Sorcerers! Read online

  SORCERERS!

  EDITED BY

  JACK DANN & GARDNER DOZOIS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-152-8

  Copyright © 2013 by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

  First printing: October 1986

  Cover art by: Ron Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  Acknowledgment is made for permission to print the following material:

  "The Bleak Shore" by Fritz Leiber. Copyright © 1970 by Fritz Leiber.

  "O Ugly Bird!" by Manly Wade Wellman. Copyright © 1951 by Mercury Press, Inc. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1951. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Power of the Press" by Richard Kearns. Copyright © 1983 by Richard Kearns. First appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Mid-December 1983. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Finger" by Naomi Mitchison. Copyright © 1980 by Naomi Mitchison. First published in Edges (Pocket Books). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Richard Curtis Associates.

  "The Word of Unbinding" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 1964, 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.

  "His Coat So Gay" by Sterling E. Lanier. Copyright © 1970 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1970. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Curtis Brown Associates.

  "Narrow Valley" by R. A. Lafferty. Copyright © 1966 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1966. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.

  "Sleep Well of Nights" by Avram Davidson. Copyright © 1978 by Mercury Press, Inc. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1978. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, John Silbersack.

  "Armaja Das" by Joe Haldeman. Copyright © 1976 by Joe W. Haldeman. First published in Frights (St. Martin's Press). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "My Boat" by Joanna Russ. Copyright © 1976 by Mercury Press, Inc.; copyright © 1981 by Joanna Russ. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1976. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Hag Séleen" by Theodore Sturgeon. Copyright © 1941 by The Conde Nast Publications, Inc. First appeared in Unknown, December 1942. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Last Wizard" by Avram Davidson. Copyright © 1972 by Davis Publications, Inc. From Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1972. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, John Silbersack.

  "The Overworld" by Jack Vance. Copyright © 1965 by Mercury Press, Inc.; © 1966 by Ace Books; © 1977 by Jack Vance for the Underwood-Miller version of Eyes of the Overworld. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1965. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The editors would like to thank the following people for their help and support:

  Michael Swanwick, Bob Walters, Trina King, Susan Casper, Jeanne Dann, Bernie Sheredy, Stu Schiff, Perry Knowlton, Adam Deixel, Virginia Kidd, John Silbersack, Tom Whitehead of the Special Collections Department of the Paley Library at Temple University (and his staff, especially John Betancourt and Connie King), Shawna McCarthy, Edward Ferman, Brian Perry and Tawna Lewis of Fat Cat Books (263 Main St., Johnson City, New York 13790), and special thanks to our editors, Susan Allison and Ginjer Buchanan.

  PREFACE

  Rival claims to the contrary, the world's oldest profession is probably sorcerer. Shaman, witch, medicine man, seer . . . the origins of the magic-user, the-one-who-intercedes-with-the-spirits, almost certainly go back to the very beginnings of humanity—and beyond. Fascinating traces of ritual sorcery have been unearthed at various Neanderthal sites: the ritual burial of the dead, laid to rest with their favorite tools and food, and sometimes covered with flowers; a low-walled stone enclosure containing seven bear heads, all facing forward; a human skull on a stake in a ring of stones. . . . Neanderthal magic. A few tens of thousands of years later, in the deep caves of Lascaux and Pech-Merle and Rouffignac, the Cro-Magnons were practicing magic, too; perhaps they had learned it from their hairy Neanderthal cousins. Deep in the darkest hidden depths of the caves at La Mouthe and Combarelles and Altamira, in the most remote and isolate galleries, the Cro-Magnons filled wall after wall with vivid, emblematic paintings of Ice Age animals. There is little doubt that these cave paintings—and their associational phenomena: realistic clay sculptures of bison, carved ivory horses, the enigmatic and non-representational "Venus" figurines, the abstract and interlacing "Macaronis," the paint-outlined handprints—were magic, designed to be used in sorcerous rites (although there is some recent debate in anthropological circles as to how the cave paintings were magically employed; the old symbolically-kill-the-painting-to-ensure-success-in-the-hunt theory may turn out to have been too simple an answer to fit a multiplex and probably multipurposed cultural phenomenon). So Magic predates Art. In fact, Art may have been invented as a tool to express Magic, to give Magic a practical means of execution—to make it work. So that, if you go back far enough, artist and sorcerer are indistinguishable, one-and-the-same a claim that can still be made with a good deal of validity, in fact, to this very day.

  For the last couple of decades, the most common public image of the sorcerer, at least in America, has probably been that of the benign, white-bearded, slouch-hatted, staff-wielding wizard—an image which almost certainly owes most of its ubiquity to the enormous success of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, an image primarily composed of a large measure of Gandalf the Grey, with perhaps a jigger of T. H. White's Merlin thrown in for flavor. Throughout history, however, the sorcerer has worn many faces—sometimes benevolent and wise, sometimes evil and malign, sometimes—ambiguously—both. To the ancient Greeks, it was the Great Science; Paracelsus called it "a great hidden wisdom," and the famous mystic Agrippa considered it to be the true path of communion with God. Conversely, to medieval European society, the sorcerer was one who collaborated with the Devil in the spreading of evil throughout the world, in the corruption and ruination of Christian souls, and the smoke of thousands of burning witches and warlocks filled the chilly autumn air for a hundred years or more. To some Amerind tribes, the magic-user was either sorcerer or magician depending on the use—either malevolent or benign—to which he put his magic. In fact, nearly every human society has its own image of the sorcerer. In Mexico, the sorcerer is curandero, brujo, or bruja; in Haiti, he is houngan or quimboiseur; in Amerind lore, the Shaman or Medicine Man or Singer; in Jewish mysticism, the kabbalist; in Gypsy circles, the chóvihánni, the witch; in parts of today's rural America, the hoodoo or conjure man; to the Maori of New Zealand, the tghunga makutu . . . and so on, throughout the world, in the most "progressive" societies no less than the most "primitive." The fact is, we are all still sorcerers under the skin, and magic seems to be part of the intuitive cultural heritage of most human beings. Whenever you cross your fingers to ward off bad luck, or knock wood, or insure the health of your mother's back by not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk—or, for that matter, when you deliberately step on them, with malice aforethought—you are putting on the mantle of sorcerer . . . then you are practicing magic, as surely as the medieval alchemist puttering with his alembics and pestles, as surely as the bear-masked, stag-horned Cro-Magnon shaman making ritual magic in
the darkness of the deep caves at Rouffignac.

  In this anthology, we have endeavored to cover the whole world of magic, the sorcerer in every mask and role. Here you will find benevolent white wizards, and the blackest of black magicians. Sorcerers who can kill with a touch, or the point of a finger. Sorcerers who encyst their enemies in crystal spheres forty-five miles beneath the surface of the earth. Whimsical sorcerers who make magic with newspapers and beer cans, grim sorcerers who whisper of death in the still of night in the most chill and terrible of voices. Sorcerers who rule your dreams and shape them to their own ends. Sorcerers who command the forces of Hell. Sorcerers who guard the very world of life itself against vast implacable Powers from beyond the dry vales of death. Here you'll drink and dice at the Silver Eel tavern, and sample the dangerous wares of Azenomei Fair. . . . Cross the black and measureless Outer Sea, sail aboard the Night Bird, or with the fabulous ship My Boat, whose ports of call include Knossos and Atlantis, Kadath in the Cold Waste, and Celephais the Fair. . . . Meet Iucounu the Laughing Magician, General Jack, and Silver John . . . squint-eyed Mr. Onselm and the fearsome Hag Séleen . . . . Encounter, if you dare, the monstrous Dead Horse . . . the Ugly Bird . . . the sinister River Spider. . . . Visit worlds outside the time and space we know, the mythic lands of Earthsea and Newhon and The Dying Earth . . . Lankhmar and Almery . . . and then return home to find that magic is also afoot in the remote hills of Appalachia . . . in the deep bayou country of Louisiana . . . in post-colonial Africa . . . in a sleepy little Central American nation . . . in a big-city park at night . . . in the stuffy environs of a Long Island high school in the fifties . . . amidst the whir and clatter of an ultramodern computer room . . .

  . . . and perhaps you will find that magic is afoot in your own heart, as well. . . .

  The Bleak Shore

  by

  Fritz Leiber

  There are only a few real giants in the heroic fantasy field; once you have made the obligatory bow to past masters like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, E. R. Eddison, C. L. Moore, and Lord Dunsany, you come very quickly to Fritz Leiber. Even among contemporary heroic fantasy writers, Leiber is seriously rivaled for excellence only by Jack Vance (and, to a somewhat lesser degree, by Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson), but Leiber's roots go all the way back to 1939, when he began publishing the first of a long series of stories and novels about that swashbuckling pair of rogues, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Not content to rest on his laurels as an Ancestral Figure, Leiber has continued to add to this canon over the last forty-five years, building it into probably the most complex and intelligent body of work in the entire sub-genre of "Sword & Sorcery" (which term Leiber himself is usually credited with coining). The Fafhrd-Gray Mouser stories have been published in six volumes, the most essential of which are probably The Swords of Lankhmar and Swords in the Mists.

  Here, in one of the strangest and most evocative of their adventures, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser encounter a small, pale, black-robed man with a white, bulging forehead and cold cavernous eyes . . . and learn that, though death has many voices, sometimes it may call by saying "the Bleak Shore." . . . Nothing more than that. "The Bleak Shore." . . . And you would have to go. . . .

  Born in Chicago in 1910, the multitalented Fritz Leiber is also a towering Ancestral Figure in the science fiction field—being one of the major writers of both Campbell's "Golden Age" Astounding of the forties and H. L. Gold's Galaxy in the fifties, for instance—and is also considered to be perhaps the finest practitioner of the supernatural horror tale—especially updated "modern" or "urban" horror—since Poe and Lovecraft. He has won six Hugos, four Nebulas, two World Fantasy Awards—one of them the prestigious Life Achievement Award—and a Grand Master of Fantasy Award. His other books include The Big Time, The Wanderer, Our Lady of Darkness, Gather, Darkness, and The Green Millennium, and the collections The Best of Fritz Leiber, The Book of Fritz Leiber, and The Ghost Light.

  "So you think a man can cheat death and outwit doom?" said the small, pale man, whose bulging forehead was shadowed by a black cowl.

  The Gray Mouser, holding the dice box ready for a throw, paused and quickly looked sideways at the questioner.

  "I said that a cunning man can cheat death for a long time."

  The Silver Eel bustled with pleasantly raucous excitement. Fighting men predominated and the clank of swordsmen's harness mingled with the thump of tankards, providing a deep obbligato to the shrill laughter of the women. Swaggering guardsmen elbowed the insolent bravos of the young lords. Grinning slaves bearing open wine jars dodged nimbly between. In one corner a slave girl was dancing, the jingle of her silver anklet bells inaudible in the din. Outside the small, tight-shuttered windows a dry, whistling wind from the south filled the air with dust that eddied between the cobblestones and hazed the stars. But here all was jovial confusion.

  The Gray Mouser was one of a dozen at the gaming table. He was dressed all in gray—jerkin, silken shirt, and mouse-skin cap—but his dark, flashing eyes and cryptic smile made him seem more alive than any of the others, save for the huge copper-haired barbarian next to him, who laughed immoderately and drank tankards of the sour wine of Lankhmar as if it were beer.

  "They say you're a skilled swordsman and have come close to death many times," continued the small, pale man in the black robe, his thin lips barely parting as he spoke the words.

  But the Mouser had made his throw, and the odd dice of Lankhmar had stopped with the matching symbols of the eel and serpent uppermost, and he was raking in triangular golden coins. The barbarian answered for him.

  "Yes, the gray one handles a sword daintily enough—almost as well as myself. He's also a great cheat at dice."

  "Are you, then, Fafhrd?" asked the other. "And do you, too, truly think a man can cheat death, be he ever so cunning a cheat at dice?"

  The barbarian showed his white teeth in a grin and peered puzzledly at the small, pale man whose somber appearance and manner contrasted so strangely with the revelers throning the low-ceilinged tavern fumy with wine.

  "You guess right again," he said in a bantering tone. "I am Fafhrd, a Northerner, ready to pit my wits against any doom." He nudged his companion. "Look, Mouser, what do you think of this little black-coated mouse who's sneaked in through a crack in the floor and wants to talk with you and me about death?"

  The man in black did not seem to notice the jesting insult. Again his bloodless lips hardly moved, yet his words were unaffected by the surrounding clamor, and impinged on the ears of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with peculiar clarity.

  "It is said you two came close to death in the Forbidden City of the Black Idols, and in the stone trap of Angarngi, and on the misty island in the Sea of Monsters. It is also said that you have walked with doom on the Cold Waste and through the Mazes of Klesh. But who may be sure of these things, and whether death and doom were truly near? Who knows but what you are both braggarts who have boasted once too often? Now I have heard tell that death sometimes calls to a man in a voice only he can hear. Then he must rise and leave his friends and go to whatever place death shall bid him, and there meet his doom. Has death ever called to you in such a fashion?"

  Fafhrd might have laughed, but did not. the Mouser had a witty rejoinder on the tip of his tongue, but instead he heard himself saying: "In what words might death call?"

  "That would depend," said the small man. "He might look at two such as you and say the Bleak Shore. Nothing more than that. The Bleak Shore. And when he said it three times you would have to go."

  This time Fafhrd tried to laugh, but the laugh never came. Both of them could only meet the gaze of the small man with the white, bulging forehead, stare stupidly into his cold, cavernous eyes. Around them the tavern roared with mirth at some jest. A drunken guardsman was bellowing a song. The gamblers called impatiently to the Mouser to stake his next wager. A giggling woman in red and gold stumbled past the small, pale man, almost brushing away the black cowl that covered his pate. But he did not mov
e. And Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser continued to stare—fascinatedly, helplessly—into his chill, black eyes, which now seemed to them twin tunnels leading into a far and evil distance. Something deeper than fear gripped them in iron paralysis. The tavern became faint and soundless, as if viewed through many thicknesses of glass. They saw only the eyes and what lay beyond the eyes, something desolate, dreary, and deadly.

  "The Bleak Shore," he repeated.

  Then those in the tavern saw Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser rise and without sign or word of leave-taking walk together to the low oaken door. A guardsman cursed as the huge Northerner blindly shoved him out of the way. There were a few shouted questions and mocking comments—the Mouser had been winning—but these were quickly hushed, for all perceived something strange and alien in the manner of the two. Of the small, pale, black-robed man none took notice. They saw the door open. They heard the dry moaning of the wind and a hollow flapping that probably came from the awnings. They saw an eddy of dust swirl up from the threshold. Then the door was closed and Fafhrd and the Mouser were gone.