Robert Asprin - Thieves World

'They are coming,' Dubro whispered as she neared him.

'I see them. We have only a few moments now.'

From around her waist she unwound two coils of rope taken from the bazaar forge. She had devised her own plan for the actual exchange, as neither the dream spirit nor her meditations had offered solid insight or inspiration.

'They will most likely follow the same path we did, since they are carrying a body also,' she explained as she laid the ropes across the mud, burying them slightly. 'We will trip them here.'

'And I will switch our corpse for the girl?'

'Yes.'

They said nothing more as each crouched in a mud-hole waiting, hoping, that the procession would pass between them.

The luck promised in her dream held. Molin Torchholder led the small procession, bearing a large brass and wood torch from Sabellia's temple in Ranke itself. Behind him were three chanting acolytes bearing both incense and torches. The last two torches were affixed to a bier carried on the shoulders of the last pair of priests. Torchholder and the other three trod over the ropes without noticing them. When the first pallbearer was between the ropes Illyra snapped them taut.

The burdened priests heard the smack as the ropes lifted from the mud, but were tripped before they could react. Marilla and the torches fell towards Dubro, the priests towards Illyra. In the dark commotion, Illyra got safely to a nearby pile of building stones, but without being able to see if Dubro had accomplished the exchange.

'What's wrong?' Torchholder demanded, hurrying back with his torch to light the scene.

'The damned workmen left the hauling ropes strewn about,' a mud-splattered priest exclaimed as he scrambled out of the knee-deep mud-hole.

'And the girl?' Molin continued.

'Thrown over there, from the look of it.'

Lifting his robes in one hand, Molin Torchholder led the acolytes and priests to the indicated mud-pit. Illyra heard sounds she prayed were Dubro making his own way to the safe shadows.

'A hand here.'

'Damned Ilsig mud. She weighs ten times as much now.'

'Easy. A little more mud, a little sooner won't affect the temple, but it's an ill thought to rouse the Others.' Torchholder's calm voice quieted the others.

The torches were re-lit. From her hideout, Illyra could see a mud-covered shroud on the bier. Dubro had succeeded somehow: she did not allow herself to think anything else.

The procession continued on towards the canopy. The rain had stopped completely. A sliver of moonlight showed through the dispersing clouds. Torchholder loudly hailed the break in the clouds as an omen of the forgiving, sanctifying, presence of Vashanka and began the ritual. In due time the acolytes emptied braziers of oil on to the shroud, setting it and the corpse on fire. They lowered the naming bier into the pit. The acolytes threw symbolic armloads of stone after it. Then they cut the ropes that held the cornerstone in its place at the edge. It slid from sight with a loud, sucking sound.

Almost at once, Torchholder and the other two priests left the platform to head back towards the palace, leaving only the acolytes to perform a night-long vigil over the new grave. When the priests were out of sight Illyra scrambled back to the mud-holes and whispered Dubro's name.

'Here,' he hissed back.

She needed only one glance at his moon-shadowed face to know something had gone wrong.

'What happened?' she asked quickly, unmindful of the sound of her voice. 'Marilla? Did they bury Marilla?'

There were tears in Dubro's eyes as he shook his head. 'Look at her!' he said, his voice barely under control.

A mud-covered shroud lay some paces away. Dubro would neither face it nor venture near it. Illyra approached warily.

Dubro had left the face covered. Holding her breath, Illyra reached down to peel back the damp, dirty linen.

For a heartbeat, she saw Marilla's sleeping face. Then it became her own. After a second of self-recognition, the face underwent a bewildering series of changes to portraits of people from her childhood and others whom she did not recognize. It froze for a moment in the shattered image of the Face of Chaos, then was still with pearly-white skin where there should have been eyes, nose, and mouth.

Illyra's fingers stiffened. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lungs and throat were paralysed with fright. The linen fell from her unfeeling hands, but did not cover the hideous thing that lay before her.

Get away! Get away from this place!

The primitive imperative rose in her mind and would not be appeased by anything less than headlong flight. She pushed Dubro aside. The acolytes heard her as she blundered through the mud, but she ignored them. There were buildings ahead solid stone buildings outlined in the moonlight.

It was a manor house of an estate long since abandoned. Illyra recognized it from her dream, but her panic and terror had been sated in the headlong run from the faceless corpse. An interior door hung open on rusty hinges that creaked when she pushed the door. She was unsurprised to see an anvil sitting on a plain wooden box in the centre of a courtyard that her instincts told her was not entirely deserted.

'I'm only prolonging it now. The anvil, and the rest; they are there for me.'

She stepped into the courtyard. Nothing happened. The anvil was solid and far too heavy for her to lift.

'You've come to collect your reward?' a voice called.

'Lythande?' she whispered, waiting for the cadaverous magician to appear.

'Lythande is elsewhere.'

A hooded man stepped into the moonlight.

'What has happened? Where is Marilla? Her family?'

The man gestured to his right. Illyra followed his movement and saw the tumbledown headstones of an old graveyard.

'But...?'

'The priests of Ils seek to provoke the new gods. They created the homunculus, disguising it to appear as a young woman to an untrained observer. Had it been interred in the foundation of the new temple, it would have created a disruptive weakness. The anger of Savankala and Sabellia would reach across the desert. That is, of course, exactly what the priests of Ils wanted.

'We magicians - and even you gifted S'danzo - do not welcome the meddling feuds of gods and their priests. They tamper with the delicate balances of fate. Our work is more important than the appeasement of deities, so this time, as in the past, we have intervened.'

'But the temple? They should have buried a virgin, then?'

'A forged person would arouse the Rankan gods, but not an imperfect virgin. When the temple of Ils was erected, the old priests sought a royal soul to inter beneath the altar. They wanted the youngest, and most loved, of the royal princes. The queen was a sorceress of some skill herself. She disguised an old slave, and his bones still rest beneath the altar.'

'So the gods of Ilsig and Ranke are equal?'

The hooded man laughed. 'We have seen to it that all gods within Sanctuary are equally handicapped, my child.'

'And what of me? Lythande warned me not to fail.'

'Did I not just say that our purpose - and therefore your purpose - was accomplished? You did not fail, and we repay, as Marilla promised, with a black steel anvil. It is yours.'

He laid a hand on the anvil and disappeared in a wisp of smoke.

'Lyra, are you all right? I heard you speaking with someone. I buried that girl before I came looking for you.'

'Here is the anvil.'

'I do not want such an ill-gotten thing.' Dubro took her arm and tried to lead her out of the courtyard.

'I have paid too much already!' she shouted at him, wresting away from his grasp. 'Take it back to the bazaar - then we will forget all this ever happened. Never speak of it to anyone. But don't leave the anvil here, or it's all worth nothing!'