Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 30

Just For Fun: Deleted Chapters of Phoenix Rising, Chapter 50

Now we jump far, far ahead to near the end of the book. This chapter was deleted because the book ended very, very differently. Not only did Xavier only show up for a couple of chapters (being sent off to Idinus of Scimitar rather than the Wanderer, and thus not traveling with Tobimar and not showing up for the final battle), but also there was no "screw you" trap following Thornfalcon's death, and after their meet-and-greet, the three companions did, in fact, burn Thornfalcon's mansion to the ground and didn't confront the remaining Justiciars at the Temple. Instead...

Chapter 50.

     "I'm sorry, Arbiter, but… I have to withdraw." Tobimar looked devastated. He's doing a good acting job, have to give him that, Poplock thought from his seat on the exiled Prince's shoulder.

Kelsley closed his eyes and sighed. "It is of course entirely your business – and I thank you for the return of this package, they do cost some coin to have made. Yet if I might ask, what brought you to this conclusion?"

"It's in there." Tobimar pointed to the envelope on top of the returned information packet. His lips tightened. "I suppose the honest truth is I'm afraid… afraid I'm just completely outclassed. It's not easy to say."

"Such admissions are always hard for a true Adventurer," Kelsley said after a moment, and managed a sympathetic smile. "But Myrionar counsels that we use Wisdom, always, and knowing one's limitations is wise. Did you… learn anything?"

"What I learned I've written down. In summary… this Phoenix is just terribly powerful. I was there in time to see the ending of her battle with Thornfalcon, and I know from what I saw that I wouldn't have stood a chance against her. Not now. In five years, maybe, but that won't do you any good now."

"Her?" Kelsley repeated, eyebrow raised. "You are sure?"

Poplock, now sure that the Arbiter's attention was fully riveted on Tobimar, eased his way back and began to slip to the floor. I've got work to do.

Meanwhile, Tobimar continued the conversation. "Well, not absolutely. But the voice sounded feminine to me, and at the least the Phoenix had managed to trick Thornfalcon into thinking he was going home with a lady – and, if you'll excuse me for saying so, from what I've heard Thornfalcon would be very, very hard to fool in that category, given his… experience."

That drew a sad laugh from the Arbiter, smoothing out worry lines for a moment. "I cannot argue there, Tobimar. Still, it is a terrible shame. We've had only three take the contract so far and I had the highest hopes for you, given your being Zarathanton Guilded and having made your way here on your own."

Poplock slipped into the back temple area behind one of the… Seekers, that was it. The door closed, cutting off his ability to listen to the conversation. He knew Tobimar could keep things going a while, but he had to try to make things quick. If he had to, of course, Tobimar would leave him behind and trust Poplock to get out and rejoin them once he was done, but by preference they should do this all together.

She said what we're looking for will be in the Arbiter's records.

"But it's going to be sealed and warded, Poplock. Those are Temple secrets. How –"

"We're doing this for the real Myrionar, Kyri," he'd pointed out. "If – and I mean if – your Arbiter Kelsley's actually with the good guys, just tricked by the baddies, then his wards will be Myrionar's, not this faker's. Which means that the god won't get much in my way."

"And if we're wrong about Kelsley – or if someone else put extra protections on it?" Tobimar had asked.

He'd winked. "I've gotten pretty good at getting past stuff."

That much was of course true – studying magic, alchemy, and all-around sneakiness had been a major focus of his life the past few years. Still, don't start swimming without at least looking into the water first. He knew they were playing on a level that – honestly speaking – was way above them, even little miss Phoenix, and getting past holy wards (or, more likely, unholy wards) wasn't something to laugh about.

So let's hope that Kyri's right about Kelsley, and that the baddies want to keep him in the dark so they won't risk using any of their, well, not-so-pure powers inside his temple.

Of course, the Sword Sanctum – the Arbiter's private offices and quarters – was locked. But since it was a central room, in the heart of the Temple of Myrionar, he knew it would have to have air passages. A few minutes of careful scuttling and he found one in one of the outer offices. Exterior grates always have tougher shielding and sometimes stuff stronger than verminseal. Inner ones, usually not, unless they're big enough for most people to go down.

He gave a wide-mouthed grin as he inched behind a records cabinet and began squeezing up towards the top so that he could reach the grate. I used to really hate being this small. Not quite the smallest of our people ever, but when the average is forty times your size…

But he happened to be roughly the same size as a large, normal – non-Intelligent – toad, smaller than even the smallest of the common – or not so common – intelligent species. And for his chosen approach to Adventuring, he'd come to accept, this was an asset that was simply invaluable. Sure, mages and such could shapeshift sometimes to really small forms, but they would show up as transformed, and there were some pretty simple and strong wards that prevented anyone under that kind of enchantment from just crawling into most places. In a world filled with magic you couldn't bar all magic, but changing a shape was pretty powerful and specific magic. And if you weren't used to living at that size, in that specific shape, you'd be pretty clumsy, and getting past the other dangers would be a real challenge.

So actually, I'm just about perfect for these kind of jobs. And with Tobimar and others around to confuse the issue, most people won't even know I'm here.

He reached the top of the cabinet, looked around to make sure no one was looking, and stretched up. Yep, standard verminseal… key locks on the grille with convenient hinges, even! Guess they clean 'em out regularly. Thoughtful of them.

The air was being pulled by a minor elemental charm… he squinted. Hmm. The viewing lens showed a bit more complexity than he expected. Check again… no one here yet. He sketched another rune with a thin temporary stylus onto the lens, looked again. Oh, nice design. But a pain.

The air current had a simple contingency alert on it which would alert cleaners if anything was obstructing the flow. Unfortunately, small though Poplock was, he'd be more than large enough to significantly slow airflow through the vents while he was worming his way through them. And I don't need the cleaners coming through!

He thought a moment, then looked around. Oh, that's good. A manual cleaning indicator. He edged over, pulled the crystal sideways, and the airflow slowed, stopped. I'll just have to remember to turn it back on when I'm done.

The Temple of Myrionar wasn't a very complicated building, so finding his way back to the Sword Sanctum was easy, and reaching through to unkey the grille worked fine.

Now… inside that big case or cabinet behind his desk.

The massive cabinet – really more of a miniature vault – loomed up a full five feet tall and seven wide, emblazoned with the symbol of the Balanced Sword. Poplock didn't need to use the inspection lens to sense the wards on this one; his training in the different magics was enough to give him that at this range.

He closed his eyes and rested one paw lightly on the door. Myrionar, I'm here in the name of your final and first Justiciar, Phoenix. And maybe in the name of Blackwart himself, too. If this is a true seal of your name, open this door, for you know that we seek what lies within for your sake. He paused, then added, And really, I won't take anything else. Even if it's really shiny.

The door clicked and opened, and Poplock felt a flash of elation and relief. He had not wanted to go back to tell Kyri that Arbiter Kelsley wasn't what he seemed. Now we've learned one of the most important things already.

He bounced inside and looked around. Oo. Good thing I made that promise. There's a lot of shiny in here. This vault contained what were probably not just treasures, but special holy tools and relics of the church, to be used only for specific occasions.

But it also held a bunch of files and papers, and that was what he was looking for. A very specific set… too bad it's not going to be clearly labeled.

The door to the Sword Sanctum rattled.

Even as Poplock turned, trying to figure out what to do, the doors of the Arbiter's Vault swung shut on their own; he sat, frozen, as total blackness sealed him in. This could be very not-good!

He pressed his head up against the crack in the doors. Faintly, he heard the Sanctum doors open and a set – no, two sets – of footsteps entered.

"Nothing here, Bolthawk."

"I swear I sensed something… something holy."

The first voice chuckled cynically. "You're in a still-hallowed Temple. What do you expect?"

"Do not laugh, Skyharrier. I meant something active, as though a prayer was answered, and how could that be when the Arbiter's out front talking to that gutless excuse for an adventurer?"

Ooo, good thing Tobimar isn't here for that one.

"What about the Vault?" Poplock heard footsteps approaching; he reached back and drew out Steelthorn, though after watching the battle with Thornfalcon he didn't have any illusions about what his chances would be. Might do one some real damage if I hit fast before they see what's coming. Maybe.

Smack! The sound of a slap of a gauntlet on armor. "Don't touch it, you idiot. Kelsley's bound to have it warded and right now we still need him. You ruin the masquerade with him by a move like that, and you'll be gone like Silver Eagle."

"Sorry. I'm still sure I sensed something."

"There's too much activity in this Temple, that's the problem. The Seekers set off my nerves all the time. I've tried my Eyes, there's nothing else in here, the Vault's closed." A few scuffling sounds, a door opening. "And nothing under the desks, in the closets, or… in Kelsley's apartments, either."

"Surprised those aren't warded."

"Wards go active when he's in there; on the Vault, they'll be active all the time. The doors are the main security, and if you've got the key you can get in." Sound of doors closing. "Let's get back to work. I want to get back to Justiciar's Retreat before Condor does."

A grunt from Bolthawk. "Too right there. Funeral for Shrike is going to leave him in a royal temper." The voices faded as the two left, closing the Sword Sanctum doors behind them.

The Vault doors swung back open a crack. Thank you, Myrionar. Thank you very much.

But that had wasted a lot of valuable time. He scrabbled around, looking for what he needed. Mud and dust, I need to keep it neat but I still need to hurry!

He dug down towards the bottom of the stack, looking at cryptic labels on files. Most of them were clearly not what he was looking for…

Justiciar's Retreat! The words flickered by and he had to stop and back up. He pulled out the small set of papers and shuffled them. Last one… that's what I need. A quick check showed a minor anti-copying curse was in effect, but there were simple ways around that. A blank sheet from his pack, laid down over the original, then traced with light and shadow. Good enough.

He pushed the papers back into the file, stowed away the copy he'd made, then carefully tried to restore the files to the same order and positions they'd had when he came in. Have to be good enough; I can't be absolutely sure, but hopefully he doesn't memorize every detail.

Out of the little Vault, swing the doors shut, back up to the vent… Key them back shut… don't forget to turn the air back on when I get out, that'd be a stupid thing to do. Or not do.

Getting out of the back temple turned out to be the hardest part. He had to hide in the shadow of a coat-rack for five minutes before one of the Seekers came along to exit.

A few more minutes and he was climbing up Tobimar's back. The Prince rose. "I wish I could tell you more, Arbiter, but really, that's all I could do."

"Don't apologize, young man. You accomplished a great deal in so short a time, even if the news you had to bring was … not the news we wished. And I will not criticize you for deciding that wisdom decrees that you find other challenges of adventure than this one. In some ways, I suspect the Justiciars will prefer this. They wish to solve it on their own." Kelsley rose as well and showed them to the door. "May the Balanced Sword guide and protect you, Tobimar Silverun."

"May there be ever Light in Darkness for you, Arbiter."

Tobimar bowed, still looking grim and slightly shame-faced, and strode off, clearly heading to the south. Once well out of sight of Evanwyl, he turned his head. "Well?"

"Got it. Now let's go meet up with her and find out what she has in mind."

Tobimar nodded, then slowed, and looked back. He stood there for a long moment, and Poplock understood, looked back himself. The exiled Prince reached up, and the Toad put his front paws on the dark-skinned hand. "We're still on the mission, Arbiter," Tobimar said quietly. "And when we come back… we'll finish it."

Just For Fun: Deleted Chapters of Phoenix Rising: Chapter 12

This chapter followed the introduction of Tobimar and Poplock, and implied some time passed. As you can see, the timeline got shifted some -- in the final draft, of course, it's implied that the first events for Tobimar and Poplock happen after Rion becomes a Justiciar.

 

 

Chapter 12.

     Lighter blade parried greatsword with a chiming impact that diverted the larger weapon but also drove back the smaller with near enough force to disarm. Rion cursed mildly as he backpedaled, his fingers clearly stinging. Kyri laughed and spun the greatsword around as fast as she could, taking advantage of her brother's momentary discomfiture. "Not slow enough for you, brother?"

"I will grant," he said, a touch breathlessly, eluding her next stroke as he recovered his weapon, "that you're faster with that monster blade than anyone has any right to be." He stood his ground now, diverting one attack, two, three with an economy of motion and effort that she found both admirable and frustrating. "But you'll need more than speed to beat me when my own blade's twice as fast!"

And he unleashed a storm of cuts, low, high, lunges with the point of his longsword, attacks seeming to come from all directions. "How well… have you… been studying?"

The question-and-answer sessions added a certain level of distraction to the training, training they'd been doing in one way or another almost every day for the past four years… four years after they'd lost nearly everything, even themselves. "Well… enough…" she managed to answer; now it was her turn to back up as all her efforts could not move the greatsword's five-foot plus blade nearly as fast as Rion's lighter, shorter weapon. Her armor now had to absorb punishment as she turned and twisted, interposing the armor at an angle that denied Rion an actual cut, watching for an opening – there!

Her swing reversed abruptly, she stepped forward and jabbed with the foot-long pommel as the blade blocked Rion's swing. But her brother was fast, even faster than she'd expected, and he halted, drew back so that the smashing blow barely touched him, and dropped to the ground, sweeping her feet out from under her. She thought she heard a faint grunt of approval from nearby, but there was no time to look in that direction; she was rolling aside, abandoning her sword for hand-to-hand combat. Rion might still have his blade, though, so she kept rolling, blocked instinctively, felt an impact –arm, not blade, he's gone to unarmed too – spun from her rolling position to a kick in that direction, blur of movement, both rolling apart to a stand, as she said, "Ask… away."

Rion grinned, a slight trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth where her kick must have grazed him, and began circling, keeping his hands raised in the position Lythos called Eonwyl Taking Flight. Kyri glided sideways, using Dragon Claw. She saw the Sho-ka-taida watching them both closely, and for a moment thought she could see a faint smile at the corner of Lythos' mouth.

     This impossibility distracted her for the slightest moment, and Rion struck, speaking at the same time. "Why is our god –" she parried the mantis-like strike, and the next, "— spoken of only as 'It'?"

     "You're giving her the easy one, Rion!" Urelle shouted from one side.

     "Peace, child. We shall see how easy you find them when you're facing swords and fists at the same time." Victoria's tone was only slightly acid.

     You have that right, Auntie V. "For justice," she began. The Dragon clawed twice, but the Eonwyl eluded her. "To wear a face, to be of one people or one sex or one of anything would exalt that over the others." She switched combat modes suddenly, leapt completely over Rion; she saw his eyes widen in surprise and his answering strike was just a tiny hair too late. She hit the ground, tumbling forward, still speaking, "And so only the Balanced Sword remains, justice and vengeance as evenhanded as time and death themselves!"

     Her hand closed on the hilt of her sword and she rolled and spun, five feet of glittering death now extended towards her brother – and she saw with a shock of mingled pride and disappointment that he had somehow matched her speed and his own sword was back in his hand. They always said I had talent with a sword, but I still can't beat him.

     Almost instantly she chided herself, stopping in guard stance. If I accept that I can't beat him, I never will. "My turn! Why is it called the 'Balanced Sword'?" Trick question, of course.

     Rion laughed, as did some of the other spectators. From the corner of her eye she thought she could see at least three of the Justiciars. Then he answered, every word accompanied by an attack, driving her backward with almost effortless savagery. "Because that is simpler than The Balance and the Sword, or Balance on the Sword, and besides, it can be the Sword Balance or many other names!" His last attack arced slightly higher.

     Got you! She rode the last impact on her blade, brought it around with two-handed leverage, a spinning cut carving upward --

     -- but somehow Rion's blade was faster, behind hers, pushing, speeding it up, turning around, around, twisting --

-- and her greatsword was wrenched from her hand, arcing away in a steel-sparkling curve as her brother's sword finished its arc with its point on her throat.

He looked so apologetic that she suddenly burst out laughing and threw her arms round him. "That was wonderful, Rion!"

"Adequate… I might even say, well done, Rion Vantage." Lythos' thin golden eyebrow was raised in appreciation, and there really was a small smile playing about the corners of his mouth. "Your father and mother would have been proud." He turned to Kyri. "And you did not do poorly either, Kyri Vantage."

"Not poorly!" Thornfalcon's voice carried a note of rebuke. "She presses her brother hard, though he has four years of training more, and all the strength and speed of the Vantage legend. Truly your reputation as a hard master carries not the full impact of the reality."

Lythos bowed to the deceptively slender Justiciar. "It is well for the actuality to exceed the legend, do you not agree? Yet you do speak truly." He turned to Kyri. "Well done, Kyri." As she felt herself beginning to smile, he quickly added, "But do not become overly accustomed to such praise. You still have much to learn. As does your brother."

"I have no doubt of it, Sho-ka-taida," Rion said, sheathing his blade finally. "As I have yet to manage a touch on you."

"A master of arms indeed," Mist Owl agreed quietly. "Yet such mastery is only a part of what we seek. We see many of those other things in you as well, Rion Vantage. After this performance, we are now agreed. You know that Gareth Lamell, the Silver Eagle, went to the Sword some weeks agone. Now we must fill that place, and we would like you to be one of the three candidates, if you would accept."

Kyri felt a leap of joy which she quickly tried to suppress; after all, he's just being invited to try; they're not promising anything! But at the same time this was what Rion had been hoping and praying for – that Myrionar would accept his service and thus provide all of them with a direct voice and agency for their own justice and vengeance.

Rion's voice reflected this, with a slight unsteadiness that belied the tears he refused to let show… at least for now. "Accept? Sir… Blessed Justice, sir, there is no honor greater! When?"

"In one week's time, Rion Vantage."

"Best be prepared, lad!" Shrike gave Rion a massive backslap that nearly knocked him from his feet. "A contest of arms, a contest of faith, and a contest of wits, you know! And we're not picking dullards and weaklings, rest assured of that, so the other two will be no easy pickings!"

"Rion will beat them both!" Kyri felt her cheeks flame as she realized that not only had she said it, but so had Urelle, in exactly the same tone of voice.

Even Lythos could not quite restrain a smile, and the others burst into laughter. "Well, naturally, this is only as must be," Thornfalcon said, still chuckling, "with such lovely ladies cheering for him." He winked at Urelle and pressed Kyri's hand briefly – not quite long enough to be questionable, but definitely more than a perfunctory gesture. "Still, he should be at his best in the trials, for Myrionar will judge as well, and it has happened – though very rarely – that the trials were all passed and the Balanced Sword still saw fit to award the Raiment of the Justiciars to none that day."

It doesn't matter, Kyri thought. I know Rion will succeed. I believe in Myrionar, and It can see that we deserve both Justice and Vengeance. And we can all see that Rion has recovered; back then, he would have sought only vengeance. But staying here, training… sometimes angry, sometimes crying when he thought no one else could see… with Aunt Victoria watching and ready… somehow it's brought him back. He's the big brother we remember. He's healed, he's stronger even than Father was, and he's going to be the Silver Eagle.

She wasn't sure what her own path would be; the new Vantage estate might be built soon, but she didn't see herself just settling down there. Maybe, once my training's finished at the Temple… Maybe I will be an Adventurer. I think… I think Mother would have liked that, no matter how much she and daddy and even Auntie V would have tried to argue me out of it.

She did toy with the idea of being a Justiciar herself. But for that to happen another Justiciar would have to die – and all the ones left were pretty young. And while there was nothing exactly in the rules about it, none of the Justiciars since… well, a very long time ago had been women. Nothing forbade it, but she somehow was fairly sure that there would be some unspoken resistance to the idea. There were plenty of other groups that didn't have that problem.

And plenty of time to worry about that later. She grabbed Rion's arm. "Come on, brother. We have a big party to throw for you tonight, and you need to get cleaned up!"

"A party? Didn't you hear what Thornfalcon just said?"

"You can go train for the rest of the week, but tonight you're going to celebrate!"

Rion looked helplessly at Victoria, and saw her nodding sagely. "Indeed, Rion. And I'll help prepare the guest list."

His face fell as he realized he was well and truly trapped. Not only a party, but a social party, one where everyone who was anyone in Evanwyl would be found. Kyri looked forward to it. Not that she was a general party fancier – in Evanwyl it always seemed to her to be a sort of decadent routine focused on meaningless if pretty entertainments when her parents' deaths and Rivendream Pass showed how fragile the safety of such entertainments could be – but there were some people she liked seeing, and they'd be sure to be at the party.

Rion grinned suddenly and shrugged. "Since you're determined to do this, I'll at least take away your fun and enjoy myself tonight!"

Victoria Vantage drew herself up and gave Rion her most withering glare. "Enjoy yourself? We shall see about that, Rion Vantage!"

 

 

 

 

Just For Fun: Deleted Chapters of Phoenix Rising, Chapter 4

So, Toron had begun an investigation last time...

 

Chapter 4.

"I am sorry, Victoria." The huge draconic creature's voice was soft.

Kyri couldn't believe it. "But… nothing?"

"Nothing, little Vantage." Toron's clawed talons slashed the air in his own anger. "I have used all my senses. I have spoken with all of note in this part of Evanwyl, from the Watchland and the Justiciars down to every living servant of the neighboring houses. I have meditated in prayer in the center of the wreckage, tasted the ashes for their consistency and for the rumors of the past contained within them; I have tried to follow trails of scent and malice."

The Sauran paced back and forth erratically as he spoke; he could not stay still, so agitated was he by the failure, and despite the aching disappointment Kyri felt a pang of sympathy for Toron. An old friend calls on you for help, and you cannot give it. "So …" She tried to think of some way to ask that would not be harmful; it was clear Rion was also looking for a diplomatic way to ask the question.

Urelle, however, was not. She glared up at Toron's scaled face. "So you haven't found out anything and we're no closer to finding out who killed mommy and daddy than when you came here? Auntie V—"

"Urelle."

The simple name, spoken quietly, stopped Urelle in mid-sentence; Victoria's tone brooked no argument. "You will apologize for that tone to Adjudicator Toron."

Kyri saw Urelle's huge gray eyes, identical to her own and their father's, begin to fill with tears, and felt an answering sting in hers.

"That is not necessary." Toron said gently. He stopped pacing and lowered himself to the ground; even seated with his tail curled around him, his head remained at Urelle's level. "No, Victoria, let it be. You called a mighty Adjudicator, from a far-fabled country, beings said to be able to see through any deception, track down the perpetrators of any crime, selected for their incorruptibility and powers and willingness to work for the good of society, given almost unlimited authority by the Sauran King and, through him, Elbon and the Sixteen themselves." His bitter smile looked like a savage, deadly snarl, given the dozens upon dozens of razor-sharp teeth. "I think she – and her siblings – can be forgiven some anger and bitterness at finding the legend is more than the truth, and the hoped-for answers are beyond his feeble grasp."

"Surely, sir… we must have learned something from this investigation?" Rion asked. The tension in his face had subsided, as had a small part of the knot in Kyri's gut as well. He apologized when he did not have to, for he had promised us nothing; only we had put that promise onto his work, in our own heads and hopes.

"We have, Rion Vantage. But very little of it good, I am afraid. Much of it terribly bad."

"I'd rather know more of the bad than not know it." Kyri said, and saw both Rion and Urelle nod.

The Sauran smiled again with a touch more humor, and there was a slight corresponding glint in the deep, dark green eyes. "Your family indeed, Victoria."

Toron rose from the floor and gestured for them to follow him outside; he clearly felt cramped in human-scaled dwellings. They emerged from the High Retreat onto Vantage Ridge, which some said was named after the family and others said was the original source of the family name, far back in antiquity that pre-dated at least two Chaoswars. The Ridge was a long, high, steep mass of stone, an isolated foothill of the immense Khalal, or Claw, Mountains looming over everything to the north, which provided an excellent lookout point (in other words, a vantage point) to survey a large part of Evanwyl. Vantage Fortress was built on a flattened area of the Ridge at its extreme southern edge, and the door from which they had left the fortress let out directly onto the top of the granite-and-nightstone crest of the Ridge.

Kyri also knew that this portion of the Crest was often used for councils of war, tactics and so on, because it was open enough to see any who might try to approach, far enough from other ground to make far-seeing problematic, and spelled and re-spelled every few decades to prevent any scrying from range or concealed approach (invisibility, stone-melding, and so on), while still allowing those present a clear view of the entire region. Clearly, Toron wanted to speak in privacy.

"First," Toron gestured to the blackened ruins far below and to the east, "I was able to determine a bit more about exactly what was done that night.

"Victoria, the main wards were not dispelled or unravelled by any ordinary means. They were simply removed. There were no traces at all of the original spells and seals, not in the wood of the doorway, the steel or crystal of the lock, the hinges, or the walls themselves. It felt to my own spells, and even to the Eye of the Dragon, like mundane material, never spelled, never touched by mystic or godly force since its first creation."

"But… I thought that wasn't possible, sir," Rion said after a moment. "Every spell, every mystical conflict, every act of the gods leaves its mark, or so they've always taught us. Thus one can read the truth of history in almost any shard or fragment that has been present at the events you seek."

"There are few – if any – things that are truly impossible, Rion," Toron replied slowly. "Some are very difficult – returning the dead to life, for example, can be done, but even for the gods it is a solemn and difficult task with grave considerations to be made before it is attempted.

"It is true that almost all efforts and events leave their marks upon the world – this is just as true for non-magical events as it is for magical ones in many ways. But just as a man may brush away his tracks in the snow, so too are there ways to reduce the traces of any magical events." Toron toyed idly with the hilt of his sword, running clawed fingers over the huge polished handle. "There is of course the obvious example of the Chaoswars, which confuse and wipe away traces and memories of what went before even in the minds of the gods themselves. That said, in truth it is difficult in the extreme to eliminate all traces so completely, difficult enough that in common parlance one might well say it was impossible.

"This in itself tells us much. What did this was backed by something of vast power – godly, demonic, or a magician of immense skill and experience."

Kyri glanced involuntarily northward, to the shadowed notch in the otherwise impenetrable rampart of the Claw Mountains. Toron followed her gaze and nodded. "That would seem a likely possibility," he said. "Even Elbon Nomicon," he touched the lightning-bolt sunburst crest inlaid in diamond on his breastplate reverently, "was never able to say what the source of those forces were."

Rivendream Pass. It was a name that meant little elsewhere in Zarathan, but for Evanwyl it was the name you scared little children with… and older children too, just in a different way. Once it had been the Heavenbridge Way, joining Evanwyl and Terathamion, the home of the Lords of the Sky, as partners and allies at the only pass through the continent-spanning mountain range.

But during the last Chaoswar, something had happened; some said that something the Lords of the Sky had done had in fact triggered the last Chaoswar, perhaps by probing too deeply into the ancient and perilous regions fringing the Abyss that lay to the north. But however it was, in what had seemed a single night the power of the Lords – who had been messengers and scouts, flying troops and speedy transport for all of Zarathan – was broken and their beautiful and diverse lands turned into a place of horror, with the Heavenbridge Way becoming a dark pathway for the monstrosities within to escape, and gaining its new name of Rivendream Pass in the bargain. Evanwyl, once a center of trade with Terathamion and protected by its association with the Lords from being conquered or even threatened by other countries, was suddenly alone, protected now mostly by the fact that there was little left to fight for with the Lords gone and the Pass leading nowhere that any sane being would go.

"But that is not the only possibility," Toron emphasized."While your family has helped seal Rivendream for many centuries, equally have you – especially your parents, of late – opposed many others of power, who might well have had connections. Like your aunt, they were adventurers of note. It would be unwise to assume the source of the attack."

"What else have you learned?" Rion said after a moment of thought.

"Two individuals broke down the door; the marks were of differing heights. It is hard to tell for certain the sizes, as they could have lowered themselves, or leapt just before impact, but one was quite tall, the other quite short, both of them of generally humanlike outline. Probably wearing armor, unless they were armored inherently – some sorts of demons have such natural armor. There were several other individuals present; the bodies we could uncover showed that the attack must have spread through the house more rapidly than a mere two beings could have managed without – for instance – some of the guards, or your parents, moving much farther than they appeared to."

Urelle winced and blinked at the mention of their parents and Kyri patted her shoulder. It will be a long time before we can think of that without being upset.

"Other than that, no one saw or recalls anything. Which bothers me."

Victoria nodded. "Because in all likelihood they would have had to study the targets and location carefully to do this so well, and someone would have noticed something in that time."

Kyri suddenly understood her point. "So either they could wipe just the right memories from people's minds –"

"—or," Rion finished, looking pale, "there was nothing for people to notice, because the one doing the scouting for them… was someone from Evanwyl."

Toron grunted assent. "I would say this is very probable no matter what your ultimate adversary is."

"But… but that's horrible!" Urelle burst out. "Someone we know?"

"More accurately, someone we think we know," Victoria said bluntly.

Toron bowed. "Victoria, the more I think of this, the less I like it. Might I suggest you move? This level of effort is not expended just on two adventurers. There is something much deeper going on here, something vastly worse, and it is not something these children –"

"I am staying here." Rion's voice was iron, and Kyri realized she had said the exact same words at the exact same time, in a startling chorus. He went on, "My father wouldn't have abandoned Evanwyl, my mother wouldn't have abandoned Evanwyl, and we're not going to either."

Victoria smiled. "They are my family, as you said."

The immense Sauran sighed. "As I expected. But once I leave, you may be on your own. I may be able to help you if you come to Zarathanton, but I cannot stay here. I am here purely as a friend; I have no legal authority in Evanwyl."

"I know that, sir," Rion said. "But we're staying. Maybe I'll have –"

"If you even think of sending me and Urelle away, Rion, I will kick you somewhere that you really do not want me to kick," Kyri said quickly. "Whatever you do… we're here to do, too."

"Then," Rion said, looking down across the fields, forests, and mountains with a determined look on his face, "we'd better get started."

 

 

Just For Fun: Deleted Chapters from Phoenix Rising, Chapter 3

Seeing these deleted chapters gives a feel for how much can be cut from a book without it being immediately noticeable. I'd basically written out the investigation of the Vantages' murder and deleted the whole thing!

 

Chapter 3.

     "No, Milady." Thornfalcon's face seemed even longer and sadder than usual beneath the silver-beaked helm. The poet and would-be swashbuckler of the Justiciars of Myrionar, Thornfalcon's lugubrious exterior usually masked a playful romantic, ready with a compliment for a lady or a quip to set a room laughing.

But there was no laughter there now. He looked defeated, mirroring the slumped shoulders of the other Justiciars present. "We have prayed, we have called upon the vision of Justice. Nothing."

Kyri looked from one to the other, the shining heroic figures of her childhood – of almost every child in Evanwyl – fighting the crushing disappointment in her heart. "Nothing?"

Silver Eagle shook his head, throwing the blue and silver cape back as the light wind made it wrap around him, and looked up at the ruins of the mansion. There was no more smoke now, more than a week after the fire, but everything still smelled of burning and death. She saw Eagle's beard quiver as he clenched his teeth before answering. "Not a trace. The wards were removed, that much is clear, by some force before the assault began. But that force left no trace, and the fire destroyed any chance of determining exactly who and what did the killing."

"And Myrionar is silent?"

"The Balanced Sword does not speak." The pearlescent armor of Mist Owl, the only Artan (or,as some called them, Elven) Justiciar, reflected the gray of the sky in sad, muted rainbow hues. "This tells us that whatever force acted here has powerful support, for in the name of Justice and Vengeance It will always speak and guide us upon the proper course… unless Myrionar Itself cannot see."

Shrike and Condor came down from the wreckage, the short, rock-solid older man seeming even shorter and even the tall, long-limbed form of Condor shrunken in defeat. "As we thought. Swords, axes… no weapons of unusual signature. The fire was alchemically started – no ordinary material could have caused such a swift and complete blaze. But that tells us little; anyone could have purchased infused oil or even pure fire essence."

"But they would have needed a considerable amount to do this." Victoria Vantage pointed out.

"Agreed," Thornfalcon said, "And do not think that we are giving up. We shall search for any large purchases. We will question any and all who may have seen anything. We will trace every connection, all those who may have held a grudge against the Vantage family, who might have feared they knew something or would act in some way against them…" His long fingered hand clenched tightly on the hilt of his ornate rapier, and Kyri felt a pang of sympathy; the Justiciars were the protectors of Evanwyl, their heroes for generations, each who was fortunate enough to take up one of the seven sacred armors given blessings of strength, senses, protection, and healing to seek out and right injustices. To fail here, with such an outrage perpetrated on one of the oldest and most loved families… "… we will never rest until we find them, Kyri. We, the Justiciars, promise you that."

"Aye." Shrike's usually gruff voice was soft. "That we do, lass." He glanced over at Rion, who had said nothing.

She'd thought her brother too lost in thought to notice, but he looked up. "I will find them myself, if you do not." She was relieved; he was clearly as disappointed as she was, but kept himself from letting any accusation of failure reach his voice.

"I have no doubt you will. But seek them not alone; whoever or whatever they were, mazakh or old enemies returned or even some devilment from Moonshade Hollow beyond Rivendream Pass, they were clever, careful, wise in their evil and very prepared indeed. Your father and mother may have been softer than in their youth, but no ordinary creatures could have caught them so off guard." Silver Eagle laid his gauntleted hand firmly on Rion's shoulder. "Make sure you have strong and worthy companions on that quest, Rion Vantage." He gestured to the others. "We have done what little we could here. We must confer and meditate, and then act. As Thornfalcon has said, there is much to do, but we must do it wisely and well, not hastily for the sake of our anger. Both justice and vengeance come in time."

The Justiciars bowed to the family with the sign of the Balanced Sword and left, the heaviness of their tread showing how deeply their failure affected them.

Aunt Victoria watched them go and did not speak until they had vanished down the road. "I wish I had not expected that."

"Is Myrionar so weak a god?" Rion's voice was bitter. "Have we followed something so impotent that it cannot even protect us in the name of justice and vengeance?"

Kyri was speechless for a moment; she'd never heard such words, even thought to hear such words, from her brother.

"Perhaps when you can answer the questions the Justiciars cannot, you will be in a position to make that judgement, Rion Kyril Vantage, but I'll thank you not to insult the gods in my presence until you reach that point!"

Rion winced, but stood, glaring down at his aunt. "I'm sorry it bothers you, Aunt Victoria, but what is the point of following one of the gods if they cannot even act in their own aspect?"

"Sometimes," a massively deep, resonant voice said from behind them, "sometimes, young Vantage, they wait for those through whom they will act."

Kyri whirled.

Not forty feet from them stood an immense figure, eight feet high, scaled with green-black armor, massive shoulders supporting a crested head with deep-set black eyes. A pattern of multicolored gems was inlaid into the scales on each shoulder; a warstaff was slung over the creature's back, held by a leather harness from which multiple small pouches and containers also hung, with a split pack on either side of the back. Plates of silvery protective armor covered a long tail, ending in edged flanges which turned the tail into a deadly weapon indeed.

"What –" Rion stepped back, hand going to his sword.

Victoria laughed. "Do not even think of drawing that sword, Rion." She ran forward, looking almost young for a moment. "I can't believe it! Old Bridgebreaker!"

The reptilian face was more expressive than Kyri would have expected, and it showed an odd mix of fondness and wincing embarrassment at Victoria's familiar address. "Not that old nickname, unless you want me to call you the V—"

"Oh, I think not!" Victoria hastily cut him off. "Children, this is … let me get the pronunciation correct if I can… T'Oroning'Oltharamnon hGHEK," the last sound sort of an inhaled choke or cough, "R'arshe Ness, first brother to the Sauran King of Zarathanton and the State."

Kyri stared open-mouthed, then tried frantically to remember the proper courtesy; true nobility was almost never seen in Evanwyl, the Watchland notwithstanding, and the Ancient Saurans, children of the Great Dragons, were unique even among nobility. That's right, the armed bow… She made sure her own sword was visible, then did a deep bow, extending one leg behind her for balance and to imitate the presence of a tail, then pivoted slowly around so that she faced away from him, bowed slowly to the air, and finally turned to face the huge creature again. She could see Rion had also performed the same gesture.

As they halted, the Sauran gave a chuckle like a kettle filled with rolling stones. "Drilled some courtesies into them, have you, Victoria?" He bowed deeply, keeping his eyes fixed on them, and then spun about to repeat the bow, the bladed tail indicating that even from behind he was not helpless.

"I do what I can, Toron."

"And still using that abominably, not to mention insultingly, shortened version of my name." The Sauran's voice, fortunately, held amusement rather than annoyance.

"It did us well enough back then. I'll admit I didn't expect him to send you."

"It was not just for your sake – though my kingly brother has not at all forgotten your services. He wished me to look into some other disquieting events in the outer regions. From here I may return via Hell's Edge, and on the way here I was able to gain some personal sight of what Dalthunia has become."

"So… sir…" Rion said, "You are a Adjudicator?"

"Adjudicator, Master of the Marshaled Hosts when the time calls for it, Warrior of the Sixteen and the Dragon God. That I am."

Master of the… that makes him not just the King's brother, but the warmaster and head of security for the greatest country in the world. How in the world does Aunt Victoria know him?

"Well, then, we'd best not waste your time. You know why I've called for a Adjudicator."

Toron bowed solemnly. "My sympathies and those of the King to you all." He looked around. "And here is the scene of the assault. I shall begin immediately."

"Can I watch?" The words were out of Kyri's mouth before she realized how inane they must sound.

Apparently they didn't sound quite that bad to the Ancient Sauran Adjudicator, because he chuckled again. "There may be little to see, despite the reputations of Adjudicators. And for me to commune with the Powers fully, I need as much quiet as possible."

"Come then, children." Rion looked reluctant, but followed.

Kyri glanced back before they entered the carriage; the huge draconic figure stood, staff out and planted in the ground before it. Somehow, though he did not move, he looked like a creature preparing for a mighty battle.

Then may you defeat lies and win the truth, Adjudicator. Because we need to know.

 

 

One aspect that these cuts did diminish is seeing the Justiciars, and some other characters, in the way they were seen by those of Evanwyl BEFORE disastrous events began to pile up on them.  Thornfalcon in particular gains more sympathy by being seen more times prior to our discovery about him later in Phoenix Rising, and it is nice to see Toron before we meet up with him in Zarathanton. Again, I think it was the right choice to delete these chapters, but I do regret some of the losses involved.

Just For Fun: Deleted Chapters from Phoenix Rising, Chapter 2

These chapters were mostly cut because they kept us from getting to the core action. There's still a fair amount of information in them that might interest readers, though the crucial parts I tried to stuff into the remaining chapters.

 

 

Chapter 2.

     Kyri stared numbly down at the remains of the front door; with cruel irony, the fire-charm on the door had remained intact, so the huge portals were unscorched, smeared only with water and soot from the rest of the mansion but otherwise marred only by the deep crescent-shaped gouges where they had, impossibly, been broken open. The deep scars in the wood showed a faint silvery sheen in the rays of the lowering sun.

The angle of the sun struck a faint chord in the back of her mind, and she realized with a sort of apathetic surprise that she hadn't ever slept; despite everyone urging her to move away, to rest, she'd refused to move as the fire raged and the others fought with water and spells and prayer to stop it, force it back, prevent it from spreading. And when the flames had given up the battle and retreated to sullen smoke, she'd refused again, wandering around the grounds, seeing the rear areas where something might have been saved (but not her parents, not the guards like Garrick, Vistle, Camberi, Simmini, or Toll, the Master of House, or Tish, no…), shrugging off the well-meaning comfort of the neighbors, the offer of shelter from Arbiter Kelsley of the Temple, even the gentle words of sympathy from the Watchland, Jeridan Relion himself, to come back always to these familiar, forlorn panels lying flat amidst the ruins.

Urelle had been taken off by Kelsley, who'd used a simple blessing to calm her; Kyri hoped her little sister had managed to get some sleep. She knew Rion hadn't; he wouldn't let her help (and had made it clear that if she tried to bull her way in, he'd have the other men drag her off by main force), but he was trying desperately to clear the debris from where they thought their parents' chambers had been.

A hand touched her shoulder from behind and she pulled away. "Go away."

"Kyri Victoria Vantage, you will need to have far more years and vastly more authority before you can ever tell me to just 'go away'," a strong contralto voice replied tartly.

Kyri spun around, staring at the very tall, elegant, perfectly-attired woman whose severe, regular features she knew were somewhat mirrored in her own. "Aunt… Auntie Victoria?"

The deep blue eyes met hers and suddenly she flung herself into her great-aunt's enfolding embrace, crying, trying to talk but finding herself unable to do anything but sob.

"Oh, child… What a terrible thing," Victoria Vantage murmured. Her mother's oldest living relative had always been their favorite, her stern and forbidding exterior hiding a woman who had followed the adventurer's path and later that of society and politics, and who had endless stories to tell (as well as a willingness to spoil the children she thought of as her own grandchildren, as she had never had any children of her own). Her own gaze fell upon the doors. "Ah. So it is true then. No accident at all."

Kyri wanted to answer properly, sounding grown up, but when she opened her mouth she couldn't say anything coherent. She settled for nodding her head emphatically.

"Broke in the door… no sign of magical destruction. Something undid the security seals, and without raising any alarms. That's… very interesting." The contralto voice was grim now.

With a great effort Kyri got herself under control and pulled away. "That's… hard to do, isn't it?"

The older woman shrugged slightly and gestured, muttering a few indistinguishable words; pearl-white light radiated from her fingers, and she bent down, traced the outline of the doors with the light. "Depends on the seals, of course. For these, yes, I would say very hard, Kyri. Your father and mother were no fools; they paid well to secure their home as well as could be managed here. I know I would not care to have tried it even when I was a much younger woman; one mistake and those seals would disable or even kill, and certainly alert everyone in the household and the nearest Patrol."

"But there was no alert at all!" she protested, almost beginning to cry again. "We didn't hear anything, and –"

"I know, Kyri. And that's most disturbing." Aunt Victoria moved forward, surveying the wreckage narrowly, eyes picking up on details; light flickered around her a few more times, perhaps showing her things invisible to Kyri. "Yes… The wards were completely removed. I find not a trace of them, even though there should be something."

A deep-throated cry yanked them both around, a shout of fury and loss from someone too young to accept the second and far too young to restrain the first. "Monsters! Cowardly, Balance-damned treacherous…" Rion was half-running, half-falling through the still-smoking ruins, whatever fireshielding he'd had for the excavation clearly now running out, but paying no attention to the heat, his sword already drawn. "I'll kill them all!"

Aunt Victoria looked for a moment as though her heart was going to break, but took a deep breath and suddenly looked as sarcastically forbidding as she had that time one of the Watchland's Eyes had suggested she cut down on the time she spent training. "An admirable plan, Rion Kervan Vantage. Such detail and attention to execution. I trust you have some idea as to who 'they' are and, by the way you are running with such decision, knowledge of where 'they' may be found?"

Rion rounded on her furiously, sword out, but just stood there wordlessly staring for several moments. Finally he let the sword drop. "I… But I can't do nothing!"

"And no one expects you to. But there is nothing that you can do right now, Rion. Your father was always a level-headed man and I would hope you inherited some of that, it was always your mother who would swing first and ask later."

"But if there's nothing we can do –"

"I," Victoria said severely,"said absolutely nothing about we." Her silvery hair with the blue scarves reminded Kyri forcibly of the blue-and-silver Balance that was the symbol of Myrionar. "I can do something, and I have already done so; what I have seen here has confirmed that I have taken the correct action."

With relief, Kyri saw the last of the unreasoning fury fade from Rion's face. He slowly sheathed his sword, then wiped his face with his sleeve; the effect was not perhaps what he would have wanted, because tears mixed with soot smeared blackly over much of his face. "So what…"

"… have I done? As soon as I heard, I went to Sasha Rithair."

"The Summoner?" Kyri was puzzled.

"Do you know another Rithair in this land? Of course the Summoner. Charming girl, if a bit young for the profession. Still, she's quite good with spirits of air, lightning, that sort of thing, and that was exactly what we needed. She was quite happy to accept some coin and a particularly flawless piece of crystal I've had lying about in exchange for calling up an aerial spirit with the power and strength to make a fast journey to Zarathanton with a letter." Aunt Victoria sighed and shook her head. "They say calling pools and crystals were reliable ways, but that's no option now."

"Not since Dalthunia was taken," Rion agreed absently. Dalthunia had been their buffer and ally to the south, a fairly large country carved out of the hinterlands of the Empire of the Mountain by heroics and political maneuverings over three thousand years ago, but a couple of centuries before Kyri had been born some mysterious force had invaded in a lightning-fast attack that broke Dalthunia's defenses, scattered her armies and nobility, and turned Dalthunia into a country that permitted few if any visitors, restricted travel, and about which no one really knew much of anything. Even communications across their territories were severely restricted. Some rumors said that it was simply the Archmage taking back what had been his, but that seemed unlikely as – apparently – the forces of the Empire were no more welcome to travel there than those of the State of Elbon or Evanwyl itself. "So what was your message?"

"Your father and mother were good followers of Myrionar and famous adventurers. The second means that they made as many enemies as they made friends, though a lot of those enemies have made their final journey," Victoria said, clearly intending to answer in her own way. Despite her resolve to stay, Kyri found that both she and Rion were now walking with their aunt towards her waiting carriage. "The first means that anyone who tried an attack like this must have taken steps to hide themselves from the direct investigation of the Arbiters, perhaps even from the Justiciars themselves. Not an easy task."

No, Kyri thought. Not when Myrionar, as a God of Justice and Vengeance, grants many powers to see through lies to the Truth. Hiding from that is very difficult. "But if they have…"

"… then still they may not have done enough." Aunt Victoria opened the door of the carriage and gestured them inside. Rion cast one more pained look backwards; his shoulders suddenly slumped, and he climbed in slowly. Kyri followed, the realization of her own exhaustion starting to come to her.

"It so happens," Victoria continued as she seated herself and the carriage began to move, "that some years ago when I was not all that much older than you, I was… well, time for that story later. Let's just say that the King owes me a little favor and –"

"The King? You mean the Sauran King?"

"Will you do me the courtesy of not interrupting all the time, child? And what other King would I be referring to? The old lizard has an excellent memory and I'm sure he'll be willing to do me a service or two. In this case," and now a genuine, but very cold smile – the smile of an Adventurer who was readying a trap for an adversary – grew on Victoria's face, "I've asked him to send one of the Lords Adjudicator. Not that I doubt our people here, but I know …" her voice seemed to stumble, "…knew your parents very well indeed, and someone who would do this so quickly and thoroughly had to have thought all aspects of the attack through."

Rion looked impressed despite his exhaustion. "But not this, eh?"

Victoria bit her lip, looking dour for a moment. "I would hope not. The power and skill to mislead Myrionar is not inconsiderable, but to hide it from one of those blessed by the Dragon God and the Sixteen, or – as is the case with some of the Adjudicators – Terian Nomicon, or Chromaias and the Four? Perhaps not impossible… but I have heard of nothing that I would believe could do it, save of course for another god willing to take the risk."

Kyri nodded, her eyelids heavy. "So we'll know soon…"

"I would hope so. But even an aerial spirit will take a few days to travel two thousand miles, and then the Adjudicator must find its way here, so be not overly impatient."

With a jolt, Kyri realized that if there had been further conversation she had missed it; the carriage had jolted to a halt in front of Victoria Vantage's fortress, the second-most formidable construction (aside from the guardwall across Rivendream Pass) in all of Evanwyl. Only the Watchland's castle surpassed Vantage Fortress, and according to family legend the foundations of the five-sided fortress were laid by five great wizards using all five Great Elements – which if true might make it even harder to destroy than the Watchland's own.

Rion looked barely awake too as he climbed heavily out of the carriage and followed their aunt inside. "So… all we can do is wait?"

"For now, you – and your sister – need to get something to eat and then rest." Victoria put an arm around each of them and hugged. "What we can do… we will do later.

"The dead do not need our haste, remember that, child. They need our justice."

 

 

Minor things one can note in this chapter is that the Watchland's name was slightly changed (Relion to Velion), and that Victoria probably guessed, but couldn't be certain of, the identity of the Adjudicator that would be sent to them.

 

Just For Fun: Deleted Chapters from _Phoenix Rising_: Chapter 1

Depending on the story and the editor, some of my books have had significant rewrites and changes over the years. In the case of Phoenix Rising, I originally detailed a lot of material which was only mentioned as backstory in the novel. I think the decision to cut the stuff out was right, overall, but it did deprive readers of event and character detail that might well have been worth reading in its own right. So I'm going to post some of those chapters for my readers' amusement -- and maybe comment on each.

Here is what used to be Chapter 1...

 

Chapter 1.

     Kyri smiled at her little sister Urelle as she ran, zig-zag fashion, back and forth across the path, trying to keep ahead of their older brother Rion. At 16, Rion was already nearly as tall as their father's six and a half feet, though much more slender. This gave him longer legs and more speed, but the eight-year-old Urelle was much more nimble.

Still, Rion was also in training for holy warrior, maybe even for the Justiciars if a vacancy opened, and he had all the speed of the Vantage family. His hand lashed out and caught Urelle's collar, lifted her laughing and shrieking into the air. "All right, that's enough, Urelle, you're getting far too excited, little lady. Mother and Father aren't going to want you running around like a wild elemental; it's wayyy past our bedtime."

Urelle giggled. "But—"

"No buts."

It was a lovely night in Evanwyl; no clouds blocked out the stars, and through one of the slight openings in the trees Kyri glimpsed the Balanced Sword, the constellation's eighteen stars bright against the glow of the lesser stars nearby, and the lower two stars of the Five.

"How was practice?" she asked Rion as he joined her, Urelle tucked, still giggling, under his left arm.

"Pretty good. Lythos said that I was almost adequate today!"

"Isn't that how he usually describes Mother and Father?"

He couldn't restrain a proud grin. "Yep. How about you?"

She would have preferred to talk more about his training; swords and duels were much more fun than religious study, and the calm, unperturbable Elven Sho-ka-taida (Master of Combat) rarely paid anyone a compliment above 'not entirely incompetent'. "Almost adequate probably describes it. They've put off the unit on Myrionar's involvement in the greatest recent sagas until next month, and I was so looking forward to that."

"Especially the Wanderer and the Seedling Heroes, I know." Rion grinned. He knew she read all the adventure stories she could find and had driven the local storytellers to distraction years ago.

"Right," she agreed. "So about the only thing that's interesting is the fact that for some reason the following of Myrionar has contracted over the last several hundred years."

Rion's brow wrinkled. "Really? I thought the Balanced Sword was always pretty much an Evanwyl thing. Our patron deity, like the Dragon King and the Sixteen for the State of Elbon and Idinus is for the Empire of the Mountain."

"Oh, no!" she said, glad to have something she knew about the Faith that Rion didn't. "There were major temples in Hell's Edge, Elbon's Watch, even in Zarathanton and all the way to Tor Port in the Empire. About five thousand years ago, the teachers say the Way of the Balanced Sword was big. Maybe not as many followed Myrionar as Terian, Chromaias, or the Great Dragon –"

"—Or the Archmage, since he rules his own country –"

"Of course, but that's kind of cheating, isn't it? I mean, even if you're the most powerful wizard ever, and maybe you're close to or even actually a god, being right there and ruling the country is kind of wrong. The gods generally stick to letting their priests and so on do the work."

Rion chuckled. "Well, Kyri, you're welcome to go to the Mountain someday and tell him that."

"Maybe I will. Father and mother –"

"—Don't want all of us out adventuring like them."

"Now there is another thing that doesn't make sense. If they spent their lives –"

Urelle, still under Rion's arm, interrupted. "Hey, what's that?"

Kyri and Rion followed the smaller girl's extended arm. A red-orange light was dimly visible ahead.

Kyri squinted, pushing her black hair (identical to her sister's, the opposite of her brother's blonde) out of her eyes. "Flickers. Looks like a fire."

"Haven't been any storms." Rion muttered. "And it looks too big to be a campfire at this distance. Besides, why would anyone build a campfire when it's right near –" he broke off and exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Kyri. The two of them took off running. "What? What's wrong?" Urelle demanded.

Rion halted to shift his little sister to his back; Kyri ran on ahead, pelting down the familiar path.

She burst out onto the lawn into terrible bright orange light and screamed.

The Vantage estate was in flames.

Rion dropped Urelle on the grass and started to sprint forward, but Kyri grabbed his arm, was dragged forward. "No, Rion, no! If the fire wards didn't stop it, there's no chance!"

He dragged to a halt unwillingly, staring. "Mother! FATHER!" he screamed. Then, remembering, he scrabbled through his belt pouch, found the small signal wand and gestured skyward. A brilliant blue ball of light streaked up into the air and burst, hanging above them like a cerulean sun.

Kyri found the Balanced Sword and prayed. Please, Myrionar. Please let Father and Mother be safe.

But she knew, as the flames rose higher, that her prayer was too little, too late.

 

 

Readers of Phoenix Rising knew, of course, that this happened, but here we see the three Vantage children together in the last moments before they lose their parents.

 

 

 

On My Shelves: Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University

I've watched a lot of Pixar's output over the years, and never been disappointed, but for various reasons I'd missed both of these when they came out; Monsters, Inc. because of budget and timing constraints (and I never had a copy around the house to watch when I was at leisure later), and Monsters University because, well, it was a follow-on and I didn't see a point in watching it without having watched the first one.

However, I've finally been able to watch them, courtesy of my friend Eric Palmer, and thus can review them!

Both films take place primarily in a world of monsters (and they call themselves that), but one that is a rather obvious reflection of our own. There may be monster-specific issues and characteristics, but they still have most of the same interests and issues we have – love, careers, competition, education, etc., all follow the same basic molds.

In Monsters, Inc., our main characters Mike Wazowski and his best friend and partner James P. Sullivan ("Sully") work at Monsters, Inc., as a professional Scarer team. Scarers go through doors into the dangerous "human" world, with the job of scaring children. This isn't for amusement, or because monsters have some natural need to do so; there is instead a highly practical reason. The screams of terrified children are a huge source of energy for the monster universe. One well-captured scream can apparently run multiple households for a considerable amount of time, and these screams are the foundation of their entire energy industry.

Of course, being a Scarer is a highly prestigious profession, combining acting prowess with nerves of steel and a willingness to risk oneself for one's job, because not only is every child different – and thus requiring a different tactic to get the best scream out of them – but also it is well-known throughout the monster world that human children, and many of the articles they contact, are lethally toxic.

Thus, a Scarer's job is something like a cross between a nuclear plant worker, a daredevil, and a professional actor. Scarers work in partnership with a support person who helps research their targets, advises them on tactics, and controls the door operation. In this case, Mike – a small green spherical creature with one giant eye – is the advisor and tactician, while Sully – a massive blue-and-purple furred creature reminiscent of a fluffy Bigfoot crossed with a bear – is the Scarer.

At the time the movie starts, Sully's the top Scarer in the company, rivaled only by Randall Boggs, a creepy looking creature like a cross between a chameleon and a centipede. As the pair leave the Scaring installation (which is of course locked down every night), Mike suddenly remembers he left key paperwork unfiled, and he has a "hot date". Sully covers for him and goes to fetch the paperwork… to find that his rival, Randall, was apparently trying to improve his numbers by doing additional Scaring after-hours. By itself this would be bad – it violates many company rules – but far worse is that Randall left the door active, and a human child escapes into the monster world!

This movie's strength – and that of its sequel/prequel – lies in the characters. Sully and Mike are a team with a clear history that keeps them together, even though Mike at first appears to be a much less thoughtful and likeable person than Sully. Even the little girl – who the monsters name "Boo" and who serves mostly as a MacGuffin for much of the story – is given a definite personality that makes her more than just a problem-coupon for the monsters to catch.

By itself, of course, the plot of escaped cute and dangerous creature (which is partly the fault of our heroes) would be enough to run a kid's movie. But Pixar never stops at "enough", and there's a lot more going on in Monsters, Inc. than meets the eye at first. Randall isn't just a dickhead and the whole industry of scream harvesting has details not obvious on the surface, leading to a much more complex, fast-moving, and intense storyline. I was caught up in Mike and Sully's story and Pixar did a great job of setting up every twist and turn of the plot without either hitting us over the head with it, or pulling things out of thin air to get the plot resolved. This was a very good movie and well worth watching!

Monsters University is actually a prequel to Monsters, Inc., following Mike Wazowski's first meeting with a professional Scarer and his determination to become one himself, culminating of course with his admission to the prestigious Monsters University and its top-rated Scarer program. The younger Mike we see here is an innocent geek, a book-reading studious Scarer-fanboy, one that hasn't gained the layer of cynicism that the older Mike of Monsters, Inc. displays; similarly, Sully is a jock, son of a prestigious Scarer family and clearly expecting to coast through the school to his rightful place at the top of the Scaring profession. Mike, by contrast, believes that all he has to do is study and work hard, and he'll be the best Scarer ever.

Neither of them, of course, is entirely right.

This is a classic "college hijinks" movie, done with monsters. It has all the same elements – the nerd and jock who have to learn to get along, the top-dog fraternity versus the outcasts, the hardass teachers that just might have hearts of gold – or not – and the Big School Competition where the underdogs have to try to beat the obvious champions.

True to Pixar's habit, they fulfill many of our expectations while upsetting the ones that are too obvious, too hackneyed, or too easy, in order to tell a better overall story – and give us more characters to enjoy, or to hate. Even Randall Boggs is given more depth here, showing the person that he might have become if things had gone differently. Pixar also throws in deliberate references to all the classic movies of teenage high-school/college drama, including one to Carrie that is both so obvious that as soon as I saw the setup I turned to Eric and said "I'm thinkin'… Carrie here,", and at the same time is so effective that the nod works without feeling at all strained or overdone.

Ultimately this is still a movie about Mike and Sully, and it is this character interaction that keeps the movie powerful and worth watching – and it is very worth watching.

I don't know if Pixar intends to ever return to this universe – or if they feel, given the resolution they found to the original Monsters, Inc., that there's no real stories to tell there any more – but seeing the two together is a real treat, and encourages me to believe that if they do try again, there's going to be a lot of fun waiting at the theater!

If you haven't seen Monsters, Inc. or Monsters University, I highly recommend you do!

 

On Writing: The Maintenance of Belief

Anyone heavily involved in SF/F fandom will have encountered something that shattered their "WSOD" – Willing Suspension of Disbelief – and kicked them out of their immersion in the story to say, in one way or another "What the heck? That made no SENSE!"

As an author, of course, I have to be very sensitive to this; I don't want my readers cranking along happily and then suddenly having their train of thought derailed. This is not, of course, something it's possible to avoid in a universal fashion; things that won't bother 99% of readers will jolt the hell out of that last 1%. But it is possible to avoid for most people, reading most books, but only if you understand what tends to do this… and how that changes depending on the book.

To a great extent, the flexibility of a reader's WSOD is inversely proportional to the realism of the setting. Much of this is inherently obvious; on the one extreme, watching a documentary of the life and times of King Louis XIV of France could end up destroying a viewer's WSOD by simply putting the wrong dress style front-and-center, while on the other most viewers don't even bat an eyeball when watching Bugs Bunny draw a round black hole in midair and then drop it in front of his pursuers, to send them plummeting to who-knows-where. We don't expect much logic in such a cartoon, just (hopefully) clever sight gags, so we almost totally disengage the critical function of the brain while watching.

In writing (or reading) speculative fiction of different types, this sliding scale of disbelief is something that has two major dimensions affected by the reader's personal experience and beliefs. The major dimensions are world (facts and beliefs about how the world functions – science, magic, etc) and people (whether people act in a believable manner to the reader). The latter tends to be more personal to a reader, but even the first is strongly affected by individual reader's knowledge and experience.

"Realism" is also, itself, variable. You can be writing a story that contains bizarre, fantastic elements, but if you set it in a world that is ostensibly very much like our own (as many urban fantasies, such Paradigms Lost or Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series, are), readers will still apply much of their real-world knowledge and experience to the parts of the world you haven't clearly changed. Thus, even in such a series, a reader's WSOD may be shattered by the author getting a particular real-world fact wrong (say, describing the use of a gun incorrectly).

This can be quite a pain if you intended the "mistake" as a clue. This happens in the first part of Paradigms Lost, in fact; a careful reader who understands cameras will notice that anyone looking through an SLR camera at a vampire should immediately notice something's wrong, because an SLR uses a mirror to send the image to the viewfinder and, of course, vampires don't show reflections. Naturally, this turns out to be a clue rather than a mistake; the guy who was taking the pictures, Elias Klein, was a vampire and thus wasn't surprised by the results. Readers who hadn't gotten that far, however, often complained about what I had "missed".

Part of the technique for reinforcing WSOD on this sliding scale is, basically, to get the reader's trust. In a hard-SF or technothriller setting, this requires getting the reader to "buy in" to the setting in some fashion. A very effective technique is to include a character or sequence early on that draws on something the author knows cold – something they are if not an expert at least well-informed on, and can write about with some authority. Clive Cussler did this with his Dirk Pitt series of technothrillers by always having some scenes having to do with underwater salvage, something Cussler has real-world experience in; the details of those sections were always rock-hard and rang true, because he really did know what he was talking about. This gave a sort of aura of believability around Cussler's prose so that the reader would be willing to stretch their WSOD a bit when they came to the more outré sections of the book.

I've used this in the Boundary series frequently. I know a fair amount about sensors and data processing for remote sensing, so A.J. Baker became a mouthpiece through which I could insert some pretty-darn-accurate science and make the rest of the text, by extension, seem believable and solid.

In a less-realistic setting, the key to maintaining WSOD is almost always consistency. People will nod and keep going through whatever bizarre magical world you create, as long as you don't ask them to believe that all magicians are female on one page, and then introduce a male magician on another page without having some in-universe reaction to the apparent contradiction.

This is where the great paradox of "which is easier to write, hard SF or fantasy" really lives. On the one hand, doing accurate research and addressing all the details of a good hard-SF setting well is no small task. On the other, well, you have the same resources as your readers – you can ask the real world for the details. I could directly contact Dr. Phil Moynihan and ask him about the NERVA project, or Dr. Robert Sheldon about the dusty plasma sail concept.

The writer of an epic (but less scientifically valid) space opera, or a grand-scale fantasy, on the other hand, can make up whatever they like for their universe, but then they have the increasingly huge burden of trying to keep it a working universe, one with consistency that allows a reader to believe all the ridiculous stuff you throw at them – dragons, wizards, disembodied intellects, some guy getting superpowers from being bitten by a radioactive spider, whatever.

Maintaining consistency in a large fantastic universe is a very non-trivial effort. Speaking as someone who has, now, written everything from multiple hard-SF novels to straight-up fantasy, I don't think either end of the spectrum is more difficult to write in and of itself. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but in neither of them is ensuring the reader's "buy-in" an easy thing, and in both it requires a lot of work by the author to make it reliably likely that a given reader will accept their world as they read.

Characters, of course, are much more variable. What seems a perfectly believable character reaction to one person may throw another completely out of the story. The example I always recall (without precisely detailing it) is that there is a sequence of events in Digital Knight (later Paradigms Lost) which one of the readers told me was totally unbelievable – that no real-world person would act that way. The first part of the joke there is that the sequence of events was based on my own personal experience, so I knew for absolute fact that a real-world person would act that way. The second part was that the reader in question was my own brother, who one would have thought could have recognized his own sibling's likely behavior.

Because of this, I tend to be a lot less worried about "realistic" behavior in characters. An author can only write characters that behave as they understand makes sense. Certainly an author can try to stretch their understanding of other people and their behaviors, and should if it's feasible, but ultimately we, ourselves, are going to be the limits of our characters. We can't make them any more believable than we are, and as is oft-pointed out, reality is sometimes stunningly unrealistic, and what seems perfectly normal and natural for someone raised in one location with one set of assumptions may seem anywhere from odd to utterly crazy to another person raised elsewhere with another set of assumptions.

Character consistency then becomes the author's only reliable tool here (well, and character appeal, but that's also a pretty darn variable thing). However odd your character's behavior, if it maintains some kind of regularity – the reader can build up expectations of how they'll behave, and find them (mostly) met, or any variations of their behavior explained in some fashion – then most readers will go along with it.

This is helped if any oddities in the characters are reinforced by details of the world – a religion they follow, events that have or are happening to the character, and so on. Knowing that a character was heavily traumatized by seeing some particular type of creature at an impressionable age will let the reader anticipate their negative reaction to an alien that looks rather like that creature, for instance, even if the character is usually an enthusiastic greeter of new species.

This is one of the hardest overall parts of writing in the speculative fiction arena, in great part because there is no certainty in it. Readers have different levels of WSOD, different "hot buttons", different preferences in the amount of detail and consistency they demand.

And, as always, the author's worst enemy is what they don't realize they haven't considered: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you, it's what you do know that ain't so," to slightly paraphrase Mark Twain. The unconsidered knowledge and assumptions – that we all have – are the beartraps waiting in our writing.

In the end, however, the effort to maintain WSOD is one of the most important that an author in the SF/F field can expend, because that suspension of disbelief is what allows a reader to stay in our world, to connect with it, in a way that makes it worth their while to do so.

 

On My Shelves: Doctor Strange

Well, technically "soon to be on my shelves" since the movie hasn't been released to video yet!

     Capsule summary: A near-perfect adaptation of the origin of Doctor Strange, updated without losing what made it work in the first place. Excellent acting, fine pacing, and clever scripting make this one of the better Marvel offerings, with only a few relatively minor flaws marring what is otherwise a stellar work. Cumberbatch was made to play Doctor Strange, continuing an amazing streak of beautiful casting decisions by Marvel. I look forward to the good Doctor's future appearances.

 

While he wasn't on the absolute top of my comic purchase list, I always liked Doctor Strange. His comics often had a dreamlike quality that was peculiarly suited to their supernatural themes, and he had a diverse and quite frightening rogues gallery that included foes up to and including the cosmic. As with all the earlier Marvel heroes, he had a background that incorporated very human elements into his development, and that kept affecting the way in which he would approach and solve problems.

Doctor Strange has also been historically highly influential on the Marvel universe, even though his popularity as an individual title never soared to the heights of Spider-Man or the X-Men or Avengers. The latter is probably because many of Strange's best adventures were complex and even cerebral, as much mindgames as duels of power and skill, and many comic readers probably found them either a bit challenging, or simply not what they were looking for in a superhero comic. Nonetheless, Strange has been a member of multiple super-teams and is also a friend and consultant to nearly all the major heroes ranging from the Fantastic Four and Avengers to Spider-Man on matters of the supernatural, and he has been instrumental in many of their adventures and in world-changing events throughout his career.

Naturally I was interested to see how they would approach him for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first good sign was the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as the good Doctor himself; physically Cumberbatch is a good match for Doctor Strange as he has been commonly depicted, being tall and athletic with the ability to project both coldness and charm in equal measures.

On the choice of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One I was more torn; I can understand the desire to increase female presence in stories that were often sausagefests, and to try to avoid the absolute hackneyed Old Asian Master business, but why not, say, someone like Michelle Yeoh? That said, Tilda Swinton is a fine actress and I had no doubt she could handle the basic role.

The casting of Mordo also concerned me, mainly because in the original comics Mordo ("Baron Mordo", to be exact) was the stereotype of the formerly best pupil who comes to resent the new superstar and then betrays his master. Having the only prominent character of color cast as the traitor seemed a bad choice. I'm still not sure of it now, but the situation in the movie did ease that particular concern some.

After a prologue of some obviously nasty people breaking into a magical monastery of some sort, stealing a book, and having a quick and very psychedelic battle against Tilda Swinton's Ancient One, we travel to today, and meet Doctor Steven Strange…

The origin is almost letter-perfect for his comic-book origin, only updating the details of Doctor Stephen Strange's medical background. Here he's a top-flight research surgeon, selecting patients on the basis of how interesting they might be to his career – although a few events show that somewhere inside he does care, at least, about seeing that all doctors do their jobs and save lives.

For the most part, however, he is an arrogant, self-involved superstar who gets away with what he does only because (somewhat like Tony Stark) he really is almost as good as he thinks he is.

Then on a rainy night, distracted in a very 2010s fashion by the information technology in his car, he careens at high speed off a cliff. After some interval, he awakens to find that he is alive… but his hands are so badly shattered they are held in a nightmarish framework just to maintain their shape, and it was long enough between his crash and rescue that permanent nerve damage was done.

His hands are his livelihood, and now they are nigh-useless; even after healing, they are barely able to pick up and hold any ordinary object, not even vaguely good enough in precision or strength to ever perform even middling-good surgery again.

Desperate, Strange throws all his brain and resources into finding some solution, but there is none. Even experimental measures fail, and he is running out of money. Finally, he is shown medical data on a man who completely severed his spine, lost all use of his body… and who then, after disappearing for some time, showed up one day completely functional. Strange tracks the man down and finds him playing basketball – and doing it very, very well – in an urban court. After pleading with him for some information, the man tells him he learned how to heal himself in a place called Kamar-Taj. With nothing left to lose, Strange liquidates the last of his assets and begins to seek out this place, that is not on any map…

This "bridge" part of the story, where Strange has to find Kamar-Taj and then accept the loss of his final anchor to his old life – the supremacy of scientific logic – is crucial to making the story work. Fortunately, it is done well. The Ancient One approaches Strange very directly, realizing that a matter-of-fact approach will be far more shocking and effective than any level of spiritual discussion, and literally knocks him out of his body as the very first introduction to the mystical powers. It only gets more bizarre from there.

Once Strange finally accepts the reality of these powers, he begs to be trained… and is shut out, because the Ancient One has already seen and trained another brilliant promising student who had some similar traits to Strange: Kaecilius, the leader of the group we saw in the opening, who betrayed her and the Temple and stole a dangerous and powerful ritual. Mordo, currently her best student, argues with her that they may need someone like Strange, and that he deserves a chance.

From there, of course, we progress through Strange's accelerating study of the Mystic Arts and to the inevitable conflict with Kaecelius and his patron: the cosmic being called the Dread Dormammu.

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. Cumberbatch always gives excellent performances, but this seems, to me, to be the role he was born to play. We already knew that he could play arrogant dickheads well, but what we really hadn't seen so clearly was how well he could transition such a character sympathetically. It would be very easy to loathe Strange, but we pity him more than hate him, which is key to sympathizing with him when he really hits bottom and has to start climbing out.

It's not easy to convincingly show an arrogant man truly learning humility, especially when that man still has to be strong enough to carry off the leading role; our society makes this a really difficult transition. Cumberbatch pulls it off, with Stephen Strange even managing to apologize to the fellow surgeon and close friend Christine Palmer while she's trying to save his life – realizing that if he's going to die, this apology is that much more important. Christine had been the only person who had stuck by him as he had collapsed, and he had driven her out of his life.

But it is the climactic battle where his newfound humility is truly tested, and he demonstrates it in what may be the most badass example of absolute selflessness yet seen on film. I won't spoiler that, it's something that should be seen for itself.

Leaving aside the casting issue, Swinton pulls off the Ancient One (who gets a somewhat more complex origin and role than in the original story) perfectly. She is mysterious, dramatic, powerful, and still has a sense of humor and matchless timing for both that humor and drama. She has a secret of her own, too, that Strange eventually discovers and has to deal with.

Chiwetel Ejiofor's Karl Mordo is an interesting character, and not (at least in this movie) a villain. This partly makes up for my concerns about his role; he is, instead, a staunch ally of Strange's and the one who convinces the Ancient One to take in this broken man; he helps train Strange and acts as a spiritual guide in many ways. If he has a weakness, it is the classic Paladin's inflexibility; he believes so strongly in the letter and detail of the teachings he has been given that any violations of these teachings, even for good reason, create terrible conflict within him.

Benedict Wong was cast eponymously as Wong, who is something like a militarized librarian of Kamar-Taj. The original comic had Wong as a Kato-style sidekick; this version of him is much less a stereotype (or at least not one of the Unfortunate Stereotypes) and an excellent foil for the dynamic Doctor.

Kaecilius, played by Mads Mikkelsen, is a strong and direct villain, a good opposite number for both Strange and the Ancient One. I didn't find him quite as strong a villain as I would have liked, partly because he seemed to be too smart not to have seen the potential flaws in his plan, but he was certainly not terrible.

Overall, this was an excellent movie. I particularly liked the ways in which they introduced the two artifacts that most commonly define Strange's look – his peak-collared Levitation Cloak and the Eye of Agamotto – making them interesting objects in their own right and not merely fanboy props.

There were a couple of minor points that keep it from hitting the absolute top-tier of Marvel in my PoV. Perhaps the largest is purely a personal reaction: I saw an awful lot of Inception-style Escher-like psychedelic reality bending, but damn few Doctor Strange-type magical spells. A lot of the magic seemed to be basically magically-summoned martial arts weapons without any of the – to me – absolutely essential flavor of the magic of Doctor Strange. No Shield of the Seraphim, no Crimson Bands of Cytorakk, no Vapors of Valtorr, none of the double-devil-horned gestures with bolts of mystic might hammering at each other. He does do some gestures, especially when opening portals to other dimensions, but none of the really cool spells I was hoping for.

As I also noted, Kaecilius didn't quite grab me as a villain the way I like. Admittedly, despite some people griping about Marvel villains, it's kinda hard to compete when Hiddleston's Loki set the bar, but I felt they missed a couple of chances to really make him shine.

Without spoiling two much, one of the two (yes TWO, so remember to STAY) credits sequences also does something with Karl Mordo that I really feel should have been done as a longer developed sequence in the (presumably) next Doctor Strange movie. The OTHER in-credits sequence is, well, beautiful and I won't say any more.

All in all, another triumph for Marvel!

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 28

This is probably the last snippet I will post. Let's look in on Simon...

-----

 

Chapter 28.

     "Fictional powers can be made real," Laila Canning repeated slowly. Her sharp brown eyes studied Oasis as though the redheaded woman was a specimen on her dissection table. "How certain are you of this?"

"Between ninety-five and a hundred percent sure," Oasis said. "I mean, Wu Kung already demonstrated he's going totally beyond the normal limits of the Arena and he can do that talk-to-animals thing that no one does, as far as we know."

"That's... that's a total game-changer right there," Carl said after a pause. "I mean... the Arena giving Hyperions their... how do I say it? Natural superpowers?"

"It's perfectly in line with the Arena's normal behavior," Simon said. "Although, based on other events, I have to assume that the Arena has a range of discretion it can use in interpreting its directives and actions. The real question isn't so much how it can justify this... but why it has chosen to do so."

Laila nodded. "That is indeed the question. As Carl says, this potentially changes everything – in general, favorably for us, although your possible sighting could be very much not in anyone's favor, Oasis."

"Fairchild? He'd be a total disaster for everyone. Especially with DuQuesne and Wu off for who knows how long."

She still sounds worried. "Oasis, why DuQuesne specifically? I mean, we still have you, and Velocity, and I presume there must be a few others left."

The woman's long, slender fingers caught at the ponytail dangling near them and began twining the red strands around them, a nervous motion at odds with the cheerfully unflappable Oasis he was used to. "There probably are some more – I think DuQuesne said there might be fifteen, sixteen of us still around, so with me, DuQuesne, Wu, Maria-Susanna, and Vel, that's ten or eleven still back in the System. But I didn't know who they were. I didn't want to know, remember? I was hiding out as Oasis Abrams, not really ever planning to be 'K' again. I think DuQuesne was the only one with a good idea of who the other survivors were and where or how to contact them."

She took a breath, glanced at her hand, and with a visible effort made it release her hair and drop to her side. "DuQuesne is Fairchild's opposite number. Fairchild... wasn't exactly human, I guess is the best way to put it, and both he and DuQuesne had a lot of powers that go way, way beyond normal human capabilities. Way out of my league, or Vel's. Plus being his designed opposite, in a world that assumed the good guys win and bad guys lose? That has to give DuQuesne a major edge over Fairchild."

"Very interesting," Laila said. "Eminently logical, if I accept the basic premises. The Arena is accepting their universes as real for the purposes of what powers it gives them; if the universe itself had a clear... definition of right and wrong and of victory conditions, you believe that at least some of that would also transfer to the Arena."

"Yes. Or it's at least a real good bet."

"You know, we should be able to get an answer as to whether this Fairchild guy is here or not," Carl said.

"Really? Aside from Oasis, none of us here would even recognize the gentleman," Simon said.

"Probably not, but you've got that super-cheat-code in your head, right? Couldn't you just look for him that way?"

Simon blinked, then chuckled. "I probably could, at that."

"Will you?" Laila asked. "I understand very well your reluctance to abuse that ability, but I think time may be of the essence in at least knowing if we do have a Hyperion-born enemy out there." For a moment, he saw unconcealed worry on the former biologist's face. "Honestly, Simon, the idea of someone who is DuQuesne's equal out there as an enemy? That terrifies me."

"You and me both, as DuQuesne might say," Simon agreed. "Very well, Laila. I will make the attempt; at the least this capability of mine should be used to serve the needs of our Faction Leaders – permanent or temporary."

Once more he drew on that transcendent feeling, the ultimate clarity that lay beyond mere mortality. Doctor Alexander Fairchild, he thought. Is he here? If he is, where?

Almost instantly he felt that sudden wrenching turn of virtual viewpoint, the sensation that presaged his ascension to a pure and detailed vision of his target.

But just as suddenly it stopped. He had the vaguest sense of the target and its location – somewhere in Nexus Arena! – and then... nothing. An impenetrable gray fog enveloped most of the gigantic construct.

He sat back with such startled force that he nearly tipped the chair over.

"What is it, Simon?" Oasis asked, steadying him with one hand on his shoulder.

"It was... the most disorienting thing I have ever experienced," he said after a moment. "I had the feeling I was about to see, or at least locate, this Doctor Fairchild... and then ... nothing. I had a sense that he was indeed here, somewhere in Nexus Arena... but after that, it was as though the truth were cloaked, hidden in shadows I could not penetrate." He gave a wry smile, trying to hide how startled and, truth be told, upset he felt. "After never encountering a limit with this power, I must say I was unprepared to find one."

Oasis could not hide the fact that she had gone pale. "But you did sense him."

He frowned. "I think so. But I admit I have never tried to look for an individual before. Perhaps that is not allowed except in a very broad sense."

"Simple to find out," Carl said. "Try locating someone you know is around."

"Very well. Let me see…"

He rose to the Olympian heights and thought, Dr Relgof.

Without a pause, he felt that turn, and his vision sped away from Humanity's Embassy and across Nexus Arena. He found himself looking down on Relgof Nov'Ne Knarph as he engaged in some form of discussion with a number of other members of the Analytic, inside the huge Great Faction House.

That worked. It's terrifying, also, but it worked. He thought for a moment. Perhaps it doesn't work on Hyperions?

Easy enough to test. He thought about Oasis, and his perception swiveled and spun, to come to rest above, well, himself, looking down upon the red-headed Hyperion. So much for that theory.

Perhaps it has to do with that... universe of origin? In which case I should be able to find Ariane but not DuQuesne.

But both attempts rebuffed him; he streaked off through vast spaces of the Arena, to a location that would be distant indeed... but long before he even got a clear sense of where that was within the titanic confines of the Arena, everything dissolved in grayness. Odd. Decidedly odd.

The transcendent feeling still remained with him, and a few quick tests showed that he could still hold details beyond human comprehension in his mind. The power did not seem weakened. But there are particular beings, or locations, that refuse to be... remote-viewed, scryed, whatever I might call it. He tested a few other choices, finding it easy to locate and view Oscar Naraj, Sethrik, and even Mairakag Achan, serving various customers in his restaurant.

But when he tried to look in on Nyanthus, he was once more completely stymied by gray indeterminism. Then, perhaps, it has to do with particular capabilities. If so, perhaps I could not locate Ariane because she has such powers locked within her.

Maria-Susanna was also grayed-out. Now that worries me. I did not get the impression she had inhuman abilities per se. Why can I not locate her?

He opened his eyes, letting that sense recede. "I can locate some people but not others. I am not yet entirely sure of the rules that determine which I can, well, spy upon and which I cannot. It is not, however, based on whether they are inside a Faction House, or a member of any given Faction, or limited by species. My best guess at the moment is that it reflects people who have some type of Arena-granted special capabilities, but even that is not universal." He looked at Oasis. "I could view you easily enough, even though I know you must have at least some special talents or powers from your Hyperion background."

Laila frowned and smoothed back her pageboy-cut chestnut hair. "Nonetheless, we have confirmed the existence of Doctor Fairchild. Correct, Simon?"

"I... am afraid so. The sensations were the same as the ones I felt for other people I know exist but who were hidden for some reason."

"Damn," Carl said. "That's bad. Do you think we could sort him out of the people who've come through our Sphere?"

Oasis bit her lip, thinking. "I really don't know. He'd want to leave no trail. If we knew exactly what he looked like now, maybe. But while I'm pretty sure whatever body he cloned for himself will look like his sim image, I'm also very sure it won't be identical. He's not stupid. He's a genius and he's really, really good at thinking things out a hundred steps ahead."

Someone with DuQuesne's brain and the moral compass of a classic villain – a smart – villain – in one of the grandest-scale tales ever written. Very much not what I would have wanted to hear. With an effort, he made himself smile. "This is bad news, but it's not nearly as bad as it could be. We have at least two advantages over him, after all."

Oasis looked up with surprise, and even one of Laila's eyebrows curved up like a seagull's wing. "Really? What are those?"

"Well, first, he doesn't know we know he is here. If he insists on wearing that outfit you described – a white classic suit – we can make sure many people keep an eye out for him and report; we'll locate him fast enough.

"But more importantly, we know that you Hyperions can use your special abilities... but he won't. He's undoubtedly read the reports sent back and could tell that none of you were doing anything beyond what your special engineering would allow. He may figure it out eventually, but for now, it's a clear advantage."

He was glad to see Oasis' face smooth out a bit. "You're right, Simon. And he's also without a Faction – or else he's stuck under the rules of Humanity's Faction. It will take even Fairchild a while to figure out the Arena and how to exploit it."

"And in the meantime we will do our best to locate him and, hopefully, contain him," Laila said. "Carl, if I understand our delegated powers, we have essentially absolute authority in the Arena, correct?"

"Basically, yes. As long as we follow the Arena's rules, which are pretty loose when it comes to internal Faction business."

"Good. Then we will do our best to locate him – and capture him when opportunity presents itself. Put him back in regular space and put him on trial for murder – as I believe we can all agree he is the primary suspect for the deaths of the other Hyperions?"

Simon saw Oasis nod, and added his own. "And, quite likely, the one who was guiding General Esterhauer – and tried to wipe her when things weren't following his script. Yes, I think that you not only can use your delegated Leader of Faction powers to capture him, but also have more than enough justification to keep him back home."

"I don't think you can keep him imprisoned forever," Oasis said. "Or even for very long."

"I would think we can keep him busy enough until DuQuesne gets back, at which point, if you're right, we will have the antidote to his poison, so to speak."

Oasis suddenly grinned. "I think you're right!"

"Good," Laila said decisively. "The news was not what we hoped, but we have a plan of action – a practical plan of action, I think. Oasis, I know you don't have standard headware, but please generate some images of this Fairchild for us so that we can transmit them to all our people who might be in a position to find him."

"Will do!"

Simon nodded, but somewhat absently. He was still trying to figure out the rules of this strange gray blankness. A quick test showed that he could locate the other known Hyperion – Velocity Celes – as he practiced piloting one of the Arenaspace vessels near Humanity's Sphere. Carl Edlund, ditto, just as easy as anyone else.

But there was one other individual about which there were some questions…

Even as Simon felt his eyebrow rising in surprise, he realized Laila was speaking to him. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said, I just realized there is one other question you might be able to answer for me. Well, more precisely, for our negotiator Oscar Naraj, although I admit it is important to me as well."

"I'm always willing to help. What is the question?"

"It is more a fact that poses a question. You understand that Mr. Naraj is an extremely observant man, and especially so in his specialty of negotiation and diplomacy."

"I would expect so, yes."

"Well, he has of course kept a close eye on the doings of our enemies as well as our allies, and just the other day he asked me if I knew of any particular events that might have affected the Molothos. When I said I did not and asked why, he said that he was fairly certain that neither he, nor anyone else, had seen or heard from their Leader, Dajzail, in quite some time."

"Hmm. Well, I can certainly try to answer the question as to where he is." He closed his eyes once more.

He rose above and through the Embassy, and thought the question where is Dajzail, Leader of the Molothos?

A wrenching turn and a rush of speed, flying through the varicolored clouds and spinning Spheres and innumerable living things of the Arena, until he found himself seemingly floating in air within a compartment that to his eyes was too brilliantly lit, and filled with Molothos attending to various duties. In the center sat Dajzail, squatting on some sort of support structure that Simon presumed was a chair. The Leader of the Molothos was examining something on a screen projected before him.

He's on board a ship, it would seem. But what ship, and where?

With barely an effort of thought, Simon rose up, through the hull of the vessel, and floated beyond, looking around, trying to sense the position of the ship below him.

Wait. There was more than one ship. Simon concentrated, expanded his vision. Two ships. Three. A dozen. Two dozen... no. There were hundreds... no, thousands of ships in this fleet!

And he suddenly knew where they were.

His eyes snapped open and he realized he had already stood. "Laila... I believe we have a far bigger problem than a mere renegade Hyperion."