Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII

by Waters, Elisabeth

  "No!" Fred vanished, but I was a certified Alchemisorceress now. I knew how his mirrors worked. I flicked the switch on and off, turning the lights on and off with it, until he returned.

  "Stop! You're making me dizzy."

  "Will you help?"

  "No."

  "You owe it to the kingdom."

  "No."

  "You owe it to my mother."

  He looked like I'd threatened him with a sledgehammer. "Not fair!"

  "What do you want Fred to do?" Chris piped up.

  "I want him to help me make the Queen so jealous of 'Snow White' that she'll forget everything else," I said, still staring down Fred. "All he has to do, the next time Queen Sable comes to him for reassurance, is to say that Snow White's the fairest woman in the kingdom, not her."

  "So why won't he? 'Snow White's' just a made-up name. Or does that mean that Fred would have to lie? Cause he can't."

  "Because Sable will look for her, you knothead!" For an image, Fred looked quite solidly stubborn. "Snow White's a fiction, but Bethanie isn't!"

  "Fine," I said. "I'll distract her myself. In person."

  "NO! I'll do it. But promise me that you won't leave the workshop alone. Please."

  I sighed. "Fair enough."

  * * * *

  Fred did his work well. Soon Queen Sable was spending days at her mirror, skeletal and hollow-eyed from forgetting to eat and sleep.

  "You're a genius, Princess," said Orrery. "Half the Queen's Guard's quit because she forgets to pay them. She doesn't ride around the kingdom scrubbing pretty girls' faces with cold cream any more. Snow White's becoming a legend."

  "Snow White's becoming an obsession," said Fred. He didn't sleep, but he was developing a nervous flicker in his reflection. "Sable knows, Princess! She talks to her reflection. She knows you're alive. It's driving her mad that she doesn't know where or how."

  I'd never seen Fred so terrified. "It's not like she knows where I am," I pointed out.

  "You don't understand!" Fred wailed. "I can't lie! If she asks me how to find you, straight out with no room for misinterpretation, I'll have to tell her. I've told her where to find the Fairest of Awls, the Forest of Owls, and the Failed List of Ales. Soon she'll realize that I can't be hard of hearing, because I don't have ears!"

  The little room was suddenly full of the sound of eight mortals not breathing.

  "She'll remember eventually," said Orrery.

  "She'll realize that Fred's been toying with her," said Astrolabe.

  "She'll be furious," said Ratchet.

  "She'll probably break Fred's mirror," said Kerf.

  "Which would be excruciating for him," said Mortise.

  "And then she'll come here," said Bevel.

  "I don't want her to come here!" Chris wailed. "I don't want her to break Fred. Stop her, Princess!"

  "She'll do worse than break Fred," said Tenon from the doorway, his voice like wind in branches. "She'll chop down Mother and burn the Forest. The W+DFTFP will have nothing left to protect."

  "If she'll find me eventually, let's make it on our terms," I said. "Fred, tell the Queen that she'll find Snow White at the Speaking Oak."

  "And what will she find?" said Fred, immediately suspicious.

  "Me. With Donna. Nothing short of an axe can break Donna's grip."

  Fred objected, but the Brothers were confident that Donna could easily overpower the Queen. After all, she was solid oak.

  Sable showed up with an axe. Fortunately, Donna's a quick thinker. Acorns rained down. Queen Sable screamed. The barrage of falling acorns and a few unladylike kicks from me forced her to retreat, stumbling over nuts.

  "You look beautiful, Princess!" said Chris when I went to conjure up some ice.

  "I do?"

  "Yeah! You've got all these pretty knots and burls on your head. And you're turning more colors than Autumn."

  I gave him a pained smile and went to talk to Fred. Well, first to get yelled at by Fred for endangering myself. Eventually he agreed that since the queen knew roughly where I was, we had to try again.

  "A Reflective Reversal!" Fred said. "I'll goad her into trying an enchantment on you, but reverse it with my mirror. The boys will be in the workshop if anything goes wrong."

  Chris peeked in from the workshop. "Let's make 'Crabby's Deadly Apples!' They put flesh people asleep until they die or a prince kisses 'em, and they smell like cinnamon."

  "Chris, you're one warped little man. Go back to work," said Fred.

  "A sleep spell's not a bad idea, though. Sandalwood Slumber would make her drowsy and suggestible."

  "Plus it sounds like an eyeshadow. Brilliant." Fred grinned. "Want to watch?"

  "How?"

  "Second switch on the back up, others down. Sable won't see or hear you. Go ahead."

  It was unnerving to have Queen Sable staring at me, through Fred, close enough to see every crack in her pancake makeup. I had to remind myself that she couldn't see me.

  "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" she demanded.

  "Lousy poet, isn't she?" I muttered.

  "Ready for worse?" Fred whispered back.

  "Stop mumbling, Mirror!" Queen Sable shouted. "Answer me!"

  "My humblest apologies, your Majesty. Um... My Queen/I'm sworn to tell the truth/It cannot be ignored, thus/Upon my oath, I have to say/'Snow White' is drop-dead gorgeous!"

  I giggled. Then I remembered that Fred couldn't lie, and blushed.

  Queen Sable hefted a heavy jewelry box.

  "Seven years bad luck!" Fred shouted. "Your Majesty, if I might suggest something less drastic..."

  With admirable calm, Fred mollified her and talked her through creating a sandalwood comb that would induce sleep upon contact with the wearer's head. Then, looking innocent, he proposed a costume that would make Queen Sable look as gnarled, ugly, and ancient as possible. "What better way to ensure that 'Snow White' won't recognize you, O Queen?"

  Fred couldn't lie, but he could act.

  * * * *

  Queen Sable arrived at the gatehouse looking crone-like and disgruntled. I welcomed her with the enthusiasm of someone desperate for company, and offered her tea. She refused, although she eyed the teapot with the look of someone parched from a long and thirsty hike through the Enchanted Forest. I admired the comb, holding it up as though to study it better. Really, I wanted it in Fred's line of sight. I slid it into my hair—and heard a click and Fred's anguished cry as the lights went out.

  I came partially awake in cinnamon-scented darkness.

  "Smells like pie," I mumbled.

  "Apple pie, princess," said a voice I really should've recognized. "The best you'll ever taste. Take a bite."

  I did. Crabby's Deadly Apples really do taste like apple pie.

  * * * *

  The next thing I knew, something was pressing on my lips. I slapped whatever-it-was.

  "Ow! I think it worked," said a familiar voice. "Princess? Wake up, please. Mind the broken glass."

  I opened my eyes and sat up. That seemed to please the young man beside me. He was remarkably pale, except for my handprint on his cheek. His white-blond hair looked like he'd survived a hurricane, but he radiated joy.

  "Pardon me, Princess, but there's only one cure for Crabby's Deadly Apples. I was prepared for the comb, but not those."

  "Fred? But you're not a prince."

  "Prints and Images Division," he reminded me. "I was an image. Now..." He shrugged.

  "But..." I took in the shattered glass, the empty mirror-frame on the wall, him. "LaVerre's Transformation?"

  He nodded. "You can't kiss if you don't have a mouth."

  "And boy does he!" put in Chris, sticking his head through the door. "Screaming, swearing..."

  "Chris," Fred and I chorused, "Shut up."

  "Aw." He closed the door again.

  "Sable?" I asked Fred.

  "You were right. Once you were unconscious, she drank the tea. She's out cold."

 
"We tied her up really good!" said Chris, popping in again. "Come see!"

  The Brothers had bound Sable in roots and were watching, rapt, as squirrels made a nest in her hair.

  Chris twisted his twiggy fingers together. "Let's put red-hot iron shoes on her feet and make her dance until she falls down dead!"

  Everyone stared at him. "No!"

  "Stuff her in a spiked barrel and roll it downhill?"

  "No! Honestly, Chris! Where do you get these ideas?"

  He shrugged. "Fairy tales."

  "She does deserve a harsh punishment, though," said Fred. "I know just the thing."

  * * * *

  You guessed right. LaVerre's Transformation, reversed. Sometimes the people who suffered the most under Queen Sable beg us to let them break one of her mirrors. We just point out that they'd get seven years of bad luck. Which just wouldn't be fair.

  Deermouse

  by K.D. Wentworth

  She knew that the guide job was risky when she took it, but Spark didn't expect it to lead her into the one place she was forbidden to return. Even less did she expect to get herself or her charge out alive. What you expect, however, may be very different from what you get.

  K.D. Wentworth has sold more than seventy pieces of short fiction to such markets as F&SF, Hitchcock's, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine. She has been a three-time Nebula Finalist for Short Fiction. Currently, she has seven novels in print, the most recent being The Course Of Empire, written with Eric Flint and published by Baen. She lives in Tulsa with her husband and a combined total of one hundred sixty pounds of dog (Akita + Siberian Husky) and is working on several new novels with Flint. Her website is www.kdwentworth.com.

  #

  Spark sat on her heels beside the steaming mudpots, steadying herself with her scabbard, and wrinkled her nose at the fierce stench. Though the day had been cool up until now with early spring, the thick mud was on the boil, a sure sign that what lived in the valley ahead was paying attention. Her wealthy client had engaged her services as a guide only because no one else would venture this close, with very good reason.

  The massive bubbles pop-popped, whispering to her in hot wet voices that she took great care not to heed lest they ensnare her thoughts. The Tamraire who inhabited these parts understood the wild presence down there, though outsiders, to their peril, did not. For a heartbeat, she flashed back to that long-ago day when she'd first blundered into the valley herself and how Jorn had found her drowning in the black waters of a swamp, trapped in writhing tree roots and down to her last gasp of air.

  "This means what's up ahead is listening," she said over her shoulder to Franz-Wallace Garth, Fifth in his line of that noted name. "It's as I told you—we must go around, work our way through the foothills."

  "Don't be a superstitious oaf," her client said, wiping his face with a red silk scarf. He dismounted to peer over her shoulder. "I have to reach my uncle's holdings in three days. The Duke is investing me as a member of his court." Garth had gleaming black hair drawn tight into a fashionable club and a heavy brow that made him look far more formidable than he actually was. She supposed he was a good enough fellow, well suited for the indoors sort of life he was meant to lead, but certainly not for the wider wild world.

  "These things never boil without something paying them mindful attention," Spark said, straightening. Her gray mare snorted uneasily, shuffling her hooves. Small and shaggy, the beast had come of the wild herds that ran these parts and most likely had a notion what that smell signified. "They're a warning, to them as has half a brain."

  He edged around her, him in his fine black riding boots, to peer down at the roiling mudpots. His brown eyes widened. He swayed and would have fallen into the pit if she hadn't snatched him back by his belt. "Don't listen, you idiot!"

  He sat down hard on the verge and then stared up at her, breathing shallowly. "Goblets of—diamond," he said dazedly. "Just ahead. Alabaster combs, opal—"

  Heart racing, she slapped him. "I told you—don't listen!"

  His head rocked back, then sagged forward. He rubbed his jaw. "You struck me!"

  "And I'll do it again," she said evenly, "if you don't heed what I say." She jerked her chin back toward the stinking mudpots. "The land is alive in these parts. That's why we can't barge straight through. It schemes and plans, and I can promise you that what's down there wants your liver. You want to give it over without a fight?"

  He shuddered. "No, of course not."

  "Then don't listen to those things," she said. "They'll burn the thoughts right out of your head, suck up your will, and leave you hollow. In the end, you'll go to your death laughing."

  His eyes narrowed, and she knew what he saw: an unmarried, sun-hardened woman clad in worn buckskin, with no connections, carrying at least fifteen more years than he had achieved, and who owned little more than a sturdy horse and a sword. In his father's massive house, she would not have been considered fit to scrub the flagstones.

  But she had been bonded, once, to one of the Tamraire who lived down there, beautiful, leggy Jorn with her cornsilk hair and gray eyes. Though the Tamraire had cast Spark out after Jorn's death, she knew the valley's tricks all too well, and these mudpots were only the least of them. Something sinister lived down there. For Jorn's sake, she had dwelled in its shadow for almost twelve years, but in all that time she'd never slept easy as it whispered and gibbered in her dreams.

  "Mount up," she said, then swung back into her worn saddle. It creaked under her weight.

  Scowling, he did likewise.

  * * * *

  They skirted the valley, gradually climbing the pine-studded foothills that rose into forbidding granite-topped mountains in the distance. Riding in her wake, Franz-Wallace Garth, Fifth of his name, kept silent, doubtless glowering, though she took no notice. She'd helped raise Jorn's two Tamraire sons by an earlier liaison, who had both started out far more ill-mannered than this hot-house flower, and she'd had to slap sense into them when the need arose. They'd turned out all right, at least up until the day she'd left, and she could certainly handle this sulking bit of male business.

  They were working their way around a stand of thick pines when her sturdy mare threw her head back, nostrils flaring. She leaned over the shaggy mane. "What?" she whispered as though the beast could answer. The nape of her neck prickled. She could feel its presence, strange and mean and oh-so-deadly.

  It was late afternoon, and the light lay golden on the valley below and its meandering river. Down there, the Tamraire conducted their lives, and none of it an outsider's concern. She remembered the wild stories of the land's sense of humor told in Jorn's honor on the night she and Spark had officially bonded, the elaborate patterns worked onto tunics they had worn that made your head swim when you looked at them too closely, the shell and onyx necklaces that brought wonderfully vivid dreams when you slept wearing them. All gone now.

  They had allied themselves with power, the Tamraire, and they wielded it to keep intruders out. She had been tolerated among them only for Jorn's sake and not a second longer than required. None would speak for her after that last terrible night. She had been Jorn's partner and that was finished now. Jorn's relations made that abundantly clear when they drove her out of the valley.

  Garth rode up beside her on his flighty bay gelding. The nervous beast danced in place, hooves muffled by the thick mat of fallen needles. The cool tang of pine filled the air, so much more bracing than the air of any keep. "Do you see something?"

  "No," she said, straining forward, "but I sure enough feel it, very close."

  "A pox on your damned feelings!" he said. "At this pace, I'm going to be late—"

  "Shut up!" They were too close, and the something had suddenly noticed them. She could feel how its attention had turned this way. "Ride!" She put her heels to the mare and leaned over the shaggy neck, urging the beast higher into the rugged foothills where they would be safe. Hoofbeats clattered over rock as Gar
th followed.

  Listen, the something was saying, twining through her mind, seeking her tender, unprotected places. I have stories to tell.

  "Don't listen!" she called over her shoulder, trying to shut it out. The hoofbeats behind her slowed. "Keep going!"

  Such wonderful stories, the something said. Ones you have been waiting all your life to hear.

  "It's lying!" she said, glancing back, but the bay gelding and the young man, her client and therefore her responsibility, disappeared into the blue-black shade of the pines.

  Nothing will ever be the same once you hear what I have to say, the something continued, but more faintly now.

  Blood thundered in her ears. He had gone to it, the fool! She reined in the mare and then slipped off and sat on a boulder, heart pounding, staring down into the valley until the light failed and darkness settled into every hollow, nerving herself for what she must do.

  She would have to go after him, into the heart of that place where she was forbidden to ever again set foot.

  * * * *

  Spark checked her sword and dagger, then rode the hardy little mare down toward the broad dish of the valley, trusting the beast's night vision more than her own. She should have seized Garth's reins and not trusted him to follow. It wasn't his fault he was an idiot. He'd never had a chance to be anything else, raised in that high-living court with its silks and blood-red wines and silver cutlery. It only made sense that those who grew up soft would be soft in the head as well. Jorn would have seen straight through him from the start.

  Jorn. The thought of her partner with her pale-gold hair still made her heart ache. The valley's strangeness had run through Jorn's veins, so that her gray eyes were opalescent in the sunlight and luminous moonlight in the dark. She had been so strong, so fearless, so alive, Spark had found herself but a faithful shadow, content to bask in her lover's presence.

  Listen! the something said as she rode, skirting a fumarole that steamed out of the side of a hill. Off to the left, she spotted the still waters of a marsh, similar to the one that had almost swallowed her life years before.

  Leave me alone! she told it. I listened to all your blamed stories and then you still killed Jorn and cast me out!