Thieves' World Book #04
Storm Season

Edited by Robert Lynn Asprin

EDITOR'S NOTE

Those who have followed  the first three volumes  of THIEVES' WORLD are  already
aware that facts  vary and contradict  one another depending  upon the character
viewing or narrating an event. This  fourth volume will be a bit  more difficult
to follow because of time-sequencing. While in the earlier volumes I have  tried
to keep the  stories in the  order in which  they occur, this  has proved to  be
impossible in STORM SEASON. The length of time covered by some of these tales is
significant, causing the events  to overlap or, in  some cases, to occur  within
other stories.  Rather than  try to  cut and  splice the  stories into  a smooth
chronology, I've  left it  to the  reader to  understand what  is happening  and
construct his/her mental timeline as  necessary. Just rest assured that  all the
stories herein occur between  the  end  of  SHADOWS  OF SANCTUARY and the end of
the STORM SEASON.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Exercise in Pain	Robert Lynn Asprin
Downwind		C. J. Cherryh
A Fugitive Art		Diana L. Paxson
Steel			Lynn Abbey
Wizard Weather		Janet Morris
Godson			Andrew J. Offutt

Epilog

Introduction

Robert Lynn Asprin

It  had been  a long  time since  Hakiem, Sanctuary's  oldest storyteller,   had
visited that  section of  town known  only as  the Fisherman's  Quarters, but he
still knew the way. Not much  had changed: the stalls with their  flimsy awnings
to keep the sun off the day's catch; the boats bottom up along the pier and,  on
the beach, a few  nets hung for drying  and mending. All was  the same-only more
faded and worn-like the people... like the rest of the town.

Hakiem had watched Sanctuary's decline  over the years; watched the  economy dry
up  as  the citizens  became  more desperate  and  vicious. He  had  watched and
chronicled  with the  detached eye  of a  professional tale-spinner.  Sometimes,
though, like this-when a prolonged absence made the deterioration more  apparent
to the eye  than the day-to-day  erosion of his  more favored haunts,  he felt a
pang  of sorrow  not unlike  that he  felt the  day he  visited his  father  and
realized the  man was  dying. He  had cut  that visit  short and never returned,
preferring in his then-youth to preserve the memories of his sire in the  joyful
strength of his prime. Hakiem had  always regretted that decision and, now  that
the town  he had  adopted and  grown to  love was  in its  death throes,  he was
determined not to repeat  his earlier mistakes by  abandoning it. He would  stay
with  Sanctuary, sharing  its pain  and comforting  it with  his presence  until
either the town or he, or both, were dead.

Having renewed his resolve, the storyteller turned his back on the heartbreaking
sight of the docks, once the pride  of Sanctuary, now a ghastly parody of  their
own memory and entered the tavern which was his objective.

The Wine Barrel was a favorite haunt of those fishermen who wished to indulge in
a bit of socializing before returning to their homes. Today was no exception and
Hakiem easily located the person he  sought. Omat was sitting alone at  a corner
table, a full tankard  held loosely in his  lone hand as he  stared thoughtfully
into the distance. For  a moment Hakiem hesitated,  reluctant to intrude on  the
one-armed fisherman's self-imposed  isolation, but then  curiosity won out  over
discretion and he approached the table.

"May I join you, Omat?"

The fisherman's eyes came into focus and he blinked with surprise. "Hakiem! What
brings you to the docks? Has the Vulgar Unicorn finally run out of wine?"

The talespinner ignored the  gibe and sank down  onto one of the  vacant stools.
"I'm tracking  a story,"  he explained  earnestly. "A  rumor which  can only  be
fleshed out to audience-satisfying proportions with your assistance."

"A story?" Omat repeated, his gaze suddenly evasive. "Adventures only happen  to
your rich merchants or shadow-hugging  cut-throats, not to us simple  fisherfolk
-and certainly not to me."

"So?" Hakiem asked,  feigning surprise. "It  was some other  one-armed fisherman
who this very day told a garrison captain about the disappearance of the Old Man
and his son?"

Omat  favored him  with a  black glare.  "I should  know better  than to  expect
secrecy in  this town,"  he hissed.  "Bad news  draws curiosity-seekers like the
Prince's gallows draw ravens. As they say, you can get anything in Sanctuary but
help."

"Surely  the authorities  will investigate?"  the storyteller  asked, though  he
already knew the answer.

"Investigate!" the fisherman spat noisily on the floor. "You know what they told
me-these precious authorities of yours? They say the Old Man must have  drowned,
he and his son both. They say  the Old Man must've fallen overboard in  a sudden
squall. Do you  believe that? The  Old Man-fallen overboard?  And him as  much a
part of  his boat  as the  oarlocks. And  Hort, who  could swim  like the fishes
themselves before he  could take a  step. Drown? Both  of them? With  their boat
still afloat?"

"Their boat was still afloat?" Hakiem pressed eagerly.

Omat eyed him for a moment, then leaned forward to share the tale at last.  "For
weeks now the Old Man has been taking Hort out, teaching him the tricks of  deep
-water boating. Oh, I  know Hort'll never be  a fisherman. I know  it; Hort knew
it, and so did the Old Man-but it was a handy excuse for the Old Man to show off
a bit for his  son. And, to Hort's  credit, he played along-as  patient with the
Old Man as  the Old Man  had been with  him. It warmed  us all to  see those two
smile on each other again." The fisherman's own smile was brief as the  memories
crowded in on  him, then he  continued: "Yesterday they  went out-far out-beyond
the sight  of land  or the  other boats.   I thought  at the  time that   it was
dangerous and  said  as  much to  Haron. She   only laughed  and told  me not to
worry-the Old  Man was more than a match for the  sea at this time of year." The
fisherman took a long pull at his drink.

"But they  didn't return.  I thought  perhaps they'd  come ashore  elsewhere and
spent most of the night roaming the other piers asking for them. But no-one  had
seen them. This  morning I took  my boat out.  It took 'til  noon but I  finally
spotted the craft floating free, with its oars shipped. Of the Old Man and  Hort
I couldn't find a trace. I towed the boat in and sought out the City Garrison to
report the  disappearance. You  already know  what they  told me.  Drowned in  a
squall! And us still months away from the storm season. ..."

Hakiem  waited until  the fisherman  had lapsed  into silence  before he  spoke.
"Could it have been...  some  creature from the  deep? I don't pretend  to  know
the sea, but even a storyteller hears tales."

Omat regarded him steadily. "Perhaps,"  he admitted carefully. "I wouldn't  risk
the deep waters here in daylight, much less at night. Gods and monsters are both
best left untempted."

"Yet you risked them today," the storyteller persisted, cocking his head to  one
side.

"The  Old  Man was  my  friend," the  fisherman  answered flatly.  "But  if it's
monsters you want for your stories-then I suggest you seek after the  two-legged
kind that spend gold."

"What are you saying, Omat?"

Although they were already sitting close,  Omat shot a furtive glance about  the
room to check  for eavesdroppers. "Only  this," he murmured.  "I saw a  ship out
there-a ship that shouldn't have been there... shouldn't have been anywhere."

"Smugglers?"

"I've seen smuggler ships before, storyteller," the fisherman snarled. "We  know
them and they  know us-and we  give each other  wide berth. If  the Old Man were
fool enough to close with a smuggler ship I'd have found him dead in his boat or
floating  in the  water beside  it. What  use would  a smuggler  have for  extra
bodies?"

"Then, who?" the storyteller frowned.

"That's the mystery," Omat scowled. "The ship was far off, but from what I could
make out  it was  unlike any  ship I've  ever seen,  or heard of. What's more-it
wasn't following the coast or making  for the smuggler's island. It was  putting
out straight into the open sea."

"Did you tell this to the authorities?" Hakiem asked.

"The authorities," snorted the fisherman. "Tell them what? That my friends  were
stolen away by a ghost ship out of legend that sailed off over the horizon  into
uncharted waters? They would have thought I was drunk, or worse- added me to the
collection of crazies that Kitty-cat's  been gathering. I've told them  too much
as it  is, though  I've told  you even  more. Beware,  storyteller, I'd not like
losing another day's fishing  because you put my  name to one of  your yarns and
stirred the curiosity of those do-nothing guards."

Hakiem would have liked to inquire further about the "ghost ship out of legend,"
but it was apparent he was on  the verge of overstaying his welcome. "I  tell no
story before I know its end," he assured his glaring host. "And what you've told
me is barely  the beginning of  a tale. I'll  hold my tongue  until I've learned
more, and even then I'll give you the first telling for free in payment for what
you've given me now."

"Very well," Omat grumbled, "though I'd rather you skipped the tale and bought a
round of drinks instead."

"A poor  man must  guard his  coinage," Hakiem  laughed, rising  to go,  then he
hesitated. "The Old Man's wife... ?" he asked.

Omat's eyelids dropped to half-mast, and there was a wall, suddenly, between the
two men. "She'll be taken care of. In the Fisherman's Quarter, we look after our
own."

Feeling awkward, the storyteller fished a  small pouch of coins from within  his
robes. "Here," he said, setting it on the table. "It isn't much, but I'd like to
help with what little I can afford."

The pouch sat untouched.

"She'll not take charity from cityfolks."

For a moment the diminutive storyteller swelled to twice his normal  appearance.
"Then you give it to  her," he hissed, "or give  it to those who are  supporting
her ... or rub it in a fish barrel until it reeks-" He caught himself,  suddenly
aware of the curious stares from  the neighboring tables. In a flash  the humble
storyteller had returned. "Omat, my friend," he said quietly, "you know me. I am
no more of the city than I am a fisherman or a soldier. Don't let an old woman's
pride stand between her and a few  honest coppers. They'll spend as well as  any
other when pushed across the board of a fishstall."

Slowly the fisherman picked up the pouch, then locked eyes with Hakiem. "Why?"

The storyteller shrugged. "The tale of the  Old Man and the giant crab has  paid
me well. I  would not like  the taste of  wine bought with  that money while his
woman was without."

Omat nodded and the purse disappeared from view.

It was dusk when  Hakiem emerged from the  Wine Barrel. Lengthening shadows  hid
the decay he had noticed earlier, though  it was also true that his outlook  had
improved  after his  gift had  been accepted.  On an  impulse, the   storyteller
decided to walk along the piers before returning to the Maze.

The rich smells of the ocean filled his nostrils and a slight breeze snatched at
his robes as he digested Omat's story. The disappearance of the Old Man and  his
son was but the  latest in a series  of unusual occurrences: the  war brewing to
the  north;  the  raid  on  Jubal's  estate;  and  the  disappearance  and later
reappearance of both  Tempus and One-Thumb-all  were like the  rumble of distant
thunder heralding a tempest of monumental proportions.

Omat had said the storm season was months off, but not all storms were forged by
nature. Something was coming, the storyteller  could feel it in the air  and see
it in the faces of the people on the streets-though he could no more have put  a
name to it than they could have.

For a few moments he debated making one  of his rare visits to a temple, but  as
always the sheer number of deities  to be worshipped, or appeased, daunted  him.
With petty jealousies rampant  among gods and priests  it was better to  abstain
completely than risk choosing wrong.

The same coins he could  have given as an offering  might also buy a glimpse  of
the future from a bazaar-seer. Of course, their ramblings were often so  obscure
that one didn't  recognize the truth  until after it  had happened. With  a smug
grin, Hakiem made up  his mind. Instead of  investing in gods or  seers he would
quest for insight and omen in his own way-staring into a cup of wine.

Quickening his step, the storyteller set his course for the Vulgar Unicorn.

EXERCISE IN PAIN

by Robert Lynn Asprin

There must be trouble. Saliman had been gone far too long for his mission to  be
going  smoothly. Some  might have  had difficulty  judging the  passage of  time
during the period of time between sundown and sunrise, but not Jubal. His  early
years as a gladiator  in the Rankan capital  had included many sleepless  nights
before arena days, or Blood Days as those in the trade called them; he knew  the
darkness intimately. Each phase of the night had its own shade, its own  texture
and he knew them all ... even with his eyes blurred with sweat and tears of pain
as they were now.

Too long. Trouble.

The twin thoughts danced in his mind as he tried to focus his concentration,  to
formulate a contingency plan. If he was right;  if he was now alone and  wounded
what could he  do? He couldn't  travel far pulling  himself painfully along  the
ground with his hands. If he encountered one of those who hunted him, or even  a
random townsperson with an old grudge,  he couldn't defend himself. To fight,  a
man needed legs, working legs. He knew that from the arena,

too.  The oft-repeated  words of  his arena  instructor sprang  into his   mind,
crowding out all other thoughts.

"Move! Move,  damn you!  Retreat. Attack.  Retreat. Circle.  Move! If  you don't
move, you're dead. If I don't kill you myself, your next opponent will! Move!  A
still fighter's a dead fighter. Now move! move?"

A half-heard sound  wrenched Jubal's fevered  thoughts back to  the present. His
hand dropped to his  dagger hilt as he  strained to penetrate the  darkness with
his erratic vision.

Saliman?

Perhaps. But in his current state he couldn't take any chances. As his ally knew
his exact location, the information could have been forced out of him by Jubal's
enemies. Sitting propped against a tree with his legs stretched out before  him,
Jubal cast about looking for new cover. Not  two paces away was a patch of  knee
high weeds. Not much, but enough.

The ex-gladiator allowed himself to fall sideways, catching himself on one  hand
and easing his body the rest of the way to the ground. Then it was reach,  pull;
reach, pull,  slowly making  his way  towards and  finally into  the weed patch.
Though he used  his free hand  to maintain his  balance, once one  of the broken
arrowshafts protruding from his knees scraped along the ground, sending a  sheet
of red agony through his mind. Still, he kept his silence, though he could  feel
sweat running off his body.

Reach, pull. Reach.

Safely in the weeds now, he allowed himself to rest. His head sank completely to
the ground. The dagger slid from its scabbard and he held it point down,  hiding
the shine  of its  blade with  his forearm.  Trembling from  the efforts  of his
movement, he breathed through his nose to slow and silence his recovery. Inhale.
Exhale. Wait.

Two figures appeared, patches of black against deeper black, bracketing the tree
against which he had recently lain.

"Well?" came a voice, loud in the darkness. "Where is my patient? I can't  treat
a ghost."

"He was here, I swear it!"

Jubal smiled,  relaxing his  grip on  the dagger.  The second  voice was easy to
recognize. He had heard it daily for years now.

"You're still no warrior, Saliman," he called, propping himself up on one elbow.
"I've said  before, you  wouldn't recognize  an ambush  unless you stumbled into
it."

His voice  was weak  and strained  to a  point where  he scarcely  recognized it
himself. Still, the  two figures started  violently at the  sound rising from  a
point near their ankles. Jubal relished their frightened reaction for a  moment,
then his features hardened. "You're late," he accused.

"We would have been quicker," his  aide explained hastily, "but the healer  here
insisted we pause while he dug up some plants."

"Some cures are strongest when they are fresh," Alten Stulwig announced  loftily
as he strode toward Jubal, "and from what I've been told-" He stopped  suddenly,
peering at the  weeds around his  patient. "Speaking of  plants," he stammered,'
'are you aware that the particular foliage you're laying in exudes an irritating
oil that will cause the skin to itch and bum?"

For some inexplicable reason the  irony contained in this recitation  of dangers
struck Jubal as hilarious, and he laughed for the first time since the  Stepsons
had invaded his estate. "I think, healer," he said at last, "that at the  moment
I have greater problems  to worry about than  a skin-rash." Then exhaustion  and
shock overtook him and he fainted.

                             *         *         *

It wasn't  the darkness  of'night, but  a deeper  blackness-the blackness of the
void, or of a punishment cell.

They came for him out of  the black, unseen enemies with daggers  like white-hot
pokers, attacking his knees while  he struggled vainly to defend  himself. Once,
no twice, he  had screamed aloud  and tried to  pull his legs  close against his
chest, but a great weight held them down while the torturer did his work. Unable
to move his hands or arms, Jubal wrenched his head about, drooling and gibbering
incoherent, impotent  threats. Finally  his mind  slipped onto  another plane, a
darker plane where there was no pain-no feeling at all.

                             *         *         *

Slowly the  world came  back into  focus, so  slowly that  Jubal had to fight to
distinguish dream from reality. He was in a room. . .no, in a hovel. There was a
guttered  candle  struggling to  give  off light,  crowded  in turn  by  the sun
streaming in through a doorway without a door.

He lay on the dirt  floor, his clothes damp and  clammy from his own sweat.  His
legs were wound from  thigh to calf with  bandages... lumpy bandages, as  if his
legs had no form save for what the rags gave them.

Alten Stulwig, Sanctuary's favored healer, squatted over him, keeping the  sun's
rays from  his face.  "You're awake.  Good," the  man grunted.  "Maybe now I can
finish my treatment and  go home. You're only  the second black I've  worked on,
you know. The other died. It's hard to judge skin tone in these cases."

"Saliman?" Jubal croaked.

"Outside relieving himself. You underestimate him, you know. Warrior or not,  he
kept me from following my better judgment. Threatened to carve out my stomach if
I didn't wait until you regained consciousness."

"Saliman?" Jubal laughed weakly. "You've been bluffed, healer. He's never  drawn
blood. Not all those who work for me are cut-throats."

"I believed him," the healer retorted stiffly. "And I still do."

"As well you should," Saliman added from  the doorway. In one hand he carried  a
corroded pan,  its handle  missing; he  carried it  carefully, as  if it, or its
contents, were fragile. In his other hand he held Jubal's dagger.

When he attempted to shift his body  and greet his aide, Jubal realized for  the
first time that his arms were bound  over his head-tied to something out of  his
line-of-vision. Kneeling  beside him,  Saliman used  the dagger  to free Jubal's
hands, then offered him the pan, which  proved to be half-full of water. It  was
murky, with  twigs and  grass floating  in it-but  it did  much for removing the
fever-taste from the slaver's mouth.

"I shouldn't expect you'd remember," Saliman continued, "but I've drawn blood at
least four times-with two sure kills-all while getting you out of the estate."

"To save my life?"

"My  life  was  involved  too,"  Saliman  shrugged.  "The  raiders  were  rather
unselective about targets by then-"

"If I might finish  my work?" Stulwig in-terupted  testily. "It has been  a long
night-and you two will have much time to talk."

"Of course," Jubal agreed,  waving Saliman away. "How  soon before I can  use my
legs again?"

The question  hung too  long in  the air,  and Jubal  knew the answer before the
healer found his voice.

"I've removed the arrows from your knees," Stulwig mumbled. "But the damage  was
great... and the infection-"

"How long?" This time the slaver was not asking; he demanded.

"Never."

Jubal's hand moved smoothly, swiftly past his hip, then hesitated as he realized
it was not holding the dagger. Only then did his conscious mind understand  that
Saliman had  his weapons.  He sought  to catch  his aide's  eye, to  signal him,
before he realized that his ally was deliberately avoiding his gaze.

"I have applied a poultice to slow the spread of the infection," Alten went  on,
unaware that he might have been dead,  "as well as applied the juice of  certain
plants to deaden your pain. But we must proceed with treatment without delay."

"Treatment?" the slaver glared, the edge momentarily gone from his temper.  "But
you said I wouldn't be able to use my legs-"

"You speak of  your legs,"  the healer  sighed. "I'm  trying to  save your  life
though I've heard there are those who would pay well to see it ended."

Jubal heard the words and accepted them without the rush of fear other men might
feel. Death  was an  old acquaintance  of all  gladiators. "Well,  what is  this
treatment you speak of?" he asked levelly.

"Fire,"  Stulwig stated  without hesitation.  "We must  burn the  infection  out
before it spreads further."

"No."

"But the wounds must be treated!" the healer insisted.

"You call that  a treatment?" Jubal  challenged. "I've seen  burned legs before.
The muscle's  replaced by  scar tissue;  they aren't  legs-they're things  to be
hidden."

"Your legs are  finished," Stulwig shouted.  "Stop speaking of  them as if  they
were worth something. The only question worth asking is: do you wish to live  or
die?"

Jubal let his head sink back until his was staring at the hovel's ceiling. "Yes,
healer," he murmured softly, "that is  the question. I'll need time to  consider
the answer."

"But-"

"If I  were to  answer right  now," the  slaver continued  harshly, "I'd say I'd
prefer death to the life your treatment condemns me to. But that's the answer  a
healthy Jubal would give-now, when death is real, the true answer requires  more
thought. I'll contact you with my decision."

"Very well," Alten snarled, rising to his feet. "But don't take too long  making
up your mind. Your black skin makes it difficult to judge the infection-but  I'd
guess you don't have much time left to make your choice."

"How much?" Saliman asked.

"A day or two. After that we'd have to take the legs off completely to save  his
life-but by then it might only be a choice of deaths."

"Very well," Jubal agreed.

"But in case I'm wrong," Stulwig said sud-'denly, "I'd like my payment now."

The  slaver's head  came up  with a  jerk, but  his aide  had fore-reached  him.
"Here," Saliman  said, tossing  the healer  a small  pouch of  coins, "for  your
services and your silence."

Alten hefted the purse with raised eyebrows, nodded and started for the doorway.

"Healer!" Jubal called from the floor, halting the man in mid-stride. "Currently
only the three  of us know  my whereabouts. If  any come hunting  us and fail to
finish the job, one, or both, of us will see you suffer hard before you die."

Alten  hesitated   then  moistened   his  lips.   "And  if   someone  finds  you
accidentally?"

"Then we'll kill you-accidentally," Saliman concluded.

The healer looked from one set of cold  eyes to the other, jerked his head in  a
half-nod of  agreement and  finally left.  For a  long time  after his departure
silence reigned in the hovel.

"Where did you get the money?" Jubal asked when such thoughts were far from  his
aide's mind.

"What?"

"The  money you  gave Stulwig,"  Jubal clarified.  "Don't tell  me you  had  the
presence of  mind to  gather our  house-funds from  their hiding  places in  the
middle of the raid?"

"Better than that," Saliman said proudly, "I took the records of our holdings."

From the early beginnings of Jubal's rise to power in Sanctuary, he had followed
Saliman's  advice-particularly  when  it concerned  the  safety  of his  wealth.
Relatively little of  his worth was  kept at the  estate but was  instead spread
secretly  through  the town  as  both investments  and  caches. In  a  town like
Sanctuary there were many who would gladly supplement their income by holding  a
package of unknown content for an equally unknown patron.

Jubal forced himself up  into a sitting position.  "That raises a question  I've
been meaning to ask since the raid: why did you save me? You placed yourself  in
physical danger, even killed to get me out alive. Now, it seems, you've got  the
records of my  holdings, most of  which you've managed.  You could be  a wealthy
man-if I were dead. Why  risk it all in an  attempt to pluck a wounded  man from
the midst of his enemies?"

Saliman got up  and wandered to  the doorway. He  leaned against the  rough wood
frame and stared at the sky before he  answered. "When we met-when you hired  me
you saved me from the slave block by letting me buy my freedom with my promises.
You wouldn't have me  as a slave, you  said, because slaves were  untrustworthy.
You wanted me as  a freeman, earning a  decent living for services  rendered-and
with the choice to leave if I felt my fortunes might be better somewhere else."

He turned to face Jubal directly. "I pledged that I would serve you with all  my
talents and that if I ever should  leave I would face you first with  my reasons
for  leaving. I  said that  until then  you need  never doubt  my intentions  or
loyalties. . .

"You laughed at the time, but I was serious. I promised my mind and life to  the
person who allowed me to  regain my freedom on his  trust alone. At the time  of
the raid I had  not spoken to you  about resigning, and while  I usually content
myself with protecting your interests and  leave the protecting of your life  to
yourself and others, I would have been remiss  to my oath if I had not at  least
tried to rescue you. And, as it turned out, I was able to rescue you."

The slaver studied his aide's face.  The limbs were softer and the  belly fuller
than the  angry slave's  who had  once struggled  wildly with  the guards  while
shouting his promises-but the face was as gaunt as it ever had been and the eyes
were still bright with intelligence.

"And why was  that resignation never  offered, Saliman?" Jubal  asked softly. "I
know you had other offers. I often  waited for you to ask me for  more money-but
you never did. Why?"

"I was happy where I was. Working  for you gave me an unusual blend  of security
and excitement with little personal risk-at least until quite recently. Once,  I
used to daydream about being an adventurer or a fearless leader of men. Then,  I
met you and learned what it took to  lead that sort of life; I lack the  balance
of  caution  and  recklessness,  the  sheer  personal  charisma  necessary   for
leadership. I know that now and am content to do what I do best: risking someone
else's money or giving advice  to the person who  actually has to make  the life
and-death decisions."

A cloud passed  over Saliman's expression.  "That doesn't mean,  however, that I
don't share  many of  your emotions.  I helped  you build  your web  of power in
Sanctuary;  helped  you select  and  hire the  hawkmasks  who were  so  casually
butchered in the raid. I,  too, want revenge- though I  know I'm not the one  to
engineer it. You are, and I'm willing to risk everything to keep you alive until
that vengeance is complete."

"Alive like  this?" Jubal  challenged. "How  much charisma  does a cripple have?
Enough to rally a vengeful army?"

Saliman averted his eyes. "If you cannot regain your power," he admitted,  "I'll
find another to follow. But first  I'll stay with you until you've  reached your
decision. If there's anyone who can inspire a force it's you-even crippled."

"Then your advice is to let Stulwig do his work?"

"There seems to be no option-unless you'd rather death."

"There is one," Jubal grinned humorlessly, "though it's one I am loathe to take.
I want you to  seek out Balustrus, the  metal-master. Tell him of  our situation
and ask... no, beg him to give us shelter."

"Balustrus?" Saliman repeated the name as if it tasted bad. "I don't trust  him.
There're those who say he's mad."

"He's served us well  in the past-whatever else  he's done," the slaver  pointed
out. "And, more important-he's familiar with the sorcer-ous element in town."

"Sorcery?" Saliman was genuinely astounded.

"Aye," Jubal nodded grimly. "As I said, I have little taste for the option,  but
it's  still  an option  nonetheless  . .  .  and perhaps  better  than death  or
maiming."

"Perhaps," the  aide said  with a  grimace. "Very  well, I'm  off to follow your
instructions."

"Saliman," the slaver called him  back. "Another instruction: when you  speak to
Balus-trus don't  reveal our  hiding place.  Tell him  I'm somewhere else-in the
charnel houses. I trust him no more than you do."

                             *         *         *

Jubal bolted awake out of his half-slumber, his dagger once again at the  ready.
That sound- nearby  and drawing closer.  Pulling himself along  the floor toward
the doorway the slaver  wondered, for the first  time, just whose hovel  Saliman
had hid him in. He had  assumed it was abandoned-but perhaps the  rightful owner
was returning. With great  care he poked his  head out the bottom  corner of the
doorway and beheld-

Goats.

A sizable  herd  meandered  toward  the  hut, but  though  they  caught  the  ex
gladiator's attention, they did not hold it. Two men walked side-by-side  behind
the animals. One was easily recognized as Saliman. The other's head came  barely
to Saliman's shoulder and he walked with a rolling, bouncy gait.

Jubal's eyes narrowed with  suspicion and puzzlement. Whatever  Saliman's reason
for revealing their  hideaway to a  goat-herd it had  better be a  good one. The
slaver's mood had not been improved by the time the men reached the doorway.  If
anything it had darkened as two goats strayed ahead of the rest of the herd  and
made his unwilling acquaintance.

"Jubal," Saliman declared,  hardly noticing the  goats that had  already entered
the hovel. "I want you to meet-"

"A goat-herd?" the slave spat out. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Not a  goat-herd," the  aide stammered,  surprised by  Jubal's erupting  anger.
"He's a Lizerene."

"I don't care where he was born-get him and his goats out of here!"

Another goat entered as they argued  and stood at Jubal's feet, staring  down on
him with blandly curious eyes while the rest of the herd explored the corners.

"Allow me to explain, my lord," the little man said quickly and nervously. "It's
not where  I'm from  but what  I am:  the Order  of Lizerene  ... a humble order
devoted to the study of healing through sorcery."

"He can mend  your legs," Saliman  blurted out. "Completely.  You'll be able  to
walk-or run-if you wish."

Now it was Jubal's turn to blink  in astonishment, as he absently shoved one  of
the goats aside. "You? You're a wizard? You don't look like any of the magicians
I've seen in town."

"It's a humble order," the man replied, fussing with his threadbare robe,  "and,
then again, living with the goats does not encourage the finery my town-dwelling
colleagues are so proud of."

"Then, these are your goats?" Jubal shot a dark look at Saliman.

"I use them  in my magics,"  the Lizerene explained,  "and they provide  me with
sustenance. As I said: it-"

"I know," Jubal  repeated, "it's a  humble order. Just  answer one question:  is
Saliman right? Can you heal my legs?"

"Well-I  can't  say for  sure  until I've  examined  the wounds,  but  I've been
successful in many cases."

"Enough. Begin your  examination. And, Saliman-get  these damn goats  out of the
hut!"

By the time Saliman  had gotten the animals  into the yard the  Lizerene had the
bandages off and was probing Jubal's legs. It was the first time the slaver  had
seen the wounds and his stomach rebelled at the sight of the damage.

"Not good...  not good  at all," the  magician  mumbled. "Far worse than   I was
told. See here-the infection's almost halfway up the thigh."

"Can you heal them?" Jubal demanded, still not looking at the wounds.

"It will be costly," the Lizerene  told him, "and with no guarantee  of complete
success."

"I knew that before I sent for you," the slaver snarled. "Your profession always
charges high and never guarantees their  work. No sellsword would stay alive  if
he demanded a sorcerer's terms."

The wizard  looked up  from his  examination. His  expression had  gone hard. "I
wasn't speaking of my fee," he corrected his patient, "but of the strain to your
body  and mind.  What is  more it  is your  strength, and  not mine  which  will
determine the extent of  your recovery. Strength of  muscle and of spirit.  If I
and  others  have fallen  short  in our  healings  it is  because  most arrogant
warriors have greater egos than skills and are also lacking-" he caught  himself
and turned  again to  the wounds.  "Forgive me,  my lord,  sometimes being  of a
'humble order' is wearing on the nerves."

"Don't apologize, man," Jubal laughed. "For the first time I begin to have  some
faith in your ability to do what you promise. What is your name?"

"Vertan, my lord."

"And I  am Jubal-not  'my lord,'  " the  slave told  him. "Very well, Vertan. If
strength is what's needed then between the two of us we should be able to  renew
my legs."

"How much strain to the mind and body?" Saliman asked from the doorway.

Jubal glared at his  aide, annoyed by the  interruption, but Vertan had  already
turned to face , Saliman and did not see.

"A fine  question," the  Lizerene agreed.  "To grasp  the answer  you must first
understand the  process." He  was in  his own  element now,  and his nervousness
melted away. "There will  be two parts to  the healing. The first  is relatively
simple, but it will take some  time. It involves drawing out the  infection, the
poisons, from the wounds. The true test lies in the second phase of the healing.
There is damage here, extensive damage-and to the bones themselves. To mend bone
takes time, more time that I'd  venture, m'lord Jubal wishes to invest.  I would
therefore accelerate the body  processes, thereby shortening the  time required.
While in this state you will consume and pass food at an incredible rate-for the
body needs fuel for the healing. What would normally require days will transpire
in hours; the processes of months compacted into weeks."

"Have you ever used this technique before?" Saliman asked.

"Oh, yes," Vertan assured him.  "m fact, you know one  of my patients. It was  I
who healed Balustrus. Of course, that was back in the capital before he  changed
his name."

"Balustrus," Jubal scowled,  an image of  the crippled metal-master  flashing in
his mind.

"I know what you're thinking," the  Lizerene injected hastily, "but I have  done
much  to  perfect  my  skills  since then.  I  was  surprised,  though,  that he
recommended me. At  the time he  was not at  all pleased with  the results of my
work."

"I see," the  slaver murmured. He  shot a look  at Saliman who  nodded slightly,
acknowledging that the metal-master would have to be investigated more  closely.
"But, if I follow your program twill be able to use my legs-normally?"

"Oh yes," Vertan assured him confidently. "The key factor is exercise. Balustrus
remained abed throughout the process, so his joints fused together. If you  have
the  strength and  will to  work your  legs constantly  you should  regain  full
mobility."

"Do  that for  me and  I'll pay  you double  your fee,  however large,   without
question or complaint. When can you begin?"

"As soon as your man there takes his leave of our company," the sorcerer said.

"What?" Saliman exclaimed, rising to his feet. "You said nothing about-"

"I'm saying it now," Vertan cut him short. "Our methods are generally known, but
our techniques are guarded. If one undisciplined in our order were to learn them
and then attempt to duplicate our efforts without complete understanding of  the
signs and dangers, the results would be not only disastrous but demeaning to our
humble order. No-one but the patient may witness what I propose to do. The  laws
of our order are most strict about this."

"Let it  pass, Saliman,"  Jubal ordered.  "I had  other plans  for you. I get no
pleasure or support  from having others  see me in  this weakened condition-even
you. If I  am to rebuild  my force I  will need two  things: my normal  physical
health, intact; and current information of happenings in Sanctuary. The  healing
is my task; one you cannot help  me with. But, for  the information I  must rely
on you, as  I have so many times  in the past." He turned to the Lizerene.  "How
long will  your healing take?"

The healer shrugged. "The time is not exact. Perhaps two months."

Jubal spoke  again to  Saliman. "Return  to town  and don't  come back for three
months. You have  access to most  of our hidden  funds; use them  and live well.
Anyone hunting hawkmasks will not think to look among the wealthy.

"That hunting should  serve as a  weeding to test  the fitness of  our remaining
swords.  Learn their  whereabouts and  watch them-but  let none  know I'm  still
alive. After three months we'll meet and decide who is to be included in the new
organization."

"If you are as wealthy as  your words," Vertan interjected cautiously, "might  I
make  an additional  suggestion?" Jubal  cocked an  eyebrow, but  indicated  the
wizard should  continue. "There  are several  wizards in  Sanctuary who have the
power to ferret out your  location. If I were to  provide a list of their  names
and estimates  of their  bribe-price, you  could insure  your safety  during the
healing process by paying them not to find you."

Saliman snorted. "That way they'll take our money and still sell their  services
to  the  first  hunter that  asks.  How  trustworthy do  you  really  think your
colleagues are, healer?"

"No more or less trustworthy than a sell-sword," the Lizerene countered.  "Every
person has weaknesses, though some are weaker than others. While a few might  be
unscrupulous enough  to accept  double-service at  least you  can eliminate  the
danger from the honest practitioners."

"See that it's done," Jubal instructed Saliman. "There're two other things  I'll
want  when you  return. Find  Hakiem and  let him  accompany you  to witness  my
recovery-"

"The storyteller? Why?"

"He  has amused  us with  his tales  in the  past," Jubal  smiled, "as  well  as
providing occasional  bits of  timely information.  Sharing this  story with him
will guarantee that all will hear of my return to power."

Saliman frowned but did not protest further. "What else?"

"A sword," Jubal  stated, his eyes  suddenly fierce. "The  finest sword you  can
find. Not the prettiest, mind you:  the best steel with the keenest  edge. There
will some who will be less than happy  at the news of my recovery and I  want to
be prepared to deal with them."

                             *         *         *

"That's enough  for today,"  Vertan announced  shakily, removing  his hands from
Jubal's knees.

Like a drowning  man encountering a  log, the healer  grabbed the goat  tethered
nearby and clung to  it while the animal  bleated and struggled to  free itself.
The slaver averted his eyes, nauseated by the now-familiar ritual.

The first day he had watched intently and what he had seen was now branded  into
his memory.  Though he  had always  loathed magic  and its  practitioners he now
admitted a grudging  admiration of the  little wizard who  labored over him.  He
would rather face  a hundred swords  than subject himself  to what the  Lizerene
endured voluntarily.

Vertan drew the poison from Jubal's legs as promised, but what the  ex-gladiator
had not realized  was that the  wizard drew it  into his own  body. He had  seen
Vertan's hands after the first session: swollen and misshapen; dripping pus from
deep-cracked skin-caricatures of hands in the flickering candlelight. The poison
was then transferred to one of the goats whose body would then undertake to heal
the invading infection. Over a dozen of the herd now had swellings or sores from
taking part in the treatments. Jubal was astounded, frightened by the volume  of
poison in his ravaged legs. While several animals now coped with his  infection,
thereby lessening its power, it had all passed through Vertan. Rather than being
annoyed with the little wizard's  frequent recuperative rests, Jubal was  amazed
at the Lizerene's tenacity.

"A few... more days... will complete this phase of the treatment,"  Vertan  said
weakly, releasing the goat. "Then the real trial begins."

                             *         *         *

Jubal gagged  at the  smell wafting  from Vertan's  kettle. He  had known  odors
before which  others found  revolting: the  rotting smell  of blood and entrails
which  the wind  carried from  the chamel  house to  his estate;  the stink   of
unwashed bodies, alive or dead; the  clinging aroma of the excretions of  penned
animals; the acrid bite of the stench of the swamp at low tide. All these he had
suffered without comment or complaint,  but this . .  . Whatever bubbled in  Ver
tan's pot was an abomination. No such odor had ever been generated by nature  or
civilization-of that Jubal was certain.

"Drink,"  Vertan  ordered,  thrusting  a ladle  into  the  slaver's  hands. "Two
swallows, no more."

The contents  of the  ladle were  still bubbling;  they had  the appearance  and
texture of vomit- but  Jubal drank. The first  swallow was surprisingly cool  on
his tongue but  the second had  the warmth and pulse  of something  alive. Jubal
took it  down  with  the same  detached resolve  he  had  used to kill his first
helpless, crippled  opponent and handed the ladle back  to the wizard.

With a satisfied nod, the Lizerene tossed the utensil back into the kettle, then
extended his hands, palms down, until they were each a few inches above  Jubal's
knees. "Brace yourself, swordsman," he ordered. "You're about to begin  learning
about pain."

Something moved under the skin of the slaver's right knee, sending a quick  stab
of agony along his leg. Another piece moved, grating against the first. Then the
movement began  in his  left knee.  Despite his  resolve an  animal howl of pain
escaped Jubal's lips, a  wordless note that rose  and sank as the  pieces of his
shattered kneecaps shifted  and realigned themselves.  The world had  faded from
knowledge when Vertan's voice came to him through the red mists.

"Now move your legs. Move them? You must flex your knees."

With a giant effort Jubal bent his  right knee, sliding his foot along the  dirt
floor. The  pain was  beyond sound  now, though  his mouth  strained with silent
screams.

"More.  You must  bend it  completely. More,  swordsman! Do  you want  to be   a
cripple? More? The other knee-more! Move it!"

Spittle ran down from the corner  of the slaver's mouth; he soiled  himself from
the agony but he kept moving, bending first one knee then the other. Right  knee
straighten. Left knee- straighten. Right knee...

He was disoriented in time and space.  His entire world had been reduced to  the
effort of repeating the simple exercise.

"Where's that will you bragged  about," the torturer taunted. "More!  Bend those
knees completely. Move!"

                              *         *        *

He was growing  used to the  taste of Vertan's  vile potion. It  still disgusted
him,  but  the  repeated  doses  had  made  the  nausea  familiar  and therefore
acceptable.

"Today you stand," the wizard announced without fanfare. '

Jubal hesitated, a piece of roast goat-meat halfway to his lips. As promised  he
was now eating five meals for every one the Lizerene ate. "Am I ready?"

"No," Vertan admitted.  "But there's more  involved here than  your knees.. Your
muscles, "especially -yow-leg  muscles, must be  worked if you  are to keep  any
strength in them. Waving your feet in  the air isn't enough for your legs;  they
must bear weight again-and the sooner the better."

"Very well," the slaver  agreed, finishing the last  of the meat and  wiping his
hands on his sleeves. "Let's do it now-before I've got to relieve myself again."
That function, too, had increased five-fold.

Seizing the wall with one hand, Jubal  drew his feet under him then pushed  with
his legs. Standing up had once seemed so simple; nothing he ever thought  about.
Now sweat popped out on his brow and his vision blurred. He kept pushing; by now
agony  was as  familiar as  the Lizerene's  face. Slowly,  his hands  scrabbling
against the walls, he rose until his weight was on his feet.

"There," he  stated through  clenched teeth,  wishing he  could stop  the waving
motion of the floor and walls around him. "As you said, nothing is impossible if
the will is strong enough."

"Good," Vertan said with  a malicious laugh, "then  you won't mind walking  back
and forth a bit."

"Walking?" Jubal clutched at the wall, a wave of dizziness washed over him. "You
said nothing about walking!"

"Of course," the wizard shrugged. "If I had, would you have attempted to  stand?
Now, walk-or don't you remember how?"

                             *         *         *

The thunderstorm raged, giving added texture to the night. Jubal practiced alone
without Ver-tan's supervision.  This was not  unusual now that  his mobility was
returning. He slept and  woke according to the  demands of his healing  body and
was often left to exercise by himself.

The rain had driven the goats away  from the hut; they sought and usually  found
better  shelter, so  even his  normal audience  was absent.  Still, the   slaver
practiced, heedless of the  sucking mud at his  feet. He held a  stout branch in
one hand-a branch the length of a sword.

Block, cut, block behind. Turn and duck. Cut at the legs. Move. Move. Move! Over
and over he practiced a death-dance he had learned as a gladiator. The pain  was
a distant ache now, an ache he  could ignore. He had something else on  his mind
now.

Turn, cut.  Move. Block,  turn, block,  cut! Finally  he stopped,  the raindrops
collecting in the wrinkles of his forehead.

Slow-all of it. Slow.

To the untrained eye his swordwork might seem smooth and expert, but he knew  he
had a mere fraction of his old speed. He made to test his suspicions; he stooped
and picked up two clods of dirt with his left hand and tossed them into the air.
He swung at  them with his  improvised weapon. One  clod splattered as  the limb
connected with it but the other splashed  into the mud with a sound Jubal  heard
as a death knell.

One! There had been a  time when he could hit  three. The healing was going  far
too slowly, taking too much of his strength. At times he felt his reflexes  were
getting worse instead of improving. There was only one solution.

Moving quietly he crept back into the hut, listening carefully to the unchanging
rhythm of  the wizard's  soft snores.  The kettle  of vile  potion was  bubbling
vigorously, as always. The slaver carefully dipped the ladle in and lifted it to
his lips. For  a week now  he had been  sneaking extra swallows,  relying on the
Lizerene's growing  fatigue to  blind that  normally watchful  eye. Still, a few
swallows had not made a difference.

Ignoring the smell and taste, Jubal drained the ladle, hesitated, then  refilled
it. He drained it a second time then he crept back into the rain to continue his
practice.

                             *         *         *

"Jubal, are you there?"

The slaver rose from his pallet at  the sound of his aide's voice. His  counting
had been correct. It was three months since Vertan's arrival.

"Don't come in," he cautioned, "I'll be out in a moment."

"Is something wrong?" his aide asked in a worried voice. "Where's Vertan?"

"I sent him away," the slaver responded, leaning heavily against the wall of the
hut. He had  been anticipating this  moment, but now  that it was  here he found
himself filled with dread. "Is the storyteller with you?"

"I'm here," Hakiem said for himself.  "Though just the news that you  are indeed
alive is story enough for a dozen tellings."

"There's  more," Jubal  laughed bitterly,  "believe me-there's  more. You  won't
regret your trip."

"What is it?" Saliman insisted, alerted  by the odd tone of the  slaver's voice.
"Wasn't the cure successful?"

"Oh, I can walk well enough," Jubal grimaced. "See for yourselves." With that he
stepped through the doorway and into the sunlight.

Saliman  and Hakiem  each gasped  at the  sight of  him; open  astonishment  was
written  large on  their faces.  If the  slaver had  any doubts  of his   recent
decision, the confirmation was now before him. He forced himself to smile.

"Here's the finale for your tale, Hakiem," he said. "Jubal will be leaving these
parts now. Where  so many  others have  failed, I  myself have  succeeded in out
witting Jubal."

"What happened?" Saliman stammered.

"What  the Lizerene  said would  happen-if we'd  had the  wit to  listen to  him
closely. He healed my legs by speeding my body's processes. Unfortunately he had
to speed them all-not just those in my legs."

Jubal was old. His hair was white and his skin had the brittle, fragile  texture
of parchment once wet then  left to dry in the  sun. Though his muscle tone  was
good there was none of a young man's confidence in his stride or stance-only the
careful, studied movements of one who knows his natural days are nearing an end.

"It's as much my fault as his," the ex-gladiator admitted. "I was sneaking extra
doses  of his  potion, thinking  it would  speed the  healing. By  the time   he
realized what was  happening the damage  had been done.  Besides, he filled  his
part of the bargain. I can walk, even run-just as he claimed. But as a leader of
men, I'm finished. A common merchant with  a cane could beat me in a  fight-much
less the swordsmen we had planned to challenge." A silence fell over the  group,
one which Jubal  felt with ever-increasing  discomfort. "Well, Hakiem,"  he said
with forced cheerfulness,  "you have your  story. Tell it  well and you'll  have
wine money for a year."

The old talespinner sank slowly  into his favored squat and  scratched absently.
"Forgive me-I had been expecting a better ending."

"So  had  I,"  Jubal  snarled, his  carefully  rehearsed  poise  slipping before
Hakiem's insolence. "But I  was given little choice  in the final outcome.  Am I
not right, Saliman? Look me in the eye  and tell me that at this moment you  are
not pondering where you may  go now in search of  someone who can give you  your
revenge? Or  are you  going to  lie and  say you  think I  still have a fighting
chance against Tempus?"

"Actually, that was one  of the things I  meant to speak to  you about," Saliman
admitted, looking away. "I've done much thinking in the time since we parted and
my current feeling  is that under  no circumstances should  we pursue Tempus  at
all."

"What-but he..."

"He did nothing  anyone else wouldn't  have done had  he the strength,"  Saliman
said over Jubal's objections. "The fault was  ours. We were far too open at  the
end,  flaunting our  wealth and  power, strutting  through the  streets in   our
hawkmasks-an easy target  for anyone with  the courage and  skill to oppose  us.
Well, someone did. If you issue  enough challenges someone, sooner or later,  is
going to call you. Gladiators  know the penalty of pride-of  displaying strength
when it isn't necessary. A wise  opponent will listen quietly and use  knowledge
against his enemy. Tempus has done what we should have done."

Jubal listened with growing astonishment. "Then you're saying we just let him go
unmolested?"

"Our goal has always been power, not vengeance," Saliman insisted. "If we  could
ever  seize  power  without  confrontation,  that's  the  route  we'd  take.  Is
confronting Tempus the only way to  regain control over Sanctuary? If not-  then
we should avoid it."

"You keep saying 'we.' Look at me. What good is a leader who can't fight his own
battles?"

"Like  Prince Kitty-cat?  Like Molin  Torch-holder?" Saliman  asked with  a  dry
chuckle. "Or the Emperor himself?"

"How often have you used your sword in the last two years?" Hakiem  interrupted.
"I may have missed some accounts, but as near as I can figure it's only once-and
you could have avoided that fight."

"I used it the day of the raid-" Jubal replied, unimpressed.

"-And it didn't help  you then-when you were  at the peak of  health and skill,"
his aide picked  up the thread  of the argument.  "There're ways to  fight other
than with a  sword. You've been  doing it for  years but your  gladiator's brain
won't let you admit it."

"But I can't fight alone," the  slave insisted, his greatest fear finding  voice
at last. "Who would join with an old man?"

"I would," Saliman assured him, "if that old man were you. You have your wealth,
you know the town and you have a mind that can use power like your hands used  a
sword. You could run the town. I'm sure enough of it to stake my future on it."

Jubal pondered a moment. Perhaps he  was being hasty. Perhaps there were  others
like Saliman. "Exactly how would we build a secret organization? How could we be
unseen, unknown and still be effective?" he asked carefully.

"In many ways it would  be easier than working openly  as we have in the  past,"
Saliman laughed. "As I see it-"

"Excuse me," Hakiem got to his feet, "but I fear you are getting into matter not
safe for a tale-spinner to hear. Some other time I will listen to your  story-if
you're willing to tell it to me, still."

Jubal waved  farewell to  the storyteller,  but his  mind was  already elsewhere
carefully weighing  and analyzing  the possibilities  Saliman had  set forth. He
just might be  able to do  it. Sanctuary was  a town that  thrived on greed  and
fear, and he was well-versed in the usage of both.

Yes. Barring any major changes in the town, he could do it. Pacing thoughtfully,
he called for Saliman to brief him on everything that had happened in  Sanctuary
since the raid.

DOWNWIND

by C. J. Cherryh

i

There was enterprise among the sprawl of huts and shanties that was the Downwind
of Sanctuary. Occasionally someone even found the means of exacting a livelihood
out of the place. The aim of most such was to get out of Downwind as quickly  as
possible, on the first small hoard of coin, which usually saw the  entrepreneurs
back again in a  fortnight, broke and slinking  about the backways, sleeping  as
the  destitute immemorially  slept, under  rags and  scraps and  up against  the
garbage they used for forage (thin  pickings in the Downwind) for the  warmth of
the decaying stuff. So they began again or sank in the lack of further ideas and
died that way, stark and stiff in the mud of the alleys of Downwind.

Mama Becho was one who prospered. There  was an air to Mama Becho, but  so there
was to everyone in Downwind. The stink clung to skin and hair and walls and  mud
and the  inside of  the nostrils,  and wafted  on the  winds, from  the offal of
Sanctuary's  slaughterhouses and  tanneries and  fullers and  (on days  of  more
favorable wind) from the swamp to the south; but on the rare days the wind  blew
out of the north and came clean, the reek of Downwind itself overcame it so that
no  one noticed,  least of  all Mama   Becho, who  ran the  only tavern  in  the
Downwind. What she sold was mostly her own brew, and what went into it (or  fell
into it) in the backside of her shanty-tavern, not even Downwinders had  courage
to ask, but  paid for it,  bartered for it  and (sometimes in  the dark maze  of
Downwind streets) knifed for  it or died of  it. What she sold  was oblivion and
that was a power in Downwind like  the real sorcery that won itself a  place and
palaces  across  the  river   that  divided  Sanctuary's  purgatory   from  this
neighboring hell.

So her shanty's front room and the alley beside was packed with bodies and areek
with fumes  of brew  and the  unwashed patrons  who sprawled  on the remnants of
makeshift furniture,  itself spread  with rags  that had  layered deep  over  un
laundered years, the  latest thrown to  cover holes in  the earlier. By  day the
light came from the  window and the door;  by night a solitary  lamp provided as
much  smoke  as  light  over  the  indistinct  shapes  of  lounging  bodies  and
furnishings and refuse. The  back room emitted smoke  of a different flavor  and
added a nose-stinging reek to the miasma  of the front room. And that space  and
that eventually fatal vice was another of Mama Becho's businesses.

She moved like a broad old trader through the reefs of couches and drinkers, the
flotsam of debris  on the floor.  She carried clusters  of battered cups  of her
infamous brew in stout red fists, a mountainous woman in a tattered smock  which
had stopped having any color, with  a crazy twist of grizzled hair  that escaped
its wooden skewers and flew in wisps and clung to her cheeks in sweaty  strings.
Those arms could heave a full ale  keg or evict a drunk. That scowl,  of deepset
eyes like stones, of jaws clamped  tight and mouth lost in jowls,  was perpetual
and legendary in  the Downwind. Two  boys assisted her,  shadow-eyed and harried
and the subject of  rumors only whispered outside  Mama Becho's. Mama Becho  had
always taken in strays, and no few of them were grown, like Tygoth, who might be
her  own  or  one of  the  foundlings,  and lounged  now  with  half-crazed eyes
following the  boys. Tygoth  was Mama  Becho's size,  reputed half  her wit, and
loyal as  a well-fed  hound. There  was besides,  Haggit, who  was one of Mama's
eldest, a lean and twisted man  with lank greasy hair, a beggar,  generally: but
some  mornings he  came home,  limping not  so badly  as he  did in  Sanctuary's
streets, to spend his take at Mama Becho's.

So enterprise brought some  coin to the Downwind  in these days of  unrest, with
Jubal fallen and the Stepsons riding  in pairs down the street, striking  terror
where they could; and  coin inevitably brought the  bearer to Mama Becho's,  and
bought a corner of a board that served as a bench, or a pile of rags to sit  on,
or for the fastidious, the table, the sole real table with benches, and a  draft
of one of Mama  Becho's special kegs or  even (ceremoniously wiped with  a grimy
rag) a cup and a flask of wine.

Mradhon Vis occupied the table this night as he had many nights, alone. Mad Elid
had tried him again with her best simper and he had scowled her off, so she  had
slunk out  the door  to try  her luck  and her  thieving fingers on some drunker
prey. Thoughts  seethed in  him tonight  that would  have chilled  Elid's blood,
vague and half-formed needs. He wanted a woman, but not Elid. He wanted to kill,
someone,  several some-ones  in particular,  and he  was no  small part   drunk,
imagining Elid's screams-even  Elid might scream,  which he would  like to hear,
which might ease his rage at least so long as he was mildly drunk and  seething.
He had no real grudge against Elid but her persistence and her smell, which  was
nothing which deserved such hate. It  was perhaps because, looking at her,  with
her  foolish  grin  that tried  to  seduce  and disgusted  him  instead,  he saw
something else, and  darker, and more  terrible; and smelled  behind her reek  a
delicate musk, and saw hell behind her eyes.

Or he saw  himself, who also  had traded too  much of himself  and sold what  he
would have kept if he had had the luxury.

But generally the whores and the bullies let Mradhon Vis alone. That was tribute
of a kind in Mama Becho's, to an outsider, and not a large man. He was  foreign.
It was in his dark face and in  his accent. And if he was watched, still  no one
had seriously tried him, excepting Elid.

He paid  for the  special wine.  He maintained  his solitude  through a slice of
gritty stoneground bread and some of  Mama Becho's passable bean soup, and  kept
his surreptitious watch over the door.

Night after  night he  spent here,  and many  of his  days. He lodged across the
alley, in  space Mama  Becho rented  for more  than it  was worth-excepting  her
assurance that it would stay inviolate, that the meager furnishings would always
be there, that there would never be some sly opening of the door when he was out
or while he was  asleep. Tygoth made his  rounds of Mama's properties  all night
with stick in hand, and  if anything was not what  it ought to be, then  corpses
floated down the White Foal in the morning.

That was good so long as his small hoard of coin lasted, and it was running low.
Then the reckoning came.

The woman-mountain rolled his way and  loomed beside him, setting down a  second
cup of wine and repossessing the empty. "Fine stuff," she said, "this."

He laid down the  coin she wanted. Fingers  the match of Tygoth's  picked it off
the scarred table with incongruously long curved nails, ridged like horn. "Thank
'ee," she  said sweetly.  Her face  in its  halo of  grizzled hair, its mound of
cheeks-grinned to match the voice, but  the eyes in their suety pits  were black
and almond and glittered like eyes  he had seen the other side  of swords-point.
She fed him  on the best,  gave him sleeping  space like a  farmwife some fatted
hog; he knew. She would be sure she had  all the money first and then go on   to
other things-  Mama Becho  dealt in  souls, both  men and  women, and  she named
the services, when the  coin was gone.  She had him  in her eye-a  man who could
be useful, but  having weaknesses-a  man  who  had tastes  that cost  too  much.
She scented helplessness, he reckoned; she  smelled blood and made sure that  he
bled all he had-  and oh,  she would  be there when  he  had run out of   money,
grinning that snake's  grin at  him and  offering him  his choices,  knowing  he
would die  without, because  a man  like him  did  die  in the Downwind when the
money  ran out along with  any hope of getting more.  He would not beg, or  sell
what sold in  the Downwind; he  would kill  to get  out; or  kill himself   with
binges of Downwind brew, and Mama knew what a delicate bird she had in her  nets
-delicate though   he had  survived half  a  dozen  battlefields: he  could  not
survive in the  Downwind, not as  Downwinders did.  So it  was possession   that
gleamed  in  Mama's deepset  eyes, the  way she  regarded one  of her  treasured
pewter cups or looked at one  of her boys, assessing its best use and on whom it
was best bestowed.

She kept a private den backstairs, that rag-piled, perfume-stinking boudoir with
the separate back  door, out of  which her Boys  and Girls came  and went on her
errands, out  of which  wafted the  fumes of  wine and  expensive krrf-he  lived
opposite that door like the maw of  hell, had been inside once, when he  let his
room. She had insisted on  giving him a cup of  wine and taking him to  Her Room
when explaining the rules and the advantages her Boys' protection afforded.  She
had offered him krrf-a small sample, and  given him to know what else she  could
supply. And  that den  continued its  furtive visitors,  and Tygoth  to walk his
patrol, rapping on the walls with his stick, even in the rain, tap-tap, tap-tap,
tap-tap in the night, keeping that  alley safe and everything Mama owned  in its
place.

"Come backstairs," Mama would say when the money ran out. "Let's talk about it."
Grinning all the while.

He knew the  look. Like Elid's.  Like-He drank to  take a taste  from his mouth,
made  the  drink small,  because  his life  was  measured in  such  sips of  his
resources. He hated, gods, he hated. Hated women, hated the bloodsucking lot  of
them, in whose eyes there was darkness that drank and drank forever.

There had been a woman, his last employer. Her name was Ischade. She had a house
on the river. And there was more  than that to it. There were dreams.  There was
that well of dark in every woman's eyes, and that dark laughter in every woman's
face, so  that in  any woman's  arms that  moment came  that turned him cold and
useless, that left him with nothing but  his hate and the paralysis in which  he
never yet had killed one-whether because there was a remnant of selfwill in  him
or that it was terror of her that  kept him from killing. He was never sure.  He
slept alone  now. He  stayed to  the Downwind,  knowing she  was fastidious, and
hoping she was too  fastidious to come here;  but he had seen  her first walking
the alleys of the Maze, a bit of night in black robes, a bit of darkness no moon
could cure, a  dusky face within  black hair, and  eyes no sane  man should ever
see. She hunted the  alleys of Sanctuary. She  still was there .  . . or on  the
river, or  closer still.  She took  her lovers  of a  night, the unmissable, the
negligible, and left them cold by dawn.

She  had sent  him from  her service  unscathed-excepting the  dreams, and   his
manhood. She called him in his  nightmares, promising him an end-as he  had seen
her whisper to her victims and hold  them with her eyes. And at times  he wanted
that end. That was what frightened him most, that the darkness beckoned like the
only harbor in the world, for a  man without hire and patronage, for a  Nisibisi
wanted by law at home and stranded on the wrong side of a war.

He dared not become too drunk. The night Mama Becho ever thought he had all  his
money on him, which he had-Then they would  go for him. Now it was a game.  They
tested him, learned him  and his resources, whether  he was a thief  or no, what
skills he had. So he still baffled them.

And watched the door. Desperately casual, pretending not to watch.

All of  a sudden  his heart  lurched an  extra beat  and began  to hammer in his
chest, for the man he had been  waiting for had just come through the  door; and
Mradhon Vis sipped his wine and gave the most blunt disinterested stare that  he
gave to  all comers,  not letting  his eyes  linger in  the least  on this young
ruffian, darkhaired, darkskinned, who came here to spend his money. The man came
closer, edged past his back,  and sat down at the  end of the same table,  which
made staring inconvenient. Mradhon  feigned disinterest, finished his  wine, got
up and walked away through the debris and out the open door, where drinkers  and
drunks took the fresher air, leaned on walls or sprawled against them or sat  on
the two benches.

So Mradhon took his place, his shoulders  to the wall in the shadows, and  stood
and stood until his knees were numb, while the traffic came and went in and  out
Mama Becho's door, until soon Tygoth would take up his vigil in the alleyway.

Then the man came  out again, reeling a  little in satiation-but not  that much,
and not lingering among the loiterers by the door.

ii

The  quarry passed  to the  right and  Mradhon Vis  leaned away  from his  wall,
stepped over the sprawled  legs of a fellow  hanger-on and went after  the young
man, along the muddy streets and alleyways. The wine had lost its effect on  him
in his waiting, but he pretended  its influence in his step-he had  learned such
strategems in his  residency in the  Downwind. He knew  the • ways  thereabouts,
every door, every turning that  could take a body out  of sight in a moment.  He
had studied  them with  all the  care with  which in  other days  he had studied
broader terrain, and now he stalked this shanty maze, knowing just when his step
might sound on harder ground, when his quarry, turning a corner, might chance to
see him, and where he  might safely lag back or  take a shorter way. He  had not
known which way this man might go; but  he had him now, and knew every way  that
he might  take, no  matter which  way he  might turn.  It had  been a  long wait
already-for this man, this current hope of his, who visited Becho's with  money,
who also liked his wine, and bought krrf in the back room.

He knew this man-who did not know  him. Knew him from a place across  the river,
in the  Maze, in  a place  where he  had courted  Jubal's employ, once in better
days. And if there was  a chance left to him,  it was this. He had  tracked this
man on another night and  lost him; but this night  he knew the ground, had  set
the odds in his own favor in this hunt.

And the man-youth-was at least some part drunk.

The way crossed the main road, past a worse and worse tangle of hovels, past the
flimsy shelters  of the  hopeless, the  old, the  desolate, and  now and again a
doorway  where  someone  had  taken shelter  against  the  wind,  eyes that  saw
everything and nothing  in the dark,  witnesses whose own  misery enveloped them
and left only apathy behind.

Down a side track and into an alley this time, and it was a dead end: the quarry
entered it and Mradhon knew-knew the door there, as he knew every turn and twist
of this street. He thrust himself  around the corner, having heard the  steps go
on.

"You," Mradhon said. "Man."

The youth whirled, hand to belt, with the quick flash of steel in the blackness.

"Friend," Mradhon said. He had his own knife, in case.

If the young  man's mind had  been fumed, it  was shocked clear  now. He had set
himself in a knifeman's crouch and Mradhon measured it as too far for any simple
move.

"Jubal," Mradhon said ever so softly. "That name make a difference to you?"

Still silence.

"I've got business to talk with you," Mradhon said. "Suppose we do that."

"Maybe."  The  voice came  tightly.  The crouch  never  varied. "Come  a  little
closer."

"Why don't you open that door and let's talk about it."

Another silence.

"Man, are we going to stand here for the world to watch? I know you, I'm telling
you. I'm by myself. The risk is on my side."

"You stand there. I'll open the door. You go in first."

"Maybe you've got friends in there."

"You're asking the favors, aren't you? Where  did I get you on my heel?  Or were
you waiting on the street?"

Mradhon shrugged. "Ask me inside."

"Maybe I'll talk to you." The voice grew reasoned and calm. "Maybe you just  put
away that knife and  keep your hands where  I can see them."  The youth inserted
his knife in  the seam of  the door and  flipped up the  latch inside, pushed it
open. The inside was dark. "Go first, about six steps across the room."

"Let's have a light first, shall we?"

"Can't do that, man. No one in there to light it Just go on."

"Sorry. Think I'll stand here after  all. Maybe you'll change your living  after
tonight; maybe you'll slip me after this. So I'll have my say here-"

"Have  it inside."  A second  figure stepped  into the  alley out  of the   dark
doorway, and the voice was female. "Come on in. But go first."

He thought about it. The pair of them  stood in front of him. "One of you  get a
light going in there."

The second figure vanished, and in a moment a dim light flared, casting a  faint
glow on the youth outside. Mradhon calculated his chances, slipped his own knife
into its sheath and went, with a prickling sensation at his nape-a short step up
to the floor with the man at his back, a flash of the eye about the single room,
the tattered faded curtain at the end that could conceal anything; the woman;  a
single cot this side,  clothing hung on pegs,  water jugs, pots and  pan-.nikins
set on a misshapen brick firepit at the right on the rim of which the lamp  sat.
The woman was the finer image of  the man, dark hair cropped close as  his, like
twins-brother and sister at least. He  turned. The brother shut the door  behind
him with a push of his foot.

"Mama Becho's," the brother said. "That was where you were."

"You're Jubal's man,"  Mradhon said and  ignored the knife  to walk over  to the
wall nearest the clothes,  where a halfwall jutted  out to shield his  back from
the curtain. "Still Jubal's man, I'm guessing, and I'm looking for hire."

"You're crazy. Out. There's nothing for you here."

"Not so easy." He saw  one cloak on the pegs.  The man wore one. There  was some
clothing, not abundant. He fingered the cloak, letting them follow his train  of
thought, and looked at them again,  folded his arms and leaned back  against the
wall. "So Jubal's got  troubles, and maybe he's  in the market. I  work cheap-to
start. Room and board. Maybe your man can't support anything more right now. But
times change. And I'm willing to ride through this-difficulty. Better days might
come. Mightn't they? For all of us."

The woman made a quiet move that took her to the side. She sat down on the  cot,
and that put their hands on different levels, at different angles to his vision.
He recognized the stalking  and the angle the  man occupied between him  and the
door, the curtain at his shoulder, so he moved again a couple of paces along the
wall, slipped his hands both into his belt (but the one not far from his  knife)
and shrugged with a wry twist of his mouth.

"I tell you I work cheap," he said, "to start."

"There's no hire," the man said.

"Oh, there  has to  be," Mradhon  said softly,  "otherwise you  wouldn't like my
leaving here at all, and I've walked in here in good faith. It's your pick,  you
understand, how it goes from here. An introduction to your man, a little earnest
coin-"

"He's  dead,"  the woman  said,  and shook  his  faith in  his  own bluff.  "The
hawkmasks are all like us-looking for employ."

"Then you'll find  it. I'll throw  in with you-  partners, you, me,  the rest of
you."

"Sure," the  man said,  and scowled.  "You've got  the stink  of hire  about you
already. What coin? The prince's?"

Mradhon forced a laugh and leaned back  again. "Not likely. Not likely the  Hell
Hounds or any of that ilk. My last hire turned sour, and a post in the guard-no.
Not with your complexion-or  mine. Your man, now-So  he and you are  lying low a
while, and maybe I've got reasons for  doing the same. There are people I  don't
want to meet. No better service I can think of-than a man who might be  building
back from a little difficulty. Don't give me that. Jubal's gone to cover. Word's
around. But one of those  hawkmasks might suit me .  . . keeping my face  out of
the sight of two or three."

"I'm afraid you're out of luck."

"No," the woman said, "I think we ought to talk about it."

Mradhon frowned, trusting her less, liking it  not at all that it was the  woman
that took that twist, that  looked at him from the  cot and tried to demand  his
attention away from her brother? cousin? with a quiet, incisive voice.

Then the curtain moved, and a darkskinned  man in a hawkmask stood there with  a
sword aimed floorward in his hand. "We talk," the man said, and Mradhon's heart,
which had  leapt several  beats while  his fingers,  obeying previous  decision,
stayed still... began to beat again.

"So," Mradhon said cockily  enough, "I was wondering  when the rest of  us would
get into it.  Look-I'm short of  funds ... a  little bit for  earnest, so I  can
reckon I'm hired. I'm particular about that."

"Mercenary," the young man said.

"Once," Mradhon said. "The guard and I came to a parting of the ways. It's  this
skin of mine."

"You're not Ilsigi," said the mask.

"Half." It was a lie. It served, when it was convenient.

"You mean," the youth said, "your mother really knew."

Heat flamed  up in  Mradhon's face.  He gripped  the knife  and let it go again.
"When you know me better," Mradhon said  softly, "I'll explain it all . .  . how
women know."

"Cut it," the woman said. She tucked her feet up within her arms.

"What would it take," the hawkmask said, "for you to consider yourself hired?"

Mradhon looked at the man, his heart pounding again. He sat down on the edge  of
the  firepit, making  himself easy  when his  instincts were  all otherwise.  He
thought  of something  exorbitant, remembered  the hawkmasks'  fallen  fortunes.
"Maybe a silver bit-Maybe some names, too."

"Maybe you don't need them," the hawkmask said.

"I want to know who I'm dealing with. What the deal is for."

"No. Mor-am;  Moria; they'll  deal with  you. You'll  have to  take your  orders
there-Does that gall you?"

"Not  particularly," Mradhon  said, and  that too  was a  lie. "As  long as  the
money's regular."

"So you knew Mor-am's face."

"From across the river. From days before  the trouble. I dealt with a man  named
Stecho."

"Stecho's dead."

The tone put a wind down his nape. He shrugged. "So, well, I suspect a lot  were
lost."

"Stabbed. On the street. Tempus' games. Or someone's. These are hard times. Vis.
Yes, we've lost a few of us. Possibly someone talked. Or someone knew a face. We
don't wear the  masks outside, Vis.  Not now. You  don't talk in  your sleep, do
you, Vis?"

"No."

"Where lodging?"

"Becho's."

"If," the voice grew softer still,  difficult, for its timbre, "if there  were a
slip, we would know. You see, it's your first job to keep Mor-am and Moria safe.
If anything  should happen  to the  two names  you knew-well,  we'd suspect, I'm
afraid, that you'd made some kind of mistake. And the end of that would be  very
bad. I can't describe enough-how bad. But that won't happen; I know you'll  take
good care. Go back to your lodgings. For now, go there. We'll see about later."

"How long?" Mradhon  asked tautly, not  favoring this threatening  and believing
every word of it. "Maybe I should move in here-to keep an eye on them."

"Out," said Mor-am.

"Money," Mradhon said.

"Moria," the hawkmask said.

The woman  uncurled from  the cot,  fished a  bit from  the purse  she wore  and
offered it to him.

He took  it, snatched  it from  her fingers  without a  look, and strode for the
door. Mor-am got out of his way and he opened it, stepped out into the foul wind
and the dark and the reek of the alley, and walked, out onto the main way again.

Doubtless one of them would follow him. His mind seethed with possibilities, and
murder was one. -For less than the silver, any one of them would kill. He sensed
that. But there was the chance too that the hire was real: their casualties were
real, and they could not get too many offers now.

He padded as quickly  as he could toward  his own territory down  the main road,
down which the last few stragglers moved, homeless and searching, muddle-minded,
some, which kleetel left of one when  its use had been too long; or  moving with
purpose it was unwise to stare at. He strode along in a world of faceless shapes
and lightless buildings, everything anonymous as himself. Hooves sounded in  the
dark, moving in haste, and in a moment the streets were clear, himself among the
lurkers  that hid  along the  alleys: a.  quartet of  riders passed  toward  the
bridge, Stepsons, Tempus' men. They were  gone in a moment and life  poured back
onto the street.

So the business out by Jubal's estate continued, and Tempus settled in. A shiver
ran down Mradhon's spine, for  the inconvenience of the neighborhood.  He wanted
out-desperately he thought of Garonne-if he  had had the funds. But they  hunted
spies. War  with Nisibis  was on  them. Any  foreigner was  suspect, and one who
really happened to be Nisibisi-

Most especially he avoided the main ways after that, grateful for the  anonymity
of Mama Becho's,  which lay off  the main track  the carts and  the riders took.
Something in him shivered, remembering the hire he had just accepted, pay  which
had  set  him  against the  new  occupants  of the  estate.  Tempus'  men hunted
hawkmasks as they hunted spies and foreigners; and gods knew it was no  prettier
way to go.

The alleyways unwound, almost home territory now. A beggar or two always huddled
near Mama Becho's, one wakeful enough tonight to put out a claw and want a  coin
a true cripple, perhaps, or too sick to make the bridge to richer streets. A dry
spitting attended his lack of charity.

Then for one heart-stopped moment he heard a sound behind, and turned, but there
was nothing but the moon on a muddy alley and the tilt-walled buildings  leaning
together like some fever dream of hell in the dark.

Followed, he thought. He quickened his pace,  on the verge of home, and came  to
the alleyway by Mama's, where the drinking continued, and the  hangers-about-the
door still loitered, but fewer of them. He walked into that alley and Tygoth was
there, to his relief, a hulking stick-carrying shadow making his rounds.

"It's Vis," Mradhon said.

"Huh," was  Tygoth's comment.  Tygoth rapped  against the  wall with  his stick.
"Walk with you?"

Tygoth did, taking his duty seriously,  rapping the wall as he went,  rapping at
the door  of his  lodgings, opening  the door  for him  like the servant of some
palatial home, across  from the lighted  parchment window that  was Mama Becho's
own.

"Coin," Tygoth said, and held out his hand. Mradhon laid the nightly fee in  the
huge palm, and the sturdy fingers closed. Tygoth went into the room and  fetched
the little  light from  its niche  by the  door, stumped  away with  it to  Mama
Becho's back door and opened that to  light it from that inside, then came  back
again, shielding the flame with his  monstrous hand. With greatest care he  went
inside and set it in its place.

"Safe," Tygoth  declared then,  a murmurous  rumble, and  walked off tapping his
stick against the walls.

Mradhon looked after that shambling shadow, then went in and barred the door.

Safe.

So he had a  bit of silver to  bolster his dwindling coppers,  and a bar on  the
door for the  night, but it  was in his  mind that this  Mor-am and Moria  would
change their lodgings tonight and not show up again.

He hoped. It was more surety than he had had the day before.

In the safety of his room he pinched  out all but the nightwick and lay down  to
his sleep, hoping for sleep, but knowing that there would be dreams.

There always were.

                              *        *        *

Ischade,  the wind  whispered coming  from the  river and  riffling through  the
debris outside. He dreamed  her walking the streets  of Downwind this time,  her
black robes unsullied, and the stench became the musk that surrounded her,  like
the smell of blood, like the smell of dead flowers or old, dusty halls.

He waked in sweat, more  than once. He lay awake  and stared into the dark:  the
draft had put the  wick out. It always  did. He reminded himself  that there was
the silver; he felt it in the  dark, like a talisman, proving that that  meeting
had been real.

He needed anonymity and gold. He needed power that could put locks on doors.  He
put fanatic hope in this Jubal, who had once had both.

Whenever he shut his eyes he dreamed.

iii

There was silence in the small  company, a prolonged silence inside the  cramped
quarters that  had been  one of  their safe  shelters, with  Mor-am sulking in a
crouch against the wall and Moria folded in the other comer, her arms about  her
knees. Eichan occupied the cot, crosslegged, arms wrapped about his huge  chest,
his dark head lowered, uncommunicative. What  could be done had been done.  They
waited.

And finally the scurrying came in the alley outside, which brought heads up  and
got Moram and Moria to their feet: no attack, not likely. Two of their own  were
on the street now, watching.

"Get it," Eichan said, and Moria unlatched the door.

It was Dzis, who stepped owlishly  into the faint light they afforded  inside-no
mask, not on the  streets these days: all  Dzis managed was dirt,  and the stink
that armored all Downwind's unwashed. "He went where he said," Dzis said.  "He's
snugged in at Becho's alley."

"Good," Eichan said, and got up from  the cot, taking his cloak across his  arm.
"You stay here," he said to Mor-am and Moria. "Use the drop up the way. Keep  on
it."

"You didn't have to give our names," Moria said. She trembled with rage, whether
at Eichan or at her brother. "Any objection if we settle that bastard outright?"

"And  leave  questions  unanswered?"  Eichan flung  on  the  cloak.  He towered,
difficult to conceal if one suspected  it was Eichan. "No. We can't  afford that
now. You've cost us a safe hole. You live in it. And watch yourselves."

"There'll be watchers," Moria said, hoping that there would.

"Maybe," said Eichan. "And  maybe not." He followed  Dzis back out the  door and
pulled it after him.  The latch dropped. The  lampflame waved shadows round  the
walls.

Moria turned round and looked at her brother, a burning stare.

Mor-am shrugged.

"Hang you," Moria said.

"Oh, that's not what they do to hawkmasks lately. Not the ones on our trail."

"You had to go to  Becho's, had to have it,  didn't you? You let someone  follow
you, stinking stewed-get off it, hear me? Get off that stuff. It'll kill you. It
almost did. When the Man gets back-"

"There's no guarantee he's coming back."

"Shut up."  She darted  a frantic  glance at  the door,  where one of the others
could still be listening. "You know better than that."

"So-they got him good  this time, and Tem-pus  wins. And Eichan goes  on pushing
and shoving as if the Man was still-"

"Shut up!"

"Jubal's not in shape to do anything, is he? They go on hunting hawkmasks in the
street and none of us know when we'll be next. We live in holes and hope the Man
gets back...."

"He'll settle with them when he does. If we keep it all together. If-"

"If. If and if. Have you seen  that lot that's moved in on the  estate? Jubal'll
never go back there. He won't face them down. Can't. Did you hear the riders  in
the street? That's permanent."

"Shut up. You're stiffed."

Mor-am walked over to the wall and pulled his cloak off the peg.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Out. Where there's less noise."

"Don't you dare."

He slung it on and headed for the door.

"Come back here."  She grabbed at  his arm, futile:  he had long  ago outweighed
her. "Eichan will have your head."

"Eichan doesn't care. He  feeds us pennies and  gives silver out with  our names
for the asking."

"You won't go after him. Eichan said-"

"Eichan said. Stay out of my business. No, I won't cut the bastard's throat. Not
tonight. I've got a headache. Just let me alone."

"All right, all right, I won't talk to you, just stay inside."

He pulled the door open and went out it.

"Mor-am?" she hissed.

He turned and held up  a coin. "Enough to get  me really drunk. But only  enough
for one. Sorry."

He whirled and left, a flurry of a ragged cloak. Moria closed the door,  crossed
the room, flung herself down  to sit on the cot  with her head in her  hands and
the blood pounding in her temples. She was scared. She wanted to hit  something.
Anything. Since the raid had scattered them with half their number dead, it  was
all downhill. Eichan tried to hold it together. They had no idea whether he  had
what he  claimed to  have, whether  Jubal was  even still  alive. She doubted it
sometimes, but not out loud. Mor-am's doubts were wider. She did not fully blame
him: tonight she hated Eichan-and remembered  it was Mor-am himself who had  led
the outsider to them. Drunk. Stoned on krrf, using far too much.

And Becho's-any  place was  dangerous if  they frequented  it, if  they set up a
pattern, and  her brother  had a  pattern. His  habits led  him here and led him
there. There  was the  smell of  death about  him, that  terrified her.  All the
enemies the slaver Jubal had ever  accumulated (and they were many) had  come to
pick bones now that his power was broken; from the days that hawk-masks used  to
swagger in  gaudy dress  through the  streets, now  they wore  ragged cloaks and
slunk into  any hole  that would  keep them.  And that  was, for  all of them, a
bitter change.

Mor-am could not bear it. She gave him money, doled it out, hers and his; but he
had lied to her-she knew he had; and gotten that little more that it needed  for
Becho's. Or he had  cut a purse or  a throat, defying Eichan's  plain orders. He
was committing slow  suicide. She knew.  They had come  up together out  of this
reek, this filth, to  Jubal's service, and learned  to live like lords;  and now
that it was back to the gutter again, Mor-am refused to live on those terms. She
held onto  him with  all her  wit and  talents, covered  for him,  lied for him.
Eichan might kill him himself if he had seen him go; or beat him senseless:  she
wished she had the strength to pound the idiocy out of him, flatten him  against
a wall and talk sense to him. But there  was no one to do that for him. Not  for
years.

                             *         *         *

Mor-am  flung off  down the  street, striding  along with  purpose none  of  the
sleepers in  doorways challenged,  getting off  the main  road as  quickly as he
might.

But something stirred another way.  A beggar dislodged himself from  his doorway
near an  alley and  shuffled along  until he  reached shadows,  then moved quite
differently, hunker-ing down when he  thought it might serve and  running spryly
enough when there was need.

Then other beggars began to move, some truly lame, but not all.

And one of them had already gone, scuttling along alleys as far as a shack  near
Mama Becho's, at  the back of  which the White  Foal river flowed  its sluggish,
black-glistening way beneath the bridge.

Guards dozed there, about the walls, unlikely as guards as he was unlikely as  a
messenger, in rags, one a little  urchin-girl sleeping in the alley, who  looked
up and went back to her interrupted nap, a  huddle of bony limbs; and one a  one
legged man who did the same; but that hulk nearest the door got up and faced the
messenger.

"Got something," the messenger said, "himself'd want to hear."

The guard rapped at the door. In a little time it opened on the dark inside, and
a shutter  opened, affording  light enough  to someone  who had  been inside all
along.

The messenger went  in and squatted  down in a  crouch natural to  his bones and
delivered what he had heard.

So Moruth listened, sitting on his  bed, and when the messenger was  done, said:
"Put Squith on it, and Ister."

Luthim left, bowing in haste.

Mama's latest  boarder. Moruth  pondered the  idea, hands  clasped on his knees,
smiling and frowning at  oruce because any link  between his home territory  and
the hawkmasks he  hunted made him  uneasy. There was,  in the dark,  on the back
side of the door,  a mask pinned with  an iron nail, and  there was blood on  it
that had dried like rust in the daylight; but only those that came to this shack
and had the door closed on them could see it. It was a joke of sorts. Moruth had
a sense of  humor, like his  half-brother Tygoth shambling  along the alleys  by
Mama's, rapping his stick and mumbling slackwitted nonsense. He had one now, and
ordered Luth-im himself followed: the urchin was summoned to the door and  given
a message to take.

So Tygoth would know.

"Good night," Moruth told  his lieutenant, and the  man closed the shutters  and
the door, leaving him his darkness and his sleep.

But he kept rocking  and thinking, pondering this  and that, shifting pieces  on
his mental map of Downwind alleys, remembering this and that favor owed, and how
to collect.

Hawkmasks died, and either they  were loyal (which seemed unlikely)  or ignorant
where Jubal lay, even in extremity. He  had had three so far. The one  nailed to
the door  had told  him most,  where these  two lodged;  but so  far he  had not
pounced. He knew the homes and haunts of others.

And suddenly the trail doubled back  again, to Mama's, to his own  territory. He
was not amused.

                             *         *         *

And just the other  side of the  bridge, in a  curious gardened house  with well
lighted windows casting a glow on the same black water. ...

Ischade received quite another messenger, a slave and young, and handsome  after
a foreign fashion, who appeared at  her gate disturbing certain wards, who  came
up the path only after hesitating some long time, and stood inside her  dwelling
as if he were dazed.

He was a gift, constantly held out to her. He had come and gone frequently, sent
by those who had offered her employ,  and stood there now staring at the  floor,
at anything but herself. Perhaps he had  known in the beginning that he was  not
meant  to  come back  to  his masters;  or  that his  handsomeness  was to  have
attracted  her and  offered a  reward; he  was not  stupid, this  slave. He  was
scared, perpetually, sensing something,  if only that his  mind was not what  it
ought to be when he was here, and  he would not, this time, look at her,  not at
all. She was,  on one level,  amused, and on  another, vexed with  those who had
sent him-as if  she were some  beast, to take  what was thrown  to her, even  so
delicate an offering as this.

But they dared not come themselves. They were that cautious, these adherents  of
Vashanka, not putting themselves within this room.

She was untidy, was Ischade; her small nest of a house was strewn not with  rags
but with silks and cloaks and such  things as amused her. Her taste was  garish,
with unsubtle fire-colored  curtains, a velvet  throw like a  puddle of emerald,
and it all undusted, unkept, a ruby necklace like a scatter of blood lying  atop
the litter on a gilded table-a bed  never made, but tossed with moire silks  and
hung with dusty  drapes. She loved  color, did Ischade,  and avoided it  for her
dress. Her hair was a fall of  ink about her face; her habiliments were  blacker
than night; her eyes- But the slave would not look at them.

"Look up," she said, when she had read the message, and after a moment he  must.
He stared at her. The fear grew quiet, because she had that skill. She held  him
with her eyes. "I did a service  for one your masters knew-lately. They seem  to
think this obligates me. Nothing does. Do they realize this?"

He said nothing, shaped a  no with his lips. He  had no wish to be  party to any
confidences, that was  clear. Yes, or  no, or whatever  she wanted to  hear; the
mind, she thought, was unfocussed like the eyes.

"So. Do you know what this says?"

No, the lips shaped again.

"They want the slaver. Jubal. Does that amuse you?"

No answer  at all.  There was  fear. It  bubbled against  her nerves like strong
wine, harder and harder  to resist, but she  played with it, stronger  than they
judged she was, despising  them-and perhaps a little  mad. At times she  thought
she was, or might become so, and  at others most coldly sane. Humor occurred  to
her, a  private laughter,  with this  gift so  obviously proffered,  this-bribe.
Animal she  was not.  She knew  always what  she did.  She moved  closer and her
fingers touched his arm while she wove a circle round him like some magic  rite.
She came full circle and looked up at him, for he was tall. "Who were you?"  she
asked.

"Haught is my  name," he said,  all but a  whisper, she was  that close, and  he
managed then to look past her.

"And were you born a slave?"

"I was a dancer in Garonne."

"Debt?"

"Yes," he said, and never looked at her the while. She had, she thought, guessed
wrong.

"But not," she said, "Caronnese."

There was silence.

"Northern," she said.

He said nothing. The sweat ran on his face. He never moved: could not, while she
willed; but never tried: she would have felt a trial of her hold.

"They question  you, don't  they, about  me?- each  time. And  what do  you tell
them?"

"There's nothing to tell them, is there?"

"I doubt that they are kind. Are they? Do you love them, these masters of yours?
Do you know what you're really for?"

A flush stained his face. "No,"  she said sombrely, answering her own  question.
"Or you'd run, even knowing what you'd  pay." She touched him as she might  some
fine marble, and  there was such  hunger, such desire  for something so  fine-it
hurt.

"This time," she said after measuring that thought, "I take the gift. . . but  I
do  with  it what  I  like. My  back  door, Haught,  is  on the  river,  a great
convenience to me; and bodies often don't surface, do they? Not before the  sea.
So they won't  expect to find  you ... So  just keep going,  do you hear? Serves
them right. Go somewhere. I set you free."

"You can't-"

"Go back  to them  if you  like. But  I wouldn't,  if I  were you.  This message
doesn't need  an answer.  Don't you  reckon what  that means?  I'd keep running,
Haught-no, here." She went to the closet and picked clothing, a fine blue  cloak
many visitors left such remembrances  behind. There were cloaks, and  boots, and
shirts-all manner of  such things. She  threw it at  him; went to  the table and
wrote a message. "Take this back to them if you dare. Can you read?"

"No," he said.

She chuckled. "It says  you're free." She took  a purse from the  table (another
relic) and gave  that into his  hand. "Stay in  Sanctuary if you  choose. Or go.
Take my  word. They  might kill  you-but they  might not.  Not if they read that
note. Do as you please and get out of here."

"They'll find me," he protested.

"Trust the note," she said, "or use the back door and the bridge."

She waved her hand.  He hesitated one way  and the other, went  toward the front
and then fled for the back,  for the riverside. She laughed aloud,  watching his
flight from her doorway, watched him run, run down the riverside until the  dark
swallowed him.

But after the laughter was dead she read the message they had sent her a  second
time and burned it in the lamp, letting the ashes fall and scorch an amber silk,
carelessly.

So Vashanka's faction went on wanting her services, and offered three times  the
gold. She cared nothing for that at  present, having all she cared to have.  She
cared not to be more conspicuous, no,  not if they offered her a palace  for her
services. And they could.

How would that  be, she wondered,  and how long  till neighbors rebelled  at the
steady disappearances? She  could buy slaves...  but enter the  Prince's  court,
but live openly-?

The thought amused, the  way irony might. She  could herself become Jubal,  in a
trade that would well suit her needs. A pity she had already taken hire-

But the irony  of it  palled and  the bitterness  stayed. Perhaps  the  Vashanka
lovers suspected what they did. Perhaps they had some inkling of her motives  or
the need-and so they sent the likes of Haught, a messenger they expected to have
had thus silenced on the first visit, then to supply her with more and more;  or
a lure they dragged  past her with cynical  cruelty, to ascertain how  much they
believed was truth-what she was, and how long her restraint might go on.

She thought on Haught and thought, as she had each time he came to her; and that
too they had surely intended. The hunger grew. Soon it would be too strong.

"Vis," she said aloud. The images merged  in her mind, Vis and Haught, two  dark
foreigners, both of whom she had let go-because she was not pitiless. There  was
hell in the slave's eyes, like hers. Time after time he had passed that door  in
either direction, and the hell grew,  and the terror that was itself  a lure-one
could develop such a taste, for the  beauty and the fear, for gentility. Like  a
drug. She had more pride.

She had had no intention of going out at all tonight. But the restlessness grew,
and she hated them for  that, for what they had  done, that now she would  kill,
the way she always killed-but not in the way they thought. It was the luck  that
followed her, the curse an enemy had laid on her.

She slung on her black cloak and pulled up the hood as she went out by that back
way as  well, through  the small  vine-tangled garden  and past  the gate to the
river walk, pace, pace, pace along the unpaved way.

And pace, pace, pace along the bridge, a striding of small slippered feet,  soft
against the wooden planks; and onto the wet pavings and then the paveless alleys
of the Downwind. She hunted, herself the lure, as the slave had been-

Perhaps she would  find him, lingering  too long in  his flight. Then  she would
have no compunction. A part of her  hoped for this, and savored the trust  there
might be at first, and then the terror; and part of her said no.

She was fastidious. The first accoster  she met disgusted her, and she  left him
dazed by the close encounter of her eyes,  as if he had forgotten why he was  in
this place  at all;  but the  second took  her fancy,  being young and with that
arrogance of the  street tough, the  selfish self-doubt that  amused her in  its
undoing, for most of that ilk recognized her in their heart of hearts, and  knew
that they had met what they had hated all their twisted lives-

That kind was worth the hunt. That  kind had no gentler core, to wound  her with
regret. This one had no  regret in him, and no  one in all the world  would miss
him.

There was an abundance of his kind in Sanctuary and its adjuncts; it was why she
stayed in this place,  who had known so  many cities: this city  deserved her...
like the young man who faced her now.

She thought of Haught still running,  and laughed a twisted laugh, but  soon the
assailant/victim was too far gone to hear, and in the next moment she was.

iv

"Money," Mor-am said, sweating. His hands shook and he folded his arms about his
ribs under his cloak, casting a furtive look this way and that down the alley of
Shambles Cross, on the Sanctuary-ward side of the bridge. "Look, I've got a  man
in sight; it just takes a little to get him here. Meanwhile even Downwind  takes
money-leading a man anywhere takes money."

"Maybe more than you're worth," the man said, a man who frightened him, even  in
the open alley, alone. "You know there's  a string on you. You know how  easy it
is to draw it in.  Maybe I should just say-produce  the man. Bring him here.  Or
maybe we ought to invite you in for a talk. Would you like that,-hawkmask?"

"You've got it wrong." Mor-am's teeth  chattered. The night wind felt cold  even
for the season; or  it was Becho's stuff  working at his stomach.  He locked his
arms the  tighter. "I  take chances  for what  I get.  I've got  connections. It
doesn't mean I'm-"

"If we hauled you  in," the man said,  ever so softly with  the animals grunting
softly in the distance, doomed to the axe in the morning, "if we did that they'd
just change all the drops and meeting places, wouldn't they? So we dribble  coin
into your hand and you supply  us names and places and  times, and they do  work
don't they?  But if  they should  be wrong-maybe  I've got  someone supplying me
yours. Ever wonder that, Wriggly? Maybe you're not the only hawk-mask who  wants
to turn coat.  So let's not  make up tales.  Where? Who? When?"

"Name's Vis. At Mama Becho's."

"That's a tight place. Not   easy to get at."

"That's  my  point.  I  get him    to you."   There was    a silence.   The  man
brought out  silver pieces and  dropped them into Mor-am's  hand,  then clenched
fingers  on  his as  they  closed.  "You know,"  the Rankan said, "the  last one
named your name."

"Of course." Mor-am tried not to shake. "Wouldn't you want revenge?"

"Others have. You knew they would."

"But you  want them  brought out  of the  Downwind. And  I do  that for you." He
clenched his jaw, a  grimace against the chattering  of his teeth. "So  maybe we
get to  the big  names. I  give you  those-I deliver  them to  you just like the
little ones. But that's another kind of price."

"Like your life, scum?"

"You know I'm useful. You'll find I can be more useful than you think. Not cash.
A way out." His teeth did chatter, spoiling his pose. "For me and one other."

"Oh, I don't doubt you'll be cooperating.  You know if the word gets out  on the
streets how we got our hands on your friends-you know how long you'd last."

"So I'm loyal," Mor-am said.

"As a dog." The man thrust his hand back at him. "Here. Tomorrow moonrise."

"I'll  get  him." Mor-am  subdued  the shivering  and  sucked in  a  breath. "We
negotiate the others."

"Get out of here."

He went,  slow steps  at first,  and quicker,  still with  a tendency to shiver,
still with a looseness in his knees.

                        *              *              *

But the man climbed the  stairs of a building near  that alley and made his  own
report.

"The slave is gone," one said, who in his silk and linen hardly belonged in  the
Shambles,  but neither  did the  quarters, that  were comfortable  and  well-lit
behind careful shutters and sealing of the cracks. Two of the men were Stepsons,
who smelted of oil and light sweat  and horses, whose eyes were alike and  cold;
three had the look of something else, a functionary kind of coldness. "Into  the
Downwind. I  think we  can conclude  the answer  is no.  We have  to extend  our
measures. Someone knows. We take the hawkmasks alive and eventually we find  the
slaver."

"We  should  pull  the slave  in,"  another  said. "No,"  said  the  first. "Too
disruptive. If convenient... we take him."

"This woman is inconvenient."

"We hardly  need more  inconvenience than  we've had.  No. We  keep it quiet. We
destroy no  leads. We  want this  matter taken  out-down to  the roots. And that
means Jubal himself."

"I don't think," said the man from the street, "that our informer can be  relied
on that far. That's the one who ought to be pulled in, kept a little closer  ...
encouraged  to talk."

"And if  he won't?  No. We  still need  him."

"A  post. Security. Get   him into  our steady   employ and  we'll learn   where
all his soft spots are. He'll soften up fast. Just twist the screws now and then
and he'll do  everything he has   to."

"If you   make a mistake   with him-"

"No mistake. I know this little snake."  A chair grated. One of the Stepsons had
put his  foot on    the rung,  folded  his  arms  with  elaborate  disdain   for
the proceedings.  "There are  quicker  ways,"  the Stepson  said. No   one  said
anything to  that. No   one  debated,  but slid  the discussion  aside from  it,
arguing only  the particulars and  a  slave who  had finally run.

                             *         *         *

The  bridge  was   always  the  worst   part,  coming  or   going.  It  narrowed
possibilities. There  was one  way and  only one  way, afoot,  to come  into the
Downwind,  and Mor-am  took it,  sweating, feeling  his heart  pounding, with  a
little edge of black around his vision that might be terror or something in  the
krrf that he had bought, that tunnelled his vision and made his heart feel  like
it was starting and stopping by turns, lending an unreality to the whole  night,
so that he paused in  the middle of the bridge  and leaned on the rail,  wishing
that he could heave up his insides.

Then he saw the  man following-he was sure  that he was following,  a walker who
had also paused on the bridge a little ways down from him and delayed about some
pretended business.

Sweat broke out afresh on him. He  must not seem to see. He pushed  himself away
from the  rail and  started walking  again, trying  to keep  his steps even. The
shanties of Downwind lurched in his view under the moon, closer and closer, like
the  crazy pilings  of the  fishing-dock beside  it and  the sway  and flare  of
someone's lantern near the water below. He found himself walking faster than  he
had intended, terror taking over.

Others used the bridge. People came and went, a straggle of them passing him  in
the dark, passing his pursuer and still he kept his steady pace. But one of them
had veered into  his path and  sent his hand  twitching after his  knife, coming
rapidly toward him.

Moria. His heart turned over as he recognized his sister face to face with  him.
"Walk past me," he hissed at her in desperation. "There's someone on my track."

"I'll get him."

"No. Just see who it is and keep walking."

They parted, expert mimery: importunate  whore and disgusted stroller. He  found
his breath too  short, his heartbeat  pounding in his  ears, trying to  keep his
wits about him and to concoct lies Moria would believe, all the while  terrified
for what might be  happening behind him. There  might be others. Moria  might be
walking into ambush set for him. He dared not turn to see. He reached the end of
the bridge, kept walking, walking, walking, toward the shelter of the alleys. It
was all right then, he kept  telling himself; Moria could take care  of herself,
would recross the river and find her own way home. He was in the alleys, in  his
element again, of beggars crouched by the walls and mud squelching underfoot.

Then one of  the beggars  before him  unfolded upward  out of  the habitual wall
braced crouch,  and from  behind an  arm encircled  him, bringing  a sharp point
against his throat.

"Well," a dry voice cackled, "hawkmask, we got you, doesn't we?"

                             *         *         *

Moria did not run. Gut feeling cried out  for it, but she kept her pace, in  the
waning hours  of the  night, with  thunder rumbling  in the  south and  flashing
lightning in a threatening wall of cloud. It was well after moonset. Mor-am  had
not gotten home.

And there was a vast silence in  the Downwind. It was not nature, which   boomed
and rumbled and advised that the streets and alleys of Downwind would be  aswim.
The street-dwellers were up seeking  whatever scrap of precious board  or canvas
that could be pilfered, carrying their clutter of shelter-pieces with them  like
the crabs down  by seamouth, making  traffic of their  own-It was none  of these
things; but  it was  subtle change,  like the  old man  who always  had the door
across from their alley-door not being there, like no hawkmask watcher where  he
ought to be,  in the alley  across the way;  or again, in  the alley second from
their own. They were gone. Eichan might have pulled them when their lair  became
unsafe.

But Mor-am had been  followed on the bridge,  and that follower had  not led her
back to Mor-am, when she had turned round again after passing him. Panic ran hot
and cold through her  veins, and guilt and  self-blame and outright terror.  She
had become alone, like that, in the space of time it took to walk the bridge and
turn round again; and find that the  follower did not lead her to Mor-am,  or to
anything; he himself had hesitated this  way and that and finally recrossed  the
bridge.

Mor-am would be at home, she had thought; and he was not.

She  kept  walking  now,  casual in  the  mutter  of  thunder, the  before-storm
movements of  the street  people, moving  because if  something had  gone wrong,
nowhere was really safe.

They hunted hawkmasks nowadays; and Eichan had cast them adrift.

There was one last place to go and she went to it, toward Mama Becho's.

The door still spilled light into the dark, where a few patrons sprawled,  drunk
and unheeding of  the storm. Moria  strode into it  in a gust  of wind, but  the
bodies sprawled inside  in sleep were  amorphous, heaped, drunken.  There was no
sign of Mor-am. A further, darker panic welled up in her, her last hope gone.

He still might be  hiding, she tried to  tell herself; might have  gone to earth
and determined to stay there;  or it was bad and  he was still running. Or  even
sleeping off a drunk.

Or dead. Like the murdered hawkmasks. Like one who had been nailed to a pole  by
the bridge.

She turned and  strode for the  door, almost colliding  with the human  mountain
that suddenly filled it.

"Drink," Tygoth suggested.

"No."

He lifted his stick. "You come here to steal-"

"Looking  for someone."  Her mind  leapt this  way and  that. "Vis.  Boarder  of
yours."

"Asleep."

She dodged past and ran, down the alley, the only lighted alley in the Downwind,
that got the light of the ever-lit lantern at Mama Becho's door.

"Vis," she called softly,  rapping at the door.  Her hands clenched against  the
wood. "Vis,  wake up,  get out  here. Now."  She heard  Tygoth coming, shambling
along after her, rapping the wall with his stick. "Vis, for the gods' sake, wake
up." There was  movement from inside.  "It's Moria," she  said. The rapping  was
closer. "Let me in."

The door  opened, a  rattling of  the latch.  She faced  a daggerpoint,  a  half
dressed man wild-eyed and suspecting murder. She showed her empty hands.

"Trouble?" Tygoth said behind her. "No  trouble," Vis said, and reached out  and
caught her by the wrist in a  crushing grip, pulling her inside, into the  dark.
He closed the door.

                             *         *         *

They brought Mor-am through the  dark muffled in a foul-smelling,  greasy cloak;
gagged and with a bandage  over his eyes and his  hands so long tied behind  his
back that they had gone beyond acute  pain to a general numb hurt that  involved
his chest and arms  as well. He would  have run but they  had had his knees  and
ankles tied too, and now  he was doing well to  walk at all, with his  knees and
ankles beyond  any sensation  of balance,  just stabbing  pain. They  jerked him
along in the  open air, and  he remembered the  hawkmask they had  nailed to the
pole near the  bridge; but they  had not yet  hurt him, not  really, and he  was
paralysed with hope, that this was all some irritation of the men he worked for;
or fear, that they  were his own brothers  and sisters, who had  found out about
his treason; or, or, or-His mind was in tatters. They were near the bridge  now.
He heard  the moving  of the  water far  away at  his left,  heard the mutter of
thunder, that confounded itself with the sounds about him. The image flashed  to
him of a sodden body crucified against a pole, in the early morning rain.

                             *         *         *

"Just put more men on it," the  Stepson said, never stirring from where he  sat,
in the too great warmth of the room. The naivete of the operation appalled  him.
But there were necessities and places too  little apt for his kind. "If you  can
do it without sounding the alarm through every alley in the Downwind." Something
had  gone  wrong.  The  abruptness of  the  vanishing,  uncharacteristic  of the
informer,  smelted  of  interventions.  "This  had  better  not  go  amiss," his
companion said meaningfully to the man who sat and sweated across the table. "It
was far  too productive.  And you've  botched the  other avenue tonight, haven't
you?  That  contact  more than  failed.  It  went totally  sour.  We  don't like
incompetence."

                             *         *         *

"I haven't seen  him," Mradhon Vis  said, in the  dark, in the  narrow room. The
woman- Moria-had a knife; he  was sure of that, sure  where she was too, by  her
breathing. He kept where he was, having all the territory measured, thinking, in
one discrete side of his mind, that he dealt with a fool or they thought he  was
one, a solitary woman coming at him like this.

But a vision of  dark robes flashed through  the dark of his  vision, with cold,
with the scent of musk;  she was solitary, female, and  he held in his hand  the
knife he slept with, safer than women.

"Why didn't you go to your own?" he  sneered at her. "Or is this the testing?  I
don't like games, bitch."

"They've cut us off." The voice quavered and steadied. He heard her move at  him
and brought the  knife up.  It met  her body  and she  stopped, dead still, hard
breathing.  "You  took our  pay."  It was  a  hiss through  clenched  teeth. "Do
something to earn it. Help me find him."

"Smells, woman. It smells all the way."

"He's into  something. He's  dealing in  something. Krrf.  Gods know  what." The
voice cracked. "Vis. Come with me. Now. After this- I'll swear to you you'll get
money. You'll be in. I've got contacts I'll swear for you. Get my brother.  He's
dropped through a crack  somewhere. Just come with  me. Riverside. We've got  to
find him."

"How much."

"Name it. I'll get it."

A woman who was faithful. To something.  He stared at the dark, doubting all  of
it, standing in the den Mama Becho owned and listening to the promise of gold to
get him out of it.

"Back off,"  he said,  shoving her  away, not  wanting her  knife in him, and he
reckoned it was drawn.  "I'll get my shirt.  Don't make any moves.  Just tell me
where you reckon to look for this lost lamb."

"Riverside." She caught her breath, a moving of cloth in the dark. "That's where
they turn up-the hawkmasks they murder."

He stopped, his shirt half on. He  cursed himself, thought of the gold and  made
his mind up to it. "You'll pay for this one."

                             *         *         *

Mor-am kicked.  They jerked  him off  his feet  and carried  him, battering  him
against some  narrow passage  as he  struggled, with  the reek  of wet stone and
human filth and suddenly warm and windless  air. They set him on his feet  again
and jerked the blindfold off. The room came clear in a haze of lamplight, a cot,
a ragged small man sitting on it  crosslegged amid a horde of others, the  human
refuse of the Downwind standing and  squatting about the room. Beggars. He  felt
hard fingers working at the  knot at the back of  his skull, freeing him of  the
gag: he choked  and tried to  spit out the  dirty wad and  the same hard fingers
pried it from his  mouth, but his hands  they had no intention  to release. They
only let him stand on his own, and his knees wanted to give under him.

"Hawkmask," the man said from the bed, "my name is Moruth. Have you heard it?"

No, he said,  but his tongue  stuck to his  mouth and muffled  it. He shook  his
head.

"Right  now,"  Moruth said  quietly,  an unpleasant  voice  with the  accent  of
Sanctuary's Maze and  not the Downwind,  "right now you'd  be thinking that  you
shouldn't know that name, that taking that blindfold off means you're already  a
dead man and we don't care.what you see. Might be. That might be. Turn around."

He stood still. His mind refused to work.

"Turn 'round."

Hands jerked him about, facing the closed  door. A mask was pinned there with  a
heavy iron nail. Terror came over him, blank terror, image of Brannas nailed  to
the pole. They spun him about again facing Moruth.

"You want to live," Moruth said. "You're thinking now you'd really like to live,
and that this is an awful place to die." Moruth chuckled, a dry and ugly  sound.
"It is. Sit down-sit down, hawkmask."

He looked, reflexively. There was nowhere. A crutch hooked his ankle and jerked.
He hit the dirt floor  on his side and rolled,  fighting to get his knees  under
him.

"Let me tell you a story," Moruth  said softly, "hawkmask. Let me tell you  what
this Jubal did. Remember? Kill a few beggars, he said, and put the informer-sign
on them, so's the riffraff knows what it is to cross Jubal the slaver, ain't  it
so?" The accent drifted to Downwind's nasal twang. "Ain't that what he did?  And
he killed us, killed  boys and girls that  never done no hurt  to him-to impress
them as might want to squeal on his business. It weren't enough he offs his own,
no, no, he cut the throats of mine, hawkmask. You know something about that."

He knew. He shivered. "I don't. I don't know anything about it.-Listen,  listen,
you want names-I can give you names; I can find out for you, only you let me out
of here-"

Moruth leaned forward, arms on ragged knees, grinned and looked appallingly lean
and hungry-

"I think we've got one what'll talk, doesn't we?"

                             *         *         *

Haught flinched in his concealment beneath the bridge. Screams reached him,  not
fright, but a  crescendo of them,  that was pain;  and they kept  on for a time.
Then silence. He hugged himself  and shivered. They began again,  different this
time, lacking distinction.

He bolted, having had  enough, finding no more  assurance even in the  dark; and
the thunder cracked and the wind skirled, blowing debris along the shore.

Of a sudden something rose up in his way, a human form in the ubiquitous rags of
Downwind, but with an incongruous long blade shining pure as silver in the murk.
Haught shied and dodged, ex-dancer, leapt an unexpected bit of debris and darted
into  the  alley that  offered  itself, alley  after  alley, desperate,  hearing
someone whistle behind him, a signal of some kind; and then someone blocked  the
alley ahead.

He zigged  and dodged,  feinted and  lost: the  cloak caught,  and the fastening
held; he hit the wall and the ground, and a hand closed at his throat.

                             *         *         *

"Escaped slave," Moria said, crouching by the man they had knocked down. She had
her knife out, aimed  for the ribs; but  the throat was easier  and quieter, and
Mradhon was in the way. "Kill him. We can't afford the noise."

"Something started him," Mradhon said. The slave babbled a language not  Rankan,
not Ilsigi, nothing she knew, sobbing for air. "Shut up," Mradhon said,  shaking
him and letting hishand from the man's throat. Mradhon said something then,  the
same way, and  the slave stopped  struggling and edged  up against the  wall. He
talked, an urgent hiss in the gloom, and Mradhon kept the knife at his throat.

"What's that?" Moria asked, clenching her  own hilt in a sweating fist.  "What's
that babble?"

"Keep still," Mradhon said, reached with his fist and the hilt of his knife  and
touched the slave gently on the side of the cheek. "Come show us, seh? Come show
us the place. Fast."

"What place?" Moria demanded, shoving Mradhon's arm.

Mradhon ignored her, hauling the slave to his feet. She got up too, knife aimed,
but not meaning to use it. The slave had straightened up like a human being,  if
a frightened one, and moved free of Mradhon's grip, travelling with lithe speed.
Mradhon followed and she did, as far as the opening of the alley.

"River," the slave said, delaying there. "By the bridge."

"Move," Mradhon said.

The slave rolled his head aside, staring back at them, muttered something.

"Seh,"  Mradhon repeated.  "Move it,  man." Mradhon  set an  empty hand  on  his
shoulder. The slave gave a gasp for air like a diver going under and headed down
the next alley, stopping again when they reached a turning.

"Lost," the slave said, seeming to panic. "I can't remember; and there were  men
men with swords-and the screams-It was the house by the bridge, that one-"

"Get moving," Moria hissed frantically and jabbed him with the blade. The  slave
flinched, but Mradhon stayed her hand with a grip that almost broke her wrist.

"He's likely still alive," Mradhon said. "You want my help, woman, you keep that
knife out of my way; and his."

She nodded, wild with rage and the delay. "Then quit stopping."

"Haught," Mradhon said. "Stay with us."

They went, running now, with no pauses, down the twisting ways even she did  not
know; but it was Mradhon's territory: they  passed through a shanty alleyway  so
close they had to turn their shoulders and came out upon sight of the bridge.

It was quiet, excepting the wind, the dry, muttering thunder. A lightning  flash
threw the  pilings of  the bridge  and the  house by  the pier into an unnatural
blink of day, exposed a bridge vacant of traffic.

"There," said the slave, "there, that was the place-"

"Better stay back here," Mradhon said.

"It's quiet," Moria said. Her voice shook despite herself. "Man, hurry up."  She
pushed at  him and  got shoved  in turn.  He caught  a fistful  of her shirt and
jerked at her.

"Don't shove. Get your mind working, woman, cool down, or I'm off this."

"I'll get round by the windows," she said, shivering. "I'll find out. But if you
run out on me-"

"I'll be working  up the other  side. Haught and  I. If it's  even odds we  take
them. If it isn't we pull off, hear, and refigure."

She nodded and caught her breath, trotted off with a looseness of her knees  she
had not felt since  her first job; felt  as vulnerable as then,  everything gone
wrong. She sorted her mind into order, pretending it was not Mor-am in there, in
that long quiet, where screams had been before.

She took a back alley, disturbing only an urchin-girl from her rest, going round
the long way, where boards might gape  and afford sight or sound, but none  did.
She kept  going, focussed  now, lost  in the  moment-by-moment calculations, and
found the windows she hoped for, shuttered, but there was a crack.

She listened,  and something  went twisted  inside. It  was a  quiet voice, that
described streets with deadly accuracy, a strained voice that told no lies.

... Mor-am's. Giving away all they had.

And more than three of them in there.

"There's another house," her brother  volunteered all too eagerly, "by  the west
side. There's a way  from there out into  a burned house....We used  that in the
old days...."

Shut up, she wished him, having difficulty holding her breath.

Something moved behind her. She whirled, knife thrusting, and got the man in the
belly, leapt, and saw others.

"Ai!" she yelled, slashing wild, a howl  that was the last shred of honor:  It's
all up, it's done- She tried to run.

There were still more, arrived from out of nowhere, a sweep of men and knives in
the  dark, rushing  the house  and alley  from the  riverside. She  stabbed  and
killed; the urchin-girl shrieked and  ran into shadows as beggars  scattered and
guardsmen shouted orders.

Fire streaked  Moria's side.  She slashed  and stumbled  back; and  back as wood
cracked and the house  erupted with shouting and  with knives, and the  back way
opened, pouring out bodies.

She fell.  Someone stepped  on her  back as  she lay  there, and  she braced and
rolled against the shanty wall as  the battle tended the other way.  She crawled
for the alley, scrambling to her feet as she reached the comer of the shanty.

Someone grabbed her from the back and dragged her aside; the slave Haught pinned
her knifehand under his arm and a  hand muffled her as they hit the  dark leanto
together, a knot of three.

"Keep low," Mradhon hissed in her ear as tumult passed their hiding-hole. A  man
died not far from  them in the first  pattering of rain. She  lay still, feeling
the pain in her side when she breathed, feeling for the rest as if she had  been
clubbed.

Mor-am?

Fire glared, a quick flaring up of orange light in the direction of the shanty.

She struggled then. The two of them held her.

"You can't help him," Mradhon said, his arms locked round her.

"She's hurt," said Haught. "She's bleeding."

They tended her, the two of them. She hardly cared.

                             *         *         *

"It's  him," the  Stepson said,  looking disdainfully  at the  human wreck  they
deposited on the road across the bridge. Rain washed the wounds, dark threads of
blood trailing in a wash of water over the skin. The guard toed the informer  in
the side, elicited a little  independent movement of the  arm, lit in  lightning
flashes.  "Oh,  treat him  tenderly,"  the Stepson  said.  "Very tenderly.  He's
valuable. Get a blanket round him."

"We lost the rest," his companion said tautly. There was rage beneath his tone.

The Stepson looked up. A shadow stood  there in the lightnings, in the rain,  an
unlikely cloaked shape, a darkness by the bridge.

When the lightning next flashed it was  gone. Fire danced on the water, full  of
tricks and shadows on this side of  the bank. The blaze might have taken  all of
Downwind, but for the rain. It was dying even now.

Six horsemen thundered  across the bridge  from Sanctuary to  Downwind, securing
the road.

"You'd better  send more,"  the garrison  officer said.  "They're like rats over
there, small but a lot of them. You- saw that."

The Stepson fixed the man with a chill, calm eye. "I saw catastrophe. Two of  us
could have  turned the  town upside  down if  that were  the object. Perhaps you
misunderstood. But I rather doubt it.  Six could raze the town. But  that wasn't
what we wanted, was it?" He looked down at the moaning informer, then  collected
his companion and walked away.

                             *         *         *

"Drink,"  Mradhon said.  Moria drank,  holding the  cup herself  this time,  and
stared blearily at the  two men, Mradhon leaning  over her, Haught over  against
the wall.  It was  decent food  they gave  her. She  wondered where they got the
money, dimly, in that vague way she wondered about anything. She was curious why
these two kept treating her as they did,  when it cost them, or why two men  she
had never met had  proved dependable when those  she had known best  had not. It
confounded her. They never  used that language they  both spoke, not since  that
night. Haught had put  on freeman's clothing, if  only that of Downwind.  He had
scars. She had  seen them, when  he dressed. So  did Mradhon Vis,  but different
ones, made with knives.

So did she, inside and out. Maybe that was what they had in common, the three of
them. Or that  they wanted what  she knew, names  and places. Or  that they were
just different, thinking differently, the way people did who had not grown up in
the Downwind, and that kind of maze of foreignness she never tried to figure.

She just took it that they wanted something; and so did she, which was to fill a
nebulous and empty spot and to keep fed  and warm and breathing.

Mor-am was dead. She hoped so. Or things were worse than she had figured.

A FUGITIVE ART

by Diana L. Paxson

The fleeing King ran towards the Gate, the strained lines of his back and  arms,
and the bunched  muscles of his  thighs, eloquent of  desperation. His face  was
shadowed and his crown  rolled in the dust;  behind him lay a  confusion of arms
and weapons, and  the bloodied sword  of his conqueror  raised against a  sunset
sky.

"And here we have the last King of Ilsig, pursued by Ataraxis the Great. . .  ."
Crimson damask  rustled stiffly  as Coricidius  the Vizier  motioned towards the
mural  that  glowed  on  the  ancient wall.  He  bowed  to  the  Prince and  his
companions. The other guests at the reception stood in a respectful  half-circle
on the chequered marble of the floor.

Lalo the Limner, trailing self-consciously  a few steps behind, squinted  at the
painting and wondered  if he had  made the sky  too lurid after  all. What would
they think,  these great  lords of  Ranke who  had been  sent by  the Emperor to
evaluate Sanctuary's preparations for the war?

Prince Kadakithis flushed with pleasure and peered more closely at the figure of
his  ancestor.  Coricidius fixed  Lalo  with an  eye  like a  moulting  eagle's,
summoning him. His aged skin was pallid above the vehemence of his gown.

He should  not wear  that color,  thought Lalo,  suppressing an  impulse to duck
behind one of the gilded pillars.  Coricidius always affected him that way,  and
he had almost refused the task of refurbishing the Presence Hall for this  visit
because  of  it.  But however  discredited  the  Vizier might  be  in  Ranke, in
Sanctuary his power was second only to that of the Prince-Governor (indeed, some
said that his influence counted for more).

"Remarkable-such  freshness  of line,  such  originality!" One  of  the Imperial
Commissioners bent to examine the brushwork, chins quivering with enthusiasm.

"My Lord  Raximander, thank  you. May  I present  the artist!  Master Lalo  is a
native of Sanctuary ..."

Lalo hid  his paint-stained  hands behind  his back  as they  all looked at him,
curious as if he had been in Meyne's Menagerie. It must be only too obvious that
he lived in the city-the battered  buildings through which the painted King  was
fleeing belonged to the Maze.

Exuding attar of roses and geniality, Lord Raximander turned to Lalo.

"You have great talent, but  why do you stay here?  You are like a pearl  on the
neck of a whore!"

Lalo stared at him, then realized  that the man was not mocking  him-neither the
Prince nor the Vizier had ever  ventured west of the Processional, and  the Maze
had not  been included  on the  Commissioners' sight-seeing  tour. He  stifled a
grin, thinking of these popinjays at the  mercy of some of his old friends  from
the Vulgar Unicorn-like  alley-cats with some  Lady's pet love-bird,  they would
be.

The  other  Commissioners were  looking  at the  painting  now-the General,  the
Archpriest Arbalest, Zanderei the Provisioner and an undistinguished relative of
the Emperor. Lalo listened to them  commenting on its naive charm and  primitive
vigor and sighed.

"Indeed-" came a soft voice close  to his ear. "What recognition can  you expect
in this city of thieves? In Ranke they would know how to appreciate you. ..."

Lalo jumped,  hearing his  own thoughts  vocalized, and  saw a  slight man  with
clipped  greying hair  and a  skin weathered  brown, draped  in dove-grey  silk.
Zanderei... after a moment  his memory supplied the  name, and for a  moment  he
imagined he  recognized amused  understanding in  the Commissioner's  eyes. Then
blandness masked them, and  as Lalo opened his  mouth to reply, Zanderei  turned
away.

A  meek  nonenity,  Lalo  had  thought  him  when  the  Prince  introduced   the
Commissioners to them all, and now Zanderei was a mouse once more. Lalo frowned,
trying to understand.

A youthful eunuch, somewhat  overaware of the splendor  of his new purple  satin
and fringe, approached with  a tray of pewter  goblets. It was wine  of Caronne,
the whisper ran, cooled by snow that had been packed in sawdust all the way from
the northern mountains whose possession was now being disputed so bitterly.  The
Commissioners  took new  goblets,  and Coricidius motioned the slave away.

Lalo, whose cup was almost empty, looked after him longingly, but did not  quite
have the confidence to call him back again. I should have used myself as a mode]
for the cowardly Ilsig King, he thought bitterly. Too many people here  remember
when  I  was  drinking myself  to  death  and Gilla  took  in  laundry from  the
merchants' wives, and I am afraid they will laugh at me. ...

And yet  he had  painted the  walls of  the Temple  of the  Rankan gods,  he had
decorated this hall, and the Prince  himself had complimented him. Why could  he
not be  satisfied? Once  my dream  was to  paint the  truth beneath the skin, he
thought then. What do I want now?

The air pulsed with polite conversation as rich merchants of Sanctuary pretended
they were accustomed to such affairs, the Rankans tried to look as if they  were
enjoying this one, and the Prince and his officers uneasily enjoyed the Empire's
belated recognition while wondering whether it was to their advantage.

Except for Coricidius-Lalo reminded himself. Rumor had it that the Vizier  would
stop at nothing to spend what remained of his old age back in the capital.

A  wave  of  scent  set  Lalo  to  coughing,  and  he  turned  to  confront Lord
Raximander's beaming face.

"Why not return to the Capital  with me?" the Commissioner said expansively.  "A
new talent! My wife would be so pleased."

Lalo smiled back, his vision expanding in images of marble columns and pavements
of porphyry  that far  outshone the  face-lifted splendors  of Prince Kittycat's
hall. Would Gilla like to live in a palace?

"But we need not waste the few weeks I have to spend here-"

Lalo's skin chilled as Lord Raximander went on.

"A picture of me, for instance-you could  do that here in the palace as  a small
demonstration of your skill."

Before Raximander had  finished, Lalo was  shaking his head.  "Someone must have
misinformed you-I never do portraits!"

Some of the others, attention attracted by the raised voices, had drifted toward
the mural again. Zanderei was watching with a faint smile.

Coricidius motioned towards the wall with a bony finger. "Who poses for all your
pictures, then?"

Lalo twitched  like a  nervous horse,  trying to  find an  answer that would not
alienate them. . . Anything but the truth, which was that a sorcerer's spell had
enabled-nay, compelled him,  to portray the  true nature of  his sitters' souls.
After a few disastrous attempts  to paint Sanctuary's wealthy, Lalo  had learned
to choose his models from those among the poor who were still uncorrupted.

"My lord, that one was done from imagination," he said truthfully, for the Ilsig
King had been inspired by his memories of fleeing through the Maze just ahead of
local bullies when he was a boy. He did  not tell them that he had got the  Hell
Hound Quag to boast of  his feats on campaign while  he posed for the figure  of
the Rankan Emperor.

One of the eunuch  pages scurried towards them  and Coricidius bent to  hear his
message. Released from his gaze, Lalo stepped backward with a sigh.

"You are too sensitive, Master  Limner," Zan-derei said softly. "You  must learn
to accept what each day brings. In these times, ideals are an expensive luxury."

"Do you want a portrait too?" Lalo asked bitterly.

"Oh, I would not be worth the trouble-" Zan-derei smiled. "Besides, I know how I
appear to the world."

Cymbals crashed, and as Lalo's startled pulse began to slow he realized that the
other end of the room was flaring  with the colored silks of the dancing  girls.
He should have expected it, having watched them rehearse almost every  afternoon
while he worked on the paintings here.

Such  a commotion,  he thought,  for a  few strangers  who will  make notes   on
Sanctuary as most artists make portraits-recording  only the surface of  reality
and then will be gone.

Happily abandoning  their conversations,  the Commissioners  let the purple-clad
pages usher  them to  couches below  the dais  on which  the Prince  was already
enthroned.  The dancers,  chosen from  among the  more talented  of  Kadakithis'
lesser concubines, moved sinuously through the ornate topography of their dance,
pausing only from time to time to detach a veil.

Trembling with reaction, Lalo drifted towards the row of pillars that  supported
the vaulted and domed  ceiling. Someone had left  a goblet on the  marble bench,
nearly full. Lalo took a long swallow, then made himself put it down again.  His
heart was pounding as loudly as the drums.

Why am  I so  afraid? he  wondered, and  then wondered  how he could be anything
else, in a  town where footpads  dogged your steps  by day, and  if you heard  a
scream after dark you ran not to help but to bar your door. It must be better in
the Capital... there must be somewhere Gilla and I could live in safety.

He lifted the  goblet once more,  but the wine  tasted sour and  he set it  back
half-full. Coricidius would not care if he left the celebration now that he  had
exhibited both the pictures and their creator. Lalo wanted to go home.

He got  to his  feet and  stepped around  the pillar,  then halted,  startled as
something in front of him seemed  to move. After a moment he  laughed, realizing
that it  was only  his reflection  in the  polished marble  that faced the wall.
Dimly he could  see the glitter  of embroidery on  his festival jerkin,  and the
sheen on his full breeches, but they could not disguise the stoop of his  narrow
shoulders or  the way  his belly  had begun  to round.  Even the thinning of his
ginger hair was  somehow mirrored there.  But through some  quality of the  dark
marble or some trick of  the light, Lalo's face was  as shadowed as that of  the
Ilsig King.

                             *         *         *

Lalo worked his way  around the outside of  the Presence Hall to  the side door.
The corridor seemed quiet after the  clamor of music and the wine-fueled  babble
of conversation, and the government offices that occupied the spaces between the
Hall and the outside of the Palace were empty and dark. As he had expected,  the
side-door leading to  the courtyard was  bolted tight. With  a sigh he  went the
other way, passed through the Hall of Justice that fronted the Palace as quickly
as he could,  and out through  one of the  great double doors  that led onto the
porch and broad stair.

Torches had been fixed in  the pillars at the top  and bottom of the stair,  and
their fitful light gleamed on the armour of the guards who stood at attention on
each of the four wide steps, and glowed on the purple pennon tied to each spear,
then rayed out across  the inner courtyard in  uneven ribbons of brightness  and
shadow, as if the soldiers had become part of the Palace architecture.

Lalo paused for a  moment, noting the effect.  Then he saw that  the first guard
was Quag, nodded, and received in answer the flicker of an eyelid in the  wooden
patience of the Hell-Hound's face.

Lalo's  sandals crunched  on grit  as he  crossed the  flagstones of  the  inner
courtyard, punctuating the patter of  applause that drifted from the  Palace, at
this distance as faint as the sound of wavelets on a shore. He supposed that the
concubines had  stripped off  their final  veils. He  must remember  not to show
Gilla the sketches he had made of them practicing.

One of Honald's many  nephews was on duty  in the guardbox set  into the massive
archway of the Palace Gate. Tonight the double doors were opened wide, and  Lalo
passed through unquestioned, though he remembered a time when all he owned would
not have  been enough  to bribe  the Gatekeeper  to let  him enter here. He felt
dizzy, although he had hardly had any wine.

Why can't I be satisfied with what I have? he wondered. What is wrong with me?

He crossed  the expanse  of Vashanka's  Square more  quickly, heading diagonally
towards  the West  Gate and  the Governor's  Walk. For  a moment  the east  wind
brought him the  rank, fuggy smell  of the Zoo  Gardens, then it  shifted and he
felt on his face the cool breath of the sea.

He halted just outside the Gate and  with a sigh reversed his cloak so  that its
dull inner  lining concealed  his festival  clothes. It  was well  known in  the
appropriate places that Lalo  never carried money-in the  old days he had  never
had any, and  now Gilla controlled  the family treasury-  but he would  not want
anyone to make a mistake in the dark.

A waxing moon was already brightening the heavens, and the rooftops of the  city
made a jagged  silhouette against the  stars. Not since  he was a  boy, slipping
from his pallet behind his father's workbench to join his friends' adventur-ing,
had Lalo seen  Sanctuary at this  hour with sober  eyes. Just now,  with all its
sordidness obscured by  shadow, it seemed  to him to  be possessed of  a kind of
haphazard but enduring integrity.

His feet had carried him almost  to Shadow Lane without his attention  when they
encountered something soft. He leaped awkwardly aside to avoid stepping into the
contents of a honeypot  which someone had emptied  into the street to  stink and
steam, until the rain washed it  into the city's underground maze of  sewers and
it was carried off by the tide. He had been into those tunnels once, on a  dare,
through an entry  shaft near the  Vulgar Unicorn. He  wondered if it  were still
there....

What  am  I doing,  getting  sentimental about  Sanctuary/  thought Lalo  as  he
inspected the sole of his sandal to see if any ordure remained. I must have  had
more wine than I thought! He had heard that in Ranke, armies of street  cleaners
scoured the streets every night to rid the city of the refuse of the day. ...

He remembered the flatteries of Lord Raxi-mander and that strange man, Zanderei,
and he remembered the days when his one desire had been to get out of Sanctuary.
It seemed to him that  his life had consisted of  cycles in which he dreamed  of
escape, found  new hope  for life  in Sanctuary,  discovered that  his hope  was
unjustified, and began to plan flight once more.

This last time, when he had found that if he stuck to mythological subjects  and
chose his models carefully he could turn Enas Yorl's gift to a blessing, he  had
been sure that his troubles were over.  But now here he was, bewailing his  fate
again.

I should have learned better by now  ... he thought morosely, but what is  there
to Jearn? Wii] anything  but death stop this  wheel or make it  take a different
path?

Houses leaned close together above him now, cutting off the sky. In some of  the
windows lamplight glowed, though most of them were tightly shuttered, edged  and
chinked with light that dappled the worn cobbles below. Lalo winced as a  murmur
of voices exploded into abuse. A mangy dog that had been nosing at something  in
the gutters looked up at the noise, then went back to its meal.

Lalo shuddered, visualizing death as a starving jackal-hound waiting to  spring.
There must  be some  other way-he  told himself,  for however  much he hated his
life, he feared death more.

Human shadows slid from  the shadows behind him,  and he forced himself  to walk
steadily, knowing that at  this hour, in this  part of Sanctuary, it  was indeed
death to  be  visibly  afraid.  By  daylight  the  area  shared  in  the   quasi
respectability of the Bazaar, but by night it belonged to the Maze.

From ahead came the  sound of drunken song  and a burst of  laughter. Torchlight
danced  around  the corner  followed  by the  singers,  a group  of  mercenaries
emboldened by  numbers to  make the  pilgrimage to  the ale  casks of the Vulgar
Unicorn.

As the light reached them, the  shapes that had followed Lalo slipped  back into
alleys and doorways, and Lalo himself  edged beneath the overhang of a  tenement
until the soldiers had gone by.  He had almost reached Slippery Street  now, and
the cul-de-sac which for twenty years had been his home.

Now, at last, Lalo allowed  himself to hasten, for in  all the ups and downs  of
his fortunes there had been one constant, and that was the knowledge that he had
a home, and that Gilla waited for him there.

The third step  of the staircase  squeaked, as did  the seventh and  the eighth.
When Lalo had become  fashionable and had, for  the first time in  his life, had
money, he and Gilla  had bought the building  in which they lived  and repaired,
among other  things, the  staircase. But  the stairs  still squeaked,  and Lalo,
hearing the lullaby  Gilla was singing  to their youngest  child halt a  moment,
knew that she had heard him coming home.

Breathing a little faster  than he would have  liked after the climb,  he opened
the door.

"You're home early!" The floor quivered beneath her steps as Gilla came  through
the door of what had once been the adjoining apartment. Lalo saw beyond her  the
curly head of their youngest, whom they still called the baby even though he was
now nearly two years old, and the outstretched arm of an older child.

"Is everything all right?" Lalo unfastened his cloak and hung it on the peg.

"It was only a  nightmare-" softly she closed  the door. "And what  about you? I
was sure you  would be at  the Palace all  night, imbibing the  wine of paradise
with all  the great  ones and  their gilded  ladies." The  carved chair  groaned
faintly as she sat down and lifted  her massive arms to pat the elaborate  curls
and coils of her hair.

"There weren't any ladies-" tactfully he passed over the dancing girls, "just an
unlikely mixture of military  and priests and government  men, like a stew  from
the Bazaar!"

She set her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand. "If it was  such
a bore why did you  stay so long? Don't tell  me they wouldn't let you  go?" Her
eyes  narrowed  and  he  flushed  a  little  beneath  the  acuity  of  her gaze.
Deliberately he began to unhook his vest, waiting for her to speak again.

"Something happened-" she said then. "Something's troubling you."

He draped his vest across another chair and sat down in it with a sigh.

"Gilla, what  would you  say to  the idea  of leaving  Sanctuary?" Beyond her he
could see his  first study for  the picture of  Sabellia which graced  the great
Temple now. Gilla had been his model, and for a moment he saw a double image  of
woman and Goddess, and her bulk took on a monumental dignity.

She put down her arm and sat up straight. "Now, when we are secure at last?"

"How secure can anyone be, here?" He hunched forward, running stubby craftsman's
fingers through his  thinning hair. Then  he told her  how they had  praised his
picture, and what the future Lord Raximander had offered him.

"Ranke!" she exclaimed  when he had  finished. "Clean streets  and quiet nights!
But what would I do  there? All the fine  ladies  would laugh at me...." For   a
moment she looked curiously vulnerable, despite her size. Then her eyes met his.
"But you said he wanted a portrait-Lalo, you can't do that-you'll end up in  the
Imperial dungeons, not the court!"

"Even there?  Surely there  must be  some honest  men and  virtuous women at the
heart of the Empire!" Lalo said wistfully.

"Will you never grow up? We are  doing very well as we are-you have  a position,
people like what you do, and  the children will be well-apprenticed and  married
when the time comes. And  now you want to go  chase some other dream? Why  can't
you make up your mind?"

He put his hands over his aching eyes and shook his head. If only he  knew-there
was something  missing in  him, something  that he  sought in  each new thing he
tried to do ... What use has it been to have my heart's desire? he thought, if I
myself am still the same?

After a little he heard the chair scrape and felt her coming to him, and  sighed
again, more deeply, as the strength  and softness of her arms enclosed  him. She
had scented her skin with oil of  sandalwood, and he could feel the opulence  of
her body through the thin silk of the night-robe she wore.

It changed  nothing, but  in her  arms he  could forget  his perplexities for at
least a little while. Gilla kissed him on his bald spot and drew away, and  with
a sense of having made a truce with fate he followed her into the other room.

                             *         *         *

"Thieves!"

Lalo jerked upright, shocked from sleep by Gilla's scream and the crash that had
shaken the room. Was  it morning? But everything  was still dark! He  rubbed his
eyes, still half-drugged by dreams of marble terraces and applause.

Shadows moved and  feet that no  longer troubled to  be stealthy thudded  on the
floor. . . hard hands grasped Lalo's shoulders and he cried out. Then  something
hit the side of his head and he sagged against the hard hands that prisoned him.

"Murderers! Assassins!"

His head still ringing, Lalo recognized Gilla in the voice, and in the dark bulk
that heaved upward  from the bed  to fling another  assailant against the  wall.
Water spattered his cheek and he smelt  roses as the vase that had stood  on the
bedside table flew past him  and shattered against someone's skull.  Men caromed
into each other swearing as Gilla groped forward. There was no sound from  their
neighbors-he had  not really  expected it-they  would ask  their questions  when
morning came.

"In Vashanka's name, somebody silence the sow!" In the half-light a drawn  sword
gleamed dimly.

"No!" he croaked, gasped in air  and cried out, "Gilla, stop fighting-there  are
too many-Gilla, please!"

There was  a final  convulsion, then  silence. Flint  rasped steel  and a little
light sparked into life. Gilla lay sprawled like a fallen monument. For a moment
Lalo felt as if a great hand had closed on his chest. Then there was movement in
the tangle of limbs. Gilla rolled  over and levered herself to her  feet without
spending a glance on the man who had cushioned her fall.

"Savankala save me,  she's squashed me  flat . .  . Sir, help  me-don't leave me
here...."

Sir? But the man on the floor was a Hell-Hound-Lalo recognized him now.

"I don't understand..."he said  aloud, and as he  turned the light was  quenched
and he blinked at darkness again.

"Carry him," said a deep voice. "And you, woman, be still if you want to see him
whole again."

Sick from the blow and aching from  rough handling, Lalo did not resist as  they
shoved his  sandals onto  his feet  and thrust  an old  smock over  his head and
marched him along the empty streets back to the Palace. But instead of  rounding
the outer wall to the dungeons, as Lalo had dismally expected, they hustled  him
through the Palace  Gate and along  the side of  the building and  down a little
staircase to the basement.

Then,  still without  a word  of explanation,  he was  thrust into  a dank  hole
smelling of dry rot and full of things to stumble over to shiver, and wonder why
they had brought him  here, and gnaw his  paint-stained fingers while he  waited
for dawn ...

                             *         *         *

"Wake up, you Wrigglie scum? The Lord wants to talk to you-"

Lalo surfaced, groaning, from  a dream in which  he had been taken  prisoner and
dragged through the night  until... Something hit him  hard in the ribs  and  he
opened his eyes.

It was morning, and it had not been a dream. He saw flaking white-washed  walls,
and splintered crates and  furniture heaped on the  bare earth of the  floor. It
was not a prison  then. A little pallid  light filtered down to  him through one
barred window set high in the wall.

He forced himself to sit up and face his tormentors.

"Quag!"

At Lalo's exclamation, the Hell-Hound's pitted-leather face became, if possible,
a richer shade of terra cotta, and  his eyes slid away from the painter's  gaze.
Lalo followed the  look to the  doorway, and suddenly  began to understand  what
power had brought him here, though he was as far as ever from comprehending why.

Coricidius hunched in  the doorway like  a sick eagle,  with his cloak  clutched
around him against  the early morning  chill, and a  face like curdled  milk. He
eyed Lalo sourly, hawked and spat, and then stepped stiffly into the room.

"My Lord, am I  under arrest? I've done  nothing-why have you brought  me here?"
babbled Lalo.

"I want to  commission  some portraits ..."  The  lined face  twitched with  the
faintest of malicious smiles.

"What?"

Coricidius snorted in disgust and motioned to one of the guards to set a folding
camp-stool  in the  middle of  the room.  Joint by  joint, the  old man  lowered
himself until he settled fully upon it with a sigh.

"I have no time to argue with  you, dauber. You say you don't do  portraits, but
you will do them for me."

Lalo shook his head.   "My lord, I can't   do pictures of real   people...  they
hate them... I'm no good at it."

"You're too good at it." Coricidius corrected him. "I know your secret, you see.
I've had your models followed, and talked to them. I could kill you, but if  you
refuse me, I have only to tell a  few of your former patrons and they will  save
me the toil."

Lalo clutched  at the  folds of  his smock  to hide  the trembling of his hands.
"Then I am doomed-if I do portraits for you, my secret will be known as soon  as
they are seen."

"Ah, but these pictures are not for public display." Coricidius hunched forward.
"I want you to make a likeness  of each of the Commissioners who have  come fron
Ranke. I shall tell them that it is a surprise for the Emperor-that no one  must
see it until  it  is done ...  and  before that  happens, some  accident  to the
painting is certain to occur. .  . ."The Vizier was shaking with  subtle tremors
that  ran along  each limb  to end   in a  grimace which  Lalo took  minutes  to
recognize as laughter.

"But  not  before I  have  seen it,"  the  old man  went  on, "and  learned  the
weaknesses these peacocks  hide  from men ...  They  have come  to power  in the
Court since my time, but once I know their souls I can constrain them to help me
return to favor again!"

Lalo shivered. The proposal had a  certain superficial logic, but there were  so
many things that could go wrong.

"But perhaps I have simply not yet  found the right stick to make the  donkey go
..."  Coricidius went  on. "They  say you  love your  wife-" he  peered at  Lalo
disbelievingly.  "Shall we  blind her  and send  her to  the Street  of the  Red
Lanterns while we keep you prisoner?"

I should have gone  away ... thought Lalo.   I should have taken  Gilla  and the
children out of here as  soon as I had the   money to go... Once he  had seen  a
rabbit transfixed by the shadow of a  stooping hawk. I am that rabbit, and  I am
lost ... he thought.

And after  all, the  internal dialogue  went on,  what are  all these  plots and
counterplots to me?  If 1 can  help this Rankan  buzzard return to  his own foul
nest then at least Sanctuary will be free of him!

"All right ... I will do what you say..." Lalo said aloud.

                              *        *        *

Lalo, brow furrowed and an extra brush held between his teeth, leaned closer  to
the canvas, concentrating on the line the soft brush made. When he was painting,
his  hand  and  eye became  a  single  organ in  which  visual  impressions were
transmitted to the fingers  and to the brush  which was their extension  without
mediation by the consciousness. Line, mass, shape and color, all were factors in
a pattern which must  be replicated on the  canvas. The eye checked  the work of
the  hand  and  automatically  corrected  it  without  either  interpretation or
reaction from the brain.

"... and then I was promoted to be under-warden of the great Temple of Savankala
in Ranke."  The Archpriest  Arbalest settled  a little  more comfortably  in his
chair, and Lalo's sensitive fingers, responding, adjusted a line.

"An excellent position, really, right at  the heart of things. Everybody who  is
anybody pays homage there eventually,  and whoever transmits their petitions  to
the  god  can  gather  quite  a lot  of  useful  information  in  time." Smiling
complacently, the Archpriest smoothed the brocaded saffron folds of his gown.

"Mmnn-very true-"  murmured Lalo  with the  fraction of  his mind  that was  not
mesmerized by his work.

"I  wish  you  would let  me  look  at what  you  are  doing!" the  priest  said
petulantly. "It is my face you are immortalizing, after all!"

Shocked into awareness, Lalo stepped back from the easel and looked at him.

"Oh no, my Lord,  you must not! It  has been strictly ordered  that this picture
shall be a surprise. None of the sitters is to see it until the entire  painting
is revealed to the Emperor.  If you try to look  I will have to call  the guard.
Indeed, it is as much as my life  is worth to let anyone see the picture  before
its time!"

And that,  at least,  was perfectly  true, thought  Lalo, daring  to look at the
canvas with conscious  eyes at last.  Against the crude  backdrop of a  pillared
hall had been sketched  the rough outlines of  five figures. The one  on the far
left had been filled in yesterday with the picture of Lord Raximander, the first
of the Commissioners to serve as model here. He looked like a pig-  complacently
self-indulgent, with just a hint of stubborn ferocity in the little eyes.

Lalo wondered that the Commissioners had  consented to it. Since they came  they
had  been busy  with inspections  and meetings,  and listening  to  interminable
reports. Perhaps they were glad of a chance to sit still. Or perhaps they feared
the consequences  of refusing  to contribute  to a  gift for  their Emperor,  or
possibly they really were  eager to have their  visit to this outpost  of Empire
immortalized. Raximander, at  least, had appeared  to take the  sitting as tacit
agreement from Lalo  to paint another  portrait which the  Commissioner would be
allowed to see.

Now the picture of the Archpriest was almost complete beside Lord  Raximander's.
If the thing had been meant seriously, Lalo would have wanted several hours more
to work on the finishing of the gown and hair, but it was already sufficient for
the Vizier's purposes. Lalo looked at  it with normal vision for the  first time
and repressed a sigh.

Why had he  dared to hope  that just because  the man was  a priest he  would be
virtuous? But Arbalest was not a pig-more of a weasel, Lalo thought, noting  the
covert cunning of his gaze.

"If you are tired we can end the  sitting now." He bowed to the priest. "I  will
not need your presence for what remains."

When the priest had gone Lalo refilled his mug from the pitcher of beer provided
by Coricidius. Aside from the infamous manner of the commission, the Vizier  had
not treated him badly. Having blackmailed him into painting, the old man was  at
least allowing him to do  so in comfort. They had  set aside a pleasant room  on
the second floor of the Palace for his use-at the front next to the roof  garden
so that windows on three sides gave him light-working conditions, at least, were
ideal.

But the painting was an abomination. Lalo forced himself to look at it again. He
had sketched in columns and a carven ceiling just in case someone should catch a
glimpse of the canvas from far away. But the faces with which he was filling the
foreground made the rich surroundings seem a travesty.

Everyone at  the Palace  appeared to  believe the  tale that  the painting was a
bribe  to  the  Emperor, and  some,  believing  that this  must  give  Lalo some
influence, were already toadying to him. Even to Gilla, Lalo had had to  pretend
that the midnight arrest was a mistake  and the commission real. But if she  did
not believe him, for once she had the sense to let the subject alone.

Would others  do the  same? What  if the  project became  so famous  that people
insisted on seeing the picture? What if one of his sitters proved nimble  enough
to get a good look before Lalo could call the guard?

Lalo sighed again, drained his mug, and told the Hell-Hound currently on duty to
bring the third subject in.

                             *         *         *

Lalo sat oh a  low stool next to  the table where he  had laid out his  painting
things, waiting, like them,  for the fourth of  the Commissioners to arrive  for
his sitting. He supposed that he had been lucky to get in Arbalest and the royal
relative yesterday-he glanced  at the  third picture  with distaste.  "Something
oxis,"  the  man's  name  was,  but  already  he  had  trouble  remembering. Not
surprising-his portrait revealed a  bovine complacence that avoided  evil mainly
through lack of energy.

And these are the pride of Ranke? thought Lalo. He found himself almost grateful
to Coricidius.  I would  never have  known-he grimaced  at the  painting again-I
would have  uprooted my  family to  seek my  fortune in  the capital, innocently
certain it must  be superior to  Sanctuary. But there,  the evil is  only better
disguised....

From the courtyard below  he could hear the  even tramp of bullhide  sandals-the
Prince's Guard was  drilling again. These  days, even the  City garrison marched
and polished their armor, but whether it  was in hopes of being sent to  the war
or the opposite, he did not know. Nor, at this moment, did he care. He found  it
hard to believe that any new invader could make things any better, or worse,  in
Sanctuary.

Still, the  incessant marching  made him  nervous, as  if his former certainties
were illusions, and just around the corner lay some new threat that he could not
see. Restlessly he paced to the window, and was just turning back when the guard
brought the fourth sitter in.

"My  Lord  Zanderei!" Lalo  bowed  to the  man  to whom  he  had spoken  at  the
reception. "Please be seated-" he indicated the sitter's chair.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Master Limner," the man said  plaintively,
settling himself.  "I was  detained at  the warehouses.  There seems  to be some
confusion regarding the grain supplies set aside for the war ..."

Lalo busied himself with his paints to  hide a grin. He could well imagine  that
the  web  of  bribes,  kickbacks,  substitutions  and  out-and-out shortchanging
characteristic   of   business   in   Sanctuary   would   make   "confusion"  an
understatement. Why had they sent such  a clerkly little mouse to deal  with the
situation here? Glancing at  him again, Lalo realized  that Zanderei had one  of
the least remarkable faces he had ever seen.

I suppose it comes of a life-time of deference, he thought. The man displayed no
individuality at all. But for the first time in this project Lalo found  himself
eager to set brush to canvas,  knowing that once he did, no  dissimulation could
hide the truth of the man from him.

"Am I posed correctly? I can turn my head the other way if you like, or fold  my
hands ..."

"Yes, clasp your hands-your head is very well as it is. You must relax, sir, and
think how near your business is to its conclusion. . ."Lalo poured thinner  into
the cup and dipped his brush.

"Yes," Zanderei echoed softly. "I am almost done. A week or less will show me if
I have accomplished all I  was sent to do. The  conflict draws very close to  us
now." His thin lips curved in the faintest of smiles.

Lalo's eyes narrowed. He drew his brush through the light ochre and began.

A half  hour went  by, and  an hour.  Lalo worked  steadily without really being
conscious either of the  passage of time or  of what he was  doing. Zanderei was
light and shadow,  color and texture  and line-a problem  in interpretation. The
artist adjusted to the changing light and even gave his model permission to move
from time to  time without emerging  from the trance  which was his  art and his
spell.

Then, from the  Hall of Justice  below, the gong  for the fourth  watch began to
toll. Zanderei  got to  his feet,  grey robes  shifting like  shadow around him.
Lalo, fighting his way  back to awareness like  a man awakening from  sleep, saw
that dusk was beginning to gather in the corners of the room.

"I am sorry. I  must go now." Zanderei  took a few steps  forward, more smoothly
than Lalo would  have expected, considering  how long the  man had been  sitting
still.

"Oh, of course-forgive me for keeping you so long."

"Are you finished? Will you want me to come to you again?"

Lalo looked at  the picture, wondering  if he had  captured the reality  of this
man. For a moment he did not  understand what he saw. He glanced quickly  at the
other portraits, but they had not changed, and paint still glistened wetly where
he had given a last  touch to Zanderei's hair. But  he had never been unable  to
recognize the model in one of his portraits before...

He saw a face like stone, like steel,  a face with no life but in the  eyes, and
there only an ancient pain. And in the hands of this image, a bloodied knife was
gripped fast.

Coricidius wanted to see these men's weaknesses-but I see death here!

And like the canvas, Lalo's face must have revealed the tumult in his soul,  for
now Zanderei was blurring towards him  in a swordsman's swift rush that  brought
him past Lalo to comprehend the picture in one searching stare and still in  the
same motion to whirl and flick into the throat of the oncoming guardsman a knife
that had been hidden in his sleeve.

"Sorcery!" exclaimed Zanderei, and then, more slowly, "Is that what I look  like
to you?"

Lalo jerked his  appalled gaze from  the ruby rivulet  that was snaking  its way
from  the throat  of the  guard across  the floor.  Now Zanderei  stood with   a
predator's poise, and his face and the face in the picture were the same.

"Did they set you to trap me?  Have my masters' plans been betrayed?" Softly  he
moved towards Lalo, who stood shaking his head and shivering. "Ah, of  course-it
was Coricidius, setting traps  for everyone. I doubt  that he expected to  catch
me!" he added more softly.

"Who are you? Why  are you pretending to  be a clerk?" Lalo  stared at Zanderei,
seeing something flicker behind the still eyes as if the mask he had  penetrated
only covered a veil that hid another truth deeper within.

"I am fate ... or I am nothing ... It all depends. My masters wish the Prince to
do  his part  in the  war, but  it  would  not be  well for  him to  do  it  too
effectively. 'Watch him, but  do not let him  become a hero, Zanderei...'  Until
that happens, I will serve him."  His voice ran smoothly as an  undammed stream,
but Lalo knew that what he was  hearing doomed him more surely than what  he had
seen.

"You're going to  kill the Prince  ..." Lalo stepped  backwards until he  bumped
into the table on which his paints lay.

"Perhaps-" Zanderei shrugged.

"You're going to kill me?"

The other man sighed,  and from the other  sleeve a second knife  flickered into
his hand. "Do I  have a choice?" he  said regretfully. "I am  a professional. No
one will deplore the work of the vandal who kills you and destroys the  painting
more than I.  . .or perhaps  it will have  been you who  suffered a revulsion of
feeling and did  it yourself-for I  am sure that  Coricidius forced you  to this
work. But one way or another,  the painting must be destroyed-" Zanderei  looked
at the other portraits and for  the first time amusement flickered in  his eyes.
"You are far too accurate!

"Reckon  up  your life,  Master  Limner-" he  said  more gently,  "for  once the
painting is gone the painter must disappear as well."

Lalo swallowed, afraid that his churning stomach would deny him dignity even  in
his death. And what had his life been worth to anyone, after all? Zanderei  took
flint and steel from a pouch beneath  his robe, and in a moment light  flared in
the dimness of the  room. Then the assassin  set a stained paint  rag aflame and
held it to the canvas.

Lalo groped for support  and his hand closed  on the smooth side  of a paintpot.
His throat ached,  holding back the  urge to beg  the man to  stop. He hated the
painting-he wished it had never been done-and yet, why did he feel the same pain
as he had  when the Hell-Hound  struck Gilla to  the floor? His  eyes stung with
unuttered grief for his work, for himself, for his family left fatherless.

The canvas  had caught  fire and  was beginning  to crackle  merrily now. Bright
flame fattened on the paint-soaked cloth and cast demon-flickers on the face  of
Zanderei.

"No!" The cry burst from Lalo's lips, and as Zanderei straightened, Lalo's  hand
closed on the paint pot and he flung it at the other man.

It struck Zanderei's shoulder, and red paint splashed like blood across the grey
robe.

The assassin  exploded towards  him and  Lalo scrambled  frantically around  the
table, snatching up more  paint pots, brushes, anything  he could throw. One  of
them hit Zanderei's forehead, and as paint sprayed across his face he  hesitated
for just a moment to mop his eyes.

And in that moment Lalo kicked over the table and ran.

                             *         *         *

Lalo hugged his chest as if he could muffle the drumming of his heart and stared
around him.

He had confused memories of having  fled down the corridor that edged  the upper
half of the Presence  Hall, towards the back  of the Palace, down  the stairs by
the dais, and  then still farther,  into a part  of the Palace  he did not know.
Though the floor was  still marble, the slabs  were cracked and discolored,  and
plaster was chipping from the wall. Then he heard crockery clattering nearby and
realized he must be hard by the kitchens.

At least, he  thought gratefully, Zanderei  the Commissioner would  be even more
out of  place here  than he.  Cautiously he  turned into  another passageway and
moved forward. But as  he eased open the  door at the end  of it, he heard  once
more a faint pattering behind him-the steps of one who from long training ran so
lightly his footfalls were only a whisper of fine leather on polished stone.

Stifling a moan, Lalo burst through the door, dashed across the wooden floor and
the platform that opened out onto the kitchen courtyard, and flung himself  into
the first concealment he found.

It had looked like a cart, and  as Lalo sank into its contents he  realized what
it was. Not the  honey-wagon, thank the gods,  but the cart into  which they had
collected the garbage from several days' worth of princely meals. Gagging,  Lalo
wriggled deeper into the mass of turnip peelings and sour curds, soggy rice  and
pastry crusts and meat trimmings and bones.

He thought grimly, As long as I can retch, I'm stil] alive...

The  cart moved  beneath him  and he  heard the  stamp of  a hoof  on stone.  He
realized then that not only was he alive, he might even escape, for if the horse
was hitched,  it must  be time  for the  garbage to  be taken  away. He  waited,
breathing shallowly, for the endless minutes until he heard voices and the wagon
lurched with the weight of somebody climbing onto the driver's bench. Then  they
began to move.

Faster... Faster! Lalo prayed  as he was jounced  deeper into the reeking  mass.
The clatter of wooden wheels on stone  was deafening, then there was a pause,  a
moment's conversation with Honald at the  Gate, and the duller vibration as  the
wagon trundled across the pounded earth of Vashanka's Square.

Then the cart shuddered to a  halt. Lalo strained his ears for  the night-noises
of Sanctuary, but heard instead shouting and the clamor of an alarm.

"Is that smoke?  Theba's paps, it's  the Palace! Leave  the wagon, Tarn,  we can
give the beasts  their slops in  the morning!" The  wagon heaved again  and Lalo
heard two sets of footsteps pounding back the way they had come.

He settled back down, realizing with wonder that for the moment at least, he was
saved.

And what will I  do now? Zanderei would  tell everyone that Lalo  had killed the
guard and started the  fire. If caught, he  would be cast into  the dungeons, if
they did not kill him out of hand. And if he offered to demonstrate his skill in
his defense, he might wish that they had...

He could not return to the Palace to accuse the 'Commissioner', but if he  could
reach the Maze he  could hide indefinitely-there were  still a few who  owed him
favors there.

And  then .  . .  Zanderei would  either assassinate  Prince Kadakithis,  or  go
peacefully home. The former seemed more likely, for one does not return a  honed
blade to the sheath without blooding it, and in that case Coricidius would  fall
as well.

And what would become of Sanctuary? The thought troubled his satisfaction.  What
kind of tyrant would the Empire send to avenge its son? For all his  clumsiness,
at least Prince Kittycat  meant well, and if  they must be ruled  by foreigners,
surely the ones they were accustomed to would be best.

And it's all in  my  hands... Trying  to  control laughter, Lalo unwisely   took
too deep  a breath,  and began  to cough  again. Here  I wallow  in the Prince's
garbage, deciding what his fate shall  be? Power bubbled in his veins  like wine
of Caronne. I could send word to Coricidius-he started this, he might believe me
. . . or-he remembered rumors he had heard about Shadowspawn-I might be able  to
get word to the Prince himself. . .

But first I have to get out of here?

Cautiously Lalo poked his head  over the rim of the  cart. There was a whiff  of
smoke in the air, and above the wall he could see torches winking like glowworms
in the upper windows of the Palace, but he saw no glare of fire-perhaps they had
put it out in time. The cart in which he was sitting was parked just outside the
Zoo Gardens, a few feet from the Processional Gate.

Sighing with relief,  Lalo clambered over  the side and  began to strip  off his
smock and brush away the worst of the filth that coated him-

-And stopped, feeling a gaze that  was not the dispassionate stare of  the mangy
lions beyond the barrier.  He turned then, and  looked across the square  to the
Palace Gate  from which  a familiar  grey-robed figure  had just  emerged. For a
moment fear froze him  again, but he was  still glowing with the  inebriation of
power. He let his smock fall to the ground.

Zanderei's robe was of rich silk, while his own worn shirt and stained  breeches
would attract no attention.  If he could entice  the Rankan into the  town, Lalo
would be on his own ground, and the City itself might rid him and the Prince  of
their enemy.

Grinning nervously, Lalo walked into plain view, and then urged his stiff  limbs
into an awkward dash through the  Gate as Zanderei and half a  dozen Hell-Hounds
leaped into motion across the Square after him.

Looking back over  his shoulder at  every other step,  Lalo pressed his  cramped
limbs to  greater speed  along the  Processional Way.  Hearing the  guards close
behind him, he dodged  among the merchants' houses  to Westgate Street and  down
Tanner's Row,  heading for  the Serpentine.  And as  he ran,  the blood began to
course  freely  through  his  limbs  once  more,  and  he  shed  middle-age  and
awkwardness as he had shed his ruined smock, and his fear.

Lalo leaped over a  handcart that had been  abandoned in the road  and paused to
send it spinning broadsides. That would  not long delay them, but he  could hear
mercenaries laying bets on a dogfight in the next street. Laughing like the  boy
who had raced through these streets so long ago, he let his pursuers follow  him
around the corner,  slid eel-like through  the crowd, and  laughed again as  the
tinny clash of  weapons told him  that the Hell-Hounds  and the mercenaries  had
met.

But  what about  Zanderei? Lalo  waited in  the shadow  of a  quiet doorway  and
watched the gap at the entrance to  the street. Night had fallen, and the  moon,
now almost at the full, was drawing free of the distorting smoke of the City and
transforming  the  shape  and  shadows of  the  street  with  its own  deceptive
dappling. How could he tell which one-

Ah, there, a shadow moved of itself, and Lalo knew that his enemy was here.

So soon! Shock tingled through his veins and set every hair on end. I must run .
. . the man moves too subtly-before  those who would attack him for the  silk he
wears can note him, he  is away. I am a  dead man if I cannot  trap him somehow.
The glory  he had  tasted seemed  now as  inconstant as  the moon.  In a  moment
Zanderei would reach his hiding place.

And yet it was almost as if he had done all this before-he remembered a time  in
his  boyhood, when  he had  come with   his mates  into the  Maze in  search  of
excitement and been set upon there. He had escaped by-he looked up and saw  that
this house too had an external stair. Without allowing himself time to think  of
failure, Lalo launched himself upward.

The wooden structure  swayed alarmingly. Lalo  clutched at a  railing and nearly
fell when  it gave  way beneath  his hand.  He could  hear loud  voices inside-a
window  opened and  then slammed  shut as  he was  seen, and  for a  moment  the
quarreling was stilled. Then  he was on the  roof, leaping over trays  of drying
fruit and  ducking under  clotheslines. He  saw the  dark shape  behind him  and
jerked one end of the line free so that the hanging clothes clung damply to  the
man who was following him.

Something flashed by his cheek in the moonlight like a line of white fire.  Lalo
threw himself across the gap between  two buildings, clutched at the ledge  of a
parapet and lay across it, gasping, staring at the quivering blade that  matched
the one he had seen in the throat of the slain guard. He hauled himself the rest
of the way into the dubious protection of the gable end.

Two Hell-Hounds trotted down the street below, paused momentarily at the  corner
and gave a whistle which was answered from two streets away. Lalo wondered  what
had happened to the mercenaries. Then  a shadow rose from the opposite  rooftop,
glimmering like silver as it came into the full light of the moon.

"Limner!" Zanderei called, "The soldiers will kill you if they catch you  before
I do-give yourself up to me now!"

Lalo thought of the  blade which he had  wedged uncomfortably into his  sash and
gritted his teeth. They call us Wrigglies, he remembered, Well, I had better  do
some quick  wriggling now?  Cautiously he  squirmed across  the tiles.  A quiver
beneath him told him  that Zanderei had also  crossed the gap, and  he scrambled
for the opposite stair.

But there was  none. Unable to  stop, Lalo leaped  to the balcony  in a crash of
breaking crockery, and swung himself from  the railing to the street below.  The
upper way would not save  him, but as he had  lain gasping he had remembered  an
alternative, darker and more dangerous both to the pursuer and the pursued.

Shards of terra cotta smashed and rattled in the street behind him as the  owner
of the balcony glimpsed Zanderei and pelted him with his broken wares. Lalo sped
down the street and past a group wavering along from the direction of the Vulgar
Unicorn.

I wanted to be a hero-he thought, forcing his legs to more speed, but how do you
tell the difference between a dead hero and a dead fool? The singing behind  him
faltered  and someone  screamed. Zanderei-for  a moment  Lalo saw  the  assassin
clearly in the  moonlight-he had shed  his grey silk  and his shirt  was torn-he
looked as if he had been bred to the streets of Sanctuary. And as if he had felt
Lalo's gaze, he turned, and his teeth flashed in a brief smile.

Lalo took a deep breath and stared around him-he dared not move too quickly  now
lest he miss the spot, though every  sense was clamoring to him to flee.  There,
at the end of the alley-a wooden cover that capped a circle of crumbling stones.
Lalo pulled it free-the covers were  usually left unbolted in hopes that  people
would throw refuse directly in-then, gritting his teeth, he lowered himself down
the shaft.

It was not so  deep as a well.  Lalo landed with a  splash in a sluggish  stream
slippery with things he would rather  not try to name. Fighting his  stomach, he
realized that  the Prince's  garbage had  been fragrant  compared to  the sewers
which were his last hope against his enemy.

He slogged grimly forward, counting his  steps and putting out a reluctant  hand
to the  slimy walls  to guide  his passage,  listening behind  him for the small
sounds that would tell  him that Zanderei had  followed him even here.  Catching
his breath, he felt for the knife, but in all his scrambling it had been lost.

Just as well-he told himself, I would not have known how to use it anyway/

"You-Limner, you've done well, but what  made you think you could win  this game
against me?" The voice echoed dankly from water-scoured stone walls. "I'll catch
up with you soon-wouldn't you have preferred to have died cleanly?"

Lalo shook his  head, though the  other man could  not see. He  had reckoned his
achievements and found them wanting, but if he died now at least he had tried to
act like a man. He forced his way onward, fingers questing for the next break in
the  stone. What  if he  was wrong?  Had he  misremembered, or  had the  tunnels
changed in thirty years?

"You will die, you know. This is the last bolthole. Your end is here."

An end  for both  of us  then, Lalo  thought numbly.  I will  not mind-Then  his
trembling  fingers found  the crack.  He moved  his hand  along the  wall,  lips
whispering the numbers that had become a litany-sixty-six, sixty-seven  steps...
Please, Lord Ils, Jet it  be here... sixty-eight... Shalpa help me,  sixty nine,
seventy?

His fingers  closed on  a rusting  semicircle of  iron, and  stifling a  gasp of
relief he hauled himself  upward, though his fingers  slipped on the rungs.  The
splashing behind him slowed as if his enemy had paused to listen, then became  a
tumult as Zanderei began to run.

Lalo gained the top, shoved the  wooden cover aside, and heart bursting,  rolled
over the edge into the clean air. But he could not rest now, not yet, not  until
the trap was sprung. Summoning strength  where he had thought there could  be no
more, he  hauled the  cover over  the shaft  and drove  home the wooden bar. And
without waiting to see  if it would hold,  he staggered back to  the first shaft
and did the same thing there.

Then he sank to the cobbles beside it, pulse hammering, knowing that this  last,
god-given strength was gone and he could do not more. This was the only place in
the network of sewers where two  shafts entered the conduits so close  together.
Zanderei was trapped there now.

How sweet the air was to his  lungs. From some upper room Lalo heard  the tinkle
of  a gittem  and a  woman's low  laughter. A  soft wind  comforted his  burning
cheeks-a sea wind. And then Lalo remembered with mingled satisfaction and horror
that Zanderei was  doubly doomed. With  the sea wind  would come a  rush of dark
water from the Swamp of Night Secrets, propelled by the tidal bore.

"You-Assassin-you've done well-but what made  you think you could win  this game
with me?" Lalo whispered through  cracked lips. Laughter rasped his  throat, and
he sat shaking by the locked well-mouth  while the slime of the tunnel dried  on
his skin.  A stray  pickpocket, passing  by, made  the sign  against madness and
scuttled away. He heard a whistle and then the clink of a sword as a  Hell-Hound
passed the mouth  of the alley,  but he supposed  he looked like  nothing human,
crouching there.

"Limner, are you there?"

Lalo  jumped, hearing  the voice  so close  to him.  The wood  of the  shaft-top
shuddered as it was struck from below, and Lalo leaned on the bar. Hanging  from
the rungs by one hand, there was  no way Zanderei could gain enough leverage  to
break free. That was  what Lalo had heard  in dark tales whispered  by childhood
friends, and  later, overwinecups  in the  Vulgar Unicorn.  If he  lived, he too
would have a tale to tell. ...

"Assassin, I am here  and you are there  and there you will  stay," croaked Lalo
when the dull hammering finally stilled.

"I will give  you gold-I have  never broken my  word . .  . You could  establish
yourself in the capital."

"I  don't want  your gold."  I don't   even want  to go  to Ranke,  his  thought
continued, not anymore.

"I will give  you your life..."  said Zanderei. "Coricidius  won't believe  you,
you know, and the Hell-Hounds will have  your skull for a drinking bowl. At  the
very least they will strike off your hands ..."

Involuntarily, Lalo's fingers  clasped protectively around  his wrists, as  if a
bright blade were already descending. It was true-surely he had lost all he  had
ever gained. Better to meet Zan-derei's knife than to live without being able to
take brush in hand. If  I cannot paint I am  nothing, he thought. I will  surely
die.

But he did not move. Shivering  with exhaustion and despair, still he  would not
throw away this victory, even though he hardly understood his reasons anymore.

"Limner, I will give you your soul..."

"You can only give death, foreigner! You cannot trick me!"

"I do  not need  to-" the  voice seemed  very tired.  "I only  need to ask you a
question. Have you  ever painted your  own portrait, Limner  with the sorcerer's
eye?"

The silence stretched into  eternity while Lalo tried  to understand. He felt  a
subtle quiver in the  earth that told him  the tide was beginning  to turn. What
did Zanderei mean? Of  course he had done  self-portraits by the dozen,  when he
could get no one else to pose for him-

-In  the old  days, before  Enas York  had taught  him to  paint the  soul ...

I've been too busy-no... the awareness came reluctantly, I was afraid.

"What will you see on your canvas  when you have murdered me?" The voice  echoed
his fear.

"Stop it! Leave me alone!" Lalo cried aloud. He heard a deep voice shout  orders
in the street  beyond the alley,  and saw for  a moment the  flicker of lanterns
bobbing by, pallid in the moonlight.

In a  few minutes  the poisoned  waters would  be driven  from their  bed by the
inexorable pressure of the tide, and rush through the sewers of Sanctuary like a
host of angry serpents  seeking their prey. In  a few minutes Zanderei  would be
dead.

If he disappears,  maybe they will  blame Zanderei for  the Fire. When  the stir
dies down I'll be free to paint again. His hand twitched as if he held a  brush,
but the motion triggered Zanderei's words in his memory.

"Have you ever painted your own portrait?"

Lalo shuddered suddenly, violently. Could even Enas Yorl lift the curse this man
had laid upon his soul? He heard  the irregular tramp of men trying to  march in
close order over an uneven road. The sound was louder now-in a few moments  they
would pass his alleyway. In a few moments the waters would be here.

"What will you see when you have murdered me?"

Without  conscious  decision, Lalo  found  himself running  stiffly  towards the
Serpentine.

"Ho there!  Guards-he is  hiding in  the sewers-down  this alley!"  He held  his
ground while they debated, knowing that  they could not recognize him under  the
sodden clothes and mud, and motioned to them to follow him.

Then he pounded down the alley, bent to wrestle the bar from the shaft-cover and
ran on until he found the dark overhang of a staircase to shelter him. Below  he
felt a trembling and heard the hiss of many waters, and, just as the wooden  lid
of the shaft was knocked aside,  the hollow boom of water forced  upward through
too narrow a way.

Something dark clung to the rim of the shaft, like a rat flooded from its  hole,
then clambered the rest of the way  out once the fury of the waters  had passed.
But now the Hell-Hounds surrounded the shaft. There was a flurry of movement and
Lalo heard swearing  and a cry  of pain. Among  the voices he  distinguished the
soft tones of the Emperor's Commissioner.

"Is that who you  say you are?" A  deep voice, Quag's voice,  replied. "Well, if
we've lost the dauber, at least we  have you. My Lord Prince will be  interested
to learn what sharp-toothed rats his brother keeps to guard his granaries!  Come
along, you!"

Lalo sank back against the post of the stair. It was over. The Hell-Hounds  were
dragging Zanderei away as once they had dragged him into the night.

He would find a way to let Coricidius know what the painting had shown and  what
Zanderei had confessed to him. Would they call him into court to prove it? Would
they dispose of the  assassin quietly, or send  him back to Ranke  to report his
failure? With a dim wonder Lalo realized that it did not matter anymore.

Gilla would have harsh words for him when he reached home, but her arms would be
soft and comforting ... 

But still he did  not move, for below  the surface questions in  his mind pulsed
one more perplexing-Why did I let Zanderei go?

Today he had faced  death, and fought for  his life, and conquered  fear. He had
realized that the  evil of the  world was not  confined to Sanctuary.  But if he
could do all this, he was not the person that he had thought he knew.

He held out his magic hands, his painter's hands, so that the moonlight silvered
them, staring as if they held his  answer. And perhaps that was true, for  if he
had beaten Zanderei, the other man's final question had also vanquished him. And
he could only answer it by facing his mirror with a paintbrush in his hand.

The moon  was poised  above the  tattered rooftops,  resting after  the labor of
drawing in the tide. Like a  silver mirror, she blessed the tortured  streets of
Sanctuary, and  the tear-streaked  face of  the man  who gazed  at her, with the
reflected splendor of the hidden sun.

                             *         *         *

STEEL

by Lynn Abbey

1

Walegrin listened carefully to the small noises carried on the night breeze. His
survival depended on his ability to untangle the sounds of the night-and on  the
steel sword  he clutched,  unsheathed, at  his side.  Ambushers crept toward his
small camp in the darkness.

Two bright Enlibar  wagons sat, unguarded  and garish, in  the ruddy light  of a
neglected fire. Their cargo had  been scattered in tempting disarray;  chunks of
aquamarine ore  shimmered in  the moonlight.  Walegrin's cloak  lay close by the
fire, covering an armload of thorny sticks-a ruse to convince the brigands  that
he and his men were more weary than careful and valued sleep above their lives.

They'd had little enough  rest since leaving the  ruined mine with the  precious
ore; and of the twenty-five men who had left Sanctuary only seven remained.  But
Walegrin trusted his six stalwarts against four times that many hillmen.

Walegrin's thoughts were stopped  by the warning cry  of a mountain hawk;  Malm,
who had a shepherd's eye for ominous movements, had spotted the enemy.  Walegrin
held  his ground  until the  camp swarmed  with dark,  scuttling shapes,   until
someone  stabbed a  cloak and  heard wood  splintering, not  bone. Then,   sword
raised, he led his men out of the shadows.

These outlaws were better armed and bolder than any the soldiers had encountered
before, but Walegrin had no time to  consider this discovery. His men were  hard
pressed, without their  usual advantage over  the hill-bred fighters.  His sword
stole  the  lifeblood  of two  men,  but  then he  was  cut  himself and  fought
defensively, unaware of the fate of his men or the tide of battle. He was forced
to retreat another step; the open back of a wagon pressed against his hips.  The
one who bore down on him was as yet un-wounded. It was time for a soldier's last
prayers.

Snarling, the  attacker took  his sword  in both  hands for  a decapitating cut.
Walegrin braced to take the force of the stroke on his sword which he held in  a
bent, injured arm. His weapon fell from his suddenly numb hand, but his neck was
intact. The brigand was undaunted, his smile never wavered; Walegrin was unarmed
now.

Steadying himself to face death with courage, Walegrin's leaden fingers found an
object left forgotten in the wagon: the old Enlibar sword they had found in  the
dust  of  the  mine. The  silver-green  steel  showed no  rust,  but  no-one had
exchanged his serviceable Rankan blade for one forged five hundred years  before
his birth-until now. Walegrin brought the ancient sword around with a bellow.

Blue-green sparks surged  when the swords  met. The Enlibar  metal clanged above
the  other sounds  of battle.  The brigand's  swordblade shattered  and, with  a
reflex born of experience not thought,  Walegrin took his assailant's head in  a
single, soft stroke.

The fabled steel of Enlibar!

His mind glazed with the knowledge. He did not hear the hillmen take flight, nor
see his men gather around him.

The Steel of Enlibar!

Three years of desperate, often dangerous searching had brought him to the mine.
They'd filled two wagons with the rich ore and defended it with their  lives-but
in the  depths of  his heart  Walegrin had  not believed  he'd found  the actual
steel: a steel  that could shatter  other blades; a  steel that would  bring him
honor and glory.

He found  his military  sword in  the dust  at his  feet and  offered it  to his
lieutenant.

"Take this," he ordered. "Strike at me!"

Thrusher hesitated, then took a half-hearted swipe.

"No! Strike, fool!" Walegrin shouted, raising the Enlibrite blade.

Metal met metal with the same resounding clang as before. The shortsword did not
shatter, but it took a mortal nick  to its edge. Walegrin ran his fingers  along
the unmarred Enlibrite steel and whooped for joy.

"The destiny of all Ranke is in our hands!"

His men looked at one another, then smiled with little enthusiasm. They believed
in their commander but  not necessarily in his  quest. They were not  cheered to
see their morose, intense officer  so transformed by an off-color  sword-however
good  the  metal and  even  if it  had  saved his  life.  Walegrin's exaltation,
however, did not last long.

They found  Malm's body  some twenty  paces from  the fire,  a deep wound in his
neck.  Wale-grin closed  his friend's  eyes and  commended him  to his  gods-not
Walegrin's gods; Walegrin honored no gods. Malm was their only casualty,  though
they could ill afford the loss.

In grim silence Walegrin left Malm  and returned to ransack the headless  corpse
by the  wagon. Its  belt produced  a sack  of gold  coins, freshly minted in the
Rankan capital. Walegrin thought of the  letters he had sent to his  rich patron
in the Imperial hierarchy, and of the replies he had not received. In anger  and
suspicion he tore at the dead man's clothes until he found what he knew must  be
there: a greasy scrap of parchment with his mentor's familiar seal embossed upon
it. While his men slept he read the treachery into his memory.

Kilite's treasury had  financed his quest  almost from the  start. The ambitious
aristocrat had said that the Enlibrite steel, if it could be found, would assure
the Empire swift,  unending victories-and swift,  unending fortune for  whomever
made the legend reality. Walegrin had dutifully informed the Imperial Advisor of
all his movements and of his success. He cursed and threw the scrap of parchment
into the fire. He'd told Kilite his exact route from Enlibar to Ranke.

He should have known the moment his first man died-or at least when he lost  the
second. The hill tribes had been peaceful enough when they'd come up through the
mountains and they, themselves, could make no use of the raw ore. He counted the
dead man's gold  into his own  pouch, calculating how  far he and  his men could
travel on it.

Things  could  have  been  worse.  Kilite might  have  been  able  to  bribe the
tribesmen, but it was still unlikely he could find the abandoned mine.  Walegrin
had  never entrusted  that secret  to paper.  And Kilite  had never  known  that
Walegrin's final  destination had  not been  the capital,  but back in Sanctuary
itself. He'd never told Kilite the name of the ugly, little metal-master in  the
back alleys there who could turn the ore to finest steel.

"We'll make it  yet," he said  to the darkness,  not noticing that  Thrusher had
come to sit beside him.

"Make it to where?" the little man asked. "We don't dare go to the capital  now,
do we?"

"We're headed toward Sanctuary from this moment on."

Thrusher could scarcely contain his surprise. Walegrin's intense dislike of  the
city of his birth was well-known. Not even his own men had suspected they  would
ever return there. "Well, I suppose a man can hide from anything in  Sanctuary's
gutters," Thrusher temporized.

"Not only hide, but get our steel too. We'll head south in the morning.  Prepare
the men."

"Across the desert?"

"No-one will be looking for us there."

His orders given and certain to be obeyed, Walegrin strode into the darkness. He
was used to sleepless nights. Indeed, he almost preferred them to his  nightmare
ridden slumber.  And now,  with thoughts  of Sanctuary  high in  his mind, sleep
would be anything but welcome.

Thrusher was right-a man could hide in Sanctuary. Walegrin's father had done it,
but hiding hadn't improved him any. He'd  ended his life reviled in a city  that
tolerated almost anything,  hacked to pieces  and cursed by  the S'danzo of  the
bazaar. It  was his  father's death,  and the  memory of  the curse that haunted
Walegrin's nights.

By rights it wasn't his  curse at all, but his  father's. The old man was  never
without a doxy; Rezzel  was only  the last  of a  long, anonymous  procession of
women  through Walegrin's  childhood.  She  was  a  S'danzo beauty,  wild   even
by  their  gypsy standards. Her own  people foresaw her  violent death when  she
abandoned  them   to  live  four  years  in  the   Sanctuary  garrison, matching
Walegrin's temper  with her own.

Then one night his father got drunk, and more violently jealous than usual. They
found  Rezzel, what  remained of  her, with  the animal  carcasses outside   the
charnel house.  The S'danzo  took back  what they  had cast  out and, by dead of
night, returned to the garrison. Seven masked, knife-wielding S'danzo carved the
living flesh of his father, and sealed their curses with his blood. They'd found
two children,  Walegrin and  Rez-zei's daughter,  Illyra, hiding  in the corner.
They'd marked them with blood and curses as well.

He'd run away before  the sun rose on  that night-and was still  running. Now he
was running back to Sanctuary.

2

Walegrin  patted  his  horse,  ignoring the  cloud  of  dust  around them  both.
Everything, everyone was covered with a fine layer of desert grit; only his hair
seemed unaffected, but then it had always been the color of parched straw.  He'd
led his men safely across the desert to Sanctuary but weariness had settled upon
them like dust and though the end of their travels was in sight, they waited  in
silence for Thrusher's return.

Walegrin had not dared to enter the city himself. Tall, pale despite the  desert
sun, his braided hair roughly confined by a bronze band, he was too memorable to
be  an advance  scout. He  was an   outlaw as  well, wanted  by the  prince  for
abandoning the  garrison without  warning. He  had Kilite's  pardon, the scrolls
still  carefully sealed  in his  saddlebag, but  using it  would eventually  let
Kilite know he was still alive. It was better to remain an outlaw.

Hook-nosed,  diminutive  Thrusher was  a  man no-one  would  remember. Able  and
single-minded, he'd never  run afoul of  the town's dangers  nor succumb to  its
limited  temptations.  Walegrin  would  have a  roof  over  his  men's heads  by
nightfall and more water than they could drink to set before them. Wine too, but
Walegrin had almost forgotten the taste of wine.

As the afternoon  shadows lengthened, Thrusher  appeared on the  dunes. Walegrin
waved him  safe conduct.  He put  his heels  to his  horse and galloped the last
stretch of sand. Both man and  beast had been cleansed of yellow  grit. Walegrin
suppressed a pang of jealousy.

"Ho, Thrush! Do we sleep in town tonight?" one of the other men called.

"With full trenchers and a wench on each knee," Thrusher laughed.

"By the gods, I thought we're bound for Sanctuary, not paradise."

"Paradise enough-if a man's not choosy," Thrusher told them all as he dismounted
and made his way to Walegrin.

"You seem satisfied. Is the town  that much changed since we left  it?" Walegrin
asked.

"Yes,  that  much.  You'd think  the  Nisibisi  rode this  way.  There  are more
mercenaries in Sanctuary than in Ranke.  We'll never be noticed. The usual  scum
fears to leave the shadows-and if a  man knows how to use his sword  there's any
number who'll hire him.  Kittycat's gold hasn't been  the best for many  a month
now. He's got to rely on a citizen's militia to take up the slack from the  Hell
Hounds. Wrigglies-every last one of them: pompous and-"

"What manner of mercenaries?" Walegrin interrupted.

"Sacred Banders," Thrusher admitted with noticible reluctance.

"Vashanka's bastards. How many? And who leads them-if they're led by a man?"

"Couldn't say  how many;  they camp  Downwind. Banders're  worse than  Hounds; a
handful of 'em's  worse than a  plague. Some say  they belong to  the Prince now
that their priest's dead. Most say it's Tempus at the root of it. They train for
the Nisibisi, but Tempus is building a new fortress Downwind."

Walegrin  looked  away. He  had  no quarrel  with  Tempus Thales.  True,  he was
inclined to arrogance, sadism  and he was treachery  incarnate, but he moved  in
the elite circles of  power and, as such,  Walegrin could only admire  him. Like
everyone else he had heard the Tempus-tales of self-healing and psuedo-divinity;
he professed to doubt them-but  had Tempus gone in  search of Enlibar steel,  no
one would have dared stand in his way.

"They  call  themselves  Stepson-or something  like  that,"  Thrusher continued.
"They're all in Jubal's turf; and neither hide nor hair of Jubal seen these last
months. No hawkmasks on the streets either, 'cept the ones found nailed to posts
here and there."

"Sacred Banders; Stepsons; Whoresons." Walegrin shared the prejudices of most in
the Imperial  army towards  any elite,  separate group.  Sanctuary had  been the
dead-end of the world as long as anyone could remember. No right-thinking Rankan
citizen passed time there. It boded ill if Sanctuary had become home to not only
Tempus but a contingent of Sacred Banders as well. The Empire was in worse shape
than anyone thought.

What was bad for Sanctuary and all of Ranke, though, was not necessarily bad for
the re-discoverer of Enlibar  steel. With luck Walegrin  would find good men  in
town, or  good gold,  or simply  enough activity  to hide  behind. But  whenever
Walegrin thought of luck he thought of the S'danzo. They had marked him for  ill
fortune: if he had good luck it could have been better and when his luck  turned
sour, the less said about it the better.

"What about that house I asked you about?" Walegrin asked after the conversation
had lulled a moment.

The scout was relieved to speak of something else. "No trouble-it wasn't hidden,
though no-one knew  much about it.  Right off the  Street of Armorers,  like you
said it'd be. This metal-master, Balustrus, he must be a pretty strange  fellow.
Everyone thought he'd died until the Torch-" Thrusher stopped abruptly, slapping
himself on the forehead.

"-Gods takes take me  for an idiot! Nothing  is the same in  Sanctuary; the gods
have  discovered it!  Vashanka's name  was blasted  from the  pantheon over  the
palace gate. Vashanka! Sacred Band's  Storm God burned clean. The  stone steamed
for a day and a night. The god himself appeared in the sky-and Azyuna, too."

"Wrigglies? Magicians? Were the Whoresons involved?" Walegrin asked, but without
interrupting the flow of Thrusher's theological gossip.

"The Torch  himself was  nearly killed.  Some say  a new  god's been born to the
First  Consort and  the War  of Cataclysm's  begun. Officially  the priests  are
blaming everything on the Nisibisi- and  not saying why the Nisibisi would  wage
magical war in Sanctuary.  The Wrigglies say it's  the awakening of Ils Thousand
Eyes. And the mages don't say much of anything because half of them're dead  and
the rest hiding. The local doomsayers're making fortunes.

"But our Prince Kittycat, bless his empty, little head, had an idea. He  marches
out on his balcony and proclaims  that Vashanka is angry because Sanctuary  does
not show proper respect to his consort and her child and that he has blasted his
own name off the pantheon rather than be associated with the town. Then Kittycat
proclaims a tax on  every tavern-a copper a  tot-and says he's going  to make an
offering to Vashanka. Sanctuary will apologize by ringing a new bell!"

Walegrin empathized with Sanctuary's naive, blundering young governor.  Actually
his idea wasn't  bad; much better  than involving the  mageguild or setting  the
Wrigglies  against the  outnumbered Rankans.  That was  Kittycat's problem;  his
ideas weren't half bad, but  he wasn't even half the  man it would take to  have
people listen to them without laughing.

A new  idea grew  in Walegrin's  thoughts. The  Prince had  turned to Balustrus,
metal-master, to cast  the bell for  Vashanka. Now he,  Walegrin, would approach
Balustrus to  make Enlibar  steel-for the  Prince, perhaps,  but not Vashanka. A
pattern of  fortune might  emerge-might be  stronger than  the S'danzo curse. He
imagined  himself with  the Prince;  the two  of them  together might  make  one
irresistable force.

"Did you see this bell of the metal-master's? Is it worthy?" he asked Thrusher.

"Worthy of what?" Thrusher replied, not following Walegrin's thoughts at all.

3

Dawn's  first light  pierced the  shadows and  sent the  denizens of  the  night
scurrying.  The  streets of  Sanctuary  were almost  quiet.  Flocks of  seabirds
wheeled silently  over the  town, swooping  suddenly as,  one after another, the
houses opened  their doors  to jettison  nightslops into  the street.  A cowled,
burdened monk slipped out  the upper window of  a tavern and disappeared  down a
still-dark alley. The brief moment of calm magic faded; the day had begun.

The  establishment  ofBalustrus,  metal-master,  was  among  the  first  in  the
armorer's quarter to come  to life. A young  woman opened the upper  half of the
front door and struggled  to raise the huge,  dingy slops-ewer to her  shoulder.
She froze,  nearly dropping  the noisome  thing, when  a man  stepped out of the
shadows. He wore a monk's garb, but the cowl had fallen back to his shoulders. A
warrior's tore held his straw-blond hair over his brow.

Walegrin had had three  days' rest and washed  the desert from his  face, but he
was still an ominous figure. The woman  gave a small yelp when he took  the ewer
from her and carried  it some distance before  upending it. When he  returned to
the doorway, the metal-master himself stood there.

"Walegrin, isn't it?"

If the young  soldier was ominous,  then Balus-trus was  positively demonic. His
skin was the color of mottled bronze-not brown, nor gold, nor green-nor human at
all. It  was wrinkled  like dried  fruit, but  shone like  metal itself.  He was
hairless, with features that blended into the convolutions of his skin. When  he
smiled, as he smiled at Walegrin, the dark eyes all but vanished.

Walegrin swallowed hard. "I've come with business for you."

"So early?" the bronze  man chided. "Well,  come right in.  A soldier in  monk's
cloth is always welcome for breakfast." He hobbled back from the door.

Walegrin retrieved his sack  and followed him into  the shop. A single  oil lamp
set over a counting-table cast flickering shadows on the metal-master's face. He
rested a pair of iron crutches against  the wall behind the table and seemed  to
hover there, unsupported. Walegrin's eyes  adjusted to the dimmer light.  He saw
the price sheets  nailed to the  wall and the  samples of bronze,  iron, tin and
steel; he saw the saddle-like perch in which the metal-master sat. But his first
impression of the eerie place did not change and he would have left if he could.

"Tell me what you've got in your sack, and why I should care?" the  metal-master
demanded.

Forcing himself not to stare, Walegrin hoisted the sack to the table-top.  "I've
found the secret of the steel of Enlibar-"

The bronze man shook with laughter.  "What secret? There's no secret to  Enlibar
steel, my boy. Any fool can make Enlibar steel-if he's got Enlibar ore and Ilsig
alchemy."

Walegrin untied the sack, dumping  the blue-green ore onto the  table. Balustrus
stopped laughing. He snatched up a chunk of ore and subjected it to an  analysis
that included not merely striking it with a mallet, but tasting it as well.

"Yes," the  wizened metal-master  crooned. "This  is it.  Heated and  ground and
tempered this will be steel! Not since the last alchemist of Ilsig sank into his
grave has there been steel like the steel I will make."

Whatever else Balustrus was, he was  at least mad. Walegrin had first  heard the
name in the library at Coombs, where he'd gotten the shard of Enlibrite  pottery
Illyra  had  read.  Kemren, the  Purple  Mage,  had been  supposed  to  read the
inscription and Balustrus would make the steel and both men swell in  Sanctuary.
Kemren had been dead when Walegrin arrived in the city, but not Balustrus.

It was said the metal-master  had been mad when he  first came to the city,  and
Sanctuary had  never improved  anyone. He  claimed he  knew everything about any
metal but he made his living mending plates and recasting stolen gold.

"I have another ten  sacks like this one,"  Walegrin explained, taking back  the
ore. "I want  swords for my  men and myself.  I don't have  much gold; and fewer
friends, but I'll give you  a quarter of my ore  if you'll make the swords."  He
continued refilling his sack.

"It will be  my priviledge," the  cripple agreed, touching  the stones one  last
time before they disappeared. "Perhaps when  you have the swords you'll tell  me
where you found this. At least you'll tell what friends you have that it was the
Grey Wolf who forged their weapons."

"You've  no need  to know  where the  mine is,"  Walegrin said  firmly,  looking
directly at Balustrus' legs. "You couldn't go there yourself. You'd have to send
others; you'd spread my secret around.  Already too many people know." The  sack
thumped to the floor. "When can I have my swords?"

The metal-master  shrugged. "It  is not  like telling  a cloth-cutter  to make a
tunic, boy. The formula is old; the ore  is new. It will take time. I must  melt
and grind carefully; tempering is an art to itself. It could take years."

Walegrin's blue eyes came alive with anger. "It will not take years! There's war
in the north. Already the Emperor has called for men to fill the legions. I will
have my swords by summer's end or I'll have your life."

"I have," the metal-master said with bitter irony, "been threatened by  experts.
You'll have your swords, my boy, as soon as I'm ready to give them to you."

The blond soldier had  a ready reply, but  withheld it as commotion  rose in the
street and someone hammered loudly on the bolted doors.

"Open up! Open up in the Prince's name! Open your doors, merchant!"

Walegrin snatched up the sack. He  glanced around the room, aware for  the first
time that it offered no hiding places.

"You look as if you'd seen a ghost,  boy. If you don't want to see the  Prince's
man, just step behind the curtain. Take your ore with you. I'll be but a  moment
with these fools."

Unable to force coherent words through his tight throat, Walegrin simply  nodded
and,  still  clutching  the  sack,  eased  behind  a  curtain  and  into  a dark
passageway. He could see narrowly into the room he had left without, he  prayed,
being seen in return.

Balustrus struggled with the heavy bolts.  He got the door open just  before the
Prince's man threatened to break it down. Three men immediately surged past: two
huge brutes in dirty rags and a third man in common dress.

"Balustrus? Metal-master?" the third man demanded.

The  man  might be  dressed  commonly, but  he  wasn't common.  Once  Walegrin's
suspicions were aroused, other incongruities became obvious: clean, fresh-curled
hair; sturdy boots with gold buckles; hands that had never been truly dirty.

Unreasoning fear gripped him. He did not pause to wonder why a Rankan lord,  for
such  the  visitor  must be,  would  enter  the metal-master's  shop  in  such a
disguise; he knew. The S'danzo curse and his false friends in Ranke had  merged.
By sundown he'd  be just so  much meat on  the torturer's rack.  They'd have his
secrets, his steel and, if he got lucky, his life.

". . .It has cooled without a crack," Balustrus said when Walegrin had  regained
enough control over his fear to listen again.

"My men will come for it this afternoon," the lord said, resting his forearms on
the table where Walegrin had spilled his sack of ore.

"As you wish,  Hierarch Torchholder. I'll  tell my lads  to hoist it  up. You'll
need a strong cart, my Lord. She's as heavy as the god."

Both men  laughed heartily.  Then, looking  mildly annoyed,  the High  Priest of
Vashanka in Sanctuary stood up and rubbed his arm. A tiny object dropped to  the
floor. Walegrin felt bitter bile surge up his throat as the Rankan retrieved the
bit and examined both it and his arm.

"It broke my skin," he said.

"Scraps," the  metal-master replied,  taking the  small flake  from the priest's
hand.

"Sharp scraps.  We should  put them  on the  edges of  our swords,"  Torchholder
laughed, and took back  the offending object. "Not  glass either . .  . Some new
project of yours?"

"No-"

Walegrin could not hear the rest of Balustrus' reply. His fear-clouded mind  had
finally placed the Lord and his  name: the Torch himself, War-god Priest.  As if
it were not bad enough to have the regular Imperial hierarchy sniffing along his
trail, now here was the Wargod too-and the Sacred Bands? Walegrin was numb  from
the waist down, unable  to move closer or  run away. Damn the  S'danzo and their
curses. Damn his father,  if he weren't already  damned, for killing Rezzel  and
incurring supernatural wrath.

But Molin  Torchholder was  laughing now,  giving the  metal-master a small coin
purse  and  a brief,  casual  blessing on  his  work. Walegrin,  whose  panicked
thoughts always moved too quickly, knew he'd been sold. When the priest and  his
bodyguards  had  disappeared out  the  door, Walegrin  confronted  the withered,
smiling, metal-master.

"Was it worthwhile?" he demanded.

"The palace has the best money in the city. Some of it was truly minted in Ranke
and not cut three  times since with lead  or tin." Balustrus looked  up from his
counting and studied  Wale-grin's face. "Now,  son, whatever you've  done to get
Ranke on your tail-don't go thinking I'd be on their side. Your secrets are safe
from Ranke with me."

Walegrin tried to laugh, but the attempt failed. "I'm to believe that the  Torch
himself just happened to  wander down here-and that  he just happened to  find a
piece of ore stuck to  his arm and then  he just happened to  give you a  double
handful of gold?"

"Walegrin, Walegrin," Balustrus swung down from the stool and tried to  approach
the angry soldier, but Walegrin  easily eluded him. "Molin Torchholder  has only
paid me  what is  due me-for  the work  on Vashanka's  bell. Now  it might  seem
strange to  you that  such a  man would  come here  himself-but the Hierarch has
taken a personal interest in this project from the beginning. Anyone in town can
tell you that. Besides, did I know you were going to be here this morning? Did I
suspect that today I'd hold Enlibrite ore in my hands? No.

"Now, I expect you'll  believe exactly what you  want, but it was  happenstance,
all of it. And Torchholder's suspicions  are not aroused; if they were  he would
still be here, believe that. Mark me  well: I know him and the rest  better than
you imagine."

It was not the first time Balustrus hinted that he knew more than he was saying,
and the notion did nothing to reassure Walegrin. Kilite had often done the  same
thing-and Kilite had finally betrayed him. "Truly, metal-master, when can I have
my swords?" he asked in a slightly calmer voice.

"Truly lad, I do not know. The bell  is finished, as you heard. I have no  other
commissions waiting at my  foundry. I'll start testing  your ore as soon  as the
priest  claims  his  bell. But,  Walegrin,  even  if I  stumble  upon  the right
temperatures and  the right  proportions at  once-it will  still take time. I've
only two lads to help me. I've  agreed to payment in kind-but I cannot  hire men
with unforged swords. Besides, would you want me to contract day-labor from  the
taverns?"

Walegrin shook his head. He'd relaxed.  His body could not stand the  tension he
brought to it. He was exhausted and knew his hands would shake if he moved them.
What Balustrus  said was  true enough,  except-He paused  and a  measure of  his
confidence returned. "I've five men  with me: good men;  more than equal to  day
labor. They sit idle until the swords are ready. They'll work for you."

It was the metal-master's turn to  hesitate. "I'll not pay them," he  announced.
"But they can stay in the outbuildings of the foundry. And Dunsha will make food
for them as she  does for the rest  of us." He seated  himself in his stool  and
smiled. "How about that, son?"

Walegrin winced,  not from  the offer  which was  all he  had desired,  but from
Balustrus' attempts at  friendship and familiarity.  Of course the  smith hadn't
been in Sanctuary when Walegrin was  a youth. He hadn't known Walegrin's  father
and could not know that Walegrin allowed no-one to call him 'son.' So,  Walegrin
controlled his rage and grunted affirmatively.

"I'll give you another piece of  advice-since you're already in my debt.  You've
got a hate and fear  about you that draws trouble  like a magnet. You think  the
worst, and you think it too soon. You'll be doing neither yourself nor your  men
any good by going north. But, now listen to me, the Sacred Band of Stepsons  and
probably the Hounds as well will have  to go-and then there'll be no-one of  any
power and ability here. Jubal's gone-you know that-don't you?"

Walegrin  nodded. Tales  of the  night assault  on the  Downwind estate  of  the
slaveholder circulated in  numerous variations, but  everyone agreed that  Jubal
hadn't been seen since. "But I don't want to spend my life in Sanctuary  looking
after gutter-scum!" he snarled back at his would-be benefactor.

"Mark me-and let me finish. You're fresh back. Things have changed. There're  no
more blue hawks  to roam the  streets. That's not  to say that  them as wore the
masks are  gone-not all  of them,  not yet.  Only Jubal's  gone. Jubal's men and
Jubal's power are there for the taking.  Even if he should return to this  town,
he'll be in  no condition to  raise his army  of the night  again. Let Temp  us,
Zaibar-" Balustrus spat for emphasis, "and  all their ilk fight for Ranke.  With
them gone and your steel you could be master of this place for life-and give  it
on to your children as well. Kittycat would surrender in a day."

Walegrin didn't answer. He didn't remember sliding the bolts back before opening
the door, and perhaps he hadn't. He  was ambitious to gain glory, but he  had no
real thoughts for the future. Balustrus had tempted him, but he'd frightened him
more.

The morning  sun brought  no warmth  to the  young man.  He shivered beneath his
borrowed, monk's  cloak. There  weren't many  people on  the narrow  streets and
those took pains to stay out of  his path. His cloak billowed out to  reveal the
leather  harness  of  a  soldier  beneath it,  but  no-one  stopped  him  to ask
questions.

The taverns were boarded up as the barkeeps and wenches alike caught a few hours
rest. Walegrin pounded past them, head erect, eyes hard. He reached the  Wideway
without seeing a  welcoming door. He  headed for the  wharves and the  fishermen
whose day began well before dawn. They would be ready for refreshment by now.

He wandered into a  slant-walled den called the  Wine Barrel; Fish Barrel  would
have been a  more appropriate name.  The place stank  of fish oil.  Ignoring the
pervasive stench, Walegrin  approached the rough-hewn  bar. The room  had fallen
silent and, though a swordsman like  himself had nothing to fear from  a handful
of fishermen, Walegrin was uncomfortable.

Even the  ale was  rank with  fish-oil, but  he gagged  it down.  The thick brew
brought the clouds of dullness his mind craved. He ordered another three mugs of
the vile,  potent stuff  and belched  prodigiously while  the fisherfolk endured
him.

Their meek, offended stares drove him back onto the wharf before he was half  as
drunk as he wanted to be. The tangy air of the harbor undid him; he vomited into
the water  and found  himself almost  completely sober.  In an  abysmal mood, he
tugged the priest's  cowl over  his head  and held  the cloak  shut with a death
grip. His path wound toward the bazaar where Illyra lived and saw the future  in
the S'danzo cards.

It was a market day at the bazaar, with every extra stall crammed with  winter's
produce:  jellies,  sweet breads  and  preserved fruits.  He  shoved past  them,
untempted, until he reached the more permanent part of the bazaar and could hear
the ringing  of Dubro's  hammer above  the din.  She had  found herself  an able
protector, at least. He  stopped before the man  who was his own  age and height
but whose slow strength was unequalled.

"Is niyra inside?" he  asked politely, knowing he  would be recognized. "Is  she
scrying for someone or can I talk to her?"

"You're not welcome here," Dubro replied evenly.

"I would like to see my sister. I've never done anything to hurt her in the past
and I don't intend to start now. Stand guard beside me, if you must. I will  see
her."

Dubro sighed and set his tools carefully back in their proper places. He  banked
the fire  and moved  buckets of  water close  by the  cloth door  of the  simple
structure he and Illyra called home. Walegrin was about to burst with impatience
when the plodding giant lifted the cloth and motioned him inside.

"We have a visitor," Dubro announced.

"Who?"

"See for yourself."

Walegrin  recognized the  voice but  not the  woman who  moved in  the  twilight
darkness.  It was  Illyra's custom  to disguise  her youth  with cosmetics   and
shapeless clothing-still it seemed that  the creature who walked toward  him was
far too gross to be his half-sister. Then he saw her face-his father's face  for
she took after him that way-and there could be no doubt.

She slouched ungracefully in the  depths of Dubro's chair, and  Walegrin, though
he had little knowledge of these things, guessed she was late in pregnancy.

"You're having a child," he blurted out.

"Not quite yet," she  replied with a laugh.  "Moonflower assures me I  have some
weeks to wait yet. I'm sure it will be a boy, like Dubro. No girl-child would be
so large."

"And you're  well enough?"  Walegrin had  always assumed  she was barren: doubly
cursed. It did not seem possible that she should be so robustly breeding.

"Well enough. I've lost my figure but  I've got all my teeth, yet," she  laughed
again. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yes-and more," Walegrin didn't trust the smith who stood close behind him,  but
Illyra would tell him everything he said anyway. "I've brought back the ore.  We
were betrayed by treachery-I lost all but  five of my men. I have made  powerful
enemies with my discovery.  I need your help,  Illyra, if I'm to  protect myself
and my men."

"You found  the steel  ofEnlibar?" Dubro  whispered while  Illyra sought  a more
dignified position in the chair.

"I found the ore," Walegrin corrected, suddenly realizing that the great ox of a
monger probably expected to make the swords himself.

"What do you need  from me?" Illyra asked.  "I'd think you'd need  Dubro's help,
not mine."

"No," Walegrin  spat out  quickly. "I've   found one  to make  my steel   for me
Balustrus, metal-master. He knows forging, grinding and tempering-"

"And Ilsig alchemy," Dubro added. "Since he cast the Prince's god-bell it  would
seem good fortune falls to him."

Walegrin did not like  to think that Dubro  knew of Balustrus and  the making of
steel. He attempted to  ignore the knowledge and  the smith. " 'Lyra,  it's your
help I need: your sight. With the cards you can tell me who I can trust and what
I can do in safety."

She frowned and smoothed  her skirts over her  great belly. "Not now,  Walegrin.
Not even if I could use the cards for such things. The baby-to-be takes so  much
from me; I  don't have the  sight. Moonflower warns  me that I  must not use the
gifts so close to my time. It could be dangerous."

"Moonflower? What is moonflower?" Walegrin  complained, and heard a giggle  from
Dubro.

"She is S'danzo. And she takes care of me, now-"

"S'danzo?" Walegrin said in disbelief. "Since when do the S'danzo help you?"

Illyra shrugged. "Even the S'danzo cannot remember forever, you know. The  women
have the sight, so the men feel free to wander with the wind. The women stay  in
one place all their lives; the men-It is forgotten."

"Forgotten?" Walegrin leaned forward to whisper to her. "Illyra, this Moonflower
who tells you not to use your sight-does she see those who used to come to you?"

"She-or her daughter," Illyra admitted.

"Illyra, breeding has clouded your mind.  They will squeeze you out. They  never
forget."

"If that were true,  so much the worse  for them. Since the  mercenaries came to
town scrying is not pleasant, Walegrin.  I do not enjoy looking into  the future
of soldiers. I  do not enjoy  their reactions when  I tell them  the truth." She
shifted again in the chair. "But, it is not true. When my son is bom the  danger
will be past and I will see  again. Moonflower and Migurneal will not keep  what
is rightfully mine," she said with the calm confidence of one who has the  upper
hand. "You need  not worry for  me. I will  not send you  to Moonflower, either.
I'll answer your  questions myself, if  I can, after  my son is  born-if you can
wait that long."

It seemed likely that she would be delivered of her child well before  Balustrus
finished making the swords, so Walegrin agreed to wait.

4

Balustrus' villa-foundry had  fallen from fashionability  long before the  first
Rankans reached Sanctuary. Weeds grew boldly in the mosaic face of Shipri in the
attrium. There wasn't a room where the roof was intact and several where it  was
non-existant. Walegrin  and Thrusher  threw their  belongings into  a room  once
connected to the main attrium but  now accessible only through a gaping  hole in
the wall. Still, it was a better billet than most they'd seen.

The work was hard and dirty,  with little time for recreation, though  Sanctuary
was in sight down the gentle slopes. Balustrus treated Walegrin and his men like
ordinary apprentices,  which meant  they got  enough food  and more  than enough
abuse. If Walegrin had  not borne his share  so stoically there might  have been
problems, but he was willing to sacrifice anything to the cause of his swords.

For three weeks they lived in  almost total isolation. A farmer delivered  their
food and gossip; an occassional mercenary came seeking  Balustrus' services  and
was turned  away. Only once   did someone  come looking  for  Walegrin  himself,
and  that was after Illyra bore  twins:  a  boy and  a girl.  The soldier   sent
them  a gold piece to insure their  registry in the rolls of citizenship at  the
palace.

"Is it worth it, commander?" Thrusher  asked as he kneaded a soothing  balm into
Walegrin's burnt shoulder. "We're here three  weeks and all we have to  show for
ourselves is fresh scars."

"What about full bellies and no  problems from Kittycat? Yes, it's worth  it. We
should know how steel is made; I had always thought the smiths just took the ore
and made it into swords. I had no idea there were so many steps in between."

"Aye, so many steps. We've gone through two sacks already and what have we  got?
Three half-decent knives, a mountain of  bad steel and a demon grinding  away in
the shed there. Maybe we would be better running. Sometimes I don't think  we'll
ever leave Sanctuary again."

"He's mad, but no demon.  And I think he's getting  close to the steel we  need.
He's as eager to have the steel as we are-it's his life."

The little man shook his head and eased Walegrin's tunic over the sore. "I don't
like magic," he complained.

"He only added a little bit of Ilsig silver- hardly enough to make a difference.
We've got to  expect a little  magic. We found  the mine with  magic, didn't we?
Balustrus isn't a magician.  He said he couldn't  put a spell on  the metal like
the Wrigglies put on steel, so he thought he'd try to add something to the steel
that already had a spell on it."

"Yeah-the Necklace of Harmony!"

"You went to the temple and looked at the statue of Ils. You yourself said there
was a silver necklace on the statue.  You yourself said there wasn't a rumor  in
town to the effect  that the necklace had  been touched, much less  stolen. It's
not the Necklace of Harmony."

Thrusher bit his  lip and looked  away in thought.  It was just  as well that he
didn't look at his commander's face. Walegrin had been present at the moment the
smith added the bits of silver to  the molten metal. He could truthfully say  he
didn't believe the metal was the Necklace of Harmony, but after seeing the burst
of white-hot flame he knew it was no ordinary piece of jewelry.

The whine of Balustrus' grinding wheel dominated the courtyard. The furnaces had
been  sealed; the  piles of  crushed ore  glittered in  the sunlight.   Everyone
awaited the results of the latest grinding. It seemed to Walegrin, as he  turned
away from the sound, that it was different this time. The metal shrieked like an
agonized, living thing.

Thrusher  gave  him  a sharp  nudge.  The  courtyard had  become  silent  and an
apprentice was running toward them. It was time, the youth shouted, for Walegrin
to witness the tempering of the blade.

"Luck," Thrusher added as Walegrin rose.

"Aye, luck. If it's good we can start thinking of leaving."

Balustrus was polishing the freshly ground blade when Walegrin entered the  hot,
dusty shed.  The bronze  man's tunic  was filthy  with sweat  and dust  from the
grinding wheel. His mottled skin glistened more brightly than the metal.

"She's a  beauty, isn't  she?" he  said, giving  the blade  to Walegrin while he
sought his crutches.

Fine, wavy lines of black alternated with thicker bands of a more silvery metal.
The old Enlibrite sword  he kept rolled in  his mattress had no  such striations
but Balustrus said an iron core  would ultimately yield a better steel;  so much
could be learned from the Rankan armorers. Walegrin thumped the flat of the  new
blade against his palm, wishing he knew if the metal-master were correct.

"We've done it, son!" Balustrus exaulted,  grabbing the blade back. "I knew  the
secret would be in that silver."

Walegrin followed him out of the shed  to one of the smaller furnaces which  the
apprentices had already fired. The youths ran when the men approached.

"But there  was no  silver mentioned  on the  pottery fragment;  and there's  no
silver in ordinary steel, is there?"

The metal-master spat on a weed. "Wrigglies never did anything without a  spell,
lad. Spells for  cooking food, spells  for bedding a  whore. Big spells,  little
spells and special spells for steel. And this time we've got the steel spell."

"With respect-you said that last time and it shattered in the brine."

Balustrus scratched his rutted  chin. "I did, didn't  I? But this .feels  right,
boy. There's no other way to explain it. It feels different and it feels  right.
And it has to be the silver-that's the only different thing this time."

"Did the silver have a 'steel' spell on it?" Walegrin asked.

The  metal-master  thrust  the  blade into  the  glowing  coals.  "You're smart,
Walegrin. Too bad it's too late; you could have learned-you could make your  own
steel." He spat  again and  the weed  fell over.  "No, it  wasn't a  steel spell
nothing like that. I don't know what the Wrigglies put on that silver. The Torch
brought the necklace here right after the Prince announced the bell. I could see
it was old, but it was plain silver and not valuable. I thought he'd want it for
the inscription; silver pressed on bronze is quite elegant. But no-the  Hierarch
gives out  that this  is the  Necklace of Harmony warm  off Ils-no saying how he
comes to have it. He wants me to melt the silver into the bell: 'Let Ils tremble
when Vashanka's name is called!' he says in that priest's voice of his-"

"But you didn't," Walegrin interrupted.

"Not sayin' I didn't  try, boy. Put it  in with the copper;  put it in with  the
tin-the damn thing floated  to the top everytime.  I had a choice:  I could cast
the bell with the silver buried in the metal and know that the bell would  crack
as soon as the Torch struck it.  You can imagine the omens that would  bring-and
what it'd bring to  me as well. Or,  I could set the  silver aside and tell  the
Torch that everything was exactly according to his instructions."

"And you  set the  silver aside?"  Walegrin covered  his face  with his hand and
turned away from the both the metal-master and the furnace.

"Of course, lad. Do you think the heavens're going to open up and Vashanka stick
his head out to tell Molin Torchholder that Ils' silver isn't in the bell?"

"Stranger  things  have happened  of  late." Walegrin  faced  the metal-master's
silence. "The silver should have melted  in the bronze, shouldn't it?" he  asked
softly.

"Aye-and I set it aside very carefully  when it didn't. I'll be glad to  see the
last of it. I  don't know what it  is that the Torch  gave me-and I'll wager  he
doesn't either. But it is Wrigglie-work and it'd have to be spelled or it  would
have melted-see? So you come asking for Enlibrite steel. You've got the ore and,
all things being equal, steel is steel. But it isn't, so I know we need a spell,
a spell for hardness  and temper. No-one alive  would know that spell,  but here
I've got silver that doesn't melt with a mighty spell on it-

"And, oh, it  feels right, Walegrin,  it feels right.  She'll take an  edge like
you've never seen."

Walegrin shrugged and  looked at the  metal-master again. "If  you're right, how
many swords can you make?"

"With what's left of  your ore and my  necklace: about  fifty. And   as it's  my
silver,  lad, I'll  be taking  more for   myself. There'll be about  twenty-five
for you and the same for me." 

The blond  officer shrugged  again. It  was no  worse than  he had  expected. He
watched as Balustrus wrestled the dull, red metal from the fire.

There were conflicting theories on the tempering of fighting steel. Some said  a
snowdrift was best for cooling the metal, others said plain water would suffice.
Most agreed  the ideal  was the  living body  of a  man, though in practice only
Imperial swords were  made that way.  Balustrus believed in  water straight from
the harbor,  left in  the sun  until it  had evaporated  by half. He plunged the
blade into a barrel of such brine and disappeared in the acrid steam.

The blade survived.

"Get the old sword," Balustrus urged and with a nod Walegrin sent Thrusher after
it.

They compared the blades for weight and balance, then, slowly, they tested  them
against each other. Walegrin held the old sword and Balustrus swung the new. The
first strokes were  tentative; Walegrin scarcely  felt them as  he parried them.
Then the  metal-master grew  confident; he  swung the  new metal with increasing
force and uncanny accuracy. Deep green sparks fell in the late afternoon  light,
but Walegrin  found himself  more concerned  with the  old man  who suddenly  no
longer seemed to need crutches. After a few frantic moments Walegrin backed  out
of range. Balustrus stopped, sighed and let the blade drag in the dust.

"We found it, lad," he whispered.

He sent the apprentices  into Sanctuary for a  keg of ale. The  soldiers and the
apprentices partook lavishly of it, but  Balustrus did not. He continued to  sit
in the courtyard with the  fresh-ground blade across his hidden,  crippled legs.
It was dark when Walegrin came out to join him.

"You are truly a master of metal," the younger man said with a smile, setting an
extra mug of ale beside Balustrus.

The metal-master shook his head, declining both the ale and the compliment. "I'm
a shadow of what I  was," he said to himself.  "So, now you have your  Enlibrite
swords, son. And what will you do with them?"

Walegrin squatted in  the moonlight. The  ale had warmed  him against the  night
breezes and made him  both more expansive and  optimistic than usual. "With  the
promise of swords I can recruit men-only a few at first. But we'll travel north,
taking commissions-taking what's necessary. I'll hire more as I go. We'll arrive
at the Wizardwall  fully mounted and  armored. We'll prove  ourselves with honor
and glory against the Nisibisi, then become the vanguard of a legion."

Chuckling loudly, the metal-master finally took a sip of ale. "Glory and  honor,
Walegrin, lad-what will  you do with  glory? What do  you gain with  honor? What
becomes of your men when Wizardwall and the Nisibisi are forgotten?"

Honor and glory  were their own  rewards for a  Rankan soldier and  as for war-a
soldier could  always find  a conflict  or commission.  Of course,  Walegrin had
neither glory nor  honor and his  commissions thus far  had been pedestrian-like
duty at the Sanctuary  garrison: the antithesis of  honor and glory. "I  will be
known,"  he  resolved  after  a  moment's  thought.  "While  I'm  alive  I'll be
respected. When I'm dead I'll be memorialized-"

"You're already known,  lad, or have  you forgotten that?  You have rediscovered
Enlibar steel. You don't dare show your  face because of it. How much honor  and
glory do you think you'll need before you can walk the streets of Ranke?  Twenty
five swords? Fifty swords? Do you  think they'll believe you when you  tell them
we   made   the  steel   with   bits  of   an   old  Wrigglie   necklace?   Eh?"

Walegrin stood up. He paced a circle around the seated cripple. "I will succeed.
I'll succeed now or die."

With  a quick,  invisible movement  of his  crutch, Balustrus  brought  Walegrin
sprawling into the dust. "It is impolite  to speak to the back of my  head. Your
fortunes have changed, and  could change again. The  Empire has never given  you
anything-and will not ever  give you anything. But  the Empire means nothing  to
Sanctuary.

"There is power here, lad, not glory or honor but pure power. Power you can  use
to buy  all the  honor and  glory you  want. I  tell you,  Walegrin- Jubal's not
coming back. His world's ripe for taking."

"You've said that  before. So Jubal  rots under his  mansion. How many  bloodied
hawkmasks have  been nailed  to the  Downwind bridge?  Even if  I were  tempted,
there's nothing left."

"Tempus is culling the ranks for you. The wiserones are safe, I'm sure.  They've
heard Jubal isn't dead  and they're waiting for  his return-but they don't  know
everything."

There was  an evil  confidence to  Balustrus' tone  that made  Walegrin wary. He
never fully  trusted the  metal-master and  trusted him  less when  he spoke  in
riddles.

"I was not always  Balustrus. Once I was  the Grey Wolf. Only  twenty-five years
ago I led all the Imperial legions  into the mountains and broke the last  Ilsig
resistance. I broke  it because I  knew it. I  was born in  those mountains. The
blood of kings and sorcerers runs in my veins, or it did. But I knew the days of
kings were  over and  the days  of Empire  had come.  I destroyed  my own people
hoping for honor and glory among the conquerors-"

Walegrin cleared  his throat  loudly. There  wasn't a  citizen alive  who hadn't
heard of  the Grey  Wolf: a  young man  clothed in  animal hides, given a hero's
welcome in Ranke despite his Wrigglie past-and tragically killed in a fall  from
his horse. The whole capital had turned out for his funeral.

"Perhaps my friends in Ranke were  the fathers of your friends," Balustrus  said
to  Walegrin's  skepticism.  "I  watched my  own  funeral  from  the gladiators'
galleries where drugged, stripped and branded I'd been left to die or improve my
one-time friends' fortunes." He laughed bitterly. "I wasn't your ordinary Rankan
general-they'd forgotten that. I could fight  and I could forge weapons such  as
they'd never seen. I'd learned metal-mastery from my betrayed people."

"And Jubal-what's he got to do with this?" Walegrin finally asked.

"He came later. I'd  fought and killed so  often I'd been retired  by my owners,
but then the  Emperor himself bought  me, Kittycat's father.  I trained the  new
slaves and Jubal was  one of them. A  paragon-he was born for  the death-duel. I
taught him every  trick I knew;  he was a  son to me.  I watched fortunes change
everytime he fought. We  soon both belonged to  the Emperor. We drank  together,
whored together-the life of a successful  gladiator isn't bad if you don't  mind
the brand and collar. I trusted him. I told him the truth about me.

"Two days later I was on the sand fighting against him. I hadn't fought for five
years; but  even at  my best  I was  no match  for him.  We fought with mace and
chain-his choice. He took  my legs with his  second swing. I had  expected that,
but I expected a quick, merciful death  as well. I thought we were both  slaves:
equals  and friends.  He said:  'It's been  arranged,' pointed  to the  Imperial
balcony and struck my legs again.

"That was summer. It was winter when  I opened my eyes again. A Lizerene  healer
was at my side congratulating himself on my recovery-but I had become this!"

The metal-master jerked his tunic upward, revealing the remains of his legs. The
moonlight softened the  horror, but Walegrin  could see the  twisted remnants of
muscle, the exposed lengths of bone,  the scaly knobs that had once  been knees.
He looked away before Balustrus lowered the cloth.

"The Lizerene said he'd been paid in gold. I returned slowly to the capital,  as
you can  imagine, and  painfully, as  you cannot.  Jubal had  been freed the day
after our battle.  I searched  for years  and found  him Downwind,  already well
protected by his 'masks. I couldn't adequately thank him for my life so I became
Balustrus, his friend. I forged his swords and masks.

"Jubal  had  enemies, most  more  able than  I;  I feared  my  revenge would  be
vicarious and his death swift. When  Tempus came I thought we were  both doomed.
But Tempus is cruel; crueler than  Jubal, crueler than I. Saliman came  here one
night to say  his master lay  alive among the  corpses at the  charnel house, an
arrowhead in each  knee. Saliman asked  if I would  shelter the master  until he
died-as he was certain to do. 'Of  course,' I said, 'but he need not  die. We'll
send him to the Lizerene.' "

The ale no longer warmed Walegrin. He was no stranger to hate or revenge; he had
no sympathy for the slaver. But Balustrus' voice was pure sated, insane  malice.
This man had  betrayed his own  people for Ranke-and  been betrayed by  Ranke in
turn. He had called Jubal his son, told him the truth about himself and believed
that his son had immediately betrayed  him. Walegrin knew he was now  Balustrus'
'son.' Did the metal-master expect to be betrayed-or would he betray first?

Balustrus submerged himself in his  satisfaction; he said nothing when  Walegrin
took his mug of ale far across the courtyard to the shadows where Thrusher sat.

"Thrush-can you go into the city tonight?"

"I'm not so far gone that I can't thread the maze."

"Then go. Start looking about for men."

Thrusher shook off the effects of the ale. "What's happened? What's gone wrong?"

"Nothing yet. Balustrus is acting strangely. I don't know how much longer we can
trust him."

"What's made you agree with me at last?"

"He told me the story  of his life. I can  see Illyra in ten days-after  the new
moon and after she's cleansed. We'll leave for the north the next morning,  with
the silver and the ore if we don't have swords."

Thrusher was not one to say 'I told you so' more than once. He got his cloak and
went over the outer wall without anyone but Walegrin knowing he was gone.

5

The metal-master organized his courtyard foundry with military precision. Within
six  days of  the successful  tempering, another  ten blades  had been   forged.
Walegrin marked  the progress  in his  mind: so  many days  until he could visit
Illyra, plus one more before the swords were finished; yet another to meet  with
the men Thrusher was culling out of the city and then they could be gone.

He watched Balustrus carefully; and  though the metal-master gave no  overt sign
of betrayal,  Walegrin became  anxious. Strangers  came more  frequently and the
cripple made journeys to places  not even Thrusher could find.  When questioned,
Balustrus spoke of  the Lizerene who  tended Jubal and  the bribes he  needed to
pay.

On the morning of the eighth day, a rainy morning when the men had been glad  to
sleep past dawn, Walegrin finished his planning. He was at the point of  rousing
Thrusher when he  heard sound where  there should have  been silence beyond  the
wall.

He roused  Thrusher anyway  and the  two men  crept silently  toward the  sound.
Walegrin drew his sword,  the first Enlibar sword  to be forged in  five hundred
years.

"You've got the money and the message?" they heard Balustrus say.

"Yessir."

Balustrus'  crutches  scraped  along the  broken  stone.  Walegrin and  Thrusher
flattened against the walls  and let him pass.  They'd never get the  truth from
the metal-master, but  the messenger was  another matter. They  crept around the
wall.

The stranger was dressed in dark  clothes of unfamiliar style. He was  adjusting
the stirrup when Walegrin fell upon him, wrestling him to the ground. Keeping  a
firm  hand over  the stranger's  mouth and  a tight  hold on  his arm,  Walegrin
dragged him a short distance from his horse.

"What've we got?" Thrusher asked after a cursory check of the horse.

"Too soon to tell," Walegrin replied. He twisted the arm again until he felt his
prisoner gasp,  then he  rolled him  over. "Not  local, and  not Nisibisi by the
looks of him."

The young  man's features  were soft,  almost feminine  and his  efforts to free
himself were laughably futile. Walegrin cuffed him sharply then yanked him  into
a sitting position.

"Explain yourself."

Terrified eyes darted from  one man to the  other and came to  rest on Walegrin,
but the lad said nothing.

"You'll have to give him a search, eh?" Thrusher threatened.

"Aye-here's his purse."

Walegrin ripped the pouch from the youngster's belt, noticing as he did that the
youth carried no evident  weapon, not even a  knife. He did, however,  have some
large heavy object under his jerkin.  Walegrin tossed the purse to Thrusher  and
sought the hidden object. It  proved to be a  medallion, covered with a  foreign
seeming script. He  had made nothing  of the inscription  before Thrusher yelped
with surprise and a dazzle of light flashed between them.

As Walegrin looked up a second flash erupted. Their prisoner needed no more time
to effect his escape. They heard the youth mount and gallop off, but by the time
either man could see clearly again the trail was already becoming mud.

"Magic," Thrusher muttered as he got to his feet.

Walegrin said nothing as he got his legs under him. "Well, Thrush-what else  was
in that purse?" he asked after several moments.

Thrusher checked  it cautiously  again. "A  small ransom  in gold  and this." He
handed Walegrin a small silver object.

"One of the Ilsig links, by the look of it," Walegrin whispered. He looked  back
toward the villa. "He's up to something."

"The magician wasn't Rankene," Thrusher offered in consolation.

"That only means we have new enemies. C'mon. It's time to find my sister. She'll
make at least as much sense as the metal-master."

The rain had  kept the bazaar  crowds to a  minimum, but so  close to the harbor
there was fog, too, and Walegrin got  them lost twice before he heard the  sound
of Dubro's hammer. Two mercenaries, a Whoreson pair by the look of them,  waited
beneath the awning. Dubro was mending their shield.

"You're putting in more dents than you're taking out, oaf," the younger,  taller
of the pair complained, but Dubro went on hammering.

Walegrin and Thrusher moved closer without being noticed. A rope was tied across
the doorway, usually a sign that Illyra was scrying. Walegrin tried to find  the
scent of her incense in the air but found only the smell of Dubro's fire.

There was a  scream and a  crash from the  inside. Dubro dropped  his hammer and
bumped into Walegrin at the doorway.  A third Stepson yanked the rope  loose and
attempted, unsuccessfully, to  bully his way  past both Dubro  and Walegrin. The
smith's hands closed on the Stepson's shoulder. The other pair reached for their
weapons, but Thrusher already had his drawn. Everyone froze in place.

Illyra appeared in the  doorway. "Just let them  go, Dubro," she asked  wearily.
"The  truth hurts  him more  than you  can." She  noticed Walegrin,  sighed  and
retreated back into the darkness.

"Lying S'danzo bitch!" the third Stepson shouted after her.

Dubro changed his grip and shook the small man. "Get out of here before I change
my mind," he said in a low voice.

"You haven't finished with  the shield yet," the  young one complained, but  his
companions hushed him, grabbed the shield and hurried into the rain.

Dubro turned his attention  to Walegrin. "One might  expect you to be  here when
something like this happens."

"You shouldn't let her see men like that."

"He wouldn't," Illyra explained from the doorway. "But that's the only kind that
comes anymore-for mongering and scrying. The Stepsons scare anything else away."

"What about the women you used to see? The lovers and the merchants?" Walegrin's
tone was harsh. "Or did the S'danzo not give them back?"

"No, Migurneal was not untrue. It's the same everywhere. No woman would  venture
this close Downwind anymore-and not many merchants either. They don't need me to
tell them their luck if they run afoul of the Sacred Band."

"And you need the money because of the babes?" Walegrin concluded, then realized
he didn't hear the normal infantile sounds.

Illyra looked away.  "Well, yes-and  no," she  said angrily.  "We needed  a  wet
nurse-and we found one.  But it's not safe  for her or the  babies here. They're
bullies. Worse  than the  hawk-masks were-those  at least  stayed in the gutters
where they belonged. Arton and Lillis are at the Aphrodesia House."

It was not uncommon  to foster a child  at a well-run brothel  where young women
sold their  milk. Myrtis,  proprietor of  the Aphrodesia,  had an unquestionable
reputation. Even the palace women kept their children in the Aphrodesia nursery.
But fostering wasn't the S'danzo way and Walegrin could see Illyra had agreed to
it only because she was scared.

"Have you been threatened?" he asked,  sounding like the garrison office he  had
been.

Illyra didn't answer, but Dubro did. "They make threats everytime she tells them
the truth. She  tells them they're  cowards-and their threats  prove it. 'Lyra's
too honest; she shouldn't answer the questions men shouldn't ask."

"But I'll  answer your  questions now,  Walegrin," she  offered, not  facing her
husband.

The incense holders were still scattered across the carpets. Her cards had  been
thrown against the wall. Walegrin watched while she set her things in order  and
seated herself behind the table. She had recovered from the birth of the  twins,
Walegrin judged. There was a pleasant maturity in her face but otherwise she was
the same-until she took up the cards again.

"What do you seek," she asked.

"I have been betrayed, but  I am still in danger.  I wish to know whom  I should
fear most and where I might be safe."

Illyra's  face  relaxed  into unemotional  blank-ness.  Her  expressionless eyes
stared into him. "The steel brings enemies, doesn't it?"

Though he had seen her in  scrying trances before, the change chilled  Walegrin.
Yet he believed  totally in her  gifts since she  had read the  pottery fragment
which had led  him to the  ore. "Yes, the  steel brings enemies.  Will it be the
death of me? Is it the final link in a S'danzo forged chain?"

"Give me your sword," she demanded.

He handed her the Enlibar blade. Illyra stared at it a while then ran her  palms
along the flat and  touched the edge tenderly  with her fingertips. She  set the
metal on her table  and sat motionless for  so long that Walegrin  began to fear
for her. He had started  for the door when her  eyes widened and she called  his
name.

"The future has been clouded since I gave birth, Walegrin, but your future is as
the fog to the sun.

"Steel belongs to no man but to itself alone- this steel even more so. It  reeks
of gods and magic, places the S'danzo do not see. But unless your betrayers work
through the gods they will have no power over you. There is intrigue,  treachery
but none of it will harm you or the steel."

"What of the men of Ranke? Have they forgotten me? When I go north-"

"You will not go north," she said, taking hold of the sword again.

"'Lyra, I'm going north with my men and the swords."

"You will not go north."

"That's nonsense."

Illyra put the sword on the table again. "It is the clearest thing I've seen  in
a week, Walegrin. You will not go north; you will not leave Sanctuary."

"Then you cannot say no  harm will come to me.  What of the spy we  trapped this
morning. The stranger who got away. Do you see him?"

"No-he can mean nothing to you, but I'll try my cards." She picked up the  deck,
took his hand and pressed it against the cards."Perhaps your future is  distinct
from the steel. Make three piles then turn over the top card of each."

He placed  the three  piles where  she pointed  and flipped  over the cards. The
first showed  two men  dueling. Though  blood dripped  from their blades neither
seemed  injured.  It  was  a  card Walegrin  had  seen  before.  The  second was
unfamiliar and damaged by water running through the colors. It seemed to show  a
great mass  of ships  on the  open sea.  The third  card showed  an armored hand
clutching  a sword-hill  that changed  to flame  halfway up  the blade.  Without
thinking Walegrin moved to touch the flame. Illyra's fingers closed over his and
restrained him.

"Your first: the  Two of Ores:  steel. It means  many things, but  for you it is
simply this steel itself. But you already know this.

'"Your second: this is the Seven of Ships, or it was the Seven of Ships. It  was
the fishing  fleet, but  ithas become  something else."  She squeezed  his hand.
"Here is all danger and opportunity. Not  even the gods see this card as  we see
it now. The Seven of Ships sails  out of the future; it sails for  Sanctuary and
nothing will be the  same. Remember it!" she  commanded and overturned the  card
again. "We were not meant to see what the gods have not yet seen.

"Your third  is not  a sword,  though you  thought it  was. It  is the  Lance of
Flames-the Oriflamme: leader's card. Coming  with steel and the revealed  future
it places  you in  the vanguard.  It is  not a  card for  a man  who believes in
S'danzo curses."

"Don't speak in riddles, Illyra."

"It is simple. You are not cursed by the S'danzo-if you ever were. You have been
marked by the gods; but remember what we say about the gods: it is all the  same
whether they  curse or  favor you.  Since the  birth of  my children this is the
first future which is not clouded. I see a huge fleet sailing for  Sanctuary-and
I see the Oriflamme. I will not interpret what I see."

"The men in Ranke will not reach me and Balustrus will not sell me?"

The S'danzo woman laughed as she gathered her cards. "Raise your eyes, Walegrin.
It doesn't matter. Ranke is to the north and you're not going north. The  steel,
the fleet and the ori-flamme are right here."

"I do not understand."

The incense had burned down. Sunlight came in through the roped-off door. Illyra
emerged from the aura of mystery to be herself again. "You are the only one  who
can understand, Walegrin," she told him. "I'm too tired, now. It doesn't  really
matter;  I don't  feel your  doom- and  I've felt  doom often  enough since  the
mercenaries started coming. Who knows. Maybe you aren't the one who understands.
Things happen to you, around you,  and you just muddle through. Tell  Dubro I'll
see no-one else today when you leave."

She stood up and went behind a curtain. He heard her lie down; he left  quietly.
Thrusherwas helping Dubro with  a wheelrim, but both  men stopped when they  saw
him.

"She wishes to be left alone the rest of the day," he said.

"Then you best begone from here."

Walegrin headed out from the awning without argument. Thrusher joined him.

"Well, what did you leam?"

"She told me  that we will  not go north  and that a  great fleet is  headed for
Sanctuary."

Thrusher stopped short. "She's mad," he exclaimed.

"I don't think so, but I  don't understand either. In the meantime  we'll follow
our original plans.  We'll come back  to the city  tonight and speak  to the men
you've  found.  There should  be  twenty-five swords  finished  by now-if  there
aren't, we'll cut our losses and leave with what we've got. I want to be out  of
here by sunrise."

6

The light in the tiny, upper  room was provided by two foul-smelling  candles. A
man stood uncomfortably in the center of the room, the only place where he could
stand without striking his head  on the rough-hewn beams. Walegrin,  deep within
the comer shadows, fired questions at him.

"You say you can use a sword-do you fight in skirmish or battle?"

"Both. Before I came to Sanctuary, two years back, I lived a time at  Valtostin.
We fought the citizens by night and the Tostin tribes by day. I've killed twenty
men in a single day, and I've got the scars to prove it."

Walegrin didn't doubt  him. The man  had the look  of a seasoned  fighter, not a
brawler. Thrusher had seen him single-handedly subdue a pair of rowdies  without
undue injury or commotion. "But you left Valtostin?"

The man shifted his weight nervously. "Women-a woman."

"And you came to Sanctuary to forget?" Walegrin suggested.

"There's always work for such as me; especially in a city like this."

"So you found work here, but not with the garrison. What did you do?"

"I guarded the property of a merchant..."

Walegrin did not need to hear the  rest of the explanation; he'd heard it  often
enough. It was as if the surviving hawkmasks had settled on a single excuse  for
their past involvement with Jubal. In a way there was truth in it; Jubal's trade
wasn't fundamentally  different from  the activities  of a  legitimate  merchant
especially here in Sanctuary.

"You know  what I'm  offering?" Walegrin  asked flatly  when the  man had fallen
silent.    "Why     come    to     me    when     Tempus    needs     Stepsons?"
__

"I'd die before I served hint."

That too was the expected response. Walegrin emerged from the shadows to embrace
his new man. "Well, die you might, Cubert. We quarter in a villa to the north of
town. A sign says 'Sighing Trees,' if you read Wriggle. Otherwise you'll know it
by the smell. We're with Balustrus, metal-master, for one more night."

Cubert knew the name and did not flinch  at the sound of it. Perhaps he did  not
have the abhor-ence of magic and near-magic that most mercenaries had. Or he was
simply a good soldier and accepted his lot with resignation. Thrusher emerged to
open the door.

"Was that the last?" Walegrin asked when they were alone again.

"The best, anyway. There's one more, another hawkmask, and-" Thrusher paused,  "
a woman."

Walegrin's sigh made the candles flicker. "Very well-send her in."

It was not the custom of the  army, even here in the hinterlands, to  consider a
woman fit for  anything but cooking  and fornicating. Jubal's  rejection of this
time-honored attitude  was, to  Walegrin, far  more outrageous  than any  of his
other activities.  Unfortunately, with  the Stepsons  changing the  face of  the
Downwind side of town, Walegrin was forced to consider these distaff  aberations
if he  was to  leave town  with a  dozen men-soldiers-swords,  whatever, in  his
command.

The last candidate entered the room. Thrusher slid back under the eaves as  soon
as he had shut the door.

There were two types to these women Jubal had hired. The first was  small-built,
all teeth and eyes  and utterly devoid of  the traditional virtues almost  every
soldier brought  into battle.  The second  type was  a man  save for accident of
birth-big and broad, strong as any man of equal size, but as lacking in military
honor as her scrawny sister.

This one was of the first type;  her head barely reached Walegrin's chest. In  a
way she reminded him of Illyra and the resemblence was almost enough for him  to
order her out on the spot.

She was  shaking out  her short  kilt; repairing  a knot  at the shoulder of her
tunic  which tried  to conceal  a small  breast as  grimy as  the rest  of  her.
Walegrin judged  she hadn't  eaten for  two or  three days.  A half-healed slash
stiffened her face; another wound ran down her hard, bare arm. Someone had tried
to  kill this   woman and  failed. She  tugged wide-spread  fingers through  her
matted, dark hair,  doing nothing to improve it.

"Name," he demanded when she stood still again.

"Cythen." Her voice was remarkably pleasant for one so callused.

"You use a sword?"

"Well enough."

"A lad's sword, not a man's, I suppose."

Cythen's eyes flashed from the insult.  "I learned the sword from my  father and
my brothers, my uncles and cousins. They gave me theirs when the time came."

"And Jubal?"

"And you," she stated defiantly.

Walegrin was  impressed by  her spirit-and  wished he  could hire  her relatives
instead. "How  have you  survived since  Jubal's death-or  don't you  think he's
dead?"

"There's not enough of us left for  it to make a difference. We always  had more
enemies than friends. The hawkmask  days are over. Jubal  was our leader and  no
one could take his place, even for a few weeks. Myself, I went to the Street  of
Red Lanterns-but it's not to my taste. I was not always like this.

"I saw your  man face down  a Stepson-so I've  come to see  you and what  you're
worth."

A  man shouldn't  look at  his prospective  officer that  way-not that  she  was
flirting. Walegrin felt she was trying to reverse their roles.

"Jubal was smart and strong-maybe not as smart and strong as he thought he  was;
Temp us got him in the end. I put  a high price on my loyalty and who I  give it
to. What are  your plans? It's  rumored you have  hard steel. Who  do you use it
for?"

Walegrin did not  reveal his surprise;  he just stared  back at her.  He had far
less experience than the slaver, fewer men and far less gold. Ranke, in the form
of Tempus, had brought Jubal down-what  chance, truly, did he have? "I  have the
steel of Enlibar forged into swords. The Nisibisi do not fight in neat ranks and
files; they ambush and we will ambush  them in turn until we've made our  names.
Then with more swords-"

She sighed loudly. For one raging moment Walegrin thought she would turn on  her
heels and  leave. Had  she honestly  expected him  to scrabble  for Jubal's lost
domain? Or did she sense the hollowness of his confidence?

"I doubt it-but at least I'll be out of Sanctuary," she offered him her hand  as
she spoke.

A mercenary captain welcomed his men with a hand-shake and a comrade's  embrace.
Wale-grin did not  embrace women as  comrades. When he  needed to he  found some
ordinary slut, laid her on  her back and, with her  skirts up to hide her  face,
took what he needed. He had seen women, ladies, that he would not treat in  such
a manner-but they had never seen him.

Cythen was no slut, and  she'd hurt him if he  treated her that way. She  was no
lady, either- not with  her clothes half-gone and  covered with dirt. Still,  he
wasn't about to set her  back on the streets-at least  not until she had a  good
meal. After quickly wiping his hand on his hip, Wale-grin took hers.

She had a firm grip, not man-strong  but strong enough to wield a sword.  Trying
to make it seem natural, Walegrin raised  his other arm for the embrace and  was
saved from  the deed  itself by  a thumping,  shouting commotion  on the  stairs
outside.

Thrusher was  flat against  the wall.  Walegrin had  a knife  out of its forearm
sheath and just enough time to  see Cythen remove a nasty assassin's  blade from
somewhere in her skirt before the door burst open.

"They've taken her!"

The light from the torch on the  landing blinded Walegrin to the details of  the
scene  before  him. There  was  a central  figure,  huge and  yelling;  writhing
attachments to it, also yelling and presumably his guards, and finally Thrusher,
leaping out of the darkness to wrap lethal arms around the neck of the unsubdued
invader. The  dark hulk  groaned. It  fell back,  squeezing Thrusher against the
wall. It twisted, freeing its right arm, then calmly peeled someone off its left
side and threw him into the eaves.

"Walegrin!" it bellowed. "They've taken her!"

Cythen was crouched on the balls of her feet, beneath the giant's notice but not
Walegrin's. She was  ready to strike  when he laid  a hand on  her shoulder. She
relaxed.

"Dubro?" Walegrin asked cautiously.

"They've  taken  her!"  The smith's  pain  was  not physical,  but  it  was real
nonetheless. Walegrin did not  need to ask who  had been taken, though  he could
not imagine how they had gotten past the smith in the first place.

"Tell me slowly: Who took her? How long ago? Why?"

The smith  drew a  shuddering breath  and mastered  himself. "It  was just  past
sundown, a beggar-lad came  up. He said there'd  been an accident on  the wharf.
'Lyra bid me help if I could, so I followed the lad. I lost him almost at  once^
there was nothing on the  wharf-" he paused, taking  Walegrin's wrist in a  bone
crushing grip.

"It was a  trap?" Walegrin suggested,  grateful for the  gauntlet that protected
his wrists from the full power of Dubro's despair.

The smith nodded slowly. "She was gone!"

"She hadn't  simply followed  you and  gotten lost-or  gone to  visit the  other
S'danzo?"

A deep-pitched groan  forced its way  out of Dubro's  throat. "No-no. T'was  all
torn about. She fought, but she  was gone-without her shawl. Walegrin, she  goes
nowhere without her shawl."

"She might have escaped to hide somewhere?"

"I've searched-else I'd  have been here  sooner," the smith  explained, shifting
his grip from Walegrin's wrist to his less-protected shoulder. "I roused all the
S'danzo-and they searched with me. We  found her shoe behind the farmer's  stall
by the  river, but  nothing else.  I went  home to  look for signs." Dubro shook
Walegrin for emphasis. "I found this!"

He withdrew an object from his pouch and held it so close that Walegrin couldn't
see it. A measure  of calm returned to  the smith, he released  Walegrin and let
him study the  object. It was  a metal gauntlet  boss, engraved and  distinctive
enough  to  identify  its wearer,  should  he  be found.  But  Walegrin  did not
recognize it. He handed it to Thrusher.

"Do you recognize it?" he asked.

"No-"

Cythen took the boss from Thrusher's  hands. "Stepson-" she said with both  fear
and anger. "See  here, the lightning  emerging from the  clouds? Only they  wear
such designs."

"You have a plan?" Dubro demanded.

It wasn't  only Dubro  waiting for  a plan.  With the  mention of  the Stepsons,
Cubert had re-entered the room, and Cythen was warm for blood; the hawkmasks all
had reasons for vengeance. Even Thrusher, still rubbing his sore head, acted  as
if this were a challenge that must be answered. Walegrin tucked the boss in  his
belt-pouch.

"We know  it was  a Stepson,  but we  don't know  who," Walegrin said, though he
suspected the one who had overturned Illyra's table earlier. "We don't have time
to run them all to ground, and I  don't think Tempus would let us. Still, if  we
had a Stepson hostage or two ourselves, it would be easier-"

"I'll go with Thrusher. I know where they're at at this hour," Cubert  asserted.
Cythen nodded agreement.

"Remember, a dead Stepson won't  do us any good. So  if you must kill one,  hide
the body well-dammit."

"It'll be a pleasure," Cubert grinned.

"See that they get their swords," Walegrin said as Thrusher led the ex-hawkmasks
from the room.  He was alone  with Dubro. "Now,  you and I  will search the back
streets-and hope we find nothing."

Dubro agreed. For  one generally reckoned  no smarter than  the hammer he  used,
Dubro moved well through the  darkness, leading Walegrin rather than  being led.
The latter had expected  him to be a  massive hinderence and had  kept him apart
from the rest,  but Dubro knew  blind alleys and  exposed basements that  no-one
else suspected.

At length they emerged  from the Maze to  the stinking structures of  the chamel
houses. Butchers worked  there, gravediggers and  undertakers as well.  Slippery
mounds of rotting flesh and bones stretched, undisturbed, down to the river. The
gulls and the dogs avoided this place, though the shadows of huge rats could  be
seen scurrying over the filth. They had found Rezzel here that morning-and  left
her here. For a moment Walegrin thought he saw Illyra lying out there-but no, it
was just another jumble of bones, glowing with decay.

"She'd come here every so often,"  Dubro said softly. "You'd know why,  wouldn't
you?"

"Dubro-you don't think I-"

"No, she trusted you and she's not wrong in such things. It's just, if she  were
frightened, if she thought she had no place else to go-she might come here."

"Let's go back  to the bazaar.  Maybe her people  have found something.  If not,
well-I'll gather my men  and whatever they've found  in the morning. We'll  deal
with Tempus from  there." Dubro nodded  and led the  way, carefully, around  the
eerily glowing things lying on the mud.

Moonflower, who was as large among  women as Dubro was among men,  sat awkwardly
at Illy-ra's table when they entered the little rooms behind the awning. "She is
alive," the immense woman said, rearranging Illyra's cards.

"Walegrin has a  plan to get  her back from  the Stepsons," Dubro  said. Between
them they almost filled the room.                   -

Moonflower  got off  the creaking  stool and  approached Walegrin,  a  predatory
curiosity in her eyes. "Walegrin-you've grown up!"

She wasn't tall; no taller than Cythen,  but she was built like a mountain.  She
wore layers of colorful  clothes, more layers and  colors than the eye  cared to
record. Yet she could move quickly to trap Walegrin before he reached the door.

"You will rescue her?"

"I didn't think you S'danzo cared about her," Walegrin snarled.

"She breaks little rules and pays a little price-but not like this. You think of
the mother. She broke the big rules and paid the big price. But wouldn't we  all
like to break the big rules? She  paid with her life-but we remember her  here,"
Moonflower pressed a beefy hand over her heart. "You go and bring her back, now.
I'll stay with this  one." She stepped aside  and pushed Walegrin back  into the
night. She probably wasn't very strong, but at her weight she didn't need to be.

Alone in the bazaar, Walegrin remembered what Illyra had said about the S'danzo.
They were two societies, men and women, and their purposes were not the same. It
had been the S'danzo men who had dismembered his father-and S'danzo men who  had
cursed him. But it was the S'danzo women who had the power, the sight-

Walegrin made his way slowly up the hills behind Sanctuary to Balustrus'  villa.
His energy went into finding the ground with each foot. He'd need food and sleep
before he could face Illyra's problems again. It occured to him that he wouldn't
be able to leave until she was found, one way or the other.

A  woman's  weeping caught  his  attention. His  half-asleep  thoughts converged
around Illyra as a shape rose out  of the darkness and threw itself around  him.
By  the smell  it wasn't  Illyra. He  pushed Cythen  aside and  studied her   in
dawnlight.

The jagged cut along the girl's  face had been re-opened sometime in  the night.
Fresh  clots  of blood  had  twisted her  expression  into something  worthy  of
Balustrus. Tears and sweat made vertical lines across her dirty skin. Walegrin's
first impulse was to toss her headfirst into the brush. Instead he took her hand
and led her  to a rock.  He unfastened his  cloak and handed  it to her, telling
himself he'd do the same for any of his men, and not entirely believing it.

"They've got Thrusher and Cubert's dead!" she sobbed.

He took her hands,  trying to distract her  from the hysteria that  made her all
but incoherent. "What about Thrush?"

Cythen buried her face in her hands, sniffed loudly then faced Walegrin  without
the tears. "We  were Downwind, past  Momma Becho's. We  were trailing a  Stepson
pair we'd been told  passed that way after  sundown carrying a body.  Thrush was
leading, I was in the rear. I heard a noise. I gave a warning and turned to face
it, but it was  a trap and we  were outnumbered from the  start. I never got  my
knife out-they had me  from behind. It was  a carry-off; they weren't  trying to
kill  us.  I went  down  before they  hit  me hard-but  Thrush  and Cubert  kept
fighting.

"I got  my chance  once we  were back  in the  City, near  the palace.  I didn't
linger, but they only had Thrusher with us-so Cubert's dead."

"How long ago was this?"

"I came straight here, and I haven't been here long."

"And you're sure it was the Prince's palace- not Jubal's?"

She became indignant. "I'd know Jubal's if I saw it. I'd have stayed and  gotten
Thrush out if it  had been Jubal's. The  Stepsons and Tempus haven't  had enough
time to learn what any hawkmask knows about the mansion. But we were attacked by
Stepsons, anyway."

"You knew that?"

"By the smell."

Walegrin was too tired to continue sparring. He'd lost Thrusher who'd been  with
him  longer  than  anyone,  who was  more  friend  and  family than  lieutenant.
Moreover, he didn't have a hostage to strengthen his position. It was impossible
to believe this scrawny, starving woman could escape where Thrush hadn't-

"You don't believe  me, do you?"  she said. "Thrush  trusted me at  his back. He
must've fought until  they hit him  hard, where's I  gave up sooner.  That's the
difference, Walegrin, you say women have no honor because they'll lose first and
win later. You men have to  win all the time or die  trying. If I was in on  it,
would I have come back like this?"

"To lead me in," Walegrin challenged, but without conviction.

The sun was up when he slid the  bolt of the villa-gate and led Cythen into  the
courtyard. Balustrus was waiting for them. The metal-master already knew some of
the night's events.

"Seems you won't be jumping early after all?" he accused.

"Yes, I'd planned to  leave," Walegrin agreed. "The  longer I stay; the  tighter
the noose. I'm getting out.  I leave you the  ore, the necklace and  the formula
you don't need anything else."

"It won't be that easy unless you've replaced Thrusher with that bone-bag behind
you. Word's come from the palace."  Balustrus handed him a scroll with  its seal
broken.

The writing confirmed  Cythen's story that  they'd been taken  to the palace  by
Stepsons.  The Prince  commanded Walegrin's  presence in  the Hall  of  Justice.
Walegrin crumpled the paper and threw it into the dirt. He could have  abandoned
Thrusher; he could have abandoned Illyra-but he could not abandon them both.

"Cythen," he whispered to her as they entered the room he shared with  Thrusher.
He looked about  for a cleaner  tunic. "No matter  what, don't stop  looking for
Illyra, hear me? If you  find her you take her  back to the bazaar. The  S'danzo
will help, and Dubro. They won't ask about your past. Do you understand?"

She nodded and watched  without interest as he  cast his filthy tunic  aside and
pulled another one over his head.

"You should wash first," she told  him. "You shouldn't stink before the  Prince.
You won't win any bargains."

Walegrin glared at  her, dropping the  second tunic to  the floor as  he stormed
toward the stream where they washed.

"I wasn't always like this," she shouted after him.. "I know better ways."

Dripping, but  clean, Walegrin  returned to  the room  to find  his tunic  lying
neatly on the mattress. Somehow the girl had gotten the extra wrinkles out.  His
bronze circlet had been given a quick  polish and some of the mud was  gone from
his sandals. But Cythen  herself was gone from  the shed, the courtyard  and the
villa. Coming on top of the loss of Illyra and Thrusher it was almost more  than
he could endure.  Had he found  her right then  he would have  cheerfully beaten
her.

But  the girl  had been  right, damn  her. He  felt better  clean. His  few  men
straightened up as he  assembled them in the  courtyard. He told them  what he'd
told Cythen. They  grumbled and he  doubted they'd wait  more than a  day before
going their separate ways if he did not return. He looked for Balustrus too, and
found only his share of the  swords. The ore, the necklace and  the metal-master
had vanished. He was getting used to that.

Knots  ofpeople ducked  out of  his path  once he  was on  the streets.  He  was
recognized, but no-one stopped him. With eyes fixed forward, he walked past  the
gallows, not  chancing a  glance at  the corpses.  The gatekeeper  took his name
without ceremony and a lad appeared to conduct him to the Hall of Justice.

He was left alone there in the echoing chamber. Kadakithus himself was the first
to enter, accompanied by two slaves.  The young prince dismissed the slaves  and
took his place on the throne.

"So, you're Walegrin," he  began simply. "I thought  I might recognize you.  You
have been no small amount of trouble."

Walegrin had intended to be quiet and meek-to do whatever was necessary to  free
Thrush. But this was Kittycat  and he invited disrespect. "Finding  your clothes
each morning must be equal trouble. You've  got my man in your dungeons. I  want
him freed."

The Prince fidgetted with the ornate  hem of his sleeve. "Actually I  don't have
your  man.  Oh, he's  been  taken all  right,  and he's  alive-but  he's Tempus'
prisoner, not mine."

"Then I should be talking to Tempus, not you."

"Walegrin, I may not have your man-but I have you," the Prince said forcefully.

Walegrin swallowed his reply and studied the Prince.

"That's better. You're entitled to your  opinion of me-and I'm sure I've  earned
it. There's a lotto be said for playing one's part in life. Now, you'll talk  to
Tempus after you've talked to me-and you'll be glad of the delay.

"I've had gods know  how many letters from  Ranke about you-starting before  you
disappeared.  I got  my most  recent one  with the  recent delegation  from  the
capital. Zanderei-as cunning  an assassin as  they could find.  I know how  much
money you got from Kilite. Don't look so surprised. I was raised in the Imperial
Household-I wouldn't be alive at all if I didn't have some reliable friends. The
chief viper in  my brother's nest  is always asking  for you. He  seems to think
you've discovered Enlibar steel;  I assure him that  you haven't, though I  know
you have. I know how much he said he'd pay you for the secret; so I know  you're
not  in  Sanctuary looking  for  a better  price.  But then,  I  also know  what
Balustrus said about  your progress with  the steel. Does  any of this  surprise
you?"

Walegrin said  nothing. He  was not  truly surprised,  though he hadn't expected
this. Nothing was truly surprising today.

The prince  misunderstood his  silence. "All  right, Walegrin.  Kilite's faction
found you, paid you,  pardoned your absence and  then tried to have  you killed.
I've run afoul of Kilite a few times and I can promise you you'll never outsmart
him on your own. You need  protection, Walegrin, and you need protection  from a
special sort of person-the sort of person who needs you as much as you need him.
In short, Walegrin, you need me."

Walegrin remembered thinking  the same thing  once, though he'd  envisioned this
interview under different  circumstances. "You have  the Hounds, Tempus  and the
Sacred Bands," he remarked sullenly.

"Actually, they have  me. Face it,  Walegrin: you and  I are not  well-equipped.
Alone with only  my birth or  your steel, we're  nothing but pawns.  But, put my
birth with your steel and the odds improve. Walegrin, the Nisibisi are armed  to
the teeth.  They'll tie  up the  armies for  years before  the surrender-if they
surrender. Your  handful of  Enlibar swords  won't make  any difference. But the
Empire is going to forget about us while they're fighting in the north."

"Or, you want my men and my steel here instead of on the Wizardwall?"

"You make me sound  just like Kilite. Walegrin,  I'll make you my  advisor. I'll
care for you and your men. I'll tell Kilite we found you floating in the  harbor
and make  sure he  believes it.  I'll keep  you safe  while the  Empire exhausts
itself in the north. It may take  twenty years, Walegrin, but when we return  to
Ranke, we'll own it."

"I'll  think  about it,"  Walegrin  said, though  actually  he was  thinking  of
Illyra's visions  of an  invading fleet  and her  warning that  he would  not go
north.

The Prince shook his head. "You don't have time. You've got to be my man  before
you see Tempus. You might need me to pry your man loose."

They were  alone in  the room  and Walegrin  still had  his sword. He thought of
using it; perhaps the Prince  thought the  same  thing for he  sat far back   in
the throne, playing with his sleeve again.

"You might be lying," Walegrin said after a moment.

"I'm known for many things, but not lying."

That was true  enough. Just as  much of what  he'd said was  true. And there was
Thrusher's safety, and Illyra's  to think of. "I'll  want a favor, right  away,"
Walegrin said, offering his hand.

"Anything in my power, but first we talk to Tempus-and don't tell him we've made
an agreement."

The Prince led the way along unfamiliar corridors. They were in the private part
of the palace and the  surroundings, though crude by capital  standards, dazzled
Walegrin. He bumped into the Prince when the latter stopped by a closed door.

"Now, don't forget-we haven't agreed to anything. No, wait-give me your sword."

Feeling trapped, Walegrin unbuckled his sword and handed it to the Prince.

"He's arrived, Tempus," Kadakithus announced in his most innane voice. "Look, he
gave me a present! One of his steel swords."

Tempus looked around from  a window. He had  some of the god's  presence to him.
Walegrin felt distinctly outclassed and doubted that Kitty-cat could do anything
to help him.  He doubted that  even the metal  boss in his  pouch could help him
free Thrusher or Illyra.

"The steel is Sanctuary's secret, not Kilite's?" Tempus demanded.

"Of course," the Prince assured him. "Kilite will never know. The entire capital
will never know."

"All right, then. Bring him in," Tempus shouted.

Five Stepsons crowded into the room, a hooded prisoner with them. They sent  the
man sprawling to the marble floor. Thrusher pulled the hood loose and  scrambled
to his feet. A livid bruise covered one side of his face, his clothes were  torn
and revealed other cuts and bruises, but he was not seriously hurt.

"Your man-I should have let my men have him. He killed two last night."

"Not men!" Thrusher spat out. "Whoresons;  men don't steal women and leave  them
for the rats!"

One of the Stepsons  moved forward. Walegrin recognized  him as the one  who had
overturned  Illyra's  table. Though  he  felt the  rage  himself, he  restrained
Thrusher. "Not now," he whispered.

The Prince stepped between all of them with the sword. "I think you should  have
this, Tempus. It's too plain for me-but you won't mind that, will you?"

The Hell-Hound examined the blade and  set it aside without comment. "I  see you
can control your man," he said to Walegrin.

"As you cannot." Walegrin tossed the  Hound the boss Dubro had found.  "Your men
left it behind  when they stole  my sister last  night." They were  of a height,
Walegrin and Temp  us, but it  cost Walegrin to  look into Tempus'  eyes and for
once he understood what it meant to be cursed, as Tempus was.

"Yes, the S'danzo. My  men disliked the fortune  she told for them.  They bribed
some Downwind  to frighten  her. They  don't understand  the Downwind  yet. They
hadn't intended her to be kidnapped, any more than they'd intended to get robbed
themselves. I've dealt with my  men-and the Downwinders they hired.  Your sister
is already back  in the bazaar,  Walegrin, a bit  richer for her  adventures and
off-limits to all Stepsons. No one guessed you were her brother-certain men  are
assumed not to  have family, you  know." Tempus leaned  forward then, and  spoke
only to Walegrin. "Tell me, is your sister worth believing?"

"I believe her."

"Even when she rattles nonsense about invasions from the sea?"

"I believe  her enough  that I'm  remaining in  Sanctuary-against all  my better
judgement."

Tempus turned away  to take up  Walegrin's sword. He  adjusted the belt  for his
hips and put it on. The Stepsons had already departed. "You won't  regrethelping
the Prince," he said without looking  at anyone. "He's favored of the  gods, you
know. You'll do  well together." He  followed his men  out the door  leaving the
Prince alone with Walegrin and Thrusher.

"You  might  have  told me  you  were  going to  give  him  my sword!"  Walegrin
complained.

"I wasn't. I only meant to distract him-I didn't think he'd take it. I'm  sorry.
What was the favor you wanted?"

With Illyra and Thrusher safe, and his future mapped out, Walegrin didn't need a
favor, but he heard his stomach rumbling and knew Thrush was hungry too.  "We'll
have a meal fit for a king-or Prince."

"Well, at least that's something I can provide you."

WIZARD WEATHER

by Janet Morris

1

In the archmage's sumptuous purple bedroom, the woman astride him took two  pins
from  her  silver-shot hair.  It  was dark-his  choice;  and damp  with  cloying
shadows-his romanticism. A conjured moon in a spellbound sky was being swallowed
by  effigy-clouds where  the vaulted  roof indubitably  yet arced,  even as   he
shuddered under  the tutored  and inexorable  attentions of  the girl Lastel had
brought to his party. She had refused to tell him her name because he would  not
give his, but had told him what she would do for him so eloquently with her eyes
and her body that he had spent the entire evening figuring out a way the two  of
them might slip  up here  unnoticed. Not  that he  feared her  escort's jealousy
though the drug dealer might  conceivably entertain such a sentiment,  Lastel no
longer  had the  courage (or  the contractual  protective wardings)  to dare   a
reprisal against a Hazard-class mage.

Of all  the enchanters  in wizard-ridden  Sanctuary, only  three were archmages,
nameless adepts beyond summoning or responsibility, and this Hazard was one.  In
fact, he was the very strongest of  those three. When he had been young,  he had
had a  name, but  he will  forget it,  and everything  else, quite promptly: the
domed and spired  estuary of venality  which is Sanctuary,  nadir of the  empire
called Ranke; the unmitigated  evil he had  fielded for decades  from his  swamp
encircled Mageguild  fortress; the  compromises he  had made  to hold  sway over
curmudgeon, courtesan and criminal (so audacious that even the bounds of  magics
and planeworlds had been eroded by his efforts, and his fellow adepts felled  on
occasion by demons roused from forbidden  defiles to do his bidding here  at the
end  of creation  where no  balance remains  between logic  and faith,  law  and
nature, or heaven and hell); the disingenuous methods through which his will was
worked, plan by tortuous plan, upon a town so hateful and immoral that both  the
flaunted gods and magicians' devils agreed that its inhabitants deserved no less
dastardly a fate-all of this, and more, will fade from him in the time it  takes
a star to burn out, falling from the sky.

Now, the First Hazard glimpses her movement, though he is close to  ejaculation,
sputtering with sensations  that for years  he has assumed  he had outgrown,  or
forgotten how  to feel.  Senility creeps  upon the  finest flesh  when a body is
maintained for millenia, and into the deepest mind, through thousands of  years.
He does not look his age, or tend  to think of it. The years are his,  mandated.
Only a very special kind of enemy  could defeat him, and those were few  and far
between. Simple death, morbidity or the  spells of his brothers were like  gnats
he kept  away by  the perfume  of his  sweat: merely  the proper diet, herbs and
spells and  consummated will,  had long  ago vanquished  them as  far as  he was
concerned.

So strange to lust, to desire a particular woman; he was amused, joyous; he  had
not felt so good in years. A  tiny thrill of caution had hor-ripilated his  nape
early on, when he  noticed the silvering of  her nightblack hair, but  this girl
was  not old  enough to  be-'Ahhhh!" Her  premeditated rippling  takes him  over
passion's  edge,  and he  is  falling, place  and  provenance forgotten,  not  a
terrible adept wrenching the world about to suit his whim and comfort, but  just
a man.

In that instant, eyes defocused, he  sees but does not note the  diamond sparkle
of the rods poised  above him; his ears  are filled with his  own breathing; the
song of entrapment she sings softly has him before he thinks to think, or thinks
to fear, or thinks to move.

By then, the  rods, their sharp  fine points touching  his arched throat,  owned
him. He could not move; not his body nor his soul responded; his mind could  not
control his tongue. Thinking  bitterly of the indignity  of being frozen like  a
rearing stallion, he hoped his flesh would slump once life had fled. As he  felt
the points enter into his  skin and begin to suck  at the thread binding him  to
life, his mortification marshaled his talents: he cleared his vision, forced his
eyes to  obey his  mind's command.  Though he  was a  great sorcerer, he was not
omnipotent: he could not manage to make his lips frame a curse to cast upon her,
just watched  the free  agent Cime-  who had  slipped, disguised,  into so  many
mages' beds of late-sip the life from him relish-ingly. So slow she was about it
he had time to be thankful she did  not take him through his eyes. The song  she
sings has cost her much  to learn, and the death  she staves off will not  be so
kind as his. Could he have spoken,  then, resigned to it, he would have  thanked
her: it is no shame to be brought down by an opponent so worthy. They paid their
prices to the same  host. He set about  composing his exit, seeking  his meadow,
star-shaped and ever green,  where he did his  work when meditation whisked  him
into finer awarenesses  than flesh could  ever share. If  he could seat  himself
there, in his established place of power, then his death was nothing, his  flesh
a fingernail, overlong and ready to be pared.

He did manage that. Cime saw to it that he had the time. It does not do to anger
certain kinds of powers, the  sort which, having dispensed with  names, dispense
with discorporation. Some awful  day, she would face  this one, and others  whom
she had  guided out  of life,  in an  afterlife which  she had  helped populate.
Shades tended to be unforgiving.

When his chest neither rose nor fell,  she slid off him and ceased singing.  She
licked the tips of her wands and wound them back up in her thick black hair. She
soothed his  body down,  arranged it  decorously, donned  her party clothes, and
kissed him once on  the tip of his  nose before heading, humming,  back down the
stairs to where Lastel  and the party still  waited. As she passed  the bar, she
snatched a piece of citrus and crushed it in her palms, dripping the juice  upon
her wrists, smearing it behind her ears and in the hollow of her throat. Some of
these folk might be clumsy necromancers  and thrice-cursed merchants with  store
bought charms-to-ward-off-charms bleeding them dry of soul and purse, but  there
was nothing wrong with their noses.

Lastel's bald head and wrestler's shoulders, impeccable in customed silk velvet,
were easy to spot.  He did not even  glance down at her,  but continued chatting
with one of the prince/  governor Kadakithis' functionaries, Molin  Something-or
other, Vashanka's official priest. It was  New Year's holiday, and the week  was
bursting with festivities which the  Rankan overlords must observe, and  seem to
sanction: since (though they had conquered and subjugated Ilsig lands and  Ilsig
peoples so that some Ran-kans dared call Ilsigs "Wrigglies" to their faces) they
had  failed  to  suppress the  worship  of  the god  Ils  and  his self-begotten
pantheon, word had come down from the emperor himself that Ran-kans must  endure
with grace the Wrigglies' celebration of Ils' creation of the world and  renewal
of the year. Now, especially, with Ranke pressed into a war of attrition in  the
north, was no time to allow dissension to develop on her flanks from so paltry a
matter as the perquisites of obscure and weakling gods.

This uprising among the buffer  states upon Upper Ranke's northernmost  frontier
and the inflated rumors of  slaughter coming back from Wizardwall's  mountainous
skirts all out of proportion to reasonable numbers dominated Molin's  monologue:
"And what say you, esteemed lady? Could it be that Nisibisi magicians have  made
their  peace  with  Mygdon's  barbarian  lord,  and  found  him  a  path through
Wizardwall's fastness? You  are well-traveled, it   is obvious.... Could   it be
true  that the  border insurrection  is Mygdonia's  doing, and  their hordes  so
fearsome as we have been  led to believe? Or is  it the Rankan treasury that  is
suffering, and a northern incursion the cure for our economic ills?"

Lastel flickered puffy lids down at  her from ravaged cheeks and his  turgid arm
went around  her waist.  She smiled  up at  him reassuringly,  then favored  the
priest: "Your Holiness, sadly I must  confess that the Mygdonian threat is  very
real. I  have studied  realms and  magics, in  Ranke and  beyond. If  you wish a
consultation, and Lastel permits-" she  batted the thickest lashes in  Sanctuary
"-I  shall  gladly attend  you,  some day  when  we both  are  fit for  'solemn'
discourse. But now I am too filled with  wine and revel, and must interrupt  you
your pardon please-that my escort bear me home to bed." She cast her glance upon
the ballroom floor,  demure and concentrating  on her slippered  feet poking out
under amber skirts. "Lastel, I must have the night air, or faint away. Where  is
our host? We must thank him for  a more complete hospitality than I had  thought
to find...."

The habitually pompous  priest was simpering  with undisguised delight,  causing
Lastel to raise an eyebrow, though  Cime tugged coquettishly at his sleeve,  and
inquire as to its source: "Lord Molin?"

"It  is nothing,  dear man,  nothing. Just  so long  since I  have heard   court
Rankene-and from the  mouth of a  real lady. .  . ." The  Rankan priest, knowing
well that his wife's reputation bore no mitigation, chose to make sport of  her,
and of his town, before the foreign noblewoman did. And to make it more clear to
Lastel that the joke was on  them-the two Sanctuarites-and for the amusement  of
the voluptuous gray-eyed woman, he bowed  low, and never did answer her  genteel
query as to the whereabouts of the First Hazard.

By the time he had promised to give their thanks and regards to the absent  host
when he saw him, the lady was  gone, and Molin Torch-holder was left wishing  he
knew what  it was  that she  saw in  Lastel. Certainly  it was  not the  dogs he
raised, or his fortune,  which  was modest, or  his business ... well,  yes,  it
might have been just  that ... drugs. Some   who knew said the  best  krrf-black
and Garonne-stamped-came  from Lastel's  connections. Molin  sighed, hearing his
wife's twitter among the crowd's buzz. Where was that Hazard? The damn Mageguild
was getting too arrogant. No one could throw a bash as star-studded as this  one
and then walk away from it as if the luminaries in attendance were  nonentities.
He was  glad he   had not  prevailed on   the prince  to come   along.... What a
woman! And what was her name? He had been told, he was sure, but just forgot.  .
. .

Outside, torchlit, their breath steaming white through cold-sharpened night air,
waiting  for  their  ivory-screened wagon,  they  giggled  over the  distinction
between "serious"  and "solemn":  the First  Hazard had  been serious, Molin was
solemn;  Tempus  the  Hell-Hound was  serious,  Prince  Kadakithis, solemn;  the
destabiliza-tion campaign they were undertaking in Sanctuary under the  auspices
of a Mygdonian-funded Nisibisi witch  (who had come to Lastel,  alias One-Thumb,
in the guise of  a comely caravan mistress  hawking Garonne drugs) was  serious;
the threat  of northern  invasion, down-country  at the  Empire's anus, was most
solemn.

As her laughter tinkled, he nuzzled her: "Did you manage to ... ?"

"Oh, yes. I  had a perfectly  lovely time. What  a wonderful idea  of yours this
was," she whispered, still speaking court Rankene, a dialect she had been  using
exclusively in public ever since  the two of them-the Mazedweller  One-Thumb and
the escaped sorcerer-slayer  Cime-had decided that  the best cover  for them was
that which her magic  provided: they need not  do more. Her brother  Tempus knew
that Lastel  was actually  One-Thumb, and  that she  was with  him, but he would
hesitate to reveal them: he had given his silence, if not his blessing, to their
union.  Within reasonable  limits, they  considered themselves  safe to  bargain
lives and information to both sides in the coming crisis. Even now, with the war
barely under way, they had already  started. This night's work was her  pleasure
and his profit. When  they reached his modest  east-side estate, she showed  him
the portion of what she had  done to the First Hazard  which he would like  best
and  most  probably survive,  if  his heart  was  strong. For  her  service, she
demanded a Rankan soldat's worth of black krrf, before the act. When he had paid
her, and watched her melt it with water  over a flame, cool it, and bring it  to
him on the bed, her fingers stirring the viscous liquid, he was glad he had  not
argued about her price, or about her practice of always charging one.

2

Wizard weather blew in off  the sea later that night,  as quickly as one of  the
Sanctuary whores could blow a client a  kiss, or a pair of Stepsons disperse  an
unruly crowd. Everyone in the  suddenly mist-enshrouded streets of the  Maze ran
for cover;  adepts huddled  under beds  with their  best warding  spells wrapped
tighter than blankets around shivering shoulders; east-siders bade their jesters
perform  and  their musicians  play  louder; dogs  howled;  cats yowled;  horses
screamed in the palace stables and tried to batter their stallboards down.

Some unlucky  ones did  not make  it to  safety before  a dry thunder roared and
lightning flashed and in the streets, the mist began to glitter, thicken, chill.
It rolled headhigh along byway and  alley, claws of ice scrabbling at  shuttered
windows,  barred doors.  Where it  found life,  it shredded  bodies,  lacerating
limbs, stealing away warmth and  souls and leaving only flayed  carcasses frozen
in the streets.

A pair of Stepsons-mercenary special  forces whom the prince's marshal,  Tempus,
commanded-was caught out in the storm, but it could not be said that the weather
killed  one:  the team  had  been investigating  uncorroborated  reports that  a
warehouse conveniently situated  at a juncture  of three major  sewers was being
used by an  alchemist to concoct  and store incendiaries.  The surviving partner
guessed  that  his teammate  must  have lit  a  torch, despite  the  cautions of
research: human wastes, flour, sulphur  and more had gone  in through those  now
nonexistent  doors.  Though  the  problem  the  team  had  been  dispatched   to
investigate was solved by a con-cussive fireball that threw the second  Stepson,
Nikodemos, through a window into  an intersection, singeing his beard  and brows
and eyelashes, the young Sacred Band member relived the circumstances leading to
his partner's death  repeatedly, agonizing over  the possibility that  he was to
blame throughout the night, alone in the pair's billet. So consumed was he  with
grief at the  death of his  mate, he did  not even realize  that his friend  had
saved his life: the fireball and  ensuing conflagration had blown back the  mist
and made an oven of the wharfside;  Wideway was freed from the vicious fog   for
half its length. He had ridden  at a devil's pace out  of Sanctuary home  to the
Stepsons'  barracks, which once  had been a slaver's estate and  thus had  rooms
enough  for Tempus to allow  his hard won  mercenaries the  luxury of   privacy:
ten  pairs plus  thirty single  agents comprised the team'score group-until this
evening past....

Sun was trying to beat back the night, Niko could see it through his window.  He
had not even been able to return  with a body. His beloved spirit-twin would  be
denied the  honor of  a hero's  fiery bier.  He could  not cry;  he simply  sat,
huddled, amputated, diminished and cold upon his bed, watching a sunray inch its
way toward one of his sandaled feet.

Thus he did not see Tempus approaching  with the first light of day haloing  his
just-bathed form as if he were some god's own avatar, which at times-despite his
better judgment-his curse,  and his battle  with it, forced  him to become.  The
tall, autumnal figure stooped and peered in  the window, sun gilding his  yarrow
honey hair  and his  vast bronze  limbs where  they were  free of his army-issue
woolen chiton. He wore no arms or armor, no cloak or shoes; furrows deepened  on
his  brow,  and  a  sere  frown  tightened  his  willful  mouth.  Sometimes, the
expression in his long,  slitted eyes grew readable:  this was such a  time. The
pain he  was about  to face  was a  pain he  had known  too well,  too often. It
brought to features not  brutal enough by half  for their history or  profession
the slight, defensive smile  which would empty out  his eyes. When he  could, he
knocked. Hearing no reply, he called softly, "Niko?" And again. ...

Having let himself in,  he waited for the  Stepson, who looked younger  than the
quarter-century he claimed,  to raise his  head. He met  a gaze as  blank as his
own, and bared his teeth.

The youth nodded slowly, made to rise, sank back when Tempus motioned "stay" and
joined him on his wood-framed cot  in blessed shadow. Both sat then,  silent, as
day filled up the room, stealing away their hiding place. Elbows on knees,  Niko
thanked him  for coming.  Tempus suggested  that under  the circumstances a bier
could still be made, and funerary games  would not be out of order. When  he got
no response,  the mercenary's  commander sighed  rattlingly and  allowed that he
himself would be honored to perform  the rites. He knew how the  Sacred Ban-ders
who had  adopted the  war name  "Stepsons" revered  him. He  did not  condone or
encourage it, but since they had  given him their love and were  probably doomed
to the man for  it-even as their original  leader, Stepson, called Abarsis,  had
been doomed-Tempus felt responsible for them. His instructions and his curse had
sent the gelded warrior-priest Abarsis to his death, and such fighters as  these
could not offer loyalty  to a lesser man,  to a pompous prince  or an abstracted
cause. Sacred Bands were the mercenaries' elite; this one's  history under   the
Slaughter  Priest's command  was nearly mythical; Abarsis  had brought  his  men
to Tempus   before committing   suicide in   a  most  honorable fashion, leaving
them as  his  parting  gift-and as  his way  of  ensuring  that Tempus could not
just walk away  from  the god  Vashanka's service:  Abarsis  had been Vashanka's
priest.

Of  all  the  mercenaries  Rankan  money  had  enabled  Tempus  to  gather   for
Prince/Governor Kadakithis, this young recruit was the most singular. There  was
something remarkable about the finely  made slate-haired fighter with his  quiet
hazel eyes  and his  understated manner,  something that  made it seem perfectly
reasonable that this self-effacing youngster  with his clean long limbs  and his
quick canny smile had been the  right-side partner of a Syrese legend  twice his
age for  nine years.  Tempus would  rather have  been doing  anything else  than
trying to give  comfort to the  bereaved Stepson Nikodemos.  Choosing a language
appropriate to philosophy and grief (for Niko was fluent in six tongues, ancient
and modern), he asked the youth what was in his heart.

"Gloom," Niko responded in the mercenary-argot, which admitted many tongues, but
only  the bolder  emotions: pride,  anger, insult,  de-claratives,  imperatives,
absolutes.

"Gloom," Tempus agreed in the same linguistic pastiche, yet ventured: "You  will
survive it. We all do."

"Oh, Riddler... I know.... You  did, Abarsis  did-twice,"  he took  a  shivering
breath; "but it is not  easy. I feel so naked.  He was... always on my  left, if
you understand me-where you are now."

"Consider me here for the duration, then, Niko."

Niko raised too-bright eyes, slowly shaking  his head. "m our spirits' place  of
comfort, where trees  and men and  life are one,  he is still  there. How can  I
rest, when my rest-place holds his ghost? There  is no maat left for me . .  .do
you know the word?"

Tempus did: balance, equilibrium, the tendency of things to make a pattern,  and
that pattern  to be  discernible, and  therefore revivifying.  He thought  for a
moment, gravely, not  about Niko's problem,  but about a  youthful mercenary who
spoke  offhandedly  of  adept's refreshments  and  archmagical  meditations, who
routinely transported  his spirit  into a  mystical realm  and was accustomed to
meeting another spirit there. He said at  last:" I do not read it ill  that your
friend waits there. Why is it bad, unless you make it so? Maat, if you have  had
it, you will find again. With him,  you are bound in spirit, not just  in flesh.
He would be hurt to  hurt you, and to see  that you are afraid of  what once you
loved. His spirit will depart your  place of relaxation when we put  it formally
to rest. Yet you must make a  better peace with him, and surmount your  fear. It
is well to have a friendly soul waiting at the gate when your time comes around.
Surely, you love him still?"

That broke the young Stepson, and Tempus  left him curled upon his bed, so  that
his sobs need not be silent, and he could heal upon his own.

Outside, leaning against the doorjamb, the planked door carefully closed, Tempus
put his fingers to the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. He had  surprised
himself, as well as the boy, offering Niko such far-reaching support. He was not
sure he dared to mean it, but he had said it. Niko's team had functioned as  the
Stepsons' ad hoc liaisons,  coordinating (but more usually  arbitrating disputes
among) the mercenaries and the  Hell-Hounds (the Rankan Imperial Elite  Guards),
the Ilsig regular army and the militia Tempus was trying to covertly make out of
some carefully-chosen street urchins,  slit purses, and sleeves-the  real rulers
of this overblown slum and  the only people who ever  knew what was going on  in
Sanctuary, a town which  might just become a  strategic staging area if  war did
come down from the north. As liaisons, both teammates had come to him often  for
advice. Part of Niko's workload had been the making of an adequate swordsman out
of a certain Ilsig thief named Hanse, to whom Tempus had owed a debt he did  not
care to personally discharge. But the young backstreeter, emboldened by his easy
early successes, had  proved increasingly  irascible and  contentious when  Niko
aware that Tempus was indebted to Hanse and Kadakithis inexplicably favored  the
thief-endeavored to lead him  far beyond slash-and-thrust infantry  tactics into
the subtleties of Niko's  own expertise: cavalry strategies,  guerrilla tactics,
western  fighting  forms that  dispensed  with weaponry  by  accenting surprise,
precision, and meditation-honed instinct. Though the thief recognized the  value
of what the Stepson  offered, his pride made  him sneer: he could  not admit his
need to know, would not chance being found wanting, and hid his fear of  failure
behind  anger.  After  three  months of  justifying  the  value  of methods  and
mechanics the Stepson felt to  be self-explanatory (black stomach blood,  bright
lung blood, or pink  foam from the ears  indicates a mortal strike;  yarrow root
shaved into a wound quells  its pain; ginseng, chewed, renews  stamina; mandrake
in an enemy's stewpot incapacitates a company, monkshood decimates one; green or
moldy hay  downs every  horse on  your opponents'  line; cheese  wire, the right
handhold, or  a knife  from behind  obviates the  need for passwords, protracted
dissembling, or forged papers)  Niko had turned to  Tempus for a decision  as to
whether  instruction must  continue. Shadowspawn,  called Hanse,  was a  natural
bladesman, as good as any  man wishing to wield a  sword for a living needed  to
be-on the ground,  Niko had said.  As far as  horsemanship, he had  added almost
sadly,  niceties could  not be  taught to  a cocky  novice who  spent more  time
arguing that  he would  never need  to master  them than  practicing what he was
taught. Similarly, so far as tradecraft  went, Hanse's fear of being labelled  a
Stepson-in-training  or   an  apprentice   Sacred  Bander   prevented  him  from
fraternizing  with the  squadron during  the long  evenings when  shop-talk  and
exploits flowed freely, and  every man found much  to learn. Niko had  shrugged,
spreading his hands to indicate an end to his report. Throughout it (the longest
speech Tempus had ever  heard the Stepson make),  Tempus could not fail  to mark
the disgust so carefully masked, the frustration and the unwillingness to  admit
defeat  which had  hidden in  Nikodemos' lowered  eyes and  blank face.  Tempus'
decision to pronounce the student Shadowspawn graduated, gift him with a  horse,
and  go  on  to  new  business had  elicited  a  subtle  inclination  of head-an
agreement, nothing less-from the youthful and eerily composed junior  mercenary.
Since then, he had not seen him. And,  upon seeing him, he had not asked any  of
the things  he had  gone there  to find  out: not  one question  as to the exact
circumstances  of his  partner's death,  or the  nature of  the mist  which  had
ravaged the Maze, had passed his lips. Tempus blew out a noisy breath,  grunted,
then pushed off from where he  leaned against the whitewashed barracks wall.  He
would go out to see what headway the band had made with the bier and the  games,
set for sundown behind  the walled estate. He  did not need to  question the boy
further, only to listen to his own heart.

He was not  unaware of the  ominous events of  the preceding evening:  sleep was
never  his.  He  had made  a  midnight  creep through  the  sewage  tunnels into
Kadakithis'  most  private apartments,  demonstrating  that the  old  palace was
impossible to secure,  in hopes that  the boy-prince would  stop prattling about
"winter palace/summer palace" and move his retinue into the new fortress  Tempus
had built for him on the eminently defensible spit near the lighthouse with that
very end in mind. So it was that he had heard firsthand from the prince (who all
the  while was  making a  valiant attempt  not to  bury his  nose in  a  scented
handkerchief he was holding almost casually but had fumbled desperately to  find
when first Tempus appeared, reeking of sewage, between two of his damask bedroom
hangings) about the killer mist and  the dozen lives it claimed. Tempus  had let
his  silence agree  that the  mages must  be right,  such a  thing was   totally
mystifying, though  the "thunder  without rain"  and its  results had  explained
itself to  him quite  clearly. Nothing  is mysterious  after three centuries and
more of exploring life's  riddles, except perhaps why  gods allow men magic,  or
why sorcerers allow men gods.

Equally reticent was Tempus when Ka-dakithis, wringing his lacquer-nailed hands,
told him of the First Hazard's  unique demise, and wondered with dismal  sarcasm
if the  adepts would  again try  to blame  the fall  of one  of their  number on
Tempus' alleged sister  (here he glanced  sidelong up at  Tempus from under  his
pale Imperial curls),  the escaped mage-killer  who, he was  beginning to think,
was a figment of sorcerers' nightmares:  When they had had this "person"  in the
pits,  awaiting  trial  and  sentence,  no  two  witnesses  could  agree  on the
description of the woman they saw; when  she had escaped, no one saw her  go. It
might be that the adepts were purging their Order again, and didn't want  anyone
to know, didn't Tempus agree?  In the face of Kadakithis'  carefully thought-out
policy statement, meant to protect  the prince from involvement and  the soldier
from implication, Tempus refrained from comment.

The First Hazard's death  was a welcome surprise  to Tempus, who indulged  in an
active, if surreptitious, bloodfeud with the Mageguild. Sortilege of any  nature
he could not abide. He had explored and discarded it all: philosophy, systems of
personal discipline such as Niko employed, magic, religion, the sort of  eternal
side-taking purveyed by the warrior-mages who wore the Blue Star. The man who in
his youth had proclaimed that those things which could be touched and  perceived
were those  which he  preferred had  not been  changed by  time, only  hardened.
Adepts and  sorcery disgusted  him. He  had faced  wizards of  true power in his
youth, and his sorties upon the bloody  roads of life had been colored by  those
encounters: he yet bore the curse of one of their number, and his hatred of them
was immortal. He had thought that even should he die, his despite would live  on
to harass  them-he hoped  that it  were true.  For to  fight with  enchanters of
skill, the same skills  were needed, and he  eschewed those arts. The  price was
too high. He  would never acknowledge  power over freedom,  eternal servitude of
the spirit was too great a cost for  mastery in life. Yet a man could not  stand
alone against witchfire-hatred. To  survive, he had been  forced to make a  pact
with the Storm God, Vashanka. He had been brought to collar like a wild dog.  He
heeled to Vashanka, these days, at the god's command. But he did not like it.

There were compensations, if such  they could be called. He  lived interminably,
though he could not sleep at all? he was immune to simple, nasty war-magics;  he
had a sword which cut through spells like cheese and glowed when the god took an
interest. In battle he  was more than twice  as fast as a  mortal man-while they
moved so slowly he could do as he willed upon a crowded field which was a  melee
to all but him, and even extend his  hyper speed to his mount, if the horse  was
of a certain strain and  tough constitution. And wounds  he took healed  quickly
instantly  if  the  god  loved  him that  day,  more  slowly  if  they had  been
quarreling. Only once-when  he and his  god had had  a serious falling-out  over
whether or  not to  rape his  sister-had Vashanka  truly deserted  him. But even
then,  as if  his body  were simply  accustomed to  doing it,  his  regenerative
abilities remained-much slowed, very painful, but there.

For these reasons, and many more, he had a mystique, but no charisma. Only among
mercenaries could he look into eyes free from the glint of fear. He stayed  much
among his own, these  days in Sanctuary. Abarsis'  death had struck home  harder
than he cared to admit. It seemed, sometimes, that one more soul laying down its
life for him and one more burden laid upon him would surpass his capacity and he
would crack apart into the desiccated dust he doubtless was.

Crossing  the whitewashed  court, passing  the stables,  his Tros  horses  stuck
steel-gray muzzles over their half-doors  and whickered. He stopped and  stroked
them, speaking soft words of comradeship  and endearment, before he left to  let
himself out the back gate to the training ground, a natural amphitheatre between
hillocks where the  Stepsons drilled the  few furtive Ilsigs  wishing to qualify
for the militia-reserves Kadakithis was funding.

He was  thinking, as  he closed  the gate  behind him  and squinted out over the
arena (counting heads and fitting names  to them where men sat perched  atop the
fence or  lounged against  it or  raked sand  or counted  off paces for sunset's
funerary games), that it was a good thing no one had been able to determine  the
cause of the  ranking Hazard's death.  He would have  to do something  about his
sister Cime,  and soon-  something substantive.  He had  given her  the latitude
befitting a  probable sibling  and childhood  passion, and  she had exceeded his
forbearance. He had been  willing to overlook the  fact that he had  been paying
her debts with his  soul ever since an  archmage had cursed him  on her account,
but he  was not  willing to  ignore the  fact that  she refused  to abstain from
taking down magicians. It might be her right, in general, to slay sorcerers, but
it was not her right  to do it here, where  he was pinned tight between  law and
morality as it was. The whole  conundrum of how he might successfully  deal with
Cime was something  he did not  want to contemplate.  So he did  not, just then,
only walked, cold brown grass  between his toes, to  the near side of  the chest
high wooden fence  behind which, on  happier days, his  men schooled Ilsigs  and
each other. Today they were making a bier there, dragging dry branches from  the
brake beyond Vashanka's altar, a pile of stones topping a rise, due east,  where
the charioteers worked their teams.

Sweat never  stayed long  enough to  drip in  the chill  winter air, but breaths
puffed white  from noses  and mouths  in the  taut pearly  light, and grunts and
taunts carried well in the crisp morning air. Tempus ducked his head and  rubbed
his mouth to hide his mirth  as a stream of scatological invective  sounded: one
of  the branch-draggers  exhorting the  loungers to  get to  work. Were   curses
soldats, the  Stepsons would  all be  men of  ease. The  fence-sitters,  counter
cursing the work-boss gamely, slipped to the ground; the loungers gave up  their
wall.  In front  of him,  they pretended  to be  untouched by  the ill  omen  of
accidental death. But he, too, was uneasy in the face of tragedy without reason,
bereft of the glory of death in the field. All of them feared accident, mindless
fortune's disfavor: they lived  by luck, as much  as by the god's  favor. As the
dozen men, more or less in a body, headed toward the altar and the brake beyond,
Temp us felt the god rustling inside him, and took time to upbraid Va-shanka for
wasting an adherent. They were  not on the best of  terms, the man and his  god.
His temper  was hard-held  these days,  and the  gloom of  winter quartering was
making him fey-not  to mention reports  of the Mygdonians'  foul depredations to
the far north, the quelling of which he was not free to join....

First, he noticed that two  people sauntering casually down the  altar's hillock
toward him were not familiar; and  then, that none of his Stepsons  were moving:
each was stock-still. A cold overswept him, like a wind-driven wave, and  rolled
on toward the barracks. Above, the pale sky clouded over; a silky dusk swallowed
the day. Black  clouds gathered; over  Vashanka's altar two  luminous, red moons
appeared high up in the  inky air, as if some  huge night-cat lurked on a  lofty
perch. Watching the pair approaching (through unmoving men who did not even know
they stood now in  darkness), swathed in a  pale nimbus which illuminated  their
path as  the witchcold  had heralded  their coming,  Temp us  muttered under his
breath. His hand went to his hip, where no weapon lay, but only a knotted  cord.
Studying the strangers  without looking at  them straight-on, leaning  back, his
arms outstretched along the fencetop, he waited.

The red lights glowing above Vashanka's altar winked out. The ground  shuddered;
the altar stones tumbled  to the ground. Wonderful,  he thought. Just great.  He
let his eyes slide over his men, asleep between blinks, and wondered how far the
spell extended, whether they were ensor-celed in their bunks, or in the mess, or
on their horses as they made their rounds in the country or the town.

Well, Vashanka?  he tested.  It's your  altar they  took down.  But the  god was
silent.

Besides the two coming  at measured pace across  the ground rutted with  chariot
tracks, nothing moved. No bird cried or insect chittered, no Stepson so much  as
snored. The companion of  the imposing man in  the thick, fur mantle  had him by
the elbow. Who was helping whom,  Tempus could not at first determine.  He tried
to think where he had seen that austere face- soul-shriveling eyes so sad, bones
so fine and yet full of vitality beneath the black, silver-starred hair-and then
blew out  a sibilant  breath when  he realized  what power  approached over  the
rutted, Sanctuary ground. The companion whose lithe musculature and bare, tanned
skin were counterpointed by an enameled tunic of scale-armor and soft low  boots
was either a  female or the  prettiest eunuch Tempus  had ever seen-  whichever,
she/he was trouble, coming in from some nonphysical  realm on the arm of the  en
telechy of a  shadow lord, master  of the once-in-a-while  archipelago that bore
his name: Askelon, lord of dreams.

When they  reached him,  Tempus nodded  carefully and  said, very  quietly in  a
noncommittal  way  that almost  passed  for deference,  "Salutations,  Ash. What
brings you into so poor a realm?"

Askelon's proud lips parted; the skin around  them was too pale. It was a  woman
who held his arm; her health made  him seem the more pallid, but when  he spoke,
his words  were ringing  basso profundo:  "Life to  you, Riddler.  What are  you
called here?"

"Spare me your curses,  mage." To such a  power, the title alone  was an insult.
And the shadow lord knew it well.

Around his temples, stars of silver floated, stirred by a breeze. His  colorless
eyes grew darker, draining the angry clouds from the sky: "You have not answered
me."

"Nor you, me."

The woman  looked in  disbelief upon  Tempus. She  opened her  lips, but Askelon
touched them with a gloved hand. From the gauntlet's cuff a single drop of blood
ran down his left arm to drip upon  the sand. He looked at it somberly, then  up
at Tempus. "I seek your sister, what else? I will not harm her."

"But will you cause her to harm herself?"

The shadow lord  whom Tempus had  called Ash, so  familiarly, rubbed the  bloody
trail from his  elbow back up  to his wrist.  "Surely you do  not think you  can
protect her from me? Have I not accomplished even this? Am I not real?" He  held
his gloved hands out, turned them over, let them flap abruptly down against  his
thighs. Niko, who had  been roused from deep  meditation in the barracks  by the
cold which had spread sleep over the waking, skidded to a halt and peered around
the curve of the fence, his teeth gritted hard to stay their chatter.

"No." Tempus had replied to Askelon's first question with that sensitive  little
smile which meant he was considering commencing some incredible slaughter; "Yes"
to his second; "Yes, indeed" to the third.

"And would I be here now," the dream lord continued, "in so ignominious a  state
if not for the havoc she has wrought?"

"I don't know what  havoc she's wrought that  could have touched you  out there.
But I take it that last night's deadly mist was your harbinger. Why come to  me,
Ash? I'm not involved with her in any way."

"You connived  to release  her from  imprisonment, Tempus-it  is Tempus,  so the
dreams of the  Sanctuarites tell me.  And they tell  me other things,  too. I am
here, sleepless one, to warn you: though I cannot reach you through dreams, have
no doubt: I can reach you.  All of these, you consider  yours...."He   waved his
hand to encompass  the  still  men, frozen unknowing  upon the field. "They  are
mine now. I can claim them any time."

"What do you want, Ash?"

"I want you to refrain from interfering with me while I am here. I will see her,
and settle  a score  with her,  and if  you are  circumspect, when I leave, your
vicious  little  band  of  cutthroats   will  be  returned  to  you,   unharmed,
uncomprehending."

"All that, to make sure of me? I don't respond well to flattery. You will  force
me to a gesture by trying  to prevent one. I don't  care what you do about  Cime
whatever you do, you will be doing  me a favor. Release my people, and  go about
your quest."

"I cannot trust you not to interfere. By noon I shall be installed as  temporary
First Hazard of your local Mageguild-"

"Slumming? It's hardly your style."

"Style?"  he  thundered  so  that  his  companion  shuddered  and  Niko started,
dislodging a stone which clicked, rolled, then lay still. "Style? She came  unto
me with her evil and destroyed my  peace." His other hand cradled his wrist.  "I
was  lucky  to  receive  a  reprieve  from  damnation.  I  have  only  a limited
dispensation: either I force her to  renege on murdering me, or make  her finish
the job. And you of  all men know what awaits  a contractee such as myself  when
existence is over. What would you do in my place?"

"I did not know how she got here, but now it comes clearer. She went to  destroy
you in your place, and  was spat out into this  world from there? But how  is it
she has not succeeded?"

The Power, looking past  Tempus with a squint,  shrugged. "She was not  certain,
her will was not united  with her heart. I have  a chance, now, to remedy  it...
bring back restful dreaming in its place, and my domain with it. I will not  let
anything stop me. Be warned, my friend.  You know what strengths I can bring  to
bear."

"Release my people, if you want her, and we will think about how to satisfy  you
over breakfast. From the look of you, you could use something warm to drink. You
do drink, don't you? With the form come the functions, surely even here."

Askelon  sighed  feelingly;  his shoulders  slumped.  "Yes,  indeed, the  entire
package is mine to tend and lumber about in, some little while longer. . . until
after the Mageguild's fete this evening, at the very least. ... I am  surprised,
not to mention pleased, that you  display some disposition to compromise. It  is
for  everyone's  benefit.  This  is Jihan."  He  inclined  his  head toward  his
companion. "Greet our host."                     .

"It is my pleasure to wish that things go exceedingly well with you," the  woman
said, and Niko saw Tempus shiver, a  subtle thing that went over him from  scalp
to sandals-and almost bolted out to help, thinking some additional, debilitating
spell was being cast.  He was not fooled  by those polite exchanges:  bodies and
timbres had  been speaking  more plainly  of respectful  opposition and cautious
hostility. Distressed  and overbalanced  from long  crouching without  daring to
lean or sit, he fell forward, catching himself too late to avoid making noise.

Niko heard Tempus remonstrate, "Let him  be, Askelon!" and felt a sudden  ennui,
his eyelids closing, a  drift toward sleep he  fought-then heard the dream  lord
reply: "I will  take this one  as my hostage,  and leave Jihan  with you, a fair
trade. Then I will release  these others, who remember nothing-for  the interim.
When  I  am  done here,  if  you  have behaved  well,  you  may have  them  back
permanently, free and unencumbered. We will see how good your faith can be  said
to be."

Niko realized he could still hear, still see, still move.

"Come here, Nikodemos," Tempus summoned him.

He obeyed. His commander's mien implored Niko to take all this in his stride, as
his voice sent him to  see to breakfast for three.  He was about to object  that
only by  the accident  of meditation  had he  been untouched  by the spell-which
sought out waking minds  and could not find  his in his restplace,  and thus the
cook and all the  menials must be spellbound,  still-when men began to  stir and
finish  sentences  begun  before   Askelon's  arrival,  and  Tempus   waved  him
imperatively on his  way. He left  on the double,  ignoring the stares  of those
just coming out of limbo, whistling to cover the wheeze of his fear.

3

So it was that the Sacred Bander Nikodemos accompanied Askelon into Sanctuary on
the young Stepson's two best horses, his ears ringing with what he had heard and
his  eyes  aching from  what  he had  seen  and his  heart  clandestinely taking
cautious beats in a constricted chest.

Over breakfast, Askelon had remarked to Tempus  that it must be hell for one  of
his temperament to languish  under curse and god.  "I've gotten used to  it."

"I could grant you   mortality, so small  a  thing is  still within  my  power."
"I'll limp   along as   I am,   thanks, Ash.   If my   curse denys  me love,  it
gives   me freedom."

"It would  be good for  you to  have an ally."

"Not  one   who  will    unleash   a  killing   mist    merely   to   make    an
entrance,"  Tempus     had  rejoined,    his  fingers  steepled    before   him.
"Sorcery is   yet beneath  your contempt?   You are  hardly  nonaligned  in  the
conflict    brewing."

"I have my philosophy."

"Oh?  And what is that?"

"A single axiom, these days, is sufficient to my needs."

"Which is?"

"Grab reality    by the   balls and   squeeze.'  "

"We  will   see how  well it  serves   you, when you stand without    your god."
"Are you    still afraid    of me,   Ash?  I   have  never  given   you   cause,
never vied    with you   for   your  place."

"Whom  do   you   think  to impress,  Riddler? The   boy?   Your  potential, and
dangerous  proclivities,  speak   for  themselves.   I  will  grant   no further
concessions...."

Riding with the dream lord into  Sanctuary in broad daylight was a  relief after
the tension of his commander's  dining table. Being dismissed by  Askelon before
the high-walled  Mageguild on  the Street  of Arcana  was a  reprieve he had not
dared to  hope for,  though the  entelechy of  the seventh  sphere decreed  that
Nikodemos must return to the outer  gates at sundown. He watched his  best horse
disappear down that vine-hung way without  even a twinge of regret. If  he never
saw that particular horse and its rider again, it would be too soon.

And he had  his orders, which,  when he had  received them, he  had despaired of
successfully  carrying  out.  When  Askelon  had  been  absorbed  in  making his
farewells  to  the  woman  whose  fighting  stature  and  muscle  tone  were  so
extraordinary, Tempus had bade Niko warn certain parties to spread the word that
a curfew must be kept, and some others not to attend the Mage-guild's fete  this
evening, and  lastly find  a way  to go  alone to  the Vulgar Unicorn, tavern of
consummate ill repute in  this scabrous town, and  perform a detailed series  of
actions there.

Niko had never been to the Vulgar  Unicorn, though he had been by it  many times
during his  tours in  the Maze.  The east-side  taverns like  the Alekeep at the
juncture of Promise Park and Governor's Walk, and the Golden Oasis, outside  the
Maze, were more to his liking, and  he stopped at both to fortify himself  for a
sortie into Ilsig filth  and Ilsig poverty. At  the Alekeep, he managed  to warn
the father  of a  girl he  knew to  keep his  family home  this evening lest the
killing mist diminish his house should it  come again; at the Oasis, he found  a
Hell-Hound and the  Ilsig captain Walegrin  gaming intently over  a white-bladed
knife  (a fine  prize if  it were  the "hard  steel" the  blond-braided  captain
claimed it was, a metal only fabled to exist), and so had gotten his message off
to both the palace and the garrison in good order.

Yet, in the Maze, it seemed that  his luck deserted him as precipitately as  his
sense of direction had fled. It should be easy to find the Serpentine-just  head
south by southwest ...   unless the entelechy  Askelon  had hexed  him! He  rode
tight in his saddle under a  soapy, scum-covered sky gone noncommittal, its  sun
nowhere  to  be seen,  doubling  back from  Wide-way  and the  gutted  wharfside
warehouses where serendipity had taken  his partner's life as suddenly  as their
charred remains loomed before him out of  a pearly fog so thick he could  barely
see his horse's ears twitch. Rolling in off the water, it was rank and fetid and
his fingers slipped on his weeping reins. The chill it brought was numbing,  and
lest it penetrate to  his very soul, he  fled into a light  meditation, clearing
his mind and letting his body roll with his mount's gait while its hoofbeats and
his own breathing grew loud and that mixed cadence lulled him.

In his  expanded awareness,  he could  sense the  folk behind  their doors, just
wisps of  passion and  subterfuge leaking  out beyond  the featureless  mudbrick
facades from inner  courts and wizened  hearts. When glances  rested on him,  he
knew it, feeling the  tightening of focus and  disturbance of auras like  roused
bees or whispered insults. When his  horse stopped with a disapproving snort  at
an intersection,  he had  been sensing  a steady  attention on  him, a  presence
pacing him which knew him  better than the occasional street-denizen  who turned
watchful at  the sight  of a  mercenary riding  through the  Maze, or the whores
half-hidden in doorways  with  their  predatory/cautious/disappointed  pinwheels
of assessment and dismissal. Still thoroughly disoriented, he chose the leftward
fork at random, as much to  see whether the familiar pattern stalking  him would
follow along as in hopes  that some landmark would pop  out of the fog to  guide
him-he did not know the Maze as well as he should, and his meditation-sensitized
peripheral perception could tell him only how close the nearest walls were and a
bit  about who  lurked behind  them: he  was no  adept, only  a  western-trained
fighter. But, being one, he had  shaken his fear and his foreboding,  and waited
to see if  Shadowspawn, called Hanse,  would announce himself:  should Niko hail
the thief prematurely, Hanse would almost certainly melt back into the alleys he
commanded rather than own that Niko had perceived himself shadowed-and leave him
lost among the hovels and the damned.

He  had  learned patience  waiting  for gods  to  speak to  him  on wind-whipped
precipices while heaving  tides licked about  his toes in  anticipation. After a
time, he began to see canopied stalls and hear muted haggling, and dismounted to
lead his  horse among  the splintered  crates and  rotten fruit  at the bazaar's
edge.

"PsstJ Stealth!" Hanse called him by  his war-name, and dropped, soundless as  a
phantom,  from  a  shuttered  balcony  into  his  path.  Startled,  Niko's horse
scrabbled backward, hind hooves kicking crates and stanchions over so that a row
ensued  with  the stall's  enraged  proprietor. When  that  was done,  the  dark
slumhawk still waited, eyes glittering with unsaid words sharper than any of the
secreted blades he wore, a triumphant smile fierce as his scarlet sash fading to
his more customary street-hauteur as  he turned figs in his  fingers, pronounced
them unfit for human consumption, and eased Niko's way.

"I was out there this morning," Niko heard, bent down over his horse's left hind
hoof, checking for splinters caught in its shoe; "heard your team lost a member,
but not  who. Pissass  weird weather,  these days.  You know  something I should
know?"

"Possibly." Niko, putting down the hoof, brushed dust from his thighs and  stood
up. "Once when I  was wandering around the  backstreets of a coastal  city-never
mind which one-with an arrow in my gut and afraid to seek a surgeon's help there
was weather like this. A man who took  me in told me to stay off the  streets at
night until the weather'd been clear a full day-something to do with dead adepts
and souls to pay  their way out of  purgatory. Tell your friends,  if you've got
any. And do  me a favor,  fair exchange?" He  gathered up his  reins and took  a
handful of mane, about to swing up on his horse, and thus he saw Hanse's fingers
flicker: state  it. So  he did,  admitting that  he was  lost, quite baldly, and
asking the thief to guide him on his way.

When they had  walked far enough  that Shadowspawn's laughter  no longer echoed,
the thief  said, "What's  wrong? Like  I said,  I was  out at the barracks. I've
never seen him scared of anything, but he's scared of that girl he's got in  his
room. And he's meaner than normal-told me I couldn't stable my horse out  there,
and not to come around-" Shadowspawn broke off, having said what he did not want
to say, and kicked a melon in their path, which burst open, showing the  teeming
maggots within.

"Maybe he'd like to keep you out  of troubles that aren't any of your  business.
Or maybe  he estimates  his debt  to you  is paid  in full-you can't keep coming
around when it suits you and still be badmouthing us like any other Ilsig-"

A spurt of profanity contained some cogent directions to the Vulgar Unicorn, and
some other suggestions impossible to follow.  Niko did not look up to  see Hanse
go. If he failed to take the warning to heart, then hurt feelings would keep him
away from Niko and his commander for a while. It was enough.

Directions or  no, it  took him  longer than  it should  have to  find his  way.
Finally, when he was eyeing the sky doubtfully, trying to estimate the  lateness
of the  hour, he  spied the  Unicorn's autoerotic  sign creaking  in the  moist,
stinking breeze  blowing in  off the  harbor. Discounting  Hanse, since Niko had
entered the close and ramshackle despair  of the shantytown he had seen  not one
friendly face. If he had been jeered once, he had been cursed a score of  times,
aloud and with spit and glare and handsign, and he had had more than his fill of
Sanctuary's infamous slum.

Within the Unicorn, the clientele did not look happy to see a Stepson. A silence
as thick as Rankan  ale descended as he  entered and took more  time to disperse
than he liked. He crossed to the bar, scanning the room full of local  brawlers,
grateful he had neglected to shave since the previous morning. Perhaps he seemed
more fearsome than he  felt as he turned  his back to the  sullen, hostile crowd
just  resuming  their drinking  and  scheming and  ordered  a draught  from  the
bartender. The big, overmuscled man with  a balding head slapped it down  before
him, growling that  it would be  well if he  drank up and  left before the crowd
began to thicken, or the barkeep would not be responsible for the  consequences,
and Niko's "master" would get a bill for any damage to the premises. The look in
the big man's eyes was decidedly unfriendly. "You're the one they call  Stealth,
aren't you?" the bar-keep accused him. "The one who told Shadowspawn that one of
the best kills  is a knife  from behind down  beside the collarbone,  and with a
sword, cut up between your opponent's  legs, and in general the object  is never
to have to engage your enemy, but dispatch him before he has seen your face?"

Niko stared at him, feeling anger chase the disquiet from his limbs. "I know you
Ilsigs don't like  us," he said  quietly, "but I  haven't time now  to charm you
into a change of mind. Where's One-Thumb, barkeep? I have a message for him that
cannot wait."

"Right here," smirked the aproned  mountain, tossing his rag onto  the barsink's
chipped pottery rim. "What is it, sonny?"

"He wants you  to take me  to the lady-you  know the one."  Actually, Tempus had
instructed Niko to  tell One-Thumb about  Askelon's intention to  confront Cime,
and  wait  for word  as  to what  the  woman wanted  Tempus  to do.  But  he was
resentful, and he  was late." I  have to be  at the Mageguild  by sundown. Let's
move."

"You've got the wrong One-thumb, and the wrong idea. Who's this 'he'?"

"Bartender, I leave it  on your conscience-" He  pushed his mug away  and took a
step back from the bar, then realized he could not leave without discharging his
duty, and reached out to pick it up again.

The  big bartender's  thumbless hand  curled around  his wrist  and jerked   him
against the bar. He prayed for patience. "And he didn't tell you not to come  in
here, bold as  brass tassels on  a witch-bitch whore?  He is getting  sloppy, or
he's forgotten who his friends are. Why didn't you come round the back? What  do
you expect me to do, leave with you in the middle of the day? I-"

"I was lucky I found your pisshole at all, Wriggly. Let me go or you're going to
lose the rest of those fingers, sure as  Lord Storm's anger rocks even this  god
ridden garbage heap of a peninsula-"

Someone stepped up to  the bar, and One-Thumb,  with a wrench of  wrist, went to
serve him, meanwhile motioning close a girl whose breasts were mottled gray with
dirt and pinkish white  where she had sweated  it away, saying to  her that Niko
was to be taken to the office.

In  it,  he watched  the  man called  One-Thumb  through a  one-way  mirror, and
fidgeted. Eventually, though  he saw no  reason why it  happened, a door  he had
thought to  be a  closet's opened  behind him,  and a  woman stepped in, clad in
Ilsig doeskin leggings. She said, "What word did my brother send to me?"

He told her, thinking, watching her, that her eyes were gray like Askelon's, and
her hair  was arrestingly  black and  silver, and  that she  did not  in any way
resemble Tempus. When he  was finished with his  story and his warning  that she
not, under any  circumstances, go out  this evening-^not, upon  her life, attend
the  Mageguild fete,  she laughed,  a sweet  tinkle so  inappropriate his  spine
chilled and he stiffened.

"Tell my  brother not  to be  afraid. You  must not  know him  well, to take his
terror of the adepts  so seriously." She moved  close to him, and  he drowned in
her storm-cloud eyes while her hand went  to his swordbelt and by it she  pulled
him close. "Have you money, Stepson? And some time to spend?"

Niko beat a hasty  retreat with her mocking,  throaty laughter chasing him  down
the stairs. She called after him that she only wanted to have him give her  love
to Tempus. As he made the landing near the bar, he heard the door at the stairs'
top slam shut. He was out of there like a torqued arrow-so fast he forgot to pay
for his drink,  and yet, when  he remembered it,  on the street  where his horse
waited, no  one had  come chasing  him. Looking  up at  the sky, he estimated he
could just make the Mageguild in time, if he did not get lost again.

4

Thinking back over the last ten months, Tempus realized he should have  expected
something like this. Vashanka was weakening steadily: something had removed  the
god's  name from  Kadakithis' palace  dome; the state cult's  temple had  proved
unbuildable,  its grounds  defiled and  its priest  a defiler; the ritual of the
Tenslaying had been interrupted  by Cime and her  fire, and he and  Vashanka had
begotten a  male  child upon the  First Consort which   the god did  not seem to
want to claim; Abarsis had  been allowed to throw his  life away without  regard
to the   fact that   he had   been Vashanka's   premier warrior  priest. Now the
field  altar his mercenaries had  built had been tumbled  to the ground   before
his  eyes  by one  of  Abarsis'  teachers,  an entelechy  chosen specifically to
balance the beserker influence  of the  god. And he, Tempus,  was imprisoned  in
his own   quarters by   a Froth   Daughter in   an all-too-human  body intent on
exacting from him recompense for what his sister had denied her.

Glumly he wondered if his god could  be undergoing a midlife crisis, then if  he
too was, since Vashanka and he were linked by the Law of Consonance.  Certainly,
Jihan's proclamation of intended rape had taken him aback. He had not been taken
aback by anything in years. "Rapist,  they call you, and with good  reason," she
had said,  reaching up  under the  scale-armor corselet  to wriggle  out of  her
loinguard. "We  will see  how you  like it,  in receipt  of what  you're used to
giving out." He could not stop her, or refrain from responding to her. Cime  had
interrupted Jihan's scheduled tryst with  Askelon, perhaps aborted it. The  body
which faced him  had been chosen  for a woman's  retribution. Later she  said to
him, rubbing the imprint  of her scale-armor from  his loins with a  high-veined
hand: "Have you never heard of letting the lady win?"

"No," he replied, genuinely puzzled. "Jihan, are you saying I was unfair?"

"Only arcane, weighting  the scales  to your  side. Love  without feeling,  mind
caress, spell-excitation. ... I am new  to flesh. I hope you are  well chastized
and repentant," she giggled, just briefly,  before his words found her ears:  "I
warn you, straight-out: those who love me die of it, and those I favor are fated
to spurn me."

"You are  an arrogant  man. You  think I  care? I  should have  struck you  more
viciously." Her  flat hand  slapped, more  than playfully,  down upon his belly.
"He-" she meant Askelon  "-cannot spare me any  of his substance. I  do this for
him, that  he not  look upon  me hungry  for a  man and  know shame. You saw his
wrist, where she skewered him...."

"I don't fancy a gift from him, convenient  or no." He was going to pull her  up
beside him,  where he  might casually  get his  hands around  her fine, muscular
throat. But she sat back and retorted, "You think he would suggest this? Or even
know of it? I take what I choose from men, and we do not discuss it. It is all I
can do for  him. And you  owe me whatever  price I care  to name-your own sister
took from me my husband before ever his lips touched mine. When my father  chose
me from my sisters to be sent  to ease Askelon's loneliness, I had a  choice-yea
or nay-and a year  to make it. I  studied him, and felt  love enough to come  to
human flesh to claim it. To  become human-you concede that I am,  for argument's
sake?"

He did that-her spectacular body, sheathed in muscle, taut and sensuous, was too
powerful and yet too shapely to be mortal, but even so, he did not critique her.

"Then," she continued, rising up, hands on her impossibly slim waist, pacing  as
she spoke in a rustle of armor-scales, "consider my plight. To become human  for
the love of a demiurge,  and then not to be  able to claim him....It is  done, I
have this  form, I  cannot undo  it until  its time  is up.  And since  I cannot
collect satisfaction from her-he has  forbidden me that pleasure-all the  powers
on the twelfth plane agree: I may have what I wish from you. And what I wish,  I
have made quite plain." Her voice was deepening. She took a step toward him.

He objected, and she laughed, "You should see your face."

"I  can imagine.  You are  a very  attractive .  . .  lady, and  you come   with
impeccable credentials from an unimpeachable source. So if you are inexperienced
in the ways of the world, brash  and awkward and ineffective because of that,  I
suppose I must excuse you. Thus, I shall make allowances." His one hand  raised,
gestured, scooped up her loinguard and  tossed it at her. "Get dressed,  get out
of here. Go back to your master, familiar, and tell him I do not any longer  pay
my sister's debts."

Then, finally,  she came  at him:  "You mistake  me. I  am not  asking you, I am
telling you."  She reached  him, crouched  down, thighs  together, hands  on her
knees, knees on what had once been Jubal the Slaver's bed. "This is a real debt,
in lieu of payment for which, my patron and the elementals will exact-"

He clipped her exactly behind her right ear, and she fell across him, senseless.

Other things she had said, earlier in passion, rang in his head: that should  he
in any way displease  her, her duty would  then be plain: he  and Vashanka could
both be disciplined  by way of  the child they  had together begotten  on one of
Molin Torchholder's temple dancers.

He was not sure  how he felt about  that, as he was  not sure how he  felt about
Askelon's  offer of  mortality or  Vashanka's cowardice,  or the  positives  and
negatives of his sister's self-engendered fate.

He gave the unconscious woman over  to his Stepsons with instructions that  made
the three he had hailed grin widely.  He could not estimate how long they  would
be able to hold her- however long they managed it, it had better be long enough.
The Stepson who had  come from seeking Niko  in Sanctuary found him,  garbed for
business, saddling a Tros horse in the stables.

"Stealth said," the gruff, sloe-eyed commando reported: " 'She said stay out  of
it, no need to  fear.' He's staying with  the archmage, or whatever  it is. He's
going to the  Mageguild party and  suggests you try  and drop by."  A feral grin
stole over the mercenary's face. He knew something was up. "Need anybody on your
right for this, commander?"

Tempus almost said no, but changed his mind and told the Stepson to get a  fresh
horse and his best panoply and meet him at the Mageguild's outer gate.

5

There was a little mist in the streets by the time Tempus headed his Tros  horse
across the east side toward the  Mageguild-nothing daunting yet, just a  fetlock
high steaminess as if the streets were cobbled with dry ice. He had had no  luck
intercepting his sister at Lastel's  estate: a servant shouted through  a grate,
over the barking of dogs, that the master had already left for the fete. He  had
stopped briefly at the mercenaries' hostel before going there, to burn a rag  he
had had for  centuries in the  common room's hearth:  he no longer  needed to be
reminded not to argue with warlocks, or that love, for him, was always a  losing
game. With  his sister's  scarf, perhaps  the problem  of her  would waft  away,
changed like the ancient linen to smoke upon the air.

Before the Mageguild's outer wall, an imprudent crowd had gathered to watch  the
luminaries  arriving  in the  ersatz-daylight  of its  ensorceled  grounds. Pink
clouds formed a glowing canopy  to the wall's edge-a godly  pavilion; elsewhere,
it was night. Where  dark met light, the  Stepson Janni waited, one  leg crooked
over his saddlehorn,  rolling  a smoke, his  best  helmet dangling by  his  knee
and  his   full-length dress-mantle   draped  over  his  horse's   croup,  while
around his hips the ragged crowd thronged and his horse, ears flattened, snapped
at Ilsigs who came too near.

Tempus'  gray  rumbled  a  greeting  to  the  bay;  the  curly-headed  mercenary
straightened up in his saddle and saluted, grinning through his beard.

He wasn't smiling when the Mageguild's ponderous doors enfolded them, and  three
junior functionaries escorted them to the "changing rooms" within the outer wall
where  they  were  expected  to  strip and  hand  over  their  armaments  to the
solicitously smirking mages-in-training before donning preferred  "fete-clothes"
(gray silk chitons  and summer sandals)  the wizards had  thoughtfully provided.
Askelon wasn't taking any chances, Tempus thought but did not say, though  Janni
wondered aloud what use  there was in checking  their paltry swords and  daggers
when enchanters could not be made to check their spells.

Inside the Mageguild's  outer walls, it  was summer. In  its gardens-transformed
from their usual dank fetidness by  artful conjure into a wonderland of  orchids
and eucalyptus and willows weeping where before moss-hung swamp-giants had  held
sway over quickmires-Tempus saw Kadakithis, resolutely imperious in a black robe
oversewn  with  gems  into a  map  of  Ranke-caught-in-the-web-of-the-world. The
prince/governor's pregnant wife, a red gift-gown splendid over her  child-belly,
leaned  heavily  on  his  arm.  Kitty  cat's  approving  glance  was  laced with
commiseration: yes, he, too, found it hard to smile here, but both of them  knew
it prudent to observe the forms, especially with wizards....

Tempus nodded and walked away.

Then he saw  her, holding Lastel's  hand, to which  the prosthetic thumb  of his
disguise was firmly attached. A signal bade Janni await him; he did not have  to
look back to know that the Stepson obeyed.

Cime  was blond,  tonight, and  golden-eyed, tall  in her  adept-chosen robe  of
iridescent green, but he saw through the illusion to her familiar self. And  she
knew it. "You come here without your beloved armaments or even the god's amulet?
The man I used to know would have pulled rank and held on to his weapons."

"Nothing's going to happen  here," he murmured, staring  off over her head  into
the crowd looking for Niko; "unless the  message I received was in error and  we
do have a problem?"

"We have no problem-" glowered Lastel/ One-Thumb.

"One-Thumb, disappear, or I'll have Janni, over there, teach you how to  imitate
your bar's  sign." With  a reproachful  look that  Tempus would  utter his alias
here, the man who did not like to be called One-Thumb outside the Maze  lumbered
off.

Then he had to look at  her. Under the golden-eyed illusion, her  char-and-smoke
gaze accused him, as it had chased him across the centuries and made him content
to be accursed and constrained from  other loves. God, he thought, I  will never
get  through this  without error.  It was  the closest  he had  come to   asking
Vashanka to  help him  for ages.  In the  back of  his skull,  a distant whisper
exhorted him to  take  his sister  while he  could ...  that bush  on  his right
would be bower enough. But more than  advice the god could not give: "I  have my
own troubles, mortal, for  which you are partly  responsible." With the echo  of
Vashanka's last word, Tempus knew the god was gone.

"Is Lastel telling the truth, Cime? Are you content to face Askelon's wrath, and
your  peril, alone?  Tell me  how you  came to  half-kill a  personage of   that
magnitude, and assure me that you can rectify your mistake without my help."

She reached up and touched his throat, running her finger along his jaw until it
found his mouth. "Ssh, ssh. You are a bad liar, who proclaims he does not  still
love me. Have you not enough at risk, presently? Yes, I erred with Aske-lon.  He
tricked me. I  shall solve it,  one way or  the other. My  heart saw him,  and I
could not then be the one who  stood there watching him die. His world  beguiled
me, his form enthralled me. You know what punishment love could bring me. . .  .
He begged me leave  him to die alone.   And I believed him...  because  I feared
for my life, should while  he died I come to  love him. We each bear  our proper
curse, that is sure."

"You think this disguise will fool him?"

She shook her  head. "I need  not; he will  want a meeting.  This," she ran  her
hands down over her  illusory youth and beauty,  "was for the mage-lings,  those
children at the gates. As for you, stay clear of this matter, my brother.  There
is no time for quailing or philosophical debates, now. You never were  competent
to simply act, unencumbered by judgment  or conscience. Don't try to change,  on
my account. I will deal with the en-telechy, and then I will drink even his name
dry of meaning. Like  that!" She snapped her  fingers, twirled on her  heel, and
flounced  off in  a good  imitation of  a young  woman offended  b'y a   forward
soldier.

While he watched, Askelon appeared from the crowd to bar her path, a golden coin
held out before him like a wand or a warding charm.

That fast did he have  her, too fast for Tempus  to get between them, simply  by
the mechanism  of invoking  her curse:  for pay,  she must  give herself  to any
comer. He watched them flicker out of being with his stomach rolling and an ache
in his throat.  It was some  little while before  he saw anything  external, and
then he saw Nikodemos showing off his gift-cuirass to Janni.

The two came up to him wondering why it was, when everyone else's armaments  had
been taken from them, Niko, who had arrived in shabby duty-gear, had been  given
better than ever he  could afford. Tempus drew  slowly into his present,  noting
Molin Torchholder's  over-gaudy figure  nearby, and  a kohl-eyed  lady who might
easily be an infiltrator from the Mygdon-ian Alliance talking to Lastel.

He asked his  Stepsons to make  her acquaintance: "She  might just be  smuggling
drugs into Sanctuary with Lastel's help,  but do not arrest her for  trifles. If
she is a spy, perhaps she will try to recruit a Stepson disaffected enough  with
his lot.  Either of  you-a single  agent or  half a  broken pair-could  fit that
description."

"At the least, we must plumb her body's secrets, Stealth," Janni rumbled to Niko
as the two strutted her way, looking virile and predatory.

With a scowl of concern for the  Stepson to whom he was bound by  ill-considered
words, he sought out Torchholder, recalling, as he slid with murmured  greetings
and  apologies  through socialites  and  Hazard-class adepts,  Niko's  blank and
steady eyes: the  boy knew his  danger, and trusted  Tempus, as a  Sacred Bander
must, to see him through it. No  remonstrance or doubt had shown in the  fighter
called Stealth's open countenance, that Tempus would come here against Askelon's
wishes, and risk a  Stepson's life. It was  war, the boy's calm  said, what they
both did and what they both knew. Later, perhaps there would be  explanations-or
not. Tempus knew that Niko, should he survive, would never broach the subject.

"Torchholder, I think you ought to go see to the First Consort's baby," he  said
as  his  hand came  down  heavily on  the  palace-priest's be-baubled  shoulder.
Torchholder was already pulling on his beard, his mouth curled with anger,  when
he turned. Assessing  Tempus' demeanor, his  face did a  dance which ended  in a
mien of knowing  caution. "Ah, yes,  I did mean  to look in  on Seylalha and her
babe. Thank you for reminding me, Hell-Hound."

"Stay with her," Tempus  whispered sotto voce as  Molin sought to brush  by him,
"or get them both to a safer place-"

"We got your message,  this afternoon, Hound," the  privy priest hissed, and  he
was gone.

Tempus was just thinking that it was well Fete Week only came once yearly,  when
above him, in the pink, tented clouds, winter gloom began to spread; and  beside
him, a hand closed  upon his left arm  with a numbingly painful  grip: Jihan had
arrived. 

6

Askelon of Meridian, entelechy of the seventh sphere, lord of dream and  shadow,
faced his would-be  assassin little strengthened.  The Hazards of  Sanctuary had
given what they could  of power to him,  but mortal strength and  mortals' magic
could not replace what he had lost. His compassionate eyes had sunken deep under
lined and arching  brows; his skin  was pallid; his  cheeks hosted deep  hollows
like his colossus's where it guarded  an unknown sea, so fierce that  folk there
who had never heard of Sanctuary swore that in those stony caverns demons raised
their broods.

It had cost him much  to take flesh and make  chase. It cost him more  to remove
Cime to the Mageguild's innermost sanctum before the disturbance broke out above
the celebrants on the lawn. But he had done it.

He said to her, "Your intention, free agent, was not clear. Your resolve was not
firm. I am neither dead nor alive, because of you. Release me from this torture.
I saw in your eyes you did not  truly wish my demise, nor the madness that  must
come upon the world entire from the destruction of the place of salving  dreams.
You have lived awhile, now, in a world where dreams cannot solve problems, or be
used to chart the future, or to heal or renew. What say you? You can change  it,
bring sanity back among the planes, and  love to your aching heart. I will  make
you lady  of Meridian.  Our quays  will once  again rise  crystal, streets  will
glitter gold, and my  people will finish the  welcoming paean they were  singing
when  you shattered  my heart."  As he  spoke, he  pulled from  his vestments  a
kerchief and  held it  out, unfolded,  in his  right hand.  There on snowy linen
glittered the  shards of  the Heart  ofAskelon, the  obsidian talisman which her
rods had destroyed when he wore it on his wrist.

She had them out by then, taken down  from her hair, and she twirled them,  blue
white and ominous, in her fingers.

He did not shrink from her, nor eye her weapons. He met her glance with his, and
held, willing to take either outcome-anything but go on the way he was.

Then he heard the hardness of her laugh, and prepared himself to face the  tithe
collectors who held the mortgage on his soul.

Her aspect of blond  youthfulness fell away with  her laughter, and she  stepped
near him, saying, "Love, you offer me? You know my curse, do you not?"

"I can lift it, if you but spend one year with me."

"You can lift it? Why should I believe you, father of magic? Not even gods  must
tell the truth,  and you, I  own, are beyond  even the constraints  of right and
wrong which gods obey."

"Will you not help me, and help yourself? Your beauty will not fade; I can  give
youth  unending,  and  heal  your  heart,  if  you  but  heal  mine."  His hand,
outstretched to her, quivered. His  eyes sparkled with unshed tears.  "Shall you
spend eternity as a murderer and a whore, for no reason? Take salvation, now  it
is offered. Take  it for us  both. Neither of  us could claim  such a boon  from
eternity again."

Cime shrugged, and  the woman's eyes  so much older  than the three  decades her
body showed impaled him. "Some kill politicians, some generals, foot soldiers in
the field.  As for  me, I  think the  mages are  the problem, twisting times and
worlds about like  children play with  string. And as  for help, what  makes you
think either you or I deserve it? How many have you aided, without  commensurate
gain?  When  old  Four-Eyes-Spitting-Fire-And-Four-Mouths-Spit-ting-Curses  came
after me, no one did anything, not my parents, or our priests or seers. They all
just looked at their feet, as if the key to my salvation was written in Azehur's
sand. But it was not! And oh, did  I learn from my wizard! More than he  thought
to teach me, since he crumbled into dust on my account, and that is sure."

Yet, she stopped the rods twirling, and she did not start to sing.

They stared a time  longer at each other,  and while they saw  themselves in one
another, Cime began to cry, who had  not wept in thrice a hundred years.  And in
time she turned her rods about, and butts first, she touched them to the  shards
of the obsidian he held in a trembling palm.

When the rods made contact, a blinding  flare of blue commenced to shine in  his
hand, and she heard him say, "I will make things right with us," as the room  in
which they stood  began to fade  away, and she  heard a lapping  sea and singing
children and finger cymbals tinkling  while lutes were strummed and  pipes began
to play.

7

All hell  breaking loose  could not  have caused  more pandemonium  than Jihan's
father's  blood-red  orbs  peering   down  through  shredded  clouds   upon  the
Mageguild's  grounds. The  fury of  the father  of a  jilted bride  was met   by
Vashanka  in his  full manifestation,  so that  folk thrown  to the  ground  lay
silent, staring up  at the battle  in the sky  with their fingers  dug deep into
chilling, spongy earth.

Vashanka's two feet were widespread, one upon his temple, due west, one upon the
Mage-guild's wall.  His lightning  bolts rocked  the heavens,  his golden  locks
whipped by his  adversary's black winds.  Howls from the  foreign Stormbringer's
cloudy throat  pummeled eardrums;  people rolled  to their  stomachs and  buried
their heads in  their arms as  the inconceivable cloud  creature enveloped their
god,  and  blackness   reigned.  Thunder  bellowed;   the  black  cloud   pulsed
spasmodically, lit from within.

In the tempest, Tempus  shouted to Jihan, grabbed  her arms in his  hands: "Stop
this; you  can do  it. Your  pride, and  his, are  not worth  so many  lives." A
lightning  bolt  struck  earth  beside  his  foot,  so  close  a  blue sparkling
aftercharge nuzzled his leg.

She jerked away, palmed her hair back,  stood glaring at him with red flecks  in
her eyes. She shouted something back, her  lips curled in a flash of light,  but
the gods' roaring blotted out her words. Then she merely turned her back to him,
raised her arms to heaven, and perhaps began to pray.

He had no more time for her; the god's war was his; he felt the claw-cold  blows
Stormbringer landed,  felt Vashanka's  substance leeching  away. Yet  he set off
running, dodging cowerers upon the  ground, adepts and nobles with  their cloaks
wrapped about their heads, seeking his Stepsons: he knew what he must do.

He did not stop for  arms or horses, when he  found Niko and Janni, but  set off
through the raging din toward the Avenue of Temples, where the child the man and
god had begotten upon the First Consort was kept.

Handsigns got  them through  until speech  was useful,  when they  had run  west
through the lawns and alleys, coming to Vashanka's temple grounds from the back.
Inside the shrine's chancery, it was quieter, shielded from the sky that  heaved
with light and dark.

Niko shared  his weapons,  those Askelon  had given  him: a  dirk to Tempus, the
sword to  Janni. "But  you have  nothing left,"  Janni protested  in the  urgent
undertone they were all employing  in the shadowed corridors of  their embattled
god's earthly home. "I have this," Niko replied, and tapped his armored chest.

Whether he meant the cuirass Askelon had given him, the heart underneath, or his
mental skills, Tempus did not ask, just tossed the dirk contemptuously back, and
dashed out into the murky temple hall.

They smelted sorcery before they saw  the sick green light or felt  the curdling
cold. Outside the door under which wizardsign leaked like sulphur from a  yellow
spring, Janni muttered blackly.  Niko's lips were drawn  back in a grin:  "After
you, commander?"

Tempus wrenched the doors apart, once  Janni had cut the leather strap  where it
had been drawn within to secure  the latch, and beheld Molin Torchholder  in the
midst of witchfire, wrestling with more than Tempus would have thought he  could
handle, and holding his own.

On the floor in the corner a honey-haired northern dancer hugged a man-child  to
her breast, her mouth an  "ooh" of relief, as if  now that Tempus was here,  she
was surely saved.

He took time to grimace politely at the girl, who insisted in mistaking him  for
his  god-his senses  were speeding  much faster  than even  the green,  stinking
whirlwind in  the middle  of the  room. He  was not  so sure  that anything  was
salvageable, here, or even if he cared if girl or priest or child or town ... or
god... were to be  saved. But then he  looked behind him, and  saw his Stepsons,
Niko on  the left  and Janni  with sword  drawn, both  ready to  advance on hell
itself, would  he but  bid them,  and he  raised a  hand and  led them  into the
lightfight,  eyes  squinted  nearly  shut  and  all  his  body  tingling  as his
preternatural abilities came into play.

Molin's ouster was  uppermost in his  mind; he picked  the glareblind priest  up
bodily and threw him, wrenching the  god's golden icon from his frozen  fist. He
heard a grunt, a snapping-in of breath,  behind, but did not look around to  see
reality fade away. He  was fighting by himself,  now, in a higher,  colder place
full of day held at  bay and Vashanka's potent breath  in his right ear. "It  is
well you have  come, manchild; I  can use your  help this day."  The left is the
place of attack in team battle; a shield-holding line drifts right, each  trying
to protect his open side.  He had Vashanka on his  right, to support him, and  a
shield, full-length and awful,  came to be upon  his own left arm.  The thing he
fought here, the Stormbringer's shape, was part cat, part manlike, and its sword
cut as hard as  an avalanche. Its claws  chilled his breath away.  Behind, black
and gray was split with sunrise colors, Vashanka's blazon snapping on a flag  of
sky. He thrust at the clouds and was parried with cold that ran up his sword and
seared the skin of  his palm so that  his sweat froze to  ice and layers of  his
flesh bonded to a sharkskin hilt. . .  .That gave him pause, for it was his  own
sword, come from where-ever the mages secreted it, which moved in his hand. Pink
glowed that blade, as  always when his god  sanctified His servant's labor.  His
right was un-tenanted, suddenly, but Vashanka's strength was in him, and it must
be enough.

He fought it unto exhaustion, he fought  it to a draw. The adversaries stood  in
clouds, typhoon-breaths rasping, both seeking strength to fight on. And then  he
had to say  it: "Let this  slight go, Stormbringer.  Vengeance is disappointing,
always. You soil yourself, having  to care. Let her  stay where she is,  Weather
Gods' Father; a mortal sojourn will  do her good. The parent is  not responsible
for the errors of the child. Nor the child for the parent." And deliberately, he
put down the shield the god had given him and peeled the sticky swordhilt from a
skinless palm, laying his weapon atop the shield. "Or surmount me, and have done
with it. I will not die of exhaustion for a god too craven to fight by my  side.
And I will not stand aside and let you have the babe. You see, it is me you must
punish, not my god. I led Askelon to Cime, and disposed her toward him. It is my
transgression, not Va-shanka's. And I am not going to make it easy for you:  you
will have to slaughter me, which I would much prefer to being the puppet of  yet
another omnipotent force."

And with a growl  that was long and  seared his inner ear  and set his teeth  on
edge, the clouds began to dissolve around him, and the darkness to fade away.

He blinked, and rubbed his eyes,  which were smarting with underworld cold,  and
when he  took his  hands away  he found  himself standing  in a seared circle of
stinking fumes with two coughing Stepsons, both of whom were breathing  heavily,
but  neither  of whom  looked  to have  suffered  any enduring  harm.  Janni was
supporting Niko, who had discarded the gift-cuirass, and it glowed as if cooling
from a  forger's heat  between his  feet. The  dirk and  sword, too,  lay on the
smudged flagstones, and Tempus' sword atop the heap.

There passed an interval of soft  exchanges, which did not explain either  where
Tempus had disappeared to, or why  Niko's gear had turned white-hot against  the
Stormbringer's whirlpool cold, and of assessing damages (none, beyond frostbite,
blisters, scrapes and Tempus' flayed swordhand) and suggestions as to where they
might recoup their strength.

The tearful  First Consort  was calmed,  and Torchholder's  people (no one could
locate the priest) told to watch her well.

Outside the temple, they saw  that the mist had let  go of the streets; an  easy
night lay chill and brisk upon the town. The three walked back to the  Mageguild
at a leisurely pace, to reclaim their panoplies and their horses. When they  got
there they found  that the Second  and Third Hazards  had claimed the  evening's
confrontation to be  of their making,  a cosmological morality  play, their most
humbly offered entertainment which the guests  had taken too much to heart.  Did
not Vashanka triumph? Was not the cloud of evil vanquished? Had not the wondrous
tent of pink-and-lemon summer sky returned to illuminate the Mageguild's fete?

Janni snarled and flushed with  rage at the adepts' dissembling,  threatening to
go  turn  Torchholder  (who  had  preceded  them  back  among  the   celebrants,
disheveled, loudmouthed, but none the worse for wear) upside down to see if  any
truth might fall  out, but Niko  cautioned him to  let fools believe  what fools
believe, and to make his farewells brief and polite-whatever they felt about the
mages, they had to live with them.

When at last they rode out of the Street of Arcana toward the Alekeep, to quench
their well-earned thirsts  where Niko could  check on the  faring of a  girl who
mattered to  him, he  was ponying  the extra  horse he  had lent  Askelon, since
neither the dream  lord nor his  companion Jihan had  been anywhere to  be found
among guests trying grimly to recapture at least a semblance of revelry.

For Niko, the slow ride through mercifully dark streets was a godsend, the  deep
midnight sky  a mask  he desperately  needed to  keep between  him and the world
awhile.  In its  cover, he  could afford  to let  his composure,  slipping  away
inexorably of its own weight, fall from him altogether. As it happened,  because
of the riderless horse, he was bringing  up the rear. That, too, suited him,  as
did  their  tortuous  progress  through  the  ways  and  intersections thronging
intermittently with  upper-class (if  there was  such a  distinction to  be made
here) Ilsigs ushering in the new year. Personally, he did not like the start  of
it: the events of  the last twenty-four hours  he considered somewhat less  than
auspicious. He fingered the enameled cuirass with its twining snakes and  glyphs
which the en-telechy Askelon had given  him, touched the dirk at his  waist, the
matching sword  slung at  his hip.  The hilts  of both  were worked  as befitted
weapons bound for a son of the armies, with the lightning and the lions and  the
bulls which were, the world over, the signatures of its Storm Gods, the gods  of
war and death. But  the workmanship was foreign,  and the raised demons  on both
scabbards belonged  to the  primal deities  of an  earlier age,  whose sway  was
misty, everywhere but among  the western islands where  Niko had gone to  strive
for initiation into his chosen mystery and mastery over body and soul. The  most
appropriate legends graced these opulent arms that a shadow lord had given  him;
in  the old  ways and  the elder  gods and  in the  disciplines of  transcendent
perception, Niko sought perfection, a mystic calm. And the weapons were perfect,
save  for two  blemishes: they  were fashioned  from precious  metals, and  made
nearly priceless by the antiquity of their style; they were charmed, warm to the
touch, capable of meeting infernal  forces and doing damage upon  icy whirlwinds
sent  from  unnamed  gods.  Nikodemos  favored  unarmed  kills,  minimal effort,
precision.  He judged  himself sloppy  should it  become necessary  to parry  an
opponent's  stroke  more  than once.  The  temple-dancing  exhibitions of  proud
swordsmen who "tested each other's mettle" and had time to indulge in style  and
disputatious dialogue  repelled him:  one got  in, made  the kill,  and got out,
hopefully leaving the enemy unknowing; if not, confused.

He no more coveted blades that would bring acquisitive men down upon him  hoping
to acquire them in  combat than he looked  forward to needing ensorceled  swords
for battles that could not  be joined in the way  he liked. The cuirass he  wore
kept  off  supernal  evil-should  it  prove  impregnable  to  mortal  arms, that
knowledge would eat away at his self-discipline, perhaps erode his control, make
him careless.  In the  lightfight, when  Tempus had  flickered out  of being  as
completely as a doused torch, he had felt an inexplicable elation, leading point
into  Chaos  with  Janni steady  on  his  right hand.  He  had  imagined he  was
indomitable, fated, chosen  by the gods  and thus inviolate.  The steadying fear
that should have been there, in his mind, assessive and balancing, was missing .
. . his moat, as he had told Tempus in that moment of discomfitting candor,  was
gone from him. No  trick panoply could replace  it, no arrogance or  battle-lust
could substitute  for it.  Without equilibrium,  the quiet  heart he  strove for
could never be his. He was  not like Tempus, preternatural, twice a  man, living
forever in extended anguish to which he had become accustomed. He did not aspire
to more than what his studies whispered a man had right to claim. Seeing  Tempus
in action, he now  believed what before, though  he had heard the  tales, he had
discounted. He thought hard  about the Riddler, and  the offer he had  made him,
and wondered if  he was bound  by it, and  the weapons Askelon  had given him no
more than omens fit for days to  come. And he shivered, upon his horse,  wishing
his partner were there up ahead instead  of Janni, and that his maat was  within
him, and that they rode Syrese byways or the Azehuran plain, where magic did not
vie with gods for mortal allegience, or take souls in tithe.

When they  dismounted at  the Alekeep,  he had  come to  a negotiated settlement
within himself: he would wait to see if what Tempus  said was true, if his  maat
would return  to him once his teammate's spirit ascended to  heaven on a  pillar
of flame. He  was not unaware of  the rhythmic nature  of enlightenment  through
the precession  of events.  He had  come to  Ranke with  his partner at Abarsis'
urging; he  remembered the  Slaughter Priest from his  early days of ritual  and
war, and had made his own  decision, not followed blindly because his  left-side
leader wished to teach  Ran kans the  glory of his name. When the elder  fighter
had put it to him, his friend had  said that it might be time  for Nikodemos  to
lead his own team-after  Ranke, without doubt, the older man would lay down  his
sword. He had been dreaming,  he  had said, of  mother's milk and   waving crops
and  snot-nosed brats with  wooden shields, a sure sign a man is  done with damp
camps and bloody dead  stripped in the field.

So it would have happened,  this year, or the next,  that he would be alone.  He
must come to terms with it; not whine silently like an abandoned child, or  seek
a new and stronger arm to lean on. Meditation should have helped him, though  he
recalled a parchment  grin and a  toothless mouth instructing  him that what  is
needed is never to be had without price.

The price of the  thick brown ale in  which the Alekeep specialized  was doubled
for  the holiday's  night-long vigil,  but they  paid not  one coin,   drinking,
instead, in a  private room in  back where the  grateful owner led  them: he had
heard about the manifestation at the  Mageguild, and had been glad he  had taken
Niko's advice and  kept his girls  inside. "Can I  let them out,  then?" he said
with a twinkling  eye. "Now that  you are here?  Would the Lord  Marshal and his
distinguished Stepsons care for some gentle companionship, this jolly eve?"

Tempus, flexing his open hand on which the clear serum glistened as it thickened
into scabby skin, told him to keep  his children locked up until dawn, and  sent
him away so brusquely Janni eyed Niko askance.

Their commander sat  with his back  against the wall  opposite the door  through
which the tavern's owner  had disappeared. "We were  followed here. I'd like  to
think you both realized it on your own."

The placement of their seats, backs  generously offered to any who might  enter,
spoke so clearly  of their failure  that neither said  a word, only  moved their
chairs to the single table's  narrow sides. When next  the door swung open,  One
Thumb, not their host, stood there, and Tempus chuckled hoarsely in the  hulking
wrestler's face. "Only you, Lastel? I own you had me worried."

"Where is she, Tempus? What have you done with her?" Lastel stomped forward, put
both ham-hands flat upon the table, his thick neck thrust forward, bulging  with
veins.

"Are you tired  of living, One-Thumb?  Go back to  your hidey-hole. Maybe  she's
there, maybe not. If not... easy come, easy go."

Lastel's face purpled; his words rode on a froth of spray so that Janni  reached
for his dagger and Niko had to kick him.

"Your sister's disappeared and you don't care?"

"I let Cime snuggle up with you in your thieves' shanty. If I had 'cared,' would
I have done that?  And did I care,  I would have to  say to you that  you aspire
beyond your station, with her.  Stick to whoremistresses and street  urchins, in
future. Or go talk to the Mageguild, or  your gods if you have the ears of  any.
Perhaps you  can reclaim  her for  some well-bartered  treachery or  a block  of
Garonne krrf.  Meanwhile, you  who are  about to  become 'No-Thumbs,' mark these
two-" He gestured to either side, to  Niko and Janni. "They'll be around to  see
you in  the next  few days,  and I  caution you  to treat  them with  the utmost
deference. They  can be  very temperamental.  As for  myself, I  have had easier
days, and so am willing to estimate for you your chances of walking out of  here
with all  appendages yet  attached and  in working  order, though  your odds are
lessening with every breath I have to  watch you take...." Tempus  was rising as
he  spoke.  Lastel  gave   back, his   flushed  face  paling  visibly  as Tempus
proposed  a  new  repository  for  his  prosthetic  thumb,  then  retreated with
surprising alacrity toward  the half-open door  in which the  tavern's owner now
stood uncertainly, now disappeared.

But Lastel was not  fast enough; Tempus had  him by the throat.  Holding him off
the ground, he made One-Thumb mouth civil farewells to both the Stepsons  before
he dropped him and let him dash away.

8

At sundown the next  day (a perfectly natural  sundown without a hint  of wizard
weather about  it), Niko's  partner's long-delayed  funeral was  held before the
replied stones of Vashanka's  field altar, out behind  the arena where once  had
been a slaver's  girl-run. A hawk  heading home flew  over, right to  left, most
auspicious of bird omina,  and when it had  gone, the men swore,  Abarsis' ghost
materialized to  guide the  fallen mercenary's  spirit up  to heaven.  These two
favorable omens were attributed by most to the fact that Niko had sacrificed the
enchanted cuirass Aske-lon had given him to the fire of his left-man's bier.

Then Niko  released Tempus  from his  vow of  pairbond, demurring that Nikodemos
himself had never accepted,  explaining that it  was time for  him to be  a left
side fighter, which, with  Tempus, he could never  be. And Janni stood  closeby,
looking uncomfortable and  sheepish, not realizing  that in this  way Tempus was
freed from worrying that harm might come to Niko on account of Tempus' curse.

Seeing Abarsis' shade, wizard-haired and wise, tawny skin quite translucent  yet
unswept eyes the same, smiling out  love upon the Stepsons and their  commander,
Tempus almost  wept. Instead  he raised  his hand  in greeting,  and the elegant
ghost blew him a kiss.

When the ceremony was done, he had sent Niko and Janni into Sanctuary to make it
clear to One-Thumb that  the only way to  protect his dual identity  was to make
himself very  helpful in  the increasingly  difficult task  of keeping  track of
Mygdonia's Nisibisi spies. As an immediate  show of good faith, he was  to begin
helping Niko and Janni infiltrate them.

When the  last of  the men  had wandered  off to  game or  drink or duty, he had
stayed at the shrine awhile, considering Vashanka and the god's habit of leaving
him to fight both their battles as best he could.

So it was that he heard a  soft sound, half hiccough and half sniffle,  from the
altar's far side, as the dusk cloaked him close.

When he went to see what it was,  he saw Jihan, sitting slumped against a  rough
hewn plinth, tearing  brown grasses to  shreds between her  fingers. He squatted
down there, to determine whether a Froth Daughter could shed human tears.

Dusk was his  favorite time, when  the sun had  fled and the  night was luminous
with memory. Sometimes, his thoughts would follow the light, fading, and the man
who never slept would find himself dozing, at rest.

This evening, it was not sleep he sought to chase in his private witching  hour:
he  touched  her  scaled, enameled  armor,  its  gray/green/copper pattern  just
dappled shadow in the deepening dark. "This does come off?" he asked her.

"Oh, yes. Like so."

"Come to think of it," he remarked after a strenuous but rewarding interval, "it
is  not  so bad  that  you are  stranded  here. Your  father's  pique will  ease
eventually. Meanwhile, I have  an extra Tros horse.  Having two of them  to tend
has been hard on me. You could take  over the care of one. And, too, if  you are
going to wait the year out as a mortal, perhaps you would consider staying on in
Sanctuary. We are sore in need of fighting women this season."

She clutched his arm; he winced. "Do  not offer me a sinecure," she said.  "And,
consider: I will have you, too, should I stay."

Promise or threat, he was not certain, but he was reasonably sure that he  could
deal with her, either way.

GODSON

by Andrew J. Offutt

Hanse did not want to be a soldier or a member of the Sacred Band ofTempus,  the
Stepsons, and most especially not a Stepson-in-training or any other dam'  thing
in-training. He wanted most definitely  and most desperately to be  Shadowspawn;
to be Hanse.  That remained elusive.  It was a  problem, just being.  He did not
know that many  spent their lives  looking for whoever  or whatever it  was that
they were or might  be, and if  he had known  it would not  have helped a  midge
worth. He was Hanse, by Ils! Not Hons or Honz or Hanz; I am Hanse?

The problem was that he was not sure what that meant.

Who was Hanse? What was Hanse?

0 Cudget,  if only  they had  not slain  you! You'd  have shown  me and told me,
wouldn't you?

It  had used  to be  so simple.   Life was  simple. There  was the  city  called
Sanctuary, and  in it  were empty  bellies, and  some that  were full.  That was
simple: it described lions (or jackals, but never mind that) and prey. And there
was Cudget Swearoath, and Hanse his apprentice in whom he was well pleased,  and
there  were the  marks-the human  sheep. And  the shadows,  to facilitate  their
fleecing.

It was all the world there was or needed be; a microcosm, a thieves' world.

And now!  Now there  were the  Rankans who  swaggered and  Prince Kadakithis who
really did not but who ruled, governed; and Tempus-0 ye gods, there was  Tempus!
and his mercenary friends, who swaggered-and nothing was simple.

Now a god  had spoken to  Hanse-Hanse!- and then  another, and Hanse  had rather
they just  kept to  themselves. The  business of  soldiers was  killing and  the
business of Prince-Governors was ruling and killing and the business of gods was
godding  and the  business of  one smallish  dark thief  of thieves'  world  was
thieving.

But now Shadowspawn was agent for gods.

Sword clanged on sword and  well-guided blade slid along brilliantly  interposed
blade with  a screech  as loud  as the  grinding of  a personal  ax. That shrill
ugliness was punctuated by a grunt chorused from two throats.

"Stopped me again, Stealth," one combatant grunted, stepping back and  twitching
his head sharply to the side. Sweat crept like persistent oil from his black mop
under the blood-red sweat-band and into his eyebrows. He jerked his head to send
it flying; the gesture carried all the constant impatience of youth.

"Barely," the other man said. He was  bigger though not much older and in  a way
his face was more boyish than that of his opponent, who had for years cultivated
a mean, menacing look he knew made him look older, and dangerous. The bigger man
was fair in contrast to the other. His hair was as if splashed or streaked  with
silver so that it was cinerous.

"I own it, Shadowspawn: you are good and you are a natural. Now. Want to work  a
bit from the saddle?" His enthusiasm  showed in his face and added  bright color
to his voice.

"No."

The one  called Stealth  waited a  moment; the  one called  Shadowspawn did  not
embellish on that  word which, when  spoken flat and  unadorned, was one  of the
four or five harshest and most unwelcome words in any language.

The man  called Stealth   masked his  disappointment. "All   right. How about...
your stones, then?"

His last words emerged in  a shout as the paler  man moved, at speed. His  sword
was a silver-gray blur, up-whipping. It  rushed on up, too, for the  wiry fellow
in the dust-colored tunic  pounced up and aside,  not quite blurring. He  simply
was not  present to  receive the  upward cut  at the  source of progeny he might
produce, like more bad virus upon the world. The other man arrested his movement
to prepare alertly for a counter-stroke.

No counter-stroke was attempted. It did not come. Shadowspawn had quit the game.
They looked  at each  other, the  expert teacher  called Stealth  and the superb
student he called Shadowspawn.

The latter spoke. "Enough, Niko. I'm weary of the sham."

"Sham? Sham, you  weed-sprout? Had you  not moved you'd  be a candidate  for the
temple choir of soprano boys, Hanse!"

Hanse called  Shadowspawn smiled  little and  when he  did he  smiled small, and
often the smile was a sneer that  fitted and mirrored his inner needs. It  was a
sneer now. Still, it was not  of disdain or contempt for  this member of the  so
called Sacred  Band, the  Stepsons, who  had taught  him so  much. He had been a
natural fighter and unusually  swift. Now he was  a trained one, with  knowledge
and ways of combative science that made him even swifter.

"But I did move, Niko; I did move. Tell Tem-pus how I move, you he set to  teach
me to be a bladesman. And tell him that still I have no desire to be a  soldier.
No desire to do murder, 'nobly' or no."

Niko stared at him.

Damned... boy, he   mused. Oh, but   I'm weary of   him and his   sneers and his
snot. I have known only war. He, who  has never known it, dares sneer at it  and
its practitioners. Neither of us  had a father-I because  mine was slain-in  war
when  I  was  a child;  this  posturing  backstreet blade-bristling  night-thief
because his mother and his father were nodding acquaintances at best. Nor  would
I  change places  with this  . .   . this  little gutter-rat,  so happy  in  his
provincial ignorance and his total inconsequence. I had rather be a man.

And I have  made him a  fighter, a real  fighter, so that  now he swaggers  even
more!

"And look you to keep your valuables 'neath your pillow, Niko. Stealth, for I am
shadow-spawned stealth, and have seen even the bed of the Prince-Governor . .  .
and of Tempus."

Niko of the Stepsons showed nothing and did not respond. Inside, he seethed only
a  little.  Petty insults  were  cheap, cheap.  As  cheap as  barely  nubile yet
experienced professional girls in the shadowy Maze that spawned this naive youth
and served him as nest and den. Niko stepped back a pace, formally. Holding  his
blade up before squinting eyes, he turned it for his examination before  putting
it away in one swift smooth motion.

The Sanctuarite was not so insolent as to keep his weapon naked in his hand.  He
too held it out and turned it for inspection at the squint, and took hold of his
scabbard with his right hand, and  turned his blade toward himself without  ever
moving the  dark, dark  eyes that  now gazed  at his  teacher. And he housed the
blade 'neath but not through the hand on its sheath. With pride.

"Nicely done," Niko could not quite help saying.

Not because he felt the need to compliment, or enjoyed it; but because there was
both edge and gratification in reminding both of them who had taught this wearer
of so many blades the maneuver he had just demonstrated.

(A man might draw at  an untoward sound or to  dispatch an enemy, Niko had  told
Hanse. And having  done, see to  the housing of  his blade at  his side. At that
moment, while he  held scabbard and  looked down to  see to its  filling, he was
vulnerable. It was then the clever  maker of the "innocent" noise or  the hidden
confederate of the new-slain man might pounce, and there was an end to sheathing
and unsheathing, all at  once. Thus a sensible  man of weapons learned  to bring
his blade up and over and back, its point toward himself, and guide it into  its
sheath with a waiting off-hand. Meanwhile his eyes remained alert for the sudden
charge.

(Yes, Nikodemos called Stealth  had taught even that  to Hanse. For Tempus  owed
him debt, and yet he and Tempus were no longer quite frinds. And so Niko paid as
Tempus's agent: he trained this wiry, cocky hawk-nose called Hanse.)

"Your shield!" Hanse called.

Niko glanced at it, leaning against a mud-brick wall with Hanse's buckler beside
it.  They had  slipped them  off and  set them  there a  pint of  sweat ago,  to
practice with  blades alone.  Now Hanse  turned and  drew and  threw all  in one
motion fluid as a cat's pounce,  arm going out long and down  in fellow-through,
andthunk one of  his damned knives  appeared in Niko's  shield. It stood  there,
quivering like a breeze-blown cat-tail.

Hanse pounced after it, all wiry and cat-lithe and dark.

He retrieved the knife, giving his wrist the little twist that plucked forth  an
inch of  flat blade  from bossed  wood capable  of withstanding  a good ax-blow.
Almost distractedly he slipped it back into its sheath up his right arm.

Hanse half-turned  to  flash teeth  at  his teacher-at-arms  but  not at   knife
throwing, and he saluted. Then he  turned and faded around the building  and was
gone, although the  sun was still  orangey-yellow and the  late-day shadows only
thinking about gathering to provide him his natural habitat.

"Shadowspawn," Niko  muttered, and  went to  retrieve his  shield and  seek  out
Tempus. Deliver me from this insolent Ilsigi in his painful youth, Tempus?  Take
away this bitter cup you have had me lift, and lift to my lips, and Irft?

Hanse moved away, wearing a tight  little smile that really did not  enhance his
looks.

He was  proud. Pleased  with himself.  Too, he  liked Niko.  There was no way he
could not, and not respect him too, just as there was (almost, at least) no  way
he could admit or show it.

He had let Tempus know he liked him while claiming to care about no one, and had
gone  and got  him out  of the  dripping hands  of that  swine, Kurd.  Kurd  the
vivisectionist. One who sectioned, who sliced, the vibrantly living. Tempus, for
instance. Among others.

After the horror of the house of Kurd, Hanse was an uncharacteristically pensive
fellow; a different Hanse. The eeriness of a regenerated Tempus was almost  more
than  he could  bear. Immortal!  0 gods  of us  all-immortal, a  human newt  who
survived all and healed all and regrew even vivisectioned parts-scarless!

Nor had that enigmatic and ever-scornful immortal said aught concerning  Hanse's
expenses in  freeing him,  or his  promise to  retrieve a  certain set  of laden
moneybags from a certain well up on Ea-a certain place.

Oh, it had cost.

For weeks  Hanse had  been idle.  He did  nothing. No;  he did  do something; he
drank.  His income  stopped. He  even sold  some of  his belongings  to buy  the
unwatered wine he had always avoided.

Even so he did not sell the gift  of a dead Stepson; an entirely mortal one.  It
hung now  on the  wall of  Hanse's lodgings:  a fine,  fine sword  in a silvered
sheath. He would not wear  it. He would not touch  it. Only he was sure  that it
was not the gift of that dead man but of a god. Tempus's god, Who had spoken  to
Hanse  and  rewarded him  for  his rescue  of  His servant  Tempus-as  that god,
Vashanka, had promised.[i]

That sword hung, minus its silver sheath, on Hanse's wall. The scabbard  trailed
down his right leg. It was wrapped all in dull black leather, knotted and pegged
and knotted  again. Nor  was he  one with  the mercenaries  cluttering the city,
bullying the city, and he had no wish to be.

Hanse  had another  need for  becoming proficient  with arms,  and better   than
proficient. It was Hanse's secret, and it was bigger than Sanctuary itself.

He collected from Tempus, though not in coin. That immortal had offered to  make
him a bladesman. (As  for the horse .  . . well, it  was something of value  and
prestige, at least. Horses and Hanse  were not friends and he hoped  never never
to fight from the back of one. But for a horse, he'd be rich!)[ii]

Tempus did not  know why Hanse  had changed his  mind and sent  word that he was
minded to learn swordsmanship. He was  pleased, Hanse was sure of that.  Just as
he and his ego  were sure that he  must be the best  student Niko had ever  had.
Already,  he was  sure, he  was incredibly  good. Hanse  never needed  the  same
instruction twice. He never  repeated an error. He  was good. Niko said  so, and
Niko spoke for Tem-pus.

Leaving Niko now, the thief called Shadowspawn wore a tight little smile. It was
the pleased  smile of  one on  whom a  god has  smiled; a  pleased but enigmatic
smile. He says that I am good.

I hope so, Vashanka's minion, he mused. Oh, I hope so. And I hope Vashanka finds
me better than good!

Hanse wended home, compact and  lithe and darkly menacing, weighted  with blades
at leg and hips and arms. There were those who were in the act of departing this
place or that but waited within  doorways until he had passed; there  were those
who stepped aside for him though he made no hostile move.  They did not like it,
or   like themselves  for doing  it,  but  they would  do it   again, for  this
menacing street-tough.

Hanse went home. I'm ready, he thought, and tight-smiled.

After that business with Kurd and  with Tempus and the absolute ghastliness   of
Tempus's mutilations-and  the ghastlier  reality of  his complete  recovery even
unto regrowing several parts-Hanse had taken to drink.

He was  not a  drinker. Never  had been.  That was  no deterrent  to millions of
others and it was not to Shadowspawn. So he drank. He drank to find an alternate
state, an alternate reality,  and he succeeded  admirably in achieving  the unad
mirable.

The problem  was that  he did  not like  that. Getting  away from everything was
getting away from Hanse, and Hanse was the poor wight he was trying to find.

0 Cudget,  if only  they had not  slain you-you'd  have shown  me and told me as
always, wouldn't you?

(Put another way, he had been shaken  badly and dived for solace into a  lake of
alcohol. He stayed there, and  he was drunk quite a  lot of the time. He  didn't
like that either; he didn't even like the taste of the stuff. Most especially he
didn't like the way he felt when sleep stopped his body and let it awake with  a
mouth like vinegar and the desert all at once, a mouth with the feel of a public
restroom for  horses and  a tongue  in need  of a  curry-comb and a stomach he'd
willingly have traded for a plate of pigs' trotters and a head he'd have  traded
for nearly anything at  all. Something had come  loose in there and  was rolling
around, and it banged against the inside  of his head when he moved it.  Alcohol
helped. More  scales off  the snake  that had  bit him.  That merely started the
whole process again. Besides, he  preferred control, control or some  feeling of
it. Strong drink washed that away on a river of vomit and sank it with explosive
belches and retching.

(He had the need  for control, back there  in the barely lighted  shadows of his
mind. All dark,  back in there,  in the mind  of the bastard  son from the wrong
side of  everything. He  had never  been in  control, and  so sought  it, or its
semblance. He had no need for any drug, and now he knew he had no desire for  it
either. Not to mention head or stomach.

(That was that. Hanse was off the sauce.)

He returned to being what most others  were, certainly most who were his age:  a
creature of his own subconscious, a  stranger dwelling within him, and he  lived
as its captive.

One day someone mentioned his "obvious sense of honor"-and it was obvious-as  he
put  it.  Learned,  that  fellow  said,  from  Hanse's  respected  mentor Cudget
Swearoath, master thief. And Shadowspawn  sneered and looked menacing. That  the
innocent spewer of insults offered to buy him a drink did not advance his  cause
or Hanse's mental state in the least measure. The poor fellow soon remembered an
important appointment elsewhere, well apart from Hanse, and he repaired there at
speed. Hanse predictably  spent the rest  of that day  behaving as if  he had no
notion what honor might be.

And still he sought, and remembered.

"Thou shalt have a sword," that voice had said inside his head, a lion agrowl in
the shadowed corridors of his mind,  "if thou free'st my valued and  loyal ally.
Aye, and a fine sheath for it, as well. In silver!"

Hanse knew  fear and  some anger;  he wanted  nothing of  that incestuous god of
Ranke, for it had to be Vashanka whom Tempus served close. No? I serve-I mean...
I do not...  No? Tempus is my...  my...  I go to aid a fr-a   man who might help
me,  he tried to  tell  that god  in his mind,   for he admitted  to no  friends
and had  sworn to Tempus  that he had  none and wanted  none. He who had friends
was   vulnerable,  and  Hanse  much   preferred his   image  of  himself  as   a
separate room, a person apart, an island.

Leave me  and go  to him,  jealous god  of Ranke?  Leave Sanctuary  to my patron
Shalpa the Swift, and Our  Lord Ils. Ils, 0 Lord  of a Thousand Eyes, why  is it
not You who speaks to me?

Yet a miracle surely  transpired that night, and  it served to save  the life of
Hanse and thus of Tempus, whom Hanse freed. Hanse knew no pride in having served
and been saved  by the god  of the Rankan  overlords, and he  found his lake  of
alcohol. When he emerged and dried out, he was still troubled.

He was not the first in such straits to have turned god-ward.

Not Vashanaka-ward! On four separate occasions he had visited the sanctuaries of
Us and Shipri All-mother,  His spouse. Ils, god of the Ilsigi who  long ago fled
one land  and found  this one,  and founded  Sanctuary. (There  was no temple to
their fourthborn, Shalpa, who shared birthdate with his sister Eshi. Shalpa  was
He to Whom There is no Temple, and The Shadowed One, in his night-dark cloak. He
was  Shalpa  the Swift,  too.  Shalpa of  the  night, and  untempled:  patron of
athletes and of thieves.)

Hanse went avisiting the house of gods, and came the time there he felt his hair
quiver and start up while  his stomach went chill and  as if empty, for he  felt
sure that one of Them spoke to him. A god, aye.

Us  Himself?  Shalpa His  son?  (Considering his  recent  drinking, Hanse  later
wondered if  it might  more likely  have been  Anen. He was firstborn of Ils and
Shipri, and he was patron of bibbers and taverners.)

Whoever it was spoke to him in his  head, it was not Vashanka, not there in  the
house of the gods of Ilsig.

Hanse of the Shadow, Chosen of Ilsig, Son of the Shadow.

We exist. We are here. Believe. And look for this ring.

He saw it. The gaud appeared from nowhere and hung there before his eyes. Now it
was  as  if  solid, and  now  he  seemed to  see  through  it, into  the  temple
appointments beyond. A ring that seemed a single piece of gold, unfused, and set
all about with twinkling  little blue-white stones like  stars. In its center  a
big tiger's-eye,  caged in  gold bands.  And that  orange-yellow gemstone,  that
tiger-eye-seemed to  stare at  him, as  if it  was more  than merely a chatoyant
stone of quartz fibers.

And then  it was  gone, and  so was  the voice  that had  been inside  his head,
addressing him- hadn't it?  Had it?-and he was  left slumped and slick  all over
with sweat.  He had  to apply  his mind  and then  make conscious effort even to
close his mouth. The temple's coolth had become chill.

After a while he felt strong enough to move. Move he did, for he was not  minded
to remain there in that joint temple ofllshipri. He departed, all prickly  still
and wet with sweat even down his legs. He squinted on leaving the dimness of the
temple, for the time was mid-afternoon, not night at all.

Had it begun  then, even in  daylight?-the hallucinations, the  false feeling of
importance that was a lie  swarming up like a nest  of spiders from the lees  of
swilled wine?

Or did I hear-could I have heard ... a god? . The god?

He had walked from the temple, seeing nothing and no one. A person apart and  an
island indeed! Until,  as if a  hood had been  lifted off his  head to bare  his
eyes, he saw Mignureal.

She came  directly toward  him, looking  at him,  that S'danzo  daughter of  his
friend Moonflower of the  Seeing eyes. Moonflower who  so well knew him-and  did
not  want  him  having  aught  to  do  with  her  daughter.  Mignureal.  Heading
purposefully toward  him, gazing  at him.  A girl  who looked  thirteen and  was
older, long since pubertous and  interested in Hanse-fascinated with Hanse  as a
woman is ever fascinated by and with the rascal. It pleased her to act as if she
was thirteen, not a woman of sixteen, most of whose age-peers were wedded or  at
least bedded.

"My daughter is very young and thinks  you are just so romantic a figure,"  that
great big woman said,  who was such a  pretty little woman inside  the masses of
flesh her husband so loved. "Will you just pretend she is your sister?"

"Oh you  would not  want that,"  Hanse had  assured her,  in one  of those  rare
revelations as to the  sort of childhood he  must have had. "She  is my friend's
daughter and I shall call her cousin."

Hanse meant that promise. Besides, Mignureal had seen him quaking and blubbering
with fear, a victim of that fear-staff of the perverse gods, and he did not care
to look her in the eyes. It was she who had rescued him and led him, a tremulous
mouse helpless against the power turned on him, back to her mother.

And now here she came, bearing some colorful bundle. Small and dark and yet  not
at all a creature of  night and shadows as he  was. Mignureal was a creature  of
day and this day in her bright yellow  skirt she wore a strange look, as if  she
was drugged.

If she is, Hanse thought fiercely, I  will beat her and take her home  and curse
Moonflower for allowing it to happen to this... this dear maiden.

But then he stopped  thinking. She was before  him, stopping and forcing  him to
stop. And when she spoke her voice was odd and flat as her eyes, emotionless  as
her face. She  spoke as if  she said words  she had only  learned-the words, not
their meaning-like a girl who had leamt her  part for some temple rite on a  god
day.

Dark brown eyes like garnets and just as lacking in softness, she said, "You are
invited to dinner tomorrow night. You will be in no danger. Wear this  clothing.
The place is known to you. It is long unpeopled, but its water is a silver pool.
The silver is your own, Son  of the Shadow, Chosen ofllsig. Come,  tomorrow even
as the sun sets, .to the aerie of the great ruler of the air."

Without blinking, she pressed into his hands that which she carried, and  turned
and ran in a  butterfly flurry of yellow  skirts and streaming blue-black  hair.
Hanse stood, stupidly staring after her until she rounded a corner and was  gone
down another street. Then he looked down at his gift. All in shades of blue  and
some green, with a  flash of yellow-gold embroidery.  A fine tunic, and  a cloak
considerably better than good. Good clothing!

Clothing so fine existed in Sanctuary, of course. No S'danzo girl had any of  it
though, nor did a youth who gained his living by stealth.

Whence, then, came this soft fabric?

From  the same  place those  words came  from, he  thought, for  they were   not
Mignureal's words. And again the phrases Son of the Shadow and Chosen of  Ilsig!
A shiver claimed Hanse then, and possessed him for a long moment.

" 'Day to you, Hanse-ah! I see you had a good night, 's more like it, hum?"  And
that acquaintance  went on  smiling, for  what else  could he  think? Where else
could Hanse have gained such a bundle of finery, save through a bit of  climbing
and breaking-and-entering on yesternight?

Hanse stood directing thoughts to his  feet, and at last they began  to respond.
He walked on, trying to make his  bundle as small as he could, lest  some member
of the City  Watch espy him,  or a Hell-Hound  from the palace,  or someone nosy
enough to consider  turning him in  or blabbing it  about that Hanse  had stolen
good soft, decorated  clothing sufficient to  pay his room's  rent for the  next
twelvemonth.

Hanse had received coded messages beforetimes, and had devised the meaning.   He
did so this  time. He knew  where he was  invited. (Invited? Bidden!  Summoned!)
Away up on the craggy hill now called Eaglebeak was a long untenanted manse.  It
lay partially in  ruins, that magnificent  home its long-ago  builder and tenant
had  called  Eaglenest.  Nearby, beyond  scattered  fallen  columns and  tumbled
stones, rotted planking marked a well. Down in that well languished two leathern
bags. Saddlebags. Hanse knew  they were there, for  he had put them  there, in a
way, though it had not been his intent.

He hoped they were there, for they contained a great deal of silver coins, and a
few that were gold.

They were the ransom  of the Rankan symbol  of power, the staff  called Savankh,
which a  thief called  Shadowspawn had  stolen from  the palace  of the   Prince
Governor. The P-G knew  they were there, but  had agreed that they  would remain
Hanse's property. Hanse  had, after all,  uncovered a spy  and a plot  and saved
Prince Kadakithis's face, if not his life.

But for  a horse  and a  dead man  named Bourne,  Hanse would  have had all that
gleaming fortune in his possession, rather than "banked" down in the earth, atop
a hill, in a narrow well that was like to have been the death of him!

He was to go to Eaglebeak, then. To dine in dark and deserted aerie:  Eaglenest!
So he quietly told Moonflower. For aye,  once again he betook himself to her  in
quest of information  and advice. (Mignureal  was not about  when he approached,
and neither he nor Moonflower was sorry.)

He sat before her now in his  nondescript tunic the color of a field  mouse, his
feet in dusty buskins, knees up. And only three blades showing on him. He sat on
the ground and  she on her  stool. The fact  that she overflowed  all around was
disguised by her  voluminous skirts; Moonflower  wore red  and  green and  ochre
and blue  and another shade  of green. Across her lap lay his new clothing.

She fondled and sniffed and tasted it,  closed her eyes and drew it through  her
dimple-backed hands. And all the while she was moving her lavender-tinted  lips.
The  vastness  of  her bosom  was  almost  still as  her  breathing  slowed, her
heartbeat slowed, her muttering slowed and  she slid away from herself, a  great
gross kitten at her divining.

No charlatan, this mother of eleven who had raised nine, but one with the  Gift,
the power. Moonflower Saw.

Now she Saw for Hanse as she had before, and he was not all that happy with  it.
Nor was she, even in trance.

"I See you, darling boy, all nobly turned out in this finery, and I See a  great
light hosting y-oh! Oh, oh  Hanse ... it is, it  is He! Here is Hanse,  aye, and
here is He, Himself-Us,  god of gods! And  I See. . .  ah! Hmp. I like  not what
else I See, for it is Mignue, my Mignue, with you and the Lord of Lords."

He nodded, frowning. That  was her pet name  for her daughter. He  accepted that
somehow Mignureal was a part of this... whatever this was.

"Ah! Here is Hanse  with  a sword, and  wielding it  well, well ... for  a  god,
Hanse, soldierly Hanse I See... for a god, against a god!"

Against a god. Father Ils, what means  this all? What would you make of  me? And
he had an idea: "Who... who gave me the sword?"

"A bas-no, no, a foster son. Ah-a stepson. Yes. A s-"

"And who gave me the clothing? Is that Mignureal?"

"Mignue? No, oh no, she is a good g-ah. I see her. Eshi! It is Eshi Herself  who
has given you this  clothing, Han-" And she  shuddered of a sudden,  and sagged,
and her eyes came alive to stare into his. "Hanse? Did I See? Was it of value?"

He nodded. He  was unable to  look other than  grim. "You Saw,  0 Passionflower.
This time  I must  owe you,  beyond the  binding coin."  (Which she  had already
dropped into that warm crevasse she called her Treasure Chest.)

Eshi, Hanse thought. Eshi!

A jealous  and passionate  god, Ils  created all the world,  and from his bodily
wastes He peopled it. The gods He created from his two extra toes, and the  eons
passed and the first-created  challenged Ils. This was  Gunder, and he lost.  He
was hurled to the earth. His daughter  Shipri, though, was thrice-fair, and  her
the great Lord Ils spared-and  couched. By him Shipri became All-mother; of  him
she bore Shils, and  Anen, and  Thufir,  and the twins  Shalpa and  Eshi,  their
first daughter,  and another;  the god  no  one  spoke of.  Now Anen was  called
firstborn, for  jealous, passionate  Ils sinned;  in rage  he slew his firstborn
son, Shils.

Eshi. Much spoken of She was, and prayed to as well, but it was little reverence
she gained. Everyone knew that she was a sensuous beauty who sought out and  had
her way with each of her brothers, and indeed sought to bring to couch even  her
father. In that She failed; even Ils was not that passionate, and one sin  for a
god was enough.

Eshi was fond  of jewellery, and  so gemworkers took  a manifestation of  her as
patron.  She was  known to  love love,  and thus  lovers, of  course. Cows  were
special to  her, and  so were  cats. Her  sign was  the liver,  which any  child
learned early was the seat of love and its younger sibling, infatuation. Eshi!

Aye, Hanse thought. She  loves jewellery and thus  the ring; cats are  sacred to
her and thus the stone: the eye of  a cat. Somehow it was pleasant thus to  find
some small  comfort of  logic in  all this  that clearly  had naught  to do with
logic. Gods! He was involved with the very gods!

Mignureal came  along just  as he  was departing.  She asked  about the handsome
clothing he carried! Obviously she had never seen it before, and Hanse  blinked.
His eyes swerved in her mother's direction. She was staring at her daughter.

"Into  the  house, Mignue,"  she  said, with  uncommon  sharpness. "See  to  the
preparation of the leeks and yeni-sprouts your father fetched home for dinner."

Hanse went away thoughtful and  shaken while Moonflower sat staring  at nothing.
She was a mother, and she too was shaken, and passing nervous.

For Hanse the next twenty-six hours rode by on the backs of snails. He slept not
well and his dreams were not for the repeating.

Attired in  such a  way as  to arouse  the envy  of a successful merchant, Hanse
completed his ascent to Eaglebeak just after the sun began sliding off the  edge
of the world. Continuing cautious and  too apprehensive to hurry, he picked  his
way  through a  jumble of  tumbled columns  and jagged  stones habited  only  by
spiders  and  serpents,  lizards  and scorpions,  a  few  snails,  and the  most
insistent of scrubby plants. These owned Eaglebeak now, and Eaglenest. All  here
had been murdered long  and long ago. They  were said still to  haunt the place,
that merchant and his family. And so the hilltop and once-fine estate-house were
avoided.

Even so a great portion of the manse stood, and some of it was even under  roof.
Green-bordered blue cloak fluttering,  his emerald-hued tunic with  its purfling
of yellow  gold an  unwontedly soft  caress on  his thighs,  Hanse approached  a
doorless entry. It yawned dark, and  still the ancient dark stains splashed  the
jamb; the blood of murder. He cast many anxious looks this way and that, and  he
did not hurry. For once he was not pleased to go into shadows.

He was met and greeted. Not by Ils or a beauteous woman, either!

Oh she was  female, all right,  and indeed shapely  in a warm  deep pink, a long
gown sashed with red and hemmed with  silver. The dress was lovely and rich  and
her figure was lovelier  than that but even  so the most striking  aspect of her
was her face. She had none.

Hanse  stopped very  abruptly and  stared. At  nothing. It  was as  if his  gaze
somehow swerved away from the face of this woman who greeted him, putting  forth
one lovely smooth hand.

The hand was  adorned with a  single ring. Hanse  recognized it. He  had seen it
yesterday, in the sky-aspiring temple of Ilshipri.

"Don't be fearful, Hanse  of the Shadows, Chosen  of Ilsig, Son of  Shadows." It
was a very nice voice, and unconditionally female.

"Of one who has no face on her? Oh, of course not!"

Her laughter  was a  stream of  bright quicksilver  in sunshine.  "Choose a face
then," she bade him, and proceeded to give him a choice.

The air shimmered above her shoulders and a head formed, and a face. It was  not
comforting. Hanse was looking at Lirain. Lirain, who had conspired with  another
against Kadakithis, and sought  to use Hanse (and  succeeded), and who was  dead
for her crime, and her pretty face gone with her. It disappeared now, to  become
the piquant features of  the royal concubine who  had been unlucky enough  to be
present  the  night  he  stole  the  Savankh  from  the  Prince-Governor's   own
bedchamber. When last Hanse had seen this one she was bound as he'd left her. He
could not even  remember her na-oh.  Taya. No matter.  She was becoming  someone
else.

"Uh!"

That gasp was  elicited by Taya's  vanishing to be  replaced by ...  Moonflower!
Aye, Moonflower, earrings, chins and all!

"No thank you," Hanse was able to say, and felt better for it.

Far more shocking was the next visage, one he recognized after a few moments  of
gaping.  The woman  he had  seen murdered  for her  terror rod  out by  Fanner's
Market, less than  two months ago!  Before he could  protest, she had  flickered
away after the others,  and Hanse swallowed. Now  he gazed close upon  a face he
knew  and had  always wished  could be  closer. She  was the  smiling and  truly
beautiful daughter of Venerable Shafralain. Esaria her name, a girl of seventeen
or eighteen-the  Lady Esaria!  A beauty  he had  watched and  about whom  he had
entertained phantasies rather more than once or thrice.

"You know," Hanse  blurted, with more  breath than voice.  "You bring out  these
faces from my own memory!"

Already Esaria was becoming Mignureal, sweet-faced Mignureal, who gazed serenely
at him-and spoke.

"You are invited to dinner tomorrow night.  You will be in no danger. Wear  this
clothing. The place is known  to you. It is long  unpeopled, and its water is  a
silver pool. The silver is your own, Son of the Shadow, Chosen of Ilsig."

And of course  now he knew  who his greeter  was. It was  not possible, but then
none of it was.

"Whom shall I be to your eyes tonight, Son of Shadow?"

Hanse  replied  with  surely  a  great  stroke  of  genius,  and  made  the most
brilliantly diplomatic utterance of his life.

"The thrice-beauteous face  of the Lady  Eshi from the  statue in the  temple of
Eshi Radiant," he said-

And She was, smiling delightedly, ever so pleased. She embraced him with  warmth
and Hanse nearly collapsed.

Her hand clasping  his with  warmth, she  led him  into that  ruined and murkily
shadowed once-luxury manse  ...  and it  was  again! Everywhere  candles  sprang
into  lambence,  with  constant  flashes  and  continuing  unnatural brightness.
Bright, bright light, revealing perfect inlaid floors that were works of art and
walls all alive and  acolor with mosaic-work. Along  a high-soaring hall he  was
led, and  into a  palatial dining  hall, and  here too  all came alight with the
brightness of day.

At the  far-far!-end of  a genuinely  long table  of fine  inlaid wood sat ... a
shadow. And a man ...

Hanse tore loose his hand from the warm grasp of a god and backed a pace with  a
hissing whisper of soft-soled buskins.

"Cudget!" he all but shouted. "Oh  no, no, Cudget-they killed you, Cudget!"  And
his voice broke.                  _

The  voice that  replied was  not Cudget's,  but was  male, and  warmth  itself.
Somehow it made Hanse feel good; all warm.

"It  is in  the nature  of gods  to be  self-directed, what  you call   selfish.
Sometimes we forget  your mortal attachments,  unbroken by death.  I thought you
would like the face  of your mentor and  late best friend and  foster father, my
beloved  friend  and servant  Hanse.  My own  visage  is only  Light;  Lambence;
Candence. For I have not a thousand eyes you know, not really."

"You... cannot be ..."

"Hanse-take the crossed brown pot  with you," Cudget said in  Mignureal's voice,
and only she and Hanse  knew that she had said  those words to him one  night of
evil. (Or did she?) And then Cudget was speaking on, in another voice that Hanse
did not at first recognize. Then he did-it was his own! He remembered the words,
from the  night he  had gone  to Kurd's  and nearly  died-no! He had not uttered
those words! He had but thought them,  and only he could know them: "0  Ils, god
of my  people and  father of  Shaipo my  patron? It  is true that  Tempus Thaies
serves Vashanka  Tenslayer. But help  us, help us  both, lord Ils,  and I  swear
to do all  I can to destroy  Vashanka Sister-wrfer or drive  him hence, if  only
You will show me the way!"

On hearing those words issue in his voice  from the Being at the far end of  the
long table, Hanse could only stare.

"Only two could know that prayer of  yours, Hanse. Only two not just in  all the
world, but in all the universe. You are one; the other is He who hears all words
directed to him, whether they are uttered by tongue or mind only."

Pale, Hanse could only gasp forth shaky words: "Lord... God."

"Yes," the warm voice spoke from that lam-bence.

Hanse had  elected not  to genuflect  on meeting  a prince  of Ranke.  Now, upon
meeting that god Who was god of gods, he was far too shaken to think of  falling
to his knees.

Lord Ils proved that  he was  no mere  king or  emperor or  religious leader, to
insist upon such displays. Neither egoism  nor egotism marked gods. They had  no
need of  either. They  were gods.  Cudget's face  vanished and  again Hanse  was
forced to squint. Someone still sat at table's end in that big dining hall,  but
there was no face at all now. There was only light.

Eyes almost closed, Hanse  was forced to look  away from it-and discovered  that
now he looked  upon a goddess,  all in deep  warm pink bordered  with silver and
sashed with scarlet. With jewels flashing  in the deep indigo silk of  her hair;
or perhaps they were stars.

The voice of warmth spoke.

"Yes," it said  again. "Cheated of  strength in my  own lands, but  not drained,
Hanse Son of Shadow. The intensity of belief of one who had sneered at gods, and
his loyalty that is not automatic but learned, volunteered-it is you I speak of,
Hanse-these aided Me. For gods and mortals are mutually dependent, Hanse.

"My cousin Savankala's son Vashanka has waxed here by the power of belief of one
variously called the Riddler, and Thales, and Tem-pus, as well as the  Engineer,
and Sea-born. We need not concern you with who he really is. Vashanka wished his
freedom one night;  wished it enough  to bargain with  Me. It required  only the
efforts of Shalpa my son to cloud  the skies that night. Because the climate  of
your land is what  it is, both Vashanka's  power and Mine were  required to send
rain  that  night,  when  you  needed  water  to  survive  the plant-that-kills.
Naturally I made bargain with Vashanka ere I helped him-because I knew  Vashanka
would bargain to help you save Tempus!

"Having agreed, Vashanka himself made a concession: Vashanka himself struck  his
name from the  palace of My  people. Nor will  Vashanka use such  power displays
here again. It were not wise of  Me to raise my murdered temple, which  Vashanka
struck  down; that  is the  business of  you humans.  Such edifices  please  you
humans; gods have no need of such  aggrandizement for there is no aggrandizement
beyond godhead."

Hanse's brain was awhirl  and he wished he  were sitting down. He  said, "And...
and Mig-nureal?"

It was Eshi who replied to that.  "We have acted through her twice now,  and she
remains more powerful than she knows. For  none can be touched by a god  without
receiving some of that which is the  essence of gods-a form of strength, a  form
of dominion  over time  and space.  Those are  after all  creations of gods, and
bounded about my mortals. The  girl Mignureal remembers nothing of  having twice
acted for us. But she dreams-0 how she dreams, now!"

Now that shadow-presence spoke,  at table's end, and  its voice was as  a shadow
might sound; was as a piece   of good leather drawn  slowly across  a whetstone.
"The power of Vashanka  remains at bay, and  now you may make  use of Vashanka's
servant, who  is ... lost."

"How-why?" Hanse asked, and  indeed he was not  sure if either question  was the
right one.  Seismic disruptions  disturbed his  brain and  his stomach felt both
hollow and drawn together.

Because they needed him, they told him without equivocation, for what was  pride
to gods?

The Ilsigi his people, and Sanctuary  called Thieves' World needed him, and  the
world needed him. It was not just that Ils and his family would wane  and shrink
and perish. Ranke would rule supreme over all the world, and Ranke was ruled  by
men other than good ("for my cousin Savankala is old and weary of the strife  of
his offspring") and Savankala's warlike, war-loving son ruled Ranke, through its
emperor.                                 .

"I may  not do  battle with  Vashanka, though," Ils said,  light speaking in the
voice of warmth, "for son must battle son."

And with  that stated  He vanished,  and much  light left  with him. Now the big
chamber was draped  with shadows, and  the Shadow at  table's end spoke,  in the
rustly voice of shadows, hooded and cloaked.

"You think you know me,  Hanse, and you are right.  I am He to Whom  There is no
Temple. I am the Shadowed One, Hanse who are Son of the Shadow. It is I who must
combat Vashanka, for I am son of Ils as he is son of Savankala my uncle. But the
presence here of Ranke, and  of Vashanka and his so-powerful  servant-these have
robbed me of abilities. I can act only through you, Hanse, as my sister may  act
only through Mignureal. With  the sword from him  called Stepson, Hanse, who  is
Godson, is to combat a god."

"Vash- Vashanka?"

Hanse saw the shadowy nod that was  his only reply, and again he blurted  words:
"But I am not skilled with a sword!-Lord of Shadows," he added.

That  fortunate  fact was  not  to be  his  succor as  he  hoped. Fight  a  god!
Shadowspawn? Hanse? No no, he wanted only  to fly from here and lose himself  in
that cess-warren called the Maze, forever!

But: "There is one in Sanctuary who  is more than expert with the sword  and the
business of killing, and he allows that he owes you. With him now are those  who
are skilled at  teaching use of  the sword, and  they are his  liege-men, Hanse.
Hanse: use him. He  will see to your  instruction, and with pleasure.  You shall
learn prodigiously and surprise them, for  I shall be there with you,  Hanse who
are the Chosen of Ilsig."

Now Hanse was propping  himself with both hands  on a high-backed chair,  and at
last Eshi took notice.

"We are cruel, brother! Shadowspawn-seat yourself."

Shadowspan obeyed  with gratitude  and alacrity.  He almost  collapsed into  the
chair. He took  a very deep  breath, let part  of it out,  and was able  to form
words by letting them ride the breath: "But ... uh ... then what?"

"You will know, Hanse."

Then Shadowspawn twitched  away at a  sound beside him.  He looked at  the floor
beside his chair, at what had  only just appeared there, and could  not possibly
be there. Clinking, dripping, running water,  were the bags off the saddle  of a
dead man  named Bourne.  Hanse's saddlebags,  from the  deeps of  the well  just
outside! The ransom of the Savankh, which he had stolen for little purpose other
than his own ego and pride-which  had soared, then. The ransom Prince  Kitty-cat
had told him was his-if he could get it out of the well.

It was  irresistible. He  bent to  the bags,  opened one,  took forth  a few wet
silver coins. And he sighed. He dribbled them back in, listening to their  sweet
lovely clink,  and he  did it  again- keeping  a few  in his fist. Then, staring
thoughtfully down at those bags sending wet runnels along the floor, he sighed.

"You are god and my  god, Shadowed One. This... this  is safe in the well.   Uh,
can you put it back?"

Hanse jerked when the bags vanished, and he wondered if he were not the greatest
fool in Sanctuary. How silly I am going to feel when I wake up from this dream?

"It is back in the well, Son of  the Shadow, and aye, it is safe indeed!  And we
must go, my sister and I. Our time on this plane is necessarily limited."

Hanse raised an expostulating hand, said "But-" and was alone in Eaglenest.  The
candles remained, burning. So now did food and wine, on the table before him. He
glanced down. The puddles and dark run-stains of water remained. And so did  the
coins in his hand, a few pieces of silver.

Did that mean it had all indeed happened?

No, of course not. When I wake, the coins will be gone.

The food he took with him, eating as he left, tasted very good in his dream, and
the wine was the  very best he had  ever sipped. Only sipped;  the sack remained
heavy as he climbed the steps to his room deep in that area of Sanctuary  called
the  Maze. (It was  even more  dangerous  now than ever  before, what  with  all
these  damned swaggering  soldiers, all  foreigners; that was one reason he  had
chosen to  leave  his  money in   the well.  Even  the  Maze could  no longer be
considered safe, Hanse thought.)

He entered his room and  closed the door with care,  and bolted it with as  much
care. A window leaked in  a little moonlight, and by  the time he had the  cloak
unclasped and off and the tunic over  his head, he was able to see  pretty well.
That was how he discovered that a woman waited in his bed.

A girl, rather. The truly beautiful Lady Esaria. In his bed. She sat up, showing
that all she wore was the bedspread, and held out her arms.

Hanse was somehow able  to avoid yelling or  collapsing. He made it  to the bed.
She was real.  She was waiting  for him. It  was wonderful, all  of it with her.
Even his wondering, Is she Eshi?, did not inhibit him or her or his enjoyment or
hers. What matter whether she was the Esaria she appeared to be or the  goddess;
she was higher than he could have aspired, and the experience was supernal.

He deduced  that it  really was  Esaria, not  Eshi (in  his dream, of course, he
reminded himself) because surely Eshi wouldn't have been eating so much garlic.

She was gone in the morning, and he lay smiling, thinking about his dream. Lying
on his back, he rolled his head.

He could see cloak, tunic, and wine-sack from here. That brought him wide awake,
and sent  his hand  swinging down  beside the  pallet to  check his buskins. The
silver coins  were still  there. Hanse  demonstrated the  cliche of sitting bolt
upright. Hurling back the spread, he inspected his bed. That required no effort.
The evidence of Esaria's visit and her late virginity were vehemently present.

I was not dreaming, he thought, and then he spoke aloud: "I see and I believe. I
will do it, 0 Swift-footed One, 0 All-father Ils! I will do  it, holiest-but-one
Lady Eshi, and Venerable Lady of Ladies Shipri?"

The voice was there, inside his head: All depend on you,son.

Not "all depends," Hanse realized later. "All depend." Meaning "all the gods  of
Ilsig and the Ilsigi!"

He took up  the last of  the strong drink  he had used  all too much  since That
Night, the night at Kurd's,  and he poured it out  onto the sheet on the  floor,
which already showed the scarlet of another form of sacrificial outpouring.

"A libation to the gods of Ilsig!" Hanse said firmly, and-he meant it.

From the  secret hiding  place it  had occupied  for a  month and  more, somehow
resisting alcoholic urges to sell  it, he took out a  packet. It was the one  he
had brought  away the  morning after  That Night.  It contained  the shining and
obviously valuable surgical instruments of Kurd the vivisectionist, whom  Tempus
had lately sent off to another  plane of existence or inexistence. Thieving  was
out of  the question  now, and  such excellent  tools would  bring him plenty of
coin, the naked Hanse thought, and  he opened the package on the  rickety little
table.

And he stared.

The surgical  instruments were  gone. The  packet contained  some forty  feet of
supple, slim, inch-wide black  leather strap; a shirt  of superb mail, black;  a
plain black helmet with nose-, temple-, and neck-guards. And a ring. It was  not
black. It was of gold, and it  was set with a large tiger's-eye, caged  in bands
of gold and surrounded by small blue-white sones.

He spent a lot  of time that day  wrapping and tightening the  leather strapping
around the silver sword-sheath given him by him called Stepson. Thus its  ornate
value was concealed. He tried on the mailcoat and marveled at its suppleness and
spent many  many minutes  learning to  get it  off. Over  the head, yes, but one
could not hoist it up and over as one did a tunic-not just under forty pounds of
boiled leather covered with rings  of black metal! The helmet  fitted perfectly,
of course.

The ring  he would  not try  on. It  was hers,  Hers and  his sign; he could not
consider it his ring. It and four of his five silver coins he carefully  stashed
before he went down, rather late in the afternoon, for something to eat. He wore
the old camel-hued tunic with the raveling hem.

He ate well, drinking only barley water.

"Saw  you  going  out  last night,  Shadow-spawn,"  the  taverner  said quietly,
admiring the  silver coin  and trying  to be  cool about  it. "Musta been a good
night, hmm?"

"Aye. A good night. Aye! Don't forget my change."

It was too late to do much of anything. He wandered a bit, hoping to catch sight
ofTempus. He did not,  andhad to go back.  pretending notto hurry, to  check his
new possessions.

He did. It was all there. The change from the silver coin was still in the  draw
top bag he was not stupid enough to wear on his belt. And there were five silver
coins in his stash.

Hanse sat on the edge of his bed, thinking about that.

Looks as i;fmy, uh, immortal allies want me to have no financial worries' They'd
maybe not wish to be served  by what I had to  remind Kadakithis I am for  was?}
"Just a damned thief!"

Over the next several days he  spread the money around, happily giving  a silver
coin to dear old Moonflower ("because you're beautiful, why else?") and two to a
one-armed beggar with two fingers missing, because Hanse recognized a victim  of
Kurd; and  he gave  to others.  The krrf  dealer was  suspicious on  receiving a
silver Ran-kan Imperial ("for  the future, just in  case; don't forget my  face,
now!") but he took the coin.

And always when the spawn of shadows returned to his room above a tavern, always
his secret hiding place offered one ring and five silver coins.

Tempus, meanwhile, had been astonished, but certainly agreed to the training. He
assigned Nikodemos called Stealth to the daily duty. And now it had gone on, and
on, day after day  of practice and sweating  and cursing, and now  Niko had told
him that he  was good, and  a natural. Elated,  Hanse had sunk  a knife into the
fellow's shield while of  course pretending that it  was a sneer become  action.
Then he had saluted  and betaken himself around  that building while Niko  stood
looking long-suffering and boyish,  and on the way  home Hanse had given  away a
silver  coin.  He  had already  spent  another  this day.  And  there  were five
remaining in his room, too.

He opened his eyes.  He knew absolutely that  a moment ago he  had been sleeping
soundly, and had come instantly awake. There  was no time to wonder why; all  he
had to do was  turn his head to  see that it was  still dark, the middle  of the
night, and that he had a visitor.

She was Mignureal,  looking a bit  older and truly  beautiful, all in  white and
palest spring-yellow. And surrounded by a  pale glow, a sort of all-body  nimbus
of twilight.

"Gird thyself, Hanse. It is time."

Weeks and weeks ago, when first he returned from that night up at Eaglenest,  he
would have shuddered at such words. Not now. Now Hanse was a trained fighter and
he had given it plenty of thought and  he was more than ready. He had not  known
it would come this way, but as he rose to obey he was glad that it had. This way
he had no time to  think about it, to worry  about what might happen to  him. It
was time. He girded himself.

He donned tights and leathern pants; woolen footsers and a thief's soft,  padded
sole buskins. Next the new cotton tunic, long, and over that the padded one. The
glow  remained  in  his  room;  Mignureal   remained,   this   Mignureal,   from
attractive  moth  into   beauteous  butterfly. The mail-coat jingled  into place
and he buckled on the sword. Not  the practice sword; the sword of the  Stepson,
with which he had privately practiced.

The figure in his room stretched forth a hand. "Come, Hanse. We have to go  now.
It is time, Son of Shadow."

He picked up his helm. "Mignureal? Have you ... a brother? A twin?"

"You know that I have."

"And what do you call him?" He took  her hand. It was cool, soft. Too soft,  for
Mignureal.

"You know what I call  him, Hanse. I call him  Shadow, for shadows he rules  and
births, Shadowspawn. Come Hanse, Godson."

He went, under the helmet. Surely there  were some awake even at this hour,  and
surely some saw the strange couple.  As surely, none recognized Hanse the  thief
in his warlike attire and under the helm, for anyone who knew him or knew of him
would never expect to see him so accoutred and so accompanied.

Under a frowning  parlous sky, in  an eerie almost-silence  kept alive and  made
bearable only by insects, they went away out of the Maze, and out of  Sanctuary,
and up to Eaglenest. And into Eaglenest they went, all dark and ancient now that
place of ghosts and gods.  Their way was lit by  the nimbus of a goddess,  whose
hand remained soft in Hanse's.

A place of gods indeed, for they went through the manse and out the back and the
world changed.

Here was  an eerie  sky shot  through with  ribbons of  gold and pale yellow and
citrine and marred  by clouds whose  underbellies were mauve.  Here was a  weird
vista from the nightmares of poison. Stone formations rose in impossible shapes,
bent and snaked along the ground to rise again; ugly rockshapes in red and burnt
ochre and siena, imitating vines  fighting their way through an  invisible stone
wall or plants tortured into convoluted shapes by alkali or lime.

The strange  stone-shapes stretched  out and  out to  become only  shadows on  a
plain, a vista that stretched out gray to meet that nacreous sky. And there  was
no sound. Not the faintest hum of a single lonely insect; not the merest peep of
a nightbird or  the scuttle  of tiny  feet or  of fronds  whispering in  a night
breeze. Here was no sun and yet no night, and no flora or fauna either.

Here were only Hanse, armored and armed, and Mignureal, and here came  Vashanka,
at the charge.

Purple  was his  armor, hawk-beaked  his helm  and tall-spiked  atop; black  his
shield and the  blade of his  sword so that  there was no  gleam to announce its
onrush.  Hanse  drew,  hurriedly  shifted his  buckler  into  place,  thought of
Mignureal and knew he had  no time to glance aside.  Here came a god, armed  and
armored, charging to end this now, right now.

The god did not, nor did Hanse.  Sparks were struck by a blow parried,  and feet
shifted and Vashanka was past and Hanse turning, unharmed.

The god came in with the arrogant precipi-tousness of a god set to slay a snotty
little mortal.  In rushed  his dark  sword, to  be caught  and turned by a round
shield so that he was jarred by the impact and the snotty human's return  stroke
nearly bit his  leg. Still Vashanka  did not leam,  could not respect  this wiry
little foeman in its untested mail,  and again he struck, his shield  still down
from protecting his leg, and this time Hanse jerked his shield on impact so that
the god's blade was  directed aside, drawing Vas-hanka's  arm and thus his  body
that way, and only the  projections of his unorthodox, twisted  body-armor saved
his neck from Hanse's edge. The god grunted as he was struck but un-wounded, and
Hanse showed  him teeth,  sidestepping, back-stepping,  feinting with  sword and
then with buckler  and showing a  preparedness that turned  another godly attack
into a feint.

Vashanka had been taught respect.

They circled, each  with his shield-side  to the other,  each staring above  the
arcing rim  of the  shield. Pacing,  watching. Each  a moving  target and moving
menace. Arms slightly amove so that neither blade was still in that dead air.

Somewhere the moon moved in the sky and hourglasses were turned, while those two
circled and stared,  paced and glared,  paced and feinted  as fighting men  with
respect each for the other. Now and  again steel hissed and sang and steel  rang
or wood  boomed under  the impact  of swordblade  on reinforced  shield. Now and
again a man  grunted, or a  god. One swift  awful flurry of  strokes traded left
each bruised under armor still intact.

How  could Hanse  knew that  they fought  so for  an hour?  Staying alive  meant
staying alert; being alert meant having no  time to think of time or of  tiring.
It was guard and parry, strike and cover, and pace to seek another  opportunity.
Silver twinkled  as the  sword-bitten winding  on Hanse's  sheath came loose and
dangled.

How long was it, ere Vashanka was  there no more but become a rock-leopard  that
snarled and sprang with awful talons extended-

-to  be met  by Hanse  become bear;  a big  bear that  caught the  huge cat  and
squeezed it in mid-leap, staggering back,  feeling its claws as he shook  it and
hurled it from him  to hit the ground,  hard, and roll, snarling  with a whining
note, twisting, becoming a cobra.

Both  were  blooded now,  and  blood marked  the  hissing serpent  that  reared,
striking-

It struck neither  man nor bear,  for neither was  there, but a  small ferocious
collection of  teeth and  fur and  boneless speed  that avoided  the strike  and
pounced to clamp its teeth on a hated enemy-

But as soon  as the mongoose  had the cobra,  the serpent swelled  huge and then
huger  so that  its tiny  antagonist fell  away. That  still-growing cobra   was
blooded again, however, and when it  became horse with Vashanka atop or  part of
it, it  turned to  canter away.  And away,  prancing easily  over ugly shapes of
stone  . .  . only  to wheel   and come  back at  the gallop.  Charging,  hooves
pounding, striking sparks  off stone, bounding  over twisted rock-formations  at
the small shape  who seemed gone  all fearful, scurrying  back and forth  in its
path, then whirling and racing away, fleeing on a straight line easily overtaken
. . .

The legs of that  racing horse rushed into  the long strip of  leather Hanse had
just bound in place for it, and  it stumbled with a scream and flew  through the
air  so that.  Hanse, swerving,  heard its  mighty impact  behuyd him.  Then  he
whirled and rushed back, shiald ready and sword up and back, gathering  velocity
for the stroke to carry all.

He was forced to slow. A man-shape stood there waiting, a god in armor and  helm
beaked in imitation of a bird of prey, shield up and ready, sword a dark  silver
of death  ready in  his fist.  Shield took  blow and  shield took  blow, but its
bottom edge was banged in to impact Hanse's body at the waist so that he groaned
and half-doubled and staggered back, trying not to fall, but falling,  sprawling
backward, a grounded target ready for the death-stroke of a god he never  should
have fought. His elbow banged into a snake-shape of ochreous rock and the  sword
leaped from it as if eager to flee.

Hanse had  the ridiculous  thought I  knew I  should never  have done this as he
tried to  writhe and  wriggle and  watched death  rushing at  him with  upraised
sword. Mignureal  saved him,  leaping in  from the  side with  a screech. Hanse,
flailing and groaning, trying to will  himself onto his feet and yet  despairing
utterly, saw the vicious black-bladed stroke  that cut her nearly in two  almost
precisely at the waist.

Now it was a god's  turn to show his teeth  in feral smile worthy of  the lowest
beast, and after spinning completely around from the exertion of destroying that
poor pale-clad body, he came bounding again,  sword rising for the second  death
blow in seconds, and the absolutely desperate Hanse reverted: he thrust his left
hand up his tunic sleeve,  half-rolling as he did to  free his arm all the  way,
and hurled the long flat knife.

He watched its rush as he had never tracked a cast before, none of his thousands
and  thousands of  practice casts.  The leaf  of shining  metal seemed  to  take
minutes, floating through eternity to reach the rushing oncoming god who, though
racing  toward Hanse,  took as  long to  near. Lightning  sundered the  sky  and
thunder followed, but it was the  voice of enraged, triumphant Vashanka, at  the
charge.

"I CANNOT BE  SLAIN BY  WEAPONS OF  YOUR PLANE,  IDIOT, LITTLE  THIEF, POOR DEMI
MORTAL, INCONSEQUENTIAL INSEC-"

And then his charge met the knife's. The knife struck, beautifully and perfectly
point-first,  just under  the adam's  apple. Vashanka  shrieked and  the  shriek
burbled.  That  impossible  plane  of  infinity  came  alive  with  blinding and
coruscating light.

. . . down in Sanctuary those up at dawn saw the late-rising moon vanish as  the
sky was hurled alight by heat lightning bright as day. . .

that surrounded Vashanka utterly, that was  Vashanka, as his bellow of rage  and
pain  was thunder  and lightning.  Pierced, he  went flying  backward as  if  by
smashing impact, and the wind of his passage was as the gale of a storm  booming
in  off the  sea. And  on he  went, until  he was  so distant  to the   staring,
squinting Hanse that he was tiny, and then that tiny Vashanka vanished.

Us appeared before Hanse then, radiant. His  face was that of the statue in  the
destroyed temple.

At that, Hanse wondered; he saw the  radiance and yet dimly. Why was it  darker;
why was his god not all triumphant in pure lambence?

Why can't I move my  damned head, damn it? "m  the end," Ils said, "he was right
and yet not wise enough. He said true  in that he cannot be slain by weapons  of
this plane. But the knife flew true, the mortal knife off its proper plane  here
on the Plane of Infinity, and it struck him a killing blow, so that he began  to
die. But  that was  not possible.  Thus a  paradox existed.  That is against the
nature of things, Hanse, for the God of Gods who created all existence-aye,  and
who created Me-that god is Reality. Since my cousin's son Vashanka could not  be
slain by weapons of your plane, this dimension, he could not die in this chamber
of the House of Infinity that is the domain of Lord Reality."

Of course  Hanse said,  "I don't  understand."

"Hmp!  I am  sure you don't! It's heady stuff for  a god! Explanations  for  all
this  won't be discovered  by your kind for thousands of years, Son of   Shadow.
Suffice it to say that Vashanka  is gone from here, and that meaning of   'here'
is a  broad one,  indeed and   in deed!  Vashanka is  gone from  here because he
cannot  exist  here, in  this  universe.  He has  been blown  backward through a
wormhole in space, which  is no easier for   you to understand, eh?  Accept this
truth,  Hanse:  Vashanka is  ElseWhere.   And though  there  is an  infinity  of
possibilities, of dimensions  or chambers, one  is  closed to  him forever; used
up. That one-yours-is impossible to him and does not  exist for him.

"That which  can never  exist is  the combination  of Vashanka  on this plane of
Reality. Since he is dead but gods  may not die from the weapons of  mortals, he
cannot be here. He can never return to this chamber of the House of Infinity."

Hanse felt  that Ils  had said  the same thing three  several ways, and all were
nicely logical and avoided paradox, but ... A wormhole? In space? Yet he was not
concerned with that and could not be. Vashanka was gone; Hanse must have won. He
felt fine, too, except that he could not seem to lift his head or feel anything.
Yet somehow being  a hero made  him behave as  one; he did  not mention that but
asked a hero's question: "And Mignureal?"

"She is asleep in her bed. Was-she is risen now, and seeing to her siblings, for
in Sanctuary it is dawn. As I and mine are all-powerful here now.... !"

And Eshi rose, whole and unscarred, and rushed to the prostrate Hanse.

She knelt beside  him and he  knew her hands  were on him  because he could  see
them. She looked up at the Lord of Lords.

"I want him, father! I want him!"

"But-me!" Hanse said. "What of me?"

Us gazed  down on  him. "You,  beloved Son  of Shadow,  have defeated  a god and
restored Me to my own people in Sanctuary. Further, as Va-shanka had become  the
most powerful of the gods of  Ranke, that people's power will wane.  Empires die
slowly, but it has begun, as of this moment."

"Yes," Hanse  said almost  plaintively, not  even realizing  the enormity of his
service to gods and Ilsigi and world, "but... now? What of me- now?"

"Fa-ther," Eshi said  with the sound  of accusation in  her voice, "his  neck is
broken!"

Us said quietly, "Now, Hanse, hero, you are dying."

"But-"

"His head struck this nasty damned stone and he's paralyzed from the neck  down!
He feels nothing, nothing!"

"But that  cannot be,"  Ils went on, as  if he  had heard  neither of them. "You
cannot be dying, for you  cannot be dead, for he  who did death on you  does not
exist on this plane. Therefore a paradox exists, if you are dying. Therefore you
cannot be dying."

Pain rose up in Hanse then, as again his body came alive, and he moved his  head
to look down at Eshi, whose weight  was partially on him, and then that  was all
he felt, for all pain fled and so did each scratch and bruise.

"Uh-pardon me, uh, Lady Goddess," he grunted, and Hanse rose to face his god. To
him clung the daughter of that god, herself a god. "And now? After all this,  my
god-what am I?"

"Now, Hanse, you return.  For ten circuits of  your world around the  s-that is,
for ten circuits of the sun-you shall  have what you wish. All that you  desire.
We shall not  be available to  you. Then we  shall, and you  will face me again,
beloved Hanse, and tell me what is your desire."

"But-"

Eshi clung to him, but her grip was broken, her fingers torn free of the  mailed
hero of the Ilsigi by the wind of Ils that rushed him back to Sanctuary; back to
his own beloved, squalid little Thieves' World.

A glance upward showed him more of the impossible that had lately become all too
commonplace for the Son of Shadow. The sky was precisely as it had been when  he
departed on his mission. He even  recognized the oddly formed little cloud  'way
out there above Julavain's Hill. It looked just like a-

But even as he paced along the narrow Maze "street," the cloud was coming apart,
changing, never to be the same again.

Information was yielded  Hanse by that.  But it was  for realization later,  the
fact that  while hours  or days  had been  consumed in  that mighty  combat in a
chamber of the  House of Infinity,  in Sanctuary exactly  no time had  passed at
all.

Just now, in the darkness of  Slick Walk, an accoster separated itself  from the
shadows along one wall and glided into his path. The fellow bulked large, too.

"You're not in  a hurry are  you, little fellow?"  the voice said,  mocking him.
"Carrying a purse?"

"Not tonight," Hanse said, stepping into the light that fell between them.

He drew a long sword from a silver-flashing sheath buckled over fine dark  armor
that rang softly with the movement of  mailed sleeve on chest. At the same  time
he showed  teeth and  the blade  moved up  to catch  the light  and the  footpad
whirled and ran for absolutely all he was worth.

Chuckling softly, Hanse moved on along Slick toward the Serpentine.

Now those  gods with  whom he  was so  intimate had  a strange way of expressing
themselves sometimes, but he was sure  Ils had said that he could  have anything
he wished  for... what  did He  mean? Ten  circuits of  the sun  was subject  to
interpretation.

Did the god mean only ten days? Surely He had not meant ten years?

Oh well. Ten  days or ten  months or ten  years, Hanse would  take them as  they
came-each as it came. One at a time, he mused, and he yawned.

To begin with he wished that he were not at all tired, and then he made  another
wish as well, grinning, and when he entered his room there she was, waiting  all
low-lashed and smoky-eyed, in his bed.

(Sleeping entwined, they were awakened later by a horrific vivid lighting of the
sky that quite occluded the late-rising  moon, but that was the sort  of paradox
that  both  Reality  and  minor  gods  such  as  Vashanka  and  Ils allowed, and
countenanced. It was enough  to bring anyone wide  awake and it was  frightfully
early, but Hanse found something to do.)

FOOTNOTES:

 [i] "The Vivisectionist," in Shadows Of Sanctuary; Ace Books, 1981.

[ii] "Shadowspawn," in Thieves' World; Ace Books, 1979.

EPILOG

The fishing fleets of Sanctuary made the first sighting.

Haron saw a strange sail and called Omat  to show it to him. By the time  he had
shaded his eyes from  the sun's glare and  located the strange ship,  there were
five sails-then twenty, all with the strange lateen rigging he had seen the  day
of the Old Man's disappearance... only these ships were larger, much larger.

He began  working quickly,  his one  arm aching  and cramped  with the effort of
quick-hauling his nets. The alarm spread  from boat to boat and soon  the entire
fleet was on the move to shore. Some abandoned their nets and traps,  preferring
to lose their equipment to remaining there on the fishing grounds.

By the time they reached the piers, over a hundred sails were in view, all on an
unwavering course for the town called Sanctuary.

                             *         *         *

Word  spread  through the  city  like wildfire.  A  fleet, a  big  one-bound for
Sanctuary. Some said it was an invasion from the north. Others argued hotly that
the design of  the ships was  not northern; their  specific point of  origin was
unknown, save that they could not be from the Northern Kingdoms.

All that was known for sure was  that before nightfall new feet would tread  the
streets of Sanctuary. Some  panicked, fleeing to the  palace or the temples  for
reassurance. Others, more  practical, began boarding  up their shops  and hiding
their valuables.

                             *         *         *

Hanse Shadows? awn heard the news with mixed feelings, wishing anew he could  be
certain  how long  his guarantee  of divine  protection would  last. Finally  he
decided that discretion really was the  better part of valor and headed  for the
ruined estate that had been the  scene of his recent adventures. An  estate that
was well outside  the boundaries of  Sanctuary proper. Things  had been so  much
simpler before he had anything to lose.

                             *         *         *

Myrtis, ruling the Street of Red Lanterns from her Aphrodesia House, was perhaps
the best  prepared of  any in  town. A  few curt  orders were  all that would be
necessary to begin relocating her "staff to the tunnels beneath the city. Though
worried about the chronic  shortage of supplies in  the chambers below, she  was
more worried about Lythande.  The mage had been  absent from town for  some time
now-and the oncoming fleet boded ill for any traveller's return.

                             *         *         *

The  magical  community  of  Sanctuary  viewed  the  fleet  with  a  mixture  of
anticipation and dread. There was magic  in those ships, strong magic of  a type
they  had never  encountered before.  Some, like  Enas Yorl  and Ischade,   with
nothing to  lose, waited  with curiosity,  eager to  add to  their already great
wealth of knowledge. The rest  wove hurried spells of defense  around themselves
and prayed secretly to varied gods that strength alone would suffice.

                             *         *         *

Molin Torchholder, head  priest of the  Temple of Vashanka,  had his hands  full
reassuring his cadre so that they  might, in turn, calm the crowds  of believers
who pressed through the temple doors. Amidst his attempts to organize things, he
was haunted by  his own fears.  He had worked  to ground the  Storm God's power,
leaving the  priesthood free  to explain  and interpret  as was  their god-given
right  and  duty. He  had  thought himself  successful,  for lately  Vashan-ka's
presence was noticeably lacking in town.

Now this.

Perhaps his schemings  had backfired. Where  was the Storm  God's protection now
that a force threatened them? Just one good windstorm. . .

With a sigh Molin reminded himself that the trouble with the gods was that  they
were never there when you needed them, but always there when you didn't.

                             *         *         *

Jubal cursed aloud when  Saliman arrived at their  new hideout with word  of the
fleet.  Their  plans to  rebuild  a power  structure  had been  going  well, old
employees being infiltrated through the existing structures of the town and  new
hirelings being  bought or  frightened into  cooperation. With  only weeks to go
before their first  act of power,  this new force  could mean complications  and
disruption of the  existing order. He  would need to  completely re-evaluate and
probably revise all their plans.

After months  of painful  healing and  careful planning,  Jubal was  not one  to
accept inconvenience with a smile.

                             *         *         *

Prince Kadakithis shooed  his advisors out  of the meeting  chambers so that  he
might speak privately with Tempus. It had already been decided that a  messenger
would be dispatched for  the capital immediately with  news of the fleet.  There
was no reason to believe they'd be able to get word out after the fleet landed.

Sanctuary's military situation  was bleak. Counting  the Stepsons, the  garrison
and  Wale-grin's newly  formed company,  the city  would muster  less than   two
hundred swords.  If this  incoming fleet  were indeed  hostile, their opposition
would likely number in the thousands.

The Prince angrily rejected Tempus' suggestion theft he accompany the  messenger
north  to the  safety of  Ranke. He  was royalty,  pledged to  the service   and
protection of the town. When one enjoyed the fruits of position, Kitty-cat said,
then one occasionally had to bear the burdens too- even if that burden  included
the possibilities of capture, ransom and worse.

Tempus argued that  this was illogical,  citing numerous historic  examples, but
Kadakithis remained  unswayed. The  citizens of  Sanctuary could  not flee  and,
therefore, neither  would he.  Good or  bad, he  would remain  with the town and
share its fate.

                             *         *         *

Confronted with another prophecy come  true, Walegrin sought his half-sister  in
the  bazaar,  only to  find  his path  blocked  by silent  S'danzo  men. Dubro's
appearance  averted  potential  bloodshed; the  smith  drew  Walegrin aside  and
explained what he knew of the situation.

Illyra  was  in a  meeting  with the  other  S'danzo women-a  meeting  closed to
outsiders. As near as Dubro  could determine, they were pooling  the information
each had received through visions of the approaching ships and arguing over  the
best course for  the S'danzo to  follow. Until the  meeting broke up,  there was
nothing to do but wait.

Walegrin fumed  but settled  back to  sweat out  the time  until the meeting was
over, knowing full well the value of  the information that might be  forthcoming
if he could convince Illyra to share the tribe's secrets with him.

                             *         *         *

The Downwinders were jubilant  when they heard the  news. As those currently  at
the bottom of the social structures, any change would have to be for the better,
though the more  imaginative cautioned that  this need not  be true. Still,  the
scavengers anticipated the fleet's arrival  with far more enthusiasm than  could
be found anywhere else in town.

                             *         *         *

The Vulgar Unicorn was crowded with those seeking to stave off the future with a
tankard of ale. One-Thumb stoically refused to give either discounts or  credit,
wishing secretly that he  had the courage to  raise the prices instead.  It took
men to man ships, and men drank,  especially when they landed in a new  town. He
could be rich by tomorrow, rich enough to leave this town for good, if ...

If these low lifes didn't drain his cellars completely before the fleet arrived.
With an angry  bellow he answered  the next request  for credit by  smashing the
asker in the face with a tankard.

                             *         *         *

The docks were deserted  now. The fisherfolk had  fled inland, leaving the  area
free for the garrison troops. The city's soldiers had not yet arrived and  there
was some doubt that they ever would. Most felt the Prince would keep them at the
palace rather than run  the risk of having  them desert before they  reached the
enemy.

Only one person kept the seabirds company as they watched the fleet move closer.
Hakiem, the storyteller,  sat crosslegged on  a crate in  the shade of  a ragged
canvas awning that flapped noisily in  the stillness of the empty wharf.  He had
purloined two bottles  of good wine  from an abandoned  tavern and he  sipped at
them alternately as he squinted at the distant sails.

He had  not been  idle since  his conversation  with Omat  and he  knew now  the
approaching ships matched the descriptions  of those used by the  Fish-Eyed-Folk
of old legends...and that  a similar ship had  captured the Old Man  and his son
months before.

Whether  friendly  or hostile,  the  fleets' arrival  promised  to be  the  most
noteworthy event in this generation's history-and,Hakiem intended to witness  it
firsthand. He was not unaware of  the potential danger, but he feared  even more
the possibility of missing the moment of landfall.

It might prove to be the end of the Old Man's story, and it would definitely  be
the beginning of a new story for Sanctuary. The fact that it might be the end of
Hakiem's story was inconsequential.

Shooing away a random fly, the storyteller drank again, and waited.