Jonathan Strahan: Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

“One of the reasons I singled you out from these others for clemency. And there was a practical consideration as well. Unless Septavian is a more common name than I’m given to understand, then you must be Septavian of the Waterhouse. If that’s true, and judging by your appearance and odd weapons I believe it is, then I’ve no wish to incur the wrath of your secretive martial brotherhood. Your people have a nasty reputation of finding and killing those who kill your own, even those of us well practiced in the dark arts.”

“I’m no longer associated with that society. I was forced to leave them under less than honorable circumstances. Kill me and I suspect the only reason they’d even think of hunting you down would be to thank you.” I always correct those who believe me to still be a part of the Waterhouse Brotherhood. Always. They’re more fanatic about hunting down those who pretend association with them than they are about those who kill one of their members.

“An odd moment for full candor,” Roe said. He paced, circling just out of sword reach, avoiding the bloodstain on the floor, which had already begun to grow tacky. Roe’s slippers whispered against the tiles. He was careful to keep his wary eyes on me. Though he might be willing to be friends, we weren’t there yet.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I can’t accept your offer anyway. Tywar and Jonar were friends. I have an obligation to try to avenge them.”

“They were thugs. Refined men owe nothing to such animals.”

“Nevertheless.”

“You won’t succeed. Nor will you survive this house. I’ve constructed so many wonderful snares, subtle and deadly. You’ve already met my Golems Decapitant. They’re just to ensure the mouse stays inside the trap.”

“I thought they were Ulmore’s creations.”

“Hardly. My master is great in power, but lacking in art. He wields his power strictly in the old ways, like a blunt instrument. That monstrous thing growling and groaning downstairs is one of his creatures, summoned up from one of the many hells where the old gods were thrown down. I created the other protections, constantly improving and refining them. That’s another reason why your two companions were invited to do their thieving here. My work needs frequent testing.”

“So it wasn’t all a selfless urge to better serve your adopted hometown.”

“Try one of the doors,” he said. “They all lead to freedom—eventually. But first you’ll have to get through my gauntlet. Survive the wire hounds and you’ll have to face the Shades Perilous, and perhaps then the fragrance room, or the black pattern, or—well, I’ve written a number of elegant murder stories, each one a variation on a central theme.”

“Care to tell me which door leads to which trap?”

“All to each. Choosing a specific door just changes the order in which you encounter them.”

“And how were you planning to let me get out alive?”

“By accompanying you. They won’t activate if I’m present.”

“Then I should bring you with me, shouldn’t I?” For the most part, swordplay in our world is a matter of closing with an opponent and hacking at him with the broad edge of a heavy blade. Roe was still safely outside the range of that sort of business. But at the Waterhouse, we’d learned a different kind of bladework, with improved weaponry. In a single motion, I drew my long, thin, and flexible waterblade from its sheath and thrust it, point-forward, in a deep lunge that more than doubled the effective range of a sword. Roe was taken entirely by surprise. My blade plunged deep into his chest. Several inches of its tip passed out the other side.

For a second, he just stood there, looking down at the sword stuck through him, a mild look of wonder on his face. Then he crumpled, lifeless, to the floor.

I put a foot in his gut, pulled my blade out from him, and wiped it off on his robes before sheathing it. With both hands free again, I picked up his corpse and hoisted it over one shoulder.

“I hope the protection of your company still works when you’re dead.”

I picked a door more or less at random and started towards it. Before I’d gone a dozen steps, I felt myself losing my grip on Roe’s body. It was rapidly growing lighter, and falling apart. I dropped the thing back on the floor and watched it turn to dust before my eyes. Then the dust turned into smaller specks that blew about for a bit, before disappearing entirely. Laughter echoed throughout the chamber.

“I withdraw my offer of release,” the voice said, coming from everywhere, or nowhere. It was unmistakably Roe’s voice. “You’ll just have to win your own way out. I doubt you’ll make it. No one ever has before. But I hope you do. Oddly, I’ve come to like you in our short acquaintance, and I’d enjoy continuing our conversation sometime.”

I didn’t reply. It seemed we’d said all that needed to be said. Since I was already pointed at one of the doors, I continued in that direction and opened it. There was a darkened corridor behind the door, leading only a few feet inward before it took a sharp right turn. I could smell a heavy and cloying musk from somewhere within, both attractive and repellent, fragrant decay. I also heard the distant sharpening of many knives, odd skittering sounds, and the musical notes of a thousand glass shards brushing against each other. The attractive part of the odor grew stronger, tugging at me, almost compelling me to enter.

I slammed the door and stepped back.

In the central room, the blade-armed golems had been released from whatever invisible force was confining them to the upper landing. They were shuffling down both staircases, increasing speed with each step. Swords and knives and spears were twisting and shaking in the grips of the statues, screeching, metal against metal, straining to be free of them. And the animal sounds from downstairs were growing louder, more agitated, and more proximate. Whatever it was down there was on its way up.

Okay, I may be in some trouble here.

JOE ABERCROMBIE attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Manchester University, where he studied psychology. He moved into television production before taking up a career as a freelance film editor. His first novel, The Blade Itself , was published in 2004, and was followed by two further books in the First Law trilogy, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings . His most recent book is a stand-alone novel set in the same world, Best Served Cold , and he is currently at work on another, The Heroes . Joe now lives in Bath with his wife, Lou, and his daughters, Grace and Eve. He still occasionally edits concerts and music festivals for TV, but spends most of his time writing edgy yet humorous fantasy novels.

Craw chewed the hard skin around his nails, just like he always did. They hurt, just like they always did. He thought to himself that he really had to stop doing that. Just like he always did.

“Why is it,” he muttered under his breath, and with some bitterness too, “I always get stuck with the fool jobs?”

The village squatted in the fork of the river, a clutch of damp thatch roofs, scratty as an idiot’s hair, a man-high fence of rough-cut logs ringing it. Round wattle huts and three long halls dumped in the muck, ends of the curving wooden uprights on the biggest badly carved like dragon’s heads, or wolf’s heads, or something that was meant to make men scared but only made Craw nostalgic for decent carpentry. Smoke limped up from chimneys in muddy smears. Half-bare trees still shook browning leaves. In the distance the reedy sunlight glimmered on the rotten fens, like a thousand mirrors stretching off to the horizon. But without the romance.