Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXV Read online

  "Indeed," he said. Lin Mei looked back at him. The man's face was carefully bland. So, she thought, what does he know, or suspect? And how much?

  Suddenly the Iskanderi looked up at the guards, as if he'd just made up his mind. "Give them their weapons," he said. In moments their swords and daggers had been returned.

  "Tomorrow night is the Fire Festival," he said. "I expect to see you there." He gestured for them to leave.

  "That was odd," Lin Mei said when they were back in their rooms. Her brother looked at her.

  "He knows more than he lets on," he agreed. The cats had curled up on a mat in the corner. She told him what she had learned of the Vizier.

  "The storehouse where the Iskanderi keeps his trade goods is outside the compound," he said slowly, "next to the market square. Conveniently so. But the Vizier is the Master of the Storerooms, and has the keys. Having the Storerooms outside the compound would also be convenient if he was trading on his own account. And the assassination attempt two days ago was from a window with no view of Prince Firuz, but of the Iskanderi and his court." She smiled at him. While he did not have her wits, he had spent most of his young life as a caravan guard. He was no fool.

  "His brother Afsar is Captain of the Guard," she pointed out. "He would know, and be in on it." He looked back at her, his hand resting on his sword hilt.

  "A normal problem, without magic," he said. "Good."

  The dawn was cold and bright. After a light meal they split up, both heading into town. The cats went back to sleep.

  She browsed in the market, gathering more gossip and doing some shopping. Noon found her near the Temple of Zarustra. Aban met her at the entrance.

  "To what I owe this pleasure?" he asked. She smiled, dropping two silver coins in the collection box.

  "I have been told you are to preside over the Fire Festival Rites in the Palace tonight," she replied.

  "The Iskanderi has graciously requested my presence," Aban said.

  "He is a follower of the Path of Light?" she asked. Aban shook his head.

  "He follows the teachings of the Enlightened One, from the land of Hind. But all faiths are respected here, and many of his court follow the Path of Light."

  "He seems like a wise and compassionate ruler," she said.

  "He is," Aban agreed. She spent a few more minutes learning more about the Fire Festival Rites before departing, dropping another silver coin in the box as she left.

  Back at the Palace preparations were in progress for that night's festivities. Wood for a bonfire was being stacked in the center of the courtyard. The kitchens were bustling, preparing for the feast to follow. A platform had been erected at one end for the Iskanderi and his court, and an altar erected between it and the bonfire in the center. And all the guards had cleaned and polished their armor and weapons.

  "A long and busy night ahead," she commented to her brother when they met later that afternoon in their rooms. She pointed to a package on the table. "I got you some clothes for tonight."

  "The jacket is nice," he commented, trying it on, "although it is bit large." She pointed to another package, one she'd had delivered.

  "It will fit over that," she commented, watching him unwrap a shirt of mail armor. He looked up at her, grim faced.

  "A long and busy night," he agreed.

  They took a good, long nap, then ate a light meal, making sure the cats also had something to keep their strength up. Hot water and tubs were brought up for bathing. After dressing in their new finery they armed themselves, and went down into the courtyard, Shadow and Twilight padding along behind.

  The courtyard was lit by torches, and ringed by large oil lamps which would be lit at the height of the ritual. People greeted one another and socialized, children ran about and played, and the guards eyed the crowd warily, hands near the hilts of their swords. Archers stood atop rooftops and walls, and near the gates squads of cavalry watched and waited.

  "They look ready for anything," Biao Mei noted. Lin Mei nodded. But at whose orders? she wondered.

  Around the courtyard smaller stacks of wood were being set up. "People jump over them," a bystander said, seeing their looks of interest. "Fire purifies us, and burns away evil."

  "So I have been told," Lin Mei replied with a smile. "I spoke with Priest Aban earlier. He seems like wise man." The man nodded, pleased, and went to meet some friends.

  Darkness had set, and the Iskanderi and his court entered to shouts and cheers. He waved to the crowd, smiling, and led the procession to the stand. Lin Mei noted that Ayshan and Prince Firuz were sitting near him as honored guests. She looked around, and finally saw the Vizier standing at the far corner of the stand, his brother nearby.

  "I would expect the Vizier to be near the Iskanderi," Lin Mei said quietly.

  "I would not," her brother replied, his face set in a hard mask. His eyes darted about, noting the positions of the guards, and especially the ones on the stand. "Six of them," he said quietly, "but more around it. And those are troops of the Army on the walls and rooftops, and at the gates." Lin Mei nodded, suppressing a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.

  It was getting dark, and she noted that the guards were eyeing her and her brother suspiciously. She did not mind, it suited her purposes. She moved a short distance to a corner of the stand, and a mental command sent the cats scampering along the wall behind the guards and under the drapes screening the base of the stand. Her eyes were on the crowd, but a portion of her mind saw the cavernous image under the stand. Her own eyes scrutinized the Vizier dressed in his robes and noted that his hands were folded before him. A suspicion formed in her mind.

  She directed the cats to the corner near the Vizier, feeling their unease. Something was there, and it was not good....

  It was just under the drapes and next to the Vizier and matched the description Ayshan had given her. Their job done, she sent the cats to the rear of the space under the stand.

  Around the courtyard torches were being extinguished, one by one, and the darkness grew. Slowly Aban began to chant, his face aglow with the light from the glowing coals in the brazier before him. Lin Mei began to move toward the front of the stand. Nearby her brother began his own approach, but toward the Vizier and Afsar.

  As the last torch went out she ducked, one of her daggers slashing the cloth covering the base of the stand to make an opening. It took a moment to adjust to the darkness, but her eyes were now better than normal human eyes at seeing in the dark. She ran to the corner where the Casket was, reaching it just as the Vizier's hands reached under it. She slashed with her dagger, drawing blood, and was rewarded with a screech.

  "The Iskanderi is under attack!" Afsar yelled outside. "Protect him!"

  Outside Biao Mei drew his daggers, one long and one short, and began fighting his way to the Guard Captain. Above him on the stand pandemonium exploded. Doffing their robes, five men seated behind the Iskanderi revealed themselves to be officers of the regular army, armored in mail and armed with daggers, more useful in the confined area than the swords carried by the guards. The Iskanderi drew his own daggers, his robe falling open to reveal mail. Amid screams, shouts, and yelling he and his men set to work.

  Lin Mei now had the casket firmly under one arm. She emerged from under the stand to a scene of chaos. Panic-stricken revelers screamed and milled about. The Vizier turned on her.

  "You!" he snarled. "Give that back to me!" he demanded, reaching out with his good hand. She grinned and jabbed with her long dagger, eliciting another screech. She looked around, spotting a small stack of firewood. It would do nicely. She tossed the casket onto it, then turned to the wall, where an unlit oil lamp stood on a tripod. That would do also…

  Biao Mei had reached Afsar, who drew his own sword as he approached. But in the crowded confines of a panicked crowd there was little room to use it, and Biao Mei was on him in a moment.

  They went to the ground in an armed grapple, Afsar trying to reach his own daggers. But it was too l
ate. Mail will turn a slashing blade, but it can be pierced, and a hard thrust by Biao Mei's heavy dagger found a weak spot, bringing a grunt of pain. Biao Mei grinned in the darkness, his light dagger thrust into the gap between helmet and mail, found a target, and went deep. The Guard Captain stiffened, then collapsed into a limp mass.

  Lin Mei ran to the altar. Behind her the spreading oil from the tumbled over lamp had reached the firewood. She grabbed the brazier and tossed the coals onto the firewood. In a flash the oil ignited, setting the bonfire ablaze.

  "The man fled as they approached with torches," the guardsmen had said. "…fire burns away evil," the bystander had said. She hoped they were right.

  The flames rose, and as from the casket a shape rose, formed into the shape of a man, tall and muscular, and began to writhe as if in pain. With a final shriek it vanished.

  * * * *

  Dawn broke on an early spring day. Outside the windows Lin Mei heard the sounds of a caravan preparing for a long journey. In the distance she could see green starting to sprout on fields between canals filled with water. Things had settled down after the rather chaotic Fire Festival. Scribes had gone over the Vizier's books and inventoried the storeroom. Afterwards a goblet of wine had been sent to him, with two Army officers to ensure that he drank it. The Royal Guard had been reconstituted with men known to be loyal. Fergana was now on good terms with Khotan, with a new ruler chosen from Khotan's lesser nobility. Biao Mei had ridden with the heavy cavalry when Khotan's army had paid a sudden and unexpected visit to Fergana, and spent a month explaining the new political order, before returning with almost three thousand horses. Biao Mei had ridden one, leading two more laden with treasure, courtesy of the Fergana Royal Treasury. After adding it to the liberal reward from the Iskanderi for services rendered, Lin Mei concluded that it had been a very profitable Winter.

  "A squadron of cavalry will escort you and your court to the frontier," the Iskanderi was saying. "The Empire has been informed of your arrival and Imperial forces will await you there to escort you to the Capitol." Prince Firuz and Ayshan bowed in thanks.

  "We are in your debt," she said. The Iskanderi waved it away.

  "My pleasure," he said. He looked at Lin Mei.

  "And I owe you a debt," he said. "We are not normally attacked by supernatural forces."

  "Our pleasure and an honor," she said. "You have already rewarded us enough."

  You are coming with us?" Prince Firuz said, his face alight with hero worship. She smiled.

  "As far as Kendar," she said. "Two months away."

  "It should be a pleasant journey," the Prince said.

  "It may be," Lin Mei replied.

  The Sorceress's Apprentice

  Pauline J. Alama

  The remake of Disney's classic "Fantasia" ("Fantasia 2000") has some great pieces in it, from the beauty of the whale sequence set to "The Pines of Rome" to the hysterically funny flamingo with yo-yo set to the Finale of "Carnival of the Animals," but I grew up with the 1940 version, so that's what I think of when I think of the movie. There is one piece, however, that is in both versions: Paul Dukas's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" with Mickey Mouse as the title character busily proving that one should not use magic if one doesn't understand how it works. There are some theories of pedagogy which refer to the mess thus created as "a teachable moment," and I really admire anyone who is so calm in the face of total chaos that she can turn an unnatural disaster into a useful lesson.

  Pauline J. Alama is a freelance grant writer, a lapsed medieval scholar, and a member of the Writers of the Weird. Her first novel, THE EYE OF NIGHT (Bantam Spectra, 2002), was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award. Her work has appeared in the webzine Abyss and Apex and in anthologies such as THE TROUBLE WITH HEROES (DAW, 2009), WITCH HIGH (DAW, 2008), and SWORD & SORCERESS 18 and 23.

  I never knew magic could kick you in the rear till the sorceress charged into her once-orderly workshop to find me knee-deep in a lake of dirty water and spilled potions, frantically chanting at a battalion of brooms that marched toward the overflowing cauldron to add new bucket-loads to the flood.

  "What have you done, you lazy bungler?"

  I did not answer, dreading what worse thing might happen if I interrupted the spell I was chanting to banish the spirits in the brooms. Before I was free to speak, Mistress Lucasta shook her fist at me, and a force like lightning propelled me out the front door. The back of my gown smoked slightly. A few of the brooms flocked around me like goats expecting to be fed, now bumping against me, now straying off in search of water.

  I sat down on the steps and dropped my face in my hands. Now I'd done it! Fill the cauldron with water, she'd said—a simple enough request—but no, I'd had to get smart about it. Now I'd have to go back to my parents and tell them I'd failed; it was all for nothing that they'd given one of their best milk-goats to the sorceress to buy me an apprenticeship. I would never be a sorceress now. I'd never be anything but a disappointment.

  I wiped my eyes with the back of one grubby hand. Much good we'd ever gotten for that goat! What a thief that sorceress was, making my parents pay her so she could put me to work, dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond: Margarey, light the fire, make the tea, clean the tea-pot, mend my night-cap, sweep the floor, rinse the alembic, milk the goats, groom the hippogriff, and for God's sake, Margarey, fetch some more water already! And while I was fetching the water or scrubbing the pots, she'd do all her secret work, and never teach me a thing but how she liked her tea.

  Anger swelled up and drowned the shame in my heart. I stood straight-backed, stomped up the steps, and pounded on the door, ready to demand the refund of my goat.

  I didn't really expect an answer, so when the door suddenly opened, I tumbled over the threshold, landing on my hands and knees in the shallow end of the lake on the floor.

  "You again," said the sorceress, pushing a strand of wet gray hair out of her eyes. Her long black skirt was belted up to stay out of the water, revealing bony knees and blue-veined shins. "Well, don't just gape around you. Start cleaning up this mess you made."

  I could see it would be useless to ask for the goat unless I obeyed. I grabbed a bucket and waded into the foul puddle on the workshop floor to bail.

  "No, no! You can't undo magic by nonmagical means. Haven't you learned anything?"

  I glared at her, but before I could speak, she swooped in and snatched the bucket from my hands.

  "You got us into this soup with magic; you have to get us out the same way." She thrust the book at me—the book I'd longed for, the book I'd schemed to get my hands on. Now, suddenly, it seemed to weigh the world.

  I staggered to a relatively dry lectern to rest it while I looked for the spell again. There it was: roughly translated from the ancient text, "An invocation by which the magus, understanding the hidden powers in common things, makes for himself an untiring servant." The spell I'd memorized in stealth to recite at need. Need had come upon me that morning, when I was too tired to fetch another bucket of water. I scanned the words for my mistake, but it seemed as though I'd remembered it exactly as it should be. I turned over a leaf to find the antichantment. There was none. Whoever wrote the book must have assumed the counterspell was obvious.

  Obvious. Hm. I began to sing the chant backward, reversing the words, the notes, the gestures I'd made over the broom. It was hard to know which broom to chant over—there were at least eighty by then, and every so often another one would split in two. But if I had to chant it over every one of them, I would do it.

  I finished my backward chant, and was rewarded by seeing not just one, but every one of the eighty-odd brooms turn upside-down. They kept on fetching water and pouring it into the overflowing cauldron, but they did it with their straws up, sweeping the rafters.

  "That will get rid of some of the cobwebs," the sorceress said as dryly as one can while flying buckets drip on one's head. "Meanwhile, try using your brain. You're trying a reversal—not always the best method of antichantment, but it
has its uses. Very well. Think: where does reversal begin?"

  What I meant to say was, give me back my goat, you old fraud, but somehow, when I knew the answer to Mistress Lucasta's question, I could not leave her thinking me a duller pupil than I was. "At the end. I have to reverse the last thing I did."

  "So there is something between your ears besides the roots of your hair, after all," said Mistress Lucasta. "What was the last thing you did?"

  "Um—I threw a broom—no—I chanted a spell—Wait, no. The last thing I did was sing the spell backward, just now. So I have to sing it again forward."

  "What were you thinking when you sang it?"

  "I—I—I—I thought the antichantment must be obvious, because it's not written out." I'd also been thinking that I'd like to dump a bucket over her head, but I didn't want to say that. I began to sing the chant forward, thinking all the time that the antichantment must be very mysterious, too difficult for me to comprehend. I stopped when three of the brooms—tramping the floor once again—emptied their buckets over my head.

  "Undisciplined," said Mistress Lucasta, "but that will do for a first step." I didn't like the little smile that twitched at her mouth. "Now go out, and take back your knocking on the door."

  I raced out and slammed the door before any brooms could follow me. I hesitated on the threshold—what nonsense, to take back knocking! Now that I was out of her house and away from the brooms, shouldn't I cut loose and leave, once and for all? But if I left now, I'd never learn what she meant, to take back knocking. Gently I laid my knuckles against the door. To my surprise, I could feel it in the wood, the quivering energy of a struck door. I brought my hand away and the quivering came with it. Then I felt a ball of white fire pull me back into the workshop.

  The brooms resumed dumping their burdens on my head. Wet hair clung to my back and neck like the tentacles of a sea creature. Soggy herbs squelched between my bare toes. I wondered about their magical properties, and what they might be doing to me.