Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,184
Malmury alive.
Twice, she lost her way among the boulders, and by the time Dóta stumbled upon the cave, a heavy snow had begun to fall, large wet flakes spiraling down from the darkness. But it was warm inside, out of the howling wind. And, what’s more, she found bundles of wolf and bear pelts, seal skins, and mammoth hide, some sewn together into sturdy garments. And there was salted meat, a few potatoes, and a freshly killed rabbit spitted and roasting above a small cooking fire. She would never again set eyes on the sea troll’s daughter, but in the long days ahead, as Dóta and the stranger named Malmury made their way through blizzards and across fields of ice, she would often sense someone nearby, watching over them. Or only watching.
* * *
BILL WILLINGHAM was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He got his start as staff artist for TSR, Inc., providing illustrations for a number of its role-playing games, among them Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Gamma World. In the 1980s, he gained attention for his comic book series Elementals (published by Comico), and contributed as an illustrator to such titles as DC’s Green Lantern. Willingham created the popular DC Vertigo comic book Fables in 2002, about characters from folklore residing in contemporary Manhattan. To date, Fables is the recipient of fourteen coveted Eisner Awards. His Jack of Fables, created with Matthew Sturges, was chosen by Time magazine as number five in their Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2007. His first Fables prose novel, Peter and Max, was released in 2009, the same year that his comic book Fables: War and Pieces was nominated for the first Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. One of the most popular comics writers of our time, he currently lives in the woods in Minnesota.
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THIEVES OF DARING
Bill Willingham
Septavian is 24 or 25 by this time, still adventuring in the company of the Brothers Frogbarding. They work as mercenaries for the most part, in the much-fragmented northern kingdoms, traveling south on occasion to spend their pay and thieve in the large and wealthy port cities. Though the city is not specifically named in the following tale, it is widely assumed to be Vess, which is identified in other stories as a center for the practice of dark arts and the location of the wizard Ulmore’s winter palace.
From A Probable Outline of Septavian’s Life and Adventures
by Walter Marsh
Jonar Frogbarding, the giant red-bearded northlander was dead, headless, on the upper landing, a victim of one of Ulmore’s roving guards, his infamous Golems Decapitant. His fair-haired brother Tywar was bleeding out at my feet on the main floor. Nothing I could do would help him. Too many deep wounds, each one a killing stroke. I watched the quickly expanding red lake spread out from the disordered pieces of him to luridly paint the floor’s elaborate central mosaic, hand-cut marble tiles of every conceivable color, depicting an imaginary monster attacking a ship at sea. Maybe not imaginary, I corrected myself, considering the other impossible things we’d encountered today. The blade that had dispatched Tywar lay on the floor beside him, apparently finally drained of whatever animating force had lent some manner of autonomous life to it.
I hadn’t seen Roe Zelazar, the black-haired, black-eyed Lemurian, since the four of us had breached the estate’s outer wall, more than an hour ago. Four thieves of daring, out on a wine-fueled lark, to make ourselves famous, at least among a select underworld set, by looting the vacant winter palace of Ulmore, the legendary Last Atlantean Sorcerer. As soon as we’d reached the first inner courtyard, Roe had whispered something frantic and unintelligible before running off in his own direction, leaving me with the brothers.
“I think he heard something,” Jonar had whispered. “Went to investigate.”
“I’m not inclined to stay here in the open, waiting for him,” I’d said.
“Nor I,” Tywar said.
So the three of us continued the raid without him, making our way past the outbuildings, over the lawn, sewn with spike-bottomed mantraps, among other snares and distractions, and to the main building, a fortress disguised as a palace. Once inside, we’d run into the real defenses, constructs of darkest sorcery, that worried and harried at us, room by room, step by step, steadily wearing us down, making us pay for every foot gained, until I had to watch the brothers, my friends and companions for the past three years, cut into lifeless bone and carcass.