Lord Tophet

EPILOGUE

THE PUPPETS OF BARDSHAM


There is a span on Shadowbridge called Calcaria that claims it has Bardsham’s original puppets. The span is terribly ancient, so old that its Dragon Bowl has long since fallen into the sea, and most of the span is composed of uninhabited ruins. The puppets, however, are on display in a museum that is a great towering structure like no other on the span, and which lends credence to the story they tell there of how the span fell into ruin. The people of that span—tall, slender creatures with prominent snouts and eyes like black marbles—tell a story about how they were once imprisoned there by a fiendish god named Chaos, and how the ghost of Bardsham’s wife came out of a mirror and destroyed him with a story, leaving the puppets behind as a tribute to those who’d suffered under his yoke. The mirror from which she emerged is a dull and unpolished thing that no longer reflects. It is also on display there, beside a pocked and damaged mask that they claimed was the face of Chaos.

This local tale would be dismissed were it not for the puppets themselves: Bardsham is not known to have performed on spirals anywhere near Calcaria, and in truth most of those other spans are dead ruins, too, peopled only by statues, the cause of their abandonment likewise attributed to the same shattered god. The puppets, however, are quite real. Detractors of the story point out that there’s no puppet of Meersh in the collection, and we all know that Meersh was Bardsham’s signature figure. Of course, the people have an explanation for that, too: that Bardsham took his puppet with him when Chaos had him thrown off the span into the sea. It’s a perplexing story to be sure.

On the other side of the world, far across the Adamantine Ocean, the spans sing stories of a girl puppeteer, who followed in Bardsham’s footsteps but was even greater than he. Some say she was his daughter, and others that she was a goddess who healed the span of Colemaigne. What happened to her is not known. At the height of her powers, she stopped performing. Many there are who believe she and Bardsham were so skillful that the gods of Edgeworld whisked them away and they live now as immortals for the entertainment of the eternals. Stories of her—of a puppeteer called Jax, who came from an island and brought Colemaigne back to life—are now performed far and wide in pantomimes and puppet shows, recitations and comedies. No one really knows for sure any of it, but, then, not all mysteries are explained.



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Numerous people gave of their time and wisdom in providing feedback on this book as it grew. I want to thank especially Fran Grote, who argued against the most obdurate resistance in the world—mine; Oz Whiston, for her blade-edged criticism; Janine Latus, a superb writer and canny reader; and my editor, Keith Clayton, who caught every single thing that everybody else missed and then some. Thanks to Shana Cohen, my agent, for keeping everything on track, including me. Once again a special thanks to M. Swanwick and the M. C. Porter Endowment for the Arts for the long-term chivvying they provided; and to Barbara for weathering it all. Finally, my thanks to the great shadow puppeteer Richard Bradshaw, who once upon a time let me have a peek into his world.



GREGORY FROST has been a finalist for nearly every major award in the fantasy field, including the Hugo, Nebula, James Tiptree, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy awards. He is the author of six previous novels, as well as the critically praised short-story collection Attack of the Jazz Giants & Other Stories. Greg is one of the Fiction Writing Workshop directors at Swarthmore College. He lives in Merion Station, Pennsylvania. His website is www.gregoryfrost.com.