Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  After the first week, Shrue had become impatient, eager to rush to the Second Ultimate Library, sure that KirdriK had been bested and eviscerated somewhere in the Overworld and that even now the Purples were returning to Faucelme’s evil band, and he’d urged Captain Shiolko to take the galleon high up into what was left of the Dying Earth’s jet stream—up where the wind howled and threatened to tear the white sails to ribbons, where ice accumulated on the spars and masts and ropes, and where the passengers had to retreat, wrapped in furs and blankets, to sealed compartments to let the ship pressurize their rooms with icy air.

  But he’d seen the folly in this even before Derwe Coreme said softly to him, “Can Faucelme’s false Finding Crystal lead him to the other Library?”

  “No,” said Shrue. “But sooner or later he—or more likely, the Red—will understand that they’ve been tricked. And then they’ll come seeking us.”

  “Would you rather they find us frozen and blue from lack of breath?” said the warrior maven.

  Shrue had shaken his head then, apologized to the captain and passengers for his haste, and allowed Shiolko to bring the Steresa’s Dream down—in a slow, dreamlike descent—to her lower, warmer altitudes and more leisurely breeze-driven pace.

  During the second week of their voyage, there were some memorable moments for Shrue the diabolist:

  For a full day, Steresa’s Dream wove slowly between massive stratocumulus clouds that rose nine leagues and more before anvilling out high in the stratosphere. When the sky galleon had to go through one of these cloud giants, the ship’s lanterns came on automatically, one of Shiolko’s sons activated a mournful fog horn on the bow, and moisture dripped from the spars and rigging.

  For two days, they flew above a massive forest fire that had already devoured millions of hectares of ancient woodland. Steresa’s Dream bucked and rolled to the violent thermal updrafts. The smoke became so heavy that Shiolko took the ship as high as she could go without incurring icing, and still Shrue and the passengers had to wear scarves over their noses and mouths when they went on deck. That night, the fifty-four passengers—including Derwe Coreme’s Myrmazons and Mauz Meriwolt, who no longer bothered wearing the monk’s robes—dined in awed silence, staring down through the dining room’s crystal hull-floor as the inferno raged and roared less than a mile below them.

  As they neared a coastline, the sky galleon flew low over the last stages of a war, where a besieging army was attacking an iron-walled fortress city. Several of the ancient, rusted walls had already been breeched, and reptile-mounted cavalry and armored infantry were pouring in like ants while the defenders blocked streets and plazas in a last, desperate stand. Derwe Coreme’s experienced eye announced that there were more than a hundred thousand besiegers set against fewer than ten thousand defenders of the doomed city. “I wish they could have hired my three hundred and me,” Derwe Coreme said softly as the galleon passed above the carnage and burning port and floated southeast out to sea.

  “Why?” said Shrue. “You would certainly be doomed. No three hundred warriors in the history of the Earth could save that city.”

  The war maven smiled. “Ah, but the glory, Shrue! The glory. My Myrmazons would have extended the fight for weeks, perhaps months, and our war prowess and glory would be sung until the red sun goes dark.”

  Shrue nodded, even though he did not understand at all, and touched her arm and said, “But that could be mere weeks or days from now, my friend. At any rate, I am glad you and your three hundred are not down there.”

  The Steresa’s Dream sailed due east across a green, shallow sea and then they were above what both Captain Shiolko and Shrue believed was the legendary Equatorial Archipelago. The passengers lunched on their terraces and looked down as Shiolko brought the galleon low to less than a thousand feet above the tropical-foliaged isles and green lagoons. The islands themselves seemed uninhabited, but the inter-island waterways, bays, and countless lagoons were filled with hundreds upon hundreds of elaborate houseboats, some almost as large as the sky galleon, and all a mass of baroque wood designs, bright brass festoons, crenellated towers and arching cabins, and each carrying more flags, banners, and colorful silks than the last.

  They left the archipelago behind and crossed further south and east into deeper waters—the sea went from green to light blue to a blue so dark as to rival the Dying Earth’s sky—and the only moving things now spied below were the great, shadowy shapes of whales and the sea monsters who ate the whales. In the dining room that night, the ocean below was alive with a surface phosphorescence underlaid by the more brilliant and slow-moving biological arc lamps of the Lampmouth Leviathans. Realizing that one of those beasts could swallow the Steresa’s Dream whole, Shrue was as relieved as the other passengers when Captain Shiolko took the galleon higher to find more favorable winds.

  The next morning, one of Captain Shiolko’s sons showed Derwe Corme and Shrue how to hook their small webbing hammocks to clasps set high in the crosstrees of the mainmast above the Geyre’s nest. It was a gusty day and the sails and tops of the masts were often tilted thirty to forty degrees from vertical as the great ship first tacked and then ran before the wind. The magus’s and war maven’s tiny hammocks swung sixty feet above the deck and then, in an instant of roll, were thousands of feet above a solid floor of stormclouds miles and leagues below. It was sun-dark day and the primary light came from the lightning that rolled and rippled through the bellies of the clouds beneath them.

  “That’s odd,” said Derwe Corme as she rolled out of her hammock and into Shrue’s. The cheap clasps and thin webbing strings on Shrue’s hammock groaned and stretched but held as Derwe sat up and straddled him. “I never knew I was afraid of heights until today.”

  On Sixthday Night of the second week, Shiolko and his sons opened the beautiful Grand Ballroom—its crystal floor took up almost a third of the hull bottom—and the passengers and sons staged a Mid-Voyage Festival, even though no one had the slightest idea if the voyage was at its midpoint or not. By midnight, Shrue cared no more than the others about such niggling fine points.

  Even after two weeks, Shrue was surprised at his fellow passengers’ festive skills. Shiolko’s sons, it turned out, each played an instrument—and played it well. The side-windows were open in the Grand Ballroom and out into the interocean night went the complex bell-chimes of tiancoes, the string music of violins, serpis, and sphere-fiddles, the clear notes from flutes, claxophone, harp, and trumpet, and the bass of tamdrums and woebeons. Captain Shiolko, it turned out, was as much a master of the three-tiered piano as he was of his ship, and thus the dancing began.

  Reverend Cepres and his two wives—Wilva and Cophrane—had not been seen out of their cabin since the voyage commenced, but they appeared in brilliant blue silks this night and showed the interested celebrants how to dance the wild and uninhibited Devian Tarantula. The Brothers Vromarak put aside their mourning for the night and led everyone in a hopping, leaping tango-conga line that concluded with two-thirds of the dancers collapsing in a wriggling, laughing heap. Then Arch-Docent Hu—the same tall, silent, solemn form with whom Shrue had played chess every evening on the foredeck—who had left his dark docent robes behind in his booklined stateroom, appeared barechested in gold slippers and silver pantaloons to dance a wild solo Quostry to the pounding piano and tamdrums. The dance was so gravity-defying and amazing to watch that the sixty-some passengers and crew applauded to the beat until Hu concluded by literally leaping to the ceiling, tapdancing there for an impossible three minutes, and then lowering himself like a spider to the crystal dancefloor below and bowing.

  Little Maus Meriwolt wheeled out an instrument that he’d cobbled together. The thing appeared to be a mixture of organ, calliope, and fog horn, and Meriwolt—dressed now in his fanciest yellow shirt, white gloves, and red shorts—tapdanced in oversized wooden clogs as he sang in his falsetto and pulled ropes to activate the various horns, pipes, and steam sirens. The effect was so comical that the round
of applause Meriwolt received rivaled Arch-Docent Hu’s reception.

  But perhaps the most amazing part of the long night to Shrue was the transformation of Dame War Maven Derwe Coreme and her six Myrmazons.

  Shrue had never seen Derwe Coreme or her fighters out of their formfitting dragonscale armor, but this night they appeared in thin, floating, incredibly erotic gowns of shimmeringly translucent silk of soft red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Everyone in the ballroom gasped when the Myrmazons floated in like a rainbow. And—like the bands of color in a rainbow—the intensity and hues shifted and changed from one to another as the women moved and as one moved in relation to them. Derwe Coreme, who had entered in a red dress, had her thin gauze’s color shift to violet as Shrue approached to ask her to dance. Each of the young women’s gowns shifted color as they moved and as their bodies moved beneath the fabric, but the full rainbow was always present with all seven of its colors.

  “Astounding,” whispered Shrue much, much later as he held Derwe Coreme close as they danced. The orchestra, apparently exhausted from its own exertions during the wild dances, was playing a slow waltz half as old as time. The ball was almost over. There was a pre-dawn grayness to the light outside the crystal windows. Shrue could feel Derwe Coreme’s breasts against him as they slowly moved together across the crystal hull-floor. “Your gown—all your gowns—are astounding,” he said again.

  “What? This old thing?” said Derwe Coreme, tossing aside a floating ribbon of the nearly transparent and seemingly gravity-free fabric—it was now green. “Just something the girls and I picked up after sacking the city of Moy.” She was obviously amused—and perhaps pleased—by Shrue’s amazement. “Why, diabolist? Does this sort of garb on a warrior not fit into your magician’s philosophy?”

  Shrue recited softly—

  “Do not all charms fly

  At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

  There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:

  We know her woof, her texture; she is given

  In the dull catalogue of common things.

  Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,

  Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

  Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—

  Unweave a rainbow”

  “That is astounding,” whispered Derwe Coreme. “Who wrote it? Where did you find it?”

  “No one knows who wrote it,” said Shrue, pulling her closer and whispering against her cheek. “I was thinking a moment ago that this waltz is half as old as time…well, that verse, the name of its author lost to us, is as old as time. And older than all our memories—save my mother’s, who used to put me to sleep with ancient poetry.”

  Derwe Coreme pulled back suddenly to study Shrue’s face. “You? Shrue the diabolist? With a mother? It is hard to imagine.”

  Shrue sighed.

  Suddenly Arch-Docent Hu cut in—not to dance with Derwe Coreme, but to talk excitedly to Shrue. “Did I hear you just say something about gnome mines? I am doing my thesis on gnomes in gloam-mines, you know!”

  Shrue nodded, took Derwe Coreme’s hand, and said, “Fascinating. But I fear the lady and I must turn in now. I shall talk to you about gnome mines another time—perhaps over chess tomorrow.”

  Arch-Docent Hu, appearing somewhat less professorial than usual with his bare chest, red cumberbund, silver pantaloons, and gold slippers, looked crestfallen.

  As they went up the grand stairway out of the ballroom, Derwe Coreme whispered, “My leaving will ruin the rainbow.”

  Shrue laughed. “Five of your other six colors left with gentlemen hours ago.”

  “Well,” said the war maven, “I cannot say that I am leaving with a gentleman.”

  Shrue glanced at her sharply. Although his expression had not changed, he was amazed to find that his feelings were deeply hurt.

  As if sensing this, Derwe Coreme squeezed his hand. “I am leaving with the gentleman,” she said softly. “Of this voyage. Of all the males I’ve known in my not-insignificant lifetime. Perhaps in all of the Dying Earth. A gentleman and a magician—not a common combination, that.”

  Shrue did not argue. He said nothing as they went up to their stateroom.

  Two days later the Steresa’s Dream crossed the western coastline of another continent just after dawn. Ulfänt Banderz’s nose shifted at least ten degrees northeast in its little box and the sky galleon altered its course to follow.

  “Captain,” Shrue said as he stood on the otherwise empty quarterdeck near Shiolko at the great wheel, “I noticed the gunports along the hull…”

  Shiolko rumbled his sailor’s laugh. “Paint only, Master magus. Paint only. For appearance sake come sky pirates or angry husbands after a port call.”

  “Then you have no weapons?”

  “Three crossbows and my grandfather’s cutlass in the weapons’ locker,” said Shiolko. “Oh, and the harpoon gun down in the for’ard hold.”

  “Harpoon gun?”

  “A great awkward thing that runs off compressed air,” said the captain. “Fires an eight-foot long barbed bolt of a harpoon trailing a mile or three of thin steel cable. Originally meant to hunt whales or baby Lanternmouths or some such. My sons and I have never had reason nor opportunity to use it.”

  “You might want to bring it up on deck and see if it works,” said Shrue. “Practice with it a bit.”

  Late that afternoon, the galleon crossed an expanse of ochre and vermillion desert glinting with crystals. The Steresa’s Dream was flying low enough that everyone could see the huge, blue creatures—rather like soft-shelled chambered nautiluses, Shrue thought from where he watched from the railing—which had evolved a single great wheel by which they rolled singularly and in groups across the red desert floor, leaving tracks ten leagues long.

  “We could practice on one of them!” called one of Shiolko’s sons to Shrue. He and two others had assembled and hooked up the air-harpoon gun nearby on the deck but had yet to fire one of the barbed harpoons.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Shrue.

  “Why not?” asked the goodnatured young man.

  Shrue pointed. “Those tracks the blue-wheelers are leaving in the sand? They’re ancient glyphs. The creatures are wishing us fair winds and a pleasant voyage.”

  As they passed beyond the desert, Derwe Coreme joined him at the rail. “Shrue, tell me the truth. You never had any plans to flee the Dying Earth when its last days came, did you?”

  “No,” said Shrue. He showed a quick, uncharacteristic grin. “It’s all just too damned interesting to miss, isn’t it?”

  Early the next morning they had entered a higher, sharper range of mountains than any of them had ever seen before—the peaks were high enough that real snow remained on the summits—when suddenly the low clouds ahead parted and the Steresa’s Dream was floating above tall, thin metal-and-glass towers that were lit from within by something brighter than lanterns.

  A dozen ancient air cars flew into the air like hornets from those towers and swept toward the galleon.

  Captain Shiolko sounded the alarm—he’d had to retrieve several of the klaxons and sirens from Meriwolt’s cobbled-together musical instrument—and the passengers went to their stations belowdeck as rehearsed. The captain’s sons took their places in the rigging or at fire-fighting stations and Shrue saw all three ancient crossbows in use. Shiolko himself, at the wheel, had buckled on the cutlass that one of his female sons had brought him. Derwe Coreme and her six Myrmazons deployed themselves with their shorter crossbows and edged weapons—two of the women on the port side rail, two on the starboard, one in the bow, one in the stern at the quarterdeck behind the captain, and Drew Coreme herself roaming. Shrue remained where he’d been at the port railing.

  Three of the air cars swept in closer. Shiolko was having one of his sons run up the white and blue universal flag of parley when the three air cars fired narrow, intense beams of light at the Steresa’s Dream. Two sails and narrow circles of decking burst
into flame, but Shiolko’s sons put out the fires with buckets of water in half a minute.

  Four more air cars joined the first three, and they swept in closer on the port side, choosing to unleash their heat beams from only a hundred yards out.

  “Fire,” said Derwe Corme. All seven of the Myrmazons triggered their blunt but powerful crossbows. They reloaded so quickly from their belt-quivers that Shrue could not see the actual motions. Together, the seven got off eleven volleys in less than a minute.

  Bolts pierced the yellowed, brittle canopies of the ancient air cars and six of the seven, their pilots dead, plummeted down through the clouds to crash on the snowy peaks below. The seventh air car wobbled away, no longer under its pilot’s control.

  The remaining five began to circle the Steresa’s Dream from half a league out, attempting to ignite the galleon’s wide, white sails with their attenuated beams.

  Shrue glanced at the compressed-air harpoon gun, but Shiolko’s sons were too busy cooling the white-circled hot spots on the sails to man the clumsy weapon. Closing his eyes, Shrue raised both arms, turned his fingers into quickly moving summoning claws, and chanted a spell taught him a century earlier by a misogynist fellow-magus named Tchamast.

  Out of the clouds to the northeast emerged a half-mile-long crimson dragon, its wings longer than the galleon, its eyes blazing yellow, its long teeth glinting in the sunlight, its maw wide enough to swallow all five air cars at once. Everyone on the Steresa’s Dream ceased their cries and motion until the only audible sounds were the flapping of the sails in their stays and the much louder flap-flap-flap of the giant dragon’s leathery wings.