Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology

by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler

  Brandon: I’d really like it if he discovers it though—or she, it does not have to be a him. I love the idea.

  Howard: One of the things I love about seeing the moon for the first time is that, if it is a gas giant, you are going to have a significant chunk of the horizon that lights up at once, and mythologies about sailing far enough to see the great crescent, sailing far enough—

  Brandon: To see the seas start on fire.

  Howard: Yeah. In fact if you do things with the atmosphere—I don’t know if you’re familiar with effects like the green flash. You play games with the spectrum and the atmosphere, and you can have all kinds of mystical stuff about what that planet looks like.

  Brandon: We keep coming back to worldbuilding! That’s not where we want to be.

  Dan: Howard, you mentioned something about how that kind of proximity to a massive planet could do things with the electrical fields and the magnetic fields. Maybe the conflict is that his compass doesn’t work anymore and he can’t get home. Or maybe the conflict is that he somehow becomes ill; there is something on the other side, either magnetically or just pure plant life, that is killing him.

  Howard: Oh my gosh, they’re divergent species; they have been apart for long enough that they have adapted differently to the magnetic properties, the magnetic sunshine and magnetic shadow.

  Mary: The other thing I’m thinking is that if I go back to the MICE quotient [milieu, idea, character, event], if the story starts with him sailing toward this land, then structurally speaking it should end with him either deciding to stay there or returning. If I just go with the easy one which is the return, then one of my conflicts can be things on that side that are keeping him from departing.

  Brandon: I’ve latched completely onto the idea of “I have just informed the conquistadors of where we live,” and so the conflict can be “Do I go back and warn my people? How do I get back and warn my people?” That could be one. Or it could be “I’ve got to find a way to convince them not to follow.” Trick them in some way into thinking that—using their religion—

  Mary: If his side of the world is the side that has had to invent artificial lighting—much more effective artificial lighting than the side with the moon—then that is one of the tricks that he can use. “Look, I’ve got the moon in a box.”

  Brandon: I’m liking this. Warfare-wise, they are amazing compared to his people. He has to come up with a way to trick them that if they follow them they will all die. It would be really cool if he were seeking religious freedom, but then on this side he has to reinforce their horrible religious intolerances in order to escape and warn his people.

  Howard: Another thing to bear in mind, if we play the mild speciation card, is that after crossing the horizon, crossing that magnetic threshold, he may start getting sick.

  Mary: Yeah, I’m not sure if I want to do magnetic threshold just because I think that’s going to be really hard to get across in a fantasy. In a short story; in novel form—

  Howard: True. You’re doing short.

  Brandon: We have a plot here. We have a great plot. We don’t have time to really dig into it, but I love plots of “I’ve got to trick the whole species into thinking that they will die if they follow me.” It’s very much a reversal—

  Mary: “If you follow me I will drown the moon, because he knows what happens if you go.”

  Brandon: Something like that, exactly! “I have to go be a sacrifice,” and tricks them into letting him go using their own religion in a very clever and interesting way. We keep saying “he” again—I actually feel like female works better for this story, for whatever reason. But I don’t know, it could be male. We have the whole “the moon is female” thing on our side, so a guy discovering the moon is more thematically—

  Howard: If you want to lift a piece of the hero’s journey for this, the return with the elixir, if on the way back it’s not just the knowledge of having seen the moon, but there is some piece of technology that he is bringing back or she is bringing back to her people with—

  Brandon: With a warning: This isn’t going to hold them off forever. “I’ve convinced the emperor that if he follows we will drown the moon, but there is a huge contingent that when he dies—we have ten years to modernize and I’ve got this piece of technology. I’ve stolen fire from the Gods; we have got to figure out how this works or we are all doomed.” That is a great ending.

  Howard: I’ve stolen the steel from Damascus.

  Mary: Probably gunpowder.

  Brandon: Yeah, I’ve stolen gunpowder, and we have ten years to jump from 1200 A.D. to 1700 A.D.

  Mary: Okay, cool. Thanks, guys.

  FIRST DRAFT: A FIRE IN THE HEAVENS

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL

  Katin was awake before the sailor knocked on the door to her cabin. She had slept poorly since they had left Marth and tonight the sway of her hammock mixed with uneasy dreams. Her heart sped. Had the crew finally decided to mutiny? No. A mutiny would not begin with a knock. She sent a prayer to the Seven Sisters to grant her calm.

  “Enter.” Katin swung her legs over the side of her hammock and set her bare feet on the smooth wood floor. She had removed her leg wraps to sleep, letting the loose fabric of her leggings puddle on the bridges of her feet.

  In the deep night, the light of the sailor’s glowdisc cast swaying shadows against the tiny space. “Pardon, Mother, but the captain says we are in sight of land.”

  “Praise the Sisters.” Months at sea, and they finally had land in sight. She picked up her own glowdisc and flipped the cover back to expose the phosphorescent surface. Ashore, a disc would fade to darkness during the course of a night, but the constant motion of the ship agitated the powder trapped within and kept them always glowing at least dimly. She shook hers to brighten it further. With its light, she took a moment to bind her scarf of office around her neck before following the sailor above decks. The heavy beaded ends swung about her waist as she walked.

  Katin looked up for the cluster of stars that the Seven Sisters inhabited in the heavens and murmured praise to them for guiding the search this far.

  The captain turned as she approached. Stylian’s tall form swayed easily with the rocking of the ship. “Well. You were right.”

  Katin did not take the triumph that he offered her, tempting though it was. Stylian had mocked her goals, but taken the church’s commission nonetheless. His acknowledgment that she had been right could be counted a victory, but it did not belong to her. The triumph lay with the Sisters. She was too grateful that he had been willing to sail on a course other captains considered foolhardy, following the trail of ancient stories about a land far to the West. She looked past him to the horizon.

  A glow lay on the horizon, marking the division of the world from the sky with its light. The sea retained its dark mystery while the sky brightened as though dawn were approaching, but the sun would rise behind them. Katin closed her glowdisc, tucking it into the pocket inside her left sleeve so that it did not interfere with her night vision. She frowned, slowly understanding what the glow meant. “I don’t know why I expected the land to be uninhabited.”

  Captain Stylian grunted in agreement. “It must have a massive city ahead, to cast so much light.”

  “The Sisters have prepared a way for us.” Her people had suffered enough persecution for their beliefs back in Marth. Old stories told that the Seven Sisters had been blown away by a storm from Selen, a homeland far to the West. They now lived in the heavens to watch over their children. Passed down from mother to daughter, the beliefs had eroded over the centuries spent in Marth among the worship of the Sun. The corruption and greed in Marth had finally led the Sisters’ Sayer to fund this expedition to find the way back to Selen.

  “To be honest, I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to keep the crew sailing west. Thought we were going to go right off the edge, they did.” He laughed and bent his head back to look at the sky. “Perhaps we’ll see ‘the moon,’ too.”

 
Katin snorted. “That’s exaggerated superstition.”

  “And tales of a land aren’t?”

  “Modern scholars feel that our holy texts are guides for ways to live a better life. They are allegories and yet . . .” She tucked her hands inside her sleeves, crossing her arms over her chest as though she were lecturing at the seminary. “There is always some basis for the tales. A land, even if it is not a new continent, must be at minimum an island. This moon? We believe that it is a corruption of the word “Monde” which means ‘City’ or ‘Town’ in Old Fretian. So we think that it refers to the city the Seven Sisters came from. ‘And the light of Monde lay behind them, casting silver across the sea.’ This refers to the wealth and knowledge of the homeland, as does the passage which refers to Monde as the ‘Brightest light in the darkness.’”

  He grunted again. “Not much point in arguing with you about your own religion.”

  “It does seem unprofitable.”

  To her surprise, he gave her a crooked smile. They said nothing else, but watched the distant glow grow nearer. All the while the wind played around her, lifting her seven braids and tickling her with the ends. No one seemed inclined to go to bed as they raced across the ocean toward landfall.

  The light from the city was like nothing she had seen before. It was cool and silvery as though a glowdisc were reflecting in a polished metal mirror. It grew brighter by the minute. She heard a startled cry from overhead.

  In the crow’s nest, a sailor pointed to the horizon. His words were snatched away. When she looked back to where he pointed, Katin’s heart seized.

  A low mound of light had emerged above the horizon. It was not the glow of city lights, but a single broad arc that glowed with an unearthly light. She tried to make sense of the size but could not grasp the distances. “How big is that?”

  “I . . . I am not certain.” Captain Stylian’s voice had a hesitation she was unused to in the man. “Pardon.” With a half bow, he made his way to the foot of the main mast. He called up to the sailor in the crow’s nest asking him for some numbers. The wind blew them away from her, but the answer caused the captain to turn abruptly and stare at the horizon.

  He pressed his hand to his mouth and his eyes were wide with something that, on another man, Katin would name terror. She crossed the deck to where the captain stood. “What is the matter?”

  He lowered his hand and swallowed. “It’s . . . The measurements . . . they cannot be correct.”

  “Surely you can’t tell from so far—”

  “But we can. When we see another ship upon the horizon, or land, we need to be able to calculate how large it is and how far away. This . . .” He waved toward it as though the words had been stripped from his mouth. “This is vast.”

  The glowing edge of the disc pulled her gaze once more. Enough of it was visible now to draw shadows from the rails. Long crisp shadows as though a dimmer sun were rising. The light lay before them and cast silver across the sea.

  #

  Water splashed on Katin’s skin as she went through the seven postures of the morning meditation in the bow of the ship. Meditation did not come easily today. As she balanced on one foot, in Dorot’s stance, she watched the sky. The sun had risen as it always did. On the horizon, the mound grew larger but seemed no closer. It was fainter during the day, but just as visible. She had not gone to bed, nor had most of the crew. Those not on duty watched, as she did, seemingly transfixed by the way the light had grown to a half sphere. When more if it had become visible over the horizon, it became clear that it was not land, but some vast disc.

  It was impossible to grasp the size of it. A dinner plate held out at arm’s length would just cover it, but a dinner plate would not be visible past the curve of the world. Perhaps it was a beacon or a source to light their land at night.

  The base of it should be visible soon. Katin leaned out as though that would help her see the support sooner. It too must be impossibly large.

  The disc cleared the horizon. Katin squinted against the haze and set her foot down, breaking the sequence. She could not see a base.

  She stepped to the rail as the ship skipped over the waves in front of a brisk wind. Her braids beat against her cheeks as she waited. The orb seemed to rise higher but nothing held it.

  A sailor spat on the deck, and touched his fingers from his mouth to his forehead in a warding gesture. Scraps of conversation began, getting tossed on the wind toward her.

  “. . . no land after all . . .” “It’s unnatural.” “We should turn back.”

  “No.” Katin pushed herself back from the rail. She shaded her eyes against the sun and looked for the captain. He stood on the [nautical term] speaking with the navigator and the first mate. Their heads were close together in tight conversation. Katin tucked her hands into her sleeves and hurried across the deck.

  The navigator lifted her head and scowled openly. “Don’t you go spouting some hocum about this being a sign.” Porit jabbed her finger at the orb. “That thing is unnatural.”

  “But not unexpected.” Katin straightened her back. “You may not believe in the Seven Sisters, but you must acknowledge that the stories speak of this.”

  “Occult nonsense. The fact that someone sailed this far and saw that thing does not mean that land is in front of us.” Porit crossed her arms under her breasts and glared at the captain and first mate.

  Katin turned from the navigator to face Captain Stylian. “We hired you to sail West. Thus far, all of the indications prove that our texts are correct. The land of Selen is ahead of us. Is there a reason, beyond your navigator’s fear, to turn back?”

  Porit scowled. “It’s common sense, not fear.”

  “Peace.” The captain held up his hand between them and turned to Katin. “Your religious texts are allegories, you said. Has it occurred to you that your Sisters may have sailed to this point from somewhere else and then turned back?”

  Her gaze slipped to the orb hanging in the sky. What else could this be, but the moon? Katin met the captain’s gaze as though he were a congregation of one. “Old Fretian is not related to any other language. Where did it come from if not the West?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “You paid us to sail for four fifnights and so we shall. You have until the eighth of Reed, but not a day past that.”

  Katin forced her voice to be calm. “There will be land.”

  #

  The moon rose higher as they sailed farther west. Katin chewed her lower lip, watching the pale object. Its shape varied through the course of the day from a bowlike crescent it swelled to a shining disc, then gradually diminished again to just an arc of light. The cycle repeated with slow regularity, but the moon never vanished entirely. It had risen high enough over the past week that it came close to the Seven Sister’s path across the heavens. With the hour approaching midnight, it was now swollen to nearly a full disc. Other stars had dimmed and disappeared behind it, then reappeared upon the other side.

  Would the Sisters yield their place as well? Katin tugged at her scarf of office, which seemed too tightly tied tonight. She had trouble breathing as she watched the sky.

  The Sisters’ stately progress carried them to the moon. They dimmed as they approached it.

  They vanished.

  Katin sank to her knees. She had guessed they would. And yet . . . And yet, it was the night sky without the Sisters to watch over them. They had to come back out on the other side. Footsteps approached and the captain crouched beside her. “Are you all right?”

  “I— yes. Thank you. I was just watching that.” She could not voice the disappearance of the sisters to him.

  “Perhaps you should not.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “I think it may drive men mad to contemplate it. We are not prepared for something so vast.”

  “But at some point, my people did know it.” She pressed her fingers to her temples trying to soothe the pressure building there.

  He grimaced. “But it is one thing to believe. O
r to disbelieve. It is quite another to see the proof of one’s convictions floating in the sky.”

  She lifted her head. Was he speaking of her or himself?

  “Ship ahead!” The call came from the topsail.

  The captain scrambled to his feet and dashed to the [nautical term], Katin completely forgotten. She climbed to her feet, scanning the horizon for what the lookout had seen.

  On the sea, backlit by the light of the orb, floated the unmistakable silhouette of a sailing ship. And a ship sailing toward them could only mean that there was land ahead.

  The captain called for the sails to be lowered and gradually the ship slowed in the water.

  “What is the matter?”

  “They’re running dark.” He nodded toward the ship. “No lights. Either it’s a pirate ship or every one is dead. Either way, we wait until daylight to approach.”

  #

  Once the dawn came, it took several hours for them to meet the other ship. Its rigging was strange, even to Katin’s untrained eye. It rode very low in the water and had a beaked bow which curved in the air like a swan’s neck. It was clear, by the light of day, that the ship was inhabited but they made no hostile moves. Fishing nets hung over the side and bandy-legged men worked to haul catches aboard.

  Captain Stylian stood at the rail and cupped his hands to shout to the other ship. “Where do you hail from?”

  A man in tight blue trousers and a long tunic of embroidered silk shouted back. Katin frowned and cocked her head. The wind had garbled what he said. It was almost understandable but slid so that she could barely distinguish the breaks between words.

  Shaking his head, Captain Stylian said, “It was too much to hope that they spoke Marth.”

  “I think that’s a variant of Old Fretian.”

  “Worth a try.”

  She only ever used Old Fretian to read scripture in its original form and hardly ever spoke it. Katin took a moment to gather her thoughts trying to martial them into a semblance of order. The declension for this would be masculine interrogative case, which mean that she would have to use the appropriate suffix to the word “land.”