Thieves World tw-1

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  'Cappen Varra?'

  'The same.' He answered, greeting her with a smile. 'There was a rope across your gate today, and Dubro was not busy at his fire - otherwise I should have stopped to see you.'

  'You have a question?'

  'No, my life could not be better. I have a song for you.'

  'Today is not a day for songs. Have you seen Dubro?'

  'No. I'm here to get wine for a special dinner tomorrow night. Thanks to you, I know where the best wine in Sanctuary is still to be found.'

  'A new love?'

  'The same. She grows more radiant with each day. Tomorrow the master of the house will be busy with his priestly functions. The household will be quiet.'

  'The household of Molin Torchholder must agree with you then. It is good to be in the grace of the conquerors of Ilsig.'

  'I'm discreet. So is Molin. It is a trait which seems to have been lost among the natives of Sanctuary - S'danzo excepted, of course. I'm most comfortable within his house.'

  The seller handed him two freshly washed bottles of wine, and with brief farewells, Illyra saw him on his way. The wine-seller had seen Dubro earlier in the day. He offered that the smith was visiting every wine-seller in the bazaar and not a few of the taverns outside it. Similar stories waited for her at the other wine-sellers. She returned to the forge-home in the gathering twilight and fog.

  Ten candles and the oil stove could not cut through the dark emptiness in the chamber. Illyra pulled her shawls tightly around her and tried to nap until Dubro returned. She would not let herself think that he would not return.

  'You have been waiting for me.'

  Illyra jumped at the sound. Only two of the candles remained lit; she had no idea how long she had slept, only that her home quivered with shadows and a man, as tall as Dubro but of cadaverous thinness, stood within the knotted rope.

  'Who are you? What do you want?' She flattened against the back of the chair.

  'Since you do not recognize me, then say, I have been looking for you.'

  The man gestured. The candles and stove rekindled and Illyra found herself staring at the blue-starred face of the magician Lythande.

  'I have done nothing to cross you,' she said, rising slowly from her chair.

  'And I did not say that you had. I thought you were seeking me. Many of us Have heard you calling today.'

  He held up the three cards Marilla had overturned and the Face of Chaos.

  'I - I had not known my problems could disturb your studies.'

  'I was reflecting on the legend of the Five Ships - it was comparatively easy for you to touch me. I have taken it to myself to learn things for you.

  'The girl Marilla appealed first to her own gods. They sent her to you since for them to act on her fate would rouse the ire of Sabellia and Savankala. They have tied your fates together. You will not solve your own troubles unless you can relieve hers.'

  'She is a dead woman, Lythande. If the gods of Ilsig wish to help her, they will need all their strength - and if that isn't enough, then there is nothing I can do for her.'

  'That is not a wise position to take, Illyra,' the magician said with a smile.

  'That is what I saw. S'danzo do not cross fates with the gods.'

  'And you, Illyra, are not S'danzo.'

  She gripped the back of the chair, angered by the reminder but unable to counter it.

  'They have passed the obligation to you,' he said.

  'I do not know how to break through Manila's fate,' Illyra said simply. 'I see, they must change.'

  Lythande laughed. 'Perhaps there is no way, child. Maybe it will take two sacrifices to consecrate the temple Molin Torch-holder builds. You had best hope there is a way through Manila's fate; A cold breeze accompanied his laughter. The candles flickered a moment, and the magician was gone. Illyra stared at the undisturbed rope.

  Let Lythande and the others help her if it's so important. I want only the anvil, and that I can have regardless of her fate.

  The cold air clung to the room. Already her imagination was embroidering upon the consequences of enraging any of the powerful deities of Sanctuary. She left to search for Dubro in the fog-shrouded bazaar.

  Fog tendrils obscured the familiar stalls and shacks of the daytime bazaar. A few fires could be glimpsed through cracked doorways, but the area itself had gone to sleep early, leaving Illyra to roam through the moist night alone.

  Nearing the main entrance she saw the bobbing torch of a running man. The torch and runner fell with an aborted shout. She heard lighter footsteps running off into the unlit fog. Cautiously, fearfully, Illyra crept towards the fallen man.

  It was not Dubro, but a shorter man wearing a blue hawk-mask. A dagger protruded from the side of his neck. Illyra felt no sorrow at the death of one of Jubal's bully-boys, only relief that it had not been Dubro. Jubal was worse than the Rankans. Perhaps the crimes of the man behind the mask had finally caught up with him. More likely someone had risked venting a grudge against the seldom seen former gladiator. Anyone who dealt with Jubal had more enemies than friends.

  As if in silent response to her thoughts, another group of men appeared out of the fog. Illyra hid among the crates and boxes while five men without masks studied the dead man. Then, without warning, one of them threw aside his torch and fell on the warm corpse, striking it again and again with his knife. When he had had his fill of death, the others took their turns.

  The bloody hawk-mask rolled to within a hand-span of Illyra's foot. She held her breath and did not move, her eyes riveted in horror on the unrecognizable body in front of her. She wandered away from the scene blind to everything but her own disbelieving shock. The atrocity seemed to be the final, senseless gesture of the Face of Chaos in a day which had unravelled her existence.

  She leaned against a canopy-post fighting waves of nausea, but Haakon's sweetmeats had been the only food she had eaten all day. The dry heaving of her stomach brought no relief.

  'Lyra!'

  A familiar voice roared behind her and an arm thrown protectively around her shoulder broke the spell. She clung to Dubro with clenched fingers, burying her convulsive sobs in his leather vest. He reeked of wine and the salty fog. She savoured every breath of him.

  'Lyra, what are you doing out here?' He paused, but she did not reply. 'Did you begin to think I'd not come back to you?'

  He held her tightly, swaying restlessly back and forth. The story of the hawk masked man's death fell from her in racked gasps. It took Dubro only a moment to decide that his beloved Illyra had suffered too much in his absence and to repent that he had gotten drunk or sought work outside the bazaar. He lifted her gently and carried her back to their home, muttering softly to himself as he walked.

  Not even Dubro's comforting arms could protect Illyra from the nightmare visions that stalked her sleep once they had returned to their home. He shook off his drunkenness to watch over her as she tossed and fretted on the sleeping linens. Each time he thought she had settled into a calm sleep, the dreams would start again. Illyra would awaken sweating and incoherent from fear. She would not describe her dreams to him when he asked. He began to suspect that something worse than the murder had taken place in his absence, though their home showed no sign of attack or struggle.

  Illyra did try to voice her fears to him at each waking interlude, but the mixture of visions and emotions found no expression in her voice. Within her mind, each re-dreaming of the nightmare brought her closer to a single image which both collected her problems and eliminated them. The first rays of a feeble dawn had broken through the fog when she had the final synthetic experience of the dream.

  She saw herself at a place the dream-spirit said was the estate called Land's End. The estate had been long abandoned, with only an anvil chained to a pedestal in the centre of a starlit courtyard to show that it had been inhabited. Illyra broke the chain easily and lifted the anvil as if it had been paper. Clouds rushed in as she walked away and a moaning wind began to blow dust-devils ar
ound her. She hurried towards the doorway where Dubro waited for his gift.

  The steel cracked before she had travelled half the distance, and the anvil crumbled completely as she transferred it to him. Rain began to fall, washing away Dubro's face to reveal Lythande's cruel, mocking smile. The magician struck her with the card marked with the Face of Chaos. And she died, only to find herself captive within her body which was being carried by unseen hands to a vast pit. The dissonant music of priestly chants and cymbals surrounded her. Within the dream, Illyra opened her dead eyes to see a large block of stone descending into the pit over her.

  'I'm already dead!' She screamed, struggling to free her arms and legs from invisible bindings. 'I can't be sacrificed - I'm already dead!' -

  Her arms came free. She nailed wildly. The walls of the pit were glassy and without hand-holds. The lowered stone touched her head. She shrieked as the life left her body for a second time. Her body released her spirit, and she rose up through the stone, waking as she did.

  'It was a dream,' Illyra said before Dubro could ask.

  The solution was safe in her mind now. The dream would not return. But it was like a reading with the cards. In order to understand what the dream-spirit had given her, she would have to meditate upon it.

  'You said something of death and sacrifice,' Dubro said, un-mollified by her suddenly calmed face.

  'It was a dream.'

  'What sort of dream? Are you afraid that I will leave you or the bazaar now that I have no work to do?'

  'No,' she said quickly, masking the fresh anxiety his words produced. 'Besides, I have found an anvil for us.'

  'In your dream with the death and sacrifice?'

  'Death and sacrifice are keys the dream-spirit gave me. Now I must take the time to understand them.'

  Dubro stepped back from her. He was not S'danzo, and though bazaar-folk, he was not comfortable around their traditions or their gifts. When Illyra spoke of 'seeing' Or 'knowing', he would draw away from her. He sat, quiet and sullen, in a chair pulled into the corner most distant from her S'danzo paraphernalia.

  She stared at the black-velvet covering other table until well past the dawn and the start of a gentle rain. Dubro placed a shell with a sweetmeat in it before her. She nodded, smiled, and ate it, but did not say anything. The smith had already turned away two patrons when Illyra finished her meditation.

  'Are you finished, now, Lyra?' he asked, his distrust of S'danzo ways not overshadowing his concern for her.

  'I think so.'

  'No more death and sacrifice?'

  She nodded and began to relate the tale of the previous day's events. Dubro listened quietly until she reached the part about Lythande.

  'In my home? Within these walls?' he demanded.

  'I saw him, but I don't know how he got in here. The rope was untouched.'

  'No!' Dubro exclaimed, beginning to pace like a caged animal. 'No, I want none of this. I will not have magicians and sorcerers in my home!'

  'You weren't here, and I did not invite him in.' Illyra's dark eyes flashed at him as she spoke. 'And he'll come back again if I don't do these things, so hear me out.'

  'No, just tell me what we must do to keep him away.'

  Illyra dug her fingernails into the palm of one hand hidden in the folds of her skirts.

  'We will have to - to stop the consecration of the cornerstone of the new temple for the Rankan gods.'

  '"Gods", Lyra, you would not meddle with the gods? Is this the meaning you found in "death and sacrifice"?'

  'It is also the reason Lythande was here last night.'

  'But, Lyra ...'

  She shook her head, and he was quiet.

  'He won't ask me what I plan to do', she thought as he tied the rope across the door and followed her towards the city. 'As long as everything is in my head, I'm certain everything is possible and that I will succeed. But if I spoke of it to anyone - even him - I would hear how little hope I have of stopping Molin Torch-holder or of changing Marilla's fate.'

  In the dream, her already dead body had been offered to Sabellia and Savankala. Her morning's introspection had convinced her that she was to introduce a corpse into Molin Torchholder's ceremonies. They passed the scene of the murder, but Jubal's men had reclaimed their comrade. The only other source of dead men she knew of was the governor's palace where executions were becoming a daily occurrence under the tightening grip of the Hell Hounds.

  They passed by the huge charnel-house just beyond the bazaar gates. The rain held the death smells close by the half-timbered building. Could Sabellia and Savankala be appeased with the mangled bones and fat of a butchered cow? Hesitantly she mounted the raised wooden walk over the red-brown effluvia of the building.

  'What do the Rankan gods want from this place?' Dubro asked before setting foot on the walkway.

  'A substitute for the one already chosen.'

  A man emerged from a side door pushing a sloshing barrel which he dumped into the slow-moving stream. Shapeless red lumps flowed under the walkway between the two bazaar-folk. Illyra swayed on her feet.

  'Even the gods of Ranke would not be fooled by these.' Dubro lowered his- head towards the now-ebbing stream. 'At least offer them the death of an honest man ofllsig.'

  He held out a hand to steady her as she stepped back on the street, then led the way past the Serpentine to the governor's palace. Three men hung limply from the gallows in the rain, their crimes and names inscribed on placards tied around their necks. Neither Illyra nor Dubro had mastered the arcane mysteries of script.

  'Which one is most like the one you need?' Dubro asked.

  'She should be my size, but blonde.' Illyra explained while looking at the two strapping men and one grandfatherly figure hanging in front of them.

  Dubro shrugged and approached the stern-faced Hell Hound standing guard at the foot of the gallows.

  'Father,' he grunted, pointing at the elderly corpse.

  'It's the law - to be hung by the neck until sundown. You'll have to come back then.'

  'Long walk home. He's dead now - why wait?'

  'There is law in Sanctuary now, peon, Rankan law. It will be respected without exception.'

  Dubro stared at the ground, fumbling with his hands in evident distress.

  'In the rain I cannot see the sun - how shall I know when to return?'

  Guard and smith stared at the steely-grey sky, both knowing it would not clear before nightfall. Then, with a loud sigh, the Hell Hound walked to the ropes, selected and untied one, which dropped Dubro's 'father' into the mud.

  'Take him and begone!'

  Dubro shouldered the dead man, walking to Illyra who waited at the edge of the execution grounds.

  'He's - he's -' she gasped in growing hysteria.

  'Dead since sunrise.'

  'He's covered with filth. He reeks. His face ...'

  'You wanted another for the sacrifice.'

  'But not like that!'

  'It is the way of men who have been hung.'

  They walked back towards the charnel-house where Sanctuary's undertakers and embalmers held sway. There, for five copper coins, they found a man to prepare the body. For another coin he would have rented them a cart and his son as a digger to take the unfortunate ex-thief to the common field outside the Gate of Triumph for proper burial. Illyra and Dubro made a great show of grief, however, and insisted that they would bury their father with their own hands. Wrapped in a nearly clean shroud, the old man was bound to a plank. Illyra held the foot end, Dubro the other. They made their way back to the bazaar.

  'Do we take the body to the temple for the exchange?' he asked as they pushed aside their chairs to make room for the plank.

  Illyra stared at him, not realizing at first that his faith in her had made the question sincere.

  'During the night the Rankan priests will leave the governor's palace for the estate called Land's End. They will bear Marilla with them. We will have to stop them and replace Marilla with our corpse,
without their knowledge.'

  The smith's eyes widened with disillusion. 'Lyra, it is not the same as stealing fruit from Blind Jakob! The girl will be alive. He is dead. Surely the priests will see.'

  She shook her head clinging desperately to the image she had found in meditation. 'It rains. There will be no moonlight, and their torches will give more smoke than light. I gave the girl cylantha. They will have to carry her as if she were dead.'

  'Will she take the drug?'

  'Yes!'

  But Illyra wasn't sure - couldn't be sure - until they actually saw the procession. So many questions: if Marilla had taken the drug, if the procession were small, unguarded and slowed by their burden, if the ritual were like the one in her dream. The cold panic she had felt as the stone descended on her returned. The Face of Chaos loomed, laughing, in her mind's eye.

  'Yes! She took the drug last night,' she said firmly, dispelling the Face by force of will.

  'How do you know this?' Dubro asked incredulously. 'I know.'

  There was no more discussion as Illyra threw herself into the preparation of a macabre feast that they ate on a table spread over their dead guest. The vague point of sundown passed, leaving Sanctuary in a dark rainy night, as Illyra had foreseen. The continuing rain bolstered her confidence as they moved slowly through the bazaar and out of the Common Gate.

  They faced a long, but not difficult, walk beyond the walls of the city. As Dubro pointed out, the demoiselles of the Street of Red Lanterns had to follow their path each night on their way to the Promise of Heaven. The ladies giggled behind their shawls at the sight of the two bearing what was so obviously a corpse. But they did nothing to hinder them, and it was far too early for the more raucous traffic returning from the Promise.

  Huge piles of stone in a sea of muddy craters marked the site of the new temple. A water-laden canopy covered sputtering braziers and torches; otherwise the area was quiet and deserted.

  It is the night of the Ten-Slaying. Cappen Varra told me the priests would be busy. Rain will not stop the dedication. Gods do not feel rain! Illyra thought, but again did not know and sat with her back to Dubro quivering more from doubt and fear than from the cold water dripping down her back.