Gulpilil paused, and they both gathered themselves. He blinked, but the beast refused to come into focus. It was long and lean, built like a serpent upright, but with an oversized head that tapered into a point. And yet there was something else within its outline, a mass of broken shards and molten red rock. It did not seem as though it could move as fast as it did, and yet it did.
Gulpilil grasped the spear and held it the way he’d been taught when they were practicing for quick-leaper hunts. But as much as he had practiced, there was no way to be ready for the beast he faced now. It came at him again, and its breath on his face stank of old piss and bad water and the rankness of dead fish. His arm came up, gripping the spear, and the impact staggered him back a full pace, causing him to hit the stone wall again with a painful slap.
The spear caught on the beast’s hide, and Gulpilil hung on to the shaft, pushing as best he could to penetrate the creature’s flesh. The beast snarled, making a sound of rocks grinding against each other, and the two stared into each other’s eyes for a heartbeat before the creature twisted and broke away, leaving Gulpilil with half the shaft in his hand, the other half embedded in that strange, rough-textured hide.
Gulpilil had not even heard the snap of the shaft; the hardwood had broken without warning. He stared at the spear in disbelief, then used it to block the next attack; the jagged end was almost as good as the stone head had been. It didn’t penetrate the hide, but a jab toward the face made the beast retreat long enough for Gulpilil to grab the knife from its sheath.
But he was no hunter, no fighter. He was a builder, a mender. And the knife—his fine work, his strong work— shattered between the beast’s dark red eyes. Its breath, as hot as the heated water of the sacred pool where initiation ceremonies were held, touched his skin, and Gulpilil pulled away, tripping backwards, falling onto his backside, and rolling away as the beast leapt for him. A blast of flames came from that endless maw of a mouth and licked at Gulpilil’s skin, making him cry out in pain even as he rolled again.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flicker, a flash of color in the shadow-heavy darkness. Red and blue and gold— the serpent!
BRING HIM HERE, the serpent commanded.
Gulpilil rolled in that direction, giving himself over to hope where there was none, and rolled again under a heavy rock overhang. An instant of panic—a pit, yawning and fetid. This was where the beast had come from! But then the serpent flicked over him, scales warm and heavy and dry, and there was light on the other side. Gulpilil kept rolling, feeling the sand scrape against his skin, the rock rough on his burns—and then he was out the other side. The beast was sliding in after him, slipping faster than the serpent could move, but there was a flash of color and Gulpilil could hear the story in his mind—how the serpent fluttered its wings and blinded the beast, and how its head turned toward Gulpilil even as its serpent-fangs went for the darkness’s throat, and how one of the serpent’s small eyes was suddenly the color of the sky and winked at Gulpilil, a wise and knowing and grateful look.
And then the ground shook, and Gulpilil covered his head with his arms and cowered until the earth was still once again.
When he opened his eyes once more, the overhang was gone, the entire wall fallen forward, a slab of rock sheared off from its source.
And gone too were the serpent, the beast, and the shadowed pit from where it had come.
Gulpilil crawled around in the rubble, coughing a bit from the red dust that hung heavy in the air. The shards of his knife lay on the stone, along with the shaft of his spear.
He bent down, wincing as his body protested, and picked up the shaft. The wood crumbled into ash as he touched it, leaving the stone head heavy and cool in his palm. His fingers clenched it, then opened slowly. It too had melted in the blast of flame, the stone melting and running until the point now looked . . . like a feather.
Gulpilil’s fingers closed around it once again, and he followed the path out of that canyon and back to where the path had split. The stone feather still in his palm, he watched the sun make its final dip before disappearing. The air, so silent before, was filled now with tiny sounds of things moving and living. And in the last ray of sunlight reaching out over the distance, he saw a faint, sinuous shape twisting in the sky, the red light glinting off its feathers as it swooped, curled up, and disappeared into the darkness.
“My thanks, Galeru,” he said softly, finally naming the guardian spirit that had helped him. “My thanks for saving our lives, as you have done for my people before.”
Tucking the stone feather into his pouch, Gulpilil went to find his sister’s village, and do what could be done.
LAURA ANNE GILMAN
LAURA ANNE GILMAN is a professional writer and editor with more than twenty short story credits to her name, in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Mars Dust, Flesh & Blood, and Oceans of the Mind and anthologies such as Spooks!, Murder by Magic, Powers of Detection, and ReVisions. Her first fantasy novels have been published recently: Staying Dead and Curse the Dark, with a new young adult trilogy, Grail Quest, to come in 2006.
Laura Anne runs d.y.m.k. productions, an editorial services company. A native New Jerseyan, she loves to travel (although she has not yet been to Australia, the setting of her story) but always comes home to the East Coast. For more information, go to www.sff.net/people/lauraanne.gilman.
HIDDEN WARRIORS
Margaret Mahy
1
THERE IN THE ROOM of Reception and Debate—there before the King himself—light flared along the blade of a knife. One of the men who, only a moment ago, had been standing meekly behind one of the Dannorad envoys was darting across the room, making for the King’s Magician—Heriot, the Magician of Hoad. A knife! A knife flourished where, it was understood, the only weapons were to be artful words and the cunning with which diplomatic men wielded them. For a moment Heriot was terrified, yet in that exact moment of terror, quicker even than the light skimming the surface of the blade, he made an inner connection—something that came and went before he could quite grasp it—and drew, from within himself, a weapon of his own strange kind.
“Freeze!” he found himself ordering.
Halfway across the room, the man locked in midstride, shaking and crying out as he strained forward, then toppled, unable to lower that threatening arm but still able to cry out: “I felt you in my head, twisting . . . twisting like a worm in an apple.”
Heriot looked toward the knife, still locked into the man’s trembling hand, then away to one side. He felt sorry for the man, but a magician must survive as best he can.
“I have to be a worm,” he muttered softly as the King’s guards burst in, bending to lift the man, to unlock the knife from those shivering fingers, then hustling him, still shouting, out of the room. “It’s what I am!” Heriot told himself, though he was not sure just what he was. He had been uncertain of this for years.
“You might even be the Hidden Warrior,” said Lord Glass in a soft voice, lips close to his ear. “Perhaps you really are that legend.” No one but Heriot heard him. The Dannorad envoys, looking every bit as horrified as the men of Hoad at the gross violation that had just taken place, were clustered around the King, apologizing. But one envoy had something to add to his apology.
“Of course there is no excuse for such an event,” the envoy said. “But surely in civilized debate, men’s heads should be inviolable territories.” He shot a glance of severe dislike at Heriot. “Worms should have no place in the presence of a king.”
“He is not a worm—he is my Magician,” said the King. “After all, we authorities do our best to read each other’s thoughts, do we not? My Magician is just better at thought-reading than most people. And those who tell the truth have nothing to fear.”
“Well, Magician,” the King said a little later, when the Dannorad envoys had retreated, bowing and still apologizing. “It seems you can make a formidable weapon of yourself. But first things first! Why did the Dannorad servant mak
e for you like that? What do you have to tell us?”
The Hidden Warrior, thought Heriot, hearing Lord Glass’s words all over again. That magical figure, that haunting possibility, promised in so many Hoadish stories and legends. They can call me a warrior over and over again because they like the idea of warriors, but it is not what I am. He cleared his throat.
“I didn’t read much, Lord King,” he replied. “These days the Dannorad keep their deep plotters at home and send us men who carry single messages and not much else. But there was one thing.”
The King leaned back in his chair. “So?” he said.
“That man at the envoy’s elbow had heard some whisper of a plan to assassinate someone close to Your Majesty. He did not know who was to be killed, but the rumor of it was running around in his head. Not so much like a worm in an apple—more like a rat in a cage.”
“A plot against one of my sons, perhaps?” asked the King.
“I couldn’t tell,” Heriot said. “The thought was smudged. He’d just picked up a whisper of it, and here in this room he remembered what he had heard.” He looked over at the table where the princes and the Lords of Consultation sat. “You lot should be careful. That’s all.”
Later he was dismissed and stepped out and away, leaving the Council behind him. As he entered the first courtyard, the guards who always escorted him through the castle dropped back a few steps, and Heriot felt himself free to tremble. What am I? he thought again, gripping his shaking hands behind his back. What am I? And what was that connection? And then: The Hidden Warrior . . . that hero of children’s stories! Perhaps after all . . .
And as he played with the idea, he felt as if the city— the city of Diamond, jewel of the land of Hoad—had opened its great mouth and swallowed him. All in a moment he was devoured—digested. All in a moment he became the city . . . became its braided streets, gardens, marketplaces, and stalls, its changing maze; became an ancient question being asked over and over again. He stood still, eyes closed, until the thought that possessed him fell away, as he had known it would, and he became once more a country boy with inexplicable powers, misplaced in a city whose rich heart was walled away from its own savage edges—edges that might assail it, yet also make it strong. I’ve lived in this city for years now, he thought. I still don’t know it. But I don’t know myself. How did I freeze that man? The command came and went too quickly to be understood. He took a step; stopped once more, so suddenly that he stumbled in midstride; and then straightened, to stand staring blankly into the air inches in front of his nose. How do I stop you from eating me? he asked the city—a silent question. Must I be the one to do the eating? Eat you? All right! Tonight I’ll test myself against the edge—with any luck, someone else will try to kill me. And either they will kill me or I’ll make that connection again—solve that part of my own puzzle, at least!
2.
Heriot passed through the castle gate, automatically showing his medallion of passage. Guards fell back, watching him go. The great castle became a stony garment he was shrugging away.
They call me a warrior because “warrior” is one of their compliments, he thought. They’re trying to reassure me with a compliment. But what am I, really? He came to a standstill for a third time, this time on the edge of the King’s garden. And as he stood there, frowning, he heard his name called, turned, and saw the young Lord Roth striding along the narrow path that curved around the edge of the garden, waving and laughing as he came.
Heriot greeted his friend with huge relief, glad to escape into lightheartedness. Roth laughed at his expression, flinging an arm around his shoulder.
“Let you out on your own, have they?” he asked. “And who did you betray today?”
Heriot’s initial relief faded. He looked down the road, his gaze leaping along the retreating line of ancient metal lampions in which flares would be lighted that evening.
“No one!” he said.
“What? No reading the secret thoughts of our adversaries?” Roth asked, somewhat mockingly. Heriot shrugged.
“Look! I can’t automatically read everyone,” he said vaguely. “Some people are closed in. I can’t tell a thing about them. Others—well, it’s as if they open up wide to me . . . and their secrets are set out like lines of a poem. And yes, I sometimes do read those poems to the King. It’s what I was brought here to do.” Then he saw Roth was laughing at him, and he sighed and laughed too. “Luckily for you, I don’t read friends,” he said. “Weren’t you born a Dannorad man?”
“Born, not bred. I’ve lived in Hoad so long I count myself totally Hoadish,” Roth replied rather defensively. Then he asked, “Wasn’t it Dannorad men the King was talking to today?”
“Yes,” said Heriot. “And—no harm in telling you; there won’t be any secret about it because they’ll set guards around the princes, I think—I did read something. There’s a threat against someone close to the King. I don’t know who.”
Roth looked at him incredulously. “Did you tell them?” he asked.
“I told what I could,” Heriot replied. “But before I did my telling, one of them came at me with a knife. I stopped him . . . froze him . . . and I don’t know how I did it. And it’s thrown me—saving myself all in the heart of a second, without knowing how.”
They had come to the edge of the grove of trees—part orchard, part forest—that history had flung around the King’s castle like a careless cloak. Heriot’s cottage, an old gardener’s hut, stood in a curve of apple trees. Under the branches, something was dancing and spinning in the dappled light.
“Your servant boy, the street rat!” exclaimed Roth. “He’s growing up, isn’t he? Nearly as tall as I am now. Hey! He’s holding a sword.”
“He dances, and that sword’s his partner,” Heriot said. “Has to be. He dreams of being a warrior—a true warrior, not one like me—and plays warrior games.”
“Every street rat in the city plays warrior games,” said Roth, losing interest.
“Now then,” Heriot said. “Come to the cottage. We can sit on the bench beside the door, drink cider, and talk about books.”
“I’ll walk on by this time,” Roth said. “I’ve got things to do. You know how it is. I’ll call in later, maybe.” He hesitated, looking at Heriot with a troubled expression. “You will stay here—here in your special place, where you’ll be safe, won’t you?” Heriot nodded, not really listening. Cayley was coming to meet them in a series of somersaults and cartwheels.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” Roth asked.
“Nothing’s wrong!” said Heriot. “Why should anything be wrong?”
“You looked—I don’t know—startled, as if you were seeing your street rat for the first time.”
“Everything astonishes a magician,” Heriot muttered. “Especially the things he already knows.”
He and Roth hugged one another. Then Roth walked away, past the green fringes of the King’s orchard toward the houses and marketplaces of the inner ring of the city. As Heriot watched him go, Cayley sprang up beside him.
“So he’s not coming to the cottage,” Cayley said, adding, with a sudden change of tone, “Hey! Does he know?”
Heriot smiled. “Are you asking me if he knows you’re a girl?”
“Did you tell?” Cayley asked.
Heriot shook his head. “Though I did tell him that you dreamed of being a warrior.”
“He’d have laughed at that one,” said Cayley, “him being a lord and me a street rat, like. But me—I’m going to be the warrior of warriors.”
“Dream away!” said Heriot derisively.
Cayley was jiggling from one foot to the other, still staring after Roth.
“Have you ever read him?” she asked curiously.
“I don’t read friends,” Heriot replied severely. “You know that. He knows it too. Anyhow, I’m glad he’s got business in the city.” He looked at her sideways. “I fancy going out to the edge tonight. Coming with me?”
Cayley looked into the orcha
rd. The air was glowing with late sunlight. As the wind blew, shadows shifted under the trees, melting into one another, then drifting apart.
“Why?” she cried. “Why go there? Me—I struggled to get away from the edge. When you picked me up out of the gutter, back when I was small, and brought me back to life— that was wonderful luck for me. Look! It’s safe here. It smells sweet. No one wants to hurt you. Why go off into dark places where every second man would kill you for your shoes alone? Because it’s deadly to be an unarmed man with good shoes, walking in a place where most people go barefoot on mud and broken stones.”
Heriot smiled. “Something happened a little bit earlier . . . something that I don’t understand,” he said. “I need to test myself against a bit of danger, and the easiest place to find danger is out on the edge.”
“Right, then! Who am I to argue?” said Cayley. “Walk on, Magician. I’ll follow!”
3.
So they walked through the late afternoon, past houses, gardens, and marketplaces, then through the door in the wall around the city’s heart to where crazy old buildings, erected during the childhood of the city, hunched together, leaning over the streets. Ragged people squinted at them through gathering twilight, sometimes shouting with a mixture of derision and anger, for Heriot and Cayley so obviously belonged to another place. “Like what you see?” one old woman yelled. The stink of the edge rose up around them, sifting into their hair and clothes.
“Everyone who lives here is a sort of warrior fighting doom,” Heriot said. “Not recognized, though!”
“I know it better than most people,” Cayley answered. “Coming here—it’s like coming home to me.”
Evening deepened and darkened. Heriot and Cayley strode around the rare, reluctant flares lighted at street corners, then dove into the darkness that dominated streets mushy with mud and filth. Ancient doorways gaped at them; narrow chinks that served as windows stared down at them.
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