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CHAPTER 1
Mars
Dreams-of-War was hunting the remnants of men on the slopes of the Martian Olympus when she came across the herd of ghosts. The armor bristled at the approach of the herd, whispering caution into her ear, and at first Dreams-of-War thought that it was warning her against the presence of men--hyenae, perhaps, or vulpen, or others of the Changed. She wheeled around, activating the hand-spines of the armor, but there was nothing there. The cold, tawny slopes rolled into the distance, empty of everything except scrub and the sparse desert life that congregated around the canals and sinks. Far on the horizon, the column of Memnos Tower pointed upward, just visible now against a darkening sky. Dreams-of-War frowned. The armor remained alert, porcupine spikes forming and reforming as she moved.
"What?" Dreams-of-War said aloud, impatiently.
"There is someone here," the armor said. Sometimes it spoke with the voice of the warrior who had first imprinted it, but sometimes the voice sounded more akin to that of Dreams-of-War herself. That was the trouble with haunt-tech; one was never sure whether one was imagining things. But perhaps one could expect no less from something that had been granted by aliens.
"I see no one," Dreams-of-War said.
"Yet someone is here," the armor insisted.
And now Dreams-of-War could, indeed, feel something: an irritation over her guarded skin, like an insect crawl. She flinched within the protective carapace.
"Look," the armor said.
They were rising out of the ground, formed from dust and solidifying soil, then sharp-edged and real. There were perhaps twenty or so: women with long horns and backward-slanting legs, but they stood vertically. Their eyes were red, with narrow pupils that burned gold--a flame within coals. They gazed at Dreams-of-War with a kind of placid curiosity, despite their demon eyes, switching long tapering tails.
Dreams-of-War stood in frozen shock. They were more than illusion. She could smell them: the scent of long-dead grasslands, woodsmoke, and blood. They smelled like prey. And as if they had seen the thought in her eyes, the herd turned as one and began to run, loping swiftly along the slope until they were swallowed by the gathering twilight. Their small hooves made no sound. They moved in silence, and then were gone.
Dreams-of-War stared after them, feeling foolish. She should at least have made an attempt to capture one of them.
She said aloud, "There have not been such beings on Mars since ancient times. I have seen the records. They roamed the Crater Plain. No one knows who created them, what laboratory, or why."
"They were long dead by my day," the armor--itself a hundred years old--remarked with a trace of wistfulness.
"Thousand-year-old ghosts," Dreams-of-War mused. "But why have they appeared now? I suppose Memnos must be told. We should go back." She spoke with reluctance. She disliked setting out on a hunt and returning empty-handed, and this would be her last opportunity. Soon she would be headed for Earth, which now shone above her in the heavens, blue as an eye. The maw of the Chain was also visible: a faint glitter high above the surface of the world. She thought of hurtling into the maw, emerging above that blue star . . . More alien tech. Dreams-of-War's lip began to curl.
The prospect of that journey, however, was superseded by the thought of the men-remnants waiting in the rocks. It irritated Dreams-of-War. She could feel it in the armor, too: a wildness, a need for killing, for flesh and death. She had spotted no real prey all day, only the ghosts and the small creatures of the plain, and she had thought that the night would provide her with a chance. The vulpen, at least, slunk out of their holes after dusk, in search of the dactylate birds that were their staple diet.
With a sigh, Dreams-of-War repressed the impulse to continue. She set off back down the long stone-strewn slope to the plain, to where the Memnos Tower was waiting.
CHAPTER 2
Nightshade
Yskatarina Iye was named for the sounds she made on her emergence from the growing-skin--first a hiss and then a cry. A daughter of the lab clans, grown in Tower Cold, on the world of Nightshade at the Chain's end and the system's edge, a very long way from the sun.
The name--her child-name, not the appellation of her Nightshade clan--proved difficult to dislodge and Yskatarina retained it into adulthood, along with the Animus that grew beside her from a hatchling no bigger than a dragonfly. The Animus, spawned from the ancient genetic lineage of the clan just as Yskatarina herself had been, possessed no name. Yskatarina tried various permutations, yet none seemed to fit.
Her aunt Elaki told her from an early age how fortunate she was to have an Animus: how women on other worlds could not be bonded with a male, for there were so few remaining, and those were inferior. She was lucky, Yskatarina knew, that the Elders of Nightshade still sought to return to the old ways, when men and women walked the worlds together, when both genders lived in harmony, each seeking their other self. And the Animus was not a human male, for they had proved too weak, but something better.
Her Animus whispered to Yskatarina as she slept, throughout the long illnesses that marked her childhood: dreamfevers, feral malaises, and the modified infestations that would enable her not only to suffer the transformation when the time came, but to welcome it. She spent the endless dark of Nightshade with the Animus crouched beside the cot like a murmuring spider, spinning webs of words.
Transformation nearly killed her. It had been explained to her by her aunt that it would make her stronger, but she did not understand what "transformation" meant.
"What am I to be transformed into?" she had asked Elaki. But her aunt replied only, "You will see."
When the time came, Yskatarina lay, a small uncomprehending form, in the sparkling dark of the blacklight matrix as the engrams rewrote her: a process of alchemical change she was powerless to resist.
The blacklight powered down into a gleaming cube of air. Yskatarina blinked, waking. It felt as though she had been wrenched across a vast distance, torn through the remnants of boiling suns. There was a smell of fire and a terrible heaviness, a weight. She tried to raise her head, but it felt too large for her fragile neck. Someone bent over her. Yskatarina looked up, but it was several moments before the strange shape floating before her congealed into human features.
She saw a long face, cheeks puffed out into veined pouches on either side of a thin, hooked nose. The skin was unlined, unnaturally smooth and shiny as porcelain. The eyes were set in deep hollows, filled with bloodshot gold. The hair was feathery: dirty-black, coiling in wispy tendrils from beneath the high hat.
Then, Yskatarina's vision shifted and she realized that it was her aunt Elaki peering down at her. Yet for a moment it seemed that there was someone else looking out from Elaki's eyes, someone who cried out in horror.
"You!" Elaki shrieked.
"Aunt?" Her own voice sounded faint, a thin croaking. Elaki reached down and shook her.
"It's you, isn't it? I'd know you anywhere."
"Aunt, what is wrong?" Something squirmed inside Yskatarina's head, running in turn from Elaki's anger, tunneling down to hide in the deep channels of her mind.
Elaki's face became thoughtful and cold, as if a crucial decision had been reached. She turned on her heel and spoke to someone unseen, probably the Animus Isti, who followed always at her heels.
"Prepare the matrix once more. There are some further modifications to be made."
Darkness swept over Yskatarina like a wing. There was a tearing, rending sensation, a lightning bolt through her brain. It felt as though she were being split in two, and the pain sent her squealing down into the abyss.
She did not wake for a long time. At last, swimming up through unconsciousness, she found herself no longer in the blacklight chamber, but in her own room. Her head felt like a great hot bag, too heavy to lift. She put up a hand to feel her brow, but nothing happened. Alarmed, Yskatarina tried to move her arms and legs. There was no sensation at all. She cried out for Elaki.
"Ah! You're awake," her aunt said, bustling in.
"I can't feel my arms, or my legs!"
Elaki placed a clammy hand on Yskatarina's forehead. "I fear that is because they are no longer there. You suffered a rare meningeal infection after the transformation process, and your limbs were damaged by gangrene. We were forced to remove them."
"Aunt?" Yskatarina whispered, in fright and shock.
"We will make new limbs for you," Elaki promised. Her face softened, almost imperceptibly, but there was something behind her eyes that alarmed Yskatarina beyond measure. "Better ones. So do not make such a fuss."
When Elaki left, Yskatarina stared numbly up to find the Animus above her, in chrysalis form. She reached out for him, before she remembered. He hung in a motionless silver-black shape from the ceiling of the laboratory, depending from a piece of growing bone. After her own experiences, Yskatarina did not expect the Animus to emerge alive, but emerge he did, gliding from the tinsel wreckage of the chrysalis: arachnid, escorpionate, baleful.
Yskatarina knew then that there was nothing she would not do to keep the Animus beside her. Hadn't they always been together? And after the dreadful experience of transformation, the Animus was the only being on which she could rely.
There was another change, too. Before, Yskatarina had been afraid of her aunt: dreading the touch of Elaki's pale, plump hands, hating the way her aunt's great...
Biographie de l'auteur :
Mars
Dreams-of-War was hunting the remnants of men on the slopes of the Martian Olympus when she came across the herd of ghosts. The armor bristled at the approach of the herd, whispering caution into her ear, and at first Dreams-of-War thought that it was warning her against the presence of men--hyenae, perhaps, or vulpen, or others of the Changed. She wheeled around, activating the hand-spines of the armor, but there was nothing there. The cold, tawny slopes rolled into the distance, empty of everything except scrub and the sparse desert life that congregated around the canals and sinks. Far on the horizon, the column of Memnos Tower pointed upward, just visible now against a darkening sky. Dreams-of-War frowned. The armor remained alert, porcupine spikes forming and reforming as she moved.
"What?" Dreams-of-War said aloud, impatiently.
"There is someone here," the armor said. Sometimes it spoke with the voice of the warrior who had first imprinted it, but sometimes the voice sounded more akin to that of Dreams-of-War herself. That was the trouble with haunt-tech; one was never sure whether one was imagining things. But perhaps one could expect no less from something that had been granted by aliens.
"I see no one," Dreams-of-War said.
"Yet someone is here," the armor insisted.
And now Dreams-of-War could, indeed, feel something: an irritation over her guarded skin, like an insect crawl. She flinched within the protective carapace.
"Look," the armor said.
They were rising out of the ground, formed from dust and solidifying soil, then sharp-edged and real. There were perhaps twenty or so: women with long horns and backward-slanting legs, but they stood vertically. Their eyes were red, with narrow pupils that burned gold--a flame within coals. They gazed at Dreams-of-War with a kind of placid curiosity, despite their demon eyes, switching long tapering tails.
Dreams-of-War stood in frozen shock. They were more than illusion. She could smell them: the scent of long-dead grasslands, woodsmoke, and blood. They smelled like prey. And as if they had seen the thought in her eyes, the herd turned as one and began to run, loping swiftly along the slope until they were swallowed by the gathering twilight. Their small hooves made no sound. They moved in silence, and then were gone.
Dreams-of-War stared after them, feeling foolish. She should at least have made an attempt to capture one of them.
She said aloud, "There have not been such beings on Mars since ancient times. I have seen the records. They roamed the Crater Plain. No one knows who created them, what laboratory, or why."
"They were long dead by my day," the armor--itself a hundred years old--remarked with a trace of wistfulness.
"Thousand-year-old ghosts," Dreams-of-War mused. "But why have they appeared now? I suppose Memnos must be told. We should go back." She spoke with reluctance. She disliked setting out on a hunt and returning empty-handed, and this would be her last opportunity. Soon she would be headed for Earth, which now shone above her in the heavens, blue as an eye. The maw of the Chain was also visible: a faint glitter high above the surface of the world. She thought of hurtling into the maw, emerging above that blue star . . . More alien tech. Dreams-of-War's lip began to curl.
The prospect of that journey, however, was superseded by the thought of the men-remnants waiting in the rocks. It irritated Dreams-of-War. She could feel it in the armor, too: a wildness, a need for killing, for flesh and death. She had spotted no real prey all day, only the ghosts and the small creatures of the plain, and she had thought that the night would provide her with a chance. The vulpen, at least, slunk out of their holes after dusk, in search of the dactylate birds that were their staple diet.
With a sigh, Dreams-of-War repressed the impulse to continue. She set off back down the long stone-strewn slope to the plain, to where the Memnos Tower was waiting.
CHAPTER 2
Nightshade
Yskatarina Iye was named for the sounds she made on her emergence from the growing-skin--first a hiss and then a cry. A daughter of the lab clans, grown in Tower Cold, on the world of Nightshade at the Chain's end and the system's edge, a very long way from the sun.
The name--her child-name, not the appellation of her Nightshade clan--proved difficult to dislodge and Yskatarina retained it into adulthood, along with the Animus that grew beside her from a hatchling no bigger than a dragonfly. The Animus, spawned from the ancient genetic lineage of the clan just as Yskatarina herself had been, possessed no name. Yskatarina tried various permutations, yet none seemed to fit.
Her aunt Elaki told her from an early age how fortunate she was to have an Animus: how women on other worlds could not be bonded with a male, for there were so few remaining, and those were inferior. She was lucky, Yskatarina knew, that the Elders of Nightshade still sought to return to the old ways, when men and women walked the worlds together, when both genders lived in harmony, each seeking their other self. And the Animus was not a human male, for they had proved too weak, but something better.
Her Animus whispered to Yskatarina as she slept, throughout the long illnesses that marked her childhood: dreamfevers, feral malaises, and the modified infestations that would enable her not only to suffer the transformation when the time came, but to welcome it. She spent the endless dark of Nightshade with the Animus crouched beside the cot like a murmuring spider, spinning webs of words.
Transformation nearly killed her. It had been explained to her by her aunt that it would make her stronger, but she did not understand what "transformation" meant.
"What am I to be transformed into?" she had asked Elaki. But her aunt replied only, "You will see."
When the time came, Yskatarina lay, a small uncomprehending form, in the sparkling dark of the blacklight matrix as the engrams rewrote her: a process of alchemical change she was powerless to resist.
The blacklight powered down into a gleaming cube of air. Yskatarina blinked, waking. It felt as though she had been wrenched across a vast distance, torn through the remnants of boiling suns. There was a smell of fire and a terrible heaviness, a weight. She tried to raise her head, but it felt too large for her fragile neck. Someone bent over her. Yskatarina looked up, but it was several moments before the strange shape floating before her congealed into human features.
She saw a long face, cheeks puffed out into veined pouches on either side of a thin, hooked nose. The skin was unlined, unnaturally smooth and shiny as porcelain. The eyes were set in deep hollows, filled with bloodshot gold. The hair was feathery: dirty-black, coiling in wispy tendrils from beneath the high hat.
Then, Yskatarina's vision shifted and she realized that it was her aunt Elaki peering down at her. Yet for a moment it seemed that there was someone else looking out from Elaki's eyes, someone who cried out in horror.
"You!" Elaki shrieked.
"Aunt?" Her own voice sounded faint, a thin croaking. Elaki reached down and shook her.
"It's you, isn't it? I'd know you anywhere."
"Aunt, what is wrong?" Something squirmed inside Yskatarina's head, running in turn from Elaki's anger, tunneling down to hide in the deep channels of her mind.
Elaki's face became thoughtful and cold, as if a crucial decision had been reached. She turned on her heel and spoke to someone unseen, probably the Animus Isti, who followed always at her heels.
"Prepare the matrix once more. There are some further modifications to be made."
Darkness swept over Yskatarina like a wing. There was a tearing, rending sensation, a lightning bolt through her brain. It felt as though she were being split in two, and the pain sent her squealing down into the abyss.
She did not wake for a long time. At last, swimming up through unconsciousness, she found herself no longer in the blacklight chamber, but in her own room. Her head felt like a great hot bag, too heavy to lift. She put up a hand to feel her brow, but nothing happened. Alarmed, Yskatarina tried to move her arms and legs. There was no sensation at all. She cried out for Elaki.
"Ah! You're awake," her aunt said, bustling in.
"I can't feel my arms, or my legs!"
Elaki placed a clammy hand on Yskatarina's forehead. "I fear that is because they are no longer there. You suffered a rare meningeal infection after the transformation process, and your limbs were damaged by gangrene. We were forced to remove them."
"Aunt?" Yskatarina whispered, in fright and shock.
"We will make new limbs for you," Elaki promised. Her face softened, almost imperceptibly, but there was something behind her eyes that alarmed Yskatarina beyond measure. "Better ones. So do not make such a fuss."
When Elaki left, Yskatarina stared numbly up to find the Animus above her, in chrysalis form. She reached out for him, before she remembered. He hung in a motionless silver-black shape from the ceiling of the laboratory, depending from a piece of growing bone. After her own experiences, Yskatarina did not expect the Animus to emerge alive, but emerge he did, gliding from the tinsel wreckage of the chrysalis: arachnid, escorpionate, baleful.
Yskatarina knew then that there was nothing she would not do to keep the Animus beside her. Hadn't they always been together? And after the dreadful experience of transformation, the Animus was the only being on which she could rely.
There was another change, too. Before, Yskatarina had been afraid of her aunt: dreading the touch of Elaki's pale, plump hands, hating the way her aunt's great...
Liz Williams is the daughter of a conjuror and a Gothic novelist, and currently lives in Brighton, England. She has a PhD in philosophy of science from Cambridge and her anti-career ranges from reading tarot cards on Brighton pier to teaching in Central Asia. She has had short fiction published in Asimov's, Interzone, The Third Alternative and Visionary Tongue, among others, and is co-editor of the recent anthology "Fabulous Brighton." She is also the current secretary of the Milford UK SF Writers' Workshop. BANNER OF SOULS is her fifth novel, proceeded by Nine Layers of Sky, The Poison Master, Empire of Bones and The Ghost Sister, and she is currently at work on her sixth.
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- ÉditeurTor
- Date d'édition2005
- ISBN 10 1405041242
- ISBN 13 9781405041249
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Banner of Souls
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Description du livre Paperback. Etat : Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. N° de réf. du vendeur GOR003922324
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Description du livre Paperback. Etat : Very Good. Banner of Souls This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. N° de réf. du vendeur 7719-9781405041249
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Description du livre Paperback. Etat : Very Good. This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. N° de réf. du vendeur 6545-9781405041249
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Description du livre Etat : Very Good. Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. N° de réf. du vendeur 39469908-20
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Description du livre Soft cover. Etat : Near Fine. No Jacket. 1st Edition. Published by Tor of London in 2005. Soft cover, hence no Dust Jacket. British 1st edition. Book condition: Very good to Near Fine. Illustrated covers in good condition. Inside pages are in good order, except for a few marks to the edges of the pages. See photograph. Dims: 230mm x 150mm x 40mm. 480 pages. Science fiction book. N° de réf. du vendeur 001374
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Description du livre Etat : Sehr gut. 480 Seiten Schnitt teilweise vergilbt, leichte Druckstellen am Cover, kleine Lagerspuren am Buch, Inhalt einwandfrei und ungelesen 231405 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 620 22,8 x 15,2 x 3,6 cm, Taschenbuch. N° de réf. du vendeur 141378
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Description du livre Paperback: 8½" x 5¾". Etat : Very Good: Light signs of wear. Cover Art: Uncredited (illustrateur). Uncorrected Bound Proof. © 2004: 1st in the 'Banner Of Souls' series of books. Uncorrected Bound Proof:- Synopsis: A mind-blowing gothic space adventure by one of Britain's most talented SF writers. In the far-distant future a flooded and shattered Earth is governed by the iron hand of the Martian Matriarchy. Martian warrior Dreams-of-War is despatched to Earth to protect an unusual young girl from an unknown threat. When her protege, Lunae, is nearly assassinated, the Martian warrior is forced to flee with her to the flooded northern islands of what was once Japan. But then the child goes missing en-route, leaving Dreams-of-War determined to return to the plains of Mars in order to discover the truth about Martian rule over Earth, and the nature of the intrigues behind it:- Review(s): "Liz Williams is this generation's answer to Margaret Atwood and Sheri Tepper. Her work - nuanced, evocative, and consummately literate - charts a compelling course for feminist SF in the 21st century" - Chris Moriarty / "A vivid adventure infused with a baroque and haunting atmosphere that lingers long after the last page is turned" - K J Bishop / "A gothic feast for the imagination that places Liz Williams in the first rank of visionary science fiction writers" - Charles Stross:- (original cost £12.99). N° de réf. du vendeur 12.005.00041
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