From "Robur the Conquerer" by Jules Verne.This is going to be a longer, 8-10k word space opera piece that I got asked to do.
Most people called her Phoenix. Her former crew used “Captain” before that and “Sir” afterward. Her hair was silver – not white, but genuine, metallic silver, a long fall against her pale blue skin, the color of a shadow on a piece of willow ware, that made her seems ageless despite the century that lay upon her, and all those decades of pirating.
They said she had been the best slideboard rider of her time, and perhaps the best battleship pilot of all time, back before her parents and lover were killed and she turned rogue.
They said she had done terrible things in her pirate days.
They said she’d been ruthless in her rise to power, moving up the chain from god knows where, an origin she’d never, ever spoken of to anyone, not even her own daughter. She’d killed some captains, slept with others, called in favors and maneuvered and betrayed and seized power with a brutal efficiency that still underlay what now seemed a calm and orderly, rules-bound government.
They said she had killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, or people — sometimes at a distance, sometimes up close, with knife or fist. They said she’d killed a crew member when the shuttle she was in needed its mass reduced and the man hadn’t even argued, just nodded and stepped into the airlock, never said a word as the door closed and the lock cycled, just stared in at his captain as she stared back.
They said time had mellowed her.
They said working with Mukopadhyay, even though he was crazy as a spiral comet, had mellowed her.
They said helping colonize a whole planet, setting up its government, the rich and intricate system that now encompassed the whole solar system called Shiva, had mellowed her.
Not to mention motherhood, they said, a change which no woman escapes going through during pregnancy. It alters the hormones in your system. Softens you. Makes you less rash, less harsh. Takes away even the sharpest edge, not to mention the hormonal craziness, which some women never recover from, after all.
Sure, changes you in a good way, they were quick to say.
Oh I LOVE the pictures of your litlte niece with the retro-looking umbrella. Something about it (and it may be a combination of the bunny ears and the fact that I just saw this movie twice in one week) reminds me of Alice and wonderland 🙂 She looks like a litlte girl brimming with “muchness” (if you haven’t seen the new movie you may not get that reference – but it’s a good thing! 😉 )
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
This is a piece of flash fiction written last year – I just got around to going through the notebook it was in lately and transcribing the fictional bits. This didn’t take too much cleaning up. For context, think of the hills of southern California, and a writing retreat with no other human beings around, and thinking a great deal about fantasy and epic fantasy at the time.
Is this a Tabat story? Naw. Just a little flash piece.
On the Nature of Gods and Magicians
The magician gestured. Out of the pool came musicians, the very first thing the tip of a flute, sounding, so it was as though the music pulled the musician forth, accompanied by others: grave-faced singers and merry drummers; guitarists and mandolinists with great dark eyes in which all the secrets of the moon were written; and one great brassy instrument made of others interlocked, so it took six to play it, all puffing away at their appointed mouthpiece. All of them bowed down to the priestess who stood watching, her sand-colored eyes impersonal and face stone-smooth.
“Very pretty,” she said, and yawned with a feline grace, perhaps even accentuating the similarity in a knowing way with a head tilt.
The magician smiled, just as catlike, just as calm. “You can do better, I am sure,” he said.
She shrugged, her manner diffident, but rather than reply, she pursed her lips and whistled. Birds formed, swooping down, and wherever they flew, they erased a swathe of the musicians, left great arcs of nothingness hanging as the seemingly oblivious players continued, their music slowly diminishing as they vanished, the instruments going one by one. The last thing to hang, trembling in the air, was an unaccompanied hand, holding up a triangle that emitted not a sound.
Landing, the birds began to sing. Though the music was not particularly sweet, there was a naturalness about it that somehow rebuked the mechanical precision of the song theirs succeeded. As they sang, more and more birds appeared, and the music swelled, washing like a river over the pair where they stood.
The priestess patted the air with the flat of her hand and the birds winked out of existence, leaving the two of them in a great white room, the antechamber of her temple.
“Will you go further in, then?” she said, her voice still casual.
The magician’s eyes were green as new grass and the black beard on his chin, which grew to a double point, was oiled and smelled of attar-of-roses. He considered her as though this was the smallest of debates, and finally stepped forward.
“We are still evenly matched,” he said.
She inclined her head and replied, “But my strength will only swell as we go deeper, and we have far to go before we reach the center of My Lady’s temple.”
His grin spread, as though encouraged by her lack of smile. As though he had some secret hidden about himself and was unafraid to admit it. She forced an expression to match it, and they stood there smiling at each other in hostility for some moments before she stepped aside and gestured him on.
The tunnels were made of adamant and alabaster, concentric rings that shrank then grew larger, then shrank and grew again and again until it was as though they walked inside an immense, undulating worm.
As they walked, they cast spells at each other, dueling lightly, a magical clash and flicker of blades with a deadly energy at its heart. This was a long quarrel between them, the strength of his magic and the might of her goddess, from whom all her power was borrowed. He maintained that while they might be well-matched, the fact was that she, a conduit, could never resonate to the degree of cosmic energy that he, a producer of such energy, could.
She had at one point asked him why it mattered. They’d been drinking in a tavern, an ordinary tavern where adventurers came. They both liked to come and watch those parties, scarred by magic and monsters, assemble and spin stories a thousand times more dangerous than any foe they had to face.
“It matters because there must always be an answer to such questions,” he said with decisiveness, not pausing a moment to think. “If there are no answers, then all in life is random.”
“Could not some of it be random?” she asked, wistfully.
He shook his head. “Randomness is the refuge of the feebleminded who cannot handle answers.” He paused when he saw her flinch. “Not you of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed.
Now they paced along and she put that conversation from her mind.
In the end they came out in a vast courtyard, in a cavern that stretched so far overhead that it would have swallowed a cathedral. The image of the goddess was carved into that ceiling, her arms outstretched, seeming to encompass everything, her serene face beaming down.
The priestess stepped aside, looking to the magician, for he had defeated her every effort along the way. Now they had come to the confrontation he desired.
He stared upward, and for a moment his face seemed daunted. Then he sneered and tugged at the necklace around his throat.
“Face me in direct challenge, you sham,” he said. “The gods are nothing but those with more power than ourselves, and this artefact will amplify mine till I can throw you down unhindered.”
“Indeed you can,” the stone lips said, in a voice sweet and merry and powerful. “For I am less than my handmaiden, much less indeed.”
He frowned. “She is your channel.”
“Ah, no,” said the Goddess. One great hand stretched itself from the ceiling and began to descend towards him. “You have misunderstood the nature of gods entirely.”
Sparks danced from his fingers, formed shining columns all around him, but the massive fingers disregarded them.
“They are not our channels,” she said as the hand closed around him. “Rather, we are theirs.”
And across the world, every worshipper lifted their head, and every priestess stopped, as the Goddess swallowed the magician whole, and then gave him to them, disassembled into fuel for their own magic, and then smiled, and began the climb back towards the ceiling and her accustomed position there.
But the priestess sighed, looking at the spot where the magician had been, and only his shadow remained. He had been good company, now and again, and now he was only embers in her heart.
A scene from early on, illustrating one of the dangers of the wilds near Tabat: parasitic fairy bites.
The next morning, Teo did not like the priest’s look. His hands were clammy but his face was red as though with blushes. His forehead under Teo’s hand was scorching hot. After a few minutes of hesitation, Teo examined the spot he thought might be a Fairy bite.
His suspicions were confirmed by the lump that lay under the surface. He’d seen the alta treat such injuries. That would be best if she did it, but he didn’t think there was time enough for that. The parasite would grow and begin to control its host’s nervous system, making it little more than an empty shell, moving about to suit the creature’s needs, until the fairy was finally born. It would not emerge from the wound that shifted under Teo’s fingers. No, it would burrow deep, then upward, till it found itself in its host’s brain, which it would devour until sated. Once it was ready, it would eat its way out through his eyes or the soft tissues of his mouth. No, it would have to be removed now, before it burrowed any deeper.
He built the fire as high as it would go, and put the wineskin from the priest’s pack to the side near it, where it could warm without burning. He took the tiny kettle and filled it with water before sifting in the mixture of dried fish and tea that was the last of the priest’s chal; this far on the journey, he’d nearly run out, and he’d confided in Teo that he was saving it for some special occasion, but it was the most sustaining and easily fed to a patient thing that Teo could find in the pack. For what he had in mind would definitely require sustaining.
He had not seen it done, but he had listened to stories. Everyone was taught the signs of a fairy bite early on, and what to do if caught away from the village with one.
He prayed the priest would stay asleep during the operation. That would make things easier. But as his knife poised above the mark, Grave’s eyes opened.
“I have to do this,” Teo said to him, afraid that the priest would take this as some attempt to escape. “You have a Fairy egg in you, and I need to take it out before it hatches and starts eating inward.”
Grave’s lids fluttered, but he said nothing. His forehead was red with fever, and Teo wondered if the man even saw him. How would he react when he felt the cut of the knife? Would he thrash around, or think himself attacked and attack Teo in turn? He hesitated, not sure what he should do.
The words were barely audible, like a breath of breeze escaping the priest’s dry lips. “Give me something to bite on, first,” he whispered. “I do not wish to crack a tooth as well.”
Teo took a piece of leather and rolled it into a tight cigar, putting it sideways between the priest’s lips. “This will hurt,” he warned, and felt the words’ foolishness as soon as they left his mouth. Of course the priest knew that this would hurt, otherwise he would not have asked for something to bite down on during the operation. Teo took his own deep breath, steeling himself, and cut.
It was not a simple job. Blood welled up in the cut, obscuring the flesh, and Teo had to keep pouring water over it to clear it, eliciting a hiss of pain from the priest each time. But otherwise he remained silent, jaws clenched around the piece of leather.
Gently Teo sluiced the wound again as he peered into it. There. As gently as he could, he eased the knife’s tip into the dark spot he could see. The flesh resisted for a moment “” he should have sharpened the knife even more beforehand “” before giving way with a tiny, delicate pop. The priest inhaled raggedly.
That would kill the egg, perhaps, but it was not enough. Left inside, the creature would rot and the flesh around it would follow its example until the priest would have to face the same choice Futu once had: to have the limb cut away or die.
Carefully, carefully, he used the thin tip to open the egg. Clear fluid drained out, and then there was something struggling at the end of the knife blade, bumble-bee big, fighting to preserve itself and burrow further.
He jammed the tip into it. Muscles spasmed in the priest’s face but he remained rigidly still. Teo hooked the loathsome thing out and took no time to contemplate it as it hung mewling and wailing on the end. He flung it into the fire as quick as thought and with a last whimper it curled into ash.
He washed the wound once more with water, checking to make sure there were no more traces of the creature. Then, taking the wineskin from where it lay near the fire, he directed the hot wine across the flesh to keep it from putrefaction. Tendons of agony twisted in Grave’s face; when Teo took the leather from between his lips, he saw that it had been bitten almost entirely through.
He took needle and thread from the priest’s kit and took four careful stitches in the skin, tying it back together to close that painful looking mouth of flesh. All the time the priest was silent and still.
3 Responses
Rockin’. I’d read it.
Very much looking forward to it (as a fan of Honor Harrington and all space opera).
Oh I LOVE the pictures of your litlte niece with the retro-looking umbrella. Something about it (and it may be a combination of the bunny ears and the fact that I just saw this movie twice in one week) reminds me of Alice and wonderland 🙂 She looks like a litlte girl brimming with “muchness” (if you haven’t seen the new movie you may not get that reference – but it’s a good thing! 😉 )