People of the Talisman

IV

He stood in a large square lined about with huckster’s stalls and the booths of wine-sellers. Beyond were buildings, streets, a city. Stark got a blurred impression of a grand and brooding darkness of stone, bulking huge against the mountains, as bleak and proud and quite as ancient as they, with many ruins and deserted quarters.

He was not sure how he had come there. He had a vague memory of the city gate. It had been open and he had passed through it, he thought, behind a party of hunters bringing home their kill. After that he could not remember. But now he was standing on his own feet and someone was pouring sour wine into his mouth. He drank it, greedily. There were people around him, jostling, chattering, demanding answers to questions he had not heard. A girl’s voice said sharply, “Let him be! Can’t you see he’s hurt?”

Stark looked down. His exalted mood, with its dreams of godlike vengeance, had left him. Reality came crowding back upon him, and reality was a slim and ragged girl with black hair and large eyes as yellow as a cat’s. She held a leather bottle in her hand. She smiled and said, “I’m Thanis. Will you drink more wine?”

He did, and then managed to say, “Thank you, Thanis.” He put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. It was surprisingly strong. He felt light-headed and strange, but the wine was fusing a spurious sense of well-being into him and he was content to let that last as long as it would.

The crowd was still churning around him, growing larger, and now he heard the tramp of military feet. A small detachment of men in light armor pushed their way through.

A very young officer whose breastplate hurt the eye with brightness demanded to be told at once who Stark was and why he had come here.

“No one crosses the moors in winter,” he said, as though that in itself were proof of evil intent.

“The clans of Mekh are crossing them,” Stark answered. “An army, to take Kushat, a day, two days behind me.”

The crowd picked that up. Excited voices tossed it back and forth and clamored for more news. Stark spoke to the officer.

“I will see your captain, and at once.”

“You’ll see the inside of a prison, more likely!” snapped the young man. “What’s this nonsense about the clans of Mekh?”

Stark regarded him. He looked so long and so curiously that the crowd began to snicker and the officer’s beardless face flushed pink to the ears.

“I have fought in many wars,” said Stark gently. “And long ago I learned that it was wise to listen when someone came to warn me of attack.”

“Better take him to the captain, Lugh,” cried Thanis. “It’s our skins too, you know, if there’s war.”

The crowd began to shout. They were all poor folk, wrapped in threadbare cloaks or tattered leather. They had no love for the guards. And whether there was war or not, their winter had been long and dull and they were going to make the most of this excitement.

“Take him, Lugh! Take him! Let him warn Old Sowbelly!”

The young officer winced. And then from someone made anonymous by the crowd there rose a louder cry.

“Let him warn the nobles! Let them think how they’ll defend Kushat now that the talisman is gone!”

There was a roar from the crowd. Lugh turned, his face suddenly grim, and motioned to his soldiers. Rather reluctantly, Stark thought, they leveled their spears and moved toward the crowd, which shrank back away from them and became quickly silent. Lugh’s voice rang out, harsh and strident.

“The talisman is there for all to see! And you know the penalty for repeating that lie.”

Stark’s small start of surprise must have communicated itself through his tightened fingers to the girl, for he saw her look at him sharply, with something close to alarm. Then Lugh had swung around and was gesturing angrily at him. “See if he’s armed.”

One of the soldiers stepped forward, but Stark was quicker. He slipped the thongs and let the cloak fall, baring his upper body.

“The clansmen have already taken everything I owned,” he said. “But they gave me something in return.”

The crowd stared at the half healed stripes that scarred him, and there was a drawing in of breath, and a muttering.

The soldier picked up the cloak and laid it over Stark’s shoulders. And Lugh said sullenly, “Come, then. I’ll take you to the captain.”

The girl turned to help him with the cloak, leaning her head close to his while she fastened the thongs. Her voice reached him in a quick, fierce whisper.

“Don’t mention the talisman. It could mean your life!”

The soldiers were reforming. The girl stood back, casual, finished with her small task. But Stark did not let her go.

“Thank you, Thanis,” he said. “And now will you come with me? Otherwise, I must crawl.”

She smiled at him and came, bearing Stark’s unsteady weight with amazing strength. And Stark wondered. Camar, certainly, had not lied. Otar and Ciaran, certainly, had well known that it was gone. Yet here was this young popinjay bellowing that the talisman was there for all to see and threatening the suddenly-cowed mob with the penalty for denying it.

He remembered that Ciaran had said something about the nobles of Kushat being afraid to let their people know the truth. They would be, Stark thought, and a substitution would be the surest way of covering up the loss. In any case, he decided to heed the girl’s warning, and began forcing his weary brain to the task of eliminating from his story not only all mention of Camar but also of Otar and of Ciaran’s references to the naked state of Kushat. A wrong word to the wrong person… He was too numb with exhaustion to think out all the possibilities, but he was suddenly and ironically aware that the talisman might prove to be more dangerous to him here in Kushat than it had been in Ciaran’s camp.

The captain of the guards was a fleshy man with a smell of wine about him and a face already crumbling apart though his hair was not yet gray. He sat in a squat tower above the square, and he observed Stark with no particular interest.

“You had something to tell,” said Lugh. “Tell it.”

Stark told them, watching every word with care. The captain listened to all he had to say about the gathering of the clans of Mekh and then sat studying him with a bleary shrewdness.

“Of course you have proof of all this?”

“These stripes. Their leader Ciaran himself ordered them laid on.”

The captain sighed and leaned back.

“Any wandering band of hunters could have scourged you,” he said. “A nameless vagabond from the gods know where, and a lawless one at that if I’m any judge of men—you probably deserved it.”

He reached for the wine and smiled. “Look you, stranger. In the Norlands, no one makes war in the winter. And no one ever heard of Ciaran. If you hoped for a reward from the city, you overshot badly.”

“The Lord Ciaran,” said Stark, grimly controlling his anger, “will be battering at your gates within two days. You will hear of him then.”

“Perhaps. You can wait for him—in a cell. And you can leave Kushat with the first caravan after the thaw. We have enough rabble here without taking in more.”

Thanis caught Stark by the cloak and held him back.

“Sir,” she said, as though it were an unclean word, “I will vouch for the stranger.”

The captain glanced at her. “You?”

“Sir, I am a free citizen of Kushat. According to the law, I may vouch for him.”

“If you scum of the Thieves’ Quarter would practice the law half as well as you prate it, we would have less trouble,” grumbled the captain. “Very well, take the creature, if you want him. I don’t suppose you’ve anything to lose.”

Thanis’ eyes blazed but she made no answer. Lugh laughed.

“Name and dwelling place,” said the captain, and wrote them down. “Remember, he is not to leave the Quarter.”

Thanis nodded. “Come,” she said to Stark. He did not move, and she looked up at him. He was staring at the captain. His beard had grown in these last days, and his face was still scarred by Thord’s blows and made wolfish with pain and fever. And now, out of this evil mask, his eyes were peering with a chill and terrible intensity at the soft-bellied man who sat and mocked him.

Thanis laid her hand on his rough cheek. “Come,” she said. “Come and rest.”

Gently she turned his head. He blinked and swayed, and she took him around the waist and led him unprotesting to the door.

There she paused, looking back.

“Sir,” she said, very meekly, “news of this attack is being shouted through the Quarter now. If it should come, and it were known that you had the warning and did not pass it on…” She made an expressive gesture and went out.

Lugh glanced uneasily at the captain. “She’s right, sir. If by chance the man did tell the truth…”

The captain swore. “Rot. A rogue’s tale. And yet…” He scowled indecisively, then shrugged and reached for parchment. “After all, it’s a simple matter. Write it up, pass it on, and let the nobles do the worrying.”

His pen began to scratch.

Thanis took Stark by steep and narrow ways, darkling now in the afterglow, where the city climbed and fell again over the uneven rock. Stark was aware of the heavy smells of spices and unfamiliar foods, and the musky undertones of a million generations swarmed together to spawn and die in these crowded tenements of slate and stone.

There was a house, blending into other houses, close under the loom of the great Wall. There was a flight of steps, hollowed deep with use, twisting crazily around outer corners. There was a low room, and a slender man named Balin, who said he was Thanis’ brother and who stared with some amazement at Stark, his long thief’s fingers playing delicately with the red jewel he wore in his left ear. There was a bed of skins and woven clothes and Stark’s body yearned toward it. But he fought off the darkness, sitting on the edge of the bed while Thanis brought him wine and a bowl of food, making quick explanations to Balin while she did so. Stark was too tired for the food, but he drank the wine and it cleared the cobwebs out of his mind so that he could think rationally at least for a little while.

“Why,” he asked Thanis, “is it dangerous to speak of the talisman?”

He was aware of Balm’s brilliant gaze upon him, but he watched the girl’s face.

“You heard Lugh when he answered the crowd,” she said. “They have put some bit of glass in the shrine and called it the talisman, and those who say they are liars are made to regret it.”

In a light and silken voice Balin said, “When the talisman vanished, we very nearly had a revolution in Kushat. The people resented losing it, and blamed the folk of the King City, where the shrine is, for not taking better care of it. Narrabhar and his nobles felt their high seats tottering under them, and the substitution was quickly made.”

“But,” said Stark, “if the people don’t believe…”

“Only we in the Thieves’ Quarter really know. It was one of us who took it.” There was an odd mingling of pride and condemnation in his tone. “The others—the artisans and shopkeepers, the ones with a little fat under their belts—they would rather believe the lie than bleed for the truth. So it has worked.” He added, “Thus far.”

Looking Stark very steadily in the eye, Thanis said, “You’re an outlander, yet you know about the talisman and you knew that it was gone. How?”

The old instinct of caution held him quiet. He understood now, quite clearly, that the possession of the talisman could be his death-warrant. So he said with perfect if fragmentary truth, “Ciaran of Mekh said it. There is an old man with him, a man of Kushat. His name is Otar…”

“Otar!” said Balin. “Otar? We supposed that he was dead.”

Stark shook his head. “He has told Ciaran the talisman was stolen and because of that Kushat is ready for the taking.” He recalled Ciaran’s words and repeated them. “Like a man without a soul.” He paused, frowning. “Does this bit of glass really have such power?”

Balin said, “The people believe that it has, and that is what matters.”

Stark nodded. His brief period of grace was over now and the darkness was sweeping in. He stared at Balin, and then at Thanis, in a curiously blank and yet penetrating fashion, like an animal that thinks its own thoughts. He took a deep breath. Then, as though he found the air clean of danger, he lay back and went instantly to sleep.

Hands and voices called him back. Strong hands shaking him, urgent voices speaking his name. He started up, heart hammering and muscles tense, with a confused idea that he had slept only a moment or two, and then he saw that the light of a new sun was pouring in through the window. Thanis and Balin were bending over him.

“Stark,” said the girl, and shook him. “There are soldiers coming.”