Bearing an Hourglass Read online

  Bearing

  An Hourglass

  Piers Anthony

  CONTENT

  Chapter 1 - GHOST MARRIAGE

  Chapter 2 - VERIFICATION

  Chapter 3 - THANATOS

  Chapter 4 - CHRONOS

  Chapter 5 - LACHESIS

  Chapter 6 - SATAN

  Chapter 7 - BEM

  Chapter 8 - CLOTHO

  Chapter 9 - ALICORN

  Chapter 10 - GAEA

  Chapter 11 - DRAWKCAB

  Chapter 12 - QUEST

  Chapter 13 - MARS

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Chapter 1 - GHOST MARRIAGE

  Norton threw down his knapsack and scooped up a double handful of water. He drank, delighting in the chill that struck his teeth and stiffened his palate. It was easy to forget that this was an artificial spring, magically cooled; it seemed natural.

  He had hiked twenty miles through the cultivated wilderness of the city park and was ready to camp for the night. He had food for one more meal; in the morning he would have to restock. That could be awkward, for he was out of credit. Well, he would worry about that tomorrow.

  He gathered dry sticks and leaves, careful not to disturb any living plants, and structured his collection for a small fire in a dirt hollow. He found some desiccated moss and set it within his pyramid. Then he muttered an incendiary-spell, and the flame burst into existence.

  He fetched three rocks, set them against the expanding fire, and unfolded his little fry-pan. He unpacked his Spanish rice mix and poured it in the pan, shaking the mix to keep the rice turning as the heat increased. When it browned, he added handfuls of water, evoking a strenuous protest of steam, until satisfied. Then he rested the pan on the stones and left it to sizzle nicely alone.

  "Can you spare a bite?"

  Norton looked up, surprised. Ordinarily he was alert for other creatures, especially people, even when concentrating on his cooking, for he was attuned to the sounds of nature. But this one seemed to have appeared from nowhere. "This is what I have," he replied. "I'll share it." Actually, that meant he would be hungry on a half ration, but he never liked saying no.

  The man stepped closer, his feet making no noise. He was evidently in his mid-to-late twenties, about a decade younger than Norton, and in unusually fit condition. He was well dressed in upper-class city style, but had the calloused palms of a highly physical man. Wealthy, but no effete recluse. "You're an independent sort," he remarked.

  It took one to know one! "Wanderlust, mostly," Norton clarified. "Somehow I always want to see the other side of the mountain. Any mountain."

  "Even when you know the mountain is artificial?" The man's eyes flicked meaningfully about the landscape.

  Norton laughed easily. "I'm just that kind of a fool!"

  The man pursed his lips. "Fool? I don't think so." He shrugged. "Ever think about settling down with a good woman?"

  This fellow got right down to basics! "All the time. But seldom for more than a week or two."

  "Maybe you never encountered one who was good enough for a year or two."

  "Maybe," Norton agreed without embarrassment. "I prefer to think of it as a distinction of philosophy. I am a traveling man; most women are stay-at-homes. If I ever found one who wanted to share my travels—" He paused, struck by a new thought. "In that sense, they are leaving me as much as I am leaving them. They prefer their location to my company, much as cats do. I move, they remain—but we know each other's natures at the start. So no expectations are violated."

  "Man does, woman is," the man agreed.

  Norton sniffed his rice. "This is about done; it's spelled for quick cooking. Have you a dish? I can make one of wood—" He touched his sturdy hunting knife. "I won't need one." The man smiled as Norton glanced askance. "I don't eat, actually. I was just verifying your hospitality. You were ready to go hungry to share."

  "No man can live long without eating, and I can see you're no ascetic. I'll carve you a dish—"

  "My name is Gawain. I'm a ghost."

  "Norton, here," Norton said, noticing how the man accented the first syllable: GOW-an. "I'm a jack of any trade, expert at none, except maybe tale telling." Then he did a double take. "Pardon?"

  "A ghost," Gawain repeated. "Here, I'll demonstrate." He extended his strong hand.

  Norton clasped it, expecting a crunching grip—and encountered air. He brought his hand back and touched Gawain's arm. There was nothing; his hand passed through, suit and arm without resistance, disappearing into the man's body. "You certainly are!" he agreed ruefully. "No wonder I didn't hear you approaching! You look so solid—"

  "Do I?" Gawain asked, becoming translucent.

  "I never met a real, live—uh—"

  Gawain laughed. "Real, at any rate." He firmed up to solid semblance again, having made his point. "Norton, I like you. You're independent, self-sufficient, unconceited, generous, and open. I know I'd have enjoyed your company when I was alive. I think I have a favor to ask of you."

  "I'll do any man a favor—any woman, too!—but I don't think there's very much I can do for a ghost. I presume you're not much interested in physical things."

  "Interested, but not able," the ghost said. "Sit down, eat your supper. And listen, if you will, to my story. Then the nature of the favor will be apparent."

  "Always glad for company, real or imaginary," Norton said, sitting down on a conveniently placed rock.

  "I'm no hallucination," the ghost assured him. "I'm a genuine person who happens to be dead."

  And while Norton ate, the specter made his presentation. "I was born into a wealthy and noble family," Gawain said. "I was named after Sir Gawain of the ancient Round Table of King Arthur's Court; Sir Gawain is a distant ancestor, and great things were expected of me from the outset. Before I could walk I could handle a knife; I shredded my mattress and crawled out to stalk the household puk—"

  "Puck?"

  "Puk—a small household dragon. Ours was only half a yard long. I gave it an awful scare; it had been napping in a sunbeam. My folks had to put me in a steel playpen after that. At age two I fashioned a rope out of my blanket and scaled the summit of the playpen wall and went after the cat. I vivisected her after she scratched me for cutting off her tail. So they brought in a werecat who changed into the most forbidding old shrew when I bothered her. She certainly had my number; when I toasted her feline tail with a hotfoot, she wered human and toasted my tail with a belt. I developed quite an aggravation for magical animals."

  "I can imagine," Norton said politely. He himself was always kind to animals, especially wild ones, though he would defend himself if attacked. There were things about Gawain he was not fully comfortable with.

  "I was sent to gladiator school," the ghost continued. "I wanted to go, and for some reason my family preferred to have me out of the house. I graduated second in my class. I would have been first, but the leading student had enchanted armor, even at night, so I couldn't dispatch him. Canny character! After that, I bought a fine outfit of my own, proof against any blade or bullet or magic bolt. Then I set out to make my fortune.

  "There are not many dragons around, compared to mundane animals, and most of them are protected species. Actually, I respect dragons; they are a phenomenal challenge. It's too bad that it took so long for man really to master magic; only in the last fifty years or so has it become a formidable force. I suppose it was suppressed by the Renaissance, when people felt there had to be rational explanations for everything. As a result of that ignorance, dragons and other fantastic creatures had a much harder time of it than they had during the medieval age in Europe. Some masqueraded as mundane animals—unicorns cutting off their horns to pass for horses, griffins shearing their wings and donning lion-head
masks, that sort of thing—and some were kept hidden on private estates by conservationists who cared more for nature than for logic. A number developed protective illusion so they looked a good deal more mundane than they were, and Satan salvaged a few, though most of His creatures are demonic. But now at last the supernatural is back in fashion, and fantastic creatures are becoming unextinct.

  "But some creatures do get obstreperous. Most bleeding-heart liberal, modern governments have bent the other way so far they've gone off the deep end and outlawed poisoning or shooting or using magic to kill these monsters. So the bad dragons have to be dispatched the old-fashioned way, by sword."

  "Why not just move the bad ones to reservations?" Norton asked, appalled at the notion of slaying dragons. He was one of the bleeding hearts the ghost described; he knew dragons were ornery and dangerous, but so were alligators and tigers. All of them had their right to exist as species, and the loss of any species was an incalculable loss to the world. Many highly significant aspects of magic had been derived from once-suppressed creatures, such as potency-spells from unicorn horns and invulnerable scale armor from dragon hides. But he realized it would be pointless to argue such cases with this fortune-hunting warrior.

  Gawain snorted. "Mister, you can't move a dragon! They're worse than cats! Once a dragon stakes out his territory, he defends it. Enchant the monster and move it to a reservation, it just breaks out and returns, twice as ornery as before, killing innocent people along the way. No, I respect dragons as opponents, but the only really good dragon is a dead one."

  Norton sighed inwardly. Perhaps it was a good thing for the world that Gawain was now a ghost.

  "That was my specialty," Gawain continued. "The hand slaying of dragons. It was dangerous work, to be sure—but the rewards were considerable. Because it was quasilegal, fees were high. I estimated that five or six years of dragon slaying would make me independently wealthy. That was the point: to prove that I wasn't simply inheriting wealth, but could produce it on my own. I knew my family would be pleased; every man in it increased the fortune, if he lived long enough."

  Gawain meditated for a moment, and Norton did not interrupt him. What would be the point? Norton had on occasion spotted the traces of dragons in the parks and had always given the monsters a wide berth. He might be an environmentalist, but he was no fool. It was said that some dragons in parks were halfway tame and would not attack a person if he gave them food or jewelry, but Norton had never trusted such folklore. The best way to deal with a dragon was to stay clear of it, unless a person had a really competent pacification-spell.

  "I know what you're thinking," Gawain said. "Obviously I met one dragon too many! But in my defense, I do want to say that I was successful for five years and had almost amassed my target level in bonus money. I would be alive today if that last dragon I faced had been genuine. But you see, it wasn't; it had been mislabeled. Oh, I don't blame the natives—not much, anyway; they were a fairly primitive tribe in South America and they spoke a mixture of Amerind and Spanish, while I spoke the language of champions, English. Normally language is not much of a barrier; my armor and sword bespoke my profession, with the dragon design on my shield; and as for the women—a man never needs a language of the tongue to speak his use for them, especially when he's a warrior. These things are fairly standard, anyway; the conquering hero always gets his pick of the local virgins. After all, it's better for them than getting chomped by the dragon!"

  He paused a moment, his lips twitching. "Funny that some of those girls don't seem to see it that way."

  He shrugged and returned to the main theme. "But I think they were honestly ignorant of the nature of their monster. Of course, I should have checked it out in the Dragon Registry—but I had traveled a long way, and the nearest civilized outpost was a half day's trek distant—couldn't use a standard flying carpet for this, of course, since those things are coded into the tour computers, and that would have given away my business—it would have delayed me a day just to do that, and maybe alerted the Dragon Patrol. So I tackled that dragon blind, as it were. I'll never do that again! I was cocky and foolish, I know—but I was familiar with the specs on just about every type of dragon in the world; I figured I was okay this one time.

  "So there I was, afoot and armed with sword and shield, as is proper for such encounters, and I boldly braved the lair of the monster. And monster it was! I could see claw marks on the big trees some ten feet up. A real challenge! I marched up to its cave and bellowed out my challenge, and the monster came charging out, no fire, just growling—and then I realized my mistake. That was no dragon—it was a dinosaur! A largely bipedal carnivorous reptile—allosaurus, to be specific; I looked it up after it was too late. It was supposed to be extinct; I think Satan revived it, just to take me down a peg."

  Now Norton spoke. "Isn't a dinosaur much like a dragon?"

  "Yes and no," Gawain said seriously. This was his field of expertise. "It should be as easy to slay one as the other, as they are of similar nature. Dragons have fire and better armor, and some are unbecomingly smart, while the ancient carnosaurs—well, they have to do it all by tooth and claw and power, so they're both more single-minded and desperate. I was geared and trained for dragons; I knew their typical foibles. A dragon, for example, will always try to scorch you with its fire or steam first; dodge that jet, and you can often get in a lethal stroke while it's recovering its breath. It's blast-oriented, you see, not thinking about what comes next. But the allosaurus—that monster didn't even pause to see how it scored, because it had no attack heat. It simply charged, catching me off guard. I had been ready to dodge to the side, and that was no good this time. I stabbed it in the neck with my sword, but it didn't seem to notice. That's another difference—a dragon will roar with pain and rage when injured—they are inordinately proud of their roars—and whip about to snap at the wound. I've seen a dragon get stabbed with a knife and reach about and bite that knife right out of its body, along with a few pounds of its own flesh, and toast the wound afterward to cauterize it. This carnosaur just kept going for me. Its system was more primitive. You know how a snake's tail will keep twitching after you cut it off? True reptiles are slow to die, even when hacked to pieces. So again I misjudged it—and again I paid. The brute knocked me down and took a chomp of my body, armor and all. I didn't even try to scramble free; I knew a body-chomp would only dent the monster's teeth.

  "That was my third error. Apparently enchantment has a sizable psychological component; people believe in its power, so it has power. A dragon would have known the armor was impermeable, since the smell of the spell was on it, and protected its teeth by easing up. The crunch would have been more show than serious; just testing, as it were. But this allosaurus dated from before the time of true magic and it gave a full-hard chomp, the kind that crunches bones."

  "But magic isn't all psychological!" Norton protested. "When I lighted this fire, the wood didn't need to believe in magic; it was ignited anyway."

  "True. My armor was impervious to the teeth of the monster," Gawain agreed. "But the mail was flexible, so I could wear it with comfort and not be restricted when fighting. That reptile had very powerful jaws. When it crunched, no tooth penetrated—but I was squished to death. A dragon never would have done that, for fear of hurting its teeth against the magical hardness of the armor—but that stupid reptile did. It broke a number of its teeth and put itself in dire straits—but it wiped me out in the process." The ghost sounded disgusted.

  "Now I understand," Norton said. "I regret meeting you in such circumstance." That was polite; Norton might have regretted meeting Gawain alive, too.

  "No fault of yours," Gawain said. "You are a courteous listener. Many people fear ghosts or ignore them."

  "Many people are more settled than I am," Norton said. "Perhaps that applies to their minds as well as their bodies. Since you profess no anger toward me, I accept you as a well-meaning companion and hope I may in some way help you." For, ironic as it seem
ed, he found himself liking the ghost. Gawain alive stood for nothing Norton stood for, but as a ghost, he was an interesting companion. Maybe that was because his evil was safely behind him.

  "I like your manners," Gawain said. "I can see we don't see eye-to-eye on everything and I think it's because you're a gentler man than I was. Be assured I offer recompense for the favor I ask. Would you like to learn how to slay dragons?"

  "Oh, I do not require pay for any favor!" Norton protested. "Then it wouldn't be a favor."

  "This is not really a minor matter. I would prefer to pay. The favor is in merely agreeing to do it."

  "Why, then, I should be happy to learn how to slay dragons, though I hope never to have to use such knowledge." That was an understatement; he would never knowingly go near a wild dragon without defensive magic-and with that magic he would not have to slay it. "But what is this favor?"

  Gawain frowned. "I prefer to provide more background first, lest you be unable to accept the request."

  Norton was growing quite curious about this. The ghost was a tough, direct sort, with quite alien values, but he was also a gentleman by his own reckoning. Why was he being so circumspect about this? "By all means, sir."

  "When I died, I had amassed a fair fortune, in addition to my inheritance," the ghost continued. "Actually, the inheritance has not yet come down to me, as my father lives, but I am the only heir. It is important that the estate remain in the family. Therefore, my surviving family arranged for a ghost marriage. That is, they married me to an excellent and healthy young woman of proper lineage who—"

  "Pardon," Norton said. "Forgive the interruption, but you have lost me. How can a ghost marry?"

  Gawain smiled. "Yes, I thought that would throw you. It threw me, first blush. It is a device used when a noble family wishes to preserve its line—when the heir is defunct. They marry the ghost to a suitable girl—one he would have approved of in life—who then bears his heir."

  "But—"