The horses were scattering, all but Shank’s Mare. Shank’s Mare had gone thirty meters before the thing tore into her. Now she thrashed with blood spraying from her ravaged hind leg—Charlie had developed a habit—and the black streak circled back to bite away half of the horse’s head. Shank’s Mare convulsed, then collapsed like a bag of old laundry. The grendel hooked her with its tail and dragged her back into the stream.
Carolyn stood up and walked forward. There was no running from a grendel. Charlie was occupied and the time was now.
The horses had hidden her, and then the rock, but now…Charlie must have seen her at once. The grendel came straight at her, pulling the mass of the horse and a mass of water too, moving no faster than a jogger. It realized its problem and stopped to shake the horse free. Carolyn shot it from six meters away.
The harpoon exploded against Charlie’s wide face.
The grendel came for Carolyn. It was free of the horse, and it accelerated like the best of motorcycles. Carolyn wouldn’t have had time to move even if she’d had the nerve and another weapon. The thing went past her in a wind that twisted her around, and she saw it smash into the hip-high boulder, bounce over it, land tumbling, look about—
Look with what? The blast had torn its face entirely away, leaving cracked red-and-white bone. No eyes, no nose, most of the mouth blown away. A grendel’s ears were nearly invisible, but she couldn’t believe those weren’t gone too.
There was blood in Carolyn’s mouth. She had bitten deeply into her lower lip. Blood soaked into her trousers, and a line of pain crossed her leg above the knee: the tail of the thing must have brushed her. She lowered the harpoon gun and felt the pain in her cramped hands. “Stupid,” she whispered. “Stupid, Charlie. Pulling a horse! I hope your sisters are that stupid.”
Charlie’s tail was a blur like the blades on a Skeeter. She charged in a straight line, with no clear target. Only by accident did she intersect the stream. She stopped then, sank underwater, then lifted again. To breathe. The snorkel was gone too.
Carolyn became aware that she was grinning like a grendel.
The rest. Where were they? She couldn’t see them; the ground curved wrongly, but they must be at least several hundred meters downslope. Three grendels—and two harpoons left. She remembered a line from Dickens and told herself, “I have every confidence that something will turn up.”
She knelt to drink again, then set off to join the horses.
• • •
• • •
THE PORTRAIT OF DARYANREE THE KING
Jim Baen talked me into opening a franchise: we invited friends to write stories set in the Warlock’s universe.
I had hoped that what became THE MAGIC MAY RETURN and MORE MAGIC would re-inspire me. They did; but it might be more accurate to say that writing notes for the other authors inspired me. Some of the ideas I suggested never got used. I wound up writing them myself.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
It was a good game while it lasted. Jovan left the palace that night as a hunted fugitive, ruined by the mannerless sixteen-year-old daughter of a border nobleman; but at noon he had joined His Majesty’s Thirty-Eighth Birthday Celebration as one of the most powerful men in Seaclaw.
The parades and games made pleasant cover for the real business of the Birthday, as two hundred local and visiting nobles gathered to meet anyone who could do them good. By sunset all was circles of private conversation; an outsider might as well go home. The guests had eaten well and drunk better. King Daryanree was monopolizing the youthful Lady Silvara, to the discomfiture of many who coveted her attention, or his.
Jovan should have been watching them. But he had made an ill-considered remark to Raskad Mil, and the princes’ brass-voiced teacher had backed him against a wall to lecture on ghosts.
Jovan was flattered but wary. Old Mil had taught literature and history to the king as well as to his sons. He was treating Jovan as an equal. That could help Jovan’s own reputation…unless Mil caught the purported artist-magician in some egregious ignorance.
“I only said that I had never seen one,” he protested.
Mil would have none of that. “After all, where do barbarous peoples bury their dead? The ancient battlefields become the graveyards, do they not? And so they remain centuries later. You, Jovan, you hail from a war-torn land. Of course you see no ghosts!”
A young man at Jovan’s shoulder asked the question Jovan dared not. “Why would it matter, Raskad Mil? Battlefields—”
“Ancient wars were fought with magic as well as swords. The sites are exhausted of the manna, the magical force. Ghosts give no trouble on a battlefield.”
“But—”
“But Seaclaw’s battles were all at sea, and even that was long ago. Our folk have always buried their dead on Worm’s-Head Hill, with a view of land and sea for their comfort.”
They were superstitious, the Seaclaw folk. Jovan’s smile slipped when peals of laughter suddenly rang through the audience hall. He’d missed something—
Conversation stopped. Lady Silvara was easily the loveliest women in the hall; but she was young and fresh from the border, untrained in courtly ways. In the silence her voice was clear, musical. “Majesty, I would have thought that a man of your age would find interest in less strenuous pursuits!”
The King’s fury showed only for an instant. Give him credit, King Daryanree had learned self-control at the negotiation tables. He said, “But unlike many a lovely young lady, Silvara, I grow no older.”
And Jovan was already working his way through the crowd, not hurrying, but moving. He barely heard Silvara’s, “Dyeing one’s hair does nothing for crow’s-feet, Majesty—”
At the great doors Jovan nodded to the guards and passed outside. A sliver of sun still showed at the northern edge of Worm’s-Head Hill. An autumn chill was setting in. While an attendant went for Jovan’s cloak, another stepped into the courtyard and waved peremptorily toward the line of coaches. Nothing moved. The attendant said, “Councillor, I don’t see your driver.”
Jovan knew about luck. Like wine: when luck turns sour, the whole barrel is sour. “Kassily probably went for a drink. Well, it’s a nice night for a walk.”
“We can provide you with a coachman—”
“No, I’ll just go on down to the World-Turtle and send Kassily back for the coach.” Jovan waited. Death for the price of a cloak? He could not leave without it. In this cold he would seem freakish.
The man returned with Jovan’s cloak, and Jovan wished them both goodnight and strolled off into the growing dark.
Now what?
In any place that knew him, the King’s men could find him. The King would be wanting explanations! Jovan had known that this might come. For eight years he had postponed his departure. The King might die, some fool might steal the painting for its powers; at worst he could be clear before the King’s hairline began to recede; and meanwhile his wealth accumulated in Rynildissen.
Jovan turned left toward the World-Turtle, toward the sea, toward Seaclaw’s ancient hill of the dead.
He dared not go home. He had not married; he had not left hostages for the King to take. His house and lands would be confiscated, of course, and the excellent painting of Jovan himself as a decrepit octogenarian…
But there was money to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life if he could reach Rynildissen. He could buy passage on a ship, if he could reach the docks. Had he enough coins? Never mind; he wore rings; that was what rings were for. He would sell the silver buckles on his shoes if need be.
He passed the tavern, walking faster now. He’d painted that sign himself: the turtle whose shell was the world, afloat in a sea of stars. Real stars were emerging, and the World-Turtle was noisy and bright with candlelight. Kassily, we’ve lost our professions tonight, but you at least will keep your life.
There were no houses beyond the World-Turtle, and Jovan felt free to run. He
had a good view of the castle. Something was happening there. Mounted men galloping down the torchlit drive? But horses wouldn’t come here, nor would the Seaclaw folk. He was passing graves already, though nothing marked them but bare rounded earth or thicker grass: the graves of those who could not afford better.
Jovan was panting now. He passed white stones set upright, with marks chiseled into them. Higher up the stones had been hacked into rectangular shape. He could see small buildings, crypts, a miniature city of the dead lined along the crest of Worm’s-Head Hill. Already he was wading through thickening mist. The night fog might help him.
Hide in a crypt? He would need shelter. A man could go hungry for a few days. It might do him good; he had fed too well, perhaps, these eight years. Water would be a problem, but this was wet country. There would be dew to collect in the morning.
The crypt he was passing was shoulder-high, built of stone with a stone door barred on the outside. The next was like it. Children’s tales spoke of a time when ghosts were deadly dangerous…but an outside bar meant that he could get in.
A miniature castle loomed to his right: the royal crypt, centuries old, with (reputedly) plenty of room left for future generations. No guard would enter there. Jovan circled, making for the great stone door that faced the harbor. The fog was thick, waist-high; it rippled as he moved.
Clothes would be a problem when he reached the harbor. He could hardly walk the docks dressed for a ball! But his cloak would hide him long enough…and Jovan had begun to think past the next hour of life. That was all to the good.
He slowed to a walk, and a grin began to form as he pictured King Daryanree dancing with fury. None would dare go near; how would they get their orders? Would the Guard even know what they were hunting?
Just before the door, the fog rose up and faced him.
Elsewhere the mist was rising to take other shapes, but Jovan didn’t turn his head. This before him was enough: a burly man with a ravaged, eyeless face, six inches broader of shoulder than Jovan and a head taller, wearing the crown of Seaclaw. He leaned on the haft of a two-handed war-axe. The skin of the right arm flapped loose; it had been flayed away nearly to the shoulder. The left hand looked soft, with every bone broken. Loops of…what might have been sausage hung below his torso-armor.
The ghost spoke in a voice that seemed to come from miles away. “I know you. Samal! Usurper! I would kill you slowly, but to what point? Time enough to torment you in the ages after you’re dead,” it shrieked, and the war-axe moved with supernatural speed.
Somehow, Jovan hadn’t thought of moving.
The axe swung down, split him from crown to crotch and drove deep into the dirt. Jovan felt no sensation at all. The old King stared, aghast. He swung from the side, a blow that would have severed Jovan at the waist. Then he howled and hurled the axe away.
The axe was a wisp of mist. The King, turning toward the crypt, lost shape and became a whorl in the waist-high fog. And a voice behind Jovan said, “He’s mad, of course.”
“Is he.” Jovan turned.
Ghosts formed an arc around him. They watched him solemnly, like the audience that often formed to watch him paint. Some were only an unevenness in the mist layer, mere suggestions of human shape. Others showed detail: men and women ravaged by disease or age; the heads of children just showing above the mist; a burly man who hung back from the crowd, whose rope-burned neck hung askew and whose fingertips dripped big droplets of fog.
The nearest had the shape of a lean old man with pointed nose and chin, bald scalp, a fringe of long hair blurred at the ends: a very clear, precise image. That apparition said, “Zale the Tenth was tortured to death. He lasted ten days. It would have driven anyone mad.”
Jovan got his own throat working, largely to see if he could do it. Could he get the ghosts talking? “I take it you got off easier.”
“I think not. The plague is an easier death, but it took my family. Will you be here long?”
“A few days.”
“Good. We’d like the company, and we won’t harm you. Can’t.”
“The manna level’s worn too low.” Jovan sighed, perhaps in relief; he wasn’t sure himself. “Over most of the world ghosts have no power at all. You’re the first I’ve ever seen.”
A child’s voice asked, “Are you a magician? You talk like one.”
“I am,” Jovan said.
The old man’s ghost drifted toward him. Jovan held himself from flinching at its immaterial touch. The ghost reached into Jovan’s chest. Jovan thought he felt cold fingers wrapped around his heart. The ghost grinned (the teeth were missing all down the right side, and scarce on the left) and said, “You’re not.”
“Why not?”
“A magician keeps some of the magic that passes through him. A touch of manna makes a ghost stronger. You don’t have any. We all know about manna here, but how did you find out?”
Jovan sat down on a headstone. “The old woman who taught me to paint, she was a magician. She’d given it up long before I met her, when all the spells gradually stopped working. But Laneerda made her magic by painting. You know, paint a successful hunt, put hairs of the animal and the hunter in the paint. Or paint your own army winning a battle—”
A distant scream caused Jovan to jump. The scream of a horse? Two horses in chorus, down at the foot of the hill.
The specter didn’t appear to have noticed. “Hunters still did that when I was a young man,” it said. “So you’re a painter. Why did you say you were a magician?”
Jovan wore a guilty grin. “Well, the King thinks so.”
“So?”
“Maybe he doesn’t by now. But he did, for eight years. I came to Seaclaw just four days ahead of the King’s thirtieth birthday. I got into the celebration at the palace by painting my landlady’s daughter and bringing it as a present.
“King Daryanree wanted a few words with me. He wanted to meet the girl. She wasn’t as pretty as I painted her. But I mentioned my teacher Laneerda, and Daryanree knew the name. Legend has her a lot more powerful than she ever was! We talked some more, and I saw how much Daryanree hated the idea of getting old. So I told him I could keep it from happening.”
“That sounds dangerous,” the ghost pointed out. “Not to mention dishonest.”
“But they did it that way! Paint a portrait, put hair and fingernail clippings and blood and urine from the subject in the paint. Do it right, the painting grows old instead of the subject. Of course you have to guard the painting, because if that gets hurt…but the better the painting is, the better the spell works. It’s not my fault if the magic isn’t good anymore. I’m good.”
“Why didn’t you just take the money and run?”
It was strange to be talking to a ring of ghosts as if they were any normal audience. Strange, and oddly pleasant, to finally speak his secret where it could not harm him. “Daryanree isn’t a complete fool. He offered me a house and an annual fee. I couldn’t see any way to turn that down without making him suspicious, and it was good money. So I told him it was just as well, because the painting would have to be tended—even Daryanree knows that manna fades with time—and when I told him about the old spell I added some details.
“I painted him naked, and I made him shave so more of his face would show in the painting, otherwise he’d get old under the whiskers. He wouldn’t shave his head. He did agree to keep his face shaved for the rest of his life. It started a court fashion. I made him up a fluid to rinse his hair every few days, to maintain an affinity with the paint—”
“He’ll still get old,” the ghost protested. “Only the dead don’t get old.”
“Well, but I had him washing his hair in berry juice that turns dark, and there’s no gray in his beard because he shaves it off, and maybe he’s getting wrinkled, but who’s going to tell him? Nobody says that to the King! As for the painting, I insisted on absolute privacy while I renewed the spells. Trust me, the King’s painting did grow older!
“I did some
good, too. Daryanree was due to execute a bunch of farmers for not paying their taxes. The hands in the painting showed bloody. I told the King, made him come see. He freed the farmers. When he was ready to declare war on Rynildissen, the painting sprouted a dripping red line across the neck, and his crown and robes turned transparent. That took days. I had to paint it in my house and smuggle it in. But the King signed a peace treaty, and he made me a councillor.
“Then this afternoon the King made an advance to the wrong girl. Right about now he’s staring into a mirror and wondering how he could have been so gullible.”
“And you came here.”
“I thought I’d be safe. I didn’t really believe in ghosts. I was sure they couldn’t hurt me.”
“And now?”
The murmuring around Jovan didn’t sound entirely friendly. Nonetheless Jovan said, “It’s still the way to bet.”
“Do you believe in a finding-stone?”
“Mmm? For finding a man?” Jovan had never heard of such a thing. “Well, it would be magic, of course. It wouldn’t work except in a few places…Why?”
The elderly ghost said, “I was second in command of Zale the Tenth’s forces when I was alive. A lot of us joined the usurper, and that way a lot of blood wasn’t spilled, but the plague that followed…maybe we brought that on us too. Killing a king carries a curse, and Samal’s veins carried no more than a jigger of royal blood. But the Guard had a finding-stone spelled by the wizard Clubfoot himself. The kings of Seaclaw still have it, even if it’s lost some of its power.”
Jovan felt a numbing fear flowing through his body. “Will they dare come here?”
A voice cleared its throat and said, “I did.” It was clearly human and very close.
Jovan didn’t turn. A clean swing of a sword through his neck? When the luck turns sour—“Companion of dogs,” Jovan whispered to the old man’s ghost. “You kept me here. You made me talk. You’re dead! You’re not an officer anymore, you didn’t have to—I didn’t do any real harm—” He couldn’t speak further, his tongue was too thick.