The Queen looked impatient.
“A kiss,” said the Duke.
She nodded.
“There is hope for you,” said the Queen. “You believe you are my only hope, but, truthfully, I am yours. Your answers were all quite wrong. But the last was not as wrong as the rest of them.”
The Duke contemplated losing his head to this woman, and found the prospect less disturbing than he would have expected.
A wind blew through the garden of dead flowers, and the Duke was put in mind of perfumed ghosts.
“Would you like to know the answer?” she asked.
“Answers,” he said. “Surely.”
“Only one answer, and it is this: the heart,” said the Queen. “The heart is greater than the universe, for it can find pity in it for everything in the universe, and the universe itself can feel no pity. The heart is greater than a King, because a heart can know a King for what he is, and still love him. And once you give your heart, you cannot take it back.”
“I said a kiss,” said the Duke.
“It was not as wrong as the other answers,” she told him. The wind gusted higher and wilder and for a heartbeat the air was filled with dead petals. Then the wind was gone as suddenly as it appeared, and the broken petals fell to the floor.
“So. I have failed, in the first task you set me. Yet I do not believe my head would look good upon a golden dish,” said the Duke. “Or upon any kind of a dish. Give me a task, then, a quest, something I can achieve to show that I am worthy. Let me rescue you from this place.”
“I am never the one who needs rescuing,” said the Queen. “Your advisors and scarabs and programs are done with you. They sent you here, as they sent those who came before you, long ago, because it is better for you to vanish of your own volition, than for them to kill you in your sleep. And less dangerous.” She took his hand in hers. “Come,” she said. They walked away from the garden of dead flowers, past the fountains of light, spraying their lights into the void, and into the citadel of song, where perfect voices waited at each turn, sighing and chanting and humming and echoing, although nobody was there to sing.
Beyond the citadel was only mist.
“There,” she told him. “We have reached the end of everything, where nothing exists but what we create, by act of will or by desperation. Here in this place I can speak freely. It is only us, now.” She looked into his eyes. “You do not have to die. You can stay with me. You will be happy to have finally found happiness, a heart, and the value of existence. And I will love you.”
The Duke looked at her with a flash of puzzled anger. “I asked to care. I asked for something to care about. I asked for a heart.”
“And they have given you all you asked for. But you cannot be their monarch and have those things. So you cannot return.”
“I . . . I asked them to make this happen,” said the Duke. He no longer looked angry. The mists at the edge of that place were pale, and they hurt the Duke’s eyes when he stared at them too deeply or too long.
The ground began to shake, as if beneath the footsteps of a giant.
“Is anything true here?” asked the Duke. “Is anything permanent?”
“Everything is true,” said the Queen. “The giant comes. And it will kill you, unless you defeat it.”
“How many times have you been through this?” asked the Duke. “How many heads have wound up on golden dishes?”
“Nobody’s head has ever wound up on a golden platter,” she said. “I am not programmed to kill them. They battle for me and they win me and they stay with me, until they close their eyes for the last time. They are content to stay, or I make them content. But you . . . you need your discontent, don’t you?”
He hesitated. Then he nodded.
She put her arms around him and kissed him, slowly and gently. The kiss, once given, could not be taken back.
“So now, I will fight the giant and save you?”
“It is what happens.”
He looked at her. He looked down at himself, at his engraved armor, at his weapons. “I am no coward. I have never walked away from a fight. I cannot return, but I will not be content to stay here with you. So, I will wait here, and I will let the giant kill me.”
She looked alarmed. “Stay with me. Stay.”
The Duke looked behind him, into the blank whiteness. “What lies out there?” he asked. “What is beyond the mist?”
“You would run?” she asked. “You would leave me?”
“I will walk,” he said. “And I will not walk away. But I will walk towards. I wanted a heart. What is on the other side of that mist?”
She shook her head. “Beyond the mist is Malkuth: the Kingdom. But it does not exist unless you make it so. It becomes as you create it. If you dare to walk into the mist, then you will build a world or you will cease to exist entirely. And you can do this thing. I do not know what will happen, except for this: if you walk away from me you can never return.”
He heard a pounding still, but was no longer certain that it was the feet of a giant. It felt more like the beat, beat, beat of his own heart.
He turned towards the mist, before he could change his mind, and he walked into the nothingness, cold and clammy against his skin. With each step he felt himself becoming less. His neural plugs died, and gave him no new information, until even his name and his status were lost to him.
He was not certain if he was seeking a place or making one. But he remembered dark skin and her amber eyes. He remembered the stars—there would be stars where he was going, he decided. There must be stars.
He pressed on. He suspected he had once been wearing armor, but he felt the damp mist on his face, and on his neck, and he shivered in his thin coat against the cold night air.
He stumbled, his foot glancing against the curb.
Then he pulled himself upright, and peered at the blurred streetlights through the fog. A car drove close—too close—and vanished past him, the red rear lights staining the mist crimson.
My old manor, he thought, fondly, and that was followed by a moment of pure puzzlement, at the idea of Beckenham as his old anything. He’d only just moved there. It was somewhere to use as a base. Somewhere to escape from. Surely, that was the point?
But the idea, of a man running away (a lord or a duke, perhaps, he thought, and liked the way it felt in his head), hovered and hung in his mind, like the beginning of a song.
“I’d rather write a something song than rule the world,” he said aloud, tasting the words in his mouth. He rested his guitar case against a wall, put his hand in the pocket of his duffel coat, found a pencil stub and a shilling notebook, and wrote them down. He’d find a good two-syllable word for the something soon enough, he hoped.
Then he pushed his way into the pub. The warm, beery atmosphere embraced him as he walked inside. The low fuss and grumble of pub conversation. Somebody called his name, and he waved a pale hand at them, pointed to his wristwatch and then to the stairs. Cigarette smoke gave the air a faint blue sheen. He coughed, once, deep in his chest, and craved a cigarette of his own.
Up the stairs with the threadbare red carpeting, holding his guitar case like a weapon, whatever had been in his mind before he turned the corner into the High Street evaporating with each step. He paused in the dark corridor before opening the door to the pub’s upstairs room. From the buzz of small talk and the clink of glasses, he knew there were already a handful of people waiting and working. Someone was tuning a guitar.
Monster? thought the young man. That’s got two syllables.
He turned the word around in his mind several times before he decided that he could find something better, something bigger, something more fitting for the world he intended to conquer, and, with only a momentary regret, he let it go forever, and walked inside.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kevin J. Anderson is the author of 140 novels, 56 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over 23 million books in print in
thirty languages. Anderson has coauthored fourteen books in the DUNE saga with Brian Herbert, over 50 books for Lucasfilm in the Star Wars universe. He has written for the X-Files, Star Trek, Batman and Superman, and many other popular franchises. For his solo work, he’s written the epic SF series, The Saga of Seven Suns, a sweeping nautical fantasy trilogy, “Terra Incognita,” accompanied by two progressive rock CDs (which he wrote and produced), and alternate history novels Captain Nemo and The Martian War, featuring Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, respectively. He has written two steampunk novels, Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, with legendary drummer and lyricist Neil Peart from the band Rush. He also created the popular humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I., and has written eight high-tech thrillers with Colonel Doug Beason.
Michael Bailey is the multi-award-winning author of Palindrome Hannah, Phoenix Rose, and Psychotropic Dragon (novels), Scales and Petals, and Inkblots and Blood Spots (short story/poetry collections), Enso (a children’s book), and the editor of Pellucid Lunacy, Qualia Nous, The Library of the Dead, and the Chiral Mad anthologies published by Written Backwards. He is also an editor for Dark Regions Press, where he has created dark science fiction projects like You, Human. He is currently at work on a science fiction thriller, Seen in Distant Stars, and a new fiction collection, The Impossible Weight of Life.
Jessica Marie Baumgartner is the award winning author of The Golden Rule, and Embracing Entropy, as well as My Family Is Different. She is a current member of the Missouri Writers Guild. Her articles and stories have been featured in a wide variety of publications including: The Society of Misfit Stories, FrostFire Worlds, Outposts of Beyond, The Horror Zine, and many more. Check her out at www.jessicamariebaumgartner.com
Mort Castle, deemed a “horror doyen” by Publishers Weekly, has won three Bram Stoker Awards®, two Black Quills, a Golden Bot, and has been nominated for an Audie, the International Horror Guild Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Pushcart Prize. He’s edited or authored 17 books; his recent or forthcoming titles include: New Moon on the Water; Writer’s Digest Annotated Classics: Dracula; and the 2016 Leapfrog Fiction contest winner Knowing When to Die. More than 600 Castle authored “shorter works,” stories, articles, poems, and comics have appeared in periodicals and anthologies, including Twilight Zone, Bombay Gin, Poe’s Lighthouse, and Tales of the Batman. Castle teaches fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago and has presented writing workshops and seminars throughout North America.
Richard Chizmar is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Amazon, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author.
He is the co-author (with Stephen King) of the bestselling novella, Gwendy’s Button Box and the founder/publisher of Cemetery Dance magazine and the Cemetery Dance Publications book imprint. He has edited more than 35 anthologies and his fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including multiple editions of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He has won two World Fantasy awards, four International Horror Guild awards, and the HWA’s Board of Trustee’s award.
Chizmar (in collaboration with Johnathon Schaech) has also written screenplays and teleplays for United Artists, Sony Screen Gems, Lions Gate, Showtime, NBC, and many other companies. He has adapted the works of many bestselling authors including Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Bentley Little.
Chizmar is also the creator/writer of Stephen King Revisited, and his third short story collection, A Long December, was published in 2016 by Subterranean Press. With Brian Freeman, Chizmar is co-editor of the acclaimed Dark Screams horror anthology series published by Random House imprint, Hydra.
Chizmar’s work has been translated into many languages throughout the world, and he has appeared at numerous conferences as a writing instructor, guest speaker, panelist, and guest of honor.
Please visit the author’s website at www.Richardchizmar.com
Neil Gaiman makes things up and writes them down. Which takes us from comics (like Sand-man) to novels (like Anansi Boys and American Gods) to short stories (some are collected in Smoke and Mirrors) and to occasionally movies (like Dave McKean’s Mirrormask or the Neverwhwere TV series, or my own short film A Short Film about John Bolton.)
In his spare time he reads and sleeps and eats and tries to keep the blog at www.neilgaiman.com more or less up to date.
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of such novels as Of Saints and Shadows, The Myth Hunters, The Boys Are Back in Town, and Strangewood. He has co-written three illustrated novels with Mike Mignola, the first of which, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, was the launching pad for the Eisner Award-nominated comic book series, Baltimore. He is currently working on a graphic novel trilogy in collaboration with Charlaine Harris entitled Cemetery Girl. His novels Snowblind and Tin Men will be released in 2014.Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com
Michael Paul Gonzalez is the author of the novels Angel Falls and Miss Massacre’s Guide to Murder and Vengeance. His newest creation is the audio drama podcast Larkspur Underground, a serialized horror story. A member of the Horror Writers Association, his short stories have appeared in print and online, including Drive-In Creature Feature, Gothic Fantasy: Chilling Horror Stories, Lost Signals, Seven Scribes–Beyond Ourselves, 18 Wheels of Horror, the Booked Podcast Anthology, HeavyMetal.com, and the Appalachian Undead Anthology. He resides in Los Angeles, a place full of wonders and monsters far stranger than any that live in the imagination. You can visit him online at www.MichaelPaulGonzalez.com.
Eugene Johnson is a writer and Bram Stoker nominated editor who has written and edited in various genres. His anthology Appalachian Undead, co-edited with Jason Sizemore, was selected by FearNet as one of the best books of 2012. Eugene’s articles and stories have been published by award winning Apex publishing, The Zombiefeed, Evil Jester Press, Warrior Sparrow Press and more. Eugene also appeared in Dread Stare, a political theme horror anthology from Thunder Dome Press. Eugene’s anthology, Drive-in Creature Feature, pays homage to monster movies, features New York Times best-selling authors Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale, Christopher Golden, Jonathan Maberry and many more. He was nominated for the Bram Stoker award for Where Nightmares Come From: The Art Of Storytelling In The Horror Genre along with his co-editor Joe Mynhardt.
As a filmmaker, Eugene Johnson worked on various movies, including the upcoming Requiem, starring Tony Todd and directed by Paul Moore. His short film Leftovers, a collaboration with director Paul Moore, was featured at the Screamfest film festival in Los Angeles as well as Dragon Con.
Eugene is currently developing fun projects at EJP. He spends his time working on several projects including Brave, a horror anthology honoring people with disabilities; the Fantastic Tales of Terror anthology; and his children’s book series, Life Lessons with Lil Monsters. Eugene is currently a member of the Horror Writers Association. He resides in West Virginia with his fiancé, daughter, and two sons.
From the day she was born, Jess Landry has always been attracted to the stranger things in life. Her fondest childhood memories include getting nightmares from the Goosebumps books, watching The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, and reiterating to her parents that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her mental state.
Since picking up a pen a few years ago, Jess’s fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Crystal Lake Publishing’s Where Nightmares Come From, Unnerving’s Alligators in the Sewers, Stitched Smile’s Primogen: The Origins of Monsters, DFPs Killing It Softly, and April Moon Books’ Ill-Considered Expeditions, as well as online with SpeckLit and EGM Shorts.
She currently works as Managing Editor for JournalStone and its imprint, Trepidatio Publishing, where her goal is to publish diverse stories from diverse writers. An
active member of the HWA, Jess has volunteered as Head Compiler for the Bram Stoker Awards since 2015, and has most recently taken on the role of Membership Coordinator.
You can visit her on the interwebs at her sad-looking website, jesslandry.com, though your best bet at finding her is on Facebook and Twitter (facebook.com/jesslandry28 and twitter.com/jesslandry28), where she often posts cat memes and references Jurassic Park.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of 48 novels and over 20 short story collections. He has written and sold a number of screenplays, has had his plays adapted for stage. His work has been adapted to film; Bubba Ho-Tep and Cold in July among them. His best-known novels, the Hap and Leonard series has been adapted for television with Lansdale as co-executive producer with Lowell Northrop under the title, HAP AND LEONARD. He has also edited or co-edited numerous anthologies.
Vince Liaguno is the Bram Stoker Award-winning editor of Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press 2008), an anthology of queer horror fiction, which he co-edited with Chad Helder. His debut novel, 2006’s The Literary Six, was a tribute to the slasher films of the 80’s and won an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Horror and was named a finalist in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards in the Gay/Lesbian Fiction category.
More recently, he edited Butcher Knives and Body Counts (Dark Scribe Press, 2011)—a collection of essays on the formula, frights, and fun of the slasher film—as well as the second volume in the Unspeakable Horror series, subtitled Abominations of Desire (Evil Jester Press, 2017). He’s currently at work on his second novel.
He currently resides on the eastern end of Long Island, New York, where he is a licensed nursing home administrator by day and a writer, anthologist, and pop culture enthusiast by night. He is a member (and former Secretary) of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC).
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