Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology Read online

  Thank you.

  Trent Zelazny

  January 5th 2014

  Part I:

  Sword and Sorcery

  HENRY SZABRANSKI’s fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science and Lakeside Circus amongst other places. He lives in Buckinghamshire, UK, with his wife and two young sons.

  Please visit his site at www.henryszabranski.com

  The Edge of Magic

  Henry Szabranski

  I built a tower of my own. All pearly white and twined with ever-blooming roses; erected by an army of chalk kobolds raised from the surrounding limestone cliffs. My husband Mevlish, of course, took exception to my new home, but by that time I was far beyond caring. My hastily constructed wards were enough to protect it from the worst ravages of his fury, and after a few days he grew weary of being thwarted. Perhaps the King had called him on another urgent mission, or maybe our daughter Farima had swayed his temper in favor of leniency. Either way, soon all I had to look out for were the occasional stray fireball and ragged, dust-laden whirlwinds. I assumed the worst was over and concentrated instead on nursing my anger and my grief.

  Then Farima turned up at my outpost near the edge of all magic. Pale-faced and tear-streaked, she trembled with fear. The standoff was over. Mevlish would soon attack again—and this time he would show no mercy.

  *~*~*~*

  It had been, as the wine-soaked minstrels in the Admarese taverns used to sing (and probably still do), a whirlwind romance. I was just sixteen, and it was an arranged match… but one never knows what may come of these things; certainly not the plotters, my odious stepfather, and the King of Proximus himself. Luckily for them, and unluckily for me, I fell for Mevlish’s superficial charms and he for my obvious ones.

  Mevlish the Mighty, feared and admired throughout the Near and Far Kingdoms; Dragonmaster, Inquisitor and Royal High Wizard, official Guardian of the Source; the greatest wielder of magic alive. And so young, too: only ten years my senior. Dashing, soft-spoken, fawned on by others—how could I not be flattered when I caught and held his attention? Princess I may have been, but only of Admar, a backwater satrapy on the edge of the Farthest Lands; about as distant from the glittering heart of Proximus and the source of magic as one could get and still call it civilization.

  He beguiled me with tales of high wizardry and adventure; of his duel to the death with the rebel sorcerer Feratus and his legion of fire ghouls; the time he saved a whole town from a plague of marauding she-devils; and with descriptions of his ancestral home, Cradlegate, near the Wizard’s Wall.

  “Come live in my tower by the Source.” He grasped my hand and fell to one knee, looking up at me for the first and last time. “Kaffryn of Admar, will you be my witch wife?”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Will you teach me magic?”

  The wide smile that revealed his strong white teeth quavered for only a moment. “Of course, my dear. As long as you show some affinity, I should be able to teach you a trick or two.”

  It was the best I could have hoped for, I supposed. And a thousand times better than any Far Land would-be wizard could offer me. “Then I accept,” I said.

  He stood up, resplendent in his black and silver uniform, and beamed down at me, a dark fantasy stepped from a young girl’s dream.

  I rested my head against his shoulder. “Take me from here, Mevlish.”

  He squeezed my arm as if he already owned me, and nodded in approval. “Kaffryn. My witch princess.”

  *~*~*~*

  Our honeymoon consisted of a brief layover in Proximus, the capital of the Near Kingdoms. Mevlish spent more time meeting with officials and the King than he did with me, so I was able to explore the city at my leisure. I wasn’t surprised by the clamor for Mevlish’s attention, but I had hoped he would make at least a token show of resistance. Still, he had made it abundantly clear during the long journey from Admar that his duty to the King and the realm came above all else, and the sooner I understood that, the happier I would be.

  “Yes, darling,” I had said.

  Where Admar was all cobbles and slate, gulls and fishing nets, salt air and threat of storm, Proximus was turrets and colonnades, silk pennants and marbled riverbank promenades: the city closest to the Source, and hence the greatest. Its sheer scale allowed me some measure of anonymity, although whispers and stares would always follow me if I tarried too long in any one place. My abiding memory of that time is of silken bed sheets, rich with color; sumptuous feasts; and all eyes on me, Mevlish’s new witch-princess. It was the dream of the life I thought I had begun.

  At the grand state dinner held in my honor, whilst Mevlish was lost in discussion halfway across the ballroom, a tall, graying man with bulging eyes and a medal-encrusted military uniform detached himself from the waltz and bent his knee before me. He kissed my silk-gloved hand.

  “Make my Mevlish happy.” His voice was soft, barely audible above the sound of the music. I leaned forward to better hear him. “His services are worth more to me than a thousand treaties with your little seaside town.” His voice lowered to a hiss and his staring eyes locked with mine. “You’re to be a good wife to him, do you understand? Do as he bids. Bear him a son.”

  He stepped back and smiled, as if he had paid me the most gracious compliment in the world, and dissolved back into the dance. Only later, when Mevlish questioned me as to the nature of his words, did I discover it was the King himself.

  And so, all too soon, even the dream was over. “We must leave,” Mevlish said, expression pensive. “Cradlegate is eager for its new mistress.”

  The next day we were alone again, in a carriage pulled by a quartet of six-legged horses. They required no driver to give them direction.

  East of Proximus, the landscape grew barren and rocky, the lush fields giving way to unpopulated foothills that wound towards the mountains. The soil here was too strange and unpredictable to grow crops, the animals too dangerous, tainted and warped by the increasing strength of the magic field, to sustain a community. There was a reason for the location of Proximus, balanced finely on the edge between maximum magic and its overdose.

  Rows of wooden crosses lined the road out of the city, hung with the dead or dying. I stared at the grisly evidence of the King’s justice and asked Mevlish what crimes warranted such a fate. His face darkened and he looked away from the carriage window. “Murderers, rapists,” he said. “And heretic wizards practicing free magic without license.”

  “Free magic?” I asked. “Magic is magic, isn’t it?”

  “The practice of magic is proscribed within strict limits, my dear. Only spells and incantations approved by the King may be performed.”

  I was genuinely confused. “Why?”

  He grimaced. “Otherwise it grows wild and harmful and out of control.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “You’re from the Far Lands, my love.” His gaze refused to meet mine. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  We spent the rest of the journey in silence.

  Cradlegate lay at the mouth of the mountain pass that led to the Source. The carriage stopped perhaps half a mile from the brooding tower and its low cluster of outbuildings. I was all agog, wide-eyed and nervous, my head throbbing with the intensity of the magic field. I had felt it building all day, a pressure behind my eyes, tricking occasional sparkles and strange blurs into my vision.

  “Let me show you the stables first,” Mevlish said.

  Set into a bank of rubble near a series of tumbling cascades was a wide, single-storey stone building. At first I thought it abandoned, ash and burned stone everywhere—then I heard and felt the low rumble, and dread certainty filled me.

  Dragons. At least half a dozen of them. Most slept, almost indistinguishable from the rock, but a couple extended their great wings and slithered forward to greet their returned master. Large as three tall men standing on each other’s shoulders, they were all blackened slate and molten glow between thick plates of spiked armor. The air sh
ivered before their breath, and I found myself in true fear for the first time in my life.

  “Come,” Mevlish said. He seemed oblivious to my reluctance and tugged me out of the carriage for introductions.

  “They’ve been bound to my family for generations.” He spoke with obvious pride, his chest puffed out, his head tilted back as he swept his hand in an arc. “It takes a king’s ransom to feed them but they’re invaluable for hunting down and disposing of rogue magicians.”

  I shuddered at the thought of being at the receiving end of these creatures’ attentions. Thrax, Drax, Grax, or some such; I don’t remember the litany of similar sounding names Mevlish reeled off. Instead I concentrated on not being overcome by the oily, metallic stench of them. I didn’t know whether it was the heat and the smell, the altitude, or the strength of magic, but darkness threatened the borders of my vision.

  Either Mevlish noticed my discomfort or he grew tired of re-acquainting himself with his pets; eventually we clambered back into the carriage and clattered on towards his home.

  Like the dragons, Cradlegate had been in his family for generations. The cold stone staircase corkscrewing up through the tower’s dark interior was lined with portraits of his haggard ancestors. They seemed to eye me with disapproval as I climbed and I began to feel dizzy and faint again. It finally dawned on me that this was my new home. My new life. And I had left behind the Far Lands forever.

  *~*~*~*

  Later that first night, after our attempt at lovemaking ended with Mevlish storming from the bedchamber, I had my first glimpse of the Wizard’s Wall. I wandered the tower in search of my escaped husband and eventually found him on the rooftop, staring out over the battlements towards the desolate mountain pass Cradlegate guarded. Ribbons of ghostly light veiled the glittering stars, playing above the ground that rose towards the Source, and I could not help but give a soft gasp at the sight.

  Mevlish did not turn as he hunkered over the edge. I approached and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Mevlish. What’s the matter, my love?”

  “This place,” he said. “This cursed place. My head buzzes with the infernal intensity of the magic here.” He hung his head, his expression pained. “I swear, sometimes it’s too much.”

  “But this is your home,” I said. And you invited me to live here.

  “It’s where I was born, yes. And my father before me, and his before him.” He straightened, arching his back, and let out a pent up breath. “Do not worry, Kaffryn. It’s just that I’ve been away too long. Eventually I’ll get used to it again. You will, too.”

  I stared at the pass, all crushed slate and pulverized, glassy rock, and sensed the energy that Mevlish spoke of, a sparkling in the air. Beneath the dancing light of the aurora, to me it felt intoxicating rather than oppressive.

  “There aren’t any demons here?” I asked. “Like in the stories?”

  Mevlish laughed, but then turned serious. “Only those we make.”

  “And have you made any?”

  He turned away, and was silent for a time. His answer, when it came, was cryptic. “I never quite reached as far as Great-Uncle Alexandre.”

  I edged closer to him, curled my arm around his waist. He did not pull away. “I don’t understand.”

  He nodded towards the pass. “Grandfather’s brother. Drunk one night, challenged by some guest—the stories never agree—he marched out, determined to reach the Source.” He quirked his dark brow. “He made it farther than most.”

  “What happened?”

  “He lies there still. Along with all the other fools and madmen who have gone before and since.” Mevlish pointed towards a line of black posts that meandered across the width of the valley, only just visible in the pale light. “There is the edge of magic. Beyond those markers the rise in its strength is no longer gradual: every step you take increases the power of the field by half again as much. Tarry for more than a few moments and you’ll become addled; stay longer and you’ll lose your sanity and die. Just a few steps beyond lies the Wizard’s Wall. You can’t see it, but it’s there: the boundary marked by the fallen. No human has ever strayed beyond it; the weight of magic simply crushes the mind.” He turned to look at me, his back to the valley. “Part of my duties here is to make sure no fools climb past Cradlegate and try to reach the Wall. Every year there are a few, bent on reaching the point of maximum magic to cast this spell or that. It’s another reason the King pays to keep the dragons; they’re a most effective deterrent.”

  I stared at the line of posts, at the aurora flickering above. “And what do you think lies beyond the Wall? How much farther is the Source itself?”

  He shrugged. “Just a mile or so, the calculations suggest. As the crow flies. If one could ever survive the flight.”

  My brow furrowed. “Perhaps the strength of the field dips again, beyond the Wall. Like the late summer storms that sometimes wrack Admar—the winds build and build, and you think they can grow no stronger, until the breath is sucked out of your lungs… and then the wind lulls and the sky grows blue again, and you find yourself at the still centre.”

  Mevlish glanced at me sharply. “What nonsense is this?”

  Stung by his rebuke, I pointed in the direction the Source must lie. “Perhaps it’s like that with magic; the field mounts and then subsides, the Source at the eye of the… storm.” I hesitated, no longer sure I understood my own thoughts. “If one could only push through that strongest part –”

  “Kaffryn. Stop. This is just crazy talk.”

  I paused, my mouth moving wordlessly, and then I laughed to re-assure him and myself. I took his hand, and tried not to think of how my stepfather used to reprimand me. “It was a jest, my love.”

  He looked down at me, unblinking. “The Source calls those who dare listen. A siren call. Many have fallen to that fascination, believing their magic would only become stronger the closer they approached.” His grip on my shoulder grew painful. “Listen to me, Kaffryn. They all fall. All. Do you understand? Never try to approach the Wall. Never.”

  I nodded. “Yes, my love.”

  But in my mind, the magic field tickled and played across an itch I knew would only grow stronger.

  *~*~*~*

  To some extent I could understand how Mevlish came to be disappointed with me, his new trophy wife. I was unpracticed in the kitchen, for one thing—my meals had all been prepared by father’s staff, so I had never needed to learn to cook. In conversation he quickly became frustrated with me; I had little regard for or knowledge of the politics of the nation, and no doubt he found my stream of complaints about the dim and dank living conditions tiresome. Neither was I much use managing the household, but at least Mevlish was undemanding when it came to the tidying, sweeping and laundry; his coterie of eerie clay servants, with their hollow eyes and powdery trails of dust, were well used to coping with those duties. At first these servants disturbed me with their blank faces, incongruously formal uniforms and silent manner—but I soon became used to their ministrations. In the morning they fetched my dresses, in the afternoon and evening they served our lunch and dinner, in the evening they helped me bathe. Before long I took them for granted, an everyday miracle made possible by Mevlish’s outstanding talent at magic and the intensity of the field here.

  I quickly learned more than a trick or two myself. Like a sun-starved flower, I bloomed under my husband’s reluctant tutelage and the strength of magic. Those times in the Mevlish’s laboratory when he would deign to show me the basics of the art, and I reproduced his results, were some of my best memories of our time as a couple.

  He gifted me a single slim volume from his personal library. “Elements of Approved Magic”, a basic manual containing enough simple spells and mind techniques to allow me to start tapping the field. “My favorite when I was a child,” he laughed. When I asked for access to the library—the door was always kept locked—he shook his head. “No, my dear. Far too dangerous.” He did not say to whom.

  If Mevlish was
ever surprised by my latent affinity and growing skill he never mentioned it. Once or twice, after I had demonstrated some particularly elaborate technique or rite, he would give my hand a squeeze, lean close and say, “Kaffryn. My witchy wife.” His condescension was unintentional, I am sure, and anyway I forgave him, since those moments soon became the only times he showed me any real affection.

  Ah, the Source. Bless its ancient creators, or the passing star from which it fell, or whatever natural or unnatural process gave rise to it all those centuries ago. In the first few months at Cradlegate, when I was consumed by a growing fear I had made the biggest mistake of my life by marrying Mevlish, the vibrant energy emanating from that mysterious point just over the horizon became my one consolation, the one advantage of my move from Admar. I could feel its influence deep through my bones, a slow-pulsing potential, and each day I wondered what new aspect of its power would be revealed to me.

  Despite everything, it was enough.

  *~*~*~*

  It was no surprise to learn my primary duty at Cradlegate was to bear Mevlish an heir; it was inconceivable the Mevlish name would not continue, undiminished, down the ages. To this demand I acceded, more or less willingly. As long as my study of magic was allowed to continue I could put up with the isolation and less than luxurious living conditions; not to mention Mevlish’s growing emotional detachment, and the exercise of his connubial rights upon demand.

  Our lovemaking was awkward and overly serious, dutiful rather than joyful; not a patch on the adventures of my careless youth, and not helped by the tinge of pity I began to feel towards him. Mighty in magic my Mevlish may have been, but meek he was when it came to the bedchamber. If I attempted to lighten the mood with humor he would become sullen and retreat; when I took the initiative he frowned disapprovingly and shrugged me away. If I had been less experienced, my confidence would have been dealt a crushing blow and I would have begun, perhaps, to blame myself for our lack of satisfaction; as it was, I knew whatever ailed our relationship, at least in that regard, was none of my doing.