16

On their way through Carcosa, Garric noticed that they'd passed several inns catering to folk from the eastern boroughs of Haft. The Red Ox was near the northern boundary of the present city where most arriving guests would be from the flat north of the island.

Northerners raised more cattle than sheep and by the standards of Barca's Hamlet they were a coarse lot besides. The inn's standard was a red-painted ox skull on a pole: most of the gilt had flaked from the horns. Garric tried to imagine his father putting a sheep's skull over the gates of his inn; he shook his head in disgust at the image.

Carcosa wasn't what Garric had expected. Unlike what he knew his friends from the borough were experiencing, the city was strikingly less than what Garric had thought he'd find. He remembered in his dreams riding through a metropolis of marble and fountains, triumphal arches and the pillared buildings where the whole government of the Isles transacted its business.

King Carus watched from the back of Garric's mind, more sober now than at any time since the night he entered a boy's dreams and drove away the nightmares. Over the days since Garric put on the medallion, the king had continued to stride closer through the planes that separated the two of them. Sometimes even when he was awake Garric thought he could hear King Carus' voice, and the king's memories lay in a haze over Garric's own.

The buildings of today's Carcosa grew like mushrooms on the stump of a fallen elm, covering the surface but with nothing like the density or magnificence of the original. The city had merely a barbaric sparkle, the sort of thing that was well enough in a provincial backwater with no pretensions to greatness.

But what had been great could become great again.

Benlo dismounted in front of the inn. The servant who took the mare spoke in terms of obsequious acquaintance; the drover must have stayed at the Red Ox while he was in Carcosa before.

The place was big and well kept, but it wouldn't have been Garric's choice for accommodation. The roof was of terra-cotta tiles; he supposed thatch wasn't a practical roofing material in a city. Neither that nor the ox skull was sufficient to make Garric feel so uncomfortable about the inn, but his discomfort was real.

He glanced up to speak to Tenoctris and saw that the old woman peering intently not at the inn but rather toward the enclosure wall across the road. "What's that?" Garric asked. All he could see from his level were the stone roofs of small buildings above the stone perimeter; Tenoctris at saddle height had a better view.

"It's a graveyard," Tenoctris said. "A very old graveyard. Old even in my day, though the tombs are still being reused."

She dismounted stiffly, using Garric's shoulder as a hand brace and his laced fingers as a step. Riding was easier than walking, but neither had been a skill she'd cultivated.

An inn servant whisked the mare into the stables in the rear. Benlo walked toward the group from Barca's Hamlet with a broad smile that Garric was sure was forced if not faked. "Well, lads," the drover said. "I've arranged for all of us to stay here for a few days."

He nodded at Tenoctris, then to Ilna as well. The smile slipped slightly. "The women too," he said. "I promised you that I'd . . . gain information when we reached the city, so it's only fair that I put you up at my expense."

Garric opened his mouth to speak. Before he could do so, Tenoctris said, "Thanks for your offer, but I believe I'll have to decline it. I don't care for some of the neighbors here."

She nodded her tight gray bun of hair toward the cemetery.

Benlo's face grew darkly furious. "Are you one of those old fools who's afraid of death?" he said. "Best get used to the thought, mistress. It'll be coming for you soon enough!"

"I'm not afraid of death," Tenoctris said simply. "I only fear for the living." She bowed and stepped back, awaiting the decisions of others.

"Master Benlo," Cashel said, planting one end of his quarterstaff on the ground beside him, "if you'll pay me my last day's wage I'll take my leave also." He lifted the purse from beneath his tunic and cocked his head as if listening to someone. Tenoctris squinted, then frowned, at the big youth.

"Yes, all right," Benlo said. He was clearly irritated at being balked even though he'd never cared what Cashel did except to the extent it affected Garric's actions. "Rald"—the chief guard carried the purse of silver and copper—"pay him an anchor."

"As for me," Ilna said with a curtness that would have been anger in another person; Garric knew her well enough to recognize it as her normal attitude, "we owe each other nothing and I don't require charity. I'll find my own lodgings."

All eyes were on Garric. "Sir," he said to the drover, "I'll go with my friends, thank you. I—"

"You can't run from it, boy," Benlo said. Liane blushed. Her father's tone did Garric the further insult of treating him like a recalcitrant beast instead of a human with the right to an opinion. "I don't care how much of a coward you are, I'm your only hope of safety!"

Garric saw the same scene twice, through his own eyes and through others that stained everything a bright, pulsing red. He stood still, afraid of what would happen if he moved.

"I'm very sorry you think me a coward, sir," he said. His voice quavered, but it was Garric or-Reise speaking, not the figure whose rage would splatter blood as far as the inn's high roof.

Liane stepped between Garric and her father. Her eyes caught Garric's and held them.

Garric's shackled anger turned inward, filling him with the sick trembling of hormones unburned. He wanted to throw up and he wasn't sure his legs would hold him much longer. He turned his back, squeezed his temples hard, and faced around again.

Cashel and Tenoctris were looking at him with concern, but Ilna's eyes were on the drover. She'd unbound the rope she wore around her waist and held the ends in her hands as she measured the distance to Benlo's throat.

"Be that as it may," Garric resumed, ignoring the repeated catch in his throat, "I don't choose to stay in the present surroundings. It isn't that I fear the dead, Master Benlo; nor the living"—he heard his voice tremble—"if it comes to that."

Garric gripped his temples again, trying to press a fresh surge of rage out of his skull. He opened his eyes. He hated not being his own man; but he was a man, not a boy, in the eyes of Benlo's guards. He could see they were afraid that nothing could save their employer if this dangerous man Garric chose to strike him down.

The drover himself didn't understand the danger; but his daughter did. "Garric . . ." Liane said.

"Yes," Garric said, speaking to himself as a separate person, then merging again to become a single soul in his own body. The spasm had passed. "Yes."

He raised his eyes to Benlo's. "Sir," he said. "I'll visit you again after I've found quarters to my satisfaction. At any rate I'll return before I leave Carcosa. Good day!"

Garric walked away—nowhere in particular, just away. His friends fell in behind him; Tenoctris quick-stepped to keep up until Garric noticed and in embarrassment slowed his pace.

He thought from the corner of his eye he saw Liane start to follow. Her father caught her by the arm.

"Garric?" rumbled Cashel as they turned the first corner they came to.

Garric looked around, finding to his vague amusement that he knew where they were: the buildings were mostly different or mere tree-grown piles of rubble, but the vast pillars of the Temple of Concord of the Isles still stood, even though the roof and most of the entablature had fallen ages ago. The harbor was half a mile south; the Summer Palace—and what did it look like now?—was half a mile north on the same boulevard.

"I'm sorry for the way I acted back there," Garric muttered.

"Huh!" Ilna sniffed. "Sorry for what?"

"Garric," Cashel repeated. "You too, Ilna. You've been good to me and I'll miss you, but I'm going now."

He turned. Garric caught his arm. "Cashel, wait," he said. "Where are you going?"

Cashel shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "Garric, I'd have gone as soon as he paid me, but I didn't want it to look like I was walking out on you. You didn't need me, I saw you with the liches; but I didn't want it to look wrong to other people."

He lowered his arm—not tugging it away, but removing himself from contact nonetheless. Garric realized that his friend was one of the few people who didn't see any point in talk when talk wouldn't change matters.

And talk clearly wasn't going to change Cashel or-Kenset's determination to go off by himself.

"You'll be all right?" Ilna asked sharply.

Cashel gave her a slow smile. "Yeah, I think so," he said. He frowned in concern. "Oh," he went on. "I have money. How much would you like? All of it?"

Ilna shook her head. "I'll be quite all right, brother," she said. "I . . . will miss having you to take care of."

She turned her back and put a hand to her face.

Garric swallowed and gripped Cashel's hand; he felt like a grapevine wrapping an oak. "Good luck, friend," he said. "I'll miss you."

Cashel smiled, nodded, and walked away. The tip of his quarterstaff was visible long after the crowd had swallowed the rest of his big form.

"Raphik, the merchant from Valles who buys my weaving," Ilna said quietly, "mentioned that in Carcosa he stays in the Captain's Rest near the harbor. Most of the guests are ships' officers. Raphik said it was quiet, clean, and not expensive."

She smiled with uncharacteristic softness. "He compared it to your father's inn, as a matter of fact."

Garric didn't react. He was trying to absorb all the things that had happened in the past few minutes. Losing Cashel, though his big friend had done no more than he'd said in Barca's Hamlet he planned to do; and almost losing his own mind in murderous rage . . . that was even worse.

Ilna's face hardened when Garric ignored her pleasantry. "Of course," she said with icy nonchalance, "you may already have decided to go back to the Red Ox to stay with your fine new friends."

"No," Garric said, recalling himself to his present company. "I'm sorry, Ilna, I was just feeling . . . A lot's been happening. The harbor's straight down this way." He pointed. "Ah, I think."

He set off at a cautious amble that he thought Tenoctris could match without strain. The traffic here wasn't as bad as it had been near the square, but he walked slightly ahead of the women and to their left so that his shoulder took the shock of the occasional traveler too hasty for care.

"I expect I can find work at the Captain's Rest as I did on the road," Ilna said in a mollified tone. "Tomorrow perhaps I'll see to selling my fabric."

"Mistress Tenoctris?" Garric said. "Is it because of the liches that you want to keep away from the graveyard?"

This section of the street was given over to tinker's ware—pots and kettles of bronze and copper and pale white tin, silver's dull sibling. It shocked Garric to see so many metal utensils in one place. In the borough most kitchenware was of wood or cast iron, with other metals generally to mend splits in the treen, wooden, dishes.

"It isn't the presence of skeletons that controls the raising of liches," Tenoctris said. "It's the sea itself. I don't believe a lich could travel to the Red Ox so far from all water, much less be created there."

She cleared her throat, aware that she was giving a lecture rather than an answer to Garric's real question. "Garric," she said, "I was more worried by the spells I'm sure Benlo will use to learn who's working against him. There's a great deal of power centered in those ancient tombs, but it's not a clean single force. Strands are knotted in fashions that I couldn't separate and Benlo can't even recognize. I'm afraid he'll manage to do something very dangerous, but I can't even predict what the thing will be."

Garric thought of Liane. He formed a question in his mind, then suppressed it unspoken; Ilna's behavior already made him uncomfortable, and he couldn't drag a girl away from her father without her even asking for help.

"Should we have warned him?" Garric said aloud.

"He wouldn't listen," Tenoctris said. "And Benlo's very powerful, you know. I'd very much like to have the answer if he learns it. The force that's working against Benlo is almost certainly directed against you too, Garric; and I think against anything you would class as 'good' as well."

"You think that Benlo is going to fall into evil by accident with his magic?" Garric said.

A tout for a corner cookshop stepped in front of him. Garric stopped in polite surprise; no one would be so brazen in Barca's Hamlet. Ilna strode straight at the fellow, the end of her short carry-staff aimed at his face. He yelped and hopped back.

"It's not nearly that simple, Garric," Tenoctris said with a sigh. "Not as simple as good and evil, and not merely two choices. Think of how complex a living person is. Is there one human being whose personality you understand perfectly?"

Garric thought of Ilna and Cashel . . . and himself. "No," he said. "Not even close."

Tenoctris nodded. "When a person dies and is buried, forces fill the space his soul—or whatever word you choose to describe the part of a human that isn't flesh . . . the space his soul used to fill. The way quartz replaces the wood of a fallen tree and leaves it agate; different in every detail, yet still recognizable as a tree trunk."

"It does?" Garric said. "Trees become stone?"

"I could never keep to the subject I was trying to explain," Tenoctris said with a rueful smile. "One of the reasons I never managed to explain very much."

The smile passed. "The other reason is that I don't understand very much . . . which is better, I suppose, than thinking like Benlo that I do understand."

She tapped her lips with a finger. "Benlo sees the ancient tombs as a nexus of great power, which they are. He doesn't see that each of what he thinks is a strand of force is a thousand strands spun together, and that some of them lead to consequences that even he with all his powers can't control."

Ilna nodded, watching Tenoctris with perfect understanding. Garric thought of the care with which Ilna chose her thread before she began weaving; each nuance of color judged before she worked it into her pattern. Oh, yes, she would understand.

"Your friend Cashel knew to avoid the Red Ox without me telling him," Tenoctris said. "I suppose it's just that he recognized the forces and chose to avoid them because he doesn't want to use the talent he unquestionably has. But at first I thought that there might be more to it than that."

"Talent?" Garric asked.

"Yes," Tenoctris said. "I was surprised that even Benlo wasn't able to recognize it, but Benlo's talent is of a very different sort. And Benlo is ignorant, of course."

Garric glanced at Ilna from the corner of his eyes. She didn't speak.

"I don't think Cashel would've stayed with us anyway," Garric said aloud. "He was really bothered about Sharina leaving the hamlet. He told me he was going to go off by himself. I didn't believe him till it happened, though."

He shook his head, trying to make sense of a situation whose elements were complete nonsense. "I just can't understand . . . I mean, Sharina's a great kid, sure. But why would anybody be so broken up about a girl leaving? I don't understand."

"No," said Ilna. "I wouldn't have imagined you would."

To Garric's complete surprise she pushed past him and continued down the street at a walk that was just short of a run. "Ilna?" he called. He looked at Tenoctris; her face was expressionless.

The inn just ahead of them hung a rocking chair above the street for a sign. The words The Captain's Rest were painted in gilt on the broad rockers. Ilna, twenty feet ahead, was going past it.

"Ilna!" Garric called, realizing suddenly that his friend couldn't read. "Ilna, this is our inn!"

She stopped and turned back to enter; he'd been afraid she wouldn't. He should have known how much she'd miss her brother, now that he thought about it. He was pretty sure that when Ilna turned around, he'd seen the glitter of tears on her cheeks.