Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan

  The worry that he felt now was nebulous and terrible.

  Again, Manmark struck the big camels with his whip, and he screamed at everyone, telling them, “We need to hurry. Hurry!”

  But the wagon was massive and one camel short, and there was still a long, empty distance to cover. The curtain of dust was nearly upon the motionless train, and inside it were dozens, or perhaps hundreds of aboriginal men riding on the backs of the half-wild ponies that they preferred to ride—an entire tribe galloping toward the treasures that Manmark would never see again.

  9

  She spoke quietly, with force.

  “My favorite fable of all promises that the dragons will come again to this world. They will rise up out of the Earth to claim what has always been theirs, and only those men and women who help them will be spared. All the other people of the world will be fought and killed and eaten. Only the chosen few will be allowed to live as they wish, protected beneath the great wings of the reawakened gods.”

  Zephyr rubbed his sore head, trying to focus his mind. But really, no amount of cleverness or any promise of money would help now. Even with a splitting headache, he understood that inescapable lesson.

  Speaking to the man wearing dragon scales, she said, “Your ugly people came into my country and stole everything of worth. You gave us disease and drink, and you are murdering our herds. But now I intend to destroy everything you have built here, and my children will take back all the lands between the seas.”

  She was a clever, brutal girl, Zephyr decided. And she had done a masterful job of fooling everyone, including him.

  Barrow turned and stared at the oncoming riders. He had pulled off his armored mask, but he was still breathing hard, winded by his fight and terrified. He might defeat half a dozen mercenaries, if he was lucky. But not a nation of wild men and women armed with rifles and a communal rage.

  “You need me,” he muttered.

  The young woman didn’t respond. It was Zephyr who said, “What do you mean? Who needs you?”

  “She does,” Barrow announced. Then he pointed at the riders, adding, “If they want to help themselves, they should accept my help.”

  The woman laughed and asked, “Why?”

  “When I was a boy,” said Barrow, “I kept baby birds. And I learned that my little friends would take my food and my love best if I wore a sock on my hand, painting it to resemble their lost mothers and fathers.”

  The rumbling of hooves grew louder, nearer.

  “I’m a big man in this big costume,” he remarked. “This costume is bigger than anything any of your people can wear, I would think. And I’m brave enough to do stupid things. And you will have seven dragons to care for now… to feed and protect, and to train, if you can… and wouldn’t you like to take along somebody who’s willing to risk everything on a daily basis…?”

  Zephyr laughed quietly now.

  Clearly, this Barrow fellow was at least as surprising as the young woman, and maybe twice as bold.

  The woman stared at the man dressed as a dragon, a look of interest slowly breaking across her face.

  Zephyr had to laugh louder now.

  Dust drifted across the scene, thick and soft, muting the sound of their voices. And then the woman turned to her people, shouting to be heard.

  “I have dragons to give you!” she called out.

  “Eight, as it happens! Eight dragons to build a new world…!”

  Berlin

  Charles de Lint

  Charles de Lint was born in The Netherlands but has lived most of his life around the city of Ottawa, Ontario. He sold his first stories in the late 1970s, and became a full-time writer in 1983. His many books include Moonheart, winner of the first Crawford Fantasy Award, and first in the popular series revolving around the imaginary city of Newford, which includes collections Moonlight and Vines, Tapping the Dream Tree, and Muse and Reverie, and novels Memory & Dream, Trader, Someplace to be Flying, Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, Spirit in the Wires and Widdershins.

  De Lint’s writing is often labelled “urban” or “contemporary” fantasy, and is credited with helping to make the subgenre popular, though he has written high fantasy in The Riddle of the Wren and others, and has published horror beginning with Mulengro. A fifteen-time World Fantasy Award finalist, he won in 2000 for Moonlight and Vines. De Lint’s most recent novel is The Mystery of Grace, and coming up is a new collection, The Best of Charles de Lint.

  Fifty years from now, Elfland came back.

  It stuck a finger into a large city, creating a borderland between our world and that glittering realm with its elves and magic. As the years went by the two worlds remained separate, co-existing only in that place where magic and reality overlap. A place called Bordertown.

  Offering dragons quarter is no good,

  they regrow all their parts & come on again,

  they have to be killed.

  - John Berryman

  ONE

  Long after midnight and there was no escape.

  Three Bloods caught Nicky in the free flophouse he ran for the Diggers down in Tintown—that part of Soho to which the hobos tended to gravitate. They had silver Mohawks shot through with orange and black streaks, ice stones glittering in their ears, black leathers. The two males held Nicky on the floor while the third took a small metal container from her pocket. She held it in front of Nicky’s face and gave it a gentle shake.

  Shucka-shuck.

  “Got something for you, Nicky,” she said. Her thin-lipped smile never reached her eyes.

  Nicky struggled in his captors’ grip, then froze when a new shadow filled the doorway of the room. A tall Blood stood there, but he wasn’t a punk. His long silver hair fell to his shoulders and his clothes were pure elvin cut, made from some sleek and glimmering material that there was no name for this side of the border. A High Born. Not a Bordertowner, but straight out of glittering Elfland. He took a step into the room.

  Nicky’s blood went cold when the candlelight picked out the tall Blood’s features.

  It was Long Lankin, the murdering knight. Nicky had only seen him once before when Tam Sharper pointed out the High Born to him at an outdoor concert in Fare-you-well Park. There was something in the Blood’s hawk-like features and cold eyes that would never let you forget him, once you’d seen him.

  Shucka-shuck.

  Nicky’s gaze flickered back to the woman and the container she held.

  “There’s a new kind of pearl in town, Nicky-boy,” she said.

  Her name was Ysa Cran and she ran a gang of Blood pushers who could provide you with whatever you wanted—smoke, fairy dust, coke, pearl, they had it all.

  “I don’t….” Nicky began.

  “Oh, everyone knows,” Ysa said. “Nicky broke his habit. Nicky dropped the pearl. Nicky’s a fucking saint.”

  She popped open the little metal container and shook its contents into the palm of her hand. Pink and mauve flakes glittered in the candlelight.

  “See, it’s something new,” Ysa said. “Not quite pearl, but not quite anything else either. Straight from Elfland, Nicky-boy. And it’s going to be good for business, you know? The business you’re taking away from me, you and the Diggers, trying to clean up everybody’s act. It’s called shake, Nicky-boy, and its going to be all over the streets in a few weeks. We’re doing, like, a test run tonight. And you know what’s really fine about this?”

  Nicky swallowed thickly, but made no reply.

  “It’s one hundred percent addictive, Nicky-boy.” This time the smile reached Ysa’s eyes. “You just gotta try it and you’re hooked. And that’s the secret of this biz, Nicky-boy. Repeat customers.” She gave the Bloods holding him a nod. “Open his mouth.”

  “N-nuh—”

  The Bloods had Nicky’s mouth open before he could spit out a word. He struggled frantically in their grip, but they were too strong for him.

  “You can smoke it,” Ysa said conversationally. “You can powder it up and snor
t it like pearl. You can swallow it. You can stick it up your ass, Nicky-boy. Any way you take it, it’s a straight mainline back to that place you left behind when you dropped the pearl. Remember, Nicky-boy? Remember how it felt to be on top of the world, fucking-A?”

  There were tears in Nicky’s eyes as she cupped her hand and funneled the shake into his mouth. He gagged, trying to spit it out, but she rubbed his throat with smooth cool fingers and he swallowed reflexively.

  “You can let him go now,” she told her companions.

  The two Bloods dropped his arms and Nicky sprang to his feet, lunging for her. She batted him casually aside and he skidded across the floor. Her companions moved towards him, but she shook her head.

  “He’s flying now,” she said.

  And it was true. Nicky lay where he’d fallen. From behind them, Long Lankin stepped over to the boy and rolled him over with a shiny black boot. Nicky’s eyes were glazed. Spittle trickled from a corner of his mouth.

  “You see, Corwyn?” Ysa said. “You feed this shit to a townie and they’re gone before it’s halfway down their throat.”

  Long Lankin nodded. “And the most amusing thing is that they will actually pay to have this done to them.”

  Nicky lay staring up at them, trying to focus, trying to get up, but he was long gone. Flying high. Fucking-A.

  “Well?” Ysa asked the High Born. “Do we get the contract or what?”

  Long Lankin nodded. “Exclusive—for three months. The first shipment will be delivered by the end of the week.”

  Ysa tried not to let her satisfaction show. “Sounds good.”

  “But finish up here first,” Long Lankin said. He gave Nicky a last look, a vague smile flickering in his silver eyes, then he turned and left the room.

  The Bloods waited till they could see him on the street below, walking away from the building, before they really let loose with some whoops.

  “All right!” Nabber shouted. “Ysa—you’ve got the balls, that’s all I can say.”

  Teddy Grim nodded. “Dealing with Lankin—that’s like dicing with the dragons, man. But, hot shit, you pulled it off!”

  Ysa just grinned. She screwed the top back on the little container of sample shake and knelt down beside Nicky.

  Shucka-shuck.

  “How’s it going, Nicky-boy? You met God yet?”

  She ran the long nails of one hand down his cheek. Silver nail polish glittered in the candlelight.

  Nicky stared up at her, eyes focused now, but blurred with tears. The shake was burning through him—it was good, oh Jesus, it was so good. But there was a part of him that remembered. He’d been a junkie with nothing going for him till the Diggers pulled him back. He’d gone through hell breaking the hold the pearl had on him. Vomiting his guts, day after day. Cramps and seizures. Shaking. Headaches sharp as amps feeding back at full volume….

  And then he was clean.

  Two years he was clean. Two years he worked helping others through that hell. Helped the Diggers clothe and feed the hobos and runaways, the lost and the lonely. Helped talk down the junkies, dry out the alkies. Helped the people who were going to throw it all away because they were hurting, or burnt out, or the hundred other reasons that people could find to kill themselves. And now….

  He could hear Ysa’s voice, though she wasn’t speaking.

  There’s a new kind of pearl in town….

  Oh yeah. Didn’t he know it? The shake was riding through his body like an old friend. He could feel the pearl glow, and behind it, kicking in every few seconds, speedy little rushes that made him feel like he was coming. Flying high. Long gone.

  One hundred percent addictive….

  He couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t go through it again. He’d already been to hell. He couldn’t go back. He….

  Shucka-shuck.

  Ysa shook the container, a mocking glitter in her silver Blood eyes.

  “Here, Nicky-boy,” she said, and she stuffed the shake container into his pocket. “You’re going to be needing this.”

  She stood up. Nicky couldn’t take his eyes from her. Goddamn Bloods. She looked so good. Goddamn Bloods. One like Ysa Cran could seduce you just by looking at you. He hated her. He wanted her.

  She could see it all in his eyes and all it did was make her laugh. “I don’t fuck junkies,” she told him. “I just fuck ’em around, Nicky-boy.”

  Nicky lunged up to a sitting position. The room spun, the candlelight turning into a kaleidoscope of pulsating colours, before everything settled down. Teddy Grim moved towards him, but Ysa waved him off.

  “Nicky-boy’s not going to hurt nobody,” she said. “Are you Nicky-boy?”

  Nicky struggled to his feet and stood swaying on a floor that breathed slightly, in a room that strobed with colour. The Bloods were brilliant flares of black and silver and orange.

  One hundred percent addictive….

  Cold turkey.

  He couldn’t do it again. No one could do it again. He staggered across the room towards the window.

  “Hey, Ysa,” Nabber began. “Maybe we’d better—”

  He and Teddy Grim started to move towards Nicky, but before they could cross the room, Nicky threw himself at the window.

  The glass shattered. It sounded like bells. The shards that cut him didn’t really hurt. They were just opening his body so that his blood could breathe. Wind was rushing by his ears. Everything was moving so fast. The whole world was moving. The ground was waiting to embrace him. It’d keep him safe from Ysa and Long Lankin and from the hell that’d be his if he tried to drop the pearl again….

  Falling was a speed rush and slow motion, all at the same time. When he hit the ground he had one stunned moment of shocked realization. I’m dea—

  And then everything was gone.

  “Hol-ee fuck,” Nabber said.

  The three Bloods looked out the window. It was a three story drop to the street below. Nicky’s small body lay in a twist of strange angles.

  “Come on,” Ysa said finally. “Let’s burn this place down. The Diggers are going to have to realize that they’re out of the helping people business. People get helped, they’re worth shit to us, right?”

  Her companions nodded.

  “So let’s do it.”

  Later, out on the street, while the Diggers’ free flophouse went up in flames, Ysa stood over Nicky’s broken body. Hobos and runaways were shuffling and staggering around them, milling in a panic while the building burned. Grey smoke rose up to meet the lightening skies of the coming dawn. Ysa took a flat piece of lacquered wood from her pocket and glanced at the dragon embossed on it, black against red, before flipping it onto Nicky’s body. Teddy Grim gave her a questioning look.

  “Maybe they’ll think one of Dragontown’s tongs did him in,” she said.

  Teddy Grim, and then Nabber, smiled in appreciation. Laughing, they headed for the club district and one last round of brews.

  TWO

  There were just the two of them now.

  Everyone else had crashed by the time a grey dawn came crawling in over Soho. They sat on the rambling front porch of the Diggers’ House—the main house that sits in a rubbled lot equidistant from the Canal and Soho’s club district, just a spit away from New Asia. Two of them, still following where the music led them. Up all night, playing the blues.

  Berlin had a vintage Martin New Yorker six-string. Its tiny body fit comfortably in the curved hollow between her lap and breasts, while the neck was wide enough so that her fingers didn’t get tangled, but not so wide that her small hands couldn’t shape the chords. She was playing an easy-going G progression, violet eyes closed, head bobbing just slightly to the rhythm. Her hair was thick—a dark brown with green tints—and pulled back from her face with a pink scarf that made it stand up around her head like a halo.

  Well, if the good die young

  I said, the good die young

  She was singing, her voice surprisingly gruff and deep for her small frame an
d nineteen or so years. Joe Doh-dee-oh was accompanying her on the harmonica, leaning back against the porch railing across from her, a smile in his dark eyes.

  He looked to be in his late seventies, an old black man playing the blues. He wore a checkered shirt and faded jeans held up with bright red suspenders. His hair was a salty white, his brown wrinkled skin was a road-map of all the tunes he’d played through the years. He knew them all, and a few more besides.

  Now if the good die young

  Then I gotta be just as wicked as they come

  —uh-huh

  I gotta be

  Just as wicked as they come

  He sang along on the last line, then brought the harmonica back up to his mouth, chording on it while Berlin’s fingers did a walking riff up the neck of her guitar. By the time Berlin hit the final G chord, a double bar at the tenth fret, Joe was wailing a long finishing note.

  “Whoo-ee,” he said, cradling his harmonica on his lap. “That’s an old one.”

  Berlin grinned. “Learned that from Poppa Lightnin’—could that man play.”

  Joe didn’t say anything for a moment. Poppa Lightnin’ had died a long time ago—in the World beyond Bordertown—maybe only a decade or so after the Change. He gave her a curious look.

  “He made some good records,” Joe said finally.

  “I suppose he did. Hey, remember this?” She broke into a version of “Cold, Cold Feeling”.

  “Know it? I coulda wrote it,” Joe told her. “I’ve been there, Berlin. Makes for a good song, but you don’t much care for it when it’s going down.”

  He brought up his harmonica, but before he could join in, Berlin laid her hands across her guitar’s strings. In the sudden silence, they could hear the creak of wooden wheels.