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    The Jewel of Bas
    The Jewel of Bas
    The Jewel of Bas
    Ebook76 pages2 hours

    The Jewel of Bas

    By Leigh Brackett

    2/5

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    About this ebook

    A quest to the Mountain of Life to save what remained by humanity from the machines that were bent on destroying them.

    excerpt
    Mouse stirred the stew in the small iron pot. There wasn't much of it. She sniffed and said:
    'You could have stolen a bigger joint. We'll go hungry before the next town.'

    'Uh huh,' Ciaran grunted lazily.

    Anger began to curl in Mouse's eyes.

    'I suppose it's all right with you if we run out of food,' she said sullenly.

    Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watched her with lazy gray eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a head shorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin as a young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind ever combed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a small red thief's brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, and her bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.

    Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missing behind it. He said, 'It's just as well. I don't want you getting fat and lazy.'

    Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent and threw the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enough to let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brown knees. It began to purr softly.

    Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazy in a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor and crush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silence of the place was wonderful.

    He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from the Phrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut, but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran's left, far below, the sea spread sullen and burning, cloaked in a reddish fog.

    To his right, also far below, were the Forbidden Plains. Flat, desolate, and barren, reaching away and away to the up-curving rim of the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXinXii
    Release dateDec 10, 2015
    ISBN9781612104256
    The Jewel of Bas

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    • 2/5
      I’ve been picking up copies of Tor’s series of back-to-back doubles since first stumbling across a couple of them in a remaindered bookshop in Abu Dhabi. There were thirty-six published in total, between 1988 and 1991, mostly reprints but with the occasional piece of original fiction, and all by known names. (Although Haber here is probably better-known as an anthologist.) ‘Thieves’ Carnival’ is a prequel to Brackett’s story, and shows how the two main characters met and ended up married. While it’s set chronologically earlier, it should really have been the second story in this book. Brackett does her typically skilful job at setting up world and cast in ‘The Jewel of Bas’ – although, to be honest, this is not one of her best – and ‘Thieves’ Carnival’ would have proven a more interesting read as a pendant to Brackett’s. Which tells how Mouse and her husband, the minstrel Ciaran, are captured by minions of Bas – well, not exactly, it’s the two androids Bas built to attend him, it’s their minions who have been enslaving people in order to build an engine to save the world… because Bas is more interested in his dreamworld and has been neglecting things. In Haber’s prequel, Mouse is teamed with Ciaran in a thievery competition, and she decides to steal the Portal Cube… which proves to be some sort of time-travel device and its theft results in weird flashbacks to other times and places. The Brackett is not among her best – the story feels tired, the dialogue is clunkier than you’d expect, and the plot echoes a few too many other stories of the period. Haber’s prequel takes Brackett’s science-fantasy and ups the fantasy, turning the story into something more like a RPG adventure than an homage to Brackett. I get that publishers are often constrained when putting these series together in as much as they can only include those stories to which they could obtain the rights… but both of these are entirely forgettable.

    Book preview

    The Jewel of Bas - Leigh Brackett

    The Jewel of Bas

    By Leigh Brackett

    Copyright © 1944 by Leigh Brackett

    This edition published in 2011 by eStar Books, LLC.

    www.estarbooks.com

    ISBN 9781612104256

    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

    The publishers at eStar Books are proud to provide this quality title for your reading pleasure. At eStar Books, we specialize in the unique and unusual. To find more titles in the genres you love most, including sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction, visit us at www.estarbooks.com.

    The Jewel of Bas

    By Leigh Brackett

    Chapter 1

    Mouse stirred the stew in the small iron pot. There wasn't much of it. She sniffed and said:

    You could have stolen a bigger joint. We'll go hungry before the next town.

    Uh huh, Ciaran grunted lazily.

    Anger began to curl in Mouse's eyes.

    I suppose it's all right with you if we run out of food, she said sullenly.

    Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watched her with lazy gray eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a head shorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin as a young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind ever combed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a small red thief's brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, and her bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.

    Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missing behind it. He said, It's just as well. I don't want you getting fat and lazy.

    Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent and threw the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enough to let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brown knees. It began to purr softly.

    Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazy in a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor and crush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silence of the place was wonderful.

    He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from the Phrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut, but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran's left, far below, the sea spread sullen and burning, cloaked in a reddish fog.

    To his right, also far below, were the Forbidden Plains. Flat, desolate, and barren, reaching away and away to the up-curving rim of the world, where Ciaran's sharp eyes could just make out a glint of gold; a mammoth peak reaching for the sky.

    Mouse said suddenly, Is that it, Kiri? Ben Beatha, the Mountain of Life?

    Ciaran struck a shivering chord from the harp. That's it.

    Let's eat, said Mouse.

    Scared?

    Maybe you want me to go back! Maybe you think a branded thief isn't good enough for you! Well I can't help where I was born or what my parents were—and you'd have a brand on your ugly face too, if you hadn't just been lucky!

    She threw the ladle.

    This time her aim was better and Ciaran didn't duck quite in time. It clipped his ear. He sprang up, looking murderous, and started to heave it back at her. And then, suddenly, Mouse was crying, stamping up and down and blinking tears out of her eyes.

    All right, I'm scared! I've never been out of a city before, and besides . . . She looked out over the silent plain, to the distant glint of Ben Beatha. Besides, she whispered, I keep thinking of the stories they used to tell—about Bas the Immortal, and his androids, and the gray beasts that served them. And about the Stone of Destiny.

    Ciaran made a contemptuous mouth. Legends. Old wives' tales. Songs to give babies a pleasant shiver. A small glint of avarice came into his gray eyes. But the Stone of Destiny—it's a nice story, that one. A jewel of such power that owning it gives a man rule over the whole world . . .

    He squinted out across the barren plain. Someday, he said softly, maybe I'll see if that one's true.

    Oh, Kiri. Mouse came and caught his wrists in her small strong hands. You wouldn't. It's forbidden—and no one that's gone into the Forbidden Plains has ever come back.

    There's always a first time. He grinned. But I'm not going now, Mousie. I'm too hungry.

    She picked up the plate silently and ladled stew into it and set it down. Ciaran laid his harp down and stretched—a tough, wiry little man with legs slightly bandy and a good-natured hard face. He wore a yellow tunic even more ragged than Mouse's.

    They sat down. Ciaran ate noisily with his fingers. Mouse fished out a hunk of meat and nibbled it moodily. A breeze came up, pushing the sunballs around a little and bringing tatters of red fog in off the sea. After a while Mouse said:

    Did you hear any of the talk in the market squares, Kiri?

    He shrugged. They gabble. I don't waste my time with it.

    All along the border countries they were saying the same thing. People who live or work along the edge of the Forbidden Plains have disappeared. Whole towns of them, sometimes.

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