Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

It rained and we took shelter. A day exhausted the little food we had. Famished, we waited for a second day. On the third we went forth to hunt, knowing that we must hunt or starve. I knowing, too, that I dared not use my bow lest the string be wetted. Toward afternoon we flushed a flight of deer. Lurn could run more swiftly than they, they turn more sharply than she. She turned them and turned them until at last I was able to dash among them like a wolf, stabbing and slashing. I have no doubt that some escaped us, and that some of those who thus escaped soon perished of their wounds. We got three, even so, and chewed raw meat that night, and roasted meat the night following when we were able at last to kindle a fire, and so hungry as to abide the smoke of the twigs and fallen branches we collected.

We slept long that night. Day had come when we awoke, the clouds had lifted, and far away—yet not so distant as to be beyond our sight—we beheld a white palace on the side of the mountain looming before us. “There will be a garden!” Lurn’s left hand closed on my shoulder with such strength that I nearly cried out.

“I see none,” I told her.

“That green…”

“A mountain meadow. We’ve seen many.”

“There must be a garden!” She spun me around. “A coronation garden for me. There must be!”

There was none, but we went there even so, a half-starved journey of two days through a forest filled with birdsong. There had been a wall about the palace, a low stone wall that might readily have been stormed. In many places it had fallen, and the gate of twisted bars had fallen into rust.

The rich chambers of centuries past had been looted, and here and there defiled. Their carpets were gone, and their hangings likewise. In many chambers we saw where fires of broken furniture had once blazed. Their ashes had been cold for heaped years no man could count, and their half-burned ends of wood, their strong square nails, and their skillfully wrought bronze screws had been scattered long ago, perhaps by the feet of the great-grandsons of those who had kindled them.

“This is a palace of ghosts,” I told Lurn.

“I see none.”

“I have seen many, and heard them, too. If we stay the night here…” I let the matter drop.

“Then we will go.” She shrugged. “This was an error, and an error of my doing. We must first find food, and afterward another.”

“No. We must go into the vaults.” My own words surprised me.

She looked incredulous, but the ghost in the dark passage ahead nodded and smiled; it seemed almost a living man, though its eyes were the eyes of death.

“What’s gotten into you?”

“I must go, and you with me,” I told her. “I must go and bring you. You are afraid. I—”

“You lie!”

“Fear better suits a woman than a man. Even so, I am the more frightened. Yet I will go, and you will come with me.” I set off, following the ghost, and very soon I heard Lurn’s heavy tread behind me.

The corridor we traversed was dark as pitch. I slung my shield over my back, traced the damp stone walls with my left hand, and groped the dark before me with my sword point, testing the flagstones with every step. None of which mattered in the least. The ghost led me, and there was no treachery.

We descended a stair, narrow and steep, and I saw light below. Here was a cresset, filled with blazing wood and dripping embers. The ghost, which ought to have dimmed in the firelight, seemed almost a living man, a man young and nearly as tall as I, in livery of grey and crimson.

“Who is that?” Lurn’s voice came from behind me, but not far behind.

I did not speak, but followed our guide.

He led us to a second stair, a winding stair that seemed at first to plunge into darkness. We had descended this for many steps when I took notice of a faint, pale light below.

“Where are we going?” Lurn asked.

I was harkening to a nightingale. It was our guide who answered her: “Where you wished to go, O pawn.”

“Why are you talking to me like that, Valorius?”

I shrugged, and followed our guide into a garden lit by stars and the waning moon. He led us over smooth lawns and past tinkling fountains. The statues we saw were of pieces, of kings and queens, of slingers and spearmen, of knights such as I and pawns like Lurn. Winged figures stood among them, figures whiter than they and equally motionless; though these did not move or appear to breathe, it seemed to me they were not statues. They might have moved, I thought, this though they did not live.

“There can be no such place underground!” Lurn exclaimed.

I turned to face her. “We are not there. Surely you can see that. We entered into the stone of the mountain, and emerged here.”

“It was broad day!”

“And is now night. Be silent.”