God Stalk

by P. C. Hodgell

  * * *

  THE SKYRRMAN burned most of that night. The next morning, one of the Creeper's spies thrust a note into Men-dalis's hand as he was climbing the Guild Hall steps.

  The Talisman, acting for Theocandi, has caused the downfall of Harr sen Tenko [it read]. Ask your brother how she rewarded him for betraying your secret backer.

  For a long moment, Men-dalis stared to the southwest at the thin pall of smoke still rising there. Then he turned and entered the Hall without a word.

  Routine business kept the Council occupied all that morning, afternoon, and well into the evening. Consequently, it was quite late when the Conclave of Electors finally gathered in an inner chamber. Odalion and one of the masters' two representatives entered looking disgruntled: both had hoped to reap greater rewards from this business. Abbotir, Bane's foster-father, came in all his massive dignity; Jewel, in terror lest he choose the losing side; the Provincials, loud-voiced with self-importance and secretly filled with awe. Chardin, unhappily climbing the outer steps, heard that Mistress Silver had not come at all, choosing to abstain rather than vote for or against the man who had secured her son's life but not his freedom.

  "Now why didn't I think of that?" said Master Shining to himself, and joyfully returned to his beloved workroom.

  The chamber was at last sealed, and the Conclave convened. Half an hour later, it was all over. By a vote of eight to four, Men-dalis had lost to Theocandi on the first ballot.

  Chapter 13

  Three Pyres

  ON THE AFTERNOON following the conflagration, Jame went to the Lower Town in response to a message from Patches. She found the area in a state of chaos. Having no intact river gates, it had suffered badly from the flash flood two days back, and so far had made little progress in sorting itself out. All the rickety houses along the Tone had been swept away, while others, seriously undermined, continued to fall with little or no warning. The homeless thronged the streets, terrified at the prospect of another night in the open, but unable to seek shelter elsewhere because of the barricades erected by the remaining four of the Five, who feared riots and looting. Meanwhile, each dawn saw more children ill or dead. The thing that stalked in the dark fed well.

  Marc had been in the area since early that morning, alternately helping to keep order and searching through the rubble for the dead. When Jame found him, he put down his crowbar and, with his captain's permission, went with her.

  They found Patches' house still standing but befouled inside and out with river silt. Patches herself was there, assisting her mother and siblings to clean away the muck. Though all had been drenched, none were the worse for it except Taniscent, who had developed an inflammation of the lungs. It was for her sake that they had come. At last, the dancer was returning to the Res aB'tyrr.

  Marc carried her home wrapped in a blanket while Jame limped along beside him. There, they put her in her old room. She didn't remember anything that had happened to her since the night of the near-riot almost a year before and was very confused. The sight of her own hands, knob-knuckled and blue-veined, upset her badly. She kept asking, in a thin, querulous voice, for a mirror, which no one was so foolish as to give her.

  Jame stayed nearby all that long day and well into the night, taking turns with Kithra and Cleppetty at nursing the invalid. Sometime well after midnight, she excused herself from the sickroom and, with a plate of scraps, crossed the square to the fire-gutted Skyrrman in search of Fang.

  Someone was huddled on the doorstep. Moonlight shone on Niggen's tear-swollen face as he jerked it up. Misery gave way to terror. He scrambled to his feet, lashing out wildly at the hand that she held out to him. Only after he had lurched past her into the night, fleeing as if for his life, did she realize that he had thought she was about to strike him.

  She did not follow him, nor did any ragged feline form slink out of the ruins in answer to her call as it had the previous night. The city had swallowed Marplet's cat as it had his son.

  Jame put the plate of scraps on the ground for whomever might claim it and walked back to the Res aB'tyrr. As she reached the front door, someone called her name. Turning, she saw a shadowy figure approaching her across the square. It was Dally.

  "Well, it's all over," he said. "We lost."

  Almost with a start, she remembered the Guild Election. "I'm sorry. What happens now?"

  "I hardly know," he said. "Even now, I can scarcely believe it happened. Mend's secret backer failed him at the last minute. If it weren't such an odd idea, I'd almost have thought that he blamed you for that. Now . . . I just don't know. My brother is used to getting what he wants, usually when he wants it. He might try again in seven years or when Theocandi dies, I suppose, if the Sirdan's assassins don't get him first. Canden was right," he said with a bitter laugh. "It isn't easy to stay alive once you've lost. He almost died tonight after the Conclave, coming down the Guild Hall steps."

  "The Sirdan is working fast."

  "Oh, I don't think he ordered this particular attack. It was just some little 'prentice trying to curry favor. I killed him." An odd look crossed Dally's face. "I've never killed anyone before," he said. "I didn't like it. Anyway, word has gone out that Theocandi has something else in mind, something far surer. There's talk of the Shadow Thief again."

  "Oh?" said Jame. "The last time that name came up, you weren't even sure that such a thing existed."

  "Nor am I now, but a good many other people are, and some of them—Canden, for instance—are no fools. They say Theocandi's such a traditionalist that he would never have threatened Mendy before the election (candidates being sacred), but now. . . . Of course, there's still a chance that he could touch off a guild war; but if he were to get Mendy first, my brother's remaining supporters would disband immediately to save themselves, and there'd be no one left to bring charges."

  "Not even you?"

  "Who would listen to me?" said Dally bitterly. "Without Mendy, I'm nothing in this town, not even a practicing thief. I can't help my brother, myself—or you."

  "Me!" said Jame in surprise. "Why? Do you think I need it?"

  "Yes . . . if what I've heard is true. It's rumored that the Shadow Thief will have a double assignment this time. You're the second half of it."

  "I'm honored."

  "Jame, please! Be serious. This is no ordinary assassin. We're talking about a . . . a 'temporarily detached soul of special malignancy and power, or so the Guild archivist tells me, 'a psychic vampire that steals the soul and kills simultaneously with the touch of a hand.' No one knows who it was seven years ago, but your friend Bane's name has been mentioned, and you've told me yourself that he consigned his soul to Ishtier at about that time. Perhaps the priest loaned it to Theocandi. I've heard rumors too about how cozy he and the Sirdan were during the last Council session. If that was the case then and again now, don't count on Bane's friendship—such as it is—to protect you. The Shadow Thief has no will but his master's, and in this case, that's Theocandi."

  "I'm still honored. Look, Dally, when Canden left, I told him that I would take full responsibility for any consequences. If they only involve a game of 'tag-you're-dead,' I'll consider that I've gotten off lightly. But what about you? What are your plans?"

  "They hardly matter now, do they?" he said, startling her with his sudden note of hopelessness. "I'll wait, and see what role Mendy wants me to play."

  "Just the same, it can't be very healthy to be his brother just now. Stay here awhile. The inn is safe enough. Stay with me."

  He gave her a quick glance of surprised gratitude, then looked away again, the light fading from his face. "I wish I could," he said dully, "but I can't desert him, now least of all, when everyone else is. I should be getting back to the party's headquarters in case he needs me for anything tonight."

  "Well, at least take some precautions," she said, touching the sleeve of his royal blue d'hen. "You shouldn't go around wearing his color, tonight of all nights. Change jackets with me. This one should fit you
; after all, it used to be yours."

  "N-no. . . . somehow that would be almost as bad as staying here. I'll be all right. Good-bye, Jame. My father's blessings on you."

  He took her hands and stood looking at her for a moment, then turned and walked away. She watched him go, wondering at her sudden impulse to follow him. Then Kithra called, and she went in to help.

  * * *

  DALLY CROSSED the square, thinking about the boy he had killed. The thin form darting forward, the sudden scuffle on the steps, the boy's astonished face as steel slid home between his ribs . . . then Men-dalis looking at him over the still-twitching body, cold, remote. Do you think this changes anything?

  What had gone wrong?

  He turned westward onto a narrow side street, a nameless despair gnawing at his heart, eating it away. The corner light sphere shone down on him, startling a flash of blue from his d'hen as he passed.

  Two men muffled in their cloaks watched from the shadow of a doorway. "Yes, that's him," said the larger one heavily when the boy had gone by, "consorting with the chief agent of my enemy, just as you said. I believe it all now." He stepped out into the street, closely followed by his wizened companion.

  Some instinct made Dally turn. He saw the two standing there and recognized both his brother and the Creeper despite their disguises. A sense of unreality and hopelessness deeper than words swept over him. When the others emerged from the shadows all about and closed in on him, he didn't even struggle.

  * * *

  TANISCENT LIVED for two more days. At first, deep in some dream of the past, she called out from time to time for her dancing costume, wine, or Bortis, but then the long silence fell, broken only by the gurgling sound of one who drowns slowly within herself, beyond the help of man.

  Patches came to the inn several times during this period, bringing news from the outside world. The Thieves' Guild was not settling down properly after the excitement of the Election. Usually by this time the loser had either fled or fallen to some assassin's wiles, but Men-dalis refused to do either. He had withdrawn into the fortress like headquarters of his party and from there held together his followers apparently by the sheer fact of his continued existence. It was almost as if he had not yet given up hope of obtaining the sirdanate, although by what means no one could guess. The entire Guild was on edge, sensing the potential violence that lurked beneath this strange state of affairs.

  "One wrong move now and bang!" said Patches at the end of her last visit. "Guild war. That sort of thing, no one wins."

  "Sounds like a good time to go hide under a haystack. What about Dally? How's he managing?"

  "Wouldn't know. No one's seen him since the Election. I expect he's holed up in the fortress with his brother. Oh, before I forget, this is from your master." She handed Jame a folded square of paper, begrimed by the dozen or so hands through which it had passed. Naturally, its seal had long since been broken.

  "Time I was scooting," the Townie said, standing up. "If you do go out tonight, Talisman, walk wary, won't you? You've a lot of enemies out there, the Sirdan not least, just waiting for you to break cover."

  She left. Jame read the note, smiling slightly both at its contents—which, in part, rather surprised her—and at the thought that Patches, illiterate as she was, had still found a way to familiarize herself with the message.

  Early that night, Taniscent died. They laid her out in her own room with fire and iron at both door and window and the usual effigy, hastily carved from a bar of soap, in the next room. The Keepers of the Dead would come for her in the morning. Kithra unearthed the dancer's little rosewood box of cosmetics and tried to make her more presentable, but nothing could disguise the network of wrinkles, those sunken eyes with their blue-veined lids or the shriveled lips. It was very hard to remember just then that Taniscent had only been twenty-five years old.

  Jame found that she couldn't face the prospect of an all-night wake.

  "If you can spare me," she said to Cleppetty, "I'm going out. Penari sent me a note this afternoon. It seems that despite everything, I've been promoted to journeyman, and he wants to celebrate." ? "Do you think that's wise?"

  "No, but it's the only chance I may get to say a proper farewell to the city. This is Marc's last night on guard duty. In a day or so, as soon as I can find out what's happened to Dally, we'll be off down the Tone, bound for the Eastern Sea."

  "I keep forgetting you two are leaving us so soon. It will seem strange here without you. I've almost forgotten what peace and quiet are like."

  Jame laughed and went.

  She found Penari up a spiral stair in the Maze, chucking rare manuscripts over his shoulders onto the floor far below in an irate search for some ancient tract probably devoured by mice a quarter century before. He would never acknowledge the ravages of time, here anymore than out in his beloved Tai-tastigon, which made housekeeping rather a problem. In fact, as he came rattling down from the heights, Jame suddenly remembered that the stairway he was on, an infrequently used one, had several broken treads near the top. Before she would shout a warning, however, he was at the spot and past it without missing a step. It must have been the wrong staircase after all, she thought, helping the old man to find his cloak, which Monster had tried to convert into a nest. Then they set off.

  Penari had not been out of the Maze since the night he had taken her to be enrolled at the Guild Hall. For the most part, he lived quite comfortably with his memories and the supplies left weekly by arrangement inside one of the Maze entrances, only emerging himself on special occasions, such as the time Monster had chosen the previous Feast of Dead Gods to come down with a sore throat, which required physic. Paddling through the streets with him now, Jame wondered if the unspecified tavern of his youth, for which they were bound, was still in existence. It would be just like him to burst into some private home built on its ruins and demand service. Soon, however, she saw that she needn't have worried. Ahead of them loomed the Cross'd Stars, an inn that had stood for better than two hundred years and was good for as many more.

  Penari's sudden appearance there caused a considerable stir. He was quickly absorbed at one of the main tables in a babble of greetings, some from friends whom he had apparently not seen in decades.

  Jame quietly took a seat a little back from the others. Just as the Moon catered to apprentices, the Stars had masters and high officials of the Guild as its primary clientele. There wasn't another journeyman in the room, and most of the men at the table were arch-partisans of Theocandi, who had probably done everything in his power to prevent her own promotion. Some celebration this was going to be.

  She was trying to think of an excuse to slip away when the trouble started.

  Someone had congratulated Penari on Theocandi's success, and he was responding in a typically sharp-tongued way when one of the Sirdan's lieutenants's slammed down his tankard.

  "Thai's balls, man!" he exclaimed thickly. "What sort of a brother are you not to have helped the Old Man when he needed it? What are a few secrets compared to the sirdanate? 'Greatest thief in Tai-tastigon'—ha! If you really had anything worth knowing, it would have come out long before this."

  "Are you trying to say," said Penari in a dangerous voice, "that I don't deserve my reputation?"

  "D-damn right. Name one thing you've stolen lately, 'greatest thief.'"

  The old man scowled. "Name one thing—anything— and I will steal it. Now. Tonight."

  "Sir, no!" hissed Jame at his back under cover of the commotion that had broken out at the table.

  "All right: the other Eye of Abarraden. Steal that, if you dare."

  "Done!" cried Penari with glee.

  "Oh, God," Jame said, putting a hand over her face.

  * * *

  THE ARGUMENT continued all the way to the Temple District, waxing steadily.

  "Look," said Jame at last, catching the old man's arm and making him stop in the shadow of the gate. "Even if that man back at the Stars was as drunk as he seemed (whi
ch I doubt), look at the situation you've let him maneuver you into: no time to scout the land, even less to lay out escape routes, and enough publicity to make an escort of trumpeters superfluous. You think the guards are deaf? One word in the wrong ear and your venerable hide is up for grabs."

  "I tell you, I know what I'm doing," said Penari petulantly. "Remember, this isn't the first time I've been on this particular errand. Besides, no one will betray me. Such things simply aren't done."

  "Someone did it to me when I took the Peacock Gloves to the Moon. All right, at the very least, I'm going with you."

  "Huh! You just want to nose out my secrets."

  "If I hear that word one more time, I'm going to take a flying leap at the nearest brick wall. Has it ever occurred to you that I simply don't want that scrawny neck of yours to get broken? Loyalty is the only virtue I happen to possess; kindly stop throwing it back in my face."

  "You mean it, don't you, boy?" he said, peering at her. "Well, come along, then. I suppose you've earned the right."