The Mâvarin Revolutions: Princess on the Run, Part One

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

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

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

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

Originally Posted by Karen Funk Blocher at 11/01/2006 01:38:00 AM

Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part Three

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

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.


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Lore Goes to Mâvarin, Part One

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...

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