“What in the world—” Reswen said.
“I found the spell you were curious about,” Lorin said. “I wish I hadn’t. Look.”
He put the pot with the plant in it on the floor, and sat down beside it. From one of the pockets of his tunic he removed a little flask, and a rock. Reswen’s fur began to stand up at the sight of them, and the memory of the other day in the square. “What’s in the pot?” he said. “Just grass?”
“It’s enough,” said Lorin. “The formula you gave me was a blessing, once. But it depends on your turn of mind exactly what results are produced when you use it.” He put the water and the stone down. “I was outside the city walls this morning,” he said. “This grass comes from out by the river. This stone was under it. This water is from the rivulet that fed it.”
Reswen sat down on a pillow beside Laas and watched as Lorin opened up the tightly-rolled parchment he was carrying, then glanced around him. “All the windows are shut,” Reswen said. “Go ahead.”
Lorin said, rather weakly, “Can I have something to drink, please?”
Laas handed him over her cup. Lorin was apparently so shaken that he took it from her without hesitation of any kind, and drank it straight off. Then his eyes goggled again.
“It’s good wine,” Reswen said. “I’ll have you sent a skin. For pity’s sake, Lorin, get on with it.”
The little mrem’s fur was standing up all over him. He put the cup down—it fell over, his paws were shaking so badly—and unrolled the parchment, and began to read. “Irheh ne beino ral pagoh’ dichhev lellosheh echin ...”
It sounded like nonsense, as the greeting—if it was one—that Laas and Lorin had exchanged had sounded to be. But there was an uncomfortable rhythm about the words; and then Reswen turned his attention to the fire, which seemed to be drawing poorly. It looked dim, and was giving little heat. Indeed, there seemed to be a frightful draft in the place. Was there a window open? And what was such a cold draft doing this time of year anyway; when it was just cool enough at night to make a fire pleasant—
Lorin kept reading. Reswen put his paw out to Laas, found her shaking slightly. He gathered her close. The soft, insistent rhythm of the words continued. It got colder; even the light from the fire seemed to be less warm ... what there was of it. The rhythm of the words kept thudding harder and harder, shutting away sound as ringing in the ears does, getting louder and louder, and the light throbbed dimmer with every beat. Soon there would be nothing but the dark, the cold, everything gone, everything dead—
The words stopped.
The air instantly seemed clearer. The warmth of the fire and the clarity of the air flooded back, until a second later Reswen wondered whether they had ever really been gone. Laas was shuddering in his arms; he cuddled her closer, if he could. Lorin had dropped the parchment and was hiding his face in his hands and moaning.
That, when Reswen looked up from comforting Laas for a few moments, was when he noticed that the grass in the pot was dead. Blasted dead, wilted and withered; some of it was rotting where it lay, as he watched.
“Oh no,” he said.
“That’s what you wanted to know about,” Lorin said, and actually wept. “Filthy stuff.” He sagged where he sat, as if exhausted, and scrubbed at his eyes with his ragged sleeves.
Reswen was stricken still. “Oh no,” he said again.
Laas looked stricken too, but rather confused. “It’s just grass, though.”
Reswen turned to look at her in miserable realization. “But grain is grass, Laas. That’s all it is, really.”
Lorin was recovering himself a little. He sat up straight, sniffling. “It wouldn’t do you any good to say any of that,” he said. “You could say it a hundred times a day, but you don’t have the power and you couldn’t fuel it. Magic is the fuel ... the spell directs. Nothing happens without both. And to do any larger harm, you’d need a lot more power than I have, a lot more talent, more training. And more ceremony—”
“But they have the magic,” Reswen said. “The talent. Someone has it.” He turned to Laas. “Our friend, there. Masejih.”
Lorin looked blank. Laas nodded, looking very shaken indeed. “So that was what they meant.”
“ ‘It’s happening already,’ ” Reswen quoted, getting up and beginning to pace. “Lorin, if you had the stone and water from a city, and did this—what would happen?”
He looked shocked. “You’d need such power—”
“What if you had it?”
Lorin blinked. “Everything that grows could die,” he said. “For miles around.”
“And it would look like this,” Reswen said, pausing to look down at the pot. “Anyone who saw that would mistake it for blight, rust, rot, half a dozen other things. But not magic, because who thinks of magic?” He looked at Laas. “ ‘They don’t believe in the other,’ he said. Whoever ‘he’ was.”
She nodded.
And, “Hiriv.” she said after a moment, gazing down and refusing to meet Reswen’s eyes.
“I thought so. But thank you, dear one. Thank you for making me sure.” That jolly bastard, Reswen thought. Now I know why I didn’t like him on sight. “Trust your instincts,” they always said to me, but I always had to reason things out, I could never let them simply be true— “You warned me,” he said to Lorin. “And you were quite right. But I had too little evidence—”
“At least, about this.” Lorin shuddered again.
Reswen looked at him uncomfortably. “What’s the problem now? What else have you found?”
“I haven’t ... I mean, I’ve been having ... encounters. In dream and out of the body. With something—” Another convulsive shudder. “Something that isn’t mremkind.”
Reswen’s fur began to stand up. He stared at Lorin.
“There’s just nothing else it could be.” Lorin was starting to babble. “I didn’t want to mention anything until I was certain. I didn’t think you’d believe me—”
“Lorin—”
“—it has to be, the affect and the aura are too typical, the power is too great—”
“Will you please speak Niauhu and tell me what you’ve found!”
“Liskash!” Lorin said, almost moaning, and fell silent.
“Impossible,” Reswen whispered.
“No, you’ve got to believe me, it’s real—”
“I don’t mean impossible that way, shut up, of course there are liskash!” He became aware of Laas’s eyes on him, and added, a little absently, “Unofficially, of course. Officially, there’s no such thing any more....” He turned to Lorin again. “I meant, where is the thing?”
Lorin shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Reswen began to pace. “So now we have a wizard, and a liskash somewhere—and a spell that can destroy every green thing that grows outside the city. At least it sounds like it. What would have to be done?” he said to Lorin.
Lorin looked bemused. “To do so much damage—there would have to be considerable preparation. You couldn’t just do it like that.” He gestured at the pot. “There would have to be circles drawn, the right influences ... called.” He shivered all over, as if that cold draft had come back into the room and run right up under his fur.
“How long would it take?”
“Days, at least.”
Reswen paced. Two days, since they got the damn stone and water. Damn the Arpekh, damn the whole lot of them!
Lorin was still shaking like a frightened kitten. Reswen paused by the table, leaned down to pick up the overturned cup, refilled it, then handed it to Lorin. “Drink,” Reswen said. “You’re a wreck, and I need you functioning. Tell me this,” he said, and paused while Lorin drank the wine with what looked like desperate haste. “Without the stone and water, can they do that?”
“No, of course not! The stone and the water are the bones and the blood of the city.
That’s the point. Without them, willingly given, no wizard could do anything.”
“But you just took that stone, that water.”
“Different situation. I went beyond the city’s boundaries, where the land owns itself, and anything taken is given willingly.”
Reswen considered the implications of that for a moment, then shook his head. “All right. But if trickery was used—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lorin said. “The stone and water were given willingly. It’s too late now. And you say they’ve got a wizard? Oh woe—” He started to weep again, then stopped with comical abruptness. “Wait a moment. They couldn’t do it with just one wizard.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. There would have to be more than one.”
Reswen went to stand over Lorin, and glared down at him. “How sure are you? Come on, Lorin, look me in the eye. This is important.”
Lorin looked up at Reswen indignantly. “One of them might die in the middle of it,” Lorin said. “Or do something else, even just slip, just say the wrong words and break the circle. There has to be another one, to back up the principal worker. Otherwise the backlash—” Lorin shuddered. “Don’t even ask.”
“Wonderful,” Reswen said, pacing again. “Another wizard. Can you smell that one out too?”
“No,” Lorin said, sounding aggrieved. “She’s—begging your pardon, lady—”
“No offense taken,” Laas said.
“She’s a charismatic. You can smell them without much trouble if you’re close enough,” Lorin said. “The talent just boils off them. Other kinds of workers, they need to be working for you to notice. You have to have a fire to have smoke to smell. I’ve been trying for days ... but I haven’t found out a thing.”
“All right,” Reswen said. “Lorin, as far as the liskash goes—if there is one . . .” He sighed. “I wouldn’t order any mrem alive at one of those things. Find out what you can. But keep your skin in one piece; you have other business. Especially other business than taking bets, just now. I want you to drop whatever else you might be doing, until you hear otherwise from me. I want you to do nothing else but ‘smell,’ you understand me? Nothing else whatever. You smell smoke—I want you to get word to me, wherever I am. I’ll show you how to do it: there are runners in various places in the city, available for mrem who need to contact me quickly.”
“All right,” Lorin said.
“I’m going to give you a lot of money,” Reswen said. “So keep your nose open. And by the gods,” he added, “I’m going to buy you some new clothes. Now go home. And thank you, old friend.”
Lorin seemed glad to go. He pulled his robes about him and bowed to Laas and was gone, slamming the door behind him. Reswen watched him through the slightly parted curtain, a shabby, hurrying figure, bright as he passed the torchlight of one of the neighboring houses, then shadow, a shape in shadow, gone.
“And then what are you going to do?” Laas said quietly.
“I’m going to take back the stone and water,” said Reswen.
Laas looked concerned. “But the Arpekh—”
“Let them try to stop me,” Reswen said.
“They’ll fire you,” Laas said.
“Fire me? They’ll spike me up as a traitor,” Reswen said. “But only if they can catch me doing what I’m doing. There are some advantages to being the chief of the secret police, you know.”
Laas smiled at him. It was a small, slowly growing smile, but it heartened Reswen nonetheless. And that was good, for the word “traitor” rang in his mind like a bell, a leaden stroke, one that lingered; and he could use heartening.
Laas stood up and put her arm around him as he stood in front of the fire. “And how much of this are you going to tell our friend Hiriv, when you see him tomorrow?” Reswen said. “For surely you’ve got to go back. They’re going to get suspicious.”
Those golden eyes gleamed at him. “I can be quite circumspect when I choose,” she said. “I can tell him a great deal of the truth ... but nothing that will do him any good.”
“Oh? Such as what?”
“Such as the fact that the chief of police likes his pleasures, likes his food, and his Games, and his plays.” She chuckled. “And his she-mrem, especially.”
Reswen gathered her close. “ ‘Likes’?” he said.
“And is an outrageous lover,” she said, nestling her head into his shoulder.
“ ‘Likes’?”
Laas laughed softly. “Loves,” she said. “Loves.”
Reswen bit her gently.
“Loves,” she said, and this time, and for some time thereafter, Reswen knew she was speaking for herself.
•
She lay in the midst of the gleaming webwork and hissed.
She had not left it for some time now—not since she found that things were no longer running as smoothly as they had been. The situation could not be permitted to continue ... but it had continued, despite her attempts to stop it.
The problem, as usual, was subtlety. She dared do nothing that was too obvious. Obvious actions attracted attention, and could ruin a well-laid plan. But on the other hand, some of the vermin were coming too close to her plan, and were beginning to perceive the general drift of it.
The little wizard, for example. That was a bad one, but if she killed him outright, or had him killed, she would perhaps betray more than she wanted to to the policemaster. At the thought of him she hissed again. The wretched meddler! He was entirely too intelligent for a beast.
Now perhaps he might be killed. But no—that might do damage to the group which she had been using and guiding since their arrival here. And it was not subtle. She rebelled against any action so obvious.
Control?
Possibly. Possibly. But with all her other pets, she had had time to practice first. It was just as well, for some of them had struggled mightily when she first took them—and though she had swiftly recovered them, even a moment’s escape, in circumstances as perilous as these, could be fatal. Not only to the plan, either. Her masters’ opinion of her must not be allowed to suffer.
That was another thing. Who knew if, even now, they were watching her from some more hidden part of the overworld, as she was watching the vermin? It was entirely possible. There were some things they could do that not even her power showed her how to manage. If they saw her taking unsubtle action, there would be no reward for her at the end of all this ... no sweet flow of blood. There might even be recall—shame, and possibly worse, would befall her. No indeed ... she must conduct herself as if she were being watched every moment, for possibly she was. She must make no unwise or precipitate move. Killing the policemaster, therefore, would have to wait. It was a pity.
The little wizard, though ... the policemaster could do nothing without him, at least nothing that would seriously threaten her. And perhaps there were other ways to strike at the policemaster. She would have to consider these.
Her pet, for instance. The policemaster was too close to it to perceive that it might be a danger. It would be simple enough to use that pet to put a knife into him, some night .... But no: That was just as unsubtle as anything else she had been considering before her annoyance steadied down.
Certainly her pet could feed him misinformation; that would be simple enough to arrange. Or perhaps decoy him into danger that he might have avoided ... except for her. She hissed softly, a pleased sound. That was not a bad idea at all. Her humor rose at the thought of the ridiculous little relationships that arose between these creatures with so little trouble. They were certainly no match for the relationships of her own people, with their complexity and their splendid cruelty. “Worm grows not to dragon till worm eats worm,” the saying was, and though it applied to one of the lesser kinds, it was true as far as it went. One could not truly grow without devouring others. She watched the vermin try to prete
nd otherwise, and watched too with amusement as they so often proved it true no matter what they did. .
So then—her pet. But first she must call out another of them: the only one she ever deigned to use words with. It knew how honored it was, she thought. It always groveled most satisfactorily when she became apparent to it ... and that was quite as it should be. That other pet must be apprised of some of the things that were going on. In its small way it could be quite efficient, and it had handled most of the business it had been sent to the city for, anyway. It might as well have something else to do now.
She glanced at the webwork for the strand that led from her to that particular pet. It burnt low at the moment; he was asleep. So much the better, for messages passed on in sleep were that much more effective.
She reached out with her will and touched the strand—sent a line of fire down it swift and hard, to communicate her impatient and perilous mood. The glow of the overworld dimmed somewhat to show her the pet’s perception of it in dream—a shadowy realm, full of places to hide, silences, protecting darks. Her intention flared through that darkness like heat lightning, and the creature perceived her and very prudently fell at her feet.
She simply loomed over it for a few moments, enjoying its terror. Because she deigned to speak to it, it had an idea that it was somehow favored among its kind, because it was her slave willingly. It was favored, in a pitiful, crawling sort of way, but it little suspected what result wooing her favor might have. It would find out, some day, when she had trained a pet that could better do her will. Its inflated little ego would crush wonderfully in her teeth.
But for the moment it lay there on the floor of the realms of dream, face down, quaking, its colors shading through all the vividest tones of fear, with here and there the slightest thread of pride or ambition showing. Priest, she said at last, when she began to weary a little of watching its fear.
Great one, command me, it said.
Exiled: Keeper of the City Page 26
