For a moment, they stopped smiling.
AFTERWORD-
VOICES FROM THE DUST
This is one of only three short stories that I’ve written. Most of my “short” works have been either novelettes or novellas. A lot has been written about the novella, in particular, being a length uniquely suited to science fiction, and one in which science fiction writers work far more often than mainstream writers. The reason seems to be that science fiction writers are dealing with societies and backgrounds that are new and strange to the average reader, and these elements of the story hove to be developed along with the basic plot and character—a complication that mainstream writers generally don’t have to deal with. This makes it very difficult to set up every point that needs to be established in under 7500 words, the official length of a short story. Occasionally I’ve been able to do it, when the basic story is straightforward enough; this was one of the results. (I calculate that it is just about exactly 7500 words, in fact.)
The setting of this story is an actual area of Mars, which I have tried to describe as realistically as possible, using information gained from the Mariner missions. There is also an element of the past in its creation, however. I have a background in anthropology, and specifically in archeology, and I found the original title, Voices from the Dust, which inspired this story on an archeology textbook I saw while browsing in a used book store. I’d originally wanted to make the protagonist, Petra Greenfeld, an archeologist, but couldn’t justify sending her to Mars (as opposed to, say, Barsoom), so I had to be content with making her a geologist with archeological experience.
THE STORM KING
They said that in those days the lands were cursed that lay in the shadow of the Storm King. The peak thrust up from the gently rolling hills and fertile farmlands like an impossible wave cresting on the open sea, a brooding finger probing the secrets of heaven. Once it had vomited fire and fumes; ash and molten stone had poured from its throat. The distant ancestors of the people who lived beneath it now had died of its wrath. But the Earth had spent Her fury in one final cataclysm, and now the mountain lay quiet, dark, and cold, its mouth choked with congealed stone.
And yet still the people lived in fear. No one among them remembered having seen its summit, which was always crowned by cloud. Lightning played in the purple, shrouding robes, and distant thunder filled the dreams of the folk who slept below with the roaring of dragons.
For it was a dragon who had come to dwell among the crags: that elemental focus of all storm and fire carried on the wind, drawn to a place where the Earth’s fire had died, a place still haunted by ancient grief. And sharing the spirit of fire, the dragon knew no law and obeyed no power except its own. By day or night it would rise on furious wings of wind and sweep over the land, inundating the crops with rain, blasting trees with its lightning, battering walls and tearing away rooftops; terrifying rich and poor, man and beast, for the sheer pleasure of destruction, the exaltation of uncontrolled power. The people had prayed to the new gods who had replaced their worship of the Earth to deliver them; but the new gods made Their home in the sky, and seemed to be beyond hearing.
By now the people had made Their names into curses, as they pried their oxcarts from the mud or looked out over fields of broken grain and felt their bellies and their children’s bellies tighten with hunger. And they would look toward the distant peak and curse the Storm King, naming the peak and the dragon both; but always in whispers and mutters, for fear the wind would hear them, and bring the dark storm sweeping down on them again.
The storm-wracked town of Wyddon and its people looked up only briefly in their sullen shaking-off and shoveling-out of mud as a stranger picked his way among them. He wore the woven leather of a common soldier, his cloak and leggings were coarse and ragged, and he walked the planks laid down in the stinking street as though determination alone kept him on his feet. A woman picking through baskets of stunted leeks in the marketplace saw with vague surprise that he had entered the tiny village temple; a man putting fresh thatch on a torn-open roof saw him come out again, propelled by the indignant, orange-robed priest.
“If you want witchery, find yourself a witch! This is a holy place; the gods don’t meddle in vulgar magic!”
“I can see that,” the stranger muttered, staggering in ankle-deep mud. He climbed back onto the boards with some difficulty and obvious disgust. “Maybe if they did you’d have streets and not rivers of muck in this town.” He turned away in anger, almost stumbled over a mud-colored girl blocking his forward progress on the boardwalk.
“You priests should bow down to the Storm King!” The girl postured insolently, looking toward the priest. “The dragon can change all our lives more in one night than your gods have done in a lifetime.”
“Slut!” The priest shook his carven staff at her; its necklace of golden bells chimed like absurd laughter. “There’s a witch for you, beggar. If you think she can teach you to tame the dragon, then go with her!” He turned away, disappearing into the temple. The stranger’s body jerked, as though it strained against his control, wanting to strike at the priest’s retreating back.
“You’re a witch?” The stranger turned and glared down at the bony figure standing in his way, found her studying him back with obvious skepticism. He imagined what she saw—a foreigner, his straight black hair whacked off like a serf’s, his clothes crawling with filth, his face grimed and gaunt and set in a bitter grimace. He frowned more deeply.
The girl shook her head. “No. I’m just bound to her. You have business to take up with her, I see—about the Storm King.” She smirked, expecting him to believe she was privy to secret knowledge.
“As you doubtless overheard, yes.” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, trying fruitlessly to ease the pain in his back.
She shrugged, pushing her own tangled brown hair back from her face. “Well, you’d better be able to pay for it, or you’ve come a long way from Kwansai for nothing.”
He started, before he realized that his coloring and his eyes gave that much away. “I can pay.” He drew his dagger from its hidden sheath; the only weapon he had left, and the only thing of value. He let her glimpse the jeweled hilt before he pushed it back out of sight.
Her gray eyes widened briefly. “What do I call you, Prince of Thieves?” with another glance at his rags.
“Call me Your Highness,” not lying, and not quite joking.
She looked up into his face again, and away. “Call me Nothing, Your Highness. Because I am nothing.” She twitched a shoulder at him. “And follow me.”
They passed the last houses of the village without further speech, and followed the mucky track on into the dark, dripping forest that lay at the mountain’s feet. The girl stepped off the road and into the trees without warning: he followed her recklessly, half angry and half afraid that she was abandoning him. But she danced ahead of him through the pines, staying always in sight, although she was plainly impatient with his own lagging pace. The dank chill of the sunless wood gnawed his aching back and swarms of stinging gnats feasted on his exposed skin; the bare-armed girl seemed as oblivious to the insects as she was to the cold.
He pushed on grimly, as he had pushed on until now, having no choice but to keep on or die. And at last his persistence was rewarded. He saw the forest rise ahead, and buried in the flank of the hillside among the trees was a mossy hut linteled by immense stones.