After forty-seven years in states that border Canada, she packed up six months worth of belongings and went to Asheville, North Carolina, to pet-sit for an acupuncturist who was going to India. After a month, she called her landlord in Minnesota and said, “Rent my apartment. I’m not coming back.” She has been happily happening in Asheville ever since, writing and arting and walking and meditating.
Her sons are fabulous beings: one graduated from Oberlin with a triple major in computer science, math, and Chinese; the other has a passion for driving race cars.
Visit her Web site at www.laurelwinter.com.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It all began—well, not it all, but this part of it all—when a friend of mine told me about her name. After her divorce, because she was rising from the ashes of her old life, new born, she changed her name to Pheonix. Not “Phoenix,” because she thought that was stupid, with the O before the E. She spelled it how she thought the bird would spell it. I decided the bird would go further than that. Fenix and his story rose from the ashes of my friend’s name.
Nick O’Donohoe FEAR AND LOATHING IN LALANNA: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the Kalchyan Dream
I
We were somewhere around Lalanna when the potions began to kick in. I remember saying something like, I feel a little dizzy; take the reins....” and suddenly there was a terrible roar around us, and the sky was full of huge bats—but not just bats—chimeras, and an impossible flock of phoenixes, and the twisted multieyed bastard children of seraphim, and clouds and clouds of dark, viciously ecstatic dragons who knew we had lost all control and feeding time had come. They gyred and spun around the wagon, which was hooked to two recently winged pegasi and was rocketing forward at an insane pace. And a voice was screaming, “Sacred Screaming God! Where did all these damned things come from?”
Gaanz was pouring a Self-Glamour on his naked chest. Thank the Laughing God he didn’t have a mirror available; as much of that wretchedly indulgent potion as he’d bathed in, his eyeballs would turn inward and he’d swallow his tongue kissing himself. He made a great effort to notice something other than his own nipples and muttered patiently, “Well, Dook, we brought the bats with us. What are you yelling about? ”
“Nothing. It’s your turn to drive the team.” No point mentioning the other creatures. The poor bastard would notice them soon enough.
The pegasi were ordinary horses whom we had winged for the drive from Derinyes and the Mage School. They strained against the team harness, trying to take our wagon off the ground with them. Later their joy of flight would wear off and they would be two tired, confused geldings in a stable full of mares and stallions who wouldn’t believe a neigh of it. Fine. Let them feel like us, for once.
Gaanz rubbed the Self-Glamour on his chest slowly and sensually. Gods, he was despicable. Glamours are normally thrown at others to get cheap adoration and, usually, even cheaper sex. Self-Glams reversed the formula. A normal dose would make a princess or a count vain. Gaanz had thrown enough on himself to be stupefied with his own beauty.
(He told me that he and his woman once used Self-Glams before sex. “I’ve never enjoyed myself more,” he swore. He was a subhuman monster, so it was probably true. I’d met her once—a pale, pasty thing with dark, angry eyes who had given up on others and turned inward—and the Drooling God knew she would never have anyone else’s interest at heart right up to the day she died.)
I said, “Maybe we should talk about the Mission.”
Gaanz scowled suspiciously. “Why? Aren’t you up to it? We have everything we need.” He gestured at the wagon bed behind us.
It was true. We had prepared well.
We had been called into the chamber of the Most High. We were fear gripped. As I often did, I was sweating profusely: what had he found out? The party with charms? The thing we had done to the foremost senior adept, with the toads and the love spell? Screaming God forbid, one of the other things? There were many choices, none good. I was picturing being sentenced to a few years in the basement of Holder’s Keep, with scarred, snarling people even worse than those around us usually.
But the Most High stroked his clean-shaven chin and rubbed the basilisk that he had turned to stone (we all wanted to hear that story, but he would not tell), and he said, “There is an Althing of heroes coming, at Lalanna.”
We were silent. We were stunned. All right, we were also charmed out of our senses, sweating perfume profusely and unable to focus.
He went on, “Normally we do not speak to heroes. They despise us. We have killed them, and they us. But something strange is happening to Kalchys, and we cannot afford not to know what they are doing.”
He leaned on the crucible. “The Pre-Eminence’s people have something in mind, something beyond the obvious. We must send someone to the Althing to observe. I have chosen you.”
Even as he said it, he looked miserable with the choice.
Later, Gaanz said to me as he sucked down a strawful of Forte (he broke two chairs subsequently), “He picked us because we’re Adaptable. Because we’re Flexible. Because of all those in the school, we alone can face the Unknown and fuck with it.” His face was shining with sweat, and he was holding a sword that someone irresponsible had given him.
I said, “I think he chose us because if it all went to Hel, he would most enjoy losing us.”
“Gods, yes!” He threw a bottle against the plaster of the tavern, chipping it. A hero would have used his fist instead of a bottle, but we weren’t crazy. “But he made a mistake.” He leaned across the table, nostrils flared, breathing heavily. “One—crucial—mistake.”
It was obvious. “The travel money.”
The Most High had handed the money over to us disdainfully. “This should cover your lodging in Lalanna, your food, and even some drink if you must. Be conservative.”
Conservative we were, in our own fashion.
Negotiations had gone well prior to our journey. We had two pouches of Stunn; seventy-five pellets of Forecaste; five parchment pages drenched in mind-bogglingly powerful Innature; a snuffbox half full of Fast; and a whole starlit skyful of Pax, Warre, Forte, Sleepers, Wakers, Follies . . . and also a quart of brandy, three jugs of wine, a goatskin of MisSpeak, four tins of Glamour, and several dozen Bravehearts . . . but the only thing that worried me was the MisSpeak. There is no one in the world more helpless than a man full of MisSpeak, certain that he knows the secrets of the universe, trying in vain to communicate them. We hadn’t used it yet, but it was only a matter of time before we got into the filthy stuff. We had at least promised each other that we would use it only one at a time, with the other one acting as a minder.
Gaanz stood bolt upright, staring ahead. “Look!” he shouted. For a moment I thought he’d finally seen the dragons. I braced myself to snatch the reins from him, even to roll him off the buckboard to save the wagon and my own life.
But he pointed straight ahead. “Behold the towers of Lalanna.”
I barely needed to squint, even in the desert sun. How had I missed them? There was a group of ziggurats, each flanked by minarets, rising in silhouette out of the desert. Ironically, the architecture was a steal from Skandia, the enemy in the war the Althing was gathered to debate.
The foolish horses-turned-pegasi bounded down the cobblestones toward Lalanna, and the towers grew every second. Gaanz said, “As your senior guide, I advise you to prepare yourself.” He waved an unsteady arm at the potions and knocked them over, spilling several out of their pouches, onto the lacquer tray.
“You miserable third-wit throwback!” I snapped. “Now we’re hopelessly undersupplied. What are we going to do?”
His smile was a picture of depravity as he scraped the brown, gold, and red powders off the tray and into a bag. He shook it to mix it and poured some on his palm. “We find out if we’re the stuff of heroes.” He stuck his nose into his palm, sniffing deeply, and stuck his hand under my nose.
What could I do? It was unthinkable to show Weakne
ss, especially at the start of a Search for the Truth. I inhaled from his palm, trying hard not to think about where else it had been.
We pulled up before the Hall of Heroes, gaping at the statuary. There were men and women in armor, leather skins, and nothing; they were fighting with spears, swords, broadaxes, twybils, and flails; they were wailing, singing, shouting, and roaring. Either the hall was incredibly old and these were all memorials, or the architect had abused even stronger potions than we had.
Then I saw that half the statues were moving, and the noise drifted down to us.
“At least we’re at the right place,” Gaanz muttered.
“Then why doesn’t it feel right?”
“Hold on to yourself, you damned coward,” he hissed. “You’ve taken too much. It’s left you fear-driven.”
“Too much of what? ” Had this monster slipped me something harmful when I wasn’t capable of watching? I wouldn’t put it past him.
“Of everything. Let’s go find the innkeeper.”
To do that, we had to cross the lobby. And the lobby, even more so than the upper balconies, was full of heroes.
At their waists they wore fistaxes, swords, scimitars, wavy-bladed krises, broadswords, and rapiers. It was astonishing that these people didn’t cut themselves jostling each other in the line for food.
The musculature was incredible. You could tell without having to ask that half of these people had wasted their violent youth bench-pressing anvils until they were nothing but broad stacks of quadriceps, lats, abs, and hemorrhoids.
I tiptoed past a rage-gripped man who seemed to be stitched together from bears. He was arguing loudly with a man whose mother may have had unnatural congress with a gargoyle. A one-eyed woman with manacle scars and a missing ear was listening and laughing. They all seemed to be clothed in diapers.
And, Mad God help me, they were all wavering at the edges as I watched. At any moment, the uncontrolled mixture I had inhaled might wash me over the edge, and they would melt and froth into a floor-covering suds of scar tissue and violence.
Gaanz grabbed my arm. “Keep walking, dolt. You want these monsters to notice us?”
After that, I moved with exaggerated caution, as though the lobby were underwater.
The innkeeper had at one time been fat. She still had all the skin from those days, though her body was spindly and her cheekbones stuck out like storm shutters. Her eyes were angry jellied pools, and she frowned at us. “What do you want?” she snapped at me.
I saw her teeth shifting back and forth restlessly on her jaw, and I whimpered and shrank back.
Gaanz grabbed my arm and stepped forward, smiling. “My friend is shy, dear lady—also a bit of a third-wit. We’re here for the Althing—”
“You. Here for the Althing.” She frowned down at him, her scowl an additional fold among her jowls.
“Of course.” He leaned forward, whispering to her, and I saw his hand wave a small unstoppered ampoule under her nose.
Her smile, by some miracle, lifted her cheeks. “Second floor, third door. Best in the house. Fit for a general,” she purred, giving him the key and adding slyly, “And his consort.”
She finished automatically, as though she had said it many times, “Please remember that you may not bring weapons into the Hall of Heroes tomorrow morning for the Althing.”
One glance across the lobby said that was a marvelous idea.
As we left the desk, I said incredulously, “You used Heart’s-Oil on her.”
“Mixed with Thighwarme.” He shrugged. “She gave us a room.”
I snarled, “No, you depraved swine, she gave you a room. And what will she do when she lets herself into it tonight with the master key and finds me asleep and helpless? Slice me across the gut and let me bleed my life away while she has her way with you.”
He was appalled. He muttered, “I don’t think I gave her that much. I don’t think she’d actually kill for me—”
“Think harder next time.” I gestured around us. “This is the most dangerous place we’ve ever been. Every second person here is a killer. We’ve got to watch for danger, listen for it, smell it; we’ve got to be ready for a sudden fatal touch—”
A hand slapped down on each of our shoulders, and I nearly screamed like I’d heard a piglet do in the last seconds it had of being a boar.
“Welcome to the war,” a voice boomed.
He spun us around. I looked into a grinning face with spaces between the teeth. He had bone buildup on his forehead from weapon impacts. If he didn’t have brain damage, he had a goddess on his side. “Finally, we go to Skandia and get to wage the battle of our dreams.”
“Graffin,” he added. “Out of the southlands, with Mad Rob’s troops. Whose outfit you with?”
“Savage Henry’s,” I said.
He stared at us blankly with his beady eyes. “Don’t know him. How many in your outfit?”
Gaanz said, “Just us. All the others died in training.”
“Fifty or so of them. Knives, garrotes, fistaxes . . .” I shrugged indifferently. “Two or three just with rocks.”
He looked dubious. “And where’s Savage Henry?”
“Training the next fifty.” Gaanz grinned. “And with any luck, he’ll get two more survivors.”
“Gods!” He stroked his curly black beard, looking us up and down. “And all he got out of it was you two?”
I nodded solemnly. “We don’t look like your usual warriors, do we?”
I had expected him to be polite, but he looked at my spindly arms and Gaanz’s massive manbreasts and said, “Not even a little.”
“Exactly.” I leaned forward, half whispering, “That’s Savage Henry’s genius. We’re special forces.”
“Don’t look like warriors at all,” Gaanz gloated.
“I see that,” he said, impressed.
“Nobody sees us coming,” I said quietly. “We don’t carry real weapons.” I gestured to our sides.
Between us we had a kindling axe, a small club, and a silver dagger that might in another setting have been used to slice helpings from a wheel of well-aged cheese. Beowulf would have sneered at us.
“Hmm. Yah. Well.” He backed away, looking at us suspiciously. “I favor the old training. Axes and swords, and most everyone who signs up makes it through.”
Gaanz shrugged. “That’s good enough for most, I guess.”
The bearded man walked away.
I said, “Did you have to make it sound so crazy?”
“Hel, I didn’t sound half crazy enough,” Gaanz said angrily. “You let these hyenas think you’re weak, they’ll rip out your spleen on your way to your room. It’s like playing cards with madmen. If you don’t bet the earth, they think you don’t have a hand. Best you remember that—”
But his jaw dropped, and he forgot what he was talking about.
A blond woman a head and a half taller than him was pushing her way through the crowded lobby. She was wearing a tight deerskin tunic and moccasins on her feet. Her arms and legs were bare except for bracelets of wolves’ teeth. She had silver ornaments in her ear: a star, a comet, an icicle, and a bear that was dancing on one foot.
She glanced at Gaanz and smiled dismissively and, for this crowd, politely.
Then she was gone, her perfectly toned body moving rhythmically and determinedly toward something we could not imagine.
Gaanz stared after her. “Sacred. Steaming. Moaning. Goddess.”
“Oh no.” I looked in anguish at him. “Don’t even try.” He turned and glared at me. “It’s possible.”
“You? And her? You wretched weasel,” I sneered. “You’ve weakened your body with every dangerous substance known to man. Look at her for a moment. She’s toned herself into a living weapon. She makes no secret of her triceps, biceps, quadriceps, glutes, and all the other major cords. She has muscles on her muscles on her muscles. Even if by some dark disaster she chose you, how would you survive? She’d wrap those legs around you and squeeze, and your
ass would fall off.”
A voice behind us said, “I see you’ve met Sigrid.”
We turned around. He was six foot three, with uncut hair like a farmboy’s. Maybe he’d been one, a few years ago.
Now he wore a brown leather vest, a fine collection of chest scars running every which way, a loincloth, weather-beaten boots to match, and a short sword. He probably had a knife stowed on him, possibly two, in places I couldn’t see.
He was smiling and acting friendly. That was good. As powdered-up and potioned-out as Gaanz and I were, we couldn’t take much more aggression without screaming.
“She’s wounded five men,” he said admiringly.
In this crowd, that was a pretty sorry tally. “When?”
“Since she arrived yesterday afternoon. Two were in the hot springs. It was pretty funny.”
“Ha,” Gaanz croaked, surrendering instantly his gland-driven dreams of her.
“Ha,” the warrior echoed. “I’ll be proud to serve beside her.”
The warrior raised his right hand to us, palm up. “Balarec,” he said, and clasped each of us to his chest in turn, slapping our backs twice in the Mighty Man-Hug.
“Dook, and this is Gaanz.” We looked at him in awe. Compared to the blood-drinking middle-aged mercenaries that staggered across the main room periodically, he seemed like a decent sort.
“So,” I said casually. “How many men have you killed?”
“Three. Only bandits, on the way here.” He looked sad. “They only attacked us for the food. Who can blame them?”
“Hmm.” Gaanz looked at him oddly, though the Mad God knew that Gaanz had little left in him but odd looks. “Are you looking forward to the war?”
“Forward? Not really.” He fingered the hilt of his sword. “But the way I hear it, Skandia’s threatened us. The Pre-Eminence says—”
Gaanz belched. “Doesn’t he, though? I hear the Eminence tells him what to believe.”
Firebirds Soaring Page 36