Soul of the City tw-8

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  "Oh, no," said Haught. "Not so readily as that-compatriot. You may even be outranked. Do you want to try me? Or do you want to take the gift I've already given you and be reasonable?"

  The witch laid a hand on her own naked chest, ran it down to the belly. "Is this your sense of humor, man? I assure you I'm not amused."

  "I worked with what I had at hand. If you've seen the staff in this house you know I did quite well. This one-" Haught grasped Moria by the arm and dragged her behind him. "-is mine. The body is Tasfalen Lancothis. He's quite rich. And with your tastes I'm sure you'll find amusement one way or the other."

  Tasfalen's eyes looked up from under the brows and all hell looked out.

  "We'll do better," Haught said, "if we both live that long." He nodded toward the street. "There's considerable disturbance out there. They're back at it again. I found you, I offer you a body. I have the globe. For two wizards, this is an opportune place and an opportune time: Ranke is dying in the streets out there by what I gather. And here-" he moved his foot aside, against Straton's leg. "Here's Tempus's own lieutenant. His chief interrogator. His gatherer of secrets. I think we have something to discuss with him, you and I. Don't we?"

  Tasfalen's nostrils flared. The face seemed hollowed. "I want a drink," Roxane said. "I'm parched."

  "Moria," Haught said.

  "I'm not your damned servant!"

  "I'll get it," Stilcho said, and got up from beside the unconscious Stepson and went for the drawing room.

  "Moria," Haught said. "Don't be a total fool." His hand caressed her shoulder but he never looked her way. "Lover's quarrel," he said to Roxane.

  "Who are you?" Roxane asked, and Haught stiffened; his hand stopped its motion and Tasfalen's face went hard and careful.

  "Answer enough?" Haught asked. "You knew my father. We're almost cousins."

  Roxane/Tasfalen said nothing to that. But the expression became thoughtful, and then something else again, that sent a shiver up Moria's Ilsigi spine. The face of the man she had lately made love with began to take on different lines, flush with lifelike color, and settle into expressions alien to its personality.

  Stilcho brought the drink in a glass, from the carafe and service on the drawing room sideboard. Tasfalen reached for it; Roxane took it and lifted it with a lingering suspicion in the look she turned toward Haught. Then she sipped at it carefully, and let go a small sigh.

  "Better," she said. "Better." And finished the glass and gave it to Stilcho. She put out her male hand in the next instant and stayed him in his departure, then turned the hand as if it had suddenly interested her as much as Stilcho. The fingers ran up the fabric of Stilcho's sleeve. And he stared back with a hard, revolted stare. Of a sudden Tasfalen's face broke into Tas-falen's grin, and a small short laugh came out. "Well." Then the hand dropped and the face turned to them again with the eyes aglitter. "You hold onto that globe so tightly-cousin. You're young, you're handling something you're only half able to use, and you're vulnerable, my young friend. This house is Ischade's property. Anything she's ever handled is a focus she can use; and this is a place she owns, you understand me. I felt your wards when I came through them, a nice little bit of work for what they are, but that streetwalking whore isn't what she was, either. Now do we put something around this house she'll have trouble breaking, or do we just stand here playing power games? Because she's on her way here, you can believe me that she is."

  Haught tucked the pottery globe the more tightly in his arms, then slowly reached out and set it in the air between them. It spun and glowed and Moria flinched away, her arm flung up between herself and that thing. It hummed and throbbed and hung there defying reason; it beat like a heart as it spun, and her own hurt in her chest; her tangled hair lifted on its own with a prickling eerie life, her silken, muddy-hemmed petticoats crackled and stood away from her body with a life of their own. All their hair stood up like that, Tasfalen's, Stilcho's, Haught's, as blue sparks leapt from Tasfalen's outstretched hand, from Haught's fingertips, flying against the globe and spattering outward against the walls, lining the crack of the door, whirling up the stairs and into the drawing room and everywhere. From somewhere in the cellars and the rear of the house there was a general outcry of panic; it had gotten to the servants.

  The sound became pain. It throbbed in time to the pulse. It screamed with a high thin shriek like wind and became her own scream. "No," she cried, "make it stop-"

  Strat moved. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, torn muscles and swollen flesh tensing round the shaft in his chest; something else tore, and the swirl of light spotted with black and went all to gray, but he knew where his enemy stood and he had coordination enough to brace his good hand against the floor, draw up the opposite leg while the pain turned every move weak and fluttery, muscles shaking and weak: one good push, his foot behind the damned Nisi's leg-

  He shoved, with all that was in him. Haught screamed; he thought that was the scream he heard, or it was his own.

  Tasfalen's hands clutched the globe. Tasfalen's face grinned a wolf's grin "There, wizardling."

  Moria made herself as small as she could against the side of the stairs: she shut both eyes, expecting a burst of fire, and opened one, between her fingers. Haught and the witch stood facing each other, Stilcho was down on his knees by the writhing Stepson, but no fire flew.

  "You've a bit to leam," Tasfalen said. "Most of all, a sense of perspective. But I'm willing to take an apprentice."

  From Haught, a long silence: then, quietly: "Is it mistress or master?"

  Tasfalen's right eyebrow jerked in wrath. Then a grin spread over his face. "Oh, I like you well, upstart. I do like you." The pottery globe vanished from his/her hands. "First lesson: don't leave a thing like that in reach."

  "Where is it?" There was the ghost of panic in Haught's voice, and Tasfalen's grin widened. Male hand touched male chest.

  "Here," Tasfalen said. "Or as close as hardly matters. I learned that trick of a Bandaran." He-Moria shuddered: it was impossible to look at that virile body and think she- walked closer and stood looking down at the Stepson, who lay white and still by Stilcho's knee. "Ischade's lover. Oh, you are a find, aren't you? And you're not going to die on us, oh, no, not a chance of that-"

  * * *

  "... A chance of that," a strange voice said; and another, hated: "I've no intentions of it. Not with what he knows."

  "He has uses other than that. Her lover, after all. It has to play havoc with her concentration. Even if personal pride is all that bothers her."

  "Oh, it's more than that." A grip closed on Strat's wrist, lifted that, let go and lifted the other, the wounded hand, with a pain that drove Strat far under for a moment; he came back with the feeling of someone's hands on him, roughly probing among his clothing. "Ah. Here it is."

  "Hers?"

  "I gave it to him. It should have come to you. In your other life."

  He thought what it was then. He would have kept the ring. He was sorry to lose it. He had been a fool. He was sorry for that too. Play havoc with her concentration.

  With what he knows.

  He understood that well too. He had asked the questions for years. His turn now. He thought of a dozen of his own cases and had no illusions about himself. He tried to die. He thought of it as hard as he could. Probably his own cases had thought the identical thought at some stage.

  "He wants to leave us," the one voice said. A feathery touch came at Strat's throat, over the great artery. "That won't do." A warmth spread out from it, his heart sped, a hateful, momentary surge of strength, like a tide carrying him up out of the dark. "Wake up, come on. We're not even started yet. Open the eyes. Or just think about what I'd like to know about your friends. Where they are, what they'll do-it's awfully hard, isn't it, not to think about a thing?"

  Crit. 0 gods. Crit. Was it you after all?

  "We can take him into the kitchen," one suggested. "Plenty of room to work in there."

  "No," a woman cri
ed.

  "Let's not be difficult, shall we? There's a love. Go wash. You'd rather be taking a bath than stay for this, wouldn't you? You do look a mess, Moria."

  THE SMALL POWERS THAT ENDURE by Lynn Abbey

  Battlefield chaos reigned in what had once been Molin Torchholder's private retreat from disorder. Niko lay on the worktable while Jihan brought her healing energies to bear on one tortured joint after another. Now and again the mercenary's eyes would bulge open and the sounds of hell would explode from his mouth. The others would cease their arguings until the Froth Daughter had him quiet; then the frantic bickering would begin again.

  Crit's simple statement, "We fouled up," applied to everyone in the room-none of whom were accustomed to failure on such a grand scale. Niko's physical pain was the least of their worries. The demon erupting in his moat- molded rest-place had the power to reshape all creation-if Roxane didn't do something preemptive with the Globe of Power or the mortal anarchy of the PFLS-inspired riots didn't overwhelm them all first.

  None of then noticed a new shadow at the threshold.

  "Divine Mother! This is intolerable!"

  Shupansea, exiled Beysib Empress and, by virtue of foreign gold and the strong arms of clan Burek, de facto ruler of Sanctuary, stopped short in the open doorway. She stared- knowing that it discomfitted these drylanders, but there was no other way. Her mind, moving behind glazed, amber eyes, scanned from one shadowed comer of the room to the other, from the floor to the ceiling, absorbing every detail without the distraction of movement.

  They had been arguing, singly and severally, but the sight of her united them in silence. She knew them all, except for the dark-clad, disheveled woman sitting on a low stool with a half-full goblet leaning out of her hands. Their combined presence in such a small, private room could only mean disaster.

  Shupansea was caught in an undertow of emotion as the images of violence patterned themselves against her memories of the Beysa's court those last few days before her supporters in clan Burek had effected her rescue, and exile. Not even the silken touch of her familiar serpent moving between her breasts could break her horror-struck fascination with Niko's broken, blood-streaked body. The tears and shrieks of terror she had resolutely concealed from her own people could not be withheld from this insignificant drylander.

  Divine Mother, she repeated, this time a prayer as the silent undertow swept her back toward incapacitating fear. Help me!

  The downward surge was broken by the soft strength of Mother Bey cradling her mortal daughter. Shupansea felt her pulse quicken as the goddess' vitality flowed within her own envenomed blood. She ascended through the Aspects: Girl, Maiden, Mother and Crone, to Sisterhood, then broke through to Self-ness. She blinked and stared across the room again.

  "He yet lives," the Presence said to her, and through her to the still-silent assembly. "The mortal soul survives."

  Shupansea took long, gliding steps toward Niko. Tempus moved away from his self assigned post at Niko's side in a slow, graceful fury, determined to stop her. She paused and stared-seeing him clearly for the first time: this nearly supernatural man now spiritually naked and silently invoking the names of puny, man-shaped gods. She lifted a finger of Power but was spared its use when Another reached out to restrain him.

  "That's the snake-bitch goddess within her," Jinan hissed, getting a handful of Tempus's biceps and squeezing it hard.

  The Beysa reached out to catch a drop of Niko's blood in the curve of her long fingernail, then brought it to her lips. Blood was sacred to Mother Bey. She savored the taste of it and absorbed all it told about Niko, his rest-place, and the uneasy truce which held there. Visions of the handiwork of moat, the Bandaran imitation of divine paradise, came as an unwelcome-indeed, unimaginable-surprise.

  You should be ashamed of yourselves, she, who tolerated no other deities in that portion of paradise she called her own, roared at the pantheons and protogods who shared a suddenly imperfect omniscience with her. THAT. An ephemeral finger pointed toward the blazing column that was Janni and the ominous bulge beneath it. That is what comes of giving mortals their own dreams. That is what they have built with free will: a gateway for demons-for the destruction of us all!

  Mother Bey reserved special ire for her erstwhile lover, Stormbringer, but her mortal avatar was spared that confrontation. The goddess withdrew, leaving Shupansea somewhat flushed and tingling with righteous indignation.

  "How could you allow this to happen?" she demanded of Molin.

  Molin straightened his robe and his dignity. "You knew all that we knew. Roxane took control of Niko's body; another magician has stolen the Globe of Power. The rest, the consequences, we are only just beginning to understand."

  "I have seen with my mother's eye, and the force within that young man," she gestured toward Niko with a bloodstained finger, "has nothing to do with witches! Can't you fools tell the difference between a demon and a witch?"

  Tempus freed himself from Jihan's restraint. He towered over Shupansea. "We know exactly what we're dealing with, bitch," he said in a softly menacing voice.

  "Well, what are we dealing with?" Shupansea replied, her head tilted back and glowering with a stare he could not hope to break. Her serpent made its way up the stiff wires of her headdress. Its tongue flickered; Tempus blinked and Molin spoke instead.

  "Roxane promised the Stormchildren to the demon. She poisoned the children but she couldn't deliver their souls and got herself wounded in the bargain. We knew she was hiding; some of us thought she had a hold on Niko but we didn't guess she'd gotten behind him until it was too late and the demon'd come to collect its payment from her. That was ASkelon's message for Tempus: that she'd gotten behind him somehow."

  Ischade shook her head. "It was never so simple. Roxane promised the demon a gateway in exchange for Niko. The only gateway she knew about was the Stormchildren. She thought she was safe from everything where she was-and that Niko was safe as well. Now that it's trying to take Niko, as it would have taken the Stormchildren, she's frantic herself. She understands less than we do-but, with a globe again, she has vastly more power."

  "We understand the demon must be destroyed and the rest-place with it," Shupansea agreed.

  Randal staggered forward, his face swollen and glistening from the fire, bits of charred canvas and flesh trailing from his clawed fingers. "Not destroyed." He had breathed the flames; his voice rasped and gurgled in his throat. "It will go someplace less defended. We need the globe. We can make it right with the globe." Passion exhausted him; he slumped forward into Jihan's outstretched arms.

  "Is this true?" the Beysa demanded.

  "It is likely," Jihan admitted, trying to divide her ministrations between the 'stricken mage and Niko, who moaned when her hands weren't resting against his flesh. "We can defend the rest-place, or the Stormchildren, but if Roxane has the globe she'll always be one step ahead."

  "Roxane, Niko, or your son, Riddler," Ischade interrupted, focusing her own, and everyone else's, attention on Tempus. "You must make your choice. No matter what I do, I will need time. I cannot wait any longer!"

  But Tempus only shook his head. He took Niko's hand and the unconscious Stepson seemed to breathe easier. "Go where you want," he said slowly.

  Ischade set the goblet down and made ready to leave the room.

  "Guards!" Shupansea shouted, and a pair of the shaven-pated Burek warriors appeared in the doorway. "Provide her with shoes and clothing. Escort her wherever she wishes to go-"

  The necromant stared across the room, hell-dark eyes flashing rejection of Beysib hospitality.

  "You ought not squander yourself by leaving the same way you arrived," the Beysa said gently, a faint smile on her lips; her eyes still defended against the power of that stare.

  Ischade lowered her eyes and picked her way carefully across the shattered glass. The great black raven, which had arrived moments after the first Globe of Power had been shattered and had held itself aloof from all the commotion si
nce, spread its wings and flapped out the window its mistress had broken by her entrance.

  "How did Roxane get in there?" Tempus asked once Ischade was gone. "How? Not even the gods can violate moat's sanctuary."

  "Randal?" Molin asked.

  The mage pushed himself away from Jihan's healing hands. He started to speak but the words were too great an effort. Quivering, he sank back to his knees; tears ate their way down his cheeks. "They had him for a year, Riddler," he pleaded for understanding. "He hates her. He remembers and he hates her but when she comes for him.... A year, Riddler. 0 gods, after a year he remembers; he hates but he can't-won't-refuse."

  Critias pounded the windowframe. "Seh!" he said, watching the smoke rising from the city's rooftops. The Nisi obscenity was somehow appropriate. If the gods, what remained of them, had intended to cripple what remained of order and competence in Sanctuary they could not have done a better job. He had even allowed the fatal thought-that the situation could not possibly get worse-to percolate through his consciousness.

  "Commander," he said with a heavy sigh. "You'd better take a look at this."

  Tempus followed the lines of his lieutenant's outstretched arm. He said nothing, so the others-Molin, Jihan, Shupansea, and finally Randal-crowded around the broken window.

  "It's all up now." Torchholder turned away and slouched against the wall.

  Jihan closed her eyes, reaching deep into her primal knowledge of all water and salt water in particular. "We've got a bit of time. With the tides they won't be able to enter the harbor until after sundown."

  "I don't expect you'd be able to send them back the way they came?" Molin asked.

  Shupansea tried looking, staring, and leaning perilously far out the window and saw nothing but the myopic fuzziness of the wharves and the ocean beyond it. "Send what back?" she inquired with evident irritation.