The Witch & the Cathedral

"The Witch and the Cathedral."  Sounds like an interesting scholarly book about women and heresy during the twelfth century, doesn't it?

Well, it's not!  This is me in my fantasy-author mode, not my medieval-scholar mode.

One of the things that I think makes my fantasy different from most of the genre, however, is that I have real, working Christianity in it.  It's not that my books are pious, however--the wizards are always leery of religion, and the priests are leery of wizardry.  But as a medievalist I would have trouble creating even a semi-medieval setting for my stories without including a functioning church.

In this book, as well as the tension between religion and magic (a thinly disguised version of the modern tension between religion and science), I also focus on the tension between the sexes, the female magic-workers the wizards distrust and call witches versus the male version of magic.

And besides, the book is funny.

The reason I'm talking about it right now is because it's just been released as an audiobook, available on Audible.com, on iTunes, and on Amazon.  You can also get it as an ebook through Amazon (details here) and go back and forth between reading it and listening to it.

If you like the Yurt books but haven't tried audiobooks yet, I suggest you start at the beginning with "A Bad Spell in Yurt."  Eric Vincent, the narrator, does a great job.  In my own head of course Daimbert (my wizard hero) sounds like me, but Eric voices him very well.

Enjoy!

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

A Long Way 'Til November

Although most of my posts on this blog are about the Middle Ages, I also reserve the right, as its creator, to talk about my stories.

And I've just released a new ebook!  It's called A Long Way 'Til November, and it's a novella (short novel), set in the world of Yurt.

Here's the description:
"A wizard, a witch, and a bishop in disguise, all off on a road trip in a gypsy caravan. What could possibly go wrong? 
But a pleasant autumn excursion for Daimbert the wizard quickly turns dark when accusations of ritual murder begin to fly and a schoolgirl turns up missing…. 
This novella (short novel) is intended both to introduce new readers to the Royal Wizard of Yurt series and (I hope!) to give reading enjoyment to old friends."

Here the link to buy in on Amazon-US (or .com if you prefer). It's also available on other national Amazons, as well as other ebook platforms.  I've also produced a paperback that includes all three Yurt novellas, called Third Time's a Charm.

The story mostly takes place in a city on top of a ridge. which is why I chose for the cover my photo of Turenne, a city on a ridge in the southern Auvergne.  In the overall Yurt chronology, the story takes place between "Daughter of Magic" and "Is This Apocalypse Necessary?"  For those who would like to see more of the duchess's daughters, they are major characters.

Here's the opening of the story.  Enjoy!

The caravan was painted yellow, with red trim and door and bright green wheels.  I loved it at once.

“I wouldn’t sell it so cheaply,” the Romney man commented, “except that we’re leaving in two days, and we won’t need it any more now that my old aunt has passed on, and we’ve got her much bigger caravan.”

I walked around it slowly, trying to pretend that I was not already imagining myself driving it off into the red sky of sunset.  I doubted he was convinced.

“You can have the pony, too, included in the price,” he added.  A pony, I thought.  We would need something to pull it.  The man was smiling, but the pony looked at me with open suspicion.

“So where are you heading next?” I asked to have something to say, trying to keep from blurting out, “I’ll take it at once!”

He smiled, teeth white against his dark skin.  “South, of course.  Cold weather is coming on.”  The September wind was indeed cool, blowing across the trampled grass of the Romney encampment as evening came on.  “We like to spend the winter somewhere without as much snow.  We have a big meeting, Romneys from all over, every year in November down in the south.  Now you might think it’s a long way ’til November, but we don’t like to hurry.  We take it slow.”

Take is slow, I thought.  I needed to do that more myself.  Just wander across the countryside, without obligations or demands.  I had another vision, rolling down the road in this charming caravan behind the pony.  In this vision it was morning, and slanting autumnal rays of sun warmed us.  The trees would be touched with orange and yellow, and we would be eating apples.  Theodora of course was sitting beside me.  “How do I know this caravan is in good shape?” I managed to ask.

He cocked an eyebrow at me.  “Aren’t you a wizard?  Shouldn’t your spells tell you what’s under the surface?  It’s nice and clean.  And as you can see, we’ve just painted it.”

“Of course, of course,” I said.  I needed someone who knew something about caravans, not spells.  But I tried probing magically, looking for cracks and rust.  I didn’t find any, but then I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.  A demonic influence I would have spotted at once, but who knew what springs were supposed to look like.  Were wheels always attached like this?

The Romney glanced at me sideways from shadowed eyes.  “If you’re unsure, don’t feel you have to take it.  I’m certain we’ll find a buyer before we leave.  One of the shopkeepers was saying he could use it for an extra showroom.  He’ll be looking it over later this evening.”

That did it.  “I’ll take it!”

He looked almost disappointed.  Perhaps I was supposed to bargain more.  But I could not bear to see this beautiful travel caravan made into an extra showroom for some shopkeeper.

At least I had the sense to say that I would wait and give him the money tomorrow, when I had arranged a place to store both the caravan and the pony.  I didn’t entirely trust him not to disappear overnight.  We shook hands on the agreement, and I hurried back through the gates into the little walled city of Caelrhon.

Theodora’s house was on a quiet cobbled street in the artisans’ quarter.  The lamplighters were at work, and curtained windows shone yellow.  The new tower of the cathedral church rose above the housetops, dark against the darkening sky.  This late in the day, the workers had come down from the scaffolding, and I could smell the sausages on their cooking fires.

I burst into Theodora’s house, too eager to tell her about the caravan even to notice that the smells from the kitchen were just as good.  I just knew that my wife would be as thrilled about this as I was.

I was wrong.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

The Starlight Raven

I've just published a new book!  It's an ebook, available on Amazon, BN/Nook, Kobo, and iTunes; a paperback version has also been published (on which see more here).

The story can be considered "Yurt, the Next Generation" (by those who have read the original Yurt series), or it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone.  It's a "YA" book (aimed at a young-adult audience), because Antonia, the heroine, is fourteen when it begins.

A sneak preview is below.  Enjoy!

THE STARLIGHT RAVEN

Of course I knew my mother was a witch.

She never needed a match to light the fire.  She knew immediately if someone new had come to town, even if she had spent the entire day at home, sewing.  Sometimes in the evening, after she had finished tailoring a new ballgown for the mayor’s daughter or embroidering a new altar-cloth for the church, women would knock quietly on our door, giving quick glances up and down the cobbled street, and Mother would tell them if they were going to have a baby boy or a girl.

But I had no intention of living an uneventful life as a small-town witch.  I was going to study to be a real wizard.

That would be easy, I thought.  My father was head of the wizards’ school in the great City, a much more interesting place than our little town of Caelrhon.  He’d said himself that I could come and study there when I became fourteen, the first girl the wizards’ school had ever admitted.  Already I knew how to turn someone into a frog, something even my mother couldn’t do.

But on my fourteenth birthday it all became much less easy.

It started two weeks earlier.  A gentle hand on my shoulder interrupted my dreams.  “Antonia, wake up.”

“It’s too early to get up for school,” I mumbled into the pillow.

The hand remained on my shoulder.  “It’s not a school day.”

Then I remembered.  “We’re going to the City!”

I was out of bed with a bound, and then, with another bound, right back under the covers.  The air from my casement window was cold.  ”It’s not even morning yet!”

Mother flicked a flame into life on my candlestick.  She was already dressed, her brown braids neatly wrapped around her head.  I loved her hair, smooth where mine was always tangled, darker than mine but showing golden highlights in the glow of the candle.

“I want to go there and be home again before it gets late,” she said firmly.  “After all, tomorrow is a school day.  In fact I hear,” she added with a smile, tugging the quilt off me, “that at the wizards’ school they give the new students only one warning.  Then, if they aren’t on time for the first early-morning class, they set the dragons on them.”

I swung my legs out of bed and kept them out.  “Sometimes I think everyone’s seen dragons except for me.  Father even killed one once when he was young, even though he won’t talk about it.  And there was the time we arrived in the City just too late to see a whole flock of them.”

“I’ve never seen a dragon either,” said Mother.  She had the brush and was working the snarls out of my hair.  “I think it would be more terrifying than exciting.  And I’m not at all sure they come in ‘flocks.’”

I let her work on my braids, thinking that once I was a wizard I would go visit dragons myself, rather than waiting for them to come to me.  A herd of dragons?  A pack?  A clutch?  I was fairly certain it wouldn’t be a gaggle.

“Besides,” I said after a minute, “I know they don’t punish students for sleeping late.  Father told me that when he was a student at the wizards’ school, he hardly ever made any of his morning classes.”

There was a chuckle behind me.  “Antonia, your father is an admirable man in many ways, and he’s made himself an excellent wizard over the years, but I would not recommend using him as your model when you become a wizardry student.”

I shrugged and laughed myself.  Having my hair braided was very pleasant.  I glanced toward my window, still nearly dark, and was hit by a sudden memory.  “I had the strangest dream,” I said slowly.  “It was about a bat.  He tapped at my window and squeaked this really high squeak, but when I sat up he flew off.  And for some reason I wasn’t frightened at all.”

“Of course not,” Mother muttered through hairpins.  “Bats won’t hurt you.  I’m glad you knew that, even in a dream.”

“And the strangest thing of all,” I went on, “was that he had a little cylinder tied to his leg—you know, like the carrier pigeons wear.”

“Who would send messages by a bat?” said Mother abruptly.  The last pin went sharply into my hair.  “Really, Antonia, you’re old enough to know that nobody finds someone else’s dreams very interesting.  Get dressed and come downstairs.”

She slammed my door behind her, leaving me wondering why she could possibly be so irritated by a dream.

No time to worry about it.  I splashed cold water on my face from the washbasin, pulled on a school dress, and laced up my boots.  In front of the mirror I smoothed out the hairs disarranged in getting dressed.  I grinned at my reflection and blew out the candle.  I was the daughter of a witch and a wizard, almost fourteen years old, and I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t do.

When I clattered down the stairs into the kitchen, Mother was frying bacon and smiling again.

But then I saw it, lying on the table amid dressmaking scraps:  a tiny piece of parchment, half unrolled.  It looked like the kind of message usually brought by a carrier pigeon.

We took the air cart.  It was barely light as we hurried down the streets to the livery stable, where we rented space for it.  The building was still locked this early in the morning, and after Mother had concentrated for a moment she said that there was no stable boy inside who might have answered our knock.

But that didn’t slow us down.  The wind tugged at our cloaks as I used a tiny lifting spell to turn the tumblers in the lock and drive the bolt back.  The spell worked perfectly the first time—a good sign, I thought, for my future as a wizardry student.  Mother led the cart out into the street, talking soothingly to the horses in the stalls, and I relocked the big doors.

The air cart was the skin of a purple flying beast, a gift to us from Father a few years ago.  It had been born in flight, and even though long dead it would still start flying if not carefully tethered.  This was wizardry, not witchcraft, and I had learned the spells even before Mother had.  We climbed in, and I confidently gave the commands in the Hidden Language.  The cart took off, wings flapping steadily, to circle above the narrow streets and dark tile roofs of Caelrhon.

I glanced sideways at Mother, saw that she seemed deep in her own thoughts, and quietly muttered the spells that made the air cart pick up speed.  I loved to go fast.

The sun rose behind us as we headed toward the City.  It was springtime, and the trees and meadows below us were fresh and green in the light of breaking dawn.  Finally I got up my nerve to ask.  “What was that letter I saw on the table?”

Mother shrugged, unconcerned.  “Just a message about a dress I’m supposed to be making.”  I would have believed her and thought no more about bats—except that no one in Caelrhon would have sent her a pigeon-message.  They would have used the magic telephones or walked over to talk to her in person.

Most of the time it was fine having a mother who kept her concerns to herself.  She had calmly bandaged me the time I’d come home all bloody from beating up a boy who’d invented an insulting song about witches.  She’d just shaken her head when the teacher sent her a frosty note saying she hoped I would never cover another student with green spots again—I didn’t even have to explain that I had virtuously resisted turning him into a frog.

And this last year, when I’d gone to a few school dances with the same boy who’d come closer to being a frog than he realized, she just asked me when I got home if I’d had a good time.  She didn’t quiz me about what we had and hadn’t done—as I’m sure my father would have in her place, as if I didn’t have excellent good sense!

But if someone had trained a bat to carry messages, which I’d never before heard of anyone doing, then the content of that message must itself be interesting.  If I’d been waked in the middle of the night by a bat, I thought, and the bat was carrying a message, I’d certainly tell my daughter about it.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

The author as wizard

Authors have enormous power.  We can create whole new worlds without the muss and fuss of hiring Industrial Light & Magic or Weta Workshop to do our special effects.  We can terrify.  We can make people laugh.  We can make people get angry or become sad.

We are wizards.

What readers remember most about any good book is the characters.  Here is where the power of the author seems to diminish, because when the characters start to have as much reality to the author as they may (one hopes) to the reader, then they start having a mind of their own and paying no attention to whatever the author wants them to do.

Daimbert, the wizard hero of "A Bad Spell in Yurt," is not me, but he likes to sit in my brain and comment on events.  I myself like to think of the book as "searing," although the most common reviews say "charming" or "gave me a few chuckles."  Daimbert reminds me that that should be expected of a book whose title is a pun.  A sneak preview is below.

PART ONE - YURT

I was not a very good wizard.  But it was not a very big kingdom.  I assumed I was the only person to answer their ad, for in a short time I had a letter back from the king's constable, saying the job was mine if I still wanted it, and that I should report to take up the post of Royal Wizard in six weeks.

It took most of the six weeks to grow in my beard, and then I dyed it grey to make myself look older.  Two days before leaving for my kingdom, I went down to the emporium to buy a suitable wardrobe.

Of course at the emporium they knew all about us young wizards from the wizards' school.  They looked at us dubiously, took our money into the next room to make sure it stayed money even when we weren't there, and tended to count the items on the display racks in a rather conspicuous way.  But I knew the manager of the clothing department—he'd even helped me once pick out a Christmas present for my grandmother, which I think endeared me to him as much as to her.

He was on the phone when I came in.  "What do you mean, you won't take it back?  But our buyer never ordered it!"  While waiting for him, I picked out some black velvet trousers, just the thing, I thought, to give me a wizardly flair.

The manager slammed down the phone.  "So what am I supposed to do with this?" he demanded of no one in particular.  "This" was a shapeless red velvet pullover, with some rather tattered white fur at the neck.  It might have been intended to be part of a Father Noel costume.

I was entranced.  "I'll take it!"

"Are you sure?  But what will you do with it?"

"I'm going to be a Royal Wizard.  It will help me strike the right note of authority and mystery."

"Speaking of mystery, what's all the fuzzy stuff on your chin?"

I was proud of my beard, but since he gave me the pullover for almost nothing, I couldn't be irritated.  When I left for my kingdom, I felt resplendent in velvet, red for blood and black for the powers of darkness.

It was only two hundred miles, and probably most of the young wizards would have flown themselves, but I insisted on the air cart.  "I need to make the proper impression of grandeur when I arrive," I said.  Besides—and they all knew it even though I didn't say it—I wasn't sure I could fly that far.

The air cart was the skin of a purple beast that had been born flying.  Long after the beast was dead, its skin continued to fly, and it could be guided by magic commands.  It brought me steeply up from the wizards' complex at the center of the City, and I looked back as the white city spires fell away.  It had been a good eight years, but I felt ready for new challenges.  We soared across plains, forests, and hills all the long afternoon, before finally banking steeply over what I had been calling "my" kingdom for the last six weeks.

From above there scarcely seemed to be more to the kingdom than a castle, for beyond the castle walls there was barely room for the royal fields and pastures before thick green woods closed in.  A bright garden lay just outside the castle walls, and pennants snapped from all the turrets.  The air cart dipped, folded its wings, and set me down with a bump in the courtyard.

I looked around and loved it at once.  It was a perfect child's toy of a castle, the stone walls freshly whitewashed and the green shutters newly painted.  The courtyard was a combination of clean-swept cobbles, manicured flower beds, and tidy gravel paths.  On the far side of the courtyard, a well-groomed horse put his head over a white half-door and whinnied at me.

A man and woman came toward me, both dressed in starched blue and white. "Welcome to the Kingdom of Yurt.  I am the king's constable, and this is my wife."  They both bowed deeply, which flustered me, but I covered it by striking a pose of dignity.

"Thank you," I said in my deepest voice.  "I'm sure I will find much here to interest me." The air cart was twitching, eager to be flying again.  "If you could just help me with my luggage—"

The constable helped me unload the boxes, while his wife ran to open the door to my chambers.  The door opened directly onto the courtyard.  I had somehow expected either a tower or a dungeon and wondered if this was suitably dignified, but at least it meant we didn't have far to carry the boxes.  They were heavy, too, and I had not had enough practice with the spell for lifting more than one heavy thing at a time to want to try in front of an audience.

The air cart took off again as soon as it was empty.  I watched it soar away, my last direct link with the City, then turned to start unpacking.  Both the constable and his wife stayed with me, eager to talk.  I was just as eager to have them, because I wanted to find out more about Yurt.

"The kingdom's never had a wizard from the wizards' school before," said the constable. I was unpacking my certificate for completing the eight years' program.  Although, naturally, it didn't say anything about honors or special merit or even areas of distinction, it really was impressive.  That was why I had packed it on top.  It was a magic certificate, of course, nearly six feet long when unrolled.  My name, Daimbert, was written in letters of fire that flickered as you watched.  Stars twinkled around the edges, and the deep blue and maroon flourishes turned to gold when you touched them.  It came with its own spell to adhere to walls, so I hung it up in the outer of my two chambers, the one I would use as my study.

"Our old wizard's just retired," the constable continued.  "He must be well past two hundred years old, and when he was young you had to serve an apprenticeship to become a wizard.  They didn't have all the training you have now."

I ostentatiously opened my first box of books.

"He's moved down to a little house at the edge of the forest.  That's why we had to hire a new wizard.  I'm sure he'd be delighted to meet you if you ever had time to visit him."

"Oh, good," I thought with more relief than was easy to admit, even to myself. "Someone who may actually know some magic if I get into trouble."

I took my books out one by one and arranged them on the shelves:  the Ancient and Modern Necromancy, all five volumes of Thaumaturgy A to Z, the Index to Spell Key Words,and the rest, most barely thumbed.  As I tried to decide whether to put the Elements of Transmogrification next to Basic Metamorphosis, which would make sense thematically but not aesthetically, since they were such different sizes, I thought I should have plenty of quiet evenings here, away from the distractions of the City, and might even get a chance to read them.  If I had done more than skim those two volumes, I might have avoided all that embarrassment with the frogs in the practical exam.

"You'll meet the king this evening, but he's authorized me to tell you some of our hopes.  We've never had a telephone system, but now that you're here we're sure we'll be able to get one."

I was flabbergasted.  In the City telephones were so common that you tended to forget how complicated was the magic by which they ran.  It was new magic, too, not more than forty years old, something that Yurt's old wizard would never have learned but which was indeed taught at the wizards' school.  How was I going to explain I had managed to avoid that whole sequence of courses?

He saw my hesitation.  "We realize we're rather remote, and that the magic is not easy.  No one is expecting anything for at least a few weeks.  But everyone was so excited when you answered our ad!  We'd been afraid we might have to settle for a magician, but instead we have a fully-trained and qualified wizard!"

"Don't worry the boy with his duties so soon," the constable's wife said to him, but smiling as she scolded.  "He'll have plenty of time to get started tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!  A few weeks!" I thought but had the sense not to say anything.  I didn't even have the right books.  If I did nothing else, I might be able to derive the proper magic from basic principles in four or five years.  I was too upset even to resent being called "the boy"—so much for the grey beard!

"We'll leave you alone now," said the constable.  "But dinner's in an hour, and then you can meet some of the rest."

I had seen faces peeping out of windows as we went back and forth with the luggage, but no one else had come to meet me.  While I unpacked my clothes, I tried gloomily to think of plausible excuses why Yurt could not possibly have a telephone system.  Nearby antitelephonic demonic influences and the importance of maintaining a rustic, unspoiled lifestyle seemed the most promising.


© C. Dale Brittain 2015

The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint

Saints were a major part of medieval Christianity, as I have discussed previously.  In writing stories set in a fantasy version of the real Middle Ages, I have therefore included saints.

The modern person may assume that saints were gentle and kind.  They could be, but medieval saints could also be frightening to malefactors, or even to those to whom they were well-intentioned.  In The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint, I used many motifs from real medieval saints' lives and miracle stories.

For example, my fictional Saint Eusebius has a backstory of how he came to die for the faith.  In his case, he was eaten by a dragon (this is, after all, a fantasy story), and the dragon miraculously choked to death on him, thus saving the people of the countryside, and leaving only his big toe.  This of course became the relic of the Holy Toe.

In the story, the Holy Toe is served by a hermit, who has several apprentice hermits living a short distance away.  This motif reflects a common medieval dilemma--a hermit would be so renowned for his holiness, his austere life in total isolation from society, that many people would want to go join him.

Eusebius shows his crankiness in one case by diverting a river so that the grave of a noted reprobate will be cut off from the rest of a cemetery full of good, decent dead people.  This is based on a real medieval miracle story.

A key feature of the plot is that two different groups of people want the saint's relics (the Holy Toe) for their own, both claiming that the saint has appeared in visions to them.  Again, this was a real medieval concern, wanting to have the relics of a saint near one in order to be sure of his favor.  There were many medieval stories of "holy thefts," people stealing a saint's relics and bringing them home when the saint was clearly not being properly revered or respected where he was (as evidenced of course by visions).

Click here if you're interested in seeing more of the Cranky Saint.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

A Bad Spell in Yurt

I've always enjoyed fantasy as well as real medieval history.  So when the characters for what became my first published novel, "A Bad Spell in Yurt," showed up quite literally in a dream, I set the story in something that would at least remind people of the real Middle Ages.

Some of it, as I've discussed before, is more nineteenth century than medieval.  But there is no New World in the story, just an outer ocean that reaches west from Europe all the way around to Asia (as medieval people, including Columbus, assumed).  There are thus no New World foods like chocolate or turkeys or tomatoes or potatoes (on which see here).  The hunting scenes and the weapons and the castles are all authentically medieval (except that the castles have figured out how to have plenty of hot water).

The saints in the "Yurt" stories are all based on real medieval stories about saints, including the Cranky Saint of the shrine of the Holy Toe, though I may have gone a bit over the top on that one.  When my heroes go through Hell (quite literally) in the finale of the series, the Hell they encounter is based on pre-Dante visionary literature.  (And here I bet you didn't even know there was pre-Dante visionary literature.)

For those of you who haven't read "A Bad Spell," or who have friends who haven't, here's a special sneak preview (the image is from Amazon).  (If you have read it, be sure to continue the series with "The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint.")

PART ONE - YURT

I was not a very good wizard.  But it was not a very big kingdom.  I assumed I was the only person to answer their ad, for in a short time I had a letter back from the king's constable, saying the job was mine if I still wanted it, and that I should report to take up the post of Royal Wizard in six weeks.

It took most of the six weeks to grow in my beard, and then I dyed it grey to make myself look older.  Two days before leaving for my kingdom, I went down to the emporium to buy a suitable wardrobe.

Of course at the emporium they knew all about us young wizards from the wizards' school.  They looked at us dubiously, took our money into the next room to make sure it stayed money even when we weren't there, and tended to count the items on the display racks in a rather conspicuous way.  But I knew the manager of the clothing department—he'd even helped me once pick out a Christmas present for my grandmother, which I think endeared me to him as much as to her.

He was on the phone when I came in.  "What do you mean, you won't take it back?  But our buyer never ordered it!"  While waiting for him, I picked out some black velvet trousers, just the thing, I thought, to give me a wizardly flair.

The manager slammed down the phone.  "So what am I supposed to do with this?" he demanded of no one in particular.  "This" was a shapeless red velvet pullover, with some rather tattered white fur at the neck.  It might have been intended to be part of a Father Noel costume.

I was entranced.  "I'll take it!"

"Are you sure?  But what will you do with it?"

"I'm going to be a Royal Wizard.  It will help me strike the right note of authority and mystery."

"Speaking of mystery, what's all the fuzzy stuff on your chin?"

I was proud of my beard, but since he gave me the pullover for almost nothing, I couldn't be irritated.  When I left for my kingdom, I felt resplendent in velvet, red for blood and black for the powers of darkness.

It was only two hundred miles, and probably most of the young wizards would have flown themselves, but I insisted on the air cart.  "I need to make the proper impression of grandeur when I arrive," I said.  Besides—and they all knew it even though I didn't say it—I wasn't sure I could fly that far.

The air cart was the skin of a purple beast that had been born flying.  Long after the beast was dead, its skin continued to fly, and it could be guided by magic commands.  It brought me steeply up from the wizards' complex at the center of the City, and I looked back as the white city spires fell away.  It had been a good eight years, but I felt ready for new challenges.  We soared across plains, forests, and hills all the long afternoon, before finally banking steeply over what I had been calling "my" kingdom for the last six weeks.

From above there scarcely seemed to be more to the kingdom than a castle, for beyond the castle walls there was barely room for the royal fields and pastures before thick green woods closed in.  A bright garden lay just outside the castle walls, and pennants snapped from all the turrets.  The air cart dipped, folded its wings, and set me down with a bump in the courtyard.

I looked around and loved it at once.  It was a perfect child's toy of a castle, the stone walls freshly whitewashed and the green shutters newly painted.  The courtyard was a combination of clean-swept cobbles, manicured flower beds, and tidy gravel paths.  On the far side of the courtyard, a well-groomed horse put his head over a white half-door and whinnied at me.

A man and woman came toward me, both dressed in starched blue and white.  "Welcome to the Kingdom of Yurt.  I am the king's constable, and this is my wife."  They both bowed deeply, which flustered me, but I covered it by striking a pose of dignity.

"Thank you," I said in my deepest voice.  "I'm sure I will find much here to interest me."  The air cart was twitching, eager to be flying again.  "If you could just help me with my luggage—"

The constable helped me unload the boxes, while his wife ran to open the door to my chambers.  The door opened directly onto the courtyard.  I had somehow expected either a tower or a dungeon and wondered if this was suitably dignified, but at least it meant we didn't have far to carry the boxes.  They were heavy, too, and I had not had enough practice with the spell for lifting more than one heavy thing at a time to want to try in front of an audience.

The air cart took off again as soon as it was empty.  I watched it soar away, my last direct link with the City, then turned to start unpacking.  Both the constable and his wife stayed with me, eager to talk.  I was just as eager to have them, because I wanted to find out more about Yurt.

"The kingdom's never had a wizard from the wizards' school before," said the constable.  I was unpacking my certificate for completing the eight years' program.  Although, naturally, it didn't say anything about honors or special merit or even areas of distinction, it really was impressive.  That was why I had packed it on top.  It was a magic certificate, of course, nearly six feet long when unrolled.  My name, Daimbert, was written in letters of fire that flickered as you watched.  Stars twinkled around the edges, and the deep blue and maroon flourishes turned to gold when you touched them.  It came with its own spell to adhere to walls, so I hung it up in the outer of my two chambers, the one I would use as my study.

"Our old wizard's just retired," the constable continued.  "He must be well past two hundred years old, and when he was young you had to serve an apprenticeship to become a wizard.  They didn't have all the training you have now."

I ostentatiously opened my first box of books.

"He's moved down to a little house at the edge of the forest.  That's why we had to hire a new wizard.  I'm sure he'd be delighted to meet you if you ever had time to visit him."

"Oh, good," I thought with more relief than was easy to admit, even to myself.  "Someone who may actually know some magic if I get into trouble."

I took my books out one by one and arranged them on the shelves:  the Ancient and Modern Necromancy, all five volumes of Thaumaturgy A to Z, the Index to Spell Key Words, and the rest, most barely thumbed.  As I tried to decide whether to put the Elements of Transmogrification next to Basic Metamorphosis, which would make sense thematically but not aesthetically, since they were such different sizes, I thought I should have plenty of quiet evenings here, away from the distractions of the City, and might even get a chance to read them.  If I had done more than skim those two volumes, I might have avoided all that embarrassment with the frogs in the practical exam.

"You'll meet the king this evening, but he's authorized me to tell you some of our hopes.  We've never had a telephone system, but now that you're here we're sure we'll be able to get one."

I was flabbergasted.  In the City telephones were so common that you tended to forget how complicated was the magic by which they ran.  It was new magic, too, not more than forty years old, something that Yurt's old wizard would never have learned but which was indeed taught at the wizards' school.  How was I going to explain I had managed to avoid that whole sequence of courses?

He saw my hesitation.  "We realize we're rather remote, and that the magic is not easy.  No one is expecting anything for at least a few weeks.  But everyone was so excited when you answered our ad!  We'd been afraid we might have to settle for a magician, but instead we have a fully-trained and qualified wizard!"

"Don't worry the boy with his duties so soon," the constable's wife said to him, but smiling as she scolded.  "He'll have plenty of time to get started tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!  A few weeks!" I thought but had the sense not to say anything.  I didn't even have the right books.  If I did nothing else, I might be able to derive the proper magic from basic principles in four or five years.  I was too upset even to resent being called "the boy"—so much for the grey beard!

"We'll leave you alone now," said the constable.  "But dinner's in an hour, and then you can meet some of the rest."

I had seen faces peeping out of windows as we went back and forth with the luggage, but no one else had come to meet me.  While I unpacked my clothes, I tried gloomily to think of plausible excuses why Yurt could not possibly have a telephone system.  Nearby antitelephonic demonic influences and the importance of maintaining a rustic, unspoiled lifestyle seemed the most promising.


© C. Dale Brittain 2014

Vikings

Everybody loves the Vikings.  Or at least everybody does now.  Back in the Middle Ages, it was an entirely different story.

There had been Germanic peoples settled in Scandinavia since the time of the Roman Empire.  The Romans never tried to conquer them, but traded them with them for things like walrus tusks and amber. They scraped out a living farming the narrow fields along the fjords and fishing.  In the eighth century, they developed the long ship, that could be either sailed or rowed, and decided it would make excellent sense to go raiding.  ("Viking" is actually a verb.)

Raiders, usually led by an out-of-favor chief or deposed king, attacked villages and monasteries in western Europe, carrying away loot.  The Vikings were terrifying fighters.  Some monks had to flee repeatedly, because Europe's rivers made excellent transportation networks for the shallow long ships.  A common prayer was, "Preserve us from the Vikings and their terrible dogs."  Imagine Great Dane dogs that were fierce rather than friendly and a bit stupid.

The Vikings (who never wore horned helmets, contrary to Hagar the Horrible) also established some trading colonies in western Europe, realizing one could only raid an area once but could make a profit in trade every year.  They also explored to the east, establishing what later became Russia and continuing all the way overland to Constantinople, where the Byzantine emperors hired these tall, powerful fighters as their so-called Varangian guard.

All during the ninth century Vikings attacked England, France, and what are now the Benelux countries.  In England, King Alfred the Great fought back and eventually forced and bribed them to settle only in what was called the Danelaw region of northeastern England, where they gradually intermarried with the locals and adopted Christianity.

In France, King Charles "the Simple" granted them the region now known as Normandy in the early tenth century (it was named for the Norsemen).  Again, they settled down, started speaking Old French, and became Christians--even if always very lively Christians.

Many Norsemen stayed in Scandinavia.  They explored westward, settling in Iceland and Greenland, even briefly reaching the Canadian maritimes.  Iceland was run by an elected assembly.  Around the year 1000 they voted to convert to Christianity.

We still have a number of sagas and legends they wrote down once they became Christian, some of which, like the Saga of the Volsungs or the Poems of the Elder Edda, referred back to their pagan gods and myths.  Most of the sagas, however, were tales of relatively ordinary Icelanders who ended up killing their relatives.  All the sagas were written in Old Norse, which is extremely close to the language still spoken in Iceland (though they have added words for things like TVs and cars of course).

I have written my own epic saga, Voima, available as an ebook from Amazon, http://amzn.com/B004ZGI3Q8, as well as from other e-tailers.  It combines elements of the sagas with elements of the Finnish Kalevala, which, both the Icelanders and the Finns will tell you, are very different.  The Finns are an entirely different ethnic and linguistic group than the other Scandinavians, being close only to Hungarians.  But from an Anglophone perspective, they both look like good traditions from which to borrow.

I've got dragons, long ships, pagan gods, and wars.  It's my version of what Norse legends might be like if they were still being written.

© C. Dale Brittain 2014

Below the Wizards' Tower

For this post, I'm going to promote my new book shamelessly.

It's a novella (short novel), intended both to introduce new readers to my Royal Wizard of Yurt series and to offer something to my long-term fans who keep asking for more stories.  As I've noted before, I'm a fantasy writer as well as a medieval historian.  It's available exclusively as an ebook from Amazon, available here.

The story tells how Daimbert, royal wizard of Yurt, visits the wizards' school in the great City by the sea to see his old teachers.  But something is wrong.  Everywhere he goes, people seem to think he's already been there.  Does he have a doppelgänger?  And when he is attacked, does he have an enemy, or is it a horrible case of mistaken identity?  To make it worse, there are hints that the shadowy figure behind it all may have his sights set on the destruction of institutionalized wizardry.

If you read it and enjoy it, I'd appreciate it if you could leave a review on Amazon, to help future readers.

The following is the first chapter, to whet your appetite.  Enjoy!

I

He was backlit against the ocean, the spray flashing in the late afternoon sun and the salt wind tugging at his clothes.  From a distance, and without detail, there was no way that I could identify him.

And yet he looked oddly familiar.

He gazed out to sea as though deep in thought.  Gulls soared high against the sky, and several heavy-laden ships were heading out with the tide.  Heading for the Far Islands, I thought, with a twinge of nostalgia I did not want.  Once I would have known what was on those ships, but that was before I gave up being a merchant to become a wizard.

After only a moment’s hesitation I hurried on.  It had been a long time since I was last in the great City by the sea, and the man at the shore was doubtless someone I used to know.  It would be embarrassing if he remembered me.

Besides, I was meeting Titus for dinner and I didn’t want to be late—especially as he had said he was buying.

The seafood restaurant was packed, full of conversation and the clink of forks and glasses and the smell of clam chowder.  Titus spotted me and waved me to a tiny table in the corner.

“This place is new since I was last in the City,” I said with a smile, slipping into a chair and shaking out my napkin.  “It seems very popular.”

The master of magical creatures for the wizards’ school smiled back.  “They always make a table available for me.  Good thing—I’m not as elegant as most of the people in here, but I really do get tired of the school cafeteria.”

The elegant townspeople, dressed in bright colors, laughed and gestured with their forks as they ate.  Business must be booming here in the City, I thought.  Back when I was growing up, before I entered the wizards’ school, our wholesale wool business had never produced enough income to afford regular dinners in a place like this.

“Their lobster is very fresh,” said Titus, studying the menu.  “I’ve never tried the crab-stuffed mushrooms, though I hear they’re good.  Did you want to start with oysters?”

It was going to be hard to choose.  I had grown up eating fish most days even if it was usually cod, but the kingdom where I was now Royal Wizard was too far from the coast for seafood.

My contemplation was interrupted.  “Well, hello, stranger!  What’s it been, a year?”

I looked up, startled.  A waitress in a starched black uniform stood by our table, grinning.  Red curls tumbled out from under a little white cap.  “You should have warned me you were back in town!”

“No, excuse me, miss,” I stammered.  “You must have confused me with somebody else.”

She made a sound between a laugh and a snort, green eyes dancing.  “Somebody else, indeed.  Are you on a secret mission, and I’ve just ruined your disguise?  The white beard looks very authentic by the way, though I like you with a brown beard better.”

“My white beard is authentic,” I said, striving for dignity.  It had turned white overnight some years ago, resulting from certain hellish experiences, but I wasn’t going to go into detail.

She turned to Titus.  “If he’s on a secret mission with you, forget I said anything!  I’ll be right back to take your order.”  And she hurried off, still laughing.

“So,” said Titus with interest, “you say you’ve never been here, but you’re already good friends with the prettiest waitress in the place!”

“No!” I protested.  “She really has confused me with someone else.  She must see dozens of people every day—it would be easy to get them mixed up, especially in dim light.”

“That’s right, Daimbert,” he said indulgently and returned to the menu.  “I’m going to start with half a dozen oysters.  How about you?  And I really do want to hear from about those magical creatures of the East.”

The waitress kept a straight face while she took our orders, but as she was leaving she whispered, “Meet me after my shift.  You remember where.”

Titus heard her.  “You don’t want to disappoint a pretty girl like that,” he said, one eyebrow raised.

“It would help,” I said coldly, “if I had ever met her before.”  But then I shook my head and smiled.  “If I tell her I really have no idea what she means, she’ll realize her mistake, and then she’ll be mortified.  Best to say nothing.”

The oysters came, and we drizzled on vinegar.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had had oysters.

But I certainly would have remembered a pretty girl like the waitress.

And why was she so convinced that I was someone she knew?

Titus and I talked while we ate.  Ever since graduation, a good decade ago, I had been quietly irritated that the school masters never seemed able to make up their minds, whether we school-trained wizards were on our own or whether they should keep a close oversight over us.  Most of the time we were on our own—especially, it seemed, when we could have used some help.  But at other times they wanted all the details.  The spires and great tower of the wizards’ school cast their shadow even when I was nowhere near the City.

I had taken a very long trip with my king to the fabled East, during which time the school had not worried about me at all.  But now, six months later, I was summoned down to give an account of all I’d seen, as though the masters had been interested the whole time.

(Well, not really summoned.  Summoning involves tremendously powerful and explicitly forbidden spells.  But called.)

“So you saw an Ifrit,” said Titus with enthusiasm, easing the backbone out of his fish with practiced ease.  “You know, I’ve been up to the northern land of wild magic multiple times, and I’ve seen all sorts of creatures there—even dragons—but I’ve never seen an Ifrit.  Are they as big and powerful as they say?”

“Bigger,” I said, cracking a lobster claw.  “More powerful.  More terrifying.”

Vaguely human in shape, capable of changing reality with a single word, they were creatures who I fervently hoped stayed very far from the Western Kingdoms.

“I’ve read that they’re essentially immortal,” Titus continued, “that they may even have helped shape the earth originally.”

“This one claimed to remember Solomon.  I didn’t quiz him on what else he might remember.  I was too busy trying to stay alive.  The most dangerous part is that they’re really very stupid and don’t like to be reminded of it.”

“Maybe a few of us should organize an expedition to the East,” said Titus thoughtfully, “get a better sense of what Ifriti are really like.  And I’m sure there are other creatures there too that never make it to the West.  We tend to focus on field trips to the north.”

“Ever since I got home to the kingdom of Yurt,” I replied, starting work on the lobster tail, “I’ve been very happy to stay right here in the West.  You can tell me all about your expedition if—I mean when—you get back.”

“I expect it would be too much to hope to be able to capture an Ifrit,” he continued, paying no attention.

“And do what with it?” I said irritably.  “Put it down in the cellars under the school with the other magical creatures and hope it stays captured?”

At this he did pay attention.  “No,” sharp and serious.  “I’m not putting anything more down in the cellars.  And I’m going to try to arrange to move out some of the creatures already there—or at least the less dangerous ones.  How can we teach the students if the creatures are inaccessible?”

I remembered then.  Titus hated tunnels and enclosed spaces.  If he ever managed to capture an Ifrit it would not be down in the cellars with their centuries-old protective spells, but right up in the school.

Fortunately, I tried to persuade myself, he was never going to capture one.  “Well,” I said in mollifying tones, “the spells used by the mages in the East are different from ours, but the creatures there are almost the same.  Desert foxes have very long ears compared to foxes around here, but I wouldn’t call them magical.”

In spite of having unpleasant memories revived, dinner was very enjoyable.  I untied the lobster bib at last with a happy sigh.  The red-haired waitress took Titus’s money without any of the suspicion City merchants always showed to student wizards and their (potentially) illusory coins.  Being a master and a regular must have advantages I had not appreciated in the days of subsisting on a slim student stipend.

“So, shall I see you later?” she asked me quietly, smiling.

I shook my head, ignoring Titus and what was probably supposed to be an encouraging expression.  “I’m sorry, but I think it would be better not.”

“Not even for old time’s sake?”

“Not even for old time’s sake.”

“Still, Marcus, it’s been good to see you.”

Marcus?

Since that was not my name, at least I could dismiss the half-formed thought that I really had known her and yet had somehow, inexplicably, forgotten.  “Good to see you too,” I mumbled.

I watched her as she crossed the crowded room, moving gracefully between the tables, giving other diners friendly nods.  She did not look like the kind of girl one would forget.

“You know, Daimbert,” Titus said dryly as we walked out into the evening, “even though we wizards never marry, we are allowed to look at pretty girls.”

“Of course I know that,” I said crossly.  Evening bells were ringing from the cathedral tower, their note not quite concordant with the bells on the harbor buoys.  The lamplighters had been out, so the streets were mottled with light and shadow, but the wizards’ school was a dark shape looming against the darkening sky.  “But it doesn’t seem fair to her when she thinks I’m someone else.”

And I wasn’t going to mention it, but I was already in love with a woman much more beautiful than the waitress:  the queen of my kingdom of Yurt.  Not that she had ever given me a second thought, having eyes only for her her husband the king.  But hopeless as my love was, it did reduce any interest in other romantic encounters.

As a former student of the school, I had been given a room closer to the masters’ rooms than the pupils’.  From my window I could look out at the harbor far below.  The long evening of late spring was drawing to a close at last.  Lights glowed from windows along the wharf, and the waves flashed phosphorescent.

Who, I wondered, could the waitress have imagined me to be?  I had grown up a City boy, but since entering the wizards’ school twenty years ago, I had mostly associated with magic-workers.  They would never have mistaken me for someone who was not a wizard, so for all I knew this Marcus could have been in town quite a bit without anyone at the school commenting, “That man looks just like Daimbert!”

And because I had visited the City only rarely since becoming Royal Wizard of Yurt, this Marcus, whoever he was, could have won the hearts of a dozen waitresses without any of them confusing me with him.

I tried to dismiss him from my thoughts but felt too restless for bed.  Titus had gone back to his chambers, pleading the need to prepare for tomorrow’s classes.  I went out into the hall and wandered toward the library.  As a student, I had probably not spent nearly as much time there as I should have, but my feet still knew the way.

The library was dim and quiet, lit during the day by tall windows filling one whole wall, but now just by a few magic lamps.  It smelled of paper and old leather.  No one appeared to be studying late.

On three sides of the long room books were shelved from floor to thirty-foot ceiling.  Once student wizards learned to fly, well along in the program, they could fly up to the shelves and find the books they wanted.  Until then, they had to use the tall, creaky ladders.  I had never liked those ladders.

Wide oak tables, some scattered with forgotten notes, were separated by stands holding still more books.  I wove my way between them, back toward the section of the library on magical creatures.

The books on the lower shelves were mostly on dragons.  Not a surprise—as very large and unpredictable creatures, not to mention deadly, they certainly attracted one’s attention.  As I scanned the shelves, I thought that I probably should have paid more attention in school to the accumulated wizardly wisdom on dragons.  I had only ever met one once, a memorable occasion—one never forgets one’s first dragon—and had been remarkably short on wizardly wisdom.

I pulled a few volumes off the shelf and glanced inside, but they mostly seemed descriptive.  If generations of wizards had found a way to master dragons, they were not sharing.

But I wasn’t looking for dragons anyway.  I rose slowly toward the upper shelves, bringing a magic lamp with me.  It looked like someone else was researching magical creatures, for there were several gaps.  Lamp light flickered across books on giants, on wood nymphs, on nixies, on purple flying beasts.  But nothing on Ifriti.

Well, this section focused on the northern land of magic, not the East.  I floated back to the floor and considered.  I wasn’t even sure I wanted to learn any more about Ifriti, having had more than enough up-close contact with one.  Instead, I wanted to learn more about Eastern magic.

Here at the school, studies focused on the spells that the wizards of the Western Kingdoms had developed and refined over the centuries.  But our trip had taken us through the Eastern Kingdoms, where the dark wizard-princes practiced the magic of blood and bone, even before we reached the great cities and empty deserts of the true East, where the mages worked from entirely different principles.

Although, as I had told Titus, the East didn’t have much in the way of different magical creatures—other of course than Ifriti—the magic itself was inherently strange.  I had stumbled my way through it with only the slightest idea of what was going on, but perhaps it was not too late to find out.

Where in the library would I find books on eastern magic?  I couldn’t remember ever seeing such a section.  Once again I wove my way between tables and book stands.  One of the corners of the room seemed more brightly lit than the rest.  I came around a freestanding set of shelves to see, sitting at a table surrounded by open books—Elerius.

End of the first chapter!  For more detail on my books, visit my webpage.

© C. Dale Brittain 2014