Turning Points (9 page)

A third sense was kept busy, but not to the point of being whelmed. That was vision. Many colors and hues marked the clothing and tents and stalls of both sellers and buyers, though the color of their hair differed only a little.

Ah, but that second, nigh overwhelmed sense! The sprawling collection of stalls, tents, and wagons, drab and colorful, was
noisy
.

Even in the open air hundreds of people, nearly all talking at the same time, did not create merely the “buzz” so often used by storytellers. It was bedlam. In fact, the noisiness of Sanctuary’s market defined bedlam.

Yet two people were quite able to carry on a conversation, provided that they paused now and again, reluctantly or in anger, while wending their way through the mass of people, scents, and colors of both produce and of garments. The two older men, for instance, on this cool but sunny day. The one was portly under his veritable mane of hair the color of whitewash, his shorter companion his senior though his hair was blacker than black, and who walked with a cane.

Abroad in daytime, the man called Chance did not envelop himself in the concealing black garb of the man he had been, the infamous shadow-spawned thief and cat burglar. The lightweight cloak he wore over an off-white tunic and medium blue leggings was a sun-sucking dark red, for a man’s blood was thinner at the age of seven and sixty, if not his arteries. This day they wended their way among stalls, booths, tents, and shoppers, while Strick relayed to Chance a few additional facts and beliefs about the youth called Lone gained through the Spellmaster’s quiet and judicial questioning of a few selected persons. It was Strick’s belief that he was discreet… and then their attention was demanded by a woman excitedly talking, with gesticulations, with a vendor who was apparently her friend.

The semi-attractive woman with the hair dyed red under the flut-tery green scarf was not well off, but she was erect and carried herself well and with pride. Too, she did know how to dress, and it was pretty clear to anyone who saw her that she spent what money she could on decorating her well-kept body. She was talking wildly, shrilly, and with a lot of gesticulating at the shortish, thin and thin-haired seller of inexpensive body decorations.

“But I live on the third floor!” she squealed. “That must be— what? Sixty feet up?”

The man in the booth under the orange and violet awning shrugged and made a gesture to indicate his uncertainty but desire to be agreeable. “Uh-huh, about that, uh-huh, I reckon…”

She was babbling on as if he had not spoken, making it obvious that he need not have done. “So somebody
climbed up the wall
all the way up there, Cleggis, and then he broke into my place through my window while I was right there sleeping”—with a sudden shiver, she clutched each of her upper arms with the opposite hand—”and he knew where to find my earrings, or he’s so experienced at thievery that he guessed, and he took them out of my shoe
about one foot below my head, Cleggis
!”

Cleggis shook his head. “Wackle! What a sneak! That sumbitch is
good
!”

“Yes! And then… and then… he left one of them in the other shoe, just to—to… to taunt me, I guess.”

Cleggis shook his head. “Wackle!”

Strick had moved to place his mouth near Chance’s ear. “Reckon we’re hearing about our boy Lone?” he asked,
sotto voce
.

“Sounds that way. And it sounds like he’s even better than we thought we knew.”

“Not in need of a lot of training,” Strick said, wickedly teasing.

“Just climb off it, Strick,” his friend said, changing course in the smallish throng to head for the savory aroma of cooking meat. “No one is ever, ever going to be as good as I was.”

He was happy to order a fat, juice-dripping sausage. With the seven-inch cylinder of meat in hand, he made a flamboyant gesture that silently invited Strick to join him in having one. The Spellmas-ter, however, preferred to cross the aisle between rows of vendors and purchase a smallish wedge of cheese. Chance knew the reason. Strick’s vast girth was part of the Price extracted from him in exchange for his ability, but still he had to be careful of his diet, lest he add to that girth and run his weight right on up past three hundred pounds.

“To continue about you know who,” he said, as they ambled on, munching, “sometimes called the cat-walker. He is naturally right-handed, but to emulate his idol, that Shadowspawn fellow, he has put in a lot of time training himself to use his left arm and hand. So long, in fact, that he is about equally as good with either arm-hand by now.”

“Brilliant fellow,” Chance said, as drily as a man could when his mouth was full of greasy sausage. He smiled and nodded at the end of the shelf of the next vendor’s booth along the way.

Comfily curled and snoozing there was a smallish cat about the color of charcoal except for the small white area on his left ear and another back of his left rear “ankle.”

And somewhere, someone triumphantly pronounced his word of power.

“Iffets!”

Even as Strick turned his gaze in the direction indicated by Chance, every hair on the slumbering animal whipped erect and its eyes flared huge. With a hideous yowl of alarming volume, the cat did not just leap to its feet, but straight up to an elevation that was beyond impressive and in fact appeared beyond possible. Landing as only a cat could, it spun around three times at almost incredible speed, pounced onto the canvas side of the adjacent stall, and ascended as if someone had set its tail afire. It set a record for speed of climbing, surely, for a cat without a flaming tail and not being chased either. Reaching the top of that dingy tent, it ruined the “roof” by spinning completely around—three times at speed, as before, just as if it could count.

By now the performance of the suddenly demented feline had attracted a good number of witnesses, all gawking and ejaculating in excited voices. By the end of its third rotation atop that vendor’s tent, the object of their attention looked bigger by twice. Surely an illusion…

It was at about that moment that several people screamed, including Strick, and hurled from them newly bought cheese suddenly become too hot to handle.

Without pausing or even slowing, meanwhile, the dark gray kitty pounced from the top of the dingy tent onto the top of the neighboring one where it had lately slept so peacefully, presumably its home. But! Its destination changed en route. Flattening in air with all four feet extended, as well as neck and tail, the presumably en-sorceled animal took on kinship with a flying squirrel.

“Sorcery!” a high-voiced man squealed.

“Oh Ils father of us all,” Chance muttered, “how I hate sorcery!”

The sorcerer standing beside him said nothing, but only stared, as so many were doing.

A charcoal gray streak and still growing, the cat soared completely over the booth of its befuddled mistress, a permanent site constructed of wood. It struck the flat roof of the next stall in line, one of gold-hued canvas with a russet awning. The impact was heavy.

At the instant of that impact the flying feline smashed through the flat canvas roof, at the same time messily
exploding
into revolting components, without sound other than stomach-turning juicy noises. From within came the sound of yells and screams, one of either sex.

Some vendors and every visitor to the market stood as if frozen, staring at what had been. Abruptly one person detached itself from the crowd. The long skirt of the loosely girt blue tunic worn by the more than portly man with white hair flapped as he strode to the aerially invaded stall. From it emerged no cat or person, but only increasingly muffled screams. Both Strick’s ringed hands slapped down onto the wooden counter and, on tiptoes, he bent forward to peer inside.

“Oh,
fart
!” he barked, which was as profane as the Spellmaster got. He turned. “Chance! I need your help.”

His friend’s unhurried compliance with the urgent request clearly lacked enthusiasm. He learned Strick’s desire and waylaid a burly Woman to help him. Together, they assisted the beyond burly man with the stocky legs onto the counter, and over it. A few moments later they were joined by a wide-eyed fellow who came hurrying around the left side of the stall, and the equally goggle-eyed woman who closely followed. Dark, dark they were, desert people whose place of business had been invaded by the ghastly components of the product of sorcery. In desperation and charged with adrenaline, they had hoisted the canvas in back and crawled out.

Together, the four of them watched Strick ritualistically bestow a touch on each of the several wet pieces of fresh meat lying here and there on the earthen floor, most bearing at least a trace of hair the color of charcoal. Without wiping those begored and lymph-shining hands, he unfolded a caravaneer’s wooden stool and seated himself slowly and with care.

“Here,” the owner said, slapping the counter with one of her thin, veined hands and pointing with the other. “Break that stool under your vast butt and pay for it, fat man!”

“Hush,” the coal-haired cripple beside her snapped. “He is a mage at work—a good and honorable mage and the best man you’re likely to meet,
skinny woman
, but I’d not be testing my luck if I was you… and beside, if that crappy little stool breaks he will
offer
payment!”

The woman, her presumed husband who had preceded her in fleeing their marketplace tent, and a few others so daring as to have joined them, all directed their stares at the man who had spoken so harshly. But no one responded vocally. Even old and leaning on a cane as he was, there was something about the fellow…

Strick, meanwhile, had uttered not a word, but only besat the stool with legs wide apart in the way that comforted men with great bellies. He seemed to be fondling or perhaps kneading a chunk of fresh cat—the only large piece, which was about the size the animal had been before it commenced its unnatural growth.

“Not a word,” Chance murmured to his fellow watchers, and put on his meanest menacing look.

No one spoke a word.

Abruptly the seated Spellmaster snapped up his head and startled those watching with an aspirated “Ah!” that sounded pleased. He followed that with several nods of his snowy head. Then he glanced round, and his audience heard his grunt without being able to translate it.

Chance knew the man, and recognized the sound of effort. Strick’s divining was at an end; he had just made an effort to hoist his bulk off the low stool, and failed. He who had been Shadowspawn leaned against the counter.

“Strick.”

The white head turned and the white mage looked over at his audience.

“For you,” Chance said, and with care, tossed his cane over the colorful array of mingled peppers and onto the ground that floored the cluttered little room. It fell with little sound and rolled only about three-quarters of a revolution before it fetched up against Strick’s left foot. He grunted anew in bending to pick it up, and with its aid and another gasping grunt he came to his feet. The stool had survived. It did creak as if with gratitude at his departure.

More effortful grunts accompanied the Spellmaster’s departing the booth in the same way the vendors had. He came round the tent a few seconds later and handed Chance his cane. By that time the two desert people had used their counter to reoccupy their tent. With clear distaste, they were collecting gobbets of deceased cat and dropping them into a large urn.

“Hope they aren’t meaning to clean that meat and try to sell it,” the burly woman who had helped Chance boost Strick into the tent said, and he flashed her a smile. He was revolted by the sorcerous occurrence, and a little angry. Years and years ago, a cat had been the best friend he could claim.

Strick addressed the vendors across their counter. “I will pay ask-ing price for a basket of peppers, assorted but without the hottest ones.” He pointed to a medium-sized basket.

At that marvelous and in fact unparalleled offer the vendors bustled to fill the basket with colors and shapes; the peppers they judged best of the lot, all without a word about the doubtless weakened stool.

“What… happened?” the woman asked, as without attempting to negotiate he paid her the price she named.

“It was a cat,” Chance provided, and received no thanks for being so kind as to provide the information.

“A cat of normal size,” Strick added, “until an incompetent someone somewhere not too far away cast a spell that he botched. An apprentice mage whose talent I suspect is worse than limited. I know whose he is, but it’s best that I don’t tell you. It was an accident.”

The overly earringed vendor in the adjoining booth, whose cat the deceased had been, had been told what had befallen her pet, since the action had taken place out of her view. Now Strick was so kind as to purchase some of her vegetables, which were hardly among the best available in the market, even at this out-of-season time.

“You are the one called Spellmaster,” she said.

Strick was hardy unaccustomed to that same non-question. “I am.”

“Can you bring back my dear Sleeks?”

He shook his head.

“Huh!” a nearby shopper snorted. “Can’t bring back a little old dead cat! Some kind of ‘spellmaster’ you are!”

Strick smiled. Never, never could his friend, who had been a model of truculence all his life, understand why Strick was so accepting, so understanding, so extremely slow to take offense. “Restoring a dead cat to life,” the white mage said quietly and without turning, “would not be an act for good, and I can perform only that kind of magic. And besides, cats make a point of breeding quite well enough that we need not help increase their number by granting immortality to some. I hope you soon adopt one, or more likely, that one adopts you,” he told the vendor.

“Sleeks was one of a kind,” she said wistfully, “but you are a great man, Spellmaster. You did a great service for my sister-in-law when you dispelled the wart off her nose.”

His smile was small, a slight change in the shape of his mouth. “Apparently whatever inconvenience or thorn in the flesh she had to accept in return for her improved appearance is bearable,” he said.