The Mammoth Book Of Warriors and Wizardry (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Sean Wallace

  Coor Krahn accepted the modest trinket – a broad silver armband set with several clear gems – such tokens were frequent enough. He thought, Now I shall discover why I was brought here. He said, “What’s the name of your master?”

  “The Lord Tyo Lionay.”

  Coor nodded graciously. Of course, he had never heard of him.

  Lord Tyo’s house was very fair, not large, but exquisite in all apparent detail. Beyond, elaborate gardens ran down the hill, and next there was Lord Tyo’s game park, full of spotted antelope, blond foxes, and rare tigers whose eyes were blue.

  The aristocrat met Coor Krahn in a marble yard. It had a marble cistern of water, where great gold and black carp swam, or put up bold heads to look at them – at which Tyo laughed, and fed them dainties, and stroked them, too. A nightingale sang by day, in a mulberry tree of purple fruit.

  “How may I assist you, Lord Tyo?”

  Tyo only smiled, and the servant refilled their cups.

  “I need nothing, Sword’s Man. I have no enemies. Nor any war-goals: I possess already almost everything I want.”

  Coor did not frown, though he suspected now duplicity. Tyo was handsome, perhaps a year or so younger than himself. Tyo’s manner was frank and charming.

  “Then, my lord, you’re too generous. If you require no service from me, I’m uneasy at accepting your gift.”

  “Please keep the armlet. I collect such things – it’s my pleasure to gift them. Your service to me you perform in allowing me to meet with you. I’d heard much of you, Coor Krahn, your valor and ability.”

  “You’re again too generous, Lord Tyo.”

  “Then permit my excess. Dine with me – stay in this house, and lie soft for once. There are many diversions here. I also collect curious creatures . . . and there are lovely women, if you incline to them.”

  Coor Krahn did frown. He said, “I am a Sword’s Man. When you heard of me, had you never heard that?”

  “And married to the blade? Naturally. But surely that isn’t always so . . .”

  Coor Krahn felt a low dull anger. (In his mind he remembered the falling empty scabbard.) Did this lordling dare insult him? “With myself, Lord Tyo, always it is so.”

  “Forgive my ignorance, then. I’m sorry to have offended you, my noble guest. But stay and dine.”

  “I’m bound elsewhere.”

  As Coor said this, the Sword lay heavy at his thigh. He was very conscious of her. No, he was not bound elsewhere, for she had bound him here. But why – for this? To bear with this rich fool and his rich fool’s whims?

  “Must you hurry on your road? Is it an urgent mission?”

  Now Coor did not answer, scorning a lie.

  And his silence, Lord Tyo Lionay took, it seemed willfully, for agreement.

  He dreamed of the Sword that night, when he slept on the silken bed, at Tyo’s mansion. A girl had come to bathe him, a lovely girl indeed, with skin like cream and hair like night rain. But he sent her out. After this, and the heavy food and wine, sleep and the dream came swiftly.

  Sas-peth Satch lay by him on the bed in Tyo’s house. She was naked as a Moon, and at once put her hands upon him, watching him as his excitement mounted, playing his body like her instrument until orgasm released him with its death.

  “You see that I reward you,” said Sas-peth then.

  “Yes, my lady. I’m rewarded beyond all treasures.”

  “Then you will cease your argument with me.”

  “I’d never argue against you, Sas-peth.”

  “But you have.”

  “How have I?”

  “You resist my will that you remain here.”

  “Ah, lady,” he sighed. “Here?”

  “Here.”

  “In this house?”

  She said nothing.

  “If you demand it, I shall. But won’t you tell me—?”

  She rose, and stood, garbed suddenly again, in the facile way of dreams (and magic) in her scarlet garments. She turned her face aside from him. For a second she seemed to him nearly evasive. “Do you question me still?”

  “Not your right to command me, lady, only the reason. A warrior isn’t made for much of such a life. Perhaps with me – not even for a single day. To lie soft, and eat and drink over and again, and talk and talk – to tell stories of his acts that sound like boasting, to listen constantly to some lord’s worthless chat – he jabbers like some farmgirl—”

  Between one word and the next, she was gone. Like the firefly by the well, her glow winked out, and he lay alone in the dream, and waking, under his hand her steel was that of an icicle, so his palm seemed stuck to her and scalded by her coldness.

  “How have I angered you, Sas-peth, Sas-peth Satch?”

  He knew. He had resisted. She was his empress; he must obey.

  Coor Krahn turned over sullenly to his left side, letting go of her as sometimes – rarely – had happened in sleep. He lay with his back to her, and in the marble court below the nightingale sang on, like a clockwork engine, itching inside his brain.

  “May I see it? – pardon my clumsiness – may I see her? I mean, the Sword?”

  It was the second day here. Coor looked at Lord Tyo, who stood there, mannerly, groomed and good looking, ingenuous perhaps, or merely stupid.

  “A warrior doesn’t give over his Sword to any man but his brothers, his master, or his smith.”

  “I meant, evidently, that you should hold her, but perhaps I might look. Her power’s very glamorous. It attracts me.”

  “Let me enlighten you, my lord. What you ask is like wanting a squint at my prick.” Coor Krahn had intended uncouthness. But Tyo only put back his head and laughed. Coor Krahn said ironly, “She is only drawn out for me, in privacy. Unless I draw her to kill. If another man sees her, as you ask to do, she must taste his blood.”

  Tyo gazed straight in his eyes. Tyo’s eyes were steady and pure.

  “If that’s the price, I would pay it. I take it you mean a sip, not my life’s blood. I’ve heard of this custom, I believe. Yes, why not.”

  The provision of the blood – a sip, as the wretch had said – had been made of necessity. There could come certain occasions when, as Coor had mooted, a Sword must be drawn outside the need of war. For repair, or before a peer. Then the Sword’s Man himself did not give her his own blood. Some fitting other was selected, by the warrior, his School or the smith, one who reckoned himself honored to be used, and would wear the scar of her bite with colossal pride.

  “Again, I’ve offended you, my dear,” said Tyo familiarly, and Coor wished to slap him like some silly slattern fumbling him at an inn.

  “You make light of what is profound,” said Coor Krahn.

  “Not I. I’m caught in the web of her fascination. Soon you’ll be gone. I must take up again my restricted life. Do you really grudge me this? Oh then, I’ll say no more.”

  A board game was brought. They ate ash-plums, and played it, as if it mattered.

  In Coor Krahn a fury was rising like a storm. It began in him on the second day at the mansion, by which time anyway he was already sick of the place and everything it held. The decorative food curdled in his belly, the nightingale hurt in his ears. The tamed beasts that strolled about the marble corridors, and lay sunning themselves in Tyo’s park – where his lordship did not even hunt them – seemed to be other versions of Coor Krahn, also trapped and tamed, his teeth grown sticky from candies. Ten days and nights went like this. All alike. Music was played them, girls rippled in lascivious dances, board games were set for table-wars, intellectual verses read out. The lord and Coor rode and dined, and talked, and talked, and separated only to sleep. Tyo was affectionate and nearly deferential, so that Coor came to believe this lord found him most amusing. Not one dream came to Coor, not one dream of her, to tell him what he should do. Except, alone with her one night, he said, “Let me go from here, my lady. Or I must go from here – without your letting me.” And in the dark spaces of sleep after this, he though
t he caught a glimpse of her, faint as a candle flame, miles ahead and carried away from him. And he followed in vain.

  * * *

  Perhaps the eleventh night arrived, or the twelfth; twelfth – the number it was sometimes believed was unlucky. He had that day ridden all over the park (as if searching for escape) and the tigers had watched with lolling tongues. In sleep he saw Sas-peth walking under the Sun with a tiger, which had red eyes, not blue. And he followed, but now not in vain, although he did not instantly catch up to her.

  If it was the fool’s park they were in, he was not sure. But it was a park, cultivated, the trees grown for effect, pruned to ardent shapes that obscured no possible vista.

  He came on Sas-peth Satch again suddenly. She waited under a cedar, and the tiger was gone. She looked away and away, and when Coor spoke to her, she did not reply, or turn to him. And then he realized that another was there with her, someone that he, Coor Krahn, could not see, so that at first he took the vague figure only for a shadow – although Sas-peth, in dreams, cast no shadow at all.

  “Here I am,” she said, “do you see?” But not to Coor Krahn.

  The shadow-figure became a little less vague. It held out its arm, and Sas-peth put her hand on this arm.

  Who is this that she touches?

  Then there was nothing there, and she looked back at Coor Krahn, and her face was expressionless as she said to him, “I have not called you to me, Coor Krahn. What do you want? Must I forbid you, like a child, to follow me at such times?”

  She had been communing with some spirit of her own kind, he reasoned. He felt shamed, and begged her forgiveness. But she merely looked away once more, and then he woke, and the fury stirred blindly inside him, like thunder under a hill.

  Still, time passed. It hurt him, each wasted hour an injury. But why was the hurt so much? It was a pleasing place, this small place. No, it was a hell for him. Sleeping or waking, here he was, with this pampered lord fool, like the lord fool’s slave. And the fool wanted a look at the naked Sword, and would pay in fool’s blood . . .

  * * *

  They were in the marble courtyard when the fury burst, staining the air, and the aura of Coor Krahn’s soul, with a black shot by fire.

  But Lord Tyo did not seem to notice. Urbanely he toyed with an ivory gamepiece, smiling on.

  “Then, my lord, if you say no more, I say as you did, why not?”

  Stunned, bewildered, Tyo blinked at him.

  And Coor Krahn put his right hand over on to the hilt of his Sword.

  When he touched her she was like some electric thing. Sparks flew up inside his arm, but he wrenched her from the scabbard with a noise like a rusty scream, and in the air she blazed and rang, slicing the light of day like gauze. The whole landscape seemed to gasp and petrify in awe. The Sun, wounded, trickled sparkling on her blade’s edge. And Tyo stared up at her, where the Sword’s Man had lifted her high into the sky. Tyo was white, he was trembling. He said softly, “So beautiful she is. Better than any jewel. Better than anything, even a woman dressed in lilies.”

  “Yes, so she is. Better than anything.” The rage now had remade Coor Krahn. He was remote and in control of himself. It was like a battle-anger, and yet, not quite. “She’s thirsty, too. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “So brief a word. Only one? I thought you’d talk more. Bare your arm for her, then.”

  Tyo rent his sleeve. Expensive sequins spun off like tears, or like the blood to come.

  Coor Krahn slit the aristocrat’s skin with great delicacy, being careful not to cut too deep, as he longed to do, careful not to shear off his foul and hated head.

  Tyo made no sound. The blood welled up, and Sas-peth Satch drew herself along, by means of Coor Krahn’s grip, all the flat of her shining blade, until she was scarlet from hilt to tip.

  And in that moment, as once before, long ago, Coor Krahn knew her secret.

  He snatched her off, and in that same movement, she dropped from his hand, his fingers nerveless. She fell away from him. She fell at the feet of Tyo Lionay.

  Tyo whispered, “What – what is it? Pick her up, man. She’s not some stick – she’s a Sword.”

  “Pick her up? No, let her lie there.”

  “What are you thinking of, Sword’s Man? Have you gone mad?”

  “Yes. It could drive me there.”

  “Take her up.”

  “You take her.” Tyo gaped at him, his color oddly coming back from shock, though he swayed like an uprooted tree. “You take her, Tyo Lionay. It’s you she’s chosen.”

  “This is madness.”

  “I told you, perhaps it is. But now I see. Why she sent me here. She smelled you, like the fruit trees. I should have seen through her, she showed me often enough, in her own woman’s way.”

  “Coor Krahn—”

  “Don’t speak my name to me, you thing of shit. Take her and keep her. Here’s the scabbard too.” It went down by her, on the marble, with a crack. “Keep her with your other collected stuffs. Take her to bed at night. See what you dream.”

  And turning, he left Lord Tyo, still somehow standing, among the scattered Sun on gold and red, and above the faithless Sword that had named herself The Woman In Scarlet, since she must always be sheathed in blood.

  Only when he reached the city of Gazul did he stop for as long as a day and a couple of nights. And then he left Gazul and went on, into the desert beyond.

  Events had happened before that, during three months of travelling. He had been called for by a pair of lords, to fight for them. He said No. But then a peasant village had entreated him to rid them of a local tyrant, showing him the bodies of four young men whipped to death. So there Coor had paused for an afternoon. He had had to ask them for a sword. It was a rough old thing, some tarnished heirloom of the village overseer, but it did his work well enough. He saw then, with a deep bitterness, that it was his own skill in combat, as much as any weapon, which gained results.

  Afterward, they begged him to keep the sword. They said they would be vainglorious, telling others they had given the sword to a Sword’s Man whose own blade was currently under repair. (They were so restricted in their knowledge, they had not faltered at his lack of his Sword, and concocted this explanation from spontaneous ingenuity.)

  He accepted the old sword, and refused other payment. He left the slain tyrant for them to tear in ritual pieces and bury in twenty different unmarked graves. (The man had been a monster.) Inasmuch as he could feel anything, save his bitterness and insane agony, Coor was not sorry to have helped the village.

  The ugly old sword was quite good, quite reliable. At another place, after another fight, he had it new-surfaced and strengthened, and made a little heavier, to suit him. Here at the smith’s, no one offered comment. Only the smith’s boy asked anxiously if he should find a worthy man, so the drawn sword could taste blood. Coor Krahn did not answer. It was the smith who shut the boy’s mouth with a glare. Even fancied up, it was sufficiently obvious this sword was not any sort of Sword.

  Coor Krahn did not speculate on how others regarded the facts. Probably they invented halfway logical tales, as the village had. The Sword’s Man’s true Sword was being mended or specially garnished. Instead of impatiently awaiting her, he had journeyed on, and would then go back to collect her. Or maybe some of them realized he had lost his Sword, supposed she was broken, or taken from him, perhaps even dishonorably. But where they required his talents, and he gave them, no one expressed an opinion.

  He slept under trees, under hills, in caves, at the wayside. He would not go in to sleep in any house, hovel, or palace.

  There was, in the third month, a woman in a town a few miles from Gazul. She was a paid girl of the streets, but clean and pretty and young. When she spoke to him he went with her through the back alleys to her tiny dwelling. He had lain with only one, and that in dreams. This girl was limber and cunning, and scented with jasmine, but although he could rise up and enter her gate, though he co
uld ride her well enough that she sobbed and melted like warm honey, there was no resolution for him. He could not reach it. And at last he pretended, as she herself might normally have done.

  She would not presently accept payment, not, she said, because he was a warrior, but because of the pleasure he had given her. She vowed too, on a mighty god, she would tell no one he had lain down with her. “Tell any you like,” he said. “Tell them, Coor Krahn had you.” And then she shrank from his face.

  There were never any dreams save the dreams any man might have, save once. Then he did dream, he thought, that far off he saw her – saw her – Sas-peth. She was standing up in water, like the sea, the waves shattering round her in white mirrors. But she was a woman only to her hips, and from there she was only a Sword, her female center locked in steel, impenetrable. And her face was averted from him, and anyway at a distance.

  Gazul was closing the gates when he reached them. It was night, but a city night, thick-starred with lit windows and gaudy paper lanterns. He stayed that night, and the following day and night. He entered nowhere, not even an inn. He wandered the streets, the marketplace, and was stared at, and he heard the mutter: Look! A Sword’s Man. But then he heard them saying, But whose sword is that? Never his. That old battered black cleaver. What can that be about? Of course this was a city. They were sophisticated and had no manners. Next morning, when the gates were opened, he walked away.

  Look! Look! He thought he heard them cheeping. There he goes into the waste land. What is he at? Why? Why?

  Oh, I could tell you, he thought.

  And then, when he looked back, and Gazul was only a smudge of Sun on the horizon, and the barren Earth, powdered with dust, unrolled before him like existence, he wept. The tears were hard as bits of marble to shed. They tore his eyes and lay salty on his face like blood.

  He sat under a lean, crippled tree and crumbled the dry dirt in his fingers.

  Coor Krahn recalled the first Sword he ever saw, the Sword in the jade scabbard, when he was nine, at Pigs City. He had learned then that such a blade was always capable of seducing another, man or boy, of leading him on. But she did not then give herself to him. She stayed faithful to her husband. Only his Sword, only Sas-peth Satch, The Woman In Scarlet, had betrayed her bonded warrior.