Dragon Lords
and
Warrior Women
Edited by
Phyllis Irene Radford
A Book View Press Anthology
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Book View Cafe
Introduction
A ghostly whisper that teases your senses; a flick of a dragon tail across the full moon, the baying of an otherworldly creature. Is it all your imagination or something else? These are the stories that take us to the lands the dead, or alternate time lines. They make us think about “What if?” as we shiver in delight and fear. Nineteen Book View Cafe authors have offered up some of their best adventures in fantasy literature; out of print and hard to find gems, first time peeks at new work, and familiar tales.
We at the Book View Press invite you to step across the threshold from this reality into another. Or is that otherworld real and we are merely the imaginings of writers, dreamers, and believers?
High Fantasy
Eagle’s Beak and Wings of Bronze
or,
Something Unusual Happens to Allis
Deborah
J. Ross
writing as Deborah Wheeler
One summer afternoon, Lady Caroline hitched up her skirts, rolled two vinegar barrels into the corner of the cool, stone-floored herbarium and sat down for a private chat with her daughter, Allis. “You’re almost a woman, my dear, and it’s time you learned the family secret. The truth is, we’re were.”
Allis’s soft hazel eyes wandered to the hanging bundles of rosemary and feverfew. “Where?”
“Not ‘where.’ ‘Were’.” Lady Caroline sighed. Her sons were small and lean, as black-eyed and quick-tongued as she, while her only daughter...
“Were,” she repeated, speaking slowly so Allis could understand, “as in were-wolves. But not until your woman’s cycles come, and almost certainly not a wolf. I’m not, and neither is your aunt Jessie. Our family tradition has always been far more imaginative.”
Allis heard the sigh and the patience in her mother’s voice. Drifting on the patter of words, she guessed that something was going to happen to her, something that involved turning into an animal. Not a wolf, for she wasn’t nearly clever enough to be a wolf. Something slow and sleepy, like she felt right now. A lizard dozing in the sun? A turtle on a log?
Oh, dear. Suppose she became a were-turtle and nibbled on ants’ eggs? When she turned back into a girl, would the eggs still be inside her stomach?
“Just come to me when something unusual happens,” Lady Caroline said.
Unusual? Like being able to read Latin? Allis sighed. With her wits, she would probably end up as a cockroach.
o0o
For the next two years nothing went right at the manor. After a terrible wheat harvest, the Duke conscripted half the field men for his latest campaign. The oldest brother married, and Allis never knew what to say in those all-too-frequent occasions when his new wife, Ivy, would jab her with an elbow and say, “So what does the dummy think about that?”
The next spring, the Duke died and his younger brother became regent and promptly started another campaign, so there were more conscriptions. It took three more years for Allis to begin her woman’s cycles, and when she finally did, nothing happened.
“Sometimes it skips a generation,” Lady Caroline murmured as she went off to deal with the holes in the bedsheets before Ivy could order new linens.
Allis didn’t mind not becoming a were-goose or a were-sheep. Life was complicated enough once her sister-in-law started having babies, one every year. “Let the dummy look after them,” Ivy said. So Allis did, and discovered she liked babies. Human babies, calves, foals, goslings, it didn’t matter. They all ran to her when they were hurt or needed comforting.
It soon became obvious the manor was too small to be divided among the three sons, especially if they were as prolific as the oldest. The youngest brother went off to college in Oxford, much to everyone’s relief, but the middle one showed no sign of going anywhere and every sign of courting the neighbor’s buxom, dowry-less daughter.
It was time for another talk in the herbarium. “Lord Talbert has made an offer for you for his third son.” Lady Caroline tucked back a few newly gray hairs. “They’ve got plenty of lands.”
Allis gathered that she was being sent away. “I’ll miss the babies.”
“Only until you start having some of your own.”
Allis brightened. “That would be nice.”
“It’s settled, then.”
o0o
Allis was packed off on a white mule, accompanied by two men-at-arms, the cook’s assistant for a chaperon, and a donkey to carry her two small trunks. She enjoyed ambling through the countryside, along fields of ripening millet. Gradually the country became wilder as they climbed through pine-wooded hills. The men touched their sword-hilts and looked nervous as the sun sank lower.
Allis wrapped herself tighter in her cloak. Now that they were past the sunlit fields, she began to feel dreadfully homesick. Although the sky was not yet fully dark, a full moon had risen.
If only, she thought, she were beautiful like the upstairs parlormaid, or were smart enough to go to college like her brother...
Lost in thought, Allis had wandered far from the others. She noticed now how quiet the forest was. The night birds had disappeared and her mule came to a halt, head up and long ears quivering. Then she heard it, too.
A noise. A very strange noise. A burbling, boiling noise. And it was coming straight towards her.
The mule leapt into the air, reversed fore and rear quarters and took off at an astonishing pace, leaving Allis on her back in a particularly thorny clump of brush. She managed, at the cost of some nasty scratches and considerable damage to her clothing, to sit up. The next moment, the crashing, roaring noise was directly above her.
Everything went sweet and dreamy and vivid, all at once. For the first time, Allis noticed the intricate arrangement of the tree branches and felt their slow green thoughts. She wondered what marvelous things they’d dreamed over the centuries.
A dragon landed on the path in front of her. The warmth which radiated from his shimmering red-gold scales was like sunshine on pearls, his breath hinted of the liquid hearts of volcanoes, and his tourmaline eyes glittered with tantalizing mysteries.
“The virgin!” he rumbled. “What have you done with the virgin?”
Allis arranged her bronze wings gracefully along her back and coiled her tail three times so the tuft made an attractive design next to her muscular haunches.
“A civilized conversation is usually initiated by a greeting such as ‘Salutations of the evening’,” she remarked. “Or perhaps, if you were in a poetic mood, you might present me with an extemporaneously composed sonnet.”
The dragon blinked, steam issuing from its nostrils. “I — want — the — virgin.”
“There’s no person of such singular chastity — of either gender — present. Only the two of us, and I assume you exclude yourself from nomination. My own sexual experience — or lack thereof — is not a suitable topic for public discussion.”
As she spoke, Allis extended her fore-claws, which were as sharp as the dragon’s. The dragon outweighed her, being as large as two cart-horses while she was only the size of a pony, but she was equally agile on the ground and in the air.
The dragon arched its sinuous neck. “Your pardon, my lady griffin. My discourtesy comes from a predicament of a personal nature and not from any distaste for your company. No insult was intended.”
“And none was taken,” Allis replied graciously. With her eagle’s beak, she couldn’t manage a normal smile.
He curled the corners of his mouth in a dragonish grin. “Nothing would delight me more than to regale you with ‘How the Dragon Prince Stole Wisdom From the Sun’, or ‘The Singing Rubies of Kasimire.’ In iambic pentameter.”
“Iambic pentameter? Really? How exquisite!”
“Alas, I have an urgent task elsewhere.”
Moonlight glimmered on the dragon’s scales as with one bound he hurled himself into the starry sky. Allis watched the intricately veined wings spread wide to catch the thermal currents. She sighed, for the rabbits cowering behind the nearby thickets would make poor conversation. What marvels this dragon must have seen and what wonderful stories it could tell! She itched all over with curiosity.
She got to her feet and padded along the forest floor, distracting herself with the rich scents and textures. When the moon set, she curled up, wings furled and tail coiled neatly, and fell asleep.
o0o
Allis awoke with stickers in her hair and dew on her clothes. In the distance she heard voices calling her name. She got up, brushed off the twigs, and headed in that direction.
The cook’s assistant chattered so Allis could hardly understand her, but she slowly realized that the more she stood there with a blank expression on her face, the more the cook’s assistant fussed. It had never occurred to Allis that she might have any influence over other people. For her entire life, everyone else had been smarter and more confident than she. They certainly all talked faster.
Allis said, totally untruthfully, “I’m so glad you found me.”
The cook’s assistant gave her a tearful hug and a hot breakfast. “We were that worried for you, miss. All alone in these terrible woods. And that dragon — I was sure you’d be eaten alive!”
Dragon? Allis envisioned a sinuous creature, all red and gold. Wondrous, mysterious and yet oddly preoccupied... But she couldn’t imagine being frightened of it.
o0o
Lord Talbert lived in a real castle, not a manor house like Allis’s family. It was covered with turrets and towers and decorative things whose names she didn’t know. She felt homesick just looking at it. A succession of impatient-looking maids moved her from one room to another until she was thoroughly disoriented.
Finally, they reached her own chamber. Left alone, Allis perched on the edge of the canopied bed, trying hard not to cry. Her two small trunks, scuffed and trail-worn, sat in the center of the Turkoman rug. Besides the bed, there was an intricately carved armoire, three dressers, five chairs and two desks. They all looked expensive and breakable.
Just about the time Allis was sure they’d forgotten about her, she heard shouting. She tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack. Striding down the hall was the most beautiful young man she’d ever seen. He had coppery hair and deep blue eyes. At his heels stormed an older man, richly dressed in silver-and-black.
“You’ll do as I say — ” bellowed the older man, “ — or I swear I’ll disinherit you!”
“So be it, Father! Hang me from the parapets. Boil me in oil. Cut off my allowance. Do whatever you like. I can not marry her!” The young man hurried off, leaving his father standing, chest heaving, in front of Allis’s door.
“Um,” she said.
“Who are you, my child?” the old man asked.
“Allis.”
“By all the saints! Rannen! Come back here and greet your bride!”
Allis burst into tears.
o0o
The next day Allis joined Lord Talbert and his family at breakfast. Everyone welcomed her politely, except for Rannen, he of the red hair and startling blue eyes. Rannen stared miserably out the nearest window, hardly eating anything, and Allis stared equally miserably out the opposite window, hardly eating anything either.
Allis spent mornings in the ladies’ bower, listening to gossip about people she’d never met and trying to hide the condition of her embroidery. During the afternoons, the ladies rested from their exertions, so Allis explored. She got lost three times before she found the kitchen gardens. She’d put on her oldest clothes and spend the afternoon with the chickens and geese, the milk cows and the litter of new piglets. Her wanderings took her to the stables, where she found Rannen, dressed in clothes almost as patched as hers, trying to bottle-feed an orphan foal. Straw liberally sprinkled his hair and the front of his shirt was drenched with milk.
“Oh, you poor thing,” said Allis. She put her arms around the struggling filly and pulled her into her lap, where she settled down to nursing. “She misses her mama.”
“I guess I’m a pretty poor substitute.” Rannen laughed as the filly pulled hard on the sheep’s-gut nipple. He glanced at Allis, seeing her for the first time. “Oh, it’s you.”
Allis bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, it’s not your fault. In fact, you’re being a rather good sport about the whole thing.”
Allis thought that Rannen looked much nicer smiling and with hay in his hair than scowling at the big table. She hated the mealtimes here. At dinner last night, Lord Talbert had done nothing but rant about the dragon. Three young women had been carried off and later found, unharmed but badly frightened. “The Duke wants that dragon caught, or killed!” he said, and put Rannen in charge of the hunt. Rannen had looked twice as miserable as he usually did.
“You know,” Allis said, stroking the foal’s mane, “I think I saw that dragon the night before I came here.”
“You did?” Rannen jerked the bottle, and the filly kicked in protest. “He didn’t — hurt you or anything?”
“Oh no, he was rather nice. At least I think so. It’s all rather muzzy. What do you suppose he wanted the girls for, since he let them go?”
Rannen stammered, “You know the old legend about the — the kiss of a virgin breaking the most fearsome curse.”
“No, Ivy never read me that story. I’m not very good at things like that, but it doesn’t sound like it would work.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“No,” she sighed. “I suppose not.”
o0o
After that, life settled into a routine. Every morning at breakfast, Lord Talbert demanded that Rannen marry Allis, and every morning he refused. Then Rannen hunted the dragon, while Allis ruined her embroidery. In the afternoon, they nursed foals and puppies, chatted with the farmer about the breeding of pigs, chased the goats and groomed the cows. Sometimes Rannen showed her a little swordplay, but she wasn’t very interested in it.
In the evenings, Allis slipped outside the castle walls. She felt as if she were looking for something in the darkened sky, but she didn’t know what. As the moon grew fuller, she noticed everything smelled wilder and sharper. Grasses, flowers, the moist tang from the moat. On the night of the full moon, she sat alone in the fields, breathing in the richness of the night. Just then, the dragon flew past, silhouetted for an instant against the brightness. Her heart filled with wordless longing, to follow him through the sky and learn all there was to know.
The world came alive to her eagle’s eyes — the fields and copses, the palace with its shining moat, even the piglets asleep in their open pen. The next moment she was in the air, her wings singing as she soared towards the moon.
o0o
She found the dragon ten leagues to the north, halfway to Oxford, hunkered down in a little clear space along a river and holding a woman dressed in red satin. When she landed beside him, the dragon looked up with a snort. The woman squirmed free and dashed for the nearest thicket.
“Oh, it’s you,” said the dragon.
“You weren’t trying to kiss her, were you?”
“None of your business.”
She was glad she couldn’t laugh aloud. The poor dragon looked discomfited enough. “I might be able to render some assistance, given the opportunity.”
“You can — can free me?”
“Pray be seated and attempt to enlarge your intellect to concepts previously unimagined.” She arranged her tail in three coils with the tuft decoratively displayed. “I conclude that you believe yourself cursed in assuming a nonhuman morphology in the fullest phase of the moon.”
It took him a moment to digest what she’d said. “Of course — how could anyone — god forbid there should be some other soul as wretched as this — you don’t believe that turning into a dragon — and scourging the countryside — is a good thing?”
“Do you engage in scourging? It seems to me a lamentable waste of time, when there is but a single night each month to explore the mysteries of the — ”
“You don’t understand! All I can think of — night and day — is how to get rid of this awful curse. I’m hideous, unholy. A menace to maidens everywhere!”
“I suspect you have yet to encounter a maiden to validate that hypothesis,” Allis replied dryly. “They’re generally locked up at this hour.” Exasperated, she leapt to her feet and spread her wings for flight. “Instead of bemoaning your fate, Rannen, you should learn to appreciate its opportunities!”
“Wait!” he called as she sped away. “How do you know my name?”
o0o
On a high crag overlooking a wide moon-washed valley sat a magnificent two-headed bird known to legend as a roc. Allis spiraled down to land gracefully beside it.
“Good evening, Mother,” she said. “You’re looking resplendent tonight.”
One of the roc heads swiveled around on a neck as supple as a snake’s. Feathers gleamed purple-black in the pearly light. “How delightful to see you.”
“Don’t state the obvious,” hissed the second head. “Allis, you’re looking well yourself.”
“Except that I’m in the most appalling predicament.”
“Don’t you like your new husband?” asked the first head.
“What new husband?” Allis cried. “You’ve promised me to a were-dragon, and he’s so obsessed of his ‘curse’ — yes, that’s how he thinks of it, a curse! — that he won’t even consider marriage!”
“Surely there’s some mistake — ”
“Ha!” Allis snapped her eagle’s beak in one of her mother’s faces. “I can’t stay on indefinitely as an unwed bride and I lack even the most remote qualifications for a lady’s maid. I’d be quite happy working in the stables, but that’s not an option, either.”
“You couldn’t persuade them to send you home?”
“What a stupid idea,” snapped the other head. “My dear, just tell the boy the truth and get him to marry you after all.”
“I don’t see why I should have to marry anyone, let alone someone who doesn’t want me,” Allis grumbled. “But, intellectually limited as I am in my human form, I don’t seem to have any other choice. Much as I’d like to, I can’t very well attend Oxford as a griffin.”
They sat looking at the moonlight over the valley for several long minutes. Lady Caroline stroked Allis’s feathered neck with one pale yellow beak. “You’ll think of something, dear.”
“What the child wants is action, not words,” said the other head. “Tonight, I’m flying to Oxford to see your brother. Exams are next week and he needs cheering. Why not come, too?”
Allis thought that if she were studying for exams, a visit from a contentiously two-headed roc would fall somewhat short of cheering. Perhaps later she could strike up a friendship with one of the professors...
o0o
Allis woke in the field beyond the moat, with birds chirping in her ears and sunshine filling the sky. She hurried around to the servant’s entrance, went up to her room and fell into bed. She was roused for the second time by the upstairs maid.
“Oh, miss, do get up! His Lordship’s all of a pother, and what will he do if you’re late for breakfast? Hurry now, wash and put on your best gown!”
Allis rubbed her eyes. She’d been having the most lovely dream — flying through a sky filled with stars which sang to her in a thousand different languages, and she could understand every word.
“Is something the matter?” she asked.
“Matter?” The maid threw back the covers and shoved a sopping bath sponge in Allis’s face. “It’s only the Duke! Arrived out of nowhere an hour ago, he did. Fancy breakfast in the big hall and everything, didn’t I tell you? Get up, you big lazy girl!”
“I’m not lazy!” Allis snapped, handing the sponge back to the maid. “And — and even if I were, you have no right to say so!”
The maid blinked, bobbed a curtsy and went on with her duties without another word.
o0o
The regent Duke had arrived with two score men-at-arms, a professional dragon-killer and his dragon-hound. He was the coldest looking man Allis had ever seen. “Talbert,” he said, “I will have this dragon’s head before the month is out, or I will have yours.”
Lord Talbert assured him that everything possible was being done to catch the dragon.
“Not everything,” said the Duke.
The ladies of the palace were kept inside all day, for Lady Talbert was taking no chances with the Duke’s men. Allis missed Rannen and the animals terribly. There was no one else she could talk to, and for the first time she could remember, she had things to say. The Duke frightened her, for he wanted the power and prestige that killing the dragon would give him, although she didn’t understand how she knew this.
She also felt it was unfair to the dragon, who was a wise and magical creature, something to be preserved and appreciated, not destroyed to further the Duke’s political ambitions. She couldn’t say those things to Rannen at the dinner table, and between the ladies and the daily hunts, she never met him anywhere else. She could see how unhappy he was by the shadows under his eyes, which deepened as the month wore on.
o0o
Allis stood at her window, shutters thrown wide. The moon seemed to have seeped into every part of the room. She began to pace up and down, as restless as the animals in the barnyard below, forcing herself to wait.
Suddenly there was a great uproar — horns, men shouting, the great alarm bell ringing. Allis nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Dragon! Dragon ho!”
Allis leaned out the window and saw the magnificent, sinuous shape silhouetted against the full moon. She heard the Duke and Lord Talbert shouting orders, the dragon-hound’s frantic baying, the clatter of spurs and iron-shod hooves. A deafening thwop! echoed from the parapets, and she caught a glimpse of a huge black-iron quarrel catapulting through the night. The dragon plummeted earthward and was lost to view.
o0o
She reached the dragon shortly after the Duke’s men surrounded him. One wing dragging, the red-gold beast reared on his hind legs and blew steam at the attackers. The dragon-hound, its nose streaming blood, whimpered as its master set another quarrel in his deadly-looking cross-bow. The Duke sat on his highbred stallion, his sword poised to give the attack signal.
Allis set down directly in front of the dragon, facing the Duke. She beat her wings, clawed the ground and gnashed her eagle’s beak. The men cried out and pointed at her.
“What in god’s name is that?”
“The first man that draws steel on yonder griffin will be the first man to lose his head!” the Duke said. He bent to ask the dragon-killer, “Is this true they possess the wisdom of the ages?”
“Don’t arsk me, Yer Grace, hit’s dragons wot’s me business, not flyin’ lions.”
“Duke!” Allis flared her wings and lashed her tail for appropriate theatrical effect. “What is your justification for persecuting this dragon? By what law, statute, or municipal ordinance do you pursue him with harmful intent?”
“It’s a dragon, Lord Griffin, and I’ve caught it on the very lands I’ve sworn to protect. This one’s already carried off dozens of innocent maidens! I’ll have its head on my lance, and neither you nor all of Hell’s demons can stop me!”
“Men have slaughtered the innocent before,” she answered coolly, “yet they are usually accorded certain judicial rights, such as the opportunity to confront witnesses and refute their testimony.”
“Huh?”
Allis seated herself and arranged her tail in three neat coils. “To begin with, how do you know it’s the same dragon?”
“There couldn’t be two such monsters!”
“But has no one actually seen this dragon commit an atrocity, other than to defend itself?”
“That’s because we cornered it before it had the chance. All those maidens — ”
“Who, as I understand it, suffered no more harm than a walk home in the moonlight and a few palpitations. Can you swear that you yourself have never caused similar distress?”
“It’s a dragon, damn you, I can’t let it live — ”
“Why not?”
“I’d be the laughing stock of the county — the man who let such a prize slip away!”
“But what if you were the man who had a dragon to do his bidding,” Allis said in her silkiest voice. “Nothing unlawful, of course, and not too frequently, for over-familiarity generates disrespect. Who would dare to challenge you when a dragon might come at your call?”
The Duke lowered his sword. The dragon-killer disarmed his cross-bow with a look of disgust.
“To enhance the bargain,” said Allis, “I could add a service of my own. Anything you want to know. One question, once a year.”
“Done! You have my word on it!”
Allis turned back to the dragon, who was sitting on his haunches, eyes wide with astonishment. “Let’s depart posthaste,” she whispered, “before he changes his mind.”
o0o
The dragon, taking Allis’s advice, made for the mossy riverbank where it had brought the unfortunate woman in red. She landed beside him and examined the injured wing. The leathery membrane was torn and one slender bone broken, but the bleeding had stopped. She wished she knew which herbs would be most suitable for a reptilian metabolism or how to properly suture the laceration.
“You saved my life,” the dragon said.
“If you hadn’t been so determined to divest yourself of your dragonish gifts by means of a maiden’s kiss, you wouldn’t have been in such a predicament to begin with!”
The dragon hung his head. “You tried to warn me, but I just wouldn’t listen. Now you’ve indebted yourself to that foul Duke for my sake. How can I ever repay you?”
“Don’t worry about the Duke. He won’t be able to understand what I tell him, anyway. As for repayment... Do you know that charming Frankish poem, ‘Chanson de Reynard’?”
o0o
Allis opened her eyes to see Rannen’s face, not four inches from her own. He lay on his back, his face open and relaxed in the morning sunshine. His tourmaline eyes twinkled as he rolled over and kissed her tenderly.
“I knew it was you,” he whispered. “Allis, my heart’s sweet treasure, I owe you my life and my happiness. Will you marry me?”
Allis rubbed her eyes, wishing it were as easy to sweep the cobwebs from her brain. There — everything was coming clear at last. How simple it all was. The answer had been right in front of her all these weeks.
“I won’t need to take much,” she murmured, ticking off the items on her fingers, “books, pens, paper, a study lamp. After a few more turns as a griffin I’ll have no trouble passing the exams, and my dowry ought to cover the tuition...” Absently, she patted Rannen’s arm and got to her feet.
“Allis!” Rannen’s face bore an expression of mixed astonishment and hurt feelings. Favoring his injured arm, he rose to his knees and took her hand. “I want to marry you!”
“That’s very sweet.” She removed her hand and continued on her way. “Yes, by all means, let’s do that when I get back.”
Rannen scrambled to his feet and rushed after her. “Back? Back from where?”
“Veterinary college at Oxford.” She gave him a radiant smile. “I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it before. I like helping things that are hurt or lost, you see, and I’m good with animals. It all makes such perfect sense — ”
“You can’t leave me, now that we’ve found each other! The stables just won’t be the same. I don’t want to lose you.”
She frowned. “Who said anything about losing me?”
“Well, what else would you call it — you going off to Oxford alone?”
Allis stamped her foot. “Honestly, Rannen, as a dragon you’re marvelous good company, but as a man you’re more than somewhat tiresome. Now that I’ve found a dragon to talk to, I have no intention of losing him. Every month, on our special night, I’ll wait for you at the river. It’s halfway between here and Oxford, an easy flight for each of us.”
Understanding slowly crossed Rannen’s face and one corner of his mouth curved upwards in a dragonish grin.
“After all,” he said, tucking her hand through his elbow as they strolled back toward the castle, “I never did have time to recite ‘The Singing Rubies of Kasimire’ for you.”
“In iambic pentameter.” With a blissful sigh, she rested her head against his shoulder.
Deborah J. Ross
My misspent youth was passed gathering academic degrees before realizing the true “work of my heart” was storytelling. I began writing professionally in 1982 as Deborah Wheeler. Now under my birth name, Ross, I am continuing the Darkover series of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as original work, including the forthcoming fantasy trilogy The Seven-Petaled Shield, and editing an elegant swashbuckling romantic fantasy series, Lace and Blade. I’ve lived in France, worked for a cardiologist, studied Hebrew, yoga and kung fu, and am active in the local Quaker community.
One Small Detail
Katharine Kerr
ONE
In the far north rise mountains too rough, too icy — too dangerous — to be home to either men or elves. The foothills, however, roll gently; rivers of sweet water foam down from the peaks; the grass grows thick and high. In the golden years before the gods broke their pact with humankind, the best horses in the entire empire came from the Greengold Hills, or so the wise say, and the best horses of all came from the little town of Cinders. While the wise have nothing to say about this, any adventurer would have told you that the best ale in Cinders came from the Wyvern Wing Inn. Its tavern room was a grand place in the summer, when the window shutters hung open, and the scent of growing grass mingled with the smell of roasting meat. You could see the white-haired mountains rising in the distance, while closer to hand stretched meadows where the famous silver-grey horses of the Hills grazed by the crystal-clear river. Many an adventurer spent many hours more than he ever intended in that tavern room, just sitting by the windows, watching the horses, and putting away a pint or two of the landlord’s sweet brown ale while the sun lay golden on the grass.
The delver who tarried the longest, though, happened to be a wizard, Eladana by name, who stopped by late one afternoon in early spring, when the river flowed brown from snow-melt and the shutters were closed tight to keep out the rain. With her green cape dripping around her, she slipped into the tavern room so quietly that it took the landlord a moment to notice her. He had troubles to brood about, among them a daughter, two years old that spring, with no mother to watch over her. Gray — that was his name, you see, because his father was a man of no imagination — Gray the tavernman was thinking about his wife, in fact, when he heard someone sneeze behind him. He turned round fast.
“Well, good morrow, traveler! Can I offer you ale? Lodging, maybe?”
“Ale, certainly. As for the lodging, I don’t know yet about that.”
The customer threw off the cloak in a scatter of big drops and dumped it onto the nearest plank table, then tossed her head and shook her hair free in long damp tendrils that clung to her cheeks and framed her face. Raven-black was her hair, and raven-black her eyes, but her skin was as pale as mother-of-pearl, and just touched with color like that sea-treasure, too, a blush of delicate pink.
“The ale, tavernman.”
“My humble apologies. Uh, you know, well, uh, sorry.”
As he rushed off to fetch her a tankard, he was telling himself that he was a fool, that no woman so beautiful would ever have an eye for a lowly tavernman like him. In that, though, he slighted himself, because Gray was a good-looking man, tall and as muscled as a warrior from all the hauling and lifting he did in the course of his day: barrels of ale and loads of firewood, sides of beef and sacks of turnips and suchlike. Eladana liked the look of him straightaway, and once the ale was brought and bought, and he’d fetched himself another to keep her company, they fell to talking.
Thanks to the rain and the cold, no one in Cinders ventured out to the tavern that evening. Eladana sat by the fire and played with the little daughter — Redbird, Gray called her, for her coppery hair — while the tavernman fixed a hot meal for the three of them and the rain drummed and blustered outside. Since Eladana had been on the road for many a long year, studying her wizardry and keeping an eye on strange and evil things tucked inside the mountains of the empire, the tavern room with the beautiful child and the handsome tavernman seemed like paradise to her. Once Redbird was asleep for the night, Gray poured little glasses of the best brandy, brought all the way from Khazan itself, for himself and his guest.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” Eladana remarked. “Did she die of an illness?”
“Die? Naught of the sort. She left me.”
“Oh.”
“For a swordsman from down Grim River way.”
“Oh.”
He said nothing for so long that she began to search around for some interesting tale from her travels, just to lighten the mood.
“I hope a goblin eats his guts,” Gray said abruptly. “For Frogday brunch.”
“I can understand how it would take you that way.”
He nodded, looked like he was going to smile, then burst into tears. Eladana put an arm around his shoulders, just to comfort him, really, wiped his face for him, too, and then found one thing leading to another, first a kiss, then an embrace, and then, well, I’m sure all of you know perfectly well where this sort of thing leads when two people are alone and lonely by a good fire in a comfortable tavern.
At any rate, Eladana told herself the next morning that she was going to get right back on the road as soon as it stopped raining, but when the weather cleared, the sunny view out the long windows was so pleasant, along with other things, that she stayed a fortnight, and that fortnight led to another, and another, until just before Midsummer’s Eve she realized that she was going to have a child. There was no leaving, of course, until her son was born, two months after Midwinter.
By then, Eladana was beginning to have a profound sympathy for Gray’s wife and her taste for fascinating adventurers. Gray was an honest man, a fine father, a hard worker — and as dull as a dragon’s tail is long. He lived for his brewing and cooking, fussed over his ales, thought of little else, really, but ale and roasts, unless it was beer and bread-baking. By the time the boy, Cadvarn, was weaned, Eladana had reached the point where one more evening listening to Gray talk about malting and yeast was going to drive her mad. Rather than turn him into a frog or perform some other wizardly horror on a man whose only crime was lack of imagination, Eladana gathered up her old adventuring gear and left. One fine autumn morning she kissed both children goodbye, promised her man that she’d return every now and then, and took the west-running road for Khazan. She wept, on and off, for two entire days, just from missing the children, but once she was catching up on the news at the Wizards’ Guildhall, she realized that she’d made the right decision.
It was right for the empire as well as for her, because, of course, trouble was already beginning to brew as dark magicks got their claws deeper and deeper into the Guild’s very soul. Eladana found that the land needed wizards like her, who used their magicks for the good of all and who cared for the common people and their sufferings as much as they did for raw power. Up in the high mountains many a strange thing needed attending to, and many a dark trail needed walking and cleansing. Yet at the end of every winter Eladana came back to Cinders, to visit her son and the girl she thought of as her adopted daughter, and to leave Gray a pouch of gold in case they lacked for anything. Every spring they begged her to stay; every time she was tempted; yet always she thought of the horrors that monsterkin might unleash upon humankin and returned to her lonely patrols of the dark that lived under the world.
Finally, though, the dark found Cinders and touched it. The year that her son turned seven, Eladana returned to town and tavern to find Gray near-hysterical with rage and Redbird sobbing in a corner by the hearth. There was no sign of Cadvarn.
“Gray!” she snapped. “Look at me! What’s happened that’s so wrong?”
It seemed that her man came out from under a spell at the sound of her voice. For a moment he stared at her, then shook himself like a wet dog.
“Thanks be to every god and goddess too! My love, he’s taken our boy. The old man, I mean, from the old tower. Ye gods, my wits! You don’t even know what’s happened, do you?”
“I most certainly don’t.” She felt every drop of blood in her body turn to ice. “Suppose you tell me?”
Gray gathered Redbird into his lap and proceeded to do just that. All during her father’s recital, the child sat stone-still, staring at Eladana’s face in a numb and wordless hope that somehow her powerful stepmother would put everything to rights.
Some miles north, twixt the town and the mountains, stood an old stone tower, built many long years before by the horse herders to keep watch against goblins from the hills. As the region grew more settled, and raids more rare, the tower had been abandoned, until the last summer, that is, when an old man and his retinue suddenly appeared in Cinders. This Malthorn, as he called himself, stayed in the Wyvern’s Wing for a few days until he could find and bargain with the original owners of the tower. He seemed wealthy, this wizard — because there was no doubt that he knew mighty magicks indeed — and he spread his gold around with a generous hand, too. Once the tower was bought, he took himself and his servants off to it, though every now and then one his bodyguards would come into town to buy ale and little luxuries.
“And then last week old Malthorn himself shows up,” Gray said. “Sat himself down as nice as you please in my tavernroom, and nice as you please pulled out some dice and suggested we have a game. But I knew he was a wizard, and only a fool gambles with wizards, so I said no. And he got furious and swore at me, and said if I wouldn’t let him win what he wanted, then he’d take it anyway. He stormed out of here in a rage, and I was sick over it, I was. But he never came back, and I thought he’d forgotten or suchlike, until this morning.” His face turned color to match his name. “Not an hour ago Malthorn and his men came raging in here. They grabbed our lad, and when I tried to stop them, it was like I was turned to stone. I couldn’t move, not a step from where I stood, and Redbird fell down on the floor just from the way the old man looked at her, and she didn’t move till ever so long after he left. And I stood there like a statue until I heard you at the door, my love, and then at last I could speak and move again.”
Eladana’s first reaction was surprise that she felt no anger at all; then she realized that her rage burned so hot and fine that it had consumed all petty things like cursing and the shaking of fists.
“If we call out the town,” Gray went on, “there’s the militia.”
“And they’d be no good at all against a man like this, and in considerable danger besides.” Eladana stood up, laying her hands flat on the table. “No, I’m going alone. This isn’t some squalid kidnapping. There’s something this man wants from me, I’ll wager, and our Cadvarn’s only his bait.”
“I’ll come, at least. By every god, he’s my son!”
“And you’ve got a daughter to care for, too, don’t you?”
Gray started to argue, but the child in his lap looked up at him with eyes brimming tears, and he relented. He did insist, though, that Eladana take the finest horse in his stable for her ride north.
The old tower, and it had no name but that, stood on the edge of the foothills. Just where a long mountain valley, slashed by a rocky stream, spread into a meadow, the narrow stone needle rose in the midst of a circling wall. When Eladana rode up, the meadows all round lay strangely silent. Not a bird sang; not a rabbit rustled in the shrubby bushes lining the road. Her horse turned nervous, snorting, tossing his head and rolling his eyes until she took pity on him. Fgoblining another living thing into that keep seemed like a crime. She dismounted, tied the reins to the saddle-peak, and sent him back home with a slap on his rump.
She strode alone to the iron-bound gates in the ring of walls and found them wide open. Just inside stood two men, wearing mail over tattered clothes and holding swords at the ready. From the way they slowly swung their heads round and stared at her without really seeing her, she could tell that they were ensgoblineled.
“My lady Eladana, is it? Come for your lad, have you?”
As harsh as steel rasping on a shield, the voice came from the doorway to the tower proper. While she walked over, picking her way through the puddles of mud and muck, the figure merely stood in the shadows and watched, a burly sort, tall, leaning on a double-headed axe. It wasn’t until she drew close that she realized he wasn’t truly human. His skin was an oily dead-white, his hair white as well, and his eyes a bright pink. His brutish face betrayed the goblinish blood in his veins. When he laughed at her, his lips drew back from proper fangs.
“My master’s waiting for you. No tricks, now, or me and my men there will shred you on the spot.”
With the goblinish half-breed at the head and the two swordsmen behind, they entered the tower and a round room that stank of dead meat and befouled hay. Huddled at a smoking fire three true goblins snarled and fought over a game of dice while, tied to a ring in the wall, a brown and white goat bleated desperately. Later, no doubt, they would eat her raw. Right in the middle of this stinking mire stood an iron staircase, spiralling up.
“Val, Rikard, come with me,” the half-breed snarled at the two ensgoblinled warriors. “We’ll take our honored visitor up to the master’s chambers.”
After the stench below Malthorn’s chamber came as a relief, though at any other time she would have felt sick at heart from its emanation of sheer malice. The feeling was too petty to be called evil, more spite than horror, but dangerous all the same. The image that this aura brought to her mind was that of a nasty child who strangles its sister’s little singing bird just to make her cry: petty, yes, but deadly. Malthorn’s servants had hung the graceless round room with black cloth, fading rusty near the windows, and laid the wooden floors with red and yellow carpets, all worn in the middle. The old man himself sat in a huge oak chair by the hearth with his feet up on a padded stool. He was a lean creature, his arms like sticks, his face a bit of skin stretched like old parchment over his skull, his lips bloodless as he drew them back from his toothless mouth to smile at her.
“So, you have come.” His voice was a rasp like dead sticks rubbed together. “I knew you would. The love of a mother for her child! Touching, is it not?”
“What have you done with my boy?”
“Turned him to stone, actually, but you’ll be able to turn him back again. I have the greatest respect for you, Eladana, the greatest of all possible respects.”
“Is that why you’ve set wards all through this tower?”
“Ah, you felt my little traps, did you? Yes, as long as you stay here, you shan’t be able to cast a single spell, not one. I made quite sure of that. But you came in anyway, wards and all? Touching, truly, this maternal devotion. Mark it well, Golo, mark it well. Your kind have no such nobility.”
The slug-white half-breed spat into the flames. For a brief moment Eladana considered drawing her throwing dagger and pinning Malthorn dead to his chairback, but no doubt Golo and the swordsmen would indeed cut her to shreds, and Cadvarn would stay here forever, a statue worn down by winds and damp till at last he crumbled away.
“What do you want of me, old man?”
“Your help. Pledge me your aid on a magical working that I have in hand, and I’ll give you back your son.” He leaned back and placed the fingertips of both hands together like a cage. “You see, I’ve been working out this plan for months. I made inquiries of all the guilds about the wizards who grace the dragon continent. Everyone agreed you are absolutely the most trustworthy. Once Eladana gives you her word, they told me, you may consider the thing done. I’ll wager that this absolute honesty is your fate, your geas, the very heart and soul of your magical power. It’s a common one, after all.”
Eladana said nothing, but she was wishing him dead for his guess. If she should ever lie, her magical power would weaken, and if she persisted, it would in time fade away.
“Oooh, my dear, you’ve gone all pale about the lips.” He laughed, a sort of gurgle deep in his throat. “Now, since you cannot lie, I have no need of lying, and so we can bargain. You promise me that you’ll help me achieve what I seek, merely promise me at first, and I shall release your lad. You can take him back to the town, cure him, fuss over him, see him all settled and safe, and then you’ll come back to me, and we’ll start our work.”
For a moment Eladana saw the room lurch and swim, felt her body turn icy cold, and heard a hissy rush in her ears. Dimly she was aware of Malthorn crying out, and of a chair, pushed close at hand. She sat down heavily and caught her breath. This was no moment for weakness.
“What’s wrong?” Malthorn was leaning close. “Come now, my dear, you can’t come over ill on me. I need you.”
“If you want me to help you harm so much as one innocent being, then you might as well kill me and my son now, because I’d rather we both died than help you work evil.”
“What? Oh little frogs and fishes, nothing of the sort! Look at me, Eladana of the Pure Heart. I am so old, old beyond even my appearing old. If I told you how old I am, you’d be shocked, I assure you. Soon, in the normal course of things, I will die. My magic weakens, there’s no more I can do to stave off this nasty and inevitable nuisance. Not, that is, by myself.” He leaned closer still, and he smelled dry, like dead grass in autumn, half-frozen, half-parched. “You are young, your magicks are still strong. You will help me live, my dear. You will help me become immortal.”
“How can I promise you a thing like that? No wizard’s ever done such a thing.”
“Ah, but no wizard’s ever worked at the problem as hard as I. The secret’s within my grasp. Another two years, another three — I’ll find it, I’m sure of it!”
The thought of that creature living for all eternity filled her with such loathing that she nearly refused the bargain. If it had been only her own life at stake, she would have let the slug Golo slit her throat before she helped Malthorn inflict himself upon the universe for one day longer, much less forever, but of course, her son’s life was at stake, too. Malthorn had judged her well.
“It would seem, old man, that I don’t have much choice in the matter.”
“None, no.” He sounded positively cheerful about it. “Oh come now! Think of it as an honor. It’s a rare practitioner of our art who’s had the chance to work with Malthorn the Mighty. Why, no doubt you’ll learn all sorts of things by working with me.”
Eladana did her best to stay calm and think. After all, she’d made many a quest in dark and stinking places and found many a thing more horrid than this conceited little toad of a man. All at once the idea came to her. Yes, she certainly had seen some strange things deep under the earth, hadn’t she now? If only he were as greedy for his prize as he seemed to be, and if only she could get her words exactly right...
“But you say there’s years of work left. What if you die before we’re done?”
“That thought haunts me.” Malthorn shuddered and clasped his claws of hands together hard. “That I might be so close and still die! It would be wretchedly unfair of the universe, wouldn’t it?”
“And just the sort of evil trick the gods like to play on those of us who study sgoblinery.”
“Exactly. They’re jealous, the gods, of human power and what the human mind can accomplish, if only there were time enough.” Malthorn leaned forward, his face all earnest indignation. “And I’m sure that they’re particularly jealous of me. With my fine mind, and with all the secret knowledge I’ve gathered over the years, why, I could be the greatest wizard who ever lived if only I had time enough to finish my studies.”
“Um, I see. Well, what if I told you that there’s a way to get your wish right close at hand? What if I told you that not more than fifty miles away, deep in the heart of the mountains, lies a means for you to achieve immortality?”
His eyes glittered and shot greed like sparks of light.
“Are you strong enough for a quest?” she went on. “We’ll have to ride all the way into the mountains. There’s a ruined silver mine, you see, up in the northern range, and deep within it is a secret chamber that only I know. Now, once we reach the mine, you’ll have to walk for some miles. Can you do that?”
“I can, indeed, if you promise me...”
“Malthorn.” She held up one hand flat. “Believe me, if we reach the chamber I’m talking about, I can promise you that every bone in your body will become immortal. Every hair on your head will become immortal. Every drop of blood in your veins, your veins themselves, your heart itself, your brain and your eyes and your ears and your lips and your tongue will become immortal. Every fleck of your skin, every fiber of muscle, every grain of toe-nail and fingernail, every — ”
“Enough!” His voice rang with a brief strength. “Do you swear all this?”
“So do I swear.”
“And do you swear that you will use all your magicks and all your strength to bring me safely to this chamber of which you spoke?”
Eladana cursed him in her heart for his caution. It would have been so convenient to tip him into a fissure along the way.
“So do I swear.”
Malthorn laughed, tossing his head back, then clapped his hands together.
“Golo, bring out the boy.” He waited until the half-breed had slunk out through a door hidden behind draped cloth. “You know, my dear, you should be proud of your little son. He knew what I was going to do, but he stood his ground, glaring at me all the while, never a whimper or a whine. Someday he’ll make a fine wizard, he will.”
“Think so? He’s always told me he wants to own a brewery when he grows up.”
Malthorn was as good as his word. Once Eladana had her son home safe at the tavern, her workings went so smoothly that it seemed the enchantment lifted itself. As she finished the last chant of the ceremony, the hard gray stone throbbed and glimmered, then dissolved into Cadvarn, who stared at her open-mouthed. When she touched his face, he began to laugh and cry at the same time. She folded him into her arms and wept with him.
“Mama, Mama, I knew you’d save me! I just knew it. Is that awful old man dead yet?”
“No, my sweet, I’m afraid he’s not. I had to promise not to hurt him, you see, so he’d let you go.”
“You shouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have minded dying to get rid of him. Well, I wouldn’t have minded a whole lot, anyway.”
“I would have minded a great big whole lot. And I’m the mother in this family. Remember?”
He clung to her so tightly that she could feel his terror, seeping from his bones like frost.
TWO
On a bright day that smelled of summer coming, Eladana met her unwanted associate on the road some miles out of town. He traveled in style, did Malthorn, on a beautiful bay horse with silver-trimmed gear. Right behind him rode his bodyguard of Golo, the three goblins, and his two ensgoblinled swordsmen, plus two pack horses and peasants to lead them.
“Give that pack to a servant to carry, Eladana.” Malthorn smiled his bloodless grin. You have no horse?”
“Oh, I’d rather walk.”
With her walking and him riding, conversation would be difficult, you see, especially since it took all his strength and attention just to cling to the saddle as they made their way over the rough and winding roads. Yet that night, once the servants had a good fire going and food handed out all round, Malthorn insisted she come sit next to him for a “chat,” as he called it.
“Now, I’ve been very forbearing so far,” he said. “When your son was still ensgoblinled, I knew you’d have no mind for a long talk. That’s the kind of man I am, deep down, always thinking of others. But now I want to know just what this marvelous chamber is that you’ve promised me.”
Eladana felt herself grow very calm. The greatest battle of her life had begun. She glanced round to find Golo sitting nearby, all ears, then turned back to Malthorn.
“Very well,” she said. “The silver mine I told you about? It prospered for many a year, until one day the miners broke through a wall and found a natural cavern where an underground river ran through. And on the other side of that, they found these artificial tunnels so old they must have been built during the oldest wars of all, the ones the bards call the Hell God Wars.”
“By great magicks, indeed.” Malthorn’s eyes gleamed, fevered in the firelight. “Did they explore them?”
“A little ways, till three of them got eaten by a creature living in the river. At that point they closed down the mine. Some years later, I heard the story and went to investigate. It was obvious that some mighty personage from the days of the Wizard Wars had carved himself out a refuge under the mountain. I won’t go into detail now. Doubtless you’ll spend much time there once you’ve achieved your goal, but the remnants of powerful magic lay everywhere.”