by Chris Turner
He recalled she had seemed dizzy with rapture for a brief instant as their hands touched—he, clutching the bauble. A strange sublime music had filled the air... redolent of old harmonies too ancient to recall.
Risgan looked this way and that. Apparently he wasn’t the only one to have heard the music. He sensed a weird stir in the air. The music was gone now; an inexplicable sadness touched him, as if the harmonies were never meant to be heard by human ears. Farella had almost fallen over, swaying in a swoon, her eyes wide like a mare’s, in some absurd satisfaction. But she picked herself up again and stood taller than anyone else and the Pontific shrank back in wonder, staring wildly, almost as if in fearful fascination of his wife.
The effect was short-lived.
In a trice, Risgan had the leather sack tucked under his arms and was making for the back alley. The Pontific’s son piped up, “’Twas exactly what I wished for, father! By the grace of this amulet the parade is over!”
The boy’s declaration was profound, and Risgan was hedged off and dragged back by courtly attendants whose glares were not comforting.
“This is a travesty of unqualified proportions!” the enraged Baron Bousaka stormed. His face was twisted in wrath, red as a beet and he shouted at the top of his lungs behind a curtain of knights and servants who efforted to maintain his honour.
“Aye, a diabolic deed!” affirmed the Diapont Dugal who had only moments ago, acquired a woman’s shift in which to cover his crotch. “It speaks of inhuman malice!” While he stamped about, raving citizens laughed uproariously.
“Pantius, I order you to have your mirthful citizens drawn and quartered, or at least awarded several rounds with the knout,” cried the Diapont.
“In due time, Dugal,” intoned the Pontific. “A cautious inquiry will be made, regarding this fellow Risgan.”
“You are mistaken, sirs,” Risgan protested, panting slightly under the scrutiny of hard eyes, “I am a Relic Hunter, no more.”
“Then explain this anomaly of nakedness of our courtiers, if you please!” boomed the Pontific. He was helped down from his elephant.
Risgan held up his palms in concession. “’Tis an act of Douran, lord, the river god. Perhaps he felt neglected during the procession and wished to spite us. Or the Silent Winged Beings that hover unseen but low overhead watching our moves like angel of fates.”
“Or the Stone Gibbeth of Garbad,” scoffed Ludlum, the Pontific’s advisor.
Risgan held his tongue. Words would not help him at this moment.
The wishbone did have a nefarious look to it cradled in Eustan’s palm, no less did the queer piece of nephrite, which was almost hypnotic in the soft late afternoon light, and which the Lady Farella had boldly snatched again from his pocket and twirled in her hands like a child. The Pontific snatched it away from his wife who seemed spellbound. Her eyes, saucers of mischievous ecstasy, ogled the curio with blind admiration. “Don’t be such a ridiculous sot!” he shouted at her. The lord seemed pale as a ghost. Frowning into the relic’s lustrous contours, he turned it over to its dark underside. Again he scowled and seemed unable to resist its delicate almost magical features which his fingers explored along the dark exterior.
“Be careful there, Lord,” urged Narvius, who had emerged on quiet feet. “One never knows what dark spell lies on these artifacts.” Gently the magician took the artifact away from the stunned lord’s hand.
“Yes, quite right,” Pantius agreed, remarking morosely upon the Narvius’s recently gloved hand. Straightening himself up, he rubbed his temples, and assumed an authoritative dignity once again.
Risgan took pains to retrieve the nephrite from the magician’s grip with gloves of his own. He stashed it in his sack, along with the wishbone which he finally wrested from Eustan’s fingers, tying the top securely.
Vosta and his own magician, Mistis, had been watching the scene with calculating scrutiny. Seeing no profit in remaining, Risgan explained to the Pontific: “Your Grace, I am utterly exhausted and so must make my way to the Golden Gibbeth to partake of a plate of sausage, perhaps even a pot of beer. Surely you must confirm my innocence in this affair?”
“Go,” the Pontific announced. “But do not think of journeying anywhere too soon, Relic Hunter. I’ll have my eye on you and may have questions to put to you soon enough.”
Risgan gave a glum nod. “Gladly, sire, for I have nothing to hide.” He thought this was stretching the truth, but under the circumstances there was nothing better to say.
A drunken voice suddenly bawled from the crowd: “I guess this means that the Pontific does not wish to purchase a gimcrack or two for me? Well! Who’ll buy it then? Perhaps shall it be me—buy it for myself—and make good profit of it, or compose a wish of my own regarding Baron Bousaka’s daughters!”
“Seize that man!” cried the Pontific. The whips were brought out and Risgan’s ears winced at the man’s cries and the snapping leather. Nonetheless, the relic hunter was glad for the diversion and he set off down the nearest alley with speed. The day had been long and it was not over yet—regretfully.
* * *
The Golden Gibbeth pub was a jog and skip away. Taxed by recent events, Risgan settled down for a pint. It had been a gruelling day, and in need for comfort, he eased into his regular chair by the window, hardly noticing the rows of stuffed, ghastly gibbeth heads mantled on the walls like hunters’ trophies. He’d been known to flirt with Rietza the tavern girl after hours—when he had the spare coins—although the last two times had been rather taxing, and he wanted nothing better than to avoid the rough treatment she tendered him, given his rather low tipping of late.
With a few mezks in his pouch, it seemed a person was worth nothing in this town. What had the sage Rastheses said, “A man without provender is a man without a hope.”
The pub was unlit at this hour. Windows of smoked glass admitted the last pale daylight. Few patrons were about except diehards electing to coddle their mugs rather than view the pompous circuit of nobles.
A gravelly voice sprang out of the dimness, “Hoy, Risgan! You up for a round of Bixt? We’re all ready for a game.” A one-eyed adzeman rattled a pair of dice in a gnarled palm.
Risgan’s fingers ached for the dice, but his purse was light for the wagers he had in mind. A notorious gambler, Risgan was only too aware of his addiction. With a sad gesture, he squared himself about and sought to ignore the adzeman’s advances.
“What’s this? Has the legendary Risgan—Roustabout of Zanzuria gone soft?” The smiling man gave a sardonic laugh. “Where are all the flamboyant tosses, the magnanimous boasts and torrid sulks?”
A snarl of irritation curled Risgan’s lip. “Very well, Osbrik. Roll the dice, if you dare! Double the wagers! I’ll take up your challenge.”
“That’s more the spirit! You’re an infallible optimist.”
Risgan grunted, tramping over to the gambling table with boots of lead, or so his heavy heels sounded in the cavern of the inn.
“Hurry up, old man!” Risgan called. “I haven’t all day to waste on preamble; I’m busy with tasks and lack all compassion for dawdlers.”
Osbrik extended Risgan a grunt of facetious annoyance. “Patience, man. Double wagers then, is it, Risgan?” With familiar relish, he swept the table clean of its grimy glasses and dog-eared gamblers’ chips. Rattling the battered dice with a practiced ease, he beckoned three other sots over to join him who grinned back toothlessly. Risgan’s regular gambling cronies at the Golden Gibbeth: Farmor, Abelstan and Clipper. Risgan’s compulsive addiction had earned him widespread repute, making him somewhat of a comic figure at times in the Golden Gibbeth, especially under the urge of drink. Withal, Osbrik’s first toss proved fairer than what Risgan would have liked and his peers looked upon him with chuckles of approval.
The boy’s success in the market with his wish bone had struck an impression and he thought to try his hand at the magic to give him an edge in play today. He cradled the magic item in his left palm under
the table. A faint smile curled his lips as he.
Clipper jeered. “Risgan! You look like you just came out of a fish hole of a narwhal.”
Risgan rapped knuckles to the table. “Quiet now, I am concentrating.” He struggled to recall details quoted by the minstrel—’twas either a young person must wish, or the subject be faced with a life or death situation. Abruptly Risgan stalled, for he seemed neither of these two.
Unsurprisingly, he lost the first round of the game. And then he barely stayed in the second round. With mulish persistence he won the third, but was miserably defeated on the fourth and now he backed out of the game with poor grace. A quick check of his purse showed that much of his recent earnings had been whisked away, ransomed to the exultant howls of these gamblers. With dry-mouthed contempt Risgan threw down his chips and cursed the dice for their warped appearance and the aura of ill luck that surrounded them.
The white-haired Farmor blandly suggested that Risgan alter his technique and adjust the angle of his throws. “Your tosses have been pitched skew-handed and in reckless haste.”
Risgan gave Farmor back a scathing look. The gamblers guffawed and Risgan took his leave, contemplating his misfortunes over a brew of bitter ale at the bar stand. Feeling the edge of their scrutiny and that of the other mysterious artifact, the jade curio, biting into his palm, Risgan felt the urge to leave the Golden Gibbeth. He strode down Baker’s Lane to Beggar’s Alley on another errand that had been brewing in his mind.
* * *
The trader Vosta’s treacherous eyes had betrayed his interest back at the market and Risgan thought now to pick the vendor’s brain on the subject of the rare curios he held in his pocket. To troll for information in a disguise was a more appealing scheme than go as his regular self. With the gears of his brain working, Risgan had returned to his studio, the small workroom he rented from an aged clerk, and rummaged about his belongings for a suitable disguise in which to secretly confront the crafty Vosta. Vosta was no fool, and no ordinary disguise would suffice. In his one dim room, in an old converted theatre long passed into disuse, Risgan stood thoughtfully in front of a battered crate of mid-grade relics thrust to the side along a dusty wall. All items were either too useless to sell or in need of desperate cleaning up, which he was not prepared to do. The discards were completely unmarketable, rejected even by Vosta, curse his miserable hide!
Risgan heaved a sigh. He stroked the ancient case with a mixture of contempt and grim reflection. Things had not progressed to his liking. He had drunk a lot of bitter ale and his damp breath already stunk up his own home. Business had been slack for the last few months and he would be lucky to pay his next month’s rent. If not for the curious find of today, he would be in abject penury.
Risgan pulled at his nose; finally withdrew the nephrite ornament for yet another time. Toying with it, again he heard the strange, sublime music when Lady Farella had been gripping it with such animation. What was the source of that peculiar sound? He looked at it with wonder. Invisible angels? An enchanted wind? The old dead whispers of an obscure mummy? He thrust such off as improbable. Some mysterious magic worked within the gem’s interior and not a few persons had already experienced the effect. It’s was almost as if they had been possessed by its merest touch. Odd!... But then Risgan had seen odder things in his time.
He gave an indifferent shrug. He pocketed the relic without another thought.
The rolled-up gibbeth hide he consigned to his crate for future use. Quickly, he shucked off his boots and donned a pair of old weathered sandals. Being somewhat adept at impersonation, Risgan slipped on a cleric’s robe and wrapped his mussed-up hair back in a tight cap, one of the round white ones of the order of the ‘Practicing Celibates’. He laughed. Under such baggy garb, Risgan bent his knees in a slightly stooped position to disguise his height and give the impression of a man older than himself. For finishing touches, he smeared his face with a cream to hide the few wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, which he discovered to his surprise had already mysteriously disappeared. Odd.
He approached Vosta’s place of business with a wariness born of a cat. This was Vosta’s place of residence when he was not peddling his bibelots in the market.
Risgan pinched his lips into a frown. There was much risk involved in this ruse. Nevertheless, there was something suspicious about Vosta’s behaviour at the market, and he meant to find out what.
A small oil lamp gleamed in sullen hue above the carved wooden door of Vosta’s shop. Several more glimmered inside. But no sign of customers or residents within.
With caution Risgan snuck into the display room, taking care to ensure that the door would not squeak. Many shelves of odd curios hung on the walls—baskets of fine cloth, trappings, rolls of golden thread, a prehistoric petrified mouse, three twisted swords bound together and glinting with verdigris, several cracked vases, ancient tureens, amphorae of antique quality, incense jars, liquids of old perfumes, medicines, elixirs, and much more which Risgan dared not guess. The door was slightly ajar at the back of a room, from where he heard muffled conversation. The rascal Vosta.
Training his ears, he thought to hear the trader’s rasping voice echoing from within, accompanied by his magician who spoke in animated tones,
“Long ago, it was said the Kraken of Ezra scorched the false underside of the youth talisman with its sour breath—The creature made short work of the malaphorite, made it black as obsidian, I tell you, Vosta! A token of death, thus aging all those who dared touch it.”
“An intriguing tale,” grunted Vosta with amusement, “but go on, Mistis, your tall words are entertaining me at this hour.”
The magician’s voice sustained a somewhat aloof petulance. “While nubile nymphs from Zmidias’s forest pool had blessed either side of the youth-bringing stone with their seraphic powers, they made it white and golden. ’Twas a beauty coveted by the eyes, and to all those who would stroke it. Therewith, ’twas the master craftsman himself, whose name is lost in time, who bound the polar forces together, forged it into a single mass—a thing of prophetic power! So invested what you saw today with strange magical properties.”
“Sounds like bunkum to me, Mistis, but I’ll take your word that it’s worth a king’s ransom.” Vosta gestured. “The relic shelters some hypnotic allure. I felt it. But we don’t have it in our clutches. We must get it!”
“How?”
“There are ways. This Risgan is a credulous fool—full of conceit and pride. He’ll give it to us, aye, in a trade for some worthless gimcrack that we can feed him, like a fake jewel or erotic stimulant. He’s easy to gull in that way as you saw when he traded that fine gold ring to that bum. We shall pamper this sparrow’s ego, aggrandize his small, juvenile talents. Come, let’s rig up something jocular.”
The magician vented a dubious grunt. “Are you sure? You failed today, with your bumbling sock puppet agent, Thrusto.”
Vosta’s voice rasped out in anger. “Thrusto would have succeeded if that wretched relic hunter hadn’t pulled the bauble from the table at the last instant. If we fail, Mistis, you’ll have to conjure up some devilish spell to befuddle the fatuous fool. We’ll be away from this hicks’ town with his treasure before he knows it.”
“It sounds like an unlikely possibility. I have yet to see what will come of these relics—”
Risgan snuck over to the door to see Vosta wave a restless hand. “Quiet, you fool. The magic demonstrated by this boy disturbs me.”
Mistis’s eyes glowed. “The wishbone’s magic is real. But I sense only the weakest flux from it. In the proximity of the youth talisman, I suspect it gained power, and so augments the minor talismans in its vicinity.”
“Perhaps... ’Tis a curio potent all the same.” Vosta mused. He rubbed his chin. “Many would kill to have it. In fact, the relic hunter should watch his back. There’ll be others out for his hide, perhaps more desperate than us.” Vosta gave an evil laugh.
Mistis seemed to wince at the trader’s crude w
ay of thinking. “Your blind-sightedness will be the ruin of us, Vosta. You don’t grasp the higher purpose of everything. With the power of youth and age, all the feats of the magicians pale in comparison.”
“And what do I care?”
“The power of the Kraken which scorched the underside is unguessable. Who has the forged legacy?—a low, gambling drunk—a relic hunter. Hush! Somebody is coming—”
Upon hearing the new information, Risgan snatched himself to attention and his mind travelled back to the relic’s unearthing, at the worship hall of Lin. How had the unfortunate corpse in the cask gotten the relic? Were the mouldering bones some deceased sorceress’s, buried aeons ago with a cursed treasure?
He smoothed back his false cap and did his best to look as innocent as possible. The conspirators’ words explained much, though left many gaps in his mind. At least Thrusto’s strange behaviour was illumined.
Mistis and Vosta clambered into the front room with attitudes of distrust upon sight of the priest in front of them.
“Who are you?” cried Vosta with suspicion. “What do you want at his hour?”
Risgan put on his most amiable voice. “I’m Nusgof, practicing celibate and messenger for Risgan the Relic Hunter. He sent me here to obtain items for trade.”
“Did he? What items?” Vosta caught a glimpse of some second-rate beads belted in a pouch at the priest’s side. “Away with these worthless gewgaws. I haven’t time to amuse myself with celibates.”