Sword Stone Table

by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)

  If some producer was pulling the strings on this, they knew all his secrets—even the ones he had never told Arturo.

  * * *

  —

  Now it was morning, the appointed hour. He’d been left at the lift to enter the Green Chapel alone. It was an astonishing place. The Green Knight before him dismounted and drew his sword. Gavin had meant to look up the story, he remembered, as he didn’t know his lines. What was next? And where was his sword? He looked around. And then, remembering he was on camera, he just asked: “Where is my sword?”

  The Green Knight tilted his head, a motion that suggested he was smirking under his visor; Gavin could just feel it. The Green Knight reached for his saddle and unfastened a sheathed second sword, smaller and less elaborate. He tossed it to Gavin, and with sweating fingers, Gavin caught it.

  A mist rose off the lake then, separating them. “Come on!” Gavin shouted to the wind. “This is not fair! Arturo! Best friends don’t—”

  Out of the mist appeared a Black woman on horseback, dressed in a black silk gown. Her horse was the color of the water in the lake behind her. She drew up before him. “Get on quickly and I’ll get you to safety,” she said, and lacking any better ideas, Gavin did. Up onto her saddle he went, and off they galloped, over the meadow and into the woods.

  His rescuer wore her hair in two long shining braids like whips that reached her waist. Gavin leaned back, self-conscious of pressing against a woman he didn’t know. They rode at a speed that surprised him, quickly reaching the forest, where they followed a trail that brought them to a castle of black stone, the same as the Raven’s Nest. The doors opened, and Gavin recalled that Gawain’s part of the story involved staying at a castle. And so here he was. As the castle doors opened, Gavin recalled a detail from Athur’s story: Gawain stayed in a castle. And so here he was.

  “You’ll want to dismount first,” she said as groomsmen appeared and took the horse’s reins. He did so.

  “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome to Raven’s End. We’ll make you at home. You’ll want to bathe and change for dinner. The chamberlain will show you to your rooms.” She gestured at one of the men in black silk livery a bit like hers.

  “What…?”

  “Yes?” She paused and took in a long breath. She seemed entirely inside the game. This had levels to it he hadn’t guessed at. He’d thought he’d be done by now, but there was this…castle. The horses. The lake. How far did this game go? Gavin told himself he’d stop pricing everything at every moment. He was used to wealthy people on Mars, or he thought he was. But this was on another scale, one he no longer knew how to tabulate.

  “Who is my host?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Me. I’m so sorry, I forgot to introduce myself.” She pulled off the long black leather riding gloves she’d been wearing and handed them to a groomsman. “I’m Morgan.” She extended a hand, and he shook it. “I’ll explain more at dinner.”

  “Are we safe? Where is my…opponent?”

  “You’re safe here,” she said, which wasn’t an answer. “I’d say ‘trust me,’ but you already did. You’re here, aren’t you?” And then she laughed, turned on her heel, and walked toward the main entrance with the slow stride of someone who did this every day.

  * * *

  —

  The rooms—he had a suite!—were beautifully appointed in what seemed to be a period style. Was the furniture all made here? Sent? Who shipped all this to Mars? A steaming bath, something he almost never had, was waiting for him, and clean clothes in his size were draped over a chair. He scrubbed and let himself slide down until his head was submerged. He looked at the ceiling from underwater, bubbles slipping slowly from his lips. They wavered, tiny moons in flight from his mouth.

  He was finally having fun.

  After drying and dressing, he looked at himself in a massive mirror set into the door of an armoire and blew himself a kiss. A black silk suit like everyone else, but also a long and elegant black cape covered in the most beautiful white birds—peacocks? Their tail feathers were made of brocade and spreading to meet one another along the hem. A bell rang—calling him, he assumed, to dinner—so he stepped into the hallway. A footman was waiting for him, a handsome boy, probably a teenager. “May I show you to the dining hall?” he asked, and Gavin nodded.

  The cape flared out behind him as he walked the black stone hall. It was lit with candles, which burned with what seemed to be real flames.

  “And who are you?” he asked the young man, who already seemed older, as they advanced down the hall. “Does no one introduce themselves?” His guide smiled, closed one eye, and held a single finger to his mouth.

  They turned the corner and entered a top-floor gallery to an atrium—seemingly impossible—as if the inner courtyard of the castle had been enclosed. Another lush interior; trees grew placidly in this garden, and a dinner table was set at the center. His host sat already at the table, at one end, and he was brought to the other, some twelve feet away. “Hello,” Morgan said. “I see the bath suited you and the clothes fit.” More candles lined the gleaming wood of the table, and a silver dragon with emerald eyes sat as the centerpiece. Waiters appeared and offered him wine, which he accepted. As he tasted the wine, he recalled this was part of the game, and he noticed his unnamed guide had vanished. She was waiting for him, glass raised, and he returned her gesture. They drank. As he reached for his napkin, he noticed a black silk sash there.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “If you wear it, it will provide you with protection from all harm.”

  He held it up in the light of the room. “All harm.” He could nearly see through it; there was what looked like an intricate tapestry of wires within the cloth. It was beautiful, for sure.

  “All harm.” She held up her hand then. “Even a green sword.” A waiter approached. “Please set another place; we’re to be joined shortly.”

  Gavin raised one eyebrow.

  “For it to work, you must wear it secretly. And tell no one you have it.”

  He nodded, then folded it into a small square that he set into a pocket of his cape, which he had not surrendered to the footmen on arrival.

  Footsteps announced their new guest’s arrival, and Gavin stood to greet him. It wasn’t the most surprising thing to happen in the past few days, certainly, but there he was. Manav. Smiling as if it was ordinary for them to see each other. As if they hadn’t been silent for so very long. Gavin felt a pang through his whole body, surging until he was full of what he couldn’t deny—that he loved Manav, missed him, had feared he was dead. But he was here, at the heart of this impossible place. And apparently he was known to Gavin’s host, who kissed his cheek as he first greeted her, then made his way to stand in front of Gavin.

  Would the sash protect him from even this? Gavin stood frozen as Manav leaned in and hugged him fiercely, the longed-for body pressing against his, hanging on as if—yes, it was for life.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he said into Manav’s ear.

  Manav pulled back and raised his hands. “Here.”

  * * *

  —

  Manav met Ásdís the year before, and they hit it off right away. He went over to Two Moons to visit her and never left. She was not quite a madwoman but rather someone who didn’t accept the obstacles that otherwise seemed so clear to everyone else. Ásdís had empathized immediately with Manav’s fears of coming out to his conservative parents, and with his need to find a place to remake himself away from the incessant eyes of cameras and everyone who knew him—even, yes, Gavin. She’d asked if he wanted an adventure, and he’d said, “Fuck yes.” Manav had always had a talent for environments, and in Ásdís he found a patron for his art. She delighted in it and in him. She loved his flair for the romantic and the dramatic, and had the resources to make real all his ideas for games and their environments; he was
the architect of this conservatory, this castle, this lake, even the mist. The horses were clones, grown here on Mars at great expense. And Morgan? A colleague whose name really was Morgan—and he’d recruited her for the game because of it. It made total sense, Gavin understood, and yet he couldn’t help feeling something between jealousy and fury when he thought of the long mystery of Manav’s disappearance.

  “We thought maybe you were dead is the thing,” he managed to say calmly. Currently it was what passed for the middle of the night. Morgan had excused herself hours ago, leaving them to “catch up,” as she’d put it.

  Manav frowned. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “We’ve known you our whole lives,” Gavin said, as if all their friends were there, too. “And then you were gone, no word, nothing. We wondered if you hated us. Or if you died outside of the signal.” Was this being broadcast?

  “We’re not on broadcast,” Manav said, as if reading his mind. He touched the silk sash Gavin had been gifted. “There are ways to block signals, you know.”

  “So what was all this for?”

  “You,” he said. “This was all just to get you alone. So I could let you in on my secret.”

  “You’re the Green Knight?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Sort of. That was an android unit we’re testing. Eventually users from Earth will be able to ‘inhabit’ the body and have adventures here on Mars. Remotely.”

  “So that…when I knocked your head off…”

  “Yes. Excellent test results from that, actually. Great data.”

  “Are you…in hiding?”

  Manav shook his head. “I made a new life for myself. I made this world. I’ve just…Only you know.” He drew a circle on the table with his right pointer finger and then a line across it—the Valles Marineris. He kept drawing it, over and over. “I got lonely, you see. For you.”

  “Couldn’t you have just texted?”

  “If I’d told you about all of this, what—in a text? Would you have believed me?”

  “Probably? I guess we’ll never know.” Gavin breathed deep. “What’s the next part of this story?”

  “This is when I tell you that whatever you find here you must give me three times.”

  “What do I find?”

  “Kisses.”

  “Are you—is this a put-on?”

  “No. That really happens.”

  Manav stood and walked to him, and his face had the impish smile that Gavin remembered so well. Had missed so much. He was so relieved to have found his friend, but he couldn’t help but feel guilty when he thought of Arturo, left behind.

  Then again, Arturo had billions of fans to keep him company. When had he last given this much thought to what Gavin wanted or needed? When had anyone taken trouble like this, tried this hard, to get Gavin’s attention?

  Manav bent down, his face soft, radiant, worried. “I’m sorry, Gavin,” he said. These were perhaps the first truly human words he’d said since he’d arrived. “I overdo it.”

  Gavin laughed. He held Manav’s hands and looked up at his beautiful face, which descended to press against his own. The tears he felt against his brow, the only water in this place he could trust. “Gawain really kisses the Green Knight?”

  “It’s a long story,” Manav said, pushing his face into his neck. The warmth of him was real. “But yes. Why else would I choose it?” He drew back, setting a finger on his nose. “Now keep your promise,” he said.

  And Gavin did.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would never have happened without the help and support of many people. A big thank-you to Kate McKean, our agent, who saw the early potential in this project, and Preeti Chhibber, our first contributor, who took a chance on us and wrote a story with no guarantee it would ever be published.

  Writing may be a solitary activity, but editing an anthology is an incredibly collaborative one. A huge thank-you to each of our contributors and to our editor (and partner in crime), Anna Kaufman, who understood what we were trying to do on a fundamental level from the very start. Anna, working with you has been a dream. Thank you also to the team at Vintage Books: production editor Kayla Overbey, copy editor Tricia Callahan, proofreaders Nancy Inglis and Hayley Jozwiak, cover artist and designer Perry De La Vega, text designer Nicholas Alguire, publicist Julie Ertl, marketing director Jess Deitcher, and our wonderful sales team.

  From Swapna: I couldn’t have done this without the support of friends and colleagues, especially Preeti, Eric Smith, and Melody Schreiber, who were always there with a kind word and advice. A huge thank-you as well to my parents and my sister, Swathi, who never quite understood my King Arthur obsession but were always happy to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail with me for the umpteenth time. And to my husband, who’s always believed in me and supported me, even when I don’t quite believe in myself. Finally, thank you to my squishy muffin, Jenn, who had this brilliant idea and thought I would be the person to help her make it happen.

  From Jenn: My first shout-out has to be to the Party Wizards, who know who they are, for the early encouragement and enthusiasm. The biggest of hugs to Swapna, without whom this idea would have been relegated to the dustbin of my brain—you are not only an amazing friend but a creative force for good in this world. Thanks to Sarah and Preeti, who, in addition to contributing stories, offered much-needed feedback and advice at key moments. So many friends, family, and colleagues supported me during the editing process and offered a listening ear, a nudge in the right direction, and/or snacks—thanks to them all. Particular thanks to Emma Hollier for all those brainstorming graveyard walks and to Rebecca Joines Schinsky, who is my first and last cheerleader. Finally, thanks to Roger Ainslie—you are my favorite.

  About the Editors

  Swapna Krishna is a space, technology, and pop culture writer and journalist. Her work has been published at Engadget, the Verge, Polygon, StarTrek.com, StarWars.com, the A.V. Club, and more. You can find her on Twitter at @skrishna.

  Jenn Northington is a former bookseller and a current reviewer, podcaster, and editor. She’s been published various places, including Selfish magazine and Book Riot, where she also works wrangling editorial operations. You can find her primarily on Instagram at @iamjennIRL.

  About the Contributors

  Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh and of the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, T magazine, Slate, and Vulture, among others. He is the winner of a 2003 Whiting Award for Fiction, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose, and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.

  Preeti Chhibber is a children’s author, speaker, and freelance writer. She has written for SYFY, Book Riot, Polygon, the Nerds of Color, and the Mary Sue, among others. Her latest, Orientation (Marvel: Avengers Assembly #1), published in August 2020, and her first picture book, A Jedi You Will Be, was released in fall 2020. You can find her cohosting the podcast Desi Geek Girls. She’s appeared on several panels at New York Comic Con and San Diego Comic-Con and on-screen on the SYFY Network. Honestly, you probably recognize her from one of several BuzzFeed “look at these tweets” Twitter lists. She usually spends her time reading a ridiculous amount of young adult but is also ready to jump into most fandoms at a moment’s notice. You can follow her on Twitter @runwithskizzers or learn more at PreetiChhibber.com.

  Roshani Chokshi is the author of commercial and critically acclaimed books for middle grade and young adult readers that draw on world mythology and folklore. Her work has been nominate
d for the Locus and Nebula Awards and has frequently appeared on best-of-the-year lists from Barnes & Noble, Forbes, BuzzFeed, and more. Her New York Times bestselling series include the Star-Touched Queen duology, the Gilded Wolves duology, and the Pandava series, the first book of which, Aru Shah and the End of Time, was recently optioned for film by Paramount Pictures.

  Sive Doyle is a teacher by day and a writer by night. Originally from Ireland, she lives in New York.

  Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times bestselling and World Fantasy Award–winning author of eight books in a variety of genres, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation and The Mere Wife. Her short stories have been short-listed for the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards and regularly appear in year’s-best anthologies.

  Daniel M. Lavery is the former cofounder of the Toast and is the current “Dear Prudence” advice columnist at Slate. His previous books include Something That May Shock and Discredit You, The Merry Spinster, and Texts from Jane Eyre.

  Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, as well as top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France, among other countries. Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, is the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, the Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers play the role of wizards. His debut collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, followed. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, the history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.