Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

A lion knows it is a lion, even if it has no occasion to tell itself so. Had it found occasion, it would, and using whatever words make up the lionesque language. All animals, naturally, employ language. Human ignorance of this results from the fact most humans have never understood most of the animal tongues. The reason being perhaps because, beyond the very obvious, animal language is formulated to convey states, ideas, and principles of conduct quite out of the range of human grasp. Certain schools of thought even maintain that what man sees in himself as “acting like an animal,” rather than a sign of degeneracy, is a sadly inadequate effort on mankind’s part to copy the philosophical intellectual animal technique in the mastery of life, love, and death.

Zire, then, knew himself a lion. And Bretilf likewise knew himself a lion. That they were brothers was undeniable, fundamental, and largely irrelevant. As for a strange jumble each vaguely noticed as being a name, and a distorted name, neither bothered with it.

Nevertheless, both lions were slightly conscious of bizarre concepts, which sometimes swirled about in their maned and noble heads. To these also they paid little attention. What they knew was this: the day was warm, the earth and trees smelled good, and everywhere blew the scents of interesting things both to experience and to eat. Something excited and pushed them on in a particular direction. It went without saying therefore this direction was desirable, and promised much. To resist the tug of it was not even considered.

For hours the lions bounded through the forest. By now verdure was thick, and the track less than a thread between the roots of trees and laceries of fern. Now and then they paused to investigate some interesting odor, sight, or noise, rested in shade under the sun-flamed canopy, drank from a streamlet dark as malachite. All was as it should be.

Noon filled the sky and so the forest. From safe tree-tents, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, and wood pigeons watched the lions, most respectfully.

To a man, the scene that now appeared between the trees was that of a huge clearing. For almost a mile all vegetation had been mown down or dredged up, and then a floor laid there, made of odd triangular flagstones, which seemed of polished basalt. In this surface the unhidden sky reflected, so it glimmered like a black lake. At its center rose a building. To a man, again, or a woman, it was instantly apparent this structure had been formed from the trunks and heavy summer crowns of many living trees. Yet they had also been deformed. Some leaned askew, some were warped in unnerving hoops, and some forced together at their tops to provide a roof with branches, boughs, and foliage. After that, sorcery had struck them. They had turned to stone—not the smooth basalt of the paving, but petrified coal of dense, ashen black.

As no men were in the clearing, but rather lions, that analysis did not occur. The lions saw a cave-like mass, cool in the day’s heat, and having to it an olfactory tang of human flesh and blood. In other words, recent fresh corpses.

Pausing only to dip cautious paws into the lake which surrounded the caves, and so learn it was solid, they sprang forward, and vanished through the entrance.

Izer, the lion who had been Zire, darted through a succession of lowering, gaping, all-black vistas. Space led into space, some more narrow, others wider or more winding. Izer galloped blithely through them all. Their enormity, and cranky arboreal sculpting, did not faze him. He did not feel made small and vulnerable, as a man might. Instead, curious as a young cat, he climbed where able up the malformed sides of the stone trees, and stuck his long, big nose into holes and fissures. He raised his paw and scraped the petrified material with a single claw. At which blue sparks flew and he veered away.

From the guts of this inert yet nastily intestine-suggestive labyrinth, came the most insidious wavering drone of sound. It was the sound of utter soundlessness, disturbed only in the ear of the listener by the tempo of pulse and heart. Izer paid it little attention. His hearing was honed for more informative noises. Of these there seemed to be none.

Then with no warning, something rushed sharply through the air, about three lion-lengths above him. Izer raised his head.

It was a bird. But a bird Izer had never seen, nor been self-trained to expect. It had no beak, nor even a head. Its outflung, fluttering wings were dark above, with complex paler featherings below, but they supported nothing. The bird had no body either.