The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois

the ladder, they were standing on dry rock. It was too dark to see anything, but a cold wind was blowing from somewhere.

      He said to the woman, “What happens now?”

      He could not see but could imagine her nervous smile and busy hands. “I don’t know,” she said. “They said it would be a journey to the land of Tyr-na-Nog and we would be received by princes and princesses. But …” She let her voice trail off.

      “Tyr-na-Nog?” Nothing more was forthcoming so Baldemar pressed her. “Has anyone ever come back from this paradise?”

      “No. But then, who would want to?”

      Baldemar realized he wasn’t dealing with the realm’s most intelligent specimen of womanhood. “Did you have to run an obstacle race?” he said.

      “No, that’s just for the boys. We have our own competition of women’s skills: sewing, milking a cow, baking bread, plucking a chicken.”

      “And you won?”

      “I was surprised,” she said. “There were better seamstresses and bakers in the contest, yet somehow they all faltered and it was I who received the accolade!”

      “Which is at the bottom of a dry well.”

      She said nothing, but he could hear the faint sound of her hands comforting each other.

      “Stay here,” Baldemar said, “I’ll explore a little.” He felt his way around the wall until he found a gap, then he got down on hands and knees to cross it until the wall resumed again. While he crawled, he was chilled by a river of cold air. He stood up, and said, “Say something.”

      “What?” Her voice came from the darkness; he oriented himself and found his way back to her side.

      “There’s a tunnel,” he said.

      Her voice came quavering. “Where does it go?”

      He told her he did not know and had no desire to find out. They stood in the darkness and felt the wind. The flow of air must mean that the tunnel connected with the outside world, but he had no desire to grope his way through blackness in which anything might lurk.

      Time passed. The woman introduced herself as Enolia. Baldemar gave her his name. They sat on the rock, backs against the wall on either side of the ladder. After a time, Baldemar let his mind wander and found himself thinking about the wizard’s questions about the Sword of Destiny. Enolia’s voice brought him back to the here and now.

      “I smell something.”

      His head came up and now he caught it, too: a sour odor, almost sulfurous, with a nose-tickling peppery overtone that made him want to sneeze. “It’s coming from the tunnel,” he said. A moment later, he added, “And there’s a light.”

      They stood up, backs against the wall. Baldemar missed his knife, which was still in his boot, far away to the north. Then he found himself missing the Sword.

      The tunnel was long and the light was far down it. It did not flicker like a flame nor throw a beam like a mirror-backed lantern. He saw a shapeless yellow glow that gradually resolved into a sphere with a flattened bottom, the shape of the tunnel. The closer it came, the stronger grew the taint of brimstone with a strong underlay of putrefaction.

      He felt motion beside him and realized that the woman was trying to fit herself between him and the wall. “Stop that,” he said, but she did not.

      “I’m frightened,” she said.

      So was Baldemar, but there was no point dwelling on it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to try to hide behind her, so he let her peep over his shoulder as the light came nearer. When it was a hundred paces away, he saw that there was something within the sphere. At fifty paces, he could almost make out what it was; at thirty, he could see it clearly and wished he did not have to. The stench became the olfactory equivalent of deafening.

      A moment later, the yellow glow filled the mouth of the tunnel and the bottom of the well. There was neither torch nor lantern; the light somehow came sourcelessly from the creature before him. It regarded them from several eyes, then an orifice that resembled no mouth that Baldemar had ever seen spoke in a voice that was somewhere between a hiss and a gobble.

      “Well, here we are again.”

      “It is the first time for us,” said Baldemar. He felt Enolia’s head nodding against his shoulder in strident agreement.

      “I don’t suppose,” said the demon—the man couldn’t think of another word that did the thing justice—“that you bring me a message from Duke Albero? Something along the lines of, ‘I’m ready. Take me’?”

      Baldemar said that no message had been vouchsafed to him and felt the woman’s nose rub his shoulder as she signaled the same was true for her. “But,” he added, “I’m willing to climb the ladder and ask for one if you can give me some help with the lid up there.”

      The demon made a sound that might have been a sigh, if a sigh could sound that horrible. “We might as well get on with it, then,” it said.

      “With what?” Despite the almost unbreathable air, Baldemar felt a strong urge to extend this part of the encounter rather than discover just what “get on with it” might entail.

      “The usual.”

      “And what is the usual?”

      The demon focused all of its eyes on the man. Baldemar felt an uncomfortable pressure in his skull and a terrible itching of his palms and soles, but he bore the sensations as best he could while maintaining an expression of polite interest.

      Part of the glowing creature moved and settled. Baldemar thought he might have just witnessed how a demon shrugged. “Very well,” it said, “Duke Albero made one of those agreements I’m sure you’ve heard about. Wealth, power, health, longevity, and so on, until he should grow weary of the eternal sameness of existence. Meanwhile, I have to hang about and do his bidding.”

      “He seems to have fended off the weariness,” Baldemar said. “Indeed, he looks capable of doing so indefinitely.”

      “Hence the escape clause,” said the demon. “Every seventh year, he must send me a man and a woman of accomplishment. I ask them three riddles. If they can answer them, I go up and collect the Duke and take him back with me.”

      “And if they can’t?”

      Again the complex set of strange motions. “I take the messengers.”

      “By any chance, would you take them to a paradise?”

      “No, not a paradise,” was the answer. “Certainly not for them. Indeed, I find it rather confining, myself. I would much prefer to collect the Duke and go home.”

      “Oh,” said Baldemar. The gibbering from behind him increased, but he forced himself to focus his mind, and said, “What is the first riddle?”

      The demon said, “What walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and three in the evening?”

      “Seriously?” said Baldemar.

      “You can’t answer?” Another demonic sigh; a limb festooned with hooks and grapples reached for him.

      “Of course I can answer,” said Baldemar. “Everybody knows that one.”

      The arm or leg or whatever it was withdrew into the glow. “None of the Duke’s messengers has ever answered it correctly,” the creature said.

      Baldemar realized that the seven-yearly contests were not intended to determine who among the Duke’s subjects were the most learned. They were instead tests of gullibility.

      “The answer,” he said, “is ‘man.’ As an infant he crawls on all fours; that is the morning of his life. In maturity, his noon, he walks on his own two feet. And in the evening, which is his dotage, he relies on a cane.”

      All