“Tarani, it may be best if you ask Lonna to stay with the sha’um. If somebody spots her, Molik will know for sure you’re back.”
“Tarani will be staying, also,” said Thymas.
I sighed. “Tarani?”
She stood up. “Lonna has her instructions, Captain. I am ready to go.”
“Tarani is to be my wife, Captain,” Thymas said, stressing the title just a little. “This is my decision to make. I demand that you order her to obey me.”
I almost laughed out loud at the image of me ordering Tarani to do anything. But it wasn’t laughable.
He was serious.
She was determined.
I was so tired of it all.
“I can’t command Tarani’s actions,” I said, “and neither can you, until you’re actually married.” If then, I added silently. “Besides, we need her. I just got a look at the outside of the building where Molik is. I saw a lot of people going in. Nobody had to turn in their weapons. If Molik feels that secure, we’ll have to fight an army to get to him without Tarani’s help.”
“But—”
“If you don’t want to see her with Molik, then stay here,” I snapped. “And if you come with us, you’d better keep quiet and follow orders—especially those regarding Molik.”
“Tarani is—”
“Do you understand the terms, Thymas?”
“Yes, Captain.”
I grabbed my saddlebags out of his hands. The ropes had been re-tied to serve as a shoulder harness, and I arranged them as I walked away.
In a few minutes, I looked back to see Tarani following me and, some five paces behind her, Thymas.
He might not want to see Molik and Tarani together, I thought. But neither does he want them to be together while he’s not there.
I’ve seen some jealousy in my time, but Thymas takes the prize. I can’t see what’s bothering him, since it’s more than clear that Tarani despises Molik, and Thymas has everything she gave to Molik, plus a promise of marriage …
Oho.
Everything?
She told Thymas she had borrowed her grubstake from Molik. She didn’t tell him the truth until she was forced to. And whenever I’ve mentioned the “pleasure illusions,” Tarani has gone off like a firebomb. Embarrassment over the business arrangement may have been only part of it. Compulsion is degrading, she said. What about this other talent? The idea of using her power like that again probably disgusts her.
So of course she recoiled when I made that crack about Thymas being addicted to her illusions. And when I implied that the only thing about her worth wanting was that pleasure she hated to give …
I sucked in my breath.
How I hurt her. My God, how I hurt her.
She was sixteen when she went to Molik, and she admitted that she was a virgin then. The onset of sexuality, coupled with unusual control over how that sexuality is used—that makes the ordinary pain and problems of growing up look like a trip to Disneyland.
She would have been eighteen when she went to Thagorn for the first time. There probably hadn’t been any men since Molik; anybody who knew Molik still wanted her wouldn’t have dared to cross him. She probably identified sex with misuse of power—until she met a young man who had never heard of Molik, and was in the mood to celebrate a big day in his life.
I turned my thoughts away from what it must have been like for her, having her physical needs awakened early, and then repressed for so long.
Now I understand why Tarani consented to marry Thymas. She’s grateful to him, maybe she really does love him. But beyond that, Thagorn must seem like a sanctuary to her, a place where Molik and his memories can never reach.
Or couldn’t reach, until the roguelord kidnapped Volitar. Her uncle must really mean a lot to her, if she agreed to contaminate the one place she felt free of her past.
Poor kid. Her whole world has crashed around her, these last three weeks. Her uncle is in danger, the show she went through hell to get is probably ruined, and Thymas knows about a time she wants to forget ….
Hoohoohoohoohoo.
I recalled the way Thymas and Tarani had acted, after spending the night together at Relenor. Tarani’s stiffness, I had attributed to my own clumsiness—I winced again as I thought of what my words had done to her. But Thymas, too, had been gloomy and snappish and generally peeved about something.
Could Thymas have resented it, that she had never told him about that particular talent and given him a chance to choose for himself whether he wanted it? Could that hotheaded, jealous s.o.b. have been stupid enough to ask Tarani for a sample?
Man, we both clobbered her that night.
Of course, all this might be a total crock, resulting from an overactive imagination. But I doubt it. Ricardo Carillo used to be a shrewd judge of character. Besides, it all fits together too well. I’d bet my shirt that I’m right.
Which means that I’ll have to watch Tarani and Thymas both, every minute we’re with Molik—or he’ll be dead before he can tell us anything about Gharlas.
Molik may be something unmentionable, but it was Gharlas who pulled the strings. Now, I may not be as convinced as Dharak that Gharlas is a world danger, but I’m sure as hell fed up with the way he messes into other people’s lives. Thanasset could have been killed. Dharak, too. Not to mention yours truly. And now Tarani and Thymas …
Scratch that. I don’t approve of the method, but I think that those two kids will be better off, in the long run, for knowing these things about one another. So you’re off the hook for that one, Gharlas.
But only for that one.
17
Tarani was sure that Molik would be holding Volitar in one of the rich homes in the third district. Several of these were reserved for use by the Living Death, until their time ran out one way or another. I thought it might be possible for Tarani to reach into Molik’s mind from a distance, and find out where Volitar was. But I didn’t ask her to do that.
First, I guessed she would be so anxious about Volitar that she wouldn’t think to get the information I wanted about Gharlas.
Second, Molik was no dummy. If he thought Tarani might be able to do that, he’d have arranged things so that he didn’t know where her uncle was—only who to contact to find him.
Third, Molik was a living memory of something Tarani wanted to forget. I didn’t know whether she could project a compulsion strong enough to kill him, but I didn’t want to take the chance of tempting her.
So it was necessary for us to get close to Molik physically. It had taken a lot of heated discussion, the night before, to agree on a plan which would get all of us close to him with as little risk as possible.
Molik, like Worfit, kept dusk-to-dawn office hours. The last hour before sunrise was the slowest time for the never-closed rogueworld, and Tarani, Thymas, and I had chosen that time to come to Molik’s gaming house, the Lonely Caravan. I was standing beside a mondea table in the second-floor salon, not ten feet from Molik’s office door. Two uglies were guarding it. I was losing what remained of my bankroll, and trying to look cheerful about it.
Thymas came running up the stairs. He paused at the wide doorway, looked over the people in the room, then came straight for me. He panted as he ran up, making a good show of excitement.
“Lakad!” he said. “Remember that show we saw in Dyskornis—the girl who lit her hands on fire while she danced? Well—” he paused and took a breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the two guards listening, almost leaning toward us. “Well, I could swear I just saw her downstairs. I went over to talk to her, but she saw me coming and moved off into the crowd. You remember her, Lakad. What was her name?”
I pretended to search my memory. “Tarra? Torelli?”
“Tarani!” Thymas crowed, the loudness of his voice quite in keeping with the act he was putting on.
One of the guards knocked on the door.
“Yes, that’s it,” I agreed. “Great show. Wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Is she p
erforming in Chizan?”
“Let’s go ask her,” Thymas urged. “I’m sure she’s still down there somewhere, wearing a desert rig with yellow tunic and trousers. With two of us, we ought to find her.”
The door had opened a crack. One man was talking into it; the other was saying something now and then out of the corner of his mouth. He was watching us closely.
“Later, maybe,” I said. “Right now, I’m more interested in getting my money back from this table.”
“Losing, are you? How much have you dropped so far?”
The guard lost interest.
“A hundred zaks,” I told Thymas, keeping up the act. “Here, why don’t you try your luck for a while. Mind if I just watch for a round or two?” I asked the table attendant, who indicated it would be all right. Thymas took the dice, and I tried to watch the door and the table at the same time.
When a man came out of the office and headed for the stairs with one of the guards in tow, I began to breathe again. We had counted on Molik wanting to see for himself.
As the round ended, Thymas gave up his bet with a shrug.
“That’s all I can afford to lose,” I told the attendant. “See you next trip.”
“Health and wisdom to you, sir,” the man said.
Thymas and I strolled slowly toward the stairway, idly watching the tables, waiting …
Someone in the far corner said: “Why, these mondeana are made of gold!”
“Let me see those,” said a voice which had to be an attendant’s.
“Fleabite you,” came the response. “I’m taking these with me for a souvenir. Some repayment for all I’ve lost in this filthy place.”
“Those are the property of—”
“Let him have ’em. He’s right about this place. Hey, are they really gold?”
“Yeah, they just changed …”
“Maybe I’ll take some, too …”
It was in character for us to stop to watch the incipient riot. When the door guard, along with the other heavies stationed around the wall of the salon, headed toward the trouble, Thymas and I made a dash—to the door, and through it.
Thymas flattened himself to the wall on the hinge side of the door. I knelt on the far side of the big desk. Behind me was the door into Molik’s living suite.
We waited for five long, tense minutes before the outer door opened. Tarani lurched through it as though she had been pushed from behind. Molik sauntered in, holding Tarani’s sword and baldric. He swung the door shut behind him, and turned to fasten the bar-and-pin lock.
He froze when he saw Thymas. By then, I was behind him. I got one hand over his mouth, and the other arm locked around his throat, before he could recover.
“I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to talk to us quietly and tell us what we want to know. If you call for help, you’ll be dead before it gets here. Understood?”
If he hadn’t sensed that I could kill him with my bare hands—Ricardo’s combat training, as well as Markasset’s wrestling skill—he would have been convinced by the point of Thymas’s sword, which was pricking his chest. My hand felt the movement as he tried to nod agreement.
I released him slowly, staying ready to grab again if he started to yell. The first thing he said was: “Somebody will die for letting this happen.”
He turned around, and I stepped back, trying to get a good look at him. He was about my size, but slimmer. He had the look of a man who had once been tough, but lately had gone soft—at least, physically. His head fur was a pale brown. His eyes were set deeply, wide apart under jutting supraorbital ridges, and his mouth was a thin line, never quite still.
Tarani had called him “presentable,” and I approved her choice of words. A smile, a spark of laughter in the eyes— these might have made him handsome. But they weren’t there.
Molik looked me over with the same close attention a bird pays a worm.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want to know?”
“We’re Tarani’s friends,” I answered sharply. “We want the location of Volitar, plus instructions from you to free him—with no tricks. And we want to know where Gharlas is.”
Molik’s gaze shifted to Tarani, who was standing behind me and to my right, leaning against the desk. When he looked at her, there was something in his eyes. It wasn’t laughter.
“Volitar is a matter to be settled between the two of us, my love,” he said, caressing her with his voice.
“Thymas,” I cautioned the boy, as I saw his face darken.
“Why have you brought outsiders into our small quarrel?” Molik continued. He had a soft, smooth voice.
“Be glad they are here, Molik,” Tarani said. “If I had come alone, I’d have killed you by now, and taken my chances of finding Volitar alive.”
“Oh, why so violent, darling?” he asked. His lipcorners twitched upward in a mockery of a smile. “We have been … many beautiful things to one another. Why spoil that memory now?”
Thymas made a choked sound. Molik heard it, and stepped aside so that he could see Thymas as well as me.
“I see this one has enjoyed you,” he sneered. “Well, I don’t mind having shared you for a while, my dear, now that you’ve come back … to … to …”
Molik’s voice shrank to a whisper, then faded altogether. His eyes strained open and his mouth began to work frantically. He wasn’t trying to talk—he was trying to breathe. He fell to his knees.
“Tarani!” I cried, whirling. She stood in a fighting crouch, her fists and jaw clenched. She was focused entirely upon Molik, who was crawling toward her, lifting a hand in supplication. She backed away, hatred almost tangible in the air around her.
“Stop it, Tarani!” I ordered.
“Let her do it,” cried Thymas. “Let her kill the fleason.”
“He hasn’t told us anything, yet!” I said.
Tarani had backed up against the connecting door to Molik’s apartment, and Molik was clawing weakly at her legs. His face had a bluish cast; he couldn’t last much longer.
I dragged him out of the way, stood in front of Tarani, and slapped her hard across the face. Her head snapped aside, and I heard a huge, raspy gulping sound from Molik as her concentration broke. Tarani’s face came front again, and that look of hatred focused on me. I began to feel a constriction in my throat. I grabbed the girl’s shoulders and shook her, and the pressure at my throat relaxed.
Tarani stared at me, and slowly sanity returned to her dark eyes. She put her hands over her face, sat down in one of the big armchairs, and curled up into a small, shaking ball.
Molik was still on the floor, but he was beginning to breathe almost normally again. I grabbed his fancy tunic near his throat and hauled him up into a chair. Then I knelt beside him so that our eyes were almost level.
“Answers,” I said.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. He stopped, coughed, and started again, speaking in a high, strained tone. “I don’t know where either of them are.”
He saw what I thought of that answer, so he hurried on.
“It’s the truth, I tell you. When I arranged things with Tarani, two of my men were on their way here with Volitar. They didn’t show up on time, so I sent out a search group. They found the two men in the Zantro Pass—dead. There was no sign of the old man.”
“Are you telling me that you don’t have Volitar any more?”
He nodded, swallowing. “He’s not in Chizan—I would know if he had made it here.”
“What about Gharlas? Where was he headed?”
“I’d tell you if I knew. That creepy-eyed—I swear I don’t know where he is. He left Chizan the day after he paid for Tarani’s job.”
“Did he know Tarani would be involved?”
“Of course not,” he said, his voice regaining its smoothness. “My clients pay for results, not methods. In this case, I would accept a commission only for an attempt, since the odds were so high against success. What happened, anyway?”
�
��Your killers missed their target, whichever one it was,” I said. “Were they after Dharak, or me?”
“I’ll ask again: who are you?”
“Rikardon is my name.”
Molik’s eyes narrowed, and he pulled himself into a straighter sitting position. “If I had known it was you Gharlas wanted, I might have charged him less. The reward Worfit is offering for your tusks would have made up the difference nicely.”
“Am I the one he wanted?”
“Are you the leader of the Sharith’?” Molik retorted. “Those are the words Gharlas used, and I passed them on to Tarani.”
So I still don’t know which one of us Gharlas wanted dead.
I went over to Tarani. When I touched her shoulder, she jumped slightly, then uncurled. Her face was calm but strained; her eyes were clear.
“I heard what he said about Volitar,” she said.
“Can we believe him?” I asked her.
“I—I don’t know, Rikardon.”
“Well, can’t you … uh, reach into his mind, and find out whether he’s telling the truth?”
“That’s preposterous,” she said flatly. “What made you think I could do that?”
“Oh—just a guess.”
Maybe Tarani’s power wasn’t as much like Gharlas’s as we had thought. The idea was oddly comforting.
Tarani stood up and followed me over to Molik. He flinched back from her, but the gleam of lust was even stronger in his eyes.
Thymas saw it, too. He lifted his sword.
“Thymas, wait,” I said. The sword stopped, ready for a cross-cut that would slice through Molik’s neck.
The roguelord looked fully into Thymas’s face, and saw his death there.
“Have you told us the truth, Molik?” I asked.
“Yes. I swear it’s the truth.”
“Then we don’t need him any more,” Thymas growled.
“We don’t need to kill him, either,” I said. “You know the plan—knock him out so that we can get away from Chizan.”
“And you know I never liked that plan,” Thymas retorted. “He can send word to Dyskornis to stop us.”
The Glass of Dyskornis Page 15
