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Sanctuary.
He went as far as money would take him, then walked straight off the cart out
of the last town into the countryside. He had no thought as to shelter or food
or comfort. If his goddess had abandoned him, he had no choice left but to
welcome death. But it didn't want him yet.
The door of his shop creaked open. Pel spun, hand automatically going for the
knife he had worn at his side for so many years. It was not there.
"Garwood, how goes the day?"
The pounding of Pel's heart slowed when he recognized Siggurn, a regular at
the Vulgar Unicorn. The burly man had one hand on the battered, dusty stone
lintel as if he needed help standing upright. His skew-nosed face wore a
sheepish look.
"Well, man, are you going to berate me that my jewelweed potion wasn't strong
enough?" Pel asked, feeling a touch mischievous.
"Strong enough!" Siggurn sputtered. "Why, it wouldn't go down for three days!
I& the girls thought it was a might funny, though they said I wouldn't pay
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until it did. After the first night they said it was sorcery and only that
Twandan wench, Mimise, would stay with me. I made it worth her while, though.
I'm no cheat."
Pel did some mental calculations and let out a hearty laugh, the first he'd
had in days. "You don't mean to tell me you took the whole bottle at once? I
told you, it's for a week's worth of nights. One mouthful at a time."
"You did! I& well, I got nervous when nothing happened right away." Siggurn
rubbed his nose with a knuckle. "I drank some more of it. Then, bang! And a
mouthful's not much, is it?"
"It's meant to be a small draught," Pel said, still chuckling. "Many who've
had& trouble with potency&
aren't of a mind to drink down a great mugful when they want to perform."
The big man looked horrified. "You've asked them about it? You didn't mention
me by name, did you?"
"No, no, of course not. When you pay my price you buy my silence as well. No,
these are other men I've sold the same potion to and I won't give you their
names, either."
"I wouldn't ask," Siggurn said, relieved. "Only& now I'm going to see Dolange
next week, and I've none left of the first bottle, so& would you?"
"With pleasure," Pel said. "Will you wait, or come back?"
Siggurn glanced out of the door. "I'll wait."
The carter sought out a comfortable place to sit. The shop looked like an
abandoned mansion more than a going business concern, yet Pel had occupied it
for several months. It took time to rebuild a structure so far dilapidated,
and Pel was in no hurry. Nobody else wanted it. Except for bored street
urchins shying stones through the cloth he'd stretched over the empty window
holes on the street side nobody ever troubled him. Even in the crowded city of
Sanctuary few liked to brave the empty places of worship on the Avenue of
Temples. This was one of the smallest and least ruined, but that was not to
say it might not have been improved by simply tearing it down and building it
up again from its foundations. More than two decades of neglect and some
active destruction wrought upon it by the adherents of Dyareela and, more
lately, those of Irrunega, had all but broken the back of a structure meant to
last thousands of years. No one alive remembered that this temple was once
dedicated to a minor but necessary Ilsigi goddess named Meshpri, lady of
health and healing, sister of great Shipri; and her son Meshnom, patron of
apothecaries. If they had, they might have considered it coincidental that a
newcomer to Sanctuary would have come to set up an herbalist's shop in its
ruin, but there was no coincidence involved.
The structure was so derelict that not even lovers desperate for privacy would
shelter there. The huge stone blocks comprising the walls had been cracked or
shifted by gods-fire, earthquake, explosions and berserk men with hammers. As
its supports had been attacked the roof decided to add to the debris below by
shedding plaster, tiles and finally shards of wood. But Pel had found the
place relatively sanitary. Deprived of donations and sacrifices for years,
there was no food to attract insects or vermin, other than those attracted to
the droppings of the birds that nested in the rotting rafters exposed between
broken sections of roof. The weather had peeled the gaudy paint from the walls
and made mush out of precious cedarwood and sandalwood incense boxes next to
the rectangular stone altar. That was still in one piece, though incised all
over its surface with graffiti by youths who dared one another to violate the
haunted precinct. The air was cold, but after a lifetime of fire he was
grateful for the chill of nature.
Because the chamber was open to the elements most of Pel's books, tools and
equipment had to be stored in heavy chests underneath braced tiers of stone,
to protect them from falling tiles and rain. The first thing Pel had done,
after cleaning the building as best he could, was to bargain with Grabar, the
local stonemason, to smooth out the surface of the altar, eight feet long and
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four feet wide. Ostensibly he needed it as a mixing palette and operating
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