Bards and Sages Quarterly (January 2016)

By Milo James Fowler, James Zahardis, Craig Comer and 5 more

Since 2009, the Bards and Sages Quarterly has brought fans of speculative fiction an amazing variety of short stories from both new and established authors. Each issue sets out to introduce readers to the wealth of talent found in the horror, fantasy and science fiction genres. In this issue: Janie Brunson, Mark William Chase, Craig Comer, Milo James Fowler, Michelle Ann King, Jason Lairamore, Guy T Martland, George Nikolopoulos, Betty Rocksteady, Jeff Suwak, Ned Thimmayya, James Zahardis, and Richard Zwicker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Dec 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781524272166

Book preview

In This Issue

Scream of the Fire Orchid by Jeff Suwak

The Tomb of Jorem’bel by Craig Comer

Days of Past Futured by Richard Zwicker

Alice Blue by Betty Rocksteady

Captain Bartholomew Quasar and the Formless Phosphorescent Exiles by Milo James Fowler

Placenta by Ned Thimmayya

The Mines of Nuram by Mark William Chase

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Captive Princess by Janie Brunson

Please Enter Through the Meditation Room, the Snack Bar’s on Your Left by Michelle Ann King

Razor Bill Vs Pistol Anne by George Nikolopoulos

The Hardy Survive by Jason Lairamore

Ida by James Zahardis

Gestating Elegy by Guy T Martland

About the Authors

Scream of the Fire Orchid

by Jeff Suwak

Azla departed the City of Trembling at dawn and walked alone into the southern jungle. Tendrils of mist floated amongst the trees and ferns like ghostly serpents. The warrior wore only her azure huipul and skirt, and for a weapon carried only an obsidian knife sheathed in her belt. For the first time in months, she’d left the burden of armor and spears behind. On that day, her mission was to track a party of six missing scouts. They had left days earlier to find a pass through the southern mountains that would allow their forces to infiltrate the enemy’s lands. Speed was of the essence.

Not only her back, but also her spirit, felt lighter as the cool earth of the jungle floor greeted her feet and the scent of rain orchids enveloped her. She’d grown up in a jungle much like that one, and despite the many years that had passed since the Sixth Jaguar Path took her from her family to civilize her, the wilderness had never truly left her heart. 

In the afternoon, smiling and soaked with sweat, she encountered a shadow lynx atop a steep rise. The animal crouched in a copse of bamboo and fixed her with its green eyes floating amongst the shimmering waves of its insubstantial form. Azla stepped back, struck simultaneously by the creature’s otherworldly beauty and by her knowledge of its deadly prowess. The cat, driven by the enigmatic motivations of its kind, turned and slinked off to dissipate into the shadows of the trees.

A rush of relief ran through her. Very few people ever saw the mysterious cats anymore. The encounter showed how far from the city she’d gone. Laughing ecstatically, she fought against the desire to throw her clothes aside and stay in the wilderness forever, naked and free as a child.

Azla shook those dreams from her head and continued on her way. She’d taken a vow to fight and die for the Sixth Jaguar Path. No matter that she’d been coerced into it when she was too young to understand what she was saying. No matter that it had caused her to do terrible, regrettable things. The fact was that she’d sworn an oath. What kind of woman would turn her back on that? Especially at a time when her people were locked in war with the people of the First Panther Path?

The scouts’ tracks were scant, largely washed away by the rains, and she gave up on following them. Her progress would be far too slow if she did, so instead she headed directly south towards the Birds River where she knew they had been headed.

When the sun started to set, she climbed into a tree and rested in the crook of a branch. The crying of night birds and the sound of distant waterfalls filled the air.

She pulled a thin strip of bark from the tree, tucked it between her lips, and whistled a few sputtering notes. She’d been a master of the instrument as a child, but apparently had lost the skill somewhere over the years. Azla spit out the bark and shook her head.

The scouts had practically been kids; just like nearly everyone else left fighting the war. The more mature warriors had been killed off. Azla, at only twenty-five years old, was one of the oldest remaining.

Every war has a different name, different banners, gods, and politics, but those who fight know that all wars are the same. There is only War, the exact same madness of the heart, repeating itself over and over.

The priests claimed a brilliant light woke up in a person’s heart after they killed their first enemy on the battlefield. They called it the blooming of the fire orchid. Such a fine, poetic notion, and like all such sentiments, a ridiculous one. The rage that overtakes a warrior’s heart doesn’t come from something new opening up. It comes when all the other, better parts have shut down.

Azla closed her eyes and slept. That night she dreamed of a river of blood running over a battlefield full of howling, shrieking skeletons tearing each other to pieces.

* * *

Three days later, Azla found their tracks in a narrow ravine. Not long after that, she found their bodies.

The corpses were scattered amongst the ferns and trees, decomposing heaps crawling with maggots and flies. Their positions of rest suggested that they’d been caught in an ambush and cut down while they fled.

Each body was full of holes where arrows had been shot and then torn out, and each of their mouths were stuffed full of rosen-thorns. This latter detail suggested that the killers had been members of the First Panther Path, for they believed that jungle spirits drew the souls of the dead out through their mouths to take them to the Windsong for final, eternal rest. In order to ensure that their enemies never reached such pleasant fates, the Panthers stuffed the mouths of their kills with rosen-roots, which they held to be unbearably noxious to all creatures of the magical realm.

Azla clenched her fists at her sides as she moved from scout to scout, promising internally that she’d take blood back from the Panthers and balance the scales of justice. The pleasant fantasies of vengeance lasted only a short time before she sighed in frustration and forced herself to relax. Before she could avenge anyone, she needed to get back to the City of Trembling to warn the priests that the Panthers had found a way through the Southern mountains. That task was all that mattered.

She moved in an outward spiral, looking for the body of the sixth and final scout. As soon as the body was found, she would head back. Yet, as she continued to search, the corpse never appeared. Had she or he been taken prisoner? Or had they escaped? Azla contemplated this mystery as she rounded a boulder and came face to face with an old man, watching her from beside an orange nut tree.

He wore only a tattered, soiled skirt. The sun had turned the rest of his bare, lean form into something resembling leather, so dark that the white, crescent-shaped medallion hanging from his necklace stood out sharply in contrast.

The old man smiled sadly through his wild, knotted beard. You shouldn’t be here.

Azla opened her mouth to respond when the rustling of leaves to her side caught her attention. Her gaze shot up to see a warrior perched atop a boulder on the valley slope. The woman wore a panther pelt over back like a cape, as all the warriors of the First Panther Path did. Their eyes locked, for only a second, and then the Panther loosed her arrow.

Azla threw herself backwards as the arrow blurred past her face. She hit the ground and rolled to take cover behind a tree, another arrow sinking into the ground where she’d been. Azla regained her feet and drew her knife as two more Panthers leapt the dense vegetation and bounded after her.

As she moved forward to meet her attackers, it was as though she stepped out of one Azla and into another. In one instant she ceased to be the contemplative daughter of the jungle and became the warrior, which is really just another way of saying she became war. No words slowed the mind of this form. There was only a preternatural acuity of the senses and a deadly precision in her movement. Perception, calculation, and reaction all flowed together into a seamless whole.

In one fluid motion, she ducked under her lead attacker’s spear strike and plunged it into his abdomen. She snatched the dying man’s weapon from his limp hands as he fell and drove its point into the neck of his lunging companion.

Movement in her periphery caught her attention. She spun aside to see another Panther going after the old man. He was not of the Sixth Jaguar Path and Azla did not know him. But he had tried to warn her of the ambush, and because of that she owed him a debt. As unhesitatingly as she defended herself, Azla moved to protect him.

The old man stood still, fingers loosely pinching the medallion around his neck as he studied his attacker’s club disinterestedly. With no time to ponder the odd mystery of the stranger’s apparent indifference, Azla tackled the Panther from behind. They hit the ground and she wrapped her legs around his waist, keeping him belly down as she ground his face into the dirt and wrestled him for his dropped club.

A rush of footsteps and shouting surrounded her as more Panthers descended. They numbered a dozen or more. She leapt to her feet, but too late to avoid the sword that slashed through the back of her thigh, causing her to fall to one knee. She spun to face that attacker, but was then struck by a club to the side of her head and nearly knocked unconscious.

Swimming in a daze, Azla staggered to her feet. She wheeled about, trying to keep her attackers at bay. As she struggled, she saw the old man again.

He approached the melee with the white medallion firmly in his grasp and a mad fire in his eyes. The air around his body warped and bent with an unseen power.

Azla lifted a branch with her toe and kicked it into the face of an attacker. She caught the club of another in mid-strike, pulled it from his hands and batted him across the mouth with the sound of smashed teeth. She continued the hopeless fight, trying to draw attention away from the old man, when something solid struck her in the back of the head and knocked her to the ground.

Azla thought angrily that she was about to die, but then a sharp crack split the air, as