by Lynn Abbey
“Aye, cursed words,” snarled the Irrune, punctuating his comment with a hawking spit that missed the spittoon by a good foot and a half. “She stumbled into a spell and damned herself.”
“Evil eye,” muttered the S’danzo, apparently re-engaging a conversation their entrance had interrupted.
“Cursed words,” the warrior huffed. “She damned herself.”
“She had the evil eye put upon her,” said the dark-haired youth. “My mother’s brother, he had the evil eye put upon him, and he fell down a well. A well that had not been there the night before.”
“Your uncle got drunk and lost his way,” said Ravadar, and his allies laughed. The S’danzo-blooded youth gripped the knife more tightly but said nothing.
“What’s this?” said Heliz, toeing the list of phrases.
One of the kitchen staff, a blond girl with blackened streaks in her hair, said, “Those are the curses Little Minx used, best as we can remember them. One of them may have done this.”
“So you spoke the words?” said Heliz.
“Do we look like fools?” thundered Ravadar. “We described them and wrote them down so we could all agree with them. Words have power. Curse words most of all.”
“Who told you that?” asked Heliz, trying to keep his voice as neutral as he could for the moment.
The big warrior’s eyes flickered. “I always heard it was so.” Heliz remained silent. “It’s common knowledge,” the Irrune warrior added after a moment.
“Evil eye,” repeated the dark-haired youth.
“And you are?” said Heliz to the youth.
“I am …” Feminine features twisted beneath hard, masculine brows. “Merely curious.”
Ravadar let out a chuckle, “S’danzo won’t tell you it’s raining out even if they come in soaking wet.” His companions laughed in agreement.
Heliz ignored the comment, and instead looked at the scrawled list. “The first one reads …” He tried to sound it out. “Puh-ed-knawk … ?”
The Irrune leaped back as if burned, along with his two companions and the kitchen staff as well. Big Minx let out a squeal. It was the S’danzo’s turn to let out a laugh, harsh as a northern winter and sharp as a knife blade.
“Don’t say it!” bellowed the Irrune. “You would call down ruin on us all!”
“So what do you refer to it as?” said Heliz dryly. “This first epithet?”
The gray bureaucrat said, “We’re calling it Engaging with a Ilsigi Woman.” His voice was whisper-quiet. “An ill-kempt Ilsigi woman.”
“And the second?” Heliz looked around.
“A S’danzo not of her father’s issue,” said the youth in a flat voice.
“And the third?” said the linguist. He looked hard at the Irrune.
“Eating one’s dinner a second time,” said the big warrior. When Heliz said nothing, he added, “It’s a common curse in the north.”
“I do not doubt that it is,” said the linguist. He scowled at the writing, and said, “They’re not very readable.”
“Best that could be done,” said the gray man, “under the circumstances”
“So you are the scrivener of this list?” said Heliz.
“I am.”
Heliz squinted at the list. “You’re not very good at it.”
The gray man’s tone grew sharper. “A workman is only as good as his tools.”
“A poor workman blames his tools,” said Heliz, pulling his tablet and writing kit from one of the new robe’s deep pockets. He opened it on the table and produced a quartersheet of papyrus and a charcoal stylus. “Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“That you can write.” The linguist nodded toward the phrases.
“Write what?” said the bureaucrat, his brows knitted.
“Anything you like,” said Heliz. “Recopy this mess.” He tapped his toe against the eighth epithet, which involved unwilling engagement with a barnyard animal. “Or just write ‘I know how to write,’ in the language of your choice. Don’t worry, I can read any language you put down. If your penmanship is up to snuff, that is. I need to know whether this mess on the floor is accurate.”
The gray little bureaucrat glared at Heliz, looked briefly at Lumm, then picked up both the stylus and the challenge. As he scratched the papyrus, the linguist said to the others, “Have you all been in Sanctuary long?”
“Three, four weeks,” said Ravadar, looking at the others. They nodded.
“Just passing through,” said the gray man, not looking up.
“I live here,” said the youth. The kitchen staff nodded in agreement, though it was unclear if the youth was claiming Sanctuary or the Vulgar Unicorn as his home address.
“And you all saw the same thing?”
The Irrune recapped the points, similar to what Lumm had told him before, and the S’danzo put in a few comments, but there was nothing that Heliz has not heard before arriving.
“Here,” said the gray bureaucrat, shoving the bit of reed paper toward him.
“I know how to write,” read Heliz aloud. “Not horribly original, but a good hand. I apologize for my impeachment of your ability, Master … Gobble, it says here?”
“Gothal,” said the gray man frostily.
“Close enough.”
Heliz lifted the piece of paper and spoke a word, an adjective of power that he knew. The word was strange and arcane and those that heard it would not be able to repeat it if they tried, so slippery was it in their mind. He felt the forces of the universe twist around him, and despite himself, he allowed himself a small grin.
The piece of papyrus burst into flames.
Big Minx and the staff leaned away, frightened. Lumm and the gray man both scowled. The dark-haired youth’s eyes brightened.
The Irrune warrior’s hand dropped to his sword, “You are a frogging wizard!”
“Hardly,” lied Heliz. “That’s a street-corner trick, a bit of rough-treated paper that ignites when rubbed against itself. And that’s what I think all this is, a bit of street-corner mummery.”
“Nonsense!” snapped Ravadar. “She spoke cursed words!”
“Evil eye,” said the youth.
“She cursed,” said Heliz, color coming to his face. “So has every man and woman that’s ever come into this nasty little hellhole.” He saw Big Minx bridle at the description, her brows knitting. “There’s nothing here,” he tapped the chalked words with a boot, “that hasn’t been said within these walls at least a thousand times, and probably by the little round-heeled trollop herself.”
The knitted brows of the large tavern wench deepened, but Heliz pressed on. “These words on the floor are harmless, a bit of misdirection. Street-corner stuff. Only a fool would believe them dangerous.”
Heliz would have gone on, but Big Minx interrupted. “If you think they’re harmless, then you speak them.”
Heliz looked up, stunned by the challenge.
“Go on!” The buffalo was in full-charge mode now. “If you think they’re harmless, do it!”
The others around the room nodded, and the red-haired drunk shifted in his chair.
Heliz stammered for a moment, “Well … I … That is …”
“Here!” She shoved him out of the circle and pointed at the top of the list. In a loud, clear voice, she announced, “Pudknocking bastard!”
Half the group leaned back, the other half leaned forward. Lumm took a step forward, but Heliz lifted a hand and the larger man froze. The cooper’s brow was furrowed in concern as well.
Big Minx would not be denied. She rattled off curse after curse, her voice rising. She used the fifth word three times, and the sixth term in a rattle of different tenses. She took a deep breath for the seventh.
And the ground opened up beneath her feet as she opened her mouth. It was a circular hole, limned in flame, that suddenly yawned underneath her heavy feet. With the seventh curse on her lips, she vanished into the hole.
Lumm let out a cry himself and took two
steps forward, but Heliz held him back, watching the others. The Irrune, Ravadar, was wide-eyed but nodding, his two comrades rising to their feet and craning their necks to see if they could get a better view. Gothal the Gray shook his head. The curious youth looked suddenly ashen. One of the drunks snorted.
“What did you do?” shouted Lumm, his face now twisted in anger.
“Told you!” said Ravadar. “told you that it was a cursed word. This word! This place! I told you! This place is cursed now, for sure! You should burn the building and let no one build upon the ashes!”
“I trusted you!” said Lumm. “I trusted you, and now Big Minx is gone as well!”
“Hush,” hissed Heliz. “Act like I know what I’m doing. And be ready with your hammer.”
To the others the linguist said, “What did you see?”
“What did we see?” said the Irrune warrior. “We saw that poor woman use the cursed words, and fall into hell!”
“You goaded her,” said the gray man, softly.
“Goaded,” picked up the warrior. “You goaded her into using the cursed words! And now she’s lost as well.”
“She’s not lost,” said Heliz, “merely misplaced.” He turned toward the man in gray. “You can bring her back now.”
Gothal scowled, “What do you mean?”
“Misdirection,” said Heliz. “Street-corner magic. Everyone was watching Big Minx, but I was watching the rest of you. And your lips were moving.”
The others were silent. Lumm hefted his bung-hammer. The warriors’ hands trailed toward their blades. The ashenfaced S’danzo gripped the knife tightly. The gray bureaucrat kept one hand on the table, the other in the pocket of his own robes. The man was too calm, Heliz thought, and with that realization, all the pieces fit into place.
“Words were involved,” said Heliz. “But not hers. Yours. A spell? A trigger word? A mantra? It doesn’t matter. Here’s what happened: I think you made a grab for her, and one or more of her insults struck a little too close to home. So you decided to get vengeance. That was very stupid.”
The gray-robed man gripped something tightly in his pocket and shouted his words this time. His phrases were alien and mystic, but Heliz had heard worse, and he threw himself to one side as the pit to hell opened beneath his feet.
Before he hit the ground, Heliz shouted, “Lumm! Keep the hole open!”
Heliz twisted as he fell, slamming a chair aside as he landed. The linguist’s shin and thigh rang from the impact, but he stood up quickly, and saw that the barrel-maker had been ready. His long-handled bung-hammer reached across the width of the sudden pit and hooked against the far end. Lumm strained to keep the pit from snapping shut on him. Ravadar, the big Irrune warrior, joined him, leaning onto the hammer, which was already starting to bend under the force trying to shut the pit again.
The other two Irrune swordsmen were at the sides of the pit, reaching down into it.
The gray man pulled something golden and roughly spheroid from his pocket, and held it before him. The object had runes carved on it. Only Heliz would notice the runes at a time like this; they displayed fluid curves, intriguingly similar to the ancient Yenizedi alphabet.
Gothal snarled the alien words again, and Heliz danced to one side, almost tangling himself up in another heavy chair. The linguist pushed it aside, and the chair fell into a brimstone-scented pit and disappeared when the hole closed over it a half-second later.
The Irrune were pulling the two Minxes out of the pit. Lumm and the big warrior leaned into the hammer, the haft of which now arched like a bow from the pressure.
“What was it?” said Heliz, taunting the spell-caster, his words gasping. His chest was tight and his leg throbbing, but he needed to keep Gothal’s attention on him and not the others. “Which of the insults got under your skin? Pudknocking bastard? Toading shitesucker? Misbegotten foulsnatch ? Which one is most accurate?”
Heliz gave a false laugh. “I know—small-codded frograper! That was it, correct?”
The gray man snarled inhuman words, and Heliz took three steps backward. The table in front of him disappeared, taking a platter of ceramic mugs into the abyss.
There was nothing else between him and the gray spell-caster. The cluttered tavern floor had been cleared by suddenly appearing, suddenly disappearing chasms. The women were almost out of the first pit. The force trying to close it had bent the haft of the hammer almost double.
Heliz needed a weapon. Anything would do. He remembered the heavy bronze tablet in his breast pocket. He smiled and casually reached his hand into the pocket over his heart—
His fingers closed on empty space.
The linguist looked around furiously. The bronze tablet must have fallen from his pocket in all the dancing around. It could be anywhere by now, including at the bottom of one of the vanished pits.
Gothal the Gray smiled. Sweat streamed down the side of the bureaucrat’s face in broad rivulets. Whatever magic he was using strained him. His face was in a rictus grin, but he knew he had Heliz trapped.
Heliz started to say, “Before you do anything rash …”
The gray man opened his mouth to conjure, but for a second nothing came out. Then a trickle of blood appeared at one corner of his mouth, and his eyes went glassy and as gray as the rest of him.
Then, slowly, Gothal started to deflate, his knees going and his body falling backward. He twisted as he fell, and Heliz saw a thin S’danzo knife sticking out between his shoulder blades. He gripped the golden spheroid tightly as he collapsed—
And toppled over the edge of the first and last pit. He descended into hell.
Lumm let out a warning shout and the haft of the bung-hammer finally snapped under the eldritch pressure. Pieces of kiln-dried wood shot across the common room and imbedded themselves in the far wall. The head of the hammer was lost with the gray mage when the hole snapped shut. The entire floor roiled like an oil-filled wineskin, and then stabilized again.
Heliz let out a sigh, this time of relief, and dropped down onto a chair. Unfortunately, the chair he thought was there wasn’t, and he fell, ass over shoulders against the wall, and knocked himself out cold.
Much of the room had been restored, minus a few tables and chairs, when Heliz came to. The images of the Minxes’ faces, one wide and bovine, the other thin and vulpine, swam in front him.
He raised a hand to swat them off like bats, and they retreated a few steps. Lumm was nearby, as was the young S’danzo. Heliz still could not discern the youth’s gender, but he/she seemed greatly shaken by the events.
Lumm the staver gave a weary smile and said, “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” said the linguist weakly. “I figured that if it was a one-time thing, there would be no hope for her. Things like that do happen around here, you know. But if it were something that could happen again, there would be three types of people who would still be here. The first were those who hadn’t seen it and wanted to see if it would happen.” He looked at the youth and received a hesitant nod in return.
“The second were people who thought they had the answers.” Heliz waved a hand toward the warriors, who had already opened the bar and were celebrating. “That lot picked up the story about the curse early, helping to clear everyone out But then they liked being experts so much, they hung around to tell anyone they could. The third group that would hang about …”
“Would be those responsible,” said Lumm.
Heliz nodded. “I think it was a magical amulet or something. Foreign, probably from Yenized, though it used an older language. Needed a phrase to activate it Such a device would be like a spell but with one word missing. When the word was in place, it opened the hole. A hole into another place, warmer, but not nearly as warm as the various hells are supposed to be. The little one angered him, so he opened a pit under her. Then he had to do it a second time to the big one to keep his story intact. He was waiting for everyone to leave so he could open the hole and probably pull them out, hungry an
d tired and maybe unconscious. You knew him?” Heliz asked the women.
Little Minx gave a shrug. Big Minx shook her head. Lumm said, “So the amulet was like a key?”
Heliz ran a hand along his head, trying to dispel the fuzziness in his mind. “If it was, we’ve locked the key in with him. That means he’s going to get hungry and thirsty and unconscious fairly quickly, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Least of all him.”
“Then you knew it was him,” said Lumm.
“I knew that your Irrune warrior could not think up something like this on his own,” said the linguist. “His eyes moved toward the gray man when I pressed him for details. And I knew that Gothal was hiding something—he wrote exactly what I told him, but his handwriting was much more careful than what he had scrawled on the floor. But other than that, no, I was just throwing accusations around and hoping that something hit.”
To Big Minx he added, “Sorry to have put you in danger.” Heliz knew he didn’t mean it and thought she knew it as well.
Big Minx held out something. “This is yours, right?” she said. “Onoe the kitchen girl found it.”
It was the bronze tablet. It was an execration text, heaping curse upon curse to the wicked in five languages. Yet none of the curses were as colorful as those the Minxes had used earlier. And one of the scripts he hadn’t quite recognized looked very much like these curving runes on the Gray Mage’s amulet …
Heliz allowed himself a smile. At least something worthwhile came out of dueling with a sorcerer in the Vulgar Unicorn.
“More good news,” said Lumm. “The young ladies are most appreciative of what we did, what you did, for them.”
The two women were back, flanking the linguist.
“We have a place,” said Little Minx, leaning forward.
“Belonged to a friend,” said Big Minx, leaning forward as well.
“He had to leave town,” said Little Minx, giggling.
“We could use a man around,” said Big Minx, smirking.
“And you’re welcome to stay as well,” said Little Minx, brushing against one side.
“You might be cute to have around,” said Big Minx, brushing against the other.
