The Exotic Enchanter (7 page)

"Tell us who you are, completely and truthfully," Chankoor demanded.

"Tell him, Harold," Chalmers said out of the corner of his mouth, eyes never leaving Din's face.

"Harr-ld?" Chankooor scowled at Shea. "What manner of name is that?"

Shea tried to remember what the Hindus might have called Europeans, before the Portuguese opened up trade with their ports. "We are, uh, Frankish, uh . . . thieves! Yes, Frankish thieves, come to study the techniques of your so-excellent band, whose fame has reached even to . . ."

"The truth!" The knife twisted again, and Chalmers gasped.

Shea wondered on which part of his concoction the man had caught him out. "Oh, all right! We heard there were rich pickings here, and that no one could stop robbers in this city, so we came to . . . well . . ."

"Cut a slice of the haunch for yourself?" Chankoor grunted. "Foolish barbarian! Know that our captain will tolerate no band but his own in this city! However, if your gods bless you, perhaps he will allow you to join us. Come, then, and we will take you to him. Turn and go!"

The knife withdrew, and a hard hand turned Chalmers toward the mouth of the alley. His shoulders slumped with relief even as he stepped away, then stepped faster as the knife-point pricked the back of his neck and the hard hand tugged him along.

Another hand caught Shea's arm in a grip like a blood-pressure cuff and hauled him after Chalmers. He went, wondering why the thieves hadn't taken his sword. Could it be the design was so alien to them that they didn't recognize it for what it was? No, surely not! They must have been confident of being able to kill him before he could stab any of them. Talk about arrogance!

He fell in beside Chalmers, reflecting that, although the local dialect of Hindustani might be his native language now, and that he probably wouldn't even be able to remember a word of English, he should still be able to speak a language that had always been foreign to him.
"Qu'est-que nous faisons maintenant, Monsieur le Docteur?"
What do we do now, Doc?

"Nous irons encontre ce capitaine de voleurs,"
Chalmers replied.
"J'ai devient curieux."
We go meet this captain of thieves; I have become curious.

There were times when Shea could cheerfully have done without the inborn curiosity of the inquiring mind.

"Speak not in your bleating tongue!" Chankoor snarled right behind Shea, and a knife pricked the back of his neck. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, and followed the other two thieves out of the alley and into the night—where he virtually froze, staring about him in shock. The street swarmed with thieves, who didn't seem to be at all concerned about somebody's seeing them. A buzz of conversation filled his ears, and the moonlit gyrations of the thieves confused and dazzled him. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. Had all this been going on before, and he just hadn't noticed it? Some of them must have just been starting the evening's work—apparently, he had fallen into the hands of the early birds that were out to get the golden worm—because they were still rubbing oil on their bodies between swigs from bottles that Shea was sure contained something more potent than fruit juice. Some had progressed beyond that point, rubbing lamp-black around their eyes and eyesockets, no doubt to make them less visible—between more swigs from bottles, of course.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shea saw a robed man hurrying along the street, apparently oblivious to the thieves, but apprehensive about them. A couple of footpads fell upon him and bore him down; a knife flashed, and the victim cried out, a cry that ended in a horrid gurgle. The footpads stood up holding a fat purse.

"Why didn't we see them before?" Shea asked Chalmers—and the knife was suddenly at his throat again. "You are not the thieves you claim to be," their captor growled, "or you would know the answer to that!"

"We do not practice the same skills as you do, in our benighted lands," Chalmers said quickly. "Indeed, we have come here to learn them! Pray tell us how we did not . . ."

He broke off, staring. So did Shea, for their captors had let go of their arms, and the street was suddenly empty again, except for the dead body—three dead bodies, now that he saw the view without the swarm of thieves. He could still hear them, but their voices seemed muted, distant.

Then, suddenly, a thief was there, crouching as he rubbed oil over his shoulders. He recited an incantation, and Shea and Chalmers stared, fascinated, recognizing only a few words here and there; obviously, the man was speaking in an old language, probably Sanskrit; Shea was mildly surprised that he didn't hear it as Latin.

Then the man disappeared.

Hard hands fell on their shoulders again, and the noise of the crowd was back in full force—and so was the gang, many of whom were now watching Shea and Chalmers, laughing with glee at their looks of surprise. "Do you understand now?" their captor asked from behind.

"Yes, I think so," Chalmers said slowly. "You have incantations to make yourselves invisible, but the effect does not last long."

"Yes, even as we have incantations to enable us to see in the darkness. Do you not have such?"

"No," Shea said, "but we'd love to learn them." He pointed at a group of men who seemed to be practicing some sort of martial art, except that Shea could very clearly make out some movements that seemed to be those of cutting purse strings. "What are they doing?"

Chankoor seemed to puff himself up, grinning with self-importance. "They practice the lessons of the god with the golden spear."

"What god is that?" Chalmers asked.

Chankoor stared in surprise. "You are thieves, and do not know?"

"Thieves from lands far to the west, remember," Shea said quickly, "
very
far to the west."

Chankoor muttered something about ignorant barbarians, but explained, "He is Kartikeya, the god of thieves, who revealed to the master Yugacharya the Chauriya Vidya, the
Thieves' Manual
. Any who wish to succeed in theft must know its precepts by heart. Regard those men, now . . ." He pointed at two men who labored at the base of a wall. ". . . and those, those, and those!" He pointed out three other groups who were also at work on the walls of three other shops. "They carry out the four modes of breaching a house."

Shea peered through the darkness, and saw that the first pair were picking bricks out piece by piece. Shoddy material, no doubt—and Chankoor confirmed it. "Burnt bricks," he explained, but didn't say who had burned them. Another pair were at work with a cold chisel, cutting through. "Those bricks are unbaked, and old," Chankoor explained. "The monsoon winds softened them quite nicely—but exposure to sun or salt will do as well."

The third pair needed no explanation—they were splashing a mud wall with bucketfuls of water. Shea shuddered, feeling that he had never fully appreciated modern construction methods before. He also didn't need much explanation for the fourth pair—all he needed to see was the huge augur with which they were boring into the wall of a wooden house. "They're going to have to drill a lot of holes before they can make one big enough to crawl through."

"Not so many as you would think," Chankoor said offhandedly. "They have saws with slender blades with which they can join the holes. See with what artistry they practice their craft! These sons of Skanda make breaches in the shape of lotus blossoms, of the sun, the new moon, the lake, and the water jar!"

"They do seem to be enjoying their work," Chalmers said diplomatically. "I find it hard to believe that a group of such, ah, 'rugged individualists' would be willing to take orders from anyone."

"Ah, but you have not seen the captain yet!" Chankoor said with a grin. "Come, let us find him!"

Moonlight or not, they were caught in a maze of single-story mud-brick houses that was a tribute to a lack of city planning. Shea found himself growing dizzy with the turns and twists. He did notice that they seemed to avoid the big stone buildings carefully. As they went, other bands of three and four came out of side streets to join them, clanking bags on their backs, laughing and joking over their good luck. It made Shea's flesh crawl, especially since he was soon surrounded by them. Looking up, he happened to notice the disguised rajah only a few feet away; he had apparently been taken up by one of the other squadrons, just as Shea and Chalmers had. Shea nudged Chalmers and nodded at the rajah, ever so slightly; Chalmers looked, and his eyes widened. He exchanged a quick worried glance with Shea before they both turned back to the front, marching onward in the midst of a mob of muggers, feeling as though they walked under the Sword of Damocles.

Then they turned a corner and almost ran into the city wall. Shea jolted to a stop out of sheer surprise, but a knife-point in his back, and a snarl, motivated him to go forward again. "How are we going to get over it?" he whispered to one of his captors, but the man hissed back, "All shall become evident to the enterprising. Forward!"

Shea gulped and marched, Chalmers beside him. He could have sworn they were going to march right into the wall, and Shea found himself wondering if Chankoor were planning to have them grind their faces into it. "Doc, do you think they'll consider stopping?"

"The question has occurred to me, too," Chalmers admitted. "Perhaps they believe themselves to be invisible."

Shea remembered the incantation for invisibility. "But the guards won't open the gates for invisible men!"

"I do not think it will be the guards who open them," Chalmers returned. "After all, invisible men can still strike blows."

Shea remembered the Wells novel, and shuddered; after the random, senseless slayings he'd seen for no more than a few pieces of minted metal, he didn't doubt that the robbers would not hesitate to kill their way out every night. "Maybe they're just going to loiter around until the gates open at daybreak," he said hopefully. "They can mutter the spell over and over, after all." But the look of skepticism Chalmers gave him was all the comment the notion deserved.

Chankoor fooled them both. He simply walked up to the gate and knocked in what sounded like Morse code—three quick knocks, then two slow. For a moment, everything seemed frozen; Shea even held his breath. Then, slowly, the gate opened. "Magic?" he whispered.

"No," Chalmers said with disgust. "Bribed porters."

Shea stared, then felt a surge of self-anger at his own gullibility. He risked a glance about—and stared. He found himself gazing at the man with the horsehair over his nose! He couldn't see the horsehair in this dim light, of course—it was only a stray moonbeam that had showed it to him in the first place—but he certainly recognized the face. It was Rajah Randhir, and his eyes flared with anger at this betrayal by his own gate guards.

Din pricked Chalmers' neck again; he flinched and said, "I think we had better undertake our own transportation, before these fellows lose patience and leave us by the wayside."

"With our throats slit," Shea muttered. He started walking beside Chalmers, following the stocky moonlighted figure before them.

Out they went, in the midst of a host of thieves and killers. They only walked for about ten minutes before they came to a knot of men milling about in the roadway, talking and laughing, with more joining them from footpaths beside the way every minute. Shea stared. Could the thieves really be so bold, and so busy, that they had worn their own paths? If they were, how could there be anything left in the city worth stealing?

They certainly weren't worried about the sentries at the gate hearing them. The voices were loud, the laughter louder, and here and there a snatch of song. Their guides led them to the center of the mob, which parted to let them through at a muttered, urgent demand from their captors. Looking about for any possible escape routes, Shea happened to catch the rajah's eye. Randhir gave a start of recognition, then gave him a furious glare that as much as promised instant death if Shea dared breathe a word about his not being a genuine thief—but Shea knew how he felt; he wasn't at his most relaxed, himself, surrounded by a pack of outlaws who would probably slip a knife between his ribs as easily as they would hiss him to silence. He tried to look reassuring before the thieves behind him hustled him along.

The crowd stopped parting at a man who was taller than the rest, and strikingly handsome, if you liked lots of beard and moustache. He had muscles, anyway, and his style of dress certainly let it show. After all, a loincloth and turban don't hide all that much.

"Captain Charya," said Chankoor, "we have here two strangers who stumbled upon us as we were leaving the shop of the goldsmith."

He didn't have to be so literal, Shea thought.

"Strangers indeed!" Charya said in a deep, amused voice. "I have never seen stranger!"

"Stranger strangers?" Shea murmured, but Chalmers kicked him in the shin, and he pinched his lips shut.

"They claim to be thieves from a foreign land," Chankoor explained.

"Are you truly?" Charya the captain eyed them keenly, as though he could spot a lie by sight—and maybe he could, if he was good enough at reading posture and attitude. "A high-toper, or a lully-prigger?"

"Uh-h-h-h . . ." The terms caught Shea flat-footed.
When in doubt, stall
, he thought, and improvised. "Just another cove in the lorst, Captain."

"Ah! A
petty
thief!" Charya nodded, satisfied. "How if I told you to mind old Oliver?"

He might have been speaking Hindi, but the spell that gave Shea the ability to understand it, was doing a great job of translating it into English idioms. "Why, I'd keep an eye on the moon, to make sure I was done stealing and gone before it rose—but your coves don't seem to worry about that."

"Why should we care?" Charya's grin gleamed in the moonlight. "There's not a soldier in the city is not afraid of us—any, even the rajah himself!"

At the moment, Shea thought, that just might have been true. "If you have the town sewed up that tight, more power to you." After all, that was just a statement of fact. "But look sharp, Captain, or the lamb-skin man will have the pull of us, and as sure as eggs are eggs, we shall be scragged as soon as lagged."