The Mammoth Book of Sorceror's Tales

by Mike Ashley

  The important thing at the moment was shelter. Lythande had been traveling these roads for many years, and remembered that many years ago there had been an inn somewhere hereabouts. She had never chosen, before this, to shelter there – unpleasant rumors circulated about travelers who spent the night at that inn and were never seen again, or seen in dreadfully altered form. Lythande had chosen to stay away: the rumors were none of her business, and Lythande had not survived this long in Old Gandrin without knowing the first rule of survival, which was to ignore everything but your own survival. On the rare occasions when curiosity or compassion had prompted her to involve herself in anyone else’s fate, she had had all kinds of reason to regret it.

  Perhaps her obscure destiny had guided her on this occasion to investigate these rumors. She looked down the black expanse of the road – without even moonlight – and saw a distant glimmer of light. Whether it was the inn of uncanny rumor, or whether it was the light of a hunter’s campfire, or the lair of a were-dragon, there, Lythande resolved, she would seek shelter for the night. The last client to avail himself of her services as a mercenary-magician – a man who had paid her well to dehaunt his ancestral mansion – had left her with more than enough coin for a night at even the most luxurious inn; and if she could not pick up a commission to offset the cost of a night’s shelter, she was no worse off. Besides, with the lute at her back, she could usually earn a supper and a bed as a minstrel; they were not common in this quarter.

  A few minutes of brisk walking strengthened the vague light into a brilliantly shining lantern hung over a painted sign that portrayed the figure of an old woman driving a pig; the inn sign read the Hag and Swine. Lythande chuckled under her breath . . . the sign was comical enough, but it startled her that for such a cheerful sign there was no sound of music or jollity from inside; all was quiet as the very demon-haunted road itself. It made her remember again the very unsavory rumors about this very inn.

  There was a very old story about a hag who had indeed attempted to transform random travelers into swine, and other forms but Lythande could not remember where she had heard that story. Well, if she, an Adept of the Blue Star, was no match for any roadside hag, whatever her propensity for increasing her herd of swine – or perhaps furnishing her table with pork – at the expense of travelers, she deserved whatever happened to her. Shouldering her lute and concealing the handle of the ruined knife in one of the copious pockets of the mage-robe, Lythande strode through the half-open door.

  Inside, it was light, but only by contrast with the moonless darkness of the outdoors. The only light was firelight, from a hearth where a pale fire flickered with a dim and unpleasant flame. Gathered around the hearth were a collection of people, mere shapes in the dim room; but as Lythande’s eyes adapted to the darkness, she began to make out forms, perhaps half a dozen men and women and a couple of shabby children; all had pinched faces, and pushed-in noses that were somehow porcine. From the dimness arose the tall, heavy form of a woman, clad in shapeless garments that seemed to hang on her anyhow, much patched and botched.

  Ah, thought Lythande, this inn-keeper must be the hag. And those wretched children might very well be the swine. Even secretly the jest pleased her.

  In an unpleasant, snuffling voice, the tall hag demanded, “Who are you, sir, going about on the road where there be nowt but hants an’ ghosts at this season?”

  Lythande’s first impulse was to gasp out, “I was driven here by evil magic; there is a monstrous Thing out there, prowling about this place!” But she managed to say instead, peacefully. “Neither hant nor ghost, but a wandering minstrel frightened like yourselves by the dangers of the road, and in need of supper and a night’s lodging.”

  “At once, sir,” said the hag, suddenly turning deferential. “Come to the fire and warm thyself.”

  Lythande came through the jostling crowd of small figures – yes, they were children, and at close range even more unpleasantly piglike; their sounds and snuffles made them even more animal. She felt a distinct revulsion for having them crowding against her. She was resigned to the “sir” with which the hag-innkeepeer had greeted her; Lythande was the only woman ever to penetrate the mysteries of the Order of the Blue Star, and when (already sworn as an Adept, the Blue Star already blazing between her brows) she had been exposed as a woman, she was already protected against the worst they could have done. And so her punishment had been only this:

  Be forever, then, had decreed the Master of the Star, what you have chosen to seem; for on that day when any man save myself proclaims you a woman, then shall your magic be void and you may be slain and die.

  So for more than three ordinary lifetimes had Lythande wandered the roads as a mercenary-magician, doomed to eternal solitude; for she might reveal her true sex to no man, and while she might have a woman confidante if she could find one she could trust with her life, this exposed her chosen confidante to pressure from the many enemies of an Adept of the Blue Star; her first such confidante had been captured and tortured, and although she had died without revealing Lythande’s secret, Lythande had been reluctant ever to expose another to that danger.

  What had begun as a conscious masquerade was now her life; not a single gesture or motion revealed her as anything but the man she seemed – a tall, clean-shaven man with luxuriant fair hair, the blazing Blue Star between the high-arched shaven eyebrows, clad beneath the mage-robe in thigh-high boots, breeches, and a leather jerkin laced to reveal a figure muscular and broad-shouldered as an athlete, and apparently altogether masculine.

  The innkeeper-hag brought a mug of drink and set it down before Lythande. It smelled savory and steamed hot; evidently a mulled wine with spices, a specialty of the house. Lythande lifted it to her lips, only pretending to sip; one of the many vows fencing about the powers of an Adept of the Blue Star was that they might never be seen to eat or drink in the presence of any man. The drink smelled good – as did the food she could smell cooking somewhere – and Lythande resented, not for the first time, the law that had often condemned her to long periods of thirst and hunger; but she was long accustomed to it, and recalling the singular name and reputation of this establishment, and the old story about the hag and swine, perhaps it was just as well to shun such food or drink as might be found in this place; it was by their greed, if she remembered the tale rightly, that the travelers had found themselves transformed into pigs.

  The greedy snuffling of the hog-like children, if that was what they were, served as a reminder, and listening to it, she felt neither thirsty nor hungry. It was her custom at such inns to order a meal served in the privacy of her chamber, but she decided that in this place she would not indulge it; in the pockets of her mage-robe she kept a small store of dried fruit and bread, and long habit had accustomed her to snatching a hurried bite whenever she could do so unobserved.

  She took a seat at one of the rough tables near the fireplace, the pot of ale before her, and, now and again pretending to take a sip of it, asked, “What news, friends?”

  Her encounter fresh in her mind, she half expected to be told of some monster haunting the roadway. But nothing was volunteered. Instead, a rough-looking man seated on the opposite bench from hers, on the other side of the fireplace, raised his pot of ale and said, “Your health, sir; it’s a bad night to be out. Storm coming on, unless I’m mistaken. And I’ve been traveling these roads, man and boy, for forty years.”

  “Oh?” inquired Lythande courteously. “I am new to these parts. Are the roads generally safe?”

  “Safe enough,” he grunted, “unless the folks get the idea you’re a jewel carrier or some such.” He needed to add no more; there were always thieves who might take the notion that some person was not so poor as he sought to appear (so as to seem to have nothing worth stealing), and cut him open looking for his jewels.

  “And you?”

  “I travel the roads as my old father did; I am a dog barber.” He spoke the words truculently. “Anyone who has a dog to show o
r to sell knows I can make the beast look to its best advantage.” Someone behind his back snickered, and he drew himself up to his full height and proclaimed, “It’s a respectable profession.”

  “One of your kind,” said a man before the fire, “sold my old father an old dog with rickets and the mange, for a healthy watchdog; the old critter hardly had the strength to bark.”

  “I don’t sell dogs,” said the man haughtily. “I only prepare them for show—”

  “And o’course you’d never stoop to faking a mongrel up to look like a purebred, or fixing up an old dog with the mange to look like a young one with glossy topknots and long hair,” said the heckler ironically. “Everybody in this county knows that when you have some bad old stock to get rid of, stolen horses to paint with false marks, there’s old Gimlet the dog faker, worse than any gypsy for tricks—”

  “Hey there, don’t go insulting honest gypsies with your comparisons,” said a dark man seated on a box on the floor by the fire and industriously eating a rich-smelling stew from a wooden bowl; he had a gold earring in his ear like one of that maligned race. “We trade horses all up and down this country from here to Northwander, and I defy any man to say he ever got a bad horse from any of our tribe.”

  “Gimlet the dog barber, are ye?” asked another of the locals, a shabby, squint-eyed man. “I been looking for you; don’t you remember me?”

  The dog barber put on a defiant face. “Afraid not, friend.”

  “I had a bitch last year had thirteen pups,” said the newcomer, scowling. “Good bitch; been the pride and joy of my family since she was a pup. You said you’d fix her up a brew so she’d get her milk in and be able to feed them all—”

  “Every dog handler learns something of the veterinary art,” said Gimlet. “I can bring in a cow’s milk, too, and—”

  “Oh, I make no doubt you can shoe a goose, too, to hear you tell it,” the man said.

  “What’s your complaint, friend? Wasn’t she able to feed her litter?”

  “Oh, aye, she was,” said the complainer. “And for a couple of days, it felt good watching every little pup sucking away at her tits; then it occurred to me to count ’em, and there were no more than eight pups.”

  Gimlet restrained a smile.

  “I said only that I would arrange matters so the bitch could feed all her brood; if I disposed of the runts who would have been unprofitable, without you having to harrow yourself by drowning them—,” Gimlet began.

  “Don’t you go weaseling out of it,” the man said, clenching his fists. “Any way you slice it, you owe me for at least five good pups.”

  Gimlet looked round. “Well, that’s as may be,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow we can arrange something. It never occurred to me you’d get chesty about the runts in the litter, more than any bitch could raise. Not unless you’ve a childless wife or young daughter who wants to cosset something and hankers to feed ’em with an eyedropper and dress ’em in doll’s clothes; more trouble than it’s worth, most folks say. But here’s my hand on it.” He stuck out his hand with such a friendly, open smile of good faith that Lythande was enormously entertained; between the rogue and the yokel, Lythande, after years spent traveling the roads, was invariably on the side of the rogue. The disgruntled dog owner hesitated a moment, but finally shook his hand and called for another pot of beer for all the company.

  Meanwhile the hag-innkeeper, hovering to see if it would come to some kind of fight, and looking just a little disappointed that it had not, stopped at Lythande’s side.

  “You, sir, will you be wanting a room for the night?”

  Lythande considered. She did not particularly like the look of the place, and if she spent the night, resolved she would not feel safe in closing her eyes. On the other hand, the dark road outside was less attractive than ever, now that she had tasted the warmth of the fireside. Furthermore, she had lost her magical knife, and would be unprotected on the dark road with some Thing following.

  “Yes,” she said, “I will have a room for the night.”

  The price was arranged – neither cheap nor outrageous – and the innkeeper asked, “Can I find you a woman for the night?”

  This was always the troublesome part of traveling in male disguise. Lythande, whatever her romantic desires, had no wish for the kind of women kept in country inns for traveling customers, without choice; they were usually sold into this business as soon as their breasts grew, if not before. Yet it was a singularity to refuse this kind of accommodation, and one that could endanger the long masquerade on which her power depended.

  Tonight she did not feel like elaborate excuses.

  “No, thank you; I am weary from the road and will sleep.” She dug into her robe for a couple of spare coins. “Give the girl this for her trouble.”

  The hag bowed. “As you will, sir. Frennet! Show the gentleman to the south room.”

  A handsome girl, tall and straight and slender, with silky hair looped up into elaborate curls, rose from the fireside and gestured with a shapely arm half concealed by silken draperies. “This way, if ye please,” she said, and Lythande rose, edging between Gimlet and the dog owner. In a pleasant, mellow voice, she wished the company good night.

  The stairs were old and rickety, stretching up several flights, but had once been stately – about four owners ago, Lythande calculated. Now they were hung with cobwebs, and the higher flights looked as if they might be the haunt of bats, too. From one of the posts at a corner landing, a dark form ascended, flapping its wings, and cried out in a hoarse, croaking sound:

  “Good evening, ladies! Good evening, ladies!”

  The girl Frennet raised an arm to ward off the bird.

  “That accursed jackdawl Madame’s pet, sir; pay no attention,” she said good-naturedly, and Lythande was glad of the darkness. It was beneath the dignity of an Adept of the Blue Star to take notice of a trained bird, however articulate.

  “Is that all it says?”

  “Oh no, sir; quite a vocabulary the creature has, but then, you see, you never know what it’s going to say, and sometimes it can really startle you if you ain’t expecting it,” said Frennet, opening the door to a large, dark chamber. She went inside and lighted a candelabrum standing by the huge, draped four-poster. The jackdaw flapped in the doorway and croaked hoarsely, “Don’t go in there, Madame! Don’t go in there, Madame!”

  “Just let me get rid of her for you, sir,” said Frennet, taking up a broom and making several passes with it, attempting to drive the jackdaw back down the staircase. Then she noticed that Lythande was still standing in the doorway of the room.

  “It’s all right, sir; you can go right in. You don’t want to let her scare you. She’s just a stupid bird.”

  Lythande had stopped cold, however, not so much because of the bird as because of the sharp pricking of the Blue Star between her brows. The smell of magic, she thought, wishing she were a hundred leagues from the Hag and Swine; without her magical knife, she was unwilling to spend a minute, let alone a night, in a room that smelled evilly of magic as that one did.

  She said pleasantly, “I am averse to the omens, child. Could you perhaps show me to another chamber where I might sleep? After all, the inn is far from full, so find me another room, there’s a good girl?”

  “Well, I dunno what the mistress would say,” began Frennet dubiously, while the bird shrieked, “There’s a good girl! There’s a clever girl!” Then she smiled and said, “But what she dunna know won’t hurt her, I reckon. This way.”

  Up another flight of stairs, and Lythande felt the numbing prickling of the Blue Star, the smell of magic, recede and drop away. The rooms on this floor were lighted and smaller, and Frennet turned into one of them.

  “Me own room, sir; yer welcome to the half of my bed if ye wish it, an’ no obligation. I mean – I heard ye say ye didn’t want a woman, but you sent a tip for me, and –” She stopped, swallowed, and said determindedly, her face flushing, “I dunno why yer traveling like a man, ma’a
m. But I reckon ye have yer reasons, an’ they’s none of me business. But ye came here in good faith for a night’s lodgin’, and I think ye’ve a right to that and nothin’ else.” The girl’s face was red and embarrassed. “I swore no oath to keep my mouth shut about what’s goin’ on here, and I don’t want your death on my hands, so there.”

  “My death?” Lythande said. “What do you mean, child?”

  “Well, I’m in for it now,” Frennet said, “but ye’ve a right to know, ma’am – sir – noble stranger. Folk who sleep here don’t come back no more human; did ye see those little children down yonder? They’re only halfway changed; the potions don’t work all that well on children. I saw you didn’t drink yer wine; so when they came to drive you out to the sty, you’d still be human and they’d kill you – or drive you out in the dark, where the Walker Behind can have ye.”

  Shivering, Lythande recalled the entity that had destroyed her magical knife. That, then, had been the Walker Behind.

  “What is this – this Walker Behind?” she asked.

  “I dunno, ma’am. Only it follows, and draws folk into the other world; thass all I know. Ain’t nobody ever come back to tell what it is. Only I hears ’em scream when it starts followin’ them.”

  Lythande stared about the small, mean chamber. Then she asked, “How did you know that I was a woman?”

  “I dunno, ma’am. I always knows, that’s all. I always knows, no matter what. I won’t tell the missus; I promise.”

  Lythande sighed. Perhaps the girl was somewhat psychic; she had accepted a long time ago that while her disguise was usually opaque to men, there would always be a few women who for one reason or another would see through it. Well, there was nothing to be done about it, unless she were willing to murder the girl, which she was not.

  “See that you do not; my life depends on it,” she said. “But perhaps you need not give up your bed to me either; can you guide me unseen out of this place?”