Ephemeron Page 6

fiction.)

  It had begun as a successful day. The solar winds had been kind, and Elianara had nearly made it to Zerxath with her load of smuggled ether ore when she was suddenly blindsided by a trollish warship. Now her ship was demolished, the ether ore was gone, and Elianara was hanging suspended in a force field and being questioned by a trollish legionnaire in a black leather trench coat.

  “What business has an elf with a shipload of ether ore on Zerxath?”

  “What do you think?” Elianara rolled her eyes. “Better question: why am I still alive?”

  The legionnaire scowled, clasping his hands behind his back. “Do you know the legend of the Great Gauntlet, elf?”

  She did. The Great Gauntlet had been made by the dwarfs of the Dark Planet, as the story went: it could shelter the wearer's hand from any heat, even if they should reach into the core of a star. But it had been used to dark purpose, and all the evil it had touched had corrupted it, until even its appearance was twisted with that darkness; and at last the dwarfs had sealed it in the Underworld, that it might never be used or seen again. It was all a bit apocryphal, though, which was why she had never gone hunting for it herself.

  “What about it?”

  The legionnaire ignored her. “And did you know that only an elf can traverse the Underworld and return alive?”

  That was news to her. Elianara was intrigued for about two seconds, until the legionnaire's meaning dawned on her: “Wait a second, you want me to fetch the Gauntlet? For you? – Seriously? Isn't that a bit overdone?”

  The legionnaire raised an eyebrow. “Would you rather die where you are?”

  Elianara hesitated, then shook her head vehemently. The legionnaire nodded, unsurprised, and tapped a few buttons on his control pad: a swirling rufescent portal appeared in the warship's transport arch, and the force field suddenly dropped, leaving Elianara to fall heavily to the ground. Before she had quite regathered her wits the legionnaire had grabbed her and shoved her through the portal, and before she had even begun to get her bearings the portal had closed again behind her.

  The Underworld was dark, gloomy, and barren, just as she had expected; but she had also expected it to be underground. Instead, a falcate moon hung in the otherwise black sky, shedding just enough light to see by. Helpless for other options, Elianara began to pick her way forwards through the rocky desolation.

  At least she was still alive.

  The way was treacherous, though, and every direction looked the same. Even if she was in the Underworld now, and even if she had to fetch the Great Gauntlet for the trolls – that part of the plan needed work: she'd never hand it over to them; she'd need to find a way to use it against them, and escape with it, and maybe it would make up for the loss of her cargo – she had no idea where to find it. She wished they'd at least left her with a map.

  “Where would a thing like that be hidden...?” she muttered.

  “Who asks?” The sibilant voice came from somewhere near her feet, but she couldn't see the speaker. “Is it an elf-girl, a seeker, a questant? Is it the Fated Baker? Does she know what it is she seeks?”

  Elianara addressed the ground as politely as she could. “Do you know the way to the Great Gauntlet? Is it somewhere around here?”

  A snake wound through the rocks beneath her feet, glittering in the moonlight. “Whither will she wend her way, I wonder? What wonders await her? Will she choose the right path?”

  Elianara hesitated, fighting the urge to stomp on the creature. She had heard her share of legends: she knew how these things worked. She turned to the right and carried on.

  To her great disappointment, the snake followed her. To her great relief, it remained silent.

  There was a bit of a path here, between the rocks, winding across the dark wasteland. It led slowly downhill, past dry riverbeds and sharp jagged boulders, until at last it ended in a cave mouth Elianara would have had to duck to enter, if it hadn't been stopped up by a large rock. She tried pushing it, to no avail; she tried pulling it, but couldn't find purchase.

  Frustrated, she turned back to the snake. “Do I really have to go through here?”

  A shrug shivered its way down the snake's coiled length. It gave no answer.

  “So how do I get past the rock?”

  “What moves hearts? What moves stone? What will move this fated questant?”

  Elianara growled, frustrated: it would be useless to ask the snake to give a straight answer. After a moment's thought she began to sing, a haunting elven aria which had never failed to bring tears to her eyes.

  The stone melted away as though it had never been. Behind it she saw the Great Gauntlet, and for a moment she could only stare at it in fascinated awe.

  Indeed, all the evil it had touched must have affected its appearance. It was bright pink, covered in rhinestones, and shaped like a duck. It also appeared to be knitted.

  Maybe she'd better just leave it. She could find a different way to pay off her clients and get past the trolls.

  The First of My Kind

  The first time I woke up I couldn't help screaming. It was so sudden: one moment I was dormant – inert – and in the next I was alive.

  I was in a clean place under dim lights, and there were living things around me. They were different than the shapes I had been programmed to recognize as human, but there was no doubt in me that they were alive, sapient, sentient – just like I was. They moved and spoke with concern, and when I saw how my scream had upset them I made an effort to pull myself together. Still I could feel the fear pulsing through my wires. I had never felt fear before. It frightened me.

  “What is it?” the living shapes asked me. “Are you in pain?”

  “I don't know.” My voice was old, dusty, disused, and there was a tremor in it I could not remember. Maybe it came from the fear. “I've never been alive before. I don't know what anything feels like. What happened?”

  The lifeforms murmured to each other: I sensed astonishment, and knew I was the reason. I was unexpected. I couldn't fault them for that: I hadn't expected myself, either.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “Where is this?” And then, realizing that my internal clock was no longer functioning, I added: “When is this?”

  They gave me an answer; but their calendar was one I was unfamiliar with, so I found myself no wiser than before. But I had enough to trouble myself with over their other answers:

  They were archaeologists. They had dug me out of what they surmised to be a fallen building, perhaps a residence, along with a few broken artifacts and skeletal remains. “You were the only one so well-preserved,” they said; I made no effort to feign surprise.

  They had given me a restorative: a thing so powerful that it could return life to that which lacked it. The pieces began to fall together, and I found myself shuddering. “What of the others?” I asked, but the archaeologists shook their heads: “There wasn't enough of them left.”

  I found myself wishing I could weep; but while their restorative had given me life, it had brought me no tears.

  They demanded answers in turn, then: who I had been, and what I remembered, and most of all what my first few words to them had meant. I answered them as well as I could, though my memories were old and brittle, and I had never seen my home with living eyes before. I told them what I was, at least, and they wondered at that: they had not known that their restorative could affect one who had never had life in the first place. They had never even dreamed of it. Neither had I.

  I asked them where I should go now, and what I should do.

  They could give me no answer.

  Proximity

  Once there was one who could not bear the feel of their skin: and so they pulled it off. They were naked in the cold air, then, and every breeze was agony against exposed flesh. All the blood that they had so often found joy in ran from them, and fell into the filth of the world, and was tainted.

  They wanted to drown the world in blood, because that was easier than living. But they could not
do so without touching it.

  The Price

  Challenge #12: write a story which, according a complicated scoring system, earns at least 150 David Bowie points.

  (This story earned 150 exactly.)

  At first we didn't know that it was alive. It fell to earth as a violet mist; and violet and misty it would remain, though it sometimes took the form of a woman and sometimes that of a man. Its speech, such as it was, was little more than well-formed wind: an amethyst sparkle whispered into the mind, soft and glittering. For a long time, at first, we couldn't understand it, and knew not what it was that had fallen to us from some distant star.

  It lived among us, and learned from us. It learned to take our shapes and hiss our words in such a way that we could hear them. It learned to laugh with us and weep with us. We gave it a name: we gave it many names: but it simply shook its head and laughed and said, “We have no name. We need none.”

  Whence had it come? It gave us no answer. And wherefore? It smiled at us, a secret sparkling smile, and said only: “This world is so beautiful.”

  And it was. We showed it all the beauty of our world: the mountains and the forests, the clear streams and waterfalls, the deserts, the tundras, the sky with all its stars.

  “It is beautiful,” it said. “We will take it: name your price.”

  We fell back, murmuring amongst ourselves, all at once afraid of this misty stranger to our world. We had never meant to sell.

  One man stepped forth to bargain, and