Liavek 1 (13 page)

Appendix 3: A Handbook for the Apprentice Magician

1. Tricks of investiture

Living things can be invested with birth luck (though this is always to be considered rash) and, in very rare cases, pieces that form a greater whole can be invested with birth luck (though this is always to be considered mad). The folly of investing luck in a living thing should be obvious: The person or pet might flee, or somehow reveal that it is a magician's invested object, or die.

The danger of investing in a divided whole, such as a wooden puzzle or a deck of cards, is compounded by its difficulty, for the process is far more complex than that of common investiture. It
requires meticulous preparation of the thing that is to be invested (for example, a deck of cards must be cut from a single sheet and be prepared during an elaborate ritual as a preliminary to the act of investiture). Even if the ritual of investiture is successful. the invested object may only be used when the magician and all of the pieces of the object are within the customary three paces of each other. If one of the pieces is missing, the luck cannot be used, and if one of the pieces is destroyed, the luck will be freed.

Since such investitures are done, and done successfully, investiture may be no more than a test of the magician's ability to perceive and sustain belief in a "unity." This theory is supported by the latest Liavekan understanding of physics, which suggests that all objects are constantly changing on the molecular level. And yet, though many magicians accept this theory, not one has been able to invest luck in a poem, a theorem, a god, or a joke. The student magician is advised to invest luck in simple, durable. physical items.

2. A magician's birthday

Since Liavek's solar year is 365¼ days long, the actual hours of one's birth period will occur at different times each year with respect to the calendar. A magician is always aware of the discrepancy between the calendar year and the solar year. That discrepancy is reconciled only by the extra calendar day given every four years during the Grand Festival.

Since all Liavekans publicly celebrate their birthdays during Festival Week (excepting, of course, the Levar, whose birthday is at midyear). many young magicians are fooled into thinking that their own birthdays are secret. So long as one has family, friends, or neighbors, this is not so. Someone almost always remembers the time of year that a magician's mother secluded herself for a few days or weeks or months, and from the tiniest clues, a rival can deduce a magician's birth hours. A rash magician might try to eliminate family, friends, and neighbors in the hope of being safe from enemies—a course that is likely to create more enemies. The wise magician will always behave an ethical manner, from a sense of self-preservation if not morality.

3. A brief history of magic

In primitive times, inhabitants of the world lived in awe and fear of the effects of birth luck. The practices of early magicians may never be known, but it is certain their skill was less than that of the youngest student of magic today, for until the secret of investiture was learned, magicians only had power during the hours of their births. The name of the magician who discovered that luck can be invested in a vessel and used throughout the year is not remembered, though the oldest college of magic was established in Tichen in 2533, and Tichenese records show the principles of investiture were the first things taught to the would-be magician. It is possible that investiture was known several centuries before that time and kept as a secret handed from magician to apprentice.

4. Of magic and medicine

The student magician is strongly advised to avoid the practice of medicine without completing an extensive course of study in medicine. The casting of a simple spell of healing can be easy; its consequences can be deadly.

(a) If the spell deals only with effects and not with causes, a patient may walk about in apparently perfect health for days or weeks, and then collapse without warning.

(b) Since an ignorant magician's spell is dependent purely on magic, it will fail on the magician's birthday, when all the magician's spells fail. Should the magician's luck be freed or destroyed by an enemy or an accident, or should the magician die, the spell will fail. When this happens, if the original illness or impairment is not the sort cured by the passage of time, it will return, at least as strongly as it was at the time of the spell or, in the case of a degenerative ailment, more strongly.

The magician who knows nothing of medicine is advised to send ailing clients to a doctor of medicine or to an unlettered healer of good repute, regardless of whether that doctor or healer is a magician.

Any student magician will do well to consider acquiring a degree in medicine. Doctor-magicians are rare and very well paid. However, those magicians who wish to keep their birthdays secret should consider other occupations. A doctor who is a magician is honor-bound to reveal when reinvestiture draws near so patients who are dependent on magical treatment may seek another doctor. Some doctor-magicians will form joint practices so they may offer overlapping treatment to each other's patients.

Appendix 4: Liavek, A Creation Myth

Know, my Excellencies, that there is a world beyond ours where magic is not bound to the laws of luck, where magic may not exist at all, and if it does, that world's inhabitants know little of it. In this world, seven writers gathered together, and these are their names: Steven Brust, Nathan Bucklin, Emma Bull, Kara Dalkey, Pamela Dean, Will Shetterly, and Patricia Wrede. They lived in a city named Minneapolis, and when they first gathered, their names were not known as those of writers, for none of their work had ever been published.

Because their world seemed deficient in magic, several of these writers created other worlds, and they would invite friends together on a weekend evening to have adventures in these imaginary worlds. The friends would take the parts of individuals in the world. The creator would direct their adventures and act the part of any additional characters that might be necessary for the entertainment, which was akin to a game and to an improvised play. The name of Patricia Wrede's world was Lyra, and Kara Dalkey's was Vesta, and Steven Brust's was Dragaera, but those realms take no part in my story (though in other tales, they are mighty lands, indeed). What is important is that they existed, and provoked Will Shetterly to create a world named Liavek.

Ah, you listen more closely! But this is not what you expect, for that Liavek was the faintest shadow of ours. Two adventures were enacted there. Will Shetterly was The Magician, Rikiki, the Levar, Rusty, and Stone. Emma Bull was Snake. Steven Brust, Patricia Wrede, and Kara Dalkey were adventurers who have not been seen since those games. Pamela Dean was audience, prompter of ideas, and baker of cookies. Still, this is a thread, it is not the tale. For the second adventure in that dim Liavek was the last, and Liavek was all but forgotten.

Now, to return to the first thread: Patricia Wrede sold her first novel,
Shadow Magic
, soon after these writers gathered together, and then
Daughter of Witches, The Seven Towers, Talking to Dragons,
and
The Harp of Imach Thyssel
. Steven Brust sold his first,
Jhereg
, and then
Yendi
and
To Reign in Hell
. Will Shetterly sold
Cats Have No Lord
, and Emma Bull sold "Rending Dark" to
Sword and Sorceress
. When Terri Windling, the editor who had bought all of their novels so far, received Pamela Dean's
The Secret Country
, and Kara Dalkey's
The Curse of Sagamore,
she decided to set these writers to a task. She asked them to create an anthology in which all the stories occurred in the same place and time. But they were too few to fill such an anthology, so she bade them invite writers whose work they knew and respected to complete the volume.

The first part of the task was to build a world in which many writers might play, and so the two threads of this tale finally intertwine. The writers had all created literary worlds of their own for the sake of their fiction. Confronted with the task of creating yet another world, they remembered Liavek, and that it had hardly been used, and so it was adopted for their purpose.

They knew they were too few to make a world, so other writers were invited to the first
Liavek
anthology. Gene Wolfe,
Nancy Kress, Megan Lindholm, Barry B. Longyear, and Jane Yolen answer the call.

And, as these eleven writers labored together, what began as a stage setting became a world.

Now you think you know the end of this story? These eleven are the great gods of Liavek—and that is the point of my tale? It is not so, 0 most excellent listeners. For they were not the only writers invited to explore Liavek. In later volumes, Charles de Lint, Charles Saunders, Gregory Frost, John M. Ford, Caroline Stevermer, Bradley Denton, and Alan Moore enlarged on what the first eleven began.

Ah, you are amused that Liavek outgrew the confines of a single book? Listen more closely, Supremacies.

The writers who have told their tales are not Liavek's gods, nor are those who may write future stories the gods of the City of Luck. Our gods are those who read what these writers wrote, for if they are pleased, Liavek will never fall, no matter what Tichen or Ka Zhir may plot.

Excellencies, thank you for graciously indulging a longwinded teller of tales. As it was written by Jane Yolen:

May the luck of birth follow you,

not like a hound on a trail,

but like a shadow on a sunny day.

About Future Volumes of Liavek

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