Funny Fantasy
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"AND WHAT OF ZANDER? I can see him turning on me, too. He disapproves of the ravages of empire—he's already pushed me to stop strip mining, replant forests, release the Wispfolk from their ancient bindings. . . . He won't attack me directly, but he might poison me, or send deadly venomous insects against me, or have his girlfriend attempt to possess me."
"There hasn't been a life-tree in the empire since your great-great-grandfather's day," the sibyl remarked.
Mogrash called Zander to his rooftop garden, and among the fragrant carnivorous plants, embraced him. "My son. In the central plains, before my ancestors charred out the tree-dwelling natives, there was a sacred tree, and the whole of the plains were lush. Perhaps some seedling yet remains among the ashes. Would you be the equal of finding such a thing, and tending it to health?"
"I think it must be the work I was meant for, Father," Zander said, eyes shining more than usual. Mogrash had no family heirloom to give him, but he gave Zander's Wispform lover full citizenship status as a going-away present.
"AND KHALIL. KHALIL, KHALIL. He is so full of ideas."
"Alas," the sibyl said. "I have no ideas about what to offer him."
Mogrash called Khalil to his throne room. "My son. Would you like to be a diplomat? Head of the secret intelligence services? Tell me your desire."
"I wish only to implement the vision of a better empire you introduced with Progress Village, Father." Khalil's voice was full of reverent respect. "Your great experiments are glorious things."
I only instituted the programs to keep you and your brothers from killing me, Mogrash thought, but he nodded. "Prime minister, then? We've never had one, but I think you'd fit the job. Is there anything I can offer you, as a gift for making an old man proud?"
"Only sufficient funding, Father," he said, and Mogrash had to smile.
AND SO MOGRASH ruled, though in practice Khalil did most of the ruling. After a few years of relative boredom, Mogrash gave Khalil his proxy and visited Meph in the ruins of the Lloqupulian capital, where they got drunk together and pissed on the floor of the Senate, singing bawdy songs. They harrowed the contested areas for a while, which Mogrash found more exhausting then he'd remembered, until the barrier leviathans opened another passage and Mogrash said his farewells and returned home. When he got back to the imperial city three years later, things were running more smoothly than ever. Khalil had granted all the Wispform people citizenship, banished the demonic engines below the Spiral Mountains and replaced them with coal-fired plants, and instituted other, even vaster reforms. "I apologize, Father," he said at their first meeting. "I knew my projections were sound, and that these changes would lead to greater prosperity, but I was afraid you wouldn't agree if I proposed them while you were here. . . Forgive me?"
Mogrash considered splitting Khalil's skull for the presumption, but he couldn't ignore the results; the empire was richer than ever. "I gave you my proxy," Mogrash said. "You are my son." Khalil's way was not the family way, but perhaps, unbelievably, it was better.
He visited the sibyl, who had not aged a day while he was gone. "It's the succession I fear," he said, having brooded over the subject during the long sea voyage. "Brother against brother, the empire thrown into chaos, all my work undone. Meph's warlike tendencies, Zander's gradually expanding zone of peace and green in the center of the empire, Khalil's philosophical underpinnings . . . they're bound to collide."
"So talk to them," the sibyl said. "Unlike every man of line Mogrash before them, your sons are good at talking." She paused. "Except Meph, but he'll manage."
WITH THE HELP OF his witches, he called up images of Meph and Zander from their distant locales, and sat with Khalil in the throne room. "I will not rule forever, and I do not wish to see my sons kill one another—"
"Oh, we've worked all that out," Zander said. "I don't want to run the empire. I'm happy with my trees. We've got two new seedlings this week."
"There's precious little killing to do back home," Meph said, raising his voice to be heard over the sounds of battle behind him. "I'm content here, where there are still frontiers. Let Khalil run things there."
"This is so . . . civilized," Mogrash said, unsure whether to be proud or disturbed.
"I will rule only with your blessing, Father," Khalil said.
"You have it, of course."
Khalil cleared his throat. "When do you think you might want to, ah, retire, Father?"
"Retire? No Lord Mogrash has ever retired! We've always ended in blood and glory! Or at least blood."
"Well," Khalil said. "I respect the precedent, but . . . do you want to end that way, Father? None of us wish you pain."
"I don't know what I want anymore," Mogrash said, and went away to think on it for a while.
"I WAS SURE I'd die in battle," the former Dark Lord said, sitting on the stone floor in the cold bleakness of the sibyl's chamber. "Or at least be assassinated, or possessed by a bodiless horror from the hell-world next door. Something more traditional. Instead, this—peaceful regime change? And no more slavery, no more strip mines, no more necromantic factories fueled by human suffering? I thought I was modern, but Khalil. . . . Great-grandfather must be twirling in his crypt."
"I have heard rather more noise than usual from up there," the sibyl said. "What will you do now, Sirid?"
He hadn't heard his given name in decades, and rather liked the sound of it. "Khalil says I'm welcome to stay here—he loves me, the beast—but I'd feel useless. All these years, I thought I'd outsmarted you, found a way around your prophecies, but you were right. That child did take my empire away from me, he did overthrow my ways and means, and he will indeed see me leave these halls behind forever."
"Where will you go?"
"I don't know. I thought of going to the provinces, raising an army of snake men and omniphages and trying to overthrow Khalil, just to keep myself occupied . . . but the empire is better under his leadership, and I think I'm too old to lead monster-men. And the worst of it is, I don't even mind being sidelined."
"I understand. I'm leaving, too," the sibyl said.
Mogrash blinked. "You've been down here since this place was just a crack in the earth!"
"Yes, but I can see the future, in glimpses, and in those glimpses, I am no longer consulted. Khalil doesn't need me. He has probability witches and the surveying corps and ten-year plans. My time is done. And you know, I have all these souvenirs from the world beyond, but I haven't been anywhere. I was thinking of going to one of the little islands in the Lambent Sea, where you can hear the chanting of the dead sailors under the waves and watch the witchlights in the water each evening. I think I might have come from there, originally."
"You don't remember?"
"I see the future, betimes, but the past is mostly lost to me."
Mogrash felt his hand creep across the floor, almost of its own volition, and touch the sibyl's long delicate fingers. "I've always liked the islands. A simple house, among the palms. It sounds . . . pleasant."
"It will be," the sibyl said, entwining her fingers with his.
This story originally appeared in Strange Horizons, 2009.
Tim Pratt is the author of over twenty novels, most recently The Deep Woods and Heirs of Grace, and many short stories. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Year's Best Fantasy, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and other nice places. He's a Hugo Award winner, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Stoker, Mythopoetic, and Nebula Awards, among others. He lives in Berkeley, CA and works as a senior editor at Locus, a trade magazine devoted to science fiction and fantasy publishing. He tweets a lot as @timpratt, and his website is www.timpratt.org.
Giantkiller
G. Scott Huggins
It is presumed by the simple that we legends know no fear, that we are born into our roles, and take to them as easily as stud bulls, who leap to their duties knowing only boundless energy and excitement. Those who know only the Giantkiller's record may be pardoned
, of course. But before there was the Giantkiller, there was a man called Jack…
-From Chapter 1: "The Map's Greatest Legend." A Man Called Jack: The Early Years. with Cleave Custer. Singing Harp Press: Happy Valley, MDCXVIII.
"AND YOU BEST NOT get taken, boy! You hear me? You just best not!" The shrieks of Jack's mother followed him up the road with the rising sun. Briefly, Jack's brow creased in puzzlement; he gazed at the rope in his hand. To his utter lack of surprise, it looped around the neck of their cow, Milky-White. Milky-White stared back at him with an arch look of contempt. Yes, he was taking the cow to market. The cow was behind him; he was not behind the cow. Therefore, Jack was doing the taking. Dismissing his mother, Jack continued toward the market. Milky-White had stopped living up to the first half of her name earlier in the week. It was all very simple: a lovely day's walk in the sun. Sell the cow. A lovely day's walk back. It was all very simple until, just a mile from their door, they ran into Jack and his cow.
Meeting a double of myself on the road was the first inkling I had that things had gone wrong. Following the lessons my instructors had drilled into me, I stepped forward, using every ounce of the cold-steel nerves the gods had granted me to stand there with a dumbfounded expression on my face and greet my doubles as if I hadn't noticed a thing.
-From Chapter 2: "The Naïve K.N.A.V.E." A Man Called Jack
"HOWDY, STRANGERS," Jack called out. He stuck his hand in his pouch. There was some cheese with hardly any mold on it, and it cost nothing to be generous. Or was that, 'it costs nothing to be friendly?' Jack often got the two confused. The strangers looked awfully familiar, but Jack couldn't place them. The cow especially looked as if he should know it. Suddenly, he realized what it was.
"Hey," he said to the man. "We're wearing the same clothes!"
The stranger stared, and then said, pityingly, "Most people do, Jack. Roughspun is pretty much roughspun, no matter how you tailor it." He looked behind Jack at Milky-White. "All right, Bulganova, we've found you. Are you going to come quietly?"
Jack looked at the man. He'd heard of people talking to cows, or even walls when they were drunk, but those people tended to fall down more. "Who are you talking to? Say, did you notice we're the same height, too?"
"Just your cow, Jack." The stranger smiled reassuringly. "Bulganova there is an excellent cow, and I'd really like her to have this fine cowbell." He pulled one from his pouch. Attached to a silver mesh collar, it was a fine cowbell, and the stranger advanced. Milky-White backed away from him. Tugging Jack. Jack set his heels in the dirt, but Milky-White tugged harder, pulling him off the road.
Milky-White is pulling me, now. She's taking me off the road. I'm getting taken by a cow, Jack thought. In desperate terror of abject poverty and drastically upset mother, Jack heaved with all his strength on the rope. Abruptly, Milky-White reversed, cannoned forward past Jack, and lunged at the stranger with her horns. He howled in pain.
Jack reacted with the speed of a farmer. "Bad cow!" he cried, hitting Milky-White in the shoulder with his full weight. She staggered away. Jack picked up the silver bell in one hand, still holding the rope. "He only wanted to give you a present." Jack smoothly fastened the bell around Milky-White's neck. She bellowed, jerking to her feet, horns leveled, and then suddenly stood looking blankly behind him, completely motionless.
Jack tried to help the stranger, and found his path blocked by the other cow. Who, he now realized, looked exactly the same as Milky-White. But this cow glared at him in a fury. "Haven't you done enough?" she said.
Before Jack could react, another voice said, "I think you've all done rather enough."
Emerging from the hedge was a dwarf. A dwarf with a wicked-looking hand crossbow, pointed straight at Jack. Jack had never had a weapon pointed at him before. Jack had never seen a weapon before.
"Don't move, boy," said the dwarf. He looked down at the stranger. "So, the great James Nulsieben. At last, defenseless. And Bulganova, too. One of our greatest agents. I congratulate your double; I've never seen Bulganova enspelled before, though many tried. You almost got her. I always hoped I'd kill you." His grin widened. "But I never dreamed I'd get to do it twice."
The stranger—James—breathed in labored gasps, blood staining the road. "The boy knows nothing," he got out. "Do you, boy? I knew you were our enemy, Rumpel. But I never thought you'd betray your own kind by siding with giants."
"Really?" said the dwarf. "And why do you think they call me the Stilts' kin? The Giants will make me taller than any of you dream. But enough of this." He pointed the bow at Jack's heart. "Will you die honorably, or will you further insult my intelligence by pleading that you know nothing and only wish to wake up from this nightmare?"
"Oh, no," said Jack. "Pleading isn't much use in nightmares, and that must be what this is, because I can't see how there could be two Milky-Whites, and even if there could, I don't reckon there's ever been a hedge by this crossroad in real life."
The dwarf turned in surprise. Then vines looped from the hedge, gripping the bow, his hand, and his neck. There was a brief contraction of foliage, and the dwarf dropped limply. The hedge contracted, collapsed in on itself and became a dark green figure with long, flowing hair.
Jack stepped forward on quaking feet and addressed the dryad. "Thank you, Miss."
"What do you mean, miss?" the figure said in a brassy tenor. He knelt by James. "Sorry, Jim. Didn't see it coming." He gave the cows a glance. "Well, well. Bulganova. So nice to see you. When were you going to lose the spare, here?" his chin gave a jerk toward Jack.
Milky-White simply mooed.
"Don't play dumb with me!" He picked up the lead and looped a tendril of vine over the cow's neck. "I know that little enchanted bell won't let you move much, but you can talk just fine."
"What are we going to do?" asked the other cow.
"Don't worry, she's not for hamburger. We'll find out everything she knows. We don't often get a chance to interrogate a deep-cover cow."
"Not her," said the other cow, "the mission!"
"What mission?"
"That's on a Things Man Was Not Meant To Know basis!" the cow snapped.
"James is a man. I'm not," he replied.
"You can't replace him," she sneered. "Our contact is expecting something that looks vaguely human, not a half-a-dryad."
"That's 'hamadryad,' said the green man, his voice going cold. "And look who's talking about human."
James coughed and both their eyes fell on him. "I believe that the watchword of the agency," he labored, his own eyes falling on Jack, "has always been 'improvisation?'"
No one would have believed in the last years of the XVIIth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences tinier than man and yet with bodies twice the size of a bull elephant; curiously as a drooling toddler might scrutinize maggots squirming on a heap of garbage and wonder if they would be fun to eat. Or, failing that, to step on.
-From Chapter 3: "The Lore of the Worlds." A Man Called Jack
"BUT WHY," SAID JACK, as the hamadryad and Milky-White, with James tied securely atop her, vanished into the distance, "did we have to trade you Milky-White for real Milky-White?"
"Bulganova," corrected the cow. "We traded me for Bulganova, because she's working for the Giants. Plus, she's quite a deadly fighter. Hey, keep your hand out of that pouch."
Jack had traded pouches with James as well as cows. It was no improvement. James had not packed any cheese. The cow went on. "We saved your life back there, in case you hadn't noticed. So stay out of the pouch until I tell you."
Jack said nothing, partly because the cow was right, but partly because he was trying to think whether pointing out that he had captured Bulganova would be a good idea.
"All right, other Milky-White."
"And stop that," the cow snorted. "I have a name. It's Philomila." At the sight of Jack screwing up his mouth to perform hitherto unimagined feats of polysyllabic speech, she said, "Phil will do."
Phil just stared. "You know," she finally said, "just about any other man, discovering himself to be in the company of a talking cow would say something like, 'How does a cow learn to talk?' or 'I wonder what the circus would pay for a talking cow?' Yet you're thinking of the butcher. Why do you suppose that is?"
"Because my Mum said to sell the cow to the butcher." Faintly, Jack also thought, and Mum also said not to get taken, and there's Phil ahead of me.
"We're not selling me to the butcher," said Phil.
"Then how much will the circus…"
"Or the circus."
"How much then?" asked Jack.
"Four beans. Haggle. Try to make it five. We don't want him to be suspicious."
"I should take five beans from the man we sell you to," repeated Jack. "And then he will not be suspicious?"
"Not if Bulganova's intercepted reports are any indication," sighed Phil. "Five, four, three, two…"
"What giants?" said Jack. "And why were you counting backwards?"
"Never mind, Jack," said Phil. "Have you ever noticed how, on most days, there are great white clouds in the sky that look like castles on the top of mountains, floating above the valley?"
"Yes!" said Jack, "They look like towers, and hills, and houses…"
"And have you ever wondered why that is?"
Jack wrinkled his head in thought. It seemed an easy question. "That's where the giants live?"
Phil stopped dead in the street. "Yes, Jack. It is." She cocked her head, a difficult thing for a cow. "Our local half-a-dryad, pain though he is, did help us stop Bulganova from contacting her agent."