Blood and Ivory-A Tapestry Page 12

  From his high perch, Loogan gave a shrill yelp.

  "The blasphemer, the Baio-cainite!" he screamed, pointing down at the slender, hated figure. "Take her, take her! A sacrifice, a sacrifice for the great Gorgo!"

  Panic caught Jame by the throat. Scores of faces were turning toward her, contorted in rage; scores of hands were reaching out. The mass of humanity in the room rose about her like the crest of a tidal wave. The nightmare quality of the scene froze her where she stood.

  "Sweet Trinity," she heard Marc say under his breath in a tone of self-disgust, and then she flinched as the full-throated war cry of the Kencyrath boomed out almost in her ear. The human wave froze. Up on his pedestal, Loogan did a passable imitation of an unbalanced statue. At that moment the inner chamber door opened and another priest, startled by the sudden roar, peered out. Marc reached past Jame with a muttered, "Excuse me," caught the man by the front of his robe, and threw him over his shoulder as easily as if he were a three-day-old pup. Instantly the room was bedlam. Loogan pitched head first off the column with a squeal. Roaring, the crowd of worshippers rushed forward. Marc grabbed Jame by the collar and threw her into the inner room. A stride carried him across the threshold after her. Pivoting, he slammed the door shut with his shoulder and dropped the bar into place across it.

  "Well," said Jame, gingerly picking herself up off the floor, "here we are."

  The inner sanctum of the temple was small but high-vaulted. The only thing in it, beside some long, heavy benches pushed back against the wall, was the stone image of Gorgo. The statue was of an obese, crouching man at least three times life size with unusually long legs; the bent knees rose a good two feet above the head. It had the most sorrow-stricken face imaginable. A steady stream of water tickled out of tiny holes in the corners of its green glass eyes. Its huge hands, cupped together to receive burnt offerings, stretched out between the towering shins. There was a long roll of parchment balanced across them over a bed of old ashes.

  "Ah ha," said Jame. "There it is . . . or is it?" She stepped forward quickly, a frown growing on her face. Something about the length, the color of the paper . . .

  "Marc, see if you can find another door. I think something is very wrong here."

  While the big guardsman began a slow circuit of the room, Jame took the scroll out of the stone hands and carefully unrolled it. She examined it, then gave a low whistle.

  "Marc, come and see this."

  There was a scraping sound and a muffled grunt from behind the statue.

  "What are you doing?"

  "There's some sort of a lever back here. Maybe it controls a secret exit. I think I can . . . "

  There was a crack, a deep gurgle, and a second later Jame sprang back, barely in time to escape a dousing as the glass eyes of the idol flew out of their sockets, closely followed by two thick jets of water.

  Marc emerged from the shadows, looking sheepish. He held out a metal bar in the broad palm of his hand. "It broke off," he said apologetically.

  "Never mind that," said Jame. "Better to be drowned than sacrificed anyway. Just look at this." She held the scroll out to him. He stared at the swirl of brightly inked words on it, making an obvious effort to focus.

  "That isn't the Law Scroll," he said.

  "I'll say it isn't. Do you see that?" She pointed to a line of runes drawn in magenta and gold. "A name: Anthrobar. This thing is the lost treatise on the bridging of the three worlds. Trinity knows how Loogan got his fat hands on it, or Ishtier ever found out that it was in Tai-tastigon."

  "Is it important?" Marc asked, staring owlishly at the roll of paper.

  "If the legends about it are true," said Jame grimly, "yes, very, and also very dangerous. Nine centuries ago the Kencyr scrollsmen on the border watches claimed that this bit of parchment held the secret to the destruction of the barriers between the worlds. If they were right and the barriers can be and are brought down, nothing, neither priest nor Law, will be left to stand between this cockleshell world and the three faces of god. It would be the ultimate disaster. Of course, the stories may be apocryphal, and perhaps Ishtier won't be able to read this—Trinity knows I'm not going to translate the parts I can make out for him—but it's too big a risk. I can't give it to him."

  "It isn't the Law Scroll," said the guardsman, beginning to sway gentry. "You don't have to give it to him."

  "I swore to bring him the scroll in the arms of the idol," Jame said unhappily. "My word binds me."

  Marc shook himself fiercely. "Aaaugh! But listen: if you take it now, lass, it will be stealing, not retrieving, and my word as a guardsman will bind me to turn you over to the merchants . . . "

  " . . . who will be delighted to see me in the central square minus my skin, and probably without even the benefit of the flowers. Oh, what a mousetrap this is! I thought Ishtier was plotting something, but his confounded whispering had me too confused to guess what it was. I never dreamed it would be anything so magnificent. Look you: if I take him the scroll, I may be opening the way to an incredible disaster; if I'm killed, he at least will have the satisfaction of my death; if I refuse, I'll be breaking my word and he will declare me a renegade, which would be a good deal worse than being dead. With you here, I get flayed alive if I do the former, and he has a Kencyr witness if I go the latter way. No wonder he decided to let you come with me. I could love that man for his subtlety . . . if only we weren't the ones caught by the tail."

  At that moment, three things happened more or less simultaneously: the whole face of the image gave way, releasing a torrent of water into the already half-flooded room; the bar across the door began to splinter under repeated heavy blows from the outside; and Marc suddenly fell asleep standing up.

  Jame looked around the room with raised eyebrows, and then back at the scroll in her hands. One complication would have been manageable, two a calamity, three ridiculous, but four? It would be an excellent time, she thought, to burn the manuscript and drown herself, but then there was Marc, who didn't deserve to die alone, much less asleep on his feet. Almost with a feeling of regret, she reached over and tapped the swaying giant on his chest.

  "You'd better see to the door," she said. "I think we're about to have company."

  "Zaugh . . . oh!" said Marc, blinking at her. He turned and waded through the water which now reached almost to his waist over to the opposite wall. While Jame took refuge on top of one of the statue's kneecaps, the guardsman began to wedge benches in front of the rapidly weakening door, handling their weighty bulk easily. As he was lifting the last one into position, he suddenly swore out loud and dropped it, creating a miniature tidal wave.

  "Lass!" he bellowed over the roar of the water, splashing back across the room toward her. "I've got it! You can't steal the scroll, but I can!"

  Jame saw his hand sweeping up at her out of the corner of her eye. She had been studying the manuscript intently and had only half heard him. Instinctively, she twisted away from what, from anyone but Marc, would have been a threatening gesture. The stone beneath her was slick with spray. The suddenness of her movement threw her sideways off her perch with a sharp cry into the surging water.

  Marc fished her out and set her sputtering back on her feet. She swept a streaming lock of hair out of her eyes, gave herself a shake, and then stopped short with a gasp. Her eyes turned to him, enormous in her thin face.

  "D . . . did you just say what I think you just said?"

  The big guardsman shifted his weight uncomfortably, giving the impression that he would have liked to shuffle his feet if only there hadn't been so much water on them. "I wouldn't be stealing from a Kencyr, you know," he said in a half-pleading voice. "It wouldn't be breaking the Law, just . . . uh . . . bending it a little."

  Jame's stunned gaze dropped to the soggy piece of parchment in her hand. She caught her breath, and then threw back her head with a sudden shout of laughter.

  Marc stared at her.

  She held the scroll out to him. Bright streaks of color spi
raled across it into a muddy lower margin. Not a letter remained legible. "By Trinity, M'lord Ishtier may be subtle, but he's not omniscient. This is one solution he could never have foreseen. Here, take the thing! Only this once, I'll let you steal for me. Now in all the gods' names, let's get out of here."

  "Uh, lass . . . how? There's only one door and no windows at all."

  "Oh, use your head," said Jame, regaining her slippery perch on the stone kneecap with a spring like a young cat's. "Where there's fire," she pointed to the wet ashes in the cupped hands, "there's usually smoke. Where there's smoke, there had better be some sort of ventilation." Her finger traced a line from the offering bowl to the ceiling far above. "There. Do you see it? A hole, not very big, but large enough, I think." She began to pull small pieces of metal out of her belt and to fit them into a spidery form. "I thought we'd find at least that much of an exit before we walked into this place, but damned if I thought we'd have to use it." The grapnel complete, she unwrapped a line from around her slim waist and snapped it on. "Of course, we could wait for the room to flood completely, but you look ready to capsize as it is." On the third try, the hook shot straight up through the dark hole and caught firmly on something outside on the roof.

  Jame threw the end of the line to Marc. "You go first, and try to stay awake at least until you get to the top. Remember, if you slip, I can only pick up the pieces."

  Either contact with her had corrupted him, she thought as she struggled to anchor the line, up to her shoulders in water and half choked with the spray, or perhaps Kencyrs weren't quite what she had thought, and she wasn't so hopelessly tainted after all. At that moment something hard and cold began to dissolve inside her. She found herself singing out loud above the voice of the water as she followed her friend up the rope. By far the smallest part of her exuberance was due to the fact that she had not been obliged to commit suicide after all.

  Marc, by some miracle, did not fall asleep half way up the line, nor as Jame guided him across the uneven roof tops of the city, nor even on the threshold of the temple of the Three-Faced God, though when the high priest snatched the limp scroll out of his hand, he very nearly pitched head-first after it. Jame led him out reeling.

  As they passed out under the dark entry arch, they heard from the heart of the temple a high wail scarcely human in its disappointment and rage.

  "That," said Jame, "is the best thing I've heard all evening."

  They staggered home arm in arm through the festival crowds of night, both singing at the top of their lungs and both very much off key.

  At the stroke of midnight, as Marc lay on his pallet snoring happily and the temples of Tai-tastigon heralded the new day with bells, chants, and laughter, the Talisman Jamethiel walked down the stairway with the traditional silver and black streamers of a senetha dancer flowing behind her, and the waiting crowd greeted her with a roar of welcome.

  At his station across the room beside a huge keg of ale, Tubain beamed at her. Trust a Kencyr to always keep her word.

  BONES

  An introduction to "Bones"

  This story grew out of a line in God Stalk about Penari's Maze being so complex that even its own architect got lost in it. From there, it just grew.

  P. C.

  It was nearly dawn in the city of Tai-tastigon. Birds had been chirping sleepily for some time as light seeped into the eastern sky, but the streets still lay drowned in shadows except where faint spheres of light shimmered against the walls. Down one such avenue in the Gold Ringing District came a hooded figure. It paused beneath each streetlight in turn, murmured "Blessed—Ardwyn—day—has—come" in a bored voice, and passed on, leaving darkness in its wake.

  When the man was out of sight, Patches emerged from the shadows and resumed her vigil outside the gate of the mansion owned by Polyfertes, the Sirdan of the Lapidaries' Guild. While the plaster figures clustered around the house's lower windows were still indistinct, the young thief noted anxiously that up near the roofline the sinuous shapes of men, women, and beasts—all doing complicated, highly ingenious things to each other—stood out with far more clarity than they had only moments before. Even the black granite ravens on the gateposts seemed about to shake their wings and join the growing dawn chorus.

  Gods, but it was getting late. Any minute now, a yawning servant would open the front door, and the guard, who was leaning against it, would tumble into the hall. As soon as they realized that his sleep had been deepened with poppy dust . . .

  Jame—better known in the Thieves' Guild as the Talisman—was still inside that house. What the hell could she be thinking of, not to have made her escape before now?

  At that moment, Jame's main thought was that she did not want to lose her fingers. Around her in the dim light of Polyfertes' treasure room glowed hundreds of gems, their erotic engravings intriguingly distorted by the horn glass of the cases that protected them. Securing each case was a box lock. Poised over each lock, out of sight within the intricacies of the box, was a weighted razor. An hour ago, Jame had edged her hand in under one such blade. She was still delicately probing into the lock mechanism beyond it, grimly suppressing tremors of fatigue. In the case before her, besides two gems, were twenty-five severed fingers, some half-decayed, all lovingly arranged on the cream velvet. Polyfertes collected more than gems.

  There was a loud click. Jame caught her breath, bracing for pain. None came. The "thief-proof" lock had at last been sprung.

  With a sigh of relief, she opened the case and removed the two jewels from their grisly nest. One was a magnificent sapphire, engraved with three women and a dog engaged in a rather peculiar activity. With this stone, Polyfertes had proved himself worthy of master's rank in the Lapidaries' Guild. The second jewel was a mere zircon. On it was the rough sketch for the masterwork. Jame turned the sapphire modestly upside down and pocketed the zircon, smiling faintly. Polyfertes wouldn't have to guess who had raided his treasure trove: the Talisman's eccentricities were by this time nearly as celebrated as her skill. Still smiling, she left the room.

  Down below, Patches was chewing through the fingertips of her gloves, having forgotten that she had them on. Suddenly she stiffened. A line tumbled to the ground. Then a slim, dark form swung itself over the third-story window ledge and started down the rope, stepping lightly from plaster head to head.

  "Talisman!" said Patches and, in the fullness of her relief stepped through the gate.

  "Thief?" cried two raucous voices above her. Startled, she looked up and saw the gatepost ravens, stone wings spread, beaks agape. "Thief! Thief! Thief!" the warning cry came again from their motionless throats.

  Jame was still twenty feet off the ground when she heard the guard wake with a snort. A pound of poppy dust blown straight up his hairy nostrils wouldn't have deafened him to an uproar like this. She pushed herself clear of the sculpted figures and let go of the line. The fall jarred her badly. Before she could recover, the guard was between her and the gate.

  He lunged at her with his spear.

  Jame sprang backward, twisting, and felt the cold breath of steel as the barbed head ripped at her jacket.

  Patches yelped in protest.

  "Stay where you are!" Jame shouted at her, and snapped at the guard, " 'Ware truce, man: I'm unarmed!"

  He lunged again.

  God's claws, she thought, sidestepping. Didn't the idiot realize that if he spitted a thief without so much as a rock in her hand, the fragile nonviolence pact between thieves and guards would be shattered? Someone inside the mansion had begun to shout. Wonderful. The entire household would descend on her from behind if she let this moron delay her a moment longer.

  Here he came again.

  Right, thought Jame. Unarmed isn't unable.

  She caught the spear shaft as it slid past and jerked the guard into a chin-strike that snapped his head back. Now, one more to teach him manners. She was poised to deliver the kick that would leave the man squeaking for a month when the ground suddenly lurched under
her feet. All three, thieves and guard, found themselves on the pavement, bewildered. What the hell . . .

  "Earthquake!" screeched the ravens. "Thief! Earthquake! Thief!" A second tremor wracked the courtyard. Looking up, Patches saw two intertwined plaster figures separate from the roofline. They were directly above the guard. Jame sprang at him as he sat gaping stupidly upward. Both disappeared in a cloud of dust and flying splinters as the figures crashed to earth.

  Patches, choking on plaster dust, heard more shouts from the house, then her friend's voice at her elbow: "You were thinking, perhaps, of moving in? Come on!"

  They ran. Behind them, the ravens were clamoring, "Thiefquake! Earthworm!" while Polyfertes' cook ran in circles beating a gong and bellowing "Fire!"

  "I think we woke 'em up," said Patches when they had slowed down again several blocks later. "But why in Thai's name did you save that guard? The bastard tried to gut you."