Storm Season tw-4

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  "My daughter is very young and thinks you are just so romantic a figure," that great big woman said, who was such a pretty little woman inside the masses of flesh her husband so loved. "Will you just pretend she is your sister?"

  "Oh you would not want that," Hanse had assured her, in one of those rare revelations as to the sort of childhood he must have had. "She is my friend's daughter and I shall call her cousin."

  Hanse meant that promise. Besides, Mignureal had seen him quaking and blubbering with fear, a victim of that fear-staff of the perverse gods, and he did not care to look her in the eyes. It was she who had rescued him and led him, a tremulous mouse helpless against the power turned on him, back to her mother.

  And now here she came, bearing some colorful bundle. Small and dark and yet not at all a creature of night and shadows as he was. Mignureal was a creature of day and this day in her bright yellow skirt she wore a strange look, as if she was drugged.

  If she is, Hanse thought fiercely, I will beat her and take her home and curse Moonflower for allowing it to happen to this... this dear maiden.

  But then he stopped thinking. She was before him, stopping and forcing him to stop. And when she spoke her voice was odd and flat as her eyes, emotionless as her face. She spoke as if she said words she had only learned-the words, not their meaning-like a girl who had leamt her part for some temple rite on a god day.

  Dark brown eyes like garnets and just as lacking in softness, she said, "You are invited to dinner tomorrow night. You will be in no danger. Wear this clothing. The place is known to you. It is long unpeopled, but its water is a silver pool. The silver is your own, Son of the Shadow, Chosen ofllsig. Come, tomorrow even as the sun sets, .to the aerie of the great ruler of the air."

  Without blinking, she pressed into his hands that which she carried, and turned and ran in a butterfly flurry of yellow skirts and streaming blue-black hair. Hanse stood, stupidly staring after her until she rounded a corner and was gone down another street. Then he looked down at his gift. All in shades of blue and some green, with a flash of yellow-gold embroidery. A fine tunic, and a cloak considerably better than good. Good clothing!

  Clothing so fine existed in Sanctuary, of course. No S'danzo girl had any of it though, nor did a youth who gained his living by stealth.

  Whence, then, came this soft fabric?

  From the same place those words came from, he thought, for they were not Mignureal's words. And again the phrases Son of the Shadow and Chosen of Ilsig! A shiver claimed Hanse then, and possessed him for a long moment.

  " 'Day to you, Hanse-ah! I see you had a good night, 's more like it, hum?" And that acquaintance went on smiling, for what else could he think? Where else could Hanse have gained such a bundle of finery, save through a bit of climbing and breaking-and-entering on yesternight?

  Hanse stood directing thoughts to his feet, and at last they began to respond. He walked on, trying to make his bundle as small as he could, lest some member of the City Watch espy him, or a Hell-Hound from the palace, or someone nosy enough to consider turning him in or blabbing it about that Hanse had stolen good soft, decorated clothing sufficient to pay his room's rent for the next twelvemonth.

  Hanse had received coded messages beforetimes, and had devised the meaning. He did so this time. He knew where he was invited. (Invited? Bidden! Summoned!) Away up on the craggy hill now called Eaglebeak was a long untenanted manse. It lay partially in ruins, that magnificent home its long-ago builder and tenant had called Eaglenest. Nearby, beyond scattered fallen columns and tumbled stones, rotted planking marked a well. Down in that well languished two leathern bags. Saddlebags. Hanse knew they were there, for he had put them there, in a way, though it had not been his intent.

  He hoped they were there, for they contained a great deal of silver coins, and a few that were gold.

  They were the ransom of the Rankan symbol of power, the staff called Savankh, which a thief called Shadowspawn had stolen from the palace of the Prince Governor. The P-G knew they were there, but had agreed that they would remain Hanse's property. Hanse had, after all, uncovered a spy and a plot and saved Prince Kadakithis's face, if not his life.

  But for a horse and a dead man named Bourne, Hanse would have had all that gleaming fortune in his possession, rather than "banked" down in the earth, atop a hill, in a narrow well that was like to have been the death of him!

  He was to go to Eaglebeak, then. To dine in dark and deserted aerie: Eaglenest! So he quietly told Moonflower. For aye, once again he betook himself to her in quest of information and advice. (Mignureal was not about when he approached, and neither he nor Moonflower was sorry.)

  He sat before her now in his nondescript tunic the color of a field mouse, his feet in dusty buskins, knees up. And only three blades showing on him. He sat on the ground and she on her stool. The fact that she overflowed all around was disguised by her voluminous skirts; Moonflower wore red and green and ochre and blue and another shade of green. Across her lap lay his new clothing.

  She fondled and sniffed and tasted it, closed her eyes and drew it through her dimple-backed hands. And all the while she was moving her lavender-tinted lips. The vastness of her bosom was almost still as her breathing slowed, her heartbeat slowed, her muttering slowed and she slid away from herself, a great gross kitten at her divining.

  No charlatan, this mother of eleven who had raised nine, but one with the Gift, the power. Moonflower Saw.

  Now she Saw for Hanse as she had before, and he was not all that happy with it. Nor was she, even in trance.

  "I See you, darling boy, all nobly turned out in this finery, and I See a great light hosting y-oh! Oh, oh Hanse ... it is, it is He! Here is Hanse, aye, and here is He, Himself-Us, god of gods! And I See... ah! Hmp. I like not what else I See, for it is Mignue, my Mignue, with you and the Lord of Lords."

  He nodded, frowning. That was her pet name for her daughter. He accepted that somehow Mignureal was a part of this... whatever this was.

  "Ah! Here is Hanse with a sword, and wielding it well, well ... for a god, Hanse, soldierly Hanse I See... for a god, against a god!"

  Against a god. Father Ils, what means this all? What would you make of me? And he had an idea: "Who... who gave me the sword?"

  "A bas-no, no, a foster son. Ah-a stepson. Yes. A s-"

  "And who gave me the clothing? Is that Mignureal?"

  "Mignue? No, oh no, she is a good g-ah. I see her. Eshi! It is Eshi Herself who has given you this clothing, Han-" And she shuddered of a sudden, and sagged, and her eyes came alive to stare into his. "Hanse? Did I See? Was it of value?"

  He nodded. He was unable to look other than grim. "You Saw, 0 Passionflower. This time I must owe you, beyond the binding coin." (Which she had already dropped into that warm crevasse she called her Treasure Chest.)

  Eshi, Hanse thought. Eshi!

  A jealous and passionate god, Ils created all the world, and from his bodily wastes He peopled it. The gods He created from his two extra toes, and the eons passed and the first-created challenged Ils. This was Gunder, and he lost. He was hurled to the earth. His daughter Shipri, though, was thrice-fair, and her the great Lord Ils spared-and couched. By him Shipri became All-mother; of him she bore Shils, and Anen, and Thufir, and the twins Shalpa and Eshi, their first daughter, and another; the god no one spoke of. Now Anen was called firstborn, for jealous, passionate Ils sinned; in rage he slew his firstborn son, Shils.

  Eshi. Much spoken of She was, and prayed to as well, but it was little reverence she gained. Everyone knew that she was a sensuous beauty who sought out and had her way with each of her brothers, and indeed sought to bring to couch even her father. In that She failed; even Ils was not that passionate, and one sin for a god was enough.

  Eshi was fond of jewellery, and so gemworkers took a manifestation of her as patron. She was known to love love, and thus lovers, of course. Cows were special to her, and so were cats. Her sign was the liver, which any child learned early was the seat of love and
its younger sibling, infatuation. Eshi!

  Aye, Hanse thought. She loves jewellery and thus the ring; cats are sacred to her and thus the stone: the eye of a cat. Somehow it was pleasant thus to find some small comfort of logic in all this that clearly had naught to do with logic. Gods! He was involved with the very gods!

  Mignureal came along just as he was departing. She asked about the handsome clothing he carried! Obviously she had never seen it before, and Hanse blinked. His eyes swerved in her mother's direction. She was staring at her daughter.

  "Into the house, Mignue," she said, with uncommon sharpness. "See to the preparation of the leeks and yeni-sprouts your father fetched home for dinner."

  Hanse went away thoughtful and shaken while Moonflower sat staring at nothing. She was a mother, and she too was shaken, and passing nervous.

  For Hanse the next twenty-six hours rode by on the backs of snails. He slept not well and his dreams were not for the repeating.

  Attired in such a way as to arouse the envy of a successful merchant, Hanse completed his ascent to Eaglebeak just after the sun began sliding off the edge of the world. Continuing cautious and too apprehensive to hurry, he picked his way through a jumble of tumbled columns and jagged stones habited only by spiders and serpents, lizards and scorpions, a few snails, and the most insistent of scrubby plants. These owned Eaglebeak now, and Eaglenest. All here had been murdered long and long ago. They were said still to haunt the place, that merchant and his family. And so the hilltop and once-fine estate-house were avoided.

  Even so a great portion of the manse stood, and some of it was even under roof. Green-bordered blue cloak fluttering, his emerald-hued tunic with its purfling of yellow gold an unwontedly soft caress on his thighs, Hanse approached a doorless entry. It yawned dark, and still the ancient dark stains splashed the jamb; the blood of murder. He cast many anxious looks this way and that, and he did not hurry. For once he was not pleased to go into shadows.

  He was met and greeted. Not by Ils or a beauteous woman, either!

  Oh she was female, all right, and indeed shapely in a warm deep pink, a long gown sashed with red and hemmed with silver. The dress was lovely and rich and her figure was lovelier than that but even so the most striking aspect of her was her face. She had none.

  Hanse stopped very abruptly and stared. At nothing. It was as if his gaze somehow swerved away from the face of this woman who greeted him, putting forth one lovely smooth hand.

  The hand was adorned with a single ring. Hanse recognized it. He had seen it yesterday, in the sky-aspiring temple of Ilshipri.

  "Don't be fearful, Hanse of the Shadows, Chosen of Ilsig, Son of Shadows." It was a very nice voice, and unconditionally female.

  "Of one who has no face on her? Oh, of course not!"

  Her laughter was a stream of bright quicksilver in sunshine. "Choose a face then," she bade him, and proceeded to give him a choice.

  The air shimmered above her shoulders and a head formed, and a face. It was not comforting. Hanse was looking at Lirain. Lirain, who had conspired with another against Kadakithis, and sought to use Hanse (and succeeded), and who was dead for her crime, and her pretty face gone with her. It disappeared now, to become the piquant features of the royal concubine who had been unlucky enough to be present the night he stole the Savankh from the Prince-Governor's own bedchamber. When last Hanse had seen this one she was bound as he'd left her. He could not even remember her na-oh. Taya. No matter. She was becoming someone else.

  "Uh!"

  That gasp was elicited by Taya's vanishing to be replaced by ... Moonflower! Aye, Moonflower, earrings, chins and all!

  "No thank you," Hanse was able to say, and felt better for it.

  Far more shocking was the next visage, one he recognized after a few moments of gaping. The woman he had seen murdered for her terror rod out by Fanner's Market, less than two months ago! Before he could protest, she had flickered away after the others, and Hanse swallowed. Now he gazed close upon a face he knew and had always wished could be closer. She was the smiling and truly beautiful daughter of Venerable Shafralain. Esaria her name, a girl of seventeen or eighteen-the Lady Esaria! A beauty he had watched and about whom he had entertained phantasies rather more than once or thrice.

  "You know," Hanse blurted, with more breath than voice. "You bring out these faces from my own memory!"

  Already Esaria was becoming Mignureal, sweet-faced Mignureal, who gazed serenely at him-and spoke.

  "You are invited to dinner tomorrow night. You will be in no danger. Wear this clothing. The place is known to you. It is long unpeopled, and its water is a silver pool. The silver is your own, Son of the Shadow, Chosen of Ilsig."

  And of course now he knew who his greeter was. It was not possible, but then none of it was.

  "Whom shall I be to your eyes tonight, Son of Shadow?"

  Hanse replied with surely a great stroke of genius, and made the most brilliantly diplomatic utterance of his life.

  "The thrice-beauteous face of the Lady Eshi from the statue in the temple of Eshi Radiant," he said-

  And She was, smiling delightedly, ever so pleased. She embraced him with warmth and Hanse nearly collapsed.

  Her hand clasping his with warmth, she led him into that ruined and murkily shadowed once-luxury manse ... and it was again! Everywhere candles sprang into lambence, with constant flashes and continuing unnatural brightness. Bright, bright light, revealing perfect inlaid floors that were works of art and walls all alive and acolor with mosaic-work. Along a high-soaring hall he was led, and into a palatial dining hall, and here too all came alight with the brightness of day.

  At the far-far!-end of a genuinely long table of fine inlaid wood sat ... a shadow. And a man ...

  Hanse tore loose his hand from the warm grasp of a god and backed a pace with a hissing whisper of soft-soled buskins.

  "Cudget!" he all but shouted. "Oh no, no, Cudget-they killed you, Cudget!" And his voice broke. _

  The voice that replied was not Cudget's, but was male, and warmth itself. Somehow it made Hanse feel good; all warm.

  "It is in the nature of gods to be self-directed, what you call selfish. Sometimes we forget your mortal attachments, unbroken by death. I thought you would like the face of your mentor and late best friend and foster father, my beloved friend and servant Hanse. My own visage is only Light; Lambence; Candence. For I have not a thousand eyes you know, not really."

  "You... cannot be ..."

  "Hanse-take the crossed brown pot with you," Cudget said in Mignureal's voice, and only she and Hanse knew that she had said those words to him one night of evil. (Or did she?) And then Cudget was speaking on, in another voice that Hanse did not at first recognize. Then he did-it was his own! He remembered the words, from the night he had gone to Kurd's and nearly died-no! He had not uttered those words! He had but thought them, and only he could know them: "0 Ils, god of my people and father of Shaipo my patron? It is true that Tempus Thaies serves Vashanka Tenslayer. But help us, help us both, lord Ils, and I swear to do all I can to destroy Vashanka Sister-wrfer or drive him hence, if only You will show me the way!"

  On hearing those words issue in his voice from the Being at the far end of the long table, Hanse could only stare.

  "Only two could know that prayer of yours, Hanse. Only two not just in all the world, but in all the universe. You are one; the other is He who hears all words directed to him, whether they are uttered by tongue or mind only."

  Pale, Hanse could only gasp forth shaky words: "Lord... God."

  "Yes," the warm voice spoke from that lam-bence.

  Hanse had elected not to genuflect on meeting a prince of Ranke. Now, upon meeting that god Who was god of gods, he was far too shaken to think of falling to his knees.

  Lord Ils proved that he was no mere king or emperor or religious leader, to insist upon such displays. Neither egoism nor egotism marked gods. They had no need of either. They were gods. Cudget's face vanished and again Hanse was forced to
squint. Someone still sat at table's end in that big dining hall, but there was no face at all now. There was only light.

  Eyes almost closed, Hanse was forced to look away from it-and discovered that now he looked upon a goddess, all in deep warm pink bordered with silver and sashed with scarlet. With jewels flashing in the deep indigo silk of her hair; or perhaps they were stars.

  The voice of warmth spoke.

  "Yes," it said again. "Cheated of strength in my own lands, but not drained, Hanse Son of Shadow. The intensity of belief of one who had sneered at gods, and his loyalty that is not automatic but learned, volunteered-it is you I speak of, Hanse-these aided Me. For gods and mortals are mutually dependent, Hanse.

  "My cousin Savankala's son Vashanka has waxed here by the power of belief of one variously called the Riddler, and Thales, and Tem-pus, as well as the Engineer, and Sea-born. We need not concern you with who he really is. Vashanka wished his freedom one night; wished it enough to bargain with Me. It required only the efforts of Shalpa my son to cloud the skies that night. Because the climate of your land is what it is, both Vashanka's power and Mine were required to send rain that night, when you needed water to survive the plant-that-kills. Naturally I made bargain with Vashanka ere I helped him-because I knew Vashanka would bargain to help you save Tempus!

  "Having agreed, Vashanka himself made a concession: Vashanka himself struck his name from the palace of My people. Nor will Vashanka use such power displays here again. It were not wise of Me to raise my murdered temple, which Vashanka struck down; that is the business of you humans. Such edifices please you humans; gods have no need of such aggrandizement for there is no aggrandizement beyond godhead."