Thieves’ World

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  Jamie made a long arm and collared him. “Not so fast, friend,” the warrior said genially. “We’ve a request, and if you oblige, we won’t get stains on this pretty rug. Where are your guests?”

  “What, what, what,” the deacon gobbled.

  Jamie shook him, in leisured wise lest he quite dislocate the shoulder. “Lady Rosanda, wife to Molin Torchholder, and her assistant Danlis. Take us to them. Oh, and we’d liefer not meet folk along the way. It might get messy if we did.”

  The deacon fainted.

  “Ah, well,” Jamie said. “I hate the idea of cutting down unarmed men, but chances are they won’t be foolhardy.” He filled his lungs. “Rosanda!” he bawled. “Danlis! Jamie and Cappen Varra are here! Come on home!”

  The volume almost bowled his companion over. “Are you mad?” the minstrel exclaimed. “You’ll warn the whole staff—” A flash lit his mind: if they had seen no further guards, surely there were none, and nothing corporeal remained to fear. Yet every minute’s delay heightened the danger of something else going wrong. Somebody might find signs of invasion back in the temple; the gods alone knew what lurked in this realm … Yes, Jamie’s judgement might prove mistaken, but it was the best he could have made.

  Servitors appeared, and recoiled from naked steel. And then, and then—

  Through a doorway strode Danlis. She led by the hand, or dragged, a half hysterical Rosanda. Both were decently attired and neither looked abused, but pallor in cheeks and smudges under eyes bespoke what they must have suffered.

  Cappen came nigh dropping his spear. “Beloved!” he cried. “Are you hale?”

  “We’ve not been ill-treated in the flesh, aside from the snatching itself,” she answered efficiently. “The threats, should Hazroah not get his way, have been cruel. Can we leave now?”

  “Aye, the soonest, the best,” Jamie growled. “Lead them on ahead, Cappen.” His sword covered the rear. On his way out, he retrieved the spear he had left.

  They started back over the garden paths. Danlis and Cappen between them must help Rosanda along. That woman’s plump prettiness was lost in tears, moans, whimpers, and occasional screams. He paid scant attention. His gaze kept seeking the clear profile of his darling. When her grey eyes turned towards him, his heart became a lyre.

  She parted her lips. He waited for her to ask in dazzlement, “How did you ever do this, you unbelievable, wonderful men?”

  “What have we ahead of us?” she wanted to know.

  Well, it was an intelligent query. Cappen swallowed disappointment and sketched the immediate past. Now, he said, they’d return via the gate to the dome and make their stealthy way from the temple, thence to Molin’s dwelling for a joyous reunion. But then they must act promptly—yes, roust the Prince out of bed for authorization—and occupy the temple and arrest everybody in sight before new trouble got fetched from this world.

  Rosanda gained some self-control as he talked. “Oh, my, oh, my,” she wheezed, “you unbelievable, wonderful men.”

  An ear-piercing trill slashed across her voice. The escapers looked behind them. At the entrance to the house stood a thickset middle-aged person in the scarlet robe of a ranking priest of Ils. He held a pipe to his mouth and blew. “Hazroah!” Rosanda shrilled. “The ringleader!”

  “The High Flamen—” Danlis began.

  A rush in the air interrupted. Cappen flung his vision skyward and knew the nightmare was true. The sikkintair was descending. Hazroah had summoned it.

  “Why, you son of a bitch!” Jamie roared. Still well behind the rest, he lifted his spear, brought it back, flung it with his whole strength and weight. The point went home in Hazroah’s breast. Ribs did not stop it. He spouted blood, crumpled, and spouted no more. The shaft quivered above his body.

  But the sikkintair’s vast wings eclipsed the sun. Jamie rejoined his band and plucked the second spear from Cappen’s fingers. “Hurry on, lad, he ordered. “Get them to safety.”

  “Leave you? No!” protested his comrade. Jamie spat an oath. “Do you want the whole faring to’ve gone for naught? Hurry, I said!”

  Danlis tugged at Cappen’s sleeve. “He’s right. The state requires our testimony.”

  Cappen stumbled onward. From time to time he glanced back. In the shadow of the wings, Jamie’s hair blazed. He stood foursquare, spear grasped as a huntsman does. Agape, the Flying Knife rushed down upon him. Jamie thrust straight between those jaws, and twisted.

  The monster let out a sawtoothed shriek. Its wings threshed, made thundercrack, it swooped by, a foot raked. Jamie had his claymore out. He parried the blow.

  The sikkintair rose. The shaft waggled from its throat. It spread great ebon membranes, looped, and came back earthward. Its claws were before it. Air whirred behind.

  Jamie stood his ground, sword in right hand, knife in left. As the talons smote, he fended them off with the dirk. Blood sprang from his thigh, but his byrnie took most of the edged sweep. And his sword hewed. The sikkintair ululated again. It tried to ascend, and couldn’t.

  Jamie had crippled its left wing. It landed—Cappen felt the impact through soles and bones—and hitched itself towards him. From around the spear came a geyser hiss.

  Jamie held fast where he was. As fangs struck at him, he sidestepped, sprang back, and threw his shoulders against the shaft. Leverage swung jaws aside. He glided by the neck towards the forequarters. Both of his blades attacked the spine.

  Cappen and the women hastened on.

  They were almost at the pergola when footfalls drew his eyes rearwards. Jamie loped at an overtaking pace. Behind him, the sikkintair lay in a heap.

  The redhead pulled alongside. “Hai, what a fight!” he panted. “Thanks for this journey, friend! A drinking bout’s worth of thanks!”

  They mounted the death-defiled stairs. Cappen peered across miles. Wings beat in heaven, from the direction of the mountains. Horror stabbed his guts. “Look!” He could barely croak.

  Jamie squinted. “More of them,” he said. “A score, maybe. We can’t cope with so many. An army couldn’t.”

  “That whistle was heard farther away than mortals would hear,” Danlis added starkly.

  “What do we linger for?” Rosanda wailed. “Come, take us home!”

  “And the sikkintairs follow?” Jamie retorted. “No. I’ve my lassies, and kinfolk, and—” He moved to stand before the parchment. Edged metal dripped in his hands; red lay splashed across helm, ringmail, clothing, face. His grin broke forth, wry. ‘A spaewife once told me I’d die on the far side of strangeness. I’ll wager she didn’t know her own strength.’

  “You assume that the mission of the beasts is to destroy us, and when that is done they will return to their lairs.” The tone Danlis used might have served for a remark about the weather.

  “Aye, what else? The harm they’d wreak would be in a hunt for us. But put to such trouble, they could grow furious and harry our whole world. That’s the more likely when Hazroah lies skewered. Who else can control them?”

  “None that I know of, and he talked quite frankly to us.” She nodded. ‘Yes, it behoves us to die where we are.” Rosanda sank down and blubbered. Danlis showed irritation. “Up!” she commanded her mistress. “Up and meet your fate like a Rankan matron!”

  Cappen goggled hopelessly at her. She gave him a smile. “Have no regrets, dear,” she said. “You did well. The conspiracy against the state has been checked.”

  The far side of strangeness—check—chessboard—that version of chess where you pretend the right and left sides of the board are identical on a cylinder tumbled through Cappen. The Flying Knives drew closer fast. Curious aspects of geometry—

  Lightning-smitten, he knew … or guessed he did … “No, Jamie, we go!” he yelled.

  “To no avail save reaping of innocents?” The big man hunched his shoulders. “Never.”

  “Jamie, let us by! I can close the gate. I swear I can—I swear by—by Eshi—”

  The Northerner locked eyes with Cappen f
or a span that grew. At last: “You are my brother in arms.” He stood aside. “Go on.”

  The sikkintairs were so near that the noise of their speed reached Cappen. He urged Danlis towards the scroll. She lifted her skirt a trifle, revealing a dainty ankle, and stepped through. He hauled on Rosanda’s wrist. The woman wavered to her feet but seemed unable to find her direction. Cappen took an arm and passed it into the next world for Danlis to pull. Himself, he gave a mighty shove on milady’s buttocks. She crossed over.

  He did. And Jamie.

  Beneath the temple dome, Cappen’s rapier reached high and slashed. Louder came the racket of cloven air. Cappen severed the upper cords. The parchment fell, wrinkling, crackling. He dropped his weapon, a-clang, squatted, and stretched his arms wide. The free corners he seized. He pulled them to the corners that were still secured, to make a closed band of the scroll.

  From it sounded monstrous thumps and scrapes. The sikkintairs were crawling into the pergola. For them the portal must hang unchanged, open for their hunting.

  Cappen gave that which he held a half-twist and brought the edges back together.

  Thus he created a surface which had but a single side and a single edge. Thus he obliterated the gate.

  He had not been sure what would follow. He had fleetingly supposed he would smuggle the scroll out, held in its paradoxical form, and eventually glue it unless he could burn it. But upon the instant that he completed the twist and juncture, the parchment was gone. Enas Yorl told him afterwards that he had made it impossible for the thing to exist.

  Air rushed in where the gate had been, crack and hiss. Cappen heard that sound as it were an alien word of incantation: “Mobius-s-s.”

  ****

  HAVING STOLEN OUT of the temple and some distance thence, the party stopped for a few minutes of recovery before they proceeded to Molin’s house.

  This was in a blind alley off the avenue, a brick-paved recess where flowers grew in planters, shared by the fanes of two small and gentle gods. Wind had died away, stars glimmered bright, a half moon stood above easterly roofs and cast wan argence. Afar, a tomcat serenaded his intended.

  Rosanda had gotten back a measure of equilibrium. She cast herself against Jamie’s breast. “Oh, hero, hero,” she crooned, “you shall have reward, yes, treasure, ennoblement, everything!” She snuggled. “But nothing greater than my unbounded thanks …”

  The Northerner cocked an eyebrow at Cappen. The bard shook his head a little. Jamie nodded in understanding, and disengaged. “Uh, have a care, milady,” he said. “Pressing against ringmail, all bloody and sweaty too, can’t be good for a complexion.”

  Even if one rescues them, it is not wise to trifle with the wives of magnates.

  Cappen had been busy himself. For the first time, he kissed Danlis on her lovely mouth; then for the second time; then for the third. She responded decorously.

  Thereafter she likewise withdrew. Moonlight made a mystery out of her classic beauty. “Cappen,” she said, “before we go on, we had better have a talk.”

  He gaped. “What?”

  She bridged her fingers. “Urgent matters first,” she continued crisply. “Once we get to the mansion and wake the high priest, it will be chaos at first, conference later, and I—as a woman—excluded from serious discussion. Therefore best I give my counsel now, for you to relay. Not that Molin or the Prince are fools; the measures to take are for the most part obvious. However, swift action is desirable, and they will have been caught by surprise.”

  She ticked her points off. “First, as you have indicated, the Hell Hounds”—her nostrils pinched in distaste at the nickname—’the Imperial elite guard should mount an immediate raid on the temple of Ils and arrest all personnel for interrogation, except the Arch-priest. He’s probably innocent, and in any event it would be inept politics. Hazroah’s death may have removed the danger, but this should not be taken for granted. Even if it has, his co-conspirators ought to be identified and made examples of.

  “Yet, second, wisdom should temper justice. No lasting harm was done, unless we count those persons who are trapped in the parallel universe; and they doubtless deserve to be.”

  They seemed entirely males, Cappen recalled. He grimaced in compassion. Of course, the sikkintairs might eat them.

  Danlis was talking on: “—humane governance and the art of compromise. A grand temple dedicated to the Rankan gods is certainly required, but it need be no larger than that of Ils. Your counsel will have much weight, dear. Give it wisely. I will advise you.”

  “Uh?” Cappen said.

  Danlis smiled and laid her hands over his. “Why, you can have unlimited preferment, after what you did,” she told him. “I’ll show you how to apply for it.”

  “But—but I’m no blooming statesman!” Cappen stuttered.

  She stepped back and considered him. “True,” she agreed. “You’re valiant, yes, but you’re also flighty and lazy and—Well, don’t despair. I will mould you.”

  Cappen gulped and shuffled aside. “Jamie,” he said, “uh, Jamie, I feel wrung dry, dead on my feet. I’d be worse than no use—I’d be a drogue on things just when they have to move fast. Better I find me a doss, and you take the ladies home. Come over here and I’ll tell you how to convey the story in fewest words. Excuse us, ladies. Some of those words you oughtn’t to hear.”

  ****

  A WEEK THENCE, Cappen Varra sat drinking in the Vulgar Unicorn. It was mid afternoon and none else were present but the associate tapster, his wound knitted.

  A man filled the doorway and came in, to Cappen’s table. “Been casting about everywhere for you,” the Northerner grumbled. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Lying low,” Cappen replied. “I’ve taken a place here in the Maze which’ll do till I’ve dropped back into obscurity, or decide to drift elsewhere altogether.” He sipped his wine. Sunbeams slanted through windows; dust motes danced golden in their warmth; a cat lay on a sill and purred. “Trouble is, my purse is flat.”

  “We’re free of such woes for a goodly while.” Jamie flung his length into a chair and signaled the attendant. “Beer!” he thundered.

  “You collected a reward, then?” the minstrel asked eagerly.

  Jamie nodded. “Aye. In the way you whispered I should, before you left us. I’m baffled why and it went sore against the grain. But I did give Molin the notion that the rescue was my idea and you naught but a hanger-on whom I’d slip a few royals. He filled a box with gold and silver money, and said he wished he could afford ten times that. He offered to get me Rankan citizenship and a title as well, and make a bureaucrat of me, but I said no, thanks. We share, you and I, half and half. But right this now, drinks are on me.”

  “What about the plotters?” Cappen inquired.

  “Ah, those. The matter’s been kept quiet, as you’d await. Still, while the temple of Ils can’t be abolished, seemingly it’s been tamed.” Jamie’s regard sought across the table and sharpened. “After you disappeared, Danlis agreed to let me claim the whole honour. She knew better—Rosanda never noticed—but Danlis wanted a man of the hour to carry her redes to the prince, and none remained save me. She supposed you were simply worn out. When last I saw her, though, she … um-m … she ‘expressed disappointment’.” He cocked his ruddy head. “Yon’s quite a girl. I thought you loved her.”

  Cappen Varra took a fresh draught of wine. Old summers glowed along his tongue. “I did,” he confessed. “I do. My heart is broken, and in part I drink to numb the pain.”

  Jamie raised his brows. “What? Makes no sense.”

  “Oh, it makes very basic sense,” Cappen answered. “Broken hearts tend to heal rather soon. Meanwhile, if I may recite from a rondel I completed before you found me—”

  “Each sword of sorrow that would maim or slay,

  My lady of the morning deftly parries.

  Yet gods forbid I be the one she marries!

  I rise from bed the latest hour I may.

  My lady comes to me
like break of day;

  I dream in darkness if it chance she tarries.”

  A Few Remarks By

  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 was then. 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 some place 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. Even one of you-know-who’s boys in the blue hawk-masks might step aside.

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

  Shadowspawn

  By Andrew Offutt

  HIS MOP OF hair was blacker than black and his eyes nearly so, under brows that just missed meeting above a nose not quite falcate. His walk reminded some of one of those red-and-black gamecocks brought over from Mrsevada. They called him Shadow-spawn. No compliment was intended, and he objected until Cudget told him it was good to have a nickname—although he wished his own weren’t Cudget Swearoath. Besides, Shadowspawn had a romantic and rather sinister sound, and that appealed to his ego, which was the largest thing about him. His height was almost average and he was rangy, wiry; swiftly wiry, with those bulgy rocks in his biceps and calves that other males wished they had.