Tales of Ethshar

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Oh, it’s all part of showing off to each other that they’re real men,” Tabar said. “They all come here because they can do it together, and show how loyal they all are to each other. The more stuff they do together, the more they trust each other when there’s trouble.”

  I had to think about that for awhile, but eventually I decided he was right. If one of the men went off with his own woman, he wouldn’t be as much a part of the company.

  But of course, that meant that I wasn’t as much a part of the company.

  I’d sort of noticed that, as I guess I told you, but I thought it was just because I was new, and not from the city, and of course partly because I was the only woman. I tried to fit in, and I did everything that everyone else did back at the barracks, all the jokes and games and arm-wrestling and so on, and mostly it was okay, but I could feel that I wasn’t really accepted yet, and I thought it was just going to be a matter of time—but when Tabar explained that I realized that it wasn’t just that. The expeditions down to Whore Street were part of fitting in, and I wasn’t doing it.

  I couldn’t, unless I wanted to go to someplace like Beautiful Phera’s, which I didn’t, and besides, none of my company went to places like that—they all liked women, or at least pretended to when they went to Whore Street, and the specialty places charged extra.

  Even before I asked Tabar about it, I knew that didn’t really make any difference that I couldn’t.

  Anyway, I got talking to Tabar about it all, and we talked and talked, and by the time I headed back to the barracks it was just about midnight.

  And the next sixnight, when the men were getting ready to go, I had an idea. I said, “Hey, wait for me!” and I went along with them.

  Some of them were kind of nervous about it; I could see that in the way they looked at me, and they weren’t as noisy as usual. One man—you don’t know him, but his name’s Kelder Arl’s son—asked where I thought I was going, and I said, “Rudhira’s.” And everyone laughed.

  “You like women?” someone asked, and someone else said, “Or are you trying to pick up a few extra silvers?” And I didn’t get mad or anything, I just laughed and said no.

  I didn’t get mad because I knew Tabar would be there.

  As soon as we set foot in the door I called, “Tabar!” And there he was, and he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me, and this big grin spread all over his face.

  “Shennar,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

  “The boys and I are just here for our regular fun,” I said, and everyone laughed, and we had a fine time. I talked to some of the girls, and joked with the men, and then when the men went upstairs Tabar and I went back to his room…

  He’s wonderful, Mother. If you ever come down to visit you’ll have to meet him.

  Love,

  Shennar

  * * * *

  Dear Mother,

  What’s wrong with a whorehouse bouncer? It’s honest work.

  Mother, I’m not a delicate little flower. I’m a hundred and eighty pounds of bone and muscle. And Tabar is two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle. I like him.

  And seeing him has really helped. I’m fitting in better than ever. I love my job, Mother, and going to Whore Street every sixnight is helping me with it.

  Besides, I like Tabar a lot, Mother. And it’s not as if it costs me anything, the way it does everyone else. Tabar and I joke sometimes about which of us should be charging.

  The only thing is…

  Well, it looks as if Tabar and I will be married, at least for awhile. We hadn’t really planned on it, but it’s happened. The lieutenant says I can get leave when I need it, and I’ve been saving up what the men use as brothel money so I won’t starve while I’m on leave, but I’m not sure how it’s going to go over with the rest of the company having a baby around here.

  I think they’ll get used to it. But it’s driving the armorer crazy enlarging my breastplate every sixnight or so!

  Love,

  Shennar

  About “Weaving Spells”

  Readers seem to be fascinated by the Transporting Tapestries I introduced in With A Single Spell, so it seemed reasonable to write a story about how they’re made, and an anthology invitation came along at just the right time—an anthology Marion Zimmer Bradley was editing that had no specific theme beyond fantasy. So I wrote this.

  Weaving Spells

  Kirinna had been staring out the farmhouse window at the steady rain for several minutes, worrying about Dogal, when she got up so suddenly that her chair fell backward and crashed on the floor. Her mother jumped at the sudden sound, dropping a stitch. The older woman looked up.

  “I’m going after him,” Kirinna announced.

  “Oh, I don’t—” her mother began, lowering her knitting.

  “You are not,” her father announced from the doorway; he had risen at the sound of the toppling chair and come to see what had caused the commotion.

  “Father, Dogal and I are supposed to be married tomorrow!” Kirinna said, turning. “He should have been back home days ago, and he isn’t! What are you going to do tomorrow, keep the whole village standing around while we wait for him?”

  “If he’s not here, then the wedding will be postponed,” her father said. “You are not going to go running off in the rain looking for him—what if he comes home while you’re away, and you’re the one who misses the wedding?”

  “Is it any worse that way? It’s still early. I’ll be back tonight, I promise.”

  “That’s what Dogal said,” Kirinna’s mother said worriedly.

  “Which is why you aren’t going anywhere, girl,” her father said, pointing a hand at Kirinna. “Now, you pick up that chair and settle down to your work.” He gestured at the bowl of peas Kirinna had been shelling before her worries got the better of her.

  Kirinna stared at him for a minute, then sighed; all the fight seemed to go out of her.

  “Yes, Father,” she said. She stooped and reached for the chair.

  Her father watched for a moment, then turned to resume his own efforts in the back room, polishing the ornamental brass for tomorrow’s planned celebration.

  Kirinna fiddled with the chair, brushed at her skirt, adjusted the bowl—and then, when she was sure both her parents had settled to their work, she ran lightly across the room to the hearth, where she reached up and snatched her great-grandfather’s sword down from its place on the mantle.

  “What are you…?” her mother began, but before the sentence was finished Kirinna was out the door and running through the warm spring rain, the sheathed sword clutched in one hand, her house-slippers splashing noisily through the puddles as she dashed through the village toward the coast road.

  A moment later her father was standing in the doorway, shouting after her, but she ignored him and ran on.

  She didn’t need anyone’s permission, she told herself. She was a grown woman, past her eighteenth birthday and about to wed, and the man she loved needed her. It wasn’t as if she intended to run off blindly into the wilderness; she knew where Dogal had gone, knew exactly what he had planned the day he disappeared, a sixnight earlier.

  A strange stone the size of a man’s head had fallen from the sky during the winter and landed in Dogal’s back pasture, melting a great circle of snow and plowing a hole in the earth beneath, and everyone knew that such stones were rare and of great value to magicians. When the spring planting was done and the wedding preparations in hand Dogal had set out three leagues down the coast, to sell the sky-stone to the famous wizard Alladia, said to be one of the richest and most powerful in all the western lands.

  He had teased Kirinna about how she might spend the money once they were married, and she had laughed and given him a shove on his way.

  And he hadn’t come back.

  Some of the village children had teased her when Dogal didn’t return, far less kindly than had her betrothed, saying he had run off with someone else—that he hadn’t gone
to Alladia at all, but to some rival’s house, rather than stay to wed crazy, short-tempered Kirinna.

  Kirinna knew better than that. Dogal loved her.

  Other villagers had suggested that perhaps Dogal had angered Alladia somehow, and been turned into a mouse or a frog, or simply been slain. That possibility was far too real, though she couldn’t imagine how poor sweet Dogal could have annoyed the wizard that much. She had been telling herself for two or three days now that Alladia couldn’t be so cruel.

  But then there was a third suggestion—that Alladia had decided to keep handsome young Dogal for herself, and had ensorcelled him. Kirinna found that theory all too easy to believe; certainly she had wanted Dogal from the first moment she had laid eyes on him, and Alladia was said to be young for a wizard, certainly young enough to still appreciate the company of men.

  If the wizard thought Kirinna was going to give her man up without a fight, though, she was very wrong indeed—and that was why Kirinna had snatched her great-grandfather’s sword. It was said that during the Great War old Kinner had once killed a Northern sorcerer with this very blade; Kirinna hoped she could do as well with it against an Ethsharitic wizard.

  Of course, Kinner had been a trained soldier, with years of experience and all the magical protection General Gor’s wizards could provide, while Kirinna had never used a sword in her life—but she tried not to think of that as she marched down the road.

  She had gone less than half a league when she paused to mount the scabbarded weapon properly on her belt; carrying it in her hand was tiresome and unnecessary. She settled the sheath in place and drew the sword, just to test it.

  She was startled by how fine and light the blade was, how the weight of the sword was so perfectly balanced that her hand seemed to almost move of its own volition as she took a few practice swings.

  She remembered to wipe it dry before sheathing it again; then she jogged onward down the road, trotting to make up the time she had spent trying the sword.

  The rain stopped when she had gone a little more than a league from her parents’ home, and the skies were clearing by the time she finally came in sight of the wizard’s home.

  She had left the ill-kept road for the rocky beach half a league back, scrambling across grassy dunes and wave-polished rocks. Alladia’s house was perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean; as Kirinna watched the sun broke through the clouds and painted a line of gold along the water that seemed to burst at the end into a shower of sparks that were the reflections in Alladia’s dozens of windows.

  It was the biggest house Kirinna had ever seen; she wondered whether even the overlord’s Fortress in Ethshar of the Rocks could be larger. Three stories high, not counting a tower at one end that rose another two levels, and easily a hundred feet from end to end—Kirinna had never imagined anything so grand.

  The main entrance was on the other side, she knew—that was one reason she had come along the beach. She had no intention of walking up to the wizard’s front door and politely asking if anyone had seen a young man named Dogal; she planned to get inside that house and see for herself. She began clambering up the bluff.

  At the top she heaved herself up over the final outcropping of rock and found herself staring in a window, her face just inches from the glass.

  She was looking into a wizard’s house, and she half-expected to see all manner of monstrosities, but instead she saw an ordinary room—paved in gray stone, as if the entire floor were hearth, but otherwise unremarkable. An oaken table stood against one wall, with a pair of candlesticks and a bowl of flowers arranged on it and chairs at either end; a rag rug covered perhaps half the stone floor. There were no cauldrons, no skulls, no strange creatures scurrying about.

  She hesitated, considering whether to find a door or simply smash her way in, and compromised by drawing her belt-knife and digging into the leading between windowpanes. A few minutes’ work was enough to loosen one square of glass, and she pried at one edge, trying to pop it free of its mangled frame.

  The sheet of glass snapped, and shards tumbled at her feet; she froze, listening and peering into the house, fearing someone had heard the noise.

  Apparently no one had; the only sounds she heard were the waves breaking beneath her and the wind in the eaves.

  She reached into the hole she had made, unlatched the window, and swung it open; then she climbed carefully into the house.

  The room was bigger and finer and cleaner than most she had seen, but looked no more outlandish from inside than it had through the glass—she had thought there might be some sort of illusion at work, altering the room’s appearance when seen from outside, but if so it worked inside, too. She crept carefully out to the center of the room and stood on the rag rug, looking around.

  Doorways opened into three other rooms—one appeared to be a dining hall, another a storeroom stacked with dusty wooden boxes, and the third she couldn’t identify. None were visibly inhabited.

  She transferred her belt-knife to her left hand and drew her great-grandfather’s sword. There should be guards, she thought—either hired men, or supernatural beings of some sort, or at least spells. In the family stories of the Great War wizards were all part of the Ethsharitic military, and always had soldiers around, as well as their magic.

  Kirinna saw no soldiers here—and for that matter, no magic. Breaking in the window might have triggered some sort of magical warning somewhere, but she no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

  She also saw no sign of the wizard Alladia, or of Dogal. All she saw was a big, comfortable house.

  She crept to the nearest doorway and peered through, half-expecting a guard to jump out and knock the sword from her hand; she clutched the hilt so tightly her knuckles ached.

  All she saw was a dining hall, with a big bare table and half a dozen chairs and a magnificent china cabinet.

  Something thumped, and she froze; it sounded again, and she realized it was coming from the cabinet.

  Was someone in there? Could Dogal have been stuffed in there, somehow? She moved nervously across the room, dashing a few steps and then pausing to look in all directions, until she reached the cabinet and opened one of the brightly-painted doors.

  A cream-colored ceramic teapot was strolling up and down the shelf on stubby red porcelain legs, bumping against pots and platters.

  “Dogal?” she asked, wondering if her beloved had somehow been transformed into crockery.

  The teapot ignored her and ambled on until it tripped over a salt-cellar and bumped its spout on the side of the cabinet; then it stopped, and somehow managed to look disgruntled as it righted itself and settled down on the shelf.

  There was magic here, certainly, but nothing she could connect with Dogal; Kirinna closed the cabinet and moved on.

  She made her way through room after room, from study to kitchen to privy, without being challenged or impeded and without finding anything else out of the ordinary except general displays of wealth and a remarkable number of storerooms. She began to fear that the house was deserted, that Alladia had fled somewhere with Dogal.

  Finally, she heard footsteps overhead—the house was not deserted! Someone was here! She hurried to the nearer of the two staircases she had discovered and crept up the steps, sword still ready in her hand.

  At the top of the stairs she found herself at one end of a hallway; she could smell incense and other, less-identifiable scents, and could hear an unfamiliar low rattling and thumping. Warily, she made her way down the hall, following the sounds and odors.

  She came at last to an open door that was definitely the source; she crept up beside the doorframe and turned to peer in.

  A woman was seated with her back to the door, working at a sort of loom—but not a loom quite like any Kirinna had ever seen before, as it had odd angles built into it, and extra structures projecting here and there. The whole construction was wrapped in a thick haze of incense, but she could see levers, weights, and pulleys in peculiar arrangements. Althoug
h a high window let daylight into the room three tall candles stood atop the frame, burning brightly amid mounds of melted wax, while the fabric being woven glittered strangely, as if points of light were being worked directly into the pattern.

  Kirinna had sometimes heard people speak of magicians weaving spells, but she had always assumed it to be a metaphor, a description based on the intricate gestures wizards used in their conjuring; now she saw that perhaps it could be meant literally. This woman was surely Alladia, working some dire magic on her wood-and-rope framework.

  The woman seemed oblivious to everything but her work, and Kirinna stepped around the doorjamb, intending to march in and demand an explanation at swordpoint of Dogal’s disappearance.

  Instead she collided with someone, or something, that had been out of her line of sight and had turned to come through the door at the same moment she did. She had a glimpse of a bearded face and a thick homespun tunic, and then someone was grabbing her wrists, shouting, “Hai! Out! Stay out!”

  Here was the guard she had been expecting. She tore her hands free and tried to raise her sword to strike, but the flat of the blade slapped into the underside of the man’s arm and was harmlessly deflected; then his knee came up and caught her painfully in the belly, and she staggered back into the hallway. That dragged her sword’s edge across the man’s raised thigh, and he yelped in pain and stepped back.

  Kirinna swept disarrayed hair from her face with her left hand, raised the sword with her right—then stopped.

  The bearded man was Dogal. He was bent over, clutching his leg, where blood was seeping from a slash in his breeches; his hair and beard were somewhat longer than Kirinna remembered, and far more unkempt, but it was unmistakably Dogal.

  “Augh!” Kirinna said. “She’s ensorcelled you!” She lowered the sword—then raised it again.