For dragon enthusiasts
I’ve got no one in the real world to talk fiction with. The internet is one thing, but I wish I had some people to nerd out about plot threads with.
Denver writing groups are all so serious, and they’re all on Zoom, writing literature. I show up with dragons and bad puns, and it goes over like a fart in church.
Part 1: Hyperion
Chapter 6
If I wanted to survive long after escaping Koru, I had to make sure that Mallens didn’t figure out I’d tried to have him killed. This was the nexus of all my problems. I’d hired an artificer Hasso to make copies of All Things Ending, the scepter of Death, the assassins had carried into battle. The assassins had died in the attempt, but Hasso hadn’t.
Soon someone would look for the remains of the killers. Mallens had stomped them, so I didn’t think the murderers would be found too quickly. Still, they would be found. So too would be found the weapons, those would be traced, and I would be found. I would have died protecting my secrets before, but now I’d finger Koru in a heartbeat. Koru had merely caused what he feared.
However, Mallens would want me tortured for eternity. I didn’t know if he even could torture a mortal for eternity, but I didn’t want to find out. I needed to find and destroy those weapons.
I’m Kog, like cog in the machine or cognitive dissonance, the duality of knowing I’m an idiot and thinking I’m smarter than everyone else. I wanted to witness things, see the decisions get made, and be a voice in the conversations that decide them. When someone said, ‘Kog did that’ I wanted that to mean something. I wanted school-children a hundred years from now to curse my name, because when they saw Kog on a test, I wanted them to struggle with all the facts they had to memorize and wonder which of them they needed to recall now. I wanted to matter.
But I got into politics to impress a girl. That’s what I thought about running. I thought of Seraphine. The last time I’d seen her, we hadn’t even talked, but she had known I was there.
Seraphine had long legs and round thighs. The curve of her hips to butt mesmerized me. She wore her red hair long and little skirts: not micro skirts or the ones that are basically hot-pants, just short, pleated skirts with a bit of skin between them and tight white shirts. When she’d invited me to join a little treason, she’d added high white stockings. Mistakes had been made.
I thought of Seraphine, her eyes, her lips, the little bits of skin her shirt revealed on her shoulders, waist, and back. I thought of the way she moved close to people when she spoke with them. I thought of how she found me, a mortal, and brought me home among gods. With Seraphine, I’d entered the rooms where the decisions had been made, I’d made the decisions, and I’d seen them carried out to victory or death.
My thoughts tripped and fell, because right now, things were moving faster to death than victory.
My problem was I was an idiot.
I got into the Northshore Academy of Sacred Geometry but failed out of a sorcery major. My advisor had sent me frankly insulting letters about job opportunities in window washing. Flailing about for a new major, I’d taken Unarmed Combat: Striking and UC: Grappling and pulled twos out of fives. The dean of the school had recruited me himself. I switched majors to martial arts.
That got me two internships at Fate. Pulling an internship at Fate isn’t hard. The pay is bad, the work stressful, there’s almost no promotion potential, but if you show up sober to an interview, you can get one. For a summer I got paid very little money and two bits of luck.
Pulling two internships, the second recommended and a direct hire, is as unlikely as a promotion. Neither I nor anyone else quite believed me when I got the second job offer. It brought a little, very little, more money and two more bits of luck. In the second week of Thermidor, after returning to school for my final year, Mos Eir, my boss at Fate, had asked me if I’d like to be considered for a full-time job.
She hedged, of course. Everyone at Fate hedged everything. She couldn’t promise anything. Maybe something at Fate might happen, she might have said. Possibly a full-time job. Was I interested?
Yes, obviously. I was going to graduate, needed a job, etc. But as I thought about it, not obviously, because the pay was bad, the work stressful, and promotion potential low. Mos Eir said she would take nearly a year to see if a job existed and wouldn’t feel insulted if I pursued other options. She even offered to write a letter of recommendation if I applied somewhere else.
I finished my program in unarmed combat with a bladed-weapons minor, filed to graduate, and got told that I needed to finish all that general education I’d skipped. I’d just sort-of ignored it for three years. The Registrar had not. Whatever. I finished half that fall semester, signed up for the other half for spring, and over Year’s End break met Seraphine.
Who was just stupefyingly, brain-stops-working, try-not-to-drool hot.
Who knew some guys who had a short term job.
Really short term.
A little dangerous.
Did I know any brave men who were interested?
The annoying thing about being a man is how quickly your brain turns off when you meet someone attractive. Women never have this problem. They don’t get stupid when pretty men show up.
The mountain air soothed my lungs and made me want to run. Angel’s Crest was a high pass north of Shang Du with many higher mountains between here and there. Even from the Hakan no sharp-eyed observer would spot me, and the path was far too high for rats. I jogged east, toward Hyperion.
The twists of the high road made me feel hidden and protected. Sometimes I saw Tsme worms. They dug great round valleys, but shed stones and rocks like snake-skin. The Clockwork Gods had made them in the first days, perhaps before the making of the Sun, and the worms created. They wiggled side to side, folding rock into mountains. They moved slowly and the mountains grew slowly, but so long as they lived, the peaks reached further toward the sky.
The lowlands don’t have the hold the mountains do on my heart. I could run faster and further when I left the foothills, but that’s the best I can say. The ground turned sandy; the pine trees grew thick. Rocky hills broke some of the ground, and sequioas and redwoods sprouted among the lesser firs and pine. The air smelled of menthol.
Every evening I put out my manna plate, and in the morning ate brown cakes that had appeared there overnight. They were dense and filling, and with care, could last a whole day. By the power of the roads, I came to Hyperion in two days time, slept outside, and woke to a dark, overcast day. Thick clouds hid the Sun, and I wouldn’t see it again for a while.
Stable Diffusion does landscapes pretty well.
I’d like to use it to creat human models I can practice drawing, but the details are what SD gets wrong and what I need to get right.
I haven’t gotten any good shots of Castle Amber, FYI.
Chapter 3
Black domes of the Agmar Shinoen rose north of the lake, and in the low spots between them lay deep clay soil. The rocky hills stood bare, long since washed clean. The stone was a dark mishmash of crystals, sparkly in the right light, but all of the grains smashing up against each other. The Hyades filled a deep crevice in the rocky ground, looking something like a capital T with the foot pointed south. Across from where the foot hits the crossbar, a double-spur of gray-brown mountains formed the Trough, a wide, fat-bellied hanging valley between two folded ridges. Kageran stands in the mouth of that valley, where the fast, cold river Aph has cut a small canyon, between the two Weeping Women who hold back the mountains.
The Weeping Women are tall figures of the same rock as the Agmar ground, whose upper bodies emerge from the lake with their backs to the mountains, and all the gray earth of those folded ridges piling up behind them. They’re crude, rough sculptures, if sculptures they are. The one on the east, Shanna, has a split butte of stone in front of her, giving the impression of two elbows sticking out like she’s got her face in her hands. A coarse, hanging curtain of stone tumbles around her face. Anna, on the west, is a little more refined. Her left arm is thrown back and out, pointing towards the city, and her right is clearly bent in front of her head with her face in the pocket of her elbow. Shanna requires a little visualization to make her look like a person, but Anna has a clear bust, waist, and hips that meet the black water.
The city fills the valley mouth. The Trough opens up a rocky scarp, maybe two hundred feet tall and leaning back at a quarter angle. There’s a toll road full of switchbacks. Where the Aph falls over the scarp, a great watermill sits at the heart of Gormen Manor. There Baroness Alyssa lives. The road hits the top of the scarp and ceases its switchbacks to run mostly straight up the Trough, and from it spread a hundred lesser roads and streets. On the other side, almost at Anna’s hand, there’s a bit of cliff missing like some giant took a bite out of the edge. Within the Trough, north of the city, the ground is rich and loamy.
Before the Aph falls through the waterwheels, plunging down through a raucous canyon to fill the Hyades and later to plunge into the Arsae, it flows a wiggly line down the Trough. Along it runs a road cut into the canyon wall, and on the road come the Doonish people. They’re a thick-bodied, dark-skinned people with sure feet. Men grow thin facial hair, but both men and women wear their head hair long, often braided intricately. They delight in complex colors on their clothing, wearing hats of braided ribbons. As a group they smile often.
New to the Doon are settlers from Ashirak, come up the great canyon city and spreading through the southern valleys. Those valleys are higher than mountains in other parts of the world. The newcomers are like many of the Ashirai, fair-skinned and tall, but not as tall as their lowland cousins. Nor are they as cheerful as their Doonish neighbors. They don’t wear the colors nor the grins.
Another path to Kageran is the low route, the Emperor’s Gateway that runs from Dylath-Leen on the Begah Bay to here in the shadow of the Doon Escarpment. Along that way lie the domain of a hundred warlords who call their bands ‘consequences’, such as the Consequence of Thalgo or the Consequence of Mayhar. Few of the Ashirai come that way. It is said that the consequent warlords are horned giants, and they’ve found a way to achieve the power of monsters by eating humans. Satre would know better than I, if the rumors are true. There aren’t many of the Ashirai lowlanders, but I saw a few. They look like taller versions of their uplander cousins.
From sunken Meom came the Meomassa, carrying a history of doom and suffering. Two hundred years ago they spoke a blasphemy no one will repeat, and volcanoes erupted across their isles. In fury, they spoke worse blasphemies to condemn the gods who sent the volcanoes. Their islands sank, their home was destroyed, and the survivors washed up on the Ungale Ngalnak beaches, where they were eaten by the horned lords. Some found their way here. Their skins are dark as dried lava. While the old-mountain Doonish wear linens spiced up with ribbons and threads, the Meomassa will make a whole dress out of a bolt of vivid red fabric and accent it with a shawl of yellow or green.
I hear ships can drop anchor at Meom and find bits of old wood in their anchor chains later. Divers can see the dim shapes of huge mountains under a dark and cloudy sea. Sometimes the ocean bubbles. I’ve never been there.
Kageran had Celephians, of course. Wherever there was money were Celephians. They’re a mixed people of their own, having few common features. As I entered the gates of Kageran, I saw them mucking out stables and gutting fish, arguing over prices in the market, and waiting in lines for gate access. I did see a few rich ones. A man on a black stallion wore silk and held scented lace to his nose. He looked at the world like he owned it while his horse shat on a non-rich Celephian groom.
And the people of Kageran seemed like the mixed-grain rock of their city, except where the rocks did their job in silence, the people yelled, argued, fought, and I think I saw someone get stabbed.
I paid the toll on the roadway and gave someone else a copper for directions. The toll road opened in Duncton’s Quarter, and Trui lived in the Baroness’s Quarter. I found my way over and inquired.
Hyrma Trui had had an attack and might die. Apparently his drinking had caught up with him. His brother Lemrai would take my options off my hands for the same price, but he was at Gormen Manor now, doing something or other with the royals.
Remember how I said Kageran has a Baroness? As best I understand it the last king of Kageran, Ozymandias, cut a deal with the Ashirai Emperor for military protection. In exchange Kageran joined the empire and the king took a demotion to baron. The locals think they were robbed. Among them, their rulers are still royal, to the point the third standing house, House Royal, makes no bones about where they stand on the issue.
They also say Ozymandias lived for thousands of years before being assassinated a few years ago, which touched off the Disagreement. I don’t know too much about all that. I know the objective facts that Alyssa is the youngest and she rules the city, her older brother Duncton doesn’t, and the eldest siblings, the twins Van and Mandrake, don’t either. The twins were not born in wedlock, nor were two other siblings, Ducarte and Kyria. Ducarte and Kyria were between the twins and Duncton, and they were missing or dead.
A polite woman met me at the door to Gormen Manor and brought me to Alyssa’s office. Satre introduced himself at the door. He was a big man in mail with an equally polite but bored expression. He had curly black hair, a big aquiline nose, and a wide chin.
“Satre, Baron-Consort of Kageran,” he said, clicking his heels together and nodding in the faintest insinuation of a bow. He spoke Celephian.
“Astrologamage Elegy,” I replied in the same. I’d made the title up because I’d needed something for the elves, but I figured I’d stick to it now. I bowed a little deeper than he had.
“Good,” he said. “And you are?”
Didn’t I just…oh, right.
“I’m here to see Lemrai Trui. I made a deal with his brother for wheat options, so I’m looking for him now.”
“A moment.” He turned in the doorway. “Lemrai, do you know an astrologamage?”
“No,” said a thin, confused voice.
“She says she’s got some wheat options for you.”
“Oh, her! Yes!” Someone jumped up, a chair scraped back, and rapid footsteps approached the boulderish-Satre. He stepped back, opening the door the rest of the way.
Lemrai Trui was a thin, ascetic man of advancing years but quick movements. He had a beak of a nose, and his hair had retreated even from a thin donut of wispy white. Now he had a fuzzy high-water mark around a too-big head. He stared at me around Satre.
“You got ’em? Don’t you lie to me. I want to see them first.”
I blinked.
“Come in, Astrologamage,” said a woman behind the desk, the Baroness Alyssa.
She was much smaller than her overlarge husband, almost normal-sized, with thick brown hair and hazel eyes. Her skin was a little fair to be Doonish, but she wore their style of clothing, a long-sleeved dress that seemed like one thread in four was scarlet, azure, or emerald. On the desk before her lay an abacus, a slate, some chalk, and five little cups of pebbles with another, larger bag of pebbles nearby. Her fingers and wrists were smudged with chalk.
“Your Highness,” I said and walked in.
“Don’t hassle the woman,” said Satre to Lemrai, who had followed me, hunched forward like he was a vulture waiting for me to croak. He had terrible posture.
Satre continued speaking to me, “Show us the documents. You can put them on the desk there.”
I hadn’t even put my stuff somewhere, but with all three watching, I dropped the duffel, rooted around within to find a leather portfolio, and displayed the fruits of my labors. I’d gone through Bloodharvest for these, and I was absolutely sure I wasn’t going to let them out of my sight. The options were ten sheets of vellum, written in silver ink, and embossed with royal seals of Manari, one of nine Immaculate Dynasties of Elvenhome. Those sheets of paper were almost everything I had and meant many things. They meant a fairly horrible job completed. They meant a fortune. They meant I could have not gone through a horrible job if I hadn’t wasted all my money the first time, and they were going to mean I wouldn’t waste a fortune again.
Lemrai snatched one option and read it greedily. Satre shut the door behind us and stood against it, and the Baroness reached for another option. She glanced at me before touching it.
“Go ahead. They’re real.” I beckoned her forward.
She picked it up and took another sheet of paper out of a hidden place behind her desk. She compared the two. That document was thick, bleached-white parchment covered in precise, small script. I’d bet a fortune it had come from a Celephian wind-house.
Actually no, I wouldn’t, because I wasn’t going to waste any more money. Be smart. Smart.
The two of them perused the documents until the baroness put hers down. Then Lemrai compared that one to the rest, but finally he was done too.
Baroness Alyssa said, “They look valid to me. Mons. Trui?”
He grumbled first, before saying, “Yes, I’ll accept. I do want to confirm directly with Gesphain though.”
“Our windcallers,” Satre said behind us.
Alyssa said to Trui, “I think that’s fair, but I doubt she’ll let them out of her sight until you pay her. Would you like us to wait?”
Lemrai didn’t want those options out of his sight, but neither did I. He wasn’t happy about that. Finally he conceded to finish the sale now. His hands twitched every time he put one of the options down.
That was that. Alyssa let me examine her scale before weighed each of Trui’s one hundred and twenty six marks. She was precise, neither quick nor slow. After Trui’s money balanced, he took the documents, Trui and I signed a bill of sale, and Satre sealed the contract with his signet ring and the fire. Alyssa had stacked my coinage beside a wooden box, and perhaps to distract me from Satre’s action, she had me count the coin-stacks, again, and place them in a long wooden box she packed with straw. By then Trui had scuttled out, and she sealed the box with more traditional wax.
“Would you like to carry it out of here?” she asked. “We can have it delivered to the Gesphains for you, if you’d prefer.”
“Is there a fee for that?” I asked.
“No. I quite like to know where this much gold is going inside my city, so I’m happy to help in exchange for a little information.”
“What information?” I asked.
The baroness smiled. “How did you get options for ten shipfuls of winter wheat from the elves? You’re not a wheat merchant.”
“The stars!” I replied. I shoulda given her jazz-hands, but I didn’t think of it in time.
“Please continue,” she answered, and they had me over a barrel.
One hundred and twenty six marks weigh sixty three pounds. We had just weighed them. I wasn’t carrying that little box out of here.
“Can I get something to drink first?” I asked, and that’s how we got to now.
A couple of things I’ve been fairly upset over for a year or more are in the process of resolving. They’re resolving in my favor. This was not idly accomplished, but it seems my work has paid off.
I really wish I could let go of a lot of residual tension, but no doubt that just takes time.
Still, these are big moves.
One week until the next thing finishes, and life hopefully gets much easier.
Fiction coming tomorrow, and more on Sunday.
If you get demoralized, remember that Feynmann invented QED because he was no good at physics.
Someone threw a saucer in a cafeteria, and he happened to notice that it wobbled as it flew. He got to thinking about it and kicked out quantum electrodynamics.
Because he was no good a physics.
A bunch of people expecting a Fed pivot just realized the Fed has two legs. The Fed can pivot the other way too, and boy is that scary.
Microsoft Office 365 is about as useful as Windows Vista.
Chapter 5
I woke up on the bier. It was a low, squat block of stone, uncut and unpolished, white marble shot through with veins of silver and speckled with quartz. This was where Koru told me to come for a reading of my dreams, where Zeni performed her day-job. Night-job, I guess. I sat up and my leg was cured. Zeni sat on a chair nearby, playing cat’s cradle with herself, and looking unutterably bored.
My schemes and flattery aside, she was quite pretty. Her skin had the same reddish tint as the river silt, carried down from the Tsme. She had big eyes and small, long-fingered hands. Her hair and clothing floated in the water as if they were weightless, and underneath her clothing, her form curved in most interesting ways. That was the thing about gossamer. It revealed shapes and no details, form but no specifics, and hints. She looked amazing.
She looked up while I was looking at her and put her game away.
She really was quite pretty, but now, instead of looking passionate, enraptured, or amorous, she looked curious and a little cynical.
“I fixed your leg,” she said, waving her finger at me.
“Thank you.”
“With less pretty language, why are you here? Be honest.”
“Mostly for the leg,” I said.
“Fair.”
“Also, I want your help to escape the valley.”
She shook her head. “I don’t get involved in the affairs of the Hakan.”
“I hate your sister.”
Zeni perked right up. “What now?”
“She’s a plague, and I want to work her downfall.”
Zeni’s eyes narrowed. “Which one?”
“Astras.” I paused. “Aelof’s fine. She’s quite nice, honestly, but she complains a lot.”
“She does do a lot of work,” Zeni said quickly.
“Maybe so, but I don’t want to hear about it! Anyway, I wish her the best. I’m talking about Astras. I want to work her downfall.”
“I don’t know if I should get involved–” said Zeni, and I hurried on.
“I think she’s cheating on Koru.”
That stopped her like I’d staked her through the heart. “With who?”
“Dr Simmons.”
She looked away, and the gears of her mind clicked audibly.
I went on. “He’s the really annoying one with the too-big head on the too-thin neck and laughs like a harpy.”
Zeni looked down, and her eyes fixed on me. She leaned forward in her seat, pulling barely-there fabric tight. “Why him?”
“A few reasons. One, he’s an idiot, she seems to like him, and I can’t imagine anyone putting up with him unless he was giving her a little something extra. Two, I don’t think Koru would suspect. Simmons gives a slightly-gay vibe. Three, I’ve never seen Koru give a lot of attention to Astras. She has to show up, look hot, and he treats her as being decorative. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was watering other fields as a way to get revenge.”
Zeni squinted. “Why do you want revenge?”
“She tried to have me killed.”
“Did you try to sleep with her, and she turn you down?”
“Who?” I yelled. My voice cracked. I didn’t mean to, but that meant there was no way I could have faked it. “The evil plague?”
“Yeah. You just said she’s hot.”
I stared at her for several seconds, then said, “No.”
“I’m just saying,” she just said.
“No.”
This turn of conversation had moved away from me. I was still kinda trying to seduce her.
“Baby, let’s not talk about other women.”
“Yeah, yeah. Enough with that, buddy. What do you want?”
“I’d like you to smuggle me out of valley without anyone knowing.”
Zeni waggled her head side-to-side a few times. She looked up at the Moon again and frowned.
“And I’d like to talk with you a little bit,” I added.
Her head stopped wiggling, and Zeni looked at me. It was a flat gaze. Her eyes didn’t open all the way, but she arched her eyebrows. Her lips made a thin line. But I got the feeling through her mask she wasn’t quite as cold as she implied.
“Come here. Talk with me a little bit,” I added. There was plenty of room on the bier.
She stood up with marvelous posture, and that made her hips and curves draw the floating gossamer tight. I enjoyed looking at her. She shifted her weight to her right leg, as if to take a step, but the movement made her curves curvier. Her left foot went up on the toe.
“Night Witch, Daughter of Alph, Oracle, come to me!” yelled the voice of the idiot above, the true blister under my sandal strap, Mithrak. “Give me your wisdom.”
“I won’t give you a bleeding thing,” muttered Zeni, slipping out of her position to stand flat-footed with fists on hips.
I slipped up from the bier, took her about the waist, and kissed her. She looked surprised, and she didn’t kiss me back. But she didn’t move away either.
After a long, pleasant moment, I leaned away without letting go. “Help me. I must escape.”
“Okay.”
“Mithrak’s going to ask you where I am. Don’t tell him.”
“I’ll lie to him.
I expected more fight there, honestly. “You can do that? As an oracle?”
“Do what? Lie to a customer? Oh, sweetie.”
“Dang.”
I’d always sort of suspected, but I’d just assumed it was impossible.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked.
Hyperion, I thought, but I didn’t say. “Just out of the valley, and far enough away I can’t be tracked easily.”
“Follow this stairway down, but when you come to the Moon, turn around. Before you, you will see many pools. One will bear the reflection of Angel’s Crest. Walk through it, and you will be there.”
“Can I come see you again?”
“If you want.”
And I did.
But I didn’t want to die. Fighting Mithrak would get me killed. If he fired even one round from that .43, Hoarfast would hear. And then…
I looked at Zeni.
“It would be great if they thought I was dead.”
She shrugged a mysterious shrug, but underneath she was smirking.
I ran down the stairway toward the Moon at the bottom of the lake.
Good luck, everyone. Life is hard. I’m rooting for you.