Also Edited by Jonathan Strahan
Best Short Novels
(2004 through 2007)
Fantasy:
The Very Best of 2005
Science Fiction:
The Very Best of 2005
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year:
Volumes 1 - 6
Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (Volumes 1-4)
The Starry Rift:
Tales of New Tomorrows
Life on Mars:
Tales of New Frontiers
Under My Hat:
Tales from the Cauldron
Godlike Machines
Engineering Infinity
Edge of Infinity
Reach for Infinity (Forthcoming)
The New Solaris Book of Fantasy Volume Two (forthcoming)
With Lou Anders
Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery
With Charles N. Brown
The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Fantasy and Science Fiction
With Jeremy G. Byrne
The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 1
The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 2
Eidolon 1
With Jack Dann
Legends of Australian Fantasy
Gardner Dozois
The New Space Opera
The New Space Opera 2
With Terry Dowling
The Jack Vance Treasury
The Jack Vance Reader
Wild Thyme, Green Magic
Hard Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance
With Gardner Dozois
The New Space Opera
The New Space Opera 2
With Karen Haber
Science Fiction: Best of 2003
Science Fiction: Best of 2004
Fantasy: Best of 2004
With Marianne S. Jablon
Wings of Fire
Including stories by
SCOTT LYNCH
SALADIN AHMED
TRUDI CANAVAN
KJ PARKER
KATE ELLIOTT
JEFFREY FORD
ROBERT VS REDICK
ELLEN KLAGES
GLEN COOK
ELIZABETH BEAR
ELLEN KUSHNER
YSABEAU S. WILCE
DANIEL ABRAHAM
First published 2013 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-566-7
ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-567-4
Cover by Tomasz Jedruszek
Introduction and story notes and arrangement copyright © 2012 Jonathan Strahan.
“The High King Dreaming” copyright © 2013 Daniel Abraham.
“Amethyst, Shadow, and Light” copyright © 2013 Saladin Ahmed.
“The Ghost Makers” copyright © 2013 Elizabeth Bear.
“One Last, Great Adventure” copyright © 2013 Ellen Kushner & Ysabeau S. Wilce.
“Camp Follower” copyright © 2013 Trudi Canavan.
“Shaggy Dog Bridge: A Black Company Story” copyright © 2013 Glen Cook.
“Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart” copyright © 2013 Jeffrey Ford.
“The Dragonslayer of Merebarton” copyright © 2013 K J Parker.
“Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine” copyright © 2013 Kate Elliott.
“The Effigy Engine: A Tale of the Red Hats” copyright © 2013 Scott Lynch.
“Forever People” copyright © 2013 Robert V S Redick.
“Sponda the Suet Girl and the Secret of the French Pearl” copyright © 2013 Ellen Klages.
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
For Garth Nix and Sean Williams, gentleman fantasists and dear friends, with affection and respect.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Any book, and especially a book like this one, is the product of the inspiration and perspiration of enough people to fill a small village. First and foremost, I would like to thank the brilliant team at Solaris Books – Jonathan Oliver, Ben Smith, and Michael Molcher – for their tireless work on this and my other books, as well as for some fine meals in Toronto last year. Second, I’d like to thank the baker’s dozen of incredibly talented writers – Daniel Abraham, Saladin Ahmed, Elizabeth Bear, Ellen Kushner, Ysabeau S. Wilce, Trudi Canavan, Glen Cook, Jeffrey Ford, K J Parker, Kate Elliott, Scott Lynch, Robert V S Redick, and Ellen Klages – who were a joy to work with and delivered some wonderful stories. I’d also like to thank Tomasz Jedruszek for his very fine cover. I am fortunate to have the great Howard Morhaim as my literary agent and, as always, I’d like to thank him for his work on my behalf. I’d also like to thank Alice Speilburg and Beth Phelan from Team Morhaim, who are wonderful. Finally, a very special thank you to my wife Marianne and my daughters, Jessica and Sophie. Every minute spent working on this book was a minute spent not being with them, and their understanding and support is always an incredible gift.
CONTENTS
Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
The Effigy Engine: A Tale of the Red Hats, Scott Lynch
Amethyst, Shadow, and Light, Saladin Ahmed
Camp Follower, Trudi Canavan
The Dragonslayer of Merebarton, K J Parker
Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine, Kate Elliott
Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart, Jeffrey Ford
Forever People, Robert V S Redick
Sponda the Suet Girl and the Secret of the French Pearl, Ellen Klages
Shaggy Dog Bridge: A Black Company Story, Glen Cook
The Ghost Makers, Elizabeth Bear
One Last, Great Adventure, Ellen Kushner and Ysabeau S. Wilce
The High King Dreaming, Daniel Abraham
About the Authors
Also From Solaris
INTRODUCTION
FANTASY. FANTASTIKA. CALL it what you will, almost any story can be made to fit within its boundaries and, like many of its finest texts, it’s almost impossible to pin down or to define. As John Clute and John Grant rightly pointed out in their essential The Encylopedia of Fantasy, fantasy is “a most extraordinarily porous term, and has been used to mop up vast deposits of story which this culture or that – and this era or that – deems unrealistic.” Trying to home in on a usable definition, they wrote that:
A fantasy text is a self-coherent narrative. When set in this world, it tells a story which is impossible in the world as we perceive it; when set in an otherworld, that otherworld will be impossible, though stories set there may be possible in its terms.
That definition sets out ground rules without clarifying much. A fantasy is a story set in a world where impossible things happen. Like fantasy itself, it’s romantic and appealing but more than a little hazy at the edges. In fairness to Clute and Grant, they go on to devote a lengthy entry and, eventually, an entire encyclopedia to defining and understanding fantasy.
More recently, in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn n
ote that “the major theorists in the field – Tzetan Todorov, Rosemary Jackson, Kathryn Hume, W.R. Irwin, and Colin Manlove – all agree that fantasy is about the construction of the impossible whereas science fiction may be about the unlikely, but is always grounded in the scientifically possible”. While critics like Clute, Grant, James, Mendlesohn and most interestingly Brian Attebery, whose Strategies of Fantasy I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the academic discussion of fantasy, have a great deal of interesting things to say about the nature of fantasy and how it constructs the impossible, this book started from much more humble beginnings.
As many books I have worked on do, and in fact as many stories that I read happen to, this book started in a bar. I was at World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, California in the late fall of 2011 engaged in a passionate discussion about favourite writers and books, something I think every reader does when they find a like mind, and the subject turned to the work of the great Fritz Leiber. I had recently edited a collection of Leiber’s work and was pontificating (the failing, perhaps, of having the discussion in a bar) on the depth and breadth of his work, from the beloved sword and sorcery adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser in Lankhmar to the humorous tales of a superkitten called Gummitch to dark and disturbing urban slices of fear like ‘Smoke Ghost’. His collected fiction amounted, I argued, to nothing less than a library of fantasy that encompassed almost all of its possibilities.
While the convivial atmosphere of that bar no doubt encouraged some subtle exaggeration on my part, it also started me thinking about a book of new stories that might encompass as wide a range of types of fantasy story as possible, from ‘traditional fantasy’ to ‘military fantasy’ to quirky, strange tales of the impossible. The idea stayed with me and, when I was discussing possible new projects with Jonathan Oliver, my editor at Solaris, I mentioned doing such a book. He shared my enthusiasm and before I knew it we’d agreed that I’d edit a new anthology for Solaris that tentatively was to be called Reap the Whirlwind and would bring together a selection of all new ‘mainstream’ fantasy stories, for want of a better term, by some of today’s best and most exciting writers.
It wasn’t long, though, before we realised that title didn’t really describe what we were attempting, and when the wonderful cover art from Tomasz Jedruszek arrived early in 2012 we knew the title had to change. After some discussion we came up with Fearsome Journeys, which I think aptly describes the beginnings of so many fantasy stories, including the ones that ended up in this book. Happily Jonathan also suggested that we should subtitle the book ‘The New Solaris Book of Fantasy’. Fearsome Journeys was to be the first in a series of anthologies, not of ‘new fantasy’ but simply of fantasy, covering all of its many variations.
As the stories came in, first from Trudi Canavan, then K.J. Parker, Kate Elliott, Daniel Abraham, Glen Cook, and more, it became clear this first New Solaris Book of Fantasy was going to exceed my expectations. Those stories, and the ones from Saladin Ahmed, Jeffrey Ford, Robert V S Redick, Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, Ellen Kushner and Ysbeau S. Wilce, and Ellen Klages have been a joy to read and I think make for a wonderful start to this new series. I’m already at work on volume two, which should be out late in 2014, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy these fine stories as much as I have.
Jonathan Strahan
Perth, Western Australia
January 2013
THE EFFIGY ENGINE:
A TALE OF THE RED HATS
SCOTT LYNCH
11th Mithune, 1186
Painted Sky Pass, North Elara
“I TOOK UP the study of magic because I wanted to live in the beauty of transfinite mathematical truths,” said Rumstandel. He gestured curtly. In the canyon below us, an enemy soldier shuddered, clutched at his throat, and began vomiting live snakes.
“If my indifference were money you’d be the master of my own personal mint,” I muttered. Of course Rumstandel heard me despite the pop, crackle, and roar of musketry echoing around the walls of the pass. There was sorcery at play between us to carry our voices, so we could bitch and digress and annoy ourselves like a pair of inebriates trading commentary in a theater balcony.
The day’s show was an ambush of a company of Iron Ring legionaries on behalf of our employers, the North Elarans, who were blazing away with arquebus and harsh language from the heights around us. The harsh language seemed to be having greater effect. The black-coated ranks of the Iron Ring jostled in consternation, but there weren’t enough bodies strewn among the striated sunset-orange rocks that gave the pass its name. Hot lead was leaving the barrels of our guns, but it was landing like kitten farts and some sly magical bastard down there was responsible.
Oh, for the days of six months past, when the Iron Ring had crossed the Elaran border marches, their battle wizards proud and laughing in full regalia. Their can’t-miss-me-at-a-mile wolf skull helmets, their set-me-on-fire carnelian cloaks, their shoot-me-in-the-face silver masks.
Six months with us for playmates had taught them to be less obvious. Counter-thaumaturgy was our mission and our meal ticket: coax them into visibility and make them regret it. Now they dressed like common officers or soldiers, and some even carried prop muskets or pikes. Like this one, clearly.
“I’m a profound disappointment to myself,” sighed Rumstandel, big round florid Rumstandel, who didn’t share my appreciation for sorcerous anonymity. This week he’d turned his belly-scraping beard blue and caused it to spring out in flaring forks like the sculpture of a river and its tributaries. Little simulacra of ships sailed up and down those beard strands even now, their hulls the size of rice grains, dodging crumbs like rocks and shoals. Crumbs there were aplenty, since Rumstandel always ate while he killed and soliloquized. One hand was full of the sticky Elaran ration bread we called corpsecake for its pallor and suspected seasoning.
“I should be redefining the vocabulary of arcane geometry somewhere safe and cultured, not playing silly buggers with village fish-charmers wearing wolf skulls.” He silenced himself with a mouthful of cake and gestured again. Down on the valley floor his victim writhed his last. The snakes came out slick with blood, eyes gleaming like garnets in firelight, nostrils trailing strands of pale caustic vapor.
I couldn’t really pick out the minute details at seventy yards, but I’d seen the spell before. In the closed ranks of the Iron Ring the serpents wrought the havoc that arquebus fire couldn’t, and legionaries clubbed desperately at them with musket-butts.
As I peered into the mess, the forward portion of the legionary column exploded in white smoke. Sparks and chips flew from nearby rocks, and I felt a burning pressure between my eyes, a sharp tug on the strands of my own magic. The practical range of sorcery is about that of musketry, and a fresh reminder of the fact hung dead in the air a yard from my face. I plucked the ball down and slipped it into my pocket.
Somewhere safe and cultured? Well, there was nowhere safer for Rumstandel than three feet to my left. I was doing for him what the troublemaker on the ground was doing for the legionaries. Close protection, subtle and otherwise, my military and theoretical specialty.
Wizards working offensi ttle have a bad tendency to get caught up in their glory-hounding and part their already tenuous ties to prudence. Distracted and excited, they pile flourish on flourish, spell on spell until some stray musket ball happens along and elects to take up residence.
Our little company’s answer is to work in teams, one sorcerer working harm and the second diligently protecting them both. Rumstandel didn’t have the temperament to be that second sorcerer, but I’ve been at it so long now everyone calls me Watchdog. Even my mother.
I heard a rattling sound behind us, and turned in time to see Tariel hop down into our rocky niche, musket held before her like an acrobat’s pole. Red-gray dust was caked in sweaty spirals along her bare ebony arms, and the dozens of wooden powder flasks dangling from her bandolier knocked together like a musical instrument.
“Mind if I crouch in y
our shadow, Watchdog? They’re keeping up those volleys in good order.” She knelt between me and Rumstandel, laid her musket carefully in the crook of her left arm, and whispered, “Touch.” The piece went off with the customary flash and bang, which my speech-sorcery dampened to a more tolerable pop.
Hers was a salamandrine musket. Where the flintlock or wheel mechanism might ordinarily be was instead a miniature metal sculpture of a manor house, jutting from the weapon’s side as though perched atop a cliff. I could see the tiny fire elemental that lived in there peering out one of the windows. It was always curious to see how a job was going. Tariel could force a spark from it by pulling the trigger, but she claimed polite requests led to smoother firing.
“Damn. I seem to be getting no value for money today, gents.” She began the laborious process of recharging and loading.
“We’re working on it,” I said. Another line of white smoke erupted below, followed by another cacophony of ricochets and rock chips. An Elaran soldier screamed. “Aren’t we working on it, Rumstandel? And by ‘we’ I do in fact mean—”
“Yes, yes, bullet-catcher, do let an artist stretch his own canvas.” Rumstandel clenched his fists and something like a hot breeze blew past me, thick with power. This would be a vulgar display.
Down on the canyon floor, an Iron Ring legionary in the process of reloading was interrupted by the cold explosion of his musket. The stock shivered into splinters and the barrel peeled itself open backward like a sinister metal flower. Quick as thought, the burst barrel enveloped the man’s arm, twisted, and—well, you’ve squeezed fruit before, haven’t you? Then the powder charges in his bandolier flew out in burning constellations, a cloud of fire that made life immediately interesting for everyone around him.
Fearsome Journeys (The New Solaris Book of Fantasy) Page 1