Beyond Sanctuary

by Janet Morris

  But the people who wouldn't open it swore they didn't know her; they refused to guest a "Rankan barbarian and your filthy slut."

  Back on the road, he swung up behind her, wondering if it was blood or rain that ran down her legs, and whether she spoke any language at all. She responded to none of his six.

  A few miles farther on he saw a jut of table rock he remembered. There was a cave there. He'd leave her with a blanket, his full wineskin, and make her a fire; she wasn't his problem; she wouldn't talk to him or acknowledge him though her buttocks were pressed against him as they rode double— she might, he thought, be feeble-minded.

  He kept hearing a wolf howl, plaintive whines and occasional sneezes off in the pines that grew thickly on either side. It could be a pack. If the girl was bleeding, not just wet, the smell would have drawn them. When he urged the horse off the road and up an incline to where the cave he recalled still gaped, he could hear wet pine needles rustling and water cascading down from low branches.

  He pulled her off the horse and carried her into the cave and put her down. The whole time she said nothing, didn't even stiffen, just endured him.

  He ducked back out to get a blanket and his flint and an oil-soaked torch to light inside while he looked for dry dung or branches to make the fire. His horse, drop-tied, was snorting and rolling its eyes, dancing in place: the wolves. He calmed it and got what he wanted from its saddlebags, slipping off its headstall so that if it had to fight, it would be at no disadvantage. He was just turning to go back inside when once more he heard a sneeze, followed by a whine. And there above the cave, upon the rock, its eyes luminous, was a timber wolf, sparse moonlight glinting off its wet fur.

  It sprang down to the flat ground before the cave and Niko stepped back reflexively, drawing the sword Aškelon had given him, its hilt warm in his hand. Magic was about—the wolf, perhaps.

  "Come on then, wolf. Come try your luck." Before the cave's mouth, the beast bristled, its ruff thickening. It whined. It sneezed. It shook itself all over. It sat on its haunches and rubbed its nose and then its eyes with one paw.

  And as he watched, it began to change, to shimmer and to grow until, as he circled to get a better look and his hackles rose and his mouth dried and he blinked to try to pierce illusion, a naked man—a youth, nearly hairless—crouched there.

  It sneezed again, then grabbed up a leaf and blew its nose and waved its hand before it where a pile of clothes and an oil lamp came to be.

  "What in Enlil's—?" Niko began to close.

  Sniffling loudly, the apparition raised its head and said thickly, as if it couldn't breathe through its nose: "Stealth, called Nikodemos? Let's not curse in any Names here." Its n's sounded like d's and its h's were silent.

  Niko lowered his sword and crouched down to indicate a truce.

  The manform was struggling into its clothes now. In the light of the oil lamp at its feet, dressed and sopping, red-nosed and teary of eye, it looked like a badly-set table in its Rankan mageguild formal wear: the girdle, lacy and embroidered with the devices of its rank, proclaimed it a Hazard-class magician, junior grade.

  It said: "I'm Randal. Of the Tysian branch of the Rankan mage—"

  "—guild, I see. What do you want of me, Hazard?"

  An explosive sneeze wracked it: "Begging your pardon, Stealth. I'm allergic to animals, fur most of all. Every time I have to do this," he bent down, fumbled in the diminished pile before him, came up with an embroidered handkerchief and blew his nose, "it brings on an attack. I hate animal forms. That's why I'm still a junior… Drink?"

  The Hazard waved a hand and a canopy materialized above them, a great metal bathtub on silver bulls' backs in the midst of it, a fire beneath to keep the water hot. Beside this was a table set with victuals fit for a mageguild fête. "Don't look at me like that, fighter. It's not catching. It's just the hair… it gets in my nose."

  Niko's horse had scrambled back a hundred yards when the striped pavilion had appeared from nowhere. He said: "I've got to see to my horse," and backed out of the light.

  As Niko watched from what he hoped was a safe distance, the mage hiked up his robes, tucked them in his girdle, poured himself a goblet of wine mulling so that its spices, wafting on the dank and drizzly wind, reminded Niko how cold and tired he was, then climbed up to seat himself on the bathtub's curving rim, his feet in the steaming water up to his knees. "That's more like it. By the Writ, I hate these field excursions. Aaah…"

  Niko, at his horse's head, spoke soothing words and filled the bay's feedbag. To do so, he had to sheath the sword. Then he had no more excuses (except the girl in the cave beyond) not to deal with this enchanter, who had gone to so much trouble to seem benign. But they never were. Promising himself not to eat or drink or believe anything offered him by the shape-changer, he approached and stood just beyond the canopy's shelter.

  "Come join me?" There was a whiney tone to the Hazard's voice. Niko remembered the wolf-sounds which had accompanied him for the last few miles.

  "You've been following me. What do you want?" "Randal. My name is Randal." The mage snuffled as he reminded Niko of this. And: "Would you hand me that other handkerchief there? Steam's best for this. But then my nose runs worse…"

  Trying not to chuckle, Niko brought it over. The warmth of the water was no illusion. The steam and the heat were enticing. He said: "Were you following me, Randal? If so why?"

  "Why? Because you haven't had the grace to check in with the mageguild. Don't you people ever collect your messages?" "Messages? I have no friends who'd—" "Everyone who's anyone sends messages north and south through the mageguild network."

  "Fine. What's the word you've brought? And from whom?" The mage had prodigious ears and a long, swanlike neck. It was hard to fear him, but Hazard-class status was not easily reached. Even a junior had power.

  "Word? Well, it's not exactly words… it's a dream… this dream I had." "Go on."

  "I'm letting you. The dream lord—Aškelon—came to me in my sleep, and that's why I'm here. I wasn't going to do this. I refused. Very brave of me… after all, he's not our archmage. But then I… changed my mind."

  "There's a pregnant girl in that cave who's injured. Can you do anything for her?"

  "Aren't you going to rape her and kill her? I don't want to interfere. I'll just give you your message and depart..."

  "If you can do all this, you can take her with you. I'll pick her up when I get back to Tyse."

  "If you do. We'll strike a bargain, then—" "I don't bargain with warlocks."

  "Then she'll die, with or without rape and torture. Your message from the dream lord is as follows: you're supposed to tell Tempus that he must call on Aškelon and… ah, some woman or other (I've left my notes behind)… if he wants their assistance. And on a personal note—this I can quote: 'Be strong. Control your mind. Heed your dreams. Guard your soul." That ring any bells?"

  Niko shook his head mutely.

  Randal looked at him askance. "Well, it's something you forgot, it seems—something the entelechy was quite anxious that you remember." The mage's watery eyes were narrowed on him now. "Doesn't sound quite like you'll be riding back to Tyse this evening, does it?"

  Niko's sword rasped out. When its point touched the young mage's Adam's apple, its hilt, always warm, heated perceptibly in his grasp as it had when he fought sorcery in Vashanka's temple. "I'll be fine. Don't worry about me. Now here's the 'bargain': take the girl and disappear, or I'll send your soul with hers to buy her a better death than the life she's had."

  The sword, touching the mage's flesh,.would anchor him as long as contact was maintained.

  Snapping his fingers to no avail, the Hazard found this out. Then he said, "Agreed," Niko lowered his weapon, and mage and pavilion and bathtub and lamp-—and girl, he found when he went to check—were gone. All that was left was the wine, mulling in its bowl, to prove he hadn't dreamed it—and the message, which sounded so familiar.

  * * *

  Gri
lle had suggested to Tempus that he look in on one of Niko's "skirts," a girl-child named Cybele who lived down by Peace River in higher style than most refugees could afford. The Rankan officer hadn't made a point of it, but mentioned it offhandedly—that was Grille's way. What prompted the suggestion, Tempus still wasn't sure as he backed a big roan war-horse of no particular breeding out of its stall to curry and saddle it. He'd chosen the gelding from Grillo's string, as he'd chosen the squadron billeted at Outbridge from Grillo's pool of specials, based on Niko's recommendations and Grillo's advice. Like the horse, the men would do for the nonce.

  Across the barn, Niko's pregnant mare stuck her blazed head over her stall's door and whickered at him. He left the roan cross-tied and went to stroke her. She missed Niko, but the foal she carried was nearly priceless now, with both the Trôs stallions gone. He felt the loss of his Trôs horses more sharply than that of Jinan: she might have deserted him of her own accord, and Datan's taunt might be no more than opportunistic lies on the archmage's part, but the horses would never have left him willingly. He wanted them back.

  The manifestations of Stormbringer during the Outbridge sack lent credibility to the claims of Wizardwall's warlock, though. One way or the other, he'd soon find out the truth of it. Rear echelon checkpoints had sent word that the first of the Stepsons' units was within a day or two of Tyse. An advance pair of Sacred Banders had come in shortly after Niko had gone north to arrange the meeting with Bashir. Everything was proceeding apace, despite Bashir's recalcitrance and Grille's reluctance to share information.

  Yet the meeting he'd had with the advance pair was troubling: they'd nearly killed their horses trying to catch up with Niko on the trail. But it wasn't only their failure to do so which prompted their distress. Hesitantly they confided that it was possible that Niko was possessed. Even under the circumstances they described—Abarsis's manifestation at Janni's funeral, the reappearance of the enchanted cuirass among Niko's other effects, Niko's manic insistence on leaving alone long before he was fit to travel—they had been reluctant to put a label on what they'd seen. But love had won out over honor, and the pair who had left early at Crit's behest to "follow close enough to help if he needs you but not so close that he can see you if he does not" had confided in Tempus: Niko couldn't have outdistanced them so thoroughly without supernatural aid; even had he been in perfect health, the pace should have killed the mare. It hadn't. Tempus had merely nodded and assured them he would respect their confidence and take care of the matter in whatever fashion seemed appropriate. Their relief had been palpable. He'd assigned Ari to show them around, after warning them that discipline among the Outbridge mercenaries and the quality of these fighters in general was less than what the Stepsons were used to, and left them to their own devices.

  When the entire cadre was in Outbridge, all his personnel problems would shake out without him having to exacerbate rivalries by giving disciplinary orders or seeming to favor one unit over another: Critias wouldn't tolerate the sort of laxity that Haram, Grillo's ranking task force leader, permitted.

  He led the saddled roan out into the cloudy night. The rain had abated, though thunderheads still masked the sky to the north. The moon was setting. Riding through the double gates with a wave to the sentries, he considered what he'd learned. There was some truth behind the Sacred Band pair's worries. Niko should have mentioned the return of the cuirass; though the young mercenary was retiring by nature, he wasn't secretive. And yet, thinking back to their reunion in Tempus' quarters, it was clear to him that the youth had been wearing the very panoply in question. Niko had been exhausted, and Tempus consumed with the feat of healing—it could have been just an oversight, after all. Possession was a serious accusation, nothing to be taken lightly. Often, one so afflicted could be cured only by death. He hoped that this would not be so in Niko's case.

  It was late to be abroad in Tyse; he met only garrison soldiers, a team of Grilles' covert actors, and two of his own three-man patrols on his way to Peace Falls.

  Commerce Avenue, when he crossed the border and turned onto it, was thronged even this late.

  On a whim he stopped to buy some krrf at Brother Bomba's, a full-service establishment of the sort for which Commerce Avenue was famous, and spent a pleasant interval trading rumor and innuendo with Bomba's statuesque wife, a canny woman who had been a camp follower and then a mercenary barber-surgeon in her younger days, and thus had guild standing and a second income as an information monger of unparalleled expertise. Too, because of her unusual history and the breadth of her travels and experience, her black-market connections were as singular as her informants, and she pressed on him a little satin pouch of pulcis, with a twinkling eye, saying it had come straight from hell via a famous krrf dealer in Caronne whom she named. And: "You know, don't you, sleepless one, that the man's the uncle of one of your sellswords? Stealth, his war name is. Get the boy to send his uncle a note and we'll be up to our buttocks in pulcis, and share the profits." Madame Bomba's drug-reddened eyes glittered in a weathered face which had once been beautiful. Pulcis, which took the mind on out-of-body excursions and was as thoroughly habit-forming as indescribable ecstasy tended to be, incapacitated its users only evanescently, leaving a residue which made of men supermen and of women seeresses and sexual athletes for up to a week following a single dose. But it was rare and costly.

  Still, Tempus sensed a different purpose: "So coy with me, Mistress Bomba? If not for your husband, whose good will I'll keep, I'd rape the truth from you. As it is, you've earned a tweak." He reached for her under the table.

  She sighed at his touch, then cowered in mocking, girlish fear. They played this game at every meeting. She was a woman he respected, and that respect had been earned over years of service to the armies. Not for her the cosmetic spell or cheap jewels of the aging wench. She traded on her acumen and was delectable for her wisdom. They'd often joked of murdering Bomba and running Peace Falls in tandem.

  But now she took a lock of hip-length, gray-streaked hair and twirled it round her long fingers, whose skin was crinkling but whose bones still bespoke fine breeding, strength and skill. She was a fraction of his age, yet looked a decade older. "My guest, dear friend, tales are told… many of them unwelcome. You love your Stepsons. Will you hear a bad word of one?" "I'll hear you."

  "Stealth brought a girl in here we don't think suits a son of the armies."

  "Niko keeps strings of girls like other men keep horses. But they are children, mere fuzz… What's he done, deflowered one of yours?"

  She chuckled heartily, stabbed over her shoulder toward a curtained door behind which boys and girls took lovers for the enrichment of the house. "Mine? I've none intact right now, and that's how he likes 'em. But I've a barmaid who swells up all over with hives when she's close to a Nisibisi witch or warlock—bought the charm from one of the mageguild Hazards and had it put on her myself." "So?"

  "So, when she was serving them, she began to itch. She must be new hereabouts—the one he escorted in, that is—no one knows her. But talk to Randal at the mageguild local, if you don't believe the spell's well cast. It's never yet been in error." As she spoke, she apportioned krrf for them, and they both partook while Tempus thought that over.

  "You haven't told this tale about? To Grille, perhaps?"

  She feigned insult. "You are turning into a filthy Rankan barbarian, friend, to think such a thing of me. Is he Grille's, then? Or still yours?"

  "Some think he's one of Grille's specials..."

  "I'm not one who believes that lions follow jackals' orders, Riddler. I'm not like the widow Maldives, who runs to Grille with every morsel of intimacy you slip her…" Fist to her nose, she snorted loudly, smacked her lips as she swallowed the krrf that ran down the back of her throat. "Do take care, love. We value thee, thy custom and thy trade."

  He nodded, paid his bill, and took his leave of her, nothing learned there he hadn't suspected.

  On the avenue, where the roan was tethered, an unf
amiliar voice hailed him. He turned around and there in Brother Bomba's shadowed doorway spied its source as he mounted up.

  He'd had enough conversation; he backed his horse into the street, not acknowledging the other, but the man left the porch and came after him, so he stayed the roan to let the stranger have his say: "What is it, man? I'm late for an appointment."

  "My name is Randal," said the short-haired, large-eared stranger, whose neck was long and clothes wet and streaked with mud. "I believe my name was taken in vain in there…" The slight man in mageguild robes stepped closer. Tempus's knees counseled his mount to back a pace. The mage kept up, saying: "I know how you feel, but please don't make me shout."

  "Speak, then, mageling."

  The junior Hazard stiffened perceptibly, his flush evident even in the street's torchlight. "I've been on an errand for powers concerned with you. Don't ask me who. And I've come back bearing a burden your Nikodemos pressed on me—a pregnant child who'll give birth before dawn: her water's broken. Now, do you want him to collect it at the mageguild, or shall I deposit it at the Outbridge station?"

  "I don't like my men involved with mage—"

  "Not his fault or mine. I'm stretching matters, coming here. The least you can do—" the mage sneezed, wiped his nose on his sleeve, backed a half-step, cursing Tempus's horse under his breath but without invoking any names "—is listen. Will you?"

  "Best hurry, boy," Tempus suggested. "My patience with your kind's worn thin through the ages."

  "When Niko returns, be sure he remembers to tell you what I had to remind him he forgot." The mage stepped back then, quickly.

  "That's it? The whole reason for this interview?"

  "The pregnant girl," the mage called back. "Remember? Your place or mine? It matters not to me." Randall was plainly exasperated.