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

In this way, they missed the dim phantasmal wailing of something, which, seeing all its ploys, even those untried, would never work, lamented in the stony masonry. They missed the dislodgement of the building, too, and how its walls and halls, openings and enclosures, came apart and smeared into nothing. They even missed the last descent of the unappealing porridge-colored garment, until it fell over both their heads.

“So, what do you make of it?”

Trudging back through the forest, stark naked, and with the fall weather turning a touch more chilly, Bretilf put this question to the matchingly unclothed and chilled Zire.

Zire said, “It seems, now, perfectly obvious.”

“To me also. Yet maybe we’ve drawn two different conclusions.”

Bretilf carried the item from the cave-labyrinth, bundled up and tied tight with grasses.

From the trees, which overnight seemed themselves partly to have disrobed, leaving great swathes of cold and unclad sky and blowing wind, birds and squirrels threw nutshells at them. Foxes and wild pig distantly passed, snorting as if with scornful laughter. Snakes seemed embarrassed by the stupidity of men and slipped down holes.

Bretilf and Zire had not decided what they made of anything, despite their exchange. And some hours on, when they reached the mansion of the witch Ysmarel Star, and found only the hill—they made not much of that, either. The gray and the bay horses were tethered nearby, however, and adjacent were neatly folded clothes, swords, and so on. Bretilf examined the part-finished carving he had begun of a stag.

“Just as I thought,” said Bretilf.

“Oh, indeed,” concurred Zire.

There followed a short conversation then, on whether it was worse to eat men or words, not mentioning meat bones. The consensus on this was that probably none of those items had been strictly real, more elemental, if potentially fatal, and so no moral issue was involved.

They rode the rest of the way to the city of Cashloria. Zire had taken his turn at carrying the rolled-up wretched rag from the maple. Neither man had wished to try it on, not even when naked in the woods. Just the first swipe of it across their heads had changed them back into men. That was enough.

Even so, sitting once more above the crazy River Ca, they held their horses in check and stared at nothing.

“It seems to me,” said Bretilf, “the witch Ysmarel—”

“Yes?”

“Ensorcelled us into animal shape less to cause us trouble in the manner of ancient legends—”

“—than in order we might survive the maze and regain the Robe. Any intelligent or gifted man or woman who intruded on that spot,” Zire went on, “was seemingly destroyed by demons conjured from their own abilities.”

“The singer found her song turned against her in so dreadful a way, it tore the ears from her lovely head.”

“The charmer of snakes found a snake he could not charm, which poisoned him.”

The horses cropped the grass. Both men digested the effect of the beautiful witch’s spell. By making them beasts, she had released them from any true engagement with their everyday beliefs. Though ghosts of their human preoccupations were yet accessible to the sorcery in the labyrinth, when presented with nightmare elements of them, as lions, they had either had no interest, or made short work and dined.

The humanly superior had perished in that place. But they, as lions, had had another agenda, another superiority. Which was why, too, they had gained the Winning-of-War-Robe. It had meant nothing to them; they had only run out growling with it tangled in their manes—then hair.

Modestly, Zire and Bretilf reentered the city. Yet on the streets people swarmed to gape and cheer. At the False Prince’s villa, they were admitted after a wait of only an hour.

The prince lay on a couch like one almost dead. He gazed up with weary dislike. “Who are these ruffians?”

“Highness,” said the affronted servant, “can’t you hear the joyful uproar outside? These— ruffians —have won back the Robe—the Robe of the Winning of War With Oneself.”

“Garbage,” said the prince and turned over on his face.

Another hour on, when he had been, rather roughly, convinced by his attendants, Zire and Bretilf had the dubious pleasure of beholding the transformation. With some revulsion, they saw how the War-Robe, when the prince had put it on, altered from a sartorial nonevent to a glowing sumptuousness of colors and gems. The prince was also changed. In a matter of seconds, he grew young and strong, handsome and profound, pristine, pure, and kingly. And then, with pleasing open-handedness, from the coffers of the city, stunning riches were obtained and loaded on to mules, all for Bretilf and Zire.

They were by then incorrigibly drunk. They had sampled much of the royal cellars, and also rambled about the city, where everyone was eager to stand them a drink. Sometimes they drew into corners and spoke in low tones of the anomaly of such a man as the prince, so sticky with cruelty and crime, now entirely changed into a genuine paragon, worthy only of loyalty and praise. But they heard, too, a rumor of a kitchen girl, named Loë, who had that very day ridden off in a carriage that sparkled like a diamond, and with her many animals, owls, and crows from neglected temples, rabbits kept for the pot, cats and dogs who had earned their keep in various inns. Loë, or Weasel as she was sometimes called, or Ermine, was now said to be one of the Benign Guardians of Cashloria, who had lingered on the premises in disguise during the city’s troubles. The Robe’s return had freed her, it seemed, to go back to her own mysterious life on a distant star.

“I could sleep a million years,” said Zire. “Alas, it’s farewell now between us.”

“Perhaps neither, yet,” said Bretilf. “I’ve heard another rumor—that those villainous guards the prince is about to expel have vengefully scored our names on their swords. Will we fare better alone or in tandem?”

“Where are the horses and mules?” asked Zire, with respectable common sense.

“Below,” said Bretilf, ditto.

As they jumped from the window to the backs of bay and gray, they picked up the nearby threatening roar composed of rejoicing, rage, and river. But soon the happy pounce of hooves, blissful jingle of coins and jewels, rumble of determined mules and carts, muffled all else. Heed this, then. The more noisily and threateningly the torrent bellows below and around, the louder make your song.

CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN was born in Skerries, Dublin, Ireland, but grew up in Leeds, Alabama. As a teenager, she worked as a volunteer in Birmingham, Alabama’s, Red Mountain Museum, and later studied geology and vertebrate paleontology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has coauthored several scientific publications, beginning in 1988, the latest published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2002. Her first novel, Silk, was published in 1998, and she has written eight novels to date, the most recent being The Red Tree . A multiple International Horror Guild Award-winning author, she has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Award. Kiernan has also written for DC Comics. She lives with her partner in Providence, Rhode Island.

It had been three days since the stranger returned to Invergó, there on the muddy shores of the milky blue-green bay where the glacier met the sea. Bruised and bleeding, she’d walked out of the freezing water. Much of her armor and clothing were torn or missing, but she still had her spear and her dagger, and claimed to have slain the demon troll that had for so long plagued the people of the tiny village.