Shadow Of Sanctuary tw-3

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  3

  It might have taken a trained investigator from Ranke a week, or a lifetime. It might have taken a Hell Hound a month or two lifetimes (a Tempus lifetime?), or a couple of days with the aid of shining ugly instruments of suasion. It took a thief of Sanctuary less than a full day to collect the information. Had he had letters, he'd have made a list.

  Since he was unlettered, he must reckon and account in his head, once he had talked with this one and that one and some others. Only one realized that he was actively seeking information, and that was because Hanse let her know. Now he made his list, in his head, while he sprawled on his own bed and stared at nothing in particular.

  Tempus did not get on with the other Hell Hounds.

  Tempus waged private war on Jubal. It was his own decision. (Not a good one; Jubal's business profited Thieves' World and Empire as well.)

  Jubal was a merchant who dealt in human merchandise. He provided some few to that scrawny Kurd fellow of whom even hardened Sanctuarites spoke susurrantly and with glances cast uncomfortably this way and that.

  In the barracks, Tempus had had serious trouble with Razkuli and that snarly growly Zaibar. (Quag had mentioned that to a certain woman under the most intimate of circumstances. A bad but common time for the imparting of confidences.)

  Stulwig Northbom had spent a shining coin bearing the Emperor's likeness. Such coinage was not all that common here, although it was welcome. People of the governor's staff occasionally spent such coins. Likely then someone had bought something off Stulwig; someone from the palace. Stulwig dealt in potions and drugs and worse.

  Harmocohl Dripnose had most recently seen two men conveying a sizeable burden to the lovely gardened home of Kurd. Harmocohl's impression was that the two were hood-cloaked Hell Hounds.

  Hell Hounds were elite Imperial guardsmen and did not deal with such as Stulwig or Kurd. Indeed, at least one of them hated Kurd. Hardly likely that Hell Hounds would deliver a human package to him. Unless there was someone they hated more than the dark experimenter.

  Tempus was missing.

  The word was out that Jubal heroically sold no more human merchandise to Kurd the vivisectionist... a man with a Rankan accent.

  Why would such as Jubal cut off such a source of revenue? For moral reasons, because Kurd did evil things to people? Hardly. Because Jubal had made a deal with other enemies of Tempus? Zaibar and Razkuli, perhaps? Because Tempus was now in the mysterious experimenter's foul and reeking hands, perhaps?

  In an ugly dark stenchy room Hanse learned more of Kurd and his business. Kurd claimed to be dedicated to the god Science. Medicine. That required experimentation. But Kurd was not content to experiment with the wounded and victims of accidents. The pallid fellow created his own. And, Hanse thought with rather more than distaste, Kurd could occupy himself for a life time with one whose wounds - Hanse suspected and thought he knew - healed with inhuman speed and completeness. Make that superhuman, or preternatural. Tempus call-me -Thales was a man of war who had participated in many battles. Yet there were no scars on the man. Not one.

  Tempus/Thales.

  'You, I own, can call me anytime,' he had told Hanse, and 'my friend', he had called Hanse, and 'Just tell me not to call you friend', he had dared Hanse. And Hanse had not been able to tell him that, thus revealing and silently replying that he was close on to desperate for friends, a friend; for someone to care about him. For someone to care about.

  Hanse sprawled supine on his bed in an upstairs room in the heart of the Maze, and he pondered what he had learned. He rose to pace and chew his full lower lip and ponder, with his soul and heart and longing all naked in his eyes so that it was good no one was there to see, for Hanse wanted others to see only what he deliberately projected.

  All I need do is report all this to KUt-to Kadakithis, he thought. The Prince Governor who had begun his term here by announcing that there would be law and order and safety for citizens and had hanged, among others, one Cudget Swearoath, mentor (and father image?) to Hanse. The P-G did not like Tempus (and father image?) to Hanse.

  It was all Hanse need do. Just report what he had learned and now suspected. Then it was up to Kadakithis. He had the power and the resources. The men and the swords. The savankh.

  Surely that was as far as Hanse's responsibility extended, to Kadakithis and to Tempus. If he had any responsibility to that krff-snorting bully.

  And... suppose H.R.H. Kadakithis, P-G, did nothing? Or if his Hell Hounds, the charming Razkuli and Zaibar, received their orders but only pretended to act? Did not Rankans protect their own? Did not soldiers obey authority? Was there not honour among those thieving over-Lords?

  If not, then Hanse's world would be a-teeter. Despite his pretences there had to be trust and some sort of order, didn't there, and trustworthiness? Hanse frowned and looked about almost wildly. An animal in a cage it feared but could not escape, yet also feared what lay beyond the bars. Even the spawn of shadows did not want to live in a world that was askew and a teeter. If it existed, if the world was truly a thing of Chance and Chaos, he preferred not to know. Fighting it, he had learned to trust Tempus. He had been/orce(/to trust Kadakithis, because he was down a well up at Eaglenest. Later, disbelieving and resisting, he had learned that he could trust the Rankan. That disturbed his haven of cynicism and was hard to admit. But was not cynicism merely a mask on an idealist seeking more, seeking perfection, seeking disproof of his cynical assumptions?

  Far better just to report what I know and leave it at that and go on about my business. That would be enough. Tempus already owed him a debt, anyhow, and had promised him a service.

  Shadowspawn began collecting his materials for a night of stealth, of breaking and entering. It was a thief's business and these were the tools. Yet he knew that he was not preparing for theft.

  You are a fool, Hanse, he told himself with a curse in Shalpa's name, and he agreed. And he continued with what he was doing.

  At the door he stopped, blinking. He looked back with a frown. Only now did he remember the look Mignureal had given him just two hours ago, and her strange words. They meant nothing and connected to nothing. 'Oh, Hanse,' she had said with a strange intensity on her girlish face. 'Hanse - take the crossed brown pot with you.'

  'With me where?'

  But she had to flee, for her glowering mother was calling.

  Now Hanse stared at the brown crock with the etched pair ofYs. Mignureal did not know about it. She could not. Mignureal had mentioned it specifically! She was Moonflower's daughter ... Name of the Shadowed One, she must have some of the power too!

  Hanse turned back to pick up that well-stoppered container, a fired pot a bit larger than a soldier's canteen. Why. Mignureal? Why, Lord I'Is?

  He had acquired it months ago, easily and quickly, without knowing what it contained. Mignureal had never seen it and could not know about this container of quicklime. She could not know where he was going this night for he had only just decided (and that without quite admitting it to himself); she was Moonflower's daughter...

  Stupid, cumbersome, senseless, he thought while he slipped the crock into a good oilskin bag he had lifted in the Bazaar. He secured it to his belt so that it rested on one buttock. And he touched the sandal of Thufir tacked above the door, and went forth.

  The white blaze of the sun had hours since become yellow in its daily waning, and then orange. Now it squatted low and seemed to spray streamers of crimson across the darkening sky. It did not look at all like blood, Hanse told himself. Besides, soon it would be dark and his friends would be everywhere, in black and indigo and charcoal. The shadows.

  I could use a good sword, the shadow thought, blending into another shadow. An eerie feeling still lay on him, from that business with Mignureal. Surely not even Kurd deserved quicklime! This long 'knife' from the Ilbarsi Hills is a good tool, he thought, to keep his mind on sensible, practical matters. But it's time I had a good sword.

  I'll have to try and steal one.


  'Thou shalt have a sword,' a voice said sonorously inside his head, a lion within the shadowed corridors of his mind, ';/ thou free'st my valued and loyal ally. Aye, and a fine sheath for it, as well. In silver!'

  Hanse stopped. He was still and dark as the shadow of a tree or a wall of stone. He was good at it; six minutes ago four cautious people had passed close enough to touch him, and never knew he was there.

  I want nothing of you, incestuous god of Ranke, he thought, almost speaking while a thousand ants seemed at play along his spine. Tempus serves you. I do not and will not.

  Yet you do this night, seeking him, that silent voice that was surely the god Vashanka's said. And a cloud ate the moon.

  No! I serve - I mean... I do not... No!... Tempus is my... my... I go to aid a fr- man who might help me! Leave me and go to him, jealous god of Ranke! Leave Sanctuary to my patron Shalpa the Swift, and Our Lord Ils. Ils, Ils, 0 Lord of a Thousand Eyes, why is it not You who speaks to me?

  There was no reply. Clouds rolled and they seemed dark men astride dark horses that loped with manes and long tails aflow. Hanse felt a sudden chill absence of that presence in his mind. In a few seconds he was praying not to gods but cursing himself for giving heed to the delusions of a dark night, a night badly ruled by a moon pale as a Rankan concubine and now covered like the whore she was. The Swift-footed One ruled this night.

  And Hanse went on, not in shadows now for there were no shadows; all the land was one vast shadow. Out of Sanctuary. Past lovers who neither saw nor heard this son of Shalpa the Shadowed One. On, to the beautifully tended gardens surrounding the house of a pasty-faced walking skeleton called Kurd and worse. The little crescent of moon pretended to return. It was only a ghost struggling weakly against clouds like restless shadows blotting the sky.

  The well-tended, scented gardens provided a pleasant if un-needed cover. A gliding anthropomorphic shadow amid herbaceous shapes like looming shadows. Hanse went right up to the house. It too was dark.

  No one wants to visit Kurd. No one considers trying to steal from Kurd. Why should it not be easy, then? Kurd must think he needs no precautions or defenders!

  Still, he kept his lips over his teeth when he smiled. He glided into the fragrant shrubs, odd deciduous shrubs with long thin branchlets, set up close against Kurd's house, exulting in how simple it was, and then the bush's trailing tendrils moved, rustling, and turned, and twined, and clutched. And clamped. And Shadowspawn understood then that Kurd was not without exterior defences.

  Even as he struggled - fruitlessly, against frutescence - he knew that the knowledge was gained too late. Whether this thing was bent on strangling him or twisting his limbs until they broke or merely holding him until someone came, it was more horribly effective than human guards or three watchdogs. Amid silent rustling horror Hanse tugged at the tendril more slender than a brooch-pin, and only cut his fingers. His knife he only dulled, sawing at a purposeful tendril that gave but refused to be cut. And they moved, twining, rustling, insinuating themselves between his arms and body and around his legs and arms and torso and -throat!

  That one he fought until his fingers bled. It was relentless. Oye gods, no, no, not like this - he was going to die, silently strangled by a damned skinny plant's tendril!

  He was, too. His 'N-' disposed of his last breath. He could not draw another. As his eyes started to bulge and a dull hum commenced to invade his ears on the way to becoming a roar and then eternal silence, it occurred to him that Kurd's garden could do more than strangle him. If it continued to tighten, it would slice in and in until it beheaded a strangled corpse.

  Hanse fought with all his strength and the added power of desperation. As well have resisted the tide, or the sand of the desert. His movements became more restricted as his limbs were more and more constricted. Dizziness began to build like storm clouds and the hum rose to the roar of a gale.

  So did the clouds above, and great big drops of water commenced to fall from the laden sky. That was just as eerie and impossible, for rain in Sanctuary fell in accord with the season, and this was not that season. The land was weeks away from the time called Lizard Summer, when lizards fried or were said to fry in their own juices, out on the desert.

  What matter? Plants loved rain. And this one loved to kill. And it was killing Hanse, who was losing consciousness and feeling while his hearing became restricted to the roar inside his head. More rain fell and Hanse, dying, tried to swallow and could not and did what he thought he could never do: he began to give up.

  Memory came like a white flash of late summer lightning. He heard her words as clearly as he had hours ago. 'Hanse - take the crossed brown pot with you.'

  Even that blazing flare of hope seemed too late, for how could his bound arms detach the bag from his belt, open it, open the crock inside, and give this predatory plant a message it might understand?

  Answer: he could not.

  He could, however, dying, jerk his forearm four or five inches. He did, again and again, breathless, dying, losing consciousness but still moving, puncturing the leather bag again and again and banging the point of his knife off the pot which was smooth, glazed, well made, and 0 damn it all too damned hard

  It broke. Shards punched through knife holes and widened them to let quicklime spill down in a candent stream. Hanse was sure it hissed in the moist grass about the moist base of the strangler plant - but Hanse could not hear that hissing or anything else save the roar of a surf more powerful than life could withstand.

  He slumped, dead now with streamers of caustic steam rising above his legs - and a suddenly frenetic shrub began waving and snapping its tendrils about as if caught by the very Compass Bag itself, whence issues the wind of every direction at once. In those whipping throes it not only released its prey, it hurled him several feet backwards. He lay sprawled, away from the plant and clear of the smoking corrosive death about its base, and the soles of his buskins smoked. Rain pelted his face and he lay still, still, while the killer plant died.

  It was not raining in Sanctuary but out of a clear night sky came a sizzling bolt that hardly rocked the structure that grounded it. The graven name VASHANKA, however, abruptly disappeared from the facade of that structure, which was the Governor's Palace.

  4

  Oh damn, but my damned head aches!

  Pox and plague, that's rain on my face and I'm getting soaked!

  Holy cess- I'm alive!

  None of these thoughts prompted Hanse to move, not for a longish while. Then he tried opening his mouth to let rain assuage a sore throat, and choked on the fifth or sixth drop. He sat up hurriedly. His grunt was not from his head, which felt fat and swollen and stuffed to bursting. He rolled swiftly leftward off a source of sharper pain. He had been lying on his back. Under him, thonged to his belt, had been the ruins of a nice leathern bag of broken pottery.

  If I don't bleed to death I'll be picking pieces of pottery out of my tail for a week!

  That thought made him angry and with a low groan he rose to glare triumphantly on the faintly smoking remnant of a destroyed shrub. Its neighbour looked almost as bad. Shadowspawn took no chances with it. Avoiding shrubs and indeed anything herbaceous that was larger than a blade of grass, he went to the nearest window. Just as he completed his slow slicing of the sheet of pig's bladder stretched over the opening, he heard the awful sound from within. A groan, long and wavery and hideous. Hanse went all over gooseflesh and considered heading for home.

  He did not. He peeled aside the ruined window and peered into a dark room containing neither bed nor person. Mindful of his punctured and lacerated buttock, he went in. There was nothing to do about his head. He had, after all, been strangled to death. Or come so close that the difference wasn't worth considering -save that he was alive, which was absolutely all the difference that mattered.

  After a long measured while of standing frozen, listening, staring in effort to make his eyes see, he moved. He heard nothing. No groan, no movement, no rain. The moon was ba
ck. It was not in line with the window, but it was up there and a little light sneaked in to aid a thief.

  He found a wall, a jamb. Squatted, then went lower, wincing at rearward pain, to ensure that no light showed under the door. The latch was a simple press-down hook. He took his time depressing it. He took more time in slowly, slowly pulling open the door. It revealed a corridor or short hall.

  While he wondered whether to go right or leftward, that ghastly sound of agony came again. This time a pulpy mumble underlay the moaning groan, and once again Hanse felt the icy, antsy touch of gooseflesh.

  The sound came from his right. He slipped his knife back into its sheath, patted other sheathed knives, and undid the thong at his belt to get the bag off. That hurt, as a shard of pottery emerged from his clothing, and him. That hand he moved very slowly, mindful of the clink of broken pottery. He squinted before he glanced back, because he did not want his enlarged pupils to shrink.

  The window showed a pretty night, small-mooned but dark of sky, without clouds or rain. Without even knowing that the rain had been confined to Kurd's grounds, Shadowspawn shivered. Did gods exist? Did gods help?

  Hanse took a long step into the corridor and turned right. The bag swung at the end of its thong from his right hand. Just in case someone popped up, that might make him look less deadly: anyone sensible would assume him to be normally right-handed.

  As he reached the end of the hall with a big door ahead and another on his left, someone popped up. The side door opened and light rushed forth. It flared from the oil lamp in the hand of a gnome-like man who wore only a long ungirt tunic; a nightshirt. 'Here -' he began and Hanse said 'Here yourself and hit him with the wet, rent bag of broken pottery. Since it struck the fellow in the face, he moaned and let go the lamp to rush both hands to . his bloodied face. 'Damn,' Hanse said, watching hot oil slosh on to the man's tunic and bare legs and feet. It also splashed wall and door and ran along the floor, burning. At the same time, a third groan of unendurable agony rose behind the other door, the big one still closed.