The children nodded, for they adored Petra as much as Jeremy had when he lived. And they followed her, doing their very best to be silent and stealthy, though children have a different sense of that than do adults. They proceeded on tiptoes, fingertips dragging dully across the curved inner wall, childish lips whispering loud speculations. As they climbed, the light grew brighter, and their fear welled higher, and their voices became froggy from the tension of it all.

With all this muttering, it was no wonder that they came round one of the cold stone curves of the stair to find the narrow, black, long-legged Lord Ferris poised above them, his wiry body stretched weblike across the tight pa.s.sage.

"What are you children doing here?" he asked in an ebon voice that sent a cold draft down the stairs and past the children.

The brave-hearted crew started at this rude welcome, but did not dart.

Petra, who alone hadn't flinched, said stonily, "What are you doing?"

The man's eyes flashed at that, and his gloved hand fell to the pitch- handled dagger at his side. "Go."

The group wavered, some in the rear involuntarily drawing back a step. But Petra did something incredible. With the catlike speed and litheness of young girls, she slipped past the black-cloaked man and his knife. She stood now, barring the stairs above him.

"We stay. You go," she stated simply.

Lord Ferris's lip curled in a snarl. His hand gripped her shoulder and brusquely propelled her back down the stairs. Her footing failed on the damp stone, one leg twisting unnaturally beneath her. Then came a crack like the splintering of green wood, and a small cry. She crumpled to the stone-edged steps and tumbled limply down to the children, fetching up at their feet and hardly breathing.

They paused in shock. Young Bannin bent, already weeping, beside her.

The others took one look at her misshapen leg and rushed in a fierce pack toward the lord. Their young voices produced a pure shriek that adults cannot create, and they swarmed the black-cloaked n.o.bleman, who fumbled now to escape them.

They drove their fathers' knives into the man's thighs. He toppled forward onto them and made but a weak attack in return, punching red-headed Mab between her pigtails and, with a flailing knee, striking the neck of Karn, too.

The first two casualties of battle fell lifeless beneath the crush, and the steps under them all were suddenly slick with blood.

As though their previous earnestness had been feigned, the children now fought with berserker rage. They furiously pummeled and stabbed the man who lay atop them, the once-bold Ferris now bellowing and pleading piteously. At one point in the brawl, Parri dropped down to take the crimson dagger from Mab's cold hand, then sunk it repeatedly into the back of the n.o.bleman.Yet Lord Ferris clung tenaciously to life. His elbow swept back and cracked Liesel's head against the stone wall, and she fell in a heap. Next to go was her twin, Ranwen, who seemed to feel Liesel's death in kindred flesh and stood stock-still as the man's fallen candle set her ablaze. Ranwen, too, was unmade by a clumsy kick.

Aside from the bodies that now clogged the path and made it treacherous with blood, Lord Ferris had only poor Parri and two others to battle now. His weight alone proved his greatest weapon, for these next children went down beneath him, not to rise again. That left only bawling Bannin and broken Petra below, neither able to fight.

The man in black found footing amidst the twisted limbs of the fallen, then descended slowly toward Bannin and Petra. "Put the knives away," said he, sputters coming from his punctured lungs.

The boy-child-young, eyes clouded with blood, ears ringing with screams-drew fearfully back a few paces. Petra could not retreat.

"I told you to go, you little fiends!" growled Lord Ferris. Red tears streaked his battered face. "Look what you've done!"

Bannin withdrew farther, his whimpering giving way to full-scale sobs. But Petra, with a monumental effort, rose then. The desperate cracking of her leg did not deter her lunge. Through bloodied teeth, she hissed, "Death to evil,"

and drove Parri's blade into the n.o.bleman's gut.

Only now did Sir Paramore come rushing down the stairs, just in time to see wicked Lord Ferris tumble stiff past a triumphant Petra. She smiled at him from within a sea of scarlet child's-blood, then collapsed dead to the floor.

The death of the child in the story coincided oddly with the death of the fire on the hearth; the stormy night had reached its darkest corner. But the rapt crowd of listeners, who sat mesmerized in the storyteller's deepening shadow, did not even notice the cold and dim around them. Horace, in the now-frigid kitchen, did.

It was Horace, then, who had to trudge out in the snow for more wood. He wondered briefly why none of the patrons had complained of the chill and dim in the taproom, as they had tirelessly done in days and years past. As soon as the question formed in his mind, the answer struck him: The stranger's story had kindled a hotter, brighter fire this evening, and by it the people were warming themselves.

Aside from lying slurs on King Caen, Dorsoom, and Lord Ferris-dead now? Horace wondered, fearing that much of the story might be true-no crime had yet been committed by the stranger, not even a stolen bit of bread or blood soup. And his story kept the patrons there when Horace would have thought folks would flee to their lofted beds. But something was not right about the stranger. The hairs on the back of Horace's neck, perhaps imbued by the natural magic of ap.r.o.n yokes and years of honest sweat and aches, had stood on end the moment the man had entered with his swirling halo of snow. Now, as the darkness deepened, as Horace heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of the wicked tale that held the others in thrall, his uneasy feeling had grown to wary conviction. This man was not merely a slick deceiver. He was evil.

Despite this certainty, despite the outcry of every sinew of his being, Horace knew he didn't dare throw the man out now or he would have a wall- busting brawl on his hands.Even so, as he bundled wood into the chafed and accustomed flesh of his inner arm, he lifted the icy axe that leaned against the woodpile and bore it indoors with him.

In the taproom beyond, the stranger was bringing his tale to its inevitable end....

There was much that followed the cruel slaying of the innocent children: Sir Paramore's shock at the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt, the shrieks of parents whose children were gone for good, the trembling praise of the king for the deeds of the fallen, the empty pallets hauled precariously up the curving stair, the filled pallets borne down on parents' backs, the brigade of buckets cleansing the tower, the stationing of guards to protect the princess's betrothed....

And after it all, Sir Paramore prayed long to the mischievous and chaotic heavens, to Beshaba and Cyric and Loviatar, seeking some plan behind the horrific affair. When his shaken mind grew too weary to sustain its devotion and his knees trembled too greatly beneath him to remain upright, Sir Paramore hung the spell-slaying Kneuma on his bedpost and crawled into his sheets to vainly seek sleep.

Without alarm or movement, and as soon as the knight was disarmed and disarmored, the mage Dorsoom suddenly stood inside the closed and bolted door. Sir Paramore started, and an approbation rose to his lips as he sat up in bed.

But the mage spoke first, in a sly hiss: "I know what you have done, monstrous man."

Sir Paramore stood up now, gawking for a moment in rage and amazement before reaching for his spell-slaying sword. His hand never touched the hilt, though, for in that instant the mage cast an enchantment on him that froze his body like ice.

Seeing Paramore rendered defenseless, Dorsoom spoke with a cat's purr.

"Most folk in this land think you a valiant knight, but I know you are not. You are a vicious and cruel and machinating monster."

Though he could not move feet or legs or arms, Sir Paramore found his tongue. "Out of here! Just as my young knights slew your a.s.sa.s.sin, I will slay you!"

"Do not toy with me," said the black-bearded mage. "Your sword dispels magic only when in your grip; without it, you can do nothing against me.

Besides, neither Ferris nor I am the true a.s.sa.s.sin. You are."

"Guards! Save me!" cried Paramore toward the yet-bolted door.

"I know how you arranged the kidnappings. I know how you hired those five men to abduct the n.o.blemen's children," said the mage.

"What?" roared the knight, struggling to possess his own body but bringing only impotent tremors to his legs.

The guards outside were pounding now and calling for a.s.surances.

"I know how you met with your five kidnappers to pay them for their duties,"

continued the mage. "But they received only your axe as their payment."

"Guards! Break down the door!"

"I know how you took the clothes of one of the kidnappers you had slain, dressed in them, masqueraded in front of the children as him, and in cold blood slew Jeremy for all their eyes to see. I know how later, in guise of the n.o.ble knight you never were, you rushed in to feign saving the rest of thechildren," said the mage, heat entering his tone for the first time.

The guards battered the bolted door, which had begun to splinter.

Paramore shouted in anguish, "In the name of all that is holy-!"

"You did it all for the hand of the princess; you have killed even children to have her hand. You orchestrated the kidnapping, played both villain and hero, that you might extort a pledge of marriage in exchange for rescuing them."

The tremors in Sir Paramore legs had grown violent; by the mere contact of his toe against the bedpost, his whole pallet shook, as did the scabbarded sword slung on the bed k.n.o.b.

"I know how you sent this note," the mage produced a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and held it up before him, "to Lord Ferris, asking him to come up tonight to see you, and knowing that your 'knights' would waylay him."

"It's not even my handwriting," shouted Paramore. He shook violently, and the rattling blade tilted down toward his stony leg.

Louder came the boot thuds on the door. The crackle of splintering wood grew. With a gesture, though, Dorsoom cast a blue glow about the door, magic that made it solid as steel.

"And in that bag," cawed the mage, knowing he now had all the time in heaven, "in the bag that late held the five heads of the five abductors lies the head of Jeremy-the head you carved out to form a puppet to appear at the foot of Petra's bed!"

The mage swooped down to the sack of heads, but his hand never clasped it. In that precise moment, the mighty sword Kneuma jiggled free and struck Paramore's stony flesh, dispelling the enchantment on him. A mouse's breath later, that same blade whistled from its scabbard to descend on the bended neck of the sorcerer.

As the razor steel of Paramore sliced the head from the court magician, so too, it sundered the spell from the door. The guards who burst then into the room saw naught but a shower of blood, then the disjoined head propelled by its spray onto the bed and Dorsoom's body falling in a heap across the red- stained sack, soaked anew.

Seeing it all awrong, the guards rushed in to restrain Paramore. Whether from the late hour or the outrageous claims of the wizard or the threat of two warriors on one, Sir Paramore's attempt to parry the blades of the guards re- sulted in the goring of one of them through the eye. The wounded man's cowardly partner fell back and shouted an alarm at the head of the stair.

Meantime Paramore, pitying the man whose bloodied socket his sword-tip was lodged in, drove the blade the rest of the way into the brain to grant the man his peace.

An alarm went up throughout the castle: "Paramore the murderer! Stop him! Slay him!"

Sir Paramore watched the other guard flee, then knelt beside the fallen body at his feet. A tear streaked down his n.o.ble cheek, and he stared with unseeing eyes upon the sanguine ruin of his life. Determined to remember the man who destroyed it all, he palmed the head of Dorsoom and thrust it angrily into his sack, where it made a clottering sound. Then he stood solemnly, breathed the blood-and sweat-salted air, and strode from the room, knowing that even if he escaped with his life, he would be unrighteously banished.

And he was.* * * * *

"And that, dear friends," rasped the robed stranger, his left hand stroking his black beard, "is the tragic tale of the greatest hero who ever lived."

The room, aside from the crackle of the hearth fire and the howl of the defiant wind, was dead silent. The people who had once scorned this broken hovel of a man now stared toward him with reverence and awe. It wasn't his words. It wasn't his story, but something more fundamental about him, more mystic and essential to his being. Magic. Those who once would have denied him a thimble of water would now happily feast him to the best of their farms, would gladly give their husbands and sons to him to be soldiers, their wives and daughters to him to be playthings. And this ensorcelled reverence was only heightened by his next words.

"And that, dear friends, is the tragic tale of how I came to be among you."

Even the wind and the fire stilled to hear what had to follow. "For, you see, I am Sir Paramore."

With that, he threw back the yet-sodden rags that had draped him, and from the huge bundle that had been the body of the stranger emerged a young and elegant and powerful and platinum-eyed warrior. His face was very different from the wizened and sepulchral one that had spoken to them. The latter-the dismembered head of Dorsoom-was jammed down puppetlike past the wrist on the warrior's right hand. The dead mouth of the dead wizard moved even now by the device of the warrior's fingers, positioned on the bony palate and in the dry, rasping tongue. Throughout the night, throughout the long telling, the gathered villagers had all listened to the puppet head of a dead man.

The old man's voice now came from the young man's mouth as his fingers moved the jaw and tongue. "Believe him, ye people! Here is the greatest hero who ever lived." A brown-black ooze clung in dribbles to Paramore's forearm.

Only Horace, stumbling now into the taproom, was horrified by this; the depravity did not strike the others in the slightest. The simple folk of Capel Curig left their chairs and moved wonderingly up toward the towering knight and his grisly puppet. They crowded him just as the children had done in the story. Cries of "Teach us, O knight! Lead us, Paramore! Guard us and save us from our enemies!" mingled with groans and tongues too ecstatic for human words.

In their center, the beaming sun of their adoration stretched out his bloodied hand and enwrapped them. "Of course I will save you. Only follow me and be my warriors, my knights!"

"We would die for you!"

"Let us die for you!"

"Paramore! Paramore!"

The praises rose up above the rumble of the wind and the growl of the fire, and the uplifted hands of the people could have thrust the roof entire from the inn had Paramore only commanded it.

The adulation was so intense that none-not even the G.o.d-man Paramore himself-saw Horace's flashing axe blade until it emerged red from the knight's gurgling throat.

TWILIGHT

Troy Denning

The world was young.

And on the sh.o.r.es of Cold Ocean sat the woman, and she had the size of a mountain and the shape as well. She had great hips as large as hillocks and she had a bosom of craggy b.u.t.tresses. The woman had also a sharp chin and a crooked nose, and cheeks as flat as cliffs. She had eyes round and black, as are caves, and white billowing hair, like snow blowing off the lofty peaks.

Ulutiu, the Ocean King, knew not the woman's name, nor did he care, as long as she came often to dangle her feet in his sea. Then he liked to climb to her shoulders and come sliding back down, to twirl his sinuous body around her peaks, to slip down her stomach and glide along the cleft where her thighs pressed together, then to leap off her knees at journey's end and splash back into the freezing waters. So much did the Ocean King like this game that he would climb onto the icy sh.o.r.e and do it again and again, doing it for days with no thought of hunger or fatigue or anything but joy, temporal and fleshly.

And the woman, who was called Othea, also loved the game well. The feel of Ulutiu's slick hide slithering over her skin she craved as her lungs craved air. She liked to brace her hands against the frozen ground, lean back, close her eyes, and think only of the icy pleasures ravaging her body. Deep into torpor would she fall. She would sink into a stupor as blissful as it was cold, and at last she would collapse in utter ecstasy. Then would her body quake, rocking lands far away, ripping green meadows asunder and shaking the snow from the mountains to crash down into the valleys with a fury as great as her rapture.

All this Annam the All Father saw. Mighty was his wrath, and mightier still because it was his curse to hear their thoughts and feel their l.u.s.t. He raised himself from the canyon where he had lain, and even the crashing flood waters when the river flowed again were not as fierce as his temper. The All Father spat out his disgust, and a storm of sleet raged across the gray waters of Cold Ocean.

Annam strode forward. So heavy were his steps that the creatures of the air forsook their nests and flew, geese and harpies together, eagles beside dragons; so many were there that they darkened the sky with their wings. The beasts of the land also fled, hooves and claws tearing the plants from the meadows, and also the monsters of the sea, their fins and flukes churning the ocean into a cold froth.

Then did Ulutiu know he had transgressed against a high G.o.d. He peered over Othea's knee, and his whiskers twitched and his ears lay against his head.

"Othea!" Annam's voice howled across the sh.o.r.e like the bl.u.s.tering wind, and truly there had never been a tempest so terrible. "Have I not spoken against your dalliances?"

Ulutiu's dark eyes grew wide with terror, and he disappeared behind Othea's bulk. Annam heard a splash in Cold Ocean and was not pleased. He rushed to the sea in two quick bounds and there he knelt, and when he spied a dark figure slipping from sh.o.r.e he stretched out his long arm and scooped the Ocean King from the icy waters."Annam, harm him not!" Othea's voice rolled across the icy sh.o.r.e as the rumble of a fuming mountain, and it was plain that she spoke in command, not supplication. "Ulutiu bears no blame in this. He was playing, nothing more."

"I know well enough what his games beget!" The All Father rose to his exalted height and faced Othea, and the cold water that dripped from his hand fell over the land like rain. "Firbolgs, verbeegs, fomorians, ettins!"

"Nay, not the ettin," Othea corrected, and when she spoke she showed Annam no fear. "That one you sired."

"Perhaps, but that is not the matter here."

Surely, it would have pleased Annam to deny the ettin's paternity, but the All Father knew he had sired the monster, and Othea would not say it had been someone else. That she denied him even this boon made his anger greater, and he thought that her punishment would be very hard indeed.

Othea paid no heed to Annam's ire, for she was not happy to have her game interrupted. "What is the matter, Husband?"

"I took you as Mother Queen of the giants," Annam answered. "You are to people Toril with my progeny-true giants-not with Ulutiu's b.a.s.t.a.r.d races!"

"Toril is as empty as it is young," Othea responded. "There is room enough for giant-kin."

"Did you not claim the same defense after your dance with rat-faced Vaprak?" Annam demanded. "And now ogres overrun Ostoria. Everywhere, they plague the empire of my children, gnawing at its seams like vermin."

"Perhaps your children are weak and Vaprak's are strong."

"I should have drowned the ogre when first you bore it!" Annam stormed, and a blizzard swept across the sh.o.r.e on roaring winds. "I should have crushed Vaprak's skull for daring to cuckold me. I shall not make the mistake twice."

The All Father made tight his grip. Though the shriek that rose from the Ocean King's throat was long and loud, it was a mere gust against the tempest of Annam's anger. Ulutiu saw he would soon die, so he pulled with hands that were like flippers and he kicked with feet that were like flukes. But Annam was the strongest of the strong, and nothing could escape his grip.

"Do not!" Othea's tone remained sharp.