Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,157
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
* * *
TWO LIONS, A WITCH, AND THE WAR-ROBE
Tanith Lee
To come on the apparently unguarded forest city of Cashloria was often a surprise, since it lay, as its name implied, deep in one of the vast ancient forests of Trosp. Enormous pines, cedars, beeches, oaks, poplars, and other trees towered up, for hundreds of miles. A single wide road, in places rather overgrown, eccentrically bisected the area. Once night began, the city was quite arresting. Then its thousands of lamp-lit windows, many with stained glass, blazed in slices between the trunks. Huge old stone mansions, public halls, and various fortresses appeared, but all smothered in among the forest, with trees growing everywhere about them, in some cases out of the stonework itself. In the narrow central valley to which the road eventually descended, where lay the city’s hub, ran the thrashing River Ca, along which only the most courageous water-traffic ventured, and that in the calm of summer.
It was now fall. The forest had clothed itself in scarlet, copper, magenta, black, and gold. Audible from a day’s ride away, the Ca roared angrily with pre-freeze melt-snow from distant mountains. Sunset dropped screaming red on the horizon and went out, and utter darkness closed its wings.
Zire the Scholar had been traveling a long while. He was weary and aggrieved. Yesterday, forest brigands had set on him and stolen his horse. Though naturally he had tracked and tricked them and stolen it back, the horse next cast a shoe, so now both of them must plod.
As night gathered and he spotted the lights of Cashloria, Zire gave a grunt of relief. He had read of the city over a year before, and set out to see it along with others, but during the last hour doubted he would find it at all. Benign unhuman guardians were supposed to take care of the conurbation, for example by protecting it with sorcery rather than city walls. This evening Zire had begun to think they had also rendered the place invisible. But lights shone. Here he was.
Zire was young and tall, and well-made. His hair was, where light revealed it, the rich somber red of the dying beech leaves. His eyes were the cold gray of approaching winter skies. His spirit was not dissimilar: fires vied with melancholy, exuberance with introversion.
Presently, the young man reached a promontory, thick with trees and pillared buildings. Below, the landscape tumbled down, still clad in darkling foliage, roofs, and windows of ruby and jade, to a coil of the angry river. A few lights also marked the river’s course, but mainly it was made obvious by its uproar. They said, in Cashloria—or so Zire had read—“The Ca is foul-mouthed and always shouting.”
Nevertheless, here was an inn, by name the Plucked Dragon.