Eclipse Three

by edited by Jonathan Strahan

  His mother had arranged to have the sword God's Will hung behind his chair and draped with cloth-of-gold. If she hadn't sat beside him the whole day through, he would have taken the thing down. Across the field, Palliot sat in a seat that mirrored his. For all the battles and entertainments, more eyes were on the pair of them than the field. Only when Sir Emund Loak, having survived the blow that caved in his armor, died when his breastplate's straps were cut did the drama of the day turn from the succession. And then only briefly.

  Night came with a great feast. Some master of entertainments with an overactive sense of humor placed the high table crosswise from its usual orientation, with Palliot on one end and Dafyd at the other, the court etiquette fashion of asking which is the king?

  Dafyd retired to his rooms early, claiming the need to rest and prepare for the next day's trial. Palliot did the same. There would be time enough for wine and song when the succession was decided.

  A fire burned low in the grate, red coals casting dim shadows on the walls. The air stifled, and rather than call for a servant, Dafyd opened the window shutters himself and stood in the cool air, watching the stars in the sky and the lights of the palace wink at each other.

  The door opened behind him, then shut.

  "Will you pray with me?" the Duchess asked, her voice small. Almost fearful. She glowed red in the dim light. The thin line of her mouth and the severe knot of her hair made her an ascetic. He wondered what had happened to the woman with long, soft hair who had sung to him when he was a boy. He wondered what had happened to the boy.

  "No," Dafyd said. And then, "I'm sorry. But no. I can't."

  "I can pray for you," she said. She meant I will make it all right, and the sorrow in her eyes meant she knew she couldn't. They stood for a moment in silence, a gulf between them more painful than the one separating them from the dead. He was the first to look away.

  "You have to kill him," she said. "If he gives you an opportunity during the trial, you must kill him. It will stop any chance of his leading an insurrection later."

  "Is that what God tells you?" Dafyd said more harshly than he'd meant. He braced himself against her anger. She sighed faintly.

  "It is what my experience says, and it is what I fear he is thinking of you. I wish that your father . . . " she began, then shook her head. "I love you, perfect child. Sleep well."

  He wanted to turn to her, to call her back, but he loved her too well to do it. The door closed again, leaving him to himself.

  When Dafyd had found Bessin, a hundred men or less had lounged on the tiered benches around the court within the court. Now there were thousands. The noise of voices could have drowned out a heavy surf. The air hung low and thick, stale as children hiding too long under a blanket.

  Dafyd wore his best armor, black and silver scale and fit for a body slightly changed by the months since its making. His shield dragged at his left arm, and the new sword hung at his side in a scabbard of gems and silver like a milkmaid wearing silk. As he passed the benches, he saw a hundred faces that he knew. His father's men and allies. He saw the anxiety in their eyes, the hope and the fear. He was about to disappoint them all. It was the choice he'd made and he told himself the shame would be worth the relief.

  The Duchess sat on the front bench in a dress whose cut owed as much to a nun's habit as to the glamour of court. Rosmund, behind her, wore his cassock and a grave expression.

  What if ceding to Palliot was God's plan all along?

  Across the court, Dafyd's opponent wore armor of enameled scales the blue of the sky; his shield bore a bronze sun. When their eyes met, Dafyd nodded. Palliot didn't return the gesture.

  The high priest entered the court and raised his hands. His voice rang clear and pure and totally at odds with the pandemonium around him. As he chanted out a benediction, all heads bowed except Dafyd's. Even Palliot cast his gaze down. Dafyd felt singled out, even embarrassed, but his neck would not bend. The prayer echoed off the distant ceiling, giving the words a sense of depth and grandeur. He wondered whether the architects had designed the room just for moments like this.

  When the high priest was done, the two combatants strapped on their helmets and stepped over the border mark together. There was no court official to remind them of the rules of combat, no priest to declare that God would strengthen the arm of the righteous. Everyone knew.

  Dafyd drew his sword. Palliot did the same. They stepped to the center of the court to determine the fate of the kingdom and, Dafyd thought bitterly, through their violence, heal the world.

  Palliot shifted to his right, swinging his blade low and slow, no more than the testing blow that any fight might begin with. Dafyd moved away rather than block with his shield, and countered with a half-hearted swing at Palliot's exposed arm. Palliot pulled back, moving carefully, his weight forward.

  Dafyd's eyes were narrow, and he found his body reacting as if the fight were genuine. With a sudden roar, Palliot charged, his shield slamming against Dafyd and shoving him off balance. Dafyd bent low, and his enemy's blade skittered off the face of his shield.

  Dafyd swung at Palliot's leg, turning the blade at the last moment to slap him with the flat of it. To the crowd, it would look like a missed chance; a cut tendon would have ended the issue, only not the way Dafyd had chosen.

  Palliot danced back, his face flushed. He held his blade high behind him, as his father had taught. In a true battle, it would leave his opponent uncertain of which angle his attack might come from. Dafyd met the man's eyes, nodded, and swung a high overhand toward Palliot's skull. Palliot blocked with his shield. Dafyd's sword clanked, and the power of the blow made his fingers smart. The poor balance left his arm aching already.

  Palliot pushed back, and Dafyd gave way, moving plausibly and unmistakably toward the border mark. Palliot shifted forward, bringing a heel down hard on Dafyd's foot. The sudden pain confused and surprised him, and he hesitated as Palliot got around his guard, pushing him back toward the center court like a sheep dog holding its flock.

  Fear bloomed in Dafyd's breast, and he looked a question at his opponent. He might as well have asked it of stone. Palliot swung hard and fast; the edge of Dafyd's shield only pushed the blade aside from its target. He felt its point catch at his hip, and then a deeper pain. Leaping back, Dafyd saw a glimpse of red at the tip of Palliot's blade.

  It is what my experience says, and it is what I fear he is thinking of you.

  Dafyd felt a brief, shrill panic washing away grief and despair both. And then, a heartbeat later, his teeth ground against each other, his heart glowed with rage. He screamed wordlessly as he attacked.

  Bent low, his shield forward, Dafyd pushed close, swinging hard, a blow more outrage than technique. Palliot blocked easily with his shield and struck back. He was hellishly strong. At the third blow, Dafyd's shield began to buckle, the metal cutting into the flesh of his arm. When he staggered back, Palliot loped around, cutting off the court's edge again.

  There was glee in Palliot's face now. His dark eyes glittered, and the thin lips were pulled back into something between a smile and a threat. Dafyd's arm ached. His sword hand was nearly numb. He shouted again, pushed forward, and slammed Palliot with his breaking shield. Palliot fell back a step more from surprise than the attack itself, then roared and shifted again, keeping Dafyd from the border mark. Fight or die, Dafyd would not even be permitted surrender.

  Palliot leaped forward with a high side swing. It felt like nothing more than a hard tap with a stick, and then it hurt much worse. Dafyd tried to fall back, but Palliot was on him. Fury or ecstasy fueled the man's arm, and he rained blows on Dafyd's shield and helmet, hammering him down. Dafyd cried out, his fear coming in sobs. His cut hip had been bleeding down his leg unnoticed until he slipped on the blood and fell to one knee.

  Like a man swearing fealty, Dafyd knelt, a parody of the ending he hoped for. God's last joke. Palliot's eyes widened, enchanted by the image of his own victory. He lifted his blade, hewing do
wn like an axeman splitting wood. Dafyd raised sword and shield together in a desperate block. Their blades met.

  Dafyd felt his break.

  Palliot staggered back, blood pouring down his face. A flap of pale skin open in his forehead showed where the flying sword point had slipped past the helmet's brim. Dafyd rose.

  All through the court, men were on their feet, screaming and cheering like a storm wind.

  Dafyd felt blood cooling on his leg. The pain in his side might have been burning or cold, but whichever it grew worse with each breath. The knuckles of his sword hand ached.

  With a sinking, sick rage, Dafyd knew what he had to do if he was to live.

  "You swore before God," Dafyd said, softly enough that only the pair of them could hear him. "Now, oathbreaker, you will surrender or you will die."

  Palliot glanced around him, uncertain. Afraid.

  And, his mother's son after all, Dafyd gathered his breath and spoke louder, his head high, declaiming with every ounce of theater that he could muster.

  "Ursin Palliot, you have been tested by God! As His agent upon this earth, I bear witness to your failure. Kneel before me. Kneel before God and confess your sins, or else die here and die forever!"

  Dafyd lifted his sad, shattered sword, and it might have been a blade of fire. Palliot took a step back.

  "Look in my eyes," Dafyd said, softly again. He used the same tone Rosmund had in speaking of shaved dice and marked cards: sorrowful, sympathetic, and made terrible by its truth. "You cannot win."

  For a moment, Dafyd thought Palliot would kneel, and then that the man would strike him down.

  Ursin Palliot, Duke of Lakefell and Warden of the South, turned and fled. When he passed the border mark, every man and woman in the court drew in a breath, and then their voices rose as one—like breaking waves, thunder, a landslide of rock and stone—to bear witness to the trial's end.

  Dafyd dropped his sword, turned, and spat. At the exultant Duchess's side, Rosmund smiled, and then shrugged, and then looked away. Only the two of them understood that in his victory, Dafyd had lost. Dafyd Laician, once Duke of Westford, and now—by the grace of God—King.

  YES WE HAVE NO BANANAS

  Paul Di Filippo

  1.

  Invasion of the Shorebirds

  Thirty years' worth of living, dumped out on the sidewalk, raw pickings for the nocturnal Street Gleaners tribe. Not literally yet, but it might just as well be—would be soon, given the damn rotten luck of Tug Gingerella. He was practically as dead as bananas. Extinct!

  How was he going to manage this unwarranted, unexpected, inexorable eviction?

  Goddamn greedy Godbout!

  The space was nothing much. One small, well-used, five-room apartment in a building named The Wyandot. Bachelor's digs, save for those three tumultuous years with Olive. Crates of books, his parents' old Heywood-Wakefield furniture that he had inherited, cheaply framed but valuable vintage lobby poster featuring the happy image of Deanna Durbin warbling as Mary Poppins. Shabby clothes, mostly flannel and denim and Duofold, cargo shorts and Sandwich Island shirts; cast-iron cornbread skillets; favorite music on outmoded media: scratch slates, holo transects, grail packs, and their various stacked players, natch. Goodfaith Industries metal-topped kitchen table, Solace Army shelves, a painting by Karsh Swinehart (a storm-tossed sailboat just offshore from local Pleistocene Point, Turneresque by way of Thomas Cole).

  All the beloved encumbering detritus of a life.

  But a life lived to what purpose, fulfilling what early promise, juvenile dreams? All those years gone past so swiftly . . .

  No. Maundering wouldn't cut it. No remedies to his problems in fruitless recriminations and regrets. Best to hit the streets of Carrollboro in search of some aid and comfort.

  Tug shuffled into a plaid lumberjacket, red-and-black Kewbie castoff that had wandered south across the nearby border like some migrating avian apparel and onto the Solace Army Store racks, took the two poutine-redolent flights down to ground level at a mild trot, energized by his spontaneous and uncharacteristic determination to act, and emerged onto Patrician Street, an incongruously named grand-dame-gone-shabby avenue cutting south and north through the Squirrel Hills district, and full of gloriously decaying sister buildings to The Wyandot, all built post-War, circa 1939: The Lewis and Jonathan, The Onondowaga, The Canandaigua, The Lord Fitzhugh, and half a dozen others.

  Mid-October in Carrollboro: sunlight sharp as honed ice-skate blades, big irregularly gusting winds off Lake Ondiara, one of the five Grands. Sidewalks host to generally maintaining citizens, everyday contentment or focus evident, yet both attitudes tempered with the global stresses of the Big Retreat, ultimate source of Tug's own malaise. (And yet, despite his unease, Tug invariably spared enough attention to appraise all the beautiful women—and they were all beautiful—fashionably bundled up just enough to tease at what was beneath.)

  Normally Tug enjoyed the autumn season for its crisp air and sense of annual climax, prelude to all the big holidays. Samhain, Thanksgiving, the long festive stretch that began with Roger Williams' birthday on December 21 and extended through Christmas and La Fête des Rois . . .

  But this year those nostalgia-inducing attractions paled, against the harsh background of his struggle to survive.

  Patrician merged with Tinsley, a more commercial district. Here, shoppers mixed with browsers admiring the big gaudy windows at Zellers and the Bay department stores, even if they couldn't make a purchase at the moment.

  Carrollboro's economy was convulsing and churning in weird ways, under the Big Retreat. Adding ten percent more people to the city's population of two-hundred-thousand had both boosted and dragged down the economy, in oddly emergent ways. The newcomers were a representatively apportioned assortment of rich, poor and middle-class refugees from all around the world, sent fleeing inland by the rising seas. "Shorebirds" all, yet differently grouped.

  The poor, with their varied housing and medical and educational needs, were a drain on the federal and state government finances. They had settled mostly in the impoverished Swillburg and South Wedge districts of Carrollboro.

  The skilled middle-class were undercutting wages and driving up unemployment rates, as they competed with the natives for jobs in their newly adopted region, and bought up single-family homes in Maplewood and Parkway.

  And the rich—

  The rich were driving longtime residents out of their unsecured rentals, as avaricious owners, seeking big returns on their investments, went luxury condo with their properties.

  Properties like The Wyandot, owned by Narcisse Godbout.

  Thoughts of his heinous landlord fired up Tug and made him quicken his pace.

  Maybe Pavel would have some ideas that could help.

  2.

  Ocarina City

  Just a few blocks away from the intersection of Tinsley with Grousebeck, site of the Little Theatre and Tug's destination, Tug paused before Dr. Zelda's Ocarina Warehouse, the city's biggest retailer of fipple flutes.

  Carrollboro had been known as Ocarina City ever since the late 1800s.

  The connection between metropolis and instrument began by chance in the winter of 1860, when an itinerant pedlar named Leander Watts passed through what was then a small town of some five-thousand inhabitants, bearing an unwanted crate full of Donati "Little Goose" fipple flutes, which Watts had grudgingly accepted in Manhattan in lieu of cash owed for some other goods. But thanks to his superb salesmanship, Watts was able to unload on the citizens of Carrollboro the whole consignment of what he regarded as useless geegaws.

  In their heimal isolation and recreational desperation, the citizens of Carrollboro had latched on to the little ceramic flutes, and by spring thaw the city numbered many self-taught journeymen and master players among the populace.

  From Carrollboro the fascination with ocarinas had spread nationally, spiking and dying away and spiking again over the subsequent decades, although never with such fervor as at the
epicenter. There, factories and academies and music-publishing firms and cafés and concert halls and retail establishments had sprung up in abundance, lending the city its nickname and music-besotted culture.

  Today the window of Dr. Zelda's held atop russet velvet cushions the fall 2010 models from Abimbola, von Storch, Tater Innovator, Xun Fun, Charalambos and many other makers. There were small pendant models, big two-handed transverse models and the mammoth three-chambered types. Materials ranged from traditional ceramics to modern polycarbonates, and the surface decorations represented an eye-popping decorative range from name designers as varied as Fairey, Schorr and Mars.

  Piped from outdoor speakers above the doorway came the latest ocarina hit, debuting on the Billboard charts at Number Ten, a duet from Devandra Banhart and Jack Johnson, "World Next Door."

  Tug himself was a ham-fingered player at best. But his lack of skill did not deter his covetous admiration of the display of instruments. But after some few minutes of daydreaming fascination, he turned away like a bum from a banquet.