He tried to sound portentous, but the effort of wizardry was making him wheeze. “Nonetheless,” he continued, “my art will enable you to climb to the upper doorway, from which you will enter to release Lord Thalemos.”
“Are there jailers up there?” Vascay asked. “There must be.”
“There are no jailers,” Metron said. “No human enters the upper levels save for prisoners and the Intercessor himself…and the Intercessor is no longer fully human. Echea made allies who were not men, and over the centuries her line has swerved closer to the line of those the Intercessors’ power depends on.”
Vascay looked at his men, his gaze finishing with Garric. “Any more questions?” he asked.
“When do we go?” Garric said.
“Tomorrow at midnight,” said the wizard. He stuck his athame point down in the middle of the scribed figure. The image above it dissolved into a bucketful of water, splashing on the dock and draining through the slats.
“Tomorrow at midnight it is,” Vascay said. His eyes were still on Garric.
Garric nodded. He rubbed the knot of muscle between Tint’s shoulder blades. He wished he understood; but for now it would have to be enough to act.
The high-pitched shriek brought Cashel to his feet from a dream in which he explained to Sharina that he owned all the sheep on the hillside below. “Tilphosa!” he shouted, his staff crosswise before him.
If the sailors’d harmed the girl after he’d warned them, then they could pray to the Sister for mercy. They’d get none from Cashel or-Kenset.
Tilphosa jumped up also. She eeped and threw herself flat as an iron butt cap whistled past her ear. Cashel’d nearly knocked her silly on his way to rescue her.
It was bright day, not much short of noon. The light hadn’t kept Cashel from sleeping like an ox after plowing, but it made it easier for him to get his bearings now that he was awake. Tilphosa was fine, just flattened on all fours as she looked up cautiously to judge where the quarterstaff was. The sailors were gone, all three of them.
The scream repeated. Now Captain Mounix was bawling in terror besides. The noise all came from the direction of the waterfall—and the birches. No surprise there.
“Stay—” Cashel said as he started lumbering toward the cries. His mouth closed. Stay here alone, where who-knows-what might be waiting for a chance to grab you?
“Duzi!” he said in frustration. “Do as you like!”
Which, being Tilphosa, she was probably going do no matter what he said. She loped along at Cashel’s side, discreetly beyond where she’d be swiped by the staff. She held her chunk of rock up by her shoulder, ready to chop or throw.
Captain Mounix was in the grove, his back to them. He was tight up against a birch, hammering it with both fists and bellowing. The branches weren’t holding him or anything like that so far as Cashel could see.
“What’s the matter?” Cashel said. Ousseau and Hook were here too, clasping other trees. Hook was the one who screamed like a boar being gelded. “What’re—”
He grabbed Mounix by the shoulder and tried to pull him back. Mounix roared in pain and terror.
The nymph he’d been embracing trilled silvery laughter. She’d looked completely human at Cashel’s first glance, but her slender body was becoming wood and bark again even more swiftly than he’d watched her form when first he’d entered the grove the previous dawn.
“Don’t bother with her, big boy,” called the nymph from a nearby birch. Her fully human body stood out from the tree trunk. “She’s taken, but I’m not.”
She laughed with demonic cruelty. Cashel looked at her, then stared down at the captain, his tunic lifted and groin pressed closed to the bole of the tree.
Oh. It wasn’t the nymph’s arms that held Mounix; but he was held, and held beyond any easy way of freeing. The captain’s eyes closed, and his whole body was going rigid.
Cashel stepped away. He drew his knife while he thought things over. The quarterstaff wasn’t going to solve the problem, and even if he’d had a proper axe he wasn’t sure he could cut Mounix loose. Not safely, anyway.
Tilphosa stepped close to look. “Don’t—” Cashel said, but she paid him no more attention than he’d expected she would. She lifted her rock high in both hands and slammed it as hard as her strength allowed into where the nymph’s face had been.
The stone flew out of Tilphosa’s grip, bouncing from Mounix’s shoulder and falling to the ground. The captain paid no attention to the blow. His body shuddered, then froze; and shuddered again. The dent in the soft birchwood filled and began to re-cover itself with bark.
Cashel could see Hook in profile. He was silent now. His eyes were open but blank, and his arms were limp. The sword he’d taken from the captain lay beside him, its blade broken a hand’s breadth below the hilt. He must have been hacking at the nymph who’d trapped him, but any damage to the tree had healed completely. Bark covered the whole trunk and was beginning to grow over Hook as well.
“Cashel?” Tilphosa said in a small voice. “I think that must be Ousseau over there.”
She pointed toward the other side of the grove. Cashel could see cloth on the ground, maybe a torn tunic.
“He’s just a lump against the tree, now,” she said. She closed her eyes. “Cashel, can we leave?”
Cashel put his knife back in its horn sheath and walked over to Hook. He picked up the sword hilt and handed it to Tilphosa.
“Here,” he said. “It’s not much, but it’s better than what you had. Let’s get going.”
All of the birches had reverted to the look of simple trees, but Cashel heard a tinkle of laughter as he and the girl walked quickly back the way they’d come.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” Cashel said.
“I don’t care where we’re going,” Tilphosa said. “We’re going away, Cashel. We’re going away!”
“They put this up quickly,” Sharina said as she mounted the steps to the wooden platform built out over the south gate into the palace compound. “It seems as solid as the palace wall, though.”
The supports were bamboo tied into a lattice as strong and open as a huntsman’s net. Reise, Garric’s majordomo, had provided tapestries to give a look of luxury to the plank floors and railings. The covered treads made Sharina step carefully, but she couldn’t have seen her feet while wearing court dress anyway.
“Builders use the same sort of scaffolding to set keystones,” King Carus muttered. “I guess it ought to hold a few people who aren’t too badly overweight.”
He punched his stomach with the heel of his left hand. Despite Carus’ insistence on a daily hour of sword practice, he complained that the round of meetings filling the rest of his time had him as badly out of shape as a calf stalled to provide veal for a banquet.
“We need a proper stand for public announcements, though,” he added. “I don’t think a thousand people can see me from here, and a king ought to be seen!”
“Perhaps the Customs Tower in Harbor Square?” suggested Liane, the last of their party. “With the booths cleared from the square, most of Valles could gather there.”
Lord Attaper stood at the base of the stairs with a platoon of his men. The additional Blood Eagles in full armor outside the gate concealed the heads of their javelins with gilt knobs. They were a guard of honor unless something went wrong, whereupon the knobs would come off very quickly.
“You want to train people to think of me when they see the tax collector?” Carus said with a laugh. “Maybe not, hey? But some sort of tower down by the square might work.”
Chancellor Royhas, Lord Waldron, and four attendants already stood on the platform, facing the steps. The nobles bowed to greet the king. In past generations the servants would have knelt, but Garric had decreed that no man in his kingdom knelt to another in his public capacity. Today bows—rather deeper than those of the nobles—sufficed for the servants as well.