David Drake - Balefires

Cashel stepped back, bending slightly and sucking air through his open mouth. The creature's arms moved feebly, like an infant trying to swim. The ferrule Cashel had just struck with glowed orange, cooling to dull red. He switched ends, then brought the staff back with both arms.

The creature got its hands under it and lifted its head slightly. Cashel lunged forward, driving the staff down with the whole weight of his body. The butt hammered the creature at the same point as before. The statue's head exploded in a flash and thunderclap. The massive body began to crumble the way a sand castle dissolves in the surf.

Cashel felt himself wavering. He planted the quarterstaff against the floor and used it to brace him as he let himself kneel. His breath was a rasping thunder, and his blood hammered in his ears.

The only part of the creature still remaining was the outstretched right arm. When it suddenly collapsed to a spill of sand, Cashel caught a brief reminder of the dry, sweet odor in which Giglia had vanished. Then nothing remained but air harsh with the faint brimstone reek of nearby lightning.

Cashel stayed like that for-well, for a time. He figured he could move if he had to, but since he didn't he was just going to rest till he felt like doing something else.

Though he'd kept his eyes open, he didn't have much awareness of his surroundings. There wasn't a lot to see, after all; just the trail of coarse grit that'd been a statue there on the floor in front of him. It looked like what he'd seen on the hills he'd climbed to reach the tower…

"Are you ready to go home, Cashel?" Mona said.

Cashel's world clicked back into hard focus again. He turned his head and smiled at the girl, feeling a little embarrassed. How long had she been standing there, waiting for him to come to himself?

"I'm all right," he said, wondering how true that was. He stood, lifting himself partly by the strength of his arms on the quarterstaff. He swayed a little, but no worse than you always did when you'd been bent over and got up suddenly.

He grinned wider and said, "I'm fine," meaning it this time. "But how do we get back home, Mona?"

As Cashel spoke, he took a closer look at the walls. His eyes narrowed."Mona?" he said. "Things don't look right. The stone looks thin. It wasn't like that before."

"This world is decaying," the girl said, "and not before time. We have to get you out of here, though. Come."

She stepped through the doorway to the room where the statue had waited; the gold key was out in her hand again. Cashel followed, as he'd been doing ever since he met the girl-except when there was the fighting.

He grinned again. That was all right. Mona was better at leading than Cashel ever wanted to be, and she'd kept out of the way when he went to work.

Mona looked back at him. "I'm sorry I had to trick you," she said. "Your help was very important."

Cashel shrugged. "You didn't have to trick me, Mona," he said. "You could just have asked. But that's all right."

The throne had fallen into a pile of sand and pebbles like the thing that'd sat on it. On the wall behind was another door. Mona stuck the key into the door-there hadn't been a keyhole that Cashel could see, but he was sure about what she'd just done-and pulled the panel open.

"Go on through, Cashel," she said, smiling like the sun rising. "Thank you. We all thank you."

Cashel hesitated. "You're coming too, aren't you, Mona?" he said. Light and color without shape swirled in the door opening.

Her smile became pensive. She raised the key in the hand that didn't hold the door open. "I have to free the seeds we found," she said. "Otherwise they'll rot instead of growing as they should."

"But what happens to you?" Cashel said.

"Go on back to your own world, Cashel," Mona said, her voice hard without harshness. "There must be renewal."

Cashel cleared his throat. He didn't have anything to say, though, so he nodded and walked toward the opening. As his leading foot entered the blur of color, Mona said, "Your house will always be a happy one, dear friend."

For a moment Cashel stepped through nothingness so silent that he heard his heart beating; then his boot heel clacked on stone. He was standing in the familiar hallway down which he'd been going to dinner.

"Oh!" cried a servant, dropping the pair of silver ewers he'd been carrying to refill from the well in the courtyard at the end of the passage. They rang on the floor, sounding sweet or hollow by turns as they rolled.

Cashel squatted, holding his staff upright in one hand as he caught the nearer pitcher. It might have a few new dings in it, but he didn't guess the servant would get in real trouble.

"Oh, your lordship, I'm so sorry!" the fellow babbled. He took the ewer from Cashel's hand but he was trembling so bad he looked like he might drop it again. "I didn't see you!"

Cashel glanced at the door he'd come out of… and found there wasn't one, just a blank wall between the entrances to a pair of large suites. He stood up. "Sorry," he said apologetically. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Cashel headed on in the direction he'd been going when he'd first heard the girl-well, first heard Mona-crying. He'd never really liked this palace. It was a dingy place, badly run-down before Garric arrived and replaced the Count of Haft with a vicar.

Nothing Cashel could see was different about it now, but the corridor seemed a little cheerier than it used to be. He smiled. He'd have started whistling if he could carry a tune.

The Hunting Ground

I read (and always have read) both science fiction and fantasy. Mr. Derleth insisted that SF was merely a subset of fantasy, but even if that's true (and I'm not sure it is) the statement doesn't accurately describe most people's perceptions. Still, because I move between fantasy and SF as a reader, it's been easy for me to write both.

Nor do I see any reason that a horror story can't be SF. Many years ago Ramsey Campbell asked me for my choice of the ten top horror stories. One of those I picked instantly was "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin, a pure SF story which I find horrifying in ways that one more nut with a meat cleaver can never be.

"The Cold Equations" proves my point in another fashion also. It's well known that John Campbell published the story in Astounding, the quintessentially hard-SF magazine. It's less well known that Godwin borrowed the plot from an EC horror comic. The boundaries between horror and SF are easily permeable.

Ramsey Campbell asked me for a story for Superhorror, an original horror anthology he was putting together. The only criterion was that the story be a good one. (One of the best in the collection was "The Viaduct" by Brian Lumley, a slice of autobiography with no fantasy element whatever.)

I chose to write a story that was SF in form, although it could have been done just as easily as a fantasy. Payment was to be 2 cents/word, but instead I traded the piece for the pencil rough draft of the novel Ramsey had just finished: his first, The Doll Who Ate His Mother.

It's neither the science nor the could-be fantasy that makes "The Hunting Ground" a horror story; it's the character's situation. There's less fiction in that than I might wish.

I came back from Nam with no physical damage and an absolute refusal to admit that there might be other problems. We-my wife and I-rented rooms in an old house that had been split into three apartments for students and other people without a lot of money.

One of the nicest aspects of the house was the attached vacant lot. A large tree had been cut down a year or two past; the stump remained beside the driveway. I sat cross-legged on that stump, reading or writing, any time it wasn't raining. For whatever reason, it was what my soul needed.