Storm Season tw-4

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  The Power, looking past Tempus with a squint, shrugged. "She was not certain, her will was not united with her heart. I have a chance, now, to remedy it... bring back restful dreaming in its place, and my domain with it. I will not let anything stop me. Be warned, my friend. You know what strengths I can bring to bear."

  "Release my people, if you want her, and we will think about how to satisfy you over breakfast. From the look of you, you could use something warm to drink. You do drink, don't you? With the form come the functions, surely even here."

  Askelon sighed feelingly; his shoulders slumped. "Yes, indeed, the entire package is mine to tend and lumber about in, some little while longer... until after the Mageguild's fete this evening, at the very least. ... I am surprised, not to mention pleased, that you display some disposition to compromise. It is for everyone's benefit. This is Jihan." He inclined his head toward his companion. "Greet our host." .

  "It is my pleasure to wish that things go exceedingly well with you," the woman said, and Niko saw Tempus shiver, a subtle thing that went over him from scalp to sandals-and almost bolted out to help, thinking some additional, debilitating spell was being cast. He was not fooled by those polite exchanges: bodies and timbres had been speaking more plainly of respectful opposition and cautious hostility. Distressed and overbalanced from long crouching without daring to lean or sit, he fell forward, catching himself too late to avoid making noise.

  Niko heard Tempus remonstrate, "Let him be, Askelon!" and felt a sudden ennui, his eyelids closing, a drift toward sleep he fought-then heard the dream lord reply: "I will take this one as my hostage, and leave Jihan with you, a fair trade. Then I will release these others, who remember nothing-for the interim. When I am done here, if you have behaved well, you may have them back permanently, free and unencumbered. We will see how good your faith can be said to be."

  Niko realized he could still hear, still see, still move.

  "Come here, Nikodemos," Tempus summoned him.

  He obeyed. His commander's mien implored Niko to take all this in his stride, as his voice sent him to see to breakfast for three. He was about to object that only by the accident of meditation had he been untouched by the spell-which sought out waking minds and could not find his in his restplace, and thus the cook and all the menials must be spellbound, still-when men began to stir and finish sentences begun before Askelon's arrival, and Tempus waved him imperatively on his way. He left on the double, ignoring the stares of those just coming out of limbo, whistling to cover the wheeze of his fear.

  3

  So it was that the Sacred Bander Nikodemos accompanied Askelon into Sanctuary on the young Stepson's two best horses, his ears ringing with what he had heard and his eyes aching from what he had seen and his heart clandestinely taking cautious beats in a constricted chest.

  Over breakfast, Askelon had remarked to Tempus that it must be hell for one of his temperament to languish under curse and god. "I've gotten used to it."

  "I could grant you mortality, so small a thing is still within my power." "I'll limp along as I am, thanks, Ash. If my curse denys me love, it gives me freedom."

  "It would be good for you to have an ally."

  "Not one who will unleash a killing mist merely to make an entrance," Tempus had rejoined, his fingers steepled before him. "Sorcery is yet beneath your contempt? You are hardly nonaligned in the conflict brewing."

  "I have my philosophy."

  "Oh? And what is that?"

  "A single axiom, these days, is sufficient to my needs."

  "Which is?"

  "Grab reality by the balls and squeeze.' "

  "We will see how well it serves you, when you stand without your god." "Are you still afraid of me, Ash? I have never given you cause, never vied with you for your place."

  "Whom do you think to impress, Riddler? The boy? Your potential, and dangerous proclivities, speak for themselves. I will grant no further concessions...."

  Riding with the dream lord into Sanctuary in broad daylight was a relief after the tension of his commander's dining table. Being dismissed by Askelon before the high-walled Mageguild on the Street of Arcana was a reprieve he had not dared to hope for, though the entelechy of the seventh sphere decreed that Nikodemos must return to the outer gates at sundown. He watched his best horse disappear down that vine-hung way without even a twinge of regret. If he never saw that particular horse and its rider again, it would be too soon.

  And he had his orders, which, when he had received them, he had despaired of successfully carrying out. When Askelon had been absorbed in making his farewells to the woman whose fighting stature and muscle tone were so extraordinary, Tempus had bade Niko warn certain parties to spread the word that a curfew must be kept, and some others not to attend the Mage-guild's fete this evening, and lastly find a way to go alone to the Vulgar Unicorn, tavern of consummate ill repute in this scabrous town, and perform a detailed series of actions there.

  Niko had never been to the Vulgar Unicorn, though he had been by it many times during his tours in the Maze. The east-side taverns like the Alekeep at the juncture of Promise Park and Governor's Walk, and the Golden Oasis, outside the Maze, were more to his liking, and he stopped at both to fortify himself for a sortie into Ilsig filth and Ilsig poverty. At the Alekeep, he managed to warn the father of a girl he knew to keep his family home this evening lest the killing mist diminish his house should it come again; at the Oasis, he found a Hell-Hound and the Ilsig captain Walegrin gaming intently over a white-bladed knife (a fine prize if it were the "hard steel" the blond-braided captain claimed it was, a metal only fabled to exist), and so had gotten his message off to both the palace and the garrison in good order.

  Yet, in the Maze, it seemed that his luck deserted him as precipitately as his sense of direction had fled. It should be easy to find the Serpentine-just head south by southwest ... unless the entelechy Askelon had hexed him! He rode tight in his saddle under a soapy, scum-covered sky gone noncommittal, its sun nowhere to be seen, doubling back from Wide-way and the gutted wharfside warehouses where serendipity had taken his partner's life as suddenly as their charred remains loomed before him out of a pearly fog so thick he could barely see his horse's ears twitch. Rolling in off the water, it was rank and fetid and his fingers slipped on his weeping reins. The chill it brought was numbing, and lest it penetrate to his very soul, he fled into a light meditation, clearing his mind and letting his body roll with his mount's gait while its hoofbeats and his own breathing grew loud and that mixed cadence lulled him.

  In his expanded awareness, he could sense the folk behind their doors, just wisps of passion and subterfuge leaking out beyond the featureless mudbrick facades from inner courts and wizened hearts. When glances rested on him, he knew it, feeling the tightening of focus and disturbance of auras like roused bees or whispered insults. When his horse stopped with a disapproving snort at an intersection, he had been sensing a steady attention on him, a presence pacing him which knew him better than the occasional street-denizen who turned watchful at the sight of a mercenary riding through the Maze, or the whores half-hidden in doorways with their predatory/cautious/disappointed pinwheels of assessment and dismissal. Still thoroughly disoriented, he chose the leftward fork at random, as much to see whether the familiar pattern stalking him would follow along as in hopes that some landmark would pop out of the fog to guide him-he did not know the Maze as well as he should, and his meditation-sensitized peripheral perception could tell him only how close the nearest walls were and a bit about who lurked behind them: he was no adept, only a western-trained fighter. But, being one, he had shaken his fear and his foreboding, and waited to see if Shadowspawn, called Hanse, would announce himself: should Niko hail the thief prematurely, Hanse would almost certainly melt back into the alleys he commanded rather than own that Niko had perceived himself shadowed-and leave him lost among the hovels and the damned.

  He had learned patience waiting for gods to speak to him on wind-whipped prec
ipices while heaving tides licked about his toes in anticipation. After a time, he began to see canopied stalls and hear muted haggling, and dismounted to lead his horse among the splintered crates and rotten fruit at the bazaar's edge.

  "PsstJ Stealth!" Hanse called him by his war-name, and dropped, soundless as a phantom, from a shuttered balcony into his path. Startled, Niko's horse scrabbled backward, hind hooves kicking crates and stanchions over so that a row ensued with the stall's enraged proprietor. When that was done, the dark slumhawk still waited, eyes glittering with unsaid words sharper than any of the secreted blades he wore, a triumphant smile fierce as his scarlet sash fading to his more customary street-hauteur as he turned figs in his fingers, pronounced them unfit for human consumption, and eased Niko's way.

  "I was out there this morning," Niko heard, bent down over his horse's left hind hoof, checking for splinters caught in its shoe; "heard your team lost a member, but not who. Pissass weird weather, these days. You know something I should know?"

  "Possibly." Niko, putting down the hoof, brushed dust from his thighs and stood up. "Once when I was wandering around the backstreets of a coastal city-never mind which one-with an arrow in my gut and afraid to seek a surgeon's help there was weather like this. A man who took me in told me to stay off the streets at night until the weather'd been clear a full day-something to do with dead adepts and souls to pay their way out of purgatory. Tell your friends, if you've got any. And do me a favor, fair exchange?" He gathered up his reins and took a handful of mane, about to swing up on his horse, and thus he saw Hanse's fingers flicker: state it. So he did, admitting that he was lost, quite baldly, and asking the thief to guide him on his way.

  When they had walked far enough that Shadowspawn's laughter no longer echoed, the thief said, "What's wrong? Like I said, I was out at the barracks. I've never seen him scared of anything, but he's scared of that girl he's got in his room. And he's meaner than normal-told me I couldn't stable my horse out there, and not to come around-" Shadowspawn broke off, having said what he did not want to say, and kicked a melon in their path, which burst open, showing the teeming maggots within.

  "Maybe he'd like to keep you out of troubles that aren't any of your business. Or maybe he estimates his debt to you is paid in full-you can't keep coming around when it suits you and still be badmouthing us like any other Ilsig-"

  A spurt of profanity contained some cogent directions to the Vulgar Unicorn, and some other suggestions impossible to follow. Niko did not look up to see Hanse go. If he failed to take the warning to heart, then hurt feelings would keep him away from Niko and his commander for a while. It was enough.

  Directions or no, it took him longer than it should have to find his way. Finally, when he was eyeing the sky doubtfully, trying to estimate the lateness of the hour, he spied the Unicorn's autoerotic sign creaking in the moist, stinking breeze blowing in off the harbor. Discounting Hanse, since Niko had entered the close and ramshackle despair of the shantytown he had seen not one friendly face. If he had been jeered once, he had been cursed a score of times, aloud and with spit and glare and handsign, and he had had more than his fill of Sanctuary's infamous slum.

  Within the Unicorn, the clientele did not look happy to see a Stepson. A silence as thick as Rankan ale descended as he entered and took more time to disperse than he liked. He crossed to the bar, scanning the room full of local brawlers, grateful he had neglected to shave since the previous morning. Perhaps he seemed more fearsome than he felt as he turned his back to the sullen, hostile crowd just resuming their drinking and scheming and ordered a draught from the bartender. The big, overmuscled man with a balding head slapped it down before him, growling that it would be well if he drank up and left before the crowd began to thicken, or the barkeep would not be responsible for the consequences, and Niko's "master" would get a bill for any damage to the premises. The look in the big man's eyes was decidedly unfriendly. "You're the one they call Stealth, aren't you?" the bar-keep accused him. "The one who told Shadowspawn that one of the best kills is a knife from behind down beside the collarbone, and with a sword, cut up between your opponent's legs, and in general the object is never to have to engage your enemy, but dispatch him before he has seen your face?"

  Niko stared at him, feeling anger chase the disquiet from his limbs. "I know you Ilsigs don't like us," he said quietly, "but I haven't time now to charm you into a change of mind. Where's One-Thumb, barkeep? I have a message for him that cannot wait."

  "Right here," smirked the aproned mountain, tossing his rag onto the barsink's chipped pottery rim. "What is it, sonny?"

  "He wants you to take me to the lady-you know the one." Actually, Tempus had instructed Niko to tell One-Thumb about Askelon's intention to confront Cime, and wait for word as to what the woman wanted Tempus to do. But he was resentful, and he was late." I have to be at the Mageguild by sundown. Let's move."

  "You've got the wrong One-thumb, and the wrong idea. Who's this 'he'?"

  "Bartender, I leave it on your conscience-" He pushed his mug away and took a step back from the bar, then realized he could not leave without discharging his duty, and reached out to pick it up again.

  The big bartender's thumbless hand curled around his wrist and jerked him against the bar. He prayed for patience. "And he didn't tell you not to come in here, bold as brass tassels on a witch-bitch whore? He is getting sloppy, or he's forgotten who his friends are. Why didn't you come round the back? What do you expect me to do, leave with you in the middle of the day? I-"

  "I was lucky I found your pisshole at all, Wriggly. Let me go or you're going to lose the rest of those fingers, sure as Lord Storm's anger rocks even this god ridden garbage heap of a peninsula-"

  Someone stepped up to the bar, and One-Thumb, with a wrench of wrist, went to serve him, meanwhile motioning close a girl whose breasts were mottled gray with dirt and pinkish white where she had sweated it away, saying to her that Niko was to be taken to the office.

  In it, he watched the man called One-Thumb through a one-way mirror, and fidgeted. Eventually, though he saw no reason why it happened, a door he had thought to be a closet's opened behind him, and a woman stepped in, clad in Ilsig doeskin leggings. She said, "What word did my brother send to me?"

  He told her, thinking, watching her, that her eyes were gray like Askelon's, and her hair was arrestingly black and silver, and that she did not in any way resemble Tempus. When he was finished with his story and his warning that she not, under any circumstances, go out this evening-^not, upon her life, attend the Mageguild fete, she laughed, a sweet tinkle so inappropriate his spine chilled and he stiffened.

  "Tell my brother not to be afraid. You must not know him well, to take his terror of the adepts so seriously." She moved close to him, and he drowned in her storm-cloud eyes while her hand went to his swordbelt and by it she pulled him close. "Have you money, Stepson? And some time to spend?"

  Niko beat a hasty retreat with her mocking, throaty laughter chasing him down the stairs. She called after him that she only wanted to have him give her love to Tempus. As he made the landing near the bar, he heard the door at the stairs' top slam shut. He was out of there like a torqued arrow-so fast he forgot to pay for his drink, and yet, when he remembered it, on the street where his horse waited, no one had come chasing him. Looking up at the sky, he estimated he could just make the Mageguild in time, if he did not get lost again.

  4

  Thinking back over the last ten months, Tempus realized he should have expected something like this. Vashanka was weakening steadily: something had removed the god's name from Kadakithis' palace dome; the state cult's temple had proved unbuildable, its grounds defiled and its priest a defiler; the ritual of the Tenslaying had been interrupted by Cime and her fire, and he and Vashanka had begotten a male child upon the First Consort which the god did not seem to want to claim; Abarsis had been allowed to throw his life away without regard to the fact that he had been Vashanka's premier warrior priest. Now the f
ield altar his mercenaries had built had been tumbled to the ground before his eyes by one of Abarsis' teachers, an entelechy chosen specifically to balance the beserker influence of the god. And he, Tempus, was imprisoned in his own quarters by a Froth Daughter in an all-too-human body intent on exacting from him recompense for what his sister had denied her.

  Glumly he wondered if his god could be undergoing a midlife crisis, then if he too was, since Vashanka and he were linked by the Law of Consonance. Certainly, Jihan's proclamation of intended rape had taken him aback. He had not been taken aback by anything in years. "Rapist, they call you, and with good reason," she had said, reaching up under the scale-armor corselet to wriggle out of her loinguard. "We will see how you like it, in receipt of what you're used to giving out." He could not stop her, or refrain from responding to her. Cime had interrupted Jihan's scheduled tryst with Askelon, perhaps aborted it. The body which faced him had been chosen for a woman's retribution. Later she said to him, rubbing the imprint of her scale-armor from his loins with a high-veined hand: "Have you never heard of letting the lady win?"

  "No," he replied, genuinely puzzled. "Jihan, are you saying I was unfair?"

  "Only arcane, weighting the scales to your side. Love without feeling, mind caress, spell-excitation. ... I am new to flesh. I hope you are well chastized and repentant," she giggled, just briefly, before his words found her ears: "I warn you, straight-out: those who love me die of it, and those I favor are fated to spurn me."

  "You are an arrogant man. You think I care? I should have struck you more viciously." Her flat hand slapped, more than playfully, down upon his belly. "He-" she meant Askelon "-cannot spare me any of his substance. I do this for him, that he not look upon me hungry for a man and know shame. You saw his wrist, where she skewered him...."

  "I don't fancy a gift from him, convenient or no." He was going to pull her up beside him, where he might casually get his hands around her fine, muscular throat. But she sat back and retorted, "You think he would suggest this? Or even know of it? I take what I choose from men, and we do not discuss it. It is all I can do for him. And you owe me whatever price I care to name-your own sister took from me my husband before ever his lips touched mine. When my father chose me from my sisters to be sent to ease Askelon's loneliness, I had a choice-yea or nay-and a year to make it. I studied him, and felt love enough to come to human flesh to claim it. To become human-you concede that I am, for argument's sake?"