The Face of Chaos

The pool of moonlight shifted as the night aged and Cythen waited. She was bathed in silvery light and blind to the shadows beyond it: undoubtedly the Harka Bey had chosen the rendezvous carefully. She held only her sword hilt and endured the cramps the cold stone left in her legs. Rising above the pain, she sought the mindlessness she had first discovered the day her world had ended and the future closed. It was not the fantastic mindlessness that had claimed Bekin, but rather an alert emptiness, waiting to be filled.

Even so, she missed the first hint of movement in the shadows. The Harka Bey were within the ruins before she heard the faint rustle of shoes on the crumbling masonry.

"Greetings,' she whispered as one figure separated from the rest and whipped out a short, batonlike sword from a sheath she wore slung like a bow across her back. Cythen was glad of the sword beneath her palms and of the sturdy boots that let her spring to her feet while the advancing woman drew a second sword like the first. She remembered all Lythande had been able to tell her about the Harka Bey: they were women, mercenaries, assassins, magicians, and utterly ruthless.

Cythen backed away, masking her apprehension as the woman spun the pair of blades around her with a blinding, deadly speed. By now, five months after the landing, almost everyone had heard of the dazzling swordwork of the Beysib aristocracy, but few had seen even practice bouts with wooden swords and none had seen such lethal artistry as advanced towards Cythen.

She assumed the static en garde of a Rankan officer - who until the Beysib had been the best swordsmen in the land - and fought the mesmerizing power of the spi

She was going to die. . .

There was serenity in that realization. The nausea dropped away, and the terror. She still couldn't see the individual blades as they twirled, but they seemed somehow slower. And no one, unless the Harka Bey were demons as well, could twirl the steel forever. And wasn't her own blade demon-forged, shedding green sparks when it met and shattered inferior metal? The voice of her father, a voice she thought she had forgotten, came to her: 'Don't watch what I do,' he'd snarled good-naturedly after batting aside her practice sword. 'Watch what I'm not doing and attack into that weakness!'

Cythen hunched down behind her sword and no longer retreated. However fast they moved, those blades could not protect the Harka Bey everywhere, all the time. Though still believing she would die in the attempt, Cythen balanced her weight and brought her sword blade in line with her opponent's neck: a neck which would be, for some invisible fraction of time, unprotected. She lunged forward, determined that she would not die unprotesting like the wheat.

Green sparks showered as Cythen absorbed the force of two blades slamming hard against her own. The Beysib steel did not shatter - but that was less important than the fact that all three blades were entrapped by each other and the tip of Cythen's blade was a finger's width from the Harka Bey's black-scarved neck. Cythen had the advantage with both hands firmly on her sword hilt, while the Harka Bey still had her two swords, and half the strength to hold each of them with. Then Cythen heard the unmistakable sound of naked steel in the shadows around her.

'Filthy, fish-eyed bitches!' Cythen exclaimed. The local patois, usually unequalled for expressing contempt or derision, had not yet taken the measure of the invaders, but there was no mistaking the murderous disgust in Cythen's face as she beat her sword free and stepped momentarily back out of range.

'Cowards!' she added.

'Had we wished to slay you, child, we could have done so without revealing ourselves. So, you see, it was simply a test; which you passed,' her opponent said in slightly breathless, accented tones. She sheathed her swords and, unseen still in the darkness, her companions did the same.

'You're lying, bitch.'

The Harka Bey ignored Cythen's remark, but began unwinding the black scarf from her face, revealing a woman only a little older than Cythen herself. The clear racial stamp of the Beysib unsettled Cythen as much, or more than, the twirling swords. It wasn't just that their eyes were a bit too round and bulging for mainland taste but -flick - and those eyes went impenetrable and glassy. To Cythen it was like being watched by the dead, and with the corpse of her sister still foremost in her mind, the comparison was not at all comforting.

'Do we truly seem so strange to you?' the Beysib woman asked, reminding Cythen that she, too, was staring.

'I had expected someone... older: a crone, from what the mages said.'

The Harka Bey hunched her shoulders; the glassy membrane over her eyes flicked open, then closed without interrupting her stare. 'No old people came on the ships with us. They would not have survived the journey. I have been Harka Bey since my eyes first opened on the sun and Her blood mingled with mine. You needn't fear that I am not Harka Bey. I am called Prism. Now, what do you wish from the Harka Bey?'

'A woman from the Street of Red Lanterns has been murdered. She slept secure in the most guarded House in Sanctuary and yet someone was able to kill her leaving the mark of serpent fangs on her neck.' Cythen spoke the words Lythande had taught her, though they were far from the ones she would have freely chosen.

Though the Sanctuary woman believed it impossible. Prism's eyes grew wider, rounder and the glassy membrane fluttered wildly. Finally her eyelids closed and, as if on cue, the loose, dark clothing she wore began to writhe from her waist to her breasts, from her breasts to her shoulders, until the bloodred head of the woman's familiar peeked above her collar and regarded Cythen with round, unblinking eyes. The serpent opened its mouth, revealing an equally crimson maw and glistening ivory fangs. Its tongue wove before Cythen's face, drawing a faint murmur of disgust from her.

'You needn't fear her,' Prism assured Cythen with a cold smile, 'unless you're my enemy.'

Cythen silently shook her head.

'But you do think that I, or my sisters, killed this woman who was, in some way, dear to you?'

'No - yes. She was mad; she was my sister. She was protected there and there was no reason for anyone to want her dead. She lived in the past, in a world that doesn't exist any more.'

The cold smile nickered across Prism's face again. 'Ah, then, you see it could not have been Harka Bey. We would never kill without reason.'

"There were no marks besides the snakes fangs' puncture anywhere on her. Myrtis even called Lythande to examine the body -and he arranged for Enas Yorl to study the poison. And Enas Yorl sent us to you.'

Prism turned to the shadows and spoke rapidly in her own language. Cythen recognized only the names of the two magicians; the native Beysib language was very different from the mix of dialects common in Sanctuary. A second woman joined them in the moonlight. She unwound her scarf to reveal a face that shimmered orchid as it stared at Cythen. Cythen let her hand rest once again on her sword hilt while the two women conversed rapidly in their incomprehensible tongue.

'What else did your magician, Enas Yorl, tell you about us -besides how to contact us along the wharves?'

'Nothing,' Cythen replied, hesitating a bit before continuing. 'Enas Yorl's cursed. We left Bekin's corpse in his vestibule and returned later to find a note tucked in her shroud. Lythande said it was incomplete; that the shifting curse had claimed him again. Beyond saying that you, the Harka Bey, would know the truth, the note was indecipherable.'