by Lynn Abbey
The room that Nim rented was in a building three blocks away from the house of Kusharlonikas the mage, in the direction of the north wall. Popular and confident in her voluptuousness, Nim hummed as she prepared. This nocturnal assignation was one of extra importance. She was careful not to spill so much as a drop of the far-too-expensive Lover's Moon perfume as she opened the vial. She half smiled, and inhaled luxuriously, and gasped at the ghastly odor she had loosed, and with a choked cry fled her home. It remained empty for three days, the inexplicably horrid stench holding at bay anyone and anything so foolish as to enter.
Not too far from that building, Semaj Numisgatt was hand-feeding his beloved blossoms when his favorite orchid, the violet-and-white Aurvestan Autumn Queen, opened wide and nipped off his right index finger to the first knuckle.
Deleteria Palungas was combing her rich mass of midnight-hued hair with the jewel-encrusted comb that dear Shih'med had given her three namedays back when the errant spell of a would-be mage she had never heard of wafted through her modest dwelling on Red Olive Street. Too numb with horror and disbelief to shriek, she watched the flashing comb become laden and then clogged with the gleaming black treasure of her scalp. And then it was piling up on the floor, and her shrieking began.
The tavern named The Bottomless Well—not infrequently fondly referred to as "The Bottomless Cesspool" by regulars—was on Tumult Street, a name that had made all too much sense fifteen or twenty years ago. The staff of The Bottomless Well was, unusually, not from Sanctuary and not conquerors, but a family from Mrse-vada. The Bottomless Well was not a dive and yet more than a watering hole. At the same time, it was not an inn much frequented by the wealthy and/or pretentious. The walls and ceiling of the family-run establishment were not painted dark and yet were only a little darkened by grease and the smoke of lamps and candles. That smoke and the odor of frying fat rode the air; not heavily, but sufficiently to cause this or that patron occasionally to rub an eye or two. The furniture and surroundings were decent enough, with lots of rounded edges, and rails and legs of blond wood, the ale and wine unwatered except on request, and the food acceptable and sometimes better than that. A modest statue of Rander Rehabilitatis perched on a stoutly braced shelf on the wall behind the proprietor/ counterman. No one had to squint or look too closely to see that it was well tended and kept free of dust and grease.
He had requested that it be watered. That raised eyebrows but no one made fun of him, for despite his years and his cane he had the look about him of a man not much given to jocularities, a man who would not take denigration with grace, and perhaps not simple joshing, either. Besides, a few minutes ago everyone's attention had been distracted by an abrupt weirdness: the thick, quality wine in one patron's chalice-like cup had suddenly burst into flames. They shot up a foot above the table of the worse than startled fat man for several seconds before a young fellow at a nearby table plopped his big personal beer mug down over the offending goblet. With apologies, the proprietor had bustled over to grasp the cup—using a towel to shield his hands—and hurried to the door to sling its contents outside.
"What in the cold hell—" the dark-clad man with the too-black hair began, but his companion interrupted.
"Some wizard has lost his touch or is training an apprentice," he muttered, wagging his head.
The two old friends had discussed the fact that the white-haired man had narrowly avoided worse than retribution when Noble Ar-izak's horse fell and damaged Arizak's leg. He sent to the white-haired man for help, but his considerable skills succeeded only in reducing the pain of the high-placed nobleman. He felt reasonably certain that this was because Arizak was no good man and he—the white-haired man—despised him.
"At any rate, his Noble Self did not forgive me for failing to work sufficient magic to end all trace of his injuries."
His friend cocked his head. "Ignoble self, I'd say. You are lucky to have escaped with your life!"
That did not seem to cheer the white-haired man. "It was an act of cowardice that I returned his gold and eased the other charge— the Price."
"What was that?"
"We will not discuss that, Chance."
"Hmm. Damn it! Once again I wish I was younger and still had four good limbs! It would be such fun to visit the palace one night and bring you exactly the amount of the charge in gold coin!" The white-haired man smiled, only smiled and nodded a few times. Perhaps he understood the occasional wistfulness of old age but surely not fully, for he was a year past his fortieth birthday and his friend, who had been the friend of his adopted father, was seven and sixty. Too, he well knew that Chance had never truly been happy, especially so after parting from the love of his life, a S'Danzo named Mignureal, and years later his large and decidedly strange cat. To his friend that was truly horrible.
Interestingly, he also wore black, tunic and leggings and boots and, on a chill night, a cloak. When he threw it back—a trifle too dramatically, perhaps—he showed some color: He had decorated himself with a broad sash of blood-red. Neither tall nor short and the beautiful natural tan color of mixed races, he wore his jet hair long but pulled back into a horse-tail passed through a short, narrow sheath of dark red leather. His feet and calves were sheathed in buskins, soft boots of a dull black sueded leather that made next to no sound when he walked. He was well armed with at least three knives and a sword. The sight of a knife worn upside down on each upper arm was an odd one. He also swaggered, and flirted mildly with the teenaged female server, Esmiria, calling her Esmy.
Quietly the dark, dark-haired elder with the nose of a hawk asked, "Strick—who is that swaggering pup who is so intent on looking so tough?"
His companion chuckled. "Uh… the one called Shadowspawn?" he said, putting on a face of complete innocence as he named a youthful thief-cat burglar of time past, though not out of mind. "Hanse, I believe his name was?"
His companion gave him a dark look. "In your ear and out your nose, O Spellmaster," he said, without rancor. "I see no resemblance."
"Amazing! I'd wager our next dinner that yon youth is working as hard as he can for just that—a resemblance. In fact I do know who he is. And a little about him. He calls himself Lone."
"Lone!" The echo was heavy with the emphasis of incredulity, but not so loud as to be heard by the bravo they discussed.
The snowy head nodded. "Aye—and not the monetary kind. But say it a little louder and he'll be right here, looking down at us. And ready to fight, Chance, believe me."
The black-clad man he called Chance glanced back along the room. The black-clad youngster he called pup had not moved from the bar just a few feet from the door. He was not looking their way. He bent close as he spoke to their host, Aristokrates.
Without turning, black-clad Chance said, "I wonder; is he old enough to shave?"
Strick snorted. "From the darkness of that hair I'd say he likely started at age twelve or so," he said, and lifted his goblet to his lips.
Even as he spoke, broad-shouldered Aristokrates moved his plain green-tunicked self away to tend to business—with a casual glance at the two men at the back wall—and the object of their interest turned and set his elbows on the bar behind him. Thus the lean, lean youngster stood, casually and yet poised as a cat, while he surveyed the room from low-lidded eyes the color of anthracite. Defiantly accentuating his dangerousness, he looked as confident as a prince, or an army facing a stick-armed rabble.
Chance's mouth moved as if it considered smiling but changed its mind. "He's got the look. Knows how to do it. I'll never forget Cudget's counsel before I had lived twenty summers: 'Wear weapons openly and try to look mean. People see the weapons and believe the look and you don't have to use them.' You say you know something about him?"
"Ah. He has parents, then."
Strick sighed. His companion claimed not to have known his parents, who were little more than nodding acquaintances. But by his power Strick knew that at some long-ago time Chance had once at least known who his father was.
Strick knew too, but never said so.
"All of us have parents, Chance, whether we knew them or not. But no, these two who claimed him to raise were not his. They were a childless couple who wanted him to be theirs. Although the people who… uh… rescued what few children they did not murder as hopeless servants of Dyareela accepted them as his parents, I believe Lone really was an orphan. I believe he has no knowledge of his parentage, or the name they gave him. Nor do I know what his stepparents called him. They are dead, and he decided to call himself Lone. So…" He gestured. "Lone he is."
"I didn't ask for his life story, Strick. But all that black he's wear-ing, at his tender age, and at those buskins—he's a roach, isn't he."
It was not a question, but an observation by a man who was sure of his surmise that Lone was a thief; that is, a creature who went abroad only by night, like a roach.
"Absolutely. He's addicted to it. After the death of his stepfather, he supported his mother with his thieving. His stepmother, I mean."
"He must be good at it, then."
"Must be. Word is that she never questioned the source of her sustenance, meaning she probably knew and did not want to deal with it."
Chance snorted. "Or endanger her source of income and food!"
"Probably. Oh—I was told that he said that what they called him in the Dyareeling Pits was 'Flea-shit.' "
"Charming. Those Dyar scum… ah! Sorry, Strick. No offense."
The man called Strick shrugged. "None taken, old friend and friend of my mentor."
His attention was distracted by the emergence of a spider from a crack in the wall above and to the right of his companion. Abruptly it sprouted lovely wings the color of an Aurvestan Autumn Queen orchid and soared awkwardly down to alight on the table between them. The dark man moved with surprising rapidity for one of his years. Under his cup the secret of the spider's sudden winged state was forever lost.
The white-haired man gave his head a slow, solemn wag. "That's the third abrupt total impossibility I've seen in three days," he murmured, watching a frowning Chance gingerly lift his cup to examine the total impossibility of a winged arachnid. "Like the flaming wine," he said in a deliberately dull way. Then, cocking his too dark-haired head to one side, "Since when is total impossibility unusual in Sanctuary?"
"You know I have."
"Because you have been offered a mission that you believe in but that is beyond you now, and because yon smart-ass reminds you of you, forty or more years agone."
His companion chose not to acknowledge that. Time was when he would never have—could never have acknowledged that anything was beyond his ability. But he had lost that along with his physical swagger and the use of a limb. He said, "Interesting. He is trying to be me, f—uh, a few years back. In fact he is only pretending to be…" He trailed off, looking puzzled. "Sorry. Can't think of the word. Oh! Casual!—he is only pretending to be casual in challenging the room. His main interest is right here, at this table."
"You?"
"Maybe. Maybe it's you. You do look prosperous, you know— and no fast mover. Listen, Strick, you know surprisingly much about him. But always there is more to be known about a person. Will you do me the favor of learning what it is?"
"I can understand that you want the upper hand, Chance. But believe me, he is a smart youngster. He will know he is being investigated."
The elderly man with the too-black hair shrugged, slightly. "So he knows. Use a double go-between so that he makes no connection to you." Then he looked away from the one called Lone and gave his companion a small smile. "Damn! Sorry again! As if you didn't know how to do that!"
His smile was returned. "As if I didn't," Strick said.
As the man he called Chance looked in the direction of the one called Lone again, the one named Strick and called Spellmaster looked whimsical and wagged his head, however slightly. His companion had just said sorry twice, and the first man named Strick had told this, the heir he had chosen and coached and trained to carry on his good work, that hawk-nosed Chance had in his younger years given no indication that he knew the word sorry.
Even some swaggering pups matured and mellowed, if they were lucky…
The first Strick, the White Mage from Firaqa up north, was an ex-swordslinger who had become the strangeling called Spellmaster. He was unbound by gods and locale, or by spells or anti-spells. His was true empathy; he truly Cared about each person who came seeking his help. Part of his curse for being given the power was that he had to care. This curse—and so he called it—of being unable not to care for and about others was part of his pact with whatever god or Force he had bargained with, and it was not always a pleasant trait to possess. He was unable to do magic of the variety referred to as "black"—meaning that his spells were good or "white" magic, only.
Strick also did well. Sanctuary's Spellmaster, sometimes called "Hero of the People," became a wealthy man and remained well off despite losses over the years in the various properties he had acquired. The losses resulted from the "natural disasters" that had plagued poor little Sanctuary-on-the-sea, as well as the thefts of conquerors—thefts that they called "confiscations," of course.
The latest foreigners to take over here also did their best to put an end to every member of the cult of the Blood Goddess Dyareela, with a great deal of success. Victims included the wife and children of the renowned white mage Spellmaster. All, including his adopted daughter, died in the Irrune-kindled fire that claimed his luxurious country home.
He was never the same man after…
But he did take in a skinny young orphan and train him as apprentice. Only that lucky lad—whose name was Chance—knew that his "father" had paid a great deal of money to have various punishments inflicted on various Irrunes, because his talent allowed him to wreak white magic only. When years later the adopted son made his bargain with the unknown that made him a white mage, his dark brown mop of hair turned white overnight and he gained girth with a rapidity that was a boon for the makers of breeches and tunics and belts. It was the Price he paid for the ability.
The Spellmaster, who had never ceased his grieving, named Chance son and heir, and bade him use the name Strick and never, never charge greedily for his services. And when he thought his successor was ready and he had done this and that with the properties he owned in and about the town, Strick killed himself.
The new Strick had long since become the friend of the strange dark man who was a longtime friend of the almost legendary Spell-master. The day Chance changed his name to Strick, their friend changed his to Chance, and moved into a better area of town than any he had previously tenanted. They met frequently to dine and drain a few cups, and The Bottomless Well was one of their favorite places.
Leaning well in toward the aproned, balding Aristokrates of Mrse-vada, Lone said, "Whatever you do, do not so much as glance at the men I am about to ask you about. At the back of the room— look only at me, Aris!—is the man in the blue robe with the white hair the one called Spellmaster?"
Looking at his questioner as if to assess the stability of the chip the youngster wore on each shoulder, the counterman said, "Yes."
Strick and Chance had forbidden him to reveal that he and
Chance owned this place, a fact known to perhaps seven people, three of them city clerks. Strick was known to own or have a stake in several commercial establishments, including, in a lesser part of town, the Vulgar Unicorn. That was a dive he'd had lovingly restored to what it had been before one of the onslaughts of nature that Sanctuary had suffered. The Golden Gourd was his, too, and other places and properties.
Lone asked, "And what of the man with him? Is he a cripple?"
The thickset proprietor and supposed owner of The Bottomless Well blinked medium brown eyes. "He walks with a cane, and limps." The mustache adorning his well-rounded face like a semi-trimmed bramble bush was no minor growth, brown and thick, and always its trailing ends wiggled when he talked. As to his reply, he was always careful with Lone,
considering it simple wisdom and perhaps self-protection. The chips on the shoulders of the aptly self-named Lone were big enough to challenge a wood-splitter. While the lad possessed a certain… basic integrity, his opinion of himself was inviolate.
"Aye. He is Chance. Of the old race, I think."
"Ilsigi, like me. But…" Lone was frowning, and on a dusky face with such black eyes under hair as black as the heart of a money changer, that was a sight to give pause even to a bold man. Although Lone was not of the Ilsigi, his idol was, and so Lone called himself. "Are you sure about his name? Maybe he has a nickname?"
The non-aristocrat named Aristokrates made a small gesture with a ringless hand and tapped his chest with the other in the manner of a devotee of Rander. "His name is Chance, Lone. I have never heard him called anything else."
Lone looked disappointed, but said, "When I draw back my hand you will see an earring that came from afar and is not cheap but also not as valuable as it looks. Call it a gift to your wife or your daughter. You choose which, Aris."
The taller, meatier man looked down at the object glittering in silver and green on his countertop. His glance around did not seem furtive and yet was. When he saw that no one was looking their way, he made the earring disappear.
"Falmiria or Esmiria will be grateful, Lone. It is surely worth more than the single cup you just drank."
"I said it was a gift."
A well-maintained mustache of major proportions writhed with Aristokrates' smile. "So is the cup you just drank!"
"Aris!" That, sharply in a female voice, from the kitchen.
"Ah. His master's voice," Lone said.
Aristokrates rolled his eyes. "Go to hell, Lone."
"Be patient," Lone said with a wink. "Surely I'll not be making that journey for a while yet!" With that he put on another expression altogether before turning away to stand and pretend to survey everyone. His manner was that of a man of supreme confidence; the commander of an army facing a mob armed with staves.
The watching Strick's mutter was only for the ears of his companion. "He seems to have the stance right!"
