Messages from Mâvarin

The New Paradigm Mâvarin Novels

2011-09-14T23:02:00.001-07:00

I had an awesome idea today for revamping my unsold fantasy trilogy, Mages of Mâvarin. I’m very excited about it.

(Please note: This was originally posted on Tumblr, where it will mostly be seen by Doctor Who fans who have no idea what Mâvarin even is. (It’s a fantasy country in an alternate universe, geographically located in the eastern U.S.) But the Tumblr entry will be picked up by Twitter and Facebook, and here I am reposting on Blogger, which will also hit FB. So much duplication, and maybe two or three people will end up reading it. But it’s worth it.)

Anyway, here’s the background. I recently finished editing my first novel, Heirs of Mâvarin, and am gearing up to submit to agents and publishers. Meanwhile, I recently reread the sequel, Mages of Mâvarin, cut one scene and added another, and called it done except for tweaking. The difficulty with Mages is that it’s over 300k words long, long enough to be a trilogy. So years ago I broke it into three volumes, with vague stopping places in the overall narrative, sort of like Tolkien did with The Lord of the Rings. An Adept in Mâvarin would set up the several plotlines, Another Mâvarin would get Our Heroes in even worse trouble, and Return to Mâvarin would complicate things further and then resolve all the plotlines, more or less.

I want my bookshelf to look like this!

But here’s the idea I had today. Instead of breaking Mages chronologically, with none of the volumes truly complete as novels, what if I made the three books concurrent? The first book would cover Rani and Darsuma’s storylines, the second would be about Fayubi, Fabi and Temet, and the third would focus on Li and Prince Talber. Each novel would begin on the same day, and each would end on the same day, and some events would be retold from different points of view, as Moorcock did with Corum, Hawkmoon etc. This way, each book tells the whole story of what happened to those particular characters, and stands alone as a complete novel. At the same time, each novel provides context for the other two.

This will be a really interesting writing exercise, and may even make the books more marketable. Here I go, starting right now! Hooray!

But yes, I’ll be submitting Heirs in the meantime.

Karen

Summary to Scene, Sort of

2011-06-27T23:20:00.002-07:00

I had a scene in what is now Chapter 29 of Heirs that until tonight was not technically a scene at all, but all summary. You know the bits in which Tolkien or Rowling or whoever disposes of days or weeks of story time in a few paragraphs? This was one of those. But without a bit of actual scene to anchor it, the description of Li's behavior during this period was all tell, no show. This deficiency has been bothering me for years.

Tonight I at least got a line of dialogue in, and a few specific actions to make the beginning of the passage into an actual scene:

“Early again, Li?” Teri Dibel asked.

Li nodded, but did not bother to answer as he hurried to Captain Perton’s office. The first day after his arrest and release, Li had managed to grovel his way onto a City patrol. ’Nishmû willing, he might win a similar assignment today, but only if there was still room on the roster. Otherwise he would try for Gate duty on one of the exit lines. Sooner or later, the traitor girl would either meet with dissidents or try to leave the City. When she did, Li was determined to be the one to capture her, abating his earlier mistake.

Once inside the Wall, he looked over Captain Perton’s shoulder at the half-completed roster, and his spirits rose. Perton had put him in charge of six trained Rovers, on patrol through the merchant district. Li accepted the undeserved honor with a smile and a heartfelt salute. Perton grumpily waved him off, sending him on his way

Not the best bit in the book by any means, but it's much less clunky than it was.

K.

What I'm Editing Tonight - a Clarion Write-a-Thon Extra

2011-06-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

This poor blog has lain fallow to two years or longer. Its most recent entry before this was an ill-conceived fragment that I was embarrassed to see listed on my sidebar. Well, no longer. During the Clarion Write-a-Thon, which started today, I will be posting fragments from whatever I'm working on, and possibly other Mâvarin bits and pieces. For tonight, I just want to show you the update of the same fragment that's on my Clarion Write-a-Thon pag:

Li said nothing further, and without meaning to, Crel let herself be drawn back into the book’s narrative.

After a while, she realized that Li was still in the doorway, watching her. “I’m sorry. Was there something else you wanted?” she said.

“Well, yes, but I can come back later. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“I’m sorry,” Crel said again. “I’m the one who’s being rude. It’s just that I haven’t read this particular legend before.”

“I get that way about books, too,” Li said. “Do you ever get the feeling, right after you read something, that the whole world around you is a little different because of what you read?”

Crel thought about it and nodded. “Sometimes, after I’m lost in a book, everything I experience seems to mean a little more, as if it were part of the story. Yes, I’ve felt that.”

“Then the feeling wears off,” Li said, “and everything’s just the same.”

Crel looked at him again. She knew just what Li meant. She’d felt it herself, but she had never been able to talk to anyone about it. Not to Del, and certainly not to Jamek.

“Somebody told me a story a few days ago,” Crel said slowly. “It changed the world around me, and I don’t think the effect is ever going to wear off.”

I've just finished Chapter 29, which I renamed, and I'm up to page 444. I'm going to bed now. Good night!

Flip Rate: A Beginning

2009-01-12T14:37:00.008-07:00

This one is in reaction to another dream. it's based on a series of books I enjoyed up to the point represented by the dream, and found problematic thereafter. The remarkable thing about that is, as far as I know, those books don't exist, but are the product of some previous dream.

This is a fragment, of course, but I hope I can make it coherent enough to stand as a short story, or possibly the beginning of yet another serial.

Berelandra
Fragments from a Possible Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2009 by KFB

Chapter One: Flip Rate

Part One

There was nothing strange about the girl. That much was certain. She was a perfectly ordinary human being, young and healthy.

I should know. I examined her, and I'm a doctor. Or was.

Oh, her circumstances were odd, no question about that. She was an orphan, apparently about twelve years old, living alone in a small, abandoned hotel along the Bering Strait. There had been an older brother, apparently, but Cinda was annoyingly vague about where he had gone or what had happened to him. "I didn't follow him. I was afraid," was all she would say at first.

And the hotel itself didn't make much sense. Who would want to vacation up here, far from the cities and amenities, along a stretch of sea the cruise lines could not enter without going aground? There wasn't even that much wildlife here, just a handful of auks and puffins, and the occasional polar bear lazing around on still-firm ice. Their habitat troubles were a hundred miles further south, and the survivors of global warming had not yet reached this godforsaken place. So there was no reason for a hotel to exist up here, run by an English girl almost certainly unknown by the State of Alaska's child welfare people. There was no village or town for fifty miles in any direction, no road to anywhere, no possible clientele except a small party of scientists studying the geological, archeological, ecological and meteorological evidence for the one time existence of a land bridge here. Which of course was what we were.

Six days of helicopter surveys with infrared cameras, landing on a likely spot and chipping away at samples of permafrost had let us to this luxury log cabin, the sort of thing Frank Lloyd Wright might have designed. Its graciously open interior spaces made clever use of glass and wooden curtains to bring in the heat and keep out the cold in a way I didn't quite understand. But I liked it.

The kitchen wasn't as rustic as it looked, and it seemed well stocked. Cinda was at the stove, flipping pancakes for us. Her flip rate was remarkable. Each pancake was perfectly cooked through in just about a minute.

I was rather pleased with myself for thinking up the term "flip rate," as if it mattered how quickly one could change pancakes from pools of batter into nicely browned discs. Funny, that.

When our expedition leader, Eric, asked where the food came from, Cinda said, "Oh, Jerry drops it off, once a week."

Jerry was the helicopter pilot who had brought us here. He was supposed to return on Friday. This was Tuesday.

"How do you pay for the food?" Eric persisted.

"Oh, with these." Cinda wiped her hands off on a towel and walked to a locked safe next to a glass-covered cupboard. After a few rapid twists of the dial she reached in and pulled out several shiny lumps of yellow rock.

"But this is gold," Vince, our geologist, exclaimed. "Unprocessed gold, like what came out of the Yukon Gold Rush over a century ago. What is it doing here?"

"Oh, it's been here a long time, my whole life," Cinda said. Everything she said seemed to start with "Oh," as if every thought our questions precipitated was entirely new to her.

"How much of it is there," Eric asked. "If you've been spending it on food and supplies...."

"Oh, I don't think I should tell you how much," she said, "but enough to last a while longer. Years, maybe. It's worth it to be able to stay here." She put the gold away, carefully spinning the lock afterward.

"Why do you want to stay?" Vince asked.

"In case Jack returns," she said. This was clearly not a new thought for her. Jack was her brother. We had determined that much.

After breakfast, Cinda showed us a framed photo of her family. It was black and white, and looked like something out of the 1950s or earlier. Everyone wore fur, in the style of a previous generation, and grinned at the camera as if in acknowledgment of a game of dress-up.

"This is my mom, Beryl," Cinda said, "and here's my dad, Erasmus. That's Jack, and this is me."

"What happened to your parents?" asked Lucy, the team's cartographer.

"They went out on the ice, a long time ago," Cinda said. "They never came back. Later Jack went looking for them. He never came back either, but I've seen him. Several times. He wants me to go out there with him, but I won't do it."

At this point I suspected that Cinda was somewhat delusional, but she was so matter of fact about everything that I wasn't certain.

"Why did your family come here in the first place?" I asked.

"Oh, they were looking for a place to have the baby. Me, I mean. I guess the sled dogs were lost or something. Then they found this hotel, and the sign, and figured this was the place to stop."

"The sign? What sign?" The only sign we had seen was the hotel name, World's End. Weird, maybe, but hardly an omen.

"Oh, do you want to see it?"

She led us outside, to a bed of ice immediately behind the hotel. The summer sun made it almost blinding, except for deep blue shadows, well beneath the surface. The numbers and letters they formed were so precise they could have been etched by lasers: "1929 BERE 2009."

"You see it?" she asked.

"We see it, but we don't understand," Eric said. "Why would that influence your parents to settle here?"

"Well, it's my family's initials," she explained.

"No it isn't," Vince said. "That would be B E J C."

"Oh, well, that's because of the nicknames. Jack is really Richard, but he didn't like that name, and Call of the Wild was his favorite book. So he's Jack. And my real name is Ella. Get it? Cinda Ella?"

I suppressed the groan that escaped the lips of several of my colleagues.

"What do the numbers mean?" I asked.

"Oh, they're years. The year my family first got here, and this year. The year I leave, maybe."

"You think we won't let you stay?" Eric asked.

Something in the sky changed. Blue became another color, gold maybe, like Cinda's nuggets. Something flashed in her eyes, and she shook her head. "I don't think it matters. The sky has changed, and I don't have to wait here any more. I think we're all leaving now. You're the people I need to help me."

"Help you do what?" Lucy asked.

"Go help Jack," she said.

That's when the flipping began.

To be continued. Maybe.

Nightmare University

2008-12-17T06:06:00.005-07:00

A dream, half-remembered. I hoped to build something more of this than I managed to retain, but ah, well. At least it sets a mood.

Nightmare University

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2008

An alien who wanted to go Christmas shopping found himself trapped in a complex of academic buildings after dark, looking for a way out onto Route 39.

He walked down gloomy, formerly white corridors where students passed by, discussing coffee and homework. Muffled music came from behind a locked metal door painted orange, but when he opened it he found it was just the soundtrack to King of Hearts, flickering in an almost empty room.

He walked through the athletic apartment, where students in yellow T-shirts spoke enthusiastically about their several undefined sports. One female student said something rather interesting, and was answered with something rather profound. In the next room, two other students said exactly the same things. In the room after that, the alien could not remember what either couple had said.

He walked on into the law department, where he found a statue of an eagle, labeled American Plausibilitism. "Ah, that explains everything," he said. And woke up.

A slightly more coherent version, starring the Doctor and turned into a comic strip slide show, can be found on my LiveJournal.

Karen

Former Ficlets: An Archive

2008-12-07T20:29:00.006-07:00

Like pretty much every other bit of user-generated content AOL ever hosted, Ficlets will be gone by year's end. This was a site devoted to ridiculously short fiction, limited not by word count but by character count. Stories could then be given a more normal length by writing a series of prequels and sequels - and Ficlets writers were encouraged to do this to each other's stories. To be honest, I really didn't like that part, because other writers took my characters in the "wrong" directions in their sequels.

Despite the fact that a glitch prevented me from logging on with the OpenID I used for my Ficlets, I was able to find them eventually and store them to Word. Here are three of the five pices I wrote for that site. The other two I will post later, fleshing them out into a proper story. New fiction on this site at last - what a concept!

Do You Want to Meet a Pirate?
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB; published on March 23, 2007.

“Tell me a story,” the little girl demanded.

“What kind of story?”

“About pirates.”

“Do you like pirates?”

“Yup. Only I don’t know any.”

“Would you like to meet a pirate? Or would you rather just hear a story about one?”

“There aren’t any more pirates.”

“Yes there are. I know some pirates. One in particular.”

“A real pirate? With a ship and everything? Or do you mean the boring kind, that just copies video and sells it?”

“The kind with a ship and everything.”

“I don’t believe you. What’s the name of the ship?”

“Bad Wolf.”

“That’s a funny name for a ship. There aren’t any wolves in the ocean.”

“You’ve never heard of the Sea Wolf?”

“No. Can I meet him?”

“Her. That depends. Are you brave enough?”

“Yeah. Why? What will she do to me?”

“She might shanghai you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Make you part of her crew.”

“That would be cool.”

“You couldn’t go home for a long time. No mommy or daddy.”

“That’s okay.”

“No tv. No iPod, phone or video game.”

“Well….”

“No computer.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The Secret Freeway
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB; published on March 26, 2007.

(This one is based on a concept I've been playing with for decades - and I still don't know what to do with it.)

I first discovered the secret freeway in 1986, the same year I learned that the back doors of every Yellow Roof restaurant lead into the same parking lot.

This is how it started.

It was a little over 4 AM when I pulled into the “Yeller’s” at El Cajon, California. It had been our traditional stop, the place to get breakfast en route from the Cleveland National Forest rest area to Disneyland. But everything was different this time. Jill wasn’t with me, and never would be again. I wasn’t headed for Disneyland, and it wasn’t time for breakfast.

I needed coffee, so I stopped anyway. It didn’t help much. I hit I-8 again eastbound, thinking that if I could just make it to the Cleveland rest area, I could sleep there. It was pretty much all I thought about.

An hour later, I pulled off. It wasn’t until I’d parked that I noticed the snow, neatly plowed but starting to drift in the biting wind.

And the Ohio plates on most of the cars. And the I-90 sign.

I was ten miles from Cleveland, OH, via the secret freeway.

What It's All About
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB; published on June 04, 2007.

“What is it about?”

“It’s about how we change in response to outside pressures.”

“Boring. What is it about?”

“It’s about three teenagers trying to stay alive.”

“Better.”

“This isn’t helping.”

“Let me see the manuscript.”

The next day: “It wasn’t about that at all.”

“What?”

“It’s not about people changing, or trying to stay alive. That’s incidental. It’s about alienation, Fox News, and the corruption of the Bush White House. Allegorically, of course.”

“No, it isn’t. Okay, the one character is alienated, but that’s about it.”

“Wrong. His friends are alienated, too, from their family and friends and a corrupt government. The government lies to the people, aided by the mass media.”

“There are no mass media in the story. It’s a fantasy world.”

“Your storyteller characters are the media. They are complicit in the government’s lies.”

“But I wrote that part before Bush took office.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s all right there in the story.” He looked at me kindly.

“Writers never know what the story is about.”

Rani and Karen - Together Again for the First Time

2008-09-01T17:59:00.006-07:00

So are you done? Rani asks.

I'm a bit surprised. Unlike Ariel and Kate, none of the Mâvarin characters have ever spoken to me before. But if there's one person from Mâvarin who would find a way to communicate with a world in which he exists only as words and pictures and a 34-year obsession, it's Rani. He's not here. I don't see him. But his words are alive in my mind, and after a moment I answer.

"Done?"

With your book. Have you settled on every word I say, killed all the clichés, made everything make sense? Are you done?

"I think so."

But you're not sure, are you?

"Pretty sure. I've tweaked that one bit with Barselti, and I've reached the end, and gotten the final word count."

And you're still worried that the dialogue with King Jor at the end is too pat, and you're tempted to go through the book once more, from the beginning. Well, don't.

"What if there's still stuff wrong, and I can fix it?"

What if you let your own insecurities keep you from marketing and selling your life's work, ever? It will never be perfect, because your subjective opinion will never let that happen.

"But is it good enough for a YA publisher?

How should I know? I'm a tengrem and a mage adept, not a literary agent. But I do know something about insecurity. You need to get over it.

"It shows, huh?"

Inside your head it's very clear.

"If you're inside my head, does that mean you know everything that's in the book?"

I know it's about us. The so-called Heroes of the Restoration. And I know which bits of it worry you. Why?

"Can you tell me if I got everything right?"

No.

"Why not?"

First of all, I don't have the time or patience. Second, it doesn't matter whether your book matches my life exactly. Maybe it matches some other Rani's life. Or maybe I was drawn into your head because the match is exact, but it still doesn't matter. It only matters whether it's a good book, and I can't help you with that. And finally, what makes you think the version of me taking in your head is any more real than the one on the page?

"So that's it? You're just here to badger me to stop tinkering and submit it?"

Pretty much. I was also curious about you.

"About me? Why?"

I dreamed someone was writing about us, and it wasn't someone from around here. I wondered why someone from another reality would know about us, or care. Now I know.

"What do you know?"

You just happened to latch onto events from a reality so far away that you can only deal with it as fiction. It's like Fayubi and his visions.

"Only less useful."

If you sell the books, it was worth it. So get to it.

"I'll try."

No. Don't just try. Do it.

"I hate when people say things like that."

I hear Rani's laughter in my mind. Yes, I know.

Heirs of Mâvarin: done and edited. The other books are ongoing. My next step, I decide, is to start researching the YA market, and get it out there.

Good, Rani tells me, and is gone.

Karen

Rani in the Tree: A Fragment

2007-12-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

This is the scene I just cut from Heirs of Mâvarin. Enjoy. I still love the scene, which helps to establish Rani's character, the reasons for the hunt and the wayward tengrem's state of mind. But it delays Rani's confrontation with the tengrem for several pages, and almost everything here is accomplished by something else somewhere. Therefore it has to go. I think. This scene actually appears in the chapter as posted on this blog a year or two ago, but has probably changed a bit since then.

"Later This Somewhere" will be back in a week or so.--KFB

Cut from Heirs of Mâvarin
Chapter One: The Tengrem
by Karen Funk Blocher

A short while after Bil and the blacksmith passed beneath Rani’s tree, he again heard the clop of hooves from upstream, and tensed. Was it a tengrem, or a hunter on horseback?

As the sound grew louder, Rani strained to listen, and then relaxed. There were two sets of equine legs coming, and human voices hung in the air. In a moment another pair of villagers emerged from the woods onto the River Road. Like the first pair, they were arguing. The argument ran along much the same lines as that of Bil and Jord, but without the sister.

This time, as the hunters passed under his tree, Rani called out to them. “Ho, there!”

The two horsemen reined in quickly at the unexpected greeting. Then one of them looked up, searching out Rani on his high branch. “There you are! You shouldn’t startle a man like that! You’re Rithe Fost’s boy, aren’t you?”

Rani frowned at the word “boy,” but replied with dignity. “Yes, I’m Rani Fost,” he said. “I—I was wondering how the hunt is going.”

“Why aren’t you with the hunters?” Clif Wipan asked. “Then you’d know what’s happening.”
“Hush, Clif,” Suri Pelch said. “I expect the lad’s only trying to respect Rithe’s wishes. Such a nervous woman! Meaning no offense, young Rani.”

“That’s all right,” Rani said. “It’s true. She is.”

“Anyway,” Suri continued, “It’s not going well, not at all. I’ve never seen an animal as fast as that tengrem. We keep losing it, only to see it again as it circles back.”

“We think the tengrem is between here and the village,” Clif added, “so we’ve split up into pairs to try to surround it.”

“It hasn’t been on the road here,” Rani said. “Not in the last half hour, anyway.”

“I’m not surprised,” Suri said sourly. “It’s probably chasing my sheep while we’re all busy tromping around in the woods.”

“I’m sure that’s all the tengrem wants,” Clif said sarcastically. “It’s not trying to save the kingdom or start a kingdom or kill the mages or marry its pale queen, or any of that other contradictory nonsense it told us this morning. No, it came all the way north just to gobble your sheep.”

“The tengrem said all that?” Rani asked.

“All that and more, when we first confronted it,” Suri said. “None of it made the least bit of sense.”

“That’s right,” Clif said. “Then when we attacked, it pretty much stopped talking.”

“Pretty much,” Suri agreed. “I thought I heard a few words, but most of what came out of its mouth after that was growls and smoke.”

“And flame,” Clif said. He grinned. “Maybe it was getting ready to barbecue a few lambs.”

“Laugh if you like,” Suri Pelch said, “but I’m going to check on my flock. Are you coming, Clif?”

“We can take a quick look at your sheep as we’re circling around,” Clif answered, “but only because it’s on our way. Be careful in that tree, Rani. The tengrem could be anywhere. We don’t want you falling off the branch and into the monster’s jaws.”

“I’ll be careful,” Rani said. As if that could happen! He had never fallen out of a tree, even as a little boy.

Suri and the miller rode on, leaving the River Road just before the bend to take the path that led to the Pelch farm. Rani settled down for another wait.

****

Revised version:

A short while after Bil and the blacksmith passed beneath Rani’s tree, he again heard the clop of hooves from upstream, and tensed. Was it a tengrem, or a hunter on horseback? Rani strained to listen, and then relaxed. There were two sets of equine legs coming, and human voices hung in the air. In a moment another pair of villagers emerged from the woods onto the River Road. Like the first pair, they were arguing. Rani spoke with them briefly, but Clif and Suri had little news to offer. Rani settled down for another wait, hoping that the next horse he heard would carry his friend Shela. Whenever anything interesting happened in or around Liftlabeth, the selmûn Wanderer was inevitably involved.

Later This Somewhere, Part Three

2007-11-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

Here we are with Part Three at last. Part Two is three entries down, and Part One just below that. As promised, I've enlisted a collaborator for this project. Please welcome Sarah Kishler, a hoopy frood from way back, whom I've met in person exactly once. She has at least a hundred times more theater experience than I have (I was in one of my mom's shows in 1965), so she's definitely the go-to person for this story. Knowing how defensive I can get about my fiction, I was more than a little nervous about collaborating -- but so far, so good. Thanks, Sarah!- KFB

The Jace Letters 2: Later This Somewhere

by Karen Funk Blocher and Sarah Kishler
© 2007 by KFB & SK

Part Three

Subject: Re: That Impossible Theatre
Date: 7/6/2013, 4:23:573122 AM
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Dear Jace,

Well, of course I went back, at night this time. The box office for the theatre – it’s called the Jubilee Palace – is hidden away in a close, sort of a cross between a courtyard and a cul-de-sac. I only noticed it the first time because I saw a couple in evening clothes walking in that direction. This time I walked past it twice before I found my way in. Even then, they didn’t want to sell me a ticket!

“I'm sorry, but the play is sold out,” the man in the booth said.

I looked around. The theatre looked pretty much deserted. “How about tomorrow night?” I asked.

“Different play, and that's sold out, too,” he said. “We're sold out all this week.”

“Look, is there a reason you don't want to sell me a ticket?”

A woman entered the box office through a back door. “Let her buy a ticket,” she said, and flashed me a brief smile. “She's all right. We sold her one last week.”

“But why, Carly? What makes you think she's all right?”

“She's got the Look,” Carly said. “She's one of us.”

The guy at the counter didn't answer directly. He turned to me and gave me a long, searching look. “One for tonight, then?” he asked. “It's Brigadoon.”

“That will be fine,” I said. “What’s on tomorrow night?”

“Man of La Mancha.”

“Great. I’ll take one for tonight, one for tomorrow night, if that’s okay.”

The man glanced back at Carly, who nodded. The tickets were forty pounds each, and I’m not rich, but I handed over the money without regret. How could I not?

And it was worth it.

To answer your question, the theater was packed to standing room only capacity. The usher showed me to my seat in the second row of mezzanine. I actually had a great view! Don't ask me how I lucked into that when I bought my ticket at the last minute.

As far as the audience went, I didn't notice anything unusual about how they were dressed. They seemed to have more expensive clothes than I do, but that's no shock. I do remember reading somewhere that people don't really dress up for the London theater, though, so maybe that is a little odd. I guess I haven't been to enough “normal” performances in the West End to know.

Do you know who played the leads in Brigadoon? Of course you don’t, but you may recognize the names when I tell you. You may have even seen Robert Goulet on television when you were younger. He played Tommy, and he looked about thirty years old.. He’s not my favorite actor, but it’s remarkable that he was there at all, considering he’s been dead for six years. I scanned the program for any other names I might have recognized, but I only knew his, so I figured he was the only “big name” brought in for this one.

I couldn't have been more wrong. You should have heard the collective gasp of the audience on Fiona's first appearance– and then the applause that followed lasted for minutes. Goulet had gotten applause too, but this dwarfed his, in volume and duration. Everyone in the audience seem to be so surprised and delighted to see this actress that they had a difficult time settling back down so the show could go on. Of course, I was sure I was the only one there who hadn't a clue who she was. I looked in my program again and only saw the initials “SB,” which didn't mean a thing to me. I supposed she could have been someone very famous in the UK but not in the States.

It was only after the applause for “The Heather of the Hill” subsided that I worked up the courage to turn the woman next to me and ask who it was. She looked at me as if I had horns coming out of my head. “You need an introduction to the Divine Sarah?”

“Thank you,” I said, afraid that saying anything more would cause me to get kicked out of the theater or something equally terrible. But that was enough for me to puzzle it out. That was Sarah Bernhardt! I don’t know much about her career myself, but I understand she was the most famous actress of the 19th century. Her singing as Fiona wasn’t the best, but she gave the part real depth and feeling. And it gave me a clue into the nature of the audience, too – to instantly recognize a stage star who's been dead for almost a century? Clearly, these people are serious about this stuff.

I’ve been thinking today about having “the Look,” as Carly put it. I think it must be something to do with my having been in the time bubble. She can detect it somehow. Have you any thoughts on what there might be about me that a time traveler could actually see, and how they might see it? Whatever it is, I’m grateful. They’re obviously very secretive and security conscious about what they’re doing, trying to serve a very select clientele without the general public finding out about this strange theatre troupe and its anachronistic casts.

Tonight is Man of La Mancha, which I’ve loved ever since seeing the Quantum Leap episode about it. I didn’t much care for the film, though. I’m looking forward to seeing who they get for the lead roles in that one.

Beyond that, I really want to get to know more about this whole setup. Who is doing all this, and how and why? Do the actors know they’re working in 2013, with other players similarly out of their time? Are they living in 2013 for the duration, or going home after each performance? How do people get back and forth? I know we’re not supposed to discuss how you got me out of the time bubble alive in my past, your future, but knowing what these people do might help you with your research. Or am I wrong about that? In any case it must be a logistical and financial nightmare, organizing all these people from different eras, mounting full productions and still keeping the rest of London from noticing anything unusual. But I’ve noticed. I’m really glad about that! And as for David's autograph – I don't know if actors come back for repeat performances, but if he does – it's a plan!

Sandy

Beneath the Orange Sky

2007-10-20T04:15:00.001-07:00

I'll get back to the other stuff eventually, but meanwhile here's a special treat, cross-posted from the Outpost. With closure, even!

Into the Land of Shadows

Vicki of the blog "Maraca" is responsible for this week's Round Robin topic, "Shadowland." This is going to be my most ambitious RR entry to date, not so much photographically as, well, you'll see.

Beneath the Orange Sky
by Karen Funk Blocher

They rode toward the mountain side by side, Rona Sable on her horse, Apple, her grandfather Seth on Chub as usual. The oncoming sunset did not pause in its approach, unlike several of the cars that passed them, heading toward the city as the two horses left it behind. While they were still on the long, flat highway, Seth played his favorite game with Rona, asking her questions about stars and planets, brains and botany. Rona answered dutifully, but she was not in the mood for it. Her whole body throbbed with tension, not just from the long ride, but with anticipation. She looked no more than seven years old, but today was her thirteenth birthday. Tonight after sunset, her impossibly youthful grandfather would finally tell Rona the secrets that had been withheld from her, all her life up to now.

Once they reached the base of the mountain, Seth lapsed into silence. They directed the horses carefully along the narrow shoulder, lest they miss their footing in the gloom. Ten feet to the right, the drop was at least a hundred feet, and increasing with every step.

"How far are we going?" Rona asked after a while. "This is getting dangerous."

Her grandfather did not answer immediately. Then he said, "Yes, it is. But for now we're riding only as far as the first vista point, another three miles or so."

Sunset was starting to fade as they turned right onto the looping drive of the Frog Mountain vista. A couple sat on the wall between the paved parking and the drop toward the valley below. Rona knew her grandfather would not want to tell her anything interesting with strangers around, so she wandered along the stone wall, taking pictures with her new camera.

"Point the lens this way," Seth said in her ear.

Rona aimed her camera in the direction her grandfather had indicated, over the wall onto a path that went past of couple of mature saguaros. Beyond the cactus, and over the foothills themselves, the LCD viewfinder revealed a light in the sky, arcing over the blue, like a cloud but not a cloud. Rona glanced away from the camera, but her naked eye revealed nothing.

When she turned back, the couple were getting in their car. "Finally," her grandfather said. "Now, look that way. See the mountain over there, where there's still an orange glow? That is where we are going."

The more Rona looked, the less sense Seth's statement made to her. "From here? Tonight?"

"Yes, from here. Look, that's the way down, over by the two saguaros. Take Apple's bridle and follow me."

Rona protested even as she obeyed. "But why from here? That mountain is down beyond the airport. Half the city is between us and it. And it's getting dark."

"It won't get dark. Not quite. And now that we've passed the boundary, we're not where you think we are. There is no city, until we reach that mountain."

"But--"

"Wait and see," her grandfather said.

Five minutes later, the switchback they were following turned suddenly onto a disused section of road, where no road ought to be. Below was a flare of light, but it was not a set of headlights. The sky ahead of them was more orange than before, and the ghost of a full moon was in the sky, although Rona knew it should only be a half moon. By its light and the distant orange glow, she found she could see every pebble, every bramble. The horses plodded along the dark pavement.

"Welcome to the Shadow Kingdom," her grandfather said. "While we're here it will never be daylight, but it never quite gets dark, either. "Look behind you."

Rona looked. Behind her should have been the looming mountain, but instead she saw a valley and the twinkling of lights. A yellow glow fringed the horizon, and a much brighter glow above that seemed to hold back the night. "What's that? It almost looks like, I don't know, a bomb or something."

Seth shook his head. In this strange light he looked slightly older than usual, perhaps a year older than his students at PCC. "It's the interface between the world you knew and the one we just crossed into. It's not visible from the other side, except sometimes through a camera lens, when the two worlds come together at dusk. But on this side it's the primary light source. You won't see the sun again while we're here."

"How long will that be?"

"Until you come of age."

"What does that mean? Until I'm eighteen, or twenty-one? Or worse yet, until I look twenty-one? That could take decades."

Seth smiled at her. "It won't be like that. It's the sunlight that slows down our aging in the other world. Here you will finally start to age normally. And no, we're not waiting for you to reach some arbitrary age or stature."

"What then? Am I supposed to go and prove myself in some way, so I can be admitted to some strange tribe? Or engage in ritual dreaming? Or kill a deer with a stone knife? Does this world even have any deer?"

"Mutter's Grey deer. And no, you don't have to hunt them, although some do. You're here to complete your education."

"I can't do that at home?"

"Haven't you guessed? This is your home, the land of your birth and birthright. The things you need to learn, you can only learn here. Your mother will teach you."

Rona stopped dead. "My mother?"

Seth smiled at her. "Of course."

"But isn't she dead?"

"Did anyone ever tell you that she was?"

"No, but I kind of assumed...."

"You know better than to assume things. Observe, hypothesize, and test. But in this case you don't need to. I had a message from Mana, just last week. She's looking forward to seeing you again."

"Truly?"

"Truly," Seth assured her. "Now come on. It's time we were riding again. The horses see this road as well as you can, and we've a long way to go."

Full of wonder, Rona climbed into the saddle, and rode on into the endless orange twilight.

Fin.

The Children in the Shoebox: an Experiment

2007-10-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

While we're waiting for the collaboration on "Later This Somewhere" to take off, here's something I'm writing off the top of my head, under the influence of E Nesbit and Miss Mullock.

The Children in the Shoebox
An Experimental Faerie Tale

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Part One
Once upon a time there were three children who lived in a shoebox in the cupboard. Their names were Mattie, Maggie, and Maddie. I expect you think a shoebox is a very odd place for three children to live, but it was their home, and they were used to it.

The shoebox was in a cupboard, as I have said; and the cupboard was in a pantry, and the pantry was in a little stone house in a grassy clearing in the Deep Woods. The house belonged to a witch, and the Deep Woods belonged to the King, but he wasn't around much, just once a year to smile and wave and hunt the same magic deer who never let him come close to catching her. She was really a princess in disguise, and the King knew it, so he wasn't as ruthless in trying to trap her as he might otherwise have been. He kept hoping that one year the princess would get tired of being a magic deer, and let him take her home at last.

Meanwhile the King let the witch live in the woods to look after the deer and the children, who were his cousins once removed on his mother's side. They were part Faerie, enchanted to remain in the miniature form the Good Folk sometimes preferred. In this size they fit in the shoebox quite well, with three tiny beds lined with the down of baby robins, for indeed their beds had started out as a large bird's nest. The witch, who was a decent sort, really, had cleaned up the nest so that it was quite habitable and pleasant, and not at all smelly.

Every morning the faerie children would fly out of the cupboard, whose door the witch thoughtfully kept open except at night, for protection, and outside into the meadow for bath and breakfast. The little stream that ran through the clearing was shallow and only a little dangerous, as long as they stayed in the inch-deep water at the very edge. Breakfast was nectar from flowers and tiny millet-cakes the witch left out for them. They didn't actually see the witch, for she was invisible; but they usually remembered to sing out a "thank you!" to her, especially when she came up with something extra special to eat, like honey-buns or a tiny omelet.

Afternoons, the faerie children might go racing with butterflies, or make forts out of sweet grass, or visit with their friend, Princess Doris, the deer. Doris was secretly in love with an enchanted skunk who lived in the hollow of a nearby oak tree. Years before he had behaved very badly toward the witch's sister, which is a very foolish thing to do. He was sorry about it, but not quite sorry enough yet, in the witch's estimation. So the deer waited for Prince Roger - the skunk's real name - to be sorry enough for the witch or her sister to let him go. Another year, Doris thought, or two, and he would probably be quite reformed enough for them, and for Doris as well. She probably couldn't live happily ever after with a fellow who still went around insulting witches and princesses and thought it an all right thing to do. But the children thought Roger was quite fun to be with, and usually pretended that his smell didn't bother them at all.

The one thing that bothered the children about this life was that it got to be rather dull and lonely after a while. Doris and Roger were very nearly adults, and sometimes acted more like animals than people. The witch was invisible, so if she was even around they usually didn't know it. And the King, jolly as he was, seemed a little awkward around them when he came through every spring. "It's the politics," Mattie explained one year, and Maggie nodded wisely. Maddie didn't really understand this explanation, and wasn't quite sure the other two did, either. But she didn't say so.

The fact remained, however, that the three faerie children suffered, just a little, for lack or a mother or father or playmates aside from each other. Then one day, everything changed.

Well, really, only one thing changed, but it was a very important change. Someone new came into the Deep Woods.

Maddie saw the girl first, in the second clearing over from the stone cottage, on the left. She was sitting on a rock, dressed in a frock the exact color of buttercups. She was reading a large, thin book with a paper cover and colorful pictures on every page. Maddie, who knew her alphabet and more besides, flew close enough to read the words on the cover. "The Amazing Spider-Man," it said.

Careful not to be seen, yet, she flew off to find her brother and sister.

Later This Somewhere, Part Two

2007-09-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

Two months without an entry! What a slacker I've been on this blog! Of course, the truth is that I've had a busy time in the rest of my life, securing a new job after First Magnus crashed and burned, and getting serious work done on Mages from Mâvarin. I've hesitated a bit on this new Jace and Sandy story, not knowing which direction to take after the opening installment. The most promising plotline I came up with seemed to be the theatre angle. Unfortunately, despite the many amateur plays and revues my mom wrote, directed or appeared in as I was growing up, I'm no theater expert. So I've enlisted Sarah K., who is, to help me write this serial, starting with Part 3. - KFB

The Jace Letters 2: Later This Somewhere

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Part Two

Subject: That Impossible Theatre
Date: 7/4/2013, 05:41 PM
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Dear Aunt Sandy -

Wow, you really do seem to have stumbled into another major time anomaly of some sort. If I could, I would fly out there tomorrow and help you investigate. As it is, though, I have an interview for a summer internship, which promises to be far less interesting than a play that features out-of-their-time actors. And I have about $16 in my purse and $27 in my checking account to get me through the week, so I couldn't afford the trip anyway, even if I weren't busy here with the summer thing and my ongoing appearances as Gabby, getting ready to rescue you in my future, your past.

I am therefore counting on you to keep me updated on any other weirdness you come across over there. Are you planning to try the theatre again by night? I really think you should. Maybe the renovation stuff is to keep people away in the daytime. I mean, I can't imagine that someone would go to all the trouble of bringing actors from other times, rehearsing them and staging a play, all for just one night. I'm no expert on plays and such, but that sounds like a very expensive thing to do. On the other hand, maybe whoever did it has plenty of money, using the old cheat of investing in the past of stocks that you know do well in the future. Even so, it seems like logistically, it would be a lot of work for a one-night production. Maybe you happened to catch the last night of a longer run? Was the theatre full or empty, or something in between? Was there anything weird about the audience? Were they wearing mod clothes or leisure suits or silver jumpsuits?

You asked whether it's possible that your seeing actors from the past and future could be an aftereffect of your being in the time bubble. To be honest, I don't really know, but it seems unlikely to me. How would something like that work, exactly? More likely, you're just more observant than most people about time displacement, having experienced it yourself. You may even have picked up on the time anomaly subconsciously, when you happened to walk by the theatre.

I suppose that you may not want to get involved in another time travel mystery, considering that you almost died the last time, but a theatre full of actors who happen to be the wrong age doesn't sound dangerous to me. If you do go, be careful, and I'm sure you'll be fine. And if you do see David Tennant again, try to get me his autograph, will you? Thanks!

Jace

Later This Somewhere, Part One

2007-07-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

While we're waiting for Jor and friends to get the story moving again in The Mâvarin Revolutions, here's the beginning of a new story about Jace and Sandy. Thanks to Sarah K. for the title. - KFB

The Jace Letters 2: Later This Somewhere

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Part One

Subject: So How Is London?
Date: 7/2/2013, 07:43 PM
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Dear Aunt Sandy -

Now that you're safely settled in my time, it bothers me a bit that in some ways you're farther away than ever. I've seen you at least eight times as Gabby, but only twice under my own name, as my college-age self. Forgive me, but I have to ask: was that part of why you moved to London? Is communication with me so awkward under the present circumstances that you feel the need to distance yourself from me physically?

Well, all right, I know it's something you really wanted to do anyway, and I admit it's a place I'd really like to see myself. Unfortunately, I'm just a penniless college student, with no money to travel any farther than Deming or Sedona, and even those I can't get to very often. Now that the school year is over, most of my free time is taken up with research, trying to work out exactly how to save you in my future, your past. The time bubble is working for now, but I'm not sure how stable it is, or how we get you out when the time comes. I know I can't ask you about that, so I won't. Oh, paradoxes are fun, aren't they?

So what is London like? Since I've never seen the real thing except on tv, it seems to me like a magical, fictional world, the place of Mary Poppins and Sherlock Holmes, Winnie the Pooh and Doctor Who. I suppose it's nothing like that, really, just another modern city, with a number of historic buildings but nothing truly extraordinary, no dimensionally transcendental police boxes or magic nannies. And that's a shame, really. It's not that I expect space-time anomalies like the Deming-Sedona one everywhere we look, and really, that one is causing quite enough trouble, all by itself. But London, the fictional London of books and tv and film, is such a place of wonder that I'm sure I'd be disappointed if I saw the real thing.

Still, I'm hoping you'll say that even the real London has charms of its own. At the very least, you can look at the Houses of Parliament or the Tower of London and be reminded of their history, both in the real world and less mundane ones.

Jace

Subject: London Is...
Date: 7/3/2013, 8:23:573122 PM
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace –

Please don’t be hurt by this, but yes, you've guessed correctly about my motives. One of the reasons I moved to London was to minimize the contact between us. You said yourself (or at least you will) that it’s the easiest way to keep the ontological paradox from getting out of hand.

I'm happy to say that you're wrong about London, though. There is something utterly charming about the place, even without the outright magic found in literature. I am surrounded by "brilliant" (they say that a lot!), funny people, speaking in a surprising variety of accents on a wide range of subjects. I'm sorry to say I'm too shy to have made any friends so far, but my landlord is rather nice, and there are a few people at the shops I frequent that I would like to get to know better.

More than that, it's a different country, a heady mixture of foreign and familiar. Every day is a mini-adventure, just buying different foods and other items in strange packaging, paying for them with something other than dollars, then taking the tube back and cutting across Kensington Gardens to my "flat." So far there is no sign of Mary Poppins in the Park, but I have to admit that sometimes I catch myself looking for her.

There is one odd thing that has happened, and I've been meaning to email you about it, since I can't reach the older version of "Gabby" any more. Last week I set out to see a play in a certain theater in the West End, but the play had closed and the theatre was dark. Instead I ended up at another theatre nearby. They were offering panto, a version of Aladdin, which surprised me because it's my understanding that it's something they normally only do at Christmas. But I paid for my ticket and went in anyway. I can't pretend I understand the panto genre; it was the most thoroughly foreign and incomprehensible thing I've seen here to date, even more so than the cricket match. To be honest, I didn't like it much. It wasn't just silly, but pointlessly silly, and full of allusions I couldn't hope to understand.

But there was something strange about it, even beyond the cultural sensibilities that I lack. David Tennant was in it, but he didn't look anything like the David Tennant on tv. He played a Grand Vizier, and all right, yes, he was all done up in a wig and a fake beard. Even so, he looked older than I expected, even allowing for the fact that I remember him mostly from Doctor Who five to seven years ago. I assumed it was the costume, but I hung around the stage door afterward, and I saw him leave. Without the wig he had gray hair, I swear to you, actual gray hair, and his face looked genuinely older. He walked right past me as if he didn't see me, and disappeared into a rather odd-looking car.

Even that isn't the weirdest part. Also on the cast list was Julie Andrews! She's certainly not someone I would expect to be doing panto at this stage of her career. Nor is she, as far as I can tell, because she wasn't the older actress of The Princess Diaries and other more recent roles. The part she played was that of the young princess, sort of the Jasmine character if it were the Disney version, which it wasn't. I saw her leave the theatre, too, and she looked no more than 15 years old! I would say it's a different Julie Andrews, but Equity is careful about such things, and besides, there was no mistaking that voice when she sang.

It was all so strange that I wondered the next morning whether I just dreamed it, or whether my experience in the time bubble has left me with some kind of dementia, or maybe an ability to see the past and future and present at once, all jumbled up. I went back to the theatre, and it was closed for renovation! I asked one of the men working on it, and he said it had been closed for a month.

So I guess I need your expert opinion, yours and Ken's. Am I going mad, or is time even weirder in the West End of London than it is in the American Southwest? And if I really did see Julie Andrews at 15 and David Tennant at 50, is it because I was somehow seeing into other times, or did the other times recombine themselves independently of me, in an unseasonal panto show in 2013?

Sandy

Black Rose Kate: Stop MDC

2007-06-02T12:54:00.001-07:00

And now for a word from Black Rose Katie specks, the Pirate Scribe!(Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin)
Stop MDC

Black Rose Kate has no problem dispatching history's villains

"Aye, I thought ye'd be at the computer," Black Rose Kate announced. I looked up, startled. There she was, standing in front of my L'Engle books, my semi-fictional pirate friend, looking down at me with her usual air of amused tolerance. It was Thursday night, ten minutes past one in the morning. "Ariel said that you wanted to see me," she explained.

"Hi, Kate," I said. "Yes, I did. But how did Ariel know that?" Our mutual friend Ariel travels between time and between universes, meanwhile attending Croatoan College, which is itself transdimensional.

Kate shrugged. "She reads your blog. You mentioned me in tomorrow's entry. And that black cloth rose of yours was in one of your photos this week, so we knew you were already thinking of me. So tell me. Am I here for a particular reason, or is this a social call only? Did you want my expert opinion on that Johnny Depp movie Ariel has spoken of for the better part of an hour tonight?"

"Oh, I didn't go on about it that long," Ariel said, coming into the room behind Kate. "Hi, Karen."

"Hi, Ariel. And no, it's not about Pirates of the Caribbean. I have a Weekend Assignment to do, and I thought Kate might be able to help. You too, Ariel."

"Oh, one of those," Kate said, looking none too pleased.

I pasted the relevant text into this entry, and let them read it over my shoulder:

Weekend Assignment #168: For reasons best left unexplained, you have been allowed to excise one and only one person from the course of history. Which person would you choose to remove from history and why? That's right: Any one person you think history would be better without, you can now expunge. So who would it be -- and how do you think history would be changed with their absence? See. Told you it was one that would make you think.

Extra Credit: Favorite historical-themed movie. Because why not?

"I see," Kate said as she finished reading. "Because I have dispatched my share of enemies on the high seas and elsewhere, it pleases you to seek my advice before murdering some historical villain before he is ever born. Is that it?"

"Pretty much, yes," I said. "And you're right. I do think that preventing Nero or someone like that from being born is a kind of murder."

"But you don't have a problem with--" Ariel began. I was starting to think she was a mind-reader.

"Shh," I interrupted. "I don't want to talk about that. The point is, I wouldn't have the right to stop someone from ever existing."

"And you think that I, the bloodthirsty pirate, would be more ruthless about such things, and thus could give Scalzi an answer in your stead," Kate said.

"Yes," I said. "And if not, you can at least discuss the idea with me, and I can report on that."

"As I notice ye be doing already," Kate observed.

"Your problem with this is that you lack perspective," Ariel said. "There are plenty of worlds in which there was no Hitler, or no John Wilkes Booth, or no Nero. On the multiverse level, it's not that big a deal."

"It is if you're in a world where he did exist, and now you decree that he doesn't," I insisted. "That creates a whole new universe, right? And that's on top of the loss suffered by family and friends."

"I have known several families," Kate said, "that benefited greatly from the death of a father or brother or son. A woman my own age once thanked me for killing her husband, who had chained her and beaten her. Pick someone sufficiently awful, and the world is certain to benefit."

"Well, I did think about choosing someone whose nonexistence would mean lives saved," I said. "I could go with Adolf Eichmann or Josef Mengele, but that violates the spirit of disallowing Hitler."

"Who were these people?" Kate asked.

"Eichmann helped Adolf Hitler, the ruler of Germany, organize the murder of millions of Jews and Romany and other people," Ariel said. "Mengele conducted horrific medical experiments on some of their victims before killing them."

"Right," I said. "But it's all part of the same horror. And I don't think there is an equivalent person in more recent examples of genocide. Usually it's groups of people killing other groups for the crime of being a 'them'. So I was thinking along the lines of a Richard Speck, or Timothy McVeigh - you know, someone who personally killed a lot of people."

"Aye, that makes sense," Kate said. "But ye didn't need me to figure that out."

"I still don't like it, though," I said. "I still wouldn't do it. Would you?"

"Aye, with hardly a moment's thought, nor any regrets," Kate said. "Oliver Cromwell is another one I would not mind seeing gone from the world."

Ariel was rereading the text of Scalzi's assignment. "You know, I don't think you read this very carefully," she said. "It doesn't specify that one person was never born. It only says excised from history. There might be other ways to do that."

That got me thinking. "Such as?" I prompted. I was starting to have a few ideas, but wondered what Ariel had in mind.

"Lock the person up so he or she can do no harm," she suggested. "Send the person back in time, or forward, or to another universe."

"Where the person can do even more harm in unknown ways," I said. "That's no good. But if we can stop the person from becoming crazy or evil or both, that would take him out of the history we know."

"Mark David Chapman," Ariel suggested.

I nodded. "I suppose I should go with McVeigh or someone like that anyway," I said, "or the older of the two DC snipers, or one of the serial killers up in Phoenix last year. But Chapman...I don't know. If you could catch him young, get him the right treatment, keep him on the right medication and away from the Dakota, that still only saves one man's life, technically."

"Yes, but what a life you'd be saving," Ariel said.

"Whose?" Kate asked.

"John Lennon," Ariel and I said together. "Of the Beatles," I added.

Before I could explain further, Kate pointed at me, a look of triumph on her face. "Aye, that's the one!" she said. "I like the Beatles. Ariel even took me to the Cavern once."

This made me angry. "Why didn't you take me with you? You know how much I want to go."

Ariel shook her head. "We bend the rules quite a bit even just coming to see you, even for a quick conversation. Your version of the world isn't meant to have time travel, and I can't let you go wandering the multiverse with me. We're pushing the fiction boundary as it is."

"Fiction boundary? What's that?"

"It's a way of gauging relationships between realities, and the relative safety of certain kinds of interactions," Ariel explained. "As my supposed creator in the context of this reality, you can receive my visits, as long as they can be passed off as fiction. But the moment you actually go into the past with me, or off into a world in which the Beatles have been reunited for the past twenty years and are currently in the studio, you damage every timeline you touch. Sorry."

"Whereas I have no such restriction," Kate said. "Say the word and I will take this Chapman person from history, my way."

"You know I won't condone that," I said. "Much as I'd like to."

"And anyway, you can't do that either," Ariel told Kate. "John Lennon wrote a song about you. That makes you fictional to him, too."

"He did? When was that?" I asked.

"1982."

"But he died in 1980," I said.

Ariel looked thoughtful. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Kate does go after Chapman," she said.

"Then that's my choice, if I have to choose someone," I said. "Just don't actually kill him if you can help it."

For a moment Ariel looked tempted. Then she shook her head. "No, sorry," she said. "Lennon's death is too well established in your world. But we might be able to do it in another world, a few universes over. Are you game for it, Kate?"

"Aye, always. Let's go, then."

"Bring me back a CD," I said.

Ariel laughed. "Can't do that, either," she said. "but if you're very good, I'll find a way for you to at least hear a later album, at least once."

They left, then, and I was alone again, finishing up this entry. I don't know how serious Ariel was. She could easily have been making up all those rules as she went along. And I'm still a little worried that Black Rose Kate will kill Chapman rather than try to get him into treatment, or at least locked up.

Imagine there's no murder.

But oh, wouldn't it be something, having another 26 1/2 years and counting of new music by John Lennon?

Oh, drat, I didn't ask my guests about the Extra Credit. I'm not big on historical movies, unless you count Back to the Future or Camelot. Lawrence of Arabia was kind of amazing, although the long version really is too long. Oh, I know. My Favorite Year. That's based on a very specific history period: the days of early television, and the live comedy variety show.

Karen

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Six

2007-05-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

Wow. It looks like nobody got around to reading the previous entry. Short of a truly crippling level of lurkiness, I don't think anyone could have read it through and failed to alert me that I repeated the opening block of text at the end! Well, no matter; it's fixed now.

Good news: King Jor finally told me what he has in mind about how to handle the royal succession when he dies. Can you guess what it is?

The Mâvarin Revolutions

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Final Instructions, Part Six
(With Fayubi's magical help, dying King Jor of the alternative version of Mâvarin has just summoned witnesses to hear him to name a successor.)

“Wait for what?” Prince Carmi asked impatiently.

“We need more witnesses first,” the King said. Fayubi didn’t like the feverish look in King Jor’s eyes. But if the old King was to make the decision Fayubi had thrust upon him, he needed to do so without interference. Fayubi hoped the result would not just increase the death and destruction to come.

Lieutenant Govan was the next to arrive. “I don’t suppose you know where Commander Masan and the Princess are, do you?” King Jor asked him.

“No, Your Majesty. Have they gone somewhere?” Fayubi couldn’t tell for sure, but he suspected Govan was being disingenuous.

“Apparently so.”

“Do you want a search mounted?”

“That depends. If we were to find them, would it help the situation?”

“I do not understand the question, Your Majesty.”

“You don’t? Well, neither do I, really,” the King said. “What I mean is, I’m a little concerned about the security around here. If you find Princess Cathla today, will she be alive tomorrow?”

“I…I don’t know, Your Majesty,” Govan managed to say.

“That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it?” the King said.

“Why wouldn’t she still be alive?” Prince Carmi asked angrily. “She always does exactly what she wants, and nothing ever happens to her. Why would today and tomorrow be any different?”

“Because today or tomorrow, I’ll be dead,” King Jor said.

“Don’t say that,” said Carmi.

“Why not? It’s true.”

Carmi shook his head. “Even if it is, what does that have to do with Cathla? It’s not like she’s going to fight me for the throne.”

“Are you certain of that?” Jor asked.

“Of course I am,” Carmi said. Fayubi wondered what else Prince Carmi’s wife and mother had forced him to believe.

“And if Cathla is my designated heir instead of you, what then?” King Jor asked. “Will you fight her for the throne, as you put it? Will your mother do so?”

“Mother would support me,” Carmi said. “She always has. But Cathla can’t be the heir. Not while I’m alive. I’m the male heir.”

“So was Ari Selevar, two centuries ago,” Lt. Govan said. The man sounded nervous, but to his credit he said it anyway. “But it was Queen Torla who ruled after Epli, not her brother,” he continued.

“That was a long time ago,” Carmi said between gritted teeth. “And you’re dismissed. Forever.”

“You forget, Carmi, that I’m still the King, and I want him here,” King Jor said mildly. “And if you’ll take my advice, it’s not a good idea to remove someone from his position for daring to state a fact.” Govan looked at him gratefully, but said nothing further.

“What good is your advice to me, Father, if according to you I’m not going to take the position I was born for?” Carmi asked bitterly.

“I didn’t say that,” King Jor told him. “I asked what would happen if I were to designate Cathla as my heir? I did not say that was my decision.”

“Then what is all this about?” Carmi nearly shouted at the dying King.

“This is about preventing a war,” King Jor said. “And I think I’ve just about worked out how to do it.”

(Original art by Sherlock; combined with photo and colorized by KFB. Originally of Carli (Del), but also depicts Prince Carmi.)

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Five

2007-05-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

Here we go, the last bit of this particular scene, and the next scene with the same characters. I was going to stop at the end of the first, but the second is short, and more interesting, and my handwritten draft ends 83 words later. I actually have no idea yet what Jor is talking about, but we'll get there. - KFB

The Mâvarin Revolutions
Fragments from a Work in Progress
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Final Instructions, Part Five
(With Fayubi's magical help, dying King Jor of the alternative version of Mâvarin has just summoned witnesses to hear him to name a successor.)

Guardsman Medor burst in. “Your Majesty, what…what was that? Are you all right? Did you want to see me?”

“That was a request, no, I’m dying, and you’re just one of the people I want to see,” the King said. “I suspect I will have quite a few visitors shortly. They are all to be admitted except my Queen and my daughter-in-law, Do you understand?”

“But the Queen—”

“—has no authority over me except what I cede to her. Please tell her, if she turns up, that I said that if she loves me, she will not interfere with this meeting. If she does interfere, she will live to regret it. Can you do that?”

“I…yes, Your Majesty. I think so.”

“Good man. Don’t worry. It will be all right. I think. Now, go wait for my guests, please.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I rather enjoyed that,” Jor remarked when Merc had left the room. “Too bad it’s my last chance to do anything interesting.” He looked pale but contented. His hand trembled as it lay on the quilt. “I don’t suppose you know a healer who can save me.”

Fayubi shook his head. “Sorry. I know a number of healers, but the only one better than Dimider lives far away in the other world. My contacts assure me that she could do nothing for you that he hasn’t already done.”

“Ah well, I expected as much,” the King said sadly.

The first to arrive was Prince Carmi, accompanied by his personal Guard. “What is this all about, Father? I’m certain that I heard your voice in the Sun Room just now, but it seems impossible.”

“Yes it does, doesn’t it?” the King agreed. He had no intention of explaining about the invisible visitor at the foot of his bed. “I need to make an announcement, Carmi. I don’t think you are going to like it.”

“It’s something to do with my sister, isn’t it? She looked awfully guilty earlier, when I saw her sneaking out to the stables with her Guard Commander lover.” Jor did not like the look on his adopted son's face as he repeated the usual Palace gossip about Cathla and Wil Masan.

From Carmi’s point of view, a moment of silence followed. For Jor, however, the moment was filled with Fayubi’s less jaundiced assessment of the Princess’s actions. “We may be too late, Your Majesty. That was probably Princess Cathla’s attempt to escape being murdered when you die.”

Jor’s conclusion was much the same as Fayubi’s. “How long ago was this?” he asked Carmi.

“About half an hour. Maybe a little longer.”

“Might she still be in the stable?”

The Prince shrugged. “I suppose. She’s not in the Palace, that’s all I know. The Guard at the back door says he hasn’t seen her since she went in the stable.”

“It’s not all that hard to get from the stable to Prince Street without being seen from the Palace side,” the King said. I’ve done it myself.” The thought that such exploits were long since behind him made Jor a little sad.

“Well, yeah, if your horse is a good jumper, or you don’t mind climbing an eight foot wall that’s guarded on the other side,” Carmi said. “But why would she bother?”

If Carmi didn’t understand the danger to his sister, Jor realized sadly, there was no easy way to enlighten him. “So Cathla has fled the Palace,” Jor said, more to Fayubi than Carmi. “That complicates thing. Hmm. There’s an idea.”

“What are you going to do?” Fayubi asked.

“What idea is that?” Carmi asked.

“Wait and see,” the King said.

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Four

2007-04-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

The following takes us to about a page from the end of the scene, but not the end of the sequence. Yep, the next entry will be a cliffhanger. After that we've got the next section of the "A Fire in Mâvarin" sequence with Temet and friends. (And wait until you see who the friends are!) By the time that's in the can, maybe we can get poor King Jor to tell us all the idea he had, which for some reason I didn't write down. - KFB

The Mâvarin Revolutions

Fragments from a Work in Progress
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Final Instructions, Part Four
(Fayubi has gone to visit the dying King, trying to get him to name a successor.)

“What would these people do, I wonder, if I called them in as you ask, and they saw you standing here?”

“They won’t see me,” Fayubi said. “Only you can see me. I’m not really here.”

“So I’m hallucinating again?” the King asked. He sounded more resigned than surprised.

“No, this is my projection. It’s an illusion of sorts, but for your eyes only.”

“Oh, one of those,” the King said wisely. “If you’re not really here, then you won’t be able to do anything to me – not that it matters – if I call in those people and endorse Carmi as king.”

“Is that your choice, Your Majesty?” It was less than ideal, but the Mâ-na-Mâ might be willing to accept Carmi, at least for now, if Jor officially endorsed him.

“Carmi is as qualified as I was, and would do an equally good job. He would maintain cordial relations with Mâton, and fill our tax coffers for the same purposes as always. He is mild-mannered and does what is expected of him, and will not lead this country into war. Does that not sound like a good king?”

“With respect, I have to say no, Your Majesty.”

“I don’t think so either,” Jor said. “If I do nothing, or endorse Carmi, then he makes all the same mistakes I made, and dies young. Cathla could die even sooner. Or don’t you agree?”

“I agree completely, Your Majesty. Cathla is in danger either way, though.”

“Just so. I would save her if I could.”

“Perhaps you can.”

“We’ll see.” He lifted his head and raised his voice. “Guards! Come in here, please.” The ailing King was clearly doing his best, but the sound was weak and quavery. No guards appeared. Jor tried twice more, and shook his head sadly. “There, you see? It’s not just that people don’t listen to me. They don’t even hear me any more.”

Fayubi smiled. “Let me help you with that.” Casting a spell from a projection was a little harder than doing it while embodied, largely because of the energy loss; still, it was the best option for the present situation. The spell itself was a two step variation on one he had used many times before: tricky, but far from impossible. Fayubi closed his aura eyes, and placed Jor’s voice at the center of his mind.

“Please just speak normally while I set this up. It should only take a few minutes.”

“What do you want me to talk about?” the King asked.

“Anything you like. I have to concentrate on my ritual, so I’ll be paying more attention to your voice than your words. I won’t reply, but I will listen.”

“All right, then. As long as you’re obliged to listen, I may as well tell you something nobody else ever cared to hear. For example, I’ve always wanted a parrot for a pet. I saw one once, when we traveled to Derio and Lehic. Huge, colorful birds, they are. Beautiful! Better still, I’ve been told they can be taught to speak human words, and even understand them somewhat. The king of Derio offered me a parrot once, about sixteen years ago. I said I’d be delighted. I even picked out a name, but nobody ever gave me the bird, either then or after we returned home. Skwok, I would have called it. Isn’t that a great name for a parrot? But I think Lormarte told them not to send the bird. She’s allergic to feathers, you see. But I would have kept Skwok in his own apartment, and oh! How I wanted him! He would have listened to me, and not ask for anything in return but food and affection. And maybe freedom, but none of us have that. Not really.”

Fayubi was ready. “We have enough freedom to make a difference, Your Majesty. Please try calling the guard again.”

Jor called out to the guard again as Fayubi activated the spell. Fayubi imagined the King’s voice growing louder and louder, filling the Palace with a wave of illusory sound. The words “Come here, please,” obediently echoed and reverberated from room to room, repeating themselves for a full minute after the King spoke them: “Come here, please…. Come here, please….”

“Wow,” King Jor said when it was over. “I don’t think Lormarte is going to like that.”

The Mavarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Three

2007-04-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, I missed a week again. Here's the next bit. I've written quite a bit further than this, but tonight's installment is all newly, um, typed.

The Mâvarin Revolutions

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Final Instructions, Part Three
(Fayubi has gone to visit the dying King, trying to get him to name a successor.)

“So you want me to choose between my children?" King Jor asked. "Between Carmi and Cathla?”

“As the next sovereign, yes. I assume your other two children aren’t under consideration at this point.”

“They’re alive? How do you even know about them?”

“They are both mentioned in my failed prophecy. In the world your queen prevented, they rule together.”

The King’s brow furrowed. “How can that be,” he asked, “if the world was prevented?”

“It was prevented here, but another world exists in which it did happen.”

“How do you know?”

Fayubi smiled. “I’ve been there. Part of the time, I live there.”

“Are they good monarchs, your King Del and Queen Crel?”

Fayubi decided not to explain about the name differences. “They do all right.”

“Is that what you would have me do here? Turn the country over to a pair of illegitimate orphans?”

“Not necessarily, Your Majesty. But they are your children, as the Prince and Princess are not.”

Now it was the King’s turn to grimace. Fayubi was unsure whether his pain was physical, emotional or both. “I know that,” Jor said irritably, “but it hardly matters now. They are officially my children, and I love them. I will not disown them on my deathbed.”

“I would not ask you to do so, Your Majesty. But only one of them is likely to rule, and the country’s future depends on that choice. Your word could make all the difference.”

“I don’t see how. I’m never consulted about these things. Even if I were to tell you what you want to hear, who would believe you?”

“Quite a few people, and I’m not the only person you can tell. Get Dimider in here to testify to your competence, the Royal Scribe to witness and record your wishes, and the Captain of the Palace Guard to protect the truth.”

Jor shook his head. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that.” Then he peered up at Fayubi. “Could I?”

“Of course you could,” Fayubi said firmly. “You’re the King.”

“For a little longer,” King Jor said.

The Mavarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Two

2007-04-07T02:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true: I've neglected this blog dreadfully, shamefully. I mean that; both dread and shame were involved. I've been busy, but I've also been stuck, with bits in both the handwritten and typed versions of this scene that I had trouble getting through. These things almost never fix themselves, though. It's not enough to reread what I have so far, close the notebook and walk away; or to open the Word document and leave it untouched for days at a time. I have to actually work on the darn thing. So, as a step in that direction, I'm going to finally get a new entry in here. Maybe I'll get stuck in this version, too--but maybe not!

The Mâvarin Revolutions
Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Final Instructions, Part Two
(Fayubi has gone to visit the dying King, who wonders whether it's too late for anyone to ask anything of him.)

“Not while you still live, Your Majesty.” The opportunity to talk to King Jor actually extended a little beyond death, but Fayubi was not eager to exercise that option.

Jor’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean to kill a dying man?”

Fayubi smiled. “No, Your Majesty. I mean to ask a dying sovereign for last instructions.”

“Instructions about what? Who in Thâle’s name are you?”

“I have several names, Your Majesty. The one you may have heard is Fabi the Innkeeper. Or possibly Fabi the Drunk.”

Jor peered at him curiously. “Are you drunk? You don’t sound drunk.”

“Nor am I, Your Majesty. I no longer do that.”

“Good for you. The name is familiar, though…oh! Oh! I remember! You’re the one who made that strange rhyming prediction about me being kidnapped.”

Fayubi was startled. “You know about that?”

“Lore told me about it long ago. She and Jere created a spell that saved me from it happening. Or so they said.”

Here was confirmation of Fayubi’s suspicions, but the means remained unclear. “What kind of spell was it?”

Still lying nearly flat in his bed, the King managed a shrug by twitching his right shoulder. “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. Have I upset you?”

“A little, Your Majesty. Whatever they did affected my whole life since then – and yours.”

“For the better, I hope.”

“Not necessarily.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I disagree with you. That’s the one luxury I have now, disagreeing. You may think that getting kidnapped would have been an interesting experience for me, but to be honest I see no possible advantage to it. How can being dragged away by the creatures in the prophecy possibly be better than being right here in my Palace, with the woman I love, who loves me in return?”

Fayubi hesitated in his reply, which prompted an amused smile from the dying king. “You don’t think Lormarte loves me, do you?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

“Well I do. Even now, when she has withdrawn her mindpush spells to help keep me alive a little longer, I cannot doubt that my queen really does love me.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but how do you know you are free from such influences?”

“I know because I see now all my faults that were once hidden from me. I know because all those private opinions I hardly knew I had, now run freely through my mind. I know because Dimider said three days ago that eighteen years of magic have drained me of vitality to the point of death, and yet for the moment I still live. Do you believe me?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Good man. Now, what did you want to ask me that you can’t divine for yourself?”

Fayubi winced. “In this world I can no longer divine anything, Your Majesty. So I ask questions. Chief among them is this: who would you choose to succeed you on the throne of Mâvarin?”

“Ah! You must be with the Mâ-na-Mâ. But what makes you think my opinion on the subject matters? Nobody’s going to listen to it.”

Fayubi sighed. King Jor might indeed be right about being free from his queen’s mindpush spells, but imposing his own will on the situation seemed to be beyond his capability. Still, Fayubi had to try to get Jor’s approval for whatever needed to happen next.

“I’ll listen, Your Majesty,” he said. “Perhaps, with my help,” others will listen, too.”

--

Yeah, that broke the log jam.

The Mavarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part One

2007-02-25T02:25:00.000-07:00

Now that my marathon of consecutive days worked is finally over for now, I can post the beginning of the scene I've been working on intermittently at lunch. Here it is.

The Mâvarin Revolutions

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Final Instructions, Part One

They thought about using the baggy pants man, recently updated by Dupili with a new visage and identity. After some discussion with Mera, however, Fayubi decided to visit the dying King as himself—by projection, of course. Unlike his physical body, his projected spirit was not subject to arrest. Even a capture bottle would not hold him this time.

The voyant window was still at his house in the other world. Projecting without it required more preparation and more expenditure of magic, but it wasn’t really a problem, as long as his visualization was sufficiently accurate. He had never been in the apartment of this world’s King Jor, but he remembered the tower hallway well, the one where he had walked unseen toward the bottle containing his other self. A selective visibility subritual would ensure that he went unseen this time, too, by all but the King himself.

The entrance to King Jor’s apartment – double doors with a rather nice stained glass mosaic in blue and gold – was blocked by two large Palace guards. Fayubi was pretty sure he’d seen one of them before, guarding Imuselti’s apartment the day Rani Lunder had visited openly while Fayubi slipped by unnoticed. This time, neither the guards nor the closed doors were barriers to him. His projected spirit passed unseen through guard and glass, and a moment later stood before the dying King.

King Jor lay in a huge, sumptuous feather bed, his too-thin body hardly making a bulge on the left side of the thick blue quilt.

“Your Majesty,” Fayubi murmured.

King Jor opened his eyes and peered up at the visitor only he could see. “Hello. Whatever you want from me, you’re a bit late, don’t you think?”

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Princess on the Run, Part Two

2007-01-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, I didn't manage to get this done a week after the previous installment, but it's been less than two weeks. That's progress! And I have finished the scene, after being a little stuck on it. I've even been writing the next one in my head, so I guess this book is truly underway. You won't see all of it here, but I'll post one more scene, at least.

Meanwhile, there's this. Last time, if you'll remember, Commander Wil Masan of the Palace Guard was trying to convince Princess Cathma Masha of the "otherworld" Mâvarin to flee from her own family to avoid a bloody succession at the imminent death of her father, King Jor.

The Mâvarin Revolutions

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

Princess on the Run, Part Two

“Fãrnet, I suppose. There really aren’t a lot of choices, if I’m going to do this at all. Do you think Prince Areno and his family would give me their protection?”

Wil nodded thoughtfully. “They might at that. Especially if they expected to gain some advantage by it.”

The Princess looked annoyed. “Explain,” she said.

“Prince Areno plays politics better than you do. He knows that Mâton and your family are unlikely to express official disfavor if he takes you in and marries you. That would effectively preclude your ruling here, but Areno’s eldest child could be the monarch of a country much larger than his own.”

“I hate it when your suggestions put men in my bed,” Cathma Masha remarked.

Masan flashed her a calculatedly lascivious grin. “No more than do I, with one exception,” he said.

“Which you dare not make,” she retorted.

“We’re getting off the subject here. The point is that Fãrnet probably is the safest place you can go – if you can get there, that is.”

“And the rest of it? I have no intention of marrying Areno.”

“But it does no harm to hold out the possibility, while we see whether a better resolution to your situation is possible. I’m with the Mâ-na-Mâ on this much: you would make a great queen.”

“So your counsel is to run away now, and perhaps return in triumph later.”

“That’s pretty much it, yes. You can hide in Mâvarin instead of Fãrnet, but you would need to be either extremely well-hidden or extremely well-protected. Even if you leave the country, you will need help along the way. My influence, such as it is, does not extend beyond these walls.”

“If I do leave – and I have not yet agreed to do so – where is my immediate destination, then? That inn with the Mâ-na-Mâ innkeeper? Perhaps Liru’s home with all the magic doorways?”

“Either will do. The big problem will be getting you out. Princess, please. I want you to live.”

She must have heard his earnest tone, with no trace of the banter in which they’d indulged just moments before. She nodded slowly. “So do I, Wil.” She sighed. “All right. Set up your people to get me to the Palace door. I don’t suppose I can pack anything?”

“Best not. It should not look as though you are going anywhere.”

“All right. Give me half an hour. I’ll go. But I still don’t like it. And Wil….”

“Yes, Princess?”

“Thanks for making me go.”

“I can’t make you do anything. You’re going because you’re an intelligent and sensible young woman, who will not invite death for no good reason.”

“That, too,” she said.

Related Entry: A Fire in Mâvarin

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Princess on the Run, Part One

2007-01-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I got stuck on the prequel. I guess I'm not ready to write about teenage Lore yet.

So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to shoot for a weekly schedule again, but the actual content will vary. If I'm working on Chapter One of The Mâvarin Revolutions (the book after the Mages trilogy), then that's what you're going to get. If I've managed to squeeze out a scene from the prequel, you'll get that instead. If all else fails, I'll write a "Missives" entry (Mâvarin apocrypha), or throw in a Joshua Wander snippet, or maybe even take a stab at "The Passion of Glenn Stone" (title subject to change) or "Leaving Denny's." Fair warning: any text from the actual novels will be deliberately fragmentary. Still, I'll try not to jump around too much! For tonight, you get part of Chapter One, Scene Two of

The Mâvarin Revolutions

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2007 by KFB

King Jor was dying.

This sad fact was known to the Mâ-na-Mâ within a day of it being known in the Palace. At least, that was what Commander Wil Masan of the Palace Guard assumed. It was a fact that Lt. Tarso had given the news to his brother Keni, a lowly Gate guard. Keni had undoubtedly told Mera Sinan, or someone like her. This was just as well, in Wil's opinion. The balance of power in Mâvarin was about to change, and it would be well for the country's patriots - such as they were - to know what was happening, and make their preparations.

Lt. Bruber was at the Princess' door when Wil arrived. "Is she in there?" Wil asked.

Modo nodded. "Just got back from the Tower," he said.

"Any trouble?"

"None so far."

Wil shook his head. "That we know of, you mean." He knocked on the door to Cathma Masha's suite, using his usual identifying cadence.

"Enter."

Wil winked at the guard and went in. Cathma Masha was sitting on her couch. Her face was damp and red. She looked up at him. "I'm not going, Wil."

He knew what she was talking about. It was an old argument they were about to replay, given new urgency by the present situation. This time, Wil had to win the argument. He chose his opening gambit. "And I can't make you go. But if you don't, I will have to commit all my resources to keeping you safe - and that's going to draw attention to my people."

"Then don't do it. Look, Carli's never going to do anything to me. I'm his sister."

"And Lormarte's daughter. But neither relationship will protect you. As long as the Mâ-na-Mâ favor your succession, you are a liability to them. But if something happens to you, the revolution is over before it begins."

"But I didn't ask for a revolution. If these people fight to put me on the throne, they'll die, and Mâton will curtail this country's freedom even further. Isn't that worse than letting Sumarte and my mother rule through Carli?"

"The Mâ-na-Mâ think it's worth the risk."

"And what do you think?"

"I think it's better if you stay alive long enough to find out whether they're right," Wil said dryly.

"What if I were to issue a statement endorsing Carli's succession?"

Wil shook his head. "I doubt the people will believe that's what you really want. Is it?"

"Well, no. If Carli were free to make his own decisions it would probably be fine, but we both know he isn't. Yes, I do think I'd make a good queen, but this is my family, and Carli is the rightful heir. How can I go against him?"

"Other than being female, your claim to the throne is as good as his," Wil pointed out. "There are precedents."

"Not many, and not recently." Cathma Masha got up and crossed the room, giving Wil a view of her luscious back, but hiding her expression.

"That hardly matters, if public sentiment is on your side."

The Princess dipped her hands in her washbasin, splashed her face, and patted herself dry with her favorite floral hand towel. Then she turned to face Wil again. "But is sentiment on my side? Is it really? We know what the Mâ-na-Mâ want. But what of the Twelve Families?"

Wil smiled. "They all like you personally. I can vouch for that. Besides, half of them are either Mâ-na-Mâ themselves or sheltering someone who is. The other half have an economic interest in seeing Mâton's influence reduced, as long as it's done without their expending either funds or people."

"That's just it. I don't want people to die over this."

Wil looked into the face of his Princess, so different from the rest of her family save for the dying King himself. Her eyes were sorrowful, her expression sincere. It was odd that he could love someone so idealistic. "I don't think you can prevent that," Wil said gently. "My interest is in seeing that you aren't among the dead."

Cathma Masha was silent for a long moment. Wil began to hope that at last she was beginning to understand the reality of her situation. Then she tossed her head, in that gesture of defiance Wil knew so well. "There must be a way," she said. "What if...what if I were to go into exile?"

It wasn't a perfect solution, in Wil's view, but it was progress, the first time the Princess had indicated a willingness to leave the Palace. If he could finesse the conversation from here, he might be able to save her life after all, and possibly even her succession.

"Where would you go?" he asked.

Portrait of a Fictional Friend

2006-11-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

Crossposted from the Outpost:

Portrait of a Fictional Friend

Here's the result of my silly project of the evening: a photograph of Ariel Allegra. You may remember her as the interdimensional traveler who brought Black Rose Kate here for a visit on Halloween night. Ariel is the 20-year-old daughter of a wizard and a ghost - at least, that's the short version of who they are. Ariel has black hair like her father, but it's less curly. Her eyes are green, and occasionally they glow a little.

"Yes, yes," Ariel says impatiently. "They can see for themselves that I have black hair and green eyes, even if you didn't catch them glowing. What else are you going to tell them about me?"

"Well, I mentioned your parents."

"They're my parents. I asked what you have to say about me personally."

"Well...."

Ariel sees my hesitation, and pounces on it. "You don't know what to say, do you? You named my fictional counterpart nearly thirty years ago, but you still know practically nothing about me. You mostly think of me as a multidimensional taxi service for your pirate friend, and secondarily as Joshua Wander's only daughter. I think I'm insulted."

"All right, then tell me what you want me to know about you. And while you're at it, tell my readers."

Ariel chuckles. "That's one way to get out of it."

"Fine, we'll do it together, interview style. Fair enough?"

"Right," Ariel says. "Are you interviewing me, or am I interviewing you?"

"Troublemaker. First question: do you really attend something called Croatoan College, as I wrote at the end of Mall of Mâvarin? Or is that apocryphal?"

"No, it's as real as I am, in quite a few universes."

"Meaning you've been to more than one version."

"No. One version, multiple universes. "

"So you can't change which Croatoan College you attend, in case you get a bad grade or something?"

"There's only one Croatoan College. It's kind of hard to explain, but it vibrates through a whole series of similar timelines, so that it's accessible from all of them."

"What do you study there?"

"You mean, do I study potions with Professor Snape? No. There is a series of four courses in Applied Magic, but overall Croatoan has nothing in common with Hogwarts or Mâton or any other fictional school for wizards. We have comparative physics, and biology, and literature, all the normal courses other schools have, except that they take into account the variations among the worlds Croatoan touches."

"But who would go to a school like that? Wouldn't that curriculum be inappropriate for anyone other than a time traveler?"

"You mean an interdimensional traveler. Yes, it's a little weird, but it turns out there are quite a few of us. Plus Croatoan has a very good reputation. A number of heads of state graduated from there."

"Which reminds me. What about Carl and Cathy, the students who almost became Carli and Cathma? I seem to recall your mentioning them in a note to me. Do they really go to Croatoan with you?"

For the first time, Ariel looks a little embarrassed. "Ah, well, that was sort of a joke." I read about them in Mall of Mâvarin."

"So they're not real."

"To say that for sure, I'd have to visit every universe there is. But the Carl and Cathy I go to school with never traveled via shopping mall."

"I see. Is there anything else you'd like to add?"

"Yes. It's five o'clock in the morning. Stop watching the Benson marathon and go to bed."

"Will you still be here tomorrow?"

"Oh, I never know that. Good night, Karen."

"Good night, Ariel."

And good night, gentle reader.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, Writing, Fiction, Reality

Kate and Ariel: Just My Imagination

2006-11-02T00:34:00.000-07:00

Crossposted from the Outpost to get the Kate and Ariel entries all in one place:

Just My Imagination

Whenever I write about an encounter with Black Rose Kate, as I did last night, I get a little worried that the casual reader will think I've completely lost touch with reality. You do know better, don't you? Well, don't you?

The odd thing about Kate and Ariel is that they are the only fictional characters I've ever created (aside from childhood, and setting aside for a moment the multiverse view of reality) who know I exist. I've never had a conversation with Rani or Cathma or any of the Mâvarin characters, even as a writing exercise in the privacy of my own head. Despite the fact that Mages of Mâvarin (and the serial Mall of Mâvarin, which probably isn't canonical) depicts characters traveling between different versions of reality, it's important to me that they be completely real within their milieu. To have them interact with me, their creator, would be to cheapen their verisimilitude. They would become like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, talking back to the camera (or to Leon Schlesinger). "Breaking the fourth wall" is usually pretty amusing, and it works well for cartoon characters, the tv series Moonlighting and so on. But it also means that you can never quite suspend your disbelief in the world of such characters. If Bugs knows he's on a movie screen, then nothing around him can be regarded as real, even to Bugs himself. Mâvarin needs to be completely real to Cathma and Carli and Rani and the rest, so that they can behave naturally and the reader can believe in them. Any interaction between them and me would call that into question. Besides, they just don't have anything to say to me.

But Kate is different, and so is Ariel Allegra. Part of what's interesting about Kate as a character is her ability to be placed in a fish out of water situation (i.e. in another century) and thrive there. She is self-confident, observant and opinionated, which gives her the ability to comment on the modern world with an outsider's perspective. Having her interact with me, her putative creator, doesn't make her less "real" because the interaction is part of her backstory. The whole premise is that somehow an eighteenth-century pirate has managed to travel from a universe in which she's real and I'm not to one in which I'm real and she's not. Ariel, being theoretically the person who caused Kate to "visit" me in the first place, is entitled to pull the same trick. As the daughter of Joshua Wander, a character who travels between universes on a regular basis, Ariel can inhabit almost any version of reality without losing believability, as long as she behaves believably and consistently herself. She's not as effective a commentator as Kate, however, because she's seen too many versions of the modern world to consider ours all that strange.

Do I really believe in this multiverse, infinite timelines idea, the concept that makes it possible for Kate and Ariel to "really" exist in some universe somewhere? The best answer I can give you is that I do and I don't. Apparently there's a fair amount of support in the world of physics for the idea of an infinite multiverse, where every possible variation is played out. But I never took physics in school, and I've never quite been able to grasp the technical explanations. Nor do I really like the idea, taken to its logical extreme. If every single possibility is played out, then every time I do something good, some Karen somewhere is doing something bad (and another one is doing nothing, and one is doing something even better, and one is doing something even worse, and so on). At the macro level, an infinite multiverse is a zero sum game. If every possibility must be played out somewhere, then free will is problematic at best.

Also, "every possibility" does not include impossibilities. If all universes obey the same scientific principles, then none of them contain real wizards, or talking rabbits in planes that stop falling when they run out of gas, or tengremen, or time traveling sports cars. Phooey on that. I prefer a more limited and freeform multiverse, where anything we create as fiction can and does exist in another version of reality, and other possible realities don't necessarily exist. I can't justify this idea scientifically, and I'm not sure I really believe it's true. But my fiction is predicated on it.

So I hope you don't mind if I indulge in this conceit from time to time, and talk to the few fictional characters who know I exist. That is, after all, what they're here for.

Karen

Black Rose Kate: This Year's Werewolf, Questioned

2006-11-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

Belatedly cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin to get the Kate saga all into one blog:

Round Robin: This Year's Werewolf, Questioned

Pat (DesLily) chose "The Creative Side Of You" as the theme for this week's Round Robin Challenge. I've been preoccupied with Halloween the last couple of days, but let's see if this will serve. Tonight, John and I built a haunted forest in front of our house. I proceeded to hang out there with a few entirely fictitious friends. Or are they? Black Rose Katie Specks always gets annoyed with me when I claim that I created her. But according to my research, she never existed in this version of reality. Ariel Allegra is more philosophical about it. "I don't mind your calling me fictional," she says, "as long as you understand that in most of the worlds I move through, you're no more real than I am here."

"Tell me again why you perform this Halloween ritual each year," Black Rose Kate ordered. The eighteenth century pirate scribe has taken to dropping in on me lately, wherever I happen to be, aided by her dimensional vagabond friend, Ariel Allegra, Joshua Wander's daughter. The two of them were hanging out by my front door, eating our mini-Snickers and critiquing the kids' costumes. Except that this year, we weren't getting many kids. "As I understand it, you are not attempting to ward off evil spirits," Kate continued. "If anything, you are inviting them."

"I may have invited you, but you aren't what I would call an evil spirit," I said. "Merely piratical. And hungry."

"Good one," Ariel said.

Kate frowned. "I speak of the spirits of the dead and the undead. Clearly I am neither."

"That's debatable," I said. "Most likely you've been dead for centuries, but you haven't stopped moving yet." Kate started to protest, but I held up my hand. "No, don't get mad. You know it's only a joke. Besides, you're right. This has nothing to do with warding off spirits. Modern Halloween is a celebration of the human imagination."

Ariel, who had just taken my picture for this entry, asked, "Whose imagination? Yours or the children's?"

"Both."

"So you aren't doing it for the children. At least not entirely."

"No. Mostly I'm doing it for me. And a little bit for John, and a little bit for the kids."

"Then tell me this," Kate said. "For whom did you hold your two imitation bats on strings and prepare to launch them through the air, when I told you there was not a child within a furlong of your house?"

"You could have been wrong," I said. "I thought I heard some."

"Who can hear distant children with any accuracy when your street is so noisy?" Ariel asked.

"Aye," said Kate. "Aside from present company, all I have heard this past half hour is that dreadful music about Jesus, and a man talking about a cake walk."

"Yes, that's all coming from the church on the other side of Wilmot."

"Why do they sing about Jesus, tonight of all nights?" Kate asked.

"They aren't singing. They're just playing a very bad recording," I said. "It's all part of a party that church is throwing, an alternative to Halloween. They want children to think about Jesus instead of ghosts and werewolves. And pirates," I could not resist adding.

"In truth, it is no bad thing to consider God and the state of one's soul," Kate said. This surprised me a little. She certainly didn't act as though she worried about such things.

"Is there something wrong with thinking about werewolves and pirates, ghosts and vampires?" Ariel asked. "In your time and place, nobody believes in those things, do they?"

"Some people still believe in ghosts," I said. "The rest, not so much."

"So none of these children will leave your yard believing in werewolves," Kate concluded. "Do the people in that loud church believe otherwise? Would they say it is a sin for you to don the mask of a monster?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. Some people might. It's wrongheaded, though. As I said, it's not about promoting belief in the supernatural. It's about being creative, and having fun."

"And candy," Ariel added.

"Did you have fun, scattering your toy rats and spiders and snakes?" Kate asked.

"Oh, yes. Yes, I did," I said.

Kate shook her head. "I shall never understand this century," she said.

Round Robin Linking List

DesLily - POSTED!
Here, There and Everywhere 2nd Edition
http://herethereandeverywhere2ndedition.blogspot.com

Carly - POSTED!
Ellipsis...Suddenly Carly
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com/

boliyou
Percolation
http://boliyou.blogspot.com/

Janet - POSTED!
Fond of Photography
http://fondofphotography.blogspot.com/

Karen - POSTED!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com/

Sara - POSTED!
Animated Seasons
http://animatedseasons.artshelf.us/

Linda - POSTED!
Blah Blah Blog
http://blahblahblog.wordpress.com/

Suzanne R - POSTED!
New Suzanne R's Life
http://newsuzannerslife.blogspot.com/

Teena - POSTED!
It's all about me!
http://purple4mee.blogspot.com/

Steven - POSTED!
(sometimes) photoblog
http://sepintx.blogspot.com/

Marie - POSTED!
Photographs and Memories Too (AOL)
http://journals.aol.co.uk/mariebm56/PhotographsMemoriesToo
&
Photographs and Memories Too (Blogger)
http://photographsmemoriestoo.blogspot.com/

Robin - POSTED!
R's Musings
http://rs-musings.blogspot.com/

Julie - POSTED!
Julie's Web Journal
http://www.barrettmanor.com/julie/journal.aspx

Chris - POSTED!
It's all about me...I think!
http://itsallaboutmeithink.blogspot.com/

Sassy - POSTED!
Sassy's EYE
http://journals.aol.com/sassydee50/SassysEYE

John - POSTED!
Personal Effects
http://personaleffects.blogspot.com

Brad G - POSTED!
We Is
http://we-is.blogspot.com/2006/11/round-robin-photo-challenge.html

Gattina - POSTED! ***Welcome New Member***
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com

Technorati Tags: Photos, memes, Creative, Round Robin Photo, Halloween, Black Rose Kate, Fiction

Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part Three

2006-10-23T02:27:00.000-07:00

This is the last of the already-typed draft for this prequel, at least in the main Word document. A week from now the real work begins.

To Rule Mâvarin

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Three

The carriage ride from Linmar to Odamas was both tedious and eye-opening. Lore had always known that Mâvarin was bigger than Mâton, but she was not prepared for the kinds of distances the Mâvarinû took for granted. It took three days just to reach the main northbound road, the same amount of time it took to cross Mâton on horseback—not that people used such mundane methods on Mâton very often. The selmûn carriage passed over a seemingly endless succession of rolling hills, broken only by the distant view of blue-grey mountains to the west.

Lore wished that their itinerary would take them somewhere half as interesting as those mountains looked. It did not. The northbound road that the one from Linmar dead-ended into was broader and better traveled, but not especially intriguing. It ran alongside a broad, rather muddy river, intermittently covered with barges. On both sides of the river were more hills and more valleys, covered with forests of maple and beech and sycamore, with cherry and later apple orchards, with cotton and later corn, with cows and with sheep. Occasionally the travelers came to a town or village, but mostly the land was rather empty of people, and very green. Lore wasn’t accustomed to seeing so few people in the course of a day, so many growing things and so few outcroppings of bare rock.

“Is all of Mâvarin like this?” she asked Genva one afternoon. They were riding past a small forest that lay to the west of the river Misis, and acre after acre of wheat fields to the east of it.

Genva looked puzzled. “Is all of Mâvarin like what?”

“Green and growing and empty. Your country seems to have an abundance of food, and hardly anyone to eat it. I doubt that we’ve seen a dozen people all day.”

“Oh! If that is what you mean, then the answer is no. Except for the outskirts of Linmar, you have not seen a real Mâvarin city yet; but we do have some. There are plenty of people to eat the food, I assure you.”

“Is all of your land this conducive to farming and ranching?” Lore asked. “Mâton is mostly rock.”

Genva shrugged. “Well, there are mountains, of course. Nothing grows on those but trees and grasses, and in some places it is bare rock. Even the land elsewhere in Mâvarin is not as good for crops as you may think. The soil to the west is largely clay, and near the sea it is mostly sand. Up around Odamas, the soil is full of stones. Our farmers work very hard to make things grow.”

“No charms?” Jere asked. “No selmûn magic?”

“Selmûn magic can only encourage growth, not make it possible,” Genva said. “The land must still be plowed and seeded, or nothing will happen. Plows do not cut through rock, and charms do not haul away the stones. However, some farmers do use charms to prevent frost damage, or to help a horse and plow cut into the soil more easily.”

“Most farmers cannot afford such things,” Gavin Cados said. Genva’s father had been relatively quiet during the journey, but he spoke up now. “Many would not use magic of any sort, regardless of the cost.”

“Why not?” Jere asked.

“People in this country tend not to trust magic or magicians,” Genva said, “particularly from Mâton.”

“That is especially true when crops and livestock are involved,” Gavin said. “They fear to eat enchanted food, lest they become enchanted themselves.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lore said. “The enchantment on a plow or a field, or even a bag of seeds, wouldn’t carry over to the harvested crop, let alone the people who ate it.”

“Perhaps not, under normal circumstances,” Gavin said. “Can you swear to me, however, that no mage can, if he or she wishes, place a spell on a farmer’s field that will indeed affect the people who eat the resulting crop?”

Lore had no intention of admitting this was possible—which it was—but Jere was less circumspect. “I suppose it could be done,” she said doubtfully, “but it would be difficult to set up, and impossible to determine ahead of time exactly who the final subjects of the spell would be. Well, maybe if it was a small family garden you’d know, but it would be equally obvious who cast the spell. I can’t see anyone bothering with anything so impractical.”

“I can,” Genva said, “if the magician does not care who gets hurt. You all should know, if you do not know already, that there is great mistrust among the people of Mâvarin toward all magic and its practitioners. Their concerns are somewhat justified,” she added, raising one eyebrow slightly, “given past conflicts and present abuses, but they do not always have a rational basis.”

“In other words, ordinary people fear what they don’t understand,” Lore said. “That doesn’t surprise me. But you said they distrust all magic and magicians. Does that mean they don’t trust selmûnen, either?”

“Not all selmûnen do magic, and all of our magic is benign,” Genva’s father said. “Nevertheless, many of the King’s People do not trust us. We are considered meddlers, even spies. In many communities our people are barely tolerated.”

Lore was surprised by the candid admission. “Then I can see why you might seek an alliance with Mâton,” she said. “You have much to gain politically if this alliance works out.”

Gavin shook his head. “I think you misunderstand. The alliance is to be between Mâton and Mâvarin as a whole, not between Mâton and the selmûnen. We do not seed political gain for ourselves, but peace and security for the country.”

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part Two

2006-10-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

I probably should have posted this last weekend, but you folks know how busy I was. I have a few more installments to post of scenes already written before I have to start adding to them.

To Rule Mâvarin

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Two

As the Mâvarin naval galleon Azure plowed through the last hundred yards of foaming blue water to its dock in Linmar harbor, Lore got her first look at the delegation from Odamas.

Lore leaned forward at the wooden rail, trying to get a better view of the people she had spotted, the ones who didn’t look like sailors or military officers. There were five of them, standing quietly on the wooden planks, watching intently as the Azure slid into its berth: two middle-aged men, a woman of the same vintage, and a girl and a boy on the edge of adulthood. Their faces were impassive. Their tunics and cloaks were grey, and so was their hair, even the teenagers’.

Lore already didn’t like them. Such dour, colorless people made even grumpy Master Morilon seem fun by comparison.

“Is that the selmûn welcoming party?” Jere asked, pointing.

Lore was startled. She hadn’t heard her sister’s arrival beside her. Before she could answer, a series of creaks and groans announced the ship’s arrival at the dock. Sailors jumped from the ship to the dock, and tied half a dozen ropes to half a dozen poles. The Azure came to a sudden halt. Lore and Jere grabbed the rail more tightly to regain their balance. The sailors scurried about, finishing the securing of the ship, reporting to officers on shore, and folding down two gangplanks: a wide one for cargo, and a narrower one for officers and passengers.

The grey delegation didn’t move.

“Yes, that’s them,” Lore said disgustedly. “A duller group of people would be hard to imagine.”

“You haven’t even met them yet,” Jere said. “Give them a chance.”

Sunestri came toward them on his long legs, his curly blond hair and beard waving in the harbor breeze. “They’re ready for us,” he said. “Are you two ready to be diplomatic?”

“Of course,” Jere said.

“As I’ll ever be,” Lore said.

The sisters followed Sunestri down the gangplank. The teenaged selmûn girl started toward them, her face lit with a sudden smile, but was halted by a one-word warning from one of the men. The word was “Genva.” As sunlight caught the girl’s hair, Lore saw that it was actually more blonde than grey.

Time to go be diplomatic, Lore thought. Sidestepping Sunestri, she stood before the selmûn delegation and bowed formally. As she came up, she made eye contact with the blonde girl, and flashed her a friendly smile. The girl smiled back.

“Greetings to you all,” Lore said. “I am Lore Cheneli, eldest daughter of Archmage Marnestri of Mâton. This is my sister, Jere.”

“And I am Sunestri, journeyman adept to Archmage Marnestri,” Sunestri added. “We are honored to meet you all.”

The selmûnen bowed simultaneously—well, almost. The blonde girl was a fraction of a second behind the rest in starting her bow, a fraction of a second ahead of them in finishing it.

“Welcome to Mâvarin,” said the eldest of the men. “I am Lord Arlin Cados, Lord of Odamas by lineage and acclamation. Please allow me to present my wife, Shada (the older woman bowed again), my son Shari (the teenaged boy bobbed his head), my brother Gavin Cados and his daughter Genva.” Genva smiled at Lore. Lore smiled back.

“As Sunestri said, we’re honored and pleased to meet you all,” Jere said.

“How soon are we leaving for Odamas?” Lore asked.

“We shall depart from Linmar immediately,” Lord Arlin said. “We have two coaches waiting.”

“Excellent,” Sunestri said.

“Just let us collect our luggage, first,” Jere said. Lore could hear her sister’s nervousness, and was surprised that she’d spoken at all. Jere didn’t talk to strangers very often, except to say whatever propriety demanded.

“We will help you,” Shari said. He turned back toward the dock, and Lore saw that their luggage was already piled near the cargo plank. Shari and Gavin picked up Lore’s trunk, and Genva helped Jere with hers. Lord Arlin went to speak to the coach drivers. A few minutes later, they were on their way through the city of Linmar. Sunestri rode with Lord Arlin and his wife and son, leaving Lore and Jere to travel in the second coach with Genva and her father.

“How long does it take to get from Linmar to Odamas?” Lore asked.

“It takes five days if you take the Sea Road and don’t make daylight stops,” Genva said. Her father raised one grey eyebrow at her use of a contraction instead of whole words. “Stopping at Mâshelamar or Liftlabeth can add as much as another day.”

“We shall not be stopping at either of those places,” Gavin Cados said.

“Is there any reason we would want to do so?” Lore asked.

“I do not think you would want to visit Liftlabeth,” Genva said. “There is absolutely nothing of interest in that village. Mâshelamar is rather nice, though. It is historically important, of course, and a haven for the arts. My mother grew up there.”

“Where is she now?” Jere asked. “Back in Odamas?“

“No. She is dead,” Genva said. She said it matter-of-factly, as if reporting the demise of a rat or wild bird.

“She died of a fever three years ago,” Gavin added. “Not even our best healers could save her.”

“Oh!” Jere said. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

Lore was curious about Genva’s mother, but under the circumstances it seemed a bad idea to question Genva directly about her parentage. Instead Lore asked, “Are there many selmûnen in Mâshelamar?”

Genva shook her head. “Hardly any, I think. My mother was not a selmûn, as you may have guessed. She was Lida Percal, a noblewoman of the Twelve Families.”

Lore knew then that she had been right to cultivate Genva’s acquaintance. “I’ve heard of the Percal familty. As I understand it, there is no finer lineage in Mâvarin.”

“The name Selevar is currently far more prominent than the names Percal and Cados,” Lord Arlin said.

“True,” Gavin Cados said. “Furthermore, every name is less important than the character and actions of the person to whom it refers.”

“Meaning that I have a lot to live up to,” Genva said with a smile.

“As do I,” Lore said sincerely. “Nearly every Archmage of Mâton since the Founding was an ancestor of mine. I must be proficient in both magic and politics to follow in their footsteps.”

Lord Arlin frowned. “It is our hope that you and your family embark now on a different path from that of your ancestors. Theirs led to centuries of strife between Mâton and Mâvarin. Yours may well lead to a new era, one in which our countries are finally united in the common cause of peace and understanding.”

Lore wanted to laugh aloud at the selmûn lord’s naïve idealism, but she kept her composure. “Yes, of course,” she said. Unlike her father, Lore had no illusions about the best way to restore peace between Mâton and Mâvarin. The Mâvarinû needed to be taught, by any means necessary, that their country was by rights a colony of Mâton, just as its non-magical inhabitants were meant to serve people of talent. It was a lesson Lore looked forward to teaching.

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part One

2006-10-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

The following is the beginning of To Rule Mâvarin, the prequel to Heirs of Mâvarin. I've only written about eleven pages of it so far, plus notes and possibly some handwritten scenes...somewhere. I'm not going to try to write the whole book online, but I should be able to get a nice little serial out of the opening section of the novel.

I posted this first scene over two years ago, but I'm rerunning it here as a set-up for the weeks to follow.

To Rule Mâvarin

Fragments from a Work in Progress

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part One

The voyage from Sûtelmar to Linmar took three days. Lore and Jere spent most of it on the aft deck, looking back toward Mâton (not that they could see it, after the first morning) and practicing spells.

“I feel like a hostage,” Lore complained the second afternoon, as she and her sister worked on the final definitions for their illusory dragon. Six feet long, the creature of air and colored light looked almost exactly like the illustration of Londer’s mythical predatory reptile, except that it was three-dimensional and in motion; but they were having trouble adding the right sounds and smells, not to mention the flaming breath. “Look at this thing,” Lore continued. “By the time we’re finished, it will be as good as any illusion Sunestri or Jonono, or even Master Calavica could produce. We should be home getting Robed and Named. Instead we’re going into exile among Mâvarinû singers and sheep ranchers. It’s just not fair. We deserve better, both by birth and by what we’ve accomplished.“

“You’re not a hostage; you’re an emissary, and so am I,” Jere said reasonably. A year younger than Lore and less talented magically, Jere had a tendency to adapt to circumstances rather than try to reshape them, as Lore did. Lore never knew whether to be admiring or infuriated by her sister’s cheerful acceptance of whatever came her way. Usually, Lore was both. “This is an honor, not a punishment,” Jere said. “The future of both Mâton and Mâvarin may be shaped by what we do at Odamas.”

“I doubt that very much,” Lore said. “If we’re emissaries, then why are we being sent to Odamas instead of Thâlemar? Mâvarin isn’t ruled by the selmûnen. It’s ruled by the Selevars, and the rest of the Twelve Families.”

“The selmûnen have blood ties to the Twelve Families, and political power of their own,” Jere pointed out. “They’re also extremely influential all over Mâvarin because of the songs and stories their Wanderers spread throughout the country. If we can win them over, Mâton will have powerful allies.”

“Then we should just mindpush the selmûnen and be done with it,” Lore said. “Why waste time pretending friendship toward normals?”

“It’s not supposed to be a pretense,” Jere scolded. “Father wants Mâton and Mâvarin to be true friends, as they were at the founding, starting with us and the selmûnen. He specifically said no mindpushing. He wants allies, not slaves.”

“I think that’s incredibly soft-hearted of him, not to mention weak-minded. They’re only normals, after all.”

“They’re not all normals. I hear there are nearly as many magicians in this country, of some sort or another, as there are on Mâton. And that’s not counting the mages in their country who are loyal to Mâton, or the selmûnen, who have their own system of magic.”

“It’s not much of a system,” Lore scoffed. “Master Calavica says it’s all healing and protective spells, nothing interesting or useful.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you were sick or injured,” Jere said. She looked over at the dragon, lying neglected and half-forgotten as the sisters argued. “Look at that,” Jere said. “We’re been talking for so long that our dragon’s gone to sleep.”

“That means our third set of definitions is working,” Lore said.

“The dragon was only supposed to go to sleep if we stopped paying attention to the spell—which we did,” Jere said. “So, are we going to keep arguing, or and we going to finish the fourth set of definitions?”

Jere laughed. “Let’s get back to the magic. It’s the only thing that makes this trip bearable for me, and we’re never going to agree about the Mâvarinû, anyway.”

“Fine. How about this for a flame?” The dragon opened its emerald eyes, and spat a nine inch plume of yellow fire.

Lore nodded. “Not bad. Let’s see if we can improve on it, though. I want a good three foot flame at least, by the time we’re finished.”

To be continued...

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

Now What?

2006-09-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

Last night, after some gentle prodding by Sarah (not Sara), I finally finished writing and posting my serial The Jace Letters. I crammed four emails instead of the usual one or two into the conclusion of this all-email, epistolary story of a godmother who has been kidnapped out of normal space/time, and the goddaughter who teaches herself physics in order to rescue her.

Now I need to figure out what to post next in this blog, preferably something I can post on schedule without too much trauma. So I have a question for you folks who read my fiction: what would you like to see next? Your choices are as follows:

Black Rose Kate's Own Story - a bit of autobiography Kate left behind in one of my spiral notebooks

Letters from Mâvarin - written by various characters at key moments in their lives

What About the Children? - a Mâvarin prequel that I got stuck on years ago

My Favorite Ghost - a Joshua Wander story I've been holding back to preserve its salability (besides, I'm stuck!)

Something else entirely - the catch is, YOU have to suggest the premise, and I have to like it enough to do it!

What say you? Shall Katie Specks regale you with the story of her escape from normalcy? Would you like to know about Del and Crel and Rani as children? Are you curious how a reluctant ghost gets a novice wizard off the hook after they're framed for armed robbery? Does the idea of Mâvarin apocrypha appeal to you? Or are you dying to see what I'd do with that fun idea you've been kicking around? Let me know, okay? Rani, Josh, Kate, Jace and I thank you.

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Seventeen

2006-09-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here goes nothin'!

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Seventeen

Subject: email test
Date: 4/??/??? 09590fh2fy08y
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

test test test... Sent from time bubble 6 hours after the accident.

Don't forget to reply (to younger self?), and to delete this email from Sandy's laptop before she wakes up.

Subject: re: email test
Date: 4/??/??? 0959r22fy08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Ignore this email, Jace. I'm just testing something. See you soon.

Subject: What I Did on My Summer Vacation
Date: 3/10/13
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Aunt Sandy -

All right, yes. It's true. I know now for a fact that I'm Gabby, because I've seen you three times now in my role as your "kidnapper." Mostly I was there to make sure everything was set up for your relative comfort, and to make sure the cross-time link between our computers was set up properly. The really tricky part was sneaking into my family's old house in 2005 to install the "time card" on my old Compaq.

I don't know how much the future-Gabby has told you, so let me clarify things a bit:

1. I didn't create the rift between Sedona and Deming. When Ken and I got to 2005 Sedona, it was already there. There's also a side branch that goes to Roswell. I couldn't shut it down completely, but after your accident we planted a couple of trees and put up a No Trespassing sign to try to keep people out.

2. Your accident really was an accident. I saw it. You skidded off the road into the rift. I've spent years thinking about whether I could or should try to prevent that, but I concluded that it's safer to work with the version of the future I remember from the emails than to prevent the entire chain of events.

3. The medical time dilation - the slowing of your body's reaction to the accident - was mostly invented by Ken and me together. It shouldn't have worked, but it did, and I knew it would because it had. Does that make sense?

I'm in college now, obvously. I ended up at the University of Arizona, not because it had the best physics department or the best scholarship, but it's within driving distance of Sedona and the hidden entrance to the time bubble. Also it's where Ken wanted to go. We're back together, but more as friends than because we expect to get married or anything.

Let me know if and when you get out of the time bubble. I started a bank account years ago with the money you left me in your will, so you'll have that to start over with. It's not much, but I'll invest it, once I've have time to "cheat" my way to a few good long-term stock tips.

Jace

Subject: Free at Last!
Date: 6/??/??? 0959rv8q4h8y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace –

Don't let the usual weird timecoding fool you. I'm actually out of the time bubble, and so far I haven't turned into a skeleton or crumbled into dust. In fact, I'm feeling much better now, and healing at a normal rate. I'm at your future apartment (details of which I won't disclose, just in case), getting my bearings and discussing my options with "Gabby."

We figure that we'll create too much of a paradox if I go back to any of those past years I lost, so any date before 2013 is out of the question. The part we've been trying to work out is whether I should come to your time, or settle with your future self in 2025. I haven't been to those years (except for right now when I'm in 2025), but you came back to see me from there. We've decided that I won't cause any catastrophe by coming to 2013, as long as we make a pact not to discuss your future actions. Actually, I suspect Gabby knows that we already made that pact in her personal past, but I know better than to ask her.

Don't worry about making those investments. I'll do it myself. But do start apartment hunting for me. I'm coming home!

Sandy

The End

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Sixteen

2006-09-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

Here comes the big reveal! Have you figured it out already?

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Sixteen

Subject: I live!
Date: 11/??/??? 0efhhffejf0fje0f08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace (or should I say Gabby?) -

I got through the operation, and obviously I'm awake now. Still a little groggy, but I hope not too groggy to proofread this time. Your Dr. Ken is pretty sure he got all the perforations that were causing the internal bleeding. It's just as well I hadn't been eating much, or I could easily have ended up with peritonitis. As it is, he's pumped me full of antibiotics, just in case. Blecch. I'm pretty nauseated, but I'll live.

Judging from the email I just read, I assume you know that you made this time bubble, and you rescued me from the crash. Thank you. Maybe there was/is/will be a better way to save my life, but this is the way you chose. It's such a chicken and the egg situation, isn't it? Which came first, the idea that these emails gave you, or the emails your idea made possible? Did we ever have a choice in all this? Maybe I emailed you from a future that didn't exist yet, and you are starting to make that future the real one.

I think I'm getting dizzy, thinking about all this.

I'm not going to say any more about all the things you'll be doing over the next decade. I don't want to risk changing my personal history, now that I'm pretty sure I'm getting out of here alive.

Next question is whether 32-year-old you will be able to get me back to normal time without me turning into a skeleton or something. "Gabby" says she's working on it.

Bless you, Jace!

Sandy

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Fifteen

2006-09-10T22:20:00.000-07:00

Now comes the scary part for me, where I start to resolve things and wrap this up. Or not.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Fifteen

Subject: Re: Stay Put
Date: 7/??/??? 0efhhffhfhqe0f08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace -

Gabby is back, and so is the doctor. And he brought two friends, and medical equipment. The operation is in half an hour. They've already given me some sedative but not the serious stuff to put me out yet. Dr. K. thinks if he can stop the internal bleeding I will probably survive everything else. The wounds we can see finally seeem to be scabbing istead ofgetting bigger.

Getting ttoo groggy to write this. I know who Gabby is. Sending. Write you if I wakeup.

Sandy

Subject: Please live!
Date: 6/17/12
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Aunt Sandy –

Your latest email makes me feel so helpless! You've reached the life-and-death moment we've been worrying about, and 18-year-old me can't do anything but wait for another email to see if you survived.

On second thought, maybe I can do something. I'm done with high school, I have access to a van, and I think my machine will work. Ken and I are driving to Sedona tomorrow. I'm anxious to hear back from you, but that could take months and months. I want to start now. I'll bring my laptop along.

I guess Ken and I are kind of back together, not that that really matters right now. We're not quite boyfriend and girlfriend, but more than just friends. Does that make any sense?

You're going to live. I'm sure of it. Otherwise, you wouldn't be going through what I'm about to make happen. It has to be worth it! It has to!

Jace

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Fourteen

2006-09-03T02:15:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what I'm going to write here tonight, but here I go anyway.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Fourteen

Subject: Re: My Promise
Date: 6/??/??? 0efh40rghfhqe0f08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace -

I was right. The doctor says I'm bleeding internally. He can't operate by himself, obviously. I don't know whether I can get to a hospital - whether it's allowed, whether it's even possible. Maybe Gabby can bring more people in here. I don't know, though, whether she will or can. I don't feel I know much of anything at this point.

Sandy

Subject: Stay Put
Date: 11/15/11
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Aunt Sandy –

I'm pretty sure there's no way you would survive a trip to the hospital. If the time bubble or whatever it is is slowing down your physical decline, then the last thing you want to do is leave it. I'm sure that Gabby knows this, and will do everything she can to help you.

My senior year has started here. Ken and I aren't getting along too well right now, but he's promised not to abandon his plans to help me help you, even though we're not dating any more. He's become kind of sarcastic lately, thinks I'm so hung up on your problem and physics in general that I'm not much good for anything else. I guess it's been a while since I was fun to be around, whatever that means. I even had to move my "mad scientist" project out of his basement. Fortunately, my boss at LANL is humoring me by letting me keep it in her garage, which is only two blocks from my house, and then across the park.. She and her husband (another physicist) have even given me a few ideas on how to make it work. I don't think they take it seriously, but they don't treat me like a kid or a crazy person, either.

Tell Gabby that I think it's time for you and her to have a talk. I don't know if she'll listen to me, but if you're dying, it could be her last chance. Maybe I'm overreacting, and I hope I'm wrong. But things are clearly getting kind of desperate over there.

You said that Gabby seemed about thirty years old. How old was she when you first got there?

Jace

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Thirteen

2006-08-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

Yow! I've never slacked off so long before on my "weekly" fiction blog. My current obsession with Wikipedia is part of the problem, but mostly it's because I've reached the part of the story where I get nervous about whether I can wrap it up properly. Let's take Jace and Sandy one step closer to resolution of their problem, shall we?

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Thirteen

Subject: Re: The Why, If Not the How
Date: 11/??/??? 0efh408fy30r1rffy08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace -

I think I must have passed out, or at any rate fallen asleep for a while. I was trying to read Physics for Dummies, which Gabby had brought at my request. But I couldn't concentrate on it. I don't know how long I was unconscious. There is no day or night here to judge by. But my uneaten apple has gone brown, and my Diet Pepsi is warm and flat.

I'm feeling weak again, and the pain is getting worse. It's not just the wounds, or the headache. There's abdominal pain, too, the worst I've had since my gall bladder came out. That's what woke me.

A few minutes ago, I managed to climb out of bed and go use the restroom. What I saw pretty much settled the question about internal bleeding. Gabby has gone to bring the doctor back in here.

Jace, I'm sorry, but I'm not at all sure I will live long enough for you to find your way to me. How would you even do it?

Sandy

Subject: My Promise
Date: 5/15/11
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Aunt Sandy –

I'm terribly worried about you, but time is working in our favor, at least at my end. I'm a couple of weeks away from finishing eleventh grade. They let me take A.P. Physics a year early, doubling up with Chemistry. I've been acing them both, even though Chem is kind of rote and boring. I guess that impressed the people at LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory), because I just got accepted to their "HS Co-op" program for high school seniors. I start interning there next week. Isn't that great? My parents are both really proud of me, but I still see that worried look in Mom's eye whenever the subject of physics comes up.

I have my driver's license now, too. Ken and I still want to drive to Sedona or Deming, or both, but my parents would freak if I drove so far away, especially with a boy. They like Ken okay, but I don't think they trust him, even after knowing him for years. They're sure that Ken and I have secrets together, but I won't tell them what kind of secrets. I just say that it's nothing to do with sex. To be honest, we've thought about doing it together, but so far he's been pretty understanding when I say I'm not ready. I'm not even sure he's ready, but I'm not going to hurt his ego by saying so.

Anyway, I keep wondering whether Ken and I should make the trip to Sedona now, and face my parents after it's all over. What's more important, me obeying a curfew, or finding and helping you? But that's what stops me. Even if I find you, I'm not ready to help you. I've been working on something in Ken's basement, so that my parents won't know that my obsession with physics has turned me into a crackpot inventor. I've got a long way to go in building the thing, let alone getting it to work. I'm not even sure exactly what it will do when it's finished. Something useful, I hope. Really, I do more than hope. I know it will work eventually. I promise it.

And I promise you will live long enough for me to see you again. Don't give up! Every month that goes by, every book I read, every bit of research I do, every email I get from you, only makes me more sure I know what's happening to you, and what to do about it. I've pretty much figured out how to get to you when the time comes, and I know I will get there. But the time hasn't come yet, and getting there isn't enough. We have to save your life, too.

Meanwhile, I've been looking at colleges to go to. I'm probably going to apply to CalTech, U.C. Riverside, and University of Arizona. You didn't go to the University of Arizona, did you? But you probably know something about it, having lived in Tucson before the accident. I guess which one I go to will depend on where I get the best scholarship. Ken is applying to the same schools, so we've been looking for ones that have a good pre-med program, not just a good physics department.

Hang in there! We can do this!

Jace

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Twelve

2006-07-23T03:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm terribly late in posting this. I think we're going to have to accept that the rest of this serial will be posted on a somewhat irregular basis. Just be grateful that you don't have to wait as long for each letter as Jace does!

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Twelve

Subject: The Why, If Not the How
Date: 11/17/09
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Aunt Sandy –

Another year has gone by. I'm in tenth grade now. At this rate, I'll be an adult by the time you get through this one day. But time seems to keep accelerating, so heck, I could be your age by the time your day is over!

I'm starting to suspect a reason for all this - not how it happened, but maybe why it's happening. I probably shouldn't say anything, though. This is the part in time travel stories when someone warns about knowing too much about the future. But I want to tell you anyway, at least this one thing, which could be totally wrong for all I know. I think this is probably about saving your life, or at least preserving it as long as possible. I mean, if you had just died right away in that accident, I wouldn't have gotten to know you as well as I do now, and nobody would have had a chance to try to keep you alive as that doctor is doing. Maybe all this time bubble stuff (if that's what it is) is the equivalent of cryonics, without the nasty side effects of freezing the brain into unusable mush. If you stay alive for another ten years of my time, medicine should get better, until whatever is wrong can be fixed, right? I hope so, anyway.

In case you're wondering, Ken and I are still friends, and still very close. But no, I haven't done anything with him that would shock my parents. We mostly have long, intense conversations, pretty much every day. And yeah, okay, he kissed me, once. I didn't like it much, but I'm not telling him that. He'll be getting his driver's license soon, and he wants to take me to Sedona and Deming, or at least one of the two. But I know my parents won't agree to any such thing, at least until I'm 18 or older. I wish I could just skip forward in time, the way you seem to do. Slogging through my teen years in normal time us dull and frustrating, especially when I know you're waiting for me to finish doing it!

Jace.

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Eleven

2006-07-07T01:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, this installment is even later than the last couple have been. If you think about it, though, it's entirely appropriate at this stage of Jace and Sandy's story that each new email appears late and unpredictably.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Eleven

Subject: Re: Sandy Lives! (I hope)
Date: 11/??/??? 095904r0731rffy08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace -

You asked whether Gabby has tried stitching me up. Better still: she's finally brought in a doctor to help me!

I don't know how he got in here, but of course I don't know how Gabby gets in here, either. She seems to be aging about as fast as you are, if not faster. She looks at least thirty as of this morning.

The doctor is about Gabby's age, maybe a little older. When I asked him his name, he said, "I'm not supposed to tell you that now." Isn't that an odd thing to say? But he seems very nice. He did stitch up my wounds, including some new ones that appeared while he was working on the others. He looked a little surprised and worried about this, but not nearly as much as you might expect. I'm sure he knows something about what's going on, but he confined his remarks to my medical condition. Like your friend, he's worried about internal bleeding, but for the moment he says there's little evidence of it. He offered me pain medication, but I need to stay alert so I can answer your emails as they come in. If it turns out I'm going to die soon, I don't want to waste any time being drugged out and drowsy.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling a little better, I think, and Gabby has brought me a fresh supply of food. The first day there was nothing here that could be considered perishable - no fruits or vegetables, no fresh or frozen meat. It was all stuff like Kraft Dinner with powdered milk and no butter, or beans and rice, or SPAM and other canned goods. Now Gabby seems to have have found a way to keep the food from spoiling at the speed of relativity. Today there was some cheddar cheese that didn't look too old, and potatoes, and a slightly squishy apple. Okay, it's not great, but it's something. Too bad I'm not hungry.

In your email you report that the man who disappeared from Sedona to Deming said the "road turned blue." I think I saw that, too. It wasn't just the road, though. It was everything at once. Blue.

I'm not going to try to talk you out of anything from this point forward. You're obviously a determined young woman, and I'm grateful that you care so much about your timelost godmother. All I ask is that you be careful, and try to avoid taking unnecessary chances. Will you do that for me? Please say that you will!

Sandy

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Ten

2006-06-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

Let's just say the new posting date is Monday nights, shall we?

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Ten

Subject: Sandy Lives! (I hope)
Date: 9/10/08
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Dear Aunt Sandy –

Hooray! I finally heard from you! It took over two years, though. I have to wonder whether your faster moving system is starting to accelerate. If it is, that's probably a good thing. It would mean that your time dilation is increasing, slowing you down relative to me. That may buy us some time, so I can grow up, learn what I need to know, and get to you before your injuries have time to kill you. I'm up to ninth grade, but even a high school student with an obsession about quantum theory isn't a whole lot more use to you than the 11-year-old I was when all this started.

I just hope your Gabby can help you to heal instead of your getting worse all the time. Ken says that if you aren't bleeding internally, then it should be possible to stop you from losing more blood. Has Gabby tried stitching you up?

Yes, I told Ken about you. I hope you don't mind. He's going into medicine like his parents, so I thought he might be able to tell me something helpful. We've gotten to be pretty close friends. Maybe more than friends, but it's too soon to say that for sure.

I did email the man who said he was near Sedona, and then suddenly found himself in Deming. I guess this happened right after the fire. Did I tell you about the fire? Well, there was one, near 89A north of Sedona, in June of 2006. Were you south of Sedona just before you disappeared, or north of it?

Anyway, the guy thought at first I was trying to hoax him, but I guess he researched your case online, and found out that I wasn't just making it all up. Then he wrote back to me. But he doesn't remember anything helpful, so it was kind of a dead end. The one thing he said was that the road turned blue, right before it happened. No, I don't know what it means.

Listen, I know you don't want me to worry about you, or to take on the responsibility of trying to save you. But I've already taken it on. I've been working on it for years. If I fail, okay, I'll be really upset. But if I don't even try, then I fail for sure. I have to do this, Aunt Sandy. I have to do everything I can to find you and rescue you, both from this dimensional anomaly you're in and from being slowly killed by a car accident that happened years ago. At least now I have a friend to help me with the second part of that.

Love,

Jace.

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Nine

2006-06-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

Late again! Sorry!

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Nine

Subject: As Time Goes By
Date: 12/1/07
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Dear Aunt Sandy –

It's almost Christmas again, and I still haven't heard from you. I was sure I'd hear from you by summer. I've been trying not to worry about you any more than I do anyway, but it's not working. Every week that goes by, I'm a little more afraid that I'll never hear from you again.

School's okay, I guess. I'm in eighth grade now. Mom thinks it's a little weird that I'm getting As in science and math all the time. It used to be Bs and Cs. I know she thinks I should try out for a school play or something, but I don't have time for that. When I'm not trying to learn physics, I'm trying to write stories, like you used to do. Or I'm doing research online. Since you disappeared, there have been three reports of people turning up in Deming, not knowing how they got there. Nobody really takes in seriously, but one of them said the last thing he remembered was driving on 89A in Arizona.

Oh, and there's a boy I like. His name is Ken, and yes, people ask him "Where's Barbie?" all the time. He just laughs and says, "We broke up." He's not my boyfriend or anything, more like friends. He's a little bit of a computer whiz, and his dad's a doctor.

One of the reasons I'm so worried about you is it sounded in your last email as though you're getting worse and worse. Please tell me I'm wrong about this. Please tell me anything! Just let me know you're alive, and I'm not too late!

Love,

Jace.

Subject: Re: As Time Goes By
Date: 5/??/??? 24r07098wi98wthw9f
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Oh, Jace, I'm so sorry to make you worry like that! I wish I could reassure you, but I can't get out of bed this morning. There's a terrible gash down one leg, and my abdomen is bleeding into the fresh bandages Gabby put on. She's made me as comfortable as she can, brought me food and a bedpan (more than you want to know, right?), and even set up my computer on a TV tray for me. But it took a while. That's probably why I'm so "late."

What else did you learn about the man who went from 89A to Deming? Was it just a little news article, or is he someone you can write to and ask questions? I don't know what you'd ask him, but it does sound a lot like my experience. He wasn't injured, was he?

Be careful with the boy who is not your boyfriend. Maybe he will become that, maybe not. Just be sure you don't get pressured into doing more than you are ready to do.

Speaking of feeling pressured, I don't want you to feel you have to save me from whatever is happening to me. No, I don't want to die here, but I'm starting to think maybe I'm going to. Gabby is really doing her best to help me, but it's as if my injuries are appearing slowly, just as I'm living slowly compared to you. They're not healing, either. But THIS IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIX. You're a teenaged girl, for Heaven's sake, not Sam Beckett. I admire your courage and commitment, and I hope to see you again before I die. I really do. But if that doesn't happen, it won't be your fault or your failure. Please promise me that whatever happens, you won't blame yourself.

Love,
Aunt Sandy

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Eight

2006-06-11T01:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm back on schedule this week. But I reserve the right to change the night I post these in the future.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Eight

Subject: Time, Time, Time
Date: 12/24/06
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Dear Aunt Sandy –

Merry Christmas! I mean, I know we don't know the date where you are, or what date it will be when you get this, or even if time has any meaning in your fast-moving system. That's what I'm guessing you're in. But it's Christmas here, and I was thinking about you, and wishing you could spend the holiday with us. The closest I can get to that is to write to you now, even though I won't hear from you again until next summer probably. I figure that if you can write to me twice in a row, then I can write to you twice in a row, or more. After all, I have a lot more time to do it in. But I'll try not to do it too often, because it still takes time for you to read them!

My parents think my recent interest in physics is something to be encouraged. They've bought me three books on the subject since I last wrote to you, and I'll be surprised if I don't get at least one more for Christmas. I don't tell them why I'm interested, though. They never really believed me about these emails, even though I showed them the first two I got from you. They think it's a hoax. They told me that you're dead, and I shouldn't hold out false hope. So now I keep all this to myself, except for talking to you, of course.

I can't give you anything physical for Christmas, so I decided to write a poem for you:

Sit silent and read
Words of Sandy, lost in Time,
Reaching out to me.

Find a way to help:
I can be a scientist
If I really try.

Years fly by for me
While you drift from day to day
To some future time.

When will we converge?
Will I know all that I need
To rescue my friend?

I know it's just a bunch of haiku put together, and it doesn't have imagery or nature in it or anything like that. But you get the idea. If there's a way to find and rescue you, I'm going to do it. It will probably take me years and years, but at the rate you're going, I guess we have the time. Hang in there, Aunt Sandy! Write me when you can.

Jace

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Seven

2006-06-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is two days late. Sorry. I think I'll be shifting to Sunday nights for posting here. I'll let you all know, here and on the Outpost, if and when I change my fiction schedule.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Seven

Subject: Re: Einstein and Stuff
Date: 5/??/??? 24r027098wthw9f
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace –

I forgot to answer one of your questions just now, so I thought I'd better do it before I go to bed and you get older. No, I don't hear any motors. I'm not quite sure whether I feel a little vibration in the floor, or it's just me feeling a little shaky after the accident, and imagining something that's not really there. As I think I said before, there are no windows here. Do you suppose maybe I'm in a TARDIS? ;)

I'm really starting to think there was an accident. I probably wouldn't feel this lousy otherwise.

Aunt Sandy

Subject: Time, Time, Time
Date: 6/6/06
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Yeah, okay. You're definitely my Aunt Sandy! And yes, "Trophy" is still in my closet.

I'm trying to figure out how long it will be before I get another email from you. A whole year, I bet. Last time a day went by for you, it was at least a year on my end, I think.

Hey! Here's another email from you! You must have sent it really quickly after the last one. I mean really really quickly.

Since I won't hear from you again for a long time, I guess there's not much point in asking for more advice right now. School is getting better, anyway. Those kids who teased me about my name aren't all that bad, and I've made a couple of friends. I'll try to do as you told me, and not get upset at every little thing someone says.

I read both books about physics that were in the school library. They didn't help much. They're kind of written for kids, and I need to know more than that. School is over soon for the summer, and I've already asked my teacher so many questions that he probably thinks I'm crazy. I guess they're tough questions, because he couldn't even answer most of them. Science class next year is Earth Science, so that doesn't really help, either. I'm going to go to the Bradbury tomorrow with Mom, and see what I can find in their bookstore. I want to understand what's happening to you. Maybe I can find a way to rescue you somehow.

Talk to you later - much later, probably!

Jace

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Six

2006-05-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

This installment is a little less centered on the sf/fantasy, a little more on the YA aspect of the older story idea. I make no apology for this. Enjoy (I hope)!

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Six

Subject: Re: Einstein and Stuff
Date: 5/??/??? 24r027098wieh
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace –

I was wondering when you would ask for proof, not that I'm exactly in a good position to give you any. How about this?

Birthday Presents from Me to You
* Age 6: a stuffed poodle on a pillow. Do you still have that? Seems to me I remember seeing it in your closet the last time you gave me "the Tour."
* Age 7: Scrabble Junior.
* Age 8: I can't remember...oh, yes. A necklace maker. I must have spent an hour in Toys R Us that time, trying to figure out what you'd like.
* Age 9: a diary with an audio feature and a lock.
* Age 10: a set of acrylic paints and an artist's tablet.
* Age 11: if I'd actually managed to get to Los Alamos, I would have given you a box set of the BBC Narnia movies on DVD. They're here with me. Since you're not likely to get these, I've been watching them. If it's really 2006, that means the Disney version came out. Was it any good?

I trust that establishes my identity.

On the name thing: my goodness, Jace, don't you know how incredibly cool your nickname is? At least it is from my point of view. You may remember that I was there when you told your parents to start calling you Jace instead of Janice. That was a gutsy thing for a seven-year-old to do. I thought your mother would be upset, but then your dad laughed, and I knew they'd go along with it. You have cool parents!

As for "Jace Face the Space Case," I thought you liked Jace Face. That is your screen name, after all. Is it really the "space case" part that bothers you, or is it because these kids are trying to be mean? The heck with them. If there's one thing I regret most about my childhood, junior high and high school years,, it's that I let whatever everyone else said and did hurt my feelings. YOU know you're not a "space case," and these kids probably know it, too. They're just going for the rhyme. You can even come up with a positive interpretation of "space case" if you try.

Heck, it's not remotely as bad as being saddled with the name "Sandy Sheets." "Hey, Sandy! How about washing those sheets?" "What were you doing in those sheets to make them sandy?" I was called Sandy Bottoms, and Sandy Pandy, and Sandy Sh*ts, and Sandy Feets, and even Candy Beets! I didn't handle it very well. Don't make that mistake. You've got a really good name, but absolutely every name can be turned into a joke or insult if you work at it. If some jerks at school try that on you, don't give them the satisfaction of being hurt by it. It's their problem, not yours. And a lot of times, as I learned many years later, teasing isn't meant to hurt. You can choose to enjoy the joke, instead of being scarred by it as I was.

So, it's past midnight by my watch,and I'm tired and sore. If I go to bed, does that mean you'll be 13 or 14 or 22 years old when I wake up in the morning? Gabby came through here a few minutes ago, and I asked her about the Einstein twin paradox and your theory about me. She didn't really answer the question, but she smiled. I think she was genuinely pleased to hear that it was you who came up with that. Make of that what you will: I have no clue.

Love,

Aunt Sandy (really!)

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Five

2006-05-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is a day late. Sorry. Still, I'm not sure that anyone but me cares about that.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Five

Subject: Einstein and Stuff
Date: 5/1/06
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Dear Aunt Sandy (if it's really you),

Well, it hasn't been a year this time. Only about three weeks. I guess maybe if you answer right away, it gets to me sooner.

I've been thinking about a video we saw in school, about Einstein and time and stuff like that. I guess it was explaining relativity, but I don't really understand it all yet, although I'd like to. Anyway, in the video, one twin went out into space and traveled at almost the speed of light. The other twin stayed home. When the astronaut twin came back, he was still young, but the other twin was old. Time slowed down in the spaceship because it was moving so fast.

So what I was wondering is this. Are you sure you're not in an alien spaceship or time machine? Can you feel the room moving, or motors humming,or something like that? I mean, if you are moving really fast, faster than anything this side of Star Trek or whatever, then time really could go slower for you than for me. It would also explain, sort of, why you can't get online. It doesn't explain how we can email each other, though.

You know, I've been believing that you're really my godmother, Sandy Sheets, pretty much just because it's your email account, and your emails sound like something you'd say. But what if it's all a trick, like the police told my parents? Is there some way you can prove you're who you say you are?

If you are Aunt Sandy, I guess maybe I should do what I said I'd do, and ask you for advice. I'm in the regular public school starting this year, and I'm having a little trouble with some of the kids. They like to call me Jace Face the Space Case. They say Jace is a stupid name. I kind of try to ignore them, but that doesn't seem to help. What do you think I should do?

Jace
(really Janice)

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Four

2006-05-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

Last week I made a continuity error. Did anyone spot it? I'm leaving it in, with the hope I can explain it as a plot point, months from now.

I'm not going to do recaps on any of the entries for this serial. Each installment is short enough that it should be easy to catch up if you come in late.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Four

Subject: Believing the Unbelievable
Date: 4/??/??? 24r08498whfo
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace –

You talk about what I say being unbelievable, and I suppose that it is. But then you hit me with unbelievable claims of your own! How am I supposed to react when you say that my accident, if there was one, was almost a year ago, and that my car was found in Deming? I haven't been to Deming in years.

I swear to you, Jace, that unless I've been in a coma, there's no way that even a week has gone by for me since I left Tucson to visit you on your birthday. It certainly hasn't been a year. My forehead is still bleeding, and my arm is sore, the way muscles sometimes get the day after an accident. That's how long it's been since I got here, wherever here is: about a day, maybe two. I look in the mirror, and I'm no older than I was before.

But your latest email is dated next April. How can that be? Something strange is going on, even stranger than I realized.

I asked Gabby whether she was an alien. She just laughed and said no. But there's definitely something she's not telling me.

If you're about to be twelve years old, then you're heading into adolescence, when pretty much everyone needs somebody to confide in. I remember being 12, 13, 14. They weren't the best years I've had. I'm not sure I have any good advice to offer, or even that this will reach you before you're an old married lady. But if you want to try to tell me what's going on in your life, I promise to reply as soon as I hear from you.

Okay. I got your email at 9:03 PM, according to my watch. It's 9:46 PM now. Please let me know whether you get this on the same day, week, or year as your email to me.

Love,

Aunt Sandy

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Three

2006-05-07T03:28:00.000-07:00

I originally intended to rewrite or add to this entry, which I wrote in a hurry very late Saturday night, based on what I'd already written in my head. But I think I'll let it stand, except for fixing a typo and rewording one sentence. It probably helps to rush the writing just as much as Jace herself does here.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part Three

Subject: Re: Why I'm not there
Date: 4/10/06
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Dear Aunt Sandy,

I don't believe this. You act like you just got the email I sent you, but I sent that the same night I got that first weird one from you, right after you disappeared. Don't you know it's been almost a year since then? I'm going to be 12 years old next week. I wish you were around, because I could use some advice, grown-up advice about stuff I can't talk to Mom about.

They found your car outside of Deming, all smashed up. They didn't find you though, or even any blood. Mom and Dad tried to tell the police that we got email from you, and we think you're alive. They took a copy of the email with them, but that's all. They never came back or told us anything.

After that we heard from a couple of people in Roswell. They say you were abducted by aliens. Do you think maybe Gabby is an alien?

Please notice I've worked hard on my writing since last year, even though I didn't get your criticism until just now. Yeah, I know that last email was bad. My friends all wrote like that at the time, but I kind of knew better.

Write back quick!

Jace

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part Two

2006-04-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

In which Sandy hears back from 11-year-old Jace Murphy.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB
Part Two

Subject: Re: Why I'm not there
Date: 4/30/2005 1:55:23 PM US Mountain Daylight Time
From: JaceFace
To: NotaBeach

Aunt Sandy!

Is this one of your stories? U r a good writer, but your scaring me a little. Where are u really? We expected you last weekend. You didn't show up, and we never heard anything until now. Mom called your cell phone, but it said it was unavailable. She left a voicemail on your home phone, too.

Just tell us where you really are, ok? And that your allright.

You missed a pretty good party last weekend. I got a high-tech spy kit and an Aragorn action figure. But the best present was a pink iPod!

Jace

Subject: Re: Why I'm not there
Date: r0tu2ru0ru0r
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Jace--

I accidentally sent my email before I was ready. Sorry about that. Now that I've received an email reply from you, I know that Gabby was telling me the truth. Nothing else about the Internet works on my computer now, but at least I can write to you and get an answer.

But I told you. It's not a joke or a story. I really have been kidnapped, even though it doesn't make sense, even though I don't know why.

All I know is that I was just arriving in Sedona for the night when a tanker truck suddenly pulled out in front of me. I remember hitting the brake and yelling. I don't remember a crash, or anything like that.

Then I woke up here. Wherever "here" is. There's a cut on my forehead that doesn't seem to want to stop bleeding, but I'm fine otherwise. At least, I think I am. Maybe I was in an accident after all. Maybe I've had a concussion. Maybe I'm really in a coma, and this is all a dream.

It doesn't seem like a dream. It's weird and lonely and depressing, but it feels real to me.

If it is real, this isn't a hospital. There's just me and the woman I call Gabby, and Gabby won't let me leave. That's kidnapping, regardless of how I actually got here.

Jace, dear, I don't want to criticize. You know I love you, and I'm grateful that you answered my email, even if it scared you. But as a former English major, I have to tell you that you need to work on your writing skills a little bit. I'm glad you dropped the "texting" abbreviations after your first few sentences. It's much easier for an old fogey like me to read what you have to say if you write real words, not just letters. You also confused "your," which means "belonging to you," with "you're," which means "you are." And "all right" is two words, not one. "Alright" as a single word seems to be gaining acceptance now, but that is not what I was taught in school when I was your age..

Please understand, I'd be glad to hear from you even if it was all in lower case Pig Latin, but I'd much rather know that my goddaughter is literate. Fair enough?

Well, I'm off to bed, assuming that I'm not already asleep. I'll write to you again tomorrow.

Love,
Aunt Sandy

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

The Jace Letters, Part One

2006-04-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

Here we go with the new serial. Part One! This is an email from Sandy Sheets (yes, I know) to her goddaughter, Jace Murphy. All will become clear in time. This is first draft stuff, so I'll probably have to clean it up later.

No, the end of this installment is not a mistake. Not my mistake, anyway.

The Jace Letters

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Part One

Subject: Why I'm not there
Date: 4/??/??? 09590fh2fy08y
From: NotaBeach
To: JaceFace

Dear Jace –

I don’t see how this email is ever going to reach you, but if it does, please tell your parents I’ve been kidnapped.

This is not a joke!

I don’t know why I’ve been kidnapped. There don’t seem to be any ransom demands. The only person I’ve seen since I woke up here isn’t telling me much of anything. In fact, she hardly says a word at all. I’ve decided to call her “Gabby.” Just about the only thing she did say was that if I wrote you an email, you would get it. So I’m doing it, just in case. Even if it doesn’t go anywhere, I have to write down what’s happened, and try to make sense of it all.

It’s impossible to tell where I am. There are no windows, and the only door out of the three rooms – bedroom, bath, small living room or study – is dead-bolted. Locked. I have my computer (obviously), but it’s not online. Or, if it is, there’s something wrong with the connection. I can’t get to any current web pages, blogs or AOL, or access my email. I have the clothes that were in my suitcase, and I have my iPod, and I have enough to eat. That’s all.

I haven’t actually been very hungry since this happened. Not that I know what happened. Not really.

All I know is

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

A Fire in Mâvarin

2006-04-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

This is the opening scene of the third Mâvarin novel (or fifth volume, or something like that), which has the working title, The Mâvarin Revolutions. It's kind of a teaser for the book, and contains no information that could act as a spoiler to the first book (or the Mages trilogy, until you get about thousand pages in!).

I hope to have something made-to-order for you next week.

The Mâvarin Revolutions

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Chapter One, Scene One

Masheldu, 4th Day of Nefilem, 897 MMY

The fire started in the middle of the day, in the middle of the village. There was no way to pinpoint the source of the flames: ten buildings caught fire in an instant, on all four corners of Murbeth’s only intersection.

People began yelling and running, in every direction at once. A grocer jumped through his shop window, trailing showers of bloody glass, his apron already smoldering. Four of his customers followed him out, mostly avoiding the jagged remains of the window pane.

Across the street and one building down, a man climbed out onto an already-burning rooftop below a second floor window. From there he jumped onto a hard-packed snowbank. The flames on his clothing died as he rolled to the bottom of the tiny icy hill.

High pitched screams came from a schoolhouse as timbers fell to block the building’s only exit. The four children who were already outside ran another twenty feet before turning to stare, teary-eyed, at the teacher and students on the other side of the burning doorway.

A mile away, Temet turned his head in the direction of his friends. At the moment they were less than shadows to his altered vision, but he drew comfort knowing they were there.

“This is the place,” he told them. “Hurry.”

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Related Entry: Rani's Dream
Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Mâvarin, Fiction

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Conclusion

2006-04-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

Or, "That Night at the Palace."

This is Chapter Two, Scenes Fourteen and Fifteen of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. As of tonight l have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. This is the last installment. I have no idea what I'll be posting next week, but it won't be Chapter Three. Any suggestions?

No recap tonight. Check the sidebar for past installments, or scroll down for a recapt on last week's entry.

Heirs of Mâvarin
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005, 2006 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Thirteen

Sabedu, 7th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

The night grew colder as dawn approached. Shela awakened an hour before sunrise to find Del and his friend curled together in sleep, Del’s head against Rani’s furry chest. When she woke again, Del was still there, although the sun had cleared the horizon and the tengrem lay awake beneath him. At Shela’s approach, Del awoke and stretched. The tengrem’s open-mouthed expression was something like a canine smile.

“Good morning, Shela,” Del said, yawning. “What’s for breakfast?”

Crel sat on a pile of old clothes, twisting the ring on her smallest finger.

“Even if this ring would fit a seven-month-old baby,” she said, “which I doubt, what is the point of showing it to me now? What do you mean by ‘stolen from the palace?’”

“I realize that this is going to take some explaining,” said Jamek. “Let me start with something you already know. I suppose you learned in school about the year the King disappeared?”

“Yes, but it never made any sense to me. One night they discovered that King Jor was missing from the Palace, and that Prince Carli and Princess Cathma were gone, too. A lot of people panicked, either running around looking for them or running away in case anyone tried to blame them for what happened.” Crel came to a sudden realization. “Which did you do, Uncle?”

“Neither. Go on.”

“There’s not much more to it. First Minister Awer and some of the others stayed despite everything, and kept the government going until the King and the royal infants reappeared three months later. Nobody ever really explained what had happened to them, but things got back to normal after that.”

Jamek nodded in satisfaction. “That’s what the whole kingdom was told. Now let me tell you what really happened.

”My name was Jami Baret then, and I ran the palace stables. King Jor and I had been friends since my father taught us both to ride, back when Jor was a young Prince. After King Shandi died, I didn’t see much of Jor; but he kept me at court, and in time I succeeded my father as stablemaster.

“Then one day, King Jor came down to the stable to see me. He was alone, and he looked worried. I thought he wanted me to saddle his horse, but that wasn’t why he was there at all.

“‘I think some kind of trouble is coming, terrible trouble,’ the King said. ‘I can’t explain it, but I’m almost sure it’s true. If something happens to me, I want you to take my children that very night, and bring them someplace safe.’”

“But—” Crel began.

Jamek raised a hand. “Hear me out. I argued with King Jor. I asked him what could possibly happen to him, safe in his palace. He said he didn’t know. I asked him whether he had confided in any of his ministers, men who were better equipped to cope with the problem than a lowborn stableman. He said he didn’t trust them. I asked him where I was to take the royal children if this unknown thing happened, and what I was to do when I got there. He handed me a bag of gold.

“‘It doesn’t matter where you go,’ he said, ‘as long as you take them away from Thâlemar. Give them new names, and keep them safe. The Kingdom may depend on what you do. Someday Mâvarin will need my children,’ he said. ‘At least, I hope so. I need you to keep them alive until that day comes. Guard the son,’ he added, and then he said, with a sudden smile, ‘and guard my daughter, too.’

“He went back into the Palace after that, and I never saw him again. The following night, Second Minister Belmer went to consult with the King about some urgent matter, but Jor was gone from his bedchamber. When they could not find him anywhere in the Palace, they raised the alarm. I checked the stable, saw that the King’s horse was missing, and hurried to the Palace nursery.

“The nurse was outside the children’s room—your room—crying and carrying on. She said that First Minister Awer had told her that Jor wanted the royal babes prepared for a journey, but now Minister Belmer said the King was gone and what was she to do? Then I knew that Jor was right to suspect a plot. I told the nurse that the First Minister wanted to see her. As soon as she left, I gathered up the two infants. You were already dressed. I wrapped you both in blankets and hurried into the corridor before anyone else came by. Once I reached the darkness outside, my bundles could as easily have been horse blankets as the royal children. I loaded you as securely as possible on my horse, and joined the searchers as they rode out the gate. When the searchers split up, I went my own way. I arrived at Liftlabeth, where my brother Jord lived, three days later.”

“Do you expect me to believe that I am Princess Cathma, and Del is Prince Carli? You’re not even really my uncle?”

“I expect you to believe the truth,” Jamek said.

“But this is ridiculous! Cathma and Carli aren’t missing! Even if they were, wouldn’t the King have sent for you once he returned safely to the Palace?”

“I’m sure he would have, if he could find me, and if he really had returned safely; but he never did. I still have a friend or two in Thâlemar, and I know the secret that most of the country does not even suspect. The man who has ruled as King Jor for the last fifteen years is an impostor. So are the royal children.”

Crel looked down at the ring Jamek had produced to prove his preposterous story. She had been unconsciously playing with it as Jamek talked, and in the few minutes she had worn it, the ring had grown. The pale gold band was now joined on the underside, and it was too loose for her smallest finger. She moved it to her ring finger, where it fitted perfectly. The inlaid Sun shone brightly for a moment, and then faded to the yellow gold of which it was made.

For a moment neither of them said anything. Jamek’s eyes were on her right hand. He looked uncomfortable, but not surprised. Behind him and around him, fine old clothes and fancy riding gear hinted at a life lived elsewhere, before the Barst Stables existed.

“I believe you,” said Princess Cathma.

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

http://www.mavarin.com/ - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Related Entry: Crel Merden's Journal, Entry #2

Related Entry: Shela Cados

Related Entry: Fayubi the Seer

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Mâvarin, Fiction

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Twelve

2006-04-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

Or, "Revelations."

This is Chapter Two, Scenes Twelve and Thirteen of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. This is the next to last installment.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One. Click here for a recap of the end of Chapter One and the beginning of Chapter Two. All installments to date of this novel excerpt may be easily reached from the sidebar.

In Chapter Two, Part Seven, Del finally tells Shela about Rani's transformation, and about the magic coin Rani found. Shela proposes to take Rani away from Liftlabeth, seeking a cure for him, and further information about the coin. She also says that Rani's situation may be part of a much larger problem. Del wants to go with Shela and Rani for Rani's sake. Shela disapproves, but agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Eight, an attempt by Del and Shela to cleanse any curse from the magic coin results in a vision of a tengrem attacking Jamek. Shela warns Del not to be overly influenced by this. They then visit Rithe Fost, who speaks mysteriously of having failed Rani, and charges Shela with helping him. She also tries to give Shela a stone from the necklace she wears, and mentions a place called Lake Taruc.

In Chapter Two, Part Nine, Del practices swordsmanship with his sister and uncle, and later sneaks out of the house with Shela, leaving behind a note. They go back to the Low Caves, where Rani is alarmed to learn that Del told Shela everything. Del manages to calm him down.

In Chapter Two, Part Ten, Shela, Rani and Del make plans to go to the selmûn Hall of Welcome at Odamas, where they hope to learn more about Rani's condition and other related issues. When they leave the cave, however, Crel and Jamek are there. Del's uncle and sister call out to him, but he turns and rides away with Rani and Shela.

In Chapter Two, Part Eleven, Del, Rani and Shela manage to evade Crel and Jamek. Crel, who spied on Del as he left the house, has been suspicious of her brother's behavior for most of the day. Returning from the failed pursuit, Jamek realizes that he must tell Crel the truth about her past for the sake of the twins' future.

Heirs of Mâvarin
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005, 2006 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Twelve

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

As Del finished with Pandar, Rani wandered into his field of vision. Again Del was startled by Rani’s behavior. This time he said something about it.

“Rani, are you doing what I think you’re doing?”

Rani lifted his snout a few inches and glanced over at Del. “Huuwwrr?”

“Are you eating grass?”

“Grrass,” Rani agreed. “Good.”

Rani resumed grazing as Del put away the curry comb and laid out his bedroll. When Del looked at Rani again, he was snuffling at an uneven patch of ground. Suddenly the tengrem dashed into the trees, his nose still near the ground, his bear-like arms outstretched. He was back a moment later, carrying something small and furry that struggled in his claws. Del watched in astonishment as Rani snapped the creature’s neck and stuffed the furry morsel in his mouth. When Del took a step toward Rani, the tengrem growled at him. Del backed off hastily. Shela stood quietly nearby, watching.

“It’s all right, Rani,” Del said. “I’m not going to take your food from you.” The tengrem cocked his head at Del as if listening. Del wasn’t sure Rani had understood his words, but the tengrem stopped growling. Then he took his prey out of his mouth and proceeded to tear flesh off it with his canine teeth, all the while watching Del.

Del tried again to get through to the part of Rani that had once been human. “Did you just catch that, Rani? What is it?”

“Rrrabbit.” The tengrem put the remains of the carcass in his mouth and crunched on it, bones and all. It was only after he swallowed what was left that a change came over Rani. The red flecks in his luminous yellow eyes gradually disappeared, replaced by bits of brown from Rani’s original eye color. Rani raised his hands, flexing and clenching the overlong fingers with their non-retractable pink claws. “I hate this,” Rani growled.

“What do you hate, Rani?” Shela asked.

“I’m nothing but an animal now,” Rani said disgustedly. “What’s the point in living like this, when I don’t—I don’t even know if therre’s a curre?”

“You’re not just an animal,” Del said. “Animals can’t talk, except maybe parrots.”

“A couple of minutes ago I couldn’t have talked, either. The part of me that used to be human was almost completely buried while I grrazed and hunted. If I ever decide that you’re food, you’ll die.”

“Then we’ll just have to keep reminding you that we’re friends, not food,” Del said. “I think you know that anyway, even when you go feral.”

“You’re too trrusting, Del. Can’t you see how much I’ve changed?”

“Of course I can,” Del said. “I also know who you are inside. What does it matter, really, if you go for a midnight graze, or hunt and eat your food raw? You’re still my best friend. Somewhere inside you, I think you remember who your friends are, no matter how feral you get.”

Rani turned to Shela. “Can’t you make him understand? I’m not safe to be arround. You two probably shouldn’t even trry to travel with a tengrem. I’ll only kill you in the end.”

“I think Del understands very well just who and what you are,” Shela said. “If I believed there was a significant chance of your hurting Del, I would not have permitted him to travel with you. Yet here we are, and I feel that Del is safe from your tengrem instincts. Del is not a rabbit, and even a wild animal does not eat its companions.”

“Exactly,” Del said. “So stop worrying about all this, and try to sleep, all right?”

Rani nodded his shaggy head. “All rright. But if I’ve killed and eaten you both by morning, don’t complain to me about it.”

Del laughed. “I promise,” he said.

Sabedu, 7th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY

Crel Merden was not happy. She was suddenly leaving her boring, comfortable life in Liftlabeth for an uncertain future in Thâlemar, the capital city. There wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

Furthermore, according to Jamek, she wasn’t even who she thought she was. The name “Crel Merden” was a lie. There was nothing she could do about that, either.

The whole situation was Del’s fault. If he hadn’t run off with the selmûn and the tengrem (what did he think he was doing?), Jamek wouldn’t suddenly have turned her life upside down. He might have waited another year to tell her, eased into it, maybe. Or he might not have told her at all. That would have suited Crel just fine.

Instead, her uncle had started acting strangely as soon as it became clear that Del would not be coming home with them that night. Jamek had stared at her all the way back from the Ot Lôven. It made her nervous. She told herself that Jamek was in shock. Probably Del’s desertion had Uncle Jamek worried that something would happen to her, too. But all Jamek had said was, “Go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

By the time Crel got up the next day, Uncle Jamek was dressed, and there were bedrolls and full saddlebags by the front door. “Pack whatever you think you’re going to need,” he told her. “We’ll be gone for some time.”

“Why?” Crel asked. “Where are we going, to find Del?”

“No,” Jamek answered. “I’m going after Del. But first I’m taking you to Thâlemar.”

“Thâlemar? Why? I want to stay here. What about the horses, the business, your duties as mayor—”

“I’ve already talked to Jord,” Jamek said calmly. “He and Bil Gorben will take over here. I’m sorry, Crel. I have to go, and I can’t leave you here.”

“I’ve never even been to Thâlemar!” she protested. “I don’t know anybody there.”

“Actually, you have been to Thâlemar,” Jamek said. “A long time ago.” He glanced thoughtfully at the shield on the wall, hesitated a moment, and removed it from its peg. Uncle Jamek’s two swords were already gone from their accustomed place.

“What do you need the shield for?” Crel asked. “Where are the swords?”

“Crel...” Jamek began tentatively. He looked so uncomfortable that Crel’s anger began to ebb.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Jamek had responded by taking her upstairs to the one room in the house that he always kept locked. Crel and her brother had gotten past the lock several times over the years, and done some discreet exploring among the old clothing, books, leather armor, tack, and other mildly interesting items that filled the storeroom. Even so, Crel had never come across the small ring of white gold that Jamek dug out of a hidden pouch and presented to her.

The ring was too tiny for any but her smallest finger, and even at that Crel had to pry apart the bands that curved around but did not touch on the underside. Instead of a stone, the band widened to accommodate an inlaid design of the Sun and the River, the royal seal of Mâvarin. The wavy blue lines that represented the River seemed to be moving subtly, up and down and right to left.

“What is this?” Crel asked.

“It is yours,” Jamek replied. “It was on your finger the night I stole you and your brother from the Palace at Thâlemar, fifteen years ago.”

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Related Entry: Crel Merden's Journal, Entry #2

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Mâvarin, Fiction

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Eleven

2006-03-25T22:22:00.000-07:00

Or, "The Runaway."

This is Chapter Two, the end of Scenes Nine plus Scenes Ten through Twelve of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. We're coming down the home stretch now - this takes us to the top of page 76! I figure that means I've got two more weeks of this before I have to find something else to post. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One. Click here for a recap of the end of Chapter One and the beginning of Chapter Two. All installments to date of this novel excerpt may be easily reached from the sidebar.

In Chapter Two, Part Seven, Del finally tells Shela about Rani's transformation, and about the magic coin Rani found. Shela proposes to take Rani away from Liftlabeth, seeking a cure for him, and further information about the coin. She also says that Rani's situation may be part of a much larger problem. Del wants to go with Shela and Rani for Rani's sake. Shela disapproves, but agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Eight, an attempt by Del and Shela to cleanse any curse from the magic coin results in a vision of a tengrem attacking Jamek. Shela warns Del not to be overly influenced by this. They then visit Rithe Fost, who speaks mysteriously of having failed Rani, and charges Shela with helping him. She also tries to give Shela a stone from the necklace she wears, and mentions a place called Lake Taruc.

In Chapter Two, Part Nine, Del practices swordsmanship with his sister and uncle, and later sneaks out of the house with Shela, leaving behind a note. They go back to the Low Caves, where Rani is alarmed to learn that Del told Shela everything. Del manages to calm him down.

In Chapter Two, Part Ten, Shela, Rani and Del make plans to go to the selmûn Hall of Welcome at Odamas, where they hope to learn more about Rani's condition and other related issues. When they leave the cave, however, Crel and Jamek are there. Del's uncle and sister call out to him, but he turns and rides away with Rani and Shela.

Heirs of Mâvarin
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005, 2006 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Nine

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

What happened next was like a nightmare. Jamek and Crel followed them into the trees, calling Del’s name. All Del could do was to ride after his friends and try not to be left behind. He could see his family behind him, Jamek’s torch casting flickering patterns of light and dark among the trees and on the ground. Jamek and Crel’s voice came again and again, battering Del with their fear and concern, but he could not answer. He urged Pandar even faster.

Now he was within ten feet of Seld’s hindquarters; astride her, Shela threw something Del could not see. Suddenly the night sky darkened. Behind him Del saw nothing: no trees, no pursuers, no stars. Crel and Jamek cried out in surprise, but Del could not see them or the torch Jamek carried. Ahead he could still distinguish Shela fairly well, and beyond her he could barely make out the monstrous form of his best friend.

Del rode on for what seemed like hours. Finally the horses and the tengrem slowed down, and Del’s heart no longer filled his body with its pounding. Shela released the spell-charm that had created the wall of darkness in their wake. Soon the horses were walking, and shortly after that they stopped. Del slid off Pandar, too exhausted to do more than remove the horse’s saddle before he collapsed on the stony ground.

Crel had been certain since early afternoon that her twin brother was plotting something. For one thing, Farni Danak was not someone she would expect Del to spend a whole morning with voluntarily, not even in exchange for a birthday present. For another, he did not seem to be terribly worried about Rani, or in shock, or anything. He merely seemed edgy, as he often was just before he did something stupid. Crel knew that questioning him would do no good, so she prepared to find out the hard way what he was plotting and, she hoped, why.

Still dressed, she lay on her bed in the dark and listened for Del sneaking around in the room below. For once, he did not climb out his window right away. Instead, he was in the next room, setting down something heavy with a light thud, and then creaking softly into the old chair at Uncle Jamek’s desk.

Quietly, Crel opened her door and looked down the stairs. Del was writing something by candlelight. He didn’t see her in the darkness above. Then the front door opened and Shela entered, her face in shadow as the moonlight behind her brought sudden color to the room. Crel ducked out of sight. When she looked again the front door was just closing. Del and Shela were gone.

Crel hurried downstairs and read the note. Then she opened the front door a crack, just in time to see Del emerging from the family stable on Pandar’s back. Shela was already there, waiting for Del on her own horse. Crel watched until they reached the end of the street, and turned north onto the River Road. For a moment she was tempted to follow Del on her own. Then she went upstairs and roused her uncle.

Shela was already finished with Seld by the time Del felt sufficiently recovered to see to his horse. Both horses were drinking from a stream that probably fed into the Misis somewhere west of them. The tengrem stood a short distance away from the horses, dark water swirling around his bony equine knees. As Del watched, Rani bent his head farther down than Del would have believed possible, and began to lap up water with his surprisingly long tongue.

Del watched Rani’s odd behavior for a long moment. Then he pulled himself to his feet and joined Shela and the horses at the edge of the streambed. The cold water felt good as Del splashed his hot face and neck. Somewhat revived, he replaced Pandar’s bridle with the halter and began to rub him down.

“Where are we, Shela?” he asked.

“This creek should lead us back to the river several hours downstream from your village,” Shela told him. “Odamas is half a day’s ride from where the two join.

“For now I think we should get some rest. I expect that Rani is tired after that run, as are the horses. We have all lost half a night’s sleep already.”

Rani lifted his dripping snout from the water. “I’m not tired at all. What—what if they find us again?”

“I doubt very much that anyone will find us tonight,” Shela said. “We are far from the road, and we left Jamek behind in the dark over an hour ago.”

“Well, if you’re sure we are safe,” Del said, “I really do need the sleep.”

“Safe?” said Rani. “How safe can you be with—with a tengrem arround? Maybe we did leave Jamek behind, but arre you safe around me?”

“I told you before: you won’t hurt me. You’re my friend.”

Rani shook his shaggy head doubtfully, but said nothing more.

Hours later, Jamek was still stunned by Del’s behavior. He was sure the boy had seen and recognized him. He thought he’d even heard Del say his name. But instead of coming to Jamek he had fled, as if Jamek were the enemy rather than the man who had raised him. Worse, Del had left in the company of that interfering selmûn, Shela, and, unbelievably, the tengrem itself.

The tengrem had called to Del and he had come, against all the bonds of family and reason. He had to be spell-struck or mindpushed, and the selmûn as well. Why else would Shela betray them so?

Jamek had pursued Del as best he could, and Crel, bless her, had stayed right with him in the flickering trees. Then, in an instant, all light had been blotted out around him. Jamek could not see his own horse, nor Crel’s. He had coaxed Peg to a slow walk in the unnatural darkness, and had nearly been thrown as his horse’s nose collided with an unseen tree. After that Jamek and Crel had dismounted to lead their horses through the invisible forest. It was not long before they stepped back into the moonlight on the River Road, but it seemed like hours. Del and the others were long gone. Once again, Jamek had failed to protect his ward. Jamek did not want to think about the consequences of his failure, but his tired mind came up with a variety of possibilities, all of them dire.

“We may as well go home,” he told Crel. “There is nothing more we can do tonight.”

Crel nodded. For once the girl was speechless. Jamek studied her as they turned toward the village. At sixteen, Crel was just beginning to look like a woman. Her sandy blond hair fell in waves past her shoulders to just above her developing figure, and her oval face lacked the freckles and blemishes that marred the complexions of most of her peers. Her nose was larger than average, but smaller than Del’s, and her eyes were blue under expressive blond eyebrows. Although she was short, boyish in clothing and manner, and seldom smiled, still the overall effect was a pleasing one. It was a pity she was so frequently annoying. In her own way Crel was as much a trial to him as Del was, and Jamek had only himself to blame.

In this, too, Jamek had failed.

Fifteen years before, Jamek had brought the twins safely out of Thâlemar, and for fifteen years he had raised them as best he could. Now Del was riding through the countryside under the spell of a monster that had already killed his best friend, and the decision Jamek had been putting off for years could be avoided no longer.

In the morning he would take Crel to Thâlemar, where she could be kept safe while Jamek continued the search for her brother. Pol Ramet would take her, he was sure; Pol could be trusted to do what must be done. Without Jamek, Crel was no longer safe in Liftlabeth, particularly if Shela knew more than she had ever said, and had told the lurking tengremen. They had been heading north when the darkness fell: toward Thâlemar, perhaps, but more likely toward Odamas, a day’s ride north. Perhaps the selmûnen there would rescue Del from the madness that bound him to the tengrem, and Jamek and Crel would not need to go all the way to Thâlemar just yet.

Even if that happened, though, the twins’ quiet life in Liftlabeth was over. They were nearly adults now, old enough to learn what they needed to know, and begin to take on their adult responsibilities. Jamek had already waited too long, and now risked losing Del because of it. He must not fail with Crel. In the morning, after fifteen years of lies and evasions, Jamek would have to tell her the truth.

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Related Entry: Crel Merden's Journal, Entry #2

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Mâvarin, Fiction

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Ten

2006-03-18T20:12:00.000-07:00

Or, "Leaving Liftlabeth."

This is Chapter Two, Scenes Eight and Nine of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One. Click here for a recap of the end of Chapter One and the beginning of Chapter Two. All installments to date of this novel excerpt may be easily reached from the sidebar.

In Chapter Two, Part Seven, Del finally tells Shela about Rani's transformation, and about the magic coin Rani found. Shela proposes to take Rani away from Liftlabeth, seeking a cure for him, and further information about the coin. She also says that Rani's situation may be part of a much larger problem. Del wants to go with Shela and Rani for Rani's sake. Shela disapproves, but agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Eight, an attempt by Del and Shela to cleanse any curse from the magic coin results in a vision of a tengrem attacking Jamek. Shela warns Del not to be overly influenced by this. They then visit Rithe Fost, who speaks mysteriously of having failed Rani, and charges Shela with helping him. She also tries to give Shela a stone from the necklace she wears, and mentions a place called Lake Taruc.

In Chapter Two, Part Nine, Del practices swordsmanship with his sister and uncle, and later sneaks out of the house with Shela, leaving behind a note. They go back to the Low Caves, where Rani is alarmed to learn that Del told Shela everything. Del manages to calm him down.

Heirs of Mâvarin
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005, 2006 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Nine

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

Shela entered the cavern. “Hello, Rani. Your speech is much improved since I saw you last.”

The tengrem nodded. “Thank—thank you forr believing me, Lady Shela. What happens now?”

“Now we take you away from here, before Jamek and the others come looking for you.”

“Do you think they’ll come tonight?”

“No, but they may return as early as tomorrow morning. We need to be well away by then.”

“Shela, did—did you figure out it was me? I think you saved my life.”

“No, but I had seen the other tengrem earlier in the day, and heard it speak. It was larger than you are, its fur was a lighter brown, and its mode of speech was very different.

“Even when the hunt began, I was uncertain about the justice in pursuing a creature that had attacked no one. The few sheep Suri Pelch lost did not seem worth the life of a creature with human intelligence. Why, I wondered, would a tengrem linger near Liftlabeth, so many weeks’ travel from the tengrem stronghold in Gathmak? Why did it refuse to leave the area when the hunters from your village demanded that it do so or perish? I was half convinced that the situation required investigation rather than bloodletting.

“Then when I thought you were dead, I was quite ready to kill the tengrem I saw, until you called my name. You refused to fight Jamek and the others, growled words I only half-understood, and behaved in such an odd manner that I did not know what to think. I hesitated. A selmûn trusts her instincts, and mine told me that this particular tengrem was an innocent creature.”

“Don’t be too surre,” Rani said. “I...I did kill. I don’t know what I might do if...if they chase me again.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Del promised. “When they come back tomorrow, we’ll be long gone.”

“If you are ready,” Shela added, “we will begin our journey now.”

Together the three of them left Rani’s cavern. “Wherre are we going?” Rani asked. “It seems to me I’m not safe anywherre.”

“We shall go to Odamas first,” Shela told him. “The selmûn strongholds do not allow outsiders within their walls, but there is a place outside each one where council is taken with visitors who seek selmûn help. I am required to report to my lord in any case. With your permission, that report will include a request for far more aid than I can give you on my own.”

“Can I trrust them?” Rani asked.

“I would trust my lord and his council with my life. Indeed, I have done so, on at least one occasion.” The candle Shela carried lit her smile of remembrance.

“Can—can they curre me?”

Shela shook her head. “Selmûn magic is not like the magic of Mâton. Ordinary healing we can do, and some minor curses we can lift. Transformation magic is beyond our power and knowledge. Still, there is much that we do know, and much more we seek to learn. Although we cannot restore your humanity at Odamas, the knowledge we gain at the Hall of Welcome may put us on the proper road.”

They had reached the Grey Wall. Pandar pawed nervously when the tengrem approached, but Seld remained quiet. A few soft words from Shela kept both horses under control as they were untied from the hitching post and mounted.

“Couldn’t Rani stay at Odamas,” Del asked, “while we look for the cure?”

“That may be possible,” Shela said, “if Lord Shari agrees. I am not certain it is wise, however.”

“You mentioned Mâton,” Rani said. “Would—might the mages there have the curre?”

“Possibly they would. Whether they would divulge it is a question I cannot answer. The Mages of Mâton have their own purposes, and helping others is not usually one of them. That is one reason why the Mages and the Wanderers are so often at odds.”

“Why?” Rani whined. “Why wouldn’t they help me?”

“Why did a mage cause Queen Genva to die in childbirth?” Shela countered. “Why did the mages not prevent the kidnapping of the King? I am sorry, Rani. I do not mean to imply that no mage would help you, but such aid is unlikely to come from Mâton.” She paused a moment as if in thought. “I do have one friend among the mages who is not like those of Mâton. Perhaps we should go to Thâlemar and seek his help. His name is Dupili. He is not a transformation mage, but he is an expert in talisman magic.”

They had just reached the woods beyond the caves. A fiery glow from somewhere near the river cast fitful, frightening shadows among the trees. “What’s that light?” Del said.

Two people on horses rode toward them up the river path. One carried a torch. When Del saw the man’s face, fear shocked his stomach and tightened his throat until he could hardly breathe. “Uncle Jamek!” he croaked. Behind Jamek, Del now recognized Crel in the moonlight.

His heart pounding, Del looked around for Rani. The tengrem was already bolting for the woods beyond the Low Caves, with Shela just behind him, riding low on Seld’s neck.

“Del!” Jamek called out.

“Del! Come on!” Rani called from the other direction. The tengrem paused at the edge of the wood.

Del hurried after his friend.

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Related Entry: Crel Merden's Journal, Entry #2

Technorati Tags: Mâvarin, Fantasy, Fiction

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Nine

2006-03-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

Or, "The Runaway."

This is Chapter Two, Scenes Eight and Nine of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One. Click here for a recap of the end of Chapter One and the beginning of Chapter Two. All installments to date of this novel excerpt may be easily reached from the sidebar.

In Chapter Two, Part Seven, Del finally tells Shela about Rani's transformation, and about the magic coin Rani found. Shela proposes to take Rani away from Liftlabeth, seeking a cure for him, and further information about the coin. She also says that Rani's situation may be part of a much larger problem. Del wants to go with Shela and Rani for Rani's sake. Shela disapproves, but agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Eight, an attempt by Del and Shela to cleanse any curse from the magic coin results in a vision of a tengrem attacking Jamek. Shela warns Del not to be overly influenced by this. They then visit Rithe Fost, who speaks mysteriously of having failed Rani, and charges Shela with helping him. She also tries to give Shela a stone from the necklace she wears, and mentions a place called Lake Taruc.

Heirs of Mâvarin
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005, 2006 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Nine

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

An hour before, Del would gladly have left the area without so much as a note to his sister. Now he was torn. Part of him wanted to rush to Rani’s side and wait there. But having seen how badly Rithe missed her son, Del also found himself wanting to spend one last evening with his own family before leaving them behind. Shela escorted Del to his home, and then rode away again to buy provisions for the journey.

By the time Del returned Pandar to the family stable and rubbed him down, Jamek and Crel were back from the Comerdu market stalls. Jamek spent the next hour giving the twins a swordsmanship lesson. Del and Crel had each had a few sessions with the sword since turning fifteen, but now that they were sixteen, Jamek said he intended to start their training in earnest. Del used the ornate but dull-bladed sword that would one day be his. Crel practiced with Jamek’s best sword, the one he’d worn while hunting the tengrem.

Del tried to pay attention to the lesson, knowing it was his last chance to learn a skill he might need on the road. But the more his uncle drilled him in the basic movements, the more he tried to impress on Del the importance of defensive skills in “these dangerous times,” the less Del was able to concentrate on the task at hand. Crel was better at the parry and thrust motions than Del was, although she tired more quickly. Perhaps she was helped by the fact that she was using a lighter sword—or perhaps not. Crel was a better student than Del, no matter what the subject was. She always had been. Del had always been slightly bothered by this fact, but not enough to be willing to work harder at his studies—until now.

During the evening meal Del talked about the visit to Rithe Fost, leaving out any hint that he planned to help Shela keep her promises to Rani’s mother. As before, Jamek said that Shela’s ideas about the second tengrem and Rani’s disappearance were foolish, and unfair to the bereaved mother. He seemed relieved to hear that the selmûn was leaving the area. “Let her search for Rani all she wants, and good luck to her,” Jamek said. “While she is gone we will do our searching close by, and do what we must to protect the village from that monster.”

Later, Del astonished his uncle and sister both when he excused himself to go organize his chronically untidy room. By the time Jamek and Crel were in bed, Del was packed. Then, taking pen and ink from Jamek’s mayoral desk, he began to write a note.

Del had just put the ink away when the door opened and Shela appeared. Silently he took up his pack and followed her out. Soon Pandar was saddled, and Del was on his way back to the Ot Lôven.

“I didn’t hear you coming just now,” Del remarked.

“Seld can be very quiet when I need her to be,” Shela replied.

“I’m glad,” Del said. “I’d hate to have had to explain to my uncle where I was going in the middle of the night, or to Crel, either. As it is,” he added with a grin, “I bet they didn’t hear a thing.”

“I do not entirely approve of this behavior,” Shela said ruefully. “Your family will fear for your safety while you are gone.”

“They shouldn’t be too concerned. I left a note.” Just as Uncle Jamek told me to, Del thought.

“What did you write in your note?”

“Just that I’m going with you to look for Rani, and that I may be gone for several days. I also told them not to worry, that you’d watch out for me.”

“You said earlier today that your uncle and sister did not care about you,” Shela pointed out.

“Well,” Del admitted, “maybe they do care, but they still don’t need me. Not like Rani does.” And they’ll still have each other, Del thought. Crel is the one Uncle Jamek counts on, anyway.

It was nearly midnight by the time they reached the wooded area near the caves. Del lit a candle for each of them, gave directions to Rani’s cavern, and then went on ahead while Shela tied up their horses.

The tengrem was in exactly the same place as before. This time, Del had no trouble finding Rani in his darkened corner. “I’m back,” Del said quietly.

The tengrem looked up. “Del! I was worried you…that you wouldn’t come.”

Del continued to approach Rani slowly, coming closer than he had dared to do that morning. “Of course I came,” he said. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

“What—what did you find out?”

Del shook his head. “Not very much so far. But I brought help.”

“You brrought someone heerre?” The tengrem jumped up, alarmed. Del could see the red flecks forming in his friend’s eyes, flickering by candlelight. “You prromised not to tell!” the tengrem roared. “I trrusted you!”

Del wanted to run away, but he didn’t. He knew that would only agitate Rani further. “Calm down, Rani,” he said, extending his hands. “It’s only Shela. Don’t get mad at me; just listen. We can’t do this by ourselves. We don’t even know what to do. Even if we did, people wouldn’t let us do it, not alone. They think we’re still children.”

A plume of smoke rose from Rani’s nostrils and disappeared into the gloom. “I’m not a child,” Rani said grimly. “Not any morre.”

“You know what I mean. You need more help than I can give you. So when I showed Shela the coin, I told her about you, too.”

The tengrem was quiet for a moment, and then he lay down again, his supple legs folding as a cow’s would. Del guessed that his friend was not going to get angry after all. This time.

Rani sighed. “I suppose you’re rright. I was worried, because she trried...but you’re rright. Shela wouldn’t betray me. I do need her help. Is—is she here now?”

“Yes.”

“Tell herr she can come in.”

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

Related entry: Crel Merden's Journal, entry #1

Related entry: A Letter from Rithe Fost

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Eight

2006-03-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

Or, "More Mysteries."

This is Chapter Two, Scenes Six and Seven of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One. Click here for a recap of the end of Chapter One and the beginning of Chapter Two. All installments to date of this novel excerpt may be easily reached from the sidebar.

In Chapter Two, Part Seven, Del finally tells Shela about Rani's transformation, and about the magic coin Rani found. Shela proposes to take Rani away from Liftlabeth, seeking a cure for him, and further information about the coin. She also says that Rani's situation may be part of a much larger problem. Del wants to go with Shela and Rani for Rani's sake. Shela disapproves, but agrees.

Heirs of Mâvarin

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Eight

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

The first thing to do, according to Shela, was to try to make Rani’s talisman as safe to touch as possible. Del chose a place not far from Rani’s tree, in a little scramble-down ravine close by the River Road. Here they dug two small holes in the ground, which Del filled with water from the river, using the leather flask he always carried. Shela floated certain common flowers sacred to Thâle (mostly dandelions and Queen’s lace) in each little pool, stirred the water clockwise with one finger, and then removed the flowers.

“Now what?” Del asked.“We are ready for the cleansing itself,” Shela said. “The coin must be washed first in one pool, and then in the second, with a stirring-stick, accompanied by a brief prayer. The basins must be allowed to drain naturally, and the stick buried. Only then will the talisman be safe to touch and to carry.”

“But Rani carried it with him,” Del protested, “unwrapped, all the way to the Ot Lôven.”

“It seems likely that the talisman had already had its full effect on Rani by that time. My present concern is with new victims.”

The water in the first pool boiled when Del dropped in the coin. The clear water became blood red. In a moment, however, the tainted water was still again,. More quickly than seemed possible for the rain-drenched soil, the tiny pit drained itself, and the talisman lay on dry clay.

“The curse is very strong,” Shela said. “Even with the second pool, the best we can do here is weaken it for a time.”

Using a stick, Del pushed the coin into the newly filled second pool while Shela murmured the words of the ritual. At once the pool glowed as if Del had dropped the sun into it.

“What is this?” said Shela.

As if by a trick of the light, reflecting the changing colors of a stormy sunset (but it was not sunset), the water shone first with a golden light, and then with the dark silver of carbon steel. On the pool’s surface an image formed.

Something large and dark stood in a shaded forest, too far away at first to see properly. The pool’s image closed on this figure as if Del were rushing toward it, crashing through leaves and branches. Now Del saw that the dark brown creature was a tengrem, pacing nervously, looking into the trees at something Del could not see. A man walked into sight, his sword drawn. It was Del’s uncle. The tengrem backed away. Jamek hurried toward it. While Del watched helplessly, the tengrem reared as Jamek reached him, crashing down on both man and sword.

The image faded. There was a small pool of clear water, already half empty, with a silver coin at its bottom. Nothing more.

“Oh, Gods,” said Del, trembling. “He can’t do that. He can’t. They’ll both be killed.”

“Listen to me, Del,” said Shela. She held his gaze with her calm grey eyes. “We do not know that this is a true vision. What Rani’s talisman showed us could be truth, a lie, a warning, a possibility, or an image of your own fear.”

Del stood up. “We have to go right now. We have to get Rani away from here before this can happen.”

“Would you leave as you are, without so much as a jacket or a slice of bread for your journey? You must not sacrifice reason to emotion, Del, or we are doomed before we start. We must make what preparations we can, and leave tonight.”

Shela insisted on their promised visit to the Fost home. Rani’s Aunt Misa admitted them reluctantly and led them to the sick woman’s bed. Rani’s mother, a short, dark-haired woman, was thin and weak-looking at the best of times. Now, as she lay still in her white dressing gown, the bed seemed to swallow her up. Her face was almost as white as the gown; her neck almost the color of the quartz necklace she always wore.

“You’re Rani’s friends,” Rithe Fost said. “Have you seen him?” Her voice was raspy, and she seemed to have trouble catching her breath. Del hung his head, unable to answer. He was uncertain how Shela wanted to handle this.

“I have not seen your son since yesterday near the river,” Shela said. “Nevertheless, we bring you hope. We have reason to believe that Rani is alive. If we can, we will return him to you.”

“Do you know what happened?” Rithe asked. “What really happened?”

“I believe that we do,” Shela acknowledged.

“Where is he?”

“I am sorry, but I cannot tell you where he is.”

Rithe’s fingers clasped the necklace like a lifeline, and her tense body relaxed a little. “The men who came here last night thought me mad to believe Rani might still be alive. I could not get them to call off their vendetta against the tengrem. It was all I could do to keep my hope.”

“You must continue to hope and believe, Rithe, whether it is days or months before you see Rani again. When he returns, in whatever condition, he will need to find his mother safe and well.”

“If you can really help him,” Rani’s mom said wistfully, “I will find my strength again. I failed him; I could have helped him if I’d known, but I didn’t know, nobody knew....” Rithe’s eyes had wandered as she said this. Now she looked up at Shela. “If you could help him in my place, it would mean everything to me.” Rithe reached up and took the selmûn’s hand in her own.

“We will do all we can,” Shela promised.

Tears stood in Rithe’s eyes. “Thank you, Lady Wanderer. I will wait for my son’s return.”

“Farewell, then,” said Shela.

Rithe gave Shela’s hand another quick squeeze and released it. “Wait,” Rithe said. “Take this with you. Give it to him for me.” She began to tug at one of the stones of her necklace.

“Rithe, no!” her sister cried. “You mustn’t!”

Rani’s mother fell back against her pillow as if even that small effort had been too much for her. “Lake Taruc,” she whispered. “Please, help my son....”

“She needs to rest now,” Rani’s aunt said. She rearranged the bedclothes about Rithe, her angry glance toward Shela at odds with her calm words. As she bent down, Del noticed that Rani’s Aunt Misa wore a necklace like her sister’s, hidden beneath the lace collar of her pale yellow dress.

Shela and Del turned to go. Despite her strange words, or maybe because of them, Del’s heart went out to Rani’s mother. He wanted to tell her everything, but dared not. “We’ll bring Rani home,” he said. “I promise!”

When they were outside again, Del said, “Does Rani’s mother know what’s really going on somehow?”

Shela said, “I am certain she knows something about Rani’s situation that we do not.”

“I wish she would tell us what it is,” Del said. “We didn’t trust her with the whole truth, so she didn’t trust us, either.”

“Yet I think we each said what was necessary,” Shela said. “Come. Jamek is expecting you at home, and I have much to do before tonight.”

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

Related entry: Crel Merden's Journal, entry #1

Related entry: A Letter from Rithe Fost

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Seven

2006-02-26T00:32:00.000-07:00

Or, "Telling Shela."

This is Chapter Two, Scene Four, Part Four (plus all of Scene Five) of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One. All installments to date of this novel excerpt may be easily reached from the sidebar.

In Chapter One, Part Nine, Del finds someone in the Ot Lôven (Low Caves) outside Liftlabeth, a half-hidden creature with a growly voice and yellow eyes. Meanwhile, Jamek finds tengrem tracks outside Del's bedroom.

In Chapter Two, Part One, Del runs away from the creature in the cavern, but comes back after it doesn't pursue him. The tengrem says it just wants to talk to Del. It's the one who tapped out the message the night before--and its name, so it claims, is Rani Fost.

In Chapter Two, Part Two, Del believes the tengrem as it tells what really happened. Rani killed the original tengrem with the coin that became a sword. The tengrem fell in the river and became a human body. Rani discovered he had become a tengrem himself, but was unable to express himself adequately to the hunters. He asks Del to research the coin with Shela, to ask whether there's a way for a tengrem to be human again - and to keep Rani's secret. Del agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Three, Jamek worries about the tengrem tracks outside Del's window, and Del's absence from home. Jamek is called away by Crel as Lady Shela arrives to see him. Meanwhile, Rani discovers a taste for grass and flowers, and kills a fox and her young on instinct before recovering his human reason and sensibilities.

In Chapter Two, Part Four, Del establishes an alibi as to where he's been, and goes home. Uncle Jamek is angry, but Del claims to have been arranging for a birthday gift for Crel. Jamek invites Shela to stay for the afternoon meal. Shela accepts the invitation.

In Chapter Two, Part Five, Del accompanies Shela into the stable, but is unable to find a way to tell her about Rani in the short time before the meal. As they eat, Jamek makes it very clear that he's certain that the tengrem by the tree is a murderer and must be killed, regardless of Shela's vieews to the contrary. Shela mentions that Rani's mother Rithe does not share Jamek's opinion.

In Chapter Two, Part Six, Shela says that Rithe did not want anyone to pursue the tengrem. Jamek thinks this is madness, but although Shela agrees Rithe is not well, she doesnot consider her crazy. Shela and Jamek devise a plan to keep the villagers, especially Del and Crel, safe from any tengremen or other murderers, based on strength in numbers. Del worries that the new restrictions will make it even harder for him to help Rani.

Heirs of Mâvarin

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Seven

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

When the meal finally ended, Shela invited Del to accompany her to the Fost home to see Rani’s mother. To Del’s surprise and relief, Jamek agreed. “Good,” he said. “I don’t really need him with us at the Market, and seeing Rani’s mother might convince him of the seriousness of the situation.”

“I know it’s serious,” Del said grimly.

Shela looked Del, and again he felt uncomfortable under her glance. “Yes, I am certain that you do,” she said.

“Well, I’m not so certain,” Jamek said. “If he knew it, he would not have ridden off like that. If you can do something with him, Shela, then I’ll be grateful to you. I can’t have Del causing any more trouble, at least until the danger is over.”

“Do you want to come with me, Del?” Shela asked.

“Yes, thank you, Lady Wanderer,” Del said. It was the best chance he had, the only chance, and he was sure that Shela had contrived it. The strange part was that Jamek liked the plan. Del wondered whether Jamek wanted Shela with him as a nurse, a counselor, a bodyguard, or all three. Maybe Del was meant to spy on the selmûn for his uncle. It didn’t matter; at least it gave him the opportunity he needed.

“If you are ready to speak, Del,” Shela said when they were out of sight of the Barst home, “then I am ready to listen. What did you wish to discuss?”

“Do you know anything about magic coins, or even cursed coins?” Del asked.

For the first time that day the selmûn looked surprised, but she answered calmly. “I have some knowledge of charms and talismans, which occasionally look like coins. Do you have such an object?”

“I do. It’s here in my pocket.”

“May I see it?”

“Do we have to do it here?” Del asked, looking around nervously. They were riding near the center of the village proper. On one side of them, on the street that led back to the Barst stable and Baret smithy, people were coming and going from a small tavern. On the others, a few neat thatched roof cottages drew somewhat less foot traffic. A pictorial wooden sign on the front of one indicated the home of the carpet weaver, Farni’s father. Another belonged to the town’s master potter. The marketplace was farther on. There were few people about near the boy and selmûn, but those that were glanced curiously at them as they passed.

“Do you desire more privacy?” Shela asked.

“I insist on it, Lady Shela.”

“Very well. I am certain you can find a place where we may speak undisturbed.” Del looked at her, unsure whether Shela was mocking him. He led the way through the village to the River Road. After a few minutes, Shela said, “This is where I met your friend yesterday.”

“I thought it might be,” Del acknowledged. “That used to be his favorite climbing tree right there.”

“Shall we have our discussion here?”

“We may as well.” Del dismounted and walked to the river’s edge. “Is this where the body was?”

Shela pointed. “It was there, underneath the beech tree.”

Del looked, but there was no longer anything to distinguish the fatal spot from any other part of the river.

“Is there a connection between the events of yesterday and the coin you believe to be magical or cursed?” Shela asked gently as Del continued to stare into the water.

“Lady Wanderer, I know that it’s cursed.” Del reached into his pocket and drew it out, still in its protective handkerchief, still a coin as it had been from the moment he reached the sunlight beyond the Grey Wall. “I have it wrapped to guard against touching it.” He took a deep breath. “As for what happened here yesterday, something very different would probably have happened without it.” He laid the handkerchief on the ground and carefully removed the folds of cloth until the talisman was revealed. Shela, who so rarely seemed surprised by anything, looked truly astonished when she saw it.

The coin was of silver, but it showed no trace of tarnish or wear. Instead of the rough stamping and irregular edges that marked the silver of Mâvarin currency, Rani’s talisman was an even circle, carefully etched with a protective rune and the image of a sword.

“Where did you get this?” Shela asked.

“From the tengrem,” Del said grimly. “The second one you saw, not the first.”

“Tell me about the second tengrem,” Shela said.

“Rani asked me to show you the coin,” Del concluded, “but to reveal his whereabouts to no one. I have decided to confide in you because you’re his friend too, and we really need your help. Will you betray him, or help him?”

“What help I can offer, he shall have,” the selmûn promised. “Indeed, we must act soon. Your uncle is determined to renew the hunt, and the Ot Lôven will not hide a tengrem for long.”

Del was relieved to hear that his trust in Shela had not been misplaced. “You agree that my uncle and the others wouldn’t believe that the tengrem is Rani?”

“I strongly suspect that they would consider the tengrem’s claim to be no more than a cruel lie. Your fellow villagers believe that such creatures are inherently evil, and that this particular one is a proven killer. Nothing we say is likely to change that belief.”

“Then what are we to do?” Del asked.

“I must take him away from here, seeking both the cure and the causes of his affliction. What happened beneath this tree may affect far more than Rani alone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If Rani’s form is a disease,” Shela explained, “then he is not its first victim. If it is a curse, than many have been cursed, possibly with as little reason. There are hundreds of tengremen in the South, and yet we know very little about them. My people have learned that many of them, possibly all of them, were once human beings. Lord Peli suspects that in some cases the transformations are voluntary. If this is true, what does that mean for your friend? If not, what changes them? What changed Rani?

“The talisman concerns me especially. It is not some common coin to be found lying in the road. I fear it may be part of some greater trouble, one that could threaten Mâvarin as a whole. The first tengrem we saw yesterday expressed a similar concern, albeit incoherently.”

“I don’t see how a coin can do all that, even if it is cursed,” Del said. “All I care about is my friend. If you can help him by taking him away from Liftlabeth, I’m going too.”

“Is your friendship with Rani so great,” Shela asked quietly, “that you would forsake your uncle and your sister to wander with him?”

“Rani has been a better friend to me than Uncle Jamek and Crel put together,” Del said. “He has cared when they have not. He also needs me, and they don’t.”

“I think someday you will find you are wrong about that,” Shela remarked. “However, if you choose to accompany us, I shall take you.”

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

Use the sidebar to get to individual installments of past fiction.

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Six

2006-02-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

Or, "The Longest Meal"

This is Chapter Two, Scene Four, Part Three of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One. All installments to date of this novel excerpt may be easily reached from the sidebar.

In Chapter One, Part Nine, Del finds someone in the Ot Lôven (Low Caves) outside Liftlabeth, a half-hidden creature with a growly voice and yellow eyes. Meanwhile, Jamek finds tengrem tracks outside Del's bedroom.

In Chapter Two, Part One, Del runs away from the creature in the cavern, but comes back after it doesn't pursue him. The tengrem says it just wants to talk to Del. It's the one who tapped out the message the night before--and its name, so it claims, is Rani Fost.

In Chapter Two, Part Two, Del believes the tengrem as it tells what really happened. Rani killed the original tengrem with the coin that became a sword. The tengrem fell in the river and became a human body. Rani discovered he had become a tengrem himself, but was unable to express himself adequately to the hunters. He asks Del to research the coin with Shela, to ask whether there's a way for a tengrem to be human again - and to keep Rani's secret. Del agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Three, Jamek worries about the tengrem tracks outside Del's window, and Del's absence from home. Jamek is called away by Crel as Lady Shela arrives to see him. Meanwhile, Rani discovers a taste for grass and flowers, and kills a fox and her young on instinct before recovering his human reason and sensibilities.

In Chapter Two, Part Four, Del establishes an alibi as to where he's been, and goes home. Uncle Jamek is angry, but Del claims to have been arranging for a birthday gift for Crel. Jamek invites Shela to stay for the afternoon meal. Shela accepts the invitation.

In Chapter Two, Part Five, Del accompanies Shela into the stable, but is unable to find a way to tell her about Rani in the short time before the meal. As they eat, Jamek makes it very clear that he's certain that the tengrem by the tree is a murderer and must be killed, regardless of Shela's vieews to the contrary. Shela mentions that Rani's mother Rithe does not share Jamek's opinion.

Heirs of Mâvarin

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Six

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

Crel looked almost as startled as Del felt. “She doesn’t?” Crel said.

“She does not,” Shela said. “She maintains that her son is alive, and begs that we not pursue any tengremen because of him.”

“Yes, I heard her,” Jamek said. “Madness!”

“It is true that Rithe Fost has taken to her bed since word was brought to her yesterday, but I do not doubt her sanity,” Shela said.

Rani’s mom always seemed rather frail anyway, Del thought, although she had always found the energy to support and raise her son. She was also a moody woman with a short temper, especially when she perceived any threat to Rani’s health or happiness. Del could easily believe that Rani’s disappearance had proved too much for her.

“Encouraging Rithe’s hopes will only hurt her in the end,” Jamek said. “Rani is almost certainly dead, whether there’s one tengrem out there or twenty. We need to find his body and kill the tengrem that murdered him, whether Rithe wants us to do so or not. We didn’t succeed today, but tomorrow it will be a different story. We’ll catch it. We have to.”

Del shuddered. I have to get Rani away from Liftlabeth tonight, he thought. But how?

“What will you do if it rains again tomorrow?” Shela asked.

“I’ll hunt it in the rain, alone if necessary! This is urgent. You saw those tracks.”

A look passed between Jamek and Shela. Del got the impression that there was something they weren’t saying, but he was afraid to ask what it was.

“It would be very foolish of you to hunt alone. What will happen to your niece and your nephew, Jamek, if you are killed?”

Jamek looked startled. Apparently he had not thought of the possibility. “All right,” he said, “but we must do something. The children must be protected.”

“With a killer in the area, tengrem or human, no one should be left alone,” Shela said. “The children should be supervised. The adolescents and adults must stay together as much as possible, especially outside the village.”

“Agreed,” Jamek said. “That especially applies to you, Del. I want no more frights like the one I had today. Crel, I want Del with you when you go out to the stables.”

“All right, Uncle,” Crel said. “Maybe that way he’ll do more of the work.”

Del sank in his chair, his annoyance with Crel unimportant compared with the larger problem. How could he protect Rani if Jamek was watching him all the time? Unless Del got Shela’s help, the hunters would find Rani and kill him, and Del wouldn’t be able to prevent it.

Jamek and Shela continued to discuss the situation, and together they formed a plan. After the meal, Jamek would go to the Market, asking everyone to see that no one in Liftlabeth, particularly children, went out alone; and recruiting villagers to do what must be done. Tomorrow, all the children and the adolescents of Liftlabeth, even the older ones, would be kept safe at the village school, while caretakers watched the invalids, preferably in groups for added safety. As many other adults as possible would hunt for the tengrem or tengremen, and for Rani, dead or alive.

For Del, the situation grew worse with every word Jamek spoke. Rani was in more danger than ever, and Del’s movements were more restricted than ever. Would Del get the opportunity to speak to Shela privately as promised? If he told her the truth, would she help? If not, what other chance did Rani have?

Del considered telling his uncle what had really happened, on the hope that somehow Jamek would believe him and spare Rani. But now the discussion had turned back to the question of how many tengremen were involved, and whether the one they met at the river was Rani’s killer. Jamek was barely polite as Shela expressed her doubts. If Jamek couldn’t believe that Shela knew the difference between a large tengrem with a deep voice and a smaller one with a higher voice, how could he believe the far more impossible story Del wanted to tell him?

So he said nothing, and forced himself to sit quietly as plans for his friend’s death were discussed. He could hardly keep his seat and listen to these things, but speaking out would be much worse. Instead he watched Shela, praying desperately to Mâshela and Thâle that somehow the selmûn would get him—and Rani—out of this mess. If Del said one word during rest of the meal, it was to decline Crel’s offer of a second helping of soup.

When she wasn’t serving, Crel sat coolly and quietly, listening to the discussion as if it were no more important than a friendly argument about the best length for a horse’s reins. She offered few comments, which was unusual, and didn’t seem to care about anything beyond the soup and salad she had made. How could Crel keep up her role as cook and hostess, Del wondered, while their world was changing around them? She didn’t know the truth, but what seemed to be going on was bad enough. Didn’t she care about Rani’s disappearance, or people in danger, or the curtailment of her own freedom? Or was this her way of coping?

Whether Crel cares or not, whether Jamek believes me or not, whether Shela helps me or not, I’ve still got to save Rani from the villagers, Del thought. It would make it a lot easier, though, if at least one of them was on our side. Del thought briefly of confiding in his sister, but decided against it. If she thought Del was wrong about Rani, she would undoubtedly tell Jamek what Del had said, and Rani would be in even worse trouble than he was now.

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Five

2006-02-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

Or, "Speechless."

This is Chapter Two, Scene Four, Part Two of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One.

In Chapter One, Part Nine, Del finds someone in the Ot Lôven (Low Caves) outside Liftlabeth, a half-hidden creature with a growly voice and yellow eyes. Meanwhile, Jamek finds tengrem tracks outside Del's bedroom.

In Chapter Two, Part One, Del runs away from the creature in the cavern, but comes back after it doesn't pursue him. The tengrem says it just wants to talk to Del. It's the one who tapped out the message the night before--and its name, so it claims, is Rani Fost.

In Chapter Two, Part Two, Del believes the tengrem as it tells what really happened. Rani killed the original tengrem with the coin that became a sword. The tengrem fell in the river and became a human body. Rani discovered he had become a tengrem himself, but was unable to express himself adequately to the hunters. He asks Del to research the coin with Shela, to ask whether there's a way for a tengrem to be human again - and to keep Rani's secret. Del agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Three, Jamek worries about the tengrem tracks outside Del's window, and Del's absence from home. Jamek is called away by Crel as Lady Shela arrives to see him. Meanwhile, Rani discovers a taste for grass and flowers, and kills a fox and her young on instinct before recovering his human reason and sensibilities.

In Chapter Two, Part Four, Del establishes an alibi as to where he's been, and goes home. Uncle Jamek is angry, but Del claims to have been arranging for a birthday gift for Crel. Jamek invites Shela to stay for the afternoon meal. Shela accepts the invitation.

Heirs of Mâvarin

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2006 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Five

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

“Good. Crel, set another place at the table, please.”

“Yes, Uncle,” Crel said. “I’ll do that right after I put this blanket away.”

“Del will put it away,” Jamek said. “While you’re at it, Del, see to your horse. He doesn’t belong in the front yard. Lady Shela, will you accompany Del to the stables?”

“I will, if Del does not object,” Shela said. “I would like to make certain that Seld is comfortable.”

Del nodded. “As you wish, Lady Wanderer.” He untied Pandar from the post while Shela waited for him. He was much relieved to be able to speak with her after all, but suddenly he didn’t know what to say. Her unexpected presence and knowing looks made Del more nervous around Shela than he’d ever been before, especially considering the unbelievable tale he had to tell her. He had been prepared to seek her out about the coin, although he had not decided exactly what to reveal and what to hold back. But this sudden confrontation in his own home, with his uncle nearby, was too much, too soon. He wasn’t ready to talk to her, and there was no time to explain things properly before they were expected back inside.

“I suppose you have been quite concerned about Rani Fost’s disappearance,” Shela said as Del led the horse past the house to the stables beyond.

“Of course I have. He’s my best friend,” Del said. He wanted to say something more, but could not find the words. He led Pandar into the family stable, where Shela went to her own horse, Seld, in one of the extra stalls. Del removed Pandar’s tack, rubbed him down, and checked his hay, all the while trying to figure out how to tell Shela about the coin and Rani before the opportunity was lost. How could he talk about the talisman and not about Rani? Would Shela believe that Rani was now a tengrem? Time was slipping away, and still Del did not know whether to trust the selmûn with his best friend’s life.

“Your horse has had a great deal of exercise today,” Shela observed.

“Nothing he can’t handle.”

“Evidently not. He seems strong and well cared for.”

Del could not help being pleased at this. “Thank you,” he said. “Lady Wanderer, I do need to talk to you, but not here and not now. I have something important to tell you, but I need more time.”

Shela did not seem surprised by this outburst. “All right, Del. Let us eat at your uncle’s table, and then if you wish to speak with me privately, we shall do so.” She looked at him gravely; even, Del thought, with respect. It made him all the more uncomfortable.

The house itself was one of the largest in the village, a two-story building of whitewashed wood with two stone chimneys. The three family members each had a separate bedchamber, Crel’s and Jamek’s upstairs, Del’s downstairs. This made it easy for Del to sneak out from time to time. The pantry and the cook-fire were in the same room as the stout wooden table at which the family ate, but there was another, larger room beside it, a modest version of what Del imagined a great hall to be like. Its five chairs had cushioned backs as well as cushioned seats, and a faded tapestry of a running horse covered part of the darkly polished wood on one wall. There was a small rug on the floor, simple in design and locally made. In the corner nearest the fireplace, a wooden shelf bore half a dozen books. A large desk where Jamek often sat when acting as mayor faced the center of the room rather than the wall where the books were. Jamek’s shield from the days before the King disappeared hung opposite the tapestry on the facing wall. The shield was adorned with the insignia of Mâvarin, although Del was not sure in what capacity his uncle had served the Kingdom. The sword that Jamek had been carrying during the tengrem hunt now hung behind the shield, along with another old sword that would belong to Del on his seventeenth birthday, once he learned to use it.

It was in this room that Del waited with Shela for Crel to announce dinner. It did not take long, but in those few moments Del watched silently as Shela’s eyes took in everything in the room, including Del’s restlessness. If she stared at him long enough, Del felt, the selmûn might somehow learn the truth without a word spoken.

The meal that followed was the longest of Del’s life. Crel’s soup was as thick and savory as ever, but for once Del had no appetite for it. Every chunk of meat and every cooked baby carrot got stuck near the lump in his throat as he listened to Jamek and Shela’s endless argument about the tengrem, whether there was more than one of them and how best to deal with the situation. Having heard Rani’s account of recent events, Del could have answered nearly every question the adults raised; but he kept quiet for the most part, rather than risk making things even worse for Rani.

Del’s promise to keep Rani’s secret from everyone but Shela seemed more justified with every word that Uncle Jamek spoke. Del’s uncle was determined to kill any and all tengremen in the area, and resisted Shela’s attempts to dissuade him from this view. She still believed that the tengrem by Rani’s tree, with its protestations of innocence and bizarre behavior, might not be guilty of murder.

“How would that be possible?” Jamek demanded.

“Rani could still be alive, for example.”

“Do you really think so, Lady Shela?” Crel asked.

“I do.”

Jamek shook his head. “If Rani were alive and uninjured, he’d have come home last night. If he were alive but injured, he’d have still been close by, and we would have found him. Either his body’s buried in the river, or he’s been carried off somewhere beyond the range of our search.”

“To be in the river without our seeing it, Rani’s body would have to have been thrown fifty feet or more, to where the water is deep, and buried below the reach of the dragging nets,” Shela said. “I doubt that even a tengrem could do that. Yet your other alternative seems no more likely. If the tengrem we saw carried Rani so far away that we could not find him, it could not have returned to the beech tree by the time we got there. Indeed, I see no reason why it would have done so, unless it was to inform us of Rani’s fate, as it tried and failed to do.”

“That makes sense, Uncle,” Del said tentatively.

Jamek snorted. “What could it have told us about Rani, even if it had the wit to speak intelligibly? That a giant eagle carried Rani away? That a mage turned Rani into a bunny rabbit, and he hopped away? Or, more likely, that the tengrem killed Rani and threw him into the deep part of the river, and the tengrem thought we might want to know about it?” He shook his head. “I don’t believe for a moment that that tengrem was hanging around the beech tree just to give us a message.”

“If it was, the message was not that the tengrem killed Rani,” Shela insisted. “I believe that the creature specifically denied having done so. It is unfortunate that it was unable to tell us what happened instead.”

“It doesn’t really matter what the tengrem did or didn’t say,” said Jamek. “I would not have believed it anyway. It’s a killer. Even if Rani is alive, there’s still been a murder. You saw the body that Bil and Jord pulled from the river.”

“Yes, I did. The severance between head and torso looked more like the result of a sword thrust than anything a tengrem could do. What if a human being killed the stranger?’

“Who, for example? Rani?”

“That is quite possible,” Shela said calmly.

“Then what? He ran away? Sorry, I don’t believe it. Rani’s a good lad. I can’t see him killing some passerby.”

“Perhaps the man attacked him, and Rani defended himself.”

“With what? His little pocket knife? He probably didn’t even have it by the time whatever happened to him took place. Rani had no sword, and there was no sword anywhere nearby. No. I say that wound was the thrust of a tengrem’s horn, and thanks to you, the tengrem got away.”

Shela shook her head. “We have no evidence of that, save this tengrem’s proximity. Even if the killer was a tengrem and not a human, it does not prove that this particular tengrem was the guilty one. It could have merely been a witness to murder.”

“Shall I tell you how unlikely that sounds? It’s obvious that tengrem was the killer.”

“It is not obvious,” Shela said. “Two tengremen were seen near the River Misis yesterday. The tengrem we saw near the body was not the one that Suri Pelch saw on his land. Perhaps the first tengrem was the killer, and the second one tried and failed to tell us this.”

“Let’s suppose for a moment that you’re right about there being two tengremen,” Jamek said. “Maybe one tengrem was seen with Suri’s sheep, and the other one was at the river. Even if that’s true, the tengrem we saw at the river is the one that killed the stranger, and probably Rani as well. It’s the one that was there when it happened. We won’t be safe until that tengrem is tracked down and killed.”

“Rani’s mother does not share your opinion,” Shela said.

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Four

2006-02-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

Or, "In Trouble Again."

This is Chapter Two, Scene Four, Part One of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

Click here for a recap of most of Chapter One.

In Chapter One, Part Nine, Del finds someone in the Ot Lôven (Low Caves) outside Liftlabeth, a half-hidden creature with a growly voice and yellow eyes. Meanwhile, Jamek finds tengrem tracks outside Del's bedroom.

In Chapter Two, Part One, Del runs away from the creature in the cavern, but comes back after it doesn't pursue him. The tengrem says it just wants to talk to Del. It's the one who tapped out the message the night before--and its name, so it claims, is Rani Fost.

In Chapter Two, Part Two, Del believes the tengrem as it tells what really happened. Rani killed the original tengrem with the coin that became a sword. The tengrem fell in the river and became a human body. Rani discovered he had become a tengrem himself, but was unable to express himself adequately to the hunters. He asks Del to research the coin with Shela, to ask whether there's a way for a tengrem to be human again - and to keep Rani's secret. Del agrees.

In Chapter Two, Part Three, Jamek worries about the tengrem tracks outside Del's window, and Del's absence from home. Jamek is called away by Crel as Lady Shela arrives to see him. Meanwhile, Rani discovers a taste for grass and flowers, and kills a fox and her young on instinct before recovering his human reason and sensibilities.

Heirs of Mâvarin
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Four

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

Thanks to Farni Danak, who was watching his father’s shop while the weaver took his choicest wares to market, Del had no problem establishing a credible story about where he had been all morning. Farni had been on the losing end of a wager about which horse Del would get for his birthday. He was easily persuaded to give Del an alibi instead of money. Del even bought a horse blanket for his sister to help seal the bargain.

“You’re amazing,” Farni said. His tone was more envious than admiring. “You keep getting away with stuff that would get anyone else punished, or even killed. Is this how you do it? By lying to your uncle?”

Del still needed Farni’s cooperation, so he kept his temper. “Not usually,” he said. “Most of the time I don’t have to lie.”

Farni tilted his head, and looked at Del suspiciously. “Where were you really?”

“Oh, riding,” Del replied.

“Long time to be riding, especially in the rain,” said Farni. “Pandar’s not that tired, or that wet.”

“I can’t tell you where I’ve been, all right?” Del said in exasperation. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“Okay, okay,” said Farni, putting up his hands. “Of course I will. I was only asking.”

“Well, don’t,” said Del. “Have you seen Lady Shela today?”

“No. Should I have?”

“I suppose not. See you later. Thanks.”

Farni turned away, shaking his head. Del waved anyway as he started for home.

What he had to do next was harder. Shela could be anywhere: out searching the woods, or somewhere in Liftlabeth, or riding north to the selmûn stronghold of Odamas, where no outsider was allowed to go. The best thing to do, Del decided, was to go home for the afternoon meal, have a look around the village, and then work his way back to Rani. If he didn’t find her by then, he and Rani would plan what to do next.

“You’re in trouble, you know,” Crel said as Del rode up. Her apron was full of carrots and mud, and she was pulling lettuce as judiciously as if the fate of the kingdom depended on her harvesting the right plants in exactly the right amounts.

“I’m always in trouble,” Del said. He dismounted and tied Pandar to the hitching post next to the house.

“You don’t have to sound as if you’re proud of it,” Crel said. Gathering her apron, she stood up carefully. “Uncle Jamek was worried. Where were you?”

Del shrugged and headed for the house. Voices were coming from inside, Uncle Jamek’s and a woman’s. Del stopped near the open window to listen.

“...it will be your fault,” Uncle Jamek was saying.

“Were I you, Jamek Barst, I would not be so quick to place blame.” Del’s whole body twitched in shock at the unexpected sound of Shela’s voice. What was she doing here, of all places? “Del is likely to return unharmed,” Shela continued, “but if something should happen to him—”

“Aren’t you coming in, Del?” Crel said loudly at his elbow.

The voices inside stopped, and Del heard the heavy tread of his uncle’s approach. “You did that on purpose!” Del hissed. Crel smiled as she opened the door.

Jamek held it open for her. “Where have you been, Del?” he asked. Del could see the smoldering anger in his uncle’s eyes. “You are allowed to ride your horse,” Uncle Jamek continued, “but disappearing for over three hours with that tengrem about, and one boy missing already, is very poor judgment.” For some reason Del had never quite understood, Uncle Jamek never shouted at him or Crel, but always lectured them instead. Even so, Del heard an unusual amount of emotion in his guardian’s voice. Was there fear in it, as well as anger?

Del launched into his apology and contrived explanation. “Sorry, Uncle Jamek. I was helping Farni roll carpets in exchange for a discount on a blanket.” Del hurried back to Pandar and the saddlebags, hoping to distract Crel and Jamek with the present he had gotten her. “Here, Crel,” he said, pulling out a light blue horse blanket.

“This is for you and Molin.”

“Well, I suppose that makes up for the chores I did for you this morning,” Crel said.

“Thank you.”

“Thanks again for the belt,” Del said.

“It was nice of you to get your sister and her horse a present,” Jamek said dryly, “but I think Crel and I would both prefer to know where you are, and that you’re safe. When you leave our property in the future, you will tell us where you are going and when you will be back. If I am not here, you must tell your sister, or leave a note. Until the tengrem is caught, you are not to go out alone at all.”

“Yes, Uncle.” It could have been worse, Del thought. This new restriction would have made things difficult were it not for the fact that Shela was here in his own house. If he could just find a way to talk to her, alone, he’d be able to help Rani anyway.

“I do not wish to keep you from your meal,” Shela said. She glanced at Del appraisingly as she turned to go. Del had a sudden moment of panic. “Think about what I have said, please, Jamek.”

“Why not stay and eat with us?” Jamek suggested. Much of his anger seemed to have evaporated with Del’s safe return and the explanation of his absence. “Even if I don’t agree with your assessment of the situation, I’d still appreciate your advice on what should be done.”

“Thank you,” the selmûn said. “I will stay.”

All art by Sherlock, copyright 2004.

http://www.mavarin.com - my website, introducing the world and the characters.

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Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Three

2006-01-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Or, "Rani's Call of the Wild."

This is Chapter Two, Scenes Two and Three of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

See the entry of two weeks ago for a recap of most of Chapter One.

In Chapter One, Part Nine, Del finds someone in the Ot Lôven (Low Caves) outside Liftlabeth, a half-hidden creature with a growly voice and yellow eyes. Meanwhile, Jamek finds tengrem tracks outside Del's bedroom.

In Chapter Two, Part One, Del runs away from the creature in the cavern, but comes back after it doesn't pursue him. The tengrem says it just wants to talk to Del. It's the one who tapped out the message the night before--and its name, so it claims, is Rani Fost.

In Chapter Two, Part Two, Del believes the tengrem as it tells what really happened. Rani killed the original tengrem with the coin that became a sword. The tengrem fell in the river and became a human body. Rani discovered he had become a tengrem himself, but was unable to express himself adequately to the hunters. He asks Del to research the coin with Shela, to ask whether there's a way for a tengrem to be human again - and to keep Rani's secret. Del agrees.

Heirs of Mâvarin

by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Three

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

Jamek rushed to the front door, into the house, and into Del’s room. It was a mess, but that was nothing unusual. The bedroom window was closed, and there was nothing to indicate that it had been open recently.

This is foolish, he told himself. Del wasn’t stolen out of his room; he rode away on his horse. It’s what happened afterwards that I should worry about.

Maybe he’s still all right, Jamek thought. Maybe these are Pandar’s tracks, despite the apparent weight on the front hooves. Even if Del does meet the tengrem, Pandar is the fastest horse I’ve ever seen. Del might be able to outrun the monster, at least long enough to get help.

Even if Del came home safe this time, what was Jamek to do about the tengrem? They had already lost valuable time, yesterday because of the stranger’s body and the coming of night, and today because of Comerdu and the rain. Would the others be free to hunt the tengrem tomorrow? Would tomorrow be too late? How could he protect the children at home, and hunt for the tengrem at the same time?

A sound interrupted his thoughts. Someone had just opened the front door of the house.

“Uncle!” Crel called. “Lady Shela is here to see you.”

Jamek sprinted toward the front of the house, praying to Mâshela that Shela had good news, that Rani had been found and, most of all, that Del was safe.

The tengrem watched as Del left the cavern. His friend was soon out of sight, but Rani could still smell him, the human scent that inflamed his senses and excited the tengrem side of his altered brain. His new instincts insisted that the smell was that of an enemy species, while the smell of Del’s horse meant possible food. Rani kept very still, fighting off his aggression and his growing hunger with every bit of human reason and compassion he could still muster. Soon he heard the faraway sound of a horse galloping away, but still he didn’t move, knowing he could easily catch the horse with very little effort, impaling it on his horn, unseating its human passenger and… no. “No,” he said aloud, forcing his mind back to the ways of human reason. “Del is not an enemy. His horse is not food. Del is trrying to help me. I must not hurrt him.” All through his encounter with Del, he’d been silently telling himself the same things, trying to override his tengrem instincts with reason and willpower.

Eventually the smells of human and horse subsided, and Rani found it easier to think clearly. He was lonely again, but he didn’t mind that nearly as much as the hunger. To the best of his memory, he hadn’t eaten since leaving his mother’s house the previous afternoon. Rani couldn’t entirely trust his memory, though, because he remembered very little about his return from the window outside Del’s house the previous night. Had he hunted? Had he killed anything or anyone? Rani honestly didn’t know.

What was he to do about food? Clearly he had to eat something. Maybe if he could apply his reason to the problem, he could find a way to feed himself without losing control. Perhaps if his hunger was satisfied, his tengrem instincts would become less acute. It was worth a try, anyway.

Rani got up, stretched, and made his way outside to where wild grasses and little purple flowers grew between the rocks. To Rani’s surprise, the grass looked palatable. Well, you are part equine, he told himself. He used his long arms to tear up the weeds by the handful, severing their stems with his thick pink claws. The flowers tasted even better than the grass, sweet but not cloyingly so. The rain had stopped, but there was mud on the plants, on the tengrem’s hooves and on his meaty brown hands before he was finished.

On his way back to the cave, Rani smelled something else: small, wild, female, not quite canine. He followed the scent to a small side cavern, where he surprised a fox and her young. Killing the mother was disappointingly easy. He simply grabbed her and snapped her neck. There was more sport in killing the babies, stomping on each little head with his front hooves. Returning to the adult fox’s carcass, he held it up and raked his horn neatly down the belly. The flowing blood that he lapped up excited him, and made him hungrier. Setting the carcass on a rock, he used his horn to pry open the ribcage. He ate the organs first, and then the rest. The chest tasted pleasantly milky. He finished his meal by crunching on the pups for the little bits of meat and blood they contained.

When he was fully sated, the bloodlust faded away, leaving him contented and a little sleepy. Only then did his tengrem instincts fade enough for the part of him that was still Rani Fost to recover his senses, and gradually realize what he had just done. “Oh, no, no…” he said. The words turned into a howl, which subsided into a whimper.

Think, Rani, he told himself. Don’t give in to being an animal. I’m Rani Fost. There is more to my brain than just instinct. I just have to hang on, keep my human consciousness going as much as possible.

Somewhere out of sight, Del was riding back to Liftlabeth with the cursed coin. Shela was probably still in the area, helping in the search for the human teenager he had been. Del would find her, maybe even this afternoon. Shela would know what to do. Maybe some selmûn healing rite could cure him, or at least calm his tengrem instincts and preserve his human intelligence. Maybe the selmûnen knew more about tengremen than Shela had ever explained, and could tell him where he could go and what he could do to be human again.

That was a lot of maybes, but the alternative, Rani felt, was a certainty. If he had to lose himself every time he smelled potential food or a potential threat, and continually endure the self-loathing he now felt, what human consciousness he had left would surely go mad.

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Two

2006-01-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

Or, "What Happened to Rani."

This is Chapter Two, Scene One, Part Two of the "final final" draft of Heirs of Mâvarin. By the time I'm done I'll have posted two full chapters of this first novel of mine, 83 double-spaced pages. Reminder: since this is a novel excerpt rather than a serial per se, it has a somewhat leisurely opening, and doesn't necessarily have a cliffhanger every couple of pages. If the ending of a particular installment seems a bit lame, that's why.

See last week's entry for a recap of most of Chapter One.

In Chapter One, Part Nine, Del finds someone in the Ot Lôven (Low Caves) outside Liftlabeth, a half-hidden creature with a growly voice and yellow eyes. Meanwhile, Jamek finds tengrem tracks outside Del's bedroom.

In Chapter Two, Part One, Del runs away from the creature in the cavern, but comes back after it doesn't pursue him. The tengrem says it just wants to talk to Del. It's the one who tapped out the message the night before--and its name, so it claims, is Rani Fost.

Heirs of Mâvarin
by Karen Funk Blocher
© 2005 by KFB

Chapter Two: The Truth
Part Two

Comerdu, 6th Day of Dortem, 896 MMY, cont.

Del sank back onto the stone shelf, speechless with certainty that the tengrem was telling the truth. Rani’s disappearance the evening before made sense now. Del thought he could even hear a little bit of Rani in the tengrem’s voice. Finally, Del said, “Oh, Gods. Rani. The signal was from you after all.”

“I didn’t know what else to do. I need your help.”

“Of course I’ll help you, but what can I do? What happened to you? Was it you that Shela and Uncle Jamek saw under the beech tree?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell them who you were?”

“I trried. They couldn’t understand me. I couldn’t talk rright.”

“How did you become a tengrem? Did somebody cast a spell on you or something?”

The tengrem shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think it was the coin.”

“What coin?”

“Rremember—remember yesterday when we sneaked out to watch the hunt go by? I went back out later, to trry to see morre. When I got to the beech trree I found a coin on the ground. I picked it up. It didn’t look like money at all. More like a talisman. It had rrunes on it, and a picture of a sworrd. I put it in my pocket. Then I climbed up into the beech tree. I was hoping Shela would come by, so I could ask her about the coin, but she was too busy. I was in the trree. The tengrem came. I couldn’t get away. I didn’t have my knife, just the coin. The coin was in my hand, and it flashed, rreally bright; it hurt my eyes. Then it wasn’t a coin. It was a sworrd. The tengrem pulled me out of the trree. I got angry, and I used the sword. It hardly touched the tengrem, but it cut through his neck like—like fresh bread, and sent him flying.

“I couldn’t see well. My eyes hurt. I looked down, and there was a body in the rriver. I rubbed my eyes until I could see again. The body—the body in the rriver, it wasn’t a tengrem. It was a man. He wasn’t young; he was about as old as, as my mom. But he was human.”

“So maybe the other tengrem used to be human, too,” Del said.

The tengrem nodded. “That’s what I think. It was awful. The body started to bleed, and the blood, the blood made the rriver boil. I was sick in the rriver. I felt dizzy, and confused, and angry. I—I couldn’t sit down. My clothes were gone, and my legs felt like poles. I had, oh Gods, I had fourr legs, Del, fourr legs....”

The tengrem was crying, choking on his words. His tears hissed as they evaporated on his hot snout. “Oh, Rani, don’t cry, Rani....” Del said.

Rani made an effort to control himself. “It’s okay. I—I’ll be all rright in a moment.” The tengrem laughed, but it came out as a pathetic snort. “Well, maybe not all rright, exactly....”

“Oh, Rani,” Del said again, repeating the name as much to reassure himself of the tengrem’s identity as to help Rani keep his human side in control. His friend seemed to have recovered a bit, so Del said, “Then what happened?”

“I looked at my rreflection for a long time. I just stood there. The sword was a coin again, and my hand...it had claws. The rriver stopped boiling, and mud started to settle on the body, covering it up. So I just watched that for a while. I wasn’t really thinking by then. Not the way a human does. I was looking at the water, and smelling it, and hearing it. I listened to cicadas, and smelled the grass, and tasted the storm that was coming. Then I sort of woke up again, and I had, well, a sort of vision. I saw a picture in the rriver, of you lying in a bed. You were so pale that I thought—I thought you were dying. But then you smiled at me, and I knew you would be all rright. Maybe I was delirious.

“The vision went away, and the humans came, and I—I didn’t think of rrunning away. I thought they were therre to save me, but they wanted to kill me. I was confused. I couldn’t think rright or talk rright. They came after me, and I—I hurt two of them, on instinct, before I took their swords away. The human part of my mind is weak, and my tengrem instincts are strrong. I’m not stupid, but I... my emotions build up and instinct takes over, and I stop thinking like—like a human. I don’t know what to do. They said that I killed Rani, and they didn’t understand the words in my grrowls.”

“Why didn’t they understand you? Your voice is a little growly, but I understand you just fine. Why didn’t they?”

“I was much more grrowly yesterday. I didn’t know how to talk with a—a snout and a foot-long tongue, and I had trrouble rremembering human worrds. I trried and trried to say who I was, but it didn’t work, so I rran away. If I didn’t, I’d have killed somebody, or they would have killed me. The only place I could think of to go was here.”

“Rani,” Del said, “you can’t stay here. My uncle and the others will find you. You’re lucky they haven’t found you already. I know you’re telling the truth, but I don’t think they’ll believe it. They think you’re a killer.”

“You’re rright, ” Rani said miserably. “That’s why I need your help.”

“I’ll do anything you want, Rani. You’re my best friend.”

“Even now? I could easily kill you, and I—I might do it.”

“You’re still my best friend,” Del said firmly. “You won’t kill me.”

“I hope not. I wish I could be surre.” The tengrem was silent for a moment. Then it nodded, as if coming to a decision. “Okay. Listen, Del. I want you to take this thing—this coin—to Shela. Find out what it is, and find out—trry to find out whetherr a tengrem can ever be human again, and how. Don’t tell anyone else about me, and don’t—don’t tell anyone where I am.”

“Of course not,” Del said.

“Then take this—careful, I’m going to throw it, get back. No, fartherr. That’s it. Here it comes. Don’t let it touch you!”

A blinding flash and a loud clatter broke through the dark and quiet of the cave. Del blinked. There was red around the edges of his vision, and a white blur in the middle of it. When he could see again, there was a bright object in front of him and to the right.

“Don’t touch it!” the tengrem warned.

“It’s a sword!”

Rani sighed. “I thought it might be. It was a coin when it left my hand. My claws, when it left my claws,” he corrected himself. “Do you have a piece of cloth or something?”

“I have a handkerchief,” Del said. “For my sneezing.”

“Okay. Use that to pick it up. Don’t let it touch you. If you touch it, I think it’ll make you kill me. Then you’ll be the tengrem. I don’t know, I’m not surre, I don’t know how it works yet.”

Del wrapped the handkerchief around his hand. Then he picked up the silver sword, very carefully. “Hey! It’s straining against my hand!”

“Toward me?”

“Yes!”

“You’d betterr go. Go on, Del, hurry. Good luck!”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Maybe tonight. Bye!” Del darted out of the cavern, away from the deadly attraction between the sword and the tengrem.

Messages from Mâvarin

The New Paradigm Mâvarin Novels

Summary to Scene, Sort of

What I'm Editing Tonight - a Clarion Write-a-Thon Extra

Flip Rate: A Beginning

Nightmare University

Former Ficlets: An Archive

Rani and Karen - Together Again for the First Time

Rani in the Tree: A Fragment

Later This Somewhere, Part Three

Beneath the Orange Sky

Into the Land of Shadows

The Children in the Shoebox: an Experiment

Later This Somewhere, Part Two

Later This Somewhere, Part One

Black Rose Kate: Stop MDC

And now for a word from Black Rose Katie specks, the Pirate Scribe!(Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin)Stop MDC

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Six

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Five

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Four

The Mavarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Three

The Mavarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part Two

The Mavarin Revolutions: Final Instructions, Part One

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Princess on the Run, Part Two

The Mâvarin Revolutions: Princess on the Run, Part One

Portrait of a Fictional Friend

Portrait of a Fictional Friend

Kate and Ariel: Just My Imagination

Just My Imagination

Black Rose Kate: This Year's Werewolf, Questioned

Round Robin: This Year's Werewolf, Questioned

Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part Three

Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part Two

Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part One

Now What?

The Jace Letters, Part Seventeen

The Jace Letters, Part Sixteen

The Jace Letters, Part Fifteen

The Jace Letters, Part Fourteen

The Jace Letters, Part Thirteen

The Jace Letters, Part Twelve

The Jace Letters, Part Eleven

The Jace Letters, Part Ten

The Jace Letters, Part Nine

The Jace Letters, Part Eight

The Jace Letters, Part Seven

The Jace Letters, Part Six

The Jace Letters, Part Five

The Jace Letters, Part Four

The Jace Letters, Part Three

The Jace Letters, Part Two

The Jace Letters, Part One

A Fire in Mâvarin

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Conclusion

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Twelve

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Eleven

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Ten

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Nine

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Eight

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Seven

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Six

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Five

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Four

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Three

Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter Two, Part Two

And now for a word from Black Rose Katie specks, the Pirate Scribe!(Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin)
Stop MDC