UNEASY ALLIANCES
CONTENTS
Dramatis Personae, Lynn Abbey
Introduction, Lynn Abbey
Slave Trade, Robert Lynn Asprin
The Best of Friends, C. J. Cherryh
The Power of Kings, Jon DeCles
Red Light, Love Light, Chris Morris
A Sticky Business, C. 5: Williams
The Promise of Heaven, Robin Wayne Bailey
The Vision of Lalo, Diana L. Paxson
UNEASY ALLIANCES
Dramatis Personae
The Townspeople
AHDIOVIZUN; AHDIOMER viz; AHDIO-Proprietor of Sly’s Place, a legendary dive within the Maze.
THRODE-An employee at Sly’s Place.
CLEYA; JODEERA-The woman Ahdio loves, and who works for him at Sly’s Place. Since she is far too beautiful to travel safely through the Maze, Ahdio has arranged for her to be protected by a disguise of ugliness.
LALO THE LIMNER-Street artist gifted with magic he does not fully understand.
GILLA-His indomitable wife.
GANNER-Their middle son, slain during the False Plague Riots of the previous winter which signaled the end of severe civil unrest in Sanctuary.
VANDA-Their daughter, employed as nursemaid to the Beysib at the palace.
WEDEMIR-Their eldest child and son. A member of Walegrin’s guard patrol.
LATILLA-Their youngest daughter.
ALFI-Their infant son.
HAKIEM-Storyteller and confidant extraordinaire.
HORT-Son of a fisherman and Hakiem’s apprentice.
JUBAL-Prematurely aged former gladiator. Once he openly ran Sanctuary’s most visible criminal organization, the Hawkmasks, now he works behind the scenes.
SALIMAN-His aide and only friend.
MORIA-Once one ofJubal’s Hawkmasks, then a servant of Ischade. She was physically transformed into a Rankan noblewoman before the magic died, and the transformation endures. She is in hiding with Stilcho.
MYRTIS-Madam of the Aphrodisia House.
SNAPPER JO-A fiend who survived the destruction of magic in Sanctuary. Once employed as a bartender in the Vulgar Unicorn.
STILCHO-Once one oflschade’s resurrected minions. He was “cured” of death when magic was purged from Sanctuary.
zip-Sitter young terrorist. Leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary (PELS). Now he and his remaining fighters have been designated as officials responsible for peace in the city.
The S’danzo
ILLYRA-Half-blood S’danzo seeress with True Sight. Wounded by PELS in the False Plague Riots.
DUBRO-Bazaar blacksmith and husband to Illyra.
THE TERMAGANT-Oldest of the S’danzo women practicing her craft in Sanctuary.
The Magicians
ILSIGI MAGES:
MARKMOR-A powerful, ambitious, youthful wizard.
MARYPE-His arrogant, yet blundering, apprentice.
MIZRAITH-Marype’s father, slain by Markmor shortly after the Prince arrived in Sanctuary.
RANKAN HAZARDS DWELLING AT THE MAGEGUILD;
RANDAL; WITCHY-EARS-The only mage ever admitted into the Sacred Band of Stepsons or trusted by them. Now a teacher at the Mageguild.
Those who adhere to no hierarchy or discipline but their own:
ENAS YORL-Quasi-immortal mage cursed with eternal life and a constantly changing physical form.
ISCHADE-Necromancer and thief. Her curse is passed to her lovers who die from it. Since the diminution of magic in Sanctuary, she has been in isolation at her house on the White Foal River.
STRICK;TORAZELAN STRICK TIFIRAQA-White Mage who has made Sanctuary his home. He will help anyone who comes to him, but there is always a Price, sometimes trivial and sometimes not, for his aid.
Visitors in Sanctuary
THE SHEPHERD-A figure of considerable mystery. By his panoply he might be an Ilsigi warrior-but all such men have been dead for years.
The Rankans Living in Sanctuary
CHENAYA; DAUGHTER OF THE sw-A beautiful and powerful young woman, the Prince’s cousin, who is fated never to lose a fight. In her arrogance and innocence she made more enemies in Sanctuary than even fate could handle and has left town until her reputation repairs itself.
DAYRNE-Her companion and trainer.
LEYN, QUIJEN, DISMAS AND GESTUS-Her friends and gladiators at her father’s school.
DAPHNE-Rankan noblewoman and first wife of Prince Kadakithis. Ostensibly sent to safety before the arrival of the Beysib, she was actually kidnapped and sold into slavery on Scavenger’s Island where Chenaya rescued her. She is estranged from her husband.
PRINCE KADAKITHIS-Charismatic but somewhat naive half-brother of the assassinated Emperor, Abakithis.
LOWAN VIGELES-Half-brother ofMolin Torchholder, father of Chenaya. A wealthy aristocrat self-exiled to Sanctuary and hoping to return to the Rankan capital in triumph someday. He operates a gladiator school at his Land’s End estate and has built a small, temporary arena there.
MOLIN TORCHHOLDER; TORCH-Archpriest of Sanctuary’s wargod (whichever deity that is at the moment). Architect for the rebuilt walls of Sanctuary, Supreme bureaucratic administrator of the city.
RASHAN; THE EYE OF SAVANKALA-Priest and Judge of Savankala. Highest ranking Rankan in Sanctuary prior to the arrival of the Prince, now allied with Chenaya’s disaffected Rankans at Land’s End.
STEPSONS; SACRED BANDERS-members of a mercenary unit loyal to Tempus. Their years in Sanctuary were among the worst in their history and all but a few of them have gratefully left town.
CRITIAS;CRIT-Longtime mercenary in the company. Tempus left him in charge of peace-keeping in Sanctuary when everyone else left. Also the partner of Straton, though that pairing has been in disarray for some time now.
STRATON; STRAT; ACE-Partner ofCritias. Injured by the PELS at the start of the False Plague Riots. He has been Ischade’s lover and though her curse has not killed him, most of his former associates count him among Sanctuary’s damned.
WALEGRIN-Rankan army officer assigned to the Sanctuary garrison where his father had been slain by the S’danzo many years before. He is now one of three officers responsible for the peace in Sanctuary. He is also Illyra ‘s half-brother.
The Beysib
SHUPANSEA; sw-SEA-Head of the Beysib exiles in Sanctuary; mortal avatar of the Beysib mother goddess. Lover of Prince Kadakithis whom she wishes to marry.
INTRODUCTION
Lynn Abbey
“No! No more blood! Make it stop!”
Shupansea awoke at the sound of her own scream. The nightmare had propelled her out of bed and to the window of her bedchamber. With a trembling hand she pulled the casement shut- This wasn’t the first time she’d found herself before an open window; wasn’t the first time she shed a cold sweat wondering what would happen if some night she did not scream herself awake.
“0 Beysa, forgive my intrusion. I-I heard you scream . . .”
Shupansea turned to the lamplight and faced the frightened eyes of Kammesin, the woman who had cared for her since infancy. “It was nothing-a noise in the dark. Nothing at all.”
Kammesin did not relax. The old woman’s eyes remained wide, round and steadily unblinking. Mother Bey! Had she been exiled so long among the fluttering Rankans that her own people looked strange and unnerving? Was her soul forgetting that the fixed stare was a gesture of honesty and transparency as much as it was a measure of uncontrolled anxiety? And had she, herself, blinked even once since waking from the nightmare?
“Yes, Kam-sin,” she admitted, forcing the membrane to withdraw and her eyelids to descend. “It was the nightmare, again. But I’m all right now. Just light my lamp, then you go back to sleep.”
The woman gave a shrug that every servant knew. It meant the same to both Rankans and Beysibs; disbelief and resignation. “As you wish, 0 Beysa.” She lit the lamp beside the bed as she left.
A flush of shame burned across the Beysa’s face as she heard the door close. Those folk who believed aristocrats were unaware of their servants had no understanding of the matter at all. Shupansea felt her old nurse’s censure as a sad, painful twinge in her heart. All her life she had confided in Kammesin, but now, when she was overflowing with despair, she could speak to no one.
In point of fact, the Beysa wished to speak to the goddess Bey. She wanted to know why, after these seasons in Sanctuary, her sleep was haunted by memories of the final, bloody days of her brief, unsanctified reign over the Beysin Empire. But it had been more than a year since the Mother’s voice had resounded within her head. Mother Bey, like everything else magical or divine in Sanctuary, had been reduced to shadow strength.
The town which had been god-ridden was now virtually god-less. Mother Bey was the merest whisper of empathy in Her avatar’s mind. A calming whisper nonetheless, and it seemed to say that the goddess was content with exile and did not plan to return home soon.
That’s not enough, the Beysa thought loudly enough, she hoped, for the goddess to hear. / can’t stay here and remember the past, too.
The flicker of empathy shifted, resonating love and the smiling face of Prince Kadakithis. Shupansea grit her teeth and shook the feeling away. Mother Bey had strengthened every cynic’s hand when She tumbled into a divine infatuation with the wargod, Stormbringer. Half the people in Sanctuary-if not the known world-had shared hot frustration in their dreams as the would-be lovers contended with a mismatch of immortal anatomy.
Such divine emissions had ceased when the magical nouma of Sanctuary was burned away, but Shupansea knew the pair chased each other still and she was more than slightly embarrassed by her progenitor’s lusty behavior.
Though Shupansea purged the goddess from her thoughts and feeling, the prince was not so easily removed. Surely it was no coincidence that the nightmares had started right after they’d announced their intended. but still unscheduled, marriage. Right after she’d decided to abide by Rankan standards of acceptable behavior and moved her personal entourage out of Kadakithis’s suite.