The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy (9 page)

I stared at her with disbelief. “But you said you loved me—“

“Listen,” she said. “I will tell you why I came here. Before your people sailed to Hesperia, when Egypt straddled the Nile like a golden sphinx, I lived, a queen, in Knossos. It was a time for queens, and for the goddess they served, the Great Mother. On Crete itself and in her far-flung colonies, it was the king who died to make the fields grow fertile, the queen who raised the sacrificial knife. Then came the men from the north, the yellow-haired conquerors, scornful of women, scorning the Goddess, bringing gods of their own, Zeus and Poseidon, Hades and haughty Apollo. Knossos itself fell to their ragged fleet. With the women of my court, I fled to Aeaea. Years passed. Tranquil years. Then they began to find us—lusting captains and swinish mariners, warriors and wanderers—and each in turn, except Odysseus, I met and charmed and enchanted as he deserved. Still they came, and once again I fled—this time to Libya. I lost one ship in a storm—the wreck you found—and built another and sailed at last to the Island of Oleanders. Men have tried to follow me. No man has found me—till now. My friends saw to that, the Harpies, the Sirens, the pygmies. Cruel and misshapen, yes, but loyal to me, loyal to the Goddess. Then you came. My pygmies watched you from the time you met the Harpies. Their jungle drums signaled your approach. At last you reached this island. ‘I will show him his dream,’ I thought. ‘I will show him death.’ But first, as I told you, I spoke with the boy:

“I wish you no harm,” I said. “You may return to the sea.” He looked at me, frightened, but not for himself. I wanted to hold him, that helpless, motherless boy not yet a man, not yet a conqueror, with sea-green eyes and courage beyond his years.

“Have you hurt my friend?” he asked.

“Friend? He will leave you, my dear. He will come to me.”

“No,” he said with absolute certainty. “No. He is Bear!”

Were you really his friend, I asked myself, and therefore worthy to live? I came to you not as your dream but as in your heart you secretly wished me to be. The Corn Maiden. Most men dream of temptresses—and marry maidens. I thought that for me, you would scorn your friends. You have proved me wrong, and I am glad.”

“The house of oleanders,” I said wistfully. “You never meant to build it at all.”

“I am much too late for love. And so were you, dear Bear—I thought. All your life you have steered for the Isles of the Blest. But now, at last, you have chosen the dolphin and not the deep. Go to your friends and never regret your choice. I will send Astyanax after you.”

“Circe,” I asked, “what are you really like? Maiden or enchantress?”

“Let that be my secret. Think of me as the Maiden.”

She clapped her hands. Pygmies sprang from the house and, silent as hunters stalking a lion, led me from the garden. “Bear,” she called.

I turned and faced her. She smiled; hardly a woman she seemed—a girl, no more, with crocuses in her hair.

“I could have loved you—once.”

Above my head the palm trees swelled with dates, and under my sandalless feet, seashells crumbled a path which was somehow soft. At the edge of the bay the pygmies bowed and left me. My ship rode at anchor: bird of loss and bird of finding, of perilous ports and a memorable voyage. I loved the blue of her hull and her red furled sail, the cut of her timbers, the deck house, warm with wicker, and Tages, her wooden god; not because she went but because she was, and for those she carried with her.

Then I heard tears. A young woman crouched on the sand at the edge of the water. Her bare body was whiter than amaranth. Circe’s hair was hyacinths; hers was sunflowers, rippling yellow petals. She cried hopelessly and did not hear me approach.

I knelt beside her. “Why are you crying?” I asked.

She looked at me, appalled, and covered her breasts with her arms. “Bear, Bear,” she sobbed. “She has shrunk me to ugliness and cast me onto the shore. My lovely flanks are hollowed and cupped till I scarcely know myself.”

“Atthis!” I cried, with stunned recognition. “You are changed, not shrunk: You must see yourself as a whole.”

I took her hand and led her, shaken and cowering, to a pool like a lily pad.

She looked at her face in the water, the pillared neck, the limbs and the ivory thighs, and understanding suffused her features, a roseate shadow on snow.

“I—I am one of you,” she said. “A woman?”

“You were always a woman. But now your body matches your heart. Enfolds it like marble ramparts.”

“I am one of you,” she repeated, “and—“

“Beautiful.”

She shook her head. “You say my body matches my heart. But my heart is evil. I tried to harm you, Bear. When I overturned your boat and Vel took you captive.”

“Why did you do that, Atthis?”

“Astyanax had told me you were going to look for Circe. Long before I was born, she was loved by the dolphins. She culled them her Naiades, her Maids of the Deep, and to them she was always The Lady. A white dolphin led her to Libya and then returned to Aeaea to keep it safe from strangers. Ever since, my people have swum those waters, guarding, waiting for her return. As one of the guardians, I did not want you to go and trouble her.”

“And when you had wrecked our boat?”

“I felt ashamed when I saw you in the water. I touched you and knew your heart, gentle and kind. No longer did I wish you harm. But I still did not want you to look for Circe. I followed the
Turan
to Graviscae.”

“And waited in the harbor until I found a ship?”

“Yes. And joined you, still divided. I thought that you would never find her anyway, and I could be your friend and then lead you home again. But after we found the wreck, I knew we were close to Circe—knew I would have to choose. Loving you both, I kept out of sight until I saw the pygmies. Then I made my choice. Was it too late?”

“Late?” I said. “Time is not hostile, Atthis. At the last minute, the last second, he will turn and smile and say, ‘Love. Forgive. Accept. It is not too late.’ Circe has taught me that. Friendship divided your heart. Not hatred, not anger. I honor you for serving Circe, and love you for choosing me.”

“Bear!” The cry whirred like a discus. He ran toward us on stalwart legs; he raced, he leaped, he kicked his heels in the air. Milkweed whirling in wind-pools, leaves in a river’s eddy, a deer, a rabbit, a boy with wings on his heels. He turned a somersault; laughing, he fell in my arms and called my name.

“And Atthis,” he cried, knowing her at once. “She has changed you too! She has given us legs like Bear. Now he will never leave us!”

Behind us someone laughed, kindly, a little sadly, and an old woman, her face as weathered as tree trunks near the sea, leaned on a cane and waved a slow farewell.

And we went on together.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge with thanks a considerable debt to the following books:

The Life and Times of Tarquin the Etruscan
by Carlo Maria Franzero

The Etruscans
by M. Pallottino

Ancient Greek Mariners
by Walter Woodburn Hyde

The Cruise of the Dolphin
by Ferdinand Lallemand

THE SWORDSMEN OF VARNIS, by Clive Jackson

The twin moons brooded over the red deserts of Mars and the ruined city of Khua-Loanis. The night wind sighed around the fragile spires and whispered at the fretted lattice windows of the empty temples, and the red dust made it like a city of copper.

It was close to midnight when the distant rumble of racing hooves reached the city, and soon the riders thundered in under the ancient gateway. Tharn, Warrior Lord of Loanis, leading his pursuers by a scant twenty yards, realized wearily that his lead was shortening and raked the scaly flanks of his six-legged vorkl with cruel spurs. The faithful beast gave a low cry of despair as it tried to obey and failed.

In front of Tharn in the big double saddle sat Lehni-tal-Loanis, Royal Lady of Mars, riding the ungainly animal with easy grace, leaning foward along its arching neck to murmur swift words of encouragement into its flattened ears. Then she lay back against Tharn’s mailed chest and turned her lovely face up to his, flushed and vivid with the excitement of the chase, amber eyes aflame with love for her starnge hero from beyond time and space.

“We shall win this race yet, my Tharn,” she cried. “Yonder through that archway lies the Temple of the Living Vapor, and once there we can defy all the Hordes of Varnis!”

Looking down at the unearthly beauty of her, at the subtle curve of throat and breast and thigh, revealed as the wind tore at her scanty garments, Tharn knew that even if the Swordsmen of Varnis struck him down, his strange odyssey would not have been in vain.

But the girl had judged the distance correctly, and Tharn brought their snorting vorkl to a sliding, tearing halt at the great doors of the Temple, just as the Swordsmen reached the outer archway and jammed there in a struggling, cursing mass. In seconds they had sorted themselves out and came streaming across the courtyard, but the delay had given Tharn time to dismount and take his stand in one of the great doorways. He knew that if he could hold it for a few moments while Lehni-tal-Loanis got the door open, then the secret of the Living Vapor would be theirs, and with it mastery of all the lands of Loanis.

The Swordsmen tried first to ride him down, but the doorway was so narrow and deep that Tharn had only to drive his sword-point upward into the first vorkl’s throat and leap backward as the dying beast fell. Its rider was stunned by the fall, and Tharn bounded up onto the dead animal and beheaded the unfortunate Swordsman without compunction. There were ten of his enemies left, and they came at him now on foot, but the confining doorway prevented them from attacking more than four abreast, and Tharn’s elevated position upon the huge carcass gave him the advantage he needed. The fire of battle was in his veins now, and he bared his teeth and laughed in their faces, and his reddened sword wove a pattern of cold death which none could pass.

Lehni-tal-Loanis, running quick cool fingers over the pitted bronze of the door, found the radiation lock and pressed her glowing opalescent thumb-ring into the socket, gave a little sob of relief as she heard hidden tumblers falling. With agonizing slowness, the ancient mechanism began to open the door; soon Tharn heard the girl’s clear voice call above the clashing steel, “Inside, my Tharn! The secret of Living Vapor is ours!”

But Tharn, with four of his foes dead now, and seven to go, could not retreat from his position on top of the dead vorkl without grave risk of being cut down, and Lehni-tal-Loanis, quickly realizing this, sprang up beside him, drawing her own slim blade and crying, “Aie, my love! I will be your left arm!”

Now the cold hand of defeat gripped the hearts of the Swordsmen of Varnis: two, three, four more of them mingled their blood with the red dust of the courtyard as Tharn and his fighting princess swung their merciless blades in perfect unison. It seemed that nothing could prevent them now from winning the mysterious secret of the Living Vapor, but they reckoned without the treachery of one of the remaining Swordsmen. Leaping backward out of the conflict, he flung his sword upon the ground in disgust.

“Aw, the Hell with it!” he grunted, and unclipping a proton gun from his belt, he blasted Lehni-tal-Loanis and hte Warrior Lord out of existence with a searing energy-beam.

THE EMPEROR OF GONDWANALAND
, by Paul Di Filippo

“Hey, Mutt! It’s playtime, let’s go!”

Mutt Spindler raised his gaze above the flatscreen monitor that dominated his desk. The screen displayed Pagemaker layouts for next month’s issue of
PharmaNotes
, a trade publication for the drug industry. Mutt had the cankerous misfortune to be assistant editor of
Pharma­Notes
, a job he had held for the last three quietly miserable years.

In the entrance to his cubicle stood Gifford, Cody and Melba, three of Matt’s co-workers. Gifford sported a giant foam finger avowing his allegiance to whatever sports team was currently high in the standings of whatever season it chanced to be. Cody had a silver hip flask raised to her lips, imbibing a liquid that Mutt could be fairly certain did not issue from the Poland Springs cooler. Melba had already undone her formerly decorous shirt several buttons upward from the hem and knotted it, exposing a belly that reminded Mutt of a slab of Godiva chocolate.

Mutt pictured with facile vividness the events of the evening that would ensue, should he choose to accept Gifford’s invitation. His projections were based on numerous past such experiences. Heavy alcohol consumption and possible ingestion of illicit stimulants, followed by slurred, senseless conversation conducted at eardrum-piercing volume to overcome whatever jagged ambient noise was passing itself off as music these days. Some hypnagogic, sensory-impaired dancing with one strange woman or another, leading in all likelihood to a meaningless hookup, the details of which would be impossible to recall in the morning, resulting in hypochondriacal worries and vacillating committments to get one kind of STD test or another. And of course the leftover brain damage and fraying of neurological wiring would insure that the demands of the office would be transformed from their usual simple hellishness to torture of an excruciating variety undreamed of by even, say, a team of Catholic school nuns and the unlamented Uday Hussein.

Gifford could sense his cautious friend wavering toward abstinence. “C’mon, Mutt! We’re gonna hit Slamdunk’s first, then Black Rainbow. And we’ll finish up at Captains Curvaceous.”

Mention of the last-named club, a strip joint where Mutt had once managed to drop over five hundred dollars of his tiny Christmas bonus while simultaneously acquiring a black eye and a chipped tooth, caused a shiver to surf his spine.

“Uh, thanks, guys, for thinking of me. But I just can’t swing it. If I don’t get this special ad section squared away by tonight, we’ll miss the printer’s deadlines.”

Cody pocketed her flask and grabbed Gifford’s arm. “Oh, leave the little drudge alone, Giff. It’s obvious he’s so in love with his job. Haven’t you seen his lip-prints on the screen?”

Mutt was hurt and insulted. Was it his fault that he had been promoted to assistant editor over Cody? He wanted to say something in his defense, but couldn’t think of a comeback that wouldn’t sound whiny. And then the window closed on any possible repartee.

Gifford unselfconsciously scratched his butt with his foam finger. “Okay, pal, maybe next time. Let’s shake a tail, ladies.”

Melba winked at Mutt as she walked away. “Gonna miss you, loverboy.”

Then the trio was gone.

Mutt hung his head in his hands. Why had he ever slept with Melba? Sleeping with co-workers was insane. Yet he had done it. The affair was over now, but the awkward repercussions lingered. Another black mark on his karma.

Refocusing on the screen, Mutt tried hard to proof the text floating before him. “Epigenetix-brand sequencers guarantee faster throughput…” The words and pictures blurred into a jittery multicolored fog like a mosh pit full of amoebas. Was he crying? For Christ’s sake, why the hell was he crying? Just because he had to hold down a suck-ass job he hated just to pay his grad-school loans, had no steady woman, hadn’t been snow-boarding in two years, had put on five pounds since the summer, and experienced an undeniable yet shameful thrill when contemplating the purchase of a new
necktie
?

Mutt knuckled the moisture from his eyes and mentally kicked his own ass for being a big baby. This wasn’t a bad life, and plenty of people had it worse. Time to pull up his socks and buckle down and all that other self-improvement shit.

But not right now. Right now, Mutt needed a break. He hadn’t lied to Gifford and the others, he had to finish this job tonight. But he could take fifteen minutes to websurf his way to some amusing site that would lift his spirits.

And that was how Mutt discovered Gondwanaland.

In retrospect, after the passage of time had erased his computer’s logs, the exact chain of links leading to Gondwanaland was hard to reconfigure. He had started looking for new recordings by his favorite group, Dead End Universe. That had led somehow to a history of pirate radio stations. And from there it was a short jump to micro­nations.

Fascinated, Mutt lost all track of time as he read about this concept that was totally new to him.

Micronations—also known as cybernations, fantasy countries or ephemeral states—were odd blends of real-world rebellious politics, virtual artsy-fartsy projects and elaborate spoofs. Essentially, a micro­nation was any assemblage of persons regarding themselves as a sovereign country, yet not recognized by international entities such as the United Nations. Sometimes micronations were associated with real physical territory. The Cocos Islands had once been ruled as a fiefdom by the Clunies-Ross family. Sarawak was once the province of the White Rajas, as the Brooke clan had styled themselves.

With the advent of the internet, the number of micronations had exploded. There were now dozens of imaginary online countries pre­dicated on different philosophies, exemplifying scores of different governmental systems, each of them more or less seriously arguing that they were totally within their rights to issue passports, currency and stamps, and to designate ministers, nobility and bureaucratic minions.

Mutt had always enjoyed fantasy sports in college. Imaginary leagues, imaginary rosters, imaginary games—Something about being totally in charge of a small universe had appealed to him, as an antidote to his lack of control over the important factors and forces that batted his own life around. He had spent a lot of time playing Sims too. The concept of cybernations seemed like a logical extension of those pursuits, an appealing refuge from the harsh realities of career and relationships.

The site Mutt had ended up on was a gateway to a whole host of online countries. The Aerican Empire, the Kingdom of Talossa, the Global State of Waveland, the Kingdom of Redonda, Lizbekistan—

And Gondwanaland.

Memories of an introductory geoscience course came back to Mutt. Gondwanaland was the super-continent that had existed hundreds of millions of years ago, before splitting and drifting apart into the configuration of separate continental landforms familiar today.

Mutt clicked on the Gondwanaland button.

The page built itself rapidly on his screen. The animated image of a spinning globe dominated. Sure enough, the globe featured only a single huge continent, marked with interior divisions into states and featuring the weird names of cities.

Mutt was about to scan some of the text on the page when his eye fell on the blinking time readout in the corner of the screen.

Holy shit! Nine-thirty! He’d be here till midnight unless he busted his ass.

Reluctantly abandoning the Gondwanaland page and its impossible globe, Mutt returned to his work.

Which still sucked.

Maybe worse.

* * * *

The next day Mutt was almost as tired as if he had gone out with Gifford and the gang. But at least his head wasn’t throbbing and his mouth didn’t taste as if he had french-kissed a hyena. Proofing the advertorial section had taken until eleven-forty-five, and by the time he had ridden the subway home, eaten some leftover General Gao’s chicken, watched Letterman’s Top Ten and fallen asleep, it had been well into the small hours of the morning. When his alarm went off at seven-thirty, he had thrashed about in confusion like a drowning man, dragged from some engrossing dream that instantly evaporated out of memory.

Once in the office, Mutt booted up his machine. He had been doing something interesting last evening, hadn’t he? Oh, yeah, that Gondwanaland thing—

Before his butt hit the chair, someone was IMing him. Oh, shit, Kicklighter wanted to see him in his office. Mutt got up to visit his boss.

He ran into Gifford in the hall. Unrepentant yet visibly hurting, Gifford managed a sickly grin. “Missed a swinging time last night, my friend. After her fifth jello shot, Cody got up on stage at Captains. Took two bouncers to get her down, but not before she managed to earn over a hundred bucks.”

Mutt winced. This was more information than he needed about the extracurricular activities of his jealous co-worker. How would it be possible now to work on projects side-by-side with her, without conjuring up visions of her drunkenly shedding her clothing?

Suddenly this hip young urban wastrel shtick, the whole life- is-fucked-so-let’s-get-fucked-up playacting that Mutt and his friends had been indulging in for so long looked incredibly boring and tedious and counterproductive, possibly even the greased chute delivering one’s ass to eternal damnation. Mutt knew with absurd certainty that he could no longer indulge in such a wasteful lifestyle. Something inside him had shifted irrevocably, some emotional tipping point had been reached.

But what was he going to do with his life instead?

Making a half-hearted neutral comment to Gifford—no point in turning into some kind of zealous lecturing missionary asshole Gifford would tune out anyway—Mutt continued through the cube- farm.

Dan Kicklighter, the middle-aged editor of
PharmaNotes
, resembled the captain of a lobster trawler, bearded, burly and generally disheveled, as if continually battling some invisible Perfect Storm. He had worked at a dozen magazines in his career, everything from
Atlantic Monthly
to
Screw.
A gambling habit that oscillated from moderate—a dozen scratch-ticket purchases a day—to severe—funding an Atlantic City spree with money the bank rightly regarded as a year’s worth of mortgage payments—had determined the jagged progression of his resumé. Right now, after some serious rehab, he occupied one of the higher posts of his career.

“Matthew, come in. I just want you to know that I’m going to be away for the next four days. Big industry conference in Boston. With a little detour to Foxwoods Casino on either side. But that’s just between you and me.”

Kicklighter was upfront about his addiction, at least with his subordinates, and claimed that he was now cured to the point where he could indulge himself recreationally, like any casual bettor.

“I’m putting you in charge while I’m gone. I know it’s a lot of responsibility, but I think you’re up to it. This is a crucial week, and I’m counting on you to produce an issue we can all be proud of.”

There were three assistant editors at
PharmaNotes
, so this advancement was not insignificant. But Mutt cringed at the temporary promotion. He just wanted to stay in his little miserable niche and not have anybody notice him. Yet what could he do? Deny the assignment? Wasn’t such an honor the kind of thing he was supposed to be shooting for, next step up the ladder and all that shit? Cody would’ve killed for such a nomination.

“Uh, fine, Dan. Thank you. I’ll do my best.”

“That’s what I’m counting on. Here, take this list of targets you need to hit before Monday. It’s broken down into ten-minute activity blocks. Say, have you heard the odds on the Knicks game this weekend?”

Back in his cube, Mutt threw down the heavy sheaf of paper with disgust. He just knew he’d have to work through the weekend.

Before he had gotten through the tasks associated with the first ten-minute block, Cody appeared.

“So, all your ass-kissing finally paid off. Well, I want you to know that you haven’t fooled everyone here. Not by a long shot.”

Before Mutt could protest his lack of ambition, Cody was gone. Her angry strut conjured up images of pole-dancing in Mutt’s traitorous imagination.

A short time later, Melba sauntered in and poised one haunch on the corner of Mutt’s desk.

“Hey, big guy, got any plans for Friday night?”

“Yeah. Thanks to Kicklighter, I’ll be ruining my eyesight right here at my desk.”

Melba did not seem put off by Mutt’s sour brusqueness. “Well, that’s too bad. But I’m sure there’ll be some other night we can, ah, hook up.”

Once Melba left, Mutt tried to resume work. But he just couldn’t focus.

So he brought up the Gondwanaland page.

Who was going to tell him he couldn’t? Kicklighter was probably already out the office and halfway to the roulette wheels.

Below the spinning foreign globe was a block of text followed by some hot-button links: IMPERIAL LINEAGE, CUSTOMS, NATURAL HISTORY, POLITICAL HISTORY, ART, FORUMS, and so forth. Mutt began to read the main text.

For the past ten thousand years of recorded history, Gondwanaland’s imperial plurocracy has insured the material well-being as well as the physical, spiritual and intellectual freedom of its citizens. Since the immemorial era of Fergasse I, when the walled com­munities of the Only Land—prominently, Lyskander, Port Shallow, Vyber­gum and Turnbuckle—emerged from the state of siege imposed by the roving packs of scalewargs and amphidonts, banding together into a network of trade and discourse, right up until the current reign of Golusty IV, the ascent of the united ­peoples of Gondwanaland has been unimpeded by war or dissent, despite a profusion of beliefs, creeds, philosophical paradigms and social arrangements. A steady accumulation of scientific knowledge from the perspicacious and diligent researchers at our many technotoria, combined with the practical entrepreneurship of the ingeniator class, has led to a mastery of the forces of nature, resulting in such now-essential inventions as the strato-carriage, storm-dispeller, object-box and meta-palp.

The grateful citizens of Gondwanaland can assume—with a surety they feel when they contemplate the regular rising of the Innermost Moon—that the future will only continue this happy progression…