The killer spat several expletives and whirled back to his victim. She was twitching, dying. Yanking open the vermilion cloak, he jerked off her necklace, ripped a twisted silver loop out of each ear, and yanked at the scantling purse on her girdle. It refused to come free. He sliced it with the swift single movement of a practised expert. Straightening, he glanced in every direction, said something to his partner - who rolled foetally, sobbing.
'Theba take you, then,' the thief said, and ran.
Back into the shadows of the market building's west corner he fled, and one of the shadows tripped him. As he fell, an elbow thumped the back of his neck.
'I want what you've got, you murdering bastard,' a shadow-voice said from the shadows, while the footpad twisted to roll over. 'Your kind gives thieves a bad name.'
'Take it then!' The fallen man rammed the white staff into the shadow's thigh as it started to bend over him.
Instantly fear seized Hanse. Viced him; encompassed him; possessed him. Sickening, stomach-fluttering fear. His armpits flooded and his sphincter fluttered.
Unlike the stick's victims he had seen, he was in darkness, and he was Shadowspawn. He did not fall to his knees.
He fled, desperately afraid, snivelling, clutching his gut, babbling. Tears flowed to blind him, but he was in darkness anyhow. Staggering, weeping, horribly and obscenely afraid and even more horribly knowing all the while that he had no reason to be afraid, that this was sorcery; the most demeaning spell that could be laid on a man. He heard the killer laugh, and Hanse tried to run faster. Hoping the man did not pursue to confront him. Accost him, Snarl mean things at him. He could not stand that.
It did not happen that way. The thief who had slain without intending to kill laughed, but he too was scared, and disconcerted. He fled, slinking, in another direction. Hanse stumbled-staggered-snivelled on, on. Instinct was not gone but was heightened; he clung to the shadows as a frightened child to its mother. But he made noise, noise.
Attracted at the same time as she was repulsed by that whining fearful gibbering, Mignureal came upon him. 'What - it's Han -what are you doing?'
He was seriously considering ending the terror by ending himself with the knife in his fist. Anything to stop this enveloping, consuming agony of fear. At her voice he dropped the knife and fell weeping to his knees.
'Hanse ~ stop that!'
He did not. He could not. He could assume the foetal. He did. Uncomprehending, the garishly-dressed girl acted instinctively to save him. Her mother liked him and to Mignureal he was attractive, a figure of romance. In his state, saving him was easy, even for a thirteen-year-old. Though his hysterical sobbing pleas brought tears to her eyes, for him, Mignureal tied his wrists behind him. The while, she breathed prayers known only to the S'danzo.
'You come along now,' she said firmly, leaking tears and gulping. 'Come along with me!'
Hanse obeyed.
She went straight along the well-lit Governor's Walk and turned down Shadow Lane, conducting her bound, snivelling captive. At the corner of Shadow and Slippery, a couple of uniformed men accosted her.
'Why it's Moonflower's darter. Whafve you got there, Mineral?'
'Mignureal,' she corrected. 'Someone put a spell on him - over on the Processional,' she said, choosing an area far from where she had found him. 'My mother can help. Go with Eshi.'
'Hmm. A spell of fear, huh? That damned Anus Yorl, I'll wager a cup! Who is it, snivelling under your shawl that way?'
Mignureal considered swiftly. What had happened to Hanse was awful. To have these City Watchmen know, and spread it about - that would be insupportable. Again Mignureal lied. It was her brother Antelope, she told them, and they made sympathetic noises and let her be on her way, while they. muttered about dam' sorcerers and the nutty names S'danzo gave their get. Both men agreed; they would make a routine check of Awful Alley and stop in at the Alekeep, just down the street.
Mignureal led Hanse a half-block more and went into her parents' shop-and living-quarters. They were asleep. The tautly overweight Moonflower did not heed summonses and did not make house calls. Furthermore her husband was an irrepressibly randy man who bedded early and insisted on her company. At her daughter's sobbing and shaking her, the seer awoke. That gently-named collection of talent and adipose tissue and mammalia sufficient to nurse octuplets, simultaneously, sat erect. She reached comfortingly for her daughter. Soon she had listened, was out of bed, and beside Hanse. Mignureal had ordered him to remain on the divan in the shop.
'That just isn't Hanse, Mother!'
'Of course it isn't. Look on sorcery, and hate it.'
'Name ofTiana Saviour-it's awful, seeing him, hearing him this way...'
'Fetch my shawl,' Moonflower said, one by one relieving Hanse of his knives, 'and do make some tea, sweetheart.'
Moonflower held the quaking young man and crooned. She pillowed his tear-wet face in the vastness of her bosom. She loosed his wrists, drew his hands round, and held their wiry darkness in her large paler dimple-backed ones. And she crooned, and talked low, on and on. Her daughter draped her with the shawl and went to make tea.
The ray of moonlight that fell into the room moved the length of a big man's foot while the seer sat there with him, and more, and Hanse went to sleep, still shivering. She held his hands until he was still but for his breathing. Mignureal hovered close, all bright of eye, and knew the instant her mother went off. Sagging. Glassy-eyed. She began murmuring, a woman small inside and huge without; a gross kitten at her divining.
'A yellow-furred hunting dog? Tall as a tree, old as a tree ... he hovers and with him is a god not of Ilsig. A god of Ranke - oh, it is a Hell Hound. Oh Hanse it is not wizard-sorcery but god-sorcery! And who is thi - oh. Another god. But why is Theba involved, who has so few adherents here? Oh!'
She shuddered and her daughter started to touch her; desisted.
'I see Ils Himself hiding His face... a shadow tall as a tree and another, not nearly so big. A shadow and its pawn? Why it has no head, this smaller shad oh. It is afraid, that's it; it has no face left. It is Ha - I will not say even though he sleeps. Oh Mignue, there is a corpse on the street up in front of the farmers' market and - ahhh.' Her relief was apparent in that great sigh. 'Hanse did not kill her. Another did, and Theba hovers over her. Hmm. I see - I s- I will not say what I s ... it fades, goes.'
Again she sighed and sat still, sweating, overflowing her chair on both sides. Gazing at the sleeping Shadowspawn. 'He has spoken with the governor who is the emperor's kinsman, Mignureal my dear, did you know that? He will again. They are not enemies, our governor and Shadowspawn.'
'Oh.' And Mignureal looked upon him, head to one side. Moonflower saw the look.
'You will go to bed and tomorrow you will tell me what you were doing abroad so late, Mignue. You will not come near Hanse again, do you understand?'
'Oh, mother.' Mignureal met the level gaze only briefly. 'Yes, mother. I understand.' And she went to bed.
Moonflower did not; she stayed beside Hanse. In the morning he was all right and she totd him what she had Seen. He would never be the same again, she knew, he who had met quintessential fear. Lord Terror himself, face to face. But he was Hanse again, and not afraid, and Moonflower was sure that within a few hours he would have his gliding swagger back. She did note that he was grim-facedly determined.