Wings of Omen tw-6

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  Wrong; instead, Tempus and his boys left town and a lot of half-competents and worse began showing up. One gave him trouble and Hanse wished the fool would just fall down on his own dagger, but when it happened he really didn't feel very good about it. After a couple of blocks he turned around and went back. That was how he discovered that he couldn't raise the dead.

  As he passed a fine tavern for the wealthy and lordly, he chuckled aloud. Wishing that they'd treat him in manner lordly and "remember" that he had paid in advance, and well, he ambled in. An hour later he left, stuffed, with the manager and tableman thanking him and wishing him well and swift return.

  He was groaning along, feeling stuffed with more than he should have eaten and far richer fare too, when a thought hit him hard. He immediately expressed the wish that none of the women he had disported himself with had got a child of his. Nor anyone I happen to find in my bed tonight, he thought, and smiled a secret smile. And went home.

  Her name was Mignureal and she was Moonflower's daughter and she had seen him as no one should see any man, doubly one so cocky and full of needs as Shadow spawn: she had seen him gibbering in sorcery-induced fear one night. She had taken him home with her and tended him with her nervous mother staying close, having seen Mignue's soft eyes admiring Hanse. On another occasion he had been about to set forth on a dreadful mission she did riot even know about when a look of strange intensity came over her face. "Oh Hanse-Hanse, take the crossed brown pot with you."

  With an eerie feeling, he did that. It was the night on which his mission was to get a pitifully maimed Tempus out of the dripping hands of one Kurd, a man whose occupation bore that which was surely the ugliest word in any language: vivisectionist. Cutter-up of the living-and not as physician, either. As it turned out, the brown pot's contents saved his life that night, and he knew that Mignureal the S'danzo had some of her mother's power of Seeing. And then.. .and then it had been Mignureal's form the goddess Eshi had taken, to fetch him to that final dreadful confrontation with Vashanka.

  And Eshi seems to love me-at least wants me, he mused, wending his full-bellied, red-cloaked way homeward. Does Mignureal?

  And after a few steps more: How old is she, anyhow?

  Ah Gods ofllsig-what has that to do with anything? I don't even know how old I am!

  Yet he knew that he knew, as he walked on all wrapped in his thoughts and new cloak, who and what he was: the son of some woman of Downwind and... Shalpa. A god. Demi-mortal, Vashanka had called him. That was a phrase that implied another half: demigod. Hanse was a demigod.

  How in Ten Hells can I live with that?

  How in Eleven Hells can I live with this wishing business?! Anything I want-it's well nigh boring already!

  He reached home, and his room, and she was there, small and lovely and vulnerable-looking in her nakedness, sitting up in his bed to smile and stretch forth her shapely arms to him as he entered. Mignureal, little Mignureal daughter of the woman Hanse loved but did not even know he wished were his mother.

  "Darling! I thought you'd never come home to me!"

  He turned to close the door and pretended to have trouble with the latch, keeping his back to her while he frowned and wrestled with thoughts and emotions.

  So she slid out of the bed and came to him. She was all willowy and even lovelier, naked and softly lit, for there was only the light of the bright moon that smiled boldly through the window.

  Unable to resist her nearness and upraised arms, he stepped into her embrace and as they kissed his hands moved all over the back of her, from nape to sulcus and back. Both of them trembled, and both longed.

  "Mignue, Mignue... what are you doing here?"

  She smiled, pressed to him, and nuzzled his neck. "You know what I am doing here, Hanse."

  "Please... why did you come, Mignue? Why tonight? What prompted you to come tonight?"

  "Because I wanted to be with you, darling-to be yours."

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Oh damn, damn. Six more questions elicited similar lovely yet unsatisfactory answers. It was all circular. She has no idea and probably didn't really want to do this at all, he thought in growing agony, she's here because I wished it and Ils sent her, that's all, and I feel... I feel just so, so... rotten!

  She had just unbuckled and removed his belt, both sheaths included, and laid it carefully aside on the old keg he used as nightstand. She turned only her head, to give him an arch look over her shoulder. Hanse swallowed hard, and again. He felt truly evil, truly a monster.

  She turned to face him with her hands behind her back and her head partly down, flaunting her breasts, and swung her torso this way and that far more in the manner of a little girl than a temptress. Her eyes and voice, however, were not those of a little girl: "Want me, Hanse?"

  "Us and Eshi-who could not want you, Mignue? I-"

  But that was the wrong thing to say, under the circumstances, which involved his mental state; a joyous smile sunned over her face and she ran to him across two whole feet, her arms whipping around him. Hanse stood stiff, one hand just touching her, while he chewed his lip and wished that he were- No! I wish that if ever I wish that I were dead, it be not considered a wish! And "Oh," Mignue said, low, having discovered herself pressing against a very aroused male. And her arms around him clamped the harder, and she pressed in harder.

  He stroked her thick and very soft hair. Revelation and inspiration hit him and he said it aloud: "Ah, Mignue, Mignue... I wish that you wanted to wrap yourself in my nice new cloak and just talk a while."

  "This may sound awful," she said against his chest, "but know what I'd like to do?"

  Yes, he did.

  She looked unequivocally and downright dangerously fetching in that wine-dark cloak, especially sitting on his bed with her legs drawn up (within the cloak, gods be thanked). Yes, of course she remembered telling him to take the crossed brown pot-and hadn't he? -Yes. And had it proven useful? -Yes. And he told her of that night, and she was astonished that he had done all that, rescuing the mighty and apparently immortal Tempus. Yet, that she had saved his life did not astonish her.

  "It is the S'danzo, Hanse. You must know that a S'danzo never tells a client that she foresees his death. Never. Nor does a S'danzo dare try to interfere with the way of a world and the will of the gods, other than to suggest that that person have a care." She sat with her arms enwrapping her drawn-up legs and her hand clasping her wrist, and she was not looking at the young man who sat on the windowsill with his feet on the floor. He had drawn the drapes almost closed, but the room was as if twilit, not nighted.

  "On the other hand... with those we love, we S'danzo cannot See as well, because the emotions are involved- you know, darling. But! There is a compensation. Sometimes we can See the danger, often without realizing it, and See just what those we love should do to avoid or to, uh, cope with it."

  Hanse blinked. She is telling me that she loves me... and has for over a year! Oh! Oh, g-Ils, Ils, god of my fa-hmp!-my mother. God of Gods... I wish that I knew whether that were true or not! Or not, I say!

  "There... I've said it. Now you know, Hanse, oh, Hanse. Now you know... I have loved you, loved you, oh loved you for years-ever since first I saw you, surely, although I was only a girl then."

  Hanse swallowed. He felt like melting wax and his eyes had gone all blurry. Me! Shadowspawn! Who ever loved me?! It's all I ever wanted-but I had to pretend, didn't I, so that when it happened, if it happened, I would know it was real... but I never would because I've always had to test, to try so hard not to be hurt....

  He tried to be unobtrusive about wiping the damned unmanly embarrassing glistening tear off his cheek. As soon as he had done, the other eye let go. I hope she doesn't see, he thought, and was not even thinking about the power of the wish.

  He asked her question after question about the whole Ils/Eshi/Vashanka business. She remembered none of it. She had had a horrible dream about his being forever lost to her, beyond her, because he was in the arms of a g
oddess, and she had wakened weeping. Her mother had held her and held her and crooned and spoken soft words to her and made her see that was silly, not at all logical or likely or possible.

  Of course, Hanse thought, and said, "Me! With a goddess? Oh Mignureal!"

  "I know," she said, darting a look-at him and looking away just as swiftly. "But we can't control our dreams, and sometimes they're so real!"

  He steeled himself, and swallowed hard, and said, "This is a dream, of course."

  She looked sharply at him. "What?"

  "I said," he said, exerting all his strength to look at her and to say the words, "that this is a dream, of course. You could not be here in my room. You could not have been waiting naked for me, in my bed. It is not S'danzo; it is beneath that great soaring wonderful mother of yours, and your fine and proud old people, and... above all, Mignue, it is not you. You would not do such a thing. It is... it is beneath you. It is not what I want or you want, not in such a way, not now. It is not in accord with your pride or your dignity."

  She was staring at him, and tears were flowing in long glistening tracks all down her cheeks and onto his cloak.

  "It has to be a dream, don't you see?"

  Mignureal raised her eyebrows, and no girl but a woman said, "It is not a dream, Hanse."

  Again it hurt, and he had to steel himself and swallow hard and take a deep breath as well, that his voice might hold without breaking: "It is a dream, Mignue. And you will remember every bit of it. I wish that this were a dream for you, Mignureal, dear sweet Mignureal, and that you would remember every bit of it, and that you were at home asleep in you bed."

  She said nothing in return, because she was not there. Only the new red cloak was, crumpled on his bed. He could still see the tear-spots, even from the windowsill. The wet darker spots from her tears, and he knew that she was home in bed.

  He sat there feeling really stupid and feeling really sorry for himself, and yet after a time he seemed to hear a soft female chuckle in his head, inside his head, and knew that it was Eshi who chuckled and said, inside his head. And you wondered why I came to you as Mignureal, ass-an ass and lovable being an ass, like all men!

  His purpose had been to spend this night abed with Mignureal as he had others, and then to go to her home and leam what her mother and she, what her father and siblings, knew and thought and remembered. Now he would not know, for Hanse had at last discovered that which was not worthy of him. / wish that I could be worthy ofMignureal and her love, he thought, without thinking at all of Ils or , of the power of the wish, and the entirety of his life was changed in an instant. Without knowing that, he undressed and went to bed.

  The torture began.

  Nearly an hour later he gave it up and made a wish.

  The very very shapely daughter of that customs man and investigator Cushariain was all soft writhing femininity in his bed and just wonderfully loving and amorous and wonderful to feel and think about and want, but after a while in her arms a poor pitifully surprised Hanse had to make the wish that he cease thinking about Mignureal and get over this very first experience with impotence.

  Somewhere Ils smiled. In Hanse's bed, an ultra-shapely young woman did, too. At first Hanse simply sighed in relief, but that was soon replaced by both stronger emotion and stronger physical activity.

  After that night a rather befogged Shadowspawn indulged himself in a very great deal of thinking. He could hardly wait for the time to be up and to be summoned again into the presence of the gods!

  As it turned out, Ils had meant ten days and nights, not years or months. Then once again the tumbled lightless ruins of Eaglenest were transformed into a dazzling palace of gods, and Hanse of Downwind and the Maze was gazing down that long table at the faceless Shadow that was Shalpa, and the great light that was Us of the Thousand Eyes, He from whom the Ilsigi had taken their name, and at the most absolutely incredibly beautiful and shapely woman any man ever saw. For that was the form Eshi chose to take this night, and Hanse realized: the goddess was showing him how magnificent She could be, how far beyond mortal Mignureal, and a great warmth and pride soared in him.

  It occurred to him to ask if his wishes were done with, and the Great God replied that aye, all were done with save only the final lifelong desires, and Hanse said that was too bad, for a diplomat rose up in him and avowed that he'd have wished that the woman he loved, Mignureal, could be touched with the beauty and magnificence and sexuality of the goddess Eshi, who was beyond him.

  "Father-r-" Eshi began, and her father silenced her.

  "And so you face me again, Hanse," He said. "Tell me that which is your desire."

  "My desire is threefold," Hanse said. "First, that neither I nor anyone close to me, dear to me, ever knows the true moment of my unavoidable death. Have I expressed that aright?"

  "It is specific, and well-expressed," that quiet sonorous voice of Power said, "and it is Done. And?"

  "I desire superior ability with weapons, as well as good health and good fortune," Hanse said. "And to forget all that has happened. All that I have done and thought and wished (saving only for a dream that I share with Mignureal, daughter of the S'danzo), since that time when first You did approach me, in the matter of Vashanka."

  For a long moment there was silence, and then the Shadow spoke, the living god who was shadow itself and who sat at the right hand of his father. "What? You would forget that you are my son?!" The voice was rustly, as befitted that of a shadow among shadows, but the last word boomed.

  Hanse looked down. "Yes."

  "What?" Eshi demanded. "You would forget all that you have done-forget that you have lain with me?" -

  And again Hanse waxed diplomatic: "I choose to be a human and mortal, 0 Beauty Itself. How could any man live at peace, when he has seen You and even held You, and knows it? It is too much, Goddess, Eshi. You must not let me remember and be tortured with memory of what was and might have been."

  She waxed even more beautiful then, and as irresistible as the word itself, and her smile was sun and moonbeams bathing him in warmth. "Let it be," she said, and became a handsome and shapely woman in white, and no more.

  "Your son, Shalpa my son, is touched with genius," He of the Thousand Eyes said. "Yet I would remind you, Hanse, Godson. Much, much of the world is within your grasp. We have conferred; you could even opt to join us, to preside perpetually over the mortals of the earth. Would you be one of them instead?"

  "I am..." (Hanse swallowed hard) "... grandfather."

  "You might also continue to have your every wish so long as you are within our precincts, or the greatest of wishes: that your every desire and wish be yours."

  "That one," Shalpa's voice rustled, "and then forgetful-ness."

  Hanse fell to his knees and his voice shook. "Let me be Hanse!"

  "It's the damned eternal truth," Eshi said. "Your charming bastard is a damned genius, Shalpa!"

  "Yet damned," her brother answered. "Damned by his own tongue and his own wish. The terminator of a god, the savior of his city and toppler of Empire, the son of a god and lover of a god-and beloved of a god, eh?-damned to mortality, humanity, by his own asinine wish!" And the Shadow of Shadows... vanished.

  "Tell my father," Hanse said very quietly, "that I have known misery not knowing the identity of my father, and now in knowing it. Tell him that... that his son is strong."

  "True," Ils said, "and I'd never have thought it. Done!"

  When Hanse awoke he was in the ruins of Eaglenest and wondered what in all Hells he was doing here. Yet he had had this wonderful joyous dream involving Mignureal, and he felt a glow as he dragged himself to his feet on that pocked, cracked stone floor and, stepping around fallen columns and detritus, left the mansion that had been. He glanced over at the old well but shrugged. It was going to take a lot of labor and gear to get those moneybags up out of there. He sighed and started pacing down the hill toward Sanctuary.

  On the day following, Moonflower told him seriously that she might h
ave been mistaken in forbidding him to see Mignureal; perhaps gods were at work, here. That day only three persons were slain, one way or another, by the Fish-Eyed Folk-From-Oversea, but many more lives were ruined by them and their doings. That evening while three of her siblings peeked and giggled from this vantage point and that, Hanse and the very young S'danzo Mignureal discovered together that they had both had the same dream last night, and that gods must be at work here.

  Considerably later a much-bejeweled Beysib amused herself by punishing an Ilsigi offender-never mind the minor offense-by handing the youth a pouch from her belt. When he opened it, the beynit inside bit him at once. The snake's neurotoxin worked swiftly. The Sanctuarite was dead in less than a minute, and the Beysib was not punished. The PFLS burned a wagonload of hay on the Processional. That was the day Hanse received the message to meet Zip in Sly's Place.

  (Rumor was that Throde the Gimp was set upon that night after closing, but he was fine next day, limping around Sly's without a mark, and no one took the rumor seriously.)

  She had been a fixture of the Maze for a hundred years, or maybe it was a dozen. She sat outside the family home/shop in which her husband sold... things, and raised their several children well while keeping her husband happy. And she Saw. She did not charge a great deal of money for her Seeings, this S'danzo named Moonflower. She Saw danger and felicities to come, pain and pleasure to come, and she Saw linkages.

  She had Seen enough once to let Hanse know that he was involved in a very large plot emanating from Ranke itself; a treacherous governor's concubine had quite charmed Hanse and, with a treacherous Hell-Hound, aided him into the palace one night to steal the Savankh.[i] Warned by Moonflower, Hanse had wriggled out of that one, and the two plotters paid the supreme penalty. Moonflower had Seen other things for Hanse, whom she could not help liking and thinking of as a good boy even though she knew he was not. And she had Seen many things for many others. Ilsigi and Twanders, Mrsevadans and Rankans, Syrese and Aurveshi... and now Beysibs.