Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII Read online

  Marion Zimmer Bradley's

  Sword & Sorceress 23

  edited by

  Elisabeth Waters

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  by Elisabeth Waters

  A Morsel For The Plague Queen

  by Dave Smeds

  Daughter of Heaven

  by Michael Spence & Elisabeth Waters

  The Vessel

  by Gerri Leen

  Polish On, Polish Off: A Dragon Tale

  by Tom Inister

  It's All in the Making

  by Patricia B. Cirone

  Daughters of Brightshield

  by Pauline J. Alama

  Undivided

  by Marian Allen

  The Fairest of Them All

  by Melissa Mead

  Deermouse

  by K.D. Wentworth

  Blood Moon

  by Catherine Mintz

  Stolen Ghosts

  by Jonathan Moeller

  The Frog's Princess

  by Kristin Noone

  Shalott's Inn

  by Leah Cypess

  Wolf Maiden

  by Linda L. Donahue

  Black Magic

  by Resa Nelson

  Remembering

  by Deborah J. Ross

  Squirrel Errant

  by Michael H. Payne

  Hope for the Dawn

  by Catherine Soto

  Scam Artistry

  by Mercedes Lackey & Elisabeth Waters

  Copyright

  Kindle books in the Sword & Sorceress series

  Introduction

  by Elisabeth Waters

  I was delighted to learn that Sword & Sorceress 22 sold well enough to justify doing Sword & Sorceress 23, and I hope that this will continue. Not only do I enjoy editing these anthologies, but also I am happy that we are able to continue Marion Zimmer Bradley's work of discovering and encouraging new writers. It's gratifying to watch a writer go from submitting the sort of story that used to get MZB's "willing suspension of disbelief does not mean 'hang by the neck until dead'" rejection to a story that an editor would like to buy.

  It's also great fun to see the next episode in some of the series that run through Sword & Sorceress. Mercedes Lackey's Vows and Honor series started with a story in Sword & Sorceress 3, continued with seven more stories in Sword & Sorceress 4 through 10, and then became a book. Catherine Soto's third Temple Cats story is in this volume, as is the fifth story in the Treasures series, which Michael Spence and I have been passing back and forth between us since Sword & Sorceress 14. Heather Rose Jones's Skins stories began appearing in Sword & Sorceress 12, and her most recent one was in Sword & Sorceress 22. Unfortunately, she didn't send me one this year, but maybe she will next year. We also have a couple of stories that are sequels to stories from earlier volumes, but it's too soon to know whether any of them will develop into a series or not.

  Editors often hear two closely-related questions: "Why did you buy that story for the anthology?" and "Why didn't you buy my story?" Sometimes I'm asked the latter in person at a convention; ideally the questioner is a professional looking for more feedback, but sometimes he or she is an amateur who is out to convince me that I was wrong to reject his or her story. The most important thing to remember about rejection, whether you are just starting out or have been selling for decades (oh yes, rejection slips can still hurt, even then) is that the editor is rejecting the story, not you as a person.

  Why, then, does an editor buy—or reject—a story?

  In simplest terms, editors buy stories they like; what becomes complex are the reasons the editor likes a story. I have often thought that an editor is a collection of prejudices—certainly MZB was—but as long as what the editor likes matches what the readers of the publication like, this is probably a good thing.

  There are a lot of other factors, of course: the story must fit the market (which is why reading the guidelines before submitting is essential) and must be the right length. The length desired changes over time, resulting in rejections such as "I really liked this story, but it's the maximum length the guidelines allow and you submitted it the day of the deadline, so I'd have to reject three other stories I've already put in the tentative final line-up to include this one." By the end of the reading period I am more apt to be looking for something short and funny; anything long has to be truly spectacular. Sometimes the length has to be the size of the current hole in the line-up, especially if the line-up is for a magazine, which has less flexibility than an anthology.

  Then, at least for Sword & Sorceress, there's the issue of balance: Do the stories, taken together, emphasize the "swords," or the "sorcery"—or do they evenly mix the two? Have we included enough new writers? On the other hand, do we have enough writers who are well-known and whose names will help sell the anthology? (If you would like a more detailed explanation, see MZB's "Why Did My Story Get Rejected?" at www.mzbworks.com.)

  What I personally tend to look for is a story that is both original and memorable. If I hold a story overnight and can't remember the next morning what it was about, I'm apt to reject it in favor of something I do still remember the next day, the next month, and beyond.

  Once I have chosen the stories, the next question is what order to put them in. I've seen an anthology where the stories were in alphabetical order by the author's last name (the editor was a librarian by training), but I really don't think that's the ideal arrangement. Not that I know what the ideal arrangement is, or even if there is one, but I try to come up with one that I hope the reader will find satisfying.

  Consider, as I have been lately, the book of Psalms. (For those not familiar with that portion of the Bible, it is a collection of 150 pieces ranging in length from 2 to 176 verses.) The first one can be taken as a keynote statement for the book: it praises the righteous man and condemns the ungodly, basically saying that keeping God's law is a right and proper thing and will make life good. The last several psalms end the book on a high note, with praises to God.

  Similarly, Sword & Sorceress traditionally begins with a strong story representing a mix of the martial and magical arts, and ends with something short and funny. We want to leave our readers smiling. (I imagine that psalms praising God would have a similar effect.) Other than that, I try to alternate between short and long stories and between stories about swords, sorcery, or both.

  So here are the stories I liked—for various reasons—this year. I hope you will like them too.

  A Morsel For The Plague Queen

  by Dave Smeds

  To paraphrase Shakespeare, some are born magic, some achieve magic, and some have magic thrust upon them. Verda, an extremely distant cousin of the king, never expected him to take any notice of her. When she became a pawn in his quest to save his kingdom, she didn't expect to live through the experience—but great things await a pawn who survives until the end.

  Sword and sorcery works by Dave Smeds include his novels The Sorcery Within and The Schemes of Dragons, and shorter pieces in such anthologies as Enchanted Forests and Return To Avalon, as well as eight previous volumes of Sword & Sorceress. He writes in many genres, from science fiction to contemporary fantasy to horror to superhero and others, and has been a Nebula Award finalist. He lives in the Napa/Sonoma wine country of California with his wife and children. In addition to being an author, he has been a farmer, graphic artist, and karate instructor.

  #

  For a man with a wooden foot, Rayl moved with deceptive grace. Once again Verda failed to anticipate his thrust. The blunt at the end of his rapier struck her prac
tice vest hard, adding to the bruises within her left breast. Too late, she sidestepped, deflecting away his weapon.

  "Not good enough," he said.

  Verda blew a sweaty strand of hair out of her face, wishing she had tied her braid tighter. She glared at Rayl. It was bad enough that he was so much better than she, but worse when he said it aloud.

  He limped back to his spot. She tried to calm her mind, ignore distractions.

  She saw he wasn't quite balanced. She charged.

  He parried her. As she danced back to avoid his counterthrust, she stepped on the hem of her skirt and went sprawling on her rump.

  Laughter came from the trees.

  She bared her teeth. The two peasant boys, Gritt and Cauld, hooted at her from their perch on a thick oak bough. Or did until Rayl gagged them with his master-at-arms scrutiny.

  At their various positions around the glade, the members of the squad worked hard to suppress their own signs of amusement.

  Verda hated having to practice in a skirt. She was better in the boy's hose and tunic Rayl had allowed her to wear during the previous week's drills. But now he expected more. "An assassin will not wait for you to compose yourself," he had lectured. "You must be ready to fight at a moment's notice."

  Lately he had taken to sneaking up while she was asleep and emitting a shout, and if she did not vault to her feet in an instant, knife in hand, prepared to meet an attack in nothing but her nightshirt, he would thwack her with his "learning stick" of bundled willow switches.

  She stole a few moments of respite by staying on the ground. She didn't understand how Rayl could keep going without showing fatigue. He was ancient. Fifty, he had told her a fortnight after he had been assigned to lead her bodyguards. That was three times as old as she.

  "Taking the offensive was the right move," he said. "Try it again."

  "Must I?" she puffed.

  Rayl sighed. "You are the last line of your own defense, girl. Do you want to be helpless?"

  Groaning, she rolled onto her feet. But before straightening, she grabbed a handful of dirt. She flung it at Rayl's face.

  He back-pedalled, belly-laughing with approval. She closed in. He cleared his eyes and tried to parry, but her sword blunt reached him, landing with enough force that, in a real engagement, he would have taken a serious wound in the mid-section.

  "Better," he said. The other warriors murmured approvingly. In the tree, Gritt and Cauld grunted in astonishment.

  Verda didn't let her guard down. That was one lesson she had learned well.

  But Rayl did not test her further. When he saw that she was alert, he pulled the blunt off his rapier and sheathed the weapon.

  "Catch your breath. Noon is nigh."

  He stepped behind her and unlaced her practice vest. As the hardened leather casing fell off her body, and the breeze struck the sweat-drenched cloth of her blouse, the sharp, sudden coolness caused her bruises to throb.

  She let herself dwell on the discomfort. Pain was a teacher, Rayl had said. It was also a distraction. She wondered if that might be the real reason Rayl had initiated her into a regimen of self-defense. All she knew was that at that moment, she would rather still be getting thumped with a sword and have boys laugh at her than move on to her next task.

  * * * *

  As the sun filtered down through the leaves from almost directly above, heralding the interval when the magic she must wield was at its greatest potency—Verda strode from the woods onto the tilled part of the farm holding she and her escort of king's men had come to aid.

  A small crowd of peasants was waiting expectantly at the edge of a barley field. Verda entered the enclosure of pavilion cloth they had erected for her privacy and removed all her clothes. She donned a knee-length frock of rough burlap and reemerged into the open.

  Rayl handed her a spear. He had made it earlier this morning from a sapling he had cut down. It was a thoroughly primitive article, its point nothing more than a whittled tip. There was no reason to craft anything better.

  She set off into the field.

  The squad had taken up sentry positions at regular intervals around the entire parcel. If an attack came, the men would protect her as best they could, but only from threats that came from beyond. The threat within the field was hers alone to deal with.

  Her calves brushed against stalks of ripening grain. A good harvest had been shaping up here—enough to cover the king's taxes and still leave the serfs with a bounty for their toil. But up ahead, nearly half the field had been transformed. The crop had sickened and collapsed, leaving a matted terrain of spongy, blackened compost. It stank of sewage. Midges and flies spun in lethargic spirals above the area.

  The outline of the sick zone was amorphous. Tendrils threaded outward like mangrove roots. What Verda was confronting was a tumor of the land.

  Her prey was the spore from which the ugliness sprouted. The cyst. Strong and well-armed as the twenty warriors surrounding her were, they could not locate it for her, nor survive the encounter.

  Her gait faltered as she approached the boundary of the infection. A sulphurous plume wafted over her, making her snort. She forced herself to take a step, then another and another, propelled by the knowledge that her only hope of success was to spend as little time as possible in the blighted zone.

  As she crossed the threshold, the air clenched around her, dank in spite of the arid summer day. At noon, the effect was as weak as it got, but it was still enough to force sweat from her pores. Her frock began to cling to her sides below the armpits. Her feet sank in with each step, first only a toe's height, then nearly to the ankles. Only the lightness of her body, the lack of heavy gear or armor, and the interlaced net of fallen grain stalks prevented her from becoming bogged down.

  Her throat constricted. Her lungs did not want to fill with the putrid air. She made them do so. The inhalation made her feel as though foulness were taking root inside her chest, but if she didn't breathe, she would pass out, and the blight would claim her.

  Now that she was within the boundary, the enchantment that had been placed upon her became active, revealing the proximity and direction of her goal. The cyst lay to her left. It was not in the center of the vileness—that would have been too easy. Too symmetrical. Less evil.

  She struggled through the rest of her approach, reaching a place where the earth was slightly mounded, though this was only apparent now that she was close. As she took the last few steps, insects harassed her eyes, tried to crawl into her ears, into her nostrils. The stench increased.

  Finally she was close enough. In a swift, sure motion, she thrust into the mound with the spear.

  A shriek overwhelmed the buzz of the insects. The spear bucked. She pulled it free before she lost her grip.

  A viscous mass, greatly resembling a ball of mucus, emerged from the soil. It oozed a puslike discharge from the wound Verda had made.

  She thrust again, this time right at the center.

  Another shriek set her eardrums to ringing. Knowing what was coming, Verda threw up her free arm to shield her eyes. The cyst... popped. Sticky, clinging matter expoded in all directions, spattering Verda from head to foot.

  Around her on the field, the substance began sizzling, eating into the matted stalks and soil like acid. Both her spear and her frock began to decompose. But the anointment did nothing to her skin and hair save hang there. It revolted her with its texture, its heat, and its odor, but it had no destructive effect.

  The shreds of the cyst collapsed. Verda poked the larger flaps of membrane several more times, but did not get a living reaction. She discarded the spear.

  Already the flies and midges were drifting away in the wind. The stench was fading. The grain, of course, would continue to rot, but in a natural way, fertilizing the soil. In three or four years, the patch would seem normal to look at, to tread upon, to smell. In a decade, people could safely eat food grown in its soil.

  Most important, the area would no longer expand until it consu
med the entire holding and those next to it.

  Verda wobbled away from the thing she had killed. At first, the droplets that fell from her bubbled and fumed as soon as they hit the ground, then even this lingering element of sorcery ceased. Her frock, which was holding together only because half of it had been shielded from the spray by her body, stopped disintegrating.

  Finally she reached the pristine zone. Rayl was waiting there.

  "Well done," he said.

  Beside him stood the peasants, whose field this was. They included the boys, Gritt and Cauld. The latter did not appear ready to mock her now. Verda almost wished they would, rather than see them cringe in disgust at the spectacle of her.

  "Great Lady," said Mott, the landholder, "on behalf of myself, my kin, and all my neighbors, I thank you."

  Verda acknowledged him with a nod. It was all she could manage.

  "Let's get you cleaned up," said Wreena, Mott's wife.

  Verda returned to the enclosure, this time accompanied by Wreena and her teenaged daughter Brigg, a sister of Gritt and Cauld. Verda slipped out of the remnant of the frock. Wreena handed her a block of soap, and then she and Brigg took turns pouring ladlefuls of warm water over Verda. The water came from a cauldron the family had transported to the site on their hay wain.

  Viscous strands of ichor and greyish suds flowed off her. She stepped clear of the resultant muck and the procedure was repeated.

  Verda appreciated the peasant women's trouble, to heat water for her and bring it out so far from their hearth. The last time she had destroyed a cyst, she had bathed in cold well water. "More," she murmured as soon as the third round of rinsing was done.

  Pampering was not something Verda was used to. She would not waste the experience.

  * * * *

  She was still light-headed when the peasants and her bodyguards gathered for supper, but at least she was clean. The aroma of the food even awakened her appetite—just a little.

  The meal was served outdoors around a bonfire in the farmyard, for none of the buildings would have accommodated so many visitors. The holding was home to three large families, but their dwellings were hovels clustered against the half-collapsed remains of a watchtower left over from the Forgotten Age. The peasants did not even have a barn, only a pigsty and goat pen. Their grain was stored in root cellars, their hay in stacks in the open fields.