Elemental

by Steven Savile

  “Well, it is. I think, therefore I am, but what about the rest of you? It’s internally consistent and impossible to disprove.”

  “When I was a kid,” Nero said, “all the science fiction writers wrote stories about … vampires, time travel, robots, faster than light travel, all that stuff—”

  “Heinlein. Whatever Robert Heinlein wrote, everyone else had to imitate.”

  “And solipsism. Everyone wrote a solipsism story. They were all sort of alike. I mean, if you take it seriously, what have you got? No protagonists, no background, no external conflict—”

  “Yeah. Forty years I’ve been writing short stories and I never did anything with that.” Wayne got the sushi chef’s attention and ordered a California roll. “If I had it to do all over again I’d imagine a better short story market.”

  “You’d be God,” Nero said suddenly. “And God’s imagination would be failing. Wow. Think how powerful your imagination must have been, before you imagined you were a baby.”

  “Think how screwy the laws of physics would be getting, right about now.”

  “An expanding universe, speeding up. Einstein’s jigger factor gone all wrong. Dark matter. Dark energy. All just metaphors for death?”

  The sushi chef set their order in front of them: rice wrapped around avocado, bits of vegetable, and fish treated to imitate crab. Wayne mixed wasabi with soy sauce. He said, “Might be more interesting the other way around. First I’m God. I create a universe. I wait. Eventually there’s intelligence. Intelligence starts evolving ideas about the universe. I incorporate the good ones.”

  “You mean, for awhile there really was a steady-state universe?”

  “And a Zodiac. God was using star patterns for blackboard diagrams, a scheme for mapping out lives. Later there were black holes that didn’t evaporate until Hawking changed his mind. It’s all a collaboration! There was a nasty simplistic Hell at first, but then Dante started adding details. Since then everybody wants to improve on Dante, so now Hell is horrendously complicated.”

  “God wouldn’t need much of an imagination at all,” Nero said. “Just a sense of consistency. It doesn’t start with a Big Bang. It starts with Eden and then blooms.”

  They went through the California roll, then ordered monkfish liver. Wayne asked, “Who dreams up diseases?”

  “Oh … there’d be shamans, and then shamans would need to explain why people hurt. Now it’s priests on one side and medical researchers—” Nero looked up. “Something?”

  “I’m positive on prostate cancer.”

  “Damn.”

  He’d been trying to put it out of his head. “I went back to Doctor Wells this morning. Positive. My morbid imagination at work.”

  “Well, yeah, a solipsist would think that. Now you’ll have to dream up a psychiatrist to cure you of thinking you’ve got cancer.”

  “Maybe—”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t be making fun—”

  “Maybe I should dream up a friend. A psychiatrist is just a hired friend anyway, right?”

  “Have you talked to Sharon about this?”

  Wayne covered his ears. The tinnitus surged.

  He dreaded telling his wife. He didn’t have enough friends. Maybe he’d taken this solipsistic stuff too seriously when he was younger. He didn’t believe it now, and as for Nero, Nero had worked in a novel, long ago. Wayne had killed him off in the sequel and he wasn’t plausible today, Nero with his funny-hat eyebrows.

  It was time to stop talking to imaginary characters, time to talk to Sharon. Wayne paid the bill and left.

  The Wager

  BY KINLEY MACGREGOR

  Urban legend has it that Sherrilyn Kenyon and Kinley MacGregor arm wrestled to see who would be in this anthology … and Kinley won.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon is the New York Times bestselling author who reigns supreme over the paranormal worlds of her Dream-, Were-, and Dark-Hunters. She is also the creator of the Bureau of American Defense series, the first novel of which (BAD Attitude) launched in fall 2005. Her alter ego, Kinley MacGregor, takes credit for The Brotherhood of the Sword books, the MacAllister series, and many others. Between them they have more than twenty books in print, as well as countless stories, articles, and essays in collections and magazines around the world.

  “The Wager” is set in Kinley MacGregor’s new Lords of Avalon series (beginning in 2006 with Sword of Darkness)—an alternate-Arthurian fantasy of epic proportions. In the days after the battle of Camlann, Arthur is taken to the isle of Avalon. The sacred objects of Camelot that gave him his power have been scattered to protect them from evil. The Round Table is fractured. The good guys have retreated to Avalon to serve their fallen king and the surviving Penmerlin who came forward after Arthur’s Merlin mysteriously vanished. The evil Morgan le Fey has taken over Camelot and placed a new Pendragon on the throne. The former Knights of the Round Table are now the Lords of Avalon, and they will do whatever is necessary to stop the Pendragon from succeeding.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon lives just outside Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her Web site at www.sherrilynkenyon.com.

  It’d been a long, cold …

  Millennium.

  Thomas paused as he penned those words. Surely it wasn’t that long. Was it? Frowning, he looked at the calendar on his PDA that Merlin had brought to him from what future man would call the twenty-first century and gave a low whistle.

  It hadn’t been quite that long, even though he lived in a land where time had no real meaning. It only felt like it, and therefore he left the word on the paper. It sounded better than saying just a few centuries—and that was what writing was all about, he’d learned. The truth was important, but not so much as keeping his audience entertained. News bored people, but stories …

  That was where the money was. At least for people other than him. There was no money here, nor much of anything else.

  But he was digressing. Millennium or not, it had been way too long since he’d last been free.

  He who bargains with the devil pays with eternity. His dear old mangled mother had been fond of the saying. Too bad he hadn’t been better at listening—but then that was the problem with “conversation.” So many times even when you paused for a breath you weren’t really listening to the other person so much as planning your next speech. Of course, he’d been a cocky youth.

  What did some old crone know about anything anyway? he used to think. He was Thomas Malory. Sir Thomas Malory—couldn’t forget the Sir part. That was all-important.

  In his day that Sir had meant that he was a man with standing. A man with prospects.

  A man with no friggin’ clue (Thom really liked the vernacular Percival had taught him from other centuries. There was just such color to some of the later phraseology … but now to return to what he’d been thinking).

  Life had begun easy enough for him. He’d been born into a well-to-do family. A nice family … Nice incidentally was a four-lettered word. Look it up, it really was. It meant to be agreeable. Pleasant. Courteous.

  Boring.

  Like any good youth worth his salt, he’d run as far away from nice as he could. Nice was for the weak (another four-lettered word). It was for a doddering fool (see how everything vile led back to four letters [even vile was four letters]).

  And Thomas was anything but a fool. Or so he’d thought.

  Until the day he’d met her (Please insert footnote here that in French, la douleur, i.e., pain, is feminine). There was a reason for that. Women, not money, were the root of all evil (it was a trick of their gender that “woman” was five and not four letters, but then “girl” was four letters too. This was done to throw us poor men off so that we wouldn’t realize just how corrupt and detrimental they were).

  But back to the point of our story. Women were the root of all evil. No doubt. Or at the very least the fall of every good man.

  And Thom should know. He’d been doing quite well for himself until that fateful day when she had shown herself to him. Like a vi
sion of heaven, she’d been crossing the street wearing a gown of blue. Or maybe it was green. Hell, after all these centuries it could have been brown. The color hadn’t mattered at the time because in truth he’d been picturing her naked in his mind.

  And he’d learned one very important lesson. Never picture a woman naked when she was capable of reading your mind. At least not unless you were seriously into masochism.

  Thom wasn’t. Then again, given his current predicament, perhaps he was.

  Only a true masochist would dart across the street to meet and fall in love with Merlin.

  Thom paused in his writing. “Now, good reader, before you think me odd. Let me explain. You see Merlin in ancient Britain wasn’t a name. It was a title and the one who bore that title could be either male or female. And my Merlin was a beautiful blond angel who just happens to be a little less than forgiving. How do I know? See first paragraph where I talk about being imprisoned for a millennium … give or take a few centuries which still doesn’t sound quite as impressive as millennium.”

  Thom felt a little better after uttering that speech. Though not much. How could any man feel better while stuck in a hole?

  For it was true. Hell had no fury greater than a woman’s wrath.

  “That’s what having a beer with your buddies will get you.”

  Well, in his case it was more like a keg of ale. But that would be jumping ahead of the story.

  Sighing at himself, Thom dipped his quill in ink and returned to his vellum sheet. It was true, he had other means of writing things down, but since it all began with a quill and vellum, he wanted this diatribe to be captured the same way. After all, this was his version of the story. Or more simply, this was the truth of the matter. While others only speculated, he knew the truth.

  And no, the truth would not set him free. Only Merlin could do that and well, that was an entirely different story from this one.

  This story began with a poor besotted man seeing his Aphrodite across the street. She had paused in her walk and was looking about as if she’d lost something.

  Me, he’d thought. You have lost me and I am right here.

  With no thought except to hear the sound of his beloved’s voice before she started on her way again, he’d headed toward her only to nearly die under the hooves of a horse as he stepped out in front of a carter. Thom not-so-deftly dodged the carter and landed extremely unceremoniously in a trough.

  Drenched, but still besotted by Cupid’s whim, Thom attempted to wring himself dry before he again headed toward her … this time a bit more cautious of traffic.

  He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t dry the damn stench of the reeking water off his clothes. All he could do was watch his Calypso as she waited (he told himself) for him to claim her.

  As he drew near her, a million clever thoughts and introductions popped eagerly into his mind. He was going to sweep her off her feet with witty repartee. She would be bedazzled by his nimble, elegant tongue (in more ways than one if everything went according to plan).

  And then she had looked at him. Those brilliant blue … or maybe they were green … eyes had pierced him with curiosity.

  Thom had drawn a deep breath, opened his mouth to speak, to woo her with his charm, when all of a sudden his cleverness abandoned him.

  Nothing. His mind was blank. Worthless. Aggravating.

  “Greetings.” Even he cringed as that simple, stupid word had tumbled out of his lips.

  “Greetings, good sir.”

  Her voice had been clear and soft. Like the song of an angel. She’d stood there for a moment, looking expectantly at him while his heart pounded, his forehead beaded with sweat.

  Speak, Thom, speak.

  “Nice day, eh?”

  “Very nice.”

  Aye, he was a fool. One who no longer bore any trace of his shriveled manhood. Wanting to save whatever dignity he possessed (which at this point was in the negative digits), Thom nodded. “I just thought I’d point it out to you, fair maiden. Good day.”

  Cringing even more, he’d started away from her only to pause as he caught sight of something strange.

  Now, being a rational human being, he’d thought it an unusually large bird. Let’s face it, in fifteenth-century England, everyone spoke of dragons, but no one had really thought to ever see one.

  And yet there it was in the sky. Like a giant … dragon. Which it was. Large and black with big red bulbous eyes and gleaming scales, it had circled above them, blocking out the sun.

  Thomas, being a coward, had wanted to run, but, being a lusty man, he quickly saw an opportunity to woo his fair lady with dashing actions instead of a feeble tongue. After all, what woman wouldn’t swoon over a dragonslayer?

  That had been the idea.

  At least until the dragon kicked his ass. With one swipe of a talon, the dragon had batted him into the building. Thom had fallen to the street and every part of his body had throbbed and ached.

  It was awful. Or so he’d thought until the woman had placed her hand on his forehead. One minute he’d been lying on the street reeking of trough water, and in the next he’d found himself lying on a large, gilded bed.

  “Where am I?”

  “Sh,” his angel had said. “You have been poisoned by the dragon. Lie still and give my touch time to heal you or you will surely die.”

  (Note to self. I should have started moving about, thrashing wildly.)

  Not wanting to die (because I was stupid), Thom had done as she asked. He had lain there, looking up into her perfectly sculpted features. She was beauty and grace.

  “Have you a name, my lady?”

  “Merlin.”

  That had been the last name he would have ever attributed to a woman so comely. “Merlin?”

  “Aye. Now be still.”

  For the first time in all of his life, Thom had obeyed. He’d closed his eyes and inhaled the fresh, sweet scent of lilac that clung to the bed he laid in. He wondered if this was Merlin’s bed and then he wondered of other things that men and women could do in a bed … especially together.

  “Stop that.”

  He opened his eyes at the reprimand from his Aphrodite. “Stop what?”

  “Those thoughts,” she’d said sharply. “I hear every one of them and they disturb me.”

  “Disturb you how?”

  “I am the Penmerlin and I must remain chaste. Thoughts such as those do not belong in my head.”

  “They’re not in your head, my lady, they’re in mine and if they offend you, perhaps you should keep to yourself.”

  She’d gifted him with a dazzling smile. “You are a bold one, Thom. Perhaps I should have let the mandrake take you.”

  “Mandrake?” As in the root?

  “The dragon,” she’d explained. “His kind have the ability to take either the form of man or dragon, hence their name.”

  Well that certainly explained that, however other matters had been rather vague in his mind. “But he wasn’t after me. He was after you. Why?”

  “Because I was on the trail of a very special Merlin and the mandrake sensed me. That is why I so seldom venture to the world of man. When one possesses as much magic as I do, it is too easy for other magical beasts to find you.”

  That made sense to him. “You are enemies.”

  She nodded. “He works for Morgan le Fey.”

  Thom’d had the audacity to laugh at that. “The sister of King Arthur.”

  Merlin hadn’t joined in his laughter. “Aye, the very same.”

  The serious look on her face and the tone of her voice had instantly sobered him. “You’re not jesting.”

  “Nay. The tales of Arthur are real, but they are not quite what the minstrels tell. Arthur’s world was vast and his battles are still being waged, not only in this time, but in future ones as well.”

  In that moment, Thom wasn’t sure what enraptured him most. The stunning creature he longed to bed or the idea that Camelot really had existed.

&nb
sp; Over the course of the next few days while he healed from his attack, Thom had stayed in the fabled isle of Avalon and listened to Merlin’s stories of Arthur and his knights.

  But more than that, he’d seen them. At least those who still lived. There for a week, he’d walked amongst the legends and shook the hands of fables. He’d learned that Merlin was only one of her kind. Others like her had been sent out into the world of man to be hidden from Morgan who wanted to use those Merlins and the sacred objects they protected for evil.

  It was a frightening battle they waged. One that held no regard for time or beings. And in the end, the very fate of the world rested in the hands of the victor.

  “I wish to be one of you,” Thom had finally confessed to Merlin on the evening of his eighth day. “I want to help save the world.”

  Her eyes had turned dull. “That isn’t your destiny, Thom. You must return to the world of man and be as you were.”

  She made that sound simple enough, but he wasn’t the same man who had come to Avalon. His time here had changed him. “How can I ever be as I was now that I know the truth?”

  She’d stepped away from him. “You will be as you were, Thom … I promise.”

  And then everything had gone blurry. His eyesight had failed until he found himself encased in darkness.

  Thom awakened the next morning to find himself back in England, in his own house … his own bed.

  He’d tried desperately to return to Avalon, only to have everyone tell him that’d he’d dreamed it all.

  “You’ve been here the whole time,” his housekeeper had sworn.

  But he hadn’t believed it. How could he? This wasn’t some illness that had befallen him. It wasn’t.

  It was real (another four letter word that often led men to disaster).

  Eventually Thom had convinced himself that they were right and he’d dreamed it all. The land of Merlins had only existed in his mind. Where else could it have been?

  And so he’d returned to his old ways. He’d gambled, he’d fought, he’d wenched, and most of all he’d drunk and drunk and drunk.

  Until that night.