The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  But they seemed to do things differently in the Midwest. Especially when the kid was the star quarterback of the high school football team.

  She’d lived here a year now, and Sarah still couldn’t believe how big football was in the Midwest. God, the high-school teams played in stadiums of NFL dimensions! Schools in Eastern Maine couldn’t even afford football. The boys played soccer, and often the spectators didn’t have a bench to sit on.

  Sarah Martin realized she was still standing in her doorway, staring into space. Shaking off her stunned reverie, she reached down and picked up the rope that had lain alongside the inner sill of her front door. The rope was slightly longer than the doorsill, and tied along its length in four complex knots. Sarah stepped into the house, closed the door, and untied every knot in the rope. She went to each window, removing the rope from the sill and undoing its four knots. Then she went to the half-open kitchen door, which opened into her tiny back yard. The doorjamb had been splintered by blows to the latch and deadbolt. Hammered open by someone strong, just like last time. Sarah looked down. The knotted rope had been slightly disturbed. She picked up the rope but did not touch the four knots.

  The utility drawer was open and in disarray, but nothing appeared to be missing. Sarah dropped the lengths of rope in the drawer. Did it work?

  She called the police.

  While moving through the house she’d noticed that she hadn’t lost any big-ticket items; she still had the stereo, the TV and VCR, the CDs and videocassettes, the computer and printer. When she hung up the phone, she checked her medicine cabinet and her yanked-open closets and drawers. The thief had gone through her jewelry box but taken nothing--had busted open her strongbox but ignored her stock certificate for the private medical clinic where she worked; however, he had taken the silver dollar her father had given to her before he’d died.

  Sarah’s fists clenched with rage.

  He’d gone through her underwear drawer. He hadn’t done anything except search for money, but she still couldn’t bear the knowledge that he’d fingered her panties and bras. She emptied the drawer in the laundry basket.

  Two officers and one detective arrived in response to her call. The uniforms dusted for fingerprints. The plainclothesman asked questions and Sarah answered.

  Then she said, “Detective Adams, can I tell you something in private?”

  “Pete,” he said. “Sure.”

  She stepped into her home office and Pete Adams followed. She closed the door and spoke softly: “I’ve only been gone two nights. And I’m a doctor, so I keep weird hours. Someone who knows my movements did this. It was a neighborhood kid.”

  “Definitely,” Adams said. “This has all the earmarks of a juvenile perpetrator. Ninety percent of these crude B-and-E’s are committed by kids looking for money.”

  “I’ll bet,” Sarah said. “Pete, I know my neighbors’ son broke in here--”

  “He’s under eighteen?” Adams asked. Sarah nodded. “A juvenile. If he has a record, we can bring him in.”

  “What?” Sarah cried. “Under those conditions, no juvenile thief could get a record!”

  “I’m sorry, I was unclear. If we lift fingerprints that match a convicted juvenile’s prints, we can make an arrest. But we can’t go and fingerprint a juvenile without a record purely on your say-so. We’ll question your neighbors--if someone else witnessed the crime and recognized the perpetrator, or gives a description matching your neighbor’s kid, then we can bring him in. But a hunch isn’t enough, Dr. Martin.”

  “Christ!” Sarah said. “I know it’s the son of my neighbors across the street. I asked them to keep an eye on my place and not to tell anyone I was gone. I know their son did it! I know he did both break-ins here! The thief is Thomas Armstrong.”

  “Thomas Armstrong!” Adams exclaimed. “The star quarterback of the Lincolnville Eagles. Ma’am, no one will believe the biggest celebrity in town broke into your place.”

  Sarah’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened.

  “Oh, I believe you, Dr. Martin,” Adams said. “Thomas is a spoiled, swell-headed brat. I think he’s broken into some other houses on this street. But you keep your suspicion to yourself. Telling anyone else won’t do anything but make you enemies. Anyway, it is possible Thomas didn’t break into your house this time. Yesterday he woke up in such terrible pain he could hardly move. His parents took him to the hospital. He’s developed such a bad case of arthritis the doctors can’t believe it. They can’t do anything except give him tests and pills and a wheelchair. They can’t even figure out how it happened so fast.”

  “My God,” Sarah said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  “No? And you’re a GP. Jesus!”

  When the police left, Sarah went across the street. Carmichael Armstrong was at the law office where he was a junior partner, but his wife Trisha was home, taking care of their son. Sarah told Trisha how sorry she was to hear about Thomas’s illness, and asked if she could speak to him; she was a general practitioner, maybe she could think of something that might help. It was a long shot, but surely worth trying.…

  “Of course!” Trisha said, nodding several times. She looked more nervous than ever, and seemed brittle; Sarah guessed another blow would shatter her. Sarah suppressed a sigh. She liked Trisha. “Please, Sarah, come in--this way--”

  The Armstrongs’ house was laid out exactly like Sarah’s. Sarah hated suburban housing, but she couldn’t afford anything old enough to possess individuality.

  “His room.…” Trisha pointed to an open door. One of the two bedrooms, Sarah knew from her own tract house.

  “I think it would be best if I spoke to Thomas alone.”

  “Oh, of course.…” Trisha drifted away.

  Sarah closed the door and turned to a riot of color; the bedroom walls were covered with glossy posters of NFL stars. Sarah didn’t know their names, but she recognized the logos of the Chicago Bears, the Denver Broncos, the San Francisco 49ers.

  Thomas wore a Minnesota Vikings jersey. He sat rigidly in a wheelchair. His face was as sullen as Sarah remembered.

  “What do you want?” he demanded. “Did you come to pity me? You can’t help me, Dr. Martin. The experts said nobody can help me.” His voice rose, harsh with rage. “You doctors are all useless bastards!”

  “I understand your frustration,” Sarah said, glancing over the powerfully built, utterly motionless body. “But sometimes a clear conscience can work wonders, Thomas.” She kept her voice calm. “While I was away, you broke into my house. If you apologize and return the silver dollar you stole, I will forgive you and you may feel better.”

  “You lying bitch!” Thomas’s tone was furious, but his voice was soft. “I didn’t break into your house!” His voice rose: “Get out!”

  Sarah stepped out of his bedroom and softly closed the door. She saw Trisha rushing toward her. She apologized for disturbing Thomas, and said, “If there’s anything I can do, Trisha, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “You’re so kind, Sarah,” Trisha said.

  Back in her house, Sarah took the knotted rope out of the utility drawer. She’d learned how to tie a knot practically in infancy; her father and grandfather had been fishermen, in the days when fishermen made their own nets. But the foreign trawlers stripped New England’s ocean waters, and most of Maine’s fishermen were driven ashore, or turned, like her father and grandfather, to lobstering. Sarah heard tales of the old days on Dad’s or Grampa’s knee, and she heard that there was power in the knots a fisherman tied: power to summon the fish, to summon a wind fair or foul, to summon trouble for a trouble-maker. When she grew older, Sarah realized no amount of knots could regenerate the schools of fish captured in miles-long nets and eaten by foreigners; she realized her father and grandfather were superstitious old men embroidering tales of past glory.

>   She studied science, she was going to be a doctor; she knew better.

  But when someone broke into her new house, Dr. Martin found herself feeling vulnerable, and unable to afford installation of an alarm system on top of her mortgage and medical-school bills; she thought about buying a dog, but she worked such long, odd hours, it would be cruel neglect. So she found herself thinking about what her father and grandfather had told her. Dad and Grampa were dead. She called her grandmother, said she was just curious about it--couldn’t quite remember what she’d heard when she was a kid, you know how that goes, Gram.…

  “Oh, ayuh, there’s power in knots,” Grandma said in her age-weakened voice. “If someone’s troubling you, granddaughter--”

  “That’s just it, Gram,” Sarah had said, dropping the pretense of idle curiosity, and she’d listened carefully to everything her grandmother had told her.

  Sarah looked at the rope in her hand, the rope that had caught the unwelcome intruder without his noticing; she looked at the four knots, one for each of the intruder’s limbs. If she untied the knots, she would unbind the intruder’s arms and legs, free them from crippling agony.

  Her grandmother had told her the best thing to do would be to tie a slipknot. Make a noose. But Sarah was a doctor. She worked to save lives, not end them. All she wanted to do was stop the thief from breaking in.

  The idea of causing such pain was disturbing enough. But this pain could be stopped. Death could not be reversed.

  But if this crippling pain were stopped, it was clear Sarah would be right back where she started.

  Sarah took her trowel out of the utility drawer and went through the broken door into her back yard. She struck the earth of her tiny flowerbed with angry blows of the trowel. She buried the rope. The hemp would rot, the knots dissolve without unbinding; Thomas Armstrong would remain crippled for as long as he lived.

  KEEPING UP APPEARANCES, by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Originally published in Did You Say Chicks? (1988).

  Maribelle stared at the little black-iron cage in dismay. She had known when she returned from visiting her family and found the room deserted, with a note from Armus dated the day before yesterday directing her to look for him here if he wasn’t home yet, that there was trouble.

  But she hadn’t expected this.

  The hamster in the iron cage stared back at her. It was small and round and golden and looked totally harmless.

  And rather stupid, but that didn’t surprise Maribelle at all. “That’s really Armus?” she asked.

  “So the wizard’s messenger said,” Derdiamus Luc replied.

  The hamster squeaked and nodded.

  “Oh, dear,” Maribelle sighed. “What will I tell his mother?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Luc said with an uneasy smile.

  “Speaking of things you do or don’t know,” Maribelle said, “would you know how to turn him back? I mean, is this permanent? Is there some way to break the curse?”

  “I’m afraid I have no idea,” Luc said. “The messenger didn’t tell me much of anything.”

  “Did the messenger tell you why the wizard Esotissimus turned Armus into this little furball?”

  “Well…” Luc coughed.

  Maribelle tore her gaze away from the hamster and looked at Luc. It wasn’t hard to see that the merchant was hiding something.

  And it wasn’t hard to guess what it was, either. When she got Armus home she intended to have a few words with him, whether he was hamster or human at the time.

  For now, though, she stared at Luc in wide-eyed innocence, pretending she hadn’t a clue as to why the wizard would have been irked with Armus.

  “I’m afraid it’s partly my fault,” Luc admitted. “Esotissimus has been telling my customers the most terrible lies about some of the goods I sell, and I hired the young man to deliver a strong complaint about this practice.” He glanced at the hamster. “It appears the wizard didn’t appreciate it. I am sorry.”

  Maribelle sighed again.

  Actually, she supposed the wizard had been merciful, since the “strong complaint” Armus was supposed to deliver had almost certainly been a dagger between the ribs. And the “terrible lies” were probably accurate assessments of the value of some of the charms and potions Luc sold; Maribelle was fairly certain that Luc’s so-called “irresistible love spells” were just civet and musk, and the “miraculous medicines” nothing but willow bark in distilled wine, with no magical content at all.

  But what had Armus thought he was doing, going after a wizard alone?

  “Well, I’m sure you meant well,” she said, picking up the cage. She turned to go, then paused and turned back to Luc. “Um…while I can see that the response wasn’t what you might have hoped, Armus apparently did deliver your message. Shall I send a bill, or would you like to pay now?”

  Luc’s jaw dropped, then snapped shut.

  “Pay?” he said, sounding a bit strangled.

  “Well, yes,” Maribelle said. “I’m afraid that the Assassins’ Guild would insist. Armus is a member, after all, so even though you merely hired him as a messenger, Guild rules would apply. Wouldn’t they, Armus?”

  The hamster made a noise that was clearly meant as agreement.

  “Assassins’ Guild? You mean there really is…” Luc stopped in mid-sentence. He looked at Maribelle’s wide-eyed innocent gaze, and at the hamster’s beady little eyes, both fixed on him.

  “Of course,” he said through clenched teeth. “I believe we had agreed upon a price of fifty royals…”

  Armus cheebled angrily.

  “How foolish of me,” Luc said, forcing a laugh. “I mean one hundred and fifty. I’ll just write you a chit…”

  “Sire Luc, I’m afraid I may be traveling soon, on short notice,” Maribelle said, her voice oozing regret. “I’ll need to have cash.”

  “Well, I don’t see how I…” Luc began.

  Maribelle interrupted him, her tone still regretful but a little harder than before. “I wouldn’t want to tell my friends in the Guild you were uncooperative, after you got the man I love turned into a hamster…”

  Luc winced. “Of course,” he said quickly.

  Maribelle waited patiently as Luc counted out the coins. So far as she knew there was no Assassins’ Guild, here in Verengard or anywhere else, but Luc wouldn’t know that. Merchants heard all the rumors, and never knew which to believe. And Luc certainly knew what Armus did for a living. What’s more, the amount of money involved confirmed that Luc hadn’t hired Armus the Assassin just to deliver a message. He could have hired any urchin off the street for two royals—or maybe it would have taken as much as five, since a wizard was involved.

  A hundred and fifty meant something more than a message, something a bit more pointed.

  Twenty minutes later, back in the rented room two streets over, Maribelle opened the cage and pointed to the sheet of parchment and the little pan of ink she had set out.

  “Now,” she said, “would you mind telling me what you thought you were doing, contracting for an assassination without me? And agreeing to kill a wizard, without properly researching the job? I was only gone for eleven days! You couldn’t wait that long?”

  The hamster cheebled angrily at her.

  “I can’t understand anything you say,” Maribelle told it. “Just dip a claw in the ink; I know you can’t hold a pen.”

  The hamster glared at her for a moment, then scurried to the ink.

  The result was smeared and messy, but legible.

  I WAS BORED. LOOKED EASY. PAID WELL.

  “A hundred and fifty royals?” Maribelle protested.

  The hamster let out an offended squawk, and scrawled 600. 150 ADVANCE, 150 MORE EVEN IF WIZARD LIVED.

  “And the rest if you actually p
ulled it off.”

  Armus nodded.

  “And did you really think you could kill a wizard single-handed?”

  The hamster shook his head, and reached for the ink.

  SCOUTING, he wrote. THEN WAIT FOR YOU, FINISH THE JOB TOGETHER.

  “But you got caught.”

  The hamster looked sheepish—which was an impressive accomplishment for a hamster, but Armus had always been a talented, charming individual.

  Not all that bright, but talented and charming.

  “All right,” Maribelle said. “Tell me all about it, step by step. Then we’ll see about getting you turned back.”

  She didn’t say it aloud, but mentally added, if you can be turned back. She knew perfectly well that transformations were tricky stuff. Some could only be reversed by the wizard who initiated them. Others could only be ended by the wizard’s death—she didn’t think she would very much mind arranging that in this case.

  And some transformations couldn’t be undone at all.

  She shivered at the thought as she watched the hamster scratching ink onto the parchment, leaving smudgy little footprints everywhere. She and Armus had been working together for a little over four years now, and she had hoped they would stay together for the rest of their lives. She’d put aside almost half the money they had earned as assassins, with the intention of someday retiring on it and settling down somewhere—after all, they couldn’t keep killing people forever. She wouldn’t always be sufficiently young and pretty and innocent-looking to use their preferred methods, where Armus would threaten the intended target, drawing all the attention while poor helpless-looking little Maribelle put a knife in the victim’s back.