The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  Obligingly, the lizard turned on her splay claws, dragging the chain from her iron collar, threw back her bony head beneath the tower’s many lamps, and hissed—not a trumpet, the Vizerine reflected, whatever young Strethi might think. “My dear, why don’t you just turn it loose?”

  “Why don’t you just have me turn loose the poor wretch chained in the dungeon?” At the Vizerine’s bitter glance, the Suzeraine chuckled. “No, Myrgot. True, I could haul on those chains there, which would pull back the wood and copper partitions you see on the other side of the pen. My beast could then waddle to the ledge and soar out from our tower here, onto the night. (Note the scenes of hunting I have had the finest craftsmen beat into the metal work. Myself, I think they’re stunning.) But such a creature as this in a landscape like the one about here could take only a single flight—for, really, without a rider they’re simply too stupid to turn around and come back to where they took off. And I am not a twelve-year-old girl; what’s more, I couldn’t bear to have one about the castle who could ride the creature aloft when I am too old and too heavy.” (The dragon was still hissing.) “No, I could only conceive of turning it loose if my whole world were destroyed and—indeed—my next act would be to cast myself down from that same ledge to the stones!”

  “My Suzeraine, I much preferred you as a wild-haired, horse-proud seventeen-year-old. You were beautiful and heartless…in some ways rather a bore. But you have grown up into another over-refined soul of the sort our aristocracy is so good at producing and which produces so little itself save ways to spend unconscionable amounts on castles, clothes, and complex towers to keep comfortable impossible beasts. You remind me of a cousin of mine—the Baron lnige? Yet what I loved about you, when you were a wholly ungracious provincial heir whom I had just brought to court, was simply that that was what I could never imagine you!

  “Oh, I remember what you loved about me! And I remember your cousin too—though it’s been years since I’ve seen him. Among those pompous and self-important dukes and earls, though I doubt he liked me any better than the rest did, I recall a few times when he went out of his way to be kind…I’m sure I didn’t deserve it. How is Curly?”

  “Killed himself three years ago.” The Vizerine shook her head. “His passion, you may recall, was flowers—which I’m afraid totally took over in the last years. As I understand the story—for I wasn’t there when it happened—he’d been putting together another collection of particularly rare weeds. One he was after apparently turned out to be the wrong color, or couldn’t be found, or didn’t exist. The next day his servants discovered him in the arboretum, his mouth crammed with the white blossoms of some deadly mountain flower.” Myrgot shuddered. “Which I’ve always suspected is where such passions as his—and yours—are too likely to lead, given the flow of our lives, the tenor of our times.”

  The Suzeraine laughed, adjusting the collar of his rich robe with his forefinger. (The Vizerine noted that the blue eyes were much paler in the prematurely lined face than she remembered; and the boyish nailbiting had passed on, in the man, to such grotesque extents that each of his long fingers now ended in a perfect pitted wound.) Two slaves at the door, their own collars covered with heavily jeweled neckpieces, stepped forward to help him, as they had long since been instructed, while the Suzeraine’s hand fell again into the robe’s folds, the adjustment completed. The slaves stepped back. The Suzeraine, oblivious, and the Vizerine, feigning obliviousness and wondering if the Suzeraine’s obliviousness were feigned or real, strolled through the low stone arch between them to the uneven steps circling down the tower.

  “Well,” said the blond lord, stepping back to let his lover of twenty years ago precede, “now we return to the less pleasant aspect of your stay here. You know, I sometimes find myself dreading any visit from the northern aristocracy. Just last week two common women stopped at my castle—one was a redhaired island woman, the other a small creature in a mask who hailed from the Western Crevasse. They were traveling together, seeking adventure and fortune. The Western Woman had once for a time worked in the Palthas, training the winged beasts and the little girls who ride them. The conversation was choice! The island woman could tell incredible tales, and was even using skins and inks to mark down her adventures. And the masked one’s observations were very sharp. It was a fine evening we passed. I fed them and housed them. They entertained me munificently. I gave them useful gifts, saw them depart, and would be delighted to see either return. Now, were the stars in a different configuration, I’m sure that the poor wretch that we’ve got strapped in the dungeon and his little friend who escaped might have come wandering by in the same wise. But no, we have to bind one to the plank in the cellar and stake a guard out for the other…You really wish me to keep up the pretense to that poor mule that it is Lord Krodar, rather than you, who directs his interrogation?”

  “You object?” Myrgot’s hand, out to touch the damp stones at the stair’s turning, came back to brush at the black braids that looped her forehead. “Once or twice I have seen you enjoy such an inquisition session with an avidity that verged on the unsettling.”

  “Inquisition? But this is merely questioning. The pain—at your own orders, my dear—is being kept to a minimum.” (Strethi’s laugh echoed down over Myrgot’s shoulder, recalling for her the enthusiasm of the boy she could no longer find when she gazed full at the man.) “I have neither objection nor approbation, my Vizerine. We have him; we do with him as we will…Now, I can’t help seeing how you gaze about at my walls, Myrgot! I must tell you, ten years ago when I had this castle built over the ruins of my parents’ farm, I really thought the simple fact that all my halls had rooves would bring the aristocracy of Nevèrÿon flocking to my court. Do you know, you are my only regular visitor—at least the only one who comes out of anything other than formal necessity. And I do believe you would come to see me even if I lived in the same drafty farmhouse I did when you first met me. Amazing what we’ll do out of friendship…The other one, Myrgot; I wonder what happened to our prisoner’s little friend. They both fought like devils. Too bad the boy got away.”

  “We have the one I want,” Myrgot said.

  “At any rate, you have your reasons—your passion, for politics and intrigue. That’s what comes of living most of your life in Kolhari. Here in the Avila, it’s—well, it’s not that different for me. You have your criticism of my passions—and I have mine of yours. Certainly I should like to be much more straightforward with the dog: make my demand and chop his head off if he didn’t meet it. This endless play is not really my style. Yet I am perfectly happy to assist you in your desires. And however disparaging you are of my little pet, whose welfare is my life, I am sure there will come a time when one or another of your messengers will arrive at my walls bearing some ornate lizard harness of exquisite workmanship you have either discovered in some old storeroom or—who knows—have had specially commissioned for me by the latest and finest artisan. When it happens, I shall be immensely pleased.”

  And as the steps took them around and down the damp tower, the Suzeraine of Strethi slipped up beside the Vizerine to take her aging arm.

  2

  And again Small Sarg ran.

  He struck back low twigs, side-stepped a wet branch clawed with moonlight, and leaped a boggy puddle. With one hand he shoved away a curtain of leaves, splattering himself face to foot with night-dew, to reveal the moonlit castle. (How many other castles had he so revealed…) Branches chattered to behind him.

  Panting, he ducked back of a boulder. His muddy hand pawed beneath the curls like scrap brass at his neck. The hinged iron was there; and locked tight—a droplet trickled under the metal. He swatted at his hip to find his sword: the hilt was still tacky under his palm where he had not had time to clean it. The gaze with which he took in the pile of stone was not a halt in his headlong dash so much as a continuation of it, the energy propelling arms and legs momentarily div
erted into eyes, ears, and all inside and behind them; then it was back in his feet; his feet pounded the shaly slope so that each footfall, even on his calloused soles, was a constellation of small pains; it was back in his arms; his arms pumped by his flanks so that his fists, brushing his sides as he jogged, heated his knuckles by friction.

  A balustrade rose, blotting stars.

  There would be the unlocked door (as he ran, he clawed over memories of the seven castles he had already run up to; seven side doors, all unlocked…); and the young barbarian, muddy to the knees and elbows, his hair at head and chest and groin matted with leaf-bits and worse, naked save the sword thonged around his hips and the slave collar locked about his neck, dashed across moonlit stubble and gravel into a tower’s shadow, toward the door…and slowed, pulling in cool breaths of autumn air that grew hot inside him and ran from his nostrils; more air ran in.

  “Halt!” from under the brand that flared high in the doorframe.

  Sarg, in one of those swipes at his hip, had moved the scabbard around behind his buttock; it was possible, if the guard had not really been looking at Sarg’s dash through the moonlight, for the boy to have seemed simply a naked slave. Sarg’s hand was ready to grab at the hilt.

  “Who’s there?”

  Small Sarg raised his chin, so that the iron would show. “I’ve come back,” and thought of seven castles. “I got lost from the others, this morning. When they were out.”

  “Come now, say your name and rank.”

  “It’s only Small Sarg master—one of the slaves in the Suzeraine’s labor pen. I was lost this morning—”

  “Likely story!”

  “—and I’ve just found my way back.” With his chin high, Sarg walked slowly and thought: I am running I am running…

  “See here, boy—” The brand came forward, fifteen feet, ten, five, three…

  I am running. And Small Sarg, looking like a filthy field slave with some thong at his waist, jerked his sword up from the scabbard (which bounced on his buttock) and with a grunt sank it into the abdomen of the guard a-glow beneath the high-held flare. The guard’s mouth opened. The flare fell, rolled in the mud so that it burned now only on one side. Small Sarg leaned on the hilt, twisting—somewhere inside the guard the blade sheered upward, parting diaphragm, belly, lungs. The guard closed his eyes, drooled blood, and toppled. Small Sarg almost fell on him—till the blade sucked free. And Sarg was running again, blade out for the second guard (in four castles before there had been a second guard), who was, it seemed as Sarg swung around the stone newel and into the stairwell where his own breath was a roaring echo, not there.

  He hurried up and turned into a side corridor that would take him down to the labor pen. (Seven castles, now. Were all of them designed by one architect?) He ran through the low hall, guided by that glowing spot in his mind where memory was flush with desire; around a little curve, down the steps—

  “What the—?”

  —and jabbed his sword into the shoulder of the guard who’d started forward (already hearing the murmur behind the wooden slats), yanking it free of flesh, the motion carrying it up and across the throat of the second guard (here there was always a second guard) who had turned, surprised; the second guard released his sword (it had only been half drawn), which fell back into its scabbard. Small Sarg hacked at the first again (who was screaming): the man fell, and Small Sarg leaped over him, while the man gurgled and flopped. But Sarg was pulling at the boards, cutting at the rope. Behind the boards and under the screams, like murmuring flies, hands and faces rustled about one another. (Seven times now they had seemed like murmuring flies.) And rope was always harder hacking than flesh. The wood, in at least two other castles, had simply splintered under his hands (under his hands, wood splintered) so that, later, he had wondered if the slaughter and the terror was really necessary.

  Rope fell away.

  Sarg yanked again.

  The splintered gate scraped out on stone.

  “You’re free!” Sarg hissed into the mumbling; mumblings silenced at the word. “Go on, get out of here now!” (How many faces above their collars were clearly barbarian like his own? Memory of other labor pens, rather than what shifted and murmured before him, told him most were.) He turned and leaped bodies, took stairs at double step—while memory told him that only a handful would flee at once; another handful would take three, four, or five minutes to talk themselves into fleeing; and another would simply sit, terrified in the foul straw, and would be sitting there when the siege was over.

  He dashed up stairs in the dark. (Dark stairs fell down beneath dashing feet…) He flung himself against the wooden door with the strip of light beneath and above it. (In two other castles the door had been locked.) It fell open. (In one castle the kitchen midden had been deserted, the fire dead.) He staggered in, blinking in firelight.

  The big man in the stained apron stood up from over the cauldron, turned, frowning. Two women carrying pots stopped and stared. In the bunk beds along the midden’s far wall, a red-headed kitchen boy raised himself up on one arm, blinking. Small Sarg tried to see only the collars around each neck. But what he saw as well (he had seen it before . . ) was that even here, in a lord’s kitchen, where slavery was already involved in the acquisition of the most rudimentary crafts and skills, most of the faces were darker, the hair was coarser, and only the shorter of the women was clearly a barbarian like himself.

  “You are free…!” Small Sarg said, drawing himself up, dirty, blood splattered. He took a gulping breath. “The guards are gone below. The labor pens have already been turned loose. You are free…!”

  The big cook said: “What…?” and a smile, with worry flickering through, slowly overtook his face. (This one’s mother, thought Small Sarg, was a barbarian: he had no doubt been gotten on her by some free northern dog.) “What are you talking about, boy? Better put that shoat-sticker down or you’ll get yourself in trouble.”

  Small Sarg stepped forward, hands out from his sides. He glanced left at his sword. Blood trailed a line of drops on the stone below it.

  Another slave with a big pot of peeled turnips in his hands strode into the room through the far archway, started for the fire rumbling behind the pot hooks, grilling spits, and chained pulleys. He glanced at Sarg, looked about at the others, stopped.

  “Put it down now,” the big cook repeated, coaxingly. (The slave who’d just come in, wet from perspiration, with a puzzled look started to put his turnip pot down on the stones—then gulped and hefted it back against his chest.) “Come on—”

  “What do you think, I’m some berserk madman, a slave gone off my head with the pressure of the iron at my neck?” With his free hand, Sarg thumbed toward his collar. “I’ve fought my way in here, freed the laborers below you; you have only to go now yourselves. You’re free, do you understand?”

  “Now wait, boy,” said the cook, his smile wary. “Freedom is not so simple a thing as that. Even if you’re telling the truth, just what do you propose we’re free to do? Where do you expect us to go? If we leave here, what do you expect will happen to us? We’ll be taken by slavers before dawn tomorrow, more than likely. Do you want us to get lost in the swamps to the south? Or would you rather we starve to death in the mountains to the north? Put down your sword—just for a minute—and be reasonable.”

  The barbarian woman said, with her eyes wide and no barbarian accent at all: “Are you well, boy? Are you hungry? We can give you food: you can lie down and sleep a while if you—”

  “I don’t want sleep. I don’t want food. I want you to understand that you’re free and I want you to move. Fools, fools, don’t you know that to stay slaves is to stay fools?”

  “Now that sword, boy—” The big slave moved.

  Small Sarg raised his blade.

  The big slave stopped. “Look, youth. Use your head. We can’t just—�
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  Footsteps; armor rattled in another room—clearly guards’ sounds. (How many times now—four out of seven?—had he heard those sounds?) What happened (again) was:

  “Here, boy—!” from the woman who had till now not spoken. She shifted her bowl under one arm and pointed toward the bunks.

  Small Sarg sprinted toward them, sprang into the one below the kitchen boy’s. As he sprang, his sword point caught the wooden support beam, jarred his arm full hard; the sword fell clanking on the stone floor. As Sarg turned to see it, the kitchen boy in the bunk above flung down a blanket. Sarg collapsed in the straw, kicked rough cloth (it was stiff at one end as though something had spilled on it and dried) down over his leg, and pulled it up over his head at the same time. Just before the blanket edge cut away the firelit chamber, Sarg saw the big slave pull off his stained apron (underneath the man was naked as Sarg) to fling it across the floor to where it settled, like a stained sail, over Sarg’s fallen weapon. (And the other slave had somehow managed to set his turnip pot down directly over those blood drops.) Under the blanketing dark, he heard the guard rush in.

  “All right, you! A horde of bandits—probably escaped slaves—have stormed the lower floors. They’ve already taken the labor pen—turned loose every cursed dog in them.” (Small Sarg shivered and grinned: how many times now, three, or seven, or seventeen, had he watched slaves suddenly think with one mind, move together like the leaves on a branch before a single breeze!) More footsteps. Beneath the blanket, Small Sarg envisioned a second guard running in to collide with the first, shouting (over the first’s shoulder?): “Any of you kitchen scum caught aiding and abetting these invading lizards will be hung up by the heels and whipped till the flesh falls from your backs—and you know we mean it. There must be fifty of them or more to have gotten in like that! And don’t think they won’t slaughter you as soon as they would us!”