Robert Asprin - Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn

When the flaming brass bowl of the noon sun had reached its apex, Smhee came. His eyes looked very red, but he didn't act fatigued. He carried a carpet bag from which he produced two dark cloaks, two robes, and the masks which the priests of Shalpa wore in public.

He said, 'How did you get rid of your mother and the children?'

'A neighbour is keeping the children until mother gets back from shopping,' she said. 'Eevroen still hasn't shown up.'.

'Nor will he for a long time,' Smhee said. 'I dropped a coin as I passed him staggering this way. He snatched it, of course, and ran off to a tavern.

'The Sailfish will be leaving port in three days. I've arranged for passage on her and also to be hidden aboard her if her departure is delayed. I've been very busy all morning.'

'Including taking a bath,' she said.

'You don't smell too good yourself,' he said. 'But you can bathe when we get to the river. Put these on.'

She went into her room, removed her clothes, and donned the priest's garb. When she came out, Smhee was fully dressed. The bag attached to his belt bulged beneath his cloak.

'Give me your old clothes,' he said. 'We'll cache them outside the city, though I don't think we'll be needing them.'

She did so, and he stuffed them into the belt-bag.

'Let's go,' he said.

She didn't follow him to the door. He turned and said, 'What's the matter? Your liver getting cold?'

'No,' she said. 'Only ... mother's very short-sighted. I'm afraid she'll be cheated when she buys the food.'

He laughed and said something in a foreign tongue.

'For the sake of Igil! When we return, we'll have enough to buy out the farmers' market a thousand times over!'

'If we get back...' she murmured. She wanted to go to Looza's room and kiss the children goodbye. But that was not wise. Besides, she might lose her determination if she saw them now.

They walked out while old Shmurt stared. He was the weakest point in their alibi, but they hoped they wouldn't need any. At the moment, he was too dumbfounded at seeing them to say anything. And he would be afraid to go to the soldiers about this. He probably was thinking that two priests had magically entered the house, and it would be indiscreet to interfere in their business.

Thirty minutes later, they mounted the two horses which Smhee had arranged to be tied to a tree outside city limits.

'Weren't you afraid they'd be stolen?' she said.

'There are two stout fellows hidden in the grass near the river,' he said. He waved towards it, and she saw two men come from it. They waved back and started to walk back to the city.

There was a rough road along the White Foal River, sometimes coming near the stream, sometimes bending far away. They rode over it for three hours, and then Smhee said, 'There's an old adobe building a quarter-mile inland. We'll sleep there for a while. I don't know about you, but I'm weary.'

She was glad to rest. After hobbling the horses near a stand of the tall brown desert grass, they lay down in the midst of the ruins. Smhee went to sleep at once. She worried about her family for a while, and suddenly she was being shaken by Smhee. Dawn was coming up.

They ate some dried meat and bread and fruit and then mounted again. After watering the horses and themselves at the river, they rode at a canter for three more hours. And then Smhee pulled up on the reins. He pointed at the trees a quarter-mile inland. Beyond, rearing high, were the towering cliffs on the other side of the river. The trees on this side, however, prevented them from seeing the White Foal.

'The boat's hidden in there,' he said. 'Unless someone's stolen it. That's not likely, though. Very few people have the courage to go near the Isle of Shugthee.' . .

'What about the hunters who bring down the furs from the north?'

'They hug the eastern shore, and they only go by in daylight. Fast.'

They crossed the rocky ground, passing some low-growing purplish bushes and some irontrees with grotesquely twisted branches. A rabbit with long ears dashed by them, causing her horse to rear up. She controlled it, though she had not been on a horse since she was eleven. Smhee said that he was glad that it hadn't been his beast. All he knew about riding was the few lessons he'd taken from a farmer after coming to Sanctuary. He'd be happy if he never had to get on another one.

The trees were perhaps fifteen or twenty deep from the river's' edge. They dismounted, removed the saddles, and hobbled the beasts again. Then they walked through the tall cane-like plants, brushing away the flies and other pestiferous insects, until they got to the stream itself. Here grew stands of high reeds, and on a hummock of spongy earth was Smhee's boat. It was a dugout which could hold only two.

'Stole it,' Smhee said without offering any details.

She looked through the reeds down the river. About a quarter of a mile away, the river broadened to become a lake about two and a half miles .across. In its centre was the Isle of Shugthee, a purplish mass of rock. From this distance, she could not make out its details.

Seeing it, she felt coldness ripple over her.

'I'd like to take a whole day and a night to scout it,' he said. 'So you could become familiar with it, too. But we don't have time. However, I can tell you everything I know. I wish I knew more.'

She doffed her clothes and bathed in the river while Smhee unhobbled the horses and took them some distance up to let them drink. When she came back, she found him just returning with them.

'Before dusk comes, we'll have to move them down to a point opposite the isle,' he said. 'And we'll saddle them, too.'

They left the horses to go to a big boulder outside the trees but distant from the road. At its base was a hollow large enough for them to lie down in. Here they slept, waking now and then to talk softly or to eat a bite or to go behind the'rock and urinate. The insects weren't so numerous here as in the trees, but they were bad enough.-

Not once, as far as they knew, did anyone pass on the road.

When they walked the horses down the road, Smhee said, 'You've been very good about not asking questions, but I can see you're about to explode with curiosity. You have no idea who the purple mage really is. Not unless you know more than the other Sanctuarians.'

'All I know,' she said, 'is that they say that the mage came here about ten years ago. He came with some hired servants, and many boxes, some small, some large. No one knew what his native land was, and he didn't stay long in town. One day he disappeared with the servants and the boxes. It was some time before people found out that he'd moved into the caves of the Isle of Shugthee. Nobody had ever gone there because it was said that it was haunted by the ghosts of the Shugthee. They were a little hairy people who inhabited this land long before the first city of the ancients was built here.'

'How do you know he's a mage?' Smhee said.

'I don't, but everybody says he is. Isn't he?'

'He is,' Smhee said, looking grim.

'Anyway, he sent his servants in now and then to buy cattle, goats, pigs, chickens, horses, vegetables, and animal feed and fruit. These were men and women from some distant land. Not from his, though. And then one day they ceased coming in. Instead, the Raggah came. From that day on, no one has seen the servants who came with the mage.'

'He probably got rid of them,' Smhee said. 'He may have found some reason to distrust them. Or no reason at all.'

'The fur trappers and hunters who've gone by the isle say they've seen some strange things. Hairy beast-faced dwarfs. Giant spiders.' She shuddered.

'Benna died of spider bites,' Smhee said. The fat little man reached into his belt-bag and brought out a metal jar. He said, 'Before we leave in the boat tonight we'll rub the ointment in this on us. It will repel some of the spiders but not, unfortunately, all.'