A Letter to Lusa

(The following is set forty-one years before the start of Heirs of Mâvarin)

Comerdu, 16th Day of Celderem, 855 MMY

Dear Lusa,

Are you surprised to hear from me? Yes, I’m alive and well. Guess where I am. Mâton! It took me six months to get here, but I did it!

I ran away all by myself, but right after that I found somebody to go with me. His name is Fabi. He’s older than me, ten years old. He’s going to be a mage, too. He’s an orphan like us. His parents died right before I met him. He knew it was going to happen, too. He’s a seer. He can do illusions, too.

It was a little scary, traveling without any adults. Fabi and I played the delmoran and sang to pay for rooms and meals. We said we were monûn teenagers, but I don’t think anyone believed us. A couple of times people tried to make us stay and be their apprentices, but we always did some kind of magic and got away. I’m getting really good at sending someone to my secret place. After a while, Fabi learned to do an illusion spell to make us look and sound older, with deep voices and everything. That made it easier to earn money for the voyage to Mâton, but Fabi got really tired doing it. We had fun on the ship, though. I got to be a cabin boy, and I only got sick once.

I wish you could be here too. You still don’t have magic, do you? If you find out you have talents, try to get to Mâton. I really like it so far. Archmage Martenestri didn’t want to take me at first, but Fabi told him my talent would be important someday. They said that nobody has had my kind of talent in hundreds of years. They weren’t even sure it was a real talent. I showed them it was. That surprised the Masters, when they saw my secret place themselves. Usually they don’t take a student that doesn’t have at least two talents, but they made an exception for me. Since then, everyone’s been really nice to us.

Happy Mâshelis! I wish I could send you a present. Maybe next year. Write if you can, okay? I know I ran away, but I wasn’t running away from you! You’re still the only family I’ve got, big sister!

Love,

Hari

Mâton Orientation Letter

From the Desk of Archmage Sunestri

Welcome to the Mâton College of Magic. If you are new to the island, welcome to Mâton! You will probably find that life here is very different from your old life in Mâvarin or Fãrnet or Derio. Here on Mâton you will be surrounded by other people of talent, people who understand you better than your old friends, your old teachers, or even your parents unless they are mages themselves. We know how it feels to discover how different you are from the "normals" around you, with all the challenges that poses. We will help you to explore your abilities, learn to control and develop them fully, and reach your potential as a fully-robed mage.

By now you should have an assigned room, a roommate, an academic advisor, a student advisor, and your novice attire and supplies. Should you lack any of these, please check in with the admissions office on the first floor of the Citadel. Your student advisor will help you find your way around this first week, and learn the basics of college life. Your academic advisor will guide you through your entire educational program, from Introductory Magic to your Master exam, assuming you get that far.

If you have not already had your aptitude test, you can expect to undergo this in the next day or two, depending on the exigencies of scheduling. This is an interesting, usually painless process, and quite educational in itself. You may well discover additional talents beyond the ones that brought you to Mâton, months before they might otherwise have surfaced.

As with any school, there are rules to be followed. The first rule, as you may expect, is to obey your academic Masters. There is a reason for every instruction they give you, whether or not that reason is immediately obvious. More often than not, the purpose of their directives is to ensure both the efficacy of the magic and the safety of its practitioners, especially that of our students.

There are three additional rules to be observed, for the safety of all:

1. No student is to attack any other resident of Mâton, except on the explicit instructions of myself or one of your academic Masters. Anyone caught disobeying this rule will immediately be expelled without recourse - or worse.

2. The cliffs above Sûtelmar Harbor are strictly off limits except for Zordano's Point, the clearly-marked scenic lookout with the invisible fence. Sûtelmar itself may only be approached using the road at the southern edge of campus, and only after your Robing, or with written permission from your academic advisor.

3. No permanent spell is to be cast, nor a permanency subritual applied, except under the direction and supervision of one of the Masters.

Your personal journey to life as a mage has already begun! We look forward to helping you travel that road in the months and years ahead.

Yours in fellowship,
Sunestri Cheneli
Forty-Fifth Archmage of Mâton

Art by Sherlock
Fiction by KFB

Glitch, Glitch, Glitch

I tried to add a links bar to my template last night. Since then I've been unable to make this blog "republish." If you see this post, you'll know that I finally got it to work. Still: aargh!

In the pipeline: I've started a prequel short story about Epli, a legendary hero of Mâvarin whose sword has the voice of his people. Stay tuned!

Karen

P.S. Shelly informs me that it was Blogger as a whole, not just me. That's a comfort. I was worried I'd ruined the template just trying to add those few things.

Diary of an Imposter

(The following is set four and a half months before the start of Heirs of Mâvarin)

From the Diary of Her Royal Highness Cathma Selevar,
Princess of Mâvarin
(except that's not who she is)

Masheldu, 20th Day of Fredor, 896 MMY

It was my birthday today. Not the official one: my real birthday.

My official birthday, on the Sixth Day of Dortem, is a grand state occasion. Representatives of the Twelve Families, except for the two that intermarried with selmûn nobility, come from all over the country to honor Princess Cathma with lavish gifts. Even the royal families of Fãrnet and Derio send presents, whether or not any of them attend the event personally. Even the common people celebrate Princess Cathma's Birthday as a holiday. There is a parade, with decorated coaches and marching guards, and small coins tossed into cheering crowds. This is followed by a feast, with ornate decorations and exotic foods, a speech from the king, music and dancing. The musicians are not selmûnen, or my friend Rutana, but they do well enough.

My real birthday I celebrate in my private suite, writing in my diary and thinking about my life so far. There are no presents. In the evening I visit my mother, as I often do when my schedule permits it.

I am sixteen today. By rights I should have been given a horse, to celebrate my being exactly a year away from the age of majority. Officially, though, I won't be sixteen for four and a half months, so officially there is no horse. Unofficially, there is a horse in the royal stable who is as good as mine, and has been for years.

It's an odd status, being who and what I am. Sometimes I wish I could just forget my real birthday and my real age and my real name. But then I suppose I would have to forget who my real mother is, too. I wouldn't want that.

Exactly six years ago today, Jerela Awer called me into her private apartment in the East Tower and told me the truth. I'd suspected for years that something was odd about me and my family, and our relationship with the First Minister and his family. But I never quite figured out that I was an Awer myself, not until my mother told me my real name, and the date of my real birthday. I am Masha Awer, the daughter of First Minister Lokvi Awer and Lady Jerela Awer. King Jor is really my uncle, Nishi Awer. Nobody in the Palace is really named Selevar. This explains a lot, especially the fact that the king and I have never loved each other, as a father and daughter should, while Lokvi and Jerela Awer have been closer to me than an outsider would ever suspect.

Even they don't understand how I feel. My mother only told me the truth because she wanted to be sure of my love. Well, she has it, just as she's always had it. But she's also taken away the security of my knowing I'm Princess Cathma of Mâvarin. I used to know who I was, even if it wasn't true. Now I don't really know who I am, or who I'm going to be. Five years of growing up, learning my duties and finishing my education haven't helped at all. All this time I've watched the king and First Minister come more and more under the influence of the Royal Mage, and of Mâton. I've watched my brother become more and more like the king he's being groomed to replace someday: vain and foolish and caring for no one but himself. I've tried to find out what happened to the real royal familiy, but nobody seems to really know except Imuselti, and I never talk to him if I can help it.

So who am I? I'm fake royalty, a usurper, playing a role my parents chose for me long ago. Am I wrong to do what they expect of me? It's not as if there's any likelihood that some rightful heir, someone named Selevar, will come to the Palace and take my place. Someone has to be Princess Cathma. It may as well be me. I'm good at it. I know all the ministers and what they do, all the people from all the Families, all the issues, all the things that Mâton demands of us and why. I could rule this country someday, and rule it well. But I'm not the heir. My stupid brother is. We're supposed to be the same age, but he's the male heir and that's that. The fact that I'm really almost a year older than he is doesn't make any difference in the official order of succession. It doesn't matter how young the real Van Awer is, what the real date of my birthday is, what our names are and how we came to be in the Palace.

Except to me.

Autobiography of a Parrot

Written about the time that Mages of Mâvarin takes place, this is King Jor's faithful transcription of his parrot's life story. (In Mâvarin, parrots know what they're talking about, if they talk at all.)

Autobiography of a Parrot
By Skwok
As Told to King Jor of Mâvarin

Hatched in Derio. Long time ago. Island. Tall trees. Soft nest. Three baby birds in nest. One fell. Parents fed babies in nest. Me. Sister.

Grew big. Flew. Storm. Wind blew north. White waves. Blue water. Land. Dark trees. Gath moss. Green water.

Spring. Lady bird. Nest. Two eggs. Two babies. Birds flew south. Skwok alone in Gathmak.

Spring again. Same lady bird. Nest. Two eggs. One baby bird. Flew south. Skwok alone.

Many springs. Lady bird gone. Sad. No parrots in Gathmak.

Saw food in box. Caught. Tengrem-man put me in castle. King Jor in castle. Nice man. Sad man. Sat all day on chair. Trapped together.

Jor taught me human talk. Too many words to learn. King Jor said okay.

Spring. No nest. Stayed with sad king. Spring again. Spring again. No lady bird. No nest. Many springs, no nest. King friend. Good biscuits. Good man.

Carli came for Jor. Jor brought me. Magic door. Different, bigger castle. Fly free. Still stay with king. Still no nest.

King Jor not sad now. Bird happy.

Biscuit?

Art by Sherlock

From the Diary of Mera Sinan, Innkeeper

(written about the time of Chapter Four, Mages of Mâvarin)

Thaledu, 9th Day of Ranosem, 897 MMY

Events are heating up again in the shadow world of my Dad's visions, so he's suffering more than usual. I've hardly seen him sober this past week. This time, the alcohol is not enough. He's just stumbling from vision to vision now, unable to stop seeing things that are impossible, unable to stop worrying about people who aren't really there.

He never complains, and would never tell me what happens in the visions if I didn't keep asking. Sometimes I think I should leave him alone about it, and not ask what he saw. Most of the time, though, I do ask. As painful as it is for him to talk about it, he seems to feel a little better afterward. He thinks it's useless, this magic gone so terribly wrong, and it helps him to know that I take his shadow world seriously. I can't believe that the Gods send my dad these visions, year after year, consistent with each other but not with the real world, and yet it all means nothing. It has to mean something! That shadow world with Cathma and Carli and Rani and the rest is important somehow. I'm sure of it.

Listening to his sometimes incoherent words, I gather that the worst of his suffering this time comes because his shadow self is suffering, too. The mage he never became woke up a few days ago thinking he was dead. He wasn't, but it was still a trauma. It's only gotten worse since then. There was a storm in my dad's vision, and a shipwreck, and an escape engineered by the shadow version of someone my dad loved in college. Then last night, according to the visions, the mage confronted Sunestri's daughter, a very different person from the one in the real world. She did something terrible to him. Now he's far away from home, with no memory of who he is. The best part of him, the spirit, is trapped in a bottle.

It would be easily to believe that it's all just dream symbolism, the stronger, happier version of my dad now helpless and trapped by alcohol. It's not like that, though. Cause and effect don't run in that direction. My dad drinks because it hurts him to see his other self suffer, along with all those other shadow people he's come to know over the decades since these visions started. Dad only reacts to what he sees. He doesn't cause it. Besides, the mage of the visions isn't drunk. It's a physical bottle, stuck in a knapsack. If the spirit inside it doesn't reunite with the lost man in the western cave, the spirit will pass from this world to the next, and the man without a memory will be as handicapped in his world as my dad is in this one.

How will my dad survive then, if even his shadow self can never be whole or happy again?

www.mavarin.com

A Letter from Rutana

Dear Barselti--

One of these days I really ought to reestablish the portal between here and Gathmak so that I came come down and see you, but you know how I hate to travel, and I doubt that Lord Albi would welcome my visit. For now, you're just going to have to settle for one of your mother's nagging letters instead.

I've been surprisingly busy up here the last several days, ever since Fayubi's projection turned up, demanding a portal between my beach and a stretch of ocean halfway between Sûtelmar and Eplimar. The poor man was on a ship that was about to sink in a mage-induced storm. We managed to save everyone on board the Seeker, but the ship itself sank. I don't think we've ever found out who sent the storm. Or, at least, I haven't. I haven't heard from Fayubi since the day of the rescue.

There was a second ship on that stretch of ocean, a little one man boat that managed to tack through the portal before I deactivated it. I'm sure you'll be as astonished as I was to learn that the little boat came all the way from Londer. Can you imagine? Fayubi told me, before he left, that the man who sailed it was the Prince of Londer. He was unconscious by the time the sailors from the Seeker put him in the back bedroom, but Li found out the next day that Fayubi was right. He is Prince Talber Edmon Jon Verjul. He's about your age, and seems like a very nice young man. He didn't speak a word of Mâvarinû when he got here, but he is working very hard to learn. Li and I are helping him.

Now, I have a very serious question to ask you, Bari. Have you ever seen any indication that Li has magical talents? If so,why didn't you tell me? Li admitted to me today that he's been using a talent for languages on the Line for over a year without realizing it. It worries me, partly because of what happened with Imuselti last year. Li seems to have survived the experience without the usual consequence, but I'm still concerned that he's had magic all this time without my knowing about it. He hasn't had any instruction, or even the most basic warnings before this morning. I will do my best to rectify the situation, but it's going to be difficult. He's still worried about what your father will think.

How have you been doing down there? I haven't heard from you since winter. I hope you are being careful with your studies and experiments, and even more so with the tengremen, especially Albi. I know that you can take care of yourself, but I worry that the situation will get too dangerous if there's a real power struggle, especially if Albi finds out what you've been doing. Yes, I did hear about that. I think it's a very brave and noble thing you're doing, but please, mind your mother and watch your back!

Please write to me when you receive this, so that I know you're still alive.

Love,

Mother






(Art by Sherlock)