The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (28 page)

Klikitagh!

Jarveena clapped hand to forehead. How was it possible? All day, since finding herself back at Melilot's, she had thought of nothing but cargo manifests and market prices and percentages! And^ the fat one had not even commented on her willingness to spend the time with him, when normally she would have been with the magician . . .

And sundown now impended!

"No! No!" she cried. "Don't hold me back an instant more!"

Incontinently she took to her heels,

The way from the harbor to Prytanis Street had never seemed so long, or so beset with moving obstacles. She lost count of the number of people she jostled against, the number of futile curses that were hurled after her. the times she herself cursed patrolmen shouting to know why she was running, imagining her to be a thief or cutpurse fleeing from her latest victim.

Somehow, though, they realized: she was not running away from, but toward . . .

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The twin pillars of her destination loomed in the gloaming, accorded a wide berth by the foot passengers on their way to sunset service at the nearby temples. And small wonder. At the foot of each reposed a sleep ing basilisk, secured at neck and leg with silver chains. As Jarveena rushed toward them, they became alert. Heads raised, they snuffed the air and listened, pondering in their slow reptilian way whether or not to open their eyes and cast their petrifying glare upon her.

Enas Yorl had said, "I'll teach you how to call them by name—"

But he hadn't!

She stopped dead, searching the corridors of memory. No! She had no idea what she must say!

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"He forgot!" she moaned, clenching her fists in rage.

And then, suddenly, she heard a groaning, grinding sound that made the pavement shudder underneath her feet. Looking up, she saw that the bronze door of the palace was sliding open, revealing a hall full of lumi nescent mist. And on its threshold—

"Klikitagh!" she exclaimed.

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Still in the homespun robe, barefoot, he seemed to respond to her cry. Shaking his head, he staggered down the five marble stairs that fronted the doorway. He accorded Jarveena a brief glance, but it was vacant, as though she meant no more to him than any chance-met passerby.

"Klikitagh?" she said again, uncertainly.

He struck her aside with violence, and staggered off into the darkness. In a moment the throng of temple-bound worshipers concealed him from Jarveena's view, while their chattering drowned out her shouts.

"Death and destruction!" she exploded. She spun on her heel and dashed up the marble steps, desperate to pass the door before it ground shut again.

The basilisks relaxed; lay down; resumed their former immobility.

She was inside the misty hall before she realized what had happened A great metallic slam announced the final closure of the door. She was alone, and more terrified than she had ever expected to be again in this life. The mist, though bright, was dense; she could not make out the walls. When she glanced down, she could barely see her own two feet.

Abruptly she was gripped with pure cold rage.

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"Enas Yorl!" she shouted. "Damn you! What have you done?"

Her surroundings shifted in unpleasant fashion, as though someone had taken normal space in either hand and given it a spiral twist. She felt she was about to lose her balance, though the weight remained on her soles. Clawing her knife from its scabbard, she prepared for an attack, knowing even as she clasped the hilt that any physical action here must be pointless.

Then the mist cleared, and she recognized the subterranean hall where she had first met Enas Yorl against her will. There was the table so long it could have seated the entire nobility of Sanctuary; there was the caped figure seated at its farther end; and all around her she heard echoes that brought shivers to her spine, as of cantrips which had set the thick stone walls to ringing like a new-stuck bell.

She stood as immobile as on that first occasion, this time not by con straint, purely from her mingled fear and anger.

"You failed!" she accused.

Her words, themselves echoing along the monstrous room, drove away the fainter echoes. At long last Enas Yorl bestirred himself.

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"No," he said in a thin voice. "I succeeded."

"What?" Jarveena took a pace toward him. It seemed not to diminish the distance that separated them; in any case, she had no wish at this moment to be in his presence at all, let alone come closer. "Then why did Klikitagh brush past me without a sign of recognition—worse: shove me out of his way like a persistent streetwalker?" Recollections crowded in.

"Besides, you said that if you did succeed, he'd die!"

"Yes, so I did. Nonetheless . . ."

As she stood striving to unriddle the mystery, he heaved a sigh.

"Come hither. I'll explain."

The hall and table contracted to more customary dimensions; in a twinkling she found herself where she had been at daybreak, seated in the same chair. Unseen hands, as ever, had set it behind her knees just as she was about to lose her self-control completely.

Cautiously she returned her knife to its sheath, staring at the magician. But for the emberlike glow underneath his brows one could not have guessed this to be the same personage. His arms, in particular, were far too flexible. His? Might one not better say its?

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But the voice remained, and was uttering slow words, as though each syllable exacted agonizing effort.

"I did succeed, Jarveena. At what cost I dare not say. Perhaps the cost of every shred of hope left in my inmost heart. I worked a rite such as has not been attempted in living memory—not, certainly, in mine , . . And worked it well."

"With what result?" she whispered.

"I learned the reason for the curse on Klikitagh."

She waited. When she could bear the waiting no longer, she demanded.

"Tell me'"

"I shall not. This only will I say: His punishment is just."

"I don't understand!"

"Better you should not. Better that no one should. Had I known what a burden of knowledge I was taking on—no! Condemning myself to!—I'd never have set out to offer help."

Guessing at the meaning behind the words, Jarveena bit her lip. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes, and yet were welcome, for they disguised
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the ghastly form that Enas Yorl was melting into.

"Here, then, in brief, is the secret Klikitagh has hidden from every body in the world, himself included.

"His punishment is just. He told me so."

"It cannot be! No one could deserve that fate!"

"Until today I would have said the same," Enas Yorl said solemnly, shifting on his chair as though his new form had grown unsuited to it.

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"But how can he have told you so?" Jarveena persisted.

"I chose this of all days rather by enlightened guesswork than by proper knowledge. As it happened, I was right. On one day of the year, in the proper circumstances, he is able to remember why he deserves his curse."

"Tell me! Tell me!" Jarveena pleaded.

"Though you crept to me on hands and knees, bleeding in the extrem ity of death, begging to be told before your final breath, I would not let
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description of such foulness pass my lips!"

Not that, strictly speaking, it was lips he now must use to speak with . . .

"Know only this: after committing it, he bethought himself of his crime and repented. Haunted by self-loathing, he became a court to try himself, and passed the only sentence that was fitting. He wanted so to suffer that no person who had heard about his evil deed, and might be tempted to emulate it, would fail to hear as well about its perpetrator's punishment and change his mind—not considering that the time might come when any such would be long dead and all his victims totally forgotten. Therefore he made the sentence cruel past conceiving—save by one who was evil to the fiber of his nerves.

"He decreed that for all time he would believe, in total honesty and full conviction, that he'd done not a thing to warrant such a doom-Perhaps this affords some insight into the enormity of his misdeed."

"But what can he have done?" Jarveena shouted.

"You'll never guess. It isn't in your nature to imagine, let alone enact, so foul a crime."

"Has it tainted you?" She leaned forward accusingly, glad that she could only vaguely see the shape he now endured. "Has it deformed your
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mind as much as your body?" That was cruel, too, in its way, but she uttered the words regardless. "Have you no mercy? Is not a thousand years enough for even the foulest of villains?"

"Oh, yes." Enas Yorl's voice had become like the sough of wind in bare-branched trees. "More than enough, in my view.

"Not in his."

"You—you mean . . ." Jarveena's mouth was suddenly dry. "You mean you tried to release him from the curse he wished upon himself?"

"I did."

"And he refused to let you, being a more powerful magician?"

"Not exactly."

She threw her hands in the air. "For pity's sake, Enas Yorl! Whether or not you pitied him, pity me who calls you friend! Never in my life before

did I find anyone with better reason to hate the world than had I myself at nine years old! Make plain what you have done and not done!"
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"I will try . , ." The voice grew fainter all the time. "But words must strain to compass these events. The spells required are half outside the normal universe ... I did succeed! No other wizard now alive could have accomplished what Enas Yorl achieved today, not even he at Ilsig whom they call most skilled, not he at Ranke who ato-serves the court.

"Jarveena: I gave Klikitagh his freedom."

There was a long stunned silence. When it had become more than she could bear, Jarveena husked, "But you said it would have killed him!"

"Which it did."

"What?"

"I speak in plain words, do I not? Despite the deformation I endure!" The tone was savage now, and sent new shivers down Jarveena's spine.

"Well, maybe your nature fights acceptance. Words plainer then than ever must be tried.

'7 gave him his release! He died! And even dead,-so dreadful is the power of that spell, he rose again and said—praise all the gods that no one save myself could hear those awful words!—'Dead or not dead, I am condemned to walk the world. I may not eat a second time from the same table, nor may I sleep a second time from the same bed. It is decreed. By
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me. It shall continue!'"

From his recital of the quoted words rang forth a hint, an echo, of the force that had endowed the curse on Klikitagh with its original power. It was unbearable. Crying aloud, her brain assailed by hideous visions, Jarveena slumped fainting from her chair.

In the light of torches, both her cheeks gleamed wet.

She woke, once more at dawn, and found herself alone at Melilot's, as had often happened to her in the past. Not this time, however, was her frame pervaded by the truly magic skill of Enas Yorl's caresses. Only a dull sense of deprivation filled her mind as she kicked aside the covers and moved to use her chamber pot, then douse herself with the contents of the ewer on the nightstand. Then, unconcerned as ever about naked ness, she dragged the curtains back and threw the shutters wide to the new day Cold air combined with cold water to bring her back to full alertness. She reached for her clothes—and checked, catching sight of her reflec tion in the tall and expensive mirror that hung beside the window.

There was no trace of any scar upon her body. Not the faintest, lace like, weblike hint beneath the skin could be discerned. She was as perfect

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as though no wire-lashed whip had ever whistled through the air to break blood from her tender flesh.

Amazed, then astounded, she flicked back her forelock. Surely the cicatrix her forehead bore—?

Gone as well

"But I told him!" she said aloud. "I mean. I told Melilot, and he was listening! I said I wanted to keep that for when it came in useful . . ."

The words died away. She let her hands fall to her sides.

"Oh, you're in there, aren't you, Enas Yorl? You've sown a counterpart of yourself inside my brain! It's the same trick that taught me the names of your basilisks! Maybe you have too much on your mind to hear me at the moment, but I'm damned well going to treat your projection the same as I would yourself! Now answer me! Why did you take my forehead scar away before I gave you leave?"

The reply came, not in speech, but in a sense of warm and private intercourse, reaching below the deepest level of her mind. If it resembled anything at all, it might be likened to the impact of hot spiced wine on a

cold day.

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