Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  The dream skims the curve of my throat, scales the cliffside of my chin, teeters at the precipice of my lips.

  I dream of a blue world, a planet of oceans and a vastness of clouds, of being hurled into that vastness.

  I feel the sledgehammer forces on my bones as the core propulsion stage engines and boosters of the primary launch system ignite and burn.

  I dream of orbit, the expended external tanks unlatching from the inter-stage structures and floating into blackness.

  I dream of the secondary solid rocket boosters with their multiple segments, each thrusting at twenty million foot-pounds, hurling her farther into the void. She dreams of the cryogenic propulsion stages, the re-ignition of the upper-stage engines and advanced boosters, the quad nuclear thermal rocket engines gunning with the tremor of a thunderclap.

  I dream of a gaseous planet, larger than my home, a great world of liquid and gas without a surface, swirling in tremendous cyclones and lightning storms. Across its face range clouds of ammonia crystals, banded in zones of light and darkness.

  I dream of an ice moon, smaller than my Moon, a moon of silicate rock with an upper crust of frozen water and a salty liquid ocean underneath the ice. Its surface is spiked with icy penitentes carved by sunlight from fissures in the ice. Dark streaks of lineae cross and re-cross across the globe, fractured ridges in the ice from its plate tectonics and the tidal flexing of its mother planet.

  I dream of a world of oceans and a vastness of clouds, a blue planet.

  One day I will wake.

  Gravity will reclaim this ship of my dream, and all around me the fluorocarbon mixture will swirl away like a whirlpool at my feet.

  My eyes will open, and the dream I am dreaming will end, the frayed edges of the filmstrip flapping like the end of a cinematic reel.

  I will sit, panting, regurgitating the last of the amniotic fluid from my lungs.

  I will sit, look around me, watch the others raising the lids on their enclosures, fighting their sleep, rising, eyes closed and open, exhausted and dazed, some still lying in a dream.

  I will go out from the ship of my dream, out to the blue planet.

  And there will be that peaceable kingdom, where I shall put my hands upon the head of the ram, where clouds of doves feed on the clovers of the plain, where the wolf grazes with the lamb.

  And this is how we will begin.

  THE END

  * * *

  For more titles by Samuel Peralta

  www.samuelperalta.com

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  About the Author

  Samuel Peralta is a physicist and storyteller. His writing has been spotlighted in Best American Poetry, selected for Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and has won multiple awards, including the Palanca Award for Literature. He is the creator and series editor of the acclaimed Future Chronicles collection of speculative anthologies, with over a score of bestselling titles. Apart from his publishing projects, he remains heavily involved in the high-technology industry, and is an ardent supporter and producer of independent films.

  The Zoo at the End of the World is his first novel, and the premier title in his series The Year of the Comet.

  Read More from Samuel Peralta

  www.samuelperalta.com

  The following is the novel “IRON TAMER” by Tom Shutt. We hope you’ll enjoy it and check out his other work.

  Please note that during the writing of this novel, Tom Shutt passed away and was unable to finish Iron Tamer. To honor Tom, the Dominion Rising authors wanted to include his novel in the set as a 23rd Bonus Novel. Rest in peace, dear friend.

  Iron Tamer

  A Special Feature

  Tom Shutt

  “A boy discovers his skill with iron goes far beyond the forge.”

  Mal, a cursed boy from the town of Point, is convicted of killing a forest spriggan and sentenced to take the deathly mountain walk with a thief girl named Arwin.

  They live, but with no coin or food, they reluctantly band together to survive. When Mal narrowly escapes capture from the law by unexpectedly manipulating iron with magic, he draws the attention of the Empire’s highest guard—dangerous men. A skilled, royal tracker is on Mal’s tail and will stop at nothing to track him down.

  1

  Mal!”

  The sound of my name being called woke me from my restless slumber, and I lurched up in my cot. That turned out to be a bad idea, as I smacked the ridge of my brow squarely against a solid oak beam, and stars danced in my vision as I staggered to my feet.

  “Mal!” called out Answorth again, louder this time. He’d wake half the village before he’d bother with the effort of walking a dozen feet to retrieve me himself. Of course, it could very well have been my curse that was the reason for him staying away.

  A dirty pewter plate hung in place of a true mirror, seeing as how glass was difficult to come by this deep in the mountains, but it did a well-enough job in its own right. Like my name, the face that stared back now didn’t belong to me. Not knowing my true face seemed to be another aspect of the curse, but it was one I could live with. A grim-faced, hawk-eyed, scary-looking man tracked my movements as I got dressed.

  “If you aren’t out here in the next five seconds, boy, then I’ll have your teeth!” Answorth threatened.

  That’s a weird thing for him to want, I thought. But it would be next to impossible to eat the game we hunted without teeth, so I figured it was a fair enough suggestion to get me moving. I left my small, bare room, parting the sheer curtain of cloth that kept me separated from everyone else.

  Answorth, a lumpy mound of fat and muscle that somehow constituted a grown man, was resting on his favorite chair next to the fire, which he was coaxing to life with increasingly larger sticks and bramble. I say ‘resting’ because the exercise of rolling out of bed had apparently left him breathless. Small clouds escaped his lips with each labored exhale, and his strained lungs seemed to suck in air like a river trout gasping for water.

  “I can tend to the fire,” I offered, “if you need to go join the others for the hunt.”

  “Shut it, you cheeky little bastard,” Answorth growled, his mustache vibrating with each word. He obviously wasn’t going anywhere fast. “Because of you, we might not get any meat this week.”

  I stopped short and just gaped at him. “You mean they’ve already left?”

  Answorth nodded. “A couple minutes ago, Beyland and a dozen others. They took the middling path into the Grimwood, so you’d better hurry before they’re too far to catch.”

  A rock formed in the pit of my stomach, making me feel heavy and hollow at the same time. “The…the Grimwood?”

  “What are you waiting for? Grab your stick and go after them!”

  I considered the slender staff that I had left leaning against the frame of the door, and my eyes slid to the more attractive sheath of the sword hanging next to it.

  “Don’t you even think about it, boy,” Answorth growled.

  But he was too late. In an instant, I lunged forward, taking both weapons under my arms. The sword was heavier than I had imagined it would be, and I only barely managed to dodge Answorth’s flailing, meaty arms as he tried to stop me. The door opened at my touch, though, and I felt the crisp mountain air and harsh morning sun battling to control the temperature of my face. Either way, it stung, but not nearly as badly as Answorth’s retribution would be once I returned.

  It was about time that I learned to use a sword, though. I couldn’t understand why Answorth forbade me from wielding an iron blade like the other boys my age. Sure, he wouldn’t be able to stand long enough to teach me how to fight, but he could easily have conscripted one of the older boys to be my mentor.

  No matter, I thought. I have iron now.

  This iron was tamed, its nasty temperament beaten o
ut long ago by the high flames and heavy hammer of a smithy in Kingsford. Its weight felt good in my hands—plural, since it was slightly too long and burdensome for me to comfortably wield in one hand. I tossed aside my wooden staff like an unwanted toy, finally understanding why Answorth called it a mere stick. I slung the leather strap over my shoulder and secured the sheathed blade along my back.

  “The middling road,” I reminded myself. We needed game, and the men of the Brigade were the best hunters around. I took off at a sprint, which soon became a mild jog as the weight of the iron slowed me down. My legs carried me past the iron tamer, past a dozen other thatch-roofed wooden huts like mine and Answorth’s, following the well-worn trail that led south out of Pointe.

  Straight into the Grimwood.

  2

  My first instinct was to turn around.

  The opening ranks of the Grimwood stood to face me, their tallest branches soaring hundreds of feet overhead. Limbs and leaves overlapped and intertwined in such a way that there was very little sunlight, if any, making it to the ground. Its shadowy embrace was a dark spot on an otherwise pristine stretch of valley.

  It would have been easy to flee to the relative safety of home. Answorth might whip me within an inch of my life, but I’d heard tales of much worse things happening to those who entered the Grimwood. Why in the world the Brigade had chosen such a dangerous path to hunt, I had no idea.

  But we needed the meat.

  A horn sounded from within the forest, a call that told me they had found a boar. I squashed my fear and charged through the tree line. The sword jostled on my back as I hopped over trip-roots and ducked under thorny, barbed vines that hung like serpents. I hadn’t encountered any beasts yet, and the Grimwood was already trying to dye the soil red with my blood.

  Maybe that’s a tad dramatic, I thought considerately, just before a branch reached out and wrapped around my arm.

  I definitely did not shriek in surprise. It was a mighty roar of defiance at this new threat.

  The grey limb gripped my wrist so tightly that I was sure my hand would pop off like a cork from a bottle. Its bark started to scrape away my skin as it worked its way up my arm. I struggled in vain against it, my undeveloped muscles too weak to break its hold.

  From the shadows of the tree, a woodland creature emerged. I don’t mean to say that it was any old creature inhabiting the woods; this monster was literally formed from the trees and the earth. A spriggan, no doubt, though this was the first one I’d ever seen. Over eight feet tall and apparently very angry, its eyes burned like swampfire as it bore down on me.

  The spriggan had no mouth, but a deep rumbling issued forth from it, and I felt the vibrations of it through our connected arms. Leaves erupted from the surrounding trees, startled from their perches by the spriggan’s roar. My feet slipped on mud that seemingly appeared out of nowhere, and I found myself being lifted off the ground. The sword started to slip from my shoulder, but I managed to catch it by the grip. Its sheath fell free to the mud, the too-heavy sword now dragging me down. It was in my left hand—my strong hand—but I knew that I was only strong enough to hold it for a few more seconds.

  Low and deep, the hunting horn sounded again, much closer this time. The Brigade was coming this way, apparently on the trail of their spotted prey. Unfortunately, the spriggan seemed to take no heed of their mortal hunt for food. Its limbs tightened with bone-crushing force around my forearm.

  I heard several shouts from the approaching men, and an arrow whistled through the air and burrowed its head in the spriggan’s side.

  The spriggan tossed me aside like a limp rag and turned its attention on the incoming threat.

  For the second time today, a flurry of stars obscured my vision as I tried to see my rescuers.

  Three men with thin, curved bows were lancing arrows faster than I could track, each one connecting with the spriggan. Well, almost each one. My head bobbed with fatigue, and an errant arrow embedded itself in the bark of the tree just above my head.

  The small stone arrowheads seemed to be ineffective against the creature, which raised its leafy head and unleashed another mouthless, unearthly roar of fury. A shockwave hit the archers, knocking them from their perched positions.

  Enough time had been bought for the rest of the Brigade to bring their arms to bear. Beyland, a tall, lithe warrior and leader of the Brigade, swung his broadsword with incredible speed. The spriggan batted the blade aside with one arm and pushed him back with the other, sending Beyland flying in a whoosh of air and scattered leaves. Like me, he collided solidly with a wide tree.

  Unlike me, he got up immediately and charged back into battle.

  Come on, I thought, urging my limbs to work together. The fingers in my left hand twitched.

  The Brigade converged on the spriggan, and it repelled them all with devastating blows from its massive limbs and some kind of earth magic that commanded the trees and soil around them. A handful of men had the boots sucked right off their feet by hungry mud, and another cluster fell prey to a line of trip-roots that appeared suddenly from the ground.

  I placed my hand on a gnarled root and started pulling myself to my feet.

  Beyland held his own for several seconds in a frenzied exchange before the spriggan thwacked him solidly over the head. The thick bark of its arm cracked with the impact, a resounding noise that made my body shiver in response. In a matter of minutes, the monster had effectively taken out the entire Brigade. Only one man was left standing, with the perfect opening to strike.

  Here goes everything.

  I cried out in frustration as I raised Answorth’s iron above my head, the too-long blade threatening to send me off balance. Two steps carried me within range, and I swung down with all of my remaining strength. The iron sliced through the outer bark and plunged into the corky layer below, embedding the sword to the hilt.

  A howl unlike any other knocked me from the spriggan’s back as the creature writhed and contorted in sudden agony. Its cry pierced to the core of my soul, filling my legs with pitch and making it impossible to move away from the terrifying sight before me.

  The spriggan twisted and turned as its overall outline became vague, transforming into a flurry of radiant leaves one moment and warping into a mind-bending tangle of vines the next. Answorth’s blade remained stuck in its back, though, seeming to block that portion of the spriggan’s body from changing its shape. The bark nearest the blade remained as fixed and unchanging as stone.

  Iridescent, algae-colored flames glared at me from the shadowy forest spirit as it retreated into the embrace of the distant trees. It faded from view just as the first of the Brigade’s men came to.

  “What in the hell was that?” one of the archers muttered.

  Another man reached out and lifted me to my feet, slinging one of his arms under my shoulder as my legs still felt as stable as those of a newborn.

  Beyland stomped into the glade with a newfound rage in his eyes. He stepped toward me with his tamed blade raised purposefully. “You’ve ruined everything, boy!”

  3

  String him up and flay him!”

  “Burn him!”

  “Cast ‘im in the river!”

  I looked around at the frenzied villagers. While I couldn’t say any of them were friends, these were people I’d grown up with, people I’d known my whole life. To hear them so eager for my blood…it gnawed at something deep inside of me.

  Beyland held me tightly by the collar as we walked to the center of town. The magistrate and his councilmen watched impotently as the leader of the Brigade worked the crowd into their current state of bloodlust.

  “For too long, we have allowed this cursed thing to live among us,” Beyland shouted. He threw me to the ground, and two of the other hunters pressed my face into the dirt as they wrenched my arms painfully behind my back. “We should have thrown him to the wolves after the fire!”

  Cries of accord rose up from the mob.

  “Fire with fi
re,” one woman shrieked. “Put him on the stake!”

  “Make him into a steak,” suggested the man beside her.

  “He should take the Walk!” shouted another man.

  Beyland’s blade slid from its sheath, and even in the faint shimmer of the firelight dancing along its length, I could see the reflected image of the hawk-eyed man glaring back at me.

  I’m cursed, and now I’m going to die for it.

  I prayed to whatever gods there were, but they’d never answered me before.

  “Brigadier,” the magistrate said, stepping forward. “Of what crime do you accuse the boy?”

  “Theft, trespassing, and murder,” Beyland answered without hesitation. The crowd murmured and gasped at the last declaration.

  “Murder?!” I tried to raise my head, but was quickly forced back down. I heard one of the archer nock an arrow.

  “Try it again,” he taunted.

  “Silence!” ordered the magistrate, but Beyland turned to address the crowd at large.

  “You all deserve to hear the truth of his crimes,” he told them. “He took tamed iron that was not his own, a fact which was confirmed by his loyal and benevolent guardian. With this stolen blade, he recklessly barged into the Grimwood—without the consent of the council, I might add—and threatened one of the spirits within.”

  “That’s not what happened,” I snarled. “You’re a liar!”

  Beyland’s voice lowered, and the crowd hushed to hear what he said next. “One of my bravest men was slain in the defense of this boy,” he told them. “This worthless, cursed, wretched excuse for a coward cost the Brigade the valuable prize of its hunt, taking another man’s life so that he could…do what?” Beyland rounded on me now, and I could see the whites of his eyes as he continued his tirade. “Disturb the fragile arrangement we have with the forest’s guardians?”