by Brian Murphy
Effram stared at those collapsed on the deck of his boat at his feet, sodden and pale as fish. They mouthed the right words, the words that should rightfully have come to him from the moment the first rain drop splashed down.
But they were too late. Too little.
“Should have said that to begin with,” he mumbled softly under his breath. “Should have said that all along.” He stiffened his spine and turned his boat towards the docks even though there were more waving, shouting people farther into the clump of prostituted ships. He could not bear to load more of that noise onto his boat.
“Hey!” Blaies waved to larboard as Effram turned the boat. “There’s more over there.”
Effram ignored him. He ignored the scowl of Blaies’s big friend. They would have to kill him to make him let go of the tiller. They would have to break his fingers to uncurl them from around it.
Effram looped his fingers through the rigging that controlled the sail. Ignoring the sharp pain of the lines, cutting into his flesh, he yanked on it. It gave, barely, the blocks squealing in protest as he put his weight on the line and on his hand. The sail edged up. Up the mast, reaching greedily for the wind.
The boat leaped forward, bringing shocked gasps from his passengers. He could almost hear their nails dig into the planks of the deck. His fingers felt as if they might fall off his hand, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care if the passengers all washed off the deck and back into the water from which they’d been fished so long as he got them off his boat. Quickly.
It was difficult steering the boat with one hand wrapped in rope and the other clamped around the tiller. The wind tearing at the sail was as strong and angry as he was. The current inside the harbor was stronger-strange, almost as if a whirlpool was building at its center, the water starting to froth and show little white-capped waves out across its gray, mottled surface.
Two passengers, a man and a woman, joined Blaies, protesting that there were still more people out amongst the wrecks. They all went silent at one glance from Effram. He growled, “If you don’t like it, you can swim.” It felt good to see them shrink back and shiver and clutch at their chests. It felt good to see even the big man stagger as Effram put his considerable muscle on the rigging.
His skin broke under the rough rope, and slick drops of blood dripped down his wrist like warm rain. The sail inched higher, catching even more of the mad wind. The boat rushed inland, toward the waterfront that was visible now through the gray air. Effram could make out the different buildings, the white stone of the main dock, the muted yellow of lanterns trying to shine through the storm.
The dock sped toward them at an alarming rate, approaching even faster as he hauled up more of the sail. A woman squeaked in fear, threw her arm over her eyes, then changed her mind and clutched at the person nearest her. Blaies staggered toward him, fists balled, then stopped. A flush of power ran down Effram’s spine, hot and spangled and sweet as wine. They wanted to stop him. They all wanted to stop him, but none of them knew how to sail his boat. None of them knew how to stop it from smacking into the wall of stone.
At the last moment, just before he’d gone too far, just before he committed his boat into slamming her elegant bowsprit into the dock, he shoved the tiller viciously to larboard and swung the boom in. It barely missed cracking the head of the little monkey child, but it did send Blaies sprawling across the deck.
The boat turned, faster than Effram thought it could, with such elegance it made his heart swell. The boat swooped in a graceful circle before the waterfront. Effram could see faces pressed to the cloudy windows of the nearest tavern. Some of the more hardy patrons ran out into the wind and rain to watch them sail past. Effram wondered if they could hear the shocked, gull-like cries of his passengers, the shrill pleas for rescue.
For good measure, he sailed along the dock, just so they could all see him. Then he took his ungrateful passengers for a great looping ride across the waterfront. Maneuvering the boom, the tiller, and the twisted ropes around his hand, he slid the boat into place alongside the dock with the expertise of the only sailor in Tarsis.
Blaies and his big bully of a friend grabbed hold of the dock. They clung to it with all their strength, though the rough stone must surely be cutting their hands to ribbons.
“All ashore that’s going ashore!” Effram called heartily. He’d read that in storybooks. He suspected that it was something made up, something no sailor had ever really said, but these fools didn’t know the difference, and it felt good to shout it, to see them all slip and trip and fall over each other in their rush to exit the rocking boat.
His passengers greeted the stone dock with glad cries and much scrambling. He gave them one last chance to look at him the way they should. He stared at them, at their mewling little children as they climbed to safety. In none of those wet faces did he see the respect or the grudging admiration he was due. All he saw was fear. They dragged their belongings or their children up onto the docks and even further up into the town, all the while glancing fearfully over their shoulders at the sea and the storm.
At him.
There was reason to fear. In just the few moments while he’d been at the dock, the storm had darkened more than seemed possible. Water shrieked past, so fierce it stung his ears, blowing rain almost parallel to the deck. The rain looked like streaks of gray satin ribbon, whirling and twisting in the wind. The blackness he’d likened to night was a pearly gray compared to the encroaching darkness on the horizon.
At least, right now, he could still see the waterfront buildings, the gawking tavern patrons who stood against the front of the building as if it could shield them. In the flashes of lightning, he could still see the jumble of ships-become-homes, but the coming darkness threatened even midnight.
What would that velvet darkness be like? How black would darker than night be? Would he even be able to see the lightning? He raised his arms up to the rain, as if it could wrap itself around him and trail behind, like the ribbons on a girl’s hat. Would the rain follow him the way it followed the wind?
“You are to be commended!” he screamed into the sky. “Whoever you are, it’s a glorious storm!”
The last quaking passenger, Blaies, who had also been his first, pulled himself up the wet, slick stone and wobbled a few steps. From the safety of still land, he paused to look back at Effram. “You’re mad,” he hissed. “Mad.”
Effram laughed at him. Inside, in that dark place where dreams slept, darker even than the storm, his hope of vindication warbled, shivered, and died. Shriveled, it dropped back down to silence, another dream that would never come true.
Effram wrenched at the boom and tiller in unison. It was automatic to him now, the way these two moved opposite each other, but to the same effect. His boat slipped away from the dock with practiced, expert ease. He turned back into the harbor.
To starboard, the tall, abandoned ships were suddenly more menacing than the blackness of the sky. They’d only been shorn up to bear the weight of occupancy, not completely clipped of their wings, and now the water reached that one inch more of height that was enough to bear their dead, beached weight. The storm lifted them, those ghost ships. They shifted and groaned with each slosh of water and threatened to break free of the land that locked them.
He barely heard the scream, followed by an unmistakable splash, over the roar of the wind. He looked back in time to see a whirl of white cloth and frothing foam sucked underwater. A moment later, a woman- really only a mass of black hair-popped to the surface.
She screamed for him to come back, motioning toward the abandoned ships.
For a moment, he stared at her, at the mass of black hair that floated about her like wriggling seaweed. He could see the air between them darkening, visibly, second by second. The yellow lantern light from the tavern was a mere pinprick in a dark curtain now, like a firefly seen across an evening field. Choking and coughing, slipping down into the water then fighting back to the surface, the woman waved for
him to return. He turned from her, from the mass of black hair to a blacker sky. To the sea. The storm over it.
He sailed away from her and the waterfront buildings and the warm, yellow light, in a great loop that would take him around the harbor, back along the docks. Perhaps up and down through a few of the old ships.
Even in the darkness, they could not fail to see him. The lightning would light him up like a spotlight upon a stage. Those who clung to the ships they had defiled, those who clung to the land would see him. They could not fail to see him. To know that of them all, only he sailed.
Only crazy Captain Effram sailed the storm and the lost Sea of Tarsis.
And perhaps the ghost ships would follow in his wake.
Some Assembly Required
Nlck O’ Donohoe
The stone floor shivered with the hum of a nearby high-speed axle that was gradually spinning faster and faster.
An accompanying crescendo of thuds sent puffs of dust rising up off the age-darkened wood floor. The thuds grew stronger and came closer together.
The resulting explosion shook the shelving until it rocked on its springs, throwing the topmost book out of the shelves.
Sorter, the gnome seated behind the desk that stood in front of the shelves, caught the book in his left hand seconds before it could smash his head and knock him senseless. He opened the volume and leafed through it, scanning the drawings and bills for materials.
“Self-winding,” he muttered to himself. “Self-propelled walker. Transport Section, East Outer Upper Right. Agricultural propulsion.”
He closed the book and looked wistfully out a side window, where he could see thick black smoke and the occasional teetering Multi-Story Fire Suppressor chasing a thoroughly soaked gnome.
“Nothing ever happens in here.” He sighed.
Beyond the smoke he could see the usual hammering, sawing, fastening, and soldering that was Mount Nevermind. Only inside the Great Repository was there quiet. Far too much of the stuff, to Sorter’s way of thinking.
He dropped the walker plans into one of the wicker baskets on the Flying Cata-Shelver, then laboriously cranked the windlass until the trigger on the basket arm caught in its latch. He dropped a few more dislodged portfolios in the labeled baskets and cocked each of the arms. Stepping well back, he gave the multi-trigger cord a single, quick tug.
The Cata-Shelver flew down the aisle, throwing books with unerring accuracy at the wrong shelves. Sorter followed the Cata-Shelver, picking up the strewn volumes and putting them in place.
At the end of the aisle he nearly bumped into a stocky older gnome, who was reading one of the thrown volumes and cautiously feeling a bump on the back of his bald head.
Sorter winced in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Blastmaster. Did it hurt?”
“Double-reciprocating action,” Blastmaster murmured as he read, oblivious to Sorter. “Who thinks of these things?” He looked up. “What was that? Oh, not much.” He rubbed his head again, blinking as his fingers touched the bump. “I think that shelver’s stronger than it used to be.”
Sorter nodded vigorously. “I added a second windlass. You should see it whip books into the Upper Stacks.” He gestured to the high shelves, where gnomes on ladders and the odd trapeze read the books they were supposed to be shelving.
Sorter added shyly, “The same principle would apply to a larger machine-”
Blastmaster was already shaking his head. “Sorter, Sorter, we have discussed this before. You may not design or build. You are a librarian-a sorter, chosen and named from birth.”
Blastmaster patted the younger gnome’s shoulder. “It is a noble role, and you fill it well. Stacker has nothing but praise for you.”
“He does?” Sorter asked, astounded. Stacker had always seemed exasperated by Sorter.
“Well, he says you work his crews hard, and that’s all to the good.” Blastmaster smiled at Sorter. “Take joy in your work, son, for you will never leave it.”
Sorter tugged glumly at the lever beside an empty stack of shelves and didn’t even smile when it slammed into the floor with a loud thunk.
“I’ll try to find some joy,” he said, sighing. “Even if it kills me.”
Before returning to his desk, he felt obligated to ask, “Blastmaster, there was an explosion a few moments ago…?”
Blastmaster beamed. “That was mine.” He pulled a scroll from one of his many pockets and unrolled it. “There is a very old legend that with the right detonating device, you can detonate water. I was testing a new device this morning.” He shrugged and laughed proudly. “What a marvelous detonator! Blew itself into more pieces than you can imagine. Completely destroyed the work of thirty years. I’ll have to start over.”
Sorter nodded and returned to his desk, muttering bitterly, “Some gnomes have all the luck.”
Sorter had been at his work long enough to accumulate a few stray volumes and stack them on a corner of the desk when a voice from the stack said, “Excuse me.”
Sorter blinked. “Excuse me?”
“That’s what I said.” The voice said reproachfully. “You have to say something different.”
“Ah.” Sorter looked this way and that, but saw nothing but the books. “Excuse me-I mean, sorry.” He opened the topmost book cautiously, peered inside. “Hello?”
“Down here.” A hand waved above the edge of his desk.
Sorter leaned forward and saw a small face with large eyes staring back at him. At first he thought the face belonged to a child, but children weren’t usually allowed to go around carrying dangerous-looking sticks like that.
“A kender,” Sorter said with certainty and some wonder. “You’re a kender.”
“I know I’m a kender, but how did you know?” the kender asked, sounding impressed.
“From reading,” Sorter said, though he hadn’t read very much about kender at all.
“That’s what I wanted to ask you about.” The kender looked up at the gnome earnestly. “Have you actually read all those books?”
Delighted, Sorter smiled down at him. “Nobody reads these books. They review parts of them and then come to revise them. What is your name?” Sorter’s right hand picked up a steam-powered quill pen that had all its feathers singed off and hovered over the Visitors Log.
“Franni,” the small visitor said, but he wasn’t paying attention. His gaze took him through the shelves, the aisles, all the myriad books. “If nobody reads them, what good are they?”
Sorter was shocked. “What good? Why, they’re history. They’re the history of the progress of gnome engineering down through the ages. Did you really think anyone could read all these books?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure,” the kender said cautiously. “Do you at least know what’s in them?”
“By category at least,” Sorter said. “Is Franni your full name?”
Sorter marveled. A short name for a short being. He was thoroughly charmed.
Franni kicked at the desk, watching with interest as his kicks drove the top book bit by bit off the corner stack. “It’s all the name I’ve ever had. What’s your name?”
Sorter beamed and took in a deep breath and launched into his name, which took several hours and a large jug of ale to tell in full.
When he paused a good while later, Franni broke in, “Can’t we pretend I asked your nickname?”
Sorter stopped himself before launching into the second part of his full name. “Actually, it’s just that first bit-Sorter.”
The kender’s repeated kicking caused the book to slide off the corner stack. Sorter caught it nimbly.
“Careful, Franni. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
Franni’s eyes went round with interest and his ears twitched. “Is it dangerous here?”
“Oh, my, yes.” Sorter looked around proudly. “There is nothing more dangerous than the knowledge in any library.” He waved an arm at the shelves. “And this isn’t just any library. This is the Great Repository.” He saw the blank look
in Franni’s face and explained, “A copy of every design a gnome has conceived is stored here.”
“And they’re all dangerous?” Franni repeated. He stared, fascinated, at the shelves. “Can I read one?”
“Of course you can. And no, they’re not all dangerous.” Sorter shook his finger with mock severity. “But just you watch yourself in North Central Lower Left. That’s the Large War Machines section. Killers, every book.”
Franni nodded vigorously. “I’ll remember,” he said solemnly, and walked away whispering, “North Central Lower Left, North Central Lower Left, North Central…”
Sorter chuckled and returned to his work. As stated, he had not read much about kender, or he might not have been so complacent.
Several hours later, Sorter was standing in the central portion of the Repository, confirming the shelving of a rarity in the Grinders and Meta-Rasps section, when he heard the thump of a bookshelf snapping back into the floor.
“Busy morning,” he said under his breath.
Then he heard another thump, and another, and another-
Then he heard a sound that began softly and grew until it was louder than the thumps: the thud of book after book being flung out of their shelves, slamming into the floor like gigantic hailstones.
The concussion of the books and the thumping of the shelves grew so severe that the vibrations caused the floor to shake. Sorter stood staring as if in a dream while the lever holding up the nearest shelf jarred free of its holding loop. He looked down a line of shelves to see row on row of levers coming unhinged.
An older gnome, hanging by his legs from one of the shelves, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed over the growing din, “Threshold effect! Book avalanche!”