Sanctuary

by Lynn Abbey

Soldt’s temple passage was narrower and steeper and, though every bit as dark, it was somehow easier to follow. When the duelist warned, “Careful here, there are pits in the floor. Keep to the right until you’re past the first, then move quickly to the left—” Cauvin remembered his own explorations and knew they had made it back to the Temple of Ils.

  Once topside, Soldt attacked the rope ladder with a boot knife, but Cauvin had a better idea. He rammed his shoulder against the undermined marble column.

  “Help me. We can bring it down and seal them in.”

  “They’ve got other ways,” Soldt insisted, but he attacked the column from a different angle.

  Bits of stone and dirt rained into the pit. Cauvin felt the column begin to shift.

  “Once more, Soldt. Once more and run for the Promise. The whole outside wall could follow.”

  It didn’t, but several blocks of marble tumbled from the roof piers and followed the column into the pit. Rats and mice could still use the passages to the Hand’s bolt-hole, but larger creatures were sealed out.

  Safe on the Promise of Heaven, Cauvin was ready to congratulate himself when Soldt said—

  “Your arm’s bleeding.”

  Cauvin had forgotten Leorin’s parting gift. His sleeve was slashed and blood-soaked. He’d ruined another shirt. But the gash itself wasn’t serious—just a flesh wound.

  “Hang on,” Soldt advised, “I’ll clean it out.” He extracted a leather bottle from a scrip beneath his cloak. “You’d better sit down for this.”

  “Not now. I’ve got to get back to the stoneyard. I’ve got to know that Bec’s safe—”

  Soldt rapped Cauvin on the breastbone. He staggered, tripped, and wound up where Soldt wanted him: sitting on the weedy steps of the Temple of Ils.

  “First things first, lad. Lord Torchholder charged me with keeping you alive, and I’m not about to fail him. The only thing the Hand loves more than blood is poison. It’s second nature to them, like breathing—”

  “Leorin didn’t have time to load her knife,” Cauvin protested and started to rise.

  Soldt rapped him again. “It wasn’t her knife, she pulled it off the corpse. Sit still. You’re fortunate that I know as much about poisons as the Hand.”

  “You saw?”

  “I put that arrow through his skull.” Soldt opened his cloak, letting Cauvin see the odd-looking bow slung below his shoulder.

  “And the fire arrows?”

  Soldt shook his head. “Not mine. Not arrows, either.” He unstoppered the leather bottle with his teeth. “We had help back there.”

  “Friends of the Torch?”

  “Not hardly,” Soldt snorted. “That fire stank of magic, and I can’t say that Lord Torchholder’s got any friends among the wizards and hazards, but the Hand hunts magi with a special vengeance, and they return the favor. I didn’t think there were any master magi holed up in Sanctuary, then again, I didn’t think there was a nest of Dyareelans under the Temple of Ils, either. Brace yourself, lad—this will sting a bit.”

  Frog all, the thick, green ooze Soldt squeezed on Cauvin’s wound did a lot worse than sting. It blackened his flesh and filled his nose with acid vapors. Burning agony shot up his arm while Soldt advised the impossible—

  “Try not to move,” and squeezed out another knuckle-sized dollop.

  The pain spread up his arm, worse than the first time, and then, thank all the god-damned gods, Cauvin felt nothing at all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Furzy feathers! Dog! Stop pulling!”

  Bec put both hands on the leather strap binding him to the huge brindle dog. The dog looked over its shoulder but, rather than give Bec another chance to loosen the strap that bound them together, the dog lowered its head and pulled harder.

  Bec had had a chance to get free at the bottom of a pit that turned out to be inside the old Temple of Ils on the Promise of Heaven. The dog hadn’t wanted to climb the shaky, rope ladder hanging in the pit. With nowhere to go, Bec could have sat in the dirt and worked the knot loose, climbed out, and left Soldt’s dog behind. But there at the bottom of the pit, when he hadn’t been certain whether the Hand was chasing him, Bec hadn’t wasted time on the knot, he’d gotten behind the dog and pushed it up the ladder.

  Truth to tell—Bec didn’t really want to loosen the knot. He’d welcomed the dog’s strength and its confidence underground. He’d been living a nightmare—caught in a sack, dumped in a cage, yelled at, threatened, dragged in front of a horrible statue that was halfman and half-woman. Then—when he’d thought the nightmare couldn’t get worse—there was Cauvin side by side with Leorin (who was Hand, through and through), saying things that couldn’t be true, knocking him down, and telling him to get out … or else.

  Bec had run for his life. He hadn’t wanted to leave Cauvin, but Cauvin was so different, and he was so scared. He’d even forgotten which hand Cauvin had told him to keep on the wall by the time Soldt found him.

  Follow Vex. Soldt had said, tying the strap around Bec’s wrist. He’ll take you to the stoneyard.

  Bec tried to tell Soldt what had happened, but Soldt whispered a few foreign words to the dog. It started pulling, and it hadn’t stopped.

  “Dog! Slow down!”

  Bec pulled back on the strap again. It was morning—maybe a couple hours past dawn—and they were charging toward Pyrtanis Street—which was good. Except people were coming out of their houses with night jars and there’d be trouble if a boy and a dog tripped someone carrying a night jar. Especially a big, ugly dog and a filthy boy who’d lost his shirt. Momma always said that the safest children were the cleanest children, the quietest children, the children who didn’t race about or get in the way of adults. Bec couldn’t control the dog, replace his missing shirt, or wash away the soot he’d picked up in the underground, but he could keep quiet.

  He did more than keep quiet, he prayed to Shipri because She was supposed to take care of children.

  Shipri must have been listening because none of the scowling mothers or fathers along the Split tried to stop him or the dog. Better still, the stoneyard dog sensed them coming along Pyrtanis Street. It barked up a challenge which Soldt’s dog answered with bone-chilling howls. That led to best of all, Momma and Poppa coming out the gate to meet him!

  Bec didn’t recognize the stout woman who opened the gate, but the dog did. When she said, “Vex!” and another word Bec didn’t catch, the dog planted its tail on the ground and sat like a statue until Poppa cut through the knot at Bec’s wrist. Momma was crying. Her eyes were so red, it was a wonder that her tears weren’t red. Because she would touch him, then pull her hands away as though he was steaming hot, Bec feared she was more angry that he’d run off than glad to see him home.

  He shouted, “I’m sorry!” and promised that he’d never run away, but that only made her cry harder.

  Then Poppa scooped him up, and all the fear and pain, the cold, and even the hunger Bec had kept hidden from himself since Grandfather told him to hide in the bushes escaped. He forgot that he was too old for hugs and clung to his father with arms and legs together.

  All of upper Pyrtanis Street must have known he was missing and must have heard the dogs announce his return. Batty Dol; Honald—the potter, not the rooster; Teera; Cauvin’s friend, Swift; Bilibot, Eprazian and the rest of the early-morning regulars at the Lucky Well, they all crowded into the stoneyard. Questions flew like summertime flies: What had happened? Where had he been? Had he been lost or stolen? How did he get away? Did he have help? Who … ? How … ? Where … ?

  Bec tried to answer, but he couldn’t string three words together before there was another question. Momma noticed that the cut on his forehead was bleeding again. She called for cloth and water and latched on to her son’s ear—not gently at all—to get a better look. He told her that the cut didn’t hurt nearly as much as the welts on his chest where the man they called Strangle had struck him with a long, nasty whip.

  Those words were no sooner out
of Bec’s mouth than everyone wanted to see the marks, and Momma was trying to pull him out of Poppa’s arms. It was Momma tugging on Bec’s arms and he did know everyone in the yard—except for the stout woman holding on to Soldt’s dog. Still, the tugging hurt, and all those voices, hands, and faces getting too close were frightening; and Bec had used up all his bravery. He did what he hadn’t dared do underground: He closed his eyes and screamed.

  Suddenly, Poppa was shaking sideways, like a baited bear, shouting at Momma and everyone else to back off. That only panicked Bec more. He couldn’t think outside his terror until, after many long, black moments, he heard Poppa’s voice saying:

  “Easy. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you. No one.”

  Bec stopped screaming. He opened his eyes and found himself in Poppa’s lap, in the kitchen, with Momma on her knees beside the chair and nobody—absolutely nobody else nearby. Momma had a mug of cider in one hand and a strip of linen in the other. She’d stopped crying, but her cheeks remained shiny wet. Bec took the mug when Momma offered it. He flinched when she touched his forehead with the damp linen.

  “Patience, wife! Let the boy breathe. Do you want to start him off again?”

  Momma started to cry again. Between sobs, she said, “My baby’s hurt … my baby’s hurt …” and neither Bec nor Poppa could stop her from daubing away the soot on his arms.

  The water was cold because the hearth was cold. In all his life Bec had never known his mother to let the kitchen hearth go stone cold. He knew then that Momma had been as scared as he and gave her a hug, before wiggling out of Poppa’s lap. Standing on his own two feet, Bec told them that he had to get to the ruins straightaway.

  “Cauvin said Grandfather’s dead. I’ve got to know—” Bec couldn’t finish his thought. “I’ve got to go out there.”

  Momma said, “Cauvin. Cauvin! Lying again!” in her angriest voice, but fell quiet when Poppa snarled at her.

  “Cauvin’s been gone since yesterday, Bec, but Lord Torchholder’s up in the loft. After the storm, when you hadn’t come home, Cauvin took me out to the ruins. We were looking for you, but I brought Lord Torchholder here—”

  Bec lunged for the door. Poppa caught him by the belt. Bec struggled, but there was no getting away from Poppa.

  “Lord Torchholder’s at death’s doorstep. He didn’t wake up when I looked in on him at sunrise and, son, it’s not likely that he will wake up again. Cauvin told you the truth—”

  “No-o-o-o,” Bec wailed and stopped struggling. “He lied. He lied about everything. He had to.”

  “The Torch was a very old man, Bec—he was an old man when I was your age.”

  Bec slipped toward blind fear again. If Grandfather was dead, then Grandfather had lied when he’d promised that “Nothing’s wrong. There’s nothing to fear” right before Bec sneaked off to find a hiding place. Bec had known, of course, that something was wrong when he was hauled out of his bramble-bush hiding place, but Momma and Poppa both said that sometimes a thing had to get worse before it got better, so he’d held on to his belief in Grandfather’s words. Until now.

  “It’s not fair!”

  “Not many things are, Bec,” Poppa said, and relaxed his grip on Bec’s belt.

  That was all the wriggle room Bec needed. He was out the kitchen door in a flash, running past Batty Dol, the stout woman, and Soldt’s dog; past a horse he’d never seen before and up the ladder to Cauvin’s loft shouting, “Grandfather!” at every step.

  A thousand spiders, at least, had spun their webs over the loft hole. Bec couldn’t see the spiders, but he felt the webs—sticky strands that stung wherever they touched his skin. When he opened his mouth to shout “Grandfather!” they stuck to his tongue, where they tasted gagging awful. He started crying again—twice in one day!—but he drove himself through the webs, shouting, “Grandfather!” between sobs.

  Four rungs from the top of the ladder, Bec got his head into the loft where the air smelled of thunderstorms. Cauvin’s pallet was in the center of the loft, and there was something shaped like a sleeping man stretched across it.

  “Grandfather? Grandfather, are you awake? Are you alive?”

  A faint voice came from the pallet. “Boy? Is that you, boy?”

  “I’m not ‘boy,’ I’m Bec—!”

  “Fetch my staff, boy. It’s on the floor between there and here.”

  If Grandfather was giving orders, then Grandfather was himself, and Bec was reassured. He found the blackwood staff scarcely an arm’s length from the pallet. He nudged what he thought was a shoulder and leapt away when Grandfather opened strange, fiery eyes. Without thinking, he held the staff crosswise before him.

  Grandfather groaned and his bones crackled as he sat up. “Where have you been?”

  Bec opened his mouth, but he found himself unable to speak unless he admitted that he didn’t exactly know. “They tied a cloth over my eyes, but I was in a cave and in a temple on the Promise of Heaven when I got out.”

  “Who were you with?”

  He had to be truthful, perfectly truthful, or his tongue simply wouldn’t move. “A dog. A big dog. He pulled me through the cave tunnels, then he pulled me home.”

  “Before that, boy—who tied the cloth over your eyes?”

  “I think—” Bec’s tongue grew thick and clumsy but he slowly got the words out: “I think it was the Hand, the Bloody Hand of Dyareela. Leorin was there—Cauvin’s Leorin. She was with Cauvin …” Bec didn’t want to tell Grandfather what Cauvin had said and done, but he had to tell the truth. Had to. “Cauvin stayed with them, with her and the other bad people, but he made me leave. When I wouldn’t leave without him, he hit me—he hit me harder than all the Hands put together—and told me you were dead and the Hand had made a mistake taking me instead of him. I was scared, Grandfather—I didn’t know what to do except run away before he hit me again.”

  “And the dog? Did Soldt give you the dog?”

  “Yes,” Bec answered truthfully, but there was more. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten, but Grandfather’s questions were like keys unlocking doors in his memory. “I had help,” Bec whispered. “Cauvin told me to keep a hand on the wall, but I forgot which hand and I went the wrong way. I ran into a monster!”

  Furzy feathers, Bec couldn’t describe the monster without using his arms to show Grandfather how big it had been. He put the staff down.

  “Don’t let go of the staff!”

  Bec snatched it up again.

  “Now, tell me what you saw.”

  “I didn’t see it.” Bec kept his hands tight around the wood. “I ran into it because it was as big as the whole tunnel. And it had arms! Lots of arms—well, maybe arms but maybe legs, too—like a crab’s? They were hard and sharp, kind of cold and wet. They made noise when they picked me up. It had strange eyes—” Bec clamped his teeth together, but the need to tell the truth was stronger than his jaw muscles. “Like yours, Grandfather, kind of. They were sunset-colored and they glowed in the dark and they moved—” Bec desperately wanted to show Grandfather how the glowing spots had drifted apart from each other, but Grandfather had told him to keep hold of the staff, and he was afraid to disobey.

  “Did this monster say anything to you?”

  Bec thought yes, but “Maybe” was the word that came out of his mouth. “I heard a voice, but—but it didn’t seem to come from the monster.”

  “A man’s voice?”

  Bec nodded confidently, “Deep, deeper than Poppa’s.”

  “What did he tell you to do?”

  “He said I was going the wrong way. He said I should turn around or I’d be back where I started.”

  “And did you turn around?”

  “Furzy feathers, Grandfather! It was a monster. It would have eaten me if I didn’t!”

  Grandfather laughed—Grandfather hadn’t been there in the dark; it hadn’t been at all funny, even though the monster had told Bec the truth, and he’d found Soldt again shortly afterward. Then Grand
father coughed and started to choke. Bec dropped the staff. He knelt beside the pallet and pounded gently between Grandfather’s shoulder blades. The spasm slowly stopped.

  “Are you better now, Grandfather?”

  “Better? I’m alive, that’s better than death. Pick up the staff.” Bec did and offered it to Grandfather, who refused it. “What did you tell the Hand, Bec?”

  Bec sprang to his feet and shouted, “Nothing!” but that was an outright lie, and immediately he felt his veins filling with fire. “All right! All right! When she saw me—when she recognized me—Leorin gave me something to drink. I wasn’t sure if I could trust her, so I took a baby sip and it was vile, so I spat it out. She made men hold my arms and pull my hair back ’til I couldn’t keep my mouth closed no matter how hard I tried, then she poured it into my mouth. I tried to spit it back at her—I tried, but the men, they held my nose and I swallowed. I had to swallow. I couldn’t not swallow. They didn’t care when I told them that my stomach hurt afterward, just asked lots of questions—like you’re asking now—only they wanted to know about you and Cauvin and what we did at the ruins.

  “I wouldn’t answer, so they brought another boy to sit beside me. He answered the questions. I yelled at him to be quiet, but my stomach was real sore, and I couldn’t stop him, no matter how hard I tried. Some of the things that other boy said were stupid lies, but he told the truth, too. I couldn’t make him stop.”

  Grandfather shook his head. “You need not blame yourself that you answered their questions truthfully. They gave you a potion to separate your conscience from your knowledge. There was no other little boy—”

  “There was!” Bec insisted, and his blood didn’t boil. “He didn’t even look like me. I wouldn’t talk to her. I wouldn’t talk to any of them!”

  “Very well, there was another boy. Did that other boy make any promises? Did he promise to do something at another time or when he saw or heard some specific thing—a word, perhaps, or an image?”

  “No!” Bec replied, still indignant. “They tried. They twisted my arm until it hurt real bad and the big, mean one—Strangle, I think, was his name—he lashed his whip across my chest and told me that there were bugs in the cave and they would burrow into the cuts he’d made and they’d eat me from the inside out. Then they heated an iron poker in the fire ’til it was red-hot and held it so close to my eyes that I could feel the heat coming off; and Strangle said he’d stick it in my eye if I didn’t promise to do what the other boy promised to do. But I scared that other boy away and told Strangle to sit on his froggin’ poker! That’s when she tied me up again and dumped me in a cage. Strangle said they’d come back; and they did. And I was afraid because … because I didn’t know if I could scare that other boy off again. Then I heard Cauvin and thought everything was going to be all right—