Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy Read online

  WIZARDS

  Edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  UNICORNS!

  MAGICATS!

  BESTIARY!

  MERMAIDS!

  SORCERERS!

  DEMONS!

  DOGTALES!

  SEASERPENTS!

  DINOSAURS!

  LITTLE PEOPLE!

  MAGICATS II!

  UNICORNS II!

  DRAGONS!

  INVADERS!

  HORSES!

  ANGELS!

  HACKERS

  TIMEGATES

  CLONES

  IMMORTALS

  NANOTECH

  FUTURE WAR

  GENOMETRY

  SPACE SOLDIERS

  FUTURE SPORTS

  BEYOND FLESH

  FUTURE CRIMES

  A.I.S

  ROBOTS

  FUTURES PAST

  DANGEROUS GAMES

  WIZARDS

  WIZARDS

  EDITED BY Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Collection copyright © 2007 by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

  A complete listing of individual copyrights can be found on page 401.

  Cover art by John Jude Palencar. Hand lettering by Jill Bell. Cover design by Annette Fiore DeFex. Text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  The name BERKLEY and the BERKLEY design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First edition: May 2007

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wizards: magical tales from the masters of modern fantasy / edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-4295-3514-8

  1. Fantasy fiction, American. 2. Wizards—Fiction. I. Dann, Jack. II. Dozois, Gardner R.

  PS648.F3W59 2007

  813’.0876608377—dc22

  2006101534

  For Merrilee Heifetz, who saw it through

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  BY JACK DANN AND GARDNER DOZOIS

  The Witch’s Headstone

  BY NEIL GAIMAN

  Holly and Iron

  BY GARTH NIX

  Color Vision

  BY MARY ROSENBLUM

  The Ruby Incomparable

  BY KAGE BAKER

  A Fowl Tale

  BY EOIN COLFER

  Slipping Sideways Through Eternity

  BY JANE YOLEN

  The Stranger’s Hands

  BY TAD WILLIAMS

  Naming Day

  BY PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP

  Winter’s Wife

  BY ELIZABETH HAND

  A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or The Devil’s Ninth Question

  BY ANDY DUNCAN

  Barrens Dance

  BY PETER S. BEAGLE

  Stone Man

  BY NANCY KRESS

  The Manticore Spell

  BY JEFFREY FORD

  Zinder

  BY TANITH LEE

  Billy and the Wizard

  BY TERRY BISSON

  The Magikkers

  BY TERRY DOWLING

  The Magic Animal

  BY GENE WOLFE

  Stonefather

  BY ORSON SCOTT CARD

  Preface

  Wizards have stalked through the human imagination for thousands and thousands of years, perhaps even from a time before we were fully human. Traces of Neanderthal magic have been found at prehistoric sites: a low-walled stone enclosure containing seven bear heads, all facing forward; a human skull on a stake in a ring of stones. A few tens of thousands of years later, in the deep caves of Lascaux and Altamira and Rouffignac, the Cro-Magnons were practicing magic too, perhaps learned from the vanishing Neanderthals, filling wall after wall in the most remote and isolated depths of hidden caverns with vivid, emblematic paintings of Ice Age animals and the abstract and interlacing paint-outlined human handprints known as “Macaronis” (there’s little doubt that these paintings were used in sorcerous rites, especially as many of the paintings seem to have been ritually “killed,” perhaps to ensure success in the hunt). These ancient walls also give us what may be the very first representation of a wizard in human history, a hulking, shaggy, mysterious, deer-headed figure watching over the bright, flat, painted animals as they caper across the stone.

  Wizards, sorcerers, shamans, witches, medicine men, seers, root women, conjure men—every age and every culture from prehistoric times on has had its own version of the magic-user, the-one-who-intercedes-with-the-spirits, the one who knows the ancient secrets and can call upon the hidden powers, the one who can see both the spirit world and the physical world, and who can mediate between them. Sometimes they’re benevolent and wise, sometimes evil and malign, sometimes—ambiguously—both. Even here in the twenty-first century, where space stations and satellites whirl overhead, you can communicate instantly with someone on the other side of the world, and you can cross a continent from one coast to the other in a matter of hours (things that would themselves have seemed like the most extreme magic only a few hundred years ago), the figure of the wizard is still a deeply significant one, an archetype that haunts art, advertising, literature, folklore, cartoons, movies, and even our very dreams.

  We asked some of the very best modern fantasists—Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Elizabeth Hand, Eoin Colfer, Jane Yolen, Peter S. Beagle, Kage Baker, Tad Williams, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, Patricia A. McKillip, Terry Bisson, Nancy Kress, Andy Duncan, Mary Rosenblum, Jeff Ford, Tanith Lee, Terry Dowling—to write stories about that most potent of fantasy archetypes, The Wizard. The book you hold in your hands is the result, and here you will find wizards young and old, evil and benign, male and female, living in the ancient world and in the modern world and in fantasy worlds that never were…children who can talk to animals, and animals who are willing to give u
p their lives to fight evil magic, boys who are raised by the dead, and girls who make friends with ghosts in haunted houses, boys who find the Devil ruffling through magazines in their garage or who secretly have the power of gods, and women of deep secret knowledge who marry Winter, young men and women who fight Iron Magic with Holly Magic through the deep forests of Arthurian Britain, or who fight deadly magical conspiracies in their own backyards, talking chickens and monstrous manticores, stone men, mysterious strangers, and a ruby incomparable, wizards as blackly evil as night or as bright and gentle as a summer’s day…plus a few wizards who just can’t make up their minds!

  We hope you enjoy them.

  WIZARDS

  The Witch’s Headstone

  NEIL GAIMAN

  One of the hottest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror today, Neil Gaiman has won three Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, one World Fantasy Award, six Locus Awards, four Stoker Awards, three Geffens, and two Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards. Gaiman first came to wide public attention as the creator of the graphic novel series The Sandman, still one of the most acclaimed graphic novel series of all time. Gaiman remains a superstar in the graphic novel field; his graphic novels, many in collaboration with Dave McKean, include Black Orchid, Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, and the children’s books The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish.

  In recent years he’s enjoyed equal success in the science fiction and fantasy fields as well, with his bestselling novel American Gods winning the 2002 Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker Awards, Coraline winning both Hugo and Nebula in 2003, and his story “A Study in Emerald” winning the Hugo in 2004. He also won the World Fantasy Award for his story with Charles Vess, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and won the International Horror Critics Guild Award for his collection Angels & Visitations: A Miscellany. Gaiman’s other novels include Good Omens (written with Terry Pratchett), Neverwhere, and, most recently, Anansi Boys. In addition to Angels & Visitations, his short fiction has been collected in Smoke & Mirrors: Short Fictions & Illusions. He’s also written Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion, A Walking Tour of the Shambles (with Gene Wolfe), and edited Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Kim Newman), Book of Dreams (with Edward Kramer), and Now We Are Sick: An Anthology of Nasty Verse (with Stephen Jones). Coming up is a new collection, Fragile Things.

  In the lyrical tale that follows, he blurs the distinction between the quick and the dead—and shows us that what really counts is kindness, no matter which side of the grave you’re on…

  THERE was a witch buried at the edge of the graveyard; it was common knowledge. Bod had been told to keep away from that corner of the world by Mrs. Owens as far back as he could remember.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “T’ain’t healthy for a living body,” said Mrs. Owens. “There’s damp down that end of things. It’s practically a marsh. You’ll catch your death.”

  Mr. Owens himself was more evasive and less imaginative. “It’s not a good place,” was all he said.

  The graveyard proper ended at the edge of the hill, beneath the old apple tree, with a fence of rust-brown iron railings, each topped with a small, rusting spear-head, but there was a wasteland beyond that, a mass of nettles and weeds, of brambles and autumnal rubbish, and Bod, who was a good boy, on the whole, and obedient, did not push between the railings, but he went down there and looked through. He knew he wasn’t being told the whole story, and it irritated him.

  Bod went back up the hill, to the abandoned church in the middle of the graveyard, and he waited until it got dark. As twilight edged from grey to purple there was a noise in the spire, like a fluttering of heavy velvet, and Silas left his resting-place in the belfry and clambered headfirst down the spire.

  “What’s in the far corner of the graveyard?” asked Bod. “Past Harrison Westwood, Baker of this Parish, and his wives, Marion and Joan?”

  “Why do you ask?” said his guardian, brushing the dust from his black suit with ivory fingers.

  Bod shrugged. “Just wondered.”

  “It’s unconsecrated ground,” said Silas. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Not really,” said Bod.

  Silas walked across the path without disturbing a fallen leaf and sat down on the stone bench, beside Bod. “There are those,” he said, in his silken voice, “who believe that all land is sacred. That it is sacred before we come to it, and sacred after. But here, in your land, they bless the churches and the ground they set aside to bury people in, to make it holy. But they leave land unconsecrated beside the sacred ground, Potter’s Fields to bury the criminals and the suicides or those who were not of the faith.”

  “So the people buried in the ground on the other side of the fence are bad people?”

  Silas raised one perfect eyebrow. “Mm? Oh, not at all. Let’s see, it’s been a while since I’ve been down that way. But I don’t remember any one particularly evil. Remember, in days gone by you could be hanged for stealing a shilling. And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.”

  “They kill themselves, you mean?” said Bod. He was about eight years old, wide-eyed and inquisitive, and he was not stupid.

  “Indeed.”

  “Does it work? Are they happier dead?”

  Silas grinned so wide and sudden that he showed his fangs. “Sometimes. Mostly, no. It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”

  “Sort of,” said Bod.

  Silas reached down and ruffled the boy’s hair.

  Bod said, “What about the witch?”

  “Yes. Exactly,” said Silas. “Suicides, criminals, and witches. Those who died unshriven.” He stood up, a midnight shadow in the twilight. “All this talking,” he said, “and I have not even had my breakfast. While you will be late for lessons.” In the twilight of the graveyard there was a silent implosion, a flutter of velvet darkness, and Silas was gone.

  The moon had begun to rise by the time Bod reached Mr. Pennyworth’s mausoleum, and Thomes Pennyworth (here he lyes in the certainty of the moft glorious refurrection) was already waiting, and was not in the best of moods.

  “You are late,” he said.

  “Sorry, Mr. Pennyworth.”

  Pennyworth tutted. The previous week Mr. Pennyworth had been teaching Bod about Elements and Humours, and Bod had kept forgetting which was which. He was expecting a test, but instead Mr. Pennyworth said, “I think it is time to spend a few days on practical matters. Time is passing, after all.”

  “Is it?” asked Bod.

  “I am afraid so, young master Owens. Now, how is your Fading?”

  Bod had hoped he would not be asked that question.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I mean. You know.”

  “No, Master Owens. I do not know. Why do you not demonstrate for me?”

  Bod’s heart sank. He took a deep breath and did his best, squinching up his eyes and trying to fade away.

  Mr. Pennyworth was not impressed.

  “Pah. That’s not the kind of thing. Not the kind of thing at all. Slipping and fading, boy, the way of the dead. Slip through shadows. Fade from awareness. Try again.”

  Bod tried harder.

  “You’re as plain as the nose on your face,” said Mr. Pennyworth. “And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway. You are a vacant doorway. You are nothing. Eyes will not see you. Minds will not hold you. Where you are is nothing and nobody.”

  Bod tried again. He closed his eyes and imagined himself fading into the stained stonework of the mausoleum wall, becoming a shadow on the night and n
othing more. He sneezed.

  “Dreadful,” said Mr. Pennyworth, with a sigh. “Quite dreadful. I believe I shall have a word with your guardian about this.” He shook his head. “So. The humours. List them.”

  “Um. Sanguine. Choleric. Phlegmatic. And the other one. Um, Melancholic, I think.”

  And so it went, until it was time for Grammar and Composition with Miss Letitia Borrows, Spinster of this Parish (Who Did No Harm to No Man All the Dais of Her Life. Reader, Can You Say Lykewise?). Bod liked Miss Borrows, and the cosiness of her little crypt, and could all-too-easily be led off the subject.

  “They say there’s a witch in uncons—unconsecrated ground,” he said.

  “Yes, dear. But you don’t want to go over there.”

  “Why not?”

  Miss Borrows smiled the guileless smile of the dead. “They aren’t our sort of people,” she said.

  “But it is the graveyard, isn’t it? I mean, I’m allowed to go there if I want to?”

  “That,” said Miss Borrows, “would not be advisable.”

  Bod was obedient, but curious, and so, when lessons were done for the night, he walked past Harrison Westwood, Baker, and family’s memorial, a broken-headed angel, but did not climb down the hill to the Potter’s Field. Instead he walked up the side of the hill to where a picnic some thirty years before had left its mark in the shape of a large apple tree.