The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (12 page)

He leaned closer and his voice sank to a whisper. “Know, chit,
that I’ve long suspected that your mother, fierce as she could be, was
perhaps ensorceled against her will—a wizard-lover like yourself...
and you the whelp of that burned charmer.”

Her eyes widened and she started to pull away from him, but he
drew her closer. “Have no fear, chit, I’ll work the taint out of your
flesh one way or another. For a beginning, prick me that boar!”

She did not move. Her face was a cream-colored mask of fear. He
raised his hand. But at that moment there was an interruption.

A figure appeared at the edge of the glade at the point where the
boar had turned to make its last charge. It was that of a slim youth,
dressed all in gray. Like one drugged or in a trance, he walked straight
toward Janarrl. The three huntsmen who had been attending the
Duke drew swords and moved leisurely toward him.

The youth’s face was white and tensed, his forehead beaded with
sweat under the gray hood half thrown back. Jaw muscles made ivory
knobs. His eyes, fixed on the Duke, squinted as if they looked at the
blinding sun.

His lips parted wide, showing his teeth. “Slayer of Glavas Rho!
Wizard-killer!”

Then his bronze sword was out of its moldy scabbard. Two of the
huntsmen moved in his way, one of them crying, “Beware poison!” at
the green of the newcomer’s blade. The youth aimed a terrific blow at
him, handling his sword as if it were a sledge. The huntsman parried
it with ease, so that it whistled over his head, and the youth almost
fell with the force of his own blow. The huntsman stepped forward
and with a snappy stroke rapped the youth’s sword near the hilt to
disarm him, and the fight was done before begun—almost. For the
glazed look left the youth’s eyes and his features twitched like those
of a cat and, recovering his grip on his sword, he lunged forward with
a twisting motion at the wrist that captured the huntsman’s blade in
his own green one and whipped it out of its startled owner’s grasp.
Then he continued his lunge straight toward the heart of the second
huntsman, who escaped only by collapsing backward to the turf.

Janarrl leaned forward tensely in his saddle, muttering, “The
whelp has fangs,” but at that instant the third huntsman, who had
circled past, struck the youth with sword-pommel on the back of his
neck. The youth dropped his sword, swayed and started to fall, but
the first huntsman grabbed him by the neck of his tunic and hurled
him toward his companions. They received him in their own jocular
fashion with cuffs and slaps, slashing his head and ribs with sheathed
daggers, eventually letting him fall to the ground, kicking him,
worrying him like a pack of hounds.

Janarrl sat motionless, watching his daughter. He had not missed
her frightened start of recognition when the youth appeared. Now he
saw her lean forward, lips twitching. Twice she started to speak. Her
horse moved uneasily and whinnied. Finally she hung her head and
cowered back while low retching sobs came from her throat. Then
Janarrl gave a satisfied grunt and called out, “Enough for the present!
Bring him here!”

Two huntsmen dragged between them the half-fainting youth clad
now in red-spattered gray.

“Coward,” said the Duke. “This sport will not kill you. They were
only gentling you in preparation for other sports. But I forget you
are a pawky wizardling, an effeminate creature who babbles spells in
the dark and curses behind the back, a craven who fondles animals
and would make the forests mawkish places. Faught! My teeth are
on edge. And yet you sought to corrupt my daughter and—Hearken
to me, wizardling, I say!” And leaning low from his saddle he caught
the youth’s sagging head by the hair, tangling in his fingers. The
youth’s eyes rolled wildly and he gave a convulsive jerk that took the
huntsmen by surprise and almost tumbled Janarrl out of the saddle.

Just then there was an ominous crackling of underbrush and the
rapid thud of hooves. Someone cried, “Have a care, master! Oh Gods,
guard the Duke!”

The wounded boar had lurched to its feet and was charging the
group by Janarrl’s horse.

The huntsmen scattered back, snatching for their weapons.

Janarrl’s horse shied, further overbalancing its rider. The boar
thundered past, like red-smeared midnight. Janarrl almost fell atop
it. The boar swung sharply around for a return charge, evading three
thrown spears that thudded into the earth just beside it. Janarrl tried
to stand, but one of his feet was snagged in a stirrup and his horse,
jerking clear, tumbled him again.

The boar came on, but other hooves were thudding now. Another
horse swept past Janarrl and a firmly held spear entered near the
boar’s shoulder and buried itself deep. The black beast, jarred
backward, slashed once at the spear with its tusk, fell heavily on its
side and was still.

Then Ivrian let go the spear. The arm with which she had been
holding it dangled unnaturally. She slumped in her saddle, catching
its pommel with her other hand.

Janarrl scrambled to his feet, eyed his daughter and the boar. Then
his gaze traveled slowly around the glade, full circle.

Glavas Rho’s apprentice was gone.

“North be south, east be west. Copse be glade and gully crest. Dizziness all paths invest. Leaves and grasses, do the rest.”

Mouse mumbled the chant through swollen lips almost as though
he were talking into the ground on which he lay. His fingers arranging
themselves into cabalistic symbols, he thumbed a pinch of green
powder from a tiny pouch and tossed it into the air with a wrist-flick
that made him wince. “Know it, hound, you are wolf-born, enemy
to whip and horn. Horse, think of the unicorn, uncaught since the
primal morn. Weave off from me, by the Norn!”

The charm completed, he lay still and the pains in his bruised flesh
and bones became more bearable. He listened to the sounds of the
hunt trail off in the distance.

His face was pushed close to a patch of grass. He saw an ant
laboriously climb a blade, fall to the ground, and then continue on its
way. For a moment he felt a bond of kinship between himself and the
tiny insect. He remembered the black boar whose unexpected charge
had given him a chance to escape and for a strange moment his mind
linked it with the ant.

Vaguely he thought of the pirates who had threatened his life in
the west. But their gay ruthlessness had been a different thing from
the premeditated and presavored brutality of Janarrl’s huntsmen.

Gradually anger and hate began to swirl in him. He saw the gods
of Glavas Rho, their formerly serene faces white and sneering. He
heard the words of the old incantations, but they twanged with a
new meaning. Then these visions receded, and he saw only a whirl
of grinning faces and cruel hands. Somewhere in it the white, guilt-
stricken face of a girl. Swords, sticks, whips. All spinning. And at the
center, like the hub of a wheel on which men are broken, the thick
strong form of the Duke.

What was the teaching of Glavas Rho to that wheel? It had rolled
over him and crushed him. What was white magic to Janarrl and
his henchmen? Only a priceless parchment to be besmirched. Magic
gems to be trampled in filth. Thoughts of deep wisdom to be pulped
with their encasing brain.

But there was the other magic. The magic Glavas Rho had forbid
den, sometimes smilingly but always with an underlying seriousness.
The magic Mouse had learned of only by hints and warnings. The
magic which stemmed from death and hate and pain and decay,
which dealt in poisons and night-shrieks, which trickled down from
the black spaces between the stars, which, as Janarrl himself had said,
cursed in the dark behind the back.

It was as if all Mouse’s former knowledge—of small creatures and
stars and beneficial sorceries and Nature’s codes of courtesy—burned
in one swift sudden holocaust: And the black ashes took life and
began to stir, and from them crept a host of night shapes, resembling
those which had been burned, but all distorted. Creeping, skulking,
scurrying shapes. Heartless, all hate and terror, but as lovely to look
on as black spiders swinging along their geometrical webs.

To sound a hunting horn for that pack! To set them on the track
of Janarrl!

Deep in his brain an evil voice began to whisper, “The Duke must
die. The Duke must die.” And he knew that he would always hear
that voice, until its purpose was fulfilled.

Laboriously he pushed himself up, feeling a stabbing pain that told of broken ribs; he wondered how he had managed to flee this far. Grinding his teeth, he stumbled across a clearing. By the time he had gotten into the shelter of the trees again, the pain had forced him to his hands and knees. He crawled on a little way, then collapsed.

Near evening of the third day after the hunt, Ivrian stole down from her tower room, ordered the smirking groom to fetch her horse, and rode through the valley and across the stream and up the opposite hill until she reached the rock-sheltered house of Glavas Rho. The destruction she saw brought new misery to her white taut face. She dismounted and went close to the fire-gutted ruin, trembling lest she come upon the body of Glavas Rho. But it was not there. She could see that the ashes had been disturbed, as though someone had been searching through them and sifting them for any objects that might have escaped the flames. Everything was very quiet.

An inequality in the ground off toward the side of the clearing
caught her eye and she walked in that direction. It was a new-made
grave, and in place of a headstone was, set around with gray pebbles,
a small flat greenish stone with strange carvings on its surface.

A sudden little sound from the forest set her trembling and made
her realize that she was very much afraid, only that up to this point
her misery had outweighed her terror. She looked up and gave a
gasping cry, for a face was peering at her through a hole in the leaves.
It was a wild face, smeared with dirt and grass stains, smirched here
and there with old patches of dried blood, shadowed by a stubble of
beard. Then she recognized it.

“Mouse,” she called haltingly.

She hardly knew the answering voice.

“So you have returned to gloat over the wreckage caused by your
treachery.”

“No, Mouse, no!” she cried. “I did not intend this. You must believe
me.”

“Liar! It was your father’s men who killed him and burned his
house.”

“But I never thought they would!”

“Never thought they would—as if that’s any excuse. You are so
afraid of your father that you would tell him anything. You live by
fear.”

“Not always, Mouse. In the end I killed the boar.”

“So much the worse—killing the beast the gods had sent to kill
your father.”

“But truly I never killed the boar. I was only boasting when I said
so—I thought you liked me brave. I have no memory of that killing.
My mind went black. I think my dead mother entered me and drove
the spear.”

“Liar and changer of lies! But I’ll amend my judgment: you live
by fear except when your father whips you to courage. I should have
realized that and warned Glavas Rho against you. But I had dreams
about you.”

“You called me Misling,” she said faintly.

“Aye, we played at being mice, forgetting cats are real. And
then while I was away, you were frightened by mere whippings into
betraying Glavas Rho to your father!”

“Mouse, do not condemn me.” Ivrian was sobbing. “I know that
my life has been nothing but fear. Ever since I was a child my father
has tried to force me to believe that cruelty and hate are the laws of
the universe. He has tortured and tormented me. There was no one
to whom I could turn, until I found Glavas Rho and learned that
the universe has laws of sympathy and love that shape even death
and the seeming hates. But now Glavas Rho is dead and I am more
frightened and alone than ever. I need your help, Mouse. You studied
under Glavas Rho. You know his teachings. Come and help me.”