Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 9
A Matter of Honor

THE WIDOW CLEPPETANIA was making humble pie. The pastry shell was ready. The sealed pot of wine, spices, and tripe had done ten hours worth of simmering in five with the aid of a simple spell, but the kitchen was wretchedly hot nevertheless. This was not a dish that she cared to make in midsummer. Mistress Abernia had specifically requested it, however, and would shake the rafters if it was not forthcoming.

Once, the widow would have told her to go bark for it.

Now, with the advent of the ambitious Kithra, she found herself doing all she could to keep Abernia's usual ill-humor from endangering her hold on Tubain. The possibility of having to call the new servant girl "mistress" was more than the widow could stomach. No, if Kithra must wed, let her have Rothan — who was already ears deep in love with her — and manage him until he came into his inheritance. Then Cleppetty and Abernia would step down, but not before.

"Allied to a figment of someone else's imagination," said the widow out loud with a grimace. "It could only happen here."

She retrieved the clay cooking pot from the ashes and transferred the tripe to its pastry shell. Boo lumbered in from the courtyard, clamoring for the tidbits, which no one was supposed to give him. Cleppetty surreptitiously put a few choice pieces down on a saucer for him, turned back toward the south fireplace, and started violently.

Jame was sitting on the hearth.

"What are you trying to do," the widow half-screeched at her, "drive me into conniptions? Why can't you stomp through life like the rest of us?"

"Sorry, Cleppetty."

The widow gave her a hard look. "You're pale. Has your head started hurting again?"

"No, it's not that. I've just seen Taniscent. In the Lower Town. An old woman crossed the street ahead of me wearing Tanis's favorite shawl—you know, that ghastly orange and purple affair. Then she turned, and I saw that it was Taniscent herself. She looked nearly eighty, all wrinkled and blotchy—half-senile, too, I think—but she knew me. She ran, Cleppetty. She gave a panicky sort of bleat, and she ran."

"Well, what did you expect?" the widow demanded, floury fists jammed on her sharp hips. "The sight of anyone from the inn can only remind her of what she's lost. Anyway, even if that beating you gave Niggen did set the whole thing off, you didn't force that overdose of Dragon's Blood down her throat. She was a foolish, vain child and has only herself to blame. Still, she was, and is, one of us. What happened next?"

"I lost her," said Jame in disgust. "That district has been so warped by fire and decay that only those born there can master the heart of it now. Patches and her Townie friends have taken up the hunt. If they find Tanis and she isn't ready to come home, Patch says her mother will take care of her until she is. For some reason, that family seems to think it owes me something."

"That's just as well for Taniscent," said Cleppetty briskly, turning back to her pie. "You've done well, child. Now let matters take their course. Sooner or later, she'll come home . . . and an altered place she'll find it, too, what with Kithra and Marc in residence. Speaking of Marc, how have you and that big Kendar been managing? It can't be easy for a thief and a guard to share the same roof, much less the same room."

"Oh, it's not all that hard," said Jame, trying to adjust to this abrupt change of topic. "I'm only in danger from him when I have stolen property in my possession, so I never bring any back to the loft or into his assigned territory. I think he's even got used to the idea of a Kencyr thief."

"Well, why not? You've made the profession honorable. The Widow Cibbeth sends her thanks and blessings, by the way. The temple would have repossessed her godson by now if you hadn't retrieved his ransom from that pocket-picking Hangrell."

"I hate thieves who specialize in robbing old people," said Jame. "If nothing else, where's the skill in it? Oh, I know all guildsmen can't be as principled as Darinby, but it's still depressing to come across a specimen like Hangrell, whose highest ambition, apparently, is to become one of Bane's scrap-fed rats.

"But if the Talisman doesn't bother Marc, do you know who does? The B'tyrr. Cleppetty, have you noticed that he always leaves the room when I dance? That worries me. His moral sense is very good, far better than mine, and I hate to go against it. But Tubain still needs the B'tyrr, so I guess there's no helping that."

She was silent for a moment. The widow, watching her askance, saw the haunted look return to her eyes.

"Cleppetty," she said, raising her head suddenly, "do you remember what you said to me the day the beam fell, that sooner or later I would destroy someone? Was that someone Tanis, or am I still a danger to you, to Tubain, to everyone I love?"

Kithra's voice cut across the widow's startled response.

"Madam, come quick! It's Marc. I think he's been hurt."

Jame leaped up and was past Cleppetty out the door before she could move. Heavy feet tramped into the hall. A voice, vaguely groggy, said something about matching scars. The big Kendar was standing in the hall with Sart Nine-toes beside him and a blood-stained cloth wrapped about his graying temples.

"Just the same," he was saying cheerfully to Jame, "I bet I've got the bigger headache. After all, mine's the bigger head."

She brought him into the kitchen, made him sit down on the scullery hearth, and unwrapped the makeshift bandage.

"That's not too bad," said Cleppetty, looking over her shoulder.

"No," said Jame with relief. "More ugly than dangerous, I'd say. Just the same, you're going to be out of it a day or two, my lad."

They cleaned the wound and dressed it with a poultice of balm leaves steeped in wine. Then Jame took Marc up to the loft. Cleppetty, left alone with Sart, stopped his clumsy advances by stomping on his foot and then, when he opened his mouth to yelp, jamming a wheat cake into it. After several minutes, Jame returned.

"You always seem to be trundling Marc home," she said to Sart. "My thanks again. Now, what happened?"

"A trap happened, that's what," said the guard with a growl. "We're walking our bailiwick, see, when we hear a shout for help. It's coming from a side lane, one of those rotting dead-ends near the Temple District Wall, where the stones crumble if you stare at them too hard. Me, I know the streets well enough to be suspicious, so I hold back, but Marc goes charging straight in before I can stop him. Then the bricks start to fall. I look up and see that the whole wall over his head is giving way. So I let off a bellow. Luckily there's a doorway handy, or he'd have gotten more than a broken head. It was no accident, either. I saw the bastard looking down as the dust settled, the lever still in his hands, wanting to see most likely if his work was well done. Well, it wasn't, and now he'll squirm on the Mercy Seat for injuring a guard —as soon as we can lay hands on him, that is."

"On whom?"

"Why, didn't I say? On that creep-thief Hangrell. He won't be easy to find, though, not when it sinks into his tiny little head that every guard in the city—aye, and half the thieves, too—will be after him. The gods only know what made him do a damn-fool thing like that."

"If they don't," said Jame grimly, "I do. Wait here, Sart. No one knows the hiding holes in this city better than I, except my master. Be ready to come when I send for you."

"Now just a minute, Talisman." he protested, stepping between her and the street door. "This man is our meat by law, and we've got to make an example of him. If we don't, no guard in Tai-tastigon will ever be safe again, or any thief, come to that, with the ban against mutual violence broken."

Cold silver-gray eyes locked with his own. "I said I would send for you. Wait."

He had not meant to step out of her way, much less to stand staring foolishly after her.

"If I were you," said Cleppetty drily behind him, "I would do as she said . . . or do you want her mad at you too?"

Sart Nine-toes closed his mouth with a snap, sat down on the hearth, and began to wait.

* * *

THE AFTERNOON light drained away. Dusk glowed and faded into night. When the message came at last, four guards were waiting at the inn.

Across the city, in the catacomb like cellars under a gutted mansion on the edge of the Lower Town, someone else also waited, nervously, starting at every hollow echo the subterranean spaces threw back. Water dripped, torches sputtered, the voices of others in hiding murmured confusedly in the distance. There! Surely someone had called his name. Here I am, here, here . . . no, nothing. Hangrell sat down again on the brick floor, sniveling a little in the dark.

Again and again, he told himself that here, if nowhere else in the city, he should be safe. Although the hand of every honest thief would be against him now, those who shared this dank, dark refuge were outcasts like himself, breakers of Tastigon or Thieves' Guild law. Both codes forbade the injuring of a guard. Hangrell would not have risked his petty revenge if he hadn't been sure (oh, so mistakenly) that he could get away with it, and that it would be applauded by the one person in Tai-tastigon whom he most wished to impress. Even now, with all plans gone awry, he hoped desperately that that individual would acknowledge the gesture and send help. He must know that it had been done to please him. Oh, why had it all gone wrong? A simple accident—that was what everyone would have called it except for the appreciative few who knew better. If it weren't for that second guard (damn him!) whom he had not seen until far, far too late . . .

Someone was shouting. Voices boomed through the halls. People were running, torches going out. "The guards!" a boy shrieked in the darkness. "The guards!"

Hangrell jumped to his feet, heart pounding. They were coming this way. He backed up, stumbling over debris, turned, and fled. Somewhere in this part of the cellar, there was supposed to be a way out. He had searched for it all afternoon in case of just such an emergency and, failing to find it, had hoped more desperately than ever that someone would be sent to show him the way.

Stone grated on stone. Ahead, the shadows on the wall fell away into a widening blackness through which a figure stepped. The thief's welcoming cry died in his throat.

It was the Talisman.

"Well, friend," she said in a quiet, almost pleasant voice. "You've really done it this time. If you had dealt with me directly, as Scramp did, we might have come to some understanding; but to injure a guard . . . that wasn't very bright, now was it?"

He backed away from her, panic clawing at him. Say something, anything. "It wasn't my fault!" he heard himself squeal. "He made me do it. It's his fault that your friend was hurt!"

"Whose fault, sweetling?"

"Bane's!"

"I. . . see." Her tone jerked his attention back from the shouts of the approaching guards. "So. This was how you bought your way into his favor. Cat's paw for a coward. I was going to hold you for the guards and the Mercy Seat, my dear. Instead, I'll give you a choice, a . . . chance. Do you see the stairs behind me? They lead to the sewers, to safety. All you have to do is pass me."

The shouts were closer, almost at the mouth of the passageway. Hangrell looked wildly behind him, whining, then at the slim, shadowy form that barred the way.

"Come along, little one," it said, its voice slipping into a deep, full-throated purr. "I wait—without a knife, without gloves."

With a choked cry, he spun about and ran straight into Sart's arms.

* * *

JUDGMENT SQUARE lay sleek in the moonlight. The stalls that had freckled its surface by midday were gone now and their owners with them, leaving the great, triangular flagstones to wind-whirled debris and the small group gathered in front of the Mercy Seat. The Master of Mercy was arguing with four guardsmen while his assistant crouched behind him, tending a brazier whose coals sparkled fitfully. The wind bore none of his complaint upward. Knowing his reputation as a perfectionist, however, it was easy enough to guess that he was bitterly protesting the conditions under which these hulking guards expected him to work. What did they know of craftsmanship? What did they care? To them, only results mattered, and now they were set on creating an example. At last the Master shrugged and opened his tool case while his assistant took an iron from the fire and spat on it experimentally. The pale, thin form that sprawled on the Seat did not move as the two men bent over it. The drugs had done their work well; once again, the Master had justified his title.

On the south side of the square stood a rich merchant's house with a turret ornamented, in imitation of Edor Thulig, with three huge stone bats in high relief. On the head of the one facing north sat Jame. She was no longer regarding the scene below but her own hands, which rested, still gloveless, on her knees. With an expression of mingled disgust and fascination, she raised one and stared at it, as though it were some wild, unidentified creature that she had found scurrying across the forest floor. The abnormally long fingers flexed and arched. At the tip of each was the nail, razor tipped, fully extended.

Would she really have used them on Hangrell? Yes. Again, she heard her voice dripping black honey, felt the savage, exultant lust for blood. It had taken all her self-control to offer that wretched boy a choice at all, if only of deaths.

Ivory claws, black rage—both were a part of her Shanir nature, that terrible openness to a divine will as ruthless as it often was incomprehensible. But if it was truly another's will, how could she be accountable for its actions? Remember Ishtier, she told herself: he was a Shanir too, as every priest must be; but could she forgive him, even on those grounds, for what he had done to her? No. It was unthinkable. And yet clearly he had no influence over the god's voice when it spoke through him. It simply used him. Was she also being used when these murderous rages fell on her, and if so, to what purpose?

"No," she said out loud, recoiling from the thought. "No. I will not be used. Let me be a monster in my own right if I must, but not the puppet of some damned, indifferent god. I will be responsible for my actions, whatever prompts them. I will be free."

Such freedom would be hard to bear, but she might not have to live with it for long, Jame thought with sudden wryness. Her words in the cellar had been addressed less to Hangrell than to those others hidden in the shadows, and through them to that wretched creature's patron, who would learn soon enough what she had said and done. Defiance, insult, challenge—if she knew him half as well as she thought she did, he would swallow none of them. The uneasy, unaccountable friendship between them was at an end and war declared, her hand against his. She had no illusions concerning her chances for survival.

Meanwhile, there was no point in watching more of the sorry spectacle below. Jame climbed down and set off for home.

The Res aB'tyrr was brightly lit but ominously silent as she crossed the square to it. A sleek young man wearing a d'hen of a rich, dark fabric waited for her in the doorway. He stepped aside as she approached and bowed mockingly. Inside, seven more men leaned against the walls or slouched negligently in the best chairs. Bane sat by himself at the center table, his long, elegantly booted legs stretched out before him and a small goblet of golden wine at his elbow. He looked up as she entered and said, smiling, "I got your message."

Jame had known that this meeting must come, but had somehow never thought of it taking place here, in her home. One of Bane's companions was lounging on the kitchen threshold, another in the room itself by the street door. Cleppetty stood white-faced with anger by the kitchen table, one arm thrown protectively around Kithra's shoulders. A slow, deadly rage swelled up in Jame.

"Get those men out of here," she said to Bane in a low voice. Her hands had already gone cold, her body slipped to the inner rhythms that precede violence.

"Don't be a fool," he said sharply, reading her intentions in her stance. "I would kill you."

"Get them out or you'll have to. Now."

He regarded her intently for a moment, then suddenly laughed and dismissed the others with a wave of his hand. Surprise broke the stride of Jame's growing, probably suicidal anger. She had not seriously thought that she could blackmail him with the threat of her own death.

"Sit down, sit down," he said when they were gone, gesturing to the opposite seat. "Have some of this excellent wine and do, please, stop glowering at me. For once, I'm not to blame. That imbecile Hangrell was acting on his own against my wishes, whatever he may have thought they were. I would have dealt with him myself if you hadn't gotten to him first."

"Why?" said Jame, warily seating herself. "If you didn't order it, what concern is all this of yours?"

"Do you mean to say," he said, regarding her with raised eyebrows, "that you still haven't guessed? Well then, here's a little story for you that may make it clear. About thirty years ago, a group of refugees came over the Ebonbane, fleeing from war and kin-strife, following their mad lord into exile. He died in the mountains. They went on, passing Tai-tastigon in the night, and turning northward into the unnamed lands. Nearly a year later, two of them came crawling back. One, a priest, entered the temple of the Three-Faced God and has not left it since. The other, once mistress to the old lord himself, was taken to wife by a high official of the Thieves' Guild. What no one knew then, or has guessed to this day, is that she crossed his threshold already quick with child. Ah, now you begin to understand."

"You're telling me that you also are of the Kencyrath," said Jame slowly; and somehow, she was not really surprised. "But no Kencyr I've ever known would behave as you do."

"None?" he said, giving her a sharp look. "Remember the Mercy Seat. You know as well as I what sort of inner darkness leads to a thing like that. I fought it for years, as you do now. I bound myself in secret to the rituals of our people and dared them to break me. Trinity, but that was hard. Then, seven years ago, my foster-father told me that I must be apprenticed to the Sirdan and become a thief. A thief! Oh, I didn't rush into the arms of the Guild like some others," he said with a bitter laugh. "Ishtier pushed me. Honor would be served no other way, he said. I owed it to Abbotir, my benefactor. Neither he nor the priest seemed to understand that if they made me go that far, whether I ever stole or not, nothing would ever hold me back again. It was a nice little paradox, really: how to save one's soul by losing it, and in a sense, that's exactly what I did. I've confused you again, haven't I? Do you like stories? Then here's another one, much older than the first:

"Once long ago, in a time of great danger, a randon warrior went to his lord and said, 'Master, our enemies hem us in, we die by the hundreds daily. I can deliver us, but only by such acts as will damn me forever in the eyes of our people and our god. Take thou my soul, so that it at least will be untainted, and loose me on the foe.' And so it was done. The Three People were saved, but by deeds so foul that no man would record them. Then, in the great hall, the warrior reclaimed his soul. Its purity consumed him, as if he lay on his pyre alive, and so he died at last with honor. . . . Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

"I understand this much at least," said Jame slowly, regarding his hand and the candlelight that glowed on the polished table top beneath it. "You cast no shadow. So Ishtier's is double then, but are you sure you can trust that priest to keep it and your soul safe?"

"I have reason to think so. Besides, who else could have done such a thing for me?"

"I could."

He stared at her, then let his breath out slowly. "Oh, my lady. Yes, you could, and would—if it weren't already too late. But now you must follow me. Give up the struggle and let go, as I did. What good is honor in life to either of us? The very weight of it twists us. Better to fall. Yes, it's terrifying at first. Life loses all boundaries, then begins to expand, seeking new ones. You never find them. No one can tell you where to stop. Honor no longer matters, no, nor the lack of it. Then, in the end, you take back your soul and let its purity immolate you and your deeds. An honorable death wipes away all stains. But before that, the freedom, lady, to do what you will, be what you are, outside the coils of the law, beyond the touch of man or god—that is the course for you, as for me. As for that hulk of a Kendar or Dallen, that whelp's son, you are ill-matched with both or, if it has come to that, worse mated with either. In the end you will see that and turn to me. Until then, m'lady."

He sketched a formal salute and was gone, stepping lightly into the night.

Jealousy hung raw on the air behind him. Had Hangrell overheard such remarks as these last and posted eagerly off to his death on their strength? The poor fool, to have measured Bane's pride by his own petty standards.

But she had underestimated Bane too, in more ways than one. No need to have sent a message at all; the deed itself, like the smell of fresh-spilt blood, would have drawn him to her. Marc might be safe, but nothing would ever protect her again, now that Bane's interest had been thoroughly aroused. But perhaps she didn't want protection. Why else offer him the greatest intimacy possible between two Kencyrs . . . and since when had she even known that such a thing lay in her power? At every turn, her voice had answered his, darkness speaking to darkness. He might be the dead, consumed with hunger for the living, but it was her own face she had seen staring back at her over the table, monstrously mirrored in those odd, silver-gray eyes.

"Mother of Shadows," she said out loud to herself. "What will come of all this?"

"Probably a hall full of angry customers," said Cleppetty loudly, making her start. The others, who had been locked in the cellar, all came flocking in after her, except for Tubain, who had stayed below on a sudden impulse to inventory the rose wine. "Those flash-blades have been turning everyone away for the last hour and drinking our best wine without so much as a copper put on the boards. I ask you," the widow concluded, setting loose all her stored wrath at once, "is this any way to run an inn?"

"No, it's not," said Jame, "and I'm at fault. It's time Jorin and I left. He's grown too big, and I too dangerous."

The junior staff burst into loud protest.

"Bustard balls," said Cleppetty, cutting across the tumult. "This is your home. When the time comes to leave Tai-tastigon, you'll leave us too, but not before. You've fought for us in your way; we'll fight for you in ours. Besides, the B'tyrr has promised to dance tonight. After a start like this to the evening, the gods help us if she doesn't."

Jame at last acquiesced, glad to give in but still uneasy. She was on her way up the stairs when the widow called her back, holding up a folded paper that she had picked up from the central table where Bane had sat.

"Notes, yet," she said, giving it to Jame, then, more sharply, "Is anything wrong?"

"I—don't know," Jame said, frowning at the wax seal. "Probably not." But to avoid more questions, she turned quickly and ran up the steps with the note still unopened in her hand.

In the loft, the big Kendar lay face up on his pallet, snoring. She knelt to check his condition, then sat back on her heels beside him, broke the seal, and read. A frown gathered on her sharp young face. She sat there for a long moment with the paper in her hands, biting her lower lip, looking down at the guardsman. Left to himself, he would remain deep in dwar sleep for another twelve hours. It would be wisest to leave a message with Cleppetty, but something in her balked at the idea. This was Kencyr business, however strange, and not meant for other ears. She bent over the sleeping man and shook him. At last his eyelids slowly peeled back.

"Marc, listen to me," she said, taking his graying head in her hands. "I've been summoned to the temple of our god by Ishtier, Trinity only knows why. If I'm not back by the time you wake up again, I suppose you'd better come after me. Do you understand?"

"Issshtier. . . ?" Marc struggled up on one elbow. "You can't do that. . . he hates you."

"That's no distinction. He hates everyone. Now go back to sleep."

"Ha!" said Marc with a cheerful if somewhat blurry grin, climbing unsteadily to his feet. "You've raised the beast right and proper, and now you'll have to put up with him. I'm going with you."

Jame swore under her breath. Of course he would say that. It was as natural for him to think of himself as her protector as it was for her to be constantly caught off-guard by the fact. With a sigh, she helped the big guardsman to find his truncheon (which, of course, turned out to be under a cat), and they set off.

* * *

THE TWO CAME on the temple of their god from its western approach, with the fire-stricken Lower Town close by to the south. The sounds of the living world followed them through the wasteland of deserted houses, but fell away to the soughing of wind in empty doorways as they emerged on the circle of dust.

"What a mess," said Marc, staring at the desolation around the temple. "Folk were beginning to move out when I was last here, but who would have thought that Ishtier would let things go so far?"

Then, absentmindedly, he rapped his companion on the back of the head for luck as though they were shieldmates going into battle together and strode down to meet the enemy. Jame followed, gingerly rubbing her head.

Inside, she took the lead. Even though she knew what to expect this time and had all her mental shields up, the currents of power were so swift that it was hard to walk the halls without reeling. Instinct, not memory, led her forward. There was the door she had crashed into, and beyond it, Ishtier.

The priest stood as before in the shadow of their god, looking as though he had not moved since that distant night. His yellow eyes too were as they had been before, cruel and haughty; but this time Jame met them. So this was the Highborn to whom Bane had entrusted his soul. Was it really safe with him? Bane might think so, but what would he say if she told him that this man had already proved faithless to his own younger brother by abandoning him to madness in the Haunted Lands? After hearing Bane's story, Jame had no further doubt that Ishtier was the priest who had fled the keep before her birth. She would indeed never forgive him for Anar's plight, but since he had not also deserted his lord (who, after all, was dead), his honor was intact as far as she knew.

Therefore she gave him a formal if wary salute and said: "You wished to see me, my lord?"

"You, yes. Not him." The words were brusque but power, licking at their edges, blurred them.

Jame tensed. Would he play at singeing her again? She had no time to consider it, for just then Marc, despite a commendably brisk start half an hour before, suddenly began to sway. She slipped an arm around his waist to steady him and punched him in the ribs to forestall a rising snore.

"Pardon, my lord," she said to the priest, getting her shoulder under Marc's armpit and heaving him upright. "We come as a set. If you try to put him out now, I shall tip him over on you."

Ishtier scowled at the swaying giant for a moment, then, unnervingly, a thin, secret smile flickered across his face.

"I have a mission for you, thief," he said.

Jame stared at him. "You want me to steal something? You, who all but spat in my face when I came to ask council before joining the Guild? Priest, you have a strange sense of humor."

"Hunzzaagg," said Marc.

"What?" snapped Ishtier.

"Never mind him. He thinks he's awake. It's a common delusion."

"Humph. Listen to me, you insolent, young . . . guttersnipe. I said nothing of stealing. Look here." He stepped aside. Behind him stood the small altar on which the temple's copy of the Law usually rested. It was not there now. "You see? The scroll is gone. Without it, only I, the priest, stand between the people of the Kencyrath and their god, all dread be to him. I want you to retrieve it."

Jame struggled with an answer. Suddenly, tendrils of power were slipping past her, sliding over her mind, numbing it with their touch. It was the nightmare of that first meeting all over again . . . but this time it was something else, too. For an instant, she seemed to see the faces of the tavern audience turned up eagerly. A bow, the first step of the dance, and they were hers. Not the mists of desire but tongues of ice and fire licked at her now. Still immobilized by Marc's weight, her mind shied away from them, instinctively tracing the first moves of a wind-blowing kantir. To her amazement, she felt the energy flowing past her, back into its natural channel over the tessellated floor.

The ultimate power, the ultimate dance. She had at last found the true outlet for her strange talent.

The priest was staring at her. "Shanir," he said, almost to himself. He must be one himself to wield hieratic power, but there was no dawning welcome in his face. Rather, Jame had the uncomfortable feeling that he was really seeing her for the first time, not just as a plaything or a tool but as an individual dangerously like himself who could only prove a threat.

But there was more at stake here than their mutual hatred. It was neither priest nor god she was being asked to serve, but the Law and the code of honor it embodied. Bane's abyss had opened up behind her. If she turned her back on that empty altar, as he undoubtedly hoped she would, it would be beneath her feet.

"Where is the scroll?" she asked in a low voice.

"Look in the temple of Gorgo. Did you think you could trifle with a priest—any priest—and not pay for it? Swear before our god that you will bring me the scroll that lies in the arms of the false idol there. Your word on it, thief."

"Priest," Jame said grimly, "death break me, darkness take me, the scroll will be in your hands tonight. My word on it."

* * *

ALL THE WAY across town, she tried to talk Marc into turning back. Not only was he hurt, she argued, but unsuited by virtue of sheer size for the job ahead. Moreover, since the guards of Tai-tastigon had no jurisdiction over the city's priests, his official status would be of no use to either of them. Obviously, the only fit place for him was at home in bed, with as few cats asleep on his chest as possible.

Marc only laughed.

This one-sided argument went on street after street, through the twining ribbons of the courtesans' district, over the Tone, past the Tower of Demons, ending only within sight of Gorgo's temple itself, where Jame at last yielded to the inevitable with a sigh.

The sound of ritual mourning rolled down the steps as they paused in the shadows of the opposite building.

"How do we get in?" Marc asked, staring up at the bright entrance.

"The most obvious way," said Jame. "Put your hood over your head like a proper worshipper and try to wail a bit."

They went up the steps together and joined the celebrants within. All were gathered in the outer chamber, waiting for the evening ceremony to begin and working themselves into the approved tearful state. The high priest himself perched precariously on top of a pillar beside the door to the inner chamber with his long silver-gray robe flowing down to the floor on all sides of it. From below, one might have supposed him to be either a very tall man with a very small head or a street performer on stilts. The combination of his loud, simulated grief and the wild circling of his arms every few minutes to maintain balance added considerably to the liveliness of the assembly.

Jame began to edge her way through the crowd with Marc at her heels, trying to make his seven-foot frame as inconspicuous as possible. She had not been in Gorgo's temple since the experiment with the water ducts some time before, which, presumably, had triggered Loogan's vengeance on her now. She wondered why he had waited so long, and where he had found an agent so bold as to plunder the house of her own god, whose very existence he had often so vehemently denied. On the surface, it didn't make much sense, but when had she ever had dealings with any priest that did? Each had his own subtle, tortuous patterns of thought, worn as deep into his mind as riverbeds on the earth's face by the power that flowed through him. Even the clownish Loogan must have his share. As for Ishtier, there was a man so eroded by the force at his command that hardly any of his original nature must be left at all. Small wonder that his code of honor was not her own or that she had so little protection against the wiles that had now maneuvered her into this nest of enemies. Bodies brushed against her, voices pounded in her ears. Her uneasiness rose as she approached the inner door, remembering suddenly with what ease Loogan had spotted her the last time she had infringed on his hospitality.

The priest had stopped his wailing. Incautiously, Jame glanced up and met his eyes as he crouched on the pillar, staring uncertainly down at her. The little man straightened up with a yelp.

"The blasphemer, the defiler of our temple!" he howled, pointing down at the slender, hated figure. "Take her, take her! A sacrifice, a sacrifice for the great Gorgo!"

Scores of faces turned toward Jame, contorted in rage. Scores of hands reached out. The mass of humanity in the room seemed to rise about her like the crest of a tidal wave, poised to come crashing down.

"Sweet Trinity," she heard Marc mutter under his breath, and then his rathorn war cry boomed out almost in her ear.

The human wave froze. Up on his pedestal, Loogan did a passable imitation of an unbalanced statue. The inner chamber door opened and the buck-toothed acolyte, startled by the sudden roar, peered out. Marc reached past Jame with a muttered "Excuse me," caught the boy by the front of his robe and threw him over his shoulder. Instantly, the room was bedlam. Loogan pitched head-first off the column with a squeal. Roaring, the crowd of worshippers rushed forward. The big Kendar grabbed his companion by the collar and threw her into the inner room. A stride carried him across the threshold after her. Turning, he pulled the door shut and dropped the bar into place across it.

"Well," said Jame, picking herself up off the floor, "here we are."

The inner sanctum of the temple was just as she remembered it—high, dark, and dank even in this time of drought because of the hand-filled reservoir on the roof. Benches, moss velvety walls, the giant image of Gorgo looking, if anything, more woebegone than usual, and, balanced on its hands over a bed of old ashes, a roll of parchment. Perfect, if one discounted a minor host of enraged celebrants hammering on the door . . . or was it? Something about the length of the scroll, the color of its paper . . .

"Marc, see if you can find another way out. I think something is very wrong here."

While the big guardsman began a slow circuit of the room, Jame took the scroll out of the stone hands and carefully unrolled it. "Eyes that read, beware," she began out loud, struggling with runes' meaning. "BE STILL, TONGUE . . ."

She recoiled from it, teeth closing with a snap. The words of Forgetting swept through her mind, drowning thought and memory. When she looked at the scroll in her hands again, cautiously this time, not translating, the marks on it were mere lines, their deadly power locked in. She stood there biting her lip for a moment, then looked around for her companion. He was not in sight.

"Marc, where are you?"

There was a scraping sound and a muffled grunt from behind the statue.

"What are you doing?"

"There's a lever back here. Maybe it controls a secret exit. I think I can . . ."

There was a sharp crack, then a deep-noted gurgle. Jame sprang back as the glass eyes of the idol flew out of their sockets, closely followed by two thick jets of water.

Marc emerged from the shadows, looking sheepish. He held out a metal bar and said, apologetically, "It broke off."

"Never mind that. Look here." She held out the parchment. He stared at it, making an obvious effort to focus. Like most Kendars with their faith in memory, he had never learned how to read.

"Is that the Law Scroll?"

"Not unless they've started writing them in the Master Words of High Runic. No, this is something else, older than any temple copy and far more deadly. See how the figures start out crisp and clear, then here, halfway down, begin to falter? Despite himself, the scribe must have begun to see the words forming under his quill point, and the race began to the end of each line. More speed, less control, ink spattering, lines shaking . . . and here it simply ends, in midsentence, in mid-word. Well?"

She glared up at Marc, oblivious both to the water now swirling about their knees and to the irate pounding on the door which had settled down into the steady, bone-jarring blows of some makeshift ram.

"Tell me I've the imagination of a street balladeer. Tell me the annals of the Kencyrath is full of such stories. Tell me this thing isn't Anthrobar's scroll, the only copy, partial as it is, of the Book Bound in Pale Leather. Go on, tell me!"

Marc blinked owlishly at the roll of parchment. "How did it get here?"

"God knows!" She was beginning to lose patience with him. Here they were, faced with a genuine crisis, and this nodding giant with his bandage slipping down rakishly over one eye was only half-awake. "We may find out later if—if, I say—we ever get out of here, but don't you see what a dilemma we're in now? Short of the Book itself, can you think of any more dangerous document ever entrusted to the Three People? Creation, preservation, destruction—this thing is the key to every power planted in us for good or ill. How many times have our wisest scrollsmen and greatest lords, in the best of faith, nearly destroyed us all by using it? And who wants his talons in it now? Ishtier! Why, the man doesn't even use the power he has properly. Marc, I can't turn it over to him."

"It isn't the Law Scroll," said Marc, beginning to sway gently. "You don't have to."

"Idiot that I am, I swore to bring him the scroll—any scroll—in the arms of the idol. My word binds me."

Marc shook himself fiercely. "Aaaugh! But listen: when we thought it was the Law Scroll, freshly stolen, it was all right for you to recover it. Now—how long has this thing been missing? Over two thousand years?—even for something so valuable, the period of jeopardy must have run out centuries ago. Originally Kencyr property or not, under the laws of the city it now belongs to Loogan, and if you steal it, my word as a guard binds me to turn you over to the Five. . ."

". . . who will be delighted to dethrone Hangrell in my favor. If you're a thief, as they say, never get too attached to your own skin. Oh, what a trap that priest has sprung on me, and all without telling one direct lie. If I take him the scroll, think of the power he will gain; if I'm killed, he will at least have the satisfaction of my death; if I refuse, I'll be breaking my word to him and he will declare me a renegade, which may be what Bane hoped for when he consented to be Ishtier's messenger. Between them, those two have given me the choice of being dishonorable, irresponsible, or dead. Beautiful! The only consolation is that matters can't possibly get any worse."

At that moment, three things happened more or less simultaneously: the whole face of the image gave way, releasing a torrent of water into the already half-flooded room; the rings holding the bar across the door, jolted loose, fell away on one side; and Marc suddenly fell asleep, standing up.

Jame looked around the room with raised eyebrows, then back at the scroll in her hands. One complication would have been manageable; two, a calamity; three, ridiculous; but four? It would be an excellent time to burn the manuscript and drown herself, but then there was Marc, who didn't deserve to die alone, much less asleep on his feet. She reached out and rapped the swaying giant on his chest.

"You'd better see to the door," she said. "I think we're about to have company."

"Zaugh . . . oh!" said Marc, blinking at her. He turned and waded through the water, which now reached almost to his waist, over to the opposite wall. While Jame took refuge on the statue's right kneecap, the big Kendar raised the bar back into place and began to hammer the ring bolts in again with the head of his truncheon. Suddenly he froze, looking startled, then spun about and came splashing back across the room.

"Lass!" he bellowed over the roar of the water. "I've got it! You can't steal the scroll, but I can!"

Jame saw his hand sweeping up at her out of the corner of her eye. She had been deep in thought and had only half heard what her companion had said. Instinctively, she twisted away from what, from almost anyone but Marc, would have been a threatening gesture. The stone beneath her was slick with spray. Her sudden movement threw her sideways off her perch and down, scroll and all, into the surging water.

Marc fished her out and set her sputtering on her feet. She swept a streaming lock of hair out of her eyes, shook herself, then froze.

"What did you say?"

He shifted his weight uncomfortably, as it he would have liked to have shuffled his feet if only there hadn't been so much water on them. "I wouldn't be stealing from a Kencyr, you know," he said, half pleading. "It wouldn't be breaking the Law, just—uh—bending it a little. After all, if that wasn't honorable, you wouldn't have been doing it yourself all these weeks."

Jame's stunned gaze dropped to the soggy piece of parchment in her hand. At the sight of it, she caught her breath, then threw back her head with a shout of laughter. Marc stared at her. She held the scroll out to him. Streaks of ink twisted down it into a muddy lower margin. Not a letter remained legible.

"By Trinity, m'lord Ishtier may be subtle, but he's not omniscient," she said. "This is one solution he could never have foreseen. Here, take the damn thing! Just this once, I'll let you steal for me. Now, in all the names of God, let's get out of here."

"Uh, lass . . . short of staging a massacre, how? I've no taste for these peoples' blood."

"It needn't come to that. Look here: where there's fire," she gestured to the wet ashes in the cupped hands, "there's usually smoke. Where there's smoke, there had better be some sort of ventilation." Her finger traced a line from the offering bowl to the ceiling far above. There among the shadows was a square of lesser darkness, through which the eyes of the Frog constellation sparkled fitfully.

Her hands had been busy as she spoke, pulling small pieces of metal out of her full sleeve and fitting them into the familiar form of a Cloudie's grapnel. To this she snapped the line that had been wound about her waist. On the third try, the hook shot straight through the hole and caught firmly on something outside on the roof.

Marc went up first, by some miracle not falling asleep halfway to the ceiling, although he had begun to nod again. Jame, following him, heard the door at last give way as the bar dropped off altogether. The shouts of the celebrants changed timbre as the wall of dammed up water came crashing down on them. It was fortunate, she thought, as she scrambled up onto the roof, that they had all come expecting to get wet anyway.

So much for Loogan. Now, to get Marc safely home, and then to settle with m'lord Ishtier.

* * *

"FOOL, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE?"

Jame had come prepared for the priest's anger, but the violence of it drove her back a step, flinching.

"The key to our future was in your hands, and you threw it away. How many ages have you added to our exile? How many eons until night falls at last?"

"Night? Exile?" She had expected his rage to fall on her for denying him (and, unfortunately, the Three People as well) the means for escaping Rathillien to the next threshold world if the barriers here against Perimal Darkling should fall. Why was he looking backward to lands already lost?

At the sound of her voice, the old man stiffened, as though suddenly aware that he had said too much. The shriveled lips moved again. This time not words but raw power whispered in from the outer corridors, ripping into her, blocking thought, freezing motion. She knew that he meant this to be her death.

"BE STILL, TONGUE THAT SPEAKS . . . TO THE CHOSEN LEAVE THE HIDDEN WAYS."

Afterwards, seated by a sleeping Marc in the loft, Jame touched her sore throat. Yes, she had said that, one hand thrown up to shield her face . . . or perhaps, futilely, to seal in the words. But whatever had possessed her to raise it higher, fingers curved, nails unsheathed, beckoning as did the image of Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys, towering over both her and the priest? Sheer defiance, probably. It was dangerous to mimic the god, but well worth it this once to see Ishtier blanch. He had not hindered her leave-taking.

Jorin was pacing from one end of the loft to the other. She needed no mental link to know his thoughts as he turned his blind, moon-opal eyes to her with each pass: the hills? Now? Now? Soon, kitten, soon. As she had told Cleppetty earlier, it was clear that he was rapidly outgrowing these cramped quarters and would soon have to be moved elsewhere.

The knapsack lay on her knees. All this time it had been there, and she had been trying to ignore it, as though hoping it would somehow vanish or she would think of an excuse to return it to its hiding place unopened. No such excuse had occurred to her. With a sigh, Jame threw back the flap and drew out the large, flat package.

She unwrapped it gingerly, folding back the cloth, layer by layer, to reveal at last what appeared to be simply an old book, remarkable only in the unexpected warmth of its soiled white binding. Fixing in her mind the patterns she hoped to find but not their meaning, Jame opened it. The first page was covered with hieroglyphs of a completely unknown nature. So were the second, third, and fourth, up to the twenty-fifth; and every one of them was written in a different, equally unfamiliar language. The damn thing was playing with her.

"Stop it!" said Jame sharply, rapping it with her knuckles.

The next page was composed of Kencyr Master Words. On it, she found the second set of runes that she had been looking for and, turning back, located the first where before there had only been an unreadable tangle of lines. When she closed the volume, its binding was no longer dingy leather but something finer grained and wanner, with little white hairs and faint blue lines running just under the surface.

So. Now she knew not only why she had been so sure the scroll in Gorgo's temple was Anthrobar's and why its destruction—a potential catastrophe for her people—had not dismayed her, but also why she had been able to quote to Ishtier both a section she had just read and one she had not.

Because the original was in her possession.

Marc's voice sounded again in her mind against the memory of falling water. "How did it get here?" he was asking. "How?"

There was only one way. When the elder world fell, the renegade Master of Knorth had kept it with him in the deepening shadows, dedicating it as he did himself and his sister-consort Jamethiel to the service of Perimal Darkling; and there it had stayed for time out of mind, becoming no more than a legend to most of those Kencyrs who had fled. If the Book was in Jame's hands now, it could only mean that she herself had brought it out of darkness. Those lost years, so long a mystery to her, must have been spent in the Master's house, in Perimal Darkling.

"Well?" she said out loud. 'Tell me where else they could have sent you from the middle of the Haunted Lands —south to Rathillien, or north, across the Barrier. Idiot, it's been staring you in the face all this time."

But she hadn't seen it, had not, perhaps, wanted to see it. There, presumably, they had taught her to dance, fight, read the runes, and Trinity knew what else; yet even now not a memory of it remained. Nor did she know how she had come into possession of the Book. Clearly she was familiar with its contents, had perhaps even used it to flee Perimal Darkling, but once here in Rathillien all recollection of that had faded too . . . until tonight. Now at last the Book Bound in Pale Leather was on its way back to the Kencyrath, in her charge, as the widow would say, for lack of anyone more sensible. Or perhaps not. Such objects of power were said to fulfill their own destinies. If this one had been using her, one might even ask if she had stolen it from the Master's house or it had stolen her. One thing at least was certain: Gerridon of Knorth could not have been pleased to find it missing.

Might he, in fact, have been displeased enough to have come after it?

. . . dead, all dead under the twilight sky, within the broken walls: Anar, her father . . . Marc's demon warriors riding down from the north on East Kenshold, blood already on their armor as though fresh from battle, looking for something—or someone . . .

"Jame!"

She started violently. Ghillie's head had popped into sight around the spiral stair's newel.

"What's the matter with you? Don't you hear them? Aunt Cleppetty says come down quick before they start breaking things, or by all the gods, she'll break you!"

She jumped up as the boy disappeared, hearing clearly for the first time the steady, rhythmic pounding below, not hooves on the iron hills but tankards on tabletops, beating an impatient tattoo. A year ago, yet just that evening, she had made a promise; now they were here to see that it was kept. Let the dead wait, she thought, hurriedly returning the Book to its hiding place and stripping off her street clothes. The living would not.

At the stroke of midnight, as Marc lay on his pallet snoring happily and far away the temples of Tai-tastigon heralded the new day with bells, chants, and laughter, the B'tyrr walked down the stairway to be greeted by the waiting crowd with a roar of welcome.

Tubain, who had been considering a hasty retreat down to the wine cellar, beamed at her across the room. Trust a Kencyr always to honor her word.

Back | Next
Framed