David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Cashel waited for Tilphosa to crawl onto flat ground, then clambered to join her, using his staff as a brace. Metra, identifiable from the bleached white slash across her outer tunic, walked northward up the beach. She was carrying the satchel of silk brocade which held the implements of her art.

“Cashel?” Tilphosa said quietly. “I don’t think…”

She licked her lips, her eyes following the other woman’s progress. In a hollow, distant enough to be concealed from the pinnace, Metra squatted and began to draw on the damp sand.

“I knew the Children of the Mistress weren’t telling me everything about my marriage,” Tilphosa said. “But now I’m not sure that the things they did tell me were all true. If Prince Thalemos is a great and powerful leader, shouldn’t there be more than—”

She gestured toward the temple. Cashel had been wrong about the roof. It looked all right from below, but up close to the side he could see that several trusses had fallen and taken the tiles with them.

“—this?”

“We’ll know more by daylight,” Cashel said. “And after a good night’s sleep.”

He led the girl the rest of the way to the temple. It was only ten double paces, but it was pretty steep in the darkness. He tapped the end of his staff ahead of him; they didn’t want to go over the edge of the cliff.

The sailors had climbed the escarpment also. They were shouting to one another, though Cashel couldn’t make out what they were talking about. He heard Hook’s saw rasping, and also the sound of chopping from several places.

Firewood, he guessed, but his eyes narrowed. There was only one small hatchet in the carpenter’s tool chest, so they must be using the adze and probably the captain’s sword as well. That seemed a lot of effort when there were plenty of fallen branches available. You didn’t have to cut wood to length for an open fire.

Cashel rubbed his staff absently again. He wasn’t sure he’d be sleeping tonight after all, though he wasn’t the sort to borrow trouble that might never come.

The temple was small, but the masonry was well finished, and there’d been lots of carvings on the triangular front of the porch roof. They’d weathered badly, so Cashel didn’t guess he’d be able to tell much even by daylight.

He walked into the nave. The God’s image was gone, though the base remained. There was no writing on it.

The moon was rising out of the sea, painting a white road across the water. Cashel could see pretty well, but he found the light didn’t make him feel…comfortable, he guessed he’d say. Full moons always made a herd restless, so maybe that was his problem.

“Look at this reredos!” Tilphosa said. “This is marvelous!”

There’d been a thin wall made from a single sheet of pale stone behind where the statue had stood, dividing the public part of the temple from the back where the priests stored things. It’d split and later fallen to pieces on the floor, probably when the roof right above it collapsed. Tilphosa was bending over a triangular piece, one of the larger fragments.

Cashel stepped closer. He’d have guessed that the girl was talking about something he couldn’t see from where he stood in the doorway, but it turned out a reredos was the stone screen itself.

“The sculptor was illustrating the Demonomachia , the Battle of Demons,” Tilphosa explained, easing to the side to keep from blocking the light as she pointed with a slim white finger. Sure enough, the public side of the wall was as full of carved figures as an ungrazed meadow is of dandelions. “See? Have you ever seen art so involving?”

“Yes,” said Cashel. “But I guess I don’t know how you mean the word.”

Cashel knew his sister’s fabrics, not only the arras she’d woven as a votive to hang behind the statue of the Protecting Shepherd in Valles but also the lesser drapes and ribbons that carried no image at all when you first glanced at them. Ilna made people feel things. This was just carved stone.

And it wasn’t what Cashel called pretty carving, either. Six-limbed monsters, generally standing upright on the hind pair but sometimes on the bottom four legs, fought with monsters that walked like men but had the heads and tails of lizards. They weren’t animals, either: they were using swords and spears, and as best Cashel could tell in the light they wore armor besides.

“The guy who did it knew his business, though,” Cashel said, hoping that he didn’t sound grudging. Tilphosa obviously liked the thing, and the fact he didn’t was no reason to spoil her happiness.

“Pendill describes the battle,” the girl said. She was excited about the carving, picking up one piece after another to see how they fit together. “In his Changes , not the Love Lyrics , of course. But look at this, Cashel!”

Tilphosa started to hold out another slab, then changed her mind and got to her feet again. “Here, where the light is better,” she said as she went back onto the porch.

Cashel smiled faintly. The expression felt good; he hadn’t been smiling as much as he ought to since he’d gone into the palace pond and wound up here. This wasn’t anything he understood, much less cared about, but it was giving the girl a lot of pleasure.

“This is the Queen of the Archai,” Tilphosa said, tilting the stone in one hand so that it caught the light the right way. “But you see, she’s not an Archa. She’s human!”

“Right, I see that,” Cashel said. The fragment had been lying facedown so the carving was as sharp as you could ask. It was a woman all right, her right arm raised and her left hand stuck out like she was signalling somebody to stop.

He squinted and bent closer. “What’s that on her head?” he asked. “Does she have horns?”

“Cashel, I think she’s meant for the Mistress!” Tilphosa said. She touched her silver-mounted crystal pendant. “In Her guise as the Lady of the Moon, you see!”

Cashel didn’t see, not really, but he was glad for the girl to be so excited. “I wish Sharina was here,” he said. “She’d understand better than I do.”

Tilphosa lowered the stone but didn’t look up for a moment. “Sharina is your wife, Cashel?” she asked.

“What?” said Cashel. The smile that had blossomed across his face when he thought of Sharina now faded slowly.

“Well, not that,” he continued, turning over in his mind how he ought to explain. Deciding that the simplest way was best—at least for Cashel or-Kenset, and probably for more people than tried it—he said, “I love her, though. And I think she loves me.”

“Let’s sit down, shall we?” said Tilphosa, walking out to the second of the four pillars holding up the porch. She seated herself with a graceful motion.

Cashel butted the quarterstaff on the littered floor beside the third pillar and lowered himself carefully, controlling the motion by his grip on the staff. He angled his legs onto the temple’s three-stepped base so that while facing the girl he could watch Metra on the beach below as well.

“Do you miss your Sharina, Cashel?” Tilphosa said.

“Well, I miss talking to her,” he said, frowning as he tried to understand the question. “But I don’t…”

He balanced the staff across his lap and shrugged. “Tilphosa,” he said, “she’s not really gone, you know. She’s always with me, and I know that when I get back to Valles or wherever she is, she’ll be there. Do you see?”

Tilphosa didn’t, he could tell that from the carefully neutral expression on her face. Well, they’d both managed to puzzle the other tonight by talking about things the other didn’t understand.

He looked down at Metra. The wizard had drawn her symbols across at least three double paces of wet sand. They were in a line rather than a closed figure the way Cashel had seen these things done in the past. Metra walked behind them, turning when she reached the end and starting back.