Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXII

by Cirone, Patricia B.

  With a scream of rage she wrenched her arm down, dropping the knife. Ryther's insidious will was vanished from her mind.

  Yet his magic still held her pinned against the wall.

  Ryther staggered back a step, wincing in pain. "Ahh! You are both stronger and cleverer than I thought." He glanced at the red woman. "Do you raise her yourself? No...she was one of mine. An experiment gone awry." His gaze returned to Caina. "A pity you're not younger. You would have made a splendid apprentice." He gestured again, raising his hand. A block of stone rose from the floor. Ryther spun his fingers, and the block began to circle him, slowly at first, yet faster and faster, like a slinger whirling a stone, until the block flashed around him in a gray blur.

  It would crush her skull like a melon.

  Caina could not pull away from the wall, but her arms and legs were free, and one of the metal tables was just within reach. She drew back her legs and slammed her boots into the table. It toppled over, the body tumbling to the floor, and smashed into one of the wooden shelves. The shelf exploded, the glass jars shattering, their vile elixirs spraying over the floor. One jar sprayed a foul-smelling yellow ooze over one of the torches.

  But instead of going out, the torch exploded in a snarling green fireball, spraying glass splinters in all directions. Ryther stepped back in alarm, throwing an arm over his face. Caina pressed her face against her shoulder, points of pain flaring in her cheek and neck and shoulder.

  But for an instant, Ryther's will wavered, and she was free.

  Caina hit the floor running. Ryther whirled, snarled a curse, and thrust out his open palm. The floating block of stone hurtled at her. Caina threw herself to the floor, rolling, and the stone block exploded against the wall. She came to one knee, drew a knife, and flung it. It flew true and struck Ryther's throat, or it would have, if not for his blasted wardspell. Ryther gestured again, and Caina dodged. The force of his will sent her spinning, and she bounced hard off the wall.

  The red woman floated before her.

  No! Not steel!

  The cords on the specter's neck stood out from the effort of her scream. Caina jumped to her feet, fighting through the dizziness, and ducked behind one of the tables. An instant later the jagged remains of the wooden shelf flew overhead, driven by the lash of Ryther's spells.

  No. Not that. Not that way.

  Caina looked at the red woman. "What?" she managed, weakly.

  Not steel. I tried. To save. My children. With steel. I couldn't. His magic. The wardspell. Not steel! Not steel! The ghost sagged, as if the effort of speaking from beyond the veil of death had exhausted her.

  Not steel? What did that mean? Caina's knives were steel, and the wardspell blocked them with ease. But could the wardspell block living flesh? Or wood, or stone?

  Caina didn't know, but it was time to find out.

  She scooped up a chunk of shattered masonry and sprang to her feet. Ryther's eyes narrowed, and his hand came up. His magic hammered into Caina, tight as a vice, but not before she threw the broken stone. It slammed into Ryther's face, and the magus stumbled back with a shriek. Two of his teeth fell to the floor.

  By the time he recovered his balance, Caina was on him. She slammed a palm into his face, snapping his head back, and drove a fist into his gut. The magus doubled over, and Caina put a hammer fist into the back of his neck. He dropped to his knees, and Caina gripped his temples.

  "You can't," coughed Ryther, "you dare not, I am a brother of the Magisterium, I..."

  She wrenched her arms and snapped his neck. Ryther fell dead to the floor. Caina managed two staggering steps and threw up. After a moment she looked up to see Ryther's glassy, dead eyes staring at her.

  "And that," she croaked, "is why the Magisterium doesn't rule the Empire."

  * * * *

  Afterwards, it was easy enough to slip away. Someone had discovered the corpses in the study, and the mansion had gone into an uproar. Worse, the Governor seemed to have gone mad, babbling about voices in his head. With Ryther missing and Druzen incapacitated, by the time anyone thought to question Countess Marianna Nereide, Caina would be on the other side of the Empire. By then, Varia Province would have a new governor, and perhaps Druzen would have recovered enough to indict the Magisterium.

  The ghosts were waiting for her.

  Hundreds of them stood before the mansion, pale as mist in the moonlight. The red woman led them, but she was red no longer, her wounds healed, her gown white once more. Besides her stood two children, smiling.

  Thank you, whispered the ghosts, their gratitude echoing inside Caina's skull.

  "Go," said Caina. She managed to smile. "Do not linger here on my account. Go."

  As one, the ghosts bowed, and then vanished like mist swept away by the wind.

  Caina stood for a moment, thoughtful, her wounds throbbing. The unavenged ghosts, the murdered dead, could not avenge themselves.

  But she was a different sort of Ghost.

  Smiling, shadow-woven cloak wrapped tight about her, she vanished into the night.

  The Decisive Princess

  by Catherine Mintz

  Catherine Mintz's work has appeared in a number of publications, including Interzone, Asimov's, Weird Tales, and the anthology WHITLEY STRIEBER'S ALIENS. Often it reflects her interest in languages, anthropology, and the history of genre literature.

  Many of us may remember Frank R. Stockton's "The Lady, or the Tiger" from school. Catherine says that, being a man, he was wise to end his story before the princess made her choice. He probably was, but I always felt that he hadn't really finished the story. I like what she's done with the idea.

  #

  There was once a barbaric king, who, aspiring to be well-thought-of by his more civilized neighbors—the source of goods which the king resold at an extraordinary markup further north—instituted a novel method for dealing with those guilty of crimes against the state. He combined elements of southern law with his own thoughts in such a way that he could, with pride, show the resulting spectacle to envoys. In this manner he provided both an entertainment and a not-too-subtle assurance that he was under their sway, something that he had no intention of allowing to happen.

  His method was to place the accused traitor into the arena that his southern neighbors had been happy to construct for him. It had cost not much more than three times what the same contractors would have charged had it been built on their own territory supplying their own laborers, instead of in his territory using his farm folk in their off-season. The contractors and their sponsors thought the king was not aware of this and he did not disabuse them of their notion.

  The accused had to choose between two huge soundproof doors. Behind one was a fighting bull, pricked and goaded to the highest pitch of fury. Behind the other was a lady of the nobility, perhaps not the prettiest or the most accomplished—for those wed early—but nonetheless of good education, breeding, and with a substantial dowry, her gift from the king for accepting an arranged marriage instead of one of her own choosing. She was always a woman who would be a fit wife for an ambitious man, a woman whose family would see to their son-in-law's success—and his loyalty.

  The barbarian king had but one child, a daughter, whom he had caused to be reared in every way as a prince. It was his intention that she, in due course, be the linchpin of a suitable alliance, yet defend her interests and those of her people against those of her husband and his folk. A fine match was in negotiation for a prince from the south, one second in line to a throne. In those days, when life was quite uncertain, such a one was a man of excellent prospects that might be improved by some judicious pruning of his family tree.

  However, to bring the match to fruition, the king knew, his daughter must be delivered to her future husband a virgin, for such was the fashion of the southern lands where inheritance went from father to son. For a man to be certain a woman's child was of his own flesh, he must marry a virgin and keep her from all other men. The king, who was king because he was a si
ster's son to the former king, had his doubts about this, knowing women and their ways, but if politics dictated that his daughter remain chaste, chaste she would be.

  With the southern monarch's envoys already sighted on the road, he found the princess deep in private conversation with a handsome, poor, and doubtless ambitious warlord who came from farther north than the king was certain his own power extended. The northern border was always a troublesome area, where it was often wisest to simply overlook various things as long as fealty was sworn. Nonetheless, the king declared this might-be lover an oath-breaking traitor and condemned him to the trial of the arena.

  To the great wonder of the court and populace, his daughter, more prince than princess, made no complaint and the king, emboldened by her silence, selected as the young man's prospective bride one of her handmaidens, one whose favors the monarch had often sought and failed to win. It was his thought that, once married, the wife might be persuadable where the maid was not. Those the king found inconvenient often had bad fortune and it was whispered that his reach was not short of his grasp and his grasp was often deadly.

  It was with pleasant anticipation that the king took his place of honor at the arena. The only blot on the day was that his daughter chose to appear veiled from head to toe. Being no fool, he had her drape back the black gauze for an instant that he, loving father that he was, might be sure of her. She had only one ring, a fine ruby much like the ones he wore, and that she toyed with restlessly. Her face, though calm, was pale as ivory, and her ebon eyes were lustrous, as if with unshed tears. In her saffron gown and gold-worked scarlet girdle, backed by the black cloud of her veil, she was stunning. The king heard the envoys—who had not seen the prize for which they bargained—murmur appreciation.

  Presently, as the pomp and ceremony that might precede a funeral or a bridal went forward, the king became absorbed in delightful thoughts of the future. Serving girls came and went, bringing sweetmeats, wine, and sherbets. The southern envoys chatted among themselves, making complimentary remarks on the anticipated spectacle, comments that they intended to be overheard. The king, pleased, lolled against his cushions, waiting for the fanfare that would herald the moment of decision.

  When it came, the might-be lover and therefore-possible traitor stood forth barefoot, in tunic and short cloak, weaponless. The king knew a moment of regret that events must play out as they would, for the man excited much favorable comment among the female companions of the envoys. Southern princes were reputedly soft with the comforts and lax ways of the south, not to mention that several were known to have handsome, painted pageboys in their households...

  His daughter was not a woman to be happy with a man who was less than virile and there was, there always had been, that weakness on the northern border of his kingdom. However, the duties of a ruler often require that the joys of the marriage bed be, at best, tepid. Even as the king mused on his own marriage, which had produced only one child before his wife retired, permanently, to her own rooms under the protection of her own guards, the trumpets sounded again.

  The king saw, in the corner of his eye, his daughter make a tiny decisive movement, and he smiled in his beard. She was indeed a prince. He had expected she would know how the lots had fallen. The monarch had not bothered to find out since either outcome was pleasing to him. The right door it was then. Had she chosen to see her lover trampled and impaled by the enraged bull? Or had she chosen a lifetime of seeing another woman, one who had been subject to her, have the man she might have desired?

  Men pulled the ropes that opened the chosen door: it was the bull that came, snorting and stamping. The king felt a great satisfaction that his daughter was as tough-minded as he, a satisfaction that turned to bewilderment as the young man took off his cape and waved it at the beast, which charged the piece of red cloth. The man whipped his cloak up and out of the way as the bull thundered by. It wheeled in a cloud of dust, looking for a target for its pain and rage.

  Again the man waved his cape, and the crowd roared as the bull passed the man by, futilely attempting to hook the fluttering thing with its horns. A third time the scene was repeated, and by then the entire crowd was upon its feet, beating upon the railings in excitement. Not least among them the southern envoys the king wished to impress. "The gods speak!" cried one and then cried all.

  The king stared, uncertain how to retrieve the victim from the arena, for retrieved he must be, with the envoys as witnesses. "Father," said his daughter, and she knelt before him as if to plead for mercy. He sighed with relief: she would help him by letting him be the indulgent father rather than the strict monarch. "Yes," he said and bent close to listen.

  She laid her hands, the hands he had so often held when she was a child, upon his. The king felt a sting. His arm went numb, to the elbow, to the shoulder, then to the heart. He who had had taught his daughter all the ways of princes, sagged back against his cushions, dying.

  The crowd, enthralled by the spectacle in the arena, saw nothing. His daughter rose, raised her arms, flinging wide the black veil so it obscured any view of the king. She stood forth at the railing next to the royal standard, proud in saffron and scarlet, and gestured. The left-hand door, the door that supposedly hid the bride-to-be, opened, man-wide and no further, then closed behind the northern warlord.

  The dusty, blood-streak beast gored the unyielding planks. Finally, fury spent, it ambled down the passage to its stall. As the bull went on its way, the princess rested one long-fingered hand upon her scarlet girdle and smiled. It could stay, muzzle in manger, until it was sacrificed at the old King's funeral feast, a feast that would also be her wedding banquet, for behind the gold-worked silk of her girdle lay a future queen of her people or lord of his father's. She would have a secure northern border and the man she desired.

  For all the new queen's tears as a serving girl discovered her father's fatal accident with his ring, some were thoughtful. The lady's composure when the northern warlord knelt and offered his condolences, his gratitude for his salvation, and accepted her offer of her hand in marriage was noticed by some. However, the wise majority paid no attention at all, for they remembered the ways of the dead king, her father, and knew that the princess had been reared as a prince.

  As for the southern envoys, they went home to their court with nothing to show for their embassy, except for the whispered observation of the most senior of them in their king's ear, that it would be as well to be on good terms with those barbarians to the north, for they were nearly as clever as civilized men, far more ruthless, and reckless to a degree never in the south, for they dared to be ruled by a woman.

  Child of the Father

  by Alanna Morland

  After living in several US states and two European countries (courtesy of Uncle Sam), Alanna Morland now lives in Maryland with her husband, children, the world's most brilliant grandchildren, and the requisite two cats. She has published two novels, LEOPARD LORD and SHACKLE AND SWORD. Two cats and two novels—does this mean she has to get another cat in order to write another novel?

  This is her first short story, and I knew I wanted to buy it when I not only remembered it the day after I read it, but kept thinking about it. Despite some stiff competition, this story has one of the strangest twists in this volume.

  #

  "Should we geld him first, or just skewer him?" the dark-haired woman asked.

  I held very still. In my opinion, this is a wise thing to do when you're flat on your back and two women have swords on you, one at your throat and the other at your crotch.

  To be fair, I suppose they thought they were doing a reasonable thing. After all, they had come back to their camp to find Anya pinned underneath me, fighting to throw me off (and succeeding, too, just as they grabbed me by the back of the neck). And I must have been enjoying it entirely too much, or they couldn't have come up on us like that without my noticing. But, dammit, Anya's a lively armful, and I'm no eunuch!

  I glanced—very carefully!—over to
my right. Anya was sitting up, rocking back and forth with her hands over her face and making strangled noises.

  "Geld him, of course," the gray-haired one said. "Isn't that appropriate for a rapist?" She grinned and jabbed the sword harder into my crotch.

  Stupid! If they'd bothered to look, they could see that both of us were still fully clothed. "Anya!" I yelled. (No matter what they tell you, I did not yelp. There is a difference.) "Tell them what was going on!"

  Anya shook her head and continued making those weird noises. She did take her hands down from her face, and I thought I caught the glitter of tears.

  "Nooo..." she choked out. "He—he—hehehahahooo."

  She was laughing, laughing so hard she was crying. The other two let up the pressure just a fraction, looked at her, then back at each other. That was all I was waiting for. I twisted and rolled into the younger woman, knocking her off her feet as I scrambled to mine, snatching for my dagger as I went. The sword at my crotch dragged across my thigh, ripping my breeches and slicing my leg. One against two, dagger against swords, and me already wounded didn't make for great odds, but it was better than being gelded.

  The prospect of out-and-out battle must have sobered Anya, for she gasped out through the giggles, "Iriana, Kalia, stop! I'm sorry, I—Lar, I am, really! But it was so funny, the look on your face!"

  "My face isn't what I'm worried about!" I snapped. "Look, you two, I was teaching her a defensive throw. Would she be howling like that if I were trying to rape her?"

  "He's right," Anya grinned. "I know I've told you about Larion."

  "Uh," the younger one grunted as she picked herself up. "The one you shacked up with a couple of months ago?"

  "Kalia, I did not 'shack up' with him. I spent the night with him—most pleasurably. Lar, these are Iriana Lyseksdaughter, and Kalia Bransdaughter. Kalia is my sister, and Iriana is our aunt."