The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  The woman studied Justin, as if she were answering some private riddle of her own. “Courtesy,” she said simply. “Where is Black Tremptor’s true name hidden?”

  Justin was silent; I felt her thoughts flutter like a bird seeing a perch. The silence lengthened; an icy finger slid along my bones.

  “I do not know,” Justin said at last, and the woman answered, “The dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”

  Justin read my thoughts; her hand clamped on my wrist. “Don’t fight,” she breathed.

  “That’s not—”

  “The answer’s fair.”

  The woman’s brows knit thoughtfully. “Is there anything else you need to know?” She put her staff lightly on Justin’s shoulder, turned the jewel toward her pale face. The jewel burned a sudden flare of amethyst, as if in recognition. “My name is Sorcery and that is the path I follow. You will come with me for seven years. After that, you may choose to stay.”

  “Tell me,” I pleaded desperately, “how to rescue her. You have told me everything else.”

  The woman shook her head, smiling her brief moon-smile. Justin looked at me finally; I saw the answer in her eyes.

  I stood mute, watching her walk away from me, tears pushing into my eyes, unable to plead or curse because there had been a game within a game, and only I had lost. Justin glanced back at me once, but she did not really see me, she only saw the path she had walked toward all her life.

  I turned finally to face the dragon.

  I climbed the slope again alone. No jewels caught my eye, no voice whispered my name. Not even the dragon greeted me. As I wandered through columns and caverns and hallways of stone, I heard only the wind moaning through the great bones of the mountain. I went deeper into stone. The passageways glowed butterfly colors with secretions from the dragon’s body. Here and there I saw a scale flaked off by stone; some flickered blue-green black, others the colors of fire. Once I saw a chip of claw, hard as horn, longer than my hand. Sometimes I smelled sulfur, sometimes smoke, mostly wind smelling of the stone it scoured endlessly.

  I heard harping.

  I found the harper finally, sitting ankle deep in jewels and gold, in a shadowy cavern, plucking wearily at his harp with one hand. His other hand was cuffed and chained with gold to a golden rivet in the cavern wall. He stared, speechless, when he saw me. He was, as rumored, tall and golden-haired, also unwashed, unkempt, and sour from captivity. Even so, it was plain to see why Celandine wanted him back.

  “Who are you?” he breathed, as I trampled treasure to get to him.

  “I am Celandine’s cousin Anne. She sent her court to rescue you.”

  “It took you long enough,” he grumbled, and added, “You couldn’t have come this far alone.”

  “You did,” I said tersely, examining the chain that held him. Even Fleur would have had it out of the wall in a minute. “It’s gold, malleable. Why didn’t you—”

  “I tried,” he said, and showed me his torn hands. “It’s dragon magic.” He jerked the chain fretfully from my hold. “Don’t bother trying. The key’s over near that wall.” He looked behind me, bewilderedly, for my imaginary companions. “Are you alone? She didn’t send her knights to fight this monster?”

  “She didn’t trust them to remember who they were supposed to kill,” I said succinctly. He was silent while I crossed the room to rummage among pins and cups and necklaces for the key. I added, “I didn’t ride from Carnelaine alone. I lost four companions in this land as we tracked you.”

  “Lost?” For a moment, his voice held something besides his own misery. “Dead?”

  “I think not.”

  “How did you lose them?”

  “One was lost to the witch in the wood.”

  “Was she a witch?” he said, astonished. “I played for her, but she never offered me anything to eat, hungry as I was. I could smell food, but she only said that it was burned and unfit for company.”

  “And one,” I said, sifting through coins and wondering at the witch’s taste, “to the harper-king in the wood.”

  “You saw him?” he breathed. “I played all night, hoping to hear his fabled harping, but he never answered with a note.”

  “Maybe you never stopped to listen,” I said, in growing despair over the blind way he blundered through the land. “And one to the imps under the mountain.”

  “What imps?”

  “And last,” I said tightly, “in a riddle-game to the sorceress with the jeweled staff. You were to be the prize.”

  He shifted, chain and coins rattling. “She only told me where to find what I was searching for, she didn’t warn me of the dangers. She could have helped me! She never said she was a sorceress.”

  “Did she tell you her name?”

  “I don’t remember—what difference does it make? Hurry with the key before the dragon smells you here. It would have been so much easier for me if your companion had not lost the riddle-game.”

  I paused in my searching to gaze at him. “Yes,” I said finally, “and it would have been easier than that for all of us if you had never come here. Why did you?”

  He pointed. “I came for that.”

  “That” was a harp of bone. Its strings glistened with the same elusive, shimmering colors that stained the passageways. A golden key lay next to it. I am as musical as the next, no more, but when I saw those strange, glowing strings I was filled with wonder at what music they might make and I paused, before I touched the key, to pluck a note.

  It seemed the mountain hummed.

  “No!” the harper cried, heaving to his feet in a tide of gold. Wind sucked out of the cave, as at the draw of some gigantic wing. “You stupid, blundering—How do you think I got caught? Throw me the key! Quickly!”

  I weighed the key in my hand, prickling at his rudeness. But he was, after all, what I had promised Celandine to find and I imagined that washed and fed and in the queen’s hands, he would assert his charms again. I tossed the key; it fell a little short of his outstretched hand.

  “Fool!” he snapped. “You are as clumsy as the queen.”

  Stone-still, I stared at him, as he strained, groping for the key. I turned abruptly to the harp and ran my hand down all the strings.

  What traveled down the passages to find us shed smoke and fire and broken stone behind it. The harper groaned and hid behind his arms. Smoke cleared; great eyes like moons of fire gazed at us near the high ceiling. A single claw as long as my shin dropped within an inch of my foot. Courtesy, I thought frantically. Courtesy, she said. It was like offering idle chatter to the sun.

  Before I could speak, the harper cried, “She played it? She came in here searching for it, too, though I tried to stop her—”

  Heat whuffed at me; I felt the gold I wore burn my neck. I said, feeling scorched within as well, “I ask your pardon if I have offended you. I came, at my queen’s request, to rescue her harper. It seems you do not care for harping. If it pleases you, I will take what must be an annoyance out of your house.” I paused. The great eyes sank a little toward me. I added, for such things seemed important in this land, “My name is Anne.”

  “Anne,” the smoke whispered. I heard the harper jerk his chain. The claw retreated slightly; the immense flat lizard’s head lowered, its fiery scales charred dark with smoke, tiny sparks of fire winking between its teeth. “What is his name?”

  “Kestral,” the harper said quickly. “Kestral Hunt.”

  “You are right,” the hot breath sighed. “He is an annoyance. Are you sure you want him back?”

  “No,” I said, my eyes blurring in wonder and relief that I had finally found, in this dangerous land, something I did not need to fear. “He is extremely rude, ungrateful, and insensitive. I imagine that my queen loves him for his hair or for his harper’s hands; she must not listen to him speak. So I had better take him. I am
sorry that he snuck into your house and tried to steal from you.”

  “It is a harp made of dragon bone and sinew,” the dragon said. “It is why I dislike harpers, who make such things and then sing songs of their great cleverness. As this one would have.” Its jaws yawned; a tongue of fire shot out, melted gold beside the harper’s hand. He scuttled against the wall.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. A dark curved dragon’s smile hung in the fading smoke; it snorted heat.

  “Perhaps I will keep you and make a harp of your bones.”

  “It would be miserably out of tune,” I commented. “Is there something I can do for you in exchange for the harper’s freedom?”

  An eye dropped close, moon-round, shadows of color constantly disappearing through it. “Tell me my name,” the dragon whispered. Slowly I realized it was not a challenge but a plea. “A woman took my name from me long ago, in a riddle-game. I have been trying to remember it for years.”

  “Yrecros?” I breathed. So did the dragon, nearly singeing my hair.

  “You know her.”

  “She took something from me: my dearest friend. Of you she said: the dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Walking paths of sorcery in this land.”

  Claws flexed across the stones, smooth and beetle-black. “I used to know a little sorcery. Enough to walk as man. Will you help me find my name?”

  “Will you help me find my friends?” I pleaded in return. “I lost four, searching for this unbearable harper. One or two may not want my help, but I will never know until I see them.”

  “Let me think…” the dragon said. Smoke billowed around me suddenly, acrid, ash-white. I swallowed smoke, coughed it out. When my stinging eyes could see again, a gold-haired harper stood in front of me. He had the dragon’s eyes.

  I drew in smoke again, astonished. Through my noise, I could hear Kestral behind me, tugging at his chain and shouting.

  “What of me?” he cried furiously. “You were sent to rescue me! What will you tell Celandine? That you found her harper and brought the dragon home instead?” His own face gazed back at him, drained the voice out of him a moment. He tugged at the chain frantically, desperately. “You cannot harp! She’d know you false by that, and by your ancient eyes.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, charmed by his suggestion, “she will not care.”

  “Her knights will find me. You said they seek to kill me! You will murder me.”

  “Those that want you dead will likely follow me,” I said wearily, “for the gold-haired harper who rides with me. It is for the dragon to free you, not me. If he chooses to, you will have to find your own way back to Celandine, or else promise not to speak except to sing.”

  I turned away from him. The dragon-harper picked up his harp of bone. He said in his husky, smoky voice, “I keep my bargains. The key to your freedom lies in a song.”

  We left the harper chained to his harping, listening puzzledly with his deaf ear and untuned brain, for the one song, of all he had ever played and never heard, that would bring him back to Celandine. Outside, in the light, I led dragon-fire to the stone that had swallowed Danica, and began my backwards journey toward Yrecros.

  Sir Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was an English writer best known for his bestselling Discworld series of novels (the first of which, The Colour of Magic, appeared in 1983) and Good Omens (1990), a collaboration with Neil Gaiman and now a popular TV series. Pratchett’s first novel, The Carpet People, was a fantasy published in 1971, which he revised for a new edition in 1992. Until 1987, when he became a full-time writer, Pratchett worked first as a journalist and then as a press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board. The Discworld series eventually numbered forty-one books, telling comic tales of a flat world balanced on the back of elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle, a world where the borders between realities are often thin and porous. Pratchett received a knighthood in 2009 for “services to literature,” later saying in an interview, “I suspect the ‘services to literature’ consisted of refraining from trying to write any. Still, I can’t help feeling mightily chuffed about it.” He was awarded ten honorary doctorate degrees, a British Fantasy Award, a Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and the Lifetime Achievement World Fantasy Award. “Troll Bridge,” a Discworld story (recently adapted into a short film), first appeared in the anthology After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien (1992) and was included in Pratchett’s A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction (2012).

  TROLL BRIDGE

  Terry Pratchett

  THE AIR BLEW OFF the mountains, filling the air with fine ice crystals.

  It was too cold to snow. In weather like this wolves came down into villages, trees in the heart of the forest exploded when they froze.

  In weather like this right-thinking people were indoors, in front of the fire, telling stories about heroes.

  It was an old horse. It was an old rider. The horse looked like a shrink-wrapped toast rack; the man looked as though the only reason he wasn’t falling off was because he couldn’t muster the energy. Despite the bitterly cold wind, he was wearing nothing but a tiny leather kilt and a dirty bandage on one knee.

  He took the soggy remnant of a cigarette out of his mouth and stubbed it out on his hand.

  “Right,” he said, “let’s do it.”

  “That’s all very well for you to say,” said the horse. “But what if you have one of your dizzy spells? And your back is playing up. How shall I feel, being eaten because your back’s played you up at the wrong moment?”

  “It’ll never happen,” said the man. He lowered himself on to the chilly stones, and blew on his fingers. Then, from the horse’s pack, he took a sword with an edge like a badly maintained saw and gave a few halfhearted thrusts at the air.

  “Still got the old knackcaroony,” he said. He winced, and leaned against a tree.

  “I’ll swear this bloody sword gets heavier every day.”

  “You ought to pack it in, you know,” said the horse. “Call it a day. This sort of thing at your time of life. It’s not right.”

  The man rolled his eyes.

  “Blast that damn distress auction. This is what comes of buying something that belonged to a wizard,” he said, to the cold world in general. “I looked at your teeth, I looked at your hooves, it never occurred to me to listen.”

  “Who did you think was bidding against you?” said the horse.

  Cohen the Barbarian stayed leaning against the tree. He was not sure that he could pull himself upright again.

  “You must have plenty of treasure stashed away,” said the horse. “We could go Rimwards. How about it? Nice and warm. Get a nice warm place by a beach somewhere, what do you say?”

  “No treasure,” said Cohen. “Spent it all. Drank it all. Gave it all away. Lost it.”

  “You should have saved some for your old age.”

  “Never thought I’d have an old age.”

  “One day you’re going to die,” said the horse. “It might be today.”

  “I know. Why do you think I’ve come here?”

  The horse turned and looked down towards the gorge. The road here was pitted and cracked. Young trees were pushing up between the stones. The forest crowded in on either side. In a few years, no one would know there’d even been a road here. By the look of it, no one knew now.

  “You’ve come here to die?”

  “No. But there’s something I’ve always been meaning to do. Ever since I was a lad.”

  “Yeah?”

  Cohen tried easing himself upright again. Tendons twanged their red-hot messages down his legs.

  “My dad,” he squeaked. He got control again. “My dad,” he said, “said to me—” He fought for breath.

  “Son,” said the horse, helpfully
.

  “What?”

  “Son,” said the horse. “No father ever calls his boy ‘son’ unless he’s about to impart wisdom. Well-known fact.”

  “It’s my reminiscence.”

  “Sorry.”

  “He said…Son…yes, OK…Son, when you can face down a troll in single combat, then you can do anything.”

  The horse blinked at him. Then it turned and looked down, again, through the tree-jostled road to the gloom of the gorge. There was a stone bridge down there.

  A horrible feeling stole over it.

  Its hooves jiggled nervously on the ruined road.

  “Rimwards,” it said. “Nice and warm.”

  “No.”

  “What’s the good of killing a troll? What’ve you got when you’ve killed a troll?”

  “A dead troll. That’s the point. Anyway, I don’t have to kill it. Just defeat it. One on one. Mano a…troll. And if I didn’t try my father would turn in his mound.”

  “You told me he drove you out of the tribe when you were eleven.”

  “Best day’s work he ever did. Taught me to stand on other people’s feet. Come over here, will you?”

  The horse sidled over. Cohen got a grip on the saddle and heaved himself fully upright.

  “And you’re going to fight a troll today,” said the horse.

  Cohen fumbled in the saddlebag and pulled out his tobacco pouch. The wind whipped at the shreds as he rolled another skinny cigarette in the cup of his hands.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “And you’ve come all the way out here to do it.”

  “Got to,” said Cohen. “When did you last see a bridge with a troll under it? There were hundreds of ’em when I was a lad. Now there’s more trolls in the cities than there are in the mountains. Fat as butter, most of ’em. What did we fight all those wars for? Now…cross that bridge.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a lonely bridge across a shallow, white, and treacherous river in a deep valley. The sort of place where you got—