The Fantasy MEGAPACK ®

by Lester Del Rey

  Riska stood looking down at the baby; her face with its high, angular cheekbones bore a studiedly stoic look. “In the undercity one buys certain powders to make sure no children are born,” she said tonelessly. “Even magic has its failures I suppose.” Morrien looked uneasy, but then that had come to be his usual look since he’d become King. She felt his arm encircle her shoulders. “Maybe it’s for the best. I can give her a home here as I promised when you brought her to me.”

  The baby had reached the edge of the bed and teetered there, and Riska who was nearer caught her, and holding her somewhat awkwardly returned her to the center of the bed. She was silent a moment. “Her hair is very dark.” She touched the ragged wing of hair that swooped against her own cheek.

  “But surely this is old business that we’ve settled amicably between us,” she said, turning to Morrien. She put her hand gently on his shoulder. “I didn’t come here to talk of it; in fact I didn’t come here to talk at all.” Her arm slid around his neck and she drew herself closer lifting her face toward his.

  She felt herself pushed back almost roughly. “So I’m a convenience here for you, as you make your way in the undercity coming and going as you choose, while I remain a fixed target for any assassin with the will to bring down a king.”

  Riska’s laughter, for all her anger, was genuine. “Are you telling me after the two of us schemed and fought and watched men killed so you could claim your rightful place on the throne you’ve decided now to decline the honor because you fear plots against your life?”

  Morrien lunged toward Riska as if he would do her violence but she dodged away knowing that in a moment her words would sink in. His laughter when it came was explosive, a release for long-held tensions. “I guess in those days I was filled with good intentions and many false illusions as to how a kingdom is held together,” he said. “But I don’t really cringe at shadows. Just today I’ve had word of a conspiracy. What’s the talk in the undercity about the Cult of Dath?”

  “I don’t concern myself with such talk. Priests are worse than thieves. They expect you to feel uplifted while they rob you. I know only that the chief priest purports his god to be an ancient one, and that his acolytes swagger about the streets with a certain confidence.”

  “As I thought. They organize and plot my overthrow.”

  “I’ll find out what I can about them. I can still show loyalty, no matter that you think I lack the finer sentiments of womanhood, but I think I’ll go. You’ve managed to turn me cool with all this talk of responsibilities.”

  As she turned away, Morrien grasped her about the waist and drew her down beside him on a thick rug before a hearth, its fire banked for the night. “As you grew cool, I began to burn,” he said.

  “The story of our lives,” said Riska, shivering as his lips tickled along her throat. Before he gave her his full attention, she saw him look surreptitiously over at the child on the bed, but the baby had fallen asleep.

  * * * *

  Riska brushed back strands of hair on Morrien’s forehead as they lay, relaxed but still entangled before the last dying embers of the fire. She decided she’d wait until he awoke before leaving, though that wasn’t like her. She had to admit the baby made some sort of difference, even if she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Living hand-to-mouth in the undercity as she did it seemed she’d made the best bargain possible for the child. Raised by thieves in the remotest and deepest windings of the labyrinth beneath Ultebre she understood that sometimes these compromises had to be made, but she was beginning to think that this agreement wasn’t always going to be an easy one to keep.

  Morrien’s eyes opened and he sat up staring at her as if she were one of the conspirators he’d been talking about. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I came here to try and find the right moment to tell you. Instead, I—is it you that makes this so difficult?”

  “Since you’re the one doing all the talking, that seems doubtful. But you’re not making much sense. Usually, you don’t have so much trouble telling me what’s on your mind.”

  Morrien drew a breath. “I don’t know what has been between us these years, if anything at all, but it’s ended tonight. I’m to be married.”

  Riska listened without comment, pulling on her loose-fitting trousers whose cut bespoke the undercity. She shrugged into the shapeless shirt without bothering to fasten it. She went to the cabinet and poured two generous drinks, thrusting one at Morrien. “Married,” she said, as if tasting the word, then drank quickly as if to wash away the taste.

  “The plans are nearly settled; no one knew of it, but now the news will be released to the populace.”

  “I suppose she’s disgustingly young and beautiful.”

  “I’ve never seen her, though I suppose she’s young at least. She’s the eldest daughter of the House of Hastorran.”

  “This is no marriage; just an alliance with a neighboring city.”

  “I don’t deny that without your knowledge of the tunnel-ways, I’d still be a houseless rebel, but a King must have a Queen and heir.”

  “Perhaps, but I don’t see what that has to do with us, and what we’ve had together. It hasn’t been all that bad, has it, for all it didn’t begin well. Take a Queen if you like, take twenty…you’ll still wait for my return, as always.”

  Morrien took her hands gently. “You’re a kind of insanity to me. And you must agree that an open doorway into the King’s bedchamber is the answer to an assassin’s prayer.”

  She nodded curtly, and your ministers will be sure not to let a thief or worse, through the front gates. She turned away from him to retrieve her sheathed dagger and to fasten it so it would hang hidden under her shirt.

  “If you have need of me, your spies know the undercity,” she said making for the secret exit, her eyes studiedly avoiding the child, lying incredibly relaxed in sleep on the bed. She pulled the drape aside and a dank scent from the labyrinth beneath insinuated itself into the luxurious room. There was a cloudy bit of liquor at the bottom of her cup and she raised it. “To alliances, no matter how uneasy.” She drained off the last of it and tossed aside the cup. The drape swung back, and it was as if she’d never been there, the fire burned away to pale ash, the baby sleeping thumb in mouth.

  * * * *

  Riska wasn’t certain how many days had gone by, but it was old habit that brought her to the opening into the Palace. She smiled wryly, an oath coming familiarly to her lips, as she saw that the entranceway had been sealed with stones and mortar, a businesslike job. She wondered why she hadn’t quite taken Morrien seriously when he talked of marriage and of severing old ties, but this wall seemed solid proof.

  If she had thought about it, but of course she hadn’t, a secret opening such as this was foolhardy to begin with, in these unsettled times. It was only logic to seal the King’s bedchamber off from possible enemies, like the kind of logic that had led her to make arrangements for the child but that still lay like an uneasy weight at the back of her mind. Sitting prominently in a niche in the tunnel wall was a vessel of her favorite firebrew and beside it a newly forged dagger, the hilt chased with silver and set with small winking blue stones. In anger she had half decided to leave the offerings there, but hefting the dagger against her own weapon, she found it superior, and shrugged as she tossed her own worn weapon into the niche. It was true that Morrien would never know his gifts were accepted, but she wanted to leave something here as a token, in case he should change his mind.

  * * * *

  With the rediscovery of the network of passages beneath Ultebre, it hadn’t been long before the poorer classes and the more unsavory elements turned them to their own purposes, creating a busy city beneath the city. There were many places like the brew-house Riska sat in now where assassin rubbed shoulders with conspirator. She told herself she was there to look over the new blood: mercenaries on the
ir way to sell themselves, or sailors off the ships that sailed Mir Esquivir. The latter favored short kilts, making it possible to see something of what one was getting beforehand. She conveniently overlooked the fact that she had been here many times before, and had done nothing more than just look. Still, even that was pleasant enough and she still had some of the firebrew Morrien had given her, which she mixed surreptitiously with the watery stuff served here.

  Her attention taken by a kilted sailor who had just entered—Gods, but he had nice legs—she realized that someone had sat down at her table. She looked away and had to look back to reassure herself that he was still there, so unostentatious was he, and so nondescript, the no-color hair, thin, droopy mustache, the gray pajama-garment worn by the poorer classes.

  “Shem, that’s my name, for the moment,” he said under his breath, pulling nervously at his tattered mustache. “Shem, the potter’s assistant. Didn’t you notice the splashes of dried slip on my clothes? It’s important to get such details right.”

  “Morrien’s spy,” she said, satisfied as the words made him visibly cringe, though the tumult in the busy place made the words inaudible.

  “Let’s leave this den,” he said, “and walk along Traders Way.”

  “This is a comfortable spot, and I’d intended to amuse myself awhile,” she said with her eyes on the sailor.

  Shem only nodded, but began talking in undertones about this one or that one who was a spy or an assassin for the Dath cult, and of agents he knew who had disappeared in the undercity without a trace, until she couldn’t look around the place without seeing a prospective enemy.

  It was a relief to leave. They walked among teeming throngs through the open air bazaar, and somewhere in the proceedings Shem had gotten possession of the firebrew.

  “Excellent stuff,” he said, taking a swig, “but then I should have known since it bears the Seal of the Palace. You must have high-placed friends.”

  “So I did…once.”

  As they walked along, they heard shouts and saw a tall man, conspicuous by his shaven head and priestly garb, at the head of an odd sort of procession. He pulled along a boy of about seven, who screamed and cried, and a woman who pulled futilely at the boy at each step, screeching in thwarted rage. Others in the street drew near at the commotion and in crowd-babble expressed an almost obscene interest.

  Riska had often seen the shave-heads with their white robes belted with a girdle of moth-eaten brown fur, eight mangy streamers depending from it. Shem didn’t need to say, “A priest of Dath, the many-legged.”

  “I bought this boy at a fair price,” panted the priest, a little overweight and outmatched at least for the moment, by the woman and child.

  “Give the boy up to his sacred fate,” shouted someone in the crowd.

  Taking the firebrew from Shem’s hand, Riska took one long pull from it, and then cocked back her arm and threw the bottle, connecting solidly with the naked skull of the priest. He went down in a flurry of robes among the milling onlookers, and she saw the boy break free and grasp his mother’s hand.

  She saw no more because Shem was hustling her down the street and turning into a debris-choked alleyway. It was darker here then along Trader’s Way which was lit by many lamps, but she could still see well enough to realize that the harmless potter’s assistant had disappeared to be replaced with someone cold and shrewd, someone not safe to cross. The chuckle building in her throat over the fate of the priest was suddenly stilled.

  “I can’t believe that Morrien would entrust this mission to such a blind fool as you seem to be,” said Shem. “You risked our anonymity for the sake of a snot-nosed brat. Surely you’ve lived in the undercity long enough to know that children are a renewable resource.”

  Riska’s palm itched for the hilt of her dagger at his words, though she hardly knew why, since he was speaking only the truth. After a time, she curbed her rage.

  “I think the commotion is over,” said Shem, peering out into the street. “It’s safe to go.”

  “Go?”

  “You need to know more of Dath’s cult, and there’s no better way than to worship, or pretend to.”

  * * * *

  A crush of people had gathered outside the entrance to the Temple of Dath, just an offshoot of one of the tunnels, a wide flight of steps built to make the downward progression easier. Riska saw that where the corridor narrowed, shave-pate acolytes were handing out cups of some liquid which the worshipers drank thirstily. An elbow prodded her ribs. “Drink it, but stay by me.” The unobtrusive potter’s assistant now plodded at her side. With a grimace she swallowed the watery stuff. “Tell me what you’re seeing and I’ll tell you what’s really there,” Shem continued.

  “I see ornate chandeliers with thousands of candles gleaming in them,” she said, stopping to take in the luxury of the place. “And these worshipers, I hadn’t noticed before, that they’re all noblemen and their ladies dressed in elegant finery.”

  “Torchlight,” said Shem, “and a selection of the poorer folk of the city—a few visiting peasants and their wives, few of them having had a recent bath or change of clothing. Your imagination does you credit. There’s also straw on the floor, filthy stuff.”

  “I see rose colored carpeting with a phoenix design worked in gold.”

  “There, on the dais, Zostris, himself. They call him Dolatorr, god’s man—Dolatorr Zostris.”

  “Yes! I see him, slender, delicate, like a young god.”

  “Old, pale and wormlike.”

  On the shaven pate of the Dolatorr the skin had been scarred open in a spider shape with legs radiating down around his skull. A plate of silver that had been set beneath it winked in the candlelight as the man moved his head. As the subdued crowd of worshipers gathered about the dais, a child was brought in, hair and eyebrows shaven. In the white one-piece garment, the child was sexless, the face angelic with a dreamlike smile.

  “Dath brings dreams,” said Zostris, gesturing to the crowd, a cluster of rings on his fingers catching the light. The stench of the people there had begun to work its way into Riska’s image of them as immaculate gentlefolk. The drug wasn’t particularly strong, nor were the images consistent. The floor’s color kept sliding from rose to orange. The crowd repeated,

  “Dath brings dreams.”

  “Dath drinks deep,” said Zostris. He was an indistinct blur in the flickering torchlight, a pale worm with human eyes. With an expert motion, Zostris cut the wrists, and then the throat of the sacrifice who smiled as he did it. Riska thought how noble it must be to slake the thirst of a god—how handsome Zostris appeared, but the sight was somehow disturbing. She had the sudden desire to fight her way through the crowd and turn Zostris’ little knife on him.

  As blood poured across the altar, something dark and cumbersome began to climb out of the darkness beneath the dais. Something that had neither the appearance nor the movements of anything human. It crept effortlessly up to the dais, bent over the altar stone to lap at red liquid as fastidiously as any cat. Riska was gripping someone’s shoulder, hoping it was Shem’s.

  “What is that—thing?”

  “Remember the drug. It’s human, but just barely. In a suit of black fur with false extra limbs—many-legged Dath—he’s an idiot Zostris found to play the part. Some say he’s Zostris’ own son, but I doubt it.”

  Riska’s stranglehold loosened as she began to recognize the human shape beneath the costume.

  The ritual went on:

  Dath will seduce your Spirits.

  Dath will give you dreams,

  And drink from you as from a cup.

  All praise to Dath.

  And the crowd echoed, “Praise!” The weird masquerader slipped away behind a screen and Zostris stood at the edge of the dais, towering over the crowd. Riska expected his head to touch t
he ceiling.

  “Now hear me and do what you will,” he shrieked and instantly the crowd exploded in screams and jostling bodies. Shem, who had managed to work himself and Riska onto the edge of the crowd, gave her a brisk shake.

  “Come back to the real world. I don’t really want to see what it is your heart desires.” They picked their way along the wall, the dirty straw in convulsion with squirming bodies. Some people seemed to be strangling each other; others were incited to orgy. With a quick look over her shoulder, Riska saw the child-sacrifice, a discarded doll-shape lying across the altar. She wondered why that had seemed so attractive at the time; it was repellent.

  “We’ve seen what he can do with crowds,” said Shem, pulling at his nondescript mustache as they walked the streets of the undercity. “And once indoctrinated they seem to react to Zostris’ voice, whether or not they’re drunk on his dream-potions. We’re certain they plan a coup with distraction caused by wholesale rioting in the streets and an elite army of acolytes being trained somewhere undercity. We don’t know their timetable; the strike could be days or years away.”

  “I don’t think anyone of sense wants that holding sway in Ultebre. Don’t you have a plan?”

  “I’m devising one. Morrien said that you know more about the passages than anyone yet living, is that true?”

  “I suppose so, but…”

  “I’ll get back to you,” he said, and with one last yank on his mustache he strode rapidly away, losing himself in the people thronging the streets.

  * * * *

  Riska paced the pavings in front of a fruit vendor’s stall on Traders Way. She’d received a message that Shem would meet her here but she was beginning to think he’d done it for the sake of subterfuge alone, because she’d been here an hour and there’d been no sign of him. For some moments there had been a man standing behind her at the vendor’s stall, deciding upon what fruits to buy by judiciously pinching them. So intent was he on this business that she almost jumped when he spoke to her.