The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack: 25 Weird Tales of Fantasy and Horror

by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * * *

  King Yvorian wandered for many days, ragged, covered with dirt and blood. He came to other towns, but no one would recognize him as king. Always, people laughed at him, or turned away sadly, or made signs to ward off evil. Sometimes their speech was strange, and he could not understand what they were saying at all.

  So the King begged for bread and scraps. Occasionally he got some. More often, he stole. Oftener still, he went hungry.

  Then soldiers seized him. This was the final outrage.

  “Take your wretched hands off me! I am the King. I command all soldiers. I’ll have your heads, all of you!”

  The soldiers said nothing. Their captain barked a command, and all of them marched off, dragging King Yvorian. They did not wear the uniform of the Eagle Legions, Yvorian noticed. Their armor was not of scales shaped like feathers, but strangely supple plate like nothing he had ever seen before.

  They brought him to a wooden lodge inside a stockade, where five judges sat in a semi-circle around a table. The first judge wore a white robe, the second pale blue, the third green, the fourth orange—it seemed to Yvorian that the motif represented the seasons—but the fifth was clad in black and hid his face behind a silver mask fashioned like a skull.

  The soldiers cast Yvorian roughly to his knees before the judges. A soldier flipped over an hourglass and the trial began.

  “Who are you?” the first judge demanded, leaning forward in his carven chair.

  Yvorian staggered to his feet. “I am the king, you fool. I am the mighty and eternal Yvorian, ruler of all the lands of the Crescent Sea, and all the islands.”

  The judges sat back, pondering.

  “What you claim cannot be,” said the second after a while. “There is no king here, nor has there been in the memory of any living man. We, the Five, rule the lands. As for the Crescent Sea, it is not known to us.”

  The third judge laughed. “Perhaps it has dried up.”

  “Silence!” Yvorian shouted. “You are all ignorant men. Surely you have heard the mighty story—”

  The third judge laughed again. “I know many stories, and I’ve heard more, but never one about you.”

  “I alone of all men have been found worthy to treat with Rada Vatu—”

  The four judges drew back with a simultaneous gasp. Then the fifth stirred, the black-clad one, his silver skull of a mask regarding Yvorian.

  “That name we do know, but it is never spoken. Your own name is strange to us—”

  The King stood still and said calmly, “But it is my name, and I am who I claim to be.”

  The masked judge banged his hand on the tabletop. The hourglass tumbled to the floor.

  “We shall find that out, and much else besides.”

  The judge waved his hand, and Yvorian was seized by torturers, who tied him to a post and beat him still blood streamed over his back and thighs. They broke his legs with hammers, then turned him on a wheel over a fire. All the while he screamed and gasped, “I am King Yvorian. I am Yvorian, the greatest of all. I built the palace of the Eagles. I conquered all the lands. I am the mighty king. I am Yvorian.”

  But in the end, after many days, it seemed to him that perhaps he had only heard that name in a story somewhere.

  The torturers nailed him to a tree and left him to die. Weeks passed, and he suffered beneath the hot sun and the cold of the night.

  Crows rested on his shoulders. But Rada Vatu would not touch him, and he could not die. His broken bones mended. His wounds began to heal.

  People gathered to marvel, to touch him, to bear away some of his hair or a cloth soaked in his blood, that they might be healed.

  At last, a fearful torturer came in the night with a ladder and a pair of pinchers.

  He drew out the nails, and Yvorian fled naked into the darkness.

  * * * *

  King Yvorian thought back to the long years within the labyrinth, to the pleasures of his retreat, to the mysteries he had pondered, to his visions within the black room. More than once he tried to convince himself that this was yet another of those visions, more terrifying and painful than most, but a thing which would end.

  Yet each morning he woke by the side of a road, or in a field or loft or cave, and he saw his sun-blackened body and his many scars, and he knew otherwise. Even his hands and feet were still marked where the nails had been.

  So he retraced his path, avoiding the villages and towns, until he came again to the hillside from which he had emerged. He resolved to go inside once more, dress in his finest robes, and come forth, crown on his head, scepter in his hand and sword at his side, with an army of automatons at his back. He would conquer the lands once again and put the unbelievers to death. Then he would command that his palace be unearthed, that it might stand more resplendent than ever before the eyes of men.

  But he could not find the cave mouth. He wandered over the hill for weeks. He could not find it.

  Finally, he knelt down and wept. He pounded the earth with his fists.

  And a stranger stood before him. He looked up. The newcomer had the shape of a barefoot man in a black robe, but without any face or head. Only fire filled the robe’s hood.

  “Who are you?” said the stranger.

  “I am King Yvorian, if I am anyone at all.”

  “Who are you?”

  More firmly, the King replied, “I am Yvorian, lord of all the lands.”

  “Ah,” said the other, and departed.

  * * * *

  Clad in a kilt and shirt of woven grass, King Yvorian came down from the hills, into the broad valley where the Crescent Sea had once been in ages past. He followed a yellow-silted stream until he reached a river, and clear water.

  Still he was King in his own mind, and each night he dreamt of his palace, and of his old ministers—he could still recall their names, every one, and their voices, and their individual manners, arrogant or servile or cold and expressionless. He remembered building the labyrinth. It seemed that still he heard the noise of hammers. It seemed that just a day or two before he himself had broken the ground with a spade and poured blood on the cornerstone.

  And in his dreams his terrible father visited him many times, pacing back and forth, raging, proclaiming that a king is a king until he dies or abdicates, and to abdicate is to die.

  “I have not abdicated,” said Yvorian, in his dream.

  Kaniphar, the chief priest he had killed, stood before him mournfully and said only, “A king lacking a kingdom is no king at all.”

  “I am still Yvorian,” was his only reply. When he awoke from that dream, he was troubled.

  Once more he declared his kingship openly in villages and towns along the river. Often he was laughed at or driven away with stones, but in other places men listened silently as he told the tale of his entire life, of his wager with Rada Vatu. This was a tale without an end.

  Crowds gathered to hear him. Someone gave him fine clothing, and he threw away his grass kilt and shirt. Still the tale continued. Scribes came to write it down. Then heralds arrived for him, and bore him in a chair across many lands, until he came to a great city of black stone, which stood on a hill overlooking the river where it emptied into the grey, white-capped sea.

  He was placed on a dais in the forum of the city. All around him pillars rose like trees in a forest, bearing up statues of gods and of kings. People swarmed out of black marble houses, out of wooden tenements, out of hovels; rich and poor alike, great lords in their canopied litters, beggars shoving against the leveled spears of the soldiers who held them back.

  And Yvorian told his tale, and the people listened, and when Yvorian paused he could hear the wind blowing among the rooftops. And when he was done, the old and sick came to him, filing up to where he sat so they might be touched by his healing hands.

  This went on for hours. It was nearly dawn when the place was empty but for a single youth, who stood before the dais. The boy was about fifteen, fair-haired, and richly clad. Rings gleamed o
n his fingers.

  Yvorian regarded him.

  “It feels so good to be a king once more.”

  “You are not a king,” said the boy. “You are a madman. The mad are touched by the gods, even as kings are, and sometimes their hands can heal, even as those of a king can. Both are holy. But I am prince of this city. When my father dies, I shall be king. You, holy madman, shall remain what you are.”

  The Prince left him, walking swiftly across the square.

  Stunned, trembling, Yvorian rose from his seat and descended the dais. He saw another standing before him in the darkness among the pillars, a barefoot old man in a black robe, whose face rippled when he spoke like a thin, paper mask. His eyes were mere holes filled with fire.

  “Are you King Yvorian the mighty?” the stranger asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you certain?”

  * * * *

  The madman cast off his fine robes and fled from the city, naked. He howled among the hills and in the depths of the forests. He crawled on all fours among the beasts of the fields, grazing. And he wept, and tore his hair, and dug in the earth with bloodied hands, searching for his kingdom.

  But still he knew who he was, and when people came upon him he would rise and stand before them in great dignity, and try to tell them the story of King Yvorian. Often he was answered with laughter and stones, but sometimes with reverence. He touched many, and healed them.

  At last when he lay shivering in the winter rain, feverish but unable to die, an anchorite found him and carried him to his hut high among the mountains. The holy man clothed him and gave him warm broth, and he told his story once again.

  “It is a fine story,” said the anchorite.

  “It is true.”

  “Does that really matter? The pattern is interesting. It contains a moral.”

  Yvorian sat still for a while, warming his hands with the cup of broth. “I am not sure anymore. My mind is filled with so many things, as if I have lived ten thousand years. I think all those things are true. But some of them must be only dreams. How can I tell?”

  “Truth may be found both in waking things, and in dreams. So, again, does it really matter?”

  “But I have no crown,” said Yvorian. “Where is my palace? Where is my kingdom?”

  Now it was the anchorite who paused. He sat still for a long time, gazing into the fire pit. Smoke rose gently up through the roof. Yvorian looked up at the smoke and the few stars he could see through the hole in the roof.

  He waited patiently.

  “I know where your kingdom is,” the other said at last. “If that is what you desire, go to a certain town, as I shall direct you, and obey the first person you meet, whatever you are asked to do. Then you shall find your true kingdom.”

  And the King wept once more, for the very first time in his life out of gratitude.

  * * * *

  The town the hermit named for him was far away. He walked throughout the winter and spring. By summer he had reached the edge of a vast desert. His fur clothing was too hot for him and he discarded it, once more weaving garments out of grass.

  Slowly, painfully he crossed the wasteland, his grass clothing burned away by the sun, his bare skin darkened like old wood, his hair and beard streaming behind him in the wind like clouds crossing the face of the moon.

  He reached his destination in the evening, as the last herdsmen drove their flocks into the town, as little bells rang to call the workmen home from their labors and the priests to their prayers.

  A woman was drawing water from a well. She was neither young nor old, and three children clung to her brightly-patterned skirt.

  When he saw her, the wanderer did not proclaim himself king. He did not command her to bow down. He only said that he was very thirsty.

  The woman looked up, startled. “If you’ll carry this bucket for me,” she said, “you may have some.”

  He nodded eagerly. She gave him the bucket and he stared into it. In the failing light he could still make out his own reflection, and he saw a man with a weathered face, whose hair and beard were purest white. He drank.

  “And if you will work for me,” the woman said, “I’ll give you food and clothing. My husband has died, and I need all the help I can get.”

  Again he nodded, and followed her back to her house.

  “You must tell me your name,” she said.

  “I am…Yvorian.”

  “I’ve heard that name before. In a story, I think.”

  “Yes, I know the story. I’ll tell it to you sometime.”

  The children stared at him, wide-eyed.

  * * * *

  For Yvorian, every aspect of life in the town by the desert’s edge was new to him, a marvel. He was no longer a naked wanderer, but wore comfortable, plain clothes, and ate regularly. That was a forgotten condition he was only beginning to recall. He performed many labors for the widow, whose name was Evadina. He tended her flocks. He cleaned her stable. He drew water from the well many, many times. Never before had he served another. It strengthened him.

  After seven years, he married her. This, too, was utterly novel, for he had never loved anyone before in all his long life, or been loved, or even expected to be. It was like an opening of the eyes, an awakening for the first time.

  Although he was taken to be a man of at least fifty, he fathered three sons by Evadina. As they grew, he told them, and his stepchildren too, the story of King Yvorian who dwelt beneath a magic mountain far to the west. Sometimes the story concentrated on the king’s pride, or his cruelty, or his loneliness; sometimes it was merely a tale of marvels. At the town festivals, he told the story to all who would listen, and people applauded and left coins in his hat.

  He tried to write the story down at the request of the priests, who wanted a copy to keep in their temple, but the only script he knew was an archaic one no one could read. Nevertheless, the priests admired his brushwork and sometimes commissioned him to restore the icons of the gods, which hung in roadside shrines and faded from the sun and the weather.

  On the night before the youngest of his sons was to go away and live elsewhere with his bride, Yvorian told the story of the king for the last time, extending it further than ever before, telling how the king emerged from his mountain and wandered through many lands, shedding his robes and his scepter and his crown, until he found himself better off without them, relieved of their burden, and found a life no king could ever know.

  “Father,” said the young man. “I have loved that story since I was a child, and now you have made it such a beautiful thing that I think I have only now heard it for the first time. I shall remember you by it always.”

  The young man turned to go, then paused.

  “What is it, son?”

  “Still I do not understand. The story, it has no ending.”

  “Yes it does. Come here.” Yvorian rose, and led his son into the bedroom. His son followed, carrying a candle. The old man lay down beside Evadina, the boy’s mother, who was already sleeping.

  “Father?”

  Yvorian put his finger to his lips. “Quiet. Don’t wake her.” Then he whispered, “This is the end of the story, that the teller came to recognize the end, and he knew that it didn’t matter, for shortly before the end he had gained a great treasure, which was merely a life lived well, and not even Rada Vatu could take that away from him. Slowly, then, Rada Vatu began to touch him, and he started to age, as all men do, but it did not matter.”

  Then the young man saw that his father was tired and went away. He left the candle burning by the bedside. Yvorian lay still, gazing into the darkness, listening to his wife’s breathing as she slept beside him.

  After a time, he was aware of another person in the room. A stranger stood by the bed, clad in a black robe. His eyes glowed, like fireflies. He held a gleaming axe in his hand.

  “Are you not the famous and mighty King Yvorian?”

  “No. That is another Yvorian, a character in a story. I te
ll of him often.”

  “Ah.” The stranger’s face shrivelled inward, consumed in fire. The axe rose. “I win the wager,” said Rada Vatu.

  “Are you certain?”

  The axe fell.

  THE SPIRIT OF THE BACK STAIRS

  But first, Sarah died.

  At the very end, impossibly huge tropical butterflies covered my wife’s outstretched hands, materializing out of the air as I watched, as if she had called them into existence merely by thinking, by her last, confused thoughts in those final moments: iridescent blue Morphos from the Amazon, gleaming under the streetlights, and great swallowtails and something the color of twilight on the upper side, with the serene face of an owl underneath. This particular butterfly perched on the tip of her finger, its underside as inscrutable as Sarah was just then, as we both were, filled with wonder and dread and sadness, unable to find the right words.

  But first she died.

  And the butterflies swarmed, their greedy tongues flickering over what little remained of her decaying flesh; and she turned to me, as if trying to speak once more, and her face was only a mass of dark wings rippling across her skull, a thing of dream, impossible even for New York, but what is one more incongruous detail among so many?

  “I’m back,” she said.

  But first she died, suddenly, snap!, the jaws of the city closing impersonally over her. There I was, at home, committing literature, what my own mother had once called the next worst thing to Allen Ginsberg, when a phone call told all: that Sarah had died on the subway not an hour before, in a freak accident as the press of a crowd of unruly teenagers just out from a rock concert had quite randomly, with no malice aforethought or even recognition, shoved her off the platform at the very moment the train arrived—which proceeded to cut her in half.

  * * * *

  “I’m back,” she said.

  * * * *

  I went to the morgue to see her. I had to do that eventually. A policeman was waiting for me, and two morgue attendants, and they asked me lots of grim questions, but politely, as if they were trying to be supportive and didn’t quite know how. No one accused me of anything.