Burning Gold

The Sun has gone out.

Ordinarily in an emergency we'd send word to the Duke, and he might send word to the King, but it's getting colder every day...well, there aren't any more days, because the Sun has gone out. And with Her light no longer shining, the land is getting cold. In the endless night, frost giants and werewolves prowl, undead rise from their mounds, and worse than that, things are coming out of the mountains.

We need the greatest heroes of the kingdom to head into the dwarven ruins and find the secret of Burning Gold (You thought the dwarves loved gold because it was shiny? No, it's because they knew how to set it ablaze, to provide light and warmth in the deep places of the earth). Then we need those selfsame heroes to take all the gold they can carry, to light their way through the mountains to the Edge of the World, and to find the place from which the Sun rises. Once there, those mighty warriors and subtle wizards could surely find a way to release Her, or heal Her, or persuade Her to take up her shining shield again.

Unfortunately, we're out of time, and the great heroes of the kingdom aren't here. We're sending you.

Seeing a ghost

It can be quite a shock, when you see a ghost.
 I was standing at my window, peering out through the lace of first frost. Moonlight dappled the streets. I could get glimpses of the Other World, and the shadows of people moving like a silent river below me. Watching them flow, I noticed one young woman, translucent. She turned one way, hesitated, turned around, stumbled a few steps, stopped, looked up. I imagined I could see her tears; a trick of the moonlight. It felt as if she were looking at me, but of course she wasn't; my window was dark and she couldn't see through it. I wished I could go out and do something to help her--but what? I could offer guidance or comfort, but she wouldn't be able to hear me. So, unable to help, I simply watched. Eventually she was carried away on the tide of moving souls, and I lost track of her.
 There were others out there, with the passions of their life showing strongly, that I could pick them out of the masses. Raging or pained or staggering drunk or bouncing giddy with excitement or grieving. This woman having loveless sex with strangers out of desperate loneliness. That man, worn and lined by care, but forgetting it as he cheered for his team. The teenage girl glowing with first love. The warrior, eyes dark and wary. The new pilot, exultant with first flight. The pretty, unhappy woman in a slave collar. The single mother too proud to ask for help. All of them beyond my ability to touch, to hear, to reach.
 In a flash of realization, I understood that the people I saw were living; that I was the one who was silent and distant. I looked at my reflection, and saw.
It can be quite a shock, when you see a ghost.

Garden pool

The hill was wooded, but the woods had been cleared of brush and made into parklands. It was open and airy, which looked pretty but was worrisome; he dared not be seen here. He wouldn't have to rustle through thickets, or keep his bow from catching on brambles, which was good; but if there were guards and foresters here, they could be equally quiet, which could be very bad. Nothing he could do about that, though; he couldn't even be as careful as he'd like, because going slowly was just as likely to get him trapped as going noisily. Down the slope from the crest he found a spring, a good sign. A little rivulet flowed from it; he followed it down, stepping from stone to stone, hoping the noise of the water would mask his steps. Within a hundred yards, two other streams had joined it. Past floods had carved the banks waist high; if he kept low and avoided loose rocks, he could stay hidden.

He stepped carefully, testing each stone to see whether it would slither out from under his weight. The banks were moss and roots and raw red earth; the stream ran over quartz sand and smooth stones. The woods thinned out as he went farther down. There was a line of white flowered trees ahead, at the edge of a cliff, and the rush of a waterfall plunging into water. He crept into the shadow of the broad limbed white trees and looked down. The rock face was only ten or twelve feet high. At the base was a paved pool, set in a meadow; and in the pool was an unclothed woman.

He settled his back against the tree trunk, and looked away from her long enough to search for other watchers. The pool was a circle cut by the cliff, twenty yards wide and walled with pink stone blocks. The area surrounding was a manicured lawn, edged with rose bushes. No one else in sight except the woman.

He let his eyes rest on her. Her hair and eyes were dark, her skin was the color of a fawn. The water was waist deep on her. She glided smoothly back and around, her fingertips trailing through the water and the white petals. He watched her for a long time.

Restaurant 1

He got to the restaurant early, and waved five people ahead of him as he looked over the menu. Stasia hadn't answered the last text he'd sent, and he didn't know how quick the service was here. He decided to go ahead and order, rather than wait for her. The girl at the counter was less than half his age, chubby, with three green stars tattooed on the inside of her left wrist. He ordered a turkey panini with sharp cheddar and bacon, and sweet tea. The girl handed him a pager and asked his name; he told her "Kyril" as smoothly as if it were his real name.

He spotted an open table in the far back corner, and took it. It put his back to one man, a scholarly looking type who was engrossed in his laptop; of course, an agent would have behaved the same way. At the other table was a black girl, with a miniskirt than exposed too much of her legs, with a nursing textbook a notebook. A grandmotherly type between him and the door, not the type the opposition usually used, but you never knew. Couldn't be helped, and the other open tables were more exposed.

The pager buzzed in his hand, and he retrieved his plate from the counter and sat down facing the entrance. There were screens dividing the restaurant into sections, but there were enough openings in the screens that he could watch the door.

And there she was. In his eyes, her presence lit the room immediately, unmistakably. She wore grey slacks, a grey vest that demurely emphasized her narrow waist and small breasts, and white blouse. Her hair was a long straight splash of pale gold now, although in his mental image it had been curls. Her eyes looked tired, until she saw him and she smiled.

The Rift

They lived against the northern wall of the Rift, the Bright Face that the sun shone on. To the west the floor of the  Rift rose in great broken terraces to become a white salt desert. To the east it stretched on, following the River, to lakes and kingdoms and past them, march after march, to the end of the world. To the north was the striated red rock of the Bright Face; to the south, at a day's march, was the Dark Face.

Knife

He couldn't recall exactly when it had started. He'd had a steak knife by the bed for some reason, probably peeling an orange or something, and he'd thrown it at the wall opposite the foot of the bed. It had stuck in the drywall, the hilt quivering for a moment; then, feeling foolish, he'd gotten it out, wiped the knife clean, and put it away. There was a mark in the wall, and every time he noticed it he meant to patch it, but it wasn't urgent. A couple of months went by.
He noticed there was a second knife mark. He couldn't remember, back in...August? September?...whether he'd thrown the knife once or twice. He could only remember the one time, and he'd remember that kind of thing, wouldn't he? There had only been the one cut in the wall, right? He could only remember one. But there were two now. The second one was smaller than the first, only about a quarter inch long, about four inches from the first one. Maybe he just hadn't noticed. He shrugged.
Two weeks later he saw a third mark. This one was horizontal, nine inches below the first one and a little to the left. It had definitely not been there before, and it was deeper than the others. Three days later, there were two more. New ones started appearing every day. They were all in a rectangle twenty six inches wide by twenty nine inches high, as if there was a picture frame on the wall and all had to be inside. They were opposite the foot of the left side of the bed, just where they'd be if someone were sitting up in bed and threw a knife.

He started waking up to find drywall dust on his hands, and in his mouth.
He bought a piece of sheet steel, thirty inches square. He drilled holes in two corners and nailed the steel sheet to the wall over the marks.

The next morning, the nails were on the floor, there were more marks on the wall, there was sand in the bed. The sand looked like ordinary beach sand, except the nearest beach was over 150 miles away. The steel was gone; he never found it. He started sleeping on the couch downstairs; the marks still appeared on the bedroom wall.

Aftermath (427 words)

The evening sky to the north was a grey pink, the low-hanging overcast lit by the fires that were consuming Copper Forge Town. The color reminded him of spilled brains, of which Copper Forge no doubt had an abundance tonight. There hadn't been enough men on the walls after the disastrous battle at Chisel Well, and the Orgok warriors had gotten inside the town. The Orgok were running through the streets right now, raping and pillaging, killing and burning. Of course he'd seen Imperial and Pretender troops do that as well, although their general tried, usually, to control them; but the Orgok also ate the dead when they could, and they regarded brains as a delicacy. He'd seen them do it.
But the Orgok and their screaming victims were in Copper Forge and he was in some tiny village he didn't know the name of, halfway up into the hills. He hoped he was beyond the range of the Usurper's patrols. Sleeping in the woods would be safer, but he was as tired as he could remember ever being. From Starcleft to Chiseled Well was a three day march but the Starcleft Regiment had done it in one. Twelves hours march, two hours sleep, twelve hours march, and then a handful of bread and a mouthful of wine as they'd maneuvered into line. And then they'd stood, exhausted but still steady enough to stand firm when the Usurper horse charged, and to throw back the barbarian archers who'd tried to skirmish against them. But then something had happened off to the right of their line--some said magic, some said treachery, but no one was in a position to really know--and then the lowland regiments had fallen back, and they'd been unsupported, and then suddenly the Usurper horse were back and it was every man for himself and devil take the hindmost. He'd cut down his pike to spear length, something that might be good enough to fend off a horseman but that he could still run with, which you couldn't do with a pike. He had his sword and a pair of pistols. But he'd eaten all his food during the night's march and the day's battle; and a bullet had punctured his wine bag. He'd never noticed that until someone had asked him about the blood; and it had been quite a shock when he'd looked down to see his whole thigh and boot drenched red, and quite a relief when he'd realized what had happened. It was a pity about the wine, though.

At the gates (216 words)

   In the dim light before dawn, a tall man trudged through the paths of the village outside the town gate. He had dark hair and a gray beard, and he wore the green leather of an Yrumgrau scout. Over his shoulder he carried two swords, and five heads hung from his belt..
   Dances Brightly saw him from her window where she waited. The country girls who came to market accepted the woodcutters and farmers and shepherds, but Dances Brightly's favors were for soldiers and merchants.  When she saw Two Swords Man, she cast the seven stones into a bowl of clear water. When she had read them, she arose and stripped naked except for her jewelry and a small blue-bladed knife, easily concealed ; then she put on a cloak and went out to see this stranger before the gate.
   Inside the gate it was darker and colder, from the loom of the walls, than it was outside, and the guards would wait a while before they unbarred.  Meanwhile the folks from the countryside, coming to market, gathered here, gossiping and joking, hawking their wares and flirting, waiting for the first glimpse of gold above the horizon and the opening of the gate. They pressed together, but they gave space and silence to Two Swords Man.

Free writing

He hadn't closed the curtains, so he woke at first light. The sky to the west was overcast, grey fluffy clouds with pink edges. Something red and swift flashed past the window--a cardinal, presumably. He sat up, gathered himself, and stood with a cacophony of pops from his joints. He was used to his ankles and knees protesting the morning, but of late his back and ribs were adding their own percussion.

Vignette

Grey came in, saw Silver Woman waiting, and took a chair at her table with his back to the wall. He ordered a bleu cheese burger with water, no ice. Silver Woman was stirring her drink, toying with the straw. He turned to her and asked, "How was your date?"

"Fine." She looked up. "Quite nice, actually. He took me to the Blue Sea Grill, and we had seafood. He got a bottle of wine, and we drank that and talked. And then he ordered another bottle and we drank and talked, and then we had something to drink. I'm pretty sure he has a drinking problem." She sighed. "Of course, it's not like anyone gets to forty-five without some kind of scars. Except you," she added.

He shrugged. "Nobody knows about mine. I listen to people, they don't listen to me." He stopped, distantly curious to see if she'd pick up on that, but she went on about her date.