Soul of the City tw-8

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  She took another glass of wine. A third when that ran out. The room swam in a haze, and the voices buzzed distantly in her ears. She picked at food and picked at another course and drank another cup until she could stare about the room without more than a distant trepidation. The conversation about the hall grew more relaxed. Tasfalen whispered invitation in her ear and she only blinked and gave him a dazed look at close range, lost for a moment in blue eyes and a masculine scent unlike Haught's, whose clothes always smelled of Ischade.

  Doomed, she thought, damned. Dead. Gods save this man. Gods save me. And she held his hand until his closed on hers with painful force.

  "My lady," Tasfalen whispered once, "what's wrong? What's happening here?"

  "I can't say," she whispered back; while Ischade said something else to Tempus, which made less sense than before. Of a sudden she realized they were speaking some foreign tongue.

  And there was no laughter. There was sudden quiet all about the table. No word from Straton or the man next to him. Critias. The men nearest caught that contagion and it spread down the table. Wine stayed untouched.

  "It's sufficient," Ischade said at last. "Your pardon." And rose.

  Tempus got to his feet. Straton was next. The whole company began to rise, and Moria thrust herself from her seat, tangling her legs and the skirts and the resisting fabric of the chair until Tasfalen's arm steadied her. She stood there with her heart pounding in terror no wine could numb, suffered Ischade's direct glance, suffered a moment that Ischade put out a hand, lifted her chin with a delicate forefinger and stared her straight in the eyes.

  "M-m-mis-"

  "How fine you've become," Ischade said, and there was hell in that look, that sent a weakness through her bones and her sinews and made her sway against Tasfalen. Ischade let her go then, and nodded to the lord Tasfalen, as Straton came and took her arm. She walked toward the door with Straton, while everyone stayed standing and the confused kitchen started sending out another course.

  A low murmur went past their backs. Slowly Tempus settled to his chair again. It was going to go on. She was left with these men after all. Moria sank back to her chair with the last strength in her legs and smiled desperately at Tasfalen.

  Ischade walked for the door, paused to gather her cloak from the bannister of the stairs, and let Straton drape it about her shoulders. "Thank you," she said, and walked on toward the door. Stopped abruptly as he followed. She looked back at him and felt her whole frame shudder with the effort of calm, with the effort to keep her face composed and her movements natural. "I said," she told him carefully, "that I needed time to myself. Don't touch me-" As he reached his hand toward her.

  "I hod to come, dammit!"

  "I said not!"

  "Who is that man?"

  She saw the madness in his eyes. Or it reflected hers, which pounded in her veins and grew to physical pain. He caught her arms and she flung up her head and stared him in the eyes until the hands lost the strength in their grip. But the pain grew; became madness, became the thing that killed.

  She shoved him back, violently, walked with quick steps to the door and heard his steps behind her. She turned before he reached her.

  "Stay away!" she hissed. "Fool!"

  And jerked the door open and fled, into the wind, and on it.

  CHILDREN OF ALL AGES by Lynn Abbey

  It was spring in the lush forests far to the south of Sanctuary. Trees and shrubs put forth their leaves; delicate flowers swayed on gentle winds and, beneath a swag of ivory blossoms, a mongoose sneezed violently. He sneezed a second time and for a moment he was not a mongoose but something larger, something with huge, flapping ears. Then he was a mongoose again- preening his thick, musteline fur; fluffing out his tail and casting coy glances at the female a leap and a bound away. The female chattered her response and they were off along the branches, across a stream and ever further from the magical trap Randal had laid for her.

  The Tysian mage had conjured and cast to exhaustion looking for her. She was the finest mongoose alive: the largest, the fastest, the boldest, and the most intelligent. She had, at least, evaded every snare he'd set from his power-web in distant Sanctuary until, in desperation, he'd transferred his essence to the forest to pursue her in person-or, rather, in mongoose. She was also, as mongooses measured such matters, the most wildly attractive creature in the forest. Giving himself over to mongoose instincts was doing Randal's vow of chastity no good at all. If he didn't lure her into the charmed sphere soon he'd forget himself completely and settle down to the business of begetting.

  Forgetting Sanctuary and everything it stood for was not an entirely unattractive notion-especially when her tail flicked across his nose and he was lost enough in mongoose-ness that he didn't sneeze. Roxane was missing; Ischade was irrational and bloated with power; the Stormchildren were moribund with a venom the snake-worshiping Beysib did not understand pooling in their veins; a dead god's high priest had been revealed to be a Nisibisi warlock-and those were only Randal's magic-tainted concerns. The mage had, however, one concern that stood above all the rest; which made him secure against momentary lust and drew him, and her, back to the grove where a circle of stones glowed a faint blue. Nikodemos, the impossible Stepson whom Randal worshiped with a chaste, fervent love, was trapped at the focus of every dangerous incongruity prowling Sanctuary and anything that might help Niko was worth every risk Randal might have to take.

  She had caught him when they reached the grove. They were rolling across the grass when they pierced the sphere and hurtled through nothingness back to the palace alcove where the body of Randal slumped over an embossed Nisibisi Globe of Power. The transfer back into himself was all the more uncomfortable for the mongoose teeth digging into his neck and the pottery crags of the Wizardwall mountains pressing against his breastbone. Randal slipped from the world back into nothingness and sheer panic. He had almost regained himself when a weighted net slapped over him.

  "The cage, Molin. Damn you, the cage before she eats through my damned neck!"

  "Coming up." The erstwhile high priest of Vashanka brandished a wicker-and-wire cage while magician and mongoose thrashed on the table.

  Having the cage was not the same as having the unrequited mongoose in the cage. Both men were bloodied and torn before the bolt was thrown.

  "You were supposed to have the cage ready."

  "And you were supposed to be back before sundown- sundown yesterday, I might add."

  "You're my assistant, my apprentice. Apprentices are like children: Children don't make decisions; they do as they're told. And if I tell you to have the cage ready-you have the cage ready no matter when I return," the magician complained, daubing at the wounds on his neck.

  The men stared at each other until Randal looked away. Molin Torchholder was too accustomed to power to be any man's apprentice.

  "I thought it best to save the globe after you and she knocked it off its pedestal," he explained, nodding toward the table where an unremarkable pottery sphere rested against a half-emptied wine glass.

  Randal slumped back against the wall. "You touched an activated Globe of Power," he mused. He possessed the globe and still hesitated before touching it, but the high priest simply picked it up. "You could have been killed-or worse," Randal added as an afterthought. His fingers wove glyphs that made the globe first shimmer, then vanish into that way-station between realities magicians called their "cabinets."

  "I've made my way doing what had to be done," Molin said when the process was complete. "You've led me to believe that the destruction of that globe could unbind the planes of existence. I can see that, at its heart, the globe is nothing but a piece of poorly made pottery. Perhaps it was necessary to use magic to destroy it, as you and Ischade did with Roxane's, but, perhaps, simply falling off the pedestal would be as effective a destruction. I could not take the risk of experiment; I moved the globe."

  Priesthoods, Randal considered as he met Molin's stare, did a better job of educ
ating their acolytes than the mageguilds did with their apprentices. Askelon, at his most magnificent, could breathe more life into the simplest phrases, making every word a threat and a promise and a truth. But Askelon was hardly mortal anymore. Not that Molin Torchholder was exactly typical ofVashanka's priesthood. Randal had met Brachis, Molin's hierarchical superior, and been singularly unimpressed. The truth was that only Tempus, who broke mercenaries', mages', and priests' rules at his whim, could conceal more raw power in his voice and gestures.

  It was a realization to make a cautious mageling look in some other convenient direction. "You might make a mistake one day, Torchholder," he said with a confidence he did not feel.

  "I will make many mistakes; I already have. Someday, I expect, I will make a mistake I cannot survive-but I haven't yet."

  Randal found himself staring at the unfinished portrait of Niko, Tempus, and Roxane that Molin had nailed to the wall behind his worktable. There was considerable similarity between the witch and the priest even though she had been portrayed transforming herself into her favored black eagle and Molin's facial bones showed some of the refinements ofRankan aristocratic patrimony. It wasn't surprising: the priest had been born to a Nisi witch. He had, thus far, adhered to his promise to learn only enough to defend his soul from his heritage, but if he ever wavered from that determination, now that the destruction of Roxane's globe had every latent magician in Sanctuary on the threshold of Hazard status, he would make the Wizardwall masters look like children.

  Molin said, "Not if you help me," as if he'd read the younger man's thoughts. "The price is too high."

  The mongoose, who in the transfer from the forest to Sanctuary had experienced being Randal as much as he had experienced being a mongoose, responded to her desired mate's distress with an eruption of motion and noise that bounced the cage onto the floor. She set her teeth into the wooden slats and splintered two of them before Randal reached her. Two were all she needed, however, to squeeze out of her confinement. She was on his shoulder in an instant, her claws finding purchase in his brocaded cloak and her tail ringing his neck.

  "I'm ... going ... to ... sneeze!" And he did-with an eruption that sent his defender, and a small portion of his left ear, flying across the room.

  Molin dove toward the door to capture the lithe creature before it gained freedom in the endless corridors of the palace. Randal laughed through his sneezes; the sight was worth an earlobe. Nothing remained of Torchholder's intensity or his dignity as he slid along the polished stone on his belly.

  Despite these losses the priest kept his reputation: he did what had to be done. Blunt fingers pinched the animal's collarbone and a well-protected arm both supported her and pinned her against his ribcage.

  "Chiringee?" Molin crooned, rubbing a free finger under her chin as he got to his feet, his long robe wrinkled, twisted, and revealing the naked, muscular thighs of an experienced soldier and brawler. "So eager, are you?" He squared his shoulders, the weighted hem dropped, and he resumed his perfect lifelong disguise as priest and court functionary. "Well, let us go to the nursery then and let you meet the little ones you'll be guarding."

  Randal followed, blotting his wounds with his sleeve.

  The nursery was more a chaotic phenomenon of palace society than a physical location. Its denizens were moved from dungeons to rooftops, from the depths of the Beysib enclave to the warmth and abundance of the kitchens as the fears and influence of its overlords shifted. For three days a cavern-ceilinged hall known as the Ilsig Bedchamber had managed to contain it to everyone's satisfaction.

  Protocol demanded that no one pass the guards without careful inspection. Molin, Randal, and Chiringee waited until Jihan pushed her way through the doors. She accepted the men in an eyeblink but stared hard at the mongoose, drawing on the arcane intuitions she possessed as Froth Daughter to archetypal Stormbringer only temporarily in mortal form.

  "So this is the unnatural creature who is supposed to protect the children better than I? It smells of Wizardwall magic."

  "Well, she is larger and more intelligent than she should be. It was an unexpected benefit from the transition-"

  Randal had more to say, but Molin took command again, leading their way into the nursery.

  The hour candle beside Jihan's cross-legged stool was half-burnt-nearly midnight. The chamber was silent except for the rapid, shallow breathing of the Stormchildren who should have been in their hardwood beds but had been in Jihan's arms and were now draped one over the other on the floor. She scooped them up before settling back on the stool.

  "They should be in their beds," Randal complained. "How can you protect them with them sleeping in your lap?"

  "They were restless with fever."

  "They're two steps from death, lady. They haven't moved in a week!"

  "I will protect them as I see fit-and I don't need a little mage flaunting his borrowed power and his menagerie...." Her eyes had begun to glow and the air in the bedchamber had gone frosty.

  Molin dropped the mongoose and placed his hands against both of them. "Jihan, Chiringee is only another precaution, like the guards outside, to assist you. No one challenges what your father has ordained: you are the Caretaker."

  Jihan's eyes cooled and the room began to warm.

  In point of fact, Randal was not tremendously impressed by Jihan's caretaking. The woman, if she could be called that, was obsessed with maternal longings; she had clutched the Stormchildren to her breast when Roxane's snake made its attack rather than drawing her sword and attacking like the hellcat fighter she was. Both children had been bitten and she had taken a divine battering, but the worst injuries had fallen on Niko when he had come to her rescue.

  Jihan had recovered almost at once and Sanctuary was better off with Arton and Gyskouras deep in envenomed slumber but Niko, despite Tempus's concern and Jihan's healing, looked and felt worse than the White Foal undead. He was also, because of his need for Jihan's healing touch, a permanent resident of the nursery along with the Stonnchildren.

  Randal didn't pretend to understand Niko's enthrallment with Roxane or his all consuming interest in the Stonnchildren-he didn't even understand his own affection for the jinxed mercenary who had rejected his friendship more than once. He had touched Chiringee when they mingled in the transfer sphere, inoculating her with his love for Niko and an awareness of Roxane's essence (an essence which, albeit neutralized, pervaded his own Globe of Power whose previous owner had loved and used the beautiful witch countless times). The mongoose might not be able to slay the snakes but she would give Niko a few moments of warning and that, not the safety of the Stormchildren, was all that mattered to Randal.

  "We had a cage built for her but, with the influence of the transfer, it wasn't enough to hold her," Molin was explaining to Jihan. "We'll have Arton's father make a stronger one in the morning. In the meantime I'll tell the guards to keep the Beysib women out. She'd go after their vipers."

  "Then don't build a cage," the Froth Daughter said with an icy laugh. "They need a few less snakes."

  "The vipers are sacred to the Beysib and to Mother Bey. You, most especially, should respect this," Molin said sternly as the temperature continued to drop.

  "Mother Bey! Mother Bey, my hind foot. Do you know where she found her first snake? That's all she needs, you know, a silly blood-mouth World Serpent. Not my father. No, she doesn't need him at all!"

  When she wasn't doting on the children, Jihan fumed about her father's progressive entanglement with the fish-folk's goddess, Mother Bey. Jihan, who had never had a rival for her father's affection, was developing a dangerous resentment for all things Beysib.

  Gods were the priests' problems. Randal had heard the adolescent protests before and was openly relieved to leave them to Molin. He found a fist-sized watch-lamp beside the glowing brazier, lit it, and headed toward the curtained alcove where Niko convalesced. Tempus had forbidden the direct application of magic on his partner's wounds so Jihan worked her healing th
rough vile unguents; the taint of rotting offal drew Randal to the alcove more surely than the flickering lamplight. He swallowed his sneezes as he drew the curtain aside and stood at Niko's feet.

  The mercenary thrashed on his pallet in the grip of nightmares or pain.

  "Leave me be!" he gasped-and Randal pressed his back against the wall of the alcove.

  Chiringee had followed the magician. She stalked across the damp, discarded linens, easily eluding Randal's cautious attempts to restrain her. Her teeth glistened and her tail quivered as it only did when she was closing on her prey. Randal set the lamp carefully on the footboard and moved closer.

  "Leave me!" Niko murmured again before his words became incoherent moans and his body stiffened into an arch above the pallet.

  Randal froze, horrified not merely because the creature he had enchanted to protect Niko was going to rip through the soft flesh of that Stepson's neck but because he knew, despite his chastity, that Niko was a victim of neither nightmares nor pain. The injured mercenary collapsed flaccidly on the linens; Chiringee's jaws clicked shut harmlessly and Randal watched as Niko's lips moved silently around the word he most feared: "Roxane..."

  The mongoose reared up and began a keening that drew Molin and Jihan to the alcove.

  "He's had a relapse," Randal said, a tremor in his voice. "I'll go tell Tempus." He ran from the alcove and the nursery hoping he could reach privacy before the deceit and sick fear that had taken root in his bowels overcame him.

  "I can see that," Jihan said coldly as she stared first at Molin, then at her patient. She drew the linens up to cover him. "Go now, I'll take care of him alone."