Storm Season

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  I’ve been too busy—no… the awareness came reluctantly, I was afraid.

  “What will you see on your canvas when you have murdered me?” The voice echoed his fear.

  “Stop it! Leave me alone!” Lalo cried aloud. He heard a deep voice shout orders in the street beyond the alley, and saw for a moment the flicker of lanterns bobbing by, pallid in the moonlight.

  In a few minutes the poisoned waters would be driven from their bed by the inexorable pressure of the tide, and rush through the sewers of Sanctuary like a host of angry serpents seeking their prey. In a few minutes Zanderei would be dead.

  If he disappears, maybe they will blame Zanderei for the Fire. When the stir dies down I’ll be free to paint again. His hand twitched as if he held a brush, but the motion triggered Zanderei’s words in his memory.

  “Have you ever painted your own portrait?”

  Lalo shuddered suddenly, violently. Could even Enas Yorl lift the curse this man had laid upon his soul? He heard the irregular tramp of men trying to march in close order over an uneven road. The sound was louder now—in a few moments they would pass his alleyway. In a few moments the waters would be here.

  “What will you see when you have murdered me?”

  Without conscious decision, Lalo found himself running stiffly towards the Serpentine.

  “Ho there! Guards—he is hiding in the sewers—down this alley!” He held his ground while they debated, knowing that they could not recognize him under the sodden clothes and mud, and motioned to them to follow him.

  Then he pounded down the alley, bent to wrestle the bar from the shaft-cover and ran on until he found the dark overhang of a staircase to shelter him. Below he felt a trembling and heard the hiss of many waters, and, just as the wooden lid of the shaft was knocked aside, the hollow boom of water forced upward through too narrow a way.

  Something dark clung to the rim of the shaft, like a rat flooded from its hole, then clambered the rest of the way out once the fury of the waters had passed. But now the Hell-Hounds surrounded the shaft. There was a flurry of movement and Lalo heard swearing and a cry of pain. Among the voices he distinguished the soft tones of the Emperor’s Commissioner.

  “Is that who you say you are?” A deep voice, Quag’s voice, replied. “Well, if we’ve lost the dauber, at least we have you. My Lord Prince will be interested to learn what sharp-toothed rats his brother keeps to guard his granaries! Come along, you!”

  Lalo sank back against the post of the stair. It was over. The Hell-Hounds were dragging Zanderei away as once they had dragged him into the night.

  He would find a way to let Coricidius know what the painting had shown and what Zanderei had confessed to him. Would they call him into court to prove it? Would they dispose of the assassin quietly, or send him back to Ranke to report his failure? With a dim wonder Lalo realized that it did not matter anymore.

  Gilla would have harsh words for him when he reached home, but her arms would be soft and comforting …

  But still he did not move, for below the surface questions in his mind pulsed one more perplexing—Why did I let Zanderei go?

  Today he had faced death, and fought for his life, and conquered fear. He had realized that the evil of the world was not confined to Sanctuary. But if he could do all this, he was not the person that he had thought he knew.

  He held out his magic hands, his painter’s hands, so that the moonlight silvered them, staring as if they held his answer. And perhaps that was true, for if he had beaten Zanderei, the other man’s final question had also vanquished him. And he could only answer it by facing his mirror with a paintbrush in his hand.

  The moon was poised above the tattered rooftops, resting after the labor of drawing in the tide. Like a silver mirror, she blessed the tortured streets of Sanctuary, and the tear-streaked face of the man who gazed at her, with the reflected splendor of the hidden sun.

  Steel

  By Lynn Abbey

  Chapter 1

  WALEGRIN LISTENED CAREFULLY to the small noises carried on the night breeze. His survival depended on his ability to untangle the sounds of the night—and on the steel sword he clutched, unsheathed, at his side. Ambushers crept toward his small camp in the darkness.

  Two bright Enlibar wagons sat, unguarded and garish, in the ruddy light of a neglected fire. Their cargo had been scattered in tempting disarray; chunks of aquamarine ore shimmered in the moonlight. Walegrin’s cloak lay close by the fire, covering an armload of thorny sticks—a ruse to convince the brigands that he and his men were more weary than careful and valued sleep above their lives.

  They’d had little enough rest since leaving the ruined mine with the precious ore; and of the twenty-five men who had left Sanctuary only seven remained. But Walegrin trusted his six stalwarts against four times that many hillmen.

  Walegrin’s thoughts were stopped by the warning cry of a mountain hawk; Malm, who had a shepherd’s eye for ominous movements, had spotted the enemy. Walegrin held his ground until the camp swarmed with dark, scuttling shapes, until someone stabbed a cloak and heard wood splintering, not bone. Then, sword raised, he led his men out of the shadows.

  These outlaws were better armed and bolder than any the soldiers had encountered before, but Walegrin had no time to consider this discovery. His men were hard pressed, without their usual advantage over the hill-bred fighters. His sword stole the lifeblood of two men, but then he was cut himself and fought defensively, unaware of the fate of his men or the tide of battle. He was forced to retreat another step; the open back of a wagon pressed against his hips. The one who bore down on him was as yet unwounded. It was time for a soldier’s last prayers.

  Snarling, the attacker took his sword in both hands for a decapitating cut. Walegrin braced to take the force of the stroke on his sword which he held in a bent, injured arm. His weapon fell from his suddenly numb hand, but his neck was intact. The brigand was undaunted, his smile never wavered; Walegrin was unarmed now.

  Steadying himself to face death with courage, Walegrin’s leaden fingers found an object left forgotten in the wagon: the old Enlibar sword they had found in the dust of the mine. The silver-green steel showed no rust, but no one had exchanged his serviceable Rankan blade for one forged five hundred years before his birth—until now. Walegrin brought the ancient sword around with a bellow.

  Blue-green sparks surged when the swords met. The Enlibar metal clanged above the other sounds of battle. The brigand’s swordblade shattered and, with a reflex born of experience not thought, Walegrin took his assailant’s head in a single, soft stroke.

  The fabled steel of Enlibar!

  His mind glazed with the knowledge. He did not hear the hillmen take flight, nor see his men gather around him.

  The Steel of Enlibar!

  Three years of desperate, often dangerous searching had brought him to the mine. They’d filled two wagons with the rich ore and defended it with their lives—but in the depths of his heart Walegrin had not believed he’d found the actual steel: a steel that could shatter other blades; a steel that would bring him honor and glory.

  He found his military sword in the dust at his feet and offered it to his lieutenant.

  “Take this,” he ordered. “Strike at me!”

  Thrusher hesitated, then took a half-hearted swipe.

  “No! Strike, fool!” Walegrin shouted, raising the Enlibrite blade.

  Metal met metal with the same resounding clang as before. The shortsword did not shatter, but it took a mortal nick to its edge. Walegrin ran his fingers along the unmarred Enlibrite steel and whooped for joy.

  “The destiny of all Ranke is in our hands!”

  His men looked at one another, then smiled with little enthusiasm. They believed in their commander but not necessarily in his quest. They were not cheered to see their morose, intense officer so transformed by an off-color sword—however good the metal and even if it had saved his life. Walegrin’s exaltation, however, did not last long.

 
; They found Malm’s body some twenty paces from the fire, a deep wound in his neck. Walegrin closed his friend’s eyes and commended him to his gods—not Walegrin’s gods; Walegrin honored no gods. Malm was their only casualty, though they could ill afford the loss.

  In grim silence Walegrin left Malm and returned to ransack the headless corpse by the wagon. Its belt produced a sack of gold coins, freshly minted in the Rankan capital. Walegrin thought of the letters he had sent to his rich patron in the Imperial hierarchy, and of the replies he had not received. In anger and suspicion he tore at the dead man’s clothes until he found what he knew must be there: a greasy scrap of parchment with his mentor’s familiar seal embossed upon it. While his men slept he read the treachery into his memory.

  Kilite’s treasury had financed his quest almost from the start. The ambitious aristocrat had said that the Enlibrite steel, if it could be found, would assure the Empire swift, unending victories—and swift, unending fortune for whomever made the legend reality. Walegrin had dutifully informed the Imperial Advisor of all his movements and of his success. He cursed and threw the scrap of parchment into the fire. He’d told Kilite his exact route from Enlibar to Ranke.

  He should have known the moment his first man died—or at least when he lost the second. The hill tribes had been peaceful enough when they’d come up through the mountains and they, themselves, could make no use of the raw ore. He counted the dead man’s gold into his own pouch, calculating how far he and his men could travel on it.

  Things could have been worse. Kilite might have been able to bribe the tribesmen, but it was still unlikely he could find the abandoned mine. Walegrin had never entrusted that secret to paper. And Kilite had never known that Walegrin’s final destination had not been the capital, but back in Sanctuary itself. He’d never told Kilite the name of the ugly, little metal-master in the back alleys there who could turn the ore to finest steel.

  “We’ll make it yet,” he said to the darkness, not noticing that Thrusher had come to sit beside him.

  “Make it to where?” the little man asked. “We don’t dare go to the capital now, do we?”

  “We’re headed toward Sanctuary from this moment on.”

  Thrusher could scarcely contain his surprise. Walegrin’s intense dislike of the city of his birth was well-known. Not even his own men had suspected they would ever return there. “Well, I suppose a man can hide from anything in Sanctuary’s gutters,” Thrusher temporized.

  “Not only hide, but get our steel too. We’ll head south in the morning. Prepare the men.”

  “Across the desert?”

  “No one will be looking for us there.”

  His orders given and certain to be obeyed, Walegrin strode into the darkness. He was used to sleepless nights. Indeed, he almost preferred them to his nightmare ridden slumber. And now, with thoughts of Sanctuary high in his mind, sleep would be anything but welcome.

  Thrusher was right—a man could hide in Sanctuary. Walegrin’s father had done it, but hiding hadn’t improved him any. He’d ended his life reviled in a city that tolerated almost anything, hacked to pieces and cursed by the S’danzo of the bazaar. It was his father’s death, and the memory of the curse that haunted Walegrin’s nights.

  By rights it wasn’t his curse at all, but his father’s. The old man was never without a doxy; Rezzel was only the last of a long, anonymous procession of women through Walegrin’s childhood. She was a S’danzo beauty, wild even by their gypsy standards. Her own people foresaw her violent death when she abandoned them to live four years in the Sanctuary garrison, matching Walegrin’s temper with her own.

  Then one night his father got drunk, and more violently jealous than usual. They found Rezzel, what remained of her, with the animal carcasses outside the charnel house. The S’danzo took back what they had cast out and, by dead of night, returned to the garrison. Seven masked, knife-wielding S’danzo carved the living flesh of his father, and sealed their curses with his blood. They’d found two children, Walegrin and Rezzei’s daughter, Illyra, hiding in the corner. They’d marked them with blood and curses as well.

  He’d run away before the sun rose on that night—and was still running. Now he was running back to Sanctuary.

  Chapter 2

  WALEGRIN PATTED HIS horse, ignoring the cloud of dust around them both. Everything, everyone was covered with a fine layer of desert grit; only his hair seemed unaffected, but then it had always been the color of parched straw. He’d led his men safely across the desert to Sanctuary but weariness had settled upon them like dust and though the end of their travels was in sight, they waited in silence for Thrusher’s return.

  Walegrin had not dared to enter the city himself. Tall, pale despite the desert sun, his braided hair roughly confined by a bronze band, he was too memorable to be an advance scout. He was an outlaw as well, wanted by the prince for abandoning the garrison without warning. He had Kilite’s pardon, the scrolls still carefully sealed in his saddlebag, but using it would eventually let Kilite know he was still alive. It was better to remain an outlaw.

  Hook-nosed, diminutive Thrusher was a man no one would remember. Able and single-minded, he’d never run afoul of the town’s dangers nor succumb to its limited temptations. Walegrin would have a roof over his men’s heads by nightfall and more water than they could drink to set before them. Wine too, but Walegrin had almost forgotten the taste of wine.

  As the afternoon shadows lengthened, Thrusher appeared on the dunes. Walegrin waved him safe conduct. He put his heels to his horse and galloped the last stretch of sand. Both man and beast had been cleansed of yellow grit. Walegrin suppressed a pang of jealousy.

  “Ho, Thrush! Do we sleep in town tonight?” one of the other men called.

  “With full trenchers and a wench on each knee,” Thrusher laughed.

  “By the gods, I thought we’re bound for Sanctuary, not paradise.”

  “Paradise enough—if a man’s not choosy,” Thrusher told them all as he dismounted and made his way to Walegrin.

  “You seem satisfied. Is the town that much changed since we left it?” Walegrin asked.

  “Yes, that much. You’d think the Nisibisi rode this way. There are more mercenaries in Sanctuary than in Ranke. We’ll never be noticed. The usual scum fears to leave the shadows—and if a man knows how to use his sword there’s any number who’ll hire him. Kittycat’s gold hasn’t been the best for many a month now. He’s got to rely on a citizen’s militia to take up the slack from the Hell Hounds. Wrigglies—every last one of them: pompous and—”

  “What manner of mercenaries?” Walegrin interrupted.

  “Sacred Banders,” Thrusher admitted with noticible reluctance.

  “Vashanka’s bastards. How many? And who leads them—if they’re led by a man?”

  “Couldn’t say how many; they camp Downwind. Banders’re worse than Hounds; a handful of ‘em’s worse than a plague. Some say they belong to the Prince now that their priest’s dead. Most say it’s Tempus at the root of it. They train for the Nisibisi, but Tempus is building a new fortress Downwind.”

  Walegrin looked away. He had no quarrel with Tempus Thales. True, he was inclined to arrogance, sadism and he was treachery incarnate, but he moved in the elite circles of power and, as such, Walegrin could only admire him. Like everyone else he had heard the Tempus—tales of self-healing and psuedo-divinity; he professed to doubt them—but had Tempus gone in search of Enlibar steel, no one would have dared stand in his way.

  “They call themselves Stepson—or something like that,” Thrusher continued. “They’re all in Jubal’s turf; and neither hide nor hair of Jubal seen these last months. No hawkmasks on the streets either, ‘cept the ones found nailed to posts here and there.”

  “Sacred Banders; Stepsons; Whoresons.” Walegrin shared the prejudices of most in the Imperial army towards any elite, separate group. Sanctuary had been the dead-end of the world as long as anyone could remember. No right-thinking Rankan citizen passed time there
. It boded ill if Sanctuary had become home to not only Tempus but a contingent of Sacred Banders as well. The Empire was in worse shape than anyone thought.

  What was bad for Sanctuary and all of Ranke, though, was not necessarily bad for the re-discoverer of Enlibar steel. With luck Walegrin would find good men in town, or good gold, or simply enough activity to hide behind. But whenever Walegrin thought of luck he thought of the S’danzo. They had marked him for ill fortune: if he had good luck it could have been better and when his luck turned sour, the less said about it the better.

  “What about that house I asked you about?” Walegrin asked after the conversation had lulled a moment.

  The scout was relieved to speak of something else. “No trouble—it wasn’t hidden, though no one knew much about it. Right off the Street of Armorers, like you said it’d be. This metal-master, Balustrus, he must be a pretty strange fellow. Everyone thought he’d died until the Torch—” Thrusher stopped abruptly, slapping himself on the forehead.

  “—Gods takes take me for an idiot! Nothing is the same in Sanctuary; the gods have discovered it! Vashanka’s name was blasted from the pantheon over the palace gate. Vashanka! Sacred Band’s Storm God burned clean. The stone steamed for a day and a night. The god himself appeared in the sky—and Azyuna, too.”

  “Wrigglies? Magicians? Were the Whoresons involved?” Walegrin asked, but without interrupting the flow of Thrusher’s theological gossip.

  “The Torch himself was nearly killed. Some say a new god’s been born to the First Consort and the War of Cataclysm’s begun. Officially the priests are blaming everything on the Nisibisi—and not saying why the Nisibisi would wage magical war in Sanctuary. The Wrigglies say it’s the awakening of Ils Thousand Eyes. And the mages don’t say much of anything because half of them’re dead and the rest hiding. The local doomsayers’re making fortunes.

  “But our Prince Kittycat, bless his empty, little head, had an idea. He marches out on his balcony and proclaims that Vashanka is angry because Sanctuary does not show proper respect to his consort and her child and that he has blasted his own name off the pantheon rather than be associated with the town. Then Kittycat proclaims a tax on every tavern—a copper a tot—and says he’s going to make an offering to Vashanka. Sanctuary will apologize by ringing a new bell!”