Steven J. Pemberton's Blog, page 19
January 3, 2015
What I want to do this year
A little later than planned, here are my goals for 2015...
Finish the final book of The Barefoot Healer and have it on sale by the end of the year. It will be called Stone & Silence unless I think of something I like better. I'm currently 46,000 words into the first draft, which is good progress.
The Accidental Dragonrider was a surprise hit, so I'll be writing a sequel. (Good job I left the ending open, eh?) I'd like to finish at least a first draft of it, and it will probably be another novella.
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. I currently have 110 unread books on my Kindle, plus a few paper ones that I ought to get around to reading one of these years.
Reduce the size of the queue of stories I've yet to read on Wattpad. (As measured by the age of the oldest item in the folder where the email notifications go. Currently it’s eight months.)
Record at least one audiobook and put it on sale. I'll probably do The Accidental Dragonrider first, as it's the shortest of my books. So if I make a mess of it, I won't waste as much time as I would if I started with one of the others.
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books.
I've set up a mailing list for announcements about new releases, so if you want to be the first to know when Stone & Silence will hit the shops, subscribe here: http://eepurl.com/_5EDX
Finish the final book of The Barefoot Healer and have it on sale by the end of the year. It will be called Stone & Silence unless I think of something I like better. I'm currently 46,000 words into the first draft, which is good progress.
The Accidental Dragonrider was a surprise hit, so I'll be writing a sequel. (Good job I left the ending open, eh?) I'd like to finish at least a first draft of it, and it will probably be another novella.
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. I currently have 110 unread books on my Kindle, plus a few paper ones that I ought to get around to reading one of these years.
Reduce the size of the queue of stories I've yet to read on Wattpad. (As measured by the age of the oldest item in the folder where the email notifications go. Currently it’s eight months.)
Record at least one audiobook and put it on sale. I'll probably do The Accidental Dragonrider first, as it's the shortest of my books. So if I make a mess of it, I won't waste as much time as I would if I started with one of the others.
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books.
I've set up a mailing list for announcements about new releases, so if you want to be the first to know when Stone & Silence will hit the shops, subscribe here: http://eepurl.com/_5EDX
January 1, 2015
What I did last year
These were my goals for 2014 -
Finish The Mirrors of Elangir and put it on sale by the end of June. (Done)
Plan and start writing the fourth and final book of The Barefoot Healer series. I hoped to have about 45,000 words of the first draft by the end of the year, which would be about a third of the book. I managed this, even though I was late starting.
Third time lucky - visit Dublin with Breda. (Not done. I think this is going to have to go on the bucket list.)
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books. (Not done, though I started on a video of a trip on PS Waverley, the world's only remaining sea-going paddle steamer.)
Reduce the size of the TBR pile. As of 1st January 2014, I had 155 unread books on my Kindle. Today I have 110, though this is partly because I didn't buy as many books this year as in previous years.
A few other notable things I achieved that weren't on the radar back then -
In July, Death & Magic, the first book in The Barefoot Healer, was selected for inclusion on the Featured Story list at Wattpad. That means the site administrators think it's really good. It's since clocked up over 90,000 reads. (That's not quite as impressive as it sounds. A "read" on Wattpad is one user reading one chapter of a book. Since Death & Magic has 45 chapters, one user reading the whole book adds 45 reads to the total. And of course most of the reads will be on the first chapter, as people come across it and try to decide whether it's for them. Still, I'm pleased with the results.)
In October, I finally finished The Accidental Dragonrider, the short story about dragons that I've been muttering about ever since starting this blog. By the time it was done, it had become a novella.
In December, I attended the first Wattpad conference in London, where there were several good panel discussions about Wattpad specifically, and writing and publishing in general. Between the panels, there was time for chatting to the other participants. It was good to put faces to some people who'd so far been only words and humorous avatars on a screen.
According to Goodreads, I read 81 books this year. There were a few more I didn't add to the list here, particularly the existing books of The Barefoot Healer, which I re-read in preparation for starting the final book. I found a few plot holes and continuity errors that I didn't already know about, but to my relief found that something I'd thought would be quite a large plot hole wasn't.
So that's that. Overall, it's been a good year in terms of writing and reading. Come back in the next day or two to see what I want to do in 2015!
Finish The Mirrors of Elangir and put it on sale by the end of June. (Done)
Plan and start writing the fourth and final book of The Barefoot Healer series. I hoped to have about 45,000 words of the first draft by the end of the year, which would be about a third of the book. I managed this, even though I was late starting.
Third time lucky - visit Dublin with Breda. (Not done. I think this is going to have to go on the bucket list.)
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books. (Not done, though I started on a video of a trip on PS Waverley, the world's only remaining sea-going paddle steamer.)
Reduce the size of the TBR pile. As of 1st January 2014, I had 155 unread books on my Kindle. Today I have 110, though this is partly because I didn't buy as many books this year as in previous years.
A few other notable things I achieved that weren't on the radar back then -
In July, Death & Magic, the first book in The Barefoot Healer, was selected for inclusion on the Featured Story list at Wattpad. That means the site administrators think it's really good. It's since clocked up over 90,000 reads. (That's not quite as impressive as it sounds. A "read" on Wattpad is one user reading one chapter of a book. Since Death & Magic has 45 chapters, one user reading the whole book adds 45 reads to the total. And of course most of the reads will be on the first chapter, as people come across it and try to decide whether it's for them. Still, I'm pleased with the results.)
In October, I finally finished The Accidental Dragonrider, the short story about dragons that I've been muttering about ever since starting this blog. By the time it was done, it had become a novella.
In December, I attended the first Wattpad conference in London, where there were several good panel discussions about Wattpad specifically, and writing and publishing in general. Between the panels, there was time for chatting to the other participants. It was good to put faces to some people who'd so far been only words and humorous avatars on a screen.
According to Goodreads, I read 81 books this year. There were a few more I didn't add to the list here, particularly the existing books of The Barefoot Healer, which I re-read in preparation for starting the final book. I found a few plot holes and continuity errors that I didn't already know about, but to my relief found that something I'd thought would be quite a large plot hole wasn't.
So that's that. Overall, it's been a good year in terms of writing and reading. Come back in the next day or two to see what I want to do in 2015!
December 24, 2014
"Pemberton Pedigrees" Reissued
This post follows on from one I wrote nearly three years ago, "Going Back to Someone's Roots," about how I'd helped to photograph Pemberton Pedigrees, an old book of genealogical charts of various people called Pemberton. After much work, the Pemberton Family World Wide is ready to reissue the book to assist anyone who's researching a family connection to a Pemberton.
The following is an announcement from Jackson Pemberton, the president of Pemberton Family World Wide, sent on 22nd December 2014.
The editors are still looking for the notes that Major-General R C B Pemberton, the compiler of the charts, wrote while he was putting the book together. They have reason to believe that the notes passed to his son, the Reverend Robert Pemberton, but his will makes no mention of them. If you know anything about the notes or what happened to them, please comment below.
The following is an announcement from Jackson Pemberton, the president of Pemberton Family World Wide, sent on 22nd December 2014.
Dear PFWW Member,
First let me wish you all a Happy Christmas (or Merry Christmas for those of us in the US). I hope you and your loved ones are having a lovely time making the last preparations for the holidays.
Then I want to thank all those who made this announcement possible: Herbert Pemberton of Blackpool, England, and his son Steven who carefully photographed an entire edition (more than 140 pages); Mike Spier of Seabeck, Washington, USA, and Chris Pemberton of Redditch, England, who helped tidy up the charts and assisted with the conversion of the text pages to searchable text, and Charlet Pemberton of Fairview, Utah, USA, who assisted me with the tedious task of proofreading the pedigree charts.
Today the Pemberton Family World Wide is pleased to announce that the publication of the famous book, Pemberton Pedigrees, is coming online as you read this email. The first half of the book is already published on the PFWW.org website and the remainder of it will be released throughout the remainder of the day. We choose today in commemoration of the passing of Major-General Robert Charles Boileau Pemberton (1834 - December 22, 1914), the man who spent much of his retirement years writing letters, visiting many archives, searching for as much information as possible on the Pemberton family. He compiled numerous notes while constructing 40 pedigree charts for the Pembertons of the world.
Please notice that the entire book is being reissued online with all of the text pages of notes, the indices, etc.; all, that is, EXCEPT the charts themselves. The charts are only available to members of record who have paid dues before today. They were promised a DVD copy and they will receive one as soon as it is ready - early January, 2015. DVD copies of the entire book will also be available for purchase in the Pemberton Market on the PFWW.org website. Furthermore, members who pay dues at the "Family Patron" level or higher will also receive a copy of the book on DVD.
The latest edition of our newsletter, the Pemberton Post will also "come off the press" within a few days so look for that in your inbox. It will contain a lot of details about the Pemberton Pedigrees 2014 edition including insights the old book and new DNA studies reveal, the story of the production of the 2014 edition and pictures of the major volunteers who made this reissue possible.
To see what is already published online, just look for the Pemberton Pedigrees book in the Card Catalogue to Soft Copies, within the Pemberton Family History Library on the PFWW.org website. You'll find it in the Family History section of the green menu on the left of any page of the website.
The editors are still looking for the notes that Major-General R C B Pemberton, the compiler of the charts, wrote while he was putting the book together. They have reason to believe that the notes passed to his son, the Reverend Robert Pemberton, but his will makes no mention of them. If you know anything about the notes or what happened to them, please comment below.
December 20, 2014
December's writing progress
Just a note on where I currently am with my writing...
I started work on the fourth and final book of The Barefoot Healer series on 25 October, and now have about 40,000 words of the first draft. Judging from my previous books, that's about a third of the way in, so I'm pleased with the rate of progress so far. No promises yet as to when it'll be on sale, but I'm reasonably confident it will be some time next year. I haven't officially decided on a title yet, but it will probably be called Stone & Silence unless I think of something I like better.
The Accidental Dragonrider has proven unexpectedly popular (popular by my standards, anyway), so it's looking more likely than not that I'll write a sequel to it. I might start that after I've finished the first draft of Stone & Silence or whatever it ends up being called. (Many writers recommend that you put a book aside for a while between finishing the first draft and starting to edit, so that when you pick it up again, you can read what you actually wrote, not what you think you wrote.)
And once those two are out of the way, it'll be time to start the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir...
I started work on the fourth and final book of The Barefoot Healer series on 25 October, and now have about 40,000 words of the first draft. Judging from my previous books, that's about a third of the way in, so I'm pleased with the rate of progress so far. No promises yet as to when it'll be on sale, but I'm reasonably confident it will be some time next year. I haven't officially decided on a title yet, but it will probably be called Stone & Silence unless I think of something I like better.
The Accidental Dragonrider has proven unexpectedly popular (popular by my standards, anyway), so it's looking more likely than not that I'll write a sequel to it. I might start that after I've finished the first draft of Stone & Silence or whatever it ends up being called. (Many writers recommend that you put a book aside for a while between finishing the first draft and starting to edit, so that when you pick it up again, you can read what you actually wrote, not what you think you wrote.)
And once those two are out of the way, it'll be time to start the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir...
November 14, 2014
"Information Age" at the Science Museum
On 8 November 2014, I went to the Science Museum in London to visit Information Age, their new permanent exhibition about communication and information technologies. I'd been looking forward to it for a while, as I managed to see posters advertising it on almost every visit to the museum over the last year or two. It brings together artefacts from several smaller galleries that I felt had been neglected in recent years, as well as many artefacts not seen in the museum before (some of which would've been too big to exhibit elsewhere).
The gallery seen from the mezzanine, looking towards the front entrance
The exhibition is divided into six broad areas - The Cable (telegraph and undersea cables), The Telephone Exchange, Broadcast (TV and radio), The Constellation (communication satellites), The Cell (mobile phones) and The Web (computing and the Internet). I spent most of my time in The Cable, as I didn't know much about that, and The Web, mainly for the sake of nostalgia. I was there for a couple of hours, and could easily have spent the entire day there.
The Cable provides a good overview and lots of interesting detail about this industry, revolutionary at the time, but almost forgotten nowadays. An oddity of the layout means that you'll probably see the exhibits about early undersea cables before early land-based telegraphs, even though the latter were invented first.
There was an embarrassing mistake in the construction of the first transatlantic cable in 1858. It was made in two halves, because no single ship was big enough to carry the whole thing. (Brunel's Great Eastern, which laid several cables, hadn't been built yet.) Two ships set out from Ireland, each carrying half the cable. The plan was that they'd sail to the middle of the Atlantic, join their halves, then sail in opposite directions. Unfortunately, the two halves had been manufactured by two different companies, and the outer layer of the cable's insulation, consisting of iron wires that coiled around the inner part, turned in opposite directions. Without some clever splicing, the two lots of insulation would tend to unwind one another. As it happened, the cable failed after about three weeks anyway - the physics of long transmission lines weren't well-understood at the time, and one of the company's senior engineers insisted on driving it at high voltage, which caused the insulation to break down.
The Web has several landmark computers (the Pilot ACE, part of an IBM System/360, part of a CDC 6600, an Altair 8800, a ZX81, the NeXT workstation that ran the first website at CERN, and one of Google's first server racks), as well as some rather more obscure machines. Chief among these is part of a BESM, a Soviet supercomputer intended as a rival to the CDC 6600. I was amused to learn that "BESM" is an abbreviation for the Russian for "large electronically computing machine".
I would happily have spent another couple of hours here, but wanted to see what was new in the rest of the museum, so will probably go back at some point.
The gallery seen from the mezzanine, looking towards the front entrance
The exhibition is divided into six broad areas - The Cable (telegraph and undersea cables), The Telephone Exchange, Broadcast (TV and radio), The Constellation (communication satellites), The Cell (mobile phones) and The Web (computing and the Internet). I spent most of my time in The Cable, as I didn't know much about that, and The Web, mainly for the sake of nostalgia. I was there for a couple of hours, and could easily have spent the entire day there.
The Cable provides a good overview and lots of interesting detail about this industry, revolutionary at the time, but almost forgotten nowadays. An oddity of the layout means that you'll probably see the exhibits about early undersea cables before early land-based telegraphs, even though the latter were invented first.
There was an embarrassing mistake in the construction of the first transatlantic cable in 1858. It was made in two halves, because no single ship was big enough to carry the whole thing. (Brunel's Great Eastern, which laid several cables, hadn't been built yet.) Two ships set out from Ireland, each carrying half the cable. The plan was that they'd sail to the middle of the Atlantic, join their halves, then sail in opposite directions. Unfortunately, the two halves had been manufactured by two different companies, and the outer layer of the cable's insulation, consisting of iron wires that coiled around the inner part, turned in opposite directions. Without some clever splicing, the two lots of insulation would tend to unwind one another. As it happened, the cable failed after about three weeks anyway - the physics of long transmission lines weren't well-understood at the time, and one of the company's senior engineers insisted on driving it at high voltage, which caused the insulation to break down.
The Web has several landmark computers (the Pilot ACE, part of an IBM System/360, part of a CDC 6600, an Altair 8800, a ZX81, the NeXT workstation that ran the first website at CERN, and one of Google's first server racks), as well as some rather more obscure machines. Chief among these is part of a BESM, a Soviet supercomputer intended as a rival to the CDC 6600. I was amused to learn that "BESM" is an abbreviation for the Russian for "large electronically computing machine".
I would happily have spent another couple of hours here, but wanted to see what was new in the rest of the museum, so will probably go back at some point.
October 30, 2014
The Accidental Dragonrider is on sale!
My new fantasy novella, The Accidental Dragonrider, is now on sale. Here's the blurb:
Teacher Iko has a problem with pirates: they keep raiding his village, taking whatever they want. Dusty documents in the archives suggest a last-chance solution: summon a dragon to destroy them. Of course everyone knows dragons don't exist, so Iko is as surprised as anyone else when the summoning works.
The dragon refuses to help - his race were once slaves to humans, and he has no desire to become one himself. But in answering the summons, he created a magical bond between himself and Iko, which will have consequences neither of them can foresee...
Find it at Amazon US - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZ02XN8 - UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OZ02XN8 and Canada - https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00OZ02XN8 For Amazon stores in other countries, just search on my name or the title.
It's currently exclusive to Amazon, to allow me to put it into Kindle Unlimited. If you're a subscriber to that programme or to Amazon Prime, you can borrow it for free. Depending on how it performs there, it might find its way to other ebook retailers later.
Teacher Iko has a problem with pirates: they keep raiding his village, taking whatever they want. Dusty documents in the archives suggest a last-chance solution: summon a dragon to destroy them. Of course everyone knows dragons don't exist, so Iko is as surprised as anyone else when the summoning works.
The dragon refuses to help - his race were once slaves to humans, and he has no desire to become one himself. But in answering the summons, he created a magical bond between himself and Iko, which will have consequences neither of them can foresee...
Find it at Amazon US - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZ02XN8 - UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OZ02XN8 and Canada - https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00OZ02XN8 For Amazon stores in other countries, just search on my name or the title.
It's currently exclusive to Amazon, to allow me to put it into Kindle Unlimited. If you're a subscriber to that programme or to Amazon Prime, you can borrow it for free. Depending on how it performs there, it might find its way to other ebook retailers later.
October 21, 2014
Cover reveal - The Accidental Dragonrider
Well, here's what it says on the tin, the cover for my new novella,
The Accidental Dragonrider
:
My covers so far have tended to suggest a topic or theme of the book rather than be an accurate representation of its contents, but this one could be a scene from the story, about a third of the way through chapter 5.
Technical details, if you're interested - I posed the figures in DAZ Studio, textured and rendered the scene in Bryce, and did the final composition and layout in GIMP. The full image is 3732 pixels by 2800. (There's a rear part to the cover as well, for use if I ever do a print edition.) Total rendering time in Bryce was about 16 hours.
Watch this space for details of when the story goes on sale!
My covers so far have tended to suggest a topic or theme of the book rather than be an accurate representation of its contents, but this one could be a scene from the story, about a third of the way through chapter 5.
Technical details, if you're interested - I posed the figures in DAZ Studio, textured and rendered the scene in Bryce, and did the final composition and layout in GIMP. The full image is 3732 pixels by 2800. (There's a rear part to the cover as well, for use if I ever do a print edition.) Total rendering time in Bryce was about 16 hours.
Watch this space for details of when the story goes on sale!
October 18, 2014
The Accidental Dragonrider chapter 1
The story about dragons that I've been referring to almost since I started this blog is almost ready to be published, so here's a sneak preview for it.
The story's origin pre-dates almost everything else I've published. The idea came from a mailing list that I used to subscribe to. Someone's signature was a quotation, "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." (This of course is a mangling of a quote from Tolkien, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.") It caught my eye, and I wondered whether I could get a story out of it. Sometime around Christmas 1999, I wrote down a scene of a man on a hilltop, trying to persuade a dragon to help him.
Then I got stuck and stopped writing it. I wrote several other stories, but this one kept nagging at me. Every year or two, I looked over it again, getting no further with it. I had a few ideas for later scenes, but no overall plot.
Eventually, I started writing The Mirrors of Elangir. For no very good reason, I decided that dragons existed in this world, and humans used them as airborne cavalry. (Spoiler alert: there are no dragons on-stage in that book.) About halfway through writing it, I realised that this little scene of the man and the dragon on the hilltop could work if I set it in the world that I was now creating. For reasons that'll become apparent when you read the complete story, I set it about a thousand years after The Mirrors of Elangir.
It's taken longer to finish than I expected, because I worked on it between my full-length novels. I thought it would be a short story, which are difficult to market on their own. But it ended up being a novella (a shade under 29,000 words), so I feel able to sell it as a standalone book. There might be a sequel or two eventually, but I'm not making any promises at this stage.
Anyway, without further preamble, here's chapter one.
A great rush of air from above knocked Iko to the ground. A shadow blotted out the sun. As the wind subsided, he became aware of a hulking presence in front of him, heavy beyond mere physical mass. Expecting it to be the last thing he ever did, he looked up.
The tip of the dragon's nose was about three feet in front of him. Its head and body were covered in jet black scales. Its eyes were the palest gold, with a narrow vertical slit in the middle, black as the bottom of the ocean, seeming deep enough to contain worlds.
The dragon shifted its weight slightly, and its nostrils dilated. Air moved past Iko as it breathed in. This was it, then. How long might it be before someone noticed he was missing? If they came up here to look for him, would they work out the meaning of the blackened patch of grass where he now lay?
Man-thing. The voice reverberated inside his skull. The legends were right: dragons had no voices like humans, but spoke directly with their minds. What the legends hadn't mentioned was that the dragon's mindspeech was incredibly loud. Perhaps he should move further away? Given his present circumstances, that might not be a wise move.
Crawling, said the dragon. Grovelling, as befits your kind. Were you another dragon, I should kill you for this insult. Yet one such as you is scarcely worth that trouble.
The dragon paused and breathed out. Iko's head reeled as if from blows. The ground seemed to spin underneath him. Still, he had survived a lot longer than he had expected to after the dragon's arrival. At the moment, he wasn't sure whether that was a good thing. Carefully and distinctly, he framed words in his mind.
O great dragon, he said, I offer my most humble apologies for disturbing you.
It speaks! The dragon seemed quite startled. Its pupils widened fractionally.
Iko hadn't been sure his mindspeech would work, so that was a relief. Would the dragon hear everything he thought? No, his sources said that you had to want your thoughts to be audible. O great dragon, Iko said, I have made some study of the ways of your kind, but there is, of course, much of which I am still ignorant. I assure you that I mean no offence. I would be most grateful to learn the correct manner of addressing you.
Polite, too. There was an uncomfortable pause. He imagined that the dragons had never had to consider such a question, at least not when it was being asked by a human. "O great dragon" will suffice, it said eventually.
Perhaps, o great dragon, you wish to know why I summoned you here.
You did not summon me, said the dragon, and Iko sensed anger behind the words. I chose to come.
As you wish, o great dragon. Iko bowed his head.
Look at me, said the dragon, and Iko complied. He knew that he couldn't have disobeyed. I am nevertheless curious to know why a man-thing happens to be on this hilltop, far from its own kind, at the very same moment that I choose to visit it.
That is quite simple to explain, o great dragon. I wish to propose an alliance.
An alliance? To what end?
O great dragon, a fleet of pirates are preying on the people of the Lenis Islands, attacking our settlements and ships. We are a peaceful people, not used to fighting -
And you wish me to destroy these... pirates for you, said the dragon.
Yes! Remembering his manners, he added, Please.
You would have me burn their ships with my fiery breath? Capsize them with a sweep of my tail? Pluck man-things from the sea and carry them aloft, shrieking, before I flip them into my mouth to crush them and swallow them whole?
He winced at the dragon's suggestions. I had thought, o great dragon, that the mere sight of you would terrify them into leaving us alone.
Perhaps. And what do you offer me in return for ridding you of these vermin?
The pirates have a great horde of treasure on their ships and in their home port - gold, silver, precious jewels. If you defeat them, it is yours.
The dragon did not reply. The corners of its mouth lifted, revealing glistening white teeth. Its nostrils narrowed, and a sound like a tree falling filled Iko's mind. You know far more of our ways than I would have expected of any man-thing. But there is much of which you are ignorant.
A gale rushed past him, pelting him with dust and twigs. By the time he could see again, the dragon was no more than a spot in the sky, an odd-shaped bird spiralling upwards. Almost at the limit of sight, there was a violet flash, and the dragon was gone. Iko brushed the worst of the dirt off his clothing and started the long walk back to the village.
What now? This outcome had never occurred to him. He hadn't seriously expected the summoning to work, but had thought that if it did, the dragon would most likely kill him immediately for his impertinence. He imagined the taunts of the children, the pitying looks of the monks and the other teachers. Typical Iko. Can't get anything right. He decided to say nothing about it. If anyone asked where he'd been, he'd simply climbed the hill to admire the view. Stretch his legs. Clear his head.
He saw no one on the road that led into the village from Samdurath, the next settlement along the coast. That wasn't so unusual, but when he saw no one in the main street, nor any of the side streets that intersected it, he began to worry. He jogged the rest of the way to the house that he still shared with his mother.
The door stood open. Smoke hung in the air - the fire had gone out. A half-eaten meal lay at one end of the table. Guilt tugged at him as he noticed the place she'd set for him at the other end. He didn't have any classes today - he should've come to have lunch with her, not chase after creatures of legend that didn't care what happened to decent people.
"Mother!" he shouted.
No answer came. He opened the door to the bedroom. She wasn't there. Sweating, he squeezed between her bed and the linen chest to reach the back door. She wasn't in the garden either.
Iko tried to calm himself. She must have gone visiting. But why leave her lunch unfinished? Realisation crept up on him. Not only had he not seen anyone on the way here, he hadn't heard anyone. The pirates had attacked while he was away. Everyone was dead or taken captive.
His knees gave way, and he fell to the ground. Tears fought for release. Was this why the dragon had refused to help? Because it knew he was already too late?
He forced himself to stand. If Mother's fire was still smouldering, they couldn't have gone far. He scrambled through the house and ran for the harbour. He couldn't do anything for his own people, but if he could see which way the pirates were going, he might be able to warn whichever village they were heading to next.
The two jetties were intact, with boats moored at both of them. Nets, crab traps and coils of rope lay neatly next to each boat, as if everybody had gone to the tavern to share a few bottles of wine. One boat still had a couple of buckets of fish next to it. No vessels were visible at sea.
Panting, Iko tried to make sense of the scene. The pirates' ships were too big to moor in the gaps between the villagers' boats. If they'd used the jetties, they would've cut some of the boats loose and made a mess of the villagers' fishing equipment. If the ships had stayed further out and lowered boats of their own, there should be keel tracks and footprints on the beach, which there weren't. Now that he thought of it, he'd seen no sign of a struggle anywhere in the village. More than that, he'd seen no dead or dying people. The pirates couldn't have taken everyone - some of the villagers would have put up a fight, and the pirates would have killed them.
Not daring to hope, he turned and ran back inland. The people must have seen the pirates coming and taken refuge in the monastery. They could stay safe for weeks there. But then why had the pirates not ransacked the rest of the village?
As he turned the corner onto the long approach to the monastery, he saw that the gate was closed. His heart leapt - it was always open except in the presence of an immediate threat. He sprinted the last hundred yards and rattled the bars.
"Hey! It's Iko! The pirates have gone!" Through the gaps in the bars, he saw that the courtyard was deserted. "Open up!" Shouldn't there be men with swords and spears waiting there? Or at least a couple of lookouts?
A young man peered around the edge of the gateway. Startled, he gawked at Iko before saying to someone behind him, "Yes, it's him."
Relieved to see someone alive, Iko grabbed the bars for support.
"Figures," said an older man. "I suppose you'd better let him in." Iko recognised the voice of one of his mother's cousins, though he couldn't recall the man's name. The younger man was his son or nephew, who'd passed through Iko's classes a few years ago without much learning settling on him. He went back behind the wall and started to turn the wheel that operated the bar that held the gate shut.
"It's all right," said Iko, raising his voice over the squeaks and scrapes of the gate swinging open, "the pirates have gone. The village is empty."
"Pirates?" said the older man, coming into view. "As if we haven't got enough to worry about with a bloody great dragon flying around the place."
Staring at him, Iko almost forget to let go of the gate when it swung open. "Yes. Of course. Dragon. Big. Black. Flying. I... I believe I can explain that."
Check back soon for chapter two!
The story's origin pre-dates almost everything else I've published. The idea came from a mailing list that I used to subscribe to. Someone's signature was a quotation, "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." (This of course is a mangling of a quote from Tolkien, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.") It caught my eye, and I wondered whether I could get a story out of it. Sometime around Christmas 1999, I wrote down a scene of a man on a hilltop, trying to persuade a dragon to help him.
Then I got stuck and stopped writing it. I wrote several other stories, but this one kept nagging at me. Every year or two, I looked over it again, getting no further with it. I had a few ideas for later scenes, but no overall plot.
Eventually, I started writing The Mirrors of Elangir. For no very good reason, I decided that dragons existed in this world, and humans used them as airborne cavalry. (Spoiler alert: there are no dragons on-stage in that book.) About halfway through writing it, I realised that this little scene of the man and the dragon on the hilltop could work if I set it in the world that I was now creating. For reasons that'll become apparent when you read the complete story, I set it about a thousand years after The Mirrors of Elangir.
It's taken longer to finish than I expected, because I worked on it between my full-length novels. I thought it would be a short story, which are difficult to market on their own. But it ended up being a novella (a shade under 29,000 words), so I feel able to sell it as a standalone book. There might be a sequel or two eventually, but I'm not making any promises at this stage.
Anyway, without further preamble, here's chapter one.
A great rush of air from above knocked Iko to the ground. A shadow blotted out the sun. As the wind subsided, he became aware of a hulking presence in front of him, heavy beyond mere physical mass. Expecting it to be the last thing he ever did, he looked up.
The tip of the dragon's nose was about three feet in front of him. Its head and body were covered in jet black scales. Its eyes were the palest gold, with a narrow vertical slit in the middle, black as the bottom of the ocean, seeming deep enough to contain worlds.
The dragon shifted its weight slightly, and its nostrils dilated. Air moved past Iko as it breathed in. This was it, then. How long might it be before someone noticed he was missing? If they came up here to look for him, would they work out the meaning of the blackened patch of grass where he now lay?
Man-thing. The voice reverberated inside his skull. The legends were right: dragons had no voices like humans, but spoke directly with their minds. What the legends hadn't mentioned was that the dragon's mindspeech was incredibly loud. Perhaps he should move further away? Given his present circumstances, that might not be a wise move.
Crawling, said the dragon. Grovelling, as befits your kind. Were you another dragon, I should kill you for this insult. Yet one such as you is scarcely worth that trouble.
The dragon paused and breathed out. Iko's head reeled as if from blows. The ground seemed to spin underneath him. Still, he had survived a lot longer than he had expected to after the dragon's arrival. At the moment, he wasn't sure whether that was a good thing. Carefully and distinctly, he framed words in his mind.
O great dragon, he said, I offer my most humble apologies for disturbing you.
It speaks! The dragon seemed quite startled. Its pupils widened fractionally.
Iko hadn't been sure his mindspeech would work, so that was a relief. Would the dragon hear everything he thought? No, his sources said that you had to want your thoughts to be audible. O great dragon, Iko said, I have made some study of the ways of your kind, but there is, of course, much of which I am still ignorant. I assure you that I mean no offence. I would be most grateful to learn the correct manner of addressing you.
Polite, too. There was an uncomfortable pause. He imagined that the dragons had never had to consider such a question, at least not when it was being asked by a human. "O great dragon" will suffice, it said eventually.
Perhaps, o great dragon, you wish to know why I summoned you here.
You did not summon me, said the dragon, and Iko sensed anger behind the words. I chose to come.
As you wish, o great dragon. Iko bowed his head.
Look at me, said the dragon, and Iko complied. He knew that he couldn't have disobeyed. I am nevertheless curious to know why a man-thing happens to be on this hilltop, far from its own kind, at the very same moment that I choose to visit it.
That is quite simple to explain, o great dragon. I wish to propose an alliance.
An alliance? To what end?
O great dragon, a fleet of pirates are preying on the people of the Lenis Islands, attacking our settlements and ships. We are a peaceful people, not used to fighting -
And you wish me to destroy these... pirates for you, said the dragon.
Yes! Remembering his manners, he added, Please.
You would have me burn their ships with my fiery breath? Capsize them with a sweep of my tail? Pluck man-things from the sea and carry them aloft, shrieking, before I flip them into my mouth to crush them and swallow them whole?
He winced at the dragon's suggestions. I had thought, o great dragon, that the mere sight of you would terrify them into leaving us alone.
Perhaps. And what do you offer me in return for ridding you of these vermin?
The pirates have a great horde of treasure on their ships and in their home port - gold, silver, precious jewels. If you defeat them, it is yours.
The dragon did not reply. The corners of its mouth lifted, revealing glistening white teeth. Its nostrils narrowed, and a sound like a tree falling filled Iko's mind. You know far more of our ways than I would have expected of any man-thing. But there is much of which you are ignorant.
A gale rushed past him, pelting him with dust and twigs. By the time he could see again, the dragon was no more than a spot in the sky, an odd-shaped bird spiralling upwards. Almost at the limit of sight, there was a violet flash, and the dragon was gone. Iko brushed the worst of the dirt off his clothing and started the long walk back to the village.
What now? This outcome had never occurred to him. He hadn't seriously expected the summoning to work, but had thought that if it did, the dragon would most likely kill him immediately for his impertinence. He imagined the taunts of the children, the pitying looks of the monks and the other teachers. Typical Iko. Can't get anything right. He decided to say nothing about it. If anyone asked where he'd been, he'd simply climbed the hill to admire the view. Stretch his legs. Clear his head.
He saw no one on the road that led into the village from Samdurath, the next settlement along the coast. That wasn't so unusual, but when he saw no one in the main street, nor any of the side streets that intersected it, he began to worry. He jogged the rest of the way to the house that he still shared with his mother.
The door stood open. Smoke hung in the air - the fire had gone out. A half-eaten meal lay at one end of the table. Guilt tugged at him as he noticed the place she'd set for him at the other end. He didn't have any classes today - he should've come to have lunch with her, not chase after creatures of legend that didn't care what happened to decent people.
"Mother!" he shouted.
No answer came. He opened the door to the bedroom. She wasn't there. Sweating, he squeezed between her bed and the linen chest to reach the back door. She wasn't in the garden either.
Iko tried to calm himself. She must have gone visiting. But why leave her lunch unfinished? Realisation crept up on him. Not only had he not seen anyone on the way here, he hadn't heard anyone. The pirates had attacked while he was away. Everyone was dead or taken captive.
His knees gave way, and he fell to the ground. Tears fought for release. Was this why the dragon had refused to help? Because it knew he was already too late?
He forced himself to stand. If Mother's fire was still smouldering, they couldn't have gone far. He scrambled through the house and ran for the harbour. He couldn't do anything for his own people, but if he could see which way the pirates were going, he might be able to warn whichever village they were heading to next.
The two jetties were intact, with boats moored at both of them. Nets, crab traps and coils of rope lay neatly next to each boat, as if everybody had gone to the tavern to share a few bottles of wine. One boat still had a couple of buckets of fish next to it. No vessels were visible at sea.
Panting, Iko tried to make sense of the scene. The pirates' ships were too big to moor in the gaps between the villagers' boats. If they'd used the jetties, they would've cut some of the boats loose and made a mess of the villagers' fishing equipment. If the ships had stayed further out and lowered boats of their own, there should be keel tracks and footprints on the beach, which there weren't. Now that he thought of it, he'd seen no sign of a struggle anywhere in the village. More than that, he'd seen no dead or dying people. The pirates couldn't have taken everyone - some of the villagers would have put up a fight, and the pirates would have killed them.
Not daring to hope, he turned and ran back inland. The people must have seen the pirates coming and taken refuge in the monastery. They could stay safe for weeks there. But then why had the pirates not ransacked the rest of the village?
As he turned the corner onto the long approach to the monastery, he saw that the gate was closed. His heart leapt - it was always open except in the presence of an immediate threat. He sprinted the last hundred yards and rattled the bars.
"Hey! It's Iko! The pirates have gone!" Through the gaps in the bars, he saw that the courtyard was deserted. "Open up!" Shouldn't there be men with swords and spears waiting there? Or at least a couple of lookouts?
A young man peered around the edge of the gateway. Startled, he gawked at Iko before saying to someone behind him, "Yes, it's him."
Relieved to see someone alive, Iko grabbed the bars for support.
"Figures," said an older man. "I suppose you'd better let him in." Iko recognised the voice of one of his mother's cousins, though he couldn't recall the man's name. The younger man was his son or nephew, who'd passed through Iko's classes a few years ago without much learning settling on him. He went back behind the wall and started to turn the wheel that operated the bar that held the gate shut.
"It's all right," said Iko, raising his voice over the squeaks and scrapes of the gate swinging open, "the pirates have gone. The village is empty."
"Pirates?" said the older man, coming into view. "As if we haven't got enough to worry about with a bloody great dragon flying around the place."
Staring at him, Iko almost forget to let go of the gate when it swung open. "Yes. Of course. Dragon. Big. Black. Flying. I... I believe I can explain that."
Check back soon for chapter two!
June 1, 2014
The Mirrors of Elangir, chapter 3
Here's the next sneak preview of my new fantasy novel, The Mirrors of Elangir. Chapter 1 is here, and chapter 2 is here.
I reached our street just as the curfew bell rang, and trotted the rest of the way. No light came from any of our windows — Mara would have gone home already, and Uncle must be in bed. I stood in the porch to catch my breath, still not quite believing the ultimatum Shanu’s father had given me. I’d thought things had been going well — to be honest, I’d hoped her parents would help to support us for a year or so after the wedding.
Three months to earn as much money as I had in the last year. Could it be done? Not by clearing junk from dead people’s houses, that much I knew. Four hundred svara would be a very good start to a household for most people. Did I really want such a grasping, calculating man as my father-in-law? No, but I had no choice. People had no influence over who their parents were.
I cast a light spell and went into the visiting room, trying to estimate how much we’d get for the stuff from Dyareg’s house. Fifty svara, maybe, once our costs were taken out, split between Uncle and me. Perhaps seventy-five if we separated the valuable items and found more specialised buyers for them.
My gaze fell on the mirror we’d taken to Yindrath. That had to be worth something now that we knew what it did. If he was right that it was Elangic — and the workmanship and its enchantment seemed to confirm that — it had to be at least a thousand years old. How much could we get for it? I had no idea. On the one hand, it was rare, possibly one of only two in the world. On the other, it had little practical value except as something to see your reflection in. Unless...
I moved to pick up the mirror, and my light went out. I froze for a moment, then backed away, hoping I wouldn’t trip over anything in the dark. I cast another light spell. This one was noticeably dimmer than the first. I went to the kitchen for a candle — Mara, being an indifferent magician, found them easier than making her own light. I lit it with another spell and retrieved the mirror, then went upstairs to my room.
By itself, the mirror was an ornament or a piece of art. But what if we had the other one of the pair as well? Two people could communicate at any distance, as quickly and easily as if they were in the same room. To get the other mirror, obviously I’d need to know where it was. It could be anywhere in the world, but there might be clues in the picture itself that would help me.
I removed the mirror from its leather case and propped it on my chair. I took a deep breath and touched the mirror’s rubies in the sequence I’d discovered.
Straight away the snowy scene appeared before me. I gasped involuntarily at its brightness and sharp detail. Yindrath had said the snow meant it had to be in a high latitude. The sun had appeared at the left of the picture, fairly high in the sky, and I took this as meaning the other mirror was west of here. West and south would put it on an island in the Tian Ocean, or perhaps even the continent of Elangir. The latter made more sense, given the mirrors’ provenance — perhaps in the days when Elangir had an empire, the emperor used these mirrors to stay in touch with the provincial governors.
The city looked deserted. Its walls might hide a multitude, but any inhabitants would surely light fires to keep themselves warm, and I saw no smoke.
I reached under the bed and pulled out a flat wooden box, disturbing a thick layer of dust as I did so. Mara never cleaned under there; perhaps she thought the past was better left buried. With a deep breath, I flipped the catches.
Inside, my father’s navigation instruments shone as brightly as the last time I’d looked at them. That would’ve been a year or so after Uncle had come home and told me he was going to be looking after me from now on. Sight blurring, I set the box on the floor and lay on the bed. I’d thought I was done crying over Father.
I didn’t see him all that often when I was a boy, but when he was at home, he packed in more than other boys’ fathers did in the whole time they were there. I still remembered how scared I’d been of the rhinoceros in the old Zoological Gardens, and how curious I’d been about the bears, sweltering under their fur. Then there were the fishing trips upriver, and the jaunts around the bay in Uncle Tomaz’s rowing boat. Tomaz had done his best to raise me, but Father’s death had dealt me a blow from which I’d never fully recovered.
Well, now I’d just have to do my best. I dried my eyes and lifted the contents of the box onto the table. Among the brass instruments were charts rolled up in leather tubes and a small thick book. The book contained tables of numbers, tide times for all the ports around Asdanund and most of those around Nuhys — a remnant of a simpler time. The charts were mostly of the seas around Asdanund. They looked odd, as the water was full of details — depths and currents, as far as I could tell — while the land was featureless, except for a few prominent hills and buildings. I found one chart of the known world, which showed the north and east coasts of Elangir and only the vaguest sketch of its west and south coasts. Under this was a thin brass plate engraved with a chart of the stars.
The largest of the instruments was an astrolabe, used to measure angles, mainly for determining latitude. That required you to measure the height of the sun above the horizon at noon, and it looked as though that time had already passed at the other mirror, so it would have to wait until tomorrow.
For longitude, most navigators preferred to use a declinometer, a complex apparatus of pendulums and balances that told you the strength and direction of the local magical field. You already knew your latitude from the astrolabe, so you looked up the field vector in a set of tables, and that gave your longitude to within about a tenth of a degree — roughly six miles, good enough for most work. But unless the mirror was much cleverer than I thought, I wouldn’t be able to measure the field through it.
Where was Father’s declinometer, anyway? I rummaged through the box, not finding it. He had only the one case for the tools of his trade, so why would that one instrument be missing? I might’ve assumed Uncle had sold it, except that there was no second-hand market in navigators’ instruments. But worrying about that wasn’t going to help me find the other mirror. I’d have to use the other method — calculate the difference in local time between the two places.
I had at least a few hours to wait before the stars appeared in the other mirror, and so went downstairs to brew some tea. As I sipped it, I tried to estimate what the pair of mirrors might be worth if we sold them. Couriers charged to deliver letters according to weight and distance. But the picture in the mirror had no weight, and could go halfway round the world as easily as down the street. On the other hand, you couldn’t send messages wherever you wanted, only between the places where the mirrors happened to be.
Perhaps, then, instead of selling the mirrors to a couple of rich or important people, we could keep them and use them to send messages for other people. If we kept one in Symeera and put the other in, say, Darmath, letters could save a nine-day journey by sea — eighteen days for a reply to come back. We could then charge based on how long it took the scribes to copy a letter when they read it in the mirror. Even better, it would be much more profitable than sending a letter by ship, because we’d be paying only for two scribes, not the ship and its crew. I had no idea how many letters crossed the Sea of Mulkara every day, but given that it cost a svar and a half to send one, there was a lot of money to be made if we could do it faster. Of course, before we could start making money, I had to find the other mirror. I drank another two cups and headed back upstairs to watch for sunset.
Waiting made the time pass more slowly. I thought of Shanu — her smile, her laughter, her soft voice — and wondered whether our first child would be a boy or a girl. A boy would be better for carrying on the family business, but she’d want to name him after her father, and I wasn’t sure I could live with a reminder of that man in my house — our house.
Despite the tea, I dozed off a couple of times, but gradually the sun in the mirror sank towards the horizon, and the sky grew darker. A few stars were visible at the top of the sky, not enough for me to be confident of identifying them. The city showed no lights, reinforcing my belief that it was deserted.
I picked up the star chart and gazed out of the window. My room faced roughly east, and so was well-placed for seeing stars as they rose. The night was relatively clear, so I should see plenty of them. Buildings and hills obscured the horizon, which would delay my sighting of each new star by about ten minutes.
I knew a few of the main constellations, and gradually picked them out. There was the Tiger, which meant the one below it was the Dragon, upside-down, defeated but not dead — never dead. The ancients had better imaginations than me, or perhaps not as much to occupy themselves in the evenings. I wondered if they’d held meetings to discuss what to call the constellations, or if some fellow with nothing better to do had announced one day that he’d divided the stars into groups and come up with names for them. Had they thought he was mad? Or had they argued with him — “That group of four isn’t a tower — it looks more like a shield.” “Don’t be daft — our shields are round. Rectangular shields won’t be invented for another five hundred years. It’s a crab.” “A crab? That’s mad.” “No madder than any of these other groups. Who ever heard of a tiger defeating a dragon, anyway?”
Eventually, the sky in the mirror was dark enough to pick out constellations. The first one I recognised was the fuzzy red patch known as the Camp Fire, much lower in the sky than I’d ever seen it. Father had mentioned that as you moved north or south, the stars shifted in the opposite direction, to the point where some disappeared under one horizon and new ones came in at the other.
I picked out the Tiger at the edge of picture, and now realised that I couldn’t see the horizon in any direction. I wasn’t even sure which way the other mirror was facing, though it must be more south than north, and more east than west — otherwise I wouldn’t see any familiar constellations. I’d have to wait for the Dragon to rise over there and make a guess as to how high it was here. Better than that — I could use Father’s astrolabe to measure the height of the Dragon here.
I struggled with the instrument’s bulk to align it with where I’d guessed the horizon was, and then tilted the crosspiece to sight on the lowest star in the Dragon. How had Father controlled this monstrosity? It seemed to require three hands. The best I could manage was that the star was now between seventy and eighty degrees above the horizon, meaning that the other mirror was between five and six thousand miles west of here. I laid the astrolabe on the bed, rubbing my arms to ease some of the fatigue. I could scarcely contemplate such a distance — eight times further than from here to Nuhys. Even without bad weather or any obstacles to sail around, that was a four-month return trip. If we departed tomorrow, by the time we got back, Shanu would have had to accept another suitor.
I reached our street just as the curfew bell rang, and trotted the rest of the way. No light came from any of our windows — Mara would have gone home already, and Uncle must be in bed. I stood in the porch to catch my breath, still not quite believing the ultimatum Shanu’s father had given me. I’d thought things had been going well — to be honest, I’d hoped her parents would help to support us for a year or so after the wedding.
Three months to earn as much money as I had in the last year. Could it be done? Not by clearing junk from dead people’s houses, that much I knew. Four hundred svara would be a very good start to a household for most people. Did I really want such a grasping, calculating man as my father-in-law? No, but I had no choice. People had no influence over who their parents were.
I cast a light spell and went into the visiting room, trying to estimate how much we’d get for the stuff from Dyareg’s house. Fifty svara, maybe, once our costs were taken out, split between Uncle and me. Perhaps seventy-five if we separated the valuable items and found more specialised buyers for them.
My gaze fell on the mirror we’d taken to Yindrath. That had to be worth something now that we knew what it did. If he was right that it was Elangic — and the workmanship and its enchantment seemed to confirm that — it had to be at least a thousand years old. How much could we get for it? I had no idea. On the one hand, it was rare, possibly one of only two in the world. On the other, it had little practical value except as something to see your reflection in. Unless...
I moved to pick up the mirror, and my light went out. I froze for a moment, then backed away, hoping I wouldn’t trip over anything in the dark. I cast another light spell. This one was noticeably dimmer than the first. I went to the kitchen for a candle — Mara, being an indifferent magician, found them easier than making her own light. I lit it with another spell and retrieved the mirror, then went upstairs to my room.
By itself, the mirror was an ornament or a piece of art. But what if we had the other one of the pair as well? Two people could communicate at any distance, as quickly and easily as if they were in the same room. To get the other mirror, obviously I’d need to know where it was. It could be anywhere in the world, but there might be clues in the picture itself that would help me.
I removed the mirror from its leather case and propped it on my chair. I took a deep breath and touched the mirror’s rubies in the sequence I’d discovered.
Straight away the snowy scene appeared before me. I gasped involuntarily at its brightness and sharp detail. Yindrath had said the snow meant it had to be in a high latitude. The sun had appeared at the left of the picture, fairly high in the sky, and I took this as meaning the other mirror was west of here. West and south would put it on an island in the Tian Ocean, or perhaps even the continent of Elangir. The latter made more sense, given the mirrors’ provenance — perhaps in the days when Elangir had an empire, the emperor used these mirrors to stay in touch with the provincial governors.
The city looked deserted. Its walls might hide a multitude, but any inhabitants would surely light fires to keep themselves warm, and I saw no smoke.
I reached under the bed and pulled out a flat wooden box, disturbing a thick layer of dust as I did so. Mara never cleaned under there; perhaps she thought the past was better left buried. With a deep breath, I flipped the catches.
Inside, my father’s navigation instruments shone as brightly as the last time I’d looked at them. That would’ve been a year or so after Uncle had come home and told me he was going to be looking after me from now on. Sight blurring, I set the box on the floor and lay on the bed. I’d thought I was done crying over Father.
I didn’t see him all that often when I was a boy, but when he was at home, he packed in more than other boys’ fathers did in the whole time they were there. I still remembered how scared I’d been of the rhinoceros in the old Zoological Gardens, and how curious I’d been about the bears, sweltering under their fur. Then there were the fishing trips upriver, and the jaunts around the bay in Uncle Tomaz’s rowing boat. Tomaz had done his best to raise me, but Father’s death had dealt me a blow from which I’d never fully recovered.
Well, now I’d just have to do my best. I dried my eyes and lifted the contents of the box onto the table. Among the brass instruments were charts rolled up in leather tubes and a small thick book. The book contained tables of numbers, tide times for all the ports around Asdanund and most of those around Nuhys — a remnant of a simpler time. The charts were mostly of the seas around Asdanund. They looked odd, as the water was full of details — depths and currents, as far as I could tell — while the land was featureless, except for a few prominent hills and buildings. I found one chart of the known world, which showed the north and east coasts of Elangir and only the vaguest sketch of its west and south coasts. Under this was a thin brass plate engraved with a chart of the stars.
The largest of the instruments was an astrolabe, used to measure angles, mainly for determining latitude. That required you to measure the height of the sun above the horizon at noon, and it looked as though that time had already passed at the other mirror, so it would have to wait until tomorrow.
For longitude, most navigators preferred to use a declinometer, a complex apparatus of pendulums and balances that told you the strength and direction of the local magical field. You already knew your latitude from the astrolabe, so you looked up the field vector in a set of tables, and that gave your longitude to within about a tenth of a degree — roughly six miles, good enough for most work. But unless the mirror was much cleverer than I thought, I wouldn’t be able to measure the field through it.
Where was Father’s declinometer, anyway? I rummaged through the box, not finding it. He had only the one case for the tools of his trade, so why would that one instrument be missing? I might’ve assumed Uncle had sold it, except that there was no second-hand market in navigators’ instruments. But worrying about that wasn’t going to help me find the other mirror. I’d have to use the other method — calculate the difference in local time between the two places.
I had at least a few hours to wait before the stars appeared in the other mirror, and so went downstairs to brew some tea. As I sipped it, I tried to estimate what the pair of mirrors might be worth if we sold them. Couriers charged to deliver letters according to weight and distance. But the picture in the mirror had no weight, and could go halfway round the world as easily as down the street. On the other hand, you couldn’t send messages wherever you wanted, only between the places where the mirrors happened to be.
Perhaps, then, instead of selling the mirrors to a couple of rich or important people, we could keep them and use them to send messages for other people. If we kept one in Symeera and put the other in, say, Darmath, letters could save a nine-day journey by sea — eighteen days for a reply to come back. We could then charge based on how long it took the scribes to copy a letter when they read it in the mirror. Even better, it would be much more profitable than sending a letter by ship, because we’d be paying only for two scribes, not the ship and its crew. I had no idea how many letters crossed the Sea of Mulkara every day, but given that it cost a svar and a half to send one, there was a lot of money to be made if we could do it faster. Of course, before we could start making money, I had to find the other mirror. I drank another two cups and headed back upstairs to watch for sunset.
Waiting made the time pass more slowly. I thought of Shanu — her smile, her laughter, her soft voice — and wondered whether our first child would be a boy or a girl. A boy would be better for carrying on the family business, but she’d want to name him after her father, and I wasn’t sure I could live with a reminder of that man in my house — our house.
Despite the tea, I dozed off a couple of times, but gradually the sun in the mirror sank towards the horizon, and the sky grew darker. A few stars were visible at the top of the sky, not enough for me to be confident of identifying them. The city showed no lights, reinforcing my belief that it was deserted.
I picked up the star chart and gazed out of the window. My room faced roughly east, and so was well-placed for seeing stars as they rose. The night was relatively clear, so I should see plenty of them. Buildings and hills obscured the horizon, which would delay my sighting of each new star by about ten minutes.
I knew a few of the main constellations, and gradually picked them out. There was the Tiger, which meant the one below it was the Dragon, upside-down, defeated but not dead — never dead. The ancients had better imaginations than me, or perhaps not as much to occupy themselves in the evenings. I wondered if they’d held meetings to discuss what to call the constellations, or if some fellow with nothing better to do had announced one day that he’d divided the stars into groups and come up with names for them. Had they thought he was mad? Or had they argued with him — “That group of four isn’t a tower — it looks more like a shield.” “Don’t be daft — our shields are round. Rectangular shields won’t be invented for another five hundred years. It’s a crab.” “A crab? That’s mad.” “No madder than any of these other groups. Who ever heard of a tiger defeating a dragon, anyway?”
Eventually, the sky in the mirror was dark enough to pick out constellations. The first one I recognised was the fuzzy red patch known as the Camp Fire, much lower in the sky than I’d ever seen it. Father had mentioned that as you moved north or south, the stars shifted in the opposite direction, to the point where some disappeared under one horizon and new ones came in at the other.
I picked out the Tiger at the edge of picture, and now realised that I couldn’t see the horizon in any direction. I wasn’t even sure which way the other mirror was facing, though it must be more south than north, and more east than west — otherwise I wouldn’t see any familiar constellations. I’d have to wait for the Dragon to rise over there and make a guess as to how high it was here. Better than that — I could use Father’s astrolabe to measure the height of the Dragon here.
I struggled with the instrument’s bulk to align it with where I’d guessed the horizon was, and then tilted the crosspiece to sight on the lowest star in the Dragon. How had Father controlled this monstrosity? It seemed to require three hands. The best I could manage was that the star was now between seventy and eighty degrees above the horizon, meaning that the other mirror was between five and six thousand miles west of here. I laid the astrolabe on the bed, rubbing my arms to ease some of the fatigue. I could scarcely contemplate such a distance — eight times further than from here to Nuhys. Even without bad weather or any obstacles to sail around, that was a four-month return trip. If we departed tomorrow, by the time we got back, Shanu would have had to accept another suitor.
May 31, 2014
Cover reveal - The Mirrors of Elangir
Here's the cover for my new novel, The Mirrors of Elangir.
I don't have a date for releasing it yet - I'm waiting for one last beta reader to come back to me - but it should be soon.
I don't have a date for releasing it yet - I'm waiting for one last beta reader to come back to me - but it should be soon.
