“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.
While she sat, the rain slowed to a misty drizzle and gave promise of stopping altogether. She left the inadequate shelter of the rock pile to venture nearer the canopy and braziers. A platform had been built above the mud at the edge of a pit with ropes dangling on one side that might be used to lower a body into the pit. A great stone was poised on logs opposite, ready to crush anything below. At least they were not too late—no sacrifice had taken place. Before Illyra had returned to Dubro’s side, six torches appeared in the mist-obscured distance.
“They are coming,” Dubro whispered as she neared him.
“I see them. We have only a few moments now.”
From around her waist she unwound two coils of rope taken from the bazaar forge. She had devised her own plan for the actual exchange, as neither the dream spirit nor her meditations had offered solid insight or inspiration.
“They will most likely follow the same path we did, since they are carrying a body also,” she explained as she laid the ropes across the mud, burying them slightly. “We will trip them here.”
“And I will switch our corpse for the girl?”
“Yes.”
They said nothing more as each crouched in a mud-hole waiting, hoping, that the procession would pass between them.
The luck promised in her dream held. Molin Torchholder led the small procession, bearing a large brass and wood torch from Sabellia’s temple in Ranke itself. Behind him were three chanting acolytes bearing both incense and torches. The last two torches were affixed to a bier carried on the shoulders of the last pair of priests. Torchholder and the other three trod over the ropes without noticing them. When the first pallbearer was between the ropes Illyra snapped them taut.
The burdened priests heard the smack as the ropes lifted from the mud, but were tripped before they could react. Marilla and the torches fell towards Dubro, the priests towards Illyra. In the dark commotion, Illyra got safely to a nearby pile of building stones, but without being able to see if Dubro had accomplished the exchange.
“What’s wrong?” Torchholder demanded, hurrying back with his torch to light the scene.
“The damned workmen left the hauling ropes strewn about,” a mud-splattered priest exclaimed as he scrambled out of the knee-deep mud-hole.
“And the girl?” Molin continued.
“Thrown over there, from the look of it.”
Lifting his robes in one hand, Molin Torchholder led the acolytes and priests to the indicated mud-pit. Illyra heard sounds she prayed were Dubro making his own way to the safe shadows.
“A hand here.”
“Damned Ilsig mud. She weighs ten times as much now.”
“Easy. A little more mud, a little sooner won’t affect the temple, but it’s an ill thought to rouse the Others.” Torchholder’s calm voice quieted the others.
The torches were re-lit. From her hideout, Illyra could see a mud-covered shroud on the bier. Dubro had succeeded somehow: she did not allow herself to think anything else.
The procession continued on towards the canopy. The rain had stopped completely. A sliver of moonlight showed through the dispersing clouds. Torchholder loudly hailed the break in the clouds as an omen of the forgiving, sanctifying, presence of Vashanka and began the ritual. In due time the acolytes emptied braziers of oil on to the shroud, setting it and the corpse on fire. They lowered the naming bier into the pit. The acolytes threw symbolic armloads of stone after it. Then they cut the ropes that held the cornerstone in its place at the edge. It slid from sight with a loud, sucking sound.
Almost at once, Torchholder and the other two priests left the platform to head back towards the palace, leaving only the acolytes to perform a night-long vigil over the new grave. When the priests were out of sight Illyra scrambled back to the mud-holes and whispered Dubro’s name.
“Here,” he hissed back.
She needed only one glance at his moon-shadowed face to know something had gone wrong.
“What happened?” she asked quickly, unmindful of the sound of her voice. “Marilla? Did they bury Marilla?”
There were tears in Dubro’s eyes as he shook his head. “Look at her!” he said, his voice barely under control.
A mud-covered shroud lay some paces away. Dubro would neither face it nor venture near it. Illyra approached warily.
Dubro had left the face covered. Holding her breath, Illyra reached down to peel back the damp, dirty linen.
For a heartbeat, she saw Marilla’s sleeping face. Th
en it became her own. After a second of self-recognition, the face underwent a bewildering series of changes to portraits of people from her childhood and others whom she did not recognize. It froze for a moment in the shattered image of the Face of Chaos, then was still with pearly-white skin where there should have been eyes, nose, and mouth.
Illyra’s fingers stiffened. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lungs and throat were paralysed with fright. The linen fell from her unfeeling hands, but did not cover the hideous thing that lay before her.
Get away! Get away from this place!
The primitive imperative rose in her mind and would not be appeased by anything less than headlong flight. She pushed Dubro aside. The acolytes heard her as she blundered through the mud, but she ignored them. There were buildings ahead solid stone buildings outlined in the moonlight.
It was a manor house of an estate long since abandoned. Illyra recognized it from her dream, but her panic and terror had been sated in the headlong run from the faceless corpse. An interior door hung open on rusty hinges that creaked when she pushed the door. She was unsurprised to see an anvil sitting on a plain wooden box in the centre of a courtyard that her instincts told her was not entirely deserted.
“I’m only prolonging it now. The anvil, and the rest; they are there for me.”
She stepped into the courtyard. Nothing happened. The anvil was solid and far too heavy for her to lift.
“You’ve come to collect your reward?” a voice called.
“Lythande?” she whispered, waiting for the cadaverous magician to appear.
“Lythande is elsewhere.”
A hooded man stepped into the moonlight.
“What has happened? Where is Marilla? Her family?”
The man gestured to his right. Illyra followed his movement and saw the tumbledown headstones of an old graveyard.
“But…?”
“The priests of Ils seek to provoke the new gods. They created the homunculus, disguising it to appear as a young woman to an untrained observer. Had it been interred in the foundation of the new temple, it would have created a disruptive weakness. The anger of Savankala and Sabellia would reach across the desert. That is, of course, exactly what the priests of Ils wanted.”
“We magicians—and even you gifted S’danzo—do not welcome the meddling feuds of gods and their priests. They tamper with the delicate balances of fate. Our work is more important than the appeasement of deities, so this time, as in the past, we have intervened.”
“But the temple? They should have buried a virgin, then?”
“A forged person would arouse the Rankan gods, but not an imperfect virgin. When the temple of Ils was erected, the old priests sought a royal soul to inter beneath the altar. They wanted the youngest, and most loved, of the royal princes. The queen was a sorceress of some skill herself. She disguised an old slave, and his bones still rest beneath the altar.”
“So the gods of Ilsig and Ranke are equal?”
The hooded man laughed. “We have seen to it that all gods within Sanctuary are equally handicapped, my child.”
“And what of me? Lythande warned me not to fail.”
“Did I not just say that our purpose—and therefore your purpose—was accomplished? You did not fail, and we repay, as Marilla promised, with a black steel anvil. It is yours.”
He laid a hand on the anvil and disappeared in a wisp of smoke.
“Lyra, are you all right? I heard you speaking with someone. I buried that girl before I came looking for you.”
“Here is the anvil.”
“I do not want such an ill-gotten thing.” Dubro took her arm and tried to lead her out of the courtyard.
“I have paid too much already!” she shouted at him, wresting away from his grasp. “Take it back to the bazaar—then we will forget all this ever happened. Never speak of it to anyone. But don’t leave the anvil here, or it’s all worth nothing!”
“I can never forget your face on that dead girl… thing.”
Illyra remained silently staring at the still-muddy ground. Dubro went to the anvil and brushed the water and dirt from its surface.
“Someone has carved a symbol in it. It reminds me of one of your cards. Tell me what it means before I take it back to the bazaar with us.”
She stood by his side. A smiling Face of Chaos had been freshly etched into the worn surface of the metal.
“It is an old S’danzo sign of good luck.”
Dubro did not seem to hear the note of bitterness and deceit in her voice. His faith in Illyra had been tried but not shattered. The anvil was heavy, an ungainly bundle in his arms. “Well, it won’t get home by itself, will it?” He stared at her as she started walking.
She touched the pedestal and thought briefly of the questions still whirling in her head. Dubro called again from outside the courtyard. The entire length of Sanctuary lay between them and the bazaar, and it was not yet midnight. Without glancing back, she followed him out of the courtyard.
The Gate Of
The Flying Knives
By Poul Anderson
AGAIN PENNILESS, HOUSELESS, and ladyless, Cappen Varra made a brave sight just the same as he wove his way amidst the bazaar throng. After all, until today he had for some weeks been in, if not quite of, the household of Molin Torchholder, as much as he could contrive. Besides the dear presence of ancilla Danlis, he had received generous reward from the priest-engineer whenever he sang a song or composed a poem. That situation had changed with suddenness and terror, but he still wore a bright green tunic, scarlet cloak, canary hose, soft half-boots trimmed in stiver, and plumed beret. Though naturally heartsick at what had happened, full of dread for his darling, he saw no reason to sell the garb yet. He could raise enough money in various ways to live on while he searched for her. If need be, as often before, he could pawn the harp that a goldsmith was presently redecorating.
If his quest had not succeeded by the time he was reduced to rags, then he would have to suppose Danlis and the Lady Rosanda were forever lost. But he had never been one to grieve over future sorrows.
Beneath a westering sun, the bazaar surged and clamoured. Merchants, artisans, porters, servants, slaves, wives, nomads, courtesans, entertainers, beggars, thieves, gamblers, magicians, acolytes, soldiers, and who knew what else mingled, chattered, chaffered, quarrelled, plotted, sang, played games, drank, ate, and who knew what else. Horsemen, camel-drivers, waggoners pushed through, raising waves of curses. Music tinkled and tweedled from wine-shops. Vendors proclaimed the wonders of their wares from booths, neighbours shouted at each other, and devotees chanted from flat rooftops. Smells thickened the air, of flesh, sweat, roast meat and nuts, aromatic drinks, leather, wool, dung, smoke, oils, cheap perfume.
Ordinarily, Cappen Varra enjoyed this shabby-colourful spectacle. Now he single mindedly hunted through it. He kept full awareness, of course, as everybody must in Sanctuary. When light fingers brushed him, he knew. But whereas aforetime he would have chuckled and told the pickpurse, “I’m sorry, friend; I was hoping I might lift somewhat off you,” at this hour he clapped his sword in such forbidding wise that the fellow recoiled against a fat woman and made her drop a brass tray full of flowers. She screamed and started beating him over the head with it.
Cappen didn’t stay to watch.
On the eastern edge of the market-place he found what he wanted. Once more Illyra was in the bad graces of her colleagues and had moved her trade to a stall available elsewhere. Black curtains framed it, against a mud-brick wall. Reek from a nearby tannery well-nigh drowned the incense she burned in a curious holder, and would surely overwhelm any of her herbs. She herself also lacked awesomeness, such as most seeresses, mages, conjurers, scryers, and the like affected. She was too young; she would have looked almost wistful in her flowing, gaudy S’danzo garments, had she not been so beautiful.
Cappen gave her a bow in the manner of Caronne. “Good-day, Illyra the lovely,” he said.
She smiled from the cus
hion whereon she sat. “Good-day to you, Cappen Varra.” They had had a number of talks, usually in jest, and he had sung for her entertainment.. He had hankered to do more than that, but she seemed to keep all men at a certain distance, and a hulk of a blacksmith who evidently adored her saw to it that they respected her wish.
“Nobody in these parts has met you for a fair while,” she remarked. “What fortune was great enough to make you forget old friends?”
“My fortune was mingled, inasmuch as it left me without time to come down here and behold you, my sweet,” he answered out of habit.
Lightness departed from Illyra. In the olive countenance, under the chestnut mane, large eyes focused hard on her visitor. “You find time when you need help in disaster,” she said.
He had not patronized her before, or indeed any fortune-teller of thaumaturge in Sanctuary. In Caronne, where he grew up, most folk had no use for magic. In his later wanderings he had encountered sufficient strangeness to temper his native scepticism. As shaken as he already was, he felt a chill go along his spine. “Do you read my fate without even casting a spell?”
She smiled afresh, but bleakly. “Oh, no. It’s simple reason. Word did filter back to the Maze that you were residing in the Jewellers’ Quarter and a frequent guest at the mansion of Molin Torchholder. When you appear on the heels of a new word—that last night his wife was reaved from him—plain to see is that you’ve been affected yourself.”
He nodded. “Yes, and sore afflicted. I have lost—” He hesitated, unsure whether it would be quite wise to say ‘my love’ to this girl whose charms he had rather extravagantly praised.
“—your position and income,” Illyra snapped. “The high priest cannot be in any mood for minstrelsy. I’d guess his wife favoured you most, anyhow. I need not guess you spent your earnings as fast as they fell to you, or faster, were behind in your rent, and were accordingly kicked out of your choice apartment as soon as rumour reached the landlord. You’ve returned to the Maze because you’ve no place else to go, and to me in hopes you can wheedle me into giving you a clue—for if you’re instrumental in recovering the lady, you’ll likewise recover your fortune, and more.”
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