The Society of Misfit Stories Presents... (February 2022)

By Julie Ann Dawson, Nicole Tanquary, Theodore Singer and 5 more

Each issue of The Society of Misfit Stories Presents… is a celebration of long-form fiction. These novelettes and novellas will entertain and surprise fans of the form. In this issue: Theodore Singer, Christian Riley, Christine Grant, Franco Aversa, Nicole Tanquary, Jay Lowrey, J. S. Dewey.

 

Stories in this issue include:

 

The successor to King Arthur becomes embroiled in a terrible war with the sons of Mordred in King Constantine.

 

A soldier restored to life after being turned to wood receives help from a young woman unlocking her own magical powers, but their efforts attract the attention of the sorcerer that cursed the soldier in The Soldier, the Girl, and the Demon Bones.

 

When a white family moves into a predominated black neighborhood, they find themselves confronting ghosts of the past…and actual ghosts…in The Haunting of Halls Hill.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Jan 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201551629

Julie Ann Dawson

Julie Ann Dawson is an author, editor, publisher, RPG designer, and advocate for writers who may occasionally require the services of someone with access to Force Lightning (and in case it was not obvious, a bit of a geek). Her work has appeared in a variety of print and digital media, including such diverse publications as the New Jersey Review of Literature, Lucidity, Black Bough, Poetry Magazine, Gareth Blackmore’s Unusual Tales, Demonground, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. In 2002 she started her own publishing company, Bards and Sages. The company has gone from having two titles to over one hundred titles between their print and digital products. In 2009, she launched the Bards and Sages Quarterly, a literary journal of speculative fiction. Since 2012, she has served as a judge for the IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Book preview

King Constantine

By Theodore Singer

THERE IS A YOUNG MAN lying before the altar, his fine fair hair soaked and clotted with blood. His face, frozen in the agony of death, is so like that hated face that has tormented me all these years. Even after Camlann, that face will not go away.

The sun shines brightly through stained glass onto the charnel scene, turning the pathetic corpse into a thing of beauty, almost making me regret what I have done.

But now the scene shifts. The face remains the same, but the expression is different–rage rather than pain; and the body lies at a different angle–on its side rather than its back. The light too is different, no longer abundant and brightly colored, but scant and dim, coming through narrow slits high in the wall. The blood is still there, however, blood in abundance.

This has happened twice. How is this possible?

I gasp with the shock of returning consciousness, and weep as full memory returns.

SO, ARTHUR IS DEAD.

The dead lay thickly strewn on Camlann field like a terrible harvest. All the flower of the realm cut down at one stroke, both Arthur’s men and Mordred’s. We shall not recover from this, we who are left behind, we lesser men.

The robbers had done their work, and the bodies lay half naked and unarmored, bereft of all wealth. It took us three days to bury the dead in mass graves, aside from those of Arthur’s knights whom we could recognize, and whom we took back to Camelot for individual burial. The priest’s voice quavered as he officiated at the gravesides, overcome with the sight of so much violent death.

We found Mordred’s body; his face still twisted in hate. At first, we intended to throw him in with his knights, but I thought better of it, and had him taken back to Camelot. He was Arthur’s son after all, and was to have been his heir, for that was what Arthur had been willing to offer him before the parley at Camlann became a battle. That he should have died and left me with the burden of kingship only made me hate him all the more, irrationally so, for it would have gone ill with me had he become king. But in the end my abiding love for Arthur made me give him fitting burial.

And Arthur? I visited his body in the chapel where Bedivere now prays night and day, and ordered a mass said there, but there are already tales that he is in Avalon, recovering from his wound, and that he will one day return. That is not so, for the wonder is departing from this realm.

I tried to speak at Arthur’s tomb but could not. What can you say about vanished greatness? Bedivere too could not speak, his face pale and drawn and stained with tears. I think he was glad to see me go, so that he could be alone with his grief.

And that face of Mordred’s, that cruel sneering face, handsome and refined, and utterly without pity. Though I had seen it dead, it would not depart from me.

We rode in a large company back to Camelot, for these are evil days, and wicked men are about. We do not have the men to enforce the law as before, neither in numbers nor in quality.

ARTHUR WOULD NOT LET me accompany him on his last campaign, since I was his heir. Truth to tell, I was never much of a knight, and would have done him no good on the field. My talent was always for the petty details of administration, and perhaps I can continue to serve the realm in this way now, although my heart is no longer in it.

My son too was never much of a knight, God rest his soul. I should have forbidden him to go on that quest with Lancelot, but he was young and high-hearted and full of the glory of it all, and I knew that he would defy me and go anyway, so I did not gainsay him. That was the last time I saw him alive.

After that my lady wife turned cold, and now she will not speak to me, and that is lonelier than if she were in her grave. She still blames me for Matthew’s death.

So, enough self-pity. Let us set to work.

The realm is unsafe at two levels. Basic law and order is under threat with the death of so many knights. Chivalry has been struck a terrible blow from which I do not think it will recover. It is not just the absence of strong men to defend the weak, but the sense of goodness and justice that once prevailed has vanished along with them. There seems to be a sense among all in the realm, both high and low, that nothing really matters, and that one can get away with almost anything. Even the archbishop’s sermons are without real conviction, and it pains me now to attend mass, and to hear his thin voice, grown suddenly trembling and old.

But all that is a malaise, easy enough to identify, but hard to fight. At a more immediate level is the threat from Mordred’s twin sons. We had hardly got their father’s body to Camelot when a messenger arrived, demanding that we turn it over to them, as befits the true king and crown prince to receive the body of their late father and king. We sent the messenger packing, of course, knowing that to do so amounted to a declaration of war, but knowing also that acquiescence would only have encouraged them.

And an evil pair they are, who need little enough to encourage them in their evil. Mordred the Younger is the elder of the two by a matter of half an hour, and as devious and cunning as his sire. Lot the Younger is thuggish and brutish like his grandmother’s husband, the man whom Mordred always regarded as his true father, even though he had never known him.

Mordred’s sons have their greatest strength in the counties surrounding London, whereas we are naturally strongest in the west, especially in Camelot and in my birthplace of Cornwall. In the rest of the country, it is chaos. It is Arthur’s party against Mordred’s (for so they are still called) in almost every castle and village and household. Brawls and skirmishes erupt in the halls of the great and in the rough ale houses of their followers. It is already a war, but without form, and with no glory.

To bring some order to the thing, I have sent out word that all men who incline to Arthur’s cause are to gather at Camelot if they can. I am also trying to establish other safe strongholds in remoter regions, where those who are far from Camelot can assemble. I am sure the sons of Mordred are pursuing a similar strategy. Eventually things will coalesce, and then we can fight a proper war, one that I am not at all confident of winning.

I wonder if Morgause knew what she was doing when she seduced Arthur, her own half-brother, and conceived his son, what long tragic train of events she would set in motion? Or was it just spite and mischief, to bring Arthur down at all costs, and consequences be damned? I truly do not know, but we must live with those consequences anyway. I wish I understood the actions of subtle people like her, but I am made of simpler stuff.

I cannot hope to emulate Arthur, so instead I am turning Camelot into a shrine to his glory. I will reign in his shadow and draw from his strength. By keeping Camelot exactly as it was, I hope to use his memory to draw men to his banner.

The hall of the round table is kept pristine, but none set foot in there save the servants who dust. The names still glow in golden letters on each seat, but it seems to me that they have faded just a little and will continue to fade. I meet with my council in a smaller chamber, just a handful of trusted men, most especially my brother Cador and my nephew Aurelius Conan. Cador was named for our father the duke, although I am the eldest of the three Cornish brothers, all kin to Arthur on his mother’s side, and it was me whom Arthur chose as his regent when he went to fight the Romans, which is why I am king now. I know that Cador has been resigned to his second place after me all his life, and is utterly loyal, although he was always far more the son my father wanted, being a true fighting man.

Conan is an unknown quantity. His father died at Camlann, and he burns with a furious desire to avenge himself on the sons of Mordred. Beyond that I do not know. I am unsure if he has the patience to wait for two old men to die before he can ascend the throne. Let us hope for the best—I need what support I can find.

IT WAS NOT ALWAYS LIKE this. Once, long ago, I was full of hope.

I came to Camelot as a stripling together with my two brothers. We were Arthur’s kinsmen and he wanted us at court with him. He was young and splendid then, at the pinnacle of his manhood, not much older than me, and I absolutely worshiped him. Even before I arrived at court I had been captivated by the tales of his splendor. When I met him for the first time, and saw that splendor for myself, I came to view him with adoration.

Even then, I was well aware of my limitations with lance and blade and knew that I was only at court because of kinship to the king, but I did not care. I did not even mind when at tournaments I was inevitably bested and left sprawling in the dust. My brother Cador used to say that no-one could fall off a horse as well as me. I vowed that I would find some other way to serve Arthur and do it to the best of my ability.

Warrior I was not, but I had a good mind. My father and my brothers would joke that I was too clerkish and bookish for a nobleman. As a child, I had only been expected to learn how to read and write and not much else, but I took it far beyond that, reading every book I could find, and that many times over. Our bishop used to say that I could quote scripture better than him.

Given this, my discovery of the great library at Camelot was true joy. It seemed to me that every book in the world was in that great room. The librarian was a kindly old man who was delighted to meet someone who shared his love of books. In those days, I was curious about every subject under the sun, and for every subject the library had at least one book. I would come to the librarian and say, Is there a book on chess? or Is there a book on the life of Saint Anthony? and he would inevitably say, Yes, yes, I do believe there is, and he would spend a few minutes rummaging through the shelves, muttering to himself all the while, until he would point me to the volume where it lay chained on the shelf. And then I would stand there for hours reading, sometimes forgetting to go and eat, at which time Cador would inevitably come and fetch me, knowing full well where I would be.

But although I would forget meals, I never forgot my duties. I was punctilious in my performance of these, light as they were at first. One of the tasks I had for a while was to assist Kay, the king’s foster brother and seneschal of Camelot. It was high summer when I arrived, and the land was parched. There was a shortage of water at Camelot and the wells were running dry. Kay was frantically trying to think of a way to get more water. He wanted to levy it from nearby villages, but Arthur, showing his greatness, would not deprive the common folk. In his frustration, Kay snapped at me one day, Maybe if you didn’t spend all your time reading, you would be able to help me find a solution!

And there of course was the answer. As soon as Kay had done with me, I went to the library. Tell me, I said, is there a book which tells one about the management of water for a city or a great household? Yes, said the librarian, there is an old Roman book, and he showed me where it was. I procured pen and parchment and set to work making notes.

At first Kay was incredulous. A canal? he said. All that way? We do not have the skill for these things.

Yes, I said, but we can learn, from people who did have the skill. And I showed him my notes and explained them. Moved by my passion for the project, I found that I was more persuasive than I had thought. At last Kay nodded reluctantly. I will show this to the king, he said, and you will come along to explain the details.

It was my first lengthy conversation with Arthur, and I was still very much overawed by him, but my enthusiasm overcame my shyness and proved to be infectious. He nodded approval. Kay is very busy, he said, so you, cousin, shall oversee the project.

I was terrified but managed to keep my composure and accept the commission. What if I fail? I thought. I was horrified at the idea, not because of the personal disgrace, but because I would disappoint Arthur.

But I was determined and set my mind to the problem. When I spoke to the assembled foremen, they were troubled by the scale of the project, as I had guessed they would be. However, when I broke the task down into smaller steps, they seemed more confident.

During the course of that long hot summer, as the men labored under a fierce sun, and I rode back and forth overseeing the work, I discovered that I had a talent for managing the everyday work of men. Not the skill to inspire men to heroic deeds, or lead them in battle, but simply the ability to get done the humble ordinary things of life.

At last, the work was done, and the water flowed freely. The king was well pleased with me, which warmed me better than the sun. From then on, I was called upon whenever similar tasks presented themselves. I found that I was doubly respected now, not just for my kinship to the king, but also for my abilities. My life had strong purpose, and many happy years lay ahead.

Of course, that is, until Mordred came.

WE HELD MY CORONATION last week. It was not the magnificent affair that Arthur’s had been, carefully stage-managed by Merlin—the spectacular beginning to a glorious era. Now that era is over, and all I could do was present myself as I am: a humble, capable man committed to carrying on the principles of his great predecessor. Nonetheless, those nobles who remain loyal to the memory of Arthur made a good showing in the cathedral, and there was a fine crowd of the common folk gathered outside, both of which heartened me. Mordred had turned out to be not unconquerable after all, much as he had appeared so in my eyes, especially when I was younger. Neither then, are his sons unconquerable, however they may resemble him.

And the war, in the form of a weary messenger, was waiting for me as I emerged from the ceremony. It appeared that there was an old castle by the River Severn, not too far away, that was becoming a rallying point for Mordred’s followers. The presence of a stronghold of Mordred’s party so close to Camelot was not only dangerous, but an insult. To tolerate it would diminish the standing of Arthur’s party. I gave instructions to Cador to assemble a force at once. I would accompany it of course, but Cador is the fighting man, and he would take direct command. I made Conan second-in-command, as a sop to his ambition.

This being the heart of Arthur’s country, a stout force was quickly assembled, and we traveled as swiftly as the infantry could manage. We arrived at the castle early in the afternoon, to find that our task was not as formidable as it had seemed.

The castle had once been very strong, guarded on one side by the river, and surrounded by deep ditches, but we crossed the river some distance from the castle, and when we drew near, found that the ditches were half collapsed and would not prove much of an obstacle. The once-fine stonework of the castle was much crumbled, and although there was a fair crowd of Mordred’s supporters in the place, they were not enough to defend it adequately given its size and the number of gaps in its walls.

We assailed the castle as soon as we had built scaling ladders, not troubling to make siege engines. It was a short, sharp engagement, with little loss on our side, and once it became clear to them that they could not hold the place, they threw