The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy Read online

  The cranes circled us in the grass and their lank shadows fell across our faces. “I am not sure,” I said.

  She clapped her hands; a pygmy scuttled from the house with vessels of wine. “Drink,” she said, handing me a silver cup with dancers in raised relief. “The wine will refresh you.”

  Phrases whirred in my brain: “With evil drugs administered…” “Round that place lay the beasts of the mountain…” “Goddess it may be she is or a woman.”

  “I am not thirsty.”

  She laughed, artlessly, playfully, and drank from both of the cups. “Did you think I was giving you poison—the milk of oleanders or the venom of adders? Take your choice. It is wine from my own grapes, sweetened with the manna of tamarisk trees.”

  “But the pygmies in the dugout,” I cried. “They came to attack us. The captain shouted, ‘Seek her at your peril.’ And the Sirens last night—“

  She answered with patient assurance. “The man who cannot meet obstacles does not deserve my love. I sent the pygmies to test your courage. And the Sirens, you ask? I never meant you to fall into their hands. I tolerate them because they help to defend my island. There are hostile tribes along the coast. My pygmies, you see, are doubtful protectors. I keep their enemies, the cranes, from attacking them. In return they serve me—for the moment.”

  I drank the wine and a sudden coolness, like a breeze from the ocean, seemed to blow along my limbs.

  “Why did you come here, Bear?”

  “To love you.”

  “No,” she sighed. “Because I was distant. Because in your heart you believed you would never find me. It is easy to love a dream.”

  “But now I have found you.”

  “You will tire of me, as you have of others.”

  “The others were ghosts.”

  “I will try to be more than a ghost. I will build you a house of oleanders, and sunbirds will nest in the walls. I will spin you robes as soft as a spider’s silk. I will give you tamarisk flowers like falling snowflakes, and the hyacinths of my own hair for your fingers to weave into meadows. You shall call me Kore, the Maiden, and forget that other one, Circe. Shall these things hold you, Bear?”

  I held her in my arms and her maiden’s slenderness stabbed me with sweet bewilderment, and her hands, like searching swallows, fluttered at my face. I held her, and in my heart summer trembled to spring, but a spring without wandering or need to wander, where boughs of quince put forth their quivering leaves. I buried my face in her tumbled hyacinths and sobbed that beauty and brevity must be inseparable.

  Laughing, she drew me into the palace, under the high lintel, from room to courtyard, garden to corridor, from shadows to shadows, fragrance…tapestries blue as waves, and the smell of salt and dunes…sunbirds wheeling in roofless chambers and rushes under our feet…the orange embers of a phoenix throbbing in green dusk—or did I dream, remembering cedar woods? She held my hand, but always she seemed immeasurably far ahead of me, elusive, irrecoverable. She moved to a deep-toned music, neither lyres nor flutes, but drums like a giant heartbeat and the sighing of many waters. It seemed to have no source; it welled from the throats of beasts. I fell among cushions sweet with spikenard and palm-oil, marjoram and essence of thyme. I lay on my back, and her face, like a distant moon, laughed in the sky.

  “You have bewitched me,” I said.

  Her voice broke the silence like the rasp of an arrow. “I will send supplies and water to your crew. Then you may tell them goodbye.”

  I looked at her, astonished. “But I want them to stay with me. They have no home, except Aruns. I am their friend, and you must be.”

  Surprise flickered in her eyes. “I like Astyanax. I think I would like your other friends—the white dolphin, Aruns, and the brothers. But they cannot stay with us, Bear. I came here to lose the world. Would you thrust it upon me again? You I have welcomed and loved. Not the others.”

  “They are friends,” I said stubbornly. “How can I send them away?”

  “Love for a friend”—she shrugged—“need not be eternal. Give it a season, a year, and then forget it. But the love of a man and a woman…Have you seen an island erupt from the sea, with thunder and foam and lashing waves? So love erupts in the heart. Does the sea protest? Does it say to the island, ‘Return to the ocean floor’?”

  “Indeed,” I said, springing to my feet, “you have thrust an island into my heart. I reel with the beauty and suddenness of it. But I have other islands, and I will not let you sink them.”

  She stood and faced me. “You have made your choice?”

  “I chose or was chosen—I am not sure which—before I found you.”

  In a sudden burst of sunlight I saw the tightness around her lips, as if laughter were alien to them. And the eyes, were they young after all? In their violet labyrinths, what minotaurs crouched, what captives groped for the light?

  “I would have killed you,” she said, “if you had forsaken your friends.” Lightly she pointed to the cranes that watched and circled us. “My birds would have crushed your skull. Their strength is formidable. I have seen them kill pygmies with a single blow of their beaks.”

  I stared at her with disbelief. “But you said you loved me—“

  “Listen,” she said. “I will tell you why I came here. Before your people sailed to Hesperia, when Egypt straddled the Nile like a golden sphinx, I lived, a queen, in Knossos. It was a time for queens, and for the goddess they served, the Great Mother. On Crete itself and in her far-flung colonies, it was the king who died to make the fields grow fertile, the queen who raised the sacrificial knife. Then came the men from the north, the yellow-haired conquerors, scornful of women, scorning the Goddess, bringing gods of their own, Zeus and Poseidon, Hades and haughty Apollo. Knossos itself fell to their ragged fleet. With the women of my court, I fled to Aeaea. Years passed. Tranquil years. Then they began to find us—lusting captains and swinish mariners, warriors and wanderers—and each in turn, except Odysseus, I met and charmed and enchanted as he deserved. Still they came, and once again I fled—this time to Libya. I lost one ship in a storm—the wreck you found—and built another and sailed at last to the Island of Oleanders. Men have tried to follow me. No man has found me—till now. My friends saw to that, the Harpies, the Sirens, the pygmies. Cruel and misshapen, yes, but loyal to me, loyal to the Goddess. Then you came. My pygmies watched you from the time you met the Harpies. Their jungle drums signaled your approach. At last you reached this island. ‘I will show him his dream,’ I thought. ‘I will show him death.’ But first, as I told you, I spoke with the boy:

  “I wish you no harm,” I said. “You may return to the sea.” He looked at me, frightened, but not for himself. I wanted to hold him, that helpless, motherless boy not yet a man, not yet a conqueror, with sea-green eyes and courage beyond his years.

  “Have you hurt my friend?” he asked.

  “Friend? He will leave you, my dear. He will come to me.”

  “No,” he said with absolute certainty. “No. He is Bear!”

  Were you really his friend, I asked myself, and therefore worthy to live? I came to you not as your dream but as in your heart you secretly wished me to be. The Corn Maiden. Most men dream of temptresses—and marry maidens. I thought that for me, you would scorn your friends. You have proved me wrong, and I am glad.”

  “The house of oleanders,” I said wistfully. “You never meant to build it at all.”

  “I am much too late for love. And so were you, dear Bear—I thought. All your life you have steered for the Isles of the Blest. But now, at last, you have chosen the dolphin and not the deep. Go to your friends and never regret your choice. I will send Astyanax after you.”

  “Circe,” I asked, “what are you really like? Maiden or enchantress?”

  “Let that be my secret. Think of me as the Maiden.”

  She clapped her hands. Pygmies sprang from the house and, silent as hunters stalking a lion, led me from the garden. “Bear,” she called.

 
; I turned and faced her. She smiled; hardly a woman she seemed—a girl, no more, with crocuses in her hair.

  “I could have loved you—once.”

  Above my head the palm trees swelled with dates, and under my sandalless feet, seashells crumbled a path which was somehow soft. At the edge of the bay the pygmies bowed and left me. My ship rode at anchor: bird of loss and bird of finding, of perilous ports and a memorable voyage. I loved the blue of her hull and her red furled sail, the cut of her timbers, the deck house, warm with wicker, and Tages, her wooden god; not because she went but because she was, and for those she carried with her.

  Then I heard tears. A young woman crouched on the sand at the edge of the water. Her bare body was whiter than amaranth. Circe’s hair was hyacinths; hers was sunflowers, rippling yellow petals. She cried hopelessly and did not hear me approach.

  I knelt beside her. “Why are you crying?” I asked.

  She looked at me, appalled, and covered her breasts with her arms. “Bear, Bear,” she sobbed. “She has shrunk me to ugliness and cast me onto the shore. My lovely flanks are hollowed and cupped till I scarcely know myself.”

  “Atthis!” I cried, with stunned recognition. “You are changed, not shrunk: You must see yourself as a whole.”

  I took her hand and led her, shaken and cowering, to a pool like a lily pad.

  She looked at her face in the water, the pillared neck, the limbs and the ivory thighs, and understanding suffused her features, a roseate shadow on snow.

  “I—I am one of you,” she said. “A woman?”

  “You were always a woman. But now your body matches your heart. Enfolds it like marble ramparts.”

  “I am one of you,” she repeated, “and—“

  “Beautiful.”

  She shook her head. “You say my body matches my heart. But my heart is evil. I tried to harm you, Bear. When I overturned your boat and Vel took you captive.”

  “Why did you do that, Atthis?”

  “Astyanax had told me you were going to look for Circe. Long before I was born, she was loved by the dolphins. She culled them her Naiades, her Maids of the Deep, and to them she was always The Lady. A white dolphin led her to Libya and then returned to Aeaea to keep it safe from strangers. Ever since, my people have swum those waters, guarding, waiting for her return. As one of the guardians, I did not want you to go and trouble her.”

  “And when you had wrecked our boat?”

  “I felt ashamed when I saw you in the water. I touched you and knew your heart, gentle and kind. No longer did I wish you harm. But I still did not want you to look for Circe. I followed the Turan to Graviscae.”

  “And waited in the harbor until I found a ship?”

  “Yes. And joined you, still divided. I thought that you would never find her anyway, and I could be your friend and then lead you home again. But after we found the wreck, I knew we were close to Circe—knew I would have to choose. Loving you both, I kept out of sight until I saw the pygmies. Then I made my choice. Was it too late?”

  “Late?” I said. “Time is not hostile, Atthis. At the last minute, the last second, he will turn and smile and say, ‘Love. Forgive. Accept. It is not too late.’ Circe has taught me that. Friendship divided your heart. Not hatred, not anger. I honor you for serving Circe, and love you for choosing me.”

  “Bear!” The cry whirred like a discus. He ran toward us on stalwart legs; he raced, he leaped, he kicked his heels in the air. Milkweed whirling in wind-pools, leaves in a river’s eddy, a deer, a rabbit, a boy with wings on his heels. He turned a somersault; laughing, he fell in my arms and called my name.

  “And Atthis,” he cried, knowing her at once. “She has changed you too! She has given us legs like Bear. Now he will never leave us!”

  Behind us someone laughed, kindly, a little sadly, and an old woman, her face as weathered as tree trunks near the sea, leaned on a cane and waved a slow farewell.

  And we went on together.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to acknowledge with thanks a considerable debt to the following books:

  The Life and Times of Tarquin the Etruscan by Carlo Maria Franzero

  The Etruscans by M. Pallottino

  Ancient Greek Mariners by Walter Woodburn Hyde

  The Cruise of the Dolphin by Ferdinand Lallemand

  THE SWORDSMEN OF VARNIS, by Clive Jackson

  The twin moons brooded over the red deserts of Mars and the ruined city of Khua-Loanis. The night wind sighed around the fragile spires and whispered at the fretted lattice windows of the empty temples, and the red dust made it like a city of copper.

  It was close to midnight when the distant rumble of racing hooves reached the city, and soon the riders thundered in under the ancient gateway. Tharn, Warrior Lord of Loanis, leading his pursuers by a scant twenty yards, realized wearily that his lead was shortening and raked the scaly flanks of his six-legged vorkl with cruel spurs. The faithful beast gave a low cry of despair as it tried to obey and failed.

  In front of Tharn in the big double saddle sat Lehni-tal-Loanis, Royal Lady of Mars, riding the ungainly animal with easy grace, leaning foward along its arching neck to murmur swift words of encouragement into its flattened ears. Then she lay back against Tharn’s mailed chest and turned her lovely face up to his, flushed and vivid with the excitement of the chase, amber eyes aflame with love for her starnge hero from beyond time and space.

  “We shall win this race yet, my Tharn,” she cried. “Yonder through that archway lies the Temple of the Living Vapor, and once there we can defy all the Hordes of Varnis!”

  Looking down at the unearthly beauty of her, at the subtle curve of throat and breast and thigh, revealed as the wind tore at her scanty garments, Tharn knew that even if the Swordsmen of Varnis struck him down, his strange odyssey would not have been in vain.

  But the girl had judged the distance correctly, and Tharn brought their snorting vorkl to a sliding, tearing halt at the great doors of the Temple, just as the Swordsmen reached the outer archway and jammed there in a struggling, cursing mass. In seconds they had sorted themselves out and came streaming across the courtyard, but the delay had given Tharn time to dismount and take his stand in one of the great doorways. He knew that if he could hold it for a few moments while Lehni-tal-Loanis got the door open, then the secret of the Living Vapor would be theirs, and with it mastery of all the lands of Loanis.

  The Swordsmen tried first to ride him down, but the doorway was so narrow and deep that Tharn had only to drive his sword-point upward into the first vorkl’s throat and leap backward as the dying beast fell. Its rider was stunned by the fall, and Tharn bounded up onto the dead animal and beheaded the unfortunate Swordsman without compunction. There were ten of his enemies left, and they came at him now on foot, but the confining doorway prevented them from attacking more than four abreast, and Tharn’s elevated position upon the huge carcass gave him the advantage he needed. The fire of battle was in his veins now, and he bared his teeth and laughed in their faces, and his reddened sword wove a pattern of cold death which none could pass.

  Lehni-tal-Loanis, running quick cool fingers over the pitted bronze of the door, found the radiation lock and pressed her glowing opalescent thumb-ring into the socket, gave a little sob of relief as she heard hidden tumblers falling. With agonizing slowness, the ancient mechanism began to open the door; soon Tharn heard the girl’s clear voice call above the clashing steel, “Inside, my Tharn! The secret of Living Vapor is ours!”

  But Tharn, with four of his foes dead now, and seven to go, could not retreat from his position on top of the dead vorkl without grave risk of being cut down, and Lehni-tal-Loanis, quickly realizing this, sprang up beside him, drawing her own slim blade and crying, “Aie, my love! I will be your left arm!”

  Now the cold hand of defeat gripped the hearts of the Swordsmen of Varnis: two, three, four more of them mingled their blood with the red dust of the courtyard as Tharn and his fighting princess swung their merciless bla
des in perfect unison. It seemed that nothing could prevent them now from winning the mysterious secret of the Living Vapor, but they reckoned without the treachery of one of the remaining Swordsmen. Leaping backward out of the conflict, he flung his sword upon the ground in disgust.

  “Aw, the Hell with it!” he grunted, and unclipping a proton gun from his belt, he blasted Lehni-tal-Loanis and hte Warrior Lord out of existence with a searing energy-beam.

  THE EMPEROR OF GONDWANALAND, by Paul Di Filippo

  “Hey, Mutt! It’s playtime, let’s go!”

  Mutt Spindler raised his gaze above the flatscreen monitor that dominated his desk. The screen displayed Pagemaker layouts for next month’s issue of PharmaNotes, a trade publication for the drug industry. Mutt had the cankerous misfortune to be assistant editor of Pharma­Notes, a job he had held for the last three quietly miserable years.

  In the entrance to his cubicle stood Gifford, Cody and Melba, three of Matt’s co-workers. Gifford sported a giant foam finger avowing his allegiance to whatever sports team was currently high in the standings of whatever season it chanced to be. Cody had a silver hip flask raised to her lips, imbibing a liquid that Mutt could be fairly certain did not issue from the Poland Springs cooler. Melba had already undone her formerly decorous shirt several buttons upward from the hem and knotted it, exposing a belly that reminded Mutt of a slab of Godiva chocolate.

  Mutt pictured with facile vividness the events of the evening that would ensue, should he choose to accept Gifford’s invitation. His projections were based on numerous past such experiences. Heavy alcohol consumption and possible ingestion of illicit stimulants, followed by slurred, senseless conversation conducted at eardrum-piercing volume to overcome whatever jagged ambient noise was passing itself off as music these days. Some hypnagogic, sensory-impaired dancing with one strange woman or another, leading in all likelihood to a meaningless hookup, the details of which would be impossible to recall in the morning, resulting in hypochondriacal worries and vacillating committments to get one kind of STD test or another. And of course the leftover brain damage and fraying of neurological wiring would insure that the demands of the office would be transformed from their usual simple hellishness to torture of an excruciating variety undreamed of by even, say, a team of Catholic school nuns and the unlamented Uday Hussein.