by Unknown
“Yes. She died.” Azure wasn’t sure she had ever heard a man sound so hollowed out. “And Sprawl and I left. Your mother raised you both while we stayed away to protect you. Flora did not expect to see either of us again. We all thought we would never stop running. Maybe we would be lucky and die naturally when we were old. Maybe Schrae would close in. We agreed to kill ourselves before letting her have us.”
“But you came here after all.”
“Yes. That minion—it is an ally more formidable than most Schrae has managed to create. It surprised us. Sprawl was captured. That’s when I knew I had to come here. When the goddess...studies...her descendants, she does more than examine how they are made. She can harvest memories. Especially the strong memories. The ones her victims would most want to hide from her.”
“The same minion that killed my father is the one after us?” Azure asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to be able to fall asleep,” Coil declared.
~o0o~
The light of dawn began to glimmer beneath the ill-hung door. Burnish stood up.
“Time to go,” he said.
They ate, used the privies, washed the crustiness from their faces.
“Follow me closely and quietly,” Burnish told the children.
He led them over the hill behind the huts. This took them into the heathlands. Soon they could see no buildings or paddocks or tilled fields, because all of those were concentrated along the river or along the caravan route. Ahead, in the direction of the rising sun, the soil became sandy and the sources of water few and far between. No one had lived in that wilderness since the time of the barrowfolk. The people of the village used it only as a hunting ground for sage antelope or pheasant.
The three of them threaded through a tangle of knotlimb and came upon a small field of maregrass. A pair of handsome dun horses were grazing there.
The animals turned toward Burnish and nickered. He ambled to them and leaned his head and right hand against their necks in turn.
Azure and Coil approached.
“This is Bread,” Burnish said of the slightly darker one. “And this is Butter.”
“You had horses waiting?” Coil burst out. “Why didn’t we use them last night?”
“Because they were spent,” he answered, brushing his hand along Butter’s dark mane. “I pushed them very hard to get here when I did. I would have pushed them even harder if I’d known how little time I had, but there’s no fixing that now. They have carried Sprawl and me away from danger many times. I believe they are fresh enough now to do it for the three of us. Shall we see?”
He went to the edge of the clearing. Azure saw a pair of saddles half-hidden in the shade of a featherseed tree. Burnish whistled. Both horses came to him. He finished saddling both of them as fast as Azure had ever seen someone saddle just one horse. He checked their feet for burrs and waved the kids over to Butter.
“This was Sprawl’s horse,” he said. “He likes to let Bread take the lead, so just let him. Don’t worry, he’s gentle with children.”
Azure hoped so. Neither she nor Coil had done much riding. Other people travelled the roads. Their kind were villagers. But Mama had insisted they learn how. Had she been worried they might someday urgently have to have those skills?
With Burnish’s help, Coil vaulted up and took the reins. Azure was tossed up behind him. She didn’t want to be in the back. It left her with nothing to hold on to except her milk-brother’s waist. What if he lost his grip?
But off they went. She saw Burnish was right about Butter. The animal was easy to ride. Unfortunately that was not enough to let her relax.
What if the spider found them out here? Where could they hide?
Nowhere.
~o0o~
It did not go well.
Within a couple of hours at what Azure thought was too idle a pace, Burnish slowed the animals even further. He kept checking their gait. He called a stop. Dismounted. Massaged both horses’ legs. Frowned.
“Get down,” he told the kids.
They continued on foot, leading the horses.
“I’m scared.” Azure had to say it. They were going too slow and the country was becoming more open, the thickets of scrub farther and farther apart. Every so often they had to cross high ground where they could be seen from miles away.
“The spider is tired, too,” Burnish said.
“That makes me feel a lot better,” Azure snapped. “It’ll get us, but at least we made it tired!”
“Making that spider tired is important,” Burnish said. “Now shut your mouth and keep walking.”
It was the first time Burnish had raised his voice in anger at her. Azure found she was unable to say one word more.
They kept on, seldom riding, mostly walking, pausing only to water the horses. The sun sank toward the western horizon. That meant that when she looked back, as she constantly did, she easily spotted the giant eight-legged silhouette on top of the low ridge they had traversed just minutes earlier.
Burnish turned at the sound of her sharp inhalation.
“Well, that’s it then,” he said. “It comes down to a fight.”
“I thought you didn’t want to fight it,” Azure said.
“I didn’t want innocent villagers to die fighting it. I didn’t want you to die—not if I could get you to safety first. But I knew someday I would have to try to kill that thing. I just wasn’t sure until now that today was the day.”
He pulled a little silver puzzle box from Bread’s saddlebag and opened it, revealing what appeared to be a small, withered prune.
“What’s that?” Coil asked.
“A sloe. The fruit of the blackthorn. I obtained it from an aged shaman of the north, who told me he picked it from a bush he had tended since he was a beardless apprentice. What sort of magic he worked over all those years is not something he would reveal, but he made certain promises about what I will be able to do if I eat it. It could be he was lying, but now I have no choice but to trust him.”
“Will it help you kill the minion?” Azure asked.
“Yes.”
“Then eat it!”
He put the sloe in his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. Grimaced.
“Why the northlanders think sloes are edible I don’t know.”
“Did it work?” Coil asked.
Burnish convulsed. His knees buckled. He caught himself before collapsing, though.
“It’s certainly doing something.” He straightened. Touched his belly. Grimaced again. “Let’s assume it’s going to do what the shaman promised. Here’s what I want the two of you to do.”
He had them mount up, Coil on Bread, and Azure on Butter. “You angle off to the right,” he told Coil. “You to the left,” he told Azure. “Don’t gallop or the horses won’t last. I’ll take the middle and run straight east. The spider will go for me. I look like the easiest victim, and it will assume it can deal with you at its leisure once it takes me down. It will find taking me down to be harder than it expects.”
They all looked west. The spider was halfway down the slope, making for them at a ferocious speed.
Burnish removed a pair of coiled ropes from Bread’s saddlebags and looped them around his shoulders.
“All right, then,” he said.
He gave each horse a slap on the hindquarters. For the next minute, Azure had to concentrate on staying in the saddle and keeping the horse headed the right direction. It wanted to follow Bread. Finally she was able to look back.
Burnish was running away, but the spider was gaining so quickly it would soon catch up to him.
Azure slowed Butter to a walk. She was safe enough for the moment and watching was more important than adding distance. Off to the south she saw Coil doing the same thing.
Inevitably the spider closed to within a few of its body lengths away. Azure began holding her breath.
Burnish sped up.
Azure expelled the breath. Burnish should have been worn out by no
w, but he had doubled his pace.
The gap was still too close, and grew no wider as monster and man darted around scrub thickets and hurtled between clumps of bunch grass, kicking up sand.
Burnish stumbled and fell. The spider was nearly upon him by the time he regained his footing. He raced ahead just out of its reach. Azure put a hand over her mouth. That stumble couldn’t have been part of the plan!
The pursuit went on like that. Azure tasted blood and realized she was gnawing the inside of her lower lip. The spider was so close—and yet it never quite managed to reach its target. Burnish somehow always managed to stay just out of reach.
Finally the spider’s pace began to flag. After another half a league, it paused altogether. Burnish trudged a bit farther and stopped as well, panting. The spider burst forward. Burnish let it get near—too near as far as Azure was concerned—but his burst was superior, keeping him out of reach.
Azure began to see just how Burnish was manipulating the minion. Not toying with it, exactly. The thing was far too dangerous to toy with. But it was obvious by now that if all Burnish had wanted to do was run away, his enchanted speed would have had him out of sight by now.
Bit by bit, the spider’s surges became short-lived. Finally it was crawling so sluggishly it was moving just one leg at a time.
Now, at last, Burnish showed just how fast he could be. He removed a coil of rope from his shoulder, made a lasso, and snared one of the spider’s front legs, all so quickly Azure would have missed it if she hadn’t just finished cleaning a speck of grit out of her left eye. Equally quickly, he anchored the rope around a stout tree.
The spider tried to shake its leg free, but it had barely started to do so before Burnish sped around behind it, snared one of its rear legs, and pulled the rope taut. He anchored that one to a boulder.
The spider thrashed. The movements were sluggish, but still very strong. Azure thought it might break free, but Burnish raced back and forth eliminating the slack from each line until the creature could hardly move. If anything, its struggles only made the ropes tighter around its legs.
Burnish beckoned Azure and Coil. The children rode toward him. At his warning signal, they left a margin of safety, but they came near enough that Burnish was able to run over to each horse and fetch additional ropes.
Soon he had every one of the spider’s eight legs tightly secured.
Eight ropes, Azure noticed. Burnish had brought along precisely eight ropes. Before she had ever seen him stride through the vestibule of the tavern, the ropes had been there among the horses’ gear.
The kids edged nearer. The spider was flailing, but between the bindings and its own exhaustion, it couldn’t get even a handspan off the ground.
Burnish laughed. “Just a spider after all. No stamina. Not like a mammal has stamina.”
Coil spat in the monster’s direction. “Kill it!”
Burnish drew his sword. He checked the blade’s sharpness by dropping a strand of bunchgrass across the edge. The grass parted and fluttered in two pieces to the soil. He nodded.
But then he took a step back and turned to Coil and Azure. “Would you two like to do it?”
Hearing the question was like jumping from the hot pool in the inn’s main bathhouse into the cold water one. Azure shivered. She met Burnish’s gaze. He wasn’t joking.
She shivered again.
“How?” she asked.
“There is no armor down in that gap between the abdomen and the thorax. See how thin the stalk is that connects the body parts? Thrust the sword into that gap. Saw through the stalk. The minion will die as any spider would die.”
“We’d have to get on top of it,” Azure said.
“Yes. So would I, to get the best angle. Shall I do it?”
“No!” Coil said. He backed up to get a running start and sprinted toward the spider. He had to clamber to make it, pulling himself up with hands and knees, but he made it.
Azure needed to take one deep breath before she could get her feet to move, but then she launched forward just as her milk-brother had done. In moments she was standing beside him atop the minion.
The creature writhed. As before it got no slack. It could pound its abdomen against the ground, and did, but could summon only a small portion of its strength. The shaking made the children dance up and down, but they were too nimble to be knocked off.
Burnish took off his sword belt, slid the blade back in the scabbard, and tossed the weapon to Coil. “Mind you don’t cut yourself.”
Coil drew the blade with care.
Azure knew he wouldn’t make the first thrust without her, and she was right. He put his left hand around the grip and the right atop the pommel and waited for her to wrap her hands around his. Then they both pushed down at the same time. Hard.
The spider’s chitin resisted for only a moment, its insides not at all. The children almost lost their balance as their hands plunged downward.
The spider hissed. She hadn’t realized it could make sounds with its mouth.
It was in pain! Good!
Coil worked the blade back and forth, widening the cut. He stopped, wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead, and let Azure take over.
Back and forth, in and out. The creature hissed and flopped its abdomen up and down some more. The jiggling made Azure’s teeth rattle.
Then the monster went still.
She stopped. Was that it?
Coil took over, sawing some more. Right. They had to make sure. She took another turn as well.
The stalk gave way. The abdomen settled into the hollow in the dirt created by the pounding. Azure tossed the sword into the clear. She and Coil jumped down.
Ichor oozed from the apertures of the severed parts. The substance reeked of vomit and dusty cobwebs. Coil covered his nose with his sleeve. Azure backed away. The horses snorted.
“Well done,” Burnish murmured. “Well done.”
Azure had trouble catching her breath. Her heart was pounding.
She expected that Burnish would pick up his sword and start cleaning off the mess before it did something awful to the steel. Instead, he stuck fingers as far down his throat as he could, and vomited.
Along with the remains of his most recent meal came what little was left of the sloe, along with several flecks of blood.
“Are you hurt?” she asked. “Is it bad?”
“I’ll never live to be an old man. Not having eaten that fruit. But that’s something to worry about if I get to be a middle-aged man. What’s important is, I outlived that thing.” He spat blood and bile at the eight-legged corpse.
“Is this it?” Coil asked, casting a nervous glance back the way from which the spider had come. “Does this mean we got away?”
“For now. The goddess has no servant left that could chase us down faster than we can vanish into those hills.” He waved toward the east.
Azure shaded her eyes and looked to the west instead. Toward home.
“We can’t go back,” Burnish said.
“Not even now?”
“No. I want with all my heart to save your mother. But if we tried, we would fail. And we would die.”
“She’s already dead, isn’t she?”
Burnish led Azure away from the cloud of stench and sat her down on one of the anchoring boulders. He took her hands in his and stared straight in her eyes. Coil hovered at his side.
“I don’t believe Flora is dead. I believe Schrae will keep her alive in the hope of trapping us when we attempt to rescue her. Eventually the goddess will realize we’re not coming. So she’ll have a choice. Kill Flora, or let her go. I believe she’ll let her go.”
“Why would she do that?” Azure asked.
“Schrae is many things, but she is not stupid. She’ll assign spies to follow Flora. But Flora doesn’t know where we went. She’ll go back to the inn. There’s no reason why she wouldn’t. Schrae will let her. The goddess knows you want to go back there. She will be watching. If you ever come within a few le
agues of the village again, she’ll know, just as she knew which direction to send the spider today. Our only hope is to keep moving beyond the places she expects us to be. As long as we have yet to be caught, Schrae will have no reason to kill your mother. By keeping ourselves safe, we keep her safe.”
“You’re just saying that,” Azure protested.
“Let me put it to you this way—would you rather imagine your mother dead, or still alive and running the inn, holding out for a day when you can be reunited?”
“Alive,” she admitted.
“There you go.”
“But if I never see her again, it’s like she’s dead.”
“Not at all. There is a very big difference.” He stood. “But I understand how you feel. There is, in fact, one way you could see your mother again.”
“How?”
“Schrae must be destroyed. Completely and permanently.”
Grandpa would be proud of her, she thought. Because she was able to tell from the way Burnish said it he wasn’t joking and wasn’t playing a trick. He was saying it like he meant it.
“How?” Coil asked.
“I don’t know,” Burnish answered. “But at one time I wasn’t sure how to destroy that minion. I learned how. I got it done. Did I not?”
“Yes. You did,” Azure said.
“Killing the goddess will be much harder. But as long as we’re alive, we may find the way.”
Azure thought deeply about this as Burnish tended to his sword, retrieved his ropes, and checked the horses. She thought about it some more as Burnish set her and Coil back on Butter’s saddle, mounted Bread, and led them onward.
Maybe her mother was alive. Maybe she wasn’t. She would have to hope so.
She was certain of one thing. The goddess did need to die. And when it happened, she would be there to see it.
The Damsel in the Garden
by Pauline J. Alama
Some sisters save their brothers by making shirts for them. Others take a more active approach. Pauline J. Alama is the author of the epic fantasy THE EYE OF NIGHT (Bantam Spectra 2002). Her work has appeared in volumes 18, 23, 25, and 26 of SWORD AND SORCERESS, as well as in Realms of Fantasy, Abyss and Apex, Penumbra eZine, and a number of anthologies. She studied medieval literature and has a particular fondness for the Old French Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, which influenced this story.