The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (26 page)

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Klikitagh's face remained blank Melilot realized he was so nervous that out of habit he had used formal, high-flown terms, incomprehensible to this foreigner He made hasty amends

"It is as Jarveena has said My guest apartment is at your disposal During your stay at Sanctuary I look forward to chatting with you about your native country and its script and language, it would be most inter esting, indeed a positive pleasure, to hear you on the subject Accord ingly, rather than dismiss you to some flea-ridden tavern like the Vulgar Unicorn, I suggest you make my home your base until you have com pleted whatever business brings you here Feel free to come and go . . ."

His words trailed away Klikitagh was scowling worse than ever His hand would have fallen to his sword hilt—he had refused to be parted from the weapon, bad manners though it was to bring it into his host's dining room—had Jarveena not caught his fingers in her own, slimmer but almost as strong With a sour gnn she said, "You've upset the poor bastard Not surprising I'll take him away and pacify him, and come back "

"Pacifying" Klikitagh took so long that Melilot, growing drowsy from the fumes of wine, was on the point of postponing further conversation with Jarveena to the morrow—the street outside having reached that pitch of quietness after which almost any noise might set his geese to
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cackling—when, silent as a shadow, she returned wearing nothing but her skin and slumped back into her chair He noticed that his guess about the keloid on her chest had been correct

"Foof" she exclaimed, though she kept her voice low "If I'd known what a handful Klikitagh can be I'd never have agreed to help him Still, you can't help feeling sorry for the poor devil, can you?"

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"Personally," Melilot grunted, "I find it the easiest thing in the world to avoid doing so. What spell has he cast on you, who never before to my knowledge felt sorry for anybody save yourself—and maybe Enas Yorl?"

She pantomimed hurling her wine mug at him, but cancelled the move ment with a wry smile at his reflexive flinch. The mug turned out to be empty. Glancing around, she saw that the little girl in the corner had dozed off. Remembering, perhaps, the days when she, too, had had to wait on Melilot's pleasure after dinner, she went to help herself. Having taken a swig and topped it up a second time, she resumed her place.

"All right." She sighed. "I guess I'd better tell you Klikitagh's story."

"I'd rather hear about the deals with—"

"Tomorrow will do!" she interrupted. "Or more likely the day after."
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"I was afraid of that," the master scribe muttered. "On the first full day of each of your visits to Sanctuary, you invariably have urgent busi ness . . . Still, if this time you can afford to have Enas Yorl charm away the scar on your forehead"—brightening—"you'll no longer present such an alarming aspect every time you shake aside your forelock."

"It's true that I intend to wait on Enas Yorl tomorrow, as I always do." Jarveena wasn't looking at him, but at the fading glories of the painted ceiling, on which the lamps and the flames from the dying logs combined to cast curious and intersecting shadows, as though some ma gician were eavesdropping on them and letting his attention wander now and then from the spell that assured his invisibility. "But this time, not

for my own sake."

"For . . . his?" Reaching for his own mug, Melilot was so astonished

he almost spilled the contents.

"Yes indeed."

After that there was a lengthy silence, broken only by the occasional

sputtering of a jet of gas boiled out from the dampest and longest-lasting

log across the fire dogs.

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Eventually noise drifted from outside: the tramp of booted feet on cobblestones. One of the night patrols was passing, composed of men trained locally to Hell-Hound standards of discipline; yet even they did not dare to venture abroad except in twos, so lawless and unruly was this premier melting pot of cities. The geese were accustomed to the sound of their passage, and the boss gander marked it with no more than an evil sounding hiss.

Having watched the gleam of the patrol's lantern approach and fade on the curtains that masked his streetward window, Melilot said, "Are you sure he has not cast a spell on you? Last year you said this was to be the time of your final visit to Enas Yorl, at least for personal reasons. You

said that after it your face would be restored to the same condition as your"—he coughed behind one plump hand—"the rest of you."

"I'm having second thoughts," Jarveena muttered. "It's sometimes not a bad thing to be able to turn off an unwanted suitor just by doing this." And she drew her eyebrows down, glaring at him from beneath their two graceful arcs. At once Melilot's gaze, against his will, was drawn away from the rest of her face and horribly concentrated on the livid cicatrix that marred her forehead and instantly made her handsome features more repulsive than the worst invention of Sanctuary's hawkmasks.
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"You haven't done it to him." Melilot suggested.

"Yes. At first. It had no effect. That was what got me interested Klik itagh." She had perfectly mastered the final sound of the name; Melilot, to his shame, knew that he would have to practice it half a dozen times aloud and in private before he dared address the man directly.

"What, then, followed?"

"The discovery that something worse could happen to a person than what I went through as a child."

For an instant her face reflected memories of long ago and far away. Melilot, knowing what was in her mind, shivered. To have been raped repeatedly, then whipped and left for dead among the ruins of her native village Holt—not for nothing now referred to as Forgotten—when she was no more than nine . . . Was that not sufficient horror to enter into anybody's life?

Yet she had found someone who, in her view, had suffered even more. What monstrous events, then, lay in the past of Klikitagh?

Huskily he said, "Tell me his tale."

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"Let it begin," she said after reflection, "with the reason why he took offense at your offer of free lodging. I know you'd not have made it had you not expected quid pro quo. It's all, of course, beside the point, but what he might be able to teil you of his mother tongue would be quite useless. Whether he can write I've not inquired; the same applies."

"Still, knowledge of any distant language—"

"Even a dead one? Dead for centuries?"

"What?" Melilot jolted forward on his chair, one careless elbow over setting his mug—but it was empty, and he lacked the energy to rise and fill it for himself.

"Do you not believe there were great magicians in the past?" Jarveena challenged.

"You mean . . ." Melilot sank back slowly into his usual pot-bellied slouch, staring into nowhere.

"Out with it!"

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"He's under an immortality spell?"

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"That's only the half of it. Don't imagine you should envy him!"—in a sharp tone of warning. "On the contrary! He is the most pitiable creature I have ever met, and in your service 1 have traveled back and forth across the whole known world. Is that not so?"

Melilot nodded dumbly.

"Then listen." She leaned toward the fire with chin on fists; the flames made patterns of darkness dart across her face and body. "What lies on him is no mere spell, but a tremendous curse. In it consists the reason why he was angry when you offered him lodging. He cannot accept. Nor will he eat your dinner tomorrow or on any other evening. You see . . ."

She weighed her words with care.

"He is bound never to sleep two nights in the same bed, nor eat a second meal from the same table. And this has been his doom for a thousand years."

Now for a great while Melilot sat motionless, save insofar as the play of fire-and lamplight kept up a constant illusion of movement through out the room. Finally he had to stifle a yawn. But behind his plump, inscrutable face it seemed his mind had been working hard enough, albeit along lines that were familiar in Sanctuary more than any other place.

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"Would this not imply that he cannot be kept in jail?" he suggested.

"Why, you—!" Jarveena leaped to her feet, brandishing her mug as though to brain him with it. Only a warning hiss from the gander beyond the ceiling prevented her. But her face was aglow with fury as she sat down again. "Is that all you can think about? How would you like to be in his shoes?"

"Not at all," the fat one answered candidly. "I'm sorry; I hadn't thought the matter through ... To what is owed this fearful geas, then?"

"I've no idea. Moreover, nor does he."

"But that's ridiculous!" Melilot stared at her. "You mean he won't admit—"

"I mean precisely what I said!" Do you think I haven't pestered him with questions? Do you think I haven't put him under oath? He has sworn by all the gods and goddesses whose names I recognize, plus one or two I never ran across before, that he believes the curse to be unjust. He says, and I've been able to confirm, that he has consulted every magi cian whom he could afford to pay, and none has given him surcease. What is more, none has contrived to relieve his misery by telling him the curse indeed is warranted. Were he aware of what he is accursed for, he might at least attempt an expiation. Can you think of a crueler fate than
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his? He is being punished—endlessly, horribly punished—for something he has no memory of having done! Is he not truly to be pitied?"

A shudder plus a vigorous nod made Melilot's gross body wobble under his fine robe.

"But how does he make shift aboard a ship?" he demanded. "If he may not sleep twice in the same bed—"

"He brought a hammock, and each night slung it from two different posts or hooks. This is permissible."

"Then: eating twice from the same table?"

"Until this evening I had not seen him eat from a table at all. Aboard ship, he carried his dish to a different spot on deck or in the 'tween-decks, but this strategem did not entirely serve; our voyage, as you know, was prolonged by a contrary wind, and for the last two days he did not eat at all. In the tavern where I met him, where he had already spent a week, he had to bribe its keeper to move him each night to a different bunk or pallet, and since there were only two tables for the customers he was reduced to eating on the floor, like a dog. He was much mocked in
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consequence."

"Has he described what happens when he tries to defy the curse?"

"He cannot. He says he's never had the power to do so. It is, he says, as though he has become a well-trained animal. Though he might sit down to your table tomorrow, be he never so hungry his hands would remain in his lap, refusing to lift food to his lips; though he might fall upon the softest couch in the world, weary to the marrow of his bones, only the first time would he be allowed repose. Thereafter he would toss about all night, unless exhaustion drove him to prefer the floor. He must, he says, avoid the highest and the lowest sorts of lodging: the former because the wealthy often buy antiques, the latter because the poor make shift with what's been handed down or looted from abandoned homes. This carven table might be one he ate from centuries ago, that horsehair pallet might have been in use elsewhere. The curse still holds, even at so remote a reach; he starves, he grows red-eyed with lack of sleep, until he wanders on and falls exhausted."

"How does he live? What trade is open to him?" Melilot demanded.

Jarveena shrugged. "I think when all else fails he has to rob. But there are tasks even a wanderer may undertake. He goes a lot to sea; sometimes he enlists to guard a caravan; he has hinted at having been a courier, and carried confidential mail. Naturally, though, he can't serve long on any given route."

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"Naturally," Melilot said in a dry tone, and had to hide another yawn.

"Well, my dear Jarveena, if it's any consolation, you have indeed elicited my sympathy. Your vivid picture of his unendurable existence must move

140 AFTERMATH

the stoniest of hearts—which mine, as you're aware, is not. Let us hope for both your sakes that Enas Yorl relieves the curse tomorrow. Go now and tell your friend I wish he may sleep soundly in my guest room, since it may only be this once. And leave me your report and your accounts, so I may peruse them while you're with the wizard."

"You'll find them all in order."

"Are they not always so?"

"Of course. How otherwise could I have kept on your right side so long?"

Rising with a chuckle, she headed for the door. Passing his chair, she bent to plant a kiss on his shaven pate.

"Thank you for allowing Klikitagh to stay. It can't be often that he enjoys such luxury."

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