Villains by Necessity (v1.1)

  Villains by Necessity

  Eve Forward

  Finding Utopia boring, they set out on a quest to restore balance to the world.

  Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  VILLAINS BY NECESSITY Copyright © 1995 by Eve Forward

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover art by Darrell K Sweet

  A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  ISBN: 0812522281

  Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 9447205

  First edition March 1995

  First mass market edition: March 1996

  Printed in the United States of America

  0987654321

  For my mother, who got me started, And my father, who got me to finish.

  With thanks to Aaron, Adam, Anthony, Brian, Chris, Clan, Denny, Deryn, Donald, Dylan, Faust, Ginger, Glen, Gloria, Jame, James, Jan, Janie, Jed, Jen, Jeff, Jeremy, Jerry, Joel, John, Josh, Julie, Karl, Karsten, Kirn, Kurt, Laurel, Laz, Llynda, Luke, Mark, Matt, Monique, Nathan, Pat, Paul, Philip, Rebecca, Richard, Robert, Saritha, Scott, Sharon, Skip, Sonya, Stacey, Tim, Tom, Wayne, Weihau, Yoav, Zack-- all the rest whose names I may have forgotten, and all those whom I know under other names.

  "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune--often the surfeit of our own behavior--we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence."

  William Shakespeare King Lear (1606)

  Prologue

  The War raged for many years. The last Elven city, Tintoriel, fell to the armies of the Dark King, and so fell many strongholds of the feudal lords of man. Hundreds of heroes died in the struggle to free the world from the deathgrip of the Dark King’s minions. In the end, it took a small but brave band of adventurers, who overcame their differences with each other to unite for the good of the entire world. At last the armies of darkness were dispersed, and the Gate through which the darkness had come was sealed forever. Even the deities of darkness and chaos were driven away, held back by the powerful forces of Good.

  As the towns and cities began to rebuild, groups of adventurers, seeking glory and wealth, took into their hands the finishing work of scouring all the remaining holdouts of evil; dank crypts haunted by the undead, tattered temples to the weakening dark gods, clusters of brigands and monsters who preyed in an evil fashion upon good folk.

  The towns and cities were rebuilt, better than ever before. The disruption of old social orders and the need to unite for a common goal had caused the old social and racial animosities to vanish. Reforms began, and the aura of goodness seeped into every facet of life. People smiled more and fought less, gave more and stole less, talked more and warred less.

  And nowhere was this more evident than in the Six Lands at the heart of the world, where all that was great began. The people of the Six Lands were at last united in harmony. They worked together to make the world a better place, both in the Lands and the entire world beyond. Their goodness spread out from the Six Lands to all the far reaches of the world, from the desert lands of shadrezar to the ice fields of K’kulbar. Swords became plowshares, mercenaries settled down and raised families. And even the adventuring parties put on weight and wrote their memoirs; for all was done, all was finished, all was well, all was Good. All was...

  I

  “Boring!”

  Sam barked the word aloud. It rang hollow in the empty room. He sat down with a thump in a chair and looked about the once-teeming hall of the Assassin’s Guild. It was utterly, utterly empty. The assassins had all left months ago, turning in daggers and poison for a peaceful way of life, one that wouldn’t trouble their sleep at night and, above all, one at which they could make a living. No assassin had had a contract in months. Members would go out on missions and would never return, only to be seen later, elsewhere, wearing relaxed smiles and working at peaceful professions. Finally the Guildmaster had stepped down, no one wanted to take his place, and the Guild, hundreds of years old, dissolved overnight. The building had been politely bought by the Town Council, which planned to turn it into a school for young girls. But now it was empty, except for memories and the last assassin in Bistort, possibly in all the Six Lands. Sam adjusted his collar so that it hid the small, star-shaped birthmark at the juncture of his shoulder and his neck.

  Sam had “left” when the others had; it wasn’t wise to defend yourself as the last remaining assassin. Not while there were still town guards. The emptiness of the room echoed at him. It made him angry, made him want to kill something. He got up and paced silently around the room. His black cloak swirled about him, despite the numerous weapons concealed in it, and his dark but rich clothing absorbed the light of the single candle that lit the wood-paneled room. He ran his fingers through his unnaturally black and greasy hair and sighed. He was in his mid-thirties, with rough-cropped neck-length hair and world-weary hazel eyes, built slender but deceptively strong. Average to attractive, without being distinctive in any way, with a lifetime of training but still unhindered by age, he was at the peak of his skills ... but there was no call for them.

  The hair on the back of his neck prickled. Old instincts, drummed into his mind and body since he was young, sang a shrill note of warning; someone was approaching from behind. Fast and silent as a shadow-slipped he twisted and caught the figure, nearly as invisible as he, as it turned, too late to flee. With a grunt he lifted the struggling being out of the shadows by the neck. It was a small scruffy figure, perhaps three and a half or four feet tall. He snarled the snarl that had been the last sight of many men and was greeted with a twisted smirk and a pair of bright blue eyes that sparkled from under a mop of reddish curls, frosted here and there with silver, and a leather cap. With a faint noise of disgust Sam dropped the intruder onto a nearby table and wiped his hands fastidiously on the hem of his cloak. The intruder rubbed his neck and grinned at him.

  “Now, then, Sam, such are a poor way for ye to be greeting your old friend!”

  Sam glowered. “You’re right, Arcie ... I should have run you through.” He paused. “Why is an old weasely thief like you poking around the forlorn yet proud halls of the Guild?”

  Arcie sat himself comfortably on the table and took out a pipe. “Well, laddie, I’ll tell ye. For cause that the Guild, in which of course I do mean my Guild, is now just dissolved, and I but wanted taste come over an’ gloat o’er the much longer the trade o’ sneakthief are outlived yer trade o’ cutthroat.” He grinned that infuriating grin again. “I ken ye’d be back here moping.” He started to clean his pipe, using one of the blowgun needles Sam had had hidden in his sleeves. Sam ignored it.

  “Right, longer by a whole, what, two months? Things have been happening, Arcie, and now they’re happening fast.” Sam glared, looking around the room with a hunted expression.

  “What are ye going taste do, Sam? That are truly why I comed over here ... I ken ye wouldna go whitewa
sh. Och, they used taste call ye ... what were it? The Adder?”

  “Viper,” muttered Sam. “Long time ago.”

  Yes, he mused, a long time ago. Back when a thief would be killed instantly if he dared step foot inside an Assassin’s Guild, and vice versa ... animosity between the two trades was... was quite fierce. Then the Victory came, and things slowly fell apart. He knew Arcie from those days, when on the occasional job some small crawling was required that his own five-foot-eleven height couldn’t fold to. It was a breach of protocol to ask another assassin for help on an assignment, so he’d turned to a thief who was not only one of the shortest people around, but one of the few who could be bribed by an assassin. They’d been a sort of team, when Sam had needed him; Sam would plot the route and get the target, hunting in his cold, methodical, superhumanly unstoppable way, and Arcie would cheerfully loot the target’s house. It was all still a tremendous embarrassment to the assassin, and the other man’s incorrigible attitude had never helped.

  Arcie was one of the many folk of Bariga to leave his rural home and seek his fortune in the cities of the Six Lands. In the harsh cold and scouring winds of the northern province of Bariga, humans had adapted and were small, dexterous, and well-insulated. Even so, Arcie was small among his people, who more normally stood at around five feet. Short, clever, and with a certain bloodyminded selfishness, he would smile even as he robbed you blind or slit your throat. He’d done well in the big city and had become the Guildmaster of the Guild of Thieves, and actually managed to survive the office. He was older than Sam, how much he’d never said; Sam would judge him, physically, to be in his mid-to-late forties, and mentally, to be about twenty summers; far removed from the stoic, responsible inhabitants of Bariga. The black sheep of his family, no doubt. He’d lived as a thief much of his life and never really had to grow up. It made him extremely annoying at times.

  “D’ye think as we’re the only ones?” asked Arcie after a moment, sounding almost plaintive. Though he was pushing fifty, he still kept that certain innocence of appearance, useful in his trade. Sam took a chair and sat down.

  “The only ones of what?” he asked.

  “As haven’t whitewashed. What haven’t become good folks, law-abiding folks, little-old-lady-helping decent folks.” Arcie spat on the floor for emphasis.

  “I don’t know...” Sam pulled his cloak around himself defensively. “Well, of course not. I mean, there’s been evil ever since there’s been sapience ...”

  “Och, laddie! I wouldna call us evil...” interrupted Arcie, his eyes wide and offended. “Self-sufficient, aye, lacking in a compassion, perhaps ...”

  “I wouldn’t either. But you realize that that’s how we’re seen. Just because a fellow takes pride in his work he’s branded as a villain.” He threw up his hands in exasperation.

  “I’m an assassin! It’s what I do! It’s all I know!”

  He sighed. “I don’t know if we’re the only ones, Arcie. I don’t really care. Let’s just get out of here. This place is getting me depressed.”

  “More so than as usual?”

  Sam ignored him. “Let’s go,” he said, standing up, black silk billowing.

  “Go? Go where?” Arcie tapped out his pipe and pocketed it.

  “Where else?”

  “Och, aye. A tavern.”

  The Frothing Otter was a good tavern, with fine tables and clean straw on the floor. Arcie and Sam sat in the far table in the shadowy corner. Of course. Merchants and townsfolk eyed Sam’s assassin blacks and whispered nervously among themselves. Happy bar noises drifted through the scent and smoke of the room. Arcie chugged his third pint of ale and peered at his sullen companion, who was nursing a goblet of dark red wine. The Barigan furrowed his red curly eyebrows at Sam, making his face crinkle up into its numerous small wrinkles.

  “Ye really ought taste change clothes, Sammy. Folk are talking.”

  Sam snorted softly. “Let ‘em talk. Not going to change clothes. Only thing I’ve got left. Everything I own in these clothes. And ...” he hiccupped. “Everything I am.” His black hair was dull in the lamplight. “I snuff, therefore I am.” He giggled.

  Arcie looked exasperated. Sam never could hold his liquor.

  Fragile Sixlanders. True, the past few weeks had been disappointing. All the news that had drifted their way showed a virtual mirroring of what had been happening in their own city. Guilds of smugglers, thieves, assassins, bands of robbers, ships of pirates, all were coming clean, turning honest. It had been happening for months, years, but he’d been too wrapped up in his own problems to notice. He had watched as his last members had come to him, dropped their last dues on his desk along with their papers of departure, and walked out.

  Most had simply vanished earlier without even that formality.

  Many had left town. Some became locksmiths, or craftsmen. Sam’s peers he had seen as chemists or butchers.

  Some had become merchants, or farmers, or fishermen.

  It was disgusting. Years of training ... The slide and crawl of wall-scaling, the feather-touch ofpickpocketing, the snick and click of locks and traps to thwart, the silent footsteps and melting merging of stealth ... all abandoned. He looked again at his companion. Look at him. He hasn’t touched liquor in years. Why? So that his hands are steady and strong, strong enough to snap a spine. So that his eyes are clear and can pick out the motion of a moth in the darkness. So that his step is sure and silent. So that his health will allow him to endure doses of venom that would kill a normal man ten times over, and his reflexes so trained he could cut off his own arm without a whimper.

  And now, thought Arcie, now he’s as useless as the tits on a boar hog, giggling his way through his second glass of wine. I gives him a year, p’raps two, before he joins his victims in the everafter. He’ll die before he whitewashes.

  Sam was starting to sing softly. Pitiful. “Come along, laddie. Let’s go.”

  They stood up and walked out, Sam owlishly counting out a handful of coins to the barkeeper. Arcie resolved to get the fellow back to the ex-Guild before his drunk reached the angry stage. As they stood by the group of merchants and caravaners sitting at the bar itself, Arcie noticed a fat purse slung on the waist of one of the men, conveniently hidden from others’ view by the edge of the bartop. Being short has many advantages, he mused, as, almost without thinking about it, he employed a Ferretfoot’s Brush-Cut and slit the strings of the pouch with the sharpened edge of a silver coin. His short but nimble fingers raised the flap to slip the pouch off the belt without spilling its contents onto the floor...

  CRACK!

  Arcie yelped as a complex mechanical device snapped on his fingers, immediately attracting the rather unwelcome attention of the entire bar.

  I’ll be baked! the Barigan thought. Fizarian pouch-trap!

  I must be losing me touch. He rubbed his sore fingers ruefully and the bar reacted to the incident by closing around them. Haven’t seen one of them in ages...

  He looked up at Sam, grinned, and shrugged. Sam had his hand over his face. There was no point in trying to make a break for it, not in this crowd of good citizens.

  Arcie felt a firm, gloved hand descend on his shoulder.

  He craned his neck to look up into the stern face of a town guard. He grinned cheerfully and tipped his cap.

  “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Arcie.”

  “They wouldna have picked ye up as well if ye hadna been wearing the blacks.”

  “Can you get out?”

  “Och, I’m fair skilled, laddie, but I’m surely not this good.”

  Sam peered through the gloom of the dungeon cell to the far wall, where the Barigan was chained. Not only was the small man virtually nailed to the wall with iron clasps on his neck, waist, wrists and ankles, but his hands had been encased in gauntlet mittens. The guard had taken all his clothing but his breeches, rather than bothering to simply search and seize his weapons and lockpicks, as they had done to Sam, and now Arcie’s
bare toes wiggled by way of a wave. “They must have built that specially for you,” commented Sam. The wine had made his mind feel fuzzy and sleepy and depressed.

  “Mayhaps. One o’ yon guardsmen do have a sort of a pet peeve against me. They did swore did they ever catch me ...” He tried to shrug in his bonds and gave his twisted grin.

  Despite changes on the outside world, the cell was almost reassuringly traditional. It was dark and gloomy and had moldy straw on the floor. A flickering torch outside cast strange shadows into the cell. Sam saw these things from his own manacled roost on the wall. Echoes of dripping water drifted down the corridors now and then, and now he heard the unmistakable sounds of footsteps.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  A moment later, with a ringing of keys and clanking of a lock, the door creaked open. Into the cramped cell stepped Oarf, the Captain of the Guard, and Mizzamir, the most famous and powerful wizard in the entire world.

  Sam and Arcie stared.

  Oarf, a burly warrior with maybe a few too many years of cozy living, looked Sam and Arcie over and gave a chuckle that made his chain mail jingle musically. Sam noted that the Captain’s sword was secured in its scabbard by a peace knot. Things must be getting really bad ... or rather, really good, he thought.

  “Ho!” chortled the Captain, poking at Arcie’s midriff with a mailed finger and patting Sam on the head, then with a tinge of disgust wiping a bit of black grease off on Sam’s tunic. “What have we here, then? Looks to me like a couple of social miscreants. Poor fellows, it’s not much of a life for you, is it? Always on the run, sleeping with one eye open, fighting for your life in dark alleys ...”