Shadowspawn (Thieves' World Book 4)

by Andrew J Offutt

  SHADOWSPAWN

  Andrew J. Offutt

  THE FOURTH

  THIEVES WORLD

  NOVEL

  © Andrew J. Offutt 1987

  Andrew J. Offutt has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1987 by Ace Books.

  This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION

  STATEMENT OF FURTWAN

  COINPINCH, MERCHANT

  CHAPTER I

  The Desert

  THE FOREST

  THE CITY

  THE SORCERY

  To

  Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey

  who started it all

  and who

  keep on keepin’ on

  GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION

  While this novel contains a lot of names and a few new words, most lend themselves readily to pronunciation. The author is a reader who despises fiction containing obviously unpronounceable words, along with cute little pips and double dots above letters and three or four unlikely vowels strung together.

  Still, a few names in Shadowspawn could use some amplification:

  HanseRhymes with “dance.” That simple, it really is not Honss or Honz or Honse or Honza.

  MignurealThe g is silent, as in chignon, Mignon. Syllables are about equally accented, with a slight stress on the first and final: MIN-you-ree-AL. She’s sensitive about it.

  MignueHer nickname; min-you-wee, equally accented.

  FiraqaRhymes with “purr-AH-kuh,” with the accent on the ah.

  AnorislasPronounced an-oh-RISS-liss.

  KhulnaCOOL-nuh.

  SinajhalEach syllable is pronounced: SIN-nudge-HAL.

  Tejanatuh-John-uh.

  VaspaRhymes with “Lass-puh.”

  S’danzobThese people are the creation of Lynn Abbey, but I think it’s “sh-Don-zoe.”

  ShadowspawnReally isn’t “shadow’s pawn,” but “shadow spawn,” as in off-spring of the Shadow(s).

  — A. J. O.

  STATEMENT OF FURTWAN

  COINPINCH, MERCHANT

  The first thing I noticed about him, just that first impression you understand, was that he couldn’t be a poor man. Or boy, or youth, or whatever he is. Not with all those weapons on him. From the shagreen belt he was wearing over a scarlet sash — a violently scarlet sash! — swung a curved dagger on his left hip and on the right one of those Ilbarsi “knives” long as your arm. Not a proper sword, no. Not a military man, then. That isn’t all, though. Some few of us know that his left buskin is equipped with a sheath; the slim thing and knife-hilt appear to be only a decoration. Gift from a woman, I heard him tell old Thumpfoot one afternoon in the bazaar. I doubt it.

  (I’ve been told he has another sticker strapped less than comfortably to his inner thigh, probably the right. Maybe that’s part of the reason he walks the way he does. Cat-supple and yet sort of stiff of leg all at once. A tumbler’s gait — or a punk’s swagger.

  (Don’t tell him I said!)

  Anyhow, about the weapons and my first impression that he couldn’t be poor. There’s a throwing knife in that leather and copper armlet on his right upper arm, and another in the long bracer of black leather on that same arm. Both are short. The stickers I mean, not the bracers or the arms either.

  All that armament would be enough to scare anybody on a dark night, or even a moonbright one. Imagine being in the Maze or someplace like that and out of the shadows comes this young bravo, swaggering, wearing all that sharp metal! Right at you out of the shadows that spawned him. Enough to chill even one of those Hell Hounds.

  That was my impression. Shadowspawn. About as pleasant as gout or dropsy.

  CHAPTER I

  The Desert

  Among the people of the desert north of Sanctuary, the sun was called Vaspa. It was also their word for demon. Now Hanse knew why.

  He had never ridden on the desert before and hoped never to do so again and as a matter of fact wished he were not doing so now. Today the sun was a demon straight from the Hot Hell. Yesterday it had been a demon from the same place, and presumably the same would be true tomorrow. It was enough to make him think almost wistfully of the Cold Hell; almost enough to make him yearn for a taste of the Cold Hell. Almost.

  Besides, they had a taste of the Cold Hell every night. How was it possible that such heat could become worse than chilly so soon after these blood-hued desert sunsets?

  The horses and the onager plodded, sweating. Their riders rode loosely, sweating.

  The very ground would be sweating, Hanse thought, if it contained a tenth of a thirteenth of a tenth of a droplet of moisture to yield up to blazing, baking, sucking Vaspa. He was reasonably sure that even this perdurable yellowish-buff sand was writhing in pain from the relentless heat. Now and again he was sure he witnessed that writhing, in a sort of wriggly wavering movement just above the ground (if anyone could call this yellowish-tan stuff “ground”). Particularly way over there, where that long snaky razor-backed mountain of sand called a dune stretched like an ugly wall across leagues and leagues of horizon.

  Maybe it’s just my eyes, he thought. We’re probably both going blind, anyhow, from the sun bouncing off this garbage-heap “landscape” and attacking our eyes. All five of us — not just Mignue and me, but the horses and that dumb donkey too!

  That dumb donkey, which was an onager and which his companion Mignureal persisted in calling “Cutie” and which Hanse called only “Dumb-ass,” chose that moment to let go with its absolutely asinine ear-assaulting Noise. A series of squeaky, sucked in ee sounds, each followed by an aspirated aw. The worst and dumbest sounds Hanse had ever heard or thought about hearing. Dumb onager/ass!

  “Shut up, Dumb-ass.”

  “What’s the matter, Cutie, you thirsty?”

  Hanse shot Mignureal a dark look. Just then she glanced at him, all sweet-faced under the muffling hood, and he tried to make his expression more pleasant; indulgent. He really hardly knew her, although she loved him and he had decided that he loved her. He had never realized just how determinedly pleasant and unremittingly nice Mignue was.

  I’m getting tired of it, he thought, and then went all nervous and frowny and thought hurriedly, No I’m not!

  One of the horses was of that reddish walnut colour called sorrel. The other was black, with the bottommost area of one leg resembling a short white buskin. A silver-grey stripe decorated the front of his long face.

  “His name?” The man Hanse had bought him from back in Sanctuary had shrugged. “Blackie,” he’d said, and Hanse had thought Oh how appropriate. I should have known, or words to that effect, and called the animal Blackie.

  Oh, how dull and unimaginative, Mignureal thought, and occupied her mind with working at more interesting names for the handsome animal. Already she called her mount — a gift from Tempus, along with their hooded white robes — by the ancient S’danzo word inja. The word meant swift-running hare, and never mind the redundance. It was a good name, Mignureal thought, although she had no idea whether Inja could run swiftly or not. She didn’t really want to find out, either, but would have bet that she would. All sorts of things just seemed to happen when Hanse called Shadowspawn was about. Some of them were violent and exertive. One of those was the necessity of running.

  Though plodding on sweaty horses, they were running right now, in fact. They were running away from Sanctuary, which was — which had been home.

  That reminded Mignureal of her parents, her wounded father and murdered mother, and her eyes went all m
isty again. She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead so that Hanse might not see. Her tears were the twitching twisting of a needle in his belly, she knew. She strove to keep them back. When she couldn’t, she tried to conceal them from him; from Her Man.

  She knew her man, too, had leaked tears over her mother, Moonflower — and then had gone wild against the killers. That soon led to his feeling the necessity of departing the forlorn town where they had both been born and had lived all their lives. Moonflower had been the nearest thing to a mother he had ever had, although he was not the sort to admit it and had actually pretended to flirt with that mightily overweight woman and mother of several.

  Moonflower was — had been — of the S’danzo and gifted with the Sight, the power of Seeing. Only lately had the trait begun to manifest itself in Mignureal. Even then it came on her only with regard to some danger in the immediate future of Hanse, who was forever doing dangerous things and whom Mignureal had seen as a romantic and glamorous man of the world since she was twelve and had started to bud and he was — what? Sixteen? Mignureal didn’t know.

  She loved him. Despite her mother’s warnings and the care the big woman had taken to prevent them from being alone together, Mignureal loved him. Of course Moonflower had known, and known that her daughter couldn’t help it. She had loved him since she was twelve. Thirteen, at least. Now she was sure that he loved her, too. It was strange, having both the agony of grief and the joy of requited love wrestling for space in one’s heart. She loved him and he loved her, but they were not lovers.

  Not yet, Mignureal thought, feeling joy even while tears of grief slid down her cheeks. The sun stole them in evaporation before they reached her chin, leaving little itchy places on her face.

  “Mignue?” It was his name for her, and only his: Min-you-ee.

  “Hmm?” She kept her face directed ahead, to hide her tears.

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Really! I thought you were seventeen. I thought I remembered Moonflower’s saying you were seventeen, just a few months ago.”

  “Well…I’ll be eighteen in three months. A little less than three months. That’s the same as being eighteen,” she added, thinking that maybe he was thinking about making love to her tonight.

  She didn’t know what that was like, didn’t know how, and she was nervous about it. She knew that Hanse knew how. She knew he had done it before. That both helped — he can teach me what I don’t know — and added to her nervousness: he’s an experienced man of the world and what if I’m an incompetent dummy when it comes to — to carding wool?

  At least her mother had never committed the cruelty of trying to frighten her about It. She knew that her parents had liked It a lot, this thing between men and women that was called, among other things, by the euphemism “carding wool.” Mignureal assumed that she would like It a lot too, and she was sure that Hanse already did. Besides, she wanted to. With Hanse.

  “How old are you, Hanse?”

  “What?” he said, to buy a little time. He didn’t like admitting what he had to admit in response to such a question, because it told too much about him.

  She said, “How old are you?”

  Staring ahead at nothing in particular because that was what there was to stare at, she squeezed her eyes shut, real hard, to force out what she thought were the last of her tears. For now.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh Hanse,” she said, for she knew he was from the wrong part of town, that area called Downwind, and that he had hardly known his mother, who had apparently been only casually acquainted with his father. “You have to have some idea. Are you older than twenty?”

  “About that,” he said, fidgeting in sudden discomfort. “Maybe a little older. Damn. The only thing worse than riding a horse is when you have to get down and try to walk!” Hanse’s age was a subject on which Mignureal had long been as silent as the g in her name. Now, for some reason, she could not avoid persisting. After all, they had cloven to one another. Here they were alone, riding north alone, just the two of them. She and her man. She wanted to know everything about him. Wasn’t that right? Wasn’t that the way it should be? She said, “Maybe a little younger?”

  “Maybe. A little. I’ve counted off seventeen years, see. I can account for those, but I don’t know how old I was when I stole the fig.”

  Abruptly he twisted around in his saddle, a sort of cradle of leather over wood, high of front and back — pommel and cantle. When he put his hand up to his brow as if to shade those nearly black eyes of his to see better in the glare of sun off sand, Mignureal sighed. He was just avoiding her question, she was sure — but naturally she had to look back. She didn’t see anything. She glanced nervously over at Hanse. “Hanse?”

  He shrugged. “Thought I saw something a little while ago. Thought I’d just not say anything but suddenly wheel around this way to take it by surprise, if there was something.”

  “You mean — people? Those desert raiders Tempus’ drover told us about?”

  He shook his head. “No, not that. Something small. Just a little dark blob, moving. I mean I thought I saw that, before. Like a little animal, you know. As if it was maybe following us. I don’t see anything now, though. Really.”

  A shiver went through her and Mignureal squinted, lifting her own hand to shade her eyes. She too stared back along their wake.

  She saw sand, and sand. Nothing else. No animal, small or otherwise. No vegetation, not even any of the junky-looking desert version of grass or imitation “grass” they had noticed from time to time. Even the onager was only mildly interested in that stuff. She saw not even big stones or rocky outcrops; those were just smooth mounds, almost eerie lumps of varying size under the yellow-tan sand, which was ripply all around them, like the train of a dull gown. Beyond, the sky was the same old molten copper shot through with silver and traces of orange. It should have been pretty. It wasn’t. It just looked hot. A faraway speck of blue “read” sky made her sigh. She glanced at Hanse again.

  “Do you see anything now?”

  “No, nothing,” he said, swinging back around and adjusting the forefront of his robe’s hood. It was folded back on top, like hers, but could be lowered so as to cover the face completely. It was called a sand-hood, they’d been told, and in case of a sandstorm the best thing to do was just stop dead still and keep that hood all the way down. None of that had made them happy, although they were grateful for the gifts of the robes in addition to the horse, Inja. Sandstorm? A storm — of sand? Hanse and Mignureal devoutly hoped that was something of which they could remain pleasantly ignorant.

  “Probably didn’t see anything before, either,” Hanse said, rubbing his thigh and making a chk-chk noise to his horse. “I’m sorry I had to let you know about it. We just saw a long way back. Obviously there’s nothing. Just…sand.” His voice turned sour on the last word.

  “Don’t be sorry, Hanse. Don’t try to be heroic or something and keep things from me, ‘for my own good’ or some such. All right? I’m not that kind of woman. If something’s bothering you, you just let me know too, all right? I don’t have to be protected from knowing things.”

  He nodded without saying anything. She couldn’t help another apprehensive backward glance. Nothing. “First you saw something and now we can see a long way back, and there’s nothing. I don’t like that!”

  Hanse didn’t like it either but would not tell her so: “I said I thought I saw something. We were told that the sun and the desert can play tricks on your eyes, remember?”

  “Yes. I’ve also been told that some things can be visible and then invisible and then — ”

  “Stop!” He threw up his head. “Ah god, O Father Its! Not that; not sorcery. Gods, how I hate sorcery!”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, with Mignureal trying to think of something altogether different to talk about. Oh, of course; she remembered where they’d been, in their conversation.

  She said, “Did
you say ‘when you stole a pig’?”

  He jerked his head to stare at her with those dark, dark eyes. “What? Why would I accuse you of stealing a pig?” He cocked his head. “Still, it might taste good; did you?”

  “No no, not me. You. I mean, uh, back there. Before we stopped. You know, when we were talking. You said you could account for seventeen years, but then…something about stealing a pig?”

  “Oh!” A smile flashed over his dark face, brief as a glimpse of sun on a cloudy day in winter. “No — fig. Fffig,” he emphasized, and then looked away from her, and his voice went low and sort of dreamy again, with memory. “He made me drop it, too.”

  Sure that her eyes and face were clear of tears, she looked over at him. “Who made you — I don’t understand. What’s that have to do with how old you are?”

  He gave her a look, but when he saw her face turned his way that expression of exasperation became a little smile, almost apologetic. Definitely not like Hanse called Shadowspawn.

  “It’s my first memory, see. I was five or three or four or whatever I was, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, tallying up the years since then. There’ve been seventeen. I was young. Real young, I mean; just a boy, just a child. And I was hungry. I’d been hungry for quite a while. It seemed forever…What’s forever, to a child? My stomach wasn’t a hole in me; it was a knot, so tight it was sore. I was in the market, and everyone looked about eleven feet tall.”

  Hanse gestured loosely, as if in pain at remembering. “Just me down there, with the stalls and the counters and all the people towering over me, and all of them moving a lot. What seemed to me millions of legs, a whole forest of legs. Just legs, not eyes to see me. No one seemed to see me. And when they did, they didn’t pay any attention. Just some homely little ragtag brat wandering around. Probably thought I was looking for my mother. Hmp! I was looking for anyone! Anyone who’d give me something to eat. A word or two and maybe a touch would have been nice,” he said, his voice changing, softening and growing wistful and boyish, and he looked away from her.