The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy

by Gene Wolfe

  Startled, Staun checked his thrust and pulled the sword back. Puzzled, he lowered his gaze.

  He was moving very slowly and stupidly, Siria saw. That was surely, she thought, because he was doing what the Undead Lord wanted, rather than what he wanted.

  She flung herself forward, between Staun’s legs; before he could react she had rolled over onto her back and taken aim.

  “I’m sorry, Staun,” she said. Then she kicked as hard as she could, with her leg fully extended.

  Her foot hit soft tissue, and Staun’s breath came out in an astonished and agonized whoosh. He crumpled forward, dropping the Sword of Light.

  Siria whirled and grabbed for the Sword, snatched it away and pulled herself out from beneath poor Staun’s crumpling form.

  The others were turning, trying to surround her, but they, too, were slow and stupid, as if wading heavy-laden through deep water. She rolled clear, still clutching the sword, then leapt to her feet and ran toward the sarcophagus.

  The Undead Lord glowered down at her, and a voice spoke from nowhere, inside her head.

  You will not defeat me, it said. Not again! I will not be...

  Then she plunged the Sword of Light into the black shape above the sarcophagus.

  It exploded; black vapor swept over her, snatching her breath away, and she fell backward, gasping. She landed sitting on the floor, legs splayed, left hand behind her hip—but her right hand still held the Sword of Light, and she still wore King Derebeth’s armor. She did not lose consciousness, or collapse further; instead she sat, dazed, for a moment, while the vapor dissipated and the menace of the Undead Lord passed away for another four centuries.

  And then it was all over, and she had a bruise on her right hip and had skinned several knuckles. Her foot hurt, and her eyes stung. Somewhere behind her Staun was rolling on the floor, moaning.

  “Well,” Captain Lethis said at her left shoulder, “I suppose we had better get the lid back on that thing, then pack up the sword and mail for next time.”

  “This time,” Uril said, “I think we had better make sure everyone knows just what a skinny little fellow King Derebeth was!”

  Siria looked up at Uril, but could not yet find her breath to speak.

  “You were very brave, young lady,” Lethis said. “And clever, too.”

  “You probably saved our lives,” Fellan added.

  Still looking at Uril, Siria managed to say, “Then perhaps someone could buy me a dinner when we get back to Splittree.”

  “Well, it won’t be Staun,” Orpac said. “I don’t think he’ll want anything to do with any women for awhile, and I’m sure he won’t want you around!”

  “I’m sorry,” Siria said, turning to look over her shoulder. Staun was now sitting with his back against the wall, still breathing raggedly.

  “Don’t be,” Uril said. “As Fellan said, you saved us all.”

  Siria looked up at him again. “Then you’ll buy me that dinner?”

  Uril laughed. “You can buy your own,” he said.

  Siria shook her head. “No, I can’t,” she began.

  “Yes, you can,” Uril said. “Once we get back to the Citadel, anyway. You’ve just earned yourself full pay for this errand—hadn’t you realized?”

  Startled, Siria looked at Lethis, who was helping Grulli and Worna lift the stone lid of the sarcophagus back into place.

  “Of course,” Lethis said. “And you’ll be offered a place at the Citadel. It’s the usual reward for disposing of dangerous magic. The Council prefers to keep anyone who can handle themselves that well where they can watch them.”

  Siria’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged.

  That meant no more begging. No more cozying up to men she didn’t like in order to scrounge a meal.

  Her mouth closed; then she said, “But that’s at the Citadel.”

  Uril laughed again. “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll buy you dinner in Splittree. And maybe we’ll talk a little, get to know each other. Here you’ve saved my life and I don’t even know your name!”

  “Siria,” Siria said, with the broadest smile she had allowed herself in ages. “And I think I’d like that.

  THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE, by Lord Dunsany

  In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the centaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the centaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father, Jyshak, in the years of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold and set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, and said no word, but walked from his mother’s cavern. And he took with him too that clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that in its time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and for twenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs waged their fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, but retreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of the gods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimate armoury. He took it and strode away, and his mother only sighed and let him go.

  She knew that today he would not drink at the stream coming down from the terraces of Varpa Niger, the inner land of the mountains, that today he would not wonder awhile at the sunset and afterwards trot back to the cavern again to sleep on rushes pulled by rivers that know not Man. She knew that it was with him as it had been of old with his father, and with Goom the father of Jyshak, and long ago with the gods. Therefore she only sighed and let him go.

  But he, coming out from the cavern that was his home, went for the first time over the little stream, and going round the corner of the crags saw glittering beneath him the mundane plain. And the wind of the autumn that was gilding the world, rushing up the slopes of the mountain, beat cold on his naked flanks. He raised his head and snorted.

  “I am a man-horse now!” he shouted aloud; and leaping from crag to crag he galloped by valley and chasm, by torrent-bed and scar of avalanche, until he came to the wandering leagues of the plain, and left behind him for ever the Athraminaurian mountains.

  His goal was Zretazoola, the city of Sombelenë. What legend of Sombelenë’s inhuman beauty or of the wonder of her mystery had ever floated over the mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of the centaurs’ race, the Athraminaurian mountains, I do not know. Yet in the blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-current rather, that is somehow akin to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered: and this spring-tide of current that visits the blood of man comes from the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, the old; it takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to ancient song. So it may be that Shepperalk’s fabulous blood stirred in those lonely mountains away at the edge of the world to rumours that only the airy twilight knew and only confided secretly to the bat, for Shepperalk was more legendary even than man. Certain it was that he headed from the first for the city of Zretazoola, where Sombelenë in her temple dwelt; though all the mundane plain, its rivers and mountains, lay between Shepperalk’s home and the city he sought.

  When first the feet of the centaur touched the grass of that soft alluvial earth he blew for joy upon the silver horn, he pranced and caracoled, he gambolled over the leagues; pace came to him like a maiden with a lamp, a new and beautiful wonder; the wind laughed as it passed him. He put his head down low to the scent of the flowers, he lifted it up to be nearer the unseen stars, he revelled through kingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye that dwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he felt as he galloped? He felt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana; for lightness like those gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds ’twixt heaven and sea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some bird racing up from the morning to sing in some city’s spires before daylight comes. He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a song; the lightnings of his legendary sires, the earli
er gods, began to mix with his blood; his hooves thundered. He came to the cities of men, and all men trembled, for they remembered the ancient mythical wars, and now they dreaded new battles and feared for the race of man. Not by Clio are these wars recorded; history does not know them, but what of that? Not all of us have sat at historians’ feet, but all have learned fable and myth at their mothers’ knees. And there were none that did not fear strange wars when they saw Shepperalk swerve and leap along the public ways. So he passed from city to city.

  By night he lay down unpanting in the reeds of some marsh or a forest; before dawn he rose triumphant, and hugely drank of some river in the dark, and splashing out of it would trot to some high place to find the sunrise, and to send echoing eastwards the exultant greetings of his jubilant horn. And lo! the sunrise coming up from the echoes, and the plains new-lit by the day, and the leagues spinning by like water flung from a top, and that gay companion, the loudly laughing wind, and men and the fears of men and their little cities; and, after that, great rivers and waste spaces and huge new hills, and then new lands beyond them, and more cities of men, and always the old companion, the glorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom slipt by, and still his breath was even. “It is a golden thing to gallop on good turf in one’s youth,” said the young man-horse, the centaur. “Ha, ha,” said the wind of the hills, and the winds of the plain answered.

  Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise men consulted parchments, astrologers sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtle prophecies. “Is he not swift?” said the young. “How glad he is,” said children.

  Night after night brought him sleep, and day after day lit his gallop, till he came to the lands of the Athalonian men who live by the edges of the mundane plain, and from them he came to the lands of legend again such as those in which he was cradled on the other side of the world, and which fringe the marge of the world and mix with the twilight. And there a mighty thought came into his untired heart, for he knew that he neared Zretazoola now, the city of Sombelenë.

  It was late in the day when he neared it, and clouds coloured with evening rolled low on the plain before him; he galloped on into their golden mist, and when it hid from his eyes the sight of things, the dreams in his heart awoke and romantically he pondered all those rumours that used to come to him from Sombelenë, because of the fellowship of fabulous things. She dwelt (said evening secretly to the bat) in a little temple by a lone lakeshore. A grove of cypresses screened her from the city, from Zretazoola of the climbing ways. And opposite her temple stood her tomb, her sad lake-sepulchre with open door, lest her amazing beauty and the centuries of her youth should ever give rise to the heresy among men that lovely Sombelenë was immortal: for only her beauty and her lineage were divine.

  Her father had been half centaur and half god; her mother was the child of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids;—she was more mystical than Woman.

  Her beauty was as a dream, was as a song; the one dream of a lifetime dreamed on enchanted dews, the one song sung to some city by a deathless bird blown far from his native coasts by storm in Paradise. Dawn after dawn on mountains of romance or twilight after twilight could never equal her beauty; all the glow-worms had not the secret among them nor all the stars of night; poets had never sung it nor evening guessed its meaning; the morning envied it, it was hidden from lovers.

  She was unwed, unwooed.

  The lions came not to woo her because they feared her strength, and the gods dared not love her because they knew she must die.

  This was what evening had whispered to the bat, this was the dream in the heart of Shepperalk as he cantered blind through the mist. And suddenly there at his hooves in the dark of the plain appeared the cleft in the legendary lands, and Zretazoola sheltering in the cleft, and sunning herself in the evening.

  Swiftly and craftily he bounded down by the upper end of the cleft, and entering Zretazoola by the outer gate which looks out sheer on the stars, he galloped suddenly down the narrow streets. Many that rushed out on to balconies as he went clattering by, many that put their heads from glittering windows, are told of in olden song. Shepperalk did not tarry to give greetings or to answer challenges from martial towers, he was down through the earthward gateway like the thunderbolt of his sires, and, like Leviathan who has leapt at an eagle, he surged into the water between temple and tomb.

  He galloped with half-shut eyes up the temple-steps, and, only seeing dimly through his lashes, seized Sombelenë by the hair, undazzled as yet by her beauty, and so haled her away; and, leaping with her over the floorless chasm where the waters of the lake fall unremembered away into a hole in the world, took her we know not where, to be her slave for all centuries that are allowed to his race.

  Three blasts he gave as he went upon that silver horn that is the world-old treasure of the centaurs. These were his wedding bells.

  THE WOMAN, by Tanith Lee

  1 - The Suitor

  Down the terraces of the Crimson City they carried her, in her chair of bone and gold.

  The citizens stood in ranks, ten or twenty men deep.

  They watched.

  Some wept.

  Some, suddenly oblivious of the guards, thrust forward shouting, calling, a few even reciting lines of ancient poetry. They were swept back again. As if a steel broom could push away the sea of love.

  But Leopard did none of these things.

  He simply stood there, looking at her. At Her. He thought, and even as he thought it he chided himself, telling himself he was quite mad to think it, that her eyes for one tiniest splinter of a fractured second—met his. Knew his—knew him. Knew Leopard.

  But then the chair, borne by its six strong porters, had gone by.

  All he could see were the scarlet, ivory and gold of its hood, and the wide shoulders of the last two bearers.

  Many of the citizens had fallen on the ground, lamenting and crying, cursing, begging for death. Like a tree which had withstood a lightning strike, Leopard remained on his feet. He was upright in all senses, bodily, mentally, in character and in his moral station. Also sexually.

  For he had seen her. At last. His predestined love.

  The Woman.

  * * * *

  In the village where he had grown up, the birth of Leopard had been a great disappointment. He had been aware of a coldness among his family from an early age. By the time he was six, his mother was dead of bearing another son, and Leopard began to see neither he, nor his newcomer brother, were liked.

  One day, when he was a little older, and had been playing ‘catch’ with the boys on the flat earthen street, under the tall rows of scent trees, Leopard heard one of the village’s pair of ancient hags muttering to her sister: “Accursed, that boy. And, too, the infant boy that came after him.”

  “Why’s that?” quacked the second hag.

  “Ah. The mother was frightened by a leopard when she carried that older one. So he was turned into something useless.”

  “And the infant?”

  “Think of his name,” said the first hag.

  Then both old women nodded and creaked away into their hut. Leopard felt ashamed. He had vaguely thought he was called Leopard for the beast’s silken handsomeness and dangerous hunter’s skills. It would seem not. While his poor little brother, Copper Coin—had Mother been scared by a piece of money?

  Copper Coin, however, rather than cursed, actually proved very useful later on, when he became popular for his beauty, and their family grew both respected and well-off.

  Today, several years after, Leopard removed himself from the crowd and strode away along the wide white streets of the Crimson City, to the wine-house Copper Coin now owned. Leopard had a thing of wonder to tell Copper. Leopard’s heart buzzed and sang within him.

  * * * *

  A single enormous scent tree reared outside the wine-house; it was somewhere in the region of three hundred feet tall. At this season it rained down orange blossoms that smelled of incense and honey
.

  Patrons sat in the courtyard to catch the perfume on their hair, skin and clothes. And while they did this, of course, ate and drank. Trade was bustling.

  Inside, Leopard had to wait. His beautiful brother was occupied for another quarter of an hour with a favoured client.

  Leopard drank hot green alcohol and ate two or three river shrimps roasted with pepper. Seeing who he was, the food and drink were on the house.

  Then the client, dreamy-eyed and flushed, rattled down from the upper apartment. He passed Leopard without seeing him though Leopard had met the man before. He was a prince of the High Family of the Nine, immensely rich, always courteous and good-natured. But also he was crazily in love with Copper, and usually came out of the bedroom in a trance, between shining joy and dark despair. This morning Leopard sympathized. For now he, Leopard, was also insane with love.

  The servant took Leopard upstairs.

  Copper, just fresh from the bath and belted in a dressing-gown of embroidered white silk, lay on a couch. His hair, worn some inches longer than any merely male man would wear it, coiled over his shoulders, gleaming black as sharkskin.

  “Gorgeous as ever,” remarked Leopard, between praise and banter. “Prince Nine tottered down, almost dead of love.”

  “So I should think. We were together three hours. It wouldn’t look good for me, would it, if he pranced out bored and burping. But you,” added Copper, “you’re pale as a marble death-stone.”

  Leopard stared at Copper. Then Leopard went and kneeled at his brother’s feet and laid his head in Copper’s lap. Murmuring gently, Copper stroked Leopard’s own hair, shortly thick as a cat’s fur. There was nothing sexual between them. Copper had become like a mother-sister for Leopard at about the same time Copper also found his own inner femaleness.

  “Ssh, what is it, darling?”

  “Oh gods of the seventy hells—“