Still, he kept his lips over his teeth when he smiled. He glided into the fragrant shrubs, odd deciduous shrubs with long thin branchlets, set up close against Kurd’s house, exulting in how simple it was, and then the bush’s trailing tendrils moved, rustling, and turned, and twined, and clutched. And clamped. And Shadowspawn understood then that Kurd was not without exterior defences.
Even as he struggled—fruitlessly, against frutescence—he knew that the knowledge was gained too late. Whether this thing was bent on strangling him or twisting his limbs until they broke or merely holding him until someone came, it was more horribly effective than human guards or three watchdogs. Amid silent rustling horror Hanse tugged at the tendril more slender than a brooch-pin, and only cut his fingers. His knife he only dulled, sawing at a purposeful tendril that gave but refused to be cut. And they moved, twining, rustling, insinuating themselves between his arms and body and around his legs and arms and torso and—throat!
That one he fought until his fingers bled. It was relentless. O ye gods, no, no, not like this—he was going to die, silently strangled by a damned skinny plant’s tendril!
He was, too. His “N—” disposed of his last breath. He could not draw another. As his eyes started to bulge and a dull hum commenced to invade his ears on the way to becoming a roar and then eternal silence, it occurred to him that Kurd’s garden could do more than strangle him. If it continued to tighten, it would slice in and in until it beheaded a strangled corpse.
Hanse fought with all his strength and the added power of desperation. As well have resisted the tide, or the sand of the desert. His movements became more restricted as his limbs were more and more constricted. Dizziness began to build like storm clouds and the hum rose to the roar of a gale.
So did the clouds above, and great big drops of water commenced to fall from the laden sky. That was just as eerie and impossible, for rain in Sanctuary fell in accord with the season, and this was not that season. The land was weeks away from the time called Lizard Summer, when lizards fried or were said to fry in their own juices, out on the desert.
What matter? Plants loved rain. And this one loved to kill. And it was killing Hanse, who was losing consciousness and feeling while his hearing became restricted to the roar inside his head. More rain fell and Hanse, dying, tried to swallow and could not and did what he thought he could never do: he began to give up.
Memory came like a white flash of late summer lightning. He heard her words as clearly as he had hours ago. “Hanse—take the crossed brown pot with you.”
Even that blazing flare of hope seemed too late, for how could his bound arms detach the bag from his belt, open it, open the crock inside, and give this predatory plant a message it might understand?
Answer: he could not.
He could, however, dying, jerk his forearm four or five inches. He did, again and again, breathless, dying, losing consciousness but still moving, puncturing the leather bag again and again and banging the point of his knife off the pot which was smooth, glazed, well made, and O damn it all too damned hard.
It broke. Shards punched through knife holes and widened them to let quicklime spill down in a candent stream. Hanse was sure it hissed in the moist grass about the moist base of the strangler plant—but Hanse could not hear that hissing or anything else save the roar of a surf more powerful than life could withstand.
He slumped, dead now with streamers of caustic steam rising above his legs—and a suddenly frenetic shrub began waving and snapping its tendrils about as if caught by the very Compass Bag itself, whence issues the wind of every direction at once. In those whipping throes it not only released its prey, it hurled him several feet backwards. He lay sprawled, away from the plant and clear of the smoking corrosive death about its base, and the soles of his buskins smoked. Rain pelted his face and he lay still, still, while the killer plant died.
****
It was not raining in Sanctuary but out of a clear night sky came a sizzling bolt that hardly rocked the structure that grounded it. The graven name VASHANKA, however, abruptly disappeared from the facade of that structure, which was the Governor’s Palace.
Chapter 4
OH DAMN, BUT my damned head aches!
Pox and plague, that’s rain on my face and I’m getting soaked!
Holy cess—I’m alive!
None of these thoughts prompted Hanse to move, not for a longish while. Then he tried opening his mouth to let rain assuage a sore throat, and choked on the fifth or sixth drop. He sat up hurriedly. His grunt was not from his head, which felt fat and swollen and stuffed to bursting. He rolled swiftly leftward off a source of sharper pain. He had been lying on his back. Under him, thonged to his belt, had been the ruins of a nice leathern bag of broken pottery.
If I don’t bleed to death I’ll be picking pieces of pottery out of my tail for a week!
That thought made him angry and with a low groan he rose to glare triumphantly on the faintly smoking remnant of a destroyed shrub. Its neighbour looked almost as bad. Shadowspawn took no chances with it. Avoiding shrubs and indeed anything herbaceous that was larger than a blade of grass, he went to the nearest window. Just as he completed his slow slicing of the sheet of pig’s bladder stretched over the opening, he heard the awful sound from within. A groan, long and wavery and hideous. Hanse went all over gooseflesh and considered heading for home.
He did not. He peeled aside the ruined window and peered into a dark room containing neither bed nor person. Mindful of his punctured and lacerated buttock, he went in. There was nothing to do about his head. He had, after all, been strangled to death. Or come so close that the difference wasn’t worth considering—save that he was alive, which was absolutely all the difference that mattered.
After a long measured while of standing frozen, listening, staring in effort to make his eyes see, he moved. He heard nothing. No groan, no movement, no rain. The moon was back. It was not in line with the window, but it was up there and a little light sneaked in to aid a thief.
He found a wall, a jamb. Squatted, then went lower, wincing at rearward pain, to ensure that no light showed under the door. The latch was a simple press-down hook. He took his time depressing it. He took more time in slowly, slowly pulling open the door. It revealed a corridor or short hall.
While he wondered whether to go right or leftward, that ghastly sound of agony came again. This time a pulpy mumble underlay the moaning groan, and once again Hanse felt the icy, antsy touch of gooseflesh.
The sound came from his right. He slipped his knife back into its sheath, patted other sheathed knives, and undid the thong at his belt to get the bag off. That hurt, as a shard of pottery emerged from his clothing, and him. That hand he moved very slowly, mindful of the clink of broken pottery. He squinted before he glanced back, because he did not want his enlarged pupils to shrink.
The window showed a pretty night, small-mooned but dark of sky, without clouds or rain. Without even knowing that the rain had been confined to Kurd’s grounds, Shadowspawn shivered. Did gods exist? Did gods help?
Hanse took a long step into the corridor and turned right. The bag swung at the end of its thong from his right hand. Just in case someone popped up, that might make him look less deadly: anyone sensible would assume him to be normally right-handed.
As he reached the end of the hall with a big door ahead and another on his left, someone popped up. The side door opened and light rushed forth. It flared from the oil lamp in the hand of a gnome-like man who wore only a long ungirt tunic; a nightshirt. “Here—” he began and Hanse said “Here yourself” and hit him with the wet, rent bag of broken pottery. Since it struck the fellow in the face, he moaned and let go the lamp to rush both hands to his bloodied face. “Damn,” Hanse said, watching hot oil slosh on to the man’s tunic and bare legs and feet. It also splashed wall and door and ran along the floor, burning. At the same time, a third groan of unendurable agony rose behind the other door, the big one still closed.
�
�Master!” Hanse screeched, high-voiced. “FIRE!” And he shoved the squatty fellow backwards, kicked the burning lamp in after him, and yanked the door shut. Instantly he attacked the other one, and soon entered Hell.
Part of a man lay on a table, a short skinny fellow. He was even shorter and skinnier now, bereft of both legs and both arms, all his hair, and his left nipple with part of the pectoral. Even as Hanse shuddered, he knew there was only one form of rescue for this wretch. Ignoring the shining sharp instruments Kurd used, Hanse drew the arm-long blade those crazies up in the Ilbars Hills called a knife, got his best two-handed grip, and struck with all his might. Blood gushed and Hanse clamped his teeth against vomit. He had to strike again to complete the job. Now only a torso lay on the table, and a shuddering Shadowspawn clung to the weapon as he squinted around a chamber full of tables and thoughtfully provided with graded runnels in the floor, for the carrying off of blood.
“Thales?”
Two groans replied. One of them ended with “help”, weak as a kitten. It was not Tempus’s voice, but Hanse went to that table.
“He—he—he’s cut off my right arm and… and three fingers of my-my l-l-le eft hannnd … just to … just to…” An enormous bodyshaking shudder refused to let the man finish.
“You do not bleed. Your legs? Feet?” Hanse was squinting without really wanting to see.
“I—I—they … there…”
“Think,” Shadowspawn said, swallowing hard. “I can cut these straps or your throat. Think, and choose.” He started to turn away.
“I am … ali-i-ive … I can wa-a-alk…”
Hanse sliced off the man’s restraining straps. “I seek Tempus.”
“You seek death here, thief!” a voice said, and light flooded the chamber.
Hanse didn’t pause to reply or look to see who bore the light. He turned, plucking forth a guardless knife like a leaf of steel, and threw. Only then did he really look at the man in the doorway; throw once to disconcert, the second time with aim. Lean and more than lean the man was, pallid skin taut. A man in a voluminous nightshirt, a man to get a chill from a south wind in June. A man who held a cocked crossbow in one hand, awkwardly, and a closed lamp or lanthorn in the other, sleeve sliding back to show an arm of bone plated with parchment. Kurd.
He was ducking the whizzing knife that missed by several inches. The lanthorn swung wildly, splashing lunatic flashes of yellow light off walls and floor and tables with ghastly stains. The doke should have put the light down first, Hanse thought, plucking out another sliver of sharp steel. With both hands on that little crossbow Kurd might be dangerous. Instead his arm was nailed to the door by a knife that caught cloth but only raked skin—there was no flesh—so that the monster cried out more in fear than in pain. The crossbow hit the floor, thunked, and sent its bolt thunk—twanging into a wall or a table leg or—Hanse didn’t care.
“I’m here for Tempus, butcher. Just stand there and provide light. Move and I’ll throw again.” He showed Kurd a third bright blade, sheathed it. “You’d look good with another navel, anyhow.” Then he went to the source of the third groan. “Oh, oh gods, oh, oh gods, why is this allowed?”
No god answered the anguished query torn from Shadowspawn by the sight of Tempus.
Big blond Tempus answered, scarless and armless, and the answer came from a mouth without a tongue. He managed to make Hanse understand that three pins were stuck into each stump. Hanse steeled himself to pull them out before turning to gush vomit on to the grooved floor of Kurd’s laboratory of torment, and whirled back to send such a glare at the vivisectionist that Kurd shivered and stood still as a statue, lanthorn held high.
Hanse cut Tempus loose and helped him sit up. The big man did not bleed. He bore various cuts, all of which looked old. They were not. He made stomach and heart wrenching sounds, ghastly noises that Hanse interpreted as “I’ll heal”, which was just as ghastly. What was this man?
“Can you walk?”
More noises. Repeated. Again. Hanse thought he understood, and bent to look. Yes. Minus some toes, Tempus had said. He was. Three. No, four. The middle one was gone from the left foot.
“Thales, there’s only me and I can’t carry you. I freed another and he can’t help. What shall I do?”
It took Tempus a long while to make him understand, trying to form words without a tongue, and once Kurd moved. Hanse turned to see the other freed wretch fleeing past the vivisectionist. Hanse threatened and Kurd froze. He held the lantern in a quivering hand at the end of a wavering arm.
Strap Kurd to a table, Tempus had said. Where’s servant?
Kurd answered that one, once he had a knife at his flat gut. His gardener and sole retainer was unconscious.
“Oh,” Hanse said, “he’ll want to be bound, then,” and worked the blade out of sleeve and door. With a knife in either hand, he gestured. “Hang that lanthorn, monster!”
“You can’t—”
Hanse poked him with sharp steel. “I can. Run complain to the Prince-Governor as soon as you can. You can also die now, which would be a shame. But I’ll try to stick you in the belly, low, just deep enough so you’ll be a day or three about dying. Of gangrene, maybe. Hang that lanthorn, monster!”
Kurd did, on the hook that was, naturally enough, beside the door. He turned to meet Hanse’s foot driving straight up between his skinny shanks. It impacted with a jar.
“Something for your balls, if you have one,” Hanse said, and didn’t even glance at the man who sank all bulge-eyed and gasping to his knees, with both hands in the predictable position. Hanse hurried to where the gardener lay, not even covered by the blanket his master had used to smother the fire. By the time Hanse finished trussing him with strips of his nightshirt, the gnomish fellow would starve before he freed himself.
Minutes later his master was strapped to one of his own tables. Hanse gagged him, because Kurd had left off threatening to plead and make the most ridiculous promises. Hanse returned to Tempus.
“They couldn’t get loose for a roomful of gold, Thales. Now how in the name of every god am I to get you out of here and back to town, friend?”
Tempus required five minutes and more to make himself understood. Don’t. Lay me back. I’ll heal. The toes first. Tomorrow I’ll be able to walk. Wine?
Hanse laid him back. Hanse fetched wine and blankets and some sort of gruelly pudding. Knowing that Tempus hated his helplessness, Hanse fed him, helped him guzzle about a gallon of wine, arranged him, covered him, checked Kurd and his servant, made sure the house was locked, and roamed it.
Surgeon’s tools, a bag of coins, and a pile of bedding he piled outside the door to the chamber of scientific experimentation. He would not lie in a monster’s bed, or on one of those tables! He slept, at last, on the floor. On bedding from the gardener’s chamber, not Kurd’s. He wanted nothing of Kurd’s.
Valuable knives and the bag of money were different.
****
HE AWOKE AT dawn, looked in on three sleeping men, marvelled, and left that place that was nine times more horrible by day. He found a sausage, considered, and chose flatbread instead. Only the gods and Kurd knew what sort of meat comprised that sausage. In a shed Hanse found a cart and a mule. He had to do some chopping and some seating. At last he got Tempus out of the ruined house and into the cart padded with hay. Hanse covered him amid shudders. Tempus’s cuts looked days older, nearly healed.
“Would you like a few fingers or nose or something of Kurd to accompany you out of here, Thales?”
Almost, Tempus frowned.
“O,” he said, and Hanse knew it was a, no. “You want to, uh, leave them for … later?” Tempus’s reply was almost a yes, for me.
Hanse got him out of there. He used much of Kurd’s money to buy the place and services of a tongueless, nearly blind old woman, along with some soft food, wine, blankets and cloak, and he went away from them with a few coins and hideous memories.
The coins bought him expensive treatment from a leech
who dared not chuckle or comment as he cleaned and bandaged a buttock with multiple lacerations, which he said would heal beautifully.
After that Hanse was sick in his room for the better part of a week. The remaining three coins bought him anaesthetic in the form of strong drink.
For another week he feared that he would encounter Tempus on the street or someplace, but he did not. After that, amid rumours of some sort of insurrection somewhere near, he began to fear that he would never see Tempus, and then of course he did see him. Healed and scarless. Hanse went home and threw up.
He traded a few things for more strong drink, and he got drunk and stayed that way for a while. He just didn’t feel like stealing, or facing Tempus, or Kadakithis either. He did dream, of two gods and a girl of sixteen or so. Ils and Shalpa and Mignureal. And quicklime.
The Rhinoceros And The Unicorn
By Diana L. Paxson
“SO WHY DID you come back?” Gilla’s shrill retort interrupted Lalo’s attempts to explain why he had not been home the night before. “Has every tavern in Sanctuary shown you the door?” She planted her fists on her spreading hips, the meaty flesh on her upper arms quivering below the short sleeves of her shift, and glared at him.
Lalo stepped backwards, caught his heel on the leg of his easel, and clattered to the floor in a tangle of splintering wood and skinny limbs. The baby began to cry. While Lalo gasped for breath, Gilla took a long stride to the cradle and clutched the child to her breasts, patting him soothingly. Echoes of their older children’s quarrels with their playmates drifted from the street below, mingling with the clatter of a cart and the calls of vendors hawking their wares in the Bazaar.
“Now see what you’ve done!” said Gilla when the baby had quieted. “Isn’t it enough that you bring home no bread? If you can’t earn an honest living painting, why don’t you turn to thievery like everyone else in this dungheap of a town?” Her face, reddened by anger and the heat of the day, swam above him like a mask of the demon-goddess Dyareela at Festival time.
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