The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (58 page)

“Why not? It’s as good a name as any.”

“But
where
is it?”

He frowned and sat back, crossing his legs under him. Cori was
relieved to see his genitals were the normal size and color. He said,
“I used to think it was a special place created just for me. My prison.
But now that you’ve shown up, well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s where
you end up when you don’t fit into any category. Not alive or dead.”

An old joke came to Cori’s mind. She grinned. “Everybody’s got
to be someplace.” She thought of the shield she’d put up the moment
before the hunger turned on her. If her body couldn’t survive and
couldn’t die either, something had to happen. “Am I really here?” she
said. “I mean, is this my body? Damn, you know what I mean.”

He shrugged. “Is this
my
body? It doesn’t need any food or sleep. I
really don’t know.”

“But if my body is lying out there—”

“Wherever your real body is, it’s not—not out there.” He tilted his
head upward, as if the real world lay above them.

How do you know?”

“I checked.” When she just stared at him, he added, “My
representative.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“An ugly green dragon. Remember?”

“Oh. Oh, of course. Look, I’m sorry.”

“But you didn’t do anything. Except to yourself. Believe me, being
here
is punishment enough for any mistakes you’ve ever made in your
whole life.”

Cori studied his face, the smile that stayed just this side of
bitterness. “Who are you?” she asked.

The smile broadened. “Haven’t you guessed? I’m Morin Jay.”

Between them they pieced the story together. Morin Jay was indeed
a merchant, or at least had planned to be, having been a student
until his father’s death. And yes, he had bought the house overlook
ing the sea, acting through his father’s agents so that no one in Sorai
had actually met him. Eager to see his new home he had ridden out
alone, before the servants had actually come from Sorai to open the
house. The ruins had captivated him immediately, so that he used
the house only for sleeping, and after a couple of nights did even
that among the stones. Whether the demon or simple curiosity had
gripped him he couldn’t say, but slowly he became more and more
drawn to the black well and its pinpoint of light. Like Cori he’d
grown faint just looking over the blue stone; unlike her he couldn’t
stop himself looking again and again, even when the light glowed,
then rushed up at him. He made one great effort of will to break
loose; and failed. There was a roar that might have been laughter
if it had been human. For an instant he sensed himself alive but
changed, vast, and tenuous as smoke. Then that too vanished, and
he was “Nowhere.”

But if the demon had hoped to take Morin Jay’s place and be done
with him he was disappointed. Though hardly a wizard Morin had
learned in his studies to direct his will, and after an endless time he
found he could glimpse or sense the “outside.” Just for a moment, and
then his will collapsed, but it was enough to see the demon enjoying
its freedom. Again Morin focused his will, powered by a hate he never
would have thought possible for him.

Then suddenly, one day he was free, he could taste the air and
touch the living Earth. It took only a moment before exhilaration
gave way to horror as he discovered the monstrous form his rage had
taken.

“Do you suppose that was Morin—the demon’s original form?”
Cori asked.

“And we changed places? I don’t know. I’m not sure that thing
ever owned a physical form at all, at least one that wasn’t an illusion.
It might just be wild energy. Do you know what wizards mean by
a pattern breaker?” She nodded. “Maybe someone, with a lot of
effort, managed to imprison this particular breaker in that black well.
Hoping no useless fool would set him free.”

Cori ignored his bitterness; she needed information. “Well, where
did the dragon come from?”

Morin looked away. “I’m afraid that monster was me, what I’d
become, made myself through hate and fear. A very graphic demon
stration.”

“But you don’t know that.” She took his hands, disoriented by
the dreamlike sense of feeling and not feeling at the same time. “The
demon might have made that form, had it waiting for you, you could
say, in case you ever broke loose. To make you give up.”

A weak smile broke his despair. “If he did, it backfired on him.”
That first time Morin had stayed outside only a few moments, hurled
back by shock. But success, strange as it was, had strengthened him.
He tried again and again. Why the demon didn’t (or more likely
couldn’t) kill him he didn’t know, but he used his small powers to
devastate the “merchant’s” wealth.

And so the demon had hired an assassin, hoping to blast Morin Jay
once and for all. But not just any assassin. Someone too experienced
might have sensed the malignant force hidden in the plump merchant.
No, he must have looked around carefully until he found just the
Guild member he wanted; a stupid, arrogant girl.

When she’d finished telling her part of the story Cori stared off
at the endless dull brown emptiness, where the flat “ground” merged
with the blank sky. Morin asked, “What are you thinking?”

She said, “I’m wondering what ugly toad shape I’ll become if I
break loose from here.”

Morin Jay laughed.

Their non-world never changed, always the same dull light without a
sun or moon, the same brown flat ground you couldn’t really feel, even
though it met your foot when you stamped. They walked, sometimes
for hours, their minds insisted, though these bodies of theirs never
tired, and it always stayed the same. Once, Cori tried to teach him
the unwilled stride. But when she emptied herself of will to let the
Earth move her feet, nothing came, a true emptiness that so appalled
her she could only stand, paralyzed, and whimper, until Morin Jay
came to hold her, lightly stroking the cold smooth body.

They fought at first. Cori wanted to get out, through will or hate
or whatever means she could find. Morin Jay wanted company.
He reasoned with her; her body was safe—probably—and when it
woke up she would snap back to it—probably. He shouted, called
her a “selfish bitch murderess”; he cried, trying in broken sentences
to tell her of his loneliness. Cori stamped off, thinking how she had
always been alone, how only an assassin really understood loneliness,
thinking, “I can’t stay here. I can’t stand this place.” And thinking
finally that Morin Jay had stood it, by himself, for years. She walked
back to him, and never mentioned leaving again.

It was the cold that moved them closer. Not the air—that always
stayed insipidly warm but the cold deep in their “bodies.” They began
to huddle together, fighting for warmth. They pressed and stroked
each other and suddenly Cori was thrown back a dozen years to Rann
kissing her breasts, her belly. “No,” she said, “I can’t.” She tried to pull
away, but not very hard, for Morin was able to hold on, whispering,
“It’s all right. Believe me.”

“It’s not all right,” she wept. “You damn idiot. You don’t understand.
I’m an assassin.”

“Not here.”

“Here, anywhere. You don’t know what that means.”

“Not here. It doesn’t count here.”

She stared at him as warmth moved in her for the first time since
she’d arrived, no, for the first time in years. The warmth opened up
inside her and Cori sobbed, in fear, in joy, in memory at the infinite
loneliness that ended as Morin Jay entered her.

Years later, Cori would try obsessively, like a bleary alchemist mixing
formula after formula, to work out how long she and Jay had spent
in that place without time, how many days in a world without night.
However long was too short.

Their lovemaking was curious, wondrous and unsatisfying at the
same time. Their bodies nearly melted into each other, yet neither
would ever climax in the usual sense. Often they simply lay in each
other’s arms, talking of their lives outside, while their hands moved of
their own accord across each other’s body. Jay told her of his studies,
of his childhood in a house so big he grew scared he’d get lost and no
one would ever find him. Cori also talked about her childhood, and
sometimes about her life now, and the way people looked at her or left
the room if she entered in her uniform. She never told him, however,
about the moment those two lives merged, that day with Rann on a
grassy hill.

They talked and made love, and played silly games and made love,
and when Jay started to speak of all the things he missed outside, Cori
kissed him or joked or picked a fight. One “day,” in the midst of their
peculiar passion, Cori lost, for just an instant, even that dreamlike
sense of her body pressed against his. For a moment she was alone
and lying on her back, with a cloudy sky and a warm breeze washing
her face. Then it flickered away again, leaving her rigid and scared,
with Jay holding her, asking what had happened. She tried not to
tell him, to make something up. When he insisted and she gave in,
he said nothing, only sighed and walked away. “Are you angry?” she
asked. From the beginning she always expected him to in some way
dismiss her, from boredom, or from disgust.

“Angry?” he said, and turned his stricken face to her. “Oh, Cori.”
They held each other, trying to form one creature stronger than the
emptiness surrounding them.

“You ran away from me,” she said.

He shook his head. “Darling Cori, don’t you understand?
You’re
leaving
me
. And I’m so damned jealous.”

“No,” she said, “it’s not true. I’ll never leave you.” As he held
her she heard a sound, like whispers, like the movement of grass, or
faraway waves.

The next time they made love it happened again, this time long
enough for Cori to glimpse rubble around her. Without a word she
and Jay stopped making love, stopped even holding each other except
when the nearness became unbearable.

What amused them before—Jay’s stories, Cori’s acrobatics or self-
deprecating jokes—now became embarrassments, as if they could
hear a voice saying, “Is this all you can think of to spend your last
moments together?”

When it came it happened in such a simple way. Jay was telling
her something about his father; long afterwards Cori tried to bring
back what he’d been saying and could never remember a single word.
As she watched him his voice vanished, just as if he were playing a
child’s game to make her think she was deaf. In its place she heard
birds, and the vague sound of summer wind. He must have seen the
look on her face (what had happened to her assassin impassivity?) for
his mouth hung open a moment, then simply closed. She shouted his
name, not knowing if he could hear her, and reached for him.

Too late. The birds grew louder, filling her head. Light burned her
eyes.

Suddenly she was lying, no, tossing like a woman in a fit, on a rock-
strewn hilltop, her body impossibly heavy and hot, soaked in sweat.
She stopped shaking. The Assassin muscle control was returning
automatically, and she hated it. Slowly she got to her knees under a
blinding sun.

“Jay,” she called, and turned, hoping at least to see the monster
that stood for him. She knew she wouldn’t. She could sense the block
in the Earth again, but that was all.

And she could sense something else as well: a force as brutal as
a forest fire, yet somehow unsure of itself, or maybe limited by some
ancient laws Cori didn’t understand. Whatever held her enemy back,
the assassin was grateful. She needed time, to gather her strength, to
make a plan. Because now that she’d returned, Coriia wanted only
one thing. Revenge. For Jay, for herself; and for the Guild. Years now
they had been her family, her people, and no demon was going to play
them for fools.