And Hanse went on, not in shadows now for there were no shadows; all the land was one vast shadow. Out of Sanctuary. Past lovers who neither saw nor heard this son of Shalpa the Shadowed One. On, to the beautifully tended gardens surrounding the house of a pasty-faced walking skeleton called Kurd and worse. The little crescent of moon pretended to return. It was only a ghost struggling weakly against clouds like restless shadows blotting the sky.
The well-tended, scented gardens provided a pleasant if un-needed cover. A gliding anthropomorphic shadow amid herbaceous shapes like looming shadows. Hanse went right up to the house. It too was dark.
No one wants to visit Kurd. No one considers trying to steal from Kurd. Why should it not be easy, then? Kurd must think he needs no precautions or defenders!
Still, he kept his lips over his teeth when he smiled. He glided into the fragrant shrubs, odd deciduous shrubs with long thin branchlets, set up close against Kurd's house, exulting in how simple it was, and then the bush's trailing tendrils moved, rustling, and turned, and twined, and clutched. And clamped. And Shadowspawn understood then that Kurd was not without exterior defences.
Even as he struggled - fruitlessly, against frutescence - he knew that the knowledge was gained too late. Whether this thing was bent on strangling him or twisting his limbs until they broke or merely holding him until someone came, it was more horribly effective than human guards or three watchdogs. Amid silent rustling horror Hanse tugged at the tendril more slender than a brooch-pin, and only cut his fingers. His knife he only dulled, sawing at a purposeful tendril that gave but refused to be cut. And they moved, twining, rustling, insinuating themselves between his arms and body and around his legs and arms and torso and -throat!
That one he fought until his fingers bled. It was relentless. Oye gods, no, no, not like this - he was going to die, silently strangled by a damned skinny plant's tendril!
He was, too. His 'N-' disposed of his last breath. He could not draw another. As his eyes started to bulge and a dull hum commenced to invade his ears on the way to becoming a roar and then eternal silence, it occurred to him that Kurd's garden could do more than strangle him. If it continued to tighten, it would slice in and in until it beheaded a strangled corpse.
Hanse fought with all his strength and the added power of desperation. As well have resisted the tide, or the sand of the desert. His movements became more restricted as his limbs were more and more constricted. Dizziness began to build like storm clouds and the hum rose to the roar of a gale.
So did the clouds above, and great big drops of water commenced to fall from the laden sky. That was just as eerie and impossible, for rain in Sanctuary fell in accord with the season, and this was not that season. The land was weeks away from the time called Lizard Summer, when lizards fried or were said to fry in their own juices, out on the desert.
What matter? Plants loved rain. And this one loved to kill. And it was killing Hanse, who was losing consciousness and feeling while his hearing became restricted to the roar inside his head. More rain fell and Hanse, dying, tried to swallow and could not and did what he thought he could never do: he began to give up.
Memory came like a white flash of late summer lightning. He heard her words as clearly as he had hours ago. 'Hanse - take the crossed brown pot with you.'
Even that blazing flare of hope seemed too late, for how could his bound arms detach the bag from his belt, open it, open the crock inside, and give this predatory plant a message it might understand?
Answer: he could not.
He could, however, dying, jerk his forearm four or five inches. He did, again and again, breathless, dying, losing consciousness but still moving, puncturing the leather bag again and again and banging the point of his knife off the pot which was smooth, glazed, well made, and 0 damn it all too damned hard\
It broke. Shards punched through knife holes and widened them to let quicklime spill down in a candent stream. Hanse was sure it hissed in the moist grass about the moist base of the strangler plant - but Hanse could not hear that hissing or anything else save the roar of a surf more powerful than life could withstand.
He slumped, dead now with streamers of caustic steam rising above his legs - and a suddenly frenetic shrub began waving and snapping its tendrils about as if caught by the very Compass Bag itself, whence issues the wind of every direction at once. In those whipping throes it not only released its prey, it hurled him several feet backwards. He lay sprawled, away from the plant and clear of the smoking corrosive death about its base, and the soles of his buskins smoked. Rain pelted his face and he lay still, still, while the killer plant died.
It was not raining in Sanctuary but out of a clear night sky came a sizzling bolt that hardly rocked the structure that grounded it. The graven name VASHANKA, however, abruptly disappeared from the facade of that structure, which was the Governor's Palace.
4
Oh damn, but my damned head aches!
Pox and plague, that's rain on my face and I'm getting soaked!
Holy cess- I'm alive!
None of these thoughts prompted Hanse to move, not for a longish while. Then he tried opening his mouth to let rain assuage a sore throat, and choked on the fifth or sixth drop. He sat up hurriedly. His grunt was not from his head, which felt fat and swollen and stuffed to bursting. He rolled swiftly leftward off a source of sharper pain. He had been lying on his back. Under him, thonged to his belt, had been the ruins of a nice leathern bag of broken pottery.
If I don't bleed to death I'll be picking pieces of pottery out of my tail for a week!
That thought made him angry and with a low groan he rose to glare triumphantly on the faintly smoking remnant of a destroyed shrub. Its neighbour looked almost as bad. Shadowspawn took no chances with it. Avoiding shrubs and indeed anything herbaceous that was larger than a blade of grass, he went to the nearest window. Just as he completed his slow slicing of the sheet of pig's bladder stretched over the opening, he heard the awful sound from within. A groan, long and wavery and hideous. Hanse went all over gooseflesh and considered heading for home.
He did not. He peeled aside the ruined window and peered into a dark room containing neither bed nor person. Mindful of his punctured and lacerated buttock, he went in. There was nothing to do about his head. He had, after all, been strangled to death. Or come so close that the difference wasn't worth considering -save that he was alive, which was absolutely all the difference that mattered.
After a long measured while of standing frozen, listening, staring in effort to make his eyes see, he moved. He heard nothing. No groan, no movement, no rain. The moon was back. It was not in line with the window, but it was up there and a little light sneaked in to aid a thief.
He found a wall, a jamb. Squatted, then went lower, wincing at rearward pain, to ensure that no light showed under the door. The latch was a simple press-down hook. He took his time depressing it. He took more time in slowly, slowly pulling open the door. It revealed a corridor or short hall.
While he wondered whether to go right or leftward, that ghastly sound of agony came again. This time a pulpy mumble underlay the moaning groan, and once again Hanse felt the icy, antsy touch of gooseflesh.