Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

“The most dangerous sort. The ones that make themselves obvious can be dealt with almost at leisure. It’s the ones that can disguise their true nature, get along socially, feign friendships…those are much, much worse. The only real way to catch them is to leave rope lying around and let them knot their own nooses.”

“Merciful gods.” Laszlo retrieved his sword and slid it into the scabbard for what he hoped would be the last time that day. “What about the body?”

“Library property. Some of the grimoires in here are bound in human skin, and occasionally need repair.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Waste not, want not.”

“But his family—”

“Won’t get to know. Because he vanished in an unfortunate magical accident just after you turned and left him in here, didn’t he?”

“I…damn. I don’t know if I can—”

“The alternative is disgrace for him, disgrace for his family, and a major headache for everyone who knew him, especially his chambers-mate for the last five years.”

“The Indexers will just play along?”

“The Indexers see what they’re told to see. I sign their pay chits.”

“It just seems incredible,” said Laszlo. “To stand here and hide everything about his real fate, as casually as you’d shelve a book.”

“Who around here casually shelves a book?”

“Good point.” Laszlo sighed and held his hand out to Astriza. “I suppose, then, that Casimir vanished in a magical accident just after I turned and left him in here.”

“Rely on us to handle the details, Laszlo.” She gave his hand a firm, friendly shake. “After all, what better place than a library for keeping things hushed?”

TWO LIONS, A WITCH, AND THE WAR-ROBE Tanith Lee

TANITH LEE became a freelance writer in 1975, and has been one ever since. Her first published books were children’s fantasies The Dragon Hoard and Animal Castle. Her first adult fantasy novel, The Birthgrave, was the start of a long association with DAW, which published more than twenty of her works of fantasy, SF, and horror in the 1970s and 1980s. She received the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award in 1980 for Death’s Master, World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Story in 1983 (for “The Gorgon”) and 1984 (for “Elle est Trois (La Mort)”). Enormously prolific, Lee has recently published a trilogy of pirate novels for young adults (Piratica and sequels), a science fiction novel for adults (Mortal Suns), an adult fantasy trilogy (Lionwolf), a young adult fantasy trilogy (Claidi and sequels), and the first of two retrospective short story collections (Tempting the Gods). Upcoming are new books in the Flat Earth series. In 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror. Tanith Lee lives with her husband, the writer and artist John Kaiine, on the southeast coast of England.

To come on the apparently unguarded forest city of Cashloria was often a surprise, since it lay, as its name implied, deep in one of the vast ancient forests of Trosp. Enormous pines, cedars, beeches, oaks, poplars, and other trees towered up, for hundreds of miles. A single wide road, in places rather overgrown, eccentrically bisected the area. Once night began, the city was quite arresting. Then its thousands of lamp-lit windows, many with stained glass, blazed in slices between the trunks. Huge old stone mansions, public halls, and various fortresses appeared, but all smothered in among the forest, with trees growing everywhere about them, in some cases out of the stonework itself. In the narrow central valley to which the road eventually descended, where lay the city’s hub, ran the thrashing River Ca, along which only the most courageous water-traffic ventured, and that in the calm of summer.