In celebration of the imminent release of Peter S. Beagle’s THE OVERNEATH, Tachyon presents glimpses from some of the volume’s magnificent tales.

Schmendrick
Alone

by Peter S. Beagle

When
the door closed behind him with, as always, never a click of the lock
nor any crack or separation where it merged into the hillside,
Schmendrick stood facing it for some while. “Well,” he said, and,
by and by, “Well” again. He shook his head slowly, as though to
quiet the ringing of Nikos’s somber final words to him. “I
tremble at your doom …” He had always known the old wizard as a
plainspoken man, far less given to darkly mystic utterances than the
general run of his colleagues … but
why did he say that?

The
noon sun was high, and the day fair, but the tall, thin young man
shivered in a cold he had never known, even as the born foreigner in
a family he had never truly belonged to for a single day in his
nineteen years. Only a certain gawky dignity kept him from banging
frantically on the door he could no longer see, begging to be let
through, to be allowed home. Don’t
be more of a fool than he already thinks you are. There
were no tears in his eyes, but they hurt all the same.

Reaching
back to settle his knapsack more firmly on his shoulders, his hand
encountered a strange other hand, already immersed to the wrist among
his belongings. Dazed and lonely as he was, he still gripped the
intruder hard enough to fetch a yelp from its owner as he turned to
confront him. Deepening his voice—which had been late in breaking,
adding one more target for his three brothers’ mimicry—he
demanded, “What do you think you are doing, fellow?”

A
weedy man of indeterminate years, with a pumpkin-orange face under
thinning grayish hair—gaped back at him in genuine, if momentary,
disbelief. “What do you think
I’m doing? I’m picking your pack, stealing your
every cherished possession. Or I would have been, if age had not
robbed me of my skill, as I would have robbed you of whatever you’ve
got in there that smells like goat cheese. Which you had better eat
quickly, by the way, for it will be a public menace in two days’
time.” As though recalling an interrupted task, he dropped to his
knees, clasping his hands in piteous supplication. “Pity, oh, pity,
gentle lord, for a harmless, helpless, obsolete old thief, with no
family, no morals—and now without the one talent that has served
these many years to keep his skin and bones from abandoning him
altogether in this heartless world. Pity,
I pray you!”

Schmendrick
drew himself up, puffing his chest out just a bit and smoothing his
blue cloak—Nikos’s parting gift, along with a strange,
many-pointed hat—about himself. “Wretch, do you not realize that
I am a mighty and powerful wizard? I sensed your sneaking approach
while you were yet making up your mind whether to rob me or no. And
now I
am the one debating whether to turn you into toad,
worm, or fire-dwelling salamander.” He narrowed his eyes, as he had
seen Nikos do on certain occasions, none of which he wanted to
remember. “Peradventure, out of kindness, I should leave the choice
to you, hey? How like you that,
Master Thief?”

The
pack-picker howled even louder. “Mercy, great lord! I had no idea .
. . I didn’t know … I would never
…” He went on in that vein long enough that Schmendrick began
to glance back toward Nikos’s house, in some anxiety that the old
wizard might be stirred to open his door a second time and instantly
know what Schmendrick and the thief both knew themselves: that it had
been pure chance and blind luck that had alerted the innocent prey to
the predator’s intent. My
first hour in the great world, and at this rate
I may not make sundown.

For more info on THE OVERNEATH, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story