by Paula Guran
He examined them. A strange script ran along their sides. He had seen such ammunition before, long ago . . . there were such objects in the ruins of the Lower Kidron, the product of the races that had lived and died there before humans came, and the children of the Lower Kidron would hunt for them amidst the ruins, and sell them to the gunsmiths of that dark place. He had been one of those children, once . . .
“Where did you find these?” he said but, of course, there was no answer. Kur-a-len, he thought: it was the dumping ground to rival all others, the refuse and dead things of a thousand places all mingled together. He loaded the bullets into his gun and turned his back on the silent graveyard.
In the distance he could see a single light shining, in the direction of the town. Yes. They would be waiting, he thought. Well, let them wait. It won’t be long, now. He smiled, and there was nothing pleasant in that smile. Then he began to march, stiffly, toward the town and that single source of light, his hands on the butts of his guns.
He came to the town and walked down the street and the light beckoned him on. He paused and changed the bullets in his guns. Only two, and they would have to suffice . . .
He came to the Last Homily and entered.
Nothing had changed. The same dim light, the same fat candles, the same bartender behind the bar, the grave-wraith leering as he polished a glass with his dirty rag.
No one sitting at the tables but for one figure, cloaked in shadows, in a far corner. Gorel went up to the bar.
“What can I get you, sheriff?”
Gorel’s gun materialized in his hand, pointing at the grave-wraith. “You can die,” he said, in a low voice.
The grave-wraith laughed. “An unpleasant experience,” he said.
“And one you are thoroughly familiar with?”
For the first time, a flash of anger from that ruined face. “What can you possibly know of death, man of Goliris?” he said. “I should have killed you when I had the chance, and pulled out your eyes. I was wrong, too merciful.”
“Is it my eyes you want?” Gorel said, and the grave-wraith grimaced. “One can have eyes and still not see,” Gorel said. “Who were you, before?”
“Shut up!”
“What are you but a shadow?” Gorel said. “Perhaps the thing that you once were, was also once great. But you are shadow, not even a memory remaining . . . ”
The grave-wraith shook his head. His eyes turned to the figure in the shadows and his eyes, for one moment, looked lost. “It is no matter, now,” he said softly. His eyes turned to the door, watching, waiting.
Gorel followed his gaze. “You set a trap, not for me, but for him,” he said, realizing. “Her lover. The necromancer—”
“Enough,” the grave-wraith said. “He is gone.”
“How can you be sure?”
The bartender’s eyes flickered. There was a sound like a sigh from the seated shadow. “I will trade you my eyes,” he said, speaking to her, knowing she was listening. “Tell me the way to return.”
There is no way back, she said. And I will take your eyes regardless, cousin.
Anger consumed Gorel then, but he controlled it. “The necromancer,” he said. “The ninth caliph. I was fooled, was I not?”
You are a fool, she said.
“There was a story I read in a book,” Gorel said. “About a boy from Mindano who met a strange princess traveling through the mountains, a woman he loved and killed to become the first caliph . . . but there have never been any others, have there? The ninth caliph and the first, they were both the same.”
He came for me, she said, and there was something in her voice, a catching, of wonder or fear, he didn’t know. After all those years, he came for me . . .
“Enough!” the grave-wraith said. “He will not have you.”
Gorel said, “Are you sure?”
“She is mine,” the grave-wraith said. More quietly, he said, “I love her.”
“Love.” Gorel’s finger was steady on the trigger, but he didn’t know who to shoot.
And what do you know of love, Gorel of Goliris, she said softly from her shadows.
At last he turned to face her. “I know love is a poor second,” he said, and she sighed, the voice of dead leaves blowing in a graveyard. Let us be, she said. This is not your business. There was some animation in her voice. Go back to your quest, go back to Goliris, that heinous, ruinous place that shapes children like weapons, that made us . . . she sighed again.
“Where is it?” he said, anger rising suddenly, hot and painful. “For the last time, where is Goliris?”
She laughed, and the sound was bitter. So you are truly lost in the World . . . how sad. You will never find it, Gorel of Goliris, last in the line to the throne. Not with my help.
“Then you are no good to me,” Gorel said, the anger dissipating, replaced by an immense cold.
He shot her.
She fell back. From behind the counter, a howl of anger, and then the grave-wraith was on him, arms trying to strangle him. Gorel punched back, fell and rolled, throwing off his opponent—who stood back up and, facing him, began slowly, to change.
The costume of the grave-wraith was at last discarded: and the god who no longer had his name began to form in its place, a hideous, shapeless mass, a white star growing in the middle of the Last Homily, howling in languages long thought dead and buried, its true form that of no form.
What did you do? she said, and the god stopped suddenly. Both of them turned to her. She crawled away from the shadows, and he could see her now for the first time. Gorel involuntarily took a step back.
She had no eyes, she was blind, but inside the yellowing bone of her ribcage a heart beat, cloaked in shadows: the caretaker’s heart which he had lost. She was unclothed with skin. A hole hissed through her chest, bones melting. The bullet had missed the heart.
A veil, made of the sheerest silk, covered her face. What is this weapon? she said, sounding confused.
The god rushed toward her, his white heat singeing the tables as he passed. “I will kill your cousin and give you his eyes,” he said. “It is as we planned. We have waited so long!”
I can wait a while longer, she said, but still she sounded bewildered. He had only one bullet left, the Jais’ gift to him. Bullets to kill the dead . . . but which one?
“I will kill you,” the nameless god said, “slowly, and will enjoy it.”
“Fuck you,” Gorel said.
The god stopped and hovered, very still, above the floor of the tavern. “Or perhaps not . . . ” he mused. “Perhaps there is something you want, Gorel of Goliris . . . ”
“There is nothing I want from you?”
“No?” and suddenly the god had changed, its countenance that of his avatar, the one-eyed preacher, and his lips were full and dark like cherries. In the air there was a stench of enchantment that clenched Gorel’s stomach, but would not allow him to draw away.
“You have been kissed before,” the preacher said, his voice filled with relish. “You know the taste of the black kiss well. I can give you what you want.”
“No . . . ” Gorel whispered.
The god said, “Yes.” He came closer to Gorel. His single eye shone in his head like a white star. “You crave it so . . . ” he said.
“No,” Gorel said again, but the hand holding the gun fell to his side, and he found it hard to breathe, or think, or act. The preacher’s lips were coming closer all the while, coming for the kiss Gorel remembered so well, a god’s kiss, a doom sweeter than life, more powerful than death. “Please,” he said.
“Since you ask so nicely,” the god said, and the preacher’s face leered, his lips almost touching Gorel’s, who closed his eyes—no longer fighting, thinking only of the touch of the god’s lips on his, of the god’s tongue penetrating into his mouth—and his body felt as light as air as he sank forward to welcome the kiss—
The door of the Last Homily exploded inwards, showering them with slivers of wood. Gorel fell to his kn
ees and the preacher screamed with rage. “You!” he said. Woozily, Gorel turned his head. Sense returned, and with it purpose, and he rose to his feet, the gun raised again, the other gun leaping into his other hand, both of them aimed.
“Me,” Seraph Gadashtill said.
Death had not changed the last—and first—caliph of Mindano. He was an urbane-looking man, the pallor of death permanent on his skin, and in his arms he held two weapons Gorel could not identify, but thought to be of Zul manufacture. The preacher had leaped behind the counter when the necromancer arrived and now faced both Gorel and the necromancer with what appeared to be a gigantic blunderbuss but which Gorel knew to be an ancient Merlangai weapon, a thing of sorcery, not artifice, and from the Drowned God’s domain.
They aimed guns at each other: Gorel, the caliph, the nameless god, moving their gaze from one to the other, tense, waiting—and Gorel laughed suddenly.
It was a three-man standoff, and two of them were already dead.
They faced each other this way, and the necromancer said, “I have no business with you, man of Goliris, but will shoot you if I must.”
“I’ll kill you both,” the preacher said.
Gorel alone did not speak. He knew then what he must do, but something inside him hurt at the thought. In his mind, he fashioned words: Will you not tell me the way?
She did not reply, which was a reply in itself. Somewhere that was not inside him and yet indelibly linked to his own being, he felt her relax.
The three opponents kept covering each other. Gorel knew they would kill him first. Their fight was their own and he was superfluous to it. There was only one way. He took it: he turned away from them and fired, and watched the caretaker’s heart explode inside the stolen body of what had once been a princess of Goliris. Gorel watched the stolen face of Kelini Pashtill relax, and knew that, at last, some ghosts at least have been laid to rest.
He heard the god and the necromancer cry in unison, but he was already ducking, making for the window, and as he sailed out into the night he heard behind him two weapons discharge at once, and yet felt no pain. He hit the ground outside and rolled hard, and lay there, staring at the stars, and it was silent: there was a silence like death, and he knew that he was alone, and alone still alive in that terrible place called Kur-a-len: the Garden of Statues.
They were all dead: which was as it should be. In the Last Homily the necromancer and the nameless god had fallen almost side-by-side. In real death, at last, they seemed almost like brothers.
They were all dead, but no—perhaps not all. He thought of those strange, small figures he had met, who made their habitat in the rubble of the dead’s once-proud mansions, who stole through shadows . . . Perhaps the Jais, at least, have found a peaceful place to call home. No one would disturb them there again. Only rubble remained of the Garden, and as for the town—
Gorel torched the place. He watched the Last Homily as it burned and then made his way slowly down the road, setting fire to the rest of the town. His graal was waiting for him and he rode him away then, the flames reflected in the graal’s dark carapace. They rode together for most of the night until, at last, the fire disappeared behind them.
Lavie Tidhar is the author of A Man Lies Dreaming, The Violent Century, and the World Fantasy Award winning Osama. His other works include the Bookman Histories trilogy, several novellas, two collections and a forthcoming comics mini-series, Adler. He currently lives in London.
Acknowledgements
“The Screams of Dragons” © 2014 Kelley Armstrong. First publication: Subterranean Press Magazine, Spring 2014.
“The End of the End of Everything” © 2014 Dale Bailey. First publication: Tor.com, 23 April 2014.
“(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness” © 2014 Laird Barron. First publication: Dark Discoveries #29.
“Madam Damnable’s Sewing Circle” © 2014 Elizabeth Bear. First Publication: Dead Man’s Hand, ed. John Joseph Adams (Titan Books).
“Sleep Walking Now and Then” © 2014 Richard Bowes. First publication: Tor.com, 9 July 2014.
“Only Unity Saves the Damned” © 2014 Nadia Bulkin. First publication: Letters to Lovecraft: Eighteen Whispers to the Darkness, ed. Jesse Bullington (Stone Skin Press).
“A Wish From a Bone” © 2014 Gemma Files. First publication: Fearful Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow (ChiZine Publications).
“Mr. Hill’s Death” © 2014 S. L. Gilbow. First publication: The Dark, Issue 4.
“The Female Factory” © 2014 Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter. First publication: The Female Factory (Twelfth Planet Press).
“Who Is Your Executioner?” © 2014 Maria Dahvana Headley. First publication: Nightmare, November 2014.
“The Elvis Room” © 2014 Stephen Graham Jones. First publication: The Elvis Room (This Is Horror).
“The Cats of River Street (1925)” © 2014 Caitlín R. Kiernan. First publication: Sirenia Digest #102.
“Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying”© 2014 Alice Sola Kim. First publication: Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales, eds. Kelly Link & Gavin Grant (Candlewick) / Tin House #61.
“Children of the Fang” © 2014 John Langan. First publication: Lovecraft’s Monsters, ed. Ellen Datlow (Tachyon Publications).
“Combustion Hour” © 2014 Yoon Ha Lee. First publication: Tor.com, 18 June 2014.
“The Quiet Room” © 2014 V. H. Leslie. First publication: Shadows and Tall Trees: 2014, ed. Michael Kelly (ChiZine Publications).
“Running Shoes” © 2014 Ken Liu. First publication: SQ Mag, Issue 16, September 2014.
“Resurrection Points” © 2014 Usman T. Malik. First publication: Strange Horizons, 4 August 2014.
“Death and the Girl from Pi Delta Zeta” © 2014 Helen Marshall. First publication: Lackington’s, Issue 1, Winter 2014.
“Dreamer” © 2014 Dragonsteel Entertainment LLC. First publication: Games Creatures Play, eds. Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner (Ace).
“Emotional Dues” © 2014 Simon Strantzas. First publication: Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (Hippocampus Press).
“The Still, Cold Air” © 2014 Steve Rasnic Tem. First publication: Here with the Shadows (Swan River Press).
“Kur-A-Len” © 2014 Lavie Tidhar. First publication: Black Gods Kiss (PS Publishing).
“Fragments from the Notes of a Dead Mycologist” by Jeff VanderMeer © 2014 VanderMeer Creative. First publication: Shimmer #18.
“Water in Springtime” © 2014 Kali Wallace. First publication: Clarkesworld, Issue 91, April 2014.
“The Floating Girls: A Documentary” © 2014 Damien Angelica Walters. First publication: Jamais Vu Issue Three, September 2014.
“The Nursery Corner” © 2014 Kaaron Warren. First publication: Fearsome Magics, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Solaris).
“And the Carnival Leaves Town” © 2014 A. C. Wise. First publication: Nightmare Carnival, ed. Ellen Datlow (Dark Horse Books).
About the Editor
Paula Guran is senior editor for Prime Books. She edited the Juno fantasy imprint from its small press inception through its incarnation as an imprint of Pocket Books. Guran edits the annual Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series as well as a growing number of other anthologies—thirty-seven published by the end of 2015—as well as more than fifty novels and single-author collections.
In an earlier life she produced weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (winning two Stokers, an IHG award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination), edited Horror Garage (earning another IHG and a second World Fantasy nomination), and has contributed reviews, interviews, and articles to numerous professional publications. Mother of four, mother-in-law of two, grandmother to one (with another on the way), she lives in Akron, Ohio.