Gil Trilogy #3:
Lady Pain
Rebecca Bradley
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Praise for the previous novels in
Rebecca Bradley's compelling series . . .
Scion's Lady
"A seamless story of deception, duplicity and evil . . . It is a taut, exhilarating yet poignant portrait of characters involved in circumstances not of their making."
—SFSite
"Well-written and engaging."
—SFX Magazine
"Bradley's tone is an adroit mixture of wry humor and seriousness. Her plot moves quickly, and her characters, especially Tig and his catlike bride, are lively."
—Starburst
Lady in Gil
"Enthralling . . . [Bradley] tells her story clearly, with great pace, and a vivid and subtle imagination."
—The Times (London)
"Rebecca Bradley is a born storyteller who deftly advances the plot and sketches in her characters with lucid prose. . . . Lady in Gil is first-rate fantasy which doesn't require you to leave your brain at home. Read and enjoy, and perhaps weep a little."
—Vector
"Rebecca Bradley has done a remarkable job in conjuring up fresh characters, vibrant plotting, and marvelous settings."
—SF Site
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Also by Rebecca Bradley
LADY IN GIL
SCION'S LADY
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LADY PAIN
Rebecca Bradley
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events or locales is entirely coincidental.
LADY PAIN
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with
Orion Publishing Group, Ltd.
PRINTING HISTORY
Victor Gollancz hardcover edition / 1998
Ace mass-market edition / June 2001
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1998 by Rebecca Bradley
Cover art by Jerry Vanderstelt
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission.
For information address: Victor Gollancz,
an imprint of The Cassell Group,
Wellington House, 125 Strand, London WC2R OBB, United Kingdom.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 0-441-00871-2
* * *
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ACE and the "A" design are trademarks
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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With fond thanks to Christine Bernard and Jo Fletcher; to Jack Robertson for some entertaining suggestions; to Robin and Owen Thelwall for bearing with me; and especially to Katherine Thelwall, who read this book as fast as I could write it.
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PART ONE
The Known World
. . . then shall the innocent, the brave and the righteously angry among the seed of the Naar be yielded up, and in turn yield up the Harashil, and be consumed; but Naar shall live for ever . . .
Naarhil text fragment, 'Khamanthana'; copy in the
Archives of the College of the Second Coming
That Naarhil fragment Tig translated yesterday got me into trouble with Calla. I said I thought it was a little obscure. Calla said, don't be stupid, Chasco, it's not obscure at all, it's a prophetic reference to Tig—innocent, brave, righteously angry. I said Tig wouldn't agree he was innocent, not since the sinking of Sher; bravery hardly applied since the Pain had made him invulnerable; and I hadn't seen him get more than righteously annoyed in years. Tig said I was absolutely right, but Calla wouldn't speak to me all evening.
Excerpt from Chasco's Journal Vol. 4,
'Khamanthana', in the Archives of the
College of the Second Coming
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1
WE HAD JUST decided to split up and look for him when Shree stopped and squinted across the torchlit market square.
"Never mind, there he is."
I squinted across the square too, but there was no sign of him at first, nothing but a knot of people gathering in front of the shrine of the Shining Ansatz, a crowd where the shoulders seemed a little tenser, the fists a little tighter, the faces a little angrier . . .
"You're right."
We reached the shrine just behind a patrol of the local constabulary and pushed in their wake to the centre of the storm. He was still not visible, but we could hear him speaking in his clear, reasonable voice, the one he used for explaining things. We groaned and pushed harder.
"In point of fact," he was saying, "your Ansatz-worship, though interesting in its own right, is historically a debased offshoot of an ancient cult found in Canzitar, the roots of which can be traced to—"
His voice was smothered under a roar of outrage, a rising roar. I could see him by then, half a head shorter than anybody else, smiling up at a pig-ugly giant in a black cloak who was probably, given our luck, the chief lawgiver in this benighted place. It would be just like him, I thought, to get noticed by somebody who could really make life difficult.
I reached out, being almost within touching distance, but Shree got to him first, grabbed his head in an armlock and clapped one hand tightly over his mouth.
"So sorry," he said to the looming lawgiver, "but as you can see, this unfortunate young man is touched in the head."
"He doesn't know what he's saying," I added sorrowfully, latching on to his wrists from behind.
The oversized person in the black cloak thrust his face into Shree's. "He blasphemed the Shining Ansatz."
"No, no," Shree insisted, "I tell you, the poor youth is mad." He raised his voice to cover the commentary trying to issue from behind his hand.
The lawgiver glowered, but I managed to find his mailed glove and pressed a small bag into the palm. The scowl became thoughtful without ceasing to be a scowl.
"Ah well," he said, "the Shining Ansatz, in their mercy, have a tender spot for madmen." He shifted his gaze from Shree to the mob, which abruptly transformed into a casual aggregation of good citizens who had paused out of concern for the stranger in their midst but were now ready to go about their business—fast. When nobody was left but ourselves and the patrol, the lawgiver loosened the mouth of the little bag to peer inside. The amount appeared to be satisfactory.
"I'll let him go this time," he said severely to Shree, "but next time I may not be able to save him—the things he was saying! Canzitar indeed! What kind of a father are you, to let your poor feeble-minded son go wandering about on his own?" Then he turned to me and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. "And you—don't you know you should take better care of your poor mad brother?"
"Yes, master," I said.
"I've got eleven younger brothers myself, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for them. And since yours is, you know," he tapped lightly between his eyebrows, "you should take even better care of him."
"Yes, master," I said.
&
nbsp; "Now get him out of the marketplace before he causes any more trouble, and don't ever let me see him here again."
"Yes, master," I said.
"A thousand thanks, master," said Shree. We turned to go, the three of us, one of us perforce, and made our way through the heaps of strange roots, herbs and vegetables, the mats laid out with Ansatz icons and cheap clay pots, the beggars waiting patiently to pillage the leavings when the market closed at curfew. Shree did not set him loose until we were well out of the square and halfway down a dark, windowless lane.
"Tig," he said wearily, "you've got to stop doing that."
"He's right, Father," I said. "Mother was very worried."
It was bad enough being in this squalid Tatakil outpost without my father doing his best to enrage the natives, though it could have been more serious. At least it was civilized enough here for bribery to be an option. It was not even the worst place he had ever chosen to be awkward in—that distinction, in my opinion, was reserved for a vicepit called Uagolo on the west coast of Storica, where owning a money purse was equivalent to inviting a death warrant, and the biggest thief of all was the one sitting on the law-chieftain's stool.
Shree's opinion leant towards an icebound clutch of hovels near the ruins of Myr, on the grounds that one ran the risk there of being eaten as well as robbed and murdered; whereas Chasco held out for a small island in the middle of the South Ronchar Sea where, according to local repute, the inhabitants would eat their visitors without bothering to murder them first. Luckily for them, they didn't try it with us, but Chasco stubbornly stuck to his choice.
My sister Katlefiya's opinion did not count—she had an equal dislike for all the ports where we had ever landed, except perhaps Gafrin-Gammanthan. My father's opinion did not count either, since he had forgotten about eight years before that such a state as danger existed except in rather interesting hypothetical terms. His habit of testing hypotheses explained why we spent so much energy trying to keep him out of trouble.
Calla, my mother, took what was probably the most sensible view of all: that wherever we were at the moment should be considered the most perilous place we had ever been.
Chasco was waiting for us on the quayside, guarding the empty smallboat. While we'd been searching for my father, he had finished taking the supplies aboard the Fifth, and the front of his dark cloak was powdered with flour from the ill-sewn Tatakil sacks. He whistled on a falling tone as we helped Tigrallef into the bottom of the boat, and was answered almost at once from some distance across the water. The answer was similar but not identical, a shrill and vehement whistle blast that took the same sliding note and turned it into a clear statement of fury.
"Tig," Chasco said with a grin as he unshipped the oars, "I think you're in trouble."
My father, hunched between the thwarts, looked up at him innocently. "Physical, metaphysical or domestic?" he asked.
"Domestic. Kat isn't pleased with you. She said, if you were going to go off and start a riot in the town, you could at least have taken her with you."
"Riot? I didn't start a riot," my father said. "I wanted a look at the shrine, and got talking to some of the local people, that's all."
"He was telling them a few interesting things about the Shining Ansatz cult," I put in.
Chasco shuddered.
"Fortunately," I added, "we got there in time to prevent anything terrible happening."
"I wouldn't have hurt them," my father protested.
"We won't go into that," said Shree.
We traded glances over my father's bent head, Shree and Chasco and I—I had a good idea what they were thinking about, because it was haunting me too. The last time we were late in rounding him up, the death toll was somewhere between ten and fifteen. He never meant to hurt anybody, of course. He never even meant to wander off. When I looked back at him, he was humming softly and experimenting with the wake his fingers made in the water beside the boat; but a few moments later the humming stopped, his hands curled into fists, his neck and shoulders began to stiffen. Chasco saw that too, and quickened his stroke. The Pain was striking again.
It called itself the Harashil. We called it the Pain. My father often referred to it as "the old sow".
It had many other names. The Great-of-Fangs was what they called it in Nkalvi, almost five thousand years ago. The Burning Child of Baul, the White Dragon of Khamanthana, Itsant's Master of Hands, the Myrwolf, the Sun Serpent of Vizzath, the Flaming Skull of Fathan, the Lady in Gil—but of all its names, the Pain was probably the most frank and descriptive.
It was my father's private demon but potentially a very public one, a doom tapping its foot with impatience while it waited to bring down the world. It was a burden my father had carried inside his own skin for the last twenty years; and while it held off the effects of age upon his body for all that time, it waged an unending war of attrition upon his spirit. Nor did it leave the rest of us entirely unscathed, since we were the poor sods who had to live with him.
Kat and Calla were leaning over the rail as the smallboat nosed past the anchor chain and bumped against the ladder. My mother sheathed her sword as she identified us; Kat's chain glittered as she poured it back into the compartment in her belt. I helped my father up the ladder—I could see from the brightness of his eyes and his set smile that the Pain had taken a firm grip during the short ride in the smallboat, and he was already too busy battling it to watch where he put his hands and feet. Kat saw it too, and turned away with a sour face. It was no use berating him now, because he simply wouldn't notice. Calla bent over the rail to take his arm and guide him up the last few steps.
"How long since the Pain began, Vero?" she asked over her shoulder as she helped him towards the cabin.
"Only a few minutes."
"Any problems in the town?"
"Nothing much—Chasco was right about the local susceptibility to bribes."
"Thank the lords for that. Careful, my darling, the doorstep . . . I'll have words with you three later, letting him wander off like that," she added ominously. The cabin door banged shut behind her.
Shree had reached the deck by then, and Chasco was already securing the painter of the smallboat in preparation for departure. Tig's venture into town had cost us the best of the tide, but we were still determined to leave that night. It was not just the general nastiness of the Tatakil port that impelled us. For twenty years we had followed the meandering trail of the Pain's history, and in Nkalvi we had struck a dead end; for want of anything better to do, we were now setting a course for Gil, and our elders had suddenly found themselves in a tearing hurry to get there.
Pearl of the World, my father kept calling the place, with a dreamy look in his eyes; more like the Arse of the World, my mother would reply, and Shree would add, yes, once your tupping Flamens finished what we Sherank began, but they seemed to be no less eager to get there than my father did. Katlefiya and I, who had seen many shores but never the one that belonged to Gil, who had lived much of our lives on salty deckboards in the great unknown world, felt no particular affinity for this homeland of our forefathers. I was curious at most, though I welcomed making a landfall that was unconnected with my father's antiquarian researches. Kat was already preparing to be unimpressed.
She was sitting on the deck by the foremast, shadowed from the lamplight, waiting for Chasco's signal to help with the sails. It looked as if she had just cut her hair again, cropping it close at the neck in the shape of a pudding basin. Like my father, she had often been mistaken for my younger brother, a misapprehension which I reckoned would not be possible for much longer, no matter how loosely she wore her tunics. Though she had said nothing as we brought Tigrallef aboard that night in Tata, I knew her well enough to feel the heat of her resentment at several paces.
"Katla?" Taking my place beside her, I reached out and touched her arm.
"Leave me alone."
"The town was a pisspit, little Kat. You wouldn't have liked it."
"I don't
care about that," she snapped back. She jerked her arm away.
"What's wrong, then? Surely not that handsome lad you saw on the quayside. I saw him up close. Not freckles. Pimples."
"I wouldn't care if they were boils. Just leave me alone, Vero." She shifted until all I had was a three-quarters view of her back. We sat for a few moments without speaking; a dog howled ashore, a promising breeze pressed against the still-rolled sails, Chasco and Shree conversed in low tones in the stern.
In the cabin, our father cried out. Kat sat up rigidly and slumped back again.
I pulled her around so that I could see her face. In the meagre light, she looked like a younger version of a mask we'd seen in the fetish temple in Uagolo, the face of the Bitter Goddess, eternally furious since the Makers used her children's bones and blood as raw material in the construction of the world. When Tigrallef cried out a second time, the resemblance became truly noteworthy. Of course I had known all along what was bothering her.
"He can't help it, you know," I said.
She turned away again. "He's getting worse. It's the third time since this morning."
"It's not his fault."
"I'm not saying he does it on purpose," she snapped. "But what does he actually think he's doing? Why does he keep dragging us around these terrible places? I don't think he knows what he's looking for."
"Of course he knows. He's looking for a true version of the Will that will banish the P . . . the Harashil."
She swung her head around on her slender neck until I was looking full into her eyes. "That's what he thinks he's doing," she said, "but I sometimes wonder. Never mind. Leave me alone, will you?"
Gil Trilogy 3: Lady Pain Page 1