The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  The roar was like the sound track of a freight train, enormously magnified and in the tempo of a slow-motion film. Instead of ducking for the shelter of the buttress, I yelled, and ran toward Wayland, as though I had to risk doing what I was sure he would not do. Stumbling over a fragment however sent me sprawling.

  “Stay away!” he shouted. “I’ll wake him!”

  He raced for the lodge. I had landed afoul of an outcropping of rock. Numbed for a moment, I had difficulty in getting up, and when I did regain my feet, I could do little more than grit my teeth and hobble.

  Wayland pivoted, wove, evaded a boulder which bounced and went crashing into the ravine. He became a barely visible blur in the mists. Dark against the darkness of the cabin, he vanished entirely from sight. He shouted again. For all his heart-breaking effort, he could not have made himself heard.

  I yelled till my throat cracked. I took a few steps forward, then stopped. Wayland could not make it. I was sure he had been knocked down. Then I got a glimpse of him; his motion revealed him. He reached the door.

  A lag in the ever-deepening rumble allowed me to hear even the rattle of the latch, and his cry, “Ron, get out!”

  A late poker game, and a comfortable amount of Bourbon; no wonder Benson and his friends had not turned out already. Wayland was kicking, beating at the door. I began backing away from my relatively safe spot. Instinct drove me, though every moment made me feel as if I myself were in the lodge, and as good as doomed, and paralyzed by the knowledge that there was no escape for me.

  Lights blazed from the windows.

  The seconds dragged eternally.

  A long path of light reached out as the door opened. Two figures were outlined by the glow. One was a woman. I caught only the momentary twinkle of white arms, the glint of silk, the gleam of hair—

  The light winked out, and the meadow quivered. I could barely distinguish the crash and splintering of the sturdy lodge as it was engulfed by the dark flood and ground to bits by the boulders which were part of the flow.

  The edge of the slide moved slowly now, as the pressure behind it subsided. The further lodge still stood, untouched. Benson’s had blended into the black mass which stopped a few yards short of the ravine’s lip.

  Neither Wayland nor Benson nor that woman, whoever she may have been, could possibly have survived. If by some miracle any shred of life remained in any of them, it would be no blessing either to that survivor, or to anyone who had to see what remained. Nevertheless, I hobbled forward.

  I had to listen, if only to make sure there was no sheltered pocket from which came a cry for help.

  Several trees had survived the dwindling fury of the rush. Timber, squared timber projected from the slide. I skirted the end, as though the further, the darker side would offer a more promising front. There was now no sound except that of the wind and the stream. Both seemed far away and feeble.

  Then, beyond any doubt, there were human voices.

  “…so help me, Dick, I never saw anyone look as downright foolish as you did when a woman turned out instead of Dave and Fred—and then you couldn’t believe it was Diane!”

  That was all I could grapple with for a moment. That any one, much less all three, could have escaped was too much to be grasped at once; so that while both Wayland and Diane spoke, I could not get what they were saying. The voices seemed far off. My thought was, “I am rather far off myself.” Reaction was more of a shock than was having witnessed the actual destruction.

  Benson spoke again; “You took the craziest chance, Dick. I’d never have had the nerve. You know—well—everything looks different—I’ve been stubborn about you two—three is a crowd…”

  There was a murmuring and a rumbling in my head, as though that devil’s drum had begun to sound. I hobbled along the edge of the debris until once more I tuned in on speech. Diane was saying, and with wonder and new life in her voice, “Ron, do you really mean it? It’s really the way you want things now?”

  “…No, not trading, not paying, it’s just that things look different…”

  All I saw was three wavering spindles of mist, so much like all the other grayness that I could not have distinguished them had they not been luminous in the manner of phosphorescent flecks in tropical waters, though by no means as bright. There were three vague spindles, and no more speech at all.

  After blending into and with each other, they became distinct again, and separate. And by now I understood that I had not actually heard any speech at all; I had perceived thought so strong and vital that it had seemed that there had been spoken words.

  Two of the shapes moved closer together, and somewhat apart from the other; and then they, as well as the one from which they had separated, thinned into morning mist.

  By the time the debris was cleared away, I had learned that since the Sims brothers had at the last minute been unable to join Benson, Diane had changed her plans and had gone with him; wherefore he and she and Wayland had met for the last time under the shadow of Saturn.

  During his final few moments, Wayland had risen from among scorpions to become a Phoenix, winning liberation for him and for Diane, and for Benson as well. And it was not until later, when I burned the devil’s drum, that it came to me that Benson had also risen above himself, earning his freedom.

  DRAGON’S DAUGHTER

  Originally published in Witchcraft & Sorcery #6, May 1971.

  CHAPTER 1

  The singsong girl’s fingers danced and rippled. Her left hand crept along the neck of the lute, advancing, retreating. The strings laughed and sang; they wailed, and sighed, and murmured. As Li Fong savored her loveliness, he recalled what a poet had said, a thousand years ago, about the girl next door…too tall, if an inch were added to her height…too short, if half that much were taken away…another puff of powder and she’d be too pale…another touch of rouge would be too much…

  Stilling the voice of the lute, she handed it to him. Its four strings were stretched over ivory frets. The body, shaped like a pear split lengthwise, was of teak. The sounding board was of wutun wood, all inlaid with mother of pearl.

  “Tajen, you play?”

  As he plucked the strings, Li Fong recited lines snatched at random from Po Chu Yi’s poem in honor of the lute:

  “Loud as the crash of pelting rain

  Soft as the murmur of whispered words

  Frail as the patter of pearls

  Poured on a plate of jade…”

  Li Fong gestured. Before he could fairly say, “Another cup!” she was pouring from the bronze jug. And he said, “You sang of the Uttermost West, of the Mountain of the Gods, and the Dragon Lords. Sing more! Tell more!” So the evening carried on, as such evenings will. Nothing was over looked. Not even that hour of whispered planning, after his promise to buy up her contract and take her home to be his concubine.

  Nothing for Li Fong to do but pass the examinations, and be appointed to a post in the Imperial Civil Service. And of course, give presents to various eunuchs and other important persons at the court of the Son of Heaven.

  Another jug of wine would not cut too deeply into the gold reserved for such gifts, nor into the silver for living expenses and tuition, the final cramming before the examination.

  When Hwa Lan realized that Li Fong actually meant what he was saying, she countered, whimsically. “There is a better way for us, Old Master! We’ll go to the Taoist magician and learn their art. Then we’ll ride the wind, we’ll go to the Mountain of the Gods, and we’ll kowtow to the Dragon lords—we’ll plead for their help! Otherwise aiieeeyah! How unpleased your Venerable Father will be when you start with a sing-song girl—when he’s most certainly got a wife picked out for you!”

  Hwa Lan was practical. Li Fong and the wine were not. So, she sang of the Dragon Lady who lived in the Great Desert…or, atop the Mountain.

  At dawn, Li Fong awakened w
ith the city. Considering how massively drunk he had been before Hwa Lan crumpled across her lute and toppled into bed he felt fine. Seeing her lying there, beyond the half drawn curtains of her alcove, he wondered what had happened. She’d been sparing enough, and had been urging him to drink less wine.

  Something odd about her breathing. Hwa Lan still wore her jade hair pins. She still wore everything.

  The bronze jar was empty. On the table was a small porcelain jug. Two matching cups. One empty. He reached for the other. He recognized the smell of that drug from Hindustan.

  He had been so drunk that he had escaped being doped. And, so drunk that robbing him had required no fancy work whatever. Instead of gray silk tunic and black trousers, and embroidered boots and embroidered cap, he wore coolie clothes, ragged and grimy.

  He was sure that Hwa Lan had had no part in this.

  Storming through the wine shop, demanding his clothes and his money had landed him in jail. He did not look like the sort of person who would be admitted as a patron.

  That was the wrong day to be in jail. A recruiting party took charge of every prisoner who could walk, gave the jailer a present, and collected a bounty of one silver tael per new soldier, when the detachment arrived at the military commander’s yamen.

  That is how it had started.

  The Son of Heaven required a lot of soldiers to fight the Uighur Turki barbarian of the Uttermost West. And now, well over two thousand miles from that fatal wine shop, Li Fong was seeing the glamour-lands of which Hwa Lan had sung. Six months of long marching and short rations brought out the difference between song and fact…

  The mountains, even from a great distance, loomed up as monstrous fantasies. More and more, they brought to mind Hwa Lan’s music and words. He persisted in his belief, in what he had come to regard as knowledge, that Hwa Lan had played no part in robbing him. His other fixed belief, a growing conviction, no more rational than the first, was that someone spoke to him, usually during his sleep, but at times by day, as he plodded, hour after hour, licking the windblown loess dust from his lips, squinting through the yellow haze and at the sky-glare until waking and sleeping became ever more alike. Finally, he could not tell one from the other.

  Li Fong never ate all his ration of parched barley or beans. Always, he saved a bit, building up a supply. This added to his burden, but it lightened his spirit. Prompted by his invisible counselors, who persistently asserted that Hwa Lan had seen great adventure and ultimate victory for him, Li Fong was making plans.

  And the camel freighters were interesting fellows. They told of buried cities…of sands which spoke at night…and of the Gods who lived on several of the high mountain peaks.

  One night Li Fong stole a camel. This was a smooth escape, without a moment of suspense. Since no one could possibly be so insane as to desert, the sentries were far from vigilant. So, he put the army behind him and looked up at the stars he had come to know, during those long nights of sleeping on hard earth.

  “The Sieve now sparkles to the South

  And mostly ill drops through.

  Slowly, the Dipper tips and spills

  But pours no good for you…”

  The fact of it was that he recited those pessimistic lines to tone down the exultation which dizzied him.

  Wind driven sand whispered and rustled, a dry, thin sound. Flying creatures grazed his face as they swerved. Some were feathered, some were furry, and as to others, he had unpleasant surmises.

  The bats betokened a mine somewhere. But, how far… Outbound bats, not homeward faring…not at this hour…

  Shortly before dawn, he came upon masonry rising a few feet above the drifted sand. There were stunted poplars. Li Fong halted at the ruin. He found a moist spot, as he had anticipated. He scraped and dug with his sword. Soon a brackish pool accumulated in the basin. After drinking, he crawled to the lee of the cornice of a deeply buried building. The drift was a softness such as he had not known for many a week.

  Blazing sun awakened Li Fong.

  Hobbling a camel so that the beast would remain hobbled was not one of Li Fong’s skills. He was alone and afoot.

  Li Fong shouldered his gear and made for the mountains.

  By night, the mountains wore coronets of stars, and crowns of snow. By day, mirage made them dance and weave. Several times, when hunger and thirst and weariness would have kept him from getting up when he lurched and fell, voices urged him on. He found water, and grubbed roots. He ate the seeds from pods. Once, he found the eggs of a wild bird. Several times, he sword-speared a lizard. When he quit the desert and could distinguish trees on the mountain’s upper slopes, Li Fong still had a handful of parched barley in his pack.

  Li Fong propped himself upright, with staff of acacia. He tilted his head far back, and stared until finally he could believe that what he saw, so far up, was summit and snow cap, not clouds.

  “Omito fu! The Mountain of the Gods!”

  Water now, and pine nuts. Sometimes at the rim of a pool, he found lily roots. The air became thin and crisp. Mists billowed.

  With flint and steel, he would make fire of an evening. Sometimes there were herbs which he simmered, making soup. He had long forgotten hunger, since he could not recall when he had last eaten other than famine-fare.

  So, that sunset, with its slanting lances of red and gold reaching through the branches, when he saw a strange bird approaching him, he regarded it as beauty, rather than as food walking to his fire.

  No doubt at all that he could throw the staff and clip the approaching fowl, but this possibility did not interest him.

  The bird came without fear. In its gold-flecked eyes was a glint as of intelligence as well as curiosity. Tawny-buff and gold, white and scarlet plumage, with a triple crest and metallically gleaming beak, it seemed to be the origin of all the pheasant-kind, all the more so since the color scheme shifted until no variety had been omitted. This, however, was much larger than any pheasant, although to judge size was absurd. The trees, the escarpments which swooped skyward—all about Li Fong was gigantic. Nevertheless, the bird must be larger than a peacock.

  It paced somewhat like a quail, flashing quick paces, yet progressing deliberately, always level, as though skimming the surface. This was a curious, a cadenced pacing.

  The bird halted, regarding him, the haggard, the sun-seared, the ragged, and the dried-out. The beautiful and the devastated regarded each other, with interest ever increasing and compelling.

  The lances of sunlight shifted.

  A vast shadow enveloped Li Fong and the iridescent bird. The shadow was that of wings, tremendously outreaching. This was not the shadow of any cloud. The bird’s eyes gleamed pointedly. The wings flickered. The tail fanned, the feet moved, a pacing which brought the bird no nearer Li Fong. It was as though this creature perceived, and knew something which Li Fong did not.

  Then he understood. He recalled Old Master Wong, the calligrapher, who would close his eyes and with a single unbroken motion, brush never quitting the paper, shape four characters, the final ending in an exquisite long prolongation stroke.

  “Soaring Dragon: Dancing Phoenix.”

  He spoke the words aloud.

  There was a blur of gold and red and apricot and persimmon. The shadow shifted and wheeled. Glancing up, Li Fong caught the glint of scales, the gleam of claws. Looking back, he saw neither shadow nor bird.

  He saw only a black-robed man who wore a Taoist hat. The man’s white beard trailed to his waist. His face had scarcely a line, yet if he had declared himself to be a thousand years old, Li Fong could have believed him. The eyes half-glinted with humor, yet were half-stern, and entirely penetrating beyond the glance of ordinary men.

  Once and a second time, Li Fong touched his forehead to the pine needles. Before he could kowtow a third time, the man helped him to his feet.

  “Perhaps you should stay h
ere—perhaps it is better for you to go far from here. But first, you will rest and eat. It is very interesting that you thought of Soaring Dragon: Dancing Phoenix, instead of roasted fowl.”

  CHAPTER II

  Li Fong followed the tao shih along a path which presently led to a monastery of brick and masonry. It nestled cozily on a shelf of rock which seemed to have an overlay of soil sufficient for a small group of monks, provided they were not hearty eaters.

  As though sensing Li Fong’s thought, the tao shih paused at the entrance. “What you do not know about farming, I will show you. I am Tai Ching, disciple of Master Ko Hung.”

  Li Fong put his palms together, bowed three times, gave his own name, and begged leave to abstain from stating his surname.

  Master Ko Hung’s life had ended three centuries ago. Whether Tai Ching meant that he had actually been one of the alchemist-magician’s pupils, or merely that he had devoted his life to studying the Pao P’o Tzu, the Master’s final book, was an open question. In any event, Tai Ching undoubtedly knew, from long ago, all the reasons which might make a man wish to conceal his surname.

  Li Fong followed the tao shih across a well-kept courtyard. He paused long enough to scrape a bit of barley from his haversack, and put the grains on the altar of the shrine, just beyond the entrance. Having paid his respect to the Gods, the Immortals, and the Buddhas, he resumed his way, until Tai Ching gestured to an alcove in which spring water accumulated in a wall-basin.

  “You may wash. Then follow food-smell to the refectory.”

  Presently, Li Fong joined the tao shih at the low table and shared the bowl of millet porridge and a platter of greens.

  “Long ago,” Tai Ching said, “I made my peace with all living creatures. I eat none of my friends and neighbors. There is only this famine fare.”

  Presently, he brought a pot of herb soup.