Still smiling but still careful, Cashel made his way to the temple’s high, narrow door. It was bronze but had only a simple latch rather than a lock of some kind.
Thinking it might be barred on the other side, Cashel lifted the latch gently, then pulled the door ajar. A pale greenish radiance marked the crack between the panel and its stone jamb; if there were sounds from within, they were lost in the river’s faint gurgle.
Cashel opened the door the rest of the way and stepped inside, his shoulders brushing both jambs. He didn’t close it behind him.
He was in a shallow room which ran the full width of the temple. It was for storage, he’d have guessed, except that nothing was stored here.
He looked up. Bars crossed the room the short way, spaced along the width. They were thick bronze, polished in the center by wear. Dark robes hung from hooks on the inside wall, one beneath each bar.
Cashel counted them: all the fingers of one hand, and the other hand except for the thumb. Nine.
There was a passage a little longer than a man is tall in the center of the room. Carefully, walking left side forward with his staff slanted across his chest ready to strike, Cashel moved down it toward a light, just bright enough to have color.
There were faint sounds from the room beyond. It wasn’t people talking, more like the clicks and slurps of dogs at the carcase of a—
“Duzi!” Cashel shouted. He leaped out of the passage, his quarterstaff raised. The chamber beyond was large and the height of the temple’s peaked roof. The ceiling glowed the hue of pond scum in the summer.
The Nine looked up from the corpse they were devouring. Without their robes Cashel couldn’t imagine he’d ever thought they were human. Their chitinous bodies had no color but that of the squamous light, and their beaked jaws were toothless.
Cashel stepped forward, spinning the staff. He wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out, but he was going to try. The Nine didn’t have weapons, and their spindly limbs would shatter under iron-shod hickory.
The Nine curled their abdomens forward beneath the two pairs of legs on which they stood. From their tails squirted sticky fluid that hardened as it splashed over Cashel’s head and torso.
Cashel strode forward, willing the staff to spin but feeling the thick hickory bend under the pressure of his arms. The ferrules were glued to his body; the staff couldn’t move.
Three of the creatures sprayed Cashel’s legs. He tried to take another step. Like swimming through molasses…and then not even that. Cashel toppled to the stone floor, as helpless as a trussed hen.
The Nine bent over him, chittering among themselves. One of them reached up delicately with a pincered forelimb and pushed a fragment of flesh back into its beak.
Sharina sucked in her stomach as the dory lifted over the crest of an incoming wave. Unatis, the boatman, feathered his left oar and pulled hard with the right one. The rowlock squealed like a rabbit in a hawk’s talons.
“Sister take it!” said Carus, sitting in the bow. “You’ll wake Lerdoc in his tent with a racket like that!”
“We will not,” said Unatis calmly, leaning into both oars now that he had the dory straightened to his satisfaction. “But if the lady would take the tallow block from the basket under my thwart and grease the pin with it, that would quiet the oars.”
He grinned at Sharina, facing him from the stern. Unatis was an old waterman from Carcosa harbor; it took more than an angry prince to worry him.
Sharina found the container easily, but in the bad light it took her a moment to open the lid; it was pegged on through loops in the wicker. The tallow was in a wooden block; a screw base drove the column of grease up as it was used. It was a clever device, and a bit of a surprise to find here in a waterman’s kit.
Carus laughed. “Aye,” he said, “I’m worrying about silly dangers I could change instead of the big ones that I cannot. That’s always the way while I’m sitting with nothing to do but wait.”
“We’ll be to where you told me soon,” Unatis said calmly, spacing his speech between strokes of his oars. “A mile off the shore where the Blaise fleet is anchored. After that you’ll have no waiting, unless you change your mind and have me take you back to dry land to sleep in a warm bed.”
Carus snorted. “That’s the last thing I want to think about,” he said. “When we’ve settled this matter, though, I’ll sleep for a week.”
Sharina had tallowed the port thole pin. She twisted the screw and leaned to her right to daub the other too; if one squealed, the other might soon.
The dory lifted onto another swell. Unatis put the bow into it, then brought them back to the previous heading as they started down the trough.
“There’s a westerly current tonight,” he said. “Not strong, but a knot or two. If the prince doesn’t mind taking a waterman’s advice, you’d best start from here unless you plan on swimming to Cordin.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Or I could take you and the lady closer inshore,” he said. “A mile is a long swim for a lady.”
“I’ll tell that to the next lady I meet,” said Sharina. She’d already loosed her sash; now she ducked to pull off the tunic she’d worn for the long pull seaward from the royal encampment. “I’m from Barca’s Hamlet, where the only Lady is the one we pray to.”
Which I’ll be doing tonight, that She may preserve me for the kingdom’s sake and my friends’ sakes, she thought with a wry smile.
Sharina lifted the oilcloth bundle holding the clothes she’d change into when they reached shore. Wrapped in the center of the silk tunics and embroidered cape was her Pewle knife. In part she’d brought it as a talisman, but the big knife was used to hard strokes and so was the woman who carried it now.
“Ready?” she said to Carus.
The boatman shipped his oars. His bushy moustache fluttered for a moment as he took in Sharina’s slim, moonlit body; then he averted his eyes as if from an unexpected horror.
“Aye,” said the king, raising his own much larger bundle. He’d stripped off his tunic also, but around his waist was a fabric belt and a dagger enclosed in sheath of leather boiled in wax and lanolin. “Now?”
Sharina slipped over the side, holding her bundle out in front of her. She’d picked her time well, with the dory sliding sideways into a trough that carried it away when she thrust for the shore.
Stretching her body out behind the bundle, Sharina kicked like a frog. Her legs alone would do the work. She could use the clothing to buoy her up if she needed to rest, but unless the current changed unexpectedly, she doubted that would be necessary.
Unatis had been right about the current—of course. The pressure of the water on Sharina’s right side was worrying, but her conscious mind knew that it was taking her to where she wanted to be. The awareness she was in the grip of a power greater than her own still made her uncomfortable.
She giggled, snorted seawater, and giggled again.
“Is everything all right, girl?” Carus called. The king was on her left side; she couldn’t see him so with her head cocked to the right to breathe, but he sounded close.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, raising her voice. She was a natural righthander, so turning onto her right side would be uncomfortable. “I apparently just realized that the sea is bigger than I am. That doesn’t say much for my perception, does it?”
Carus laughed—and choked silent on seawater in his turn. They kicked on in companionable silence.
Bonfires and lamplight gleamed for the full arc of the bay holding Count Lerdoc’s vessels and army. The fires weren’t large enough individually to silhouette a ship, but as Sharina slanted toward the coast she got a feel for the anchorage. Lights vanished and reappeared as her angle to this hull or that one changed.