Aftermath- - Thieves World 10 (22 page)

"But how can you—" the caravan master began as he slipped a step back, beyond the present arc of the claws. The demon bent at its girlslim waist as it leaped, because otherwise its flat skull would have banged the

ten-foot ceiling.

"Samlor," said the Napatan scholar, "get out! I brought you here!" The demon had trembled back to near stasis for a moment. Now it lurched far enough forward in its unsupported motion that it was clear one hand was reaching for Khamwas's head even as the kick extended toward the Cirdonian.

"There is none who abandons his traveling companion whom the gods do not call to account for it," said Tjainufi.

"Fuck your gods," said Samlor, who was already sliding the knife back under his belt to free his hands. He encircled the Napatan's waist, underneath the cape for a firmer grip, with his left arm.

"No—" said Khamwas desperately.

"Do yowjob," Samlor snarled back as he lifted the smaller man. The air swirled with the demon's renewed movement, but the claws now behind the caravan master did not rend him as he stepped with regal determination to the ladder.

Focusing on the creature from the stone was for Khamwas. Samlor hil 126

Samt had the responsibility of getting them both back up the ladder while

his companion did that job, eyes, arm, and staff locked into their duty Khamwas's body was muscular, but weight wasn't the problem. Carrying him upright while Samlor's right hand needed to grip the ladder for balance was brutal punishment, and it reminded him of how badly he had strained himself getting into this damned house

One foot above the other, each step a deliberate one because a jolt at the wrong time might break Khamwas's concentration irrevocably No way to tell what was happening behind him, nothing to do about it if things weren't well One foot and then the other.

A gust of wind shocked Samlor as his head lifted above the floor of the reception hall Fabric, a curtain or a counterpane, had been snatched from a room on the upper floor and was flapping from the railing Star was calm as molten glass as she watched her uncle struggle up the ladder with the other man clamped to his side At his first wild glance, Samlor thought the whorl of white hair on the child's temple was one of the creatures of light which pulsed through the reception hall It was so bright

He couldn't bend over to balance with his palm on the floor as he neared the top of the ladder, so the caravan master mounted the last three rungs at a quickened pace Toppling backward would mean the floor killed them if the demon didn't, but if Samlor sprawled on his face

the result would be no better He'd seen the creature start to move, it would be on them in an instant ifKhamwas were flung out of his concentration Samlor stepped from the top rung to the marble floor, sucking in his lips as he strove to move as smoothly as a duck gliding on water He set the Napatan down, conscious of the man's weight only after he was free of it, and with the same motion strode for the wall and the latch mechanism Khamwas's voice was audible again, breaking with strain as he chanted over and over again a dozen or so words Sweat from the Napatan's face had splashed Samlor's left forearm as he climbed The caravan master's boot skidded when he tried to slide back the piece the marble which was half withdrawn beneath the molding Instead of trying again with his hobnails, Samlor knelt and scrabbled at the black

stone with both sweaty palms It moved into position with the same greasy certainty with which it had opened

The pond of mirror-smooth water slipped down to cover the demon soundlessly

Samlor skidded as he ran from the sidewall to the front door Hobnails weren't the footgear for these polished stones . . and this house wasn't

a place for humans Not now, and probably not before Setios's pet got loose

There was no inside door latch

"You didn't let them out, Master Khamwas," said Star, patting the hand of the scholar who had knelt and was sobbing with exhaustion

'They're playing with us "

"Come on," Samlor shouted There was certainly a way to open the inner and outer doors from here, but he didn't have time to fool with it.

"We're leaving the way we came'"

"There's six of them. Uncle Samlor," said Star. "They're playing with us"

Something emerged from the pilaster beside the stairs to the second floor It was a clawed hand like that of the demon below Instead of streaming like smoke from the stone, it broke free as a chick emerges from an egg Rock shattered away from the groping limb, and a section of the wall started to lift

Khamwas rose to his feet His face was blank and his body swayed with fatigue He crossed his arm over the staff again and began a whispered chant The wall from which the demon crashed, already formed, was loadbearing Tortured roof beams squealed as plaster in chunks of up to a hundred pounds broke away A big piece hit the center of the pond and blasted water out across the reception hall

Samlor caught his niece with one arm and Khamwas with the other He flung them, all three together, to the floor against the nearer sidewall

A block of stone, notched for the butt of a crossbeam, tumbled from the roof to the rail of the second-floor walkway, then caromed to the floor in

a shower of dust and chips.

"We'll get out through the back'" said the caravan master who doubted that they would. The wall beside where they hunched under cover of the walkway was crumbling as gray claws harder than the stone emerged from it

Across the reception room, the other sidewall was disintegrating m a shower of bits and blocks They hid but did not disguise the cause of the destruction One of the demons was clasping a dismembered human leg Samlor figured he knew where Setios and his servants had gone Six of 'em, Star'd said Likely five more than they'd need, but you didn't quit Just because you couldn't win

The three humans rose and scuttled for the room's back wall and the door there They were bent over because the walkway's partial roof was no protection against blocks bouncing from the floor at crazy angles. The front half of the house staggered forward into the street with a 128

roar. The sound did not seem loud until Samlor realized that he could not shout with enough volume to be heard by the two companions he had dragged with him into the temporary safety of the door alcove. Skeletal, inhumanly tall figures minced toward the trio, shrugging off the tons of rubble that had thundered down on them. There were four, and the mound of stone and timber covering what had been the floor of the reception room heaved as the creature in the room beneath rejoined its fellows.

Sheets of pain flapped across Samlor's body from a center where his right hip had blocked a ricocheting chunk of stone that weighed as much as he did. The crosswall dividing the house was built as solidly as the exterior. It remained essentially undisturbed when the emerging demons had shattered the front of the house. That portion of the building had demolished itself as brittle stone shifted in a vain attempt to find new foundations.

The door in front of Samlor was locked or possibly jammed when ruin made the house twist, but the panel was only thin wood inlaid with horn and ivory in patterns which were probably significant as well as decorative. Khamwas pounded it with the ferule of his staff, breaking off scales

of ivory without doing anything to get them through the doorway. Samlor would have kicked the latchplate, but he was pretty sure that his right hip would neither support him alone nor lift his boot high enough for the purpose. Wondering how many seconds they had before a demon lunged onto them, he rotated on his left heel and grabbed a torsosized block from the wreckage that had spilled inward during the collapse. The demons were advancing with tiny steps, chittering in self-satisfaction. When they chose to, they picked their way over the piled rubble, but

one of the four figures strode through the tons of jumbled rock like a man

wading in the surf. The fifth of the creatures heaved itself into sight with

the ease of a toadstool bursting pavement to reach the open air,

"Care—" cried Samlor, turning with the block in his hands. The movement was so painful that he could feel only his scalp, his palms, and

the ball of his left foot.

"—ful!"

The stone splintered the door and carried on, crashing on the floor of the hallway beyond and then bouncing harmlessly from the legs of the sixth demon poised there with its arms spread across the passage. The air was dead still. The caravan master turned again, no more conscious of his pain than a fox is conscious of the way its lungs burn from its running when the hounds encircle it for the last time.

"The sky," Khamwas said hoarsely. "Look."

Samlor drew the long dagger from his belt and lifted Star to his chest with his free arm. The semicircle of demons waited, crouching slightly, with their spindly, steelstrong arms interlocked. They were close enough that if one of the creatures leaned forward, it could rip the caravan master's face away in its pointed teeth.

"Look!" Khamwas screamed, and even so his voice was smothered by a sound like the scream of a giant snake.

Samlor looked up. He could see almost a mile into the sky, up the lightning-lit throat of a descending tornado funnel.

The lower end was shaggy with tentacles of water vapor condensing in the lowered pressure surrounding six separate suction vortices. They extended toward the ruined house.

"Down!" cried the caravan master, but Star twisted like an eel from his arms and stood while the two men tried to flatten themselves. One of the demons leaped away, covering twenty feet of the distance toward the street before being caught by a suction vortex-The creature reeled upward into the main funnel, like a crab being lifted into an octopus's crushing beak. Blue-white lightning licked soundlessly but with

coronal radiance from one side of the void to the otherThe funnel hovered at the level of what remained of Setios's roof. A miniature vortex snaked past Star's erect head, so close that it should have touched her hair but didn't. It was no more than the diameter of a wine jar, spinning widdershins though the main cloud rotated with the sun.

Samlor lay on his back, clutching the medallion of Heqt in his left hand as he watched transfixed. The broken door panel exploded into splinters. They cleared themselves up the shaft of the screaming vortex. The demon flashed out in the grip of the wind, upright and battling momentarily while its hinder claws gouged pieces the size of a man's fist

from the stone of the doorjambs. Then the creature was gone, falling upward into the sky in a helix so tight that its limbs had been plucked from the body before it disappeared into the tunnel of lightning. The tornado was lifting and folding in on itself like a purse whose drawstrings were being tightened. Samlor hadn't seen what happened to the four remaining demons, but they had vanished when he knelt to look around.

"If you are not slack," said Tjainufi in a perfectly audible voice,

"then

your god will be active for you."

Samlor uncurled his fingers from the amulet of Heqt; but it had not been to the toad goddess that he screamed his prayers in the last instants . . . 130 AFTERMATH

"I thought Mommy's box was empty," said Star as her eyes met the caravan master's "But it wasn't "

The tornado funnel flattened into the overcast almost a mile above Sanctuary Only then did the normal wind return, a huge gust of it, and with it the start of a cold downpour It was as dark again as the inside of

a tomb.

But the whorl of hair on Star's temple burned for a moment like the heart of the lightning

John Brunner

By lamplight, by firelight, on a winter evening, Jarveena of Forgotten Holt sat at dinner with the less-than-man whose foreign agent she had been for these seven years.

In the years since she had served him merely as a scribe-interpreter, Master Melilot had changed but little He was portlier, admittedly—the satin robe he splashed with grease as he gnawed at the carcass of his third

wild duck stretched smooth across his ample paunch—but his suety face was equally innocent of wrinkles and would no doubt remain so till his death

Most certainly of all, his inner nature had not altered Though he was a great deal richer than of yore—Jarveena knew that for a fact, having put several immensely profitable deals his way, and having laid the foundations of a fortune for herself—the outward signs of his prosperity were

few He was still reluctant to part with money save when it was unavoidable, food still came to his table from the fire shared between the kitchen

and the bindery adjacent to the scriptorium on the entrance floor, and those who clambered up and down the ladderlike stairs with wine jars and full and empty dishes were still the same sort of apprentices, not engaged just now in copying or studying A thousand others would have flaunted their wealth by buying slaves, or installed one of the hoists of

late so popular in Ranke, which delivered food piping-hot by way of a shaft sunk in the wall Not Melilot He knew that an excessive display of worldly goods was a sure way to attract the interest of thieves, and he had no wish to be at the expense of hiring armed watchmen It was cheaper to rely, by day, on the constant vigilance of his staff, and by night

132

on the geese he had installed on the roof, in what formerly had been the nauseous dwelling of the drunken nobleman whose ancestors had built this once fine mansion. He had gone to his repose; now the geese could be

trusted to disturb everybody's at a nocturnal shout or footfall, a complaining bolt, or the creaking of a shutter jimmied open. Besides, here in Sanctuary, what guards were available were as likely as anyone else to rob their employers if they felt they could get away with

their loot.

Despite his visibly good appetite, Melilot was uneasy. As well as Jarveena, another guest sat at his table. It was not his custom to admit strangers to his private quarters. Had the fellow not been vouched for by