Over went the hulk, amid a resounding bash and clamor, sword flying one way, and dagger doing no more damage than to shave four of Ibfrelt’s impressive whiskers, before a couple of jaws, equally impressively toothed, met in his esophageal tract.
Ibfrelt was already feeding greedily when, to his disgust, his kill dissolved like a mist and faded into thin air.
Some snaggle of labyrinthine turns away, Izer was just undergoing a similar disillusion. His adversary had been a rapier-brandishing swordsman, with a back-up ax. But Izer had simply jumped on him in the midst of the fellow’s posturing, fangs seeing to the rest. When this nice hot meal vanished, Izer let out a complaint so loud even Ibfrelt paid attention, and rumbled back.
Rising from the teasing absent carcass, Izer padded through the maze and, with leonine instincts of scent, vision, hearing, and subthought, located Ibfrelt inside two minutes.
The lions commiserated with each other. This was a poor place after all. It would be better to depart instantly.
It was then that a blazing light flared up in the next cave or chamber. They were lions; they took it for the undoing of an exit into the afternoon forest. Shoulder to shoulder, they flung themselves toward it—
They found themselves contrastingly inside a gargantuan inner region of the complex. The compartment would have evoked, to most human eyes, a colossal temple hall. To the lions, it was just an especially oversized cavern. Yet light from some invisible source filled it full.
In the very middle of the space stood a solitary living tree, or so it appeared. The tree was a sort of maple, but of absurd dimensions, and with autumnal leaves colored raspberry, orange, and ripe prune. From the boughs hung a dowdy banner—or a garment? It seemed stranded there, whatever it was, by mistake, shoddy and threadbare, stained, and itself the hue of over-cooked porridge.
Neither lion glanced at it. A spectacle of greater fascination pended. The living trunk was slowly splitting along a hinge of softer, more elusive light. When the gap was wide enough, a form burst from within. It cantered into the cavern, a sight to render any warrior numb with astonished horror.
Directly before the lions epically bulged a stag of unusual size. It was almost spotless white, its antlers like boughs, its eyes glittering like fires. It snorted, and from its nostrils black smolders gushed out.
Lions do not shake hands, or smite paws together to announce brotherhood. If they did, these two would have done.
Without preamble, both vaulted headfirst at the stag. They hit it square, one to each side of the breast. Fearful splinterings, jangles, cracks, and clangs engulfed the air. In a thousand shards, the stag, which seemed fashioned from one house-huge bone, collapsed. The giant maple shook at the detonation. Leaves rained like—rain. One other item was dislodged and drifted foolishly down, like dirty washing. Izer and Ibfrelt, Ibfrelt and Izer, ignored this. They were busy. The bone of which the monster stag had been constructed had once belonged to some improbably prodigious roast. They were engaged in extracting the marrow, any shreds of meat, savoring the cooked tastes, finding every splinter on the ground.
In this way, they missed the dim phantasmal wailing of something, which, seeing all its ploys, even those untried, would never work, lamented in the stony masonry. They missed the dislodgement of the building, too, and how its walls and halls, openings and enclosures, came apart and smeared into nothing. They even missed the last descent of the unappealing porridge-colored garment, until it fell over both their heads.
“So, what do you make of it?”
Trudging back through the forest, stark naked, and with the fall weather turning a touch more chilly, Bretilf put this question to the matchingly unclothed and chilled Zire.
Zire said, “It seems, now, perfectly obvious.”
“To me also. Yet maybe we’ve drawn two different conclusions.”
Bretilf carried the item from the cave-labyrinth, bundled up and tied tight with grasses.
From the trees, which overnight seemed themselves partly to have disrobed, leaving great swathes of cold and unclad sky and blowing wind, birds and squirrels threw nutshells at them. Foxes and wild pig distantly passed, snorting as if with scornful laughter. Snakes seemed embarrassed by the stupidity of men and slipped down holes.
Bretilf and Zire had not decided what they made of anything, despite their exchange. And some hours on, when they reached the mansion of the witch Ysmarel Star, and found only the hill—they made not much of that, either. The gray and the bay horses were tethered nearby, however, and adjacent were neatly folded clothes, swords, and so on. Bretilf examined the part-finished carving he had begun of a stag.
“Just as I thought,” said Bretilf.
“Oh, indeed,” concurred Zire.
There followed a short conversation then, on whether it was worse to eat men or words, not mentioning meat bones. The consensus on this was that probably none of those items had been strictly real, more elemental, if potentially fatal, and so no moral issue was involved.
They rode the rest of the way to the city of Cashloria. Zire had taken his turn at carrying the rolled-up wretched rag from the maple. Neither man had wished to try it on, not even when naked in the woods. Just the first swipe of it across their heads had changed them back into men. That was enough.
Even so, sitting once more above the crazy River Ca, they held their horses in check and stared at nothing.
“It seems to me,” said Bretilf, “the witch Ysmarel—”
“Yes?”
“Ensorcelled us into animal shape less to cause us trouble in the manner of ancient legends—”
“—than in order we might survive the maze and regain the Robe. Any intelligent or gifted man or woman who intruded on that spot,” Zire went on, “was seemingly destroyed by demons conjured from their own abilities.”
“The singer found her song turned against her in so dreadful a way, it tore the ears from her lovely head.”
“The charmer of snakes found a snake he could not charm, which poisoned him.”
The horses cropped the grass. Both men digested the effect of the beautiful witch’s spell. By making them beasts, she had released them from any true engagement with their everyday beliefs. Though ghosts of their human preoccupations were yet accessible to the sorcery in the labyrinth, when presented with nightmare elements of them, as lions, they had either had no interest, or made short work and dined.
The humanly superior had perished in that place. But they, as lions, had had another agenda, another superiority. Which was why, too, they had gained the Winning-of-War-Robe. It had meant nothing to them; they had only run out growling with it tangled in their manes—then hair.
Modestly, Zire and Bretilf reentered the city. Yet on the streets people swarmed to gape and cheer. At the False Prince’s villa, they were admitted after a wait of only an hour.
The prince lay on a couch like one almost dead. He gazed up with weary dislike. “Who are these ruffians?”
“Highness,” said the affronted servant, “can’t you hear the joyful uproar outside? These—ruffians—have won back the Robe—the Robe of the Winning of War With Oneself.”
“Garbage,” said the prince and turned over on his face.
Another hour on, when he had been, rather roughly, convinced by his attendants, Zire and Bretilf had the dubious pleasure of beholding the transformation. With some revulsion, they saw how the War-Robe, when the prince had put it on, altered from a sartorial nonevent to a glowing sumptuousness of colors and gems. The prince was also changed. In a matter of seconds, he grew young and strong, handsome and profound, pristine, pure, and kingly. And then, with pleasing open-handedness, from the coffers of the city, stunning riches were obtained and loaded on to mules, all for Bretilf and Zire.
They were by then incorrigibly drunk. They had sampled much of the royal cellars, and also rambled about the city, where everyone was eager to stand them a drink. Sometimes they drew into corners and spoke in low tones of the anomaly of such a man as the prin
ce, so sticky with cruelty and crime, now entirely changed into a genuine paragon, worthy only of loyalty and praise. But they heard, too, a rumor of a kitchen girl, named Loë, who had that very day ridden off in a carriage that sparkled like a diamond, and with her many animals, owls, and crows from neglected temples, rabbits kept for the pot, cats and dogs who had earned their keep in various inns. Loë, or Weasel as she was sometimes called, or Ermine, was now said to be one of the Benign Guardians of Cashloria, who had lingered on the premises in disguise during the city’s troubles. The Robe’s return had freed her, it seemed, to go back to her own mysterious life on a distant star.
“I could sleep a million years,” said Zire. “Alas, it’s farewell now between us.”
“Perhaps neither, yet,” said Bretilf. “I’ve heard another rumor—that those villainous guards the prince is about to expel have vengefully scored our names on their swords. Will we fare better alone or in tandem?”
“Where are the horses and mules?” asked Zire, with respectable common sense.
“Below,” said Bretilf, ditto.
As they jumped from the window to the backs of bay and gray, they picked up the nearby threatening roar composed of rejoicing, rage, and river. But soon the happy pounce of hooves, blissful jingle of coins and jewels, rumble of determined mules and carts, muffled all else. Heed this, then. The more noisily and threateningly the torrent bellows below and around, the louder make your song.
* * *
CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN was born in Skerries, Dublin, Ireland, but grew up in Leeds, Alabama. As a teenager, she worked as a volunteer in Birmingham, Alabama’s, Red Mountain Museum, and later studied geology and vertebrate paleontology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has coauthored several scientific publications, beginning in 1988, the latest published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2002. Her first novel, Silk, was published in 1998, and she has written eight novels to date, the most recent being The Red Tree. A multiple International Horror Guild Award–winning author, she has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Award. Kiernan has also written for DC Comics. She lives with her partner in Providence, Rhode Island.
* * *
THE SEA TROLL’S DAUGHTER
Caitlín R. Kiernan
It had been three days since the stranger returned to Invergó, there on the muddy shores of the milky blue-green bay where the glacier met the sea. Bruised and bleeding, she’d walked out of the freezing water. Much of her armor and clothing were torn or missing, but she still had her spear and her dagger, and claimed to have slain the demon troll that had for so long plagued the people of the tiny village.
Yet, she returned to them with no proof of this mighty deed, except her word and her wounds. Many were quick to point out that the former could be lies, and that she could have come by the latter in any number of ways that did not actually involve killing the troll—or anything else, for that matter. She might have been foolhardy and wandered up onto the wide splay of the glacier, then taken a bad tumble on the ice. It might have happened just that way. Or she might have only slain a bear, or a wild boar or auroch, or a walrus, having mistaken one of these beasts for the demon. Some even suggested it may have been an honest mistake, for bears and walrus, and even boars and aurochs, can be quite fearsome when angered, and if encountered unexpectedly in the night, may have easily been confused with the troll.
Others among the villagers were much less gracious, such as the blacksmith and his one-eyed wife, who went so far as to suggest the stranger’s injuries may have been self-inflicted. She had bludgeoned and battered herself, they argued, so that she might claim the reward, then flee the village before the creature showed itself again, exposing her deceit. This stranger from the south, they said, thought them all feebleminded. She intended to take their gold and leave them that much poorer and still troubled by the troll.
The elders of Invergó spoke with the stranger, and they relayed these concerns, even as her wounds were being cleaned and dressed. They’d arrived at a solution by which the matter might be settled. And it seemed fair enough, at least to them.
“Merely deliver unto us the body,” they told the stranger. “Show us this irrefutable testament to your handiwork, and we will happily see that you are compensated with all that has been promised to whomsoever slays the troll. All the monies and horses and mammoth hides, for ours was not an idle offer. We would not have the world thinking we are liars, but neither would we have it thinking we can be beguiled by make-believe heroics.”
But, she replied, the corpse had been snatched away from her by a treacherous current. She’d searched the murky depths, all to no avail, and had been forced to return to the village empty-handed, with nothing but the scars of a lengthy and terrible battle to attest to her victory over the monster.
The elders remained unconvinced, repeated their demand, and left the stranger to puzzle over her dilemma.
So, penniless and deemed either a fool or a charlatan, she sat in the moldering, broken-down hovel that passed for Invergó’s one tavern, bandaged and staring forlornly into a smoky peat fire. She stayed drunk on whatever mead or barley wine the curious villagers might offer to loosen her tongue, so that she’d repeat the tale of how she’d purportedly bested the demon. They came and listened and bought her drinks, almost as though they believed her story, though it was plain none among them did.
“The fiend wasn’t hard to find,” the stranger muttered, thoroughly dispirited, looking from the fire to her half-empty cup to the doubtful faces of her audience. “There’s a sort of reef, far down at the very bottom of the bay. The troll made his home there, in a hall fashioned from the bones of great whales and other such leviathans. How did I learn this?” she asked, and when no one ventured a guess, she continued, more dispirited than before.
“Well, after dark, I lay in wait along the shore, and there I spied your monster making off with a ewe and a lamb, one tucked under each arm, and so I trailed him into the water. He was bold, and took no notice of me, and so I swam down, down, down through the tangling blades of kelp and the ruins of sunken trees and the masts of ships that have foundered—”
“Now, exactly how did you hold your breath so long?” one of the men asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“And, also, how did you not succumb to the chill?” asked a woman with a fat goose in her lap. “The water is so dreadfully cold, and especially—”
“Might it be that someone here knows this tale better than I?” the stranger growled, and when no one admitted they did, she continued. “Now, as I was saying, the troll kept close to the bottom of the bay, in a hall made all of bones, and it was here that he retired with the ewe and the lamb he’d slaughtered and dragged into the water. I drew my weapon,” and here she quickly slipped her dagger from its sheath for effect. The iron blade glinted dully in the firelight. Startled, the goose began honking and flapping her wings.
“I still don’t see how you possibly held your breath so long as that,” the man said, raising his voice to be heard above the noise of the frightened goose. “Not to mention the darkness. How did you see anything at all down there, it being night and the bay being so silty?”
The stranger shook her head and sighed in disgust, her face half hidden by the tangled black tresses that covered her head and hung down almost to the tavern’s dirt floor. She returned the dagger to its sheath and informed the lot of them they’d hear not another word from her if they persisted with all these questions and interruptions. She also raised up her cup, and the woman with the goose nodded to the barmaid, indicating a refill was in order.
“I found the troll there inside its lair,” the stranger continued, “feasting on the entrails and viscera of the slaughtered sheep. Inside, the walls of its lair glowed, and they glowed rather brightly, I might add, casting a ghostly phantom light all across the bottom of the
bay.”
“Awfully bloody convenient, that.” The woman with the goose frowned, as the barmaid refilled the stranger’s cup.
“Sometimes, the Fates, they do us a favorable turn,” the stranger said, and took an especially long swallow of barley wine. She belched, then went on. “I watched the troll, I did, for a moment or two, hoping to discern any weak spots it might have in its scaly, knobby hide. That’s when it espied me, and straightaway the fiend released its dinner and rushed towards me, baring a mouth filled with fangs longer even than the tusks of a bull walrus.”
“Long as that?” asked the woman with the goose, stroking the bird’s head.
“Longer, maybe,” the stranger told her. “Of a sudden, it was upon me, all fins and claws, and there was hardly time to fix every detail in my memory. As I said, it rushed me, and bore me down upon the muddy belly of that accursed hall with all its weight. I thought it might crush me, stave in my skull and chest, and soon mine would count among the jumble of bleached skeletons littering that floor. There were plenty enough human bones, I do recall that much. Its talons sundered my armor, and sliced my flesh, and soon my blood was mingling with that of the stolen ewe and lamb. I almost despaired, then and there, and I’ll admit that much freely and suffer no shame in the admission.”
“Still,” the woman with the goose persisted, “awfully damned convenient, all that light.”
The stranger sighed and stared sullenly into the fire.
And for the people of Invergó, and also for the stranger who claimed to have done them such a service, this was the way those three days and those three nights passed. The curious came to the tavern to hear the tale, and most of them went away just as skeptical as they’d arrived. The stranger only slept when the drink overcame her, and then she sprawled on a filthy mat at one side of the hearth; at least no one saw fit to begrudge her that small luxury.
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