David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

The sky had continued to clear. Cashel could recognize most of the constellations, but they didn’t look quite right. The space between the Calves was too wide, and the feet of the Huntsman were above the Drinking Cup instead of below the way they should’ve been.

Metra’s eyes focused again on Cashel. “Well?” she said. “ Are we on Laut?”

“He says he’s a stranger too,” Tilphosa said, frustrated and a little angry because of her advisor’s attitude. “Metra, he saved my life. He pulled me from the sea!”

Cashel cleared his throat. “I was in Valles,” he said. “Something…brought me here. I don’t know what.”

“You’re a wizard?” Metra said. She took a half step back and made an obscure movement with the athame. A splutter of blue wizardlight picked out the symbol the point had drawn in the air. “You are a wizard!”

“Cashel?” said Tilphosa in surprise, raising her eyes to look at him.

“I’m not ,” Cashel said. He’d growled, and he didn’t mean to. He planted his staff firmly in front of him and twisted it as if he was trying to screw the ferrule into the gritty soil. “I’m not a wizard, but I’ve been told…Well, sometimes stuff happens when I’m around, that’s all.”

Cashel didn’t want to think about what he was. He’d done fine being a shepherd and a man folks in the borough called on for heavy lifting. That’s all he wanted to be: normal.

He sighed. The world had never much cared what Cashel wanted. This business was just another example of that.

“Mistress Metra!” bawled the leader of the men around the bonfire. “If you’re alive, get over here or may the Sister take me if you don’t wind up back in the sea!”

The fire was drawing the survivors together. Sailors from farther down the beach straggled by, eyeing the two women and Cashel as they passed.

“That’s Captain Mounix calling,” Tilphosa said. It was obvious that in a few moments someone would tell the captain that Metra was standing close by.

“Do you want me to go along when you talk to them?” Cashel said. He swung his staff level and brushed the ferrule clean with the hem of his inner tunic. He felt calm again, both because the subject had changed and because it looked like he’d have a chance to do something he understood.

“To handle them?” Metra sneered. “No, I’ll take care of those fools myself.”

“We’re going to Laut because I’m betrothed to Prince Thalemos,” Tilphosa said, in explanation but with a hint of understandable pride. “He’s the ruler of Laut.”

“Thalemos?” said Cashel. “I thought the ruler was named Echeus. I just saw him in Valles, talking to Garric.”

Metra had started for the bonfire, but she was still close enough to hear Cashel’s words. She turned sharply, holding the athame in a fashion that reminded Cashel it was a weapon—though not a material one.

“What did you say?” she demanded. “What do you know of Echea?”

“Echeus,” Cashel corrected. His hands slid apart on the shaft of the quarterstaff, one to either side of the center, where they were ready to make it spin and strike. “And I don’t know anything about him, lady, just that he was talking to my friend Garric.”

There was a moment’s tense silence. Tilphosa put her hand on Cashel’s forearm. “Echea was an enemy of ours,” she said calmly. “An enemy of the Mistress, really. But she’s dead now. You’re sure of that, aren’t you, Metra?”

“I was sure,” the priestess said, with slight emphasis on “was.” “You saw someone named Echeus in Valles, you say? Was he the wizard who sent you here?”

Cashel made an angry gesture with his right hand, then gripped his quarterstaff again. “I don’t know who put me here,” he said. “I don’t know where I am.”

Instead of shouting, Captain Mounix crunched over the sand toward Metra and her companions. Most of the gathered survivors came with him.

Cashel looked up at the skewed constellations. “Who’s the King of the Isles?” he said. “Do you know?”

“The king?” Tilphosa repeated. “Why, King Carus, of course. Who did you think it was?”

The arriving sailors saved Cashel from answering that question.

Sharina held back instead of plunging into the water ahead of Cashel as she could easily have done. There wasn’t time to discuss plans, and having someone Cashel’s size land on top of her flailing a quarterstaff wouldn’t help the trouble. She knew Cashel couldn’t swim, but she trusted him to do the right thing by instinct.

Now Cashel leaped with all his considerable strength, a graceful arc despite him looking like a broad-jumper rather than a diver. Garric sprawled limp, sinking slowly on the weight of his sword.

Cashel should have landed next to him; Sharina paused on the mossy coping stones, waiting for a splash like that of a boulder dropping in the sea. Instead, Cashel vanished the way water soaks into hot sand.

The look of the pond changed. Sharina hadn’t noticed the rosy haze over the water until now, when it disappeared.

Garric was still sinking. Several guards were dragging Echeus from the bridge. One had jumped into the pool, and others looked ready to follow him. Wearing armor, they wouldn’t be able to swim any better than Cashel, and Sharina had no reason at all to trust their judgment.

Sharina made a clean dive. The water was shockingly cold—she’d forgotten that it had bubbled from the spring-fed fountains only fifty paces away. She reached under and caught the front of her brother’s gold-embroidered collar. Her grip rolled Garric’s face out of the water as they broke the surface.

Sharina kicked despite her hampering garments and stroked for the shore with her free hand. She wished she’d taken a moment to remove the court robe, though it didn’t matter much.

She didn’t let herself think about Cashel. Tenoctris could explain or—

But anyway, Sharina couldn’t let herself think about it now.

One of the soldiers on the margin held out his javelin so his fellow floundering in the water could grab it behind the point and be dragged to safety. Voices all around babbled. Several Blood Eagles lifted Garric away from Sharina with the care owed a priceless treasure; they laid him on the grass.

Sharina grimaced. She didn’t need help getting out of the water, but she had to swim two paces down the coping to clear the out-turned hobnails of the soldiers bending over her brother. The pool was deeper than she was tall, and the several feet of mud on the stone bottom didn’t help matters.

A few minutes ago this corner of the palace had seemed as sparsely inhabited as a stretch of plowland. Now scores of soldiers, servants, and officials descended from all directions. Most of them were shouting.

Garric lay belly down on the grass, his face to the side. Blood Eagles surrounded him; one was making a clumsy attempt at artificial respiration.

Sharina slipped between a pair of black-clad soldiers to her brother’s side. A Blood Eagle grabbed her shoulder. She turned her head back, and snarled, “No, you cur!” as though he’d touched her importunately as she served in her father’s inn.

“Princess!” the soldier blurted. “My pardon!” He snapped his head around to face the gathering crowd.

“Here, let me have him!” Sharina said to the fellow massaging Garric’s back muscles in apparent hope of restoring the victim’s breathing. Garric’s chest rose and fell without help, though the deep, shuddering nature of those breaths showed that something was wrong.

Garric’s eyes opened. For a moment his expression was blank; then—

Sharina couldn’t have said what the change was. She only knew that the soul behind those eyes wasn’t her brother’s.