Silver May Tarnish Read online

  MAGIC IN ITHKAR

  (Editor, with Robert Adams)

  Magic in Ithkar 1

  Magic in Ithkar 2

  Magic in Ithkar 3

  Magic in Ithkar 4

  THE SOLAR QUEEN

  (with Sherwood Smith)

  Derelict for Trade

  A Mind for Trade

  THE TIME TRADERS

  (with Sherwood Smith)

  Echoes in Time

  Atlantis Endgame

  THE OAK, YEW, ASH, AND ROWAN

  CYCLE (with Sasha Miller)

  To the King a Daughter

  Knight or Knave

  A Crown Disowned

  THE HALFBLOOD CHRONICLES

  (with Mercedes Lackey)

  The Elvenbane

  Elvenblood

  Elvenborn

  A Dagger Was Whittling at the Door’s Edge

  I moved to stand back from the door, inside my room, then drew sword and dagger. The door was flung open and a man burst through. I allowed him to pass me then struck him down just as his comrade entered. My blow had been true so that the thief died without cry. I think the one who followed believed the small sound of a blade cleaving flesh was made by his friend as he slew me.

  He grunted approval, then spoke low-voiced. “Is he dead?”

  I closed with him. My dagger went home even as my other hand choked back his cry. His dagger snapped on my mail. He thrashed after that as he died.

  The third thief must have been bewildered by the dark. He blundered into me, seized my arm, and muttered angrily, “You make too much noise about it, you fool. You’ll have the innkeeper up here.”

  “A good thought,” I agreed. I lifted my dagger, striking him hard across the side of the head with the pommel before he understood my words. I caught him as he sagged, then lifted my voice in a bellow, “Ho, innkeeper, aid here? Aid to your guests beset by thieves.”

  “Although the basic setting is familiar after more than 40 years’ worth of Witch World stories, the book’s quite convincing picture of a land without rulers or laws in the wake of disaster is more than a little timely.”

  —Booklist

  APPENDIX

  The song “Silver May Tarnish” is a folk song of considerable antiquity. Legend says it came with the dalesfolk when they entered High Hallack. This is not impossible, since the first form of the work appears to have been a sword song. That is, a song which was chanted rather than sung, and to an accompaniment formed by the tapping of blades together, customarily the blade of an eating dagger against that of a bowed sword blade. The rhythmic metallic tapping formed the “music.”

  This type of song and accompaniment does date back many hundreds of years and may well predate the arrival of the dalesfolk to the land they now occupy. The possibility is strengthened by the fact that this form of the song extols the possession of land as something to be prized above all else. Some time later, after a gap of at least another two hundred years, the song altered, forming two variations. Both are quite different musically from the original, being in a format closer to the usual ballad. One variation is a love song, the other a lullaby.

  The unusual thing is that each has retained the original name. This may be because in all forms of the work a number of the phrases, including the title, are used in common. In order to differentiate between them, the person requesting the song tends to add a comment noting the preferred form. Alternately, the person singing uses a musical introduction that allows those listening to know which song is to be sung. The love song and lullaby have only three verses, and in each the first verse is repeated as a fourth verse. In the original song there are five verses and no exact repetition.

  —LAUTRON OF ALSVALE, SONG-GATHERER TO LORMT. YEAR OF THE PARD.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ANDRE NORTON, named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America and awarded a Life Achievement World Fantasy Award, was the author of more than one hundred novels of science fiction and fantasy adventure. Beloved by legions of readers the world over, she thrilled generations with such series as The Beast Master, Time Traders, The Solar Queen, Witch World, and others. Miss Norton died on March 17, 2005, and was laid to rest beside her mother in an Ohio cemetery; Andre Norton was 93. However, her spirit lives on in continuing reprints and foreign language editions of her works, and in the writing of her friends and collaborators. Visit her Web site at www.andre-norton.org.

  LYN McCONCHIE is the coauthor, with Andre Norton, of the Witch World novel The Duke’s Ballad, as well as Beast Master’s Ark and Beast Master’s Circus, and other novels. She also writes her own fiction. A native of New Zealand, she has twice been awarded the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel by a New Zealander, in 2002 for Beast Master’s Ark and in 2004 for Beast Master’s Circus. A third Beast Master novel, BeastMaster’s Quest, will be published by Tor in 2006.

  Look for A TASTE OF MAGIC

  by Andre Norton and Jean Rabe

  (0-765-31527-0)

  Available Now in Hardcover

  Turn the Page for a Preview

  The tip of my tongue registered an unpalatable acridity, the distinctive taste of death and the lingering scents of fear and desperation.

  There’d been a raid while I was hunting!

  Our village is filled with farmers, hunters, and weavers, not warriors. Peaceful people! My heart seized with fear. I dropped the reins, knowing Dazon would follow me, and I rushed through a gap in the brush.

  Who attacked us? And why?

  I saw no one.

  The gate to the courtyard swung in the wind.

  Near Willum t’Jelth’s house I spotted a snorter stretched on a frame over a now-smoldering fire, more than half of its carcass hacked away. I heard the bellow again, and I slipped along the hedge to the north, drawing upon all the stealthy skills Bastien had taught me and trying to force down the dread threatening to overwhelm me.

  “Willum? Gerald?”

  No answer.

  I raised my voice. “Maergo? Lady Ewaren? Lady Ewaren!”

  Now I could see a section of the yard beyond the gate, the Great House and its various attendant buildings essentially forming the walls of the courtyard. Inside, a large cow tramped across the soft loam of a newly seeded herb garden and continued to bellow loudly, two smaller ones trailing behind it. Another cow leaned against the side of the Great House. The sun caught on shards of metal protruding from its black hide, as numerous as the pins in Lady Ewaren’s sewing pillow. Blood dripped from its wounds. I vowed to end its suffering—after I saw to the village.

  I looked elsewhere, cupping my hands over my eyes, shutting out the light and focusing on my wyse-sense and on my tongue and what the wind was telling me.

  Death.

  The wind spoke of death and suffering and confusion.

  I thought I saw a foot and a torn piece of material just under the shadow of a jutting second story.

  Afoot …

  “Willum! Maergo! Lady Ewaren!”

  Loosening the web of my backpack, I sat it on the ground and placed my blowpipe and quiver of bolts next to it. I did not want to be encumbered when I faced the enemy, but I wanted to be prepared. I drew the longest of my knives and fought to keep my senses sharp. Fear and grief threatened to overwhelm me.

  It was easy to suspicion all manner of horrid things, especially after seeing the throwstars in the cow’s side and finding no one outside and no one to answer my call. I wanted more than suspicion to work with, and so struggling desperately to keep panic at bay, I again tasted the air, urging my tongue to find the scents.

  Blood—blood is always strong enough to make itself known first. There was more blood than I had ever scented before. And I picked up a touch of sweat—of men and mounts—and the fire I smelled earlier, and ashes. Then I strained my senses to the limit, barely able to reach and identify emotions. I tasted terror, pain, and hate. And above all of that, I tasted my own horror, choking and dreadfully nauseating.

>   “Willum.” My voice grew weak, a whisper. “Lady Ewaren.”

  Still, nothing stirred in the village.

  The foot I spied in the distance did not move, and somehow I knew it belonged to a corpse. How many dead? I knew I would have to search the entire village to learn what had happened. My stomach churned with the grisly possibilities, and my heart hammered with each step I took. I was feeling faint from the scents and the notion that I wouldn’t find a soul alive, that everyone I knew and loved had been brutally butchered.

  But slain by whom? Slain why?

  And why had I gone hunting so early this morning? Had I lingered, I could have defended this place.

  “Willum!”

  The coughing sickness had taken Bastien this past winter. The village had no guards, the elders thinking Bastien’s presence enough protection. But after his death, the elders still took no steps for defense, thinking our world oh so peaceful and safe, and thinking that I could be sufficient defense, given the skills Bastien had taught me. Too, there had been no rumors of invasion from the Twisted Lands, and Lady Ewaren seemed held in favor with the neighboring countries to the west—even though it was said she was descended from the long-outlawed House of Alchura.

  I sheathed my knife and tugged a long, thin chain free from my belt. I preferred it as a weapon because of its reach. Then I started down a gentle slope, making use of the shadows from buildings to provide me some cover. Within heartbeats I stood in the gate road. Once more I tongue-tested, finding more blood, ashes, terror, and hate. Oddly, hate was the strongest here, almost overwhelming. Darting around the comer of the gate, I came into the courtyard.

  The foot …

  The rags that had been her spring-green gown lay torn on the ground between myself and where the body lay. Her ripped undergarments were saturated with blood. Something stronger than anger welled from deep within me, and a horror I’d never felt overcame me. I grabbed on to a post to support myself.

  I edged closer.

  The foot … it belonged to Lady Ewaren, our House Lady. My breath caught and I went down on my knees beside her body, fighting for air.

  “My lady!” The first words I’d spoken since entering the village were filled with grief. “By the Green Ones, my lady!”

  Lady Ewaren had taken me in after the death of my mother ten years past. Hers was the only home I truly remembered. Her face … now a broken ruin. Sobbing, I tugged down from her curve cap a length of lace veil. It didn’t hide all the blood, but it softened the worst of it around her face. Then I noticed her other injuries. Each and every one of her fingers—which she had used to weave such beauty that nearby lords and ladies begged for her work—every one had been broken. Deliberately, cruelly, I knew, broken while she’d lived.

  Once more I heard the bellow of the cow. Though the mournful sound was muted now by the intervening buildings, it was nonetheless demanding. In the intervals between the bellows, I heard an incessant buzzing from the bees in the hive housed on a balcony above me. I noticed the sound of flies, too. They were drawn to Lady Ewaren’s body.

  Lady Ewaren, I should pray for her.

  I hesitantly touched her broken fingers and under my breath, in the thinnest of voices, I uttered old, old words.

  “Nesalah dorma calla—”

  “Yaaaaaah!” The scream spun me around so quickly I nearly lost my balance. I saw a slip of a girl, just a heartbeat before her knifepoint flashed down and sliced my tunic at the shoulder. I moved fast enough that the blade only drew a thin line of blood. Without pause, I lashed out with my chain, whipping it around her arm.

  She cried in surprise and pain, and dropped the blade as I dragged her close. But she didn’t give in. Her wide golden eyes flashed with madness, and her teeth snapped at my throat. It was as if I held a night fiend instead of the slight girl that Lady Ewaren had taken as an apprentice almost a year ago. Lady Ewaren had hoped I’d be like a sister to this girl, but that hadn’t happened. I didn’t want to hurt the girl if I could help it—and it would be so easy for me to end this fight with a single blow. I was that much stronger, and she was half my age … at most ten years old.

  “Demon!” she spat. “Thrice-damned demon may you be!”

  I dropped my chain and grabbed both her wrists, shaking her roughly in an effort to bring her to her senses. She kicked at me now, her heavy boot landing a solid blow against my shin. I cringed and dragged her so close against me she had no room to kick again, while at the same time I twisted her arms behind her in a hold Bastien had taught me early on. I crushed the air out of her, and she swayed and gasped. I truly hadn’t intended to hurt her, but she’d given me no choice.

  I bent my head to her ear, as I stood several inches taller. “Alysen, what happened here?”

  She went limp, and I held her up now.

  “They came for you, Eri,” she said after a moment.

  “Who? Tell me, Alysen!”

  She didn’t answer this, saying instead, “They came for you because the Emperor’s dead. And so is your father. You and your kin, the Empress has had you drummed!”

  I loosed her then and she staggered back, stumbling toward one of the slender pillars that held up the outer edge of a narrow roof. Catching at the pillar with both hands to support herself, she faced me. Alysen’s smooth face was a scarlet mask of hatred.

  “They came for you!” Her voice was stronger now, spittle flecking at her lips. “You they wanted! And all this death, Eri, is because you weren’t here! Everyone died because of you!”

  Me? All this because of me? A wave of dizziness crashed against me.

  “Everyone is dead, Eri!”

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  SILVER MAY TARNISH

  Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Andre Norton and by Lyn McConchie Excerpt from A Taste of Magic © 2006 by the Estate of Andre Norton and by Jean Rabe

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

  Edited by James Frenkel

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  eISBN 9781429914222

  First eBook Edition : February 2011

  First Edition: December 2005

  First Mass Market Edition: November 2006