“I never even saw it,” muttered Laszlo.
“And you think that makes you some sort of failure? Grow up, Laszlo. It just makes you well-adjusted. Not likely to spend weeks of your life planning a way to seize more power than any mortal can sanely command. Look, every once in a while, a place like the High College is bound to get a student with excessive competence and no scruples, right?”
“I suppose it must,” said Laszlo. “I just…I never would have guessed my own chambers-mate…”
“The most dangerous sort. The ones that make themselves obvious can be dealt with almost at leisure. It’s the ones that can disguise their true nature, get along socially, feign friendships…those are much, much worse. The only real way to catch them is to leave rope lying around and let them knot their own nooses.”
“Merciful gods.” Laszlo retrieved his sword and slid it into the scabbard for what he hoped would be the last time that day. “What about the body?”
“Library property. Some of the grimoires in here are bound in human skin, and occasionally need repair.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Waste not, want not.”
“But his family—”
“Won’t get to know. Because he vanished in an unfortunate magical accident just after you turned and left him in here, didn’t he?”
“I…damn. I don’t know if I can—”
“The alternative is disgrace for him, disgrace for his family, and a major headache for everyone who knew him, especially his chambers-mate for the last five years.”
“The Indexers will just play along?”
“The Indexers see what they’re told to see. I sign their pay chits.”
“It just seems incredible,” said Laszlo. “To stand here and hide everything about his real fate, as casually as you’d shelve a book.”
“Who around here casually shelves a book?”
“Good point.” Laszlo sighed and held his hand out to Astriza. “I suppose, then, that Casimir vanished in a magical accident just after I turned and left him in here.”
“Rely on us to handle the details, Laszlo.” She gave his hand a firm, friendly shake. “After all, what better place than a library for keeping things hushed?”
* * *
TANITH LEE became a freelance writer in 1975, and has been one ever since. Her first published books were children’s fantasies The Dragon Hoard and Animal Castle. Her first adult fantasy novel, The Birthgrave, was the start of a long association with DAW, which published more than twenty of her works of fantasy, SF, and horror in the 1970s and 1980s. She received the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award in 1980 for Death’s Master, World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Story in 1983 (for “The Gorgon”) and 1984 (for “Elle est Trois (La Mort)”). Enormously prolific, Lee has recently published a trilogy of pirate novels for young adults ( Piratica and sequels), a science fiction novel for adults ( Mortal Suns ), an adult fantasy trilogy (Lionwolf), a young adult fantasy trilogy ( Claidi and sequels), and the first of two retrospective short story collections ( Tempting the Gods ). Upcoming are new books in the Flat Earth series. In 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror. Tanith Lee lives with her husband, the writer and artist John Kaiine, on the southeast coast of England
* * *
TWO LIONS, A WITCH, AND THE WAR-ROBE
Tanith Lee
To come on the apparently unguarded forest city of Cashloria was often a surprise, since it lay, as its name implied, deep in one of the vast ancient forests of Trosp. Enormous pines, cedars, beeches, oaks, poplars, and other trees towered up, for hundreds of miles. A single wide road, in places rather overgrown, eccentrically bisected the area. Once night began, the city was quite arresting. Then its thousands of lamp-lit windows, many with stained glass, blazed in slices between the trunks. Huge old stone mansions, public halls, and various fortresses appeared, but all smothered in among the forest, with trees growing everywhere about them, in some cases out of the stonework itself. In the narrow central valley to which the road eventually descended, where lay the city’s hub, ran the thrashing River Ca, along which only the most courageous water-traffic ventured, and that in the calm of summer.
It was now fall. The forest had clothed itself in scarlet, copper, magenta, black, and gold. Audible from a day’s ride away, the Ca roared angrily with pre-freeze melt-snow from distant mountains. Sunset dropped screaming red on the horizon and went out, and utter darkness closed its wings.
Zire the Scholar had been traveling a long while. He was weary and aggrieved. Yesterday, forest brigands had set on him and stolen his horse. Though naturally he had tracked and tricked them and stolen it back, the horse next cast a shoe, so now both of them must plod.
As night gathered and he spotted the lights of Cashloria, Zire gave a grunt of relief. He had read of the city over a year before, and set out to see it along with others, but during the last hour doubted he would find it at all. Benign unhuman guardians were supposed to take care of the conurbation, for example by protecting it with sorcery rather than city walls. This evening Zire had begun to think they had also rendered the place invisible. But lights shone. Here he was.
Zire was young and tall, and well-made. His hair was, where light revealed it, the rich somber red of the dying beech leaves. His eyes were the cold gray of approaching winter skies. His spirit was not dissimilar: fires vied with melancholy, exuberance with introversion.
Presently, the young man reached a promontory, thick with trees and pillared buildings. Below, the landscape tumbled down, still clad in darkling foliage, roofs, and windows of ruby and jade, to a coil of the angry river. A few lights also marked the river’s course, but mainly it was made obvious by its uproar. They said, in Cashloria—or so Zire had read—“The Ca is foul-mouthed and always shouting.”
Nevertheless, here was an inn, by name the Plucked Dragon.
Lanterns burned, and Zire, having tethered his horse, and maneuvered through a hedge of willows, thrust in at the door.
At once a loud outcry resounded, after which total silence enveloped the smoky yellow-lit room beyond. It was not that the several customers had reacted in astonishment on seeing a newcomer; they were reasonably used to visitors in Cashloria. It was simply that, during the exact moment Zire stepped into the inn, a man standing at the long counter had swung about and plunged his knife between the ribs of another. Everyone, Zire included, watched in inevitable awe as the knife’s unlucky recipient dropped dead on the ground.
The murderer, however, only wiped his blade on a sleeve, sheathed the weapon, and turned to regard the landlord. “Fetch me another jug, you pig. Then clear that up,” jerking his thumb over-shoulder to indicate the corpse.
He was, the murderer, a burly fellow, with dark locks hanging over a flat low brow. He wore a guardsman’s uniform of leather and studs, with a gaudy insignia of two crossed swords surmounted by a diadem. Certainly no one argued with him. Here rushed an inn-boy with a brimming jug, and there went the landlord himself with another inn-boy, hauling the dead body off along the floor and out the back. Even the third man, on whose sleeve the murderer had wiped his knife—not, presumably, wishing to soil his own—made no complaint.
“Cheers and a hale life!” cried the killer, and downed a large cupful in one gulp.
All present, with the exception of Zire, echoed the toast in fast fellowship. And some of them added, for good measure, “And hale life to you, too, Razibond!” “Yes, long life. That dolt had it coming to him.”
Razibond, satisfied, belched. Then his small eyes slid straight to Zire, still poised in the doorway. Those little eyes might just as well have been two more greasy blades. If looks could kill, they might.
“And you,” said Razibond. “What do you say, Copper-Nod?”
“I?” Zire smiled and shrugged. “About what?”
“Oh, you’re blind then, as well as carrot-mopped. Come, let’s have your opinion. You saw I slew him.”
“That? True, I did see.”
“You seem offended,” said Razibond, ugly voice now sinking to an uglier growl. “Want to make something of it, eh?”
If Zire had been in any doubt as to what Razibond meant, further evidence was instantly supplied, as all the other drinkers withdrew in haste, plastering themselves to the walls, some even crawling beneath the long tables. Even the fire crouched down abruptly on the wide hearth, while the girl who had been tending a roast there sprinted up the inn stair with a flash of bare white feet.
“Well?” bellowed ugly Razibond, seemingly further incensed by Zire’s speechlessness.
“Really,” said Zire, “what you do is your own affair. After all, perhaps the man you stabbed had done you some terrible wrong.”
“He had,” Razibond declared. “He refused me use of his wife and daughter.”
“Or, on the other hand,” continued Zire smoothly, “you are, as I suspected, merely a drunken thug who throws his weight about, that being considerable since he is now running to podge, and slaughters at random. One day you will answer in the afterlife, to an uproar of furious ghosts. Don’t think I joke there, friend Razi. Another life exists than this one, and we pay our dues once we are in it. I imagine your reckoning will be both long and tedious, not to mention painful.”
Razibond’s face was now a marvelous study for any student of the human mood. It had passed through the blank pink of shock to the crimson of wrath, sunk a second in superstitious, uneasy yellow, before escalating into an extraordinary puce—a hue that would have assured any dye-maker a fortune, had he been able to reproduce it. More than this, Razibond had swollen up like a toad. He cast his wine cup to the ground, where it shattered, being unwisely made of clay, and, disdaining his knife, heaved out a cleaverish blade some four feet long.
Zire raised his eyes to heaven, or the ceiling. Next instant, he, too, had drawn a sword, this one fine almost as a wand, and going by the name of Scribe. As Razibond lumbered at him, Zire moved, easy as smoke, from his path, extending as he did so a booted foot. This brief gesture sent the homicidal guardsman crashing, at which Zire leapt onto his back, landing with deliberate heaviness and knocking the breath right out of him. Then, with a casualness truly awful to behold, Zire drove his own bright sword straight in, through Razibond’s leathers, skin, flesh, muscle, and heart. Blood spurted like a fountain, and decorated the blackened beam above.
At the inn once more, only silence held sway. Zire did not wipe the sword, he kept it ready in one hand. He looked contritely about at the stricken faces.
“My apologies,” said Zire. “But I object to dying at this late hour. I would prefer supper. Oh, and my horse needs shoeing. Otherwise, if you want, we can continue the violence.”
No one answered. None moved. The landlord himself, who had ducked below his counter then reemerged to witness the short fight’s climax, stared with mouth agape.
Then there came the sound of bare feet, and down the stair hurried the inn-girl. She alone seemed able to move, and now, too, proved capable of speech, although it came out in a sort of a quavering shriek.
“Rash sir, you know not what you’ve done!”
“But I do know,” said Zire. “Let me see, killed a killer. Maybe all you here loved him, and now wish to attack me. If so, let’s get on. As I said, I’m hungry.”
“Love him?” wailed the girl. “Razibond? He was a fiend.”
At this, the strange inertia that had held the room broke in pieces. Voices from all sides honked and whispered: “He was a monster—” “A bully—no woman left alone, no man of honor safe—” “May he rot in the swampmost belly of the worst-devisable hell—”
“But,” yelled the girl on the stair, “he was one of the False Prince’s guardsmen. None must harm them no matter what their crimes. Or the False Prince will seek obscene vengeances. He is in league with dark magic, too, and will already know you have trespassed against his soldiers.”
“This inn,” intoned the landlord, gripping the counter white-knuckled, “may be burned to the earth, and all of us whipped. As for you, sir, he will hang you by your feet above a pit of snakes, whose poison dispatches in the slowest, most heinous stages—”
“Or else—” vocalized another, “he will sentence you to the death of two hundred hornets, each the size of a rat—”
“Or the live burial amid fractious scorpions—”
“Or—”
“Yes, very well,” interrupted Zire, apparently tired. “I have inferred the correct sting-laden picture of my proposed fate.”
“Run—” shrilled the pale girl from the stair. “It’s your only chance! We dare not shield you.”
Zire grimaced. He sat down on a bench. “First serve me some dinner,” he said. “Also my poor starved horse must eat. Both he and I refuse to run on an empty stomach.”
Silence once more submerged the room. The noise of the river, always angrier after moonrise, filled it instead.
Some half-mile below, at a second inn, whose name was the Quiet Night, and which directly adjoined the thunderous River Ca, Bretilf the Artisan sat over the remainder of his dinner, thoughtfully slicing the last roast meat from a bone. Beside him rested a jug of Cashloria’s black ale. His tankard stayed full. He was concentrating equally on the bone and on a shape he could detect in the bone’s surface. Once all the meat was gone, he intended to carve the figure free, but an interruption came.
Two drunken bravos, belonging—judging by their cross-swords-and-diadem insignia and studded-leather garments—to some guard militia of the city, had begun to quarrel.
Bretilf watched them sidelong through narrowed, tawny-amber eyes. His hair was of a similar shade, a type of ginger-amber, marking him out through the gilding of a stray lamp. He was otherwise young, tall, and well-made, and, had he but known it, bore a definite resemblance to another man, who only some minutes earlier, and half a mile above on the promontory, had stuck a sword straight through the heart of space-wasty Razibond.
“Damn it all, Kange,” ranted the bigger of the quarrelers, “I say we shall.”
“I don’t deny we have a perfect right. But the house walls are high and she is protected by loyal servants and hounds, the latter of which will snap off a man’s leg soon as make water on it.” This was the retort of the smaller though no less repulsive Kange.
Bretilf could hear all clearly, even through the general din. He suspected others in the room heard the dialogue, too, but pretended deafness.
“Pahf!” went on the first guard. “No need for that. We’ll knock at the gate and remind the girl the False Prince has given us permission to delve any wench we fancy. Besides, when she sees our beauty, how can she not succumb? Failing that we’ll poison both servants and dogs, and burn the house to show we called.”
“True, you’re wise, Ovrisd,” relented Kange. “But before we set forth on our mission, let’s see what money we can squeeze out of that foreigner over there, with the pumpkin-colored mane.”
Bretilf put down the meat bone.
The guardsmen were advancing, smiling winningly upon him, carefully ignored on every side by the rest of the inn.
“Greetings, stranger,” said the unpresentable Kange.
“Welcome, stranger,” added the revolting Ovrisd.
“To you also,” replied Bretilf, rising. “I believe you wish me to render you something,” he presumed.
“Oh, indeed! How perceptive. We would like all of it!”
“And pretty fast.”
“Perhaps not all, but certainly a great deal. All that you deserve,” said Bretilf. He finished mildly, “Nevertheless, once is enough. To seek me later for more will not be to your liking.” And, leaning forward, he grasped both their unlovely necks and, in one sleek, quick movement, smashed their heads together. Like two halves of a severed pear, each guardsman fell, thumpingly senseless, to the floor.
Instantly, every person in the inn, including the landlord, his slim wife, and large cat, fled the premises.
Bretilf placed coins in gene
rous amount on the counter, and toting the jug and the sculptable bone, walked off into the riverine night.
A golden moon howled radiance like wild music in the sky. The insane river answered. Bretilf sat awhile on the bank and started the carving of the bone. But his own bones guessed the night’s difficulties were not done.
Sure enough, about an hour later, two sore-headed and bleary-eyed guardsmen came staggering to the bank with drawn blades and antisocial motives.
“I said,” gently reminded Bretilf, as once again he rose to his feet, “it was not advisable that you ask for more.”
Seething and blathering, Kange and Ovrisd leapt ungainly at him. Bretilf flipped back his cloak. The moon splashed like hot lava on a sudden broadsword, that had the name Second Thoughts. Swish, swish went the two severed heads of Kange and Ovrisd, plunging off the land’s edge into the hungry river. Their now leaderless bodies slumped, this time conclusively, to the earth.
Bretilf strode away into the slinks of Cashloria. It was his creed never to kill, if at all possible, at an initial encounter. But so many people were determined to try his patience. Reticence and extremity coexisted always with him. Presently, he found a much less clean, and more secluded, inn where he might spend the night in peace asleep, or carving the figure of a militant stag.
Bretilf awoke to find, with some bemusement, he was staring at himself in a mirror. Zire awoke to find exactly the same thing.
Neither man recalled a mirror placed before him, in either of the inns they had last night occupied. In fact, Zire had fallen asleep at the table in the Plucked Dragon, after his first cup of wine. Bretilf had done much the same in his own inn, the Affectionate Flea. Besides, the mirrors were unreliable. Bretilf immediately noted that his own reflection rubbed its eyes, which Bretilf had not done and was not doing. Zire noted that, though he had rubbed his eyes, his reflection refused to copy him. In any case, said reflection’s eyes, in both instances, were the wrong color.
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