The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (23 page)

High soared the dragons until below them was the heaving black
mass, marring the landscape, the fear-driven horde of barbarians
who, in their ignorance, had sought to conquer the lands beloved of
Elric of Melniboné.

“Ho, dragon brothers—loose your venom—burn—burn! And in
your burning cleanse the world!”

Stormbringer joined in the wild shout and, diving, the dragons
swept across the sky, down upon the crazed barbarians, shooting
streams of combustible venom which water could not extinguish, and
the stink of charred flesh drifted upwards through the smoke and
flame so that the scene became a scene of hell—and proud Elric was
a Lord of Demons reaping awful vengeance.

He did not gloat, for he had done only what was needed, that
was all. He shouted no more but turned his dragon mount back and
upward, sounding his horn and summoning the other reptiles to him.
And as he climbed, the exultation left him and was replaced by cold
horror.

I am still a Melnibonéan, he thought, and cannot rid myself of that
whatever else I do. And, in my strength I am still weak, ready to use
this cursed blade in any small emergency. With a shout of loathing,
he flung the sword away, flung it into space. It screamed like a woman
and went plummeting downwards towards the distant earth.

“There,” he said, “it is done at last.” Then, in calmer mood, he
returned to where he had left his friends and guided his reptilian
mount to the ground.

Dyvim Slorm said: “Where is the sword of your forefathers, King
Elric?” But the albino did not answer, just thanked his kinsman for
the loan of the dragon leader. Then they all remounted the dragons
and flew back towards Karlaak to tell them the news.

Zarozinia saw her lord riding the first dragon and knew that
Karlaak and the Western World were saved, the Eastern World
avenged. His stance was proud but his face was grave as he went to
meet her outside the city. She saw in him a return of an earlier sorrow
which he had thought forgotten. She ran to him and he caught her in
his arms, holding her close but saying nothing.

He bade farewell to Dyvim Slorm and his fellow Imrryrians and,
with Moonglum and the messenger following at a distance, went into
the city and thence to his house, impatient of the congratulations
which the citizens showered upon him.

“What is it, my lord?” Zarozinia said as, with a sigh, he sprawled
wearily upon the great bed. “Can speaking help?”

“I’m tired of swords and sorcery, Zarozinia, that is all. But at last I
have rid myself once and for all of that hellblade which I had thought
my destiny to carry always.”

“Stormbringer you mean?”

“What else?”

She said nothing. She did not tell him of the sword which,
apparently of its own volition, had come screaming into Karlaak and
passed into the armoury to hang, in its old place, in darkness there.

He closed his eyes and drew a long, sighing breath.

“Sleep well, my lord,” she said softly. With tearful eyes and a sad
mouth she lay herself down beside him.

She did not welcome the morning.

JOANNA RUSS

T
his
is
the
tale
of a voyage that is of interest only as it concerns the
doings of one small, gray-eyed woman. Small women exist in plenty—
so do those with gray eyes—but this woman was among the wisest of
a sex that is surpassingly wise. There is no surprise in that (or should
not be) for it is common knowledge that Woman was created fully a
quarter of an hour before Man, and has kept that advantage to this
very day. Indeed, legend has it that the first man, Leh, was fashioned
from the sixth finger of the left hand of the first woman, Loh, and
that is why women have only five fingers on the left hand. The lady
with whom we concern ourselves in this story had all her six fingers,
and what is more, they all worked.

In the seventh year before the time of which we speak, this woman, a neat, level-browed, governessy person called Alyx, had come to the City of Ourdh as part of a religious delegation from the hills intended to convert the dissolute citizens to the ways of virtue and the one true God, a Bang tree of awful majesty. But Alyx, a young woman of an intellectual bent, had not been in Ourdh two months when she decided that the religion of Yp (as the hill god was called) was a disastrous piece of nonsense, and that deceiving a young woman in matters of such importance was a piece of thoughtlessness for which it would take some weeks of hard, concentrated thought to think up a proper reprisal. In due time the police chased Alyx’s coreligionists down the Street of Heaven and Hell and out the swamp gate to be bitten by the mosquitoes that lie in wait among the reeds, and Alyx—with a shrug of contempt—took up a modest living as pick-lock, a profession that gratified her sense of subtlety. It provided her with a living, a craft and a society. Much of the wealth of this richest and vilest cities stuck to her fingers but most of it dropped off again, for she was not much awed by the things of this world. Going their legal or illegal ways in this seventh year after her arrival, citizens of Ourdh saw only a woman with short, black hair and a sprinkling of freckles across her milky nose; but Alyx had ambitions of becoming a Destiny. She was thirty (a dangerous time for men and women alike) when this story begins. Yp moved in his mysterious ways, Alyx entered the employ of the lady Edarra, and Ourdh saw neither of them again—for a while.

Alyx was walking with a friend down the Street of Conspicuous
Display one sultry summer’s morning when she perceived a young
woman, dressed like a jeweler’s tray and surmounted with a great coil
of red hair, waving to her from the table of a wayside garden-terrace.

“Wonderful are the ways of Yp,” she remarked, for although she
no longer accorded that deity any respect, yet her habits of speech
remained. “There sits a red-headed young woman of no more than
seventeen years and with the best skin imaginable, and yet she
powders her face.”

“Wonderful indeed,” said her friend. Then he raised one finger and
went his way, a discretion much admired in Ourdh. The young lady,
who had been drumming her fingers on the tabletop and frowning
like a fury, waved again and stamped one foot.

“I want to talk to you,” she said sharply. “Can’t you hear me?”

“I have six ears,” said Alyx, the courteous reply in such a situation.
She sat down and the waiter handed her the bill of fare.

“You are not listening to me,” said the lady.

“I do not listen with my eyes,” said Alyx.

“Those who do not listen with their eyes as well as their ears,” said
the lady sharply, “can be made to regret it!”

“Those,” said Alyx, “who on a fine summer’s morning threaten
their fellow-creatures in any way, absurdly or otherwise, both mar
the serenity of the day and break the peace of Yp, who,” she said, “is
mighty.”

“You are impossible!” cried the lady. “Impossible!” and she
bounced up and down in her seat with rage, fixing her fierce brown
eyes on Alyx. “Death!” she cried. “Death and bones!” and that was
a ridiculous thing to say at eleven in the morning by the side of the
most wealthy and luxurious street in Ourdh, for such a street is one
of the pleasantest places in the world if you do not watch the beggars.
The lady, insensible to all this bounty, jumped to her feet and glared
at the little pick-lock; then, composing herself with an effort (she
clenched both hands and gritted her teeth like a person in the worst
throes of marsh fever), she said—calmly—

“I want to leave Ourdh.”

“Many do,” said Alyx, courteously.

“I require a companion.”

“A lady’s maid?” suggested Alyx. The lady jumped once in her seat
as if her anger must have an outlet somehow; then she clenched her
hands and gritted her teeth with doubled vigor.

“I must have protection,” she snapped.

“Ah?”

“I’ll pay!” (This was almost a shriek.)

“How?” said Alyx, who had her doubts.

“None of your business,” said the lady.

“If I’m to serve you, everything’s my business. Tell me. All right,
how much?”

The lady named a figure, reluctantly.

“Not enough,” said Alyx. “Particularly not knowing how. Or why.
And why protection? From whom? When?” The lady jumped to her
feet. “By water?” continued Alyx imperturbably. “By land? On foot?
How far? You must understand, little one—”

“Little one!”
cried the lady, her mouth dropping open.
“Little one!”

“If you and I are to do business—”

“I’ll have you thrashed—” gasped the lady, out of breath, “I’ll have
you so—”

“And let the world know your plans?” said Alyx, leaning forward
with one hand under her chin. The lady stared, and bit her lip, and
backed up, and then she hastily grabbed her skirts as if they were
sacks of potatoes and ran off, ribbons fluttering behind her.
Wine-
colored ribbons,
thought Alyx,
with red hair; that’s clever.
She ordered
brandy and filled her glass, peering curiously into it where the hot,
midmorning sun of Ourdh suffused into a winy glow, a sparkling,
trembling, streaky mass of floating brightness.
To
(she said to herself
with immense good humor)
all the young ladies in the world.
“And,” she
added softly, “great quantities of money.”

At night Ourdh is a suburb of the Pit, or that steamy, muddy bank
where the gods kneel eternally, making man; though the lights of
the city never show fairer than then. At night the rich wake up
and the poor sink into a distressed sleep, and everyone takes to the
flat, whitewashed roofs. Under the light of gold lamps the wealthy
converse, sliding across one another, silky but never vulgar; at night
Ya, the courtesan with the gold breasts (very good for the jaded taste)
and Garh the pirate, red-bearded, with his carefully cultivated stoop,
and many many others, all ascend the broad, white steps to someone’s
roof. Each step carries a lamp, each lamp sheds a blurry radiance on
a tray, each tray is crowded with sticky, pleated, salt, sweet... Alyx
ascended, dreaming of snow. She was there on business. Indeed
the sky was overcast that night, but a downpour would not drive
the guests indoors; a striped silk awning with gold fringes would be
unrolled over their heads, and while the fringes became matted and
wet and water spouted into the garden below, ladies would put out
their hands (or their heads—but that took a brave lady on account
of the coiffure) outside the awning and squeal as they were soaked by
the warm, mild, neutral rain of Ourdh. Thunder was another matter.
Alyx remembered hill storms with gravel hissing down the gullies
of streams and paths turned to cold mud. She met the dowager in
charge and that ponderous lady said:

“Here she is.”

It was Edarra, sulky and seventeen, knotting a silk handkerchief
in a wet wad in her hand and wearing a sparkling blue-and-green bib.

“That’s the necklace,” said the dowager. “Don’t let it out of your sight.”

“I see,” said Alyx, passing her hand over her eyes.

When they were left alone, Edarra fastened her fierce eyes on
Alyx and hissed, “Traitor!”

“What for?” said Alyx.

“Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” shouted the girl. The nearest guests
turned to listen and then turned away, bored.

“You grow dull,” said Alyx, and she leaned lightly on the roof-rail
to watch the company. There was the sound of angry stirrings and
rustlings behind her. Then the girl said in a low voice (between her
teeth), “Tonight someone is going to steal this necklace.”

Alyx said nothing. Ya floated by with her metal breasts gleaming
in the lamplight; behind her, Peng the jeweler.

“I’ll get seven hundred ounces of gold for it!”

“Ah?” said Alyx.

“You’ve spoiled it,” snapped the girl. Together they watched the
guests, red and green, silk on silk like oil on water, the high-crowned
hats and earrings glistening, the bracelets sparkling like a school of
underwater fish. Up came the dowager accompanied by a landlord of
the richest and largest sort, a gentleman bridegroom who had buried
three previous wives and would now have the privilege of burying the
Lady Edarra—though to hear him tell it, the first had died of overeat
ing, the second of drinking and the third of a complexion-cleanser she
had brewed herself. Nothing questionable in
that
. He smiled and took
Edarra’s upper arm between his thumb and finger. He said, “Well,
little girl.” She stared at him. “Don’t be defiant,” he said. “You’re go
ing to be rich.” The dowager bridled. “I mean—even richer,” he said
with a smile. The mother and the bridegroom talked business for a
few minutes, neither watching the girl; then they turned abruptly and
disappeared into the mixing, moving company, some of whom were
leaning over the rail screaming at those in the garden below, and
some of whom were slipping and sitting down involuntarily in thirty-
five pounds of cherries that had just been accidentally overturned
onto the floor.

“So that’s why you want to run away,” said Alyx. The Lady Edarra
was staring straight ahead of her, big tears rolling silently down her
cheeks. “Mind your business,” she said.

“Mind yours,” said Alyx softly, “and do not insult me, for I get
rather hard then.” She laughed and fingered the necklace, which was
big and gaudy and made of stones the size of a thumb. “What would
you do,” she said, “if I told you yes?”

“You’re impossible!” said Edarra, looking up and sobbing.

“Praised be Yp that I exist then,” said Alyx, “for I do ask you if
your offer is open. Now that I see your necklace more plainly, I incline
towards accepting it—whoever you hired was cheating you, by the
way; you can get twice again as much—though that gentleman we
saw just now has something to do with my decision.” She paused.
“Well?”

Edarra said nothing, her mouth open.

“Well, speak!”

“No,” said Edarra.

“Mind you,” said Alyx wryly, “you still have to find someone
to travel with, and I wouldn’t trust the man you hired—probably
hired—for five minutes in a room with twenty other people. Make
your choice. I’ll go with you as long and as far as you want, anywhere
you want.”

“Well,” said Edarra, “yes.”

“Good,” said Alyx. “I’ll take two-thirds.”

“No!” cried Edarra, scandalized.

“Two-thirds,” said Alyx, shaking her head. “It has to be worth my
while. Both the gentleman you hired to steal your necklace—and
your mother—and your husband-to-be—and heaven alone knows
who else—will be after us before the evening is out. Maybe. At any
rate, I want to be safe when I come back.”

“Will the money—?” said Edarra.

“Money does all things,” said Alyx. “And I have long wanted to
return to this city, this paradise, this—swamp!—with that which
makes power! Come,” and she leapt onto the roof-rail and from there
into the garden, landing feet first in the loam and ruining a bed of
strawberries. Edarra dropped beside her, all of a heap and panting.