Epic: Legends of Fantasy

by John Joseph Adams

  He reined his horse hard away from the stone, casting a glance as swift as an arrow toward her. The bearded man lay slumped along the base of the black megalith. It was too late for him. But not for Kereka.

  The witch had not moved, caught in a choice between clutching the precious bundle of griffin feathers or lunging past Kereka for the crossbow.

  Kereka tripped her neatly, using a wrestling move she’d learned from Belek, speaking fast as she released her. “If it’s true there are paths between the stones, then open a way now with your sorcery. But wait for me! Remember that I have fulfilled a debt and I want payment in return. Remember to trust me.”

  She leaped back as if fleeing something she feared more deeply than death itself. Vayek thundered up behind her, sword raised for the running kill, but Kereka held her ground with the griffin’s feather shielding the witch’s body.

  “I’ve killed her!” she shouted. “Your courage has emboldened me! Now it won’t be said that you laid hands on a mere woman! Quickly, let us go before her sorcery sickens me! I am so frightened, husband!”

  She bolted toward the fire like an arrow released from Tarkan’s heavenly bow, praying that Vayek would dismiss the woman as not worthy of his warrior’s prowess. She ran, and he followed.

  The fire’s hissing crackle, the horse’s weight and speed and heavy hoof-falls as it plunged toward the wall of fire; the high thrumming atonal singing of the wings in the presence of powerful magic; all this perhaps distracted Vayek as she raced ahead and dashed through that flaming gap in front of him. Fire roared. The smoke poured up to greet her, and because she was only one small human on two small feet, she darted to one side even as the clothes on her back grew hot and began to curl and blacken. He galloped past like the fury of the heavens, not even seeing her step aside because he was blinded by the tale he had long since learned to believe was the only tale in all the world.

  But it wasn’t true. The world was not the same no matter where you went. She’d seen the truth of that today.

  She could follow Vayek back onto the sea of grass into a life whose contours were utterly familiar and entirely honorable. Handsome, brave, strong, even-tempered, honorable, famous among the clans for his prowess, with two secondary wives already although he was not ten years a man, he would be the worst kind of husband. A woman could live her life tending the fire of such a man’s life. Its heat was seductive, but in the end its glory belonged only to him.

  She spun, feet light beneath her, and raced back through the gap.

  To find the witch already in action. She had bound the bundle of griffin feathers to her own back. Now she had her arms under the bearded man’s shoulders, trying to hoist him up and over a saddled horse. Kereka ran to help her, got her arms around his hips and her own body beneath him. Blood slicked her hands and dripped on her face, but his rattling breaths revealed that he still lived.

  The woman spared her one surprised glance. Then, like a begh, she gestured toward the other horses before running to a patch of sandy soil churned by the battle and spotted with blood. She unsheathed her obsidian knife and began, as one might at the Festival dance with Tarkan’s flaming arrows, to cut a pattern into the expectant air.

  A distant howl of rage rang from beyond the sorcerous fire.

  Kereka ran to fetch the three remaining foreign beasts who had come with the witch and the bearded man as well as her own mount. The other horses were already saddled and laded, obedient to the lead. She strung them on a line and mounted the lead mare as an arch of golden fire flowered into existence just beyond the obsidian blade. The witch grabbed the reins of the bearded man’s horse and walked under the fulgent threads.

  Into what she walked, Kereka could not see. But riding the shore of the river of death was the risk you took to find out what lay on the other side.

  Wings sang. The shape of a winged man astride a horse loomed beyond the fire. Vayek burst back past the writhing white fire of Edek’s corpse and into the circle. The complex weave that gave the arch form began to fray at the edges, flashing and shivering.

  Griffin feathers are proof against sorcery.

  She flung Edek’s griffin feather away; it glittered, spinning as on a wind blowing out of the unseen land beyond the arch, while Edek’s gauntlet fell with a thud to the dirt. Then she whipped her mount forward, and they charged into a mist that stank of burned and rotting corpses, of ash and grass, of blood and noble deeds.

  Her eyes streamed stinging tears; heat burned in her lungs.

  The foul miasma cleared, and she was trotting free down the slope of a hill with blackened grass flying away beneath the horses’ hooves and the sun setting ahead of her, drawing long shadows over the grass. The witch had already reached a familiar-looking stream, and she was kneeling beside the body of her comrade as she cast handfuls of glittering dust over his limp form. Saplings and brush fluttered in a brisk wind out of the west.

  Kereka twisted to see behind her the same stones, the very same stone circle, rising black and ominous exactly where they had stood moments before. Vayek and his warband had vanished.

  Did the witch possess such powerful sorcery that she could pluck men from the present world and cast them into the spirit world?

  No.

  The carpet of burned grass had cooled; its ashy stubble had been disheveled by strong winds; green shoots had found the courage to poke their heads above the scorched ground. She dismounted, tossed the reins over her mount’s head. Her mare nipped one of the pack horses, who kicked; she separated the steppe horse and hobbled her, then trudged on aching feet back up into the stones. The soles of her boots were almost burned away. Her clothes shed flakes of soot. Her hands oozed blood from a score of hairline cuts. Her chest stung with each breath she inhaled.

  There lay what remained of Edek, flesh eaten away by the unearthly fire and skeleton torn and scattered by beasts. Cut ropes lay in heaps at the base of three stones; the litter had been mauled by animals but was mostly intact. Their gear was gone, picked up to the last knife and bridle and leather bottle. The ashes of the campfire were ground into the earth. The wind gentled as dusk sighed down over them.

  The moon shouldered up out of the east, round and bright, the full moon on which she was to have been wed. The moon could not lie. Half a month had passed since the night of the sword moon. The witch had woven a path between that time and this time, and they had ridden down it.

  A whistle shrilled. Standing at the edge of the stones, Kereka saw the witch, standing now and waving to catch her attention. Trusting fool! It might well be easy to kill her and take the bearded man’s head while he was injured and weak, before the witch fully healed him, if he could be healed. She could then ride back to her mother’s tent and her father’s tribe and declare herself a man. She knew what to expect from a man’s life, just as she knew what a woman’s life entailed.

  So what kind of life did these foreigners live, with their sorcery and their crossbows and the way they handed a shovel from one to the other, sharing the same work, maybe even sharing the same glory? It was a question for which she had no answer. Not yet.

  She went back to the litter and grabbed the leather tow lines. Pulled them taut over her own shoulders and tugged. Like uncertainty, the burden was unwieldy, but she was stubborn and it was not too heavy for her to manage.

  Could she trust a witch? Would a witch and a foreigner ever trust her?

  Pulling the litter behind her, she walked across the charred earth and down through the tall grass to find out.

  Bound Man

  Mary Robinette Kowal

  Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Shades of Milk and Honey and Glamour in Glass. In 2008, she won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer and in 2011 her story “For Want of a Nail” won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story. Her work has also been a finalist for the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, and several Year’s Best anthologies, as well as in her collection Scenting the Dark and Othe
r Stories from Subterranean Press. She served two terms as the Vice President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Mary lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters.

  Light dappled through the trees in the family courtyard, painting shadows on the paving stones. Li Reiko knelt by her son to look at his scraped knee.

  “I just scratched it.” Nawi squirmed under her hands.

  Her daughter, Aya, leaned over her shoulder studying the healing. “Maybe Mama will show you her armor after she heals you.”

  Nawi stopped wiggling. “Really?”

  Reiko shot Aya a warning look, but her little boy’s dark eyes shone with excitement. Reiko smiled. “Really.” What did tradition matter? “Now let me heal your knee.” She laid her hand on the shallow wound.

  “Ow.”

  “Shush.” Reiko closed her eyes and rose in the dark space behind them.

  In her mind’s eye, Reiko took her time with the ritual, knowing it took less time than it appeared. In a heartbeat, green fire flared out to the walls of her mind. She dissolved into it as she focused on healing her son.

  When the wound closed beneath her hand, she sank to the surface of her mind.

  “There.” She tousled Nawi’s hair. “That wasn’t bad, was it?”

  “It tickled.” He wrinkled his nose. “Will you show me your armor now?”

  She sighed. She should not encourage his interest in the martial arts. His work would be with the histories that men kept, and yet...“Watch.”

  Pulling the smooth black surface out of the ether, she manifested her armor. It sheathed her like silence in the night. Aya watched with obvious anticipation for the day when she earned her own armor. Nawi’s face, full of sharp yearning for something he would never have, cut Reiko’s heart like a new blade.

  “Can I see your sword?”

  She let her armor vanish into thought. “No.” Reiko brushed his hair from his eyes. “It’s my turn to hide, right?”

  Halldór twisted in his saddle, trying to ease the kink in his back. When the questing party reached the Parliament, he could remove the weight hanging between his shoulders.

  With each step his horse took across the moss-covered lava field, the strange blade bumped against his spine, reminding him that he carried a legend. None of the runes or sheep entrails he read before their quest had foretold the ease with which they fulfilled the first part of the prophecy. They had found the Chooser of the Slain’s narrow blade wrapped in linen, buried beneath an abandoned elf-house. In that dark room, the sword’s hard silvery metal—longer than any of their bronze swords—had seemed lit by the moon.

  Lárus pulled his horse alongside Halldór. “Will the ladies be waiting for us, do you think?”

  “Maybe for you, my lord, but not for me.”

  “Nonsense. Women love the warrior-priest. ‘Strong and sensitive.’” He snorted through his mustache. “Just comb your hair so you don’t look like a straw man.”

  A horse screamed behind them. Halldór turned, expecting to see its leg caught in one of the thousands of holes between the rocks. Instead, armed men swarmed from the gullies between the rocks, hacking at the riders. Bandits.

  Halldór spun his horse to help Lárus and the others fight them off.

  Lárus shouted, “Protect the Sword.”

  At the Duke’s command, Halldór cursed and turned his horse from the fight, galloping across the rocks. Behind him, men cried out as they protected his escape. His horse twisted along the narrow paths between stones. It stopped abruptly, avoiding a chasm. Halldór looked back.

  Scant lengths ahead of the bandits, Lárus rode, slumped in his saddle. Blood stained his cloak. The other men hung behind Lárus, protecting the Duke as long as possible.

  Behind them, the bandits closed the remaining distance across the lava fields.

  Halldór kicked his horse’s side, driving it around the chasm. His horse stumbled sickeningly beneath him. Its leg snapped, caught between rocks. Halldór kicked free of the saddle as the horse screamed. He rolled clear. The rocky ground slammed the sword into his back. His face passed over the edge of the chasm. Breathless, he recoiled from the drop.

  As he scrambled to his feet, Lárus thundered up. Without wasting a beat, Lárus flung himself from the saddle and tossed Halldór the reins. “Get the Sword to Parliament!”

  Halldór grabbed the reins, swinging into the saddle. If they died returning to Parliament, did it matter that they had found the Sword? “We must invoke the Sword!”

  Lárus’s right arm hung, blood-drenched, by his side, but he faced the bandits with his left. “Go!”

  Halldór yanked the Sword free of its wrappings. For the first time in six thousand years, the light of the sun fell on the silvery blade bringing fire to its length. It vibrated in his hands.

  The first bandit reached Lárus and forced him back.

  Halldór chanted the runes of power, petitioning the Chooser of the Slain.

  Time stopped.

  Reiko hid from her children, blending into the shadows of the courtyard with more urgency than she felt in combat. To do less would insult them.

  “Ready or not, here I come!” Nawi spun from the tree and sprinted past her hiding place. Aya turned more slowly and studied the courtyard. Reiko smiled as her daughter sniffed the air, looking for tracks. Her son crashed through the bushes, kicking leaves with each footstep.

  As another branch cracked under Nawi’s foot, Reiko stifled the urge to correct his appalling technique. She would speak with his tutor about what the woman was teaching him. He was a boy, but that was no reason to neglect his education.

  Watching Aya find Reiko’s initial footprints and track them away from where she hid, Reiko slid from her hiding place. She walked across the courtyard to the fountain. This was a rule with her children; to make up for the size difference, she could not run.

  She paced closer to the sparkling water, masking her sounds with its babble. From her right, Nawi shouted, “Have you found her?”

  “No, silly!” Aya shook her head and stopped. She put her tiny hands on her hips, staring at the ground. “Her tracks stop here.”

  Reiko and her daughter were the same distance from the fountain, but on opposite sides. If Aya were paying attention, she would realize her mother had retraced her tracks and jumped from the fountain to the paving stones circling the grassy center of the courtyard. Reiko took three more steps before Aya turned.

  As her daughter turned, Reiko felt, more than heard, her son on her left, reaching for her. Clever. He had misdirected her attention with his noise in the shrubbery. She fell forward, using gravity to drop beneath his hands. Rolling on her shoulder, she somersaulted, then launched to her feet as Aya ran toward her.

  Nawi grabbed for her again. With a child on each side, Reiko danced and dodged closer to the fountain. She twisted from their grasp, laughing with them each time they missed her. Their giggles echoed through the courtyard.

  The world tipped sideways and vibrated. Reiko stumbled as pain ripped through her spine.

  Nawi’s hand clapped against her side. “I got her!”

  Fire engulfed Reiko.

  The courtyard vanished.

  Time began again.

  The sword in Halldór’s hands thrummed with life. Fire from the sunset engulfed the sword and split the air. With a keening cry, the air opened and a form dropped through, silhouetted against a haze of fire. Horses and men screamed in terror.

  When the fire died away, a woman stood between Halldór and the bandits.

  Halldór’s heart sank. Where was the Chooser of the Slain? Where was the warrior the sword had petitioned?

  A bandit snarled a laughing oath and rushed toward them. The others followed him with their weapons raised.

  The woman snatched the sword from Halldór’s hands. In that brief moment, when he stared at her wild face, he realized that he had succeeded in calling Li Reiko, the Chooser of the Slain.

  Then she turned.
The air around her rippled with a heat haze as armor, dark as night, materialized around her body. He watched her dance with deadly grace, bending and twisting away from the bandits’ blows. Without seeming thought, with movement as precise as ritual, she danced with death as her partner. Her sword slid through the bodies of the bandits.

  Halldór dropped to his knees, thanking the gods for sending her. He watched the point of her sword trace a line, like the path of entrails on the church floor. The line of blood led to the next moment, the next and the next, as if each man’s death was predestined.

  Then she turned her sword on him.

  Her blade descended, burning with the fire of the setting sun. She stopped as if she had run into a wall, with the point touching Halldór’s chest.

  Why had she stopped? If his blood was the price for saving Lárus, so be it. Her arm trembled. She grimaced, but did not move the sword closer.

  Her face, half-hidden by her helm, was dark with rage. “Where am I?” Her words were crisp, more like a chant than common speech.

  Holding still, Halldór said, “We are on the border of the Parliament lands, Li Reiko.”

  Her dark eyes, slanted beneath angry lids, widened. She pulled back and her armor rippled, vanishing into thought. Skin, tanned like the smoothest leather stretched over her wide cheekbones. Her hair hung in a heavy, black braid down her back. Halldór’s pulse sang in his veins.

  Only the gods in sagas had hair the color of the Allmother’s night. Had he needed proof he had called the Chooser of the Slain, the inhuman black hair would have convinced him of that.

  He bowed his head. “All praise to you, Great One. Grant us your blessings.”