World Enough, and Time Read online

  World Enough, and Time

  JAMES KAHN

  Copyright © 1980 by James Kahn

  Cover art, map and illustrations by Jill Alden Littlewood

  Scanned by DmJim

  ebook version 1.1

  MAPS

  PROLOGUE

  A pure, low, demented cry tore the fabric of the night. It was a blind, inhuman sound, terrible and brief.

  The six people in the large log cabin looked up simultaneously; at each other, at the window, at the door. Their pulses jumped, pupils dilated, hairs stood erect—all suddenly adrenaline-heavy, atavistic.

  “What in God’s name was that?” said Mother.

  Father stood up and checked the latch on the front door, made sure it was secure. “Wolf, most likely,” he muttered. He peered out the window into the night. “Don’t see nothin’.”

  “I’m afraid, Mommy.” The little boy looked up from the floor where he’d been playing. A menagerie of tiny carved wooden animals surrounded him.

  His mother looked relieved to have her own thoughts pulled back to their quotidian domain. “Now there’s nothing to be afraid of, Ollie. Just an old coyote.” Then, with a hint of loving sternness: “Now put away your toys and get ready for bed.”

  This seemed to break the tension that had formed, like thin ice, over the room. Ollie gathered up his little wood carvings and went into the other room to get undressed. Father walked from the window over to the fireplace full of glowing coals and peat. He warmed his hands, then unhooked the kettle that was hanging there and poured himself a cup of hot water. “Anybody want some tea?” he asked.

  Mother shook her head No. Dicey didn’t answer. Dicey was fifteen years old, a child bride. Joshua, her love, had been gone hunting for two days now. It might have been two centuries. Every noise, every change of wind, signaled his danger in her heart. This animal sound riveted her face to the door, and masked all other sounds, including the sound of conversation. Old Uncle Jack, Dicey’s father, rose slowly from his rocker, walked three steps across the room, picked the heavy rifle out of the corner where it leaned, and examined it. Rusting old single-action; sometimes it fired and sometimes it didn’t. He checked the load, fiddled with the action. “Mebbe go wolf-huntin’ in the morning,” he mumbled. Wolves were familiar dangers, almost old friends. Uncle Jack spit into the fireplace, and the spittle cracked and jumped.

  Even Grandma finally lowered her eyes from the window, went back to her needlework. She was a suspicious, unyielding old lady, many hardships old. She lowered her eyes, now, but never her guard. The lines of age that furrowed her face were both price paid and prize won.

  “Help your cousin get ready for bed, Dicey.” Mother spoke quietly, trying to give the girl something to do besides brood over dark fantasies.

  Dicey went into the other room to help Ollie wash up. She found him sitting on the end of the bed, staring out the back window into the impenetrable blackness.

  “What do you see?” she asked him. “Think Josh is okay?” he whispered without looking up.

  “Of course he is. Why wouldn’t he be?” she snapped. She was angry with the young boy for voicing her own fear. What if the Gods heard?

  “He promised he’d read to me when he came home.”

  Dicey softened. It wasn’t Ollie’s fault her beloved was late. “I’ll read to you,” she stroked the back of the youngster’s head once. “Get in your jams real fast and come back into the parlor and I’ll read to you until bedtime. I’ll read The Magic Pencil.” That was his favorite story. In no time he was scaring up his bedclothes.

  So the cabin gradually resumed its rhythm. The reading, the sewing, the tinkering. Dicey murmured softly to her young cousin, who was nodding off to sleep before the dwindling embers. An ancient oil painting of sailors and nets hung over the fireplace. On the mantel was an old family sword, from the War; some clay figurines; a chipped vase full of dried flowers. A bowl of fruit occupied the center of the table. Colorful crocheted rugs patched over the floor; Grandma’s quilt lay on a bed. The fading fire, gray smoke drifting up the flue. The harmony. The—

  Once more, the unholy moan outside, much closer now. Not like a wolf. Like a nightmare.

  They all looked up again, six heads in unison, as if on the same string, a string of fear. This time no one looked away from the door. Jack stood up and started toward the rifle. “Father …” began Dicey. And then it happened.

  The entire door burst into the room, torn from hinges and lock, and three creatures thundered in without pause, screeching and bellowing. The first was a Griffin—body of a lion, head and wings of a huge eagle. It screamed insanely. It half-flew, half-pounced on Jack immediately—before he could even raise his gun—and gored his belly open with its razor talons, and screamed again in chilling triumph. Griffins hated even the smell of Humans.

  On the heels of the Griffin came a creature so deformed and depraved it had never had, nor ever would, a name. Its scaly face had one eye, misplaced, and no nose, and a mouth that could not contain the fat tongue that hung like a piece of meat down the chin, and drained foul-smelling matter. Its sex was out. It hated all living things.

  While the Griffin was killing Jack, this other Thing crushed the father’s head with a single blow. It was about to abuse the hysterical mother, when suddenly the third creature entered, and snapped his fingers. The Thing turned briefly, snarled, stopped what it was about to do, and merely killed the mother. Then it grabbed up the two children. Dicey and Ollie, in its powerful arms, and carried them off into the night. The Griffin quickly tore out the heart of the old grandmother, shrieked, and flew off.

  The third creature stood, still, in the doorway, surveying the carnage. Three dead, one disemboweled and dying, two abducted. He smiled. He was tall; handsome, in a thin, dark way. His hair was black, and evil white fangs protruded down over his lower lip. Two great, spoked, brown-black leathern wings completely enfolded his spindly body. He was a Vampire.

  He walked over to the body of the dead woman, knelt, and sank his teeth into her neck. He finished quickly. When he was done, he licked his lips, licked her neck once more, licked his lips one last time, and walked out of the cabin.

  When he’d walked five or six feet, and was clear of the portico, he opened his huge webbed wings and flew.

  CHAPTER 1: In Which The Story Begins

  IT was a clear, bright day. The sky showed brilliant, cloudless blue all the way to the horizon in the west, and though the air was still brisk, intimations of spring were everywhere: a V of migrating ducks appeared overhead, the arrow of their formation pointing, like a collective thought, to their destination; the creek that laced over Cachagua Pass was now a stream; fruit trees were suggesting buds.

  At the edge of the orchard, two starlings fought over a seed, then hopped quickly up into a high branch as two people approached. Joshua and Rose walked slowly into the clearing.

  Joshua was a good-looking young man of twenty-seven summers. Strong, weathered features were set off by placid, blue-green eyes; a gently curving nose came down to a firm, straight mouth. He had the body of an outdoorsman, all lean and no fat; yet there was something soft about it as well, or tender. His whole manner and being, in fact, suggested opposites, hence complexity, consequently depth. Too, he was a quiet man.

  His dark hair hung down to his shoulders in soft curls, though frequently—especially when he hunted—he wore it in a ponytail, tied with a length of thong. His chest was bare, his pants were soft, worn leather. He wore high rawhide mountain boots. On his beautiful embroidered belt hung two knives, throwing knives; and stuck in the top of his left boot was a third, for infighting.

  And finally, nested into the top of Joshua’s right boot was a quill pen: he was not
only a hunter, but a Scribe.

  Rose, the woman he walked with, was his friend and the wife of his best friend. She carried her simple, southern good looks naturally, without burden or taunt. Her grace seemed to come from the earth; and now that the earth was coming alive, Rose, too, was blooming.

  Her long black hair fell to her hips over her lincoln green shift. Tied decoratively into her locks were two beautiful feathers, wing feathers from matched falcons she’d had as a child. She’d set the birds free when she realized it was better to be falcon than falconer; she kept the feathers, still, as reminders of this truth.

  Joshua had slept in their barn the previous night, on his way home from a two-day, moderately successful hunting trip.

  “I’ll leave you the rabbit, I’ll take the squirrel,” he told her as they stood at the end of the orchard. A squirrel and a rabbit is what constituted good hunting at that time: the woods and fields were played out, overstalked. Most of the game had moved north in recent years, and Josh found himself having to trek farther and farther to find anything at all.

  Rose knew it was a hardship to spare the meager game; but they were friends, and gifts could not be easily refused. So in return she offered to read his eyes: she was a seer, and for some a healer as well.

  She sat him on a large rock at the end of the grove and had him fix his vision on a point down the hill, had him stare past all the rolling grassland, the twisting brook and bushy briar, to fixate on a craggy stone formation a hundred yards away, to keep his eyes from moving. She stared intensely at his pale-blue left iris.

  “When was the last time I read you?” she asked as she studied the pigment in his eye.

  “Maybe a year ago,” Joshua shrugged.

  “That’s too long. You’ve got a lot of changes here; there’s a lot that wasn’t here last time.”

  He pursed his lips. A bird of some kind flew past his field of vision, but he forced himself not to look, even though it might have been an omen.

  Rose said, “You’ve lost something lately, something important. But you’ll find it again, there.” She brought her face closer to his a moment, then backed off again. “What have you lost?” she asked.

  “Nothing I can think of,” he tightened his brow.

  She ignored his response and continued. “I see a long hunt coming up …” She frowned. “You will almost die, and then …” She stared deeply now, past his iris, through his lens, into the dark of his eye. “And then … and then … you will die.” Her face knotted; her vision swam in his thick future. “You will die by water,” she went on, “you will drown. But then, I cannot see how, but clearly, there—you will live again!” She sat up straight. He looked at her questioningly. She shook her head: “I cannot see deeper.”

  The leaves whispered secrets in the trees as a cool wind swelled briefly, then dwindled. Joshua didn’t disbelieve a word of what Rose told him; he’d never known her to be wrong for him. It was a strange reading, though, strange and upsetting, not like her usual readings, and Joshua couldn’t interpret the meanings.

  “What should I do?” he asked.

  She looked perplexed. “Let me give you some herbs I’ve got in the cellar. They have healing properties that might be of some use on a long hunt. Take them when you tire.”

  He nodded acceptance. He admired her knowledge. He himself could read and write, of course, and there were some who regarded that as powerful magic. Black magic, even. But Rose’s medicine was pure and good, and as powerful as any Josh had ever known.

  The day was beginning to heat up, and a fat bluebottle fly buzzed over and sat on the nose of Joshua’s dead squirrel. He brushed the insect away, then looked at Rose again.

  “Take the squirrel, too,” he told her. He wanted her to have something more than the one puny rabbit for her little family.

  “You needn’t, Josh,” Rose answered sincerely. “We still got plenty fruit stored.”

  He shrugged, as if to say it was okay, he wanted to give it to them. She smiled, as if to say okay, they’d be happy to take it. He reached up into a low branch, examined a small, hard bud.

  “You anxious to see Dicey again?” she asked him. Dicey was his young lover, his dear cousin, his new bride.

  He smiled, knowing Rose had lain alone herself for the past ten nights. “Where is that husband of yours?” he chided her.

  She laughed in return. “Should be back anytime now. Seed sellers’ convention in Port Fresno was over yesterday morning.” She refused to be the subject of the tease, though. “Betcha miss Dicey,” she pursued the matter with a sly, yet somehow ingenuous wink.

  Joshua nodded drily, admitting he did. “Don’t miss her daddy, though, for sure,” he went on. “I could see a lot less of old Uncle Jack and might never miss him.”

  “Tz, tz,” scolded Rose, “and you call yourself a family man.” She spanked his bottom playfully. He bent his head in mock chastisement.

  She walked a few steps into the orchard, picked a small nut off the ground, and tried to crack it on a tree. It wouldn’t crack. Josh tried to take it from her, but she hid it behind her back and giggled. He just watched her and shook his head: so often when she wasn’t a wise woman, she was a young girl.

  They walked along a peaceful, clear path between two straight rows of young pear trees. The sun filtered through the thin leaves and landed in fuzzy patches on the ground, where it mottled last year’s dead flowers, broken twigs, cicada shells, and clover. All the world at that moment was serene.

  Two wild ponies pranced in the distance, too far away to be heard, just running for fun. They disappeared over the farthest hill, whose loamy slope, on the nether side, met the sea.

  “Looks like they’re in love,” said Rose. Then both were quiet again, as their thoughts drifted contentedly over their own loves—Rose’s awaited, Joshua’s awaiting.

  Rose headed out of the orchard again, drawing her buck knife out of her belt as she walked, to pry open the nut she was still holding.

  Joshua followed. The starlings in the upper branches decided they weren’t ever going to make it back to the seed they were after, so they flew away. Rose broke open her nut and gave half the meat to Joshua. They chewed meditatively, feeling very close.

  “Love,” mused Josh, echoing her last word.

  “Love’s the gravity of the soul,” she smiled.

  “You mean no matter how high it flies it always comes down?” he teased, intentionally misunderstanding. “Or do you mean it pulls apples from the tree of life and knocks you on the head till you see stars?”

  She threw a flower at him in feigned annoyance. “I mean it pulls spirits together.”

  “Ahh,” he bowed. “Like heavenly bodies.”

  A blush filled her cheek. She had been Joshua’s lover before—and even during—the Race War. The tune held many warm memories for them both, but by tacit agreement they never discussed it. Not since Rose had married.

  She took his hand, now; squeezed it. “You’re dear to me, you know. Both of you. I sometimes feel as if we’re three circling planets in search of a sun …”

  He shook his head, smiling. “You talk like an old book.”

  “And you like a loose-leaf with pages missing,” she laughed, pushing him away. They momentarily held each other with their eyes; then released their hold. In the silence that followed, many things were left unsaid. Josh knew he would love her always—as a sister, a confidante; and as one who shared his closeness to his other best friend, her husband. Rose, in turn, blessed her fortune, to love and be loved by two such as they. The world seemed a glorious place this day.

  “I’d better be going soon,” Joshua finally spoke, softly, checking the sun. “Mother gets peevish if I’m gone too long.”

  Suddenly from down the road behind the trees came the sound of hoofbeats. They both heard the gallop at the same time. Rose’s face lit up warmly, like summer fire. “That’ll be him comin’ home now,” she grinned with unconcealed relief, and ran off down the path that led to t
he main road. Josh, too, smiled happily, for he recognized the familiar pace of his old friend’s approach. They would share a homecoming toast.

  Joshua stepped out of the grove, walked along its neat edge to the road, and watched Rose running down to meet her returning love. “Beauty,” she called to him, “Beauty!”

  He approached her at a canter, fifty yards from Joshua. By the time they reached each other, she was panting gaily. He stopped, leaned down, and they embraced passionately for a long few seconds. “Beauty,” she whispered. He brought his mouth down on hers, and their tongues exchanged a soft, wet caress.

  “I’ve missed you,” he told her when she finally let go. She put her hand up and stroked his short, golden beard, his smooth throat; and finally brought her fingers gently down the curly yellow hairs of his broad sun-browned chest. She missed his body next to hers.

  “Climb up,” he said more loudly, “Josh is standing out there all alone, he looks like a lost puppy.”

  She giggled, hiked up her dress, jumped up on his back; and he set off for Josh at a gallop. She loved riding him this way, bareback, her arms “wrapped around his chest from behind, her fingertips rubbing his wind-hardened nipples, her knees pressed firmly about his flexing foreshoulders, her heels nuzzling his flanks, her face buried in his long, golden mane.

  Joshua watched the two ride toward him—Rose straddling his good friend’s back—and he raised his hand in greeting, in affection, in admiration: Beauty was, had always been, the most graceful Centaur Joshua knew.

  The three reclined on the grass in the smile of the noon sun, sipping apple wine. Rose lay with her head on Beauty’s side; his tail flicked away the occasional fly. They were talking and joking.

  “I’ll bet you’ve completely forgotten how to shoot,” scolded Joshua.

  Beauty smiled. “I haven’t drawn a bow since …”

  “Give up this farm,” Joshua shook his head, “you weren’t meant to be a farmer.”

  Rose kicked lazily at Joshua. “You leave my Beauty alone, he’s a good farmer—”