Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn

'Do not trifle with Me, Man.'

'Then let me be. I am doing the best I can. There is no room for foreign gods in the hearts of these Sanctuarites. The Ilsig gods they were born under have seen to that. Do something amazing: strike the fear of You into them.'

'I cannot even make you cower, 0 impudent human!'

'Even Your visitations get old, after three hundred and fifty years. Go scare the locals. This horse will founder, standing hot in the rain.'

The thunder changed its tune, becoming canny. 'Go you to the harbour. My son, and look upon what My Majesty hath wrought! And into the Maze, where I am making My power known!'

With that, the corral of lightning vanished, the thunder ceased, and the clouds blew away on a west wind, so that the full moon shone upon the land.

'Too much krrf,' the mercenary who had sold himself for a Hell Hound sighed. 'Hell Hound' was what the citizenry called the Prince's Guard; as far as Tempus was concerned. Sanctuary was Hell. The only thing that made it bearable was krrf, his drug of choice. Rubbing a clammy palm across his mouth, he dug in his human-hide belt until searching fingers found a little silver box he always carried. Flipping it open, he took a pinch of black Caronne krrf and, clenching his fist, piled the dust into the hollow between his first thumb joint and the fleshy muscle leading to his knuckle. He sniffed deeply, sighed, and repeated the process, inundating his other nostril.

'Too much damn krrf,' he chuckled, for the krrf had never been stepped on - he did not buy adulterated drugs - and all six and a half feet of him tingled from its kiss. One of these days he would have to stop using it - the same day he laid down his sword.

He felt for its hilt, patted it. He had taken to calling it his 'Wriggly-be good', since he had come to this godforsaken warren of magicians and changelings and thieves. Then, the initial euphoria of the drug past, he kneed his horse homewards.

It was the krrf, not the instructions of the lightning or any fear of Vashanka, that made him go by way of the harbour. He was walking out his horse before taking it to the stable the Hell Hounds shared with the barracks personnel. What had ever possessed him to come down-country among the Ilsigs? It was not for his fee, which was exorbitant, that he had come, for the sake of those interests in the Rankan capital who underwrote him - those who hated the Emperor so much that they were willing to back such a loser as Kadakithis, if they could do it without becoming the brunt of too many jokes. It was not for the temple, though he was pleased to build it. It was some old, residual empathy in Tempus for a prince so inept as to be known far and wide as 'Kitty' which had made him come. Tempus had walked away from his primogeniture in Azehur, a long time ago, leaving the throne to his brother, who was not compromised by palace politics. He had deposited a treatise on the nature of being in the temple of a favoured goddess, and he had left. Had he ever, really, been that young? Young as Prince Kadakithis, whom even the Wrigglies disparaged?

Tempus had been around in the days when (he Ilsigs had been the Enemy: the Wrigglies. He had been on every battlefield in the Rankan/Ilsig conflict. He had spitted more Ilsigs than most men, watched them writhe soundlessly until they died. Some said he had coined their derogatory nickname, but he had not, though he had doubtless helped spread it...

He rode down Wideway, and he rode past the docks. A ship was being made fast, and a crowd had gathered round it. He squeezed the horse's barrel, urging it into the press. With only four of his fellow Hell Hounds in Sanctuary, and a local garrison whose personnel never ventured out in groups of less than six, it was incumbent upon him to take a look.

He did not like what he saw of the man who was being helped from the storm wracked ship that had come miraculously to port with no sail intact, who murmured through pale cruel lips to the surrounding Ilsigs, then climbed into a Rankan litter bound for the palace.

He spurred the horse. 'Who?' he demanded of the eunuch-master whose path he suddenly barred.

'Aspect, the archmage,' lisped the palace lackey, 'if it's any business of yours.'

Behind the lackey and the quartet of ebony slaves the shoulder-borne litter trembled. The viewcurtain with Kitty's device on it was drawn back, fell loose again.

'Out of my way. Hound,' squeaked the enraged little pastry of a eunuch-master.

'Don't get flapped, Eunice,' said Tempus, wishing he were in Caronne, wishing he had never met a god, wishing he were anywhere else. Oh, Kitty, you have done it this time. Alain Aspect, yet! Alchemist extraordinaire, assassin among magicians, dispeller of enchantments, in a town that ran on contract sorcery?

'Back, back, back,' he counselled the horse, who twitched its ears and turned its head around reproachfully, but obeyed him.

He heard titters among the eunuchs, another behind in the crowd. He swung round in his saddle. 'Hakiem, if I hear any stories about me I do not like, I will know whose tongue to hang on my belt.'

The bent, news-nosed storyteller, standing amid the children who always clustered round him, stopped laughing. His rheumy eyes met Tempus's. 'I have a story I would like to tell you. Hell Hound. One you would like to hear, I humbly imagine.'

'What is it, then, old man?'

'Come closer. Hell Hound, and say what you will pay.'

'How can I tell you how much it's worth until I hear?' The horse snorted, raised his head, sniffed a rank, evil breeze come suddenly from the stinking Downwind beach.

'We must haggle.'

'Somebody else, then, old man. I have a long night ahead.' He patted the horse, watching the crowd ofllsigs surging round, their heads level with his hips.

'That is the first time I have seen him backed off!': a stage-whisper reached Tempus through the buzz of the crowd. He looked for the source of it, could not find one culprit more likely than the rest. There would be a lot more of that sort of talk, when word spread. But he did not interfere with sorcerers. Never again. He had done it once, thinking his tutelary god could protect him. His hand went to his hip, squeezed. Beneath his dun woollens and beneath his ring mail he wore a woman's scarf. He never took it off. It was faded and it was ragged and it reminded him never to argue with a warlock. It was all he had left of her, who had been the subject of his dispute with a mage.

Long ago in Azehur...

He sighed, a rattling sound, in a voice hoarse and gravelly from endless battlefield commands. 'Have it your way tonight, then, Wriggly. And hope you live 'til morning.' He named a price. The storyteller named another. The difference was split.

The old man came close and put his hand on the horse's neck. 'The lightning came and the thunder rolled and when it was gone the temple of Ils was no more. The Prince has bought the aid of a mighty enchanter, whom even the bravest of the Hell Hounds fears. A woman was washed up naked and half drowned on the Downwinders' beach and in her hair were pins of diamond.'

'Pins?'

'Rods, then.'

'Wonderful. What else?'

'The redhead from Amoli's Lily Garden died at moonrise.'

He knew very well what whore the old man meant. He did not like the story, so far. He growled. 'You had better astound me, quick, for the price you're asking.'

'Between the Vulgar Unicorn and the tenement on the corner an entire building appeared on that vacant lot, where once the Black Spire stood - you know the one.'

'I know it.'

'Astounding?'

'Interesting. What else?'

'It is rather fancy, with a gilded dome. It has two doors, and above them two signs that read, "Men", and "Women".'

Vashanka had kept his word, then.