Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,166

A dog barked once, a rabbit squeaked, and a cat spat. A rattle of wings and clatter of discarded perches and instruments revealed where crows and owls beat it at top speed through a window and a door. The room had become black as tar. Only the star gleamed on the garden outside.

Male voices uttered.

“Are you able, Bretilf, to move at all?”

“Not I. And you, Zire?”

“Neither.”

“Rest, my friends,” murmured the seductive tones of the witch. “I have concocted, for your intelligence and reckless natures, another destiny than you predict.”

“A witch, what else? That food,” said Bretilf next, now in a slurred and impersonal way.

“Or that witchy bloody beer,” grumbled Zire. “To the lowest hell with it, we have yet again—”

“—been drugged and enspelled,” explained Bretilf.

In the darkness, there now sounded a discordant slumping couple of thuds, as of two muscular young men dropping on a tiled floor, amid their boots, garments, a part-sculpted stag, swords, and other accessories.

There followed a woman’s provocative laugh. And night extinguished the scene both inside and out, as the low diamond of the abnormal star capsized in clouds.

In sleep, there was no respite either. Each man dreamed a selection of episodes concerning those luckless heroes—and heroines—who had entered the infamous castle.

Bretilf beheld Drod Laphel, tall and powerful, with golden locks, striding through an enormous sable building, sword ready, while a huge serpent oozed toward him. It was scaled like an alligator, yet black-blue as midnight. It opened its scarlet jaws and made a noise as of steam rising from a hot spring. At that, Drod chanted some spell so hypnotic even the actually ensorcelled and drugged and anyway non-serpentine Bretilf grew helpless. Surprisingly, the serpent did not. It surged forward, a scaly wave from a midnight ocean, and the golden swordsman vanished in its coils.

Zire, too, dreamed, but his surreality concerned the beautiful Shaiy. She was a lightly sturdy young woman, with skin of cream and eyes like green embers. Now, standing inside a huge vaulted hall, she confronted a sort of puma, with the head of a falcon and falcon wings. The falcon-puma had challenged her, it seemed, to solve some conundrum, and to sing her reply. This Shaiy proceeded to do. But no sooner did her excellent mezzo-soprano fill the space than the echo of her voice itself became a living entity, which boomed and howled like thunder. Blocks of masonry started to fall. And both Shaiy and the cat-bird-sphinx were lost to view.

Thereafter there were endless such dreams. Maybe even fifty or more of those condemned to seek the Robe appeared before Bretilf and Zire. All foundered. In each case, definite clues were given as to the vile methods of their ending.

Then at last Bretilf dreamed, and Zire, too, that they themselves—each solo—entered the same lapideous building. Their names had altered, for some reason. Zire was called Izer, Bretilf—Ibfrelt. Knowing this was less than useful to them.

Upon Zire, from the shadowy architecture rushed flapping creatures, most like colossal books, and he, spinning and leaping, wielding Scribe to parry and slash and pierce, the knife to stab and slice, still battled them in vain. They closed on him, and slammed him shut inside their covers.

Bretilf found that he had tried to draw, or carve out on the walls, talismans of beneficent gods. But they erupted like boiling black milk, grew solid, ripped away his weapons from his grip. After which a giant stag rose out of the floor and tore at him, and stove in his ribs, with antlers and feet.

Slaughtered personally over and over in their dreams, Izer-Zire and Ibfrelt-Bretilf longed for day and awakening, whether in a hell or heaven, or—the favorite choice—the world.

Dawn though, as was its habit, took its own time.

A century later, perhaps, it seemed, the metal-leafed forest flooded pink as a blush. The sun rose. The things of darkness…fled?

The mansion of the witch was somber and deserted-looking in the morning. No owls, or any birds, were evident. The white roses had folded tight as buds, as if only after sunset could they open.

Even so, the door to the mansion remained wide. As did the outer gate.

In a while, something might be seen to be moving through the garden.

If the sun watched for Zire and Bretilf, the sun was due for a disappointment, since what presently padded through the gates on to the hillside, though two in number, were a pair of young lions. Once outside, both paused to sniff the gate-posts, the air. One growled, the other