Realms of infamy a-2

by Ed Greenwood

  “I know how you sent this note,” the mage produced a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and held it up before him, “to Lord Ferris, asking him to come up tonight to see you, and knowing that your ‘knights’ would waylay him.”

  “It’s not even my handwriting,” shouted Paramore. He shook violently, and the rattling blade tilted down toward his stony leg.

  Louder came the boot thuds on the door. The crackle of splintering wood grew. With a gesture, though, Dorsoom cast a blue glow about the door, magic that made it solid as steel.

  “And in that bag,” cawed the mage, knowing he now had all the time in heaven, “in the bag that late held the five heads of the five abductors lies the head of Jeremy-the head you carved out to form a puppet to appear at the foot of Petra’s bed!”

  The mage swooped down to the sack of heads, but his hand never clasped it. In that precise moment, the mighty sword Kneuma jiggled free and struck Paramore’s stony flesh, dispelling the enchantment on him. A mouse’s breath later, that same blade whistled from its scabbard to descend on the bended neck of the sorcerer.

  As the razor steel of Paramore sliced the head from the court magician, so too, it sundered the spell from the door. The guards who burst then into the room saw naught but a shower of blood, then the disjoined head propelled by its spray onto the bed and Dorsoom’s body falling in a heap across the red-stained sack, soaked anew.

  Seeing it all awrong, the guards rushed in to restrain Paramore. Whether from the late hour or the outrageous claims of the wizard or the threat of two warriors on one, Sir Paramore’s attempt to parry the blades of the guards resulted in the goring of one of them through the eye. The wounded man’s cowardly partner fell back and shouted an alarm at the head of the stair. Meantime Paramore, pitying the man whose bloodied socket his sword-tip was lodged in, drove the blade the rest of the way into the brain to grant the man his peace.

  An alarm went up throughout the castle: “Paramore the murderer! Stop him! Slay him!”

  Sir Paramore watched the other guard flee, then knelt beside the fallen body at his feet. A tear streaked down his noble cheek, and he stared with unseeing eyes upon the sanguine ruin of his life. Determined to remember the man who destroyed it all, he palmed the head of Dorsoom and thrust it angrily into his sack, where it made a clottering sound. Then he stood solemnly, breathed the blood-and sweat-salted air, and strode from the room, knowing that even if he escaped with his life, he would be unrighteously banished.

  And he was.

  “And that, dear friends,” rasped the robed stranger, his left hand stroking his black beard, “is the tragic tale of the greatest hero who ever lived.”

  The room, aside from the crackle of the hearth fire and the howl of the defiant wind, was dead silent. The people who had once scorned this broken hovel of a man now stared toward him with reverence and awe. It wasn’t his words. It wasn’t his story, but something more fundamental about him, more mystic and essential to his being. Magic. Those who once would have denied him a thimble of water would now happily feast him to the best of their farms, would gladly give their husbands and sons to him to be soldiers, their wives and daughters to him to be playthings. And this ensorcelled reverence was only heightened by his next words.

  “And that, dear friends, is the tragic tale of how came to be among you.” Even the wind and the fire stilled to hear what had to follow. “For, you see, am Sir Paramore.”

  With that, he threw back the yet-sodden rags that had draped him, and from the huge bundle that had been the body of the stranger emerged a young and elegant and powerful and platinum-eyed warrior. His face was very different from the wizened and sepulchral one that had spoken to them. The latter-the dismembered head of Dorsoom-was jammed down puppetlike past the wrist on the warrior’s right hand. The dead mouth of the dead wizard moved even now by the device of the warrior’s fingers, positioned on the bony palate and in the dry, rasping tongue. Throughout the night, throughout the long telling, the gathered villagers had all listened to the puppet head of a dead man.

  The old man’s voice now came from the young man’s mouth as his fingers moved the jaw and tongue. “Believe him, ye people! Here is the greatest hero who ever lived.” A brown-black ooze clung in dribbles to Paramore’s forearm.

  Only Horace, stumbling now into the taproom, was horrified by this; the depravity did not strike the others in the slightest. The simple folk of Capel Curig left their chairs and moved wonderingly up toward the towering knight and his grisly puppet. They crowded him just as the children had done in the story. Cries of “Teach us, 0 knight! Lead us, Paramore! Guard us and save us from our enemies!” mingled with groans and tongues too ecstatic for human words.

  In their center, the beaming sun of their adoration stretched out his bloodied hand and enwrapped them. “Of course I will save you. Only follow me and be my warriors, my knights!”

  “We would die for you!”

  “Let us die for you!”

  “Paramore! Paramore!”

  The praises rose up above the rumble of the wind and the growl of the fire, and the uplifted hands of the people could have thrust the roof entire from the inn had Paramore only commanded it.

  The adulation was so intense that none-not even the god-man Paramore himself-saw Horace’s flashing axe blade until it emerged red from the knight’s gurgling throat.

  Twilight

  Troy Denning

  The world was young.

  And on the shores of Cold Ocean sat the woman, and she had the size of a mountain and the shape as well. She had great hips as large as hillocks and she had a bosom of craggy buttresses. The woman had also a sharp chin and a crooked nose, and cheeks as flat as cliffs. She had eyes round and black, as are caves, and white billowing hair, like snow blowing off the lofty peaks.

  Ulutiu, the Ocean King, knew not the woman’s name, nor did he care, as long as she came often to dangle her feet in his sea. Then he liked to climb to her shoulders and come sliding back down, to twirl his sinuous body around her peaks, to slip down her stomach and glide along the cleft where her thighs pressed together, then to leap off her knees at journey’s end and splash back into the freezing waters. So much did the Ocean King like this game that he would climb onto the icy shore and do it again and again, doing it for days with no thought of hunger or fatigue or anything but joy, temporal and fleshly.

  And the woman, who was called Othea, also loved the game well. The feel of Ulutiu’s slick hide slithering over her skin she craved as her lungs craved air. She liked to brace her hands against the frozen ground, lean back, close her eyes, and think only of the icy pleasures ravaging her body. Deep into torpor would she fall. She would sink into a stupor as blissful as it was cold, and at last she would collapse in utter ecstasy. Then would her body quake, rocking lands far away, ripping green meadows asunder and shaking the snow from the mountains to crash down into the valleys with a fury as great as her rapture.

  All this Annam the All Father saw. Mighty was his wrath, and mightier still because it was his curse to hear their thoughts and feel their lust. He raised himself from the canyon where he had lain, and even the crashing flood waters when the river flowed again were not as fierce as his temper. The All Father spat out his disgust, and a storm of sleet raged across the gray waters of Cold Ocean.

  Annam strode forward. So heavy were his steps that the creatures of the air forsook their nests and flew, geese and harpies together, eagles beside dragons; so many were there that they darkened the sky with their wings. The beasts of the land also fled, hooves and claws tearing the plants from the meadows, and also the monsters of the sea, their fins and flukes churning the ocean into a cold froth.

  Then did Ulutiu know he had transgressed against a high god. He peered over Othea’s knee, and his whiskers twitched and his ears lay against his head.

  “Othea!” Annam’s voice howled across the shore like the blustering wind, and truly there had never been a tempest so terrible. “Have I not spoken aga
inst your dalliances?”

  Ulutiu’s dark eyes grew wide with terror, and he disappeared behind Othea’s bulk. Annam heard a splash in Cold Ocean and was not pleased. He rushed to the sea in two quick bounds and there he knelt, and when he spied a dark figure slipping from shore he stretched out his long arm and scooped the Ocean King from the icy waters.

  “Annam, harm him not!” Othea’s voice rolled across the icy shore as the rumble of a fuming mountain, and it was plain that she spoke in command, not supplication. “Ulutiu bears no blame in this. He was playing, nothing more.”

  “I know well enough what his games beget!” The All Father rose to his exalted height and faced Othea, and the cold water that dripped from his hand fell over the land like rain. “Firbolgs, verbeegs, fomorians, ettins!”

  “Nay, not the ettin,” Othea corrected, and when she spoke she showed Annam no fear. “That one you sired.”

  “Perhaps, but that is not the matter here.”

  Surely, it would have pleased Annam to deny the ettin’s paternity, but the All Father knew he had sired the monster, and Othea would not say it had been someone else. That she denied him even this boon made his anger greater, and he thought that her punishment would be very hard indeed.

  Othea paid no heed to Annam’s ire, for she was not happy to have her game interrupted. “What is the matter, Husband?”

  “I took you as Mother Queen of the giants,” Annam answered. “You are to people Toril with my progeny-true giants-not with Ulutiu’s bastard races!”

  “Toril is as empty as it is young,” Othea responded. “There is room enough for giant-kin.”

  “Did you not claim the same defense after your dance with rat-faced Vaprak?” Annam demanded. “And now ogres overrun Ostoria. Everywhere, they plague the empire of my children, gnawing at its seams like vermin.”

  “Perhaps your children are weak and Vaprak’s are strong.”

  “I should have drowned the ogre when first you bore it!” Annam stormed, and a blizzard swept across the shore on roaring winds. “I should have crushed Vaprak’s skull for daring to cuckold me. I shall not make the mistake twice.”

  The All Father made tight his grip. Though the shriek that rose from the Ocean King’s throat was long and loud, it was a mere gust against the tempest of Annam’s anger. Ulutiu saw he would soon die, so he pulled with hands that were like flippers and he kicked with feet that were like flukes. But Annam was the strongest of the strong, and nothing could escape his grip.

  “Do not!” Othea’s tone remained sharp.

  Annam was not pleased. “This shall be a lesson to you.”

  The All Father bore down, and bones snapped and organs burst. Ulutiu wailed, and a tremendous swell rose far out in Cold Ocean. It came rolling to shore with a terrible speed and crashed against Annam’s looming figure, breaking over his head and tearing at the Ocean King’s body.

  Even the sea could not defy Annam. He stood against the torrent as steady as the pillars of his palace, and when the receding waters no longer swirled about his waist, the All Father held Ulutiu. The Ocean King was limp and silent, but still his heart beat. Weak and erratic it beat, and Annam thought his punishment had been just.

  “As with Ulutiu, so it shall be with all your lovers,” Annam proclaimed. The All Father turned and whipped his arm toward the center of Cold Ocean, and Ulutiu’s body raced through the sky as a shooting star. “I will have no more bastard races loose in the empire of my children!”

  Othea watched a long time, until Ulutiu faded to a fleck of darkness in the sky. She watched until that speck arced downward, and still she watched as it splashed among the icebergs at Cold Ocean’s distant heart. Then she looked at Annam, and the tears in her eyes were as large as ponds.

  “There shall be no more giant-kin,” Othea promised.

  “That is good.” Annam smiled, to make plain she had pleased him. “For I will not tolerate them.”

  Othea smiled not. Verily, she twisted her mouth into a sneer, and the sneer was more angry than a fiend’s snarl. “Neither shall there be more true giants.”

  “What?” Annam demanded, and he was not happy.

  “I will bear no more races for you,” Othea said again. In her eyes shone a black gleam of anger, and it was a fury so cold that her tears turned to ice and tumbled down her face like an avalanche. “I love Ulutiu’s children more than I love yours, and so I have done with you.”

  “I am the All Father!” Annam’s voice tore at Othea’s face as a fierce wind tears at a mountainside. “You cannot refuse me!”

  “Why can I not?” Othea demanded. “Will you punish me as you punished Ulutiu? I welcome it!”

  So mighty was Annam’s fury that he could but roar, and the winds howled as they had never howled before, on their breath bearing shards of ice that scoured the plants from the soil and the soil from the stone. From his belt the All Father took the great axe Sky Cleaver and raised it to strike.

  His rage did not frighten Othea, for she had spoken in truth and would gladly follow Ulutiu. When Annam saw this, the fury in his heart changed to shock. Sky Cleaver slipped from his hand, and the axe sailed far over the plains, until at last it came down on a mountain and split it asunder, and so Split Mountain was created.

  Annam did not see this, for his thoughts were as mad dragons, whirling about his head in a tumult more befitting a mortal than a deity. He was the All Father. It was his right to have Othea, and he could have her by force, if he wished. Yet Annam was no evil god, and it would not please him to loose the spawn of a wicked union on this young world. The ettin had been horrible enough. Anything worse would destroy the empire of his children and not strengthen it.

  But Annam could not yield to Othea. He had seen that Toril would be a world of many races, not just ogres and giant-kin, but of humans and dwarves and dark-loving beings even more horrible. The All Father saw that if his children were to fare well, they would need a wise and powerful king to lead their empire.

  So he spoke to Othea, saying, “You shall bear me one more giant, and he shall be the greatest of all, wise and strong and just, for he shall be king of giants.”

  “I have already borne you a titan,” Othea replied. “Let him be king of the giants.”

  “Nay!” Annam decreed, and his mighty voice rocked Othea on her heels. “The titan is keen and strong and forthright, but he is also proud and vain. The empire of my children must have a better king than that.”

  Annam took breath, drawing it not into his chest, but deeper into him, down into his loins, and there he held it.

  “Storm all you wish,” Othea said. “I will not yield.”

  The All Father exhaled. The wind that came from his mouth was not a tempest, but a divine zephyr, warm with the breath of spring and the promise of life, and Annam blew this breeze upon Othea, so that it passed over her body as chiffon passes over a bride’s head, and the Mother Queen trembled.

  No obsidian was ever as black as Othea’s face grew then. “What have you done, Annam?”

  The All Father smiled, for his trick had pleased him well. “Can you not feel the answer in your womb?” he asked, and in his eye he had the look of a wyvern. “I have got a king on you.”

  “A king that shall never be born!” A bottomless rift shot across the plain, for such was Othea’s anger. “I will hold him until the end of time!”

  “Ha! That you cannot do,” Annam said. “If you try, he shall grow within you until he splits your bulk asunder.”

  The Mother Queen gave thought to her husband’s words, and after a time she said, “Then will I spill him out early and summon Vaprak’s brood. They always have need of tender fodder!”

  Annam’s mouth fell open and out rushed the thunder and lightning. “He is your child too!” the All Father roared. “You would not feed him to ogres!”

  “Not if you have gone,” Othea said, and now a crooked smile was upon her craggy lips.

  “You offer a bargain?”

  “Leave Toril, and I w
ill hold the infant until he can fight his own way from my womb,” Othea said. “But if you return before he is born, then will I force him out, and then will Vaprak’s brood feast on your spawn.”

  So cold was her voice that the clouds froze in the sky, and they fell to ground to become the glaciers of the mountains.

  The All Father grinned. “Well do I like this game, for my seed is strong and will not long be denied,” he proclaimed. “I shall return when my king-child calls my name, and then shall I watch the empire of my children spread over Toril as wind speeds across the plains.”

  Annam waved an arm toward the heavens. From his hand spilled a rainbow of five colors; onto this rainbow he stepped, and climbed into the sky with strides as long as rivers.

  Othea watched him go, and when the blue firmament had swallowed him up, she looked toward the heart of Cold Ocean. Though the distance was immeasurably vast, she saw the terrible vengeance of her husband. There Ulutiu lay upon an iceberg all streaked with crimson, his body twisted as bodies cannot twist From his ears trickled dark blood and from his mouth bubbled red froth, and together they spilled into the gray waters of his sea.

  “I swear the voice of Annam’s child shall never sound outside my womb.” Though Othea but whispered, the waves caught her voice and carried it across the waters to the ears of the Ocean King. “I wish I could avenge you better, but the All Father is powerful and this little is all I can do.”

  Ulutiu raised his head and to his lips came a smile. Across the ice he dragged himself, to where Cold Ocean lapped at the brink of his death-raft, and into the crimson waters he plunged his arm. For a long time he remained there, motionless, until it seemed the life had passed from his body, and the Mother Queen wailed forth her grief. From her mouth spilled the Hundred-Day Night, and that is why winter and darkness are as brother and sister in the northlands.

  But Ulutiu had not yet passed from this world. The Ocean King rolled onto his back and pulled his hand from the cold waters, and on his fingertips hung five crystals of ice. They had the color of gems; they were emerald and sapphire, ruby, amber, and one as white as a diamond. The Ocean King plucked the crystals off his fingers and pressed them all to his collar, and there they hung as on a chain.