Tales of Ethshar

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “It’s the skin of a field mouse,” Deru said, as he wrapped it around her.

  She tumbled from the bed, and it was a much longer fall than it should have been; she landed on her hands and knees, her palms stinging with the impact. Her vision blurred.

  When it cleared again she clambered to her feet and looked up.

  Deru stood before her, unspeakably huge, the pack on his shoulder the size of Quonmor Keep; between the gigantic pillars of his legs she could see the smoking stub of candle, taller than she was. The pattern of smoke hung over her, out of reach. She looked up, and up, and up.

  Deru was putting a tiny red thing on his own tongue; that done, he took a scrap of gray fur and lifted his hands up over his head.

  And then he began shrinking. The mouse-pelt didn’t stretch; Deru shrank.

  And moment later he stood before her at his normal height, a few inches taller than herself, as the candle flared up and went out and the pattern of smoke dissipated. Darkness descended, broken only by the orange glow of the greater moon outside the open window.

  The little bedchamber stretched out before them in the dimness, an immensity of space.

  “There,” Deru said. “It worked.”

  “Oh,” Kirna said, looking around.

  The world was strange and different, with ordinary furniture become looming monstrosities, but she no longer suspected she was dreaming; everything was quite solid and real. She looked up at the window, impossibly far above them, and asked, “How do we get out?”

  “We levitate. Or rather, I do. I’ll have to carry you, I’m afraid; I don’t have a levitation spell that will work on both of us.”

  She frowned, but could hardly argue. She was no wizard.

  At least, not yet.

  Deru knelt and opened his pack. He pulled out a small lantern, a grey feather, and a silver bit; he lit the lantern, set the coin inside it, then drew his dagger again and did something Kirna could not see. Then he straightened up, the lantern in his hand and the dagger back in his belt; the feather seemed to have vanished.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Cautiously, Kirna approached—and then shrieked as Deru grabbed her and hoisted her over his shoulder, her head and arms dangling down his back, her legs pinned to his chest. She raised her head and turned to look around.

  Deru was walking, one hand holding her legs and the other carrying the lantern—but he was not walking across the floor; instead he was walking up into the air, as if climbing an invisible staircase.

  “Varen’s Levitation,” he said.

  Kirna made a wordless strangled noise. She had wanted to learn magic and have adventures, but being shrunk to the size of a mouse, flung over someone’s shoulder, and carried up into the air, with nothing at all holding them up, all in quick succession, was a little more than she had been ready for.

  But, she told herself, she was being silly. This was a magical adventure! She should appreciate it.

  She thought she could appreciate it much more easily if she weren’t draped over Deru’s shoulder, though. She tried to twist around for a better view.

  “You don’t want me to drop you,” Deru cautioned. “The spell only works on me.”

  Kirna ignored that and watched. Deru was marching up higher and higher above the floor, and had now turned toward the window. Kirna could see the sky and the surrounding treetops, lit by the orange light of the greater moon—the feeble glow of the tiny lantern didn’t reach more than a few inches.

  Fitting between the bars would be no problem at all at their present size—but how would they get down?

  “Shouldn’t you have a rope?” she asked.

  “We don’t need one,” Deru said, panting slightly. “Varen’s Levitation goes down just as well as up.”

  “Oh,” Kirna said.

  That sounded well enough, but she had noticed the panting—this fellow Deru was already getting tired, and they weren’t even out the window yet.

  Well, he had been working magic for hours, which must be tiring, and while Kirna certainly would never have said she was fat, or even stout, she knew she wasn’t a frail little twig like some girls—princesses were well-fed. Carrying her might get tiring eventually even for a bigger, stronger man than Deru.

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, and the panting was more obvious this time.

  Kirna was hardly in a position to protest, though, so she shut her mouth and watched as they mounted up over the windowsill.

  Deru leveled off just a foot or so—no, Kirna corrected herself, perhaps half an inch—above the sill, and walked straight forward, placing each foot solidly on empty air.

  The bars were as big as oaks as they passed, great oaks of black iron—and then they were out in the night air, cool and sharp after the hot, stuffy bedchamber. Kirna felt her hair dancing in the breeze, and she squirmed, trying to keep it where it belonged.

  “Stop it!” Deru hissed. “You do not want me to drop you from here!”

  Kirna looked down the side of the tower—and down, and down, and down—and decided that Deru was right. She knew it was only about thirty feet to the ground, at most, but in her shrunken state it looked more like a thousand, and besides, thirty feet was enough to kill someone. She stopped squirming.

  Deru marched forward, just as if he were walking on solid stone rather than empty air; then he started descending, step by step, as if he had arrived at another invisible stair.

  Kirna, tired of looking down, looked up—and shrieked, “Look out!” She pointed and began struggling desperately.

  Deru turned, trying to hold onto his burdens and see what she was talking about. “What is it?” he started to say, but before the words had left his lips he knew what had caused Kirna’s panic.

  It all happened incredibly fast for Deru; he had been looking down at his feet, watching his descent and staying well clear of tree branches or whatever seeds might be drifting on the wind, since Varen’s Levitation would end instantly if either the wizard stopped paying attention, or his booted feet touched solid matter, when Kirna had shouted and begun thrashing. He had turned his attention to the sky and seen nothing but a night-flying bird.

  Then it registered that the bird was approaching rapidly, that it was an owl swooping silently toward them.

  And then, finally, it registered that this was a threat, that in their shrunken state an owl could eat them both.

  He instinctly flung up his arms to ward the huge predator off, whereupon Kirna tumbled off his shoulder and plummeted into the darkness beneath.

  And at that instant Deru forgot all about Varen’s Levitation and dropped the lantern, and he, too, fell into the night. The owl, wings muffled and talons spread, swept harmlessly through the space where the wizard had stood half a second before.

  * * * *

  Kirna sat up, dazed, trying to remember where she was and what had happened to bring her here. She was sitting on a gigantic leaf, surrounded by a thick tangle of wood; it was dark, though the orange light of the greater moon alleviated the worst of the gloom. To one side she glimpsed an impossibly tall stone tower; everywhere else she saw only forest.

  Everything seemed distorted.

  Then she remembered why; she was only about two inches tall. That clumsy young wizard had shrunk her, carried her out the window…and then what? Had he carried her off somewhere and abandoned her?

  No, he had dropped her, when that owl had attacked. She remembered the vast rush of air as she fell, and the utter helpless terror she had felt, and the crunch as she had hit a bush.

  The bush must have broken her fall, though, because she was still alive, albeit somewhat bruised and battered.

  And she was, she realized, under that same bush, a few feet from Gar’s tower.

  But where was Deru? Had the owl gotten him?

  She scanned the sky overhead as best she could through the tangle of bush, but saw no trace of Deru. She did spot the owl, how
ever, drifting far overhead.

  She tried to remember what she knew about owls. Her father, King Tolthar, had insisted she receive a proper education, and while that had mostly meant politics, geography, history, and etiquette, several lessons about her natural surroundings had been included.

  She thought the owl up there was a big one, even allowing for her own diminished stature, perhaps even what Tharn the Stablemaster had called a great horned owl, though of course owls didn’t actually have horns.

  At least, she didn’t think they did.

  Owls did have exceptional eyesight, even for birds, since they preferred to hunt at night. They also had special fringes on their wings that let them fly silently, with none of the audible flapping and rustling of other avians, and they generally gave no cry in flight—hooting was for when they were safely at home, not for when they were out hunting.

  That one up there looked very much as if it were hunting.

  If it had eaten Deru, she asked herself, wouldn’t it be done hunting? She tried to take encouragement from that, to convince herself that this meant Deru was still alive; the possibility that he was simply too small to satisfy so large a bird was too uncomfortable to consider.

  For one thing, if the owl had swallowed him she doubted it had managed to remove his pack first, and that was where the antidote to the shrinking spell was. The idea of spending her entire life able to meet chipmunks and large spiders face to face did not appeal to her.

  Of course when the owl spat out a pellet of Deru’s bones and hair the pack and bottle might still be in it, but that was really too gross to think about. Besides, how would she find it?

  So she would assume he was still alive, and that he still had that flask in his pack. All she had to do was find him and take a sip, and she would be herself again, and the owl would be no problem at all.

  She got to her feet and brushed bits of dry leaf from her gown. She was safe enough here inside this bush, she was sure.

  “Deru!” she called, as loudly as she could.

  No one answered; she glanced up to see that the owl had wheeled about and was soaring overhead again.

  “Deru!” she shouted again.

  The owl wavered slightly in its flight, veering toward her.

  “Hush!” Deru’s voice called back from somewhere a good way off. He sounded strained.

  That was an immense relief; she let her breath out in a rush. He was still alive.

  She wouldn’t have to stay tiny the rest of her life.

  “It can’t get me here,” she called back. “Where are you?”

  “Over here, in another bush,” Deru called back. “Are you sure it can’t tear its way right through to you?”

  Kirna swallowed her reply, suddenly not sure at all. She ducked under one of the larger branches and looked around for better shelter, just in case.

  There was a hole in the ground, half-hidden in the darkness; if the owl came for her she could duck in there…

  She stopped in mid-thought. Why was there a hole in the ground? Presumably something lived in it.

  That might be worse than the owl. She had a sudden vision of meeting a snake while still her present size.

  “Do something!” she shrieked. “Grow back to normal size and get me out of here!”

  “I can’t!” Deru called back. “I dropped my pack. It’s out there in the open somewhere—if I go after it the owl will get me.”

  “Can’t you do something?” She was starting to go hoarse from shouting.

  “The countercharm needs oak leaves from the very top of a tree ten times the height of a man,” Deru called back, his voice sounding weaker. “That’s what the tea is made from. Even if these trees are oaks, I can’t climb that high when I’m this size!”

  “Can’t you levitate?”

  “Where the owl can see me? Besides, I lost my lantern.”

  “So what do we do?” Her voice cracked on the final word.

  “We wait until the owl goes looking for easier prey, and then I fetch my pack from the clearing.”

  That didn’t sound so very difficult—but what if the owl was stubborn? What if Gar noticed her absence and came looking for them? What if whatever lived in that hole came out? Kirna eyed the black opening fearfully.

  She didn’t really have much choice, though. She looked up.

  The owl was still up there. It seemed quite persistent. She wondered if perhaps Gar had put a spell on it so that it would guard the tower.

  She waited for what seemed like hours, but which the motion of the greater moon told her was only minutes; then Deru’s voice called, “Your Highness?”

  “What is it?” she snapped. She was afraid that their conversation was keeping the owl interested, and that it might wake whatever was in that hole.

  “I didn’t want to worry you, but I think I had better warn you—I hurt myself in the fall. I landed on a thorn. I bandaged it, but I’m still bleeding pretty badly, and I’m not sure I can walk.”

  “What am I supposed to do about it?” Kirna shrieked.

  “I thought you should know,” Deru called back weakly.

  “Idiot!” Kirna shouted. She rammed her fist against a branch of the bush.

  This was a nightmare. Everything had gone wrong. When she had followed Gar from Quonmor she had thought she was bound for love and adventure and a life of magic, and now…well, she had gotten some magic, anyway, but she was alone in the dark, dirty and bruised, stuck between a monstrous great bird and a mysterious hole-dweller, with the only one who could help her probably bleeding to death a few feet away.

  It wasn’t fair! She was a princess. These things weren’t supposed to happen to her. People were supposed to obey her and protect her, not lock her up or steal her blood and tears or shrink her down to nothing or carry her around like a sack of onions—and drop her!

  It just wasn’t fair at all. The World was not treating her properly.

  If she could just find Deru’s pack and get the antidote she would be fine, she could go home to her parents and pretend this was all just some grand lark—but that owl was out there, and she didn’t know where the pack had fallen. If the owl would just go away…

  But it was hungry.

  And whatever lived in that hole might be hungry, too. It might come leaping out at her at any moment.

  She frowned and looked at the hole. She had had quite enough unpleasant surprises. At least if she knew what lived in there she’d know whether it was dangerous. Whatever it was, it was probably asleep; she could creep down and take a look, then slip back out.

  She picked up a big stick—a tiny twig, actually, but to her it was as thick as her arm and somewhat longer than she was tall. Thus armed, she crept across the dead leaves and down the sloping earth into the hole.

  She had only gone a few steps when she stopped; ahead of her the hole was utterly black. The moonlight did not reach that far. Going farther suddenly didn’t seem like a good idea.

  She suddenly wanted to cry. Here she was trying her best to do something useful, something to improve her situation, and it wasn’t working. She sniffled.

  Then she sniffled again.

  There was a smell here, a smell she recognized.

  Rabbit.

  She suddenly relaxed. This was a rabbit hole! Rabbits wouldn’t hurt her, even at this size—they were harmless vegetarians. All she had to worry about was the owl.

  That was quite enough, though, if it wouldn’t give up and go away. Then a thought struck her.

  The owl was staying around because it was hungry, and knew there was prey here. All she had to do was feed it, and it would leave.

  She gathered her courage, raised her stick—she was trembling, she realized—and charged forward into the blackness, shouting. “Hai, rabbits! Come out, come out! Get out of here!”

  There was a sudden stirring in the warm darkness, a rush of air, and she found herself knocked flat against the tunnel wall as something huge and furry pushed past. She flailed wildly with her
stick, but whatever it was was gone.

  After a moment the racket subsided. She hoped that at least one of the furry idiots had fled out into the open.

  She turned and headed out of the tunnel—or started to. At the mouth of the hole she abruptly found herself face to face with a rabbit that had apparently decided its departure had been too hasty.

  “Yah!” she shouted, jabbing her stick at the rabbit.

  It turned and fled, kicking dirt and bits of leaf at her; she blinked, trying to shield her eyes. Then she pursued.

  When she emerged into moonlight she saw that the rabbit was still under the bush; she ran at it, screaming and waving her stick.

  The rabbit fled again, hopping out into the clearing…

  And then, without a sound, the owl struck.

  The rabbit let out a brief squeal, and then bird and prey were both gone, vanished into the night.

  For a moment Kirna stared at nothing; the strike had been so fast, so silent, and so sudden that at first she had trouble realizing it had happened.

  And when she did, she also realized how close she had come to following the rabbit out of the bush, trying to herd it further. She flung away her stick and let out a strangled gasp.

  For a moment she stood there, looking out into the night—first at the clearing, then up at the sky.

  The owl was gone. The rabbit was gone. Everything was still.

  And Deru’s pack was out there somewhere.

  It was several minutes before she could work up her nerve to go find it.

  She was still searching when Deru staggered out to join her. His face and bare chest were deathly pale, and one leg was wrapped in a bloody bandage made from the tunic he had doffed.

  “There,” he said, pointing.

  She hurried to the spot he indicated, and a moment later she held the precious flask. She turned to Deru.

  “Is there any ritual? Anything special we have to do?”

  He turned up a palm. “Just drink it. One sip.”

  She opened the flask and sipped, then handed the rest to Deru—barely in time, as she began growing the instant she swallowed.