David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Garric smiled again. His education taught him that “prince” meant “first.” It was an honest claim, if not a humble one.

Again Carus guffawed. “ Princes don’t have to be humble ,” he said, hooking his thumbs in his swordbelt and flaring his fingers. Carus was such a vibrant presence in Garric’s mind that Garric had to keep reminding himself that others didn’t see the ancient monarch—who had drowned a thousand years in the past.

The hump of the arching bridge hid Echeus from Garric when they were on the opposite approaches, though both men were tall. Garric looked over his shoulder. His detachment of Blood Eagles followed at a respectful distance. In the pergola, Liane and Sharina greeted Tenoctris and Cashel. They were looking at a rock—a small boulder—on the table. Whatever had Tenoctris found this time?

Echeus rose into view, step by step. He was an imposing figure: spare rather than powerful, but surrounded with an aura of enormous dignity. Garric had the impression of a person whose time scale was that of an oak, or possibly of the crag of a mountain.

“Lord Echeus?” he said when they were within a double pace, right toe to right toe, of one another.

Echeus stopped and bowed slightly. “Thank you for meeting me, Prince Garric,” he said in a thin, hoarse voice.

Unexpectedly Echeus turned and looked over the bridge coping. “What is that in the water, do you suppose?” he said.

Garric peered into the pool. A few leaves rotated slowly on the surface; at one stone edge glistened a mass of frog eggs. In the water directly under the central arch on which Garric stood—

For a moment, Garric thought he saw his reflection and that of the bridge he stood on. The reflected stonework was covered with lush, broad-leafed vegetation like nothing that grew on Ornifal, though, and the figure looking at him from the pool was—

“ Get back! ” King Carus shouted.

Too late. There was a flash of vivid red light like nothing in the natural world. The reflected figure was toppling upward, and Garric was falling toward it.

They merged at the surface of the water. There was a crash like the cosmos splitting—

And Garric was alone in his mind.

“Set it here,” Liane suggested, waving Cashel to the table under the pergola.

He eyed the surface doubtfully before he set the statue there, but she was right about it being sturdy enough. Though small, the table was polished granite and at least as solid as the plinth the statue must originally have stood on. Cashel placed his burden with his usual care so that it didn’t roll off; stone scrunched on stone.

Sharina hugged him. “Cashel,” she said, “I was just thinking how lucky I am to have you. You make me feel safe.”

Cashel blushed. In front of everybody! He was even prouder than he was embarrassed, but he was so embarrassed he couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“I’m all black from the stone,” he said in a hoarse voice. He raised his hands; they were smudged with the residue of decaying marble.

“Cashel…” said Tenoctris, scrubbing at the block with the hem of her robe. Cashel was enough Ilna’s brother to cringe at such a use of a fine silk garment. “Look at this! I hadn’t noticed.”

The statue’s right arm, apparently raised, was broken off at the shoulder, but the left hand had been placed on its girdle. The marble fourth finger wore a real ring, a ruby on a simple gold band. While Cashel carried the statue, he’d flaked away the crust of corroded stone which had been covering the jewel.

“It’s a pretty little thing, isn’t it?” Cashel said. He waited for Tenoctris to tell him what to do. Instead she turned away from the statue to stare abstractedly toward the fountains in the near distance.

“Tenoctris?” he said.

Ignoring him, she took a bamboo sliver from her right sleeve. She knelt and began to scribe on the gritty stone floor with it.

Many wizards used athames of exotic materials for their spells; the tool gained power each time it twisted the forces of the cosmos to the wizard’s will. Tenoctris instead picked a simple twig or split of wood, casting each makeshift wand away after one use. She said that no one could be sure of what they were doing if they practiced their art with an object in whose fabric they’d overlaid and braided past wizardry.

Tenoctris claimed she wasn’t a powerful wizard. Probably she was correct—it wasn’t a matter Cashel could judge. But she was a very, very careful wizard; and in the past that care had saved her and the Isles as well, to Cashel’s certain knowledge.

Sharina and Liane were watching him expectantly. “Go on, Cashel,” Sharina said. “It’s yours.”

With a grin of acknowledgment, Cashel gripped the ring between his left thumb and forefinger and gave it a twist. He didn’t expect it to come loose—not unless he used more strength than he planned to, anyway—but it turned easily.

Still wondering, he pulled. The ring slipped free in a cloud of powdered lime; Cashel sneezed.

“I wonder why someone put a ring on—” Liane said, bending slightly for a better look at the circlet in Cashel’s hand.

Tenoctris looked up from the simple triangle of words in the Old Script which she’d traced in the grit. “Garric!” she cried. “Cashel, stop him!”

“Garric!” Cashel bellowed, but he was already in motion. Garric stood on the bridge arch near a well-dressed stranger, looking down at the pool. Tenoctris couldn’t shout loudly enough for him to hear her.

Cashel burst out of the pergola at a dead run, holding his staff crossways and close to his body. He didn’t call again because he’d popped the ring in his mouth for safekeeping. In common with most poor folk, that’s where he’d generally carried the few coins he came by until he paid them out again. Faced with a sudden crisis, he treated the ring the same way out of reflex.

Red wizardlight flashed, unmistakable even in the bright sun. For a moment the ruby glare shone through the ancient stone of the bridge. Even after the initial flash, a rosy haze hung over the water.

Garric toppled forward, over the railing and into the glow. He fell like a half-filled wineskin, limply unconscious. One of the Blood Eagles at the foot of the bridge immediately jumped into the pool—and sank.

The water was a good deal deeper than landscaping required. From the way it clouded as the soldier flailed desperately, the bottom was gluey muck like that of a marsh. The man was in half-armor: thirty pounds of steel, leather, and blackened bronze since he hadn’t even taken the time to unstrap his helmet. No amount of strength and goodwill was going to enable a man with no more fat than a rutting stag to swim while wearing that load.

Cashel wasn’t going to be able to swim either: he was afraid of the water, so he’d never learned how. He was still afraid; that didn’t make any difference now.

The distinguished-looking stranger who’d been talking to Garric raised his hands palms upward. Two Blood Eagles grabbed his wrists and forced him down on his knees. The fellow didn’t resist, not that it would have done him any good.

Cashel jumped as far out as he could get, the way he would’ve tried to cross a stream in spate. He landed feet first, legs pumping, as he sank through water and wizardlight. Holding his quarterstaff out to the side where he wouldn’t slap Garric with it, he thrashed his way forward. He couldn’t see properly. It had gotten dark, and salt stung his eyes.

The staff was hickory and floated despite its iron ferrules. With luck it was long enough to touch bottom; if not, Cashel hoped to hold it out so that a soldier at the margin of the pool could seize it before he and Garric sank.

And if not that either, well, he’d tried.