Shadows of Sanctuary

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  At the rope barrier’s first wooden supporting post, he stopped again. He gestured towards it tentatively and spoke a guttural word.

  The post sputtered into flame.

  The people nearby drew back shouting, and the wizard lurched along the path, first to one side, then the other, waving his hands at each wooden post in turn.

  The foggy white circles melded together to light the way. Wess saw that the posts were not, after all, burning. When the one in front of her began to shine, she brought her hand towards it, palm forward and fingers outspread. When she felt no heat she touched the post gingerly, then gripped it. It held no warmth, and it retained its ordinary texture, splintery rough-hewn wood.

  She remembered what Lythande said, about her having a strong talent. She wondered if she could do the same thing. It would be a useful trick, though not very important. She had no piece of wood to try it on, nor any idea how to start to try in the first place. She shrugged and let go of the post. Her handprint—she blinked. No, it was her imagination, not a brighter spot that she had touched.

  At the prince’s platform, the wizard stood staring vacantly around. Bauchle Meyne leaned forward intently, glaring, his worry clear and his anger barely held in check. The wizard gazed at him. Wess could see Bauchle Meyne’s fingers tense around a circle of ruby chain. He twisted it. Wess gasped. The wizard shrieked and flung up his hands. Bauchle Meyne slowly relaxed his hold on the talisman. The wizard spread his arms. He was trembling. Wess, too, was shaking. She felt as if the chain had whipped around her body like a lash.

  The wizard’s trembling hands moved: the prince’s platform, the wooden parts of the chairs, the poles supporting the fringed awning, all burst suddenly into a fierce white fire. The guards leaped forward in fury and confusion, but stopped at a word from their prince. He sat calm and smiling, his hands resting easily on the bright arms of his throne. Shadowy flames played across his fingers, and the light spun up between his feet. Bauchle Meyne leaned back in satisfaction, and nodded to the wizard. The other nobles on the platform stood disconcerted, awash in the light from the boards between the patterned rugs. Nervously, but following the example of their ruler, they sat down again.

  The wizard stumbled onward, lighting up the rest of the posts. He disappeared into the darkness of the tent. Its supports began to shine with the eerie luminescence. Gradually, the barrier-ropes and the carpets on the platform and the awning over the prince and the canvas of the tent became covered with a soft gentle glow.

  The prince applauded, nodding and smiling towards Bauchle Meyne, and his people followed his lead.

  With a sharp cry, a jester tumbled through the Processional gates and somersaulted along the path. After him came the flutists and drummers, and then three ponies with bedraggled feathers attached to their bridles. Three children in spangled shorts and halters rode them. The one in front jumped up and stood balanced on her pony’s rump, while the two following did shoulder-stands, braced against the ponies’ withers. Wess, who had never been on a horse in her life and found the idea quite terrifying, applauded. Others in the audience applauded too, here and there, and the prince himself idly clapped his hands. But nearby a large grizzled man laughed sarcastically and yelled, “Show us more!” That was the way most of the audience reacted, with hoots of derision and laughter. The child standing up stared straight ahead. Wess clenched her teeth, angry for the child but impressed by her dignity. Quartz’s oldest child was about the same age. Wess took her hand, and Quartz squeezed her fingers gratefully.

  A cage, pulled by a yoke of oxen, passed through the dark gate. Wess caught her breath. The oxen pulled the cage into the light. It carried an elderly troll, hunched in the corner on dirty straw. A boy poked the troll with a stick as the oxen drew abreast of the prince. The troll leaped up and cursed in a high pitched angry voice.

  “You uncivilized barbarians! You, prince—prince of worms, I say, of maggots! May your penis grow till no one will have you! May your best friend’s vagina knot itself with you inside! May you contract water on the brain and sand in the bladder!”

  Wess felt herself blushing: she had never heard a troll speak so. Ordinarily they were the most cultured of forest people, and the only danger in them was that one might find oneself listening for a whole afternoon to a discourse on the shapes of clouds or the effects of certain shelf-fungi. Wess looked around, frightened that someone would take offence at what the troll was saying to their ruler. Then she remembered that he was speaking the Language, the real tongue of intelligent creatures, and in this place no one but she and her friends understood.

  “Frejojan!” she cried on impulse. “Tonight—be ready—if I can—!”

  He hesitated in the midst of a caper, stumbled, but caught himself and gambolled around, making nonsense noises till he faced her. She pulled her hood back so he could recognize her later. She let it fall again as the cart passed, so Bauchle Meyne would not see her from the other side of the path.

  The grey-gold furry little being gripped the bars of his cage and looked out, making horrible faces at the crowd, horrible noises in reaction to their jeers. But between the shrieks and the gibberish, he said, “I wait—”

  After he passed them, he began to wail…

  “Wess—” Chan said.

  “How could I let him go by without speaking to him?”

  “He isn’t a friend, after all,” Aerie said.

  “He’s enslaved, just like Satan!” Wess looked from Aerie’s face to Chan’s, and saw that neither understood. “Quartz—?”

  Quartz nodded. “Yes. You’re right. A civilized person has no business being in this place.”

  “How are you going to find him? How are you going to free him? We don’t even know how we’re going to free Satan! Suppose he needs help?” Aerie’s voice rose in anger.

  “Suppose we need help?”

  Aerie turned her back on Wess and stared blankly out into the parade. She even shrugged off Quartz’s comforting hug.

  Then there was no more time for arguing. Six archers tramped through the gate. A cart followed. It was a flatbed, curtained all around, and pulled by two large skewbald horses, one with a wild blue eye. Six more archers followed. A mutter of confusion rippled over the crowd, and then cries of “The secret! Show us the secret!”

  The postillion jerked the draught horses to a standstill before the prince. Bauchle Meyne climbed stiffly off the platform and on to the cart.

  “My lord!” he cried. “I present you—a myth of our world!” He yanked on a string and the curtains fell away.

  On the platform, Satan stood rigid and withdrawn, staring forward, his head high. Aerie moaned and Wess tensed, wanting to leap over the glowing ropes and lay about with her knife, in full view of the crowd, whatever the consequences. She cursed herself for being so weak and stupid this morning. If she had had the will to attack, she could have ripped out Bauchle Meyne’s guts.

  They had not broken Satan. They would kill him before they could strip him of his pride. But they had stripped him naked, and shackled him. And they had hurt him. Streaks of silver-grey cut across the red-gold fur on his shoulders. They had beaten him. Wess clenched her fingers around the handle other knife.

  Bauchle Meyne picked up a long pole. He was not fool enough to get within reach of Satan’s talons.

  “Show yourself!” he cried.

  Satan did not speak the trade-language, but Bauchle Meyne made himself well enough understood with the end of the pole. Satan stared at him without moving until the young man stopped poking at him, and, with some vague awareness of his captive’s dignity, backed up a step. Satan looked around him, his large eyes reflecting the light like a cat’s. He faced the prince. The heavy chains clanked and rattled as he moved.

  He raised his arms. He opened his hands, and his fingers unfolded.

  He spread his great red wings. Wizard-light glowed through the translucent webs. It was as if he had burst into flame.

  The prince gazed upon him with si
lent satisfaction as the crowd roared with surprise and astonishment.

  “Inside,” Bauchle Meyne said, “when I release him, he will fly.”

  One of the horses, brushed by Satan’s wingtip, snorted and reared. The cart lurched forward. The postillion yanked the horse’s mouth to a bloody froth and Bauchle Meyne lost his balance and stumbled to the ground. His face showed pain and Wess was glad. Satan barely shifted. The muscles tensed and slid in his back as he balanced himself with his wings.

  Aerie made a high, keening sound, almost beyond the limits of human hearing. But Satan heard. He did not flinch; unlike the troll, he did not turn. But he heard. In the bright white wizard-light, the short fur on the back of his shoulders rose, He made an answering cry, a sighing: a call to a lover. He folded his wing-fingers back along his arms. The webbing trembled and gleamed.

  The postillion kicked his horse and the cart lumbered forward. For the crowd outside, the show was over.

  The prince stepped down from the platform, and, walking side by side with Bauchle Meyne and followed by his retinue, proceeded into the carnival tent.

  The four friends stood close together as the crowd-moved past them. Wess was thinking. They’re going to let him fly, inside. He’ll be free … She looked at Aerie. “Can you land on top of the tent? And take off again?”

  Aerie looked at the steep canvas slope. “Easily,” she said.

  ****

  THE AREA BEHIND the tent was lit by torches, not wizard-light. Wess stood leaning against the grounds’ wall, watching the bustle and chaos of the troupe, listening to the applause and laughter of the crowd. The show had been going on a long time now; most of the people who had not got inside had left. A couple of carnival workers kept a bored watch on the perimeter of the barrier, but Wess knew she could slip past any time she pleased.

  It was Aerie she worried about. Once the plan started, she would be very vulnerable. The night was clear and the waxing moon bright and high. When she landed on top of the tent she would be well within range of arrows. Satan would be in even more danger. It was up to Wess and Quartz and Chan to create enough chaos so the archers would be too distracted to shoot either of the flyers.

  Wess was rather looking forward to it.

  She slipped under the rope when no one was looking and strolled through the shadows as if she belonged with the troupe. Satan’s cart stood at the performers’ entrance, but Wess did not go near her friend now. Taking no notice of her, the children on their ponies trotted by. In the torchlight the children looked thin and tired and very young, the ponies thin and tired and old. Wess slid behind the rank of animal cages. The carnival did, after all, have a salamander, but a piteous, poor and hungry-looking one, barely the size of a large dog. Wess broke the lock on its cage. She had only her knife to pry with; she did the blade no good. She broke the locks on the cages of the other animals, the half-grown wolf, the pygmy elephant, but did not yet free them. Finally she reached the troll.

  “Frejojan,” she whispered. “I’m behind you.”

  “I hear you, frejojan.” The troll came to the back of his cage. He bowed to her. “I regret my unkempt condition, frejojan; when they captured me I had nothing, not even a brush.” His golden grey-flecked hair was badly matted. He put his hand through the bars and Wess shook it.

  “I’m Wess,” she said.

  “Aristarchus,” he said. “You speak with the same accent as Satan—you’ve come for him?”

  She nodded. “I’m going to break the lock on your cage,” she said. “I have to be closer to the tent when they take him in to make him fly. It would be better if at first they didn’t notice anything was going wrong …”

  Aristarchus nodded. “I won’t escape till you’ve begun. Can I be of help?”

  Wess glanced along the row of cages. “Could you—would it put you in danger to free the animals?” He was old; she did not know if he could move quickly enough.

  He chuckled. “All of us animals have become rather good friends,” he said. “Though the salamander is rather snappish.”

  Wess wedged her knife into the padlock and wrenched it open. Aristarchus snatched it off the door and flung it into the straw. He smiled, abashed, at Wess.

  “I find my own temper rather short in these poor days.”

  Wess reached through the bars and gripped his hand again. Near the tent, the skewbald horses wheeled Satan’s cart around. Bauchle Meyne yelled nervous orders. Aristarchus glanced towards Satan.

  “It’s good you’ve come,” he said. “I persuaded him to cooperate, at least for a while, but he does not find it easy. Once he made them angry enough to forget his value.”

  Wess nodded, remembering the whip scars.

  The cart rolled forward; the archers followed.

  “I have to hurry,” Wess said.

  “Good fortune go with you.”

  She moved as close to the tent as she could. But she could not see inside; she had to imagine what was happening, by the tone of the crowd. The postillion drove the horses around the ring. They stopped. Someone crawled under the cart and unfastened the shackles from below, out of reach of Satan’s claws. And then—

  She heard the sigh, the involuntary gasp of wonder as Satan spread his wings, and flew.

  Above her. Aerie’s shadow cut the air. Wess pulled off her cloak and waved it, signalling. Aerie dived for the tent, swooped, and landed.

  Wess drew her knife and started sawing at a guy-rope. She had been careful enough of the edge so it sliced through fairly quickly. As she hurried to the next line, she heard the tone of the crowd gradually changing, as people began to notice something amiss. Quartz and Chan were doing their work, too. Wess chopped at the second rope. As the tent began to collapse, she heard tearing canvas above where Aerie ripped through the roof with her talons. Wess sliced through a third rope, a fourth. The breeze flapped the sagging fabric against itself. The canvas cracked and howled like a sail. Wess heard Bauchle Meyne screaming, “The ropes! Get the ropes, the ropes are breaking!”

  The tent fell from three directions. Inside, people began to shout, then to scream, and they tried to flee. A few spilled out into the parade-ground, then a mob fought through the narrow opening. The shriek of frightened horses pierced the crowd-noise, and the scramble turned to panic. The skewbald horses burst through the crush, scattering people right and left, Satan’s empty cart lurching and bumping along behind. More terrified people streamed out after them. All the guards from the palace fought against them, struggling to get inside to their prince.

  Wess turned to rejoin Quartz and Chan, and froze in horror. In the shadows behind the tent, Bauchle Meyne snatched up an abandoned bow, ignored the chaos, and aimed a steel-tipped arrow into the sky. Wess sprinted towards him, crashed into him, and shouldered him off-balance. The bowstring twanged and the arrow fishtailed up, falling back spent to bury itself in the limp canvas.

  Bauchle Meyne sprang up, his high complexion scarlet with fury.

  “You, you little bitch!” He lunged for her, grabbed her, and backhanded her across the face. “You’ve ruined me for spite!”

  The blow knocked her to the ground. This time Bauchle Meyne did not laugh at her. Half-blinded, Wess scrambled away from him. She heard his boots pound closer and he kicked her in the same place in the ribs. She heard the bone crack. She dragged at her knife but its edge, roughened by the abuse she had given it, hung up on the rim of the scabbard. She could barely see and barely breathe. She struggled with the knife and Bauchle Meyne kicked her again.

  “You can’t get away this time, bitch!” He let Wess get to her hands and knees. “Just try to run!” He stepped towards her.

  Wess flung herself at his legs, moved beyond pain by fury. He cried out as he fell. The one thing he could never expect from her was attack. Wess lurched to her feet. She ripped her knife from its scabbard as Bauchle Meyne lunged at her. She plunged it into him, into his belly, up, into his heart.

  She knew how to kill, but she had never killed a human b
eing. She had been drenched by her prey’s blood, but never the blood of her own species. She had watched creatures die by her hand, but never a creature who knew what death meant.

  His heart still pumping blood around the blade, his hands fumbling at her hands, trying to push them away from his chest, he fell to his knees, shuddered, toppled over, convulsed, and died.

  Wess jerked her knife from his body. Once more she heard the shrieks of frightened horses and the curses of furious men, and the howl of a half-starved wolf cub.

  The tent shimmered with wizard-light.

  I wish it were torches, Wess screamed in her mind. Torches would burn you, and burning is what you deserve.

  But there was no fire, and nothing burned. Even the wizard-light was fading.

  Wess looked into the sky. She raked her sleeve across her eyes to wipe away her tears.

  The two flyers soared towards the moon, free.

  And now—

  Quartz and Chan were nowhere in sight. She could find only terrified strangers: performers in spangles. Sanctuary people fighting each other, and more guards coming to the rescue of their lord. The salamander lumbered by, hissing in fear.

  Horses clattered towards her and she spun, afraid of being run down. Aristarchus brought them to a halt and flung her the second horse’s reins. It was the skewbald stallion from Satan’s cart, the one with the wild blue eye. It smelled the blood on her and snorted and reared. Somehow she kept hold of the reins. The horse reared again and jerked her off her feet. Bones ground together in her side and she gasped.

  “Mount!” Aristarchus cried. “You can’t control him from the ground!”

  “I don’t know how—” She stopped. It hurt too much to talk. “Grab his mane! Jump! Hold on with your knees.” She did as he said, found herself on the horse’s back, and nearly fell off his other side. She clamped her legs around him and he sprang forward. Both the reins were on one side of his neck—Wess knew that was not right. She pulled on them and he twisted in a circle and almost threw her again. Aristarchus urged his horse forward and grabbed the stallion’s bridle. The animal stood spraddle-legged, ears flat back, nostrils flaring, trembling between Wess’s legs. She hung on to his mane, terrified. Her broken ribs hurt so badly she felt faint.