The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (94 page)

I sat on the windowseat, my cheek brushing the shutters, and scribed my letter to John. As I finished, I looked up and found Ursula beside me, a small pack slung over her shoulder. Her face was in shadow to the firelight, and she said nothing. Suddenly, she seated herself next to me and put her hand over mine. "Andrew, there is something I must tell you, now, while John is away."
I quickly extracted my hand from hers and rose. She remained on the windowseat, staring up at me through her dark eyes set in a moon-bright face.
"I don't keep secrets from John," I said. Then I added, "I didn't know that you kept secrets from him."
"Andrew, we all have secrets we cannot tell those we love. John rarely tells me what the gods say to him when he goes to the priests' house, and this is something I could not tell you if John were here. I am one of the Jackal's thieves."
I looked at the delicate creature before me and felt an impulse to smile. But she was watching me soberly, so I said, "Ursula, the Chara is my master. You ought not to have told me this."
"My own master bid me to. The Jackal wishes me to take you to see him tonight. He has a message for the Chara."
I felt the blood suddenly thump through my body in a slow, sickly manner. I said tersely, "The last man who visited the Jackal was murdered."
She smiled then, her pale skin easing back into its usual lines of laughter. "Andrew, I don't even have to ask the Jackal to know that he means you no harm. He wouldn't kill the messenger when he needs so badly to send the message. He sees as well as the Chara does that things cannot continue as they have, with the Jackal fighting the governor, and the governor trying to root the Jackal from his lair. The Jackal won't speak to the governor, but he'll speak to the Chara because he knows that the Chara would rather have peace than war. You are the only way that the Jackal can tell the Chara who he is and what he wants."
I said slowly, "The god would reveal his human face to the Chara?"
"He has said that he will. But he must meet the Chara in order to do so, and you are to arrange the meeting. Will you come with me?"
She was sitting weaponless in front of me, but so strange were the words she was speaking that I felt compelled to ask, "Do I have any choice?"
"The Jackal said that you were not to be brought by force, that you must come willingly. Andrew, I can't bring you on any night but tonight, while John is away. Will you come?"
I walked over to the hearth then and touched the mask of the Jackal. I could go to the Jackal now without asking the Chara's permission, and perhaps bring peace and perhaps bring greater trouble to Peter. Or I could go back to the Chara, leaving Ursula unprotected. Or I could take her with me by force to the governor, and then watch as she was arrested so that she could be tortured into revealing the Jackal's whereabouts. Or I could lie to Peter.
Ursula was waiting, and as I glanced her way I saw that her eyes were filled with uncertainty. A curse rose in my mind against the Jackal, so cold and dispassionate a god that he would put a young woman in danger's way. Yet the same god had said that he would reveal himself to the Chara, and I remembered Peter's questions through the last few days – to John, to Lord Alan, to me. All of those questions had been aimed at discovering what sort of man the Jackal was.
Finally I said, "The Jackal ought to have arranged that I could ask the Chara first what I should do. But the Chara told me today that he wanted me to be his ambassador to the Jackal, so I will take that as his permission, and hope for the best."
Ursula came over to my side and placed her hand on my arm. "You won't regret it, Andrew, I promise you. The god's ways often seem harsh, but he is always right in what he does, and he brings not only peace to this land but also peace to the heart of those who know him. I have found that, no matter how much I suffer in following his commands, it is worth it all to have heard the voice of a god."
A short time later, any gods looking down upon us could have located us winding our way through the dark streets of Koretia's capital.
Ursula guided us faultlessly around the patrols of the city watchman and the governor's soldiers. As a slave I had been taught to move quietly and unobtrusively, but Ursula flowed from one doorway to the next as though she were a night shadow, and my spine began to prickle as I realized that I was indeed in the presence of one of the Jackal's legendary thieves, a creature who could enter locked houses, steal past guarded doors, and murder a nobleman in his chambers while his servants slept nearby.
She still wore no weapon, and I found myself wondering what she would do if we were sighted. Then I started to round a corner before she did. The next moment she had slammed me back into the shadows, hissed, "Stay!" and walked around the same corner herself, singing lightly under her breath.
Startled by the strength of her shove, I stayed in the shadows as I heard a man say, "Ursula, my dear, what are you doing out at this hour? Where is your husband?"
I ventured to peer round the corner and saw Ursula standing with her hands on her hips, merrily looking up into the face of the city watchman. "And where would any man be at this hour, Druce? I have come to drag John away from the Flower and Flame to the bed where he belongs."
The watchman gave a hearty laugh. "At work all day and up all night? That sounds like John the trader to me. I have never seen him when he did not look weary to the death. Here, I will escort you to the tavern, as I think that John is unwise to leave his pretty wife alone when other men may sneak into his bed while he is gone."
Ursula made no protest, but took the arm that the watchman proffered and disappeared into the tavern I had visited that noonday. After a minute the watchman left, and after several minutes Ursula slid out of the doorway and slipped, quick as moonlight, back to where I stood.
"That was lucky," she said under her breath. "The tavern-keeper's daughter there is one of us; she listens in on the conversation of traders like John so that she can obtain information for the Jackal. She told the watchman that John was in the back room."
John's name rose to my lips, but I whispered instead, "How did you learn to lie so well?"
"It isn't easy for me," she replied. "But whenever I'm working for the Jackal it seems as though he's with me, guiding what I do."
She said no more, for we were still in the open street. I silently followed Ursula, taking care not to outpace her again. As we went, I found myself wishing that John were here with us. As Brendon had told the subcaptain, it was John who could best judge what sort of man the Jackal was.
Was the Jackal really a god, as I had always thought? Or was he just a man who used trickery to convince his thieves that he had divine powers? John had heard the gods' voices in his visions and would know in an instant whether the Jackal actually held the god's powers, but what proof should I ask of the rebel-leader?
The tavern was not far from the city wall, and there we stopped, sliding our way down into the ditch. A prickling in my back began once more as Ursula guided me to the shallow hole under the wall. This time I was being mastered, not by fear, but by memory.
The hole had grown smaller since last I encountered it, or so it seemed to me, but I could still wriggle my way through. Ursula caught hold of my hand as we emerged into the shadowed side of the mountain. I followed her as she ducked her way across the governor's flower bed and through the trees, until we had reached the clearing in front of the cave entrance.
She stopped then, sat down abruptly on a flat rock in the clearing, and said in a low but relaxed voice, "We must wait until I see the signal that the Jackal has arrived in his lair."
I glanced at the cave entrance, and then looked back down at the wall we had just emerged from. "I've been through that tunnel before."
"I know. John told me how you used it when you were boys, so I searched it out, and now all of the thieves travel by it when they can't come in through the city gates."
I set aside an unpleasant vision of the thieves shoving a dead body through the tunnel and turned my gaze back to the dark hollow before us. It was the cave, I realized – the Jackal had made his lair in the cave where the Chara Nicholas had hidden his soldiers. The cave was close to the city but not within the regular patrolling ground of the mountainside soldiers – at least, not if the governor's subcommander ordered the patterns of patrolling I had known as a child. So unless the thieves did something to attract the attention of the border guards within the cave, they would not be found.
I asked, "How is it that you've been able to keep your thieves' work from John?"
"If you mean, how do I keep him from suspecting, that's easy enough, for the Jackal only gives me work when John is away on business. But if you mean, how can I stand to keep such a secret from the one I love . . ." She drew up one knee against her body and placed her chin on it. Her eyes were fixed, not on the cave, but on the mountain slopes above. "It was one of John's trader friends who came and told me that the god wished to see me. The Jackal has many traders among his thieves because traders learn what happens in Koretia before anyone else does. John's friend told me that the Jackal had already called John to be one of his thieves, but that John had refused. So, since the Jackal could not have John, he sent his summons to me."
Ursula's eyes remained fixed on the mountain but she hugged the knee closer, as though trying to shut out some pain. "It took me three days to decide. I couldn't imagine lying to John, yet I couldn't imagine refusing the god. Finally I told the trader that I couldn't be sure of what to do until I spoke to the god himself, and the Jackal accepted me into his presence on that condition."
"And is he a god?" I said, finally putting the question to voice.
"I knew that he would be, but if I had had any hidden doubts, they were destroyed when I first saw the Jackal. He was standing there staring at me through his yellow eyes and smiling at me with his terrible teeth, and I knew that it was just a man wearing a mask, but I knew too that it was the god's mask, and that the god himself was there in the room with me. I could feel his power, and it was the power of the Jackal who kills his enemies without mercy and suffers wounds for his servants. I knew at that moment that I was right to come, so I pledged my loyalty to him, and I will always be his thief, in life or beyond death."
My breath hit the back of my throat as I watched her staring outwards, as I had seen John stare many times before, his eyes filled with visions of the gods. But Ursula, I knew, was not the type to see hidden visions. She believed she had seen the god in human form, and soon I would see this man too. For a moment, I lost all thought of the Chara.
Ursula added, "Later I realized that, by serving one of the gods whom John loved so much, I was really remaining loyal to John. It surprised me—" At Ursula's sudden silence, I looked up toward the mountain just in time to see a faint flicker of light, gone at once like a star falling from the sky. Ursula stood and said, "They're waiting for us."
She took my hand and we began travelling, not toward the cave, but toward where the light had flickered. The ground was black with shadows, and once again I lost our track and gave myself over blindly to Ursula's guidance. We wove in and out of trees and bushes, and between rocks, and I stumbled so often that I began to keep my eyes on the ground, seeing only my own feet and Ursula's. After a long while, she stopped. I looked up and saw a door.
My back began to sting again as Ursula opened the door of the gods' house. As we walked into the dark corridor, I caught a glimpse of some figures standing at the other end of the house. Their faces were in shadow, but the moonlight trapped itself on metal that one of the figures was holding. The blade shone for a moment like a piece of the sun.
Ursula tugged at my hand, and she began guiding me through the corridor I would have forgotten long before but for my dream. She reached a door, then hesitated and touched my hand before saying, "He is here."
I stepped into the room alone and heard the door close behind me. My mind was still filled with the vision that Ursula had just given me of her god, but my first impression, as I entered, was that I was here with no god but just an ordinary man. He was sitting on the windowseat, with his legs drawn up and his left arm hanging down loosely by his side. His head was turned to face the view. He looked in every respect like any man whom I had seen in Koretia, but dangling from the fingers of his left hand was the god's mask, with its fierce promise of death or deliverance. I stared a moment at the bright paint on the black cloth. Then my gaze rose from the golden hunting eyes of the thief god to the dark, dispassionate eyes of John.
 
 
Blood Vow
6
THE GOD'S LAND
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I suppose that what I ought to have felt was anger and doubt: anger that I had been deceived, and grave doubt that the Jackal was anything more than the human rebel-leader that the Emorians had always thought him to be. For a moment, indeed, unidentified emotions twisted about in me, striving for mastery of my will. I stared at John, sitting quietly on the windowseat, his face as blank of expression as the mask of the Unknowable God. He was watching me steadily through his black eyes which, I told myself, were no god's eyes, but only the eyes of the blood brother with whom I had grown up.
He did not move. And yet, as I watched, his face changed, taking upon itself the mask of the Jackal: the sharp teeth that chewed on the flesh of the dying and dead, the sensitive whiskers, and the hunting god's eyes. John's own eyes were still there, calm and unknowably black, the eyes that had never changed no matter what roles he played in life: the vengeful eyes of the warrior as he prepared to kill the soldier, the loving eyes of the priest as he sought peace from the gods, the watchful eyes of the trader as he listened and weighed in his mind what to do. Now, though, they were surrounded by the golden eyes of the Jackal: the eyes of the God of Vengeance, the eyes of the God of Mercy, and the eyes of the God of Judgment. And I knew in that moment that John's eyes had always been those of the god.
The power Ursula had said she felt was too strong for me to bear. As the mask faded away, leaving only John's face, I addressed not the god but my blood brother: "I knew that you weren't the sort to break a blood vow."