Thieves World1 (9 page)

The burdened priests heard the smack as the ropes lifted from the mud, but were tripped before they could react. Marilla and the torches fell towards Dubro, the priests towards Illyra. In the dark commotion, Illyra got safely to a nearby pile of building stones, but without being able to see if Dubro had accomplished the exchange.

'What's wrong?' Torchholder demanded, hurrying back with his torch to light the scene.

'The damned workmen left the hauling ropes strewn about,' a mud-splattered priest exclaimed as he scrambled out of the knee-deep mud-hole.

'And the girl?' Molin continued.

'Thrown over there, from the look of it.'

Lifting his robes in one hand, Molin Torchholder led the acolytes and priests to the indicated mud-pit. Illyra heard sounds she prayed were Dubro making his own way to the safe shadows.

'A hand here.'

'Damned Ilsig mud. She weighs ten times as much now.'

'Easy. A little more mud, a little sooner won't affect the temple, but it's an ill thought to rouse the Others.' Torchholder's calm voice quieted the others. The torches were re-lit. From her hideout, Illyra could see a mud-covered shroud on the bier. Dubro had succeeded somehow: she did not allow herself to think anything else.

The procession continued on towards the canopy. The rain had stopped completely. A sliver of moonlight showed through the dispersing clouds. Torchholder loudly hailed the break in the clouds as an omen of the forgiving, sanctifying, presence of Vashanka and began the ritual. In due time the acolytes emptied braziers of oil on to the shroud, setting it and the corpse on fire. They lowered the naming bier into the pit. The acolytes threw symbolic armloads of stone after it. Then they cut the ropes that held the cornerstone in its place at the edge. It slid from sight with a loud, sucking sound. Almost at once, Torchholder and the other two priests left the platform to head back towards the palace, leaving only the acolytes to perform a night-long vigil over the new grave. When the priests were out of sight Illyra scrambled back to the mud-holes and whispered Dubro's name.

'Here,' he hissed back.

She needed only one glance at his moon-shadowed face to know something had gone wrong.

'What happened?' she asked quickly, unmindful of the sound of her voice.

'Marilla? Did they bury Marilla?'

There were tears in Dubro's eyes as he shook his head. 'Look at her!' he said, his voice barely under control.

A mud-covered shroud lay some paces away. Dubro would neither face it nor venture near it. Illyra approached warily.

Dubro had left the face covered. Holding her breath, Illyra reached down to peel back the damp, dirty linen.

For a heartbeat, she saw Marilla's sleeping face. Then it became her own. After a second of self-recognition, the face underwent a bewildering series of changes to portraits of people from her childhood and others whom she did not recognize. It froze for a moment in the shattered image of the Face of Chaos, then was still with pearly-white skin where there should have been eyes, nose, and mouth. Illyra's fingers stiffened. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lungs and throat were paralysed with fright. The linen fell from her unfeeling hands, but did not cover the hideous thing that lay before her. Get away! Get away from this place!

The primitive imperative rose in her mind and would not be appeased by anything less than headlong flight. She pushed Dubro aside. The acolytes heard her as she blundered through the mud, but she ignored them. There were buildings ahead solid stone buildings outlined in the moonlight. It was a manor house of an estate long since abandoned. Illyra recognized it from her dream, but her panic and terror had been sated in the headlong run from the faceless corpse. An interior door hung open on rusty hinges that creaked when she pushed the door. She was unsurprised to see an anvil sitting on a plain wooden box in the centre of a courtyard that her instincts told her was not entirely deserted.

'I'm only prolonging it now. The anvil, and the rest; they are there for me.'

She stepped into the courtyard. Nothing happened. The anvil was solid and far too heavy for her to lift.

'You've come to collect your reward?' a voice called.

'Lythande?' she whispered, waiting for the cadaverous magician to appear.

'Lythande is elsewhere.'

A hooded man stepped into the moonlight.

'What has happened? Where is Marilla? Her family?'

The man gestured to his right. Illyra followed his movement and saw the tumbledown headstones of an old graveyard.

'But...?'

'The priests of Ils seek to provoke the new gods. They created the homunculus,

disguising it to appear as a young woman to an untrained observer. Had it been interred in the foundation of the new temple, it would have created a disruptive weakness. The anger of Savankala and Sabellia would reach across the desert. That is, of course, exactly what the priests of Ils wanted.

'We magicians - and even you gifted S'danzo - do not welcome the meddling feuds of gods and their priests. They tamper with the delicate balances of fate. Our work is more important than the appeasement of deities, so this time, as in the past, we have intervened.'

'But the temple? They should have buried a virgin, then?'

'A forged person would arouse the Rankan gods, but not an imperfect virgin. When the temple of Ils was erected, the old priests sought a royal soul to inter beneath the altar. They wanted the youngest, and most loved, of the royal princes. The queen was a sorceress of some skill herself. She disguised an old slave, and his bones still rest beneath the altar.'

'So the gods of Ilsig and Ranke are equal?'

The hooded man laughed. 'We have seen to it that all gods within Sanctuary are equally handicapped, my child.'

'And what of me? Lythande warned me not to fail.'

'Did I not just say that our purpose - and therefore your purpose - was accomplished? You did not fail, and we repay, as Marilla promised, with a black steel anvil. It is yours.'

He laid a hand on the anvil and disappeared in a wisp of smoke.

'Lyra, are you all right? I heard you speaking with someone. I buried that girl before I came looking for you.'

'Here is the anvil.'

'I do not want such an ill-gotten thing.' Dubro took her arm and tried to lead her out of the courtyard.

'I have paid too much already!' she shouted at him, wresting away from his grasp. 'Take it back to the bazaar - then we will forget all this ever happened. Never speak of it to anyone. But don't leave the anvil here, or it's all worth nothing!'

'I can never forget your face on that dead girl... thing.'

Illyra remained silently staring at the still-muddy ground. Dubro went to the anvil and brushed the water and dirt from its surface.

'Someone has carved a symbol in it. It reminds me of one of your cards. Tell me what it means before I take it back to the bazaar with us.'

She stood by his side. A smiling Face of Chaos had been freshly etched into the worn surface of the metal.

'It is an old S'danzo sign of good luck.'

Dubro did not seem to hear the note of bitterness and deceit in her voice. His faith in Illyra had been tried but not shattered. The anvil was heavy, an ungainly bundle in his arms. | 'Well, it won't get home by itself, will it?'

He stared at her as she started walking.

She touched the pedestal and thought briefly of the questions still whirling in her head. Dubro called again from outside the courtyard. The entire length of Sanctuary lay between them and the bazaar, and it was not yet midnight. Without glancing back, she followed him out of the courtyard.

by Poul Anderson

Again penniless, houseless, and ladyless, Cappen Varra made a brave sight just the same as he wove his way amidst the bazaar throng. After all, until today he had for some weeks been in, if not quite of, the household of Molin Torchholder, as much as he could contrive. Besides the dear presence of ancilla Danlis, he had received generous reward from the priest-engineer whenever he sang a song or composed a poem. That situation had changed with suddenness and terror, but he still wore a bright green tunic, scarlet cloak, canary hose, soft half-boots trimmed in stiver, and plumed beret. Though naturally heartsick at what had happened, full of dread for his darling, he saw no reason to sell the garb yet. He could raise enough money in various ways to live on while he searched for her. If need be, as often before, he could pawn the harp that a goldsmith was presently redecorating.

If his quest had not succeeded by the time he was reduced to rags, then he would have to suppose Danlis and the Lady Rosanda were forever lost. But he had never been one to grieve over future sorrows.

Beneath a westering sun, the bazaar surged and clamoured. Merchants, artisans, porters, servants, slaves, wives, nomads, courtesans, entertainers, beggars, thieves, gamblers, magicians, acolytes, soldiers, and who knew what else mingled, chattered, chaffered, quarrelled, plotted, sang, played games, drank, ate, and who knew what else. Horsemen, camel-drivers, waggoners pushed through, raising waves of curses. Music tinkled and tweedled from wine-shops. Vendors proclaimed the wonders of their wares from booths, neighbours shouted at each other, and devotees chanted from flat rooftops. Smells thickened the air, of flesh, sweat, roast meat and nuts, aromatic drinks, leather, wool, dung, smoke, oils, cheap perfume.

Ordinarily, Cappen Varra enjoyed this shabby-colourful spectacle. Now he single mindedly hunted through it. He kept full awareness, of course, as everybody must in Sanctuary. When light fingers brushed him, he knew. But whereas aforetime he would have chuckled and told the pickpurse, 'I'm sorry, friend; I was hoping I might lift somewhat off you,' at this hour he clapped his sword in such forbidding wise that the fellow recoiled against a fat woman and made her drop a brass tray full of flowers. She screamed and started beating him over the head with it.

Cappen didn't stay to watch.

On the eastern edge of the market-place he found what he wanted. Once more Illyra was in the bad graces of her colleagues and had moved her trade to a stall available elsewhere. Black curtains framed it, against a mud-brick wall. Reek from a nearby tannery well-nigh drowned the incense she burned in a curious holder, and would surely overwhelm any of her herbs. She herself also lacked awesomeness, such as most seeresses, mages, conjurers, scryers, and the like affected. She was too young; she would have looked almost wistful in her flowing, gaudy S'danzo garments, had she not been so beautiful. Cappen gave her a bow in the manner of Caronne. 'Good-day, Illyra the lovely,'

he said.

She smiled from the cushion whereon she sat. 'Good-day to you, Cappen Varra.'

They had had a number of talks, usually in jest, and he had sung for her entertainment.. He had hankered to do more than that, but she seemed to keep all men at a certain distance, and a hulk of a blacksmith who evidently adored her saw to it that they respected her wish.

'Nobody in these parts has met you for a fair while,' she remarked. 'What fortune was great enough to make you forget old friends?'

'My fortune was mingled, inasmuch as it left me without time to come down here and behold you, my sweet,' he answered out of habit. Lightness departed from Illyra. In the olive countenance, under the chestnut mane, large eyes focused hard on her visitor. 'You find time when you need help in disaster,' she said.

He had not patronized her before, or indeed any fortune-teller of thaumaturge in Sanctuary. In Caronne, where he grew up, most folk had no use for magic. In his later wanderings he had encountered sufficient strangeness to temper his native scepticism. As shaken as he already was, he felt a chill go along his spine. 'Do you read my fate without even casting a spell?'

She smiled afresh, but bleakly. 'Oh, no. It's simple reason. Word did filter back to the Maze that you were residing in the Jewellers' Quarter and a frequent guest at the mansion of Molin Torchholder. When you appear on the heels of a new word - that last night his wife was reaved from him - plain to see is that you've been affected yourself.'

He nodded. 'Yes, and sore afflicted. I have lost -' He hesitated, unsure whether it would be quite wise to say 'my love' to this girl whose charms he had rather extravagantly praised.

'-your position and income,' Illyra snapped. 'The high priest cannot be in any mood for minstrelsy. I'd guess his wife favoured you most, anyhow. I need not guess you spent your earnings as fast as they fell to you, or faster, were behind in your rent, and were accordingly kicked out of your choice apartment as soon as rumour reached the landlord. You've returned to the Maze because you've no place else to go, and to me in hopes you can wheedle me into giving you a clue - for if you're instrumental in recovering the lady, you'll likewise recover your fortune, and more.'

'No, no, no,' he protested. 'You wrong me.'

'The high priest will appeal only to his Rankan gods,' Illyra said, her tone changing from exasperated to thoughtful. She stroked her chin. 'He, kinsman of the Emperor, here to direct the building of a temple which will overtop that of Us, can hardly beg aid from the old gods of Sanctuary, let alone from our wizards, witches, and seers. But you, who belong to no part of the empire, who drifted hither from a kingdom far in the West ... you may seek anywhere. The idea is your own; else he would furtively have slipped you some gold, and you have engaged a"diviner with more reputation than is mine.'

Cappen spread his hands. 'You reason eerily well, dear lass,' he conceded. 'Only about the motives are you mistaken. Oh, yes, I'd be glad to stand high in Molin's esteem, be richly rewarded, and so forth. Yet I feel for him; beneath that sternness of his, he's not a bad sort, and he bleeds. Still more do I feel for his lady, who was indeed kind to me and who's been snatched away to an unknown place. But before all else -' He grew quite earnest. 'The Lady Rosanda was not seized by herself. Her ancilla has also vanished, Danlis. And - Danlis is she whom I love, Illyra, she whom I meant to wed.'