14

The rain had stopped for the moment, but drops continued to fall pit! pit! pit! from the high branches. A salamander grunted in the depths of the forest. It must have been bigger than a man to achieve such throbbing volume.

Sharina had taken a knife from the effects of a seaman killed during the storm. She prodded it gently between layers of the hard stone. The point scarcely penetrated. If she pushed harder, she'd only break the blade.

"Nonnus?" she called. "There's no mortar between the stones here, but they fit closer even than the walls of the mill back in Barca's Hamlet. That's Old Kingdom work. Have you looked at these?"

"Enough to know that you're right," the hermit said. "I was never a mason, though. I can't appreciate the fine points of the work."

Nonnus had a slow fire going in a trough along the upper side of a tree trunk thirty inches in diameter. That would be the diameter, at least, when she and the hermit finished scraping the bark off. Sharina used a hand axe from the trireme; the hermit had his knife.

A falling giant four times as thick had pushed this tree over, saving her and Nonnus the work of chopping it down. The bow and stern would require a great deal of shaping, an axeman's job for which Sharina could be very little help. It didn't seem to concern Nonnus.

The tall vegetation drank the high-pitched voices of men calling to one another, though occasionally a word or a few words penetrated to Sharina's ears. The whole crew had vanished up the hill to see the abandoned city. Nonnus had said only, "When I've finished the dugout, there'll be time for cities."

Sharina could have gone with or perhaps without her protector; but she'd asked Nonnus on the voyage because she trusted his judgment and experience above her own. She wasn't about to second-guess him now. She remained and helped, though she didn't have the endurance to work as Nonnus did without an occasional break to explore the immediate vicinity.

"I meant..." she said. "Nonnus, I don't think men could have built things like this. Normal men, I mean. Do you think this was an isle of wizards?"

Nonnus straightened and stretched, laughing with a cheerful humor that would have amazed anyone who'd known the dour hermit in Barca's Hamlet. "Well, I'm not an expert on wizardry either, child. But as for what normal men can do...they can do anything a wizard can, in my experience. It may take longer and be done in a different way; but we can do anything at all."

He got up on the fallen log to check the fire, making sure that it wasn't burning too close to the edge as it hollowed the trunk into a vessel. Large timber was too valuable on Haft for Sharina to think of fire as a woodworking tool, but the hermit's experience of less settled lands had led him at once to the option.

A slow fire of damp moss and wood chips hollowed the log as fast as a strong man with an adze. The fire never tired and it worked through the night. A twig framework held a roof of large leaves to keep direct rainfall from the trough; splashes and Tegma's saturated humidity served to prevent the smoldering fuel from breaking into open flame.

Sharina and Nonnus hadn't discussed the reason they were building a dugout. They hadn't needed to.

Breakers groaned beyond the curtain of fog. The reefs were distant—and perhaps distant in more than space alone—but they hadn't vanished. The trireme couldn't cross them without the lift of an unnatural storm as well as magic of a sort that Sharina knew had depended on the captain's bloody death.

The captain's sacrifice by Meder, she suspected. She'd rather drown than become a willing participant in an attempt to repass the reefs by similar means.

"Are we going to have a sail?" Sharina asked. "They probably won't let us take canvas from the ship, but I could sew together the capes of the men who were killed. I wish Ilna was—"

She fell silent. The hermit's stance had changed slightly and he picked up the javelin that had never been beyond arm's length since they landed. He rotated it point down: if he brought his arm back, the missile was ready to throw.

"Nonnus?" Sharina said. Still holding the sailor's knife, she stepped quickly behind him to the fallen log where she'd left the hand axe. A blunt-pointed knife was no weapon if there were better available.

A file of six Blood Eagles and Meder bor-Mederman came out of the forest. The soldiers chatted among themselves. They looked sweaty and bored, though two scarred veterans stiffened noticeably when they noticed the hermit's stance.

"Good morning, Meder," Sharina called in a loud voice. "I trust we won't be in the way of whatever business brings you back to the ship?"

"The procurator has decided you should be with her at all times, mistress," Meder said. "You're to come with us to the city, where we'll stay until we better understand the situation."

He gave Nonnus a glance that was meant to be slighting but instead looked hostile. "Your servant can come or stay as you please."

Meder sounded both peevish and uncomfortable. His black velvet garments were sodden. Even Sharina's thin tunic was heavy with the water it had absorbed. The humid air was both unfamiliar and unpleasant.

The young wizard's problem went beyond the weather, though. She felt flattered—any woman would—that a wealthy noble would find her so attractive; but Meder himself, the way his mind worked and the actions he took without hesitation, was repellent to her. Cold disdain was both Sharina's natural response and the best way she knew to keep him at a distance.

It wasn't a matter she wanted to discuss with Nonnus. It particularly wasn't a question she wanted to discuss with Nonnus.

"I don't choose to go," Sharina said loudly.

Meder clenched his right fist. The soldiers who stood talking and scratching themselves fell silent and waited for developments.

"Oh, I don't think there's much we need do here for the next few hours," the hermit said in a calm, carrying voice. He deliberately laid the shaft of his spear on his shoulder as if it were merely a staff. He walked along the log, peering in to check the fire. "No, this is under control."

He turned to Meder and smiled; a gesture of goodwill rather than good humor. "A good time to view new things, sir," he said.

Meder scowled like a ditchdigger unable to crush or shoo away a troublesome fly. "Yes, all right," he said. "Whatever Mistress Sharina wants."

He offered Sharina his arm. She strode haughtily past him and up the stone path.

"I think you can put the knife away now, child," Nonnus said from just behind her.

Sharina blushed and thrust the knife back into its sheath. "I wasn't thinking about it," she said. "I'm used to kitchen knives that you carry till you put them down."

The track was serpentine but steep, rising one foot for every three of horizontal distance. The path was wide enough for six men to walk abreast, though it was a moment before Meder caught up to Sharina and Nonnus. The wizard's slick-soled boots slipped awkwardly on the leaf mold. Bare feet were better even than the soldiers' hobnailed footgear; the spongy matter wasn't strong enough to grip the nails without shearing.

Where traffic had worn the path down to the original surface, gneiss gleamed mirror-smooth. Sharina looked at the curb formed of stones individually twenty feet long. "Some of these blocks weigh tons, Nonnus," she said.

"So they do," the hermit agreed. She heard a faint smile in his voice at the argument she had resumed. "But I haven't seen any block that couldn't have been moved by four men on level ground. Four ordinary men."

"The island is a nexus of power," Meder said, almost to himself. He wiped his face with his sleeve. "A wizard here could do great things. Incredible things."

Sharina realized that the wizard's nervous petulance stemmed from more factors than she'd been considering. Whatever the means by which Tegma's buildings were constructed, the island's reappearance from the sea was proof of great magic. That couldn't help but affect another wizard.

Sailors shouted, nearby but invisible among the vegetation. They were hunting something big enough to require a coordinated attack.

There were worms and insects on Tegma, and the salamanders that preyed on both. She'd seen no mammals, no snakes; not even any birds, though at first she'd thought otherwise. Some of the insects had wings as long as Sharina's forearm. They made a deep bass note as they thrummed through the forest.

Reeds crackled as something large wriggled along just out of sight. The forest was so thick that Sharina couldn't see the path beyond the switchbacks above or below them.

The Blood Eagles panted and cursed softly to one another. Their spears were as much help as hindrance, bracing them when their feet slipped, but their helmets and body armor were heavy and must be unbearably hot in these conditions. It was a tribute to the troops' discipline that they continued to wear the gear; but it was also, Sharina thought, a sign of how silly military discipline could be.

Nonnus carried his javelin butt-upward over his shoulder, still gripping the weapon at the balance for instant use. Perhaps he didn't think the Blood Eagles' concern for material enemies was empty as Sharina did....

The hermit gestured with his left hand, drawing Sharina's eyes upward. Because the path rose so steeply through the scores of switchbacks, she'd been led to the instinctual habit of looking down at where she'd step next and ignoring the wider surroundings.

The buildings on the ridge ahead of her were individually larger than every structure in Barca's Hamlet put together. Walls and high bridges bound the gleaming mass into a whole as complex and intertwined as the tunnels of an ants' nest. The mist-reddened light of the sun deepened the pink stone into bloody scarlet. Sailors walked on the battlements or passed the windows of rooms within, calling to one another in voices bright with childish wonder.

The path led to a gateway twenty feet high: a trapezoid whose transom was half the width of the lintel beneath. Sharina's eyes narrowed slightly. The design was perfectly practical, but she would have expected an arch. Now that she was closer, she saw that the many windows were of the same pattern, slits narrowing toward the top.

"The procurator's in the citadel," Meder said. His eyes had a febrile gleam; his hands twitched as though snatching at something others couldn't see. "The tallest building, I mean. To the right."

Nonnus knelt and ran his free hand along the gatepost. The edge was countersunk as if for a hinge, but no sign of that or the gate itself remained; not even the stain of corrosion on the stone.

Words and the click of the troops' hobnails echoed within the enclosing walls. The building to which the wizard pointed was so high that Sharina wasn't sure whether she saw the topmost tower or just the height at which mist hid the remainder of the structure from her.

"Master Meder!" Wainer's powerful voice called. He stood at the corner of a balcony sixty feet above the courtyard, on the side opposite to the gate. Asera was beside him, letting the soldier do the undignified job of bellowing directions. "The procurator asks that you join her immediately!"

The doorway was small and so low that Sharina ducked, though she would probably have cleared the transom by an inch or two anyway; the passage through the fifteen feet of smooth stone walls felt like a tunnel. The building was certainly capable of being used as a defensive citadel, whether or not that was the purpose for which the ancient builders had intended it.

A pair of sailors jogged across the huge odd-angled room inside. They called to another man somewhere in the echoing gloom. Sharina knew that there were more than two hundred men in this structure or the immediate vicinity, but she felt as though she were swimming in empty ocean.

A soldier murmured something to Meder. He turned with a scowl. "Yes, all right, you're dismissed," he snapped.

"It's only that we need to look after our own rations here, you see, sir," the man said with an air of being ill-used.

The troops turned and vanished back through the doorway, already beginning to strip off their armor. The leather pads they wore beneath the metal were sopping wet.

There were a dozen trapezoidal doorways out of the hall, but the windows on the front and back walls were small and just below the high ceiling. Access to the upper stories was by an open-sided helical ramp supported by pillars. A soldier—not Wainer—waved from the opening where the ramp merged with the coffered ceiling.

"Why didn't they build stairs?" Sharina asked as the three of them started up the ramp. It sloped more steeply than the path outside and her shins already ached from that.

"Aesthetic reasons, mistress," Meder said in a patronizing tone. "The builders of these great structures would have been at pains to blend their work with the forces centered here. This is something that can be fully appreciated only by someone adept in the arts."

By a wizard like him, Sharina translated with a moue of distaste.

"Or of course, they may have been snakes," Nonnus said straight-faced. "Using the arts at which they were so adept in place of the hands they lacked."

Meder blinked, unwilling to believe the gnarled old peasant was mocking him. Sharina giggled despite a hand over her mouth to suppress the sound. The wizard's face went pale except for a blotch of hectic red on either cheekbone.

Doorways opened from each wall of the pentagonal foyer at the top of the ramp. The soldier who'd beckoned to them stepped aside. Asera looked over her shoulder through one opening and called, "Yes, come out here. Tell me what you make of it."

She and Wainer were on a long balcony looking down the other side of the ridge. It was thirty inches deep and there was no railing, only a low curb like those of the paths up the slope from the shore. Sharina felt uncomfortable, though no breath of wind had stirred since the trireme landed on Tegma.

A valley in the mist stretched down the opposite slope. From the base of the citadel bubbled a spring, steaming and sulfurous, which gushed down the rocky slope. No vegetation grew within several feet of the water, though precipitated minerals painted its margins yellow and orange. An updraft from the seething fluid scoured the mist from the air above.

"I can see for miles," Sharina said in wonder. Though there was nothing to see but forest like that on the shore side of the ridgeline.

"These might be the buildings I saw in the lagoon of Tegma," Nonnus said quietly. "But the reefs had grown up around a small island, not..."

The point of his javelin gestured toward distances rippling in the heated air.

"Do you know anything about this, Meder?" Asera said bluntly. "Do you know where you've really brought us?"

She was tense in a different fashion from Wainer beside her. The soldier's concerns were for what might be lurking in this vast stone warren—an uncertain question but a limited one. The procurator was still thinking about the mission that had brought her to Haft. She was trying to predict a vast and complex future which their landing on Tegma had thrown into confusion.

If they were even on Tegma.

"I didn't bring—" Meder said, but he caught the glint in Asera's eye and swallowed the remainder of his protest. He was right, of course; the storm was no doing of his. But the procurator was both frightened enough and angry enough to react violently if a colleague misspoke himself at this juncture.

"Mistress," he went on, "Tegma is more ancient than any writings that survive. More ancient than Man himself, some have speculated."

Asera frowned. "That's nonsense," she said, tapping the wall beside her with a fingertip. "These buildings prove that's nonsense."

"Despite the buildings, mistress," the wizard said, though he nodded as if in agreement. "But as I say, everything was conjecture because until now it was impossible to reach even the lagoon above the sunken island."

Nonnus had craned his neck to look up the sheer wall. He smiled faintly. Another balcony jutted from a doorway twenty feet higher and fifty feet to the side, but Sharina knew from her first sight from outside that the citadel had several higher stories inset from this massive base level.

"I'll begin studying the matter through my arts," Meder said.

"You'll find us a way out," Asera snapped.

"Yes, yes of course," Meder agreed, "but first I have to determine where it is that the queen's wizards have brought us. I assure you that my abilities are—"

Boots clashed on the floor of the anteroom. "Wainer!" a soldier called. "Mistress Asera, look what's lying on the floors upstairs. Look!"

Two Blood Eagles paused at the doorway onto the narrow balcony and thrust handfuls of jewelry toward their superiors. Torques too strait for a neck, narrow fluted plates joined into tubes tighter than a human torso but too long for even a tall man's limbs, bangles that Sharina's eyes couldn't fit onto a human form in any way her mind could imagine...

Made of gold. Gold so pure that it had survived the ages which devoured all else but the stones of Tegma.

"The sailors have been finding this all over, mistress," a Blood Eagle said. The soldier who'd guarded the doorway onto the balcony hovered behind his two fellows, peering past them for a glimpse of the treasure. "They weren't going to say anything about it, I shouldn't wonder. Well, we taught them about discipline, Ningir and me."

Meder lifted a torque so that it better caught the red light of the sun. He turned it, peering closely at the carvings on all surfaces. If they formed writing rather than decorative symbols, they were in a script like nothing Sharina had ever glimpsed.

"This is exactly what I need!" the wizard said. "We'll take this back to the ship—that'll save time over bringing my tools back here. We'll learn exactly what's going on here because the ancient inhabitants will tell us!"

Still holding the torque, Meder strode through the doorway so quickly that the soldiers could barely jump clear. Seeming to notice them for the first time, he said, "You three—I'll need animals for this, as many as you can catch. And don't kill them yet!"

As Sharina had noticed before, when Meder was wrapped in what he called his art he completely ignored the procurator except as a potential pair of hands to carry out his bidding. Asera looked startled, but her flash of anger faded quickly to one of hopeful interest.

"Come along, girl," she said to Sharina. "If there's a way out of this place, I want to learn about it as soon as possible. Wainer"—turning her head toward the soldier—"I'll want at least six men. Join us at the ship immediately when you've rounded them up."

The head of the guard detachment nodded. He left the balcony at a quick pace.

"Just as well," Nonnus murmured as they went down the ramp to the main hall. "It's getting time to check on our fires."

Sharina thought he sounded mildly amused. She was confident that she and the hermit would be getting off the Isle of Tegma, whatever happened to the remainder of the trireme's folk.