Shadowspawn (Thieves' World Book 4)

by Andrew J Offutt

  “What’s this about, Malingasa? So you and I aren’t friends; so all right. But only we two escaped the trap at Corstic’s. Why come here to murder me in my bed?”

  “You Bas — ”

  Hanse popped his palm over the bound man’s mouth. “Hold your voice down, Malingasa; some people in this building are trying to get back to sleep. Talk quietly and be still or I’ll get that cat to sit on your chest. Now go ahead. You’re right about my being a bastard, but what’s that have to do with it? You some sort of bigot about that as well as about southerners?”

  “Hanse,” Mignureal said in a thoughtful voice, “he thinks you must have set up the trap, since only you survived. Right now he’s wondering how I know.” Then her voice changed: “Your name is Malingasa and your mother is Yorna and your father was Malint. He died of an illness your mother calls the Green Disease. That was three years ago, or was it four? You were married to — uh, Isna, is that right? — Yes, Isna, but just a year ago she died in childbirth. Oh, poor man! The baby was all right, but you knew you could not care for it — her — and gave her to a youngish couple, but the beasts vanished from Firaqa with her. Am I now the only person who knows about that, Malingasa?”

  Malingasa lay on the floor shuddering, rolling his eyes. “Ss…orcery…”

  “She’s a S’danzo,” Hanse told him. “She has the talent, Malingasa. She learned that from your mind, or your liver, or however it works; even she doesn’t know. It came on her twice last night. Before I left here she warned me not to touch the spikes on top of Corstic’s wall, and told me that Perias was dining with him.”

  “I did? You didn’t tell me I told you that!”

  “I was going to, Mignue. You know what kind of shape I was in when I came off that hill.”

  The man on the floor said, “You…were up…there?”

  “Aye. I was late, because Mignue came after me. Out on the street, Malingasa! That time she told me not to go; to stay outside the wall.” That Hanse had told Mignureal, who sat nodding. “I went anyhow. I’ll tell you true: I didn’t care an ant’s eyebrow about you, or any of the others except Thuvarandis. I galloped out of the gate and galloped all the way up the hill, in hopes of stopping him from going over the wall. Four horses met me on their way down at the run, saddled and bridled but riderless. I saw the terror in their eyes and knew I was too late, but I went on anyhow. Want to know what I saw when I got there? Well, do you? Do you want to hear about it, Malingasa?”

  Hanse shook him. Rainbow stared at him. So did Notable, tail moving restlessly. Malingasa made a moaning sound.

  “Want to go out to the north gate now, and let the sentinels tell you I went out saying I wanted to give my horse a run, and came back an hour or so later at the gallop, on a lathered horse? You and I are the lucky ones, Malingasa, damn you. The whole place was bright as day — because Shorty over by the house and Marll up on the wall were torches, just yellow-white flame licking twenty feet high. Someone else was screaming, in there somewhere, shrieking like a child. I never saw him.”

  “Stop!” Malingasa was shuddering. “Oh, stop! I believe you.”

  “Do you? Can you imagine Thuvarandis up in the air with a big thick tree-branch through him, all the way through him, Malingasa, and yet him still able to talk, trying to warn me? Then that branch snapped and rushed down at me, like a spear with him hanging on it. My horse bolted. That’s how we found another man. Whoever he was, he had too much yellowish hair and a leather tunic over — well, I think his leggings were red, but I’m not sure. I won’t lie or pretend; I was terrified. He was hanging over the wall, and just as I got there he burst into flame, too, and Corstic had three torches. Your friends, Malingasa, with you not even there and me not able to do a thing.”

  “Stop!” the violently shivering man said. “No, no more! I believe you, I’m sorry, yes, yes, that’s Corstic — ah Flame, oh mother-r-r…” He flailed his head back and forth. “Now he’ll get me, too! He’ll have to! Ah no, no, oh…”

  Malingasa broke off, his face to one side. He was weeping. Hanse looked down at his own hand, with distaste. The hand was spattered with the other man’s tears and saliva.

  Hanse sneered. “I’ll tell you one thing more, Malingasa. It won’t be so hard for your delicate mind and courage to handle.

  I fled, man. I ran! I ran as hard as that horse could take me, because whole branches were ripping themselves off trees and rushing through the air, right out onto the road outside the wall. I think the man I saw in an upstairs window couldn’t see me, but he didn’t care; he wanted to wipe out anybody and everybody! I’m not sure how I escaped. I came all the way down that hill at the gallop, and every second I expected to feel a tree slam into my back. I’m alive because I was lucky, Malingasa; Mignureal and luck. She made me late. You’re alive because you were such a shit to me that they wouldn’t let you go in there with the big boys. Now you’re either going to tell me what it’s all about,” Hanse said, realizing the probable efficacy of direly threatening a man shaken as badly as Malingasa obviously was, “or my cat Notable and I are going to start playing vivisectionist with you.”

  His knife flashed before Malingasa’s eyes and Mignureal said, “Hanse!”

  He gave her a glare. Then he winked. While she was trying to work out the meaning of that, her mouth began moving.

  “Mai — Malingasa,” she murmured, “was one of the ones. So was Thuvarandis, and Perias, and a — a Ravas, yes, Ravas, and others.”

  Hanse stared at her. Her eyes seemed all right, if starey, but her voice was perfectly normal. She seemed to be Seeing, but in a different way. “One of the ones that…what, Mignue?”

  Malingasa was sobbing when Mignureal said, “Did that to Corstic’s wife. Tell us, Malingasa, if you believe you have a soul and might be able to save it from Corstic. Or would you rather be — be…Nuris! Would you rather be Nuris?”

  Malingasa jerked at that, and cried out so that Hanse clapped his hand over the balding fellow’s mouth again. When he removed it, he wiped drool on Malingasa’s tunic.

  “I’ll…I’ll tell you,” Malingasa said, in a small pitifully choked voice disrupted by sobs. “Oh, oh, m-mother, m…I’ll tell you…no, not Nuris’ fate…”

  “Who’s Nuris?” Hanse demanded, and Mignureal said, “Who?” in a natural voice, and he looked sharply at her. Suddenly he realized that more was happening here than Mignureal’s Seeing. And he was right.

  Malingasa told most of it, mumbling and sobbing. Even after Hanse had cut loose his ankles the man made no movement. And yet now and then he paused, or answered a question with an almost pleading “I don’t know!” and Mignureal abruptly Saw and filled in that blank, while she sat on the floor stroking Rainbow.

  She and Hanse learned a great deal more than they had expected. It emerged in spurts and out of synchronicity, but they were able to put together the story. First they heard from Malingasa about the mass rape, but Mignureal supplied other aspects, details, and at last the background, so that a narrative formed.

  *

  Years ago, a fellow named Nuris was a sorcery trainee, an apprentice mage with innate predictive or Seeing talent. Too soon, Nuris decided that he was better than that. He was led to that premature feeling of worth and competence as mage partly because of his very apprenticeship. He chafed as apprentice to a mean and ever-sneering, never-pleased man: the master mage Corstic. Nuris’ abilities grew without praise, and so did his dissatisfaction unto bitterness.

  His master’s wife chafed just as much, for Corstic was just as cruel and stingy with her. He was master of his art and skills; a great and a mighty man who was growing mightier. The day would come when he would rule Firaqa, and be called lord. The honour of being his wife should be enough for her.

  Of course it was not, and in time she and apprentice Nuris commiserated. Two mistreated people solaced each other. That relationship developed, whether they wished it or not, and in time it led them to her bed. If not quite able to forget their troubles, th
ey were at least able to enjoy themselves and each other.

  They did, for months. Until Corstic found them out. He must have known for some time before he acted, for his plan was no simple one.

  It was not difficult for him to imprison his affrighted wife in a room of the manse. There he left her, further adding to her anguish by telling her as sinisterly as possible that now he would see to the fate of Nuris. What pitiable attempts to escape that miserable woman made! Shurina broke her nails, bruised her arms and body in hurling herself against the door. Those attempts availed her exactly nothing save pain and despair. While she had learned a few sorcerous tricks and even spells as Corstic’s wife, Shurina had no powers to free herself or to affect her husband, who was well protected by his own ward-spells.

  She could do nothing for Nuris, and could only wonder at what evil her husband would inflict on the poor fellow.

  Corstic was at that business. He had already devised his plan. Some outraged husbands slew one or both of the illicit lovers. Ah, but Corstic was a master sorcerer! How could people suffer for such an insult to his pride, if they were merely dead?

  (On hearing this — unaccountably, from Mignureal — Hanse shivered. He had seen Corstic’s defences and retaliation only hours ago. What a chilling mind the man had; what talent for wickedness and horror!)

  In his own chamber, the unsuspecting Nuris soon dropped over in sorcerous unconsciousness. Now Corstic isolated and captured the young man’s ka, that invisible spark some called “a soul.” The mage ensorceled that human awareness into the body he had already prepared and caged: an unnaturally large red cat.

  After concealing the cage but leaving his apprentice’s visibly breathing body as if merely drugged, Corstic went to his wife. He fetched her to Nuris’ chamber. Bound, she helplessly watched her husband’s carefully slow, bloody slaying of her lover. Shurina had no notion that a part of Nuris, his very essence, had been saved, and trapped in the body of a cat; such knowledge on her part would have lessened Corstic’s delight in her horror. The mage even laboriously cleaned up all evidence of the murder, knowing that being forced to remain there and watch was further anguish for his bound wife.

  The next part of the master spellmaker’s vengeance and retaliation was to reverse the roles of sufferer and helpless observer. Along with the smilingly presiding Corstic, the caged cat must watch while Shurina lay helpless on the same bed whereon she had taken solace with Nuris; “Vilely disported herself,” as Corstic put it. Now ten men assaulted and misused the naked and weeping woman.

  Each man received a single silver coin on completion of his rape, and departed. At last all were gone, leaving on the bed a bruised and bleeding shambles of a woman.

  Mockingly, Corstic tossed onto his wife’s quaking form a coin for each of her rapists, and he added one for himself. His next act was to leave her, taking the cat. Though he feared no tale-telling from an animal whose teeth, whose mouth and nose connection were such as to prevent speech despite the efforts of any mage, Corstic’s wish was to reduce Nuris further. Nuris would always be aware, but unable to act as a man, even a man in a cat’s body. He was a prisoner in that body. He could not direct it. He was a cat.

  As for the hired despoilers: those half-score men knew what they were doing and what they had done. The only spell laid on them was on their tongues; they could never tell anyone what they and Corstic had done. Naturally, neither could the cat that had been Nuris — no, that contained the essence of Nuris. Fearful or living with remorse or both, some of those men fled Firaqa. Others did not. As time went on some prospered, as some men would; others did not. They led, in other words, what seemed the normal lives of normal men.

  Corstic left Shurina to her pain and her anguish for days, accompanied by that silver which he termed the price of her body. Knowing that she suffered thus, both mentally and physically, pleased him. Then Corstic transferred the ka of his wife into another cat.

  “A…calico cat,” Mignureal murmured, stroking Rainbow.

  No one knew that her body was already mindless when Shurina “fell” from a high window of Corstic’s palatial home. Corstic, of course, showed much public grief but all could see how he strove to be stoic. He was called courageous.

  He had defeated the plotters he saw as betrayers of his kindness merely by having housed them, suffered them to become a part of his life and live in the blaze of his greatness. He had buried their awareness in the bodies of the two cats, and he had destroyed their human bodies and buried them in the earth. He killed them, murdered them…but saved a mocking portion of their humanity; their human-ness. They were not quite cats and yet they were less than people trapped within cat-forms.

  Corstic intended to keep them as pets; pets to be tormented both physically and emotionally; to be reminded and to be sneered at.

  “They escaped.”

  Hanse jerked in startlement at Mignureal’s murmured words. She sat staring at nothing as she stroked Rainbow.

  Hanse glanced at Notable, who sat with his gaze fixed on Malingasa. Notable looked distinctly hungry. Hanse regarded Rainbow, who remained in Mignureal’s lap as she had since the beginning of the revelations that tumbled forth from both Malingasa and from Mignureal. Rainbow, too, glared at the man on the floor. Hanse looked again at the five silver Imperials. They lay on the floor as they had throughout the questioning, and Malingasa’s broken narrative, and Mignureal’s even stranger than usual Seeing.

  The cats had escaped, Mignureal said. Unfortunately, he who had been Nuris was discovered as a stray and taken in a caravan to Sanctuary. There he became one of Ahdio’s two watch-cats. He was surly, and yet became Ahdio’s friend; Ahdio’s cat. He existed as a cat that drank beer and acted as a watch-dog and alarm for Sly’s Place. He was not Nuris. He was Notable; he was a cat.

  And then Hanse came to that back room of Sly’s Place, heavy with the aura of the outré because of his birth and his association with gods and with Moonflower and her daughter. Hanse came into Notable’s presence, and awoke the magic-sensitive in Nuris/Notable, and awareness of what he had been. And he clove to Hanse.

  That was one explanation; another was simply that a cat liked a man, particularly after they teamed to break into the governor’s palace of Sanctuary, where they were nearly killed by serpent and by human guard before they emerged and descended the walls again.

  The later link with the calico cat on the desert was only partially coincidence. Rainbow, not-quite blindly seeking Notable, was found by the Tejana. She was in need of water. They gave her that, and netted her. Only they knew whether they wanted a pet, a mouser, or food. Hanse and Mignureal, Mignureal murmured dully, had been led only to a degree; they had not been mere tools and automatons in all this.

  “And so six coins are gone,” Hanse said slowly, “and six men are dead — six of the rapists! Eh, Malingasa?”

  The sobbing fellow only trembled and moaned.

  “Yes” Mignureal said.

  Hanse glanced at her. He said, “And the eleventh coin, one of those five — it represents Corstic. And you, Malingasa; one of those who ‘employed’ me and who has told us so much but not all…you are another of the rapists. But something is missing here, villain. How is it that you overcame the spell not to tell, and still live?”

  “Hanse!”

  The sharp urgency in Mignureal’s voice brought his head around instantly. She was pointing at the coins. Untouched on the floor, one of them had begun to quiver.

  At the same time their captive made a choking noise and commenced jerking in ugly spasms. While the others stared, hair rising, his arms twisted into ugly travesties. Suddenly they heard the cracking of bones, and watched those ruined arms become grotesque, useless shapes. His skin swelled and trembled while he struggled to get to his feet. And then he erupted all over with hideous boils.

  “G-aaah,” Malingasa said, and something dropped from his mouth onto the floor.

  Notable pounced upon it and happily devoured that pink and still-warm tong
ue. Already pale, Hanse gagged and looked away. That helped little: he saw that one of those accursed coins had turned to copper.

  In less than a minute Malingasa had become hideous; sickening. He staggered, got to his feet while the revolting boils stretched his skin until they were shiny and swelled still more. Making horrible tongueless sounds, he staggered again and left by the same route he had entered: he hurled himself out the unpaned window.

  Staggering nearly as badly, Hanse hurried to the window to look down. “Could — could he have survived that fall?” He glanced at Mignureal.

  Silently she shook her head. Again she indicated the coins. They had become four, of silver.

  Hanse spoke low: “One more gone: Malingasa. But only one. Cor — the monster has still not let Thuvarandis die.”

  He stared at Mignureal for a time, his eyes unnaturally round and bright. He looked at the cats, at the coins, at the floor where Malingasa had lain so long. A great shudder went through Hanse, and he turned to the beer. As he filled a cup he felt the thumping contact with his leg, and looked down at the red cat.

  “Right; you too, boy! Uh, Notable; uh, Nur…” He trailed off in confusion. Then, “Mignue! How is it that Notable is a cat and Rainbow is, and yet she remembered and headed for Sanctuary? And what about the coins — and Mignue! How is it that you know all these things you’ve said?”

  Mignureal sat on the floor, stroking the calico cat between her cloak-covered thighs. Her face was serene as she looked up at him.

  “I know, Hanse. Shurina was wife of a master mage. She learned some few aspects of his trade; some lesser spells. When he locked her again in her prison room to suffer after the rape, she was not idle. Agony and outrage drove her and would not allow her to take refuge in shock. She bound the coins to her with a spell. And she laid a spell on herself, against forgetfulness. Even then she didn’t know his plans, or that he was preparing a cat for her ka. It wasn’t Nuris-Notable who began all this, Hanse. It was Rainbow. I mean Shurina.”