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

by Sean Wallace

  He thought he might as well sit there, in the dust, under the tree, until he died. He drew the black sword, which was sexless, not even male, and laid it down. Coor told the sword he was sorry, and thanked it for its service. He would bury the sword, it deserved that much. But first Coor Krahn would use it to cut his veins.

  However, he had not slept for two nights and two days. He fell asleep before he could pick up the black sword again.

  She came to him in the night.

  The desert, in the dream, was gilded by faint fires. A round Moon of red amber was nailed in the sky above.

  Sas-peth had been brought here apparently in a roofed litter, tasseled and draped with silk, by slaves, and these all waited for her some way off. She wore her scarlet, and many jewels. Her hair was elaborately dressed.

  “Coor Krahn,” she said, “say my name to me.”

  He looked at her. He paused, and then said, “Your name is The Bitch.”

  Her face did not alter. He had never seen her angry, only stern for battle. While during love, she had been amorous, sly, coaxing. Never passionate, or tender.

  “Why are you here?” he said.

  “What do you believe the reason might be?”

  “To show me he adorns you with silk and jewelry. Does he wear you to war, too, that little boy, Tyo?”

  ‘There are no wars in Tyo’s place.”

  “Rest there, then. Rest and rust.”

  “Shall I come back to you?” she asked, surprising him, jolting his heart to the core. “What would you do?”

  “How can you come back, unless I go and fetch you, Sas-peth? Do you want me to fetch you? Want, then.”

  “You will do without me? How?”

  He said nothing.

  “And now,” she said. “Imagine I were to say, I am here to show I am ready to be with you again.”

  “I would say, Sas-peth, that I won’t have you.”

  “Even in your dreams? Even as a woman? Even in love?”

  It was an awful thing to know, as Coor knew it, that to take to her again would be worse even than when he had been robbed of her.

  Coor Krahn, in the dream, shut his eyes and commanded himself: “Wake now.”

  But when he opened his eyes, he was still in the dream with her. And now she stood naked, pale as ivory, her hair combed down and down.

  “No, Sas-peth,” he said, “it was Tyo you wished to have. Fill his dreams, not mine. Let him wear away his spirit on your edge. In all the lands, I never heard a story of one such as you. Did I shame you in combat? Did I fail you? Did I abuse the poor, insult the helpless? Was I a drunkard, a cheat, a coward – was I a weakling or an idiot? Or unchaste? Go out of my dream, you whore.”

  She turned away. It seemed to him then, in all his dreams of her, she had so often, just like this, turned from him, hiding, masking herself in his trust or his lust. Worse than that, in his respect for her.

  “What life will you have,” she said, “without me?”

  “What life indeed.”

  “It was a passing desire,” she said, head turned, strands of her fine hair blowing like smoke against the Moon. “A momentary, weightless thing, to be with that other one, to live another way. But only for a while, a little minute. And perhaps, I tested you.” (He knew she lied.)

  Bluntly he said, “What could he give you?”

  “Nothing,” she said softly, the woman Sas-peth.

  “And that,” said Coor Krahn, “is all now you will get from me.”

  Then she turned back, and she was beside him, lying against him on the dust, her arms wound round him and her lips on his. “I have been everything to you,” she said. “I am your life.”

  “So you are. I see it now, Sas-peth. I’d thought I would have to die, and I was wrong in that.”

  He held her fast with his left arm, and with his right hand, drew up the old black genderless sword, which had come into the dream with him, as it seemed for this purpose. Coor Krahn drove the sword into her, up through her belly into her heart.

  Her head curved back, and she looked at him, his Sword. She looked at him a long while, not speaking, until her eyelids fell like two white petals.

  Raising his face from hers, Coor Krahn saw a lion standing on the desert, the red Moon between its ears. Eventually it vanished, but Sas-peth Satch did not. She lay heavy as lead in his arm until he let her go, and woke at last.

  With sunrise, he buried the black sword, as he had promised.

  In the Sword-School of Curhm-by-Ocean, he was questioned all the days of three more months, terrible questions on and on, over and over. They examined his dreams too (in none of which did she appear). They drugged him and beat him and starved him and made him drunk. And in the end, when they were sure he had not lied, they made him well again, scoured out like a shell. That day he was brought a new Sword that had been made randomly for him, or for one in his predicament. It was one of only twelve hoarded at any given time, in a secret store against such a need as his own. Coor Krahn was told, and it was the elderly master who told him, so he should grasp it could not be false, that, though it had not often come about, the thing which had happened with him, yet, along the years, still it was clandestinely known. He was not the only one to die this death.

  The new Sword was male. It had no name, was his to name. It was a slave, not an empress, but a mighty slave, headstrong, gorgeous, and dangerous as that other slave who might rebel, fire.

  Once Coor had come to know it, and wore it at his side, and walked with it, he met it in a dream. In the flesh it was himself, but younger, and a little less, and a little more crazy. It – he – laughed, the new Sword, clowning, amusing Coor. Coor Krahn called it, therefore, Coor’s Brother.

  Then the master took Coor Krahn half a mile down to a small room in the rock below the School’s temple, and showed him a horrible thing, which was a line of narrow vitreous boxes. These were the graves of some twenty-five or twenty-six or -seven Swords, mostly broken in pieces. And the last of the metal corpses was Sas-peth Satch. But she was pierced tidily right through, not mutilated. She had kept her glamour. Even ruined, she was beautiful, peerless.

  “He sent her here to us,” the master said, “Lord Tyo Lionay. He found her lying so on his floor one morning. She’d cut him as she fell. He will always carry the scar. He knew enough to want her, and enough to know what had been done. He sent jewels with her, rubies and pearls. Removed, as you see. He begs your forgiveness.”

  “He will never have that,” replied Coor Krahn, without interest. Then he said very low, “But is she dead? Yes. She’s dead. I see she is. Sas-peth, better than rubies and pearls.”

  The sword shone, even without light. In memory he gazed again at the closing of her petal lids, her smooth hair poured in the dust. He murmured to himself, “Perhaps.”

  FLOTSAM

  Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Strange how one can be so close to freedom, yet still wish for death. Freedom: the water below the bowsprit I rested on; water that would welcome me with open arms had I so chose; water that I had loved so much, but now found to be mocking, perhaps more so among the closeness of the harbor.

  I began to shift backwards to escape the water’s call when two sets of footsteps crept on to the forecastle deck behind me. I shrugged my shoulders tight, wishing them to be gone, anticipating the humiliation to come.

  “It doesn’t wear clothes,” a young male said.

  “Yes, never has.” This, the captain’s niece, present from the moment we docked to the moment we left again.

  The boy giggled. “You can see its poop-hole.”

  “I told you!”

  I despised that the humans’ sense of decency had worn off on me, but still I turned to hide my privates from them. Twenty years with another culture would do this to even the most antithetical society.

  The boy gasped, and his heart beat faster. “What happened to its eyes?”

  “They’re just glossed over, see? He’s a shaman. They’re born with no e
yesight.”

  Not strictly true, I thought, but close enough to the truth.

  The boy’s footsteps came closer. “Looks like rotted cheese.”

  “Told you.” The girl came closer as well. Though she feigned confidence, I could hear her heartbeat catching up to her brother’s. The coarse skin of her hand ran along the smoothness of mine. Her touch brought some feelings of resentment, but the simple reminder of youth and its innocence shadowed such thoughts.

  “Come here,” she said. “His skin’s like an eel.”

  The boy’s sweat mingled with the dead-fish smell of the harbor. His footsteps receded.

  “Scared as a mouse,” the girl said with feigned disgust, yet she backed away quickly, too.

  From the quarterdeck, a liquid voice rose above the gulls and creaking wood of ships at dock. “Neera. What are you doing?” Captain Hoevin’s long stride echoed over the main deck towards us.

  The children scuttled to one side. “Nothing, Uncle Hoevin,” the girl said.

  His steps halted a few paces short of me. “Nothing indeed. The yeavanni are not pets, least of all Khren here.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Off with you now. We’re nearly ready to depart.”

  Just then, a thundering crack pealed over the harbor. The concussion struck a moment later – long before I had a chance to cover my ear-pads. The pain of it coursed through me, and only long breaths later did it recede to a dull pain.

  “Go, I said!”

  The children’s scattered footsteps left the forecastle deck and diffused into the maelstrom of other sounds and the ringing in my own ears. The captain shifted slowly to the gunwale.

  He didn’t speak for some time. “We need to talk, Khren.”

  “Perhaps we do, Captain.”

  “You’ve heard the cannons, no doubt.”

  He knew that I did, so I said nothing.

  “The new sightings are nearly complete, and the fleet’s ready to set sail. Tonight.”

  Still I said nothing. I was unsure where the human wished to take the conversation.

  “Your . . . race. You’ve been an immense help to us over the years. And despite whatever advantage the king may have taken, I appreciate it. You’ve saved my men a dozen times. More.”

  His words shed from me like water slipping over yeavanni skin.

  “Well. The king decided to wait until now to give his latest request. We’re to fight through the blockade to the south. They’re ready to tear down the walls of Trilliar, and we cannot allow it.”

  A low laugh escaped my throat. As with most humans that hear such sounds, the captain’s heart quickened. “You mean you will fight, Captain.”

  “No, Khren. You will fight, too.”

  “I will not. Our atonement does not include battle.”

  The captain’s fingers drummed against the wooden railing. He smelled of rum and garlic. “He’s offered to free you of your commitment if you do this.”

  My response died in my throat. What simple words Hoevin had spoken . . . but what promise they held. “The king would forgive us?” My own question barely made sense to me.

  “Yes. One battle – provided we win – is the last service he shall require from you. From all of you.”

  I turned from the captain, unable to be near him any longer, and crawled further up the bowsprit. I opened my mind to the water; how I longed to drop into its arms and return to my people, return to those I had come to believe were lost to me forever. But at what price? The king would have us kill when death is what delivered us to him in the first place.

  Behind me, the captain shuffled some steps away. “Think on it, Khren. Think of your home, your people.”

  Waves lapped against the hull of the ship. The sounds beckoned me, begged me to join them among the waters, to swim with them and follow my brothers home. But my stomach soured at the captain’s words – they had the taint of deception and corruption upon them. Fight for us, and be freed, they said. But kill, and lose our eternal salvation. Such urges tempted while trapped within this mortal shroud.

  With a broken heart, I turned from the water and shimmied up the jib-line to the foremast. I stayed as far away from the water as I could, for I didn’t know if I could resist the calls of the sea much longer.

  I felt the night breeze as it tugged the ship against the ocean current below. A school of dolphin splashed through the waves on the portside; a few strays played to starboard as well. I leapt free of the bowsprit and dove into the water, unable to resist its call any longer.

  The cool water met me, and I rejoiced in a deep dive below the ship’s keel. A large dolphin nudged my back. I could feel the waves of its escape before me. I pursued, catching up easily until the beast tired of my simple chase and sped off into the deep. In my prime, I could keep up with schools of dolphin, but as twilight touched the ocean of my life, I could only rely on their sympathy.

  The ship’s motion, ahead and above, washed over me. The trickle of the dolphin pod did the same, but it came staccato, as opposed to the deep bass of the ship.

  Something else lingered nearby – behind and below. I turned and felt for the presence, unsure of the source – but I had an inkling. I sent a bellowing call through the water; a moment later, a haunting reply was returned. Another yeavanni, and this one I was not so sure I wanted to speak to.

  I felt the yeavanni swim nearer, heard the trickle of its movement through the deeps. He stopped nearby and performed a slow pirouette. At least he still shows respect, I thought.

  “Khrentophar,” he began, “it is good to have you near.”

  “And you, Iulaja.”

  We swam together, trailing the ship by a half-league.

  “I bring news,” Iulaja said, “though I’m sure you’ve heard some of it already.”

  I was pleased to feel the link between us build. I could feel his concern over the humans’ battle. “Of the war? Yes, I know of it.”

  “I’ve come from the other ships, and the queen before that.” An eagerness overcame Iulaja then. A joy.

  “The queen wishes us back, does she?”

  Confusion touched him for only a moment. “Yes, as do the other shaman. They have agreed to fight this human battle, and be done with them.”

  Sorrow overcame my heart. “They have all agreed?”

  “Yes, all of them, Khrentophar. All but you.”

  I couldn’t speak for a moment. All of them? “You asked them before coming to me.”

  Iulaja’s mind echoed his embarrassment. “You would have convinced them otherwise, Khrentophar. Our villages would have you back home. I would step down so that you might return to your proper place.”

  We swam in silence for a time, catching up to the ship. A school of greyridge whales harrooned their song into the night. Iulaja drove before me and brought me to a halt. His anger soured the water between us.

  “Do you wish to talk like the humans, still and unmoving? Have you become so like them that you wish to stay until your dying day?”

  “In truth, Iulaja, I would welcome my dying day. These humans lay foul on my tongue, ring with clangor in my ears, drive coral under my skin. If Yeavan, in her divine guidance, would summon me to the depths, I would rejoice and sing so that all the yeavanni could hear.” I began swimming again, forcing Iulaja to keep pace. “Yet I will not lose my place in her land to further the goals of these land-ridden beasts.”

  The water turned colder.

  “You have paid a score times the deathbond price. Twenty years, Khrentophar! The sinking of their ship was an accident. They stumbled on to our lands in a hurricane.”

  “A hurricane we summoned.”

  “As a ritual to our Goddess! I don’t understand why, but I believe she wanted them dead. Those humans care nothing for Yeavan; they don’t bow to her will, nor does she have dominion over them or we would have had you back long before now. Do you truly think she wished for this to happen after Khuum Livva, her holiest day?”

  “I think
, Iulaja, shaman of our people, keeper of her faith, that she will guide us as she sees fit. I cannot willingly murder for them. I will not.”

  Iulaja turned away in heat and anger. He swam to one side and turned back. “Then you can stay with them, Khrentophar, though it rots my heart to see it so. Farewell.”

  “Begone, traitor,” I said to him.

  Iulaja’s echoes trailed off and were lost among the din of the dolphin pod.

  “Begone, dear Iulaja,” I said to the sea. “May she keep you well.”

  The ship had pulled ahead, but I caught up to it quickly. I dove up from beneath the prow and leapt from the water to grasp the bowsprit and swing around. I dropped down to my typical, folded pose, hating the simple fact that I had one.

  A heartbeat from behind startled me. The distinctly human rhythm was small, frail. No human man had such a signature. I could not at first remember who it belonged to, but it came to me shortly.

  “Come out, girl. It’s no use hiding from someone blind to the world.”

  After a moment, I heard her tentative footsteps sidle up the gunwale.

  “I don’t think your uncle would approve.”

  Her heartbeat sped up. So impressionable, these humans.

  “Please don’t tell him. I wanted to go to war. I wanted to help fight the enemy.”

  She wanted to? My heart wept at such a statement. How can they still live when even their children hunger to kill?

  “What would make you want such a thing, child?”

  “They killed my father. He was a captain, like Uncle Hoevin.”

  “Why don’t you search for a way to reconcile instead?”

  The girl seemed taken aback, for she said nothing for a long time. “Because they killed him.” Her voice was tentative, but it grew stronger the more she talked. “They killed everyone on the ship, even those they took hostage.”

  “And peace? When will that come?”

  “When I have revenge. Then we can have peace.”

  I laughed; again the girl’s heart raced as she stepped away. “Yes, child. That is the way of your world, isn’t it?”