The Vondish Ambassador loe-10

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “It’s on Through Street just a few doors east of Arena Street,” Emmis said, watching as Corinal opened the book and laid it flat on the table. The right-hand page was blank; the left-hand one had a few illegible words hand-written at the top. “It’s a yellow house we rent from Kather of Allston, and the shrine is just to the right of the front door.”

  Corinal uncorked the ink bottle, dipped the quill, and began writing in the book. “Go on,” he said.

  “The idol is a goddess — or a woman — in a green robe and a golden crown. Her hands are down and open, as if she’s giving something, but she isn’t smiling. There’s an offering bowl at her feet, but there’s nothing in it but dust.”

  “I think I know this one without even asking,” Corinal said, nodding. “You can have my guess for two bits, or I’ll ask the goddess Unniel for you for three.”

  Emmis hesitated, then said, “I think you’d better consult the goddess.”

  Corinal scribbled another few words, then looked up from the book. “And what else did you want to ask me? If anything else is in Unniel’s bailiwick, I might as well ask her everything at once.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Of course!”

  Emmis glanced at Ahan. “I had several other questions, actually, but I don’t think any of them have anything to do with theurgy or sorcery.”

  Corinal also cast a glance at the guardsman, then grinned, his thinning beard seeming to spread itself wider as he did. “Would you like to drive Lord Ildirin mad with curiosity, then?”

  “What?”

  The theurgist turned the book to face Emmis, then handed him the quill. “Write your questions here,” he said. “I’ll sort them out and give you a price, and you won’t need to say a word this fine soldier will hear.”

  Emmis looked from Corinal to Ahan.

  “I won’t stop you,” Ahan said. “And I won’t try to read it, because I can’t read very well. But I’ll tell Lord Ildirin about this, and he may not like it.”

  “Well, we’ll have all the questions written down for him, won’t we?” Corinal said. “He can come and pay me for them. Not for the answers, of course — you know the rules about customer privacy.”

  “I’ll tell him some of the answers myself, if he wants them,” Emmis said. “I want to know who the assassins I fought were, and where we can find them, and where the three Lumethan spies are...”

  Corinal held up a hand. “Write it down!” he said. “Write it all down.”

  Emmis lifted the quill and looked at Ahan, who turned up an empty palm. “I won’t stop you,” he repeated.

  Emmis nodded, dipped the quill in the ink, and began writing.

  The list took a surprisingly long time. As soon as he had finished one question, he thought of another, and another.

  After a few moments of watching his customer scribble, Corinal had picked up The Pursuit of the Shatra and resumed his interrupted reading.

  Ahan simply sat and waited, and in his meditative silence looked more like a theurgist than did Corinal.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There was a sudden feeling of pressure, as if the air itself had become heavier; Emmis’s ears ached. A golden light appeared in the crack beneath the door to the theurgist’s inner chamber.

  “It would seem the spell worked,” Ahan remarked, startling Emmis. The guardsman was not in the habit of speaking unnecessarily, but he had volunteered this comment without any prompting at all.

  “Not necessarily,” Emmis said. “He made something happen, but it might not be the god he wanted.”

  “True.” Ahan nodded.

  Emmis could not think of anything more to say, so the two fell silent again, and sat waiting in Corinal’s parlor — or rather, Emmis sat, and Ahan stood.

  The strange pressure in the air persisted, as did the glow, though odd shadows sometimes moved in the golden light. Emmis was not sure whether he could hear faint voices through the door, or whether he was imagining it; he certainly couldn’t make out any words. He was tempted to get up and put an ear to the closed door, but Ahan’s presence deterred him, and the knowledge that there was probably a god or goddess on the other side, and that the deity would know he was there, was downright intimidating. From what little Emmis knew of the attitudes of the gods he didn’t think the god would mind, but there was still something disturbing about the idea.

  He and Corinal had, after some dickering, settled on five silver bits for any answers Unniel could provide to the long list of questions Emmis had written, regardless of how many that might be, so long as it was three or more. Two questions would cost four bits, and one would be just the three he had paid in advance.

  Emmis would then have the option of paying Corinal to invoke another god to answer questions Unniel could not, and Corinal had therefore appended a final question to the list: “Which gods or goddesses may best be able to answer any of the questions above that you have not answered fully?”

  Any other invocation would cost more; Emmis fully understood that. He patted the purse Lar had given him; he had quietly counted its contents while Corinal had been preparing to invoke Unniel, and knew that it held three rounds of gold. That ought to be enough for almost any god in the pantheon.

  And they might need almost any god in the pantheon; Emmis had let himself be carried away by the opportunity, and had asked questions about assassins, Annis, Hagai, Neyam, Morkai, the Empire of Vond, Vond the Warlock, Lar, Lumeth of the Towers, Ashthasa, warlockry, warlocks, Lord Ildirin, Azradelle the Tomboy, Gita, his luggage, swords, cookery, kitchen supplies — he had never consulted a theurgist before and might never have the chance to consult one again, so he had gone a little overboard.

  He wondered what Corinal thought of some of those questions; Emmis wondered just how much of a fool he had made of himself. He stared at the closed door, trying to imagine what was on the other side. What did Unniel look like? The traditional idols always showed goddesses as beautiful women, usually tall and thin and inhumanly perfect, but otherwise human in appearance. Was that right, though? He had heard that it was not, that goddesses were hard to look at, hard to see clearly; they were somehow both there and not there at the same time. The painters and sculptors had no way to represent them accurately, so they did their best to depict what they could see.

  If he flung open that door, what would he see? A tall, glowing woman, or something else entirely? Why did the gods never appear in public? Why did theurgists work behind closed doors?

  He should have put those questions on the list, he decided, with a wry grimace.

  He realized, suddenly, that he did not know how long he had been staring at the closed door; something strange had happened to his sense of time. He turned and glanced at the curtained windows, and saw that no daylight was visible through them.

  The voices he hadn’t been sure he was hearing had stopped, and the pressure in the air was lessening; his ears were ringing.

  Then the golden glow vanished, and he heard footsteps. He rose from his seat.

  The door opened to reveal Corinal silhouetted in perfectly ordinary lamplight. He stepped out into the parlor, smiling wearily. A trickle of blood was seeping from one nostril into his beard; he held the book where Emmis had written his questions in one hand, and a sheaf of paper or parchment in the other.

  “Well, that was interesting!” he said, a little too loudly. “I have never before had Unniel’s company for so long. She found your list of questions rather challenging, I think.” His voice cracked a little on the final phrase.

  “Are you all right?” Emmis asked, suddenly concerned for the old man.

  “Oh, I’ll be fine,” Corinal said, waving him away. “Let us just say that the presence of the divine can be wearing on us mere mortals.”

  Suddenly feeling guilty that he had apparently endangered the theurgist’s health, and perhaps his life, for a few bits in silver, Emmis said, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “You can step aside and let me s
it down, my boy. I’ve been chatting with Unniel for fifty-odd years now, ever since I was an apprentice; I’ve nothing to fear from her.” He grimaced. “However, I normally only speak with her for a few minutes at a time, no more than a quarter of an hour, while you, sir, with your infernal list, kept her occupied and in my study for half the afternoon.”

  “I’m sorry...”

  “Don’t be,” Corinal interrupted, as he settled onto a chair. “It was most instructive!” He dropped the book on a table and lifted his sheaf of paper. “Let me tell you some of what she said, though I won’t promise this is in any particular order.”

  Emmis glanced at Ahan. “Couldn’t I read it, perhaps?”

  Corinal shook his head. “I scribbled it down as quickly as I could, and I doubt you could read it. My handwriting is not one of my more impressive accomplishments.” He lifted the papers. “Your doorway shrine is, as I suspected, an idol of Piskor the Generous; as long as that house is under her protection, no one within its walls shall starve, and all drinking water therein shall be pure and wholesome. To maintain her blessing you should place a copper bit in the bowl at least once a year; if it’s stolen, that’s fine, the goddess will consider it well spent. Should the goddess intervene directly on your behalf, extending your food supplies or cleansing your water of disease, you may be called upon, through dreams or other divine messages, to perform certain minor services on her behalf for the poor and unfortunate of the city — distributing food in the Hundred-Foot Field, perhaps. Nothing too onerous. You do not want to shirk these duties, should you be summoned; not only will Piskor’s protections be withdrawn, but you will find your neighbors becoming hostile.”

  “Thank you,” Emmis said.

  Corinal glanced at his papers.

  “Hagai of Lumeth was able to locate Lar Samber’s son at any time, and in fact can still locate Lar at any time, by means of a blessing bestowed upon him by the god Aibem. It would seem this Hagai is a moderately-accomplished theurgist himself, though I flatter myself that I’m his better at the art. At any rate, as long as the blessing lasts Hagai can see an unnatural glow in the sky above Lar, no matter how near or far he might be, and he can simply follow this glow to locate our dear Vondish ambassador, at any time of day or night.”

  “I... he can do that?” Emmis asked.

  “So it would seem. It’s a good stunt, really; I’ve never encountered it before. I suspect someone in the Small Kingdoms only recently stumbled upon the idea.” He cleared his throat. “On all your questions concerning Azradelle of Shiphaven, Unniel refers you to the goddess Mazhom. Since Mazhom is the goddess of courtship, I think you can guess what the tenor of those answers is likely to be.”

  Emmis felt himself blushing.

  “On the subject of warlockry, Unniel declines to say anything useful at all, except that she knows of nothing in Lumeth that has any connection with warlocks. In every other question on your list that relates to warlockry, she insists that there is some great misunderstanding of what’s happening, one so profound that she cannot explain the truth to humans in an even remotely intelligible fashion. People have been trying to get the gods to explain warlockry ever since the Night of Madness, and it just isn’t coming across.”

  “That seems strange,” Emmis remarked.

  “Yes, doesn’t it? Nonetheless, it’s so, and the gap in understanding is so great that Unniel can’t even suggest another god we might consult on the subject.” Corinal shook his head. “Even the gods have their limits.”

  “And the other questions?..”

  “Well, Unniel has no idea where any of the foreigners can be found; she suggests consulting Aibem, who is obviously capable of locating specific individuals, as Hagai’s little spell demonstrates.” He shuffled the top sheet of paper to the bottom and peered at the next page. “She did know how the three Lumethans got to Ethshar so quickly, though — by means of a spell called Hallin’s Transporting Fissure. That took them from Lumeth to Ethshar in a matter of minutes.”

  “I never heard of it,” Emmis said. He glanced at Ahan.

  “Neither have I,” the guardsman said. “I have little to do with magic.”

  “If it got them here that fast, it must be powerful magic,” Emmis remarked. “Is it wizardry?”

  “Probably. Unniel offered no details; you’d best ask a wizard if you want to know more about it.” Corinal glanced at the papers. “Annis the Merchant was already in the city, and was contacted by means of the Greater Spell of Invaded Dreams.”

  “More wizardry?”

  “That one I am familiar with; yes, it’s wizardry.” He turned to the next paper. “You asked what in Lumeth is guarded by protective spells; she reports that the list is relatively short. Several rooms in the government fortress they call the New Castle have wards and protections of one sort or another, the castle itself has a few spells on it, and the various entrances to a miles-long tunnel used by the Cult of Demerchan are all booby-trapped in various ways. Of course the famous Towers themselves are massively guarded by every sort of magic, dozens of spells, on all three of them, and a few assorted diaries, spell-books, lock-boxes, and the like have protective runes, wardings, and such.”

  “A tunnel used by the Cult of Demerchan?” That was interesting; Lar had mentioned them. They were assassins — and they were active in Lumeth. Did that mean anything?

  “So she said. She gave no further information.”

  Emmis nodded, and considered the rest of the list. Spell-books and important government offices, yes, but...

  “Why the towers? Why do they have so many protective spells? They aren’t just pre-war ruins, then?”

  “As it happens, you asked what the towers are, and Unniel answered, after a fashion, and that might give us a clue. She said that the towers are sorcerous talismans, the oldest and greatest sorcery in the World.”

  Emmis blinked. “Sorcery?”

  “So the goddess tells me, and it’s our understanding that the gods cannot lie. Their answers are sometimes misleading, but they don’t actually lie.”

  “They’re talismans?”

  “So she says.”

  “But... they’re towers. Fifty or sixty feet high, aren’t they?”

  “Three hundred feet high, actually. You asked that, too.”

  “Nothing is three hundred feet high,” Emmis protested.

  “The towers of Lumeth are.”

  Emmis had trouble comprehending that. He knew that the big towers in Westgate were no more than sixty feet, and they were huge. The lighthouse at the end of the eastern breakwater was perhaps ninety feet, and the Seacorner watchtower was said to be a hundred or more, and that was so tall that it took a brave man to climb it. Courage aside, Emmis had heard that some of the largest soldiers were excused from serving there for fear their weight would cause it to collapse.

  And the Lumeth towers were three times that height?

  Of course, they might be much, much larger at the base; they would have to be. But that made the other point all the more unbelievable. “And they’re talismans?”

  “So she says.”

  “But — talismans are mostly little things, things a person can carry. I’ve seen a few on the docks, and none were too big for a man to lift. Unniel says there are three of them three hundred feet high?”

  “Indeed she does. I must confess, Emmis, I hadn’t realized you were so interested in this particular subject; you didn’t seem to emphasize it on your list.”

  “I hadn’t realized I was, either,” Emmis said. “Not until you told me they were sorcerous. So are there sorcerers guarding them?”

  “Not that Unniel mentioned; she said they have many powerful protective spells, but they were mostly put there by wizards, not sorcerers.”

  “Why would wizards be guarding sorcery?”

  “I have no idea, and Unniel did not happen to volunteer any information on the subject. Perhaps you should ask a wizard.”

  “Perhaps I should,” Emmis agreed. “Or a sorcerer
. What do the towers do? I mean, a sorcerer’s ordinary talismans can find things, or talk to people far away, or knock down buildings, or answer questions, or a dozen other things — they’re magic, and they’re all small enough to carry. What kind of magic could possibly call for a talisman three hundred feet high?”

  “According to Unniel, they keep out poisons.”

  Emmis blinked, and stared at Corinal. “They do what?”

  “She says they keep out poisons, poisons that surround the entire World.”

  “What poisons?”

  “I have no idea. She did not trouble herself to explain further, and at that point I was simply trying to get through your list before my eardrums burst, or I choked on my own blood, so I did not ask for more details. I thought perhaps you would know.”

  “Me? I’m a dockworker. I don’t know anything about sorcery or poisons or any of this!”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  Emmis grimaced, then glanced at Ahan, but he had already turned up an empty palm, signifying ignorance. Emmis turned back to Corinal.

  “It seems as if there’s a lot of wizardry in Lumeth,” he said. “That transporting whatever-it-is, and the protective spells on the towers, and all that. Isn’t that more than most of the Small Kingdoms?”

  “I wouldn’t really know,” Corinal said. “I agree, though, that it does not accord well with the popular image.”

  “And where does that tunnel go? Why are there assassins there?”

  “That was not on your list of questions; shall we start compiling a new list, to present to Aibem or Bellab or Mazhom?”

  Emmis considered that for a moment.

  He certainly had plenty of questions — Unniel’s responses had raised almost as many as she had answered. On the other hand, Corinal said none of the gods would give useful answers about warlockry, and that was the topic Lar most urgently wanted addressed. Consulting Mazhom at all would be a waste of time; Emmis knew that Azradelle was no longer any of his business, and nothing could come of asking a god to confirm that. This Aibem might be useful in locating the assassins before they could make another attempt...