The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  The old man whipped a full-length staff out of thin air and twirled it menacingly. “Who wants to know?”

  The wariness was a good sign. Hanegral was known for having been hounded out of a neighbouring kingdom a few years back, something about a payment dispute, a Shrinking Curse, and a king’s favorite organ. Wizards tended to live highly peripatetic lives, especially when they refused to forgive contracted debts.

  Thol stood, carefully holding his gourd in his left hand. He knew he couldn’t stand up to a skilled staff-wielder with half a sword, and if he had to run for it the water was going with him.

  “I’m Thol, Prince-Designate of Ild. Our capital was overrun by Krollok’s forces six days ago, and my father killed in battle. I bear the Singing Sword of Ild, which was crafted by the Mage Hanegral, and I need to find him to get it fixed.”

  The old man’s face darkened, and he grounded his staff with a thump. “Krollok, you say? You have your father’s look about you, that’s for sure. And that looks like one of mine.” The staff vanished into thin air. He gestured to the sword. “Let’s see it.”

  Thol drew the sword gently, and handed it over hilt first. It warbled like an injured bird as the old man took it, and the old man winced.

  Hefting the half-sword, the man said, “Yes, definitely one of mine. But how the Flames could it have been broken? We guarantee this model unbreakable.” He looked at Thol and added, “For Sun’s sake, man, drink. You’re in no danger.”

  Thol gratefully lifted the gourd and sipped about half of it as slowly as he could. The old man nodded approval and said, “Good. Hold off for a time, let yourself adjust. Then you can slug down a proper drink without losing it.”

  He held the sword up to the sun and sighted along the blade. “No bend, no warp. I don’t suppose you have the rest?”

  Thol opened his pack and handed over the other half.

  While the old man held that part to the sun and looked along its edges, shaking his head, Thol took the opportunity to kneel and refill the gourd to its top, cork it, and sling it at his belt. The sword-halves were warbling a muted, happy, off-key duet.

  “No bend or distortion here, either,” said the old man. “I don’t understand it. Well, come on inside and we’ll check it over.”

  Carrying a part of the Singing Sword in each hand, he led the way into the cave mouth, and Thol followed closely. His relationship with the Sword was, at best, highly adversarial, but he wasn’t about to lose track of it after all this trouble.

  The cave mouth was only a couple of man-heights wide, and perhaps one and a half tall, but just inside it widened greatly. Thol could see some sort of illumination farther inside, and make out dim walls slanting up and away.

  “Here,” said the Mage. “A bit of light so you can see the digs.” He transferred the parts of the Sword into one hand, and the staff reappeared in the other, its upper tip now a blaze of white fire. The old man bowed formally to the wall and said, “By your leave, may we please pass?”

  Thol looked around at a forest of glittering stalactites and stalagmites, and caught his breath as he looked at the wall stretching up to the side. It was roughly flat, and there were bones set into it, something huge, squashed, embedded for ever in the living stone. The body was long and oval, perhaps three man-lengths, and it had four legs, not set like a walking animal’s, but wide and paddle-shaped. The neck was a long, looping curve rising to a small head many feet above.

  The Mage smiled softly. “It’s a swimming lizard that lived here long, long ago. It was old and tired, and sank in the mud at the bottom of the sea, buried for so many years that its very bones turned to stone. But while it was dying, it dined on passing creatures. See?” He indicated a heap of strange petrified bones in the rock before the creature, a tumble of fragments that indicated more than one meal.

  Thol was amazed. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Sometimes diggers find bones made of rock, but the philosophers tell us they’re the bones of rock giants who died and were buried.”

  The Mage shook his head. “No. I was intrigued, and spent a lot of time working spells to let me see and talk with the creature as it died. It was so long ago that we can’t even number the years exactly, and the world had no men, nor any giants, in it then.” He turned away to move farther into the cave. “A good exercise; I learned a great deal about talking to creatures, and earning their aid. We often reach through time to talk to each other, although its interests are somewhat limited. I always try to address it politely, since even though it’s not terribly bright, it appreciates formal courtesy. Politeness is very important to it. Did you see the elegant curve of the neck? I think of it as a ‘Please-and-thank-you sea Saurian’.”

  They entered a brightly lit room, and the Mage’s staff dimmed and disappeared again. The Mage walked over to a wide stone workbench next to a dully glowing forge, and set the pieces of the Singing Sword down, juxtaposed as they would have been were it whole.

  He picked up a huge pane of mica set in a circular bronze frame, tapped it with a wand that appeared in one hand, and looked through it at the blade.

  “Incredible,” he said. “Here, take a look.”

  Thol moved forward to see through the circle. The Singing Sword was a bar of glowing, pulsing, purple light; there were flaring red areas in it, and at the jagged break the ends of both pieces were an ugly bloody colour.

  “You see?” asked the Mage. “At these points—” he indicated the red spots “—something has acted to destroy the spell that makes it a whole, the magical temper that makes its steel unbreakable.”

  Thol’s memory flashed back to the apocalyptic duel of champions, his father against Krollok. There had been a huge flash of sparks every time the swords clashed. He said, “I think those spots are where Krollok’s sword hit it.”

  The Mage looked off into the distance for a moment. “Interesting,” he said. He looked around, spotted a couple of bits of metal on a nearby table, and brought them over to the bench. A few moments of experimentation established that the spots that showed bright red under the viewing circle were highly magnetized.

  The old man nodded and turned to face Thol. “Krollok. I wondered when I heard the name, and now I know; this kind of thing is exactly his style. Lazy ex-student of mine, not one I’m proud of. Ran off when he failed his first Journeyman’s tests, couldn’t be bothered to keep at his studies. He can’t make a Singing Sword himself, but he knows enough about them to attack their strengths. Looks like he magicked his blade to create intense jolts of magnetism at points of contact – the harder the blow, the more intense the magnetism. Sufficiently intense magnetism destroys the spell-temper of the special steel I use in Singing Swords, not to mention just shattering your basic run-of-the-mill sword.”

  “So there’s nothing I can fight him with.”

  “Of course there is. I’ve been working with a new alloy, and magnetism won’t touch it. It won’t be a Singing Sword, but it’ll do the job.”

  Thol pointed to the blade on the bench. “The Singing Sword is an – emblem – of the Kingdom of Ild. My father carried it for decades, and it never failed him. When it was broken, the heart went out of our people.”

  “Understandable,” said the old man. “That model had an exceptional repertoire, especially when in its own scabbard. I’ll do my best to mend it for you, but we need to set you up with something you can use to fight Krollok. Bad for business, having my customers get hurt.” He stuck a couple of fingers into his mouth and whistled an ear-piercing shriek.

  A couple of small fuzzy creatures gallumphed into sight, craning up to peer at the Sword. They were grey, the colour of granite, and they’d come right out of the stone walls. Rock gnomes.

  The old man gabbled at them in their weird language, and they gabbled back. The discussion ended, and one of them walked over to the forge and began pumping it up to a white heat.

  “Come on,” said the old man. “They’ll do the repair weld, and a basic reforge, and it won’t be f
un to be here. Your average Singing Sword gets really noisy when you heat it up white-hot and start whacking on it with hammers. And the way they scream during the magical tempering process, it’s horrible.” He shuddered.

  Thol winced sympathetically; his imagination was good.

  In another chamber, the old man dug out a new sword with a strange golden colour and handed it to him. “Here, give this one a try.”

  It was thicker and broader than an average fighting sword, but seemed lighter. Puzzled, Thol tapped it and listened to the ring. It had an eerie chiming tone.

  The old man grinned. “That’s god-metal, left in the earth by the Titans. Cursed hard to separate out; easy to find, hard to smelt and work, strong as steel, but a third lighter. I usually alloy it with bronze to make it more workable, since it’s almost impossible to forge. Have to use special spells to get the heat up high enough to soften it.”

  He pointed over to a workbench. “Need special tongs, too; at those temperatures, regular tongs just melt.” He pointed to a practice pell set in a hole in the floor. “Give that a few whacks and see how it balances for you.”

  A few sweaty minutes later, the pell was matchwood and Thol was admiring the sword, running through practice phrases with it. “Amazing,” he said. “The way you’ve got it balanced to compensate for the oversize tip.”

  The Mage just grinned. “Look at the edges very closely.” There were tiny wavy lines in the edges, different-coloured ripples. Thol looked up at the Mage, curiously.

  “It’s a trick they use in the east,” said the Mage. “You use two metals, one very hard but brittle, and one softer and elastic. You work them in layers, folding them over again and again, and get a sword that’s the best of both, very hard and very elastic. That piece is made of my two best alloys of Titan metal and bronze. Cuts through standard sword-metal pretty easily.”

  “And it’s proof against the spell that destroyed the Singing Sword?”

  The old man grinned evilly. “Should be very educational for Krollok. There’s no magic in that sword to attack. We used magic to make it, but magic isn’t part of what it is, if you get my drift.”

  Thol looked down at the golden sword in his hand. “You understand, I can’t pay you for this. Krollok and his troops have complete control over the central valley, and I’m penniless.”

  The old man passed it off with a wave. “I charged high for the Singing Sword, and guaranteed it unbreakable. Think of it as a loaner while we do warranty repairs on your father’s sword. I owe your family, anyway; I should have followed through on that rotten apprentice when he ran off. If I had, your Singing Sword would still be in good working order. I’d have killed him like a shot if I’d suspected he was going to use magic to go into real-estate acquisition. Complete violation of Guild rules.”

  “Still, I feel that I owe you a debt.”

  “Very well,” said the Mage. “If you live, bring me back that sword—” he pointed to the golden blade “—and bring me back Krollok’s sword, so I can figure out how he made it, and perhaps find a way to proof against the damage it can do. Can’t have my whole product line’s reputation compromised because someone’s built a sword specifically designed to destroy mine.”

  “Done,” said Thol.

  There was a strange, sourceless chittering in the air around them and the Mage cocked his head, listening intently. “Umm. My marmots report a group of men have gotten past them. Well, they’re only the first line of defence, anyway. Let’s go see what we have to deal with. Anyone following you?”

  Thol nodded unhappily. “I don’t know how. I’ve tried not to leave any trail, I’ve walked in rivers for miles, travelled over hard stone whenever I could. I thought I was a good woodsman.”

  “You probably are,” said the Mage. He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “But tracking a Singing Sword is something any journeyman can do, especially if he’s got the scabbard. Any of the gold mountings from the scabbard will resonate to the Sword. That’s how we generate the major chords. Let’s go see who’s following you.”

  They walked back toward the entrance, passing the chamber where the rock gnomes were working at reforging the Singing Sword. The air was tortured with its screams, and Thol noticed the rock gnomes had tufts of waxed cotton stuffed in their ears to reduce the noise. He winced a bit at every shriek. The Mage said, “Don’t let it bother you too much. Singing Swords aren’t really alive, they just like to put on airs. Prima donnas.”

  They passed the wall with the bones of the “Please-and-thank-you” water lizard, the Mage doing a quick bow and whispering a polite greeting, and Thol saw a moving shadow outside. He reflexively pushed the old man behind him, drawing the golden sword. There were crashing noises and splashes.

  “Damn,” whispered the old man. “I hate when this sort of thing happens.”

  Thol muttered an imprecation and added, “Really sorry about this. I’ll hold them off while you get away.”

  The Mage shook his head, and his staff appeared in his hand. He gestured toward the opening, inviting Thol to accompany him. They edged out warily, and found a half-dozen of Krollok’s men kicking the potted plants around and roistering in the pool. One of them had a big six-legged marmot and a couple of little ones hanging from his belt, their necks circled by tight loops of gut. He was engaged in pushing over one of the rune-steles while the rest cheered him on.

  Thol walked to a clear area, ignored by the intruders, and yelled, “STOP THAT.” To his side, he was peripherally aware of a humming staff twirling through the air, and a hollow wooden clonking sound. One of the men took a header into the pool he’d been climbing out of, limp as a boiled mackerel.

  The man just in front of Thol rushed at him, his sword cutting down in a straight blow, and Thol got the golden sword around and into a rising block just in time. It sheared the man’s sword, leaving him with a short stub in his hand, and Thol was able to take off his head with a neat backstroke. He turned instantly to face two more coming at him, one with a staff and one with another sword. It took a bit more finesse, but not much, since the golden sword cut through their weapons like a knife through hot butter. He’d launched a crude horizontal cut, intending to take out one and go after the other on recovery, and was surprised when the golden sword cut through both on the same swing. He turned again to check on the Mage, and saw him standing over two bodies, one still face down in the pool. That left one. He pivoted madly, just in time to see a huge glowering face with a great ugly gold tooth, as a club took him in the side of the head.

  He managed to whip the golden sword around as he fell, cutting the club off just above its wielder’s hand, but he knew he’d taken a good whack, since he was hallucinating. He could have sworn the big marmot hanging at the man’s belt winked at him as he was falling to his hands and knees. There was a sound of running footsteps, and the Mage’s voice yelling “NO! DON’T GO IN THERE!” and the world went black.

  He came to slowly, realizing that his head was ringing like a gong, in slow agonizing throbs. He forced his eyes open, and saw the Mage’s face looking down at him, concerned.

  “I was afraid we were going to lose you there.”

  Thol tried to talk, and all that came out was a croak. The Mage slipped him a bit of water from a cup and helped him sit up. The pain in his head was receding rapidly, and he dared to feel the area where he’d been struck. Odd; there was no tenderness or swelling. He looked down beside him and saw a bloody poultice and some phials of potions marked with mage-runes.

  The Mage nodded. “Yes. You’ve made it this far, you’ll be good as new in a few more minutes.”

  “The last man,” Thol said. “He was running into your cave. We have to catch him!”

  “No. He’s no longer a problem.”

  Thol struggled to his feet. “He had a gold tooth. Does that mean anything?”

  “Probably,” said the Mage. “Krollok could have magicked him a new tooth using one of the golden bosses from the Sword’s scabbard. Inste
ad of being led around by the nose, he’s been following his tooth to the Sword.”

  Thol picked up the golden sword and sheathed it, and the Mage extended a supporting arm to help him walk to the cave entrance. The staff appeared, illuminating the gloom, and Thol saw strands of shredded gut that had held the murdered marmots, a chopped-up heap of rent fibres. There were chitterings and rustlings in the dark among the stalagmites.

  “I don’t understand. Where did he go?”

  The Mage pointed to the wall, where the huge water-lizard’s bones loomed. The head and neck appeared to be in a slightly different position than Thol remembered, and when he looked at the heap of fossilized bones before it, the topmost set looked almost human. There was a tiny glint of corroded gold among the teeth in the crushed skull. He nodded slowly, remembering the Mage’s comment about “first line of defence”.

  Hanegarl explained. “When I worked my spells to reach him, they also allowed him to reach anywhen through the eons. He’s been guarding those who live in this cave and attract impolite predators since the cave itself formed. Didn’t you notice all the warning runes?

  “Should we get started digging graves for the other five?”

  The Mage shrugged. “Not necessary. My rock gnomes love fresh meat, and they can use the two live ones for slave labour as long as they behave themselves.”

  Thol looked at the glints of sparkling little marmot-eyes watching him from the gloomy shadows among the bases of the stalagmites.

  The Mage noticed his gaze and commented, “The cheeky little buggers are great at playing dead until they get a chance to rip your jewels off. They picked their time and held him up just long enough so the water lizard would wake up and reach through to now for a snack. Always nice to have them on your side, even when they’re being lazy and playing dead.”

  A sarcastic chitter came out of the darkness, and a flying pebble bounced off the Mage’s forehead. “Of course, there are still moments when I think that giving them hands was a considerable error.”