by Larry Niven
A bead of sweat ran down Durily’s cheek.
The King’s ghost waited patiently at another door.
Terror was swelling in Karskon’s throat. Fighting fear with self-directed rage, he strode soggily to the door and threw it open before the King’s warning gesture could register.
He was looking at a loaded crossbow aimed throat-high. The string had rotted and snapped. Karskon remembered to breathe, forced himself to breathe…
It was a tiled bathroom, sure enough. There was a considerable array of erotic statuary, some quite good. The Roze-Kattee statue would have been better for less detail, Karskon thought. A skeleton in the pool wore a rotting bath-attendant’s kilt; that would be Nihilil’s spy. The one-eyed god in a corner…yes. The eye not covered by a patch gleamed even in this dim, watery light. Gleamed green, with a bright vertical pupil.
Karskon closed his good eye and found himself looking at himself.
Grinning, eye closed, he moved toward the statue, fumbling in his pouch for the chisel. Odd, to see himself coming toward himself like this. And Durily behind him, the triumph beginning to show through the exhaustion. And behind her—
He drew his sword as he spun. Durily froze in shock as he seemed to leap at her. The bubble of water trembled, the sea began to flow down the walls, before she recovered herself. But by then Karskon was past her and trying to skewer the intruder, who danced back, laughing, through the bedroom and through its ornate door, while Karskon—
Karskon checked himself. The emerald in his eye socket was supplying the mana to run the spell that held back the water. It had to stay near Durily. She’d drilled him on this, over and over, until he could recite it in his sleep.
Lion stood in the doorway, comfortably out of reach. He threw his arms wide, careless of the big, broad-bladed kitchen knife in one hand, and said, “But what a place to spend a honeymoon!”
“Tastes differ,” Karskon said. “Innkeeper, this is none of your business.”
“There is a thing of power down here. I’ve known that for a long time. You’re here for it, aren’t you?”
“The spying stone,” Karskon said. “You don’t even know what it is?”
“Whatever it is, I’m afraid you can’t have it,” Lion said. “Perhaps you haven’t considered the implications—”
“Oh, but I have. We’ll sell the traveling stone to the barbarian king in Beesh. From that moment on the Movement will know everything he does.”
“Can you think of any reason why I should care?”
Karskon made a sound of disgust. “So you support the Torovans!”
“I support nobody. Am I a lord, or a soldier? No, I feed people. If someone should supplant the Torovans, I will feed the new conquerors. I don’t care who is at the top.”
“We care.”
“Who? You, because you haven’t the rank of your half-brothers? The elderly Lady Durily, who wants vengeance on her enemies’ grandchildren? Or the ghosts? It was a ghost who told me you were down here.”
Beyond Lion, Karskon watched faintly luminous fog swirling in the corridor. The war of ghosts continued. And Durily was tiring. He couldn’t stay here, he had to pry out the jewel. “Is it the jewel you want? You couldn’t have reached it without Durily’s magic. If you distract her now you’ll never reach the air, with or without the jewel. We’ll all drown.” Karskon kept his sword’s point at eye level. If Lion was a were-lion…
But he didn’t eat red meat.
“The jewel has to stay,” Lion said. “Why do you think these walls are still standing?”
Karskon didn’t answer.
“The quake that sank Atlantis, the quake that put this entire peninsula underwater. Wouldn’t it have shaken down stone walls? But this palace dates from the Sorcerer’s Guild period. Magic spells were failing, but not always. The masons built this palace of good, solid stone. Then they had the structure blessed by a competent magician.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. The walls would have been shaken down without the blessing and some source of mana to power it. You see the problem. Remove the talisman, the castle crumbles.”
He might be right, Karskon thought. But not until both emeralds were gone, and Karskon too.
Lion was still out of reach. He didn’t handle that kitchen knife like a swordsman, and in any case it was too short to be effective. At a dead run Karskon thought he could catch the beefy chef…but what of Durily, and the spell that held back the water?
Fool! She had the other jewel!
He charged.
Lion whirled and ran down the hall. The ghost-fog swirled apart as he burst through. He was faster than he looked, but Karskon was faster still. His sword was nearly pricking Lion’s buttocks when Lion suddenly leapt over the banister.
Karskon leaned over the dark water. The ghosts crowded around him were his only light source now.
Lion surfaced, thirty feet above the ballroom floor and well out into the water, laughing. “Well, my guest, can you swim? Many mainlanders can’t.”
Karskon removed his boots. He might wait, let Lion tire himself treading water; but Durily must be tiring even faster and growing panicky as she wondered where he had gone. He couldn’t leave Lion at their backs.
He didn’t dive; he lowered himself carefully into the water, then swam toward Lion, Lion backstroked, grinning. Karskon followed. He was a fine swimmer.
Lion was swimming backward into a corner of the ballroom. Trapping himself. The water surface rose behind him, curving up the wall. Could Lion swim uphill?
Lion didn’t try. He dove. Karskon dove after him, kicking, peering down. There were patches of luminosity, confusing…and a dark shape far below…darting away at a speed Karskon couldn’t hope to match. Appalled, Karskon lunged to the surface, blinked, and saw Lion clamber over the railing. He threw Karskon’s boots at his head and dashed back toward the King’s “secret” bedroom.
The old woman was still waiting, with the King’s ghost for her companion. Lion tapped her shoulder. He said, “Boo.”
She froze, then tottered creakily around to face him. “Where is Karskon?”
“In the ballroom.”
Water was flowing down the walls, knee-high and rising. Lion was smiling as at a secret joke, as he’d smiled while watching her savor her first bite of his incredible swordfish. It meant something different now.
Durily said, “Very well, you killed him. Now, if you want to live, get me that jewel and I will resume the spells. If our plans succeed, I can offer Karskon’s place in the new nobility, to you or your son. Otherwise we both drown.”
“Karskon could tell you why I refuse. I need the magic in the jewel to maintain my inn. With the jewel Karskon brought me, this structure will remain stable for many years.” Lion didn’t seem to notice that the King’s ghost was clawing at his eyes.
The water was chest-high. “Both jewels, or we don’t leave,” the old woman said, and immediately resumed her spell, hands waving wildly, voice raspy with effort. She felt Lion’s hands on her body and squeaked in outrage, then in terror, as she realized he was tickling her. Then she doubled in helpless laughter.
The water walls were collapsing, flowing down. The odd, magical bubble was collapsing around him. Clawing at the stone banister, Karskon heard his air supply roaring back up the stairwell, out through the broken windows, away. A wave threw him over the banister, and he tried to find his footing, but already it was too deep. Then the air was only a few silver patches on the ceiling, and the seawash was turning him over and over.
A big dark shape brushed past him, fantastically agile in the roiling currents, gone before his sword arm could react. Lion had escaped him. He swam toward one of the smashed ballroom windows, knowing he wouldn’t make it, trying anyway. The faint glow ahead might be King Nihilil, guiding him. Then it all seemed to fade and he was breathing water, strangling.
Lion pulled himself over the top step, his flippers already altering to hands. He was gasping, blowing. It was a long tr
ip, even for a sea lion.
The returning sea had surged up the steps and sloshed along the halls and into the rooms where Lion and his family dwelt. Lion shook his head. For a few days they must needs occupy the next level up: the inn, which was now empty.
The change to human form was not so great a change for Lion. He became aware of one last wisp of fog standing beside him.
“Well,” it said, “how’s the King?”
“Furious,” Lion said. “But after all, what can he do? I thank you for the warning.”
“I’m glad you could stop them. My curse on their crazy rebellion. We’ll all f-fade away in time, I guess, with the magic dwindling and dwindling. But not just yet, if you please!”
“War is bad for everyone,” said Lion.
“Shadow of Wings”
♦
by Bob Shaw
There was once a magician named Dardash, who—at the relatively young age of 103—decided he had done with the world.
Accordingly, he selected an islet a short distance off the coast of Koldana and built upon it a small but comfortable house that resembled a wind-carved spire of rock. He equipped the dwelling with life’s few necessities and moved into it with all his possessions, the most prized of which were twelve massive scrolls in airtight cylinders of oiled leather bound with silver wire. He surrounded his new home with certain magical defenses, and as a final touch that was intended to complete his isolation, he rendered the entire island invisible.
As has already been stated, Dardash had decided he was finished with the world.
But the world was far from being finished with him…
It was a flawless morning in early summer, one on which the universe seemed to have been created anew. The land to the east shimmered like freshly smelted gold, deckled with white fire where the sun’s rays grazed slopes of sand; and on all other sides the flat blue immensity of the sea challenged Dardash’s knowledge of history with its sheer ringing emptiness. It was as though Crete and Egypt and Sumer had never existed or had vanished as completely as the ancient magic-based civilizations that had preceded them. The very air sang a song of new beginnings.
Dardash walked slowly on the perimeter of his island, remembering a time when such mornings had filled him with near-painful joy. It was a time that was lost to him.
Being a magician, he retained a long-muscled and sinewy physique which—except for its lack of scars resembled that of a superbly conditioned warrior, but his mind was growing old, corrupted by doubt. When the twelve scrolls had first come into his possession, and he had realized they contained spells written in the mana-rich dawn-time of magic, he had known with a fierce certainty that he was destined to become the greatest warlock that had ever lived. But that had been almost two score years ago, and he was no longer so confident. In truth, although he rarely admitted it to himself, he had begun to despair—and all because of a single, maddening, insuperable problem.
He reached the northeastern tip of the islet, moody and abstracted in spite of the vitality all around him, and was turning southward when his attention was caught by a flickering whiteness at the far side of the strip of water separating him from the mainland. The coast of Koldana was rocky in that area, a good feeding ground for gulls, but the object he had noticed was too large to be a bird. It was possibly a man in white garments, although travelers were rare in that region. Dardash stared at the brilliant speck for a moment, trying to bring it into sharp focus, but even his keen eyesight was defeated by the slight blurring effect caused by the islet’s invisibility screen.
He shrugged and continued his morning walk, returning his thoughts to more weighty considerations. As a man who had traveled the length and breadth of the known world, he could speak every major language and was familiar with the written forms where they existed. The fact that the spells of the twelve scrolls were couched in the Old Language had at first seemed a minor inconvenience, especially for one who was accustomed to deciphering all manner of strange inscriptions. A few months, possibly even a few years, of study would surely reveal the secrets of the old manuscripts, thus enabling him to fulfill his every dream: to become immortal, to assume all the fantastic powers of the dream-time sorcerers.
But he had not allowed for the effect of the ten-thousand-year hiatus.
The old magic-based civilizations, so powerful in the days when mana was plentiful everywhere, had in fact been edifices of great fragility; and when the raw stuff of magic had disappeared from the earth, they, too, had crumbled and faded into nothingness. Few relics remained, and those that Dardash had seen or thought he had seen were totally without relevance to his quest. He lacked the necessary key to the Old Language, and as long as it remained impenetrable to him, he would fail to develop anything like his full potential. The doors of destiny would remain shut against him, even though there were places where mana had again begun to accumulate, and that had been the principal reason for his retreat from outside distraction. He had elected to devote all his time, all his mental energies, all his scholarship, to one supremely important task: solving the riddle of the scrolls.
Thus preoccupied, and secure behind his magical defenses, Dardash should have been oblivious to the world beyond, but he had been oddly restless and lacking in concentration for some time. His mind had developed an annoying tendency to pursue the irrelevant and the trivial, and as he neared the southern corner of the island, where his house was located, he again found himself speculating about who or what had appeared on the opposite shore. Yielding to impulse, he glanced to the east and saw that the enigmatic white mote was still visible at the water’s edge. He frowned at it for a short period, hesitating, then acknowledged to himself that he would have no mental peace until the inconsequential little mystery was solved.
Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he went into his house and climbed the stone stairs to its upper balcony. He had used the spy-mask only the previous day to observe a ship that had appeared briefly on the western horizon, and it was still lying on the low bench, resembling the severed head of a giant eagle. Dardash fastened the mask over his face and turned toward the mainland. Because the spy-mask operated on magical and not optical principles, there was no focusing or scanning to be done: Dardash immediately saw the mysterious object on the coast as though from a distance of a few paces. And he was unable to withhold an exclamation.
The young woman was possibly the most beautiful he had ever seen. She appeared to be of Amorite stock, with the lush black hair and immaculate tawny skin of her race. Her face was that of the perfect lover that all men recognize from dreams but few aspire to touch in reality—dark-eyed and full-lipped, sensuous and willful, generous yet demanding. She was standing ankle-deep in the waters of a narrow cove, a place where she could presume to remain unobserved; and as Dardash watched she unbuttoned her white linen chiton, cast the garment behind her onto the sand, and began to bathe.
Her movements were graceful and languorous, like those of a dance that was being performed for his sole benefit, and his mouth went dry as he took in every detail of her body, followed the course of every runnel of water from splendid breast to belly and slim-coned thigh.
Dardash had no clear idea of how long her toilet lasted. He remained in a timeless, trancelike state until she had left the water, clothed herself, and was gliding away into the rocky outcrop that formed a natural palisade between sea and land. Only when she was lost to his view did he move again. He removed the eagle-mask from his head, and when he surveyed his little domain with normal vision, it seemed strangely bleak and cheerless.
As he descended the stair to the principal chamber in which he did most of his work, there came to Dardash a belated understanding of his recent lackluster moods, of his irritability and lapses of concentration. The decision to devote his entire life to the riddle of the scrolls had been an intellectual one, but he was a composite being, a synthesis of mind and body, and the physical part of him was in rebellion. He should have brought one or more girls
from an inland village when he had set up his offshore retreat a year earlier. Many would have been glad to accompany and serve him in exchange for a little basic tutelage in magic, but he had an uneasy feeling it was too late to come to such an arrangement. The women of the region, even the youngest, tended to be a sun-withered, work-hardened lot, and he had just seen the sort of companion he truly craved.
But who was she? Where had she come from, and what was her destination?
The questions troubled Dardash at intervals for the rest of the day, distracting him from the endless task of trying to relate the phonetic writing of the scrolls to the complex abstractions of his profession. It was rare for trade caravans plying between the capital city of Koldana and the northern lands to take the longer coastal route, so she was unlikely to be the daughter or concubine of a wealthy merchant. But what possibilities remained? Only in fables did princesses or others of high birth go wandering in search of knowledge. Reconciling himself to the fact that speculation was futile, Dardash worked until long after nightfall, but in spite of being weary he found it difficult to sleep. His rest was disturbed by visions of the unknown woman, and each time he awoke with the taste of her lips fading from his, the sense of loss was greater, more insistent.
Part of his mood was occasioned by a belief that important opportunities only come once, that the penalty for failing to take action is eternal regret. Hence it was with a sense of near-disbelief, of having been specially favored by the gods, that on the following morning as he walked the eastern boundary of his island he again saw the flicker of whiteness on the mainland. This time, vision aided by memory, he had no trouble interpreting the lazy pulsations and shape changes of the blurred speck. She was there again. Undressing, uncovering that splendid body, preening herself, preparing for the sea’s caress.