The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12

by Jonathan Strahan

  Mountebanks swarmed as I and a few other neophytes examined the town warily. The junk-mongers outnumbered us three to one. “Don’t breathe the dragon-air without taking a draught of Cleansing Miracle Water,” shouted a bearded man, waving a stone pitcher of what was clearly urine and mud. “Look around! The dragon-air gives you clisters, morphew, wretched megrims, and the flux like a black molasses! Have the advantage when you challenge the Anvil! Protect yourself at a fair price!”

  I did look around, and it seemed that none of the other natives were downing miracle mudpiss to keep their lungs supple, so I judged none of us likely to perish of the megrims. I moved on, and was offered enchanted blades, enchanted boots, enchanted cheese, and enchanted handfuls of mountain rock, all for a fair price. How fortunate I felt, to discover such simple generosity and potent magic in the meanest of all places! Even if I’d had money, I would have reciprocated this cordial selflessness by refusing to take advantage of it. Two gracious humanitarians of Helfalkyn then attempted to pick my pockets; the first I merely spurned with a scolding. The second mysteriously incurred a broken wrist and lost his own purse at the same time, for in those days my fingers were considerably faster than the contents of my skull. I worried then about constables, or at least mob-fellowship against outsiders, but I quickly realized that the only law in Helfalkyn was to win or stay out of the way. No more creeping fingers tried my pockets after that.

  Cheered by the acquisition of a few coins, I hunted for a place to spend them and tame my tyrant stomach. Ale dens of varying foulness offered themselves as I strolled, and street hawkers made pitches even less appetizing than the prospect of Cleansing Miracle Water. Sooner rather than later, for while Helfalkyn was encysted with diversions it was not terribly vast, its twisted streets naturally funneled me to the steps of the grandest structure in town, Underwing Hall. Here would be food, though the smell wafting out past the cold-eyed guards beside the doors promised nothing delicate.

  Outside it was morning, but inside lay a perpetual smoky twilight. The entrance hall was decorated with bloody teeth and the slumped bodies of those who’d recently had them knocked out of their mouths. Porters, working with the bored air of long practice, were levering these unfortunates one by one out a side entrance. I saw more fisticuffs underway at several tables and balconies in the cavernous space. Given the relaxation of the door guards, I wondered what it took to rouse their interference. The servers, stout men and women all, wore ill-fashioned armor as they heaved platters about, and the kitchen windows were barred with iron. Rough hands thrust forth tankards and wine-bottles like castle defenders dispensing projectiles through murder-holes. Though I’d enjoyed some elevated company in my career, this crowd was still an intimately familiar sort, comprised of equal parts stupid, cruel, cunning, blasphemous, and greedy faces. Every corner of the known world had skimmed the scum of its scum to populate Helfalkyn. I resolved to step warily and attract no attention until I learned the order of things.

  “CRALE!” bellowed someone from a balcony overhead.

  Ah, the feeling of receiving unsought the attention of a greatroom full of brawlers and carousers. Heads turned, conversations quieted, and even some of the servers halted to stare at me.

  “Tarkaster Crale?” came a disbelieving shout.

  “Bullshit. Tarkaster Crale’s a tall handsome bastard,” muttered a woman.

  I was about to say something that would have, in all candor, improved nobody’s situation, when I was seized from above and hauled into the air. The sheer power of my appropriator was startling, and I kicked helplessly as I was spun a disagreeable number of feet above the stones of the tavern floor. My assailant hung from a balcony rail by one arm, and dandled me with the other. I prepared fresh unhelpful commentary and reached for the knives in my belt, and then I saw the man’s face.

  “Your highness!” I whispered.

  “Don’t give me the courtesies of cushion-sitters unless you want to get dropped, Crale.” Still, there was warmth in his voice as he heaved me over the railing and set me on a stool as easily as anyone here might hang a tunic on a drying-line. Here was a man with shoulders as broad as a boat’s rowing-bench and arms harder than the oars. He was dark of skin and darker of hair, with gray setting some claim to his temples and beard, and all the lines in his face had been carved by either the sea-winds or the wild grin he wore when facing them. The other patrons of Underwing Hall rapidly lost interest in me, for I had been claimed for the table of none other than my old adventuring companion, Brandgar Never-Throned, King-on-the-Waves, Lord of the Ajja.

  Like Helfalkyn, the King-on-the-Waves is little more than a story these days, though it’s a good one and an Ajja skald who’ll sing it for you is worth the asking price. All the Ajja clans had kings and queens, and keeps and lands and suchwise, but once a generation their mystics would read the signs and proclaim a King-on-the-Waves. This lucky bitch or bastard would be gifted a stout ship to crew with sworn companions, and set sail across the Ajja realms, calling upon cousin monarchs, receiving full courtesy and hospitality. Then they’d usually be asked to undertake some messy piece of questing that would end in unguessable amounts of death and glory. Thus charged was a King-on-the-Waves, to hold no lands, but to slay monsters, retrieve lost treasures, lift curses, and so forth, until they and all their companions had met some horrible, beautiful fate on behalf of the Ajja people. Brandgar was the last so-named, nor is there like to be another soon, for he and his companions were uncommonly good at the job and left few messes for others to clean up. I had fallen in with them on two occasions and done some reaving, all for the best of causes, I assure you, though I am sworn to utter no details. Even my sleeping sense of honor sometimes rolls over in bed and kicks. Onward!

  “There’s fortune in this. We had not thought to see an old friend here.” Brandgar settled himself back on his own stool, over the half-eaten remains of some well-fatted animal I couldn’t identify, sauced with sharp-smelling mustard and brown moonberry preserves. “What say you, Mikah?”

  I gave a start, for sitting there in the darkness at the rear of the balcony was a shape I hadn’t previously noticed. Yes, indeed, here was Mikah King-Shadow, rarely seen unless they chose the time and place. Mikah, my better in all the crafts of larceny, who could pass for man or woman in a hundred disguises, but in their own skin was simply Mikah, good friend and terrible enemy. They leaned into the light, and it seemed the years had not touched that lean angular face or the cool gray eyes that smiled though the lips below them never so much as twitched.

  “Friend Crale has a hungry look, lord.”

  “They’re in fashion hereabouts.” Brandgar waved casually to the remains of his morning fast-breaking, and I fell to with a grateful nod. “Have you been here long, Crale?”

  “I’m fresh-landed as a fisherman’s catch,” I said between bites of rich greasy something. I did not scruple to avoid licking my fingers, for I knew the table manners of a King-on-the-Waves were shaped for the tossing deck of a longship. “And I thank you for the sharing. This latest chapter in the book of my life has been writ mostly on the subject of empty bellies.”

  “And empty pockets?” said Mikah.

  “I have offended some power unknown to me.” I took a bone and greedily sucked the marrow of some animal also unknown to me. “An ill fate has swept me here to play a desperate hand.”

  “No,” said Brandgar, and there was that damned grin I mentioned, a follow-me-over-the-cliff grin. “A kind fate has joined friend to friends. Give us your skills. We mean to climb the Dragon’s Anvil and crown our lives with the glory of a treasure claimed. The Wormsong bids us to carry ending and eyes, eh? Ending we carry in our steel. Eyes we still need! You were ever a fine and cunning lookout.”

  “When do you intend to go?”

  “Tonight.”

  I dropped my bone then, and wiped my mouth with a scuffed jacket-cuff. I’m not best pleased to shine a light on my hesitation, friends, but I vowed to give every truth of this
tale as much illumination as it’s due. I had gone to Helfalkyn in a desperate fever, yes, and by happy fate found two of the few people alive whom I might have chosen if given my pick of fellows. Still, with the weight of satisfying meat in my belly for the first time in recent memory, I found myself less than eager to set the hour of my doom so close.

  “I had thought to spend a few days preparing myself,” I began, “and learning whatever useful information might be—”

  “You’re no craven,” rumbled Brandgar. “Yet any man might feel the sting of fear when he sits in comfort and thinks of peril. Come, I know you would never run from a duty bound in honest wager! Lay a simple bet with me. Should I win, join us tonight. Else we wait three days, and you may seek whatever ‘useful information’ you like before we climb.”

  Now here was a salve to all my several consciences, gentle listeners, by which I could keep faith with useful companions and still have time to ease myself into a frightful enterprise. I asked the means of the wager.

  “See the attic-skorms that cling high upon the wall there?”

  Gazing across the wide tavern, squinting past smoke and flickering brazier-light, I did indeed see a pair of the dark-scaled lizards motionless below the ceiling. Arm-length and even-tempered, attic-skorms creep down from the mountains in all the northern countries, and are either eaten as food or tolerated as rat-catchers.

  “The wager is this. Long have those two sat unmoving; sooner or later one of them will doubtless creep down in search of food. If the dark one on your side moves soonest, we go in three days. If the red-rippled one on my side moves, we go tonight. Is it sealed?”

  “My oath,” I said, and we sat at ease to watch this yawn-inducing spectacle unfold. This was not as odd as it might seem, for out upon the waves the Ajja will pass the time in friendly wagers on anything that catches the eye, from which way gulls will fly to which sailor on another ship will next use and empty a dung-bucket over the side. I have eased fierce boredom with bets on some ludicrous trifles in my time.

  Not five heartbeats after I spoke, the red-rippled skorm on the king’s side pulled in its legs. It didn’t so much climb down as fall directly off the wall like a grieving suicide in an old romantic tale.

  I sputtered without dignity while Brandgar and Mikah laughed. Then there was a flash of sliver light in the shadows where the king’s choice had plunged; a thin mist rose into the air, a mist I recognized.

  “No!” I shouted, “that was no honest bet! That was a skin-shifting sorceress of low moral character who is—”

  “Standing right behind you,” said Gudrun Sky-Daughter, appearing in silver light and mist. She ruffled my hair affectionately, for yes, I still had some in those days. Hers was seven braided spills of copper, now lined with the color of iron like her king’s, and her round flushed face was all mischief and mirth.

  “That was unworthy,” I scowled.

  “That was fair as anything,” said Brandgar. “For if your eyes had been working as a fine and cunning lookout’s should, you’d have seen that there was only one beast upon the wall until a moment before my proposal. Come, Crale. We need you, and you won’t find better company if you wait here a hundred years! This is fate.”

  I partly hated him for being right, and was partly thrilled that he was. A warrior-king, a master thief, and a sorceress. Great gods, hope was a terrible and anxious thing! They were indeed allies that had as much chance on the Dragon’s Anvil as any mortal born. I pondered my recent poverty, and pondered the treasure.

  “I have never in my life behaved with any particular wisdom,” I said at last. “It would make little sense to start now.”

  “Ha!” Brandgar pounded the table, stood, and leaned out over the balcony. His voice boomed out, echoing from the rafters and startling the raucous commotion below into instant attention. “HEAR ME! Hight Brandgar, son of Orthild and Erika, King-on-the-Waves! Tonight we go! Tonight we climb the Dragon’s Anvil! We, the Never-Throned, the King-Shadow, the Sky-Daughter, and the famous Tarkaster Crale! We go to claim a treasure, so take this pittance! Drink to us, and wait for the word! Tonight we break a legend!”

  Brandgar opened a purse, and shook out a stream of silver into the crowds below, where drinkers cheered and convulsed and clutched at his largesse. Gods! If I’d had even that much money just a week before, I’d never have left the Crescent Cities. As the near-riot for the coins subsided, a voice rose in ragged chant, and was joined by more and steadier voices, until nearly everyone in Underwing Hall was gleefully serenading us, a single verse over and over again:

  Die rich, dragon’s dinner!

  Play well the game that has no winner!

  Climb the mountain, greedy sinner!

  Die rich, dragon’s dinner!

  The chant had the sound of a familiar ritual that had been much-practiced. I liked it not a whit.

  NEXT, HOW WE PROVED OUR RESOLVE AND BROKE A FEW HEARTS ALONG THE WAY

  IDOZED FITFULLY most of the day, in a hired chamber guarded by some of Gudrun’s arcane mutterings. Terrified or not, I was still an experienced man of fortune and knew to try and catch a bit of rest when it was on offer.

  At dusk the moons rose red, like burnished shields hanging on the wall of the brandywine sky. The mountain loomed, crowned with strange lights that never came from any celestial sphere, and it seemed I could hear the hiss and rumble of the stone as if it were a hungry thing. I shuddered and checked my gear for the tenth time. I had come light from the Crescent Cities, in simple field leathers, dark jacket, and utility belts. I carried a sling and a sparse supply of grooved stones. My longest daggers were whetted, and I wore them openly as I headed for the northeastern side of town with my companions, pretending to swagger. Denizens of Helfalkyn watched from every street, every rooftop, every window, some jeering, some singing, but most standing quietly or hoisting cups to the air, as one might toast a prisoner on the way to the gallows.

  Brandgar wore a fitted coat of plate under a majestically ragged gray cloak with particolored patchings from numerous cuts and burns over the years; he claimed it was as good as enchanted and that he had sweated most of his considerable luck into it. Gudrun had never offered a professional opinion on this, so far as I knew. She was as scruffy as ever, a study in comfortable disrepute. Strange charms and wooden containers rattled on leather cords at her breast, and she bore a pair of rune-inscribed drums on her back. Mikah was lightly dressed in silks and leather bracers, moving with their familiar fluid grace, concealing their real thoughts behind their even more familiar mask of calculating bemusement with the world. They carried a few coils of sea-spider silk and some climbing gear wrapped in muffling cloth. However detached they seemed, I knew they were a fanatic about the selection and care of their tools, more painstaking than any other burglar I had ever worked with, and any professional jealousy I might have felt was rather drowned in comfort at their preparedness.

  The only real oddity was the extra weapon Brandgar carried. His familiar spear Cold-Thorn had a bare and gleaming tip, and its shaft was worn with use. The other spear looked heavy and new, and its point was wrapped in layers of tightly-bound leather like a practice weapon. When asked about this, Brandgar smiled and said, “Extra spear, extra thief. Aren’t I growing cautious in my old age?”

  At the northeast edge of Helfalkyn lay our first ascent, an unassuming path of dusty dark stone that was marked by a parallel series of lines, half a foot deep, slashed across the walkway. Though time and weather had softened the edges of these lines, it was not hard to see them for what they were, the claw-furrows of a dragon. An unequivocal message to anyone who wanted to step over them. I suddenly wished I could forget our mutual agreement to go up the Anvil with clear heads, and find something irresponsible to pour down my throat.

  One by one we crossed the dragon’s mark, your nervous narrator lastly and slowly. After that we walked up in silence save for the occasional rattle of gear or boot-scuff on stone. As the odors of the town and the harbor steam faded b
elow us, the indigo edges of evening settled overhead and stars lit one by one like distant lanterns. It would be a clear night atop the mountain, and I wondered if we would be there to appreciate it. This first part of the climb was not hard, perhaps three quarters of an hour with the switchback path offering nothing more than agreeable exercise. As the light sank the way roughened and narrowed, and when full dark came on it ceased to be a path and became a proper climb, up a sloping black rock face of crags and broken columns. Rugged as it was, this was the only face of the Anvil that could be approached at all. Brandgar shook Cold-Thorn and muttered something to Gudrun, who muttered something in return. A moment later the tip of Cold-Thorn flared with gentle but far-reaching light, and by that pale gleam we made our way steadily up.