Dave Duncan - Children of Chaos

Year by year Horth Wigson had extended his reach, doubling and redoubling his worth and workforce. Everything he turned his hand to turned to gold. He owned all of Crab now, except for one jetty on the northeastern corner. He owned most of Blueflower, which adjoined Crab on the west so that the two of them enclosed the basin of Weather Haven, a natural harbor secure enough to give him an advantage over all his competitors. Year after year he tore down more hovels, built more warehouses, extended his mansion. Any footprint-size patch of ground in Skjar was precious, yet Horth's windows overlooked a private park. He imported full-grown trees and was planning his own zoological collection. His residence outshone the palace of Satrap Eide.

As the onagers hauled the chariot across the bridge from Blueflower to Crab, Frena broke a long silence. "You will drop me at the door, Verk, and then go straight back to Uls. He will rest better if you are there."

Verk shot her a startled look and almost knocked over a woman carrying a water jug on her head. She screamed abuse after him.

"Tomorrow," Frena said, in what she hoped was the same calm and confident voice, "you will bring Uls to the Healers on Chatter Place. I will tell Master Trinvar to send someone with gold to wait for you there. And tonight I will tell Father what happened and insist that it was all my fault. I promise," she told his skeptical expression. "I think he has a lot more on his mind now than a lost sword and a scrape on my arm."

"My lady is kind," Verk said. He did not argue, so she must have found the best solution to their problem.

six

BENARD CELEBRE

was wakened by daggers of light stabbing through his eyelids. For a moment he thought it must be Cutrath coming to kill him, and his heart leaped in terror. But it was only Thod, his depressingly cheerful apprentice, all dewy-faced and doe-eyed.

"Twelve blessings this fine morning, master!"

"And on you," Benard growled. "Water?"

"At once, master!" Darkness returned as Thod dropped the tarpaulin and ran over to the well.

Benard sat up, wincing at the resulting thunderclaps inside his head. He could hear priests warbling morning hymns, accompanied by screaming roosters in the surrounding houses. He could hear voices as people went by on their way to prayers. His shed stood in a corner of the abandoned builders' yard behind the new Pantheon, almost the only empty space in Kosord. As a home it was sadly cramped, just three walls of mud brick and the fourth only a curtain of oiled cloth hung from a beam, but he could work in there in rainy weather. The interior was a catastrophe of clay models, faience figurines, tubs of raw clay, tottering heaps of chisels and mallets, balks of timber, jars of paint, bags of coloring for glazes, boxes, baskets, polychrome tiles, boards for sketching, and gods knew what else. One thing old Master Artist Odok had signally failed to teach his best pupil was tidiness.

Hiddi... His body still hankered after Hiddi. Had she really been the vision she had seemed, or had her beauty been only in the bedazzled eye of her beholder? He must not judge the child for choosing to serve the god of madness. What seemed to him like utter degradation might be better than the life of a peasant's wife, endlessly producing short-lived babies.

Benard dragged himself upright and began picking his way through the disorder. He felt as if he had not slept at all, and apparently he would not be eating today either. His pelf string had held at least a dozen twists of copper last night when he went off with Nils to celebrate, but now it was bare. Even the epochal torment in his head could not have cost that much, so he must have bought matching headaches for half of Kosord. Granted that the priests were better at commissioning work than paying for it, when they did pay him, the sudden riches never lasted long. So he survived on his fee from Thod's family, a bag of meal every sixday, and the next was not due until tomorrow.

If he lived that long.

Werist Cutrath was an infuriating, unnecessary, unwanted complication in the life of a man who wanted nothing more than to spend the entire day chipping stone. Benard's needs were few: his art, his art, and his art. Once in a while he enjoyed a riotous celebration like last night's. He appreciated women, women appreciated him; although most of his friends were humble folk, he had worshiped holy Eriander in some of the best bedrooms in Kosord. There was one woman he loved to desperation but could not have. The last thing he needed was a fight to the death with Cutrath Horoldson, especially when there could be no doubt as to whose death.

He grimaced as Thod opened the drape again, hurling sunlight everywhere. Benard accepted a jug of Kosord's fetid, lukewarm well water and drank greedily. Thod hopefully located a chisel and maul.

"No hammering yet," Benard said. "I need a board."

"At once, master." Thod put a brave face on his disappointment. He liked nothing better than to spend the entire day chipping marble as Benard directed, convinced that this would build muscles to impress the light of his life, Thilia, daughter of Sugthar the potter. Thod was eagerness personified, laboring untiring from dawn to dusk, five days out of six. Whether he possessed enough of an artist's eye to please holy Anziel was another matter.

"But first, run and ask Thranth if I can borrow his good loincloth again. And his sandals!" he shouted as Thod took off like a stone from a sling. Thranth was his brother, a harness maker, and relatively wealthy.

Benard tied up the curtain and squinted out at the day. Although Kosord had no good building stone, it did own a quarry of warm-toned marble that was perfect for sculpting golden Vigaelian bodies. Three great blocks stood around in various stages of completion. Mayn, goddess of knowledge, was the easiest of the Bright Ones to portray, because only Her hands were visible, holding Her traditional distaff and spindle, but he was pleased with the way the stone revealed the woman inside—trailing folds where fabric hung loose, smooth surfaces when it clung to flesh at shoulder or advancing knee, even hints of the face under the veil. Almost as if the marble were transparent. Praise the lady.

Next to Benard's kiln stood a roughly hacked out Sinura, goddess of healing, wrapped in Her snake, but no one except Benard knew that the raw block nearest the shed contained Weru, god of storm and battle, just waiting to be exposed.

By the time Thod came trotting back from his brother's harness shop, Benard was rummaging in his cluttered nest. "You haven't seen my razor anywhere, have you?" Vigaelians reacted badly to black beards.

They found the razor but not the polished scrap of bronze he used as a mirror. In his present state he was likely to skin himself anyway, so he let Thod shave him while he— Ouch !—planned his visit to the palace.

"Lot of teeth lying around the streets this morning," Thod remarked shyly.

"Teeth? ... Um, yes." Ouch ! As well as instructing his apprentice in his craft, a master should set a good example of proper civic behavior, but knuckles as bruised as Benard's could not be explained away. Nor could his hangover be concealed. He told the tale, stressing the mitigating circumstances of betrothal celebration and damsel-rescuing, and not mentioning divine intervention.

Thod made admiring noises when he heard about the fight. "Do you know who this rapist was, master?"

"Cutrath Horoldson."

" The satrap's son ?" Fortunately Thod was stropping the bronze blade on a fragment of tile at the time, or he might have cut his master's throat. "But he's a Werist! Oh, master, master! That's suicide, to hit a Hero!"