Outside Zudi: the ninth month in the third year of the Reign of Righteous Force.
The night before, Kuni Garu still had under his charge fifty prisoners—a few from Zudi, but most from far away, men who had committed some kind of crime and received sentences of hard labor in the corvée gangs.
The prisoners had been walking slowly because one of the men had a lame leg. Since they couldn’t make it to the next town in time, Kuni had decided to make camp in the mountains.
In the morning, only fifteen prisoners were left.
“What are they thinking?” Kuni fumed. “There is nowhere to hide anywhere in the Islands. They’ll be caught and their families will be executed or conscripted for hard labor to make up for their desertion. I treated them well and didn’t have them chained at night, and this is how they repay me? I’m dead meat!”
Kuni had been promoted to head of the Corvée Department two years ago. Ordinarily, escorting a team of prisoners was something one of his underlings would do. But he had taken this particular assignment himself because he knew that the gang would probably not get to their destination on time because of the man with the bad leg—Kuni was sure he could convince the commander at Pan to let it go. Besides, he had never been to Pan, and he had always wanted to see the Immaculate City.
“I just had to do the most interesting thing,” he berated himself. “Am I having fun now?” At that moment, he wished more than anything to be home with Jia, drinking a cup of herbal tea made from some recipe she was experimenting with, safe and bored.
“You didn’t know?” one of the soldiers, a man by the name of Hupé, asked, incredulous. “The prisoners had been whispering and plotting all of yesterday. I thought you knew and were letting them go on purpose because you believed in the prophecy. They want to join the rebels who declared war on the emperor and pledged to free all prisoners and conscripted laborers.”
Kuni did remember the prisoners whispering an unusual amount yesterday. And he, like everyone else in Zudi, had heard rumors about the rebellion. But he had been too distracted by the beauty of the mountains they were hiking through, and didn’t connect the dots.
Abashed, he asked Hupé to tell him more about what he knew of the rebels.
“A scroll in a fish!” Kuni exclaimed. “A fish that they just happened to have bought. That con stopped working on me when I turned five. And people believe this?”
“Don’t speak ill of the gods,” Hupé, who was very religious, said stiffly.
“Well, this is a bit of a pickle,” Kuni muttered. To calm himself, he took a plug of chewing herbs out of his waist pouch and put it into his mouth, letting it sit under his tongue. Jia knew how to make herbal mixes that made him feel like he was flying and caused him to see rainbow-haloed crubens and dyrans everywhere—he and Jia had fun with those—but she also knew how to make mixes that did the opposite: slowed things down and helped him see choices more clearly when he was stressed, and he definitely needed some clarity.
What was the point of bringing fifteen prisoners to Pan when the quota was fifty? He’d have an appointment with the executioner no matter how he tried to talk his way out of it. And most likely Jia, too. His life as a servant of the emperor was over; there was no longer any path back to safety. All the options he had were dangerous.
But some choices are more interesting than others, and I did make a promise to myself.
Could this rebellion finally be the opportunity that he had been seeking all his life?
“Emperor, king, general, duke,” he whispered to himself. “These are just labels. Climb up the family tree of any of them high enough and you’ll find a commoner who dared to take a chance.”
He got up on a rock and faced the soldiers and the remaining prisoners, all of whom were terrified: “I’m grateful that you stayed with me. But there’s no point in going any farther. Under the laws of Xana, we’re all going to be punished severely. Feel free to go wherever you want or to join the rebels.”
“Aren’t you going to join the rebels?” Hupé asked in a fervent voice. “The prophecy!”
“I can’t think about any prophecies right now. I’m going to hide in the mountains first and figure out a way to save my family.”
“You’re thinking of becoming a bandit then?”
“The way I look at it is this: If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.”
To his satisfaction but not surprise, everyone volunteered to stay with him.
The best followers are those who think it was their own idea to follow you.
NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE
BEST NOVEL
EXCERPT FROM BARSK: THE ELEPHANTS’ GRAVEYARD
LAWRENCE M. SCHOEN
Lawrence M. Schoen holds a PhD in cognitive psychology, has been nominated for the Campbell, Hugo, and Nebula awards, is a world authority on the Klingon language, operates the small press Paper Golem, and is a practicing hypnotherapist specializing in authors’ issues.
His previous science fiction includes many light and humorous adventures of a space-faring stage hypnotist and his alien animal companion. His most recent book, Barsk, takes a very different tone, exploring issues of prophecy, intolerance, friendship, conspiracy, and loyalty, and redefines the continua between life and death. He lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his wife and their dog. In 2015, Barsk won the Cóyotl Award for Best Novel.
FROM THE AUTHOR
I started writing Barsk in 1988, during my second year as a college professor. The first two chapters were published in a fan magazine in 1990, and I went on to write the entire novel, all fifty chapters of it! I was very proud of the book, as it was the first novel I had written from beginning to end. I tried to find a publisher, and fortunately I failed, primarily because it was a horrible book! It wasn’t that the story was bad, just that I didn’t know how to write without endless exposition and overdone tropes. I hadn’t learned enough or acquired the necessary tools to tell it well. Eventually this fact bypassed my ego and percolated through to my awareness and I put the damn manuscript in a drawer. I went back to writing, to studying, to improving. I joined a regular writing group. I attended James Gunn’s two-week workshop at the University of Kansas. I climbed the mountain and took part in Walter Jon Williams’s master class in Taos, New Mexico. And I practiced, practiced, practiced. Twenty plus years later, I had what I needed to do it right, and here we are.
Jorl filled the resulting darkness with images from his own memory, imagining a familiar room in a house on the island of Keslo. The dimensions and materials, the colors and textures and scents formed around him. That easily, he sat in a small alcove that lay just off of the kitchen of the home maintained by his friend’s widow. The walls were beech, yellow, bright in their own right and polished to a high sheen. A hand-braided rug covered the floor from the kitchen’s threshold to the hidden door in the back wall that provided a less obvious entrance to the house. A tapestry woven of wild flowers hung on that wall, filling the air with light, sweet fragrance. Two comfortably curved benches faced one another, set far back against opposite sides such that their occupants would be unseen by anyone passing the opening. Jorl saw it all in his mind, just as he had seen it before taking the koph and settling into that very spot after dinner.
While his best friend’s widow busied herself with after-dinner tasks, he muttered a name aloud, “Arlo,” and began summoning particles, luring them with memories: sitting in a classroom in his grandmother’s hall learning to cipher . . . sampling their first efforts at distillation . . . introducing him to Tolta, the daughter of a friend of his mother . . . laughing in the rain as they took a raft to Gerd for the first time . . . embracing him, trunks wrapped around one another’s ears, the day he left Barsk . . .
When he had a sufficient number, he willed the particles to coalesce into his friend’s form, occupying the bench opposite him, visible to anyone who possessed the Speaker’s gift.
“
Your wife made the most amazing dinner tonight,” said Jorl, the mental construct of himself smacking his lips with satisfaction while in the real world his head pressed back against the wall, his trunk draping languidly down his chest, a trickle of drool starting at the corner of his flaccid mouth.
Arlo smiled. It started at his eyes and spread with exaggerated slowness across his face, until his ears gave a little flap of merriment. “Did she? You say that like you’re surprised. Tolta’s always been a great cook. You know that.”
“Of regional dishes, sure. The safe and same traditional meals that everyone’s aunt knows how to make. I’m talking about recipes from other worlds, places where no Fant has been in centuries.”
“Now you’re just being foolish. No one is going to bother venturing into space just for dinner. Not even you.”
“I didn’t say we left Barsk, only that the recipes, the spices, were from off world. Pay attention.”
“Or what? You’ll banish me? Spread the glowing bits of me far and wide?”
“I’d never—don’t even joke about that!”
“I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do. More importantly, you shouldn’t be trying to tell me anything. This is what, the thirtieth time you’ve summoned me? It’s not healthy.”
“I’m a Speaker. It’s a rare gift, even on Barsk. Why shouldn’t I use it?”
“Just because a thing can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. I’m not telling you not to use your gift. You’re a historian, and I imagine it must be a powerful tool in your work, talking directly to the people who made history. That’s incredible. Do more of that. But you shouldn’t keep talking to me. Let me go. Even a historian can’t keep living in the past.”
“I don’t want to have this argument with you.”
Arlo spread his hands, his trunk lifting in an ironic gesture. “Stop summoning me and you won’t.”
“I needed to talk to you. Something’s going on and I don’t understand it. I thought discussing it with you might help.”
The smile fell away from Arlo’s face. “Something more than Tolta’s cooking?”
“I’ve been studying the prophecies of the Matriarch since our school days.” He grew still, head bowed, hands clasping the nubs of his trunk and one another in his lap. Even his ears had stopped moving. “I think one of the dire ones is coming to pass.”
“I’ve long since forgotten the details of her warnings. Of all the areas of history to study, I never understood why you made her life your focus. Most of her writings bored me, and the prophecies were so weird they made little sense, at least at the time we covered them in class. Which one are you going on about here?”
“The Silence.”
Arlo scrunched up his trunk and spat. “I hate that one. You remember how my mam told us stories about it when we were small, years before we got to that section in school? Scared the leaves out of us.”
“I remember. I had nightmares. Sometimes I think I grew up to study them as a reaction. You know, so that I could really understand what scared me.”
“Yeah? Well, be sure and thank her for your livelihood next time you see her.”
Jorl looked down, finding a sudden interest in the cuticles of one hand.
“What?” said Arlo.
“Your mom is part of the problem. I wasn’t going to bother you with the knowledge, but she sailed off a season ago. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
“Kembü had a full life, Ar. It didn’t have anything to do with your own passing. It was just her time.”
“What do you mean, she’s ‘part of the problem’?”
“Do you remember when we were eight and crazy for insects? We spent the summer collecting every bug we could find? I got to thinking about it, and I found myself wanting the specimen jar you used. Just a sentimental reminder. And you know how your mother never threw anything away. . . . So I tried to ask her if she knew where it was.”
“What do you mean, you tried?”
“I couldn’t summon her.”
“How long ago?”
“Weeks. More than enough time for her to finish her last voyage and be summonable. Something set me off, thinking about that long ago summer. I snatched up a pellet of koph and reached out to pull your mother’s nefshons together, only . . . I couldn’t.”
NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE
BEST NOVEL
UPDRAFT
FRAN WILDE
Fran Wilde’s work includes the novels Updraft (Tor, 2015) and Cloudbound (Tor, 2016). Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, and Nature. Her novella “The Jewel and Her Lapidary,” came out from Tor.com in May 2016. She writes for publications including the Washington Post, SF Signal, and Clarkesworld.
Editor’s Note: Updraft was also nominated for the Andre Norton Award and won in that category. Please go to page 251 to read an extended excerpt of this novel.
NEBULA AWARD WINNER
BEST NOVEL
EXCERPT FROM UPROOTED
NAOMI NOVIK
Naomi Novik is the acclaimed author of the Temeraire series, begun with His Majesty’s Dragon. Her latest novel, Uprooted, is a new fantasy influenced by the Polish fairy tales of her childhood. She is a founder of the Organization for Transformative Works and the Archive of Our Own.
FROM THE AUTHOR
I started writing Uprooted from an impulse to tell a story about a completely different kind of dragon than the ones in my Temeraire series—that’s where the first line came from. The narrator’s voice came to me very clearly after that and from there I wrote the first 11–12 thousand words very quickly, in a few weeks, and by the end of that I had discovered it took place in a kind of fairytale version of Poland, shaped by the stories I grew up with.
Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.
He doesn’t devour them really; it only feels that way. He takes a girl to his tower, and ten years later he lets her go, but by then she’s someone different. Her clothes are too fine and she talks like a courtier and she’s been living alone with a man for ten years, so of course she’s ruined, even though the girls all say he never puts a hand on them. What else could they say? And that’s not the worst of it—after all, the Dragon gives them a purse full of silver for their dowry when he lets them go, so anyone would be happy to marry them, ruined or not.
But they don’t want to marry anyone. They don’t want to stay at all.
“They forget how to live here,” my father said to me once, unexpectedly. I was riding next to him on the seat of the big empty wagon, on our way home after delivering the week’s firewood. We lived in Dvernik, which wasn’t the biggest village in the valley or the smallest, or the one nearest the Wood: we were seven miles away. The road took us up over a big hill, though, and at the top on a clear day you could see along the river all the way to the pale grey strip of burned earth at the leading edge, and the solid dark wall of trees beyond. The Dragon’s tower was a long way in the other direction, a piece of white chalk stuck in the base of the western mountains.
I was still very small—not more than five, I think. But I already knew that we didn’t talk about the Dragon, or the girls he took, so it stuck in my head when my father broke the rule.
“They remember to be afraid,” my father said. That was all. Then he clucked to the horses and they pulled on, down the hill and back into the trees.
It didn’t make much sense to me. We were all afraid of the Wood. But our valley was home. How could you leave your home? And yet the girls never came back to stay. The Dragon let them out of the tower, and they came back to their families for a l
ittle while—for a week, or sometimes a month, never much more. Then they took their dowry-silver and left. Mostly they would go to Kralia and go to the University. Often as not they married some city man, and otherwise they became scholars or shopkeepers, although some people did whisper about Jadwiga Bach, who’d been taken sixty years ago, that she became a courtesan and the mistress of a baron and a duke. But by the time I was born, she was just a rich old woman who sent splendid presents to all her grandnieces and nephews, and never came for a visit.
So that’s hardly like handing your daughter over to be eaten, but it’s not a happy thing, either. There aren’t so many villages in the valley that the chances are very low—he takes only a girl of seventeen, born between one October and the next. There were eleven girls to choose from in my year, and that’s worse odds than dice. Everyone says you love a Dragon-born girl differently as she gets older; you can’t help it, knowing you so easily might lose her. But it wasn’t like that for me, for my parents. By the time I was old enough to understand that I might be taken, we all knew he would take Kasia.
Only travelers passing through, who didn’t know, ever complimented Kasia’s parents or told them how beautiful their daughter was, or how clever, or how nice. The Dragon didn’t always take the prettiest girl, but he always took the most special one, somehow: if there was one girl who was far and away the prettiest, or the most bright, or the best dancer, or especially kind, somehow he always picked her out, even though he scarcely exchanged a word with the girls before he made his choice.
And Kasia was all those things. She had thick wheat-golden hair that she kept in a braid to her waist, and her eyes were warm brown, and her laugh was like a song that made you want to sing it. She thought of all the best games, and could make up stories and new dances out of her head; she could cook fit for a feast, and when she spun the wool from her father’s sheep, the thread came off the wheel smooth and even without a single knot or snarl.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2017 Page 25