by Hambly
And, “If it was just her that disappeared, everybody’d know, wouldn’t they?”
*
During the first day after that, during which Gil barely left Ingold’s bedside, Rudy or the Icefalcon would come in and report progress: that they’d found the body of Perik Weff, killed like Nebby “So’s everybody would think it was some kind of creature,” as Kei explained it; that they’d found in Kei’s cell the wood-and-metal whistle with which he’d imitated the sounds of a supposedly unknown creature.
She also got five offers from various Keep nobles and clan heads, to purchase the fake “tricorder,” all of which she refused. There was no telling when they’d need to convince somebody else that Gil was capable of producing non-magic technology.
On the second day, Ingold was conscious – and rested – enough to give his side of the story, which was that – as Gil had suspected – he and Kei had gone to the place where Kei had supposedly heard the “creature,” Ingold had gone ahead to investigate, and Kei had waited until he was in the dead spot, then cracked him over the head with his club… under the impression that his own safety was far more important than leaving the Keep without its only powerful wizard, healer, and protector.
“His mother agrees with that, by the way,” said Rudy, sitting on the end of Ingold’s bed with baby Mithrys propped between his knees and trying to eat a glowstone. “She claims that not only did Kei have nothing to do with Tallia Weff’s murder – although she says Tallia deserved it because Kei is the most wonderful man in the world – but that Gil cooked the whole thing up out of sheer jealousy because she – Gil – is secretly in love with Kei.”
“Jesus!” said Gil, disgusted.
Concerning the hours he’d spent in total darkness, fighting off unconsciousness and rats and waiting for someone to figure out where he was, Ingold only remarked, “Well, I’m sorry to say it wasn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Then please,” said Rudy, “don’t ever tell me about what was. But I will say, Spook,” he added, “Kei had me fooled. It was a good set-up. I was all ready to believe we had It, Terror From Beyond Space creeping around back there. Looks like you were right, about it being something that’s been here in the Keep all along.”
“And is here still,” remarked Ingold. “Wherever there is humankind.”
“Like we didn’t have enough problems with monsters. And it’s a damn good thing it wasn’t a monster, Spook, because I don’t have the slightest idea what we’d do about it if it was. When did you guess?”
“It was the cats,” said Gil slowly. “Something bothered me about that story, but I didn’t realize what it was until I went back up there by myself, and heard the whistling. Thinking about it later… I had a dream—”
She stopped for a moment, at the sudden pain, the memory of the dream. Donna smiling dewily at the man who’d left those bruises on her – Pretty Polly fleeing in terror. Pretty Polly thrown out of the house into the woods on a rainy night, licking her bleeding paws…
Then she went on, “I realized that the cats up there hadn’t been scared. With that thing – if there had been a thing – practically standing on top of them, they were just fine with it. So if people don’t get killed by monsters, what do they get killed by? And the answer is usually, Somebody they know.”
*
Only much later, as they lay together in the soft flicker of the light reflected through the door-louvers from the watchroom outside, did Gil tell Ingold about both of her dreams: not only what she had dreamed, but the grief at seeing what had become of Donna, what had become of Pretty Polly, in the years since she, Gil, had turned her back on them, and disappeared out of their lives – like Tallia Weff – without a trace.
“I know Donna’s chosen her own road,” she said softly. “I spent my teenage years beating my head against the wall, trying to save Donna from being what Donna was going to be. I loved her like crazy. I guess I still do. But isn’t there anything we can do – anything you can do – to save Pretty Polly? She’s innocent – animals always are. It isn’t her fault…”
His hand stroked her hair, so light considering the strength of those short, scarred fingers, his voice dark velvet in the dimness. “I’m sorry, Gil. The things you saw could have happened years ago – and our worlds have moved apart in the Void between Universes. Even could a gate be opened between them without risk… None of us can go back, to what we had, or to what we were.”
“No.” She pressed her face to his shoulder. “I was afraid, when you were gone, that I’d – that I’d left it for nothing. And I knew that I couldn’t go back. But I didn’t know how I was going to go forward either.”
“And yet you did. One never knows what the next day will bring. Sometimes things quite unexpected.” He cupped her cheek with his palm, gently kissed her lips. “Like you, to an old man who thought he’d seen everything the world had to show.”
*
The following day Ingold was on his feet, and made his way, a little unsteadily, with Gil to the court of the Keep’s Justice. Both testified before the Assembly of the Keep as to the events of Tallia Weff’s murder, and the fact that Kei had killed two children, and attempted to kill both of them, to bury the secret of his original crime. Kei’s mother, a thin, vaguely pretty woman with Kei’s intense blue eyes, had wept hysterically, sobbing over and over that if they punished her son she would have no one to take care of her – which was unfortunately true. But the horror that everyone in the Keep had felt at the thought of being left with only three novice wizards had, Gil suspected, as much effect on the jury as the awfulness of the murders themselves.
Forty-eight hours ago, she reflected wearily as they returned to the watchroom that evening, she would have cheerfully chopped Kei up herself with her sword. But now she only felt drained and sickened, and almost wishing she had, rather than sit through the nastiness of justice done cold.
“Here.” The Icefalcon came over to her with a horn of very hard cider mixed with back-level gin. “There’s nothing you can do about it now, and you’ll feel better in the morning. If you hadn’t known any of the people involved,” he added, “it wouldn’t bother you. You’re a Guard now. It’s what you are. It’s what you do.”
Ingold must be right, she thought. That world is far behind me…
And everyone in it.
And here I thought I was going to grow up to be an historian. She sipped the gin, which was outstandingly awful, like most of the liquor – and much of the food - in the Keep. Firelight from the little hearth flickered over the faces of her friends. In the Aisle, the horns sounded sunset, and renewed storm. And instead I become a village cop…
It would be a long time until spring.
Something white flickered in the doorway of the watchroom: a gold flash of reflective eyes. A skinny white cat trotted in from the Aisle, limping a little where her paw had been cut. As Gil stared, shocked, the cat came straight to her and jumped into her lap, mewed in her tiny kitten-voice—
“Polly?”
She stroked the animal’s sleek, small head wonderingly, recognizing the Siamese shape, the extraordinary length of whiskers—
“It’s Polly.” She looked up as Ingold came into the watchroom, barely able to see with the tears that suddenly flooded her eyes. “It’s Pretty Polly. Did you—?”
Ingold shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, my dear.” But there was uncertainty in his voice. He reached down gently, stroked the cat’s head, looked into the blue eyes which blinked back at him, revealing nothing. “There are a great many white cats in the Keep—”
Pretty Polly half-rose on her hind-legs to rub her head under Gil’s chin, then curled up in her lap, a little ball of bones, and began to knead ecstatically with her paws – silent. Still silent, as if despite her happiness she was completely unable to purr, she fell asleep.
About the Author
Since her first published fantasy in 1982 - The Time of the Dark - Barbara Hambly has
touched most of the bases in genre fiction. She has written mysteries, horror, mainstream historicals, graphic novels, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, romances, and Saturday Morning Cartoons. Born and raised in Southern California, she attended the University of California, Riverside, and spent one year at the University of Bordeaux, France. She married science fiction author George Alec Effinger, and lived part-time in New Orleans for a number of years. In her work as a novelist, she currently concentrates on horror (the Don Simon Ysidro vampire series) and historical whodunnits, the well-reviewed Benjamin January novels, though she has also written another historical whodunnit series under the name of Barbara Hamilton.
Professor Hambly also teaches History part-time, paints, dances, and trains in martial arts. Follow her on Facebook, and on her blog at livejournal.com.
Now a widow, she shares a house in Los Angeles with several small carnivores.
She very much hopes you will enjoy these stories.
The Further Adventures
by
Barbara Hambly
The concept of “happily ever after” has always fascinated me.
Just exactly what happens after, “happily ever after”?
The hero/heroine gets the person of his/her dreams, and rides off into the sunset with their loved one perched on the back of the horse hanging onto saddlebags stuffed with gold. (It’s a very strong horse.)
So what happens then? Where do they live? Who does the cooking?
This was one of the reasons I started writing The Further Adventures.
The other was that so many of the people who loved the various fantasy series that I wrote for Del Rey in the 1980s and ‘90s, really liked the characters. I liked those characters too, and I missed writing about them.
Thus, in 2009 I opened a corner of my website and started selling stories about what happened to these characters after the closing credits rolled on the last novel of each series.
The Darwath series centers on the Keep of Dare, where the survivors of humankind attempt to re-build their world in the face of an ice age winter, after the destruction of civilization by the Dark Ones. Ingold the Wizard is assisted by two stray Southern Californians, Gil Patterson - a historian who is now part of the Keep Guards - and Rudy Solis, in training to be a mage.
The Unschooled Wizard stories involve the former mighty-thewed barbarian mercenary Sun Wolf, who finds himself unexpectedly endowed with wizardly powers. Because the evil Wizard King sought out and killed every trained wizard a hundred years ago, Sun Wolf has no teacher to instruct him in his powers. With his former second-in-command, the warrior woman Starhawk, he must seek one - and hope whatever wizard he finds isn’t evil, too.
In the Winterlands tales, scholarly dragonslayer John Aversin and his mageborn partner Jenny Waynest do their best to protect the people of their remote villages from whatever threats come along: dragons, bandits, fae spirits, and occasionally the misguided forces of the distant King.
Antryg Windrose is the archmage of the Council of Wizards in his own dimension, exiled for misbehavior - meddling in the affairs of the non-mageborn - to Los Angeles in the 1980s (that’s when the novels were written). He lives with a young computer programmer, Joanna Sheraton, and keeps a wary eye on the Void between Universes, to defend this world from whatever might come through.
Though out of print, all four of these series are available digitally on-line.
To these have been added short stories about the characters from the Benjamin January historical mystery series, set in New Orleans before the Civil War. As a free man of color, Benjamin has to solve crimes while constantly watching his own back lest he be kidnapped and sold as a slave. New Orleans in the 1830s was that kind of town. In the novels he is assisted by his schoolmistress wife Rose, and his good-for-nothing white buddy Hannibal; two of the four Further Adventures concerning January are in fact about what Rose does while Benjamin is out of town.
I have always been an enthusiastic fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. Over the years I have been asked to contribute stories to various Sherlock Holmes anthologies, and when the character went into Public Domain, I added these four stories to my collection.
Quest For Glory is a stand-alone, a short piece I wrote for the program book at a science fiction convention at which I was Guest of Honor.
Sunrise on Running Water is tenuously connected to the Don Simon Ysidro vampire series, in that Don Simon makes a brief cameo appearance. After seeing the movie Titanic - and reflecting that the doomed ship departed from Ireland after sunset and sank just as dawn was breaking…and that vampires lose their powers over running water - I just had to write it. It’s the only story that’s more about the idea than about the characters.
The Further Adventures are follow-ons to the main novels of their respective series. They can be read on their own, but the Big Stuff got done in the novels: who these people are, how they met, what the major underlying problems are in their various worlds. I suppose they’re a tribute to the fact that for me - and, it seems, for a lot of fans - these characters are real, and I at least care about what happens to them, and what they do when they’re not saving the world. They’re smaller issues, not world-shakers: puzzle-stories and capers.
Life goes on.
Love goes on.
Everyone continues to have Further Adventures for the rest of their lives.
*
Novels in the Darwath Series (out of print but commercially available digitally)
The Time of the Dark
The Walls of Air
The Armies of Daylight
Mother of Winter
Icefalcon’s Quest
Table of Contents
Pretty Polly
About The Author
The Further Adventures
Table of Contents
Pretty Polly
About The Author
The Further Adventures
