Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXVI Read online

  Moon reduced her chant to a silent movement of the lips. She watched Salt freeze in concentration, listening. Whether because her ears were less keen or because even mouthing the chant was too distracting, Moon could not hear what had caught Salt's attention. Eaten up with curiosity, she forced herself to be silent until Salt said, "Something's singing. Up that way. It doesn't sound human."

  Moon nodded without ceasing to chant. Salt led her up a steep slope and northward toward the distant voice. Before Moon became able to hear it, she could feel it like thunder in the air; her bones thrilled with it. As they made their way along the high cliff, she heard it, too, deep and echoing, but with high overtones, stirring every nerve in her body. She wanted nothing more than to cease her own song and lose herself in the inhuman music, but with each step they took closer to the voice, the need for the chant of stealth increased. She dared not falter. At last, strained almost past endurance, she touched Salt's wrist in the agreed-upon sign that she needed a rest.

  Salt did not at first respond, her eyes and her whole body intent on the path toward the dragon. Only when Moon gave the signal a fourth time did Salt begin trying to take up the chant—and even then, she stumbled and missed so many words that Moon did not dare leave off the chant herself, lest they stand open and unprotected before the dragon. After a time, Moon waved a dismissive gesture at Salt and resigned herself to maintaining the spell without help.

  Salt led them backward along the path they had taken until they reached a small cave where they could shelter. They squeezed past the thorn bush at the mouth and flung themselves to the floor, exhausted. Moon at last fell silent, drinking in the sound of the dragon's song in ecstasy. After a time it ceased. They sat breathless, clinging to each other for a few moments before they saw a vast shining green form pass the mouth of the cave and fly out to sea.

  "Mother of mercies," Moon whispered when the dragon was out of sight. "What if she'd caught our scent? I ought to have begun the chant again when she stopped singing."

  "What's wrong with me?" moaned Salt. "I couldn't chant stealth at all."

  Moon corrected her, "You couldn't do it over the dragon's song. It's hard to cast one spell over another."

  "So that was a spell," Salt said, as if it confirmed her guess.

  "Maybe this is where all our spells came from, in the beginning," Moon mused.

  "Do you think so?" Salt's voice grew high with excitement. "Great Mother, what we could learn if we stay here! More spells than Clearstream would teach us in twenty years!"

  "Maybe," Moon said. "Who knows?"

  "Can we stay here? Will we be safe? A dragon couldn't come into this little crevice, but it could send a flame right into the cave, couldn't it?"

  "I don't think that dragon we startled could flame. Maybe they can't when they're with child," Moon said. "If she could have driven us off with fire, I think she'd have done it—easier than flying at us, heavy with young."

  "What about her mate?"

  "I don't know." Moon rubbed her eyes. "I'm too tired to go anywhere else, and too tired to chant any longer. The spell saps my strength. I need sleep." She remembered nothing after that until dawn light crept into their hideout. Beside her, Salt was sleeping: chant or no chant, they'd survived the night.

  * * * *

  During the days they camped in that cave, they learned the rhythms of the dragon's life. She flew at dawn and dusk; on her return, she was always silent for some hours. She sang with heart-melting beauty from noon until sundown, and again for a little time at midnight. The two women learned to replenish their supplies of fish and water while the dragon was silent, chanting for stealth in case she was awake. When she sang, they could do nothing but listen, ravished.

  During one of the dragon's silences, they tried to transpose her songs into their human voices, to see if they had learned anything they might use as a spell. "Nothing!" Salt cried in frustration, breaking off in the midst of a phrase of melody.

  "Not quite," Moon said. "I felt something—something waiting. As if we had missed some cue, and the wind only waited for the one thing we missed."

  "We have to see the dragon," Salt said furiously. "I'm tired of only hearing her."

  "You're right," Moon said. "We'll have to risk it. You chant for stealth first; I'll take over after ten verses. It may get harder, the closer we come to the lair."

  They shuffled carefully along the cliff, scanning the stones for fewmets, the sky for dragons. Gulls flew close by their ears, oblivious to their presence under the cover of the spell. At last they found a cavern—not a little hidey-hole like the one they lived in, but a magnificent hall of rock that sighed with faint music.

  They crept inside and found the dragon sleeping, green scales glistening like the surface of the sea. Tales had it that dragons slept on a hoard of gold and jewels; there was no gold here, no trove of stolen treasure, but the walls of the cave were studded with crystals that caught the sunlight, rose and violet and pearly white. The dragon's belly twitched with the stirring of her young. Her sleeping breath sighed out in faint music, too gentle to perturb the minds of the women, though the spring breezes heard and answered with caresses.

  They gazed until the morning was so far advanced that they feared to be caught there, paralyzed by the dragon's song, unable to hide themselves or flee. They retreated unwillingly to their hiding place to hear the song tease them again with promises of magic just beyond their reach.

  That evening, after the dragon flew away, a storm whipped the sea to fury. Moon shivered, wondering whether Seahorse and the children were safe.

  * * * *

  The next morning it was Moon's turn to get fresh water while Salt fished. On her way back from the freshwater stream, she felt drawn to the dragon's cave. Surely it would not hurt to look, just for a little while. Shouldering her waterskins, she took the cliffside path to the dragon's lair. The chant of stealth had become a reflex, scarcely occupying her thoughts. She had no fear of detection.

  The dragon slept as before, stirring only in the rhythm of breath and the dancing of the child in her womb.

  Moon crept closer till she could feel the dragon's breath: the softest of summer breezes, redolent of beach roses and wild herbs and the clean tang of the sea. She did not know how long she stood, inhaling that breath, feeling that there was something important lingering at the verge of her consciousness that she almost understood.

  The dragon abruptly stretched and turned. Moon noticed the angle of the light with alarm: the sun must be nearly overhead. Still chanting, she hurried along the path toward the cave. Before she reached shelter, the song began, and she had to weep for the very beauty of it. Still, obstinately, she chanted, knowing her life depended on it.

  Then her foot met an unexpected softness, and she smelled woodsmoke and wild chicory. Fewmets! Just as she remembered from her childhood adventure with Seahorse, the scent went to her head like the strongest wine. Dared she move? Dared she stay, where the broken fewmet would keep sending its intoxicating odor toward her? She kicked the fewmets off the cliff edge, clung to the wall of stone, and managed a few slow steps before dreams took her. She was flying out over the sea to an island at the far edge of the world. There golden trees bore golden apples; fanged beasts guarded them, but she passed over them, snatched the topmost fruits, and soared over the clouds, while the great beasts roared in fury.

  A pair of strong, slim hands caught her, bringing her back to her body. Moon looked up blearily at Salt. The young woman did not speak to her; she was chanting, her face strained in fierce concentration. A dragon swooped by—not the green mother dragon, but a purple-black one. Moon yearned toward it; Salt held her harder, pinning her to the stone wall. When the dragon was out of sight, Salt began coaxing Moon step by step back to their shelter. The wind lashed them all the while, and Moon wept with the desire to step out onto it and fly. She sang with the dragon and heard the wind echo her melody.

  At last they reached shelter, but Salt did not cease chantin
g for stealth as Moon sang and danced and writhed in her fewmet-dreams.

  * * * *

  Moon came to herself in darkness. "How long did I dream?"

  "Two and a half days," Salt said wearily.

  "You chanted all that time!" Somehow, even in her mad dreaming, Moon had been aware of it. "Even through the dragon's song. You've never done that before."

  Salt shrugged. "You do what you must. I was afraid your spell-chanting would bring the dragon. It grew easier with practice. But I desperately need sleep now. I almost started dreaming myself, till I realized I had to throw away your fewmet-tainted sandal."

  "You saved both our lives. Sleep now." While Salt slept, Moon quietly tried to sing to the wind, as the dragon had done in her dreams. But something was still lacking.

  As soon as Salt had recovered from her long vigil, Moon told her, "I have the pieces of the mosaic now: the magic in the dragon's song and the magic in her body, which is manifest imperfectly in fewmets. There's only one way to put them together. I have to do what Windwise did: become the dragon's daughter."

  "But we don't even know what that meant," Salt protested.

  "I think I do," Moon said.

  * * * *

  They stood together at the door of the crystal cave where the dragon slept. "Protect yourself," Moon whispered. "If I don't survive, you have to bring word back to Sternhaven."

  Salt didn't stop chanting as they embraced. Moon detached herself, then looked back one last time for reassurance before she faced the dragon. She wove her own chant, the chant to breathe under water, like a child not yet born. She drew air around herself, and at the same time, she made herself more like air, lithe enough to enter the smallest window. Hidden by Salt's spell of stealth, shrunk by her own spell, she slipped under the gigantic scaly thigh and then immersed herself in the dragon's body, bubbling upward into the waters of the womb. The soon-to-be-born dragonlet floated in that hidden sea, and Moon floated beside it.

  She did not know how long she dwelt there. She heard the dragon singing in every register she could hear, deeper than the lowest growl of an old sailor's shanty, higher than the shrillest birdsong, lighter than a baby's laughter, wilder than the voice of the ocean. The song shook her till she thought she would break apart. It permeated her bones and changed her from within.

  The song rose to a wail of pain, and the world contracted around her, forcing her out into unaccustomed brightness and air. Moon gasped on the stones of the cave beside a glistening purple-black dragonlet, her brother. A long rough tongue rasped her clean. Her head reeled in confusion until her mother's voice comforted her, and she slept.

  She woke to clutching fingers and a chant whispered by an undragonly voice. Frightened, she tried to fly away over the sea, but warm arms held her back—not, she realized slowly, the arms of a stranger, but those of a friend. Salt, she thought, but could not speak. She let the woman lead her back to Sternhaven, step by faltering step on feet that had almost forgotten how to walk.

  As they stumbled down the coast, she heard a song a grief, the wail of the mother dragon waking to find her daughter gone. She tried to leap into the air and fly home. Salt tackled her and held her on the ground, chanting steadily all the while. The glistening green dragon flew past them, unseeing; Moon wailed and struggled, but the younger woman was stronger, and held her in place under the spell of stealth, until the dragon was gone and they could move again. The rest of the way, she walked blinded by tears, torn by yearning for her children ahead of her, for her mother behind her.

  When her husband ran to embrace her, when her children clung to her, she saw tears in their eyes. She tried to reassure them, but the voice that came from her throat was a dragon's.

  When the storms came again, the old wise-woman tried to take her by the arm and draw her somewhere, but Moon shook her off like a strand of seaweed. She ran out on the sand among the fishing boats, raised her dragon's voice in song, and danced the wind away.

  It took her years to remember how to speak in human language. Long before then, learning-women began to gather about her: Salt, who had never left her; her young cousin Sweetwater; even Dayraven, a woman older than Moon, too headstrong to follow Clearstream, but drawn to Moon's new knowledge. They brought Moon colored stones to tile the patterns of her dances so others could learn them. She found she could do this more easily than speaking.

  From time to time, she traveled up the coast to watch the dragons—her mother, her brother—and wept to know she could not fly with them. Every full moon, her friends and learning-women kept close watch over her, for then the desire was the strongest to throw herself to the winds and spread wings she did not have, vainly seeking the islands at the rim of the world.

  She could not regret the path she had chosen, but in one respect Clearstream had been right. Moon had paid the price of knowledge in the belly of the dragon, and she would never be the same.

  Nemesis

  by Steve Chapman

  Your friends may drive you crazy, but it takes your family to make you truly homicidal. Killing them, however, is usually not the proper solution to the problem.

  A lapsed musician and engineer, Steve Chapman recently decamped with his wife and daughter from Manhattan to the relative wilds of the New Jersey shore. Though he still spends most days high above Times Square, in the evening he can hear the ocean.

  #

  Shada strode down Kings' Hall, the rucksack thrown over her shoulder. Courtiers stopped and stared at her bruised face and torn combat leathers. Her boots left tracks of blood, sand, and seawater on the fine carpets.

  All her sixteen years Shada had dreaded this endless march along the cathedral-like Hall. She was usually bound in yards of fabric and jewels, on helpless display as she moved from the glares of the low courtiers in the atrium, past the leers of geriatric generals and mages, to finally arrive before the punishing stares of the highborn nobles jostling for prime position around her father's throne.

  Within Kings' Hall, one must always look one's best and behave with absolute decorum.

  The Hall was nearly empty today, a handful of courtiers buzzing about the vacant throne. Shada felt their disapproving glares like a flurry of razor cuts; a chorus of inconsequential but painful wounds. She forced herself to keep her head up and her face clear of emotion.

  "I'm pleased to see you've forgotten the penalty for dirtying Master Filtzmaltin's carpets, Princess." An obese woman of fifty years, the Baroness Nerana Allastraude appeared as a robust if over-rouged ingénue by virtue of the magical tattoos on her neck and hands. "I so enjoyed your last public flogging."

  Shada emptied the rucksack. The object within splattered green blood and slime on the Baroness' diamond-encrusted shoes as it tumbled free. The Baroness, and all the assembled courtiers, gasped at the gruesome head of the water gorgon.

  Rumor claimed that such a monster had been sighted in the sea caves outside the city. The Royal Herald insisted there was no such creature, but seven fishing boats had vanished in the past fortnight. Already some of the migrant schooners had left for safer waters, and talk swirled that St. Navarre would soon face food shortages.

  With the monster's head delivered to the Citadel, the crisis was over. Shada, always the black sheep, always in trouble, had won the day. This day, at least.

  One of the nearest courtiers clapped his hands in approval. Another joined in. And another. The Baroness, ready to fume about her ruined shoes, bit her tongue. Shada could feel the relief coursing through the Hall. She allowed herself a mocking bow in acknowledgment. She didn't get many moments of triumph and was determined to enjoy this one.

  Scarlet Guardsmen, weapons drawn, poured into the Hall. Fifteen soldiers moved in a wedge designed to separate Shada from the growing crowd. Cavalier Vanas Escroat, bald and wiry, scooped up the head and threw it back in the sack.

  Heartbeat hammering as the soldiers surrounded her, Shada put a hand to her sword. But she knew better than to draw it.

  "Move along," a
Guardsman told the courtiers. "You've seen nothing here today."

  "What are you doing?" Shada felt a blade against her back. Strong hands grasped her arms.

  "What does it look like I'm doing, Princess?" Escroat retied the neck of the rucksack with slime-coated hands. "Placing you under arrest."

  * * * *

  Set high in the Eastern Tower, the featureless cell had no furniture save for a slop bucket and a single window overlooking the furious sea. Shada stood at the window, breathing in the cool, salt-scented air, watching the schooners making their way in and out of St. Navarre's harbor. They would proceed safely because she had slain the gorgon. For her troubles she was now a prisoner in her own home.

  She could have had her sword out and through Escroat's throat, but only at the cost of blood spilled in King's Hall. Her only option, for the moment, had been to submit.

  Was there a plot afoot against her father? She'd feigned tears with Escroat during the long climb to the cell, allowing him every opportunity to gloat, but he'd stayed uncharacteristically silent. She was likely being held as leverage. If so, she intended to make the men who had mistaken her for a passive pawn very sorry they'd done so.

  Shada felt like a tinderbox most of the time, as if her blood were flammable, the faintest slight enough to ignite it. She understood that she did herself no favors, brawling with baronets and soldiers. But at a moment when St. Navarre was facing so many external threats, the backstabbing politics of the Court infuriated her and often overcame her better judgment.

  The one thing that could focus her thoughts was a direct threat to her father. She refused to be the lever by which a usurper attempted to take his crown.

  The locks clicked open behind her.

  Shada stayed perfectly still at the window, as if she hadn't noticed. Her sword and knives had been confiscated; she'd have to manage without them.