Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,107
first book in his landmark sci-fantasy Majipoor series. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author and editor Karen Haber.
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DARK TIMES AT THE MIDNIGHT MARKET
Robert Silverberg
Business was slow nowadays for the spellmongers of Bombifale’s famed Midnight Market, and getting slower all the time. No one regretted that more than Ghambivole Zwoll, licensed dealer in potions and spells: a person of the Vroonish race, a small many-tentacled creature with a jutting beak and fiery yellow eyes, who represented the fourth generation of his line to hold the fifth stall in the leftmost rank of the back room of the Midnight Market of Bombifale.
Oh, the glorious times he could remember! The crowds of eager buyers for the wizardry he had for sale! The challenges triumphantly met, the wonders of conjuring that he had performed! In those great days of yore he had moved without fear through the strangest of realms, journeying among the cockatrices and gorgons, the flame-spitting basilisks and winged serpents, the universes beyond the universe, to bring back the secrets needed to meet the demands of his insatiable clients.
But now—but now—!
Popular interest in the various thaumaturgic arts, which had begun to sprout on Majipoor in the reign of the Coronal Lord Prankipin, had grown into a wild planetwide craze in the days of his glorious successor, Lord Confalume. That king’s personal dabblings in sorcery had done much to spur the mode for it. But it had been gradually waning during the reigns of the more skeptical monarchs who had followed him, Lord Prestimion and then Lord Dekkeret, and now, a century and more after Dekkeret’s time, sorcery had become a mere minor commodity, neither more nor less in demand than pepper, wine, dishware, or any other commonly used good. When one had need, one consulted the appropriate sort of wizard; but the era when a magus would be besieged by importunate patrons all through the hours of the clock was long over.
In those days the sorcerers’ section of the market was open only on the first and third Seadays of the month, creating pent-up demand that helped to spur a sense of urgency among the purchasers. But for the past decade the wizards had, of necessity, kept their shops open night after night to make themselves readily available to such few customers as did appear, and even so their trade seemed to be waning steadily year after year.
Even a dozen years ago Ghambivole Zwoll had had more work than he could handle. But two years back he had been forced to take in a partner, Shostik-Willeron of the Su-Suheris race, and together they barely managed to eke out a modest living in this era of diminishing fascination with all forms of magecraft. Their coffers were dipping ever lower, their debts were mounting to an uncomfortable level, and they were near the point where they might have to discharge their one employee, the stolid, husky Skandar woman who swept and tidied for them every evening before the shop opened. So it was a matter of some excitement one night, three hours past midnight, when a tall, swaggering young man clad in the flamboyant garb of an aristocrat—close-fitting blue coat with ruffled sleeves trimmed with gold, flaring skirts, wide-brimmed hat trimmed with leather of some costly sort—came sweeping into their shop.
He was red-haired, blue-eyed, handsome, energetic. He had the look of wealth about him. But there was something else about him, or so it seemed to Ghambivole Zwoll: the smirking set of his mouth, the overly rakish slant of his hat that cried scoundrel, wastrel, idler.
No matter. Ghambivole Zwoll had dealt with plenty of those in his time. So long as they paid their bills on time, Ghambivole Zwoll had no concern with his clients’ moral failings.
The proud lordling struck a lofty pose, his hand resting on the gleaming hilt of the sword that hung from a broad beribboned baldric at his side, and boomed, “I will have a love potion, if you please. To snare the heart of a lady of the highest birth! And I mean to spare no expense.”
Ghambivole Zwoll masked his joy with a calm, businesslike demeanor. He stared up—and up and up and up, for the new client was very tall indeed and Vroons are diminutive beings, knee-high at best to humans—and said judiciously, “Yes, yes, of course. We offer such compounds at every level of efficacy and potency.” He reached for a writing tablet. “Your name, please?”