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The Ruby Incomparable

KAGE BAKER

One of the most prolific new writers to appear in the late nineties, Kage

Baker made her first sale in 1997, to Asimov’s Science Fiction, and has

since become one of that maga-zines most frequent and popular

contributors with her sly and compelling stories of the ad-ventures and

misadventures of the time-traveling agents of the Company; of late,

she’s started two other linked sequences of stories there as well, one of

them set in as lush and ec-centric a High Fantasy milieu as any we’ve

ever seen. Her stories have also appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Sci

Fiction, Amazing, and elsewhere. Her first Company novel, In the Garden

of Iden, was also published in 1997 and immediately became one of the

most acclaimed and widely reviewed first novels of the year. More

Company novels quickly followed, including Sky Coyote, Mendoza in

Hollywood, The Graveyard Game, The Life of the World to Come, as well

as a chapbook novella, The Empress of Mars, and her first fantasy novel,

The Anvil of the World. Her many stories have been col-lected in Black

Projects, White Knights, Mother Aegypt and Other Stories, Dark Mondays,

and a collection of Company stories, The Children of the Company. Her

most recent Company novel is The Machine’s Child. In addition to her

writing, Baker has been an artist, actor, and director at the Living History

Center and has taught Eliza-bethan English as a second language. She

lives in Pismo Beach, California.

When purest Evil and purest Good join in marriage you can’t

expect the relationship to be a tranquil one — but sometimes it can

produce unexpected consequences that surprise both.

* * * *

HE girl surprised everyone. To begin with, no one in the world below had

thought her parents would have more children. Her parents’ marriage had

created quite a scandal, a profound clash of philosophical extremes; for her

father was the Master of the Mountain, a brigand and sorcerer, who had

carried the Saint of the World off to his high fortress. It’s bad enough when

a living goddess, who can heal the sick and raise the dead, takes up with a

professional dark lord (black armor, monstrous armies, and all). But when

they settle down to-gether with every intention of raising a family, what are

respectable people to think?

The Yendri in their forest villages groaned when they learned of the

first boy. Even in his cradle, his fiendish tendencies were evident. He was

beautiful as a little angel except in his screaming tempers, when he would

morph himself into giant larvae, wolf cubs, or pools of bubbling slime.

The Yendri in their villages and the Children of the Sun in their stone

cities all rejoiced when they heard of the second boy. He too was beautiful,

but clearly good. A star was seen to shine from his brow on occasion. He

was reported to have cured a nurse’s toothache with a mere touch, and he

never so much as cried while teething.

And the shamans of the Yendri, and the priests in the temples of the

Children of the Sun, all nodded their heads and said: “Well, at least we

have balance now. The two boys will obviously grow up, oppose each

other, and fight to the death, because that’s what generally happens.”

Having decided all this, and settled down confidently to wait, imagine

how shocked they were to hear that the Saint of the World had borne a third

child! And a girl, at that. It threw all their calculations off and an-noyed them

a great deal.

The Master and his Lady were surprised, too, because their baby

daughter popped into the world homely as a little potato, by contrast with

the elfin beauty of her brothers. They did agree that she had lovely eyes, at

least, dark as her father’s, and she seemed to be sweet-tempered. They

named her Svnae.

So the Master of the Mountain swaddled her in purple silk and took

her out on a high balcony and held her up before his assembled troops,

who roared, grunted, and howled their polite approval. And that night in the

barracks and servants’ hall, around the barrels of black wine that had been

served out in celebration, the minions of the proud father agreed amongst

themselves that the little maid might not turn out so ugly as all that, if the

rest of her face grew to fit that nose and she didn’t stay quite so bald.

And they at least were proved correct, for within a year Svnae had

become a lovely child.

* * * *

ON the morning of Svnae’s fifth birthday, the Master went to the nursery and

fetched his little daughter. He took her out with him on his tour of the

battlements, where all the world stretched away below. The guards, tusked

and fanged, great and horrible in their armor, stood to attention and saluted

him. Solemnly, he pulled a great red rose from thin air and pre-sented it to

Svnae.

“Today,” he said, “my Dark-Eyed is five years old. What do you want

most in all the world, daughter?”

Svnae looked up at him with her shining eyes. Very clearly she said:

“Power.”

He looked down at her, astounded; but she stood there looking

pa-tiently back at him, clutching her red rose. He knelt beside her. “Do you

know what Power is?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Power is when you stand up here and make all the

clouds come to you across the sky, and shoot lightning and make thunder

crash. That’s what I want.”

“I can make magic for you,” he said, and with a wave of his gauntleted

hand produced three tiny fire elementals dressed in scarlet, blue, and

yel-low, who danced enchantingly for Svnae before vanishing in a puff of

smoke.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she said, “but no. I want me to be able to do it.”

Slowly, he nodded his head. “Power you were born with; you’re my

child. But you must learn to use it, and that doesn’t come easily, or quickly.

Are you sure this is what you really want?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation.

“Not eldritch toys to play with? Not beautiful clothes? Not sweets?”

“If I learn Power, I can have all those things anyway,” Svnae

observed.

The Master was pleased with her answer. “Then you will learn to use

your Power,” he said. “What would you like to do first?”

“I want to learn to fly,” she said. “Not like my brother Eyrdway. He just

turns into birds. I want to stay me and fly.”

“Watch my hands,” her father said. In his right hand, he held out a

stone; in his left, a paper dart. He put them both over the parapet and let go.

The stone dropped; the paper dart drifted lazily down.

“Now, tell me,” he said. “Why did the stone drop and the paper fly?”

“Because the stone is heavy, and the paper isn’t,” she said.

“Nearly so; and not so. Look.” And he pulled from the air an egg. He

held it out in his palm, and the egg cracked. A tiny thing crawled from it, and

lay shivering there a moment; white down covered it like dandelion fluff, and

it drew itself upright and shook tiny stubby wings. The down transformed to

shining feathers, and the young bird beat its wide wings and flew off

rejoicing.

“Now, tell me,” said the Master, “was that magic?”

“No,” said Svnae. “That’s just what happens with birds.”

“Nearly so; and not so. Look.” And he took out another stone. He held

it up and uttered a Word of Power; the stone sprouted bright wings and,

improbably, flew away into the morning.

“How did you make it do that?” Svnae cried. Her father smiled at her.

“With Power; but Power is not enough. I was able to transform the

stone because I understand that the bird and the stone, and even the paper

dart, are all the same thing.”

“But they’re not,” said Svnae.

“Aren’t they?” said her father. “When you understand that the stone

and the bird are one, the next step is convincing the stone that the bird and

the stone are one. And then the stone can fly.”

Svnae bit her lip. “This is hard, isn’t it?” she said.

“Very,” said the Master of the Mountain. “Are you sure you wouldn’t

like a set of paints instead?”

“Yes,” said Svnae stubbornly. “I will understand.”

“Then I’ll give you books to study,” he promised. He picked her up

and folded her close, in his dark cloak. He carried her to the bower of her

lady mother, the Saint of the World.

Now when the Lady had agreed to marry her dread Lord, she had won

from him the concession of making a garden on his black basalt

mountain-top, high and secret in the sunlit air. Ten years into their marriage,

her or-chards were a mass of white blossom, and her white-robed disciples

tended green beds of herbs there. They bowed gracefully as Svnae ran to

her mother, who embraced her child and gave her a white rose. And Svnae

said proudly:

“I’m going to learn Power, Mama!”

The Lady looked questions at her Lord.

“It’s what she wants,” he said, no less proudly. “And if she has the

tal-ent, why shouldn’t she learn?”

“But Power is not an end in itself, my child,” the Lady said to her

daughter. “To what purpose will you use it? Will you help others?”

“Ye-es,” said Svnae, looking down at her feet. “But I have to learn

first.”

“Wouldn’t you like to be a healer, like me?”

“I can heal people when I have Power,” said Svnae confidently. Her

mother looked a little sadly into her dark eyes but saw no shadow there. So

she blessed her daughter and sent her off to play.

* * * *

THE Master of the Mountain kept his promise and gave his daughter books

to study, to help her decipher the Three Riddles of Flight. She had to learn

to read first; with fiery determination she hurled herself on her letters and

mastered them, and charged into the first of the Arcane texts.

So well she studied that by her sixth birthday she had solved all three

riddles and was able at will to sprout little butterfly wings from her

shoul-ders, wings as red as a rose. She couldn’t fly much with them, only

flutter-ing a few inches above the ground like a baby bird; but she was only

six. One day she would soar.

Then it was the Speech of Animals she wanted to learn. Then it was

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