On the present occasion, however—
The Thal’s round face and fleshy features quivered like those of a man in the throes of apoplexy. Threats gleamed in the sweat of his brow. Vehement punishments stared from his wide eyes.
“You dare?” he gasped. “You dare insult me so?”
The indignation of the gathering appeared to feed his—or to feed on it. Ladies and courtesans cried shame on the impostor. Merchants of high birth and low offered uncharacteristic imprecations. Retainers, relations, and sycophants posed themselves as though only decorum restrained them from rushing to their lord’s defense. Unbidden, pikemen advanced a step or two on my usurper. Even I was overtaken by an accumulating wish for retribution. A fury which consorted ill with my plain terror thickened my throat. Involuntarily, I yearned to call for my own destruction.
Surely, I told myself while unwilling wrath and quick dread opposed each other in my veins, surely there must be some means by which I might determine who had cast this mood upon us.
“You are a merchant, Urmeny,” the Thal continued on the strength of his people’s support. “It is not your place to judge me. Like your father, and his father before him, you dwell among us and acquire wealth and enjoy your ease because the Thal of Benedic permits it!”
Another man might have accepted this reprimand—might at least have mustered a decent silence—while he still retained his life. However, the man who had bereft me of my name was relentless. “Again you are mistaken,” he stated in clarion tones. “It is the place of every honest citizen to name injustice whenever it occurs, and to reject it honestly.”
The Thal brandished his fists. “Insult!” he roared. “Outrage!” Spittle splashed from his lips. “This merchant threatens the Thal of Benedic. He threatens me! Did you hear him? Is this to be endured?”
“No!” a man quavered from the assembly—none other than decrepit Sher Vacompt himself, as vacant a fop as ever strode the avenues of Benedic. “No!”
At once, he was seconded by his elderly Sharna, as well as by the twin courtesans Milne and Vivit, with whom he had carried on an ineffectual dalliance for some years. “No! Never!”
They were the first to encourage the Thal’s wrath. And they encouraged others. New voices quickly joined theirs. Nevertheless they had done me an oblique service. The sight of Sher Vacompt’s flaccid jowls and Sharna Vacompt’s powdered bosom straining with vehemence restored my sense of discrepancy. The Sher and his lady were altogether too vapid to convey intense emotion credibly, and their incongruous outrage had a salutary effect upon me. My own ire did not fall away. However, it ceased to mislead me. To some extent, I recovered my comprehension of events.
Theurgy—not passion—gripped the hall. And any art could be countered, by one means or another.
If I could but remember—
Not to be outdone, more citizens named their disapproval. A queasy hunger for harm filled the chamber. Men and women who would not have lifted their hands to strike a pillow called for Sher Urmeny’s disgrace—even for his death. At the same time, the guards answered their lord’s outrage by surrounding the stranger. Ingrained custom or indolence caused them to withhold their pikes, but they did not withhold their hands. Some of them clutched at my usurper to secure him. Others struck him about the head and body. I heard the sodden pounding of hard bone on undefended flesh. In moments, he had received more blows than I had ever imagined.
Still I could not aid him. This fate had befallen him in my name, my name, and I could do nothing.
I found, however, that need and despair had at last improved my recollection.
As a youth, I had been taught the merest scraps of theurgy, nothing more than the sort of small acts and invocations which might prove useful or appropriate for a young merchant of high birth who chanced to find himself in unfamiliar circumstances, confronted by men and purposes he had cause to mistrust. And one of those minor skills was an easy and unobtrusive exercise in—so my tutor had named it—demystification. It was used, I now remembered, to detect the presence of theurgy, and to determine its source, so that the young merchant might be wary of bafflement.
Fortuitously, I also recalled how this demystification was done.
I feared I had regained my memory too late. The stranger had already been accorded punishment enough to flatten a stallion. Pikemen pummeled his face and body. Merchants and retainers delivered weaker blows to his shoulders and back. Among them, I recognized Sher Ablute and his personal scrivener, Tep Jacard, as well as Vivit, Teppin Sommenie, and others. And those who were not near enough to strike called in compelled voices for his death. Some may have demanded dismemberment. In his place, I would no doubt have died where I stood—slain by fear if not by pain.
Nevertheless I set to work without hesitation. My own urgency tolerated no delay.
The beauty of demystification, as my tutor had explained it, was that it required neither talent nor apparatus, for it drew on the preexisting energy and exercise of theurgy. Therefore it might be within my abilities, despite my rather wan condition. It demanded of me only that I utter certain arcane syllables in certain ways, accompanying them with subtle but appropriate gestures.
The gestures I recalled well enough. They were performed thus and thus, using only the fingers and a small rotation of the wrist. I could repeat them as often as needed without attracting notice. The words, however, came to mind less distinctly. Did the invocation speak of cataphract or cataphracsis? Did it make reference to abeminil or abemanol? I could not remember.
Sweating feverishly, I struggled to achieve my aim. Every blow suffered by the stranger in my name caused my heart to labor with more violence. How he remained on his legs I could not conceive. In haste, I attempted every imaginable variation of sound and stress, repeating my gestures with greater and greater emphasis.
Through the rising tumult, I heard the Thal shout, “Let him be beheaded!”
Swallowing curses, I exercised my invocation once more, performed my tense gestures—and saw an eerie spangling punctuate the air of the hall. Small, misshapen flashes resembling sunlight a-dance upon disturbed waters stretched and broke above the heads of the gathering. They were apparent only to me—so my tutor had assured me—accessible only to the man who had invoked them. Nevertheless I saw them plainly. At first, they covered all the chamber, shattered gleamings, rough fragments of illumination, indicating theurgy at work upon the entire assembly. Soon, however, they concentrated toward the sources of their effect.
The milling and clamor of the crowd had grown so strenuous that I could not immediately identify Sher Abener’s theurgists. There were two, as Rowel had indicated, one near at hand, the other somewhat apart. But who—?
There! The nearer one became clear to me—a theurgist in the Thal’s service, a gaunt, haughty man by the name of Bandonire. I had been acquainted with him for years, but knew little about him except that he had practiced sneering until his contempt had acquired the refinement of fine weaving or sculpture. Spangles flurried about his bald pate, marking him for me. One hand he held deep in the pouch hung from his belt. The other clutched an amulet at his throat. His lips moved incessantly, murmuring words without sound.
As a theurgist, he was impervious to me. My unreliable memories held nothing which might obviate his arts. Still I did not hesitate. Ordinary doubt and caution had deserted me. Rushing forward, I pounced upon Sher Vacompt for the simple reason that he supported his years and infirmities upon a cane.
The Sher’s cane had caught my eye on more than one occasion. Its polished and luminous teak shaft was surmounted by a crown of inlaid bronze sculpted to suit its owner’s fingers. I snatched it from him and swung it high in one motion. Gripping it by its shaft, I aimed its heavy head and my own desperation at the curve of flesh between Bandonire’s neck and shoulder, and struck.
He collapsed under the blow like a man who had been shattered within hi
s robes. I felt a sudden alteration in my hearing, as though I had lifted my ears from submersion in a basin of water. At once, the spangles which had echoed Bandonire’s arts faded.
Around me, the entire gathering staggered, overtaken by uncertainty. Between one heartbeat and the next, the grip of imposed passion weakened. Some few of my fellow citizens may have wondered what they were about. Others merely paused in their avarice for dire actions.
I had felled one threat. So much was good. Yet there was another. I discovered him easily now. His attire resembled that of a retainer—a scrivener such as Tep Jacard, perhaps, or an estatesman—but he could not be other than a theurgist, for my demystification swirled about him, marking him beyond mistake, and the curious position of his hands was identical to Bandonire’s.
Unlike Bandonire, however, he had been forewarned.
Fool that I was, I had not considered this danger. My gaze met his past the consternation of the gathering, and I saw at once that his own hostility was directed at me rather than at my usurper. He may have known who I was, despite the stranger’s impenetrable glamour. Or he may have intended my hurt simply because I had impeded the designs of his master, and had thereby declared myself his enemy.
He was a theurgist in Sher Abener’s service, whatever his disguise—trained to his arts, and to the support of necromancy. And I was nothing more than a sun-beaten merchant, too parched and foot-worn and hungry to retain my sanity. Nevertheless I had come too far to falter now.
Stooping to Bandonire’s stunned form, I snatched the amulet from his neck, the pouch from his belt. These objects I raised in one hand as though I understood their uses. In the other, I flourished Sher Vacompt’s cane. Impelled more by lunacy than by any reasonable purpose, I strode the parquet toward my foe.
Apparently, he had not expected my advance—or my acquisition of Bandonire’s periapts. At once, his wrath became concern. Alarm twisted his features. Before I had taken three steps, he began to retreat, turning his head as he did so to howl through the heedless hubbub, “Rowel! Scut! Aid me!”
Then his hand swept from his pouch to perform a flinging gesture. He might have pitched a stone at my head, although I saw nothing.
Instead the air before me—indeed, the very hall—seemed to ripple and waver as though the calm surface of a pool had been disturbed. Immediately the air itself, or my opponent’s arts, struck the center of my chest so heavily that the breath was driven from my lungs, and I lurched backward, blundering to the side as I staggered.
By chance, or by the theurgist’s intent, I stumbled toward the drapes which covered the entry where I had last seen Sher Abener’s ruffians.
They surged past the hanging before I could right myself. Still unable to breathe, I saw the fear and fury in their faces, the bloodshed ready on their blades. Clearly my attempt to bring about their capture had gone astray. The pikemen I had sent must have forgotten my warning as well as my existence. Or they had been ensnared and distracted by the mood imposed on the hall. The assassins would have time to gut and fillet me before any guard drew near enough to intervene.
In an airless frenzy, I swung Sher Vacompt’s cane. Fortuitously, my efforts to recover my balance had the effect of increasing the force of my blow. The cane landed across Rowel’s shoulder, causing him to stumble in his turn, away from me.
Toward the stranger—and the dais.
Witlessly obedient, Scut veered to follow.
Thus my life was spared.
Defending himself against me, Sher Abener’s theurgist had necessarily loosed his hold upon the assembly. In consequence, the mood for blood had disappeared like quenched flame. When an instant later armed miscreants appeared, bearing their blades toward the Thal, his pikemen were able to respond. They may have understood nothing else, but they understood this. Without hesitation, they wheeled from the supposed Sher Urmeny to ward their sovereign.
By the time I had urged a thin breath into my stunned chest, Rowel and Scut had been stretched supine upon the parquet, disarmed and unconscious.
During the scuffle, Sher Abener’s theurgist fled the hall, no doubt hastening to apprise his master of what had occurred.
Around me, my fellow citizens stared at the ruffians, and at each other, in astonishment and shock, disturbed by the proximity of keen-edged harm—as well as by the intensity of their brief passion for bloodshed. They hardly spoke, although a Sharna or two and several Teppin panted and moaned, preparing to faint at an appropriate moment. If they had not been so shaken, the gathering might have wondered what had inspired Rowel and Scut’s attack, or why Bandonire lay sprawled in their midst, or indeed why I wielded Sher Vacompt’s cane as a bludgeon. As matters stood, however, they required a moment in which to regain their wits before they could become hysterical.
I might cheerfully have indulged in hysteria myself, but could not afford the energy. I was exhausted to the heart. And my sense of urgency did not abate, although the immediate crisis had passed.
Sher Abener would receive warning. And he would know where to direct his enmity.
Trembling between difficult respirations, I dropped Sher Vacompt’s cane, thrust Bandonire’s pouch and amulet into my blouse, and turned to determine my usurper’s condition.
Throughout the contest for his life, he had lifted no finger in his own defense. Although he had been bloodied and battered, he remained standing, motionless and inviolate, as though such trivial details as his own peril and my efforts to save him could not trouble his essential calm. Released now, he did not deign to wipe his face. Instead, he folded his arms upon his chest and confronted the Thal once more as though the true contest lay between them, still unresolved.
Borne down by the weight of the stranger’s regard, our sovereign sank slowly to his knees, apparently poised to weep. The nature of his apprehension had been transformed. He had more now to dread than Sher Abener’s displeasure alone. He had cause to fear himself. Perhaps more to the point, he had cause to distrust the people assembled before him. If they could be so easily swayed against one of their own number, how readily would they abandon their fealty to their lord?
Kneeling, he raised his fists. I thought that he might beat his breast, but he contented himself with shaking his arms in a gesture of distress.
“I am undone,” he wailed piteously. “We are all ruined.”
“How so?” inquired my usurper. No one else had the wit to speak.
“You have offended Sher Abener.”
The Thal’s tone was thick with abjection. Whatever dignity he had once possessed was gone. Poor man. I felt an odd moment of kinship with him, as though we had shared a bereavement.
“Do you not understand?” he continued. “He is a necromancer. His power is great and fatal. Already he has shown me arts which my theurgists can neither counter nor inhibit. And he has hinted at atrocities which chill my soul.” The Thal shuddered extravagantly. “He instructed me to ‘deal with you.’ If I do not, he will perform—”
Our sovereign flinched into silence.
The stranger remained unimpressed. “Threats do not excuse injustice,” he pronounced without mercy. “If they chill you, you must oppose them. No other response can save you. When you bow to them, their demands increase.”
Then he lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “You need fear nothing, however.” He appeared to dismiss the Thal from his consideration. “There is a debt I must repay. I will confront this necromancer.”
Calmly, he left his place before the dais. Despite his injuries, he strode with confidence through the assembly. No one hindered his passage. Neither the pikemen nor the Thal himself remarked on the fact that this Sher Urmeny had not been granted leave to depart.
At last, I saw my chance. The Thal and I appeared to be the only men in the hall who grasped the extremity of Benedic’s peril. Before my usurper could avoid me, I accosted him directly.
“Stop
this,” I demanded past cracked and burning lips. My hands clutched at the front of his shirt. “Stop now.
“Are you entirely mad? Did you comprehend nothing that happened here? Sher Abener is a necromancer. He treats with the dead. And he is not alone. He is served by theurgists and assassins, as well as by horrors—” My raw throat closed on the memory of Tep Longeur. Ignoring the dismayed stares of the gathering, I strove to turn the stranger aside from my fate. “He possesses those who do not choose to serve him, and compels them to his will. My own overseer drove me from my villa in Sher Abener’s name—”
There I faltered. I found that I could not withstand my usurper’s searching gaze. I saw no disdain in his eyes. Indeed, his expression suggested anger at Tep Longeur’s fate more than contempt for me. Yet I felt profoundly disdained. Of their own volition, my frail fists dropped from his shirt. Although we were of similar height, he appeared to tower over me—too strong, and too certain of his purpose, to be impeded by a weary, thirst-maddened, compliant weakling like myself.
With an effort, I concluded, “You must flee. Restore my name to me, and flee while you can.”
I already knew, however, that my appeal would be rebuffed. This man could not be swayed by such paltry considerations as pain, death, and abomination.
Several of the pikemen had drawn near as I spoke. “Sher Urmeny,” one of them asked the stranger solicitously, “does this fellow disturb you?”
Some glamour had transformed my usurper from an object of animosity to a favored guest.
“Not at all,” he replied without a glance at the guards. “Your concern is misplaced. He will attend me to my villa.
“Come,” he commanded me. Without awaiting a reply, he departed the hall.
Unable to imagine what else I might do, I stumbled after him. Certainly, I had no wish to remain where I was. The men and women around me had begun to recover themselves. They shook their heads, fanned their brows, shuffled their feet, muttered softly. Soon some of them would question what had transpired, while others swooned. Inevitably, a few would take note of my rude appearance. They might conclude that I was another like Rowel and Scut, scruffy and murderous.
Reave the Just and Other Tales Page 42