Beyond the Veil

by Janet Morris

  "At hand, is it? What have we been doing for the last year or so? Knitting sweaters for our Rankan overlords?" Oman spat by his booted foot. "And you, Cybele—" For this was what they called her, an alias she'd used and a disguise she'd worn here in days gone by "—where have you been? Cuddling up to demons to sway them to our cause? We've seen what sorcery can do against the Rankans and their gods! I hope you've something better, this time, to offer us. Better plans, better aid, better information, better—"

  She stopped him then, reaching once more into her pocket and bringing out a palmful of the little incendiary globes. "These little balls, as you have seen, will temporarily blind and sore affright your mortal enemies. Just drop or cast one—" She started to let them fall groundward; Oman lunged forward to catch them… and succeeded—just. The others, behind him, tittered. He scowled around at them, straightening up.

  Roxane continued: "Cast them in the midst of your enemy, then strike while the terror lasts. Come, come close, all, and get your share." She gave out the gross of pellets, making sure that Oman got the lion's share.

  This mollified the rebel leader somewhat and he began telling her what progress his group had made. She interrupted, saying that she knew what he and his had done and it was not enough, but just a start. "The merchant class must be disrupted, totally. Food shipments, drug caravans, wine and water poisoned or cut off entirely. Lacan Ajami sorties south even now with a mighty army to join with us, but—"

  "Ajami!" One of the women squealed with delight. The other hushed her.

  "Before he arrives, our part in this must be done. Now, I wish to meet with Grille, either by his leave or without it."

  "Grillo? But he's a Rankan—" Oman interrupted.

  "I know who he is; it is you who have been fooled. He is a profiteer who must be swung to our side or discredited and destroyed as having been, if he cannot be."

  The rebels muttered among themselves. She let it go on a while, then added: "Bring him here to me, willing or no. It will go ill for all if I have to come to him."

  Cries of consternation rose from the group, now huddled together, except their leader, who stood nearer Roxane, fists resting on his hips. Grillo was their enemy, sworn; he'd put prices on every head assembled here. Oman, who by day was a minor noble whose estate north of Tyse had been commandeered by the Rankan army and who now, to support himself, had a smithery near the souk that specialized in fine weaponry fit more for show than duty, spoke the mind of his group, saying that their necks might stretch on this one and asking how soon it would be before the Mygdonian force was close enough to be sighted by Rankan outposts or reconnaissance patrols.

  "A month, no more. Perhaps less. There's no time to delay. Of course, if you've come to love your Rankan masters like the Maggots in the free zone love their begging in the streets, I'll find a bolder crew, men and women who remember what freedom was like…"

  She was interrupted, this time, by a flash of blue light: Oman had thrown one of the incendiary pellets at her feet.

  Almost, she controlled her temper. But not quite: a purer flash of blue poured forth from Roxane's pointing finger, whipped round Oman like a lasso, then like a net of power, and when the brightness faded so that mortal eyes could look, a giant frog squatted, man-sized, where the rebel leader had just been.

  Screams and pandemonium broke out among her minions. The women threw themselves on their bellies at her feet and wept for mercy. Their tears falling on her toes and the terror in the wide-set eyes of the hoarsely croaking frog (too new at the amphibian life to realize either that it had a weapon in its long and sticky tongue or that it was far too heavy to live long, out of water: death lurked in its very size) convinced Roxane that her point had been well made.

  "Close your eyes, fools!" When they did, she waved a hand and recalled the spell, at which point Oman, the proud, fell over backward to sit, knees up and hands covering his face, in the mud.

  Roxane left them, then, with orders as to when and where and how she expected them to report; with targets to terrorize and businesses to destroy.

  One of these was the establishment known as Brother Bomba's, thrown in for good measure, to make the Riddler mad.

  As for herself, Roxane had a child name Shamshi to tend, a Froth Daughter to harry, a Rankan or two to compromise, and a legend named Tempus to defame. This, she told herself, was plenty even for the finest Nisibisi witch to do. But the matter of Nikodemos still vexed her and thus, instead of heading in appropriate guise into Tyse to put certain plans in motion, she retired once more to her underground bower to meditate upon Niko's soul, its jeopardy, and some suitable method of countering the machinations of Aškelon, shadow lord, lord of dreams.

  * * *

  Wizardwall had once glittered with blue wards of magical power; now it glowed faintly pink with the blessing of the god Enlil, lending Tyse, nestled at its foot, an aura of sanctity that Tempus's knowledge of the town belied.

  Riding downward from Bashir's high peaks stronghold, over tricky ground at a speed only one of his Trôs horses or this Aškelonian mount would have dared, Tempus reflected that though all the laws of men are nourished by one divine law, in Tyse that law was in the habit of fragmenting itself, even destroying itself. Those who lived in Tyse and those of Free Nisibis fancied themselves at cross-purposes and no one, not even the Stepsons he loved or Bashir's Successors whom he respected, had any tolerance for another's viewpoint or considered it at all odd that prejudice had replaced community and every mother's son suffered from a curse of selfishness and self-importance only Tempus seemed to recognize.

  A whole town accursed? A whole race of mountain-dwelling people frowned upon by the very gods they sought to serve? Even to Tempus, who knew Disorder like a mother and fancied that Strife marched ever on his right, these were daunting questions, chilling suppositions to entertain.

  But Bashir was taking his priestly role too seriously, and frowned upon any who didn't have the god's ear. Jihan was threatening to marry Tempus and have a child by him, even give up immortality for him. Death squads and dead squads roamed Tyse's byways and even ventured into Peace Falls to torch grain magazines and fuller's stalls and, if what Grit's message said was true, were bold enough to swagger into Brother Bomba's, white eyes gleaming, and demand blood pudding and tripe and worse to eat, then vandalize the premises when they couldn't get it. And no one, not Grillo's specials or the Rankan garrison or Critias's task force, could ever be alerted in time to roust or intercept even one member of this rebel force of shades and gypsies.

  In fact, talk was that certain elements of the various private armies and estate militias doubled as terrorists when off duty. Even his Stepsons had been implicated, a matter of a lightning-embossed silver concha being found in the rubble of what was once Brother Bomba's pride and joy—his public dining room.

  This last had occurred while Tempus was with Bashir on Wizardwall trying to make some accommodation between the Free Nisibisi and the Tysians below. If the war Tempus smelled on every breeze— which made his pulse pound fast and his instincts cry out that he'd better be off to Mygdonia with the hostage Shamshi before he couldn't go at all— was really blowing hither, then the populace of peak and plain must make a pact that would hold despite the exigencies of war to come.

  He'd spent six days in the acrid smoke of the gods, stirring sacrifices with a golden poker and mumbling prayers he'd had a hand in writing before Bashir was born, trying to convince the warrior-priest to consider the townies as part and parcel of his flock.

  But Bashir belonged to one god, and Tysians venerated nearly threescore; because of this, Tempus had made no progress with Bashir—he had no proof to which he could point, beyond the recent increase of Mygdonian-sponsored agitation in Tyse's narrow streets, that war blew down on them like the thunderheads now massing above him, driven by an unseasonable wind from the northeast.

  The horse, Niko's sable Aškelonian stud which Tempus had inherited when the boy gave up all he owned to sojour
n west, snorted disapprovingly at the clouds which suddenly masked the autumn sky, but kept picking his way southward. Any horse of strong and noble breeding could partake of Tern-pus's own speed and stamina, twice that of a mortal man, but this beast didn't need his help. He'd taken it to Bashir to bribe the Nisibisi leader with the gift of breeding privilege. It hadn't worked, as nothing else had availed, to change Bashir's isolationist mind. If nearly fifty Stepsons couldn't quell the town's unrest, Bashir had pointed out, then it was fate. "Come up, sleepless one, and join with my Successors. Sanctify our cause and we shall hold this mountain firm against all of magic's demon armies and even jealous, foreign gods."

  This wasn't like Bashir. Tempus had given up then, thinking that Crit had sent for Niko and perchance Niko could do better with Enlil's priest, his boyhood friend. Then Crit's message had arrived, wrapped around the leg of a homing hawk— no polite suggestion, or timely missive, as might have been expected, but a summons: all the men and gods and laws of nature Tempus had dared to trust were acting far too strangely for less than magical intervention to be at the root of it.

  Thus he rode homeward, summoned by Critias to the Outbridge station like a truant groom to his muck-filled stable. If only Kama's Rankan masters would send the money he'd requested, he'd be out of town with all his Stepsons. He'd neither tarry nor delay, just leave.

  And he'd leave Jihan in Mygdonia when he got there. It had occurred to him that either the Froth Daughter or her Mygdonian charge were the fount of all this ominous display.

  The clouds above kept massing as he rode, so that the ground beneath with its furrows and chasms and rocky slopes became difficult to see and the Aškelonian stud stopped, its flanks aquiver, craning its neck around at him with a snort and a reproachful look as if to inquire which of them, man or horse, was the more foolhardy. It was nearly dark as night by now, madness to go on.

  Yet he slapped its rump and kicked it hard: he had an idea what this daylight-devouring cloud might be.

  Looming above them, it stretched north back toward Wizardwall so that no gleam of pink or mighty peak was visible; ahead, the cloud seemed to rise up from the ground so that no Tyse, indeed nothing whatsoever, could be seen.

  Nevertheless, the horse, not one to defer a challenge or refuse a dare, started resolutely forward, each foot held long above the ground, then pawing tentatively before trusting its next step.

  This continued until thunder roared and the Aškelonian halted once more, raising its muzzle high to let out a scream of challenge to the very sky. There was no lightning with this thunder, no lessening of the cloaking dark about them, so that the proud stallion, who had never in his life known fear, broke out in frothy sweat where he stood on trembling legs and hid his head between his forelegs, partly from terror, partly from shame.

  Tempus, touched by the horse's plight, slid down and took it by the bridle, tying a kerchief from his neck about the sable stallion's white-rimmed eyes. This done, he led the blindfolded beast slowly forward, trusting his own sense of direction to guide them safely over ground he thought he knew, until, directly in his path and on a level with his own eyes, two burning orbs of red appeared, like the eyes of some mountain cat piercing inky gloom.

  "Stand!" He stopped the horse and held it still, not going for his weapons: he'd fought an apparition quite like this once in Sanctuary, most venal southern port of empire. He'd fought it to a draw for a god. He couldn't win against it then. And now, he knew, he'd fare no better.

  Its name could not be spoken by a human tongue. The thunderous sound they'd heard had not been lightning, but its growling as it came to be on this unaccustomed plane. The sound from that cloud-throat he'd heard before, much louder. He'd hoped never again to hear Jihan's father's voice ringing in his ears.

  He spoke to it, calling it by its manifestation. "Stormbringer, what is it you want here? Your daughter, Jihan, is not with me. She's back at the barracks station, playing mother to a human child." Thunder roared. The sheer volume of that sound buffeted man and horse, and the blindfold was blown from the stallion's eyes. The steed emitted a high-pitched squeal and reared. For an instant, Tempus's feet left the ground and he dangled from its headstall. Then he brought it down.

  "Scare my horse, will You, inhuman lord of turbulence? I've cast off godly love for affronts to my mounts before. Begone, if You've no purpose here. I've no time to—"

  "Silence! Mortal toad, spawn of dirt and blood! Have you not said that the soul is water and from water comes the soul? You know your danger!"

  "So You think to cow me? Am I not plagued with Your daughter? Is it not enough to torture me, that You must threaten me into the bargain? I've called it quits with gods and Their untimely aid and comfort. Get Thee back to Thine unearthly home!"

  Thunder without words roared so that the horse dragged Tempus back a dozen steps and the very ground beneath them shook. "And, too," Tempus added, anger rising in him, not just at this inarticulate, incomprehensible father of weather gods, but at all the gods who throughout the ages had used him, plagued him, made sport of him, and afflicted mortals through him, "you've quoted me wrongly: I said that for souls it is death to become water, for water it is death to become earth; out of earth water comes to be, and out of water, soul! So if it is death You've come to offer, Ineloquent One, give it here! I'll take it! Otherwise, Weathermonger, piss off!"

  The ground beneath his feet began to split then, so loud was Stormbringer's thunderous response, bereft of words but full of emotion. The red orbs grew and grew and seemed to come much closer. A fetid wind like breath from the earth's bowels blew in his face. "My daughter, mortal-lover, is with you. More, she craves to stay with you, at any cost. Her power and her heritage she petitions to forfeit, to be a wife to you and spread her legs for you and bear a child to you when, but for you, she would be the honored consort of the entelechy of dreams! I hold you responsible for this! Dissuade her, afflicted demigod." The roaring which carried Stormbringer's words had become softer, a rumble viscious and full of threat, "Or the sufferings of your wasted youth will be nothing to the torture of your endless old age! Be warned!"

  And with a last, gusting breath which nearly made Tempus retch, and from which the sable stallion turned his head away, the red orbs, so close and hot, dissolved. The thunder ceased, and the black clouds scudded and dispersed, the last inky wisps of them blowing away on a crisp autumn breeze.

  When the sky above was clear, Tempus raised his fist to heaven. "Crap!" he shouted. "I'm not afraid of you, Windbag!" And he wasn't.

  * * *

  Roxane held court in Frog's Marsh when the moon was high. She had a brace of minions, human, ex-human, and inhuman. She had conjured a throne of red granite and a pavilion of summer sky to illumine her where she sat above the throng. She fingered a small golden effigy of a man (or of a god, none could say, so old was this talisman of power) as Grillo was brought forth through the crowd with a red demon on his right and a gray fiend on his left and Oman's death squad—which included seven white-eyed undeads—trailing along behind.

  Some humans in the crowd gasped and murmured, as humans will. The fear in them—in their voices, their sweat, and their minds—pleased Roxane. She fed upon it. It was not a meal to her, but a sumptuous snack, a delight, an appetizer fit for the feast she hoped would come.

  This Grillo she would not sup upon in one single evening; gluttony was not Roxane's way. A nibble now, a nibble later; the meal she'd have would be a sacrifice from this crowd, one they'd choose of their own number, if they'd failed in their endeavors and come without a suitable victim for her enjoyment.

  For this was a god's night. On such a night, a witch works hard. Many sacrifices were going up to heaven; many prayers must be countered; many priestly efforts circumvented and earnest prayers blasphemed.

  Roxane was a defiler by nature and a spoiler for sport. Sacrilege during the harvest festival could ensure famine and evil throughout the coming year. To that end, she had brought out her finest weapons�
�those of the spirit, those of the flesh, and even those of material nature. Beside her, on its golden stand, was her own precious globe of power, inset with colored stones; in her palm was the tiny golden man.

  When Grillo was brought by Oman to the foot of her dais, still dazed and under a spell of compliance so simple even Oman or an undead could recite it without error, Roxane reached out and spun the globe so that it caught the light of her conjured canopy of daybright sky.

  Then she held up the little golden figure. It was bathed in the reflected light of each diamond, sapphire, ruby, and emerald in her globe as it spun.

  Grillo teetered, swayed on widespread feet. Roxane waved Oman back and he, along with her throng of adherents, went down on bended knee at her signal.

  Where the globe of high peaks clay stood, the very air began to shimmer and coalesce. Stroking the golden talisman, she bent the powers which loved her to the task of summoning one more guest: the Mygdonian-raised Shamshi, son of Datan, the deceased Nisibisi archmage.

  Around the globe, the air now shone unbearably. People below shielded their eyes. Undeads chuckled. Demons chortled. Fiends cackled.

  At the proper moment, Roxane reached out and stopped the globe's spinning with the flat of her hand.

  An "Aah" of wonder escaped the bravest of the humans in the crowd who gazed upon a miracle through narrowed eyes: the materialized witch-child stood still for an instant, startled to be snatched from bed and sleep, then rubbed his eyes with his fists, lowered them, blurted: "Roxane!" and threw himself onto her lap.

  For all to see, she caressed him. Stroking his flaxen hair with his head against her breast, the little talisman in her other hand, she bade Grillo come forward.

  "You," she whispered to the child whom she had afforded his first experience of a woman's body and so many other, more arcane matters, "follow my lead, beloved Shamshi, and soon we will be united forever."