Today on Skiffy and Fanty, we have something a little bit different for you. Tom Toner is the author of the Amarathine Spectrum trilogy, The Promise of the Child, The Weight of the World, and the forthcoming The Tropic of Eternity. Instead of an ordinary guest post, today, Tom has an original short story to share. I give you “Microcosm”
MICROCOSM
Thrussis: a mote of colour drifting in the great rings of dust that circled the gas giant Zeliosomnus, grandest of Tau Ceti’s planets. The dappled, lichen-green moon was home to a wonder of the Prism Investiture: the Roaal mountains, a range of two hundred and four perfectly conical peaks – each one precisely the same height and diameter at its base – surrounded by a vast yellow floodplain that draped the world to its oceanic poles.
Harald, who’d traveled the Prism worlds for almost forty years, had heard of the Roaal range only in passing – each mountain was said to be cut off from its neighbours and ruled as an individual kingdom, fortified against attack by immense rectangular moats dug between them, where a thousand teetering fortresses guarded the flat lands between the peaks. No Amaranthine had ever been permitted to come here, until now.
He flicked open his eyes in the moss-wreathed forest at the base of the mountain of Jumn, holding in his hand a letter of invitation. He could just as easily have bilocated to the summit and saved himself the hassle, but he wasn’t due to meet the ruler until the day after tomorrow, and wasn’t it supposed to be the journey that mattered? Well, here he was, outfitted in his best woolly cloak and Osserine boots, backpack slung over one shoulder, ready for the climb.
He gazed into the dappled woodland around him for a few moments, quite unafraid of getting lost – he need only follow the incline of the land, after all – before examining the silver ring on his right index finger, the very reason for his being here.
Bezel set into the ring was a pale blue shell, pitted with age. Harald lifted the ring to his lips, whispering to it until from out of the shell there squirmed the head and forelimbs of a tiny, pale crustacean. He smiled a little sadly, showing it the forest and the snow-capped, conic summit of Jumn, looming high above.
‘I’m sorry, Aletris. We’re here.’
He’d bought the ring and its tiny occupant long ago from a self-proclaimed Vulgar wizard on the moon of Glost, who claimed it was one of only a few such shells left in existence. The crabs were nearly immortal, Harald later heard, surviving upon nothing but dust and the moisture in the air, and were once held to be the gold standard of good luck charms, protecting any traveler who carried them. Aletris had served him well all these years, and more than once he’d considered cutting the shell from its mount and tossing it into the sea somewhere, so that the tiny crab might have another life of her own.
But somehow, amidst the chaotic motions of the Firmament, the news of Harald’s ring had reached the Jumn-king Olmwit, ruler of this very mountain, and Harald had been invited to the moon with the proposal of a trade. In exchange for the ring, Olmwit said, Harald would be given something found only here, on Jumn: a Ghost Tool.
Harald whispered the word again under his breath as he set off. Ghost Tool. A silly name for something that probably didn’t even exist. But part of him had been curious enough to come, and his curiosity drove him onwards, up through the woods and the humid, still air. Between the arthritic branches he glimpsed a stippling of pale stars as evening fell, and all around him glowed the sparks of lit candles: the Prism of the lower forest lighting their hovels in the trees.
These mountains were the remains of artificial earthworks millions of years old, one of the few physical remnants left by the ancient Epir – the mysterious dinosaur species that had once conquered Earth and its surrounding stars eighty million years before – and the conical peaks were the most abundantly rich source of Epir artifacts in the entire Firmament and Investiture. Harald could only assume that the Ghost Tool the Jumn-King had spoken of in his letter was an Epir device – a computer, perhaps, dug up and kept in some heap of family heirlooms by Olmwit’s predecessors, and it was enough to tempt him away from his work and out here to the dangerous moons of the Zelioplanets, the songs of Lopos never far from his mind. In the unlikely event that the traveler’s ring didn’t pass muster, Harald had brought a few other interesting bits and bobs collected over his wanderings: Firmamental trinkets and speaking corals from the sea of Winth, a reliquary containing a lock of the great Ignioz’s hair and the mummified, bejeweled diverticulum of Deoffulsta, the feared serpent of Veops, amongst other things he couldn’t quite recall. There was so much of it that he regularly lost his book at the bottom of everything and had to tip the backpack’s contents out, and now he wasn’t completely sure what was in there anymore – Olmwit would just have to take a look for himself.
Harald, who until that point had kept himself faded and hidden, stepped into the light, prompting a susurration of whispers from the hovels in the trees. Window shutters were flung open, many sets of eyes peering down at him.
The hominid peoples of the Roaal mountains were a breed of Ringum Zelioceti known as the Thriss, and they held the record as the smallest Prism in the three hundred worlds; standing at six or seven inches tall they were tinier in stature than even the fairy-like Oxel, and Harald only caught sight of them properly as they began to follow him through the woods.
They were scampering little things, their long spindly limbs quite out of proportion to their bodies, their legs carpeted with luxuriant red fur. When he glanced into their eyes their pupils seemed to glow with a reflected, frenzied light – he was almost certainly the first Amaranthine they’d ever seen, and they had no reason to fear the five foot-eleven giant striding through their wooded township. Already a few had scampered ahead to spread the word, and Harald was anxious not to walk too fast for fear of stepping on anyone.
A few of those that walked with him now carried bundles of babies on their backs, a host of small grey faces peering up at him. He heard their language, a high warbling like the music emitted by a theremin, and realised that their speech had been cut off so long from the rest of the Zelioceti kingdoms – not to mention the other two hundred and three mountains in the range – that he hadn’t a hope of understanding it.
He felt a weight on his back as the first little Thriss leapt from a tree and scrabbled onto his shoulder, whooping with delight at the free ride. Soon a dozen more had tried their luck, a few missing and ending up in his pockets or climbing the buckles of his backpack. More were warbling and gesticulating ahead, anxious that he stop at a clearing in the trees, presumably trying to get him to sit.
Harald obliged them, stretching out his arms to let the joyriders off, but they seemed in little hurry to move. A trickle of pungent urine dribbled down his cloak, as if he were being claimed like territory, and soon they were all at it.
Zeliospeak famously used a dozen words when one would do, and their warbling went on for quite some time as he was offered skewer after skewer of roasted wildlife, each laid ceremoniously before him for inspection. Harald took out his pipe and lit it, much to their amusement, exhaling fragrant smoke into the clearing while he tried the foods they brought him, his hangers-on poking and prodding his dark skin, pulling on his earlobes and inserting fingers into his nostrils until he waved them away.
As he ate he gazed up through the trees at the lights kindling around the summit. The mountains were each self-contained ecosystems, like islands separated by ocean, thousands of years of evolution working independently on each peak and warping the Prism peoples of the moon into two hundred distinct families. Harald had long wished to see them all, and so an invitation to the mountain of Jumn seemed as good a place as any to start. Of course it could all be a trap – the Amaranthine were seen by most in the Prism investiture as walking bank vaults; It was only their (often grossly exaggerated) powers that kept them safe from a life of constant muggings and hold-ups, though that didn’t stop the more dim-witted Prism from trying their luck. Or maybe one of his many enemies had learnt of the invitation too, and paid off the king. The Satrap of Ectries, perhaps – a thorn in Harald’s side for longer than he could remember, who hated him for his part in Sabran’s purge. Harald gave the mental equivalent of a shrug as he sat amongst the Thriss. He’d been wandering too long to get worked up about worst-case scenarios, and one must always try new things.
The sun rose behind the mountain, warming his chilly hands and face after a night of just four hours, and Harald continued his hike out of the upper reaches of the forest. He caught sight of some of the other peaks at last, rising dark and mossy green and growing paler towards the hard, icy spikes of their summits, where they blazed in the rising sun. And overhead, hanging on a scale so colossal that it seemed as if it would drop and crush the world, loomed the leopard-spotted globe of Zeliosomnus, twenty-seven of its multicoloured moons sprayed across the sky.
He paused, entranced, the sharp breeze whipping at his cloak, lost in the absorption of his place within this immeasurable heaven.
From his vantage point on Jumn he counted eight distinct mountains – the kingdoms of Hulm, Eimis and Slarn amongst them – the great canal grids at their bases twinkling in the morning light. It was a sight almost too grand for his eyes to process, and the thought of reaching Jumn’s summit and seeing the other hundred and ninety-five peaks sprawling out before him spurred Harald on.
He climbed on into lush green grasslands spotted with the stately, ancient husks of dead trees, hearing the whistles of shepherds as he saw fat-tailed herds of bloated, evolved rodents grazing the mountainside. Open burrow entrances strung with bunting dotted the slopes, the homes of a squat breed of Thriss adapted to higher altitudes. Harald knew they never left the heights they’d been born at, never venturing down to the woods at the mountain’s base, or up towards the summit.
He passed a burnt-out timber watchtower that looked across the view of the Roaal, noting some tiny, blackened bones protruding from the ash, and gazing up towards the summit he could see the winding march of some kind of procession picking its way down the slopes towards the forest, still blanketed in shade, to the west.
Harald glanced back at the watchtower, wondering, before making his way up towards the procession of tiny figures. Pale birds, mounted by riders, wheeled and cackled overhead.
As he came upon the soldiers Harald could see how they’d swaddled themselves in crimson furs against the cold of the mountain, some white, bone-like plates of armour visible beneath their coats. Some waved, warbling to him, before a soldier rode into view atop one of the snorting rodents. He looked at Harald and winked.
‘If you were hoping to find the Jumn-king, don’t bother,’ he said in clear, unaccented Old Zelio. He opened his furs – and for the first time Harald realised they were the peeled skins of the Thriss soldier’s own species – to reveal a scale armour of interwoven white teeth the size of olive stones. Two at either side of the collar were inlaid with sapphires. Harald stared at them, understanding dawning on him. Olmwit had been overthrown, perhaps by some coup, and the Jumn-King’s teeth twinkled around the Thriss’s neck.
The rider grinned, showing off his own set of tartar-stained fangs, and carried on past Harald down the mountain. Bringing up the rear were a procession of woolly, horned creatures fitted with howdahs and pavilions upon their backs, heaped goods and chests and cases – the spoils of victory dragged back to the forest, the mountain’s power inverted – threatening to tip forward and fall down the hill as they negotiated the path. Harald watched them go, spotting a fur-wrapped bundle the size of a human head topple from one of the loot piles and come rolling down the hill towards him. He jogged after it, grabbing the thing before it could tumble into the woods, and unwrapped it.
He gazed in wonder at the object for some time before tying it back up and heading down the mountain, keen to be away before they missed it.
Perhaps that King Olmwit had been on to something, after all.
