Weirdbook 31 Read online
Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
STAFF
A NOTE FROM THE CONSULTING EDITOR
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
CHIVAINE, by John R. Fultz
THE CITY IN THE SANDS, by Ann K. Schwader
GIVE ME THE DAGGERS, by Adrian Cole
NecRomance, by Frederick J. Mayer
THE MUSIC OF BLEAK ENTRAINMENT, by Gary A. Braunbeck
WALPURGIS EVE, by K. A. Opperman
INTO THE MOUNTAINS WITH MOTHER OLD GROWTH, by Christian Riley
SONNETS OF AN ELDRITCH BENT, by W. H. Pugmire
THE GRIMLORN UNDER THE MOUNTAIN, by James Aquilone
DOLLS, by Paul Dale Anderson
GUT PUNCH, by Jason A. Wyckoff
CASTLE CSEJTHE, by Ashley Dioses
EDUCATIONAL UPGRADE, by Bret McCormick
BOXES OF DEAD CHILDREN, by Darrell Schweitzer
THE FORGOTTEN, by D.C. Lozar
COFFEE WITH DAD’S GHOST, Jessica Amanda Salmonson
MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH, by Gregg Chamberlain
A CLOCKWORK MUSE, by Erica Ruppert
THE SHRINE, by Wade German
THE ROOKERY, by Kurt Newton
WOLF OF HUNGER, WOLF OF SHAME, by J. T. Glover
BRIDE OF DEATH, by Dave Reeder
MODERN PRIMITIVE, by Chad Hensley
ZUCCHINI SEASON, by Janet Harriett
THE JEWELS THAT WERE THEIR EYES, by Llanwyre Laish
THE TWINS, by Kevin Strange
PRINCESS OR WARRIOR?, by S.W. Lauden
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Weirdbook is published by Wildside Press LLC. Copyright © 2015 by Wildside Press, LLC, 9710 Traville Gateway Dr. #234, Rockville MD 20850. Visit us at wildsidepress.com.
STAFF
Publisher and Executive Editor: John Gregory Betancourt
Consulting Editor: W. Paul Ganley
Editor: Doug Draa
Production Manager: Steve Coupe
A NOTE FROM THE CONSULTING EDITOR
Ever since Doug Draa told me his plans to revive Weirdbook I have been more or less speechless—and now they say I have to make a speech!—or at least write one. What can I say? I was totally amazed then and I continue to be totally amazed. I recall the state of fantasy/horror back in 1967 when I decided to start Weirdbook…hardly much being published at all, outside of the Magazine of Horror, which used mostly reprints! I was lucky to get three excellent writers for the first issue (Brennan, Munn, Howard) and ended up writing most of the rest of the issue myself under pennames, and using some reprints from my old fanzine from the fifties…with almost no artwork at all! And mailing out 500 giveaways (to supposedly interested persons) was like dropping them in the ocean tied to a ton of lead. Everything started very slowly. This is a new era…and I am extremely glad to see what a fine lineup we have for issue #31…writers and artists to be proud of! Great work, Doug!
—W. Paul Ganley
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
We pulled it off.
You’re holding the first issue of Weirdbook to appear since 1997!
Trying to live up to Paul Ganley’s original World Fantasy Award winning magazine has been a daunting task, but I think that Paul will be satisfied with the selection of stories being offered here. I’ve made a point of staying true to the spirit of the magazine’s original incarnation while simultaneously bringing it up into the 21st Century.
One of my major criteria for being accepting stories into Weirdbook is that they satisfy.
This is a reader’s magazine and not a critic’s. I honestly hope these stories meet with your approval and pleasure. You’ll be running into established pros like Gary A. Braunbeck, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Paul Dale Anderson, Adrian Cole and Ann K. Schwader. Other stories for your enjoyment are by rising stars such as John R. Fultz and James Aquilone. And backing this all up of is a slew of talented new writers who round out this premier relaunch issue.
I wish to thank everyone who has supported this project from the get go. I especially want to thank the following folks. Paul Ganley for allowing me to revive his child, John Betancourt for taking the chance on publishing Weirdbook, all of the wonderful writers who submitted more than 500 stories for consideration.
And lastly, I’d like to thank the readers who have invested their hard earned money so that they may read this collection of the weird and wonderful.
I thank each and everyone of you from the bottom of my heart!
Now get reading and make sure to tell your friends.
—Doug Draa
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Being asked to take over as publisher of Weirdbook came as a surprise to me. But it was one I enjoyed, and one I’m happy to embrace. As the former publisher of Weird Tales, I certainly understand the challenges faced by weird fiction magazines, and hopefully I can start the new incarnation of Weirdbook on the road to success. I can’t promise to be at the helm more than a couple of issues, but hopefully that will be enough to get it well launched for a prolonged new life under editor Doug Draa.
—John Betancourt
CHIVAINE, by John R. Fultz
“Chivaine!” they cried.
“Chivaine will return to us and all of this suffering will end.”
Chivaine with his silver sword and gleaming mail. Chivaine with his lion eyes and quick limbs. Chivaine on his white horse strung with chains of gold and jewels.
Chivaine. Bane of Invaders.
Across the Land of Willows he was little more than a fable, a dream kept alive by frightened townsfolk gathered around their burning homes. The war was over and the land had been won not by its valiant defenders, but by the enemy. The horse tribes of the tundra had descended on the Land of Willows for the fifth time in as many generations. This time they had conquered all.
“Chivaine…” cried the witch on the mountain. She sprinkled bone dust over her fire and looked across the valley where the river flowed toward the Yellow Plain. Seven villages she counted burning in the valley. She rattled feathers and bones, spilled blood from her wrist to pacify the Demon of the Winds.
Forty years ago it had been Chivaine who led the Bright King’s army to the field of Eleanim. Chivaine who led the king’s men to victory, and Chivaine whose blade took the head of the Horselord Ugtuk Wolfstooth. Yet Chivaine had wandered into mystery during the decades of peace that followed his victory.
“Chivaine…” cried the witch. She called on the spirits of her ancestors, all those who had lived and died in the Land of Willows since the beginning of time. She spoke the names of dreadful powers known only to witches.
On this day the Land of Willows belonged to Barain Hawkheart, Lord of Horses, heir to the Druid Crown. Slayer of the Bright King. With fear and fire and iron blades his raiders came south on the backs of stallions bred for war. The Willow Folk were unprepared, used to peaceful living, forgetful of their hard-fought past victories. They were easily conquered.
Yet they remembered Chivaine. As the Bright King’s citadel fell and the northmen torched entire towns, the Willow Folk remembered the Hero of Eleanim.
“Chivaine will return,” they said. “Chivaine will bring us freedom.”
The conquerors walked the streets and orchards claiming whatever they wanted. They violated women and temples, slaying wildly in the name of Hawkheart. Packs of mounted raiders owned the roads. The Dreaming River ran red and corps
es floated among the reeds. The Land of Willows burned, and Chivaine remained a dream.
“Chivaine!” said the witch. “He will be our vengeance. Come, Chivaine, hear the call of your people! Come to us now in the hour of our need.”
A storm blew over the valley. Thunder roared Chivaine! and lightning struck the wooded slopes. The witch chanted and danced in the rain. Her fire smoldered but did not extinguish. As the storm faded, a dense fog crept into the valley and up its slopes.
The witch inhaled smoke from the embers and sat quietly in the fog. Listening. She listened with the patience of a stone until she heard a horse’s hooves on gravel. A dark shape, a rider, moved through the mist. He came down the slope, as if from the mountain’s unseen peak, and paused at the witch’s camp. She stared at his face and raised her bony arms.
“Chivaine?” she sighed.
The man on the white horse was very old. His flesh sagged on his bones, as did the rusted mail on his shoulders and arms. Arms once big ’round as treetrunks, the stories said. His beard was white with streaks of grey. His eyes in their beds of wrinkles squinted at the witch and sparkled with mystery. A silver sword hung across his back.
“What is this place grandmother?” asked the knight.
“The Valley of the Dreaming River,” said the witch. “Are you Chivaine?”
The old man blinked and rubbed his beard. He wore steel gauntlets as rusted as his armor.
“That might have been my name,” he said.
“What were you?” she asked, waving a crow feather at him.
The knight looked into the fog, or into the depths of his foggy memories.
“I was a hero,” he said.
“Then be so again,” said the witch. She rose, dubbed his forehead and shoulders with a blackthorn branch, as a queen blessing her champion. The knight offered her a kindly smile, but shook his head.
“I am too old,” he said. “Too tired. I wish only to rest.”
The toothless witch grinned, a horrible sight for anyone to see.
“I have called you from the Deadlands,” she said. “You may not return to your well-deserved rest until the man called Hawkheart is driven from our land.”
The knight bowed his head. He seemed to have fallen asleep.
“You are Chivaine!” she said, shaking him awake. “You are the Bright King’s blade! Bane of Invaders! Go now and bid your people to rise up and slay their oppressors! Go take the head of Barain Hawkheart as you took that of Ugtuk Wolfstooth. Bring it here to me if you would regain your eternal rest.”
“I am Chivaine,” said the knight. “Yet I am not the same Chivaine who felled the Wolfstooth. I was younger and stronger then. Foolish enough to be courageous. Convinced of my own invincibility. I would learn eventually that all these headstrong truths were lies. Untruths that I told to make myself strong. Lies I told the world.”
“If lies are strength, then find that strength again,” said the witch. He could not refuse the power of her geas. “Go!”
The white horse sped down the slope and Chivaine inhaled the sweet honey of the mountain air. Mammoth lillies were in blossom this time of year. He galloped through a field of tall, drooping flowers that bobbed and nodded like praying monks.
Riding along the riverside he smelled the reek of the burning villages. He saw blood and bodies floating on the river. He stopped, slid from his saddle, and walked to the water. Found an unspoiled place to drink.
His own starlit face looked back at him from the water’s surface. His beard was darker now, his face less wrinkled. He was not so old as he had imagined. The water was cool, bringing strength to his limbs. His broad shoulders filled the rusted mail better than they had at the witch’s camp.
“Chivaine…”
A voice called to him from beneath the water. Several voices, all repeating his name.
“Spirits of the dead,” he said. “I hear you.”
“Avenge us, Chivaine,” said the voices. “Bring us the head of the Hawkheart.”
“That prize I have already promised to a lady on the mountain,” said Chivaine. “But I will give you a taste of this tyrant’s blood, once I have cut him down.”
The water spirits cooed and bubbled. “Take with you the power of our own blood flowing in this river, that it might not be lost entirely.”
Chivaine climbed into his saddle. A forgotten vitality sang in his arms and legs. It churned in his chest like a battle cry ready to be set free. The hooves of his white horse beat against the earth as he flew between the flaming husks of farms and hamlets. Following the trail of bodies and wreckage he came to the valley’s end, where the land spread itself flat and the river flowed toward the great plain.
There Chivaine found the great encampment of Barain Hawkheart. The northmen were enjoying the rewards of plundering and pillaging. They had claimed this land, and now they claimed its spoils. Ale, meat, and captive women flowed between their tents of elk hide. The screams of victims mingled with the slow cadence of drunken war chants sung about the fires. Thousands of fine northern horses were picketed in haphazard rows about the site. The despoilers of the valley thought all their enemies dead or in hiding, so they celebrated and forgot their native caution.
Chivaine rode into the mass of carousing northmen swift as an arctic wind. His blade cut a red path toward Hawkheart’s pavilion. The blood of northmen rained upon his ancient mail, somehow cleansing it of rust and filth. His armor gleamed as bright as his silver blade. His beard was black as midnight, his face young and defiant. He grinned at the red carnage about him, exulting in the slaughter.
“I am Chivaine!” he roared. “Bane of Invaders! From beyond death I have come to take the life of the Hawkheart…”
At last the crowds of panicked raiders spread apart, revealing their champion, the reaver who had delivered their greatest victory, Barain Hawkheart himself. His chain mail was black with soot, his war helm set with a crown of jagged spikes. His mount was a dark behemoth of horseflesh with iron-shod hooves, trained to split the skulls of footsoldiers.
Hawkheart peered through his visor at the hero of southern legend. He knew the fables like everyone else. He understood this Chivaine was a specter from the netherworld, but he did not care. He was the Lord of Horses, ordained by his savage gods to spread conquest. The entire world was his to take as he had taken the Land of Willows. No man, dead or alive, would stop his colossal ambition.
“Shade!” Hawkheart hailed Chivaine. “Revenant!” He raised a great axe in each hand. “You have forgotten the sweet embrace of death. So come. Let me refresh your memory.”
The two horses and their riders collided. Sparks flew from scraping metal, drops of blood fell to the muddy earth. The riders swirled like battling storms striking thunderbolts at one another. The northmen gathered in a great circle about the combat, cheering their hero, spitting and cursing Chivaine’s name.
“If you kill me I will only return to the Deadlands,” Chivaine said. “And if I kill you that same return is my promised reward.”
“Then why not let me slay you?” said Hawkheart. “I’ll send you back to the dead country quickly and painlessly.”
“Look at the red river,” said Chivaine. He struck and parried, his greatsword leaping between the two great axes. “Look at the burning villages. See the bodies of the dead trampled into the earth, hear the wailing of war orphans. For all of these things you are damned. For these crimes I will send you to the Deadlands well before I return there.”
Hawkheart grinned like a hyena. “I will wait for you on the other side of death. I’ll give you no peace, even in the afterlife. Once I am dead too, you’ll not be able to kill me again. We will fight this battle forever at the gates of the Deadlands.”
Chivaine answered with the thrust of his blade through his opponent’s neck. The sword sliced open Hawkheart’s jugular. Blood gushed to drown his blackened b
reastplate. He dropped his axes, raised hands to his spurting neck.
“This is your choice,” Hawkheart said. His voice rasped and he coughed blood.”You’ll find no more rest in death… Only me waiting for you…”
“I am Chivaine,” said the knight. He swept the silver blade sideways and finished beheading the Lord of Horses. Hawkheart’s head fell into the muck and rolled a short way, its eyes still blinking through the visor. His body fell from the black horse and lay still upon the red earth.
“Now we are both legends,” said the head. Its eyes grew still.
Chivaine’s horse and mail gleamed crimson. He spun about, bent to grab up Hawkheart’s head, and rode back the way he had come. He trampled or cut down any outlanders foolish enough to get in his way.
The army of northmen wailed and fell into disorder. Without their warlord to calm tribal hatreds they fought among themselves. Several skirmishes broke out at the heart of the horde, while tribal bands along its edges rode into the night. Better to leave with whatever treasures were gained this season than to stay and lose everything. They had taken gold, women, and weapons of steel from the Land of Willows. Every warpath must come to an end and most of the northmen were ready to go home anyway. Hawkheart might have driven them eastward to plunder the cities of the Yellow Plain next. But Hawkheart was dead and so was his campaign of conquest.
Chivaine went back to the river as he had promised and sprinkled a few drops of Hawkheart’s blood to appease the water spirits. Then he rode hard along the High West Road leading out of the valley into the heart of the Bright King’s domain. Always bearing Hawkheart’s head in his raised fist, he passed from one shattered town to another.
Commoners and noblefolk cheered him on together.
“Chivaine!” they called in the morning sun. “Chivaine has saved us!”
“Chivaine has killed the Horse Lord!”
Across the Land of Willows the knight rode and displayed his grisly trophy. Men took up spears and pitchforks and rusted blades, determined now to drive out the remaining invaders. The savages had no heart for a fight without a dominant force to unite them. History had show this again and again. The Bright King was dead, but Chivaine had returned.