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  ENDEAVORS OF WILL

  two decades of fantastic writing

  Sharon Lee

  Pinbeam Books

  http://www.pinbeambooks.com

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

  ENDEAVORS OF WILL

  Copyright © 2000, 2011 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. Please remember that distributing an author's work without permission or payment is theft; and that the authors whose works sell best are those most likely to let us publish more of their works.

  First published in May 2000 by SRM, Publisher.

  Stolen Laughter first published in Dragonfields, Winter 1983

  The Winter Consort first published in SPAWAO Showcase, August 1982

  Stormshelter first published in Worlds Lost, Times Forgotten, March 1981

  The Pretender first published in Owlflight, January 1981

  The Silver Pathway first published in Owlflight, July 1981

  The Girl, The Cat, and Deviant first published in Star Triad, February 1991

  A Matter of Ceremony first published in Amazing Stories, May 1980

  The Handsome Prince first published in Fantasy Book, May 1982

  Cards first published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, September 1981

  ISBN:

  Kindle: 978-1-935224-78-5

  Epub: 978-1-935224-79-2

  PDF: 978-1-935224-80-8

  Published May 2011 by

  Pinbeam Books

  PO Box 707

  Waterville ME 04903

  email [email protected]

  Cover design by Steve Miller

  Endeavors of Will

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy fo reach recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, the please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  Dedicated to:

  John Schuyler "Sam" Moore

  who valued will above rules

  Stolen Laughter

  THE DUKE WAS being affable. A bad sign, that. He lounged there in his almost-throne, fingers laced over his majestic paunch and smiled. A very bad sign.

  I cleared my throat. "The Princess Ariana laughs but rarely, one is told."

  "This is true," replied the Duke, still smiling. "The value of the item lies in this very rarity."

  "So rarely," I insisted, there being nothing to lose by having the offered commission outlined for me crystally, "that it is further said that the Moon itself rewards the sound when it comes by filling the black sky that is its sole dominion with dancing miniature replicas of itself." I leaned forward just a bit, kept my eyes tight on his face. Still he smiled. "This is the treasure you would have me acquire for you? A thing so poignant that it touches the heart of the icy Moon and is more elusive than Love in its aspect?"

  "Well," said the Duke, waving a ringed hand for cognac, "if you cannot manage the matter, you needn’t attempt it. I’m sure that Eirin--"

  "Eirin! That ten-thumbed bungler! He couldn’t steal an egg from beneath a hen!"

  "And yet he has all of his thumbs, has he not?" The Duke savored his brandy with half-closed eyes. I swallowed my anger with some difficulty. The old bastard almost caught me that time. One needed to be cautious.

  "Very well," I offered in more conversational tones, "I accept the commission, my lord. It will, however, be expensive."

  He eyed me, swirled his drink lightly in the glass.

  I tried again. "There are certain--equipments..."

  An impatient flash of rings. "You will pay whatever expenses you find necessary to incur out of your fee." He paused to savor more liquor. "Twenty dinosi."

  "Twenty dinosi?" The laugh sounded real in my own ears. "But you’re jesting, of course. It cannot possibly be done for less than two hundred."

  "No? Eirin--"

  "Eirin would demand three--his vanity is o’erbearing." A risk, but not too great.

  "Perhaps." We traded stares. "One hundred, then."

  "One seventy-five."

  "Absurd." He tasted more liquor. "One hundred twenty-five. I feel exceptionally generous this noon."

  I didn’t even breathe deep. "One hundred fifty, my lord; and my profit in the matter is minuscule."

  "One hundred thirty-five. That is my final offer, scapegallow."

  Not precisely true, and more of an insult for that. I inclined my head, humbly. "One hundred thirty-five, my Duke." Then I straightened, gave him my face, my eyes. "Plus expenses."

  The goblet crashed into the fireplace at my back. I heard the flames roar and subside as I kept my eyes on his own.

  "A curse on you, then!" He struggled into as much of a sitting position as his bulk would allow. "One hundred fifty dinosi." He fingered the pouch at his belt, tossed three bright coins. "The remainder upon delivery."

  I caught them in my three-fingered hand, bowed the deep bow--liege to lord--and withdrew.

  * * *

  DAME AGATHA’S PRICE was seventy-five dinosi, which was quickly haggled, downward, to twenty. It more then covered her expense in the thing and left enough over to sweeten the task. She could not really have expected to receive the sum first named. We’d done business before.

  I worked the bellows as needed through the night, and listened to her prattle and chatter through the events that had transpired since our last association. I nodded and half-dozed, watching the fire and planning my plans.

  Just as the heat of the flames tinged the bottom of her brewpot with blue, she turned to me, bird eyes quick on my face.

  "There’s no good will come of it, ye know, laddie."

  No telling how much she really knew, beyond the bare facts it had been necessary for me to share to obtain what was needful: A Wise Woman has a bag of tricks to rival any thief’s. I kept my face under control. "I’d call my pay from Duke Ilych good, certainly; and your own cut is not to be laughed at..."

  She interrupted me with a quick motion of her head. "Tush and foolishness, Jalan. I’ve known you too long to be dealt with that way." She bent to judge the blueness of the pot, nodded and straightened, back to me.

  "Ye come wantin’ a vial that’ll hold Moonlight, ye say, with a neck so fashioned that, once captured, nothing will out--not ’til the vial itself is rubble. Fah, laddie! Do I look such a fool?" She was facing me again, eyes cutting sharp, accusing me-- of what I could not tell. "You’re out to take it, that lovely, once-a-year sound, that makes the solitary Moon yearn for others like itself to dance with. You! To steal what is a costless gift to all-- Ah, Jalan, Jalan. It’s too ill for thinking upon."

  "So? And if something is freely given to the masses and I as one of they to whom the gift is offered, what is remiss, should I need it all? The Duke yearns for it, and the Duke’s yearnings are gold in Jalan’s pocket, Aggie. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, has the power to keep his head upon his shoulders. Mysergee has a long memory for those who owe him money."

  She paled somewhat in the blueglow of the fire. "Have ye no’ paid that debt yet, laddie?"

  I kept the chill out of my voice with an effort; spoke as if telling a joke. "Ah, well, some of it’s paid, surely, by dribs
and drabs, enough to keep him--if not altogether happy, then--patient. But this job, dear Aggie, this will be the finish of my dodging Lord Mysergee and exchanging pleasantries with his lackeys in bars, ill-lit alleyways and other unpleasant places. After this is done and the Laugh delivered to Duke Ilych, Mysergee will have his money and I enough left over--and time unwatched--to begin revenge for Lena."

  I bent over and pushed the bellows, suddenly furious. The joke had turned on me and Dame Agatha had rain upon her cheeks.

  We finished the task and the dark nighttime in silence. And in the dawnlight, as I placed the black velvet-wrapped package in my pouch, Old Aggie came to me and, arms around my neck, laid her wrinkled and again wet cheek against my own and murmured that meaningless phrase in my ear:

  "Go with the gods, Jalan."

  And I--I gave her a shallow buss and a hug, put her doll’s body from me firmly and left by the back door, sidestepping her three or eighteen cats, out into the sunshine, toward Glynnie.

  * * *

  THE TOWN WAS bustling, of course. What else on the eve of the King’s Naming Day?

  The merchants’ inns were full and then some, and the bordellos were crammed to overflow, and that with most of the girls still out in the streets.

  I spent some time thronging with the sightseers, ears and eyes both open; and I milled about with more of the same in the Mall, where the King and his daughter, Ariana, would stand--there--above the crowd, tomorrow this time, and wait with them for the Moon to rise so the Princess might present her father with his shared annual gift. Learning here what I came to learn, I then went in search of lodging.

  One-eyed Tazak’s place is in Rum Alley, just beyond the intersection with Opium Way, the main thoroughfare in that part of the city. Not a noble neighborhood, no, nor one that is especially known for the loyalty of its residents to their King and his law. But, even here, there were crowds of people, heads up and eyes brightly open, like honest folk, their minds on nothing but the morrow’s festivities, Well and good. I slid into Tazak’s like one more evening shadow, commanded my usual room with a hand-wave and a piece of copper; paid another for a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and a doubtful sausage, and climbed the stairs. Tazak knew better than to send up a wench.

  I ate my meal and sipped the wine at the open window, which commanded a near view of an odorous and junk-filled courtyard, and, in the far view, the castle itself; a pretty sight, indeed, with the Moon coming up behind it, all silver ice and gleaming. I retired ere the Moon had fully claimed the sky, and dreamed of Lena, smiling.

  The next day dawned clear and somewhat chilly; the Sun would soon take care of that; the time of year called for cool mornings and evenings bracketing warmish noons. I left Tazak’s before the nip had left the air, visited the public baths and went about my other chores.

  Sundown found me in place behind the vines to the right-hand side of the King’s Balcony, near the place Ariana would stand. I’d done some petty thieving early in the day to supplement my income and to add force to certain suggestions. The guard who let me in had a blue stone and gold necklace for his sweetheart hidden somewhere about his person.

  The crowd noises below were louder, the shadows somewhat longer.

  I withdrew the black-wrapped vial from my pouch, took up my position against the wall. And waited, not breathing overmuch and thinking even less.

  Things would have to go by instinct now, events would move too quickly for me to slow my reactions with conscious thought. It grew cold.

  Footsteps from within. A dragon-stir from the crowd unseen. The shadows proclaiming the Sun well down. And they emerged, father and daughter. He the Sungold lion; she, the Moonborne snow.

  The crowd went wild.

  They let the shouting run for a few moments, then he raised his right hand. The sound ceased rising, was contained in the gesture. Then she, also, raised her hand, more in caress than command, and the sound fell away to a murmur, to a whisper, to a silence in which all there was to hear was the waiting beat of a thousand hearts.

  I faced Ariana squarely from the shadow of the vine. But she had eyes only for the horizon over which would soon rise the Moon. I followed the time’s passage in her face. Waiting. Thought a thought of Lena smiling.

  Banished it and waited more.

  She leaned forward, the Princess Ariana; I saw the Moon rising in her eyes. Delight tinged the corners of her face, her mouth began an upward tilt--I slipped the black cover from the vial and leapt forward, caught the sound as it emerged, bottle upended above her head. Then I stoppered it and was away, halfway down the stairs before any had the wit to know they’d seen me.

  Down the stairs and out the door. He of the blue and gold necklace saw me not. The proper doors were, indeed, unlatched; the clothes stacked neatly behind the appropriate bale of hay. The sound of pursuing feet, two blocks to the south. I let myself smile as I slipped out the side door, back the way I had come.

  I was through the crowd and out of the city by the time the Moon was high.

  * * *

  I RESTED AT a grove of fruit trees, which ringed a small, pure water pond, a traveler’s waystation, maintained by the King I had just robbed. I helped myself to a fruit, and sat with my back against a tree. Grinning, I stared up at the sky, the Moon solitary, as always. Duke Ilych would see that and know my task was accomplished.

  I was only a little sorry to remember that Dame Aggie and her three or eighteen cats would also see the sky and read the message there.

  I finished the fruit and scraped a hole in the ground for the pit. It wouldn’t do to offend the gods of the place, after all. Not after Aggie had set them on me. I patted the ground, kept my hand down, frowning. Then I heard it clearly. Horses’ hooves. Bent half over I ran, away from my projected course and toward the badlands, where the ground is too rocky for horses.

  With luck, I would beat them to the edge.

  I ran. They pursued. The night wore on and the Moon hung over my head like my accumulated fears and errors. Like the night I found her dead.

  Banish that thought, too, Jalan. Run. Revenge demands it.

  They caught me at the very edge. They were three and one sent ahead, circling wide around me, hiding his hoofbeats with their own. To the very edge of safety they let me run, down the blind pathway that the knowing can make an avenue with a leap. The one they sent ahead was waiting for me there, above, so the leap was impossible; and the further end was filled with two horsemen.

  I thought of Lena, broken, pressed my back to the stone and would not move. The man above called to his companions, "He’s cornered, all right. Want me to take it from him?"

  The voice that answered him made the hair on my nape quiver. "The gentleman was once an employee of mine, Brax. He deserves the courtesy of giving it into my own hands."

  And that was that. Lord Mysergee would have the Laugh--and my life, doubt it not--and Lena’s death unanswered.

  Mysergee stood before me, taller than I and terrible; hand outstretched, waiting. "Well, Jalan? Did two fingers and a woman lost teach you nothing of my nature?"

  "I don’t know what it is you want, my lord. If it’s the money..."

  He smiled in the Moonlight. "The money? Why no, Jalan. I think we might dispense with the debt you owe me, now." And suddenly he wasn’t smiling and his voice was like a fist in my face.

  "The Laugh, Jalan. Now."

  "Duke Ilych paid for it." Trouble, but there was no right thing to say. The choices? A quick death by rage, a slow one by frustration. Again, a thought of Lena broken--death by rage it would have to be. A thief must be imaginative to achieve the fame I had.

  "Jalan, I grow very impatient. I have ridden long this night." There was a subtle whisper of metal against leather. If it was going to be rage I was going to have to be quick and wily.

  "What do you want it for? What good is a Laugh trapped in a bottle? Let it go and you’ve lost it, traded for one spangled night time. And you could have had that tonight, if I hadn’t nee
ded the cash, that is. Why not wait ’til next year?"

  Silence. I tensed myself for the sword thrust. Then, "Since you ask--and Jalan it is likely the last thing you will ask--except perhaps for death. There are certain--uses--to which a captured laugh can be put, by one who has the necessary training, of course. I have that training. As does good Duke Ilych."

  Too late, by a full minute. Satisfy the curse of a thief’s curiosity.

  "Uses?"

  "There are certain beings which may be animated, but only by something very rare--a pure soul, for example. There are lamentably few pure souls about nowadays, as you, yourself, may have noticed. And one such as this--food for a hundred creatures of my manufacture." He leaned forward suddenly, his face in mine. "I will have an army from that Laugh, Jalan."

  "You said soul..."

  He drew back, smiled his crawling smile again. "And what do you think a laugh is? Only the giving of one’s soul, momentarily, to the world."

  I thought and it made sense. Aggie, Aggie, why wouldn’t I hear you?

  And now here’s Mysergee who’ll make an army of monsters from this one, free-given soul, captured by me, not knowing its true value. I searched the sky, empty but for the full cold Moon, sinking low in its nightly path. A thought--

  "What of the Princess? If she should laugh again?"

  Mysergee made a sound nothing like laughter. "Without a soul? Why man, she’s dead already!"

  And that made up my mind. I fumbled in my pouch for the vial.

  "Just a moment my lord. Here it is..." And I pulled the black-shrouded bundle half-way out, plucking the cloth loose. A glint of silver showed where the fabric parted slightly.

  He leaned forward to take it; the man above me bent close down--and I drew back my arm and threw the vial with all my strength to the rocks at Mysergee’s feet. I heard him scream as the brightness flared out and upward. I was already moving, tearing my way up the wall to the right. The guard there never knew that I pulled him down.