Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Sable heard the glasslike tinkle of a sequence of spells and looked up from the puddle to find herself seeing a rainbow. And it was no ordinary rainbow; it was her own private vision. Nor was it an arc—it was a complete circle, and she knew she was the very center of it.

  In the back of her mind, she knew very well that each child saw the same thing: each child was the beginning and end of his or her own rainbow.… She could not take her eyes off it until it faded gently into the mist and was gone.

  When she looked around, she saw Eloise-That-Liar stretch out her hand as if to call it back. Granny Sassy shook herself as if from a dream; the two children beside her were openmouthed in wonder.

  “We’ve done it,” said Glory with satisfaction, and the children, as if compelled, drew toward her. “Yes,” she told them, “you saw. We drove all the sniggets out. You did a good job of it, too. Now you deserve a rest—go home, bathe away the mud, and tell your parents I prescribe a restorative of hot honey-lemonade and candies.”

  Still awed, the children quietly nodded and began to disperse. As they passed through the rain-soaked streets, they at last regained their tongues—and Sable could hear that the topic of conversation was hot honey-lemonade.

  Granny Sassy looked at the handful remaining, who had been brought by rider, and said, “I’ll see to hot honey-lemonade for these—I could use some myself. I’m a little hoarse from all that shouting.” Very softly she added, “Thank you, Glory. I’ve never seen the like.” She bustled the children away. Then, to restore her sharp-tongued image, she shot back over her shoulder, “Clean up, child. You look a perfect mess.”

  Sable considered Glory: she was streaked with mud. Her hair was matted and dripping, but the neverburn still twinkled. “She’s right, you know,” Sable said critically.

  Glory spread her hands and looked down at herself and began to laugh. “You should talk, you didn’t even dry-spell yourself.”

  Sable twisted to wash her shoulder and got a tongueful of mud. Disgusted, she shook violently, spattering Glory further.

  “If you please, Glory Two-Eyes”—Ringgold ducked his head deferentially—”you would be welcome to bathe at my house. Sable, too, of course,” he added hastily as Sable glared at him.

  Aha! thought Sable at Glory, now it comes out…

  Don’t be such a grouch, Glory replied.

  I’m wet! She shook again. This time she spelled the flying drops for emphasis: each and every one got Glory.

  I’ll see you dry first, Glory assured her, chuckling. Aloud, to Ringgold, she said, “We’d be delighted to accept your offer.”

  “And you can bet she doesn’t mean just the bath,” Sable commented, but Ringgold was deaf to all but Glory’s magic. Glory was right, Sable reflected. Spells or no spells, what a wizard does is magic.

  About Mercedes Lackey and “Satanic, Versus”

  Misty Lackey is another one of “my” writers; I bought her first two short stories for Sword & Sorceress 3 and 4, and continued to buy them for both my anthologies and my magazine. And, of course, she has sold novels. Lots of them—by now, maybe more than I have. And Misty, Andre Norton, and I have just finished a collaboration, called Tiger Burning Bright, which should be out sometime around the time this anthology sees print.

  Misty’s first Diana Tregarde story, “Nightside,” which was in issue 6 of my magazine and the first volume of this anthology series, is a short-story version of her novel Children of the Night, but this story hasn’t made it into a novel—at least not yet.

  Misty lives in Oklahoma with her husband, the artist Larry Dixon, somewhere between ten and twenty birds at last count, and a wide variety of other animals.

  Author’s Note: The character of Robert Harrison and the concept of “whoopie witches” were taken from the supernatural role-playing game “Stalking the Night Fantastic,” by Richard Tucholka, and used with the creator’s permission.

  Satanic, Versus

  A Diana Tregarde Story

  Mercedes Lackey

  “Mrs. Peel,” intoned a suave, urbane tenor voice from the hotel doorway behind Di Tregarde, “we’re needed.”

  The accent was faintly French rather than English, but the inflection was dead-on.

  Di didn’t bother to look in the mirror, although she knew there would be a reflection there. Andre LeBrel might be a two-hundred-year-old vampire, but he cast a perfectly good reflection. She was busy trying to get her false eyelashes to stick.

  “In a minute, lover. The glue won’t hold. I can’t understand it—I bought the stuff last year for that unicorn costume and it was fine then—”

  “Allow me.” A thin, graceful hand appeared over her shoulder, holding a tiny tube of surgical adhesive. “I had the sinking feeling that you would forget. This glue, chérie, it does not age well.”

  “Piffle. Figure a backstage haunt would know that.” She took the white plastic tube from Andre and proceeded to attach the pesky lashes properly. This time they obliged by staying put. She finished her preparations with a quick application of liner and spun around to face her partner. “Here,” she said, posing, feeling more than a little smug about how well the black leather jumpsuit fit. “How do I look?”

  Andre cocked his bowler to the side and leaned on his umbrella. “Ravishing. And I?” His dark eyes twinkled merrily.

  Although he looked a great deal more like Timothy Dalton than Patrick McNee, anyone seeing the two of them together would have no doubt who he was supposed to be costumed as. Di was very glad they had a “pair” costume, and blessed Andre’s infatuation with old TV shows.

  And they are going to see us together all the time, Di told herself firmly. Why I ever agreed to this fiasco…

  “You look altogether too good to make me feel comfortable,” she told him, snapping off the light over the mirror. “I hope you realize what you’re letting yourself in for. You’re going to think you’re a drumstick in a pool of piranha.”

  Andre made a face as he followed her into the hotel room from the dressing alcove. “Chérie, these are only romance writers. They—”

  “Are for the most part overimaginative middle-aged hausfraus, married to guys that are growing thin on top and thick on the bottom, and you’re likely going to be one of a handful of males in the room. And the rest are going to be middle-aged copies of their husbands, agents, or gay.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “So where do you think that leaves you?”

  “Like Old Man Kangaroo, very much run after.” He had the audacity to laugh at her. “Have no fear, chérie. I shall evade the sharp little piranha teeth.”

  “I just hope I can,” she muttered under her breath. Under most circumstances she avoided Romance Writers of the World functions like the plague, chucked the newsletter in the garbage without reading it, and paid her dues only because Morrie pointed out that it would look really strange if she didn’t belong. The RWW, she found, was a hotbed of infighting and jealousy, and “my advances are bigger than your advances, so I am writing Deathless Prose and you are writing tripe.” The general attitude seemed to be that “the publishers are out to get you, the agents are out to get you, and your fellow writers are out to get you.” Since Di got along perfectly well with agent and publishers, and really didn’t care how well or how poorly other writers were doing, she didn’t see the point.

  But somehow Morrie had talked her into attending the RWW Halloween party. And for the life of her, she couldn’t remember why or how.

  “Why am I doing this?” she asked Andre as she snatched up her purse from the beige-draped bed, transferred everything really necessary into a black leather belt pouch, and slung the latter around her hips, making very sure the belt didn’t interfere with the holster on her other hip. “You were the one who talked to Morrie on the phone.”

  “Because M’sieur Morrie wishes you to give his client Robert Harrison someone to talk to,” the vampire reminded her. “M’sieur Harrison agreed to escort Valentine Vervain to the party in a moment of weakness equal to yours
.”

  “Why in Hades did he agree to that?” she exclaimed, giving the sable-haired vampire a look of profound astonishment.

  “Because Miss Vervain—chérie, that is not her real name, is it?—is one of Morrie’s best clients, is newly divorced and alone, and Morrie claims most insecure, and M’sieur Harrison was kind to her,” Andre replied.

  Di took a quick look around ’the hotel room, to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. One thing about combining her annual “make nice with the publishers” trip with Halloween, she had a chance to get together with all her old New York buddies for a real Samhain celebration, and avoid the Christmas and Thanksgiving crowds and bad weather. “I remember. That was when she did that crossover thing, and the sf people took her apart for trying to claim it was the best thing since Tolkien.” She chuckled heartlessly. “The less said about that, the better. Her magic system had holes I could drive a Mack truck through. But Harrison was a gentleman and kept the bloodshed to a minimum. But Morrie doesn’t know Valentine—and no, sexy, her name used to be Edith Bowman until she changed it legally—if he thinks she’s as insecure as she’s acting. Three quarters of what La Valentine does is an act. And everything is in Technicolor and Dolby-enhanced sound. So what’s Harrison doing in town?”

  She snatched up the key from the desk, and stuffed it into the pouch, as Andre held the door open for her.

  “I do not know,” he replied, twirling the umbrella once and waving her past. “You should ask him.”

  “I hope Valentine doesn’t eat him alive,” she said, striding down the beige hall, and frankly enjoying the appreciative look a hotel room-service clerk gave her as she sauntered by. “I wonder if she’s going to wear the outfit from the cover of her last book—if she does, Harrison may decide he wants to spend the rest of the party in the men’s room.” She reached the end of the hall a fraction of a second before Andre, and punched the button for the elevator.

  “I gather that is what we are to save him from, chérie,” Andre pointed out wryly as the elevator arrived.

  “Oh, well,” she sighed, stepping into the mirror-walled cubicle. “It’s only five hours, and it can’t be that bad. How much trouble can a bunch of romance writers get into, anyway?”

  There was enough lace, chiffon, and satin to outfit an entire Busby Berkeley musical. Di counted fifteen Harem Girls, nine Vampire Victims, three Southern Belles (the South was Out this year), a round dozen Ravished Maidens of various time periods (none of them peasants) and assorted frills and furbelows, and one “witch” in a black chiffon outfit clearly purchased from the Frederick’s catalog. Aside from the “witch,” she and Andre were the only ones dressed in black—and they were the only ones covered from neck to toes—though in Di’s case, that was problematical; the tight black leather jumpsuit really didn’t leave anything to the imagination.

  The Avengers outfits had been Andre’s idea, when she realized she really had agreed to go to this party. She had suggested Dracula for him and a witch for her—but he had pointed out, logically, that there was no point in coming as what they really were.

  Besides, I’ve always wanted to get a black leather jumpsuit, and this made a good excuse to get it. And since I’m doing this as a favor to Morrie, I might be able to deduct it.

  And even if I can’t, the looks I’m getting are worth twice the price.

  Most of the women here—and as she’d warned Andre, the suite at the Henley Palace that RWW had rented for this bash contained about eighty percent women—were in their forties at best. Most of them demonstrated amply the problems with having a sedentary job. And most of them were wearing outfits that might have been worn by their favorite heroines; though few of them went to the extent that Valentine Vervain did, of copying the exact dress from the cover of her latest book. The problem was, their heroines were all no older than twenty-two and, as described, weighed maybe ninety-five pounds. Since a great many of the ladies in question weighed at least half again that, the results were not what the wearers intended.

  The sour looks Di was getting were just as flattering as the wolf whistle the bellboy had sent her way.

  A quick sail through the five rooms of the suite with Andre at her side ascertained that Valentine and her escort had not yet arrived. A quick glance at Andre’s face proved that he was having a very difficult time restraining his mirth. She decided then that discretion was definitely the better part of valor, and retired to the balcony with Andre and a couple of glasses of Perrier.

  It was a beautiful night; one of those rare late October nights that made Di regret—briefly—moving to Connecticut. Clear, cool, and crisp, with just enough wind to sweep the effluvium of city life from the streets. Below them, hundreds of lights created a jewel-box effect. If you looked hard, you could even see a few stars beyond the light haze.

  The sliding-glass door to the balcony- had been opened to vent some of the heat and overwhelming perfume (Di’s nose said, nothing under a hundred dollars a bottle), and Di left it that way. She parked her elbows on the balcony railing, looked down, and sighed.

  Andre chuckled. “You warned me, and I did not believe. I apologize, chérie. It is—most remarkable.”

  “Hmm. Exercise that vampiric hearing of yours, and you’ll get an earful,” she said, watching the car lights crawl by, twenty stories below. “When they aren’t slaughtering each other and playing little power-trip games, they’re picking apart their agents and their editors. If you’ve ever wondered why I’ve never bothered going after the big money, it’s because to get it I’d have to play by those rules.”

  “Then I devoutly urge you to remain with the modest ambitions, chérie,” he said fervently. “I—”

  “Excuse me?” said a masculine voice from the balcony door. It had a distinct note of desperation in it. “Are you Diana Tregarde?”

  Di turned. Behind her, peering around the edge of the doorway, was a harried-looking fellow in a baggy, tweedy sweater and slacks—not a costume—with a shock of prematurely graying, sandy-brown hair, glasses, and a mustache. And a look of absolute misery.

  “Robert Harrison, I presume?” she said archly. “Come, join us in the sanctuary. It’s too cold out here for chiffon.”

  “Thank God.” Harrison ducked onto the balcony with the agility of a man evading Iraqi border guards and threw himself down in an aluminum patio chair out of sight of the windows. “I think the password is, ‘Morrie sent me.’ ”

  ”Recognized; pass, friend. Give the man credit; he gave you an ally and an escape route,” Di chuckled. “Don’t tell me; she showed up as the Sacred Priestess Askenazy.”

  “In a nine-foot chiffon train and see-through harem pants, yes,” Harrison groaned. “And let me know I was Out of the Royal Favor for not dressing as What’s-His-Name.”

  “Watirion,” Di said helpfully. “Do you realize you can pronounce that as ’what-tire-iron’? I encourage the notion.”

  “But that wasn’t the worst of it!” Harrison shook his head distractedly, as if somewhat in a daze. “The worst was the monologue in the cab on the way over here. Every other word was Crystal this and Vibration that, Past Life Regression, and Mystic Rituals. The woman’s a whoopie witch!”

  Di blinked. That was a new one on her. “A what?”

  Harrison looked up, and for the first time seemed to see her. “Uh—” He hesitated. “Uh, some of what Morrie said—uh, he seemed to think you—well, you’ve seen things—uh, he said you know things—”

  She fished the pentagram out from under the neck of her jumpsuit and flashed it briefly. “My religion is nontraditional, yes, and there are more things in heaven and earth, et cetera. Now what in Tophet is a whoopie witch?”

  “It’s—uh—a term some friends of mine use. It’s kind of hard to explain.” Harrison’s brow furrowed. “Look, let me give you examples. Real witches have grimoires, sometimes handed down through their families for centuries. Whoopie witches have books they picked up at the supermarket. Usually right at the checkout co
unter.”

  “Real witches have carefully researched spells—” Di prompted.

  “Whoopie witches draw a baseball diamond in chalk on the living-room floor and recite random passages from the Satanic Bible.”

  “When real witches make substitutions, they do so knowing the exact differences the substitute will make—”

  “Whoopie witches slop taco sauce in their pentagram because it looks like blood.”

  “Real witches gather their ingredients by hand—” Di was beginning to enjoy this game.

  “Whoopie witches have a credit card, and lots of catalogues.” Harrison was grinning, and so was Andre.

  “Real witches spend hours in meditation—”

  “Whoopie witches sit under a pyramid they ordered from a catalogue and watch Knott’s Landing.”

  “Real witches cast spells knowing that any change they make in someone’s life will come back at them threefold, for good or ill—”

  “Whoopie witches call up the Hideous Slime from Yosotha to eat their neighbor’s poodle because the bitch got the last carton of Haagen-Dazs double-chocolate at the 7-Eleven.”

  “I think I’ve got the picture. So dear Val decided to take the so-called research she did for the Great Fantasy Novel seriously?” Di leaned back into the railing and laughed. “Oh, Robert, I pity you! Did she try to tell you that the two of you just must have been priestly lovers in a past life in Atlantis?”

  “Lemuria,” Harrison said gloomily. “My God, she must be supporting half the crystal miners in Arkansas.”

  “Don’t feel too sorry for her, Robert,” Di warned him. “With her advances, she can afford it. And I know some perfectly nice people in Arkansas who should only soak her for every penny they can get. Change the subject; you’re safe with us—and if she decides to hit the punch bowl hard enough, you can send her back to her hotel in a cab and she’ll never know the difference. What brings you to New York?”

  “Morrie wants me to meet the new editors at Berkley; he thinks I’ve got a shot at selling them that near-space series I’ve been dying to do. And I had some people here in the city I really needed to see.” He sighed. “And, I’ll admit it, I’d been thinking about writing bodice-rippers under a pseudonym. When you know they’re getting ten times what I am—”