The Fathomless Fire

The publication of The Fathomless Fire, the second volume in my Perilous Realm trilogy, has been delayed, unfortunately. I'm told it won't be coming out until August 2011.

A long time to wait, if you've been following the story (as I have!) and have been wondering what's happening with Will Lightfoot and Shade the wolf and Rowen. So here, by way of apology for the long wait, and to whet your appetite, is a short excerpt from The Fathomless Fire:

Last night, Will talked to a shadow…

It was a warm night and he couldn’t sleep, so instead he started unpacking one of the boxes in his room labeled Will’s stuff. It was strange how packing up your things and then taking them out of a box later made you look at them in a new way. Some of these books and knick-knacks had been on his bedroom shelf for as long as he could remember, but jumbled up together in a box they looked like intriguing curiosities. He dug out an old storybook and slowly turned its yellowing pages. His mother used to read him these stories at bedtime when he was little. When he came to the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, with the picture of the giant’s castle above the clouds, he stopped. He’d loved this story. He remembered how scared he was of the giant when he came after Jack, but oh how satisfying the ending was, when the beanstalk was chopped through and the giant fell to his earthshaking end.

One night when his mother was reading the story to him she’d shut the book and said, Our people have a story like this one, too.

She’d been gone for three years now, but as he sat with the book in his hands he could still hear her voice, as clearly as if she was right here with him.

  Tell me that story, he’d asked her.

When she’d said our people she’d meant her ancestors, who had lived on the plains a long time ago, riding horses and hunting buffalo. She hardly ever spoke about her family’s past, and so when she did Will always sat still and listened eagerly. Since those plains people were his mother’s ancestors that meant they were Will’s, too, a thought that always gave him a strange feeling, a kind of homesickness for a world he’d never seen. And that night she’d told him the story of the boy who traveled to the mountain above the clouds and stole back the rain from the Sky Folk. At first his mother just called the hero of the story the boy, but when Will asked her what his name she said his people called him the boy who is light of foot, or Lightfoot for short. He was thrilled that the hero’s name was the same as his. Only much later did he realize that his mother had added that detail on the spur of the moment, just to please him. I think he was probably a lot like you, his mother had said.

The story was even better than Jack and the Beanstalk. The boy called Lightfoot had many adventures on his way to the Sky Mountain, adventures that Will’s mother told him night after night for a long time before they moved on to other stories and other books. Whenever she finished one of her Lightfoot stories and was tucking him in for the night, he would always ask her for just one more. And she would tilt her head, and say …

A gust of wind swept in through the open window, sending papers flying and knocking over the reading lamp on the table beside Will’s bed. Before he could catch it, the lamp landed on the rug and the shade sprang off the bulb. Will hopped off the bed and rescued the shade before it rolled under the bed. As he was about to put it back on the lamp, he heard a sound behind him. A very distinct and unmistakable cough. The kind of cough someone makes when they’re trying politely to get your attention.

He whirled around.

There was no one else in the room. The door was closed. All he saw was his own looming shadow, thrown by the bare bulb onto the far wall.

But there was another shadow, standing right next to his.

Another person-shape, where there shouldn’t be one. Will turned his head slowly, his heart pounding. There was no one beside him casting that other shadow.

“Hello,” said a voice.

Will screamed and raced for the door.

“Wait,” said the voice, although it was not quite a voice. More like the hollow echo of a voice. “Where are you going?”

Much to his own surprise, Will didn’t flee out the door and down the stairs. Instead he stopped, turned and faced the shadow. He wasn’t sure why, but it was at least partly the feeling, deep down, that this impossibility had something to do with that other world he had journeyed to, and had been thinking about ever since.

The shadow of someone who wasn’t there moved away from Will’s own shadow, toward the corner of the room. An old saggy armchair stood there, on which Will piled his clothes at the end of the day.

The shadow-person raised a shadow-hand and gestured to the chair.

“May I?” the voice asked. How a shadow could be speaking to him, Will didn’t know, but the voice sounded … right somehow. A shadow should sound like that, he thought, like the edges of a voice with everything in the middle taken away.

Will nodded his head slowly.

The shadow of someone dropped into the shadow of the chair with a long sigh.

“That’s better,” it said, patting the arms of the chair. “It wasn’t easy getting here, believe me. I’m a bit out of breath. I have to say I’ve never come this far before.”

“Where are you from?” Will asked.

There was a moment of silence.

“You don’t really need me to answer that,” the shadow replied, with the slightest tinge of sarcasm.

“No, I guess not. What are … who are you?”

“That’s a better question. Unfortunately, the answer is that I’m not anybody. I’m a shadow.”

“A shadow of who?”

“Just a shadow. No who.”

“But every shadow is a shadow of something.”

“Maybe. But never mind that. I’ve got a task to perform, so I’d better get to it before my time is up. I’m here to warn you.”

“Warn me about what?”

The shadow seemed to lean forward in the shadow of the chair.

“Terrible things. A friend in great danger.”

Will thought of Rowen and her grandfather the loremaster. And Shade, the wolf. The shadow could only be talking about one of them. 

“I was with my friends just a few days ago,” he said, bewildered. “They were fine when I left. They were safe. What’s happened?”

The shadow sat back again.

 “That’s all I can tell you. Terrible things. A friend in great danger.”

Will stared at the shadow.  This was the shape of a person, all right, but nothing more than that. There was no face, nobody to look at. Which made everything it said doubtful. This could be the shadow of anyone. 

“Who sent you?” Will asked.

“No one sent me. I’m here because it’s what must be.”

“Well, who told you my friends are in danger?”

The shadow had no eyes, but Will had the odd feeling that if it had, it would have been rolling them in annoyance.

“No one told me. I serve no one. I’m just here, simple as that, with a warning for you. I’ll repeat it again if you like: Terrible things. A friend—“

“Is that all you can say?” Will broke in, his alarm turning to anger.

“That’s all I can say.”

“Meaning you don’t know anything more, or you won’t tell me?”

The shadow sat for a moment in silence, then hoisted itself out of the shadow armchair with a grunt of effort.

“That’s a comfortable chair. But I’ve done what I came to do. Now if you’ll excuse me --”

“No, wait. If you know more, you have to tell me. Are these terrible things happening now, or are they going to happen soon …?”

“As I said, I’ve done what I came to do. I can’t give out any further information. The laws forbid it.”

The shadow seemed to dim slightly, and Will was afraid it would disappear.

“What laws?” he asked quickly. “Please, I’m not from your world. I don’t understand.”

 “The laws of Story, of course. I exist because of those laws. Or I suppose you could say I am one of the laws.”

“But there’s more you could tell me, right? It sounds like you know more than you’re saying.”

The shadow sighed.

“Listen. What I am is a shadow of things to come. Things that haven’t happened yet. My task is to bring warnings or hints about what’s on the way. Hints that most folk choose to ignore, unfortunately. But that’s their problem. All I do is foretell, and what I do is what I am. And that’s all.”

“But you could say more if you wanted to, couldn’t you?”

 “A shadow has no wants,” it said mechanically, as if reciting something it had said already many times. “A shadow does not give directions, explanations, or advice. A shadow is its task and nothing more.”

“But you’ve already broken the law,” Will said eagerly, the idea forming even as he spoke. “You told me what you are and what you do. So you’ve given me an explanation.”

The shadow went still, as if it was surprised by what Will had said, and then it chuckled, a hollow sound like raindrops falling into a tin pail.

“I’ve bent the rules. I never did that before. It must be because I’m so far from home…”

“It won’t hurt anything,” Will said, though he had no idea if that was true or not. “So you can go ahead and tell me more.

The shadow didn’t answer right away. It wavered and bobbed, as if it was being cast now by a flickering candle flame.

“I will not,” the shadow said with what sounded to Will like a note of fear in its voice. “I’m … I’m a shadow of things to come. That’s all I am. And my time is almost up. I have to …”

“Wait, please.”

The shadow had grown even harder to see, but at Will’s entreaty it grew darker and more defined again.

“I can’t tell you what terrible things are coming,” the shadow said, “because I really don’t know. I don’t know what danger your friends are in.” The shadow had almost faded away to nothing. “All I know is that you’re needed in the story, and you have to get back right away.”

“How do I get back?”

 “The same way you left,” the shadow’s voice said, but from where, Will couldn’t tell, because it had already vanished.

In a daze Will looked around his room, as if he might find the shadow still lurking somewhere. He saw the fallen lamp, picked it up and set it back on the table. Then his eyes fell on the storybook, sprawled open on the floor. Jack and the Beanstalk. He remembered that just before the shadow appeared he’d been thinking about what his mother’s always told him when he asked for one more story at bedtime.

Don’t worry, she would say. The story will wait for us.

But what about his story, and Rowen’s, he wondered now. Would it wait?

Ogre

Traveling in the Perilous Realm you’re likely, sooner or later, to meet ogres. They have become more and more familiar denizens of Story these days, no doubt largely as a result of computer and roleplaying games like World of Warcraft, in which they appear quite often. In these games, and the guidebooks and manuals that have spun off from them, ogres have been catalogued by way of various species, tribes, races, etc. You can, for example, encounter an “ogre mage,” which is surprising, given that ogres are traditionally thought of as brutish hateful creatures without much in the way of brains. Rarely (if ever) in stories does a hero go to consult a wise old ogre.

The word ogre itself is interesting. Looking into its etymology, one finds that the word first appears in French literature, in a 12th century poem about the Aruthurian knight Percival, where these lines appear:

et s'est escrit que il ert ancore

que toz li reaumes de Logres,

qui ja dis fu la terre as ogres,

ert destruite par cele lance …

Which translates roughly to something like: “and there will come a time / when the kingdom of Logres [England], / which was once the land of ogres / shall be destroyed by that spear …”

It almost seems likely the poet invented the word ogre in order to find something to rhyme with an odd word like Logres. From there, however, the word ogre shows up more and more frequently in poems and stories through the ages, usually to describe some sort of large, savage, nasty being, somewhere in size between a goblin and a giant. 

I used to wonder why there were no ogres in Tolkien’s books, only trolls, until I discovered that his word for goblin, orc, may have been derived from the Italian word for ogre, orco, which may itself come from a far older word for some sort of evil creature. So he didn't want both orcs and ogres in his stories if they're really the same thing, at least etymologically. As usual with Professor Tolkien, it was an interesting old word that sparked his imagination and led to the creation of a new creature. 

Sometimes that's how the realm of Story grows: the word comes first, then something has to be imagined to fit it.

Storytelling inns

The Golden Goose tavern in the city of Fable is not the only place in the Perilous Realm where Storyfolk gather to share the tales they’ve heard or lived.

In a part of the Realm known as the Twilight Land, there is an Inn of the Sign of Mother Goose. You have to be careful approaching the Mother Goose Inn. As one earlier traveler told it: “I would have floated past the Inn, and perhaps have gotten into the Land of Never-Come-Back-Again, only I caught at the branch of an apple tree, and so I stopped myself…”

The traveler, having saved himself from a one-way trip to Never-Come-Back-Again, went on into the tap-room of the inn, and this is what he found there:

“There they all were, every one of them. Aladdin and Ali Baba, and Fortunatus, and Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and Dr Faustus, and Bidpai, and Cinderella, and Patient Grizzel, and the Soldier who cheated the Devil, and St George, and Hans in Luck … and there was Sinbad the Sailor, and the tailor who killed seven flies with one blow, and the Fisherman who fished up the Genie, and the Lad who fiddled for the Devil in the bramble bush, and the Blacksmith who made Death sit in his apple tree, and Boots, who always marries a princess, whether he wants to or not – a ragtag lot as ever you saw in your life, gathered from every place, and brought together in Twilight Land.”

And each of these Storyfolk was taking a turn telling a story, just as the pilgrims did on their way to Canterbury at the Tabard Inn, and just as Storyfolk have done for ages in Fable. But they don’t tell their own stories, the ones we know; instead they tell other stories that they have heard.

[To read these stories told by storybook characters, look for the book Twilight Land by the American artist and writer Howard Pyle]

There are many other such storytelling inns throughout the Perilous Realm, they say, and perhaps beyond it. For example, I have heard of a place called the Inn of the World’s End: “a free house” as the sign outside declares. This is a place where travelers journeying between stories may take shelter during strange storms that herald the onset of momentous, reality-changing events.

(For further information, see World’s End, a graphic novel in the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman).

Postscript: I personally know of three travelers who've returned from the Land of Never-Come-Back-Again. There is at present a petition being circulated through the Realm to have the name of this land changed to Probably-Never-Come-Back-Again.

Merlin's Ring

I first read this novel when I was a teenager in the 1970's. I was blown away by its epic narrative sweep and by the beautiful, transcendent story of its heroes, the Roman-Aztec warrior Gwalchmai and his beloved Corenice, an immortal Atlantean woman, as they lose and find one another again and again through the ages, and through many worlds of myth, legend and history. 

I knew nothing about the author when I first read the book all those years ago, but recently I happened to be browsing the old paperbacks on my shelves and I found my battered Ballantine copy of the novel, and decided to read it again for the first time in decades. It had held up remarkably well after all these years, and now, in this age of the internet, I finally did some searching to learn more about the author. His story is more curious than I would have guessed, and rather sad as well, since it's clear he has been far underrated as a writer of fantasy.

Here's the story of H Warner Munn and the world of Merlin's Ring.

The Death of King Arthur

It was not to win renown that King Arthur had gone far across the sea, for he loved his own country so well, that to gain glory at home made him happiest of all.


But a false knight with his followers was laying waste the country across the sea, and Arthur had gone to wage war against him.


"And you, Sir Mordred, will rule the country while I am gone," the King had said. And the knight smiled as he thought of the power that would be his.


At first the people missed their great King Arthur, but as the months passed they began to forget him, and to talk only of Sir Mordred and his ways.


And he, that he might gain the people's praise, made easier laws than ever Arthur had done, till by and by there were many in the country who wished that the King would never come back. When Mordred knew what the people wished, he was glad, and he made up his mind to do a cruel deed.


He would cause letters to be written from beyond the sea, and the letters would tell that the great King Arthur had been slain in battle.


And when the letters came the people read, "King Arthur is dead," and they believed the news was true.


And there were some who wept because the noble King was slain, but some had no time to weep. "We must find a new King," they said. And because his laws were easy, these chose Sir Mordred to rule over them.


The wicked knight was pleased that the people wished him to be their King. "They shall take me to Canterbury to crown me," he said proudly. And the nobles took him there, and amid shouts and rejoicings he was crowned.


But it was not very long till other letters came from across the sea, saying that King Arthur had not been slain, and that he was coming back to rule over his own country once more.


When Sir Mordred heard that King Arthur was on his way home, he collected a great army and went to Dover to try to keep the King from landing.


But no army would have been strong enough to keep Arthur and his knights away from the country they loved so well. They fought fiercely till they got on shore and scattered all Sir Mordred's men.


Then the knight gathered together another army, and chose a new battle-field.


But King Arthur fought so bravely that he and his men were again victorious, and Sir Mordred fled to Canterbury.


Many of the people began to forsake the false knight now, and saying that he was a traitor, they went back to King Arthur.


But still Sir Mordred wished to conquer the King. He would go through the counties of Kent and Surrey and raise a new army.


Now King Arthur had dreamed that if he fought with Sir Mordred again he would be slain. So when he heard that the knight had raised another army, he thought, "I will meet this traitor who has betrayed me. When he looks in my face, he will be ashamed and remember his vow of obedience."


And he sent two bishops to Sir Mordred. "Say to the knight that the King would speak with him alone," said Arthur.


And the traitor thought, "The King wishes to give me gold or great power, if I send my army away without fighting." "I will meet King Arthur," he said to the bishops.


But because he did not altogether trust the King he said he would take fourteen men with him to the meeting-place, "and the King must have fourteen men with him too," said Sir Mordred. "And our armies shall keep watch when we meet, and it a sword is lifted it shall be the signal for battle."


Then King Arthur arranged a feast for Sir Mordred and his men. And as they feasted all went merrily till an adder glided out of a little bush and stung one of the knight's men. And the pain was so great, that the man quickly drew his sword to kill the adder.


And when the armies saw the sword flash in the light, they sprang to their feet and began to fight, "for this is the signal for battle," they thought.


And when evening came there were many thousand slain and wounded, and Sir Mordred was left alone. But Arthur had still two knights with him, Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere.


When King Arthur saw that his army was lost and all his knights slain but two, he said, "Would to God I could find Sir Mordred, who has caused all this trouble."


"He is yonder," said Sir Lucan, "but remember your dream, and go not near him."


"Whether I die or live," said the King, "he shall not escape." And seizing his spear he ran to Sir Mordred, crying, "Now you shall die."


And Arthur smote him under the shield, and the spear passed through his body, and he died.


Then, wounded and exhausted, the King fainted, and his knights lifted him and took him to a little chapel not far from a lake.


As the King lay there, he heard cries of fear and pain from the distant battle-field.


"What causes these cries?" said the King wearily. And to soothe the sick King, Sir Lucan said he would go to see.


And when he reached the battle-field, he saw in the moonlight that robbers were on the field stooping over the slain, and taking from them their rings and their gold. And those that were only wounded, the robbers slew, that they might take their jewels too.


Sir Lucan hastened back, and told the King what he had seen.


"We will carry you farther off, lest the robbers find us here," said the knights. And Sir Lucan lifted the King on one side and Sir Bedivere lifted him on the other.


But Sir Lucan had been wounded in the battle, and as he lifted the King he fell back and died.


Then Arthur and Sir Bedivere wept for the fallen knight.


Now the King felt so ill that he thought he would not live much longer, and he turned to Sir Bedivere: "Take Excalibur, my good sword," he said, "and go with it to the lake, and throw it into its waters. Then come quickly and tell me what you see."


Sir Bedivere took the sword and went down to the lake. But as he looked at the handle with its sparkling gems and the richness of the sword, he thought he could not throw it away. "I will hide it carefully here among the rushes," thought the knight. And when he had hidden it, he went slowly to the King and told him he had thrown the sword into the lake.


"What did you see?" asked the King eagerly.


"Nothing but the ripple of the waves as they broke on the beach," said Sir Bedivere.


"You have not told me the truth," said the King. "If you love me, go again to the lake, and throw my sword into the water."


Again the knight went to the water's edge. He drew the sword from its hiding-place. He would do the King's will, for he loved him. But again the beauty of the sword made him pause. "It is a noble sword; I will not throw it away," he murmured, as once more he hid it among the rushes. Then he went back more slowly, and told the King that he had done his will.


"What did you see?" asked the King.


"Nothing but the ripples of the waves as they broke on the beach," repeated the knight.


"You have betrayed me twice," said the King sadly, "and yet you are a noble knight! Go again to the lake, and do not betray me for a rich sword."


Then for the third time Sir Bedivere went to the water's edge, and drawing the sword from among the rushes, he flung it as far as he could into the lake.


And as the knight watched, an arm and a hand appeared above the surface of the lake. He saw the hand seize the sword, and shaking it three times, disappear again under the water. Then Sir Bedivere went back quickly to the King, and told him what he had seen.


"Carry me to the lake," entreated Arthur, "for I have been here too long."


And the knight carried the King on his shoulders down to the water's side. There they found a barge lying, and seated in it were three Queens, and each Queen wore a black hood. And when they saw King Arthur they wept.


"Lay me in the barge," said the King. And when Sir Bedivere had laid him there, King Arthur rested his head on the lap of the fairest Queen. And they rowed from land.


Sir Bedivere, left alone, watched the barge as it drifted out of sight, and then he went sorrowfully on his way, till he reached a hermitage. And he lived there as a hermit for the rest of his life.


And the barge was rowed to a vale where the King was healed of his wound.


And some say that now he is dead, but others say that King Arthur will come again, and clear the country of its foes.


-- from Stories of King Arthur's Knights by Mary MacGregor