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

The blue-robed Indexers withdrew from the room hastily, and the heavy door clanged shut behind them.

“Astriza,” said Casimir, “somewhere in this room is the master index book, the one updated by the enchantments. Bring it to me now.”

“Casimir,” said the Librarian, “it’s still not too late for you to—”

“How will you write up Laszlo’s death in your report? ‘Regretfully unavoidable’? Bring me the damn book.”

“As you wish,” she said coldly. She moved to a nearby table, and returned with a thick volume, two feet high and nearly as wide.

“Simply hand it over,” said Casimir. “Don’t touch the warding paint.”

She complied, and Casimir ran his right hand over the cover of the awkwardly large volume, cradling it against his chest with his left arm.

“Well, then, Laszlo,” he said. “This is it. All the information collected by the index enchantments is sorted in the master books like this one. My little alterations will reverse the process, making this a focus for me to reshape all this chaos to my own liking.”

“Casimir,” said Laszlo, “please—”

“Hoist a few for me tonight if you live through whatever happens next. I’m moving past such things.”

He flipped the book open, and a pale silvery glow rippled up from the pages he selected. Casimir took a deep breath, raised his right hand, and began to intone the words of a spell.

Things happened very fast then. Astriza moved, but not against Casimir—instead she hit Laszlo, taking him completely by surprise with an elbow to the chest. As he toppled backward, she darted her right arm past his face, slamming her leather-armored limb against Laszlo’s blade before it could shift positions to follow him. The sword fought furiously, but Astriza caught the hilt in her other hand, and with all of her strength managed to lever it into a stack of encyclopedias, where it stuck, quivering furiously.

At the same instant, Casimir started screaming.

Laszlo sat up, rubbing his chest, shocked to find his throat uncut, and he was just in time to see the thing that erupted out of the master index book, though it took his mind a moment to properly assemble the details. The silvery glow of the pages brightened and flickered, like a magical portal opening, for that was exactly what it was—a portal opening horizontally like a hatch rather than vertically like a door.

Through it came a gleaming, segmented black thing nearly as wide as the book itself, something like a man-sized centipede, and uncannily fast. In an instant it had sunk half a dozen hooked foreclaws into Casimir’s neck and cheeks, and then came the screams, the most horrible Laszlo had ever heard. Casimir lost his grip on the book, but it didn’t matter—the massive volume floated in midair of its own accord while the new arrival did its gruesome work.

With Casimir’s head gripped firmly in its larger claws, it extended dozens of narrower pink appendages from its underside, a writhing carpet of hollow, fleshy needles. These plunged into Casimir’s eyes, his face, his mouth and neck, and only bare trickles of blood slid from the holes they bored, for the thing began to pulse and buzz rhythmically, sucking fluid and soft tissue from the body of the once-handsome aspirant. The screams choked to a halt, for Casimir had nothing left to scream with.

Laszlo whirled away from this and lost what was left of his long-ago breakfast. By the time he managed to wipe his mouth and stumble to his feet at last, the affair was finished. The book creature released Casimir’s desiccated corpse, its features utterly destroyed, a weirdly sagging and empty thing that hung nearly hollow on its bones and crumpled to the ground. The segmented monster withdrew, and the book slammed shut with a sound like a thunderclap.

“Caz,” whispered Laszlo, astonished to find his eyes moistening. “Gods, Caz, why?”

“Master Molnar hoped he wouldn’t try it,” said Astriza. She scuffed the white circle with the tip of a boot and reached out to grab the master index book from where it floated in midair. “I said he showed all the classic signs. It’s not always pleasant being right.”

“The book was a trap,” said Laszlo.

“Well, the whole thing was a trap, Laszlo. We know perfectly well what sort of hints we drop in the introductory materials, and what a powerful sorcerer could theoretically attempt to do with the index enchantments.”

“I never even saw it,” muttered Laszlo.

“And you think that makes you some sort of failure? Grow up, Laszlo. It just makes you well-adjusted. Not likely to spend weeks of your life planning a way to seize more power than any mortal can sanely command. Look, every once in a while, a place like the High College is bound to get a student with excessive competence and no scruples, right?”

“I suppose it must,” said Laszlo. “I just…I never would have guessed my own chambers-mate…”

“The most dangerous sort. The ones that make themselves obvious can be dealt with almost at leisure. It’s the ones that can disguise their true nature, get along socially, feign friendships…those are much, much worse. The only real way to catch them is to leave rope lying around and let them knot their own nooses.”

“Merciful gods.” Laszlo retrieved his sword and slid it into the scabbard for what he hoped would be the last time that day. “What about the body?”

“Library property. Some of the grimoires in here are bound in human skin, and occasionally need repair.”

“Are you kidding ?”

“Waste not, want not.”

“But his family—”

“Won’t get to know. Because he vanished in an unfortunate magical accident just after you turned and left him in here, didn’t he?”

“I…damn. I don’t know if I can—”

“The alternative is disgrace for him, disgrace for his family, and a major headache for everyone who knew him, especially his chambers-mate for the last five years.”

“The Indexers will just play along?”

“The Indexers see what they’re told to see. I sign their pay chits.”

“It just seems incredible,” said Laszlo. “To stand here and hide everything about his real fate, as casually as you’d shelve a book.”

“Who around here casually shelves a book?”

“Good point.” Laszlo sighed and held his hand out to Astriza. “I suppose, then, that Casimir vanished in a magical accident just after I turned and left him in here.”

“Rely on us to handle the details, Laszlo.” She gave his hand a firm, friendly shake. “After all, what better place than a library for keeping things hushed?”

TANITH LEE became a freelance writer in 1975, and has been one ever since. Her first published books were children’s fantasies The Dragon Hoard and Animal Castle . Her first adult fantasy novel, The Birthgrave , was the start of a long association with DAW, which published more than twenty of her works of fantasy, SF, and horror in the 1970s and 1980s. She received the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award in 1980 for Death’s Master, World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Story in 1983 (for “The Gorgon”) and 1984 (for “Elle est Trois (La Mort)”). Enormously prolific, Lee has recently published a trilogy of pirate novels for young adults ( Piratica and sequels), a science fiction novel for adults ( Mortal Suns ), an adult fantasy trilogy (Lionwolf), a young adult fantasy trilogy ( Claidi and sequels), and the first of two retrospective short story collections ( Tempting the Gods ). Upcoming are new books in the Flat Earth series. In 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror. Tanith Lee lives with her husband, the writer and artist John Kaiine, on the southeast coast of England.