Old Kingdom 04: Across the Wall (32 page)
INTRODUCTION TO MY NEW REALLY EPIC FANTASY SERIES
T
HIS BEGAN LIFE AS A SPOKEN - WORD
piece that I wrote for a panel session at the 1999 Worldcon in Melbourne, Australia. I learned long ago that if possible, it’s best to read something short and funny to an audience, rather than parts of longer, serious works. It’s usually best to avoid pieces with lots of dialogue as well, unless you’re gifted at doing different voices or are a trained actor.
So I wrote this piece, notionally about the new epic fantasy series I’m going to write. Given that it would be delivered to extremely well-read fantasy readers, I thought they would appreciate some gentle fun being poked at some of the stereotypes and peculiarities of the genre. I took the added precaution of apologising in advance to some of the authors whose titles I had playfully manipulated, just in case any rabid fans took exception. Or the authors themselves, as at least one was there.
The piece went over well at Worldcon, so I have repeated it a few times here and there and eventually put it up on my website. I never expected that this would prompt a few readers to e-mail me, one suggesting that I shouldn’t write such a long series of books because it would take too long and I should be writing more stories set in the Old Kingdom; and another wanting to know when the first of the forty-seven novels would be coming out as they wanted to know what happened to the boy with eyes the color of mud who swam with dolphins.
Somehow, e-mailing to explain that the article is a joke took some of the fun out of it. I trust I will not need to do so again …
MY NEW REALLY EPIC FANTASY SERIES
I
’M GOING TO READ THE PROLOGUE
from my new forty-seven-book epic fantasy series, which is currently titled
The Garbeliad
. The titles of the individual books include:
Book One:
A Time of Wheels
Book Two:
A Throne of Games
Book Three:
The Dragon Who Died Young
Book Four:
The Sorcerer’s Thirty-seven
Apprentices
Book Five:
The Witch Wardrobe of Lyon
Book Six:
The Dark Is Falling
Book Seven:
The Seventh Book
Book Eight:
The Return of the Mistakenly
Purchased King
To tell the truth, I’m not entirely sure about the other thirty-nine books yet, though I’m toying with
The Book Whose Title Must Not Be Spoken
for Book 26. You know, to keep the series sort of atmospheric and spooky.
Anyway, I decided that before I wrote this series, I’d analyse the components of successful epic fantasy. Like when to have the ultimate evil first mentioned and so on—should it be page forty-two or page sixty-seven? And one thing I discovered pretty early on is that you need to have a prologue and preferably a prophecy as well. A bird’s-eye view of something is a bonus, and you can add that in if you like, but it’s not essential.
So this is the prologue and prophecy from the first book of my new fifty-eight-book series—I just decided I’d need another eleven books to do it properly; forty-seven isn’t enough.
PROLOGUE: FROM THE SECRET LEDGER OF THE ACCOUNTANT
HIGH ABOVE THE DUSTY PLAINS , AN eagle whose wings stretched from side to side soared and soared and … soared. Its eagle eyes focused on the ground below, seeking out tasty vihar-vihar rabbits.
Then a glitter caught its eye. Not the glitter of dull vihar-vihar rabbits. No, this was metal, not fur.
The eagle folded the wings that went from side to side and dropped like an eagle that has stopped flying. Down and down and down it plummeted, until two hundred three feet and seven inches above the ground its wings snapped out. The eagle stopped in midair.
When it recovered from the shock of stopping so suddenly, the great bird of prey, the raptor of the skies, the lord of the birds, saw that the glitter came from a metal badge. A metal badge that was fastened to a brim. The brim of a hat. A hat that was on a head. A head that was connected to a body. The body of a man who was a traveler. This was not a vihar-vihar rabbit. This was not food. Still, the eagle circled in a soaring sort of way, watching and listening. For this eagle had not always been an eagle. It had once been an egg. But even so, it had the gift of tongues and could understand human speech. It could speak it too, though badly. It had a stutter because its beak was bent.
This is what the eagle heard when the man with the metal badge on the brim of his hat began to speak to the other men who didn’t have metal badges and thus didn’t glitter in a way that attracted the attention of eagles that soar.
WHAT THE MAN WITH THE METAL BADGE ON THE BRIM OF HIS HAT SAID:
Gather round, unpleasant acquaintances, and partly listen to a tale of our knuckle-dragging forebears and the battles they ran away from. Our recorded history goes back some three weeks to the time that Sogren the Extremely Drunk burned down the museum. But I remember tales older still … going back almost ten years, to the time when Amoss the Stupidly Generous gave the Midwinter Party with the ice-skating accident.
Know that this is a story before even that—back to the almost legendary but still quite believable times of twenty years ago. The time when rumour reached the Lower Kingdoms of a new, dark power growing without aid of fertiliser in the north. The name of the ‘Overlord’ was spoken softly for the first time in secret and troubled councils. In many dark corners lips whispered it, and then trembled with the effort of not laughing.
For the Overlord’s name was Cecil and he was known to have a lisp. Naturally enough, he preferred to be referred to as ‘Overlord,’ and whenever his agents heard his true name spoken, dire retribution would swiftly follow. No one was safe. The merest innocent mention of the word
Cecil
would result in hideous and usually magical destruction of everyone within hearing distance.
Within days of the first outbreak, the town of Cecil was completely vaporised, and poor unfortunates who had been baptised Cecil were forced to change their names to Ardraven or Belochnazar or other wimpish monikers lacking the macho virility of their own true names.
How is it that I dare to mention the word
Cecil
to you now? I have this amulet, which magically erases the word
Cecil
from the minds of listeners after ten minutes have passed. Instead, you will remember a conversation littered with small chiming sounds where the word
Cecil
has been erased.
But I digress. Where was I? Yes. Frantic messages from the Dwarves went unanswered, as their messenger service took so long to walk over the mountains that they weren’t actually received until three years after the dire warnings they contained were sent. In any case, Falanor and Eminholme were unprepared to send men to war. Instead, they offered a troop of armoured monkeys and the entire population of a reform school for small children.
This elite force went into the mountains and never returned alive. However, they did come back dead, even more horrible than before and in the service of Cecil … I mean the Overlord.
Shocked, the kingdoms ordered a massive mobilisation, and the kings had extra horses harnessed to their personal escape chariots. Yet even as they extracted the most valuable items from their treasuries, many feared it would be too late.
The forces of Cecil were on the march. Slowly, it is true, for dead Dwarves march even slower than live ones. Yet it became clear to the minds of the Wise that within the next seventeen years something must be done.
But it seemed that there was no power in the south that could resist the Overlord. For he was the mightiest sorcerer in his age bracket, the winner of all the gold medals in the Games of the Seventeenth Magiad. He was also a champion shotputter, who practiced with the skulls of his enemies filled with lead. And his teams of goblin synchronised swimmers could cross any moat, could emerge at any time in private swimming pools, or even infiltrate via the drains, dressed in clown suits. No one was safe.
It was then that the Wise remembered the words written on the silver salad bowl they had been using for official luncheons the last hundred years. It was brought from the kitchens, and despite the scratches and dents from serving utensils, the Wise could still make out the runes that said ‘Sibyl Prophecy Plate. Made in Swychborgen-orgen-sorgen-lorgen exclusively for aeki.’
The other side appeared completely blank. But when olive oil was drizzled upon it, strange runes appeared around the rim. Slowly, letter by letter, the Wise began to spell it out.
‘A s-a-i-l-o-r w-e-n-t t-o s-e-a s-e-a s-e-a t-o s-e-e w-h-a-t h-e c-o-u-l-d s-e-e s-e-e s-e-e.’
Days went by, then weeks, then months, as you would expect. If it was the other way around, it would be a sign that the Overlord had already triumphed. Finally the Wise puzzled out the entire prophecy.
A sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could
see see see
But all that he could see see see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea
The meaning of this prophecy was immediately clear to the Wise. They knew that somewhere in the Lower Kingdoms a boy would be born, a sailor who would use the power of the sea to defeat the Overlord. A boy with eyes as black as the bottom of the deep blue sea. A boy who might even have vestigial gills and some scales or maybe a sort of fin along his back.
But the Wise also knew that the Overlord would know the prophecy too, for his spies were everywhere, particularly among the waiters at the Wise Club. They knew that he knew that they knew that he knew.
They all knew that the Wise must find the boy with the power of the sea at his command first, and take him somewhere where he could grow up with no knowledge of his powers or his destiny. They must find him before the Overlord did, for he would try to turn the boy to the powers of darkness.
But who was the boy? Where was the boy? Was there a second salad bowl, a second verse to the prophecy, long lost to the Wise but known to an aged crone in the forest of Haz-chyllen-boken-woken, close by the sea, where a small boy with eyes the color of dark mud swam with the dolphins?
Yes, there was.
INTRODUCTION TO THREE ROSES
I
WROTE THIS STORY THE DAY BEFORE
I needed to read something at an event in Melbourne in late 1997. The occasion was the annual celebration organised by Australian children’s literature champion Agnes Nieuwenhuizen for librarians, teachers, and book aficionados, and this one was entitled ‘An Enchanted Evening.’ Half a dozen authors were to speak, each reading or telling a story about love or in some way related to love.
I don’t know why I wrote a story about a dead wife, since at that time I was single, I had never been married, nor had I ever had a significant partner die. I also don’t know why it came out as a fable or fairy tale. Part of it was written on a plane, and part in a hotel room. It wasn’t even typed when I read it for the first time at ‘An Enchanted Evening.’
But it surely was a tale of love, and the evening was indeed enchanted, as I met my future wife, Anna, there. So perhaps it is the most important story I have ever written, for the greatest reward.
THREE ROSES
