Wings of Omen

GYSKOURAS by Lynn Abbey

Illyra needed no special S'danzo power to read the young man's past. He had been, and still was, a sewer-snipe. His face was marred by neglect and disease. He watched her, and her scrying table, with the desperate intensity of one who had been beaten, betrayed, yet still hoped for victory. She stood beside her table to stare him out of her shop, when he tossed an ancient, filthy golden coin onto the gray baize beside her.

"I need to know. They said you would know, one way or the other." His surprisingly deep voice made the simple phrases into an accusation.

"Sometimes," she replied, listening to the steady pounding of Dubro's hammer, her fingers poised over the coin.

They came to her in greater numbers now that Moon-flower was dead and her daughter had run away with the thief, Shadowspawn. Illyra could not think of the immense woman who had defended her right to be S'danzo in Sanctuary without feeling a storm of grief as immense as the old woman herself. She wanted to tie a knot across her doorway, turn her back to the Sight, and give way to her grief, but they came with their coins and demanded and she did not know how to turn them away. Dubro helped, intimidating the ones he sensed danger in, but he had let this one through. Her forefinger brushed the gold. "If the answer can be known, sometimes I can know it." Gathering her skirts over one arm, she settled behind the table and gestured for him to sit on the stool. The gold was still on the baize and the silk was still tied around her cards when he began his story.

"I killed a pig last night. By the White Foal-for luck. I need lots of luck."

Illyra felt the first lies drift between them. Sanctuary was swollen with Beysib stomachs and Ranke, tearing itself apart with wars and assassinations, was a fading presence in this comer of its once-great Empire. Even sewer-snipes should know enough to sell a pig for Beysib gold and use the gold to buy luck.

"I-I took the blood to a place, a special place. It's mine, and Vashanka's. I gave Him the blood."

She set the cards aside and suppressed a 'shiver. Unlike many S'danzo women sitting in their rooms throughout the Empire, Illyra did have the Sight. An un Sighted S'danzo woman survived by listening to her clients without laughing; she used the cards for mystery. Illyra used the cards for inspiration and guidance when the Sight came to her; she had no need for inspiration as this youth unburdened himself.

"It was like a wind. It was hot and cold; wet and dry all at once."

"Then it could not have been a wind," she told him, though she Saw the truth of his memories swirling around her. It was not like her Sight to be. out of her control this way; she sought to rein it in.

"It was a wind. And the blood-the blood was covered with sparks.

She Saw the secret place in his mind: an altar abandoned to the marshes and discovered by the snipe who prayed there without knowing what it was or had been. Blood sacrifices made on its mossy stones-not pig's blood but men's blood: Beysib blood and bits of flesh he'd hacked from their corpses as offerings in his own private worship. Illyra felt the unholy wind whip around him while the rest of the marsh froze motionless and saw the blue-white flames dance on the blood. She heard the shrill giggle of a child's laughter as the congealed mess on the altar was absorbed into the flame; then the Sight was gone and there was only the ragged, scared youth-who called himself Zip and tried to hide his true name even from himself-staring at her.

"So, what do you see. Did the Stormgod hear me? Does Vashanka favor me? Can I bind Him to me? Sell me a potion to bind the Stormgod!"

She meant to send him away. The S'danzo had no use for gods and were happiest when the gods had nothing to do with the S'danzo. It didn't matter that she could answer his questions. He had focused her Sight on the god and she wanted him, and all that was in his memories, gone before ('(noticed her. Yet she could still hear the laughter and didn't that mean, answer him or not, that the damage was already done?

The youth mistook her hesitation for imminent betrayal. "Don't give me suvesh talk." He reached across the table to grip her wrist.

"See the priests if you want to talk to the Stormgod," she replied icily, extracting herself with a swift, small movement he had never seen, or felt, before. But for the blacksmith, whose hammer rang in the sunlight beyond her shop, she'd have been a sewer-snipe herself. She knew his type of brazen pride and knew, as he did himself, that any whim of fate could squash him, without warning. He had stumbled into something vaster and more dangerous than he had ever imagined. As much as he lusted after the excitement and glory, he feared it.

"What do the priests know?" he said, as if any priest would have spoken to him. "Nosing up to the snakes. They don't know anything about Vashanka."

"If you know so much more than the priests, you certainly know more than a S'danzo fortune-teller." She pushed the gold coin back to him.

"A half-S'danzo fortune-teller who knew when that damned fleet would arrive could talk to Vashanka if she dared." He ignored the coin and met her stare.

Anything that survived in the gutter of Sanctuary was dangerous. Zip had already violated her home with his visions; would he be any more dangerous with the truth about his prayers, sacrifices, and altar-or any the less?

"Keep your gold and everything else. Vashanka is no more."

He sat back as if she'd struck him. Surely he'd heard the rumors, lived through the storm that saw Vashanka's name struck from the pantheon archstones? Perhaps he hadn't quite believed that the Rankan Stormgod had been vanquished in the skies over Sanctuary, but he should have learned to contain his horror if he expected to survive.

"I give Him blood at my altar... and He takes it!"

"Fool! Leave the gods to the priests. You find a pile of rotting stones in the mud by the White Foal and you think you can lure Vashanka to your cause. Vashanka! The Storm-god of Ranke-and with the blood of a pig!"

"He hears me! I feel Him but I can't hear Him! He's telling me something and I can't hear him!"

"You don't want to know what hears you. Could Ranke have built a temple to Vashanka, lost it to the White Foal, and all Sanctuary forgotten it was there except for you?" She was standing, leaning over her table, screaming in his face and unmindful of everything except the laughter he'd left in her mind. She couldn't See what he had raised yet, but it was getting clearer the longer he sat there with his sacrifices and memories battering against her.

"Get out of here! Vashanka does not hear you. No god yet born hears you! Nothing hears you! May the dung rise up and swallow you before anything listens to you again!"

She did not believe the S'danzo had the power to curse, but the sewer-snipe did. Zip backed up until the sunlight from the doorway fell around his feet, then he turned and ran, not noticing, or perhaps not caring, that he had left his gold coin behind.

" 'Lyra! What happened?" Dubro called to her from the doorway. He took a step to follow the youth, then turned back and rushed to catch Illyra before she collapsed over her table. He carried her in his arms like a sick child, berating himself for not sensing the danger in the young man, while she whispered broken phrases in the ancient S'danzo language.

The rat-faced sewer-snipe had forced her to See what should not be Seen and what she should not dare to remember. Each breath and heartbeat solidified the images and knowledge. Illyra worked frantically to blind herself to what had happened, before it spread like poison through wine and condemned her as surely as it had condemned the young man. She bound the knowledge in the form of one of the great black carrion-birds that flocked above the Char-nel House and, with a wrenching sob, set it free.

"'Lyra, what's wrong?" her husband asked, stroking her hair and swabbing her tears with the comer of his sweaty tunic.

"I don't know," she answered honestly. A shimmering blackness of her own devising hung in her memories. The fear remained, and a sense of doom, but the vision itself had been seared away; the sound of a child crying was all that remained. "The children," she whispered.

Dubro left his forge in the care of his new, anxious apprentice and followed Illyra through the Bazaar to the Street of Red Lanterns. Children were an inevitable byproduct of life on the Street, and even if most of them wound up in the gutters, a few of them enjoyed a healthy, sheltered childhood within the Houses themselves. Myrtis, madam of the fortresslike Aphrodisia House, kept the boys as well as the girls, and had apprenticed one youth to Dubro in exchange for sheltering the couple's twin son and daughter.

The Street was quiet and drab in the afternoon sunlight. Illyra let go of Dubro's hand and told herself that there was no danger, that the blackness in her mind was a nightmare she could release and forget. She thought nothing of the young woman running toward them until she fell to her knees before them. '

"Shipri be praised, you're right here! He was sleeping with the rest-"

The woman's hysteria rekindled Illyra's anxiety and her Sight. She Saw the room where Myrtis, frowning, leaned over a cradle; where chubby blonde Lillis cowered in a shadowed comer; and where her year-and-a-half-old son had stopped crying. Following the certainty of her vision she raced ahead down stairways and corridors.

"You've come so quickly," the ageless madam said, looking up from the cradle, a momentary wrinkle of confusion on her brow. "Ah, but yes, you do have the Sight, don't you?" The confusion vanished. "You know as much as I, then." She made room for the child's mother at the cradle.

The little boy lay rigid in some sudden, paralyzing fever. His breath came in sporadic gasps, each holding the possibility that there would be no others. His tears were drying on his dirty cheeks. Illyra brushed her fingers across one rivulet and shivered when she saw that the darkness was in the tears themselves.

"It is like no disease I know of," Myrtis disclaimed. "I would send word to Lythande, but the Blue Star is beyond my call now. We can summon Stulwig or some other-"

"There's no need," Illyra said wearily.

She was seeing everything twice: once with her own eyes and mind, then a second time with the Sight. The strange-ness should have been overwhelming, but because the Sight itself was involved, there could be no surprises. Dubro pushed aside the curtain and joined them. She glanced at him and Saw the completeness of his being: his boyhood, his manhood, his death-and quickly lowered her eyes. Again she made a raven of Vision and set the knowledge free, but the new darkness it left within her was insignificant compared to the old.

Because she would only look at her shallow-breathing son whose shape and fate was the same in both visions, Illyra was left alone with him. She sat on the rocking stool and felt the square of window-light move across her shoulders, then the first chill of twilight. They brought her a thin broth, which she ignored, and wrapped a heavier shawl around herself as the night air thickened. She moved as little as Alton did in her arms.

A fresh wind carried the weather through Sanctuary: an almost silent storm of thin clouds passing swiftly before the moon. It was midnight, perhaps, or somewhat later, when a moon-cast shadow broke free and came to rest on the headboard of the cradle. Illyra bowed her head and allowed the raven to return. Sight decayed and reformed without darkness. She Saw Zip's face, his benighted altar, and the mark of a Stormgod in her son's cloudy tears.

She did not know yet how to save Arton, though Sight and sight were the same now and a path of silver-edged importance was emerging where there had been only blackness. Her plan was still unformed when she drew the borrowed shawl tightly around herself and went, unseen and without light, through the back passages of the Aphrodisia.

It was well past midnight, for the Street had become quiet and the moon had set. Fog crept up from the harbor, emphasizing the silence, the darkness, and the dangers. Illyra, who disliked the city and traveled its streets as seldom as possible, walked confidently toward the garrison barracks where her half-brother was in command of the guard. In the back of her mind she recalled all the gossip of the Bazaar: how Sanctuary was more dangerous than ever now that so many gangs, mercenaries, and soldiers were taking an interest in it. She recalled as well that no S'danzo had ever used the Sight as she was using it to walk the streets in utter darkness, utterly alone and utterly safe. She could have distrusted its unfolding powers, conceived as they were as her son lay touched by some unknowable Stormgod, but, flush with the confidence of the Sight itself, she dismissed her thoughts and stepped deftly around the silver-traced offal.

"Ischade?"

Illyra turned, recognizing neither the name nor the hoarse voice whispering it. Her Sight touched on a ragged beggar.

"Why do you walk tonight?" the man asked.

As she had Seen with Dubro, she Saw with the beggar-king-and much, as well, about the necromant, Ischade, he had mistaken her for. She stepped back from him, and he from her, although in the darkness he could not have seen her but only sensed that she could see something in him that even Ischade was blind to. The new aspects of Sight were quickly becoming familiar to her; she continued on her way without needing to mold her Vision of the beggar-king into a raven to be rid of it. And when the watch at the barracks challenged her, she used what she had learned to Look at the torchlit face until the man, cowed by his own utter nakedness, stood aside and let her into the common room.

"Cythen?" Illyra called, knowing the woman was in the smoky room.

'"Lyra?" The mercenary rose from a group of men and, putting a firm, authoritative arm on the S'danzo's shoulders, pulled her into an alcove. '"Lyra, what are you-"

Illyra Looked into the other's face. Cythen cringed, then her anger flared, and this time it was Illyra who looked aside.

"Are you all right?" Cythen demanded.

"I must see Walegrin."

"His watch starts at dawn; he just went upstairs to sleep."

"I've got to see him, now."

Cythen tugged at a worn amulet. "'Lyra, are you all right?"

"I've got to see my brother, Cythen," Illyra's voice trembled with Sight and from her determination that she would speak with Walegrin before dawn shed light on Zip's altar. She waited in the officer's upper room while Cythen roused an unhappy Walegrin. He came into the room as a green-eyed death-wraith full of threats and fury, but she met him calmly with the Sight in her eyes.

"I need your help," she informed her stunned, superstitious half-brother. "My son, whom you have made a Rankan citizen, has been stolen."

"The guard patrols the Street of Red Lanterns; it is as safe as the palace itself." He defended the ability of his men even as he bound a bronze studded greave to his shin. "Did you report it to them first? Have they searched?"

"There is nothing for them to do."

Walegrin set the second greave aside and stared at her. "Illyra, what's wrong with you?"

Now that she was with him, Illyra found that the Sight was not so clear. She Saw him carrying her message, but she couldn't See him bringing the guard to Zip's altar to destroy it. "There was a young man who came to me this past afternoon with a story about an altar by the White Foal and the spirit of the Stormgod he sacrificed to there...."

"Alton... sacrifice?" It was outlawed, but it happened.

Illyra shook her head. "That young man-they call him Zip, usually-brought his filthy, unspeakable demon into my life. He touched me with it, and when I refused, it reached out to touch my son. Arton cries black tears."

"Poison-Zip?" He had the other greave strapped on and was smiling as he pronounced the snipe's name. "We've needed something clean on that one. Something that wouldn't fan the fires higher. And Beysin women, some of them, can make cures in their blood. If they cure a Sanctuary child, then that will bring quiet, too-"

Illyra hammered both fists on the table. Neither he nor the Sight would move as she wished. "You aren't listening to me! There's no poison in Arton's blood, Half-Brother. Spirits seek him. Godspirits raised on a White Foal altar. What could you do for Arton that I have not already done? What could bare-breasted Beysin women do while the spirit of a Stormgod sits on its altar, waiting for another chance? Destroy the altar; I'll save my son."

Walegrin assessed her with one eye, then the other, and left the breastplate lying on the table. "Illyra, my men struggle to contain the Maze. There is more murder and intrigue in this town than one man can imagine, and you would have me stomp through the White Foal marsh, looking for a broken-down pile of stones. If it's only the altar you care about, then tell Dubro-he'll do it with his hammer."

"I have not told Dubro."

He raised an eyebrow, having believed that the pair had no secrets between them, and was about to ask more questions when she turned toward the fireplace.

"I don't know why I've come to you for help." She turned and studied the room. "The Sight ends, and I don't know what to do now."

"You can wait here," he said, almost kindly. "I'll make my report in the morning. Or, I'll guide you back to the Aphrodisia, and Arton and you can wait there."

The silver clarity of Sight was gone and she could not, of course, guess when it might return. The preternatural confidence it had given her was fading. She had too many terrified childhood memories of the barracks to linger there, and so accepted his offer. Walegrin called Cythen and two others to be her escort. They each carried torches heavy enough to serve as weapons. Once, they were delayed by the sound of a fracas in a blind alley. "PFLS," Walegrin muttered as the combatants scattered but to Illyra, illiterate and Bazaar-bound, the expression made no sense.

Myrtis welcomed the mercenaries with cups of fortified wine. Illyra escaped to the nursery where, as she expected even without the Sight, her son's condition had not changed. Dubro had taken the unconscious child from the cradle and was hiding the mite in his arms while Lillis, exhausted and worried beyond understanding by her brother's behavior, sat wild-eyed on the floor, clinging to Dubro's leg.

"You have been following some S' danzo intuition?" Dubro asked with accusation.

"I had thought Walegrin might help." Illyra let the cloak fall back from her shoulders. "He will try, though I'm not sure if he will help or hurt in the end. We'll pray it is enough."

"Do you pray?" her husband asked as if speaking to a stranger.

"To the one who wants our son-yes."

In time the sky grew rosy, then bright blue. Arton grew no worse, though no better. Despite their anxiety, Illyra and Lillis both leaned against the smith and dozed. Those children who normally made a noisy shambles of the nursery before breakfast were bundled off to some distant part of the house, and the family waited in silent isolation.

A black bird, not so great as the one Illyra had made of her Sight but undeniably real, cawed noisily outside the window. Illyra awoke and hoped it might be the Sight returning to her. Before she could know one way or the other, there was a furor in the hallways which ended with the appearance of the Hierarch of Vashanka, Molin Torch-holder, at the nursery entrance.

"Illyra," the priest said, ignoring everyone else in the room. Not knowing any other response, Illyra knelt before him: the priest's power was real even if his god was not. "How is the child?"

She shook her head and took Arton from Dubro's arms. "No better. He breathes, but no more than that. How do you know? Why are you here?"

Molin gave a sardonic laugh. "I had not expected to be the one answering questions. I know because I make it a point to know what is going on in Sanctuary and to find the patterns by which it can be governed. You went to the garrison. You said your son had been 'taken.' You spoke of spirits and of the Stormgod, but you did not mention Vashanka. You wanted your brother to deal with the altar, but you were going to deal with rest.

"They say you have the legendary S'danzo Sight. I'd like to know exactly what you've been Seeing." The priest did not seem surprised when Illyra's only response was to stare forlornly at the floor. "Well, then, let me convince you."

He took her gently by the arm and guided her toward a tiny atrium where the rook was already perched in a tree. Dubro rose to follow them. Two temple mutes, armed with heavy spears, convinced him to remain with the children.

"No one has betrayed you, Illyra, nor will betray you. Walegrin does not see the larger picture when he tells me the details, but you-you might see a picture even larger than my own. You have the Sight, Illyra, and you've looked at the Stormgod, haven't you?"

"The S'danzo have no gods," she replied defensively.

"Yes, but as you yourself have admitted, something has touched your son, and that something is involved with known gods."

"Not gods, godspirits-gyskourem."

"Gyskourem?" Molin rolled the word across his tongue, and the rook tried its beak on the sound as well. "Spirits? Demonfolk? No, I don't think so, Illyra."

She sighed and turned away, but spoke louder so he could still hear what no suvesh had heard before. "We have Seen the past as well as the future. Men begin the creation of gods. There is a hope, or a need; the gyskourem come, and then there is a god-until there is no hope or need anymore. When they begin, the gyskourem are like other men, or sometimes demonfolk are summoned as gyskourem, but when they are filled then they become gods truly and they are more powerful than any man or demon. The S'danzo do not hope or need, lest we call the gyskourem to us."

"So Vashanka is not the son of Savankala and Sabellia. He is the hope and need of the first battles fought by the first Rankan tribes?" The priest laughed from some secret bemusement.

"In a way. It could be so. That is the pattern, although it is very hard to see so far back as for a god such Vashanka," Illyra temporized. The man was Vashanki priest, and she was not about to tell him of the birth or death of his god.

"But not so hard to see forward, I should think. My god has fallen on hard times, hasn't he, S'danzo?" Torchholder's tone was harsh and bitter, causing Illyra to turn to face him, though she feared for her life. "Don't pretend, S'danzo. You may have the Sight, but I was there. Vashanka was ripped from the pantheon. Ils was there, but I do not think that he or his kin can fill Vashanka's void. And there is a void, isn't there? A hope? A need? The Rankan Stormgod: the Might of Armies, the Maker of Victory, isn't here anymore."

She nodded and picked nervously at the fringe of her shawl. "It has never happened before, I think. He was changing, growing, even when he was tricked and banished. There is a great web over Sanctuary, High Priest; it was there before Vashanka was banished, and it's still there now. There is much to be Seen and little to be understood." She spoke to him as she would any other querent and for a moment he looked properly chastened.

"How much hope does it take, S'danzo? How much need? Can the god of one people usurp the devotion of another?" The priest seemed to ignore her then, digging deep into the hem of his sleeve, producing a sweetmeat for the rook, which flew tamely to his wrist for the treat. When Molin began again his voice was calm.

"I came here with the Prince, thinking to build a temple. The talk in Ranke was of war with the Nisibisi, and it was not a good time for an architect-priest. I would rather lay the foundation for a temple than undermine the walls of a city. It should have been quiet. Vashanka's attention should have been drawn to the north with the war and the armies, but He was here, almost from the beginning, and I never understood that.

"Now, the war goes on without victory. The troops are disheartened, rebellious, mutinous. They have slain the Emperor along with all of his family, and mine, which they could find. Now, the war belongs to Theron, and it goes no better for him, perhaps because it was not that the Emperor was a bad war-leader but because in a forgotten backwater of the Empire a Rankan god has been banished.

"I've been left with a cesspool of a city to govern because no one else is interested or able. My temple was never built, and will not be built now. My Prince, the only legitimate heir to the Imperial throne, lives in perpetual innocence, and there are two thousand Beysin in Sanctuary, not counting snakes, birds, and fishermen, who are planning to wait here with their Empress, their gold, and their revolting customs until their goddess bestirs herself to win a war they couldn't win with their own hands and weapons back home!"

His voice rose again, and it frightened the rook, which promptly bit the hand that fed it squarely between the thumb and forefinger.

"Lately I've begun to understand that I will not be going back home," he said more softly, binding the wound with fabric from his sleeve. "Or, rather, I've been forced to accept that Sanctuary-of all the forsaken places in creation-is going to be my home until I die. I will not have my dream of dying in peace in the temple where I was born. Do the S'danzo think much of their birth-homes? I was born in the Temple of Vashanka in Ranke. My substance is one with that temple. Some part of me: my eyes, my heart, whatever, is as it was when I was born and belongs more to that temple than to me. But now, look, the bird bites me; blood flows and new skin is formed. Sanctuary skin, Illyra. For me it will always be a very small part, but for you- isn't Sanctuary within you even as the S'danzo Sight is within you?"

He had drawn her in to look at his wound, and played her with his best arguments as he would have done had she been the Emperor himself. His eyes stared into hers.

"Illyra, if you won't help me, then I can't help Sanctuary, and if I can't help Sanctuary, then it doesn't matter if you save your son. Use the Sight to look around you. There is hope, need; there is a great vacuum where Vashanka reigned "

Illyra jerked away from him. "The S'danzo have no gods. It does not matter to us which of the gyskourem becomes the Gyskouras, the new god other men bow down to."

"Before Vashanka was vanquished I made a grand ritual for Him, to consecrate his worship here, to establish Sanctuary in his eyes and, in truth, to control Him. A Feast of the Ten-Slaying and the Dance of Azuna. The girl was a slave trained in the temple in Ranke, and Vashanka was the Imperial Prince Kadakithis himself. It was, perhaps, the greatest of my offerings to the god, and my worst. The girl, remarkably, conceived, and a boychild was born not two weeks before... before Vashanka was lost. That child is" about the same age, I would guess, as your own son.

"He is a strange child, much given to anger and ill-humor. His mother and the others who care for him assure me that he is no worse than any other child his age, but I am not so sure. They say he is lonely, but he rejects all the palace children brought to him. I think, perhaps, he has needed to choose his own companions-and then, this morning, I heard of your son..." He paused, but Illyra did not complete his sentence. "Shall I give you an old Ilsigi coin like the boy gave you yesterday? Do the S'danzo only speak to gold? Is your son to be the companion to Vashanka's last son? Is he the new god I must serve, or is he the Gyskouras of some other hope which I must destroy?"

"Why do you ask these things?" Illyra repeated helplessly as the priest's words stirred the Sight within her.

"I was high priest and architect for Vashanka. I am still high priest and architect for the Stormgod-but I must know whom I serve, Illyra. And, if I must, I must try again to bring the Stormgod into an understanding with his people. I could take your son out to that altar and make a sacrifice of him; I could bring him to the palace and raise him as the god's son instead of the one I have there now. Do you understand the choices I will have to make?"

Illyra Saw the high priest's choices, all of them, as well as the gods watching nervously as gyskourem were drawn to Sanctuary's maelstrom of hope and need. The web of confusion she had Seen around the city was focused on the place where Vashanka had been and, for the moment, all other magic and intrigue were controlled by the hopes and needs which the emergent Stormgod must take into himself.

She put her hands over her ears and was unaware of her own screaming. When she was aware of anything again she was lying in the dirt of the atrium and Myrtis's cool hands were holding a damp cloth to her forehead. Dubro was glaring down at the priest with mayhem in his eyes.

"She is a strong woman," Torchholder informed the smith. "Stormgods do not choose weak messengers." He turned to Illyra. "I had not named Vashanka's last son; I had no name that was right for him. Now I think I shall make a naming ceremony for him and call him Gyskouras-at least until he chooses a different name for himself. And, Illyra, I think your son should be at that ceremony, don't you?" He summoned his servants with a snap of his fingers and left the atrium without formal farewells, the great rook shedding feathers as it struggled to clear the steep rooftops of the Aphrodisia.

"What did I tell him?" Illyra asked, taking hold of Dub-ro's hand. "He isn't taking Arton? I didn't say that, did I?"

She would never surrender her son to the priest or the gods, not even if there was the silver of true Sight in Torch-holder's request. Dubro would never understand and, above all, the S'danzo did not acknowledge the interference of gods. They would leave the town, if they had to, sneaking out at night the way Shadowspawn and Moonflower's daughter had, since the Torch had already decreed that no one would leave Sanctuary without his permission.

While she'd been with the priest, Myrtis had gotten the little boy to swallow some honeyed gruel, but when she put the child back in Illyra's arms the madam made it plain that she did not expect him to survive and, with the high priest showing such an interest, she certainly did not want him surviving or dying at the Aphrodisia.

"We will take him with us," Dubro said simply, gathering up his daughter as well and leading the way out to the Street. They could not have remained much longer at the Aphrodisia in any event.

Through years of labor Dubro and Illyra had amassed a small hoard of gold which they kept hidden where the stones of Dubro's forge became the outer wall of their homestead. But with the Beysib, and all the gold they brought with them, not even gold was as valuable as it had been and they could ill afford another day of idleness. A squall rose out of the harbor while they were walking, a sudden, damp inconvenience that should not have been remarkable in a seacoast town except that the raindrops striking Arton's face did not wash away his clouded tears but made them darker. Without saying why, Illyra clutched her son tighter and raced ahead through the storm-quieted Bazaar.

It took several days, even for the gossips and rumor-mongers of Sanctuary, to discover the coincidences: The recurrent, violent squalls; Molin Torchholder's unprecedented visit to the Aphrodisia House; and the S'danzo child who cried silent, storm-colored tears. The story that someone had smuggled an unfriendly serpent into the Snake-Bitch Empress's bedchamber had lent itself easily to lewd embellishment, while the tale that half-rotted corpses were walking the back alleys of Downwind was more frightening. But when the fifth storm in as many days dumped hundreds of fish, some as large as a man's forearm, on the porch of Vashanka's still-unfinished temple, interest began, at last, to grow.

"They're sayin' it's our fault," the apprentice said when the fire had been banked for the night and the stew was bubbling on the fire-grate. "They say it's him," the youth elaborated, glancing fearfully at Arton's borrowed cradle.

"It's the time for storms, nothing more. They forget every year," Dubro replied, digging his fingers into the boy's shoulders.

The apprentice ate his meal in silence, more frightened of the smith's infrequent anger than of the unnaturalness of the child, but he laid his pallet as far from the cradle as possible and invoked the protection of every god he could remember before turning his face to the wall for the night. Illyra took no notice of him. Her attention fell only on Arton and the honey-gruel she hoped he would swallow. Dubro sat frowning in his chair until the lad had begun to snore gently.

A single gust of wind churned through the Bazaar, then, with no greater warning, the rain thundered against the walls and shutters. Illyra blew out her candle and stared past the cradle.

"Tears again?" Dubro asked. She nodded as her own tears began to fall. '"Lyra, the lad's right: people gather by Blind Jakob's wagon and stare at the forge with fear in their eyes. They do not understand-and I do not understand. I have never questioned your comings and goings; the cards or your Sight, but 'Lyra, we must do something quickly or the town itself will rise against us. What has happened to our son?"

The huge man had not moved, nor had his voice lost its measured softness, but Illyra looked at him in white-eyed fear. She searched her mind for the right words and, finding none, stumbled across the room to collapse into his lap. The Sight had revealed terrible things, but none hurt her as much as the weariness in her husband's face. She told him everything that had happened, as the suvesh told their tales to her.

"I will go into the city tomorrow," Dubro decided when he had heard about Zip's altar, Molin's god-child, and the Stormgod's demise. "There is an armorer who will pay good gold for this forge. We will leave this place tomorrow- forever."

Another gust of wind whipped through the awning and, beyond that, the sound of a wall, somewhere, crashing down. Dubro held her tightly until she cried herself to sleep. The little oil lamp beside him guttered out before the squall had abated and the household tried to sleep.

Illyra did not know if she'd heard the crash under the awning or if she only awoke because Dubro had heard it, had shoved her aside, and was already wading into the storm and mud. By the time she lit a candle from a coal in the cooking fire, Dubro had retrieved the young man whose visit'had precipitated all their misfortune.

'Thinking to steal, lad?" Dubro growled, lifting the sewer-snipe by the neck for emphasis.

Mustering his courage. Zip twisted his leg for a kick where it would hurt the smith most and found himself thrown face-first onto the rough-wood floor for his unsuccessful effort.

"What did you want? Your gold coin?" Illyra interceded, grabbing her shawl and twirling it modestly around her as she rummaged through her boxes. "I've kept it for you." She found the coin and threw it onto the floor by his face. "Be thankful and begone," she warned him.

Zip grabbed the coin and scrabbled to his knees. "You stole Him. You cursed me and kept Him for yourself. His eyes were fire when I called Him back to me. He doesn't need me anymore!" The young man's face was torn and bloody, but the edge of hysteria in his voice came from something deeper than physical pain. "This is not enough! I need Him back." He cast the coin aside and produced a knife from somewhere around his waist.

Maniacal rage was not unknown to Illyra who had, more than once, said the wrong words to a distraught querent, but then she had been behind a solid wood table with a knife of her own. Zip lunged at her before she or Dubro comprehended the danger. The blade bit deep into her shoulder before Dubro could move.

"He'll take me back with this," Zip said in triumph from the doorway, brandishing his bloody knife before disappearing into the storm.

Zip's knife had left a small, deep wound that did not, to Dubro's eye, bleed heavily enough. They would need poultices and herbs to keep the cut from going to poison, and that would have meant Moonflower, if she'd been alive. Without Moonflower they had only their instincts to guide them until morning. Caring for Illyra was more urgent than chasing Zip. The frightened apprentice was sent to the well for clean water while Dubro carried his Illyra to their bed.

The apprentice had just set the water on the fire-grate when the doyen of the S'danzo in Sanctuary darkened the doorway. Tall, raw-boned, and bitter, she was not the e.ldest of the amoushem, the scrying-women, nor certainly the most far Sighted, but she was the most feared. Her word had prohibited Moonflower from bringing the abandoned, orphaned Illyra into her home. S'danzo and suvesh alike knew her as the Termagant and even Dubro shrank back when she made the hand-sign against evil and entered the room.

Illyra pushed herself up from the pillows. "Go away. I don't want your help."

With a loud, disdainful sniff the Termagant turned away from Illyra and plucked at the blankets in Arton's cradle. "You've brought us all to the edge of death, and only you can bring us back-only you. You See the gods, but do you ever close your eyes to look around you? No. Even Rezel-and your mother's Sight was better than your half-blood will ever be-knew better than this. Suvesh pray and meddle with magic, but they are Sightless creatures and no one notices them. When a S'danzo woman opens her eyes... Even the mightiest of gods don't have the Sight, Illyra; remember that."

The crone looked away, unwilling to say more. Illyra slumped back against the pillows, her rage and fear dampened by doubt. Rezel had never troubled to tell her toddling daughter about the S'danzo ways. Moonflower had tried, but with the Termagant herself threatening and cursing from the shadows, Illyra had learned dangerously little about the people whose gifts she used.

"I have not sought gods or gyskourem," she whispered in her own defense. "They found me."

"There're demon ships sailing the harbor; black beasts rampaging through the Maze, and the wretched storms besides. The suvesh are making themselves a war god, Illyra, and the gyskourem they draw to Sanctuary will stop at nothing to become that god. It is not the time for S'danzo to be using cards and Sight for them."

"I have not used the Sight for them. I have not had the Sight since just after my son was touched..." She would have continued, but the herbal infusion had begun to steam and the Termagant moved swiftly to make a poultice with it that took Illyra's breath away when it rested against her shoulder.

"Fool, you cursed the suvesh, not the gyskourem that drove him," the crone whispered now that Illyra alone could hear her. She glanced at Arton's cradle, her disdain replaced by naked concern. "Does he have the Sight?"

Illyra would have laughed, had it been possible. Men did not inherit the Sight, and girl-children did not know if they possessed it until well after Lillis and Arton's age.

The Termagant noticed Illyra's half-smile. "S'danzo men do not have the Sight. Who is to say what he might have. You care little enough for the S'danzo-and, maybe I did wrong to mis-See danger in you, to try to keep you and the S'danzo separate. Know this then: it has been many generations since a new god was made from the gyskourem, and never have they taken the place of so powerful a god as Vashanka. But if gyskourem are to become a god, they must first be drawn by need and sacrifice; then they must become Gyskouras-become one with a chosen mortal. It will be so, even with the new Vashanka.

"They have chosen your son as Gyskouras. Through him they have Blinded you. Gods have never been a threat to us but this one, this Gyskouras-who was your son will have the Sight, and will be invincible."

"But the Gyskouras will be Molin Torchholder's child in the temple...."

"Many men hope and sacrifice, Illyra, but there can only be one Gyskouras. It is not yet decided. One child or the other must die before the Gyskouras can emerge to be among men before becoming a god. You have loved your son. If you can't free him from the gyskourem web, then kill him before it is too late for us all S'danzo and suvesh."

She pressed the clothes against the wound and, knowing that their sting would keep the young woman speechless for some time longer, turned to her husband. "You must avenge her," she said to Dubro as she began the first of four silken stitches which would hold the wound shut. "You may wait until she recovers or dies, or you can kill him outright for the insult to all the S'danzo. She will pay, but so must the suvesh who did this to her. None of us who use the cards are safe if this is unavenged."

Dubro shook his head. "If I had caught him before he left, he would be dead, but I cannot hunt a man to the death, old woman. I will send word to the town garrison. They'll be glad enough of a reason..."

"No." Illyra struggled to sit up. "No, let him go. Let him have my blood on his altar. If it will free Alton, it's small enough price. Let him be the Gyskouras of the new Stormgod."

"He attacked a S'danzo seer; his destiny is not for gods or gyskourem to decide. The S'danzo have no gods to protect them-only vengeance!" The woman raised her hand over Illyra's face and found it caught there in Dubro's bone-crushing fist.

"She is but half-S'danzo, old woman. You and the rest cast her out before. If she does not want vengeance, then you shall not give it to her." Dubro released the old woman and shoved her through the door into the abating storm. He frowned as he wiped the tears from his wife's cheek.

"Shall I go to the barracks?" the apprentice asked into

the silence.

"Not yet. We'll wait and see what happens." Illyra slipped into sleep, but Dubro sat, staring, in his chair. At dawn he awoke his wife and told her his intentions had not changed. He would sell his forge to the armorer and quietly buy a wagon. They would be gone from Sanctuary by sundown. His wife did not argue and pretended to go back to sleep. The Termagant's medicine had done its work well; the wound was cool to the touch. Once Dubro had left, she was able to dress herself, invent chores for the apprentice, and sit on the bench beside the forge to wait anxiously for her husband's return while Lillis played in the dust at her feet.

She was dozing, almost oblivious to the ache in her shoulder and the clamor of the mid-moming bazaar around her, when a heavy shadow fell over the forge. The storms came this way: darkness, then wind and rain. Pushing herself to her feet, she told the apprentice to tie the wooden shutters closed before even looking up at the sky. The Bazaar became deathly quiet as Illyra, and everyone else, looked at the cloudless sky. Nothing could be heard but the frantic calling of great flocks of birds seeking shelter. Evening stars appeared on the horizon, then the white-gold disk of the sun could be seen in the sky-with a black disk sliding over it. Someone nearby shouted that the sun itself was being devoured. The Bazaar, and the city beyond it, which had endured more of natural and unnatural disaster in the past weeks than it cared to remember, succumbed to widespread panic.

Illyra clutched the children to her and sat transfixed as the sun shrank to a glistening crescent of light. Then, just as it seemed it would vanish forever, a halo of white fire appeared around the black sun. It was too much-in a single unfeeling movement she dragged Lillis and the apprentice inside, where they cowered on the floor beyond Alton's cradle. The darkness became a storm that swept water and mud through the open doorway. Gusts of wind lifted the awning, beat it against the stones of the forge, then bore it away. Lillis and the apprentice whimpered in tenor while Illyra tried to set an example of courage she did not feel.

The storm had begun to die down when Illyra realized her son was crying aloud. Letting the apprentice hold onto Lillis, she crawled to the cradle and looked into it. Alton had thrown off his blankets and wailed mightily, but his tears were as dark as the storm itself. She gathered him into her arms and was assaulted by something which was not Sight and yet which showed her the ravening gyskourem, fueled by the ambitions and sacrifices of men like Zip, pushing aside Alton's mortal spirit, making him and themselves together into the Gyskouras of the new Stormgod. There was Sight as well, or at least empathy. She felt her son's terror and knew that in mercy and love she should take his life before the gyskourem did, but there was something beyond that: a glimmer of hope and sacrifice that might yet succeed. Ignoring the pleas and screams of the apprentice, she wound her shawl around herself and Arton and went through the doorway into the storm.

The wind carried more smoke than rain as Illyra made her way through the overturned carts and stalls. Damage and injury were everywhere, but in the chaos no one had the time to notice a lone woman picking her way carefully toward the gates with a bundle in her arms. Fewer dwellings had been leveled in the town, but great plumes of smoke were rising in some quarters. Gangs ran through the streets, some to rescue, while others went to wrest fortune from the misfortunes of their peers. Illyra thought of Dubro, somewhere in the tangle of streets himself, but she had no time to search for him as she continued on her way to the palace.

It was not like the last time she had made her way boldly through the streets of Sanctuary. Her path was not etched in the silver clarity of Sight, and she could not have confronted the palace guards with the Sight of their destinies. But the palace, well-lit by lightning from the storm, was the largest building in Sanctuary, and the guards, busy consoling aristocrats and arresting looters, had better things to do.

Within the palace walls Illyra moved with the frantic courtiers, searching for something she could not name. Her shoulder throbbed from the strain of carrying Arton. The sense that was not quite Sight led her to a half-enclosed cloister. There, sheltered from the wind, rain, and casual glances of the palace residents, she crumpled into a comer. Tears were flowing down her cheeks when exhaustion mercifully closed her eyes and sent her to sleep.

"Barbarians!"

Illyra awoke to the echo of a shrill yell. The storm had passed, leaving in its wake brilliant blue skies and only a faint trace of smoke in the air. Her shelter had become the scene of a private quarrel between a pair she could see quite well but who could not, thanks to the patterns of bright sun and contrasting shadows, see into her comer. It was just as well: the woman was Beysib by her accent, though she seemed dressed in a modest Rankan gown, and the man was Prince Kadakithis himself. Illyra clutched Arton tightly to her, almost glad that he was once again motionless and silent.

"Barbarians! Did we not open our court while the storm still raged to hear their complaints? Did we not personally assure them that the sun has vanished before and always returns? And that the storms, whatever exactly is causing them, have nothing to do with the sun? Haven't we let them move their filthy belongings into the very courtyard of this palace?

"And did I not drape myself in great wads of cloth and pile my hair on top of my head so that they might think of me as their proper Empress?"

Illyra gulped as Kittycat shook his head. "Shu-sea, I fear you misunderstood my lord Molin."

The Beysa Shupansea, Avatar of Mother Bey and Absolute, if currently exiled. Empress of the Ancient Beysib Empire, turned her imperial back on the Prince; and Illyra, despite her awe and fear, was inclined to agree with his judgment. True, her hair and dress were Rankan-aristocrat beyond reproach, but she had painted her face with Beysib cosmetics, and the translucent, shimmering green from hairline to neckline only emphasized her Beysibness.

"Your high priest makes entirely too many points," Shupansea complained, tossing her head. A curl sprang free from her elaborate coiffure, then another, then, with a flash of rich emerald, a snake eased down her neck and under the shoulder of her dress. Sighing, the Beysa tried to entice the serpent onto her forearm.

"His point, Shu-sea, was simply that as long as the towns-folk of Sanctuary think of the Beysin and, most especially, of you, as invaders, as people totally unlike themselves ... well, it makes a sort of unity among them that never really was there before. All their violence is being directed at your people rather than at each other," the Prince explained. He reached out to touch the Beysa, but the emerald snake hissed at him. He pulled back his hand and sucked briefly on his fingertips.

Shupansea let the snake slide into a flowering bush. "Molin this... Molin that. You and he talk as if you love these barbarians. Ki-thus, they don't love you and your relatives any more than they love me and mine. Your own Imperial Throne has been usurped, and the agents of the very man who sits on it in your place are sulking through the alleys of this horrible little city. No, Ki-thus, the time has come not to show them how benevolent we are-but how merciless. They have pushed us to the very edge. They won't push us any farther."

"But, Shu-sea," the Prince said, taking her hands in his own now that the snake was gone. "That is precisely what Molin has been trying to tell you. We have been pushed to the very edge; we weren't very far from it to begin with. Your Burek clan is here in exile-hoping Divine Mother Bey will finish off your usurping cousin. I don't even have that hope. All we have is Sanctuary-but we have to convince Sanctuary that there's some reason to have us. Talk to your storyteller if you won't listen to me or Molin. Every day that passes-every storm, every murder, every broken flowerpot-just makes it that much harder for us."

The Beysa leaned on the Prince's shoulder, and for a moment both were silent. Their lives, the minutiae of survival for a prince or empress, were beyond Illyra's comprehension, but not the weariness in the Beysa's shoulder; she had felt that herself. Or the anxiety in the Prince's face- the look of a man who knows he is not quite up to the tasks he knows he must perform; that look crossed the face of everyone sooner or later.

The sudden empathy freed her Sight from whatever had held it in bondage just as the Beysa wrested free of the Prince.

"So-I will wear all this cloth, and my women as well- and we will all look like clan-Setmur fisherwomen. This is not the gentle land of Bey; I have been cold to the bone since we arrived. But, Ki-thus, I will not take you as my husband. I am the Beysa. My consort is No-Amit, the Corn-King, and his blood must be sacrificed to the land. Even if your violent barbarians would accept your death at my hands, I will not take a man I love as No-Amit only to cut his heart from his breast twelve months later."

"Not No-Amit-Koro-Amit, Storm-King. Like you said: you're not in the gentle lands of Bey anymore. Nothing has to be the way it has always been. Sanctuary may not be much, but if it's ours no one will question what we do with it.

"Besides, no matter what you think of what Molin says- you've seen that child down in the temple. You've seen his eyes when he starts the storms, and you've seen them when the storms that he hasn't started are rattling the rafters. Even your great-uncle Terrai Burek says we've got to make that child think he belongs to us and not to whatever else is raising the storms around here."

The Beysa nodded and sank onto a damp stone bench. She reached out, and the beynit serpent began a spiraling climb up her arm. "I am the Avatar of Bey. Mother Bey is within me, guiding me; She is real for me, yet I am not like that little boy. I hear him in my sleep and Bey, Herself, is disturbed. Always She has taken the conquered Corn gods-and, yes Stormgods into her bed, and always She has absorbed them into Herself.

"But this time we have not conquered the people of the Stormgod; the Stormgod was conquered without us, and we do not know what will rise in his place. Bey doesn't know. If I must take a Koro-Amit to appease this new god, then it will be the boy's true father: this Tempus Thales. I must believe that Mother Bey will take him to Her-and when it is over, I will still have you."

Both the Prince and Illyra blanched; the Prince for his own reasons, Illyra because the Sight revealed Vashanka, Tempus, and the child together in one twisting, godlike apparition.

"Molin will kill me if he finds out that not only am I not that little demon's father but that Tempus is. And, Shu-sea, if half the stories of Tempus Thales are true, when you cut out his heart he'll just grow a new one. I'd rather you cut my heart out than think of you bound to Tempus and his son. I never foresaw what would happen when I sent Tempus to take my place at the Great Feast of Ten Slaying-but I won't run away from it now."

Illyra Saw, however, both the truth of the Prince's confession and the holocaust which would follow Tempus's ravishment of Shupansea-if that Sight were allowed to happen. Visions of war and carnage gripped her, but the Sight showed a single, silver path that led out of her comer.

"I can help you," she announced as she stepped into the sunlight.

The Beysa screamed, and the Prince, unmindful of the agitated serpent on her arm, pushed her behind him to confront Illyra alone. Calmly, patiently, and with the certainty of Sight around her, Illyra told the Prince that they had met before-when he had taken Walegrin's oath and almost immediately given Walegrin's gift, an Enlibar steel sword, to Tempus. Kadakithis, whether he truly remembered Illyra or not, was sufficiently impressed with her display of S'danzo prowess to take Arton in his own arms and lead the way to Molin Torchholder as she requested.

They found the priest not far from the nursery, giving orders to the frightened women who were the child's nursemaids. He looked first at the Beysa and the Prince, then at Illyra, and finally at the bundle in Kadakithis's arms. Illyra looked at the huge black bird preening its wings above the doorway and remembered she had Seen something like this before, at the Aphrodisia House-just before she had left to find her half-brother, who worked for the priest-and had forced herself to forget it.

"You have won," Illyra acknowledged. There were other parts of that vision as well. "I cannot watch Sanctuary be destroyed. I will not see with my eyes what I See in my heart. I should have given him to you before. He is dying now; it may be too late...."

"I could have taken him," Molin reminded her gently. "I have neither Sight nor, at the moment, a god. Still, it did not seem right that I could help that child in there become what he must become if Sanctuary is to survive if I stole your son from you. I had to believe that somehow you would understand and bring him to me. If I could still believe that, then I do not think it could be too late. Take your child in your arms again and come." He turned and ordered the door to the nursery to be opened.

Chaos reigned in the nursery. Tom pillows lay everywhere. Feathers clung to the nursemaids, and the weary-looking woman who appeared to be the child's mother was inspecting a deep-purple bruise on her arm. The child himself turned to glare at his visitors and discarded a half-empty pillow in favor of a short wooden sword. He charged at Illyra.

"Gyskouras! Stop!" Molin thundered. The boy, and everyone else, obeyed. The little sword clattered to the marble floor. "That is better. Gyskouras, this is Illyra, who has heard your crying." Though he held still, the boy met the priest's eyes with a cold defiance no one else would have dared. "She has brought her son to be with you."

Illyra pulled the blankets back from her son's face, unsurprised that his eyes were open. She kissed him, and thought he smiled at her, then she knelt down an allowed the children to see each other.

The child whom Molin had named Gyskouras had eyes which were truly frightening when confronted face-to-face, but they softened when Arton smiled and reached out with his hand to touch the other's face. The gyskourem were gone; even the shifting images of Vashanka and Tempus were gone-there were only Gyskouras and Arton.

"Will you leave him here with me?" Gyskouras asked. "My mother will take care of him until my father gets here."

He took no notice of the Prince and, fortunately, for the moment Molin was taking no notice of him. Illyra set Alton, already struggling from his blankets, onto the floor and stood up just in time for the room to contain an eruption of a different sort, as Dubro, Walegrin, and a half a dozen Beysib guards squeezed through the doorway. But by then Gys-kouras was showing Arton how to hold the sword. The smith could accept, even if he could not wholly understand, that his son belonged here now, and however painful and unpleasant the consequences might be, things were better than they might have been.