Sword and Sorceress 28

by Unknown

  Anticipation woke me well before dawn. I broke my fast, drank from my small supply of water, scrubbed my teeth with a frayed stick, and returned to the chase. The morning air was clear, still cool from the night. Once, a long time ago, I would have said this was a wonderful day to be alive, with the sun bright on the leaves and the scent of wild herbs on the breeze. I wished Joram might have lived to enjoy it with me, and I supposed he was, in the sense I carried him with me.

  Once my muscles were warm, I picked up my pace, running when the trail permitted it. It wound along the contours of the hillside, so that often what lay ahead was hidden until the last moment. Around one such twist in the trail, I came upon the remains of a campsite. Here the cart had been placed between two arms of rock. Here, the campfire. Here, the picketed ponies. From one end of the site to the other, I marked the traces of a struggle. I touched my fingertips to the darkened splotches in the earth, knowing before I smelled the reside that it was blood, and not old blood, either. Four men had died here, the three traders and one more. They’d been laid out on the dirt and then dragged to a grassy slope, where a shallow pit marked their common grave. The earth was still moist under a thin crust.

  How could Rayzel have done this? I demanded of the empty sky. Then I remembered, Of course. She is not a mortal woman, with a heart to care for travelers. She is a dragon, the Dragon of Sharaya.

  The cart was missing, as were the ponies, and I assumed she had taken them as booty, along with the trade goods. Why not? Ever since I’d known of her, she’d taken whatever she wanted: lands, flocks, men’s lives. To my surprise, she was not alone. The woman from the couple traveled with her, and clearly this woman did not stumble or lag as a captive would. That she went freely startled me. Even more surprising was the evidence that these two had sat together, as close as comrades, as trail-sisters. This was not the behavior of a victor and her spoils.

  For the first time in my long quest, I felt a tremor of doubt. I had thought the powers of this Pearl were of the body only. I had not dreamt that it might also enslave the mind. How could I fight such evil? I could not slit its throat in the night. Not only might I fail, I might become subject to what I most hated.

  On the other hand, what was there for me, besides this chase? Who would I be if I turned back now? The last, defeated heir to once-great Eaglehurst? A traitor to my brother’s memory, and now to my very self?

  Slowly I wrestled my way back to an approximation of courage. I hadn't imagined the end of my long search would be easy. I admitted to myself that I’d had no thought of what would become of me once I confronted the Dragon of Sharaya. Perhaps that meant I would not survive, that I intended to finish her at the cost of my own paltry life. That must be why I had carried Joram’s ghost, his very appearance, all these years—because I myself had no separate existence.

  ~o0o~

  The trail crested the hills and then dipped into the valley beyond. I had no knowledge of these lands, but I could feel the vitality rising from the meadows. Birds nested in the surrounding groves, and rabbits darted away at my approach. Two heavily-pregnant does looked up from their browsing before bounding into the shadowed forest. Occasionally I glimpsed rolling pastures below and once, distantly, a herd of red-brown cattle.

  Because I kept to a more rapid pace than my quarry and because the two women had lingered at the first campsite for the better part of a day, I gained on them rapidly. Now a new worry came to me, that they might reach a town or other settlement before I caught up with them, a place where they might gain allies. The last thing I wanted when I stood before Rayzel and demanded her life in payment for her crimes was an audience. So I hurried throughout that afternoon, sometimes scrambling down slopes and over rocks, risking injury and pushing myself for more speed.

  My efforts paid off, for as twilight drew close, I saw that they had set up camp in a little grove that bordered the pastureland. I didn’t know the type of tree, short and spreading, leaves massing dark in the gathering night, but suspected there was a water source there as well. I made out the cart, the women tending to the ponies, and then the flare and warm orange light of a fire.

  In the forests of Eaglehurst, I had learned to move like a whisper through the underbrush, so softly that not even a hunting owl marked my passage. Now I drew my stealth around me like a cloak. I became a shadow against shadow, a flicker in the gloaming. I had no reason to think the two suspected my presence, but with a little care and skill, I would make sure that did not happen.

  I breathed so softly and stepped so silently that I heard their voices long before I got an unobstructed view of their camp. Two women, of course. Of that I had already been certain. But as I paused to listen, I heard something that I did not expect.

  One of them was weeping, long shuddering sobs that surely arose from the very pit of despair, that place bereft of hope, of thought, of words. That in itself was not surprising, for who would not weep in the company of the Dragon of Sharaya?

  No, what brought me up short were the soft murmurs of the other woman, the gentle phrases, the tone of voice that rose and fell as a mother might sing to a fretful child.

  Rayzel, the Dragon of Sharaya, was comforting the other woman.

  How could this be? Had the world so disarranged itself, that the sky and earth had lost all reason?

  Heart yammering in my ears, I stumbled forward. Only by long habit and fortune did I keep hold of my dagger. A moment later, I was glad I hadn’t dropped it. The Dragon lived by her own law, but she was not beyond mine.

  Only a thin screen of lacy branches stood between me and the campsite, a veil scarcely worth the effort of brushing it aside. In the light of the fire and what remained in the western sky, I could see the women clearly. I had not erred, for there was Rayzel, wearing the trail-worn garb of a sword-soldier. There was no mistaking that strong build, that hair, that line of brow and cheek. The other woman, the one curled into a ball, half on Rayzel’s lap, wrapped in Rayzel’s arms, she must be the one from Raë. Her body shuddered with the force of her sobs, and Rayzel rocked her, held her tight.

  “Hush now,” Rayzel said softly. “You did not kill those men of your own choice, but that is over now...”

  “...never be free of it...”

  “You must go on. That’s what your lover would have wanted for you, is it not? Would he not forgive you for what was not your fault?”

  The light shifted on Rayzel’s body and I saw it then, hanging from a chain around her neck.

  The Pearl.

  The thing that had made her invincible, that had brought about the destruction of everything I loved—my home, my own hopes, my brother’s life.

  Before I had made a conscious choice, I darted into the camp. Rayzel was vulnerable at this moment, her arms encumbered by the other woman. Even with magically-enhanced reflexes, it would take her a moment to get to her feet and draw her sword.

  She noticed me, her head coming up. Her gaze met mine. I moved to close the distance, but she didn’t shove the other woman aside. It was as if she had no care to defend herself. Something in her posture, a stillness that bordered on surrender, made me pause when nothing else would have. I stood for an instant, dagger clenched low beside my knee where it could not be easily spotted, muscles primed for a lunge and a quick upward strike.

  Now the other woman reacted, pulling away from Rayzel with a whimper. She scuttled away from the fire to hide herself in the shadows. It was just the two of us, the Dragon of Sharaya and me. I tightened my grip on the dagger, drew a breath like fire into my lungs, and—

  —and before I could take that next step, the step that would commit me to the attack, her expression changed. The hardness fell away, and I looked into the face of a young girl, the girl she had once been, not beautiful, but radiant and open of heart. Even as my brother had been. Even as I had been.

  “Joram?”

  The astonishment in her voice held me fast, and I realized then that my brother and I had so resembled one another, and
I had so assiduously taken on his manner and appearance, that she saw him instead of me. Yet I heard not a trace of fear in her cry, as would arise from confronting the ghost of a man she had slain. No, what I heard so clearly was wonder, wonder and joy. I might have brought her death—that was yet to be decided—but I had also brought her the thing her heart desired more than any other—to see her beloved one last time.

  For there was not the slightest doubt in my mind that she had known Joram and had loved him with the fervent innocence of first love. No matter what came afterwards, he had left an indelible imprint on her heart.

  Rayzel blinked, and the young girl she had been faded into the battle-hardened woman. She made no effort to rise, as if granting me leave to do what I would. Try as I might, however, I could find no trace of the implacable Dragon, the one who had brought about the destruction of Eaglehurst. I discerned endurance and sorrows as deep as my own, and I also saw compassion.

  “You are not Joram,” she said, and it seemed to me that she would a thousand times have preferred to meet his ghost, vengeful or not, than any living person.

  I straightened slightly. “His sister.”

  “Sister? I did not know he had a sister. Might I know your name?”

  I told her, although I had not spoken it for so long, my tongue did not recognize it.

  She hesitated, which surprised me even more deeply. “I suppose you have come to avenge him. And that you will not believe me if I say that I would give anything to exchange places with him.”

  “Fine words.”

  She smiled a little, but sadly, and shifted so that she knelt before me. Her hands were empty. If she had a weapon about her, she made no attempt to draw it. Moving slowly, she slipped the chain over her head and let the Pearl fall to the earth. It glowed as if it bore a living ember at its heart, but the light was uneasy, as if a subtle intelligence, a hunger, burned there also.

  What had she said to the other woman? Not your choice, not your fault...

  “Now I am as mortal as you,” she said. “My life is yours to take, as recompense for what you have lost. I ask only one thing—that you bury the Pearl with me. That you make no claim on it for yourself. I have done enough harm to your family. I would not have you carry the curse as well.”

  What kind of trick is this? I wondered, and realized there was no deception in her voice, no falsehood. What would it cost me to grant her this one thing? I wanted justice for my brother, for Eaglehurst and its people. For all my life as a bandit and thief, I had no interest in turning into the one who had brought so much harm to so many.

  When I agreed, she smiled again, like the sun emerging from behind a cloud. “You are indeed Joram’s sister, to have such kindness in you.”

  If I had had any doubt that she had known him, known the heart and core of who he’d been, it vanished. “How could you do it—how could you,” the words stumbled over one another, “knowing him?”

  In answer, she looked down at the smoldering red light of the Pearl. If everything I had learned was true, the gem had made her invincible, immortal. I had not imagined what else it might have brought—or driven—her to become. I could almost hear her wish that Sharaya and not Eaglehurst had burned, that she had led an ordinary woman’s life, that her own death at my hands might in the smallest way compensate for all the grief she’d caused.

  My legs threatened to give way beneath me. I understood then that she had not killed Joram and all the others. This thing had. Now it was about to take her life as well, using me as its instrument.

  I let my dagger fall. The blade landed on the links of the chain with a hollow, clashing sound. The camp was empty except for the two of us. The Raë woman had fled.

  I lowered myself beside Rayzel. I had thought that getting close enough to slip my blade between her ribs would be the hardest part. I’d had no idea, no idea at all, what she’d endured all these years.

  “If I bury that,” I said, pointing, “it might not stay buried.” Someone might dig it up. I’d heard enough tales about cursed objects to know they had ways of becoming found. I didn’t think it was possible to destroy this one, or Rayzel would long since have done it.

  She nodded in a friendly way, as if in that moment we had shifted from being bitter enemies to allies. “I thought to carry it, in time to...to tame it.”

  “How can you tame something like that?”

  “Not with sword or whip,” she replied, and again I heard such sadness in her voice, my own throat threatened to close up. She looked at me again, and her eyes were bright. “With memories. With tears.”

  Tears for Joram? Tears for the loss of her home, her own kin? Tears for the sweet young girl she had once been?

  Tears for me?

  I had seen that she’d loved him. What I had not realized until that moment was that he had loved her. But he hadn’t been able to save her.

  I could...if I would.

  And if I chose not to, if I turned my back on the girl my brother had loved, who then would be the victor?

  Not Eaglehurst, in ashes.

  Not Joram.

  Not me.

  The Pearl would win, and its hunger would claim even more lives.

  Together, Rayzel and Joram had found a moment of joy. I could either snuff out its very memory or I could set it free.

  I picked up the Pearl, handling it by the chain only, and let the gem come to rest on her opened hand. There it pulsed once, twice, as if it had a heart of its own. A hungering heart. A dragon heart.

  With both hands, I closed Rayzel’s fingers around the Pearl. “Then I will help you tame the Pearl.”

  She drew back in surprise. Clearly, she’d expected death, a slow one of revenge or a quick one of mercy. “Why would you offer such a thing?”

  “Because,” I said, leaning forward to kiss her as a sister, “surely we have enough tears between us.”

  “Enough tears, yes,” she repeated, and kissed me in turn. “Enough tears to quench even a Pearl of Fire.”

  What’s in a Name?

  by Katharina Schuschke

  Katharina has a knack for short and funny stories. Her story “Summer Flu” was the ending story in SWORD AND SORCERESS 26, and I’m delighted to have this one to end SWORD AND SORCERESS 28. It still makes me laugh despite the number of times I’ve read it.

  Katharina is 47 years old and still enjoys working as a computer consultant—thanks to the fascinating people she meets that way. She has yet not succumbed to the “obligatory cat” and has no pets apart from the spiders in the garden. Those who are interested can find more about her at marzipanmuffin.livejournal.com.

  She would like to dedicate this story to Cyrano, “who's got a strange sense of humor (and who told me he liked my story).”

  ~o0o~

  “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

  By any other name would smell as sweet.”

  (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

  Sure, but would a “bouquet of borckls” be quite as romantic?

  ~o0o~

  I’m an editor—I know about the power of names. Name the heroine or hero wrong and the best plot just falls flat on its face—tragedy turning into farce.

  Yes, I’m the infamous editor responsible for the last-minute corrections to the urban fantasy Blood Rose. When Henrietta wrote that book, a dastardly godling had sunk its hooks quite deeply into her. The creature wanted its name spread and known. For to be believed in would give it its first foothold for gaining a power base.

  Henrietta, being her inimitable self, wrote some kick-ass dialogue even when in the grip of despair. So, Blood Rose is a dark and stark fantasy—but even so, her odd sense of humor lurks through. I didn’t notice anything amiss, and the godling might have gotten away with its plot.

  But the thing was too greedy and wanted to feed off Henrietta. It forced her to attempt suicide and was ready to feed on her life energy and last-minute remorse. Henrietta fought it—in the end successfully—and managed to call me. I got
an ambulance to her in time and, when I went through her desk for info on her insurance, I found some pretty disquieting personal notes about what had been happening.

  My first thought was to stop publication of Blood Rose. But then I had my moment of mad inspiration, which is why Blood Rose was published—with one minor last-second editorial change: the name of the godling.

  I wiped all copies of the original manuscript. I’ve got friends in low places (aka tech support), so even backups got cleaned up.

  The book went into print. Critics laughed their heads off, having a field day making fun of the book—and incidentally making enough people curious that the book became a quite satisfying success—isn’t it fun when even literary critics turn out to be useful?

  Thousands of readers laughed—and one obnoxious godling of despair disappeared. There’s still despair in the world. But it’s our own, it can be fought. No godling gets fat on it.

  And the moral of the story is… name the evil godling in an urban fantasy wrong in just the right way and you’ll not only have surprising success, you’ll also get rid of the damned thing through ridicule.

  So, if you feel a bout of despair coming on—think of “Mupfi, God of Despair.” Have a good laugh!

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2013 by The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust

  Cover Design Copyright © 2013 by Dave Smeds

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Painting:

  “Femme Circassienne Voilée” by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1876

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.