Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy

by Shawn Speakman

  In the quiet after, a new voice spoke in the ether.

  “Mother?” the voice called, a plaintive sounding filled with fear and hope.

  I am here, Michi thought, knowing the voice was not for her.

  Michi struggled from the cocoon and glanced around the room. There was a small child, four or five years by her appearance, huddled in the crook between the twisting roots of a large spruce. “I’m lost,” the child said. “Have you seen my mother? It is dark here and I am afraid.”

  Michi knelt in front of the child, watching the flow of symbols that flooded behind her dark eyes. “Are you a Kodama, my little tree spirit?”

  “Help me,” the child said, then vanished, melting into the shadows.

  It took Michi two months to make the arrangements. Haruka had shown her the clues she needed, even though Michi had not seen it at first. She had to go to where Haruka had camped. Had to go outside. This filled her with as much fear as anticipation. But with satellite imagery and her expertise, she was able to find the woods on the edge of Mt. Fuji. These were the infamous suicide woods. This is what Haruka had recreated inside Michi’s virtual world. This is where Michi had to go to find answers, and to find the child.

  She spent the money, made contacts with a guide, and before she could’ve believed it possible, she stood at the edge of Aokigahara, the sea of live trees unfolding before her, each needle and branch burned into her memory. This was Haruka’s gift—this forest that had transformed her home and her life.

  The reality of the outside world surpassed the virtual in ways that Michi had no conceptual means of expressing. Richer colors, deeper shadows, more vibrant smells and sounds. The juxtaposition of the deep green of the forest against the startling blue of the sky was an image that she was sure would leave an indelible mark on her spirit.

  She hefted her pack and her walking sticks, breathing in the richness of the forest and glorying at the way it filled her. With the help of a guide, she began the trek into the heart of the suicide woods. Part of her mind already knew what she would find, but her heart told her she had to go and find Haruka’s child.

  Three days in, past the scattered bodies of the recently dead, her guide brought her to the clearing she had etched into her memory. There, on a hillside, with a clear view of Mt. Fuji as a backdrop, she saw the camp.

  A single tent sat to one side, but the dominant feature was the antennae that rose thirty feet into the clear blue sky. This was no flight of whimsy, she knew. Haruka had planned this for many months, maybe years. At the very top of the hill was a solar array surrounding an enclosed bunker only a few feet across.

  Power had flowed to this spot from the solar array, filling the seven batteries arranged around the central server. The careful planning, expense, and sheer engineering genius in the setup impressed her. Haruka had proven herself to be a brilliant scientist. And she’d sought out Michi to be the one to help her in the culmination of her life’s work.

  The guide called out from the open flap of the tent. Michi turned to see the stricken look on the man’s face. She didn’t need to look. She knew that Haruka had taken her own life. Why else would she have come to this place? That and the way the surrounding iron deposits and the angle of this hill created a perfect amplifier.

  The frame of the server came apart with little effort. All it really needed was someone with opposable thumbs. Inside, a pulsing sphere sat nestled in a cocoon of filaments and woven mesh. Here was Haruka’s greatest achievement. Here was the flawed creation that Michi had helped nurture into existence.

  She closed the case and connected her travel rig to the server, entering the ether in a much-reduced capacity but with enough force of will to do what she needed to do. Within moments she unleashed her greatest work—the most delicate and complicated algorithm—into the ether, unlocked the firewall to her domain, and merged the realities there with those in the glowing sphere at her feet.

  In that moment a deep resounding tone shook the clearing and the antennae vibrated, sending a pulse down into the bedrock and back out into the sky. A new life-form birthed into the ether, a child of two mothers.

  Michi sat, her life’s greatest work done—her greatest achievements yet to come. She would guide this new being, this artificial intelligence in the worlds she’d created. How could she do any less? She just hoped that the pain she felt in her heart, the joy and the trepidation, was the emergence of love.

  Janny Wurts

  * * *

  I have always enjoyed exploring the theme of what happens when history’s record is rewritten by the victor. Play that fascination into a world already extensively developed for a major series—where restrictions have forced cultural evolution to take a different course than the one we know—I stepped further outside the envelope and stretched the time line backward, striking for an intimate look into the nuance that shaped an already familiar setting, and delving into the underpinnings. For “The Decoy,” I chose to leap over five centuries into the past, and imagine what might have happened by bringing a historical period of strife to the forefront. Not in the predictable way that the Wars of Light and Shadow novels might lead one to assume, but to capture a snapshot view of the customs and trends that were the precursors to the epic events yet to come. Each setting on the greater map has its own signature. Seizing the alternate view and evoking the contrasts, changes, and the hard edges behind what the upcoming generations will have polished to legend hopefully unveils unexpected twists and turns for old readers and new ones alike.

  Janny Wurts

  The Decoy

  A Wars of Light and Shadow Story

  Janny Wurts

  Falion sen Ardhai was rousted from sleep with an urgent summons to present himself, ready to ride. He stumbled from bed, reeled to vertigo the moment his feet hit the floor by the static discharge of an inbound storm. The surge frayed his sight to white sparks as he blundered into the wall.

  “I’m likely to fall on my face getting dressed,” he snapped, his embarrassment caught in the glow of the stableboy’s candle.

  “Captain knows.” The lad’s shrug showed indifference. “Says you’re called, anyway.”

  Resigned to his bruises and humiliation, Falion wrestled his gangling legs into yesterday’s breeches. Throughout, the heightened state of the flux played havoc with his distressed sensitivity. Close confines made the dizziness worse. Falion shoved outside, clutching his hose and boots, with shirt, belt, and courier’s blazoned doublet thrown over his arm. He breasted the risen gusts that snapped and whined through the stable yard. The lamps tossed on their chains, flinging demonic shadows where a tousled lad with straw in his hair led a ribby mare to be saddled. She sidled, ears flat, bred for speed before temperament by the tantrum that brewed in her wicked, rolled eye.

  “Hurry on,” snapped the master of horse, pausing to shut the stall door. “You’re away, once she’s tacked. Swallow’s fast as we’ve got, runs like a singed cat, but she’ll trample my groom if she’s made to wait, standing.”

  Falion bobbed a nod. His unbraided brown hair lashed his face as he climbed the ramshackle steps to the dispatch shack. He barged in, ungrounded despite his bare feet, and tripped over the threshold. His inept snatch missed catching the door. The panel blew shut at his heels with a bang that guttered the candles.

  An unknown rider regarded his entry, the leathers of the forest clans worn like a second skin over a frame beaten limp with exhaustion. Falion sized up the stranger, respectful of the indigo tattoos of a thrice-proven scout on his forehead. The initiate’s seal verified a blood ancestry strong enough to withstand all three tests of the Paravian presence. A rarity, and a risk, to bear that sign into Karfael amid the cankered unrest since the Mistwraith’s invasion. But that uneasy detail was eclipsed by the black armband of mourning tied to the rider’s left arm.

  Whoever had died, trouble trampled due courtesy.

  “You’re the relay’s unmarked?” the arrival rasped brusquely.

  “
One of four.” The rest were in service at Erdane, where unsavory interests had lately gained sway. Two decades of dangerous unrest now demanded anonymous messengers. Awkwardly placed between factions since birth, Falion was entitled to bear the same indelible proof of a confirmed heritage; and would have had he not been groomed first as a tradesman. Grown up unsuited, he was his father’s embarrassment until the Mistwraith’s incursion strained ordered tradition, and royal couriers with obvious clan background increasingly came to be waylaid. But to send a covert rider alone to inform the bereaved ran beyond a shocking departure from form.

  “Who’s crossed Fate’s Wheel?” Falion asked, prickled to apprehension. A condolence should have traveled in state, clad in heraldic formality, and accompanied by a caparisoned horse, saddle empty to honor the titled fallen.

  The rider replied, his blunt façade shattered. “The king’s company. All of them.” Once started, he blurted the rest, hands clenched in white-knuckled grief. “A concerted assault struck the line holding the Mistwraith in check. Three days and nights, with a last wave that claimed three of Athera’s crowned sovereigns. Tysan’s steward is gone, and his daughter. Caithwood’s clan chieftain fell also, before the Fellowship Sorcerers stabilized the weakened boundary. Sunlight has been secured on scant resource, but the list of the dead is the least dire news to be dispatched southward.”

  Remiss for his state of undress, Falion tossed his doublet over the opposite bench and flung on his shirt. He left the cuff laces swinging to braid his loose hair, when the relay captain strode in from the ward room, spry despite the hitched stride from a crippling fall from a horse after decades of service.

  “Don’t bother, boy!” Intolerant, lean as leather, with vitality like flame under bronze features, the relay captain unsheathed his belt knife and flipped the blade, handle first, toward the sleepy equerry who tagged at his heels. “Cut his hair. Then find him a groom’s jerkin without the royal badge, and a plain cloak. He’s all we have. If he can’t pass as townborn, for mercy, hope’s lost.”

  The clipped order came fast. “Falion, the word you’re to carry is critical, too sensitive to be written down. The gist, we have news of a guild conspiracy aimed at the destruction of the royal family. You will bear warning to the queen-regent in Avenor, we hope in time for her to take flight along with her children. This is sudden, and serious. A widespread plot is afoot to upset Charter Law in the Sorcerers’ absence.”

  The recoil spun off by hard-leashed emotion rippled the flux. Falion swayed, jostling the hand with the blade at his nape, to an oath from the equerry who cropped his hair. “But you know—” he blurted.

  “That you’re a distant relation of the crown lineage, yes.” The relay captain sighed, his regret a visible weight on spry shoulders as he leaned on his cluttered desk. “We are sending you into hazard, I realize. The hard choice is necessary.” Falion was sanctioned for travel inside the free wilds, though Ath knew, of late, Paravian sightings had grown sparse. Within town walls, his outbred origins also let him ride unnoticed where a clan scout would stir sharp distrust.

  “The direct route cross country offers our best chance of slipping the message through at short notice. The queen-regent’s safety lies in your hands, against stakes beyond grave to contemplate.”

  The man come with ill tidings elaborated in Caithwood’s distinctive inflection, “We know nothing else. This rising is real. Two men died getting word out of Erdane.”

  The relay captain straightened, resolved. “You leave now for Avenor. Ride hard and fast, change horses as often as necessary. Tell the queen-regent she must flee directly, and to trust none of the garrison officers.”

  The clan rider slipped off his black armband. He passed on the strip of silk with regret, and gave Falion the second, dire message. “When the queen-regent’s away, and only then, break the news of her personal losses. Her brother is dead, and her nephew, the heir designate. Asandir of the Fellowship asks for her grown daughter, Eveny, to accept the burden of the crown succession. The Sorcerer will come when duty permits and complete her investiture.”

  Falion accepted the burdensome cloth, a nobody rattled to be tossed headlong into the nexus of greater affairs.

  “Keep that ribbon tucked out of sight unless you meet an obstruction,” the relay captain advised. “At all costs, avoid seeding a premature rumor that might spur the unrest.” Concern sharpened his final question. “Do you carry a long knife?”

  Unnerved by the whetted steel by his ear, Falion said, “No.”

  “Then you’ll take mine.” The relay captain unbuckled his belt. Before trusting Falion’s notorious reflexes, he tossed the sheathe to the equerry, who fielded the catch, finished out the quick trim, and surrendered the heirloom blade’s burled handle into Falion’s keeping. “Yon’s a quality blade, keen enough to split a whisker. Too fine for cutting a switch for your horse, and damnwell take care if you draw that you don’t lose a finger.”

  “I’ll be mindful,” Falion promised, muddled again as the flux static surged.

  The relay captain noted the weakness, suddenly looking his age. “See that you do, with yourself alive at the end of this.”

  Bundled into a borrowed jerkin and cloak, Falion received the carved courier’s token to command the best quality remounts. “Get through, young man. Send word back when the s’Ilessid family’s secure within the free wilds.”

  Moments later, Falion plunged out the door into the windy dark. The tousled groom steadied the flighty mare as he mounted, then slapped his knee for luck and loosed her rank impatience.

  Falion took her explosive temper in hand. Expert, once astride, he embraced the familiar, blessed relief as his wracked senses grounded into stability. The erratic effect of the flux stream tamed under partnership with a horse, he reined the fractious mare across the yard, and let her explode through the gate.

  The country between Karfael’s southern gate and the royal port of Avenor spread forty leagues as the crow flew, across free wilds country held sacrosanct by Charter Law. Hard-ridden, with frequent changes of mount, the expanse could be crossed in two days. No road and no settlement marred the proscribed ground past West End, and no crofter farmed the rich grassland where, for two ages since Mankind’s upstart settlement, the herds of Riathan Paravians were wont to breed. But none of the blessed had foaled since the Mistwraith’s blight threatened sunlight. Their diminished numbers of late raised the troublesome prospect of a withdrawal, heating the merchant guilds’ clamor for unrestricted expansion. Two decades of crisis had deferred even the smallest petitions for change, with the perilous mediation between Mankind and the Paravians stalled throughout the high king’s absence. The impasse chafed the peace, while the dire hazards of unsheltered contact faded from memory outside the clan enclaves.

  Falion rode, wide-awake to that danger. Recently come to his majority, he had never known a time when the land’s stewardship did not strain the impatience of town commerce. A craftsman’s son, his maternal tie to an offshoot of s’Ilessid thrust him squarely into the rift between factions. Summers spent with his mother’s folk showed him at first hand the trials imposed by patrolling the boundaries. The risk of hallucination and madness was real: crown sovereigns died young from the backlash of repeated contact with the Paravian presence. At twelve years of age, Falion had surmounted the test of direct exposure without going insane, forever lost to an ecstasy that burned beyond human endurance. Yet his father had refused to allow his permanent mark of initiation.

  “How can the boy run the shop without inviting contempt? He won’t just take ridicule. Upright folk will shun custom, here. If Falion’s to shoulder the trade and represent the sen Ardhai name, let him complete his guild apprenticeship and claim his due place without flaunting the barbaric defacement.”

  His mother demurred, unsettled herself as resentment towards clan birthright heated into open hatred. Falion had lain wakeful through the arguments shouted across the kitchen table as the outspoken slurs of the neighbors
set increased strain on the household. The day came when his mother packed and left with his sister, fled to her kindred to escape the wrath of a rock-throwing mob.

  Falion stayed, until one accident too many dashed his father’s plans for him in the glass forge. A young man who fit nowhere, he took work in the post stable, where the grizzled, kindly master of horse had taught him to ride, and nurtured his gift for silk hands on the bridle.

  Now placed at the crossroads of fate, on a horse bound at speed for Avenor, his mission relied upon his dual heritage. Beyond the standing stones placed in antiquity to demark free wilds territory, no trail or signpost guided his way. Clouds obscured stars and moon, and cloaked a horizon in shades of dipped ink. Falion relied on his mount’s instinct to gauge the uncertain footing, while the wakened perception of clan-bred awareness tracked the electromagnetic pulse of the lane current. Although the scarcity of the Paravians dimmed the bright sheen of the flux on the land, he mapped his course by the volatile patterns, nerves tingled like a tonic where no human emotion snarled the storm’s natural discharge.

  He changed mounts, twice, before fording the Melor, deep enough in spring melt that the water swirled up to his stirrups. Invigorated by a dousing squall, he gave rein as his horse surged up the far bank, then resumed at a walk to let the animal breathe. Pressed back to a trot, he reserved sparing bursts at the canter until the land leveled out.

  The clanfolk on patrol at the outposts honored his token, and shook him awake when the next horse was saddled. He ate on the move and catnapped as he could, then snatched four hours’ sleep before cock’s crow next day, with a scout sentry detailed to roust him.

  Dawn’s blustery sunlight gave way to more rain as Falion crossed the restricted fringe of tilled fields and clattered up to the gate on the landward side of Avenor. Like all royal seats, the fortress had changed little from the Second Age, when the centaur masons first erected the outer wall to defend the ancient port. Ceded to Mankind’s use under the Sorcerer’s compact, and governed by Charter Law for five millennia, the town nestled amid the coastal downs with no access granted to land-bound trade. Commerce moved only by sea, with the sleepy arched portal spanning the airy watchtowers curtained in sheeting torrents.