The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition

by Rich Horton (ed)

  The day after that, he fought and killed a pack of feral children. The battlefield was the high side of a cloud, under a sky lit by three full moons and a thousand constellations, each exerting its pull upon human destinies.

  The day after that, he fought and killed a troll with three eyes and three mouths; no mouth spoke a comprehensible language, though each gibbered all through the fight. The battlefield was, or appeared to be, the Dire Stairs.

  After each of these battles, and after every battle on every day that followed, Isrohim Vey found himself in the Dominie’s tower, where he healed over the course of a night. On occasion the Dominie Segelius would speak with him.

  What the Dominie said might be quite brief, as when he observed “wizardry is to witchcraft as art is to madness.” Or he might speak at length, as when he explained to Isrohim Vey the true nature and relationship of all the gods of every mortal people, from the One Above All and the Jack-of-all-Ills of the Empire Church to the Great Gods of the Holy Dominion to the Twelve Gods and the God Of All Other Things of the Lohr to the Red Gods to the Unwritten Book to the Old Gods to Time, who was worshipped as a god in the far country of Knutherizh; and then on to the hundreds of gods of the Faefolk, and to Father Stone of the Svar, and to the gods of dragons and giantfolk and goblinkin, and how all these gods served to mortal understanding as giving to life a meaning in the face of death.

  “Which is not to say,” the Dominie then observed, “that they are unreal, or do not serve other purposes as well; but such purposes remain unknown, as the gods themselves are ultimately unknown. It is only the angels who can mediate between the human and divine spheres, being beyond gods as they are beyond destiny. The Dominion goddess of death, for example, is Halja; but she does not separate the soul from the body. No more does the hand of the One Above All. You know these things.”

  Isrohim Vey said nothing to this, and the next day he fought and killed two warriors of the shape-strong race of the Mirator, one of whom took the form of Valas as a youth while the other took the form of Valas as a king. The battlefield was the fountain of Umbral.

  It was not so many days later that the battlefield was a deep dungeon, from which Isrohim Vey had to escape by defeating again the King-Who-Was-And-Will-Be-Again.

  The Dominie Segelius came to the aging swordsman after that fight, and Isrohim Vey asked “Will I have to fight other figures of my past? Grandfather Hiberius, or Yasleeth Oklenn?”

  “Does it surprise you that we know your history?” asked the Dominie. “We are wizards.”

  “Do you know everything there is to know?” asked Isrohim Vey.

  The Dominie shrugged. “I know how scared you were when you faced the demon Gorias. I know you were not scared at all when you faced Umbral; but I don’t know why not.”

  “Neither do I,” said Isrohim Vey.

  The Dominie nodded.

  “Give me the worst of it,” said Isrohim Vey.

  The next day was a running battle across the field of Aruvhossin where seven armies lay dead. In that place Isrohim Vey killed his selves that might have been. He killed Isrohim Vey, the bloodthirsty mercenary captain. He killed Isrohim Vey, lecherous sybarite and drunk. He killed Isrohim Vey, devout chaplain of the Empire Church. These and many others he killed. Savage black dogs came to eat the entrails of the dead men. They scented the living Isrohim Vey, and chased him. There were too many to kill. Isrohim Vey was brought to ground. His muscles were torn from his bones and the tongues of dogs lapped at his blood. There was no angel. Only the quiet dissolution of all the world.

  To his surprise, Isrohim Vey woke up in the Dominie’s tower.

  When the Dominie Segelius came to visit him, the swordsman said: “I died.”

  The Dominie shrugged.

  “Why bring me back?” asked Isrohim Vey. Before the Dominie could answer, he asked also, “Why make me fight? Why do these things to me?”

  “Wizards have their reasons. Perhaps we wanted to know how long it would be before you began to ask ‘why.’ Perhaps we wanted to see what you would do now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re free to go,” said the Dominie Segelius. “You should leave the Demesne. But other than that, you may go wherever you like. Do what you will.”

  After a long while, Isrohim Vey asked, “Why did you wait so long to find me? Why did you wait until I was so old?”

  The Dominie shrugged.

  Isrohim Vey travelled south from the Demesne of Starry Wisdom and Golden-Eyed Dawn, a long way south until the stars changed. He travelled through Ulvandr-Kathros the Confederate Empire until he reached its south-west coast, and then across the harsh seas until he reached the island of Thættir. The people of Thættir were, and are, solitary and grim, fisherfolk and pirates, often foul of temper, overall seasoned by the salt of the sea and the bitter winds that lash the island of volcanic rock and ice fields; but they work together without complaint, are very brave, and love freedom. Isrohim Vey was soon voted by them to be Lawspeaker, which meant in essence to be their king.

  For several years Isrohim Vey governed the people of Thættir wisely and well. Also in these years he organized their defenses. The Empress Adara XI had come to power in Ulvandr-Kathros; she was mad and lusted for conquest. For these reasons she looked westward, to Thættir, which had always before been too distant from the mainland to attract conquerors; it was that which had led men and women to settle on Thættir, and be free from rulers.

  Isrohim Vey led raids against the mainland, sinking ships at harbor; he concluded alliances, with other island-folk and with the races under the ocean; and he sent agents northward to Opallios to recover that whip which commanded the flood and the eclipse, along with other treasures he had discarded decades before. When all these things had been done he made further preparations, but those were for his own future.

  The night before the navies of Ulvandr-Kathros were to battle the ships of Thættir, Isrohim Vey went to the Dawn Tower, a lighthouse on the far eastern end of the island; with him was Ida, whom he trusted most on Thættir. Ida was the one he had chosen to go to Opallios. “We will win tomorrow,” Isrohim Vey said to her, looking eastward.

  “Yes, we will,” said Ida. “The whip will determine it.”

  “True,” agreed Isrohim Vey. “So there is no need of me.” He took the obsidian amulet of the Lawspeaker from around his neck. Its chain clicked against itself as he gave it to Ida.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. But she trusted him, and took the amulet.

  “I have had some men loyal to me prepare a boat,” he said. “I must go north. You will be the Lawspeaker.”

  “I am too young,” said Ida.

  “Some old men are wise,” said Isrohim Vey. “Others have only lived a long time without meeting death.”

  “You can stay,” said Ida. “Lead us further. If we break the navy of the Confederate Empire, we can raid inland—we could take the Pelian Isthmus, starve the city of Carcannum—you could topple the Empress, rule half the world.”

  “I could, old as I am. I choose not to.”

  Ida set the chain about her neck.

  Suddenly, Isrohim Vey said: “You can escape destiny. Change your fate. The world’s fate. If you choose to. If you know that, then you may not need to.”

  Below them, the waves of the sea crashed against the mossy black rocks of the island of Thættir, as they always had.

  “What will I tell the people?” asked Ida.

  “Tell them I have finally gone to the angel of death.”

  “Death. This will be difficult for them to understand.”

  Isrohim Vey said, “Death is simple.”

  Isrohim Vey did not know that the night he arrived in Vilmariy for the third and last time in his life was also the night of his sixty-first birthday; nor, if he had known, would it have mattered.

  It was the night of the Grand Masque, when all things were upended.

  Isrohim Vey walked through the city, past satyrs and devils and
Kings of old time.

  He asked a watchman for directions to the home of Reivym Shoi; whether this was truly a watchman or not did not matter. The man told the old swordsman where to find the estate of Reivym Shoi, heir to the line of Eblinn, and that was enough.

  The house was dark and silent. Isrohim Vey walked to the front door and pounded on the solid wood. When no-one came after a minute he pounded again; and then again. And eventually the door opened, and Reivym Shoi stood before Isrohim Vey.

  “The servants are gone to the Grand Masque,” said Reivym Shoi, who seemed not to see the man before him. “I am the master here. Who are you, and what do you seek?”

  “I am Isrohim Vey, the death-bound swordsman. I carry the sword called Azrael’s Word, which some say is the Nameless Sword. I seek the Angel of Death.”

  For a moment Reivym Shoi did not move; then he sprang back into the shadows of the house. Isrohim Vey followed, more slowly, and drew Azrael’s Word. Then Reivym Shoi came at him, sword in hand, and the two old men fought.

  Reivym Shoi’s eyesight had faded with the years, but in the dark of the house Isrohim Vey found this gave him no advantage. But the wound he had given Reivym Shoi years ago on a ship still seemed to trouble him. Isrohim Vey drove him back across an old entrance hall. Then Reivym Shoi ducked into a shadowed archway, and turned and ran. Cautiously, Isrohim Vey gave chase.

  He ran through dark room after dark room. Ahead of him, in the moonlight filtering through high windows, was always the form of Reivym Shoi. As fast as Isrohim Vey ran he could not gain ground, and for the first time in his life he felt truly old. Sometimes Reivym Shoi would shout and guards would come.

  Isrohim Vey killed them. Reivym Shoi came to a flight of stairs and paused; a light flared, a lantern in his hand. Reivym Shoi ran down the stairs. Isrohim Vey followed.

  The diagonal of the stairs ran a long way into the dark. Then there was a landing, a switchback, another long diagonal. Another landing, another switchback. And again. Isrohim Vey would catch up to Reivym Shoi during the long descents; then Reivym Shoi would turn a corner and without the light of his lantern Isrohim Vey was forced to slow down.

  The stairs seemed to continue endlessly, past walls of old stone, then past no walls at all, into a vast cavern, then through a close arched shaft of rock carved with old runes. The stairs were pitched at an odd angle, and were of varied heights, as though to fit the strides of creatures with several sets of legs and a variable length of stride. Isrohim Vey and Reivym Shoi were by this time far far below the city of Vilmariy, farther below the earth than the deepest tunnel of the Hideous Prison Illullunor, farther below than the Deep Dark where Isrohim Vey had spoken to the Svar smith Einik.

  As they raced down the stairs in their weary old-man’s hobble, both men became aware of a third presence with them; and Isrohim Vey remembered the Dominie he had spoken to almost four decades past saying “There are angels everywhere.”

  Then they were out of the tunnel, still upon the stairs, but the stairs now circled a curving stone wall; a great circle of stone, like a vast cup or cauldron on a scale fit for gods. Isrohim Vey heard a crashing and a pounding from below, and as he ran downwards he realized there was a fountain at the base of the cauldron, like the fountain under Umbral’s glacier, but much larger. He could see the waters seething and frothing, raging and white; could see, at the edge of the light of Reivym Shoi’s lantern, a fine mist of spray that seemed to take an infinity of forms. And those forms persisted when the light had moved on, so that in the darkness were all things made.

  At the base of the long, long stairs there was a stone path like an isthmus or bridge leading out to an island in the middle of the fountain; like an image of Vilmariy, which was an island city built upon a mountain rising from a great river. Reivym Shoi hastened along the path. Isrohim Vey followed, slowly now as there was no other way off the island.

  Finally, deliberately, Reivym Shoi set down his lantern and turned and drew his sword. “Do you know what this place is, Isrohim Vey?” he cried. “This is the Fount of All! Here all things come into the world! Here all things begin! So it must be here that all things end!”

  It was at this point that Isrohim Vey understood that the years had taken Reivym Shoi’s reason as well as his sight. Nevertheless the man attacked, and Isrohim Vey drew Azrael’s Word for the last time in his life.

  Isrohim Vey and Reivym Shoi battled for a long time on the island at the heart of the Fount of All.

  It seemed to Isrohim Vey that every move he made he had already made, many times before. That his life was a circle and that all things in it had come round again.

  Then he battered down Reivym Shoi’s sword and kicked it away across the island. And he raised Azrael’s Word; and brought it down; and Reivym Shoi’s collarbone was crushed as the sword sank into his chest.

  And then there was a light on Reivym Shoi’s face, and his eyes were focused on something far away, and Isrohim Vey turned, knowing what he would see.

  And there was Azrael, the Angel of Death; and the Angel was smiling.

  And for the third and last time of his life Isrohim Vey spoke the Word of Azrael.

  And, knowing that Reivym Shoi had still several moments of life left, Isrohim Vey deliberately let his sword fall from his hand; and this, the last decision in his life, was made in acceptance of his destiny, which, he understood now and for the first time, was only the beginning of himself and not the summation, just as he was defined not by the nature of that destiny but in how it was met and fulfilled.

  And so Isrohim Vey moved beyond both destiny and free will.

  And then Reivym Shoi took up the Nameless Sword which Isrohim Vey had called Azrael’s Word, and, falling forward, with the last of his life drove the point of the sword through Isrohim Vey’s chest and on into the heart of the Angel of Death.

  And all Isrohim Vey knew was the smile of the Angel. And the smile hurt with a sweet pain that grew until it was all he knew, and he knew everything and nothing. And Isrohim Vey felt his lips curve and pull back from his teeth, and felt his blood surge, and knew a rare warmth.

  And Isrohim Vey smiled the smile of the Angel of Death, and all things were upended, and the world turned upside down.

  Such is the end of the story of Isrohim Vey, as the Dominies tell it, and the keepers of the truths of angels. And all of them have since debated the fate of the soul of Reivym Shoi, and of the Angel of Death called Azrael, and of Isrohim Vey.

  As is the case with most souls, however, their destiny remains unclear.

  UNDER THE MOONS OF VENUS

  DAMIEN BRODERICK

  1.

  In the long, hot, humid afternoon, Blackett obsessively paced off the outer dimensions of the Great Temple of Petra against the black asphalt of the deserted car parks, trying to recapture the pathway back to Venus. Faint rectangular lines still marked the empty spaces allocated to staff vehicles long gone from the campus, stretching on every side like the equations in some occult geometry of invocation. Later, as shadows stretched across the all-but-abandoned industrial park, he considered again the possibility that he was trapped in delusion, even psychosis. At the edge of an overgrown patch of dried lawn, he found a crushed Pepsi can, a bent yellow plastic straw protruding from it. He kicked it idly.

  “Thus I refute Berkeley,” he muttered, with a half smile. The can twisted, fell back on the grass; he saw that a runner of bind weed wrapped its flattened waist.

  He walked back to the sprawling house he had appropriated, formerly the residence of a wealthy CEO. Glancing at his IWC Flieger Chrono aviator’s watch, he noted that he should arrive there ten minutes before his daily appointment with the therapist.

  2.

  Cool in a chillingly expensive pale blue Mila Schön summer frock, her carmine toenails brightly painted in her open Ferragamo Penelope sandals, Clare regarded him: lovely, sly, professionally compassionate. She sat across from him on the front porch of the old house, rocking gently in the suspended glider.


  “Your problem,” the psychiatrist told him, “is known in our trade as lack of affect. You have shut down and locked off your emotional responses. You must realize, Robert, that this isn’t healthy or sustainable.”

  “Of course I know that,” he said, faintly irritated by her condescension. “Why else would I be consulting you? Not,” he said pointedly, “that it is doing me much good.”

  “It takes time, Robert. As you know.”

  3.

  Later, when Clare was gone, Blackett sat beside his silent sound system and poured two fingers of Hennessy XO brandy. It was the best he had been able to find in the largely depleted supermarket, or at any rate the least untenable for drinking purposes. He took the spirits into his mouth and felt fire run down his throat. Months earlier, he had found a single bottle of Mendis Coconut brandy in the cellar of an enormous country house. Gone now. He sat a little longer, rose, cleaned his teeth and made his toilet, drank a full glass of faintly brackish water from the tap. He found a Philip Glass CD and placed it in the mouth of the player, then went to bed. Glass’s repetitions and minimal novelty eased him into sleep. He woke at 3 in the morning, heart thundering. Silence absolute. Blackett cursed himself for forgetting to press the automatic repeat key on the CD player. Glass had fallen silent, along with most of the rest of the human race. He touched his forehead. Sweat coated his fingers.

  4.

  In the morning, he drove in a stolen car to the industrial park’s air field, rolled the Cesna 182 out from the protection of its hangar, and refueled its tanks. Against the odds, the electrically powered pump and other systems remained active, drawing current from the black arrays of solar cells oriented to the south and east, swiveling during the daylight hours to follow the apparent track of the sun. He made his abstracted, expert run through the checklist, flicked on the radio by reflex. A hum of carrier signal, nothing more. The control tower was deserted. Blackett ran the Cessna onto the slightly cracked asphalt and took off into a brisk breeze. He flew across fields going to seed, visible through sparklingly clear air. Almost no traffic moved on the roads below him. Two or three vehicles threw up a haze of dust from the untended roadway, and one laden truck crossed his path, apparently cluttered to overflowing with furniture and bedding. It seemed the ultimate in pointlessness—why not appropriate a suitable house, as he had done, and make do with its appointments? Birds flew up occasionally in swooping flocks, careful to avoid his path.