The Mammoth Book Of Warriors and Wizardry (The Mammoth Book Series) by Sean Wallace

Author:Sean Wallace
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781472110763
Publisher: Robinson Publishing
Published: 2014-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

GOLDEN DAUGHTER, STONE WIFE

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

For skeleton, steel and stone. For life, the edge of youth and command.

These are the things my daughter is made of. These are the things she leaves behind when the spell is gone and the wish is dead.

Sometimes I’d cup her chin and say that I wished her skin was like teak and her hair like the vestment of a crow, the natural shades of my lineage. And she would tell me, I would have been ugly and despised to the one whose wish bought my provenance.

Do you think me ugly, then?

Golem honesty, she answered. You aren’t beautiful. Neither are you ugly. And children, Mistress, must believe their mothers pretty – thus I do, imitating the limits and distortion of their perspective.

I laughed. It was glorious to have a child such as she, frank and strange. A child that was old when we boarded the exiles’ ship. A child my wife named Areemu, her last gift to me.

“Mistress Erhensa,” someone says. They’ve been saying that for some time, in the belief that shock has deafened me and robbed me of a voice.

My brow to the window, Areemu’s remains in my arms. The road outside is a black ribbon, wet-sharp with frost under the halo of my seahorse lamps. An empty road. This is not a season for visitors.

“Mistress Erhensa. The Institute of Ormodon is here to collect the golem.”

A girl purchased her some 200 years past. A girl gold of hair and skin, eyes like the canals after a storm. “Tell them there is no golem.”

“But there must be, Mistress Erhensa.” This voice does not belong to my servant. “We detected the flux of its dissipation. I was dispatched immediately.”

It’s too dim for the glass to glare, and so I’m obliged to turn. The Ormodoni is ludicrously young, ludicrously freckled, and it is an insult they’ve sent this over a gray-haired officer. Her gaze severe, her shoulders high beneath the weight of pauldrons, her stance square despite the bulk of plating. Much too proud, before age has earned her the right.

“You must be tired from the journey,” I say, rote. There’s no journey – it is a step and a thought from the Institute of Ormodon to my domain, a requirement all practitioners must heed. Keep our doors open, or else. “We don’t often have visitors. Lais will find you a room and supper if you want it. In the morning we will talk.”

“I’m Hall-Warden Ysoreen Zarre.”

“I’m sure you are.” I did not ask.

“I am to bring your answer within the night.”

“Expectations have a way of being thwarted, Hall-Warden Zarre. Your superiors will have to understand. Over breakfast, we may discuss the golem. Or you may depart now and we may discuss nothing.”

Who defies Ormodon; delays its enforcers? Who dares? No one wise, but lately I am past wisdom.

“In the morning, then.” Hall-Warden Zarre turns on her heels. “I look forward to it.”

I watch her back and watch the door shut behind her, thinking again of the girl with the pale hair.

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