'Materialize, you bastard!'
I already have; one body; one mind; one life - in every sphere.
'I am not you!' Tempus screamed through clenched teeth, willing firm footing beneath his sinking feet.
No, you are not. But I am you, sometimes, said the nimbus-wreathed figure striding towards him over gilt-edged clouds. Vashanka: so very tall with hair the colour of yarrow honey and a high brow free from lines.
'Oh, no...'
You wanted to see Me. Look upon Me, servant!
'Not so close, Pillager. Not so much resemblance. Do not torture me, My God! Let me blame it all on You - not be You!'
So many years, and you yet seek self-delusion?
'Definitely. As do You, if You think to gather worshippers in this fashion! 0 Berserker God, You cannot roast their mages before them: they are all dependent on sorcery. You cannot terrify them thus, and expect them to come to You. Weapons will not woo them; they are not men of the armies. They are thieves, and pirates, and prostitutes! You have gone too far, and not far enough!'
Speaking of prostitutes, did you see your sister? Look at Me!
Tempus had to obey. He faced the manifestation of Vashanka, and recalled that he could not take a woman in gentleness, that he could but war. He saw his battles, ranks parading in endless eyes of storm and blood bath. He saw the Storm God's consort, His own sister whom He raped eternally, moaning on Her couch in anguish that Her blood brother would ravish Her so.
Vashanka laughed.
Tempus snarled wordlessly through frozen lips.
You should have let us have her.
'Never!' Tempus howled. Then: '0 God, leave off! You are not increasing Your reputation among these mortals, nor mine! This was an ill-considered venture from the outset. Go back to Your heaven and wait. I will build Your temple better without Your maniacal aid. You have lost all sense of proportion. The Sanc-tuarites will not worship one who makes of their town a battlefield!'
Tempus, do not be wroth with Me. I have My own troubles, you know. I have to get away every now and again. And you have not been warring, whined the god, for so very long. I am bored and I am lonely.
'And You have caused the death of my horse!' Tempus spat, and broke free of Vashanka, wrenching his mind loose from the mirror mind of his god with an effort of will greater than any he had ever mounted before. He turned in his steps and began to retrace them. The god called to him over his shoulder, but he did not look back. He put his feet in the smudges they had left in the clouds as he had walked among them, and the farther he trudged, the more substantial those clouds became.
He trekked into lighter darkness, into a soft, new sunrise, into a pink and lavender morning which was almost Sanctuary's. He continued to walk until the smell of dead fish and Downwind pollution assailed his nostrils. He strode on, until a weed tripped him and he fell to his knees in the middle of a damp and vacant lot.
He heard a cruel laugh, and as he looked up he was thinking that he had not made it back at all - that Vashanka was not through punishing him.
But to his right was the Vulgar Unicorn, to his left the palimpsest tenement wall. And before him stood one of the palace eunuchs, come seeking him with a summons from Kittycat to discuss what might be done about the Weaponshop said to be manifesting next to the Vulgar Unicorn.
'Tell Kadakithis,' said Tempus, arduously gaining his feet, 'that I will be there presently. As you can see...' He waved around him, where no structure stood or even could be proved ever to have stood '... there is no longer any Weaponshop. Therefore, there is no longer any problem, nor any urgency to attend to it. There is, however, one very irritable Hell Hound in this vacant lot who wants to be left alone.'
The blue-black eunuch exposed perfect, argent teeth. 'Yes, yes, master,' he soothed the honey-haired man. 'I can see that this is so.'
Tempus ignored the eunuch's rosy, outstretched palm, and his sneer at the Hell Hound pretending to negotiate the humpy turf without pain. Accursed Wriggly!
As the round-rumped eunuch sauntered off, Tempus decided the Vulgar Unicorn would do as well as any place to sit and sniff krrf and wait for his leg to finish healing. It ought to take about an hour - unless Vashanka was more angry at him than he estimated, in which case it might take a couple of days.
Shying from that dismal prospect, he pursued diverse thoughts. But he fared little better. Where he was going to get another horse like the one he had lost, he could not conjecture, any more than he could recall the exact moment when the last dissolving wisps of Vashanka's Weaponshop blurred away into the mists of dawn.
SHADOW'S PAWN By Andrew J. Offutt
She was more than attractive and she walked with head high in pride and awareness of her womanhood. The bracelet on her bare arm flashed and seemed to glow with that brightness the gods reserve for polished new gold. She should have been walking amid bright lights illuminating the dancing waters of a fountain, turning its sparkling into a million diamonds and, with the aid of a bit of refraction, colourful other gemstones as well.
There was no fountain down here by the fish market, and the few lights were not bright. She did not belong here. She was stupid to be here, walking unescorted so late at night. She was stupid. Stupidity had its penalties; it did not pay.
Still, the watching thief appreciated the stupidity of others. It did pay; it paid him. He made his living by it, by his own cleverness and the stupidity of others. He was about to go to work. Even at the reduced price he would receive from a changer, that serpent-carved bracelet would feed him well. It would keep him, without the necessity of more such hard work as this damnable lurking, waiting, for - oh, probably a month.
Though she was the sort of woman men looked upon with lust, the thief would not have her. He did not see her that way. His lust was not carnal. The waiting thief was no rapist. He was a businessman. He did not even like to kill, and he seldom had to. She passed the doorway in whose shadows he lurked, on the north side of the street.
'G'night Praxy, and thanks again for all that beer,' he called to no one, and stepped out onto the planking that bordered the street. He was ten paces behind the quarry. Twelve. 'Good thing I'm walking - I'm in no condition to ride a horse t'night!' Fourteen paces.
Laughing giddily, he followed her. The quarry.
She reached the corner of the deserted street and turned north, onto the Street of Odours. Walking around two sides of the Serpentine! She was stupid. The dolt had no business whatever with that fine bracelet. Didn't have proper respect for it. Didn't know how to take care of it. The moment she rounded the corner, the thief stepped off the boardwalk onto the unpaved street, squatted to snatch up his shoes the moment he stepped out of them, and ran. '
Just at the intersection he stopped as if he had run into a wall, and dropped the shoes. Stepped into them. Nodded affably, drunkenly to the couple who came around off Stink Street - slat and slattern wearing three coppers' worth of clothing and four of 'jewellery'. He stepped onto the planking, noting that they noted little save each other. How nice. The Street of Odours was empty as far as he could see. Except for the quarry.
'Uhh,' he groaned as if in misery. 'Lady,' he called, not loudly. 'My lady?' He slurred a little, not overdoing. Five paces ahead, she paused and looked back. 'H-hellp,' he said, right hand clutching at his stomach.