Fell Beasts and Fair

by C. J. Brightley

  About the Author

  Leslie J. Anderson was born and raised in Michigan, where she spent a lot of time falling off ponies and out of trees. She earned her M.A. in writing from Ohio University. Her writing has appeared in Asimov’s, Daily Science Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Strange Horizons. Her poetry was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award in 2014.

  Last Knight and the Burning Sands

  Chloe Garner

  Ruggiero pushed aside a tent flap, taking off his sword belt and laying Gentleness, his long-suffering angel blade, aside.

  “You summoned me?” he asked. The man at the small desk glanced at him, then resumed writing for several minutes before finally putting down his quill and turning to look directly at Ruggiero.

  “You saw to your horse?” Ferrau asked. Ruggiero dipped his head.

  “Of course,” he said. Ferrau stood, smiling.

  “Well met, friend,” he said. “I had worried that your time on the continent would leave you little stomach for the desert.”

  “Frontino was certainly glad of your shelter,” Ruggiero said, and Ferrau laughed.

  “My servants will know better than to overload him with oats, but he can have as much hay as he likes, so long as he is here. Did you find the oasis of Ceylon?”

  “Exactly where you described it,” Ruggiero said. “But tell me, what have you found that drove you to such lengths?”

  Ferrau indicated a cot, where Ruggiero sat as Ferrau regained his chair. The dark-skinned man rested his bearded chin on his fists and stared hard at Ruggiero.

  “No. Even now, I cannot bring myself to do it.”

  Ruggiero pressed his lips.

  “My friend, if you would send Hermus to me and ask me to come away from the war, all the way here, we both know that it is both important and that you will tell me. Now or in the morning, you will tell me.”

  Ferrau grinned.

  “Exactly so,” he said, standing. “So, for now, wine and stories. Tell me, how goes the war?”

  Ruggiero allowed his friend to pull him back to his feet and they went out into the rapidly-cooling desert air where a man in a turban was kindling a fire. Ruggiero didn’t like to talk of the war, because he had close friends on both sides of it. His own wife was fighting against his father, and eventually Ruggiero felt that he was going to have to choose a side once and for all.

  “Land comes and goes between the sides,” he said as Ferrau took a stool from another servant and set it out for Ruggiero to sit on, perching on the edge of his own stool and putting his elbows on his knees.

  “Who will take it? Do you know?”

  Ruggiero shook his head. Ferrau grinned.

  “You don’t even know who you want to win. Tell me, how is your beautiful wife?”

  Ruggiero smiled, just watching the fire as the flames grew up through the dry kindling. There wasn’t enough wood out here to burn, so they kept themselves warm at night with plenty of blankets and they cooked their food on dried animal dung.

  Even now, as he watched, a man brought out a tripod with a kettle and fed it dried leaves. The southerners drank tea imported from places Ruggiero had never heard of; his father loved the drink.

  Ruggiero accepted a small plate with a sweetened dessert on it, even warm, it had a cooling feel in his mouth, and a subtle spice put a heat in his veins.

  “You haven’t been sacrificing as much as I’d feared, out here,” Ruggiero said.

  “It’s all trivialities, my friend,” Ferrau said. “You know as well as I do that the token comforts are nothing compared to a real sense of home.”

  “Tell me, then,” Ruggiero said. “What brings my friend Ferrau out to the middle of the sands, then to drag me out as well?”

  Ferrau looked at the flames, settling a bit lower as a woman came to pour tea. Ruggiero shook his hands, declining, and a man offered him a skin of something; he smelled wine and he smiled a silent yes to this.

  “There are stories that only the desert knows,” Ferrau said quietly, sipping his tea and then setting it aside on a sturdy rug. “Secrets, perhaps, that only the wind here could keep. Whole cities that rose, climbing up above the sand for a time, only to be reclaimed and vanish, just the dunes.” He looked at Ruggiero with a sharp expression of interest. “There is a rumor of a great, powerful city in these lands. Everyone knew where it was, everyone could find it, but when the queen died, the sand took it back, along with all of its treasures. How many men would be willing to dig through a mountain of sand to find it, but,” he motioned with his arm, “which mountain? When the desert reclaims a place, it is well and truly lost.”

  Ruggiero sipped his wine. Ferrau didn’t drink, but he kept good wine, anyway.

  Ferrau looked away again, settled out over his knees.

  “Djinn,” he said. Ruggiero looked at him, but Ferrau didn’t seem inclined to say more, immediately, and Ruggiero waited. He’d ridden a long way to get here; he didn’t need answers immediately if they were going to cost Ferrau. He could be patient.

  “Tell me of your wife,” Ferrau said.

  “She is strong,” Ruggiero said. “Smart. As skilled with a sword as a lance. A capable rider, and a lovely singer.”

  Ferrau snorted.

  “You describe a battle brother.”

  “She is that.”

  Ferrau shook his head.

  “And what did she think of you coming to me, simply because I asked?”

  Ruggiero looked away.

  “The battle is never simple.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “I will tell her,” Ruggiero said quickly. “It isn’t a secret. It’s simply…”

  “Your worlds take you apart,” Ferrau said. “And what of your father?”

  “Margano hasn’t come down from his tower in more than a year,” Ruggiero said. “I don’t know if I will see him again before he dies.”

  Ferrau stroked the edges of his beard with his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger.

  “Your father believes in his work.”

  “And very little else,” Ruggiero answered. Ferrau gave him a dark look, and Ruggiero took another drink of his wine.

  “You are my friend,” he said after another moment. “I did not hesitate to come when you asked.”

  “That is the truth,” Ferrau said. “What do you know of djinn?”

  “A breath and whispers,” Ruggiero said. “In truth, I don’t even know what the word means.”

  Ferrau nodded.

  “In the oldest of our stories, they are benevolent. They carry great wisdom and great insight, and like many creatures of age and wisdom, they are dangerous because they do not tolerate fools.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a sneering anger. “I’ve found the truth to be less… flattering.”

  “Tell me,” Ruggiero said.

  “Demons,” Ferrau said. “Taken to human form. With flashes of flame and light, they seduce men into worshiping them. They shift from flame to flesh and they consume anything around them.”

  Ruggiero shook his head.

  “Demons don’t shift forms.”

  “Ay, so I would have said, too, before I went down to them.”

  “You’ve seen them?” Ruggiero asked. Ferrau nodded.

  “The very night I sent for you. The very night.” He licked his lips and looked over at Ruggiero. “They found the entrance to a… a temple. I have no word for it, other than that. An awesome construction, buried deep in the sand.”

  “Your missing city?” Ruggiero asked.

  “No,” Ferrau said. “No. This place has only ever served one purpose. The walls, the floor… In the desert, there is nothing but sand to build with. The ancients knew the way of forming stone from it, and they constructed their buildings of great slabs, but down deep, it always remembers that it is sand. It always returns. And sand has no memory but that it is sand.”

  Ruggiero frowned as Ferrau held his hands out in front of himself. They trembled in the firel
ight. Ferrau closed them and tucked them back in against his sides.

  “The sandstone in the temple, Ruggiero. It is stained with blood.”

  “New blood?” Ruggiero asked and Ferrau laughed darkly.

  “Perhaps, but not enough new blood to begin to cover the old.”

  Ruggiero nodded.

  “It is best you sent for me,” he said. Ferrau nodded.

  “I am a soldier and a merchant. I have seen great violence and I know a great many secrets, but I know when I am matched, and I know that there is more to you than there is the simple soldier.”

  Ruggiero nodded. He didn’t talk about it very much, the things his father had taught him. He’d met his wife Aurora in battle, sword to sword, and it was the very first time he’d known someone with power like his own. They’d fought for days before they’d fallen, exhausted, next to each other, crawling to a nearby stream where they scooped water for each other as they spoke. He’d loved her from that moment, driving a division between himself and his father that he had no remedy for. The power remained.

  Not many people knew about it. His father had friends—the type of friends who drove out the need for enemies—with a shared knowledge and power, and Aurora had a small group of men who had learned at the knee of a single elder, but Ruggiero himself had no peer.

  Margano knew that. Aurora knew, but not with the same real awareness that Margano knew.

  Ruggiero was the second most powerful man the world had ever seen, if Margano’s system of measurement was trustworthy.

  “I will look into it,” he said. “If you will take me there and then promise to leave me on my own.”

  Ferrau laughed.

  “I would not have it any other way.”

  They set out the next morning long before the sun had reached the horizon. The sky was colored enough to allow them to ride, and if they waited for dawn, the cool of the day would be lost to them. As it was, Ruggiero worried for his friend returning under the worst of the heat.

  They stopped once to let the horses drink. Ferrau had camels who were better-suited to the desert, but both men preferred their fighting horses, for all the cost that came with tending them, simply because staying alive had justified those costs time and time again.

  Frontino was as critical to Ruggiero as Gentleness herself. The horse had been with him since he was a child, and he had a mind that rivaled most men for tactics and commands. The two men agreed that Ferrau would take Frontino back to the camp and return in two days. Ruggiero would not be able to leave the temple in that time, but there was no place for the horse inside, and he would die of exposure, outside.

  The dunes went on forever in every direction. There were no landmarks, no distinguishing features that Ruggiero might have used to make his way back here. The only reason that Ferrau knew where he was going was that it hadn’t been long enough for the dunes to change shape since he’d last been here. Two weeks, three at the most, and the way would be lost.

  “What are they doing out here?” Ruggiero wondered out loud. “Demons need people to amuse them.”

  Ferrau looked back at him but didn’t answer. Ruggiero suspected that it was because there was no answer, with just what the two of them knew.

  “Djinn,” he breathed.

  They rounded the arm of a dune and there at the bottom of the trough between dunes, like a siphon for all of the sand of the great desert, Ruggiero saw a gaping black door. To either side, he could see columns, and even at this distance he could see that they were carved with figures, but that was all. He dismounted, taking his supplies for the two days and a few other things, then he shook hands with Ferrau and his friend left, toting a skeptical Frontino behind him. Ruggiero gave Frontino a wave, then started across the slick sand, his feet sliding down into it deep enough that it covered the toes of his boots at each stride. It was a sucking exhaustion, walking in sand such as this, and he hoped that Frontino was able to recover well during his rest. Ruggiero only had some hundred yards to cover; Frontino had traversed a sea of the stuff.

  He reached the stone floor outside of the door and looked up at the columns. Three times his height, they bore figures of men and animals, many of which he knew, but many more that he didn’t. Strange limbs and faces, they seemed fantastic, but standing next to dogs and camels and horses, he had to wonder if they weren’t real. The men hunted them, fled from them, consumed and were consumed by them. Making nothing of importance from this, but noting as much of it as he could in case it did prove relevant, Ruggiero approached the door.

  The sun cut a hard line into the dark, a wedge of searing light against blind darkness, and Ruggiero stood to cast his own shadow across it, listening for anything but the ever-present wind and the sound of shifting sand.

  There was nothing.

  He took a step forward, holding up his hand and blowing across his flat palm to spark a white flame into existence. Rather than scorching, like the sun outside, the white flame glowed with a cool purity that lit the space without blinding him.

  A shadow moved and Ruggiero drew Gentleness from his hip, the angel blade resonating with the power of the angel flame in his palm.

  Ruggiero took another step forward, wanting to be out of the unkind sunlight, but not wanting to advance further than he was sure he should go.

  Patience.

  Patience won as many battles as swords did.

  Gentleness was perhaps less willing to wait for him to become aware of his surroundings; he didn’t need anything more than the indignant flow of magic off of the sword to know that there were demons about.

  There was a roll of flame some distance in front of him and a man appeared. He had a solid build and smooth skin the color of the sand, and he wore an ornate outfit of the same color, loose in the style that Ferrau wore and decorated everywhere with bits of bronze. Smoky orange flame rolled away from his feet as he stood.

  “Who are you and why do you disturb us?” he asked.

  “I am Ruggiero, son of Margano,” Ruggiero answered. “How many are you?”

  He could see, in the white light from his palm and from the orange flame around the djinn that Ferrau hadn’t exaggerated the extent of stain on the orange sandstone. There were streaks on top of streaks, staining two rows of columns that went the length of the great room, and the floor was almost black. Even so, the air smelled of nothing but stale and dry. It was old blood.

  “We are many,” the djinn answered. “And you are few.”

  “I am one,” Ruggiero said. “Why do you hide in the darkness?”

  “We choose darkness or light as it suits us,” the djinn said. “You will bow before us.”

  Ruggiero looked up at the ceiling, at the way the stone was worked and carved. It would have been beautiful, in the right light. The time that men had put into creating this place was extraordinary.

  “I’ve never known a powerful demon to hide out this far away from men,” Ruggiero finally said. “I’m more inclined to believe that you are here out of fear, that you have come here to hide.”

  The djinn tipped his head back at the ceiling and roared, a howl that sounded like the wind in a sandstorm, and he flexed his arms in, up over his head, then spread his hands.

  “We will tear you into pieces and feast on your flesh,” he said, bringing his head back down. “But not before you worship me.”

  He closed his hands and the temple vanished, as did he.

  Ruggiero found himself standing on a grassy hillside overlooking a shallow pool. The rocks on the bottom were a cheery color of green, like the hill just continued down into the crystal water. A great tree spread branches over his head, and everything twinkled with a sense of new, of fresh, of clean.

  Without indulging in it, he could smell the damp of the air, the smell of new life and healthy earth. He checked his grip on Gentleness, who was still on an angry alert at the darkness of the magic around him, then he extinguished the angel flame in his palm. What he saw was not with his eyes, and the angel flame was
a dangerous thing to control when he was in possession of all of his wits.

  Aurora drifted down out of the forest shade behind him wearing a gauzy blue gown, walking to the water’s edge in bare feet and looking back at him. She smiled, a simple, devastating smile, and held a hand out to him. He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, my love,” he told her. “I can’t.”

  She tipped her head to the side.

  “We work,” she said softly. “And we fight. And sometimes I feel we do very little else. Is there never a time for us?”

  “There will be,” he answered. “When the work is done.”

  “Do you never fear that perhaps I won’t be here, when the work is done?” she asked.

  She had a lovely face. Not as wan and willowy as was fashionable in some of the places Ruggiero had lived, nor as ample and round as was popular in other places, but firm and featured, with a scar over her eye where someone had landed a fist during a fight, and another down the side of her face where the tip of a lance had flung off her helmet. It was her eyes, though, that he’d admired, laying on the ground next to her, exhausted like his body might never recover, Gentleness in his hand and Frontino walking a cautious circle, snorting at Aurora’s horse.

  The ground had been heavily trod from their fight, that day, but it had been ground like this. Clean-smelling and earthy, full of green life.

  He felt the longing in his body to take that still-offered hand, to pull his feet out of his boots and stand next to her ankle-deep in the water, and he shook his head.

  “I cannot stay,” he said.

  “We will miss each other entirely, if we aren’t careful,” she said to him, and he pulled his mouth into a tight line.

  “Such is the cost of power, beloved.”