Guilds & Glaives

by David Farland

  “For you,” Taibid said. “He’s alive still. Not many years, but enough to get you on your feet. After him you can hunt for yourself.”

  Before he had finished speaking, Droë was at the man’s neck, draining him of his years. She barely heard the last of what Taibid said. Too soon, she finished. She straightened, breathing hard. The man had given her just enough to make her frantic for more. But she could stand. Her thoughts cleared. She thought she might even be able to move at speed again.

  “I need more. Now.”

  “Then you should hunt. I have to go back.”

  “Yes, all right.” She should have said more, thanked him for saving her life—he had risked a good deal on her behalf—but she could think only of finding more years, of finally satisfying the hunger that raged within her. “Goodbye. I’m in your debt.”

  She gave him no chance to reply, but dashed away along the farm road. After less than a league, she had nearly exhausted herself. To her great relief, however, she had come within sight of another village. This one was smaller than Rissla’s town, but it was big enough. As dusk darkened the sky, she slipped into the village, following the road past fields and barns and homes, tasting the years within each structure.

  Droë sensed the boy before she saw him. He walked toward her on the lane. Ten years old, no more. An entire life ahead of him. Years enough to begin to fill her once more.

  She felt his fear, could imagine him in the gloaming, eager to be home, safe with his mother and father. Fear might make him careless, which would help her take him. Usually such prey would be almost too easy for her. But she was far from her best and she didn’t know the land.

  She tasted something else in him, something that might have held her back had she not been famished. As it was, she dismissed the danger. How could it matter? Out here in this tiny village, far from any towns or cities of consequence?

  Easing off the lane, she retreated into shadows and watched for the lad. She didn’t have to wait long.

  He carried a stick, gripping it as a soldier might a war axe. His eyes scanned the road and the fields to his left and right. Surely he feared an encounter with highwaymen, or wolves, or some imagined terror of the night. It would never occur to him to be afraid of a girl, someone who, to all appearances, was no older than he.

  She stepped out of her hiding spot. The boy halted, adjusted his grip on the stick. After looking her up and down, he lowered it slightly.

  “Good evening,” he said, his voice thin in the cooling air.

  “Good evening.” She kept herself coiled, ready to strike. Just a bit closer.

  He took a tentative step toward her, glanced around again. It didn’t seem to occur to him to check the sky. It didn’t occur to Droë either.

  The attack came without warning, abrupt and furious: the rush of wind in wings, a pale blur of motion, a truncated cry from the boy, a spray of blood that stained a broad arc of the dirt road and the pale grass beside it.

  Even after Droë realized that the huge pale form crouched over the boy was a Belvora, it took her a fivecount to understand what had happened. Her prey was dead. This witless Ancient had taken it from her, spilling precious years the way one might slosh muddy water from a bucket.

  “He was mine!” she said, rage turning her voice to a rasp.

  The Belvora draped his wings over the body. Already blood stained the leathery skin around his mouth. He regarded her with placid surprise, as if he hadn’t noticed her until that moment but cared not at all.

  “Not so, Tirribin,” he said. “Surely you scented the magick in him. He was mine to take, as are all creatures of power. Including Tirribin. You know Guild law. If you do not, you ought to.”

  “I was stalking him,” she said, ignoring the implied threat. “I practically had his years already. They were mine!”

  He flicked a hand, indicating the body. “It would seem otherwise.” He turned his attention back to his meal.

  Anger exploded within her. Rissla. The Belvora. The madness of near starvation. All of it had been building for too long. The death of the boy was as a flame to oil.

  She charged at the Belvora and was on his back before he could react. She clamped her mouth to his neck, wrapped her arms around his throat. He bellowed, tried to break her grip, but she would not be denied this feeding. He buffeted her with his wings to no avail. She closed her eyes, locked her hands together, held on. And she devoured him.

  His years went deep, deeper than any creature on which she had fed before. Belvora were shorter lived than most Ancients, but still he had more time in him than any human. The years were bitter, not as honeyed as the years of humans, but she was too famished to let that stop her. She ate, filling herself and more. Long after she was sated she continued to pull the years from him, spite blending with hunger into a ravenous frenzy.

  When at last she had finished—when nothing remained within him—she released him and stepped back. He lay dead, prone across the body of the boy. His skin had shriveled, making him even more hideous than most Belvora.

  Droë felt unsteady on her feet, drunk on years, but also more powerful than she could remember. She sighed her contentment and left him there, intending to find a new village, one in which she would be the lone Tirribin.

  * * *

  “Do you deny it?” the Belvora female demands, her taloned finger still aimed like a blade at Droë’s heart. “Do you dare to claim innocence before this assembly?”

  Droë raises her chin. “I am Droë of the Tirribin. I do not deny killing the Belvora. But I was on the hunt as well. I was desperate to feed. Near to starving. The human was mine. Your brother stole my prey.”

  “Then you concede that you were stalking a magickal creature. Not only are you guilty of murder, you also have violated ago-old agreements on prey and territory.”

  “I never admitted murder,” she says, an idea coming to her with the power of epiphany.

  She might yet find a way to avoid punishment. The Belvora himself—this creature’s brother—has shown her the way.

  Jonji scowls, the expression fearsome on such a huge creature. “You said you killed him. What more—”

  “He was prey. I fed on him.”

  Whispers greet this, then silence. The Belvora spreads her wings. “Do you dare mock me?”

  “I do not.”

  “Tirribin do not feed on Belvora!” The female turns to Lir. “I demand that she be punished!”

  “Why can my kind not feed on Belvora?” Droë asks, facing the Arrokad as well. “Do Belvora not feed on us? Do they not claim the right to hunt all beings of magick?”

  Lir raises both eyebrows at her question. “An intriguing point. Jonji, do you deny that your kind prey on others in this Guild?”

  “We—we prey on humans who have magick. Primarily. It is rare for us to prey on other Ancients.”

  “But not unheard of.”

  As the Belvora falters, Lir turns his gaze on the other Tirribin. “Do you support the claim of Droë, that your kind should be given leave to prey upon the years of other Ancients?”

  “Only those who prey on us,” Droë says before the others can answer.

  “Very well. Do you support the claim of Droë,” Lir begins again, “that your kind should be given leave to prey upon the years of those Ancients who have leave to prey upon you?”

  Rissla slants a glance Droë’s way and for a moment Droë thinks she might refuse. But after a tencount, the older Tirribin nods. “I am Rissla of the Tirribin. We do support this claim. It seems only right and just.” She sends a sweet smile Jonji’s way. “I’m sure my Belvora cousins will agree.”

  At first, the Belvora can say nothing. Eventually, though, she gathers herself. “Even if we do agree, that does not excuse the killing of my brother. She cannot murder, and then, afterward, justify doing so.”

  “Even though he threatened me?” Droë says. “Even though he flaunted his right to hunt me down?”

  “He did not!”

/>   “He did. I swear it before this Guild and invite death should I be found to be lying.”

  “An empty vow, since none were there to hear!”

  “It is fairly sworn, Jonji,” Lir says. “You know this.” He does not wait for her response. “I find that Droë’s actions, while unfortunate, do not warrant punishment. Next Grievance.”

  No one speaks.

  “Hearing none, I conclude our proceedings.”

  Droë exhales.

  “But before we take leave of one another, I have a question. Why, Droë, were you so desperate for sustenance?”

  “What?”

  “You said so yourself. ‘I was desperate to feed. Near to starving.’ You, a Tirribin with the strength to take the years of a Belvora—how did this come to pass?”

  She goes still, save for her eyes, which find Rissla’s. The other Tirribin schools her features, but watches her, clearly interested to hear her answer.

  “With all respect to you and the other Ancients here tonight,” Droë says, “this is a matter for our sept. It does not fall under the purview of the Guild.”

  “I did not claim otherwise. This is why I concluded our gathering before asking. But I remain curious.”

  “A predicament of my own creation, I assure you. An error of youth, some might say.”

  She chances a second glance at Rissla. The Tirribin actually smiles back at her.

  “Very well,” Lir says. “Farewell all, until next time.”

  He moves off and, joined by the other Arrokad, begins the descent to the sea. The Belvora linger. Jonji glares at Droë, murder in her amber eyes. But she does not attack, at least not yet, and an instant later the other Tirribin gather around Droë. All except Taibid.

  “That was well done, little one,” Rissla says, her voice devoid of irony. “Very well done indeed.”

  “Thank you,” Droë says, wary.

  “You’ve found a new village?”

  “Yes. I’m the only Tirribin there.”

  Rissla nods, eyes the Belvora. “That’s just as well.” She swings her gaze back to Droë. “But if ever you return to my town, you will be welcomed.”

  Droë does not hide her skepticism.

  “‘I swear it,’” Rissla says, “‘and invite death should I be found to be lying.’” She grins again.

  Droë does as well. She tips her head, a motion halfway between a nod and a bow, and moves off, keeping an eye on the Belvora as she retreats into the wood.

  She has been fortunate this night, and even so she has managed only to exchange one deadly enemy for another. She decides, though, that she would rather be at odds with the Belvora than with her own sept. Her kind are cruel and canny. The Belvora are hunters, no less certainly, but no more either. Formidable as they might be, they are also predictable.

  Still, from this day forward, Droë will have to make a habit of checking the sky.

  The Cage at the End

  of the World

  James Enge

  “Things could be worse.”

  “How?” asked Morlock Ambrosius.

  “You could be dead, too. Like me.”

  Morlock ignored his cellmate and continued to look somberly out the barred window. The eastern edge of the world curved away, only a few paces distant—dry and bare, like the rib of a monstrous beast, long dead and picked clean. A few vermilion sheep were snuffling through the dust near the world’s edge, trying to pick the bone even cleaner. They ate bugs, and in some ways their faces looked more like pigs than sheep. But they had been bred from sheep by some of the members of the Collegium Necromanticum, the same order that now held him prisoner.

  It had started, as many things did for Morlock nowadays, with a hangover. Morlock woke up in a ditch with his head throbbing like a Fenferlad’s drums, his eyes crusted shut with a cement of tears and dust, dried vomit caked on his face and forearm, and a wound on his hand that he didn’t remember and couldn’t explain.

  It was a better morning than many he’d had in the past few years. The ditch was relatively dry, at least.

  Everything was dry. His eyes, when he managed to pry them open, still felt like they were coated with sand. His nose was plugged with black dusty dried snot. The wound on his hand was recent, red with unhealing heat, but the wrinkled brown lips of the wound were clamped shut. His mouth tasted like damnation salted with empty regret. Clearly, he needed a drink, and he crawled out of his ditch in search of one.

  None of it puzzled him, except the wound. He didn’t remember getting it and it seemed recent enough that it should still be oozing the occasional drop of blood. Maybe someone had sealed up the cut with a salve while he was unconscious or blacked out. Not out of charity, he was sure: few wasted their kindnesses on a drunk, as he knew from experience (and, as a matter of fact, he quite agreed). But his blood was a general hazard: it set any flammable and many apparently non-flammable things on fire. He wasted little thought on it, as it didn’t seem important, which was probably the biggest single mistake he made on that ugly, evil morning.

  When he made it all the way out of the ditch he realized that he had forgotten his sword, Tyrfing. It had somehow slid out of its sheath overnight and lay there, glittering like a strip of volcanic glass, at the bottom of the ditch.

  Sliding down the ditch again would be easy, but he shuddered at the thought of repeating the laborious climb up the dusty slope. He held out his hand and croaked the sword’s name: “Tyrfing.” The talic impulse woven into its crystalline lattice lifted it up and it settled into his outstretched hand like a bird coming to roost.

  He considered simply sheathing the blade without renewing the talic impulse. But what if he dropped the sword in another ditch or behind a piece of furniture or something and was too tired to pick it up? Morlock sluggishly reckoned future effort against current effort, the lazy man’s calculus, and reluctantly took the steps to summon visionary rapture, allowing him to re-infect the accursed sword with a kind of life.

  The mental discipline involved in summoning and dismissing rapture woke him more thoroughly than the sunlight, or hunger and thirst. He hid the blade in the sheath strapped to his crooked shoulders and stood in a single movement, defying the crescendo of pain-drums thundering behind his eyes.

  “Very good!” remarked a fox who was lounging atop a nearby stump.

  “Thank you,” Morlock replied with reflexive courtesy. He looked more narrowly at the fox to be sure that (a) it was there, (b) it was actually speaking, and (c) it was speaking to him. All three things seemed to be true. It looked at him with a quizzical intelligence luminous on its narrow, pointed face.

  “Not at all,” the fox replied. “If I knew you could be so lively, I woody-bin more careful about clawing you last night.”

  “Oh?” Morlock looked at his hand. “Woody-bin?”

  “Yes: woody-bin. My name is Gawr, by the way.”

  “Mine is Morlock. So you clawed me.”

  “Yes! Sorry! My friend wanted a sandal of your blood, so I clawed you a little tuney bit. Burned my paw, too! But my friend healed me up, and you, too. Sort of.”

  “So you’re a familiar.”

  “That’s rude. We prefer the term ‘sorcerous adjunk.’”

  “Oh?”

  “No, I’m just messing with you. Yes, I’m a familiar: to Clivia the Lifemaker.”

  “Eh.” Morlock usually didn’t get along with lifemakers, or necromancers as they were sometimes known.

  “I guess I know what that means. Most lifemakers are pretty creepy. But Clivia’s not like that. Usually. Sometimes. Maybe you’d like to talk to her? She can get you a drink, at least.”

  “All right. Sounds like she owes me one.”

  Gawr the fox lightly leapt down from the stump and trotted down the road towards the blue wall of the sky. The eastern edge of the world was very near here and the size of the sky was somewhat disconcerting.

  They came over a ridge and went down into the last valley in the world. A city wall stood blocking t
he road; there was a soldier in tarnished armor standing with a spear in the open gate. He brought the spear up to guard, but the fox ran straight at him, screamed out high-pitched wheezing barks, dodged the slow swing of the spearblade, and arrowed in to nip at the soldier’s bare ankles.

  “Get the chaos away from me, you fornicating rat-dog!” the soldier screamed at last and the fox dashed onward into the world’s last city.

  As Morlock approached, the soldier swung his spear back threateningly and said, “You I can stop.”

  Morlock took the spear away from the soldier and handed it back to him without a word. The soldier looked at the spear, looked at the filth-caked figure confronting him, and snarled, “I’m quitting this stupid job!”

  Morlock took this as permission to pass and followed the fox into the last city.

  The street beyond the gate was full of peddlers. They stood silent by their carts, watching every passerby eagerly, but said nothing, and did not even gesture toward their wares. Morlock noted how odd these wares were. Who would need triply refined goat-piss, or dried baby-fingers (“harvested from freshly dead babies!” according to the ideoglyphs adorning the seller’s cart), or jellied Hydra venom? No one … unless they were engaged in the more sinister forms of magic.

  “Many magic-workers in town?” he asked the fox.

  “Sure,” Gawr said. “It’s the magic guilds. For all intensive purposes, everyone in town is in one, or biting their time until they can get their mist in.”

  Morlock thought he understood most of this. “There are many magic guilds, then?”

  “Oh, Lorbal Mighty, yes. My friend belongs to the Collegium Necromanticum, or she used to, and will again as soon as she passes mustard. But there is the Werewolf Conspiracy, Granny Stormfunk’s Triple-Secret Coven, the Army of the Mystic Envelope—whores of others.”

  “Whores?”

  “It means ‘lots.’ It’s a hard word, but my friend taught it to me. I know lots of hard words,” Gawr bragged, grinning a toothy, vulpine grin up at Morlock. “People can hardly understand me sometimes. Anyway, there are lots of magicians in town.”