By Demons Possessed

by P. C. Hodgell

  “A fungit, from the Central Lands.”

  “We have little to do with such foreign parts, less each year. How did it get here, then, eh?”

  “Does that matter? It’s silver.” No need to mention that it had probably been minted with a curse in the Poison Court.

  “If you say.” He bit it. “Doesn’t taste like lead, anyway. Here.”

  He handed her a spit. What she had given him was worth a lot more, but she didn’t complain. Bad enough that word of Central Lands’ silver was about to hit the streets.

  “Fresh,” said the vendor, watching her. “I got it from my cousin’s sister’s son come in from the countryside yesterday. None of your get-up-and-walk-away sort.”

  “Is that happening?” Jame asked.

  “There are rumors,” he said darkly. “I hear that beef hearts in Fleshshambles Street keep beating even out of the chest and have to be chased with spits. Beheaded fowl try to fly away. Fish won’t stop twitching. Eels slither. There’s even talk of the yeast in ale climbing back up the drinkers’ throats to choke them.”

  Jame nibbled an onion, and spat it out.

  “That’s nothing,” said the vendor. “When I trimmed off their roots this morning, they wept. My brother over on River Street says the eyes of the potatoes in his stew keep blinking at him.”

  Jame remembered the server at the Ringing Gold mansion: mewling street vegetables.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You don’t want to know what was in the cabbage heads.”

  He glared at her. “If you knew already, why did you ask? Here, you’re one of the night-timers, aren’t you? I recognize the cut of your coat.”

  As Jame walked away, she heard the coin ring in the gutter.

  “Filthy nightie!” the vendor shouted after her. “Stay in the shadows where you belong!”

  It seemed to Jame, now that she thought about it, that she had been getting hostile glances all day. Day and night in Tai-tastigon must be more at odds than she had realized, as if one saw contagion seeping from the other.

  Mewling vegetable, naked beating hearts, roofs infested with woodlice, stone-mites (whatever those were) . . .

  The clouds to the north appeared to form wispy, towering shapes as the north wind collided with the south. A shape was forming there that she felt she ought to recognize.

  And what was that smell of death borne out of the Haunted Lands? Did the north gate stand open?

  Huh.

  Sleep, she supposed, would also be good, but she was used to going days at a time without it. Besides, she sensed that if indulged in now, it would bring bad dreams.

  Ahead, a crowd of citizens swarmed around the shadow of a stairwell, leading down to a basement door.

  “Kill it!” shouted some.

  “Filthy abomination!” howled others.

  Jame edged in between them. She noted that they held rocks and the fragments of cobbles, but despite their cries they hesitated.

  A figure huddled at the bottom of the stairs. Its clothes were fine, but stained and torn. Judging from the wild mop of dirty blonde hair, it was a young woman.

  “What are you doing?” she asked a pudgy man near the front clutching a large rock in both hands. “Surely this is one of your neighbors.”

  He glanced at her, his eyes glassy, his face slack with horror. “No. This was my sister. We cared for her, Mother and I, after she lost her mind. She had gone out to hold vigil for our god. I found her the next day wandering the streets and brought her home. At first she pleaded with us to let her go. Then she fell silent. Then she died. I went to fetch a priest. When we came back, Mother had gone in to make her presentable.”

  He laughed, his voice shrill with hysteria. Tears ran unheeded down his plump cheeks.

  “I found her like that, crouching over Mother’s body, gnawing on what was left of her face. Monster!”

  He turned and heaved up his rock. Jame put a hand on his arm. He wheeled at her touch, nearly bringing the stone down on her head.

  “Why?” he cried, more in bewilderment than anger. “They say that you nightwalkers have cursed us. What did we ever do except provide you with things to steal?”

  “I’m sorry. Let me talk to her.”

  “Talk! Just try!”

  Jame edged down the stairs. The girl flinched back into the shadows, hiding her face. Then she raised her head and bared her teeth. They were bloodstained, with strings of flesh caught between them. Her features were swollen, her eyes blank. She hissed. Jame retreated.

  “That’s a haunt,” she said to the young man, “No, wait. Stoning won’t help. You have to give it to the pyre.”

  She left as some of the crowd scattered, looking for fire. Others stayed. Stone thudded on flesh. Bones broke. As a thin, piping scream rose behind her, Jame remembered the revenant return of Winter, the Kendar who had been her childhood nurse. She hadn’t yet asked Singer Ashe if haunts felt pain. All that really mattered, though, was that their case was hopeless—yes, even that of Ashe.

  She wandered on for a time, trying not to think, until someone brushed against her.

  “Sorry,” said a familiar voice.

  Jame turned sharply. A blond head bobbed away from her among the throng of shoppers. She plowed after it, against the stream, and clutched a patched sleeve. Startled, the other swung around to face her.

  “Canden!”

  “Talisman?” He looked at first delighted, then wary. “You killed my grandfather.”

  “How many times do I have to say this? I didn’t. He tampered with the Book Bound in Pale Leather and the master runes in it burned out his brains.”

  Canden regarded her dubiously. “Coming from you, that almost sounds reasonable.”

  “Look, where can we talk? The middle of the street somehow doesn’t seem appropriate.”

  “My lodgings are nearby. Come along.”

  He led her off the main street, whose merchants specialized in hats, into an alley festooned with ribbons—cheap cotton ones, Jame noted, some no more than hanks of colored thread. One had to go elsewhere for silk or satin. Canden’s room was over a particularly tawdry shop, with the stench of raw dye seeping up through the floorboards. The door was unlocked.

  “Aren’t you afraid of thieves?” Jame asked.

  She noted that the small space was scrupulously neat except for a table piled high with maps. When she had last seen the late Sirdan’s grandson, he had been southward bound with the renowned explorer Quipun to chart lost Tai-than.

  Canden opened several cabinets, finding nothing, until one yielded a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, and a bottle of wine.

  “Ah,” he said. “If not for the thieves, leaving things, I would long since have starved. This city isn’t kind to cartographers. However, Grandfather still has supporters, although these days none dare say that openly.”

  Jame accepted a cup of wine—a good vintage, she noted. Her opinion of the current Thieves’ Guild changed, marginally.

  She regarded her host. Canden was still a young man but much too thin, with a prematurely lined face and straw-colored hair that had begun to recede at the temples. The intervening years had not been kind to him.

  “When did you come back?” she asked.

  He sipped and shivered. She could see, as he clutched his glass with both bony hands, that he was trying hard not to gulp down its contents.

  “Some three years ago. We were on site for almost two years before that, coming and going. It . . . unnerved me. The city perched on a steep slope below a mountain peak. Far below was a river, then sheer cliffs, then a cloud forest with mist tangled in its upper branches. The top was so high up that the air was hard to breathe. That caused a curious sickness, a dizziness during which we almost thought we could see the city as it had been. Drinking the fermented juice of certain local berries helped.”

  He sank down onto his narrow bed and took another swallow from his cup as if not noticing it. His eyes lost focus.

  “It had been a wonderful
place. The buildings were constructed of cyclopean white granite blocks laid without mortar, following the curves of deep terraces. Workers and priests lived in square houses on streets winding upward. The temples were round, set in green, sloping lawns. There were so many of them that Quipun guessed this was a holy site, set apart by height and location from some lowland capital city long since lost. On the crest of the ridge, at the top of the town, was something different. Taller. Windowless. Alone. It stood in the shadow of the highest peak but seemed, somehow, to dwarf it. I can’t explain. It was strange, and ominous.”

  Jame stirred. “That sounds remarkably like a Kencyr temple. I’ve heard that one was there.”

  Canden drank again and shuddered.

  “Then there was the city as we actually found it, in ruins. Roofs gone. Trees growing up within shattered walls. It looked as if there had been a great earthquake, except that all of the fallen stone blocks had been pushed in one direction—downhill. Then there were the bones. Lots of them. The ones under the blocks were crushed, but those caught on the exposed side had been smashed to dust. Whatever happened, it seemed that everyone had been caught in it. There were no signs of more recent life.”

  “How long ago?” asked Jame.

  “Quipun thought some two thousand years, on the basis of an uncompleted victory stele. It was in pieces when we found it, but if he got very, very drunk he could read it. It commemorated a united hieratic victory over a common enemy, a blasphemous cult who had set itself on high and proclaimed its truth to be preeminent. All of these people they had put to the sword.”

  That sounded very like another version of the Anti-God Heresy, Jame thought. She remembered what Dalis-sar had said about his temple having troubles of its own when he and his fellow guards had been sent north to help Tai-tastigon. If all the Tai-than priests had been killed, their unmanned temple might well have eventually exploded.

  Yes, if the timing was right. Dalis-sar seemed to have no idea how long he had been in Tai-tastigon, but his followers should know. For that matter . . .

  “Canden, when did this city last have a king?”

  He blinked at her, confused. “You mean Heliot? That was nearly two millennia ago. Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Maybe. What happened in the end to your expedition?”

  He raised his glass again to drink, and was bewildered to find it empty. Jame restrained herself from pouring him more.

  “We didn’t last much longer,” he said, his words beginning to slur. “Quipun wanted to see more. We all did. So one night we got very, very, very drunk. The bones rose. The people came back. They were celebrating. ‘Our enemy no longer looks down on us,’ they said. ‘Come, dance with us.’ Quipun and the rest went with them in their long lines, weaving around the white houses, the temples, up the linked, sloping lawns to that monstrosity on the crest, around it . . .

  “I fell asleep. In the morning I was alone, surrounded by ruins and bones. Now here I am, home again, and oh, so tired.”

  Jame rose quickly to help him lie down. He was asleep before his head touched the gray pillow. She swung his feet up onto the bed, covered him with a thin blanket, and stood for a moment, looking down at him.

  He began to snore.

  Little lost boy. Unhappy young man. Good night.

  Chapter VII

  The House of Luck-bringers

  Spring 56

  I

  RUE WOKE NEAR DUSK, confused. Where was she? What had happened?

  Oh yes. As she relaxed, still half asleep, memory returned.

  “Welcome to the Res aB’tyrr.” That was where she was. Mistress Cleppetania, no, call-me-Cleppetty had welcomed her in Jame’s name. This was where her lady had lived when she had stayed in this strange city. They had given her and Marc shelter and she had given them her loyalty.

  Therefore, Rue was among friends. Reassured, her thoughts drifted again.

  Breakfast at the kitchen table. Porridge with a dollop of honey.

  Patches fidgeted with her bowl. Given her scant frame, she must not eat much, but Cleppetty still plunked it down in front of her. In this house, even an apprentice thief, it seemed, must be promptly fed.

  On entering, Patches had presented Rue with a flourish, saying, “The Talisman has sent this great moon-calf to help defend the inn.”

  Rue had choked back a protest. Jame had told her no such thing. What might she have said, though, to the little thief, in case they were separated? Rue knew in theory that some people told lies, but she still found the concept hard to believe.

  “Well,” Cleppetty said, standing over them, vigorously wiping her hands on her apron. “What has our Talisman been up to, all this time?”

  How to answer that?

  “Er . . . I didn’t meet her until about four years ago, when she snatched up my ten-command and tried to storm Lord Caineron’s fortress with us.”

  “Woo,” said Patches, staring. “Start in the middle, will you?”

  “I don’t know a lot before then,” Rue protested. “She came from here, apparently; she and Marc crossed the Ebonbane; she meet her brother at the Cataracts in the middle of a battle; he sent her to the Women’s Halls at Gothregor; she escaped.”

  “My head is spinning,” said Patches. “What brother?”

  “Torisen, Highlord of the Kencyrath.”

  “She’s nobility?”

  “What we call Highborn, yes. And his lordan—that is, his heir.”

  “Two of them,” mused Cleppetty. “And you’re all still alive?”

  “Well, not all of us,” said Rue, with a thought to the late Killy, Vant, and several others. “She does tend to leave her mark, my lady.”

  Cleppetty snorted. “More like a scar. No, I do her an injustice there. She did us much good as well, here at the House of Luck-bringers. Wait a minute: you said that she escaped these Women’s Halls. Did her own people imprison her?”

  “That was at first,” said Rue, spooning up porridge. “I don’t know much about the Highborn, except that they keep their women in seclusion, bind their legs, make them wear masks without eyeholes, and farm them out like broodmares. Jame must have surprised them. She certainly did us.”

  “I dare say,” said Cleppetty dryly. “Bloodstock, eh? No, I wouldn’t see the appeal either, were I in her boots. We didn’t know what to expect from her either then—still don’t now, come to that. She says that the Sirdan has summoned her back. Something to do with his poor dead brother Dally. Now, there was a sweet boy. What happened to him would make the gods weep.”

  “What did happen?” asked Rue, who hadn’t yet caught up with events.

  Cleppetty told her.

  Rue forgot her breakfast. “Her friend? They did that to him?”

  “Someone did. People say that it was Bane who also, in a strange way, was her friend. The gossip on the street is that Bane was jealous of his rival.”

  Rue grappled with this. “My lady had two lovers?”

  “Rather, none that I know of. I don’t think she could make up her mind between them. And she’s fastidious, is our Talisman. Now, there’s a filly who would bolt any stable with a breeding box built into it.”

  The matter had never been put quite this way to Rue before. She regarded it solemnly. It might also explain, in part, why Jame had fled the Women’s Halls.

  Cleppetty folded her arms under her apron and hugged her sharp elbows.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” she said, frowning. “Now the Res aB’tyrr is mixed up with the Thieves’ Guild or, more specifically, with its Sirdan. And to my mind, Men-dalis has not been right in the head since the last Feast of Dead Gods. For that matter, the whole city has seemed to go insane. The stories I could tell you . . . ! But now things may get worse, fast. The Talisman has picked a perilous time to return, much less to put you under our protection.”

  Choking back a protest that she didn’t need protecting, Rue turned to ask Patches for her opinion on the leader of her guild, only to fin
d that the little thief had snuck off, unobserved, as she and Cleppetty had talked.

  Rue jumped to her feet. She hadn’t meant to let Patches out of her sight as her last link to Jame. Cleppetty grabbed at her, but Rue shook her off, as gently as her agitation allowed, and charged out the door.

  “Wait, wait!” Cleppetty cried after her.

  However, Rue had caught a glimpse of Patches turning the corner by the ruined Skyrrman with a mocking glance back over her shoulder. Rue ran after her.

  Within a turning, she lost sight of the thief. Within several more she halted at a crossroads, then took off to the right. The multicolored patch she followed turned out to belong to a countrywoman’s skirt.

  “Sorry,” panted Rue, letting go of her captive.

  “I should hope so!” the latter retorted and flounced off.

  Houses leaned over Rue from both sides, three or four stories high, their upper levels jutting out over the narrow road. It was hard to trace the sun, although she knew that it had risen. People were everywhere, the morning being by now much advanced.

  “Sorry,” muttered Rue, pushing through them. “Sorry. Sorry.”

  Most were shorter than she was. It was like being back in Kothifir, although she had spent most of her time there in the barracks of the Southern Host among peers who had dwarfed her.

  A “great lunk,” Patches had called her. She hadn’t noticed her comparative size so much before. Here among the morning crowd, it made her feel hulking and clumsy, an unaccustomed monster among midgets.

  Otherwise, Tai-tastigon by day was a much more normal city than she had expected.

  People went about their business, buying, selling, trading, as if they hadn’t spent the previous night huddled within doors, almost afraid to breathe. Here from a doorway, a merchant extoled the virtues of his wares.

  (“Pots! Pans! An oven for your bun, madam?”)

  There another offered samples of his spices.

  (“All fresh! No city taint! You won’t sneeze your nose off!”)

  If anything, their chatter was more pronounced than she would have expected, as if in defiance of the dark. There was even a street juggler at one corner, although his audience was all adults. Rue saw no children except at windows, fearfully peering out.