The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (volume 1)

by Paul Haines

  “Enough!” In the window, Casco’s dragon reflection bloomed anew, rearing its head; her wings spread wide, and her tail lashed violently. Her voice filled the grand chamber. “I’ve had enough! Enough of being trapped in this House; enough of being neither one thing nor the other. Enough of you. Let me alone!”

  Pater Claudio’s head snapped back as if he’d been slapped. His face and shoulders sagged. Folding his hands carefully in his lap, he straightened, sitting as tall as his aging back would allow. He waited for the echoes of Casco’s words to fade before he spoke.

  “It appears, my love, that you’ve become overly agitated.” He snapped his fingers; Mirko appeared from the antechamber. The bodyguard stood framed in the doorway while Claudio gave his instructions. “Escort Casco to her room now, Mirko. She’s not fit for company this evening. We’ll have to continue our conversation in the morning, when she’s regained her composure.”

  Mirko slowly sidled up to his charge, a man obliged to act although he clearly had no taste for the task. Casco stood her ground. “There’s nothing to talk about—don’t touch me!” She wrenched her arm from her guard’s meaty grasp. Glaring at Claudio, she repeated, “There is nothing further to discuss.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Casco. We must make arrangements for our wedding. But it can wait for the morning. Until then, I bid you goodnight.”

  Lightning flared over the rough seas, briefly filling the salon with its harsh glare. In the window’s reflection, a small girl was dragged from the room; an old man looked on, smiling, until darkness returned.

  * * *

  “Engraver, good morning.”

  Forneau was at the door of her work-cell, Mirko close behind him. Her bodyguard’s face was set in annoyance, but he knew his position was too low to speak rudely to Vitrine’s heir, no matter how much he wanted to do so.

  “Master Forneau,” said Casco. “You are an early visitor.”

  “The dragons. I have come to speak with your keepers about the new dragons. Would you do the honour of escorting me? I cannot wander Verre’s House unattended—who knows what secrets I might discover?” He grinned, looking past her at the half-completed Empire bottle.

  “Very well,” she said. “Keep an eye on the candles for me, Mirko. It seems such a waste to snuff them when I’ll be back up in a matter of minutes.”

  “I should probably come with you, Casco,” Mirko said.

  Fourneau leaned toward Casco and barked once, like a watchdog, then tried to mask what he’d done by covering his mouth and coughing. She glared at him, and said, “That won’t be necessary, Mirko. We really won’t be long.”

  The furnace room was dimly lit; none of the dragons had yet been brought from their cells. There was only the low glow of the brazier, bronzing both Fourneau and his reluctant guide.

  “When will you hunt?” asked Casco.

  “Tomorrow. I still hope to convince Pater Claudio to sell me that firedrake.”

  “Feus is not for sale.”

  “Feus? You’ve given him a pet name?” Forneau laughed as if she was an amusing child.

  “It’s his name. He told me.”

  “Told you? My, my, you are a rare creature, Casco. Rare indeed.” He grinned. “No wonder Pater Claudio wants you for himself.”

  “I will not marry Pater. I will not be mated with anyone against my will.”

  “He is very old. Perhaps you prefer younger flesh.” He pushed her to the bars of Feus’ cage and pressed himself against her. The metal bit into her back and Forneau’s teeth bit into her tongue and lips. He was careful to imprison her hands and make sure she couldn’t use her nails. She was so shocked she hadn’t time to react. She flailed uselessly in his grasp.

  From the mouth of one of the tunnels came an almighty roar and the shouts of the keepers as Feus broke free of them. They had become so used to the submission of channelled dragons they were unprepared for the fury of an outraged beast. Forneau released Casco and backed away from her, his face white as bone, his eyes large as terror seized him. He couldn’t bring himself to turn his back on the dragon so he saw the fire as it came for him, the heat drying out his eyeballs before it even hit.

  There was very little left after the first burst of flame. By that time, the keepers had rallied; they hung on the ends of the chains attached to Feus’ collar and one of them jabbed the soft underside of his neck with a drug-dipped dart to tranquilise him. It took only moments to work, but it was too late for Forneau who lay smoking on the floor of the furnace chamber.

  Casco looked in horror, not at Forneau, but at Feus, knowing he had just condemned himself to the arena.

  * * *

  “I will marry you, Pater, but my bride price is the life of Feus.”

  “The firedrake? Stop this foolishness, Casco. Dragons don’t have names, they are not pets!”

  “They name themselves just as we do!” She took a deep breath to calm herself, knowing that aggravating him further would not advance her cause. She knelt before him, hating herself, put her hands on his knees, then slid them up to his thighs.

  “Pater.” She paused. “Claudio. This is the one thing I ask of you. Grant me this one small boon and I will belong to you and Verre’s House forever. I will give you sons to carry on your line. In this way I will give you immortality, if you just grant me this one thing in return.”

  He wavered, distracted by the stroking of her fingers and nails.

  She smiled. “Besides, what kind of business sense does it make to waste a perfectly good firedrake? He saw me threatened and reacted. He has removed Vitrine’s heir—done you a favour, really. Reward him with his life.”

  She leaned forward, lifted her face and offered her lips.

  * * *

  Mirko gave her a pitying look. Casco was bent over the Empire bottle. The base had been completed; now she was preparing the bottle neck and stopper. He watched her, thinking she’d gotten thinner and paler in the weeks since Forneau’s death; worse since she’d agreed to marry Claudio.

  She looked up and smiled wearily at him. “Nearly finished.” She gestured at the bottle. “The buyers are bound to offer a hefty price for this—”

  “He lied,” Mirko interrupted. She gave him an uncomprehending look. “Pater Claudio.”

  “Have the buyers withdrawn?” Casco stood. “Are there any buyers at all?”

  “No, no. That’s not it. It’s just—the firedrake goes to the arena this evening.”

  She sagged, all the life gone from her.

  Mirko had been ordered to keep his charge on a tight leash, to not let her out of his sight, to keep her away from news and people who might tell her anything. He had done his job, he had kept her in the dark; and she had not fought him, distracted as she was by her impending marriage and the demons she kept tightly inside her mind. Seeing her thus, working on the Empire bottle, about to become even more of a slave, he couldn’t lie to her any longer. “What will you do?”

  She began to weep.

  “You are better than this, Casco. What are you going to do?”

  * * *

  “Tonight, you will witness a battle to the death!” Sevante Belluaire’s deep voice boomed over the appreciative crowd. He stood on a dais at the arena’s south end, facing a series of tunnels, each of which led to the gladiators’ subterranean chambers. Black and barred, the doorways looked like a row of rotten teeth held in place by rusty bands.

  Casco watched her father’s performance from the northernmost tunnel. A few choice whisperings in a young guard’s ear and a handful of shiny coins in his palm had gained her this prime position.

  Much as a king would from his elevated position, the beastmaster surveyed his audience, smiling condescendingly. The dais’s wooden planks hovered over a filthy creature tethered to the arena floor. Belluaire was poised near the platform’s edge; the crack of his whip punctuated each of his sentences with a stinging flick against Feus’ hide. Weighed down by chains as thick as a strongman’s thigh, the dragon could not
retaliate.

  “This devil,” Belluaire boasted, “soaked up a century’s heat from the Arnuvian deserts, where he feasted on boiling blood, flame-cactus and spitfire! Our bravest ’catchers tracked him along a perilous route—from roasting sands to Haverna’s blackest volcanoes—until they finally caught him bathing in craters of bubbling lava. This devil—”

  Sigils paraded through Casco’s mind and she whispered the unbinding incantation she had found hidden away in one of the minor spell folios. Looking at the rapt faces in the crowd, each of them riveted by Belluaire’s false words, Casco’s lip curled in disgust. He had such power to charm; she could almost believe her father had a bit of the dragon in him.

  “We’ve seen many a fire-breather in this arena.” Belluaire paused for dramatic effect, lifted his eyes to the banners plastered against all of the building’s vertical surfaces. Casco followed his gaze, taking in the variegated shreds of cloth and tinsel that commemorated the arena’s fallen warriors. Her eyes caught on a gold and burgundy pennant, still rich in hue despite its age.

  Priling.

  Belluaire continued, “Many a fierce beast has torn human limb from limb before us, but none—” he raised his arm and spun it to gain momentum, “—none has caused as much damage as this one!” The whip lashed across Feus’ flanks with skin-splitting force. The firedrake reared his head and loosed a spout of fury-driven flames.

  “Lies!” Casco hissed, her dismay submerged in waves of the crowd’s delight.

  “Which of our brave gladiators will defeat this animal?” The sound of metal scraping across metal underscored the crescendos of Belluaire’s rousing speech—the tunnels’ heavy iron gates began to lift. Casco rattled the slow-moving barrier, urging it upward, still shaping the Incantors’ sigils in her mind.

  “Who will keep him from our children?” At this, the beastmaster turned away from the dragon and faced row upon row of seats ascending skyward at vertiginous angles. His youngest daughter waved down at him from the third row, her blonde ringlets bouncing as she proudly wiggled her plump arm for all to see that it was her daddy down there. “Shall we summon the gladiators?” The crowd cheered their assent. Casco heard the tramp of feet behind her. She dropped to the ground and wriggled beneath the gap. She strode across the arena floor as Belluaire continued his address.

  “Strong Heracles, perhaps? Quick Induvio? The Incredible Serbonne? There are so many favourites—which of them will save my little Lapis from this—”

  “I will.”

  She spoke loud and clearly, but had to repeat herself twice before the audience fell silent. Casco’s boots crunched across the pebbles and bones littering the arena floor. Her breathing was calm, her posture assured. She inhaled the scent of sulphur and scorched earth, tasted salt with each step she took toward the dais. “Call off your killers, Father. Feus is mine.”

  A sharp hiss echoed around the stadium, a collective drawing in of breath; Casco wasn’t sure whether it was because she had claimed her father or the dragon that crouched at his feet. One voice, coming from the stands behind Belluaire’s platform, raised a more fervent protest than the rest:

  “Casco!”

  She kept walking. Pater Claudio stood and called again, his hands clenched at his sides, his face livid. “Stop right where you are.” She ignored him. “Stop! Wife!”

  “Wife?” Feus’ voice resounded in Casco’s mind. “I had hoped one day to call you that myself.” The words warmed her, filled the empty space in her chest. “Then do so,” she whispered. She drew as close to the dragon as she could without coming within range of her father’s whip.

  “Guards! Gladiators!” Pater Claudio’s commands rang shrilly across the stadium. He had descended the stairs next to his seat, and was now leaning precariously over the protective barrier that kept the audience from falling twenty feet down to the sunken showground. “Get her out of there, Belluaire, or so help me you’ll never see another one of our dragons!”

  The portcullises had been fully raised and gladiators followed Casco to the foot of Belluaire’s platform. Torchlight reflected off the points of their spears.

  “He’s mine,” she repeated, staring up at her father, then switched her gaze to Pater. She held out the Empire bottle’s incantation scroll; its edges were ragged where she’d torn it from the great book. It no longer mattered—the bottle itself lay in shards on the floor of her work-cell.

  “Belluaire!” Pater Claudio paced along the barrier like a caged tiger. “Damn you—by all the gods—you can’t do this!”

  Casco thought she saw her father’s eyes flick to Priling’s banner and back before he said, under his breath, “This is no fault of mine. Let her stay if she’s got a death-wish.” An artificial smile spread across his face as turned his back on Pater Claudio’s protestations and shouted, “A fight like none before! The beast faces the hybrid!”

  The applause was deafening. Belluaire urged the gladiators back; then he sketched an elaborate bow, and tossed Casco his whip. “There’s nothing else I can give you,” he said. “You’ve brought this upon yourself.”

  Casco ignored the whip. She turned to face the dragon.

  “Feus, I trust you: burn away the flesh.”

  “Verba volant, little half-blood: spoken words fly away. Prove yourself.”

  “I trust you,” she repeated and knelt before him, placing the parchment on the ground. A woman in the audience screamed. Pater Claudio had negotiated his way through the rows of seats and began to lower himself down one of the many rope ladders ringing the arena’s perimeter, quick exits for the Wranglers. Casco paid no attention and took brief moments to caress Feus’ ravaged hide, her fingers glancing gently along the dull edges of his scales, eliciting a groan of pleasure from her mate. The long silver tongue flicked out and touched the back of her neck, whisper-soft. Casco swallowed hard and removed her hand, began inscribing the symbols of the unbinding incantation onto the dragon’s chains with her nails.

  “I trust you,” she said, intent on her work. Eyes cast down, focused, she was unaware of her lover’s fiery kiss until it had engulfed her. The scroll beside her became ashes.

  The flames hurt less than she had thought, and more. She felt her human flesh drying out, then curling and finally burning away. New muscle grew, her body changed shape and scales sprouted all over. Her heartbeat slowed and the heat of her blood dropped. Wings stretched from her back, larger and more powerful than those she’d seen in her reflection. Her nails, grown thick with metamorphosis, sheared through Feus’ remaining bonds.

  Free, she thought, and the joy that shot through her was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Every inch of her body tingled with it. Stretching her long neck, she nuzzled her lover’s torso then nipped at his flanks, teasing him into action. She purred, expelling short bursts of steam from flared nostrils as she butted her sleek head gently against his muscular shoulder. Feus reared and roared. Casco caught the thrum of his humming, now rekindled and transcending to a victorious trumpeting; laughter bubbled in her throat. She opened her mouth and joined her song to his.

  A storm of sand rose from the arena floor and blasted over the audience. The night sky was a satin backdrop as the two dragons stretched their wings and took flight.

  About The Contributors

  R J Astruc’s short fiction has appeared in like a bajillion magazines including Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Abyss and Apex, and Aurealis. Her latest novel, Harmonica + Gig, is available from all good bookstores in Australia. You should totally buy it, seriously. Find RJ online at www.rachelastruc.com or on twitter as @astruc.

  Peter M Ball is a Brisbane writer who attended Clarion South in 2007. His novella, Horn, was published by Twelfth Planet Press in 2009 and the sequel, Bleed, in 2010. His recent short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex, Shimmer, Sprawl, and the Interfictions II anthology. He can be found online at www.petermball.com.

  Alan Baxter is a British-Australian author living on the south coast of NSW,
Australia. He writes dark fantasy, sci fi and horror, rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. He also teaches Kung Fu. Read extracts from his novels, a novella and short stories at his website www.alanbaxteronline.com and feel free to tell him what you think. About anything.

  In high school, Jenny Blackford won the Hunter Valley Research Association Prize for a poem that was later published in Dolly. There was a break of several decades before the poem reprinted here, “Mirror”, appeared in Midnight Echo 4. Another poem is forthcoming in ME 6. Her six published stories for adults so far have received three Honorable Mentions from Gardner Dozois and one from Ellen Datlow. Her website is www.jennyblackford.com.

  Gitte Christensen was born and raised in Australia, but also lived in Denmark for 12 years before returning to study journalism at RMIT. Her speculative fiction has appeared in Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Moonlight Tuber, The NSW School Magazine, Bards and Sages Quarterly, the anthology The Tangled Bank, and other publications. To escape keyboards, she regularly grabs a tent and a horse and goes trailing riding through distant mountains.

  Matthew Chrulew’s novella The Angælien Apocalypse, published by Twelfth Planet Press, was a finalist in the 2010 Aurealis Awards. “Schubert by Candlelight” is his second published Androphagi story. The first, “Between the Memories,” originally appeared in Aurealis #38/39, was shortlisted for the 2007 Australian Shadows Award, and was reprinted in Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror Volume Three. He is working on a number of other related stories, and a novel, The Worm Runners. His blog Negentropy is at matthewchrulew.wordpress.com.

  Bill Congreve is a writer and independent publisher living in the Blue Mountains in NSW. He has a BA in communications, holds accreditation in editing from IPed, and has won awards for genre criticism, editing and publishing. His stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines around the world, and he edited the horror anthologies Intimate Armageddons and Southern Blood. His independent publishing company, MirrorDanse Books, specialises in SF and horror.