Black Gate, #12, Summer 2008

With this twelfth issue, it is clear that Black Gate has found its voice. Part of that impression might stem from the fact that out of seven original stories, four are continuations, and the reprint is a segment of one of the old sword and sorcery tales. But that’s a result, not an explanation.

The early issues were spread full spectrum all over fantasy; some considered that a feature, others were disappointed to open a magazine labelled “fantasy adventure” and read stories that, while arguable good, could be found in more general venue. Within the last several issues, Black Gate has published stories with strong elements of “fantasy adventure” that combine old and new tropes, good characterization, and vividly realised settings.

The issue opens with a stand-alone from John R. Fultz, who is new to the magazine, “Oblivion is the Sweetest Wine.” Taizo of Narr (which may or may not be an in-joke for readers familiar with German) is a thief approaching the city of Ghoth (oh yes, Fultz is playing with the reader!) in order to make a pinch. He’s a thief by trade, though he feels it’s time to retire, relax, enjoy life. Especially since he met his beloved, dark-eyed Syyra, who is of a far higher caste. But she’s been denied him. In order to win her, he has to break into the temple, where giant arachnids carry out their ritual magic. .

This story, and Howard Andrew Jones’s last in the issue, both draw on the flavor of 1001 Arabian Nights that imbues most pre-Tolkien fantasy, but the authors in different ways play slyly off modern expectations.

With “Payment in Full,” James Enge brings back Morlock Ambrosius, the mysterious mage who has featured in four earlier issues. This tale is narrated by Fasra, who was a twelve-year-old girl at the time of the adventure. Her wry voice, her interactions with her fifteen-year-old brother, Thend (typical sibling give-and-take, even in the midst of astounding circumstances), inject the slowly developing mystery of Ambrosius’s background and intentions with a sense of fun that enhances the escalating tension. In this story, they encounter Charis, proprietor of Charis’s Discount Emporium of Deluxe Wonders, one of these wonders being the making of golems. An attack by a water gang named the Sandboys soon involves the entire family—Naeli, the youths’ mother, and Roble, whom we met in the previous installment. How they deal with some seemingly rogue golems is intertwined with family and cultural dynamics, hints of what happens to Fasra later in life, as well as deepening the mystery about Morlock Ambrosius. This summer, Enge sold a novel about Ambrosius, which ought to come out next year.

Next up is a prequel story from Martha Wells. In “Houses of the Dead,” we meet Ilias and Giliead, a pair of wizard hunters featured in her trilogy, Fall of Ile-Rien. Giliead appears to be too young to be a Chosen Vessel, gifted by the gods to sense curses made by the lethal wizards of this world. Ilias watches out for Giliead, though he is not aware that they’ve crossed from one god’s territory into another’s until Giliead stops dead. They’ve been called to the aid of a wizard hunter who has been wounded. The pair find a trading camp and learn the story of the Taerae, who wanted to mine gold in a dangerous, godless section of a mountain pass. These people mined gold successfully for a time, then vanished. No bodies, no signs of destruction in the empty houses. The traders’ contact is a young wagon owner named Laodice. She catches Ilias’s eye, which gives the pair impetus to solve the mystery. Wells spins out a tale with typical strong characterization and complicated world-building, building to an inexorable climax.

Constance Cooper makes her first appearance in Black Gate with “The Wily Thing,” a story that I hope is part of a book. Yonetta DuRou (or Yonie Watereye, as she now calls herself) is a young girl living alone in a dank hut on stilts above a flooded delta city. The area she lives in is called Wicked Ford, fed by the Petty Canal, that far, far away had washed the guile out of cities, to be swept down to the coast to sink, soaking into flooded graveyards and old homes and land that used to be lived on, filling objects—and people. Those filled with guile are called wily, and they can end up with special talents—like LaRue, Yonie’s partner. Yonie herself is wily. She makes her living trying to appear older so people will take her as a pearly, someone who can do a Seeing over objects found by fishers and divers. Pearlies tell people what the objects are worth, or how wily they are.

Yonie is brought an odd object, a gong with horns on it. The finder’s wife suddenly up and left after hearing the gong. Yonie and LaRue have to solve the mystery of this object so that the wife will come home. This exquisitely written tale swells like the tide to a powerful climax, resonant with emotional verity, before quietly receding.

Todd McAulty is back again, with a standout stand-alone tale, “The Soldiers of Serenity.” Chris is a salesman, working for a company that, like many big companies, is sliding toward bankruptcy unless someone pulls off a miracle. Either that, or they release products that are not anywhere near ready, so they can at least be seen trying to stem the flow of outgoing money. Chris, like his father, thrives on the negotiation, the on-the-fly, adrenaline-pumping corporate crisis that will not provide miracles, but may save face, and therefore buy time so that resolution might be possible. But Chris is late to the meeting because he had a fender bender. Despite the escalating crisis, people keep asking about this car incident, especially a man who has slipped in past the security checks and seems to know a whole lot more about Chris’s personal life than anyone else…McAulty has a gift for beginning with ordinary, even mundane, life and gradually slipping hints of the fantastic into the story until, before you know it, all hell breaks loose.

“Knives Under the Spring Moon” by Ed Carmien is the second story about Kris, who is an outrider—a hunter—for her people, who cruise about on their sailing wagons. Her partner is Paddy, an old guy who has wandered a long time and has gained some strange ideas as well as experiences—only Paddy, oddly enough, objects to being called an old coot. Kris rides a two, a newfangled wagon that Paddy designed, which has only two wheels, dangerous and fast compared to the more common threes of the other outriders, and the bigger eights and twelves of the rest of her people. It’s time to park for their spring festival, which includes dancing and drinking of bloodmead. Far too much bloodmead, Kris discovers too late, when a bunch of Riders (otherwise known as pirates) swoop down and raid the women. One of them is horribly familiar from Kris’s duel with the evil Makk, whom she’d had to kill before he killed her. His buddy is now part of the rowdy Riders. This vivid, taut tale adds nicely to the building story about Kris, the mysterious Paddy, and the wide-sky ranges the people swoop over in their travels.

“Whispers from the Stone,” the last original tale by Howard Andrew Jones, is also a continued tale. We’re in the Middle East during the era of caliphs. The narrator, Captain Asim, is the loyal bodyguard of Jafar, who is in love with an educated Greek woman named Lydia, who is passionately dedicated to gaining wisdom, knowledge, and power—in a world ruled by bearded fools, as she says. Asim, having stumbled onto the stomach-turning remains of a ritual killing of a goat, connects it to Lydia and her father, Corineus. Asim tries to warn Jafar, who is the right-hand man of Harun al-Rashid, the renowned Caliph, but Jafar is too dazzled by Lydia to listen, and so Asim grimly accompanies his master, and the Greeks, on an expedition to an ancient cache of mysterious manuscripts.

Like his first tale featuring this setting and Jafar and Asim, Jones shows Asim to be a man of his time, with the prejudices of the time, but still makes him a worthy hero. His characterizations are subtle and layered, the humor wry, breathing fresh life into a familiar fantastical setting, and providing some interesting twists.

And though we usually don’t talk about other matter in these reviews, I have to say that the artwork in this issue was exceptionally fine, especially the stunning illustration for the Constance Cooper story. I also can’t resist mentioning the comic, Knights of the Dinner Table, and its “two hawt chicks and a fat dork” that had me laughing in just about every panel. Great way to finish off another excellent issue.