Nineteenth Beginning 06: Worldshore

“Lying!  Deceitful! Manipulative!”  Morganzer was warming up for a good, long yell.  She knew from long experience that it was difficult to keep up a good mad in the face of a gathering of aunts’ placid acceptance.  So she screwed her eyes shut and clenched her fists.

“Mean!  Uncaring!  Flatulent!”  The aunts were unimpressed by theology, biology, or scatology, leaving a child raised by them with no ready set of group-designated invective to draw on in times of high emotion.  Although acting while in high emotion was frowned upon, so the fact that Morganzer was yelling while upset had a certain moré-defying satisfaction to it.

“Pus-pocketed!  Gull-squirting! …”

“Poop!  Poop!  Poop!”  a high-pitched, happy voice joined in, putting Morganzer off her stride.

“. . . Nail-splitting . . . uh. . . Spit-dribbling . . . “

“Dung!  Cockerel!  POOOOOOOP!” there was a creak in the voice when it warbled up to its highest notes.

Morganzer clapper her teeth together, clenching her whole body.  Her cheeks burned with embarrassment.  This was just wrong.  Aunts shouldn’t be allowed to be mocking and childish.  It was bad enough that they were stubborn and insufferable patient.

“Pooop!  Poop!   Pooooooooooooop!”  Rhythmic splashing began to accompany the voice.

“Now, Mother, would you like a cookie?”  a calm, more auntish voice asked.  The voice became mumbly and preoccupied.

Morganzer unclenched a bit, but kept her eyes shut.  No one else spoke.  She became aware of a steamy heat.  Even going into summer, heat was a welcome thing this far north.  Putting that together with the splashing and various background clanks and clacks, Morganzer decided she was. . .

“Downside!”

There was no keeping eyes shut, now.  No one went Downside until they were declared adult.  Since she was still only 15, Morganzer assumed that the aunts were bending their own rules.  Information about Downside was gold Topside.  Talking about it would be like talking about visiting Dureyni gods.  No matter how unfair calming down was, Morganzer had to calm down enough to get a good look around.

Her first thought was that she wasn’t sure she liked the aging thing.  There were things that most Topside children knew, or ended up knowing.  Most of it was pieced together from random comments made by aunts or stories from older children.  Not that all the stories could be believed.

Downside.  Morganzer looked around, determined not to meet anyone’s eyes until she had had a good look.  It was only mildly irritating that no one seemed to be taking any note of her.  Because you had to expect that aunts would be annoying.  It was what aunts did.

The room was big for Topside.  Almost as big as the . . . yes, it was almost exactly like the baths.  The baths were brighter, though, at least they were when the doors and windows were open, which was the only time Morganzer ever saw them.  Using her skill at modeling, she mentally measured the room using the oblong barrel tubs as the unit.  The tubs were about one aunt long and the room was a circle about eight tubs across.  Only about half of the torches were lit along the outer wall and those were lit with summer fire, whose flame was bluish and gave off no heat. 

The heat was coming from . . . where?  Morganzer could not make that out.  There were stories of where the heat came from.  The aunts told the nemen that it came from deep in the earth.  There were old pipe works, they said, that had been cut off by a shifting of rock in an earthquake.  There was no way to get down to the pipes any more, but the baths above still worked.  There was a tunnel that small boys were sent down.  The aunts said it was to adjust a few exposed valves, to keep the water hot without building up so much pressure that the old pipes above would blow and need repairs. 

The aunts told the nemen lots of stories, though.  It was difficult enough to trust the stories that the aunts told her age-mates, it was impossible to trust what they told to nemen.  And the boys would never tell.  Or they’d tell so many different stories that you had to just throw them all out.  Boys were a nuisance.  At least they got sent away before they got too big.  Big boys would be as bad as nemen, worse, maybe, because they’d be harder to lie to. 

The nemen thought that aunts immolated themselves when they got too old.  Morganzer had known that the aunts went Downside for years, now.  It was never something that anyone said to you.  You were left to work it out.  It was radush – if you didn’t have enough wit to work it out for yourself, you probably couldn’t be trusted to know it. 

Morganzer approved of fooling the nemen.  She approved of having aunts Downside, where they could spend their time thinking and planning and keeping everyone safe.  And incidentally, not being in a location from which they could directly poke at children.  But she had never thought through the results of aunts getting older Downside.  She was now experiencing a revulsion that she knew was caused by absorbing the story that the aunts told, even though she knew it wasn’t true.  She knew that the aunts fooled the nemen and lived longer lives, but she was repulsed by those longer lives.  Part of her obviously believed that lives like this could not be worth living.  Part of her thought that these women would be better off dead. 

Well, dead would also make them easier to deal with.  It was natural to want someone difficult out of the way.  Morganzer could forgive herself for being repulsed by the aunts.  She told herself that she’d probably get used to them in no time.  It wasn’t her fault that she’d been denied a chance to get used to . . . this kind of thing.

So she was Downside.  She was Downside ahead of time.  They’d probably try to convince her that she shouldn’t talk about it back Topside.  She’d see.  She’d agree, of course.  That was the easiest way, with aunts.  There was no way she’d give them any reason to keep her here.  Warm or not, this place felt wrong.  It was too enclosed.  Something felt pressing.

“Come along to the kitchen,” said one of the old aunts.  She was wearing  a raw muslin tunic and baggy pants, tied just below her knees.  Her bare shins and feet didn’t look too misshapen.

Morganzer followed.  She had questions, but she knew better than to ask them directly.  Food wouldn’t be a bad idea.  Sometimes aunts talked while they watched you eat.

Ninteenth Beginning 05: Worldshore

It had been a frantic five minutes.  Although Satbada had dropped the razor quickly, Lavvi had managed to nick an artery.  They could tell because the blood had come in spurts.  It was a thin enough stream, but it was coming in spurts.  Narnemvar looked at it dumbly as Satbada clamped fingers on it, pressing firmly and calling for healing.  It was spurting.  It wasn’t just dripping.  It was spurting out of his neck!

Satbada called several times, louder and louder, as Narnemvar’s mind chilled enough to realize his friend’s peril and to begin casting.  It was a good thing that the magic was right there.  Shocked as he was, he might have fumbled raising it.  Even the magic felt strange and foreign as he sent it into his friend’s neck.  At least it felt that way until the flow of it took him and he could think of the repairs to be made in the abstract, without any personal meaning or emotional impact. 

He stopped the flow and held the edges of the artery together quickly, but did the fleshknitting slowly and carefully.  The slower he worked, the longer it would be until he had to come out of the magic and know what had happened.  Not that he had decided that openly.  His mind was doing very little openly.  The hole in Postlavanderon’s neck was doing enough open for one day.  Maybe he’d think openly later.  Or not.  No need to decide now.

Satbada watched the not so merry now mage heal his lord.  Postlavanderon leaned back with his eyes shut exactly as he had during the steaming and shave.  It chilled the servant to see his master slowly begin to smile.  Somehow the smile seemed more wrong than the cutting.  There could be reasons for the cutting.  There was no good reason for the smile. 

The hairs on the back of his neck and arms tingled and rose as Postlavanderon began to chuckle.  It was a soft, mildly amused chuckle.  A magician was closing a deadly hole in his neck, a hole he had opened himself, and he was laughing. 

Satbada began to put the shaving things away.  He cleaned everything thoroughly and completely.  When he was finished, he began to stow the rest of his master’s gear. 

“Did you see his face?  I finally shocked him.”  Postlavanderon continued his chuckle around his words. 

“I would hardly think that the effort matched the reward, sir.”

“You were shocked too.  You should have seen your face.”  Narnemvar’s hands still hovered over the slowly closing red gap in his friend’s neck.  “He’s been trying to shock you properly for years and I’m the one who finally managed it.”

“Perhaps a reassessment of the purpose of this little traveling jaunt is in order, sir.  It seems not to be affording you as much amusement as you require.”

The glow around Narnemvar’s hands faded, which left him looking into his friends laughing face as the magic left him.

“You should have seen your faces, both of you.”  The chortles seemed to float in the air around the mage, disconnected.  “I win.”

Nineteenth Beginning 04: Worldshore

Morganzer didn’t like standing in the cremation pit.  The tales and tellings of the aunts had always provided a solid view of life and death and the way to deal with things.  Morganzer was accustomed to railing against the ways of the aunts.  She did it inside more often than out, but did it outside often enough to think of herself as someone established as opposing the over-settledness of the aunt’s ways.  It was unsettling to discover that, although she wanted to change some things, mostly she had accepted the aunt’s views without question, like a child emptied a cup of milk handed to her, taking it in unexamined.

The unsettling revelation was a small part of her thoughts and feelings, though.  A bigger part was embarrassment.   The embarrassment was at the amount of fear she was feeling.

Death was an accepted thing.  No one ever made a fuss over it.  It wasn’t worth fussing about.  You got to the point where you couldn’t climb the rocks any more or some other thing that you judged meant it was your time, and you went down to the pit.  You sat out the day while people went about their chores.  They noticed you, though, and passed the word.  At dusk, they’d come and circle the pit and watch while you called to the magic in the central stone disc.  You’d say something poetic first, of course.  Something to show that you appreciated the life you had had and to show that you were ready to die.  Then you’d call and the fire would come in one big, resounding hooom!  The center of the disc would show fire the rest of the night, but the cleansing fire only lasted a few minutes.

Morganzer had watched maybe a dozen aunts go to the fire over her childhood.  She had patterned her attitude to that of the others around her.  She had never considered the possibility of acting or reacting another way. 

Now her feet were pressing against the pit’s central disc and her stomach was bucking and shying in the center of her.  She was afraid.  How did you lay down on this stone and call the fire?  The fear embarrassed her and made her angry.

Anger is not a primary emotion, the aunts say.  It is only secondary.  Secondary or not, Morganzer was practiced at it.

“So why are we here?”

“Because the stone is magic.”

“You said teleportation, not fire.”

“The stone holds two spells.  Teleportation and fire.  Fire is the secondary spell.  You already know the incantation for the teleportation spell.  I’ve seen you use it.”  Lillibell pressed a mittened hand into one of her heavy coats pockets and carefully extracted a small disc.

“That’s a skip-stone!”  Morganzer’s voice was almost scornful.

“Yep, and there’s an incantation to pop it about.  You used to play fairly well, if I remember correctly.”

“Popstone is for babies.”

“For children, at least.  You have to shift the incantation a bit, of course.  We couldn’t give children the whole spell or sure as the tides rise, one of them would eventually play popstone on the disc and there’s be demon-lords to pay.”

Morganzer didn’t comment immediately and Lillibell let the pause extend.

“So how is the canta changed?”

“Shift the G sounds to J, the N sounds to M, and add a K after every L.  You probably ought to practice a bit, but you probably know your own ways best.”

That was one of the things that Morganzer liked about Aunt Lillibell.  She never ordered, only suggested.  Her stupid brother said it was sneaky, but Morganzer was pretty sure that it was just the way the older woman was.  She walked out of the pit to practice the spell, in pieces, allowing the magic to bleed off between the fragments of spell.

“You can go tell them that we saw the ship while I practice.”

“No need.  They saw us come down and we didn’t go tell anyone that something unexpected had happened.  So they know that it happened exactly as Seen.”

Morganzer made a rude noise.  She didn’t know which was worse.  The way that aunts were tricky or the way that they were smug.

“I think I have it.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it takes another incantation entirely to call the fire.  You can’t call it by getting this canta wrong.”

“How can I take that the wrong way.”

“By relaxing too much.  You can still mess up the spell enough to hurt or kill yourself.  I don’t think you will, but taking care is a very good habit no matter what spell you’re using.”

“I’ll be careful.  I’m surprised that you’re not taking me through once to let me get used to it.  That’s how aunts usually teach.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.  I never was much good at anything beyond scrying and the teleporting went years ago.  The only thing I could do in this pit would be to die, and that would be a shame.”

Morganzer looked a question at Lillibell.  It was a question she couldn’t tease into words, and Lillibell declined to answer it, unvoiced.

“You’d better get on.  They’re expecting you.”

More curiosity.  And obviously only one way to satisfy it.  Morganzer settled her focus and began the spell.  Magic washed over her fear, obscuring it.  A hollow ringing filled her ears as the sound of her voice muffled until she couldn’t hear it at all.  But the spell felt like the popstone spell and she was very good with that one.  She concentrated on breathing regularly and shaping her mouth properly, remembering the feel of her mouth working the other spell.

Popstone was very competitive.  You had shape it with full awareness while watching three opponents doing the same thing.  A little thing like no sound wasn’t going to trip her up.  Not when she was alone and could take all the time she needed. 

As the spell tripped, she looked up to see Lillibell smile and nod.  One aunt, at least, was not surprised to see her stretch beyond the usual slow teaching and succeed. 

The world folded itself into Morganzer’s belly, rotated slightly, and unfolded itself again.  She was standing in shadow on a stone disc.  The room she was standing in was round and made of stone.  There were lights all along the walls, but the room was big enough that the center was still shadowed.

Her eyes adjusted.  There were dozens of aunts around the room.  Most of them were older than any human Morganzer had ever seen.  Many couldn’t move without help.  There was a steamy heat to the air.  Suddenly Morganzer recognized the shapes around the edge of the room as baths.  She knew where she was.  She knew how she’d been tricked.  She began to swear.

“Damn all filthy, lying aunts!” she screamed, to begin.  Then she got creative.

Nineteenth Beginning: Map of the Worldshore

I'm trying to remember whether I made this map before NaNoWriMo 2005, or after and I just can't.      What I can remember is that 2005 was the year that I got the closest thing to a novel out of National Novel Writing Month.      I also got very behind at work and with housecleaning, proving that you can't have everything, at least not all at once.       Plotwise, there is a prophecy (details unknown) and a clan of hereditary seers.  They are traveling south from the very north of the Worldshore.  There is a merry mage, and entourage, traveling north from the very south.  Since the length of the Worldshore is finite, they will meet in the middle, somewhere, if they keep going.

There is an invasion coming from the continent, around the north.  They are not the main problem, although they will be one difficulty keeping our groups from dealing with the problem.

The map was modified from a map of North America.  I'm not sure, yet, if it's supposed to be the entire continent, or just as much of the continent as anyone from the Worldshore knows about. 

Nineteenth Beginning 03: Worldshore

Morganzer didn’t like standing in the cremation pit.  The tales and tellings of the aunts had always provided a solid view of life and death and the way to deal with things.  Morganzer was accustomed to railing against the ways of the aunts.  She did it inside more often than out, but did it outside often enough to think of herself as someone established as opposing the over-settledness of the aunt’s ways.  It was unsettling to discover that, although she wanted to change some things, mostly she had accepted the aunt’s views without question, like a child emptied a cup of milk handed to her, taking it in unexamined.

The unsettling revelation was a small part of her thoughts and feelings, though.  A bigger part was embarrassment.   The embarrassment was at the amount of fear she was feeling.

Death was an accepted thing.  No one ever made a fuss over it.  It wasn’t worth fussing about.  You got to the point where you couldn’t climb the rocks any more or some other thing that you judged meant it was your time, and you went down to the pit.  You sat out the day while people went about their chores.  They noticed you, though, and passed the word.  At dusk, they’d come and circle the pit and watch while you called to the magic in the central stone disc.  You’d say something poetic first, of course.  Something to show that you appreciated the life you had had and to show that you were ready to die.  Then you’d call and the fire would come in one big, resounding hooom!  The center of the disc would show fire the rest of the night, but the cleansing fire only lasted a few minutes.

Morganzer had watched maybe a dozen aunts go to the fire over her childhood.  She had patterned her attitude to that of the others around her.  She had never considered the possibility of acting or reacting another way. 

Now her feet were pressing against the pit’s central disc and her stomach was bucking and shying in the center of her.  She was afraid.  How did you lay down on this stone and call the fire?  The fear embarrassed her and made her angry.

Anger is not a primary emotion, the aunts say.  It is only secondary.  Secondary or not, Morganzer was practiced at it.

“So why are we here?”

“Because the stone is magic.”

“You said teleportation, not fire.”

“The stone holds two spells.  Teleportation and fire.  Fire is the secondary spell.  You already know the incantation for the teleportation spell.  I’ve seen you use it.”  Lillibell pressed a mittened hand into one of her heavy coats pockets and carefully extracted a small disc.

“That’s a skip-stone!”  Morganzer’s voice was almost scornful.

“Yep, and there’s an incantation to pop it about.  You used to play fairly well, if I remember correctly.”

“Popstone is for babies.”

“For children, at least.  You have to shift the incantation a bit, of course.  We couldn’t give children the whole spell or sure as the tides rise, one of them would eventually play popstone on the disc and there’s be demon-lords to pay.”

Morganzer didn’t comment immediately and Lillibell let the pause extend.

“So how is the canta changed?”

“Shift the G sounds to J, the N sounds to M, and add a K after every L.  You probably ought to practice a bit, but you probably know your own ways best.”

That was one of the things that Morganzer liked about Aunt Lillibell.  She never ordered, only suggested.  Her stupid brother said it was sneaky, but Morganzer was pretty sure that it was just the way the older woman was.  She walked out of the pit to practice the spell, in pieces, allowing the magic to bleed off between the fragments of spell.

“You can go tell them that we saw the ship while I practice.”

“No need.  They saw us come down and we didn’t go tell anyone that something unexpected had happened.  So they know that it happened exactly as Seen.”

Morganzer made a rude noise.  She didn’t know which was worse.  The way that aunts were tricky or the way that they were smug.

“I think I have it.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it takes another incantation entirely to call the fire.  You can’t call it by getting this canta wrong.”

“How can I take that the wrong way.”

“By relaxing too much.  You can still mess up the spell enough to hurt or kill yourself.  I don’t think you will, but taking care is a very good habit no matter what spell you’re using.”

“I’ll be careful.  I’m surprised that you’re not taking me through once to let me get used to it.  That’s how aunts usually teach.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.  I never was much good at anything beyond scrying and the teleporting went years ago.  The only thing I could do in this pit would be to die, and that would be a shame.”

Morganzer looked a question at Lillibell.  It was a question she couldn’t tease into words, and Lillibell declined to answer it, unvoiced.

“You’d better get on.  They’re expecting you.”

More curiosity.  And obviously only one way to satisfy it.  Morganzer settled her focus and began the spell.  Magic washed over her fear, obscuring it.  A hollow ringing filled her ears as the sound of her voice muffled until she couldn’t hear it at all.  But the spell felt like the popstone spell and she was very good with that one.  She concentrated on breathing regularly and shaping her mouth properly, remembering the feel of her mouth working the other spell.

Popstone was very competitive.  You had shape it with full awareness while watching three opponents doing the same thing.  A little thing like no sound wasn’t going to trip her up.  Not when she was alone and could take all the time she needed. 

As the spell tripped, she looked up to see Lillibell smile and nod.  One aunt, at least, was not surprised to see her stretch beyond the usual slow teaching and succeed. 

The world folded itself into Morganzer’s belly, rotated slightly, and unfolded itself again.  She was standing in shadow on a stone disc.  The room she was standing in was round and made of stone.  There were lights all along the walls, but the room was big enough that the center was still shadowed.

Her eyes adjusted.  There were dozens of aunts around the room.  Most of them were older than any human Morganzer had ever seen.  Many couldn’t move without help.  There was a steamy heat to the air.  Suddenly Morganzer recognized the shapes around the edge of the room as baths.  She knew where she was.  She knew how she’d been tricked.  She began to swear.

“Damn all filthy, lying aunts!” she screamed, to begin.  Then she got creative.

Nineteenth Beginning 02: Worldshore

“Ah, the southern shores are the best, my friend.  Warm and friendly and close enough to the continent to have all manner of exotic goods.”

Narnemvar gestured expansively toward the rest of the hut, as if it were a grand and mysterious inn, rather than a poky little dump where one family offloaded mikla too sour to sell in any town.  At least too sour to sell in any self-respecting town.  He was lying in a braided hammock, which was the only comfortable seat in the place.  His friend, Postlavanderon, often called Lavvi, was slumped on the floor, feeling queasy.  His friend’s servant was outside, having refused to sully the soles of his shoes with the dirt of this particular hut.

Three grubby children followed by two plumping piglets swarmed in from one side of the hut and began to pester their dozing mother for food.  She swatted at them all, indiscriminately, until they exited out the other side. 

“Ah, a hut with many doors.  A marvellous thing.”  Narnemvar wasn’t drunk, although many might mistake him for being so.  He liked to think of himself as expansive and jovial.  Oh, and sprightly, young, and fun-loving.  The young part was receding a bit farther than he suspected, though.

He wasn’t at slim as he used to be, for one thing.  And though he still wandered the worldshore without care or burden, he was beginning to wander it with a series of friends further and further from his own age.

Postlavanderon, for instance had older brothers who had once wandered with the Merry Mage.  They were all members of minor nobility – absolute rulers of a small, southern island.  One by one they had all settled down and gotten on with adulthood.  Narnemvar pitied them.  Not for getting married or for siring children.  Not exactly, anyway.  It just seemed that their ability to pun and carouse had diminished as they aged into their settled lives.

Most people thought of drinking when they thought of carousing.  Narnemvar didn’t.  He rarely drank and tended to stay sober even when he did, if sober was a word that could be applied to him.  Carousing was acting up.  Acting out.  Teasing the world until it stopped plodding on in its rut and danced a little.  Or threw rocks.  Something, at least.

When he had turned 35, Narnemvar had started getting white streaks in his beard.  He had shaved it off.  Once.  Then he had decided that streaky beards were droll.  He grew the beard back and added a few.  You never knew how many there would be, or what color.  No one ever knew that Narnemvar hadn’t liked the look of the shaven face that looked back at him from mirrors, when the beard wasn’t there.

A small cat began to play with the ribbons that hung from his sleeves.  He encouraged it, humming happily.  Postlavanderon lurched to his feet and staggered out of the hut.  The Merry Mage quieted, wondering if his friend was ill.  He decanted himself from the hammock and followed him out, readying himself to offer any healing or purging that his friend might need.

Out on the sand, a small table had been lashed together out of driftwood and twine.  On the table were the toilet articles with which a proper noble would begin his day.  On the other side of it, an improper noble was relieving himself against a rock.  The servant stood at attention near the table, in proper inattention at his master’s actions. 

Narnemvar laughed.  “Shortbread, how do you manage to do it?  This is wonderful!”

“Do you have any mint water?” Postlavanderon asked.

“No, sir.  Only the ginger and the lavender.”

“The ginger, then, I think.”

“Yes, sir.”  And only a small amount of rummaging in their bags produced a bottle and glass.  The glass was thick and clear, an object of obvious worth in a world whose hand-blown glasses tended to the slightly muddled, bubbled, and distorted.

Postlavanderon seated himself on the rock, carefully avoiding the wet side.  His servant, actually named Satbada, handed him the beverage and ignored him as he gargled and swished it through his teeth.  He was busy popping a towel into a pot that was sitting on some nearby coals.

“Oh, I do have to watch this, Lavvi.  This is high comedy.” Narnemvar wound himself down into a cross-legged sit, wind-milling his arms, fanning his long coat, and grinning hugely as he circled in descent.  Postlavanderon crossed his fingertips and pressed them to his stomach, leaning back and tilting his head slightly.  Satbada wrung out the hot towel on two sticks as precisely as a court juggler and wrapped it neatly around and over his master’s face.  A tiny air hole was positioned exactly over Lavvi’s now-hidden nose.  Time passed.

In the passing time Satbada stood at attention at his master’s side, ignoring his master’s improper companion as diligently as he ignored his master’s own improprieties.  Narnemvar grinned and held out his arms, basking in the incongruence of such courtly behavior in such uncourtly circumstances.  He also basked in the glow of the magic he had drawn up, but did not now seem to need.  He would hold it, as an exercise, letting it dribble away as slowly as possible, in such small amounts that it could be persuaded to do nothing noticeable.

Perhaps.

Or, perhaps he would think of something amusing to do with it.  You never knew.

The children and the pigs could be heard sporting somewhere unseen as Satbada judged the moment right and began to concoct perfect lather out of an ermine shaving brush, imported shaving soap, and a cracked coconut.  Gulls cried and the morning sea breeze caressed by as he removed the cooling towel and began to apply the scented foam.

Postlavanderon held his leaning pose, moving not at all.  Silent.  Narnemvar hummed, satisfied with the world, holding the magic with no effort at all.  It amazed him, sometimes, what a groaning mess most people made of magic.  Ah, well.  Life was good if you didn’t chew at it too rabidly.  For instance, his friend and he had wandered into this otherwise miserable little hamlet, but because they had no great need for it to be anything other that what it was, they could enjoy it and enjoy themselves and wander on when the mood shifted.

Satbada shaved the young man he never, ever thought of as Lavvi.  He kept his back as much as possible to that other person.  It was a pity that Cadet Postlavanderon had not yet tired of this wearisome flaunter, as his brothers had, but it would happen soon.  Soon they would be back in civilized lodgings and behaving with proper manners.  The hated tag of Shortbread would be forgotten.

Satbada’s hands were quick and sure.

“Do you know, you make exactly the same moves every time?”

Satbada ignored.  Postlavanderon remained silent, head back, eyes closed.

“It’s like you don’t to many shaves, just the same shave again and again.”

Perhaps it was that the title Cadet was too likely to be a lifelong one.  The ruler of a southern island, of any size, was a Hroon.  The first and second sons (daughter’s, too, on some islands) were the Haran and the Hareen.  Subsequent sons were Cadet, an off-island term.  And Cadet Postlavanderon had enough older brothers to know that it would take quite a disaster for him to get anything like official influence. 

“You do the same thing with cookies, you know.  The same eating routine over and over.  Raise cookie.  Position cookie against tongue.  Position teeth against cookie.  Press through.  Remove cookie.  Eight chews and a swallow. . . “

Satbada ignored.  It was taking a little more effort now, though.

“. . . Sip beverage daintily.  Lower beverage.  Position cookie nearly against tongue.  Rotate cookie counter-clockwise to align the next bite.  Position teeth. . .it’s the same cookie again and again.  Sometimes I wonder if you do it so that you don’t have to excrete it.”

Postlavanderon allowed his head to raise as Satbada finished the last bit on his chin and began clearing short hairs from the hairline on his forehead.  With an almost sleepy movement he reached up and wiped a bit of moistness on Satbada’s sleeve.  Satbada ignored.  He had to stop and allow himself to sag unresisting in order to ignore.  Stiffness would imply disapproval.  It wasn’t his place to disapprove.

Postlavanderon’s cheek wiped against his sleeve.  Then the cheek shifted and his master’s hand held his as his cheek rubbed against his wrist, like a cat or a toddler wanting attention.  More ignoring, no resistance.  Postlavanderon shifted and drew the shaving knife across his throat.

It was a good thing that Satbada was quick.  It was also good that Narnemvar still had his magic ready.

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Twentieth Beginning: PETITION TO THE MUSE

WHEREAS, the muse is known by all to be the wellspring of good life, bringing prosperity, joy, and friendship; and

WHEREAS, a petition to the muse, according to established formulas, is an indication that a writer is working within proper literary tradition; and

WHEREAS, the voice of the muse is treasured by writers for the inspiration, aid, and encouragement that it brings; and

WHEREAS, the muse may evoke memory, parting the years to expose access to long hidden events, and may also discern truth from lies; and

WHEREAS, the muse may use a willing writer to shape the past so that it might flow to form the future; and

WHEREAS, the undersigned is willing to sacrifice sleep and all other striving in order to offer service to the muse and is willing to be guided by her weakest whisper;

THEREFORE, be it resolved that I, the undersigned, do PETITION THE MUSE for inspiration and guidance in my scheduled writing project, offering to be tossed upon the rivers of her reverie, offering to be wracked with rapture and woe, offering to sit upon her tripod and bend all possible skill to the coming tale, though the tempest of her inspiration should batter my ribs, chap my cheeks, and cool all other enthusiasms in my heart and brain.

BE IT ALSO RESOLVED that the resulting work shall be sealed in honor of she from whom its inspiration flowed, that its worth, which she has summoned, shall linger to illuminate her lustrous dignity going forward. 

Signed on the _______ of ______________________

at _________________________________________________

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