When he was lively enough to parley, the mayor of the town faced him. “Why did you make war on our peaceful town?”

  “Peaceful?” the sea-king scoffed. “You made war on us first in your greed. Once we had vast herds of murex snails; we scarcely minded if you milked them for dye. Now, not content with a little dye, you raid the herds, taking young and old snails away by the dozens, by the hundreds, leaving a wasteland behind. Your trading ships dump offal that fouls our gardens, so noxious blooms grow in the place of good kelp. Did you expect us not to defend our land?”

  “How could we mean war when none of us knew you existed?” the mayor said. “Only now that we meet face to face can we make treaties with you.”

  “We solemnized a treaty with your people long ago,” the sea-king said, “in the time of my ancestor, Nereida the Wise. How can you have forgotten?”

  “Perhaps our memories are shorter than yours. The chronicles of this town go back two centuries with no word of your people. In all that time, why have you not spoken to us?”

  “You see what it costs me to be on land,” the sea-king said. “Nereida the Wise gave your ancestors an enchanted image to speak to our people from afar, but you kept it poorly, and it no longer speaks.”

  “You mean...” the troubadour began.

  But one of Loïsette’s serving-women interrupted. “The mermaid statue in the square! My grandmother told me that long ago it used to speak with a voice of the sea. I thought it was just a story.”

  “It was a work of the highest magical craft, and to restore it will be an arduous task. If I spend my strength on this wizardry, will you parley honestly with us?”

  “I will lend my strength to the spell if I can,” I told him, “though I am still a novice enchantress.”

  “Be careful what you promise,” the sea-king said. “You would have to come under the sea with me, trusting to my breathing charms to keep you alive. Do you dare?”

  “If you’ll teach me about those charms, it will be the wonder of a lifetime,” I said.

  “You may not be ready to learn, dry-foot enchantress,” he said, “but what I can, I shall teach you.”

  “I’ll go too,” Ursula put in, a touch too eagerly. “Someone has to guard Isabeau.”

  The sea-king smiled sardonically. “How will you guard her in my kingdom, where you needed protection yourself? But come, and welcome, Maid Ursula, if your venturesome spirit draws you there. Though need, not love, made me seek you, my words were not far from the truth: I could easily come to love you, bright heroine of the strand between the dry land and the sea.”

  I scanned Ursula’s face anxiously. She was safe from glamour, but curiosity, attraction, or love might draw her to him nonetheless. She and the sea-king might find they had much in common, with their poetic flights of fancy and their love of the ocean. Would she leave me for this charmer from the sea?

  But she laughed him off. “You and your flattering lies! As if I could be charmed by you twice, after that glamour you cast on me.”

  I lowered my eyes, afraid to look her too closely in the face. The barb in her words was not meant for me, but it stung me nonetheless. I, too, had tried to englamour Ursula at our first meeting. And yet she had forgiven me, become my steadfast friend: a gift I had not earned, but gratefully accepted. I drew a green thread from my pouch and began embroidering a green ribbon of clear seaweed near the hem of my gown: an emblem of Ursula’s forthrightness, a safeguard against deception, a promise that our friendship would survive whatever changes our sea-journey might work on us.

  Haunted Book Nook

  by Margaret L. Carter

  Traditional sword and sorcery fantasy does not often feature librarians, and yet for most of us, librarians have been our childhood guides to adventure and magic, later becoming our teachers and friends. The internet is a marvellous tool (for discovering disinformation as well as factual knowledge), but most writers I know consider research librarians to be heroes in the truest sense: rescuers, navigators, keepers of the flame of history, preservers of lore, and most of all, the folks who really do know where all the bodies are buried.

  Reading Dracula at the age of twelve ignited Margaret L. Carter’s interest in a wide range of speculative fiction and inspired her to become a writer. Vampires, however, have always remained close to her heart. Her work on vampirism in literature includes Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics, The Vampire in Literature: A Critical Bibliography, and Different Blood: The Vampire As Alien. She holds a PhD in English, and her dissertation contained a chapter on Dracula. In fiction, she has written horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance. Recent publications include Crimson Dreams (vampire romance), Demon’s Fall (paranormal romance novella), Heart’s Desires and Dark Embraces (story collection, fantasy and paranormal romance), and Legacy of Magic (sword and sorcery, in collaboration with her husband, Leslie Roy Carter). A humorous paranormal romance novella, “Yokai Magic,” drawing upon Japanese folklore, is forthcoming. Margaret has had stories in previous Sword and Sorceress and Darkover anthologies. She and her husband, a retired naval officer, live in Maryland and have four sons, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a St. Bernard, and two cats. Please visit her website, Carter’s Crypt: http://www.margaretlcarter.com.

  “Have you seen Joris Beechtree’s Codex of Substance and Dissolution? It’s not on the shelf.”

  “No, ma’am.” Fenice’s student assistant, Milo, paused in the doorway between the anteroom and the inner chamber of the Rare Books Archive.

  Fenice waved away the winged pen flitting in circles above her desk, then dodged as a glass paperweight in the shape of a cat leaped and batted at the pen. “Not that I’m in any hurry to de-animate these blasted things, but I’d like to know what I did wrong, and I’ve already looked through most of the other relevant texts.”

  Milo trundled a cart full of volumes over to a bookcase and began shelving them. “How many have gone missing now? Three?”

  “Four, counting Beechtree’s.” With a sigh, she scanned the high shelves that surrounded her, illuminated by the clear, warm glow of the perpetual-light globe on the ceiling. After only a month as curator of rare books in the university library, she’d become attached to this collection of scrolls and tomes and offended by any disturbance of its serene order. “Magistra Sylvaine will be inspecting us in just five days. I shudder to think how she’ll react if she doesn’t find everything where it belongs.” The head librarian had a reputation for strictness. Fenice imagined herself summarily demoted to her former job in the open stacks.

  A shy smile brightened Milo’s plump face. “Maybe the ghost took them.”

  “What ghost?” She picked up the glass cat, now tugging on her braid, and moved it to the far end of the wide desk. A few days earlier, she’d tried a spell to imbue an ordinary pen with an endless supply of ink. She’d succeeded in making an implement that would never need refilling, but in the process she had bestowed wings and the power of flight upon it. Furthermore, the animation spell had splashed over onto the cat paperweight.

  “Some people say this room’s haunted.” He nodded toward the anteroom, presently unoccupied. “Students reading in there have felt cold spots. Little things disappear, like pens, ink, and paper. No books until recently, as far as I’ve heard.”

  Fenice paused to cast a temporary magic-dampening spell on the flying pen. It dropped to the desk, and she grabbed it. “Got you!” She stuffed it into a drawer, which rattled with the flutter of wings. “Has anybody actually seen things disappearing?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then I think drafts and carelessness sound more likely than a ghost.” Not that ghosts didn’t exist, but they were uncommon enough that she didn’t expect to meet one. “It would need an anchor, either its own body or a significant object. As far as I know, the collection doesn’t include any cursed tomes that might drag restless spirits along with them.”

  “We haven’t acquired anything like that since I started working in here,” Milo said, “and that was four months before you took over. But what about the vanishing books?” He shelved a couple more volumes and turned to face her, leaning against the cart. “Could anybody have stolen them?”

  “I don’t see how. Not if you’ve been doing your job whenever we let scholars in here.”

  At her mock glare, he shook his head. “I never leave them alone with the books.”

  She grinned. “Relax, I know you don’t. And nobody has keys to this suite except Magistra Sylvaine and me.”

  “Unlocking spells wouldn’t work, would they?” he asked, although he must know the answer already.

  “The doors are warded against that kind of magic.”

  He paused with a scroll in hand. “The Codex of Substance and Dissolution was in its place late yesterday before we left. I noticed it when I re-shelved Beechtree’s second volume.”

  “So it vanished overnight.” She plucked her braid from the glass cat’s paws again. “Maybe I should keep watch tonight in case another book disappears. I might see how it’s happening.” The cat leaped off the desk—fortunately, the animation magic had also made the paperweight unbreakable—and stalked over to paw at the base of a huge painting that covered most of a wall. Larger than life in garishly bright colors, it depicted a gigantic figure of Wisdom looming over the university to lavish her gifts on it. In that pose, the goddess’s stance and expression looked more menacing than benevolent. Not for the first time, Fenice wondered why the picture occupied space that could have been used for more bookshelves.

  Fumbling an armful of scrolls and catching them just in time, Milo said, “Let me help. I’d hate to miss a chance to see the ghost in action.”

  “Sure, why not? Meet me here an hour after sunset.” She laughed. “Don’t get your hopes up about the ghost, though. Why would any departed spirit want to haunt this place?”

  ~o0o~

  That evening Fenice and Milo met in the deserted hall outside the Rare Books Archive. After unlocking the outer door to the suite, she cast invisibility spells on her assistant and herself. Milo’s clothes rustled as if he were flapping his arms. “Wow,” he whispered. “This feels weird.”

  “You’ll get used to it.” She groped for the doorknob and let the two of them into the anteroom, then shut the door behind them. Although the lamps on the reading desks had been extinguished for the night, a smaller, dimmer version of the ceiling globe in the book vault allowed them to see their way to the inner portal. They stepped inside and closed that door, too. “Nobody here,” she said. “My first guess would be that somebody is filching objects by long-distance teleportation, but the wards should prevent that.”

  Milo bumped into her and murmured an apology. “However they’re doing it, I wonder why they’re taking ink and stuff like that. Valuable books, I can understand.”

  She felt around until she could clasp one of his hands, clammy to her touch. She guided him to the corner next to the oversized painting and pulled him down beside her. “We’ll be out of the way here in case a flesh-and-blood person shows up. We don’t want them to trip over us. Now we should stay quiet.”

  A tedious stretch of time followed. In the windowless room, no sounds broke the stillness except the flutter of the pen in the drawer and the skittering of the glass cat’s paws. After a while, her legs and rear ached from sitting on the hardwood floor. She cautiously shifted position to ease cramps and heard muted scrapings and rustlings as her assistant probably did the same. Just when she wondered whether they’d waited long enough and ought to give up until the following night, a chill crept over her. The next moment, the temperature of the air fell from its usual dry coolness to the cold of a bleak autumn day.

  Milo gasped. Fenice squeezed his hand to remind him of the need for silence. Directly across from them, several books in the center of a shelf halfway up began quivering. After a few seconds, one of them detached itself from its place and floated across the room toward the picture. About an arm’s length from the wall, the volume blinked out of existence, or so it appeared.

  Fenice tiptoed to the spot where they’d last seen it and waved her arm around. Nothing. She pronounced the incantation to negate the invisibility spell on Milo and herself. If anyone else had been lurking unseen in the room with them, he or she would have reappeared, too. Nobody did.

  “What now?” he asked. “Are you going to report this to Magistra Sylvaine?”

  “Not until we have something more definite to report.” She cringed at the thought of trying to convince the head librarian that a restless spirit, rather than carelessness on Fenice’s part, had caused the disappearance of the books. She led the way to the exit. “I have an idea of what to do next, but I’ll need to make some preparations first.” As they walked across the inner chamber to the reading room, she added, “Sorry for my remarks about your ghost theory. Maybe there actually is one. But why?” She locked the outer door and pocketed the key. “Well, there’s one obvious way to find out why this place is haunted—if it is—try speaking with the hypothetical spirit. We’ll do it here tomorrow after closing time.”

  ~o0o~

  As soon as the last student left on the following evening, Fenice cleared off her desk and opened the volume where she’d found a simple spell for communicating with the dead. With Milo checking her work, she chalked the necessary diagram on the bare wood. According to this grimoire, by a former Professor of Divination at the university, the spell posed no danger as long as the user followed the precise formula. After drawing the symbols and closing the circle, she spread her hands to touch Milo’s fingertips as well as the outer edges of the diagram, and they began the prescribed chant while the glass cat frisked around the hems of their robes.

  As they intoned the final syllable, the air turned frigid again. “Is anyone here?” she asked, fighting the irrational impulse to whisper. A stack of paper she’d shifted from the desk to the floor rippled. “Who are you?”

  She expected a faint moan in reply, perhaps accompanied by a wisp of ectoplasm. Instead, the top desk drawer flew open, and the winged pen fluttered out. A sheet of paper floated onto the desk. The pen landed on it and wrote, “Lena Goldenleaf.”

  Fenice gulped and forced her voice to remain calm. “Have you been taking books from the shelves?”

  The pen scrawled, “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Need them for my thesis. I’m testing a new method of dematerialization. Got to hurry up and finish my research. Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m the librarian in charge of this collection. It’s my job to care for those volumes.”

  “I would never do anything to damage the books.” An angry-looking splash of ink punctuated the sentence.

  Fenice and Milo exchanged glances. “Then where are they?” she asked.

  “With me. Don’t worry, they’re safe.”

  “Um…where are you?”

  “Right here.”

  Rather than pursue this less-than-informative answer, Fenice asked, “Why did you suddenly start, uh, borrowing books?”

  “Not sure what happened.” The ink mark trailed into a wavy scrawl before resuming legible script. “Something hit me out of nowhere. I realized I’d been getting fuzzy-minded, not focusing very well lately. I want to get my thesis published, so I can’t waste any more time.”

  Fenice injected a stern note into her voice. “As curator of rare books in this library, I can’t have you taking volumes off the shelves without permission. Will you promise not to do that again?”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking straight. I promise. Now I’ve got everything I need anyway.” The pen extruded another random scribble, followed by, “No time to talk, must get back to work.”

  No matter how insistently Fenice urged the spirit to communicate further, no more writing appeared. The air temperature warmed to normal. She erased one line to deactivate the spell circle but left the rest intact for later use.

  Milo rubbed his hands together as if to massage away the residual chill. “Do you get the feeling she doesn’t know she’s dead?”

  Fenice nodded. “I’ve heard that’s not uncommon. I wouldn’t be surprised if my animation spell accidentally improved that fuzzy focus she mentioned, which is why the thefts escalated from writing supplies to reference books.” She covered the diagram with a protective sheet of paper weighted down by a couple of encyclopedia volumes. Snagging the winged pen, she stuffed it into the drawer. “Tomorrow, go over to the student records office and see what you can dig up on Lena Goldenleaf. Then we’ll try to get in touch with her again.”

  ~o0o~

  It was almost noon when Milo showed up the next day. After apologizing for his tardiness, he said, “Even with a search cantrip keyed to her name, finding Lena took way longer than I expected. She was buried—sorry, bad word choice—in the old files boxed in a back room. It turns out she should have graduated a hundred and fifty-nine years ago.”

  Fenice absently pulled her braid away from the glass cat nibbling on it. “Should have?”

  “She dropped out in her senior year, or at least that’s what it says at the end of her file. It seems she left for midwinter break and never came back.”

  Fenice frowned. “Didn’t the administration check with her family when she didn’t show up?”

  “She didn’t seem to have one. The file mentions that her parents died in her second year, and otherwise there’s no next of kin listed,” he said. “She was over twenty-one when she dropped out, vanished, whatever, so I guess the university didn’t see a need to track her down.”

  “What do you want to bet she never left?” After making sure no students were waiting in the anteroom, Fenice hung the “Closed” sign on the outer door and locked it. She shifted the animated paperweight from the desk to the floor, released the flying pen from the drawer, got out a fresh sheet of paper, and uncovered the spell diagram. A quickly sketched chalk line reactivated it. Seated across from each other, touching the edges of the circle and each other’s fingers, she and Milo again recited the incantation for speaking with the dead.