by Lynn Abbey
A dark-faced little gnome with a hunchback and a serious lisp wandered in just as Ronal descended the stair from above. The two shortest men in Sanctuary glared at each other, much to Spyder's silent amusement. Then the hunchback rushed off, muttering something about telling his "mathter."
Spyder introduced himself to all his visitors. To Soldt, a grim man with a professional eye for weapons. To Galen, another shopkeeper from the Maze, to whom Spyder took an immediate, if cautious, liking. To an arrogant young Rankan named Vion Larris, who despite disdaining and criticizing virtually everything in the shop, nevertheless bought and bought until his considerable purse was empty.
Despite the Hill's reputation, throughout the afternoon friendliness and courtesy prevailed—until the arrival of Naimun, the Irrune chieftain's second son, and his pair of burly escorts. Half of The Black Spider's customers, those nearest the door, exited at once. The other half backed into the far corners of the shop.
"Do you make all these weapons?" Naimun demanded as he took a Yenized sword down from its peg on the wall and unsheathed it. He ran his thumb along its edge.
"Then you're just a common shopkeeper," Naimun sneered. His two comrades laughed openly. "Tell me, shopkeeper, do you have any particular skill with the things you sell?"
It had been unseasonably warm for mid-winter in Sanctuary, warm enough that the shop's more elderly customers had muttered about a return of "wizard weather," and made finger signs against it; but with Naimun's question, the temperature in the shop dropped inexplicably. At the same moment, Aaliyah appeared on the staircase in a simple white dress with her hair spilling down her back. She paused there, her gaze fixed on the troublemakers. Though she had made no sound at all, every eye—even Naimun's—turned her way, as if sensing her presence.
"So we shall have a pissing contest," Spyder said in a low voice. His breath came out in a soft white stream, suggesting the chill in the air was no mere matter of nerves. "But then, pissing would make a mess of my floor, and the cleaning lady won't come until the morning." He reached toward a display case and drew down a pair of finely matched daggers. "I hear the Irrune have some skill with these." He handed one to Naimun.
Naimun looked at him with surprise. Though Spyder was actually an inch or two taller than the Irrune, the governor's son was far more muscular, not to mention backed by two friends. "You wish to fight me?"
Spyder shook his head and tapped the blade of the second dagger on his palm. "That, too, would make a mess of my shop, and I'd be all night cleaning up the blood." He paused as he looked around the shop. A young dark-haired boy in the unlikely garb of a S'danzo stood off to one side. In his hand he held a pear from which he'd taken a single bite.
"Kaytin," Spyder said. His breath no longer streamed white, and the chill seemed to have left the shop. "Would you mind tossing that into the air?"
Kaytin paled a little. "You want me to toss my lunch?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Spyder answered. He turned back to Naimun. "I'll bet this pair of daggers you can't skewer the pear in mid-toss."
Naimun sneered again. "Against what?"
"I'll name my price in a moment. Nothing too exorbitant."
Spyder nodded to Kaytin. The boy tossed the fruit and swiftly dove for the floor. Naimun's dagger flashed through the air, missing, embedding itself in the far wall. "It's impossib—!" he shouted. Before he could finish, Spyder's dagger flew as the fruit came down again, piercing the pear, cleaving it. A split-second after the first dagger, another one embedded in the wall, dripping juice.
"Not impossible," Spyder said quietly amid gasps and applause from the onlookers. "And now, my price."
Naimun's face darkened, and his two comrades stepped closer.
"Your friendship," Spyder continued. He extended his hand. "And perhaps your patronage the next time you're really in the market." The governor's son hesitated, then grinned as he accepted Spyder's hand. "Well played, shopkeeper," he answered. "I'll pay your price and more." He turned to his escort. "Spread the word: This shop and its owner are under my protection. If anyone causes them trouble"—he glanced toward Aaliyah on the staircase—"especially this beautiful lady, they'll answer to me."
"Gilthona maha," he whispered, kissing her lightly on the brow. "My protector."
When the sun finally set, The Black Spyder closed. It had been a successful opening in many respects, and with the profits safely locked away in a concealed vault, Spyder and Aaliyah sat down on the rooftop to a supper of roasted pigeon breasts prepared by Ronal. She had changed into a dress of saffron-colored silk that hung off one ebony shoulder. He wore only a kilt of blue linen. Sesame oil burned in a lamp of pale alabaster. Its glow lent the rooftop an air of romance and tranquility.
"I don't understand it," Spyder said quietly as he sipped wine and stared outward toward the harbor. "I was sure they would arrive today. But you both kept watch, and I made what inquiries I safely could without arousing suspicions among the customers. No one has seen a Vasalan ship for a week.
Aaliyah reached across the table and touched his hand. It was meant to reassure him, but he could feel the tension in her touch. She was as worried as he was. More so, for she had more at stake-He met her gaze. "No, I can't be wrong," he insisted, answering her unspoken question. He raised his face toward the full moon that hung low and golden on the eastern horizon. "The eclipse is tonight or tomorrow night. They must perform the ritual before it's over, or all their hopes are lost."
Rising from her seat, Aaliyah came around the table and took his face in her hands. Her eyes were storms of anger, pain, fear, and doubt.
"Silivren mi akare, Shahana," he said, wrapping his arms around her, pressing her head to his shoulder. "I will not let that happen! They will not take Lisoh from you, I swear!"
Swallowing, Aaliyah nodded and returned to her seat. They resumed supper, though neither ate much. Their eyes watched the harbor—and the rising moon.
When the meal was done, Spyder leaned on the rooftop parapet and stared impatiently outward. Aaliyah paced back and forth, her tread soundless, her eyes wild with worry and torment as the night grew later. Ronal was gone; Spyder had sent him to the wharves to learn what he could and to keep watch from there.
A light wind stirred Spyder's short-cropped hair and played on the back of his neck as he folded his hands together and leaned on the rough stone. The moon and the night mocked him, he thought. The streets, indeed the city as far as he could see, was a maddening patchwork of shadows lit only by Sabellia's wan smile and the occasional flickering torch.
The bay and the sea beyond were a silvery mirror where nothing moved. Merchant ships rested in their slips for the night; fishing boats bobbed lightly on their lines at the docks.
He had chosen these apartments just for this view. Jamasharem would be interested in the comings and goings in this city's harbor. The Rankan Empire yet regarded Sanctuary with suspicion, and in truth, even fear. Too much had happened here. The place was strange. Enchanted, some said. Cursed, said others. Whichever, gods and sorcerers and demons had left their marks here as they had in no other city.
So he was Spyder, a man without heritage, without a nation.
And yet, for reasons he couldn't fully grasp, he served the Rankan emperor. Some lingering ember of loyalty still burning in his breast? Some minuscule hope of restoring the honor of the Vigeles?
It embittered him to deny his true name.
Aaliyah touched his arm, and he turned to her. Filled with a sudden need, he drew her close and pressed his head down upon her shoulder. The smell of her hair, the feathery brush of her fingers on his bare back—whether by his action or hers, his kilt fell away as their lips met. She tasted of honey and mint, sweeter and more intoxicating than the wine in his cup.
On the couch beside the table, in the open night, they made love. The soft illumination from the alabaster lamp highlighted the con-trast between their bodies and charged the air with an eroticism and sensuality that, for a time, allo
wed them to forget Sanctuary and danger, bitterness and fear. For a time, they had no other mission, no other purpose, but each other.
Afterward, they lay side by side watching the moon. Spyder felt Aaliyah's breathing, the soft vibration of her body next to his. He knew that she was changing his life in a way that was both fantastical and disturbing. There was no room in his life for the feelings she stirred in him, and yet already in the short month since he'd found Aaliyah, he couldn't imagine being apart from her.
He kissed her mouth, then rose from the couch. The sesame oil burning in the lamp was beginning to smoke, so he sprinkled a few grains of salt in it to stop the smoking. As he did so, something in the flame caught his attention. He stared with puzzlement as a blood red shadow touched the edge of the flame and slowly engulfed it, turning blacker and blacker.
Spyder jerked his gaze away and rubbed a thumb and finger over his eyelids. Then he shot a glance at the moon. It floated in the sky over the harbor, effulgent. Next, he noticed Aaliyah. She stood at the parapet, her attention riveted on the moon, her fingers curled like claws on the stone, her body rigid, and her head thrown back.
The braided flax wick in the sesame oil crackled suddenly, drawing his attention once again, and the flame was just a yellow flame. But he knew, without understanding how, that he had seen a vision of the coming eclipse in that small lamp light, and that Aaliyah had shared that vision, or at least, in her own way, that she had sensed something.
He caught her shoulders and drew her against him. Her face was a mask of panic and desperation. He studied the harbor again for the Vasalan ship, then slammed a palm down on the parapet in frustration. Though it had only been a small vision, it had to mean something!
"Prepare yourself, Shahana," he said, leading her to the staircase.
"They're here. They've gotten by us somehow. Now we have to find them."
They descended to their separate apartments. Spyder quickly donned garments of black leather and threw a cloak about his shoulders. From a chest at the foot of his bed he took a double-edged sword of medium length. The scabbard, though sturdy, was unremarkable, but before he strapped it on, he grasped the hilt and exposed a few inches of the blade. The candlelight in his room gleamed on fine Enlibar steel. To this, he added a plain dagger, and closed the chest once more.
But Aaliyah had reacted, too. Something had plainly agitated her.
He hurried downstairs into the darkened shop and let himself out a side door into an alley that was barely wide enough for two men to pass through shoulder to shoulder. He followed it, pausing at the opening to stare both ways down Face-of-the-Moon Street. A few torches burned here and there. One burned in a sconce before the entrance to The Black Spider.
With his hood up and his cloak drawn close, Spyder moved into the street. He kept to the shadows and the dark places as he made his way down the Hill, his footsteps silent, his movements swift and stealthy. A gang of rowdy bravos passed him without so much as noticing his presence. A pair of customers stumbled arm in arm from a tavern almost into his path with no more awareness.
Once, a low animal growl caused him to pause in mid-step. With narrowed eyes, he searched the street and the darkness around him for some sign of danger, one hand going carefully to the hilt of his sword. Behind the poorly fitted shutters of a nearby shop he noted the furtive movement of faint light, a candle or perhaps a shaded lantern, which was odd at so late an hour. Thieves, he suspected, but it was no business of his.
As he neared the bottom of the Hill, he heard the rapid clip-clop of horses' hooves and the creak of wagon wheels on rough cobbles. From the shadowed recess of an alley, he measured its approach. As it rounded a corner, the moonlight fell full upon both wagon and driver. As it passed his hiding place, Spyder leaped aboard.
The driver, Ronal, jerked hard on the reins with his left hand. At the same time, he launched a backfisted blow toward his uninvited passenger's face. Spyder caught his arm before the blow could land.
"Such a swift ride must mean you have news," he whispered as he settled on the buckboard beside his friend.
Ronal's breath hissed between his teeth. "Damn it, you nearly gave me heart failure!"
"You've a stouter heart than ten men," Spyder answered, letting go of Ronal's arm. "To the point. The ring is here—I'm certain of it."
Ronal half-turned on his seat to regard Spyder. "How do you know that?"
"I just know," Spyder answered from beneath his hood. "A feeling."
"You may be right," Ronal said in a low voice. "In the Broken Mast a short time ago I overheard Markam telling a wild story. Seems there's a ship from Inception Island anchored at the easternmost end of the harbor, and some of its sailors were claiming they saw a ghost ship last night, all black with no running lights, off their starboard side hugging the shoreline. Sailed straight up the White Foal River, they claimed, before it disappeared in the fog. Markam was laughing about it. Impossible, he said. But I thought you'd want to know." "Turn the wagon around," Spyder ordered quietly. "Take the Wideway at the best pace you can manage without drawing too much attention, and head for the White Foal."
Spyder didn't answer. He glanced over his left shoulder at the moon high above the bay. There was no trace yet of the eclipse Ranke's finest astrologers were predicting. And yet, there was that strange little trick with the candle flame on his rooftop. Out on the water near the pinnacles of stone called Hag's Teeth a number of ships were anchored. Lanterns burned weakly along their rails, in their bows. They were single and double-masted sailing vessels without oar-banks like the Ilsigi trireme he had arrived on.
There had been no wind last night. How could a ship have hugged the shoreline and sailed almost unnoticed up the White Foal? The river ran deep enough, but it was full of snags and tangles, particularly for the first few miles or so inland from the mouth.
They had come to the end of the Wideway. Ronal brought the wagon to a halt, and Spyder rose, standing on the seat to study the black ribbon of water. The river ran wide, but not so swiftly as in former days. It had washed out of its old banks and spread over the land, making bogs and marshes. "There is a name for that place," Spyder said with a sweep of his hand.
"The Swamp of Night Secrets," Ronal answered. "An evil place, especially at night."
Spyder climbed down from the wagon and turned slowly. Just behind them between their position and the sea were the low rooftops of Fisherman's Row. "Steal us a boat, Ronal. A skiff, a row-boat, anything that will get us to the other side. Hurry!"
Ronal turned the wagon and slapped the reins across the horses' backs to speed them along. Spyder watched him go, then drawing his cloak about himself, he moved into the shadow of a warehouse and turned back toward the river.
The Swamp of Night Secrets. An evil place, Ronal called it. What better place then for a coven of Nisi witches to make their sacrifices and work their damnable magic? He clenched his fists inside his leather gloves and swore silently. It was no longer enough to thwart their rituals and destroy the Ring of Sea and Fire—that much he had promised Jamasharem. He must also save Lisoh. That he had also promised.
The sharp, feline growl of a jungle cat sounded near the river's bank, interrupting his thoughts. He gazed in the direction of the sound, then sank deeper into the shadows and deeper into his thoughts.
The Ring of Sea and Fire.
Forty years before, two Globes of Power had been forged on Wi-zardwall in the land of the Nis, one each for the King and Queen of Night, who were the greatest warlock and witch of their day. Into those crystal orbs were poured the essences of the blackest sorcery, power magnified and amplified beyond understanding. Armed with such power, Nis looked with hungry eyes on the Rankan Empire, its neighbor.
A long and costly war followed, and though Ranke eventually prevailed, the globes were not destroyed. As with so many things arcane and magical, they made their way to Sanctuary. Here, in the slum district once called Downwind, demigods and sorcerers and vampires and their masters
, the strangest of allies, finally shattered them. Spyder sniffed the air as he looked around. Downwind—he stood now upon its very edge, recalling the tales, how for a single night following that destruction every man, woman, or child with a mote of magical talent found their abilities elevated to drastic levels as the power contained in those globes diffused through the city. Then, like fire smothered under sand, the magic went out.
The creak of wagon wheels in the quietness alerted him to Ronal's return. The shorter man hopped down and threw back a tarp, exposing the small rowboat he'd appropriated. "I don't feel good about stealing from honest, hard-working folks," he grumbled as the two men together seized hold of the boat.
"Perhaps you'll feel better about it when someone steals your wagon and team," Spyder commented. "We'll have to leave them here."
Ronal frowned as they lifted the boat and carried it to the water. "And you're a right prick for mentioning it."
Again there came the feline cry that Spyder had heard earlier. Ronal straightened instantly. His startled eyes widened as he whirled and searched the darkness, and he gripped an oar like a club. "That came from behind us!"
Spyder gazed toward the sky again. The full moon hung directly overhead. Yet, there was a thin veil of clouds gathering over the sea, a moon-tinged grayness that had come up without warning out of nowhere. "Get in the boat," Spyder insisted. Climbing in first, he settled himself in the bow with his eyes fixed on the far side of the White Foal.
Ronal pushed off from the bank and seated himself in the middle of the boat. Quickly, he positioned the oars in the oar-locks and dipped them into the water.
A soft splash sounded off to their right. Ronal froze at the oars to stare. Spyder calmly turned his head for a moment. "You're nervous tonight," he said.
Ronal resumed rowing. "Swamps and witches," he muttered. "Witches and swamps. Why would I be nervous? This isn't your usual business, my friend. I've helped you count army divisions in secret, intercepted correspondence for you, watched you seduce information from the wives of generals. This is different."
