Soul of the City Part 18

While upstairs something thumped, and that board that always creaked near the bed-creaked; and sent ice down Moria's back.

"G.o.ds, stop it!"

"You don't want your lover back?"

"He's not my lover, he wasn't my lover, he was a poor, d.a.m.ned man She got her hands on, I just-I just-I was sorry for him, that's what, I was sorry for him and he was good, and I don't give a d.a.m.n, Haught, I'm not your d.a.m.n property, I'm not Hers, you can blast me to h.e.l.l if you like, I've had all I'll take from all of you!"

Her shouting died. Her fists were still clenched. She waited for the blow or the blast or whatever it was wizards did and knew she was a fool. But Haught's face stressed and it smoothed, and something flowed over her mind like tepid water.

"Congratulations," he said. "But you don't get those kind of choices. The world doesn't give them to you. / can. I have the power to do whatever I like. And you know that. Stilcho knows it. You want power, Moria? If you've got a shred of talent I can give you that. You want lovers, I can give you those, whatever amuses you. And I'll amuse you myself when the mood takes us. Maybe you'd like Stilcho. Ischade's probably taught him a lot of interesting things. I'm not jealous."

The h.e.l.l you're not.

Haught's eyebrow twitched. Dangerously. And the cold eyes took on a little amus.e.m.e.nt. "Only of your loyalty," he said. "That, I'll have. What you have in your bed is your business. As long as I have the other. I don't hold anybody my property. Moria."

Slave, she remembered, remembered the whip-scars on him, and saw his face grow hard.

"I was apprenticed on Wizardwall," he said. "And Ischade was fool enough to take me on. Now I have what I need. I have this house, I have hands to do what I want, and I have one of my enemies. That's a beginning, isn't it?"

He looked up toward the head of the stairs. Moria did, unwillingly, and saw Tasfalen standing there naked to the waist and with his hair all rumpled as if he had just risen from sleep.

But there was something wrong in the way he stood there, in the lack of reaction, in the way the hand reached out listlessly for the bannister, all the reactions of life but no reaction to what ought to stir a man. As if he did not know that there was anything amiss with him or in what his eyes must register in the hall below him.

"The body's working," Haught said. "The mind's rather spotty, I'm afraid.

Memory's not what it was. The soul might retain the missing bits-decay sets in very soon, you know; some tiny bits of him have just rotted, already. So a lot it had is gone. But it doesn't need a soul, does it? It doesn't need one for what I want."

"You said you'd help me," Stilcho said from where he knelt by the wounded Stepson.

"Oh. That. Yes. Eventually." As the body that had been Tasfalen came down the stairs in total disinterest. And stopped and stood at the bottom. "It doesn't have much volition. But it doesn't need that either. Does it?"

Niko's body went into still another spasm. Jihan had gotten his jaws open and Tempus had forced a small wooden rod there-G.o.ds knew where Randal had come up with it, out of what debris of the office. It kept Niko from biting his tongue through. And Randal had pulled another thing out of that otherwhere of a mage's storage-had gotten bits and pieces of that armor he had worn and tried to fit the breastplate to a body that kept trying to break its own spine.

Niko screamed when that touched him. He screamed and flung himself into a spasm that Molin would not have thought was left in that wracked body; his own muscles ached with pity and his hands sweated. "It's killing him," Tempus yelled, and shoved Randal and the collection of metal aside. "Dammit, let him be; Jihan, hold onto him, hold onto him-"

Tempus hugged him hard against him and shut his eyes and tried. Molin saw what he was trying, sensed the effort to break through the barrier that existed in Niko now. He threw his own strength into it, and felt Randal add his.

Trees groaned in the wind, crashed and fell, and the ground quaked. Ischade put out all her effort to stay others, her arms about the sleeper, Janni's white shape holding him from the other side. The wind grew colder, and the thing battering at the gate grew more powerful.

Even Roxane was afraid now. Ischade knew it. "Get out of him!" Ischade yelled into the wind. "Witch, you've lost, get out of him, leave this place!"

I'll know when to go, the voice came back. Give me Niko. "Fool," Ischade murmured, holding tight. "Fool, fool-You won't get him, Roxane, I'll send his soul to h.e.l.l before you get your hands on it, hear me?"

And then a gate would exist indeed, snake swallowing its tail, a gaping hole in the world's substance which would pull them all in. She said it and knew it was not bluff, that she was not going to let go; she did not know how to let go, in the way that Roxane did not know how; and at the end that was what would happen, the thing would find its way up out of the pit that had opened in this place and take the sleeper, and when it did, when it did, that snake-swallowing-tail effect would envelop them all. Her doing, and Roxane's.

Storm broke overhead.

Something else had manifested. Lightnings crashed. The ground shook; and of a sudden a bolt crashed down nearby, where the gate was. All of existence shuddered.

And there was sudden nothingness in her arms and in Janni's. The sleeper melted from them. The sky dissolved in rack and lightnings.

And a dark shape flew from the direction of the meadow to mingle with it, one fused whirling ma.s.s of lightnings, of gray cloud, and of night that shot destruction everywhere....

Niko's unbandaged eye opened. He flung himself in a spasm against Jihan's strength and Tempus's inert weight and Molin flinched at the scream that came past the gag. Let him die, he prayed, was praying, when Randal scrambled out of his disarray with the armor and reached after something else. The painting manifested in his grip.

"Get a light," Randal yelled at him. In one dullwitted moment Molin knew what Randal was after, recoiled from the thought of the deed and wondered in the same numb-minded flicker why a candle, why not call fire: but a candle was apt for fire, the canvas was magical and unapt, it resisted destruction. "Light!" Molin bellowed at the priest who hovered terrified in custody of Ischade's body. The priest cast about this way and that, and in that selfsame moment Randal s.n.a.t.c.hed up a handful of papers and blasted them into flame. The fire whumphed up and took the corner of the canvas on which Tempus and Niko and Roxane existed in triad, and Molin clenched his hands on the back of the chair in front of him and flinched as the smoke poured up from it, as Randal held onto burning paper and burning canvas, his face twisted in the pain of the burning that went up and up, the fire licking out at sleeves, at robe, at hair, at anything it could get while Randal turned and twisted in what looked like some grotesque dancer's contortions, keeping it away from himself and what else it reached for. Silver smoke poured up, mingled unnaturally with black. There was a stench of sulphur, and a shadow poured out of that smoke, a presence of intolerable menace. The priest screamed and covered his head. Then that darkness went- somewhere.

At the same moment Niko's body went limp as the dead and a slow trickle of blood flowed down from his nose and around the comer of his mouth where the stick was set between his jaws. Jihan looked puzzled and Randal stood there breathing in great gasps with the sweat standing on his white face and his hands all black and red, his lips drawn back in a grimace of pain and doubt.

Cloth whispered. Molin glanced aside in his distress and saw Ischade move and rise on one elbow and the opposing hand. Her dark hair hid her face. She looked up then, toward Niko, and that face was drawn and grim.

Tempus stirred and shoved himself up off the floor. His jaw clenched and knotted as he looked into Niko's face; while Jihan carefully pulled the stick from between Niko's jaws and closed his mouth, down which a ribbon of blood still poured.

"He's alive," Ischade said. Her voice was ragged and hoa.r.s.e. "He's free of her."

"But not of it," Tempus snarled, "dammit, not of it-"

"Let it alone!" Ischade shouted. Her voice broke. She reached out a forbidding hand and straightened the other arm, supporting herself. "It's not loose. Yet.

Don't meddle with it. It's not something you can handle. Or that I can. I don't make that kind of bargain."

"Do it!"

"No!" She got herself up on her knees and staggered to her feet. "He's got Janni still. And Janni on that ground is power enough to keep him till he wakes. She's still loose, do you hear me? Roxane's still free, and she's pacted with that thing. She's somewhere, and your meddling in that Place can only make it worse: she's still got ties there. She doesn't want that gate open any more than we do: not unless she can get it what she promised. Then she'll open it. She's lost her power, she's lost her hiding-place, we're that much better off, but not if you go head-on against her ally-"

"That's not the worst of it," Randal said. "Your apprentice just stole the globe in all the confusion. I heard him coming and I couldn't get here in time. I do trust it wasn't your idea." Ischade opened her mouth to say something. The air shuddered and Niko choked and moaned. Then she shut it and her jaw went hard, her fists clenched. "It wasn't," she said. And did not speak any curse, which restraint sent a chill down Molin's back and reminded him what she was. "Well,"

she said, "now we know where Roxane's gone, don't we?"

"Don't hurt him," Moria said, "Haught, don't."

"Another of your lovers?" Haught asked, and prodded Straton's side with his booted toe.

"No. For Shalpa's sake-"

"Your old patron." Haught s.h.i.+fted the globe he held to the crook of his arm and touched her under the chin. "Really, Moria, I make you a lady and look at you, you smell like a wh.o.r.e and you swear like a gutter-rat. Carry a knife in your garter, do you? No? Your brother stole it. What a life you lead."

"Stay out of my mind, dammit!"

"You're going to have to leam to control yourself, you know. Stilcho does. He thinks about things when I ask him questions. He thinks about things other than what I'm asking, he's gotten very good at it. Sometimes he remembers being dead.

That's his greatest weapon. Sometimes I see other things in his head, like what it feels like to have people flinch away from you- bothers you terribly, doesn't it, Stilcho? You ran right out there to collect this bit of dogmeat just because Moria was going to do it, just because death doesn't mean a d.a.m.n to you and you wanted to do something she wanted, you wanted her to look at you and not flinch, you want her, don't you, you sorry excuse for a living man?"

"Stop it," Moria cried.

"I just want the ones I love to know themselves the way I know them. Isn't that fair? I think we ought all to know where we stand. You want to go to bed with him? He's dying to."

"That's very funny," Stilcho said. "Excuse him, Moria, he's not himself."

She clenched her hands together to stop their shaking and clenched her jaw and stared up the bit she had to go to stare Haught in the eyes. "Well, dead, he's still got a heart in him. Where's yours? They beat it out of you?"

It scored. It scored all too well. For a moment she thought she would die for that, and she ought to be scared; but she was what he had said, she was a gutter-rat, and a rat was a coward until it got cornered, its back to two walls.

Then it would fight anything. And these were her walls. This was her house. "My house, d.a.m.n you, and mind your manners, I don't care what you've brought in with that d.a.m.n jug. Get this man off my floor, put him to bed where he belongs, get this other poor thing set down somewhere where he won't scare my servants, and let me go up and take a bath, I've had enough of this goings-on."

"There's a love." Haught chucked her under the chin. She hit at his hand. "Go clean up. I'll take care of the rest."

She tightened her lips as if she would spit at him. It occurred to her.

Childhood reflex. Then her eyes fixed on a move behind his shoulder. On Tasfalen, who had stood listless till then; now Tasfalen's head lifted and the eyes focused sharp; the chest gave with a wider breath and the whole body straightened. d.a.m.ned trick of his, she thought, to scare me with it.

"Not a trick," Haught said, turning even while that cold touch ran over her mind. "We have a visitor. h.e.l.lo, Roxane."

IV.

Crit slid down from the saddle breathless and sweating, was on the marble steps at the second stride, and took them two at a time. "Watch my horse," he yelled at men whose proper job at the doors was not hostelry, but one of them ran to do that, and Crit kept going, inside the building in long strides-he wanted to run.

Being what he was, where he was, he refused to show that much of his anguish to the locals.

He grabbed a middle-aged man by the arm, a Beysib who turned and stared at him in that way a Beysib had to, with eyes that had no white and no way to turn in their sockets. "Tempus," Crit spat. "Where?" His haste was such that he had no time to waste hunting; no time even to hunt an honest Rankan: he took the first thing he could get.

"Torchholder's office," the Beysib lisped, and Crit let him go and strode on.

Broke finally into a jog, his steel-studded boots ringing down the marble hall and echoing off the central vault. He saw the room, saw white-robed priests hanging about outside its open door, and came up on them in his haste.

"Wait," one said, but he shoved through and into the stench of burning and the tumble of chaos in the room.

Tempus was there. Ischade. Molin. And a couple of priests. Molin and the priests he ignored; he ignored the stink of fire, the ashes, the strewn papers and tumbled books.

"They shot Strat," he said. "Riddler, your d.a.m.ned daughter's friends've shot Strat, they got him in Peres, someone in Peres pulled him in and we're trying to pick the snipers off the street so we can get in there. They've got it ringed, only thing they can't hit is that d.a.m.ned horse, they got Dolon in the arm and Ephis got two in the leg-"

"d.a.m.n, who?" Tempus grabbed him by the arm. "What in h.e.l.l's happened?"

"The Front, the d.a.m.ned piffles! They made one try on him, this time they shot him. News is all over town, we got barricades going back up, we got every precinct flaring up, we haven't got the men to cover the whole d.a.m.n city and fight a sniper action: they got that whole d.a.m.n street and I had to come way wide and around to get in here."

"My house," Ischade said. "Strat's there?"

"The Peres house. They got him in. We don't know whether he's alive or not-"

"G.o.ds blast it!" Tempus shouted. "What's your intelligence doing?"

Crit sucked in his breath. Walking rings around your daughter, was the thing that leaped up behind his teeth, but he stopped it before it got out. "We fouled up," he said. That was all there was to say.

"Tempus." Molin thrust out a hand to stop him on his way out. "Niko. Niko's at risk, you understand me."

"Haught's there," Ischade said. "So's Roxane by now. Right in the middle of it.

And Roxane's got her ally poised here. In Niko. You need me for either and we could lose it in either place. You choose. You're the strategists."

The witch stirred a step, looked down at her/his own body, and up again.

Tasfalen's eyes burned with a preternatural clarity. "Give me that,"

Tasfalen/Roxane said, taking a second step toward Haught; and Haught clutched the pottery globe the tighter and backed that step away while Moria shrank back against the outside of the bannister.

"Oh, no," said Haught. "Not so readily as that-compatriot. You may even be outranked. Do you want to try me? Or do you want to take the gift I've already given you and be reasonable?"

The witch laid a hand on her own naked chest, ran it down to the belly. "Is this your sense of humor, man? I a.s.sure you I'm not amused."

"I worked with what I had at hand. If you've seen the staff in this house you know I did quite well. This one-" Haught grasped Moria by the arm and dragged her behind him. "-is mine. The body is Tasfalen Lancothis. He's quite rich. And with your tastes I'm sure you'll find amus.e.m.e.nt one way or the other."

Tasfalen's eyes looked up from under the brows and all h.e.l.l looked out.

"We'll do better," Haught said, "if we both live that long." He nodded toward the street. "There's considerable disturbance out there. They're back at it again. I found you, I offer you a body. I have the globe. For two wizards, this is an opportune place and an opportune time: Ranke is dying in the streets out there by what I gather. And here-" he moved his foot aside, against Straton's leg. "Here's Tempus's own lieutenant. His chief interrogator. His gatherer of secrets. I think we have something to discuss with him, you and I. Don't we?"

Tasfalen's nostrils flared. The face seemed hollowed. "I want a drink," Roxane said. "I'm parched."

"Moria," Haught said.

"I'm not your d.a.m.ned servant!"

"I'll get it," Stilcho said, and got up from beside the unconscious Stepson and went for the drawing room.

"Moria," Haught said. "Don't be a total fool." His hand caressed her shoulder but he never looked her way. "Lover's quarrel," he said to Roxane.

"Who are you?" Roxane asked, and Haught stiffened; his hand stopped its motion and Tasfalen's face went hard and careful.

"Answer enough?" Haught asked. "You knew my father. We're almost cousins."

Roxane/Tasfalen said nothing to that. But the expression became thoughtful, and then something else again, that sent a s.h.i.+ver up Moria's Ilsigi spine. The face of the man she had lately made love with began to take on different lines, flush with lifelike color, and settle into expressions alien to its personality.

Stilcho brought the drink in a gla.s.s, from the carafe and service on the drawing room sideboard. Tasfalen reached for it; Roxane took it and lifted it with a lingering suspicion in the look she turned toward Haught. Then she sipped at it carefully, and let go a small sigh.

"Better," she said. "Better." And finished the gla.s.s and gave it to Stilcho. She put out her male hand in the next instant and stayed him in his departure, then turned the hand as if it had suddenly interested her as much as Stilcho. The fingers ran up the fabric of Stilcho's sleeve. And he stared back with a hard, revolted stare. Of a sudden Tasfalen's face broke into Tas-falen's grin, and a small short laugh came out. "Well." Then the hand dropped and the face turned to them again with the eyes aglitter. "You hold onto that globe so tightly-cousin.

You're young, you're handling something you're only half able to use, and you're vulnerable, my young friend. This house is Ischade's property. Anything she's ever handled is a focus she can use; and this is a place she owns, you understand me. I felt your wards when I came through them, a nice little bit of work for what they are, but that streetwalking wh.o.r.e isn't what she was, either.

Now do we put something around this house she'll have trouble breaking, or do we just stand here playing power games? Because she's on her way here, you can believe me that she is."

Haught tucked the pottery globe the more tightly in his arms, then slowly reached out and set it in the air between them. It spun and glowed and Moria flinched away, her arm flung up between herself and that thing. It hummed and throbbed and hung there defying reason; it beat like a heart as it spun, and her own hurt in her chest; her tangled hair lifted on its own with a p.r.i.c.kling eerie life, her silken, muddy-hemmed petticoats crackled and stood away from her body with a life of their own. All their hair stood up like that, Tasfalen's, Stilcho's, Haught's, as blue sparks leapt from Tasfalen's outstretched hand, from Haught's fingertips, flying against the globe and spattering outward against the walls, lining the crack of the door, whirling up the stairs and into the drawing room and everywhere. From somewhere in the cellars and the rear of the house there was a general outcry of panic; it had gotten to the servants.

The sound became pain. It throbbed in time to the pulse. It screamed with a high thin shriek like wind and became her own scream. "No," she cried, "make it stop-"

Strat moved. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, torn muscles and swollen flesh tensing round the shaft in his chest; something else tore, and the swirl of light spotted with black and went all to gray, but he knew where his enemy stood and he had coordination enough to brace his good hand against the floor, draw up the opposite leg while the pain turned every move weak and fluttery, muscles shaking and weak: one good push, his foot behind the d.a.m.ned Nisi's leg- He shoved, with all that was in him. Haught screamed; he thought that was the scream he heard, or it was his own.

Tasfalen's hands clutched the globe. Tasfalen's face grinned a wolf's grin "There, wizardling."

Moria made herself as small as she could against the side of the stairs: she shut both eyes, expecting a burst of fire, and opened one, between her fingers.