David Drake - Lord of the Isles 07 - The Fortress of Glass

VIP免费

2024-12-23 0 0 595.01KB 208 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE FORTRESS OF GLASS

Book One of

The Crown of the Isles

by David Drake

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

The Fortress of Glass

thereof, in any form.

Cover art by Donato

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web:

http://www.tor.com

Tor(r) is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

First Edition: April 2006

ISBN 0-7653-1259-X

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 98-7132

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

To Mark L. Van Name

Again, sort of.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dan Breen continues as my first reader, just as careful and crotchety as ever.

He tends toward proper grammar (some might say pleonasm), and I tend toward

the striking ellipsis (sometimes more striking than intelligible), so we make

a good team.

Dorothy Day has been doing continuity checking for me on this on several

previous books. That is, I'll need to know the name of (to pick a real

example) Katchin the Miller's wife, and she'll tell me that it depends on

which book I choose. (I've needed a continuity checker longer than I've had

one.)

My webmaster, Karen Zimmerman, has a skill at finding data which goes beyond

craftsmanship. When I need a reference, it appears magically in my in-box

within a couple hours.

Mark Van Name has been my friend for more than twenty years, and for that

reason I dedicated a book to him back in 1990. Mark is a variety of things

besides being my friend, however. Among them, he's a management and marketing

consultant; in which capacity he advised me on the structure of The Crown of

the Isles, the trilogy of which this novel is part.

Computers (two of them) Died in Making This Book. (Yes, I'm used to it by

now.) Mark, my son Jonathan, and Jennie Faries got me out of holes.

My wife Jo bore with me, fed me superbly, and kept the house as clean as

possible under the circumstances. (I'm really going to clean up my mess of

paper now.)

My thanks to all those above, and to others who just by being nice people made

my world brighter than it would've been otherwise.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As before in the Isles series, I've based the magic on that of the

Mediterranean Basin in Classical times. The voces mysticae (which I've called

words of power) are taken from real spell tablets. Their purpose was to call

the attention of demiurges (entities between men and Gods) to the wishes of

the person casting the spell. I do not personally believe in Classical magic

or any magic, but neither do I choose to pronounce the voces mysticae aloud:

I've been wrong before.

In my writing I always use bits and pieces not only of history but of other

fiction, scenes and phrases that made a strong impression on me. This time the

plot was shaped in part by my study of Spawn, a story by P. Schuyler Miller.

Those of you who haven't read Spawn can find it reprinted in the fat anthology

The World Turned Upside Down, along with many other stories which the three

editors found particularly memorable.

Another direct influence was Ovid, who can be amazingly evocative with a mere

line or two. For an example of what I mean, compare (on my website; see below)

my translation of the Perseus section of the Metamorphoses with the portion of

Fortress involving Cashel and the Daughter of Phorcys.

Again as usual, I've translated scraps from real Latin poets into the fabric

of this novel. While it's rarely a good idea to assume that a fictional

character is expressing the author's real beliefs, I will note here that

Garric's observations on O fons Bandusiae summarize the reasons I carried the

OCT edition of Horace with me through my time in the army in 1969-71. There

are times and places in which it's very important to have proof that

civilization exists, or at least that it once existed.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

Chapter 1

Tenoctris the Wizard stood in the prow of the royal flagship, staring intently

at the sky. "Sharina," she said, "we're suddenly in a focus of enormous power.

There's something here. There's something coming here."

Sharina glanced upward also. "Is it good or bad?" she asked, but the wizard

was lost in contemplation.

Cumulus clouds were piled over the island of First Atara on the northern

horizon, but here above The Shepherd of the Isles there was only a high chalky

haze. Whatever Tenoctris was looking at couldn't be seen by an ordinary person

like Sharina os-Reise.

Sharina grinned: or, for that matter, seen by Princess Sharina of Haft. In

preparation for meeting the ruler of First Atara, she was this afternoon

wearing court robes garments of silk brocade stiffened with embroidery in gold

thread. They were hot and uncomfortable in most circumstances; here on

shipboard they were awkward beyond words. The Shepherd had five oar-banks and

was as big as a warship got, but the deck of her streamlined hull was no wider

than necessary to allow sailors to trim the yards when the vessel was under

sail.

Sometimes Sharina wondered whether she'd feel more at ease in formal garments

if she'd been raised wearing them. Liane bos-Benliman, her brother Garric's

noble fiancée, certainly wore hers with calm style. On the other hand, Liane

did everything with style. If Liane hadn't been such a good person and so

obviously in love with Garric, even Sharina might've felt twinges of envy in

thinking about her.

Sharina and Garric had been raised by their father, the innkeeper in the tiny

community of Barca's Hamlet on Haft. No school for the wealthy could've

educated them better in the literature of the Old Kingdom than Reise himself

had, but they'd grown up in simple woolen tunics and had gone barefoot half

the year.

Sharina grinned. She guessed she could learn to wear court robes more easily

than even Liane could learn to wait tables in a common room packed with sheep

drovers and their servants, many of them drunk.

Horns and trumpets were calling, slowing the hundred and more ships of the

royal fleet to a crawl. A little vessel draped with gaudy bunting was coming

out to meet them with a wriggle of oars.

One of the royal triremes, the swift and handy three-banked vessels which were

the backbone of the fighting fleet, had already come alongside the stranger

and passed it as harmless, though that didn't explain why the island's

authorities felt a need to approach Garric-Prince Garric-at sea. No reasonable

official would choose to negotiate on the wobbling deck of a warship, since

even people who weren't seasick would find a conference table in the palace a

better location for spreading documents and consulting ledgers.

"There seem to be five-no, six passengers," Sharina said, peering down at the

deck of the twenty-oared barge bringing the Ataran delegation. She frowned and

added, "And one of them's just a boy."

The island's present ruler called himself King Cervoran, and his ancestors for

hundreds of years had claimed the title "king" also. They'd gotten away with

it because First Atara kept to itself, never making trouble for its neighbors

or for the King of the Isles in Valles... and because for generations the King

of the Isles had ruled little more than the island of Ornifal and eventually

had ruled nothing outside the walls of the royal palace.

That'd changed when the present King of the Isles, Valence III, adopted a

youth named Garric, a descendent of the ancient line of Old Kingdom monarchs,

as his son and heir apparent. It had to change. Unless there were a strong

hand on the kingdom's rudder, the same forces that swept up Garric and his

sister would smash the new kingdom. The second catastrophe would finish what

that of a thousand years before had left.

It was all well to say that every man should live his life without being

pestered by distant officials. That's the way things had been in Barca's

Hamlet, pretty much, simply because the community was a tiny backwater on an

island which had ceased to be important a thousand years before.

Most of those who said that now, however, were local nobles. What they meant

by freedom was that nobody from Valles should tell them how they should treat

their own peasants. A peasant given the opportunity generally prefers a bully

on a distant island to a bully in the castle overlooking his farm. Even

better: Garric's government didn't bully and it tried to protect its citizens.

Garric hadn't set out to conquer the other islands of the kingdom; rather, he

was visiting thtem one by one in a Royal Progress-accompanied by a fleet and

army that obviously could crush any would-be secessionist. As a result, the

reunification of the Isles was taking place in conference rooms, not on

battlefields.

Tenoctris clasped her hands and muttered in reaction to the pageant she alone

saw in the sky. If there were proof that the Gods rather than blind chance

ruled the world, it was in the fact that the same cataclysm that brought down

the Old Kingdom threw Tenoctris forward from that time to this one.

Wizards used the powers on which the cosmos balanced. These waxed and waned in

thousand-year cycles and were at a peak now. Because wizards remained for the

most part as blind, clumsy, and foolish as they'd been when they'd conjured

music and baubles from the air to amaze guests at a feast, disaster loomed

over the New Kingdom as surely as it had wrecked the Old.

Even in these days Tenoctris could affect very little through wizardry, but

she saw and understood the powers which greater wizards used in ignorance. Her

knowledge and the strong hand of Prince Garric of Haft had so far been enough

to reunify the kingdom; and the Isles to be unified if they were to face the

threats, human and demonic, which had swollen as the underlying powers

increased.

No one could look at the present world and doubt that Good and Evil existed.

Those who thought they could remain neutral in the struggle had chosen Evil,

even though they wouldn't admit it.

Sharina put her arm around Tenoctris for companionship. The old wizard had

lived seventy years or more, and something of the weight of the ten centuries

she'd been thrown forward seemed to lie on her shoulders also. Tenoctris

didn't believe in the Great Gods and all she'd ever wanted from life was peace

for her studies, but she was spending her life in the service of Good.

As were Garric and Sharina and their friends; as were all the members of the

royal army and the royal administration. Individually they included better

folk and worse, but all were on the right side in the greater struggle... or

so Sharina believed.

She smiled again, broadly this time. She did believe that.

Sharina turned to watch the barge nuzzle the Shepherd's high, curving stern

where Garric stood with Liane, a pair of aides, and a squad of black-armored

members of the Blood Eagles, the bodyguard regiment. Garric's silvered

breastplate made him look both regal and heroic-which was the purpose, of

course; nobody expected fighting here on First Atara.

Sharina noticed he hadn't donned the helmet with the flaring gilt wings that

completed the outfit, though he probably would before they landed. By the time

her brother was fifteen he was already the tallest man in Barca's Hamlet, and

the helmet added a full hand's-breadth to that height.

Garric was strong as well as tall, but there was a stronger man yet in the

community: Cashel or-Kenset, an orphan raised by his twin sister Ilna after

their grandmother died; a quiet fellow, gentle as a lamb and without a lamb's

querulous self-importance. A man taller than most, broader than almost any,

and stronger than anyone he'd ever met or was likely to meet.

He stood now behind the two women like a wall of muscle, his hickory

quarterstaff an upright pillar in his right hand. Sharina, still touching

Tenoctris with her left hand, put her right in the crook of his elbow. Cashel

smiled because he usually smiled, and he smiled wider because Sharina touched

him. It would've embarrassed him to take her hand in public, but nobody seeing

the two of them together could doubt that they loved one another.

Sailors from the barge had thrown lines from bow and stern aboard the

Shepherd; crewmen snubbed them to the outrigger that carried three of the

flagship's five oar-banks. The sailing master was blasting the barge captain

with remarkable curses, though, at the notion that the smaller vessel would be

allowed to lie hull to hull where it'd scrape the flagship's paint. The barge

captain swore back.

"We've been three months since the ships were overhauled in Carcosa," Sharina

said, frowning. "I don't see that a few more scrapes are going to be noticed."

Sailors tended to carry out their business as though the officials travelling

as passengers didn't exist. She and Garric had been taught to keep their

affairs-the inn's affairs-secret from the guests. This slanging match the

officers of the two ships offended Sharina's sense of propriety, though the

curses themselves did not.

"I think what he's saying is that we're fine people from the palace in

Valles," said Cashel, quietly but with something solid in his tone that

wouldn't have been there if he were better satisfied with the situation. "And

they're just nobodies from the sticks. Only we're not, not all of us; and I

guess that fellow'd have been as quick to call me a nobody back before Garric

got to be prince and it all changed."

"Not to your face, Cashel," Sharina said-and kissed him, surprising herself

almost as much as she did her fiancé. It was the perfect way to break his

mood; Cashel's face went the color of mahogany as he blushed under the deep

tan. They were in the shelter of the jib boom, though, and everybody else was

looking toward the stern where the delegation was swaying aboard on a rope

ladder. Nobody was likely to have noticed.

"Do we know why these people are meeting us at sea?" Tenoctris said.

Sharina jumped. The older woman had been so thoroughly lost in her own

thoughts that Sharina'd forgotten her presence.

"Ah, no," she said. "We could join them in the stern if you'd like, though.

They're certainly an official delegation, so I guess it's our duty to be

there."

"Right," said Cashel, turning and starting down the walkway stretching the

length of the ship between the gratings over the rowers. There wasn't much

room, but the sailors on deck would get out of his way though they might be so

busy they'd ignore the women.

Sharina motioned Tenoctris ahead of her and brought up the rear. She didn't

have Cashel's bulk, but her tall, slender body was muscular and she had

reflexes gained from waiting tables in rooms crowded with men.

"They may have nothing to do with what I feel building around us," Tenoctris

said quietly, perhaps speaking to herself as much as to her younger

companions. "But their meeting us at sea is unusual, and the way the forces

are building is very unusual; almost unique in my experience."

"'Almost unique'" Sharina said, delicately emphasizing the qualifier.

"Yes," said the wizard. "I felt something like this in the moments before

similar I wwas ripped out of my time and the island of Yole sank into the

depths of the sea."

* * *

One of Garric's guards gave his spear to a comrade so that he had a hand free

to reach over the railing to the twelve-year-old climbing the swaying ladder

ahead of five adults. "Here you go, lad," he said.

"Have a care, my man!" cried the puffy looking bald fellow immediately behind

the boy. "This is Prince Protas, the ruler of our island!"

"All the more reason not to let him fall into the water, then," said Garric,

stepping forward. "Since I'm told that right around here it's as deep as the

Inner Sea gets."

He took the boy's right hand while the soldier gripped him under the left

shoulder, and together they lifted him aboard. Protas tucked his legs under

him so that his toes didn't touch the rail. Though he didn't speak, he bowed

politely to Garric and dipped his head to the soldier as well, then slipped

forward to get as much out of the way as was possible on the warship's deck.

The plump official reached the railing. Garric nodded a guard forward to help

him but pointedly didn't offer a hand himself.

"That would be Lord Martous," Liane whispered in his left ear. "Protas is King

Cervoran's son, but Cervoran was ruler as of my latest information."

Among Liane's other duties, she was Garric's spymaster; or rather she was a

spymaster who kept Garric informed of events from all over the Isles, whether

or not they took place on islands which had returned to royal control. Her

father had been a far-travelled merchant. Liane of her own volition-Garric

wouldn't have known what to ask her to do-had turned his network of business

connections into a full-fledged intelligence service. It'd benefited the

kingdom more than another ten regiments for the army could've done.

Lord Martous had an unhappy expression as he struggled aboard in the soldier's

grasp. Garric shared his mind with the spirit of King Carus, his ancient

ancestor and the last ruler of the Old Kingdom. Now the image of Carus grinned

and said, "If I know the type, he looks unhappy most of the time he's awake.

Being manhandled over the railing just gives him a better reason than usual."

Martous straightened his clothing with quick pats of his hands while he waited

for the remainder of the delegation to climb onto the deck, aides or servants

from their simpler dress. One of them carried a bundle wrapped in red velvet.

The delegates wore baggy woolen trousers and blouses, felt caps, and slippers

whose toes turned up in points. Martous and Protas had long triangular gares

of cloth-of-gold appliqued vertically on their sleeves and trouser legs; those

of the other men were plain. The wool was bleached white, but it was clear

that First Atara's society didn't set great store on flamboyant personal

decoration.

Garric preferred simplicity to the styles of the great cities of the kingdom,

Valles and Erdin on Sandrakkan or even Carcosa which now was merely the

capital of the unimportant island of Haft. It'd been the royal capital during

the Old Kingdom, and it remained a pretentious place despite its glory being a

thousand years in the past.

Garric grinned at Lord Martous: a balding little fellow, a homely man from a

rustic place who was incensed that he and the boy on whom his status depended

weren't being treated with greater deference. That implied that

pretentiousness was one of the strongest human impulses.

"Come along, Basto, come along," called Lord Martous to the aide struggling

with the bundle. Then on a rising note, "No, don't you-"

The latter comment was to Lord Attaper, the commander of the Blood Eagles and

a man to whom Garric's safety was more important than it was to Garric

himself. Attaper, a stocky, powerful man in his forties, ignored the protest

just as he ignored all other attempts to tell him how to do his job. He

plucked the package from the aide's hands and unwrapped it while the aide came

aboard and Martous spluttered in frustration.

"I'm sorry you had to scramble up like a monkey, Prince Protas," Garric said,

smiling at the boy to put him at his ease. Protas was obviously nervous and

uncertain, afraid to say or do the wrong thing in what he knew were important

circumstances. "I'd expected to meet you-and your father, of course-on land in

a few hours."

"King Cervoran is dead, sir," Protas said with careful formality. He forced

himself to look straight at Garric as he spoke, but then he swallowed hard.

"Yes, yes, that's why we had to come out to meet you," Martous said, pursing

his lips as though he were sucking on something sour. "His highness died most

unexpectedly as he was going in to dinner last evening. Quite distressing,

quite. He fell right down in his tracks. I was afraid the stewards had dropped

something on the floor and he'd slipped, but he just-died."

"I probably could give you advice on housekeeping in a large establishment,"

Garric said, smiling instead of snarling at the courtier's inability to come

to the point, "but I really doubt that's why you've met us here at the cost of

discomfort and a degree of danger. Is it, milord?"

Martous looked surprised. "Oh," he said. "Well, of course not. But I

thought-that is, the council did-that since you were arriving just in time,

you could preside over the apotheosis ceremony for King Cervoran and add,

well, luster to the affair. And of course we needed to explain that to you

before you come ashore because the ceremony will have to be carried out first

thing tomorrow morning. The cremation can't, you see, be delayed very long in

this weather."

"Apotheosis?" said Liane. She didn't ordinarily interject herself openly into

matters of state, but Lord Martous was obviously a palace flunky, and not from

a very big palace if it came to that. "You believe your late ruler becomes a

God?"

"Well, I don't, of course I don't," said Martous in embarrassment. "But the

common people, you know; and they like a spectacle. And, well, it's

traditional here on First Atara. And it can't hurt, after all."

"This doesn't appear to be a weapon, milord," said Attaper dryly. "Shall I

return it to your servant, or would you like to take it yourself?"

The velvet wrappings covered a foiled wooden box decorated with cutwork

astrological symbols. Inside was a diadem set with a topaz the size of

Garric's clenched fist. The stone wasn't particularly clear or brilliant, even

for a topaz, but Garric didn't recall ever seeing a larger gem.

Protas, forgotten during the adults' by-play, said in a clear voice, "We

brought it to your master the prince, my man. He will decide where to bestow

it."

Garric nodded politely to the young prince. "Your pardon, milord," he said in

real apology. "We've had a long voyage and it appears to have made us less

courteous than we ought to be."

He took the diadem. The gold circlet was thicker and broader at the back to

help balance the weight of the huge stone, but even so it had a tendency to

slip forward in his fingers.

Cashel had led Sharina and Tenoctris to the stern, butt now he stepped aside

and let the women join the group of officials. When he caught Garric's glance

over Tenoctris' head, he smiled broadly. Cashel stayed close to Sharina, but

he wasn't interested in what the locals had come to discuss and didn't pretend

otherwise.

Cashel wasn't interested in power. He was an extraordinarily strong man, and

he had other abilities besides. If he wasn't exactly a wizard himself, then

he'd more than once faced hostile wizards and crushed them. That alone

would've gained him considerable authority if he'd wanted it. Add to that his

being Prince Garric's friend from childhood and Princess Sharina's fiancé, and

a great part of the kingdom was Cashel's for the asking.

But he didn't ask. Cashel wouldn't have known what to do with a kingdom if

he'd had it, and anyway it wasn't something he wanted. Which of course was

much of the reason he was Garric's closest friend: Garric didn't want power

either.

"That may be," said Carus. "But the kingdom wants you; needs you anyway, which

is better. Otherwise the best the citizens could hope for is a hard-handed

warrior who knows nothing but smashing trouble down with his sword until

trouble smashes him in turn. Somebody like me-and we know the bad result that

leads to."

The ghost in Garric's mind was smiling, but there was no doubt of the solid

truth under its lilt of self-mockery. Garric grinned in response; the

delegates saw the expression and misread it.

Lord Martous stiffened and said, "The crown may seem a poor thing to you,

milord, a mere topaz. But it's an ancient stone, very ancient, and it suits us

on First Atara. We were hoping that you would invest Prince Protas with it

following the ceremony deifying his father."

Garric glanced at the boy and found him chatting with Cashel. That probably

made both of them more comfortable than they'd be in the discussion Garric and

Martous were having.

Both the thought and the fact behind it pleased Garric, but he politely wiped

all traces of misunderstood good humor from his face before he said, "I'll

confer with my advisors before I give you a final decision, milord,

particularly Lords Tadai and Waldron, my civil affairs and military

commanders. That won't happen until we're on land."

"But you're the prince-" the envoy protested.

"That's correct," said Garric, aware of Carus' ghost chuckling at the way he

handled this bit of niggling foolishness. "I'm the prince and make the final

decisions under the authority granted by my father King Valence III."

Valence was so sunk within himself in his apartments in a back corner of the

palace that servants chose his meals for him. He wasn't exceptionally old, but

life and a series of bad choices had made a sad ruin of a mind which on its

best day hadn't been very impressive.

"But I have a staff to keep track of matters on which I lack personal

knowledge," Garric continued. "The political and cultural circumstances of

First Atara are in that category, I'm afraid. I have no intention of slighting

you and your citizens by acting in needless ignorance. We weren't expecting

King Cervoran's death, and it'll take the kingdom a moment to decide how to

respond."

"Well, I see that," said Martous, "but-"

"I'd have tossed him over the railing by now, lad," Carus said. "By the Lady!

it's a good thing for the kingdom that you're ruling instead of me."

Garric looked into the big topaz. There were cloudy blotches in its yellow

depths. The stone had been shaped and polished instead of being faceted, and

even then it wasn't regular: it was roughly egg shaped, but the small end was

too blunt.

It was a huge gem, though; and there was something more which Garric couldn't

quite grasp. The shadows in its heart seemed to move, though perhaps that was

an illusion caused by the quinquereme's sideways wobble. Only a few oars on

the uppermost bank were working, so the ship didn't have enough way on to make

its long hull fully stable.

Liane touched his wrist. Garric blinked awake; the eyes of those nearby

watched him with concern. He must've been in a reverie....

"I'm very sorry," he said aloud. "It was a long voyage, as I said. Lord

Martous, while I won't swear what my decision will be until I've consulted my

council, I can tell you that I intended to grant the rank of marquess within

the Kingdom of the Isles to the ruler of First Atara-whom of course we

believed to be Lord Cervoran."

"King Cervoran," Martous protested quickly.

"King is a title reserved for Valence III and his successors as rulers of the

Isles, milord," Garric said. He didn't raise his voice much, but his tone made

his meaning clear. "That is not a matter King Valence or I will compromise

on."

"Well, of course you can do as you please, since you have the power," Martous

said unhappily to the deck plank which his gilt slipper was rubbing. In a tiny

voice he added, "But it isn't fair."

Garric opened his mouth to snap out a retort. The grim-faced ghost in his mind

would've backhanded the courtier for his presumption or possibly done

something more brutally final. Perhaps it was that awareness that allowed

Garric to catch himself and laugh instead of snarling.

"Lord Martous," he said mildly. "The kingdom is under threat from the forces

of evil. The people, all those who live on all the scores of islands large and

small within the circuit of the kingdom, are threatened. We and those whom we

rule won't survive if we aren't united against that evil. I hope that in a few

years or even sooner you'll be able to see that First Atara is better off as a

full part of the kingdom than it would've been had it remained independent;

but regardless of that-"

Garric made a broad gesture with his right arm, his sword arm; sweeping it

across the long line of warships to starboard. As many more vessels were

arrayed to port.

"-I'm very glad you understand that the kingdom has the power to enforce its

will. Because we do, and for the sake of the people of the Isles, we'd use

that power."

"We're not fools here," Martous said quietly, proving that he after all wasn't

a fool. "We cast ourselves on your mercy. But-"

His tone grew a trifle brighter, almost enthusiastic.

"-I do hope you'll see fit to crown Prince Protas in a public ceremony. That

will be quite the biggest thing that's happened here since the fall of the Old

Kingdom!"

Garric laughed, feeling the ghost in his mind laugh with him. "I trust we'll

be able to come to an accommodation, milord," he said, glancing toward the

prince and Cashel. "I'm sure we will!"

* * *

Cashel or-Kenset prickled all over like he'd gotten too much sun while

plowing. That could happen, even for a fellow like him who'd been outside

pretty much every day he could remember, but it wasn't what he was feeling

this afternoon.

This was wizardry. He'd known his share of that too, in the past couple years

since everything changed and he'd left Barca's Hamlet.

Cashel held his quarterstaff upright in his right hand; one ferrule rested on

the deck beside him. He crossed his left arm over his chest, letting his

fingertips caress the smooth hickory.

In his tenth year Cashel had felled a tree for a neighbor in the borough and

taken one long, straight branch as his price for the work. He'd cut the staff

from that branch and had carried it from that day to this.

A blacksmith travelling through Barca's Hamlet on his circuit had fitted the

first set of iron butt caps, but there'd been others over the years. The

staff, though, was the same: thick, hard, and polished like glass by the touch

of Cashel's calloused palms and the wads of raw wool he carried to dress the

wood. It'd been a good friend to Cashel; and with the staff in his hands,

Cashel had been a very good friend to weaker folk facing terrors.

Just about everybody was weaker than Cashel. He smiled a little wider.

Everybody he'd met so far, anyway.

The little boy who'd come aboard with the puffed up fellow and the servants

looked uncomfortable as he edged back from the adults talking politics.

Getting up on their hind legs, really. The fellow from First Atara was trying

to make himself big and Garric was pushing him back, showing him he wasn't

much at all. With luck the fellow'd stop making trouble before he wound up

with a headache or worse.

A shepherd didn't have a lot to learn about how people behaved in a palace. It

was all the same, sheep or courtiers.

Being uncomfortable while folks talked about things he didn't know about or

care about wasn't new to Cashel either, so he grinned at the boy in a friendly

way. It was like he'd tossed him a rope as he splashed in the sea: the boy

stepped straight over to Cashel and said, "Good day, milord. I'm Prince

Protas. Are you Lord Cashel? I thought you must be because you're, well...

you're very big. I've heard of you."

Protas spoke very carefully. He was trying to be formal, but every once in a

while his voice squeaked and made him blush. Cashel remembered that too.

"I'm Cashel," he said, letting the smile fade so Protas wouldn't mistake it as

mocking his trouble with his voice. "Not 'lord' though. And I've met bigger

folk than me; though not a lot of them, I'll grant."

Protas nodded solemnly. He looked away from Cashel, facing in the general

direction of First Atara. "My father King Cervoran died just yesterday," he

said. "Lord Martous tells me that I'm going to be king now in his place, or

whatever Prince Garric lets me be called."

"I'm sorry about your father, Protas," Cashel said, meaning it. Kenset, his

father and Ilna's, had gone away from Barca's Hamlet and come back with the

two children a year later. Kenset had never said where he'd been or who the

twins' mother was. He hadn't said much of anything by all accounts, and he

hadn't worked at anything except drinking himself to death. He'd managed that

one frosty night a few years later.

The children's grandmother had raised Cashel and Ilna while she lived. After

she died, leaving a pair of nine-year-olds, they'd raised themselves. Ilna

always had a mind for things, and Cashel as a boy had a man's strength. When

he got his growth, well, his strength grew too. They'd made out with Ilna's

weaving and Cashel doing whatever needed muscle and care. Mostly he'd tended

sheep.

"I didn't know my father very well," Protas said, continuing to look out to

sea. Cashel guessed the boy really didn't want to meet Cashel's eyes, which

meant either he was embarrassed or he figured Cashel'd be embarrassed by what

he had to say. "He was very busy with his studies. He was a great scholar, you

know."

"That's a fine thing to be," Cashel said. He meant it, but mostly he spoke to

help the boy get to whatever it was that he really wanted to say.

Cashel'd learned to spell his name out or even write it if somebody gave him

time and didn't complain that the letters looked shaky. He was proud of

knowing Garric and Sharina because they read and wrote as well as anybody even

though they'd come from Barca's Hamlet instead of a big city. Those weren't

skills Cashel felt the lack of himself, though.

"My father King Cervoran was a wizard, lor-l... Master Cashel," Protas said,

his voice squeaking three times in the short sentence. He glanced sideways,

then jerked his eyes away like Cashel had slapped him. He kept talking,

though. "You're a wizard too, aren't you? That is, I've heard you are?"

"I don't know where you'd have heard that...," Cashel said, speaking even more

slowly and carefully than he usually did. He cleared his throat, wishing there

was room so he could spin his quarterstaff. That always settled him when he

was feeling uncomfortable, which he surely was right now. "Anyway, I'd as soon

you just called me Cashel with no masters or lords or who knows what elses.

It's what I'm used to being called, you see."

"I'm sorry, m-mas... Cashel," the boy said. He sounded like he was ready to

start blubbering. "I didn't mean to say the wrong thing. I'm just so, so-oh,

Cashel, I just feel so alone!"

Cashel squatted down so that his face was a bit lower than the boy's instead

of staring down at him. He didn't look straight at Protas either, because that

might be enough to push the boy into tears.

"I'm not a wizard like most people think of wizard," Cashel said quietly. He

didn't guess anybody but Protas could hear him over the sigh of the light

easterly breeze; and if they could, well, he wasn't telling any more than the

truth. "I don't know anything about spells or the like. Only my mother...."

He paused again to figure just how to say the next part. Protas was looking at

him straight-on now. He seemed interested and no longer on the verge of

crying.

"I didn't know my mother till I met her just a little bit ago when we were on

Sandrakkan," Cashel went on. He gripped the upright staff with both hands,

taking strength from the smooth hickory. "She was a queen in her own land, and

she was a wizard. Not the way Tenoctris is by studying and memorizing old

books, but sort of born to it. Tenoctris says my mother is really powerful;

and I guess she must be, from the things I saw her do."

He cleared his throat again, then made himself look up and meet the boy's eyes

squarely. "I guess I picked up some of that from her," Cashel said. "I did and

Ilna did too, only not the same way. Ilna can do things with cloth, weave

anything and make a net that catches somebody's mind when they look at it. And

Ilna's smart, too, like our mother."

He grinned broadly. "Not like me," he added. "I'm about smart enough to watch

sheep, but that's all."

"King Cervoran wasn't a wizard in a bad way," Protas said. He was still facing

Cashel but his eyes were fuzzy; looking back into the past, most likely. "He

just used his art to learn things. That was the only thing that was important

to him, learning things."

Cashel nodded. "There's people like that," he said carefully. It struck him as

strange to hear Protas talking about his father so formally, but he wasn't the

one to judge. He didn't talk about Kenset much at all.

But then, maybe Cervoran hadn't had any more to do with Protas than Kenset had

with his children while they were growing up. The things Cervoran wanted to

learn about didn't seem to have included his own son.

"I thought...," Protas said, then looked away again. "I thought when I heard

about you that you were like my father. With your art, I mean. That you didn't

use wizardry to hurt people. That's so, isn't it?"

"Well, I try not to hurt good people," Cashel said. "I've met my share of the

other kind, though, and some of them got hurt. By me."

He understood what the boy was getting at now. Though he didn't want to be

unkind to Protas, he didn't intend to let him think Cashel was going to be

some kind of father to him.

He grinned broadly. "Look, Protas," he said, "being a, well, a wizard the way

I am isn't anything to be proud of. It's like Sharina having blond hair: it's

the way she was born and I was born. The way she reads things, though-that she

worked to do. Sharina's a scholar and Garric too; that's something they did

all by themselves. And I'll show you what I did and I am proud of."

Cashel looked both ways to make sure not only that there was room but also

that nobody was about to step where he was going in the next instant; then he

hopped to the railing. The ship heeled a trifle; Cashel was a solid weight,

and The Shepherd of the Isles was both slender and perfectly balanced.

Master Lobon, the sailing master, turned and snarled, "Hey, you moron!" When

he saw he'd shouted at Cashel, Lord Cashel the Prince's friend, he swallowed

the rest of what he was going to say with a look of horror. Lobon's opinion of

what Cashel was doing hadn't changed, but he wished he hadn't been quite so

open with it.

Cashel was facing seaward on the stern rail. He crossed one bare foot over the

other and turned so he could meet the eyes of everybody on the Shepherd's

deck, then started his staff spinning slowly in a sunwise pattern.

He grinned. The sailing master was right about the foolishness, but it was in

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEFORTRESSOFGLASSBookOneofTheCrownoftheIslesbyDavidDrakeThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisnovelareeitherfictitiousorareusedfictitiously.TheFortressofGlassCopyright2006byDavidDrakeAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbook,orportionsthereof,inanyform.Coverartby...

展开>> 收起<<

David Drake - Lord of the Isles 07 - The Fortress of Glass.pdf

共208页,预览42页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

David Drake - Lord of the Isles 07 - The Fortress of Glass

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: