Storm Season tw-4

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  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 f
rom 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 i
f 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?"