Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,36
trumpets speaking.
I nodded.
“We will restore the kingdom, Valorius!”
I nodded as before. It had been my own thought.
“I shall restore the kingdom, and the Game will be played again. The Game, Valorius, and I a queen!”
I knew then that she whom I had kissed so often must die. Men have said my sword springs to my hand. That is not so, yet few draw more swiftly. She parried my first thrust with her gauntlet and sought to seize the blade; it escaped her—thus I lived.
Of our fight in that moonlit garden I will say little. She could parry my blows, and did. I could not parry hers; she was too strong for it. I dodged and ducked and was knocked sprawling again and again. I hoped for help, and received none. If longing could foal a horse from air, I would have had two score. No horse appeared.
What came at last was Our Lord the Sun, and that was better. I turned her until she faced it and put my point through her eye-slot. The steel that went in was not so long as my hand and less wide than two fingers together, yet it was enough. It sufficed.
Now?
Now I wander the land. Asked to prophesy, I say we shall overthrow the tyrants and make a new nation for ourselves and our children. Should our folk require a sword, I am the sword that springs to their hands. Asked to heal, I cure their sick—when I can. If they bring food, I eat it. If they do not, I fast or find my own. And that is all, save that from time to time I entertain a lost traveler, such as yourself. East lies the past, west the future. Go north to find the gods, south to find the blessed. Above stands the All High, and below lies Pandemonium. Choose your road and keep to it, for if you stray from it, you may encounter such as I. Fare you well! We shall not meet again.
* * *
JAMES ENGE has been developing his stories of Morlock Ambrosius for years, but had to wait for the pendulum to swing back in favor of sword and sorcery before he made a splash. Appearing only recently in the pages of Black Gate, Flashing Swords, and everyday fiction.com, his tales of a wandering wizard and swordsman built up a loyal following in a very short time, before leaping into novel form with the books Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way, and The Wolf Age. Strange Horizon writes of him: “There’s a kind of literately sensuous pleasure in Enge’s writing…the pleasure of an intelligent, skillful writer amusing himself and us.” Little surprise then that Enge is an instructor of classical languages at a Midwestern university. Speaking to Fantasy Book Critic, he said, “The modern realistic novel, increasingly in the twentieth century, concerned itself with character above all else: what the character felt and perceived. I’m not knocking this: realistic fiction has some triumphant achievements in this line…But I think it’s an approach that is susceptible to diminishing returns. Genre fiction, like medieval and classical traditions of storytelling, tends to concentrate much more on what people do and the context in which they do it. I love this concentration on conduct, on action (but not necessarily in the car-chases-and-gunfights sense) and on the world…I find it in the older narrative traditions; I find it in genre fiction; and I think it’s the reason that twenty-first-century literary fiction is looking to refresh itself at the wells of genre.”
* * *
THE SINGING SPEAR
James Enge
To drink until you vomit and then drink again is dull work. It requires no talent and won’t gain you fame or fortune. It’s usually followed by a deep dark stretch of unconsciousness, though, so it had become Morlock Ambrosius’ favorite pastime.
In a brief lapse from chronic drunkenness he had invented a device which intensified the potency of wine many times. Because he had no use for gold (he could make it by the cartful if he needed it), he gave the device to Leen, the owner of the Broken Fist tavern. Leen proceeded to make gold by the cartful, through the more mundane method of selling distilled liquor. By his order, Morlock’s cup was never to be left empty when he entered the Broken Fist. Morlock entered the Broken Fist on a daily basis thereafter and stayed until the disgusted potboys tossed him, snoring, into the street. In another time and place, Morlock might have