Swords Against Darkness

by Paula Guran

  Master Aldisis came. He said nothing, only stared at her, and she at him; him she feared most of all, his sight, his perception. His influence. She had nothing left, not the ring, not the blades, not the single gold coin. The scholar, in his night robe, observed her and walked away. She sat, the heat of exertion long since fled, with her feet and hands cold and finally numb.

  “Mistress Gillian,” a voice mocked her.

  She looked up sharply, saw Jisan standing by a porphyry column. He bowed as to a lady. She sat still, staring at him as warily as at Aldisis.

  “A merry chase, mistress Gillian.”

  Alarm might have touched her eyes. It surprised her, that it had been he.

  “Call the lord prince,” the Assassin said, and a guard went.

  “Who is your contract?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Guildmaster might answer,” he said. “Go ask.”

  Patently she could not. She sat still, fixed as under a serpent’s gaze. Her blades were in the guards’ hands, one more knife than there had been. They suspected something amiss, as it was their business to suspect all things and all persons; Jisan knew. She stared into his eyes.

  “What game are you playing?” he asked her plainly.

  “I’ve no doubt you’ve asked about.”

  “There’s some disturbance down in lowtown. A tavern with a sudden . . . unwholesomeness in it. Dead men. Would you know about that, mistress Gillian?”

  “I carry messages,” she said.

  His dark eyes flickered. She thought of the serpent-god and the mouse. She kept her hands neatly folded, her feet still. This was a man who killed. Who perhaps enjoyed his work. She thought that he might.

  A curse rang out above, echoing in the high beams of the ceiling. Osric. She heard every god in the court pantheon blasphemed and turned her head to stare straight before her, smoothed her breeches, a nervousness—stood at the last moment, remembering the due of royalty, even in night dress.

  Called from some night’s pleasure? she wondered. In that case he might be doubly wrathful; but he was cold as ever, thin face, thin mouth set, white-blue eyes as void of the ordinary. She could not imagine the man engaged in so human a pastime. Maybe he never did, she thought, the wild irrelevance of exhaustion. Maybe that was the source of his disposition.

  “They sent me back,” she said directly, “to kill you.”

  Not many people surely had shocked Osric; she had succeeded. The prince bit his lips, drew a breath, thrust his thin hands in the belt of his velvet robe. “Jisan?” he asked.

  “There are dead men,” the Assassin said, “at dockside.”

  “Honesty,” Osric murmured, looking at her, a mocking tone.

  “Lord,” she said, at the edge of her nerves. “Your enemies have my sister. They promise to kill her if I don’t carry out their plans.”

  “And you think so little of your sister, and so much of the gold?”

  Her breath nigh strangled her; she swallowed air and kept her voice even. “I know that they will kill her and me whichever I do; tell me the name of your enemies, lord prince, that you didn’t tell me the first time you sent me out of here with master Jisan behind me. Give me names, lord prince, and I’ll hunt your enemies for my own reasons, and kill them or not as you like.”

  “You should already know one name, thief.”

  “A god’s name? Aye, but gods are hard to hunt, lord prince.” Her voice thinned; she could not help it. “Lend me master Aldisis’s company instead of master Jisan’s, and there’s some hope. But go I will; and kill me priests if you haven’t any better names.”

  Osric’s cold, pale eyes ran her up and down, flicked to Jisan, back again. “For gold, good thief?”

  “For my sister, lord prince. Pay me another time.”

  “Then why come here?”

  “Because they’d know.” She slid a look toward the guards, shifted weight anxiously. “A ring; they gave me a ring to wear, and they took it.”

  “Aldisis!” the prince called. The mage came, from some eavesdropping vantage among the columns or from some side room.

  An anxious guard proffered the serpent ring, but Aldisis would not touch it; waved it away. “Hold it awhile more,” Aldisis said; and to Osric: “They would know where that is. And whether she held it.”

  “My sister,” Gillian said in anguish. “Lord, give it back to me. I came because they’d know if not; and to find out their names. Give me their names. It’s almost morning.”

  “I might help you,” said Osric. “Perhaps I might die and delight them with a rumor.”

  “Lord,” she murmured, dazed.

  “My enemies will stay close together,” he said. “The temple—or a certain lord Brisin’s palace . . . likely the temple; Brisin fears retaliation; the god shelters him. Master Aldisis could explain such things. You’re a bodkin at best, mistress thief. But you may prick a few of them; and should you do better, that would delight me. Look to your reputation, thief.”

  “Rumor,” she said.

  “Chaos,” muttered Aldisis.

  “You advise me against this?” Osric asked.

  “No,” said Aldisis. “Toward it.”

  “You mustn’t walk out the front gate this time,” Osric said, “mistress thief, if you want a rumor.”

  “Give me what’s mine,” she said. “I’ll clear your walls, lord, and give them my heels; and they’ll not take me.”

  Osric made a sign with his hand; the guards brought her her knives, her purse and her ring, while Osric retired to a bench, seated himself, with grim stares regarded them all. “I am dead,” he said languidly. “I shall be for some few hours. Report it so and ring the bells. Today should be interesting.”

  Gillian slid the ring onto her finger; it was cold as ever.

  “Go!” Osric whispered, and she turned and sped from the room, for the doors and the terrace she knew.

  Night opened before her; she ran, skimmed the wall with the dogs barking, swung down with the guards at the gate shouting alarm—confused, and not doing their best. She hit the cobbles afoot as they raced after her, and their armor slowed them; she sprinted for known shadows and zigged and zagged through the maze.

  She stopped finally, held a hand to a throbbing side and fetched up against a wall, rolled on a shoulder to look back and find pursuit absent.

  Then the bells began out of the dark—mournful bells, tolling out a lie that must run through all of Korianth: the death of a prince.

  She walked, staggering with exhaustion, wanting sleep desperately; but the hours that she might sleep were hours of Jensy’s life. She was aware finally that she had cut her foot on something; she noted first the pain and then that she left a small spot of blood behind when she walked. It was far from crippling; she kept moving.

  It was midtown now. She went more surely, having taken a second wind.

  And all the while the bells tolled, brazen and grim, and lights burned in shuttered windows where all should be dark, people wakened to the rumor of a death.

  The whole city must believe the lie, she thought, from the Sink to the throne, the mad monarch himself believed that Osric had died; and should there not be general search after a thief who had killed a prince?

  She shivered, staggering, reckoning that she ran ahead of the wave of rumor: that by dawn the name of herself and Jensy would be bruited across the Sink, and there would be no more safety.

  And behind the doors, she reckoned, rumor prepared itself, folk yet too frightened to come out of doors—never wise for honest folk in Korianth.

  When daylight should come . . . it would run wild—mad Seithan to rule with no hope of succession, an opportunity for the kings of other cities, of upcoast and upriver, dukes and powerful men in Korianth, all to reach out hands for the power Seithan could not long hold, the tottering for which all had been waiting for more than two years . . .

  This kind of rumor waited, to be flung wide at a thief’s request. This kind of madness waited to be let loose in the
city, in which all the enemies might surface, rumors in which a throne might fall, throats be cut, the whole city break into riot . . . A prince might die indeed then, in disorder so general.

  Or . . . a sudden and deeper foreboding possessed her . . . a king might. A noise in one place, a snatch in the other; thief’s game in the market. She had played it often enough, she with Jensy.

  Not for concern for her and her troubles that Osric risked so greatly . . . but for Osric’s sake, no other.

  She quickened her pace, swallowing down the sickness that threatened her; somehow to get clear of this, to get away in this shaking of powers before two mites were crushed by an unheeding footstep.

  She began, with the last of her strength, to run.

  7

  The watch was out in force, armed men with lanterns, lights and shadows rippling off the stone of cobbles and of walls like the stuff of the Muranthine Hell, and the bells still tolling, the first tramp of soldiers’ feet from off the high streets, canalward.

  Gillian sped, not the only shadow that judged the neighborhood of the watch and the soldiers unhealthy; rufflers and footpads were hieing themselves to cover apace, with the approach of trouble and of dawn. She skirted the canals that branched off the Serpentine, took to the alleys again and paused in the familiar alley off Agdalia’s Shrine, gasping for breath in the flare of lanterns. A door slammed on the street: Agdalia’s was taking precautions. Upper windows closed. The trouble had flowed thus far, and folk who did not wish to involve themselves tried to signify so by staying invisible.

  The red-shuttered room was closed and dark; Sophonisba had not returned . . . had found some safe nook for herself with the bells going, hiding in fear, knowing where her partner had gone, perhaps witness to the hue and cry after. Terrified, Gillian reckoned, and did not blame her.

  Gillian caught her breath and took to that street, forested with pillars, that was called the Street of the Gods. Here too the lanterns of the watch showed in the distance, and far away, dimly visible against the sky . . . the palace of the king upon the other hill of the fold in which Korianth nestled, the gods and the king in close association.

  From god to god she passed, up that street like an ascent of fancy, from the bare respectability of little cults like Agdalia’s to the more opulent temples of gods more fearsome and more powerful. Watch passed; she retreated at once, hovered in the shadow of the smooth columns of a Korianthine god, Ablis of the Goldworkers, one of the fifty-two thousand gods of Korianth. He had no patronage for her, might, in fact, resent a thief; she hovered fearfully, waiting for ill luck; but perhaps she was otherwise marked. She shuddered, fingering that serpent ring upon her thumb, and walked farther in the shadow of the columns.

  It was not the greatest temple nor the most conspicuous in this section, that of Triptis. Dull black-green by day, it seemed all black in this last hour of night, the twisted columns like stone smoke, writhing up to a plain portico, without window or ornament.

  She caught her breath, peered into the dark that surrounded a door that might be open or closed; she was not sure.

  Nor was she alone. A prickling urged at her nape, a sense of something that lived and breathed nearby; she whipped out the poisoned blade and turned.

  A shadow moved, tottered toward her. “Gillian,” it said, held out a hand, beseeching.

  “Nessim,” she murmured, caught the peeling hand with her left, steadied the old man. He recoiled from her touch.

  “You’ve something of them about you,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed at him. “Old man, go back—get out of here.”

  “I came for mousekin,” he said. “I came to try, Gillian.” The voice trembled. It was, for Nessim, terribly brave.

  “You would die,” she said. “You’re not in their class, Nessim.”

  “Are you?” he asked with a sudden straightening, a memory, perhaps, of better years. “You’d do what? What would you do?”

  “You stay out,” she said, and started to leave; he caught her hand, caught the hand with the poisoned knife and the ring. His fingers clamped.

  “No,” he said. “No. Be rid of this.”

  She stopped, looked at his shadowed, peeling face. “They threatened Jensy’s life.”

  “They know you’re here. You understand that? With this, they know. Give it to me.”

  “Aldisis saw it and returned it to me. Aldisis himself, old man. Is your advice better?”

  “My reasons are friendlier.”

  A chill went over her. She stared into the old man’s eyes. “What should I do?”

  “Give it here. Hand it to me. I will contain it for you . . . long enough. They won’t know, do you understand me? I’ll do that much.”

  “You can’t light a candle, old trickster.”

  “Can,” he said. “Reedlight’s easier. I never work more than I have to.”

  She hesitated, saw the fear in the old man’s eyes. A friend, one friend. She nodded, sheathed the knife and slipped off the ring. He took it into his hands and sank down in the shadows with it clasped before his lips, the muscles of his arms shaking as if he strained against something vastly powerful.

  And the cold was gone from her hand.

  She turned, ran, fled across the street and scrambled up the stonework of the paler temple of the Elder Mother, the Serpent Triptis’s near neighbor . . . up, madly, for the windowless temple had to derive its light from some source; and a temple that honored the night surely looked upon it somewhere.

  She reached the crest, the domed summit of the Mother, set foot from pale marble onto the darker roof of the Serpent, shuddering, as if the very stone were alive and threatening, able to feel her presence.

  To steal from a god, to snatch a life from his jaws . . .

  She spun and ran to the rear of the temple, where a well lay open to the sky, where the very holy of the temple looked up at its god, which was night. That was the way in she had chosen. The sanctuary, she realized with a sickness of fear, thought of Jensy and took it nonetheless, swung onto the inside rim and looked down, with a second impulse of panic as she saw how far down it was, a far, far drop.

  Voices hailed within, echoing off the columns, shortening what time she had; somewhere voices droned hymns or some fell chant.

  She let go, plummeted, hit the slick stones and tried to take the shock by rolling . . . sprawled, dazed, on cold stone, sick from the impact and paralyzed.

  She heard shouts, outcries, struggled up on a numbed arm and a sprained wrist, trying to gain her feet. It was indeed the sanctuary; pillars of some green stone showed in the golden light of lamps, pillars carved like twisting serpents, even to the scales, writhing toward the ceiling and knotting in folds across it. The two greatest met above the altar, devouring a golden sun, between their fanged jaws, above her.

  “Jensy,” she muttered, thinking of Nessim and his hands straining about that thing that they had given her.

  She scrambled for the shadows, for safety if there was any safety in this lair of demons.

  A man-shaped shadow appeared in that circle of night above the altar; she stopped, shrank back farther among the columns as it hung and dropped as she had.

  Jisan. Who else would have followed her, dark of habit and streetwise? He hit the pavings hardly better than she, came up and staggered, felt of the silver-hiked knife at his belt; she shrank back and back, pace by pace, her slippered feet soundless.

  And suddenly the chanting was coming this way, up hidden stairs, lights flaring among the columns; they hymned Night, devourer of light, in their madness beseeched the day not to come—forever Dark, they prayed in their mad hymn. The words crept louder and louder among the columns, and Jisan lingered, dazed.

  “Hsst!” Gillian whispered; he caught the sound, seemed to focus on it, fled the other way, among the columns on the far side of the hall.

  And now the worshipers were within the sanctuary, the lights making the serpent columns writhe and twist into green-
scaled life, accompanied by shadows. They bore with them a slight, tinseled form that wept and struggled. Jensy, crying! she never would.

  Gillian reached for the poisoned blade, her heart risen into her throat. Of a sudden the hopelessness of her attempt came down upon her, for they never would keep their word, never, and there was nowhere to hide: old Nessim could not hold forever, keeping their eyes blind to her.

  Or they knew already that they had been betrayed.

  She walked out among them. “We have a bargain!” she shouted, interrupting the hymn, throwing things into silence. “I kept mine. Keep yours.”

  Jensy struggled and bit, and one of them hit her. The blow rang loud in the silence, and Jensy went limp.

  One of them stood forward. “He is dead?” that one asked. “The bargain is kept?”

  “What else are the bells?” she asked.

  There was silence. Distantly the brazen tones were still pealing across the city. It was near to dawn; stars were fewer in the opening above the altar. Triptis’s hours were passing.

  “Give her back,” Gillian said, feeling the sweat run down her sides, her pulse hammering in her smallest veins. “You’ll hear no more of us.”

  A cowl went back, showing a fat face she had seen in processions. No priest, not with that gaudy dress beneath; Duke Brisin, Osric had named one of his enemies; she thought it might be. And they were not going to honor their word.

  Someone cried out; a deep crash rolled through the halls; there was the tread of armored men, sudden looks of alarm and a milling among the priests like a broken hive. Jensy fell, dropped; and Gillian froze with the ringing rush of armored men coming at her back, the swing of lanterns that sent the serpents the more frenziedly twisting about the hall. “Stop them,” someone was shouting.

  She moved, slashed a priest, who screamed and hurled himself into the others who tried to stop her. Jensy was moving, scrambling for dark with an eel’s instinct, rolling away faster than Gillian could help her.

  “Jisan!” Gillian shouted to the Assassin, hoping against hope for an ally; and suddenly the hall was ringed with armed men, and herself with a poisoned bodkin, and a dazed, gilt child, huddled together against a black wall of priests.