Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  “The fish believes it’s you, my brother,” Gandreel said. “Thus perhaps you are truly an imposter of a kind.”

  “Perhaps these thoughts can be enhanced,” Vendra said, concentrating strangely upon the fish. “For surely Sarnod’s spell is too far along for him to simply end it to confront new danger.”

  Whereupon the fish, staring at these apparitions with their strange sounds, insisted one final time “I am Sarnod!” although it no longer knew the meaning of the words, and, thus saying, concluded all conflict and discussion with a mighty leap forward toward the dimly perceived source of its affliction. In two gulps, it swallowed surprised, protesting Sarnod, the half-formed stabbing lines above him lashing out in blind confusion, then lunged for the huge window, smashed through, and plunged into the cool, deep, sad-dark lake beyond, the waters like a second skin, while from behind it sensed the shock in its wake, all of Sarnod’s spells broken with his last smothered scream—Whisper Bird with a long sigh already returning to Embelyon, and, somewhere far-distant, T’sais sensing some fundamental change—and The Mouth’s further exultations and wisdoms muffled as the fish dove deeper and deeper still, into the thick silt of the lake bed, and as Sarnod’s final quest ended, sought only the oblivion of no-thought, no-dominion, and a feast of salamanders, in that place where the light from the dying sun could not penetrate except as a pale, fast-fading memory.

  Afterword:

  I first encountered Jack Vance through his “The Dragon Masters” novella. I found it during a school fieldtrip to the library when I was twelve, and it so dazzled me that I sought out Vance’s Dying Earth tales. As a kid, I loved the adventure aspects and the outlandish imagination.

  As an adult, my affection for Vance only deepened, because there was so much in the stories that I hadn’t seen earlier. Cugel, for example, is the kind of person who does whatever is necessary to survive in what is a very harsh world. This makes him more of an anti-hero than a hero, because his actions can be morally suspect. Sometimes he is even driven to unnecessary cruelty. What saves him from being repugnant often has to do with the rogues around him: there’s always someone worse than him that we’re rooting against.

  I also appreciated the genius quality of imagination even more as an adult. There’s something about reading as a teenager that levels out these qualities—you see through the text to what it’s trying to be rather than what it is, and you’re much more forgiving of stylistic flaws. So, back in the day, I didn’t think of Vance as being necessarily any more brilliant than anything else I was reading. But, coming back to Vance, I can really appreciate the high quality of the writing and of his rather black sense of humor.

  In terms of my own writing, the idea of Vance creating or refining “scientifantasy,” or far-future SF that read like fantasy, really resonated. I don’t have much of a scientific background, but I liked the idea of the reader having to interpret the text in that way—to see past a “spell” and think that it might be some advanced form of nanotechnology or some other science incomprehensible to us today. As a result, Vance, along with Cordwainer Smith, had a huge influence on my Veniss Underground novel and related short stories. Without Vance, or Smith, I would never have even tried to write science fiction.

  Vance’s overall influence seems to me to have been vast. Some writers have long, productive careers and their sheer longevity makes them iconic. With Vance, there’s a different sense—the idea that he was very much an innovator to whom the rest of the world eventually caught up. I doubt that some of the approaches in my work, or in any number of other writers’ work, could or would exist without Vance. That there’s such a wide Vance influence across many different kinds of writers strikes me as important, too. That’s because a reader can interpret the Dying Earth in different ways: you can read them as straight-on fantasy stories; you can read through them to the far-future aspects; you can read through them in a postmodern way, because there’s so much subtext. This, for me, is what has made them classics, and made them last for writers and readers alike.

  —Jeff VanderMeer

  Kage Baker

  The Green Bird

  One of the most prolific new writers to appear in the late ‘90s, Kage Baker made her first sale in 1997, to Asimov’s Science Fiction, and has since become one of that magazine’s most frequent and popular contributors with her sly and compelling stories of the adventures and misadventures of the time-traveling agents of the Company; of late, she’s started two other linked sequences of stories there as well, one of them set in as lush and eccentric a High Fantasy milieu as any we’ve ever seen. Her stories have also appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Sci Fiction, Amazing, and elsewhere. Her first Company novel, In the Garden of Iden, was also published in 1997 and immediately became one of the most acclaimed and widely reviewed first novels of the year. More Company novels quickly followed, including Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood, The Graveyard Game, The Life of the World to Come, The Machine’s Child, and Sons of Heaven, and her first fantasy novel, The Anvil of the World. Her many stories have been collected in Black Projects, White Knights, Mother Aegypt and Other Stories, The Children of the Company, and Dark Mondays. Her most recent books are three new novels, Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, about some of the real pirates of the Caribbean, the new fantasy novel The House of the Stag, and a full-length version of The Empress of Mars. In addition to her writing, Baker has been an artist, actor, and director at the Living History Center, and has taught Elizabethan English as a second language. She lives in Pismo Beach, California.

  Here, she follows the infamous Cugel the Clever on a visit to the white-walled city of Kaiin, where he’s soon embroiled in an intricate plot to steal a fabulous pet…a plot that proves to have unfortunate consequences for all concerned.

  The Green Bird

  Kage Baker

  It amused Justice Rhabdion of Kaiin to dispose of malefactors by dropping them down a certain chasm located at the edge of his palace gardens.

  Deep and steep-sided the chasm was, bottomed with soft sand, so that more often than not the objects of Justice Rhabdion’s displeasure survived the fall. This was all to the good, as far as Rhabdion was concerned, since it provided him with further subject for mirth. On claret-colored summer afternoons, he used to have his Chair of Office moved out on the balcony that overlooked his garden pleasaunce, and which, incidentally, gave him an excellent view into the chasm as well. There he would smile to watch the antics of the enchasmates, as they fruitlessly sought to escape or quarreled with one another.

  To further tease those unfortunates who had been so consigned, Justice Rhabdion had had vines of Saskervoy planted all along the chasm’s rim, prodigious black creepers, with scarlet leaves in shape and function like razors, save for their motility and the small voracious mouths set just above each stem. Each enchasmed newcomer attempted to depart by means of seizing and scrambling up the vines, generally at the cost of a finger or nose and never farther than the first third of the way before having to let go and fall.

  Rhabdion’s gardeners stinted the vines’ feeding, to keep them keen; and this in time diminished their effect, for the enchasmates quickly learned better than to grasp at the vines. Therefore in their impatience to feed, the vines took to hunting for themselves, snapping out to catch any bird or bat so unwise as to fly within their reach.

  The enchasmates, having made slings out of sandal-laces, would then fire small stones, striking the vines and causing them to drop their prey, upon which the slingers themselves would then gladly fasten, bearing the small tattered flesh back to the shelters built under the more concave angles of the chasm’s walls. So were they provided with sustenance.

  Then it chanced that a mining engineer from Erze Damath displeased Justice Rhabdion in some wise, and was inadequately searched before being thrown down the chasm. Certain tools he had concealed in his boots, and, once resigned to his misfortune, he retreated under the most acute of the leaning walls and there excavated, patiently chipping away at stra
ta of porous aggregate to make yet deeper shelter from winter hail and the melancholy red light of the sun.

  In time, his work provided the enchasmates with water, for he broke into a subterranean spring, relieving them thereby of the need to collect the bloody dewfall that dripped from the vines in early mornings—and with currency, for he struck upon a vein of purest gold, which was pounded into roundels and traded amongst them all in exchange for certain favors.

  So a kind of society grew up at the bottom of the chasm, with its own customs and pleasures, all unnoticed by Justice Rhabdion, whose eyesight had waned as he grew older. Still he sat on his balcony through the fine purple evenings, chuckling at the occasional howls of despair that rose to his hearing from below.

  Cugel, sometimes known as Cugel the Clever, became an enchasmate on the first day of spring, and the boom of the ice floes breaking on the river Scaum echoed off the upper walls of the chasm as he came pin-wheeling downward. He struck the sandy floor with a crash, and awhile lay stunned, long enough for the other inhabitants of that place to come creeping out to see whether he lived or no, and, if dead were the case, whether he had been a well-nourished and sedentary man. Alas for their hopes, Cugel detected their stealthy approach and sat up sharply.

  Seeing him alive and whole, the foremost of the unfortunates smiled at Cugel. “Welcome, stranger! How have you offended, to end here?

  Cugel scrambled to his feet and looked about him. He saw a score of wretches, some in the rags in which they had arrived, others in coverings of bat or mouse skins torturously pieced together by the use of bird-bone needles and short lengths of dried gut.

  “Offended?” said Cugel. “Not in the least. There was a trifling misunderstanding, which was, sadly, blown out of all proportion by a jealous suitor. My advocate was astonished that the matter even came before the Dais of Adjudication. ‘Friend Cugel,’ he said to me, just before I was cast down here, ‘Do not let your fiery spirits dampen! I will appeal your case and these baseless charges shall melt away, even as the ice upon great Scaum.’ So much he said, and I am confident in his powers of persuasion.”

  “No doubt,” said the nearest enchasmate, a splay-footed man with red hair, that hung to his shoulders in tangled ringlets. “And what, pray, is the name of your excellent friend?”

  “Pestary Yoloss of Cutz is the man,” said Cugel. The massed enchasmates smiled amongst themselves.

  “Why, Pestary was my advocate too,” said the red-haired man.

  “And mine,” said a swarthy man of Sfere.

  “And mine,” echoed many others. They laughed, then, at Cugel’s pale face, and, for the most part turned away to their own affairs. The red-haired man approached more closely, and, drawing a small pouch from his loincloth, opened it with two fingers and worked forth three flattened nuggets of gold, looking less like coins than pieces of trodden farlock dung. These he offered to Cugel, would Cugel but grant him certain privileges of Cugel’s person.

  Cugel declined the transaction, though he looked thoughtfully at the gold.

  He beat the sand from his clothing and made a slow circuit of the bottom of the chasm, gazing up at the vines of Saskervoy and noting how they twitched at the passing flight of a bird, sometimes lashing out to snap one from midair. He saw, too, how expert certain of the enchasmates were at knocking down the vines’ prey. All the life of the community Cugel observed with shrewd eyes, before settling down with his long back against the chasm’s wall and his long legs stretched out before him. He had been wearing a liripipe hood when he had been thrown into the chasm, sewn with a pattern of red and green diamonds, and he removed it now and delved into the recesses of its long point. At his arm’s length, he found what he sought, drawing forth in his nimble fingers a pair of spotted cubes of bone.

  Thereafter, Cugel won himself many a succulent lizard or wren, and accrued a considerable store of gold, in games of chance with the other enchasmates. Seeing, however, that an unpopular man was unlikely to last long in that society, Cugel was at pains to distribute largesse of marrow-bone and pelts to his fellow prisoners, and made himself pleasant in divers other ways, primarily conversation. He found, to his irritation, that none were especially interested in hearing his traveler’s tales; but each man, once encouraged to speak of his own life, went on at great length and seemed to relish having someone to listen.

  Some were sycophantic courtiers whose flattery had failed them; some were petty murderers; some had disputed the amount of taxes they owed. Kroshod, the engineer from Erze Damath, had been a visitor unaware of local custom when he had most unwisely failed to tie three lengths of red string to the handle of his innroom door before retiring. To all these, Cugel listened with well-concealed boredom, nodding and occasionally tapping the side of his long nose and murmuring “Ha! What injustice!” or “Monstrous! How I do condole with you, sir!”.

  At last, he made the acquaintance of a certain elderly man in rags of velvet, who sat alone, wreathed in violet melancholy. Him Cugel approached with bland affability, inviting a wager on the cast of a single die. The elder looked at him sidelong and chewed his yellowed mustache a moment before replying.

  “I thank you, sir, but no. I have never gambled, and have learned, to my grief, to avoid straying outside my field of expertise.”

  “And pray, sir, what would that be?” inquired Cugel, seating himself beside the other.

  “You see before you Meternales, a Sage, erstwhile master of a thousand librams and codices. Had I been content with what I held for mine own, I would even now be stretched at mine ease, in far Cil; but I yielded to greed and curiosity, and see to what extremity I am brought for my treasure-hunting!”

  “Perhaps you would elucidate,” said Cugel, scenting useful information. Meternales rolled a wet eye at him.

  “Hast ever heard of Daratello the Psitticist? He was a mage, and a pupil of none less than great Phandaal. Deep and subtle was his power, and prudent his employment of it; yet he was hunted to his death long ago, for reasons which he ought to have foreseen.”

  “I do not believe I know the name. Was he slain by thieves? And did they, perhaps, fail nevertheless to obtain his fortune? Which is, by chance, somewhere still concealed for some fortunate wayfarer to find?” said Cugel, hitching himself a little closer to Meternales, in the hope that he would lower his voice and thereby exclude other listeners.

  “So it happened,” said Meternales. “But the fortune was not, as you might imagine, in brassbound chests or bags of impermeable silk. His fortune was in spells. I, myself, once owned librams containing one hundred and six spells surviving from the age of Phandaal. Daratello, they say, had preserved double that number, in volumes borne away in stealth from Grand Motholam. Yet Daratello was only a man, as you or I, though a passing clever man. I have spent a life in study and austerities, and still can commit to memory no more than five spells of reasonable puissance at any one time. Daratello could memorize as much, it is said, but no more. His genius lay in the shifts he devised to circumvent his limits.

  “There was a merchant traveled from the Land of the Falling Wall, who brought with him a pair of bright-feathered birdlings, and said they could be taught the speech of men. Daratello purchased them from the merchant, and took them away to his isolate redoubt, and there in seclusion taught each one half the spells he had preserved.

  “Our human minds cannot contain so much. I hold my five spells after a lifetime’s training; any attempt to memorize more would twist the matter of my brain to madness. Any common man would find his nose running and his eyes crossing were he to fill the hollow of his skull with more than one cantrap, and as many as three would break him in seizures and incontinence. Yet a bird’s mind is bright and empty, heedless of human care or ambition; and it is the delight of green-feathered birds of that sort to memorize and store what they hear.

  “Daratello carried the birds one on either shoulder. He had only to prompt one or the other, and the bird would murmur the spell of his choice into his ear, for
his instant use.

  “Such brilliance awoke envy wherever Daratello went. Attempts were made to steal his green birds; he withdrew to his far manse. Caravans full of petitioner-thaumaturges braved the miles to his door, offering chests of gems and ensorcelled wares in exchange for the birds. Fruitless were their efforts, for he refused to admit them nor even to raise his portcullis.

  “In the end, they grew importunate. Daratello was driven forth, with his birds; Daratello was hunted across Ascolais, Almery, even across the sea and the Silver Desert. He was besieged at last in a high tower of timber, and, most unwisely, his pursuers set it afire. So Daratello and his birds perished. And yet…there were some who claimed to see a single bird escape, flying free of the writhing smoke.

  “Having read so much in an ancient tome of Pompodouros, I read more, and learned that others had claimed to have seen, and even briefly possessed, Daratello’s surviving pet. I traced the green bird’s whereabouts across five lands, and five ages. When I found no further references in books, I went forth myself, though I am but a scholar and ill-equipped for travel, and sought rumor of the marvelous bird in those places in which it had been last recorded as possibly having been known. I will not tell you what I spent in bribes to consult certain forbidden oracles, or with what pain the syllables of disclosure were wrenched forth from those who dealt in revelatory ambiguities.

  “It must suffice to say that in the ninetieth year of my life, I came here, to white-walled Kaiin, and sought the yellow-eyed daughters of Deviaticus Lert.”

  “And who would these be?” Cugel arched one eyebrow. “Nubile sirens? Exotic beauties from Prince Kandive’s pleasure pavilions?