A Dirge for Sabis

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Now, Losh," said Eloti, smoothing down her dress, "I pray you, draw a picture of me."

  The whole assembly drew its collective breath. Gynallea waved frantic signals to her husband, who ignored them. Sulun and his friends looked at each other in bewilderment. Eloti smiled prettily.

  "Go on, Losh. As I've said, things have no power—not until people give it to them."

  With shaky fingers, Losh sat down and did as he was bid.

  The minutes crawled. The audience crept closer, trying to peer over Losh's shoulder at the growing image. Those who could see any of it agreed that Eloti's passing judgment was right; Losh did indeed have great skill at drawing. There, that was surely the line of Lady Eloti's skirt, real as life; and there, yes that was the very angle of her wrist. Slowly the form took shape, and then the face, smiling confidently. The crowd murmured softly in appreciation. Losh drew on, sweat beading on his forehead and trickling down his neck.

  Oralro tapped his feet and jittered with impatience. Sulun and company sat quietly, sweating nearly as much as Losh. Gynallea shot puzzled glances at her husband. Wotheng alone was calm, smiling serenely, hands clasped on the table before him.

  At length Losh heaved a deep sigh, set down the pen, got up, and handed the drawing to Eloti. He put the board, pen, and inkpot back on Wotheng's table and trudged off to his seat on the benches without a word. Irga took his hand again, radiating sympathy.

  "Very good, Losh," said Eloti, studying the drawing. "Quite flattering, in fact. Now—" She turned to Wotheng. "Would you please ask Goodwife Nima to step forward."

  The crowd buzzed like troubled bees as Nima bustled to the center of the courtyard.

  Eloti calmly handed her the drawing. "Lord Wotheng," she said, "if, as certain parties have claimed, things have power in themselves which any person can use for ill purposes, then let Nima prove it. Let her turn her back on me, look only at the drawing, and curse me if she can."

  The audience gasped in concert.

  On the rightward bench, Folweel caught his breath in furious hope. Gods, if only he could signal to Oralro, if only the man would face him for a moment, they could use this chance to quietly cast their own curse. It would have to be something simple, done without tools or preparation—but then, a simple curse could more effectively be disguised as something Nima herself might do. Once the curse struck, everyone would think Nima had done it and that Oralro had been right. So perfect! But Oralro wasn't looking at him, couldn't be signalled. He'd have to do it himself, and wait for just the theatrically proper moment.

  On the leftward bench, Arizun had just come to the same conclusion. "Gods, this is madness!" he whispered. "We don't know how many wizards they have, or what power. . . . Nine hells, I'll have to help her alone." He closed his eyes and began silently chanting the meditative formulas while Ziya watched him, fascinated.

  None of this was lost on Eloti. She was aware of the prickling, nonphysical pressure behind her, with that characteristic tone/color of Arizun's mind. Clever of the boy to think of it so soon, and she could certainly use the protection if this ploy failed. She silently recited the formulas herself while carefully keeping that utterly confident smile on her face, keeping it turned toward Nima. Much depended now on that silly woman's character.

  Nima stared for a moment at the drawing, then glowered at Eloti. If mere target and malice were sufficient to cast an effective curse, everyone in the assembly could see that she would have done it then.

  Arizun softly chanted, Folweel held his breath and waited, Eloti smiled.

  Nima's assurance broke. "What nonsense is this?" she shouted, her voice noticeably shrill. "How should I put a curse on a skilled sorceress? Surely she knows means to prevent me, ward off the curse, turn it back on me, gods know what. It isn't fair, it isn't the same at all."

  The crowd rumbled disappointment, speculation, contempt.

  "Aughhh!" bellowed one of the former work gang. "A pigeon just splattered me! It must be the curse, deflected on the innocent. Ey, witchcraft!"

  "Oooeee!" One of Eloti's students took up the game, tumbling to the ground and kicking theatrically. "I've gas pains from the beer. She must have bewitched my belches downward! Magic! Magic!" In the middle of the performance he cut a loud fart. His neighbors flinched away, holding their noses. "Praise be to all the gods," the student improvised merrily. "I've been cured!"

  The audience roared with laughter. Wotheng tried quelling it with his bell, but was shaking too much with ill-held guffaws to ring properly. Oralro purpled again, stamped his feet, and stuck out his petulant lip. Folweel silently cursed the lost opportunity, and bitterly hoped for another.

  "It's not fair!" Nima shrilled in fury, her headdress slipping in disarray. "I'm no wizard! Let some real wizard do it!"

  She spun on her heel, turned to the nearest of the Yotha priests—which happened to be Oralro—and thrust the parchment into his hand.

  "You do it," she snapped. "You'd be a match for the likes of her."

  Oralro was startled for only a moment; then a broad smile spread across his face. He glanced warily at Eloti, then set to studying the parchment.

  The crowd roared, argued, railed, and stared.

  Folweel sat up straighter, struggling to keep his grin of victory from showing.

  Eloti kept smiling, but it wasn't easy. She concentrated on the formulas, driving her mind up the levels to the plane where magic could be released, feeling her wave front spread and link with Arizun's. She hadn't, she fleetingly admitted, expected this to come so soon.

  "Halt!" Wotheng roared, startling everyone. He lurched to his feet, swinging his handbell like a club, looking as ferocious as anyone had ever seen him. "I'll have no wizards' duel in my court! No, nor in my villa, either—nor anywhere on my lands. By the gods, my land's suffered too much from wizardry already."

  He glared around him, ignoring his wife's amazed look. The guards, with no signal given, snapped to attention. Everyone else stared in silence.

  Wotheng smiled grimly and rang his handbell three times. "Here's my judgment on this case," he thundered. "Since this matter cannot be proved nor decided save by methods of wizardry, let it so be proved. This case shall be decided in trial by combat."

  Everyone gasped at that. Folweel threw caution aside and waved frantically at Oralro. Nima turned around and around, looking dazed at the sudden change. Eloti's students cheered. Sulun's coterie looked at each other and all started talking at once.

  Wotheng clanged his bell once more for silence.

  "I hereby decree," he announced, "that at noon tomorrow this assemblage shall gather on the field outside the walls of Deese House, there to witness said combat. The wizards of Deese shall stand before their walls and the wizards of Yotha shall face them at not less than fifty paces. Upon given signal both shall duel with their respective skills until one or the other is defeated. Upon the victory of one or the other shall this matter be decided. So be it known and written." He clanged his bell three more times, and added, "This gathering is now adjourned."

  With that, he drew his robes around him and marched back toward the doors of Ashkell House, not glancing to either side.

  Gynallea gaped at his retreating back, then ran to gather up his assorted parchments and tablets and hurried after him. The two nearest guards looked at each other, shrugged, and went to pick up the table. Other guards hurried to carry in the other furniture.

  "M'lord, m'lord!" Oralro was howling. "What's to keep yonder wizards from stealing a march and bewitching us, to their advantage, before combat tomorrow?"

  "You have my picture, do you not?" Eloti snapped, nimbly hopping to her feet as a guard came to pick up her chair. "Keep it in surety, then. I'd advise you, nonetheless, not to try ill-wishing me beforetime."

  "Witness!" Zeren bellowed at the guards, snagging their attention. "If any harm—any harm—comes to the Lady Eloti before the combat tomorrow, you'll all know that the priests of Yotha are guilty beyond doubt!"

  Oralr
o snorted disgust, rolled up the parchment drawing, and shoved it firmly in his belt pouch. "No one shall so much as see this image beforetime," he announced, ignoring Folweel's flailing hands. "That I vow, by Yotha's flame."

  Arizun ran to Eloti and clutched her arm. "Will you be safe until then?" he whispered.

  "Once inside our walls, I will be," Eloti hissed back. "Let's get there with all haste."

  The milling crowd was roaring with delight and anticipation at the coming duel, splitting into factions within factions, and already the bet makers were offering conflicting odds. The brewer pulled out his better bottles, and did a lively business. Several students formed a protective honor guard around Eloti and her friends and helped push through the throng to the gates, the wagon, and escape.

  Sulun grabbed at Zeren's sleeve, utterly bewildered. "Why did he do it?" he asked, as if the brawny soldier would know. "Why did he throw us into this? I thought he was our friend."

  "He planned it so," Zeren growled, glancing back toward Ashkell House in mingled fury and admiration. "That wily old wolf—he planned for this all along."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "Come, Brother Oralro, give me the drawing," Folweel wheedled. "You know we have much to plan, and so little time, and I need to, er, study the witch."

  "I'll not," the burly Second Priest huffed. "Upon my honor and oath, I'll keep it safe and untouched until tomorrow noon."

  "'Twill be too late, then!"

  "Too late for what? Do you intend some breach of honor, sir? I swore to keep the picture in surety against any such same connivance toward Yotha House."

  "But there have been magical attempts already," Folweel tried. "The last just an hour ago."

  "Aye, and I felt that." Oralro sneered. "That was practice work by our own under-priests, and quite poorly they did it too. Really, Brother Folweel, after all these years of instructing our novices in basics of magecraft, did you think I wouldn't know the feel of the spirit of every mage in the house?"

  Folweel sighed in frustration. "Well, then you deal with them! Make them practice properly in strategy for tomorrow, for I've work enough to do with the tools."

  "That I'd planned to do, Brother, once I finished meditation." Oralro hesitated. "If you truly need to raise extra defenses against the witch tonight, why not simply use your memory of her as focus?"

  "That I could do in any case," Folweel fumed. "I was hoping for something more concrete."

  "Hm, well, it would not help you," Oralro admitted. "She's within Deese House, and the place is most thoroughly warded."

  "Ah?" Folweel perked up, wondering if Oralro truly had discovered the legendary—and never proved—technique of scrying. "And how would you know that, Brother Oralro?"

  "Umm . . ." The burly Second Priest looked actually embarrassed. "Because I've already tried to, er, chastise her. The attempt failed. There is effective counterspelling."

  "Oh." Folweel sighed. If Oralro couldn't get through Deese House's shields, he certainly couldn't. "So that drawing is useless to us."

  "Er, yes. And upon my honor and sworn word, I may yield it up to no man."

  Easy honor, that! Folweel fumed, stamping off to see to the distillery.

  * * *

  Cloaked and hooded to anonymity, Gynallea stepped through the doorway of Deese's temple—and stopped to stare at what was there revealed.

  The floor before her was carved with deep, narrow ditches in concentric rings, each labelled in strange letters or perhaps numbers. In their center the forge blazed, heated to eye-searing glare by a mammoth bellows. The bellows was powered by no human hand but a complex arrangement of gears, which ran from a thick leather belt, which was turned by a whirling axle set high in the wall. Above the blazing forge hung and swayed an enormous blackened bucket of unidentifiable stone, swaying like a pendant on its thick black chains, clearly just hauled up from the roaring furnace. Its controlling chains hung also from heavy gears upon an axle running across the ceiling, and the half-naked Deese wizards hauling thereon looked like toiling trolls in the flaring light. One of them—Omis?—shouted a command, and the priests ran to pull on other chains. The rest of the crowd jumped back beyond the third ditch ring, watching tensely and wiping sweat from their faces. The huge bucket swung forward, halting just above what appeared to be a block of clay with holes in the top and a complex clay funnel with many spouts leading to the holes. As Gynallea watched, fascinated, the wizard in charge shouted another order. The others pulled on the chains, and the spouted bucket tilted slowly toward the waiting funnel.

  Its contents glowed. Creamy white and shining like the sun at summer's noon, exhaling a blast of intolerable heat, the nameless fluid poured like milk from a pitcher. It spilled, gods' milk surely, into the clay funnel and down, down the series of spouts, into the waiting holes. The holes filled to the brim, gleaming yellow, then orange and now Gynallea could see that they contained cores of clay, originally white, now dark by comparison. The last of the gleaming gods' milk filled the holes and covered the tops of the cores, and Omis shouted again. The emptied bucket, its pulled chains rattling, swung upright and away from the furnace. The filled holes in the clay block shone like suns in the shadow of the forge's walls.

  "Ease off the fire," Omis commanded, pulling a lever by the wall. The gears of the bellows promptly disconnected, and the roar of air died away, leaving only the higher-toned wind sound of the flames. "Deese be praised: a good, clean pour!"

  The other wizards cheered.

  "Sorcery," Gynallea whispered. "No magic greater than this."

  At that point one of the wizards noticed her and came forward wiping sweat and soot off his brow. It was Sulun, she saw.

  "Lady Gynallea!" he marveled. "What on earth do you here? Won't it prejudice the case, you being the judge's wife come visiting us?"

  "Oh, pish," snorted Gynallea. "I came secretly, and no one saw me. Besides, I've noted that Yotha's priests place little regard on the doings of women . . . hmm, save when it serves them. Shall we go someplace cooler to talk? I swear, 'tis like the worst of summer in here."

  Sulun gladly led her into the side dining room. A common fire twinkled on the hearth, and the air seemed wonderfully cool. Sulun fetched cups and a jug of good ale from the sideboard. "What in all the hells was that sorcery you were performing out there?" Gynallea asked, accepting her cup. "I never saw the like."

  "Metal-casting," said Sulun, pouring for them both. "Omis had set up to melt iron down to pure liquid—which, I admit, I'd thought couldn't be done. He'd intended to cast a statue of Deese for the Ashkell House shrine, but then all this business came up, and now we have to cast quickly some tubes, for, hmm, firepowder and burning-mineral displays. We need them by noon tomorrow, of course. Everyone who isn't here is off making firepowder—save for Eloti and Arizun, who need their sleep, and Zeren, of course, who's busy guarding them. I swear, I don't know when I'll rest."

  "Hmm, firepowder workings," Gynallea considered. "No magic in that?"

  "No, m'lady: pure chemistry and mechanics. Wotheng did warn us to put on a good show." Sulun mopped his forehead again. "I don't know how much this will frighten Yotha's wizards, but it should distract their ill-wishing enough to let it fail."

  "Aye, good tactics. And take care that you not be distracted by their tricks. You can be sure, they'll use the Yotha fire; prepare for it."

  "That we've done. Also, we'll have the advantage of standing under our own walls, which are already well-wished. I suspect Wotheng thought of that when he set the conditions of the . . . wizards' duel."

  Gynallea studied her cup, fiddled with it, took a deep breath. "I must confess, friend Sulun, somewhat has been kept hidden from you."

  Sulun raised an eyebrow and scratched his beard. "I know that none of you warned us sufficiently when first we came here, about the sheer power and threat of Yotha's wizards."

  "Well, dear, we did want you to settle here and make us rich with your skills." Gynallea gave him something nearer her usual s
mile. "'Twouldn't do to scare away potential wealth-makers by saying much about local troubles, now would it?"

  Sulun laughed. "I'm happy you thought so highly of us, and I must confess I've never seen better patrons than we've found at Ashkell House."

  "'T'as been mutually rewarding." Gynallea's smile slipped away. "But we didn't warn you of the possible trouble with the neighbors, either."

  Sulun rolled his cup in his hands, though it wanted no warming. "Wotheng told me he needed to appear strong if he was to become noticeably rich. Without numbers for armies, he must need to look well protected by wizardry."

  "Ay, dear," Gynallea sighed. "That was another reason we tolerated Yotha for so long, besides the difficulty in ousting him."

  "I see."

  "Not entirely, friend Sulun, and neither do I." She set down her cup. "I confess, I don't know why he rushed both of you to this wizards' duel. Had he simply decided against Yotha on the evidence given, Yotha would have continued to dwindle away—oh, sniping here and there, perhaps, but doomed nonetheless. This way, he may rid himself quickly of Yotha, but he also risks losing you. He's kept his counsel tight upon that, even with me. Have you any idea why he'd take such chances?"

  "No . . ." Sulun pondered long. "All I can think is that he needs this settled fast, for some reason. Perhaps he fears Yotha's continued troublemaking, or he may have cause to worry strongly about his greedy neighbors. Perhaps he fears such continued squabbling would tempt them, make us appear weak and divided. He warned me to make our 'magic' look fearful enough to discourage such hopes. That's one thing that made us decide to cast and use those fire tubes. It's also why I made such a show of testing the bombard before all the workmen. By all means, let people carry tales outside the vale of our marvelous sorcerous powers. If it helps keep Wotheng—and us—safe, then I'll be happy to add to such."

  "Bombard?" Gynallea asked, an odd faraway look in her eyes.

  "That large fire tube mounted on the wall." Sulun took a long pull of his cup. "The one we used to, hah! plow the north field. The workmen took to calling it a 'storm tube,' and the name spread."