Beneath Ceaseless Skies #142, Special Double-Issue for BCS Science-Fantasy Month 2 Read online

  She can feel the demon watching her, and she reaches out to it, wrapping herself around its bright and rotting core, extending herself through its awareness of the wasteland. In its corruption it has woven itself through the vast desert that surrounds them, a net snarled over the extent of its domain. She feels its surprise, the momentary flash of something like distress as it realizes how closely she has tied them together, the stillness that follows.

  It was like this when I was born, says the demon, and its voice is closer, now, as if it is speaking directly into her ear. The endless open sky over the desert.

  And it shows her, only a glimpse: the little settlement huddled in the canyon’s shade; the tiny stream cherished, protected. The rough-hewn circle they had chiseled from the rock to contain their ambition, burnt black upon the ground in the brilliant moment of the demon’s birth.

  I called forth water from the dry and dying earth, the demon whispers in her ear, and she watches the little stream swell and grow and rush forth as the city grew up around it. I can make your people great again.

  The river surges forward in its channel, pours itself into the aqueducts and reservoirs of Nimarat, its rhythm mingling with the pounding of Doormaker’s heart and the sudden roughness of her breath. The city shines before her with the clamor and laughter of civilization, the will and fire of her people restored, reborn.

  Redeemed.

  Before her, she sees the arches of Nimarat raised proud and tall again; sees the restoration of the city, the buildings strengthened and fulfilled, the people stopping in the central square to gossip. Her grandmother’s footsteps raise the desert dust in gentle halting puffs—

  In the wizard’s school, Doormaker learned the tenets of magic, drilled into her head by straight-backed teachers. The art defines reality, they told her, and her practice underscored their words. She learned to model the mathematics of her desired outcome, the forces and energies arrayed within her mind, before she drew them bold across the world’s face.

  Stretched throughout the long drift of the demon’s decay, she can feel the slow beat of its core as clearly as if she held it within her hands; the moment-by-moment whisper of its innermost workings as if its heart were laid bare and vulnerable before her.

  Doormaker takes a long breath, steadying herself against the demon’s vision: the wide rushing river and the tall white towers and the limitless desert sky overhead.

  “My grandmother is dead,” she says, and strikes.

  * * *

  Outside, in the quiet evening air, Doormaker walks through the dead city. Its rough and broken edges are smoothed out by the starlight, peaceful in the fading light. The sweet clear air of the desert fills her lungs with its breath.

  She goes more slowly, this time, dallying in the open courtyards, running her hands over the calm and crumbling stone. She cannot raise it from death, the city of her people; must leave it behind her in the wasteland of the demon’s destruction. She is its memorial, now.

  In the outskirts of the city she finds the vulture sitting on an age-bowed wall. It is shrouded in its wings, waiting for her.

  “You came back,” it says, and the fragile starlight glints against its eye. Doormaker can hear the brittle rage in its voice, the emptiness laid raw and broken beneath its amusement. She watches it for a long time, thinking.

  “Yes,” she says at last. “I did.”

  Copyright © 2014 Rachel Sobel

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Rachel Sobel writes software by day and stories by night. Her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus, and she is a graduate of the Alpha Writing Workshop..

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  STONEBONES

  by Nathaniel Lee

  In the morning, Jenivar ran away from home. As the sun reached zenith, she walked along the Black Road, keeping her sunshade overhead. The sun was as white as a bone and bright enough to bleach the colors from everything in sight. Even the Black Road looked more like a faded gray-green in the glare.

  Jenivar kept her goggles on and watched her step. The Black Road was full of cracks and crevices, some of them several feet wide and all of them likely hiding places for rock-snakes, drackles, and leathery needlebats roosting away from the sun. To her left was the Big Glass. To her right was the Scrub. Only an idiot tried to travel any distance through either of those. Behind her was the Spine, still visible through the heat-haze. Ahead of her, somewhere out of her sight, was the Skull, and beyond that was freedom. Or destiny. It didn’t matter so much what was ahead.

  Jenivar looked over her shoulder. The rocky mound of the Spine made a gentle curve along the horizon, its two ridges—the Neck and the Tail—reaching out to embrace the small valley within, granting shade and shelter to the inhabitants. Jenivar decided that she did not like the view; it looked as though the Spine were reaching out to grasp her and pull her back in.

  By now, they’d have found the missing stores. She adjusted her goggles and hurried on.

  * * *

  It was a six-hour walk to the Skull, but that was assuming you were smart enough to go in the twilight, when the temperature was a little more bearable. Jenivar made it in seven, her skin tingling with the reflected sunlight she’d taken in, despite her poncho, sunshade, and goggles. There was a drackle still squirming on the point of her sunshade’s bayonet; she hadn’t wanted to fold the sunshade long enough to remove it. Besides, maybe someone at the Skull knew how to make drackles edible. If she could eat the omnipresent black-shelled vermin, her worries about food would be solved.

  The Skull loomed over her, twenty feet at its highest point. The eye sockets had been covered with plaster, so that the whole top half appeared smooth and unbroken. There was space up there where travelers could rent a room for the day and wait out the heat inside the cool stone. The jagged teeth, pointed and visibly serrated, had been broken at the front to allow a doorway. It was covered by a ragged curtain, weighted at the bottom to improve the seal and keep out dust and heat. The nostrils vented wisps of vapor, cold and damp air pumped up from deep underground to fill the Skull’s interior. Jenivar saw a drackle skitter out of one foot-wide opening, and she shuddered.

  Movement in the distance caught her attention. Jenivar flipped the farsight lenses down over her smoked goggles and peered through, turning the Spine from a distant speck to a sizeable lump. A dust cloud had emerged from the gap between the Neck and the Tail. It seemed that Water-Keeper Tymon—not “father,” never that—had woken up earlier than she’d thought he would. That title was half a joke; everyone at the Spine knew Jenivar had been Water-Keeper in all but name for years now. He’d sent Terk and his engine-cycle after her.

  She nodded to herself. This was not an entirely unexpected development. She had perhaps an hour before he caught up to her, allowing for the delay when he had to leave the increasingly fragmented road to get around the cracks too wide for him to roll over. She patted her thigh, where the ancient gun Groton had given her rested comfortably in its holster. The withered old historian had told her it was a genuine Knight’s weapon, from the days when the Knights had fought the dragons and won the war for humanity. Its cracked screen still flashed with a nearly full charge. Jenivar pushed the curtain aside and stepped from the baking brilliance of the day into a muggy darkness.

  The snout formed a long entranceway. There were a few small tables along the rows of stone teeth. Inside, where the dragon’s tongue would have rooted, the space opened out into a round area. Above, the roof was rickety wood, imperfectly fitted. Periodically, stone dust drizzled down from the occupants in the rooms overhead. There were more tables here, and a counter of sorts, formed from solid rock. A stairwell behind the counter led down into darkness, and Jenivar could hear the pumps working below to move the cool air up along rubber hoses affixed to the walls and ceiling.

  Jenivar pushed her goggles up and looked to the man at the counter, who was big and beefy and bald. His apron was stained, and he
stood beside three barrels and a metal trunk. He looked at Jenivar without speaking, and Jenivar returned the stare.

  Finally, he spoke. “Yeah?”

  It was more of a grunt than a greeting. Jenivar elected to take the man in stride. “Greetings, barman,” she said. “I wish to trade with you. I am a Knight on a quest, and I therefore require maps of the area and directions to the nearest marauding dragon.”

  The man sniffed and rubbed at his nose with a meaty forearm. He looked her up and down more closely, wary instead of apathetic. Eventually, he shrugged. “Got some papers. People trade ‘em sometimes. C’n let you look at ‘em and take one if you want it. Whatcha got to trade?”

  Jenivar moved to the counter and swung her pack around. She rummaged inside and retrieved a piece of paper, twisted at both ends into a wrapper. “Donnybell,” she said, shaking it so the powder inside rustled.

  The barman nodded vigorously and snatched it away. “Deal!” he said, sliding it into a pocket beneath his apron.

  “And refill my water-bags,” Jenivar added, suddenly unsure of herself. She’d known the herbs from the Spine’s gardens were valuable—the town’s main trading goods—but she had apparently underestimated the market price.

  “Sure.”

  “And a meal.”

  The barman shrugged and grinned at her. His teeth were as ill-made and broken as those of his establishment. He lugged one of the barrels onto the counter, opened the lid to show her it was truly water, and hooked the hose at the bottom onto her bags. She’d drunk far too much on the walk over.

  While the bags were refilling, he rummaged in some bins hewed out of the space below the counter and came up with a loaf of gritty bread and a strip of unspecified jerked meat. He handed over the food and Jenivar’s renewed water supply separately, using both hands for the taut bags. Everyone handled water with a touch of reverence, even Jenivar and Tymon.

  Then the barman surprised her; he pulled out a stone mug and filled it most of the way with water from the same barrel before offering it to her.

  “My name’s Huj,” he said. He met her gaze, then glanced down. “Drink’s included,” he said, reaching a hand to the lump of Donnybell in his apron pocket.

  Jenivar nodded and thanked Huj politely, as was the Knightly thing to do. She had definitely misjudged the value of the herbs she’d taken. She hoped her theft wouldn’t hurt anyone at the Spine. They’d had so much, and she’d taken so little. Was that why Terk was wasting his fuel to chase her down?

  Jenivar sat at a table in the corner by the entrance, so she was out of sight of anyone coming in from the bright, but still close enough to dash for it. The bread was impossible to eat, hard as it was, but she soaked it in the water until it softened. The water tasted of mold and moss and deep, deep caverns.

  Huj brought her a string-wrapped sheaf of yellowed, flaking documents. “Here,” he said. “This’s all I’ve got. Dunno what’s all in it. Some of ‘em got pictures. Might be maps.”

  “Thank you, sir. You are most kind.”

  He grunted. “You come up from the Spine, yeah?”

  Jenivar nodded.

  “Tell that Keeper, Tymon, he owes me for two kegs of rotgut. Been weeks now.”

  Jenivar nodded again, trying to keep her face carefully blank. “When I see him again,” she promised, more or less truthfully.

  Huj pursed his lips and lumbered back to his station, where a tall man clad almost entirely in leather belts had come down from overhead to mumble something at him.

  Jenivar couldn’t understand most of the papers. She knew how to read, but many of the papers were in languages she didn’t recognize or were smudged beyond readability. Those that she could read didn’t make much sense. She found half of a book with the pages still mostly glued to the spine. There were a lot of documents in the too-fine writing that meant a machine had made them. Others looked like journal entries or contracts. One seemed to be an IOU, but Jenivar didn’t recognize the names. Or the currency.

  At last, near the bottom of the stack, Jenivar found a map. It had the obvious land-shapes and lines, with words in the middle. It even still had a little bit of coloring on it; the biggest space was still faintly blue, which meant it was an ocean. Groton had told Jenivar about oceans, of course, but it was exciting to see confirmation that such things had once existed. To think of all that water... What excited Jenivar the most was the notation she found in the northernmost reaches of the map: “Here be dragons.”

  Dragons in the north. That was where she had to go if she wanted to slay one.

  Jenivar had just finished her meal when the entranceway flared with light. Someone had pushed aside the curtain. Jenivar bundled up the papers and hastily crammed the last of the meat into her mouth. Heavy bootsteps echoed faintly on the rocky floor as a shadow stretched out into the main chamber. A tall, rangy figure strode in, clad in a tight-fitting leather helmet and wrapped at every joint with colorful scarves. He paused in the doorway. Jenivar eased to her feet and pressed against the wall as if she could disappear into it.

  Terk. The leader of the Watch, guardian of the Spine.

  Her enemy, now.

  Huj ducked his head respectfully—more greeting than he’d given Jenivar or any of his other guests—and coughed. “Wasn’t expecting you back so soon,” he said. “What brings you out again?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” Terk responded. His voice was deeper than his reedy build would have suggested. “A thief.” He didn’t move out of the entrance, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimness.

  “Well, everyone comes through here, though some don’t stop. I don’t ask where they been before.”

  “Have you seen a girl-child today?” Terk stepped forward. Jenivar scooted behind him, out of sight, but Huj couldn’t conceal his darting glance at her. Terk caught the movement and spun around, hands going for the blades that hung on his belt.

  Jenivar was faster. She had the old blaster up and leveled. “I’m leaving,” she announced.

  Terk chuckled and straightened. “Don’t try to threaten me with that toy. It’s been hanging on Groton’s wall since his father’s day.”

  Jenivar thumbed the switch. The pistol whirred to life, filling the room with an ominous hum. A tiny red dot appeared on Terk’s chest, just between his scarves.

  “I’m leaving now,” said Jenivar.

  Terk swallowed. “Jenivar. Jen. Be reasonable. You’ve taken more out of the stores than you could earn the rights to in ten years. You’ve disrupted two full days’ work while we sort out the water rations. Tymon is heartbroken. And for what?” Jenivar tightened the trigger until the vents opened. The gun’s hum shifted to a higher pitch. Terk stopped talking.

  “Tymon can crawl back into his bottles and stay there for good, for all I care. I’m going to be a Knight,” Jenivar told him, easing away. She kept her back to the wall and the gun on Terk. “I have to slay a dragon first. That’s the Code.”

  “The Knights are a dead cult,” Terk said, flinching as the laser sight glinted across his eyes. It tracked him steadily. “I know you loved Groton. We all loved that old duffer. But this Knight nonsense... he didn’t do you any favors, filling you full of that slag. The Knights probably never even existed, and if they did, it’s crazy to think that they killed dragons.”

  “So I’m crazy.”

  “There aren’t any dragons.”

  “There were. I’m going to find where they went.” Jenivar reached the curtain and hooked her ankle around it. “I’ll be covering the entrance. If I see any movement...” She let the remark hang in the air. Terk and Huj stayed frozen. Jenivar ducked outside.

  She did keep the gun pointed at the curtain, because she’d said she would and a Knight must not lie. She turned it off as soon as she was out of sight, though. Humming and lighting up was all it could actually do, and Groton had warned her about letting it overheat. Terk’s engine-cycle sat nearby, a low-slung mass of hollow tubes, gears, and chains whose immense motor at the
rear gave it the look of a fat black spider. Jenivar considered her options. On the one hand, stealing was un-Knightly. On the other hand, if she tried to flee on foot, Terk could easily catch her in the engine-cycle. Should mere pragmatism triumph over chivalry? Yet... when a Knight defeated an opponent, he could claim their armor as a ransom. She’d bested Terk in a confrontation, even if it hadn’t come to blows. Perhaps the engine-cycle was simply the spoils of combat.

  The curtain flexed slightly, as if someone stood waiting just behind it. Jenivar made her decision and slid into the bucket seat in the middle.

  The engine-cycle was unfamiliar—Jenivar had only driven pedalers before—but she’d seen Terk start it up any number of times, when he made his trading trips. She’d been so jealous of him and his stories. Cities of three or four thousand people! Buildings that reached up into the sky as well as down into the ground! Surely, somewhere out in that wide world, was a town in need of a hero.

  With a cough and a sputter, the engine behind her came awake, spewing thick black smoke. Its roar veered to a keening note until Jenivar hastily pulled the clutch lever and disconnected the motor from the gears.

  Terk’s basso shout caught her attention. He charged from the entrance of the Skull, waving his warhammer over his head. Jenivar plunged her foot onto the accelerator and the cycle lurched forward, roaring in triumph. Terk dove out of the way as the engine-cycle rushed past him. Jenivar managed to swerve just enough to avoid the wall of the Skull. She threw her weight against the steering mechanism and pulled the vehicle in a long arc through the sand, bumping at last back onto the roadway. She jerked the clutch into a higher gear and chugged away, back toward the Spine.

  The Spine was west, though. She needed to go north. Leaving the road would be difficult at best. A few hundred meters away, the answer to her problems glittered dangerously in the sun. It touched the road here, in its southernmost reach, and extended north to the horizon.