Swords & Dark Magic (12 page)

It rained and we took shelter. A day exhausted the little food we had. Famished, we waited for a second day. On the third we went forth to hunt, knowing that we must hunt or starve. I knowing, too, that I dared not use my bow lest the string be wetted. Toward afternoon we flushed a flight of deer. Lurn could run more swiftly than they, they turn more sharply than she. She turned them and turned them until at last I was able to dash among them like a wolf, stabbing and slashing. I have no doubt that some escaped us, and that some of those who thus escaped soon perished of their wounds. We got three, even so, and chewed raw meat that night, and roasted meat the night following when we were able at last to kindle a fire, and so hungry as to abide the smoke of the twigs and fallen branches we collected.

We slept long that night. Day had come when we awoke, the clouds had lifted, and far away—yet not so distant as to be beyond our sight—we beheld a white palace on the side of the mountain looming before us. “There will be a garden!” Lurn’s left hand closed on my shoulder with such strength that I nearly cried out.

“I see none,” I told her.

“That green…”

“A mountain meadow. We’ve seen many.”

“There must be a garden!” She spun me around. “A coronation garden for me. There must be!”

There was none, but we went there even so, a half-starved journey of two days through a forest filled with birdsong. There had been a wall about the palace, a low stone wall that might readily have been stormed. In many places it had fallen, and the gate of twisted bars had fallen into rust.

The rich chambers of centuries past had been looted, and here and there defiled. Their carpets were gone, and their hangings likewise. In many chambers we saw where fires of broken furniture had once blazed. Their ashes had been cold for heaped years no man could count, and their half-burned ends of wood, their strong square nails, and their skillfully wrought bronze screws had been scattered long ago, perhaps by the feet of the great-grandsons of those who had kindled them.

“This is a palace of ghosts,” I told Lurn.

“I see none.”

“I have seen many, and heard them, too. If we stay the night here…” I let the matter drop.

“Then we will go.” She shrugged. “This was an error, and an error of my doing. We must first find food, and afterward another.”

“No. We must go into the vaults.” My own words surprised me.

She looked incredulous, but the ghost in the dark passage ahead nodded and smiled; it seemed almost a living man, though its eyes were the eyes of death.

“What’s gotten into you?”

“I must go, and you with me,” I told her. “I must go and bring you. You are afraid. I—”

“You lie!”

“Fear better suits a woman than a man. Even so, I am the more frightened. Yet I will go, and you will come with me.” I set off, following the ghost, and very soon I heard Lurn’s heavy tread behind me.

The corridor we traversed was dark as pitch. I slung my shield over my back, traced the damp stone walls with my left hand, and groped the dark before me with my sword point, testing the flagstones with every step. None of which mattered in the least. The ghost led me, and there was no treachery.

We descended a stair, narrow and steep, and I saw light below. Here was a cresset, filled with blazing wood and dripping embers. The ghost, which ought to have dimmed in the firelight, seemed almost a living man, a man young and nearly as tall as I, in livery of grey and crimson.

“Who is that?” Lurn’s voice came from behind me, but not far behind.

I did not speak, but followed our guide.

He led us to a second stair, a winding stair that seemed at first to plunge into darkness. We had descended this for many steps when I took notice of a faint, pale light below.

“Where are we going?” Lurn asked.

I was harkening to a nightingale. It was our guide who answered her: “Where you wished to go, O pawn.”

“Why are you talking to me like that, Valorius?”

I shrugged, and followed our guide into a garden lit by stars and the waning moon. He led us over smooth lawns and past tinkling fountains. The statues we saw were of pieces, of kings and queens, of slingers and spearmen, of knights such as I and pawns like Lurn. Winged figures stood among them, figures whiter than they and equally motionless; though these did not move or appear to breathe, it seemed to me they were not statues. They might have moved, I thought, this though they did not live.

“There can be no such place underground!” Lurn exclaimed.

I turned to face her. “We are not there. Surely you can see that. We entered into the stone of the mountain, and emerged here.”

“It was broad day!”

“And is now night. Be silent.”

That last I said because our guide stood behind her, his finger to his lips. He pointed, but I saw only a thick growth of cypress. I went to it, nonetheless; and when I stood before it I heard a muted creaking and squeaking, as though some portal long closed were opening. I pushed aside the boughs to look. There my eyes saw nothing. My father (who seemed to sit before me, his head cloven by the ax) had entered my mind and let me see him there.

I knelt.

He took his mantle from his shoulders and fastened it about mine. For a moment only I knew the freezing cold of the gold brooch that had held it. I reached for it. My fingers found nothing, yet I knew then (as I know now) where that mantle rests.

“What’s in there?” Lurn asked.

“A tomb,” I told her. “You did not come here to see a tomb, but to become a queen. See you the moon?”

“My lady? Yes, of course I see her.”

“She rises to behold your coronation, and is already near the zenith. There is a circle of white stones, just there.” I pointed. “Do you see it?”

It appeared as I spoke.

“No—yes. Yes, I see it now.”

“Stand there—and wait. When the moon-shadows are short and every copse and course is bathed in moonlight, you will become a queen.”

She went gladly. I stood before her; the distance was half as far, perhaps, as a boy might fling a stone.

I recall that she said this: “Won’t you sit, Valorius? You must be tired.”

“Are you not?”

“I? When I am to become a queen? No, never!”

That was all. That, and this: “Why do you rub your head?”

“It is where the ax went in. I rub it because the place is healed and my father at rest.”

The moon rose higher yet, and one of the white figures came to kneel before me. She held a pillow of white silk; upon it lay a great visored helm white as any pearl, and upon that a silver crown.

I accepted it and rose. Six more were arming Lurn, armor of proof that no sword could cleave: breastplate and gorget, tasset and tace. As earth circles moon, I circled her; and when her arming was complete save for the helm, poised that as high as I might. “From the goddess whom you serve, receive the crown that is your due.” Standing, her head was higher than my upstretched arms; but she knelt before me to receive helm and crown, and I set them upon her head. They felt no heavier than their own pale plumes.

Rising, she pulled down the visor to try it; and I saw that there was a white face graven upon the visor now—and that white face was her own.

“I am a queen!” It might have been ten-score trumpets speaking.

I nodded.

“We will restore the kingdom, Valorius!”

I nodded as before. It had been my own thought.

“I shall restore the kingdom, and the Game will be played again. The Game, Valorius, and I a queen!”

I knew then that she whom I had kissed so often must die. Men have said my sword springs to my hand. That is not so, yet few draw more swiftly. She parried my first thrust with her gauntlet and sought to seize the blade; it escaped her—thus I lived.

Of our fight in that moonlit garden I will say little. She could parry my blows, and did. I could not parry hers; she was too strong for it. I dodged and ducked and was knocked sprawling again and again. I hoped for help, and received none. If longing could foal a horse from air, I would have had two score. No horse appeared.

What came at last was Our Lord the Sun, and that was better. I turned her until she faced it and put my point through her eye-slot. The steel that went in was not so long as my hand and less wide than two fingers together, yet it was enough. It sufficed.

Now?

Now I wander the land. Asked to prophesy, I say we shall overthrow the tyrants and make a new nation for ourselves and our children. Should our folk require a sword, I am the sword that springs to their hands. Asked to heal, I cure their sick—when I can. If they bring food, I eat it. If they do not, I fast or find my own. And that is all, save that from time to time I entertain a lost traveler, such as yourself. East lies the past, west the future. Go north to find the gods, south to find the blessed. Above stands the All High, and below lies Pandemonium. Choose your road and keep to it, for if you stray from it, you may encounter such as I. Fare you well! We shall not meet again.

JAMES ENGE has been developing his stories of Morlock Ambrosius for years, but had to wait for the pendulum to swing back in favor of sword and sorcery before he made a splash. Appearing only recently in the pages of
Black Gate, Flashing Swords,
and everyday fiction.com, his tales of a wandering wizard and swordsman built up a loyal following in a very short time, before leaping into novel form with the books
Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way,
and
The Wolf Age
.
Strange Horizon
writes of him: “There’s a kind of literately sensuous pleasure in Enge’s writing…the pleasure of an intelligent, skillful writer amusing himself and us.” Little surprise then that Enge is an instructor of classical languages at a Midwestern university. Speaking to
Fantasy Book Critic,
he said, “The modern realistic novel, increasingly in the twentieth century, concerned itself with character above all else: what the character felt and perceived. I’m not knocking this: realistic fiction has some triumphant achievements in this line…But I think it’s an approach that is susceptible to diminishing returns. Genre fiction, like medieval and classical traditions of storytelling, tends to concentrate much more on what people do and the context in which they do it. I love this concentration on conduct, on action (but not necessarily in the car-chases-and-gunfights sense) and on the world…I find it in the older narrative traditions; I find it in genre fiction; and I think it’s the reason that twenty-first-century literary fiction is looking to refresh itself at the wells of genre.”

THE SINGING SPEAR

James Enge

T
o drink until you vomit and then drink again is dull work. It requires no talent and won’t gain you fame or fortune. It’s usually followed by a deep dark stretch of unconsciousness, though, so it had become Morlock Ambrosius’ favorite pastime.

In a brief lapse from chronic drunkenness he had invented a device which intensified the potency of wine many times. Because he had no use for gold (he could make it by the cartful if he needed it), he gave the device to Leen, the owner of the Broken Fist tavern. Leen proceeded to make gold by the cartful, through the more mundane method of selling distilled liquor. By his order, Morlock’s cup was never to be left empty when he entered the Broken Fist. Morlock entered the Broken Fist on a daily basis thereafter and stayed until the disgusted potboys tossed him, snoring, into the street. In another time and place, Morlock might have been called an alcoholic. In the masterless lands east of the Narrow Sea, he was simply a man drinking himself to death—and not quickly enough for those few who had to deal with him.

One evening, as Morlock was just settling down to work, a man came up to him and asked, “Is it true that you’re Morlock the Maker?”

If Morlock had been a little more sober, he would have just denied it. If he’d been a little drunker, he would have embarked on an elaborate series of lies to make the questioner suspect that he himself might be Morlock the Maker. And if Morlock had been very much drunker, he wouldn’t have been able to answer at all. But, as it happens, he was at that precise state when he was able to know the truth and not care. Apart from actual oblivion, it was the state of mind he enjoyed the most.

“I’m Morlock,” he said, lifting his slightly crooked shoulders in a shrug. “What’s your poison? They have to serve you for free if you drink with me, you know. Drink with me, get served for free—that’s practically a song, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want a drink,” the questioner said, sitting down at Morlock’s table. “I want help.”

“I’m not in the help business. I’m in the drinking business.”

“That’s not a business.”

“Not with your lacka—lacka—lackadaisical attitude, no. But I take these things more seriously.”

Morlock drank several cups of distilled wine while the other told him a long, involved story and then concluded, “So you see, don’t you, that you have to help?”

“I might, if I’d been listening,” Morlock admitted. “Thank God Avenger, I wasn’t.”

“You useless bucket of snot!” the other shouted. “Didn’t you hear me tell you that Viklorn has the Singing Spear?”

“I heard you that time. Who’s Viklorn—some juggler or carnival dancer?” Morlock could see how a singing spear might be useful in a carnival act. Almost involuntarily, his mind began to envision various ways to make a spear sing on cue.

“Viklorn!” shouted the other man. “The pirate and robber! He’s been using the singing spear to kill and rob all along the coast of the Narrow Sea. And now they say he’s killed his own crew with it and is coming inland with Andhrakar.”

“Wait a moment.”

“And you sit there sucking down that swill—”

“You’re telling me that this ‘singing spear’ is the weapon called Andhrakar?”

“Yes. And if you—”

“Just who was stupid enough to take the spear and start using it?”

The other looked at Morlock almost pityingly. “Viklorn. A pirate and robber.”