the expression; that would have been boasting. She went on quietly, "Another time I might have to cover another part of the pattern here in the pavement; but I could. It won't be back."

"Then, dearest…," Chalcus said. "Dear one, dear heart-let us go out of this place now, may we not?"

"I want to leave," Merota whispered. "Please. Please."

"If you'll be quiet," said Ilna sharply, "we'll be able to leave that much sooner. The exit's in the eye overhead. It shouldn't take me very long to find a way to open it for us."

"I'm not afraid to die, dear heart," Chalcus said. He smiled, but his face showed as much sadness as Ilna had ever seen him express. "The place that thing was taking me, though… If there's a hell, my love, that's where it was taking me."

"There's Hell," said Ilna, remembering infinite grayness and the voice that had whispered to her. She looked at Chalcus, then down to the yarn in her hand. She began to pick out the knots and rejoin the strands into a different pattern.

"Master Chalcus," she said, eyeing the interwoven mosaic as her fingers worked, "I think before I open the door for us, I'll leash the Shadow. That way it won't come back while I'm occupied with getting us out of this place."

"That would be…," Chalcus said. His face spread into a rollicking smile. His curved sword and dagger slid into their sheaths over his left and right hips with the same liquid ease that Ilna showed while weaving. He stepped toward her, swept her into his arms, and kissed her hard.

Ilna frowned in amazement when the sailor backed away, still smiling. "Master Chalcus," she said, "this is scarcely the place for such."

"And what better place could there be, my dearest?" Chalcus said. "It's where you are and I am, and both of us living. Life's a chancy business, love; and what a fool I'd feel should I die in the next moment without having kissed the love of my life once more when I could have. Not so?"

Ilna sniffed, but she didn't snap back at his foolishness. He'd put it as a joke, but in her heart she recognized the simple truth of what he'd just said.

She stepped to Merota, hugged her, and then held an arm out to Chalcus as well. The three of them stood tightly together for a moment; then Ilna backed away.

"Now," she said, "don't disturb me. I can do this thing-"

"You said you could, Ilna," said Merota. "Of course you can!"

"I can do this thing," Ilna repeated, "but I can't start and not finish."

She allowed herself a slight smile.

"If that happens, the Shadow will finish me and I suppose all of us, because it will be very angry. Do you understand?"

Chalcus nodded and grinned. Merota opened her mouth to speak-to agree, almost certainly-but Chalcus touched a finger to the girl's lips before a sound came out. He moved with the grace of falling water and the speed of light itself…

Ilna looked at the golden grating over the eye. That was where the key was, not in the floor itself but in what the grating's shadow threw onto the mosaic. She began to knot her cords, making herself a part of the pattern.

She could feel the Shadow's strength. It was aware of what she was doing, but she had it now. There was no way it could escape unless she let it escape, and she would die before she did that.

Ilna's lips were tight with concentration but she smiled in her mind: she would certainly die very shortly after the Shadow escaped, should that happen. From what Chalcus said-and more from what she'd seen in his eyes as he said it-that would be a very bad way to die.

Chalcus and Merota had gone outside the temple. The child was picking flowers. The sailor watched her pick flowers and watched Ilna knot yarn and watched every other thing around them that might become an enemy or hide one.

She was very close to completion; a few more knots and the fabric-yes, she was not only binding the Shadow but bending it to her absolute will. The tapestry was even more marvelously complex than she'd realized before she wove herself into it. Only a master could have created the Garden, and Ilna os-Kenset was that One's equal to be able to reweave what He/She/It had The domed roof of the temple shone and became unnaturally clear. The eye and the grating still existed, but not in the universe that was forming itself over the temple. Ilna continued to weave, her fingers carrying out the understanding of her mind.

Merota cried out; Chalcus had drawn his blades. Cashel, Protas, and the dead-alive Cervoran were standing beside Ilna in the center of the temple.

Cashel had his quarterstaff raised to strike. Rushing toward them were cats the size of men, snarling in fury with their weapons raised.

Ilna wove.

Cashel couldn't move as quickly as his leaping opponent, but reflex honed in many fights jerked him back at the same time as the quarterstaff rose in his hand. He didn't so much hit the cat man as lift the iron-bound hickory into a place the cat man leapt through. Leapedinto, at any rate, because Cashel was arm's length back from where the creature'd thought he'd be when it lunged.

Air and bloodwhuff ed from the creature's mouth as the staff smashed its ribs. It flew upward into the mirrored ceiling, hitting hard enough to flatten its skull. It'd already been dead.

Another cat man was bounding down the entrance passage toward Cashel. There was no other way in or out of the domed room. Cashel stepped forward, again confounding his attacker.

This cat man carried a spear whose springy double point was barbed on the inside to grip and hold. A fishing spear Cashel would've said, but bigger and stouter; this was meant to catch men. He couldn't dodge the spear-thrust so he stepped into it, knowing that a head like that wouldn't stick him too badly.

The twin cane points burned like hot coals as they gouged Cashel's chest, but that didn't slow him. The cat man easily avoided the straight thrust of the quarterstaff, but it wasn't expecting the side-stroke that crushed it against the wall of the passage. The lithe body slipped to the gleaming floor, flat as a discarded rag.