Swords & Dark Magic

by Jonathan Strahan; Lou Anders

  “You weren’t curious?”

  “Whatever they told me, I would have to waste my time trying to figure out what was true and what wasn’t. It was easier to just come here and find out.”

  “I might have chosen to kill you without speaking to you,” she pointed out.

  “You might have. And yet they seemed pretty confident sending me up here.”

  “That’s what the last three they sent thought,” she replied. “It’s not confidence—they’re just not very bright. They get stupider and weaker every day, without their sustenance. If you wait long enough, they will die, and you will have your woman back.”

  “How long?”

  “Without their ritual, they will age like men. A few decades, at most.”

  “I don’t really have that much time on my hands,” Fool Wolf said.

  “I suppose not,” she replied.

  “What happens if I give them their sword?”

  She shook her head. “You should put that thought out of your head. First of all, I won’t let you touch it. But even if you did—the fact is, they don’t want their sword. None of them can wield it without their lives draining back into Qash. What they want is some idiot who doesn’t know better to pick it up.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, to take it you would have to slay me, and they want that. And once you held the sword, Qash would possess you and send you after the virgins.”

  Fool Wolf suddenly felt completely lost.

  Virgins? Chugaachik hissed. This gets better and better.

  Fool Wolf did his best to ignore her, but she was aroused, and he felt warm behind his ears, as if someone were kissing him there.

  “I don’t understand,” he told Ruwhere.

  “The sword is part of Qash,” she replied. “And Qash is quite mad. Our people drove him mad a thousand years ago when they sacrificed a virgin to him.”

  “Ah,” Fool Wolf said, “and since they are his descendants, they also require virgin sacrifices.”

  “Yes, you see that do you? But their union was unnatural, evil. Qul always strained to be free and finally—after centuries, with my help—Qul managed to break away and take her daughters with her.”

  “The virgins are Qul’s daughters?”

  “The men who sent you here are the sons of Qash. It is from the daughters of Qul that they must have their sacrifices. I brought the daughters here, the ones who remain virgin, to keep them safe.”

  “I can think of better ways to save a virgin,” Fool Wolf said. “The problem is in being virgin, yes? If only virgins are fit for sacrifice—”

  The air suddenly crackled with force, and his sight opened as he was yanked beneath the lake. Ruwhere was a burning brand, the knot in the heartstrings of a god, and the god was all around them, a half-formed woman, naked, mutilated. Her gaze was all deranged fury.

  Ruwhere’s calm exterior broke, and that rage rushed through her.

  “Wait—”

  “You’re like them,” Ruwhere said, in a low, flat tone. The reasonable old woman was nowhere in that voice. “They don’t kill them. They rape them, just as they taught Qash to rape Qul, just as they now must rape to keep their youth.”

  “I didn’t understand that,” Fool Wolf said, backing away. “I was only joking. I wouldn’t…”

  It’s too late, Chugaachik snarled. Qul has her.

  “You have!” Ruwhere screamed. “The things you’ve done, I see them now, the things…” She choked off, and her eyes rolled back.

  He did the only thing he could do. He tossed the grapevine ring so that it landed about Ruwhere’s neck. Her eyes went wide with shock as Qash entered her by his vein, seeking through to Qul. Mad or not, Qul understood the danger, and in an instant severed the conduit. But by then, Fool Wolf had lunged past the sorceress and taken grip on the sword.

  He turned and found Ruwhere blazing with godforce and knew that if it weren’t for Chugaachik, he would already be dead. Gasping as his bones began to burn, he threw himself at her, plunging the weapon in deep just below her breastbone. Ruwhere hung on the blade, her eyes gradually calming.

  “You’ve done it,” she gasped. “You monster. You don’t understand what…”

  But she fell away, and the presence of Qul diminished and then fled from the sword.

  “It was only a joke.” Fool Wolf sighed.

  He tried to drop the blade, but his head seemed to fill with locusts and his legs began jerking without his permission.

  And he knew Ruwhere had been right, and Qash was in him.

  He’s trying to make you walk, Chugaachik said. She seemed weak, far away.

  “I’m not walking,” he noticed.

  Because I’m fighting him. He’s trying to drive me out.

  Fool Wolf considered that for a moment. “Can he?”

  No. But this is taxing, and I cannot help you like this.

  “That’s interesting,” he said. “I wonder if you’re lying. If he might rid me of you, given time.”

  He would have you then, always. Do you want that?

  “I could drop the sword.”

  Not if I’m gone. But you can drop it now. You should drop it now.

  Fool Wolf looked at the weapon, considering, seeing possibilities. If Qash forced her out, and he managed to leave the valley, wouldn’t he be free? Qash was a god of place—he would stay. It might be a chance worth taking.

  But he didn’t know enough yet.

  “Let’s not be in a hurry about this,” Fool Wolf said. “I think I’ll go have a look at those virgins, first.”

  Ruwhere hadn’t made any effort to hide her trail, and even without his senses heightened by Chugaachik Fool Wolf was a good tracker. Her path carried him higher up the steepening valley wall, through rattling stands of bamboo and graceful tree ferns, and finally to a series of broad terraces planted in crops that Fool Wolf didn’t recognize. A few men and women working in the fields gave him odd glances, but no one spoke to him.

  Above the fields he came to the village, if it could be called that. Tents, lean-tos, and a few crude houses—all clearly recent—clustered thickly around an older, much more solid building, an enormous longhouse of cedar raised up on twelve thick stone pedestals. A lot of people were watching him now, but he didn’t see any with weapons. He strolled toward one of the long ladders that led up to the house as if he belonged there. He almost made it before a young woman stepped in front of him. She was pretty, with a round face and pink cheeks, probably no more than sixteen.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. She seemed frightened, but determined.

  “My name is Fool Wolf,” he said. “Ruwhere sent me to make sure the virgins are safe.”

  “They are,” she said.

  He put on his most winning smile. “Might you be one of them?”

  She laughed bitterly. “Not for a while,” she said. “You’re a foreigner aren’t you? You don’t know much about this place.” She looked him up and down. “But you wear their armor,” she said.

  “I took this from one of them,” he lied. “After I killed him.”

  “Maybe you did,” she said. “If so, thank you. But if you serve them, I will find a way to kill you.”

  “I take it…” he trailed off.

  “We all were,” she said shortly.

  He noticed that a crowd had gathered now, mostly women.

  “I’ll never bear children,” she said. “That’s how badly they hurt me—and I was lucky. I used to think that was for the best, because I would never have my daughter taken for the ritual. But then Ruwhere freed Qul, and everything has changed.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “You’ll have to kill me if you want them.”

  “I don’t want…” he stopped. “How old were you?”

  “Older than most. The younger we are, the more we sustain them. Or so they think, anyway.”

  Fool Wolf looked up the ladder. He heard a long, piercing wail.

  He shoved the girl out of the way, rushed up the bamboo steps. He heard
her screaming and felt her weight join his on the ladder.

  The longhouse was one vast empty space. A few older people looked up as he entered, but besides them, of the more than a hundred inhabitants of the building, none looked to be over the age of four. Most were infants.

  The girl hit him in the back. He ignored her as the sword in his hand hummed in hunger and Chugaachik howled with lust. A wind came through the house, and he smelled juniper.

  Hesqel looked down at Fool Wolf from his high seat and smiled.

  “You’ve done it,” he said. “You have the sword.”

  “That I do,” he replied. “And so where is my companion?”

  “She is safe, in the prison. But you’ve only performed half of your task.”

  “You sent me to get the sword, nothing more.”

  “Something’s wrong,” one of the others said. “He should be—”

  “Yes, he should,” Hesqel said. “He who bears the sword should be host to Qash.”

  “Oh, he’s here,” Fool Wolf said, raising the blade.

  Hesqel sneered. “I don’t know what witchery prevents his incorporation, but that weapon cannot harm any of us.”

  “I believe you,” Fool Wolf said.

  He dropped the sword.

  Godblood, Chugaachik sighed as he stepped over the dead. Almost as good as babies. Release me again—we’ll go back up there, find out what Qash sees in virgins.

  He didn’t even bother to answer her, but just shook his head wearily.

  You’ve never been like that before, sweet thing. That was more you than me.

  “I know.”

  Why?

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

  We’ve killed children before. We’ve done things these pathetic half-men never dreamed of.

  “That’s right,” Fool Wolf replied. “Now, sleep.”

  It was easy, because she was sated. As she slunk away, he could still feel her genuine confusion.

  He had to kill a guard to free Inah. She looked at the yellowish blood that soaked his clothes and coated his face and shook her head,

  “You let her out,” she said. “After all that talk.”

  “I did it to save you, of course,” he replied.

  “That’s a lie,” she said, “but I like it.” She leaned up and kissed him.

  He bathed in the same pool as he had earlier, then donned some clothes they had taken from a line on the outskirts of the city. By nightfall they were at the rim of the valley. Unfamiliar dales and peaks walked off north, east, and west.

  “Which way?” Inah asked.

  In the darkening sky, Fool Wolf picked out the constellation his people called the Twins, used that to find the star called the Yekt Kben, the Hearth, the one that never moved. Then he pointed a bit to its right.

  “What’s there?” she asked.

  “Home,” he replied.

  * * *

  MICHAEL SHEA was born to Irish parents in Los Angeles, California, where he frequented Venice Beach and the Baldwin Hills for their wildlife. After attending UCLA on the advance-placement program while still in the tenth grade, he made his way to UC Berkeley for the wildlife there during the Time of Troubles. He hitchhiked across America and Canada twice, and at a hotel in Juneau, Alaska, chanced on a battered book from the lobby shelves: The Eyes of the Overworld, by Jack Vance. It led to his first Vancean novel, A Quest for Simbilis, which was published in 1974. Shea followed that with several novellas, some horrific, some comic, in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, including the Nebula Finalist, “The Autopsy.” He published Nifft the Lean in 1982. A classic of the genre, it won the World Fantasy Award and was followed by The Mines of Behemoth and The A’rak. Other work includes novels The Color Out of Time; In Yana, the Touch of Undying; and collections Polyphemus and The Autopsy and Other Stories.

  * * *

  HEW THE TINTMASTER

  Michael Shea

  Ah, colorful Helix! It’s a rainbow whirligig, a bright coil of bustling streets and painted structures that spirals up the little mountain—or grand hill—of the same name. It lies a few miles inland from Karkmahn-Ra, Earth’s most seething port, and the hub of trade for the whole Sea of Agon.

  Every ridgeline of Helix’s slopes is crusted with proud halls and domiciles, and their burnished roof-tiles and gaudy walls flash like the jumbled facets of a grand jewel extruded from the plain. For color’s the thing in Helix. True, the whole Ephesion Island Chain boasts a culture of panache and proud display—the Bazaar of the Southern Hemisphere it’s called—but in Helix, pigmentation borders on obsession, on delirium. Mounted as the city is on the rough cone of its eminence, every structure’s on exhibit, and an ethos of self-proclamation prevails. It is a chromatic carnival.

  This was the city Bront the Inexorable beheld one autumn morning, wending his way up its spiral streets, threading among the drays and freight-wagons, the wains and rickshaws. From the Jarkeladd Tundras, a man raised to raiding and war, Bront viewed dazzling Helix with an uneasy sense of excess. Look where he would, he saw no cornice not surmounted by frieze work, no window not lavishly mullioned, nor doorway undadoed and unpilastered…and every one of these embellishments painstakingly traced in its own tint.

  Color was a constant rumor in his ears as well—the tale on every tongue. Bront heard from the jostling throng such shards of talk as: “…the lintels puce, you understand, the dadoes apricot, and all the panels mauve!”

  “Mauve? Do you trifle with me?”

  “The grim truth, nothing less!”

  “Mauve…! You tax belief!”

  Bront’s shoulders were as muscled as a titanoplod’s thigh. He wore his broadsword’s hilt thrust up behind his head, and in the matter of decoration of any kind, he was an ascetic. His bronze cuirass, a scarred and dented veteran of many a subarctic skirmish, bore only the severest touch of embellishment: an embossed severed head between his pectorals. It was a crudely executed piece at that, done by a Tundra tinker on a little anvil mounted on the tail of his cart. Not surprisingly, the warrior overheard such aesthetic cavils with a mounting exasperation.

  Bront, it must be said, was no dunce, nor was he utterly dead to the aesthetic joys. One’s senses were windows to the divine, and excellence must be sought through all the senses’ apertures. What man with a soul in him did not thrill to a plangent paean at the close of slaughter? To the architecture of an houri’s haunch, or the succulence of snow-chilled wine? To the heft of specie nested in a pouch? Or, indeed, to that specie’s glint of buttery gold?

  But how many colors did a sane man need? What color, by the Black Crack, was mauve? What color was puce?

  His errand irked him, and that was half his trouble. He had to fetch his employer a tintwright—for which, in terms less pretentious, read housepainter. People didn’t paint things at all in Bront’s native tundras, but he had mercenaried for years in the Great Shallows, along whose timbered coasts the cities were all plank and beam, all of which were protected by whitewashes, serviceable varnishes, and paint of sober hues. And he knew that there, a wall-smearer ranked about with a mill-hand—was a cut above an ostler, for the minor heights he climbed, and well below a tree-jack, who truly climbed. But here housepainters would be made much of, and doubtless whatever scaffold-monkey he engaged would put on airs.

  Only the ample advance his employer disbursed to him secured Bront’s compliance with this menial errand—that, and the necromantic aura that haloed his employer’s name. Eldest Kadaster had met him at the dock in Karkmahn-Ra, and proved to be gaunt and white-haired, his eyebrows brambly and luxuriant, his beard thin and sere, converging to a wispy point below his chin. He wore a black leathern gown that was scuffed and scorched here and there—it struck you as some tradesman’s garment, till you looked into the remote serenity of his eyes and remembered who he was. Eldest Kadaster’s name moved in murmurs throughout the Ephesion Isles, and Bront knuckled his forehead at their meeting, a northern gesture of respect.

 
The mage conducted him to a tavern and a corner-table conference—asked preferences and graciously ordered for him. Though gratified by the sorcerer’s affability, Bront was troubled when Kadaster explained his first errand.

  “But you see, sir,” said Bront, “I don’t know the first thing about housepainters…How am I to choose one?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Indeed, the randomness of your choice is itself the point. A natural conjunction is required between you. Just go looking, and when the conjunction occurs, you need not seek me. I’ll be with you.”

  The last promise gave Bront just the faintest tingle down his spine.

  Thus it was he now wended his way toward the peak of Helix—and amid an embarrassment of riches, housepainter-wise. Had passed a score and more of them already, glimpsed at work in open-doored interiors, or up on scaffolds anchored to facades. But knowing his choice must be random didn’t help Bront. Quite the reverse. How could he know he was making the right random choice in so important a matter?

  Doing what clearly must be done was the essence of Bront’s trade. Here a parry, there a thrust—in a fight to the death, taken moment by moment, there was little ambiguity. How, on what basis, was he supposed to pick a particular wall-smearer? All were equally ignoble, all comically daubed with the tints of their trade…

  On his left now rose a wide web of iron and wood fully eight stories high, with seven stories of gaudily painted windows peeping out of the scaffold’s frame, and work still in progress up on the eighth. He studied the man toiling up there—too much undignified climbing to reach that smearer…

  As he idly scanned those heights, he saw a blip of motion in the sky. No…out of the sky, something plummeting right for him. He moved aside, but a beat too late, and felt a weighty impact on his shoulder, and a drenching splash covering the whole left side of his head.

  Though Bront couldn’t have named it, the object that struck him was a half-round paint mop: a large wad of sheep’s wool affixed to a short pole, its fleece charged with a good half-gallon of bright-blue paint.