Lamp Medusa + Players of Hell, page 13
“Do you have coin of Zetri?” asked the woman. “A scut will do it—that’s the small copper piece.”
“My coin is all of Periareth,” responded Tassoran. “Yet I think this metal is as good as that stamped with the Ebon Tower.” And he drew out a handful of copper and silver coins.
The woman plucked out a slightly larger copper piece than he had expected her to choose, and he frowned.
Catching his frown, the woman added, “Coin of Periareth, held by a man not of Periareth. Young sir, it is a mystery to me. Perhaps it might be a mystery worth solving, should a Hawk Guard of the Lady pass near by…
“I have no fear that guardsmen seek me, woman,” Tassoran said, then suddenly realized what she must have meant. It might be important to know the common folk were this sharp here. “Why do you call my land in question?”
“Why, you wear scarlet cloth, though it is faded with your wanderings, young sir. Never did man—nor woman neither —of that land wear scarlet on their person, for it is a doomful thing to wear the sign of blood and death…”
Tassoran said nothing, but his smile slowly faded.
The woman had pocketed the copper coin, and had placed a fresh-cut slab of roast groundpig on a brazier to char one side more fully, in the Kazemi manner.
“Yes, lad, I’d either change that garb you are so happy to affect,” the woman said, deftly picking the ‘sizzling meat up with the point of a sharp knife, and depositing it on a worn but clean platter of unornamented wood. “Oh, yes, indeed,” she chattered on, “change the clothes, or see to changing the money, with some discreet gentleman.”
It was now almost irritating to be held here by this woman lecturing him on his costume and his coinage, but he was held there first by one thought, and then by several others that came to him as he questioned the woman.
“I speak frankly to you, woman, as you have to me. How is it that no one made mention of these curious anomalies to me before, along my journeyings?”
“Periareth is a distant land and not much traded with by other lands and peoples, good young sir, which I do not doubt is why it occurred to you one day to pick it. But even a clever young Kazemi owes it to himself to study that on which he wishes to base his deceptions. No doubt there have been a silent few, a very few, who saw through your poor veilings—but rest easy, most could not have known.”
“I will not hide that this thought causes me some concern, nonetheless, good mother,” Tassoran said, partly falling into the Kazemi mode of address when he saw that secret too was known.
“I would not have mentioned it, fair youth,” said the woman, adapting the stiff clipped accent of Kazemi with some difficulty, “had I no remedy to propose. You might speak with Chaniven Dzar. He is not a kinsman of mine nor a landsman of ours,” she added hastily, seeing his protest about to break out in words. “He is not a very good man at all, perhaps, but he is fair to those he thinks he must be fair to. You will find him where this path meets the Magicians’ Wideway.”
“Why do you tell me this?” he asked directly, more curious than suspicious.
“I have not seen a fair Kazemi youth in many years, lad,” said the stout woman, with a rueful grin. “Why I live in this troubled land I do not know, but the simplest fact is that I am far from home and likely to remain here till my square of earth is cleared and hollowed for my body. I like your face, young sir, and your adacity, and you should not carry coins of Periareth when you’re dressed in blood…
Tassoran laughed. “Good mother, thanks for your warm counsel. He reached for the woman’s hand, kissed it with a flourish of his cap in his free hand, then let go the now blushing woman’s hand, picked up the wooden platter with the slab of roast groundpig, and looked about for one of the free tents.
Chaniven Dzar bore an uncanny resemblance to Nezzei, that castled lord of the Ninashon Marches whose current reknown in the near lands was that he was the former owner of the two finest diamonds in the Marches. Tassoran regretted the stout woman’s advice, at the same time he realized he was merely starting at phantasms.
Besides, it was part of the price to pay for being a thief by trade—that one must at times deal honestly with honest men, a great strain on your true thief, as Tassoran not only knew, but believed.
The irony that gripped was in selling a handful of outland coins, filched by hunger’s necessity from a true Periari, to a man who so closely resembled the lord whose gems were presently sewn with great care inside the leathern buckle of his swordbelt…
“Periareth? They are true in their alloys and meltings there. Let me see…” Chaniven Dzar took several coins, seemingly at random, and squinted at them up close. He bit one, examining the dent with sour satisfaction, and set several others on a small balance tray for weighing.
Presently Chainven Dzan smiled slightly.
“They are good coins. In service to a family from thence, eh? They were good masters, were they?”
“Excellent and gentle,” said Tassoran, “and what are the names and values of the coins of Zetri you are going to render me?”
Chaniven Dzan widened his smile a trifle. “We have coins of only two metals in Zetri, silver, a half-silver alloy, and copper. The large silver coin is standard weight, in the measure common in the lands set west of the High Mountains. The large copper coin is likewise a standard weight of copper. The other coins explain themselves. From highest value down, they are in sequence of the orders of nobility in this land, as, a queen, the large silver coin; a consort is the small. You will know them by the insignia on the obverse, and by the traditional Xalis numbering on the reverse…”
During the lecture, Tassoran inclined his head courteously to Chanivan Dzan, and did not inquire into the details of the transformation of fifteen large silver coins of Periareth to ten large silver coins of Zetri, and the like percentages with his other coins. It was to be expected, since, as they both seemed to know, how could Tassoran have been in the employ of Periareth and still affect to wear scarlet?
There was a clamor from outside Chanivan Dzan’s tent, where others who desired to do business with the changer stood impatiently. Tassoran nodded again and departed.
“A fair dealer for such as I,” he thought to himself, “but he looks too much like Nezzei for me to wish myself frequently in sight of him…”
Now Tassoran strode along the crowded Magicians’ Wideway, allowing the motion of the clamoring throngs to dictate his movements here and there.
This was one of the half dozen major Wideways, but Tassoran realized quickly that it was really quite misnamed. For there were gathered only lesser workmen in the trying arts, mere journeymen of wonder, apprentices to mysteries so far beyond them that they were content to stop here and vend their tiny foolish wares.
Here were dark-visaged lads casting clouds of dust into the air, for goggling countryfolk to marvel at the resulting momentary vision of some lovely face.
Tassoran, himself possessing no hidden lore save for that pressed on him in the last two days by Shagon (and save for an old and probably useless amulet that he had carried since he was ten), was yet well aware that true masters of the art of casting dust could hold the dust picture motionless for as long as needful. Not only that, but he had heard the deepest masters could actually conjur the dread aspects of the future.
Here among the multitudes in the square were the proud, blue-turbaned tiKhaz tribesmen, none less than six and a half feet tall. In the way of the tiKhaz no youth may live who has reached his seventeenth year and is not that tall, and the maidens must be six feet at that time.
Tassoran wondered, as he had fruitlessly many times before, just what were the mysterious ways in which the tiKhaz went about disposing of the mis-sized members of their blood.
There seemed an infinite variety of people and dress. Here and there a few times he even caught sight of an occasional Spellmaster of Sezain. Briefly he wondered how much he really knew about his temporary master Shagon’s hideous brotherhood’s involvement in the morrow eve’s events.
Perfumes from Yush and Ophni and Sazinor filled the air, as a half dozen sweating apelike half-men of Mevorthim bearing a silken-covered litter riotous with rich flower colors came trotting through the crowds, grunting harshly on every fifth cadence to warn those ahead that a high lady of the Queen’s Quarters was approaching.
Even the grey-cowled Spellmaster whom Tassoran had seen, some moments earlier, had stepped aside for the litter, forcing those near him into desperate pushings and shovings to keep from touching his ominous grey robe.
Tassoran had never believed the stories of the Mevorthim half-men, but when a clumsy bystander tripped forward into the litter’s path, the fifth half-man turned out to be the epitome of his kind. For in one savage slash he opened the man’s stomach full open with a stone knife, then ripped out the man’s throat with his teeth.
The half-man worried at the dead man’s throat for a moment, then cast the body aside as the fifth-cadence grunt came round with a harsh whoosh. Moments later he was back at his odd-man position helping with the litter-bearing, and the group trotted steadily away, among a ripple of silence along the Magicians’ Wideway.
With some reluctance the crowd reformed in a sprawl over the wideway, though the bleeding hulk was avoided.
Tassoran stood transfixed for minutes, till the arrival of a Hawk Guard and two naked prisoners to carry off the body and dispose of it.
Did he seriously intend to walk through the halls of the palace of the woman who ruled this land and who was responsible for that?
Stolidly the naked prisoners hoisted the body, dripping with blood, and turned to disappear into the crowd at a command of the Hawk Guard.
Tassoran realized he was not able to think useful thoughts on his project at the time, and went on, reluctantly, till the Magicians’ Wideway crossed the Jewelers’, shortly thereafter.
Eagerly he turned to take the new route, hardly realizing where he was but happy to be removed from magicians once more.
Along the Jewelers’ Way at regular intervals stood posted guards, armed with crossbows which—so Shagon had warned him that morning—had been charmed at the hand of the eighth Lady Tza herself, the charm to be that the crossbows should work without mechanical fault.
It was a sensible precaution, crossbows being what they were, especially when they were guarding tents filled with riches garnered from all the New Lands.
Here were displayed precious and semiprecious gems and stones, both natural and worked in cunning fashion. Necklaces and bracelets, rings and brooches and tiaras, boxes of unworked rubies, and sacks of topaz, heaps of pearls—and solemn-faced guardsmen, crossbolts ready, sun glinting on plain steel cuirasses and shimmering on the bronze hawk helmets of the Lady’s Guards.
There was no temptation here for a wary lad eager to remain a free master thief!
Not that he did not gain, for as he passed through the byways, conversing here, arguing here, discussing elsewhere, he learned that, perhaps here at the sign of the Emerald Towers, or there at the sign of the golden Road, a man with valuable secrets, such as diamonds, could find himself in potentially excellent circumstances…
But—there was Shagon’s plan. Failure or success, it meant there would be small likelihood Tassoran could soon show face again in Zetri. And then too, the devlet was gone—if he could trust Shagon, but there had been no signs of the monster—so there was no need to hurry the transaction.
A sound of distant horn, a drumming and skirling, broke into Tassoran’s reflections on his trade and future, and he looked around to see that he had drifted to another block of shops hawking foods plain and exotic.
At some distance was a tented tavern, in front of which stood the same three musical fellows that had welcomed Tassoran to the marketplace hours earlier.
He shrugged his troubles away and made cheerfully for the tavern.
In the open flap of the tent appeared a girl.
“Away,” she commanded the three musicians. “Master 119 says, ‘Iala, we have no customers because that squalling drives them away before they dare to enter!’ Away with you then, and let honest people do their honest work!’
The three stood their ground. But Tassoran could tell that they would have to give way, it being the custom in marketplaces that those with no tent must not remain by one whose owner objected, whatever his reason. Obviously the custom was held to in Zetri.
As Tassoran came up to them unnoticed, the ten-year-old signed, and started to pick up his gnar-skin drum. Habu, had his name been? wondered Tassoran.
“Hold, there, lass,” Tassoran shouted. “I crave some strong chill ale and perhaps some food with it, and I am most contented in my eating and my drinking if music be played nearby. Let them remain, if you would please me.”
Unexpectedly the girl scowled at him darkly a moment, giving her prettiness a new sly gamine charm.
Then she looked closer at him, while the musicians nudged each other; everyone was silent for a moment.
Tassoran laughed, and jingled his purse. The girl Iala started. “Come, come,” he said, still laughing, “let us inside and to it, eh?”
He reached in his purse and tossed the drummer a large copper coin, by its markings worth a dozen tunes. “Music, lads!”
Nothing loathe, well remembering their man’s generosity from earlier in the day, they struck up the tune he had liked so well then.
He laughed and entered the cool gloom of the tent, to find himself face to face with the girl.
He looked down at the pert face, noting the flash of almost animal intensity hiding in her pale blue eyes and the odd cut of her hair, as golden as his own.
She was beautiful, with a strange smile that intrigued as it puzzled him.
At least it wasn’t puzzling that he intended to spend a few hours at the least in this cool tent, with those blue eyes flashing at him, and many smiles…
CHAPTER FOUR: The Black Mist
Konarr rubbed his newly shaven chin as he watched the young thief enter the tavern tent after the lovely serving maid.
“A stupid job, this,” he thought to himself, and muttered several choice curses. The musicians remained outside, and continued playing their wretched music.
Konarr’s head ached with the wails of the black-skinned boy’s skirlings, which he neither liked nor understood. He pressed his hand to his forehead for a moment, and cursed again to feel the grotesquely foppish cap he wore, drooping low over his forehead almost to his eyes, in the latest fashion for men of the Lady Tza’s court.
Durrekal—it was hard after twenty years to call the man Zantain—had insisted on the disguise, pointing out that the young love to remember the faces behind the swords they have met. So there was nothing for it but to hack off his beard, don foolish hat and foppish clothing, wear narrow uncomfortable boots that broke his characteristic soldier’s stride into an unfamiliar kind of awkward hobble.
It must have worked, Konarr realized by now, for Tasso-ran had not given sign of recognizing him, even though the shifting crowds had brought them almost face to face several times.
“He will not expect to see you, in the first place,” Zantain had said. “And, dressed like a nincompoop of the court as you are, he will not give you a second glance even should his eye light on you.”
“Nincompoop indeed,” Konarr had muttered angrily, damning Zantain and himself for the humiliation he felt. “If any of my men were to see me like this, and recognized me, I should have to fight each man in my entire Free Company before I should be permitted to lead them again!”
“Then it is fortunate you have revoked all leaves and passes during your absence on your own leave,” said Zantain equitable. “You need not fear being recognized by anyone «, who knows you, not looking like that!”
Now it was getting late in the afternoon. Shadows were lengthening from the low towers of the Patricians’ Quarter, west of the marketplace.
Hunger and thirst gnawed at Konarr’s vitals. Being unskilled at tracking a man through city ways, he had not dared to take his eyes from Tassoran long enough to order a platter of food and to drink a stoup of ale.
But now he felt he understood the lad and his movements much better. It was reasonably certain that the fellow would stay in that tavern tent long enough for a starving soldier to wolf down a few bites of meat and gravy-soaked bread, and wet it down with rich brown ale.
He waited a moment to see that Tassoran would not immediately reemerge from the tavern.
Then he walked slowly past it, attempting to show as little overt interest as possible in the glimpse through the tent flap of a young man with his arms round a girl’s waist, with the sound of laughter in two voices.
He sighed to himself, feeling a wave of inexplicable longing almost overwhelm him.
Then he walked on past the tavern to another nearby.
Tassoran laughed, half-intoxicated with the strong wine he had drunk, and the touch of the girl as he held her close.
But one quick kiss, and Iala darted away, laughter in her intense blue eyes.
“Nay, now,” she said, “your money buys music, it buys drink, and even food. Thus your soul and body are tended to—do not think you can buy mine!”
He laughed again and shook his head. “It is too early in the day besides, fair miss,” he said, chuckling.
A chunk of bread still stood on his platter, one forlorn piece amidst a small body of gravy. He seized the bread and vigorously attempted to sop up the entirety of the gravy with it, and very nearly managing.
Then he stood up.
“I have much to see to today,” he announced, and allowed himself to be pleased to think the girl’s face fell.
He placed a large worn silver queen down on the table beside the platter, lifted the small cup of wine and drained off what remained, and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The coin was three times what the meal was worth, at the least. He felt a qualm, then reminded himself that he was a master thief with two peerless diamonds in his belt and a plan to steal a great and powerful magic artifact…he could afford it, and he would not soon return to Zetri after tomorrow night…
