P.C. Hodgell's Blog, page 2

Mixed News

I gather that today Deathless Gods came out.  A couple of days ago I did an online interview on it which you can find at https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-deathless-gods-author-p-c-hodgell/
and Baen is doing a podcast due out later which may or may not be all right:  I often don't do well in live interviews.

The bad news:  an hour or so ago, I was half way through my daily walk when my knee quit on me.  Degenerative arthitis. (sp?) I barely managed to hobble home and am now sitting very still, hoping that the pain-killers cut in soon.  Worse, I'm supposed to drive to Minneapolis on the 15th for a book signing.  I hope I'll still be able to do that.

Don't get old.  Just don't do it.

Chicon/worldcon

Morgan reminded me that I am indeed attending Chicon in Chicago this week.   As I told him, I love to meet fans.  This is my schedule.  Otherwise, alas, they didn't give me a reading slot:

Friday, September 2, 2022
11:30 AM
Autographing - P. C. Hodgell
Autographing, Duration: 60 mins

Saturday, September 3, 2022
4:00 PM
Table Talk - P. C. Hodgell
Crystal Foyer, Duration: 60 mins To sign up for this Table Talk, visit https://chicon.org/tabletalks All sign up are available starting Wednesday August 31st at Noon central, and you will be notified at least 12 hours before the Table Talk time if you were chosen for a spot. More details available at https://chicon.org/tabletalks


Sunday, September 4, 2022
1:00 PM
Waiting for Closure -PC plus others
Grand Hall K, Duration: 60 mins

Brant/Brenwyr/a snippet

Did I ever say that Lord Brandan and his sister Brenwyr were twins?  That seems to be a recurrant theme, but I can't remember if I was explicit here.

Speaking of twins, something new from  Novel 11:

Prologue

The Riverland:  Winter 24 – 25

I

The room was dark and stiflingly hot.  Sage burned on the hearth, but failed to cover an underlaying stench that caught at the throat and made eyes water, unless those were tears.  Flickering shafts of torchlight edged between the drawn curtains and streaked the walls, almost but not quite cutting through the miasma.  From outside rose a muffled chant, one word repeated over and over, punctuated by the clash of weapons and of pots and pans: 
“Wake, wake, wake…”
In the room was a bed.  On it lay two figures, one bending over the other, who did not stir.
“Wake, wake,” the former murmured in the latter’s ear.  “They call to you.  So do I.  Don’t leave me.  Don’t leave.”
And he shook the slumped shoulder.
The second form sunk farther into the disordered covers, emitting gas in a subterranean groan: 
… let me go …
“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”
“Wake, wake, WAKE!” cried those outside, to a final, cataclysmic crash.

II

Torisen woke with a gasp.  His tower room at Gothregor was quiet except for sentries on the outer wall calling out the last watch of the night before dawn.  His Kendar servant Burr snored at the foot of his bed, grumbled, and turned over without waking.  Had he also been touched by the dream, if that was what it had been?  More likely, he had felt his lord stir but had sensed no urgency.
Torisen believed differently.
Pushing back the blankets, careful not to disturb Burr again, he rose and went to the open window.  The breath of early winter entered it, cool on his bare skin.  Below lay the inner ward’s vegetable garden, in deep shadow for it was the dark of the moon. Everything there had already been harvested, if not yet consumed.  He had yet to hear from his war-leader Harn or his sister Jame in High Bashti if King Mordaunt meant to supply them over the winter in payment for the Knorth’s service as mercenaries over the past season.  To be fair, he hadn’t written to Jame or Harn recently either.  They must wonder what was going on.
He also wondered.
Something was wrong in the Riverland

eARC

Baen tells me that the eARC of Deathless Gods is now available for purchase ( https://www.baen.com/deathless-gods-earc.html).  It will be out in trade-paperback in October.

I'm still struggling to gain traction with the next (last?) book in the series, not helped by a muggy heatwave that makes thinking hard. I hope that the weather is better wherever you are.

Kindrie, etc. and questions

I hear from Baen that the next novel will be published in October, too late, alas, for worldcon in Chicago which I intend to attend.  Maybe the concom will let me do a reading from it.

Meanwhile, I'm revising the final copy under a new editor, who hasn't read any of the previous books.  I'm not sure how this will work out.  At this point, I doubt if I'm picking up many new readers. (Thoughts on this?)  Would like to, of course, but this is hardly the point at which I would advise anyone to join the series.  I still see the next book as the last.

Re: said book, I just discovered that I have a lot of new LJ postings on Kindrie of which I was unaware.  I try to answer most posters.  If I haven't gotten to you yet, please be patient.

Then the questions:  I asked about gout before.  Yes, it's caused by crystallized uric acid in joints, but what does this look like when melted?  (Asking in connection with Kindrie's soul-image encounter with Caldane.)

Also this:  have I ever differenciated between Highborn and Kendar berserkers?  My thought was that it was a Shanir trait, but how does that explain Harn?  A touch of Highborn blood?

Kindrie

Thanks to everyone who posted on the Kendars' new state.  You've given me a lot to think about.  I'm still working through my reactions.

Another question:  Jame has pretty well established her relationship to That-Which-Destroys, Tori sort of to That-Which-Creates.  Kindrie needs to be strong too, but it's hard to see how.  Preservation is passive - isn't it?  Readers have pointed out that he will be needed to preserve necessary elements of the traditional Kencyrath.  Agreed.  Tori needs to lead his people to a new understanding of themselves.  Mostly, I see both of the latter as following Jame's "Hulk smash" approach to Gerridon and PD.  Is that enough?  Do I need to have Tori and Kindrie show signs of strength too, and if so, what?

news and a question

This  past week I turned in the ms for Deathless Gods + the maps, close to the first anniversary of the murder/suicide of  my old friends, George and Judy.  The novel is dedicated to them, "Deathless in Memory."   Baen thinks that it will be due out around next fall, which is about what I expected.  Now I'm thinking about the next and probably last novel in the series.

Questions arise about that and I could use feedback.  First off, the structure of the Kencyrath will change if it wins.  Tori and Jame are already questioning the need of the Kendar to be bound, not to mention its fairness.   What will happen, though, if that need suddenly goes away?  I don't think there will be an instant democracy, nor do I have to spell everything out on the spot, but I should drop hints.  What do you see, short and long term?

Not all fantasy is necessarily class-based (is it?), but what about this one?

Good News and a Snippet

I am pleased to announce that on 9/4/2021, at 8:22am, I finished Kencyrath novel 10, Deathless Gods.  Now I'm going over it making corrections.  It runs about 114,000 words, which is typical for me, and covers 205 days, during which Jame goes to the Central Lands to check on strange reports from Harn while Torisen and Kindrie cope with growing trouble in the Riverland.  I also still have to draw the maps and work out the lexicon.  The deadline is Dec.1, but I hope to beat that.  How long before it sees print?  Well, my publisher usually takes about a year, but I hope for less than that, given the delay already.   One novel to go to finish the series, if things stay on track.  Thanks for being so patient with me over the years.

In the meanwhile, here's a snippet set in High Bashti.  Jurik is the crown prince, a spoiled jerk.  He previously expressed a desire to ride Death's-head.

An unfamiliar shiver ran up Jame's spine, jolting her hand, causing the cider mug which it gripped to spill.
Rue stared. “What is it?”
“Death’s-head is having fun.”
She leaped up and ran out of the apartment, followed by Rue’s plaintive cry:
“D’you really want to interrupt him?”
Here was the grassy heart of the barracks.  At its far end, a dozen or so people lined the pasture’s fence.  More were within, apparently chasing the remount herd.  Horses swerved back and forth like a flock of birds, kicking up muddy spray.  Then Death’s-head charged through their ranks, scattering them left and right.  The human invaders fled before him and scrambled out between the bars of the enclosure.  The rathorn swerved, snorting with derision, his tail held high.  Nothing had amused him more in many a long, dull day.
Jame recognized Jurik and his friends.  So he hadn’t left with his mother, assuming she had indeed gone home.  What the prince was up to now was all too clear.
Two of his followers remained in the pasture.  Now they were trying to sneak up on the rathorn.  Death’s-head charged one.  The other used the distraction to snake a rope around his foreleg. Tangled, he fell, plowing into the mud on his shoulder.  A second rope snared another of his flailing hooves.
Jurik straightened, climbed over the fence, and sauntered toward the prone beast, a bridle dangling from his hand.  He might even have laughed, as if it had been so easy after all.
As he approached, Death’s-head glared at him through a besmirched mask, panting.  The prince was within feet when the rathorn hooked his nasal tusk under the ropes and ripped them off.
Jurik stopped.
Death’s-head regained his feet.  Head low, horns poised, he moved toward the prince.  Stalking.  One slow step, then another.  Oh, never offend a rathorn’s dignity.
Jurik dropped the bridle, turned, and ran.
Jame was running too, toward the enclosure, toward the watching, horrified Bashtiri.  She slipped between them, between the bars, between the prince and his would-be prey, just as the latter charged.
Jurik scrambled to safety behind her.
The rathorn sat on his haunches, forelegs braced, trying to stop, but he skidded on slick mud and crashed into Jame, throwing her backward against a post.  For a moment, dazed, she couldn’t breathe.  A mottled wall of equine flesh loomed over her with horns and red eyes.  She grabbed blindly for the flying mane, caught it, and swung up onto his back.
Jurik was shouting for spears, arrows, rocks … anything!
Death’s-head stopped short, gathered himself like a cat, and sprang over the fence.
He could have done that anytime he wanted to, Jame thought, hanging on for dear life.  Bored as he had been, his supposed imprisonment here had only been a game.  Then he came down again and she was jolted face foremost into his rising neck.  For a moment, she wondered if she had broken her nose.  Then they were galloping across the training field toward the gate.  From there one way led into the beast pens, currently used as stables, while the other opened below the outer stair onto the road.
A white face watched them pass – Queen Vestula, waiting after all to see her darling son’s conquest.
Out on the street were the horses of Jurik’s entourage.  When Death’s-head charged through their midst, they scattered in panic, pursued by their attendants, dragging the regal litter after them until it smashed turning a corner.  Good.  Hopefully Jurik wouldn’t be able to follow her, and his precious mother could damn well walk home.
Meanwhile the rathorn’s hooves skidded on slick cobblestones.  It must have rained again, Jame thought, clinging to his slippery back.  Oh, for stirrups.  The thunder seemed closer, if that wasn’t just the echo of hooves against close-set walls.  Where were they going?  Oh, for reins or a bit with which to steer, not that Death’s-head had ever accepted the latter.  Instead, this was a run-away, pure and simple.  She must either cling or risk breaking bone on stone.  No other way offered itself.

Question

Got a question, maybe for a chemist: I'm thinking that the Shadow Guild Assassins write their contracts in the same mere ink that renders their cloth and skin invisible. What, then, makes the invisible ink reappear? I'm thinking that it might be a water based solution of iron/blood, but don't know how plausible this is.

Also, LJ tells me that my automatic payments to LJ have failed and they need more info. This sounds both plausible and suspicious. Has anyone else gotten such emails?

Also a snippet from novel 10, hoping I haven't sent this out before:

Summer was almost over. The Riverland’s Minor Harvest had come and gone, and with it the Knorth cadets from Tentir who had helped to bring in the hay. It had been a good crop, all the more so because no one had come down with the dreaded hay cough.
So far, so good.
Then the rains had stopped.
Torisen Blacklord stood on the cracked clay of the water meadow amid rows of stunted oat, rye, and wheat. Morosely, he scuffed up dust with the heel of his boot. The upcoming Major Harvest at summer’s end looked all but doomed even if now, at last, it should rain.
At this season, as usual, last year’s provisions were running low. Bread was down to dense, dark loaves made of buckwheat. The cows, usually bred in the fall, had run dry. So, in its way, had the last cracked wheels of cheese. Last year’s field vegetables, down to wizened relics, were only good after long soaking, the same for such left-over pulses as beans and peas. The garrison was growing heartily sick of soup. How many cows, pigs, and sheep must be slaughtered in the fall, for meat, to preserve the fodder? Some even spoke of the horses.
On the other hand, there were still some ripening vegetables in the inner ward’s garden, painfully watered by hand, also bushels of fruit. Apples in particular had been plentiful to feed man, beast, and the busy cider press.
“Two more weeks for the first batch to ferment,” said the harvest master at Torisen’s elbow, as if reading his mind. Then again, he might have been considering the jug hanging at his waist which he had just emptied.
“Well, that’s something.”
“And those mysterious supplies keep coming from your sister’s keep, in season and out. I know, I know: we aren’t supposed to talk about that. Rush might have told us more, if only to boast, but he’s gone.”
“Where?”
“No one is quite sure. He took a post horse. I hear that he turned right on the River Road at the Silver and rode north. There isn’t enough from Tagmeth, anyway, to see us through the winter. When can we expect shipments from Bashti?”
“Soon, I hope.”
“Huh.”
All of the contracts had specified that the first delivery be made by Autumn’s Day. Wagons full of provisions from the other Central Lands had already begun to pass Gothregor on the way to the northern keeps. Presumably others had stopped in the south.
Autumn’s Eve was near.
Torisen didn’t feel that he could complain until that was past, in the meantime hoping for the best. Was his instinct that Mordaunt meant to shirk his duty as paymaster true? Torisen had thought himself worldly-wise after dealing with Kothifir as the Host’s commander, but had he really been? It came hard to think of anyone foreswearing his word. After all, besides the question of honor, what lasting good would it do Mordaunt? What other factors might be involved, and did the king even think along such lines? Torisen was experienced enough to recognize a potential, perhaps congenital manipulator. The main thing was that pertinent shipments should arrive before winter closed the Riverland’s roads.
Time enough, he thought, but with a twinge of unease.
Was Harn keeping all of this in mind? Torisen had received a post letter from Jame announcing her arrival in High Bashti, but about Harn she had only written that he continued to be preoccupied. Also, the Bashtiri garrison hadn’t yet been paid. That was to have been according to the half season, with the first payment due on the arrival of the troops, back-dated to midsummer in consideration of the time spent getting there. It wasn’t like Harn to let such a thing slip. What sort of trouble was he in?
What, for that matter, about Jame? Knowing his sister’s knack for mischief, by now there had to be something.
“Ask questions,” she had said.
Trudging back to the keep through dry grass singing with crickets, he considered this. More and more, he found himself restless, his own attention divided. Was this what it meant, to become That-Which-Creates? If so, it made him profoundly uncomfortable. Since when, though, had his comfort been important? He was responsible for his people, for the entire Kencyrath. Now it required something of him, but what?
When he started to open the door to his drum tower study, Burr’s voice spoke within:
“Careful.”
Books slid out, like a papery tongue extending to envelope him. The room beyond was awash with them, and with scrolls piled on every flat surface. Stiff, dry, and musty, their odor likewise rolled out. Burr stood up to his shins in chaos, glowering.
“More arrived today,” he said. “You can’t read all of these.” Himself a traditional Kendar, he couldn’t read at all, but it seemed to be primarily the disorder that offended him.
Torisen stepped in cautiously, groping for the floor.
“Sorry. I got carried away.”
His servant snorted.
The Highlord slung his coat over the stack on his chair, which consequently took on the appearance of a headless, hunched figure with flaccid arms. That was much how he currently felt.
“The scrollsmen claim that they have the answer to everything, if one only asks the right question.”
”Let them sort out tomorrow’s dinner, then,” said Burr.
“We aren’t that desperate yet. Questions, though – those are hard.”
He waded gingerly to the window, perched on the ledge, and bent to pick up a book. Its pages were vellum, crisply inscribed with elegant text. Tiny, vivid figures danced up the margins. Here a hunter scrambled after a hare that jeered back at him over its shoulder; there stood a cook white up to the elbows with flour in the midst energetically of making a pie. They seemed almost to move. He blinked, then closed the book carefully.
“I’m a fool,” he said. “These are treasures, not to be scattered underfoot. I thought, though, that the more I had, the more I would know. Well, I do know more – about hares, about pies – but it’s the wrong knowledge.”
Burr grunted. “This I can tell you: more books won’t help.”
Torisen wished that Harn were there. Admittedly, as a boy he had listened more to the big randon than talked, but he had learned much.
Then he had become highlord and, to his regret, his relationship with all Kendar had changed.
Then the Riverland had become a closed book to him during the year during which he had been so deathly ill.
His sense was that each house, likewise, had shut up within itself to face a changing world. Divided … weakened?
To whom would he talk now, if he could? The Kendar would help him and often did, but they didn’t share the same burdens. Among the Highborn Brant, Lord Brandan, was his closest neighbor, a steady, honorable man with a deep regard for the welfare of those dependent upon him. From the beginning, he had been a Knorth ally. He was also old enough to be Torisen’s father.
That gave Torisen pause. Would consulting him now be like seeking a father’s approval? The thought made him cringe. Both Ganth and Adric had called him “son,” but they had tried mostly to manipulate him. He would have turned to neither of them now. Brant was unrelated and was therefore (Ancestors, please) different.
Absentmindedly, he reopened the book, on the same page that he had closed it. The hare had scampered off. The pie had been baked and eaten, its cook grinning widely, replete. Torisen returned the volume to the floor, which rustled to receive it.
“Pack up,” he said to Burr, rising, his mind already on new details. “We’re going to pay Falkirr a visit.”
Burr looked dubious. “That last trip to Omiroth didn’t work out so well.”
“My sister was with us then.”
But Jame had suggested that the Tyr-ridden might manifest themselves across all three faces of their god before the end. Dari slain by Torisen’s own sword, Adric on his pyre …
“Oh, cheer up,” he said, bracing himself.
“If I had stopped to think too much,” his sister had said, with that rueful, lop-sided smile of hers, “might I have done nothing at all, for good or ill?”
There was an urgency in her that pushed him, as it always had. Did he resent it? Yes. But that didn’t mean that she was wrong.
Across the room, on the chair, his empty coat shivered as if with anticipation, but could not raise its arms.
“Brant is my oldest friend, now that Adric is dead,” he said to Burr. “What could go wrong?”

Death's-head snippet

Someone suggested to me that Death's-head should find a mate.  Actually, I'm thought of that.  Here it is:

Several days later, Jame went out in search of Death’s-head.  The rathorn colt hadn’t been seen since their return to Tagmeth and she was worried, given how hard the ride south had been.  Moreover, recently her blood-link with him had been unusually chaotic.  She had wondered before how stable he was considering all of the times, accidentally on purpose, he had tried to kill her. What was wrong with him now?
Behind her, likewise, she left a keep in disarray.  Rush had dispatched his Kendar to the gates already opened except for the one leading to the oasis, which she had forbidden.  Rush had scowled at that. 
“My lord said that all doors would be open to me.”
“I doubt if those were his exact words.  This is my keep.  I determine what happens here.”
“Humph.  He is your lord as well as mine.  Who are you to deny him?”
“And you, of course, speak for the entire Kencyrath.” 
Such sarcasm, she suspected, was lost on this diminutive Kendar.  One said that, but actually he was bigger than she was and moreover tended to balance on his toes when they talked, the better to loom over her.  On the last of these occasions, Brier had come up and put him in her own intimidating shade.  Jame was beginning to hope that Brier meant what she had said at Gothregor about accepting her, Highborn or not.  She would trade any amount of aggravation for that.
Now here she was, on the top cliff above the keep, on her stomach, having crawled to this vantage point under tangled boughs.  To the north, the Silver roared down the ravine from the escarpment, throwing up a spray that, even at this distance, flecked her face.  Below, the river frothed southward.  In between was Tagmeth on its tear-drop of an island.  Her bond to the rathorn had brought her here.  Where was he?
The branches behind her rustled.  Something snuffled.  Before she could edge away from the drop, her boot was seized and she was jerked backward.
Jame twisted over onto her back and lashed out with her free foot. 
The first time, it tangled in undergrowth. 
The second, it made contact, answered by an enraged snort. 
One jerk more and she was out in the open, looking up into a pair of furious red eyes.  Fangs bared.  A white nasal tusk brandished before her face.  She kicked again and caught her assailant below the horn, in the nose.  Her foot was dropped.  Hooves drove down, barely missing her head as she rolled aside.  The other reared, black against the sky, and struck again.  Jame scrambled back between dancing hooves, noting in passing that this was a mare, but she had already guessed that.
Kindrie’s voice came back to her:
“The Randir were riding thorns – you know, those female offspring of horses and rathorns, yes, just like the ones that the Karnids rode to attack Kothifir.  Well, one of them escaped just south of Mount Alban….”
And that, Jame reckoned, was what she faced now. 
The thorn wheeled on her haunches and charged back at her.  Such speed, so much power on the hoof, was terrifying.
A rushing wall of white cut between them as Death’s-head shouldered the thorn aside.  They circled Jame, the mare outermost, the stallion blocking her, snapping at each other, until she subsided with a grumble and a glare.  Jame suddenly wondered if she was in foal.
“So now you have a mate,” she said to the rathorn, who snarled at her over his shoulder.  “All right.  That’s your business.”
After all, she thought as she walked away, deliberately not looking back, he had been lonely for a long time.  She should be glad for him.  But oh lord…!