David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

“Right, it shouldn’t be long,” Cashel said. He didn’t try to sound especially hearty; if Tilphosa hadn’t learned by now that Cashel meant the things he said, there wasn’t much point in tricking her into believing him. Funny that she’d been so, well, solid when it really was dangerous. Now that the thing in the gold coffin was dead—and it surely was dead—she was letting her nerves get to her.

Tilphosa resumed staring morosely at the ground. The sailors were rigging a rudder—the dinghy had been steered with the oars—and hadn’t started loading the stores of food and water yet, so it’d be a while longer.

Cashel cleared his throat, and said, “Can you tell me about this Thalemos you’re going to marry, mistress? I don’t know anything about Laut. I, ah, come from Haft.”

The truth was, up to a few months ago Cashel hadn’t known any more about Count Lascarg in Carcosa, the capital of Haft, than he had about whoever ruled Laut. Folks from Barca’s Hamlet didn’t travel much, and the merchants who came to buy sheep and wool didn’t give much idea of the wider world they moved in.

Tilphosa looked at him and smiled unexpectedly. “Thanks,” she said, “for trying to distract me. But if you really want to hear about my marriage…?”

“Sure,” Cashel said, watching a speck above the western horizon. “Now that I’m getting a chance to learn new things, I figure I oughtn’t to waste it.”

The speck was an albatross, he figured, though he couldn’t be sure at this distance. Even the seagulls seemed to keep away from here. He’d never guessed that gulls cared about anything but finding the next beakful to send down to a belly that was never full.

“There’s really some mystery about it,” Tilphosa said, lowering her voice slightly. The sailors by the pinnace were too far away to hear anyway, but it was toward the jungle where Metra was working that the girl’s eyes turned. She grinned at Cashel, already herself again. “A mystery from me, at any rate. I think Metra…”

She shrugged. Cashel nodded understanding.

“My parents died when I was too young to remember even their faces,” Tilphosa said. “They were lost at sea. I…well, I’ve never liked the sea, but there wasn’t any choice if I was to get to Laut, was there?”

“Someday maybe you’ll meet my sister Ilna,” Cashel said. “You’d get along, I guess. You’d get along with all my friends.”

Tilphosa frowned. “Because they’re afraid of the sea?” she said.

“Not that,” said Cashel. “Because they do things whether they’re scared to do them or not.”

He smiled softly, remembering Ilna and Garric and especially Sharina, lovely Sharina, with her musical laugh.

“But what about you, Cashel?” Tilphosa asked. “You do things even if you’re afraid, don’t you?”

Cashel shrugged. “I guess I would,” he said. “But the only things I’ve found to worry about are, you know, not doing a good enough job.”

His lips pursed. He wondered if he sounded like he was bragging. It wasn’t like that, he was just trying to explain how he felt.

“Well, anyway,” Tilphosa went on, “I became a ward of the Temple of Our Lady of the Moon in Donelle. The priests saw to it that I was educated as a proper lady. They didn’t make me a priest myself, though. I know no more about the rituals of the Mistress than any householder on Tisamur does.”

Cashel nodded to show that he’d heard. On Haft the priests chanted hymns to the Great Gods on major festivals; ordinary folk just bowed and paid their tithes; paid a tithe of what the temple officials could prove in their assessment rolls, anyhow. It sounded like things were different on Tisamur. At least—

“You always say ‘the Mistress,’” Cashel said, turning to meet the girl’s eyes. “It is the Lady you mean, right?”

Tilphosa frowned slightly. “Well…” she said. “It’s hard to explain, Cashel. The Mistress, the lunar aspect of the Lady, is real. I mean…”

She looked over her shoulder with a hooded expression, checking to be sure that Metra was still at her work out of sight. “We don’t have an image of the Mistress in our temple in Donelle,” Tilphosa said in a lowered voice. “She conies in the visions when worshippers gather in the sanctuary at night to pray; and She comes in dreams to the specially devout. The Mistress isn’t a statue of wood or stone like the Lady in other temples.”

Captain Mounix was satisfied with the way the rudder hung, though Hook had taken a rasp from his tool chest and was softening the edges of the hinge-pin. The rest of the men began loading the pinnace from the stores piled to either side.

Mounix glanced toward Cashel, but he didn’t call. Most times Cashel would’ve gone to help without thinking about it, but there were too many sailors for the job already: three handsful of them, besides Mounix himself and Hook. They worked like they were as ready to leave this place as Tilphosa was.

Cashel smiled. He wouldn’t mind getting away himself, though he wasn’t sure he was going to like Laut any better. Well, by now he’d been a lot of different places and he’d managed to do all right in all of them.

“And that’s what happened, you see,” Tilphosa continued, watching the final preparations with greedy eyes. “The Mistress told Her Children in dreams that I should marry Thalemos of Laut so that She can return to rule the world. So, well, here we are.”

She smiled at Cashel, then looked over her shoulder again. Her expression became guarded again.

“I’ve never met Prince Thalemos,” she said softly. “And I’m not even sure he knows I’m coming to Laut to marry him. But the Mistress knows all; Her will be done.”

“Girl!” called Captain Mounix, though his eyes were on Cashel rather than Tilphosa. “You better bring your wizard if she expects to leave with us!”

“Let her stay!” shouted a sailor from the other side of the pinnace, mostly hidden by his fellows.

“I’ll get her,” Cashel said quietly, but Tilphosa stood with him as he rose.

They started off toward Metra’s clearing. Before they entered the trees, Cashel glanced back to make perfectly certain that the sailors wouldn’t be able to launch the pinnace before he and the women could return. There were farmers in the borough who’d cheat you of anything they thought they could get away with; they’d trained Cashel, so he was ready to deal with Mounix and his men.

“Did you have any say in the business, mis…ah, Tilphosa?” Cashel asked. “Mistress” was what he’d ordinarily call a woman when concern made him formal, but he didn’t like the sound of the word here.

Bent fronds marked the trail, but enough of the vegetation had sprung straight again that he walked in front of the girl. “I mean, what you’re doing doesn’t sound like, like something I’d want to do.”

Tilphosa laughed and touched his shoulder from behind. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Cashel,” she said, “but you don’t understand what it is to have a real God, the Mistress Herself, order you to do something.”

Through the foliage ahead Cashel heard Metra’s voice hoarsely chanting. His skin prickled.

“Mistress Metra!” he called to give warning. “We’re coming to fetch you back to leave!”

Then, softly over his shoulder, he added, “No, Lady Tilphosa, I don’t know what it would be like to have a real God order me to do something.”

Cashel wasn’t sure that Tilphosa knew either, though she thought she did. Well, he’d deal with his part of the job the best way he could, whatever it turned out to be.

He pushed through the ferns; Metra was trying to rise, but wizardry had robbed her legs of strength. “You take her gear, Tilphosa,” Cashel said. He shifted his staff to his left hand and bent to pick Metra up whether she wanted that or not.