Lynn Abbey - Thieves' World - Turning Points

And time passed in The Bottomless Well. At last through the arched doorway he came, in his gliding gait called catlike, a lean young man of no great height but at least five lengths of sharp steel that showed. He wore black, black, and black, tonight unalleviated even by the red sash, and the soles of his soft buskins made not a sound on the hardwood floor. From arrestingly dark eyes beneath rather thick, black brows he scanned the place as if in a casual way, but which his host knew was quite purposeful indeed.

The catwalker wore no happy look when he turned to the counter and those nearly black eyes bored into the mild, medium brown ones of his host.

"I was to meet the man who calls himself Chance here," he said. "I don't see him…"

Aristokrates bobbed his head in such a way as to make it obvious that he was attempting to be ingratiating. "Yes. He was here, Lone. Alone. He sat at the back wall, and sipped a mug very slowly like a man waiting for someone to join him. After more than an hour he had still not bought another cup and I despaired of ever selling him one. Then he came up here on that cane of his, and paid, and looking not at all pleased, told me that if you came in I was to say these words, and I repeat them exactly, Lone: 'I waited a long time; too long for a boy so young and inexperienced.' "

Immediately he had spoken, the balding man from Mrsevada took a step back from the counter and the stormy face on its other side. That face had darkened, and its features were writhing, and the eyes seemed ready to emit flashes of fire.

"That bastard!" Lone blazed, and louder than Aristokrates had ever heard him speak.

"I… think you are right," the bigger man said mildly, while judiciously reserving all comment on Lone's lack of parentage.

Lone slammed a fist down on the counter. "That blag-dagged blaggard! This is—this is—you said his words exactly, Aris?"

"Absolutely! D'you think I would say such a thing to you?"

"That blag-dagged bastard!" Lone spun about as if in hopes that someone would hurry to pick a fight with him, or that he could find an excuse to assault someone. Anyone.

No such opportunity knocked.

"I can understand that you are not amused," Aristokrates said. "Let me pour you something."

Lone wheeled back to him with such speed and such a stormy face that the other man bethought himself of the thick hardwood club he kept under the counter. But Lone proved not the sort to take out his anger on the message-bearer.

"Not tonight, Aris. Damn! Damn him for an arrogant blaggard!" Aristokrates considered that his wisest course was to say nothing.

"Shit!" the young man snapped, face still writhing, and with a swish of cloak dark as midnight he whirled away toward the door. "Oh, Lone," the man behind the counter said. "Wait a moment. He did bid me give you a few words of

council when you were about to leave."

Dark clothing did not rustle despite the speed of Lone's turn. Wickedly menacing eyes met those paler ones of Aristokrates. "Council?" "He bade me do you a favor," the proprietor of The Bottomless Well reported. "I'll just bet!" "Umm. He said to warn you not to enter Angry Alley." Lone stared. "Huh! That's all?" "Yes." Aristokrates nodded solemnly. "Hey, Aris! How about another mug over here!" That call sounded in a voice with a bit of surliness in it. Aristokrates waved a hand at the patron, one of several at his table. Two of them also signed for another.

"Oh oh. Sorry, Lone. Uh… good night…"

Lone did not return that ritual well-wishing as he glided to the door and in a second as much as vanished into the darkness outside. Naturally, being angry and more, being Lone, he headed directly for the dark, dark opening between two

close-set walls—a passage that too often reeked of urine. Although he saw no one in Angry Alley,

someone was. "The carelessness of rash-brash youth," a voice quiet as a tiptoe in shadow said, "is not bravery, Lone. The real Shadowspawn would not be so rash as to charge in when such a clear warning was issued."

"Shadowspawn!" Lone gasped, cloak swept back and hand frozen to hilt. It was as if the darkness had

spoken, for still he saw no hint of person or even movement. "The same. And well armed, and vexed at you with reason, but only talking instead of letting steel speak for me."

Lone of the prickling scalp and armpits considered that, and swallowed, and actually devoted a few

seconds to thought, and for once he answered from his brain, not his bravado. "You left word that I must stay out of this alley only because you knew I would have to accept the challenge!"

"It was a safe assumption," the darkness said. "You have just restrained yourself. You must learn to do that much more often, which is to learn to think. Else you will die a very young man, and who could possibly give a damn."

The final words were no question, really, but spoken flatly as a statement of fact. And once again Lone felt assaulted… and once again, somehow, he found discipline within himself, and exercised it. "I will try, Master of Thieves."

"You do not make it easy, do you."

"I have had no easy life, Lone. My mentor was hanged when I was only a boy, younger than you. I was a cocky little piece of cat shit, but I learned that I must learn, and so I tried, and I learned."

Lone swallowed and, even in pitch darkness, blinked. It had not occurred to him that his idol was capable of such profundity.

"Doubtless you think that was profound," the darkness said, in the shadow-quiet voice of the master thief of Sanctuary.

Lone swallowed and managed to make no reply.

"If you can learn, I know things that you don't and can still do things that you can't."

As I can do things that you no longer can, poor crippled Shadowspawn, Lone mused, but again he strengthened himself to hold silent.

Then it occurred to him that the unseen owner of the ever-challenging voice was also saying nothing, and he steeled himself to pronounce the simple words:

"I can learn, Master."

The man called Chance had not been so elated in a long, long time. But none of that was apparent in his shadow-quiet voice: "You must be tested. To begin with you have not I hope forgot the location of the home of the Spellmaster."

"I remember," Lone said, trying hard not to sound sheepish. What an idiot I was, breaking into that mansion! What a friend such a man as Strick could be!

"Good," the shadows said. "Then we will meet there. Your first test is to reach his door before I do."

After a time Lone realized that although he had heard no sound of movement, he was alone in Angry Alley. With a slight smile, he began walking. Rapidly.

With a fleet and eager horse hitched to the mule-cart and a pass to show any law enforcement types who might stop him, Samoff made very, very good time driving through the night to the home of his master. Simple matter to wait near the end of the alley Chance had specified, say nothing when the black-clad man appeared and climbed aboard, and set off. From time to time as he guided the more than spirited young horse through the night he heard a chuckle from the man seated behind him, and Samoff made a vow to ask Chance—at a more opportune, meaning safer, time—if he had wet his underpants in his gurgling glee.

If the younger cat-burglar wet his pants that momentous night, it was not in glee. He was not short of breath but his legs were afflicted with spikes of ice when he reached the estate of the Spellmaster… and stared, blinking. Strick was right there outside, seated on the front steps of the carefully elevated house, apparently awaiting Lone's arrival. Moreover and far more awesomely, beside him sat a black-clad figure. That one threw up a hand as the other man in black approached on weary legs that he had pushed close to the limit of their endurance. "Lone!" Chance called jubilantly. "Good to see you at last, lad!" "Shit!" Lone muttered. Then, reprovingly as a schoolmaster: "You cheated!" "True! I used my brain instead of my legs!" While Lone ground his teeth, Strick spoke. "Not to mention a horse. Promise never to enter this house