Margaret Weis - Into the Labyrinth

The skin on her forehead burned and stung. She could feel the touch of his hand on her naked breast. The memory of that blessed pain and the memory of his touch would remain with her forever.

She left Abarrach, sailing her ship into Death’s Gate. It never occurred to her to report to Xar the conversation she’d overheard between the two lazar. She had, in her excitement, forgotten all about it.

Back in Necropolis, in his study, Xar settled down at his desk, took up again one of the Sartan texts on necromancy. He was in a good humor. It is a pleasant thing to be worshipped, adored, and he’d seen worship and adoration in Marit’s eyes.

She had been his to command before, but she was doubly his now, bound to him body and mind. She would open herself to him completely, as had so many others before her. Unwritten law prohibits a Patryn from joining with more than one person, so long as the rune-mate is still alive. But Xar was the law, as far as he was concerned. He had discovered that rune-joining opened up many hearts’ secrets to him. As for revealing his secrets to others, Xar was far too disciplined mentally to permit such a thing to happen. He revealed as much of himself as he deemed it useful to reveal, no more.

He was pleased with Marit, as he would have been pleased with any new weapon that came into his hand. She would do readily whatever needed to be done—even if it meant slaying the man she had once loved.

And Haplo would die knowing he’d been betrayed.

“Thus,” said Xar, “I will be avenged.”

“He’s arrived,” came the report. “Standing out front.” The Ancient looked at Ciang, pleading in his eyes. The formidable elf woman had only to say... No, she had merely to nod... and Hugh the Hand would be dead. An archer sat in a window above the entrance. If the elf woman, sitting stiff and upright in her chair, barely inclined her smooth, skull-like head, the Ancient would leave her presence and carry a wooden knife, with Hugh’s name carved in it, to the archer. The archer would without hesitation send a shaft into Hugh’s breast.

Hugh knew this. He was taking an enormous risk, returning to the Brotherhood. The knife had not been sent around on him [9] An expression used among the Brotherhood to indicate a member marked for death. See Appendix I, “The Brotherhood,” The Hand of Chaos , vol. 5 of The Death Gate Cycle . (if it had been, he would not have been alive at the moment), but the word had been whispered among the membership that Ciang was displeased with Hugh the Hand, and he had been shunned. No one would kill him, but no one would help him either. A shunning was one step away from the wooden knife. A member finding himself shunned had better get to the Brotherhood and argue his case fast. Thus no one was surprised at Hugh’s arrival at the fortress, though a few were disappointed.

To have been able to claim that you killed Hugh the Hand, one of the greatest assassins the Guild had fostered—such a boast would have been worth a fortune.

No one dared do it without sanction, however. Hugh was—or had been—one of Ciang’s favorites. And though her protective arm was gnarled and wrinkled and spotted with age, it was spotted with blood as well. No one would touch Hugh unless Ciang commanded it.

Ciang’s small, yellow teeth sank into her lower lip. Seeing this gesture and knowing it for indecision, the Ancient’s hopes rose. Perhaps one emotion could still touch the woman’s insensate heart. Not love. Curiosity. Ciang was wondering why Hugh had come back, when he knew his life was nothing but a word on her lips. And she couldn’t very well find out from his corpse. The yellow teeth gnawed flesh. “Let him come in to me.” Ciang spoke the words grudgingly and with a scowl, but she’d said them and that was all the Ancient needed to hear. Fearful she might change her mind, he hastened out of the room, his crooked old legs moving with more speed than they’d used in the past twenty years.

Grabbing hold of the huge iron ring attached to the door, the Ancient himself swung it open.

“Come in, Hugh, come in,” the Ancient said. “She has agreed to see you.” The assassin stepped inside, stood unmoving in the dim entryway until his eyes adjusted to the light. The Ancient eyed Hugh quizzically. Other people the Ancient had seen in this position had been limp with relief—some so limp he’d been forced to carry them in. Every member of the Brotherhood knew about the archer. Hugh knew that he’d been a curt nod away from certain death. Still, there was no sign of it on his face, which was harder than the fortress’s granite walls.

Yet perhaps the penetrating eyes of the Ancient did catch a flicker of feeling, though not what the Ancient had expected. When the door offering life instead of death had opened to Hugh the Hand, he had appeared, for an instant, disappointed.

“Will Ciang see me this moment?” Hugh asked, voice gruff and low. He raised his hand, palm outward, to show the scars that crossed it. Part of the ritual. The Ancient peered at the scars intently, though he had known this man for more years than the elder could recall. This, too, was part of the ritual.

“She will, sir. Please go on up. May I say, sir,” the Ancient added, his voice trembling, “that I am truly glad to see you well.” Hugh’s grim and dark expression relaxed. He laid his scarred hand on the old man’s bird-bone-fragile arm in acknowledgment. Then, setting his jaw, the Hand left the old man, began the long climb up the innumerable stairs to Ciang’s private quarters.

The Ancient peered after him. The Hand had always been a strange one. And perhaps the rumors about him were true. That would explain a lot. Shaking his head, knowing that he would likely never find out, the Ancient resumed his post at the door.

Hugh walked slowly up the stairs, looking neither to the left nor to the right. He wouldn’t see anyone anyway, and no one would see him—one of the rules of the fortress. Now that he was here, he was in no hurry. So certain had he been of his death at the hands of the archer that he hadn’t given much thought to what he would do if he didn’t die. As he walked, tugging nervously on one of the braided strands of the beard which straggled from his jutting chin, he pondered what he would say. He rehearsed several variations. At length he gave up.

With Ciang, there was only one thing to say—the truth. She probably already knew it anyway.

He traversed the silent, empty hallway paneled in dark, highly polished, and extremely rare wood. At the end, Ciang’s door stood open.

Hugh paused outside, looked in.

He had expected to see her seated at her desk, the desk marked with the blood of countless initiates into the Guild. But she was standing in front of one of the diapiond-paned windows, looking out at the wilds of the isle of Skurvash. Ciang could see everything worth seeing from that window: the prosperous town—a smuggler’s haven—rambling along the shoreline; the craggy forest of the brittle hargast trees that separated town from fortress; the single narrow path that led from town to fortress (a dog walking along that path could be seen by every lookout in the Brotherhood); and beyond and above and below, the sky, in which the isle of Skurvash floated.

Hugh’s hand clenched; his mouth was so dry he could not for a moment announce himself; his heart beat rapidly.

The elf woman was old; many considered her the oldest living person in Arianus. She was small and fragile. Hugh could have crushed her with one of his strong hands. She was dressed in the bright-colored silken robes the elves fancy, and even at her age there was a delicacy, a grace, a hint of what reputedly had once been remarkable beauty. Her head was bald, the skull exquisitely shaped, the skin smooth and without blemish, an interesting contrast to the wrinkled face.