Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIV

by Unknown

  "Maridah! Returned to us after all these years!" Hadidjah seized Maridah's hands, and kissed them formally. "I never believed you were dead. You look so young, not a hair different from the day you disappeared! Have you freed yourself from an evil enchantment? Is that how you have come back to us?"

  "I- I don't understand." Maridah's thoughts whirled. "I have been gone no more than an hour or two. Is Grandmother still among us? Is that why no one is in mourning?"

  "Come, my niece," Yussuf said, holding out one hand to her. "Let us speak of these things in private."

  "Let us speak of them right now!" Maridah shot back. She had not returned to put herself in his power. "Right here!"

  Yussuf and his daughter exchanged glances. Yussuf gestured to a man wearing the sash of a chief vizier. "Clear the chamber!"

  Immediately, the guards who stood at the entrance escorted the courtiers from the room. When they were alone, Yussuf said, "It has been five years since Zunayna of the Blessed Memory departed our midst, and five years since you yourself vanished."

  Five years! How was that possible? With magic, was anything impossible?

  Oh, Grandmother...

  Maridah shoved aside the pulse of grief. "And you, I suppose, have been ruling in the interim?"

  Under the vitriol of her words, Yussuf paled but did not flinch. "I have been serving as Regent-"

  "But he has not been ruling," Hadidjah said, her voice edged with steel.

  "You? You dared to take my place?"

  "Yes, I dared! What else could I have done? When you disappeared, there was no one else. No one to rally our people when raiders came swarming upriver. No one to negotiate trade agreements, to settle disputes and inheritances. No one to-"

  "Do you challenge my right to rule?" Maridah faced her uncle.

  "No, I do!" Hadidjah exclaimed. "My father would be happy to lay down the Regency, if only there were a rightful heir. He's old and sick, even a simpleton can see that! For the past five years, for good or ill, I have made those decisions. I have exercised that authority. I have made mistakes, and I have learned from them."

  She paused, her breast heaving, and went on in a softer tone. "I have always loved you, my cousin, and I rejoice to see you whole, but I have no intention of stepping aside—throwing away everything for which my father and I have labored—for an inexperienced, irresponsible fledgling who has already abandoned this city and its people not once, but twice!"

  Maridah glared at her uncle. "This is all your doing! Grandmother warned me of your ambition. If you cannot rule in your own right, you seek to do so through your daughter. I hear your words from her mouth!"

  "You hear my own!" Hadidjah cried. "Oh, it is no use reasoning with her, Father. She has made you into a villain and me into your puppet, even as Grandmother did in her final illness."

  She faced Maridah, her emotions once more under control. "Yours may be the stronger right by lineage, but I have the advantage of experience. I will not yield to any lesser claim. And when the wand of office is found, I will release my father from his burden."

  "Then take it, if you dare!" Maridah reached into her pocket and drew out the wrapped wand. She unfolded the handkerchief, revealing the wand, which gleamed as if moist.

  When Hadidjah reached out her hand, her father grabbed her wrist. "Wait, there must be a trick. Why else would Maridah take such care to prevent even a casual touch? See, even now she shields her own skin."

  Hadidjah met Maridah's gaze with a troubled expression. "Would you truly seek to poison me? Slay me by treachery? Has your own ambition grown so vast? Have you no memory of the love we once shared? Does power mean more to you than friendship?"

  Maridah opened her mouth to protest that they had never been so very dear to one another. Memories swept away her words, of playing together in the palace gardens, braiding each other's hair, giggling over the newest gossip and handsome visitors to court. She had thought Hadidjah lacking in seriousness, too vulnerable to her father's guidance, but never vicious.

  More than that, did she herself want to rule? To forsake the world of stories and dreams?

  "I touched it once," Maridah admitted, "and it pained me, but caused no lasting harm. Its power answers only to one who truly desires to keep the city safe and prosperous."

  Hadidjah's rose-gold complexion paled. She reached trembling fingers toward the wand.

  "Do not do this for me," Yussuf said. "I can manage for a while longer. And here is Maridah, come to take up her heritage."

  Maridah saw tears glimmering in Hadidjah's eyes as her cousin shook her head. Before Hadidjah could touch the wand, Maridah grasped it in her free hand.

  Fire jolted up her arm. Every nerve flared into white agony. Her throat clenched around her breath. Her back arched in spasm. Waves of pain shook her. All she had to do was to let go...

  The wand clattered to the tiled floor.

  Maridah bent over, gasping. Her vision blurred, crimson, as if her eyes had been washed in blood. A gentle touch steadied her. She inhaled her cousin's perfume, the scent of rosewater and cloves.

  Maridah was still unable to speak, but could stand on her own, when Hadidjah released her. Slowly, with resolve taut in every line of her body, Hadidjah bent to pick up the wand.

  Slim fingers closed around the ivory rod. For a moment, the delicate engravings shimmered. Then the light passed from them. Hadidjah straightened up. Trembling shook her body. She looked up, an unnatural brightness in her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came.

  Maridah found herself unexpectedly moved by the sight of Hadidjah, ashen and resolute. She could not imagine what her cousin must be suffering. Moving stiffly, for her muscles had not yet fully recovered, she fumbled for her handkerchief.

  Hadidjah waved it away and clasped the wand against her body. The chamber, empty except for a guard at the doors, had fallen very still. Maridah could hear nothing above the rasp of her cousin's breathing and the thrumming of her own heart.

  Color seeped out of Hadidjah's skin, her hair, her beautiful hazel eyes. For an instant, it seemed that she had become part of the wand. Ivory, once living but now with only the memory of that life. Enduring, enslaved. Glistening with magic as if with tears.

  Yussuf covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking, making no sound.

  Although the gesture brought her a sadness she could not explain, Maridah bowed to her new sovereign. "You are now the Princess of Khazarand, and so I will say to the whole world!"

  * * * *

  Later, much later, the two cousins stood on a balcony overlooking the twin rivers. Dusk perfumed the shadows as Khazarand's thousand gardens released the heat of the day. The moon, just past full, cast a softly golden light.

  Maridah, still in her favored robe of soft cotton, her hair simply dressed, breathed in the lingering sweetness.

  "You have not yet made your plans to return to Samarkhand," Hadidjah said.

  "Not yet." Maridah still dreamed of Samarkhand and, sometimes, a statue who had perhaps become a man, who spun tales of wonder more real than the stones beneath her feet. A wooden horse waited to carry her to her heart's desire, if only she knew what that was.

  "There is something I would ask you," Maridah said, "although you may think it presumptuous."

  Hadidjah's smile was a ghost in the gathering dark. "Dearest cousin, we know each other too well for formal courtesies."

  "Well, then. When you took up the wand—you saw what it did to me, and I had come here determined to take the throne. I never realized how much greater was your own desire. You were never ambitious, not in that way. I thought you content with pretty clothes and ardent suitors."

  "Of which I have many, all of them interested in power," Hadidjah interjected. "I must marry and provide our city with an heir, but I will choose carefully. I did not pick up the wand in order to give away everything I worked so hard to achieve."

  "Why, then? Why did you do it?"

  "Did I have a choice?
How else could I put forth a lawful claim to the throne? I took it up because there was no one else, and to spare my father."

  Maridah nodded silently. Uncle Yussuf would not have lain down the Regency until Khazarand had a rightful Princess. Now that Maridah had abdicated in Hadidjah's favor, the throne was secure.

  "I saw what the wand did to you," Hadidjah went on. "I had not the slightest doubt it would bring me even greater pain." She paused, blinking hard.

  From the way her cousin spoke, and the coiling silence that followed, Maridah knew the pain had not abated, but it was of the heart and spirit, not of the body. She said, "I cannot envy you."

  "You need not." Hadidjah paused. "Did Grandmother ever tell you—do you know what the wand does? How it grants power?"

  Maridah supposed the wand bestowed some exceptional degree of prosperity, health, good luck, or invincibility in battle.

  "It reveals the truth," Hadidjah said quietly.

  "Surely that's a good thing. To know when your adversaries or even your own advisors are lying."

  "You may say so, you who have lived for your philosophy, who breathed in Grandmother's tales of enchantment as a fish breathes water. Such stories are beautiful and bewitching. One forgets that not every true thought or every true word, spoken in haste or anger, is kind."

  In Maridah's sight, moonlight turned Hadidjah into a woman of silver-washed ivory. Maridah remembered the wetness of the wand, how it had appeared to weep. She thought of the statue, animated by passion. Even as the stone had come to life, life now seeped from Hadidjah's human flesh as ivory, beautiful and hard, took its place.

  Maridah's heart shivered. Were they not two sides of the same hand, the dark moon and the light? Truth bound one with barbed chains, scouring away trust and love; the other was seduced by a world of easy dreams, of riddles that tantalized and intoxicated.

  By the grace of the Infinite, what were stories for?

  All her life, she had wandered through a world of stories. And what use had they been, except to make her entirely mistaken about her uncle, the sorceress, the statue? Even Hadidjah.

  Even herself.

  Yet... if stories had the power to give life to stone, to comfort a dying old woman, to ease the loneliness of a royal child, might they not also give life... and hope... to this woman she loved, who was even now turning into ivory?

  Smiling, Maridah laid her hand upon her cousin's arm. "I think we have, between us, more than enough truth and more than enough dreams, for any one lifetime."

  Together they went into the old work room, where the brass casket whispered poisoned secrets in the wavering candle light. Together, they opened it. The ball and the top were in their proper places, no longer inert but charged, waiting.

  Together, they put away the ivory wand and the little wooden horse, closed the casket, and sealed it with molten lead.

  Together, they placed it back in the stronghold.

  The next morning, Hadidjah would sit upon the throne, judging with her own mind. And Maridah would enter Grandmother's chambers and throw open the doors to the clear light of day. She would study, as was her talent; she would tell all the stories she knew, not to insulate and cripple, but to bring life to the ivory statues of men's hearts.

  I will carry you

  Wherever you truly wish to go.

  Hadidjah would dispense justice, and Maridah would spin out dreams, and together they would create such an age that there would be no end to the tales of wonder.

  Merlin's Clutter

  by Helen E. Davis

  There's really nothing quite like life with a great wizard—unless it's life with a disorganized bibliophile or a creative genius. The day I first saw Marion's house, most of the floor was not visible. The library was about a foot deep in papers and fabric scraps (it doubled as the sewing room), and the memory of her office makes me shudder to this day. So I can truly empathize with the protagonist of this story. It's like being given the responsibility for a job without being given the authority necessary to do it.

  Helen E. Davis grew up in Northern Louisiana, graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio, and lives in Dayton, Ohio. She is a housewife, a mother of two teenagers, and an occasional substitute teacher. This is her second professional sale.

  #

  Adele lay in bed, listening to her husband's footsteps as he walked out the front door. After the slam a delightful silence filled the cottage. Now, she thought, willing aged muscles to unknot, Now I can get up.

  The wizard she had married promised her riches and eternal youth – then went and lost the damn stone. He was searching for it, he claimed, as he hurried out the door each day. When he returned, usually after dark, it was to eat his chilled supper and go straight to bed, or else to shut himself into his study for hours. Meanwhile, the years carried off her youth and with it, her strength.

  Pulling her shawl over her thin shoulders, she pushed her feet into slippers. The bedroom was cold no matter the season. The central room was a little better, with a fresh built fire and early dawn sluicing through the windows. A table stood before the hearth, and on it lay the remains of the wizard's breakfast.

  Adele's eyes narrowed. Their fight last night had been about the clutter in the house, with Himself screaming that he couldn't live in such a disorganized place, for he had not been able to find a book he wanted. From there he had yelled about the pots piled beside the sink (there were no nails on the walls to hang them) and the jars of canned food stacked against the far wall (there was still no pantry to put them in) and her knitting yarn tangled in the basket beside her chair (his cat would not believe that yarn was neither living nor a threat) and then a dozen things more minor than that.

  Meanwhile, he left his dishes for her to pick up, his robes for her to put away, and his papers on any flat surface. She gathered a set which he had dropped on the counter the night before and saw the book he had been bellowing about beneath them.

  She dropped the papers back on it.

  Shuffling to the hearth, she swung the kettle over the flame. If the wizard wanted a clean house, she would give it to him. But she was starting with his clutter first.

  * * * *

  His always being gone bothered her the most. Day in, day out, half the nights, and almost every weekend, he was off on that damned sacred quest of his. There was always a library he had to visit, an old hermit he had to talk to, a new scrap heap he had to comb. Meanwhile, to her fell the daily cooking, gardening, and cleaning.

  Where to start? she thought as she wiped gnarled hands on a threadbare apron. The door to his study caught her eye, standing ajar with a pile of paper slumping over the threshold. Every day it was worse. She was forbidden to enter his study, lest she disturb the powerful spells within – but anything which crept out, she reasoned, was hers to deal with. So she fetched two baskets: one for things which should be kept, and one for things which could fuel the fire. A bright fire would truly warm the place. Knees creaking, she knelt and gathered the papers.

  The first was a hand-written receipt for two jars of dried newt eyes, a packet of powdered frog toes, and a bottle of seaweed jelly. When had he bought those things? She looked at the date, shuddered, and tossed it in the refuse basket.

  There were other things, equally ancient. Such as a letter from a long-dead king, and another from his grandson offering safe passage through a war fought for reasons forgotten. There were several invitations to baptisms, coronations, and funerals, often of the same individual, and more than one unpaid bill. All this went into the refuse basket without a second glance. Correspondence deserved a second look, but most of it was over such trivial things as the price of tadpole tails. The more solid objects she set aside, such as the scarf embroidered with the queen's mark and the jeweled ring in the shape of a lion's head. They could be sold to buy wood when the paper ran out.

  Beneath a mass of unmailed letters of recommendation, she found a stone bowl that was too large for the save basket. It was carved of rough grey stone flec
ked with black glass, but the inside curve was polished. It weighed so little that it seemed to float on air, and her aged arms lifted it easily. A faint warmth tingled her fingers. This, she knew, was the perfect bowl for making bread. Setting it aside, she returned to the paper pile.

  The sorting was good for her fingers. Her fingers moved more nimbly as she worked, and the stabbing pain in the joints faded.

  Her next find made her glad that she had decided to clear the pile today. It was an egg, twice as large as a duck's egg, with a grey, mottled shell. Addled and rotten. She set it carefully in the bowl, praying that it would not break before she could bury it in the compost heap.

  When the refuse basket was filled, she rose on creaking knees and shuffled stiffly to the fire. The old papers tumbled into flames that flared with delicious warmth. For several minutes she stood there, savoring the heat, then turned back to the pile. Despite her work it seemed no smaller. With a sigh she picked up the bowl and set it on the table, so that neither she nor the cat would accidentally knock against it and crack the egg.

  Odd, the old eggshell seemed almost white when set against the dark grey of the stone.

  Back at the pile she sorted out a treasure map with El Dorado scribbled across the top and a scroll of spells tied with string. Hints were scribbled in the margins. The wizard's attempt to write Spellcasting for Imbeciles, she remembered. Just beneath it lay a collection of letters that discussed the various uses of Dragon's Blood. From the notes he had scribbled on these, it looked as if he might have been planning a second book.

  Hidden treasure and book royalties. With those, perhaps, they could afford coal in the winter and a servant to help with the house. She set these things carefully to the side, planning to bring them out the next time he complained.

  Beyond the doorway, the pile crouched like a lurking beast. Dark hollows that could have been eyes stared at her above a mouth-like pit. The jagged corners of papers formed teeth, and it had a red scarf for a tongue.