Swords & Dark Magic (49 page)

“It’ll kill you!”

“It could win.” Casimir flashed his teeth, a grin as predatory as any worn by the vocabuvores that had tried to devour him less than an hour before. “But so what? I graduate with honors, I go back to my people, and what then? Fighting demons, writing books, advising ministers? To hell with it. In the long run I’m still a footnote. But if I can seize
this,
rule
this,
that’s more power than ten thousand lifetimes of dutiful slavery.”

“Aspirant Vrana,” said Astriza. She had come up behind Laszlo, so quietly that he hadn’t heard her approach. “Casimir. Is something the matter?”

“On the contrary, Librarian Mezaros. Everything is better than ever.”

“Casimir,” she said, “I’ve been listening. I strongly urge you to reconsider this course of action, before—”

“Before
what
? Before I do what you people should have done a thousand years ago when this place bucked the harness? Stay back, Librarian, or I’ll weave a death for you before your spells can touch me. Look on the bright side…anything is possible once this is done. The University and I will have to reach…an accommodation.”

“What about me, Caz?” Laszlo threw his tattered cloak aside and placed a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Would you slay me, too?”

“Interesting question, Laszlo. Would you really pull that thing on me?”

“Five years! I thought we were friends!” The sword came out in a silver blur, and Laszlo shook with fury.

“You could have gone on thinking that if you’d just left me alone for a few minutes. I already said I was sorry.”

“Step out of the circle, Casimir. Step out, or decide which one of us you have time to kill before we can reach you.”

“Laszlo, even for someone as mildly magical as yourself, you disappoint me. I said I checked your sword personally this morning, didn’t I?”

Casimir snapped his fingers, and Laszlo’s sword wrenched itself from his grasp so quickly that it scraped the skin from most of his knuckles. Animated by magical force, it whirled in the air and thrust itself firmly against Laszlo’s throat. He gasped—the razor-edge that had slashed vocabuvore flesh like wet parchment was pressed firmly against his windpipe, and a modicum of added pressure would drive it in.

“Now,” shouted Casimir, “Indexers,
out
! If anyone else comes in, if I am interfered with, or knocked unconscious or by any means further
annoyed,
my enchantment on that sword will slice this aspirant’s head off.”

The blue-robed Indexers withdrew from the room hastily, and the heavy door clanged shut behind them.

“Astriza,” said Casimir, “somewhere in this room is the master index book, the one updated by the enchantments. Bring it to me now.”

“Casimir,” said the Librarian, “it’s still not too late for you to—”

“How will you write up Laszlo’s death in your report? ‘Regretfully unavoidable’? Bring me the damn book.”

“As you wish,” she said coldly. She moved to a nearby table, and returned with a thick volume, two feet high and nearly as wide.

“Simply hand it over,” said Casimir. “Don’t touch the warding paint.”

She complied, and Casimir ran his right hand over the cover of the awkwardly large volume, cradling it against his chest with his left arm.

“Well, then, Laszlo,” he said. “This is it. All the information collected by the index enchantments is sorted in the master books like this one. My little alterations will reverse the process, making this a focus for me to reshape all this chaos to my own liking.”

“Casimir,” said Laszlo, “please—”

“Hoist a few for me tonight if you live through whatever happens next. I’m moving past such things.”

He flipped the book open, and a pale silvery glow rippled up from the pages he selected. Casimir took a deep breath, raised his right hand, and began to intone the words of a spell.

Things happened very fast then. Astriza moved, but not against Casimir—instead she hit Laszlo, taking him completely by surprise with an elbow to the chest. As he toppled backward, she darted her right arm past his face, slamming her leather-armored limb against Laszlo’s blade before it could shift positions to follow him. The sword fought furiously, but Astriza caught the hilt in her other hand, and with all of her strength managed to lever it into a stack of encyclopedias, where it stuck, quivering furiously.

At the same instant, Casimir started screaming.

Laszlo sat up, rubbing his chest, shocked to find his throat uncut, and he was just in time to see the
thing
that erupted out of the master index book, though it took his mind a moment to properly assemble the details. The silvery glow of the pages brightened and flickered, like a magical portal opening, for that was exactly what it was—a portal opening horizontally like a hatch rather than vertically like a door.

Through it came a gleaming, segmented black thing nearly as wide as the book itself, something like a man-sized centipede, and uncannily fast. In an instant it had sunk half a dozen hooked foreclaws into Casimir’s neck and cheeks, and then came the screams, the most horrible Laszlo had ever heard. Casimir lost his grip on the book, but it didn’t matter—the massive volume floated in midair of its own accord while the new arrival did its gruesome work.

With Casimir’s head gripped firmly in its larger claws, it extended dozens of narrower pink appendages from its underside, a writhing carpet of hollow, fleshy needles. These plunged into Casimir’s eyes, his face, his mouth and neck, and only bare trickles of blood slid from the holes they bored, for the thing began to pulse and buzz rhythmically, sucking fluid and soft tissue from the body of the once-handsome aspirant. The screams choked to a halt, for Casimir had nothing left to scream with.

Laszlo whirled away from this and lost what was left of his long-ago breakfast. By the time he managed to wipe his mouth and stumble to his feet at last, the affair was finished. The book creature released Casimir’s desiccated corpse, its features utterly destroyed, a weirdly sagging and empty thing that hung nearly hollow on its bones and crumpled to the ground. The segmented monster withdrew, and the book slammed shut with a sound like a thunderclap.

“Caz,” whispered Laszlo, astonished to find his eyes moistening. “Gods, Caz, why?”

“Master Molnar hoped he wouldn’t try it,” said Astriza. She scuffed the white circle with the tip of a boot and reached out to grab the master index book from where it floated in midair. “I said he showed all the classic signs. It’s not always pleasant being right.”

“The book was a trap,” said Laszlo.

“Well, the whole thing was a trap, Laszlo. We know perfectly well what sort of hints we drop in the introductory materials, and what a powerful sorcerer could theoretically attempt to do with the index enchantments.”

“I never even saw it,” muttered Laszlo.

“And you think that makes you some sort of failure? Grow up, Laszlo. It just makes you well-adjusted. Not likely to spend weeks of your life planning a way to seize more power than any mortal can sanely command. Look, every once in a while, a place like the High College is bound to get a student with excessive competence and no scruples, right?”

“I suppose it must,” said Laszlo. “I just…I never would have guessed my own chambers-mate…”

“The most dangerous sort. The ones that make themselves obvious can be dealt with almost at leisure. It’s the ones that can disguise their true nature, get along socially, feign friendships…those are much, much worse. The only real way to catch them is to leave rope lying around and let them knot their own nooses.”

“Merciful gods.” Laszlo retrieved his sword and slid it into the scabbard for what he hoped would be the last time that day. “What about the body?”

“Library property. Some of the grimoires in here are bound in human skin, and occasionally need repair.”

“Are you
kidding
?”

“Waste not, want not.”

“But his family—”

“Won’t get to know. Because he vanished in an unfortunate magical accident just after you turned and left him in here, didn’t he?”

“I…damn. I don’t know if I can—”

“The alternative is disgrace for him, disgrace for his family, and a major headache for everyone who knew him, especially his chambers-mate for the last five years.”

“The Indexers will just play along?”

“The Indexers see what they’re told to see. I sign their pay chits.”

“It just seems incredible,” said Laszlo. “To stand here and hide everything about his real fate, as casually as you’d shelve a book.”

“Who around here
casually
shelves a book?”

“Good point.” Laszlo sighed and held his hand out to Astriza. “I suppose, then, that Casimir vanished in a magical accident just after I turned and left him in here.”

“Rely on us to handle the details, Laszlo.” She gave his hand a firm, friendly shake. “After all, what better place than a library for keeping things hushed?”

TANITH LEE became a freelance writer in 1975, and has been one ever since. Her first published books were children’s fantasies
The Dragon Hoard
and
Animal Castle
. Her first adult fantasy novel,
The Birthgrave,
was the start of a long association with DAW, which published more than twenty of her works of fantasy, SF, and horror in the 1970s and 1980s. She received the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award in 1980 for
Death’s Master,
World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Story in 1983 (for “The Gorgon”) and 1984 (for “Elle est Trois (La Mort)”). Enormously prolific, Lee has recently published a trilogy of pirate novels for young adults (
Piratica
and sequels), a science fiction novel for adults (
Mortal Suns
), an adult fantasy trilogy (Lionwolf), a young adult fantasy trilogy (
Claidi
and sequels), and the first of two retrospective short story collections (
Tempting the Gods
). Upcoming are new books in the Flat Earth series. In 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror. Tanith Lee lives with her husband, the writer and artist John Kaiine, on the southeast coast of England

TWO LIONS, A WITCH, AND THE WAR-ROBE

Tanith Lee

T
o come on the apparently unguarded forest city of Cashloria was often a surprise, since it lay, as its name implied, deep in one of the vast ancient forests of Trosp. Enormous pines, cedars, beeches, oaks, poplars, and other trees towered up, for hundreds of miles. A single wide road, in places rather overgrown, eccentrically bisected the area. Once night began, the city was quite arresting. Then its thousands of lamp-lit windows, many with stained glass, blazed in slices between the trunks. Huge old stone mansions, public halls, and various fortresses appeared, but all smothered in among the forest, with trees growing everywhere about them, in some cases out of the stonework itself. In the narrow central valley to which the road eventually descended, where lay the city’s hub, ran the thrashing River Ca, along which only the most courageous water-traffic ventured, and that in the calm of summer.

It was now fall. The forest had clothed itself in scarlet, copper, magenta, black, and gold. Audible from a day’s ride away, the Ca roared angrily with pre-freeze melt-snow from distant mountains. Sunset dropped screaming red on the horizon and went out, and utter darkness closed its wings.

Zire the Scholar had been traveling a long while. He was weary and aggrieved. Yesterday, forest brigands had set on him and stolen his horse. Though naturally he had tracked and tricked them and stolen it back, the horse next cast a shoe, so now both of them must plod.

As night gathered and he spotted the lights of Cashloria, Zire gave a grunt of relief. He had read of the city over a year before, and set out to see it along with others, but during the last hour doubted he would find it at all. Benign unhuman guardians were supposed to take care of the conurbation, for example by protecting it with sorcery rather than city walls. This evening Zire had begun to think they had also rendered the place invisible. But lights shone. Here he was.

Zire was young and tall, and well-made. His hair was, where light revealed it, the rich somber red of the dying beech leaves. His eyes were the cold gray of approaching winter skies. His spirit was not dissimilar: fires vied with melancholy, exuberance with introversion.

Presently, the young man reached a promontory, thick with trees and pillared buildings. Below, the landscape tumbled down, still clad in darkling foliage, roofs, and windows of ruby and jade, to a coil of the angry river. A few lights also marked the river’s course, but mainly it was made obvious by its uproar. They said, in Cashloria—or so Zire had read—“The Ca is foul-mouthed and always shouting.”

Nevertheless, here was an inn, by name the Plucked Dragon.

Lanterns burned, and Zire, having tethered his horse, and maneuvered through a hedge of willows, thrust in at the door.

At once a loud outcry resounded, after which total silence enveloped the smoky yellow-lit room beyond. It was not that the several customers had reacted in astonishment on seeing a newcomer; they were reasonably used to visitors in Cashloria. It was simply that, during the exact moment Zire stepped into the inn, a man standing at the long counter had swung about and plunged his knife between the ribs of another. Everyone, Zire included, watched in inevitable awe as the knife’s unlucky recipient dropped dead on the ground.

The murderer, however, only wiped his blade on a sleeve, sheathed the weapon, and turned to regard the landlord. “Fetch me another jug, you pig. Then clear that up,” jerking his thumb over-shoulder to indicate the corpse.

He was, the murderer, a burly fellow, with dark locks hanging over a flat low brow. He wore a guardsman’s uniform of leather and studs, with a gaudy insignia of two crossed swords surmounted by a diadem. Certainly no one argued with him. Here rushed an inn-boy with a brimming jug, and there went the landlord himself with another inn-boy, hauling the dead body off along the floor and out the back. Even the third man, on whose sleeve the murderer had wiped his knife—not, presumably, wishing to soil his own—made no complaint.