Neverland's Library: Fantasy Anthology Read online

  “Thank you,” he said, trying to force a meekness he didn’t feel into his words. “I’ll be careful.”

  #

  The first time Hien swam the Dead Ox Falls he was only five. It was the last day of Fullness, the three-day fast that marked the end of the rainy season and ushered in the dry days of autumn, and, as they did every year, the people of Chian’s village had emptied out – men and boys, women with squirming babes strapped across their chests – to bid the setting sun farewell from the top of the Green Cliffs. After days of hunger and prayer, there would be feasting, finally, and fires. Firefruit, and honey-dipped rice, and whisky by the barrel.

  The young men and women, hot with the last heat of summer, with their own burning youth, with joy and hope and lust, had stripped their clothes and gathered on the ledge above the falls, urging one another to leap into the rain-swollen current. It was an old ritual, one Chian himself had taken part in a dozen times in his youth. He could still remember the hollow fear in his gut as he dropped off the edge, the water’s thousand hands pulling him under, flipping him over and over until up and down had no meaning, the dizziness and cold water in his nostrils and ears, and then the calm of the pool far, far below, the breathless, desperate laughter, Sui’s arms around him, cold and warm and shivering all at the same time.

  It was a dumb, dangerous sport, he thought, watching the young men and women as they danced and taunted each other above the roaring current. Once every dozen years or so, someone would dive in and fail to surface. The children would weep, the elders would shake their heads, and for a year or two, no one would leap into the falls. Then the memory would fade, the sharpness of the pain would dull, and suddenly, in a wash of plum wine and whisky, the young folks would be at it again. Chian couldn’t help but smile as he watched them.

  Then he saw Hien.

  The boy, barely waist-high, had joined the young men and women of the village, naked as the day he was born and cavorting on the edge of the cliff. His eyes were bright, filled with the light of the setting sun, and he was laughing, dancing, caught up in the mad joy of the moment.

  “My love,” Sui gasped, seizing Chian’s arm and pointing, but he was already moving, shrugging off her grasp, charging for the ledge, for his son. It was one thing for a youth of seventeen or eighteen to brave the raging current, another for a boy of barely five.

  “Son!” Chian called, shoving his way past neighbors, vicious in his desperation. “Hien!”

  The boy turned, saw his father bearing down on him, and smiled, a huge grin that seemed to split his face, white teeth flashing in the evening light. There was fear in the smile, but also glee, and defiance, and savage joy. He was free in that moment, he knew he was free, and before Chian could reach him, could seize him in his arms to scream at him and hold him close and weep, the boy turned away, spread his arms as though ready to embrace the setting sun, then jumped into the furious current below.

  #

  Chian couldn’t tell if it was the sun, nudging its sluggish way above the roofline to the east, or the dregs of his own hot terror that made him sweat. He mopped at his forehead with a hand, wiped it on his shirt, then considered his clothes once more. They were soaked through with sweat and blood. The former was his own, the latter…

  He shuddered.

  Even hours later and half a mile distant from his crime, even standing in the hot, watery light of the open plaza, he still expected someone to denounce him, to notice the blood on his black clothes, to see the awful truth in his eyes, to lower a fateful finger and raise the cry.

  Just a little longer, he prayed. Please Hull, hide my secret a little longer.

  He should have been gone, miles outside the city, fleeing back to the things he knew – his wife, his farm, his family – before someone discovered his deed. If he left immediately, there was still a chance, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. He had killed a man, at least one, and he’d left the two others so badly injured that they could be dead as well. Either way, he needed to see the end of the thing, needed to see it through.

  The magistrate and the executioner strode into the square a few hours after dawn, a cordon of fourteen guards with long spears holding back the enthusiastic press that followed. People had been pouring into the square for the better part of an hour, staking out places on the flagstones from which they could see the gibbet and stake.

  The murderers and thieves hanged first, a series of quick, efficient executions. One poor fool tried to flee, fell to his knees, and had to be dragged all the way to the noose. Another shouted curses at the magistrate and the hangman, the Emperor and the whole system of Annurian justice, right up until the moment the rope snapped his neck. A few of the criminals went to their slaughter docile as old oxen, eyes wide but lost, as though they understood nothing of their own extinction. And then it was done, all of it but the true sport – the burning of the leach.

  The entire mob was on its feet for that, the air a hard wall of sound. Chian’s heart thudded, thudded inside him, until he felt he might collapse on the stones, but he forced his way forward all the same, pushing, pushing, until he stood in the front ranks, until he could see his son.

  Hien kept his face down, perhaps from shame, perhaps to protect himself from the hurled projectiles. When the guards unlocked his cage, however, prodding him into motion with their long spears, he raised his eyes and Chian saw, with a tremor of relief and horror, that his eyes were sharp, focused, almost predatory. All traces of the drug were gone. Hien glanced over the mob, considered the stake and the pile of wood ready at its base, then found his father in the crowd and nodded.

  For the first time since seeing his son in the cage, Chian took a full breath, a hint of relief, like the first autumn breeze after a scorching summer, cooling the knot of confusion and doubt inside him. He glanced around the plaza at the hundreds of angry faces, at the mouths pried wide with rage and release. They had come for a righteous slaughter, these wives and fishmongers, street sweepers and thieves. They expected a slaughter. No one seemed to notice anything amiss. It had worked. The whole thing had worked. As the guards prodded Hien out of his cage, Chian allowed himself to nod wearily in return.

  It was maybe thirty steps from the cage to the stake, thirty steps separating captivity from death. For the first fifteen, Hien followed his captors gently as a calf, eyes on the stones before him, shoulders slumped. Then, halfway to the iron pole, he stopped. The guards, eager to make a show of it, paused with him, and the tallest prodded him in the shoulder with the tip of his spear, taunting him, drawing blood. When there was no response, the guard stabbed at the other shoulder, harder, and at last Hien raised his head.

  When he smiled, the whole sky screamed, shivered, then cracked.

  Where, one heartbeat before, there had been nothing but sticky summer air, damp and heavy with sea salt, sheets of flame raked through the crowd, singeing hair, burning flesh, catching the shutters of the nearest shops ablaze. The earth shuddered, battering Chian to his knees. Howling and roaring pounded at him from all around, the sound of men turned abruptly to animals in their panic, the scent of urine thickening the air. There was blood, Chian realized as he tried to haul himself to his feet, to see what was happening and how to escape it, to find Hien, to shelter him, to help him. People were dying, faces twisted in pain, wounds blossomed like red, wet flowers in the flesh all around him. A woman at his side shrieked and clawed out, catching Chian’s shoulder. He turned in time to see her face crushed, as though caught in some awful, unseen vise.

  Awash in blood and terror, he stumbled finally to his feet, then spun in place, searching the chaos, then finding Hien there, right before him, a hand extended. Chian lunged for him, hoping to pull him free of the madness, but stumbled over an outstretched corpse. Hein caught him.

  “Go!” Chian gasped. “We have to go.”

  Hien shook his head slowly.

  “No,” he said. “Where I’m going, you can’t come with me.” He started to say something
else, something more, then stopped, reaching out with one arm to pull his father close. Even as the embrace closed around his shoulders, Chian felt the pain, a great, hooked talon tearing the breath from his lungs. With what seemed an enormous effort, he pushed his son away and stared down at the knife buried in his stomach, the knife still clutched in the leach’s hand. Chian scrabbled at the blade a moment, then let it be. He looked back up at Hien, at his boy. As he watched, a shadow of something terrible passed across those dark eyes, like rancid oil slicked on water. Then it was gone.

  “I’m sorry, father,” Hien said, then shrugged him off, leaving the knife still buried in his gut. “I’m sorry,” he said again, then turned, making his way through the madness toward the side of the plaza.

  The pain was a bloody tooth between Chian’s ribs, a searing shard of agony. The pain was nothing. Slowly, he forced himself to his knees again, then to his feet. Hand wrapped around the handle of the knife, he yanked it free. It felt as though his heart ripped away with the steel, but he managed to keep his feet, his eyes on his son’s back. He could make the throw. At this distance, even dying, he could make the throw.

  He’s a leach, he told himself, clutching at the gushing wound with one hand, hefting the knife with the other, unconsciously testing its weight. He’s not my child any more. He’s a killer now, a murderer. Chian cocked his arm, held it, staring at the torn cloth over the leach’s retreating back.

  “Look back,” he spat, the words bloody on his tongue, knife light in his hand. “Look back, you bastard. I need you to look back.”

  But the leach did not look back. Whatever lines of rage or sorrow, doubt or indifference or sick delight etched the man’s face, Chian never saw them. There was only memory, bright as flame, scribbled across his dying mind, memory of his son that evening at the falls: the wide, bright smile, the eyes alive with sunlight, his child’s face aflame with fear, and defiance, and freedom, and slowly, slowly, Chian let the knife drop.

  Redemption at Knife’s End

  Tim Marquitz

  THE MARK MOVED into the light.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Gryl cursed under his breath as he watched the three men saunter from the inn; mercenaries, one and all. They walked with a sense of purpose. The other two hadn’t been with Rayk when he’d gone inside, but Gryl knew better than to assume. Amberton swarmed with Korbitt’s lackeys. Why should the outlying inns be any different?

  It just meant Gryl would have to work harder to get the information he needed. He didn’t mind.

  His long blade already clear of the sheathe—no point announcing you’re there with the scrape of steel—he waited until the three men stepped onto the road before he drifted after them. Their booted steps were heavy, crunching dirt beneath their heels with confidence. A crooked smile split Gryl’s lips. They had no clue they were being stalked.

  Gryl let them travel a little further, waiting until they slipped into the shadows at the end of the light’s reach from the inn, and quickened his pace. His soft-soled boots made no sound as he closed in. He only needed one of them alive.

  The merc to the left was broad-shouldered and as tall as Gryl, though much wider, slabs of muscle moving thunderously under his cloak and sleeveless, rigid-leather jerkin. His sword hung at his right, marking him as a leftie. Gryl had taken the measure of the man’s eyes when they’d first emerged from the inn. They were cold, cruel. He’d be the first to die.

  The other man was short and thick, but with fat, not muscle. He wore no armor, not that any would fit. His ragged beard covered the lower half of his face and masked his expression, but Gryl could hear the wind whistling from his lungs as he walked. The wooden haft of a hammer jutted out from beneath his cloak, its head buried somewhere in the clutter of cloak and ale-soaked girth that burdened the mercenary’s waist. He’d be strong, but not fast.

  Rayk was the least of them, at least physically. Gryl had soldiered with him years back after the Avan-Thrak incursion had run its course. The man was vile, a worm of the lowest kind. That was what made him useful. His loyalty was only to himself. Gryl had experienced that firsthand when Rayk left him standing alone against a dozen Thrak berserkers. Learning that the worm was involved with Korbitt was a tantalizing taste of sweet fate he couldn’t pass up.

  The darkness roiling about him, Gryl moved behind the broad merc, timing his step to correspond with the swing of the man’s arm. Gryl thrust his sword deep into his armpit just as his limb cleared the breach between leather and flesh. The blade slipped into the man’s chest to a symphony of grating bone. A gurgled grunt slipped from lips already wet and the merc went down the instant he was free of Gryl’s sword.

  Rayk spun about with a shriek, his green eyes wide with recognition. The other mercenary gasped and fumbled for his hammer. Long and lean, with a reach that dwarfed the fat man, Gryl kicked him in the crotch. The man’s cheeks purpled and he blew out a noxious breath like a bellows, cloying with the scent of red meat and cheap liquor. Gryl drew his sword across the man’s throat to redirect the stench.

  Before the fat mercenary crumpled to the ground, Rayk was off and running. Gryl fought back a grin. He loved the chase, but he knew better than to let the worm get too far. This wasn’t about revenge, however delicious it might be. A girl’s life was at stake.

  Gryl darted off, easily catching up to Rayk. The man had never liked to exert himself. He was average in nearly every way, and he excelled at it. He was the man who was always around, yet never noticed, the shadow that clung to the wall and never challenged. He slipped through life invisible, feeding off the crumbs and growing fat on the ignorant largesse of others. Unfortunately for Rayk, his invisibility was as much a curse as a blessing. No one was likely to miss him, which suited Gryl fine.

  A snap of his wrist severed the tendon at the back of Rayk’s ankle. The worm squeaked and stumbled, momentum carrying him forward when his leg gave way. He fell in a cloud of dust, squirming to be away the moment he landed. Before he could cry out, Gryl dropped in front of him. He pressed his free hand against the man’s mouth and set the tip of his sword in the shell of Rayk’s ear.

  “Where is Korbitt keeping her?”

  Sweat glistened on Rayk’s brow as he stared up with moist eyes. He started to shake his head but Gryl applied a tiny bit of pressure to his blade, its sharpened edge milking a single line of blood from his ear.

  “The Xenius girl: Vai. Tell me where she is, and I’ll let you go.”

  The worm trembled and Gryl could feel the man’s tongue working inside his mouth, licking at his teeth. He was contemplating his options. Gryl pressed his sword again to make the choice easier. Rayk mumbled something against his palm.

  “Scream and I’ll cut your tongue out and make you write the answer in your blood.” He met the worm’s wet eyes. “Are we clear?” Rayk gave the slightest of nods and Gryl pulled his hand aside.

  “He has her at the Broken Lizard.” The words spilled loose like a flood. “Keeps her upstairs…she’s special to him.”

  Gryl sighed. Nothing was ever easy. The Broken Lizard sat in the center of the busiest road in Amberton, just doors down from the barracks that housed the city’s militia; all of them sucking on the tit of Korbitt’s purse. The sheriff of Amberton had his office down the block from the tavern, but he was as much in pocket as the rest of Korbitt’s minions. The Broken Lizard was the last damn place Gryl wanted to be.

  “Does he take her anywhere? Does she ever leave?”

  Rayk swallowed hard and shook his head.

  A knot coalesced in his stomach as Gryl imagined what he’d have to do. There was no way around it. “I guess that’s it, then.” He wrapped his hand about the worm’s throat and stood, keeping pressure on the blade.

  “You said you’d let me go,” Rayk whined, his voice crackling at the last. “You said.”

  “That I did, Rayk. That I did. I just didn’t say where I’d let you go off to…I’m thinking the next life would be most appropriate seeing that’
s what you intended when you left me to the berserkers.” Gryl shoved hard, sheathing his blade inside the worm’s skull.

  Rayk’s eyes jutted wide, bulging from the steel lodged in his brain, and then went dark. Gryl had been right: delicious.

  He let the body slip from his sword and glanced about for a place to stash it and the others. He couldn’t have Korbitt find his dead mercenaries before Gryl was ready. There was a rescue to plan.

  #

  Gryl hunched in a darkened alley across from the Broken Lizard. Lantern light flickered inside the establishment, dancing to the tune of the tavern’s rowdy occupants. A chaotic assemblage of shouts, stomps, and tawdry music played on out of tune instruments gushed from the shuttered doors and washed over Gryl’s ears like a dirty wave. He felt almost violated.

  Though he’d spent years in the trenches with all manner of men, he would never feel at home with soldiers and mercenaries. Their appetites were garish and cruel and completely foreign to Gryl. Having never known the touch of a woman, save for the Avan seer who castrated him as a boy, he could not understand the interest in the fairer sex or the rancid liquor that led men afoul of them. It was all soldiers spoke of, marking Gryl as an outcast, though no one alive knew of his emasculation. He was not one of them, and though they knew not why, they still knew.

  A shrill laugh drew his wandering thoughts back to the Lizard. A buxom woman, with more of her pale breasts spilling from her corset than remained inside, stepped out onto the tavern’s porch. Korbitt emerged with her. Gryl flushed.

  Korbitt towered over the plump woman, his lion’s mane of dark hair pulled back in a loose tail. He stared at the woman with hungry eyes, a crooked smile twisting his lips. There was no hiding the lust in his gaze and she reveled in it. She arched her back and turned to better his view, casting the lure.

  “Go on now, before you get me riled up,” Korbitt told her, smacking her hard on the ass for emphasis. Her bottom lip drooped. “Now, don’t be gettin’ all offended, Chastity.” Korbitt laughed, the sound like two stones scraping together. “I just need you to drag the rest of the men here before I get all caught up in them curves of yours, woman. You know I can’t think with those sexy udders all up against my whiskers.”