Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXV

by contributors, various

  At last Caden woke her, when the sky was not yet beginning to lighten but was turning in the east from black to the deepest of blues. "It's time for you to go," she said.

  "It's early," Jennet protested, on the edge of sleep.

  "My mother bore me an hour after dawn," Caden said.

  Jennet looked up at her, her eyes clear now. "Let me stay," she said. "I can help."

  "You have," Caden said, and kissed her on the forehead. Then she pulled her to her feet and steered her out the door. "If by some chance this works, I expect you'll know."

  "The dragon outside will be something of a clue," Jennet said, her voice uneven. "Are you sure—I haven't said thanks—"

  "Get clear of this place," Caden said. "That's the best favor you can do me."

  Jennet hesitated a moment longer and then ran toward downhill toward the village. Caden watched her go, and then went to fetch the axe.

  The dragon came an hour after dawn, its wings like a darkening of the sky. Caden heard distant cries of alarm, but she didn't trouble herself. It would be long over before anyone got up the nerve to come to her rescue and get themselves killed doing it.

  With a beating of wings and a swirling of dry leaves, the dragon settled to the ground outside the smithy. Caden held tight to the axe and tried not to look into its eyes.

  I come, she heard anyway, the same thrum through her bones.

  "I've been waiting," she said, and flung herself at it.

  She hadn't remembered how fast it moved, or maybe it was only that she was slower now than the sinewy young soldier she'd been. Her first slash went wild, and she leapt back barely in time to avoid a swipe from its claws. She swung the axe again, but it moved as she connected, and the sharpened scales that formed its blade skittered down the angle of the dragon's shoulder.

  I am your death, the dragon said, a vibration through her whole body. She looked up, trying to judge her angle, and was caught by the dark pools of its eyes. She could feel her grip on the axe loosening. In a moment it would fall from her hand, and the dragon was already drawing its head back to strike.

  "Not yet!" The angry shout came from the bushes, Jennet's voice. An untrained girl might have turned to look, but Caden was an old soldier, and she kept her eyes on the dragon as it whipped its head around toward the sound. Its neck was one smooth curve, the scales lying too close for her axe to bite, but there where its claws dug into the dirt—

  She swung the axe down with all the strength of her right arm, all the strength of fifteen years of hammering iron and chopping wood, and she felt as much as heard the dragon scream as the sharpened scales bit deep, black blood staining the earth as the axe severed the creature's taloned paw.

  She raised the axe again as the creature reared back, thrashing. Her eyes met its again, but the power in its gaze was gone, replaced with something that felt suspiciously like fear. It couldn't know much about pain, she realized, not when it had lived all its life in armor. But it was learning fast.

  Caden raised the axe, aiming not for the creature's neck but for its other paw. "I've been waiting for you," she said. "I'm your death."

  Not yet, she heard, a plea shuddering through her bones. She hesitated, her hand still gripping the axe. The soldier she'd been wouldn't have hesitated. They hadn't given quarter after the invaders had started burning houses and farms.

  "Then when?" Jennet said. Caden spared her a quick glance. The girl was keeping a cautious distance, but her chin was up and her voice steady.

  The dragon turned its gaze on Jennet. It spoke, but Caden couldn't make out words in the sound, just a rumble like the sound of earth moving. Jennet raised her chin and nodded, once, like a man preparing to meet the enemy, and then Caden had to shade her face from the thrown-up dirt as the dragon beat its wings to take the sky.

  "If you were my prentice, I'd beat you for disobeying," Caden said when she couldn't any longer see the shadow of the dragon's wings against the sky.

  "I didn't think you needed a prentice," Jennet said, a little shakily but still with the ghost of a smile.

  "Well, apparently I'm not going to die today," she said. "What did it say to you, at the end?" She thought with a sinking feeling that she knew.

  "When you're old," Jennet said. "I'll come back when you are old." She shrugged. "I won't be forty for twenty-seven years," she said. "You've got plenty of time to teach me how to fight by then."

  "You'd best learn to be a blacksmith first," Caden said. "It's a more reliable trade than soldiering." She let the axe fall, finally, and considered the dragon's paw. The scales that lined it were smaller, but they'd still be worth a great deal in trade. It might be wise to keep some, though, for the next piece of work that needed a very sharp edge. "Help me get this thing inside before a bunch of fools come gawking about."

  Jennet hefted one of the talons with a will, managing to drag the thing a few feet without Caden's help. After Caden thought she'd wrestled with it long enough she took hold of the other side.

  "Do you suppose you can get your other prentice back?" Jennet asked as they dragged the thing inside. The firelight glinted off a hundred little scales, turning them the blue of the sky just before the dawn. "We could get more done with three."

  Caden started to snap that she'd done well enough with one, but then she thought that it might not be a bad thing to have a boy around the place. At least it might keep Jennet from running off after someone totally unsuitable. Just because she'd never seen the point in the whole thing didn't mean Jennet had to be the same.

  "I'll have to buy you a pair of shoes," she said, and Jennet smiled and went to stoke the fire for the morning.

  Matriculation

  Michael H. Payne

  As I mentioned in the introduction, I have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to identify with and care about a squirrel. Of course, Cluny is a rather unusual squirrel...

  When I asked Michael to update his biography, I got this: "A new year, a new magical squirrel story, and yet it's still the same old author. Working at the local library, singing and playing guitar at the local Catholic church, hosting a Sunday afternoon radio program at the local university, and updating my webcomics a cumulative seven days a week: I'll recommend folks check hyniof.livejournal.com or try Michael H. Payne on Facebook for more information."

  Settled in the pocket she'd sewn for herself along the front of Crocker's robes, Cluny ran through her check list again. After all, no one at Huxley graduated into the sophomore class without passing Thaumaturgical Synergy, measuring how well each budding wizard actually worked with his or her familiar, and since Cluny had designed everything she, Crocker and Shtasith were about to do expressly to hide that information—

  "Hey," Crocker muttered. "Nobody's leaving."

  Cluny blinked, looked up, twitched her whiskers at the empty seats around them. "Crocker, everybody's left."

  Smoke from over his right shoulder, and Shtasith's head rose into view. "I believe, my Cluny," the firedrake said, one eye ridge curling, "that our Crocker refers to that." He pointed a foreclaw toward the front of the room, and Cluny turned to face the door to the test chamber, its clear sides showing her an empty cylinder twenty feet across and twenty feet tall. And through the magical glass on the other side—

  Her tail puffed like an overripe dandelion. In every seat on every tier of the observation gallery sat human novices and magisters with their animal familiars. Most of the novices were students who'd entered the chamber earlier, but Cluny picked out Tzu Yin in the front row, Jian, her sparrowhawk familiar, perched on her shoulder. Quickly, she tried to think of a way to distract Crocker before he noticed them, but—

  A groan behind her. "Tzusy's here? Oh, great!" He wiped his palms on the skirt of his robe. "Don't people have better things to do on the last day of school?"

  "Nope." Cluny gave him a forced grin, wouldn't let her ears fold at the fear in his scent. "'Cause you're Terrence Crocker, aren't you? They all want to see you in action."

 
"Yeah, right." He swallowed, his round face pale. "But you better mean 'see us in action.'"

  "Just so." Shtasith's neck ridge flared. "We shall make them understand the meaning of the word 'formidable.'"

  Cluny couldn't miss the drake's sour uneasiness, though, and the flutter in her chest grew when she saw Master Gollantz, Huxley's magister magistrorum, among the faculty members seated on one side of the gallery, his big she-wolf familiar Raine curled up beside him. Master Gollantz had insisted during their twice-weekly meetings this past term that no one must ever learn the unthinkable truth that Cluny was the wizard while Crocker and Shtasith were her familiars, but when she'd asked him how they could pass through the test chamber without alerting everyone, he would only say, "That will be your actual test."

  The chamber's door whooshed open, and Mistress Iggelsley stumped through with her usual clipboard and frown. "Novice Crocker, your squirrel Cluny, and your firedrake Shtasith." She crooked a thick thumb over her shoulder. "You're last up."

  Crocker stood, almost tripped when the hem of his robe caught the toes of his boots; he stumbled forward and managed to bring himself to a knock-kneed halt an inch before he slammed Cluny, clutching her pocket, face-first into the sharp metal edge of Mistress Iggelsley's clipboard.

  The magistrix didn't budge. "So eager, novice," she rumbled, then stepped aside so Crocker could shuffle into the chamber. The door slid shut behind them, the walls inside glowing golden and opaque, and Mistress Iggelsley's rough voice spoke all around them. "Ready? Begin."

  Leaping down the front of Crocker's robes, Cluny was glad when he started spinning, his arms spread wide the way he was supposed to. Shtasith launched snorting from his shoulders, the air quickly thickening with the steam so vital to her plans, and in the whirling, cloudy confusion, Cluny cast the spell she'd put together, a shadow squirrel springing up beside her, its paws synchronized to Crocker's shaking hands as he cast the shield spell they'd worked out for him. His shadow stood above her now, too, and followed her motions when Cluny spun a lightning wall to reinforce the mesh of Crocker's shield. Or followed as well as it could: no human shadow could truly mimic the tail, ear, and whisker flicks of Cluny's casting regimen.

  But since firedrake steam fuddled both regular sight and magical probing, she'd made a spell that would reinforce what their audience expected to see: the human working the wizard magic, and the squirrel being the familiar. Otherwise—

  The chamber's attacks began then, fast and hard and from every side. Cluny had told Shtasith to concentrate on the solid projectiles, and his serpentine body flashed black and gold through the steam, the white-hot connection that bound him to her flaring with joy every time he incinerated another stick or stone. Through Crocker's connection, as warm and comfortable as a blanket around her shoulders, she knew he'd tuned his shield correctly and was catching the low-level magical attacks.

  Which left the rest for her. She sent out an all-purpose dispersal spell, then waggled her whiskers into an array of detection magic, linking it to Crocker's shield to avoid a feedback loop. Not that the chamber should generate anything as dangerous as feedback during a frosh test, but—

  The shield lit up, blocking the chamber's attempted loop; Cluny snapped a disruptor bolt along the casting trail, and sparks showered from the wall, a three foot by three foot section going dark. The pads of her paws began to prickle, and she hopped onto Crocker's boot before pasting the chamber's floor with the latest version of the stripping and scouring spell she'd used to disperse the mana flayer nine weeks ago.

  The whole chamber groaned, the floor reverting to dark ceramic tile, every bit of its magic scrubbed away, and she couldn't stop a grin. She had to make sure Crocker lived up to his reputation, after all.

  Sudden hissing perked her ears, and she added an analysis rider to her whiskers' detection spell. Kendrosine, it said, a potent tranquilizer...and highly combustible. "No fire, Shtasith!" she shouted, trying to think where she could get enough water to precipitate the gas from the—

  Of course! Cluny muttered some sympathetic magic, slashed the air with her claws, and winced as the chamber's ceiling burst to dust. Transformation turned it all to water, and rain deluged over her, the entire chamber going dark.

  Silence then—except for Crocker panting, drops pitter-pattering, and Shtasith bugling: "A hatchling in the Realms of Fire faces greater obstacles flitting to bed of an evening! Did you fools truly think—!"

  "Shtasith?" Crocker's voice wavered above her. "Shut up."

  A crack of light began widening in the wall to her left, a door opening, several gnomes in custodians' overalls grunting at hand cranks. Dispersing the shadow spell with a shake of her dripping ears, Cluny watched Mistress Iggelsley stump in, her scowl plain even in the uncertain light. "Novice Crocker!" she snapped, and Cluny felt him tense up. "You have completely disabled the test chamber!"

  Another moment of silence, then a smile as big as a jack-o-lantern's spread over her broad face. "One hundred out of one hundred! Marvelous!" She made a mark on her clipboard and waved at the door. "Off with you, novice! Need to get things cleaned up here, and you gotta get to the bonfire!"

  Relief washed over Cluny so warm, she felt her fur drying; scrambling up Crocker's soggy robes to her pocket, she tugged the longest hair of his scraggly attempt at a wizard's beard. "Say thank you, Crocker."

  "What??" He blinked, then bent a spastic bow at the magistrix. "Right! Yes! Thank you, ma'am!" He straightened, guilt on his face. "Should I grab a mop?"

  Mistress Iggelsley laughed, something Cluny had never heard before. "Term's over! You passed! Now get!"

  "Wise words," came Shtasith's hiss of a voice, and he settled onto Crocker's shoulders, his neck spines bristling. "I could perhaps question the need for such a damp strategy, but its success cannot be argued with." His tail snaked around Crocker's neck and dangled down to brush the tips of Cluny's ears. "We have done exceedingly well."

  Crocker began moving toward the door, his boots squishing with each step. "That...that was—" He looked down, a big grin on his face. "That was real magic, Cluny! It was—"

  A wave of clapping, whistling, and howling broke over them, and Cluny clung to the edge of her pocket as students swept into Crocker, human and animal voices chanting, "Novice night! Novice night!" The flow moved them along, excitement and relief and sheer crackling happiness a potent mixture stroking Cluny's whiskers with every breath she took. A doorway slid past, walls and roof pulling away to reveal the deepest blue sky she'd ever seen, the clouds purple and pink and red with the sunset.

  "Hurry!" an eagle she didn't recognize shouted, swooping above them and heading toward the Main Quad. "They're gonna—" A column of fire burst between the buildings to her left, a cheer bouncing and echoing from that direction, and the whole group around her surged, their whoops mixing with those ahead, boots clattering over the promenade between Hsieh Hall and Admin till they rounded the corner to a sea of students, their fellow frosh—or former frosh, now, Cluny thought—ringed around the huge bonfire at the center of the Quad.

  Laughing and shouting, Cluny's group sank into the mass— and lazing the next morning on her shelf above Crocker's bed, Cluny smiled and snuggled into the comforter her mother had knitted for her, the night a blur of warmth and wonder. Certain moments stood out: gasping as Shtasith swooped and swerved in an impromptu race/parade/flight exercise with a group of avian familiars; clapping along while Crocker flailed at a bodhran with a ragged band of students during several sets of reels and jigs; trying her paw at the shuffling dances traditional among Huxley's large contingent of rat and mouse familiars.

  Eating and drinking and celebrating with her classmates their graduation into the sophomore ranks, the smoke of the bonfire swirling around her sometimes like incense, sometimes like wildflowers, sometimes like hot chocolate and marshmallows, she'd felt for the first time a sense of belonging, a real kinship. It didn't matter if she was a wizard or a familiar or both or what. She was here, and she wa
s a part of this place.

  A sudden tapping, soft but sharp. Cluny propped herself up on an elbow, saw Shtasith raise his head from his bed of coals in the fireplace. The sound of Crocker's steady breathing in his tangle of blankets told her it wasn't him, so who—?

  Several more taps. Shtasith raised an eye ridge at her, and she nodded, jumped down to perch on the foot of the bed while he whooshed to the window and pulled the curtain aside.

  The morning flooded in, summer less than a week away; Cluny squinted into it at an avian silhouette not much larger than she was. "Jian!" she heard Shtasith say just before her eyes got used to the light and showed her the sparrowhawk.

  Springing to the top of the sash, Shtasith undid the latch, and Cluny sent a lift spell to slide the window up six inches, Jian's eyes going wide. Cluny felt her ears fold: Every class she'd sat through pretending to be Crocker's familiar stressed that familiars should only perform magic without their wizard's supervision under the direst of circumstances.

  "It's OK!" she called, leaping to the floor, dodging around Crocker's scattered boots, and clambering up to the windowsill. "Crocker's given me a blanket permission to perform any spell at any time." She smiled and shrugged. "You know how he is."

  "Indeed." Jian slipped inside. "His example has forced me all quarter to address my mistress by her given name!" His neck feathers ruffled. "How you two manage it astounds me."

  Shtasith nodded. "It is a trial every day." He gave Cluny a glare so sharp, she could feel its edges. "But we familiars must follow our masters' whims, no matter how ridiculous."

  Cluny folded her arms. "Well, I think it's a simple way for them to let us know we're partners rather than slaves!"

  The sparrowhawk blinked, and Shtasith puffed a smoke ring from one nostril. "My friend Cluny is a bit of an activist."