BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue001 Read online

  Issue #1 • Oct. 9, 2008

  “The Sword of Loving Kindness pt1,” by Chris Willrich

  “Sun Magic, Earth Magic,” by David D Levine

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  The Sword of Loving Kindness pt1

  Chris Willrich

  One storm-lashed sunset in the Eldshore’s antique capital, beneath Castle Astrolabe’s crumbling perch and near the Zodiac Coliseum’s bloody stones, Gaunt and Bone scaled Heaven’s Vault, there to make a hellish deposit.

  Heaven’s Vault was a golden, six-sided tower lancing like an orphaned sunbeam through Archaeopolis’ sodden skies. Rectangular stained-glass windows glittered at intervals up its six hundred feet, each with a god’s portrait in the center, surrounded by lush scenes of that divinity’s life and death. In the corners of the windows there glowed ruby numbers, as if enumerating divine blood money.

  “They are all dead, you know,” Imago Bone said within a gilded cloak, his invictium-tipped gloves scraping past the vast window of the Forge God, a blade of grass in his teeth recalling the world far below. “Or so it’s claimed. All the gods of the West. Those not embedded in the landscape, or too abstract to have form at all. Their blood stained this glass, with the blood of their high priests. And the Things beyond the glass killed them.”

  “If this is meant to deter me,” Persimmon Gaunt said, clutching her rope beneath Bone, “I’m deterred. Turn back anytime you like.” Though I wish I’d been swayed at a lower altitude, she thought. Swaying at high altitude is hard on the stomach. Her sturdy body had been toughened by weeks of travel, but the long climb ached within her limbs, and chill winds swirled auburn hair into her eyes. Dangling there, she felt not unlike the rose tattooed upon her face, the one shown ensnared by a spider’s web.

  “There’s no choice,” Bone said. “What we need is beyond this glass, that prophecy claims unbreakable.”

  The poet answered him,

  “Neither liquid nor solid: such then is glass.

  Stained with godblood and manblood, no one shall pass.

  Thus trapped between natures, ‘twill never fault.

  Eternal, the windows of Heaven’s Vault.”

  “Right,” Bone said. “That one.” The spare, ferret-like face of the thief frowned down, framed by two old scars, one from blade, one from flame. “I won’t ask again that you allow me to go alone. I merely ask that you respect the Pluribus. They are not seen much beyond this tower. But if tales are true they slew the old world, spawned the present age.”

  “I understand.”

  “I... do not want to lose you.” The momentary softness fled the thief’s scarred face as soon as it arrived. “Some perils must be mine alone. So you must do exactly as I say.”

  “You do not own me, Bone.”

  “You are free, Gaunt. I merely want you free and alive.”

  They reached the upper right vertex of the great window, beside a number marking Allos the Smith’s assigned ranking among gods (thirteen), and the climbers secured themselves and readied their gear. Stray raindrops spattered the window, which glistened with the ruddy flourishes of sunset. Godblood was, it seemed, composed of all the spectrum’s colors, but with a marked bias toward the red.

  Bone removed his gloves. “The gem, if you please.”

  Gaunt slid from her index finger the ring they’d stolen from the delvenfolk of Loomsberg. It took the shape of a silver ouroboros serpent, with a crook in its self-devoured tail, and a frosty gem within the crook.

  “A ring of Time,” she said, passing it up. “And time, perhaps, to tell me the plan.”

  Bone took the ring and tested it, plucking the grass blade from his teeth and flicking it across the gem. Green coiled into brown, blew away as dust, the remnants scattering to the street. None of the hustling wayfarers beside the Vault noted the incident, nor perceived the climbers in gilded cloaks that mimicked the tower’s stones. Indeed, for all their civic pride, the Archaeopolitans preferred to act as though the Vault did not exist.

  “We could live a year,” Bone mused, “on the value of this gem. Captain Dawnglass would want it for piracy, the kleptomancers for research, Dolman the Charmed to create false relics. Yet it’s merely the tool for a larger caper.” He sighed. “This is my master heist, Gaunt. I spent decades sketching it, as a sort of hobby, never supposing I’d actually try something so mad.” He gazed if for the final time at the grey sea surging westward; then he smiled. “That is the effect you have on me.”

  For you, Bone, she thought, that was a love poem.

  But he had turned back to the window of the god-eaters.

  He put the ouroboros upon his ring finger, pressed it to the glass.

  The gem shimmered and diminished, and simultaneously the world blurred.

  Bone shuddered. Hair sprouted upon his face. Grey strands appeared on his head. His clothes frayed. So did the rope.

  “Bone....”

  “A moment.” Bone shimmered back into solidity, and the gem was gone. Was his voice a trifle weary? “A moment, a year... so little difference to a ring of clotted Time. So little difference to me. Heh. But most of its influence was directed outward, Gaunt, at this window.”

  Was the window’s luster gone, its surface drab and colors flat? “What have you done?” Gaunt asked.

  “Don’t worry, I’m fine. Just a little temporal backwash. But the window, now... well, a thief appreciates loopholes. Glass is indeed something between liquid and solid, but old glass with impurities has been known to divitrify and become a solid in truth. So I wonder if the prophecy still applies to crystal....”

  Bone donned his clawed gloves, scraped, and grinned.

  Soon he’d created a gap a few feet across in the corner of the Forge God’s window. He carefully lowered a crystal disc into the darkness of the tower, sliding it to one side.

  “Well done,” said Gaunt, peering up into the Vault’s shadows. “But was it necessary to keep me in the dark?”

  Bone looked at her. There were lines beside his eyes, as if a few more crows had danced there. “You are not as skilled at evasion as I. You might have been caught and questioned by delvenfolk, or eldguards, or infraseers.”

  “You were afraid I’d stop you, weren’t you?”

  He coughed. “Perhaps. I could not predict the severity of the temporal backwash. And you have so many years left.”

  She reached up and grasped his wrist. “Give me this moment, and this road, and this sky. That is enough. Never give me lies.”

  He smirked. “I am glad it’s enough, since you’ve enumerated most of our possessions.” He studied the narrow gap, patted his stomach. “For once I’m glad we’ve had little to spend on food.”

  Gaunt shook her head. “Think of it. We are down to our last gold ambrosian, and bear an infernal burden.” She cocked her head toward her pack, which bore the reason for their adventure. “And now we are breaking into one of the world’s most dangerous places.”

  “Don’t tell me you aren’t enjoying it.”

  She laughed and mimed an unchaste kiss. “After you, master thief.”

  The Vault’s windows were for the outside world’s benefit. The beings within had no requirement of light, and although ruddy illumination streamed through the windows, shadows were plentiful. Once within, Gaunt and Bone sought their dubious concealment and took the Vault’s measure.

  Their first realization was that Heaven’s Vault was in a sense two towers: a citadel of black stone perhaps fifty feet in diameter, nestled within the shell of the golden-hued exterior. A narrow, sloping passageway separated the two.

  Upon the ebon stone of the inner tower there appea
red, at regular intervals, narrow doors of still darker metal resembling slabs of congealed night. Spindly glyphs, like a sequence of mad spiders’ webs, etched the walls beside.

  “Purest agonium,” Bone said after a sniff of the door-metal. “Formed, it’s said, in the hearts of draconic suicides. I’d best not touch it.”

  “The language of the lost isle of Nobeca,” Gaunt said, squinting at the writing beside the door. “I’d best read it.” Clicking her tongue, she said, “A free translation might be ‘clam, ennui, knucklebone.’“

  “So,” Bone said, scratching his chin, “beyond lies a talisman that puts mollusks to sleep?”

  “No, Bone. My translation makes no sense because the language employed is not Nobecan, but our own tongue of Roil.”

  Bone frowned at her, then at the arcane squiggles. “You could have fooled me. But then the light is dim....”

  “The Nobecan symbols are here used to represent the sounds of Roil. You see, Nobecan is ideographic, not alphabetic. The glyphs with the meanings ‘clam,’ ‘ennui,’ and ‘knucklebone,’ possessed in the original tongue the sounds ‘slaw,’ ‘terr,’ and ‘dairk.’“

  “‘Hm. Slaw-terr-dairk. Slaw-ter-dark. Slaughterdark?” Bone’s eyebrows rose. “The pirate lord? Could this be his deposit box?”

  Persimmon Gaunt could almost see the fires lighting behind Bone’s forehead, illuminating storied hoards of Summerlong wine, Karthagarian gold, Wallander silk.

  “That creature was the terror of three continents,” Bone murmured, his hand drifting despite his own warning toward the dark panel. “I absorbed all his legends as a boy. He retired as a prince to a desert outpost—what would he lock away here?”

  A thousand miles east in the city of pain, a girl tending a weed-choked garden shivered beneath a desert moon, as if a cold western wind whispered her name....

  Gaunt caught Bone’s hand. “This isn’t our goal.”

  Her lover sighed. “Correct. We are not stealing, this day.” He beckoned up the winding passage. “The unoccupied boxes should be this way.”

  “A moment.” Gaunt studied the crystal disc they’d dropped in the passageway, its edges marked with red powder, flecked with blues, golds, greens, and yellows. She rubbed the mouth of a pouch along its circumference. “Powdered godblood,” she said, “might just be of value.”

  “Audacious,” Bone said. “Well played. You carry the stuff.”

  They crept upward the equivalent of two stories, passing dark portals labeled for wizards, heroes, monsters, and lunatics, before they discovered the Vault had a guardian.

  A huge golden sphere rolled into view. Bearing down, it made not a rumbling, but a sticky-sounding hiss.

  To Gaunt it resembled nothing so much as a globe of frozen honey, just wide enough to dominate the passage. Like drops of blood, bubbles within glinted with the window-light. Yet this was not its most lurid aspect, for within quivered the severed heads of three men, bobbing as though the interior were viscous yet. The rolling heads stared at Gaunt and Bone, their eyes tracking the new victims, their mouths gaping wide as if shrieking silent warning.

  “Flee!” Bone yelled.

  Gaunt tarried, as much from shock as from a desire to protect her companion. The golden sphere rolled closer.

  Cursing, Bone shifted to the nearest black door, jabbing glove-claws deep into the seam between metal and stone.

  The door popped. Bone swung it and blocked the way, even as the agonium corroded the claws down to smoking flecks.

  The sphere hit the enchanted metal; Bone fell backward into Gaunt. The globe steamed into sweet-smelling vapor, filling the passage with a tantalizing odor as of life’s finest meal, now over.

  Before the door swung back Gaunt glimpsed the chamber beyond. There glinted a dented brass lamp, a carved pumpkin brooding atop a saddle, a pale girl immobile within a glass coffin. Then the deposit box and its mysteries were closed off forever.

  Three heads flopped now upon the floor like fresh trout, drawing Gaunt’s gaze. They were aging swiftly. Their skins became ash, and the skulls beneath followed suit. Before they were gone, however, Gaunt thought she heard them whisper, Our thanks....

  “An ambrosia globe,” Bone said. “A head within goes on living, in misery, nourished by divine honey. I told you to flee.”

  “I was startled. And I couldn’t leave you.”

  He frowned. “We must hone your self-preservation skills.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Your death would serve no one, Persimmon Gaunt!” Bone shook his head. “You affect a certain world-weariness, but you are a romantic. You must learn proper selfishness.”

  “Selfishly I ask, quit the lecture.” Hands on hips, she said, “Of more immediate concern, how many times can you repeat that trick with the door?”

  Bone grunted, looked away, removed his smoking gloves. “I had only one set of invictium claws.”

  “May I borrow what remains?”

  “They’re nearly useless. But be my guest.”

  She slipped on the gloves, which still bore remnants of the enchanted metal. “Let’s go.”

  Their luck improved. They found their goal just around the bend: the first door lacking an inscription.

  Bone withdrew a pair of daggers, slipping the blades between metal and stone. Immediately the weapons corroded. Bone discarded smoldering hilts.

  He removed a strand of ironsilk, shaking it once for stiffness, and slipped it into the crack. A line of sizzling ruin lashed out toward Bone’s hands, and he dropped the remnant of the strand.

  He raised a jagged shard of magnetite on a string, swung it against the agonium. The shard failed to stick, and the tip smoked and crumbled. Scowling, Bone touched the stone to a ruined dagger-hilt. It clicked, but did not cling. “Gaunt,” he said petulantly, “this vile metal has neutralized my lodestone!”

  “Hold. I have a notion....”

  Gaunt used the gloves with their invictium shards to trace a Nobecan character beside the door.

  Bone winced at the scraping and screeching. “Shall I just call out a challenge to the Pluribus?”

  “Hush.”

  “That was the gist, yes.”

  “This won’t take but a moment. There.”

  She had finished inscribing the Nobecan glyph for balance.

  In the original tongue it sounded much like Gaunt.

  “I am Gaunt,” she told the black door.

  With a grinding noise and a waft of cool air, it swung aside.

  Bone raised his eyebrows. “I must give you a bigger share of our hauls.”

  “We haven’t been stealing anything.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been saying. Let’s finish our task and go rob a drunk.”

  They peered into the chamber, a dark, hollow space that echoed with their breathing. Gaunt opened her pack and produced an unmarked book with a drab cover.

  “Rot in there,” she whispered, and tossed within the tome known only as Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow.

  That was when the air seemed to come alive.

  “THIEVES!” came a maddening cry, as though a thousand voices shrieked all around.

  Gaunt shivered, but did not freeze. She spun and unsheathed her own daggers, fine steel from Tancimor.

  She became aware of a dark-robed figure behind her. Even as she turned, it lashed out with both hands—or rather, what she had believed were hands. Their touch was light, yet both her wrists sang with pain. She dropped her blades.

  Meanwhile Bone had found his own weapon. It was more unorthodox; he flung a waterskin at the hooded shape.

  The skin just missed the head, but burst against the wall, spattering their foe.

  It buzzed with rage.

  For it was a swarm of bees that filled the cloak, and with their central cognitive squadron drenched, the rest spilled in all directions like golden drops of anger.

  “I’m fleeing!” Gaunt said, preempting Bone, but even as she scrambled downslope she encountered a second hooded
figure droning in accusation, and beyond it a third. She skidded to a halt, and thus Bone collided with her, herded as he was by another pair of shrouded swarms. The lovers fell against each other, and huddled.

  Their original accuser(s) flowed back into the abandoned robe, filled it, and billowed up to the ceiling. Gaunt marveled how light the robe must be, or how strong the bees. Then she marveled that she and Bone yet lived.

  Down pointed a finger formed of intertwined insects, quivering with legs, wings, and antennae.

  “We are the Teller,” buzzed the voice of myriad wings. “We speak for the Pluribus. We have eaten gods. It demeans us to consume thieves. But it’s more efficient than showing you the door.”

  Many times Imago Bone had been surprised by Persimmon Gaunt, but never more so than today.

  “We are not thieves, O Pluribus!” cried she.

  He opened his mouth to object, reflected a moment, shut it again.

  “We fear you,” Gaunt was saying, “who rebelled against the very gods, who never fairly paid you for nectar and ambrosia. We respect you, whose Deicide allowed mortals to dominate the West. We honor you, who originated the art of banking. And we come to you now as would-be customers.”

  Bone gave her one look of perfect perplexity, then followed in languid tones, “My colleague speaks the truth.”

  “You are Imago Bone,” the Teller said, pointing a crawling “finger” at Bone’s nose. A single bee detached itself for emphasis, orbiting Bone’s head. Larger than a honeybee, it was elongated in a way that resembled wasps, and flashed a metallic shade of gold, with bristles reminiscent of spikes. “We have tiny eyes in many places.”

  “You know me?” Bone said, with a quaver of pride.

  “We were not stealing,” Gaunt said, “despite my friend’s reputation. We were leaving something behind.”

  The Teller withdrew its arm. It and its comrades rippled in consternation.

  “You were making a deposit?”

  Eyes on the circling bee, Bone said, “There is a deadly enchanted book in our care, the legacy of our first meeting.” He glanced at Gaunt, recalling their escape from kleptomancers, goblin librarians, and the two deaths Joyblood and Severstrand who’d so weirdly circumscribed and extended his life. And he remembered the cost of that escape—employingMashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow, a book that killed all who absorbed so much as a paragraph. “We do not want it, but its disposal falls to us. While we search for the means, we must ensure it doesn’t fall into evil hands.”