The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (30 page)

Dossouye bent to Gimmile’s side. The
bela
sprawled face-down,
unmoving. Gently Dossouye turned him onto his back and cradled
his braided head in her lap. Though his life leaked in a scarlet stream
from his wound, Gimmile’s face betrayed no pain. His hands clutched
his
kalimba
, but the instrument was broken. It would never play again.

“I never lied to you, Dossouye,” Gimmile said, his voice still like
music. “But I did not tell you everything. The king of Dedougou has
been dead three hundred rains. So have I. After I sang my vengeance
against Konondo and Bankassi, after I sang this tower to escape
those who wanted to use me, the truth of Legba’s curse became
clear. I would forever be a
moso
, a unifying thing of metal. Only great
emotions—love, hate, joy, sorrow—can restore me to life. But such
life never lasts long.

“It was your rage at the
daju
who stole me that brought me to life
by the river. I saw you...wanted you, even as the
daju
did. The
Baraka
of Legba gave you to me. I wish...I had not needed the
Baraka
to gain
your love. Now...the
kalimba
is broken; the
Baraka
is gone from me. I
can feel it flowing out with my blood. This time, I will not come back
to life.”

Dossouye bowed her head and shut her eyes. She did not want to
hear more or see more; she wished never to hear or see again.

“Dossouye.”

The
bela
’s voice bore no sorcerous compulsion now. Still, Dossouye
opened her eyes and looked into those of Gimmile. Neither deceit
nor fear of death lay in those earth-brown depths. Only resignation—
and peace.

“I know your thoughts, Dossouye. You bear the seed of a—ghost.
There will be no child inside you. Now, please turn from me, Dossouye.
I do not want you to see me die.”

He closed his eyes. Dossouye touched his cheeks, his lips. Then
she rose and turned away. His blood smeared her bare thighs.

Memories diverted by the fight with the
daju
returned in a rush
of pain. Even as she gazed sorrowfully at the dust-laden remnants
of the accouterments of Gimmile’s chamber, Dossouye remembered
his warmth, his kindness, the love they had shared too briefly. The
memories scalded her eyes.

Dossouye and Gbo stood quietly by the bank of the Kambi. The sun
had set and risen once since they last saw the heat-mist rise from
the river. Dossouye stroked Gbo’s side, thankful that Gimmile had
penned him the day before. Formidable though the war-bull was,
there was still a chance the
daju
might have brought him down with
a lucky thrust of sword or spear. In her swordhand, Dossouye held a
brass figurine of a
bela
with a broken
kalimba
. Tarnish trickled like
blood down the metal side of the
moso
.

“You never needed Legba, Gimmile,” Dossouye murmured sadly.
“You could have sung your vengeance in other cities, and all the
kings of Mossi would have laughed at Konondo’s pettiness, and the
laughter would have reached Dedougou. The sting of your songs
would have long outlived the sting of his lash.”

She closed her fist around the
moso
.

“You did not need Legba for me, either, Gimmile.”

Drawing back her arm, Dossouye hurled the
moso
into the Kambi.
It sank with a splash as infinitesimal as the ranting of woman and
man against the gods.

Mounting Gbo, Dossouye urged him into the water. Now she would
complete the crossing that had been interrupted the day before. Her
road still led to nowhere. But Gimmile sang in her soul....

KARL EDWARD WAGNER

Prologue

“
S
he
was
brought
in
not long past dark,” wheezed the custodian,
scuttling crablike along the rows of silent, shrouded slabs. “The city
guard found her, carried her in. Sounds like the one you’re asking
about.”

He paused beside one of the waist-high stone tables and lifted
its filthy sheet. A girl’s contorted face turned sightlessly upward—
painted and rouged, a ghastly strumpet’s mask against the pallor of
her skin. Clots of congealed blood hung like a necklace of dark rubies
along the gash across her throat.

The cloaked man shook his head curtly within the shadow of his
hood, and the moon-faced custodian let the sheet drop back.

“Not the one I was thinking of,” he murmured apologetically.
“It gets confusing sometimes, you know, what with so many, and
them coming and going all the while.” Sniffling in the cool air, he
pushed his rotund bulk between the narrow aisles, careful to avoid
the stained and filthy shrouds. Looming over his guide, the cloaked
figure followed in silence.

Low-flamed lamps cast dismal light across the necrotorium of
Carsultyal. Smoldering braziers spewed fitful, heavy fumed clouds of
clinging incense that merged with the darkness and the stones and
the decay—its cloying sweetness more nauseating than the stench of
death it embraced. Through the thick gloom echoed the monotonous
drip-drip-drip of melting ice, at times chorused suggestively by some
heavier splash. The municipal morgue was crowded tonight—as
always. Only a few of its hundred or more slate beds stood dark and
bare; the others all displayed anonymous shapes bulging beneath
blotched sheets—some protruding at curious angles, as if these restless
dead struggled to burst free of the coarse folds. Night now hung over
Carsultyal, but within this windowless subterranean chamber it was
always night. In shadow pierced only by the sickly flame of funereal
lamps, the nameless dead of Carsultyal lay unmourned—waited the
required interval of time for someone to claim them, else to be carted
off to some unmarked communal grave beyond the city walls.

“Here, I believe,” announced the custodian. “Yes. I’ll just get a
lamp.”

“Show me,” demanded a voice from within the hood. The portly
official glanced at the other uneasily. There was an aura of power, of
blighted majesty about the cloaked figure that boded ill in arrogant
Carsultyal, whose clustered, star-reaching towers were whispered to
be overawed by cellars whose depths plunged farther still. “Light’s
poor back here,” he protested, drawing back the tattered shroud.

The visitor cursed low in his throat—an inhuman sound touched
less by grief than feral rage.

The face that stared at them with too wide eyes had been beautiful
in life; in death it was purpled, bloated, contorted in pain. Dark blood
stained the tip of her protruding tongue, and her neck seemed bent
at an unnatural angle. A gown of light-colored silk was stained and
disordered. She lay supine, hands clenched into tight fists at her side.

“The city guard found her?” repeated the visitor in a harsh voice.

“Yes, just after nightfall. In the park overlooking the harbor. She
was hanging from a branch—there in the grove with all the white
flowers every spring. Must have just happened—said her body was
warm as life, though there’s a chill to the sea breeze tonight. Looks
like she done it herself—climbed out on the branch, tied the noose,
and jumped off. Wonder why they do it—her as pretty a young thing
as I’ve seen brought in, and took well care of, too.”

The stranger stood in rigid silence, staring at the strangled girl.

“Will you come back in the morning to claim her, or do you want
to wait upstairs?” suggested the custodian.

“I’ll take her now.”

The plump attendant fingered the gold coin his visitor had tossed
him a short time before. His lips tightened in calculation. Often there
appeared at the necrotorium those who wished to remove bodies
clandestinely for strange and secret reasons—a circumstance which
made lucrative this disagreeable office. “Can’t allow that,” he argued.
“There’s laws and forms—you shouldn’t even be here at this hour.
They’ll be wanting their questions answered. And there’s fees....”

With a snarl of inexpressible fury, the stranger turned on him. The
sudden movement flung back his hood. The caretaker for the first
time saw his visitor’s eyes. He had breath for a short bleat of terror,
before the dirk he did not see smashed through his heart.

Workers the next day, puzzling over the custodian’s disappearance,
were shocked to discover, on examining the night’s new tenants for
the necrotorium, that he had not disappeared after all.

I. Seekers in the Night

There—he heard the sound again.

Mavrsal left off his disgruntled contemplation of the near-empty
wine bottle and stealthily came to his feet. The captain of the
Tuab
was alone in his cabin, and the hour was late. For hours the only
sounds close at hand had been the slap of waves on the barnacled
hull, the creak of cordage, and the dull thud of the caravel’s aged
timbers against the quay. Then had come a soft footfall, a muffled
fumbling among the deck gear outside his half-open door. Too loud
for rats—a thief, then?

Grimly Mavrsal unsheathed his heavy cutlass and caught up
a lantern. He cat-footed onto the deck, reflecting bitterly over his
worthless crew. From cook to first mate, they had deserted his ship a
few days before, angered over wages months unpaid. An unseasonable
squall had forced them to jettison most of their cargo of copper
ingots, and the
Tuab
had limped into the harbor of Carsultyal with
shredded sails, a cracked mainmast, a dozen new leaks from wrenched
timbers, and the rest of her worn fittings in no better shape. Instead
of the expected wealth, the decimated cargo had brought in barely
enough capital to cover the expense of refitting. Mavrsal argued that
until refitted, the
Tuab
was unseaworthy, and that once repairs were
complete, another cargo could be found (somehow), and
then
wages
long in arrears could be paid—with a bonus for patient loyalty. The
crew cared neither for his logic nor his promises and defected amidst
stormy threats.

Had one of them returned to carry out...?
Mavrsal hunched his
thick shoulders truculently and hefted the cutlass. The master of the
Tuab
had never run from a brawl, much less a sneak thief or slinking
assassin.

Night skies of autumn were bright over Carsultyal, making the
lantern almost unneeded. Mavrsal surveyed the soft shadows of the
caravel’s deck, his brown eyes narrowed and alert beneath shaggy
brows. But he heard the low sobbing almost at once, so there was no
need to prowl about the deck.

He strode quickly to the mound of torn sail and rigging at the far
rail. “All right, come out of that!” he rumbled, beckoning with the
tip of his blade to the half-seen figure crouched against the rail. The
sobbing choked into silence. Mavrsal prodded the canvas with an
impatient boot. “Out of there, damn it!” he repeated.

The canvas gave a wriggle and a pair of sandaled feet backed
out, followed by bare legs and rounded hips that strained against the
bunched fabric of her gown. Mavrsal pursed his lips thoughtfully as
the girl emerged and stood before him. There were no tears in the
eyes that met his gaze. The aristocratic face was defiant, although the
flared nostrils and tightly pressed lips hinted that her defiance was a
mask. Nervous fingers smoothed the silken gown and adjusted her
cloak of dark brown wool.

“Inside.” Mavrsal gestured with his cutlass to the lighted cabin.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” she protested.

“Looking for something to steal.”

“I’m not a thief.”

“We’ll talk inside.” He nudged her forward, and sullenly she
complied.

Following her through the door, Mavrsal locked it behind him
and replaced the lantern. Returning the cutlass to its scabbard, he
dropped back into his chair and contemplated his discovery.

“I’m no thief,” she repeated, fidgeting with the fastenings of her
cloak.

No, he decided, she probably wasn’t—not that there was much
aboard a decrepit caravel like the
Tuab
to attract a thief. But why
had she crept aboard? She was a harlot, he assumed—what other
business drew a girl of her beauty alone into the night of Carsultyal’s
waterfront? And she
was
beautiful, he noted with growing surprise.
A tangle of loosely bound red hair fell over her shoulders and framed
a face whose pale-skinned classic beauty was enhanced rather than
flawed by a dust of freckles across her thin-bridged nose. Eyes of
startling green gazed at him with a defiance that seemed somehow
haunted. She was tall, willowy. Before she settled the dark cloak
about her shoulders, he had noted the high, conical breasts and
softly rounded figure beneath the clinging gown of green silk. An
emerald of good quality graced her hand, and about her neck she
wore a wide collar of dark leather and red silk from which glinted a
larger emerald.

No, thought Mavrsal—again revising his judgment—she was too
lovely, her garments too costly, for the quality of street tart who plied
these waters. His bewilderment deepened. “Why were you on board,
then?” he demanded in a manner less abrupt.

Her eyes darted about the cabin. “I don’t know,” she returned.

Mavrsal grunted in vexation. “Were you trying to stow away?”

She responded with a small shrug. “I suppose so.” The sea captain
gave a snort and drew his stocky frame erect. “Then you’re a damn
fool—or must think I’m one! Stow away on a battered old warrior
like the
Tuab
, when there’s plainly no cargo to put to sea, and any
eye can see the damn ship’s being refitted! Why, that ring you’re
wearing would book passage to any port you’d care to see, and on
a first-class vessel! And to wander these streets at this hour! Well,
maybe that’s your business, and maybe you aren’t careful of your
trade, but there’s scum along these waterfront dives that would slit
a wench’s throat as soon as pay her! Vaul! I’ve been in port three
days and four nights, and already I’ve heard talk of enough depraved
murders of pretty girls like you to—”

“Will you stop it!” she hissed in a tight voice. Slumping into the
cabin’s one other chair, she propped her elbows onto the rough table
and jammed her fists against her forehead. Russet tresses tumbled
over her face like a veil, so that Mavrsal could not read the emotions
etched there. In the hollow of the cloak’s parted folds, her breasts
trembled with the quick pounding of her heart.

Sighing, he drained the last of the wine into his mug and pushed
the pewter vessel toward the girl. There was another bottle in his
cupboard; rising, he drew it out along with another cup. She was
carefully sipping from the proffered mug when he resumed his place.

“Look, what’s your name?” he asked her.

She paused so tensely before replying, “Dessylyn.”

The name meant nothing to Mavrsal, although as the tension
waxed and receded from her bearing, he understood that she had
been concerned that her name would bring recognition.

Mavrsal smoothed his close-trimmed brown beard. There was a
rough-and-ready toughness about his face that belied the fact that
he had not quite reached thirty years, and women liked to tell him
his rugged features were handsome. His left ear—badly scarred in a
tavern brawl—gave him some concern, but it lay hidden beneath the
unruly mass of his hair. “Well, Dessylyn,” he grinned. “My name’s
Mavrsal, and this is my ship. And if you’re worried about finding a
place, you can spend the night here.”