The reign of Istar t2-1

by Margaret Weis

  Too late for me, though, sword-cut and bleeding…

  Peverell — bruised and scraped and grinning — threw himself down on his knees beside me, gestured wildly, but I couldn't figure it out. The light, the running, raining red and silver, began to fade, then vanished altogether, taking feeling and sound with it.

  I awoke in another place, a sturdy cottage so light and bright and clean that if I did not have wounds and weakness to gainsay the thought, I'd have believed the canyon no more than a place in a nightmare. The first thing I saw was Peverell, and he was chattering to an elderly woman in his silent way, his hands swooping and flying. After a while, the old woman, her face wrinkled like a winter apple, shooed him away as though he were a pesky hen gotten into the house. I wondered, in a vague kind of way, what they'd been talking about, but I fell asleep again.

  I slept often and long. One evening I awoke to find Dinn standing beside me.

  "There is no longer debt between us, human," he said. "You kept her safe when I could not. They're right. You'll do, Hunter-Doune, if you live." He said that last grudgingly, with a sullen shake of his horns.

  Dinn wasn't the only one who was unsure whether I'd survive my wounds. I wasn't all that certain about it myself, but Alyce wasn't having any of that. She was always near, and one morning I awoke to see her standing in the open doorway, looking out. Her left arm was bandaged above the elbow. She wore a soft blue gown of some light, widewoven fabric, the hem of it just brushing sun-browned ankles.

  I don't know why I remembered it then — with her looking like a breeze-blown flower come to settle on the doorstep, but in memory I heard someone shout, Kell! And heard her yell, to me! To me!

  "Are you Kell?" I asked her.

  She turned from the doorway, her blue eyes darkly thoughtful. She was weighing a risk. Finally she said, "Yes. You see, Hunter-Doune, Dinn does know where that terrible heretic Kell hides out."

  "But why — ?"

  She shook her head, laid a finger on my lips, then she pressed her own lips to my forehead. To check for fever, she said.

  Later that day I awoke and Alyce was not in the cottage, but I wasn't alone. I had a visitor. He sat in a chair pulled close to the side of the bed, a tankard of ale in his hand. His eyes, dark and a little flecked with blue, were soft-focused, as though his thoughts were far away.

  On second look, I saw that what I'd thought was sunlight glinting in his black beard was the silvering of time's passing. He'd aged, and that shouldn't have been surprising. It had been about seven years since I'd last seen him. When he saw me awake, he turned in the chair, and I saw that he'd lost something since the last time I'd seen him: a leg. In its place, strapped to the stump where a knee should have been, was a carved wooden peg.

  Although it hurt to move, I raised my left hand, palm up, and hit it with my right fist. Now I knew the meaning of Peverell's puzzling gesture: A hammer hitting an anvil.

  Four days. Surprise. Friend.

  Toukere Hammerfell.

  "Touk," I said, though hoarsely for trying to sound calm. "Where am I?"

  "Ah, well, that's a story." He raised the tankard, drank, and held it out to me.

  "No," I said. "I don't drink ale."

  Smiling a little, as if he were looking down a long road to an old memory, he said, "Guess you had your fill the night I left Istar, eh? Well, then, listen good, Hunter-Doune. There's a lot to tell about me and the Vale."

  He told me there were two mages living in the Vale. They had made the sky over the canyon rain red and silver light. He grinned when he said that, held that those mages did a fine job of scaring the feeble wits out of the goblins with their little light game. He told me there were five clerics, and some declared their allegiance to the gods of good by their white garb. Others wore the red of neutrality. According to Toukere, it was one of the red-robed clerics who had healed the worst of my hurts.

  "And there's enough people — young men and old, grannies and mothers and children — to fill up a small town," he said. "Some of 'em you saw in the canyon, which is no great distance from here. Good fighters when they have to be, but mostly they're farmers."

  "But this is no town, Touk, is it?"

  He allowed as how it wasn't, not exactly. The Vale was a deep, high-sided valley tucked between two rising mountain peaks. The people who lived there hunted the highlands, raised cows and chickens and pigs, had a fine forge at the broad fording place of the river. Kell's father had founded the place.

  "Alyce — Kell — told me her father was a mercenary."

  Touk shrugged. "He was, once, for a while, but he was a pretty good thinker, and he got to thinking that this habit the Kingpriest has of slaughtering in the name of goodness is a strange one. Once that idea got hold of him, it didn't let go. He opposed the Kingpriest's persecutions with everything he had — heart and soul. He did more than talk about it. He settled this place.

  "You call his daughter Alyce," Toukere said, "but that's only a traveling name. Here we name her Kell, for that's what her father called her. Kell o' the Vale."

  He told me that all the folk who lived in the Vale were free believers in whatever god or gods they chose. Many of them had come by way of dark paths, hunted for bounty and driven by desperation into the goblin lands. He said that every one of them — men and dwarves and elves, one kender and a minotaur — owed their lives to Kell, the heretic who, like her father, did not believe that torment and execution were fit ways to honor the gods of good.

  "We get on well, Hunter-Doune. By which I mean we don't kill each other over the big matters, and we feel free to squabble over the small things."

  "We?"

  He finished off the ale and thumped the mug against his wooden leg. He winced a little when he did that, and I saw that the wood was newly carved. The amputation wasn't old enough to be used to.

  "We're awfully close to goblin lands, here," he said. "That's good and bad. Good because it keeps the Kingpriest's spies and casual visitors away. Bad because we have to keep patrols on our borders against the blackhearted goblins. I am — " He ran his palm along the wood again. "I was the one who led those patrols. No more."

  "What happened, Touk?"

  He shrugged. "Just what it looks like. Lost my leg to a goblin's axe, lay too long for the cleric to heal me. But I'm not here to talk about me, Doune. I'm here to talk about you."

  Now, go reckon this — because I can't. There he sat, my old partner whose advice I'd remembered and lived by even all the years after I'd thought him dead, the old friend whose memory I'd sworn by — and I was suddenly angry. Angry and wondering why he'd not found a moment to spare to let me know that he was not dead.

  "You want to talk about me?" I said bitterly. "Why, I'm just fine, Touk. Sword-cut, my ribs broken, gnawed by goblins, and the rest of me feeling like I've been run over by a wagon. But otherwise, fine. How've you been?"

  "Now hear me, Hunter-Doune," he said. "Hear me."

  "Hear you? No, Touk Hammerfell. You listen to me — "

  "Hear me!" His dark, blue-flecked eyes flared, as they'd so often done when — as he liked to say — I had the stubborn fit on me.

  "It's me who told Kell to bring you here," he said, "and that was a risk. I knew you seven years ago, Hunter-Doune, but I didn't know what you'd become since then. Still I talked Kell into taking the risk. Ah, blackmailed her, I guess you'd say, told her she owed me for my leg."

  "Why, Touk?"

  He sucked in his cheeks, as he did when he was thinking, then spoke in a rush, as he did when he was trying to get past sentiment.

  "I've never forgotten you, Hunter-Doune, and I hoped

  … I hoped you'd still be the man I remembered. I'd have gone for you myself, but you see I couldn't. We need someone trusty, and someone keen-witted. Someone who — " He shook his head, then went off on another tack. "They're mostly all farmers here, not fighters. The minotaur wanted the job. He wants nothing more than to be killing goblins every chance he gets. But you know how minot
aurs are. Hotheaded and not good at leading men. I'll tell you, he didn't much like being the bait in this game."

  "Bait? For what? For me?"

  "Well, I've been dead these seven years, haven't I? Caught by some bounty hunter in Xak Tsaroth." He grinned, an old familiar twist of his lips. "I don't reckon you'd have believed it if anyone came to say that your old friend Touk Hammerfell wanted to have a chat."

  I gave him that.

  "So we used Dinn for bait. A nice big minotaur — worth what, ninety gold these days? — wandering your usual stomping grounds and ready for the taking."

  I sighed, and he gave me a sharp look.

  "I'm not doing a very good job explaining, am I?"

  "No," I said. "You're not."

  There came a soft sound, a bare foot whispering against the floor rushes. Alyce stood in the doorway, as bright as a sapphire in a golden fall of sunlight. She came to stand beside Touk.

  "Let me try," she said. "Doune, we need a new captain for our border patrol" — she rested a hand on Touk's shoulder — "and you come highly recommended."

  "Why did Kell himself — herself — come after me?"

  She laughed, her blue eyes sparkling. "I told you when we first met that you were a legend where I come from. Touk insisted that you were the man we need, but I like to make very certain about the people who are going to live here. There wasn't all that much danger for me in Istar. They're too busy spinning up legends about Terrible Kell to know who I really am. So, who better to decide whether you were trustworthy?"

  "And if you'd decided that I wasn't?"

  "Easy enough to lose our way in the canyons." She smiled, her cheeks dimpling. "They're very twisty and winding. You'd have had no trouble believing that Dinn had lost his way."

  I looked at the ceiling, trying to get all this into shape.

  No murdered party of innocent pilgrims? I asked. None, she told me. No looted shrines and slaughtered clerics? Not a one, she said. No silver pennies stolen from dead men's eyes?

  She shuddered. "I hate that story worst of all. No. I have my ideas about what's right, and I see that they get heard out there in the world. That's all."

  I nodded. "No bounty then, I suppose?"

  "None. Just a job, Hunter-Doune, guarding good people and keeping them safe. A home with an old friend." She glanced away, her eyes hidden beneath the veil of her dark lashes. "And some new ones. Are you with us, HunterDoune?"

  Touk looked from her to me, raised an eyebrow. "Well, well," he muttered. "So that's the way of it, eh? I thought the kender was just making it up."

  "Oh, hush, Touk," she said, her cheeks flushing, but she didn't say it very insistently.

  Touk laughed and slapped his knee — his good one. "So what about it, Hunter-Doune? Are you with us?"

  Once Alyce had promised me a bounty so great that no place I could stash the treasure would be empty. I'd been thinking about gold; she'd been talking about a home, a place of trust, and an old friend. Now, watching her smooth white cheek coloring rosy, I understood that she was offering something more.

  I told Touk that I'd sworn a good oath to deal honestly with Alyce, said that I reckoned that the oath held for Kell, too.

  Later, when the sky was filled with stars and Solinari's light shone in though the window, Alyce — the terrible outlaw, Kell o' the Vale — brushed her lips against my forehead in such a way that I knew she wasn't thinking about fever.

  "Once I thought it would be impossible to fill up those empty places of yours," she whispered. "I thought Touk was wrong, that you weren't the man for us. But when I saw you watching the nomad woman running, when I saw you feeling for her, really feeling so that you wanted to turn away but couldn't — "

  She smiled, as she had then, as though she were seeing me for the first time and liking what she saw.

  "Welcome home, Hunter-Doune."

  She kissed me again, and I felt her lips move in a smile like a promise.

  Off Day

  Dan Parkinson

  In a place of shadows, small shadows moved.

  Sunlight filtered among tumbled stone debris, where great blocks of granite lay in mountains of rubble, braced one against another where they fell. The light shone down through cracks and crevices to illuminate the smooth, damp floor of a meandering tunnel far beneath the ground. Here centuries of rainwater had scoured gullies beneath the rubble, gullies that led downward to larger, cavernous sumps below the massive foundations of a great temple.

  In the dim light, shadows wound their way upward — small, furtive shadows moving in single file, moving silently… or nearly so.

  Thump. The line of shadows slowed, became shorter as trailing shadows converged on those in front. The foremost shadow spun around and said, "Sh!"

  "Somebody fall down," a voice whispered.

  "Sh!" the lead shadow repeated, emphatically.

  Then they were moving again. The source of the eroded gully was a V-shaped opening between squared stones, a seep where stones had settled, pulling apart from one another.

  The lead shadow paused, said, "Sh!" again, and disappeared into the cleft. The others followed, into darkness beyond.

  Darkness, then dim light from somewhere ahead. With the light, the sounds of voices and the smells of cooking food. The light came through a narrow crack; the lead shadow stopped again. Others piled up behind, and again there were abrupt, soft sounds.

  Thud. A hushed voice, "Oof!"

  Another voice, "Ow! Careful!"

  "Sh!"

  "Somebody bump into somebody."

  "Sh!"

  Thump.

  "Somebody fall down again."

  "Shhh!"

  Silence again, and the little shadows crept one by one through the crack and into a large, lamp-lit, vaulted room where ovens radiated, meat sizzled over coals, pots steamed on blazing grates, and people worked — people far larger than the shadowy little figures that darted across an open space and under a laden cutting table.

  One of the tall people in the kitchen glanced around. "What was that?"

  "What?" another asked.

  "Did you see something just then?"

  "No. What was it?"

  "Nothing, I guess. Take a look at those loaves, will you?"

  A large person turned away and bent to peer into an oven. "A few more minutes. I… now where did THAT go?"

  "What?"

  "Half a duck." The voice sounded mystified, then irritated. "Come on, now. These roast ducks are for the guards' hall. Who took it?"

  "I didn't, so don't glare at me. It doesn't matter. Get that tray ready. You know how the guards are when they're hungry."

  "All right, but I hope nobody notices that there are only eleven and a half ducks here."

  Large people came and went, and the little shadows worked their way from cover to cover, across the kitchen to a half-open pantry door in a shadowed corner. Behind them, another voice shouted, "How many loaves did you put into this oven? I think some are missing"

  Through the pantry the little shadows moved, fanning out, investigating everything. Here and there, small items disappeared from shelves and benches. Past the pantry was a wide hall, dimly lit, where linen robes hung from pegs on the walls and pairs of sandals lay beneath them. Curtained cubicles lined the hall. From behind some came the sounds of rhythmic breathing and an occasional snore.

  "Oh!" a voice whispered. "Pretty."

  "Sh!"

  Tools and implements lay on heavy-timber benches in a stone-walled workshop. As the shadows passed, a few of these items disappeared. At the far wall of the workshop, tanned and treated hides stood rolled and bound. Other hides hung on the wall, and others were stacked in piles beside large, covered vats.

  A shadow paused near a big elk hide, freshly cured. "Pretty," a whisper said. "Make nice sleeping mat."

  "Gorge'! I take that for hisself," another whisper noted.

  "After th' fight, he will," the first said, determinedly.

  Candles lighted a wid
e eating hall, where large men sat at long tables, wolfing down food and ale as servants carried in laden trays, took them out empty.

  "Burnish and polish, scour and shine," a deep voice growled. "I'm about worn out from rubbing armor."

  "Captain's orders," another grunted. "Spit and polish all the way. Big things afoot."

  "Whole council's here now," a third said. "The ninth delegation just came in. Kingpriest's birthday, the clerics say."

  Between ranks and rows of large legs and big feet, small shadows scurried single file beneath a row of tables. Here and there, near the edge of the tables, bits of food disappeared.

  Thump.

  "Sh!"

  "Somebody fall down again," a faint whisper explained.

  Above the table a guardsman turned to the one next to him. "What?"

  "What, what?"

  "Who fell down?"

  "Who did WHAT?"

  "Never mind. I… owl Keep your feet to yourself, joker!"

  Beyond the feasting hall, past a crack behind a tapestry, a wide, dim room held ranked cots. Here and there were sleeping men. Suits of armor hung on wooden stands.

  Shadows moved about.

  "Not much here," a voice whispered. "Nice stuff, but all way too big."

  "Sh!"

  "Here somethin'. Hey, nice an' shiny." Metal clinked against metal.

  "Sh!"

  After a time, the shadows were gone, back the way they had come. Except for the ordinary sounds of the temple, now there was only silence.

  Through ancient seeps caused by ancient rainfall, shadows moved — small, hurrying shadows laden with bulging net sacks, armloads of various things, and objects of all descriptions. The seeps widened into caverns and ahead were glows of light and the muffled sounds of voices.

  Thump… Clatter. Crash.

  The line slowed. "What now?" the lead shadow demanded.

  "Somebody fall down."

  The shadows moved on, then stopped abruptly as a mighty roar came from somewhere — a roar like the rushing of water. A shout mingled with the sound, then stopped abruptly, only to return as a frantic echo of someone splashing and coughing.