By Demons Possessed Read online

  Ahead, again: rustle, rustle, rustle.

  Someone stood close beside her.

  Jame rocked back on her heels so as not to trip over the diminutive figure in a gray cloak.

  “There is a stranger in our midst,” it said, in hardly more than an articulated breath of air. Bright eyes set in a domed, hairless skull regarded her anxiously. “Should I send for your people?”

  “Himmatin. Sorry, I didn’t see you. Not yet, but please fetch Chirpentundrum.”

  It always paid, she had found, to be polite to those far older and much more intelligent than oneself, and that the mysterious Builders certainly were. For millennia, they had preceded the Kencyrath from world to world building temples, but on Rathillien they had apparently all died. It had been a shock to find an enclave of these nearly immortal people living here, where the destruction of their home in the Anarchies had stranded them.

  Jorin had slipped away. She followed, to the eaves of the pear trees that lined a small lake. The intruder stood on the sands of the moon-washed shore, no longer bothering to hide. He was scratching Jorin’s stomach as the ounce rolled over and over at his feet.

  “Hello,” he said, straightening up.

  “Hello. Are you an assassin?”

  “Why, are you expecting one?”

  “Not recently, but I believe that they still have me on their books. A spy?”

  “Wrong guild.”

  Ah. That gave her a context, if a surprising one.

  “I almost think that I know your voice.” And smell, she might have added, now that Jorin was so close.

  “And I, yours. Talisman.”

  “Darinby.”

  Jame crossed the beach to take his hand. He looked much as he had five years ago—young, handsome, smiling—but also haggard with strain crinkling his eyes and twitching the corner of his mouth.

  “You’re a long way from home,” she said, taking in his travel-stained clothes.

  “Apparently farther than I thought.” He looked around him in wonder. “Where are we?”

  “At an oasis somewhere in the Southern Wastes. We haven’t yet explored outside the wall. Y’see, Tagmeth has a ring of step-forward tunnels that lead to all sorts of places. Rathillien is like that, riddled with strange ways to get from one place to another.”

  “If you say so.” He sounded dubious, as well he might. Until this journey, Tai-tastigon had rounded out his world. Now he was trying to fit new pieces into the puzzle, with what appeared to be limited success.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” she added, belatedly, regarding him askance. “It’s meant to be a secret.”

  Darinby gave her a small bow. “Then it is safe with me, whatever it is that you just said.”

  Ah, she remembered how courtly he could be, a true prince of the Thieves’ Guild with his own well-developed sense of honor.

  Still, here they were four, nearly five years apart, and what a chasm of experiences now lay between them.

  Somewhere in the night, a baby cried. That would be Benj, Must’s child. Jame had heard that the Kendar Girt was having trouble with him since his birth and his mother’s simultaneous death. Had it been wise to settle the Caineron refugees here in the oasis, neighbors to the stranded Builders? Chirp had so wanted to hold a baby again. So far, suspicious Girt hadn’t given him the chance.

  “Pleased as I am to see such an old friend,” she said, “I have to ask: why are you here?”

  He laughed, with a touch of hysteria, and ran distraught fingers through his dark, dusty hair.

  “You’re a hard person to find, Talisman. We knew you were Kencyr, of course, and heard that you were bound for the Riverland to find your brother. By the way, the Gamblers’ Guild laid high odds that you wouldn’t survive the Ebonbane, leaving as you did out of season. Gods. I came across this year as soon as the passes opened even a crack, but it was still touch and go.”

  “Trouble with brigands?” Jame asked, remembering the late, unlamented Bortis.

  “Weather, my dear, weather. It’s been an uncertain spring. The passes of the Ebonbane were riddled with wyrsan running under the snow. Several of our packhorses fell through into their tunnels, in fountains of blood. So much red snow. I only saw one, when I tripped and tumbled into its burrow. Red eyes, white teeth, rushing at my face. . . . A carter pulled me out.” He shuddered, briefly showing the whites of his eyes. “They talk about such things in the city, but I never expected . . . well, never mind. Then there were the margins of the Anarchies. The birds with eyes on their wings. The hungry hills. They are spreading, I hear. The hills, not the birds. Well, maybe the birds too.”

  He said this with an uncertain laugh. In telling his story, he seemed to wonder anew at its reality.

  “Back, then, to civilization,” he continued, pulling himself together, “or what passes for it in this part of the world. Did you know that traveling up the Silver is like moving between armed camps? I slipped past your keeps when I could, pretended to be an agent of the Central Lands when I was caught. The first guards I stumbled across gave me that idea. It seems to create a free pass. Finding your brother, though, that took luck. You see, I wasn’t looking for a lord. Royalty, are you? And never said a word.”

  Jame shrugged. “I didn’t know for sure then. It seemed as unlikely to me as it obviously still does to you. Did you speak to my brother?”

  “That turned out to be unnecessary. Wherever I had word of him, someone mentioned his peculiar sister. Unpredictable, headstrong, always causing trouble . . . that sounded familiar. Of course, you would be at the northernmost end of the Riverland.”

  “Not quite that. There’s a keep beyond Tagmeth, but it’s abandoned.”

  “It would be.”

  She could almost see his curious look, trying to match the impetuous child she had been to whatever she was now.

  “You still haven’t said why you’re here.”

  “The Sirdan sent me.”

  “The leader of the Thieves’ Guild?” Not Theocandi, of course: using the Book Bound in Pale Leather he had created a demon known as the Shadow Thief. Then he had lost control and the Book had burned out his brains. “Would this be Men-dalis?”

  “Yes. Even though he lost the guild election, he took over after Theocandi’s death. No one dared to challenge him, then or now.”

  “Does he need challenging?”

  “No. Of course not!”

  His sudden vehemence surprised her. She remembered Darinby as almost militantly apolitical.

  “He wants you to come back.”

  That startled her even more. “I should think I would be the last person he would want to see again, assuming he gives any thought to me at all.”

  “He says, and here I quote, ‘If the Talisman does not come, I will rip her old master Penari out of his precious Maze, even if I have to tear it down in the process.’”

  “He can’t do that!” she exclaimed involuntarily, then stopped to consider.

  How many people knew that the Maze was the model of the city itself? To destroy one was to imperil the other. Trinity, think of the time when Penari and the Architect of the Maze had fought over which could take credit for it. Whole sections of the Temple District had fallen. Would Men-dalis risk that? Would he even care? Remembering him in his smug, demi-god glow, she had no doubts on that score.

  “There is this too,” said Darinby. “That hostelry where you stayed—the Res aB’tyrr? Men-dalis has kidnapped the innkeeper’s wife.”

  “Abernia?” Jame was startled again, in more ways than one.

  “The inn’s cook Cleppetania complained to the Five, but Men-dalis denied that he had her. He would only open Ship Island’s brig to be searched, he said, if her husband Tubain complained to him personally. So far, for some reason, Tubain hasn’t. And the Five are . . . preoccupied. The state of the city . . . well, you’ll see. It’s a mess. Also, Abbotir of the Gold Court is currently the Thieves’ Guide’s representative on the Five’s council, and he backs his Sirdan, Me
n-dalis. The other four hardly want to bring such a case up before him at such a troubled time.”

  “Then too,” said Jame, “we’re talking about a potential guild-trade conflict here. Guild wars, trade wars, even temple wars—they all have a place and are taxed accordingly. To cross social boundaries, though, that suggests a loss of order. So the matter wasn’t pressed.”

  Darinby nodded, looking chagrined.

  Politics, thought Jame, disgusted.

  The Five governed Tai-tastigon, one delegate each from the city’s two neighboring countries, who held its charter of independence, and three chosen on a rotating basis from the city’s guilds. If a guild prince like Abbotir was involved, yes, he would have an edge on any deliberation, but he would also be bound, at least superficially, by conventions.

  Darinby looked uncomfortable. “Be that as it may . . .” He coughed and braced himself. “The Sirdan bade me tell you this: if you don’t return, he swears by his blood that he will order not only the Maze destroyed but the Res aB’tyrr torched and everyone who flees it slain on its threshold.”

  “Sweet Trinity. He wouldn’t.”

  “You know him. Dare you risk it?”

  Men-dalis was half Kencyr, the son of a temple prostitute and Dalis-sar, that improbable Kencyr New Pantheon sun god. Jame had never understood the relationship, but she had seen its influence on Men-dalis and his half brother Dally, whose fascination with the Kencyrath may well have led to his death.

  Ah, Dally, that sweet, trusting boy who had first welcomed her to the Guild, to the city itself.

  . . . sprawling on the Mercy Seat, flayed (alive?) and crawling with flies . . .

  Don’t think of that.

  “What does the Sirdan want with me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” For a moment, Darinby looked confused. “He didn’t tell me . . . did he? No. Things have gotten seriously strange in the city since last year’s Feast of Dead Gods. Afterward, they didn’t go away. People say that the dead in general are coming back. Men-dalis certainly believes it. Me, I’m not religious. I go by what I see, but I have seen such things that I—I wonder if I am going mad.”

  Jame walked a few steps down the beach, considering. Tai-tastigon was in the past, but she still loved it. Such colors, such quirks, such amazing people. Oh, city jammed with so much unexpected life, even when it had challenged and terrified her. Penari had been an eccentric master, but without him little that had happened to her there would have been possible, the good and the bad, but mostly the former. The latter . . . well, she always encountered that, everywhere, usually head on.

  The dead are returning.

  Darinby is a good man, but he is not himself.

  Something needs to be broken.

  But not the Res aB’tyrr, the House of Luck-bringers, which had saved her life and given her a home. Tubain, Cleppetty, Ghillie, Kithra, Rothan, even the cat Boo. . . . She had come to them wounded, stricken with loss, and they had provided the love that she had needed to survive. How could that debt ever be repaid?

  Think of those whom you left behind.

  But “I can’t,” she said out loud, still pacing. “In a few days, I have to report to Gothregor where the randon will decide if I’m fit to become one of their officers. That’s our warrior class,” she added, seeing his puzzled look. “What? Don’t you think that I’m capable?”

  “Talisman, the gods alone know what you are capable of.”

  She laughed, a sharp bark. “True. I’ve just spent a year proving to others and to myself that I can take responsibility, that I can lead. And now you propose that I vanish, just when my people need me the most? If I don’t appear at Gothregor, they will suffer. So will I.”

  “And if you don’t go to Tai-tastigon, your friends will die. You have to come with me. Now.”

  Jorin had rolled to his feet and was backing away.

  Darinby stepped toward her.

  There was a flurry of movement as shadows danced on the sand, meeting, parting, falling.

  Jame withdrew to stare down at her visitor’s prostrate form. “You meant to kidnap me? Oh, Darinby!”

  Two small figures emerged hesitantly from the trees.

  “Is he dead?” asked the one a step back.

  Himmatin again, Jame thought, although Builders were often hard to tell apart, especially in uncertain light.

  She regarded the faint lift of Darinby’s shoulders as he lay face down on the shore. “Fainted, I think, or asleep. Then too, I just used a Senethar earth-moving technique to drop him on his head. He’s had a hard time.”

  “We will bring him something to eat.” Chirpentundrum nodded to his colleague, who scurried off. “Food mends much.”

  “No doubt he will be glad of it.” Jame thought for a moment, chewing on an extended nail. Then, with a sigh, she settled cross-legged on the sand, which brought her eyes level with those of the little Builder.

  “Chirp, listen. I need to talk to you.”

  II

  SOME TIME LATER, Darinby woke. A bonfire had been kindled next to him, yellow flames snapping over the red glow of branches. Gods, he had been cold for so long, and oh so hungry. Beside him was a platter holding half a loaf of crusty bread. There was also an ewer of water and a bowl of fresh figs, the latter barely familiar from Tai-tastigon’s more exotic markets. Someone had dropped a blanket over his shoulders. He sat up stiffly, clutching it to him, and shivered as much from shock as from the evening chill.

  Seen in retrospect, the past moon-span presented itself as a vista of madness. The Ebonbane’s dire peaks where nightmares erupted from the snow, the shifting, omnivorous Anarchies, the hard eyes of the Riverland . . .

  What had he expected when he had left Tai-tastigon? Nothing that he had found, despite travelers’ tales, so easily dismissed in the comfort of home. One thought that one understood reality but then . . .

  How big the world is, he thought with wonder, how terribly strange.

  But the Sirdan had sent him here.

  Darinby, dear, dear boy. I have a mission that only the bravest, the most loyal, may undertake. My fate depends on it. Our fate as a guild. As a city. Do you understand?

  He hadn’t at first, but faced with those luminous blue eyes, that compelling golden voice . . .

  And now here he was.

  Gods, he must have been crazy. Everyone knew that the Talisman was a superb fighter in that peculiar but oh-so-effective style favored by her people.

  She had also . . . changed. Well, people did, even over what felt to him like the blink of an eye. What had he expected? That eager, intense girl in Tai-tastigon, hell-bent on doing what was right if only she could figure out what that was. . . . For her, the truth had always seemed more complicated than for anyone else. He had smiled at that. Such a child’s view of the world, he had thought. According to his own code, one simply did one’s duty by one’s master, guild, and friends.

  True, she had never lacked the latter, some highly improbable. Like the Cloudies and the Archiem of Skyrr. Like Gorgo the Lugubrious and his priest Loogan. Like Bane. It had occurred to him before, though, that the Talisman’s friendship was sometimes more dangerous than another’s enmity.

  Oh, Dally, whom she had especially favored. His fate lingered like a weeping sore. Something there had gone very, very wrong, and warped the world with it.

  Darinby was eating figs, trying not to gorge to quell his hunger, when the Talisman returned. At first he saw only the pale oval of her face watching him out of the gloom. Where had she gotten that scar across her cheek? It struck him again that her life since Tai-tastigon had not been uneventful. Then she emerged, black-clad, and sat on her heels on the other side of the fire, arms clasped about her knees, somber eyes gleaming silver.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think that, for some time, I’ve been a little insane. I didn’t stop to consider: It took me nearly two months to get here over the Ebonbane’s passes. We can’t possibly get back to Tai-tastigon before Men-dalis carries o
ut his threat against Penari and the Res aB’tyrr.”

  “Actually,” she said slowly, gloved fingertips tapping on her elbows, “it can be done.”

  He stared at her. Who was mad now? “What? How?”

  “Well, I told you that there are many odd ways to get around this world. Consider the gates. There isn’t one from here directly to Tai-tastigon, at least that I know of, but one does lead to another step-forward ring under the Anarchies. The gates there connect to most of the Kencyr temples on Rathillien, including the Eastern Lands, or so Chirpentundrum tells me.”

  She glanced over her shoulder as she spoke, and her words seemed to summon up a small apparition in a gray cloak. Darinby couldn’t see its face in the shadow of the hood. A child? he wondered, judging from its size.

  The Talisman seemed finally to make up her mind. He saw now that one sleeve of her jacket was full and reinforced for defense, the other tight, for the cut and thrust of attack: she was wearing a Tastigon knife-fighter’s d’hen—the same, perhaps, that Dally had given her years ago.

  “This is hard,” she said. “Things could get desperate if I don’t return in time. On the other hand, there will be a disaster if I don’t go at all. It’s going to be tight. No one will forgive me, least of all myself, if I fail either way.”

  She rose, a lithe, dark shadow, committed if not entirely composed. “Chirp is going with us, at least as far as the Anarchies.”

  Something in her voice suggested that this last troubled her, but Darinby didn’t care. He was going home. Back to his master.

  III

  RUE WOKE WITH A START. She had been dozing fitfully ever since the middle watch had departed and his earlier counterpart had returned, yawning, to catch a few precious hours of rest. It was still dark outside. No need to rise yet. Rue was very young, lured by sleep. Still, she had had nearly three years of randon cadet training by now, and that counted for something. So, she wondered groggily, what had roused her this time? She thought that she had heard footsteps on the tower stair, as if one could hear that through a stone wall. She would willingly have slept as before in the tower itself, in an alcove off Jame’s room or even on the stair itself to keep out intruders—Bear, say, to stop bestial rumors or, worse, the amorous Ardeth Lordan Timmon.