David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

As they walked through to the master bedroom, Ilna said in an undertone, “Osnan was a guard at my bungalow for a few weeks. I think he’s as much afraid of wizards as the rest of them, but he appears to trust me.”

Sharina laughed and hugged her friend. “So does everyone who knows you, Ilna,” she said.

The heavy bronze headboard of Garric’s bed was chased with scenes illustrating the courtship of the Lady by the Shepherd and—on the footboard—the Lady’s descent into the Underworld. It’d been pulled out from the wall, and the canopy had been removed. The room looked much larger though it still contained clothes chests, a table, chairs, and several lampstands—an unusual amount of furniture.

A lighted brazier stood between the eastern windows. It’d been brought in since Sharina left.

A section of fresco had fallen away sometime in the past. The plaster had been patched but merely distempered instead of being fully repainted.

Garric had sketched a votive figure in charcoal on the plain surface. A stranger would have thought it was a drawing of the Shepherd, but Sharina recognized her brother’s much simpler intent: this was Duzi, the little God of shepherds like Garric, who tended flocks around Barca’s Hamlet. The bed-curtains would have concealed it until now.

Tenoctris stood and gave the younger women a bright smile. “Your timing’s perfect,” she said. “I’ve just finished with the preparations.”

She beamed down at the floor. She’d drawn a circle around the bed—that was why it’d been moved out—with powdered lime, then used the pot of vermilion to draw around it in the Old Script.

Tenoctris stoppered the vermilion and set it on the circular table with the rest of her paraphernalia. There couldn’t be much left, even though she’d written the characters too small to be read from any distance.

The flames of the multiple lamps paled as dawn came through the windows. The rosy softness still hid as much as it displayed.

“Ilna, Sharina’s told you what I’d like you to do?” Tenoctris said. As she spoke, her eyes traced her preparations in quick motions. Another person would have seemed nervous, but the old wizard was simply showing her normal, sparrowlike intensity.

Ilna shrugged. “You’re to put me in a trance,” she said. “You’ll send my mind—”

“Your soul,” Tenoctris corrected.

“My soul, then, to a dreamworld,” Ilna said. “There I’m to follow a path of some sort and come back to tell you what I’ve found.”

“I didn’t know how to describe what she was to do,” Sharina said apologetically. “I don’t really understand about that part.”

Tenoctris flashed a smile. “Nor do I,” she admitted. “Amalgasis and Princess Querilon both described the process very clearly, but those are things I’ve read, not experienced. I hope—I trust—that the pattern will be clear to one of Ilna’s abilities.”

“A soldier named Osnan shares your confidence,” Ilna said, her tone too dry for even Sharina to be sure whether she was joking. “You want me on the bed?”

“Yes,” said Tenoctris. “And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to chew some lettuce cake first. To help you relax.”

“I need all the help I can to do that,” Ilna said, this time with a faint smile. “Whatever you think is best.”

Sharina shaved the cake of narcotic with the great knife she wore under her cape tonight. It was the knife she’d gotten from Nonnus, the healer for Barca’s Hamlet and the surrounding borough; it was while helping him that Sharina had learned to judge a dose of lettuce cake and other basics of the healing art.

Ilna pinched up the drug and swallowed it, making a wry face. “Let’s get on with it, then,” she said. She sat on the edge of the bed, then slid into the center and lay flat.

Sharina rarely thought of her friend as small, but Ilna looked tiny in the center of the pale blue coverlet. Her weight wasn’t enough to make the ropes supporting the mattress creak.

Sharina backed against the wall. Behind her was a scene of happy peasants shearing sheep in springtime. She pressed her shoulders against the plaster and thought of other times.

“ Malaas athiaskirtho ,” Tenoctris chanted. “ Nuchie uellaphonta steseon…. ”

She tossed a pinch of powder onto the brazier. It flared white with a smokeless crackle.

“ Kalak othi lampsoure… ” the wizard continued.

The room was growing cold again. Sharina waited, her eyes turned toward the sunrise and her hands clasped on the hilt of the Pewle knife.

Eight sailors astern of Cashel worked an oar apiece, while he sat where the bow narrowed and rowed with two. He lifted his oarblades and carried the looms forward with his arms and whole torso to prepare for another stroke. The sun was low behind him and would set within half an hour.

“Land!” said Tilphosa, standing ahead of Cashel in the far bow. “Under that cloud on the horizon!”

“Yes, by the Lady!” cried Hook, rising to his feet in the stern beside the captain. As the ship’s only surviving officers, they’d been trading off with the tiller throughout the hot, windless day. “Real land this time, not another cursed reef!”

The oarsmen were at the thwarts to bow and stern. Stores and baggage saved from the wreck filled the middle of the pinnace; Metra and the off-duty crewmen perched on it however they might. The wizard can’t have been comfortable, but the sailors gave her plenty of room.

Tilphosa hadn’t wanted to risk how she’d have been treated in the close quarters of the ship’s belly. She’d chosen to place herself with Cashel sitting between her and all the others aboard. The pinnace had been under oars the whole way from the islet where they’d wrecked, so the bow never lifted high enough to smack spray over her. Even if they’d been spanking along on a strong wind, Cashel guessed the girl would’ve made the same choice—and been wise to.

A breeze—the first since dawn—ruffled the sea, then filled the limp sail. The pinnace heeled slightly to starboard. Sailors looked up with bare interest.

“Well, get it trimmed, damn you!” Captain Mounix shouted. “Posal and Kortin, tighten the lee brails! Don’t you have eyes?”

Two sailors grabbed lines and began to shorten them, obedient but not enthusiastic. The men seemed cowed, but whether by the wreck itself or events on the islet Cashel couldn’t say; he hadn’t known them before the trouble. Cashel wasn’t the sort to think ill of folks he didn’t really know, but he was pretty sure his sister Ilna would’ve said they weren’t any great shakes ever in their lives.

Cashel pulled his oars aboard through the rowlocks twisted from cordage and crossed the shafts before him. He rubbed his palms together, then checked them. He didn’t row often even when he lived in Barca’s Hamlet, but the calluses he’d developed from other tasks had protected him today.

“Hey you!” Hook called. “Farmer! Nobody told you to ship your oars!”

“No,” Cashel said. “You didn’t.”

Another man might’ve argued that he’d done as much as any two of the sailors during the long, brutal day. Cashel didn’t bother. There were people who could give orders that he’d obey, but none of them were aboard the pinnace.

The sailors were bringing their oars aboard also. The breeze continued to freshen, so rowing was pointless even if Cashel hadn’t wanted to turn toward the land. He squinted, hoping he’d see something that’d make the shore look more attractive.

“I thought there’d be more than just wilderness,” Tilphosa said. “If we’ve really found Laut, I mean.”

“I don’t know about Laut,” said Cashel. “This is a big place, anyhow.”