God Stalk

by P. C. Hodgell

  "Go along, Talisman," her new master called back from the doorway. "Give my regards to Theocandi!" And he disappeared, fairly gurgling with some secret mirth.

  The dark man released Jame's arm and signaled her to proceed him. They went through a door behind the secretary's desk and beyond that into a narrow, winding passage. It was rather like being back in the Maze except that here the halls were richly appointed and she was being followed by this . . . person, whose gaze, sliding insolently over her body from behind, made her feel acutely self-conscious. Then the corridor opened into a small, tapestry-hung audience chamber. The Sirdan Theocandi stood on title far side of it, waiting. Even without Penari's parting words and the heavy chain of office that this sharp-featured old man wore, Jame would have known him from the authority—one might even say the arrogance—of his stance. She saluted him warily with crossed wrists held low, but not the open hands of friendship.

  "So," he said in a flat, cold voice, not bothering to acknowledge the greeting. "Penari has at last taken an apprentice. Let us hope he has chosen wisely, for himself and for the Guild."

  "I hope to serve him well, m'lord," Jame said, wondering if she had been summoned merely for a lecture. Somehow, she didn't think so.

  "There are many ways in which to serve. Some are more advantageous than others."

  Ah-ha! "And what might those be, m'lord?"

  "A clever person can find them out." Confidence now ran in a strong current beneath the icy surface of his voice. Forty years of power and easy victories showed in his disdainful assurance that he could buy whatever, or whomever, he wanted. "There are secrets . . ." he began, but at that moment the drapes to one side parted and a boy came quickly into the room, holding a scroll.

  "Grandfather, look at this," the newcomer said eagerly.

  For an instant, Jame wondered why the boy's pale features were so familiar. Then she remembered: that was the frightened face she had seen in the alley the night Penari had almost died. The boy felt her eyes on him. He turned, saw her, and promptly lost what little color he had.

  The Sirdan, however, was too angry to notice this interchange. The boy's intrusion had set him badly off stride for reasons that Jame could not even guess. "We will continue this discussion later," he said curtly to her, still glaring at his grandson. "Now go."

  "Very well, m'lord. Oh, by the way," she added, turning at the door. "My master sends his regards." She sensed his wrathful eyes on her back as long as she was in sight.

  Walking out through the hall, Jame considered the growing complexity of her situation. It was obvious now why Penari had chosen her, a Kencyr, to be his apprentice. After decades of pressure to make him reveal his secrets, he had taken revenge on them all by choosing to confide not only in an outsider but in one whose very race was to him a guarantee of her incorruptibility. Just now he had thrown her to Theocandi in hopes that the Sirdan would break his teeth on her. That he had not was only the first warning that little from now on was apt to be as simple as her new master seemed to think. As a further token of this, what in all the names of God was she to make of Theocandi's grandson, that pleasant-faced boy who had stood by watching while two pug-nasties had tried to kill an old man?

  She was descending to the courtyard when something warned her that she was being followed. The dark man came down the steps toward her, flanked by three others as richly clothed as he, in shades as sober.

  "There's a meeting at the Three Legg'd Dog in an hour," he said to her as he passed. "Be there."

  He and his companions were several steps below Jame when she said, quietly, "No."

  Those unnervingly bright eyes turned back to her, lighting up even more with incredulous, pleased surprise.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said, 'No.'" Automatically, she noted the position and postures of all four, the flash of a knife hilt sheathed in one man's boot, another in his comrade's belt, and took an unobtrusive step back to the stairwell. "I belong to the Guild now and as such owe loyalty to it and to my master," she said. "No one said anything about jumping when you whistle."

  "Quite right, too," said a new voice from the foot of the steps. A young man clad in royal blue stood there watching them. "No one owes Bane anything he can't exact by force," he said, still speaking to Jame but watching the four. Two others had come out of the crowd to stand behind him. Am I being defended? Jame wondered, unexpectedly amused, but then decided that she was more the excuse than the cause for this confrontation. The role didn't appeal to her.

  "Carry on, gentlemen," she said to the gathering at large and walked past the lot of them into the bustle of the market before anyone had a chance to react.

  The young man in blue caught up with her several blocks later, on the south bank of the Tone.

  "That was rather remarkable," he said, falling into step beside her. "It isn't often that anyone stands up to Bane, especially without support. You must either be extremely brave or phenomenally stupid."

  "Mostly the latter, I think, in conjunction with being very Kencyr."

  "Really? Someone told me that, but I didn't believe it. Is it true that you people don't come from Rathillien at all, and that you're able to touch minds with animals, and that you can carry each other's souls?"

  "More or less," said Jame, smiling at his sudden eagerness. "Also, some of us can't endure sunlight—although I can; and most of us are left-handed—although I'm not. By the way, you may not remember it, but I think we've met before. About a week ago, weren't you the one who dove into the river after that boy?"

  The light went out of his face.

  "I thought so. Who was he?"

  "No one knows," he said with growing bitterness. "So many young boys come in from the provinces looking for someone to sponsor them in the Guild. Bane can pick and choose. To be fair, I don't think the Sirdan approves, but he has very little control over his so-called pupil. Theocandi's general edict has protected your master so far, mostly because Penari has never much interested Bane. You, however, apparently do—and that can be very dangerous."

  "Wait a minute. Go back a bit. Why should the Sirdan protect Penari? I got the impression that they don't like each other."

  "Nor do they, but Theocandi has to have some guarantee that no one will beat the old boy's secrets out of him"— they'd kill him first, thought Jame—"and besides, differences notwithstanding, brothers have to stick together, the way Mendy and I do."

  "Now let me get this straight; Penari is Theocandi's brother. . ."

  "Older."

  "And you're Men-dalis's?"

  "Younger. Right. The name is Dallen, incidentally—Dally to you." For the first time since the mention of the flayed boy, he smiled. His face was surprisingly youthful. "You really don't know much about current events, do you? I wonder if you have any idea what kind of a situation you've walked into."

  "If I did, I probably wouldn't be here. And speaking of walking, are we bound someplace in particular or are you just looking for a nice stretch of river to pitch me into?"

  He laughed. "I don't think I could if I wanted to. No, I just thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce you to some of the other 'prentices at the Moon in Splendor down the way. It's as close to neutral ground as we have left in Tai-tastigon; and since your master hasn't taken a side yet, you probably won't want to at first either."

  "Not until you've had a chance to recruit me for your brother, you mean."

  "But of course," he said, with an ingenuous smile.

  * * *

  THE MOON was a large, brightly lit inn facing the Tone and River Street. Inside, the noise was deafening. Wall to wall, the great hall seemed to be cobbled with the heads of apprentices, with a few older journeymen thrown in and one young master holding court in a far corner. Jame's companion was greeted with a roar of welcome and not a few eyes turned toward her, openly or covertly. She had the sense of being sized-up from all directions and found reassuringly lacking. Room was made for them at a center table.

&n
bsp; "I don't see any women here," she said in an undertone to Dally, taking an offered seat.

  "Very few have been permitted into the Guild since Theocandi came to power. He doesn't think much of female thieves, which is idiotic considering the great ones we've had in the past. At any rate, no one can accuse you of getting in under false pretenses."

  "I should hope not, but if anyone says anything about having made a clean breast of it, there's going to be bloodshed."

  At that moment, a wizened monkey of a boy scrambled up onto the tabletop, upsetting tankards right and left, and rose unsteadily to his feet. Those whose ale hadn't been spilt raised a derisive cheer and some began to clap.

  "No, no, no!" the boy screeched, waving his hands. "No dancing tonight, 'least not 'til we've welcomed our new member. You, Talisman, stand up. Fellow lunatics, Master Penari's new 'prentice!"

  There was another cheer, as derisive as the first, but somehow tinged with uncertainty as well. They hadn't made up their minds about her, Jame thought, bowing to them. Among her own people, such hesitancy would quickly be followed by a challenge, and so it was here, too.

  "The measure, the full measure!" someone shouted in the back of the room and many eagerly took up the cry, all hesitation gone.

  The "full measure" arrived. It was an enormous flagon that must had contained over a gallon and a half of ale. Regarding it with dismay, Jame said "Propose something else."

  "Well! What else can we pr-pr-propose, eh?" The boy threw a broad wink at his audience. "Something reasonably simple . . . like maybe fetching us the Cloud King's britches."

  "All right," said Jame.

  Dally choked on his beer. "Talisman, you loon," he gasped between bouts of coughing, "Scramp was only teasing you!"

  "And I've paid him the compliment of taking him seriously, or as much so as anyone can. See you later."

  She was gone before he could react, leaving behind a small but rapidly spreading ripple of shock.

  * * *

  BEHIND THE MOON in splendor was the house of an obscure lay brotherhood whose members, for reasons best known to themselves, spent their lives pushing a boulder up a ramp and then letting it fall from a considerable height on a bound chicken. In the course of a day they usually disposed of nineteen or twenty birds in this fashion. The sound didn't carry far, but one could distinctly feel the floor shake inside the Moon, and sometimes a dish fell off the wall.

  Dally had anxiously noted two such tremors since the Talisman's departure, and now here was another one rattling the cups on the table. He was furious with himself for having brought her to this place instead of to his own faction's haunt, where he at least had some control over Lower Town trash like Scramp. If anything happened to his new friend, he would take it out of that wretched boy's hide. For the hundredth time, Dally wondered where the young Kencyr was.

  Most Tastigons who knew anything about the Kencyrath thought of it as an exotic oddity. They laughed at Kencyr claims to a home-world other than Rathillien, and as for Kencyr beliefs, how could any reasonable man even consider monotheism, much less warnings that some monstrous evil lurked all around the Eastern Lands, waiting to devour them? You humored people like that, especially if they happened to be the finest warriors around, but you didn't always take them seriously.

  Dally, however, did. The Kencyrath had fascinated him since childhood. He had always longed to meet one of its people; and tonight he finally had, only to lose her again in a matter of minutes. This Talisman seemed an unlikely figure when set against the magnificent, vaguely sinister forms of his imagination, and yet perhaps not so out of place among them after all. He hoped desperately that he had not seen the last of her.

  "I see you waited for me," Jame said, slipping onto the bench he had kept vacant for her. "Here." She tossed the bundle of cloth across the table to Scramp. It was a pair of trousers, made of rich fabric but much mended. "I'm afraid the only proof of ownership I can offer is that patch on the back," she said as the little Townie held them up so the people in the rear who had stood up on their benches could see. "But if any of you gentlemen think I had time to embroider the royal crest there, you don't know much about needle-craft. Just the same. . ." the noise level was on the rise again, excitedly overleaping her voice ". . . just the same, I should tell you that I didn't steal these pants. The Cloud King gave them to me."

  And that was exactly what had happened. On climbing to the inn's roof, Jame had been amazed to find Sparrow waiting for her. It seemed that when she had not appeared in court within a few days, Prince Dandello had sent out scouts to look for her; and it was her erstwhile guide who had spotted her first, entering the Moon with Dally. He had escorted her to the Winter Quarters, which were across the river in the loft of an abandoned house. There His Spacious Majesty had been pleased to give her not only the coveted freedom of the skies but also an old pair of pants when she explained her need of them.

  She tried to tell the other apprentices all this; but Scramp, after listening with incredulity for a moment, stopped her short by suddenly bursting into laughter. That set off the rest of the room. Only Dally saw Jame's face go white and understood why.

  "Scramp, my dear lad," he said quickly with an unmistakable note of alarm, "there's one thing you must never, ever do in dealing with any Kencyr, and that's even to imply that he or she isn't telling the truth. It simply isn't healthy."

  Scramp took this warning, if not seriously, at least enough so to sit down and temporarily shut up. The racket soon regained its normal tone. Jame relaxed slowly. The violence of her reaction had surprised her, almost as much as the realization that so many of her new colleagues were not prepared to take her or her concept of honor seriously. There might well be trouble over that later; but if so, it could be dealt with when it came.

  "Do you suppose," she said rather plaintively to the room at large, "that I might have a drink now? A small one?"

  A moment later seven noggins had appeared on the table before her, and an untold number were still on the way.

  "Welcome to the Thieves' Guild," said Dally with a grin.

  BOOK II

  Crown of Nights

  Chapter 5

  Winter Days

  DALLY SLID to the right, feinting, then lunged. Jame pivoted to meet him. Her left arm jerked up as she tried to snare his knife in the full sleeve of her d'hen. For a second the blade caught in the tough, mesh lining, then he twisted it free and jumped back. Hissing wickedly, her return strike skimmed the front of his tunic.

  "Not bad!" he said, maneuvering warily at arm's length. "You're fast enough, but you always hold back. Come on, let's see some aggression!"

  Back and forth they went over the flagstones of the Res aB'tyrr's courtyard, circling the well, avoiding the mound of manure that Ghillie had just mucked out of the stable. It was three and a half weeks after Winter's Eve, and the late afternoon air was growing chill, but still the lesson continued.

  "C'mon, attack, attack!" Dally gasped, leaping in with a lateral strike, which Jame neatly blocked. "What's the matter with you?"

  "I don't like knives!"

  "Well, you've got to learn how to use one anyway, unless you want every flash-blade in town picking on you. You can't take them all on bare-handed . . ."

  Jame, with a frustrated growl, drove her knife between two flagstones and sprang at him. A moment later, Dally found himself disarmed and face down on the pavement with the pile of manure inches from his nose and his right arm locked in a most uncomfortable position over his head.

  ". . . then again," he said in a muffled voice, "maybe you can."

  "Am I—uh—interrupting something?" said an unfamiliar voice tentatively.

  "I am, I think, about to be stood on my head in a dunghill," said Dally, wriggling futilely. "By all means, interrupt, interrupt!" His arm released, he scrambled to his feet, then froze, regarding the boy at the gate with disbelief.

  "Canden, the Sirdan Theocandi's grandson, isn't it?" Jame said. "Meet Dallen, the brothe
r of Master Men-dalis."

  The kinsmen of the Guild's two bitterest rivals bowed to each other warily. Neither seemed quite sure what to do next.

  "Cleppetty's just baked a damson tart," said Jame, amused. "Come in, both of you, and have some."

  "It really was you in the alley that night, wasn't it?" Canden asked as he perched on the south hearth, gingerly juggling a slice of pastry. "I thought you were a ghost god. You gave me a real scare turning up at the Palace like that."

  "I'll bet I did, and for all I know, you deserved it. What in all the names of God were you doing, hiding in the shadows while those two pug-nasties tried to murder your grand-uncle?"

  "Oh, they wouldn't have hurt him." Canden gave Dally a quick, nervous glance. "It was all a trick, you see. In another minute I was supposed to jump out of the doorway and save him, thereby winning his gratitude and maybe a chance to become his apprentice. . . or so Grandfather hoped. I told him it wouldn't work, but he never listens to me. Now he's furious with me for failing and with you for being successful, but I don't care. In fact, I'm glad," he said with sudden, desperate defiance, quite losing control of the tart, which slide off his knee onto the floor. "I don't want to be a thief or trick Grand-Uncle Penari out of his secrets or be the next Sirdan when Grandfather dies. No one seems to understand that."