Way of the Wizard Read online

  “You were close to dead,” Gray Alys replied.

  “Silver,” he said bitterly. “Silver cuts and burns so.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you saved me,” he said, confused.

  “I changed back to myself, and brought you back, and tended you.”

  Boyce smiled, though it was only a pale ghost of his old smile. “You change at will,” he said wonderingly. “Ah, there is a gift I would kill for, Gray Alys!”

  She said nothing.

  “It was too open here,” he said. “I should have taken you elsewhere. If there had been cover . . . buildings, a forest, anything . . . then you should not have had such an easy time with me.”

  “I have other skins,” Gray Alys replied. “A bear, a cat. It would not have mattered.”

  “Ah,” said Boyce. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he forced a twisted smile. “You were beautiful, Gray Alys. I watched you fly for a long time before I realized what it meant and began to run. It was hard to tear my eyes from you. I knew you were the doom of me, but still I could not look away. So beautiful. All smoke and silver, with fire in your eyes. The last time, as I watched you swoop toward me, I was almost glad. Better to perish at the hands of she who is so terrible and fine, I thought, than by some dirty little swordsman with his sharpened silver stick.”

  “I am sorry,” said Gray Alys.

  “No,” Boyce said quickly. “It is better that you saved me. I will mend quickly, you will see. Even silver wounds bleed but briefly. Then we will be together.”

  “You are still weak,” Gray Alys told him. “Sleep.”

  “Yes,” said Boyce. He smiled at her, and closed his eyes.

  Hours had passed when Boyce finally woke again. He was much stronger, his wounds all but mended. But when he tried to rise, he could not. He was bound in place, spread-eagled, hands and feet tied securely to stakes driven into the hard gray earth.

  Gray Alys watched him make the discovery, heard him cry out in alarm. She came to him, held up his head, and gave him more wine.

  When she moved back, his head twisted around wildly, staring at his bonds, and then at her. “What have you done?” he cried.

  Gray Alys said nothing.

  “Why?” he asked. “I do not understand, Gray Alys. Why? You saved me, tended me, and now I am bound.”

  “You would not like my answer, Boyce.”

  “The moon!” he said wildly. “You are afraid of what might happen tonight, when I change again.” He smiled, pleased to have figured it out. “You are being foolish. I would not harm you, not now, after what has passed between us, after what I know. We belong together, Gray Alys. We are alike, you and I. We have watched the lights together, and I have seen you fly! We must have trust between us! Let me loose.”

  Gray Alys frowned and sighed and gave no other answer.

  Boyce stared at her uncomprehending. “Why?” he asked again. “Untie me, Alys, let me prove the truth of my words. You need not fear me.”

  “I do not fear you, Boyce,” she said sadly.

  “Good,” he said eagerly. “Then free me, and change with me. Become a great cat tonight, and run beside me, hunt with me. I can lead you to prey you never dreamed of. There is so much we can share. You have felt how it is to change, you know the truth of it, you have tasted the power, the freedom, seen the lights from a beast’s eyes, smelled fresh blood, gloried in a kill. You know . . . the freedom . . . the intoxication of it . . . all the . . . you know . . . ”

  “I know,” Gray Alys acknowledged.

  “Then free me! We are meant for each another, you and I. We will live together, love together, hunt together.”

  Gray Alys shook her head.

  “I do not understand,” Boyce said. He strained upward wildly at his bonds, and swore, then sunk back again. “Am I hideous? Do you find me evil, unattractive?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?” he said bitterly. “Other women have loved me, have found me handsome. Rich, beautiful ladies, the finest in the land. All of them have wanted me, even when they knew.”

  “But you have never returned that love, Boyce,” she said.

  “No,” he admitted. “I have loved them after a fashion. I have never betrayed their trust, if that is what you think. I find my prey here, in the lost lands, not from among those who care for me.” Boyce felt the weight of Gray Alys’ eyes, and continued. “How could I love them more than I did?” he said passionately. “They could know only half of me, only the half that lived in town and loved wine and song and perfumed sheets. The rest of me lived out here, in the lost lands, and knew things that they could never know, poor soft things. I told them so, those who pressed me hard. To join with me wholly they must run and hunt beside me. Like you. Let me go, Gray Alys. Soar for me, watch me run. Hunt with me.”

  Gray Alys rose and sighed. “I am sorry, Boyce. I would spare you if I could, but what must happen must happen. Had you died last night, it would have been useless. Dead things have no power. Night and day, black and white, they are weak. All strength derives from the realm between, from twilight, from shadow, from the terrible place between life and death. From the gray, Boyce, from the gray.”

  He wrenched at his bonds again, savagely, and began to weep and curse and gnash his teeth. Gray Alys turned away from him and sought out the solitude of her wagon. There she remained for hours, sitting alone in the darkness and listening to Boyce swear and cry out to her with threats and pleadings and professions of love. Gray Alys stayed inside until well after moonrise. She did not want to watch him change, watch his humanity pass from him for the last time.

  At last his cries had become howls, bestial and abandoned and full of pain. That was when Gray Alys finally reemerged. The full moon cast a wan pale light over the scene. Bound to the hard ground, the great white wolf writhed and howled and struggled and stared at her out of hungry scarlet eyes.

  Gray Alys walked toward him calmly. In her hand was the long silver skinning knife, its blade engraved with fine and graceful runes.

  When he finally stopped struggling, the work went more quickly, but still it was a long and bloody night. She killed him the instant she was done, before the dawn came and changed him and gave him back a human voice to cry his agony. Then Gray Alys hung up the pelt and brought out tools and dug a deep, deep grave in the packed cold earth. She piled stones and broken pieces of masonry on top of it, to protect him from the things that roamed the lost lands, the ghouls and the carrion crows and the other creatures that did not flinch at dead flesh. It took her most of the day to bury him, for the ground was very hard indeed, and even as she worked she knew it was a futile labor.

  And when at last the work was done, and dusk had almost come again, she went once more into her wagon, and returned wearing the great cloak of a thousand silver feathers, tipped with black. Then she changed, and flew, and flew, a fierce and tireless flight, bathed in strange lights and wedded to the dark. All night she flew beneath a full and mocking moon, and just before dawn she cried out once, a shrill scream of despair and anguish that rang and keened on the sharp edge of the wind and changed its sound forever.

  Perhaps Jerais was afraid of what she might give him, for he did not return to Gray Alys alone. He brought two other knights with him, a huge man all in white whose shield showed a skull carved out of ice, and another in crimson whose sigil was a burning man. They stood at the door, helmeted and silent, while Jerais approached Gray Alys warily. “Well?” he demanded.

  Across her lap was a wolfskin, the pelt of some huge massive beast, all white as mountain snow. Gray Alys rose and offered the skin to Blue Jerais, draping it across his outstretched arm. “Tell the Lady Melange to cut herself, and drip her own blood onto the skin. Do this at moonrise when the moon is full, and then the power will be hers. She need only wear the skin as a cloak, and will the change thereafter. Day or night, full moon or no moon, it makes no matter.”

  Jerais looked at the heavy white pelt and smiled a har
d smile. “A wolfskin, eh? I had not expected that. I thought perhaps a potion, a spell.”

  “No,” said Gray Alys. “The skin of a werewolf.”

  “A werewolf?” Jerais’ mouth twisted curiously, and there was a sparkle in his deep sapphire eyes. “Well, Gray Alys, you have done what the Lady Melange asked, but you have failed me. I did not pay you for success. Return my gem.”

  “No,” said Gray Alys. “I have earned it, Jerais.”

  “I do not have what I asked for.”

  “You have what you wanted, and that is what I promised.” Her gray eyes met his own without fear. “You thought my failure would help you get what you truly wanted, and that my success would doom you. You were wrong.”

  Jerais looked amused. “And what do I truly desire?”

  “The Lady Melange,” said Gray Alys. “You have been one lover among many, but you wanted more. You wanted all. You knew you stood second in her affections. I have changed that. Return to her now, and bring her the thing that she has bought.”

  That day there was bitter lamentation in the high keep on the mountain, when Blue Jerais knelt before the Lady Melange and offered her a white wolfskin. But when the screaming and the wailing and the mourning was done, she took the great pale cloak and bled upon it and learned the ways of change. It is not the union she desired, but it is a union nonetheless. So every night she prowls the battlements and the mountainside, and the townsfolk say her howling is wild with grief.

  And Blue Jerais, who wed her a month after Gray Alys returned from the lost lands, sits beside a madwoman in the great hall by day, and locks his doors by night in terror of his wife’s hot red eyes, and does not hunt anymore, or laugh, or lust.

  You can buy anything you might desire from Gray Alys.

  But it is better not to.

  David Barr Kirtley has been described as “one of the newest and freshest voices in sf.” His work frequently appears in Realms of Fantasy, and he has also sold fiction to the magazines Weird Tales and Intergalactic Medicine Show, the podcasts Escape Pod and Pseudopod, and the anthologies New Voices in Science Fiction, The Dragon Done It, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year. I’ve previously published him in my The Living Dead and The Living Dead 2 anthologies and in my online science fiction magazine Lightspeed. Kirtley is also the co-host (with me) of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

  Everyone loves treehouses. Our distant ancestors lived in trees, of course, so maybe it all goes back to that. In fact, the Korowi people in Papua New Guinea still live in tree houses, as protection against a neighboring tribe. Some modern treehouses reach rather spectacular levels of scale and luxury, but nothing like what you’ll see in our next story.

  “I was visiting my grandmother,” Kirtley says, “and she uses a computer program called Family Tree Maker. When I glanced at the box for that, it gave me this idea for a literal tree that the family lives in, where each branch of the tree corresponds to a branch of the family. (Good fantasy ideas often come from literalizing metaphors.) Then I got the idea that if a line of the family died out, their branch of the tree would wither and die as well, which immediately started suggesting possible conflicts. It’s hard to come up with a fantasy idea that hasn’t been done a million times already, and this was one I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It took me a long time to work out exactly how things would unfold. I spent a lot of time drawing tree diagrams.”

  Family Tree

  David Barr Kirtley

  Simon Archimagus rode his horse through a twilight forest. A rapier hung at his side, and as he moved he muttered a spell that would slay any insect who presumed to land upon him.

  He turned onto the narrow dirt trail that led to his abode. A short time later he glanced back and noticed a horseman behind him. As Simon was the sole resident in these parts, he could only assume that he was being followed. He moved one hand to his sword, while with the other he sketched a diagram in the air, preparatory to unleashing battle magic.

  The rider neared. He wore a loose white shirt and feathered cap. The dimness made it hard to judge his features, but he didn’t seem hostile. Then Simon knew him. Bernard.

  As the rider trotted up he called out, “Brother.”

  Of all Simon’s male relatives, Bernard, his youngest sibling, was perhaps his favorite, though that wasn’t saying a lot. Bernard seemed not to have changed much—same thick brown hair and ingenuous eyes. A bit pudgier, maybe. Simon said, “How’d you find me?”

  “Magic.” Bernard added with a touch of pride, “You’re not the only wizard in the family, you know.”

  “No.” Simon gave a half-smile. “Just the best.”

  Bernard chuckled. “No argument there.” He glanced up the trail. “You live nearby?”

  The game was up. Simon’s family had located him, at last. So, “Yes,” he said.

  “Then grant me hospitality, brother. We need to talk.”

  Simon hesitated, then said, “All right.” He gestured with his head. “This way.”

  They followed the trail, which wound its way up the hillside. The horses panted and snorted. After a time, Bernard said, “So are you going to tell me why you disappeared?”

  “I doubt it,” Simon said.

  “We worried.”

  Simon stared off into the sky. “My branch is still there, isn’t it? You knew I was all right.”

  “We knew you were alive,” Bernard said. “You might’ve been sick, imprisoned—”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I see that.” Bernard sighed. “But yes, your branch is still there. Mother’s kept everything just the way you left it. She misses you, Simon.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Bernard lapsed into silence. Then he asked, “What the hell have you been doing with yourself all these years anyway?”

  Simon didn’t answer. The two of them crested the hill and looked out over the moon-silvered grasses of the meadow below. Simon waited for Bernard to notice the tree.

  Finally he did. He gasped. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Yes.” Simon couldn’t help grinning. “It’s mine.”

  The giant oak was indigo in the darkness, its trunk dotted with small round windows that glowed with warm light from the rooms within.

  Bernard stared in wonder. “My god. You did it. You crazy bastard, you actually did it. I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.” Simon spurred his horse. “Come, I’ll give you the tour. Come see what your clever older brother has wrought.”

  They approached the tree, then dismounted and led their horses toward an archway that passed through into its trunk. Above them to either side huge gnarled roots loomed darkly. Simon gestured, and a portcullis made of thick thorn branches lifted open. He and Bernard passed into the stable, where they left the horses feeding happily, and from there the two men climbed a broad staircase that was lit by wall-sconces blazing with faerie fire. All around was spell-forged woodwork that still lived, and grew. They made their way to the kitchen, where Bernard fixed himself a sandwich and stretched out on the windowsill. “It’s a fine tree, brother,” he said. “But still rather . . . modest, isn’t it? Compared to our inheritance, your birthright.”

  Simon leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “I could command it to grow larger, like the other. More branches, rooms.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “It’s sufficient to my needs.” Simon had never shared his relatives’ appetite for palatial suites nor for the endless squabbles over who should lay claim to the floorspace of which deceased ancestor.

  Bernard glanced about. “And you live alone? Don’t you miss the comforts of family?”

  “Brother,” Simon said wryly, “believe me, having lived sixteen years among the scions of Victor Archimagus, the comforts of family are something I’m happy to forego for a good long time to come.”

  Bernard chewed his sandwich and stared out the window. He said, “My wife, Elizabeth, has given me a child, at last. A son.”

 
; Simon felt obliged to say, “Congratulations.”

  “The presentation ceremony is next month,” Bernard added. “I’d like you to be there.”

  Simon moved to the cupboard. “I have a prior engagement. But thanks.”

  “Simon, this is serious. Victor’s ghost is displeased by your continued absence, and the branches he’s grown for our brothers’ boys have seemed less grand than they might be. I want my son to have only the best.”

  “Please.” Simon poured two glasses of wine. “I doubt that even the spirit of Victor Archimagus would punish your infant child for my transgressions. In fact, this whole line of emotionally manipulative argumentation seems to me to have mother’s fingerprints all over it. Did she put you up to this?”

  “What, you think I can’t act on my own?”

  Simon passed him a glass. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “All right,” Bernard said, accepting the wine. “Yes. But she has her reasons, beyond the obvious.” He took a sip. “We need you, Simon. Tensions with the descendants of Atherton have never been higher. If it comes to a fight—”

  “It won’t.”

  “You’ve been away,” Bernard said. “You haven’t seen how bad it’s gotten. Malcolm provokes us constantly.”

  Simon shook his head. “The children of Franklin and the children of Atherton have been at each other’s throats for years. It’s never come to bloodshed, and it never will.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Bernard said. “Look, you’re not overfond of your close kin, we know that, but are you really just going to sit back as we die in a feud?”

  “I’m confident in your ability to look after yourselves.”

  Bernard grimaced. “Ordinarily, yes. But there’s a complication.”

  “Oh?”

  “Meredith.”

  At the name, Simon felt a jolt. He set down his wine glass. “What?”

  “Yeah, I guess it didn’t work out with Duke what’s-his-name—”

  “Wyland.”

  “Yeah, so she’s back. And she scares me, Simon. Her magic has become very powerful.” The fear in Bernard’s eyes was real. “That’s why we need you. To balance things. If you came back it might actually help keep the peace, because they’d think twice about messing with us.”