Uneasy Alliances tw-11

by Robert Asprin

  The voices stopped suddenly. At first, he feared he had been seen. But neither the man nor the woman there turned his way. Indeed, their eyes never seemed to move at all. After a moment, the man resumed the conversation, but the woman gave no answer. She didn't speak a word. Neither did her gaze leave her partner's face.

  An alarm jangled in Dayrne's head. He peered closer at the blackcloaked man, unable to tell much about him save his height. A hood concealed his features, also any weapons he bore. But he was tall, much too tall for a Raggah. And he spoke Rankene.

  "Come with me," the man said, crooking his finger. The prostitute smiled and fell into step beside her suitor. They left the niche and walked down the pebbled path.

  Their tread made no sound!

  Almost, Dayrne leaped from his hiding place, drawing his sword. Sorcery! If he struck swiftly, the fiend might not have time to react. A clean stroke through the neck-separate the head from the body-that was the best way to kill a wizard.

  But he stopped himself. That might save this lady, but what of the other missing whores? He owed it to Asphodel to try and find them. He didn't relish the task, and he cursed his own sense of loyalty. Still, he owed. There was no more to be said about it. Of one thing he was sure, though. This villain was no Raggah.

  Dayrne followed the pair. Apparently, the wizard knew the park well. Shipri's grove was isolated in a little-traveled area of the Promise. The walkways were empty. They wove a careful course toward the high wall at the southeast corner. Dayrne rubbed his chin. He'd expected them to make for one of the entrances. Where could they be going?

  In the very corner where the two walls joined stood one of the tallest of the park's god-sculptures. Dayrne ducked behind a shrub while the wizard and his catch approached the Father of the Ilsigi pantheon, mighty Us.

  The wizard left the prostitute in the god's shadow while he went to the jointure of the walls. He put his left hand on a certain brick about shoulder high in the east face. His right found another brick in the south face at belly level. The two bricks were barely within his reach, and he strained to press them inward.

  Dayme heard a grinding of stone against stone as the statue of Us moved on its base.

  The wizard crooked a finger, and the prostitute went to his side. He led her down into a black crack at the idol's feet and the darkness swallowed them. Dayrne bit his lip. She'd gone like a sheep to slaughter, without protest, smiling as if she'd smoked a whole bag of krrff.

  Again came that grating sound, and the pit suddenly sealed. Dayrne leaped out of his concealment and raced to the wall. Which were the right stones? He strove to remember. He was taller than the wizard, and his arms were longer. He chose a pair and pressed. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. He was sure he had the correct left-hand brick. But which was the right?

  Suddenly, Us moved. Dayme thanked his own gods, stepped to the edge of the opening and looked down. A set of stone steps descended into utter blackness. He spent only an instant wishing for a lamp or a torch, then took the first step.

  The air was oppressive and stale. He glanced back upward at the square of moonlight and drew a final fresh breath. He didn't take time to search for the closing mechanism, but drew his sword and began to feel his way forward, brushing one hand along the slime-slicked wall.

  The tunnel led in only one direction. He'd heard rumors of such tunnels, but all reports had confined them to the Maze. Apparently the reports were wrong.

  The darkness made him pause. It was worse than being blind because he knew that he could see. His eyes were wide open, shifting from side to side, straining for some object or bit of light to fasten onto. His heart thundered in his ribs. Still, he pushed on, mindful of the promise he'd made to Asphodel.

  A web draped over his head. He opened his mouth, a shout rising in his throat. Barely, he choked it back, and he rubbed his sleeve over his face in a frantic haste to free himself from the sticky strands.

  Now, how in hell had that damn wizard dodged that?

  He crept on, all too aware of the closeness of the walls, of the weight of the earth over his head.

  Then-was that a light?

  He moved a little faster, careful still to make no sound. The tiny spot of light became a flame in the distance, then a sconced lamp with another just beyond it. Dayme hovered at the edge of the darkness and listened.

  A low voice rode on the stagnant air. Impossible to distirguish the words, but by the rhythms and stresses, Dayme thought it some kind of chant. He saw nothing ahead, though, so pressing against the wall, he ventured on into the light.

  He stopped again. A too-familiar scent wafted through the tunnel. Dayme sniffed. His brows knitted together for an instant, and he clenched the hilt of his sword.

  A death smell hung in the air, the unmistakable odor of rotting flesh. Too many years in the Rankan arenas as a slave and as an auctoratus had made him familiar with that stench. Gritting his teeth, trying not to breathe too often or too deeply, he followed the scent and the voice.

  A shriek ripped through the tunnel. The fine hairs on Dayme's neck rose straight up. A woman's voice! Another cry echoed after the first, then a pause, and a long series of screams and broken sobbings.

  Dayme abandoned stealth and ran forward. The chant had risen to match the intensity of the screams. A mad cacophony of sound swirled around him. He ran wide-eyed and fearful, yet the fear did not stop him. It drew him, instead, until he found the entrance to a side room off the tunnel.

  He realized at once the tunnel's original purpose. He was surely close to the palace by now, and this was an old escape route used in times of emergency, built by the Ilsigs, perhaps still unknown to the current Rankan occupants. The side room was full of empty weapon racks where fleeing men might once had grabbed swords before emerging aboveground in the Promise.

  But not all his arena experience had prepared him for the rest of the sight.

  In the light of a dozen oil lamps Dayme saw the bodies of Asphodel's missing prostitutes. They hung by their necks from metal spikes driven deep into the walls, twisted ropes biting through the bloated flesh of their throats. Plainly, though, they had been killed before they were hanged.

  The first few women had merely been stabbed through the hearts. The purpled, crusted wounds showed visibly on their bare breasts. The next one had been disemboweled; the flesh of her belly had been peeled back to reveal emptiness; she looked like nothing more than a gutted fish. The mutilations grew progressively more cruel. The skin and muscle had been sliced from one, leaving the organs in full view. Another had been left relatively intact with only dark holes showing where the organs had been removed. On yet another body the visible veins and arteries had been precisely, surgically opened, making a strange and gruesome mapwork.

  Blood had stained the wall a nauseating color where the corpses hung. Old puddles and rivulets of blood had dried and crusted on the floor beneath them.

  Dayme reeled at the insanity of it.

  He fixed his eyes on the center of the room. Bound upon a crossshaped altar a woman screamed again, her terror filling the chamber and the tunnel beyond. It was the whore he'd followed from Shipri's niche. Whatever entrancement her captor had placed upon her had faded. Her feet and wrists bled as she struggled in her ropes.

  At her head stood her captor. The wizard's eyes snapped open and fixed suddenly on Dayrne. The chant died in his throat. The gleaming knife he'd brandished over the prostitute turned point first toward the gladiator, and he snatched a second dagger from a table of instruments close at hand.

  Outrage smothered any thought of fear. Dayrne started across the room, raising his sword. The wizard stepped swiftly to the altar's far side, putting his victim between himself and his unexpected attacker. As he moved he brought the points of his two blades together and barked a short command in a language Dayrne didn't know.

  A pain stabbed the gladiator's heart. The breath rushed from him, and he clenched his teeth. Still he forced another step forward,
fighting the sudden agony. The pain struck him again, and as he took another step, yet again stronger than ever. His knees buckled; the arcane fire in his chest consumed his strength. A red tide flooded his vision. His fingers trembled with seizure on the hilt of his sword.

  He forced his head up, expecting a death stroke from one of the daggers. The wizard had felled him easily; Dayrne was helpless at that moment. Yet, his foe kept his place behind the altar and his victim.

  Then, Dayrne saw fear, not triumph, on his foe's face.

  Fighting the pain, he crawled back toward the entrance. With each retreating step the pressure on his heart lessened. He leaned on the jamb and slowly pulled himself to his feet, gasping for one good breath.

  The wizard lowered his blades. A fine sweat sheened on his brow, and the glow of the oil lamps lent him a strange countenance.

  Still, the fear was unmistakable; Dayrne saw it in those dark. deep-set eyes.

  The prostitute cried piteously. "Help me'" she begged Dayrne. "Don't let him kill me, I'm with child!"

  Dayrne stayed by the door. He needed a moment to recover his strength and to think. For all the wizard's apparent power, he feared Dayrne. Why?

  "Don't just stand there like a worthless eunuch!" the whore shouted when her rescuer didn't move. "He's going to-"

  The wizard frowned and touched her temple with one finger. Her head sagged back before she could say another word. Her eyes fluttered shut. She sighed, then went limp.

  But almost instantly, her lids snapped open again. She screamed and cowered away from the wizard's hand as far as her bonds allowed.

  The wizard roared in frustration, grasped both his blades in his right hand, and seized the woman's hair in his left- He jerked her head up then sharply down on the altar. She let go a short gasp as her eyes rolled and closed. A fine trickle of blood oozed down the cross under her head and dripped to the floor.

  "I get so tired of the noise," the wizard said in exasperation.

  Dayrne leaped across the threshold, but his foe was just as fast. Again the points of the blades touched, and again he shouted in that strange tongue.

  Dayrne screamed as fire exploded in his chest and a rush of tears halfblinded him. But he kept his feet and flung himself at the altar. Wideeyed, the wizard sprang back against the wall, clutching the daggers in shivering hands.

  "Whatever god has siphoned my power, I've still more than enough for you," the wizard hissed. But his voice quavered.

  Dayme sprawled over the altar and over the woman's limp form, his fingers clutching her thighs for support. He sucked for air to relieve his tortured lungs and tried to fight the weakness that numbed his limbs. He lunged with the point of his sword, but his strength faded too swiftly, and his foe retreated beyond his reach.

  The wizard flattened against the wall, and his fear was a tangible force. Then, fear turned to anger as he realized Dayrne's impotence. "All the way from Carronne I came to this miserable dung-hole!" He was still careful to keep his blades touching and pointed at the gladiator. "The tales had reached even that far of the strange affairs transpiring here, stories of gods and demons and dead souls that walked the streets. Clearly, there was power here for the taking, and who deserved it more than I? So I came disguised as one of the laborers who build your walls."

  Dayrne hissed through his teeth, barely able to form words. "Human sacrifice? Never in our empire-not even in this rotten town!" He tried to glance over his shoulder, wondering if he could make it back to the safety of the entrance where the wizard's spell didn't reach. But he knew that was useless. It was a struggle even to raise up on one elbow and look his foe in the eye.

  "The sacrifices are to placate whatever god has stolen my magic!" The wizard dared to come closer. "In Carronne I was a hazard-class magician -curse the fate that brought me here! My simplest spells go completely awry. All those stories of power-there must be some secret!"

  "No secret," Dayme managed. "Go back to Carronne." He dragged one foot, then the other, under himself and tried to stand. It was useless.

  His heart hammered against his ribs; the room spun crazily. The wizard's face swam out of focus. "Tasfalen's,"-he fought to get the words out"magic burned out!"

  But the wizard didn't hear or didn't understand. "I'll find the god who has cursed me and broken my skill and offer blood to appease him, until I'm strong again-strong enough to break your secret and seize the magic that pervades this city!"

  Another voice called suddenly from the entrance. "It's always good to have dreams." Dayrne recognized it immediately and turned to shout a warning. All he managed to do was fall. Daphne didn't spare him a glance. "Have a long one in your death sleep." Her dagger flashed across the space.

  The wizard cried out and bounced against the wall, clutching his shoulder. When he straightened. Daphne's blade protruded near his collar bone. A wet stain blossomed rapidly on his dark garment. Still, he managed to lift his own daggers and slam the points together and breathe his Word of Power.

  Dayme thought his heart would burst. From the comer of his eye he saw Daphne double over as she stepped across the threshold with drawn sword. The weapon tumbled from her gripBut then, impossibly, she began to laugh. She straightened, threw back her head and let the mirth flow from her lips. She looked around for her sword, but as she bent to retrieve it she tripped on her own foot and fell, only to clamber up again laughing.

  Dayrne felt it, too- The hand that squeezed his heart began, instead, to tickle it. His pain turned slowly into renewed energy. Strength flooded his limbs. He chuckled. Then, uncontrollably, he laughed. He looked at the bodies suspended on the walls, at the prostitute bound to the cross, at the astonished expression on the wizard's face.

  It was all so funny!

  The wizard smashed his daggers together, cursing, and stamped his foot. With a bellow he struck them once more. The blades shattered under the impact, and the pieces fell at his feet. His face paled, and his mouth gaped. Then, gathering his robes about him, he raced from the room and into the tunnel.

  Daphne shot out a foot as if to trip him, but he was already gone. She rolled kittenlike onto her back, clutched her stomach and howled.

  Moments passed before the twisted spell dissolved. Dayme got to his feet, wiping spittle from his chin. He sheathed his sword and turned to help the princess.

  But Daphne rose on her own. "If you breathe a word of this," she threatened, red-faced, "I'll wear your mouth for a garter."

  "Just see to that one," he snapped, pointing to the prostitute on the altar. "Later we'll talk about your following me. I told you this was personal business."

  She put a hand on his chest before he could pass her. "You're my business," she answered stubbornly, her gaze hard and glittering. "Good trainers are rare."

  He regarded her for an instant, then remembered the wizard. "We'll talk," he said, and he ran into the tunnel.

  The echo of fleeing footsteps sounded from the direction of the Promise. Dayrne sped after, drawing his blade once again. He quickly passed the final lamp and plunged ahead. The darkness, though, forced him to slow. He put a hand to the wall and hurried as rapidly as he dared, cursing under his breath.

  The wizard's footsteps faded. Had he reached the tunnel's end at the shrine of Us? If he had emerged, Dayme knew he might never find him.

  His answer came as he spied the shaft of moonlight that lanced the blackness. But strange sounds wafted through the opening, swelling as he approached-shouts and curses, high, frantic voices:

  Dayrne raced toward the moonlight. It had to be the prostitutes! He took the steps two at a time and ascended into open air.

  The women of the Promise surrounded the wizard in a wide ring. He spun in confusion, weakling brandishing Daphne's dagger. It gleamed wetly with his blood. The whores, too, waved daggers, the small weapons they wore in their garters. Still, they didn't know their foe's power!

  Dayme tried to warn them. "Asphodel!"

  At his shout, the wizard whirled. Their eyes
met for an instant. Hatred and anger burned in that furious gaze, and Dayme felt a force reach out for him.

  The prostitutes saw their chance. They fell on the wizard, hacking and stabbing with their tiny blades. Arms rose and plunged with frantic outrage and swiftly blackened with the blood of their stalker.

  Dayme could only stare as the wizard sank under the onslaught. The women did not stop. They stabbed and stabbed, giving release to all the rage and terror they had lived with the past nights. Then, Asphodel stepped back gasping and wide-eyed, her white dress a stained ruin. Dayme went slowly to her side.

  "Who was he?" she asked, barely able to speak as she trembled.

  She might have been a spectre that haunted the park the way she looked. Dayme wiped a smear of blood from her cheek and patted back the hair that had fallen around her face. "He came from Carronne," he finally answered. "I never learned his name."

  Asphodel sighed and looked over her shoulder. The whores stood away from their grisly work. Pieces of the corpse lay hacked and scattered around their feet. The women stared from one to the other with expressions that betrayed confusion in some, fury and vindication in others. One by one they drifted back into the bushes. From somewhere in the foliage came the sound of weeping.

  "I guess it doesn't matter," Asphodel said. "One of my ladies found this opening, and we waited to see who came out. I knew it had something to do with my missing ones." She sighed again and peered into the tunnel's gloom. "They're dead, aren't they, Tiana and all the rest?"

  He nodded quietly. "All but the one he took tonight. She's still alive, though somewhat battered."

  Daphne chose that moment to emerge from the opening with the prostitute slung over her shoulder. She dumped her burden unceremoniously in the grass.

  Dayrne frowned and knelt beside the woman. "He didn't hit her that hard. She should have come around by now,"

  Daphne spat. "She did. Then, she took a good look at-" the one-time princess, hesitated, looked at Asphodel, and spoke more softly. "She saw her friends and realized how close she'd come to joining them." Daphne shrugged and cocked her head to one side. "She fainted."