Storm Season

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  Sweat never stayed long enough to drip in the chill winter air, but breaths puffed white from noses and mouths in the taut pearly light, and grunts and taunts carried well in the crisp morning air. Tempus ducked his head and rubbed his mouth to hide his mirth as a stream of scatological invective sounded: one of the branch-draggers exhorting the loungers to get to work. Were curses soldats, the Stepsons would all be men of ease. The fence-sitters, counter cursing the work-boss gamely, slipped to the ground; the loungers gave up their wall. In front of him, they pretended to be untouched by the ill omen of accidental death. But he, too, was uneasy in the face of tragedy without reason, bereft of the glory of death in the field. All of them feared accident, mindless fortune’s disfavor: they lived by luck, as much as by the god’s favor. As the dozen men, more or less in a body, headed toward the altar and the brake beyond, Temp us felt the god rustling inside him, and took time to upbraid Vashanka for wasting an adherent. They were not on the best of terms, the man and his god. His temper was hard-held these days, and the gloom of winter quartering was making him fey—not to mention reports of the Mygdonians’ foul depredations to the far north, the quelling of which he was not free to join…

  First, he noticed that two people sauntering casually down the altar’s hillock toward him were not familiar; and then, that none of his Stepsons were moving: each was stock-still. A cold overswept him, like a wind-driven wave, and rolled on toward the barracks. Above, the pale sky clouded over; a silky dusk swallowed the day. Black clouds gathered; over Vashanka’s altar two luminous, red moons appeared high up in the inky air, as if some huge night-cat lurked on a lofty perch. Watching the pair approaching (through unmoving men who did not even know they stood now in darkness), swathed in a pale nimbus which illuminated their path as the witchcold had heralded their coming, Tempus muttered under his breath. His hand went to his hip, where no weapon lay, but only a knotted cord. Studying the strangers without looking at them straight-on, leaning back, his arms outstretched along the fencetop, he waited.

  The red lights glowing above Vashanka’s altar winked out. The ground shuddered; the altar stones tumbled to the ground. Wonderful, he thought. Just great. He let his eyes slide over his men, asleep between blinks, and wondered how far the spell extended, whether they were ensorceled in their bunks, or in the mess, or on their horses as they made their rounds in the country or the town.

  Well, Vashanka? he tested. It’s your altar they took down. But the god was silent.

  Besides the two coming at measured pace across the ground rutted with chariot tracks, nothing moved. No bird cried or insect chittered, no Stepson so much as snored. The companion of the imposing man in the thick, fur mantle had him by the elbow. Who was helping whom, Tempus could not at first determine. He tried to think where he had seen that austere face—soul-shriveling eyes so sad, bones so fine and yet full of vitality beneath the black, silver-starred hair—and then blew out a sibilant breath when he realized what power approached over the rutted, Sanctuary ground. The companion whose lithe musculature and bare, tanned skin were counterpointed by an enameled tunic of scale-armor and soft low boots was either a female or the prettiest eunuch Tempus had ever seen—whichever, she/he was trouble, coming in from some nonphysical realm on the arm of the entelechy of a shadow lord, master of the once-in-a-while archipelago that bore his name: Askelon, lord of dreams.

  When they reached him, Tempus nodded carefully and said, very quietly in a noncommittal way that almost passed for deference, “Salutations, Ash. What brings you into so poor a realm?”

  Askelon’s proud lips parted; the skin around them was too pale. It was a woman who held his arm; her health made him seem the more pallid, but when he spoke, his words were ringing basso profundo: “Life to you, Riddler. What are you called here?”

  “Spare me your curses, mage.” To such a power, the title alone was an insult. And the shadow lord knew it well.

  Around his temples, stars of silver floated, stirred by a breeze. His colorless eyes grew darker, draining the angry clouds from the sky: “You have not answered me.”

  “Nor you, me.”

  The woman looked in disbelief upon Tempus. She opened her lips, but Askelon touched them with a gloved hand. From the gauntlet’s cuff a single drop of blood ran down his left arm to drip upon the sand. He looked at it somberly, then up at Tempus. “I seek your sister, what else? I will not harm her.”

  “But will you cause her to harm herself?”

  The shadow lord whom Tempus had called Ash, so familiarly, rubbed the bloody trail from his elbow back up to his wrist. “Surely you do not think you can protect her from me? Have I not accomplished even this? Am I not real?” He held his gloved hands out, turned them over, let them flap abruptly down against his thighs. Niko, who had been roused from deep meditation in the barracks by the cold which had spread sleep over the waking, skidded to a halt and peered around the curve of the fence, his teeth gritted hard to stay their chatter.

  “No.” Tempus had replied to Askelon’s first question with that sensitive little smile which meant he was considering commencing some incredible slaughter; “Yes” to his second; “Yes, indeed” to the third.

  “And would I be here now,” the dream lord continued, “in so ignominious a state if not for the havoc she has wrought?”

  “I don’t know what havoc she’s wrought that could have touched you out there. But I take it that last night’s deadly mist was your harbinger. Why come to me, Ash? I’m not involved with her in any way.”

  “You connived to release her from imprisonment, Tempus—it is Tempus, so the dreams of the Sanctuarites tell me. And they tell me other things, too. I am here, sleepless one, to warn you: though I cannot reach you through dreams, have no doubt: I can reach you. All of these, you consider yours…” He waved his hand to encompass the still men, frozen unknowing upon the field. “They are mine now. I can claim them any time.”

  “What do you want, Ash?”

  “I want you to refrain from interfering with me while I am here. I will see her, and settle a score with her, and if you are circumspect, when I leave, your vicious little band of cutthroats will be returned to you, unharmed, uncomprehending.”

  “All that, to make sure of me? I don’t respond well to flattery. You will force me to a gesture by trying to prevent one. I don’t care what you do about Cime—whatever you do, you will be doing me a favor. Release my people, and go about your quest.”

  “I cannot trust you not to interfere. By noon I shall be installed as temporary First Hazard of your local Mageguild—”

  “Slumming? It’s hardly your style.”

  “Style?” he thundered so that his companion shuddered and Niko started, dislodging a stone which clicked, rolled, then lay still. “Style? She came unto me with her evil and destroyed my peace.” His other hand cradled his wrist. “I was lucky to receive a reprieve from damnation. I have only a limited dispensation: either I force her to renege on murdering me, or make her finish the job. And you of all men know what awaits a contractee such as myself when existence is over. What would you do in my place?”

  “I did not know how she got here, but now it comes clearer. She went to destroy you in your place, and was spat out into this world from there? But how is it she has not succeeded?”

  The Power, looking past Tempus with a squint, shrugged. “She was not certain, her will was not united with her heart. I have a chance, now, to remedy it… bring back restful dreaming in its place, and my domain with it. I will not let anything stop me. Be warned, my friend. You know what strengths I can bring to bear.”

  “Release my people, if you want her, and we will think about how to satisfy you over breakfast. From the look of you, you could use something warm to drink. You do drink, don’t you? With the form come the functions, surely even here.”

  Askelon sighed feelingly; his shoulders slumped. “Yes, indeed, the entire package is mine to tend and lumber about in, some little while longer… until after the Mageg
uild’s fete this evening, at the very least… I am surprised, not to mention pleased, that you display some disposition to compromise. It is for everyone’s benefit. This is Jihan.” He inclined his head toward his companion. “Greet our host.” .

  “It is my pleasure to wish that things go exceedingly well with you,” the woman said, and Niko saw Tempus shiver, a subtle thing that went over him from scalp to sandals—and almost bolted out to help, thinking some additional, debilitating spell was being cast. He was not fooled by those polite exchanges: bodies and timbres had been speaking more plainly of respectful opposition and cautious hostility. Distressed and overbalanced from long crouching without daring to lean or sit, he fell forward, catching himself too late to avoid making noise.

  Niko heard Tempus remonstrate, “Let him be, Askelon!” and felt a sudden ennui, his eyelids closing, a drift toward sleep he fought—then heard the dream lord reply: “I will take this one as my hostage, and leave Jihan with you, a fair trade. Then I will release these others, who remember nothing—for the interim. When I am done here, if you have behaved well, you may have them back permanently, free and unencumbered. We will see how good your faith can be said to be.”

  Niko realized he could still hear, still see, still move.

  “Come here, Nikodemos,” Tempus summoned him.

  He obeyed. His commander’s mien implored Niko to take all this in his stride, as his voice sent him to see to breakfast for three. He was about to object that only by the accident of meditation had he been untouched by the spell—which sought out waking minds and could not find his in his restplace, and thus the cook and all the menials must be spellbound, still—when men began to stir and finish sentences begun before Askelon’s arrival, and Tempus waved him imperatively on his way. He left on the double, ignoring the stares of those just coming out of limbo, whistling to cover the wheeze of his fear.

  Chapter 3

  SO IT WAS that the Sacred Bander Nikodemos accompanied Askelon into Sanctuary on the young Stepson’s two best horses, his ears ringing with what he had heard and his eyes aching from what he had seen and his heart clandestinely taking cautious beats in a constricted chest.

  Over breakfast, Askelon had remarked to Tempus that it must be hell for one of his temperament to languish under curse and god. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

  “I could grant you mortality, so small a thing is still within my power.” “I’ll limp along as I am, thanks, Ash. If my curse denies me love, it gives me freedom.”

  “It would be good for you to have an ally.”

  “Not one who will unleash a killing mist merely to make an entrance,” Tempus had rejoined, his fingers steepled before him. “Sorcery is yet beneath your contempt? You are hardly nonaligned in the conflict brewing.”

  “I have my philosophy.”

  “Oh? And what is that?”

  “A single axiom, these days, is sufficient to my needs.”

  “Which is?”

  “Grab reality by the balls and squeeze.’ “

  “We will see how well it serves you, when you stand without your god.”

  “Are you still afraid of me, Ash? I have never given you cause, never vied with you for your place.”

  “Whom do you think to impress, Riddler? The boy? Your potential, and dangerous proclivities, speak for themselves. I will grant no further concessions…”

  Riding with the dream lord into Sanctuary in broad daylight was a relief after the tension of his commander’s dining table. Being dismissed by Askelon before the high-walled Mageguild on the Street of Arcana was a reprieve he had not dared to hope for, though the entelechy of the seventh sphere decreed that Nikodemos must return to the outer gates at sundown. He watched his best horse disappear down that vine-hung way without even a twinge of regret. If he never saw that particular horse and its rider again, it would be too soon.

  And he had his orders, which, when he had received them, he had despaired of successfully carrying out. When Askelon had been absorbed in making his farewells to the woman whose fighting stature and muscle tone were so extraordinary, Tempus had bade Niko warn certain parties to spread the word that a curfew must be kept, and some others not to attend the Mageguild’s fete this evening, and lastly find a way to go alone to the Vulgar Unicorn, tavern of consummate ill repute in this scabrous town, and perform a detailed series of actions there.

  Niko had never been to the Vulgar Unicorn, though he had been by it many times during his tours in the Maze. The east-side taverns like the Alekeep at the juncture of Promise Park and Governor’s Walk, and the Golden Oasis, outside the Maze, were more to his liking, and he stopped at both to fortify himself for a sortie into Ilsig filth and Ilsig poverty. At the Alekeep, he managed to warn the father of a girl he knew to keep his family home this evening lest the killing mist diminish his house should it come again; at the Oasis, he found a Hell-Hound and the Ilsig captain Walegrin gaming intently over a white-bladed knife (a fine prize if it were the “hard steel” the blond-braided captain claimed it was, a metal only fabled to exist), and so had gotten his message off to both the palace and the garrison in good order.

  Yet, in the Maze, it seemed that his luck deserted him as precipitately as his sense of direction had fled. It should be easy to find the Serpentine—just head south by southwest … unless the entelechy Askelon had hexed him! He rode tight in his saddle under a soapy, scum-covered sky gone noncommittal, its sun nowhere to be seen, doubling back from Wide-way and the gutted wharfside warehouses where serendipity had taken his partner’s life as suddenly as their charred remains loomed before him out of a pearly fog so thick he could barely see his horse’s ears twitch. Rolling in off the water, it was rank and fetid and his fingers slipped on his weeping reins. The chill it brought was numbing, and lest it penetrate to his very soul, he fled into a light meditation, clearing his mind and letting his body roll with his mount’s gait while its hoofbeats and his own breathing grew loud and that mixed cadence lulled him.

  In his expanded awareness, he could sense the folk behind their doors, just wisps of passion and subterfuge leaking out beyond the featureless mudbrick facades from inner courts and wizened hearts. When glances rested on him, he knew it, feeling the tightening of focus and disturbance of auras like roused bees or whispered insults. When his horse stopped with a disapproving snort at an intersection, he had been sensing a steady attention on him, a presence pacing him which knew him better than the occasional street-denizen who turned watchful at the sight of a mercenary riding through the Maze, or the whores half-hidden in doorways with their predatory/cautious/disappointed pinwheels of assessment and dismissal. Still thoroughly disoriented, he chose the leftward fork at random, as much to see whether the familiar pattern stalking him would follow along as in hopes that some landmark would pop out of the fog to guide him—he did not know the Maze as well as he should, and his meditation-sensitized peripheral perception could tell him only how close the nearest walls were and a bit about who lurked behind them: he was no adept, only a western-trained fighter. But, being one, he had shaken his fear and his foreboding, and waited to see if Shadowspawn, called Hanse, would announce himself: should Niko hail the thief prematurely, Hanse would almost certainly melt back into the alleys he commanded rather than own that Niko had perceived himself shadowed—and leave him lost among the hovels and the damned.

  He had learned patience waiting for gods to speak to him on wind-whipped precipices while heaving tides licked about his toes in anticipation. After a time, he began to see canopied stalls and hear muted haggling, and dismounted to lead his horse among the splintered crates and rotten fruit at the bazaar’s edge.

  “Psst! Stealth!” Hanse called him by his war-name, and dropped, soundless as a phantom, from a shuttered balcony into his path. Startled, Niko’s horse scrabbled backward, hind hooves kicking crates and stanchions over so that a row ensued with the stall’s enraged proprietor. When that was done, the dark slumhawk still waited, eyes glittering with unsaid words sharp
er than any of the secreted blades he wore, a triumphant smile fierce as his scarlet sash fading to his more customary street-hauteur as he turned figs in his fingers, pronounced them unfit for human consumption, and eased Niko’s way.

  “I was out there this morning,” Niko heard, bent down over his horse’s left hind hoof, checking for splinters caught in its shoe; “heard your team lost a member, but not who. Pissass weird weather, these days. You know something I should know?”

  “Possibly.” Niko, putting down the hoof, brushed dust from his thighs and stood up. “Once when I was wandering around the backstreets of a coastal city—never mind which one—with an arrow in my gut and afraid to seek a surgeon’s help there was weather like this. A man who took me in told me to stay off the streets at night until the weather’d been clear a full day—something to do with dead adepts and souls to pay their way out of purgatory. Tell your friends, if you’ve got any. And do me a favor, fair exchange?” He gathered up his reins and took a handful of mane, about to swing up on his horse, and thus he saw Hanse’s fingers flicker: state it. So he did, admitting that he was lost, quite baldly, and asking the thief to guide him on his way.