Too late. The birds grew louder, filling her head. Light burned her eyes.
Suddenly she was lying, no, tossing like a woman in a fit, on a rock-strewn hilltop, her body impossibly heavy and hot, soaked in sweat. She stopped shaking. The Assassin muscle control was returning automatically, and she hated it. Slowly she got to her knees under a blinding sun.
“Jay,” she called, and turned, hoping at least to see the monster that stood for him. She knew she wouldn’t. She could sense the block in the Earth again, but that was all.
And she could sense something else as well: a force as brutal as a forest fire, yet somehow unsure of itself, or maybe limited by some ancient laws Cori didn’t understand. Whatever held her enemy back, the assassin was grateful. She needed time, to gather her strength, to make a plan. Because now that she’d returned, Coriia wanted only one thing. Revenge. For Jay, for herself; and for the Guild. Years now they had been her family, her people, and no demon was going to play them for fools.
She didn’t dare go for the thing on her own, not without real knowledge of its powers, and herself still fragile. So she ran, as far from the hill and the sea as the Stride would carry her. The warm wind blew away her tears.
Back in her house, protected (she hoped) by the markings on the door and windows and along the foundation lines, Cori sat in perfect stillness in the room where she’d first promised her services to the thing that had stolen Morin Jay’s name. The paintings and the cushions were gone, the windows draped in black cloth. Eyes half closed, Cori sat before the engraved disc, emblem of her guild. Furiously, she drove away all thoughts, until she remembered that she needed calm as well as emptiness. She allowed the thoughts to approach her, then drift away, the whole time fighting the feeling that she was betraying Jay by releasing her memories of him. The thoughts became birds seen far away and then gone.
A deeper darkness rose in the dim room. It covered her, like smoke, and then like a thick jelly. Terror nearly came in with it, but Cori knew they were not the same, and released the fear even as she embraced the Dark. At last there was nothing left, no thoughts, no room, no memories, not even her body, just the Dark filling her existence.
In that blackness a light began, a point of dull red quickly growing in size and brightness, gaining form as it grew until it became Cori’s mark, sprung from her neck and burning like a newborn star.
All across the land her sisters and brothers saw it, in Guild halls, in homes and forests, in taverns and markets. It woke them up and stopped their meals; it even turned them away from their contracted kills. Wherever they were they found some place where they could open their necks to the air. The hunger rose in them. At the moment that it flared they propelled it, like lovers thrusting toward orgasm, through the image of Cori’s whirling mark.
She reeled, pressed down by the weight of all that power. Somehow, she stepped back from the onslaught, seized control of it, and then, with a shout of hate and joy, sent it hurtling at a house on a hilltop outside the town of Sorai.
Cori never knew what defense the demon mounted. She felt a moment’s resistance, and then the uncontrollable hunger of the entire Guild swept over the house and its owner like a hurricane striking a nest of bees.
In the very moment that the storm blasted the ancient center of the monster’s being something struck Coriia as well. Ecstasy. Floods of joy roared over her body, wave and wave of release, from her own hungry body, and from the joy of all those other men and women linked together in a way no one who was not an assassin could ever understand. No one.
Cori tried to hang on to her memories of Jay, of the time they’d spent together. Shame filled her as she realized the pettiness of what she’d given and taken from him. Then all memories and thought gave way to that ecstatic sea.
4
Cori knew it was him as soon as she heard the knock. Slowly, she set down her brush and paint and walked through her bare house to the door. “Cori!” he cried, arms out, only to drop them clumsily when she stood there, impassively looking at him.
“I thought you’d find me,” she said, not inviting him.
“It was quite a search.” He laughed, trying to make it a joke. “Are all your Guild halls pledged to secrecy or something?” He wore a yellow silk robe, unembroidered. The bright clothes set off the color that was coming back to his skin, and Cori had to clench her fists to keep from touching his face, from feeling just once, the full weight of him pressed against her. “Aren’t you going to let me in?” he asked. “I’ve never seen an assassin’s home.”
“There’s nothing to see. Jay, I’m sorry you came all this way, but please, there’s nothing for you here. Believe me.”
“Nothing? All this way? Cori, darling, what are you talking about? You know how far I’ve come to be with you. No one in the world can know that but you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Oh my gods, Cori, what’s happening? When I came back I looked around for you. I thought you’d be there on the hill waiting for me. But I told myself, she thinks I’m dead, she thinks I didn’t make it. All I’ve got to do, I told myself, is find you. Then we’ll be together again. Really together.” He stepped towards her. She pushed him back. “Cori, you’re my lover. Have you forgotten or something? Is that it? Let me touch you and the memories’ll come back. Believe me, they’ll come flying back.” He reached out.
Cori stepped away. “I’m an assassin, Jay. A killer. Don’t you understand that? That’s my only pleasure, my only love. Murdering helpless people.”
“I know what you are,” he said. “What you’ve been. I’ve thought and thought about it. Cori, darling, I don’t care. We’ll—in some way we’ll handle it.”
She half shouted, “Won’t you please just go away?" Tears threatened to ruin the whole thing, so many times rehearsed.
“No. I won’t let you chase me. What we had, it wasn’t just to pass the time. I know it wasn’t.”
“What happens in Nowhere doesn’t count. We were just keeping each other from losing our minds. That’s all it was.”
“We were lovers, Cori.”
“We were nothing.”
He shook his head, started to say something, and found his throat too full of tears. Abruptly he turned and walked down the road back to the little market town, his back straight, his steps jerky.
Cori closed the door, shaking. Would he come back? Probably. Jay wasn’t the type to just give up. She hoped it would go easier the next time, but she didn’t think so. If only she could do it without hurting him. “Jay,” she whispered, feeling his name inside her.
But when she sat down in an old green leather chair and closed her eyes it wasn’t Morin Jay she saw but Rann, the skinny red-faced boy who’d led her, a girl of twelve, with promises and fantasies and caresses to a gentle hill on his father’s farm. For the thousandth time Cori remembered every touch, his grin as he broke her hymen, the sudden fury of her own desire. And then the flames, the shrieks of pain and terror, Rann’s stunned look as he pulled back from her, his mouth and eyes open until the flames roared over them, and the way he rolled on the ground, then slowly came to a stop, lying there all charred and stiff, the last flames dying out, with nothing left but smoking flesh and bone.
She remembered running back to town, remembered the mob and her mother’s shrieks, remembered the assassins walking her through the crowd, whose fear had suddenly overcome their rage. From now on, they told her, forget any life but us. Any lover but us. What happened to Rann will happen again and again, to anyone you touch with desire. And once it gets stronger it will happen without sexual contact, once, twice a year, destroying people, land, anything near you. Unless we train you. Unless you release it before it builds up. Release it the only way possible.
“No!” she’d shouted back. “I won’t kill. You can’t make me.”
You must, they told her. When the hunger rises you cannot fight it. You can only choose your target.
“How can I make a choice like th
at? How can anyone?”
Because you must. There is no other answer. We will help you. Remember, Coriia. You belong to us now. To the Red Guild.
Six from Atlantis
GENE WOLFE
Thane of Ophir he called himself (though it was not his true name) and Thane he will be called here. His hair was black, his skin olive, the cast of his face one we have not seen upon Earth for ten thousand years: a mobile mouth so wide it seemed a deformity, hawk nose, and wide cheekbones. The eyes that drank the wealth of the ivory towers were narrow and slant, of a green so dark it seemed black. Gates of horn and ivory there were here. He bade his men wait, and stepped through the ivory alone.
The path had been gravel; as he passed the gleaming towers, its stones turned to gems. Stooping, he picked one up. Topaz, he judged it, and well fit to draw gold. He breathed upon it, polished it on the rawhide of his sword belt, admired it again, and dropped it into...
Nothingness. Or so it seemed.
A woman stepped smiling from a tangle of flowering vines. Her golden hair blazed with gems. Deep cups of red-gold struggled to contain breasts so large they threatened to break the precious chains uniting them.
It was a good topaz, Thane reflected.
“Our king,” the woman said, “shall learn that you have stolen from him. What he will do when he learns, I know not, but learn he will. Will you step into the vines with me, stranger? Only for a moment.”
He shook his head.
She approached him. “The perfume of those flowers halts the flow of time. In them a moment can outlast the waning of the moon—if we will it so. Do you think me beautiful?”
“I do,” Thane said.
“I have been so for whole centuries. Because I have lain there, where the years for me have ceased their flow.”
“I have been offered the black lotus. I refused it. I refuse this, too.”
“Your loss and mine.” She linked arms with him. Her arm was soft and smooth, rich with strange perfumes. His was hard, brown, and scarred.
“You have seen strange lands.”
He shook his head.
“The smell of the sea is in your hair.”
He whirled on her, and his left had held a long knife. “The sea has swallowed my house and my sister, with the nation that bred us. Gulped all down whole, and is still unsatisfied. It hungered—and we are gone. It hungers still. Know you why we were thus devoured?”
She stepped from the path. The roses had fled her cheeks, and her sapphire eyes were full of fear.
“Earth permits only a certain deviation from the norm,” Thane taught her. “We were great and wise, thus doomed. Our land was like no other and held ten thousand things for which you would find no name. My house was not a house such as you know, nor was my sister a sister. Take me to your king.”
“He will kill you!”
Thane smiled, revealing teeth strong and of strange forms. “Many have said that. I tire with hearing it, and saw no bowmen in the ivory towers.”
“What need has he of guards? He is greater than an army!”
“So we have heard.” Thane’s sword-hand caught her arm below its broad gold bracelet. “Thus I come alone, hoping he will not fear me. My crew—they are but five—await my return beyond the gate.”
“They will wait long.”
“Show me,” he said, and his grip was such that she cried out and he released her.
Through alabaster passages she led him with linked arms, and at last into a hall so vast its lapis lazuli dome seemed a new sky. To left and right it stretched till its walls were lost to sight; but the way they followed was hemmed by rows of crystal jars, each taller than a man. These held the silver coins of many empires, coins heaped and overflowing.
Farther, and gold mingled with the silver.
Farther yet, and gold predominated. Soon it was mingled with jewels whose inner fires flashed through the crystal, lighting it from within.
Then Thane saw far ahead a mighty throne, and on it an ape greater than any ape. Huge and hairy, swag-bellied and fanged like the nightmare dragons a million years dead, it leered and sneered.
Before it, three lovely women supported a great golden bowl of melons. These melons—green and yellow, scarlet, spotted, spattered, and striped—the ape took between thumb and forefinger and consumed like grapes.
A woman taller than the rest rose from the steps of the throne. Seeing her fiery hair and the nobility and savagery of her glance, Thane recalled Red Sonya and licked his lips.
This woman bore a long rod of gold topped with a jewel of ten score facets that shone like a star. At her back, four women more arranged themselves. Two held trumpets, and two swords. All were fair to the sight; yet it seemed to Thane that the woman who bore the star was fairest of all.
“Prostrate yourself before our king.” She spoke in ringing tones, and gestured with her rod of gold. “Tell us your mission.”
Thane stretched his length upon the floor, then rose again.
“You were not to stand,” the woman who bore the star told him. “By that act you have forfeited your life.”
“Many times over, I fear, since I stand so every morning.”
The woman who had linked arms with Thane took his arm again. “Touch me,” she whispered. “Stroke me where you will. Thus you may know joy before death.”
The ape on the throne grunted; and the woman who bore the star went to him, caressing him while she harkened to such sounds as beasts make when caressed.
When she returned, she said, “He admires your courage. He will tear out your heart and preserve it with the rest, for such is his custom. He assures you, however, that your conflict will be fair, and wishes to know why you have come here to die.”
She lowered her voice. “State your business. It may be that he will change his choice and spare you. That is rare, but not unknown.”
The woman who held Thane’s arm whispered, “Speak, for the longer you speak the longer you shall live.”
“I am merely a poor but honest slave trader,” Thane explained. “Mine is counted, as your majesty must know, the most humane of professions. For profits that are vanishingly small, and too often vanish altogether, I bring the poorest savages to civilized lands and there procure them useful employment. I beg his majesty to permit me to free his glorious kingdom from the most troublesome of his subjects. You yourself, my lady, would be most welcome aboard my ship—as welcome as old wine and a new wind, even if you came only as a visitor.”
The woman who bore the star smiled. “I said truly that our king admires your courage. I admire it as much as he now, and regret that I have come to know you only this day, which is to be the day of your demise. Have you bags weighted with turquoise or jasper? These might allay our king’s wrath, though I do not promise it.”
The woman who held Thane’s arm whispered, “Say yes.”
Thane shook his head. “None.”
“Mules loaded with bullion?”
“Had I such things,” Thane said, “I should buy myself a fair estate in some dull land of peace and plenty, there to dream of home.”
The monstrous ape grunted, and she went to it again.
When she returned, she said, “Our king wishes you to learn that gold and gems and all such things draw fair women, even as the topaz you stole draws gold. He has these things, and thus we whom you see are come to him from the farthest reaches of Earth. He advises you to acquire such things in the life to come. Thus you shall surround yourself with beauty.”
The woman who held Thane’s sword-arm screamed and freed it. As she did, the women who held trumpets put them to their lips. There was naked power and towering port in the golden notes—a sullen fury, too, and terror.
For the ape was rising, a beast to shake the world.
Thane, who had known many kings and many governments, reflected that this one was at least honest. He drew his sword.
Three times he skipped aside, dodging such blows as might have broken walls. Three times
he slashed at the great hands that sought his life.
Other hands, smaller and more fair, caught him from behind. The fourth blow landed, flinging him as far as a strong man might cast a spear. There he lay motionless, his blood staining the chalcedony slabs.
There one of the women who had held the bowl picked up Thane’s sword and offered it to the ape. It waved her aside and picked up Thane, holding him as a child might hold a broken doll.
One by one, the ape exhibited Thane’s body to the women, first to her who bore the star, then to her who had three times held Thane’s arm, and last to her who held Thane’s sword. The ape’s eyes were full of questions, for beasts no more than men understand death.
“He will not move again,” the woman who held Thane’s sword declared.
“His spirit has flown, O king.” So the woman who had lived for centuries among flowering vines seconded her.
“His life has been added to your own,” the woman who bore the star assured the ape.
When that last had spoken, the ape raised Thane’s body to its own face that it might sniff it; as it did, Thane’s left hand drew the long knife and plunged it into the ape’s throat.
Of all Thane’s fights, the one that followed was strangest, for no sooner had he snatched his sword than the women who held swords were at him, double his number and by no means ignorant of swordcraft. Hard they pressed him, while the woman who bore the star struck at him with her rod of gold.
When every other woman was dead or fled, she who had thrice held his arm kissed his feet and begged her life.
“Rise,” he said.
She did not dare. “I am your slave. Use me! Sell me! Only spare me.”
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology Page 41
