Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXVI

by Unknown

  "Closer!" she screamed at Vreith.

  "It's no good!" the hunter cried, but with a deft stroke, she angled the prow of their canoe against Pazyrykian's.

  Straining, Tabitha teetered on the rim of the canoe, acutely aware of the expanse of water directly beneath her. Her fingertips met the wet, smooth hull of the other craft. She felt the slickness of the painted dragon wings. Then the water shifted, drawing them apart. Twisting, she threw her weight backwards. She cursed aloud in three different extinct languages, words the Dean would have been mortified to learn that she knew.

  The water was definitely rising, although more slowly this time, as if the leviathan knew that they floated above it and was savoring the prospect of victory.

  Tabitha scrambled back up. Breathing hard, she faced the problem as her teachers had bidden her on so many occasions. She would never get another chance. She braced one knee inside the canoe and stretched out with both arms.

  The fingers of one hand swept down the side of the other canoe, sliding over paint...over wood...and as the wave lifted Pazyrykian's craft a fraction, caught on the edge of the plaque. Tabitha pushed hard with her weight-bearing foot. Her fingers found a thin gap between the plaque and the canoe. Where she touched it, the plaque felt shockingly hot.

  Water, gray and white, loomed beneath her. Someone shouted—

  With a jerk, the plaque came free. Her fingertips felt as if she had passed them through the hottest part of a bonfire. She drew back her burning hand and threw the plaque as far and hard as she could.

  Then she was falling, plummeting through air. The water struck her like a wall of ice. She felt it close over her head. Heart racing, she fought against the sudden, almost overpowering reflex to breathe. She flailed with her arms and legs. Her exposed skin flamed with a cold so intense, it burned. Her head burst through the surface and she inhaled, one convulsive lungful after another.

  An instant later, the frigid water had drenched her leggings. Her parka kept it out for a moment longer, a brief respite in which she managed to suck in another lungful of air and force her legs to kick. She had only a few minutes before the weight of her sodden clothing dragged her down.

  Shouting...she heard more shouting, although she could not understand the words. Where was it coming from?

  Something flat and ovate appeared from above in front of her face—a paddle? "Grab it, damn you!" That was her brother's voice.

  She kicked hard, her muscles already thick and numb. Her fingers closed around the blade of the paddle. It was too slick and her grip too weak for her to hold it. She kicked again, although she no longer felt her legs. The effort lifted her a few inches, enough for her to grab the shaft with one hand. Cold pierced her to the core. She was rapidly losing sensation in her arms, but she managed to drag her lower hand upward. Somehow, she wrapped her fingers around the paddle shaft as well. The pressure on her palm, where she had grasped the plaque, was almost too painful to bear.

  Hands scooped under her armpits. The water seemed to fall away. Her body felt like a sodden lump. Shivers jolted through her, wave after wave, as if her body were trying to tear itself apart. She couldn't catch her breath, and there was something she needed to say...

  "Rey—"

  "I'm here." Fingers touched hers, so warm they felt like fire. Her eyes focused on his face.

  The boat shifted under her and then her brother moved aside. A different face gazed down at her, moon-round and haloed in white fire. Hands tugged at her sodden clothing, rolling her this way and that. She struggled as one garment after another, soft dry fur, was wrapped around her.

  "Rey..."

  There was something she must say, quickly before she lost consciousness...someone she must warn. Languor seeped through her body. She had stopped shivering, but her lips would not move properly. She felt herself drifting like a feather in a soft breeze.

  "Rey...Omerta..." Tabitha could not tell if she spoke the names aloud or only in her mind. "Not Omerta...Dejhen..."

  "She's delirious," someone said.

  * * * *

  Tabitha returned to herself in gradual stages, a confusion of warmth and light and urgency. She lay in a bed, fur warm against her skin, except for her hands, which were swathed in layers of gauze. Strange women entered, spoke gently to her, and held cups of water or soup for her to drink. One in particular returned more often than the rest.

  She should know that face...there was something she must say...

  "Tell Rey...not what she seems..."

  "Do not fret, my sister. You will recover." A smile, as bright as sun breaking through a storm, lit the moon-round face.

  He will try again, the Dejhen...

  * * * *

  She jerked awake, but some instinct bade her hold still. Without moving her head, she concentrated on what her senses told her. Some time had passed, by the change in the light. Her ears caught a faint scuffing sound from the direction of the door.

  Still, hold still!

  The sound repeated, closer now. She clamped her teeth together, flaring her nostrils...and inhaled a faint musty smell, like leather stored too long in the bottom of a sealed casket, a smell she should remember...

  Tentatively, she tried shifting her body beneath the covers. As best she could determine, she was able to do so without visible movement. Her legs felt sound enough, but her hands—

  Another sound reached her, this one unmistakably a footstep.

  She clawed at the gauze bandages. The carefully-wound fabric resisted her before she located the knot. She held it fast, twisting her wrist, and the bandage slipped free over her fingers.

  A face loomed over her. Not-Omerta.

  "You can't fool me. I know you're awake. Ah, I see you recognize me. You warned them, didn't you? They came for me but an hour ago, these women with their pitiful pretensions. Sea-magic, ice-magic! What do they know of true power? No, don't try to cry out. I've made sure no one can hear you."

  The Dejhen-Omerta smiled, and in that smile Tabitha imagined the rictus of a death's head.

  "Now..."

  Tabitha braced herself for a dagger between her ribs or a knife across her throat. With one hand bandaged and the other bare, she might hold off such an attack for a moment or two.

  Why would a magician who could disguise himself as a young woman, deceiving even her lover, who could wield the plaque that lured the leviathan, why would he resort to such an ordinary weapon?

  Fabric whispered, a sleeve being folded back. The Dejhen bent over her, his arm bared to reveal his tattoo. The whorls of the pattern glowed faintly blue. As Tabitha watched, they brightened rhythmically. Each pulse intensified the harsh blue light.

  She might have had a remote chance against steel, but never against magic powerful enough to compel a leviathan. Her ears buzzed, damping all other sound. A band of cold fire tightened around her lungs. She had only a minute or two, most likely less, before she began to lose consciousness.

  For every thing in the cosmos, the Dean whispered in her memory, there is an opposite...

  Through the buzzing in her ears and the graying of her vision, she tasted smoke, harsh and acrid. Dimly she thought it was the residue of the charred skin from when the tattoo had been made, the magic first burned into the flesh, imprisoned there, and then covered over with ink, ready to spring out again into the world.

  As if from the far end of an immense, echoing ballroom, she heard a voice chanting in a language she almost recognized. She had read those ancient words, but had never heard them spoken aloud, nor had any Collegiate scholar.

  With her bare fingers, she scrabbled—weakly, hopelessly—at the bandage covering her right hand. She grunted with effort, one final jerk with her failing strength.

  The tattoo pattern swelled in her sight, its brilliance obscuring all else. She felt herself drowning in it, her body shredding apart in the chanted syllables.

  The bandage loosened.

  She yanked her arm free of the bedclothes and thrust out her right
hand, facing away from her. The oozing scar flared, fiery. Her muscles trembled with effort, hard enough to rupture tendon from bone. A sob burst from her throat, but she held fast.

  Light flared, filling the room. Pattern met counter-pattern in a thousand-fold lightning clash.

  Thunder shocked through the air. It seemed as if the very fabric of air and stone, fire and rain, were being unwound. Unmade.

  The incantation shattered into syllables of chaotic sound that died away into nothingness. In the silence that followed, she blew away like ashes.

  * * * *

  At last there came a day, a morning that filled her chamber with petal-soft light, when Tabitha felt fully herself again. By the coating of her tongue and a residual lassitude in her limbs, she deduced that she had been sedated through the worst of her recovery. She wore an unfamiliar night dress and the skin on her bare hands felt tender but sound. The palm that had been seared by the plaque bore a round, shiny patch. It looked sweetly innocent, this mirrored image of the Dejhen magician's tattoo.

  She looked up at a tapping at the door. Reynoso entered with a hesitant tread. His face brightened when he saw that she was alert. He sat on the edge of the bed as she pelted him with questions. From time to time, he would look away, color rising in his cheeks.

  "At first, I thought you'd gone mad with terror, and in your panic were trying to escape into our canoe," he told her. "It wasn't until the leviathan turned away from us that I realized what you were up to. You saved all our lives."

  "I regret it took me so long to figure it out," she said in the awkward pause that followed. "The clues were all there—the Dejhen tattoo, the unexplained illness of my chaperone, Omerta taking her place. I noted but did not understand why she was not wearing the virridony cameo, so clearly a treasured heirloom. But its virtue would have unmasked the Dejhen's disguise."

  "She would not speak with me, although we had many opportunities," Reynoso said. "I did not press the matter, thinking it would be cruel once we had said our farewells. If I had not been so besotted with the romantic idea of doomed love, I might have suspected something amiss."

  Tabitha propped herself to sitting and regarded her brother. She did not want to agree with him, to say aloud that yes, he had been foolish and self-indulgent. If she herself had not been taught to think clearly and act rationally, might she not in the same circumstances have fallen into the same melancholy? She well might have, she thought, but Pazyrykian...no, the Ice Witch would not have.

  He sighed. "You should never have been left unguarded. But Omerta—I mean, the Dejhen wizard—we still believed her to be a young gentlewoman intent on serving her mistress."

  "What happened to him?" Did he survive the unmaking of his magic?

  "He was—burned from within. We've sent a messenger to Father to find out whether the real Omerta survived. If only I'd—"

  Tabitha reached out with her unscarred hand and touched his. "What could you have done against a magician capable of commanding a leviathan? Omerta's death, if indeed she is dead, is not your fault."

  He hung his head, perhaps acknowledging that his must be a political alliance, and one impoverished lovesick girl could never have been more than an obstacle. Yet he might still know happiness. His promised wife was a woman of courage...and compassion, also, to have allowed him this private interview.

  Reynoso had regained his composure and Tabitha was drinking honeyed chamomile tisane from the pitcher by her bedside when Pazyrykian joined them. There was little to add to the tale, other than the look of guarded approval that passed between Reynoso and the Ice Witch.

  They will make the best of it, Tabitha thought. Rey will grow up, she will deal with not having her own way all the time, and our northern borders will be safe.

  "What reward can I bestow for this great deed?" Pazyrykian asked Tabitha. "Your brother does not think you would appreciate hearing ballads of your exploits."

  And you and I will make the best of it as well, sister-in-law.

  "I will not be ready to travel for some months, I think," Tabitha said, carefully measuring her words to make sure Pazyrykian understood the nuances. "And it occurs to me that, since an idle mind is as much a menace to health as is an idle body, there is much to learn here."

  "Much indeed." A dimple formed at one corner of Pazyrykian's mouth. "So much so that I believe an extended residency might be required."

  Yes, we understand each other very well.

  "Do you know a Collegiate-trained scholar who might be available?"

  Tabitha smiled. "I might, indeed."

  The Girl Who Folded Dragons

  by Jean Tatro

  There is a Japanese legend that says that if you fold a thousand origami cranes, you will be granted a wish. There is a Spanish proverb: Ayúdate y Dios te ayudará—if you help yourself, God will help you. In this story, the two concepts meet. I love stories where the heroine finds an original solution to her problem, and this one certainly qualifies.

  Jean Tatro has been telling stories since early childhood. As a young writer she found her first writing advice in the early volumes of Sword & Sorceress, and ever since it has been her dream to be published in the anthology series. When not busy at the keyboard, she is an avid gamer and artist. She lives in Wasilla, Alaska with her spoiled Australian Cattle Dog; she is also a member of a local writing group, and is currently working on an urban fantasy novel. "The Girl Who Folded Dragons" is her first publication. You can visit her online at www.jeantatro.com.

  #

  Shiori sat alone in her room, cradling a bamboo cage in her lap. The little birds inside the cage fluttered anxiously, beating colorful wings against the bars. Shiori's room had been sparsely decorated to begin with; it had been cleared out to give her the space to prepare. It seemed cavernous and alien, the bird cage the only thing that remained. Shiori supposed if they were real birds her mother would have a fit, chiding her about ruining her best kimono on her wedding day, but they weren't. Each and every one was paper—folded and given life by Shiori's own hands.

  A shadow fell across the shoji and Shiori's fingers tensed around the cage. Her mother stood in the doorway, her stern expression softening when her gaze found Shiori. "It's time," her mother said, visibly struggling to hold back her emotions. "We will be waiting for you in the front room." Turning sharply she left.

  Standing, Shiori moved to the outer wall and slid open the shoji to reveal the garden, brown and bare. If it were not for the drought herbs and bright flowers would have bloomed there. Lifting up the bird cage Shiori turned it so that it faced into the garden and opened the cage's door. The paper cranes burst forth, swirling like a cloud of colorful butterflies.

  They spread out into the garden, settling on the withering plants. For a moment the garden bloomed with color. Shiori shook off the ones that had alighted on her, sending the whole flock into motion again. Entranced by the sight Shiori leaned out from under the eaves to watch her paper cranes as they circled up into the cloudless sky, scattering like seeds on the wind.

  When all the paper cranes were gone from sight Shiori stepped back and set the empty cage on the porch. She didn't look back as she left her room, drawing the proud air of a refined woman around her as she made her way to her home's entrance. Today she was the headsman's daughter—a sacrifice for the safety of the village, a mortal astringent for their fears. A bride not intended for a mortal man, but for a god.

  * * * *

  The whole village was waiting for Shiori outside her home's gates. People who had scolded her as a child now looked on her with awe. Beside her parents her elder brother stood, his perpetual scowl darkening his features.

  Her younger brother was there too. He had recently returned from the capital and his job as an aid in a noble household. He hadn't known about the plan to sacrifice Shiori until after he'd arrived home. He had been outspoken against it, but he was an outsider now, and his word hadn't counted for much.

  Flanked by her family, and most of the villa
ge, she was led down the familiar road to the nearby lake. Large and placid, like an enormous mirror of the sky, the lake was fed by one river and drained into another. The water level had fallen so that the procession had to pick their way down rocky, chapped banks to where the priests waited by a worn little boat. She kept her head down while the priest intoned. The water made a hollow sound lapping against the boat. The small wooden vessel didn't have to take her far—just to the middle of the lake, and down into the water god's domain.

  When the priests finished they stepped back to let her climb into the boat. Shiori tried not to look at anyone, keeping to the silence and decorum expected of a dignified woman. Her younger brother broke free of the crowd and stepped forward to help her. She looked up in surprise at his touch. He did not speak, and instead offered her a firm grip and a smile so warm that she couldn't help but smile back. As she lowered herself into the boat he slipped a wrapped package into her sleeve and murmured so that only she would hear. "A wedding present."

  And then he stepped back. Shiori lowered her head again so that no one could see the tears that stung her eyes. The priests started intoning again as they pushed her little boat out into the water. A single great heave sent the boat drifting towards the middle of the lake. Water began seeping in immediately. Shiori squeezed her eyes shut to avoid watching the water soak through her kimono.

  It was slow at first, the level of the shockingly cold water gradually rising until it swirled around her hips. At that point it found a tipping point, and water began to rush in furiously. The boat fell from under her, and she was left flailing in the cold water. Her panic at being in water over her head and the weight of her kimono overwhelmed all she knew about swimming. Something caught at her kicking legs, wrapping them tightly as it pulled her down. She reached up for the cloudless blue sky as the water closed over her head, sending up a prayer that her sacrifice was worth it.

  Then her hands broke the surface and her feet found purchase. She threw herself forward instinctively and landed on a rocky bank. She lay for a moment in the warm sunshine, gasping for breath. Then she pushed herself up and looked around. Instead of the parched farm land she saw a lush garden. She sat half in and half out of a serene pool, where bright koi circled her feet, and an elegant maple stretched over her head.