Beyond Sanctuary

by Janet Morris

  Tempus clasped it. "We'll try, you mean."

  "We'll do it. I don't put my hand or commit my men to what I don't expect to accomplish."

  The general's name was Adrastus. Tempus didn't need more than a moment to ascertain that the man's grief was real: it went deeper than his rent garments and flamed hotter than his red-rimmed eyes. In Grillo's commodious quarters, an estate requisitioned by the army but still housing the Tysian widow whose property it was, they drank watered wine and the general, embittered and drunk, his mail cast aside and his linen undershirt hanging out over his belt, lamented at length the wages of complicity with warlocks.

  "Adrastus means 'the inescapable," does it not?" Tempus asked him in an infrequent pause when the general's cup was empty. The room in which they drank was small and window-less; Grillo had tacked sheepskins, fleece wallward, over every inch of it to decrease the possibility of eavesdropping. The hides still reeked of tanning.

  "Does, yes. And I'd better be. God's," he turned, "my wife—my sons— There's nothing those adepts won't do. They think they've got me by the balls, having my youngest in their power. But he's not—he's—He might be…" Adrastus swore and refilled his cup with a shaking hand; the wine spilled over onto his bare feet. "My wife's still up there." He gazed northward as if, through the roof, he could see the looming heights of Wizardwall. "It's better if they slay her. Blind as a bat."

  "What does he look like, the youngster?"

  "Tow-headed, like his mother. Funny eyes. Don't like to dwell on where he might have got them—gray like dead winter sky. But they say he's gone… run off—"

  "In the morning," Grillo interjected gently, "our general here is going back up there. The tale will be that he rode all night, seeking the boy, found nothing, but outrode his guilt, if not his grief. He'll go from there back to Lacan and we'll wait for word… Agreed?"

  General Adrastus Ajami agreed. Tempus thought about the boy Jihan had befriended in the free zone, and said nothing. When the patrols came in at dawn, no one had seen or heard from her. By then, he was sequestered in Grillo's chapel, lamenting his curse and waiting for the god to speak.

  The silence which answered each of his increasingly impolite solicitations was eloquent; it occurred to him that he wanted just this—that he was beyond the point where gods or even entelechies could help him, that he'd managed to give new meaning to the term "irredeemable": if Jihan was gone— lost, wounded, hostage, defected, or merely distracted—it was a manifestation of his curse. All the lords of all the heavens pleading in unison couldn't have persuaded him that any cause was worth what would follow if Stormbringer's daughter were hurt on his account. And if she was simply gone—this, too, was his curse in action. If he'd come to care for her, much as he'd tried to avoid it, then acrimonious separation, at the very least, was their lot: she'd spurn him, disdain him. But that was better than her fate if she loved him.

  He'd gone back to the mercenaries' hostel, on the off chance he'd find her there, and found that both Trôsbreds were gone. He'd thought again of the boy and sworn loudly enough to bring a stablehand running, who could recall no armored, muscled woman. But then, Tempus' voiced frustration had waked him—he was still rubbing sleep from dazed and bleary eyes.

  So Tempus berated the gods, but refrained from calling Stormbringer—he'd as soon not bring the Weather Gods' father bad news…

  In the little chapel, he performed a lengthy ritual. It was a chapel to the war gods, the lords of death and conquest; on its altar were all things necessary to sharpen the tools of war and make weaponry's leathers supple. Intermittently snorting first-grade krrf that Grillo had pressed on him, he worked, on his knees, putting an edge to cut a groundward-floating hair upon his sharkskin-hilted sword.

  While about his "prayers" he heard a sound, looked around to see the Tysian widow, whose grounds these were, sidle in. She was tawny, with brown hair and eyes, fine and purely human. Without thought to Grillo's claim on her or what their relationship might be, he bade her come to him. A woman in the Storm Lords' temple could only want one thing. And, whether she knew it or not, or wished it or not, he was glad to give it to her; if a sacrifice was needed to clear his path or change his fate or merely change his mind, and make him content to wield his power without blaming what he did on gods, he'd make it. In the streets he'd traveled here from the mercenaries' guild he'd seen three armed confrontations: one between two civilian factions, one between civilians and drunken soldiers, and one broken up with sure precision by a practiced squad of Grillo's "specials." He was, right then, content to stay awhile in Tyse.

  For preparing to shed mageblood, nothing was better than a wench to sanctify all morose endeavor with her fear and lust and sweat.

  * * *

  Grillo had long known from his informants in the Tysian chapter of the Rankan mageguild that Tempus was intent on coming north; the adepts' network brought him news quicker than the fastest mounted relays. But that news was enchanter-edited and sorcerer-censored. Often he could not believe it; seldom was it free from the prejudice of Hazards and their kind.

  But now the Riddler was here, and his cohort soon to follow. Riding that evening toward the Nisibisi border, alone, the Rankan officer who worked surreptitiously to further many diverse interests pondered the difficulties that Tempus had brought with him: black-market deals in krrf and drugs and slaves must be protected until the Riddler's purpose and allegiance were made clear. Double dealing must be more closely shrouded. The Riddler, after scant hours in town, had disdained the safe and well-to-do south side and drifted into the free zone, seeking Bashir. There was more than a chance that this was no coincidence, that Tempus knew more about Grillo's work at the foot of Wizardwall than Grillo about Tempus—curse, god, mystique, and all.

  At the rock marker which signified the end of Tysian sovereignty, Grillo pulled up his horse in the twilight and whistled. A mournful jackal's laugh was his only answer. He kicked his horse's ribs and it picked its way across the stony black soil of Nisibis, soil that on his right and left for five miles across and nearly fifty miles northward was called "Free Nisibis" and controlled, with sword and fury, by Bashir's Successor militia. A hundred feet into Free Nisibis, he halted, slid off his horse, got a wineskin from his saddlebag and settled down to wait in the dark with only the rising sliver of the last-quarter moon to illuminate his position.

  when stone struck against stone to his left he clutched his swordhilt but sat unmoving, tracking by the sounds it made a furry form which rose up from behind a tumble of boulders.

  As it came close enough for Grille to see the soot-smeared limbs of a man under the pelt, three others with similar helmets of jackal heads and mantles of jackal fur slunk into view, crouched low, attentive shadows among the rocks.

  Grille's horse snorted at the smell of cured jackal hide and a blackened face well known to the Tyse station's chief intelligence officer split into a gleaming grin. A long-nailed hand stretched out and Grille grasped it: "Bashir."

  "Grille." The fur-clad figure with the soft baritone voice which made Nisi sibilances sound like autumn winds rattling the trees squeezed his hand, pushing something into it, unclasped it, and folded into a squat.

  Grille put the lump of high-mountain pulcis, most rare and coveted of drugs, into his belt, thanked the Successors' leader in ritual fashion, and in his turn laid a hide-wrapped dagger in Bashir's palm. Gifts exchanged, Grille broached the subject concerning him to Bashir: "You will meet with the Riddler?"

  "My father's friend? How can I not?"

  "By considering that if you sit with him, you sit with Rankans."

  "I sit with you."

  "I've proven my intentions. I can't vouch for his."

  "You've proved a good friend, and I will consider your warning. How goes the battle for the town?"

  "Well enough. The woman whose description I sent—have you seen her?"

  "With a boy, yes? No, we saw none such. But we saw horses make the hard climb—up the trail of tears. If
that was she, she's gone to the wizards' high keeps, and they smoothed her path—no unaided horse could make that climb."

  "Thank you. That sounds about right." Grillo rose up, stiff-kneed. "About the Riddler—I'm uneasy."

  "I, too. Niko is headed this way? Your message said this was so."

  "So I'm told."

  "Then we will wait and see what Niko has to say." Bashir rose also and stepped close to him, so close Grillo could smell the onions on his breath and see, in the residing moon's light, Bashir's sardonic smile. The commando continued: "When and if we meet them, we will have forgotten your name."

  "Good enough, then. Die on your feet, Bashir."

  "And you, Grillo," Bashir replied, backing away without a sound. In the space of a dozen heartbeats, he was gone, melting into the night he commanded.

  Grillo, mounting up, hurried. Since the Riddler's companion, Jihan, had disappeared, freak storms had pummeled Tyse. The wind, picking up as he headed his horse south toward the town, was wet and wild. He urged his horse into a lope. If hail or mistral came tonight, it would clear the streets. The death toll, since Tempus had arrived, had doubled—no direct fault of the man who served rapacious gods, but circumstances in keeping with his nature.

  And Grillo, who feared few men and dared to dispute with mages who should live free and who should pay wizards' tithe, wished fervently (if he'd a god he trusted, he'd have prayed) that Tempus would just disappear, drift back the way he'd come, or on to one of the other beleaguered border states where Grillo had nothing at stake.

  But the chances of that were less than of adepts forgetting how to change shape or how to fly. Tempus was here, and somehow Grillo was going to have to bring him into his confidence or compromise him so that efforts to aid the Successors need not be curtailed. If there was a hope alive in Upper Ranke to flout the mages and withstand Mygdonian expanson, it lay in the person of Bashir, not in the senile Rankan empire, or in hateful and self-serving gods.

  * * *

  Feral and thick as mageblood, a fog rolled down from the high peaks, turning the night pale like phosphorescent foam.

  In it, the Trôs horses picked their way slowly, and in it the boy, Shamshi, talked loudly of his mother and his brother at home and everything but his fear that they were lost.

  Jinan knew the truth of it, and it troubled her. Her distress might have been the cause of the thick fog, called by the boy and the indigenous hillmen "whiteout" because naught could be seen through it, and sounds were misdirected by it, and most of humankind stayed still under it, afraid to stumble or become befuddled in it. But Jihan had been lost for a day and more, now, and her temper was roused, her pride piqued, and even, down deep, something very much like uneasiness stirred in her. Weather was her ally; water, her particular talisman. But the water in the fog was not helpful. They'd been lost since yesterday afternoon, and now another day was gone.

  Shamshi swore they were traveling in circles; his gray eyes wide, and his lips blue with cold. When they stopped to eat, he'd gritted out his fears through chattering teeth, golden head to her breast while she stroked his hair.

  He wanted his mother; she wished she were enough. He wanted his warm Mygodonian bed—it was his bloodline that had convinced her that to help Tempus, to prove herself more than the overprivileged amateur he thought her to be, she had only to return this lost waif to his highborn Mygdonian family. Then, once she'd made a friend on the far side of Wizard wall, Tempus would see that she was worthy. She might solve all disputes for him, bring peace to the fragile, waning mortals whose only solution to their own suffering was to inflict the same upon others. She'd meant well.

  She knew, though the boy did not believe her, that their recurving path was of unnatural design. She thought, taking another loop in the line that tethered the Trôs Shamshi rode to Tempus' so that they wouldn't become separated in the white-out, that she should have trusted the Riddler, asked him to join her or left word of her intentions.

  She considered calling upon her father, but that, too, was an admission of failure, of inadequacy, of the disaster she and the boy, in common, feared most of all: they wanted respect from their elders.

  She wished the power obstructing her would show itself. In direct confrontation, face to face, no adept or even archmage could daunt her.

  But they were too wise for that. No demon descended from the heavens, though occasionally an eagle cried or a wild hound bayed at the moon she couldn't see. And the Trôs horses, withers quivering with unspoken remonstrance, plodded determinedly onward, heads down, nostrils wide and snuffling to judge by smell alone that there was solid ground where they would next put their hooves.

  When the great crenelated keep of black stone rose out of the opaque mists as if it had been fashioned by some god's hand at that very moment, Shamshi gave a little cry of relief and urged her toward it: "My mother; my father! You will meet my father, Jihan!"

  And as he prattled his relief, all her doubts bled away. She was anxious to succeed, though the Trôs horses were not. They set their haunches and raised their heads and, smelling the sorcery she could feel like carnivorous gnats upon her skin, whinnied loudly in complaint when she urged them forward so that at length they had to dismount and lead them up and in across a narrow bridge over a precipitous defile filled with writhing smoke and deep with echoes from pebbles skittering down when Tempus' Trôs, which she led, balked halfway across. So, as she had seen the Riddler do, she tore a strip from her undershirt and blindfolded him, hurrying, as the boy implored, to her meeting with his sire.

  * * *

  Having nothing better to do, Tempus had taken to stalking with one of Grille's six-man teams, the first night under their leader, to learn the ins and outs of Tysian brigandry, thereafter as their leader. They broke up gatherings of more than three on any street and pulled rabblerousers off their boxes; they chased down a pair of Nisibisi agents and brought them in where Ran! an mages performed the equivalent of putting salt upon their tails—binding them with holding spells so that when they returned to consciousness they couldn't change their shapes and disappear, slipping the strongest temporal chains.

  From that pair, information had come of a nest of spies, southwest of the free zone, disguised as nobles holed up in the Outbridge district in an estate hectares wide and walled and fortified so that its inhabitants could hold off an army for months, unaided.

  The team was well-honed, three of them seasoned mercenaries, the other three Rankan specialists in guerrilla warfare. They scaled the estate's walls in silence, poisoning as many dogs as possible, first with meat thrown over, and, all in blacks with weapons sheathed to hide their glitter and every piece of metal which might clink or jangle wrapped in dark cloth, they made their way toward the main house, crossbows drawn and quarrels tipped with poison drawn from almond shells.

  This night action didn't sate, but suited, a man in his position. He'd cursed Jihan when he couldn't find her. Like the gods, she had deserted him. He put her, six times and more each day, firmly out of mind.

  When he'd raped the widow Maldives, Grillo's mistress, he'd learned a bit of Tysian lore and a few things Grillo might prefer he didn't know, but he'd not enjoyed it as once he would have.

  She had, but that was beside the point. Women come in as many varieties as horses, and this one was an activist, a fierce sort who'd been born to the Tysian insurrection and took his arrival as a sign that the Lord Storm, her own patron, had sanctified their struggle for freedom, and his willingness to strip her and split her as a sublime affirmation of her writ.

  He'd felt manipulated, after, but gotten good information from her. And he'd made, despite his intentions, a friend who, if she could be believed, he could count on "as Grillo does, my lord."

  He had enough troubles without a "friend" in Tyse, but he'd let it pass without a word. She was tough and she was knowledgeable of the environs. She might prove useful, or prove to be a gift of conciliation from gods who, for their own reasons, would not come to hi
m or speak with him. He didn't expect her to live much longer, since she craved his company, but even that, he didn't say.

  Out here, among the troops, he took revenge upon the town and even upon the gods—Enlil, who snubbed him; Vashanka, left behind but not forgotten—and on the mages whose forebears had bequeathed him his current plight.

  The inner court, now that the team had reached it, was dotted with statuary bearing panniers filled with burning oil. They doused as many as they dared with sand, but left the balance, slinking along in shadows, skulking their way, weapons drawn and armored backs tight to walls, toward the stone manse in the estate's center.

  Half a dozen outbuildings remained to be passed by when a tower guard thought he saw a movement and called down to unseen companions to "look sharp by the stables, there!" and someone whistled for the dogs.

  He'd given orders for this contingency; they all split up and scattered. They'd meet at the back door of the house, where a root cellar used for covert meetings had its own wooden bulkhead. They'd brought naptha preparations and incendiaries made from a crude concoction rolled up in parchment: they meant to roast the Nisibisi agents where they huddled under ground.

  A pair of greaves, ill oiled, squeaked as their owner tried to sneak, unheard, round a corner. Tempus met him with a sword which once glowed pink but now, bereft of godly sanction, merely killed.

  Whether the armored chest he cleaved had magical protection, he could not tell for certain; the blue tinge he thought he saw was as faint as witchfire. The man dropped without a sound and Tempus stepped over, wrenching his blade from a chest reluctant to release it.

  And then, from somewhere, barking split the night and shouts commenced—his men, letting others know they'd been discovered, and he moved to slide within a doorway and wait until the furor died.

  But something four-legged, white teeth and spiked collar gleaming, leaped at him without a single sound. This "dog," who neither growled nor barked, was near his own weight, and its claws were sharp as daggers. He was bowled over by its charge and on the ground he wrestled it, his hands, despite the spikes, gripping its straining neck and, at last, snapping its spine.