The Best of Kage Baker

by Kage Baker

  John listened to them chatting a while before dropping a friendly remark or two. By and by he joined the conversation, and pretty soon one of them asked him if he cared to go on the account.

  John, ever so grateful, said he’d like that very much indeed.

  They sailed next day, and had taken a galleon full of wine and silk before the week was out.

  The Ruby Incomparable

  The girl surprised everyone.

  ***

  To begin with, no one in the world below had thought her parents would have more children. Her parents’ marriage had created quite a scandal, a profound clash of philosophical extremes; for her father was the Master of the Mountain, a brigand and sorcerer, who had carried the Saint of the World off to his high fortress. It’s bad enough when a living goddess, who can heal the sick and raise the dead, takes up with a professional dark lord (black armor, monstrous armies and all). But when they settle down together with every intention of raising a family, what are respectable people to think?

  The Yendri in their forest villages groaned when they learned of the first boy. Even in his cradle, his fiendish tendencies were evident. He was beautiful as a little angel except in his screaming tempers, when he would morph himself into giant larvae, wolf cubs or pools of bubbling slime.

  The Yendri in their villages and the Children of the Sun in their stone cities all rejoiced when they heard of the second boy. He too was beautiful, but clearly good. A star was seen to shine from his brow on occasion. He was reported to have cured a nurse’s toothache with a mere touch, and he never so much as cried while teething.

  And the shamans of the Yendri, and the priests in the temples of the Children of the Sun, all nodded their heads and said: “Well, at least we have balance now. The two boys will obviously grow up, oppose each other and fight to the death, because that’s what generally happens.”

  Having decided all this, and settled down confidently to wait, imagine how shocked they were to hear that the Saint of the World had borne a third child! And a girl, at that. It threw all their calculations off and annoyed them a great deal.

  The Master and his Lady were surprised, too, because their baby daughter popped into the world homely as a little potato, by contrast with the elfin beauty of her brothers. They did agree that she had lovely eyes, at least, dark as her father’s, and she seemed to be sweet-tempered. They named her Svnae.

  So the Master of the Mountain swaddled her in purple silk, and took her out on a high balcony and held her up before his assembled troops, who roared, grunted and howled their polite approval. And that night in the barracks and servants’ hall, around the barrels of black wine that had been served out in celebration, the minions of the proud father agreed amongst themselves that the little maid might not turn out so ugly as all that, if the rest of her face grew to fit that nose and she didn’t stay quite so bald.

  And they at least were proved correct, for within a year Svnae had become a lovely child.

  ***

  On the morning of her fifth birthday, the Master went to the nursery and fetched his little daughter. He took her out with him on his tour of the battlements, where all the world stretched away below. The guards, tusked and fanged, great and horrible in their armor, stood to attention and saluted him. Solemnly he pulled a great red rose from thin air and presented it to Svnae.

  “Today,” he said, “my Dark-Eyed is five years old. What do you want most in all the world, daughter?”

  Svnae looked up at him with her shining eyes. Very clearly she said:

  “Power.”

  He looked down at her, astounded; but she stood there looking patiently back at him, clutching her red rose. He knelt beside her. “Do you know what Power is?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Power is when you stand up here and make all the clouds come to you across the sky, and shoot lightning and make thunder crash. That’s what I want.”

  “I can make magic for you,” he said, and with a wave of his gauntleted hand produced three tiny fire elementals dressed in scarlet, blue and yellow, who danced enchantingly for Svnae before vanishing in a puff of smoke.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” she said, “but no. I want me to be able to do it.”

  Slowly he nodded his head. “Power you were born with; you’re my child. But you must learn to use it, and that doesn’t come easily, or quickly. Are you sure this is what you really want?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

  “Not eldritch toys to play with? Not beautiful clothes? Not sweets?”

  “If I learn Power, I can have all those things anyway,” Svnae observed.

  The Master was pleased with her answer. “Then you will learn to use your Power,” he said. “What would you like to do first?”

  “I want to learn to fly,” she said. “Not like my brother Eyrdway. He just turns into birds. I want to stay me and fly.”

  “Watch my hands,” her father said. In his right hand he held out a stone; in his left, a paper dart. He put them both over the parapet and let go. The stone dropped; the paper dart drifted lazily down.

  “Now, tell me,” he said. “Why did the stone drop and the paper fly?”

  “Because the stone is heavy and the paper isn’t,” she said.

  “Nearly so; and not so. Look.” And he pulled from the air an egg. He held it out in his palm, and the egg cracked. A tiny thing crawled from it, and lay shivering there a moment; white down covered it like dandelion fluff, and it drew itself upright and shook tiny stubby wings. The down transformed to shining feathers, and the young bird beat its wide wings and flew off rejoicing.

  “Now, tell me,” said the Master, “Was that magic?”

  “No,” said Svnae. “That’s just what happens with birds.”

  “Nearly so; and not so. Look.” And he took out another stone. He held it up and uttered a Word of Power; the stone sprouted bright wings, and improbably flew away into the morning.

  “How did you make it do that?” Svnae cried. Her father smiled at her.

  “With Power; but Power is not enough. I was able to transform the stone because I understand that the bird and the stone, and even the paper dart, are all the same thing.”

  “But they’re not,” said Svnae.

  “Aren’t they?” said her father. “When you understand that the stone and the bird are one, the next step is convincing the stone that the bird and the stone are one. And then the stone can fly.”

  Svnae bit her lip. “This is hard, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Very,” said the Master of the Mountain. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a set of paints instead?”

  “Yes,” said Svnae stubbornly. “I will understand.”

  “Then I’ll give you books to study,” he promised. He picked her up and folded her close, in his dark cloak. He carried her to the bower of her lady mother, the Saint of the World.

  Now when the Lady had agreed to marry her dread Lord, she had won from him the concession of making a garden on his black basalt mountaintop, high and secret in the sunlit air. Ten years into their marriage her orchards were a mass of white blossom, and her white-robed disciples tended green beds of herbs there. They bowed gracefully as Svnae ran to her mother, who embraced her child and gave her a white rose. And Svnae said proudly:

  “I’m going to learn Power, Mama!”

  The Lady looked questions at her Lord.

  “It’s what she wants,” he said, no less proudly. “And if she has the talent, why shouldn’t she learn?”

  “But Power is not an end in itself, my child,” the Lady said to her daughter. “To what purpose will you use it? Will you help others?”

  “Ye-es,” said Svnae, looking down at her feet. “But I have to learn first.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be a healer, like me?”

  “I can heal people when I have Power,” said Svnae confidently. Her mother looked a little sadly into her dark eyes, but saw no shadow there. So she blessed her daughter, and sent her off to p
lay.

  ***

  The Master of the Mountain kept his promise and gave his daughter books to study, to help her decipher the Three Riddles of Flight. She had to learn to read first; with fiery determination she hurled herself on her letters and mastered them, and charged into the first of the Arcane texts.

  So well she studied that by her sixth birthday she had solved all three riddles, and was able at will to sprout little butterfly wings from her shoulders, wings as red as a rose. She couldn’t fly much with them, only fluttering a few inches above the ground like a baby bird; but she was only six. One day she would soar.

  Then it was the Speech of Animals she wanted to learn. Then it was how to move objects without touching them. Then she desired to know the names of all the stars in the sky: not only what men call them, but what they call themselves. And one interest led to another, as endlessly she found new things by which to be intrigued, new arts and sciences she wanted to learn. She spent whole days together in her father’s library, and carried books back to her room, and sat up reading far into the night.

  In this manner she learned to fly up to the clouds with her rose-red wings, there to ask an eagle what it had for breakfast, or gather pearls with her own hands from the bottom of the sea.

  And so the years flowed by, as the Master throve on his mountain, and the Saint of the World brought more children into it to confound the expectations of priests and philosophers, who debated endlessly the question of whether these children were Good or Evil.

  The Saint held privately that all her children were, at heart, Good. The Master of the Mountain held, privately and out loud too, that the priests and philosophers were all a bunch of idiots.

  Svnae grew tall, with proud dark good looks she had from her father. But there were no black lightnings in her eyes, as there were in his. Neither were her eyes crystal and serene, like her mother’s, but all afire with interest, eager to see how everything worked.

  And then she grew taller still, until she overtopped her mother; and still taller than that, until she overtopped her brother Eyrdway. He was rather peevish about it and took to calling her The Giantess, until she punched him hard enough to knock out one of his teeth. He merely morphed into a version of himself without the missing tooth, but he stopped teasing her after that.

  Now you might suppose that many a young guard might begin pining for Svnae, and saluting smartly as she passed by, and mourning under her window at night. You would be right. But she never noticed; she was too engrossed in her studies to hear serenades sung under her window. Still, they did not go to waste; her younger sisters could hear them perfectly well, and they noticed things like snappy salutes.

  This was not to say that Svnae did not glory in being a woman. As soon as she was old enough, she chose her own gowns and jewelry. Her mother presented her with gauzes delicate as cobweb, in exquisite shades of lavender, sea mist and bird-egg-blue; fine-worked silver ornaments as well, set with white diamonds that glinted like starlight.

  Alas, Svnae’s tastes ran to crimson and purple and cloth of gold, even though the Saint of the World explained how well white set off her dusk skin. And though she thanked her mother for the fragile silver bangles, and dutifully wore them at family parties, she cherished massy gold set with emeralds and rubies. The more finery the better, in fact, though her mother gently indicated that perhaps it wasn’t quite in the best of taste to wear the serpent bracelets with eyes of topaz and the peacock necklace of turquoise, jade and lapis lazuli.

  And though Svnae read voraciously and mastered the arts of Transmuta-

  tion of Metals, Divination by Bones and Summoning Rivers by their Secret Names, she did not learn to weave nor to sew; nor did she learn the healing properties of herbs. Her mother waited patiently for Svnae to become interested in these things, but somehow the flashing beam of her eye never turned to them.

  One afternoon the Master of the Mountain looked up from the great black desk whereat he worked, hearing the guards announce the approach of his eldest daughter. A moment later she strode into his presence, resplendent in robes of scarlet and peacock blue, and slippers of vermilion with especially pointy toes that curled up at the ends.

  “Daughter,” he said, rising to his feet.

  “Daddy,” she replied, “I’ve just been reading in the Seventh Pomegranate Scroll about a distillation of violets that can be employed to lure dragons. Can you show me how to make it?”

  “I’ve never done much distillation, my child,” said the Master of the Mountain. “That’s more in your mother’s line of work. I’m certain she’d be delighted to teach you. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Oh,” said Svnae, and flushed, and bit her lip, and stared at the floor. “I think she’s busy with some seminar with her disciples. Meditation Techniques or something.”

  And though the Master of the Mountain had never had any use for his lady wife’s disciples, he spoke sternly. “Child, you know your mother has never ignored her own children for her followers.”

  “It’s not that,” said Svnae a little sullenly, twisting a lock of her raven hair. “Not at all. It’s just that—well—we’re bound to have an argument about it. She’ll want to know what I want it for, for one thing, and she won’t approve of my catching dragons, and she’ll let me know it even if she doesn’t say a word, she’ll just look at me—”

  “I know,” said her dread father.

  “As though it was a frivolous waste of time, when what I really ought to be doing is learning all her cures for fevers, which is all very well but I have other things I want to be learning first, and in any case I’m not Mother, I’m my own person, and she has to understand that!”

  “I’m certain she does, my child.”

  “Yes.” Svnae tossed her head back. “So. Well. This brings up something else I’d wanted to ask you. I think I ought to go down into the world to study.”

  “But—” said the Master of the Mountain.

  “I’ve always wanted to, and it turns out there’s a sort of secret school in a place called Konen Feyy-in-the-Trees, where anybody can go to learn distillations. I need to learn more!”

  “Mm. But—” said the Master of the Mountain.

  She got her way. Not with temper, tears or foot-stamping, but she got her way. No more than a week later she took a bag, and her bow and quiver, and climbing up on the parapet she summoned her rose-red wings, that now swept from a yard above her dark head to her ankles. Spreading them on the wind, she soared aloft. Away she went like a queen of the air, to explore the world.

  Her father and mother watched her go.

  “Do you think she’ll be safe?” said the Saint of the World.

  “She’d better be,” said the Master of the Mountain, looking over the edge and far down his mountain at the pair of ogre bodyguards who coursed like armored greyhounds, crashing through the trees, following desperately their young mistress while doing their best not to draw attention to themselves.

  Svnae sailed off on the wind and discovered that, though her extraordinary heritage had given her many gifts, a sense of direction was not one of them. She cast about a long while, looking for any place that might be a city in the trees; at last she spotted a temple in a wooded valley, far below.

  On landing, she discovered that the temple was deserted long since, and a great gray monster guarded it. She slew the creature with her arrows, and went in to see what it might have been guarding. On the altar was a golden box that shone with protective spells. But she had the magic to unlock those spells, and found within a book that seemed to be a history of the lost race whose temple this was. She carried it outside and spent the next few hours seated on a block of stone in the ruins, intent with her chin on her fist, reading.

  Within the book, she read of a certain crystal ring, the possession of which would enable the wearer to understand the Speech of Water. The book directed her to a certain fountain an hour’s flight south of the temple, and fortunately the temple had a compass rose mosaic s
et in the floor; so she flew south at once, just as her bodyguards came panting up to the temple at last, and they watched her go with language that was dreadful even for ogres.

  Exactly an hour’s flight south, Svnae spotted the fountain, rising from a ruined courtyard of checkered tile. Here she landed, and approached the fountain with caution; for there lurked within its bowl a scaled serpent of remarkable beauty and deadliest venom. She considered the jeweled serpent, undulating round and round within the bowl in a lazy sort of way. She considered the ring, a circle of clear crystal, hard to spot as it bobbed at the top of the fountain’s jet, well beyond her reach even were she to risk the serpent. Backing away several paces, she drew an arrow and took aim. Clink!

  Her arrow shuddered in the trunk of an oak thirty paces distant, with the ring still spinning on its shaft. Speedily she claimed it and put it on, and straightaway she could understand the Speech of Water.

  Whereupon the fountain told her of a matter so interesting that she had to learn more about it. Details, however, were only to be had from a little blue man who lived in dubious hills far to the west. So away she flew, to find him…

  She had several other adventures and it was only by chance that, soaring one morning above the world, deep in conversation with a sea-eagle, she spotted what was clearly a city down below amongst great trees. To her inquiry, the sea-eagle replied that the city was Konen Feyy. She thanked it and descended through the bright morning, to a secluded grove where she could cast a glamour on herself and approach without attracting undue notice. Following unseen a league distant, her wheezing bodyguards threw themselves down and gave thanks to anyone who might be listening.

  ***

  The Children of the Sun dwelt generally in cities all of stone, where scarcely a blade of grass grew nor even so much as a potted geranium, preferring instead rock gardens with obelisks and statuary. But in all races there are those who defy the norm, and so it was in Konen Feyy. Here a colony of artists and craftsmen had founded a city in the green wilderness, without even building a comfortingly high wall around themselves. Accordingly, a lot of them had died from poisoned arrows and animal attacks in the early years, but this only seemed to make them more determined to stay there.