Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

Izer did not identify the flying object as a book, which, to a human, it would appear to be. For him it was only logical to classify it as a bird. And as lions are generally a match for most birds, save those of supernatural size, such as a roc, he leapt straight at it, bore it to the earth and smashed it there. The book’s spine broke. Izer tore at its feather pages, champed and spat them out. The bird was not good eating, good for nothing, aside from a bit of swift exercise. When the next one came flapping at him, Izer took this in sporting spirit, sprang at it and batted it about a while, before destroying it on the ground. Other books followed in streamers, though not very many. Izer danced about with them, enjoying himself. When the last was felled, he noted tiny scurrying things that were spilling from the carcasses. He put his paws on them, bit and squashed them. They were written words, yet Izer did not know this. They meant nothing at all to him beyond a playful moment or two. They tasted only of ink anyway. He also spat their shredded bodies forth, rolled on his back, shook his henna mane, and trotted off deeper into the petrified maze.

Elsewhere, Ibfrelt, the lion who had been Bretilf, was nosing around some knots in the floor that might, once, have been edible fungi. He, too, was uninterested in the persistent yodel of the silence. However, presently he heard a curious scraping noise, and looking around saw some sharp implements worming out of a wall. No sooner were they ejected than they began to crawl over the floor, scratching irritatingly as they did so. Ibfrelt went to examine them, batting at them rather as Izer had at the books. Their steel edges made no impression on his well-toughened lion pads. In the end, he became bored with the things and loped off. He did not actually realize that they then pursued him in a highly sinister manner. To Ibfrelt, there could be nothing sinister about them. Nor did he see when, by then some way behind him, they lost momentum, rusted, flaked, and fell apart.

Wandering on into another chamber of the building, Ibfrelt paused only when a sudden form reared up from the floor. A man would have known this figure at once for a fellow man—a sword fighter for a fellow swordsman, and a dangerous one. He was tall, and laden with muscle, clad in mail, and armed both with a broadsword of considerable size and a dagger of extraordinary length. At Ibfrelt, he glared with flashing, maniacal eyes, and from a sneering gob let out a challenge: “Match me then, you damnable nonentity!”

But Ibfrelt evidently only knew men—when he had known them—as menu-worthy pieces of prey. Shows of weapons, of aggression, protective armorings—they meant nothing at all, to a lion. Ibfrelt smelled live meat, and he gave a snarl of appetite, then launched himself, like a vast ginger firework, at the threatening hulk.

Over went the hulk, amid a resounding bash and clamor, sword flying one way, and dagger doing no more damage than to shave four of Ibfrelt’s impressive whiskers, before a couple of jaws, equally impressively toothed, met in his esophageal tract.

Ibfrelt was already feeding greedily when, to his disgust, his kill dissolved like a mist and faded into thin air.

Some snaggle of labyrinthine turns away, Izer was just undergoing a similar disillusion. His adversary had been a rapier-brandishing swordsman, with a back-up ax. But Izer had simply jumped on him in the midst of the fellow’s posturing, fangs seeing to the rest. When this nice hot meal vanished, Izer let out a complaint so loud even Ibfrelt paid attention, and rumbled back.

Rising from the teasing absent carcass, Izer padded through the maze and, with leonine instincts of scent, vision, hearing, and subthought, located Ibfrelt inside two minutes.

The lions commiserated with each other. This was a poor place after all. It would be better to depart instantly.

It was then that a blazing light flared up in the next cave or chamber. They were lions; they took it for the undoing of an exit into the afternoon forest. Shoulder to shoulder, they flung themselves toward it—

They found themselves contrastingly inside a gargantuan inner region of the complex. The compartment would have evoked, to most human eyes, a colossal temple hall. To the lions, it was just an especially oversized cavern. Yet light from some invisible source filled it full.

In the very middle of the space stood a solitary living tree, or so it appeared. The tree was a sort of maple, but of absurd dimensions, and with autumnal leaves colored raspberry, orange, and ripe prune. From the boughs hung a dowdy banner—or a garment? It seemed stranded there, whatever it was, by mistake, shoddy and threadbare, stained, and itself the hue of over-cooked porridge.