The Old Armory, Part I

Posted on July 12, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

The Old Armory in Bazinthiad was originally built as a lord’s keep in the days of Giralliya’s early history. Giralliya as an empire did not yet exist. Three kingdoms that would become its heart – Eirdry, Ennecy, and Istria – comprised the region, and Castellum Balazoron was a minor seat above Lake Argead, guarding the back way into the court of the Istrian king.

Blood Falchion

The lord’s heir, Caelan, was the second to see the blade.

It arrived amidst a pile of carpets from far Bethpaarean, and Sathon the carpet merchant’s son discovered it when he unpacked the bale and arranged the carpets in his father’s stall in the bailey.

Lord Jekis’ son sought his friend the instant he received word the carpet merchant was passing through Balazoron’s gates. It was a hike from his high chambers down through the donjon to the courtyard and out the barbican to the bailey, and Caelan suffered palsied limbs, the result of a fever in his infancy. He could not move fast, but he was just fast enough to see the sword—a falchion—a moment after Sathon uncovered it.

The weapon exuded an aura of dread. Caelan’s in-breath hissed. “What do you see?” he demanded.

Sathon turned in surprise—not that Caelan was there; the boys were always immediate in seeking one another—but in surprise at his friend’s tone: one of warning.

He answered: “The blade is broad and heavy after the nature of a falchion and fashioned of a bronze-hued metal that holds an edge far finer than ordinary metals. I should think it would split the bones of even a blood dragon, and a champion’s armor would part like water beneath its blow.”

Sathon nodded and continued. “Its hilts are fashioned of the same, but encrusted with opal and jade, and the scabbard matches them. The sap of the hevea tree covers the grip. The pommel is an emerald entire.” Sathon paused. “I wish I knew the way to wield a blade.” Envy and longing tinged his words.

“That’s not what I see.” Caelan swallowed. “I see shadow, a roiling darkness threaded by blood and despair.” His whisper strengthened to a command. “Hide it! Now! Or destroy it!”

That might have been the wiser course, but Caelan’s father came to greet the carpet merchant, the two men friends like their sons, and Lord Jekis saw what Sathon had seen: a fair weapon, rich, well-made, destined for the hand of a peer. And Jekis was a falchion wielder.

The foreign blade hung from the lord’s belt thereafter, and troubles followed.

A drought gripping the land deepened. Crops withered, wells failed, and wildfires swept through the dried grasses of the hunting veldt. Refugees pleaded entry at Balazoron’s gate every day, and the village on the lake shore below swelled as cousins and cousins of cousins left the parched interior to visit their kin.

Castellum Balazoron had foodstores in depth and an outer bailey made for mock battles. It could accommodate crowds. But the spring on the hillside faltered, its trickle slowing. The cistern in the inner bailey dried completely.

Lord Jekis ordered the digging of a new well, upslope from the outflow where the castellum churls filled their buckets. Legend held the heart of the aquifer supplying the spring rose there.

The men used a drill with a hollow bit, manually pumping its long stem, to excavate the well shaft. Deeper and deeper the bit penetrated, but the earth was dry, dry.

Lord Jekis and his sister quarreled. How many newcomers might be permitted through the gates? Should water be hauled from the lake? Could a request for aid be sent to Lord Vidriyo?

They quarreled about Caelan as well. Lady Agace had been as a mother to him since the fever. She looked always to ease her nephew’s shaking, cramping limbs. She summoned masseurs from Cambers, salves from Solmondy, and potions of healing from Hamrask, Fresange, and northern Tromme.

Now she evolved a scheme to send him to a sacred shrine in Capydaicia to pray healing of the goddess honored there. Lord Jekis denied her.

The words between brother and sister grew bitter, and their love for one another dwindled more swiftly than even the outflow of water from the hillside spring.

Caelan resisted his aunt’s plans for the first time, afraid to leave his elders in the donjon without his youth to stay their tempers.

Lady Agace sent tidings of their plight to Lord Vidriyo, against Jekis’ express command. Vidriyo arrived, but not with aid. He brought an army to advantage himself of their weakness and gain a stronghold for his kinsman.

The villagers fled their homes for Balazoron’s walls, and Lord Vidriyo sent terms for surrender.

Lord Jekis’ wrath mounted into madness. Caelan wondered: “Is he a troll?” Had his father resorted to incantatio in a futile attempt to save Balazoron from drought and warfare?

Jekis still wore the tabard device of his lineage, but his face was strange under his fury and his behavior, stranger. Caelan could not recognize him. Where had the genial man with laughter in his voice and kindness in his hand gone? This one’s visage was hard, his hand equally hard, and the evil falchion hung ever at his hip.

Lady Agace sent a messenger bearing a white flag to Vidriyo waiting amidst his knights. Perhaps she feared the enemy without less than the one rising within.

Caelan’s father declared her traitor and arranged for her chastening to be a public spectacle. When Vidrio entered under the truce flag for parley, Lady Agace’s punishment would demonstrate Jekis’ answer to Vidrio’s terms.

Jekis’ sister wore palest yellow—the color of mourning—in protest. But she presented herself at the new wellhead—still dry—as ordered. Her ladies begged her to lock herself in her chambers. Or to bribe the guards at the gate and escape, seeking succor in Vidriyo’s camp. She refused, awaiting Jekis’ will on the slope.

Caelan, present as required by his station, stood fidgeting in increasing dread.

His father arrived mere moments before Vidriyo himself. He—their enemy—expected their surrender. He received Jekis’ defiance instead.

“Shalt slay myself, my son, my sister, and all within my walls before I cease,” Balazoron’s lord declared. “But one death is enough. One death shall suffice.”

Lord Vidriyo grinned, expecting Jekis’ men-at-arms to make an attack, here at parley, knowing his own honor guard were too numerous to allow such treachery to succeed.

But Lord Jekis meant otherwise.

“There is a sorcery shalt buy all our freedoms—freedom from drought, freedom from coercion, freedom from enemies.” He glared at Vidriyo. “The blood of a mother shed by a young boy’s hand to wet this dry earth shalt purchase all. Caelan!”

Caelan was startled, and yet not. He’d witnessed his father’s advancing depravity all the half year since the falchion’s advent.

Vidriyo frowned, missing Jekis’ meaning yet again.

Lord Jekis unsheathed his fell weapon. “Three bloods!” he declared. “Three bloods in all.” He drew his palm across the blade’s razor edge, and blood dripped to the dry earth.

He pressed the falchion’s hilt into Caelan’s left hand and passed his son’s other hand, palm down, across that deadly edge for second blood. Caelan’s right hand stung with the wound.

Then Jekis stood back, leaving his son in possession of the falchion.

The balance of the blade weighed heavy, far beyond that of any sword or mace. The ballast of a trebuchet, the boulder in a merlon, the tail lash of a blood dragon might weigh like this. Somehow Caelan withstood it. His arm trembled.

The malice of it could not be withstood. It thirsted for blood, for destruction, for death. Its dark, tortured essence threaded tendrils of violence through Caelan’s thoughts. Limbs severed, wounds weeping, screams at echo. Its thrust built in Caelan’s clenching muscles. He stood and shook, feeling it, resisting it. Despite his resistence, he struck: a lunge in quarte, a fencer’s blow, not a battle-lord’s.

The razor edge grazed Lady Agace’s shoulder, ripping her gown, drawing third blood, although not the blood of the throat that Lord Jekis had intended.

Persisting in the momentum of his thrust, Caelan hurled the falchion from him, down into the open well shaft. “Let the bosom of earth take and keep both weapon and blood!” he shouted.

Lord Jekis convulsed and fell writhing. He might have followed the falchion into the rent earth had not his men reached for his cape, so close did he stand to the drop.

Far below in the darkness where no water ran, light blossomed, gold laced with silver, a molten flow that seethed and brightened, then shot skyward, an eye-searing column that might reach the moon, visible even in the daylight of noon.

Lightning cracked, a whip of brilliance from horizon to horizon, and clouds rushed up over the rim of the earth to hide both faded moon and blazing sun. Another deafening crash sounded, and the rain fell, soaking the dry dust, drenching the people gathered, quenching the column sparking from the wellhead.

It was Lord Jekis who made the trip to Zele’s shrine. Healing was granted him, both for the seizures afflicting his body and for the guilt and grief afflicting his mind. But he ceded Castellum Balazoron to the Lady Agace. And she wed Vidriyo, who thusly gained a stronghold after all, for himself, not his kinsman.

The well—tomb to the falchion, but baptized and transformed by sacred rain—brimmed with water, as did the spring down the slope. It was an exceptionally pure liquid with an echo of sweetness that lingered in the mouth after swallowing. And sometimes it yielded miracle cures of its own.

Caelan drank of it, and the palsy in his limbs was vanquished. He became a hero, mighty both on the battlefield and in the court of the king, where his wisdom won him lands and influence much greater than the portion accruing to a lord of Castellum Balazoron. And Sathon, the carpet merchant’s son, got his wish: learning skill at arms. He fought as a brother by Caelan’s side, with a spiked morningstar on the field of battle and with clever words in the king’s counsel chamber.

THE END

The Thricely Odd Troll

Posted on May 25, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

Alcea was the Exemplar elected from the canton of Ennecy, and she was a troll. But she was an odd troll. She did not contract her disease reaching greedily for power – the conventional route of an incantatrice. Nor did she sicken in heroic sacrifice to save an endangered child or a dying lover – the well-worn trope for many a ballad. No, nothing so dramatic or poetic as that. Alcea became a troll, because her radices were more weakly anchored than those of most folk. During an ordinary lesson under the auspices of her antiphonic mentor, the energetic strands securing her root radix snapped.

Her teacher was horrified, but there was no mending what was broken. The only question was: with just one radix drifting and the remaining twenty still firm, would she actually contract troll-disease?

She did; the straying root radix, massive in its slow momentum, inexorably dragged first the belly radix off course, and then the plexial radix, until all were awry. Many experts made pilgrimage to Ennecy to study her case, so unusual was it. But the more unusual thing about Alcea, really odd from a historical point of view, was that she was not the only troll in the Chamber of Exemplars. In fact, nearly every Exemplar was a troll.

The minutes recorded from the Chamber sessions paint a very strange picture of that governing body. Yelled taunts and defiance, obscene gesticulation, actual gibbering, and impassioned ranting were commonplace. In a particularly heated debate, one Exemplar went so far as to strangle his opponent. The minutes depose that the mortuary binders were summoned to take charge of the corpse!

Today, in these times of capital punishment for any use of incantatio, we can hardly imagine how such a situation could be permitted, but in truth the Exemplars of the Scaffold Era went wrong in their interpretation of their own early history. The plague that afflicted the Emperadrina Ravessa’s people was conflated with troll-disease. The understanding that Godon’s dawn and dusk postures cured antiphoners of plague was held as evidence that such contortions, performed regularly, might also hold troll-disease at bay. (Of course, they did nothing of the sort.)

Since all Exemplars then were antiphoners, temptation was great. One pioneer used the taboo incantatio to purify an unclean well in one of her constituent villages. Another built a bridge to replace a perilous ford. Others resorted to beguiling incantatio on the populace merely to secure election. Once the rot set in, it set in thoroughly. By Alcea’s time, mere antiphoners were rare; troll-mages were the rule; and helpful law-making from the Chamber of Exemplars, scarce. Godon’s postures did not retard troll-disease as was claimed, nor prevent it as was initially announced.

Now, it might be thought that Alcea was in good company – one troll among many – but her correspondence (all preserved by an industrious niece, the renowned Letitia of the Opal Sceptre) shows that this was not so. Alcea spoke against Tiberio’s Heresy, as she called it, at every chance offered, both in the Chamber itself and outside of it. Unlike the rest of her cohort, she practiced no incantatio, her disease progressed slowly, and she retained her sanity. She did not blame her colleagues for their poor choices, attributing their unwisdom to ignorance and calling for a return to Godon’s orthodoxy.

“Let us, doizennes and damesses, begin again the practice taught by our founder in all its purity. Godon propagated the dawn and dusk sequences, not because they banished plague, but because they induced harmony in the soul.”

Over years, Alcea’s advice grew popular. No doubt her own participation in the disease of trollism, if not in its prologue of power, forestalled conclusion that she stood in judgment over the troll mob. Antiphoners and non-antiphoners alike came to regard her as a wise old grandmother and took heed of her words. Fewer practitioners chose to cross over the line between safe energea and dangerous incantatio, and fewer constituents chose to elect trolls to the Chamber. Before Alcea breathed her last, Tiberio’s Heresy was abandoned, and the Chamber filled entirely by Exemplars of Godon’s Orthodoxy.

Alcea’s political reign has an odd codicil. Dying at last of troll-disease, the old woman left this earth literally, as well as figuratively. She lay upon a bier in the open air, desiring to witness the setting of the sun one last time. As the flaming daystar touched the horizon, fierce winged horses flew out from the streaming light, took Alcea upon their backs, and bore her away into the sky.

The orthodox example of the governing Chamber of Exemplars spread throughout the land, and Giralliya became a realm largely free of trolls among her citizenry. The Chamber itself accepted fewer and fewer antiphoners until it became wholly the province of legislators without any energea or magic whatsoever at their behest.

* * *

More stories of old Giralliya:
Legend of the Beggar’s Son
Ravessa’s Ride
The Old Armory: Blood Falchion

The Writing of the Belt

Posted on May 11, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

The Troll's Belt I had no idea I’d be retelling a renowned folk tale. All I had was the really vivid mind-picture of a wide leather belt, dyed brilliant blue and studded with golden metallic stars, nestling in the reindeer moss of a pine forest. That and the knowledge that a boy would find it.

So, how did I build my story? I almost always start with questions. Who is this boy? Oh, he lives with his father, but there seems to be no mother on the scene, and I have the sense that she’s been absent since he was a baby. Okay. Then how did his father manage? Ah . . . his brother’s wife took care of the boy when he was really little. The two brothers, when they were very young men, purchased a timber claim from Silmaren’s Queen Anora.

My notes show that I digress into examining the nature of the timber claims and fishing claims offered by the crown at this point in the realm’s history. Then I pull myself back to the boy and sketch out a quick account of his childhood. Next my thoughts leap to the skeleton of my story’s plot: the boy finds the belt, he gets in trouble with it, and he only achieves some wisdom in the course of overcoming his trouble.

Hmm. This is the North-lands. If there’s trouble, then of course there’s a troll involved. Surely the belt belongs to this troll. And . . . suddenly, I just know that the troll lives in a rustic cot hollowed from a massive glacial rock.

Naturally, the boy encounters the troll, who wants his belt back. And, oh my, he wants the boy for dinner. Oh! I’m telling Hansel and Gretel. Cool! I think I like it.

copy of actual manuscript notes for The Troll's Belt So the boy is imprisoned and that mad old troll is going to devour him. Then the boy’s cousin arrives on the scene, and things get even more complicated. Now I need some names. I can’t just keep saying: “the boy” and “the boy’s father” and “the wood-town.” What all do I need? Boy, cousin, father, uncle, aunt, town, troll. This time, for this story, the names just fly into my head without much searching for inspiration.

Then I realize I need to know what the town of Glinhult looks like. At first I think everyone lives in tree houses, but that doesn’t feel quite right. Ah! The older houses are indeed tree houses, remnants from the time when the lumberjacks needed a cheap way to raise their homes off the ground for safety’s sake. Packs of wolves and other predators roam these parts, the wilds of west-lying Gosstrand. Once the work on the timber claim was more advanced and everyone had more money, they could afford to build the more convenient stilt-homes.

So what did Brys’ home look like? I draw a quick floor plan. And make some notes about its idiosyncrasies: the straight door at the bottom of the stairs and the trap at its top. Then I think about what Brys and Jol look like: Brys with shoulder-length red hair; gangly; shorter than his cousin; Jol a bit larger and with long, curly, dark hair pulled back in a horsetail. What chores do the boys do? Suddenly I know that Brys and his father Arn will have an argument about chores. And the specifics of the plot unfold in my mind. I’m there. Time to start writing. On October 20, I begin: “Brys slammed the door behind him and stomped across his room in fury.”

Copy of handwritten list of scenes for story Each day thereafter I write another installment of the story. Sometimes the scene is so clear, it pours out of my pen (yes, I was writing longhand, ink onto paper) like an enchanted spring welling from sacred ground. Other times I make notes or mini outlines in my margins to get my inner storyteller going: “skip to meeting Jol who is impressed with his daring, but also pretends to object to the tunic borrowing;” or “clasp belt, sudden urgency as body joins mind, leap up, know just what to do.”

On November 4, I write the final words: “’Huh, yourself!’ And Brys aimed a friendly punch at his cousin’s ribs.”

I’d done it! Written the story I would use to test the intricacies of uploading computer files to electronic bookstores. Best to encounter all the error messages and to search for fixes on a short piece of fiction, not a novel!

Of course, I was not finished. I sent the story off to my first reader, who quite liked it. I would work on the cover while she was reading. Then I must make corrections and put the whole package together. Yes, there was work to do. But that moment of triumph at the close of the first draft was special.

Just in case The Troll’s Belt has suddenly catapulted itself onto your must-read list (grin!), here are the links:

Amazon.com I B&N I Diesel I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords I Sony

For more about the stories behind my stories, see:
Writing Sarvet
Notes on Chance
Dreaming the Star-drake

Ravessa’s Ride

Posted on April 20, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

The Exemplars of the Orthodoxy came into being when a plague – the curse of the troll-king Beyhalt – swept the empire of Giralliya. The emperador, then each paucitor, and then each prince and king were stricken, along with many others. The disease was a lingering agony of wasting and fever and delirium. As the months went by and the representatives of government fell, one by one, Giralliya lay rudderless and vulnerable. The emperador’s daughter, on whom the sickness lay more lightly, rose from her bed in a valiant attempt to stand in her father’s stead. Flushed and chilled, Ravessa occupied the imperial pivot, issuing decrees and commanding the heros who arose – briefly, before disease felled them too – to save her people.

But the ninth such to come forward – Eliya – was not struck down. She was an old woman, wizened and wise, the member of an obscure order of antiphoners who practiced an equally obscure posture sequence to greet the sun at dawn and again to dismiss the light at sundown. All of her order remained untouched by Beyhalt’s curse.

Ravessa’s first thought was simply to co-opt these Exemplars of Gebed to hold the vacant posts of the royal and the pauce. Desperate times called for desperate measures. A second thought stayed her impulse.

“Dost thy exemplars dwell only within Bazinthiad?” she asked.

As it chanced, they did not. Many small hamlets in the countryside of Cambers sheltered chapters of the sect. The cathedral city in Solmondy, the origin of the order, housed its oldest chapter. And a sprinkling of these unusual antiphoners could be found in all of Giralliya’s other cantons.

Then it was that Ravessa began her great labor for her people and their land.

She went to the ruins of the temple on the sacred isle in Lake Argiyaen and prayed. Her pleas to heaven were answered by three winged horses – fierce and fey and glorious. They bore her on their backs throughout Flaumivar and Lillyoise and Brabante and Belline, and also into Cambers and Solmondy. In each canton, Ravessa addressed any citizenry able to rise from their beds: seek amongst yourselves for an Exemplar of Gebed to care for your interests and beg him or her to stand as prince or paucitor in Bazinthiad that you may not be forgotten.

Thusly was the Chamber of Princes and Kings filled once more; likewise, the Chamber of Paucitors. And when plague at last left the land, Giralliya was a different realm from before. No hamlet or village, no sea port or river port, no cathedral town or capital, no hill or valley where people dwelt was devoid of exemplars, were it only a lone proponent teaching and leading the locals in the postures for dawn and dusk. These sequences of bends and holds and breath control had proved an antidote to Beyhalt’s curse. Those yet well who performed the postures never fell sick with plague; those ailing under plague threw off the illness that gripped them. And without his army of disease – Beyhalt had no other – the troll-king proved easy to defeat.

When Beyhalt lay dead and all Giralliyans rejoiced in their newfound health, the emperador declared that each elected exemplar should keep his or her post, but not as royal or pauce. They would sit in a new chamber, one created especially for them. And they would be chosen, always, by the people of their lands.

“The pauce are appointed by lot and by imperial decree. The royal hold power through tradition and inheritance. Let now these exemplars serve at the commons’ choice.”

How they came to earn their later name – the Orthodoxy – is another story, but this tale is almost done. The three pegasi who appeared to fill Ravessa’s need were seen no more, but desperate folk dreamed of them. And the dreams inspired solutions of all magnitudes: healing between feuding parent and child, peace between nation and nation, beauty under an artist’s paint brush, safety from an inventor’s imagination, or tranquility within one conflicted soul. And the citizenry of Giralliya, discovering other posture sequences through the centuries to add to those for sunrise and sunset, became avid contortionists who visited their town retreat centers for daily practice in the conviction that there lay health and harmony and wholeness.

* * *

Legend of the Beggar’s Son

Posted on March 23, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

Here is a tale of ancient Giralliya for the loremaitresses and loremasters among us.

In the terrifying days of Gohgohl the Relentless, four brothers stood against the troll-mage, not with armies – although they had those – but in all the vulnerability of their royal persons. Each night the sky rippled with hungry curtains of red light, gnawing at the land and all who dwelt upon it. Then it was that the brothers stood guard, weapons raised to the roiling energies above, weaving a gossamer shield to hold descending death at bay.

The eldest was Phillox, King of Istria, and son of Claudeo and Juniya. He bore the mighty axe Vahtayvan, and his antiphonic voice was more powerful than his weapon. It was he, the Imprecator, whose shouts harmonized their defense, each of the four standing on the low ridges some distance from their beleaguered city.

The next younger, full brother to Phillox, was Theon, King of Eirdry. His antiphonic chant bore more subtlety than that of the others, and it was he who sensed the anomalies in the death overhead and moved to counter its sudden jabs downward with the musical enchantments of his chalemel, weapon and instrument both.

Horato, King of Ennecy, and son of Ondreyus and Juniya, was the most enduring of the brothers. On the longest night when ribbons of blue light sparked upward from the river to join the red draperies shifting in the sky, birthing violet waves of unspeakable weight, the brothers folded one by one. Only Horato remained upright, holding off the lethal tide alone. He lasted until dawn and the rising sun brought safety.

Amadeo, full brother to Horato, and merely Lord of Ebior until the day of his ascension, was the nimblest of the four – both in mind and in body – but his contribution seemed the lesser until the dusk when he brought a beggar’s son before Phillox.

“This is Luciyo, born of Cayo, and he is the least and most miserable in all our realm, but he is our salvation. Give him the mantle of Saint Sofiya and let him stand unshielded beneath Gohgohl’s curtain of death. Then shall victory be ours.”

Phillox was astonished. He looked directly at the beggar youth. “You will do this?”

Luciyo nodded.

Now the mantle of Saint Sofiya was sacred to the Istrians. They preserved it on the altar in the inner sanctum of their temple. Thrice yearly those in need made pilgrimage to Bazinthiad to touch the hem of the garment and be healed or inspired or forgiven. Such a treasure could not be lightly risked.

Yet such was the desperation felt by the kings and their subjects that all was done as Amadeo directed. The brothers took their stations as the sky darkened and then filled with perilous crimson light. And Luciyo, the beggar’s son, stood on the temple isle in the center of Lake Argiyad, wearing the ancient cloak of the saint.

Phillox bellowed his commands: Theon, Horato, and Amadeo raised their weapons in synchrony with his, and the transparent gauze of green and silver floated up from them, generating crashing flashes of black and gold where it withstood the crimson writhings.

Phillox shouted again. A gap pierced the enchanted protection and death drifted down, a slow rippling roil of blood and wine, to touch the cloaked man awaiting it. Luciyo lifted his arms palm up, and lifted his face too, as though to embrace what descended to him. The skin of his hands, of his brow, blazed suddenly blue-white. Would he burn, as had the other victims? The sparking fire on his visage and palms spread, enshrouding his entire figure. Then the mantle of Sofiya unfurled itself like a cavalier’s banner in the wind, and the fierce inferno of Luciyo gouted upward like lightning in reverse to stab the sky, bursting asunder the dread red draperies and shattering the glistening sky-ship that was the fortress where Gohgohl dwelt.

Fragments of crystal rained down along with the ash of charred ivory. A vast flock of doves flew out from Sofiya’s mantle, streaming across the sky and sweeping the air clean with their wings. The birds disappeared over the horizon. Then all was silent. The stars shone in the dark velvet of the upper reaches. Victory was theirs. The long defense was done.

Theon, Horato, and Amadeo begged Phillox to remain Imprecator over them all to the end of his days – and then to pass the office on to his first child – while they took up the kingships of Istria, Eirdry, and Ennecy. He agreed only on the condition that they establish the Chamber of Princes and Kings to advise him in his rule. That and one other thing: that Luciyo would become First in a Chamber of Paucitors and elect others to his side.

“For the bounty of the least and most miserable has won this day, and future Imprecators will not always be so lucky as to have a brother Amadeo, who will bring hidden poverty forward to the attention of the mighty!”

Thus were three of the great Giralliyan institutions – Emperador (Imprecator); Princes and Kings; and Paucitors – created. The tale of the fourth – the Exemplars of Orthodoxy – is a tale for another day.

* * *

More stories of old Giralliya:
Ravessa’s Ride
The Thricely Odd Troll
The Old Armory: Blood Falchion

North-land Magic

Posted on March 6, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

Last Sunday’s post provided a perfect example of how I interact with my outline when I’m writing a story. I always have an outline, and I do follow it. Except when I don’t! That is, as my story unfolds, I usually discover that I need an extra scene or that I need to flip flop the order of two scenes, and so on. Plus my outline is merely a skeleton outline. Such as: Lorelin plays a trio with Kaye and Saune. (Not, emphatically not, Lorelin plays music with Kaye and Saune, then discusses right livelihood with them, and then learns that an imperial herald has arrived in Birkliden. Actually the news about the herald was planned for a later scene and got moved to this one.) I discover the details of a conversation as I write it.

In just this way, my outline for the blog post on Sunday was roughly: discuss magic of the North-lands. But when I found myself at my keyboard, I really wanted to explore the magic of Silmaren specifically and to tell you about it. Since I write from the heart rather than the head, that’s what happened. But I feel I still owe you the more comprehensive post, so I’m making another stab at it!

Safe Magic

Civilized people in the North-lands use a gentle energy magic that is practical, but not flamboyant. It requires study and practice to achieve the upper levels of skill. Most are content to incline sick people toward health, to nudge crops into lush growth, and to adjust the worst storms into heavy downpours. It’s rare to heal someone near death, to grow fruit trees in non-arable land, or to disperse a hurricane. Even among the elite, such unusual feats are possible only if the underlying structures (the radices and the arcs) permit small repairs or adjustments to achieve spectacular results. Practitioners merely help the natural processes along in a favorable direction. They do not change the energy configuration significantly. That would be incantatio or troll-magic, which is both dangerous and illegal. Practitioners avoid large alterations to energy patterns. It’s perilously easy to drift across the line separating the safe from the forbidden when too much is attempted.

The varied peoples of the North-land realms speak of magic using different words. And understand it differently as well, through the lenses of their own cultures.

Silmaren

Silmarish keyholders are usually women, not men. The country phrase is that she holds the Keys of Sias, being specifically blessed by the Divine Mother. City folk say that she studies theurgia, and that she is a theurgist or a theomancer. Keyholders and theurgists alike use their powers largely for healing the sick and the injured, seeming unaware of theurgia’s greater potential.

Erice

The people of Erice worship the twin gods of Theon and Ionog (local variants – one male, one female – on Sias’ handmaidens Thiya and Iona) and believe that the divine twins bestow healing power on a few fortunate devouts. Country folk say that a healer has the Hands of the Twins, that he or she is a twinhand. More educated people merely say that such a practitioner is a healer or a physician. And that he or she practices healing or physic. Like the Silmarish, Ericeans emphasize the medical aspects of magic.

Fiorish

In Fiorish, Ionan (yet another variant on the handmaiden Iona) is worshipped and believed to be the source of magic. Rural people say a practitioner has the Sight of Ionan. She or he is sighted or a seer. Town folk call their magicians visionaries or visioners and hold that they have the Wisdom of Ionan. Miracles of healing occur with some frequency in the lady-chapels of the countryside, but ignorant and educated alike look for guidance in decision-making more than medicine from their seers and visionaries.

Auberon

Rural folk and city dwellers alike speak of pattern-maitresses and pattern-masters, or patterners. Only the professors in the capital city of Caranda lecture on odylogists and the practice of odylogy. Auberoneans believe that patterning or odylogy is a natural ability of humans, not a gift granted from their god Teyo (yet another variant – male – on Thiya). Perhaps this is why their practitioners have broadened the use of patterning to create safe protocols in their mines and shipyards. They’ve begun exporting this expertise to Silmaren, which is why Reice ni Bayaude (in Troll-magic) spent many months out of the year in Andhamn, the mining city in Feldholm.

Pavelle

The laypeople of Pavelle speak of seekers or riddlemasters. The more religious talk of enigmatists who practice enigmology. Like their neighbors, the Giralliyanese, they understand that practitioners perceive the deep structures beneath surface appearances. Uniquely, they believe that the deep structures determine not only an entity’s nature, but the way it comes together with others to produce events, history, and reality itself. The focus of Pavanese enigmology is divided between a scholarly probing into the puzzle of the cosmos and enhancing the worship experience of cathedral congregations.

Giralliya

The people of the empire believe that all life is a vibration of energy, a tide of giving and receiving, a pulse of question and answer. Knowledgeable and ignorant alike call magic antiphony. A practitioner of antiphony is an antiphoner or an antiphonist. Giralliyans conflate spiritual health with physical health and view antiphony as the noble road to both. Nearly the entire population visits their local retreat for counsel from a personal antiphoner and for guidance in the posture sequences regarded as the foundation of happiness.

Despite this individualistic interpretation, or perhaps because of it, the imperial Ministry of Inventions is alone amongst the political powers in the North-lands in attempting to directly harness antiphony to technology. Success in the endeavor has not yet arrived, but when it does . . watch out!

Perilous Magic

Troll magic, or incantatio, is flamboyant, immediate, and acute in its effects. A troll-mage might pull a sick person back from the brink of death, grow watermelons in the desert, disperse a typhoon, and other such magnificent feats. Unfortunately, it is the practice of troll-magic that turns humans into trolls. It corrupts their bodies, starting with the ears and nose, which enlarge a little with each use of the power. It also unbalances their intellectual and emotional abilities. A troll-witch who has practiced troll-magic for years will have a nose elongated like a curled thumb, ears the size of normal hands, swollen hands and feet, a severely curved spine, coarse skin with a yellow tone, bloodshot eyes, and much ill health. In his or her mind, insanity reigns.

Troll-magic is forbidden in all civilized places, because its use essentially creates powerful villains. Even beneficiaries of a troll-spell cast by someone else (a troll-mage, of course) can suffer corrosive effects, so few seek it. The side effects are often so detrimental as to cancel out any benefit.

Most folk call this perilous practice troll-magic and its practitioners troll-mages or troll-witches. Only a few intellectual types use the terms incantatio and incantor or incantress or incantatrix. Nobody really wants to separate the idea of the magic from its effect: to make trolls.

Insane trolls do crazy and hurtful things with their power. Newer trolls usually flock to older and more powerful trolls in the wild lands. They have no place in the civilized world. The authorities arrest them, because they cannot be left at large, and sentence them to death. (Incarceration is impractical. How do you imprison someone who can break any cell?) Trolls don’t live long, because the troll-disease, once started, progresses. When it progresses too far, the troll dies. Even potent trolls who elude capture live short lives.

For more about magic, see:
Radices and Arcs
Silmarish Magic

Silmarish Magic

Posted on March 4, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

In Silmaren, magic and the mother goddess are thoroughly intertwined. It’s a given that Sias, the Divine Mother, grants certain holy women special powers; and a woman who desires to hone her gift turns naturally to either the ecclesia (the religious hierarchy) or the two lay sisterhoods outside the ecclesia.

A woman with a calling for healing might join the Sisters of Remedy and train as either a lay keyholder or an apothecary, depending on whether she wishes to work directly with the sick and injured or whether she prefers compounding medicines. If she hopes to use her gifts to magnify Sias, she would apply to the Order of Malady within the ecclesia with the goal of becoming a holy salver, a phylaxor (a specialist in obscure disorders), or a nutricia. All of these religious professions are essentially keyholders – that is, they scan and manipulate the “keys” (radices) and “bridges” (arcs) of their patients – but their healing rituals contain a different emphasis than that of their lay sisters.

Healers are not the sole recipients of Sias’ bounty. Within the ecclesia, the Order of Sage-wifery offers women with a scholarly bent the opportunity to study a wide array of subjects – from the arcane discipline of mathematics to the more practical life sciences or earth sciences – and to devise ways in which magic might benefit these disciplines. Such women are called theurgists. Within the Order, there exists the Society of Theomancers, which accepts men.

The Sorority of Euna is the third order within the ecclesia to which gifted women turn. It also accepts women lacking the boon of Sias. Celebrants preside in the chapels where the Silmarish population worships. Gifted celebrants perform the high rites requiring magic, while mundane celebrants lead everyday services. Oath-sisters (both gifted and mundane) officiate at baptism, accordance, marriage, reconciliation, vows of vocation, and unction.

Outside the ecclesia, the Sisters of Hospitality offer justice to those wronged or forsaken by the royal judicial courts, contemplative atonement to repentant sinners, prophecy to petitioners chosen by the goddess, and ordinary hospitality to wayfarers. Their respective titles in these roles are: justiciar, confessor, oracle, and hostelier. Each has its own unique disciplines and magical teachings.

The vast majority of gifted women in Silmaren practice their vocations under the auspices of the Sisters of Remedy, the Sisters of Hospitality, the Great Orders of Malady or Sage-wifery, or the Sorority of Euna. A very few set up as independent theurgists, usually mentored by a man. Most male theurgists are independents, since gifted men have few options for sponsored practice. The gift of Sias is rare, however, so independent theurgists number but a handful and usually cluster in Silmaren’s capital city. Without the protection of the ecclesia or one of the lay orders, they risk being accused of incantatio by the less educated folk of the countryside.

For more about magic, see:
North-land Magic
Radices and Arcs