C
ashel pushed the tapestry out of the way and stepped into a throne room stinking of fire and old death. Sharina stood with her back against the opposite wall, holding the hermit's heavy knife. She faced a long-armed demon with a mottled red body.
Cashel stepped forward, circled his left arm around the demon's throat, and threw the creature backward over his braced left knee. It crashed to the floor so hard the impact cracked the terrazzo.
Sharina stepped forward, raising the big knife. “Get away with that, girl!” Cashel said. “You'll hurt no one but me or yourself with a knife!”
His words surprised him, maybe more than they surprised Sharina. Still, when Cashel saw a straight path to completing a task he'd always taken it, and he didn't have time for folks who got in his way. He didn't know as much about fighting demons as he did about sheep, but it was a thing he'd done.
If he'd had any doubt that the same rules applied to this creature as had to Derg, the wreckage of this room and the hall beyond would have convinced him. Score of liches and their varied weaponry lay strewn and shattered across the polished floors. The demon's ruddy skin was unmarked.
Sharina backed into the angle of the wall and the black throne dominating the room. It was an ugly thing that looked like it was formed by the twined bodies of living snakes instead of being carved out of stone.
But it wasn't Cashel's concern just now.
The demon got to its feet. It was taller than Derg but not nearly as heavily built. The exceptional length of its arms reminded Cashel of a crab, or a crab spider.
“I will kill you now, peasant,” the creature said in the voice of Meder, the procurator's wizard.
Cashel tossed his head like a bull clearing his horns. “Better men have tried,” he said. “Better demons, too.”
They stepped together. Cashel gripped Meder's forearms because his own arms didn't have the span to catch the demon's wrists.
There were no lights in the throne room and only a candle or two burning in the great hall beyond, but the light of a full moon streamed through windows just below the vaulted ceiling. Wall hangings, one of them the tapestry Cashel had emerged behind, fluttered in the violence of the combat. Each woven scene was a distant world depicted with the realism of a death mask.
Cashel butted Meder in the chest. The demon wasn't any heavier than Cashel or at any rate not by much, but he was ungodly strong. Meder's toes scratched for traction, digging furrows in the marble chips and black mortar.
Meder bent his arms, bringing his hands toward the youth's temples like clawed pincers. Cashel didn't have the leverage to prevent him. An instant before his elbows folded and the claws met in his brain, Cashel twisted his torso and flung the demon over his right knee again, this time sideways.
Meder crashed down, skidding on the slick surface. Cashel bent forward, resting his fingertips on the floor as he breathed in great gasps.
The only thing that had saved him thus far was that Meder didn't know how to use his advantagesâdidn't know how to
fight
. He wasn't greatly stronger than Cashel, but he didn't tire and he wasn't harmed by being slammed down hard enough to crush stone.
The demon had a scarecrow build and a supple spine.
Cashel couldn't bend Meder's back far enough over his knee to break the spine.
Meder stood up. He gave a screeching, angry laugh and started for Cashel.
The only option Cashel saw was going to be fatal to him even if it succeeded, because the demon would have time to claw him apart. Survivalâeven Sharina's survivalâwasn't the most important thing right now. Winning this fight was the most important thing.
Winning was the only thing.
Cashel gave a roar from deep in his throat and lunged toward Meder, catching the demon off-guard. Cashel had his left forearm under Meder's chin and his right forearm around the demon's back for a fulcrum before the red hands closed on his bare back.
Cashel levered his left arm upward with all his strength, ignoring the claws that raked him. Meder resisted, trying to force his chin down. He twisted his head in an attempt to escape the pressure.
Blood streamed down Cashel's back. He'd do all that human strength could do; he'd press his arm into Meder's throat for as long as he could. And then he would die.
A flicker of fierce, red light, a figure only inches high, sprang from one of the tapestries. It bounded toward the combatants like a wolf running and set its jaws above Meder's heel where the Achilles tendon would be in a man.
Meder screamed so loud in startled pain that weapons lying on the stone quivered in sympathy. The scream ended in a crack! as sharp as lighting when Cashel broke the demon's neck.
Cashel hurled the body away from him with a cry less of triumph than relief. Meder's gangling form sprawled half on, half beside the black throne. His foreclaws dripped blood on the terrazzo.
“I owed you nothing, human!” Derg cried, his dog-faced form as small as when Cashel first glimpsed him in the strongbox. “This was my gift to a friend!”
He leaped back onto,
into
the tapestry from which he'd come.
Sharina knelt beside Cashel. She began slicing her cloak into bandages with the Pewle knife. “There's a fountain in the main hall, Cashel,” she said. “Can you walk that far or shall I bring a helmetful to you here?”
He hadn't thought he'd ever hear Sharina's voice again. Her face had firmer lines than that of the girl he'd known in Barca's Hamlet, and she was even more beautiful.
“I can walk,” Cashel said. He took another deep breath, gathering his strength to rise. He'd said the words, so now all that remained was to make them so.
The tapestry he'd come from behind was an almost perfect duplicate of the one in the ruined tower where he'd left Derg and Mellie. In it a bridge crossed a broad river toward a forest and a city of fairy glass.
Two tiny figures stood at the center span of the bridge. They waved toward Cashel. One was a dog-faced demon, and the other was a sprite with rich red hair.
“
T
hat's Cashel!” Garric said in amazement. As unlikely as it seemed, there was no mistaking his friend's big form coming through the crowd filling Palace Square. He wore a breechclout and a crisscross of bandages over his chest.
One of the mansions was afire. Not Ilna'sâas Garric first thought with a tensing of his heartâbut a place a few doors down which also backed up to the main canal.
Flames leaped from one end of the second story. Members of the Fire Watch worked on the blaze while hundreds of City Patrolmen and soldiers from the palace barracks tried vainly to keep order. The crowd brought out by the excitement
wasn't yet a dangerous mob, but the fire was an excuse for ordinary citizens to ransack a rich man's houseâand they were doing so.
Garric understood that, but he was surprised to see Cashel carrying a roll of fabric. Cashel was the last person Garric could imagine looting. The last person besides Ilna, at any rate.
“Cashel!” he called, striding ahead of Liane and Tenoctris. There was a woman with Cashel, a tallâ
“Sharina!” Garric shouted. “Shepherd guide me! Tenoctris, it's Sharina!”
Cashel grinned broadly. He changed direction but didn't break into a run as Garric and Sharina did, shoving people out of the way in their haste.
Garric hugged his sister, lifting her off the pavement. Until the day she left he'd never thought he'd miss Sharina, and even the emptiness he'd felt as the trireme sailed off gave him no inkling of how good it would feel to see her again.
“What are you doing here?” he said. They both started to laugh half-hysterically, because Sharina had said the same thing simultaneously.
“Garric,” Tenoctris said. “I don't believe Liane has met your sister.”
Garric put Sharina down. Cashel had joined them. Garric clasped arms with his friendâflesh this time, not a dreamâand looked over his shoulder toward the two women. Liane's expression was withdrawn and as cold as the moonlight that illuminated it.
“Ah,” Garric said. “Liane, this is my sister Sharina. Liane came to Barca's Hamlet, ah, after you left.”
He tried to think how to explain to Sharina what had happened to him since she'd sailed away. The complexity of the whole businessâthings that he didn't understand, things that weren't over yet; things which might not have happened at all, like the dream in which he got the swordâstunned him silent.
Sharina wore a heavy knife under her sash. Garric blinked
at it. Much else besides about his sister looked different from the last time he'd seen her, but that was a specific, identifiable change.
Sharina followed the line of his eyes. She touched the hilt and said, “Nonnus is dead, Garric. He died because, because ⦔
“Ah,” Garric said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know him very well.”
“Come,” Cashel said with a rumbling confidence he used to have only when herding sheep. “There's a, well, the man who employed me; a Serian named Latias. His compound's close, and I think I need to lie down.”
The five of them were a strange enough mix that under other circumstances the Patrol would certainly have been asking questions. Garric realized that there hadn't been time to cancel the pickup order for him and Liane, though the fire and the surging mob provided a degree of protection from the authorities at the moment.
Cashel strode through the fringes of the crowd, leading them in the direction he and Sharina had been headed when Garric saw them. On Cashel's back the bandages were soaked through with blood, some of it still seeping from the wounds below. The injuries must have been extremely painful, though apart from a certain stiffness Cashel seemed the same as usual.
The stiffness was usual enough too. Cashel was the sort who plodded along, never hurrying and never stopping till he'd gotten where he was going.
“Want me to take that?” Garric offered, patting the roll of fabric under his friend's left arm. It didn't look heavy, but somebody hurt as badly as Cashel was didn't need extra burdens.
Cashel looked down at the bolt with a smile that Garric couldn't read. The cloth had gleamed with highlights from the fire. Now that they'd left the square and were walking up one of the boulevards feeding it, the moon's softer light lay across it like a shimmering stream.
“It's all right,” he said. “The house we were in caught fire, I guess from the fighting before I got there. I thought I'd bring this along in case ⦔
Cashel cleared his throat, uncertain for the first time since Garric had met him here. “In case it was important to some friends of mine that it not burn.”
“Meder caused the fire,” Sharina said with a tremble that wasn't fear. “With his wizardry. His last wizardry.”
“If Master Latias will give us privacy,” Tenoctris said, “that will be very helpful. The things I'm afraid we have to do next will be difficult enough without outsiders becoming involved.”
Cashel looked at the old woman over his shoulder. “He'll give us whatever I ask, I think,” he said.
“There's more to take care of?” Garric said. He wasn't frightened. He was just getting information together so that he'd know what he was to do.
“Yes,” said Tenoctris. “The dark power which now holds Ilna.”
S
harina watched three Serian healersâan old woman, a middle-aged man, and a ten-year-old girlâwork on Cashel's back with jabbering enthusiasm while Cashel sat stolidly in a circle on the floor with his four companions. The Serian male cleaned and spread unguent in the long gouges while the child sewed them up under the old woman's direction. The healers might have been digging ditches on another island for all the indication Cashel gave that he was aware of them.
“I need to go after Ilna,” Garric said. He'd turned the belt buckle to his right side so that the long sword lay across his
lap instead of projecting awkwardly behind him. “It's my fault what happened to her.”
Latias had given them the use of an entire building; its ceilings were high and the louvered walls provided ventilation while maintaining privacy. Trays of juices and sliced fruits sat on little serving tripods beside each guest.
Cashel had described Latias as his employer. The Serian's conduct toward Cashel reminded Sharina more of the deference the Blood Eagles had shown to Asera.
“She's my sister,” Cashel said. “Besides, I've gone ⦔
He grimaced, either looking for a word or disliking the one he'd found. “I've gone other places. I'll bring her back.”
Sharina had always known Cashel was strong. She hadn't appreciated how strong he was till she left Barca's Hamlet and saw enough of other men to learn that the boy she'd grown up with wasn't merely the strongest man in the borough.
She'd watched him kill the thing that Meder had become. She'd grown up with a man who tended sheep, and who killed demons with his bare hands.
“It's not a matter of responsibility,” Tenoctris said, dividing her glance between the two youths. “Garric, you freed Ilna from a very bad master. That left her vulnerable to another power who needed a servant, but you didn't cause that to happen.”
The Serians chirped like a flock of birds as they closed Cashel's wounds. They seemed to speak only their own language; certainly they had no interest in what their master's guests were saying.
“A worse master,” Garric said flatly.
Tenoctris shrugged. “I don't think so,” she said, “though bad enough. This one is human, or at least he used to be: the Hooded One.”
Tenoctris had insisted on pronouncing a healing spell over Cashel despite his objection that she shouldn't strain herself on his behalf, that he'd be all right. Sharina remembered Garric
lying torn in their father's inn, with Tenoctris and Nonnus discussing the gods and healing.
Sharina wished she could cry. She didn't know why she couldn't. She would have rather any result than Nonnus lying dead before the throne-room door; but he was dead.
Garric touched his sword hilt. “If the Hooded One has her, then I
do
need to go.”
He didn't seem to be her brother anymore; and yet ⦠Cashel was still Cashel, there was just more of him than Sharina had realized before. Maybe the same was true of Garric, that the things he'd encountered had brought out parts of him that nobody in the borough would have had a chance to see.
Nobody, Garric himself included.
“I can take you with me to where Ilna is, Garric,” the old woman explained, “but I can't take anyone else. I don't have the power to take anyone else.”
She looked at Cashel. “Garric has a link to the place, the
time
I believe, where the Hooded One hides. He comes out to do his business, but only through agents.”
“People like my father,” Liane said. She was beautiful woman, obviously a lady despite looking for the moment as though she'd just dried out after a shipwreck.
Perhaps she had. Sharina, Cashel, and Garric had all blurted the rough headings of how they'd gotten here from Barca's Hamlet, but Liane had remained silent during the discussion.
“I don't think so,” Tenoctris said, meeting Liane's eyes. “I believe your father was in the service of another power, a competing power. At the end he served only himself, though. And Malkar, since all evil serves Malkar.”
Liane nodded crisply. “I see,” she said. “Well, I wanted to know.”
“Is the sword what you mean by a link?” Cashel said. He'd listened to what was being said and sifted it for the only question that mattered to him. “Because I can carry it, if that's all it is.”
Tenoctris smiled wanly. “No, it's not the sword, it's his ancestry,” she said. “Garric by blood and soul is bound to
one on the plane in which the Hooded One hides. That's why I can bring Garric to him.”
She looked around her companions and went on, “I suppose you all realize this but I'll say it anyway: Garric and I can confront the Hooded One, but the most likely result is that he'll defeat us both.”
The smile quirked her face again. “If we're more lucky than I expect, he'll kill us.”
Garric shrugged. “He can try,” he said.
More than the brother she'd grown up with; but still her brother.
“Garric,” she said. He looked at her, a little surprised though he smiled. “Don't get yourself killed for Ilna. She wouldn'tâ”
Her voice caught. She went on, “Ilna wouldn't want to know that a friend had died to save her. She'd rather die!”
Nobody said anything for a moment. Sharina wiped her eyes fiercely, then wiped them again.
“It's not a matter of rescuing Ilna,” Tenoctris said, looking at Garric as she spoke to the group. “Though that too, of course.”
She held up a tatter of cloth that Ilna had woven and had worn when she and Garric fought the liches. “Ilna's presence allows me to locate the Hooded One's hiding place. If we only counter when
he
acts, then he'll withdraw whenever he's personally at risk. We have to go to him to defeat him completely.”
“There was a throne where Sharina was,” Cashel said. The male healer wound fresh linen bandages around his chest while the child held the ends in place. “Black. And ugly.”
Tenoctris nodded. “I'm not surprised,” she said. “I think it's sympathetic magic. Wizards like the Hooded One believe that if they claim to sit on the Throne of Malkar, it will bring the reality closer.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps he's right,” she added. “He's a greater wizard than I am, certainly.”
“When do we go?” Garric asked. The careful nonchalance of the question showed he was tense.
“I'll need to make preparations,” Tenoctris said. “Powders of various sorts. Cashel, do you think Master Latias will help us?”
“Sure, I figure he can find whatever you need,” Cashel said. “He's a pretty big man in Erdin.”
Cashel gave a big, slow smile of contentment. The Serians had started to leave. They paused in the exitâthere wasn't a door, just offset panelsâand chirped in horror when their patient stretched with his fingers interlaced.
Their bandages held. “His ceremony went real well, he says,” Cashel added with quiet pride. “The one I kind of helped him with.”
“Garric,” Tenoctris said. “You don't have to go with me, though I hope you will, since I'm not fool enough to think I can succeed alone against the Hooded One; but I don't think the pair of us will succeed either.”
She shook her head in self-deprecation. “Sharina,” she went on, “I told your friend Nonnus that good and evil only mattered in human terms. I find that I'm human also. I hope Nonnus is amused.”
Sharina touched the old woman's hand.
Garric stood up. “I have to go with you,” he said. He fingered his sword hilt, grinned like another man entirely, and added, “Carus and I have to go with you.”
Sharina looked at her brother and thought of Nonnus. And at last she was able to cry.