Shadowspawn began collecting his materials for a night of stealth, of breaking and entering. It was a thief's business and these were the tools. Yet he knew that he was not preparing for theft.
You are a fool, Hanse, he told himself with a curse in Shalpa's name, and he agreed. And he continued with what he was doing.
At the door he stopped, blinking. He looked back with a frown. Only now did he remember the look Mignureal had given him just two hours ago, and her strange words. They meant nothing and connected to nothing. 'Oh, Hanse,' she had said with a strange intensity on her girlish face. 'Hanse - take the crossed brown pot with you.'
'With me where?'
But she had to flee, for her glowering mother was calling.
Now Hanse stared at the brown crock with the etched pair ofYs. Mignureal did not know about it. She could not. Mignureal had mentioned it specifically! She was Moonflower's daughter ... Name of the Shadowed One, she must have some of the power too!
Hanse turned back to pick up that well-stoppered container, a fired pot a bit larger than a soldier's canteen. Why. Mignureal? Why, Lord I'Is?
He had acquired it months ago, easily and quickly, without knowing what it contained. Mignureal had never seen it and could not know about this container of quicklime. She could not know where he was going this night for he had only just decided (and that without quite admitting it to himself); she was Moonflower's daughter...
Stupid, cumbersome, senseless, he thought while he slipped the crock into a good oilskin bag he had lifted in the Bazaar. He secured it to his belt so that it rested on one buttock. And he touched the sandal of Thufir tacked above the door, and went forth.
The white blaze of the sun had hours since become yellow in its daily waning, and then orange. Now it squatted low and seemed to spray streamers of crimson across the darkening sky. It did not look at all like blood, Hanse told himself. Besides, soon it would be dark and his friends would be everywhere, in black and indigo and charcoal. The shadows.
I could use a good sword, the shadow thought, blending into another shadow. An eerie feeling still lay on him, from that business with Mignureal. Surely not even Kurd deserved quicklime! This long 'knife' from the Ilbarsi Hills is a good tool, he thought, to keep his mind on sensible, practical matters. But it's time I had a good sword.
I'll have to try and steal one.
'Thou shalt have a sword,' a voice said sonorously inside his head, a lion within the shadowed corridors of his mind, ';/ thou free'st my valued and loyal ally. Aye, and a fine sheath for it, as well. In silver!'
Hanse stopped. He was still and dark as the shadow of a tree or a wall of stone. He was good at it; six minutes ago four cautious people had passed close enough to touch him, and never knew he was there.
I want nothing of you, incestuous god of Ranke, he thought, almost speaking while a thousand ants seemed at play along his spine. Tempus serves you. I do not and will not.
Yet you do this night, seeking him, that silent voice that was surely the god Vashanka's said. And a cloud ate the moon.
No! I serve - I mean... I do not... No!... Tempus is my... my... I go to aid a fr- man who might help me! Leave me and go to him, jealous god of Ranke! Leave Sanctuary to my patron Shalpa the Swift, and Our Lord Ils. Ils, Ils, 0 Lord of a Thousand Eyes, why is it not You who speaks to me?
There was no reply. Clouds rolled and they seemed dark men astride dark horses that loped with manes and long tails aflow. Hanse felt a sudden chill absence of that presence in his mind. In a few seconds he was praying not to gods but cursing himself for giving heed to the delusions of a dark night, a night badly ruled by a moon pale as a Rankan concubine and now covered like the whore she was. The Swift-footed One ruled this night.
And Hanse went on, not in shadows now for there were no shadows; all the land was one vast shadow. Out of Sanctuary. Past lovers who neither saw nor heard this son of Shalpa the Shadowed One. On, to the beautifully tended gardens surrounding the house of a pasty-faced walking skeleton called Kurd and worse. The little crescent of moon pretended to return. It was only a ghost struggling weakly against clouds like restless shadows blotting the sky.
The well-tended, scented gardens provided a pleasant if un-needed cover. A gliding anthropomorphic shadow amid herbaceous shapes like looming shadows. Hanse went right up to the house. It too was dark.
No one wants to visit Kurd. No one considers trying to steal from Kurd. Why should it not be easy, then? Kurd must think he needs no precautions or defenders!
Still, he kept his lips over his teeth when he smiled. He glided into the fragrant shrubs, odd deciduous shrubs with long thin branchlets, set up close against Kurd's house, exulting in how simple it was, and then the bush's trailing tendrils moved, rustling, and turned, and twined, and clutched. And clamped. And Shadowspawn understood then that Kurd was not without exterior defences.
Even as he struggled - fruitlessly, against frutescence - he knew that the knowledge was gained too late. Whether this thing was bent on strangling him or twisting his limbs until they broke or merely holding him until someone came, it was more horribly effective than human guards or three watchdogs. Amid silent rustling horror Hanse tugged at the tendril more slender than a brooch-pin, and only cut his fingers. His knife he only dulled, sawing at a purposeful tendril that gave but refused to be cut. And they moved, twining, rustling, insinuating themselves between his arms and body and around his legs and arms and torso and -throat!
That one he fought until his fingers bled. It was relentless. Oye gods, no, no, not like this - he was going to die, silently strangled by a damned skinny plant's tendril!
He was, too. His 'N-' disposed of his last breath. He could not draw another. As his eyes started to bulge and a dull hum commenced to invade his ears on the way to becoming a roar and then eternal silence, it occurred to him that Kurd's garden could do more than strangle him. If it continued to tighten, it would slice in and in until it beheaded a strangled corpse.
Hanse fought with all his strength and the added power of desperation. As well have resisted the tide, or the sand of the desert. His movements became more restricted as his limbs were more and more constricted. Dizziness began to build like storm clouds and the hum rose to the roar of a gale.
So did the clouds above, and great big drops of water commenced to fall from the laden sky. That was just as eerie and impossible, for rain in Sanctuary fell in accord with the season, and this was not that season. The land was weeks away from the time called Lizard Summer, when lizards fried or were said to fry in their own juices, out on the desert.
What matter? Plants loved rain. And this one loved to kill. And it was killing Hanse, who was losing consciousness and feeling while his hearing became restricted to the roar inside his head. More rain fell and Hanse, dying, tried to swallow and could not and did what he thought he could never do: he began to give up.
Memory came like a white flash of late summer lightning. He heard her words as clearly as he had hours ago. 'Hanse - take the crossed brown pot with you.'
Even that blazing flare of hope seemed too late, for how could his bound arms detach the bag from his belt, open it, open the crock inside, and give this predatory plant a message it might understand?
Answer: he could not.
He could, however, dying, jerk his forearm four or five inches. He did, again and again, breathless, dying, losing consciousness but still moving, puncturing the leather bag again and again and banging the point of his knife off the pot which was smooth, glazed, well made, and 0 damn it all too damned hard\