I sharpened my sight to make out her shadowed contour. Once the fire was sated, ash would fertilize the soil for a new world tree and we would entrust Rose with the acorn. It would grow strong with her to lean on.
Leah padded out of the dark. She was silent trotting up, silent when she sat, and silent while she stared at the burning tree.
I pondered whether to strike or thank her. It was discomforting to have her sit so close—yet she carried an odd, calming aura. Perhaps because few creatures, man or beast, had shown us kindness over our journey.
“Garm wasn’t always as he was,” she finally said. A soft whine, almost humming. “He feared death so much he gave in to winter to prevent it. What irony—he gorged himself on blood so that his soul twisted beyond recognition, and now it is lost with those he ate. A fitting end, but cruel nonetheless.”
“I don’t see the irony,” I said. “No creature can be immortal.”
Leah gave an oddly human-like chuckle. “You’ve only just cheated death.”
“I’ve done so once, and can never again.”
“You cannot help another do so again. Had you stabbed quicker and then pressed a blood-caked blade against your own tongue …”
I ran fingers through one of Lily’s wheat-become-white curls. “I never knew that was possible.”
“Because it was kept from you. The price is horrid: Once you’ve removed yourself from natural order, all those you reap to extend your life will be bound to an empty void, not the meadows at the end of time.”
“What? Is Rose—”
“Safe. Garm had no chance to drink from her.” She edged closer, nudged my shoulder. “Don’t weep for her any more than you must. This was meant to be. The wolf rescued the dove. It is always so.”
She started away, and when her feet touched the dark, I called, “Did Garm’s fur bleach because of drinking blood?”
Leah paused. “Yes. Blood magic draws one away from the black river.”
“Is that why Lily’s hair changed color, too?”
“Yes.”
She waited as I processed this. I felt a nebulous sorrow return. “You said she was pulled away from it once already. Did Father do it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was born dead.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
A long silence. “I gave him no choice.”
Sorrow became numbness. Her voice was clear now, free of canine constraints. I never found out whether it was because I learned how to listen or because she stopped hiding it. “Did you turn your sword on him?”
Another bout of silence, and I realized my tongue had slipped—but before I spoke again, she replied, “On myself.”
Voice stiff, I murmured, “Then why did you offer Lily to Garm?”
“You were planning your death, my little martyr. I needed you to run, not strike a deal.”
“If I had, Rose might yet be alive.”
“No, Ivy. You can cheat death but not fate. You must never blame yourself for what became of her.” She blended into the dark. “Garm was a fool to fear something that had no power over him. The river is denied from the likes of us. It is the She-Wolf’s curse, and her gift.”
Lily groaned in her sleep when a tear dropped on her cheek. “I see the irony now.”
“Goodbye, love. Watch over Lily.”
“Goodbye, Mother. Watch over Rose.”
Come dawn, fire had played enough to thaw the soil and we dug Rose a grave. The sword fell from her grasp when I lifted her. Blood had forged the bond, and it had served its purpose.
We returned to see the change the following spring. The valley was in full bloom. The world tree loomed over lush woodlands, the leaves of its crown gleaming as emeralds against brilliant sunlight. Birdsong and the babble of streams accompanied our travel down, and at night wolves greeted the moon without a note of dolor or desperation. From our campfire by the mighty ash, I saw Leah howling on a hill, a black cub beside her.
The Magnificent Bhajan
written by
David VonAllmen
illustrated by
Chan ha Kim
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David VonAllmen began writing at age thirteen, but quickly became disheartened due to the poor quality of his work. His senior year of high school a short story he wrote to fulfill an assignment led to accusations of plagiarism and threats of expulsion. That’s when he realized his writing might be better than he’d previously given himself credit for.
Having spent his youth assuming that all fantasy was identical to Tolkien, David thought of himself as a science fiction writer, although a somewhat uninspired one. Then, upon reading Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, David’s brain said to him, “Wait, if this is fantasy, then fantasy can be … anything.” Now that David is writing fantasy, he and his brain have a much more amiable relationship.
David has summited a glacier-covered volcano in New Zealand (then watched it erupt on television a few years later), won a gold medal at the Collegiate National Track Cycling Championship (then watched a teammate get stripped of an Olympic gold medal due to a positive PED test), and dislocated bones in mixed martial arts training (then watched one of his instructors become the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s welterweight champion).
He lives in his hometown of St. Louis with his wife, Ann, and their children Lucas and Eva, who write some pretty darned good fantasy stories of their own.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Chan ha Kim is also the illustrator for “The Woodcutters’ Deity” in this volume. For more information, please see her bio here.
The Magnificent Bhajan
The palace was just as it had been forty years ago, just as I’d left it. Her blackstone floors polished to glitter as if they were the midnight sky itself, her white pillars and archways carved with so many six-armed gods they were made of nothing but marble bodies. I had changed, yes, aged in so many ways, my magics faded along with the vigor of my muscles and the color of my beard. But the palace, she had only grown in radiance for the many years I was away.
If only I were good with politics, as good as I used to be with magic, maybe then I never would have had to leave the palace at all. If only I’d been savvy like the courtiers, and whispered hints into the Maharaja’s ear about Ranjeet the Usurper’s conspiracy against him, let him put the final piece of the puzzle together himself instead of unveiling the betrayer in public. I hoped the Maharaja’s golden ceremony would put him in a nostalgic mood, a mood where an old friend might be forgiven a mistake decades old. I hoped that once forgiven I might be welcomed back to the palace, back to the Maharaja’s side, back to the seat of service where I’d spent my finest years. In those days, my talent for magic made me a jewel in the crown of the Kingdom of Nidhu. Every day granted me more opportunities to help our people than there were drops of water in the river Galweesh. Now, I was left searching for any way to be useful to anyone. If things went well here today, maybe that would change.
A troupe of acrobats hurried past me, smiling to one another, the sweat of an audition well-executed beading their foreheads. I hobbled down a few stairs and into the green courtyard, where a clerk sat slumped in a cushioned chair under a canopy just big enough to shade him.
“Ah,” the clerk said, sitting up. “And what delight has the Magnificent Bhajan prepared for us today?”
I placed my palms against one another and bowed, as much as I was able. There had been a time when I’d known the name of every palace official, and was liked and respected by them all. Not anymore.
It took so little effort from me, just a moment of concentration and a caress of my hands around the empty air where I willed shapes and colors to release themselves from the clear sunlight. And then Maharaja Aditya stood before us, glowing with power, noble chin up, a golden river of brocaded silk draped over t
he panther-sleek muscles of his chest, just as I remembered him from the day he had been crowned fifty years ago.
“An illusion?” the clerk asked. His raised eyebrows were the only part of his face that showed reaction.
Illusions required no altering of matter or bending the will of another, and so they were the first tricks a magician learned as a child. Now it was the sole magic that age had left me with. But I was great at it, and I would win over this clerk.
“Ah yes, young sir, yes it is an illusion, but one I suspect is unlike any you’ve seen before,” I said, and waved my hand behind the image of our ruler. “See how true to life it is? See how little shimmer there is around the edges?”
The clerk picked through figs and honeyed dates on the silver platter that a servant boy held next to him. I squinted into the harsh sun and blinked away the sweat from my eyes, but I did not give up my smile.
“When I heard the Magnificent Bhajan was going to audition for the Maharaja’s golden ceremony, I did not expect him to show me mere illusions,” the clerk said. “Where’s the Bhajan who revived the Viceroy of Pahudesh? Where’s the Bhajan who gentled leopards just by staring into their eyes? Where’s the Bhajan who pulled truth from the lips of Ranjeet the Usurper?”
There was a time I could perform any of those magics, and so many more magics, and so much grander magics, and not even find myself out of breath for the effort. Not anymore.
But could this clerk not see my illusion, see that it was rendered beyond what other magicians were capable of? Who had granted him the authority to reject me? It was only right that I be allowed to present before the Maharaja. I would show this clerk and the entire court that I could still serve a function in the palace. I would show them that I was still valuable to the kingdom.
“I don’t believe any aged man, not even our great Maharaja, will be looked upon favorably when standing side by side with his youthful self,” the clerk said. “Are there any other magics you might be able to perform for the ceremony?”
No. No, there were no other magics I could perform. All I’d done was show this clerk how truly useless I was. Had he allowed me to perform at the ceremony, to create my illusions, the crowd would have applauded politely and whispered to each other behind their hands about how far the Magnificent Bhajan had fallen, how feeble he’d become. This young man had spared me the pain of embarrassing myself.
“Thank you, young sir. Thank you,” I said. “There are no other magics I am prepared to perform today. I’ll leave you to your other auditions, now. Thank you.”
My sandals scuffed slowly along the hard dirt road, like a street beggar who had no destination. The city center bustled around me, vendor stalls smashed up against one another until they formed an octopus of wood and tarp, arms branching off arms and down into every alleyway. Most days, Jainkot’s marketplace would be filled only with brown faces—noble men and women in their parrot-bright sherwanis and saris, bare-chested servants in plain white dhotis, lugging home sacks of lentils or shimmering bolts of silk their masters had selected. But today the citizens of Nidhu’s capital city politely stayed home, leaving space for the hundreds of foreign nobles who had traveled here to honor the fiftieth year in the reign of his majesty Maharaja Aditya Jai Chandratreya.
And what a wonderful fifty years they had been, yes, wonderful for all. The ghost-pale merchants who sailed for months to bring spice back to the Far West, the ivory traders from the Afrik continent, the horse breeders from the Arabis lands, and the silk weavers from across the Chine Empire—all grew rich from the rivers of trade that flowed in every direction from Jainkot. They were here, happy to be out of their boats and caravans after long trips, eating steaming lamb from banana leaves and selecting wooden animal carvings to return home with.
These past fifty years had been good to me as well. Mostly good. Though the Maharaja had released me from service, there was never a lack of work for a magician who could ward off spirits from a newborn or keep a withering farm alive until the rainy season. I had been useful and needed by my family, my neighbors, and my people. Not anymore.
Though I had no errands or appointments, I did not go home. Nothing waited there for me, save any images I might conjure to keep me company. There was a reason my apparitions were so finely crafted, were more realistic than the sculptures of the greatest sandstone masters. While some men drowned their failures in alcohol, I drowned mine in illusion. And every day there was a new failure that needed drowning. Each time I found I could no longer ease pain in the injured or command animals or pull rain from the sky in real life, I stepped into memories of the days when I could do such things. As my years added up, I was able to do less and less in the solid world, and so did more and more inside my ghost world.
I’d passed countless lonely hours hiding behind my window curtains, talking to the almost-real memories standing full and round on my clay floor. I could nearly touch them, nearly smell them. And one sniff of a cloth doused with dyani seed oil would just about make me believe I was there again—healing a burn on the prince’s arm, ridding a cabbage field of moths, teaching my daughters multiplication. The only people who needed me anymore were the citizens of my hallucinatory kingdom.
When I entered Gopal’s shop, the apothecary, bearded like a bison, smiled wide and was kind enough to pretend he didn’t already know what I had come for.
“Namaste,” I said to Gopal, and he said to me, with a bow of our heads. We chatted, carried a warm, meaningless conversation until my patience had proven me to not be an addict, and I could casually bring the glass vial from my pocket.
“Dyani seed oil for me today, my friend,” I said.
“Sure,” he said with a smile. A forced smile. Dyani seed oil wasn’t addictive to the body, but it was addictive to the soul. Gopal had seen more than one elderly magician become endlessly thirsty for the hollow embrace of his illusions, and disappear so deeply into them that he was never able to find his way back out again. Gopal was a good enough friend that one of these days he might refuse to sell to me anymore.
He reached behind him and snatched a bottle of tan oil from a shelf full of what appeared to be nearly identical bottles. The apothecary removed a square of parchment from the balance scale between us, then set my empty vial on one side and added weights to the other until the two sides hung even. Residue of a deep red powder lightly ringed the center of the parchment. I knew it, knew the color and shape of the grain, but the powder was rare, and it took my mind a moment to understand what I was seeing.
Having filled the vial, Gopal added a few more weights and looked up. “Two paisa should do it. Unless there’s anything else I can get you?”
“No, no, that is all, that is all, my friend.” I pulled out my coin purse but could not lift my eyes from the parchment. “But tell me, my friend, please tell me, is that bhra yusi root?”
Gopal glanced down, then back up with amusement in his eyes. “You are ever the Magnificent Bhajan. Is there a single ingredient to any potion or tonic that you don’t know?”
“I can’t imagine you normally keep ground bhra yusi.”
“No, it took some doing to procure it.”
“And did the man who requested it also buy wood spirits? Perhaps in a ratio of thrice the woods spirits as bhra yusi?”
“Ha, right again. It’s a recipe that you know, I take it.”
I did know it, but few others did, not even apothecaries. Knowledge of it was dangerous. Too dangerous. The only other magician I knew who had knowledge of this combination had fled into the Half Moon Desert forty years ago when I’d exposed his plan to overthrow the Maharaja.
But Ranjeet the Usurper was dead. Yes, he had to be dead. He’d run off into a desert two hundred miles across without water or food or a compass. Messengers on horseback, who carried a dozen water skins and rode in the cool of night, were known to drop dead trying to cross that dry dirt plain.
But Ranjeet was nothing if not crafty. Had he known of some trick to survive the heat, the tigers and poison vipers? Had he invented some magic that kept him alive and moving for weeks without water or food? It was possible for Ranjeet. Perhaps not for anyone else, but for Ranjeet, yes, it was possible.
“Who ordered these ingredients?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The order was delivered and picked up by a messenger boy.”
“What was his name? The one who picked it up. Do you know the boy?”
“Uh … sorry but so many of those kids come in and out of here I hardly look up from my work. I don’t remember which it was.”
If he was back, if Ranjeet the Usurper had finally returned to take his revenge, only I could stop him. Only I had seen inside his mind, knew how the man thought. Only I could have a hope of guessing what he was planning and when he would strike.
Or was I fooling myself? Was it truly possible that Ranjeet was still alive? Or was I dreaming up an enemy that only I could challenge so that the Magnificent Bhajan could feel useful once again?
“How much for that bit of parchment?” I asked.
“Well I don’t sell parchment here,” Gopal said.
“Yes, yes, my good friend, I know. I’m asking if you would sell me this bit of parchment, here on your table. With the ground bhra yusi remnants still on it.”
Wadded parchment gripped tightly in my fist, eyes closed, I stood motionless outside Gopal’s shop.
Ranjeet would be elderly, and would look nothing like the man who had fled the country all those years ago. It would be simple for him to blend into the crowd of foreigners at the golden celebration, wearing a jacket coated with the light-red resin of bhra yusi mixed with wood spirits. All he’d need is a little flint spark to set the mixture burning. He’d die along with the Maharaja, but that’s a sacrifice a man like Ranjeet would be willing to make now that his magic had faded away with age. Yes, to take his final revenge in front of a thousand guests from around the world, that was perfectly in keeping with Ranjeet’s sense of self-importance and drama.