Griots

by Charles R. Saunders

Firewing Dragon? Ashlan now saw the true shape of the creature his Mother crudely drew.

  Surprised at the ease of her acquiescence, Ashlan made his way to the side of the bed hesitantly pulling the covers aside.

  Despite his warrior's training, Ashlan gasped at the sight of his brother. Ayrn's body, white and cold as snow, and hollow like a reed. He turned the youth over, but could find no cut though the child was as empty as the wind.

  "No one has ever come for their sacrifices," the Icewitch continued, unperturbed by Ashlan's shock. "It would be convenient for someone to come in and clean up."

  "Curse you!" Ashlan shouted. "You speak of my brother like refuse!"

  Fury overriding his grief, Ashlan struck out at the woman with his sword. The screeching shattering sound that his blade made as it struck some invisible barrier between them blasted his ears. He tried again, forcing all of his strength into the blow. Sparks flew from the barrier, stinging his face and singeing the furs he wore. A roar deafened him and sent him sprawling to the ground holding his ears.

  Ignoring the pain in his head, Ashlan rose to the challenge again. He lashed out at her with a bolt of his power. Impotently, his best effort sputtered against her shields like summer lightning.

  "If you but knew how to use what you have, you could be like me," the Icewitch offered with a seductive smile. A wave in his brother’s direction and Aryn’s body blazed up like seasoned kindling, flaming the blue of a summer night.

  Ashlan did not dignify her with a response. Instead, he threw himself toward her, grasping her slender throat between gloved hands. Gasping, he backed away leaving the palms of his gloves behind him. Idly, the Icewitch pulled the leather scraps from her body and let them fall to the floor.

  “No wonder your mother loved your father so,” the creature marveled. “You came from such strength, such power. I wonder, were you one of the dragons, the lions.”

  Love? Ashlan paused, staring at the woman. She’d just spoken in a tongue his mother had taught only him among her children. The rich musical sound with its rhythmic tongue clicks stayed his hand.

  My father’s language. Despite himself, he stood entranced.

  “You think your mother would have kept a child she didn’t want, particularly one forced upon her by a man she didn’t care for?” The Icewitch shook her head, ruefully. “You know the power she has with waters, the very humors of her own body. She could wash an unwanted seed from her womb with a thought.”

  Despite himself, Ashlan nodded. Lyrell rutted like a beast and created more seed than his mother could bear and live. While she’d never spoken of it, he’d known she’d prevented herself from bearing many years.

  “Alle had to let Lyrell believe she was a victim else he would not have had her as wife no matter how beautiful she was.”

  Ashlan swallowed back a bitter taste. Of course, Lyrell would have sported with a woman who’d been with another, but he would not have claimed her as his unless she’d told him a convincing story. And, if he had not claimed her, Mother would have become one of the camp women.

  “Don’t you tire of the snow-skinned people with their harsh tongues?”

  Ashlan caught himself nodding before he realized and stopped forcing a frown to his lips.

  "I could offer you something much more interesting," the Icewitch's voice was low and cajoling. "It has been long since I have taken a strong man to my bed. I give you my word, I would not harm you. Like you, I am alone here and from a far-off place.”

  An overwhelming sense of heat struck Ashlan. Hands twitching, he contemplated removing the furs covering him. Already he was sweating. It was a dangerous situation. As soon as he went outside, his flesh would freeze.

  "Perhaps my present form does not please you?" Before his eyes, soft flesh replaced the armored shell. Lustrous gold hair sprouted from her bald scalp. Her eyes were the deep blue of mountain lakes.

  Stepping back, Ashlan shook his head, denying the temptation.

  "Would a woman of your own breeding please you more?" As if it were sun kissed, her flesh changed to a woodsy brown. The curves of her body softened. Golden hair turned the rich brown color of fine wood. Dark eyes, expressive and deep, beckoned him. Her mouth grew full and ripe like summerfruit. His body replied in a manner his voice could not.

  "You are so lonely," the Icewitch crooned in that secret language that spoke to his heart like no other. She gestured him to another bedchamber above the present one, even more fine than the first.

  They sported many times. In between, the Icewitch told him stories of a place to the South. In this country, the mage-gifted shaped fire as his Mother did water. And, the mages ruled. They were revered almost as much as gods.

  Later, as Ashlan rose from her bed, he could not say why he answered her seduction. Ultimately, he could not resist pretending that there was someone else like him even if it cost him his life. He still marveled that the Icewitch left him alive to tell the tale.

  "Why?” he demanded when she stood beside him returned to her cold form.

  "Have you ever eaten a large meal and still felt unsatisfied?" When Ashlan nodded, she continued softly. "You have given the first strength of your life-force to the other women you have lain with; thus, you would not nourish me."

  “There was no child with the camp woman.”

  “There did not have to be,” the Icewitch’s tone was amused. “You spent your first energies in her. That was enough.”

  "Still, you left me alive," Ashlan protested.

  "Here, you are one of a kind like I am," the Icewitch answered simply. "Once, I was like you, outcast from our people. It is a land kissed by sun and fire. My powers were unlike theirs, so they thought I was an oddling, cursed. The Master Sorcerer refused me acknowledgment as a mage or even the most basic instructions. Desperate for some way to control my powers, I discovered secrets my people would not have me know. I left the place where I was born and came here to this cold place where magic has all but died. I used my powers to gain eternity. I could teach you the use of your gifts. You could join me."

  "No," Ashlan demurred. Already, several enemy warriors perished upon his blade, but they were taken in honest combat. He'd sooner die than take the blood of an innocent.

  Ashlan dressed and strode back down the steps to the first chamber with the Icewitch trailing after him. He pulled a silken sheet from his lover’s bed and gathered as much of Aryn’s ashes in it as he could.

  "Go in whatever peace this cold land will grant you," the Icewitch bade him. He left saying nothing further.

  Grief and guilt rushed through Ashlan's mind as he mounted his stag and rode away. He paused beside the frozen lake where the Icewitch’s tower was. For a brief summer, flowers would bloom in a rainbow of colors and the waters would flow blue and clear as the sky. Aryn would like that.

  “You would have been a great warrior.” Ashlan recalled his brother’s laughing face. Lately, he’d been showing a gift for the bow. Despite his small size, Ayrn already could hit the target with his arrows as well as many of the older warriors. Perhaps his targets now would be the summer stars.

  Ashlan quickly brushed tears away from his eyes, swallowing his grief down with the knot of hurts he’d stored away since birth.

  He could not return to Lyrell's camp. He detested what they had done to the children, but wasn't he as bad bedding with the Icewitch?

  Ashlan pointed his stag in the opposite direction of his former home, Southward where the Icewitch claimed they both hailed. He could not remain with Lyrell’s people and this cold place.

  Only a few measures away was a small village who owed their protection to Lyrell. Checking his saddlebags, he realized they still contained the few fish he’d gleaned from the hunt. Guilt stabbed him for not sharing even this small bounty with his clan, but the provisions would get him away.

  Outside the village, he encountered a young boy swathed in bright red. Mindless of the numbing cold, he sat in a snow bank staring ahead.

  "What
are you doing here, boy?” Ashlan asked. The child did not answer.

  When Ashlan brought his mage light close, the child’s pupils were already huge as though he’d stared into a fire. He didn’t react as much countrymen did to the strange fire. Neither did he protest when Ashlan picked him up and placed him on the front of his saddle. Believing the child was lost, Ashlan took him back to the village.

  A woman clad in mourning gray with her face covered with ash met him at the village gate, forbidding him to enter.

  “Why?” Ashlan demanded.

  "He has a disease of the blood. There are knots beneath his skin. First, it took his strength, then his mind. Our healer died just weeks ago. We gave him the last of our summer poppy, then left him there because there was no one to speak the rites over him," the child's mother explained to Ashlan. Her face was bleak and colorless as the landscape.

  Ashlan nodded. It was custom for the camp's healer to give a quick, honorable death to those who could not do so themselves. Nature would take the child perhaps more slowly, but the family would not have the death of an innocent unprepared for the next phase of his life on their heads.

  "Would you take him where you found him?" the mother tearfully pleaded. Ashlan could see that none of the villagers had the fortitude to make the return trip. The beautiful child would lie in wait until the harsh land or his bad blood claimed him.

  Wordlessly, Ashlan swept the child back upon his saddle. A threnody, bitter as the cold wind, followed him back to the place where the child had lain in wait for winter to claim him.

  He wasn't sure where the idea came. He was less certain whether it would work, but somehow, he had to try. Averting his eyes from the snowbank where the villagers had wanted the child to die, Ashlan purposefully rode back to the Icewitch's tower.

  He found a place near the wall sheltered by the worst of the winds. He lit only the smallest of mage-lights, just enough to warm his face and hands. But as the dark hours crept by, he feared the cold would claim him as well as the child before the Icewitch left her protected tower.

  Finally, he caught a glimpse of twin mage fires. Soon after the Icewitch departed, riding upon her sled which did not touch the ground.

  Ashlan’s bones creaked like an old man’s as he rose from his concealed position and stole back into the warm tower. His face and the exposed palms of his hands burned with the cold, but he knew he could not remain long.

  Gently, he left the child upon her bed and stole away.

  With the patience of a hunter, he lay in wait after she returned. He had no idea how long it’d taken the creature to drain his brother. He forced himself to remain outside wondering what happened. Clouds hovered ominously above him in the night sky, threatening snow. Neither stars nor moon shed their light upon him nor aided him in telling the time with their journeys across the dark sky.

  For a while, he slept fitfully. Visions of Ayrn’s life came back to him. Lyrell’s joyous announcement that his favorite woman had borne him another son. The smell of his mother’s birth blood and the strong liquor from the men as Ashlan held his half-brother for the first time and drank a salute to his birth.

  As he grew, Ashlan realized his younger brother was someone special. He stood helpless at the sight of two-year-old Ayrn standing in the path of stampeding riding stags. No beast’s hooves even came close to the blessed child’s body. It was then Ashlan declared himself his younger brother’s protector and set out to train him to become their clan’s next leader.

  Ashlan had been the first to seat Ayrn on his own riding stag and show him the use of the reins. Ayrn beamed with pride as he rode unassisted for the first time. He was brave, strong and the best of any of Lyrell’s issue.

  Finally, when Ashlan could stand uncertainty no longer, he crept back into the Tower. Immediately, he noticed the place was not as warm as before. The Icewitch and her final offering lay sprawled side by side on the bed.

  Her true form had not been much different from his own, or even the one she’d assumed to seduce him. Covering them both, Ashlan folded their hands and closed their eyes. Then, he cast his mage-fire to set the interior of the tower ablaze.

  She had needed killing, Ashlan tried to assure himself as he rode away refusing to look back at the tower brightened by his fire. He could not permit her to continue living as she was.

  Still, he would not forget the time he spent with her. It was not the bedding, although that was unlike any pleasure he had ever experienced. She had told him tales of his true homeland far to the South.

  It never snowed; she had said. Not even for a short time. The sky was light for half the day. Brown fertile earth produced a variety of plants, not like the determined little snowflowers that fought their way through the cold, gray ground. Blackwood from that land was hard as his sword. Waters flowed providing transportation throughout the year. Like someone stores firewood to warm themselves on a cold night, Ashlan saved every word she'd said to him.

  Possibly what she said was strictly fantasy, bedtime tales devised for her own amusement as much as his own. So much of what she said seemed too fantastic to be true. Worse, she could have been lying for her own entertainment. He still found that hard to believe. She'd told the truth when she said she would not kill him.

  He had only two wishes, he wished he had asked her the name of the land where he came from.

  Last, he wished she had given him her name.

  The Leopard Walks Alone

  By

  Melvin Carter

  The city was in high celebration. The wedding of the young daughter of the caid, Malik Battur and the hill country wolf known as the Silver Panther, Muamir Ashad's son by his Frankish concubine, the red-haired Abu Shama, promised a peace between the rivals and an alliance against both the Franks to the northeast and the tottering Almohad ruler to their south. Many were the songs and poems presented to the appreciative crowds and in certain spots, many were the toasts made in the rich dark wine the region had been famous for, since before the first legionnaire cast his shadow on the land. In one such supplied spot, the festivities included the sauce of ample hipped harlots, thieves and sharp eyed and nimble-fingered gamblers.

  Moslem, Christian, and Jew were gathered here in this one cross street inn and the blood of the races flowed freely in the veins of most there. Shirkuh Hammerhand, a long-time marauder of Ashad's retinue sat at table with three of his fellows along with two of the garrison troopers of the town.

  " More wine girl! Two pitchers if you please,” he shouted out over the din at a serving woman passing.

  " Aye my honey! And some cheese, bread, and olives for us also," said a lithe serpent in human form.

  Hassan Ibn Jubayr was a mustachioed narrow faced devil. He and Shirkuh had met on the field of battle against each other on more than one occasion in the past five years. Now over wine and whores they had made their truce with one another and hoped their fallen comrades found a place somewhere near the fringes of paradise. Just as they were about to burst into song with the crowd, a sudden silence fell on the inn's denizens, as if a strict mullah had found them all out of a sudden. Standing in the doorway at the top step, was a tall, bearded Black man dressed similar but not quite the same as a Berber from the lands of the Maghrib. Nine clan scars in total decorated his forehead and cheeks. His right forearm as he closed the door was bull buster thick adding to the hint of musculature his figure gave off beneath his clothes. He scanned the room, his dark eyes peering into any that so dared to meet his.

  Strapped about him in a well-made but worn exotic leather baldric was a cross- guarded longsword and a knife tucked into a beast skin scabbard the mane a decorative fringe. He sauntered leopard easy across the clearing room to the heretofore crowded bar, ample space being made for him.

  "Somebody's eunuch's out on the town, eh?" growled Shirkuh.

  "He's not of us," the guardsman with Hassan, Daud said testily. "We get them after a generation or two away from the land of the Sudd. That one acts like we're
beneath him."

  "The double damn you say! I can't have one of them dawgs forgettin' his place around me!”, one of Shirkuh's companions, a big bravo named Yusef said, rising from the table dramatically.

  One of the others, not so awash in wine, rose with him to watch the expected show closer. Yusef steadied himself with a deep breath, then walked up to the Black. Before he was close enough to repeat aloud the hastily contrived statement he had thought up while approaching, the warrior turned towards him.

  " Puppy," he rumbled in a deep accented voice, “ Don't waste what little time you have left in the sweet world by yapping at your betters."

  Yusef gulped and looked back to the others. He then turned towards the object of his disrupted lesson and reached to turn the Black back towards him, when quicker than a viper’s strike, the Black man grasped the intruder's wrist and violently twisted. Yusef dropped to his knees, a silent scream issuing from his cavernously a gaped mouth.

  " Damned Cur!" shouted the companion drawing his scimitar. The Black drew his blade. With two swift sweeps, arm, sword, and head fell in opposite directions from the torso of the doomed brawler.

  " I can't have this!"

  Leaping to his feet and overturning the table, Shirkuh came on like a stampede of bulls. The warrior smiled humorlessly. They met in a whirl of blades, briefly, then it was the Hammerhand being beaten down, finally collapsing to the inn’s floor with a split skull.

  Darting like a hunting hawk after his sky borne prey, he cut down two luckless others who had ventured upon him from behind. Scattering a crowd from a corner, he turned to face the beguiled denizens, stunned by the speed of his kills. He stood crouched, legs apart in a fighting man's stance, and his roaring laugh of triumph echoing in the inn.

  " When you tell your miserable live stories to other maggots, tell them you saw the Son of the So, Sumunguru, rid the world of fools and the wind of his blade strikes cleansed your cringing souls. I'm still ready to dance, who's ready to be damned?"

  The inn emptied, among those bolting Hassan. But it was not totally from fear. He thought he had found what his master the caid was seeking.