Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology Read online

  SHADOWS BENEATH

  THE WRITING EXCUSES ANTHOLOGY

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL

  DAN WELLS

  HOWARD TAYLER

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  A FIRE IN THE HEAVENS

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL

  I.E.DEMON

  DAN WELLS

  AN HONEST DEATH

  HOWARD TAYLER

  SIXTH OF THE DUSK

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  THE MAKING OF A FIRE IN THE HEAVENS

  BRAINSTORMING

  FIRST DRAFT

  WORKSHOPPING

  EDITS

  THE MAKING OF I.E.DEMON

  BRAINSTORMING

  WRITING I.E.DEMON

  FIRST DRAFT

  SECOND DRAFT

  EDITS

  THE MAKING OF AN HONEST DEATH

  BRAINSTORMING

  FIRST DRAFT

  SECOND DRAFT

  WORKSHOPPING

  EDITS

  WRITING AN HONEST DEATH

  THE MAKING OF SIXTH OF THE DUSK

  BRAINSTORMING

  FIRST DRAFT

  WORKSHOPPING

  EDITS

  FIXING SIXTH OF THE DUSK

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WELCOME TO THE

  WRITING EXCUSES ANTHOLOGY

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  You hold in your hands one of Brandon Sanderson’s patented Crazy Ideas™.

  It started about two years ago. For those who don’t know, Writing Excuses is an internet radio program that I cohost with the other wonderful people whose names you can find on the cover of this very volume. We offer writing advice from professionals.

  I’m always searching for ways to make Writing Excuses more relevant and interesting. I want to try things we haven’t tried before—and, if it can be done, things that nobody has ever tried before. This was one of those ideas. I wanted to brainstorm a story on one episode, write that story, then provide it for everyone to read afterward.

  The idea took hold, and I pitched it to the team, suggesting that we each brainstorm a story together, then write it. We could workshop each story on another episode, then release an anthology with both the first drafts and the final drafts, giving readers and unprecedented look at the process of creating a story.

  Now, I fully understand that many of you aren’t writers yourselves and may not be interested in all of this. If that’s you, feel free to skip the rest of this introduction and dive right into the stories! They’re right up front, in their polished and final revisions, gloriously illustrated by talented artists we commissioned for each story. (And while we’re on the subject of the art, have another look at that awesome cover by Julie Dillon. She’s up for a Hugo Award this year in the Best Professional Artist category, and she heartily deserves your consideration.)

  I recommend each story to you, particularly those by my cohosts. They’re some of the finest pieces I’ve read this year, and I think their quality will speak for themselves. Go forth and enjoy!

  For those of you who are interested in the writing process, whether you be an aspiring writer yourself or just someone who likes pulling back the curtain and looking at the guts of something, I have a real treat for you. After the polished stories (which I still suggest you read first) you’ll find a wealth of bonus material, presented in a separate section for each individual story. These sections include the following for each story.

  Original brainstorms: We have transcribed here for you the original brainstorming session, as we recorded it on-air, cleaned up a bit and streamlined so you can read over the conversation that inspired the story in the first place.

  First drafts: We have included each original draft, which in some cases is wildly different from the final story.

  Edits documents: Perhaps the most interesting, we’ve taken each story and merged the first and final drafts, putting a strikethrough on each word cut and an underline on each word added. This will look a little messy at first, but as you adjust to the notations, you can see exactly what was removed and what was added, allowing you to compare the drafts in a cool way.

  However, if all that weren’t enough, the anthology also contains the following items for some of the stories.

  Essays on Writing: Dan, Howard, and I wrote up essays about the writing process—with our own story specifically in mind. (Mary was in the middle of a rigorous book tour when we decided to write these.)

  Workshopping sessions: Transcripts for the workshopping sessions for my story, Mary’s story, and Howard’s story (Dan’s story wasn’t done yet at the time we recorded the episodes) have been included, just like the original brainstorming sessions.

  Bonus goodies: I included my writing group’s comments for my story. (I workshopped it there after doing so with the Writing Excuses team, as I still couldn’t figure out my ending.) Howard did us an awesome cartoon. Dan and Howard not only gave us first and last, but an interim draft of their stories, for an extra look at the process.

  Overall, this anthology is stuffed full of extra material, hopefully achieving my goal of giving you a look at the process of story generation from start to finish.

  I’m extremely proud of what we’ve done here. I don’t think there’s anything quite like it on the market. However, the real bonus is how well each story turned out. Thanks so much for reading, listening, and supporting us.

  Anyway, you’re out of excuses.

  Now go read.

  Brandon Sanderson

  A FIRE IN THE HEAVENS

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL

  A mutiny would not begin with a knock. At the simple rap upon her cabin door, Katin sent a prayer to the Five Sisters to grant her calm. Closing the Principium, she tucked the small book of scripture into the sash at her waist.

  “Enter.” She swung her legs over the side of her hammock and set her bare feet on the smooth wood floor of her cabin. She had removed her leg wraps to sleep, letting the loose fabric of her leggings puddle on the bridges of her feet.

  In the deep night, the light of the sailor’s glowdisc cast swaying shadows in the tiny space. Lesid ducked his head into the cabin. “Pardon, but the captain says we are in sight of land.”

  “Praise the Sisters.” Months at sea, and even she had begun to think there was no other shore. She slipped the chain of her own glowdisc over her neck, with the cover flipped back to expose the phosphorescent surface. Ashore, a disc would fade to darkness as its dust settled during the course of a night, but the constant motion of the ship agitated the powder trapped within and kept discs always glowing at least dimly. She shook hers to brighten it further. With its light, she took a moment to bind her scarf of office around her neck before following Lesid above decks. The heavy beaded ends swung about her waist as she walked.

  Katin looked up for the cluster of stars that the Five Sisters inhabited in the heavens and murmured praise to them for guiding the search this far.

  The captain glanced over his shoulder as she approached. Stylian’s tall form swayed easily with the rocking of the ship. “Well. You were right.”

  His words made her feel more alone among the Markuth sailors than ever. She had no one of her faith aboard the ship to share her joy.

  Stylian had mocked her goals, but how was that different from the mockery that the followers of the Five Sisters faced daily? He had taken the church’s commission. She was only grateful that he had been willing to sail on a course other captains had considered foolhardy, following the trail of ancient stories about a land far to the wes
t. And the storm chased the Five Sisters from Selen, across the dark sea.

  A glow lay on the horizon, marking the division of the ocean from the sky. In the darkness, she could just make out the rounded shadow of land. Katin closed her glowdisc so it would not interfere with her night vision. She frowned, slowly understanding what the light meant. She must be seeing a mountain with a city at its base. “I don’t know why I expected the land to be uninhabited.”

  Captain Stylian grunted in agreement. “I’m of two minds about this. One part of me is relieved, because this means we can definitely restock. The other is apprehensive, because big cities have more regulations than others.”

  “Why are you expecting a big city?”

  He nodded toward the horizon as if his statement were obvious. “The only time we see that much light before we arrive is when we cross the Narrow Sea to Arland and sail into the harbor at Porvath.”

  Katin looked back to the light and had to struggle to catch her breath. So many people . . . so many people who shared a heritage with her.

  Her people had suffered persecution for their beliefs in every country. In Marth alone, the followers of the Sisters had been barred from holding office unless they renounced their beliefs. Even then, the visible differences of those who were ethnically of the Sisterhood still marked them. Hair twisted into pincurls at night to mask its coarse straight lines. Dye to cover the early gray—in some of the older families, hair grayed at puberty. Nut stains to darken the skin from the ruddy hue of a Sister, and still people could tell.

  It was hard to comprehend that they had found Selen, the homeland.

  She raised her gaze to the sky. She was not alone as long as the Sisters watched overhead. “The Five Sisters have prepared a way for us.”

  “To be honest, I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to keep the crew sailing west. Thought we were going to go right off the edge, they did.” He laughed and bent his head back to look at the sky. “Perhaps we’ll see the ‘moon,’ too.”

  Katin snorted. “That’s exaggerated superstition.”

  “And tales of a land aren’t?”

  “Modern scholars feel that our holy texts are guides for ways to live a better life. They are allegories, and yet . . .” She tucked her hands inside her sleeves, crossing her arms over her chest as though she were lecturing at the seminary. “There is always some basis for the tales. A land, even if it is not a new continent, must be at minimum an island. This moon? We believe that it is a corruption of the word ‘musa,’ which means ‘city’ or ‘town’ in Old Fretian. So we think that it refers to the city the Five Sisters came from. ‘And the light of Musa lay behind them, casting silver across the sea.’ This refers to the wealth and knowledge of the homeland, as does the passage which refers to Musa as the ‘Brightest light in the darkness, it consumes all who enter.’”

  He grunted again. “I’ve been to one of your Harvest Feast pageants. That whole glowing disc behind a sheet thing?”

  “Illustrates a metaphor.”

  “Not much point in arguing with you about your own religion.”

  “It does seem unprofitable.”

  To her surprise, he gave her a crooked smile. They watched the distant glow brighten, while the wind played around her, lifting her scarf and tickling her with the ends. No one seemed inclined to go to bed as they raced across the ocean toward landfall.

  The light from the city was like nothing she had seen before. It was cool and silvery as though a glowdisc were reflecting in a polished metal mirror. It grew brighter by the minute. She heard a startled cry from overhead.

  In the crow’s nest, a sailor pointed to the horizon. His words were snatched away. When she looked back to where he pointed, Katin’s heart seized.

  A low mound of light had emerged above the horizon. It was not city lights, but a single broad arc that glowed with an unearthly light. She tried to make sense of the size but could not grasp the distances. “How big is that?”

  “I . . . I am not certain.” Captain Stylian’s voice had a hesitation she was unused to in the man. “Pardon.” With a half bow, he made his way to the foot of the mainmast.

  He called up to the sailor in the crow’s nest, asking him for some numbers. The wind blew them away from her, but the answer caused the captain to spin abruptly and stare at the horizon.

  She crossed the deck to where the captain stood. “What is the matter?”

  “It’s . . . The measurements . . . they cannot be correct.”

  “Surely you can’t tell from so far—”

  “But we can. When we see another ship upon the horizon, or land, we need to be able to calculate how large it is and how far away. This . . .” He waved toward it as though the words had been stripped from his mouth. “This is vast.”

  The glowing edge of the light pulled her gaze once more. Enough of it was visible now to draw shadows from the rails. Long crisp shadows as though a dimmer sun were rising. The light lay before them and cast silver across the sea. It was like seeing scripture come to life.

  Katin’s breath left her body in a rush. Dear Sisters . . . If the moon was real, what else was?

  A sailor spat on the deck, and touched his fingers from his mouth to his forehead in a warding gesture. Scraps of conversation began, getting tossed on the wind toward her.

  “. . . no land after all . . .” “unnatural,” “turn back,” and then the epithet “nightlover.”

  “No.” Not now. She would not let them stop this voyage when they were so close. “You may not believe in the Five Sisters, but you must acknowledge that our stories speak of this. Of the moon.”

  Stylian tugged an end of his mustache. “I thought you said it was a metaphor.”

  Looking at the—at the moon rising higher above the horizon, Katin swallowed. “We hired you to sail west. Thus far, all of the indications prove that our texts are correct. The land of Selen is ahead of us.”

  “Has it occurred to you that your Sisters may have sailed to this point from somewhere else and then turned back?”

  Her gaze slipped to the light rising in the sky. She had been taught about the metaphors and had written papers on what they meant. Her work was, in part, what had led to this expedition. But what else could this be? Katin met the captain’s gaze as though he were a congregation of one. “Old Fretian is not related to any other language. Where did it come from if not the West?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “You paid us to sail for four fifnights, and so we shall. You have until the eighth of Reed, but not a day past that.”

  Katin forced her voice to be calm. “There will be land.”

  The moon rose higher as they sailed farther west. Katin chewed her lower lip, watching the pale object. It was impossible to grasp the size of it. A dinner plate held out at arm’s length would just cover it, but a dinner plate would not be visible past the curve of the world.

  Its shape varied through the course of the day. From a bowlike crescent, it swelled to a shining disc, then gradually diminished again to just an arc of light. The cycle repeated with slow regularity, but the moon never vanished entirely. It was clear now that it hung in the heavens, stationary as the sun and the stars spun their course behind it. She had studied enough astronomy in seminary to understand that the stars were actually far-flung bodies, not the spirits of the dead. This object—this moon was closer, so of course stars would pass behind it.

  It only appeared to rise higher because they sailed around the world. If they kept going, it would eventually hang directly overhead. But why did it not move?

  At noon, the sun skirted the edges, and daylight dimmed as though a storm cloud covered the sky. Each day, the moon seemed to eat a little more of the sun as it passed. Again, she understood intellectually that the changing face of the moon was a shadow. She understood that the sun was not truly being consumed, and yet the line from scripture kept running through her head. Brightest light in the darkness, it consumes all who enter. . . .

  The moon had r
isen high enough over the past week that it came close to the Five Sisters’ path across the heavens. With the hour approaching midnight, it was now swollen to nearly a full disc.

  Water splashed on Katin’s skin as she went through the five postures of night meditation in the bow of the ship. Meditation did not come easily. As she balanced on one foot, in Dorot’s stance, she watched the sky. Katin pulled at her scarf of office, which seemed too snug. She had trouble breathing as she watched the sky. It was one thing to believe, and quite another to see the proof of one’s convictions floating in the sky.

  “Ship ahead!” The call came from the topsail.

  Katin lowered her foot and scanned the horizon for what the lookout had seen.

  On the sea, backlit by the light of the moon, floated the unmistakable silhouette of a sailing ship like in a Harvest Feast pageant. And a ship sailing toward them could only mean that there was land ahead.

  The captain called for the ship to turn abreast of the wind, and gradually they slowed in the water.

  She hurried across the deck to him. “What is the matter?”

  “They’re running dark.” He nodded toward the ship. “No lights. Either it’s a pirate ship or everyone is dead. Either way, we wait until daylight to approach.”

  Once the dawn came, it took several hours for them to meet the other ship. Its rigging was strange, even to Katin’s untrained eye. It rode very low in the water and had a beaked bow that curved in the air like a swan’s neck. By the light of day it was clear that the ship was inhabited, but they made no hostile moves. Fishing nets hung over the side, and bandy-legged men worked to haul catches aboard.

  When it came close enough to really see the individuals, a weight lifted from Katin’s heart. Gray hair. Ruddy skin. They must be from her homeland.

  How glorious to see a ship filled with people who looked like her.