Aftermath- - Thieves World 10 (26 page)

did I find anyone with better reason to hate the world than had I myself at nine years old! Make plain what you have done and not done!"

"I will try . , ." The voice grew fainter all the time. "But words must strain to compass these events. The spells required are half outside the normal universe ... I did succeed! No other wizard now alive could have accomplished what Enas Yorl achieved today, not even he at Ilsig whom they call most skilled, not he at Ranke who ato-serves the court.

"Jarveena: I gave Klikitagh his freedom."

There was a long stunned silence. When it had become more than she could bear, Jarveena husked, "But you said it would have killed him!"

"Which it did."

"What?"

"I speak in plain words, do I not? Despite the deformation I endure!" The tone was savage now, and sent new shivers down Jarveena's spine.

"Well, maybe your nature fights acceptance. Words plainer then than ever must be tried.

'7 gave him his release! He died! And even dead,-so dreadful is the power of that spell, he rose again and said—praise all the gods that no one

save myself could hear those awful words!—'Dead or not dead, I am condemned to walk the world. I may not eat a second time from the same table, nor may I sleep a second time from the same bed. It is decreed. By

me. It shall continue!'"

From his recital of the quoted words rang forth a hint, an echo, of the force that had endowed the curse on Klikitagh with its original power. It

was unbearable. Crying aloud, her brain assailed by hideous visions, Jarveena slumped fainting from her chair.

In the light of torches, both her cheeks gleamed wet.

She woke, once more at dawn, and found herself alone at Melilot's, as had often happened to her in the past. Not this time, however, was her frame pervaded by the truly magic skill of Enas Yorl's caresses. Only a dull sense of deprivation filled her mind as she kicked aside the covers and moved to use her chamber pot, then douse herself with the contents of the ewer on the nightstand. Then, unconcerned as ever about nakedness, she dragged the curtains back and threw the shutters wide to the new dayCold air combined with cold water to bring her back to full alertness. She reached for her clothes—and checked, catching sight of her reflection in the tall and expensive mirror that hung beside the window. There was no trace of any scar upon her body. Not the faintest, lacelike, weblike hint beneath the skin could be discerned. She was as perfect

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as though no wire-lashed whip had ever whistled through the air to break blood from her tender flesh.

Amazed, then astounded, she flicked back her forelock. Surely the cicatrix her forehead bore—?

Gone as well

"But I told him!" she said aloud. "I mean. I told Melilot, and he was listening! I said I wanted to keep that for when it came in useful . . ."

The words died away. She let her hands fall to her sides.

"Oh, you're in there, aren't you, Enas Yorl? You've sown a counterpart of yourself inside my brain! It's the same trick that taught me the names

of your basilisks! Maybe you have too much on your mind to hear me at the moment, but I'm damned well going to treat your projection the same as I would yourself! Now answer me! Why did you take my forehead scar away before I gave you leave?"

The reply came, not in speech, but in a sense of warm and private intercourse, reaching below the deepest level of her mind. If it resembled

anything at all, it might be likened to the impact of hot spiced wine on a

cold day.

"Not me," said the mental duplicate of Enas Yorl in words that were not words. "Not by my intention, anyway. Listen, Jarveena, and remember all your life!

"Not to recall what he had done was for Klikitagh a mercy. I state this on the basis of what I have found out. To live with recollection of such horror . . . ! You must concede this."

She nodded, participating in this nonexistent dialogue.

"However, it became exacerbation of his punishment. It made his sentence unendurable. Indeed it was a mercy worse than none. He knew it, and condemned himself regardless."

Again a nod, tinged this time with terror.

"Yet you took pity on him!"

"Yes, I did!"—defiantly. "And I still feel the same!"

"You were the first to do so in a thousand years." For an instant she stood rigid. Then:

"I can't have been!"

"He told me so when I interrogated him, invoking a power greater than any god's. Not once, till he met you, had anyone felt pity for his plight."

"Then I weep for our sick world!" Jarveena cried—and abruptly it was true. Tears that had so long been unfamiliar to her flowed as freely down

her face as they had last night.

"And well you may," the illusory Enas Yorl confirmed. There was a pause.

"For you have worked a miracle."

"I don't understand." Snuffling, fighting to regain control, Jarveena resumed the donning of her clothes.

"How are your scars today?"

"Why ask? You cleared them, didn't you? And took away the one I'd thought of keeping!"

"Not I, Jarveena, but yourself."

She froze in midmovement, bending to strap her boots.

"Go forth, as soon as you are dressed, into the street. Do not ask why; you will at once find out. I worked a greater magic than I knew. For the moment, then: goodbye. Don't try to call on me until I send for you. The names I give my basilisks are daily changed. Sometimes I cannot give them names pronounceable by human tongues-That's why I have not spoken words to you this morning . . ."

The contact faded in a garble of discomfort that left Jarveena imagining for several seconds that she had four stomachs and a mouthful of regurgitated hay.

The sensation passed. The laces of her jerkin still unfastened, she dashed down the slanting ladders that served this house for stairs and cuffed aside a sleepy apprentice who tried to stop her unbarring the main

door on the grounds that Master Melilot was still asleep. Beyond, in the wan gray light of dawn, she saw a form upon the cobblestones, face turned aside, one arm outflung, chest smeared with blood still red thanks

to the sharp cold: victim, presumably, of some chance robber's knife . . .

"Klikitagh!" she whispered, dropping on one knee beside the ... corpse?

It was indeed. No pulse was to be felt. A rime of frost had formed upon its hair, its beard, its hands , . .

Slowly she straightened, gazing down in wonder.

"So your journey ended here, in Sanctuary," she murmured. "Well, death was what you most desired. And . . ."

A thought occurred, as wonderful as it was terrifying.

"If I'm to believe what Enas Yorl asserts—and who but him should I believe in such a matter?—it follows that the worst crime in the history of

the world has been committed. It was yours, my Klikitagh. And yours alone."

It was going to snow any moment. The air was so cold, the lips she licked were numb. She half expected to taste ice.

"But even you have reached the last stage of your pilgrimage in search of expiation. What now becomes of you will be no matter. Let your shroud be snow. Let dogs and thieves assail your body—you won't care. 152 AFTERMATH

Perhaps you should have come to Sanctuary sooner. It cannot just have been because of meeting me that you were saved! I won't believe it!" So saying, she spun on her heel and marched back into the scriptorium. Much relieved, the apprentice slammed and barred the door behind her. White flakes swirled down outside as she went to seek a breakfast of

hot broth and dumplings.

By nightfall—for such had been the will of Enas Yorl—she cared no more for Klikitagh save in the sense that all misfortune must be pitied, and he had been least fortunate of all. He lingered in her memory as myth and symbol; meantime she had a life to lead herself.

"Mayhap," thought the wizard who sprawled across stone flags in guise but ill adapted to such human artifacts as chairs, "that snow enshrouding Klikitagh, by his own verdict foulest villain of all time. will

cover me in turn. Let it be soon!"

Whereafter he composed himself to patient meditation, tinged with regret that for the duration of their present encounter he and Jarveena would be unable to make love.

(BUT LOVE IS BLIND)

Lynn Abbey

Illyra awoke to the sound of an infant's crying and a sudden stiffening of the muscles in her neck and shoulders. She stayed that way, tense—

almost cringing—until she heard the wet nurse shove her blankets aside, then stumble across the night-dark room. The crying changed to contented sucking sounds; Illyra closed her eyes and shrank back into Dubro's arms. He hugged her reflexively but the infant had not interrupted his sleep. Why should it? Children were women's work and this child was not even his.

The S'danzo seeress matched her breathing to her husband's and waited for sleep to touch her again. She listened to the wet nurse tuck the

infant back into her cradle and return to her own bed where she swiftly resumed her gentle snoring. Dubro's strong arms were no longer comforting but had become an encircling trap from which she could not free herself—tangible symbols of the weight she had felt since summer when her half-brother, Walegrin, had appeared with the newbom girl-child in his arms.

It had never seemed like a good idea. Three years ago Illyra had borne twins: a boy-child and a girl. Now they were both gone. The boy, Arton, had been taken from the mortal world. Caught up in the influence of the demigod, Gyskouras, he had sailed for the Bandaran Islands this past spring and if he returned at all, it would not be as her son, but as a wargod stranger. Worse, Lillis, her blue-eyed daughter had been hacked into pieces by ravening street gangs during the Plague Riots at about the

same time. Illyra had tried to protect her daughter with her own body—

with her own life—but fate had denied her sacrifice. There was a purple 154 AFTERMATH

scar running across her belly but it went not nearly so deep as the scars

mourning had left on her heart.

She had nurtured her grief and had wanted nothing to do with living or joy. She had hated that squirming bundle Walegnn had thrust into her arms. Had wanted to dash its head against the doorposts because it lived and Lillis did not. But it had wrapped its fragile fingers around hers and

stared into her eyes. And Illyra had Seen that this child would remain at

her side.

Strange how the S'danzo Sight worked. It rarely focused on the self, family, or loved ones but brought the abstract, the uncared-for, into clarity. Illyra did not love—would not allow herself to care for—this notdaughter they called Trevya and so the infant flashed constantly in her mind's eye where the Seeing visions grew.

Had not Trevya's legs been crippled in the prolonged birthing that had claimed her blood-mother's life? Had not Illyra Seen, superimposed over every other vision she commanded, a construct of baleen and leather guiding the infant's soft bones into a healthy alignment? Had not Dubro made such a brace, following her precise instructions, and was not that twisted little leg already growing straighter as the Sight had foretold?

Illyra had wrought a miracle for Trevya, who was not her daughter and whom she did not love. She had given Trevya freedom and built an unyielding trap for herself. Hot tears squeezed out from her eyes and puddled in the crook of Dubro's arm. The young woman who had once been a mother prayed that they would not awaken him and waited the long hours until dawn when she would be released.

This not-daughter consumed more of Dubro and Illyra's time and money than their own children had, for they kept Trevya with them in the Bazaar rather than send her behind the fortress walls of the Aphrodisia House where working merchants often kept their precious children. So they had had to hire a wet nurse, a woman—scarcely more than a child herself—whose baby had been stillborn and who had come to live with them alongside Dubro's forge. But there wasn't enough room for them, Trevya and the waiflike Suyan, so they'd hired workmen to make their home larger. And, of course, Suyan must have food, and clothes, and medicine when she grew sick.

Fortunately there was plenty of work to be had in Sanctuary these days. The new city walls were being made from cut and dressed stone; there were picks and mauls in need of constant repair and replacement. Dubro had both a journeyman and an apprentice working beside him at the forge these days, and he talked of building a larger furnace beyond the rising walls. Verily, a fortune could be made these days in Sanctuary,

but the pump needed priming and it seemed to Illyra that their coin hoard shrank rather than increased.

She was half S'danzo, fully gifted with their preternatural clairvoyance but bereft of their tolerance for haphazard poverty. She was half Rankan,

through her father's blood, and craved the material security that was the

heritage of that empire's middle class. And, of course, her S'danzo Sight

could offer no assurances to her Rankan anxieties. Even without Trevya, Illyra would have lost many a night's sleep this season. As it was, she balanced on the edge between dreaming and waking, and her thoughts spiraled far beyond her control. Trevya's face drifted toward her, like a leaf on the wind or driftwood with the tide. Illyra called her mind's eye back, but it did not come and the face grew into a full Seeing of a child running through a neat flower garden, arms outstretched, silently laughing and singing a single word over and over again.

Illyra cried out, breaking the thrall of the Seeing but not disturbing her

husband who, in truth, was accustomed to her cries in the night. The seeress, still bound in Dubro's protection, stared into the night determined now to remain fully awake. The vision would not be denied and inserted itself mto her thoughts, demanding interpretation. That was easy enough. If Trevya ran, then her legs grew straight and strong. If she ran through a garden, then she became a child in a place where beauty was an affordable luxury. If she sang as she ran, then she was happy. If that word was Mother . . .