Storm Season

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  Aye, Hanse thought. She loves jewellery and thus the ring; cats are sacred to her and thus the stone: the eye of a cat. Somehow it was pleasant thus to find some small comfort of logic in all this that clearly had naught to do with logic. Gods! He was involved with the very gods!

  Mignureal came along just as he was departing. She asked about the handsome clothing he carried! Obviously she had never seen it before, and Hanse blinked. His eyes swerved in her mother’s direction. She was staring at her daughter.

  “Into the house, Mignue,” she said, with uncommon sharpness. “See to the preparation of the leeks and yeni-sprouts your father fetched home for dinner.”

  Hanse went away thoughtful and shaken while Moonflower sat staring at nothing. She was a mother, and she too was shaken, and passing nervous.

  For Hanse the next twenty-six hours rode by on the backs of snails. He slept not well and his dreams were not for the repeating.

  ****

  ATTIRED IN SUCH a way as to arouse the envy of a successful merchant, Hanse completed his ascent to Eaglebeak just after the sun began sliding off the edge of the world. Continuing cautious and too apprehensive to hurry, he picked his way through a jumble of tumbled columns and jagged stones habited only by spiders and serpents, lizards and scorpions, a few snails, and the most insistent of scrubby plants. These owned Eaglebeak now, and Eaglenest. All here had been murdered long and long ago. They were said still to haunt the place, that merchant and his family. And so the hilltop and once-fine estate-house were avoided.

  Even so a great portion of the manse stood, and some of it was even under roof. Green-bordered blue cloak fluttering, his emerald-hued tunic with its purfling of yellow gold an unwontedly soft caress on his thighs, Hanse approached a doorless entry. It yawned dark, and still the ancient dark stains splashed the jamb; the blood of murder. He cast many anxious looks this way and that, and he did not hurry. For once he was not pleased to go into shadows.

  He was met and greeted. Not by Ils or a beauteous woman, either!

  Oh she was female, all right, and indeed shapely in a warm deep pink, a long gown sashed with red and hemmed with silver. The dress was lovely and rich and her figure was lovelier than that but even so the most striking aspect of her was her face. She had none.

  Hanse stopped very abruptly and stared. At nothing. It was as if his gaze somehow swerved away from the face of this woman who greeted him, putting forth one lovely smooth hand.

  The hand was adorned with a single ring. Hanse recognized it. He had seen it yesterday, in the sky-aspiring temple of Ilshipri.

  “Don’t be fearful, Hanse of the Shadows, Chosen of Ilsig, Son of Shadows.” It was a very nice voice, and unconditionally female.

  “Of one who has no face on her? Oh, of course not!”

  Her laughter was a stream of bright quicksilver in sunshine. “Choose a face then,” she bade him, and proceeded to give him a choice.

  The air shimmered above her shoulders and a head formed, and a face. It was not comforting. Hanse was looking at Lirain. Lirain, who had conspired with another against Kadakithis, and sought to use Hanse (and succeeded), and who was dead for her crime, and her pretty face gone with her. It disappeared now, to become the piquant features of the royal concubine who had been unlucky enough to be present the night he stole the Savankh from the Prince-Governor’s own bedchamber. When last Hanse had seen this one she was bound as he’d left her. He could not even remember her na—oh. Taya. No matter. She was becoming someone else.

  “Uh!”

  That gasp was elicited by Taya’s vanishing to be replaced by … Moonflower! Aye, Moonflower, earrings, chins and all!

  “No thank you,” Hanse was able to say, and felt better for it.

  Far more shocking was the next visage, one he recognized after a few moments of gaping. The woman he had seen murdered for her terror rod out by Fanner’s Market, less than two months ago! Before he could protest, she had flickered away after the others, and Hanse swallowed. Now he gazed close upon a face he knew and had always wished could be closer. She was the smiling and truly beautiful daughter of Venerable Shafralain. Esaria her name, a girl of seventeen or eighteen—the Lady Esaria! A beauty he had watched and about whom he had entertained phantasies rather more than once or thrice.

  “You know,” Hanse blurted, with more breath than voice. “You bring out these faces from my own memory!”

  Already Esaria was becoming Mignureal, sweet-faced Mignureal, who gazed serenely at him—and spoke.

  “You are invited to dinner tomorrow night. You will be in no danger. Wear this clothing. The place is known to you. It is long unpeopled, and its water is a silver pool. The silver is your own, Son of the Shadow, Chosen of Ilsig.”

  And of course now he knew who his greeter was. It was not possible, but then none of it was.

  “Whom shall I be to your eyes tonight, Son of Shadow?”

  Hanse replied with surely a great stroke of genius, and made the most brilliantly diplomatic utterance of his life.

  “The thrice-beauteous face of the Lady Eshi from the statue in the temple of Eshi Radiant,” he said—

  And She was, smiling delightedly, ever so pleased. She embraced him with warmth and Hanse nearly collapsed.

  Her hand clasping his with warmth, she led him into that ruined and murkily shadowed once-luxury manse … and it was again! Everywhere candles sprang into lambence, with constant flashes and continuing unnatural brightness. Bright, bright light, revealing perfect inlaid floors that were works of art and walls all alive and acolor with mosaic-work. Along a high-soaring hall he was led, and into a palatial dining hall, and here too all came alight with the brightness of day.

  At the far—far!—end of a genuinely long table of fine inlaid wood sat … a shadow. And a man …

  Hanse tore loose his hand from the warm grasp of a god and backed a pace with a hissing whisper of soft-soled buskins.

  “Cudget!” he all but shouted. “Oh no, no, Cudget—they killed you, Cudget!” And his voice broke—

  The voice that replied was not Cudget’s, but was male, and warmth itself. Somehow it made Hanse feel good; all warm.

  “It is in the nature of gods to be self-directed, what you call selfish. Sometimes we forget your mortal attachments, unbroken by death. I thought you would like the face of your mentor and late best friend and foster father, my beloved friend and servant Hanse. My own visage is only Light; Lambence; Candence. For I have not a thousand eyes you know, not really.”

  “You… cannot be …”

  “Hanse—take the crossed brown pot with you,” Cudget said in Mignureal’s voice, and only she and Hanse knew that she had said those words to him one night of evil. (Or did she?) And then Cudget was speaking on, in another voice that Hanse did not at first recognize. Then he did—it was his own! He remembered the words, from the night he had gone to Kurd’s and nearly died—no! He had not uttered those words! He had but thought them, and only he could know them:

  “O Ils, god of my people and father of Shalpa my patron? It is true that Tempus Thales serves Vashanka Tenslayer. But help us, help us both, lord Ils, and I swear to do all I can to destroy Vashanka Sister-wifer or drive him hence, if only You will show me the way!”

  On hearing those words issue in his voice from the Being at the far end of the long table, Hanse could only stare.

  “Only two could know that prayer of yours, Hanse. Only two, not just in all the world, but in all the universe. You are one; the other is He who hears all words directed to him, whether they are uttered by tongue or mind only.”

  Pale, Hanse could only gasp forth shaky words: “Lord… God.”

  “Yes,” the warm voice spoke from that lambence.

  Hanse had elected not to genuflect on meeting a prince of Ranke. Now, upon meeting that god Who was god of gods, he was far too shaken to think of falling to his knees.

  Lord Ils proved that he was no mere king or emperor or religious leader, to insist upon such displays. Neither ego
ism nor egotism marked gods. They had no need of either. They were gods. Cudget’s face vanished and again Hanse was forced to squint. Someone still sat at table’s end in that big dining hall, but there was no face at all now. There was only light.

  Eyes almost closed, Hanse was forced to look away from it—and discovered that now he looked upon a goddess, all in deep warm pink bordered with silver and sashed with scarlet. With jewels flashing in the deep indigo silk of her hair; or perhaps they were stars.

  The voice of warmth spoke.

  “Yes,” it said again. “Cheated of strength in my own lands, but not drained, Hanse Son of Shadow. The intensity of belief of one who had sneered at gods, and his loyalty that is not automatic but learned, volunteered—it is you I speak of, Hanse—these aided Me. For gods and mortals are mutually dependent, Hanse.

  “My cousin Savankala’s son Vashanka has waxed here by the power of belief of one variously called the Riddler, and Thales, and Tempus, as well as the Engineer, and Sea-born. We need not concern you with who he really is. Vashanka wished his freedom one night; wished it enough to bargain with Me. It required only the efforts of Shalpa my son to cloud the skies that night. Because the climate of your land is what it is, both Vashanka’s power and Mine were required to send rain that night, when you needed water to survive the plant-that-kills. Naturally I made bargain with Vashanka ere I helped him—because I knew Vashanka would bargain to help you save Tempus!

  “Having agreed, Vashanka himself made a concession: Vashanka himself struck his name from the palace of My people. Nor will Vashanka use such power displays here again. It were not wise of Me to raise my murdered temple, which Vashanka struck down; that is the business of you humans. Such edifices please you humans; gods have no need of such aggrandizement for there is no aggrandizement beyond godhead.”

  Hanse’s brain was awhirl and he wished he were sitting down. He said, “And… and Mignureal?”

  It was Eshi who replied to that. “We have acted through her twice now, and she remains more powerful than she knows. For none can be touched by a god without receiving some of that which is the essence of gods—a form of strength, a form of dominion over time and space. Those are after all creations of gods, and bounded about my mortals. The girl Mignureal remembers nothing of having twice acted for us. But she dreams—O how she dreams, now!”

  Now that shadow-presence spoke, at table’s end, and its voice was as a shadow might sound; was as a piece of good leather drawn slowly across a whetstone. “The power of Vashanka remains at bay, and now you may make use of Vashanka’s servant, who is … lost.”

  “How—why?” Hanse asked, and indeed he was not sure if either question was the right one. Seismic disruptions disturbed his brain and his stomach felt both hollow and drawn together.

  Because they needed him, they told him without equivocation, for what was pride to gods?

  The Ilsigi his people, and Sanctuary called Thieves’ World needed him, and the world needed him. It was not just that Ils and his family would wane and shrink and perish. Ranke would rule supreme over all the world, and Ranke was ruled by men other than good (“for my cousin Savankala is old and weary of the strife of his offspring”) and Savankala’s warlike, war-loving son ruled Ranke, through its emperor.

  “I may not do battle with Vashanka, though,” Ils said, light speaking in the voice of warmth, “for son must battle son.”

  And with that stated He vanished, and much light left with him. Now the big chamber was draped with shadows, and the Shadow at table’s end spoke, in the rustly voice of shadows, hooded and cloaked.

  “You think you know me, Hanse, and you are right. I am He to Whom There is no Temple. I am the Shadowed One, Hanse who are Son of the Shadow. It is I who must combat Vashanka, for I am son of Ils as he is son of Savankala my uncle. But the presence here of Ranke, and of Vashanka and his so-powerful servant—these have robbed me of abilities. I can act only through you, Hanse, as my sister may act only through Mignureal. With the sword from him called Stepson, Hanse, who is Godson, is to combat a god.”

  “Vash—Vashanka?”

  Hanse saw the shadowy nod that was his only reply, and again he blurted words: “But I am not skilled with a sword!—Lord of Shadows,” he added.

  That fortunate fact was not to be his succor as he hoped. Fight a god! Shadowspawn? Hanse? No no, he wanted only to fly from here and lose himself in that cess-warren called the Maze, forever!

  But: “There is one in Sanctuary who is more than expert with the sword and the business of killing, and he allows that he owes you. With him now are those who are skilled at teaching use of the sword, and they are his liege-men, Hanse. Hanse: use him. He will see to your instruction, and with pleasure. You shall learn prodigiously and surprise them, for I shall be there with you, Hanse who are the Chosen of Ilsig.”

  Now Hanse was propping himself with both hands on a high-backed chair, and at last Eshi took notice.

  “We are cruel, brother! Shadowspawn—seat yourself.”

  Shadowspan obeyed with gratitude and alacrity. He almost collapsed into the chair. He took a very deep breath, let part of it out, and was able to form words by letting them ride the breath: “But … uh … then what?”

  “You will know, Hanse.”

  Then Shadowspawn twitched away at a sound beside him. He looked at the floor beside his chair, at what had only just appeared there, and could not possibly be there. Clinking, dripping, running water, were the bags off the saddle of a dead man named Bourne. Hanse’s saddlebags, from the deeps of the well just outside! The ransom of the Savankh, which he had stolen for little purpose other than his own ego and pride—which had soared, then. The ransom Prince Kitty-cat had told him was his—if he could get it out of the well.

  It was irresistible. He bent to the bags, opened one, took forth a few wet silver coins. And he sighed. He dribbled them back in, listening to their sweet lovely clink, and he did it again—keeping a few in his fist. Then, staring thoughtfully down at those bags sending wet runnels along the floor, he sighed.

  “You are god and my god, Shadowed One. This… this is safe in the well. Uh, can you put it back?”

  Hanse jerked when the bags vanished, and he wondered if he were not the greatest fool in Sanctuary. How silly I am going to feel when I wake up from this dream?

  “It is back in the well, Son of the Shadow, and aye, it is safe indeed! And we must go, my sister and I. Our time on this plane is necessarily limited.”

  Hanse raised an expostulating hand, said “But—” and was alone in Eaglenest. The candles remained, burning. So now did food and wine, on the table before him. He glanced down. The puddles and dark run-stains of water remained. And so did the coins in his hand, a few pieces of silver.

  Did that mean it had all indeed happened?

  No, of course not. When I wake, the coins will be gone.

  The food he took with him, eating as he left, tasted very good in his dream, and the wine was the very best he had ever sipped. Only sipped; the sack remained heavy as he climbed the steps to his room deep in that area of Sanctuary called the Maze. (It was even more dangerous now than ever before, what with all these damned swaggering soldiers, all foreigners; that was one reason he had chosen to leave his money in the well. Even the Maze could no longer be considered safe, Hanse thought.)

  He entered his room and closed the door with care, and bolted it with as much care. A window leaked in a little moonlight, and by the time he had the cloak unclasped and off and the tunic over his head, he was able to see pretty well. That was how he discovered that a woman waited in his bed.

  A girl, rather. The truly beautiful Lady Esaria. In his bed. She sat up, showing that all she wore was the bedspread, and held out her arms.

  Hanse was somehow able to avoid yelling or collapsing. He made it to the bed. She was real. She was waiting for him. It was wonderful, all of it with her. Even his wondering, Is she Eshi?, did not inhibit him or her or his enjoyment or hers. What matter whether she
was the Esaria she appeared to be or the goddess; she was higher than he could have aspired, and the experience was supernal.

  He deduced that it really was Esaria, not Eshi (in his dream, of course, he reminded himself) because surely Eshi wouldn’t have been eating so much garlic.

  ****

  SHE WAS GONE in the morning, and he lay smiling, thinking about his dream. Lying on his back, he rolled his head.

  He could see cloak, tunic, and wine-sack from here. That brought him wide awake, and sent his hand swinging down beside the pallet to check his buskins. The silver coins were still there. Hanse demonstrated the cliche of sitting bolt upright. Hurling back the spread, he inspected his bed. That required no effort. The evidence of Esaria’s visit and her late virginity were vehemently present.

  I was not dreaming, he thought, and then he spoke aloud: “I see and I believe. I will do it, O Swift-footed One, O All-father Ils! I will do it, holiest-but-one Lady Eshi, and Venerable Lady of Ladies Shipri!”

  The voice was there, inside his head: All depend on you, son.

  Not “all depends,” Hanse realized later. “All depend.” Meaning “all the gods of Ilsig and the Ilsigi!”

  He took up the last of the strong drink he had used all too much since That Night, the night at Kurd’s, and he poured it out onto the sheet on the floor, which already showed the scarlet of another form of sacrificial outpouring.

  “A libation to the gods of Ilsig!” Hanse said firmly, and—he meant it.

  From the secret hiding place it had occupied for a month and more, somehow resisting alcoholic urges to sell it, he took out a packet. It was the one he had brought away the morning after That Night. It contained the shining and obviously valuable surgical instruments of Kurd the vivisectionist, whom Tempus had lately sent off to another plane of existence or inexistence. Thieving was out of the question now, and such excellent tools would bring him plenty of coin, the naked Hanse thought, and he opened the package on the rickety little table.