Shadows of Sanctuary

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  The Unicorn was closed and dark. As the tavern-keeper had said, he did not open early. Wess went around to the back, but at the steps of the lodging door, Lythande stopped.

  “I must leave you, frejojan.”

  Wess turned back in surprise. “But I thought you were coming upstairs with me for breakfast, to talk …”

  Lythande shook his head. His smile was odd, not, as Wess had come to expect, sardonic, but sad. “I wish I could, little sister. For once, I wish I could. I have business to the north that cannot wait.”

  “To the north! Why did you come this way with me?” She had got her bearings on the way back, and while the twisted streets would not permit a straight path, they had proceeded generally southward.

  “I wanted to walk with you,” Lythande said.

  Wess scowled at him. “You thought I hadn’t enough sense to get back by myself.”

  “This is a strange place for you. It isn’t safe even for people who have always lived here.”

  “You—” Wess stopped. Because she had promised to safeguard his true identity, she could not say what she wished: that Lythande was treating her as Lythande himself did not wish to be treated.

  Wess shook her head, flinging aside her anger. Stronger than her anger in Lythande’s lack of confidence in her, stronger than her disappointment that Lythande was going away, was her surprise that Lythande had pretended to hint at finding Satan. She did not wish to think too deeply on the sorcerer’s motives.

  “You have my promise,” she said bitterly. “You may be sure that my word is important to me. May your business be profitable.” She turned away and fumbled for the latch, her vision blurry.

  “Westerly,” Lythande said gently, “do you think I came back last night only to coerce an oath from you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, perhaps not, since I have so little to give in return.”

  Wess turned around. “And do you think I made that promise only because I hoped you could help us?”

  “No,” Lythande said. “Frejojan, I wish I had more time—but what I came to tell you is this. I spoke with Jubal last night.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? What did he say? Does he know where Satan is?” But she knew she would have no pleasure from the answer. Lythande would not have put off good news. “Will he see us?”

  “He has not seen your friend, little sister. He said he had no time to see you.”

  “Oh.”

  “I did press him. He owes me, but he has been acting peculiar lately. He’s more afraid of something else than he is of me, and that is very strange.” Lythande looked away.

  “Didn’t he say anything?”

  “He said … this evening, you should go to the grounds of the governor’s palace.”

  “Why?”

  “Westerly … this may have nothing to do with Satan. But the auction block is there.”

  Wess shook her head, confused.

  “Where slaves are offered for sale.”

  Fury and humiliation and hope: Wess’s reaction was so strong that she could not answer. Lythande came up the steps in one stride and put his arms around her. Wess held him, trembling, and Lythande stroked her hair.

  “If he’s there—is there no law, Lythande? Can a free person be stolen from their home, and … and …”

  Lythande looked at the sky. The sun’s light showed over the roof of the easternmost building.

  “Frejojan, I must go. If your friend is to be sold, you can try to buy him. The merchants here are not so rich as the merchants in the capital, but they are rich enough. You’d need a great deal of money. I think you should, instead, apply to the governor. He is a young man, and a fool—but he is not evil.” Lythande hugged Wess one last time and stepped away. “Good-bye, little sister. Please believe I’d stay if I could.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  Lythande strode away without looking back, leaving Wess alone among the early morning shadows.

  ****

  WESS RETURNED TO the room at the top of the stairs. When she entered, Chan propped himself up on one elbow.

  “I was getting worried,” he said.

  “I can take care of myself!” Wess snapped.

  “Wess, love, what’s the matter?”

  She tried to tell him, but she could not. Wess stood, silent, staring at the floor, with her back turned on her best friend.

  She glanced over her shoulder when Chan stood up. The ripped curtain let in shards of light that cascaded over his body. He had changed, like all of them, on the long journey. He was still beautiful, but he was thinner and harder.

  He touched her shoulder gently. She shrank away.

  He saw the bloodstains on her collar. “You’re hurt!” he said, startled. “Quartz!”

  Quartz muttered sleepily from the bed. Chan tried to lead Wess over to the window, where there was more light.

  “Just don’t touch me!”

  “Wess—”

  “What’s wrong?” Quartz said.

  “Wess is injured.” Quartz padded barefoot towards them and Wess burst into tears and flung herself into her arms.

  Quartz held Wess, as Wess had held her a few nights before, when Quartz had cried silently in bed, homesick, missing her children. “Tell me what happened,” she said softly.

  What Wess managed to say was less about the attack than about Lythande’s explanations of it, and of Sanctuary.

  “I understand,” Quartz said after Wess had told her only a little. She stroked Wess’s hair and brushed the tears from her cheeks.

  “I don’t,” Wess said. “I must be going crazy, to act like this!” She started to cry again. Quartz led her to the blankets, where Aerie sat up, blinking and confused. Chan followed, equally bewildered. Quartz made Wess sit down, sat beside her and hugged her. Aerie rubbed her back and neck and let her wings unfold around them.

  “You aren’t going crazy,” Quartz said. “It’s that you aren’t used to the way things are here.”

  “I don’t want to get used to things here, I hate this place, I want to find Satan, I want to go home.”

  “I know,” Quartz whispered. “I know.”

  “But I don’t,” Chan said.

  Wess huddled against Quartz, unable to say anything that would ease the hurt she had given Chan.

  “Just leave her alone for a little while, Chan,” Quartz said to him. “Let her rest. Everything will be all right.”

  Quartz eased Wess down and lay beside her. Cuddled between Quartz and Aerie, with Aerie’s wing spread over them all, Wess fell asleep.

  ****

  AT MIDMORNING, WESS awoke. Her head ached fiercely and the black bruise across her side hurt every time she took a breath. She looked around the room. Sitting beside her, mending a strap on her pack, Quartz smiled down at her. Aerie was brushing her short smooth fur, and Chan stared out of the window, his arm on the sill and his chin resting on his arm, his other shirt abandoned unpatched on his knee.

  Wess got up and crossed the room. She sat on her heels near Chan. He glanced at her, and out of the window, and at her again.

  “Quartz explained, a little …”

  “I was angry,” Wess said.

  “Just because barbarians act like… like barbarians, isn’t a good reason to be angry with me.”

  He was right. Wess knew it. But the fury and bewilderment mixed up in her were still too strong to shrug off with easy words.

  “You know—” he said, “you do know I couldn’t act like that…”

  Just for an instant Wess actually tried to imagine Chan acting like the innkeeper, or Bauchle Meyne, arrogantly, blindly, with his self-interest and his pleasure considered above everything and everyone else. The idea was so ludicrous that she burst out in sudden laughter.

  “I know you wouldn’t,” she said. She had been angry at the person he might have been, had all the circumstances of his life been different. She had been angry at the person she might have been, even more. She hugged Cha
n quickly. “Chan, I’ve got to get free of this place.” She took his hand and stood up. “Come, I saw Lythande last night, I have to tell you what he said.”

  ****

  THEY DID NOT wait till evening to go to the governor’s palace, but set out earlier, hoping to gain an audience with the prince and persuade him not to let Satan be sold.

  But no one else was waiting till evening to go to the palace, either. They joined a crowd of people streaming towards the gate. Wess’s attempt to slip through the throng earned her an elbow in her sore ribs.

  “Don’t push, girl,” said the ragged creature she had jostled. “He shook his staff at her. “Would you knock over an old cripple? I’d never get up again, after I’d been trampled.”

  “Your pardon, citizen,” she said. Ahead she could see that the people had to crowd into a narrower space. They were, more or less, in a line. “Are you going to the slave auction?”

  “Slave auction? Slave auction! No slave auction today, foreigner. The carnival come to town!”

  “What’s the carnival?”

  “A carnival! You’ve never heard of a carnival? Well, ne’mind, nor has half the people in Sanctuary, nor seen one neither. Two twelve-years since one came. Now the prince is governor, we’ll see more, I don’t doubt. They’ll come wanting an admission to his brother the Emperor—out of the hinterlands and into the capital, if you know.”

  “But I still don’t know what a carnival is.”

  The old man pointed.

  Over the high wall of the palace grounds, the great drape of cloth that hung limply around a tall pole slowly began to spread, and open—like a huge mushroom, Wess thought. The guy ropes tightened, forming the canvas into an enormous tent.

  “Under there—magic, foreign child. Strange animals. Prancing horses with pretty girls in feathers dancing on their backs. Jugglers, clowns, acrobats on high wires—and the freaks!” He chuckled. “I like the freaks best; the last time I saw a carnival they had a sheep with two heads and a man with two—but that’s not a story to tell a young girl unless you’re fucking her.” He reached out to pinch her. Wess jerked back, drawing her knife. Startled, the old man said. There, girl, no offence.” She let the blade slide back into its sheath. The old man laughed again. “And a special exhibition, this carnival—special, for the prince. They won’t say what ‘tis. But it’ll be a sight, you can be sure.”

  Thank you, citizen,” Wess said coldly, and stepped back among her friends. The ragged man was swept forward with the crowd.

  Wess caught Aerie’s gaze. “Did you hear?”

  Aerie nodded. “They have him. What else could their great secret be?”

  “In this skyforsaken place, they might have overpowered some poor troll, or a salamander.” She spoke sarcastically, for trolls were the gentlest of creatures, and Wess herself had often stretched up to scratch the chin of a salamander who lived on a hill where she hunted. It was entirely tame, for Wess never hunted salamanders. Their hide was too thin to be useful and no one in the family liked lizard meat. Besides, one could not pack out even a single haunch of fullgrown salamander, and she would not waste her kill. “In this place, they might have a winged snake in a box, and call it a great secret.”

  “Wess, their secret is Satan and we all know it,” Quartz said. “Now we have to figure out how to free him.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Wess said.

  At the gate, two huge guards glowered at the rabble they had been ordered to admit to the parade-ground. Wess stopped before one of them.

  “I want to see the prince,” she said.

  “Audience next week,” he replied, hardly glancing at her.

  “I need to see him before the carnival begins.”

  This time he did look at her, amused. “You do, do you? Then you’ve no luck. He’s gone, won’t be back till the parade.”

  “Where is he?” Chan asked.

  She heard grumbling from the crowd piling up behind them.

  “State secret,” the guard said. “Now go in, or clear the way.”

  They went in.

  The crowd thinned abruptly, for the parade-ground was enormous. Even the tent seemed small; the palace loomed above it like a cliff. If the whole population of Sanctuary had not come here, then a large proportion of every section had, for several merchants were setting up stalls: beads here, fruit there, pastries farther on; a beggar crawled slowly past; and a few paces away a large group of noblefolk in satins and fur and gold walked languidly beneath parasols held by naked slaves. The thin autumn sunlight was hardly enough to mar the complexion of the most delicate noble or to warm the back of the most vigorous slave.

  Quartz looked around, then pointed over the heads of the crowd. “They’re making a pathway, with ropes and braces. The parade will come through that gate, and into the tent from this side.” She swept her hand from right to left, east to west, in a long curve from the Processional gate. The carnival tent was set up between the auction block and the guards’ barracks.

  They tried to circle the tent, but the area beyond it all the way to the wall was blocked by rope barriers. In the front, a line of spectators already snaked back far beyond any possible capacity.

  “We’ll never get in,” Aerie said.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” Chan said. “We don’t need to be inside with Satan we need to get him out.”

  ****

  THE SHADOWS LENGTHENED across the palace grounds. Wess sat motionless and silent, waiting. Chan bit his fingernails and fidgeted. Aerie hunched under her cloak, her hood pulled low to shadow her face. Quartz watched her anxiously, and fingered the grip of her sword.

  After again being refused an audience with the prince, this time at the palace doors, they had secured a place next to the roped-off path. Across the way, a work crew put the finishing touches on a platform. When it was completed, servants hurried from the palace with rugs, a silk-fringed awning, several chairs, and a brazier of coals. Wess would not have minded a brazier of coals herself; as the sun fell, the air was growing chill.

  The crowd continued to gather, becoming denser, louder, more and more drunk. Fights broke out in the line at the tent, as people began to realize they would never get inside. Soon the mood grew so ugly that criers spread among the people, ringing bells and announcing that the carnival would present one more performance, several more performances, until all the citizens of Sanctuary had the opportunity to glimpse the carnival’s wonders. And the secret. Of course, the secret. Still, no one even hinted at the secret’s nature.

  Wess pulled her cloak closer. She knew the nature of the secret; she only hoped the secret would see his friends and be ready for whatever they could do.

  The sun touched the high wall around the palace grounds. Soon it would be dark.

  Trumpets and cymbals: Wess looked towards the Processional gates, but a moment later realized that all the citizens around her were straining for a view of the palace entrance. The enormous doors swung open and a phalanx of guards marched out, followed by a group of nobles wearing jewels and cloth of gold. They strode across the hard-packed ground. The young man at the head of the group, who wore a gold coronet, acknowledged his people’s shouts and cries as if they all were accolades—which, Wess thought, they were not. But above the mutters and complaints, the loudest cry was, “The prince! Long live the prince!”

  The phalanx marched straight from the palace to the new-built platform. Anyone shortsighted enough to sit in that path had to snatch up their things and hurry out of the way. The route cleared as swiftly as water parting around a stone.

  Wess stood impulsively, about to sprint across the parade route to try once more to speak to the prince.

  “Sit down!”

  “Out of the way!”

  Someone threw an apple core at her. She knocked it away and crouched down again, though not because of the threats or the flying garbage. Aerie, too, with the same thought, started to her feet. Wess touched her elbow.

  “Look,” sh
e said.

  Everyone within reach or hearing of the procession seemed to have the same idea. The crowd surged in, every member clamouring for attention. The prince flung out a handful of coins, which drew the beggars scuffling away from him. Others, more intent on their claims, continued to press him. The guards fell back, surrounding him, nearly cutting off the sight of him, and pushed at the citizens with spears held broadside.

  The tight cordon parted and the prince mounted the platform. Standing alone, he turned all the way around, raising his hands to the crowd.

  “My friends,” he cried, “I know you have claims upon me. The least wrong to one of my people is important to me.”

  Wess snorted.

  “But tonight we are all privileged to witness a wonder never seen in the Empire. Forget your troubles tonight, my friends, and enjoy the spectacle with me.” He held out his hand, and brought a member of his party up beside him on the stage.

  Bauchle Meyne.

  “In a few days, Bauchle Meyne and his troupe will journey to Ranke, there to entertain the Emperor my brother.”

  Wess and Quartz glanced at each other, startled. Chan muttered a curse. Aerie tensed, and Wess held her arm. They all drew up their hoods.

  “Bauchle goes with my friendship, and my seal.” The prince held up a rolled parchment secured with scarlet ribbons and ebony wax.

  The prince sat down, with Bauchle Meyne in the place of honour by his side. The rest of the royal party arrayed themselves around, and the parade began.

  Wess and her friends moved closer together, in silence.

  They would have no help from the prince.

  The Processional gates swung open to the sound of flutes and drums. The music continued for some while before anything else happened. Bauchle Meyne began to look uncomfortable. Then abruptly a figure staggered out on to the path, as if he had been shoved. The skeletally thin, red-haired man regained his balance, straightened up, and gazed from side to side. The jeers confounded him. He pushed his long cape off his shoulders to reveal his star-patterned black robe, and took a few hesitant steps.