Liavek 4 Read online

  These things concerned her as she walked beside Klefti that day. She remembered her adventures with him and Urgelian. They all seemed fantasies now, as though someone else had told them to her and she had made up the pictures in her head.

  The nearer she and Klefti got to the city of Liavek, the more people they saw. People herded sheep and pigs; two fishermen discussed the amazingly good season over on Minnow Island. one trying to convince the other to go there. Jolesha lifted a dried fish from his supplies. She and Klefti ate it greedily while watching a man in a tent booth beside the road trying to convince passersby—and he had a good crowd—to "invest" their money in his business, the specifics of which seemed more than a little vague. The salesman made a great joke of playing on all the meanings in that word, invest: "Magic, my friends, is what you'll think it is when you see your money triple, quadruple even, before next Buds and Flowers. Invest in me, let me invest for you, and we'll all be rich together. And, to show my good intentions, my good faith, in return, these wonderful implements can be yours. Invest ten levars and receive this hand-crafted mug for your kaf; twenty levars and you'll walk away in these handsome sandals, absolutely free." He went on showing people all the gifts they could receive. Many in his audience began fumbling for coins. Jolesha and Klefti moved through them, scavenging dropped pieces of copper and silver, but no gold.

  "Why didn't we ever think of so obvious a ploy?" Jolesha asked Klefti as they left the crowd. "People will believe anything if they think you'll make them richer in the bargain." She heard herself say that and wondered if she were any different, really, with her fantasies.

  They wandered along Market Street and spent most of their coin on meat pies and kaf where that road met up with the Levar's Way. It was dusk when they reached the Levar's Park. Musicians played, acrobats leapt over flames, and more booths sold steaming food. Among the shops that lined Gold Street they found hostelry for the night, paid for with the last of the money they had scrounged.

  Just before dawn the two of them left the hostel and went across the park toward the spires of the Levar's Palace. They had gone perhaps halfway through the park—Klefti again scrutinizing the artifact—when Jolesha stepped off the path and pulled him after her into the bushes.

  In an open area where three of the paths intersected ahead, two men stood back to back, each with a matchlock pistol held up beside his cheek. Three others looked on, their backs to Jolesha and Klefti. The two armed men began to stride away from each other, their steps smooth, slow, rhythmic. One was lost to sight behind the foliage. Abruptly, the other man turned, lowering his pistol. Before he could fire, there came a loud shot and he suddenly spun around and slammed to the ground. One of the three onlookers went calmly to the body and knelt there. Klefti suddenly clutched Jolesha and she assumed the spectacle of the duel had overwhelmed him, but he tugged harder and she glanced over at him to find him bathed in light thrown off by the artifact. The blackness beneath the gold had turned pink, the intensity throbbing. A whispery voice issued from it; "Marakele, Marakele, I fought for you. Marakele..."

  The strange, susurrant voice faded and the color dimmed in the cylinder. It was a wonder to Jolesha that Klefti had not dropped it. He stared into her eyes and there was so much distress in that look that she could not answer him.

  One of the onlookers placed a blue cape around the shoulders of the surviving duelist and they turned away from the scene. The onlooker grinned like a father proud of his son and said, "Now the girl is yours—even her parents won't interfere if you want her. I envy you." The duelist grunted and sneered to his companion. Jolesha could smell him as he passed.

  Klefti still held out the artifact. She took it from him and wrapped it up again. Somehow it had let them hear a dead man's voice, of that she was certain. The sooner it belonged to somebody else, the happier she would be. Even getting money for it had become of minor importance.

  *

  At first the two Scarlet Guards insisted that the Levar saw no one, being far too busy with preparations for the End of Wine to hear some beggar's tale. Then Jolesha explained that she had a religious artifact to deliver to the Levar, an artifact belonging to the Church of Truth. The guards fell silent, eyeing one another with something akin to wonder. One of them said, "You'd best come with me then," as if to his comrade, but she knew he was speaking to her. Klefti started to accompany her but the other guard grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. "Not you. You stay put, whelp.”

  Jolesha went back and calmed him, saying, "Wait for me here. I'll be fine. If it takes long, you go to where we saw the duel fought and meet me there. Okay?" She smiled to show him things would be fine, but she was hardly inclined to believe that herself. She shot the guard a hard look but he did not seem to notice. The other one said, "Girl?" and she backed a few steps, then turned and followed him.

  The guard led her past neatly trimmed bushes and up wide marble stairs. They went inside, where it was warmer, she saw, because they had come in near the kitchens; she caught a glimpse of vats hung in the back, a spitted pig, and a table piled with fresh loaves of bread, all different colors and textures. The guard marched at a steady pace along the halls, oblivious to the tapestries, murals, and sculptures that adorned them.

  Jolesha slowed and stared at every one of them, touching an enormous marble Kil rising from a waterspout, the eyes fitted with emeralds; she was completely awed by a painting of the Levar that was mostly gilt-work, and by a mural of farmers irrigating their fields which rose up the height of two floors. She had to run to keep up with the guard. She was breathing wealth and power the likes of which she had never seen; they rode the air like the smell of baking bread.

  The guard brought her to an anteroom of woven rugs, floor-length curtains, and intaglio woodwork. "You wait here now and I'll get Count Dashif to hear your case." As he retreated, he was grinning at her as if at his favorite food, but Jolesha hardly noticed. The name...the one who had stood above her in the silo, who had been responsible in some way for Urgelian's death. She had stumbled into a terrible trap. She thought to run back through the Palace but was certain the guard would spy her, and even if he didn't, she knew she would never be able to retrace her steps.

  The curtains at the far end of the room opened onto a high window that showed her a view of a courtyard two stories below. She backed away from it dizzily, her eyes squeezed shut. Soldiers had been drilling down there, and across the yard she had seen the kitchen chimneys and so knew where she was. In no way could she make herself look below, much less climb out and escape. But the guard must think she had done just that. She steeled herself to reach out and throw the window open. In the anteroom again, she searched for a place to hide and noticed immediately that the woodwork had been designed to conceal the cupboard doors that lined both sides of the room. Jolesha tried two before she found one she could squeeze into. She dragged the door closed, then listened against it.

  She hid in that cramped place so long that she thought no one would be coming back. Then someone ran into the room. "She's gone," the guard exclaimed.

  "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she weren't even corporeal," said the voice she had heard in the silo.

  "Lord?"

  "Forget it. I'm surrounded by fools, and worse still, fools of my own picking. Now I'll have to..." He fell silent as slow, measured footsteps entered the room. "Your Eminence," Dashif said. The tone of his voice had changed completely. "The urchin would appear to have fled."

  The measured tread continued without interruption past the cupboard. At the curtains the footsteps did hesitate for a moment, but continued on to the window. "Out this window, down to the yard," said the new voice, and she could hear tension in it; she realized suddenly that this person shared her fear of heights but had made himself deny them. The window scraped shut and the footsteps came back. "Someone should be looking for her, hmm?" Now he sounded tired or bored.

  “Uhh—right away, Your Eminence." The guard clattered out.

  “Dashif,"
said His Eminence. "As things stand, the Faith must pay for the loss of an entire well's worth of grain that was destroyed...effectively in pursuit of four saddlebags and a length of rope."

  "Eminence, I—"

  "Furthermore, word of this device has at last reached the Levar and she wants it for her own in order to communicate not only with her dead parents but also with her first regent. There are important questions she wishes answered, some of which she has voiced to me. Must I explain to you the possible consequences of such a discourse with my predecessor? Is that clear?"

  "Eminently. Your...Eminence."

  His Eminence sighed deeply. "Her agents are seeking it even now. Neither they nor the heretical White priests must gain it. I'm no longer concerned with having it. I'd prefer it were simply destroyed along with anyone who knows of it. That is all." The footsteps of His Eminence strode away, followed shortly by Dashif's hurried tread.

  Jolesha's mind whirled with all that she had overheard. She stole out of the cupboard and crept to the door. People milled about in the hallway; any one of them might have been Dashif. She decided that she would climb down from the window. His Eminence had her fear and if he could master it, so could she. She closed the curtains with sweaty hands. The latch had been fastened tight and she had to struggle with it, finally flinging the window oren. She found herself hanging over a wide ledge that led all around the palace at this level. She got up into the window. Her head seemed light and sound took on a strange hollowness. She tried to step out on the ledge without looking at it and was reminded of the feeling of stretching her toes for the walkway in the silo. This was different and much, much worse. She might have touched the ledge or not—by then she could not say. The curtains had reached out for her and dragged her back, wrapping her up in thick darkness.

  *

  She awoke because the sun was baking her. She was lying on the floor below the window, part of the curtain trapped beneath her. The artifact still lay in the folds of her tunic. The window hung open.

  How long she had been unconscious she could not guess, but it must have been some time in order for the sun to swing around and strike her. She left the window open and went through the anteroom. The hallway contained fewer people now and surely none of them would have been the one called Dashif. She began walking in a direction she hoped would take her back toward the kitchen. Some of the people eyed her with mild curiosity, but she was hardly the strangest sight walking along those halls.

  At one point she passed what she thought was a tall man in dark leggings and a cloak. She was going to ask him if he could direct her to the kitchen, but when she looked into his face she saw the strangeness of his eyes, like cat eyes, and knew that she was looking at a Bhandaf, something that seemed utterly impossible. He smiled, no doubt amiably, but she could not find her voice or slow down.

  She hurried on, searching for the statues, that same mural, something to guide her, to show her the way out. Soon, she began pausing at doorways and, when no one was looking, opened them carefully in the hope of finding an exit. In one room a man turned and saw her, then waved her in. He gave her a green silk cloak covered in embroidery and told her that he needed it by that evening. She backed out the door with the cloak. She went down one hall, holding it out in front of her like a maid, but then put it on to disguise her less fashionable attire.

  When at last she found an exit from the palace, the guard at the door stiffened and called her "Mistress" as she passed. He held the door for her. She pressed her fingertips to her forehead and fought down the desire to run. The guard closed the door behind her. She was outside. No one bothered her as she hurried across the yard.

  Jolesha circled the perimeter until she neared the entrance where Klefti had stayed behind. He was no longer there, and she crossed the road immediately to set off for the park.

  In the clearing where the three paths met, she waited. At sunset he had still not appeared. Jolesha could not bear to think what that meant. She sat on a stone bench across from where the duel had been fought. Not one trace showed where the dead man had fallen...the man whose soul they had heard escaping.

  She took the artifact from her tunic, unwrapped it, and studied it again, turning it over so that the last light of day played scintillas off the gold. With a deep sigh, she murmured, "Klefti, Klefti, where are you?"

  The artifact grew wanner. Its black depths began to glow, first a dark vermilion, but brightening in moments to pink as it had done before. A strange voice stirred the air around her, calling as if from a vast distance, "Jolesha, Jolesha." She had never heard that voice before, because he had not had a voice, but she knew him as she knew her own skin.

  A sharp, stabbing knot caught in her throat. "Klefti. Where are you?"

  "Gone. Free. They took me away, Jolesha, a man with long curly black hair ordered my torture. Where were you and where was the cylinder? they asked me, as if I could tell them. So much pain, all gone now. Much peace now."

  Tears fractured her vision of the park. "Oh, no, Klefti, what do I do now?"

  "Avoid the palace people, the Red Faith. They're wrong, all of them—even the ones who fashioned the cylinder, all so wrong. So much beauty, texture, color. Not like life at all."

  "Klefti!"

  "It hurts to talk with you, but I have a voice. You can hear me. I love you, Jolesha. Urgelian, too, he's here. He'll talk a time if you call him. Must go now. The color's closing. I can see you! I can see you! Call, I'll answer again. Jolesha...."

  The artifact grew cold and dark. Jolesha clutched it to herself, doubled up with her head on her knees, and shook with grief. The sun had set.

  •

  The traffic on the Saltigos Road in the month of Wine was heavier than most other months of autumn due to the travelers who came for the End of Wine Festival. The warmth of Kil Coast at that time of the year attracted many of the nomads with their booths and tents, hawkers with everything from sex to shoes for sale. Even the investment broker had moved his show there from the Farmer's Road.

  Among them all, one small striped tent was erected, offering communication with Ghostside for the price of a five-levar piece, rather a high price for a spiritualist—especially one stationed this far outside the city—but no one had yet gone away dissatisfied.

  The interior of the tent was kept dark and the woman with the ancient voice kept her dusky face concealed behind a veil. But she had very young eyes.

  The various faiths lumped her in with all the others they decried, denouncing all as one. What could such vagabonds know of the afterlife, asked the faiths, when the truth of it was so clearly written down and spelled out—depending, of course, on which god and belief one followed? Despite their condemnation, the spiritualist did an exceedingly good trade, and her growing fortune kept her there longer than she had intended while word of her practice spread further than she would have chosen.

  One cool Luckday morning, a tall, thin man with a scarred face and curly black hair to his shoulders entered the dimness of the tent. Jolesha had not intended to open the tent for business that morning, so the man caught her off-guard, tending a brazier, her face exposed and colored by the glowing coals. She quickly veiled herself but knew that he had seen her face clearly. Leaving the brazier, she went and sat behind her small table. The man smiled grimly as he seated himself on the stool across from her. She knew she had fear in her eyes, and lowered them.

  "What price for a communication?" he asked.

  "I'm giving none today," she said in an old woman's voice. "I'm leaving here today."

  "Undoubtedly," he agreed, and the sound of his voice chilled her; finally, they were face to face. Almost. "However," he continued, "not before you and I complete a small transaction."

  She could not help glancing past her left shoulder where an exit lay hidden in the folds of the tent. He rapped on the table to draw her attention back to him. "There really is nowhere for you to go," he said. "I have soldiers outside who have stopped the man you paid from loading your belon
gings aboard the wagon you purchased on Windday. Shall I tell you where you intended to go? On which vessel? You see, I know much about you. You've done well for yourself in so short a time—too well, one might speculate."

  "You're Count Dashif," she said, no longer bothering to disguise her voice. He leaned across the table and pulled free her veil. "And what would your name be, girl?" When she said nothing, he pressed, "I've spent considerable time and money seeking you. I'll have your name now."

  Defiance lighted her eyes. "Jolesha."

  "Jolesha. And the rest of the name?"

  She shook her head. Dashif sighed. "Very well, child. I'll have the artifact, and please, no tales or fabrications. I bore easily."

  Jolesha dug into the layers of robes she wore and brought out the leather pouch. She placed it on the table between them. Dashif reached for the object almost reverently. He weighed it in his palm, turned it over, then set it down. He took off his gloves to untie the leather. It unfolded and the artifact was revealed. He stared at it, Jolesha thought, with something almost fearful in his gaze.

  "How does it work?" he asked in a whisper; even so, the sound of his voice warmed the blackness of the crystal to maroon.

  "You call a name," Jolesha said. "Your voice draws the spirit. If you like, I'll call up someone for you. Perhaps you'd like to speak with the former regent."

  He looked up at her in narrow surprise. "What do you know of that?" Instead of answering, she ran her fingertips across the knurls of gold. "Or perhaps you would rather speak to...Erina?"

  The color seemed to drain from Dashif's face and into the artifact as it flickered with pink candescence. Light, feathery sounds emanated from it. Dashif stood suddenly, kicking over his stool. Jolesha picked up the artifact and came around the table. Dashif backed away.