An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat

by Glen Cook

  "Eh?"

  "Shoshonah heluska e irmilatrir eskonagin."

  "Right. Anything else?"

  "Some advice. Don't waste time. It flows differently in the Forest. Passes slower. Stay a week and you might return to find me an old man. If you could get back at all."

  "Why's that?"

  "Who can say? The gods? The Forest lies in the time river of eternity, where sentience alone enforces familiarities on the fabric of a space with no reasonable substance."

  "How can I tell when to get out?"

  "That's knowledge hidden even from me. Perhaps when you feel the incantation slipping from your mind. The Forest experience is unique to each visitor. You make of it what you will. The only way to discover your own version is to go there."

  "So send me."

  As Ragnarson spoke, the wizard sketched a fiery mystical sign in the air before him. The mercenary's universe reeled. There was a gut-wrenching twist, then blackness.

  Blackness surrounded him when he wakened. His first panicky thought was that he had been blinded. Then he began to discern objects around him, though by what means he couldn't determine. There was no light source. No stars, no moon.

  Around him were black-trunked trees leafed with metallic ebon leaves, and beneath him lay a carpet of dark crystalline grass. Above him lay a deeper blackness, an infinite, hungry darkness that could hardly be called a sky.

  He rose and turned slowly. Everywhere, the same thing. Blackness and trees. "The Forest of Night," he murmured. It echoed mockingly in the stillness. He shuddered, felt his weapons to make sure they were in trim. He turned again till he found a direction that felt right, started walking.

  He had begun to worry about the time before he finally encountered a break in the Forest.

  Light! Through the quiet trees came a greenish light. Witch light. His breath came more quickly. He walked faster, crouched more, took more precautions against discovery.

  Before him, surrounded by a broad, blackly watered moat and black-grassed glen, stood a strangely shifting and shapeless black edifice. It had many tall, tube-like spires, each of which had tear-shaped bulges slowly working down their heights. Sparks of almost invisibly pale green light appeared briefly in what might have been windows.

  "The Castle of Tears," he muttered. He had thought that the name had to do with pain or sorrow.

  He invested an estimated quarter hour in catching his breath and overcoming his awe. Then, very slowly, sword in hand, he stalked toward the castle. He stopped at the moat, leaned back, considered the towers. The great teardrops slowing ran down the pipe stems and disappeared behind the shifting walls.

  Something stirred the surface of the moat. He caught a glimpse of an oily back, shuddered, began following the bank.

  Again and again he caught a flicker of motion as some creature roiled the stagnant waters. Perhaps it was best he didn't get a direct view.

  He came to a narrow drawbridge. The gate beyond was open. Trap-wary, Ragnarson cautiously stepped onto the bridge. Nothing happened. Five rapid steps took him to the gate, which seemed alive. Its shape, width, and height constantly changed. He entered the courtyard beyond. A greenish mist filled the place. It stirred and boiled, yet was not there to his touch.

  Growing more uncertain, and increasingly time-worried, Ragnarson crossed to steps leading to the only doorway in sight.

  Within lay a room lighted in green mist, revealing nothing threatening. He cautiously stalked ahead . . . and found himself surrounded by a great weeping, as of ghost voices from afar. He whirled, saw nothing but shadows.

  The weeping went on. The shadows stirred. But nothing threatened him.

  Once more he modified his theory about the fortress's name. The weeping . . . .

  Speculation would not get him the Heart. He began searching.

  He wandered for what might have been hours, constantly worrying the passage of time. He climbed and descended strangely shifting stairways, ventured into a hundred oddly shaped rooms. Always he was surrounded by blackness and haunted by patchlets of weeping, shadow-containing green mist.

  Then he entered a hall where the mist was dense. The weeping was louder. Shadows swirled around him as he pushed through the fog, swarming over him. His fear grew as the weeping became like the wailing of women over a field of ten thousand fallen. Ragnarson at last realized that he had entered a place that was vastly more than a haunted castle in a strange forest. He realized it was a place beyond forests, beyond worlds, beyond times. A place where gods or demons dwelt.

  He went on.

  He found a small door. A red light glowed from beyond it. Shadows swirled and moaned as he approached. He intuited that he had reached his goal.

  Two steps took him to where a small calamander chest rested, lid open. Within lay a glowing heart-shaped ruby. "The Heart." He reached for it.

  "Yes," said a whisper from behind him.

  Ragnarson whirled. His sword leapt out as swiftly as an adder's strike.

  And encountered nothing. Yet a creature stood before him, unharmed.

  "The Heart of Lorraine," the creature whispered. "Very precious to me. Why do you want it?"

  "To return it to Duke Greyfells, to whom it belongs. So his daughter can be freed from an enchantment and marry the Lord of Four Towers."

  "Greyfells doesn't own the Heart. No man can trade a Heart like so many pounds of cabbage. It belongs to Lorraine, to be given when and where she wills. It's here because she wills it to be. I, and only I, have the power to remove it against her will."

  "What is this place?" Ragnarson asked, closing the calamander chest, slipping it into his jerkin.

  "This is the place beyond places, the end after ends. It has many names. It is the gathering place of the shades of hopes that have died, and I am their keeper. The Heart is mine."

  "And yet I must have it."

  "And yet you must have it." The Keeper shifted form. "I will think on it. It may be that all can gain heart's desire, including myself. Return to the gate. Your time grows short. I will meet you there."

  Ragnarson went. As he understood it he was in Hell. And soon might be trapped there forever. Fear lent speed. He reached the gate in a quarter of the time it had taken to find the Heart.

  The Keeper of Shadows was waiting. Thick green mists surrounded him.

  "I have considered," said the specter. "You may take the Heart. Thus, Greyfells will gain his wish. Yet he will be disappointed. You, too, shall see a wish fulfilled, yet learn despair. And you will have to flee Greyfells, though you fulfill your commission. Now speak your words and go. Your time is short and I have not yet prepared a place for your dream."

  A wall arose as the shadows protested an escape from the Castle of Tears.

  Ragnarson bowed, muttered, "Shoshonah heluska e irmilatrir eskonagin."

  Something stirred in the Forest of Night. Leaves long unmoved sighed. Trees bent toward the mercenary as if loath to let him escape.

  The wind arrived. For an instant it opened the mist surrounding the Keeper.

  Ragnarson screamed. He had seen the true face of Despair.

  He woke in the center of the pentagram whence he had departed Mendalayas. Visigodred poured fiery liquid into his mouth. "Four weeks. I'd begun to fear you'd stayed too long. But you got what you went after?"

  "Uhm. Four weeks? I was only there a day. Wouldn't want to go back."

  "We'll all go sometime. A part of us. Well, we'd best get you moving toward Greyfells. You have less than two days." Castle Greyfells lay some sixty miles east of Mendalayas.

  Ragnarson gagged on another draught of liquid, spat, staggered up, snatched up the casket. "Yeah. It'll be a hell of a ride. Thanks for helping."

  "Helped myself while I was at it. The pledge of service. I'll collect. And I needed the exercise." Making small talk, the wizard led him to the courtyard, where a page had his horse ready.

  A minute later Ragnarson galloped toward Greyfells.

  He rode that horse till she co
llapsed, stole another, and continued till he reached Castle Greyfells. He arrived barely a half hour before his deadline.

  Ragnarson was impressed by the castle's size and stories he had heard of its unique construction.

  There was a remarkable structure, called the Echo Tower, which guarded the gate. Greyfells, pathologically afraid of treachery, had had the sorcerer Silmagester contrive him a structure in which there could be no secret communications. The slightest whisper there could be heard for miles around. As Ragnarson approached, a sentinel was muttering about the weather, which threatened rain.

  The man from the Red Hart waited at the gate. "Well, it's about time! You have it?"

  "Yes. And hell's own time getting it. Thirty sovereigns aren't enough."

  "You knew there would be risks."

  "But the risk of soul?"

  "Let's have it."

  "No."

  "There're a thousand men here. They could kill you before you escaped."

  "No doubt. But I'd destroy the Heart before I died."

  "Uhn. Thief." He drew a small sack from within his shirt. "I haven't time to argue. The wedding's too close. Give me the casket."

  Ragnarson surrendered the Heart, seized the purse, galloped away. As he wheeled, he noticed Greyfells himself running toward the Echo Tower. He thought little of it till, moments later, as he rounded that same tower's exterior, he heard a scream from its parapet.

  Looking upward, he saw the Duke waving the casket before a slim young woman.

  "I'll never marry that savage!"

  "You will!"

  "Never! Sooner the Keeper of Shadows."

  "Do as I say."

  "Sooner the Keeper."

  "Lorraine! . . . "

  The woman hurled herself into space. She plummeted toward the moat. Ragnarson sprang from his saddle, ran to the waterside, waded in, grabbed a handful of hair. He managed to keep her breathing, but could do nothing about her crushed insides. She kept gasping, "Sooner the Keeper of Shadows."

  Ragnarson looked up angrily. Beauty ruined, life wasted . . . . Men were coming. He didn't know their intent, didn't care to learn it. He jumped into his saddle, galloped away. The frustrated curses of Greyfells, amplified by the Echo Tower, pursued him.

  He remembered the prediction of the Keeper. Yes. Everyone had gained a wish, yet had been disappointed.

  He shrugged. Of such unpleasant yarn did the Norns weave lives—and deaths. He had seen youth and beauty destroyed many times. This world might well be the true Forest of Night and Castle of Tears.

  He would forget his own disappointment sooner than would any of the others.

  The extorted purse contained disks of lead.

  Call For The Dead

  This was the second Vengeful Dragon story. It appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for July 1980. It proved that few endings are irrevocably final. It received numerous excellent reviews, many Nebula Award recommendations, and was a finalist on the Balrog Awards ballot for best short fantasy of 1980.

  I

  The figure wore scarlet.

  It had a small, hairless skull. Its face was as delicate as that of a beautiful woman. A rouge colored its lips. Kohl shadowed its eyes. Zodiacal pendants hung from its earlobes. Yet no observer could have sworn to its sex.

  Its eyes were closed. Its mouth was open.

  It sang.

  Its song was terror. It was evil. Its voice stunk with its own fear.

  Its lips did not move while the words came forth.

  A dark basaltic throne served as its chair. A pentagram marked the floor surrounding it. That Stygian surface seemed to slope away into infinity. The arms of the pentagram, and the cabalistic signs filling them, had been sketched in brilliant reds and blues, yellows and greens. The colors rippled and changed to the tempo of the song. They surrendered to momentary flashes of silver, lilac, and gold.

  Perspiration dribbled down the satin-smooth effeminate face. Veins stood out darkly at its temples. Neck and shoulder muscles became knots and cords. Small, slim, delicate hands clawed at the arms of the throne. The fingernails were long, curved, sharp, and painted the color of fresh blood.

  Torches surmounting the throne's tall back flickered, growing weaker and weaker.

  The song faltered . . . .

  The figure surged, drew upon some final bastion of inner resource. A scream ripped from its throat.

  The darkness gradually withdrew.

  The figure slowly stood, arms rising. Its song/scream transmuted into a cry of triumph.

  Its eyes opened. They were an incredible cerulean blue, almost shining. And they were incalculably malevolent.

  Then the darkness struck. A finger came from behind, swiftly, coiling round its victim like a python of night. Tendrils of the tentacle thrust into the sorcerer's nostrils and open mouth.

  II

  The caravel revolved slowly in an imperceptible current. The sea was cool and quiet, a plain of polished jade. Neither fin nor wind rippled its lifeless surface. It looked as unyielding as a serpentine floor.

  I stared as I had for ages. It was there, but I no longer saw it.

  Fog domed the place where Vengeful Dragon lay becalmed. It made granite walls where it met the quiet sea, but overhead it thinned. Daylight leaked through.

  How many times had the sun come and gone since the gods had abandoned us to the spite of that Itaskian sorcerer? I had not counted.

  Sometimes, when I tried hard enough, I drifted away from my body. Not far. The spells that bound us were of the highest order.

  It pleased me that I had slain the spell-caster. If ever I escaped this pocket hell and encountered him in the afterworld, I would attack him again.

  I could get free just enough to survey the scabby remnants of my drifting coffin.

  Emerald moss clung to her sides. It crept a foot up from her waterline. Colorful fungi gnawed at her rotting timbers. Her rigging dangled like strands of a broken spider's web. Her sails were tatters. Their canvas was old and brittle and would crumble at the first caress of wind.

  The decks were littered with fallen men.

  Arrows protruded from backs and chests. Limbs lay twisted at odd, painful angles. Bowels lay spilled upon the slimy planks. Gaping wounds marked every body, including mine.

  Yet there was no blood. Nor any corruption.

  Not of the biological kind. Morally, Dragon had been the cesspool of the world.

  Sixty-seven pairs of eyes stared at the gray walls of our tiny, changeless universe.

  Twelve black birds perched in the savaged tops. They were as dark as the bottom of a freshly filled grave. There was no sheen to their feathers. Only the movement of their pupilless eyes betrayed their claim to life.

  They knew neither impatience, nor hunger, nor boredom. They were sentinels standing guard over the resting place of old evil.

  They watched the ship of the dead. They would do so forever.

  They had arrived the moment our fate had overtaken us.

  Suddenly, as one, twelve heads jerked. Yellow eyes peered into the thinner fog overhead. One short screech filled the heavy air. Dark pinions drummed a frightened bass tattoo. The birds fled clumsily into the granite fog.

  I had never seen them fly. Never.

  A shadow, as of vast wings, occluded the sky without actually blocking the light.

  I suffered my first spate of emotion in ages. It was pure terror.

  III

  The caravel no longer revolved. Its battered prow pointed an unerring north-northeast. A tiny swale of jade bowed around her cutwater. A shallow depression bordered her stern.

  Vengeful D. was moving.

  Dark avians wheeled round her splintered masts, retreated in consternation.

  Our captain lay on the caravel's high poop, beneath the helm, clad in rags. Once they had been noble finery. He still clutched a broken sword. He was Colgrave, the mad pirate.

  Not all Colgrave's wounds had come in our last battle. One leg had been cr
ippled for years. Half his face had been so badly burned that a knoll of bone lay exposed on his left cheek.

  Colgrave had been the worst of us. He had been the cruelest, the most wicked of men.

  Our fell commander had collapsed atop several men. His eyes still stared in fiery hatred, burning like the lamps of Hell. For Colgrave, Death was a temporary lover. A woman he would betray when his time came.

  Colgrave was convinced of his immortality, of his mission.

  Stretched on the high forecastle deck, in rags as dark as the loss of hope, lay another man. A blue and white arrow protruded from his chest. His head and shoulders lay propped against the vessel's side. His hating eyes stared through a break in the railing opposite him. His face was shadowed by ghosts of madness.

  He was me.

  I hardly recognized him anymore. He seemed more alien than any of my shipmates.

  I remembered him as a grinning young soldier, a cheerful boy, a hero of the El Murid Wars. He had been the kind you wanted your daughters to meet. That man on the forecastle deck, beyond his obvious injuries, had wounds to the bones of his soul. Their scars could be seen by anyone. He looked like he had endured centuries of hurt.

  He had dealt more than he had received in his thirty-four years.

  He was hard, bitter, petty, vicious. I could see it, know it, and admit it when looking at him from my drifting place amidst the rigging. I could not from inside.

  He was not unique. His shipmates were all hating, soul-crippled men. They hated one another more than anything else. Except themselves.

  A seven-legged spider limped down my right shoulder, across my throat, and out along my left arm. The arachnid was the last living creature aboard Dragon. She was weakening in her relentless quest for one more victim.

  The spider's odyssey took her out onto the pale white of a hand still gripping a powerful bow. My bowstring had parted long ago, victim of rot and irresistible tension.

  I felt her . . . ! My skin twitched beneath her feet.

  The spider scuttled into a crack between planks and observed with cold, hungry eyes.