Dreams of the Compass Rose (54 page)

That center coffin was thus a mystery.

But the children of the
taqavor
loved him so much that they did not question it, and simply closed the sepulcher tight, and, after grieving for the departed, went on with the business of living.

With time and with generations, it was rumored that in the empty coffin was contained the world’s greatest evil. But of course it was nonsense, since many knew that it in fact contained nothing.

Only some very old ones—a decrepit grandmother of another great-grandmother who had lived so long ago—remembered that in their younger days things had been dark and bitter, things that had made the great
empirastan
what it was.

That coffin—they muttered, prompted to reminiscence by certain peculiar shadows in the corners under a certain light of dusk—that coffin is yet to be filled. It waits for someone.

The coffin waits for a soul which will one day step forth from the bottomless well outside the universe and back into the river of time to embrace death—for time is a cascading sequence of cause and effect, and death is the separator of memory of that sequence, the great delimiter.

But it will only be filled after the soul’s choice is made to embrace the fullness of truth and to reject Illusion.

Thus it was spoken. But eventually even this legend too was forgotten.

Time swept through the
empirastan
and the great city, and with centuries the earth shifted and great oceans advanced to flood the desert. Around the city was formed an island, for somehow even the waters were unable to sweep this peculiar bit of land away in its entirety, as though something outside of time and the universe lay reposing here, some unfinished business.

The silver water sang, and waves came rushing softly upon an ashen ebony shore.

And with time the men and the women and all remnants of the great
empirastan
had left the island, and the once great city lay in ruins. While elsewhere in the world, it was said, new
empirastans
were created, and new vibrant things took root, in all the directions of the wind—North, South, East, and West of the Compass Rose.

The Compass Rose itself—who knows what really became of it? Very likely it lies still, no longer floating, but in a dried-up basin of a pool—truly, a great cup of water fit for a giant—in the center of a stone hall of a ruined palace, in an abandoned city, on an island of dreams that shimmers at the edges of time.

One thing is certain. As it stilled for the last time in the final moist dregs of the basin before this liquid too evaporated, the single lodestone-weighted point of the Compass came to rest in such a way that it still points North.

But maybe you will one day find out for yourself as you go searching for it, in search of your own directions, and lured forward toward wonder by the music that comes from your dreams and has no name, except as an ancient memory.

Amarantea beckons you thus, beckons all of us, and, if you do find it, then take a moment to refill the great cup of the pool and let the Compass Rose float free once again, fulfilling the next moment and the next in this neverending story of time.

THE END

Vera Nazarian
immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages.

She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed arabesque “collage” novel
Dreams of the Compass Rose
(2002), followed by epic fantasy about a world without color,
Lords of Rainbow
(2003). Her novella
The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass
from PS Publishing with an introduction by
Charles de Lint
made the
Locus
Recommended Reading List for 2005. Her debut short fiction collection
Salt of the Air,
with an introduction by
Gene Wolfe
, contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.” Recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Award-nominated, self-illustrated baroque fantasy novella
The Duke in His Castle
(2008), science fiction collection
After the Sundial
(2010), three Jane Austen parodies
Mansfield Park and Mummies
(2009),
Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons
(forthcoming),
Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy's Dreadful Secret
(forthcoming), and
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
(forthcoming).

Vera lives in Los Angeles and is working on a number of book-length projects including
Lady of Monochrome,
a sequel to
Lords of Rainbow,
a new Compass Rose milieu novel
Gods of the Compass Rose,
the
Airealm
trilogy, and medieval-gothic
Cobweb Bride.
She uses her Armenian sense of humor and her Russian sense of suffering to bake conflicted pirozhki and make art
.

In addition to being a writer and award-winning artist, she is also the publisher of Norilana Books.

Official website:
www.veranazarian.com

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Norilana

Blog:
http://norilana.livejournal.com/

I would like to thank with all my heart Alan Rodgers, John Gregory Betancourt, the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, Paul Barnett, Jane S. Fancher, Charles de Lint, Diana L. Paxson, Lisa Silverthorne, Rachel Holmen, Paul Melko, Lois Tilton, Stephen Leigh, Beth Bernobich, Lazette Gifford, Linda J. Dunn, Terry McGarry, Roby James, Melisa Michaels, Laura J. Underwood, Mike Resnick, West Flanagan, Modean Moon, Tom Hise, Amy Sheldon, Paul Witcover, Amy Sterling Casil, Tom P. Powers, Kurt Roth, Pat Fogarty, Jeffry Dwight, and at least a hundred other kind friends at SFF Net who tore apart first drafts, slaved over cover art, and in other ways advised, encouraged me, and stood by my side all these years since the strange word “Amarantea” first came to me in a dream.

Most of all, I would like to thank Sherwood Smith, who changed my life.