Way of the Wizard Read online

  THE WAY OF THE WIZARD

  edited by

  JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS

  The Way of the Wizard © 2010 by John Joseph Adams.

  This edition © 2010 by Prime Books.

  Cover art © 2010 by Scott Grimando.

  Cover design by Stephen H. Segal.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  Introduction © 2010 by John Joseph Adams.

  Story notes © 2010 by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley.

  All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used here with their permission.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-275-7 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-232-0 (trade paperback)

  Prime Books

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact Prime Books.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction, John Joseph Adams

  In the Lost Lands, George R.R. Martin

  Family Tree, David Barr Kirtley

  John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner, Susanna Clarke

  Wizard’s Apprentice, Delia Sherman

  The Sorcerer Minus, Jeffrey Ford

  Life So Dear or Peace So Sweet, C.C. Finlay

  Card Sharp, Rajan Khanna

  So Deep That the Bottom Could Not Be Seen, Genevieve Valentine

  The Go-Slow, Nnedi Okorafor

  Too Fatal a Poison, Krista Hoeppner Leahy

  Jamaica, Orson Scott Card

  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Robert Silverberg

  The Secret of Calling Rabbits, Wendy N. Wagner

  The Wizards of Perfil, Kelly Link

  How to Sell the Ponti Bridge, Neil Gaiman

  The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories, Christie Yant

  Winter Solstice, Mike Resnick

  The Trader and the Slave, Cinda Williams Chima

  Cerile and the Journeyer, Adam-Troy Castro

  Counting the Shapes, Yoon Ha Lee

  Endgame, Lev Grossman

  Street Wizard, Simon R. Green

  Mommy Issues of the Dead, T.A. Pratt

  One-Click Banishment, Jeremiah Tolbert

  The Ereshkigal Working, Jonathan L. Howard

  Feeding the Feral Chidren, David Farland

  The Orange-Tree Sacrifice, Vylar Kaftan

  Love Is the Spell That Casts Out Fear, Desirina Boskovich

  El Regalo, Peter S. Beagle

  The Word of Unbinding, Ursula K. Le Guin

  The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria, John R. Fultz

  The Secret of the Blue Star, Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Acknowledgements

  About the Editor

  Introduction

  John Joseph Adams

  In 2004, Forbes Magazine declared J.K. Rowling, author of the wizard-themed Harry Potter series, a billionaire. That was the year the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released, earning $795.6 million worldwide in the box office and grossing millions more in licensed merchandise. It can be hard to explain the appeal of the wizard in cinema and literature, but when reduced to the brute language of dollars and cents, it is clear that in the realm of the imagination, the wizard is king.

  Stories of magic have tantalized readers and listeners since the dawn of language. Myths are dotted with enchanters and witch-doctors. The fairy tales of the Grimm brothers were stories rich with witches and sorceresses and magicians. Homer’s ancient epic, The Odyssey, depicts one of the first magic-users in all of literature: the wicked sorceress Circe. Even Shakespeare featured wizards in his fiction, from the Weird Sisters of Macbeth to Prospero in The Tempest.

  But wizard literature has exploded since World War II. In a time when technology has given humanity the ability to fly, to communicate instantaneously with people on the other side of the globe, to travel to the moon—even to shatter atoms themselves—wizards have become even more popular, despite the wonder and magic offered by modern-day technologies. Also, magic-users have moved from the sidelines and into the limelight; where once a wizard was a supporting character or perhaps a villain, now he is the protagonist. Merlin has effectively upstaged Arthur.

  J.R.R. Tolkien deserves much of the credit for the popularization of fantasy literature; The Lord of the Rings rocked the foundations of the fantasy field, and its influence continues to be strongly felt more than fifty years after its initial publication. The creatures and archetypes that Tolkien described have become source material for fantasy enthusiasts of all kinds.

  Gandalf, with his long white beard and otherworldly wisdom, forms our standard picture of a wizard—but he isn’t the only kind of wizard out there. In the last five decades, innumerable varieties of wizards and other magic-users have been imagined, and magic itself has come a long way as well. It is no longer just the stuff of staff-carrying old men or witches with bubbling cauldrons; now there are just as many sorcerers making magic happen with their own force of will or spinning creations out of magical languages. Witches are as likely to use electromagnetics to pull magical energy out of ley lines as they are to sacrifice goats to devils.

  As writers draw their inspiration from a wider net of folkloric resources, their witches and wizards get their own variety of ethnic flavors. This anthology features shamans working from their aboriginal tradition, witches pulling spells from the words of the Bible, and even necromancers tapping into ancient Egyptian wisdom to suit their own nefarious purposes. If the typical milieu for a fantasy adventure starts in a rustic inn, these extraordinary stories feel as if they begin in the spice market of an exotic bazaar; which is all to the good: magic comes in too many flavors to keep it bound up in the Western European tradition.

  Writers might bring new influences to their treatment of magic and the characters who use it, but the importance of the wizard in literature has not changed. Wizards, being possessed (usually) of uncommon intelligence, typically know a great deal more than the other characters in stories; his wisdom might be rooted in evil or it might be rooted in kindness; the wizard might give helpful advice, or he might set the protagonist on a journey of hardship and privation. Whatever he chooses to do, the wizard’s actions change the hero’s life forever.

  Today, as I mentioned above, we quite often see the wizard himself playing the hero’s role. Perhaps this is because once the wizard stood for all the things people did not understand about the world, and now the wizard represents the weight of our knowledge. In a time where technology has given any ordinary person the kinds of abilities that were the stuff of fairy tales two hundred years ago, anyone can be a wizard. Everyone is extraordinarily powerful.

  But power has a weight, an obligation. It must be carefully used. We read about wizards because the choices they make are our choices writ large. In many stories, a wizard’s mistake can cause his own death—or even the destruction of the entire world. Our own choices can be just as fraught with danger. The automobile can whisk us to and from distant destinations, but a wrong move could mean a deadly accident. An X-ray can diagnose a broken bone, but too much exposure to radiation can cause cancer. A nuclear weapons system can deter a threat, but a misused nuke can set off global war and nuclear winter.

  After centuries of dreaming and yearning for magic, we now have it, or at least a taste of it. We love wizards because, no matter how much power we attain, we can always
dream of more.

  To read about magic is to stir up ancient dreams that live on inside the human mind. They are dreams of wonder and adventure and curiosity. And in a time when it is easy to reduce the world to dreary facts and figures—when economists can put a dollar figure to every human creation and natural resource—it’s vital that we have somewhere to go to recharge our dreams.

  So read these stories, and in them, find a magical path to walk and a wondrous dream to dream. What you discover—no matter what the economists say—will be priceless.

  George R.R. Martin is the best-selling author of the Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series, which is currently in the process of becoming a television series for HBO. Martin has also written a range of other novels including Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, Dying of the Light, and Hunter’s Run (with Daniel Abraham and Gardner Dozois). He is a prolific author of short stories, which have garnered numerous nominations and wins for the field’s major awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, Stoker, and World Fantasy awards; most of these have been collected in the mammoth, two-volume Dreamsongs.

  One of the oldest of human desires is to shed our clumsy human bodies and run wild and free with the animals—or to soar through the air with the birds. Legend is full of accounts of people who can transform into animals, such as werewolves, or of animals that can transform into humans, such as the huli jing (fox spirits) of Asian mythology. Frequently such transformations involve an animal skin, such as in the tales of the Navajo skinwalkers. There are also countless stories about selkies or swan maidens. Often in fairy tales these creatures will take off their animal skins and become human, and a young man will steal the skin, trapping the creature in human form, and force her to marry him. These stories seldom end happily. It seems that humans were meant to be humans and animals were meant to be animals, and no good ever comes of trying to defy the natural order of things.

  Our next story is one of the darkest of all such tales. Of course we want to run with the animals, but this story reminds us of that old advice: be careful what you wish for.

  In the Lost Lands

  George R.R. Martin

  You can buy anything you might desire from Gray Alys.

  But it is better not to.

  The Lady Melange did not come herself to Gray Alys. She was said to be a clever and a cautious young woman, as well as exceedingly fair, and she had heard the stories. Those who dealt with Gray Alys did so at their own peril, it was said. Gray Alys did not refuse any of those who came to her, and she always got them what they wanted. Yet somehow, when all was done, those who dealt with Gray Alys were never happy with the things that she brought them, the things that they had wanted. The Lady Melange knew all this, ruling as she did from the high keep built into the side of the mountain. Perhaps that was why she did not come herself.

  Instead, it was Jerais who came calling on Gray Alys that day; Blue Jerais, the lady’s champion, foremost of the paladins who secured her high keep and led her armies into battle, captain of her colorguard. Jerais wore an underlining of pale blue silk beneath the deep azure plate of his enameled armor. The sigil on his shield was a maelstrom done in a hundred subtle hues of blue, and a sapphire large as an eagle’s eye was set in the hilt of his sword. When he entered Gray Alys’ presence and removed his helmet, his eyes were a perfect match for the jewel in his sword, though his hair was a startling and inappropriate red.

  Gray Alys received him in the small, ancient stone house she kept in the dim heart of the town beneath the mountain. She waited for him in a windowless room full of dust and the smell of mold, seated in an old high-backed chair that seemed to dwarf her small, thin body. In her lap was a gray rat the size of a small dog. She stroked it languidly as Jerais entered and took off his helmet and let his bright blue eyes adjust to the dimness.

  “Yes?” Gray Alys said at last.

  “You are the one they call Gray Alys,” Jerais said.

  “I am.”

  “I am Jerais. I come at the behest of the Lady Melange.”

  “The wise and beautiful Lady Melange,” said Gray Alys. The rat’s fur was soft as velvet beneath her long, pale fingers. “Why does the Lady send her champion to one as poor and plain as I?”

  “Even in the keep, we hear tales of you,” said Jerais.

  “Yes.”

  “It is said, for a price, you will sell things strange and wonderful.”

  “Does the Lady Melange wish to buy?”

  “It is said also that you have powers, Gray Alys. It is said that you are not always as you sit before me now, a slender woman of indeterminate age, clad all in gray. It is said that you become young and old as you wish. It is said that sometimes you are a man, or an old woman, or a child. It is said that you know the secrets of shapeshifting, that you go abroad as a great cat, a bear, a bird, and that you change your skin at will, not as a slave to the moon like the werefolk of the lost lands.”

  “All of these things are said,” Gray Alys acknowledged.

  Jerais removed a small leather bag from his belt and stepped closer to where Gray Alys sat. He loosened the drawstring that held the bag shut, and spilled out the contents on the table by her side. Gems. A dozen of them, in as many colors. Gray Alys lifted one and held it to her eye, watching the candle flame through it. When she placed it back among the others, she nodded at Jerais and said, “What would the Lady buy of me?”

  “Your secret,” Jerais said, smiling. “The Lady Melange wishes to shapeshift.”

  “She is said to be young and beautiful,” Gray Alys replied. “Even here beyond the keep, we hear many tales of her. She has no mate but many lovers. All of her colorguard are said to love her, among them yourself. Why should she wish to change?”

  “You misunderstand. The Lady Melange does not seek youth or beauty. No change could make her fairer than she is. She wants from you the power to become a beast. A wolf.”

  “Why?” asked Gray Alys.

  “That is none of your concern. Will you sell her this gift?”

  “I refuse no one,” said Gray Alys. “Leave the gems here. Return in one month, and I shall give you what the Lady Melange desires.” Jerais nodded. His face looked thoughtful. “You refuse no one?”

  “No one.”

  He grinned crookedly, reached into his belt, and extended his hand to her. Within the soft blue crushed velvet of his gloved palm rested another jewel, a sapphire even larger than the one set in the hilt of his sword. “Accept this as payment, if you will. I wish to buy for myself.”

  Gray Alys took the sapphire from his palm, held it up between thumb and forefinger against the candle flame, nodded, and dropped it among the other jewels. “What would you have, Jerais?”

  His grin spread wider. “I would have you fail,” he said. “I do not want the Lady Melange to have this power she seeks.”

  Gray Alys regarded him evenly, her steady gray eyes fixed on his own cold blue ones. “You wear the wrong color, Jerais,” she said at last. “Blue is the color of loyalty, yet you betray your mistress and the mission she entrusted to you.”

  “I am loyal,” Jerais protested. “I know what is good for her, better than she knows herself. Melange is young and foolish. She thinks it can be kept secret, when she finds this power she seeks. She is wrong. And when the people know, they will destroy her. She cannot rule these folk by day, and tear out their throats by night.”

  Gray Alys considered that for a time in silence, stroking the great rat that lay across her lap. “You lie, Jerais,” she said when she spoke again. “The reasons you give are not your true reasons.”

  Jerais frowned. His gloved hand, almost casually, came to rest on the hilt of his sword. His thumb stroked the great sapphire set there. “I will not argue with you,” he said gruffly. “If you will not sell to me, give me back my gem and be damned with you!”

  “I refuse no one,” Gray Alys replied.

  Jerais scowled in confusion. “I shall have what I ask?”

  “You shall have what you
want.”

  “Excellent,” said Jerais, grinning again. “In a month, then!”

  “A month,” agreed Gray Alys.

  And so Gray Alys sent the word out, in ways that only Gray Alys knew. The message passed from mouth to mouth through the shadows and alleys and the secret sewers of the town, and even to the tall houses of scarlet wood and colored glass where dwelled the noble and the rich. Soft gray rats with tiny human hands whispered it to sleeping children, and the children shared it with each other, and chanted a strange new chant when they skipped rope. The word drifted to all the army outposts to the east, and rode west with the great caravans into the heart of the old empire of which the town beneath the mountain was only the smallest part. Huge leathery birds with the cunning faces of monkeys flew the word south, over the forests and the rivers, to a dozen different kingdoms, where men and women as pale and terrible as Gray Alys herself heard it in the solitude of their towers. Even north, past the mountains, even into the lost lands, the word traveled.

  It did not take long. In less than two weeks, he came to her. “I can lead you to what you seek,” he told her. “I can find you a werewolf.”

  He was a young man, slender and beardless. He dressed in the worn leathers of the rangers who lived and hunted in the windswept desolation beyond the mountains. His skin had the deep tan of a man who spent all his life outdoors, though his hair was as white as mountain snow and fell about his shoulders, tangled and unkempt. He wore no armor and carried a long knife instead of a sword, and he moved with a wary grace. Beneath the pale strands of hair that fell across his face, his eyes were dark and sleepy. Though his smile was open and amiable, there was a curious indolence to him as well, and a dreamy, sensuous set to his lips when he thought no one was watching. He named himself Boyce.

  Gray Alys watched him and listened to his words and finally said, “Where?”

  “A week’s journey north,” Boyce replied. “In the lost lands.”

  “Do you dwell in the lost lands, Boyce?” Gray Alys asked of him.