Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn

VASHANKA'S MINION by Jante Morris

1

The storm swept down on Sanctuary in unnatural fury, as if to punish the thieves for their misdeeds. Its hailstones were large as fists. They pummelled Wideway and broke windows on the Street of Red Lanterns and collapsed the temple of Ils, most powerful of the conquered Ilsigs' gods.

The lightning it brought snapped up from the hills and down from the devilish skies and wherever it spat the world shuddered and rolled. It licked round the dome of Prince Kadakithis's palace and when it was gone, the Storm God Vashanka's name was seared into the stone in huge hieratic letters visible from the harbour. It slithered in the window of Jubal's walled estate and circled round the slavetrader's chair while he sat in it, turning his black face blue with terror.

It danced on a high hill between the slaver's estate and the cowering town, where a mercenary named Tempus schooled his new Syrese horse in the art of death. He had bought the tarnished silver beast sight unseen, sending to a man whose father's life he had once saved.

'Easy,' he advised the horse, who slipped in a sharp turn, throwing mud up into his rider's face. Tempus cursed the mud and the rain and the hours he would need to spend on his tack when the lesson was done. As for the screaming, stumbling hawk-masked man who fled iron-shod hooves in ever-shortening circles, he had no gods to invoke - he just howled.

The horse wheeled and hopped; its rider clung tightly, reins flapping loose, using only his knees to guide his mount. If the slaver who kept a private army must flaunt the fact, then the mercenary-cum-Guardsman would reduce its ranks. He would teach Jubal the overweening flesh merchant that he who is too arrogant, is lost. He saw it as part of his duty to the Ranke Prince-Governor he was sworn to protect. Tempus had taken down a dozen hawk-masks. This one, stumbling, gibbering, would make thirteen.

'Kill,' suggested the mercenary, tiring of his sport in the face of the storm.

The flattened ears of the misty horse flickered, came forwards. It lunged, neck out. Teeth and hooves thunked into flesh. Screaming. Then screaming stopped.

Tempus let the horse pummel the corpse awhile, stroking the beast's neck and cooing soft praise. When bones showed in a lightning flash, he backed the horse off and set it at a walk towards the walled city.

It was then that the lightning- came circling round man and mount.

'Stand, stand.' The horse, though he shook like a newborn foal, stood. The searing red light violated Tempus's tight-shut lids and made his eyes tear. An awful voice rang inside his head, deep and thunderous: ' You are mine.'

'I have never doubted it,' grated the mercenary.

'You have doubted it repeatedly,' growled the voice querulously, if thunder can be said to carp. ' You have been unruly, faithless, though you pledged Me your troth. You have been, since you renounced your inheritance, a mage, a philosopher, an auditing Adept of the Order of the Blue Star, a-'

'Look here. God. I have also been a cuckold, a footsoldier in the ranks, a general at the end of that. I have bedded more iron in flesh than any ten other men who have lived as long as I. Now You ring me round with thunder and compass me with lightning though I am here to expand Your worship among these infidels. I am building Your accursed temple as fast as I can. I am no priest, to be terrified by loud words and bright manifestations. Get Thee hence, and leave this slum unenlightened. They do not deserve me, and they do not deserve You!'

A gust sighed fiercely, flapping Tempus's woollens against his mail beneath.

'I have sent you hither to build Me a temple among the heathens, 0 sleepless one! A temple you will build!'

'A temple I will build. Yes, sir, Vashanka, lord of the Edge and the Point. If You leave me alone to do it.' Damn pushy tutelary god. 'You blind my horse, 0 God, and I will put him under Your threshold instead of the enemies slain in battle Your ritual demands. Then we will see who comes to worship there.'

'Do not trifle with Me, Man.'

'Then let me be. I am doing the best I can. There is no room for foreign gods in the hearts of these Sanctuarites. The Ilsig gods they were born under have seen to that. Do something amazing: strike the fear of You into them.'

'I cannot even make you cower, 0 impudent human!'

'Even Your visitations get old, after three hundred and fifty years. Go scare the locals. This horse will founder, standing hot in the rain.'

The thunder changed its tune, becoming canny. 'Go you to the harbour. My son, and look upon what My Majesty hath wrought! And into the Maze, where I am making My power known!'

With that, the corral of lightning vanished, the thunder ceased, and the clouds blew away on a west wind, so that the full moon shone upon the land.

'Too much krrf,' the mercenary who had sold himself for a Hell Hound sighed. 'Hell Hound' was what the citizenry called the Prince's Guard; as far as Tempus was concerned. Sanctuary was Hell. The only thing that made it bearable was krrf, his drug of choice. Rubbing a clammy palm across his mouth, he dug in his human-hide belt until searching fingers found a little silver box he always carried. Flipping it open, he took a pinch of black Caronne krrf and, clenching his fist, piled the dust into the hollow between his first thumb joint and the fleshy muscle leading to his knuckle. He sniffed deeply, sighed, and repeated the process, inundating his other nostril.

'Too much damn krrf,' he chuckled, for the krrf had never been stepped on - he did not buy adulterated drugs - and all six and a half feet of him tingled from its kiss. One of these days he would have to stop using it - the same day he laid down his sword.

He felt for its hilt, patted it. He had taken to calling it his 'Wriggly-be good', since he had come to this godforsaken warren of magicians and changelings and thieves. Then, the initial euphoria of the drug past, he kneed his horse homewards.

It was the krrf, not the instructions of the lightning or any fear of Vashanka, that made him go by way of the harbour. He was walking out his horse before taking it to the stable the Hell Hounds shared with the barracks personnel. What had ever possessed him to come down-country among the Ilsigs? It was not for his fee, which was exorbitant, that he had come, for the sake of those interests in the Rankan capital who underwrote him - those who hated the Emperor so much that they were willing to back such a loser as Kadakithis, if they could do it without becoming the brunt of too many jokes. It was not for the temple, though he was pleased to build it. It was some old, residual empathy in Tempus for a prince so inept as to be known far and wide as 'Kitty' which had made him come. Tempus had walked away from his primogeniture in Azehur, a long time ago, leaving the throne to his brother, who was not compromised by palace politics. He had deposited a treatise on the nature of being in the temple of a favoured goddess, and he had left. Had he ever, really, been that young? Young as Prince Kadakithis, whom even the Wrigglies disparaged?

Tempus had been around in the days when (he Ilsigs had been the Enemy: the Wrigglies. He had been on every battlefield in the Rankan/Ilsig conflict. He had spitted more Ilsigs than most men, watched them writhe soundlessly until they died. Some said he had coined their derogatory nickname, but he had not, though he had doubtless helped spread it...

He rode down Wideway, and he rode past the docks. A ship was being made fast, and a crowd had gathered round it. He squeezed the horse's barrel, urging it into the press. With only four of his fellow Hell Hounds in Sanctuary, and a local garrison whose personnel never ventured out in groups of less than six, it was incumbent upon him to take a look.

He did not like what he saw of the man who was being helped from the storm wracked ship that had come miraculously to port with no sail intact, who murmured through pale cruel lips to the surrounding Ilsigs, then climbed into a Rankan litter bound for the palace.

He spurred the horse. 'Who?' he demanded of the eunuch-master whose path he suddenly barred.

'Aspect, the archmage,' lisped the palace lackey, 'if it's any business of yours.'

Behind the lackey and the quartet of ebony slaves the shoulder-borne litter trembled. The viewcurtain with Kitty's device on it was drawn back, fell loose again.

'Out of my way. Hound,' squeaked the enraged little pastry of a eunuch-master.

'Don't get flapped, Eunice,' said Tempus, wishing he were in Caronne, wishing he had never met a god, wishing he were anywhere else. Oh, Kitty, you have done it this time. Alain Aspect, yet! Alchemist extraordinaire, assassin among magicians, dispeller of enchantments, in a town that ran on contract sorcery?

'Back, back, back,' he counselled the horse, who twitched its ears and turned its head around reproachfully, but obeyed him.

He heard titters among the eunuchs, another behind in the crowd. He swung round in his saddle. 'Hakiem, if I hear any stories about me I do not like, I will know whose tongue to hang on my belt.'

The bent, news-nosed storyteller, standing amid the children who always clustered round him, stopped laughing. His rheumy eyes met Tempus's. 'I have a story I would like to tell you. Hell Hound. One you would like to hear, I humbly imagine.'

'What is it, then, old man?'

'Come closer. Hell Hound, and say what you will pay.'

'How can I tell you how much it's worth until I hear?' The horse snorted, raised his head, sniffed a rank, evil breeze come suddenly from the stinking Downwind beach.

'We must haggle.'

'Somebody else, then, old man. I have a long night ahead.' He patted the horse, watching the crowd ofllsigs surging round, their heads level with his hips.

'That is the first time I have seen him backed off!': a stage-whisper reached Tempus through the buzz of the crowd. He looked for the source of it, could not find one culprit more likely than the rest. There would be a lot more of that sort of talk, when word spread. But he did not interfere with sorcerers. Never again. He had done it once, thinking his tutelary god could protect him. His hand went to his hip, squeezed. Beneath his dun woollens and beneath his ring mail he wore a woman's scarf. He never took it off. It was faded and it was ragged and it reminded him never to argue with a warlock. It was all he had left of her, who had been the subject of his dispute with a mage.

Long ago in Azehur...

He sighed, a rattling sound, in a voice hoarse and gravelly from endless battlefield commands. 'Have it your way tonight, then, Wriggly. And hope you live 'til morning.' He named a price. The storyteller named another. The difference was split.

The old man came close and put his hand on the horse's neck. 'The lightning came and the thunder rolled and when it was gone the temple of Ils was no more. The Prince has bought the aid of a mighty enchanter, whom even the bravest of the Hell Hounds fears. A woman was washed up naked and half drowned on the Downwinders' beach and in her hair were pins of diamond.'

'Pins?'

'Rods, then.'

'Wonderful. What else?'

'The redhead from Amoli's Lily Garden died at moonrise.'

He knew very well what whore the old man meant. He did not like the story, so far. He growled. 'You had better astound me, quick, for the price you're asking.'

'Between the Vulgar Unicorn and the tenement on the corner an entire building appeared on that vacant lot, where once the Black Spire stood - you know the one.'

'I know it.'

'Astounding?'

'Interesting. What else?'

'It is rather fancy, with a gilded dome. It has two doors, and above them two signs that read, "Men", and "Women".'

Vashanka had kept his word, then.

'Inside it, so the patrons of the Unicorn say, they sell weapons. Very special weapons. And the price is dear.'

'What has this to do with me?'

' Some folk who have gone in there have not come out. And some have come out and turned one upon the other, duelling to the death. Some have merely slain whomsoever crossed their paths. Yet, word is spreading, and Ilsig and Rankan queue up like brothers before its doors. Since some of those who were standing in line were hawk-masks, I thought it good that you should know.'

'I am touched, old man. I had no idea you cared.' He threw the copper coins to the storyteller's feet and reined the horse sideways so abruptly it reared. When its feet touched the ground, he set it at a collected canter through the crowd, letting the rabble scatter before its iron-shod hooves as best they might.

2

In Sanctuary, enchantment ruled. No sorcerer believed in gods. But they believed in the Law of Correspondences, and they believed in evil. Thus, since every negative must have its positive, they implied gods. Give a god an inch and he will take your soul. That was what the commoners and the second-rate prestidigitators lined up outside the Weaponshop of Vashanka did not realize, and that was why no respectable magician or Hazard Class Enchanter stood among them.

In they filed, men to Tempus's left, towards the Vulgar Unicorn, and women to his right, towards the tenement on the corner.

Personally, Tempus did not feel it wise or dignified for a god to engage in a commercial venture. From across the street, he took notes on who came and went.

Tempus was not sure whether he was going in there, or not.

A shadow joined the queue, disengaged, walked towards the Vulgar Unicorn in the tricky light of fading stars. It saw him, hesitated, took one step back.

Tempus leaned forwards, his elbow on his pommel, and crooked a finger. 'Hanse, I would like a word with you.'

The youth cat-walked towards him, errant torch-light from the Unicorn's open door twinkling on his weapons. From ankle to shoulder, Shadowspawn bristled with armaments.

'What is it with you, Tempus? Always on my tail. There are bigger frogs than this one in Sanctuary's pond.'

'Are you not going to buy anything tonight?'

'I'll make do with what I have, thanks. I do not swithe with sorcerers.'

'Steal something for me?' Tempus whispered, leaning down. The boy had black hair, black eyes, and blacker prospects in this desperadoes' demesne.

'I'm listening.'

' Two diamond rods from the lady who came out of the sea tonight.'

'Why?'

'I won't ask you how, and you won't ask me why, or we'll forget it.' He sat up straight in his saddle.

'Forget it, then,' toughed Shadowspawn, deciding he wanted nothing to do with this Hell Hound.

'Call it a prank, a jest at the expense of an old girlfriend.'

The thief edged around where Tempus could not see him, into a dapple of deepest dark. He named a price.

The Hell Hound did not argue. Rather, he paid half in advance.

'I've heard you don't really work for Kitty. I've heard your dues to the mercenaries' guild are right up to date, and that Kitty knows better than to give you any orders. If you are not arguing about my price, it must be too low.'

Silence.

'Is it true that you roughed up that whore who died tonight? That Amoli is so afraid of you that you do whatever you want in her place and never pay?'

Tempus chuckled, a sound like the cracking of dry ice. 'I will take you there, when you deliver, and you can see for yourself what I do.'

There was no answer from the shadows, just a skittering of stones.

Yes, I will take you there, young one. And yes, you are right. About everything. You should have asked for more.

3

Tempus lingered there still, eating a boxed lunch from the Unicorn's kitchen, when a voice from above his head said, 'The deal is off. That girl is a sorceress, if a pretty one. I'll not chance ensorcel-ment to lift baubles I don't covet, and for a pittance!'

Girl? The woman was nearly his own age, unless another set of diamond rods existed, and he doubted that. He yawned, not reaching up to take the purse that dangled over the lee of the roof, 'I am disappointed. I thought Shadowspawn could steal.'

The innuendo was not lost on the invisible thief. The purse was withdrawn. An impalpable something told him he was once again alone, but for the clients of Vashanka's Weaponshop. Things would be interesting in Sanctuary, for a good little while to come. He had counted twenty-three purchasers able to walk away with their mystical armaments. Four had died while he watched, intrigued.

It was possible that a career Hell Hound such as Zaibar might have intervened. But Tempus wore Vashanka's amulet about his neck, and, if he did not agree with Him, he would at least bear with his god.

The woman he was waiting for showed there at dusk. He liked dusk; he liked it for killing and he liked it for loving. Sometimes if he was very lucky, the dusk made him tired and he could nap. A man who has been cursed by an archmage and pressed into service by a god does not sleep much. Sleep was something he chased like other men chased women. Women, in general, bored him, unless they were taken in battle, or unless they were whores.

This woman, her black hair brushing her doeskin-clad shoulders, was an exception.

He called her name, very softly. Then again: 'Cime.' She turned, and at last he was sure. He had thought Hakiem could mean no other: he had not been wrong.

Her eyes were grey as his horse. Silver shot her hair, but she was yet comely. Her hands rose, hesitated, covered a mouth pretending to hardness and tight with fear. He recognized the aborted motion other hands: towards her head, forgetful that the rods she sought were no longer there.

He did not move in his saddle, or speak again. He let her decide, glance quickly about the street, then come to him.

When her hand touched the horse's bridle, he said: 'It bites.'

'Because you taught it to. It will not bite me.' She held it by the muzzle, squeezing the pressure points that rode the skin there. The horse raised his head slightly, moaned, and stood shivering.

'What seek you in there?' He inclined his head towards Vashanka's; a lock of copper hair fell over one eye.

'The tools of my trade were stolen.'

'Have you money?'

'Some. Not enough.'

'Come with me.'

'Never again.'

'You have kept your vow, then?'

'I slay sorcerers. I cannot suffer any man to touch me except a client. I dare no love; I am chaste of heart.'

'All these aching years?'

She smiled. It pulled her mouth in hard at its corners and he saw ageing no potion or cosmetic spell could hide. 'Every one. And you? You did not take the Blue Star, or I would see it on your brow. What discipline serves your will?'

'None. Revenge is fruitless. The past is only alive in us. I am not meant for sorcery. I love logic too well.'

'So, you are yet damned?'

'If that is what you call it, I suppose - yes. I work for the Storm God, sometimes. I do a lot of wars.'

'What brought you here, Cle-'

'Tempus, now. It keeps me in perspective. I am building a temple for Him.' He pointed to Vashanka's Weaponshop, across the street. His finger shook. He hoped she had not seen. 'You must not ply your trade here. I have employment as a Hell Hound. Appearances must be preserved. Do not pit us against one another. It would be too sour a memory.'

'For whomever survived? Can it be you love me still?' Her eyes were full of wonder.

'No,' he said, but cleared his throat. 'Stay out of there. I know His service well. I would not recommend it. I will get you back what you have lost. Meet me at the Lily Garden tonight at midnight, and you will have them. I promise. Just take down no sorcerers between now and then. If you do, I will not return them, and you cannot get others.'

'Bitter, are you not? If I do what you are too weak to do, what harm is there in that?' Her right eyebrow raised. It hurt him to watch her.

'We are the harm. And we are the harmed, as well. I am afraid that you may have to break your fast, so be prepared. I will reason with myself, but I promise nothing.'

She sighed. 'I was wrong. You have not changed one bit.'

'Let go of my horse.'

She did.

He wanted to tell her to let go of his heart, but he was struck mute. He wheeled his mount and clattered down the street. He had no intention of leaving. He just waited in a nearby alley until she was gone.

Then he hailed a passing soldier, and sent a message to the palace.

When the sun danced above the Vulgar Unicorn's improbably engaged weather vane, support troops arrived, and Kadakithis's new warlock. Aspect, was with them.

'Since last night, and this is the first report you have seen -fit to make?' The sorcerer's pale lips flushed. His eyes burned within his shadowed cowl.

'I hope you and Kadakithis had a talk.'

'We did, we did. You are not still angry at the world after all these years?'

'I am yet living. I have your kind to blame or thank, whichever.'

'Do you not think it strange that we have been thrown together as - equals?'

'I think that is not the right word for it. Aspect. What are you about, here?'

'Now, now. Hell Hound-' .''

'Tempus.'

'Yes, Tempus. You have not lost your fabled sense of irony. I hope it is a comfort.'

'Quite, actually. Do not interfere with the gods, guildbrother of my nemesis.'

'Our prince is justifiably worried. Those weapons-'

'-equal out the balance between the oppressors and the oppressed. Most of Sanctuary cannot afford your services, or the prices of even the lowliest members of the Enchanters' Guild. Let it be. We will get the weapons back, as their wielders meet their fates.'

'I have to report to Kitt - to K-adakithis.'

'Then report that I am handling it.' Behind the magician, he could see the ranks whispering. Thirty men, the archmage had brought. Too many.

'You and I have more in common than in dispute, Tempus. Let us join forces.'

'I would sooner bed an Ilsig matron.'

'Well, I am going in there.' The archmage shook his head and the cowl fell back. He was pretty, ageless, a blond. 'With or without you.'

'Be my guest,' Tempus offered.

The archmage looked at him strangely. 'We do the same services in the world, you and I. Killing, whether with natural or supernatural weapons, is still killing. You are no better than I.'

'Assuredly not, except that I will outlive you. And I will make sure you do not get your requisite burial ritual.'

'You would not!'

'Like you said, I yet bear my grudge - against every one of you.'

With a curse that made the ranks clap their hands to their helmeted ears, the archmage swished into the street, across it, and through the door marked 'Men' without another word. It was his motioned command which made the troops follow.

A waitress Tempus knew came out when the gibbous moon was high, to ask him if he was hungry. She brought him fish and he ate it, watching the doors.

When he had just about finished, a terrible rumble crawled up the street, tremors following in its wake. He slid from his horse and held its muzzle, and the reins up under its bit. The doors of Vashanka's Weaponshop grew shimmery, began taking colour. Above, the moon went behind a cloud. The little dome on the" shop rocked, grew cracks, crazed, steamed. The doors were ruby red, and melting. Awful wails and screams and the smell of sulphur and ozone filled the night.

Patrons began streaming out of the Vulgar Unicorn, drinks in hand. They stayed well back from the rocking building, which howled as it stressed larger, growing turgid, effluescing spectrums which sheeted and snapped and snarled. The doors went molten white, then they were gone. A figure was limned in the left-hand doorway, and it was trying to climb empty air. It flamed and screeched, dancing, crumbling, facing the street but unable to pass the invisible barrier against which it pounded. It stank: the smell of roasting flesh was overwhelming. Behind it, helmets crumpled, dripped on to the contorted faces of soldiers whose moustaches had begun to flare.

The mage who tried to break down the invisible door had no fists; he had pounded them away. The ranks were char and ash in infalling effigy of damnation. The doors which had been invisible began to cool to white, then to gold, then to red.

The street was utterly silent. Only the snorts of his horse and the squeals of the domed structure could be heard. The squeals fell off to growls and shudders. The doors cooled, turned dark.

People muttered, drifted back into the Unicorn with mumbled wardings, tracing signs and taking many backward looks.

Tempus, who could have saved thirty innocent soldiers and one guilty magician, got out his silver box and sniffed some krrf.

He had to be at the Lily Garden soon.

When he got there, the mixed elation of drug and death had faded.

What if Shadowspawn did not appear with the rods? What if the girl Cime did not come to get them back? What if he still could hurt, as he had not hurt for more than three hundred years?

He had had a message from the palace, from Prince Kadakithis himself. He was not going up there, just yet. He did not want to answer any questions about the archmage's demise. He did not want to appear involved. His only chance to help the Prince-Governor effectively lay in working his own way. Those were his terms, and under those terms Kitty's supporters in the Rankan capital had employed him to come down here and play Hell Hound and see what he would do. There were no wars, anywhere. He had been bored, his days stretching out never ending, bleak. So he had concerned himself with Kitty, for something to do. The building of Vashanka's temple he oversaw for himself more than Kadakithis, who understood the necessity of elevating the state cult above the Ilsig gods, but believed only in wizardry, and his noble Ranke blood.

He was not happy about the spectacle at Vashanka's Weapon-shop. Sloppy business, this side-show melting and unmelting. The archmage must have been talented, to make his struggles visible to those outside.

Wisdom is to know the thought which steers all things through all things, a friend of his who was a philosopher had once said to him. The thought that was steering all things through Sanctuary was muddled, unclear.

That was the hitch, the catch, the problem with employing the supernatural in a natural milieu. Things got confused. With so many spells at work, the fabric of causality was overly strained. Add the gods, and Evil and Good faced each other across a board game whose extent was the phenomenal world. He wished the gods would stay in their heavens and the sorcerers in their hells.

Oh, he had heard endless persiflage about simultaneity; iteration - the constant redefining of the now by checking it against the future-; alchemical laws of consonance. When he had been a student of philosophy and Cime had been a maiden, he had learned the axiom that Mind is unlimited and self-controlled, but all other things are connected; that nothing is completely separated off from any other thing, nor are things divided one from the other, except Mind.

The sorcerers put it another way: they called the consciousness of all things into service, according to the laws of magic.

Not philosophy, nor theology, nor thaumaturgy held the answer for Tempus; he had turned away from them, each and all. But he could not forget what he had learned.

And none of the adepts like to admit that no servitor can be hired without wages. The wages of unnatural life are unnatural death.

He wished he could wake up in Azehur, with his family, and know that he had dreamed this impious dream.

But instead he came to Amoli's whorehouse, the Lily Garden. Almost, but not quite, he rode the horse up its stairs. Resisting the temptation, he reflected that in every age he had ever studied, doom-criers abounded. No millenium is attractive to the man immured in it; enough prophecies have been made in antiquity that one who desires, in any age, to take the position that Apocalypse is at hand can easily defend it. He would not join that dour Order; he would not worry about anything but Tempus, and the matter awaiting his attention.

Inside Amoli's, Hanse the thief sat in full swagger, a pubescent girl on each knee.

'Ah,' he waved. 'I have something for you.' Shadowspawn tumbled both girls off of him, and stood, stretching widely, so that every arm-dagger and belted sticker and thigh-sheath creaked softly. The girls at his feet stayed there, staring up at Tempus wide-eyed. One whimpered to Shadowspawn and clutched his thigh.

'Room key,' Tempus snapped to no one in particular, and held out his hand. The concierge, not Amoli, brought it to him.

'Hanse?'

'Coming.' He extended a hand to one girl.

'Alone.'

'You are not my type,' said the thief, suspicious.

'I need just a moment of your evening. You can do what you wish with the rest.'

Tempus looked at the key, headed off towards a staircase leading to the room which bore a corresponding number.

He heard the soft tread of Shadowspawn close behind.

When the exchange had been made, the thief departed, satisfied with both his payment and his gratuity, but not quite sure that Tempus appreciated the trouble to which he had put himself, or that he had got the best of the bargain they had made.

He saw the woman he had robbed before she saw him, and ended up in a different girl's room than the one he had chosen, in order to avoid a scene. When he had heard her steps pass by, stop before the door behind which the big Hell Hound waited, he made preclusive threats to the woman whose mouth he had stopped with the flat of his hand, and slipped downstairs to spend his money somewhere else, discreetly.

If he had stayed, he might have found out what the diamond rods were really worth; he might have found out what the sour-eyed mercenary with his high brow, suddenly so deeply creased, and his lightly carried mass, which seemed tonight too heavy, was worried about. Or perhaps he could have fathomed Tempus's enigmatic parting words: 'I would help you if I could, backstreeter,' Tempus had rumbled.

'If I had met you long ago, or if you liked horses, there would be a chance. You have done me a great service. More than that pouch holds. I am seldom in any man's debt, but you, I own, can call me anytime.'

'You paid me. Hell Hound. I am content,' Hanse had demurred, confused by weakness where he had never imagined it might dwell. Then he saw the Hell Hound fish out a snuffbox of krrf, and thought he understood.

But later, he went back to Amoli's and hung around the steps, cautiously petting the big man's horse, the krrf he had sniffed making him willing to dodge the beast's square, yellow teeth.

4

She had come to him, had Cime. She was what she was, what she had always been.

It was Tempus who was changed: Vashanka had entered into him, the Storm God who was Lord of Weapons who was Lord of Rape who was Lord of War who was Lord of Death's Gate.

He could not take her, gently. So spoke not his physical impotence, as he might have expected, but the cold wash of wisdom: he would not despoil her; Vashanka would accept no less.

She knocked and entered and said, 'Let me see them,' so sure he would have the stolen diamonds that her fingers were already busy on the lacings of her Ilsig leathers.

He held up a hide-wrapped bundle, slimmer than her wrist, shorter than her forearm. 'Here. How were they thieved?'

'Your voice is hoarser than I have ever heard it,' she replied, and: 'I needed money; there was this man ... actually, there were a few, but there was a tough, a streetbrawler. I should have known - he is half my apparent age. What would such as he want with a middle-aged whore? And he agreed to pay the price I asked, without quibbling. Then he robbed me.' She looked around, her eyes, as he remembered them, clear windows to her thoughts. She was appalled.

'The low estate into which I have sunk?'

She knew what he meant. Her nostrils shivered, taking in the musty reek of the soiled bedding on which he sprawled fully clothed, smelling easily as foul. 'The devolution of us both. That I would be here, under these circumstances, is surely as pathetic as you.'

'Thanks. I needed that. Don't.'

'I thought you wanted me.' She ceased unlacing, looked at him, her tunic open to her waist.

'I did. I don't. Have some krrf.' On his hips rode her scarf; if she saw it, then she would comprehend his degradation too fully. So he had not removed it, hoping its presence would remind him, if he weakened and his thoughts drowned in lust, that this woman he must not violate.

She sat on the quilt, one doe-gloved leg tucked under her.

'You jest,' she breathed, then, eyes narrowed, took the krrf.

'It will be ill with you, afterwards, should I touch you.'

Her fingers ran along the flap of hide wrapped over her wands. 'I am receiving payment.' She tapped the package. 'And I may not owe debts.'

'The boy who pilfered these, did it at my behest.'

'Must you pander for me?'

He winced. 'Why do you not go home?' She smelled of salt and honey and he thought desperately that she was here only because he forced the issue: to pay her debt.

She leaned forwards, touched his lips with a finger. 'For the same reason that you do not. Home is changed, gone to time.'

'Do you know that?' He jerked his head-away, cracking it against the bed's wooden headboard.

'I believe it.'

'I cannot believe anything, any more. I surely cannot believe that your hand is saying what it seems to be saying.'

'I cannot,' she said, between kisses at his throat he could not, somehow, fend off, 'leave ... with ... debts ... owing.'

'Sorry,' he said firmly, and got out from under her hands. 'I am just not in the mood.'

She shrugged, unwrapped the wands, and wound her hair up with them. 'Surely, you will regret this, later.'

'Maybe you are right,' he sighed heavily. 'But that is my problem. I release you from any debt. We are even. I remember past gifts, given when you still knew how to give freely.' There was no way in the world he was going to hurt her. He would not strip before her. With those two constraints, he had no option. He chased her out of there. He was as cruel about it as he could manage to be, for both their sakes.

Then he yelled downstairs for service.

When he descended the steps in the cool night air, a movement startled him, on the grey's off side.

'It is me, Shadowspawn.'

'It is I, Shadowspawn,' he corrected, huskily. His face averted, he mounted from the wrong side. The horse whickered disapprovingly. 'What is it, snipe?'

As clouds covered the moon, Tempus seemed to pull all night's shadows round him. Hanse might have the name, but this Tempus had the skill. Hanse shivered. There were no Shadow Lords any longer ... 'I was admiring your horse. Bunch of hawk masks rode by, saw the horse, looked interested. I looked proprietary. The horse looked mean. The hawk-masks rode away. I just thought I'd see if you showed soon, and let you know.'

A movement at the edge of his field of vision warned him, even as the horse's ears twitched at the click of iron on stone. 'You should have kept going, it seems,' said Tempus quietly, as the first of the hawk-masks edged his horse out past the intersection, and others followed. Two. Three. Four. Two more.

'Mothers,' whispered Cudgel Swearoath's prodigy, embarrassed at not having realized that he was not the only one waiting for Tempus.

'This is not your fight, junior.'

'I'm aware of that. Let's see if they are.'

Blue night: blue hawk-masks: the sparking thunder of six sets of hooves rushing towards the two of them. Whickering. The gleam of frothing teeth and bared weapons: iron clanging in a jumble of shuddering, straining horses. The kill trained grey's challenge to another stallion: hooves thudding on flesh and great mouths gaped, snapping; a blaring death-clarion from a horse whose jugular had been severed. Always watching the boy: keeping the grey between the hawk-masks and a thief who just happened to get involved; who just happened to kill two of them with thrown knives, one through an eye and the other blade he recalled clearly, sticking out of a slug-white throat. Tempus would remember even the whores' ambivalent screams of thrill and horror, delight and disgust. He had plenty of time to sort it out: Time to draw his own sword, to target the rider of his choice, feel his hilt go warm and pulsing in his hand. He really did not like to take unfair advantage. The iron sword glowed pink like a baby's skin or a just-born day. Then it began to react in his grip. The grey's reins, wrapped around the pommel, flapped loosely; he told it where he wanted it with gritted words, with a pressing knee, with his shifting weight. One hawk -mask had a greenish tinge to him: protected. Tempus's sword would not listen to such talk: it slit charms like butter, armour like silk. A blue wing whistled above his head, thrown by a compatriot of the man who fell so slowly with his guts pouring out over his saddle like cold molasses. While that hawk-mask's horse was in mid-air between two strides, Tempus's sword licked up and changed the colour of the foe-seeking boomerang. Pink, now, not blue. He was content to let it return its death to the hand that threw it. That left just two.

One had the thief engaged, and the youth had drawn his wicked, twenty-inch Ibarsi knife, too short to be more than a temporizer against the hawk-mask's sword, too broad to be thrown. Backed against the Lily Garden's wall, there was just time for Tempus to flicker the horse over there and split the hawk-mask's head down to his collarbones. Grey brains splattered him.. The thrust of the hawk-mask, undiminished by death, shattered on the flat of the long, curved knife Shadowspawn held up in a two-fisted, desperate block.

'Behind you!'

Tempus had known the one last hawk-mask was there. But this was not the boy's battle. Tempus had made a choice. He ducked and threw his weight sideways, reining the horse down with all his might. The sword, a singing one, sonata'd over his head, shearing hairs. His horse, overbalanced, fell heavily, screaming, pitching, rolling onto his left leg. Pinned for an instant, he saw white anguish, then the last hawk-mask was leaping down to finish him, and the grey scrambled to its feet. 'Kill,' he shouted, his blade yet at ready, but lying in the dirt. His leg flared once again, then quieted. He tried it, gained his knees, dust in his eyes. The horse reared and lunged. The hawk-mask struck blindly, arms above his head, sword reaching for grey, soft underbelly. He tried to save it. He tried. He tackled the hawk-mask with the singing sword. Too late, too late: horse fluids showered him. Bellows of agony pealed in his ears. The horse and the hawk-mask and Tempus went down together, thrashing.

When Tempus sorted it out, he allowed that the horse had killed the hawk-mask at the same time the hawk-mask had disembowelled the horse.

But he had to finish it. It lay there thrashing pathetically, deep groans coming from it. He stood over it uncertainly, then knelt and stroked its muzzle. It snapped at him, eyes rolling, demanding to die. He acceded, and the dust in his eyes hurt so much they watered profusely.

Its legs were still kicking weakly when he heard a movement, turned on his good leg, and stared.

Shadowspawn was methodically stripping the hawk-masks of their arms and valuables.

Hanse did not notice Tempus, as he limped away. Or he pretended he did not. Whichever, there was nothing left to say.

5

When he reached the Weaponshop, his leg hardly pained him. It was numb; it no longer throbbed. It would heal flawlessly, as any wound he took always healed. Tempus hated it.

Up to the Weaponshop's door he strode, as the dawn spilled gore onto Sanctuary's alleys.

He kicked it; it opened wide. How he despised supernal battle, and himself when his preternatural abilities came into play.

'Hear me, Vashanka! I have had enough! Get this sidewalk stand out of here!'

There was no answer. Within, everything was dim as dusk, dim as the pit of unknowingness which spawned day and night and endless striving.

There were no weapons here for him to see, no counter, no proprietor, no rack of armaments pulsing and humming expectantly. But then, he already had his. One to a customer was the rule: one body; one mind; one swing through life.

He trod mists tarnished like the grey horse's coat. He trod a long corridor with light at its ending, pink like new beginnings, pink like his iron sword when Vashanka lifted it by Tempus's hand. He shied away from his duality; a man does not look closely at a curse of his own choosing. He was what he was, vessel of his god. But he had his own body, and that particular body was aching; and he had his own mind, and that particular mind was dank and dark like the dusk and the dusty death he dealt.

'Where are You, Vashanka, 0 Slaughter Lord?'

Right here, resounded the voice within his head. But Tempus was not going to listen to any internal voice. Tempus wanted confrontation.

'Materialize, you bastard!'

I already have; one body; one mind; one life - in every sphere.

'I am not you!' Tempus screamed through clenched teeth, willing firm footing beneath his sinking feet.

No, you are not. But I am you, sometimes, said the nimbus-wreathed figure striding towards him over gilt-edged clouds. Vashanka: so very tall with hair the colour of yarrow honey and a high brow free from lines.

'Oh, no...'

You wanted to see Me. Look upon Me, servant!

'Not so close, Pillager. Not so much resemblance. Do not torture me, My God! Let me blame it all on You - not be You!'

So many years, and you yet seek self-delusion?

'Definitely. As do You, if You think to gather worshippers in this fashion! 0 Berserker God, You cannot roast their mages before them: they are all dependent on sorcery. You cannot terrify them thus, and expect them to come to You. Weapons will not woo them; they are not men of the armies. They are thieves, and pirates, and prostitutes! You have gone too far, and not far enough!'

Speaking of prostitutes, did you see your sister? Look at Me!

Tempus had to obey. He faced the manifestation of Vashanka, and recalled that he could not take a woman in gentleness, that he could but war. He saw his battles, ranks parading in endless eyes of storm and blood bath. He saw the Storm God's consort, His own sister whom He raped eternally, moaning on Her couch in anguish that Her blood brother would ravish Her so.

Vashanka laughed.

Tempus snarled wordlessly through frozen lips.

You should have let us have her.

'Never!' Tempus howled. Then: '0 God, leave off! You are not increasing Your reputation among these mortals, nor mine! This was an ill-considered venture from the outset. Go back to Your heaven and wait. I will build Your temple better without Your maniacal aid. You have lost all sense of proportion. The Sanc-tuarites will not worship one who makes of their town a battlefield!'

Tempus, do not be wroth with Me. I have My own troubles, you know. I have to get away every now and again. And you have not been warring, whined the god, for so very long. I am bored and I am lonely.

'And You have caused the death of my horse!' Tempus spat, and broke free of Vashanka, wrenching his mind loose from the mirror mind of his god with an effort of will greater than any he had ever mounted before. He turned in his steps and began to retrace them. The god called to him over his shoulder, but he did not look back. He put his feet in the smudges they had left in the clouds as he had walked among them, and the farther he trudged, the more substantial those clouds became.

He trekked into lighter darkness, into a soft, new sunrise, into a pink and lavender morning which was almost Sanctuary's. He continued to walk until the smell of dead fish and Downwind pollution assailed his nostrils. He strode on, until a weed tripped him and he fell to his knees in the middle of a damp and vacant lot.

He heard a cruel laugh, and as he looked up he was thinking that he had not made it back at all - that Vashanka was not through punishing him.

But to his right was the Vulgar Unicorn, to his left the palimpsest tenement wall. And before him stood one of the palace eunuchs, come seeking him with a summons from Kittycat to discuss what might be done about the Weaponshop said to be manifesting next to the Vulgar Unicorn.

'Tell Kadakithis,' said Tempus, arduously gaining his feet, 'that I will be there presently. As you can see...' He waved around him, where no structure stood or even could be proved ever to have stood '... there is no longer any Weaponshop. Therefore, there is no longer any problem, nor any urgency to attend to it. There is, however, one very irritable Hell Hound in this vacant lot who wants to be left alone.'

The blue-black eunuch exposed perfect, argent teeth. 'Yes, yes, master,' he soothed the honey-haired man. 'I can see that this is so.'

Tempus ignored the eunuch's rosy, outstretched palm, and his sneer at the Hell Hound pretending to negotiate the humpy turf without pain. Accursed Wriggly!

As the round-rumped eunuch sauntered off, Tempus decided the Vulgar Unicorn would do as well as any place to sit and sniff krrf and wait for his leg to finish healing. It ought to take about an hour - unless Vashanka was more angry at him than he estimated, in which case it might take a couple of days.

Shying from that dismal prospect, he pursued diverse thoughts. But he fared little better. Where he was going to get another horse like the one he had lost, he could not conjecture, any more than he could recall the exact moment when the last dissolving wisps of Vashanka's Weaponshop blurred away into the mists of dawn.