Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Di shrugged. “I don’t think you’d be happy doing it, unless you’ve written strictly to spec before. There are a lot of things you have to conform to that you might not feel comfortable doing. Listen, Harrison, you seem to know quite a bit about hot-and-cold-running esoterica—how did you—?”

  Someone inside one of the other rooms screamed. Not the angry scream of a woman who had been insulted, but the soul-chilling shriek of pure terror that brands itself on the air and stops all conversation dead.

  “What in—?” Harrison was on his feet, staring in the direction of the scream. Di ignored him and launched herself at the patio door, pulling the Glock-19 from the holster on her hip, and thankful she’d loaded silver-tipped bullets in the first clip.

  Funny how everybody thought it couldn’t be real because it was plastic…

  “Andre—the next balcony!” she called over her shoulder, knowing the vampire could easily scramble over the concrete divider and come in through the next patio door, giving them a two-pronged angle of attack.

  The scream hadn’t been what alerted her—simultaneous with the scream had been the wrenching feeling in her gut that was the signal that someone had breached the fabric of the Otherworld in her presence. She didn’t know who, or what—but from the stream of panicked chiffon billowing toward the door at supersonic speed, it probably wasn’t nice, and it probably had a great deal to do with one of the party-goers.

  Three amply endowed females (one Belle, one Ravished, one Harem) had reached the door to the next room at the same moment and jammed it, and rather than one of them pulling free, all three kept shoving harder, shrieking at the tops of their lungs in tones their agents surely recognized.

  You’d think their advances failed to pay out! Di kept the Glock in her hand, but sprinted for the door. She grabbed the nearest flailing arm (Harem), planted her foot in the midsection of her neighbor (Belle), and shoved and pulled at the same time. The clot of feminine hysteria came loose with a sound of ripping cloth as a crinoline parted company with its wearer. The three women tumbled through the door, giving Di a clear launching path into the next room. She took it, diving for the shelter of a huge wooden coffee table, rolling, and aiming for the door of the last room with the Glock. And her elbow hit someone.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Harrison and Di simultaneously. Harrison cowered—no, had taken cover, there was a distinct difference—behind the sofa, beside the coffee table, his own huge Magnum aimed at the same doorway.

  “My job,” they said—also simultaneously.

  “What?” (Again in chorus.)

  “This is all a very amusing study in synchronicity,” said Andre, crouching just behind Harrison, bowler tipped, the sword from his umbrella out and ready. “But I suggest you both pay attention to that most boorish party-crasher over there—”

  Something very large occluded the light for a moment in the next room. Then the lights went out, and Di distinctly heard the sound of the chandelier being torn from the ceiling and thrown against the wall. Di winced. There go my dues up again.

  “I got a glimpse,” Andre continued. “It was very large, perhaps ten feet tall, and—chérie, it looked like nothing so much as a rubber creature from a very bad movie. Except that I do not think it was rubber.”

  At just that moment, there was a thrashing from the other room, and Valentine Vervain, long red hair liberally beslimed, minus nine-foot train and one of her sleeves, scrambled through the door and plastered herself against the wall, where she promptly passed out.

  “Valentine?” Di murmured—and snapped her head toward Harrison when he moaned, “Oh, no,” in a way that made her sure he knew something.

  There was a sound of things breaking in the other room, as if something was fumbling around in the dark, picking up whatever it encountered, and smashing it in frustration.

  “Harrison!” she snapped. “Cough it up!”

  “Valentine—she said something about getting some of her ’friends’ together tonight and ’calling up her soul mate’ so she could ’show that ex of hers.’ I gather he appeared at the divorce hearing with a twenty-one-year-old blonde.” Harrison gulped. “I figured she was just blowing it off—I never thought she had any power—”

  “You’d be amazed what anger will do,” Di replied grimly, keeping her eyes on the darkened doorway. “Sometimes it even transcends a total lack of talent. Put that together with the time of year—All Hallow’s Eve—Samhain—is tomorrow. The Wall Between the Worlds is especially thin, and power flows are heavy right now. A recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.”

  “And here comes M’sieur Soul Mate,” said Andre warningly.

  What shambled in through the door was like nothing that Di had ever heard of. It was, indeed, about ten feet tall. It was a very dark brown. It was covered with luxuriant brown hair—all over. Otherwise, it was nude. If there were any eyes, the hair hid them completely. It was built something along the lines of a powerful body builder, taken to exaggerated proportions, and it drooled. It also stank, a combination of sulphur and musk so strong it would have brought tears to the eyes of a skunk.

  “Wah-wen-ine!” it bawled, waving its arms around, as if it were blind. “Wah-wen-ine!”

  “Oh, goddess,” Di groaned, putting two and two together. She called up a soul mate, and specified parameters. But she forgot to specify “human.” “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  The other writer nodded. “Tall, check. Dark, check. Long hair, check. Handsome—well, I suppose in some circles.” Harrison stared at the thing in fascination.

  “Some—thing—that will accept her completely as she is, and love her completely. Young, sure, he can’t be more than five minutes old.” Di watched the thing fumble for the door frame and cling to it. “Look at that, he can’t see. So love is blind. Strong and masculine as you can get. And not too bright, which I bet she also specified. Oh, my ears and whiskers.”

  Valentine came to, saw the thing, and screamed.

  “Wah-wen-ine!” it howled, and lunged for her. Reflexively Di and Harrison both shot. He emptied his cylinder, and one speed-loader; Di gave up after four shots, when it was obvious they were hitting the thing to no effect.

  Valentine scrambled on hands and knees over the carpet, still screaming—but crawling in the wrong direction, toward the balcony, not the door.

  “Merde!” Andre flung himself between the creature’s clutching hands and its summoner, before Di could do anything.

  And before Di could react to that, the thing backhanded him into a wall hard enough to put him through the plasterboard.

  Valentine passed out again. Andre was already out for the count. There are some things even a vampire has a little trouble recovering from.

  “Jesus!” Harrison was on his feet, fumbling for something in his pocket. Di joined him, holstering the Glock, and grabbed his arm.

  “Harrison, distract it, make a noise, anything!” She pulled the athame from her boot sheath and began cutting sigils in the air with it, getting the Words of Dismissal out as fast as she could without slurring the syllables.

  Harrison didn’t even hesitate; he grabbed a couple of tin serving trays from the coffee table, shook off their contents, and banged them together.

  The thing turned its head toward him, its hands just inches away from its goal. “Wah-wen-ine?” it said.

  Harrison banged the trays again. It lunged toward the sound. It was a lot faster than Di had thought.

  Evidently Harrison made the same error in judgment. It missed him by inches, and he scrambled out of the way by the width of a hair, just as Di concluded the Ritual of Dismissal.

  To no effect.

  “Hurry up, will you?” Harrison yelped as the thing threw the couch into the wall and lunged again.

  “I’m trying!” she replied through clenched teeth—though not loud enough to distract the thing, which had concluded that either (a) Harrison was Valentine or (b) Harrison was keeping it from Valentine. Whichever, it
had gone from wailing Valentine’s name to simply wailing, and lunging after Harrison, who was dodging with commendable agility for a man of middle age.

  Of course, he had a lot of incentive.

  She tried three more dismissals, still with no effect. The room was trashed, and Harrison was getting winded, and running out of heavy, expensive things to throw.…

  And the only thing she could think of was the “incantation” she used—as a joke—to make the stoplights change in her favor.

  Oh, well. A cockamamie incantation pulled it up—“By the Seven Rings of Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Rock of Elizabeth Taylor I command thee!” she shouted, stepping between the thing and Harrison (who was beginning to stumble). “By the Six Wives of Eddie Fisher and the Words of Karnak the Great I compel thee! Freeze, buddy!”

  Power rose through her, crested over her—and hit the thing. And the thing—stopped. It whimpered, and struggled a little against invisible bonds, but seemed unable to move.

  Harrison dropped to the carpet, right on top of a spill of guacamole and ground-in tortilla chips, whimpering a little himself.

  I have to get rid of this thing, quick, before it breaks the compulsion— She closed her eyes, trusted to instinct, and shouted the first thing that came into her mind. The Parking Ritual, with one change…

  “Great Squat, send him to a spot, and I’ll send you three nuns—”

  Mage-energies raged through the room, whirling about her, invisible, intangible to eyes and ears, but she felt them. She was the heart of the whirlwind, she and the other—

  There was a pop of displaced air. She opened her eyes to see that the creature was gone—but the mage-energies continued to whirl—faster—

  “Je-sus,” said Harrison. “How did you—?”

  She waved frantically to silence him as the energies sensed his presence and began to circle in on him.

  “Great Squat, thanks for the spot!” she yelled desperately, trying to complete the incantation before Harrison could be pulled in. “Your nuns are in the mail!”

  The energies swirled up and away, satisfied. Andre groaned, stirred, and began extracting himself from the powdered sheet-rock wall. Harrison stumbled over to give him a hand.

  Just as someone pounded on the outer door of the suite.

  “Police!” came a muffled voice. “Open the door!”

  “It’s open!” Di yelled back, unzipping her belt pouch and pulling out her wallet.

  Three people—two uniformed NYPD, and one fellow in a suit with an impressive .357 Magnum in his hand—peered cautiously into the room.

  “Jee-zus Christ,” one said in awe.

  “Who?” the dazed Valentine murmured, hand hanging limply over her forehead. “What hap…?”

  Andre appeared beside Di, bowler in hand, umbrella spotless, innocent-looking again.

  Di fished her Hartford PD Special OP’s ID out of her wallet and handed it to the man in the suit. “This lady,” she said angrily, pointing to Valentine, “played a little Halloween joke that got out of hand. Her accomplices went out the back door, then down the fire escape. If you hurry you might be able to catch them.”

  The two NYPD officers looked around at the destruction, and didn’t seem any too inclined to chase after whoever was responsible. Di checked out of the corner of her eye; Harrison’s own .44 had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

  “Are you certain this woman is responsible?” asked the hard-faced, suited individual with a frown as he holstered his .357. He wasn’t paying much attention to the plastic handgrip in the holster at Di’s hip, for which she was grateful.

  House detective, I bet. With any luck, he’s never seen a Glock.

  Di nodded. “These two gentlemen will back me up as witnesses,” she said. “I suspect some of the ladies from the party will be able to do so as well, once you explain that Ms. Vervain was playing a not-very-nice joke on them. Personally, I think she ought to be held accountable for the damages.”

  And keep my RWW dues from going through the roof.

  “Well, I think so too, miss.” The detective hauled Valentine ungently to her feet. The writer was still confused, and it wasn’t an act this time. “Ma’am,” he said sternly to the dazed redhead, “I think you’d better come with me. I think we have a few questions to ask you.”

  Di projected outraged innocence and harmlessness at them as hard as she could. The camouflage trick worked, which after this evening was more than she had expected. The two uniformed officers didn’t even look at her weapon; they just followed the detective out, without a single backward glance.

  Harrison cleared his throat, audibly. She turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

  “You—I thought you were just a writer—”

  “And I thought you were just a writer,” she countered. “So we’re even.”

  “But—” He took a good look at her face, and evidently thought better of prying. “What did you do with that—thing? That was the strangest incantation I’ve ever heard!”

  She shrugged and began picking her way through the mess of smashed furniture, spilled drinks, and crushed and ground-in refreshments. “I have no idea. Valentine brought it in with something screwy, I got rid of it the same way. And that critter has no idea how lucky he was.”

  “Why?” asked Harrison as she and Andre reached the door.

  “Why?” She turned and smiled sweetly. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a parking place in Manhattan at this time of night?”

  About George Barr and “Brontharn”

  When I first started Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, I turned to my old friend, the well-known sf/fantasy artist George Barr, for the cover painting for my first issue. The title story was called “Skycastle” and George painted a beautiful flying castle, a line drawing of which now appears on the front of the T-shirts we made up for the magazine. George continued to do covers for us, and by issue 4, I had discovered that he could write as well. He wrote the cover story and painted the cover for both issues 4 and 11. This is the story from issue 11; I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

  George lives in San Jose, California.

  Brontharn

  George Barr

  “His Highness, Prince Derro Silverlance, of the Kingdom of Fairland!”

  The herald’s staff rapped the requisite three times on the black slate floor, sending echoes about the great hall despite heavy draperies overhanging the cold stone walls, and the buzzing throng of courtiers assembled for the—by now—familiar occasion.

  Amberly sat straight in her throne, her face carefully expressionless, as the latest suitor descended the stairs.

  Prince Derro, unlike so many who had presented themselves in the two years Amberly had been of marriageable age, was not bedecked in regal splendor. His bearing was regal enough; he didn’t need brocades and jewels to convince anyone he was of royal birth. He wore a simple black tunic over grey hose, girded with a broad, silver-studded belt, and had a deep red woolen cloak thrown back over one shoulder.

  He didn’t swagger, nor did he appear conscious at all of the court about him. His manner seemed less a performance than simply natural behavior.

  Princess Amberly’s first impression was that he was striking. But as he approached, she amended that to strikingly handsome. Prince Deno Silverlance was the hero of every maiden’s dream made flesh.

  If she accepted his suit her father would be pleased. Fairland was wealthy; it would be a good marriage and a profitable alliance. She would be envied by all the girls of the court… and, truth to tell, many of the married ladies as well.

  She might even—in time—learn to care for him. If good looks could only guarantee happiness, she should be in heaven, for he was certainly the most dashingly beautiful of all the men who’d come seeking her hand.

  She wished it were that easy… that she could simply nod, smile, and let it all be over.

  If only she could…

  If only she’d not asked for her father’s pr
omise.

  She’d been fourteen and it was her birthday. Before the entire court her doting father had asked if she had some special birthday wish he might grant.

  “Yes,” she replied boldly, “but you wouldn’t grant it.”

  “Why?” he laughed. “Would it cost me the crown jewels?”

  “No,” she said. “It would require you to break custom, and you wouldn’t do it.”

  Her father seemed hurt that she’d think him so hardhearted. “My darling,” he said, drawing her close, “I give you my word. I cannot relinquish my crown, nor set May Day into June on your whim, but what I can do to make you happy I will do most willingly.”

  Amberly looked about at the smiling court. They were imagining she wanted some childish fantasy like a formal ball she—at fourteen—would be allowed to attend, an outof-season hunt, or a harvest fair in the middle of summer. They all saw her as her father did: a girl who’d been pampered and indulged, with little imagination and no reason for ambition. And they were right… partly. She had been pampered, and she really didn’t aspire to much beyond her already royal position.

  But Amberly remembered her sister who, three years before, had come closer than anyone else realized to taking poison when she’d been married off against her will to a man she neither knew nor loved. Amberly had seen her despair, and lived in horrified anticipation of sharing her sister’s fate.

  “Father,” she said, “I want only your promise that when it comes time for me to be wed, you will allow me to choose my husband. I will try to make a good marriage, but I’d rather live a spinster all my life than marry a man I do not love. Will you do that for me, as you have promised… or is it too much for a daughter to ask of her father?”

  He might have reneged on his vow had it not been made in front of the entire court. Even so, there were many who’d have understood … perhaps all. But King Ferris Oakenshield was a proud and honorable man; he stood by his word lest anyone accuse him of being untrue, even to a child.