David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

The snake struck. It was quicker even than Garric had feared, sinking its long fangs in the wool with an audible clop of air. Garric twisted, catching the snake beneath the head with both hands. He’d rather have run, but he couldn’t have gotten up from his sprawl before the snake struck again, this time into his thigh or torso.

Now Tint jumped, first away and then back like a toad bouncing between the walls of a ditch as it tries to flee a sudden motion. She screamed.

The snake’s body writhed about Garric’s right arm. The creature was strong, probably stronger than he was, but it couldn’t get a fulcrum that would allow it to wrench itself out of his grasp. He could feel the scales’ keel ridges cutting into his callused palms.

“Tint!” Garric shouted. He’d come down hard, slamming his left side on a chunk of rubble that bruised him badly if it hadn’t broken a rib. Pain crackled through him like lightning hitting the sea. “Help me!”

The beastgirl capered and squealed. The snake was trying to stab its fangs down into Garric’s forearm. Its long tail curled, slapping Garric across the eyes.

“Duzi!” he shouted, lashing hysterically. The snake’s back popped. Garric flung the creature from him, horrified by the memory of his fear of a moment before.

The snake continued to twist, but now spasmodically. Its jaws opened and closed without force; its eyes were glazing.

Garric stood up slowly, rubbing his side. He’d have a bruise; nothing worse than that. He saw his breechclout among the vines where the struggle had flung it. Venom had soaked through a patch the size of his palm. He left the coarse woolen where it was; it hadn’t been much of a garment to begin with.

“Gar good?” Tint said, creeping to his side and stroking him. “Gar good!”

Garric brushed the beastgirl’s hand away. She couldn’t overcome a fear like that any better than an effort of will would enable her to breathe water; but Garric remembered with revulsion how nearly the serpent had come to squirming its dry suppleness from his unaided grip….

“Show me where the ring is, Tint,” Garric said in a husky voice. “That’s all I want from you. Find me the ring.”

Sharina followed as Garric entered the meeting room; he moved like a caged cat, still holding the sword bare in his hand.

She’d been concerned since he fell into the pool. Now she was beginning to feel a sick horror.

Garric paced to the other side of the round table, only then turning to face the three women he’d summoned. Liane was helping Tenoctris; Sharina met his eyes directly.

Garric swiped the wad of silk again over the tip of his blade; the steel was already spotless. In an odd tone he said, “The way he jumped, I was afraid I’d caught him in the jaw. Nothing bites a sword edge as bad as hacking at a fellow’s teeth.”

“Garric,” said Sharina. “What’s wrong?”

Garric shot the sword home into its scabbard without looking at what he was doing. That smooth, ringing motion took as much skill as threading a needle in the dark.

“What’s wrong?” he said. “I’m not Garric, milady—that’s what’s wrong! That wizard— ”

His face contorted; he snarled out the word as though it were “father-slayer” or a worse term yet.

“—snatched away your brother’s mind and replaced it with the mind of some drooling moron from the Sister knows where!”

The man who looked like the brother Sharina had known for nineteen years glared at the birds frescoed in a band between the ceiling moldings and the lowered casements, then met her eyes. Again Sharina had the feeling she watched a trapped animal.

Tenoctris slid from her backless ivory chair and settled onto the terrazzo floor. With the writing brush and a small inkhorn she’d taken from her sleeve, she was drawing a six-sided figure.

“This so-clever Intercessor thought he’d leave the Isles leaderless because the prince’s body was barely able to feed itself,” the man said, grinning at Sharina in a way that could’ve been Garric after all. “What he didn’t know…”

He reached under his tunics and came out with his fist around the medallion hanging there from a neck thong. He went on, “…is that Garric hadn’t been alone in his skull. There’s a half-wit boy whimpering in here with me, wondering what’s going on; but I’m the one wearing Garric’s body, not him.”

Smiling still broader, he opened his hand to display his own image on the worn gold disk. “My name is Carus,” he said. “A thousand years ago, I was King of the Isles.”

A spark of blue light, vivid but minute, glittered in the center of the figure Tenoctris had drawn over the irregular pattern of the stone chips. It snapped with the quick certainty of a gadfly toward the man speaking, but vanished before it touched him—and before his hand had more than gripped the sword again.

Tenoctris swayed. Liane was closer; she reached out to steady the old woman before Sharina could bend to do the same. Wizardry was hard work, especially for someone whose knowledge was much greater than her power.

“Yes,” Tenoctris said as she rose with Liane’s help. She smiled faintly. “You are Carus.”

The man—Carus—let out a long, shuddering breath. “Lady Tenoctris…” he said. He paused, averting his eyes for a moment. He squeezed the pommel of his great sword so fiercely that his knuckles mottled white and red.

“Lady Tenoctris,” Carus resumed, looking down at her with an utterly humorless smile, “I would do, will do, everything I can to preserve the kingdom until my descendent Garric returns to his rightful place. I will even take a wizard as my advisor and confidant, though I’d prefer to thrust my hand in the fire.”

He released his sword hilt and worked the incipient cramp out of it, his grin this time an honest one if wry.

“But milady?” he resumed with an undertone of earnestness beneath the banter. “Please don’t strain my determination again. I’d regret the reflex that took the head off your shoulders if you sent another of your spells at me when I wasn’t expecting it.”

To Sharina’s surprise, Tenoctris offered a curtsy. “Your majesty,” she said, “I’m an old woman who’s spent much time with books and none until recently with men of war. I treated you as a question to be answered, not a person; I apologize for the disrespect. If it happens again, you have my leave to behead me.”

Carus bellowed with laughter and stepped around the small table. Liane jumped, but not quickly enough; Carus caught her by the shoulders and lifted her out of the way with a cheerful lack of ceremony.

He offered Tenoctris his hands, palms up. “I watched through Garric’s eyes ever since you came ashore in this age,” he said. “I saw you”—he glanced around, including Liane and Sharina in his statement—“ all of you save the kingdom when it would otherwise have gone down to a worse smash than in my day, for all Garric and I alone could have done to save it. I know your goodness; and more, I know you’re necessary. But…by the Shepherd, milady, please don’t startle me if you can avoid it. Eh?”

Tenoctris laid her delicate hands on those Carus now wore: large and long-fingered, with calluses on the right palm from Garric’s sword practice. “Done,” she said.

“Your highness?” said Liane, her voice calm but her expression wholly unreadable. “Why would the Intercessor of Laut have wished to remove Garric? Sandrakkan and Blaise might think they could rival Ornifal for the kingship, but surely not Laut.”

Carus shrugged, then grinned broadly as he stepped away from Tenoctris. “He had some wizard reason, I’d suppose,” he said. “Nothing that a man like me could fathom. But Liane, all of you: in the past you said, ‘Garric’ when you spoke to the fellow wearing this flesh, and ‘your highness’ only on formal occasions. When we’re alone together, I’m just Carus. And you’re Liane, Tenoctris, and Sharina. All right?”