by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler
“It will destroy us,” Dusk said. “Don’t seek . . . Don’t you see . . . ?”
For a moment, they all just stared at him. He had a chance. Words. He needed words.
“That machine is deathants!” he said. “A den, a . . . Bah!” How could he explain?
He couldn’t. In his anxiety, words fled him, like Aviar fluttering away into the night.
The others finally started moving, pulling Vathi toward the safety of their treasonous fortress.
“You said the corpses are gone,” Vathi said as she was ushered through the gates. “We’ve succeeded. I will see that the machine is not engaged on this trip! I promise you this, Dusk!”
“But,” he cried back, “it was never meant to be engaged!”
The enormous wooden gates of the fortress creaked closed, and he lost sight of her. Dusk cursed. Why hadn’t he been able to explain?
Because he didn’t know how to talk. For once in his life, that seemed to matter.
Furious, frustrated, he stalked away from that place and its awful smells. Halfway to the tree line, however, he stopped, then turned. Sak fluttered down, landing on his shoulder and cooing softly.
Questions. Those questions wanted into his brain.
Instead he yelled at the guards. He demanded they return Vathi to him. He even pled.
Nothing happened. They wouldn’t speak to him. Finally, he started to feel foolish. He turned back toward the trees, and continued on his way. His assumptions were probably wrong. After all, the corpses were gone. Everything could go back to normal.
. . . Normal. Could anything ever be normal with that fortress looming behind him? He shook his head, entering the canopy. The dense humidity of Patji’s jungle should have calmed him.
Instead it annoyed him. As he started the trek toward another of his safecamps, he was so distracted that he could have been a youth, his first time on Sori. He almost stumbled straight onto a gaping deathant den; he didn’t even notice the vision Sak sent. This time, dumb luck saved him as he stubbed his toe on something, looked down, and only then spotted both corpse and crack crawling with motes of yellow.
He growled, then sneered. “Still you try to kill me?” he shouted, looking up at the canopy. “Patji!”
Silence.
“The ones who protect you are the ones you try hardest to kill,” Dusk shouted. “Why!”
The words were lost in the jungle. It consumed them.
“You deserve this, Patji,” he said. “What is coming to you. You deserve to be destroyed!”
He breathed out in gasps, sweating, satisfied at having finally said those things. Perhaps there was a purpose for words. Part of him, as traitorous as Vathi and her company, was glad that Patji would fall to their machines.
Of course, then the company itself would fall. To the Ones Above. His entire people. The world itself.
He bowed his head in the shadows of the canopy, sweat dripping down the sides of his face. Then he fell to his knees, heedless of the nest just three strides away.
Sak nuzzled into his hair. Above, in the branches, Kokerlii chirped uncertainly.
“It’s a trap, you see,” he whispered. “The Ones Above have rules. They can’t trade with us until we’re advanced enough. Just like a man can’t, in good conscience, bargain with a child until they are grown. And so, they have left their machines for us to discover, to prod at and poke. The dead man was a ruse. Vathi was meant to have those machines.
“There will be explanations, left as if carelessly, for us to dig into and learn. And at some point in the near future, we will build something like one of their machines. We will have grown more quickly than we should have. We will be childlike still, ignorant, but the laws from Above will let these visitors trade with us. And then, they will take this land for themselves.”
That was what he should have said. Protecting Patji was impossible. Protecting the Aviar was impossible. Protecting their entire world was impossible. Why hadn’t he explained it?
Perhaps because it wouldn’t have done any good. As Vathi had said . . . progress would come. If you wanted to call it that.
Dusk had arrived.
Sak left his shoulder, winging away. Dusk looked after her, then cursed. She did not land nearby. Though flying was difficult for her, she fluttered on, disappearing from his sight.
“Sak?” he asked, rising and stumbling after the Aviar. He fought back the way he had come, following Sak’s squawks. A few moments later, he lurched out of the jungle.
Vathi stood on the rocks before her fortress.
Dusk hesitated at the brim of the jungle. Vathi was alone, and even the sentries had retreated. Had they cast her out? No. He could see that the gate was cracked, and some people watched from inside.
Sak had landed on Vathi’s shoulder down below. Dusk frowned, reaching his hand to the side and letting Kokerlii land on his arm. Then he strode forward, calmly making his way down the rocky shore, until he was standing just before Vathi.
She’d changed into a new dress, though there were still snarls in her hair. She smelled of flowers.
And her eyes were terrified.
He’d traveled the darkness with her. Had faced nightmaws. Had seen her near to death, and she had not looked this worried.
“What?” he asked, finding his voice hoarse.
“We found instructions in the machine,” Vathi whispered. “A manual on its workings, left there as if accidentally by someone who worked on it before. The manual is in their language, but the smaller machine I have . . .”
“It translates.”
“The manual details how the machine was constructed,” Vathi says. “It’s so complex I can barely comprehend it, but it seems to explain concepts and ideas, not just give the workings of the machine.”
“And are you not happy?” he asked. “You will have your flying machines soon, Vathi. Sooner than anyone could have imagined.”
Wordless, she held something up. A single feather—a mating plume. She had kept it.
“Never move without asking yourself, is this too easy?” she whispered. “You said it was a trap as I was pulled away. When we found the manual, I . . . Oh, Dusk. They are planning to do to us what . . . what we are doing to Patji, aren’t they?”
Dusk nodded.
“We’ll lose it all. We can’t fight them. They’ll find an excuse, they’ll seize the Aviar. It makes perfect sense. The Aviar use the worms. We use the Aviar. The Ones Above use us. It’s inevitable, isn’t it?”
Yes, he thought. He opened his mouth to say it, and Sak chirped. He frowned and turned back toward the island. Jutting from the ocean, arrogant. Destructive.
Patji. Father.
And finally, at long last, Dusk understood.
“No,” he whispered.
“But—”
He undid his pants pocket, then reached deeply into it, digging around. Finally, he pulled something out. The remnants of a feather, just the shaft now. A mating plume that his uncle had given him, so many years ago, when he’d first fallen into a trap on Sori. He held it up, remembering the speech he’d been given. Like every trapper.
This is the symbol of your ignorance. Nothing is easy, nothing is simple.
Vathi held hers. Old and new.
“No, they will not have us,” Dusk said. “We will see through their traps, and we will not fall for their tricks. For we have been trained by the Father himself for this very day.”
She stared at his feather, then up at him.
“Do you really think that?” she asked. “They are cunning.”
“They may be cunning,” he said. “But they have not lived on Patji. We will gather the other trappers. We will not let ourselves be taken in.”
She nodded hesitantly, and some of the fear seemed to leave her. She turned and waved for those behind her to open the gates to the building. Again, the scents of mankind washed over him.
Vathi looked back, then held out her hand to him. “You will help, then?”
His corpse appeared at her feet, and Sak chirped warningly. Danger. Yes, the path ahead would include much danger.
Dusk took Vathi’s hand and stepped into the fortress anyway.
THE MAKING OF A FIRE IN THE HEAVENS
WRITING EXCUSES 7.51
BRAINSTORMING WITH MARY
(Listen on WritingExcuses.com)
Brandon: We thought it was a blast when we did this with Dan, so we’re going to do it with Mary. She’s actually going to pitch at us—three stories I believe?
Mary: Yes, the way I normally work is that I do a whole bunch of what I call thumbnail sketches where I just jot down a couple of different ideas of different stories, usually wildly different, and I see which one grabs me. I’m going to read them—these are little one-paragraph things—and we’ll see which one grabs the guys, and then we’re going to brainstorm that. Just as an aside, this is also the way I work with my agent; I will send her one-paragraph synopses of the novels I’m interested in, and she’ll tell me which ones she thinks she can sell.
Mary: Idea one: In a tidally locked world or a world with a tidally locked moon, an explorer sails over the curved world and sees the moon for the first time. The coastal city he visits is of course completely different culturally and, because their nights are not dark, more advanced technologically.
Mary: Idea two: a reality show for wizards. First-person, as though he’s talking to the confession box. “What happens when you strand a whole group of wizards on an island and film them trying to perform increasingly complex magic to stay in the game?” The main character thinks that one of the wizards is exerting mind-control, but isn’t sure if he’s been influenced yet or not. Or, as an alternate plot, he’s eventually asked to cross an ethical line and raise the dead. How much does he really want to win?
Mary: Idea three: Werewolves are real and the condition is passed on by a virus. Though there is a cure, most werewolves choose not to be cured, claiming it as a subculture like the hearing impaired. A sommelier uses his superior olfactory sense in his job in the wine industry, but wants to keep his condition a secret because of a social stigma. Then he falls in love with one of the winemakers at an event. She invites him to come to the winery for harvest, but he has to turn it down because it’s over his time of the month. He’s only contagious when he’s in wolf form, but at what point does he confess to her that he’s a werewolf?
Brandon: Okay. I’m voting wizards.
Dan: I’m actually temped by the tidally locked one, because—
Howard: Tidally locked is more interesting to me, but I’m willing to be outvoted.
Brandon: Here’s the thing. With the tidally locked one you don’t have as much there, so it may be more fun for us to explore.
Dan: That’s what I was going to say. There’s no story, there’s just a setting.
Mary: This is one that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.
Brandon: Let’s do that one.
Mary: I’ve been stumped because I can come up with this world and setting, but I have yet to come up with a story to go with it.
Brandon: The one I want to read most is the wizard one, but there you already have the whole plot. Even the perspective and everything. So I’d say let’s go tidally locked. On a tidally locked world this means that the moon stays in one place with the planet at all times. Your character sails over. Is he the first person who has ever done this?
Mary: Yes.
Brandon: So, he’s like Columbus. There might be people who have done it before, but—
Mary: Yeah, and my idea roughly is that it’s more like Marco Polo. China was significantly more advanced than Europe at that point, and so he goes to this place and he says, “Everything is different.” But aside from “my worldview is shaken,” I have no conflict yet.
Brandon: Throw it at us. You want us to start talking conflict?
Mary: Yeah!
Brandon: What is the conflict, guys? And what is our ending? That’s another big one.
Dan: One potential conflict here is that they have developed better seafaring technology than the first side, and so they’re gearing up for an invasion. They’re ready to mount one, and he knows that his country’s navy has no prayer of defending.
Brandon: Now, I would really like it if they didn’t know anything was over the ocean until he arrived. Then it puts the invasion on him. There is the potential of—they thought that the world came to a stop. They now realize it didn’t. They’ve already conquered everything over here. But now there’s proof from the other side, which some will see as a religious sign. There’s been talk of sending exploration that way, and when someone comes, they say, “The gods—the moon or whatever—has sent this person to show us there are riches to be had.”
Mary: I think that the reason that the people from that side of the planet have never gone to the other side is because they would have to sail beyond the moon, and the idea of being in complete darkness—they’ve always turned around and gone back.
Howard: At risk of turning it on its head, the side that has more light at night, the reason for them to be more technologically advanced is that they can get more done without the need for light at night? You could flip that on its head and say that the dark side is more technologically advanced because necessity is the mother of invention.
Mary: Oh, interesting.
Howard: They had to come up with lighting, and so if we have an explorer who literally sails into the dark—
Mary: Or sails out of the darkness.
Howard: He would be from the light side.
Mary: Oh, I’m not as interested in that. The thing that really interests me about this is the idea of seeing the moon for the first time.
Brandon: I think you could make an argument for either side being more technological. I think the side that has darkness, but not complete darkness, is going to have the advantage.
Mary: Yeah, but I think you’re right that the argument could be made either way. One thing that I’m also particularly interested in exploring with this is the idea of the cultural differences. That there would be, particularly, religious differences, and whether or not—
Brandon: Well I love the idea, religiously, of “We can’t sail to where the moon can’t see us.”
Howard: You sail the sun, the sun rises and sets and is temporary and gives us a warming influence during the day, but the moon is constant.
Brandon: That’s actually pretty cool, because it gives us a reverse of the way most earth cultures developed. If there’s a sun god, the sun god is among the highest and most important of the gods, and there you could say, “The sun god is the evil one, because it’s transient, and the moon is always there and soft.”
Howard: Let me think about this for a moment. The moon is tidally locked to the world they live on, but the body is still rotating in its orbit.
Mary: Right. Which means that side of the planet would get more solar eclipses.
Howard: Yes, and the only tides they would get would be solar tides.
Brandon: Which are not that strong.
Howard: They’re not, but they are measurable.
Brandon: Here’s a question for you. We’re doing a lot of worldbuilding—I think we should go to culture after this—but what about the concept that this is a very bright sun for whatever reason? (We’d have to ask the science people; I’m the fantasy guy.) So, during the day there’s a period of such heat and light that it’s hard to get anything done, but you can be productive all night, because that very bright sun translates into a modestly bright moon, which means that’s a great time to get stuff done.
Mary: I have thought about saying that the moon is a moon around the size of ours, but that the characters are on the tidally locked moon that is orbiting something like Saturn. So the planetary body that is in the sky is massive. It puts out an enormous amount of light.
Howard: Mary, I love the idea of the orbiting Saturn thing, because when you’re orbiting a gas giant that big, or world that big, you
can start talking about the external magnetic field as an additional influence, which could be doing fun things with ocean life.
Brandon: Can it be doing fun things with navigation too?
Howard: Yeah, and that could be one of the reasons why nobody’s left the dark side via an ocean voyage in a long time, because there are things happening in the water. It occurred to me that—you mentioned Marco Polo; a possible conflict is that this guy has staked the family fortune on building a trade route and he gets to the other side and realizes: one, I have nothing to offer, and two, I have just led the conquistadors back to my house.
Mary: Oh. That’s interesting.
Brandon: Just before we move off that, should we see if there are any other conflicts we can throw out, because that’s the part you’re having troubles with?
Mary: Yes.
Brandon: Worldbuilding doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem. What other potential conflicts could there be for this story?
Howard: You put other people on the boat, and you can build all kinds of character conflicts.
Brandon: He could be escaping something.
Mary: He could be escaping something. . . .
Brandon: It could be the opposite of the Columbus thing, and they decided to sail to the other side of the ocean because they wanted to get away.
Mary: It could also be that he was leaving his country to escape religious persecution. Then he arrives at a place that is not only colonized completely, but—
Brandon: It could even be a ship full of religious refugees saying, “We’re going to escape, but there is a Promised Land in our records that we know about where they don’t have to deal with the tyranny of the sun every day or at night.” There’s this beautiful thing that they go searching for, and they get there and it’s this horribly, horribly worse culture for religious tolerance reasons.
Mary: Or we could say that the ship that he is on is one that is from the side of the world with the moon and he is returning with them as—
Brandon: They show up just all of a sudden?
Mary: Yeah, and that he says, “The moon? What are you guys talking about, the moon, the moon, the moon?”