It’s not often that a publication gives you the space to talk about a story. Here’s my interview with Luna Station Quarterly. Thank you, Anna O’Brien, for the insightful questions.
Odak
The citizens of Amarantis are a demanding lot, chief among them a young squire with brilliant dark eyes on a brooding face, his hair parted neatly down the middle. It isn’t so much a demand from him for more wine, for fluffier pillows or for lace window dressings, but his need to know, to understand the complexities of the monster that is Amarantis, the realm, that is deeply unsettling to its ghoul lord… and perhaps because these are the intangibles so hard to supply.
The stranger enters Gnohaust’s study one day with a roll of parchment tucked under his arm, looking very much— the Man of Business. A rather emaciated Man of Business on hindsight.
“Aha, there you are,” he murmurs to his king upon first sight. He doesn’t bother with introductions or courtesies. Preoccupied, he pauses to look back at the door, and frowns, growing increasingly troubled. He slips out the door and enters again. He doesn’t seem quite taken by the attempt and repeats the theatrics a third time.
Gnohaust raises an eyebrow at the spectacle.
“Who the dante are you? And what’re you doing?”
The wreath with the cleanly parted hair seems to be a poor listener as well. Tutting to himself, he has the gall to charge over to the king’s table, his form leaking wisps of mist. He scratches his jaw with one hand and with the other, he lays the parchment over the king’s birchwood table like he owns it; he unfurls the sheet with a flourish and points Lord Gnohaust’s attention to the parchment.
The Ghoul Lord obliges by poring over the man’s shoulder and is amazed.
For the roll of parchment turns out to be a map of Amarantis, hand drawn, extensively detailed and marked with thousands upon thousands of notations.
“Do you see it?” the man presses.
“See what?”
“The boiler room!”
Gnohaust studies the map of Amarantis again, his eyes roving from the High Towers of Carth to the Nero dungeons, from the Gallery of the Grave to the Ballroom of the Bored. But he finds no boiler room.
“I find no such thing,” he announces the same.
The brooding man snaps his fingers.
“Aha, that is exactly my point,” he says. “It’s like the curious incident of the dog in the night time. Sherlock Holmes, 1892. We have heating but no boiler room. We have hot water in our baths, but no radiators or furnaces. It makes no sense. I’m a man of science, my lord. I need it to make sense. Where is all the heat coming from? What sustains Amarantis from the cold?”
Gnohaust is intimidated by the man’s enthusiasm for answers. He looks to the map and muses over it.
“Mm,” he murmurs. “I remember now.”
The Man of Business, nay, Science lights up.
“You do?”
Gnohaust lifts a stubby finger and twirls the end of his mustache. “Yes, indeed. We used to have a furnace in the lower dungeons like you said. But it was highly inefficient and racked up an enormous debt with the steamers.”
The man’s eyes light up at the prospect.
“If that’s the case, I can tune it for you. Overhaul the entire mechanism. Build you a new one—”
Gnohaust interrupts with a cough.
“Mm. But then, we got Odak.”
“O-Odak?”
“Yes, yes, our fire breathing dragon,” Gnohaust emphasizes. “I assure you he is far more efficient than the furnace we used to have. All he needs are three feasts a year, couple of human sacrifices and he’s happy to breathe fire for eternity. A rather cheap bargain, agreed?”
The Ghoul Lord finds the man staring agape at him.
“A d-dragon, you say?”
Gnohaust nods. “Aye.”
The man’s eyes sink to his map slowly. “I-I see,” he mutters, turning downcast. His gloom pervades. “I guess… that’s one mystery solved.”
Distraught, he rolls up his parchment and tucks the map under his armpit again. Shoulders slumped and back bent, he turns to leave.
Gnohaust poses a question to the stranger before he can disappear.
“Say, what is your name, Man of Science?”
The brooding squire is at the door already and sighs for he’d have to exit it thrice.
“Tesla,” he answers. “Nikola Tesla, sire.”
—-
The Amarantis Series is a collection of small misadventures and drabbles about Amarantis, the realm of the dead and its ghoul lord, Gnohaust.
The Riddlin’ Poem of Gnohaust
Ghost King Gnohaust,
Host to all low and ghoul,
Raised his voice in toast,
His breath waftin’ afoul.
“They can swarm an’ fester,
But they may never enter
by hook or rook, this soiree—
Of moire and faerie.”
“To pass without trouble,
Ye pay double my toll,”
So, he spake while drinking mist
from a gremlin’s bowl.
“Double, sire?” the cry soar’d,
Over heads in voices hoarse,
“But what is your toll?” they implor’d,
To their riddlin’ King of Ghosts.
Ylang Ylang
“There is a wreath sitting in the Mailroom of the Departed, who refuses to withdraw from the premises till he’s received an answer to his mail, sire.”
“Halt. We have a mailroom?” Gnohaust asks in surprise, looking up from the silver spoon where he’d been admiring his mustache moments ago. “Why the Dante do we have a mailroom, Elistran? Who could we possibly send letters to?”
Elistran remains unruffled by his barrage of questions.
“Which is the second point of the itinerary needing your attention, your lordship,” Eli explains in his stately manner. “We have at this moment 1,892,201,335 unposted letters written by our denizens to their living kin,” Elistran, decked immaculately in breeches and fine coat, pauses to look at his watch and allows a distant bell to chime. “Correction. 1,892,201,336. We are running out of filing cabinets in Amarantis. You must issue a decree. What would you like to do with them, sire?”
Gnohaust rolls his eyes and looks to the censer with incense smoking. Some cretin’s idea to lift the ever-pervasive gloominess in the realm of the dead. The air is now heavy with the scent of ylang ylang, such a heady smell and all too stimulating.
“Burn them,” he answers simply, scowling at the incense.
Elistran purses his lips into a stiff line.
“I meant your royal subjects, milord.”
“The same. Burn them too.”
“But… they’re dead. You can’t incinerate the long dead, my lord.”
Gnohaust gives his aide a swift look. “Have you tried?”
Luna Station Quarterly #36 and A Handful of Mud
A short story of mine ‘A Handful of Mud‘ got published in Luna Station Quarterly this month. The whole issue is a gorgeous blend of crones in speculative lit.
And I must say Eran Fowler’s cover certainly does justice to the theme. You can read it and grab a copy here.
On Steerpike
“And now,” he said, “what will you have? And what, in the name of hosiery, are you wearing?”
Steerpike got to his feet. “I am wearing what I am forced to wear until clothes can be found which are more appropriate,” he said. “These rags, although an official uniform, are as absurd upon me as they are insulting. Sir,” he continued, “you asked me what I would take. Brandy, I thank you, sir, Brandy.”
The Doctor was for a moment nonplussed at the youth’s self-assurance, but he did not show it. He simply smiled like a crocodile. “Am I mistaken, dear boy, or is that a kitchen jacket you’re wearing?”
“Not only is this a kitchen jacket, but these are kitchen trousers and kitchen socks and kitchen shoes and everything is kitchen about me, sir, except myself, if you don’t mind me saying so, Doctor.”
“And what,” said Prunesqualior, placing the tips of his fingers together, “are you? Beneath your foetid jacket, which I must say looks amazingly unhygienic even for Swelter’s kitchen. What are you? Are you a problem case, my dear boy, or are you a clear-cut young gentleman with no ideas at all, ha, ha, ha?”
“With your permission, Doctor, I am neither. I have plenty of ideas, though at the moment plenty of problems, too.”
— Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake
Of all the characters that Gormenghast introduces to us, it is Steerpike that rouses our deepest mistrust and with it, a tiny sliver of our sympathy. At least, mine. There is something enterprising about a kitchen boy who thirsts to rise above his station, who does not want to fester with the dirty pans and has no qualms against manipulating the denizens of this castle to get what he wants. Mervyn writes of him as a boy who ‘does not let any kind of information slip from him unawares.’ A boy so in control of his destiny despite the odds stacked against him. That’s the stuff great heroes villains are made of. I’m intrigued to see the mischief he can conjure.
Gnohaust, the Ghost Lord of Amarantis
The binding to the Book of Names was falling apart, and Gnohaust, the Ghost King, found it imperative to call upon someone to mend it. He leafed through the pages and found the one he needed, enlisting quickly the help of Raynar Bertin, the late eighteenth century tailor to Queen Marie Antoinette. The man had been executed as part of her entourage, which is how Raynar came to Amarantis, a deeply troubled soul whose snuff, pink powder and avant-garde love for gold filigree did little to cheer him in the afterlife. Gnohaust figured there was no one better than this man to work the needle and thread ( save perhaps the Lady of Shalott, but there was no taking her away from that tapestry of hers) and so make do, they must. Continue reading
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
I should forewarn there are spoilers ahead. But this is a pretty old book, written in 1974.
There are epic fantasies where the novel places stepping stones, each leading up to a great war of Good vs Evil, complete with battle formations, assassins, intrigue, chosen ones and special appearances from Chaotic Neutral.
Then there is Patricia A. McKillip’s ‘The Forgotten Beasts of Eld’ which had all the planning towards a great battle between lordships Sirle and Drede… except the Wizard who weaved this war to detail just packs up and leaves the night before, with no care for the outcome. And she even had a fire breathing dragon to boot.
It’s a refreshing take.
And perhaps that is the whole point behind Sybel. She was never interested in the wargames of men. She spent the entirety of her life (and the book) with the wonderful beasts of Eld, the mountain, her nature and was content to do so. Then came the men: young, old, meddlesome, kingly, wise. Each one a drought, taking away a piece of her. Love for Tam, longing for Coren, her mind’s peace for Derde. She learns from each of them, some good, some bad, but caught in their entreaties and passions, she forgets her own mind and what she always sought for herself: freedom. When she stands poised to hurt all those who hurt her, the Blammor shows her her mind’s eye and the wizard finally realizes what she has become and what she has lost. She’s terrified and flees.
For every Gandalf, Merlin and Dumbledore, there ought to be wizards like Sybel who choose their own sanity over the insanity of others.
I’m sure I’m going to dwell over this for a few days more.
Sweet Lime
Upon discovering a shriveled up sweet lime in the fruit tray of the family refrigerator, I ask my mother (in a voice that carries dismay and ample disgust), “What the heck is this? Why is this still here?”
And she looks to me, smiling wistfully.
“You bought it the last time you were home. I didn’t feel like throwing it out.”
That’s when I remember the grocery list written in her hand, tucked away deep in my purse. I guess we’re both hoarders.
Perhaps sweet limes don’t fall far from the tree either.
Sybel
She sat down on the chair beside the bed and covered her face with her hands. She whispered finally into her palms, “You told me to love him. So I did, like I have loved nothing else in my world. And now you want to take him from me, to use him in your war games. Tell me now: which of us has the heart of ice?”
— Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Sybel on the child Tamlorn.
Art-o-Tart