Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  There’d have been no problem. There were plenty of suitors… many who set hearts fluttering throughout the castle. And Amberly would surely have been smitten by one or another of the fine handsome men who presented themselves before her.

  Except for that promise, Amberly’s fate would have been out of her hands. Her father would long since have given her to a worthy prince of a rich kingdom. She’d have hated it—just as much as her sister had—but she’d have lived with it. Generations of women since time began had endured such arranged marriages and managed somehow to find a measure of fulfillment in their lives. Her own mother had not been entirely unhappy.

  But Amberly had been given the right to choose for herself, and she could make no choice.

  Not ever…

  … because she was in love, and it was an impossible love. Not that law forbade it; such laws had not even been imagined, let alone enacted. She might as well request permission to wed a pine tree or a mountain peak. She’d have as much chance for acceptance, a family, and happiness.

  Two years before Prince Deno Silverlance of Fairland entered the audience hall of King Ferris Oakenshield to seek the hand of a young princess, that princess—bored with her samplers, her dolls, and her ladies-in-waiting—had indulged in a secret pleasure she’d shared with no one; she’d gone exploring.

  She left the castle by way of a tunnel hidden behind her great-great-grandfather’s crypt, deep within the mountain. It was a way known only to the members of the royal family, dug generations ago as an ultimate means of escape in case of a siege.

  She spoke to almost no one for fear her education might betray itself in her speech and give her away. It made such explorations more secretive and exciting to imagine herself a spy or a sorceress bent on some secret and dangerous mission.

  In rough dress of homespun and a shawl to hide her bright hair, Amberly had become acquainted with most of the lanes and byways within half a day’s walking distance. She knew the shops, the inns, the mill, the smithy, even the brothels.

  There’d been no war for near a century. Amberly herself was the only member of the family—so far as she knew—who’d ever actually made use of the passage. It wasn’t the most pleasant place in the world… dank, dark, filled with rustlings and eerie echoings.

  Twenty paces beyond the crypt, the man-made tunnel connected with a natural limestone cave that honeycombed the mountain. There were numerous dark, unexplored branches leading away from the main passage, and many small openings in the steep mountainside that let in faint daylight occasionally to give glimpses of chambers she was certain were full of bats and thick with spiderwebs.

  Amberly had always kept to the well-defined trail that led down to a small waterfall. There she was required to crouch low, squeeze through a small crevice, and push aside thorny brush that grew thickly about the stream.

  But once past this there was a mountain trail to the village. It was an outing that took most of the day, so the princess didn’t take it unless she was fairly certain she would not be missed.

  On this fateful occasion she had known her father would be involved with envoys from a neighboring kingdom, and she was bored enough that she didn’t much care if her ladies-in-waiting were distressed at not finding her. She dressed carefully, stole a torch from a sconce in the crypt, and moved slowly into the hand-hewn tunnel.

  Though she carried tinder, she always waited to light the torch until she emerged from the tight passage. In such cramped quarters, she disliked its smoke and stench. Feeling her way along the rough stone, she had no fear of being lost, as there were no branches until she reached the cave. She could easily determine when she’d arrived there by the change in the texture of the wall.

  The tunnel, upon merging with the cavern, joined first a natural passageway between the solid mountain and a fretted screen of limestone that had formed over the countless ages. Slim columns had descended in a straight line from a crack in the stone overhead, meeting with others arising from the floor. Close together, they’d branched, spread, filled in, and created a delicate network of lacy stone. Water still dripped over it, gradually filling in the openings with minute deposits of dissolved minerals.

  Upon entering this narrow hallway, Amberly became aware of two things. First: the morning sun through the porous face of the cliff made the torch unnecessary. The light was dim, but sufficient. Second: there was a sound she’d not heard before… something more than the dripping water and the rustling of bats. It was like heavy breathing… almost snoring.

  Cautiously she crept forward. Sound was deceptive in the cavern. Echoes made it difficult to discern the direction of a noise. What she heard might be a bear, or simply an amplified reflection of her own breath.

  With the sunlight behind it, the stone screen had become a translucent veil pierced with tiny bright holes. It was beautiful and seemed somehow magical. Delicate traceries of subtly glowing color wound through it.

  Never having come through this early before, Amberly had not been aware of the beauty of the cave. She’d seen it only lit by the light of a smoking torch, looking dangerous and forbidding, filled with deep holes and ominous pillars that looked like shrouded statues.

  Carefully she leaned forward and with one eye peered through a small hole in the stone. The scene that met her gaze was unreal … dreamlike… enchanted.

  Water, dripping from the ceiling, caught the light and sparkled like jewels. Light, like that in a cathedral, filled the air, reflecting softly from wet stone. A few larger openings, straight enough to admit pure sunlight, formed slanting beams of radiance filled with dancing notes and falling gems.

  The sound of water, so eerie in darkness, seemed suddenly like music… fairy music to match the enchantment of the moment.

  But it didn’t mask the soft sound that had urged her to extra caution.

  Then she saw, in a recess across “the cavern, a slight movement. A young man lay there, apparently asleep. Though muscular of build, his face seemed that of a boy… not handsome, exactly, but open and appealing. He was nearly naked, wearing only a brief garment that looked to be made of the skins of many small animals sewn crudely together.

  Leaning against the wall beside him was a club: a gnarled, thorny, quite dangerous-looking length of tapered wood at least half his height. That—and the skins he wore—gave an appearance of savagery and barbarism very much at odds with the untouched innocence of his face.

  His hand moved. Evidently not soundly asleep, he caressed a small grey-furred animal curled up at his side.

  A mouse, she thought, enchanted at the sweetness of it. He has a pet mouse.

  Then the little animal raised its head to sniff the air. To her utter astonishment it was not a mouse at all… nor anything remotely related to a mouse. The boy’s pet was the tiniest dog she’d ever seen. It was not a puppy; its proportions were those of a full-grown dog. In fact, it looked very like a wolf, yet was small enough that he could have carried it curled in the palm of his hand.

  It sniffed again and its head turned to stare directly toward her. Though it couldn’t possibly see her, its nose wrinkled as it bared its white teeth in a snarl.

  Not wishing to alarm the young man, Amberly moved quickly along the trail until she’d emerged from behind the limestone screen.

  Suddenly disoriented, the girl stared in amazement.

  Having peered through the hole in the stone with only one eye, she’d had no immediate way to guess the distance across the cave. Now in the open, she saw that the cavern was larger than she’d remembered. It was immense. Between her and the skin-clad stranger stretched a floor as vast as the great audience hall of the castle, though not so neatly paved. There were formations like great tree trunks rising out of deep pools of crystal-clear water… hills, hollows, and ravines.

  She screamed involuntarily as her foot slipped into a narrow crevice and wedged tightly.

  The little wolf stood up, growling, and launched itself toward her as the young man blinked and peered af
ter it.

  For what seemed an incredibly long time the snarling, grey-furred creature bounded across the cavern. And her mind balked at accepting what she saw.

  It was distance… the distance across that huge chamber… that had made the wolf seem so small. It was anything but small as it approached. It was a full-sized beast of the forest, as large as any the castle huntsman had ever brought in.

  And that meant—no, it was beyond belief! But it was true! The young man she’d assumed was a lost child of the woods was in reality a creature out of myth. He scrambled to his feet to follow the wolf, and with each long stride loomed ever larger to her horrified gaze.

  He stood fully six times the height of a normal man.

  In this cave beneath her home lived a giant! In all the nursery tales, never had she heard of one so huge. He could devour a human being as quickly and easily as a man might eat a rabbit… take off a head in a single bite.

  “Galbor!” the giant shouted, his voice filling the chamber, reverberating from the stone walls, terrifying the princess with its immensity. Such a voice could never have emerged from a human throat. The great heraldic trumpets in the gate towers did not sound with such depth and resonance.

  The wolf stopped… evidently well trained to its master’s commands. Mere feet away from her, its yellow eyes seemed to burn into Amberly’s. Its pink tongue, dripping, licked its black lips. But it did not attack.

  In moments the giant had covered the distance to arrive beside his pet. He knelt and bent toward the princess, who felt her bones turn to water.

  So close, and so huge, the great being’s face still managed to retain that look of boyishness that had so charmed her. “Who are you?” the giant asked, his voice soft… like whispering thunder. “And what are you doing here in Carrowyn?”

  “Carrowyn?” she said, astonished that the huge man would speak a language she could comprehend… and suddenly hopeful that she might survive this day. If he spoke, she reasoned, he had a mind. Intelligence. He’d spent time in converse with others … others who were akin to her, at least in that they spoke the same tongue.

  “Carrowyn,” he repeated, then gestured sweepingly to encompass the entire cavern. “This is Carrowyn… the ancestral home of my people.”

  “My home is atop this mountain,” she replied. “My father rules this land.”

  “Aaah,” he said, nodding. Sitting back on his heels, he seemed lost in thought.

  Taking advantage of his diverted attention, Amberly cautiously extricated her foot from the crevice and prepared to dart back behind the limestone curtain and into the tunnel. The wolf, perhaps, might follow, but the giant surely could not.

  “If your father rules,” he said, leaning forward again, “then he is a king, is he not? I’ve heard of kings. You are then a… princess?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, wondering if she would be held for ransom, “the youngest of three. I am Amberly, daughter of King Ferris Oakenshield, and Princess of Carin. This is the land of Carin, not Carrowyn.”

  Again the giant nodded. “It has been many ages since my people lived here. Long before you little ones came, this mountain was ours, and this cavern our home. We called it Carrowyn then. That was before I was born. Carin is not so different… smaller… like you.

  “I came back to see it, to see if the legends were true.”

  Despite his immense size, and the presence of the slavering grey wolf that obeyed his command, Amberly no longer felt afraid … and was surprised at the realization.

  “How many of you are there?” she asked. “There’s been no rumor of giants in these mountains. None at all.”

  The huge being looked for a moment like a forlorn child. “I came alone. If there are others of my people still living, I don’t know where they’d be. My father died beneath an avalanche before I was born. And my mother…” His face hardened. “My mother was slain by a brave knight when I was but a toddler. I’ve been told your people still tell tales of heroism in conquering the Ogress of Kerrywood Fen. I am her son: Brontharn… perhaps the last of all my kind.”

  Amberly gasped. “It is an old tale. No one really believes it. It was supposed to have happened over a hundred years ago. How can you be her son?”

  Brontharn spread his hands—each big enough to grasp her like a puppet—and shrugged. “I don’t know how many years ago it was. We are a long-lived people. I have barely reached my full growth, and have not yet grown a beard. My father had a beard almost to his waist, I was told, and he was over two hundred years old when he died… and not yet grey. I really don’t know how long we’re supposed to live. There’s no one left to ask.”

  He sounded so lonely that had he been nearer her size, the princess would have put an arm around him to comfort him. But she could hardly have encircled his ankle with both her arms.

  Such gestures were to imply that the one embraced was more protected and secure. The thought should have been funny in this situation, but Amberly did not feel like laughing. She felt deeply the giant’s isolation.

  In the visits that followed, the princess heard how Brontharn had been led as a child to the great forests in the south by an old dwarf named Gutwort. He had raised the colossal boy—as well as possible—as his own.

  Old Gutwort, being about half human height, had been able to move among men without too much trouble, and had learned much of their doings, their history, and their legends. All this he’d taught to his young charge, as well as what he knew of the giants themselves.

  Isolated from both their kind, visited only occasionally by forest gnomes, and encountering on rare instances a fairy or an elf, their life was lonely and hard. They’d lived on wild boar and elk. There was little else big enough to feed Brontharn, and gathering sufficient food for the growing giant had not been easy. But it had not been a totally unpleasant experience.

  He’d learned from Gutwort how his mother had stained her fair face with pitch, strung moss in her long hair, then gibbered and wailed to frighten men out of Kerrywood Fen. But the ruse had worked against her when she became legendary, and the object of knightly quest by men hoping to build a reputation for bravery.

  Her presence had been put to use by several who’d seized the opportunity to escape blame for deeds they might otherwise not have dared commit. Rivals in business… and in love… disappeared. Their bodies were discovered in the marshes and the “Ogress” assumed a more deadly reputation. Thefts of sheep, goats, and cattle were attributed to her, and more than one impatient heir came to his inheritance sooner than he ought to have when wealthy fathers or uncles reportedly fell prey to the monster of the fen.

  The brave knight who’d slain her did so by having an entire troop of armed lackeys surround and distract her so he could creep through the undergrowth and use an ax on the back of her ankle. With the tendon cut, she’d fallen, and his lance was waiting for her throat.

  No one had ever bothered to see the quiet beauty beneath the simple disguise.

  Amberly wept at the tale.

  Many times Brontharn would take the princess out through a huge exit from the cavern, about which she had not known. The sprawling maze of caves had many chambers and corridors that had very probably never been explored by man… almost certainly so, or some provision would have been made to defend the castle against attack from below.

  The giant’s own portal was a high, narrow cleft behind a stand of ancient pines. It looked as though the trees, which were probably over a century old, had been planted deliberately to conceal what must once have been the door to the caverns of Carrowyn. Brontharn wondered if his own father might have set them there. Gutwort, who could only have heard of it from the giant’s parents, had described to him in detail the location of the cleft, and the trees that concealed it.

  Amberly and Brontharn, with Galbor the wolf, would sit together in the forest, basking in the sun, exchanging accounts of their lives. Often she’d wear her loveliest gowns, her jewels and tiaras, because he had a great delight in beautif
ul things.

  Through the trees they could see the castle atop the mountain, and it seemed a distant, foreign place to her. In all of that great fortress, she had not one true friend, and—save for her father—no one she truly loved.

  “I love you, Amberly,” Brontharn said one afternoon.

  He needn’t have said it; she’d known it for months. But hearing it was pleasant, and it allowed her to speak her own love in return.

  “Destiny has played a cruel joke on us,” she said. “All we can ever be is friends, and even that is doomed. You cannot stay here much longer, for the herdsmen are complaining at the loss of their sheep and cattle. They suspect each other right now, but how long can it be before you are discovered? I don’t want you to meet your mother’s fate.”

  “I know,” he nodded. “It was a vain pilgrimage on which I came. I wanted just to see the caverns of Carrowyn… to know that Gutwort’s tales were true. I had no expectation of meeting anyone at all… least of all someone like you.”

  He reached one huge hand toward her and Amberly nestled into his palm. His skin was like soft leather, but warm and alive. She rested her arm upon his thumb, as though it were the arm of a couch, and stroked the broad nail with her fingertips. It was, agony to be limited to such an ineffectual touch when everything in her ached to embrace.

  Her pain was echoed in his boyish face.

  Though he’d lived a hundred years—longer than any man she’d ever known—her heart accepted the evidence she could see, and to her he was but a youth. The tears forming in his eyes were a young man’s tears.

  “What will you do?” she asked. “Where will you go?”

  “Back to the forest, I suppose,” Brontharn replied after a long moment. “Old Gutwort is long dead, of course. But there are a few humans in the deep woods. I should not be bothered by brave knights. There is a mountain upon which I may build myself a castle. It will take many years… but I will have many years, and little else to occupy my time.