Beneath Ceaseless Skies #129

by Austin, Alec

“Yes!” I said. “That’s definitely it. It was Plinio’s expedition all along, and the king forced him to take the Duke.”

  “Calixta,” Jovita admonished me.

  “It’s true,” said Plinio. “The Duke was, alas, quite a burden, not much given to travel, but—” He broke off and stared at Roldao, who was coughing into his napkin.

  “Fish bone,” said Roldao with his classic reticence.

  Barca was staring at all of us. “Pray continue,” he told Plinio, after Roldao’s coughing fit had subsided.

  “Well,” Plinio managed, “there was a bit of a mishap involving some wildlife—”

  “—and the Duke and his retinue went their own way,” I finished, drawing a warning look from Jovita and a disappointed one from Roldao.

  “Ah,” Barca said, glancing between us. “I think I begin to see. Were there any plans for the Duke and his retinue to rejoin the rest of the expedition, do you know?”

  “Oh no,” Plinio said, as hasty as ever to defend his preeminence. “Certainly not.”

  “The Duke,” Jovita said, shooting a quelling look in my direction, “was not in any position to make plans. Being indisposed at the time.”

  “Mmm,” Barca said, turning to me. “And does this account match your recollection of events, Lady Calixta?”

  “Why, yes,” I said, making a transparent effort to appear ingenuous. “Why would it not, my lord?”

  Barca let out a low chuckle. “Indeed. Why would it not?” He refilled his glass, then raised it as if proposing a toast. “To the Duke of Apocrita, then. May he have a swift recovery.”

  No sooner had we toasted the Duke’s health than Barca summoned a servant to his side. After a brief conversation, the servant scuttled off, and as another course was brought in, the light of torches and the jingle of tack came from outside.

  “Milord,” I said reproachfully. “I almost begin to suspect that you do not trust us.”

  “Milady Calixta,” Barca replied, “these are troubled times, and I fear that trust is precious and rare indeed. Do have some of the monitor steak, won’t you? It’s really quite exquisite.”

  * * *

  It was the next afternoon before Barca’s scouts returned, and soon after their arrival, my companions and I heard the sound of Barca’s footsteps as he ascended the staircase nearest our quarters.

  “My friends,” Barca said, favoring us with an ironic smile as he entered the suite where Jovita and I were studying the feathers of the beast that had vanquished the Duke. “I fear that all your attempts at subterfuge have been for naught.”

  “Whatever do you mean, milord?” Jovita replied, her tone barely civil.

  “I mean,” Barca snapped, “that the Duke of Apocrita and his entourage are not nearly as stealthy as you might hope. Oh, they certainly strove to cover their tracks, but the Duke’s fondness for soft living betrayed him.” He produced a folding cup and an empty tin of preserved meat with a contemptuous flourish. “I will grant that the cup is ingenious, but leaving such traces behind on breaking camp was the work of an amateur. I suppose one can expect no better from the pampered favorite of a blind, weak king.”

  “You’ll never catch him,” I said, which made Barca smile.

  “It pains me to contradict you, Lady Calixta,” he said, “but I fear I must. Even a simpleton such as Apocrita will eventually grasp the significance of finding an ever-shifting lake where his maps show none. I must count it as good fortune that he and his retinue appear to be busy surveying my lands rather than running straight home to the king with tales of treachery and deceit.”

  “So, then,” Roldao said, emerging from his room. “You mean to hunt him down?”

  “Even so,” Barca replied, patting the hilt of his sword.

  “It would be hypocritical to wish you luck,” Jovita observed. “Besides, I am of Calixta’s opinion regarding your chances.”

  “Whereas I am rather more sanguine,” Barca replied. “I fear I will not be able to attend dinner this evening, but my staff will extend you every courtesy. I expect this little excursion should not take much more than a day.” On that hopeful note, he strode off, and in a few minutes, the shouts of sergeants and a cloud of dust announced his departure.

  Dinner that evening was a subdued affair, and by the following evening, neither Barca and his men nor any of our lackeys had returned. As for myself, I oscillated between elation at my plan’s apparent success and anxiety at imagining all the ways in which it could have gone wrong. The horrid visions my imagination conjured up quite thoroughly vanquished my appetite.

  It was almost a relief when a whey-faced young Captain in Barca’s service wandered into the dining hall just as dessert was about to be served. He recollected enough of his manners to remove his hat from his head, but once it was in his hands, he regarded it with puzzlement, as if he had never seen it before. When he looked up from his hat, the pallor of his features made it clear that he had had a nasty shock.

  “Ladies,” he managed, bowing to Jovita and myself. “Gentlemen. I regret to inform you... that is, I have just received word....” He cut himself short and stood there blinking, as if he had no idea who we were or why he was speaking to us.

  “Speak up, young man,” Jovita demanded. “What word have you received?”

  The Captain sucked a shallow breath through his teeth. “That Lord Barca is dead, milady.” Having delivered the news, he peered at us hopefully, as if we might tell him what to do.

  * * *

  The tale, which I pieced together from Lygia’s account and the handful of survivors of Barca’s expedition, went as follows:

  Following the tracks that Lygia and the other lackeys had laid for him and his scouts, Barca and a company of his vine-grown soldiers skirted the edge of the lake we’d encountered and plunged deeper into the jungle. The false trail which Lygia and her companions had laid included scraps of fabric caught on branches, freshly smothered campfires, and other signs that Barca’s quarry was close at hand, so he pushed his men hard, and when the first iron-eater struck, the confusion was great enough that it took Barca some time to realize his adversary was a jungle beast, rather than the Duke of Apocrita.

  With a company of muskets at his disposal, Barca was not content to drive off the iron-eater, and the massed fire of his soldiers laid the beast low. Ever the naturalist, Barca ordered his men to construct a travois so it could be dragged back to his mansion and dissected—but before the travois was more than a vision in Barca’s mind, a fierce, shrill cry came from the depths of the jungle. Vine-born though they were, Barca’s men could not help but be shaken by such an awful sound, especially when it repeated itself, much louder and closer than before.

  Whatever his other faults, Odilon Barca was no coward, and he formed his men into lines as the beast approached. But even he was unprepared for what burst through the trees. When Lygia had told me of the iron-eaters growing large and hungry, I had imagined them simply scaling upwards, with their midnight feathers growing ever denser—not that their plumage would fuse into glistening keratinous scales.

  Between its ragged jaws and claws, corrosive breath, and horns and jet-black scales, it is fair to say that Odilon Barca was confronted by a dragon.

  By all accounts he kept his cool, ordering his men to aim for the beast’s eyes. He did not, alas, keep his head. Eyewitness accounts differ in the specifics of how Odilon Barca met his end—some claim a musket’s barrel exploded, sending a jagged chunk of metal flying, while others assert that the dragon’s roar or foul breath caused his skull to melt or disintegrate—but all agree that he did not die well.

  Of the nearly two hundred soldiers who had accompanied Barca on his expedition, only seven returned alive from the first recorded encounter with the mature form of Draco Draconis Barca, and three of those died of their wounds within the week.

  It is entirely understandable that none of my companions wanted to take credit for arranging this encounter.

  Our parole had been given personal
ly to Odilon Barca, noble to noble. His reclusive ways left him with no one else upon the estates to whom it would have been appropriate to transfer such an agreement, even had we been inclined. Needless to say, we were not. We assured his shaken staff that we were well aware of the proclivities of such a beast and that only our own august selves stood between them and the fate that had befallen their master.

  Plinio, confused by this plan from first to last, had never convinced even one of Barca’s people that he was the true leader of our expedition. In the days that followed Barca’s death, Roldao was the one who rode for court, so I assumed that the honors and presumption of leadership would accrue to him. Jovita, dear companion and brilliant naturalist though she was, spent so much of her time cataloging the species around the estate that settling the servants fell to me—again, I assumed, to my disadvantage.

  I could not have been more wrong. Or rather, I could not have been more right.

  When the king’s messengers arrived, they found that the person who was ready to hand over the better part of two battalions of trained musketeers to His Imperial Majesty’s service was yours truly, the Lady Calixta, a humble and selfless servant of the Imperial Crown. And who better, His Imperial Majesty reasoned, to accompany him on his voyage back to reclaim the throne of the motherland, than a noblewoman who had sought only to serve him, never playing the games of court politics but seeking only the interest of the realm?

  Yes. The very same Lady Calixta—with her trusty lackey Lygia—was summarily packed onto a galleon bound for the motherland, far from birds, shifting lands, jungles of natural interest, or anything whatsoever to do with nests of Draco Draconis Barca.

  Loyalty and honor may be their own rewards, but I will confess I have certain notions about what may be done by two young women with quick wits and an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world, who are not suspected of anything in particular.

  First, however, I need to ensure that the king’s pet basilisk has been fed.

  Copyright © 2013 Alec Austin & Marissa Lingen

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Alec Austin & Marissa Lingen have been writing stories together since 2011. He’s a game designer, media scholar, and an aficionado of Chinese history. She’s a stunt baker, a Finnish trivia nerd, and a recovering physicist. Together, they fight crime (and publish fiction in BCS, Analog, and various other forums).

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  THE GOBLIN KING’S CONCUBINE

  by Raphael Ordoñez

  It was a good thing that Maugreth’s men mutinied when they did. Otherwise he would have gone mad like the rest and fled shrieking into the moss-forest at the river’s edge to be devoured by spiders. Of course he didn’t know that at the time. He just sat in the ship’s hold where his men had locked him, shaking his grizzled gray-blonde locks, watching the sunless banks slip slowly past the embrasure.

  He spied the first mate through the hatch. “Hey there,” he growled. “I don’t like this narrow bit. You’d better look to yourselves.” They were in a place where the river ran in two channels on either side of a long island.

  The mate peered through the grating. “Still trying to lord it, eh, sweetheart?” he said, grinning. “Soon as we clear this island we’re bringing her about. We’ve had enough of this stinking hole.”

  “You want to die poor? That’s your business. But I’d assumed you’d want to delay it as long as possible.”

  The mate threw back his head and laughed. He broke off mid-guffaw when his already ugly face was made more unpleasant by a bone dart that appeared as if by magic in the middle of his left eyeball. For a moment he tried to blink while drops of blood ran down the shaft. Then he was rolling on the deck, clawing at the planks.

  Instantly there was a hail of darts. Maugreth watched while his men swore and stamped and ran back and forth under the volley. Then the quills stopped flying as abruptly as they had started, and a shriek rent the air. A horde of gangly, ghost-pale goblin forms swarmed onto the deck from either bank.

  It was hand-to-hand fighting now, and Maugreth’s men had the worst of it. He went berserk, throwing himself against the hatch until he burst the hinges. With a roar he drew the mate’s sword and began dealing death with double-handed strokes.

  One helbor, he beheaded; another he split to the sternum. The massacre became a rout, and within seconds the goblins had vanished into the forest, shrieking and hooting.

  Panting with exhilaration, he swept his gaze over the deck, surveying the damage. Half his crew had been slaughtered. The survivors were wounded to a man and stuck full of quills. “Well,” he said with a laugh, “all’s well that ends well, eh?” He began tossing the slain helborim overboard, one by one.

  A whimper brought him up short. He looked to his men.

  They were picking the darts out of their bodies and scratching at the holes, whining like curs. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he cried, walking toward them.

  They fell over one another in panic, moaning and slobbering. Their bones seemed to be turning to rubber. Some scrambled over the sides and lost themselves in the river or the moss-forest. The two that remained groveled feebly at his feet. He hacked off their heads in disgust and kicked the remains overboard.

  The engine chugged on through the descending hush. Maugreth eyed the moss-forest uncomfortably. The channel was like a tunnel, its unseen ceiling held aloft by the pale stems of the scale-trees. The only animals that ventured into the open were the white wingless cockroaches that crept over the fungous fruiting-bodies and the great gray tarantulas that fed upon them. The moist darkness was thick with the odor of old rot, like nauseous breath.

  A sleepy voice broke the silence: “What’s going on?”

  Maugreth turned. It was Horda, the half-wit stoker. His narrow skull and tangled locks gave him a look of wild inanity. “Who else is below?” Maugreth demanded.

  “Nobody but me. Say, where is everyone?”

  “Dead. We’re about to run aground. Get below and tend to the furnace. I’ll steer.”

  “We still turnin’ around? Just asking. Since we don’t have no hands.”

  “Good riddance. Are you of their party or mine?”

  “Why, yours, sir,” said Horda. “I’m for you.” He slouched back below.

  Maugreth kept the ship on course beyond the joining of the channels. Presently he perceived daylight streaming from around a bend up ahead, the first he’d seen in weeks. A muffled roar shook the air. Soon the ship emerged into a small lake that lay open to the sky.

  Swaying scale-trees grew down to the pool’s edge on all sides like pale pillars holding aloft a purple-green awning. Looming over the far shore was a cliff-wall cloven by a canyon; brown and black high over the lake, mossily green close above the livid canopy, and vertically ribbed like the sides of a portal in a ruined cathedral. The dark heart of Ir spewed its gathered waters through the notch in a cascade of foamy white, with effervescing pools of blue-green edged by black rocks. Rainbows shimmered in the mist.

  Maugreth let the ship crawl into the middle of the lake. Horda emerged from the engine-room and spun around, taking in the prospect. “Cor!” he shouted. “Look there! Ain’t that a sight for sore eyes!”

  Maugreth followed the stoker’s finger. A glint of gold high above winked at him. Squinting, he descried a dark-haired woman perched at the head of the falls, naked as a needle apart from her jewelry. Beside her was a small white figure.

  “That what we’re after?” Horda asked.

  “Reckon so.”

  The lady seemed to spy the steamer. She vanished with her attendant into the shadows of the hemmed-in forest. “What was that white critter?” asked Horda.

  “A goblin whelp, I guess.”

  “Cor! Won’t she be glad to see us! Hey, if we make it out of this, that’ll be the reward split between us two instead of among twelve-odd, eh? If her folks keep their word, that is.”

  “Yeah,” drawled Maugreth. He
was looking at the back of Horda’s head, rubbing his sword’s pommel with the palm of his hand. “Well,” he said, “let’s drop anchor and see what we see.”

  The ship thus secured, the pair dove into the water and swam ashore. Moments later they were scaling the cliffs like two lizards. It didn’t take them long to make it to the base of the notch.

  Daylight streamed through the mouth of the canyon and played over the huge mosses that carpeted the understory, a riot of green and red and purple. But the fungus of the deep forest took the plants’ place as Maugreth and Horda picked their way up the corridor. They struck a flagged path winding amongst the scale-tree stems and fruiting-bodies. There were no signs of the lady or her attendant.

  After a mile or so the canyon walls began to fall away. The main path diverged from the river. They climbed the slope, picking their way through thickets of yellow coral and clusters of scarlet elf cups and giant brown morels and suppurating stinkhorns and beds of pink foliose lichen. The path crested the rise and began to wind in and out of dark hollows. A sudden tropical cloudburst turned it into a rivulet.

  The rain was still falling when they came to a place where the stems were silhouetted against pale daylight. “Go up yonder and take a look,” whispered Maugreth.

  Horda crept cautiously forward and then returned. “You got to see it to believe it,” he said. “A village of ‘em.”

  “Any sign of the woman?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, come on.” Together they crept up to the brink.

  They were looking down from the rim of a steep-sided bowl. Its floor was cleared and carpeted with yellow liverwort, but the scale-trees that encircled it gave it the appearance of a deep well. In its midst was a circle of huts of dried moss limbs and leaves and other debris. There were helborim everywhere.

  The goblins were lean and muscular, resembling upright frogs, their huge heads emerging directly from their torsos and shoulders, their mouths stretched in wide smiles like frogs’ mouths. Their lipless jaws drew to a point in front like a porwil’s, and their eyes were laterally placed orbs of unfathomable black, large and liquid and heavily lashed. The arrangement of their organs could be made out through their thin skin.