Magic in Ithkar (21 page)

A dissonant roar bounced from the loom-strings. All the tavern crockery shattered, benches and tables split. As Chond took breath for a third bane, the song-loom’s discord smashed into him, knocked his wind from him, and threw him on his knees.

Day shine burned away the green-lightning fog, and the Joyous Goblet settled on its foundations again. Qella snapped awake and scrambled behind Qazia, who still thrust her wine-shimmering dagger protectively out.

“Master,” shouted Hearmo, “we’re neutralized!”

“So I have learned,” Chond agreed, rising to his feet. “Mouse-brain! Why didn’t you warn me this place was shielded?”

“It isn’t!” protested the ferret-fetch. “Qazia knows by instinct which metals to use against us.”

Qazia began to laugh. A few minutes later Qella and Virmith joined in. But Hoel remained a feebly breathing huddle on the floor.

Hearmo’s weasel-whiskers twitched in a grimace, and the ferret-fetch tried in vain to lift one link of silver chain in a paw. “Master, you’ll have to bargain. These people won’t release me, and they’ll kill Hoel rather than give him to you.”

After a long glare at Qazia’s wine-flashing blade, Chond gruffed, “Well, vomit-mopper, what do you want?”

“I’ll trade your wight for Hoel!”

“Urrr!” muttered the wizard. “Give up Ryddeg’s brat, he’ll have more chance to kill me. But if give up Hearmo, lose half my powers. Either way bad choice. Urrr!”

His mumbles were indecipherable, but all awaited his decision. Qazia and Virmith maintained their guard; Qella relaxed enough to emerge from the shelter of Qazia’s skirts. But Hoel’s breathing grew more shallow, and he began to resemble a freshly dead corpse. Hearmo strained forward as far as the silver fetters allowed, trying to follow Chond’s thoughts.

At last the wizard nodded sharply. “Done. But only on condition that you free my ferret-fetch yourself.”

“Oh, no!” retorted Qazia. “I don’t intend to be jumped! Virmith, you unlock Chond’s wight.”

Scowling, and in slow motion, the smith unshackled Hearmo.

Scampering at once to Chond’s side, the ferret-fetch shrilled, “Thank you, most gracious master!”

Hoel moaned at the sudden restoration of movement and air to his stifled lungs, flexed his cramped arms and legs, and felt for an object to orient himself. His fingers blundered against the frame of his song-loom. By the time he started tuning the warp and weft, he was on his feet.

“Play a war song, quick,” whispered Qazia.

Under the cover of a loud rendition of “Gyrech’s March,” Hoel asked, “Why’d you want a song?”

“Song-loom sound seems to nullify Chond’s spell-casting.”

“If I’d known that, I’d have avenged my father long ago.”

“I discovered it by accident just now. Chond didn’t know it, either.”

Neither wizard nor ferret-fetch paid attention to the other persons in the room. Hearmo kept trying to perch on Chond’s shoulder, and the wizard brushed his creature off every time. Finally, Chond growled, “Stop clutching me, ant-brain! I saved your hide because you’re more valuable than you know. Now get off, and let me think!”

“That’s it!” Qazia hissed in Hoel’s ear. “Chond can’t attack us because the silver chains weakened his wight, and because Virmith and I carry naked steel. The ferrety wight probably contains a good part of Chond’s powers.”

Qella whimpered, “Chond’s scheming!”

“Just let him try!” reassured Virmith, with a threatening feint of hammer.

“Only one way to stop Chond permanently,” Qazia whispered to Hoel. “Make his wight desert him. We must convince the wight Chond doesn’t really love it. Can you improvise a taunt?”

Hoel’s hands poised over the song-loom and a snickering trill of thread-chords launched his jeer:

“Chond made a ferret wight
And Hearmo was its name.
Chond gave to Hearmo
Half his black spells’ bane.
Yah!

Hearmo thought Chond loved it.
Chond cared only for Hearmo’s power to witch.
If Hearmo ever finds that out,
Chond’s magic strength will be in doubt.
Yah!”

As the mocking melody dimmed, Hearmo tugged at Chond’s robe, arguing in an urgent yammer.

Hoel listened, his song-loom tight in the curve of his arm, while Qazia, Qella, and Virmith watched the wight quarrel with Chond.

The wizard snatched the ferret-fetch by its neck scruff, shook it a few times, and thundered, “Yes, you have half of my powers inside your weasel-shape! But if you don’t stop pestering me, I’ll turn you back to burnt ermine fur, and create a more docile fetch!”

Hearmo screeched, squirmed around in Chond’s grasp, and bit Chond’s right thumb at the root, almost severing it. Chond jerked his bitten hand and lost his hold on Hearmo’s neck.

Hearmo slashed at Chond with all four sets of claws, jumped clear, and landed on Qazia’s shoulder, chittering, “You thinged me, Chond, like you tried to thing Hoel! I’ll never give you back your powers, never! I renounce you! You’re a ratling! I shred you and eat you!”

Even as the bane tumbled from the ferret-fetch’s mouth, Chond of Grimkeep shrank from urso wizard-thane to a corpulent black rat that struggled to get its legs under itself to run. Hearmo swooped down from Qazia’s shoulder, broke the rat’s spine with a single crunch of jaws, and swallowed the former wizard whole.

“Bravo, ferret wight, that’s the best deed you’ve done since Chond made you!” cried Virmith, setting his hammer at ease on the floor.

Hearmo ran his tongue around his mouth, brushed whiskers, and asked, “Tavern-mistress, may I have a goblet of your strongest Jerezian? Chond’s aftertaste is very bad.”

“You ate Chond of Grimkeep?” Hoel exclaimed. “How my father must be laughing, wherever his soul is!” He struck up his ballad again:

“The wizard-thane of Grimkeep
Is bested now at last.
His ferret-fetch turned on him,
Devoured him with powers vast.”

“A round of Jerezian for all, Qella!” cried Qazia. “Aye, tavern-mistress. May I fetch the ferret wight a double ration, since he saved the Joyous Goblet?” Qazia nodded.

With a shrug, the ferret-fetch protested, “I just got mad at Chond. He wouldn’t thank me for serving him like a good fetch. I’m glad I ate him; it’s the first real meal I’ve had since I was made.”

Hoel stilled his song-loom and chuckled.

Virmith the smith held out his goblet of Jerezian and declared, “May evil always lose its tongue!”

Clinking her goblet to his, Qazia responded to his toast, “May bad ends always be well sung!”

The sweat ran down from his armpit in a chilling tickle. When he rose from his knees later, it would mix with his hair shirt and be this chilly morning’s reminder of his sacrilege and crimes. Thotharn and lust! Did those stupid priests really believe he wore the horrible scourge next to his skin because he was penitent? False bastards—they’d wear one only to appear saintly when they were run over by a cart or assassinated by a lord in the Shrine of the Three Lordly Ones. Fools! They would lie beneath the wheels below everyone’s notice, and what mighty lord could be bothered with a priest?

Brother Jerome hunched further into his pain, knowing from experience that his bent frame would conceal the gold candlestick tied to his chest. His brethren called him “the Huncher” because of his odd kneeling. He almost didn’t suppress a chuckle. They teased but thought him impossibly devout. In their blind, false piety, they never guessed that he had for many mornings now been prayerfully wrapped around piece after piece of soft gold stolen from the temple’s dusty treasure vault. Even the fearful sweat that constantly glazed the center of his tonsure was thought the product of his intense devotion and prayer.

Fools, thought Jerome. Pious, unsuspecting dolts. Even the high priest, with his supposed grand education and pompous pronouncements, had been fooled.

Just the other morning, the high priest had condescended to speak to him. “Ah, Brother Jerome, up before everyone again. Pacing the halls like a curled saint, praying, praying, praying. You must be kinder to yourself. Straighten your shoulders, your back. Those we worship have no need of red-eyed and stooped servants.” Jerome felt a wave of goodwill stab through him. That damned badge. He fought the feeling down. Long ago he’d learned to resist the high priest’s hypnotic Lordly Ones amulet. Silence and deadly purpose were his defense. Let him and the others think that their sanctimonious posturings and pat conclusions were omnipotent: “Ah ’tis the devote Jerome, mumbling his way through the rolls of the Songs of Summoning, stalking the halls, bent with his eyes on his dirty toenails.”

Damn their laughter. Damn the high priest; his rewards would come anyway. For too long he’d indulged in the spices, wool, jewels, and fur that wandered up and down the Ith. The fat pig would learn when the next noble visited for a token Holy Ten-day appearance that the purest of the precious gold was gone, his storeroom shelves marked with dust-free shapes and empty cases. Jerome had so wanted to stand straight for the bloody ass. What fun it would have been to watch the false beatitude drop from his fat face when he saw a temple treasure outlined beneath his robe! Jerome had even wished, as he’d lain each night on his pallet hating, that he could be there when the high priest opened the door and saw his losses; but by then the Ithkar Fair would be over, the lustful fleeced, and he on his way to take care of
her!

Devotions over, Jerome rose carefully, straightening only at the knees, to leave the bare resident chapel with the other priests. Despite the high priest’s stern presence, there were the usual whispers and muffled chuckles as they made their ways back to their cells for the morning’s hour of solitary meditation. Being careful to avoid the spaces between the ill-fitted flagstones and the worn curves on the stairs, Jerome made his way along the too familiar route to his only private place. It wouldn’t do to stumble now, not when he was so close to his goal. He again chuckled to himself when he realized that if he fell, he’d clank when he hit, a topheavy thief with a golden breast.

He did pause in the soft breeze of late summer to look out through the arched windows of the cloister across the rolling green hills. In the distance he could see the preparations for the fair. Dominating it all was the undeniable majesty of the Shrine of the Three Lordly Ones. The silver Ith, its filth hidden by sun and distance, ribboned the far boundary. The skeletons of the rising tents, soon to capture more colors than the rainbow; the permanent, more spacious stalls of the guilds, even the gray edifice of the stone workers’ hall of statuary. Wagons of traveling players already ringed the shrine and turned it into a giant pinwheel. Off to the side a young boy and girl performed tricks on a galloping pony; the distance made them look like centaurs. Jerome even thought he saw the spinning flashes of the axes thrown by a juggler practicing his art and the sharp flashes of the controlled fire of a trained dragon. He looked for one wagon in particular and was both angered and relieved when he couldn’t find it.

“ ’Tis a beautiful sight, is it not, Jerome?” remarked Brother Sadmust, the heal-all.

Jerome brushed by. “Eh, Sadmust, I must, I must, go to my cell . . . my prayers, the souls of sinners, my soul, my brethren. I will come by after the fair, after all the responsibilities of so many visiting souls are done.”

“My pardon, I did not mean to keep you, but the high priest and I are . . .” Sadmust’s words echoed along the vaulted corridor; Jerome was already picking his careful way toward his cell. Sadmust stared at the departing back: a strange man, unquestionably devout, but disquietingly different from the monastery’s usual population. And that poor, sad back. How cruel that the priests mocked his piety before all. It would not be a happy fair for him. Sadmust nearly followed but thought better. Still, he must have another chat with the high priest about Jerome. Try to convince him that Jerome’s piety deserved to be treated as more than a comical curiosity.

Jerome leaned his back against the door to his cell. Gods, it was good to straighten up. Almost inadvertently a groan escaped his lips; he repeated it. Oddly, it helped ease the poisoned stomach he had endured since she’d left him for the ragtag guardian-wizard. “Ooooww.” He let it escape slowly. Better, a bit better, though never gone. He retched as he did most mornings and had to hold his hands above his head to stop from puking. Let them listen and marvel again at his agony for the world’s pain. This was his pain, his to keep, to hold, to nurture.
Sweet pain, sweet moan. Cursed woman, soft, beautiful woman, firm breasts, warm quilts, wonderful hunger, caring
— Stop, fool! Again she had seduced the revelry from him. Again he clenched his teeth against the love that crept within him without cause, without reason. He must deny her, he must survive.
Reason?
spoke something within him;
Purpose?
it asked again.

Jerome spoke again to his constant haunter. “It will pass; I will be healed; it will be better; I will one day be free of her. There will be payment. ...” From a deep, secret place within him, there rose a sardonic chuckle, and Jerome snapped his head sharply back and forth to rid himself of his own voice, to rid himself of the feeling that he would never be whole again.

“I will be healed, but not by the butcher of a barber in the town with his faded red-and-white pole, nor by that meddling Sadmust. That fool of a heal-all; he doesn’t even believe in bleeding. If there was blasphemy, that Sadmust was in it up to his nostrils. No humors, what a turd! All I’ll need is enough money to be bled by an expert. All that ails me is too much black bile. A balanced system, microcosm matching macrocosm—then I’ll be free of her and the pain.”

For the moment, he was almost free of his stomach and his aching back had begun to stretch out. ...
She used to rub it
— Stop! He ripped his robe and hair shirt over his head in one motion. Lords! He nearly dropped the Y-shaped rod, that noise would be hard to explain. He rubbed his blood-streaked chest with grease he’d taken from the kitchen. It provided little relief, but its smell did contribute to his reputation as a denier of the flesh.