Robert Asprin: Storm Season

Hanse of the Shadow, Chosen of Ilsig, Son of the Shadow.

We exist. We are here. Believe. And look for this ring.

He saw it. The gaud appeared from nowhere and hung there before his eyes. Now it was as if solid, and now he seemed to see through it, into the temple appointments beyond. A ring that seemed a single piece of gold, unfused, and set all about with twinkling little blue-white stones like stars. In its center a big tiger's-eye, caged in gold bands. And that orange-yellow gemstone, that tiger-eye-seemed to stare at him, as if it was more than merely a chatoyant stone of quartz fibers.

And then it was gone, and so was the voice that had been inside his head, addressing him- hadn't it? Had it?-and he was left slumped and slick all over with sweat. He had to apply his mind and then make conscious effort even to close his mouth. The temple's coolth had become chill.

After a while he felt strong enough to move. Move he did, for he was not minded to remain there in that joint temple ofllshipri. He departed, all prickly still and wet with sweat even down his legs. He squinted on leaving the dimness of the temple, for the time was mid-afternoon, not night at all.

Had it begun then, even in daylight?-the hallucinations, the false feeling of importance that was a lie swarming up like a nest of spiders from the lees of swilled wine?

Or did I hear-could I have heard ... a god? . The god?

He had walked from the temple, seeing nothing and no one. A person apart and an island indeed! Until, as if a hood had been lifted off his head to bare his eyes, he saw Mignureal.

She came directly toward him, looking at him, that S'danzo daughter of his friend Moonflower of the Seeing eyes. Moonflower who so well knew him-and did not want him having aught to do with her daughter. Mignureal. Heading purposefully toward him, gazing at him. A girl who looked thirteen and was older, long since pubertous and interested in Hanse-fascinated with Hanse as a woman is ever fascinated by and with the rascal. It pleased her to act as if she was thirteen, not a woman of sixteen, most of whose age-peers were wedded or at least bedded.

"My daughter is very young and thinks you are just so romantic a figure," that great big woman said, who was such a pretty little woman inside the masses of flesh her husband so loved. "Will you just pretend she is your sister?"

"Oh you would not want that," Hanse had assured her, in one of those rare revelations as to the sort of childhood he must have had. "She is my friend's daughter and I shall call her cousin."

Hanse meant that promise. Besides, Mignureal had seen him quaking and blubbering with fear, a victim of that fear-staff of the perverse gods, and he did not care to look her in the eyes. It was she who had rescued him and led him, a tremulous mouse helpless against the power turned on him, back to her mother.

And now here she came, bearing some colorful bundle. Small and dark and yet not at all a creature of night and shadows as he was. Mignureal was a creature of day and this day in her bright yellow skirt she wore a strange look, as if she was drugged.

If she is, Hanse thought fiercely, I will beat her and take her home and curse Moonflower for allowing it to happen to this... this dear maiden.

But then he stopped thinking. She was before him, stopping and forcing him to stop. And when she spoke her voice was odd and flat as her eyes, emotionless as her face. She spoke as if she said words she had only learned-the words, not their meaning-like a girl who had leamt her part for some temple rite on a god day.

Dark brown eyes like garnets and just as lacking in softness, she said, "You are invited to dinner tomorrow night. You will be in no danger. Wear this clothing. The place is known to you. It is long unpeopled, but its water is a silver pool. The silver is your own, Son of the Shadow, Chosen ofllsig. Come, tomorrow even as the sun sets, .to the aerie of the great ruler of the air."

Without blinking, she pressed into his hands that which she carried, and turned and ran in a butterfly flurry of yellow skirts and streaming blue-black hair. Hanse stood, stupidly staring after her until she rounded a corner and was gone down another street. Then he looked down at his gift. All in shades of blue and some green, with a flash of yellow-gold embroidery. A fine tunic, and a cloak considerably better than good. Good clothing!

Clothing so fine existed in Sanctuary, of course. No S'danzo girl had any of it though, nor did a youth who gained his living by stealth.

Whence, then, came this soft fabric?

From the same place those words came from, he thought, for they were not Mignureal's words. And again the phrases Son of the Shadow and Chosen of Ilsig! A shiver claimed Hanse then, and possessed him for a long moment.

" 'Day to you, Hanse-ah! I see you had a good night, 's more like it, hum?" And that acquaintance went on smiling, for what else could he think? Where else could Hanse have gained such a bundle of finery, save through a bit of climbing and breaking-and-entering on yesternight?

Hanse stood directing thoughts to his feet, and at last they began to respond. He walked on, trying to make his bundle as small as he could, lest some member of the City Watch espy him, or a Hell-Hound from the palace, or someone nosy enough to consider turning him in or blabbing it about that Hanse had stolen good soft, decorated clothing sufficient to pay his room's rent for the next twelvemonth.

Hanse had received coded messages beforetimes, and had devised the meaning. He did so this time. He knew where he was invited. (Invited? Bidden! Summoned!) Away up on the craggy hill now called Eaglebeak was a long untenanted manse. It lay partially in ruins, that magnificent home its long-ago builder and tenant had called Eaglenest. Nearby, beyond scattered fallen columns and tumbled stones, rotted planking marked a well. Down in that well languished two leathern bags. Saddlebags. Hanse knew they were there, for he had put them there, in a way, though it had not been his intent.

He hoped they were there, for they contained a great deal of silver coins, and a few that were gold.

They were the ransom of the Rankan symbol of power, the staff called Savankh, which a thief called Shadowspawn had stolen from the palace of the Prince Governor. The P-G knew they were there, but had agreed that they would remain Hanse's property. Hanse had, after all, uncovered a spy and a plot and saved Prince Kadakithis's face, if not his life.

But for a horse and a dead man named Bourne, Hanse would have had all that gleaming fortune in his possession, rather than "banked" down in the earth, atop a hill, in a narrow well that was like to have been the death of him!

He was to go to Eaglebeak, then. To dine in dark and deserted aerie: Eaglenest! So he quietly told Moonflower. For aye, once again he betook himself to her in quest of information and advice. (Mignureal was not about when he approached, and neither he nor Moonflower was sorry.)

He sat before her now in his nondescript tunic the color of a field mouse, his feet in dusty buskins, knees up. And only three blades showing on him. He sat on the ground and she on her stool. The fact that she overflowed all around was disguised by her voluminous skirts; Moonflower wore red and green and ochre and blue and another shade of green. Across her lap lay his new clothing.

She fondled and sniffed and tasted it, closed her eyes and drew it through her dimple-backed hands. And all the while she was moving her lavender-tinted lips. The vastness of her bosom was almost still as her breathing slowed, her heartbeat slowed, her muttering slowed and she slid away from herself, a great gross kitten at her divining.

No charlatan, this mother of eleven who had raised nine, but one with the Gift, the power. Moonflower Saw.