by Neil Clarke
Bathed in fire, Jinyang lit dusk into daytime. The air boiled in the inferno; a scarlet dragon of flame wheeled upward, dispersing the clouds in an eyeblink. No one saw the fallen snow; they only saw flames that touched the heavens. The ancient city, first built in the Spring and Autumn Era, more than one thousand four hundred years before this moment, wailed distantly in the flames.
Jinyang’s fortunate survivors were being driven northeast by the Song army, looking back with every step, their weeping loud enough to shake heaven. The Song ruler Zhao Guangyi sat astride his warhorse, gazing at the flames of distant Jinyang and the figures kneeling before him.
He said, “When you’ve captured the pretend-emperor Liu Jiyuan, come and see me. Do not harm him. Guo Wanchao, I confer upon you the title of Militia Commander of Ci Prefecture. Ma Feng, I name you Supervisor of Imperial Construction. You two have done me service, and I hope you will turn all your ingenuity and wisdom to my Great Song from today onward. Liu Jiye, why do you refuse to surrender when all the others have? Do you not know the parable of the praying mantis who attempted to block the passage of a chariot?”
Liu Jiye, his hands bound, turned to kneel northward. “The ruler of Han has yet to surrender,” he said stubbornly. “How can I surrender first?”
Zhao Guangyi laughed. “I’ve long heard of Liu Jiye of the East Bank. You live up to your reputation. You can surrender once I capture the little emperor. You should revert to your original name of Yang. Why should a Han try to protect a Hu? If you want to fight, you should turn and fight the Khitans, don’t you think?”
Having finished talking to these men, Zhao Guangyi rode forward a few steps. He bent down. “What do you have to say?”
Zhu Dagun knelt on the ground, afraid to raise his head. From the corners of his eyes, he could see the raging flames on the horizon. “I claim no accomplishment,” he said, shaking. “I only ask that I be judged to have done no trespass.”
“Very well.” Zhao Guangyi waved his whip. “Posthumously grant him the title Duke of Tancheng, with a feifdom of thirty miles square. Chop off his head.”
“Your Imperial Majesty! What wrong did I commit?” Zhu Dagun stood up in shock, flinging aside the two soldiers next to him. Four or five more tackled him. The executioner raised his sword.
“You did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. No one did anything wrong. Who knows whose fault it is?” said the Song ruler indifferently.
The head rolled to a stop; the large frame thudded to the ground. The copy of Analects fell from Zhu Dagun’s sleeve pocket and into the puddle of blood, soaking through, until not a single character could be distinguished.
Everything the time traveler had created burned to ashes with Jinyang. After a new city was built nearby, people gradually came to think of those days of wonders as an old dream. Only Guo Wanchao would sometimes take out the “Ray-Ban” sunglasses while drinking with Zhao Da in the Ci Prefecture army camp. “If he’d been born in Song, the world would be a completely different place, huh.”
The Song conquest of Northern Han received only a brief description in the History of the Five Dynasties. One hundred sixty years later, the historian Li Tao at last wrote the great fire of Jinyang into the official histories, but naturally there were no mentions of a time traveler.
“In [979 CE], the emperor visited Taiyuan from the north through Shahe Gate. He dispatched the residents in groups to the new governing city of Bingzhou, setting fire to their homes. Children and the elderly did not reach the city gates in time, and many burned to death.”
—Extended Continuation of Zizhi Tongjian, Book 20
Originally published in Chinese in New Science Fiction, January 2014.
Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.
About the Author
Born in 1981, Zhang Ran graduated from Beijing Jiaotong University in 2004 with a degree in Computer Science. After a stint in the IT industry, Mr. Zhang became a reporter and news analyst with Economic Daily and China Economic Net, during which time his news commentary won a China News Award. In 2011, Mr. Zhang quit his job and moved to southern China to become an independent writer. He began publishing science fiction in 2012, with his debut story, “Ether,” winning the Yinhe (Galaxy) Award as well as the Gold Xingyun (Nebula) Award. His novella, “Rising Wind City,” won the Yinhe Award and a Silver Xingyun Award.
The Promise of God
Michael Flynn
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
It began to grow cold in the cabin after the sun went down, and Nealy thought about building a fire. It would be a fine fire, roaring and crackling and toasting warm. It would light the room with a delicious dancing light, and he and Greta could beek on the outer hearth. He loved the way that firelight played off Greta’s features, making them red and soft and shiny; and he loved the way the smoky smells of the burning wood blended with the earthy smells of Greta herself. Yes, a fire was surely what was needed.
The wood was stacked against the back wall. He had chopped it himself, as Greta had asked. Use the axe, she had told him before leaving to trek down the mountainside to the village. Don’t do it the Other Way.
Nealy snuggled deeper into the chair and looked over his shoulder at the cabin’s door. He couldn’t see what difference it made. He flexed his hands, sore and stiff from the chopping and rubbed the hard palms together. Hard work. Blister-raising work. It was easier the Other Way. Your muscles didn’t ache; your back was not sore. The faggots could march themselves into the hearth and leap upon each other; then he could summon a salamander to ignite them. It would be easy, and it would be fun to watch.
Nealy gazed on the wood. His fingers plucked aimlessly at the arm of the chair. It was growing chilly in the room. He thought about building a fire.
When Nealy was seven, a wolf broke into the sheep pen. He heard the bleating all the way from the chicken coop and he ran as fast as he could down to the meadow gate, slipping in the mud where the run-off from the old well-pump trickled toward the creek. As Nealy raised himself from the muck, he spied the wolf among the flock as though through parted clouds. Sheep were milling and baa-ing, knowing there was a danger amongst them, but at a loss for what to do. The wolf raised its head from the carcass of a young ewe and bared bloody teeth. Far off, in the autumn field on the far side of the pen, Papa had dropped the reins of the plow horse and was hopping across the furrows with his musket in hand. Too late, though; too late for Fat Emma.
Nealy staggered to his feet and the wolf backed away, not ready to attack a human being, but neither ready to retreat, either. When it turned, Nealy could see the badly healed scar along its flank, the stiffness with which one hind leg moved; explanation, at least, for why it had chosen the sheep pens. Nealy pointed a finger at the beast.
“You killed Fat Emma, you!” he shrieked, as only young boys can shriek over a favorite animal lost; and never mind that Emma would betimes have graced his own table. At seven, the future is a hazy thing. He made a gesture with his hands. Anger and instinct moved his arms; and he felt something—he felt some thing—course through him like water through a pipe, as if the pulse in his veins gushed forth in a great spray.
And the wolf howled and twisted, leaped upon itself and lay still.
Nealy’s breaths came in short gusts. His brow and face were hot and flushed and his chest heaved. His head ached and he felt very, very tired. The sheep milled about in the pen, bleating and bleating and bleating and bleating. Stupid beasts, Nealy thought. Lackwits. Sheep deserved what happened to them. He made another gesture and the fleece upon Gray Harry began to blacken and smolder. Harry shook himself. Smoke rolled off him, then flames. Harry ran, still unsure where the danger lay, knowing only to run and escape.
With a cry, Nealy dropped to his knees in the mud and covered his face with his hands. His head throbbed. What had he done? What had he done? He felt his father’s arms gather him in, banding him tight against his sweet-smelling l
inen shirt. Between sobs, Nealy told him what had happened; and his father kept saying, “I know, Nealy. I saw.”
After a while, his father stood him upright and brushed him off and straightened his clothes. “There,” he said with a catch in his voice. “You look more presentable now. The wolfskin is yours, you know. It will make a fine cloak. You can wear it to school and the other kids will be jealous.”
“Buh—Buh—But, Gray Harry—” Nealy’s words bobbed in his throat.
His father looked past him, at the dead animals in the pen. He could feel Papa’s head shaking as he buried his face in his father’s chest. “You shan’t have that fleece, Nealy,” he heard him say. “No, you shan’t have that one.”
The rapping at the door was repeated three times. Nealy twisted in his seat and stared at it, wondering who it was. Not Greta, for she would not have knocked. A neighbor? Someone from the village? The knocking boomed: a fist against the thick, wooden slats. Finally, a kick and a muffled voice. “I know you be within, Master Cornelius. I saw your wifman leave.”
Nealy nodded to himself. Someone craving admittance. Perhaps he should open the door and admit whoever it was. He pondered that for a time, weighed the urim and the thummin in his mind, chased the decision as it slipped like quicksilver through the fingers of his mind, while the pounding on his door increased. Perhaps he should . . .
But the decision was taken from him. The door creaked open and a mousy-brown face peered around its edge. It brightened when it saw him, and showed a smile white with small teeth. “There you be, Master Cornelius. I knew you were here.”
“God’s afternoon to you, Goodwif Agnes,” Nealy said, for he recognized the man now. “I pray you are well.”
Agnes touched the mezuzah lightly to appease the household lares and closed the door behind her. She curtsied quickly and awkwardly, then stood there, dressed in a shapeless, butternut homespun gown that just brushed the tops of her moccasins. The top button in the front of her gown was unfastened, so that Nealy could see a soft bit of roundness on either side of the opening, like twin crescent moons.
“God’s afternoon, Master Cornelius.” A hint of color suffused her cheeks, so perhaps she knew that her gown was unfastened; or that Nealy had noticed.
Has she come to seduce me? Nealy wondered. There were wivmen enough who wanted his seed. That would explain why she wore no coverslut over her gown. He knew Other Ways of pleasuring, Other Ways of bringing a wif to ecstasy, riding atop a rolling sea of pure joy. Sometimes Greta allowed him to use those Ways on her. She would arch her back in rapture while he spelled, and give soft, little cries—though afterward she would often grow dread-full and beg him never to do it again, even if she asked. Though she always did, she always did. And Nealy had no choice but to obey.
“I’ll not mump with you,” Agnes said. “I crave a boon.”
Of course, she did. They all did. Why else would she have come. “And what boon is that?” Politeness came easy. Politeness cost nothing.
“My house-bound, sir Master. He has the fleas some’ at bad; and I was wondering, I was, if you could use your dweomercræft to relieve him.” She stood, twisting the front of her gown in her fist, flushed in the face and looking down.
“And you as well?” he asked with a half-smile. That which has touched an unclean thing became itself unclean. See Leviticus. Yet, did she know how awe-full it was what she asked of him? “You know the custom,” he chided her. “You must approach my rixler. Greta has gone but lately and . . . ”
“I know.” Agnes paused and took a deep breath. “I waited until she left. I addressed her yestere’en, but she laughed at me and said that my wereman and I should wash ourselves and our clothing with lye soap and a stiff wire brush.”
Nealy laughed. “Aye, by Hermes, that would work!” He felt the hammer in his veins, the sudden, momentary distancing of his vision, and knew that the scrubbing would work, better than Greta had supposed; but before he could tell Agnes of his incontinent spelling, she spoke.
“But you could make it so the fleas would never return, so that Lucius and I ’ud be clean for good and aye.”
Nealy paused with his mouth half-open and pondered the additional requirement. Now, that did put a different cast on things. There were any number of alternatives. He closed his eyes to better envision them. Yes, four or five possibilities, some of them quite amusing. And it made Alice’s request so much more interesting.
To ply the craeft, as all men knew, would nibble the soul away.
His parents had begun the search for a rixler that very evening. The priest had come up from Lechaucaster, down by the forks of the river, where the chain dam hoarded the headwaters for the southern canal. He had come up the mountainside a-muleback and had tested Nealy with an ankh. It was stuffy in the close-bed with the priest. The man stank with the sweat of his riding and his breath was foul. Nealy remembered everything about that day with the clarity of a landmark spied across miles of fog and mist.
Mama had cried. He remembered that, too.
“For a while yet, he may refrain,” the priest said with a shaking head. “Ynglings oft try to abstain; yet in the end, they cannot restrain themselves and are drawn back to the Other Way in spite of everything.”
His mother rose from the table and turned, crossing her arms across herself—and Nealy drew back quickly into the confines of the close-bed lest she see him. But he leaned his head by the door so as to hear everything.
“But Nealy is a good boy,” she said. “And dweormen do much good in the world.”
“Esther . . . ” Papa’s voice, warning.
“But only under the tutelage of a trained rixler,” insisted the priest. “One who may provide a soul for him when his craeft has eaten his own.” Then he chanted from the Gospel of Thomas:
“‘When you make the two into one,
When you make the inner like the outer,
And the outer like the inner,
And the upper like the lower,
When you make the male and the female into a single one . . . ’”
Nealy had heard the words before, at synagogue, when the priest sang from the Hermetic books, but they had meant nothing and still meant nothing.
“He is too young,” said Mama through a quiet sob. (Oh, and Nealy bristled at that. Too young? Why, he was seven! All of seven . . .)
“It comes on them at the age of reason,” the priest said. “Best that his training begin tonight.”
“So soon?” Papa’s voice had been laced with sorrow. “I had thought that . . . ” Papa’s voice trailed off.
The priest was silent a moment. Then he spoke firmly. “Nothing is gained by putting it bye. There is only loss. I shall have a mister come to tutor you, and to select the rixler. Does the lad prefer girls or boys?”
“Let it wait for a moon or so. He is my son. I . . . ”
“Delay too long,” the priest warned, “and he may not bond with his rixler at all.” The priest’s voice had gone soft and low. “Or have you forgotten what was born within the Barrens?”
He heard Mama suck in her breath. Nealy did not understand. Only that the Pine Barrens was a place Mama used to frighten him into good behavior. No one went there. No one who ever came back. In two hundred years, no one had ever come back.
“Tonight,” the priest continued firmly. “Tonight you must open the need that only his rixler may fill.”
“My son,” said Papa in a choked voice. “How can I?”
“How can you not?” the priest insisted.
That evening, Mama did not come to kiss him and tuck him into bed as was her wont. Nealy waited and waited and she did not come. He was afraid that something had happened to her and he began to cry and still she did not come.
Later, when his sobs had stilled themselves by exhaustion, he heard from his parents’ bed the sounds of others sobbing.
“Stop!” Greta’s voice jerked Nealy around with his mouth open and his hand half raised. She had used the vox, what the Gu
yandot Skraelings called orenda. Nealy paused with the words unspoken on his tongue. He could no more proceed than a winterlocked stream.
Greta’s eyes took in Agnes and Nealy. Took them in, saw them, understood them. Judged them. She stared at Nealy a moment longer with eyes the color of a storm-proud sky. Then, with barely a glance at Agnes, she turned and unfastened her cloak of charred sheeps’-wool and hung it on the peg behind the door. Greta was a buxom man, her breasts full and round under her laced buckskin coverslut. Her golden-grey hair was braided in tight whorls behind each ear.
“Mistress Rixler,” said Agnes, “I only—”
“Hush, child.” The voice was not loud, but it compelled. Greta bent and unfastened her leggings, which she tossed in the corner by the door; and exchanged her boots for moccasins. Her pendant, a brightly jeweled vestal’s dagger in a leather scabbard, dangled from her neck when she bent over.
“Nealy, dear,” she said, “be a host and offer our guest some wine.” Nealy hopped to do as he was bid, grateful to be acting, grateful for having been decided.
“No, I could not.” Agnes edged her way toward the door.
“Stay, child. We have matters to discuss.” Nealy listened to the wivmen while he arranged the goblets and removed the wine from the coldbox. Sometimes he felt as if he were both at a play and in it; as if he were watching and waiting and was occasionally called upon to speak lines written by someone else, words as surprising to him as to anyone.
Agnes stood stiffly and wrung the homespun gown in her fist. “I was not . . . I did not come to swyve your wereman.”
Greta laughed. “So. Then, button up. Don’t wave a musket you don’t mean to fire. Nealy, dear, would you have taken her if she had offered?”