Fantasy Gone Wrong

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  “Do you want Wendel’s throne?” Grell snapped.

  Jonathan stared. “My father’s blood pounds through my veins like fire, screaming for justice. My mother’s dying screams echo in my dreams, demanding—”

  “Do you want it?” she repeated. Jonathan’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing. Grell rolled her eyes. “Go home, boy.”

  “You know nothing of justice or honor, goblin.” Jonathan closed his eyes and raised his sword again.

  “I know children,” Grell said. “Go home. Let the rest of us get some sleep.”

  Jonathan spun, his face dark. “Be careful how you address me, or I’ll remember you serve no further use.”

  “I thought honorable men didn’t kill women and children,” Grell said.

  “You’re a goblin. You’d turn on me in the end anyway, and I’d be forced to cut you down.” Jonathan began to move around from the witch’s stone grave, sword held high.

  He had taken only a single step when Grell grabbed the wadded diaper and hurled it at him.

  The prince moved with the reflexes of an elf-trained warrior, instinctively moving to block the missile with his sword . . . his enchanted sword, with the supernaturally sharp edge. The blade sliced clean through the diaper, spraying its contents all over his neck, chest, and arms.

  Grell had never seen such an expression of horror and disgust. For several heartbeats, Jonathan stood frozen. Then he was screaming and ripping the tabard from his body. The sword clattered to the ground as he tried desperately to get the tabard over his head while avoiding the soiled spots.

  He didn’t have time to realize his mistake. With the tabard still raised partially over his face, Jonathan toppled to the ground, asleep.

  “What a shame,” Grell said. The body of the would-be prince had fallen behind the rocks. “Waste of a good meal.”

  Grell found Rindar in hand-to-hand combat with two human scouts. For some reason, Rindar had gone back to using his bow and arrow, while the humans thrust at him with short swords. Rindar twisted and leaped, avoiding lunge after lunge until one of the humans stumbled. Quicker than Grell could see, Rindar drew and fired. The arrow ripped through both men, who collapsed to the ground.

  Elves were such show-offs. Grell hobbled closer, slapping the rocks with her cane so he would be sure to hear.

  “What happened?” Rindar asked. “Is Jonathan—”

  “He got halfway through his incantation and dropped his sword.”

  The sound that escaped Rindar’s open mouth was somewhere between a sob and a cough. “How?”

  Grell shrugged. “I was busy with an oozing diaper at the time. Maybe the warlock placed a second curse to trap any would-be rescuers. Maybe his hands were sweaty and he lost his grip. Maybe he just didn’t want to be king. How should I know?”

  Rindar’s face went still, losing what little color it had. “Jonathan . . . the sword . . . can we retrieve it?”

  “He was standing behind the tomb when he fell.” She leaned on her cane, using her other hand to bounce Jig in his sling.

  Rindar slipped his bow over one shoulder. He looked like he was about to fall down. “I shouldn’t have left him,” he whispered.

  “You said he was the last heir to that throne, right?” Grell asked.

  Rindar nodded.

  “So his uncle would be the legitimate ruler now.”

  Another slow, stunned nod.

  “Which means there’s really no reason to keep up all this fighting?”

  Rindar moved slowly, like a man underwater. He removed a silver chain from around his neck. A long, gold whistle hung at the end of the chain. The high, piercing sound was more than enough to start Jig crying again.

  “I failed him,” Rindar whispered.

  Grell was already making her way back to the cave, flattening her ears against Jig’s crying. If that fool elf kept standing there all forlorn, he would be an easy target for Wendel and his human soldiers. As for Grell, there was no way she was going to hike back to the lair with humans and elves racing about the mountain. Goblins too, once they scrounged another drum. She could wait until tomorrow, when the elves had retreated and things settled down.

  Inside the witch’s cave, she emptied out her sack and set the still-wailing Jig inside. She stifled a yawn as she looped the strap over the end of her cane. With both hands, she lifted the sack farther into the cave until Jig’s cries died down.

  With that, she gathered the fallen branches from outside the cave and lay them down beside her. She bundled a clean rag beneath her head and closed her eyes. The sticks would prevent her from rolling into the cave and falling under the enchantment. Rocks dug into her back, and the pink light from the back was a bit distracting, not to mention the pine-scented breeze blowing in the entrance.

  But for the first time in days, neither horns nor drums nor wailing children interrupted her rest.

  CRUMBS

  Esther M. Friesner

  Nebula Award-winner Esther Friesner is the author of thirty-one novels and over one hundred short stories, in addition to being the editor of seven popular anthologies. Her works have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, and Italy. She is also a published poet, a playwright, and once wrote an advice column, “Ask Auntie Esther.” Her articles on fiction writing have appeared in Writer’s Market and Writer’s Digest Books.

  Besides winning two Nebula Awards in succession for Best Short Story (1995 and 1996), she was a Nebula finalist three times and a Hugo finalist once. She received the Skylark Award from NESFA and the award for Most Promising New Fantasy Writer of 1986 from Romantic Times.

  Her latest publications include a short story collection, Death and the Librarian and Other Stories from Thorndike Press, Turn the Other Chick from Baen Books, fifth in the popular “Chicks in Chainmail” series that she created and edits, and the paperback edition of E.Godz, also from Baen, which she co-wrote with Robert Asprin. She is currently working on three YA novels as well as continuing to write and publish short fiction.

  Educated at Vassar College, she went on to receive her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, where she taught Spanish for a number of years. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two all-grown-up children, two rambunctious cats, and a fluctuating population of hamsters.

  SIR HANSON THE HAWK-eyed rode his mount to the edge of the Dark Woods, peered into their sinister shadows, and pondered the next step of the quest he was about to undertake in the name of his sovereign, Good King Donald. As the boldest, bravest, and third-handsomest knight ever to couch lance in the service of his king, there could be only one thought going through his mind at such a solemn moment, namely:

  “Why do I always get the squirrel-butt jobs?”

  It was a rhetorical question whose answer he knew well: The boldest, bravest, and third-handsomest knight in the realm was also the poorest, having come of nou veau only relatively riche peasant stock. Being a knight was a costly business. Horses didn’t grow on trees. And while Good King Donald was quite good, he applied most of said goodness to himself.

  Oh, he was open-handed to others when it suited him, but it only suited him to demonstrate generosity to those knights whose quests brought home the bacon. (Also the gold, the jewels, and the damsels whose doting parents were wealthy enough to shower largesse upon the warrior who’d saved their Little Pumpkin from becoming dragon chow.) This was not favoritism, but pure reciprocity: All knights were compelled to tender the spoils of their ad venturings to the king, who in turn restored to them a fair share of said tribute. (“Fair” being based on the king’s conviction that his loyal knights were most likely holding back a good ten percent of their gross booty.)

  The system worked. That is to say, it worked for Good King Donald and for those knights who came into his employ from wealthier families. Along with sword, shield, lance, and banner, each affluent applicant for a position in the king’s chivalric entourage likewise packed “A small, most unworthy gift for You
r Majesty, in gratitude for Your Majesty’s most unlooked-for favor in accepting my humble self into your service.”

  It did sound ever so much more romantic than: “Hey, King! Here’s your bribe!”

  The gift-of-unworthiness was not obligatory, by any means. Neither was His Majesty required to hand out the really tasty quests—the quests where the gold and jewels and truly hot damsels practically fell into your lap—to any knight whose family circumstances prohibited him from bringing that gift with him when he first joined the team.

  Funny, the way it always just happened to work out, though.

  Thus, as he lingered at the border of the Dark Woods, Sir Hanson the Hawk-eyed well might have been pausing to regain his balance, for his career as a knight had been the most vicious of whirligigs: No choice assignments without a plump gift to the king, no way of obtaining a plump enough gift for the king without a choice assignment. Sir Hanson the Hawk-eyed could have changed his name to Sir Hanson the Knightly-scutwork-until-you-die without violating any truth-in-advertising laws.

  The quest to which he was presently assigned was a case in point. It was a simple Missing Persons affair, and while the Persons thus Missing were important enough, none involved were princess-level important.

  “Maybe it’s a dragon that’s responsible,” Sir Hanson muttered as he leaned slightly forward upon the pommel of his saddle. “There aren’t supposed to be any dragons in the Dark Woods, just trolls and goblins and giants and flesh-eating witches, but you never can tell with dragons: They pretty much turn up wherever they like. Who’s going to tell them not to? And where there’s dragons, there’s hoards of gold. It can’t be helped.” He ended on an optimistic note that rang somewhat tinny, even to his own ears.

  He consulted the scrap of parchment in his hand one more time. Sir Hanson had requested that the palace scribe write down the particulars of the case, being a firm believer in the Rule of the Six P’s, viz.: Prior Planning Prevents Poorly Prepared Paladins.

  “Vanishments,” Sir Hanson read. “Mysterious vanishments within the Dark Woods, cause unknown, sorcery suspected.” He shook his head. “But that’s impossible. Who’d go into the Dark Woods these days? Everyone knows that they’re rife with witches who’d turn a child into gingerbread and gobble him up before you can blink. And since the construction of the Dark Woods Bypass, there’s no need to risk traveling through this unholy place. Only a fool would do so.”

  Once more, Sir Hanson’s head filled with the king’s indignant voice giving him his assignment: We’re not talking about a bunch of children or village idiots here, Hanson; we’re talking about some of the most cunning, ruthless, successful merchants in my realm! These were not stupid men, and yet, they were all last observed going into the Dark Woods and not coming out again.

  Men? Sir Hanson had echoed. But in the old tales, isn’t it always children who—

  His Majesty cared not a festering fig for the old tales. Do you think I’d be wasting any of my manpower if this was about children? Children do not pay taxes, or see fit to remember their beloved king with appropriately lavish gifts at Yuletide. To the fuming pits with the children: These are real people who’ve vanished, and I want to know the reason why.

  It was interviews like that that sometimes made Sir Hanson the Hawk-eyed pause to wonder just what, exactly, Good King Donald was good for.

  Sir Hanson took up the reins, and urged his steed forward. “On, Barbelindo!” he cried, lifting his chin and striking a heroic pose.

  The horse just stood there and, very slowly and with supreme contempt, turned to look at him. In spite of the grandiloquent name Sir Hanson had bestowed upon his mount, they both knew the truth: Barbelindo the Bold was really Bessie, a stolid, serviceable stopgap steed from his father’s modest stable. Instead of a proper knight’s horse—a fiery stallion with coat of midnight and eyes of flame—all Sir Hanson could afford was Bessie, a mare with coat of oatmeal, eyes of hazelnut, and an expression that made him swear she was always laughing at him.

  Covert equine insubordination aside, she was obedient enough. Her one non-negotiable point, however, was her name. And so, muttering angrily under his breath, Sir Hanson managed to grit out a terse, “Giddup, Bessie,” before the beast would consent to carry him on to adventure ’neath the Dark Woods’ drear and dreadful boughs.

  They rode down a forest path that was not entirely unfamiliar to him, even though he had never traveled its tree-shadowed twists and turns himself before now. The Dark Woods and its reputed perils were old hat to Sir Hanson, who had grown up bored halfway out of his skull by tales of this selfsame place of dangers dire and dolorous, whenever Auntie Gretel came to visit. It never failed: the conversation with her brother Hansel always slewed back to their childhood adventures with the Dark Woods, the breadcrumb trail, and the witch they’d so cleverly slaughtered.

  “Ah, there was gold aplenty in that gingerbread house!” Auntie Gretel cackled. “God knows how the crone came to have it.”

  “Who cares how she got it?” her brother Hansel responded. “What matters is we did. Gold’s a good dog: It knows its proper master!”

  “True, dear brother, true.” This was invariably the point where Auntie Gretel sighed happily and twirled the fat strand of pearls around her neck.

  Unfortunately this was invariably also the point where young Hanson let loose a cavernous yawn. (Family histories are wasted on the young.) That yawn made young Hanson’s father cuff his ear and deliver a lecture about how the witch’s purloined riches became the foundation of the family’s modest fortune.

  “Aye, and the reason why a poor woodchopper’s son like me will become the father of a belted knight some day!” he concluded, clouting young Hanson in the other ear for good measure.

  Sir Hanson’s mother was just as weary as her son of hearing the old, old story. She took pains to confide a few salient details that Dad and Auntie Gretel left out, details she’d learned once upon a time in vino veritas, when her husband had turned truthful in his cups.

  “Abandoned by their parents in the Dark Woods?” she said with a sarcastic lift of one eyebrow. “Did you never meet your grandparents? Your Grandpa Hansel-the-Elder would sooner chop off his own arm for the stewpot! Your pa and auntie ran off into the Dark Woods on purpose, by themselves, because they’d heard about the witch’s gold and decided it’d be great sport to rob her. That whole bit about the witch caging your pa to fatten him up while making your auntie keep house for her, that’s trash and moonshine. Gretel’s such a slob, she wouldn’t know which end of a broom to hold if you shoved it up her—er, never mind.

  “You see, the witch was a keen cardsharp—loved gambling to the point where she couldn’t think straight when the gaming fever was on her. Gretel challenged her to a long sit-down over the devil’s pasteboards—hand after hand of Trim the Brisket, Five Yellow Dogs, Seeking Aubrey’s Ankle, and Camelot Hold ’Em—and by the time the sun went down, she’d won most of the old woman’s gold.”

  “And the witch let her go home with her winnings?” young Hanson inquired of his mother.

  Her laughter shook cobwebs from the ceiling corners. “After she caught on that Gretel’d marked the cards? Fat chance! But while Gretel was separating the witch from her treasure, your pa’d been rummaging through the old besom’s books until he found one full of simple spells.

  “The witch was just about to mount her broomstick and fly after those treacherous brats when your pa launched an incantation that brought the gingerbread cottage tumbling down on the crone’s skull. She was crushed beneath an avalanche of stale cake and candy pieces, your pa and auntie took to their heels with her gold in a little casket between ’em, and that, dear heart o’ mine, is what really happened.”

  “Oh,” said young Hanson, who rather liked the family history account better.

  Now he rode along the way his pa and aunt had trodden so long ago. It did not take him long to notice that something was not quite right about the path through the Dark Woods.
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br />   “A troll-haunted woodland road with fresh wagon ruts? And so many?” He blinked at the evidence of his eyes. True, merchants had vanished ’neath the not-so-jolly greenwood shade, but Sir Hanson was expecting to find hoofprints of horse or donkey, something proper to a lone wayfarer who’d taken a wrong turn into the forest and was waylaid by crone or creature. When a merchant went into the Dark Woods with a wagon heavily laden enough to leave ruts this deep, it meant he’d gone in with property and purpose.

  Sir Hanson had just reached this conclusion when his musings were shattered by a loud, ungodly bawling. It came from under an abandoned wagon dead center on the forest path. He dismounted and peered into the shadows beneath the cart, expecting to encounter a banshee, at the very least. Instead he found a weeping child.

  It didn’t take much parley to persuade the tyke—a dirty-faced, towheaded boy who looked barely nine years old—to come out and accept an apple. As the lad crunched into the rosy fruit with the grace of a starving dog, Sir Hanson tried to question him, thus:

  “Boy, how did you come to be here?”

  “Mumf vavver tol’ mezoo wait here furrim ’til heecumback f’me,” the boy replied, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk’s. Then he swallowed and repeated: “My father told me to wait here for him until he comes back for me.”

  “Your father left you here?” Sir Hanson had a bad feeling about this. The whole thing smacked of mid-woodland child abandonment, something with which he was more than a little familiar.

  On the other hand, there was still the matter of the wagon. People abandoned children far more readily than they gave up all claim to a fine vehicle like this one. Come to think of it, though the cart was here, where were the beasts to pull it? The roadway bore ample, pungent evidence that the cart had been brought this far by the labor of oxen, yet oxen there were none. It was all most puzzling.

  “Lad, did you father happen to mention where he was going and why he took the oxen with him but left you behind?” Sir Hanson handed the boy a piece of bread and a small chunk of cheese to grease the wheels of conversation.