“Home.” Shinobu looked about his surroundings for a way down. He needed to get back to his home dimension, but he had to plan a way to elude the khazira when it inevitably found him after the shift.
The pull grew stronger when he started moving. Something was definitely calling to him, but what? The strider held the fiery blade in front of his face. “You said this was ‘her’ dimension. Who?”
Imphetos is the name of the spectral realm; her realm, and the one she named for herself.
“You’re saying her name is Imphetos?” Shinobu frowned. “I don’t know this name.”
Imphetos is of her name, but not her name.
Shinobu took a deep breath to keep from grinding his teeth. “Speak your meaning clearly. I’m in no mood for riddles.”
Imphetos is of her name, but not her name.
Shinobu stared at the sword, moving his lips as he worked the word over and over in his mind. “Of her name, but not her name? I don’t . . .” he trailed off. “Do you mean the word is composed of the letters of her name?” The sword didn’t respond, but he received an impression of approval from it. Why wouldn’t it just tell him?
Because she is my creator, and I, her betrayer.
The sword was reading his thoughts again. He needed to discipline his mind to block it out. Later.
“Imphetos.” Shinobu tried the name backward, but the sword disapproved. He tried it many different ways, but came up with nothing.
She is known in your human lore.
“I’ve never heard of such a name in the lore of my homeland.”
I do not lie.
Shinobu thought about it. The sword might not distinguish between different cultures. “Is this even important?” he asked. The new feeling deep inside tugged at him. “If it is, can you tell me nothing more?”
This is important, the sword assured him. There are those in your world who know her name. There are those who tricked her by altering my nature in order to seal her away, back to her spectral realm.
That rang familiar.
Shinobu ducked behind a gnarled tree with branches that writhed in a non-breeze like fingers groping at the air. A six-legged animal with a silver coat and wide jaws trotted by. The bulging muscles in its legs gave a spring to its step that assured the strider it wasn’t a predator he’d escape if it found him. The thing had at least two rows of teeth perfect for tearing, and its glowing green eyes were large and round like saucers.
It trotted away and Shinobu let out a long sigh and sat down. He needed to get out of this realm before something terrible found him. He ran his fingers through the dirt—or what was similar to dirt—and found that it felt tangible, but barely so. Such an odd place this was. He chewed his bottom lip as he stared at that dirt, then used a finger to write out the word I-M-P-H-E-T-O-S.
He spelled the word several different ways, but nothing made sense. The sword never reacted either. He brushed over the dirt and tried again, several more times. The last try elicited a spark of approval from the sword. The word was unfamiliar, but it somehow rang true. Shinobu stared at the word for a long time with a growing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach.
The sword had said she was his greatest fantasies and nightmares combined. Seeing the name scratched into the ground now, he remembered Hikaru’s warning of a demon possessed of cunning.
The manipulator. The one who knows the greatest desires of every sentient being. The one that could trick the cleverest of opponents out of their very souls.
Shinobu swallowed. The growing cold in his stomach felt as though he’d swallowed his own dread.
M-E-P-H-I-S-T-O.
ANNA SMITH SPARK
“GOLD LIGHT” IS WHAT I ALWAYS SAY I WON’T EVER WRITE—THE backstory to single brief throwaway image in The Court of Broken Knives. It exists within the world of my Empires of Dust novels, but is not a part of the series narrative; it can and perhaps even should be read without your having so much as heard of me before (luckily). The intention behind it was simply to write something beautiful and strange and stark and dragon-wild, inspired by the beautiful cover image Shawn Speakman showed me.
The underlying “Gold Light” image itself was inspired by my young daughter, who tells stories in which she is a heroine with a sword of light, shining. This seemed suitable for an anthology to raise money for writers’ health care. Youth equals health equals healing. And, again because it was for an anthology raising money for health care, I wanted to tell a story with more of an element of good-against-evil hope to it.
Or perhaps not. The golden light of the sun can burn one’s eyes and leave one blind. A doctor heals a man, makes him strong—and then learns to fears him.
Anna Smith Spark
Gold Light
Anna Smith Spark
Her brother talks to dragons.
In the bright morning, Ysleta sat in her bedchamber, watching the sun rise over the Bitter Sea. Her room was high in the tallest of the towers of the fortress of Malth Tyrenae, that rises over the city of Tyrenae clear as a sword blade, old as dying, so tall that clouds come around it to shield it from mere human sight. When the sky is clear in the blue of a northern summer, she can sit at the window of her chamber and stare far to the horizon, watch the sun rise over the White Isles and the endless expanse of the silver sea. The great ships that make the passage between the White Isles and Ith, their sails green or red or cloth of silver, their masts sweetwood or mountain ash or witch pine, slaves in rags and jewelled collars bent over the oars—the ships look as tiny as children’s toys from the towers of Malth Tyrenae. A whale breaches, far out in the silver sea—from the towers of Malth Tyrenae it is a flicker on the water, a dark flash like an insect’s wing. The clouds come in, grey and heavy with cold northern rain, and the sea is lost, the city beneath the window is lost, its green copper-roofed houses, its squares and courtyards, the alleys where blind children beg for coins, the doorways where mad men crouch and shake. All is gone, hidden by the clouds that taste of sea salt, crusting sea salt on the tower’s walls. The towers of Malth Tyrenae are lost in the grey sky.
Ysleta sat at her window, watching. The city, her city, disappearing beneath her. She was a princess of the great kingdom of Ith, the daughter and the sister of kings; she could trace her descent back to Eltheri the sword-brother of Amrath, to the Godkings of Immier and Caltath. Thus fitting that she should be cut off from the world of mere men. Her hair was silver pale, from drinking a cup of quicksilver every morning. Her eyes were pale grey.
“Ysleta.” Her brother came into her bedchamber. Undyl Silver Eyes. The King of Ith. The Lord of Malth Tyrenae. A thin sad man with the same pale hair and pale eyes.
“Undyl.” She went over to him. Drops of water in her hair, from sitting staring into the gathering cloud. She took her brother’s hands in greeting; his hands felt hot and dry. The skin on them was cracked. Burned. The skin on them was red. Her own hands were very white, cold and clammy like the belly of a fish. There were black hairs on her fingers that she was ashamed of. Very black, like ink stains, against her white skin. Her brother’s hands were hairless. The tips of his fingers were swollen. He had no fingernails.
“I am waiting for you,” Undyl the King of Ith said. Ysleta smoothed her clammy white hands down the skirt of her dress. Followed him out of her room.
They climbed the stairs of the tower together. Higher and higher. Walking into the sky. Walking up above the clouds. Up here the air is thin and silent. Cold as Ysleta’s hands. They went on past windows looking out at nothing. White sky. Almost as though they were sinking down through the depths of the sea. After a long time climbing, they came at last to the very top of the tallest tower of Malth Tyrenae. The highest point, it is said, in all the world. Even after the world has been drowned and destroyed, at the end of all things, the tower will rise above the waters, alone, undisturbed. It rises like a beam of light from the heavens. And indeed the light up here is pure and golden in the morning, above the clouds. Beneath them the clou
ds are like a snowfield.
There are no birds, up here in the cold silence. The air is so thin that Ysleta gasped for breath. Undyl beside her coughed and panted. Steadied himself, drew himself up, raised his arms, cried out.
“Athela. Athela.”
Come. Come.
There are no birds, up here in the cold silence. But a thing . . . a thing like a bird came flying, far away from out of the north where the wild places begin. If the whale breaching in the Bitter Sea was an insect, this was a grain of sand, nothing. But it came on and came on, swimming through the golden light of morning, the light that is above the clouds where the sun is always bright, and its shadow fell on the white clouds beneath it, and as it came on it grew vast. Its shadow stained the clouds black as night.
“Athela!” Undyl the king of Ith called to it.
It was blue and green and gold and silver and scarlet. The colours moved on its scales, flowed and winked like the light on frost. Its body rippled, the strength of its muscles was like water, or like ice crushing and pushing on the water’s surface when the ice comes down from the far north over the Bitter Sea. Its wings were lace and filigree, frothed as fine as a woman’s hair as she dances; it had spines on its back that were curved and gleaming; it had talons on its feet that were polished sharp as butchers’ knives. Its body was as long as a mountain. Its mouth could swallow an army. It opened its mouth and the fire there was a furnace, its jaws and its teeth gleamed like liquid metal; the breath that came out of it smelled of honeyed wine, sweet and hot and sharp. Its eyes Ysleta did not look at. Never look into a dragon’s eyes. Never. “Swear it, Ysleta!” Undyl her brother had begged her. “Swear!” She saw them with her mind as they looked at her, black and burning, like the heart of the fire that is too bright to look upon and can only be seen as a blinding absence of light. All that can be known would be there in its eyes. Thus swear, swear that you will not look.
Her brother talks to dragons.
“Athenen,” it said.
I come.
Undyl’s face was as beautiful as the dragon. The glory in him. The wonder. The King of Ith, who has summoned a dragon. He had called for it, begged for it, and it had come. It hung there before them, beating its wings. Unreal thing. Impossible thing. Ysleta thought: This is a dream. This is an absurdity. My brother has summoned a dragon. This is a thing of madness.
“Temen ysare genher?” the dragon said. What do you want? Its voice was a whisper. Ghostly. No meaning in it, and yet words were there. A small, quiet, sweet voice, for such a vast deathly thing. The young girls of Tyrenae played a game where they went down to a cave on the shore outside the city, listened for words in the play of the water on the stones, listened to hear their future husband’s name and their future children’s names. Ysleta thought of this when she heard it speak.
Undyl was forming words in his head, his lips moving, trying to piece together what he must say. They had rehearsed this together, brother and sister, gone over and over the words. Speak, brother! Ysleta thought. Yet she herself had no thought what words she would say. Her mind and her brother’s mind blank and white.
The dragon laughed at them.
Hot fire riding on its breath, the hot sweet scent of burned wood.
“Temen kel tiaknei ke ekilan?” the dragon said. Are you afraid of me?
“Stay!” Ysleta cried out to it. “Stay! Please!”
The dragon beat its wings. It raised its head up into the sky. It poured out fire. A column, a fountain of fire, silver fire and gold fire, white fire, rushing up and up into the heavens, a tower of fire to hold up the sky, a mirror of fire brighter than the dawn sun. A waterfall of fire. The heat was scorching Ysleta’s face.
The dragon beat its vast wings. Flew off into the north. So vast, they watched it as it shrank away, its shadow falling on the white snowscape of the clouds, the sun catching on its scales and making them flash with colour like the sun on frost.
“You fool,” Ysleta said to her brother. “You fool, you fool. You said you could speak to it. Make it serve you, as it once served the old kings. You fool.”
“I can make it come back,” Undyl said in a thin voice. “I can. I will.”
The next evening at dusk, they stood above the clouds at the very top of the tallest of the towers of Malth Tyrenae and the sky was midnight blue and twilight blue and blazing burning brilliant red. And again Undyl stood and raised his arms and called to beg the dragon to come to him.
And again, the dragon came. The colours had faded in its body, it no longer wore its splendour, its scales had paled to white. The skin of its wings was pink like a seashell. There was laughter in its eyes. Scorn for them. Amusement.
“Temen kel mene kel tiaknei?” Are you still afraid?
Undyl said, his voice trembling, “Yes.”
Ysleta clutched at his arm. Remember. Remember. Nerve yourself. Speak to it. The sky was darkening, the sun sinking away. The dragon hung in the air dark as a shadow, pale as flowers on a summer night. Its eyes burned, the fire burned in the depths of its body, red fire glowed through the skin of its throat. There was a princess of Ith once whose skin was so white that wine showed red in her throat when she drank. So the fire moved beneath the dragon’s skin. It opened its mouth and its mouth was all fire, its words were fire in the air as it spoke.
“Ysare kel ekilet ke seleriet?” Do you want to anger me?
“You served the Godkings, my ancestors,” Undyl said in fear. “Why will you not speak to me? I have . . .” Undyl’s voice was broken. “I have something . . . a tribute . . . an offering. For you.”
What is this? They had not discussed this. “Dragons, Ysleta! Dragons! I am the King of Ith, I can summon them to me!” Ysleta thought: Not offerings. Not tribute. Not pleas.
“Hekelth, Tiamenekil.” A gift, dragon. Undyl drew something from beneath his cloak.
A human arm. A child’s arm. Smooth and pale, the skin with a sheen like silk to it, so thin, so little, with the plumpness of a child’s limbs. The ghost of the scent of it, the lovely clean smell of a child’s limbs.
“My son Aann,” Undyl said. “My youngest child. To see dragons! To speak with dragons! What would I not give!”
He threw the child’s body out into the air. Obscene. A man throwing a scrap to a hawk. But Ysleta thought: I must not scream. I must not run. It will turn on me, if I scream, if I run. I must not run. And Ysleta thought: don’t look at him. The dragon, I must watch the dragon. I cannot I will not look at him. The dragon is a cleaner thing. In the darkness the dragon’s mouth opened in fire. The dragon’s eyes glowed and she thought: it would be better to look into its eyes than to look at him and what he has done.
The dragon beat its wings. It seemed to Ysleta that it was smiling at them. It seemed to shrink down, become a thing more to be grasped by a human mind. She thought, with guilt: but I have seen a dragon. And thus perhaps my brother is right in what he says.
“Tribute,” the dragon said, in their own tongue. “Yes.”
“I have three children,” Undyl said.
That night she could not sleep. Her head was filled with death and wingbeats. The tower of Malth Tyrenae seemed filled with the child’s ghost. The child’s mother’s ghost, also: Ysleta saw her as she had seen her dying, in her chamber after the boy had been born. “Your brother has killed me,” Queen Elita’s eyes had shrieked out, dying. “Your brother has killed my son,” Queen Elita’s face screamed and wept at her now when Ysleta closed her own eyes.
Undyl was walking and walking through the tower. She heard him, once, very late, stopping outside her chamber door. What have I done? Oh, what have I done? All the Kings of Ith, the Godkings, Eltheri, all their ghosts must be watching him, mocking him or praising him.
“He was sitting playing,” Undyl had said. “And I saw him, and I thought . . . I thought . . . I saw . . .”
Why? How? How could you see that? Her heart is broken, the child’s death screams to her.
And yet. And yet. The day pass
ed as in a nightmare. That evening as the sun set she found herself climbing the steps of the tower, round and round, up and up. Up forever, praying, hoping that she will never reach the top. Undyl walked beside her. In his arms he carried a heavy oilcloth sack. They reached the top of the tower. Stepped out, stood on the edge between the sky. No clouds: the sea, stretching out black and silver, moving in the light, birds wheeled far out over it, following the night fishing boats, black and flowing like lace. To the north, the dark forests, the Empty Peaks rich in copper, rich in quicksilver, rich in tin. Dead empty places. Beyond them the world ends in grief. At the foot of the tower, the city sprawling: copper roofs, flower gardens, forge fires. Ysleta watched a line of carts come down the road from the mountains, pass beneath the north gate. Ten white oxen, bringing tin and copper to be forged into killing bronze.
“Help me.” Undyl opened the oilcloth sack. “I cannot do this, Ysleta. Help me.” Together they lifted out the child’s body, Undyl’s second son, stretched it out before them. Naked and pale and weak and white like the first had been.
“Athela!” Undyl cried out in a broken voice.
A long time, they waited.
When the dragon came, it bowed its head to them.
“Tribute,” Undyl whispered. “Tribute. A gift.”
Blood on the dragon’s teeth.
“Tribute, dragon. Are you pleased?”
The dragon snorted fire. Laughing, Ysleta thought. Or itself grieving, for what Undyl had done to the child and to it. It twisted in the air, soared up into the twilight, beat its wings, danced and leapt. It stretched its head forward, very close to them, the smell of blood still on its mouth, the stink of ash and carrion, scorched metal, the strength of its scaled flesh. Do not look into its eyes. But it was so close that Ysleta could not keep herself from looking. Its eyes went on forever, like the sea on a moonless night.
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