by Paula Guran
Some priests tried to flee; the drawn steel of the soldiers prevented; and some died, shrieking. Others were herded back before the altar.
“Lord,” Gillian said nervously, casting about among them for the face she hoped to see; and he was there, Prince Osric, in the guise of a common soldier; and Aldisis by him; but he had no eyes for a thief.
“Father,” Osric hailed the fat man, hurled an object at his feet, a leaden cylinder. The king recoiled pace by pace, his face white and trembling, shaking convulsively so that the fat quivered upon it. The soldiers’ blades remained leveled toward him, and Gillian seized Jensy’s naked shoulder and pulled her back, trying for quiet retreat out of this place of murders, away from father and son, mad king who dabbled in mad gods and plotted murders.
“Murderer,” Seithan stammered, the froth gathering at his lips. “Killed my legitimate sons . . . every one; killed me, but I didn’t die . . . kin-killer. Kin-killing bastard . . . I have loyal subjects left; you’ll not reign.”
“You’ve tried me for years, honored father, majesty. Where’s my mother?”
The king gave a sickly and hateful laugh.
There was movement in the dark, where no priest was . . . a figure seeking deeper obscurity; Gillian took her own cue and started to move.
A priest’s weapon whipped up, a knife poised to hurl; she cried warning . . . and suddenly chaos, soldiers closed in a ring of bright weapons, priests dying in a froth of blood, and the king . . . The cries were stilled. Gillian hugged Jensy against her in the shadows, seeing through the forest of snakes the sprawled bodies, the bloody-handed soldiers, Osric—king in Korianth.
King! the soldiers hailed him, that made the air shudder; he gave them orders, that sent them hastening from the slaughter here.
“The palace!” he shouted, urging them on to riot that would see throats cut by the hundreds in Korianth.
A moment he paused, sword in hand, looked into the shadows, for Jensy glittered, and it was not so easy to hide. For a moment a thief found the courage to look a prince in the eye, wondering, desperately, whether two such motes of dust as they might not be swept away. Whether he feared a thief’s gossip, or cared.
The soldiers had stopped about him, a warlike knot of armor and plumes and swords.
“Get moving!” he ordered them, and swept them away with him, running in their haste to further murders.
Against her, Jensy gave a quiet shiver, and thin arms went round her waist. Gillian tore at a bit of the tinsel, angered by the tawdry ornament. Such men cheated even the gods. A step sounded near her. She turned, dagger in hand, faced the shadow that was Jisan. A knife gleamed in his hand.
He let the knife hand fall to his side.
“Whose are you?” she asked. He tilted his head toward the door, where the prince had gone, now king.
“Was,” he said. “Be clever and run far, Gillian thief; or lie low and long. There comes a time princes don’t like to remember the favors they bought. Do you think King Osric will want to reward an assassin? Or a thief?”
“You leave first,” she said. “I don’t want you at my back.”
“I’ve been there,” he reminded her, “for some number of hours.”
She hugged Jensy the tighter. “Go,” she said. “Get out of my way.”
He went; she watched him walk into the beginning day of the doorway, a darkness out of darkness, and down the steps.
“You all right?” she asked of Jensy.
“Knew I would be,” Jensy said with little-girl nastiness; but her lips shook. And suddenly her eyes widened, staring beyond.
Gillian looked, where something like a rope of darkness twisted among the columns, above the blood that spattered the altar; a trick of the wind and the lamps, perhaps. But it crossed the sky, where the stars paled to day, and moved against the ceiling. Her right hand was suddenly cold.
She snatched Jensy’s arm and ran, weaving in and out of the columns the way Jisan had gone, out, out into the day, where an old man huddled on the steps, rocking to and fro and moaning.
“Nessim!” she cried. He rose and cast something that whipped away even as he collapsed in a knot of tatters and misery. A serpent-shape writhed across the cobbles in the beginning of day . . .
. . . and shriveled, a dry stick.
She clutched Jensy’s hand and ran to him, her knees shaking under her, bent down and raised the dry old frame by the arms, expecting death; but a blistered face gazed back at her with a fanatic’s look of triumph. Nessim’s thin hand reached for Jensy, touched her face.
“All right, mousekin?”
“Old man,” Gillian muttered, perceiving something she had found only in Jensy; he would have, she vowed, whatever comfort gold could buy, food, and a bed to sleep in. A mage; he was that. And a man.
Gold, she thought suddenly, recalling the coin in her purse; and the purse she had buried off across the canals.
And one who had dogged her tracks most of the night.
She spat an oath by another god and sprang up, blind with rage.
“Take her to the Wyvern,” she bade Nessim and started off without a backward glance, reckoning ways she knew that an Assassin might not, reckoning on throat-cutting, on revenge in a dozen colors.
She took to the alleys and began to run by alleys a big man could never use, cracks and crevices and ledges and canal verges.
And made it. She worked into the dark, dislodged the stone, took back the purse and climbed catwise to the ledges to lurk and watch.
He was not far behind to work his big frame into the narrow space that took hers so easily, to work loose the self-same stone.
Upon her rooftop perch she stood, gave a low whistle . . . shook out a pair of golden coins and dropped them ringing at his feet, a grand generosity, like the prince’s.
“For your trouble,” she bade him, and was away.
Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, in the author’s words, is “not a sword and sorcery hero; he is a gothic hero-villain from the tradition of . . . novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” Kane “could master any situation intellectually, or rip heads off if push came to shove.” So long as he eludes death by violence, “time can not wither his physical being.” Kane is not a sorcerer—but his “power so defies human comprehension that men call it magic.” He amorally “serves himself and no other gods or obscure values,” and, wearied with immortality, he combats ennui by seeking adventure.
Writing in the 1970s and 1980s, Wagner saw the women in his Kane stories as “very independent characters,” far from “helpless-girl stereotypes,” and never “simpering girls in diaphanous gowns.” True, but re-reading the Kane stories in 2016, I found more than a touch of misogyny. Of course, not all is as it always seems in a Kane story. In “Undertow,” for instance, a stereotypical barbarian hero thinks he is saving a beautiful woman from an evil sorcerer.
Undertow
Karl Edward Wagner
Prologue
“She was brought in not long past dark,” wheezed the custodian, scuttling crablike along the rows of silent, shrouded slabs. “The city guard found her, carried her in. Sounds like the one you’re asking about.”
He paused beside one of the waist-high stone tables and lifted its filthy sheet. A girl’s contorted face turned sightlessly upward—painted and rouged, a ghastly strumpet’s mask against the pallor of her skin. Clots of congealed blood hung like a necklace of dark rubies along the gash across her throat.
The cloaked man shook his head curtly within the shadow of his hood, and the moon-faced custodian let the sheet drop back.
“Not the one I was thinking of,” he murmured apologetically. “It gets confusing sometimes, you know, what with so many, and them coming and going all the while.” Sniffling in the cool air, he pushed his rotund bulk between the narrow aisles, careful to avoid the stained and filthy shrouds. Looming over his guide, the cloaked figure followed in silence.
Low-flamed lamps cast dismal light across the necrotor
ium of Carsultyal. Smoldering braziers spewed fitful, heavy fumed clouds of clinging incense that merged with the darkness and the stones and the decay—its cloying sweetness more nauseating than the stench of death it embraced. Through the thick gloom echoed the monotonous drip-drip-drip of melting ice, at times chorused suggestively by some heavier splash. The municipal morgue was crowded tonight—as always. Only a few of its hundred or more slate beds stood dark and bare; the others all displayed anonymous shapes bulging beneath blotched sheets—some protruding at curious angles, as if these restless dead struggled to burst free of the coarse folds. Night now hung over Carsultyal, but within this windowless subterranean chamber it was always night. In shadow pierced only by the sickly flame of funereal lamps, the nameless dead of Carsultyal lay unmourned—waited the required interval of time for someone to claim them, else to be carted off to some unmarked communal grave beyond the city walls.
“Here, I believe,” announced the custodian. “Yes. I’ll just get a lamp.”
“Show me,” demanded a voice from within the hood. The portly official glanced at the other uneasily. There was an aura of power, of blighted majesty about the cloaked figure that boded ill in arrogant Carsultyal, whose clustered, star-reaching towers were whispered to be overawed by cellars whose depths plunged farther still. “Light’s poor back here,” he protested, drawing back the tattered shroud.
The visitor cursed low in his throat—an inhuman sound touched less by grief than feral rage.
The face that stared at them with too wide eyes had been beautiful in life; in death it was purpled, bloated, contorted in pain. Dark blood stained the tip of her protruding tongue, and her neck seemed bent at an unnatural angle. A gown of light-colored silk was stained and disordered. She lay supine, hands clenched into tight fists at her side.
“The city guard found her?” repeated the visitor in a harsh voice.
“Yes, just after nightfall. In the park overlooking the harbor. She was hanging from a branch—there in the grove with all the white flowers every spring. Must have just happened—said her body was warm as life, though there’s a chill to the sea breeze tonight. Looks like she done it herself—climbed out on the branch, tied the noose, and jumped off. Wonder why they do it—her as pretty a young thing as I’ve seen brought in, and took well care of, too.”
The stranger stood in rigid silence, staring at the strangled girl.
“Will you come back in the morning to claim her, or do you want to wait upstairs?” suggested the custodian.
“I’ll take her now.”
The plump attendant fingered the gold coin his visitor had tossed him a short time before. His lips tightened in calculation. Often there appeared at the necrotorium those who wished to remove bodies clandestinely for strange and secret reasons—a circumstance which made lucrative this disagreeable office. “Can’t allow that,” he argued. “There’s laws and forms—you shouldn’t even be here at this hour. They’ll be wanting their questions answered. And there’s fees . . . ”
With a snarl of inexpressible fury, the stranger turned on him. The sudden movement flung back his hood. The caretaker for the first time saw his visitor’s eyes. He had breath for a short bleat of terror, before the dirk he did not see smashed through his heart.
Workers the next day, puzzling over the custodian’s disappearance, were shocked to discover, on examining the night’s new tenants for the necrotorium, that he had not disappeared after all.
I. Seekers in the Night
There—he heard the sound again.
Mavrsal left off his disgruntled contemplation of the near-empty wine bottle and stealthily came to his feet. The captain of the Tuab was alone in his cabin, and the hour was late. For hours the only sounds close at hand had been the slap of waves on the barnacled hull, the creak of cordage, and the dull thud of the caravel’s aged timbers against the quay. Then had come a soft footfall, a muffled fumbling among the deck gear outside his half-open door. Too loud for rats—a thief, then?
Grimly Mavrsal unsheathed his heavy cutlass and caught up a lantern. He cat-footed onto the deck, reflecting bitterly over his worthless crew. From cook to first mate, they had deserted his ship a few days before, angered over wages months unpaid. An unseasonable squall had forced them to jettison most of their cargo of copper ingots, and the Tuab had limped into the harbor of Carsultyal with shredded sails, a cracked mainmast, a dozen new leaks from wrenched timbers, and the rest of her worn fittings in no better shape. Instead of the expected wealth, the decimated cargo had brought in barely enough capital to cover the expense of refitting. Mavrsal argued that until refitted, the Tuab was unseaworthy, and that once repairs were complete, another cargo could be found (somehow), and then wages long in arrears could be paid—with a bonus for patient loyalty. The crew cared neither for his logic nor his promises and defected amidst stormy threats.
Had one of them returned to carry out . . . ? Mavrsal hunched his thick shoulders truculently and hefted the cutlass. The master of the Tuab had never run from a brawl, much less a sneak thief or slinking assassin.
Night skies of autumn were bright over Carsultyal, making the lantern almost unneeded. Mavrsal surveyed the soft shadows of the caravel’s deck, his brown eyes narrowed and alert beneath shaggy brows. But he heard the low sobbing almost at once, so there was no need to prowl about the deck.
He strode quickly to the mound of torn sail and rigging at the far rail. “All right, come out of that!” he rumbled, beckoning with the tip of his blade to the half-seen figure crouched against the rail. The sobbing choked into silence. Mavrsal prodded the canvas with an impatient boot. “Out of there, damn it!” he repeated.
The canvas gave a wriggle and a pair of sandaled feet backed out, followed by bare legs and rounded hips that strained against the bunched fabric of her gown. Mavrsal pursed his lips thoughtfully as the girl emerged and stood before him. There were no tears in the eyes that met his gaze. The aristocratic face was defiant, although the flared nostrils and tightly pressed lips hinted that her defiance was a mask. Nervous fingers smoothed the silken gown and adjusted her cloak of dark brown wool.
“Inside.” Mavrsal gestured with his cutlass to the lighted cabin.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” she protested.
“Looking for something to steal.”
“I’m not a thief.”
“We’ll talk inside.” He nudged her forward, and sullenly she complied.
Following her through the door, Mavrsal locked it behind him and replaced the lantern. Returning the cutlass to its scabbard, he dropped back into his chair and contemplated his discovery.
“I’m no thief,” she repeated, fidgeting with the fastenings of her cloak.
No, he decided, she probably wasn’t—not that there was much aboard a decrepit caravel like the Tuab to attract a thief. But why had she crept aboard? She was a harlot, he assumed—what other business drew a girl of her beauty alone into the night of Carsultyal’s waterfront? And she was beautiful, he noted with growing surprise. A tangle of loosely bound red hair fell over her shoulders and framed a face whose pale-skinned classic beauty was enhanced rather than flawed by a dust of freckles across her thin-bridged nose. Eyes of startling green gazed at him with a defiance that seemed somehow haunted. She was tall, willowy. Before she settled the dark cloak about her shoulders, he had noted the high, conical breasts and softly rounded figure beneath the clinging gown of green silk. An emerald of good quality graced her hand, and about her neck she wore a wide collar of dark leather and red silk from which glinted a larger emerald.
No, thought Mavrsal—again revising his judgment—she was too lovely, her garments too costly, for the quality of street tart who plied these waters. His bewilderment deepened. “Why were you on board, then?” he demanded in a manner less abrupt.
Her eyes darted about the cabin. “I don’t know,” she returned.
Mavrsal grunted in vexation. “Were you trying to stow away?”
She responded with a
small shrug. “I suppose so.” The sea captain gave a snort and drew his stocky frame erect. “Then you’re a damn fool—or must think I’m one! Stow away on a battered old warrior like the Tuab, when there’s plainly no cargo to put to sea, and any eye can see the damn ship’s being refitted! Why, that ring you’re wearing would book passage to any port you’d care to see, and on a first-class vessel! And to wander these streets at this hour! Well, maybe that’s your business, and maybe you aren’t careful of your trade, but there’s scum along these waterfront dives that would slit a wench’s throat as soon as pay her! Vaul! I’ve been in port three days and four nights, and already I’ve heard talk of enough depraved murders of pretty girls like you to—”
“Will you stop it!” she hissed in a tight voice. Slumping into the cabin’s one other chair, she propped her elbows onto the rough table and jammed her fists against her forehead. Russet tresses tumbled over her face like a veil, so that Mavrsal could not read the emotions etched there. In the hollow of the cloak’s parted folds, her breasts trembled with the quick pounding of her heart.
Sighing, he drained the last of the wine into his mug and pushed the pewter vessel toward the girl. There was another bottle in his cupboard; rising, he drew it out along with another cup. She was carefully sipping from the proffered mug when he resumed his place.
“Look, what’s your name?” he asked her.
She paused so tensely before replying, “Dessylyn.”
The name meant nothing to Mavrsal, although as the tension waxed and receded from her bearing, he understood that she had been concerned that her name would bring recognition.
Mavrsal smoothed his close-trimmed brown beard. There was a rough-and-ready toughness about his face that belied the fact that he had not quite reached thirty years, and women liked to tell him his rugged features were handsome. His left ear—badly scarred in a tavern brawl—gave him some concern, but it lay hidden beneath the unruly mass of his hair. “Well, Dessylyn,” he grinned. “My name’s Mavrsal, and this is my ship. And if you’re worried about finding a place, you can spend the night here.”
