Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy (16 page)

Read Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy Online

Authors: Robert Silverberg

“I’ll grant my jam ain’t to everyone’s taste but I never—” Granny began, in a modest little tone.
“You’ve been putting a ’fluence on everyone!”
“—I just set out to help, you can ask anyone—”
“You did! Admit it!” Mrs. Earwig’s voice was as shrill as a gull’s.
“—and I certainly didn’t do any—”
Granny’s head turned as the slap came.
For the moment no one breathed, no one moved.
She lifted a hand slowly and rubbed her cheek.
“
You know you could have done it easily!
”
It seemed to Nanny that Letice’s scream echoed off the mountains.
The cup dropped from her hands and crunched on the stubble.
Then the tableau unfroze. A couple of her sister witches stepped forward, put their hands on Letice’s shoulders, and she was pulled, gently and unprotesting, away.
Everyone else waited to see what Granny Weatherwax would do. She raised her head.
“I hope Mrs. Earwig is all right,” she said. “She seemed a bit … distraught.”
There was silence. Nanny picked up the abandoned cup and tapped it with a forefinger.
“Hmm,” she said. “Just plated, I reckon. If she paid ten dollars for it,
the poor woman was robbed.” She tossed it to Gammer Beavis, who fumbled it out of the air. “Can you give it back to her tomorrow, Gammer?”
Gammer nodded, trying not to catch Granny’s eye.
“Still, we don’t have to let it spoil everything,” Granny said pleasantly. “Let’s have the proper ending to the day, eh? Traditional, like. Roast potatoes and marshmallows and old stories round the fire. And forgiveness. And let’s let bygones be bygones.”
Nanny could feel the sudden relief spreading out like a fan. The witches seemed to come alive, at the breaking of the spell that had never actually been there in the first place. There was a general straightening up and the beginnings of a bustle as they headed for the saddlebags on their broomsticks.
“Mr. Hopcroft gave me a whole sack of spuds,” said Nanny, as conversation rose around them. “I’ll go and drag ’em over. Can you get the fire lit, Esme?”
A sudden change in the air made her look up. Granny’s eyes gleamed in the dusk.
Nanny knew enough to fling herself to the ground.
Granny Weatherwax’s hand curved through the air like a comet and the spark flew out, crackling.
The bonfire exploded. A blue-white flame shot up through the stacked branches and danced into the sky, etching shadows on the forest. It blew off hats and overturned tables and formed figures and castles and scenes from famous battles and joined hands and danced in a ring. It left a purple image on the eye that burned into the brain—
And settled down, and was just a bonfire.
“I never said nothin’ about
forgettin
’,” said Granny.
 
W
hen Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg walked home through the dawn, their boots kicked up the mist. It had, on the whole, been a good night.
After some while, Nanny said, “That wasn’t nice, what you done.”
“I done nothin’.”
“Yeah, well … it wasn’t nice, what you didn’t do. It was like pullin’ away someone’s chair when they’re expecting to sit down …”
“People who don’t look where they’re sitting should stay stood up,” said Granny.
There was a brief pattering on the leaves, one of those very brief
showers you get when a few raindrops don’t want to bond with the group.
“Well, all right,” Nanny conceded. “But it was a little bit cruel.”
“Right,” said Granny.
“And some people might think it was a little bit nasty.”
“Right.”
Nanny shivered. The thoughts that’d gone through her head in those few seconds after Pewsey had screamed—
“I gave you no cause,” said Granny. “I put
nothin’
in anyone’s head that weren’t there already.”
“Sorry, Esme.”
“Right.”
“But … Letice didn’t
mean
to be cruel, Esme. I mean, she’s spiteful and bossy and silly, but—”
“You’ve known me since we was girls, right?” Granny interrupted. “Through thick and thin, good and bad?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“And you never sank to sayin’ ‘I’m telling you this as a friend,’ did you?”
Nanny shook her head. It was a telling point. No one even remotely friendly would say a thing like that.
“What’s empowerin’ about witchcraft anyway?” said Granny. “It’s a daft sort of a word.”
“Search me,” said Nanny. “I
did
start out in witchcraft to get boys, to tell you the truth.”
“Think I don’t know that?”
“What did you start out to get, Esme?”
Granny stopped, and looked up at the frosty sky and then down at the ground.
“Dunno,” she said, at last. “Even, I suppose.”
And that, Nanny thought, was that.
Deer bounded away as they arrived at Granny’s cottage.
There was a stack of firewood piled up neatly by the back door, and a couple of sacks on the doorstep. One contained a large cheese.
“Looks like Mr. Hopcroft and Mr. Poorchick have been here,” said Nanny.
“Hmph.” Granny looked at the carefully yet badly written piece of paper attached to the second sack: “’Dear Mis
f
tres
f
Weatherwax, I
woud be mo
f
t grateful if you woud let me name thi
f
new champion
f
hip Variety “E
f
me Weatherwax.” Yours in hopefully good health, Percy Hopcroft.’ Well, well,
well.
I wonder what gave him that idea?”
“Can’t imagine,” said Nanny.
“I would just bet you can’t,” said Granny.
She sniffed suspiciously, tugged at the sack’s string, and pulled out an Esme Weatherwax.
It was rounded, very slightly flattened, and pointy at one end. It was an onion.
Nanny Ogg swallowed. “I
told
him not—”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh … nothing …”
Granny Weatherwax turned the onion round and round, while the world, via the medium of Nanny Ogg, awaited its fate. Then she seemed to reach a decision she was comfortable with.
“A very useful vegetable, the onion,” she said, at last. “Firm. Sharp.”
“Good for the system,” said Nanny.
“Keeps well. Adds flavor.”
“Hot and spicy,” said Nanny, losing track of the metaphor in the flood of relief. “Nice with cheese—”
“We don’t need to go that far,” said Granny Weatherwax, putting it carefully back in the sack. She sounded almost amicable. “You comin’ in for a cup of tea, Gytha?”
“Er … I’d be getting along—”
“Fair enough.”
Granny started to close the door, and then stopped and opened it again. Nanny could see one blue eye watching her through the crack.
“I was
right
though, wasn’t I,” said Granny. It wasn’t a question.
Nanny nodded.
“Right,” she said.
“That’s nice.”
TERRY GOODKIND
WIZARD’S FIRST RULE (1994)
STONE OF TEARS (1995)
BLOOD OF THE FOLD (1996)
TEMPLE OF THE WINDS (1997)
 
 
 
 
 
Terry Goodkind burst onto the fantasy scene in 1994 with the publication of
Wizard’s First Rule,
which tells the story of Richard Cypher, a young man who learns that he is the key to defeating the evil sorcerer Darken Rahl, who threatens to subjugate all lands and peoples. Three succeeding novels in the series have brought Goodkind to the best-seller lists.
Little does Richard know when he happens across Kahlan, an alluring but secretive woman being chased by four assassins, that his life as a woods guide is about to be forever altered. Richard, a man with his own troubling secrets, helps Kahlan find the wizard she seeks but, as the boundary between the lands begins to fail, discovers himself caught up not only in a strange new world, but in Kahlan’s quest for a way to stop Darken Rahl, the charismatic and cunning leader of the far-off land of D’Hara. Darken Rahl has launched a war of arms as well as persuasion against the people of the Midlands as he searches for the power to control them entirely. Richard and Kahlan are running out of time to find the repository of this power before Darken Rahl can impose a merciless fate on them. Richard, who comes to care deeply for Kahlan, must confront timeless lessons about the encroachment of evil on an unsuspecting world. The series becomes an inner quest as much as it is a struggle for destiny and freedom. In the course of obtaining the essential weapon—the Sword of Truth—he learns that the stakes are higher than simple life and death, and that the dividing line between moral choices and evil ones is often shrouded by apathy, ignorance, and greed.
In
Stone of Tears,
Richard strives to master the magic power that is his birthright, but finds that the effort of wielding such magic threatens
his life. To save him, Kahlan, in desperation, sends him away with the Sisters of the Light. The Sisters, who promise to teach him to control his power, spirit him away beyond the Valley of the Lost to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World. Kahlan undertakes an arduous journey to find their friend and mentor, Zedd, the First Wizard. Along the way she discovers the people of a city that has been attacked by the Imperial Order, and must forge an army of young recruits into a force that will not only stop this new threat to the Midlands but will extract vengeance. Richard’s teachers turn out to include some who are sworn to the Keeper of the Underworld and intend to use Richard to free their master. Richard has already unwittingly helped them by using his gift, which tore the veil that separates the realm of the dead from the world of the living. Richard’s only hope to save everyone is to find the Stone of Tears, but to do that, he must escape his imprisonment at the Palace of the Prophets. And to have any hope of escape, he must learn to use his gift before the Sisters of the Dark, who would destroy him, can turn him to their purposes.
In
Blood of the Fold
, the third novel, the emperor of the Imperial Order in the Old World lusts to conquer the Midlands. To that end, he tries to use an army of anti-magic zealots to purge the Midlands of those born with the gift of magic. The emperor, a dream-walker with magic of his own, captures the Sisters of the Dark and uses them against Richard and Kahlan, while the people who call themselves the Blood of the Fold plot their own conquest of the Midlands. Unless Richard can seize power and mold the fragmented Midlands into one, the Imperial Order will sweep across the land, shadowing the Midlands in an age of slavery, and freedom’s last flames will die forever.
In
Temple of the Winds
, Emperor Jagang sends an assassin to kill Richard, and in the process unleashes a deadly plague. The conflagration of disease claims more people with each passing day as Richard and Kahlan desperately search for a cure. Trust and love are tested in a twisting trail of devotion and betrayal. With hundreds and then thousands of their people perishing each day, Richard and Kahlan must find the Temple of the Winds, and then decide if they will pay the terrible price required to enter.
The present story takes place a number of years prior to the events of
Wizard’s First Rule,

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