Anthology 1: The Far Corners Read online

  "Servants?" said Jere. His breath puffed out in a sudden long gout of steam. "Hold on, your wights swore an oath!"

  "All wraiths, wights, ghosts, and various and sundry supernatural, disembodied, and, um, bodied entities present," said the tia-tia, in Jere’s own voice, with emphasis on the word ‘present.’ The tia-tia laughed. "The ones who swore the oath are with me," it said. "They shall not trouble you. I fear, though, that some small number of my friends were playing in the trees a distance away, and were thus not present," said the tia-tia. "Oh, but fear not their absence for long. Barrow-wights do love a song." The face in the sky changed, now shreds of dry skin stretched over a grinning skull. "It is the singers they cannot abide."

  The stars shook, and the tia-tia was gone.

  Jere’s roadharp began to sound in its case. Jere snatched it up and fumbled with the latches.

  The roadharp was playing Haunts Come a Dancin’.

  Moans sounded from the trees. "Yes, yes, I know," muttered Jere. "But I didn’t hear you do any strumming, while I bargained." The air grew colder. "It called them barrow wights," said Jere. "Now -– how does one protect oneself from barrow wights?"

  Jere’s mind raced. Campfire stories, children’s tales, bits and snatches of legends and myth –- not a single lyric, not the least old couplet, not a fragment of an Old Empire legend told of a hero’s victory over a barrow wight. Oh, there were songs and stories aplenty. Just none that didn’t end badly for the hero.

  Except, perhaps, the Tale of Arphon and the Barrow at Kin. There, first bard Arphon, believing himself doomed by a barrow-wight, had taken up his harp and played one last love song to Serpha, his wife. And the wight had been so overwhelmed with memories of its own love that it not only spared Arphon but gave him the barrow’s treasures before stepping out weeping into the new-risen sun.

  The moans grew more numerous and more distinct.

  "We shall charm the wights as Arphon did," said Jere. "Unless you know a better scheme."

  The roadharp hesitated, then plucked out a quick, jaunty tune.

  Jere flung the harp-case to the ground. "Hail, good folk!" he cried, lifting the harp towards the flickering, dancing stars. "Hail, and harken! I am Jere the Harper, and I bring you the gift of music!"

  The moaning in the skeletal forest grew louder, and it came from all around Jere -- before, behind, beside. The harper forced a laugh, and found a smile.

  "Music!" shouted Jere. "Music to harm or heal, to delight or dismay, to bind or set free. Music unlike this cheerless place has heard since last a true sun rose. Do you remember that, I wonder?"

  Things moved beneath the trees, pale and thin and softly luminous in the starlight.

  Arphon faced one barrow-wight, thought Jere. I count two, four, six, eight -– and still they come.

  Jere gulped and strummed. Wights left the trees, came up from the ground, drifting toward him in twos and threes, weaving and writhing like timid bolts of restless fog.

  "Come on, fellows," said Jere, willing away a shiver and forcing a jauntiness to his voice. "Gather close around. Don’t be shy. There’s room for all."

  Dozens came, then hundreds, then so many the light of them gave Jere a faint, wandering shadow.

  Jere found a wider smile and kept it. They’re an audience like any other, he said to himself. Just thinner.

  Thinner, colder, and a good deal more luminous.

  The ranks of wights began to jostle and inch forward.

  Just another audience, chanted Jere silently. And if they had feet they’d be stamping them; it’s time to start the show.

  Jere took a deep breath and met the nearest specter’s black, hollow eyes.

  "What song would you hear, friend?" said Jere, gently. "What would you remember? The sun, bright and warm? The smell of rain? The sound of laughter?"

  The wights closed in about Jere, and the air about the harper went as cold as the heart of winter. Jere watched as a rime of ice raced crackling across the pond.

  A moaning rose up. Something cold stroked the back of Jere’s neck.

  Jere skipped away from the cold caress, turned the skip into a hasty harper’s bow, and steeled himself to rise. "Hear now the song of Antimony and Cleova," he said, stroking the harp. "May it warm your heart, and touch your soul."

  Jere smiled and sang the first words. My choice of songs is at least clear, he mused. Antimony and Cleova has calmed many a rowdy road-house, left many a sobbing court in its wake. Jere recalled watching hard-bitten Soverk border mercenaries throw down their swords and blubber like babies when Cleova drank the poison, only to snatch up their blades and beat them on their shields in salute when Antimony charged through the Pale Gate itself after her.

  The first stanzas swept past. Jere urged the roadharp to add echoes and delays and even introduced a faint female chorus when the choir welcomed Cleova at her wedding -– if storied Arphon himself had to pick a new song, the harper told himself, this would be it.

  Jere sang, his harp a whirlwind, then a whisper, then a chorus of voices and strings. Cleova died, and Antimony, too late, rushed to her side, and then charged fearlessly into the netherworld itself.

  Jere’s voice fell to a whisper, built to a shout, and ended with a roar that, like Antimony’s, was meant, quite literally, to wake the dead.

  The song ended.

  The wights stared, nearer still, and hollow-eyed.

  Jere licked his lips. His breath went out in puffs of steam, and the tips of his toes were numb from cold, as though he stood barefoot in snow.

  A new moaning rose up.

  Jere rubbed his hands together and bowed. They don’t act the least bit charmed, said a tiny voice, deep in the back of his mind. In fact, the words "ugly" and "mob" seem entirely more appropriate than "charmed."

  The air crackled, and a light snow began to fall. Jere fought back a shiver and put his hands to his harp.

  "And now," said Jere, with a flourish of strings. "And now --"

  What?

  They stared unblinking through Antimony. So -– no more songs about death. No, Jere decided, this lot wants something else. Something bright and happy, alive and vibrant -– a song not only to wake the dead, but set them dancing.

  Jere frowned. Either The Ladies of Lomol, or -–

  Yes. That’s it. Vival’s Dance, with all the bells and whistles. I’ll do Vival’s Dance, thought Jere, and I dare them, dead or not, to stand there like fence-posts.

  Jere limbered his cold fingers, winked at a phantom, and sang.

  "I wander fields, I wander wood,

  I wander sky and sea,

  I wander lone beneath the stars

  Come wander, lass, with me."

  Jere’s fingers fell.

  The roadharp keened and wailed and thundered and sang. Jere charged to the long-form opening, doubled the tempo, doubled it again. The harp lent power to his voice, so that his words rang and carried like peals from a palace tower-bell. Jere added hand-claps, as if surrounded by a circle of reveling Angish kinsmen. He brought forth hoof-beats, as of war-horses dancing. After the hoof-beats came the deep Ovack kettle-drums, and then the North Moor bag-pipes, and, finally, the roar of summer thunder, booming from the heavens as though the sky itself was moved to sing.

  Jere played faster, his fingers a blur, his lungs straining, his harper’s magic stretched taut and threatening to tear with each note, each word, each beat of the harp’s furious sounding. Jere’s voice rang out, above it all, then split and split and split again, a chorus of bards crying triumph until the last word of the last stanza echoed and faded, leaving the clearing in a sudden, brittle silence.

  The wights stared.

  Jere fell to his knees, rose quickly, and stared back.

  The wights were thick now, thick as fog, fog with eyes and fingers and a thousand soft voices. And like a fog, they flowed together, and began to move as one, freezing the air in their midst, darting and coiling close about Jere’s face and hands.

  Jere felt t
he sweat from Vival’s Dance freeze solid on his forehead. One more song, came a voice in his mind. One more song –- but what?

  The wights began to scream.

  Jere’s roadharp moved beneath his fingers, startling Jere so that he burst into song, blurting out the words by rote before he even recognized the tune.

  "The apple farmer’s daughter,"" sang Jere, "Was all alone one day --" Jere’s eyes went wide. He tried to silence the harp by holding down the strings, but it played on, furious and strident.

  "When mighty Og the hunter happened by the way --"

  The chill in the air abated somewhat –- or was it the flush that rose to Jere’s cheeks that made the chill seem less?

  "Mighty Og spied Lovely Daughter, and his blood did right quick boil --"

  Wide-eyed, Jere gasped out the words. Oh, he’d sung The Apple Farmer’s Daughter many times before -– it was a favorite in late-night taverns and roadside merchant camps and anywhere else men were away from their wives and daughters but in intimate contact with wine and ale. But here, below a sky of shaking stars, amid a field of ghosts -- here, Jere could barely sing the words without choking.

  "The Daughter smiled and fanned her skirts, and Mighty Og did shout -–"

  The wights separated, receded, stood still as stones. Jere raced and croaked from one word to the next, barely able to keep up with the harp’s frantic pace. The harp gave Jere’s voice volume, and smoothed out a ragged note now and then, but gone were the thunder-blasts and drums and choirs of silver-winged fairies.

  "Mighty Og began to weep, and Lovely Daughter laughed --"

  The sweat on Jere’s brow thawed and ran and froze anew. His fingers were still warm, though, and Jere knew the roadharp was warming the air above the strings so his playing wouldn’t falter.

  "I’ll not be shamed, the hunter roared, one boot upon his foot -–"

  Jere played and sang and then, finally, the last awful verses of the The Apple Farmer’s Daughter were over, done, and gone.

  Silence. And then, before Jere could catch his breath, the harp’s strings moved again, and Jere’s fingers followed.

  A chill ran down Jere’s spine, a chill that had nothing to do with the crowd of barrow wights but everything to do with a certain Eryan alehouse bawdy that, quite frankly, embarrassed the harper no end.

  The harp played on, and Jere sang to match. He sang Eryan marches and risqué Highland pub ditties and Orkish sailor’s songs and three versions of Queen Mavam Tames the Dragon, each one more horrific in lascivious detail than the last.

  Jere risked one glance skyward. No sun was rising, though black did appear to be giving way to a leaden grey, and the stars were fading, one by one.

  Jere sang, hoarse and rasping, his shirt soaked with sweat, ice riming his moustache. The harp played on, relentless and shameless -- Sir Mabog and the Queen of Hent, The Happy Donkey Song, and, worst of all, Lords Love Ladies. And when the harp exhausted every bawdy, risqué song Jere had ever heard, it played new ones for him, keeping the bard a word or two ahead of the strings and blushing furiously.

  Jere watched the last of the stars go out. The harp faltered, hurled the last few words of an unbearably descriptive Vendish sea-shanty into Jere’s mind, and fell silent.

  Jere choked out the final verse.

  The wights, without a wail or a keen or so much as a menacing glare, bolted for cover among the skeletal trees.

  Jere gaped, brushed ice off his nose, and fell heavily down upon his knees. He counted to ten. No wights came. He counted to twenty, and the air began to lose its deadly chill.

  "Arphon," he croaked, "I think you lied to your wife about the love song. I really, really do."

  Jere’s roadharp made a single toneless twang.

  Behind him, he heard the ice on the pool crack and shatter, as though smashed with a giant’s mace. And before Jere could rise or turn or even shut his eyes, he was caught up in a roaring whirlwind and cast up into the leaden sky, arcing toward the pool, falling, spinning, plunging headlong toward the dark.

  Jere hugged his harp to his chest and shut his eyes before he struck.

  * * *

  A song played. Wake Up Sleepyhead. Jere smiled. That’s quite a change from the last song I heard, he thought. Not an amorous Troll or a nearsighted blacksmith anywhere in Sleepyhead, and I’m certainly thankful for that.

  Memories trickled past Jere –- songs and wights and whirlwinds, and a black sky full of stars.

  Jere’s eyes snapped open. Daylight half-blinded him, and he groped for his roadharp.

  It lay by his side, uncased. Jere sat upright, brushing leaves off the strings and ignoring the sudden pounding at his temples until he was sure the harp was undamaged.

  Jere looked about. He lay a stone’s throw from the lady’s gazing-pool, his pack and sword and harp-case at his feet. The towering red-leafed blood-oaks still ringed the clearing -– though now, heading west, lay a wide, straight road through the trees, which lay broken and splintered on either side of the lane as though uprooted and tossed aside by an angry giant.

  Something glittered in the morning sun. Jere squinted, and spied an armored helm hanging from a broken bough. The helm was crushed nearly flat.

  Crows cawed and fought and troubled the leaves just out of Jere’s sight. Overhead, great turning wheels of vultures circled, circled, dipping lower and lower.

  "I don’t think we need be concerned about soldiers," he said. The throbbing in his head intensified, and he sank back to the turf until it passed.

  His head pounding, his throat rasping and dry, Jere reached for his canteens. The big one was empty; the small one was gone.

  "Wake, harper," said a voice. "Wake."

  Jere scrambled to his feet. "No, no, no," he said. "The sun is up." Jere’s head reeled and spun. I’m back in the real world, he thought. Or what passes for the real world, this far East. "It’s over," he said. "I charmed your wights. My night for yours," he said. "It’s done."

  From the pool, the tia-tia laughed, its voice as rasping and weary as Jere’s. "It is done," she said. "Done, and well done. I offer you only water, to slake your thirst. Are you not, after all, born of the fragile folk?"

  Jere backed up. "Pardon me, my Lady," he said. "Thirst is one thing. Foolishness is another. I must needs seek another pool."

  "As you will, harper," she said. "As you will. I tell you true that you may drink from here without harm, and that I vow to make neither charm nor curse upon you, should you approach." The voice paused. "In truth, harper, I only wish to see you. You charmed the wights –- how, I do not know, for they have hidden, loathe to come forth or speak. What song, I wonder, did you sing?"

  Jere shook his head. "I may not say, Lady," he said.

  The tia-tia sighed. "We must all have our secrets," it said. "So be it."

  Jere stood on tip-toe. Just for an instant, he saw the tia-tia, as though it stood in the pool, head just below the water. It wore its female form, garbed in sheer white robes in the fashion of Eastern nobility.

  She smiled, and beckoned, and despite the pounding in his head and the blur that ringed the edges of his vision, Jere snatched up his pack and sword and harp-case and charged, headlong if unsteadily, down the middle of the westward path left in the lady’s vengeful wake.

  Later –- much later -– Jere slowed to a trot and, soon after, a tottering walk. He found water in a stream, and jerky in his pack, and by the time he reached the village at Hunt he was at least seeing clearly and stumbling only occasionally.

  But he was well into the Empire, four hundred miles and three long months to the west, before he stopped pretending he alone of all Avendish harpers did not know a certain Avend tavern song called The Apple Farmer’s Daughter.

  One Such Shore

  by Frank Tuttle

  Silicy sat in the sun on the foredeck of the Juwatha, closed her eyes, and imagined she was home again, sitting on her apartment’s tiny balcony, book in her lap. Certainly, she thought, I’m actually sitt
ing on a bale of cotton, and the wind smells of salt and sea, and the shouts and songs of the Sea Folk are worlds apart from the cries of the fruit-sellers and songs of the street-minstrels of home. But just for a moment, when the Juwatha lay still in the trough of a swell, Silicy felt that she was home again, that she had never left Hapren, that the Juwatha and the Sea Folk and the Great Sea itself were nothing more than remnants of a particularly vivid dream.

  Someone tugged at Silicy’s long brown skirt. She opened her eyes, and her flat and her tiny balcony and her home were gone, replaced by the endless azure expanse of the Great Sea and the dome of sky above.

  Tiggi pulled again at Silicy’s skirt. "Missa, missa," said the child. "Sing! Sing!"

  Silicy smiled and took Tiggi’s hand. She became aware of furtive movements among the bales and crates lashed to the deck about her, and soon the bolder of Tiggi’s friends began to gather close about.

  "Sing! Sing!" cried Tiggi, bouncing from one bare brown foot to the other. "Missa sing!"

  Silicy sighed, but she could not look away. Had the child spoken Kingdom, she would have gently told him that she didn’t feel like singing just then. She’d have promised to sing later, and perhaps asked Tiggi to sing, instead – but Tiggi spoke only two words of Kingdom, and Silicy realized that she could not look into those merry brown eyes and pick this moment to teach him the new word "no."

  She squeezed his hand, and stood. "What shall I sing for you?" she asked, forcing a smile. "A song of wizards and kings? Dragons and magics? Damsels and knights?" She lifted her finger to her lips and glanced at the sky, as if pondering. "Hmmm."

  Tiggi stamped his foot on the deck. "Juwatha!" He said, gesturing with his right arm back towards the Juwatha’s looming forecastle. "Juwatha!"

  Silicy smiled. "Juwatha it is, then," she said. I wonder, she thought – have any of these children ever left this vessel, ever set foot on dry land?

  Probably not. "Juwatha," Silicy decided, may well mean home.