The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (55 page)

Still, she did not know why the dog pack was here, circling her
tree. Their jaws were raised so that she could see their iron teeth,
could hear the tolling of her death with their long tongues.

She used the single word she could remember. She said it with
great authority, with trembling.

“Avaunt!”

At the sound of her voice, the animals all sat down on their
haunches to stare up at her, their own tongues silenced. Except for
one, a rat terrier, small and springy and unable to be still. He raced
back up the path toward the west like some small spy going to report
to his master.

Love comes like a thief, stealing the heart’s gold away.

It was in the deeper dark that the dogs’ master came, with his men
behind him, their horses’ hooves thrumming the forest paths. They
trampled the grass, the foxglove’s pink bells and the purple florets
of self-heal, the wine-colored burdock flowers and the sprays of
yellow goldenrod equally under the horses’ heavy feet. The woods
were wounded by their passage. The grass did not spring back nor the
flowers raise up again.

She heard them and began trembling anew as they thrashed their
way across her green haven and into the very heart of the wood.

Ahead of them raced the little terrier, his tail flagging them on,
till he led them right to the circle of dogs waiting patiently beneath
her tree.

“Look, my lord, they have found something,” said one man.

“Odd they should be so quiet,” said another.

But the one they called lord dismounted, waded through the sea
of dogs, and stood at the very foot of the oak, his feet crunching on
the fallen acorns. He stared up, and up, and up through the green
leaves and at first saw nothing but brown and green.

One of the large gray dogs stood, walked over to his side, raised its
great muzzle to the tree, and howled.

The sound made her shiver anew.

“See, my lord, see—high up. There is a trembling in the foliage,”
one of the men cried.

“You fool,” the lord cried, “that is no trembling of leaves. It is a
girl. She is dressed all in brown and green. See how she makes the
very tree shimmer.” Though how he could see her so well in the dark,
she was never to understand. “Come down, child, we will not harm
you.”

She did not come down. Not then. Not until the morning fully
revealed her. And then, if she was to eat, if she was to relieve herself,
she had to come down. So she did, dropping the rope ladder, and
skinning down it quickly. She kept her knife tucked up in her waist,
out where they could see it and be afraid.

They did not touch her but watched her every movement, like
a pack of dogs. When she went to the river to drink, they watched.
When she ate the bit of journeycake the lord offered her, they
watched. And even when she relieved herself, the lord watched. He
would let no one else look then, which she knew honored her, though
she did not care.

And when after several days he thought he had tamed her, the
lord took her on his horse before him and rode with her back to the
far west where he lived. By then he loved her, and knew that she
loved him in return, though she had yet to speak a word to him.

“But then, what have words to do with love,” he whispered to her
as they rode.

He guessed by her carriage, by the way her eyes met his, that she
was a princess of some sort, only badly used. He loved her for the
past which she could not speak of, for her courage which showed in
her face, and for her beauty. He would have loved her for much less,
having found her in the tree, for she was something out of a story, out
of a prophecy, out of a dream.

“I loved you at once,” he whispered. “When I knew you from the
tree.”

She did not answer. Love was not yet in her vocabulary. But she
did not say the one word she could speak:
avaunt.
She did not want
him to go.

When the cat wants to eat her kittens, she says they look like mice.

His father was not so quick to love her.

His mother, thankfully, was long dead.

She knew his father at once, by the way his eyes were slotted
against the hot sun of the gods, against the lies of men. She knew him
to be a king if only by that.

And when she recognized her mother and her sisters in his retinue,
she knew who it was she faced. They did not know her, of course. She
was no longer seven but nearly seventeen. Her life had browned her,
bronzed her, made her into such steel as they had never known. She
could have told them but she had only contempt for their lives. As
they had contempt now for her, thinking her some drudge run off to
the forest, some sinister throwling from a forgotten clan.

When the king gave his grudging permission for their marriage,
when the prince’s advisers set down in long scrolls what she should
and should not have, she only smiled at them. It was a tree’s smile,
giving away not a bit of the bark.

She waited until the night of her wedding to the prince, when
they were couched together, the servants a giggle outside their door.
She waited until he had covered her face with kisses, when he had
touched her in secret places that made her tremble, when he had
brought blood between her legs. She waited until he had done all the
things she had once watched her brother do to the maids, and she
cried out with pleasure as she had heard them do. She waited until
he was asleep, smiling happily in his dreams, because she did love him
in her warrior way.

Then she took her knife and slit his throat, efficiently and without
cruelty, as she would a deer for her dinner.

“Your father killed my father,” she whispered, soft as a love token
in his ear as the knife carved a smile on his neck.

She stripped the bed of its bloody offering and handed it to the
servants who thought it the effusions of the night. Then she walked
down the hall to her father-in-law’s room.

He was bedded with her mother, riding her like one old wave atop
another.

“Here!” he cried as he realized someone was in the room. “You!”
he said when he realized who it was.

Her mother looked at her with half-opened eyes and, for the first
time, saw who she really was, for she had her father’s face, fierce and
determined.

“No!” her mother cried. “Avaunt!” But it was a cry that was ten
years late.

She killed the king with as much ease as she had killed his son, but
she let the knife linger longer to give him a great deal of pain. Then
she sliced off one of his ears and put it gently in her mother’s hand.

In all this she had said not one word. But wearing the blood of
the king on her gown, she walked out of the palace and back to the
woods, though she was many days getting there.

No one tried to stop her, for no one saw her. She was a flower in
the meadow, a rock by the roadside, a reed by the river, a tree in the
forest.

And a warrior’s mother by the spring of the year.

RACHEL POLLACK

1

“
I
would
like
to see your master, please.” The merchant stood in the
doorway, nervously shifting his weight. Except for a first glance at
Cori, his eyes slid right past her.

“There is no master here,” she said. “I serve only myself.”

“What? Oh. I mean, I’m sorry.” She could see him shrink back as
he looked over his shoulder at the single dirt road from town, empty
of any other houses (must they
all
do that?). Then he looked her
up and down, seeing the long deep red dress, the green scarf that
covered her hair and then crossed around the back of her neck to
tie at the throat, the long delicate hands slightly reddened from the
scrubbing she’d given the house that morning, the small breasts and
long slender waist, the delicate face with its thin lips, high cheeks,
and wide eyes. “I’m sorry,” the merchant repeated. “I must have made
a mistake.”

“If you must, you must,” Cori said, and almost slammed the heavy
wood door. Instead she reminded herself how much she needed a
client. “Why don’t you tell me what you want?” she said.

“Well—” The man swallowed. “The people, I mean in the town,
they said, that is, the innkeeper, a bald man—”

“Jonni.”

“Yes, that’s right. Jonni. He told me—” He stopped. “That an—”

“That an Assassin lived here.”

He caught his breath at the word. “Yes. A member...a member of
the Red Guild. Yes.”

“I am an Assassin,” Cori said.

He stared at her. He was a tall thick man, this merchant in his
yellow satin robes streaked with pink and purple velvet. He stood
more than a head above the skinny girl, and probably weighed a good
third more than she did. He could have knocked her down with a
single shove; or so it looked. “I didn’t know the Guild took, uh...”
Again his voice trailed off.

“Took women?”

A smile played upon his fleshy lips. “Took girls.”

Cori smiled back at him. “The Guild takes what belongs to it.
Please come inside.” She led him down the narrow center hall of
her house, her black slippers silent on the tile floor, his embroidered
leather boots clunking awkwardly behind her, to a wide, high-
ceilinged room filled with sunlight and a cool breeze from the large
curtainless double windows facing the open fields. Against one wall
stood several paintings, dark and abstract. Cori had been trying to
decide whether she liked any of them well enough to hang when the
knock came at the door. Besides the paintings the room contained
only two flat red cushions set on either side of a brass disc engraved
with Earth Markings in the center of the stone floor. Cori sank down
cross-legged, her back absurdly straight even for her; she restrained a
grin as the heavy man grunted his way to the floor.

“My name is Morin,” he said. “Morin Jay. Do you know the city
Sorai? By the sea?” Cori nodded. “I’ve lived there for ten years now.
It’s a good place for a merchant. Opportunities from the sea trade, you
know. But it’s not overcrowded. That’s important for a merchant.”

“Mr. Morin, why do you want an Assassin?”

“Yes, yes, but you should know the background.” The sunlight on
his face brought out his paleness. Cori imagined, him sitting before
his ledgers all day, harassing even paler clerks. “I came to Sorai with
enough money—from my family, I was the third son.”

“Mr. Morin, please.”

“Oh. Yes. Well, I sent out a caravan—I couldn’t afford any ships
at first, so I bought a cargo and anyway, the Yellow God stroked my
camels as they say, and then my ships, when I could afford them, and
now I find myself, well, not in a safe, but a comfortable position, one
I can build on. But not safe. Not safe. That’s the point. I need to
expand, I need to keep my investments constantly turning over.” Cori
imagined a row of little money bags somersaulting. “The Yellow God
doesn’t like money sitting in cellars, you know.”

Cori sighed. It was beginning to sound like the kind of offer every
Assassin hated, when you knew you should say no, but found yourself
hoping something would justify it. “Let me see if I can help you. A
rival merchant has attacked your operations and you find no choice
except to remove him.”

“Rival?” he said. “My father’s god, do you think I would hire—”
He swallowed. “No, it’s very different. Not a rival. A dragon.”

Cori’s eyes widened despite herself. Dragons may once have
blotted out the sky, but that was long ago, before the Blank God had
taken most of his servants with him into the World of Smoke. The
last dragon kill, the only one Cori knew of really, had taken place a
good twenty years before she had joined the Guild. She imagined a
scaly monster laid out before her, imagined her Mark burned into
its belly, imagined the line of Guild members shouting her name as
she walked coolly into the great Hall in the Crystal City to formally
announce her kill.

Morin Jay’s sigh brought her back to reality. “I’m sorry. I should
have realized it was too—too ambitious for a girl.” He pushed himself
up.

Cori’s grip held him like a paper doll. “Please continue, Mr. Morin,”
she said, and lowered him to his seat.

“Is there any point? Look, Miss—”

“Coriia. No Miss. Assassins are forbidden all titles.”

“Coriia, then. I don’t mean to insult you, really. God knows I
wouldn’t anger a Guild member, even—”

“Even a girl, yes. Don’t worry, Mr. Morin, assassins never get
angry.”

“But really, a thing like this—” He gestured. “A dragon.”

“Do you think the Guild would credit me if I couldn’t handle
whatever jobs I took?”

Sweat dripped over his cheeks. “I don’t really know the Guild has
credited you. Maybe that innkeeper was playing a joke on me.”

A flick of a thumb and forefinger yanked away the scarf that
covered Coriia’s head and neck. Morin Jay’s eyes saw first the red
hair, cropped closer than any normal girl would even contemplate;
and then they moved down to the hollow of the throat, where the
mark gleamed, as red and liquid as a fresh wound. A spiral cross,
the arms curled clockwise. As the merchant stared at it, the mark
appeared to spin, like the sun wheel of a meditator.

“Mr. Morin,” Cori said, with just a hint of the Voice, enough to
command obedience, “the knife hidden in your pouch. Throw it at
me.”

Morin didn’t ask how she had known the jeweled blade was there.
His eyes stayed on her mark as he fumbled in his pouch, found the
blade, and with greater speed and accuracy than Cori expected,
launched it at her throat. Her right wrist snapped; the scarf, with
its pencil line of “diamond metal” sewn into the outer fabric, flashed
out; the two halves of the knife clattered against the wall. “Am I an
Assassin?” she asked.

Again he surprised her. Sweating, he whispered, “It takes more
than a quick hand and a blade scarf to kill a dragon.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does.” Again the mark spun, slowly this
time, and as the merchant stared, his face slackened and he began to
moan. Cori knew what he was seeing. The image would grow, filling
the room. He himself would shrink to a dot, the tiniest pin prick
against a cloud. Darkness would surge through him, an invasion of
utter cold, slowing the blood rushing through his body. Cori knew
this feeling. Her teacher had used it to bring her back the time she’d
run from the Guild. For Morin Jay it would seem as if the slightest
noise, just a breath, a scratch of a fingernail against a thigh, and he’d
shatter like a frozen bubble.

Abruptly it ended. He sat again on a thin cushion across from a
young girl, her face as innocent as spring, her head and throat covered
with a thin green scarf. She nodded, fighting a smile that attacked the
edges of her mouth. “Tell me about your dragon,” she said.

They traveled to Sorai separately, Morin Jay by coach along the sea
road, Cori on foot, running with the “unwilled stride.” Someone, not
a Guild member, had once described the stride as drawing power from
the Earth. It was nothing of the kind. Instead, she let the Earth enter
and propel her, a hand moving a puppet. It felt good, the pull of the
muscles, the slap of her slippers against the dirt and rock of the low
hills leading to the sea, the changes in light and temperature as gray
sea clouds rolled across the sun, the thick smell of late spring.

When Cori first learned it the stride had demanded an empty
mind. Now she knew the further trick of experiencing thought
without creating will. Undirected, her mind filled with memories.
The sea and the time after her first kill, when she’d swum out in a
storm, hoping to drown, only to find her desire to live stronger than
shame, or horror at what she was. The Guild hall in the capital, with
its stark brown chairs and wonderful wine. And Sorai, with its up and
down streets and bleached white houses.

She thought also of Morin Jay’s strange enemy. The house Morin
had bought for himself outside Sorai sat on a piece of land that also
hosted, a little farther inland, the remains of an old castle or fortified
town. No one really knew the name or purpose of the place except
that the strange architecture, the oddly shaped and colored stones,
suggested some old wizard centef. Very ancient. Harmless. Empty as
long as anyone could remember. So they said.

Morin had lived there three years, building up his business, when
one night, while he stood in his office watching a small fleet of his
ships sail past his house on their way to the Sorai docks, he heard
a wild rushing noise. A moment later, to his amazement as much as
terror, a dragon, a genuine winged worm longer than any of his boats
(Cori allowed for considerable enlargement through fear), fell upon
the fleet, smashing the flagship and breaking the other ships’ masts,
so that one of them foundered and the other two barely made it to
port. Miraculously, no one was killed, but half the cargo sank into
the sea.

Over the next two years the dragon attacked three more times;
the last two, however, had come only two weeks apart. Always the
same pattern prevailed, ships, caravans, storehouses destroyed, but
never the men and women who tended them. Morin Jay himself was
the target, though the beast never went for him or his house.

From an overpriced wizard the merchant had learned that the
creature apparently lived in the old ruined town, perhaps as a guardian
for the long dead. Somehow Morin had angered it, maybe just by being
there, and only its death could release him. Moving would accomplish
nothing, the wizard said. Angry dragons never changed their minds.
After two ineffectual tries at killing the creature the wizard admitted
that the spells guarding the ruins lay beyond his comprehension. An
obsolete style. When he’d collected his fee—Morin Jay had tried
to haggle but a vengeful demon is trouble enough—the wizard had
given Morin one last suggestion. If you want something dead—hire
a specialist.

Cori slept one night in the wild, stretched out on a rock. There was
no need for shelter. She knew it wouldn’t rain—the Earth had “told”
her—and even asleep an Assassin’s reflexes were more than equal to
any beast or bandit. She arrived in Sorai the following evening, only
five hours after Morin Jay’s coach had rolled into the center of the city.

Cori had visited Sorai twice before, and both times found it charming
with its streets stepped like stairways, its open air jewel markets
bringing traders and thieves from hundreds of miles, its wandering
bands of child singers (half of them pickpockets), its thick black ale.
But those times she’d gone disguised, first as a Free Messenger, and
then as an aristocrat observing the common people. This time, when
Cori stood in the center square, with its empty stalls from the closed
markets and its rows of grotesque statues decorating the doorways
of the guild halls, this time she wore the “uniform” of her calling:
black leggings, soft leather slippers (rimmed, like the scarf, with a
strip of diamond blade), dark green tunic with a small red leather bag
tied to her waist, and the scarf covering her Mark. A simple enough
costume; but one immediately recognized.