Robert Asprin - Thieves World

'Well,' said the innkeeper after a silence, 'what do you make of this latest?'

Cappen suppressed a shiver. His palms were cold. 'I don't know, save that what we confront is not of our kind.'

'You told me once you've got a charm against magic.'

Cappen fingered the little silver amulet, in the form of a coiled snake, he wore around his neck. 'I'm not sure. A wizard I'd done a favour for gave me this, years ago. He claimed it'd protect me against spells and supernatural beings of less than godly rank. But to make it work, I have to utter three truths about the spellcaster or the creature. I've done that in two or three scrapes, and come out of them intact, but I can't prove the talisman was responsible.'

More customers entered, and One-Thumb must go to serve them. Cappen nursed his ale. He yearned to get drunk and belike the landlord would stand him what was needful, but he didn't dare. He had already learned more than he thought the opposition would approve of- whoever or whatever the opposition was. They might have means of discovering this.

His candle flickered. He glanced up and saw a beardless fat man in an ornate formal robe, scarcely normal dress for a visit to the Vulgar Unicorn. 'Greetings,' the person said. His voice was like a child's.

Cappen squinted through the gloom. 'I don't believe I know you,' he replied.

'No, but you will come to believe it, oh, yes, you will.' The fat man sat down. One-Thumb came over and took an order for red wine - 'a decent wine, mine host, a Zhanuvend or Baladach.' Coin gleamed forth.

Cappen's heart thumped. 'Enas Yorl?' he breathed.

The other nodded. 'In the flesh, the all too mutable flesh. I do hope my curse strikes again soon. Almost any shape would be better than this. I hate being overweight. I'm a eunuch, too. The times I've been a woman were better than this.'

'I'm sorry, sir,' Cappen took care to say. Though he could not rid himself of the spell laid on him, Enas Yorl was a powerful thaumaturge, no mere prestidigitator.

'At least I've not been arbitrarily displaced. You can't imagine how annoying it is, suddenly to find oneself elsewhere, perhaps miles away. I was able to come here in proper wise, in my litter. Faugh, how can anyone voluntarily set shoes to these open sewers they call streets in the Maze?' The wine arrived. 'Best we speak fast and to the point, young man, that we may finish and I get home before the next contretemps.'

Enas Yorl sipped and made a face. 'I've been swindled,' he whined. 'This is barely drinkable, if that.'

'Maybe your present palate is at fault, sir,' Cappen suggested. He did not add that the tongue definitely had a bad case of logorrhea. It was an almost physical torture to sit stalled, but he had better humour the mage.

'Yes, quite probably. Nothing has tasted good since - Well. To business. On hearing that One-Thumb was inquiring about last night's incident, I sent forth certain investigators of my own. You will understand that I've been trying to find out as much as I can.' Enas Yorl drew a sign in the air. 'Purely precautionary. I have no desire whatsoever to cross the Powers concerned in this.'

A wintry tingle went through Cappen. 'You know who they are, what it's about?' His tone wavered.

Enas Yorl wagged a finger. 'Not so hasty, boy, not so hasty. My latest information was of a seemingly unsuccessful interview you had with Illyra the seeress. I also learned you were now in this hostel and close to its landlord. Obviously you are involved. I must know why, how, how much - everything.'

'Then you'll help - sir?'

A headshake made chin and jowls wobble. 'Absolutely not. I told you I want no part of this. But in exchange for whatever data you possess, I am willing to explicate as far as I am able, and to advise you. Be warned: my advice will doubtless be that you drop the matter and perhaps leave town.'

And doubtless he would be right, Cappen thought. It simply happened to be counsel that was impossible for a lover to follow ... unless - 0 kindly gods of Caronne, no, no! - unless Danlis was dead.

The whole story spilled out of him, quickened and deepened by keen questions. At the end, he sat breathless while Enas Yorl nodded.

'Yes, that appears to confirm what I suspected,' the mage said most softly. He stared past the minstrel, into shadows that loomed and flickered. Buzz of talk, clink of drinking ware, occasional gust of laughter among customers seemed remoter than the moon.

'What was it?' broke from Cappen.

'A sikkintair, a Flying Knife. It can have been nothing else.'

'A-what?' -

Enas focused on his companion. 'The monster that took the women,' he explained. 'Sikkintairs are an attribute of Ils. A pair of sculptures on the grand stairway of his temple represent them.'

'Oh, yes, I've seen those, but never thought -'

'No, you're not a votary of any gods they have here. Myself, when I got word of the abduction, I sent my familiars scuttling about and cast spells of inquiry. I received indications ... I can't describe them to you, who lack arcane lore. I established that the very fabric of space had been troubled. Vibrations had not quite damped out as yet, and were centred on the temple of Ils. You may, if you wish a crude analogy, visualize a water surface and the waves, fading to ripples and finally to naught, when a diver has passed through.'

Enas Yorl drank more in a gulp than was his wont. 'Civilization was old in Ilsig when Ranke was still a barbarian village,' he said, as though to himself; his gaze had drifted away again, towards darkness. 'Its myths depicted the home of the gods as being outside the world - not above, not below, but outside. Philosophers of a later, more rationalistic era elaborated this into a theory of parallel universes. My own researches - you will understand that my condition has made me especially interested in the theory of dimensions, the subtler aspects of geometry - my own researches have demonstrated the .possibility of transference between these different spaces.

'As another analogy, consider a pack of cards. One is inhabited by a king, one by a knight, one by a deuce, et cetera. Ordinarily none of the figures can leave the plane on which it exists. If, however, a very thin piece of absorbent material soaked in a unique kind of solvent were laid between two cards, the dyes that form them could pass through: retaining their configuration, I trust. Actually, of course, this is a less than ideal comparison, for the transference is accomplished through a particular contortion of the continuum -'

Cappen could endure no more pedantry. He crashed his tankard down on the table and shouted, 'By all the hells of all the cults, will you get to the point?'

Men stared from adjacent seats, decided no fight was about to erupt, and went back to their interests. These included negotiations with street-walkers who, lanterns in hand, had come in looking for trade.

Enas Yorl smiled. 'I forgive your outburst, under the circumstances,' he said. 'I too am occasionally young.

'Very well. Given the foregoing data, including yours, the infrastructure of events seems reasonably evident. You are aware of the conflict over a proposed new temple, which is to outdo that of Ils and Shipri. I do not maintain that the god has taken a direct hand. I certainly hope he feels that would be beneath his dignity; a theomachy would not be good for us, to understate the case a trifle. But he may have inspired a few of his more fanatical priests to action. He may have revealed to them, in dreams or vision, the means whereby they could cross to the next world and there make the sikkintairs do their bidding. I hypothesize that the Lady Rosanda - and, to be sure, her coadjutrix, your inamorata - are incarcerated in that world. The temple is too full of priests, deacons, acolytes, and lay people for hiding the wife of a magnate. However, the gate need not be recognizable as such.'