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citadel, the jerdat captaincy, it was probably a bone thrown to Sorem in better days. It was apparently not uncommon for the royal house to place its princes in the army, the ancestry of the Hragons being a military one. Yet he handled himself well and was an excellent horseman. He had mentioned a priest’s training, too. Maybe all these things were fruits he had plucked for himself. His men were loyal to him, you could not miss that. He had used what came to hand, and used it well enough, but his birthright must have been gall rather than honey to him, such crowds before him, and such crowds looking on to see if he would fall, to mock him when he did. No wonder his pride was raw. Hearing of a Hessek mob in the Grove, he had come out like a young lion for action. Finding me, he felt his gods had set him another test. He would kill me if he could. I had no option but to deflect his purpose. And it irked me.
3
When I left the Grove, the sun was low, sinking brick-red behind the piled roofs, into the distant western marsh.
Bar-Ibithni took on a new color in the sunset, a feverish, sullen glow of burning lacquers and dyed plaster walls. In the high prayer-towers of the Palm Quarter, the Flame priests sang out their hymn to Masrimas’s fiery sun.
A man loitered by the wall of the Grove. When he saw me he bowed and touched his fingers to his breast, the Masrian greeting to a religious leader.
“Illustrious sir, my master has sent me to entreat you to visit him. His house is your house, he will give you anything you desire, if you can cure his agony.”
“Which agony is that?”
“It is a rock, holy one, above his bladder.”
Phoonlin, the rich merchant Lyo had promised, was gambling on me after all.
I said I would go with the man, Phoonlin’s steward, no less, and told him to conduct me.
If any were watching for us, a fine reassurance it must have been for them to observe, sauntering up the street, one tall young dandy surrounded by a crew of three villainous
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and overdressed ship’s officers and six filthy and crazed-looking Hesseks. Small wonder if they had barred the gates against us; yet they did not.
The house, situated in the fashionable area, was as close to Hragon’s Wall and the Palm Quarter as it could get. A mansion of stucco and tiled gables, it lifted itself on heavily gilded columns carved to resemble palms, out of a garden court of black sculpted trees. Here the hot afterglow was fading in a narrow strip of pool. A lion fountain of white stone stared down Into the water; it had a woman’s breasts and the wings of an eagle, and through its bearded lips, pursed as if to whistle, jetted a glittering string that created the only movement and the only sound in the quiet.
No lights had been lighted in windows of the mansion.
A veiled figure opened the door and pattered away ahead of us on little naked pale feet.
The steward asked if my servants would remain below, and took me upstairs to the second story. Here, as we waited for the girl to return, he said, “Forgive the lack of light, sir. It is my master’s whim.”
“Why?”
He seemed embarrassed.
“It has something to do with the Old Faith,” he said. “I beg your pardon. We thought you to be a devotee of the Hessek order.”
“Do I seem a priest? I’m not. But this is a Masrian house.”
“Partly, sir. But when a man is desperate, he will turn anywhere. And if you are not of the Masrian canon yourself-”
“I am a foreigner,” I said. “Tell me about the Old Faith.”
Before he answered, something went through my brain, some intimation, a memory of talk on the ship. The Old Faith. Darkness as opposed to the clear light of the Flame, the sun and the torch symbols of Masrimas, something arcane and occult, a mildewed dust from the tomb of ancient Hessek.
“Myself,” he said sturdily, a fellow who felt his sense and his reason affronted by the persisting doubt in his bones, “myself, I don’t credit such superstition. I, too, have Masrian blood, and if I incline to any god, it would be the FlameLord. That’s clean. For the other, it’s rife in the old city over the marsh. Bit-Hessee. . . . Did you know, not even a jerdier will go there after sundown?”
“Give me a name for this god of the Hesseks. I thought they worshipped the ocean or some such.”
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“Yes, sir,” he said, “but it’s not a god. It’s a-an un-god. I’d rather keep quiet. I’ve said too much. You understand, my master Phoonlin turned to the idea in desperation, and he doesn’t grasp the fundamentals of it. I’ve heard them say you must be pure Hessek to do that. . . . Here’s the girl coming, sir.”
He broke off, and the veiled servant ran up on her white mouse feet, and whispered that the master bade me enter.
It was now very dark. I went in at another door and stood in shadows. I made out breathing, harsh from pain and excitement-or was it fear? I read his fright, glimpsing him with the inner eve rather than my sight, a fat man wasted to his skin, a blade of pain in his side, death on his mind.
“Be calm,” I said. “I am the sorcerer Vazkor, and I have come to heal you.”
There was a lamp on a stand. I crossed to it, opened the glass panel, and put my hand in, letting the energy rise gently from me, as I had learned to do. enough to heat the wick and set it burning. Phoonlin caught his breath. The flame shot up, scattering lights about the walls as I closed the glass on it.
Now I could see him. He lay in a chair, blinking at me. The curled wig was threaded with silver, and there was a silver fringe on his robe and great rings on his fingers, but his face was naked. He would sell me everything, I could see, for an hour without pain. Here was my wage.
“I have tried several,” he muttered. “All failed. I wasted good cash on them. You, too, perhaps, in spite of your trick with the lamp.” He glared at me with dismal rage. “You’re just a boy.”
“It is your discomfort that makes you forget yourself,” I said. “So I will relieve you of it, and then we shall do business.”
The minute I put my hand on him, I felt the stone, “saw” it through my palm, like a black knot in a white branch. I thought, This I will leave you for today. Only the hurt I will take, till I have what I want.
Rich Phoonlin became rigid. He gripped the sides of his chair, and paused, to be certain.
“It has-gone-” he said. His face was full of entreaty.
“You are not yet cured,” I said. “That’s for tomorrow, if you’ll pay my fee.”
He sighed and shut his eyes.
“Even for this,” he said, “I would reward you. By the
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Flame, how sweet it is. If you can make me well, you may name your price.”
I had questioned Kochus briefly concerning the merchant, and was well primed.
“I name my fee now. Ten balances of gold, to be weighed at the market rate; fifteen of silver. Also a brief interest in your business dealings, corn and vineyards, I think, and pearls. I ask only enough to provide me an adequate income while I am in the city, say twenty percent of each current measure, vat and gem-at the market rate, of course.”
“You dog,” he said. “Do you judge me that wealthy? You will batten off my blood, like a parasite, will you? What right have you to ask this of me?”
“As much right as you suppose you have to live. Choose.”
“You’ll ruin me.”
“Death would do it more thoroughly than I,” I said. “I will return tomorrow; you may tell me then if my terms are to be met.”
I felt no pity for him, trying to keep hold of his life and his hoard at once. It was not my time for pity, at least, not for men such as Phoonlio.
Torches burned along the front of the Dolphin’s Teeth, in funnels of blue and yellow glass. Inside the vestibule and corridors, I passed no one who did not stare.
The story had got around, as was to be expected. They had heard everything, the episode with Gold-Arm, the hours as healer in the Grove, the jerdat-prince turning tail with his two hundred men. What would the sorcerer do next?