Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII

by Waters, Elisabeth

  Leather rasped against stone.

  A young man in a guard's livery stepped from the leftmost cell, a sword in hand. He was unshaven, his mail spotted with rust, his tabard torn and stained. His mouth curled into a rictus grin, and his bloodshot eyes glittered, seeming to glow with their own inner fire.

  He raised the sword and began walking towards her.

  "I know you," said Caina.

  The guard stopped, staring at her.

  "Your name was Ryther. You were a magus, a brother of the Magisterium, and you murdered children to fuel your necromancy. I slew you once, but by all the gods it seems that your crimes have earned you another death."

  Laughter burst from the guard's lips, the same mad laughter she had heard from Anabas and Halfdan.

  "Wretched, clever little Ghost. I had hoped to tell you the truth as I cut the flesh from your bones, but you are clever, aren't you? I've been waiting for you. I thought you might find your way down here."

  Caina drew a knife, pulling back her arm to throw.

  "Go ahead," said Ryther. "Cut down this flesh. Just as you slew poor drunken Anabas. Just as you butchered that old fool. But I will live again." He laughed at her. "Perhaps I should thank you. I have transcended the flesh, transcended death itself." The rictus grin widened. "But I still owe you a death. You can kill me a dozen, a hundred times, and you will still die in torment at my hand."

  "I know you for what you are now," said Caina, "and I will stop you." Kill his stolen flesh, find the enspelled heart, and Ryther would pay for the last time.

  "No," said Ryther. "You won't."

  He spun his free hand in a circle, and a harsh crimson light burst from his fingers.

  The pain struck Caina at once, waves of icy cold flooding into her flesh and bones. She fell to her knees with a trembling shriek. The stone floor felt cold, so cold, and she saw waves of glittering frost creeping across the ceiling and pillars. Caina threw the knife at Ryther, but her shivering wrist sent the blade spinning into the darkness.

  "Strange," said Ryther, strolling towards her. "I thought death would strip me of my magical powers. A small price to pay for immortality, of course. But it seems that death only enhances sorcery. Especially the necromantic sciences." He gestured again, and unseen force picked Caina up, floated her through the air towards Ryther.

  She tried to curse him, but her teeth chattered too badly.

  "This," said Ryther, "is going to be very special." He tossed aside the sword and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close.

  "Let... let... me go..." spat Caina, forcing the words through shuddering lips.

  "Oh," said Ryther, "I shall, I promise you."

  He seized her hair, pulled her face close, and kissed her.

  And something dark and cold forced its way between her lips and into her throat. It had no weight, no substance, but Caina still felt it crawling down her throat and reaching for her heart. The guard's body collapsed to the floor, and Caina stumbled back, gagging, as cold fingers dug into her chest.

  Ryther's soul. His corrupted, rotting soul.

  His voice whispered inside her head.

  I haven't decided yet how I'm going to kill you. Or, rather, how you're going to kill yourself. Perhaps you'll douse yourself with oil and set yourself aflame. Or perhaps you'll surrender to the guards and confess to Anabas's murder. They'll crucify you, you know, and you'll hang for days as the birds peck at your...

  "Get out!" screamed Caina, and her words dissolved into an incoherent snarl. She felt Ryther's will tightening around her muscles, seizing control of her limbs. Desperate, she pawed at her belt. Her shaking hand curled around the dagger she had stolen from Nicorus.

  Silver. Nicorus had said silver brought agony to the undead.

  Can you stab the immaterial? Ryther's laughter echoed inside her skull. Your flesh is mine, wretched little Ghost, and you will curse your mother's name before I finish with...

  Caina slammed the silver dagger into her left palm. The pain was blinding, but nothing compared to agony of Ryther's will forcing itself into her muscles. The wound sizzled, and black smoke rose from her skin.

  And Ryther's gloating dissolved into a wail of surprised pain.

  Again Caina stabbed herself, the blade sinking into her forearm, and hissing black smoke rose from the cut. Ryther's mental shriek seemed to split the world, and suddenly Caina was on her knees, gagging. The cold, invisible thing erupted from her lips, fleeing the pain, and Ryther's voice vanished from her skull. Caina blinked, her arm wet with blood, the world spinning around her.

  The guard groaned and began to twitch.

  Caina staggered to her feet, reeling. The heart, she had to find the heart. But where? Ryther could have hidden it in a thousand places down here. The guard sat up, and Caina saw the crimson glitter in his eyes, the lips twisted in a snarl of fury.

  The cell. Ryther had come out of the leftmost cell.

  Caina half-ran, half-hobbled towards it, the silver blade dangling from her right hand. She heard Ryther screaming curses at her, heard him stand and retrieve the discarded sword. Caina stumbled through the cell door. A stone coffer sat against one wall, a pulsing red glow flickering from within.

  Inside lay Ryther's dead heart. It rested motionless on its side, but it throbbed with a bloody radiance. Ryther came at her, howling curses, and Caina ducked. The sword ripped at her stolen cloak and clanged off the wall.

  She fell to her knees and drove the silver dagger into the glowing heart.

  The dagger burst into raging white flames. The heart shuddered, the crimson glow winking out. Ryther froze, his eyes bulging. The dagger melted into an arc of molten white, and the dead heart erupted into crackling flames.

  Ryther screamed, once, and fell against the wall. His face went slack, the mad glitter fading from his eyes, and Caina felt something cold and invisible erupt from his lips, something that dissolved into nothingness.

  "I told you," rasped Caina, leaning on the stone coffer, "that you deserved to die twice."

  The guard's eyes focused on her.

  "Who... who are you?" he said. His voice had changed, and now he looked and sounded like a terrified young man. "I... I had the most horrible dream, there was a terrible voice in my head..."

  Caina said nothing and limped away, and the guard made no attempt to stop her.

  * * * *

  Two days later, Caina burned Halfdan's pawnshop to the ground.

  The guards still searched the city, seeking Anna Callenius, but no one thought to stop a tired beggar woman in a ragged cloak, her mangled left arm wrapped tight in bandages.

  From the safety of an alley, Caina watched Halfdan's pyre, watched the guardsmen scramble with buckets to put out the flames. She touched one of the daggers hidden beneath her cloak, Halfdan's dagger, taken in his memory. Her teacher was dead, but she was still a Ghost of the Empire. There were still men like Ryther in the Empire.

  And in Halfdan's memory she would stop them.

  Caina turned and disappeared into the crowds.

  The Frog's Princess

  by Kristin Noone

  This story is an interesting twist on "The Princess and the Frog" by the Brothers Grimm. Kristin's not the only one playing with the story this year; Disney's December 2009 release is currently called The Princess and the Frog, although last year's press release called it The Frog Princess, and the heroine's name appears to have changed at least once so far. I don't know why changing humans into frogs (and vice versa) is such a frequent theme in stories—despite the fact I've done it once or twice (it was two stories, in different worlds, but the same frog/prince). Why frogs? Admittedly, there appears to be a belief that frogs can sound like humans, running from Aristophanes' play The Frogs (405 BC) to the Budweiser television commercial (1995), but is that enough to explain it?

  Kristin Noone is a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, where she is studying the interactions of medieval literature, fantasy, and science ficti
on. Her academic writing has covered ghosts, Robin Hood, Beowulf, and medieval romance, and her previous short story "Stitches" appears in the anthology Strange Worlds of Lunacy. She lives in Riverside, California, with a black cat named Percival and a houseful of books, and is currently working on a novel, especially when she needs a break from doing research. To the best of her knowledge, her boyfriend has never been a frog.

  #

  The princess Andrina Elisabetta Gwenelyn sat in the long weeds next to the moat, heedless of her elaborate gown, and wished that she might never be found.

  The moat was overgrown, choked with water-rushes and dark swampy plants. The water lurked, sullen and black and ominous, around them. It refused, contrary to all logic, to catch even the faintest hints of the setting sun.

  The setting suited her mood, just then. She had fled the glittering dining hall earlier, the place filled with servants in their best livery and silver bearing only a touch of tarnish, and her father's plaintive calls of "Andrina!" had chased her out into the grounds.

  Andrie curled her feet up in the damp grass, and rested her head on her arms. She missed her mother—not because Signy had been a particularly loving parent, but because she never would have arranged a marriage for her daughter, without her consent, to the prince of some foreign country. And Signy would have argued to keep her child at home for reasons of her own.

  Home, Andrie thought. Home was a lie. The brilliant facade her father had devised to impress the foreign prince would fool no one. King Therin had lost all interest in running the estate—much less the kingdom—after losing his queen, and the servants had responded accordingly. The sorry state of the moat was only the most external of the signs.

  Perhaps, she thought, without much hope, the prince would simply arrive, take one look at the crumbling kingdom, and run off into the night. That would be a happier ending.

  But it was unlikely. Her father wanted the match, and the young man came from a large and extremely powerful country. If he'd chosen Andrie as his bride, no one would wish to try to dissuade him.

  Except Andrie herself, whose objections to her rushed engagement with a stranger had been brushed aside "for the good of the kingdom." The worst part of it was that she knew it was true. The marriage would help her decrepit home, bringing it a powerful ally. Young Prince Nial was not only the heir to the throne of the neighboring kingdom, but an impressive magician in his own right. He'd been trained by Andrie's own mother, after all.

  She wondered why he'd been so insistent on wedding her. She was no great beauty or wit; her brown-gold hair and gray-blue eyes were pretty enough, but no one had ever been moved to write poetry in her honor. While she was fairly intelligent, a near-encyclopedic knowledge of literature and philosophy was not the kind of thing one married for. And if he expected her to live up to Signy's legendary scintillating wit, he'd be sadly disappointed.

  Of course, there were other things he might be expecting from Signy's daughter, but that story at least was well known. Everyone had heard what a pity it was, that the beautiful, brilliant, magical queen had produced a child with next to no trace of her sorceress blood.

  Andrie, thinking about her mother, slipped one hand into her pocket, and pulled out the small golden ball she carried. It had been the last thing Signy had given to her. Supposedly it had magical powers—Signy had never given up on her hopes for her daughter—but Andrie had never been able to make it work. She had never been able to make a single spell work, really, and she kept the little golden ball mostly as a reminder, a memento of her mother.

  Signy, she suspected, had been baffled by her daughter, that strange plain unmagical creature, and though she had loved her child, it had been across a distance that neither of them knew how to bridge. Andrie had mourned her mother, but more in the way of a distant aunt or grandparent; someone she'd never really known, who'd never quite known her.

  Idly, she began to toss the golden ball from hand to hand over the murky water. It wasn't so much that she missed her mother; she missed the way the world had been with her mother around.

  Signy had been able to charm birds from the trees, to calm a raging wildfire, to change her own shape and wear animals' skins. That was how Therin had first seen her: a stunningly lovely golden doe, running through the woods. He had fallen in love with her the moment she stopped and spoke to him, her shape transforming with her passions, into a perfect woman. And Signy had loved him in return, seeing in him the perfect partner, the young and handsome king of a wild forest country. Their courtship and wedding had been the stuff of fairy tales, and the court for years afterward had been a center of magic and lore. Men and women came to study with the sorceress-queen, or to exchange knowledge, or simply to say that they had been there when they returned home. The palace had been a whirl of scholars, of magic, of the lore and art and imagination of all the kingdoms. It had been beautiful.

  The whole kingdom—indeed, all of the ten kingdoms—had rejoiced when Signy had given birth to a child. Surely this was cause for great celebration. Surely the daughter would prove herself worthy of such outstanding parentage. Even when those hopes had proved false, the child's lack of aptitude for magic hadn't dulled the brightness of those days. And Andrie herself had enjoyed it, watching from the sidelines like an audience for the world's most luminous pageant. The knowledge of her own deficiency had stung a bit, as if she'd been born with no voice to the world's greatest minstrel. But she'd always found a sort of bright-eyed consolation in her place beside the epicenter of magic and brilliance that was her mother's life, the view from inside that charmed circle.

  Andrie sighed, and flipped the ball into her other hand. The small solid weight of it was reassuring somehow.

  She had wanted for nothing; both her parents loved her, in their different ways. Therin adored her because she was a reflection of his bride, his queen, and because she shared his interest in ancient books and scholars' lore. Sometimes he seemed to forget that she was only a child, speaking to her with all the animated passion of one of his philosophers. Sometimes he seemed not to realize that she was his child; she knew that he cared for her, but suspected from a young age that he did not understand who or what she was. Signy had loved her daughter instinctively, like a real mother; but that gulf of ability had stretched between them like a chasm neither of them could cross. Signy had always believed that her daughter must be like her; she had believed it so strongly that there was no room in her mind for any other conception. But she had been as fiercely possessive of her child as a mother wolf, and never, Andrie thought, would have allowed a foreign prince—even one of her own students—to take that child away.

  It hadn't been a perfect existence; Andrie knew that much. She had known it at the time. But it had been lovely nonetheless.

  She gazed at the perfectly polished golden surface of the ball as it sat in her palm, smooth and blank and revealing nothing, and tossed it into the air.

  That glittering, enticing life had vanished, like enchanted smoke, when Signy had died.

  Therin had secluded himself for weeks in his apartments, and refused to see anyone, even his child; when he had emerged, he was a changed man. He took no interest in anything; he had to be reminded to eat, to bathe. The running of the kingdom was left to ministers, some good, some bad, who let the orderly nation fall into disarray. The salons and scholars and students trickled away, not all at once, but slowly, over the years. The few servants that remained did so out of compassion, or misplaced loyalty, or simply because they had nowhere else to go; but they were not enough to prevent the slow decay of time. The castle, like everything else, suffered now from years of neglect.

  She had fled the dinner tonight because she couldn't bear to smile and see her father pretend that everything was well, ignoring or refusing to see the tarnish all around him.

  Unthinkingly, Andrie tossed her ball a little too hard, and missed the catch. It bounced off her fingertips, hit the bank, and splashed down into the moat.

  "Oh, d
rat," she said out loud, with feeling, and glared at the disgusting water. "Oh, no..."

  As she sat contemplating the relative merits of removing her shoes and stockings and wading into the muck, a sudden voice from the reeds said, "Don't worry, princess," and Andrie jumped.

  "Who's there?"

  "Only me, I'm afraid." A small frog, bright green and slimy with the moat-water, hopped up on the bank beside her, and blinked wide frog eyes at her.

  Andrie stared. Surely not. Perhaps she had dozed off and was dreaming. Things like that never happened to her. To Signy, maybe; surely in a sorceress's world animals spoke all the time. But not to her mundane little daughter.

  "I didn't mean to startle you." The frog looked sheepish, if such a word could be applied to an amphibian.

  "I—er—it's all right," Andrie managed, years of courtly politeness coming to her aid. Always be elegant, Signy had said, and mysterious if you can. If you cannot, you can at least be courteous. Andrie was not elegant and would certainly never manage mysterious, but courtesy she could offer. "I was just surprised. I've never spoken to a frog before."

  "For the most part, it's terribly boring," the frog said politely. "Flies, flies, and more flies... would you like your ball back?"

  "Yes, please." Andrie watched as the frog launched itself off the bank, doing a neat little leap into the water; it was out of sight shortly, obscured by darkness. After a few moments, it reappeared, the shining gold of her ball stretching its wide mouth.

  It dropped the ball into her outstretched hand, and sighed. "Ah, much better."