Conmergence: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction

by Maya, Tara

  Conmergence

  Although Reggie had heard on CNN that the Phasic Warning Level was up to Orange, he didn’t put much stock in that Home Dimension Security crap, and the sight of the armed man walking outside of Starbucks took him by surprise. The man wore a uniform of some sort, dingy, with a silly, squashed cap, and he carried a large automatic. On his chest, sleeve, and cap, his uniform was embroidered with an American flag with the wrong number of stars. His feet were bare. The sidewalk bustled with people, but many of them were not out-phased enough to notice the stranger. That was the most unnerving thing about the whole conmergence, Reggie thought, trying to decide if he should say something or just order his cappuccino. You could easily think you were schizo, or paranoid, seeing people fade in and out that no one else could see. Some people, even some scientists, still argued that the conmergence represented nothing more than mass hysteria, like the Salem witch trials.

  He ordered and took a seat as far from the soldier as possible.

  Mass hysteria or not, Reggie felt better when the crowd sipping their drinks at the tables outside Starbucks began to mutter and glance in the direction of the man with the gun. Others saw him; Reggie had not just imagined him, or at least, had not been alone in imagining him.

  In a non-Euclidean universe, parallel lines can meet, and in a non-Euclidean multiverse, so can parallel universes. Scientists called it conmergence. Governments called it a threat. Some states had already passed laws to prevent illegal immigrants from other dimensions staying in-phase too long. As far as Reggie knew, no one could control it, no matter what the law books said.

  The man with the gun had also noticed the crowd and the Starbucks for the first time. You could see it in his face. First, he paced some invisible beat with vicious boredom. Then he began to dart nervous glances this way and that way as he noticed flashes from the other phase. Finally, he found himself solidly in the middle of the noon-hour yuppie crowd, as out of place as a monster truck at an art museum. When the soldier realized where he was, his breathing quickened, and he gripped his gun.

  Reggie didn’t need the coffee. He was fully awake now.

  The soldier threw the gun from him, suddenly. He raised his hands in the air.

  "Plase ," he said in strangely accented English. "Plase, don’t hurt me. I surrender. Don’t kill me. Don’t send me back. Let me stay. I want to stay in this dimension. I demand asylum!"

  His head jerked like a bird’s, from one face to another. Reggie strategically sipped his cappuccino to avoid meeting the soldier’s eyes.

  The police arrived. Docilely, the soldier allowed them to take him away.

  Comments on Conmergence

  Some writers are novelists by nature. Others excel at short stories. I’m definitely a 100,000 words-plus-size girl. I suck at short stories. And here you are reading my short stories… uhm, yeah. I meant to say, I find short stories "challenging." There, that sounds better. These stories don’t suck, no sir. Would I make you read a collection of junk? Don’t answer that .

  Many of the stories in this anthology were originally novel ideas. Some, in fact, are extracts from novels. This one was only a wisp of an idea. I jotted down this scene and didn’t know what else to do with it.

  Then I discovered the magic of flash. Flash fiction: Really short stories that are often no more than that – a single flash of inspiration, a scene, a fragment. Wow, I guess I can write short after all! Somewhere deep in my heart, though, I still feel like I accidently left out 99,000 words.

  The Painted World:

  Portrait of a Pretender

  Part One: Waiting for Dusk

  The gashes crossed his throat, chest, and thighs. Blood pooled like spilled paint beside him. His eyes bugged when Othmordian knelt and took his pulse.

  "Why?" the dying man rasped. "Everything I gave… Why wasn’t it enough?"

  The stateroom was furnished with fountains, mahogany chairs, rosewood tables, and gold-gilt pillars. On the walls, murals depicted scenery from each of the provinces of the Kingdom of Cammar. Each mural was tied off by a fat, velvet ribbon. Othmordian heard the sound of a boot scuffing the marble floor. There was someone else in the room, behind a jade-tiled fountain. Othmordian surged forward, his blood-wet blade still in his hand, and a young man deflected the attack with a kora, a hook-tipped sword. They circled, neither speaking, and steel clanged against steel. The young man fought like an animal, feral with rage, while Othmodian’s style was precise and deadly. But just as he would have stepped in for the killing blow, a woman entered the room behind them.

  She cried out, "Don’t kill my son, Othy!"

  The young man cut the velvet tie across a mural and leapt into the painting.

  #

  The day after his brother’s funeral, Othmordian could no longer put it off; he called an assembly to meet and name his new court. He took refuge in the formality of the occasion. In silence he let his brother’s servitors swath him in belled garments of black and gold, in the tall heavy hat and the elaborate shoes, three pairs, one inside another, until his feet felt like clods of lead. They wrapped his injured hand in bands of silk. They anointed him in oils and lay a mint leaf on his tongue, while a tiny silver bell was rung four times four. With a swan’s feather, they brushed white powder onto his brows and goatee, and they blackened the creases around his eyes with kohl, to make him look older and wiser than his three decades.

  Othmordian hoped the illusion would help, but he doubted it. He had always been cleverer than Arnthom, but not more popular, and though people professed to love wisdom in a king, in truth they preferred charisma to intelligence.

  Their preferences did not matter now. Arnthom was dead, and Othmordian must serve as regent until Arnthom’s twenty year old son, Drajorian, reached his quarter century, when the fools assumed Othmordian would step down and glorious Drajorian, even more beloved than his father, would ascend the throne of Cammar.

  Musicians plucked at nine-stringed instruments and moaned on three-throated flutes when Othmordian entered the Great Hall for the ceremony. In such ceremonies, one had to walk in just such a way: one foot dragging to meet the other, pauseing, the next foot extending slowly, setting down, pauseing, slow, slow, back ramrod straight, so carefully that not a bell on one’s robe jingled. Othmordian made it to his place beside the empty throne of his dead brother without embarrassing himself too much.

  The Four Officiants came forward to drone their hymns and chants. All went well until the Chant of Challenge, when the Officiants were required to ask of the Assembly whether anyone objected to the investiture of Othmordian as regent for his nephew.

  The Officiants paused significantly in their chant, allowing ample time for all eyes in the room to turn to Prince Drajorian. Othmordian stiffened at their insolence, their unspoken accusation. He took care not to allow his frown to disturb his face.

  The heir, Prince Drajorian, wore a veil under his tall moon-shaped hat, a veil to hide his face from hostile glamourers who might try to draw his portrait and thus capture his soul. The veiled prince stood ramrod straight and did not make any attempt to speak. Arnthom’s closest allies, observing the heir’s significant silence, guarded their own with sour frowns. Othmordian relaxed a fraction.

  His relief was short-lived.

  A woman stepped forward. In ringing tones, she announced, "I challenge."

  You would, thought Othmordian.

  Boldly, Lyadra met Othmodian’s eyes. He nodded his head just a fraction, in wry acknowledgment. Princess Lyadra was Drajorian’s betrothed. Once she had been Othmodian’s betrothed.

  "Princess Lyadra, your challenge is noted," the Four Officiants intoned. "In three days you shall present your case that the pretender is unfit or renounce your claim. Are there any others who would challenge?"

  A susurration of unease rippled through the assembled notables.

  Cowards, Othmordian cursed them in silent scorn. There is not one of you here who does not suspect that I murdered my brother. Is only
Lyadra brave enough to step forward to accuse me of what you all believe?

  After a thick, ugly, guilty silence, a second woman, twice the age of twenty-six year old Princess Lyadra rose.

  "I challenge," she said.

  Othmordian raised an eyebrow in surprise. His elder sister Forthia had been the one person he had not expected to accuse him. On the other hand, she and Arnthom had been closer in age and in sentiment than he had been with either of them.

  "Princess Forthia, your challenge is noted," the Four Officiants sang. "In three days you shall present your case that the pretender is unfit or renounce your claim. Are there any others who would challenge?"

  Othmordian felt his stomach clench. If a third challenged, and if all three refused to renounce their challenge in three days, he must face an actual trial for treason.

  And naturally there was a third. Another woman—Drajorian’s mother and Arnthom’s widow, the Queen Mother Tulthana.

  "I challenge," she said. Her white cape still smelled of funeral incense from her night spent in the company of her husband’s corpse.

  Three challengers. Schemes for dealing with Lyadra and Forthia already snaked through his mind. As for Tulthana—well, he would deal with her when the time came.

  #

  Othmordian received Princess Lyadra in rich mahogany carved rooms lit with jasmine candles. Exquisite paintings in gilt frames vied for space on the walls. There were no portraits of men. Painting a living man would imprison his soul and was forbidden. Painting an imagined person was even more dangerous. Most of the paintings were of beautiful naked slave girls whose souls had been owned by past kings, or still lifes of food. Servants took a dozen still lifes from the walls and set them on the table, a painted feast of sausages, breads, cheeses and fruit. They tied ribbons around each painting, placed scissors next to the porcelain plates, then bowed and left.

  Othmordian had chosen his wardrobe with care, a cape-coat of black and gold velvet over a buttercream silk blouse, similar to, but not quite as ornate as what he had worn before the Assembly. He’d washed his goatee and eyebrows of the white powder, so his hair was its natural ebony again. He smiled to himself when he saw that Lyadra wore a cream dress-coat and cloth-of-gold trousers, almost elaborate enough to be bridal. There was no doubt the warm whites and golds set her auburn hair and peaches-in-milk skin to advantage, but the presumption of her palette amused him. This woman had broken her betrothal to a poor artist in favor of his younger, but royally destined, nephew. She had not changed.

  "Be seated, ‘niece,’" Othmordian said mockingly.

  "I will stand."

  He shrugged. "I will sit."

  From the canvases on the table, he chose a still life of a peach, plum and pomegranate. The scribbler, Habtheine, dead some centuries now, had been renowned for the rich pigments he had used to paint his plums and pomegranates, the translucent glazes he used to make his peaches glow. Othmordian cut the ribbons tied round the painting. The fruit tumbled onto his plate, round, juicy, solid. He sank his teeth into a peach. Sweet, sticky juice gushed in his mouth and dribbled from his lower lip.

  "You dress like a prince now, but you still have the manners of a scribbler," Lyadra said with great distain.

  "Ah, is that why you chose to forsake me in favor of my nephew, a boy six years your junior?" asked Othmordian. He dabbed his chin with a napkin. "His manners. I am sure that was especially evident when he was ten years old, which, as I recall, is when you made your decision."

  Lyadra stared hard at him. "I always knew you were crass and unsocial, Othmordian. I never knew you were capable of murder."

  "Why, I have no idea what you are talking about, Lyadra."

  Lyadra smiled at him. "After a thought, I do feel a bit peckish. I think I shall accept your invitation to eat." She seated herself at the table and cut the ribbon on the painting of a glass of crushed lemon ice. She spooned a few bites onto her plate, which, however, she made no attempt to consume. "Beautiful food, by the way. Did you paint it yourself?"

  "No, no. I’m afraid I haven’t the talent to make my glamours real enough for a satisfying feast."

  "That’s odd," she said, "For I heard that in the years you lived at the glamourers’ school, you developed quite a knack for magic. Perhaps even enough talent to draw a brink."

  Othmordian smiled grimly. "Lyadra, do you even understand what a brink is?"

  "Like a glamour, but it does not die at the twixting that divides day from night. Nothing can kill it. A monster painted and brought to life with blood from a human sacrifice. Such as the monster that killed your brother, Arnthom."

  Othmordian took another bite of his peach. "This fruit feels solid, even tastes real. But when sunset falls, it will be as if I had never eaten it, for only the most skilled glamourers can paint the very essence of an object into their paintings. They must capture its very soul. If it is that difficult to paint the soul of a peach, imagine then how difficult it is to paint an imagined man with enough soul that he can escape the canvas and cross the twixting to breach the brink of our world. It’s not enough to mix the paint with the blood of a human sacrifice. One must also have a master’s skill." He finished eating and spit out the pit. "I assure you, I do not have that talent."

  "I don’t pretend to know about scribblings and glamours," Lyadra said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "But I know that King Arnthom was murdered. And I know that you’ve done something to Prince Drajorian. That veiled boy who walks around the palace like one of your soulless fruits—he is not human."

  "You’re right," said Othmordian.

  Her jaw dropped, then her eyes narrowed.

  "Your darling betrothed is actually a glamour," he said, "kept under careful control, redrawn each dawn and dusk, when the illusion fades to dust."

  "I will bring this news to the Assembly…" Lyadra stood up.

  "Will you?" Othmordian asked mildly.

  Lyadra sat down again, horror on her pretty face. "Will you kill me and replace me with a glamour too, Othy?"

  "Now I’m ‘Othy’ again," he noted. "You haven’t called me that since you were sixteen."

  "I never thought you capable of this," she said.

  "No, if you had thought that I had a chance at the throne, you would not have cast me off in favor of my nephew."

  "Is that why you murdered Drajorian?" she asked coolly. "To take revenge on me?"

  How typical that she assumed everything revolved around her.

  "Drajorian is not dead."

  "Not…? Then where is he?"

  Othmordian smiled. "Agree to renounce your challenge against me…"

  …And maybe I’ll tell you, was the unspoken implication, which, carefully, Othmordian did not actually promise aloud.

  Lyadra stared at him wide-eyed for a moment. Then, as wax melted off a mold, her crafted veneer of affronted innocence melted away. The woman beneath the mask was harder, crueler. She burst into tinkling laughter. "Oh, Othy, Othy, Othy! Who knew you had it in you?"

  Very deliberately, she picked up the plum from his plate and bit into it. She let the juice drip down her lower lip, and licked it off in a sensuous motion. "I’ll go you one better. I will agree to marry you."

  "Lyadra, I’m shocked."

  "No. You are not. You knew that if you showed me the true extent of your power, I would flock to your side. Well. You were right. I presume that if the real Drajorian is not dead yet, he is your prisoner, and it is only a matter of time until you send him the way of his father."

  "Would that bother you if it were true?"

  "Not at all. But I want proof that he is your prisoner, that he did not escape you. Prove it to me by showing him to me—in chains. Then I will believe in your power and agree to be your queen." She grinned and leaned forward. "Oh, let me be the one to stick the dagger to the belly of the little brat."

  Othmordian laughed. "In time, perhaps, Lyadra. But first you must prove yourself to me."

  "I’ll renounce my challenge." She sh
rugged.

  "That’s not enough."

  "What else could you want?"

  "Let me paint you."

  She stood up, eyes flashing. "As if I were a slave girl? Are you mad?"

  "I don’t trust you. If I marry you, I must know I control you. You won’t be humiliated. I’ll keep the painting secret."

  For a moment, he wondered if he had pushed too far, too fast. Her breath came rapidly and he watched, transfixed, how the translucent cream gauze of her blouse shimmered over her cleavage as her breasts rose and fell. How badly did she want to be queen?

  "I will let you paint me," she said at last. "But there are two other challengers, Othmordian. And many, many others who suspect you. Your brother’s death was messy. Even with no investigation by a master glamourer, everyone could tell he had been murdered by a brink. Very careless."

  "Dear Lyadra, let me worry about that. Why don’t you worry about the things you do best—your wardrobe on the day of your wedding—the day of my coronation."

  "I want jewels," she said. "Silks and brocades. And a veyance pulled by the swiftest dogs. Every luxury must adorn my new station. If I’m going to sell my soul to you, I hope you do not think it will be cheap."

  "You shall have all that you ask. Just be here at midnight to sit for your portrait."

  She swept out of the room without answering. Although it was too soon for the glamour on the food to have worn off, his stomach clenched, as if empty. The table was full of food that would only leave him hungry. He tried to remember when he had last had a real meal, and realized it was before his brother had died.