Aaron Lazar
www.lazarbooks.com
Synopsis
Tempus (Sacred Band of Stepsons: Sacred Band Tales Book 1) by Janet Morris
Relive the iconic adventures of Tempus, the Riddler, and his Sacred Band through the eyes of Nikodemos, his right-side companion, as Niko seeks his spirit's balance on Bandara's misty isles. Five pivotal Sacred Band stories from the earliest adventures of the Stepsons in a world of thieves. Ride with Tempus and his Band once again, for the first time. PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Parts of this work have been published in substantially similar form in several volumes of the Shared Universe Series, Thieves World®.
Excerpt from Tempus by Janet Morris © 1987, 2013
There was a
little mist in the streets by the time Tempus headed his Trôs horse across the
east side toward the Mageguild – nothing daunting yet, just a fetlock-high
steaminess as if the streets were cobbled with dry ice. He’d had no luck
intercepting his sister at Lastel’s estate: a servant shouted through a grate,
over the barking of dogs, that the master had already left for the fete. He’d
stopped briefly at the mercenaries’ hostel before going there, to burn a rag he
had had for centuries in the common room’s hearth: he no longer needed to be
reminded not to argue with warlocks; or that love, for him, was always a losing
game. With his sister’s scarf, perhaps the problem of her would waft away,
changed like the ancient linen to smoke upon the air.
Before the
Mageguild’s outer wall, an imprudent crowd had gathered to watch the luminaries
arriving in the ersatz-daylight of its ensorcelled grounds. Pink clouds formed
a glowing canopy to the wall’s edge – a godly pavilion; elsewhere, it was
night. Where dark met light, the Stepson Janni waited (one leg crooked over his
saddle horn, rolling a smoke, his best helmet dangling by his knee and his
full-length dress-mantle draped over his horse’s croup), while around his hips
the ragged crowd thronged and his horse, ears flattened, snapped at Ilsigs who
came too near.
Tempus’
gray rumbled a greeting to the bay; the curly-headed mercenary straightened up
in his saddle and saluted, grinning through his beard.
He wasn’t
smiling when the Mageguild’s ponderous doors enfolded them, and three junior
functionaries escorted them to the “changing rooms” within the outer wall.
There they were expected to strip and hand over their armaments to the
solicitously smirking mages-in-training before donning proffered "fete
clothes" (gray silk chitons and summer sandals) the wizards had
thought-fully provided. Aškelon wasn’t taking any chances, Tempus thought but
did not say, though Janni wondered aloud what use there was in checking their
paltry swords and daggers when enchanters could not be made to check their
spells.
Inside the
Mageguild’s outer walls, it was summer. In its gardens – transformed from their
usual dank fetidness by artful conjure into a wonderland of orchids and
eucalyptus and willows weeping where before moss-hung swamp-giants had held
sway over quagmires – Tempus saw Kadakithis, resolutely imperious in a black
robe oversewn with gems into a map of Ranke-caught-in-the-web-of-the-world. The
prince-governor’s pregnant wife, a red gift-gown splendid over her child-belly,
leaned heavily on his arm. Kittycat’s approving glance was laced with
commiseration: yes, he, too, found it hard to smile here, but both of them knew
it prudent to observe the forms, especially with wizards….
Tempus
nodded and walked on.
Then he saw
her, holding Lastel’s hand, to which the prosthetic thumb of his disguise was
firmly attached. A signal bade Janni await him; he did not have to look back to
know that the Stepson obeyed.
Cime was
blond, tonight and golden-eyed, tall in her adept-chosen robe of iridescent
green, but he saw through the illusion to her familiar self. And she knew it.
“You come here without your beloved armaments or even the god’s amulet? The man
I used to know would have pulled rank and held on to his weapons.”
“Nothing’s
going to happen here,” he murmured, staring over her head into the crowd,
looking for Niko; “unless the message I received was in error and we do have a
problem?”
“We have no problem –” glowered Lastel/One-Thumb.
“One-Thumb,
disappear, or I’ll have Janni over there teach you how to imitate your bar’s
sign.” With a reproachful look that Tempus would utter his alias here, the man
who did not like to be called One-Thumb outside the Maze lumbered off.
Then he had to look at her. Under the golden-eyed illusion, her char-and-smoke
gaze accused him, as it had chased him across the centuries and made him
content to be accursed and constrained from other loves. God, he thought, I will never
get through this without error. It was the closest he had come to asking Vashanka to help him for ages. In
the back of his skull, a distant whisper exhorted him to take his sister while
he could… that bush on his right would be bower enough. But more than advice
the god could not give: “I have my own
troubles, mortal, for which you are partly responsible.” With the echo of
Vashanka’s last word, Tempus knew the god was gone.
“Is Lastel telling the truth, Cime? Are you content to face Aškelon’s
wrath, and your peril, alone? Tell me how you came to half kill a personage of that magnitude, and assure me that you can
rectify your mistake without my help.”
She reached up and touched his throat, running her finger along his jaw
until it found his mouth. "Ssh, ssh. You are a bad liar, who proclaims he
does not love me still. Have you not enough at risk, presently? Yes, I erred
with Aškelon. He tricked me. I shall solve it, one way or the other. My heart
saw him, and I could not then be the one who stood there watching him die. His
world beguiled me. His form enthralled me. You know what punishment love could
bring me.... He begged me leave him to die alone. And I believed him… because I feared for my life, should I come to love him while he died. We each
bear our proper curse, you and I, that is sure.”
“You think this disguise will fool him?”
She shook her head. “I need not. He will want a meeting. This,” she ran
her hands down over her illusory youth and beauty, “was for the magelings,
those children at the gates. As for you: stay clear of this matter, my brother.
There is no time for quailing or philosophical debates, now. You never were
competent to simply act, unencumbered
by judgment or conscience. Don’t try to change on my account. I will deal with
the entelechy, and then I will drink even his name dry of meaning. Like that!”
She snapped her fingers, twirled on her heel, and flounced off in a good
imitation of a young woman offended by a forward soldier.
While he
watched, Aškelon appeared from the crowd to bar her path, a golden coin held
out before him like a wand or a warding charm.
That fast
did he have her, too fast for Tempus to get between them, simply by the
mechanism of invoking her curse: for pay, she must give herself to any comer.
He watched them flicker out of being with his stomach rolling and an ache in
his throat. It was some little while before he saw anything external, and then
he saw Nikodemos showing off his gift-cuirass to Janni.
The two
came up to him wondering why it was, when everyone else’s armaments had been
taken from them, Niko, who had arrived in shabby duty gear, had been given
better than ever he could afford. Tempus drew slowly into his present, noting
Molin Torchholder’s gaudy figure nearby, and a kohl-eyed lady (who might easily
be an infiltrator from the Mygdonian Alliance) talking to Lastel.
He asked
his Stepsons to make her acquaintance:
“She might
be smuggling drugs into Sanctuary with Lastel’s help, but don’t arrest her for
trifles. If she is a spy, perhaps she will try to recruit a Stepson disaffected
enough with his lot. Either of you – a single fighter or half a broken pair –
could fit that description.”
“At the
least, we must plumb her body’s secrets, Stealth,” Janni rumbled to Niko as the
two strutted her way, looking virile and predatory.
With a
scowl of concern for the Stepson to whom he was bound by ill-considered words,
Tempus sought out Torchholder. As he slid with murmured greetings and apologies
through socialites and Hazard-class adepts, Tempus recalled Niko’s blank and
steady eyes: the boy knew his danger and trusted his commander, as a Sacred
Bander must, to see him through it. No remonstrance or doubt had shown in the
fighter called Stealth’s open countenance, that Tempus would come here against
Aškelon’s wishes, and risk a Stepson’s life. It was war, the boy’s calm said,
what they both did and what they both knew. Later, perhaps there would be
explanations – or not. Tempus knew that Niko, should he survive, would never
broach the subject.
“Torchholder,
I think you ought to go see to the First Consort’s baby,” he said as his hand
came down heavily on the palace priest’s bebaubled shoulder.
Torchholder
was already pulling on his beard, his mouth curled with anger, when he turned.
Assessing Tempus’ demeanor, the priest’s face did a dance which ended in a mien
of knowing caution. “Ah, yes, I did mean to look in on Seylalha and her babe.
Thank you for reminding me, Hell Hound.”
“Stay with her,” Tempus whispered as Molin
sought to brush by him, “or get them both
to a safer place –”
“We got your message this afternoon, Hound,”
the privy priest hissed, and he was gone.
Tempest
was just thinking that it was well Fete Week only came once yearly when, above
him in the pink, tented clouds, winter gloom began to spread; and beside him, a
hand closed upon his left arm with a numbingly painful grip: Jihan had arrived.
website link: http://www.theperseidpress.com/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Morris
Presentation at Library of Congress Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EylzKQa4yg
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