Servant of the Dragon (19 page)

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHT

As soon as it was decently dark, Ilna crawled out of the luxurious tent Lord Tadai had forced on her. She didn't want to insult the nobleman, but she'd sooner have slept on a mattress of human bones.

Bones didn't speak to Ilna. Fabrics did, and the flooring of silk rugs knotted by the fingers of tiny children—the knots were closer because the hands tying them were so small—spoke in tones of wailing misery.

Ilna was no romantic. Farm labor was hard, and children in the borough worked almost from the time they were weaned. Even so, she preferred to sleep outside wrapped in the cloak she'd woven rather than on gleaming rugs under a canopy of silk and cloth-of-gold.

The two triremes leaned on braced oars so that when the tide came in they wouldn't fill and sink. Their anchors were set high up the sand with the flukes pegged down to hold against the water's tug. They'd been beached on one of the many nameless islets which dotted the Inner Sea when the tide had just begun to ebb.

A girdle of barren sand stretched down to the water, but there was thick vegetation in the center of the island which only the highest spring tides washed. Ordinary trees couldn't have survived the occasional baths in salt water, but beach plums and a number of other lowlying woody plants bound the soil with their roots.

On the east side of the islet were mangroves, dropping roots into the shallow sea. Their gnarled stems and the driftwood carried from distant islands fed the sailors' fires on the wet sand, while the passengers dined in lamplit tents on the higher ground. Salt colored the sparks blue and green and sometimes a flash of gleaming purple.

Carrying her cloak—the air was warm, but not so warm that she'd want to sleep under the sky with only her tunic—Ilna walked away from the circle of tents. Guards and servants may have noticed her, but none of them commented that she could hear. She'd wondered how Lord Tadai and his companions could manage to pack the ships with so much baggage, but when she saw the tents, betasseled and brocaded, begin to come out of the narrow hulls, she understood.

Ilna had been looking for privacy, but as she started up the slope from a swale where the sand was fluid even with the tide this low, she realized that sailors had gathered on the other side of the ridge. They had a fire, but it was a low one and she was nearly to the line of groundsels on the top of the rise before she saw the sparks.

Ilna paused, wondering which direction to go. She wanted the crewmen for company as she slept even less than she did the members of Tadai's suite.

"There's no end to the riches," said a voice drifting to her on the breeze. "Gold lies in the streets, armlets and broaches and headbands of jeweled foil. If you want more, there's the treasure rooms of noblemen and of merchants richer than any who live today."

Ilna knelt, dropping the cloak behind her as an encumbrance. She worked her way forward among the fleshy leaves of the groundsel to where she could see. Her face was a mask without feeling. Without thinking what she was doing, her hands twitched loose the silken rope she wore over her waist sash. On one end was a running noose which would do everything but talk when Ilna used it.

There were thirty sailors in the depression. It was a cup, not a trough, shielding them from view on all sides. Vonculo, the sailing master of the
Terror
, squatted near the fire. He was the navigator and highest-ranking seaman on the vessel, though titular command was that of the noble captain, Lord Neyral.

Vonculo wasn't in charge here either. Standing beside him to address the gathering was Mastyn, the bosun. Ilna had taken note of Mastyn already on the voyage: a close-coupled man who shaved his head and eyed the nobles with angry contempt when he thought none of them saw him.

Ilna had no quarrel with Mastyn's opinion, but the man's furtiveness repelled her. Anyone who wanted to know where Ilna os-Kenset stood had only to ask her.

A sailor anonymous in the crowd asked a question in a voice too low for Ilna to hear. The fire cracked out a gout of white sparks as if for emphasis.

Mastyn hooked his thumbs in his broad belt. "Aye!" he said. The bosun's voice had a hoarse rasp from bellowing orders in storms where a missed command meant death and ruin. "What of the captains and the fine nobles that're drinking wine while we huddle here with hard bread and bad water? The only reason they did have us executed for mutiny when we followed Admiral Nitker is that they need us for a time. How much longer, though, do you think it'll be when the usurper Garric has his own crews trained?"

"We've got pardons," a sailor called, with more doubt than denial in his voice. "All of us who survived."

"All the handful who survived!" Mastyn snarled. "Pardons as good as the word of nobles who laughed when the beastmen killed our fellows, killed them and
ate
them! That's how good the pardons are!"

"He should've been a politician, shouldn't he, our Mastyn?" murmured a voice at Ilna's side. She looked sideways, her fingers curving to cast the noose, but the chanteyman's fingers closed on her wrist before she could move. Not hard, but there was iron under the touch.

"Gently, lass," the fellow said. He grinned. In the low moonlight, the scar on his right cheek seemed to continue the line of his mouth into the gape of a laughing frog. "They'd not care to be spied on, I think; by either of us, but especially you."

Ilna nodded agreement and deliberately turned back to watch the gathered sailors. The chanteyman released her wrist. The calluses on his thumb and forefinger were tough as boot leather.

"My name's Chalcus," he said. His voice was soft but clear. "And you're Mistress Ilna, the wizard."

"Others have said that," Ilna said. "No such nonsense has come from
my
mouth."

"The rulers of the place know how to reward bold men," Mastyn said. He bent to retrieve the bundle lying at his feet. The outer wrapping was of goatskin bound with the hair-side inward, but within was a layer of silk that gleamed scarlet in the firelight. "They have need of sailors, and those who join them early will live like the kings of other isles."

"Oh, aye," murmured Chalcus. "The rivers run with wine, and roast ducks hop onto your platter, begging you to eat them."

Ilna couldn't help but smile. The chanteyman's words were so close to what she'd been thinking that they might have come from her own mouth.

A sailor asked a question; only worry reached the ears of those listening from above.

"We'll take care of the guards," Vonculo said. He rose to his feet with the sudden catch of a man who'd been squatting too long. He swore under his breath, then continued, "There'll be no fighting. No harm to them, even, if you're squeamish about those who never cared about you."

Mastyn unwrapped the last covering from the object he held. It was box of gold and mother-of-pearl, amazingly delicate in the bosun's hands. He raised the lid, then inserted a key into the side and began to turn it.

Chalcus leaned forward, watching intently. He wore a gold ring in his left ear. Close up Ilna could see that his skin was pocked with more scars than were likely to come to most men. Honest ones, at any rate. The semicircle of pits on Chalcus' shoulder was surely from an animal's bite.

Mastyn removed the key. The slowly uncoiling spring drove the mechanism of the box. Tiny silver notes sang across the sand, waking false memories in Ilna's mind. She found herself thinking of drowned palaces, streets along which fishes swam. Treasure lay on the pavements, all the wealth that Mastyn had spoken of and more....

The music slowed, then stopped with a final plangent tone. The gathered sailors were silent, and Mastyn himself seemed transfixed.

Mastyn shook himself alert. "So, lads," he said, "what do you say? Will it be more gold than you can carry, or will you bow and scrape to fools like Neyral until they choose to hang you?"

A sailor asked a question. Mastyn looked at the sailing master. Vonculo nodded twice and said, "Nothing for now. We're speaking to the rest of the men. When it's time, you'll be told."

Ilna eased back from the ridge. Dried leaves crackled beneath her weight, though no one could hear the rustling at any distance. Chalcus backed also, making as little sound as a weasel.

"So, lass," the sailor whispered. "Where do you stand? For wealth by the armload?"

"The wealth may be there," Ilna said. "What comes with it though, I wonder? Nothing those monkeys prating of riches are going to talk about, of that I'm sure."

She found her cloak and gathered it under her left arm, leaving the right hand free with the noose. Not that she expected to need it.

"Aye," Chalcus said with a knowing grin. "Promises too good to be true are just that, I've found: too good to be true. I've come close losing my neck to such—"

He continued smiling, but his index finger traced a scar running from the lobe of his right ear down his throat and under his V-necked tunic.

"—and I don't choose to repeat the lesson. But most of the crews will jump for it, don't you think?"

"I can't be bothered with what other people do," Ilna snapped. The sailor's grin irritated her. She had the feeling that Chalcus really
did
understand the things he mocked; Ilna os-Kenset among them.

Ilna turned and walked quickly back in the direction she'd come. She didn't want to be caught by the conspirators as they dispersed.

For all her brave words, Ilna was well aware that what others did might very well bother her. And the child Merota, if it came to that.

* * *

Garric lay on a couch whose bronze frame was inlaid with ivory and ebony in an interwoven pattern. The black-and-white striped horsehair cushions had probably been chosen to match, but either color alone would have been a better choice. The fabric looked coarse in comparison with the subtlety of the intarsia as Garric gazed down at his sleeping body.

He walked out of the palace, through solid doors, walls, and landscaping. Nothing was a barrier to him.

It must have been midnight. The detachment of Blood Eagles on guard in the hall outside his sleeping chamber was changing. He'd walked through men who continued to watch his sleeping body.

Time compressed, or at any rate didn't run the way it would have done in the waking world. Each step Garric took was in a different hour of the day, though noontide was as likely to preceed dawn as it was to follow.

Garric reached the bridge. He'd known that was where he was going, though he had no control over his movements and no concern about what they implied. It made him vaguely angry to be shifted the way chessplayer places a pawn, but the force controlling Garric had stripped away all volition.

The bridge was no tracery of light to Garric in his present state: rather it was solid gray sandstone, bound with iron cramps which had rusted red stains across the ashlars. Garric's feet slapped the pavement, jarring him even in his dream.

Garric heard other feet echo faintly to his left. He turned his head and saw Carus, forcing a smile. The king wavered in and out of focus. He opened his mouth to call something, but the words were were lost.

Garric shut his eyes and gripped the coronation medal hanging against his chest. For a moment he held the thin gold stamping, warm with his own blood's heat; then he was holding the callused right hand of a swordsman.

Garric opened his eyes and grinned. He and King Carus walked together, hand in hand, across the hard stone. Lightning flashed among the clouds, but no thunder reached the pavement below.

They were approaching the ruined city that Garric had visited before in this fashion. "That's Klestis, all right," Carus said. His voice seemed deeper than it had when Garric heard his ancestor in the silence of his own mind. "It's worse for wear, isn't it?"

He chuckled. He opened his hand, releasing Garric's wrist. They continued to walk side by side. Caressing the hilt of his sword, Carus added, "Though Klestis is in better shape than my Carcosa is today, lad. There were hogs rooting in the Field of Monuments when you saw it, weren't there?"

"There's life in Carcosa," Garric said. "All that Klestis has is stones and the landscaping run wild. And Ansalem, I suppose."

His left hand tingled with the strength of Carus' grip. Garric wondered what effort it had taken to draw the king through the barrier into an enchantment meant for Garric alone. Carus' worst enemies can never have doubted the king's strength and determination.

The bridge ended at the esplanade in the center of Klestis. Garric was walking normally again, though he wondered what would happen if he tried to turn and run.

His face hardened, though his expression was technically a smile. He wasn't going to run, from Ansalem or from anybody. Especially not when the eyes of his ancestor were on him.

"There were people who next to worshipped Ansalem," Carus said musingly. "I heard them say that the Yellow King formed mankind out of dust, and that men would return to dust again when Ansalem died."

He laughed, but there was a touch of unusual bitterness in the king's voice as he added, "It wasn't quite dust, what the kingdom fell into; but it was close enough at that. Maybe I should have listened to all those frightened doomsayers."

"Most folk wouldn't say it was Ansalem's death that brought down the Old Kingdom," Garric said. "Besides, Ansalem seemed lively enough when I last saw him, as do you. And I've learned from you that it's never good to listen to fear."

"Oh, I never told you that," King Carus said cheerfully. "Fear's a useful thing, lad; it keeps you from getting overconfident. But you can't let it rule you, no. Not and still be a man."

They strode toward the palace, going forward boldly to avoid being driven. Pride wasn't worth much when you were completely in another's power, but it was all Garric had. Pride in himself, and in the ancestor who'd overcome the will of a great wizard to join him.

"Klestis grew all its own food," Carus said as he and Garric entered the palace, this time through the small front entrance. "You can see the fields from the roof here; I caught only a glimpse when I was visiting Ansalem. Wheat kernals each the size of my thumbnail and oranges as big as melons. Ansalem's doing, I suppose."

Age had ruined the building's interior. A few scraps of tapestry—mostly the metal strands which had been part of the weave—clung to the hooks beneath the cornice moldings, but for the most part the rotted hangings clogged the floors as dust. The furniture had fallen apart as well. Statues and urns set into wall niches remained, though some had toppled in the ages since they were brought here.

No one had walked in the palace for decades, perhaps centuries. Garric felt the debris cling to his bare feet. He and Carus both were leaving footprints. The king followed the line of Garric's eyes; he nodded.

They climbed the stairs by which servants had led Carus to Ansalem in past times. Had that been in the past? Though surely as many years had passed in this place as they had in the Isles.

The king laughed suddenly. "It doesn't seem dangerous in the least, does it?" he said. "So why do I feel this way?"

Garric shrugged. A right turn of the stairs followed a left turn, so that each man alternately had to lengthen his stride at the landings.

"A hen's got a pretty good life too," he said. "Nothing to do but come to the kitchen door where the wife scatters grain in the morning, and then grub for herself the rest of the day. Then one morning the wife wrings the hen's neck and she's that day's dinner."

Garric exchanged glances with Carus. "Not that we know whoever's bringing me here is planning dinner," he added. "But there isn't a lot I can do about it if he is."

Carus laughed again. "We'll see what we can do," he said.

Garric noticed the king's fingers twitched his sword up a finger's breadth to make sure it was loose in the scabbard. It was an unintended gesture; neither of them consciously thought that weapons would be of any use against the force controlling them. But it also showed that to Carus, the danger was theirs together and not Garric's alone.

Garric gripped the king's shoulder and squeezed it. Both men smiled, though neither spoke.

There was no one in the anteroom at the top of the stairs. The door that the tall man had guarded was barred from their side. Carus slid back the untarnished electrum bolt without difficulty, pulled the door open, and bowed Garric in ahead of him ironically.

Ansalem was sitting on the stone couch again, apparently oblivious of the double-headed serpent, the amphisbaena, which shimmered in and out of view through him. He looked up eagerly, then frowned when he saw Garric and Carus entering the room.

"Dear, dear," Ansalem said as he rose to greet them. "I've met you before, haven't I? Both of you. Or are you both the same person? King Carus, isn't it?"

"I'm Carus," the king said with and easy smile. "This is my many-times-grandson Garric."

His quick glance took in the whole the room. The mid-morning sun would enter through the alabaster as well as through the holes in a creamy effect that softened what would otherwise have been glare.

"And we've met before, yes," Garric said. "When you brought me here the first time, Master Ansalem."

"Did I really?" Ansalem said, peering around the littered room with a puzzled expression. "Oh, I scarcely think I did that, my boy. I couldn't have, surely. This chamber is closed off from all the rest of the cosmos. You don't really exist, you see: you're just my dream."

Instead of answering, Carus rapped his knuckles on the window grill beside him. The electrum frame bonged musically.

Ansalem nodded, looking even more puzzled than before. "Yes," he said, "that
is
strange, isn't it? But you can't be real."

He reached toward a bookshelf and paused with a moue of frustration when he realized that all his books were gone. "Purlio!" he shouted. "Master Purlio, come here at once!"

His voice echoed. There was no other sound.

"I think my acolytes must have closed me off here," Ansalem said. He sounded more interested than concerned. "Why do you suppose they did that? You haven't seen them, have you, Purlio and the rest? But no, you couldn't have. You don't really exist."

"I met your Purlio when I was here in my own flesh," Carus said bluntly. "I thought he was a nasty piece of work, and the other six with him not much better."

"What?" said Ansalem in mile surprise. "Oh, they're not so bad. Quite clever, all of them, though—"

His cherubic face clouded.

"—they really shouldn't have walled me off here while I was so tired from removing Klestis from the waking world. I was going to...."

Ansalem's eyes suddenly focused on Carus. Garric, watching the old man, suddenly saw that beneath the childlike innocence was a core as powerful and amoral as the lightning.

"You were very angry that I wouldn't join the great crusade you were mounting against all your enemies, weren't you, Carus?" the old man asked.

Carus shrugged grimly. "They were the enemies of civilization, but—" he smiled; with some humor, though not a great deal "—yes, I did tend to confuse myself with civilization back in those days. As for angry, no. Not with you, at least."

Carus turned to the windows and looked out. In the streets below, the terrified citizens stood in the gleaming streets of ancient Klestis.

"I thought you were a short-sighted fool," the king said, returning his attention to Ansalem. "As indeed you were. But with the advantage of hindsight, I realize I was a short-sighted fool as well in trying to solve all my problems with my swordarm."

"I knew I didn't have enough power to save all the Isles," Ansalem said, protesting mildly rather than flying into one of the petulant rages Garric had seen the first time he was brought to this place. "Besides, the kingdom wasn't my business. My duty was only to Klestis and its citizens, so that's who I saved."

"You didn't save them, sir," Garric said. "The city's as dead as the sea bottom now. Despite what you see from the window here."

"Is it really?" Ansalem said. He sat on the bier again, knitting his fingers together in concern. "I wasn't able to complete my plan, you see, because I'm still sleeping here. How much time has gone by? I'm afraid it's very long, isn't it?"

"A thousand years," said Carus. "Garric here is my descendent a thousand years after the time I drowned, Ansalem."

The old wizard sighed. "Yes, I was afraid of that," he said. "It really had to be for you to enter my dreams this way, you see. Only when the forces are at a millennial peak would that be possible."

Ansalem stood, showing for the first time the weariness of old age. He touched places on his bookshelf, here caressing a missing codex, there tapping the roller of the scroll that should have been in a particular pigeonhole. "You see," he went on, "when you died, Carus—"

He turned toward the king with the quickness of a frog snatching prey.

"You did die, didn't you?" Ansalem asked with the sharpness of one who expects to get an honest answer, and promptly.

Carus shrugged. "My body drowned," he said. "I'm not a philosopher or a priest to tell you about the rest. But I'm here, now."

"Here in my dream, yes," Ansalem said, genial again. "Well, I had no need of scrying mirrors or divination spells to know what would happen to the Isles when you'd finally failed. I took Klestis out of time to preserve it from the chaos to come. Next...."

He turned and surveyed the empty bookshelves and the niches which had held objects to focus the powers on which the cosmos turned. This time he didn't try to touch the missing treasures. His visage was momentarily hard and old in an inhuman fashion, the way a mountain is old.

"I was very tired, you see," Ansalem continued quietly. "It was a great work. I alone could have achieved it!"

He glared at Garric and Carus as if daring them to gainsay him. The old wizard was a child again with a child's boastfulness—and the power to move a city out of time, as he clearly had done.

Garric folded his hands over the sash of his sleeping tunic of plain wool, the only garment he wore in this dream state. He nodded agreement. It was like facing a caldera of bubbling rock, wondering if the next instant would bring a burp of fire to incinerate him and all else around.

Ansalem sighed, shrinking into himself. "I was tired and I slept," he said softly. "When I awakened I would have moved Klestis a thousand years into the future when peace and stability were reestablished. I didn't want my people to suffer through the ruin to come."

Garric smiled wryly. "I wouldn't call the present—my present, I mean," he said, "either peaceful or stable, but I'll grant that it's better than what happened immediately after the collapse of the Old Kingdom. For the time being, at least. The trick will be to keep it that way, and your bridge from Klestis to our world is making that harder, sir."