The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (97 page)

Perhaps that was the reason his god failed to answer him. He had
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found the old stones of this altar on the river-shore, and set it up there during the witch wars and fed it during the Revolution; and he had moved it to this sacred street—stone by stone, until he began to build again in the Street of Temples, well, if not on the street, at least in an alley next the great shrines of Empire and of the quisling Ilsigi gods—

And he had failed at first to find the shape of the ancient altar—he had piled up stones only to see them tumble, or to have pieces left over.

But a stranger had come along at the depth of his frustration and told him—told him without hesitation!—what stone to place on what stone, and lo! the altar had taken shape, firmer than before—

Zip knew that this stranger, with the clay-colored horse, the woven reins, this strange, old-time warrior—had to be special—was perhaps numinous, because the hair still rose on his neck when he thought about it. He made his offerings, he hoped for another such manifestation—

But the stranger appeared elsewhere in the streets of Sanctuary, these days. Zip had seen him by plain daylight, the stranger had turned up riding in the lower town, by noontime; or around the Garrison by moon

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light; sometimes one saw him riding by the river-shore, in the night—as if he were searching for something lost in the marsh—

The stranger's name was Shepherd, so the rumor was in the streets, and once Zip had seen him stop at that house in the Shambles where the Stepsons lodged, and ride through that low gate that let him into a certain yard—

Where the Stepsons kept their horses in a ramshackle stable.

That association was what gnawed at Zip.

He poured blood from his own veins over these ancient stones, hoping for an Ilsigi god. Even an Ilsigi devil would do—something of Sanc tuary's own people and not the occupation forces.

And something, finally, finally glowed within the crevices of the stones

—glowed and winked out again.

"What do you want?" he cried, kneeling on the dirty cobbles, pound ing his fists on his knees. "What do you want me to do?"

There was silence, and in that silence he heard the slow, hollow ring of a horse's hooves out on the Street of Temples—in this hour just before the dawn. For some reason that leisurely advance seemed ominous to
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him, the most dangerous, the most fatal thing in the world, and he knew that rider would stop and that shadow would loom in the alley-opening, saying to him, in a deep voice.

"Boy, what are you praying to?"

"I don't know," he confessed, on his knees before that mounted shadow, and felt cold, cold as the dead in the White Foal.

"Boy, what are you praying for?"

"For—" But revenge was not it, not exactly; and it was dangerous, to say something too quickly or to say it wrong. Zip sensed that, he sensed he was in the greatest danger he had ever been in, that—

God, he slept with a Rankan woman, he had started out wanting revenge on Rankene pride, started out sleeping with her to screw some enemy woman and ended up sleeping with her because it was someone to sleep with, and somehow he got to looking for things from her, like—the way she wasn't at all like the rest other kind, she was good, she could be rough as a dockside whore and gentler than his dreams^ she became—an addiction with him, an unpredictability, he never knew what she was going to be, or why he felt the way he did—but it excited him, she did, and he had to have her—

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He was filth before his god. That was all he was, and the questions shot straight to his heart.

But a second time: "What are you praying for?" the stranger asked—it was Shepherd himself. There was a watt of chill swamp air about him.

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"I don't know," Zip confessed, and knotted his fingers in his hair, head bowed. "I just don't know anymore . . ."

"Never go to a god," Shepherd said, "with preconceptions."

"Pre—what?" He squinted up at the mounted shadow, saw the red gleam of the eyes of the panther-head on the horse's chest.

"I'll make it easy for you," Shepherd said. "Wrongs set right. Prob lems solved. Lives set in order. Is that what you want? Go to the market:

fortune-tellers charge a copper for promises like that. Much cheaper than

blood."

The stranger was making fun of him. Zip stood up with his hand on his
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knife, with all the old, foolish anger rising up in him. A man could take so much, but not laughter at his expense.

"Wrongs set right," the stranger said in a deep voice. "But what if you're one of those wrongs—what if that anger of yours and that hate of yours had no Rankans to turn to? Can you imagine your life then?"

He could not. He did not know where he would be or what his life would be for, if not Ranke; and Ranke was falling on its own, without any need of him . . .

"You sleep with Ranke," Shepherd said. "You need Ranke, boy, you need it to live, because when it's gone, there'll be nothing left of you. You've had your answer. Quit praying."

Zip's hand fell. He stood there in that cold that came of hearing the truth and knowing everything Shepherd said was true.

He was still standing there when the rider shouldered past him, slow clatter of hooves down the alley and into the dark of the shrines on either

hand.

The light was gone from his altar. The very air felt cold. And the stones of that altar suddenly tumbled apart, scattering across the cobbles
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of the alley.

Taz the thief stood on the corner of the river-road in the dawn, sullen and out of sorts and watching the house the way he had been watching when Ischade had come out of it and when she had come back and when other men had come to it—well-dressed men, mostly, and one woman and one limping beggar. Taz failed to understand, but curiosity gathered his courage toward the dawn, never having seen her return—he came up to the iron fence himself, and laid a hand on that gate in the hedge. He yelped in pain, recoiled with a shivering cold up that arm. But the gate, glowing blue as Shalpa's ghostfire, unlatched itself and swung inward on its own. Taz stood there somewhere between shock and a terrible compulsion to walk that path and, thieflike, prudently, some thing whispered to him, persuasive as temptation to sin, to reconnoiter

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the place—himself in the fine clothes she had given him; and with all these other finely dressed folk—did he not belong here? Why was he excluded?

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Come ahead, something said. come ahead, come ahead—

He took the first step, he took the second, not really wanting it, but he felt his hand brush the gate, felt it leave his hand—

He walked the path and ducked aside into the weeds and into the hedges, where a crack in the shutters gave forth a seam of light into the brush; he worked his way most carefully into this hedge against the house and rose up beneath the window, carefully, carefully to peer into the crack—

Into a room where the witch sat in the glare of countless candles—on the floor, on a bright array of discarded silks. Her face was white, her eyes were shut, her strange guests stood as shadows in the background of this cluttered room.

It was witchcraft he spied on, Taz was sure of it, it was most real and dangerous witchcraft, of a sort he had seen in the skies and in the streets of Sanctuary in recent years, when the dead had walked and lightnings and whirlwind had warred over the harbor. . . .

A thief knew when he was out of his league. Taz was easing backward in the brush when there was a sudden clap of wings, air against his neck, a raven's harsh cry—

And the shutters banged open in his face, inside and out at once,
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setting him face-to-face with a startled man: he swore, Taz yelped, and Taz was off through the bushes and for the only way out he knew, the front gate—

But it clanged shut and glowed blue and perilous in front of him, and he whirled around at the creak of the front door behind him.

He walked toward that door—not that he wanted to, but his body moved, and the distance between him and the porch steps grew less and less.

A man stood in that doorway, a one-eyed man who met him as he came up onto the porch, who set his hand on his shoulder and said, half sadly, "You should have run when you had the chance, boy."

But he went inside. He had to. He took his place with the others, a bearded, foreign man, a beggar with the remnants of handsomeness—a Rankene lady, the pale, one-eyed man who had snared him on the porch. . . .

She had never moved. She sat in the midst of this goings-on with her hands open on the knees of her black gown, her eyes shut, her lips moving in a constant murmur.

520 STEALERS' SKY

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"Randal—" Strat felt uneasy on the steps of the Stepson-mage's apart ment, uneasy in being in the mage-quarter in the first place, in an area where Rankan personnel were less than welcome, especially these days.

He felt uneasy in the second place because one had no knowledge what sort of wards an anxious mage might set; and Randal, with his enemies, had every right to be anxious.

And he felt that unease in the third place because he had had enough of dealing with wards and with witchery in all its manifestations, and he was disgusted to find his knees all but shaking as he stood on Randal's second-story landing, under a night sky and in a rising wind, and ham mering away with more noise than a body ought to have to use to raise a mage out of sleep.

"Randal, dammit, wake up!"

A dog barked. Strat looked over the rail and down, and saw a black cur in the shadow down there, next the bay horse—

Someone sneezed, and instantly where the dog had been was Randal, in a night-robe and bare feet, wiping his nose.

"Damned allergies," Randal said. "I thought—"

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"Thought what?" Strat came hastily down the steps, no little annoyed for the public scene.

"Thought—I smelled an associate of yours about you."

That was not what Strat wanted to hear. No. He grabbed Randal by the arm, hauled Randal into the privacy against the bay horse's side, and said, "I want you to come with me. I want you to talk to her. . . ."

Randal sneezed again, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "For what? What good can I do? The woman's doing nothing against the Guild, and alone—"

"Talk to her," Strat said, holding his arm so tight Randal flinched and physically began to pry loose his fingers. He realized that and let go, took a grip on Randal's shoulder and kept that lighter, with a mortal effort. "I can't sleep, I don't rest—"

"I don't think it's sorcery," Randal said.

"What do you mean, 'don't think it's sorcery'!" Another effort to keep his voice down and the grip gentle. "Man, I'm forgetting things, I don't know where I am half the time, I think about her like I was some damn fool kid with his first lay—"

"It's not witchery."

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"Damn if it isn't!"

"Has it dawned on you. Ace, that all of that equally well describes a man—in love?"

Strat stood there with his hand on Randal's shoulder and stared at him

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before he gave him a shove against the horse. "I came to you for help, Stepson!"

"That's what I'm telling you. I know spells. I know bewitchment. You've had it, but you haven't got it—that horse has, but you haven't." Another sneeze. "She cut you loose. The ties that've been on you—aren't. But you keep thinking about her. You can't sleep. You can't eat. You wake at night thinking about her, wondering who she's with—"

"Damn you!"

"So what else is it—but love?"

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"You're useless!" Strat said, and picked up the bay horse's reins. "I'm going to have it out with her!"

"Don't!" Randal said, catching at the reins as Strat threw himself into the saddle. "Strat!"

But Strat pulled up on him, reined aside, and the bay took out at a run

—with a black dog loping along: Strat saw it when they turned the corner and the dog got into the lead, running right under his horse's feet.

The bay horse shied up then, screamed and shied as the dog jumped at its throat, and Strat felt—

—nothing under him. Simply nothing stopping him from flying through the air and landing dazed on the cobbles.

He scrabbled for his knees, bad shoulder stunned, knee and hip para lyzed—he fell on his face again, somewhere between pain and numbness, and stopped caring whether he lived or died—because the horse was gone, and all there was in the world was Randal sitting on the filthy cobbles beside him, saying to someone—"I sent it away. I don't know if I should have done that—"