IGMS Issue 6

  Issue 6 - October 2007

  http://www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com

  Copyright © 2007 Hatrack River Enterprises

  Table of Contents - Issue 6 - October 2007

  * * *

  Night of Falling Stars

  by Steven Savile

  How Peacefully the Desert Sleeps

  by Brad Beaulieu

  Great Mother, Great Father

  by William Saxton

  In The Beginning, Nothing Lasts

  by Mike Strahan

  The Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race

  by Cat Rambo

  The Price of Love

  by Alan Schoolcraft

  A Spear Through the Heart

  by Cherith Baldry

  Ender's Stocking

  by Orson Scott Card

  Lost and Found

  by David Lubar

  This is Only a Test

  by David Lubar

  InterGalactic Interview With Robert J. Sawyer

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  Night of Falling Stars

  by Steven Savile

  Artwork by Brian Hailes

  * * *

  Crowscrest was made up of six peaks that fell away sharply, diving five hundred feet down into the green-blue of the placid sea. Atop one of its cliffs sat Jayant Ash, cross-legged, watching the waves roll in. Gulls banked and circled overhead, scanning the water for scraps thrown up by the current. The sea's salty tang bit in Ash's throat, and day gradually ceded the sky to night, the red sky bleeding to death for another day.

  Ash always came to the white cliffs to lose himself -- and Nell always laughed at him for doing so. A soldier with the soul of a poet, she called him. She didn't understand that it came with the blood. To her life was simple: the things that had to be done were done, no fuss, no bother. Nell didn't walk with death day after day -- though she frequently reminded Ash that the uncertainty and the endless waiting within death's shadow were no better. Both marked the spirit.

  Ash loved her as best he could; they both knew that. But there were times like today when he wished he could be one with the water, a small wave rolling toward the shore, breaking on the rocks and being absorbed again into the anonymity of the sea, only do it again, over and over. Not for the first time, he found himself watching the white caps and wondering about the metaphysical importance of what he was watching: the endless cycle of death and rebirth being played out by even the simplest wave. Did it mirror the cycle of the soul? Were soldiers born again to serve and die and serve and die and serve?

  Ash watched the waves and the moonlight's rippling shadow on them. Something was different about this night. The sea was agitated. Restless.

  The gulls sensed the tremors first; their squalling grew more urgent, their circling flight more and more erratic as they struggled to ride the rising wind. Ash followed the patterns made by their wings without understanding what he was seeing or what it meant.

  A moment later he felt the earth answer the gulls' cries, a violent shiver that seemed to cause the dirt and stone to ripple beneath his feet. It was the most peculiar sensation, a betrayal of the senses that transformed the solidity of the ground into a continuation of the rippling, crashing waves.

  Ash scrambled away from the cliff's edge for fear it might buckle so much that it slipped away from the headland and fell beneath the waves. His fear was heightened by the sudden tortured shriek that emerged from the belly of the earth itself. He had heard nothing like it in his life. It was, Jayant Ash thought sickly, as though he was listening to the death rattle of the ground beneath his feet.

  Above him the first star fell, trailing a tail of silver in the night sky. Another and another followed, and then more, streaking the sky like the moon's tears of grief for a dying earth. The sight stole his breath away. So bright were the falling stars they transformed dusk to dawn, spreading molten silver from horizon to horizon. It was as though the gods had cut their purses' strings and emptied them out across the heavens.

  He staggered back further from the edge, his gaze torn between the roiling sea and the bleeding, star-streaked sky. Whatever was happening in the sky was having an effect on the sea. The waters churned violently, bubbling and frothing as the tidal pull drew it lower and lower.

  Another lurch of the earth had Ash on his knees. Disbelieving his eyes, Ash followed the waves; instead of crashing into the shore, they retreated. It was a giant wave rearing up, every bit a match for the shadow of Crowscrest. Ash stared in mute horror as it continued to swell and swell, only to come crashing back to shore, hammering the high cliffs.

  Then, with another tortured scream from the earth, something tore free.

  The horizon buckled, throwing the sea into turmoil. The water boiled, steam hissing into white wraiths that coiled up to meet the streams of silver as the first seaweed and slime-crusted spire of stone pierced the blue-green waters.

  Ash watched in wonder as seven fingers of stone clawed their way out of the depths. Both land and sea trembled as a drowned city was born again beneath the pall of Crowscrest. The spires were twisted, their majesty corroded by the sea. Foam and sea-scum lapped at the cracked and broken stones. Ash remained on his knees, watching the sea part to reveal a causeway of neatly laid octagonal stones wide enough for three men to ride abreast. The causeway ran from the base of Crowscrest to a huge portal with rotten ironwood doors pitted with barnacles.

  He didn't dare stand until every spire and every wall had risen. Only then could he see that it was a citadel rather than a city; not that the difference made its return any less miraculous or terrifying. Beneath the spires the seabed rock and the citadel's white stone fused as though the emergent edifice were nothing more than another species of barnacle clinging limpet-like to the jagged rocks.

  Several of the spires were twisted around on themselves; sections of others were precariously balanced. Pustules of oil-filled seaweed and clam-like shells pitted the stony facade. The water churned at its base, licking up over the causeway and around the green-slick foundations of the crumbling tower.

  Then one by one peculiar blue lights glimmered into existence along the strand of sand and smooth-sided pebbles. Ash watched, but the lights did not move.

  Ash was torn between competing impulses; to run toward the thing that had just burst forth from the sea or to run away from it, toward help and people that needed to know what he had witnessed. He had a duty toward them. But he had no blade and no armor. To charge in blindly, ill-equipped to defend himself, was neither wise nor heroic, it was suicide.

  However, there was a darkness about the place -- a wrongness -- that put a chill deep in Jayant Ash's heart.

  That chill convinced him. A soldier lived and died by his instincts. And those instincts had him making his way slowly down to the beach and toward the strange blue lights. He picked his way carefully down the cliff, skidding and sliding despite his caution, until he reached the bottom.

  Closer, the lights were more like nimbus than flame. Hundreds of them lined the sand, each facing the newly-risen citadel. They stood between him and the ruin. He had to walk between them if he hoped to enter. Ash moved up beside the nearest of the lights. Shaped vaguely like a man, of like height and form, it bore no features, nor anything resembling them. He reached out tentatively, touching it with his fingers. A thrill of energy, vibrant and full of life, chased up his arm. He maintained the contact, feeling the warmth emanating from the light's core.

  Ash moved from light to light. They were all the same, almost. The energies he felt coming off them varied, but each shared the same warmth and vitality. Though he half expected them to, none moved to stop him as he walked the causeway up to the ironwood gates of the citadel.

  The main gates hung drunkenly on corroded hinges. He
reached out, placing his palm flat against the wooden door. It felt like stone to the touch, yet the slightest pressure was enough to disturb its balance. The huge door seemed to shiver for a moment, then fell backwards, agonizingly slowly. It crashed to the courtyard's stone floor, raising a cacophony even as the flotsam settled. Cracks splintered through the wood as it came apart at the grain, echoes reverberating up and down the walls of the huge stone gate. For one sickening moment he thought the entire arch was going to collapse, burying him. Without thinking, he braced the base of the arch with his back. But the keystone held.

  Ash closed his eyes and offered hurried thanks to Mashan the Maker.

  As he came away from the stone arch, a voice rang out with sudden and shocking clarity: Release me! And for the moment between breaths the imperative burned within him, release me. Then the contact with the crumbling stone was broken and it was gone.

  The bluish lights edged closer to Ash, like a snare tightening around the citadel, drawn in by the voice still ringing in his ears.

  Release me!

  Jayant Ash turned tail and ran back toward Kalatha and the Rector's palace, his head spinning with dire thoughts and remarkable visions.

  Kalatha, the second of the four port cities, was a monument to the efficacy of need and desire. Merchants plying the Pearl Route were pandered to with bath houses. Fine silks and coarser fabrics adorned the back room's of tailors willing to cut cloth to the purse as well as the figure.

  The buildings within the protective city wall, however, could not be considered lavish. Indeed street after street, even in the more affluent areas, saw the same white stone and green weathered shutters battling the noon sun. The facades were sterile and functional, more akin to fortifications than abodes. Only here and there could one find flourishes of personality -- botanical gardens cultivating rare and precious blossoms fighting a losing battle against the fierce heat. Stubborn vines and climbers picked away at the white stones, their occasional bursts of color adding both practical shade and a flamboyant touch.

  Only the Avenue of Princesses, where flesh and companionship were available for the right coin, was remarkable for its blossoms. There and only there, flowers of every color remained in bloom throughout the year, sustained by expensive botanical alchemy. The heady fragrances of so many flowers masked the musk of coupling.

  Smoking rooms, offices of weight and measure, and actuaries lined the narrow streets leading up to summits where the money liked to play. Commoners went down to the dockside for their amusements.

  The hovels around the docks were not only the poorest quarter of the city, they were also the most pungent. Ramshackle shanties cluttered the jetties where the workers needed them, their own seedy industries developing around the floating fish market dockside hussies, alehouses, and smokeries all nestle side by side with the old trades. Leather-skinned fish wives darned the nets, getting one more trawl out of them. Cockles and muscles, flat fish and fragrant fillets lay on the cobbles beside the gathered nets.

  There was a convenience to this arrangement, keeping unpleasant aromas away from the more respectable parts of the city -- like the Rector's palace and the temples. It was the best part of a league from Crowscrest to the Rector's palace on Judicar's Hill. Ash ran all the way.

  And when he told his story of blue ghosts standing sentinel on the beach, guarding a citadel risen from the waves on a spur of rock, and voices demanding freedom, his swordbrothers laughed at him.

  "Too much of Malister's Malt," mocked Levant Galen. Ash and Levant were both Rector's Men, answerable only to Gerant, the Rector's right hand. There were seven Rector's Men serving under Gerant, though the idea of them being the Rector's Men was misleading; in truth they were bonded to his lady.

  Levant had his blade, the Kinslayer, across his knee, and was honing it with a whetstone and an oily rag. His mawkish face split into a short-lived grin. "A citadel rose out of the sea? Voices in your head demanding freedom? Do you seriously expect us to swallow that? Pashan's balls, I know you too well to fall for your tall tales, Ash." Levant smoothed the excess oil off the blade's open face. "The more outrageous the lie, the more willingly people will swallow it; isn't that the gospel you preach?"

  Levant's words were harsh but fair. Ash had said that, and more than once. But this time -- the irony of the protestation had him bark a sharp laugh -- this time he needed the Rector's Men to believe him.

  Levant turned the sword on his knee, working the other side of the blade. Ash had no liking for the Kinslayer, and not merely because of its name. There was something about the blade that set his flesh creeping the only time he had laid a hand upon it.

  Few blades were named, but those that were had earned their titles, none more so than the Kinslayer. It was a traitorous blade. If Levant was to be believed, the Kinslayer had claimed the blood of three uncles and no less than seven of their swordbrothers -- and caused who knew how many chapters of grief before that -- before falling into his father's hand. The old man had refused to lift it again after that day: that was his response to the supposed curse. It was said that the owner and the blade were fated, intertwined once the blade bonded to his soul. The stories also said that if a man wielded the sword even once, he would one day use the Kinslayer to kill those closest to him, then fall victim to the blade himself.

  Levant's father choose to interpret that to mean that if he never used the blade, he would never die. So he treated the blade reverently, worshipfully, as though by some enchantment it truly could offer the boon of immortality. Instead of wearing it at his hip he had it mounted above the fire pit in the family home.

  On the eve of his coming of age, Levant had taken it down from where it rested, claiming it as his birthright. "I will prove the curse a lie once and for all," he told his mother. "I shall wear it in battle and make father proud. He must know, surely, that I would never harm him. That he is safe because there is no curse."

  His mother had begged him not to take the sword. There had been no tears, no admonishments, just a heartfelt plea, as though she knew the curse had already wormed its way into her boy, and with him as its instrument it would claim more souls.

  With the arrogance of youth, he ignored her.

  However, upon discovering the Kinslayer gone from its mount, Levant's father had flown at him in a rage, all reason gone from his brittle frame. He threw himself at his youngest son, tooth and claw. Levant merely tried to defend himself, instinctively raising his hands. His deranged father fell upon the blade -- all the way to the hilt -- and was dead before their lips kissed, so close was he when the life left him.

  His father's death had marked Levant, and rather than disproving the curse, it cemented his fear of it. He sincerely believed the Kinslayer earned its name over and over for each wielder, and that one day he would strike down his own swordbrothers, driven mad by the blade that would then be turned on him - just as it had been with his father, his uncles, their swordbrothers, and all those who had ever dared to wield the accursed blade.

  Yet he refused to relinquish it, ensnared in the duality of his father's interpretation of the curse. So long as he wielded the blade he believed himself invulnerable, immortal, knowing that until it tasted kins' blood, the blade would protect him. If he never fed it the blood of kin, it would never turn on him.

  "But Levant . . ." Ash began. But he didn't know what to say. If he couldn't convince his best friend, how could he hope to sway Gerant?

  Release me!

  Ash flinched against the sheer forcefulness of the words inside his head.

  "Something isn't right, Levant. It's getting stronger. I can't resist it forever."

  "Then go find Naru and beg him to unravel your mind. It isn't as though we'd be losing much."

  Where Gerant was the Rector's right, Ashrak Naru -- the raveller -- was his left. More sinister by far, practicing hidden arts, Ash had never felt comfortable in the raveller's company.

  But Ash did not need to feel comfortable, he needed to be believ
ed, and though Levant was being factitious, Naru was exactly who he needed to talk to.

  "Just make sure that damned blade of yours is sharp if you're the one standing next to me when Gerant sends us there," Ash said.

  "Stop spouting rubbish," Levant replied, twisting the oily rag into a knot. With a flick of the wrist he snapped it at Ash's legs, snorting, "Giant castles rising up out of the sea . . . Do yourself a favor and don't go trying this one out on Efrem or Raz, they'll have a field day with it."

  Ash had no interest in the fish market or the abundant hawkers along the quayside. Women of all shade, shape, and size offered pleasures they swore no man could imagine. Ash walked by, untempted.

  Shortly he found the raveller dragging his iron chain through the crowded markets by the floating docks. A big man seemed to be pleading with the raveller or whatever ghosts the Ashrak Naru had flensed from his damaged soul.

  Despite the rags binding his blind eyes, Naru turned to face Ash as he ran into the market. Smells assailed from every side, the fragrances of humanity: sweat, cloying perfumes, and bodily fluids. Naru stood in the center of it, head thrown back, drinking it in. The rusted chain that hung from his left wrist jerked and twisted lightly, blue sparks flowing from the thick vein at his wrist. A Rowan staff bore most of his weight.

  Does it please you to stare at my deformity? The raveller's voice rasped inside Ash's skull. You do it well. Are you really that simple?

  "Come with me, raveller."

  I do not answer to your whims, swordsman. Perhaps I am not finished here.

  "The dead you so love have left this place, Naru. Your chain no longer dances with their energy."

  Perhaps you are no fool after all. Yes, the restless dead have left this place, and he, Naru crooked his head toward the man who appeared to be clutching at closed doors, is alone with the one ghost he would never willingly part with. So, I will come. Lead me where you will; this once I will follow. But know that I am not the only one who follows. Violent shades of death walk in your wake.