David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

Cashel backed, breathing through his open mouth. Additional cat men filled the passage, more than he could count. They stayed two double paces back, warned by what'd happened to their fellows.

Cashel had room to move, while the attacking cat men were bound by the passage. Soon one would get past him, though, and it'd all be over. They moved like light glinting from silver, too quick for thought.

The mirrored walls let Cashel see Protas standing with the topaz crown in both hands. The boy's face was set in a death mask. This would be a good time for wizardry…

To Cashel's surprise, Protas hurled the crown against the floor. The great yellow jewel shattered-not the way a stone breaks, but rather like a soap bubble vanishing. Where it struck, the wizard Cervoran stood-wearing the same garments and the same sneer as he had when Cashel last saw him in his room in Mona. He pointed his bone athame toward the cat men and chanted, "Nain nestherga!"

A cat man with a short-hafted stone hammer in one hand and a wooden dagger in the other sprinted toward Cashel, ducked low, and sprang. It easily avoided Cashel's lifted staff, but it hadn't expected him to kick upward with his left foot.

Cashel's soles were hard as a horse's hooves, and he'd put as much muscle in the blow as an angry mule could've. The cat man's cry became a startled bleat. It hit the passage ceiling, then the floor, and was thrashing in its death throes as it bounced back toward its fellows.

The remaining cat men paused. There were many of them, too many.

"Drue," Cervoran said. "Nephisis."

Protas was staring at his father, not paying any attention to Cashel. That was all right, since there wasn't a lot the boy could do regardless.

A cat man twice the size of any other bulled his way to the front of the group filling the passage. He was snarling at them, just noise to Cashel but words to the other cat men, that was sure. The big leader sorted them out, mostly by growling but once with a slap with the hand that didn't hold a wooden mace; his fingers had real nails and drew streaks of blood across a smaller cat man's scalp

Three of the creatures poised. Their big leader was right behind them, his mace lifted as much as it could be in the passage. It was easy enough to figure how things would go: one springing high, one low, and one straight up the middle.

Experience and strength had saved Cashel this far, but he knew he'd had good luck besides. His luck was bound to run out and anyway, he couldn't stop three of the creatures coming at him all at once; especially not with the big one following to finish the business with his mace while one or two of the little fellows chewed on Cashel's throat.

"Stherga!" Cervoran shouted. Cashel lunged forward, trying to catch the cat men off balance. They were too quick, launching themselves at him like so many arrows.

The chamber and passage vanished. For an eyeblink, Cashel was in a circle of pine trees. Ilna was there, grim-faced as her fingers tied bits of yarn that went on forever at the corners of Cashel's eyes. The cat men were coming at him and Cashel was alone in a flash of red wizardlight. He was blind, but he could feel each of his bones and muscles.

The light vanished. Cashel was back in the domed chamber with Protas and Cervoran.

Cervoran continued to chant, his face a mask of puffy triumph. The circle of trees and the cat men, living and dead, were gone. Figures formed in the mirrored walls.

Chalcus moved like a wraith, facing the cat men. His sword licked out. A leaping cat man somehow managed to get its spear up in time, but the slender wooden shaft couldn't block the steel: the edge sheared through the spear and throat both.

Two others were springing toward Chalcus at the same time. He kicked at one. The cat man dodged in the air like a hawk striking but the thrust of its stone-pointed spear missed also.

The third had leaped high. The sailor's dagger blocked the swing of the cat's stone hammer, but the wooden poniard in its other hand plunged home. It was withdrawing from Chalcus' chest when his return stroke swiped a bloody smile the width of its furry throat.

Ilna was gathering the threads of this garden, of this small universe, into her mind; the knots of her pattern fastened them. Everything was connected: every stone, every flower, every life. To stop now would be to fail; to loose the Shadow on herself, which didn't concern her, and to loose it on her friends, which she would not do.

She'd never doubted that she would die one day. She wouldn't willingly die because she'd failed, though.

The cat men ringed Chalcus and Merota. The big one, the leader, ducked past the curved sword like water curling around a bridge piling, but Chalcus caught the creature's mace on his dagger and kicked it in the groin. Two cat men speared the sailor in the back as his sword beheaded their maned leader.

Merota screamed and grappled with one of the cat men as Chalcus turned. Another crushed her skull with a stone hammer. Chalcus stabbed the killer through the heart, put his dagger point through the temple of the creature which the child continued to hold as she convulsed in death, and then thrust behind him to kill the cat man clinging to the spear whose thin flint point poked through the front of the sailor's tunic.

I never imagined they would die, Ilna thought. I would die, but not them. She finished the task she'd set herself; too late, of course, but that couldn't be helped now.

Chalcus opened his mouth to speak. Blood came out but no words. He smiled, though, before the light went out of his eyes and he fell over Merota's small corpse.

There were still as many cat men as Ilna could count on the fingers of both hands. They'd paused, perhaps doubting that Chalcus was really dead, but now they eyed Ilna.

You should have killed me first, she thought, and she opened a knot of her pattern.

Darkness formed around the cat men. They looked startled, then began to howl. They must've been trying to move, but their limbs wouldn't obey them. It was like watching them dissolve in acid, flesh melting from the bones and then the bones themselves dissolving.

Ilna retied the last knot and put the fabric in her sleeve. She was smiling. Odd. I didn't think I'd ever smile again.

Chalcus and Merota lay where they'd fallen. The dead cat men remained also, but the Shadow had taken its prey out of this universe.

Ilna carried the bodies of her family into the temple and placed them under the golden screen. Chalcus weighed more than she did, but it wasn't a difficult task. She was quite strong. People in Barca's Hamlet had commented on that, how strong the little orphan girl Ilna was.

She knelt beside her family and thumbed their eyelids closed. After kissing them for the last time, she rose.

Chalcus' blood was on her lips. She licked it carefully away and took out more yarn.

Looking upward to the eye of the temple, Ilna began to tie another pattern. Everything was clear to her, now. Everything except for the question of why she was still alive.

The cat men were gone, even the musky smell of them. Cashel turned his head slightly so that he wasn't trusting the reflection in the walls to tell him what was happening behind in the chamber.

Protas was staring at Cervoran, who chanted, "Iao iboea ithua..," with strokes of his bone athame. Ruby light flooded the world at the final syllable. Cashel felt himself squeezed-not in his body or his mind either one, but some third way that he couldn't explain.

The pressure released. He wasn't in the domed chamber any more; neither were his companions. Protas and Cervoran shimmered in the mica walls, gray and as dim as if Cashel was seeing them through morning mists. Ilna was in the mirror also, and Garric with something on his shoulder that looked like a bird made of quartz.