The Anvil of the World (23 page)

"No!" he gurgled desperately. "I am a straight sound mage, mildew-resistant and clean in all my parts, but you are a one-legged castrated blind dog with mange!"

Whereupon he became the upright mage he said he was, and the black fungus that had begun to cover his face vanished; but Blichbiss toppled to the floor, clutching at his groin with swiftly withering arms, and turning his blind scabrous furry face he howled; "No! I am a man, full and complete and strong upon both my legs, clearly seeing that you are a toad whose teeth have grown together, preventing your speech!"

"Whoops," said Lord Eyrdway gleefully, for both he and Smith had caught the fallacy: Toads have no teeth. "Tried too hard to be clever!"

Lord Ermenwyr jerked back, an agonized look on his face as his teeth snapped shut. He struggled to get out words as he began to shrink and change color; as his mouth widened, the rest of the incantation cycled through and the teeth vanished. He made a horrible noise, just perceptible as words, "No! I am no toad but a man, with perfect and flawless dentition, clearly capable of stating that you are a mere giant mayfly with no mouth at all!"

"No!" gasped Blichbiss, as gauzy wings burst from the back of his dinner jacket. "I am a"--her reached up and tore at his elongating face to prevent his mouth from sealing before he could finish the counterspell--"a man with a mouth such as all men have, and no wings nor any brief life span, whereas you are a cheap tallow taper, your mouth wide with molten wax, your tongue the black wick, awrithe with living flame!"

"No!" Lord Ermenwyr screamed, spitting fire. "I am a man, and my tongue is supple, alive and flameless, no tallow to block my loud pronouncement that you are no man at all but a hanging effigy of old clothes stuffed with paper, your face a painted sack, your mouth a mere painted line, incapable of utterance!"

"Gurk!" exclaimed Blichbiss, as a noose appeared from nowhere and hoisted him up by the neck. "No! I am not hanging and--" He ripped his sealing mouth open again. "I am a mage whose curses are swift and always deadly, with a quick mouth to pronounce that
you,"
--and a terrible gleam came into his eyes--"are a pusillanimous little half-breed
nouveau-arcane
psychopath who richly deserves the inescapable blast of witchfire that is about to electrocute him where he stands!"

"Hey!" said Smith in dismay, and Lord Eyrdway looked confused as he played the spell back in his head; but Lord Ermenwyr, his eyes bugging from their sockets, stared up at the crackling circle of white-hot energy that had just begun to circle his head. He shrieked the first thing that came to mind;

"I know you are, but what am I?"

With his last syllable the witchfire reached critical mass and shot out a ravening tongue of lightning, hitting Blichbiss square in the middle of his waistcoat. That gentleman had just time to look outraged before he made a sizzling noise, his sinuses discharged copiously, and the fire engulfed him in a crackling blaze for the space of three seconds before vanishing with a loud popping sound.

Blichbiss fell backward with a crash, smoke and steam rising from his slightly charred mustache. He had been felled by the deadliest of counterspells, the one against which there is no appeal. So simple is its operative principle, even little children grasp it instinctively; so puissant is it in its demoralizing effect, grown men have been driven to inadvertent self-destruction, as Blichbiss now was evidence. Oddly enough, his clothes were almost untouched.

"That was cheating, that last one," said Lord Eyrdway. "Wasn't it? I thought you said no incendiary spells."

Lord Ermenwyr turned on him in fury. "Of course he cheated, you dunce! But it wouldn't have mattered if he'd managed to kill me."

"Of course it would have," Lord Eyrdway said reasonably. "Then Smith could have appealed his victory to the Black Council, as your second."

"A lot of good that would have done
me,
wouldn't it?" Lord Ermenwyr said, trembling in every limb as the reaction set in. He staggered backward and, like a landslide, his bodyguards surrounded him and caught him before he fell. Cutt set him gently into an armchair.

"Master is drained," he said solicitously. "Master is exhausted. What Master needs now, to restore his strength, is to eat his enemy's liver fresh-torn from his miserably defeated body, while it's still warm. Shall I tear out the liver for you, Master?"

"Gods, no!" cried Lord Ermenwyr in disgust.

"But it's good for you," said Cutt gently, "and you need it. It's full of arcane energies. It will replenish you with the life force of your enemy. Your lord father--" pause for group genuflection--"always consumes the livers of those so rash as to assail him. If they have been particularly offensive, he eats their hearts as well. Come now, little Master, won't you even try it?"

"He's right, you know," Lord Eyrdway said. "And think of the publicity! Nobody's ever going to challenge
your
right to be guild treasurer again. I wouldn't mind a bit of the bastard's heart, myself."

"Can I get it cooked?" asked Lord Ermenwyr.

"No!" said all the guards and Lord Eyrdway together.

"That would destroy much of its arcane wholesomeness," Cutt explained.

"Then I'm damned well having condiments," Lord Ermenwyr decided. "Smith, can you get me pepper and salt and a lemon?"

"Right," said Smith, and fled.

At least the sorcerous duel seemed to have passed unnoticed by anyone else, though Bellows gave him an inquiring look as he raced back from the kitchen with the condiments Lord Ermenwyr had requested. He just rolled his eyes in reply and hurried back upstairs.

When he reentered the suite, Blichbiss's body had been laid out on the dissecting table, and Lord Ermenwyr was attempting to wrench open the waistcoat and dress shirt.

"He shouldn't be exhibiting rigor mortis this early," he was complaining. "Unless that's the effect of the spell. Hello, Smith, just set those down anywhere. Damn him, these buttons have melted!"

"Rip it open," Lord Eyrdway suggested.

"Tear apart your vanquished enemy," Cutt counseled. "Slash into his flesh and seize the smoking liver in your mighty teeth! Wrest it forth and devour it, as his soul wails and wrings its hands, and let his blood run from your beard!"

"I don't think I'm quite up to that, actually," said Lord Ermenwyr, sweating. He cut the garments apart, laid open Blichbiss with a quick swipe of a knife, and peered at the liver in question. "Oh, gods, it looks vile."

"You didn't mind slicing up Coppercut," Smith remarked.

"Autopsying people is one thing. Eating them's quite another," said Lord Ermenwyr, gingerly cutting the liver out. "Eek, damn--look, now it's got on my shirt, that stain'll never come out. Hand me that plate, Smith."

Smith, deciding he would never understand demons, obliged. Lord Ermenwyr laid Blichbiss's liver out on the plate and began cutting it up, turning his face away. "Oh, the smell--Did you bring a juicer with that lemon, Smith? I'll never be able to keep this down--"

"What are you doing?" said Lord Eyrdway, looking on scandalized.

"I'm fixing Liver Tartare, or I'm not eating this thing at all," his brother snarled. "And the rest of you can just get those offended looks off your faces. Smith, you'd better go before you pass out."

Smith left gratefully.

He went downstairs, where Old Smith and New Smith were dozing in a booth, and woke them and sent them off to bed. Then he fixed himself a drink and sat alone in the darkened bar, sipping his drink slowly, reviewing the events of the last two days.

When he heard Mrs. Smith returning with Crucible and Pinion, he emerged from the bar. "How did it go?" he inquired.

Crucible and Pinion, who were staggering slightly, threw their fists into the air and gave warrior grunts of victory. Mrs. Smith held up her gold medal.

"A triumph," she said quietly. She looked into Smith's eyes. "Boys, I think you'd best go to bed."

"Yes, ma'am," said Pinion thickly, and he and Crucible staggered away.

"Why don't we go talk in the kitchen?" Mrs. Smith suggested. She started down the passageway, and Smith followed, carrying his drink.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Smith removed her medal and hung it above the stove. She considered it a moment before turning and drawing out a chair. She draped her gown's train over one arm and sat down; and, with leisurely movements, took out and filled her smoking tube.

"A light, please, Smith," she requested.

He lit a straw at the stove, digging in the banked coals, and held it out for her. She puffed until the amberleaf lit and sat back.

"Well?" she said.

"How would I get hold of a bloatfish liver, if I wanted one?" Smith asked her.

"Simple," said Mrs. Smith. "You'd just walk down to the waterfront when the fishermen were sorting through their catches, before the fish-market dealers got there. You'd find a fisherman and ask if he had any nice live bloatfish. You might play the foolish old woman, a bit. And you'd listen very carefully when the fisherman told you how to filet the fish once you'd got it home, and thank him for his warning about the nasty liver. Then you'd carry the bloatfish home in a pail.

"And," she went on composedly, "if there was a particularly wicked man asking for an early dinner ... and if you knew he'd ruined a few innocent people in his time and even driven a couple of them to suicide ... and if you knew a little girl was crying her eyes out because he'd threatened her with what amounts to a death sentence unless she slept with him, even though she'd just fallen in love with someone else... and moreover this wicked man wanted her to give him information that would betray certain other persons ... Well, then, Smith, I expect something rather dreadful might find its way into the appetizer he'd ordered.

"Mind you, I admit to nothing," she added. "But I have absolutely no regrets."

Smith sat in silence a moment, turning his drink in his hands, watching the ice melt. "Information that would betray certain other persons," he echoed. "He wasn't sure about you yet, but if he'd scared Burnbright badly enough, he'd have had you; and you've got a restaurant and a reputation to lose. Much better prospect for blackmail.

"You sneaked up there in the dark and burned most of his notes, but someone--probably Burnbright--interrupted you before you finished. You had the feast to get on the table, and Burnbright to calm down, so you never got back in there to burn the rest of the papers before Pinion discovered the murder."

Mrs. Smith exhaled smoke and watched him, silent. At last he said,

"Tell me how you got mixed up in the Spellmetal massacre."

She sighed.

"Years ago," she said, "I was working for the old Golden Chain caravan line. We got a party of passengers bound for the country up around Karkateen.

"It was the Sunborn and his followers. They'd just been thrown out of one town, so they'd chartered passage to another. But the Sunborn had already begun to talk of founding a city where all races would live together in perfect amity.

"When they left the caravan at Karkateen, I went with them."

"Had you become a convert?" Smith asked. She shook her head, her eyes fixed on something distant, and she shrugged.

"I was just a bad girl out for a good time," she said. "I didn't believe the races could live together in peace. I didn't believe one man could change the world. But the Sunborn asked me to come, and ... if he'd asked me to jump from the top of a tower, I'd have done it. You never heard him speak, Smith, or you'd understand.

"He had the strangest gift for making one
clean,
no matter what he did in bed with one. He carried innocence with him like a cloak he could throw about your shoulders. With him, you felt as though you were forgiven for every wrong thing you'd ever done... and love became a sacrament, meant something far more than grappling for pleasure in the dark.

"Well. There were nearly thirty of us, of mixed races. Of the Children of the Sun there were a few boys and girls from well-to-do families. There was me; there were a couple of outcasts, half-breeds, and one girl who was blind; and there was a young man who always seemed uncomfortable with us, but he was the Sunborn's kinsman, and so he followed him out of a sense of family duty. Ramack, his name was. The greenies were all a wild lot, nothing like the ones you meet here running shops. Gorgeous savages. Poets. Musicians.

"It was a mad life. It was wonderful, and stupid, and exhausting. We committed excesses you couldn't begin to imagine. We starved, we wandered in the rain, we danced in our rags and picked flowers by the side of the highway. It was everything Festival is supposed to be, but with a
soul,
Smith!

"The Sunborn joined me to a Yendri man, and blessed our union in the name of racial harmony. I suppose I loved Hladderin well enough; greenies make reasonably good lovers, and he was drop-dead beautiful too. But I loved the Sunborn more.

"When Mogaron Spellmetal joined us, he suggested we all go live on his family's land. Away we went, dancing and singing. I bore Hladderin a child ... what can I say? He was a pretty baby. I was never the motherly type, but his father thought the world of him.

"He was just six months old the day House Spellmetal showed up with their army."

"You don't have to talk about this part, if it's painful," said Smith.

"I won't talk about it. I still can't... but during the fighting, a grenade blew out the back wall of the garden. And when it was over, I ran like mad through the break, and so did a lot of others. I looked back and saw Hladderin fall with one of those damned long black arrows through his throat. Right after him came Ramack carrying the blind girl, her name was Haisa, she'd been a special favorite of the Sunborn's because he said she was a seeress. She was in labor at that very moment. Her baby picked that time of all times for its inauspicious birth!

"Ramack and Haisa got out alive, though. I waved to them, and Ramack spotted the ditch where I'd taken cover, and they joined me there. We managed to crawl away from the slaughter, and by nightfall we were safe. I don't know what happened to the others.