Read Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy Online

Authors: Robert Silverberg

Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy (10 page)

The dream blew away in an instant, but the scream remained, now unraveling to a moan. That part was real—as real as the Tower, brooding in its place at the very end of End-World. Roland came back to the brightness of dawn and the soft purple smell of desert sage. He had drawn both his guns, and was on his feet before he had fully realized he was awake.

Jenna was gone. Her boots lay empty beside his purse. A little distance from them, her jeans lay as flat as discarded snakeskins. Above them was her shirt. It was, Roland observed with wonder, still tucked into the pants. Beyond them was her empty wimple, with its fringe of bells lying on the powdery ground. He thought for a moment that they were ringing, mistaking the sound he heard at first.

Not bells but bugs. The doctor-bugs. They sang in the sage, sounding a bit like crickets, but far sweeter.

“Jenna?”

No answer … unless the bugs answered. For their singing suddenly stopped.

“Jenna?”

Nothing. Only the wind and the smell of the sage.

Without thinking about what he was doing (like playacting, reasoned thought was not his strong suit), he bent, picked up the wimple, and shook it. The Dark Bells rang.

For a moment there was nothing. Then a thousand small dark creatures came scurrying out of the sage, gathering on the broken earth. Roland thought of the battalion marching down the side of the freighter’s bed and took a step back. Then he held his position. As, he saw, the bugs were holding theirs.

He believed he understood. Some of this understanding came from his memory of how Sister Mary’s flesh had felt under his hands … how it had felt
various,
not one thing but many. Part of it was what she had said:
I have supped with them.
Such as them might never die … but they might
change.

The insects trembled, a dark cloud of them blotting out the white, powdery earth.

Roland shook the bells again.

A shiver ran through them in a subtle wave, and then they began to form a shape. They hesitated as if unsure of how to go on, regrouped, began again. What they eventually made on the whiteness of the sand there between the blowing fluffs of lilac-colored sage was one of the Great Letters: the letter C.

Except it wasn’t really a letter, the gunslinger saw; it was a curl.

They began to sing, and to Roland it sounded as if they were singing his name.

The bells fell from his unnerved hand, and when they struck the ground and chimed there, the mass of bugs broke apart, running in every direction. He thought of calling them back—ringing the bells again might do that—but to what purpose? To what end?

Ask me not, Roland. ’Tis done, the bridge burned.

Yet she had come to him one last time, imposing her will over a thousand various parts that should have lost the ability to think when the whole lost its cohesion … and yet she
had
thought, somehow—enough to make that shape. How much effort might that have taken?

They fanned wider and wider, some disappearing into the sage, some trundling up the sides of a rock overhang, pouring into the cracks where they would, mayhap, wait out the heat of the day.

They were gone.
She
was gone.

Roland sat down on the ground and put his hands over his face. He thought he might weep, but in time the urge passed; when he raised his head again, his eyes were as dry as the desert he would eventually come to, still following the trail of Walter, the man in black.

If there’s to be damnation
, she had said,
let it be of my choosing, not theirs.

He knew a little about damnation himself … and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.

She had brought him the purse with his tobacco in it. He rolled a cigarette and smoked it hunkered over his knees. He smoked it down to a glowing roach, looking at her empty clothes the while, remembering the steady gaze of her dark eyes. Remembering the scorchmarks on her fingers from the chain of the medallion. Yet she had picked it up, because she had known he would want it; had dared that pain, and Roland now wore both around his neck.

When the sun was fully up, the gunslinger moved on west. He would find another horse eventually, or a mule, but for now he was content to walk. All that day he was haunted by a ringing, singing sound in his ears, a sound like bells. Several times he stopped and looked around, sure he would see a dark following shape flowing over the ground, chasing after as the shadows of our best and worst memories chase after, but no shape was ever there. He was alone in the low hill country west of Eluria.

Quite alone.

Discworld

TERRY PRATCHETT

THE COLOUR OF MAGIC (1983)
THE LIGHT FANTASTIC (1988)
EQUAL RITES (1988)
MORT (1989)
SOURCERY (1989)
WYRD SISTERS (1990)
PYRAMIDS (1990)
GUARDS! GUARDS! (1991)
ERIC (1991)
MOVING PICTURES (1992)
REAPER MAN (1992)
WITCHES ABROAD (1994)
SMALL GODS (1994)
LORDS AND LADIES (1994)
INTERESTING TIMES (1995)
SOUL MUSIC (1995)
MASKERADE (1995)
MEN AT ARMS (1996)
FEET OF CLAY (1996)
HOGFATHER (1996)
JINGO (1997)

Discworld is a flat world supported by four elephants standing on top of a huge turtle swimming endlessly through space. Using this classic mythological concept as his starting point, Pratchett cheerfully lampoons a vast range of targets—Shakespeare, Creationism theory, heroic fantasy, etc., etc.—and ventures into such far-flung realms as ancient Egypt, the Aztec Empire, and Renaissance Italy for further raw material. When he is not satirizing historical periods or cultures, Pratchett allows much of the action to center around Ankh-Morpork,
a melting pot of a fantasy city that’s a mix of Renaissance Florence, Victorian London, and present-day New York.

The series uses fantasy as a fairground mirror, reflecting back at us a distorted but recognizable image of twentieth-century concerns. (For example, equal-opportunity and affirmative-action laws take on new dimensions when you’ve got vampires, werewolves, and zombies among your citizens … . )

The books can be roughly divided into four groups:

In the Rincewind series (
The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Eric, Interesting Times
), the protagonist is an incompetent, cowardly (or very clear-thinking) magician who is constantly trying to escape some danger only to run into something ten times worse. However unfortunate his misadventures become, in the end he manages to triumph and to restore Discworld to a semblance of order, as order is understood there. The primary satiric target of these books is heroic fantasy, complete with all the genre staples—trolls, wizards, and similar fauna.
Sourcery,
for example, is a parody of the Lovecraftian netherworlds; Eric is a spoof of the Faustian deal-with-the devil theme.

The Granny Weatherwax group (
Equal Rites, Wyrd Systers, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade
) introduces one of the most popular characters in the series, a witch of iron constitution, steel morals, and reinforced-concrete pride who takes charge in any situation; like a Western hero, she’s technically a bad witch who does good. A rewriting of
The Phantom of the Opera
forms the basis for
Maskerade,
and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
is lampooned in
Lords and Ladies
with Shakespeare’s more genteel fairies replaced by haughty, vicious elves from Celtic folklore.

The four books composing the Death series (
Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather
) follow the trials of Death, a humorless entity who secretly harbors a soft spot for humanity, and whose inability to understand these same humans creates real pathos. In
Mort,
Death takes a vacation, leaving his even more softhearted apprentices to carry on while he’s gone.
Reaper Man
follows Death when he becomes—temporarily—mortal, and learns what humanity
really
means.

The City Watch books (
Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay
) combine fantasy with elements of the police-procedural mystery novel, with appropriately lively results.
Guards! Guards!
finds the grubby but honest Ankh-Morpork Night Watch battling a dragon who
wants to assassinate the city’s Patrician and install a new puppet ruler.
Men at Arms
tracks a serial killer running amok with Discworld’s only gun (designed by Discworld’s equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci).

The stand-alone novel
Pyramids
injects some modern thinking into a version of Egypt of the Pharaohs.
Moving Pictures
uses the Discworld toolbox to examine the real magic of the movies.
Small Gods
provides a darkly humorous look at the rise of a religion whose one “truth” is that the Discworld is actually spherical instead of flat.

In “The Sea and Little Fishes” Pratchett offers a new adventure of Granny Weatherwax, a highly competitive spirit who believes that “coming in second” is another term for losing … .

The Sea and Little Fishes

TERRY PRATCHETT

Trouble began, and not for the first time, with an apple.

There was a bag of them on Granny Weatherwax’s bleached and spotless table. Red and round, shiny and fruity, if they’d known the future they should have ticked like bombs.

“Keep the lot, old Hopcroft said I could have as many as I wanted,” said Nanny Ogg. She gave her sister witch a sidelong glance. “Tasty, a bit wrinkled, but a damn good keeper.”

“He
named
an
apple
after
you
?” said Granny. Each word was an acid drop on the air.

“‘Cos of my rosy cheeks,” said Nanny Ogg. “An’ I cured his leg for him after he felt off that ladder last year. An’ I made him up some jollop for his bald head.”

“It didn’t work, though,” said Granny. “That wig he wears, that’s a terrible thing to see on a man still alive.”

“But he was pleased I took an interest.”

Granny Weatherwax didn’t take her eyes off the bag. Fruit and vegetables grew famously in the mountains’ hot summers and cold winters. Percy Hopcroft was the premier grower and definitely a keen man when it came to sexual antics among the horticulture with a camel-hair brush.

“He sells his apple trees all over the place,” Nanny Ogg went on.
“Funny, eh, to think that pretty soon thousands of people will be having a bite of Nanny Ogg.”

“Thousands more,” said Granny, tartly. Nanny’s wild youth was an open book, although only available in plain covers.

“Thank you, Esme.” Nanny Ogg looked wistful for a moment, and then opened her mouth in mock concern. “Oh, you ain’t
jealous,
are you, Esme? You ain’t begrudging me my little moment in the sun?”

“Me? Jealous? Why should I be jealous? It’s only an
apple.
It’s not as if it’s anything important.”

“That’s what I thought. It’s just a little frippery to humor an old lady,” said Nanny. “So how are things with you, then?”

“Fine. Fine.”

“Got your winter wood in, have you?”

“Mostly.”

“Good,” said Nanny. “Good.”

They sat in silence. On the windowpane a butterfly, awoken by the unseasonable warmth, beat a little tattoo in an effort to reach the September sun.

“Your potatoes … got them dug, then?” said Nanny.

“Yes.”

“We got a good crop off ours this year.”

“Good.”

“Salted your beans, have you?”

“Yes.”

“I expect you’re looking forward to the Trials next week?”

“Yes.”

“I expects you’ve been practicing?”

“No.”

It seemed to Nanny that, despite the sunlight, the shadows were deepening in the corners of the room. The very air itself was growing dark. A witch’s cottage gets sensitive to the moods of its occupant. But she plunged on. Fools rush in, but they are laggards compared to little old ladies with nothing left to fear.

“You coming over to dinner on Sunday?”

“What’re you havin’?”

“Pork.”

“With apple sauce?”

“Yes—”

“No,” said Granny.

There was a creaking behind Nanny. The door had swung open. Someone who wasn’t a witch would have rationalized this, would have said that of course it was only the wind. And Nanny Ogg was quite prepared to go along with this, but would have added:
Why
was it only the wind, and how come the wind had managed to lift the latch?

“Oh, well, can’t sit here chatting all day,” she said, standing up quickly. “Always busy at this time of year, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So I’ll be off, then.”

“Goodbye.”

The wind blew the door shut again as Nanny hurried off down the path.

It occurred to her that, just possibly, she might have gone a bit too far. But only a bit.

The trouble with being a witch——at least, the trouble with being a witch as far as some people were concerned—was that you got stuck out here in the country. But that was fine by Nanny. Everything she wanted was out here. Everything she’d
ever
wanted was here, although in her youth she’d run out of men a few times. Foreign parts were all right to visit but they weren’t really serious. They had interestin’ new drinks and the grub was fun, but foreign parts was where you went to do what might need to be done and then you came back here, a place that was real. Nanny Ogg was happy in small places.

Of course, she reflected as she crossed the lawn, she didn’t have this view out of her window. Nanny lived down in the town, but Granny could look out across the forest and over the plains and all the way to the great round horizon of the Discworld.

A view like that, Nanny reasoned, could probably suck your mind right out of your head.

They’d told her the world was round and flat, which was common sense, and went through space on the back of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle, which didn’t have to make sense. It was all happening Out There somewhere, and it could continue to do so with Nanny’s blessing and disinterest so long as she could live in a personal world about ten miles across, which she carried around with her.

But Esme Weatherwax needed more than this little kingdom could contain. She was the
other
kind of witch.

And Nanny saw it as her job to stop Granny Weatherwax getting bored. The business with the apples was petty enough, a spiteful little triumph when you got down to it, but Esme needed something to make every day worthwhile and if it had to be anger and jealousy then so be it. Granny would now scheme for some little victory, some tiny humiliation that only the two of them would ever know about, and that’d be that. Nanny was confident that she could deal with her friend in a bad mood, but not when she was bored. A witch who is bored might do
anything.

People said things like “we had to make our own amusements in those days” as if this signaled some kind of moral worth, and perhaps it did, but the last thing you wanted a witch to do was get bored and start making her own amusements, because witches sometimes had famously erratic ideas about what was amusing. And Esme was undoubtedly the most powerful witch the mountains had seen for generations.

Still, the Trials were coming up, and they always set Esme Weatherwax all right for a few weeks. She rose to competition like a trout to a fly.

Nanny Ogg always looked forward to the Witch Trials. You got a good day out and of course there was a big bonfire. Whoever heard of a Witch Trial without a good bonfire afterward?

And afterward you could roast potatoes in the ashes.

T
he afternoon melted into the evening, and the shadows in corners and under stools and tables crept out and ran together.

Granny rocked gently in her chair as the darkness wrapped itself around her. She had a look of deep concentration.

The logs in the fireplace collapsed into the embers, which winked out one by one.

The night thickened.

The old clock ticked on the mantelpiece and, for some length of time, there was no other sound.

There came a faint rustling. The paper bag on the table moved and then began to crinkle like a deflating balloon. Slowly, the still air filled with a heavy smell of decay.

After a while the first maggot crawled out.

N
anny Ogg was back home and just pouring a pint of beer when there was a knock. She put down the jug with a sigh, and went and opened the door.

“Oh, hello, ladies. What’re you doing in these parts? And on such a chilly evening, too?”

Nanny backed into the room, ahead of three more witches. They wore the black cloaks and pointy hats traditionally associated with their craft, although this served to make each one look different. There is nothing like a uniform for allowing one to express one’s individuality. A tweak here and a tuck there are little details that scream all the louder in the apparent, well, uniformity.

Gammer Beavis’ hat, for example, had a very flat brim and a point you could clean your ear with. Nanny liked Gammer Beavis. She might be a bit too educated, so that sometimes it overflowed out of her mouth, but she did her own shoe repairs and took snuff and, in Nanny Ogg’s small worldview, things like this meant that someone was All Right.

Old Mother Dismass’s clothes had that disarray of someone who, because of a detached retina in her second sight, was living in a variety of times all at once. Mental confusion is bad enough in normal people, but much worse when the mind has an occult twist. You just had to hope it was only her underwear she was wearing on the outside.

It was getting worse, Nanny knew. Sometimes her knock would be heard on the door a few hours before she arrived. Her footprints would turn up several days later.

Nanny’s heart sank at the sight of the third witch, and it wasn’t because Letice Earwig was a bad women. Quite the reverse, in fact. She was considered to be decent, well-meaning, and kind, at least to less-aggressive animals and the cleaner sort of children. And she would always do you a good turn. The trouble was, though, that she would do you a good turn for your own good even if a good turn wasn’t what was good for you. You ended up mentally turned the other way, and that wasn’t good.

And she was married. Nanny had nothing against witches being married. It wasn’t as if there were
rules.
She herself had had many husbands, and had even been married to three of them. But Mr. Earwig was a retired wizard with a suspiciously large amount of gold, and Nanny suspected that Letice did witchcraft as something to keep herself
occupied, in much the same way that other women of a certain class might embroider kneelers for the church or visit the poor.

And she had money. Nanny did not have money and therefore was predisposed to dislike those who did. Letice had a black velvet cloak so fine that it looked as if a hole had been cut out of the world. Nanny did not. Nanny did not
want
a fine velvet cloak and did not aspire to such things. So she didn’t see why other people should have them.

“Evening, Gytha. How are you keeping, in yourself?” said Gammer Beavis.

Nanny took her pipe out of her mouth. “Fit as a fiddle. Come on in.”

“Ain’t this rain dreadful?” said Mother Dismass. Nanny looked at the sky. It was frosty purple. But it was probably raining wherever Mother’s mind was at.

“Come along in and dry off, then,” she said kindly.

“May fortunate stars shine on this our meeting,” said Letice. Nanny nodded understandingly. Letice always sounded as though she’d learned her witchcraft out of a not very imaginative book.

“Yeah, right,” she said.

There was some polite conversation while Nanny prepared tea and scones. Then Gammer Beavis, in a tone that clearly indicated that the official part of the visit was beginning, said:

“We’re here as the Trials committee, Nanny.”

“Oh? Yes?”

“I expect you’ll be entering?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll do my little turn.” Nanny glanced at Letice. There was a smile on that face that she wasn’t entirely happy with.

“There’s a lot of interest this year,” Gammer went on. “More girls are taking it up lately.”

“To get boys, one feels,” said Letice, and sniffed. Nanny didn’t comment. Using witchcraft to get boys seemed a damn good use for it as far as she was concerned. It was, in a way, one of the fundamental uses.

“That’s nice,” she said. “Always looks good, a big turnout. But.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Letice.

“I said ‘but,’” said Nanny. “’Cos someone’s going to say ‘but,’ right? This little chat has got a big ‘but’ coming up. I can tell.”

She knew this was flying in the face of protocol. There should be at
least seven more minutes of small talk before anyone got around to the point, but Letice’s presence was getting on her nerves.

“It’s about Esme Weatherwax,” said Gammer Beavis.

“Yes?” said Nanny, without surprise.

“I suppose she’s entering?”

“Never known her stay away.”

Letice sighed.

“I suppose you … couldn’t persuade her to … not to enter this year?” she said.

Nanny looked shocked.

“With an axe, you mean?” she said.

In unison, the three witches sat back.

“You see—” Gammer began, a bit shamefaced.

“Frankly, Mrs. Ogg,” said Letice, “it is very hard to get other people to enter when they know that Miss Weatherwax is entering. She always wins.”