Wings of Omen tw-6

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  Another lightning-flash. A sudden wind swept down the black, light-rimmed chasm of the river, stirring the trees on the terraced shore. Brush cracked beneath his step on the eroded brink, beneath the sickly trees-she would know his presence, Ischade would; she had her ways. Had said once that she would know when she was needed, which intimation he had seized on with the misery and hope of all fools: so he was here, trusting a witch no sensible man would have sought in the first place-ignoring common sense and rules-gods, Crit-Crit would swear him to hell and back-What was wrong with him?

  He feared he knew.

  He came on an ancient stone, thrust away from it to fight the incline of the path. Hard-breathing, he climbed the treacherous slope and crested the top of it.

  And if she had been an enemy, a simple shove could have pitched him backward into the Foal. He caught his balance and she gave him room there among the autumn-dead trees, on the river-verge with its strange stones. The night went away for him. There was her face, what she wanted, what she might say, nothing else.

  "All sorts of birds," she said, "before this storm."

  It made no sense to him; and did. "Roxane-" he said. "Word's out she's on the move-"

  "Yes," she said. Her face met the starlight within the confines of her hood. There was quiet in her, perilous quiet, and every hair on him stirred with the static in the air. "Come." She took his hand and drew him upslope, following the path. "The wind's getting up-"

  "Not your doing-"

  "No. Not mine."

  "Vis-" He caught his balance against a waist-high stone, recognized where he was, and jerked his hand off it. "Gods-"

  "Careful of invocations." She caught his arm to pull him further and he stopped, involuntarily face-to-face with her in the starlight: he saw no detail beneath the shadow of her hood, but only a slantwise hint of mouth and chin; but he felt the stare, felt the smooth cool touch of her fingers slide to his hand. "That's been days gathering. Are you deaf to it?"

  "Deaf to what?"

  "The storm. The storm that's coming... .The harbor, man. What if some great storm should break the seawall, drive those hulking Beysib ships one against the others, stave their timbers, sink them down-Sanctuary'd have no harbor. Nothing but a sandbar founded on rotting hulks. And where'd Sanctuary be then?-Death squads, riots, none of these things would matter then. The war's no longer at Wizardwall-no longer leagues away. There are ways to use the power for more than closing doors."

  He was walking. She had him by the arm and the voice compelled, wove spells, though brush raked his face and he forgot to fend it off.

  "I've interests here in Sanctuary," said Ischade. "It's been long since I had interests. I like it as it is."

  Fool, said Crit's voice at the dim, dim, back of his mind, past hers and the rising sough of wind.

  "You didn't have to hire me," she said. "Not for Roxane. That matter's free."

  "I can get help." He recalled his wits and his purpose. "Get a message down there, move those ships to open water-"

  "She'd eat you alive, Stepson. There's one she won't. One she can't touch. Make a little haste. You're late. Where did you go? The house?"

  "The house- When-sent for me? Is Vis yours?"

  "He has bad dreams."

  He blinked. Balked. She drew him on. "Damn," he muttered, "could have had a horse-it's the other damn side of the bridge- We've got to pass under the checkpoint, dammit-"

  "They won't notice. They never do."

  They walked, walked, and the wind whipped the trees to a roar. Thunder boomed. Late, she had said; waiting on him, and late-

  "For what?" he asked, out of breath. "For what-waiting on me?"

  "I might have used Vis. But I don't trust him any longer- at my back. There'll be snakes. I trust you're up to snakes-"

  The brush opened out on the terrace edge that became a rubble slope. The bridge was ahe'ad, the few shielded lights by the bridgehead still aglow on the Sanctuary side of the Foal. Rocks turned, clashed beneath hastening steps slipped and rattled.

  They'll not see us. They never do-

  He was out of breath now. He was not sure about Ischade, whose hand held his and urged him faster, faster, while the wind whipped at her cloak and threw his hair into his eyes.

  "Damn, we're too late-"

  "Hush." Nails bit into his hand. They passed beneath the bridge. He looked up and looked forward again as a rock rattled which they had not moved, faint in the wind and the river-sound.

  A man was in the shadow. Strat snatched his hand toward his sword, but an outflung hand, a black wave of Ischade's cloak was in the way: "It's Stilcho," Ischade said.

  He let the sword fall home again. "More help?" he asked. If there had not already been a chill down his back, this was enough: Stepson, this one was... one of the best of the ersatz Stepsons they'd left behind; gods, one he'd well approved. Haunting the bridge-side. There was something appropriate in that; it was from this place the beggar-king had got him.

  Dead, Vis swore. Stilcho had died that night.

  Thunder rumbled. "Closer," Ischade said, glancing skyward as they passed out of bridge-shadow, three, where they had been two. Stars were still overhead, but in the south there were continued lightnings and rumblings; winds shivered up the Foal, roared in the trees downriver, on the further, southern, terraces.

  Beside him now, a dead man walked. It looked his way once that he caught, with its one remaining eye, its ungodly pallor. It went swathed in black, except the hood; a young man's dark hair-Stilcho had been vain-still well-kept. Gods, what did it want-camaraderie?

  He turned his back to it and slogged ahead, up the slope. Ischade drifted wraithlike before him, shadow-black against the shadow of the brush up-terrace, till she was lost in it. He struggled the harder, heard Stilcho laboring behind like death upon his track.

  Lightning cracked. He crested the slope and Ischade was there, at his elbow, seizing on his arm.

  "Snakes," she reminded him. "Go softly."

  In the roar of the gathering storm.

  The wind whirled in the window and the room went dark with the death of candles, except the fire in the hearth. "Reverence," the servant said, a small voice, insistent; below, in the perspective from the hill, all Sanctuary had just gone dark, what lights there were whipped out in the face of that oncoming wall; the very stars went out. There was for light only the flicker of the lightnings in the oncoming mass of cloud.

  "Reverence."

  He turned at the tug on his sleeve, saw in the dim firelight there was left the apparition of a palace guard, disheveled, windblown. "Zaibar?"

  "Reverence-two of the patrol came back-someone hit them. Some could have gotten through; they don't know. They lost another man on the way back-"

  "Reverence-" Another guard came pelting in at Zaibar's heels, breaking past the servants. "There's fire in the Aglain storehouse-"

  "That's one." Kama let fly and missed the sulking figure. Wind carried the shot astray; the dark figure dived past, along the quay where fishing boats rocked and thumped together. The dark hulks of the Beysib ships leaned drun-kenly and strained at cables out in the channel, out of reach from this side. "Damn!" She slid down the roof with the wind whipping at her braids and hit the rain-channel with her foot, stopping her descent on the trough of the roof. Lightning cracked. 'Too exposed up here. Arrows no good- Get down, get down there."

  She slid and bumped down to the stack of boxes, one-handed by reason of the bow, caught herself again, leaped down and came up on her feet-

  -face on with a clutch of Beysib.

  "Out of here!" she yelled, waving with the bow. "Out, move it-"

  They jabbered their own tongue at her. One broke away; the others did, like so many mice before the fire, running down the docks-

  A second shadow thumped down beside her, her partner, with an arrow nocked. "Lunatics," he said. Riot on the docks and the Beysib ran straight into the middle of it, fluttering and twittering-

  A Beysib dropped. On
e of the snipers had scored with something; other Beysib reached the water, peeled out of garments like thistledown leaving pods-pale bodies arced toward the water-one, and three, and five, a dozen or more.

  "Look at that!" her partner said. For a moment she did nothing but look, thinking it suicide (she was no swimmer, and the water was wild and black).

  "Their ships-damn, they're going for their ships-"

  They had guts-after all: Beysib amazed her; Beysib seamen, risking their lives out there.

  The wind roared, making the trees creak. A limb cracked and fell; the smaller debris of old leaves and wind-stripped twigs rode the cold edge of the gusts. Left to right the wind blew here, about the ramshackle dwelling whose lights gleamed balefire red through the murk.

  Here they crouched, here in this snake-infested outland, in the wind's howl and the lightning's crack.

  "Vashanka's gone," Strat protested, his last faith in any logic shredded in the wind. "Gone-"

  "The lack of a god also has its consequence," Ischade said. Her hood had blown back. Her hair streamed like ink in the dark. Lightning lit her face, and her eyes when she turned his way shone like hell itself. "Chaos, for instance. Petty usurpers."

  "We going in there?" It was the last place Strat wanted to go, but he had his sword in hand and the shreds of his courage likewise. Inside might be warm. For the moment they lived. And here his bones were freezing.

  "Patience," said Ischade; and holding out her hand: "Stil-cho. It's time."

  There was silence. Strat wiped his tearing eyes and turned his head. The steady flicker of lightnings showed a masklike face set in horror. "-No," Stilcho said. "No-I don't want-"

  "You're essential, Stilcho. You know that. I know you know the way."

  "I don't want to-" Childlike, quavering.

  "Stilcho."

  And he tumbled down, facedown, a dead weight that collapsed against Strat's side, utterly limp. Strat flinched aside in a paroxysm of revulsion, held his balance on his sword-hand, and blinked in the sting of wind and leaves. "Dammit "

  But Ischade's voice came to him through the dark: "... fmd him, Stilcho, find him: bring him up-he'll come. He'll come. He'll come^-"

  He made the mistake of lifting his head, looking up just where a thing materialized-a thing ribboned red and nothing-surely-ever human; but he knew its face, had known it for years and years.

  "Janni-"

  The murdered Stepson wavered, assumed a more human aspect-Janni the way he had been, before the Nisi witch had him for the night.

  "She's yours, Janni." Ischade's distant whisper. "Stilcho. Come on back. Ace-"

  His war-name. He had never told her that.

  "Get her," Ischade whispered. "I'll hold-hold here. Get her. Bring it in on her...."

  Janni turned, like an image reflected in brass; moved like one, jerking and indistinct. Another presence stirred, more substantial: Stilcho staggered up, clawed branches for support. Strat moved, stung to be the last. "Janni-dammit, wait!"

  But nothing could catch that rippling thing. It paid no heed to winds or brush. Strat thrust out his arm and forced his way through brush, passed Stilcho's efforts-crashed against a projecting branch and broke it on his leather jerkin, a crack swallowed in the wind.

  Thorns raked him; the wall of the house loomed in front of him, and Janni was far ahead, diminishing as if he ran some far shore, then vanishing within the dark of that river-stone wall, with its oaken door.

  "Janni!" No more need of silence. Janni had lost to the witch before-was alone in there, past barriers-gods knew what-"Janni!" He hit not the door but the shutters, shattered the rotting wood and plunged through in a roll over shattered pieces, into furnishings-blinding light. Shock lanced through his marrow, flung him flat. His head hit the floor, his sword was-gods, where?-his fingers too numb to feel it; but Stilcho was in, scrambling past him, hacking at something-

  Muscle rolled over him, live and round and moving. He yelled and thrust it off and lurched for his knees-snake, the motion told him; he yelled and hacked at it, and it looped and thrashed-not the only one. He rolled to his knees and chopped at the looping coils for all the strength that was in him. Stilcho got the head off it: it had begun to scream.

  Coils passed through Janni. He just kept moving. And Roxane-the witch Roxane, amid the room-in the midst of that place-stood black in the heart of fire; a pillar of dark, whose hair crackled with the light that came from her fingers and her face. Her hand lifted, and pointed, and the fire leaped. Janni went black himself against that light, a shadow, nothing more. The fire began to wail.

  Strat tried; he flung himself forward.

  "Get back!" It was Stilcho grabbed him, on some brink he could not see, beyond which was a fall that took them both, down, down, into dark-

  But Janni had his arms about the witch, and lightnings wrapped them and crawled up and down the pair of them like veinwork, till the thunder rolled. The light riddled him, shredded his darkness, blew both of them in tatters; and sucked inward then with one deafening clap of thunder.

  Darkness then. The stink of burning.

  "Janni? Janni? Stilcho-'

  The wind fell. Fell so suddenly it was like death; with one great crack of thunder that must have hit something near.

  The ships started pitching on a sea gone chaotic, no longer heeled by the wind, no longer straining at the cables. "Gods!" Kama breathed.

  "-hit somewhere riverside," the servant said, superfluous as ever. Molin Torchholder clenched the sill and felt his heart start labored beats again.

  "I'd say it did."

  But where, he could not tell. There was a blossoming of flame in that far dark, not the only one. There were burnings here and there.

  None large yet.

  And nothing had gotten through.

  It was nothing he wanted to remember. It was most of the walk back before he could hear; and most of the long walk he staggered off on his own, reeling this way and that like a drunken man. But sometimes Stilcho had his arm about him, sometimes She had his hand...

  ... There was fire, another sort of fire, safely in a hearth. The smell of herbs. Of musk.

  Ischade's dusky face. She knelt beside his chair, by her fireside, by the tame light. Her hood was back. The light shone on her hair.

  "Janni-" he said. It was the first thing he remembered saying.

  "Stilcho brought you," Ischade said. She leaned aside. Wine spilled with a liquid, busy sound, the pungency of grapes. She offered him the cup. And he sat still.

  The mind took a long time collecting images like that. He sat staring at the fire and feeling the ache in all his bones.

  "-Janni?"

  "Resting."

  "Dead. He's dead, leave him dead, dammit-" thinking of Niko, of Niko's grief, half-of-whole. It would break Niko's heart. "Isn't a man safe dead?"

  "I'd have used others. Other souls were-inaccessible. His wasn't. To reach him took very little, in that cause. Stilcho's gotten adept at that two-way trip." A step drew near. Haught's face loomed. "You can go," she said, looking up at Haught. "See to the uptown house. They'll want reassuring."

  Haught padded away, took his cloak. There was brief chill as the door opened and closed again. The fire fluttered.

  "Roxane," Strat said.

  She put the cup into his hand. Closed his fingers on it. "Power has its other side. It's not well to be interrupted- in so great a spell."

  "Is she dead?"

  "If not, she's uncomfortable."

  He drank, one quick swallow after the other. It took the taste of burning from his mouth. She took the cup, set it aside. Leaned her arm and head on his knee like any woman gazing into the fire. And turned her head and looked up at him. A pulse began, the chill about him thawed, but the world seemed very far away.

  "Come to bed," she said. "I'll keep you warm."

  "How long?"

  She shut her eyes. For a moment he was cold. Opened them again and the room grew warm and the pulse grew in all his veins. />
  "You've always mistaken me," she said. "Vampire I am not. You think it's what I choose. I don't. But some things I can choose."

  Her hand closed on his. He leaned down and touched her lips, not caring, not caring to recall or think ahead. It was the way he had gone into that house. Because Ranke might well be through. And he was, soon; and time was, he had learned in his own craft, no one's friend.

  "Damnedest thing," Zaibar said, wiping at his soot-streaked face, and a moment's consternation took him. His eyes refocused. "Begging pardon, reverence-"

  "Report."

  "Got a dozen dead out there we've counted so far, just up and down the streets. Dead men-throats cut, some; stabbed-"

  "The ships, Zaibar."

  "A few timbers stove, but the Bey's folk, they got to them-the bodies, reverence-a dozen of them."

  "In Sanctuary," Molin said with a pitying look at the Hell-Hound, "we notice a dozen bodies come dawn?"

  "Two at Siphinos's door; one at Elinos's. Three at Agal-in's.... They're Nisi. Every one."

  "Hey," someone yelled. "Hey-"

  He was in the street; his horse under him. He blinked at the sun and the ordinary sights of Sanctuary and caught himself against the saddlebow, staring down at the man who had stopped his horse, a common tradesman. There was a buzz of consternation about. Dimly Strat understood the horse had gotten to some mischief with a produce cart. He stared helplessly at the old man who stared at him in a troubled way; Ilsigi-dark, and recognizing a Rankan lost and prey to anything that might happen to a man by day in Sanctuary streets.

  Shingles lay scattered on the cobbles; a tavern sign hung by one ring; debris was everywhere. But trade went on. The bay horse was after apples.

  He felt after his purse. It was gone; and he could not remember how. He would have flung the man a coin and paid the damage and forgotten the Wriggly entire; but they were all round him, men, women, silent in mutual embarrassment, mutual hate, and mutual helplessness.

  "Sorry," he muttered, and took up the reins and got the horse away, slowly down the street.

  Robbed-not of the money only. There were vast gaps in his memory-where he had been; what he had seen.