Wings of Omen - Thieves World 06 (32 page)

"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.