Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXV

by contributors, various

  He untied her rolled-up cape and let it fall so as to keep the night air off her bare back. The witch had already withdrawn into somber silence, accepting to whatever degree she could that while she was waiting afloat beside the fortress, he would be inside engaging in murder her participation had made possible.

  He began to climb.

  * * * *

  He was back only an hour later. He rappelled down until they were level with one another.

  "It is done?" she asked.

  "The Snake of the East will trouble our land no more."

  She nodded in relief.

  He did not tell her of the sentry and the unfortunate manservant he had been forced to garrote in order to reach the intended victim's quarters. She did not ask.

  "My duty is done, then. Time for our farewell. You have been a true friend, Sir Foxtread."

  "May it always be so, Your Highness."

  "Will you not come with me?"

  "No, I will return to the king. He will have need of my skills in the future, and I mean for him to have them at his command."

  "You still have to get away from the keep safely, and then find a horse."

  "I have endured such challenges before."

  "And if my brother suspects you helped me?"

  "I have just killed his greatest enemy. I trust he will give me the benefit of any doubts he may harbor."

  She put her hand to his cheek. And for the very first time since he had known her, she smiled.

  He touched the lodestone and spoke the phrase of release. The talisman let go its grip. She began to rise skyward.

  As she cleared the battlement, she put her hand to the amulet. In place of the words that would have taken her back to the king's tower, back to her old life in her aerie of windowless stone walls, she said, "A Haven in the Hills."

  The sorcery manifested. She headed off not due west, from whence they had come, but at a northerly angle. Precisely where she was going Fox did not know. He had not been privy to that part of the plan. Wherever it was, a lodestone drew her—a lodestone unknown to the king. Wherever it was, friends waited to receive her like the princess she was.

  Fox made his way back up the wall, brimming with a feeling he had never known before. He had taken many lives. How extraordinary to be part of saving one.

  Caden's Death

  Amy Griswold

  "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons For you are crunchy and good with ketchup." I've seen this on both a button and a bumper sticker (it's the sort of bumper sticker I used to put on my suitcases to make them easy to spot on the baggage carousel). Caden ignored this advice, probably due to the fact that she lived in a world without bumper stickers—or bumpers. But she did manage to bargain with the dragon, at least a little bit, so there's no need for the ketchup yet.

  Amy Griswold is a writer and editor who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her first novel, STARGATE ATLANTIS: LEGACY: THE LOST with Jo Graham, is scheduled to be published in January 2011. She is currently working on two other Stargate Atlantis tie-in novels, one Stargate SG-1 tie-in novel, and an original novel of her own.

  Caden found the girl three weeks before her death came back. She rose early every morning to stoke the fire in the forge, ignoring the stiffness in her back and the way her right wrist seemed to ache even though there was nothing there but a metal hook bound to her arm with stiff leather. She found the girl huddling in the lingering warmth of the hearth, her pale hair tangled and her head down on her skinny knees.

  "You can't stay here," Caden said. "Get up and get out." She reached for the stacked wood and began to feed sticks into the hungry maw of the forge.

  The girl looked up, more stubbornness than Caden had expected in her eyes. "I can't go, neither," she said. "Look at my feet."

  Caden glanced down despite herself. The girl was barefoot and clearly not used to it, her feet blistered raw.

  "Sold your shoes, did you?" Caden said. "You'd better go on home. You'll get the beating you probably deserve, but you won't starve."

  "Can't," the girl said. "My Ma's new man turned me out. He said I'd best find work at the hiring fair, but by the time I got there, it was over."

  "They'll be another in a month's time," Caden said. She reached for the bellows, hooking the left handle as easily by now as she gripped the right.

  "I'm hungry," the girl said.

  Caden shook her head. "There's cold porridge," she said.

  She sliced it and laid a tin plate in front of the girl against her better judgment. There wasn't time now to be bothered with this sort of thing. She ate standing up herself, quickly and efficiently, old soldier's habits she'd never bothered to break.

  "I can't keep you," she said.

  "They say you haven't got a prentice," the girl said.

  Caden shook her head. "As little a thing as you are? This isn't carding wool I do here."

  "I can chop and carry wood," the girl said. "And I've seen the smith in our village work the bellows."

  "I've seen the king on his fine horse, but that doesn't make me king," Caden said.

  "They say you had a prentice boy who ran off."

  "I turned him off," Caden said. "And I can't take you on. My death is coming back for me."

  "You don't look sick," the girl said.

  "I'm not," Caden said. She wiped her plate and stacked it neatly back on the shelf, old habit still. "There was a dragon."

  * * * *

  It was after the war ended, when horsemen and bowmen turned back into farmers and herdsmen, and the few women among them back into daughters and wives. She'd lived with Marise and Kelle like they were her own sisters, slept tangled in a three-fold knot in their too-small tent and gotten roaring drunk with them to guard her while she sang and wept. But by the time they neared home, Marise was sharing the tent of a farmer with ten acres, her belly already swelling with his child, and Kelle was counting her coins with an eye toward a dowry.

  "They say Old Piers is taking thirty men to try their luck as mercenaries in foreign parts," Caden said.

  "Thirty men," Kelle said. "They'll put us on the line to guard our own lands, but who'd hire us to guard theirs?"

  "It's been seven years," Caden said. Seven years to turn from the girl who'd clung white-knuckled to the back of her brother's horse while they rode away from what was left of her father's smithy after the invading army passed. Seven years to learn to ride and fight, to bury her brother in a shallow winter grave scraped in earth as hard as iron, to learn to treasure mornings on the march, the wind sharp on her face and the sun rising above the knife-edged hills.

  "Men coming home want wives," Kelle said. "It won't matter so much that you're too old to marry."

  She thought about it, lying in her tent while Kelle slept and the camp outside stayed strangely quiet, so many of the men having already melted away as they passed towns and farms. A man who wouldn't mind her, who would hurry to get her with child before she really was too old, and be patient teaching her to plow. She tried to remember the feel of wool sliding through her fingers, the silky warmth of kneading bread.

  Then she got up and shrugged her sword belt on, slinging her knapsack on her shoulder as she went out to the picket line to find her horse. It was three days' ride back to the mountains where they'd seen the remains of the deer, ripped apart by giant claws, and found two smooth black scales the size of her hand. Three days ride back to where the dragon would be nesting.

  * * * *

  "I've never seen a dragon," the girl said.

  "They don't come out of the hills much," Caden said. "I don't expect they've got much reason to." She shook her head at the girl's skeptical expression. "That doesn't make them fairy stories. For that matter, I've seen fairies, too, on the thin days. I wouldn't go near them any more than I would a dragon."

  "My Ma always said blacksmiths were great liars."

  "Be that as it may," Caden said. "I've got my work to do."

  "I can work the bellows," the girl said.
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  Caden frowned at her. She was a skinny thing with breasts just starting, tall enough that Caden would believe she'd been used to square meals and a mother's care before she went off wandering. If she made it to the next hiring fair without any mishap, it'd be a wonder.

  "I expect you have a name," she said.

  "Jennet," the girl said. "I can sleep by the hearth."

  "You may as well," Caden said. "It's the warmest spot in the house, and you'll be up before dawn to stoke the fire. But don't start thinking you've found yourself a prenticeship. They'll be nothing left here for you when the dragon comes."

  The girl put her head to one side and smiled a little. Caden could well see that her Ma's man would have found her lacking in respect, though she couldn't help a sneaking liking for that. "And when will that be?"

  "Three weeks and a day," Caden said. "On my fortieth birthday."

  "Then I can go to the hiring fair after," Jennet said, and went back in to where the forge was waiting.

  * * * *

  Time was there would have been a dozen men climbing into the hills after the dragon, but with the war ended and the men paid off, the call of waiting wives and unplowed fields was too strong. They'd quickened the march to get out of the creature's territory, and left the remains of the deer behind when some winters they'd have made off with the creature's leavings for the pot without a second thought.

  A few of the men had seen dragons before, though, and Caden had listened to the stories on cold winter evenings. They didn't hoard gold or gems, but they carried a fine enough hoard with them in their scales that were hard and bright as gems, and as prized by lords who'd wear them and pretend they were mighty slayers of dragons. As many as she could carry would be more than a dowry, more than enough for her to retire like the old soldier she felt herself to be at twenty-five.

  They weren't as big as you thought, she reassured herself. All the men who'd seen them agreed, they weren't much bigger than a man from head to tail, and while they had claws like razors, they didn't breathe fire. The only trick was that you had to be sure not to look in their dark eyes, or you'd freeze like a rabbit waiting for your death to come.

  She climbed until her legs stung with the effort, as used as she was to marching. She'd left her horse picketed below. If she didn't come back, he'd pull the stake out in time and head back the way she came to the camp, but she wasn't giving much thought to not coming back. She deserved this, she thought. She'd given the army seven years, and she deserved for there to be an after.

  She came upon it as it brought another deer to ground, and froze, though she hadn't yet seen its eyes. Its body might have been the size of a man's, but nothing ought to have wings like that, great dark wings that slashed their way through the air and spread out on and on. It whipped its head around toward her, and she jerked her own head around to avoid meeting its eyes, drawing her sword.

  She wasn't really afraid until the first time her sword connected and rang off the dragon's scales, the jarring force of the stroke shaking her arm to her shoulder. It was worse than beating her sword on mail, worse than beating it on a tree. She dodged a swipe from the great beast's claws and slashed at its shoulder, but her sword skidded uselessly on its scales.

  Caden turned, then, knowing the hopelessness of it even as she did, and ran, ten desperate strides before the dragon caught her, a blow of its foot knocking her to the ground and knocking the wind out of her, making her gulp painfully for air.

  She rolled over and looked up without thinking, and met the dragon's eyes.

  I am your death, a voice said, not in her ears but echoing through her body, like feeling the beat of a drum through her feet. One of its claws was pinning her left hand, crushing it beneath the beast's weight, and the pain beat through her veins with a rhythm of its own.

  Maybe it was the power of its eyes that took away her fear, but all she could feel was a powerful anger rising up in her for everything she wasn't ready yet to give up.

  "Not yet!"

  The beast actually hesitated, its head cocking to one side. I am your death, its voice said in her bones. But it is a fair request. When may I come for you?

  "Never!" Caden gasped.

  That is not a fair request.

  "When I'm old," she said. "You can come when I'm old."

  What is old?

  She meant to say eighty, ninety, a hundred—the oldest person she'd ever heard of was a hundred, and she'd probably never live so long—but it was hard to hold on to what she meant to do with the dragon's eyes on her and the sound of its voice vibrating through her. Old, she thought, what's old for a soldier?

  "Forty," she said, never meaning to; the word was just on her lips against her will, like honesty wrung from somewhere deep inside her. "When I'm forty I'll be old."

  I will come when you are forty, the dragon said, and beat its wings, lashing the air with dust, and Caden fainted. She woke on the cold hillside, her left hand a screaming wreck of pain, the world swimming around her.

  She reached out one hand and touched something hard and smooth. Dragon's scales, she realized. Not enough to live idly all her life, but enough to set herself up in some trade, assuming she lived to make it back to camp.

  When she was forty seemed a very long time away.

  * * * *

  Caden worked at the forge while Jennet watched her, trying not to pay the girl any mind. She'd turned away her customers, told them she was going to retire, to shutter the shop and go north to her daughter's farm. There wasn't any daughter and there wasn't any farm, but they'd taken her at her word and started walking five miles to the next town when they needed smithing. After she was gone there'd be another smith, she thought, but it wouldn't be Jennet, not with the little she could learn in these few days.

  Jennet was willing enough, fetching water and straightening the smithy, her blistered feet wrapped in scraps of linen. Caden had torn up one of her oldest shirts for it, steeling herself to the waste by telling herself the fine linen wouldn't do her any good soon. It had been her best shirt, one she'd worn in the parade after they turned the invaders out of the capitol, dressed as fine as any man and probably looking like one with her broad shoulders and weather-burned face.

  Still, she would keep asking questions. Caden was working on a sword, since at this point she might as well make what pleased her rather than what would be practical to sell to common folk.

  "Is that the sword you're going to fight the dragon with?" Jennet said.

  "It's just a sword," Caden said.

  Jennet waited as she beat the sword into its rough shape and thrust it into the water to cool it. "Is there really a dragon?"

  "There's really a dragon," Caden said. "I owe it my life, and it's coming to collect. Believe or not as you like, but on my birthday you'd best be far from here."

  "But you're going to fight it?" Jennet said, her chin raised stubbornly.

  "I fought the dragon," Caden said, turning her left arm to show off the curve of the hook. "I lost."

  "But what am I supposed to do then?"

  "Go to the hiring fair," Caden said. "Be a milkmaid or watch someone's children until you can get a man to give you your own. That's the way it works."

  "Not for you," Jennet said.

  Caden felt an unreasonable need to defend herself against the betrayal in Jennet's voice.

  "We had nowhere to go but the army, my brother and me. There was a war—"

  Jennet's eyes were hard. "You could have found a man yourself," she said. "You didn't have to go looking for the dragon."

  Caden glared at her. "What do you want me to say?"

  "Was it worth it?" Jennet said.

  Caden let out a slow breath. Fifteen years as a smith, learning the craft she'd learned first at her father's knee over again, making things that were sturdy and ugly but that would last. Being up and sweaty already before every dawn, at the mercy of the forge's relentless need to be fed. Falling asleep at the hearth herself sometimes to wake up stiff o
n the warm stones, the left hand she didn't have aching.

  Fifteen years not spent waking up beside a man she didn't want and work she didn't choose. She felt a sense of peace descending.

  "It was worth it," she said.

  "Then why won't you fight now?"

  "The dragon gave me fifteen years because it said it was a fair request," Caden said. "I don't think it's going to do me any favors."

  "Then this time you'll have to win," Jennet said.

  Caden shook her head. "Look here," she said. She lifted one of the hearthstones, one she didn't think Jennet could even have shifted an inch. She drew out the bundle she'd laid beneath it and folded back the cloth. The dark curve of the dragon scales caught the firelight, throwing it back like oiled metal.

  "They're beautiful," Jennet said, touching one with the tip of her finger.

  "And harder than steel," Caden said. "There's no sword made that'll pierce that hide. I don't know how anyone's ever slain a dragon. Maybe they're all telling stories, and all anyone's ever done is gather up their cast-off scales."

  "No sword, maybe," Jennet said. She lifted one of the scales, testing its weight in her hand. It narrowed along its curve to a razor edge. "I've been all week cutting wood with that dull axe."

  "If you set that thing in an axe handle, the handle'd break on the first strike," Caden said, but she could feel the first itching of an old feeling in her chest, the one she'd felt first on the march with the open road stretching ahead of her.

  "If the handle were steel?"

  "All this so you won't have to go to the hiring fair," Caden grumbled, but she was thinking about the shape of it already, and idly she reached for a bar of iron.

  * * * *

  Caden didn't sleep the night before her birthday, walking through the smithy, touching bits and pieces that she'd made that she still liked, or at least forgave now for their flaws. Jennet slept in the warmth of the hearth, with the ease of the young.