Name: The Pyramid of Krakow
ISBN: 9780765384423

Michael Swanwick

The Wizard has swallowed more and more of Europe--and inside his shuttered realm are magic and mass death. The Pyramid of Krakow is the sixth of Michael Swanwick's "Mongolian Wizard" tales. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Tor.Com Short Story

The Pyramid of Krakow

Sarah Escorsa

Newsflash: there is a pyramid in this story. I kid you not. It's in Krakow, too. And not in Krakow, Egypt either. (Because yes, there is a town called Krakow in Egypt. Of course there is.) It's in Good Old Krakow, Poland. Ah, Krakow. Such a enchanting, welcoming, immaculately unpolluted city:

“Through the coach windows flooded an effluvium of misery and sickness, of excreta and vomit and pus, overlaid with coal smoke strongly flavored with the same unidentifiable smell that in lesser concentration permeated the air of Krakow.”



Oh yeah, I bet Smelly Susie here feels right at home in Good Old Krakow.

So. This delightful little story is probably the most deliciously bleakest in the series so far. Which is quite, um, delicious and stuff. The sad thing is, I can’t tell you why it’s deliciously bleak. Because spoiler spoiler spoiler, obviously. All you need to know is that my yummy boyfriend Ritter of the Werewolf Corps (in case you were wondering, no, the werewolf is not him. Ha) gets yummiliciously yummier with every instalment. Okay, so he can be as ridiculously naïve as a newborn barnacle sometimes:

“We are talking about Europe, after all, not some benighted heathen continent. Necromancy and human sacrifice! Those are exactly the sorts of slanders a nation levels against its enemy as propaganda. We may be at war, but we are still civilized peoples—and that includes the Russians.”

Told you my boyfriend could be innocently ignorant as fish sometimes. I mean, the Russians? Civilized people? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *Waves at The Overlord*

Oh, and by the way: post-spoiler spoiler alert and stuff. Yeah, sorry about that. (view spoiler)[

 

 (hide spoiler)] To think I didn’t want to spoil things for you, but did anyway. Sorry, what? You missed the spoilery bit, you say? You mean, the part about necromancy and human sacrifice? Oh, good. I’m so glad you won’t find out about it until you read the story. It would have considerably lessened your enjoyment of it, methinks. So phew and stuff.

Anything else to report? Why yes, as a matter of shrimp. My boyfriend Ritter is a hard case. Pretty sure Doolittle would love having him as one of his unwilling patients.

“Can you follow my lead or must I carry you?” Ritter was a Teuton, an officer, and of noble blood to boot. He forced himself to hold his head high. “Pain is of no significance to me.”

At which the resident Damsel in No Bloody Shrimping Distress went all:

 

The end and stuff.

➽ The stories in this series are Slightly Very Entertaining (SVE™). The stories in this series are Super Extra Short (SES™). The stories in this series are Super Extra Free (SEF™). This particular story is SUPER EXTRA HERE (SEH™). So read it and stuff.

· Story #1: The Mongolian Wizard ★★★★
· Story #2: The Fire Gown ★★★★
· Story #3: Day of the Kraken ★★★★
· Story #4: House of Dreams ★★★★
· Story #5: The Night of the Salamander ★★★★
· Story #7: The Phantom in the Maze ★★★★
· Story #8: Murder in the Spook House ★★★★
· Story #9: The New Prometheus ★★★

The Pyramid of Krakow A Tor.Com Short Story