Lightspeed Magazine - October 2016

by John Joseph Adams [Ed. ]

  “Nonlethal my ass,” I muttered. I stepped back from the door so Cindy could look. She gasped loudly at the sight of the beast, and was met with a low rumbling inside.

  “I think this might be the prime,” Domino whispered. The ultimate of its variant, he meant, the one that, if defeated, would close other Cavern anomalies. The anomalies came in two varieties; primes and shadows. Shadows were good for practice. Primes were the real deal, and often deadlier.

  Cindy hissed for silence, but it was too late.

  “Who prowls outside my den?” the beast asked.

  “I mean, why does it even speak our language, huh, explain that?” Domino said. I rolled my eyes.

  “Let’s continue that conversation later when we’re not about to be eaten by a giant hand.”

  Cindy threw the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside before I could stop her. “Adventurers, come to slay monsters and loot their treasures,” she shouted.

  Bad. Ass. At least she’d die chill as anyone who ever lived. I expected a blast of fire or a gnashing of giant teeth in answer, but the beast only laughed.

  “Guests! I haven’t had a good game in ages. What have you brought to gamble? I warn you, I am nothing if not fair …”

  “Gamble?” Cindy asked, taken aback.

  “We could do … violence instead. If you wish.”

  “No!” I said loudly, and stepped inside. “Gambling is agreeable. We have fine treasures for stakes.”

  “Eh?” The beast swiveled its finger eyes to look at me. “Such as?”

  I took out my collapsible ten-foot pole. I expanded it with a flip of my wrist. “How about this?”

  The beast snorted. “A stick? You insult me.”

  I patted myself down. The timer? No, that’d be equally insulting, as would my multi-tool and my rope. What could I possibly—

  “I grow bored,” the beast said, and a long, purple tongue licked at its palm-maw.

  I took out my coin. “What about this?”

  The beast growled with pleasure. “Yes. Let’s play for that. What game would you like? Shall we throw the bones? Spin a wheel? Cards, perhaps.”

  “Let’s flip for it,” I said. I had no idea where this confidence was coming from, but inside I was terrified it would leave me at any moment.

  The beast’s face swung closer to us on its neck of interlocking arms. “Let me see it. Show both sides,” it said. I held up the coin so he could see that it looked perfectly ordinary.

  “Very well. I call … heads.” And its horrible mouth twisted into a smile.

  Somehow, the monster knew. Had it read my mind? Had it seen the coin before somehow?

  I looked to Domino. He held his hands up as if to say, “I’ve got nothing.” Neither did I.

  I flipped the coin. Caught it, and held it in my clenched fist.

  “Are you sure you want to call heads?” I asked. But the beast merely smiled, and its body of arms rippled and flexed.

  I opened my palm. The beast leaned in to look. The coin was heads. I groaned.

  The beast laughed. A child’s hand appeared from within its coils, pinched the coin between two talons, and withdrew amongst the mass of biceps. “I win. Shall we play again? What else have you brought to gamble?”

  Domino removed his mask and offered it. “No,” I said. “Let’s forget this.”

  “I’ll gamble my mask for your treasure, but you have to give back the coin, too,” he said. “My ’fact is worth a lot more than the coin.”

  “Of course. I am a fair guardian, as I said …,” the beast said. “Choose your game.”

  “If you are fair, then you won’t mind another flip of the coin,” Domino said. The beast began to protest, but Domino, to his credit, held his ground. “It’s my choice, isn’t it?”

  “Fine,” the beast said. “We shall toss a coin again.”

  The beast retrieved the coin again from its hidden folds, presented it for examination.

  “If you’re truly fair, then you will let me call the toss?” Domino asked.

  “Of course,” the beast said.

  “Let’s talk this thr—” Cindy said, but the coin was in the air.

  “We call tails,” I shouted, cutting off Domino. He shot me the angriest look I’d seen him manage so far. I held my breath as the coin spun on the floor, rattled, and then fell …

  Tails.

  The beast let out a huff that smelled like raw steak. “Well played. How did you know I switched the coin for one of my own?” it asked.

  “A truly fair guardian would meet our cheat with one of its own.” It was dungeonspace logic— the kind my brother used to justify picking on me no matter what I did. Cruel. Crafty. I guess I had learned something from him after all.

  “Clever,” the beast said. It uncoiled and slipped away into the dark recesses of its cavern. Where the beast had been knotted there were two things: my coin, and a red box the size of a jewelry case.

  “That was genius!” Cindy clapped.

  I shrugged and turned my head away to hide a smile and my embarrassed flush.

  “Just one artifact,” Domino said with a sigh. “How are we going to split this up?”

  “If it’s just art, we’ll sell it and split the money,” Cindy said. “But if it’s a ’fact, one of you two should have it. I don’t feel like I contributed that much.”

  “That’s really nice of you, but we would have never gotten through that door without you. How about you can have pick next time?” Domino said, and I didn’t argue because I was too busy thinking: Next time? Would there be a next time?

  “How are we going to decide between us?” Domino asked.

  “Flip you for it!” We laughed.

  “Grab the box and let’s get out of here,” Cindy said. “We would be the lamest ever if we lapse out before taking the loot.”

  I pocketed my coin and picked up the box. I offered it to Domino. “You take it. You were willing to risk your namesake to get back my coin. Thank you.”

  “Fine, we can argue about it when we get out.” And he opened the box.

  I expected a rush of energy, an explosion, something. Instead, we were instantly back in the women’s bathroom at Java Palace. Poor Sam stared in the mirror and rubbed at purple welts on his cheeks with a bemused grin.

  Bloodaxe and Doom Maiden started as the anomaly collapsed. I felt pretty good at the sight of their shock.

  “How in the hell did you pull that off?” Bloodaxe asked.

  “Excellent teamwork with fine leadership from this guy,” Domino said, slapping me on the black. “The loot’s weird, though. Never seen anything like this, have you?” He held up a jagged, black shard. Black didn’t really describe it. It was made of some kind of material so dark that light couldn’t escape it. Almost like …

  “I have seen something just like that,” Doom Maiden said, lips curled in a grimace. She looked at me. I nodded. I knew the material, too.

  “The entrance to Black Hole looks like that,” I said. “It must be tied to it somehow.”

  “I think it’s a key,” Bloodaxe said, nodding.

  “A key?” Domino asked. “Is it worth much?”

  “Keys are very rare, but this one’s worthless now.” I sighed. “The Black Hole is locked down by MAC as an ultra-lethal. Nobody’s ever come back out, so they’ve written it off. Maybe a high-rated team could score entrance, but that’s only after signing like a thousand pages of consent forms.”

  “I guess we had better start training you newbies up then,” Bloodaxe said. He cocked his head to Doom Maiden. “Try Tower of the Repeating Phantasm, next, maybe?”

  She nodded. “For starters, yeah.”

  I blinked, confused. “Why help us? We got lucky in there. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

  Doom Maiden shook her head. “You didn’t get lucky. You made sharp calls in there. A good head on your shoulders in d-space is worth more than all the talents and artifacts in the city.”

  “I’m already m
entoring these two knuckleheads,” Bloodaxe said. “What’s two more? And to make it fair, we’ll take, say, ten percent of your loot in return. I’m not long for this game anyway. Gonna age out soon.”

  “That’s fair,” Domino said, nodding and grinning.

  “I thought you were making fun of me when we first went through,” I mumbled. I felt tears running hot down my face. Why was I crying now? I hadn’t cried in months. I thought I wouldn’t ever cry again.

  Doom Maiden’s perpetual scowl softened. “That’s not it at all. I laughed because I forgot what it was like in the beginning.”

  Bloodaxe grinned. “When crawling was about more than the bucks, bruises, and broken bones. It’s serious business, of course, but there was a time for us all when it was also exciting and not just a job.”

  Bloodaxe put his arm around my shoulder. “After solving the Cavern on your first try, I don’t think anybody’s going to be making fun of you. Unless you say something really dumb. Okay?”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. “That means a lot.”

  “Now we need to get you kids on a training regimen quick. I know a gym we can use cheap. And we’ll need better gear …” Bloodaxe took out a pocket notebook and began to scribble in it as he rambled.

  Domino looked to me. “What do you say, Flip?”

  “Flip?”

  “I dunno, it just seemed right.” He smiled.

  “I like it,” Cindy said. “You can call me ‘Basher.’”

  “That’s a good one,” I said. “And I like Flip. Yeah. Thanks, Dom.”

  “I’m in, too, but I can’t think of a good name yet,” Sam said. Cindy shot him a look that I could only read as “we’ll talk about it.” Poor Sam.

  “What do you say? Team up for real next time?” Domino asked.

  What did it mean, I wondered, that we’d looted a key to the dungeon I feared more than anything in the city? Was Domino right? Was there an intelligence behind the anomalies? Did the voice in the shadows have something to do with it? I had more questions than I’d started with. But I had at least one answer worth giving.

  “Yeah … I’m in.”

  © 2016 by Jeremiah Tolbert. | Art © 2016 by Sam Schechter.

  *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jeremiah Tolbert has published fiction in Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Asimov’s, and Shimmer, as well as in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Seeds of Change, Federations, and Polyphony 4. He’s also been featured several times on the Escape Pod and PodCastle podcasts. In addition to being a writer, he is a web designer, photographer, and graphic artist. He lives in Kansas, with his wife and son.

  *

  The Dragon’s Tears

  Aliette de Bodard | 5142 words

  Huan Ho sealed the last window, leaving only a crack in the shutter. Tonight, he thought, his eye on the empty streets, the neighbours’ barred shutters. Tonight he had to pass the door on the hill, or let the sickness take his mother.

  She had been watching him from her bed. “They ride tonight,” she said, when he was done.

  “Yes,” Huan Ho said. As on every year, the three horsemen would scour the city of Fei Weng, taking what and whom they pleased. “I’ve closed the house.”

  His mother smiled, wanly. “We have nothing worth their notice.”

  No riches, Huan Ho thought. The only room of the house was bare: a bed, a table, and two chairs were its sole furniture. He had sold everything of value to the pawnbroker, to pay the apothecary. Not that the drugs had done more than dull her pain. The apothecary himself had admitted defeat, had jokingly said only the Dragon’s Tears could help her now. Huan Ho had not laughed. He had taken the drugs, and waited until year’s end, for the return of the riders, praying every day that his mother would remain alive until then.

  “No one knows what is worth their notice,” Huan Ho said, more dryly than he had intended. “Or why they take some, and leave some unharmed.”

  His mother did not move. She said at last, “It doesn’t matter.”

  If they wanted to seize her … then there was nothing he could do. They had been known to take the sick and the aged, as well as the mighty and the rich. They could not be stopped. Let them pass this house tonight. Let them move on, to roam the rest of the empire and seize what caught their fancy.

  And then he would be free to enter the place where they came from, to find the Dragon’s Tears and heal his mother.

  The bell of the Taoist temple struck midnight. He heard it echo through the house, peal after peal, like a voice calling the dead. Midnight of the last day of the year. The time of the riders.

  His mother’s face was paler than usual. “Huan Ho.”

  “They will not come here,” he said. The last peal of the bell faded into silence; all of Fei Weng lay waiting, the streets deserted, the wine shops closed, every opening barred so tightly an insect could not have crawled through.

  The door on the hill above Fei Weng, the door of lacquered wood that was always closed, would be opening now, as the moon rose higher and higher in the sky. They would pass through it into the mortal world.

  Huan Ho, his eye against the hole in the shutters, watched the empty street. Waiting.

  They came without a noise, a blur of movement against the night. The hooves of their horses struck the ground, silently, raising sparks like thousands of fireflies. One wore golden clothes, and his bridle and saddlebags were golden as well; one dressed in silver, riding a silver horse, and the last one wore purest black, and a black hood covered his face.

  They flowed into the street, stopping only once to enter a house, the sound of the door bursting into splinters the only noise breaking the silence. Huan Ho did not move. He prayed to every one of the Eight Immortals to make them forget this house, to pass it by. Only tonight. Afterwards it would not matter.

  Two of them rode past the house, hardly glancing at the windows. But the third one, the one of purest black, stopped.

  No.

  The horseman raised his head, stared straight at Huan Ho as if he could see through the shutters. There was nothing within the hood but a deeper darkness.

  Please, no. Huan Ho could not move, transfixed, knowing there was no charm that would keep the rider at bay. No one knew what happened to those the horsemen took. They simply were never seen again.

  At length, the rider wheeled his horse round, and rode down the street to join his brothers.

  Huan Ho’s heart still beat madly in his chest. There is time, he thought. Still time to renounce. He could not hope to fool any of the riders.

  His mother was watching him. Her face was gaunt, with sallow, papery skin stretched taut over her bones. She had not risen from her bed for three years.

  “They passed us by,” he said.

  She raised her head. He saw her grimace of pain as she moved, and knew not even the drugs made a difference now. He thought of the Dragon’s Tears, stolen by the riders from the depths of the sea, a long time ago: a flask of enamel which held the full power of the Dragons. And any child knew that Dragons could heal mortals with a touch. This would cure her. It had to.

  “You should sleep now,” he said. It was all he could do to keep his voice expressionless.

  • • • •

  He watched her until she fell asleep. The house was utterly silent; only her laboured breathing could be heard. He knew that the riders would not come back to Fei Weng until the moon had set. The door would close then, for another year.

  Time to go.

  He stroked her cheek one last time, wincing as his hand caught on her protruding bones. With the drugs she took at night, she would not wake before dawn: He hoped to be back by then, or dead. None of it mattered anymore.

  The door, unbarred, opened onto the deserted streets. Fei Weng cowered, awaiting the return of the riders with their plundered wealth. In moonlight, he walked past familiar buildings, all eerily closed and silent, as if the whole city had died in one night.

  He carried nothing but a la
ntern: No mortal weapon would avail him against the riders. Take their names, said the old wives. Tell them their names, and they will have to do one thing for you. But no one knew anymore what the riders were called, least of all Huan Ho, who was neither wise nor rich nor powerful.

  He had sought the names; had scoured graveyards and temples for any scrap of knowledge about the riders, had listened to countless legends by storytellers. But he had little to show for it, only heightened fears. The riders had scoured the world since the dawn of time: From the moment mankind had appeared, so had they, taking anything they pleased.

  Their names are those of brothers: entwined one with the other, said the Taoist texts. They wear human shapes, yet are our greatest fears, said the inscriptions on the graves. We cannot be rid of them.

  Huan Ho passed through the gates, which lay open for fear the riders would tear them down to enter the city, and took the long, winding road that led past the rice fields into the hills above Fei Weng. The air was crisp and cold, and stung his exposed skin. He walked on.

  The door through which the riders came stood a little way from a fork in the road. Its wood was old and weathered, and the lacquer had cracked in many places. Faded pictures of phoenixes and dragons adorned its huge panels.

  Everyone in Fei Weng knew where it was. For most of the year, it was nothing but an oddity: standing in the shadows of the hills, a door with no building, a door which would never yield no matter how hard one pushed on the panels.

  But now it was open, revealing only darkness within its frame.

  Huan Ho stood before the door, watching the moon above. He knew the rules: He knew what time he had, before the door closed in the wake of the riders’ passage. Not much, not even a whole night, but it would have to be enough to find the Dragon’s Tears.

  Still time, part of him said. Still time to come back, and pretend nothing has happened .