The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (66 page)

Toler woke suddenly to avoid seeing his servant’s face. He was
drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. “I’ve got to get away from
here,” he said. Still, he stayed on, three more days. On the evening of
the third day, he gave orders for the grooms to ready Nod for travel
early in the morning. Before turning in, he went to the balcony and
sat, staring out at the stars. “Garone, you were right,” he said aloud.
“I’ve fallen in love, but tribulation and certain death might have been
preferable.” He dozed off.

A few minutes later, he awoke to the sound of Greppen’s footfalls
receding into the distance. He sat up, and as he did, he discovered
a pale yellow envelope in his lap.
For The Coral Heart
was inscribed
across the front. The back was affixed with wax, bearing, what he
assumed, was the official seal of the House of Maltomass, ornate
lettering surrounding the image of an owl with a snake writhing in
its beak. He tore it open and read, “
Come now to my chambers. Your
Lady
.”

He sprang up off the divan and summoned Garone to lead him.
They moved quickly through the halls, the tulpa skimming along
above the blue marble floors like a ghost. In the Hall of Tears, they
came upon a staircase and climbed up four flights. At the top of those
steps was a sitting room, at the back of which was a large wooden
door, opened only a sliver. Toler instructed Garone to stand guard
and to alert him if anyone approached. He carefully opened the door
and entered into a dark room that led into a hall at the end of which
he saw a light. He put his left hand around the grip of the sword and
proceeded.

Before reaching the lighted chamber he smelled the vague scent
of orange oil and cinnamon. As he stepped out of the darkness of the
hall, the first thing that caught his attention was Lady Maltomass,
sitting up, supported by large silk pillows, in her canopied bed. The
coverlet was drawn up to her stomach and beneath it she was naked.
The sight of her breasts halted his advance.

“Come to practice your swordsmanship?” she said.

He swallowed hard and tried to say, “At your service.”

She laughed at his consternation. “Come closer,” she said, her
voice softer now, “and dispense with those clothes.”

He undressed before her, quickly removing every article of clothing.
When he stood naked before her, though, he still had on his belt and
the sheathed sword.

“One sword is useful here, the other not,” she said.

“I never take it off,” he said.

“Hurry now. Put it right here on my night table.”

He reluctantly removed the sword. Then he sat on the edge of the
bed and put his arms around her. They kissed more passionately than
they had in the clearing. He ran his fingers through her hair as she
clasped her hands behind his back and kissed his chest. He moved his
hands down to her breasts and she reached for his prick. When their
ardor was well inflamed, she pulled away from him, and then slowly
leaning forward, whispered in his ear, “Do you want me?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then, come in,” she said and, grabbing the corner of the blanket,
threw it back for him.

For a moment, Ismet Toler wore the same look of terrible surprise
fixed forever on the faces of his victims, for Lady Maltomass was, from
the waist down, blood coral. He glimpsed the frozen crease between
her legs and cried out.

Garone appeared suddenly at his side, shouting, “Treachery.” Toler
turned toward his servant just as Mamresh, bearing a smile, appeared
and pulled back the hood of his tulpa’s robe. The swordsman glimpsed
his own face with yellow eyes in the instant before the thought-form
went out like a candle. He buckled inside from the sudden loss of
Garone. Then, from out of the dark, he was punched in the face.

Toler came to on the floor, gasping as if he’d been under water.
Greppen was there, helping him off the floor. Once Toler had regained
his footing and clarity, he turned back to the bed.

“Imagine,” said Lady Maltomass, “your organ of desire transformed
into a fossil.”

Toler was speechless.

“Some years ago, my father took me to the market at Camiar. He’d
been working on the translation of the spell upon your sword, and
he’d heard that you frequented a seller there who dispensed drams of
liquor. He wanted to present you with what he’d discovered from the
ancients about the sword’s script. Just as we arrived at the market, a
fight broke out between five swordsmen and yourself. You defeated
them, but in the melee you struck a young woman with an errant
thrust and she was turned to coral.”

“Impossible,” he shouted.

“You’re an arrogant fool, Ismet Toler. The young woman was me.
My father brought me back here a statue, and prepared the five herbs
from his research into an elixir. He poured it down my hard throat,
and because it was made of only half the ingredients of the cure, only
half of me returned.”

Greppen tapped Toler upon the hip, and, when the swordsman
looked down, handed him The Coral Heart.

“Now you face my tulpa,” said the Lady.

Toler heard Mamresh approaching and drew the sword, dropping
the sheath upon the bed. He ducked and sidled across the floor, the
weapon constantly moving. He turned suddenly and was struck twice
in the face and once in the chest. He stumbled, but didn’t go down.
She moved on him again, but this time, he saw her vague outline and
sliced at her torso. The blade passed right through her and she kicked
him in the balls. He doubled over and went down again.

“Get up, snake,” called Lady Maltomass from the bed.

“Please, rise, Ismet Toler,” said Greppen, now standing before him.

He lifted himself off the floor and resumed a defensive crouch.
He kept the blade in motion, but his hands were shaking. Mamresh
attacked. Her hard knuckles seemed to be everywhere at once. No
matter how many times Toler swung The Coral Heart, it made no
difference.

After another pass, Mamresh had him staggered and reeling from
side to side. Blood was running from his nose and mouth.

“I’ve just given her leave to beat you to death,” said Lady
Maltomass.

The vague outline of a muscled arm swept out of the air, and Toler
slid beneath it, turned, and made the most exquisite cut to the ghostly
figure’s spine. The blade didn’t even slow in its arc.

She closed his left eye and splintered his shin with a kick. Toler
was on the verge of panic when he saw Greppen standing in the
corner, tiny fists raised in the air, urging Mamresh to the kill. The
tulpa came from the left this time. The swordsman had learned the
sound of her breathing. Before she could strike, he tucked his head in
and rolled into the corner where Greppen stood. He could hear her
right behind him.

He reached out with his free hand and grabbed the toad man by
the ankle. Then, as Toler rose, he lifted the blade, and with unerring
precision, gave a deft slice to the Councilor’s neck. He turned quickly,
and Greppen’s blood sprayed forth in a great geyser. It washed over
Mamresh, and she became visible to him as she threw a punch at his
left eye. He moved gracefully to the side, tossing Greppen’s now coral
body at her. It passed through her face, briefly blocking her view of
him. Toler calmly sought a spot where the blood revealed his assassin
and then lunged, sending the blade there.

Mamresh gasped, and her visible face contorted in terror as she
crackled into blood coral. He turned back to the bed, and the Lady
was still. He now could ascertain the color of her eyes and they were a
deep red. He’d made her mind coral in the act of defeating her tulpa.
He dropped the sword and lay down beside her. Pulling her to him,
he tried to kiss her, but her teeth were shut and a slow stream of drool
issued from the corner of her mouth.

Toler discovered Nod gutted and decapitated in a heap upon the
stable floor. After that, he spared no one, but worked his way down
every hall and through the gardens, killing everything that moved.
It was after midnight when he left the palace in the flying chair and
disappeared into the western mountains.

People wondered what had happened to The Coral Heart. Some
said he’d died of frostbite, some, of fever. Others believed he’d finally
been careless and turned himself into a statue. Seven long years passed
and the violence of the world had been diminished by half. Then, in
the winter of the Year of Ice, a post rider galloped into Camiar and
told the people that he’d seen a half-dozen bandits turned to coral on
the road from Totenhas.

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

A Queen at Sea

A
cross
the
still
blue
water
came the slow steady beat of drums,
and the soft swish of oars from the galleys. The great cog groaned in
their wake, the heavy lines stretched taut between.
Balerion
’s sails
hung limp, drooping forlorn from the masts. Yet even so, as she stood
upon the forecastle watching her dragons chase each other across a
cloudless blue sky, Daenerys Targaryen was as happy as she could ever
remember being.

Her Dothraki called the sea
the poison water,
distrusting any liquid
that their horses could not drink. On the day the three ships had
lifted anchor at Qarth, you would have thought they were sailing to
hell instead of Pentos. Her brave young bloodriders had stared off
at the dwindling coastline with huge white eyes, each of the three
determined to show no fear before the other two, while her handmaids
Irri and Jhiqui clutched the rail desperately and retched over the side
at every little swell. The rest of Dany’s tiny
khalasar
remained below
decks, preferring the company of their nervous horses to the terrifying
landless world about the ships. When a sudden squall had enveloped
them six days into the voyage, she heard them through the hatches;
the horses kicking and screaming, the riders praying in thin quavery
voices each time
Balerion
heaved or swayed.

No squall could frighten Dany, though.
Daenerys Stormborn,
she
was called, for she had come howling into the world on distant
Dragonstone as the greatest storm in the memory of Westeros howled
outside, a storm so fierce that it ripped gargoyles from the castle walls
and smashed her father’s fleet to kindling.

The narrow sea was often stormy, and Dany had crossed it half a
hundred times as a girl, running from one Free City to the next half a
step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives. She loved the sea. She liked
the sharp salty smell of sea air, and the vastness of limitless empty
horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel
very small, but free as well. She liked the dolphins that sometimes
swam along beside
Balerion
, slicing through the waves like silvery
spears, and the flying fish they glimpsed now and again. She even
liked the sailors, with all their songs and stories. Once on a voyage to
Braavos, as she’d watched the crew wrestle down a great green sail in
a rising gale, she had even thought how fine it would be to be a sailor.
But when she told her brother, Viserys had twisted her hair until she
cried. “You are blood of the dragon,” he had screamed at her. “A
dragon,
not some smelly fish.”

He was a fool about that, and so much else,
Dany thought.
If he had
been wiser and more patient, it would be him sailing west to take the throne
that was his by rights.
Viserys had been stupid and vicious, she had
come to realize, and yet sometimes she missed him all the same. Not
the cruel weak man he had become, by the end, but the brother who
had once read to her and sometimes let her creep into his bed at night,
the boy who used to tell her tales of the Seven Kingdoms, and talk of
how much better their lives would be when he became a king.

The captain appeared at her elbow. “Would that this
Balerion
could
soar as her namesake did, Your Grace,” he said politely, in bastard
Valyrian heavily flavored with accent of Pentos. “Then we should not
need to row, nor tow, nor pray for wind. Is it not so?”

“It is so, Captain,” she answered with a smile, pleased to have won
the man over. Captain Groleo was an old Pentoshi like his master,
Illyrio Mopatis, and he had been nervous as a maiden about carrying
three dragons on his ship. Half a hundred buckets of seawater still
hung from the gunwales, in case of fires. At first Groleo had wanted
the dragons caged and Dany had consented to put his fears at ease,
but their misery was so palpable that she soon changed her mind and
insisted they be freed.

Even Captain Groleo was glad of that, now. There had been one
small fire, easily extinguished; against that,
Balerion
suddenly seemed
to have far fewer rats than she’d had before, when she sailed under
the name
Saduleon
. And her crew, once as fearful as they were curious,
had begun to take a queer fierce pride in “their” dragons. Every man
of them, from captain to cook’s boy, loved to watch the three fly...
though none so much as Dany.

They are my children,
she told herself,
and if the maegi spoke truly,
they are the only children I am ever like to have.

Viserion’s scales were the color of fresh cream, his horns, wing
bones, and spinal crest a dark gold that flashed bright as metal in the
sun. Rhaegal was made of the green of summer and the bronze of fall.
They soared above the ships in wide circles, higher and higher, each
trying to climb above the other.

Dragons always preferred to attack from above, Dany had learned.
Should either get between the other and the sun, he would fold his
wings and dive screaming, and they would tumble from the sky locked
together in a tangled scaly ball, jaws snapping and tails lashing. The
first time they had done it, she feared that they meant to kill each
other, but it was only sport. No sooner would they splash into the sea
than they would break apart and rise again, shrieking and hissing, the
salt water steaming off them as their wings clawed at the air. Drogon
was aloft as well, though not in sight; he would be miles ahead, or
miles behind, hunting.

He was always hungry, her Drogon.
Hungry and growing fast.
Another year, or perhaps two, and he may be large enough to ride. Then I
shall have no need of ships to cross the great salt sea.

But that time was not yet come. Rhaegal and Viserion were the
size of small dogs, Drogon only a little larger, and any dog would have
outweighed them; they were all wings and neck and tail, lighter than
they looked. And so Daenerys Targaryen must rely on wood and wind
and canvas to bear her home.

The wood and the canvas had served her well enough so far, but
the fickle wind had turned traitor. For six days and six nights they had
been becalmed, and now a seventh day had come, and still no breath
of air to fill their sails. Fortunately, two of the ships that Magister
Illyrio had sent after her were trading galleys, with two hundred
oars apiece and crews of strong-armed oarsmen to row them. But
the great cog
Balerion
was a song of a different key; a ponderous
broad-beamed sow of a ship with immense holds and huge sails, but
helpless in a calm.
Vhagar
and
Meraxes
had let out lines to tow her,
but it made for painfully slow going. All three ships were crowded,
and heavily laden.

“I cannot see Drogon,” said Ser Jorah Mormont, as he joined her
on the forecastle. “Is he lost again?”

“We are the ones who are lost, ser. Drogon has no taste for this wet
creeping, no more than I do.” Bolder than the other two, her black
dragon had been the first to try his wings above the water, the first to
flutter from ship to ship, the first to lose himself in a passing cloud...
and the first to kill. The flying fish no sooner broke the surface of the
water than they were enveloped in a lance of flame, snatched up, and
swallowed. “How big will he grow?” Dany asked curiously. “Do you
know?”

“In the Seven Kingdoms, there are tales of dragons who grew so
huge that they could pluck giant krakens from the sea.”

Dany laughed. “That would be a wondrous sight to see.”

“It is only a tale,
Khaleesi,”
said her exile knight. “They talk of wise
old dragons living a thousand years as well.”

“Well, how long
does
a dragon live?” She looked up as Viserion
swooped low over the ship, his wings beating slowly and stirring the
limp sails.

Ser Jorah shrugged. “A dragon’s natural span of days is many
times as long as a man’s, or so the songs would have us believe...
but the dragons the Seven Kingdoms knew best were those of House
Targaryen. They were bred for war, and in war they died. It is no easy
thing to slay a dragon, but it can be done.”

The squire Whitebeard, standing by the figurehead with one lean
hand curled about his tall hardwood staff, turned toward them and
said, “Balerion the Black Dread was two hundred years old when he
died during the reign of Jaehaerys the Conciliator. He was so large he
could swallow an aurochs whole. A dragon never stops growing, Your
Grace, so long as he has food and freedom.” His name was Arstan,
but Strong Belwas had named him Whitebeard for his pale whiskers,
and most everyone called him that now. He was taller than Ser Jorah,
though not so muscular; his eyes were a pale blue, his long beard as
white as snow and as fine as silk.

“Freedom?” asked Dany, curious. “What do you mean?”

“In King’s Landing, your ancestors raised an immense domed
castle for their dragons. The Dragonpit, it is called. It still stands atop
the Hill of Rhaenys, though all in ruins now. That was where the
royal dragons dwelt in days of yore, and a cavernous dwelling it was,
with iron doors so wide that thirty knights could ride through them
abreast. Yet even so, it was noted that none of the pit dragons ever
reached the size of their ancestors. The maesters say it was because of
the walls around them, and the great dome above their heads.”

“If walls could keep us small, peasants would all be tiny and kings
as large as giants,” said Ser Jorah. “I’ve seen huge men born in hovels,
and dwarfs who dwelt in castles.”

“Men are men,” Whitebeard replied. “Dragons are dragons.”

Ser Jorah snorted his disdain. “How profound.” The exile knight
had no love for the old man, he’d made that plain from the first.
“What do you know of dragons, anyway?”

“Little enough, that’s true. Yet I served for a time in King’s Landing
in the days when King Aerys sat the Iron Throne, and walked beneath
the dragonskulls that looked down from the walls of his throne room.”

“Viserys talked of those skulls,” said Dany. “The Usurper took
them down and hid them away. He could not bear them looking
down on him as he sat his stolen throne.” She beckoned Whitebeard
closer. “Did you ever meet my royal father?” King Aerys II had died
before his daughter was born.

“I had that great honor, Your Grace.”

Dany put a hand on the old man’s arm. “Did you find him good
and gentle?”

Whitebeard did his best to hide his feelings, but they were there,
plain on his face. “His Grace was...often pleasant.”

“Often?” Dany smiled. “But not always?”

“He could be very harsh to those he thought his enemies.”

“A wise man never makes an enemy of a king,” said Dany. “Did you
know my brother Rhaegar as well?”

“It was said that no man ever knew Prince Rhaegar, truly. I had the
privilege of seeing him in tourney, though, and often heard him play
his harp with its silver strings.”

Ser Jorah snorted. “Along with a thousand others at some harvest
feast. Next you’ll claim you squired for him.”

“I make no such claim, ser. Myles Mooton was Prince Rhaegar’s
squire, and Richard Lonmouth after him. When they won their spurs,
he knighted them himself, and they remained his close companions.
Young Lord Connington was dear to the prince as well, though his
oldest friend was Arthur Dayne.”