Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The creature moved eerily, silently, and where its eyes might have been were a pair of translucent eyelids, with blank white orbs lolling beneath. It charged ahead, bellowing through sharp and yellowed teeth, with its one massive arm pumping furiously with its shorter legs to maintain a furious pace. Of its other arm, only a vestigial stump remained, and the asymmetrical tracks it left suddenly seemed all too familiar.

Farciya drew her knife, but it was barely the size of the snow-thing’s largest canines, and seemed unlikely to do her any good unless she were able to plunge it into some vital spot. Tiris produced the larger axe that they had used to fell firewood during the journey, and when the creature passed him he used the weapon to open its flank, scattering bright crimson across the Harbiyyah snow.

Whatever it was, it could be wounded. It could be killed.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Farciya and Tiris, each carrying both a load on their back and a load on a sled slung behind them, were days out from the Last Refuge, northward. Always northward.

Temperatures had been dropping steadily, and flurries of snow were now falling with increasing regularity. But, Tiris noted, the days were also becoming longer. Often, when they made their exhausted camp for the evening, the sun still lingered near the horizon. In order to sleep, they both found they had to blindfold themselves against the midnight sun.

There were strange tracks, too. Some were simple deer and rabbits, but others were asymmetrical and vile, a mockery of life and of gait. Farciya had never seen anything like them, and Tiris had no desire to make their acquaintance. Harbiyyah Stretched before them both, increasingly barren, but the sun’s odd behavior made Tiris hope, as he never had before, that the Dreaming Moon was somehow near.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

I climbed the Endless Stair, as Le Aaiun did, and did not, when she reached the source of the Dead River. But as the Dreaming Moon rose above me, with perfect Vloles set upon it, I found that I could speak to it, and it to me, though my approach was both endless and futile.

“Immortal, inscrutable Vloles,” said I, “my family and kin are all gone. Taken from me, but in a way that there are none upon whom I might revenge.”

“Such is the way of things.” Vloles spoke in a multitude of voices, as if every citizen of Korton had lifted their throats up as one.

“I fear that nothing is left for me but the Next Dream, the Dream-to-Come, the Deepest Dream,” I continued. “Tell me if I am right or wrong.”

Vloles did not respond, so I continued walking. In time, I asked afresh: “Should I end myself? Cast me upon the plains of baleful Køs and let her horrid light be my end?

“If your rasp should wear, do you then destroy it?” Vloles, its multitudes, asked.

“No,” I said. “You re-cast it, re-forge it, into a hunting-knife. Or, at least, I have always done so.”

“Then that is what you must do. Seek for the north, for Harbiyyah. That will be your forge, your hammer, your tempering quench.”

“Harbiyyah is vast,” I replied. “How will I know when I have reached my destination? How will I know when I have leave, your leave, to depart to the Dream-To-Come?”

“How did you know to arrive into this dream, or any other images that have danced before your mortal eyes?”

“I do not know,” was my reply. “I just did.”

“Then there is your answer,” the many voices of Vloles said as one.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“A vision of Vloles upon the Dreaming Moon, with your loved one calling to you from its battlements…” Farciya seemed to choke, unable to continue, once Tiris had finished his story.

“Is that so strange?” Tiris said. “The these dreamlands’ strange gods should speak to us through dreams within dreams, speaking in riddles?”

An icy wind from the north broke against the shelter, and the flames guttered as Farciya drew her blanket closer. “No,” she said. “What is strange is that I too, had such a vision Years ago. My kith and kin had died, and I beseeched immortal Vloles for a sign of what I should do next.”

She was silent as the wind whistled again, rising to a savage howl before abating.

“The answer was Harbiyyah,” she said. “Here. Now, I suppose.”

“Tell me what you saw,” Tiris said, his voice taking on a gentler tone. “We can compare our visions, and perhaps in so doing come to know our path a little better.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

In my vision, I approached perfect, immortal, inscrutable Vloles, its turreted walls calling to me across the void, and beheld three shadowy figures perched on its living battlements.

“I am the Light,” said the first. “I bring illumination, but also burning-death, blindness, and charred flesh clinging to bone.

“I am the Dark,” said the second. “I bring obfuscation, but also rest to the weary, shelter to the hunted, and the deep cold of deep, still waters.”

“I am the Nameless,” said the third. “I cannot be known, but to know me would bring madness, so that be a mercy.”

I spoke: “Tell me, oh many-who-are-three, oh three-who-are-many, whether huddled within your walls I might find my beloveds, taken from me first in waking and later in dreaming.”

Their reply: “They are within, for all who pass beyond must first through immortal Vloles, the living city-god, pass.”

“I will seek you then,” said I. “I will sail the Dead River to the City of Aaiun and climb the Infinite Stair, if that be what is required.”

“No,” they said, as one and in unison. “Seek us at Farthest North. Aauin’s way is closed, now.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Remote Piloted Drone log, pilot Dale Hillman III reporting. Please note timestamp and galactic coordinates.”

“System is Deep Near-Infrared Survey 1248-99. Please pull relevant details from database.”

“System consists of six major and ten minor planets. Append notes to observations as I read them, please.”

“First planet, DNIS 1248-99a, is of a Hot Jupiter type. Limited economic prospects, but possible site for hydrogen mining or dumping.””

“Second planet, DNIS 1248-99b, is terrestrial. .1 Earth masses, relatively few heavy elements, one satellite that appears to be captured asteroid or comet. Limited economic prospects.”

“Third planet, DNIS 1248-99c, is a super-earth. 8.5 Earth masses. Some trace heavy metals and a thin atmosphere. Tagged for possible future prospecting.

“Fourth planet, DNIS 1248-99d, is the big one. It appears to be a former gas giant that has undergone extreme hydrodynamic escape, stripping away all atmosphere and leaving only the core.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The porters had taken one of the canoes but left much of the food. Their note, apologetic, described their fear at seeing the dazzling lights in the sky, the men from their village that had not returned from the far north.

“I suppose I cannot ask you to come any further with me, then,” Tiris said. “I had planned and prepared for this eventuality, to seek the Dreaming Moon in the farthest north alone.”

Farciya was silent a moment. “I will accompany you, she said in time.

“Why?” Tiris said. “I release whatever hold I, as your employer, may once have had on you.”

“When you came upon me, I had long tired of the dreamlands as I had once tired of waking life, many years ago. I had begun looking for ways to pass beyond, into the Next Dream, the Dream-to-Come, the Deepest Dream. But surrender is not my way.”

“You came here to die,” Tiris said, shocked.

“I would accept success, and life, just as I would accept perishing in the attempt.”

Farciya let her words hang over the last refuge for a time.

“Why do you seek the Dreaming Moon?” she said. “I have unburdened myself to you unbidden; to pay me the same tribute is the least I can ask.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“This is the last refuge,” Farciya said. “North of here, there are not, nor have there ever been, aught but the occasional hunter or lost soul, and they wander at their peril.”

Tiris looked at the rude hut, with sod stacked upon its sides as insulation against the northerly winds. “How long before we stop seeing trees we can burn?” he asked, casting a glance at the firewood that had been cut and stacked at the hunter’s hut.

“Not far, now. You can already see how short and stunted they are. First we will leave them behind, then we will lose use of the rivers as they turn to ice, and finally we will break upon the rocky shores of Farthest North. I only hope that what you seek is there.”

“What is north of that?” said Tiris.

“Frozen water. Snow and ice, with polynyas. A tortured nightmare landscape from which there is no return.”

“Surely there is land beyond it,” Tiris said. “Somewhere, somehow.”

“Some have sought it,” Farciya replied. “None who set foot on that ice have ever returned.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Tiris had convinced only two of the remaining porters to accompany him north with Farciya. The other two took the bloody canoe, from which the sound-haunts had torn their compatriots, and portaged east, toward a river that would bring them to the Silver Sea and home.

Farciya insisted on paying them their full wages, and Tiris did not object. Supplies meant for ten would last four far longer.

They cached everything that could not be carried by burying it and then continued to sail north. Farciya warned that soon nighttime would desert them as they entered the lands where the sun is eternal and the night is even more so. It would behoove themes finish their travels before the long night began, for not even she knew what horrors emerged to tread the dreamlands in perpetual blackness.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

When reached I then the farthest north
The sun did stand on end
A dozen orbs in glit’ring robes
To the horizons did descend
Behind them all, looming bright
The Dreaming Moon I did behold
Upon it then I did alight
Lightly, briefly, in repose

Tiris closed the book. “I found that in the Chronicles of Ad Dakhla, in the great libraries of the City of Brass,” he said. “They are some of the last ravings of Le Aaiun, Lady of the Dead River, and it is my belief that the describe another route to the Dreaming Moon.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!