Beneath Ceaseless Skies #150

by Richard Parks

  Open that door and you’ll find out.

  She did as I said. “By Sethis....” Her voice trailed off.

  I did tell you about saying that name... oh, never mind. What do you see?

  “My mother... my father. They’re alive!”

  I knew this was going to be a critical point. If Driana could not get past the first door, there was no chance she’d be able to find me. After coming this far, coming so close to freedom, I confess I was a little nervous, and I made a very serious mistake.

  I lied.

  It’s just an illusion to distract you. Walk on to the next doorway.

  “It’s wrong,” she said. I could tell that she hadn’t moved a single step closer. “They’re not the way I remember them.”

  I said it’s an illusion. Keep moving.

  “If it’s an illusion, then why aren’t they as I remember? Why do I see them this way?”

  What way?

  “Older. I’m older too. My father is smiling, my mother is crying. Do you know what my mother and I are doing, Sahel?”

  No.

  That at least was the truth. I could not see what she saw now; this was her lost time, not mine. I could not see her at all, now that she had crossed the doorway. The immediate surroundings of my prison I could see as clear as a cloudless morning. But the place itself? No more than the little in front of me, and for me there were no doors.

  “We’re in our home, the one that was burned to the ground the day they died. My mother and I are sewing my wedding dress.”

  It’s a trap to snare you, to prevent you from moving forward. Nothing more. Ignore—

  “Stop lying to me, Sahel! I told you I know illusion, and this is not an illusion! I’m not merely seeing this, I’m there! I’m myself and yet I am with them. I know what that girl sewing the dress is thinking, I know what she’s feeling. I’m watching it all, yet the thread is in my hand and I feel the sting from the needle’s point! If you don’t tell me what this means right now, our bargain is ended. And I do know the way out.”

  She wasn’t bluffing. I’d thought the lie might make things easier, but this was Driana I was dealing with, and let me confess frankly that I was only just then beginning to understand what that meant. I abandoned the lie.

  I don’t know the true name of this place, Driana, if it has one. I call it ‘The Manor of Lost Time.’ Humans and demon-kin alike generate a nearly infinite cache of lost possibility for every path not taken. This is the place where all the ‘might have beens’ reside. That is what you’re experiencing now. The potential was there, but it was thwarted, for better or worse. What you’re seeing and feeling now, and knowing now, did not happen. You’re right—it’s not an illusion, but it’s also not real, and never can be real.

  “I lost this the day my parents died,” she said simply.

  I nodded, forgetting for the moment that she could not see me. Yes, I said.

  “What will I see next?”

  I truly do not know, Driana. Perhaps something horrible, or something painful and sad, but also perhaps something wonderful, joyous. Whatever it may be, it is something you’ve lost forever. That’s what is waiting behind every door. Fortunately, only a limited number of doors block your path to me, but I do not know exactly how many, or why the ones that appear are the ones that do appear. I’m trapped in a room of my own lost time, and I cannot see my door, or you. You’ll have to cross your own lost time to reach me, and find the door I cannot see.

  I’m not sure what I expected then. I halfway expected her to flee from both myself and Ledanthos, binding spell or no. But after a very long silence, I heard her voice again.

  “Makan. I was going to marry Makan. I rather suspected that.” Maybe it was my imagination, but I think there was a touch of relief echoed in her words.

  He wasn’t your choice?

  “He was... Makan. A year older than I was. He was tall and strong and pig-headed, and he cheated at ring-toss. I liked him well enough when I didn’t actually hate him. Yet when I’m sitting with my mother sewing my wedding dress, I love him more than anything. I’ve never been in love or lost a love, but I do know what both feel like, to love and lose in the exact same moment. Thanks to you, Sahel.”

  I’m sorry.

  “No you’re not, and you may go to blazes. But not until after you honor our bargain. I see the next door. I’ll open it now,” she said, and that’s what she did.

  I’m not going to tell you everything she saw behind every door. Partly because there are some she never spoke of, even to me, but mostly because it’s beside the point. I told you the first because you need to understand what this was costing her. What it would cost anyone. How would you like to see your lost chances and potentials paraded in front of you, forced to live through every single one, the good and the bad, but all never to be? There are few humans who wouldn’t be reduced to a blubbering mess within an hour’s time.

  Not Driana, though I’m honestly not certain how many more she could have taken before she finally walked into a bit of lost time that was not her own: an image of a celestial city and a street located just this side of what you might refer to as the Abode of the Gods.

  Yes, it was mine.

  For creatures with the lifespan of mayflies, relatively speaking, humans have quite a gift for focusing attention on the matter at hand, whatever it may be. It was only when she found my lost time that Driana stopped concentrating on the next door and paused to wonder just what the hell she’d gotten herself into. Fortunately for me.

  “What are you, Sahel?”

  Demon-kin. I told you that.

  “This place belongs to no version of a hell I’ve ever heard of.”

  An expert on hells, are you?

  “The truth, Sahel. For our bargain to work I need to know I can trust you. Tell me the truth. Who are you? How did you get here in the first place?”

  Yes, she did finally ask me that. I do think it would have been wiser on her part if that question had been asked earlier, but I guess it was better the way things were. That’s always a comfort to cling to, when dealing with lost time. I imagine there’s a new room in the Manor now, of what would have happened had she asked those questions earlier. I will avoid it.

  Again, yes, I’m going to tell you what I said, else nothing else that follows will make sense to you. And do remember—you asked.

  Just over a year ago there was a war on the western border of this country, I said.

  “I know, Sahel,” Driana said grimly. “I was there.”

  Just over five hundred years ago, there was a war in the Abode of the Gods, and I was there.

  “By Sethis—”

  Stop saying the wretch’s name. How many times must I repeat that?

  “But... the demon-kin are far older than that,” she said in protest. “And long-since banished to infernal planes of existence. Assuming there was such a thing, what business would it be of yours?”

  I said I was demon-kin, and so I am. What are demons but gods who have lost their place in the heavens? What makes you think that one war ended all of them?

  I knew she was thinking about it, though I still could not see her, nor even the lost time that she moved through now. My lost time. I think it would have been a nice touch if I’d been allowed to see and experience it rather than just knowing it was there. A bit of torture, perhaps. Only that the point had never been to torture me. Or any of us. Maybe Sethis thought that made everything all right.

  “You’re saying you were a god?!”

  Not ‘were,’ Driana. ‘Am.’

  Excuse me, but if your mouth has fallen open in surprise, I do wish you’d close it. I find the thought very distracting. Ummm? Well, I advise you to get over your astonishment. There’s more.

  “But once you lost...” Driana began.

  I know the rules, Driana. A new born demon, to seed to the Infernal Plane? There’s just one problem with that assessment—I wasn’t on the losing side.

  “But... then why are
you here?”

  Because it was my charge to drive the last four rebels from the Abode of the Gods. Because as I was so doing, Sethis, Lord of the Heavens and Commander of Lightning, lost his divine nerve. He sealed the portal with all five of us inside. The loyal and the traitorous alike.. Neither Heaven nor Hell; simply sealed away. Each of us in our separate houses of lost possibilities, until the end of time... which may come sooner than he thought..

  You want to know what she said? She said what you’re obviously thinking. That I was lying.

  The thing is, as you may have noticed, I’m not a very good liar. It’s not my nature, but Driana is very good at knowing a lie from the truth. So Driana said that she didn’t believe me, but of course she did. Just as you do. I had to make sure she continued to believe me, so I continued to tell her the truth, just as I’m doing to you now.

  You’re standing within my sphere of lost time. I do not know what it shows you, but you know it is none of yours. Isn’t that true?

  The answer came softly. If it had been spoken with any less force even I would not have heard it.

  “Yes.”

  You see the doorway that is hidden to me. Is that not also true?

  Again the answer came, “Yes.”

  Know this, Driana—I will do as I have sworn. I will serve you in all things for a term of five years. You can train your magical skills with a god for a tutor. At the end of that time, I will take my leave of you and use my freedom to track down the four who were imprisoned at the same time I was. When I find them, I will set them free. Together we will storm the Abode of the Gods.

  “But if you lose....”

  I did not lose before, and I will not lose this time. Lord Sethis, if he is very lucky, will soon reside in a prison of his own lost time, and in his case I will not conceal the door but I will bar it against him, and he will contemplate what will never come to pass for the rest of eternity. I swear that this is so. Do you believe me?

  “Yes, Sahel. I believe you.”

  You’ve heard my choice, Driana. Now make yours—open the door and free me, or return the way you came, to your master, Ledanthos. You’ll likely be rid of him on your own, sooner or later.

  Now then. You must admit that was a very silly question on your part. You know what Driana did, or this conversation would not be happening. You can well imagine Ledanthos’s surprise when she emerged from nothing leading a being of light and fire like a little lost child. The shock killed him, which is a pity—I wanted to do it.

  As for me, I’m not quite done with my plans. These things take time. Three of my brothers and sisters are free now. Soon we all will be.

  Umm, no, I do not think you will be offering any prayers to Sethis. See, he still doesn’t know. We wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, would we? No, no sense in squirming. You did ask. And no, I said your barrier would hold for a while. I think it lasted up until just before the part where Ledanthos left Driana and me alone for the second time. If you’ve got any more questions, I suggest you ask them now.

  Am I responsible for Driana’s final disappearance? I did not harm her, if that’s what you mean. I swore not to, and I’m a being of my word. Besides, why should I? She’s been a great help to me over the years. She found two of the other rebels on her own.

  Loyalty to her god? What do you know of that? While it’s true Driana swore by Sethis out of habit, in her heart she was furious with him, not the least for letting her parents die. Finding them again in the Manor of Lost Time only made that worse, I’m afraid. Gods often forgive humans, in the stories. There’s no rule that says a human must forgive a god. Just between the two of us, I think she hates him more than I do.

  Yes, that’s right. Hates. There are many legends about Driana’s death, and I assume that’s why you asked that silly question. They’re all nonsense, because she hasn’t died. When time came to weigh on her too heavily, she merely returned to the Manor of Lost Time. She lives there now, and acts out her lost potentials. She’s young when she chooses, old when she takes the whim. She marries that lout Makan or doesn’t. She has borne children, fought demons, and even inherited Ledanthos’s amulet business in one well-lost bit of possibility. But mostly I think she spends the lost time with her parents.

  I think she regrets losing their potential most of all.

  No, I said I will have no prayers, and I meant it. You won’t need them since I’m not going to hurt you. I am, however, going to put you somewhere safe until all this is over. You may thank me later. You’re going in the way I did, my first time, so you won’t be able to find the door. If you have any more questions, you can put them to Driana directly. I’m sure you’ll run into each other sooner or later.

  By the way, she won’t show you the way out, and if I were you I wouldn’t try and force her. Even if she’s not in the mood to call down lightning on your head, she still carries that knife of hers and the legends don’t begin to do justice to her famous temper. But ask her politely and she might just show you where to find your own lost time.

  Which starts now.

  Copyright © 2014 Richard Parks

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Richard Parks lives in Mississippi with his wife and a varying number of cats. His fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, multiple times in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in numerous anthologies including Year’s Best Fantasy and Fantasy: The Best of the Year. His fourth story collection, Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter, was released in February of 2013 by Prime Books.

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  THE BLACK WATERS OF LETHE

  by Oliver Buckram

  At dawn, starlings fall from the sky like fat feathered raindrops. After flying low over the river, they forget to flap their wings and they plummet downward. Some splash into the black water. Others hit the ground near me, making little furrows in the bare earth. Those that survive are stunned and twitching. Before they can recover and fly away, I twist their necks with practiced ease.

  The prince trembles in his sleep but does not wake, despite a broken-winged starling scrabbling in the dust near him. He must be dreaming of a full belly and a warm bed, of life on the other side of the dark river.

  I only call him prince for lack of a better name. He claims a disloyal vizier must have seized his realm and exiled him. More likely, he’s a slave who came here to flee a cruel master. That would explain the scars on his back.

  Who can say for sure? Like all three of us, he’s forgotten his name and everything else about the other side of the river. He calls me ‘greybeard,’ which at least is accurate. I’ve been here the longest.

  The warrior emerges from his hut—a pitiful structure of sticks and grass—and roars for his breakfast. His strength and brutality make him the unquestioned tyrant of our little group. We know he’s a warrior because he was wearing a bronze helmet when he washed up on the riverbank years ago. Thus he’s not a runaway slave or fugitive criminal. A deserter, I think, though I never say it aloud.

  The warrior kicks the prince awake and orders him to fetch water. Our camp lies by a stream that flows into the river. Water from the stream is unclouded and does not bring oblivion.

  The prince stumbles to his feet in time to avoid another kick. While I gather up starlings into dark feathery piles, he dips the battered helmet into the stream. We’ll use it as a pot to cook starling stew. Once the warrior has eaten his fill, there may be some left over for the prince and me.

  I pluck the birds as the prince gathers brush for the fire. The brush burns poorly, but it’s all we have. Wood is scarce here, as if the trees themselves don’t remember how to grow straight and tall.

  The prince cries out. He’s found a large wooden object at the water’s edge. The thing is at least ten feet long, with a pole sticking up from the middle.

  It’s a sailboat, I say. Sailboat. The word emerges from my mind like a bloated corpse rising from
murky depths.

  The warrior stares at the boat, which is tangled in the reeds. We’ve never seen a vessel on the river before. The black water has no fish, and who’d want to travel here?

  There’s no reason for anyone to visit our empty scrubland. Civilization, comfort, memory: these must all be on the opposite bank. On this side lies only madness. Nature itself here is unnatural. Ants sometimes fly in the air. The prince says that of course ants fly. On the other side of the river, he claims, his golden carriage was pulled by swarms of winged ants. I remember none of this.

  The warrior approaches the boat warily. Lying inside is a dead man wearing a blue robe. Perhaps his heart forgot to beat. The river sometimes kills men this way. For others, drinking the black water, or breathing its vapors, leaves body unscathed but mind empty. When the prince first arrived, he drooled and babbled for days before regaining the power of speech.

  I scan the opposite shore of the wide river for any sign of human activity, for the people who sent the boat. As always, I see only a forest of pine trees. The prince sometimes sees gleaming battlements and distant towers, but I’ve never caught a glimpse of them.

  The warrior drags the corpse ashore. He strips the clothes from it. It’s been two years since the last body washed up, and we’re all dressed in tatters.

  When I look at the boat, words flood into my head. Square rigged sail. Flat bottom. Steering oar. Perhaps I’m a shipwright. The large black eyes painted on the bow look familiar. Am I a painter?

  The warrior, now dressed in the blue robe, tosses aside the filthy rags he used to wear. The prince looks at me, and when I remain still, scrambles to retrieve them.

  The warrior hauls the boat onto land. Summoning my courage, I protest. I tell him we should sail across the river. We must have survived the crossing once before. We can again. The boat is big enough for three.

  He laughs and says a crossing is too dangerous. He starts searching inside the boat.

  I point at the nude stranger lying in the dirt. Look, I say. The wind is shifting. See how it ruffles his hair. If we raise the sail, the wind will blow us to the opposite shore.