Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXVI

by Unknown

  Then there were the ghosts who died in dishonorable or violent ways, and set out to cause mayhem or take vengeance during their one night of freedom. The greater their anguish, the more substantial their spirit flesh — and the more powerful their effect on the realm of the living. In the footsteps of their mythical ancestor Zhong Kui, vanquisher of ghosts, Mei and her fellow Ministers were trained to subdue these angry ghosts and return them to hell by force if necessary. Mei used her Sword of Steel, with its wide and wickedly curved blade, glowing silver in the shadows, on those occasions.

  * * * *

  The night became a rhythm of rhythms as she scoured the streets for ghosts: the steady brush of wind past her ears, four footsteps to each inhale, a glance to the left, a jump and four steps to each exhale, a glance to the right. It was a routine Mei had perfected over the years. Her day job was a variation she carried out with the same kind of single-minded precision. Inhale, swipe the bag with the right hand into the trash bin, spread new bag in the can with the left. Exhale, take three steps to the next workstation. Repeat. She also out-drank her friends in the same way, downing shots with a mechanical determination that nobody could comprehend or match. She rarely smiled even then. They called her "Xiao Má" instead of Xiao Mei, on those nights. Little Horse.

  Mei did not mind. It was a part of her nature, the way she approached the world, as habitual as breathing. Life was a relentless series of routines, and Mei powered her way through them. If she was always on the move, she was that much closer to her goals. There was little room for doubts and uncertainties to bog her down in the midst of routines. Her mother said she came out of the womb thin and small, serious and determined. It got worse when she turned eighteen, when she realized she could see ghosts.

  Finally the brightly lit, crowded business district of Dongcheng came into view, after she had crossed the quiet residential blocks east of the Drum Tower. Beneath her feet, wooden rooftops, balconies and telephone lines became squat roof decks, neon billboards and cell phone towers. The night was a couple of degrees cooler, but the smell of petrol and frying grease became stronger. The beeps of scooters and the din of pedestrian traffic rose. Mei broke into a sprint.

  She found the next ghost in a small residential street off of Yanghegong Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Dongcheng, where High Minister Lin found her wandering eleven years ago this night, flinching at unseen things – but not running from them either. As she jumped between the terra cotta roofs of a temple she caught sight of a hanged male ghost, with its head dangling limply against its chest, walking the rows of a small vegetable garden. Mei leapt to the ground instantly, startling a young couple necking in the shadows. She cursed herself silently for her carelessness; her thoughts had been elsewhere, guessing at Jincheng's expression behind his mask.

  If detected, she was to avoid frightening the public at all costs. Her second job was to preserve the peace and dignity of the Ghost Festival; the Politburo had established the Ministry so that the proud Chinese could honor their visiting ancestors, without knowing some of their ancestors wished them harm.

  Mei bowed low to the couple, and did a backflip in place. The girl shrieked and giggled; the boy hooked his arm around the girl's neck, and they sauntered back towards the bright lights and street vendors of Yanghegong Street. The girl pulled out her phone to text her friends about the little Ghost Festival acrobat with swords.

  Mei exhaled and leapt over the garden wall into the tiny yard, near a small leafy contingent of squash.

  The hanged ghost picked up its head with its hands, and turned its face to her. It was a young face, with heavy round cheeks and bulging eyes. Its tongue was wedged between its clenched teeth; its neck was covered in livid rope marks. Mei had the Sword of Steel drawn, but when she sensed little malice she stood up straight and drew the Sword of Coins. The ghost turned its face towards the ground, as if it were contemplating its next move, and then vanished without any resistance. Mei closed her eyes and focused inwards, clearing her mind of Jincheng Wu before running back into the shadows.

  * * * *

  She spent some time on the ground next, prowling the less populated neighborhoods, the back streets and alleyways. Whenever she encountered a ghost she thought of Ma-Ma, sitting faded and insubstantial in that tiny, plastic sheet covered apartment in Da Shan Zi. She dispatched the headless ghost wandering the concourse of Dongzhimen Bus Station, before it came within sight of the nearby Russian Embassy. A couple of wandering ghosts, unable to find their way home, knocked rows of bicycles over until she pointed them on their way.

  Dongcheng began to settle down for the night, the lights and the conversations winking out, as the last of the festival goers returned home. But with the festival goers went the friendly ghosts; only the malevolent ones remained, still seeking revenge. The night's true work began, and Mei took it on with the same determined pace as the previous hour, though she began to sweat, and her legs and arms began to ache despite the Zhong Kui mask's supernatural enhancements.

  She intercepted a vengeful female ghost tottering down a narrow, darkened alleyway, scratching at doors. Its hair and skin and clothes were drained of color but for the dark red blood pouring from its slashed throat and the mangled cleft between its legs. Its milky white eyes rolled in different directions, and its mouth whispered a man's name over and over again. Mei stepped in front of the ghost who turned, heedless, to scratch at another door.

  Mei raised the Sword of Coins and spoke gently. "Sister, in the name of Zhong Kui, the vanquisher of ghosts and evil spirits, you cannot harm the living tonight. Please accept this prayer of honor and respect, and return to the gates of hell."

  The female ghost hissed, turned and swiped at Mei with bloody fingernails, knocking the sword aside.

  "Very well," Mei said solemnly, and drew the Sword of Steel with her left hand. The ghost lunged with hands raised high and Mei stepped backwards, blocking the first strike with both swords. A sharp-tipped hand flailed at Mei's face; dots of blood welled up on Mei's right cheek from three long scratches. She pushed back with her swords. The ghost staggered, then charged again and Mei darted to the side, twisting at the last second to plunge the Sword of Steel into the ghost's heart. Glowing white flames erupted; the ghost's bloody mouth opened to scream, but only a hoarse whisper came out. It began to lose its shape, its substance dissolving slowly and fading away completely.

  Mei spoke a short, additional prayer of release; she could not help but feel pity for the ghost, who could not have been older than twenty.

  A drowned male ghost, its mouth forever open in a silent, water-swallowing howl, floated in the large pond of a sprawling estate, waiting for a victim to drag underwater and possess. Mei searched its bloated face, looking for certain features. When she found none she recognized, she ordered it out of the water at sword point. Moving faster than she expected, the ghost grabbed the sword's blade and pulled her into the pond. Its pale, wrinkled fingers swiped at her, moving through the water without a sound. In turn Mei could not thrash in the water too much, for fear of waking the residents; she held her breath and swam away from the ghost in long, underwater strokes, into a thick forest of lily pads. From there she skimmed the pond surface like a small, red-faced alligator playing hide-and-seek among the lilies, stalking the ghost until she could pierce its heart and send it on its way.

  Headless ghosts swarmed the grounds of the Immigration Office in Yonghegong, searching for the visas they were denied in life. They managed to knock Mei to the ground before she could draw her swords. She hit her head against the concrete and lay stunned, seeing stars, until she felt ghostly tugs against her tunic, her trousers. Panic made her tighten her grip on her swords, and she was herself again; she swept the Sword of Steel in an arc, severing a ghostly Achilles tendon. The ghost fell, wringing its hands, and the others scattered. Mei methodically chased them all down. All but one, she thought after each exorcism. Another year, another chance, Ma-Ma.

  The ghosts of small chi
ldren ran through the streets, dodging cars that they had been unable to avoid in life. Mei sheathed her swords, took them by the hand, and lit candles on paper boats for them herself. It was a brief moment of respite, and she was able to stop shaking.

  * * * *

  Towards sunrise, she finally neared exhaustion, and another year's disappointment. When she sighted the telltale glow in front of a small row of dilapidated and abandoned shops near the Beijing Railway Station, she did not hurry at first.

  When she made out the outline of the male ghost wielding a machete, she broke into a run despite the lingering ache in her head, the sharper pains of fatigue in her legs and arms and joints.

  A flickering fluorescent light lit the tall ghostly figure. It was nearly substantial; its spirit was angry. It looked like it had died in a machete fight with a rival gang, with its head cleaved in a line from the left ear to the nose. Mei stepped before it with her Sword of Steel drawn in front of her. The blade was an extension of her hand, the wrist always straight and solid.

  But then Mei took in its heavily bearded face, with its heavy unlined brow and its small, beady eyes, and did not recognize it. Her grip faltered, and the sword dipped.

  She barely raised it back up in time when the ghost roared, a sound like thousands of strings being plucked, and swung its ghost machete at her. The impact jarred her wrist bones; later, she would find nicks in the edge of her blade.

  Her training kicked back in, moved her to block the next strike, and the next. The ghost drove her backwards with its anger, raising dust against a bruised purple sky.

  Mei wore it down, blocking and evading and dodging. Finally, it could not summon enough spiritual energy to hold itself together in the living realm; its machete hand stopped in mid-air, and dropped to its side. When its hand dissolved, and the ghost machete fell to the ground, the ghost fell to its knees with arms outstretched. Mei sheathed her swords and knelt in the dust with him, settling on her heels with her palms on her thighs. "Brother," she breathed heavily, "in the name of Zhong Kui, the vanquisher of ghosts and evil spirits, you cannot harm the living tonight. Please accept this prayer of honor and respect, and return to the gates of hell."

  The ghost did not move as it slowly vanished. Mei hung her head. She was in pain, covered in streaks of sweat and grime, and more tired than she had felt in her entire life, even more than the time she chased a ghost who had figured out how to latch onto motorcycles. She felt as hollow and insubstantial as the ghosts she had excised.

  All but one.

  * * * *

  In the last hour before dawn, Mei gave the hongsheng mask back to Prime Minister Lin and changed back into her street clothes without speaking to the other women in the locker room. She strapped her swords to her back, hastily waved goodbye to Jincheng Wu before he could engage her in conversation, and drove her rusted moped northeast from the Pavilion of Everlasting Spring. There was no traffic on the empty streets, and Mei returned to Da Shan Zi Towers in record time. The Hello Kitty mask, covered in a fine black grit from the journey across the city, went into the dumpster.

  She had to report for work at the animation studio in two hours; she rode the elevator with her head and shoulders slumped. When the doors slid open on the thirtieth floor she forced her tired legs to walk forward. Then she stopped.

  There was a ghost outside her front door.

  It was a hungry ghost. Small and stooped, nearly translucent. Insubstantial. Tattered grey rags splayed across withered grey limbs and a grossly bloated belly. Its neck was elongated, nearly the length of its torso, thin and bony, what little flesh left on it wrinkled and sagging. It stood with its hands held in front of its chest, the fingers opening and closing, grasping endlessly for all eternity.

  This ghost had been empty in life. Greedy for things with which to fill itself. Money, and drink, and other things that filled idle days. And now it was forced to wander through hell, forever unfulfilled and desperate with longing.

  "You moved," it said.

  "Ba-Ba," Mei said, straightening her back. She didn't feel tired anymore. Somewhere, on the other side of the wall, her mother snored among dusty, unopened boxes.

  "When did you leave Dongcheng?" it croaked, scratching his unusually round belly.

  "After you died."

  "Huh." It was bald as an egg, with a liver spot above its left ear. "You could have waited for me to return, before you moved."

  "You could have stayed alive."

  It hissed. "Don't you give me any of that lip!"

  "Eleven years ago you left for work and never came back. The police found your body in a dumpster."

  "They followed me home," it said, pulling at the ghost hairs sprouting from the ghost mole on its chin. The hairs nearly touched the bloody divots left by the meat cleaver on its throat. "I never saw their faces. Cowards!"

  Mei found it hard to swallow. She had thought she would be angrier. "You gambled away our house, and Ma-Ma's savings. You left us with nothing."

  "I was going to get it back," it said, gnarled grey hands clenching into fists. "Old Lao cheated. He always switched the dice." The hungry ghost began to gain substance, and grow in size. It took a step towards her, and its fingers opened again, began grasping again. At the air. At her.

  Mei dropped the cases from her shoulders. The lids popped open on impact and she knelt, drew the Sword of Coins in her right hand, the Sword of Steel in her left. The hilts awoke to her touch for the first time without the presence of the mask of Zhong Kui; they warmed and thrummed in her hands.

  The hungry ghost stopped moving. Its eyes bulged. "What is that? What are you doing?"

  "When we burned your body, I began to see ghosts. And I began looking for you. I have been waiting for the chance to see you again, all these years," Mei said, raising the Sword of Steel and pointing it at the hungry ghost.

  "You wouldn't." It took a step backwards, its hands now clasped and shaking in supplication. Its head wobbled on the end of the thin, bloodied neck.

  "I wanted to see for myself what became of you." Mei took a step forward. "Don't worry, I will never tell Ma-Ma."

  "I am but a spirit, but I was your father," it cried, falling to its knees. "I have been looking for you too, did you think of that?" Its eyes darted from side to side, before settling back on her in a desperate moment of recognition. "Mei!"

  In the distance, a brilliant sliver of sunlight appeared over the horizon.

  She lowered the Sword of Steel and watched as the hungry ghost began to fade. Then, slowly, she raised the Sword of Coins. "Father, in the name of Zhong Kui, the vanquisher of ghosts and evil spirits, you cannot harm the living tonight. Please accept this prayer of honor and respect, and return to the gates of hell."

  * * * *

  Mei-Li Chang was late to work on the morning of July 16, and therefore late coming home that evening. Ma-Ma watched a wushu drama set in the Tang Dynasty as Mei hurried about the kitchen, chopping vegetables for the black bean noodles.

  Ma-Ma pointed at the screen. "Look, Mei. Swords," she said, not unkindly. She had fussed over how tired Mei looked earlier, and exclaimed especially over the scratches.

  Mei set the bowls out onto bamboo trivets. "I'm quitting the troupe, Ma-Ma. We can mount the swords on the wall."

  The television turned off immediately, and her mother's slippers flapped their way over to the dining table. Mei smiled. "And I think Ba-Ba's urn should go under them." She turned around, and handed her mother a spoon and pair of chopsticks. "We really should unpack the rest of the boxes. Our home will look nice when I bring my friend Jincheng Wu over for dinner. You will like him. He owns a restaurant."

  Ma-Ma clutched her utensils against her chest, speechless, eyes shining.

  Ghost Dance

  by Jonathan Moeller

  There are some ghosts who are not dead—the ones who serve the Emperor, for example. Caina was one of them—and like the US Marines, there's no such thing as an ex-Ghost. Even when Caina became too well-known to
work unnoticed, she continued to serve the Emperor, but it was harder to do when people knew who—and what—she was.

  A wandering computer repairman from Minnesota, Jonathan Moeller think it's pretty cool that he's had stories featuring Caina, the Ghost Countess, in five "Sword & Sorceress" anthologies now. He's also written two novels featuring Caina—Child of the Ghosts and Ghost in the Flames, both of which are now available in all major eBook formats. Visit his website at www.jonathanmoeller.com where you can read, among other things, interviews with numerous past contributors to Sword & Sorceress.

  #

  Caina hated wine.

  And as it happened, that was the only thing that saved her life.

  "This is," said Lucan Maraeus, sitting across from her, "a very fine wine."

  "As you say," said Caina, looking out the balcony doors.

  The view was splendid, of course. Lucan had invited her to dinner, and as Lord Maraeus's youngest son, he could use the old man's apartment in the Imperial Citadel, palace and stronghold of the Emperor. So Caina sat at his dining table, watching as a servant brought out dinner.

  Lucan smiled at her. It looked good on him. He was a handsome man in his middle thirties, with the irreverent air of a lazy, idle nobleman.

  But that was only an act, a masquerade.

  Much as the fine gown and jewels that Caina wore were also a mask.

  "I know you do not care for wine," said Lucan, beckoning. The servant, a grandfatherly man named Roebel, lifted a silver carafe from the sideboard. "But this vintage will change your mind."

  "One would suspect, my lord Lucan," said Caina, "that you were trying to get me drunk."

  His smile widened. "Enough to steal a kiss, perhaps. A small chance, I admit, but...one can always hope. Roebel?"

  The old man bowed and started to pour. Caina's eyes wandered to the sideboard. A small wooden box sat there.

  It hadn't been there before.

  "That box," said Caina. "Where did that come from?"