A Quest-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic Read online

  “I was interested in your conclusions to this experiment,” Kane said. “I had earlier amused myself by reading through your journal. Truly remarkable.”

  “One would assume an assassin would be interested in the practical, if not the theoretical aspects of toxicology,” Sitilvon smiled, edging toward a credenza. “May I drink a glass of wine?”

  “It would be rude to refuse you,” Kane acceded. “The notes where you established the toxic characteristics of each portion of the monkshood plant were particularly methodical. Forty children—fascinating!”

  “Will you drink a glass with me?” Sitilvon invited. “This vintage has lain in our cellars since it was pillaged before my father's day. None of us has been able to identify it.”

  She poured two ice-clear goblets with heavy, tawny wine, and then handed one to Kane.

  Kane had been watching her every movement. “The other goblet, if you please,” he said, ignoring the one she proferred.

  Sitilvon shrugged and made the exchange. “As you please.”

  She took a luxuriant sip from her goblet, then noticed that Kane was still watching her, his own wine untasted.

  “I'm sure you'll understand if I exchange goblets with you once again,” Kane smiled, giving Sitilvon his wine and taking hers.

  “Under the circumstances, I can understand your caution.” Sitilvon returned his smile above her goblet. She drank deeply, and Kane followed suit.

  Sitilvon drowned her laughter in the wine. Both of their glasses were poisoned, for the decanter from which she poured was steeped with enough distillate of the amber poppy to kill a hundred men. Sitilvon, whose addiction to the same rare drug had established an enormous tolerance, considered this tainted liqueur no more than a pleasant nightcap. For Kane, the sleep would never be broken.

  Kane drained his goblet. “This is one of the sweet white wines that could be had from regional vineyards where the Southern Kingdoms border Chrosanthe,” Kane decided, “until the killing blight of a century past destroyed the grapes there. Its precise vineyard and perhaps its exact year I might have told you, had the wine not been so heavily laced with a tincture of amber poppies.”

  Sitilvon's eyes grew wide with fear.

  “The stimulant I swallowed as you poured for us is quite sufficient an antidote,” Kane said gently. “After all, I've had time enough to peruse your journal—and to partake of your sideboard. The opium of the amber poppy is no stranger to me.”

  Sitilvon realized that her heartbeat was too rapid, too erratic, even for fear. Pain lanced through her chest.

  “When you switched goblets with me …”

  “Actually, it was in your inkwell,” Kane explained.

  Her pulse was shaking her entire body. Sitilvon clutched at her writing table, her legs nerveless. Kane's hands reached out for her.

  “Sitilvon, come with me.”

  Puriali dipped his brush of maidens' eyelashes into the jade cup of infant's blood and completed the final astrological symbol within the pentacle's inner circle an instant before the last weakened cry of the newborn. Difficult in the extreme each step had been, but then the stakes were the highest, and Puriali knew he was too accomplished an adept to fail. He gathered his magician's robes close to his bony knees—it would be catastrophic should one of the lines be obliterated at this hour—and stepped carefully outside of the pentacle. Its outermost circle of power touched the threshold of the tower chamber's door and encompassed half the room. Puriali seated himself at his desk in view of the only door. A block of tarry substance with which he had formed the outer circle lay in his fingers, and his hand hung down only inches from a short gap that broke the outer circle. His lips barely seemed to move as he crooned a low chant in an archaic tongue.

  The wait was longer than Puriali had anticipated, but in time Kane slipped past the open doorway and stepped into the circle of the pentacle. Puriali lashed out with his dubious chalk and closed the circle. Kane halted at the sudden movement, watching the sorcerer.

  Puriali nodded a complacent greeting. “By now,” he said urbanely, “it would no doubt be facetious to inquire after the well-being of my paternal siblings.”

  “Do you really want to know?” Kane asked.

  “Surely you couldn't have thought I bore them any brotherly affection. They would have rid themselves of me long ago had we not needed one another. The solution to the problem is that I was first to realize the others were superfluous.”

  Puriali's smirk bespoke private jests. He watched Kane pace about the pentacle, seemingly studying its artistry with the detachment of the connoisseur.

  “I imagine you may be curious as to why I have summoned you to me,” Puriali suggested.

  Kane ceased his pacing and regarded the sorcerer attentively. “I was awaiting a polite opportunity to ask.”

  “I know everything about you, of course,” Puriali assured him with benign humor. “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Which is both why and how I summoned you here.” Puriali held up a hand to forestall protest. “No doubt you are thinking that you were sent here to carry out the vendetta of some bereaved whore with grandiose dreams. You should have understood by now that apparent free will is only a delusion.

  “You were summoned here through my own arts, Kane. I knew my half-siblings hated me, plotted as one to be rid of me whenever it seemed that my arts were more of a danger to them than an asset. Why not? Together we killed our father when his usefulness was outlived. But this time theirs was the error of judgment. I was already too powerful to require their continued existence.”

  Puriali withdrew a glittering coronet from beneath his robes and jammed it down upon his shock of red hair. “The ducal crown of Harnsterm,” he crowed, regarding Kane through over-bright blue eyes. “Fits rather well, don't you agree?”

  “Gold can be bent to any shape,” Kane remarked.

  “Very pithy, to be sure. No doubt your unsuspected wit will provide me with much needed amusement while you serve my will.”

  “You were about to explain …?”

  “Why, I should imagine it is all obvious to you by now, Kane.” Puriali adjusted the crown. “Who else could have murdered Wenvor and Ostervor and lovely Sitilvon? They were far too vigilant to give me the chance.”

  “And now?”

  “And now you should serve me. With the others dead I shall require a loyal henchman—one who can lead men into battle as expertly as he can weave political intrigue. For this reason I have spared you. With you to carry out my commands, Harnsterm is only the first step toward conquest of this strife-torn land.”

  “An ambitious scheme,” Kane commented, “if not particularly original. However, I regret that my own immediate assignments will make such an alliance impossible.”

  “Alliance?” Puriali laughed. “Not so. It is servitude I demand of you, Kane—although you will find that I am a kind master to those who serve me well.”

  He rose to his feet and gestured sweepingly. “By now you will have examined the pentacle into which you so obligingly blundered. Still believe in freedom of will, Kane? I summoned you tonight, willing you to slay the others, then to come to me in my tower. You are imprisoned now within the pentacle, held there by the symbols of power that represent the innermost secrets of your existence. You cannot escape the pentacle until I set you free, Kane—and this I will do only after I have bound you to me through certain irrevocable oaths and pacts that not even you dare break.”

  Puriali savored his triumph. “You see, Kane, I know that you are no common assassin and adventurer, no matter how uncommon your abilities. I know who you are.”

  The sorcerer gestured impressively. “Kane, son of Adam and born of Eve, you are within my power and my power alone. For centuries beyond counting you have followed your accursed fate, but after this night you shall follow only the dictates of my will. I have seen your destiny in the stars, and the astrological symbols of your nativity bind you powerless within the pentacle.
”

  “Most impressive,” Kane admitted. “Your work would do credit to a far older sorcerer whose wisdom would transcend this provincial backwater. You have committed only a few mistakes, but regrettably this is not an art in which one learns through experience.

  “In time even the stars change,” Kane explained, casually stepping out of the pentacle, “and yours are not the constellations of my birth.”

  Puriali shrank back against the tower wall, seeking in vain for an avenue of escape.

  “And it's ironic that you hadn't known Eve was only my stepmother,” Kane continued, reaching out for Puriali, “inasmuch as I rather suspect there's some trace of my blood in your veins.

  “Puriali, come with me.”

  IV. Payment in Full

  TAMASLEI AWOKE FROM DREAMS OF JOSIN TO DISCOVER KANE SEATED beside her bed. It was not a pleasant prospect, and she clutched the fur robes protectively about her silk-clad shoulders. Remembering the thin-bladed dagger sheathed just behind the headboard, she regained composure.

  “What do you want, Kane?” Her voice was surprisingly level.

  “Payment. I have completed my part of our bargain.”

  Tamaslei turned up the wick of her bedside lamp, increasing its companionable glow to brightness that split the chamber into shadows. Her figure was supple beneath the translucent silk.

  “No doubt there is proof?” Tamaslei's eyes were upon the large bag that Kane carried. Its leather folds seemed too flaccid to contain the evidences she expected.

  Kane's tone was formal, but held neither rancor nor scorn. “Tamaslei, I give these to you in accordance with our agreement.”

  He took her hand and dropped several bright objects onto her palm.

  Tamaslei's first thought was that they were jewels, then she saw they were something more. They were four oblong sigils carved of some crystal resembling jet, approximately the size of the first joint of her thumb, unusually heavy for their size and curiously warm to the touch. Each bore a carving upon its flattened side, and each carved figure was different: a dragon, a spider, a serpent, and a scorpion.

  “I'm not certain I understand the jest, Kane. I hired you to kill the Vareishei clan, and unless you have brought me their heads as proof that you have fulfilled our bargain, I insist upon awaiting news of their deaths before I give you payment.”

  She had expected protest, but Kane's voice was patient. “You did not ask me to kill the Vareishei clan; you said you wished to purchase their lives. You were most explicit.”

  “Come to the point of your jest, Kane.”

  “There is no jest. You made a contract to purchase four lives. I took four lives. You hold them in your hand: Wenvor, Ostervor, Sitilvon, Puriali.”

  “Do you think me a fool!” Tamaslei slid closer to the hidden dagger.

  Kane took the serpent-carven sigil from her hand and pressed it to her forehead. Tamaslei stiffened for a moment, then flung herself away with a violent shudder.

  “The secret is all but lost,” Kane said, “but I assumed you understood when you agreed to our contract, and I took from them their lives as I promised to do.”

  “And what of their physical bodies?” Tamaslei no longer doubted.

  Kane shrugged. “Lifeless carrion. Perhaps their followers were of a mind to burn their bodies upon a pyre of their stolen riches, perhaps they left them for the ravens. Their life-force remains imprisoned within these sigils.”

  “And what shall I do with them?”

  “Whatever you wish.”

  “If I smash the sigils?”

  “Their life-force would be released to reanimate their former flesh, such as may remain of it. However transient that experience might be, it cannot be a pleasant one.”

  Tamaslei rose from her bed and seated herself at her dressing table. One by one she dropped each sigil into her onyx mortar, smashing brutally downward with its pestle. The crystals shattered under her determined blows, suddenly disintegrating into thousands of dull granules. The sound of their shattering was like a cry of anguish.

  When she had finished, Tamaslei seemed to remember Kane's presence, like one recalling a long-ago dream. “And the coronet?” she asked, coming to herself.

  Kane produced the crown of Harnsterm from the depths of his bag. “The Vareishei no longer had need of it.”

  Tamaslei snatched it from his hand and gazed into her mirror. Her eyes glowed as she adjusted the crown upon her head.

  “There remains the matter of payment,” Kane reminded her.

  “Of course! And you shall find me more than generous.”

  “I only demand payment as agreed upon. A game is pointless if one disregards its rules.”

  Tamaslei unlocked the iron-bound door of her aumbry, as Kane held open his bag. One by one she drew them out: four bulging leather almoners, a name written in blood upon each heavy purse. One by one they disappeared into the black depths of Kane's bag.

  “I have kept these forty marks of gold in readiness for you, as promised,” Tamaslei explained. “I insist on paying you full value for this crown as well. However, I don't have enough gold on hand to make fair payment. Tomorrow evening, when you call upon me, I shall have obtained the full payment you have earned.”

  Tamaslei judged that by that time she could obtain half a dozen sufficiently competent and considerably less expensive assassins to lie in wait for Kane.

  “The crown is yours to keep,” Kane said unexpectedly. “I rather think Josin would have wanted you to have it.”

  He pointed toward the depths of the aumbry. “If you will just pull out the false nailheads immediately above and below the middle shelf at the left, that will release the lock on the false bottom. Hand me as payment what you find within, and this most interesting assignment will be completed.”

  Tamaslei bit her lip in anger, wondering how Kane could know of the aumbry's secret compartment. But he was not as clever as he thought, for the false bottom concealed nothing of real value—it was luck that Kane had not learned of the hidden space beneath the hearth.

  To her surprise, her fingers closed upon a thick leather purse. In wonder she dragged it out. It was a fat almoner, heavy with gold, just the same as the other four. Tamaslei gaped at it, turning it about in her hands.

  There was a name written in blood: Tamaslei.

  She remembered the thin-bladed dagger beside her bed, then saw that it was now held in Kane's hand.

  “Josin knew you were sending him to almost certain death,” Kane told her, stepping near. “Josin came to me before he set out, and we made a contract.”

  The Barbarian

  Poul Anderson

  Since the Howard-de Camp system for deciphering preglacial inscriptions first appeared, much progress has been made in tracing the history, ethnology, and even daily life of the great cultures which flourished till the Pleistocene ice age wiped them out and forced man to start over. We know, for instance, that magic was practiced; that there were some highly civilized countries in what is now Central Asia, the Near East, North Africa, southern Europe, and various oceans; and that elsewhere the world was occupied by barbarians, of whom the North Europeans were the biggest, strongest, and most warlike. At least, so the scholars inform us, and being of North European ancestry they ought to know.

  The following is a translation of a letter recently discovered in the ruins of Cyrenne. This was a provincial town of the Sarmian Empire, a great though decadent realm in the eastern Mediterranean area, whose capital, Sarmia, was at once the most beautiful and the most lustful, depraved city of its time. The Sarmians' northern neighbors were primitive horse nomads and/or Centaurs; but to the east lay the Kingdom of Chathakh, and to the south was the Herpetarchy of Serpens, ruled by a priestly cast of snake worshippers—or possibly snakes.

  The letter was obviously written in Sarmia and posted to Cyrenne. Its date is approximately 175,000 B.C.

  Maxilion Quaestos, sub-sub-sub-prefect of the Imperial Water-works of Sarmia, to his nephew Thyaston, Cha
ncellor of the Bureau of Thaumaturgy, Province of Cyrenne:

  Greetings!

  I trust this finds you in good health, and that the gods will continue to favor you. As for me, I am well, though somewhat plagued by the gout, for which I have tried [here follows the description of a home remedy, both tedious and unprintable]. This has not availed, however, save to exhaust my purse and myself.

  You must indeed have been out of touch during your Atlantean journey, if you must write to inquire about the Barbarian affair. Now that events have settled down again, I can, I hope, give you an adequate and dispassionate account of the whole ill-starred business. By the favor of the Triplet Goddesses, holy Sarmia has survived the episode; and though we are still rather shaken, things are improving. If at all times I seem to depart from the philosophic calm I have always tried to cultivate, blame it on the Barbarian. I am not the man I used to be. None of us are.

  To begin, then, about three years ago the war with Chathakh had settled down to border skirmishes. Now and then a raid by one side or the other would penetrate deeply into the countries themselves, but with no decisive effect. Indeed, since these operations yielded a more or less equal amount of booty for both lands, and the slave trade grew brisk, it was good for business.

  Our chief concern was the ambiguous attitude of Serpens. As you well know, the Herpetarchs have no love for us, and a major object of our diplomacy was to keep them from entering the war on the side of Chathakh. We had, of course, no hope of making them our allies. But as long as we maintained a posture of strength, it was likely that they would at least stay neutral.

  Thus it stood when the Barbarian came to Sarmia.

  We had heard rumors of him for a long time. An accurate description was available. He was a wandering soldier of fortune from some kingdom of swordsmen and seafarers up in the northern forests. He had drifted south, alone, in search of adventure or perhaps only a better climate. Seven feet tall, and broad in proportion, he was one mass of muscle, with a mane of tawny hair and sullen blue eyes. He was adept with any weapon, but preferred a four-foot double-edged sword with which he could cleave helmet, skull, neck, and so on down at one blow. He was also said to be a drinker and lover of awesome capacity.