by Tad Williams
"I want it out," Vo said. "I do not care what it means to you. If you help me I will reward you. If you try to trick me or betray me I will kill you very painfully."
Kimir laughed shortly. "Oh, yes, I am certain you would, Master…?" When there was no reply the old man stood. "No one would waste such an… encouragement as that on an unimportant servant with an unimportant task, and no one who could find, afford, and employ the basiphae would hire a clumsy servant. Oh, I am quite convinced you are a very good killer indeed. Sit here and let me inspect you."
As he seated himself on the stool, Vo lifted his hand.
"Truly, you need not say it," the old man told him. "I am quite certain something terrible will happen to me if I make you unhappy in any way." He touched the side of his nose. "Trust me-I have a long experience of secretive and dangerous customers."
Malamenas Kimir's hands moved quickly over Vo's belly, pushing and squeezing. The old man moved on to his face, pulling back his eyelids, smelling his breath, examining the color of his tongue. By the time he had finished asking Vo a series of questions about the quality of his stools, urine, and phlegm, an hour had passed and Vo could hear the temple bells ringing the end of morning prayers. His prisoners must be awake by now, which meant the little Hive bitch would be thinking of ways to make trouble.
"I cannot wait forever," he said, rising to his feet. "Give me something to kill this thing inside me."
The old man looked at him with shrewd eyes. "It cannot be done."
"What?" Vo's fingers stretched toward the knife in his waistband.
"There are limitations to violence, you know," Kimir said calmly. "But I do not aim to waste my last breath explaining them if you are going to kill me."
"Speak."
"Make up your mind."
Vo let go of the knife hilt. "Speak."
"Limitations to violence. Here are two. The only thing you could do to murder the basiphae creature inside you, although it is as tiny as a fern seed, would poison you, too. That is a limitation, is it not?"
"You said two. Speak. I do not like games."
The old man grinned sourly. "Here is the second. If you killed me, you would never have learned what I can do for you." He got up and walked to the tall chest, then began to search through its many drawers. "Somewhere in here," he said. "Fox's clote, no, herb of Perikal, no, Zakkas' wort, squill-ah! I had wondered where that squill got to." He turned. "Do you know, the last fellow in here who kept touching his knife the way you do wound up buying enough monkshood from me to kill an entire family, including grandparents, uncles, cousins, and servants. I've often wondered what happened to it…" Kimir stopped rummaging and pulled out a fat black bottle the length of Vo's index finger. "Here we are. Tigersbane out of far Yanedan. The farmers there use it to poison their spears when a tiger-a creature even larger and more dangerous than a lion-is stalking their village. It is made from a mountain flower called the Ice Lily. It will kill a man in moments."
Now the knife came out, although Vo did not yet leave his seat. "What nonsense is this? I don't want to die-do you, old man?"
Kimir shook his head. "The Yanedani dip their spears in the paste like eating chickpea butter with pieces of bread. For a man, even a mighty man like yourself, only the smallest, smallest amount is necessary."
"Necessary for what? You said this thing inside me could not be killed."
"No, but it can be… lulled. It is a living thing, not pure magic, and so it is susceptible to the apothecary's art. A very, very tiny taste of tigersbane every day will help to keep the creature… asleep. As a toad sleeps in the dried mud, waiting for the spring rains."
"Huh. And how do I know it will not poison me?" Vo waved the long, broad blade of his knife at the old man. "You will show me how much to take. You will take it first."
Malamenas Kimir shrugged. "Gladly. But I have not taken it in a while. I fear I will not get much work done this afternoon." He grinned again. "But I am sure in your gratitude you will pay me enough to make it worthwhile closing the shop for the day." He worried the stopper out of the black glass bottle, then began searching around the store for something.
"And how do you know I won't kill you when I have what I want, old man?"
The old man returned with a silver needle held between his fingertips. "Because this poison is very rare. You could go to a hundred places and not find it. If you let me live I will get more for you, and the next time you need it you will find it here. I do not know your name and would not tell tales on a customer if I did, so there is no advantage to you in harming me."
Vo stared at him for a moment. "Show me how much to take."
"Only a drop as big as you can lift on the point of this needle-never bigger than a radish seed." Kimir dipped the needle into the jar and withdrew it with a tiny ball of glistening, red-amber liquid clinging to the tip. Kimir put it on his tongue and sucked it off the needle. "Once every day. But beware," he said. "A great deal more at one time will stop even a strong heart like yours."
Vo sat and watched him for some time, nearly an hour, but the old man showed little difference in his behavior. With Vo's permission he even began tidying his shop, although he seemed to work in a slightly lackadaisical way.
"It can almost be pleasant," Kimir said at one point. "I have not tasted it for a long time. I had forgotten. My lips feel a bit strange, though."
Vo was not interested in how the old man's lips felt. When enough time had passed that he felt sure no trick was being played, he took a slightly smaller quantity for himself and licked the needle clean.
"And this will keep the thing inside me asleep?"
"If you keep taking the tigersbane, yes," Kimir told him. "What you have there should last you until the end of summer. It cost me two silver imperials." Again that grin, like a fox watching a family of fat quail. "I will let you have it for that much, because you will be a returning customer."
Vo slapped the money down on the table and walked out. The old man did not even watch him go, so busy was he changing the arrangement of the drawers in his apothecary chest.
Vo felt a little odd, but no worse than after drinking a mug of beer quickly on a hot day. He would get used to it. It would not affect his alertness, he would see to that. And if it did, well, he would take an even smaller dose. There was still the chance that when he delivered the girl to Sulepis, the autarch would recognize his usefulness and reward him by removing the creature from Vo's innards. Who was to say that good things might not happen? If the autarch meant to rule two entire continents then he would need strong, clever men. He would find no better viceroy than Daikonas Vo, a man not bullied by his fleshy appetites like most of his brethren. A country of his own to rule would be an interesting experience indeed…
Vo stopped, aware that something was wrong, but not sure for a moment what it was. He stood on a promontory where the main bazaar road curved out and the hill dropped away on one side, giving a view over the harbor. The morning sun was now high in the sky, and the sky was cloudless… but clouds hung just above the water.
Smoke.
He stared. His feeling of near contentment abruptly fell away, replaced by anger and something that might even have been fear.
Down in the harbor, the Xixian ship-Vo's ship-was on fire.
The sun had been up for an hour at least as far as Qinnitan could tell, and the nameless man seemed to have left the boat, or at least he had not come in to examine them with his empty expression, which was what he had done every other day, starting first about dawn.
So, gone… perhaps. If so, it might be the last time they would be out of his reach until he delivered them into the autarch's golden-fingered hands. If she was ever to try an escape, now was the moment.
She banged loudly at the door, ignoring Pigeon's look of concern. At last the bolt lifted and one of the guards peered in. She told him what she wanted. He frowned uneasily, then hurried off to get his commanding officer.
Two more officers came and went b
efore the captain himself appeared, at which point she knew for certain that the nameless man was off the boat. It was obvious that the captain still feared him, though, from the anxious way he dealt with Qinnitan: clearly he knew little about her except that she was being taken to the autarch.
"I am a priestess of the Hive," she told him for the third time. "I must be allowed to pray to Nushash today. It is the Day of the Black Sun." She hoped the invented name sounded suitably ominous.
"And you think I am going to let you out on deck for that?" He shook his head. "No. No and no."
"You would bring bad luck down on your ship? Deny the god his prayers on this day of all days?"
"No. I would have to surround you with guards and to be honest, I dare not show so many men here in this harbor. We are not at home, after all." He realized he had said more than he should and scowled at her, as if it were Qinnitan's fault that he had a lax tongue. "No. You may pray until you are hoarse, but only in your cabin."
"But I cannot pray without sight of the sun. It is an offense against the god!" Now she said a real prayer, begging that he would think he had come up with the idea on his own. "I must have either a view of the all-conquering sun-or a fire. I have neither."
"A fire? Ridiculous. I suppose you could have a lamp. Or a candle. Yes, that would be safer. Would a candle be enough to keep the god sweet?"
"You mock the gods at your own risk," she said severely, but inside she was almost dizzy with relief. "A lamp would be sufficient."
"No, a candle. That or nothing, and I will take my risks with the gods."
Qinnitan did her best to look like a spoiled priestess used to getting her own way. "Oh, very well," she said at last. "If that is the best you can do."
"Tell the gods I did not hinder you," he said. "Be honest! You must always tell the truth to heaven."
After a feverish, frustrating wait, a sailor brought her a candle in a clay cup. It was a little thing, only slightly bigger than her thumb, its flame small as a fingernail. When they were alone again she set it on the floor and began to tear her blanket into long strips. Pigeon sat up, his eyes round, and made a questioning sign with his fingers. She smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. "I'll show you. For now, just help me. In pieces this wide."
When the blanket had been reduced to a couple of dozen strips, she pulled the water jug out from under the bed. She had been saving her water from last night, drinking only a few drops, and now she handed it to Pigeon. "Start pushing the pieces of blanket in this-like so." She shoved one in the jug and pulled it out, then wrung the excess water back into the ewer. "Now you do it. Just a few, then save the rest of the dry pieces."
While Pigeon, puzzled but willing, began to dip the scraps of wool, Qinnitan took a tiny perfume bottle she had been given by one of the other girls back in Hierosol. She pried out the stopper and poured it onto a piece of blanket she had saved for herself, then stood up to cram it into a crack between the planks of the ceiling. As the boy looked on in dawning terror, she lifted the candle up and held it to the perfume-soaked rag. A moment later a transparent blossom of blue flame sprang from it.
"Down," she told Pigeon. "Down on the floor. Hold this over your mouth-like so." She took one of the soaked strips of blanket and held it against his mouth. Like every other Hive priestess she had learned the story of the terrible fire some seventy years before, when the tapestries in the great hive rooms had caught fire and most of the bees-as well as many of the priestesses and acolytes-had been killed. Ancient Mother Mudry, a young woman then and the only person still alive in Qinnitan's day from that time, had survived the horrible conflagration because she had just come from the bath with wet clothes and wet hair, which she had pulled over her mouth. This had kept her alive long enough in the choking, blinding smoke for her to find her way to freedom. But now Qinnitan and Pigeon had an even more difficult task.
"We must stay alive until someone breaks down the door," she told the boy, speaking loudly so he could hear her through the muffling wet cloth. The flame was beginning to blacken the beams where the cloth was wedged and showed every sign of staying lit. When it got to the outer boards and the tar that made them waterproof she hoped the flames would be impossible to stop. "Stay down low, near the ground, and breathe only through the wet cloth. When it gets dry and you can taste the smoke, dip the cloth back in here." She showed him the jug. "Now lie down!"
O brave Nushash, she whispered, then realized that even though she had just set the blaze herself, praying to the god of fire might not be the ideal choice. Was the autarch not the child of Nushash, after all? Qinnitan was thwarting his will-perhaps Nushash would not take kindly to that.
Suya the Dawnflower. Of course-Suya had been stolen from her husband's side and forced to wander the world. She of all the gods would know and understand.
Please, O Dawnflower, Qinnitan prayed, clutching the shivering child beside her as smoke began to obscure the ceiling of the small cabin. Already she could smell it through the wet wool, but she wanted to save the water-only the gods knew how long they would have to wait. Give us your help at this hour. Show me your grace and your favor. Let me protect this child. Help us to escape the people who would harm us. Show us your well-known mercy…
Prayer finished, she closed her eyes tight against the stinging smoke and waited.
She shoved the scrap of blanket all the way down to the bottom of the jug, but it seemed to come out even more dry than it had gone in. The piece she clutched to her own face was bone-dry, too-all she could smell was smoke. Beside her, Pigeon was coughing hard, his tiny body shaking and straining in a way that made Qinnitan feel her heart would break. She could no longer see the door through the thick, coiling clouds of gray.
I don't mind dying, she told Suya and any other kindly gods who might be listening, and I don't care what happens to me. But please, if the boy must die too, take good care of him in heaven. He is innocent.
Poor Pigeon. What a dreadful life the gods had given him-his tongue taken, his manhood too, and then forced to run for his life simply for the crime of being in the wrong place when the autarch had one of his enemies murdered. It isn't… isn't… fair… Poor…
Qinnitan shook her head. She could see almost nothing now, and had to strain to get any breath into her burning lungs. Pigeon was barely moving. At the same time a booming pressure echoed through her, as if she were underwater and some ancient, sunken merchantman at the bottom of the ocean was tolling its ship's bell.
Boooom. Boooom. Boooom.
Qinnitan thought it was strange to be under the water. It hurt to breathe, but not in the way she would have guessed-and the water was so murky. Sand. Someone or something had stirred up the sand along the ocean bottom until it swirled in clouds around her, flecked with gold, with light, with little bits of starshine like the sky at night the dark the beckoning darkness…
Booom! And then something splintered and the water… the air… smoke… swirled and flames leaped above her and shapes staggered into the murky cabin-dark, shouting shapes that flickered with red light like devils capering on the floors of hell. Qinnitan could only stare and wonder what was happening as strong hands grabbed her and pulled her away from Pigeon. She was carried up the stairs outside the shattered doorway, jouncing like a saddle with a broken strap.
She found a little voice, but it was faint as a whisper. "Get the boy! Get Pigeon! Don't leave him behind!'
Before she could see whether the soldiers were bringing the mute child, she was dumped unceremoniously on the deck at the top of the stairs. Fire was everywhere, not just crackling in the deck but on the mast and even higher, flames capering in the sails and dancing across the rigging like wicked demon children. Some of the sailors were throwing buckets of water onto the blaze but it was like throwing pebbles at a sandstorm.
Another soldier dumped Pigeon beside her. The boy was alive, moving a little, but almost entirely insensible. She stared dully at the chaos for a moment, the men running, screaming, b
its of flaming rope smacking down from above like the hell whip of Xergal, and then remembered what she had done. What horror her little candle had caused! Qinnitan struggled up onto her knees. No point trying to wake Pigeon: she would let the water do that job, or else finish the job the fire had just failed to do.
This time I'll die for certain before I let anyone take him again…
She waited a few more stuttering heartbeats until the men nearest her had their backs turned, then she lifted the boy's limp form as best she could and stumbled to the nearby rail. She leaned her back against it, heaved Pigeon up until his weight was across her shoulder and chest, then clung to him as his momentum carried them both over.
The fall took longer than she expected, time enough for her to wonder if dying in cold water would be better than dying in fire. Then they hit the water hard and green darkness closed around them like a fist.
14
Three Scars
"Before the Vuts were driven out the lands now behind the Shadowline, the farthest northern outpost of men was the Vuttish city Jipmalshemm. In writings from that city there is much talk of a fearful place named 'Ruohttashemm,' the home of 'Cold Fairies,' which was also called 'the End of the Earth.'
-from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand"
Barrick Eddon floated on the darkness like a leaf on a slow-moving river. The thoughts that made him took their direction from that flow: what they lost in complexity they gained in cohesion. It was peaceful, even pleasant, to be nothing, to want nothing, but the part of him that was still Barrick sensed that such peace could not last.
It didn't. Voices rose from the nothing-three voices entwined, three voices speaking as one, surrounding him with a tangle of words that only gradually came to reveal their meaning.
… Long ago, when the Dreamless broke away from their kin, it was because their own eternal wakefulness had driven them mad. The sleep of the People has always dulled the pain of their long lives, and even those highest and most long-lived, the Fireflower's children, can take a sort of rest and let their minds roam unfettered. But no such peace eased the pain of the Dreamless, trapped forever in the echoing cavern of their own thoughts.
