Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  Walegrin paced the length of the town, providing the inhibiting impression of a garrison officer actually on duty, though if a murder had occurred at his feet he would not have noticed. Twice he passed the entrance of the bazaar, twice hesitated, and twice continued on his way. Sunset found him by the Promise of Heaven as the priests withdrew into their temples and the Red Lanterns women made their first promenade. By full darkness he was on the Wideway, hungry and close in spirit to the fifteen-year-old who had swum the harbour and stowed away in the hold of an outbound ship one horrible night many years ago.

  In the moonless night that memory returned to him with palpable force. In the grip of his depravities and obsessed by the imagined infidelity of his mistress, his father had tortured and killed her. Walegrin could recall that much. After the murder he had run from the barracks to the harbour. He knew the end of the story from campfire tales after he’d joined the army himself. Unsatisfied with murder, his father had dismembered her body, throwing the head and organs into the palace sewer-stream and the rest into the garrison stewpot.

  Sanctuary boasted no criers to shout out the hours of the night. When there was a moon its progress gave approximate time, but in its absence night was an eternity, and midnight that moment when your joints grew stiff from sitting on the damp stone pilings of the Wideway and dark memories threatened the periphery of your vision. Walegrin bought a torch from the cadaverous watchman at the charnel house and entered the quiet bazaar.

  Illyra emerged from the blacksmith’s stall the second time Walegrin used the mountain hawk cry. She had concealed herself in a dark cloak which she held tightly around herself. Her movements betrayed her fears. Walegrin led the way in hurried silence. He took her arm at the elbow when they came into sight of the barracks. She hesitated, then continued without his urging.

  Walegrin’s men were nowhere to be seen in the common room that separated the men’s and officers’ quarters. Illyra paced the room like a caged animal, remembering.

  “You’ll need a table, candles, and what else?” he asked, eager to be on with the night’s activity and suddenly mindful that he had brought her back to this place.

  “It’s so much smaller than I remember it,” she said, then added, “just the table and candles, I’ve brought the rest myself.”

  Walegrin pulled a table closer to the hearth. While he gathered up candles she unfastened her cloak and placed it over the table. She wore sombre woollens appropriate for a modest woman from the better part of town instead of the gaudy layers of the S’danzo costume. Walegrin wondered from whom she had borrowed them and if she had told her husband after all. It mattered little so long as she could pierce the spell over his shard.

  “Shall I leave you alone?” Walegrin asked after removing the pottery fragment from the pouch and placing it on the table.

  “No, I don’t want to be alone in here.” Illyra shuffled her fortune cards, dropping several in her nervousness, then set the deck back on the table and asked, “Is it too much to ask for some wine and information about what I’m supposed to be looking for?” A trace of the bazaar scrappiness returned to her voice and she was less lost within the room.

  “My man Thrusher wanted to lay in an orgy feast when I told him I’d require the common room tonight. Then I told him I only wanted the men out—but it’s a poor barracks without a flask in it, poorer than Sanctuary.” He found a half-filled wineskin behind a sideboard, squirted some into his mouth, and swallowed with a rare smile. “Not the best vintage, but passable. You’ll have to drink from the skin…” He handed it to her.

  “I drank from a skin before I’d seen a cup. It’s a trick you never forget.” Illyra took the wineskin from him and caught a mouthful of wine without splattering a drop. “Now, Walegrin,” she began, emboldened by the musty wine, “Walegrin, I can’t get either your pottery nor Haakon’s oranges out of my mind. What is the connection?”

  “If this Haakon peddles Enlibar oranges, then it’s simple. I got the shard in Enlibar, in the ruins of the armoury there. We searched three days and found only this. But, if anyone’s got a greater piece he knows not what he has, else there’d be an army massing somewhere that’d have the Empire quaking.”

  Illyra’s eyes widened. “All from a piece of cheap red clay?”

  “Not the pottery, my dear sister. The armourer put the formula for Enlibar steel on a clay tablet and had a wizard spell the glaze to conceal it. I sensed the spell, but I cannot break it.”

  “But this might only be a small piece.” Illyra ran her finger along the fragment’s worn edges. “Maybe not even a vital part.”

  “Your S’danzo gifts are heedless of time, are they not?”

  “Well, yes—the past and future are clear to us.”

  “Then you should be able to scry back to when the glaze was applied and glimpse the entire tablet.”

  Illyra shifted uneasily. “Yes, perhaps, I could glimpse it but, Walegrin, I don’t ‘read’,” she shrugged and grinned with the wine.

  Walegrin frowned, considering the near-perfect irony of the curse’s functioning. No doubt Illyra could, would, see the complete tablet and be unable to tell him what was on it.

  “Your cards, they have writing on them.” He pointed at the runic verses hoping that she could read runes but not ordinary script.

  She shrugged again. “I use the pictures and my gifts. My cards are not S’danzo work.” She seemed to apologize for the deck’s origin, turning the pile face down to hide the offensive ink trails. “S’danzo are artists. We paint pictures in fate.” She squirted herself another mouthful of wine.

  “Pictures?” Walegrin asked. “Would you see a clear enough image of the tablet to draw its double here on the table?”

  “I could try. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “Then try now,” Walegrin suggested, taking the wineskin away from her.

  Illyra placed the shard atop the deck, then brought both to her forehead. Exhaling until she felt the world grow dim, the wine-euphoria left her and she became S’danzo exercising that capricious gift the primordial gods had settled upon her kind. She exhaled again and forgot that she was in her mother’s death chamber. Eyes closed, she lowered the deck and pottery to the table and drew three cards, face up.

  Seven of Ore: again, red clay; the potter with his wheel and kiln.

  Quicksilver: a molten waterfall; the alchemic ancestor of all ores: the ace-card of the suit of Ores.

  Two of Ore: steel; war-card; death-card with masked men fighting. She spread her fingers to touch each card and lost herself in search of the Enlibrite forge.

  The armourer was old, his hand shook as he moved the brush over the unfired tablet. An equally ancient wizard fretted beside him, glancing fearfully over her shoulder beyond the limits of Illyra’s S’danzo gifts. Their clothing was like nothing Illyra had seen in Sanctuary. The vision wavered when she thought of the present and she dutifully returned to the armoury. Illyra mimicked the armourer’s motions as he covered the tablet with rows of dense, incomprehensible symbols. The wizard took the tablet and sprinkled fine sand over it. He chanted a sing-song language as meaningless as the ink marks. Illyra sensed the beginnings of the spell and withdrew across time to the barracks in Sanctuary.

  Walegrin had removed the cloth from the table and placed a charcoal stylus in her hand without her sensing it. For a fleeting moment she compared her copying to the images still in her mind. Then the image was gone and she was fully back in the room, quietly watching Walegrin as he stared at the table.

  “Is it what you wanted?” she asked softly.

  Walegrin did not answer, but threw back his head in cynical laughter. “Ah, my sister! Your mother’s people are clever. Their curse reaches back to the dawn of time. Look at this!”

  He pointed at the copied lines and obediently Illyra examined them closely.

  “They are not what you wanted?”

  Walegrin took the card of Quicksilver and pointed to the lines of script tha
t delineated the waterfall. “These are the runes that have been used since Ilsig attained her height, but this—” he traced a squiggle on the table, “this is older than Ilsig. By Calisard, Vortheld, and a thousand gods of long dead soldiers, how foolish I’ve been! For years I’ve chased the secret of Enlibar steel and never realized that the formula would be as old as the ruins we found it in.”

  Illyra reached across the table and held his clenched fists between her palms. “Surely there are those who can read this? How different can one sort of writing be from another?” she asked with an illiterate’s innocence.

  “As different as the speech of the Raggah is from yours.”

  Illyra nodded. It was not the time to tell him that when the Raggah came to trade they bargained with hand signals so none could hear their speech. “You could go to a scriptorium along Governor’s Walk. They sell letters like Blind Jakob sells fruit—it won’t matter what the letter says as long as you pay the price,” she suggested.

  “You don’t understand, ‘Lyra. If the formula becomes known again, ambition will seek it out. Rulers will arm their men with Enlibar steel and set out to conquer their neighbours. Wars will ruin the land and the men who live on it.” Walegrin had calmed himself and begun to trace the charcoal scratches onto a piece of translucent parchment.

  “But, you wish to have it.” Illyra’s tone became accusing.

  “For ten years I’ve campaigned for Ranke. I’ve taken my men far north, beyond the plains. In those lands there’re nomads with no cause to fear us. Swift and outnumbering us by thousands they cut through our ranks like a knife through soft cheese. We fell back and the Emperor had our commanders hung as cowards. We went forwards again, with new officers, and were thrown back again with the same results. I was commissioned myself and feared we’d be sent forwards a third time, but Ranke has discovered easier gold to conquer in the east and the army left its dead in the field to chase some other Imperial ambition.

  “I remembered the stories of Enlibar. I hid there when I first escaped this town. With Enlibar steel my men’s swords would reap nomad blood and I would not be deemed a coward.

  “I found men in the capitol who listened to my plans. They knew the army and knew the battlefield. They’re no friends of a hidebound Emperor who sees no more of war than a parade ground, but they became my friends. They gave me leave to search the ruins with my men and arranged for the garrison posts here when all omens said the answer lay in Sanctuary. If I can return to them with the formula the army won’t be the whipping-boy of lazy Emperors. Someday men who understand steel and blood would rule … but, I’ve failed them. The damned S’danzo curse has preceded me! The mage was gone when I got here and my dreams have receded further with each step I decided to take.”

  “Walegrin,” Illyra began, “the S’danzo are not that powerful. Look at the cards. I cannot read your writing, but I can read them and there are no curses in your fate. You’ve found what you came for. Red clay yields steel through the Ore ruler, Quicksilver. True, Quicksilver is a deceiver, but only because its depths are concealed. Quicksilver will let you change this scribbling into something more to your liking.” She was S’danzo again, dispensing wisdom amid her candles, but without the bright colours and heavy kohl her words had a new urgent sincerity.

  “You are touched by the same curse! You lie with your husband yet have no children.”

  Illyra shrank back ashamed. “I … I use the S’danzo gifts; I must believe in their powers. But you seek the power of steel and war. You need not believe in S’danzo; you need not fear them. You ran away—you escaped! The only curse upon you is that of your own guilt.”

  She averted her eyes from his face and collected her cards carefully lest her trembling fingers send the deck flying across the rough-hewn floors. She shook out her cloak, getting relief from her anger in the whip-like snap of the heavy material.

  “I’ve answered your questions. I’ll take my payment, if you please.” She extended her hand, still not looking at his face.

  Walegrin unfastened the suede pouch from his belt and placed it on the table. “I’ll get the torch and we can leave for the bazaar.”

  “No, I’ll take the torch and go alone.”

  “The streets are no place for a woman after dark.”

  “I’ll get by—I did before.”

  “I’ll have one of my men accompany you.”

  “All right,” Illyra agreed, inwardly relieved by the compromise.

  From the speed with which the soldier appeared Illyra guessed he had been right outside all along and party to everything that had passed. Regardless, the man took the torch and walked slightly ahead of her, attentive to duty but without any attempt at conversation until they reached the bazaar gates where Illyra had to step forwards to guide them both through the maze of stalls.

  She took her leave of the man without farewell and slipped into the darkness of her home. Familiarity obviated need for light. She moved quickly and quietly, folding the clothes into a neat bundle and storing the precious pouch with her few other valuables before easing into the warm bed.

  “You’ve returned safely. I was ready to pull on my trousers and come looking for you. Did he give you all that he promised?” Dubro whispered, settling his arms around her.

  “Yes, and I answered all his questions. He has the formula now for Enlibar steel, whatever that is, and if his purposes are true he’ll make much of it.” Her body released its tension in a series of small spasms and Dubro held her tighter.

  “Enlibar steel,” he mused softly. “The swords of legend were of Enlibar steel. The man who possesses such steel now would be a man to be reckoned with … even if he were a blacksmith.”

  Illyra pulled the linen over her ears and pretended not to hear.

  ****

  “SWEETMEATS! SWEETMEATS! ALWAYS the best in the bazaar! Always the best in Sanctuary!”

  Mornings were normal again with Haakon wheeling his cart past the blacksmith’s stall before the crowds disrupted the community. Illyra, one eye ringed with kohl and the other still pristine, raced out to purchase their breakfast treats.

  “There’s news in the town,” the vendor said as he dropped three of the pastries onto Illyra’s plate. “Twice news in fact. All of last night’s watch from the garrison took its leave of the town during the night and the crippled scribe who lived in the Street of Armourers was carried off amid much screaming and commotion. Of course, there was no watch to answer the call. The Hell Hounds consider it beneath them to patrol the law-abiding parts of town.” Haakon’s ire was explained, in part, by his own residence in the upper floors of a house on the Street of Armourers.

  Illyra looked at Dubro, who nodded slowly in return.

  “Might they be connected?” she asked.

  “Pah! What would fleeing garrison troops want with a man who reads fifteen dead languages but can’t pass water without someone to guide his hands?”

  What indeed?

  Dubro went back to his forge and Illyra stared over the bazaar walls to the palace which marked the northern extent of the town. Haakon, who had expected a less mysterious reaction to his news, muttered farewell and wheeled his cart to another stall for a more sympathetic audience.

  The first of the day’s townsfolk could he heard arguing with other vendors. Illyra hurried back into the shelter of the stall to complete her daily transformation into a S’danzo crone. She pulled Walegrin’s three Ore cards from her deck and placed them in the pouch with her mother’s jewellery, lit the incense of gentle-forgetting, and greeted the first querent of the day.

  The Dream Of The Sorceress

  By A.E. Van Vogt

  THE SCREAM BROUGHT Stulwig awake in pitch darkness. He lay for a long moment stiff with fear. Like any resident of old, decadent Sanctuary his first fleeting thought was that the ancient city, with its night prowlers, had produced another victim’s cry of terror. This one was almost as close to his second-floor, greenhouse residence as—

  His mi
nd paused. Realization came, then, in a nickering self-condemnation.

  Did it again!

  His special nightmare. It had come out of that shaded part of his brain where he kept his one dark memory. Never a clear recall. Perhaps not even real. But it was all he had from the night three years and four moons ago when his father’s death cry had come to him in his sleep.

  He was sitting up, now, balancing himself on the side of the couch. And thinking once more, guiltily: if only that first time I had gone to his room to find out.

  Instead, it was morning before he had discovered the dead body with its slit throat and its horrifying grimace. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. Which was odd. Because his father at fifty was physically a good example of the healer’s art he and Alten both practised. Lying there in the light of day after his death, his sprawled body looked as powerful and strong as that of his son at thirty.

  The vivid images of that past disaster faded. Stulwig sank back and down onto the sheep fur. Covered himself. Listened in the continuing dark to the sound of wind against a corner of his greenhouse. It was a strong wind; he could feel the bedroom tremble. Moments later, he was still awake when he heard a faraway muffled cry—someone being murdered out there in the Maze?

  Oddly, that was the final steadying thought. It brought his inner world into balance with the outer reality. After all, this was Sanctuary where, every hour of each night, a life ended violently like a candle snuffed out.

  At this time of early, early morning he could think of no purpose that he could have about anything. Not with those dark, dirty, dusty, windblown streets. Nor in relation to the sad dream that had brought him to shocked awareness. Nothing for him to do, actually, but turn over, and—

  He woke with a start. It was daylight. And someone was knocking at his outer door two rooms away.