Visible Light, page 18
The red-shuttered room was closed and dark; Sophonisba had not returned& had found some safe nook for herself with the bells going, hiding in fear, knowing where her partner had gone, perhaps witness to the hue and cry after. Terrified, Gillian reckoned, and did not blame her.
Gillian caught her breath and took to that street, forested with pillars, that was called the Street of the Gods. Here too the lanterns of the watch showed in the distance, and far away, dimly visible against the sky& the palace of the king upon the other hill of the fold in which Korianth nestled, the gods and the king in close association.
From god to god she passed, up that street like an ascent of fancy, from the bare respectability of little cults like Agdalia's to the more opulent temples of gods more fearsome and more powerful. Watch passed; she retreated at once, hovered in the shadow of the smooth columns of a Korianthine god, Ablis of the Goldworkers, one of the fifty-two thousand gods of Korianth. He had no patronage for her, might in fact, resent a thief; she hovered fearfully, waiting for ill luck; but perhaps she was otherwise marked.
She shuddered, fingering that serpent ring upon her thumb, and walked farther in the shadow of the columns.
It was not the greatest temple nor the most conspicuous in this section, that of Triptis. Dull black-green by day, it seemed all black in this last hour of night, the twisted columns like stone smoke, writhing up to a plain portico, without window or ornament.
She caught her breath, peered into the dark that surrounded a door that might be open or closed; she was not sure.
Nor was she alone. A prickling urged at her nape, a sense of something that lived and breathed nearby; she whipped out the poisoned blade and turned.
A shadow moved, tottered toward her. "Gillian," it said, held out a hand, beseeching.
"Nessim," she murmured, caught the peeling hand with her left, steadied the old man. He recoiled from her touch.
"You've something of them about you," he said.
"What are you doing here?" She hissed at him. "Old man, go backget out of here."
"I came for mousekin," he said. "I came to try, Gillian."
The voice trembled. It was, for Nessim, terribly brave.
"You would die," she said. "You're not in their class, Nessim."
"Are you?" He asked with a sudden straightening, a memory, perhaps, of better years. "You'd do what?
What would you do?"
"You stay out," she said, and started to leave; he caught her hand, caught the hand with the poisoned knife and the ring. His fingers clamped.
"No," he said. "No. Be rid of this."
She stopped, looked at his shadowed, peeling face. "They threatened Jensy's life."
"They know you're here. You understand that? With this, they know. Give it to me."
"Aldisis saw it and returned it to me. Aldisis himself, old man. Is your advice better?"
"My reasons are friendlier."
A chill went over her. She stared into the old man's eyes. "What should I do?"
"Give it here. Hand it to me. I will contain it for you& long enough. They won't know, do you understand me? I'll do that much."
"You can't light a candle, old trickster."
"Can," he said. "Reedlight's easier. I never work more than I have to."
She hesitated, saw the fear in the old man's eyes. A friend, one friend. She nodded, sheathed the knife and slipped off the ring. He took it into his hands and sank down in the shadows with it clasped before his lips, the muscles of his arms shaking as if he strained against something vastly powerful.
And the cold was gone from her hand.
She turned, ran, fled across the street and scrambled up the stonework of the paler temple of the Elder Mother, the Serpent Triptis's near neighbor& up, madly, for the windowless temple had to derive its light from some source; and a temple that honored the night surely looked upon it somewhere.
She reached the crest, the domed summit of the Mother, set foot from pale marble onto the darker roof of the Serpent, shuddering, as if the very stone were alive and threatening, able to feel her presence.
To steal from a god, to snatch a life from his jaws& She spun and ran to the rear of the temple, where a well lay open to the sky, where the very holy of the temple looked up at its god, which was night. That was the way in she had chosen. The sanctuary, she realized with a sickness of fear, thought of Jensy and took it nonetheless, swung onto the inside rim and looked down, with a second impulse of panic as she saw how far down it was, a far, far drop.
Voices hailed within, echoing off the columns, shortening what time she had; somewhere voices droned hymns or some fell chant.
She let go, plummeted, hit the slick stones and tried to take the shock by rolling& sprawled, dazed, on cold stone, sick from the impact and paralyzed.
She heard shouts, outcries, struggled up on a numbed arm and a sprained wrist, trying to gain her feet. It was indeed the sanctuary; pillars of some green stone showed in the golden light of lamps, pillars carved like twisting serpents, even to the scales, writhing toward the ceiling and knotting in folds across it. The two greatest met above the altar, devouring a golden sun, between their fanged jaws, above her.
"Jensy," she muttered, thinking of Nessim and his hands straining about that thing that they had given her.
She scrambled for the shadows, for safety if there was any safety in this lair of demons.
A man-shaped shadow appeared in that circle of night above the altar; she stopped, shrank back farther among the columns as it hung and dropped as she had.
Jisan. Who else would have followed her, dark of habit and streetwise? He hit the pavings hardly better than she, came up and staggered, felt of the silver-hiked knife at his belt; she shrank back and back, pace by pace, her slippered feet soundless.
And suddenly the chanting was coming this way, up hidden stairs, lights flaring among the columns; they hymned Night, devourer of light, in their madness beseeched the day not to comeforever Dark, they prayed in their mad hymn. The words crept louder and louder among the columns, and Jisan lingered dazed.
"Hsst!" Gillian whispered; he caught the sound, seemed to focus on it, fled the other way, among the columns on the far side of the hall.
And now the worshippers were within the sanctuary, the lights making the serpent columns writhe and twist into green-scaled life, accompanied by shadows. They bore with them a slight, tinseled form that wept and struggled. Jensy, crying! She never would.
Gillian reached for the poisoned blade, her heart risen into her throat. Of a sudden the hopelessness of her attempt came down upon her, for they never would keep their word, never, and there was nowhere to hide: old Nessim could not hold forever, keeping their eyes blind to her.
Or they knew already that they had been betrayed.
She walked out among them. "We have a bargain!" She shouted, interrupting the hymn, throwing things into silence. "I kept mine. Keep yours."
Jensy struggled and bit, and one of them hit her. The blow rang loud in the silence, and Jensy went limp.
One of them stood forward. "He is dead?" That one asked. "The bargain is kept?"
"What else are the bells?" She asked.
There was silence. Distantly the brazen tones were still pealing across the city. It was near to dawn; stars were fewer in the opening above the altar. Triptis's hours were passing.
"Give her back," Gillian said, feeling the sweat run down her sides, her pulse hammering in her smallest veins. "You'll hear no more of us."
A cowl went back, showing a fat face she had seen in processions. No priest, not with that gaudy dress beneath; Duke Brisin, Osric had named one of his enemies; she thought it might be.
And they were not going to honor their word.
Someone cried out; a deep crash rolled through the halls; there was the tread of armored men, sudden looks of alarm and a milling among the priests like a broken hive. Jensy fell, dropped; and Gillian froze with the ringing rush of armored men coming at her back, the swing of lanterns that sent the serpents the more frenziedly twisting about the hall. "Stop them," someone was shouting.
She moved, slashed a priest, who screamed and hurled himself into the others who tried to stop her. Jensy was moving, scrambling for dark with an eel's instinct, rolling away faster than Gillian could help her.
"Jisan!" Gillian shouted to the Assassin, hoping against hope for an ally; and suddenly the hall was ringed with armed men, and herself with a poisoned bodkin, and a dazed, gilt child, huddled together against a black wall of priests.
Some priests tried to flee; the drawn steel of the soldiers prevented; and some died, shrieking. Others were herded back before the altar.
"Lord," Gillian said nervously, casting about among them for the face she hoped to see; and he was there Prince Osric, in the guise of a common soldier; and Aldisis by him; but he had no eyes for a thief.
"Father," Osric hailed the fat man, hurled an object at his feet, a leaden cylinder.
The king recoiled pace by pace, his face white and trembling, shaking convulsively so that the fat quivered upon it. The soldiers' blades remained leveled toward him, and Gillian seized Jensy's naked shoulder and pulled her back, trying for quiet retreat out of this place of murders, away from father and son, mad king who dabbled in mad gods and plotted murders.
"Murderer," Seithan stammered, the froth gathering at his lips. "Killed my legitimate sons& every one; killed me, but I didn't die& kin-killer. Kin-killing bastard& I have loyal subjects left; you'll not reign."
"You've tried me for years, honored father, majesty. Where's my mother?"
The king gave a sickly and hateful laugh.
There was movement in the dark, where no priest was& a figure seeking deeper obscurity; Gillian took her own cue and started to move.
A priest's weapon whipped up, a knife poised to hurl; she cried warning& and suddenly chaos, soldiers closed in a ring of bright weapons, priests dying in a froth of blood, and the king& The cries were stilled. Gillian hugged Jensy against her in the shadows, seeing through the forest of snakes the sprawled bodies, the bloody-handed soldiers, Osricking in Korianth.
King! The soldiers hailed him, that made the air shudder; he gave them orders, that sent them hastening from the slaughter here.
"The palace!" He shouted, urging them on to riot that would see throats cut by the hundreds in Korianth.
A moment he paused, sword in hand, looked into the shadows, for Jensy glittered, and it was not so easy to hide. For a moment a thief found the courage to look a prince in the eye, wondering, desperately whether two such motes of dust as they might not be swept away. Whether he feared a thief's gossip, or cared.
The soldiers had stopped about him, a warlike knot of armor and plumes and swords.
"Get moving!" He ordered them, and swept them away with him, running in their haste to further murders.
Against her, Jensy gave a quiet shiver, and thin arms went round her waist. Gillian tore at a bit of the tinsel, angered by the tawdry ornament. Such men cheated even the gods.
A step sounded near her. She turned, dagger in hand, faced the shadow that was Jisan. A knife gleamed in his hand.
He let the knife hand fall to his side.
"Whose are you?" She asked. He tilted his head toward the door, where the prince had gone, now king.
"Was," he said. "Be clever and run far, Gillian thief; or lie low and long. There comes a time princes don't like to remember the favors they bought. Do you think King Osric will want to reward an assassin?
Or a thief?"
"You leave first," she said. "I don't want you at my back."
"I've been there," he reminded her, "for some number of hours."
She hugged Jensy the tighter. "Go," she said. "Get out of my way."
He went; she watched him walk into the beginning day of the doorway, a darkness out of darkness, and down the steps.
"You all right?" She asked of Jensy.
"Knew I would be," Jensy said with little-girl nastiness; but her lips shook. And suddenly her eyes widened, staring beyond.
Gillian looked, where something like a rope of darkness twisted among the columns, above the blood that spattered the altar; a trick of the wind and the lamps, perhaps. But it crossed the sky, where the stars paled to day, and moved against the ceiling. Her right hand was suddenly cold.
She snatched Jensy's arm and ran, weaving in and out of the columns the way Jisan had gone, out, out into the day, where an old man huddled on the steps, rocking to and fro and moaning.
"Nessim!" She cried. He rose and cast something that whipped away even as he collapsed in a knot of tatters and misery. A serpent-shape writhed across the cobbles in the beginning of day& & and shriveled, a dry stick.
She clutched Jensy's hand and ran to him, her knees shaking under her, bent down and raised the dry old frame by the arms, expecting death; but a blistered face gazed back at her with a fanatic's look of triumph. Nessim's thin hand reached for Jensy, touched her face.
"All right, mousekin?"
"Old man," Gillian muttered, perceiving something she had found only in Jensy; he would have, she vowed, whatever comfort gold could buy, food? And a bed to sleep in. A mage; he was that. And a man.
Gold, she thought suddenly, recalling the coin in her purse; and the purse she had buried off across the canals.
And one who had dogged her tracks most of the night.
She spat an oath by another god and sprang up, blind with rage.
"Take her to the Wyvern," she bade Nessim and started off without a backward glance, reckoning ways she knew that an Assassin might not, reckoning on throat-cutting, on revenge in a dozen colors.
She took to the alleys and began to run by alleys a big man could never use, cracks and crevices and ledges and canal verges.
And made it. She worked into the dark, dislodged the stone, took back the purse and climbed catwise to the ledges to lurk and watch.
He was not far behind to work his big frame into the narrow space that took hers so easily, to work loose the self-same stone.
Upon her rooftop perch she stood, gave a low whistle& shook out a pair of golden coins and dropped them ringing at his feet, a grand generosity, like the prince's.
"For your trouble," she bade him, and was away.
V
We've gone for jump now. You wobble back to the lounge, a little frayed about the edges.
So have I come, some minutes before. Perhaps we both want to be sure the stars are still there.
Or that we are.
"Looking for something?" I ask as you lean against the glass.
"The Sun."
"Wrong direction." I point aft.
"I know that. I just prefer this window."
Jump is the kind of experience that makes philosophersof some people. It's certain that no other passengers venture here this soon.
"Tell me. What do you think of?"
"In transit? It varies. You?"
"Earth. Home."
I smile. "That, most often. Sea-anchor."
"What?"
"When a ship needed stability at sea, it flung out a sea-anchor. Home-thoughts are like that. And this is a big ocean."
"I thought you might think" you say, and give something up unasked.
Eventually I say: "You were about to ask me where I get my ideas. You haven't yet. Go on. I've been wondering when you'd get around to it."
"That wasn't what I was going to ask."
"What, then?"
"I thoughtyou might thinkyou know, somehow different."
"That's the idea-question, all right. I thought I heard it coming."
"You're laughing at me."
"No. I know exactly what you want to know. You want to know wherein I'm different, wherein a writer's mind is different. I've told you. It's because I'm here." I gesture at the windows. "It's a strange sensation when the ship turns loose of space. You want a sea-anchor. It takes nerve to let go and fly with the wind.
I confess I won't jump in parachutes. But I will sometimes think of alien worlds when I slide into hyperspace. Or of falling when I'm flying. I let go of homely things at uncertain momentsjust to test my nerve. You want the terrible truth? You have that kind of mind too."
"Me?"
"You're here, aren't you? You came to look out the windows."
"I don't know why I came."
"Just the same as I don't know where I get my ideas. They just are."
"Any time you want them?"
"Once upon a time," I say, "I had twenty-four hours and a postcard, and a challenge to come up with a story that would fit it."
"Did you?"
"I sat down at supper and wrote the start. I wrote a snatch at a cocktail party, another at breakfast. And yes, twenty-four hours later I stood up to read to a convention full of people from a rather densely written postcard. Used a micropoint." I look out at changed stars and remember a smallish meeting hall, in Columbia, Missouri, and an audience the members of which had had about as much sleep as I had. "Two hours' sleep. Two thousand words."
"Did it work?"
"I read it the close way you have to read letters that smallnever dared look at my audience; I just hoped to get through it without faltering, blind tired as I was. The time went in that kind of fog time gets to when you're in a story; and it was over, and I looked up. Nobody moved. I was kind of disappointed, I mean, when you write what you think is a nice little story and you don't get any reaction at all, you feel worse than if people walked out. I thought they were asleep.
"Then the audience stirred and some wiped eyes and others, I think, got to their feet and cheered, and I just stood there in one of those moments that come to a storyteller a few times in a lifetimeI don't know, maybe we all were tired." I smile, seeing those faces reflected out of nowhere in the glass. "But spare me that. I wrote it to read aloud. It was a special moment. That's all. It doesn't come twice."
The Last Tower
The old man climbed the stairs slowly, stopping sometimes to let his heart recover and the teapot settle on the tray, while the dormouse would pop out of his sleeve or his beard and steal a nibble at the teacakes he brought up from the kitchen. It was an old tower on the edge of faery, on the edge of the Empire of Man.
