Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn Part 3

Suddenly, he smiled, and something invisible, an unseen weight seemed to fall from him. Somehow, he even looked thinner.

'I've gone this far,' he said. 'So I must go all the way. No backing out now.

The reason I must have a woman is that the mage's sorcery has a weakness. His magical defences will be set up to repel men. He will not have prepared them against women. It would not occur to him that a woman would try to steal his treasure. Or ... kill him.'

'How do you know that?'

'I don't think it would be wise to tell you that now. You must take my word for it. I do know far more about the purple mage than anyone else in Sanctuary.'

'You might, and that still wouldn't be much,' she said. 'Let me put it another way. I do know much about him. More than enough to make me a great danger to him.'

'Does he know much about you?'

Smhee smiled again. 'He doesn't know I'm here. If he did, I'd be dead by now.'

They talked until dawn, and by then Masha was deeply committed. If she failed, then her fate would be horrible. And the lives of her daughters and her mother would become even worse. Far worse. But if she continued as she had, she would be dooming them anyway. She might die of a fever or be killed, and then they would have no supporter and defender.

Anyway as Smhee pointed out, though he didn't need to, the mage was after her.

Her only defence was a quick offence. She had no other choice except to wait like a dumb sheep and be slaughtered. Except that, in this situation, the sheep would be tortured before being killed.

Smhee knew what he was saying when he had said that she was desperate.

8.

When the wolfs tail, the false dawn, came, she rose stiffly and went through to her room and looked out the window. Not surprisingly, the corpses of the Raggah were gone.

Shortly thereafter, Kheem awoke, bright-eyed, and asked for food. Masha covered her with kisses, and, weeping joyfully, prepared breakfast. Smhee left. He would be back before noon. But he gave her five shaboozh and some lesser coin. Masha wakened her mother, gave her the money, and told her that she would be gone for a few days. Wallu wanted to question her, but Masha told her sternly that she would be better off if she knew no more than she did now.

'If Eevroen wants to know where I am, tell him that I have been called to help deliver a rich farmer's baby. If he asks for the man's name, tell him it is Shkeedur sha-Mizl. He lives far out and only comes into town twice a year except on special business. It doesn't matter that it's a lie. By the time I get back it'll be soon - we'll be leaving at once. Have everything we'll need for a long journey packed into that bag. Just clothes and eating utensils and the medicine. If Kheem has a relapse, give her Smhee's powders.'

Wallu wailed then, and Masha had to quiet her down.

'Hide the money. No! Leave one shaboozh where Eevroen will find it when he looks for money. Conceal the rest where he can't find it. He'll take the shaboozh and go out to drink, and you won't be bothered with him or his questions.'

When the flaming bra.s.s bowl of the noon sun had reached its apex, Smhee came.

His eyes looked very red, but he didn't act fatigued. He carried a carpet bag from which he produced two dark cloaks, two robes, and the masks which the priests of Shalpa wore in public.

He said, 'How did you get rid of your mother and the children?'

'A neighbour is keeping the children until mother gets back from shopping,' she said. 'Eevroen still hasn't shown up.'.

'Nor will he for a long time,' Smhee said. 'I dropped a coin as I pa.s.sed him staggering this way. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it, of course, and ran off to a tavern.

'The Sailfish will be leaving port in three days. I've arranged for pa.s.sage on her and also to be hidden aboard her if her departure is delayed. I've been very busy all morning.'

'Including taking a bath,' she said.

'You don't smell too good yourself,' he said. 'But you can bathe when we get to the river. Put these on.'

She went into her room, removed her clothes, and donned the priest's garb. When she came out, Smhee was fully dressed. The bag attached to his belt bulged beneath his cloak.

'Give me your old clothes,' he said. 'We'll cache them outside the city, though I don't think we'll be needing them.'

She did so, and he stuffed them into the belt-bag.

'Let's go,' he said.

She didn't follow him to the door. He turned and said, 'What's the matter? Your liver getting cold?'

'No,' she said. 'Only ... mother's very short-sighted. I'm afraid she'll be cheated when she buys the food.'

He laughed and said something in a foreign tongue.

'For the sake of Igil! When we return, we'll have enough to buy out the farmers'

market a thousand times over!'

'If we get back...' she murmured. She wanted to go to Looza's room and kiss the children goodbye. But that was not wise. Besides, she might lose her determination if she saw them now.

They walked out while old Shmurt stared. He was the weakest point in their alibi, but they hoped they wouldn't need any. At the moment, he was too dumbfounded at seeing them to say anything. And he would be afraid to go to the soldiers about this. He probably was thinking that two priests had magically entered the house, and it would be indiscreet to interfere in their business.

Thirty minutes later, they mounted the two horses which Smhee had arranged to be tied to a tree outside city limits.

'Weren't you afraid they'd be stolen?' she said.

'There are two stout fellows hidden in the gra.s.s near the river,' he said. He waved towards it, and she saw two men come from it. They waved back and started to walk back to the city.

There was a rough road along the White Foal River, sometimes coming near the stream, sometimes bending far away. They rode over it for three hours, and then Smhee said, 'There's an old adobe building a quarter-mile inland. We'll sleep there for a while. I don't know about you, but I'm weary.'

She was glad to rest. After hobbling the horses near a stand of the tall brown desert gra.s.s, they lay down in the midst of the ruins. Smhee went to sleep at once. She worried about her family for a while, and suddenly she was being shaken by Smhee. Dawn was coming up.

They ate some dried meat and bread and fruit and then mounted again. After watering the horses and themselves at the river, they rode at a canter for three more hours. And then Smhee pulled up on the reins. He pointed at the trees a quarter-mile inland. Beyond, rearing high, were the towering cliffs on the other side of the river. The trees on this side, however, prevented them from seeing the White Foal.

'The boat's hidden in there,' he said. 'Unless someone's stolen it. That's not likely, though. Very few people have the courage to go near the Isle of Shugthee.' . .

'What about the hunters who bring down the furs from the north?'

'They hug the eastern sh.o.r.e, and they only go by in daylight. Fast.'

They crossed the rocky ground, pa.s.sing some low-growing purplish bushes and some irontrees with grotesquely twisted branches. A rabbit with long ears dashed by them, causing her horse to rear up. She controlled it, though she had not been on a horse since she was eleven. Smhee said that he was glad that it hadn't been his beast. All he knew about riding was the few lessons he'd taken from a farmer after coming to Sanctuary. He'd be happy if he never had to get on another one.

The trees were perhaps fifteen or twenty deep from the river's' edge. They dismounted, removed the saddles, and hobbled the beasts again. Then they walked through the tall cane-like plants, brus.h.i.+ng away the flies and other pestiferous insects, until they got to the stream itself. Here grew stands of high reeds, and on a hummock of spongy earth was Smhee's boat. It was a dugout which could hold only two.

'Stole it,' Smhee said without offering any details.

She looked through the reeds down the river. About a quarter of a mile away, the river broadened to become a lake about two and a half miles .across. In its centre was the Isle of Shugthee, a purplish ma.s.s of rock. From this distance, she could not make out its details.

Seeing it, she felt coldness ripple over her.

'I'd like to take a whole day and a night to scout it,' he said. 'So you could become familiar with it, too. But we don't have time. However, I can tell you everything I know. I wish I knew more.'

She doffed her clothes and bathed in the river while Smhee unhobbled the horses and took them some distance up to let them drink. When she came back, she found him just returning with them.

'Before dusk comes, we'll have to move them down to a point opposite the isle,'

he said. 'And we'll saddle them, too.'

They left the horses to go to a big boulder outside the trees but distant from the road. At its base was a hollow large enough for them to lie down in. Here they slept, waking now and then to talk softly or to eat a bite or to go behind the'rock and urinate. The insects weren't so numerous here as in the trees, but they were bad enough.- Not once, as far as they knew, did anyone pa.s.s on the road.

When they walked the horses down the road, Smhee said, 'You've been very good about not asking questions, but I can see you're about to explode with curiosity. You have no idea who the purple mage really is. Not unless you know more than the other Sanctuarians.'

'All I know,' she said, 'is that they say that the mage came here about ten years ago. He came with some hired servants, and many boxes, some small, some large. No one knew what his native land was, and he didn't stay long in town.

One day he disappeared with the servants and the boxes. It was some time before people found out that he'd moved into the caves of the Isle of Shugthee. n.o.body had ever gone there because it was said that it was haunted by the ghosts of the Shugthee. They were a little hairy people who inhabited this land long before the first city of the ancients was built here.'

'How do you know he's a mage?' Smhee said.

'I don't, but everybody says he is. Isn't he?'

'He is,' Smhee said, looking grim.

'Anyway, he sent his servants in now and then to buy cattle, goats, pigs, chickens, horses, vegetables, and animal feed and fruit. These were men and women from some distant land. Not from his, though. And then one day they ceased coming in. Instead, the Raggah came. From that day on, no one has seen the servants who came with the mage.'

'He probably got rid of them,' Smhee said. 'He may have found some reason to distrust them. Or no reason at all.'

'The fur trappers and hunters who've gone by the isle say they've seen some strange things. Hairy beast-faced dwarfs. Giant spiders.' She shuddered.

'Benna died of spider bites,' Smhee said. The fat little man reached into his belt-bag and brought out a metal jar. He said, 'Before we leave in the boat tonight we'll rub the ointment in this on us. It will repel some of the spiders but not, unfortunately, all.'

'How do you know that?'

'I know.'

They walked silently for a while. Then he sighed, and said, 'We'll get bitten.

That is certain. Only ... all the spiders that will bite us - I hope so, anyway - won't be real spiders. They'll be products of the mage's magic. Apparitions.

But apparitions that can kill you just as quickly or as slowly and usually as painfully as the real spiders.'

He paused, then said, 'Benna probably died from their bites.'

Masha felt as if she were turning white under her dark skin. She put her hands on his arm.

'But ... but...!'

'Yes, I know. If the spiders were not real, then why should they harm him? That is because he thought they were real. His mind did the rest to him.'

She didn't like that she couldn't keep her voice from shaking, but she couldn't help it.

'How can you tell which is real and which magical?'

'In the daylight the unreal spiders look a little transparent. By that I mean that if they stand still, you can see dimly through them. But then they don't stand still much. And we'll be in the dark of night. So...

'Look here, Masha. You have to be strong stuff to go there. You have to overcome your fear. A person who lets fear conquer him or her is going to die even if he knows that the spider is unreal. He'll make the sting of the bite himself and the effects of the venom. And he'll kill himself. I've seen it happen in my native land.'

' But you say that we might get bitten by a real spider. How can I tell which is which in the dark?'

'It's a problem.'

He added after a few seconds, 'The ointment should repulse most of the real spiders. Maybe, if we're lucky. You see, we have an advantage that Benna didn't have. I know what faces us because I come from the mage's land. His true name is Kemren, and he brought with him the real spiders and some other equally dangerous creatures. They would have been in some of the boxes. I am prepared for them, and so will you be. Benna wasn't, and any of these Sanctuary thieves will get the same fate.'

Masha asked why Kemren had come here. Smhee chewed on his lower lip for a while before answering. **

'You may as well know it all. Kemren was a priest of the G.o.ddess Weda Krizhtawn of the island of Sharranpip. That is far east and south of here, though you may have heard of it. We are a people of the water, of lakes, rivers, and the sea.

Weda Krizhtawn is the chief G.o.ddess of water, and she has a mighty temple with many treasures near the sea.

'Kemren was one of the higher priests, and he served her well for years. In return, he was admitted into the inner circle of mages and taught both black and white magic. Though, actually, there is little difference between the two branches, the main distinction being whether the magician uses his powers for good or evil.

'And it isn't always easy to tell what is good and what is evil. If a mage makes a mistake, and his use turns out to be for evil, even if he sincerely thought it was for good, then there is a ... backlash. And the mage's character becomes changed for the worse in proportion to the amount of magical energy used.'

He stopped walking.

'We're opposite the isle now.'

It wasn't visible from the road. The plain sloped upwards from the road, becoming a high ridge near the river. The tall spreading blackish hukharran bush grew on top of it. They walked the horses up the ridge, where they hobbled them near a pool of rainwater. The beasts began cropping the long brownish gra.s.s that grew among the bushes.

The isle was in the centre of the lake and seemed to be composed mostly of a purplish rock. It sloped gently from the sh.o.r.e until near the middle, where a series of peculiar formations formed a spine. The highest prominence was a monolith perforated near its top as if a tunnel had been carved through it.

'The camel's eye Benna spoke of,' Smhee said. 'Over there is the formation known as the ape's head, and at the other end is that which the natives call the dragon's tail.'

On the edge of the isle grew some trees, and in the waters by it were the ubiquitous tall reeds.

There was no sight or sound of life on it. Even the birds seemed to shun it.

'But I floated down past it at night several times,' he said, 'and I could hear the lowing of some cattle and the braying of a donkey. Also, I heard a weird call, but I don't know if it was from a bird or an animal. And I heard a peculiar grunting sound, but it wasn't from pigs.'

'That camel's eye looks like a good place for a sentry,' she said. 'I got the impression from Benna that that is where he entered the caves. It must've been a very dangerous climb, especially during the dark.'

'Benna was a good man,' Smhee said. 'But he wasn't prepared enough. There are eyes watching now. Probably through holes in the rocks. From what I heard, the mage had his servants buy a number of excavating tools. He would have used them to enlarge the caves and to make tunnels to connect the caves.' She took a final look in the sunlight at the sinister purple ma.s.s and turned away.

9.

Night had come. The winds had died down. The sky was cloudy, but the covering was thin. The full moon glowed through some of these, and now and then broke through. The nightbirds made crazy startling sounds. The mosquitoes hummed around them in dense ma.s.ses, and if it hadn't been for Smhee's ointment would have driven them out of the trees within a few minutes. Frogs croaked in vast chorus; things plopped into the water.

They shoved the boat out to the edge of the reeds and climbed in. They wore their cloaks now but would take them off when they got to the isle. Masha's weapons were a dagger and a short thin sword used for thrusting only.