Robert Asprin - Blood Ties

"And this is what we already have," added the S'danzo. "Quicksilver, what some call the Card of Shalpa-the Root of Ores and the Foundation of Sanctuary." The next card was placed below the first two.

"What has gone before is the Face of Chaos-" Illyra held up a card with the images of a man and a woman twisted and distorted as if in some fever dream. She smiled grimly and laid the card down.

"And what is to come. Seer-show me what is to come!" demanded Gilla. She could feel energy flowing from her to the woman on the other side of the table, and knew that more than S'danzo power was going into this casting.

Illyra took another card. "The Zigurrat," she smiled dangerously. "For we shall bring the pride of the destroyers tumbling down."

Gilla looked at the image of the disintegrating tower and thought of the patched up peace that had held the town quiet since the visit of the Emperor. Surely it would take only a finger's push to destroy so uneasy a balance.

"How?" whispered Gilla then. "Seeress, show me how it will be!"

Illyra held the remaining cards fanned out in her thin hand. "First the Lance of Winds-"

The card she set down bore the images of storm and tornado. "This represents our determination to see this done. And this one is for our fear..."

She set another card above it, on which a triumvirate of robed and hooded figures stood pointing at a kneeling man. "Justice," came the whisper, and Gilla licked suddenly dry lips, understanding even without explanation that this represented the dead children for whom they sought revenge.

"Our hope is for justice, and therefore I set Sanctuary's tribunal here-" Illyra's voice had a rhythmic resonance, and her eyes seemed to look through the card to some other reality. Gilla realized that the S'danzo was Seeing them as truly as ever she had in a querent's reading, and she wondered suddenly if in choosing just these cards for Lalo to paint first, Illyra had been guided by something more than chance, and if her selection of them now was the result of her will to vengeance, or some subtle working of that Pattern Illyra had denied.

Gilla shivered, for now the S'danzo was wholly entranced, and she felt a heaviness in the air around them as if unseen forces waited around her to see what the final card would be. The magic of the mages had been broken, but, clearly, she and Illyra were drawing now upon deeper powers.

Without looking at the cards still in the pile, Illyra took one and set it above all the rest. Gilla stared at it, her gaze burned by swirling patterns of red and gold, and the beauty of a woman's face staring out of the flames. Even seen upside down that face seared the sight. She forced her gaze away and saw the appalled wonder in Illyra's eyes.

"What is she?" Gilla asked hoarsely.

"The Eight of Flames-the Lady of Fire whose touch can warm or destroy!"

"What will She do to Sanctuary?"

Illyra was shaking her head. "I do not know. I have never drawn Her reversed in a reading before. Oh, Gilla-" The S'danzo's face twisted in a terrible smile. "I did not choose this card!"

In the days that followed, the Lady of Fire came to Sanctuary, not in bolts of flame from heaven as Gilla and Illyra had expected, but silently, insidiously, as a flame that kindled in men's flesh and consumed them slowly from within.

For weeks the weather had been close and still-plague weather, though usually it came to Sanctuary later in the year. In a city whose sanitation system had been designed to move men secretly rather than sewage efficiently, epidemics were an inevitable sign of summer, like the insects that swarmed across the river from the Swamp of Night Secrets. But a dry spring had lowered the water table early, and without enough flow to flush them, the disease bred in the filthy channels and spread swiftly through the town.

It began in the streets around Shambles Cross and moved like a slow fire into the Maze and the Bazaar, where a few corpses more in the morning caused little comment, until the kisses of the drabs who plied their trade in the cul-de-sacs and doorways burned with more than passion's fire, and men began to fall from the benches in the Vulgar Unicorn with their mugs untasted. Soldiers drinking in the taverns carried the plague back to the barracks, and servants going to their work in the great houses of the merchants carried it to the better quarters of the town. Only the Beysib seemed to be immune.

Molin Torchholder realized the danger when his workmen began to drop beside his unfinished city wall and, returning to the palace, found the Prince in a panic and a full-scale crisis on his hands. That morning, the decapitated body of a dog had been discovered in the ruined Temple of Dyareela, with "Death to the Beysib" scrawled in its blood on the altar stone.

Lalo turned, spattering blue paint from the plastered wall past the pillar as the High Priest stormed through the Presence Hall with the Prince and the Beysa hurrying along behind.

"They are saying that Dyareela is punishing Sanctuary because of our betrothal." Shupansea tightened her grip on Ka-dakithis's hand. "They say that your Demon Goddess is angry because the town has accepted Mother Bey!"

"My goddess!" Both Prince and Beysa fell back as Molin turned on them, looking rather like a Storm God himself with his mantle flaring around him and dust flying from his uncombed hair and beard. Lalo found it hard to believe that this was the same sleek priest who had given him his first great commission so long ago. But then his own changes in the past few years had been even more remarkable, if less obvious. And Sanctuary itself had changed.

"Dyareela's no deity of Ranke, or of the Ilsig either!" Molin's gaze fixed on Lalo and a quick grab hauled the limner out from behind the pillar. "You tell them-you're a Wrig-glie! Is Dyareela any goddess of yours?"

Lalo stared at him, more startled than offended by the priest's use of the Rankan epithet. Torchholder's unguarded tongue was the best evidence of the priest's own frustration and fear.

"The Good Goddess was here before the Ilsigi came." He pulled off his mask and answered softly. "She rules the wastelands, and the lost spirits who dwell there. But mostly, men do not pray to Her..."

"Mostly?" asked Kadakithis. "When do they pray to Her, limner?" .

Lalo kept his gaze on the patterned tiles, his skin prickling as if even talking about it could bring the fever on. "I was a boy when the last great plague came here," he said in a low voice. "We worshiped Her then. She brings the fever. She is the fever, and She is its cure...."

"Wrigglie superstition," began the Prince, but his voice lacked conviction.

Molin Torchholder sighed. "I don't like to give recognition to these native cults, but it may be necessary. I don't suppose you remember any details of the ceremonies?" His grip tightened on Lalo's shoulder again.

"Ask the priests of Us!" Lalo shrugged free. "1 was a child, and my mother kept me inside for fear of the crowds. They said there was a great sacrifice. They dragged the carcass outside the city to attract the demons away and burned the bodies of the dead and their possessions in a great pyre. What I remember was men and women lying with each other in the streets, with drops of blood from the sacrifice still red on their brows."

Kadakithis shuddered, but Shupansea said that she had heard of similar customs in the villages of her own land.

"That may be so," said the High Priest repressively, "but the theological implications are unfortunate, particularly now. My Prince, I am afraid that your formal betrothal will have to be delayed until this dies down."

"It is the dying I am afraid of," said the Beysa. "They will be sacrificing my people, not stallions or bulls, if you do not do something soon!"

Molin Torchholder's face worked as if he saw the careful edifice of cooperation he had constructed collapsing before him. Without answering, he strode off, and Shupansea and Kadakithis followed him, leaving Lalo staring after them.