The Face of Chaos Part 1

Thieves' World.

The Face of Chaos.

by Robert Lynn Asprin.

INTRODUCTION.

Robert Lynn Asprin.

'The Face of Chaos will laugh at us all before the cycle completes its turn!'

The words were barely audible above the din of the bazaar, but they caught the ear of Illyra, stopping her in her tracks. Ignoring her husband's puzzled glance, she made her way into the crowds in search of the source of the voice.

Though only half S'danzo, the cards were still her trade and she owed it to her clan to discover any intruders into their secrets.

A yellow-toothed smile flashed at her out of deep shadow, beside a stand.

Peering closely, she recognized Hakiem, Sanctuary's oldest and most noted storyteller, squatting in the shelter, away from the morning sun's bright glare.

'Good morning, old one,' she said coolly, 'and what does a storyteller know of the cards?'

'Too little to try to earn a living reading them,' Hakiem replied, scratching himself idly, 'but much for one untrained in interpreting their messages.'

'You spoke of the Face of Chaos. Don't tell me you've finally paid for a reading?'

'Not at my age.' The storyteller waved. 'I'd prefer that the events of the future come as surprises. But I have eyes enough to know that that card means great change and upheaval. It requires no special sight to realize it must be showing often in readings these days, with the newcomers in town. I have ears, Illyra, as I have eyes. An old man listens and watches, enough not to be fooled by one who walks younger than her makeup and dress would lead most to believe.'

Illyra frowned. 'Such observations could cost me dearly, old one.'

'Thou art wise, mistress. Wise enough to know the value of silence, as a hungry tongue talks more freely.'

'Very well, Hakiem,' the fortune-teller laughed, slipping a coin into his outstretched palm. 'Dull your ears, eyes and tongue with breakfast at my expense ... and perhaps a cup of wine to toast the Face of Chaos.'

'A moment, mistress,' the storyteller called as she turned to go-'A mistake!

This is silver.'

'Your eyes are as keen as ever, you old devil. Take the extra as a reward for courage. I've heard what you have to do to gather the stories you can tell!'

Hakiem slid the coin into the pouch belted within his tunic and heard the satisfying clink as it joined the others secreted there. These days he extorted breakfast money more out of habit than need. Purses were growing fat in Sanctuary with the influx of wealth brought by the newcomers. Even extortion was growing easier, as people became less tightfisted. Some, like Illyra, seemed almost eager to give it away. Already, this morning, he had collected enough for ten breakfasts without exerting the effort hitherto required to obtain enough for one. After decades of decay. Sanctuary was coming to life again with the influx of wealth brought by the Beysib troops. Their military strength was far greater than the Sanctuary garrison could muster, and only the fact that the foreigners had made no claim to the governance of the city itself kept it in the hands of the Prince and his ministers. But the threat was always there, potent, lending a new spice of danger to the customary activities of the people of the city.

Scratching again, the storyteller frowned into the morning brightness, and not all his wrinkles were from squinting. It was almost... no, it -was too good to be true. Hakiem had too many years of anguish behind him not to look a gift horse in the mouth. All gifts had a price, no matter how well-hidden or inconsequential it might seem at the time. It only stood to reason that the sudden prosperity brought by the newcomers would exact a price from the h.e.l.l hole known as Sanctuary. Exactly how high or terrible a price the storyteller was currently unable to puzzle out. (There were still hawks in Sanctuary, though not so easily brought to hand ... and one hawkmaster in particular.) Sharper eyes than Hakiem's would be scrutinizing the effects and long-range implications of the new arrivals. Still, it would do him well to keep his ears open and ...

'Hakiem! Here he is! I found him! Hakiem!'

The storyteller groaned inwardly as a brightly bedecked teenager leapt up and down, flapping his arms to reveal Hakiem's refuge to his comrades. Fame, too, had its price ... and this particular one was named Mikali, a young fop whose main vocation seemed to be spending his father's wealth on fine clothing. That, and serving as Hakiem's self-proclaimed herald. Though the money from the more fas.h.i.+onable sides of Sanctuary was nice, the storyteller often longed for the days of anonymity when he'd had to rely on his own wits and skills to peddle his stories. Perhaps it was for this reason he clung to some of his old haunts in the Bazaar and the Maze.

'Here he is!' the youth proclaimed to his rapidly a.s.sembling audience. 'The only man in Sanctuary who didn't run and hide when the Beysib fleet arrived in our harbours.'

Hakiem cleared his throat noisily. 'Do I know you, young man?'

A rude snicker rippled through the crowd as the youth flushed with embarra.s.sment.

'S ... Surely you remember. It's me, Mikali. Yesterday ...'

'if you know me,' the elder interrupted, 'you also know I don't tell stories to preserve my health, nor do I tolerate gawkers who block the view of paying customers.'

'Of course.' Mikali beamed. In a flash he had produced a handkerchief of fine silk. Cupping it in his hands, he began moving through the a.s.semblage, collecting coins. As might be expected, he was loathe to undertake this ch.o.r.e silently.

'A gift for Sanctuary's greatest storyteller... Hear of the landing from the lips of the one who welcomed them to our sh.o.r.e ... Gifts ... What's that?

Coppers?! For Hakiem? Dig deeper into that purse or move along! That's the bravest man in town sitting there ... Thank you ... Gifts for the bravest man in Sanctuary ...'

In a nonce a double handful of coins had found their way into the handkerchief, and Mikali triumphantly presented it to Hakiem with a flourish. The storyteller weighed the parcel carelessly in his hand for a moment, then nodded and slipped the entire thing into his tunic, secretly enjoying the look of dismay that crossed the youth's face as Mikali realized the fine handkerchief would not be returned.

Though I took my post on the wharf near midday, it was after dark before the fleet had anch.o.r.ed and the first of the Beysib ventured ash.o.r.e. It was so dark, I did not even see the small boat being lowered over the side of one of the s.h.i.+ps. Not until they lit torches and began pulling for the wharf was I aware of their intent to make contact before first light,' Hakiem began.

Indeed, on that night Hakiem had nearly dozed off before he realized a boat was finally on its way from the fleet. Even a storyteller's curiosity had its limits.

'It was a sight to frighten children with; that torchlit craft creeping towards our town like some great spider from a nightmare, stalking its prey across an ink-black mirror. Though I was hailed as brave, it embarra.s.ses me not to admit that I watched from the shadows. The wise know that darkness can s.h.i.+eld the weak as easily as it harries the strong.'

There were nods of acknowledgement throughout the crowd. This was Sanctuary, and every listener, regardless of social status, had sought refuge in the shadows more than once as the occasion arose, and did it more often than he would care to admit.

'Still, once they were ash.o.r.e, I could see they were men not greatly different from us, so I stepped forth from my place of concealment and went to meet them.'

This brave deed that Hakiem took on himself had been born of a mixture of impatience, curiosity, and drink ... mostly the latter. While the storyteller had indeed been at his watchpost since midday, he had also been indulging all the while, helping himself to the wines left untended in the wharfside saloons.

Thus it was that when the boat tied up at the wharf he was more sheets to the wind than its mother vessel had been.

The party from the boat advanced down the pier to the sh.o.r.e; then, rather than proceed into town, it had simply drawn up in a tight knot and waited. As minutes stretched on and no additional boats were dispatched from the fleet, it became apparent that this vanguard was expecting to be met by a delegation from the town. If that were truly the case, it occurred to Hakiem that they might well still be waiting at sunrise.

'You'll have to go to the palace!' he had called without thinking.

At the sound of his voice, the party had turned their gla.s.sy-eyed stares on him.

'Palace! Go Palace!' he repeated, ignoring the p.r.i.c.kling at the nape of his neck.

'Hakiem!'

A figure in the group had beckoned him forward.

Of all things he had antic.i.p.ated or feared about the invaders, the last thing Hakiem had expected was to be hailed by name.

Almost of their own volition, his legs propelled him shakily towards the group.

'The first one I met was the one I least expected,' Hakiem confided to his audience. 'None other than our own Hort, whom we all believed to be lost at sea, along with his father. To say the least, I was astonished to find him not only among the living, but accompanying these invaders.'

'By now you all have not only seen the Beysib, but have all grown accustomed to their strange appearance. Coming on them for the first time by torchlight on a deserted pier as I did, though, was enough to panic a strong man ... and I am not a strong man. The hands holding the torches were webbed, as if they had come out of the sea rather than across it. The handles of the warriors' swords jutting up from behind their shoulders I had seen from afar, but what I hadn't noted was their eyes. Those dark, unblinking eyes staring at me with the torchlight reflecting in their depths nearly had me convinced that they would pounce on me like a pack of animals if I showed my fear. Even now, by daylight those eyes can ...'

'Hakiem!'

The storyteller was pleased to note that he was not the only one who started at the sudden cry. He had not lost his touch for drawing an audience into a story.

They had forgotten the morning glare and were standing with him on a torchlit pier.

Fast behind his pride, or perhaps overlapping it, was a wave of anger at having been interrupted in mid-tale. It was not a kindly gaze he turned on the interloper.

It was none other than Hort, flanked by two Beysib warriors. For a moment Hakiem had to fight off a wave of unreality, as if the youth had stepped out of the story to confront him in life.

'Hakiem! You must come at once. The Beysa herself wishes to see you.'

'She'll have to wait,' the storyteller declared haughtily, ignoring the murmurs that had sprung up among his audience, 'I'm in the middle of a story.'

'But you don't understand,' Hort insisted, 'she wants to offer you a position in her court!'

'No, you don't understand,' Hakiem flared back, swelling in his anger without rising from his seat. 'I already am employed ... and will be employed until this story is done. These good people have commissioned me to entertain them and I intend to do just that until they are satisfied. You and your fish-eyed friends there will just have to wait.'

With that, Hakiem returned his attention to his audience, ignoring Hort's discomfiture. The fact that he had not really wished to start this particular session was unimportant, as was the fact that service with the leader of the Beysib government-in-exile would undoubtedly be lucrative. Any storyteller, much less Sanctuary's best storyteller, did not s.h.i.+rk his professional duty in the midst of a tale, however tempting the counter-offer might be.

Gone were the days when he would scuttle off as soon as a few coins were tossed his way. The old storyteller's pride had grown along with his wealth, and Hakiem was no more exempt than any other citizen of Sanctuary from the effects of the Face of Chaos.

HIGH MOON.

Janet Morris

Just south of Caravan Square and the bridge over the White Foal River, the Nisibisi witch had settled in. She had leased the isolated complex - one three storied 'manor house' and its outbuildings -as much because its grounds extended to the White Foal's edge (rivers covered a mult.i.tude of disposal problems) as for its proximity to her business interests in the Wideway warehouse district and its convenience to her caravan master, who must visit the Square at all hours.

The caravan disguised their operations. The drugs they'd smuggled in were no more pertinent to her purposes than the dilapidated manor at the end of the bridge's south-running cart track or the goods her men bought and stored in Wideway's most pilferproof holds, though they lubricated her dealings with the locals and eased her troubled nights. It was all subterfuge, a web of lies, plausible lesser evils to which she could own if the Rankan army caught her, or the palace marshal Tempus's Stepsons (mercenary shock troops and 'special agents') rousted her minions and flunkies or even brought her up on charges.

Lately, a pair of Stepsons had been her particular concern. And Jagat - her first lieutenant in espionage - was no less worried. Even their Ilsig contact, the unflappable Lastel who had lived a dozen years in Sanctuary, cesspool of the Rankan empire into which all lesser sewers fed, and managed all that time to keep his dual ident.i.ty as east-side entrepreneur and Maze-dwelling barman uncom promised, was distressed by the attentions the pair of Stepsons were payin her.

She had thought her allies overcautious at first, when it seemed she would be here only long enough to see to the 'death' of the Rankan war G.o.d, Vashanka.

Discrediting the state-cult's power icon was the purpose for which the Nisibisi witch, Roxane, had come down from Wizardwall's fastness, down from her shrouded keep of black marble on its unscalable peak, down among the mortal and the d.a.m.ned. They were all in this together: the mages of Nisibisi; Lacan Ajami (warlord ofMygdon and the known world north of .Wizardwall) with whom they had made pact; and the whole Mygdonian Alliance which he controlled.

Or so her lord and love had explained it when he decreed that Roxane must come.

She had not argued - one pays one's way among sorcerers; she had not worked hard for a decade nor faced danger in twice as long. And if one did not serve Mygdon - only one - all would suffer. The Alliance was too strong to thwart. So she was here, drawn here with others fit for better, as if some power more than magical was whipping up a tropical storm to cleanse the land and using them to gild its eye.

She should have been home by now; she would have been, but for the hundred s.h.i.+ps from Beysib which had come to port and skewed all plans. Word had come from Mygdon, capital of Mygdonia, through the Nisibisi network, that she must stay.

And so it had become crucial that the Stepsons who sniffed round her skirts be kept at bay - or ensnared, or bought, or enslaved. Or, if not, destroyed. But carefully, so carefully. For Tempus, who had been her enemy three decades ago when he fought the Defender's Wars on Wizardwall's steppes, was a dozen Storm G.o.ds' avatar; no army he sanctified could know defeat; no war he fought could not be won. Combat was life to him; he fought like the G.o.ds themselves, like an entelechy from a higher sphere -and even had friends among those powers not corporeal or vulnerable to sortilege of the quotidian sort a human might employ.

And now it was being decreed in Mygdonia's tents that he must be removed from the field - taken out of play in this southern theatre, manoeuvred north where the warlocks could neutralize him. Such was the word her lover-lord had sent her: move him north, or make him impotent where he stayed. The G.o.d he served here had been easier to rout. But she doubted that would incapacitate him; there were other Storm G.o.ds, and Tempus, who under a score of names had fought in more dimensions than she had ever visited, knew them all. Vashanka's denouement might scare the Rankans and give the Ilsigs hope, but more than rumours and manipulation of theomachy by even the finest witch would be needed to make Tempus fold his hands or bow his head. To make him run, then, was an impossibility. To lure him north, she hoped, was not. For this was no place for Roxane. Her nose was offended by the stench which blew east from Downwind and north from Fisherman's Row and west from the Maze and south from either the slaughterhouses or the palace - she'd not decided which.

So she had called a meeting, itself an audacious move, with her kind where they dwelled on Wizardwall's high peaks. When it was done, she was much weakened - it is no small feat to project one's soul so far - and unsatisfied. But she had submitted her strategy and gotten approval, after a fas.h.i.+on, though it pained her to have to ask.

Having gotten it, she was about to set her plan in motion. To begin it, she had called upon LastelIOne-Thumb and cried foul: 'Tempus's sister, Cime the free agent, was part of our bargain, Ilsig. If you cannot produce her, then she cannot aid me, and I am paying you far too much for a third-rate criminal's paltry talents.'

The huge wrestler adjusted his deceptively soft gut. His east-side house was commodious; dogs barked in their pens and favourite curs lounged about their feet, under the samovar, upon riotous silk prayer rugs, in the embrace of comely krrf-drugged slaves - not her idea of entertainment, but Lastel's, his sweating forehead and heavy breathing proclaimed as he watched the b.e.s.t.i.a.l event a dozen other guests found fetching.

The dusky Ilsigs saw nothing wrong in enslaving their own race. Nisibisi had more pride. It was well that these were comfortable with slavery - they would know it far more intimately, by and by.

But her words had jogged her host, and Lastel came up on one elbow, his cus.h.i.+ons suddenly askew. He, too, had been partaking ofkrrf- not smoking it, as was the Ilsig custom, but mixing it with other drugs which made it sink into the blood directly through the skin. The effects were greater, and less predictable.

As she had hoped, her words had the power of krrf behind them. Fear showed in thejowled mountain's eyes. He knew what she was; the fear was her due. Any of these were helpless before her, should she decide a withered soul or two might amuse her. Their essences could lighten her load as krrf lightened theirs.

The gross man spoke quickly, a whine of excuses: the woman had 'disappeared ...

taken by Askelon, the very lord of dreams. All at the Mageguild's fete where the G.o.d was vanquished saw it. You need not take my word - witnesses are legion.'

She fixed him with her pale stare. Ilsigs were called Wrigglies, and Lastel's craven self was a good example why. She felt disgust and stared longer.

The man before her dropped his eyes, mumbling that their agreement had not hinged on the mage-killer Cime, that he was doing more than his share as it was, for little enough profit, that the risks were too high.

And to prove to her he was still her creature, he warned her again of the Stepsons: 'That pair of Wh.o.r.esons Tempus sicced on you should concern us, not money - which neither of us will be alive to spend if -' One of the slaves cried out, whether in pleasure or pain Roxane could not be certain; Lastel did not even look up, but continued:'... Tempus finds out we've thirty stone of krrf in -'.

She interrupted him, not letting him name the hiding place. 'Then do this that I ask of you, without question. We will be rid of the problem they cause, thereafter, and have our own sources, who'll tell us what Tempus does and does not know.'

A slave serving mulled wine approached, and both took electrum goblets. For Roxane, the liquor was an advantage: looking into its depths, she could see what few cogent thoughts ran through the fat drug dealer's mind.

He thought of her, and she saw her own beauty: wizard hair like ebony and wavy; her sanguine skin like velvet: he dreamed her naked, with his dogs. She cast a curse without word or effort, refiexively, giving him a social disease no Sanctuary mage or barber-surgeon could cure, complete with running sores upon lips and member, and a virus in control of it which buried itself in the brainstem and came out when it chose. She hardly took note of it; it was a small show of temper, like for like: let him exhibit the condition of his soul, she had decreed.

To banish her leggy nakedness from the surface of her wine, she said straight out; 'You know the other bar owners. The Alekeep's proprietor has a girl about to graduate from school. Arrange to host her party, let it be known that you will sell those children krrf - Tamzen is the child I mean. Then have your flunky lead her down to Shambles Cross. Leave them there - up to half a dozen youngsters, it may be - lost in the drug and the slum.'

'That will tame two vicious Stepsons? You do know the men I mean? Janni? And Stealth? They b.u.g.g.e.r each other, Stepsons. Girls are beside the point. And Stealth - he's aIwzzbuster- I've seen him with no woman old enough for b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Surely -'

'Surely,' she cut in smoothly, 'you don't want to know more than that - in case it goes awry. Protection in these matters lies in ignorance.' She would not tell him more - not that Stealth, called Nikodemos, had come out of Azehur, where he'd earned his war name and worked his way towards Syr in search of a Tros horse via Mygdonia, hiring on as a caravan guard and general roustabout, or that a dispute over a consignment lost to mountain bandits had made him bond-servant for a year to a Nisibisi mage - her lover-lord. There was a string on Nikodemos, ready to be pulled.

And when he felt it, it would be too late, and she would be at the end of it.

Tempus had allowed Niko to breed his sorrel mare to his own Tros stallion to quell mutters among knowledgeable Stepsons that a.s.signing Niko and Janni to hazardous duty in the town was their commander's way of punis.h.i.+ng the slate haired fighter who had declined Tempus's offered pairbond in favour of Janni's and had subsequently quit their ranks.

Now the mare was pregnant and Tempus was curious as to what kind of foal the union might produce, but rumours of foul play still abounded.