Robert Asprin - TW 02 - Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn

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THIEVES WORLD #2

TALES FROM THE VULGAR UNICORN

Edited by Robert Lynn Asprin

CONTENTS

EIDTOR'S NOTE

INTRODUCTION

SPIDERS OF THE PURPLE MAGE Philip Jose Farmer

GODDESS David Drake

THE FRUIT OF ENLIBAR Lynn Abbey

THE DREAM OF THE SORCERESS A.E.vanVogt

VASHANKA'S MINION Janet Morris

SHADOW'S PAWN Andrew J. Offutt

TO GUARD THE GUARDIANS Robert Lynn Asprin

ESSAY: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF SANCTUARY

EDITOR'S NOTE

The perceptive reader may notice small inconsistencies in the characters

appearing in these stories. Their speech patterns, their accounts of certain

events, and their observations on the town's pecking order vary from time to

time.

These are not inconsistencies!

The reader should consider the contradictions again, bearing three things in

mind.

First, each story is told from a different viewpoint, and different people see

and hear things differently. Even readily observable facts are influenced by

individual perceptions and opinions. Thus, a minstrel narrating a conversation

with a magician would give a different account than would a thief witnessing the

same exchange.

Second, the citizens of Sanctuary are by necessity more than a little paranoid.

They tend to either omit or slightly alter information in conversation. This is

done more reflexively than out of premeditation, as it is essential for survival

in this community.

Finally, Sanctuary is a fiercely competitive environment. One does not gain

employment by admitting to being 'the second-best swordsman in town'. In

addition to exaggerating one's own status, it is commonplace to downgrade or

ignore one's closest competitors. As a result, the pecking order of Sanctuary

will vary depending on who you talk to ... or more importantly, who you believe.

INTRODUCTION

Moving his head with minute care to avoid notice, Hakiem the Storyteller studied

the room over the untouched rim of his wine cup. This was, of course, done

through slitted eyes. It would not do to have anyone suspect he was not truly

asleep. What he saw only confirmed his growing feelings of disgust.

The Vulgar Unicorn was definitely going downhill. A drunk was snoring on the

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floor against the wall, passed out in a puddle of his own vomit, while several

beggars made their way from table to table, interrupting the undertoned

negotiations and hagglings of the tavern's normal clientele.

Though his features never moved, Hakiem grimaced inside. Such goings on were

never tolerated when One-Thumb was around. The bartender/owner of the Vulgar

Unicorn had always been quick to evict such riffraff as fast as they appeared.

While the tavern had always been shunned by the more law-abiding citizens of

Sanctuary, one of the main reasons it was favoured by the rougher element was

that here a man could partake of a drink or perhaps a little larcenous

conversation uninterrupted. This tradition was rapidly coming to an end.

The fact that he would not be allowed to linger for hours over a cup of the

tavern's cheapest wine if One-Thumb were here never entered Hakiem's mind. He

had a skill. He was a storyteller, a tale-spinner, a weaver of dreams and

nightmares. As such, he considered himself on a measurably better plane than the

derelicts who had taken to frequenting the place.

One-Thumb had been missing for a long time now, longer than any of his previous

mysterious disappearances. Fear of his return kept the tavern open and the

employees honest, but the place was degenerating in his absence. The only way it

could sink any lower would be if a Hell Hound took to drinking here.

Despite his guise of slumber, Hakiem found himself smiling at that thought. A

Hell Hound in the Vulgar Unicorn! Unlikely at best. Sanctuary still chafed at

the occupying force from the Rankan Empire, and the five Hell Hounds were hated

second only to the military governor. Prince Kadakithis, whom they guarded.

Though it was a close choice between Prince Kitty-Cat with his naive lawmaking

and the elite soldiers who enforced his words, the citizens of Sanctuary

generally felt the military governor's quest to clean up the worse hellhole in

the Empire was stupid, while the Hell Hounds were simply devilishly efficient.

In a town where one was forced to live by wit as often as skill, efficiency

could be grudgingly admired, while stupidity, particularly stupidity with power,

could only be despised.

No, the Hell Hounds weren't stupid. Tough, excellent swordsmen and seasoned

veterans, they seldom set foot in the Maze, and never entered the Vulgar

Unicorn. On the west side of town, it was said that one only came here if he was

seeking death ... or selling it. While the statement was somewhat exaggerated,

it was true that most of the people who frequented the Maze either had nothing

to lose or were willing to risk everything for what they might gain there. As

rational men, the Hell Hounds were unlikely to put in an appearance at the

Maze's most notorious tavern.

Still, the point remained that the Vulgar Unicorn sorely needed One-Thumb's

presence and that his return was long overdue. In part, that was why Hakiem was

spending so much time here of late: hope of acquiring the story of One-Thumb's

return and possibly the story of his absence. That alone Would be enough to keep

the storyteller haunting the tavern, but the stories he gained during his wait

were a prize in themselves. Hakiem was a compulsive collector of stories, from

habit as well as by profession, and many stories had their beginnings, middles,

or ends within these walls. He collected them all, though he knew that most of

them could not be repeated, for he knew the value of a story is in its merit,

not in its saleability.

SPIDERS OF THE PURPLE MAGE

by Philip Jose Farmer

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This was the week of the great rat hunt in Sanctuary.

The next week, all the cats that could be caught were killed and degutted.

The third week, all dogs were run down and disembowelled.

Masha zil-Ineel was one of the very few people in the city who didn't take part

in the rat hunt. She just couldn't believe that any rat, no matter how big, and

there were some huge ones in Sanctuary, could swallow a jewel so large.

But when a rumour spread that someone had seen a cat eat a dead rat and that the

cat had acted strangely afterwards, she thought it wise to pretend to chase

cats. If she hadn't, people might wonder why not. They might think that she knew

something they didn't. And then she might be the one run down.

Unlike the animals, however, she'd be tortured until she told where the jewel

was.

She didn't know where it was. She wasn't even sure that there was an emerald.

But everybody knew that she'd been told about the jewel by Benna nus-Katarz.

Thanks to Masha's blabbermouth drunken husband, Eevroen.

Three weeks ago, on a dark night, Masha had returned late from midwifing in the

rich merchants' Eastern quarter. It was well past midnight, but she wasn't sure

of the hour because of the cloud-covered sky. The second wife of Shoozh the

spice-importer had borne her fourth infant. Masha had attended to the delivery

personally while Doctor Nadeesh had sat in the next room, the door only half

closed, and listened to her reports. Nadeesh was forbidden to see any part of a

female client except for those normally exposed and especially forbidden to see

the breasts and genitals. If there was any trouble with the birthing, Masha

would inform him, and he would give her instructions.

This angered Masha, since the doctors collected half of the fee, yet were seldom

of any use. In fact, they were usually a hindrance.

Still, half a fee was better than none. What if the wives and concubines of the

wealthy were as nonchalant and hardy as the poor women, who just squatted down

wherever they happened to be when the pangs started and gave birth unassisted?

Masha could not have supported herself, her two daughters, her invalid mother,

or her lazy alcoholic husband. The money she made from doing the more affluent

women's hair and from her tooth-pulling and manufacture of false teeth in the

marketplace wasn't enough. But midwifery added the income that kept her and her

family just outside hunger's door.

She would have liked to pick up more money by cutting men's hair in the

marketplace, but both law and ancient custom forbade that.

Shortly after she had burned the umbilical cord of the new-born to ensure that

demons didn't steal it and had ritualistically washed her hands, she left

Shoozh's house. His guards, knowing her, let her through the gate without

challenge, and the guards of the gate to the eastern quarters also allowed her

to pass. Not however without offers from a few to share their beds with her that

night.

'I can do much better than that sot of a husband of yours!' one said.

Masha was glad that her hood and the daricness prevented the guards from seeing

her burning face by the torchlight. However, if they could have seen that she

was blushing with shame, they might have been embarrassed. They would know then

that they weren't dealing with a brazen slut of the Maze but with a woman who

had known better days and a higher position in society than she now held. The

blush alone would have told them that.

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What they didn't know and what she couldn't forget was that she had once lived

in this walled area and her father had been an affluent, if not wealthy,

merchant.

She passed on silently. It would have made her feel good to have told them her

past and then ripped them with the invective she'd learned in the Maze. But to

do that would lower her estimate • of herself.

Though she had her own torch and the means for lighting it in the cylindrical

leather case on her back, she did not use them. It was better to walk unlit and

hence unseen into the streets. Though many of the lurkers in the shadows would

let her pass unmolested, since they had known her when she was a child, others

would not be so kind. They would rob her for the tools of her trade and the

clothes she wore and some would rape her. Or try to.

Through the darkness she went swiftly, her steps sure because of long

experience. The adobe buildings of the city were a dim whitish bulk ahead. Then

the path took a turn, and she saw some small flickers of light here and there.

Torches. A little further, and a light became a square. The window of a tavern.

She entered a narrow winding street and strode down its centre. Turning a

corner, she saw a torch in a bracket on the wall of a house and two men standing

near it. Immediately she crossed to the far side and, hugging the walls, passed

the two. Their pipes glowed redly; she caught a whiff of the pungent and sickly

smoke of kleelel, the drug used by the poor when they didn't have money for the

more expensive krrf. Which was most of the time.

After two or three pipefuls, the smokers would be vomiting. But they would claim

that the euphoria would make the upchucking worth it.

There were other odours: garbage piled by the walls, slop-jars of excrement, and

puke from kleetel smokers and drunks. The garbage would be shovelled into goat

drawn carts by Downwinders whose families had long held this right. The slop

jars would be emptied by a Downwinder family that had delivered the contents to

farmers for a century and would and had fought fiercely to keep this right. The

farmers would use the excrement to feed their soil; the urine would be emptied

into the mouth of the White Foal River and carried out to sea.

She also heard the rustling and squealing of rats as they searched for edible

portions and dogs growling or snarling as they chased the rats or fought each

other. And she glimpsed the swift shadows of running cats.

Like a cat, she sped down the street in a half-run, stopping at corners to look

around them before venturing farther. When she was about a half-mile from her

place, she heard the pounding of feet ahead. She froze and tried to make herself

look like part of the wall.

At that moment the moon broke through the clouds.

It was almost a full moon. The light revealed her to any but a blind person. She

darted across the street to the dark side and played wall again.

The slap of feet on the hard-packed dirt of the street came closer. Somewhere

above her, a baby began crying.

She pulled a long knife from a scabbard under her cloak and held the blade

behind her. Doubtless, the one running was a thief or else someone trying to

outrun a thief or mugger or muggers or perhaps a throat-slitter. If it was a

thief who was getting away from the site of the crime, she would be safe. He'd

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be in no position to stop to see what he could get from her. If he was being

pursued, the pursuers might shift their attention to her.

If they saw her.

Suddenly, the pound of feet became louder. Around the corner came a tall youth

dressed in a ragged tunic and breeches and shod with buskins. He stopped and

clutched the corner and looked behind him. His breath rasped like a rusty gate

swung back and forth by gusts of wind.

Somebody was after him. Should she wait here? He hadn't seen her, and perhaps

whoever was chasing him would be so intent he or they wouldn't detect her

either.

The youth turned h'is face, and she gasped. His face was so swollen that she

almost didn't recognize him. But he was Benna nus-Katarz, who had come here from

Ilsig two years ago. No one knew why he'd immigrated, and no one, in keeping

with the unwritten code of Sanctuary, had asked him why.

Even in the moonlight and across the street, she could see the swellings and

dark spots, looking like bruises, on his face. And on his hands. The fingers

were rotting bananas.

He turned back to peer around the corner. His breathing became less heavy. Now

she could hear the faint slap of feet down the street. His chasers would be here

soon.

Benna gave a soft ululation of despair. He staggered down the street towards a

mound of garbage and stopped before it. A rat scuttled out but stopped a few

feet from him and chittered at him. Bold beasts, the rats of Sanctuary.

Now Masha could hear the loudness of approaching runners and words that sounded

like sheets being ripped apart.

Benna moaned. He reached under his tunic with clumsy fingers and drew something

out. Masha couldn't see what it was, though she strained. She inched with her

back to the wall towards a doorway. Its darkness would make her even more

undetectible.

Benna looked at the thing in his hand. He said something which sounded to Masha

like a curse. She couldn't be sure; he spoke in the Ilsig dialect.

The baby above had ceased crying; its mother must have given it the nipple or

perhaps she'd made it drink water tinctured with a drug.

Now Benna was pulling something else from inside his tunic. Whatever it was, he

moulded it around the other thing, and now he had cast it in front of the rat.

The big grey beast ran away as the object arced towards him. A moment later, it

approached the little ball, sniffing. Then it darted forwards, still smelling

it, touched it with its nose, perhaps tasted it, and was gone with it in its

mouth.

Masha watched it squeeze into a crack in the old adobe building at the next

corner. No one lived there. It had been crumbling, falling down for years,

unrepaired and avoided even by the most desperate of transients and bums. It was

said that the ghost of old Lahboo the Tight-Fisted haunted the place since his

murder, and no one cared to test the truth of the stories told about the

building.

Benna, still breathing somewhat heavily, trotted after the rat. Masha, hearing

that the footsteps were louder, went alongside the wall, still in the shadows.

She was curious about what Benna had got rid of, but she didn't want to be

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