Complete short fiction, p.30
Complete Short Fiction, page 30
On the night of the conflagration, I recall little happening that was not of the ordinary. It was a chillsome late autumn, especially down by the lagoon where the winds blew unchecked, and a fire had been set in the fireplace. The air was thick with smoke and my eyes stung. Nevin Hewney, who was then still such a young man that he had no beard upon his face at all, but only a yellow fluff like dandelion, was bragging about having finished his first play, a piece of what we suspected must be dubious skill and even more doubtful virtue, which told the story of a famous Trigonarch’s mistress. To our surprise, a year later this play, The Eidolon of Devonis, was performed at the Firmament Theater and became quite popular, and Hewney received his first post with Earl Rorick’s players.
In another corner a trio of strangers, who despite the warmth of the room had not taken off their hooded cloaks, drank moderately and spoke quietly among themselves for most of the evening. I have heard it said in after days that these were the Lord Constable’s guardsmen, but what their purpose in the tavern should have been I do not know, and I doubt the story. There are places closer to the inner keep than the Quiller’s Mint where guardsmen can drink, and in fairer circumstances as well. I have even heard it claimed that one of these hooded men was young Prince in disguise—he is said to have liked to sit with ordinary men and women to learn something of their lives—but I suspicion this is a false claim. People will see the hands of princes and hierarchs in any fateful event, but there are fateful events enough in this world that princes and hierarchs would have to forego sleep entirely to have a hand in them all.
A few other of the tavern’s regular patrons were in the main room on that night, including a poet and occasional swindler named Thom Regin (although most who knew him would have said that it was the poetry that was occasional and the swindling his fulltime vocation) and a Jellonian woman named Doras, of whose virtues the most charitable thing that can be said is that she did not haggle much about prices. Doras, who from time to time kept a sort of company with big-bellied, booming-voiced Regin when he was sober, had on this night brought in a stranger, a dark-haired, pale man who she introduced as John Sommerle or Summerlea (I have seen the name spelled in diverse ways) who she said was a sailor. Sommerle himself did not speak much.
As I said, I remember little about the night that was odd or untoward. At one point Thom Regin—who I thought was not happy about Doras keeping company with another man, but had not said so straightly, recited a bit of poetry about a man who beds a fairy-princess and wakes up in the morning to find that the Twilight People have ensorceled him and that his companion is a sow. Sommerle for some reason took exception to this foolish rhyme and threatened Regin with a dagger, although the knife was never actually produced. Arvald the tavern-owner intervened, and only Doras’ tearful pleading kept him from ejecting John Sommerle from the Mint on the instant.
The three hooded men took little interest in this brawl, as far as I could see.
Later in the evening, while I was busy playing potboy and thus did not see what happened, Sommerle and the woman Doras fell into a disagreement for some reason and Sommerle left the Quiller’s Mint. He did not come back, at least while the tavern was open.
When the bell rang in the temple of the Trigon and closing hour came round, the Jellonian woman and Thom Regin seemed to have been reconciled. She was fondling his face and lovingly tweaking his beard while he recited her some bit of doggerel, this one a tale of women who give their hearts to fairy-princes. Since he seemed to be likening himself to such an immortal and magical lover, I thought he was overbuilding himself a bit—Regin was not the most presupposing of men. In any case, that was the last time I saw him. Arvald called for those who were present to empty their scoops. He had not locked the doors yet, and a few of the patrons were still in the tavern when he sent me to my bed. That was the first thing in the evening that felt odd to me, since Arvald generally kept me at my labors until every tankard was rinsed and every bench and table wiped.
I was awakened in the middle of the night by a woman’s voice raised in a scream. My nostrils were instantly full of the harsh scent of smoke. Tripping over the other inhabitants of my shared room, who were slower to wake than I, I made my way to the stairs and started downward. Between the ground floor and the first story I almost ran into a dark figure. It was the woman Doras, her hair and clothes in disarray, looking as though she had just been pulled from bed, although whether also from sleep would have been another question.
“Where is my Riggin?” she said, her Jellonian accent making it hard for me to understand what she was saying. “My Rig, where has he gone?”
I shoved past her and made my way down to the tavern. A fire was burning, not in the fireplace, but in the straw floor on the opposite side of the main room. Lying beside this new blaze but not in the flames was a dark shape. I leaned over to see the poet Regin with his forehead caved in like a broken eggshell and blood running from his nose and mouth. He was lying near one of the room’s wooden ceiling-pillars. I suppose that if he had been running across the room, not looking where he was going, he might have hit the pillar hard enough to crack his poll that way. I am not certain I believe that, but I cannot say it is impossible.
In any case, I had no time to think about it then. The fire was already spreading across the straw and in a moment more I would be surrounded and hemmed in by the blaze. I tried to drag the poet’s corpse with me, although I knew he was already dead, but he was too heavy. It must be remembered that at the time I was only a stripling, and Regin must have carried almost twice my weight.
I ran out of the tavern then and through the inn, shouting for Arvald, calling out that there was fire in the house, fire! Soon the halls and stairwell were full of confused guests and tavern patrons—apparently Arvald had allowed a card game in his own chambers after the main room was closed. I saw Arvald trying to enlist the help of some of the scurrying cardplayers to go to the lagoon to fill buckets of water, but no one paid him any attention in the smoke and shouting and darkness lit only by flickering flames. One man was killed in the crush at the front door, trampled until his ribs cracked and pierced his heart, and several more had broken limbs and other injuries trying to get out. As the fire swiftly spread, some had to leap out of the upper stories into the ordure of Squeakstep Alley. It was only due to the mercy of Zoria, I believe, and of Honnos who watches over travelers, that more were not killed inside the tavern.
But many others did die as the fire spread to some of the nearby roofs, and to the tenement houses on Tin Street where hundreds of people lived in each single three- or four-story house. All told, something more than two dozen folk were killed in the terrible Quiller’s Mint fire and hundreds more lost their homes. The conflagration would have burned far more of the city had not two sides been blocked from spreading by Skimmer’s Lagoon, and one side by the city wall itself.
There was not much strange in the events of that evening, as I said, but there was much that was strange that happened afterward.
Arvald, the owner of the tavern, disappeared within a few days after the fire. Some said that was because there was nothing except an expensive and pointless salvage to detain him in Southmarch any longer and so he had gone back to the Vuttish islands, others suggested it was because his conscience was something less than clean. Why he should have set a fire in his own tavern, though, has not yet been convincingly explained even by those who suggest his guilt.
When Thom Regin’s body was brought out of the ashes, it was naught but black bones and charred meat, and thus nothing I said would have made any difference, so I told no one of how I had found him. I was young and not keen for the eye of authority to fall on me in such an unflattering situation. I might have spoken up if John Sommerle had remained, but he too had vanished, never seen again after Arvald shoved him out of the Quiller’s Mint front door. The Jellonian woman Doras was little help in answering questions. She could never speak of the evening without bursting into tears, and the pox took her within a year or two in any case.
Was it simply by chance that the Mint burned down? It matters little, I suppose, because a new tavern was soon built on the ashes of the old, and because the oldest parts of the place are in any case below ground or in the city walls and thus went unscathed.
It still seems odd that the fire should have started on the opposite side of the room from the fireplace, on a damp night, and that I should find Thom Regin’s corpse on the ground near the place where it had caught. But if John Sommerle came back to murder Regin and set the fire to cover his deed, why did he not simply drag the poet’s corpse out through one of the side doors and leave it in an alley instead? Regin would have been thought only the most recent in a long line of Quiller’s Mint patrons who never made it back to their homes through the Lagoon District’s sometimes inhospitable streets.
There are even wilder speculations, most based around the reputed presence of the man who would someday be our King Olin, but I have never heard one of these tales yet that did not sound to me like the ravings of a madman. The idea that a king who has always shown kindness even to his lowest and poorest subjects would instruct his guards to set a deadly fire simply to hide the fact that he was visiting a tavern . . . well, there is just no sense to it.
So there it is, the tale of the conflagration that destroyed the old Quiller’s Mint. In fact, I am told that even this terrible deed or accident was merely a reenactment of a larger historical tradition—that the Mint which burned was at least the fourth or fifth building of that name on that spot in Squeakstep Alley between Fitters and Tin. It is that most unsatisfying of tales, a true one. What it means, if it means anything at all, must be up to you, kind reader, to decide.
—Finn Teodoros, by his hand, on the ninth day of the eleventh month of the year 1314
2002
Not with a Whimper, Either
I first met Tad Williams at the American Booksellers Association Convention in San Francisco in 1985. We were launching the first DAW hardcover list, and spearheading it with Tad’s first novel, Tailchaser’s Song. He had come to the ABA to meet me, his first editor, and to sign his bound galleys. At the time, Tad really didn’t have the slightest idea how special his debut was, or that most first novelists didn’t get the kind of treatment he was getting, but as he and his wife waltzed around our booth to unheard music, it was clear that he was very, very happy.
Later, in my hotel room, I asked him what he planned to write next. He discussed the possibility of writing an elephant book, or perhaps an alternate history. Then he mentioned this other book . . . a really big book—something he had always wanted to write. It would be his ode to Tolkien, to Mervyn Peake, to all the great fantasy writers who had influenced his life. He didn’t feel experienced enough yet, but he knew it was something he eventually would have to do. Concerned with the continued commerciality of his career, I convinced him to try writing this other, “bigger” novel. I don’t think either one of us ever imagined just how big it would turn out to be.
It took Tad three years to perfect his craft sufficiently to publish The Dragonbone Chair, the first volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, and it would be an additional five years until we published the third and concluding volume, the massive To Green Angel Tower, which spent five weeks on The New York Times and the London Times best-seller lists, It was during the writing of this 3,OOO page trilogy that Tad evolved into one of the finest writers I have ever read.
Now Tad writes whatever he wants. And he gets better and better.
His recently completed science fiction quartet, Otherland, is a true masterwork.
Although Tad is one of the smartest, most literate, and most talented men I know, he’s also just . . . Tad. Gregarious, interesting, warm, humorous, unpretentious, and interested in editorial input—in many ways he’s still the same person who danced to that unheard music.
—BW
TALKDOTCOM> FICTION
Topic Name: Fantasy Rules! SF Sux!
Topic Starter: ElmerFraud—2:25 pm PDT—March 14, 2001 Always a good idea to get down and sling some s#@t about all those uppity Hard SF readers . . .
* * *
RoughRider—10:21 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Um, okay, so let me get this straight—the whole Frodo/Sam thing is a bondage relationship? Master-Slave?
Can anyone say “stupid” ?
Wiseguy—10:22 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
No, can anyone say “reductio ad absurdum” ?
RoughRider—10:23 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Hell, I can’t even spell it.
Lady White Oak—10:23 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
I don’t think TinkyWinky was trying to say that there was nothing more to their relationship than that, just that there are elements.
RoughRider—10:24 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Look, I didn’t make a big fuss when Stinkwinky came on and said that all of Heinleins books are some kind of stealth queer Propaganda just cause Heinlein likes to write about people taking showers together and the navy and stuff like that but at some point you just have to say shut up that’s bull@#t!
Lady White Oak—10:24 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
I think you are letting TinkyWinky pull your chain and that’s just what he’s trying to do.
RoughRider—10:25 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
He touches my chain he dies . . .
Wiseguy—10:25 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
I just can’t stand this kind of thing.
I don’t mean THIS kind of thing, what you guys are saying, but this idea that any piece of art can just be pulled into pieces no matter what the artist intended.
Doesn’t anybody read history or anything, for God’s sake? It may not be “politically correct” but the master-servant relationship is part of the history of humanity, not to mention literature. Look at Don Quixote and Sancho Panda, for God’s sake.
Lady White Oak—10:26 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Panza. Although I like the image . . . ;)
BBanzai—10:26 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Tinkywinky also started the “Conan—What’s He Trying So Hard to Hide?” topic. Pretty funny, actually.
RoughRider—10:27 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
So am I the only one who thinks its insulting to Tolkiens memory to say this kind of stupid crap?
RoughRider—10:27 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Missed your post, wiseguy.
Glad to see Im not the only one who isn’t crazy.
TmkyWinky—10:27 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Tolkien’s memory? Give me a break. What, is he Mahatma Gandhi or something? Some of you people can’t take a joke—although it’s a joke with a pretty big grain of truth in it. I mean, if there was ever anyone who could have done with a little Freudian analysis . . .
The Two Towers, one that stays stiff to the end, one that falls down? All those elves traveling around in merry bands while the girl elves stay home? The ring that everybody wants to put their finger in . . .
ANAdesigner—10:28 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Wow, it is really jumping in here tonight. Did any of you hear that news report earlier, the one about the problems with AOL? Anybody using it here?
BBanzai—10:28 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
I’d rather shoot myself in the foot . . . :P
Lady White Oak—10:28 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Hi, TinkyWinky, we’ve been talking about you. What problems, ANA? I’m on AOHell, but I haven’t noticed anything.
ANAdesigner—10:29 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Just a lot of service outages.
Some of the other providers, too. I was just listening to the radio and they say there were some weird power problems up and down the east coast.
Darkandraw—10:30 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
That’s one of the reasons it took me like five years to finish the rings books—I couldn’t stand all that “you’re so good master you’re so good”—I mean, self respect, come on!
TinkyWinky—10:30 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
I’m on AOL and I couldn’t get on for an hour, but what else is new . . .? Oh, and RoughRider, while you’re getting so masterful and cranky and everything, what’s with your nick? Where I come from a name like that could get a boy in trouble . . .!
RoughRider—10:30 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
We should change the name of this topic to Fantasy Rules, AOL Sux.
Lady White Oak—10:31 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Actually, it raises an interesting question—why do all the most popular fantasy novels have this anti-modernist approach or slant? Is it because that’s part of the escapism?
Wiseguy—10:31 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Sorry, dropped offline for a moment. Darkandraw, it’s a book mat has the difference in classes built into it because of who Tolkien was, I guess. It makes hard reading sometimes, but I don’t think it overwhelms the good parts. And there are a lot of good parts.
RoughRider—10:32 pm PDT—June 28, 2002
>Where I come from a name like that could get a boy in trouble . . .! Don’t push your luck, punk.
ANAdesigner—10:32 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Wow. I just turned the tv on and it’s bigger than just AOL. There are all kinds of weird glitches. Somebody said kennedy is closed because of a big problem with the flight control tower.
Lady White Oak—10:32 pm PDT—June 28, 2002
Come on, Roughie, can’t you take a joke?
BBanzai—10:33 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
Kennedy? Like the airport?
TinkyWinky—10:33 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
I love it when they get butch . . .!
Wiseguy—10:34 pm PDT—Jun 28, 2002
I’ve got the TV on, too. Service interruptions and some other problems—a LOT of other problems. I wonder if this is another terrorist thing . . .
