Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn tw-2

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  'I was a coachman,' the other said with a nervous frown. 'I - I mean ... no.'

  'Once I pulled a man apart with hot pincers,' Samlor continued quietly. 'He was headman of a tribe that had taken our toll payment but still tried to cut out a couple of horses from the back of our train. I slipped into the village that night, jerked the chief out of his bed, and brought him back to the laager. In the morning I fixed him as a display for the rest.' The Cirdonian reached forwards and wiped his dagger clean on the sleeve of the other man's tunic. 'Don't go back on your word to me, friend,' he said.

  Regli's man edged to the helical staircase. As he mounted each of the first dozen steps, he looked back over his shoulder at the Cirdonian. When the pursuit or thrown knife did not come as he had feared or expected, the retainer ran up the next twenty steps without pausing. He looked down from that elevation and said, 'One thing, master.' .

  'Say it,' responded Samlor.

  'They opened the Lady Samlane to give the child separate burial.'

  'Yes?'

  'And it didn't look to be demon spawn, as you say,' Regli's man called. 'It was a perfect little boy. Except that your knife was through its skull.'

  Samlor began to climb the steps, ignoring the scrabbling slippers of the man above him on the twisting staircase. The door at the top thudded, leaving nothing of the hapless ambusher but splotches of his blood on the railing. Should have stuck to his horses, Samlor thought. He laughed aloud, well aware that the epitaph probably applied to himself as well. Still, he had a better notion than that poor fool of a coachman of what he was getting into ... though the gods all knew how slight were his chances of getting out of it alive. If the fellow he was looking for was a real magician, rather than someone like Samlor himself who had learned a few spells while knocking around the world, it was over for sure.

  The door at the top of the stairs pivoted outward. Samlor tested it with a fingertip, then paused to steady his heart and breathing. As he stood there, his left hand sought the toad-faced medallion.

  The dagger in his right hand pointed down, threatening nothing at the moment but - ready.

  He pushed the door open.

  On the other side, the secret opening was only a wall panel. Its frescoes were geometric and in no way different from those of the rest of the temple hallway. To the left, the hall led to an outside door heavily banded with iron. From his livery and the mutilation of his outflung left hand, the coachman could be recognized where he lay. The rest of the retainer appeared to have been razored into gobbets of flesh and bone, no other one of them as large as what remained of the left hand. Under the circumstances, Samlor had no sympathy to waste on the corpse.

  The Cirdonian sighed and turned to the right, stepping through the hangings of brass beads into the sanctuary of Heqt. The figure he expected was waiting for him.

  Soft, grey dawnlight crept through hidden slits in the dome. Mirrors had been designed to light the grinning, gilded toad-face of Heqt at the top of the dome beneath the spire. Instead, the light was directed downwards onto the figure on the floral mosaic in the centre of the great room. The hair of the waiting man glowed like burning wire. 'Did the night keep you well, friend?' Samlor called as he stepped forwards.

  'Well,' agreed the other with a nod. There was no sign of the regular priests and acolytes of Heqt. The room brightened as if the light fed on the beauty of the waiting man. 'As I see she kept you, Champion of Heqt.' -

  'No champion,' Samlor said, taking another step as casual as the long knife dangling from his right hand. 'Just a man looking for the demon who caused his sister's death. I didn't have to look any farther than the bench across the street last night, did I?'

  The other's voice was a rich tenor. It had a vibrancy that had been missing when he and Samlor had talked of Heqt and Dyareela the night before. 'Heqt keeps sending her champions, and I ... I deal with them. You met the first of them, the priest?'

  'I came looking for a demon,' the Cirdonian said, walking very slowly, 'and all it was was a poor madman who had convinced himself that he was a god.'

  'I am Dyareela.'

  'You're a man who saw an old carving down below that looked like him,' Samlor said. 'That worked on your mind, and you worked on other people's minds. ... My sister, now, she was convinced her child would look like a man but be a demon. She killed it in her womb. The only way that she'd have been able to kill it, because they'd never have let her near it, Regli's heir, and her having tried abortion. But such a waste, because it was just a child, only a madman's child.'

  The sun-crowned man gripped the throat of his white tunic and ripped downwards with unexpected strength. 'I am Dyareela,' it said. Its right breast was pendulous, noticeably larger than the left. The male genitals were of normal size, flaccid, hiding the vulva that must lie behind them. 'The one there,' it said, gesturing towards the wall beyond which the coachman lay, 'came to my fane to shed blood without my leave.' The naked figure giggled. 'Perhaps I'll have you wash in his blood. Champion,' it said. 'Perhaps that will be the start of your penance.'

  'A mad little hermaphrodite who knows a spell or two,' Samlor said. 'But there'll be no penance for any again from you, little one. You're fey, and I know a spell for your sort. She wasn't much, but I'll have your heart for what you led my sister to.'

  'Will you conjure me by Heqt, then. Champion?' asked the other with its arms spread in welcome and laughter in its liquid voice. 'Her temple is my temple, her servants are my servants ... the blood other champions is mine for a sacrifice!'

  Samlor was twenty feet away, a full turn and half a turn. He clutched his medallion left-handed, hoping it would give him enough time to complete his spell. 'Do I look like a priest to talk about gods?' he said. 'Watch my dagger, madman.'

  The other smiled, waiting as Samlor cocked the heavy blade. It caught a stray beam of sunlight. The double edge flashed black dawn.

  'By the Earth that bore this,'

  Samlor cried,

  'and the Mind that gave it shape; By the rown of this hilt and the silver wire that laps it; By the cold iron of this blade and by the white-hot flames it flowed from; By the blood it has drunk and the souls it has eaten - know thy hour'

  Samlor hurled the dagger. It glinted as it rotated. The blade was point-first and a hand's breadth from the smiling face when it exploded in a flash and a thunderclap that shook the city. The concussion hurled Samlor backwards, bleeding from the nose and ears. The air was dense with flecks of paint and plaster from the frescoed ceiling. Dyareela stood with the same smile, arms lifting in triumph, lips opening further in throaty laughter. 'Mine for a sacrifice!'

  A webbing of tiny cracks was spreading from the centre of the dome high above. Samlor staggered to his feet, choking on dust and knowing that if he was lucky he was about to die.

  Heqt's gilded bronze head, backed by the limestone spire, plunged down from the ceiling. It struck Dyareela's upturned face like a two-hundred-ton crossbow bolt. The floor beneath disintegrated. The limestone column scarcely slowed, hurtling out of sight as the earth itself shuddered to the impact.

  Samlor lost his footing in the remains of Regli's coachman. An earth-shock pitched him forwards against the door panel. It was unlocked. The Cirdonian lunged out into the street as the shattered dome followed its pinnacle into a cavern that gaped with a sound like the lowest note of an organ played by gods.

  Samlor sprawled in the muddy street. All around him men were shouting and pointing. The Cirdonian rolled onto his back and looked at the collapsing temple.

  Above the ruins rose a pall of shining dust. More than imagination shaped the cloud into the head of a toad.

  THE FRUIT OF ENLIBAR by Lynn Abbey

  The hillside groves of orange trees were all that remained of the legendary glory of Enlibar. Humbled descendants of the rulers of an empire dwarfing Ilsig or Ranke eked out their livings among the gnarled, ancient trees. They wrapped each unripe fruit in leaves for the long caravan journey and wrapped e
ach harvest in a fresh retelling of their legends. By shrewd storytelling these once proud families survived, second only to the S'danzo in their ability to create mystery, but like the S'danzo crones they flavoured their legends with truth and kept the sceptics at bay.

  The oranges of Enlibar made their way to Sanctuary once a year. When the fist sized fruits were nearly ripe Haakon, the sweetmeat vendor of the bazaar, would fill his cart and hawk oranges in the town as well as in the stalls of the bazaar. During i those few days he would make enough money to buy expensive | trinkets for his wife and children, another year's lodgings for his mistress, and have enough gold left to take to Gonfred, the only honest goldsmith in town.

  The value of each orange was such that Haakon would ignore the unwritten code of the bazaar and reserve the best of his limited supply for his patrons at the Governor's Palace. It had happened, however, that two of the precious fruits had been bruised. Haakon decided not to sell that pair at all but to share them with his friends the bazaar-smith, Dubro, and his youngwife, the half-S'danzo Illyra.

  He scored the peel deftly with an inlaid silver tool meant especially for this one purpose. When his fingers moved away the pebbly rind fell back from the deep-coloured pulp and Illyra gasped with delight. She took one of the pulp sections and drizzled the juice onto the back of her hand, then lapped it up with the tip of her tongue: the mannerly way to savour the delicate flavour of the blood-red juice.

  'These are the best; better than last year's,' she exclaimed with a smile. 'You say that every year, Illyra. Time dulls your memory; the taste brings it back.' Haakon sucked the juice off his hand with less delicacy: his lips showed the Stain of Enlibar. 'And, speaking of time dulling your memory - Dubro, do you recall, about fifteen years back, a death-pale boy with straw hair and wild eyes running about the town?'

  Haakon watched as Dubro closed his eyes and sank back in thought. The smith would have been a raw youth then himself, but he had always been slow, deliberate, and utterly reliable in his judgements. Illyra would have been a skirt-clinging toddler that long ago so Haakon did not think to ask her, nor to glance her way while he awaited Dubro's reply. Had he done so he would have seen her tremble and a blood-red drop of juice disappear into the fine dust beneath her chair.

  'Yes,' Dubro said without opening his eyes, 'I remember one as that: quiet, pale ... nasty. Lived a few years with the garrison, then disappeared.'

  'Would you know him again after all this time?'

  'Nay. He was that sort of lad who looks childish until he becomes a man, then one never sees the child in his face again.'

  'Would you reckon "Walegrin" to be his name? Ignored, beside them, Illyra bit down on her tongue and stifled sudden panic before it became apparent.

  'It might be ... nay, I could not be sure. I doubt as I ever spoke to the lad by name.' Haakon shrugged as if the questions had been idle conversation. Illyra ate her remaining share of the oranges, then went into the ramshackle stall where she lit three cones of incense before returning to the men with a ewer of water.

  'Illyra, I've just asked your husband if he'd come with me to the Palace. I've got two sacks of oranges to deliver for the Prince and another set of arms would make the work easier. But he says he won't leave you here alone.'

  Illyra hesitated. The memories Haakon had aroused were still fresh in her mind, but all that had been fifteen years ago, as he had said. She stared at the clouded-over sky.

  'No, there'll be no problem. It may rain today arid, anyway, you've taken everyone's money this week with your oranges,' she said with forced brightness.

  'Well then, you see, Dubro - there's no problem. Bank the fires and we'll be off. I'll have you back sweating again before the first raindrops fall.'

  Illyra watched them leave. Fear filled the forge, fear left over from a dimly remembered childhood. Visions she had shared with no one, not even Dubro. Visions not even the S'danzo gifts could resolve into truth or illusion. She caught up her curly black hair with a set of combs and went back inside.

  When the bed was concealed under layers of gaudy, bright cloth and her youth under layers of kohl, Illyra was ready to greet the townsfolk. She had not exaggerated her complaints about the oranges. It was just as well that Haakon's supply was diminishing. For two days now she had had no querents until late in the day. Lonely and bored she watched the incense smoke curl into the darkness of the room, losing herself in its endless variations.

  'Illyra?'

  A man drew back the heavy cloth curtain. Illyra did not recognize his voice. His silhouette revealed only that he was as tall as Dubro, though not as broad.

  'Illyra?-1 was told I'd find Illyra, the crone, here.'

  She froze. Any querent might have cause to resent a S'danzo prophecy, regardless of its truth, and plot revenge against the seeress. Only recently she had been threatened by a man in the red-and-gold livery of the Palace. Her hand slid under the folds of the tablecloth and eased a tiny dagger loose from a sheath nailed to the table leg. -

  'What do you want?' She held her voice steady; greeting a paying querent rather than a thug.

  'To talk with you. May I come in?' He paused, waiting for a reply and when there was none continued, 'You seem unduly suspicious, S'danzo. Do you have many enemies here. Little Sister?'

  He stepped into the room and let the cloth fall behind him. Illyra's dagger slid silently from her hand into the folds of her skirts.

  'Walegrin.'

  'You remember so quickly? Then you did inherit her gift?'

  'Yes, I inherited it, but this morning I learned that you had

  returned to Sanctuary.'

  'Three weeks past. It has not changed at all except, perhaps, for the worse. I had hoped to complete my business without disturbing you but I have encountered complications, and I doubt any of the other S'danzo would help me.'

  'The S'danzo will never forget.'

  Walegrin eased his bulk into one of Dubro's chairs. Light from the candelabra fell on his face. He endured the exposure, though as Dubro had guessed, there was no trace of youth left in his features. He was tall and pale, lean in the way of powerful men whose gentler tissues have boiled away. His hair was sun bleached to brittle straw, confined by four thick braids and a bronze circlet. Even for Sanctuary he cut an exotic, barbarian figure.

  'Are you satisfied?' he asked when her gaze returned to the velvet in front of her.

  'You have become very much like him,' she answered slowly. 'I think not, 'Lyra. My tastes, anyway, do not run as our father's did - so put aside your fears on that account. I've come for your help. True S'danzo help, as your mother could have given me. I could pay you in gold, but I have other items which might tempt you more.' He reached under his bronze-studded leather kilt to produce a suede pouch of some weight which he set, unopened, on the table. She began to open it when he leaned forwards and grasped her wrist tightly.

  'It wasn't me, 'Lyra. I wasn't there that night. I ran away, just like you did.'

  His voice carried Illyra back those fifteen years sweeping the doubts from her memories. 'I was a child then, Walegrin. A little child, no more than four. Where could I have run to?'

  He released her wrist and sat back in the chair. Illyra emptied the pouch onto her table. She recognized only a few of the beads and bracelets, but enough to realize that she gazed upon all of her mother's jewellery. She picked up a string of blue glass beads strung on a creamy braided silk.

  'These have been restrung,' she said simply. Walegrin nodded. 'Blood rots the silk and stinks to the gods. I had no choice. All the others are as they were.'

  Illyra let the beads fall back into the pile. He had known how to tempt her. The entire heap was not worth a single gold piece, but no storehouse of gold could have been more valuable to her.

  'Well, then, what do you want from me?'

  He pushed the trinkets aside and from another pouch produced a palm-sized pottery shard which he placed gently on the velvet.

  'Tell me everything about th
at: where the rest of the tablet is; how it came to be broken; what the symbols mean - everything!'

  There was nothing in the jagged fragment that justified the change that came over Walegrin as he spoke of it. Illyra saw a piece of common orange pottery with a crowded black design set under the glaze; the sort of ware that could be found in any household of the Empire. Even with her S'danzo gifts focused on the shard it remained stubbornly common. Illyra looked at Wale-grin's icy green eyes, his thought-protruded brows, the set of his chin atop the studded greave on his forearm, and thought better of telling him what she actually saw.

  'Its secrets are locked deeply within it. To a casual glance its disguises are perfect. Only prolonged examination will draw its secrets out.' She placed the shard back on the table.

  'How long?'

  'It would be hard to say. The gift is strengthened by symbolic cycles. It may take until the cycle of the shard coincides...'

  'I know the S'danzo! I was there with you and your mother -don't play bazaar games with me. Little Sister. I know too much.'

  Illyra sat back on her bench. The dagger in her skirts clunked to the floor. Walegrin bent over to pick it up. He turned it over in his hands and without warning thrust it through the velvet into the table. Then, with his palm against the smooth of the blade, he bent it back until the hilt touched the table. When he removed his hand the knife remained bent.