Paksworld

Too many days without sunlight and my brain starts daydreaming about sleeping the clock around and waking to a sunny morning.  Kicking it out of bed is necessary, even when it tells me the balance mechanism is sub-par.  We had several days of heavy cloud with occasional thunder “somewhere” and not much actual water from the sky.  Finally however we got an inch over about 18 hours, including in a last 15 minute thunder on the roof at 1 am Saturday morning (it wasn’t the rain but a big BOOM!! overhead that woke me.)

No sun, though.  Easter Eve is a traditional time for Hispanic families in Texas to have big “end of Lent” parties, and our neighbors did.  You can tell when the pinata goes up by the squeals of the younger children and the “thwack-thwack” of whatever stick they’re hitting it with.  [drat this touchpad.  I just deleted the rest of that paragraph, with the incident of soccer ball recovery…grr.)

Skipping ahead.  Plot bomb burst in my head this morning and there’s a little over 2000 words of something new.  You may remember that in Limits of Power, Stammel dies delaying some pirates coming to the village where he’s been living.   After that, when the people return from the caves where they hid, they decide to honor him by naming children in his memory:  Matthis for the boys and Paksen for the girls (they’re not literate and never got Paks’s full name because he talked a little about having trained Paks in Fox Company.  Stammel stayed with Cadlin in that vill, so Cadlin’s next children carry Stammel’s family name as well:  Matthis Stammel and Paksen Stammel.  Everyone else names them as usual with the parent’s name: Matthis Volson, Telson, Rortson, etc and Paksen Voldotir, Rortdotir, Arndotir, etc.  This so Stammel’s name never dies out.

The children grow up knowing why they carry these unusual (for that region) names, and they…get ideas.  To live up to Stammel’s memory, shouldn’t they figure out a way to protect not just their village but the whole island?  Grownups tell them it’s impossible.  But…Matthis and Paksen Stammel are now (where I’m writing) meeting with Meddthal Andressat in the South Marches headquarters…and there’s this younger Lord Marrakai there, too.  They have a Fox Company ring…I know (I looked it up and sure enough) that Dragon took Stammel’s ring up to the Duke’s Stronghold with Stammel’s body.  But nobody would say Dragon couldn’t reproduce a copy for the village, esp. given that Dragon will certainly hear about the decision to name a boy and a girl in each family for Stammel and Paksen.  And the vill does not know Dragon took the ring to give Arcolin, so they don’t wonder when Cadlin finds it on the beam in his workshop where the sack of crossbow bolts hung.

The young folk now have a net of acquaintances between the vills–not just with the next one over but all the way around.  They’ve chosen lookout points to watch for pirates.   Pirates have come back several times, but now more vills empty ahead of invasion.  The adults are beginning to realize something might be done, though none of them have clue of what, or how, or where to find the resources.  Pirates being pirates, they decide to let that island alone for awhile to recover some stuff worth stealing and be less watchful.  Meanwhile Matthis and Paksen Stammel  travel to the mainland in one of the fishing boats to find someone who knows where Fox soldiers are.  Hence they’re in Cha…and meet someone who met Stammel (back in Siniava’s War and later) and someone who knew Paksenarrion when he was a boy in the far north (which these young people have never heard of.   That there is a mainland…but they imagine it as a really big island.)

But certainly word will go quickly to Fox Company that people who knew Stammel on this island have come to Cha…and from there to the north, to Arcolin. The right music for some of the writing is Elgar’s Engima Variations, esp. the Nimrod section.  (Earlier part went fine to Chopin Nocturnes.)

Oh, you want a snippet?   But of course.  Except they may get cluttered up with Word Sekrit Decoder Stuff.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….(And yes the Enigma Variations “Nimrod” fits this particular passage.  Esp. toward the end where the soldier realizes…this is a story he’s heard before, years ago.

The two stood looking for a long moment, then walked forward.  Without actually looking at them, the two soldiers blocked their way to the door with the crossed staves of their weapons.  “Halt,” said one, and “State your business,” said the other.

“We need to see the Andressat lord,” said Paksen.

“Who are you?  Where from?”

“I’m Paksen Stammel.  From the island out there in the big ocean.”

“Which island?”

She had no idea how to tell him.  The island was just ‘the island’ or ‘our island’ to the islanders.   “It’s where we live; I don’t know what other people call it.”

The soldiers looked at each other.  The one to her heart side tapped the haft of his weapon on the stone step three times.  “Wait,” he said.  “Someone will come.  Not the lord, someone who will know what to do with you.  Do you have a letter or a word from someone Andressat might know?”

“We have his-someone’s ring.”

“You will need to show it.”

Matthis pulled it out of his shirt on its thong, just as another man in a long robe of yellow edged with white came to the door.  “What’s going on?” he asked the soldiers.

“These two.  Fisherfolk, I suspect, from an island.  Say they want to see the Andressat lord and that one’s got a ring.”

“An island…plenty of islands…name?”

Paksen shook her head.  “We don’t know what other people call it,” she said again.  “It’s just our island to us.  Matthis and me aren’t fisherfolk; we live up the mountain.”

“Name?” the man asked.

“Paksen Stammel,” she said.

He blinked.  “Stammel. That’s not an island name…your father?”

“No, Blind Stammel,” Matthis said.  “He lived on our island a short time and saved us—well, the olders, we hadn’t been born yet—from pirates.  He said he was a soldier somewhere else.”

“Sergeant,” the man in the robe said to one of the soldiers.  “Could that be–?”

“Let me see that ring, young man,” the soldier said.  “And your name?”

“Matthis Stammel.”  He took the thong off over his head and handed the ring to the soldier, who looked, and took in a sudden breath.

“By the Dragon, it is!  Fox Company ring.  Must be three hands of years at least since he was blinded, more like four.  I was up in Valdaire when I’d heard the rumor and then saw him riding past with the Duke.” The soldier looked hard at Matthis.  “And you’re named for him?  But not his body-son?”

“No.  Cadlin’s my father.  Blind Stammel lived in our house on the island.  That’s why my sister and I have his last name.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

A snippet from an exciting moment.   Location: Marrakai estate west of Vérella.   POV character: Juris Marrakai who has ridden from the city after receiving a courier message that the estate had been attacked but everyone was OK.  He has an escort of Royal Guard just in case–luckily since the second attack is going on when he arrives.

…………………………………………………………..

He hadn’t jumped a fence in armor for several years, had forgotten the extra heave the horse gave, and the way the armor put him in a different balance.  He landed harder than he meant to; the horse grunted, but then caught its stride and ran on to intercept the enemy riders.  The momentary slowdown saved him from the bolt that whizzed across in front of him; the group he ran at scattered, losing its cohesion.

A high yodel from behind–a family signal–and pounding hooves–must be Gwenno–but he dared not turn to see.  He yelled, not the family call but a roar of rage to distract the man starting to turn to shoot at Gwenno and aimed his horse at that one. Beneath him, his mount let out a stallion scream; the man’s horse panicked and charged off at an angle, bucking; the man couldn’t stay on and fell hard, bouncing twice before lying still. Juris glanced around.

Yes, this afternoon I reached 150,000 words-and-a-bit, which is the “about right” length for a Paksworld book.   Was so gleeful I made a batch of fudge brownies (forgetting that with a temporary crown on one tooth, fudge is not the best idea…)  Celebration time.  We had fried chicken for supper,  brownie with ice cream to follow.  It’s not all done…one major component needs to be written, and a dull boring blob of a beginning needs to be ripped off and replaced with a crisp, sparkling, start, but…it’ll be a much easier balancing act with 150,000 *mostly* right words keeping it on track and zipping along.

Today’s snippet is also posted in the elizabethmoon.com blog, so you needn’t look there for extras today.

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By dark, he had achieved, he thought, the ugliest point ever put on the end of a pole, but it would hurt if it hit you right, and it didn’t fall off or break when he jabbed at a tree section with it.

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This is Aris, the not yet qualified blacksmith, king’s friend, duke’s third son, horse trainer, and former squire to Duke Arcolin until a series of unfortunate events sent him….well, you’ll have to find out in the book itself.

Words, that is.   I hit one hundred thousand words on the new Paksworld book just after 1 am yesterday morning.   Celebratory snippets follow (not the same snippets as in the Universes blog on the main site, BTW.)

1) Camwyn, who has forgotten his past before the injuries that required healing by Dragon, has a great deal more to learn about the world.

Camwyn rode back to the city thinking about what she’d said.  Dragon had said nothing about a Company of Camwyn, about “dragonkin,” but M’dierra did not feel like a liar.  He wished he knew exactly what she meant, who they were, what their rules were.  Paks and his other tutors had taught him about beliefs, about familiar heroes: Gird, Falk, Torre.  They had not mentioned a Camwyn, though if Dragon’s name was also Camwyn…but Dragon had said his name, his real name, was too long for humans to say and known only to the high gods.  “In my disguise as a man,” Dragon had said, “I use Sir Camwyn, but very seldom.”  He’d liked it–liked it now, in fact–that the name Dragon had given him was kin to that name.

2) Aris Marrakai, meeting a Royal Courier from Tsaia on the bridle path of the Guild League Road between Foss and Ifoss.  The courier asked Aris if he was the third son of Duke Marrakai, for whom he was carrying a message from the king, as well as messages to Duke Arcolin.

“Yes,” Aris said, immediately thinking of his father. Had he died, then?  “Your horse won’t make it to Ifoss faster than a walk, in this heat.  I can ride faster and have a mount sent back for you.”

“No!  You give me your horse! ”  The courier sneered at him, rage and contempt in every line of his face, his voice loud.  “Of course it’s hot! It’s the summer, it’s the gods-blasted South!  But the king expects his couriers to travel at a gallop.   I have the king’s authority to requisition horses from any Tsaian.   Hurry up and get off.  You can pamper this lazy nag all the way to Ifoss at a creeping walk if you want to.   I don’t have the time.” From the corner of his eye, Aris saw heads turn on the Guild League road itself.

“This isn’t my horse to lend,” Aris said, keeping his voice level with an effort.  “It’s Duke Arcolin’s, one of his own chargers. There may be one on the road over there you could hire.  Some caravans–”

“I don’t care whose horse it is! I order you, in the King’s name!  Get off that horse and give it to me!”

3) Gwennothlin Marrakai, now a member of the Bells and just resigned from service in the Royal Guard because of her father’s ill health (and her own boredom), demonstrates her investigative talent faced with the reluctance of the king and her own older brother to tell her why Juris’s marriage may be delayed and what is really going on.

“Thank you,” Gwenno said.  “Now that you are no longer my commander, but still are my liege, and in consideration of the family emergency I mentioned which has to do with–very likely–the succession to duke of my brother here, and thus the status of everyone in the family, I ask you to tell me truly what you and Juris are talking about.  I am quite capable of keeping secrets, as Juris knows from the secrets I kept for him.  I’m sure he remembers.”

Juris flushed a deep red.  “Gwenno!”

Keep in mind that all these are in first-draft status, which means that the wording of incidents, as well as incidents themselves, could–and likely will–change a little by the time the book’s finished and the revisions are done.  But all three of these (and the incidents in the snippets on http://elizabethmoon.com/blog/ should be in the final book in some form.  I think.

When the storm passed, they rode on, over the melting lumps of ice and the wet grass.  Oktar’s sheepskin, sodden with rain, hung over his horse’s rump; he walked, leading his mount, his bare feet so cold from the ice he could not feel the bruises.  His grandfather rode ahead, not speaking to him, but muttering continually to the horses, who bobbed their heads as if they understood.

Home was too far behind to imagine, that cold night.  Read the rest of this entry »

When he had the flasks full; Oktar splashed back to hand them up.  His feet were bruised by rocks, aching from cold.  His grandfather looked down at him.  “Drink one swallow.  Then give flask. Catch your horse.”

Read the rest of this entry »

As light revealed the land around them, Oktar knew they were north of the town, riding north, winterwards as the horsefolk said, and the reason he hadn’t been able to feel the rein was that he had none–his grandfather held Oktar’s horse’s rein as well as his own in his one good hand.  The horses moved at a brisk walk, ears forward, alongside a stone wall with sheep on the other side of it.  Oktar turned to look behind.  Nothing of the town showed but a blur of smoke in the distance.  Read the rest of this entry »

“Again?” Oktar’s mother glared at him. “Bloody nose, black eye, shirt torn, a complaint from the judicar–you’re a disgrace!”

“They said we were dirty stinking horse–” he paused; the word they’d used was forbidden. “–droppings,” he finished.

“You should ignore them,” his mother said. “They are ill-bred; you should not dirty your hands with them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Though it’s tempting, in the current state of the world, to follow that up immediately with “As if…” actually I do always hope that tomorrow, next week, next month, and a New Year will see changes for the better.   And sometimes it happens.  Sometimes there’s a breakthrough, not only in science or technology, but in the hearts of individuals…and then those individuals’ internal breakthroughs propagate through those near them.  Not always, but sometimes.

What I hope for all of you reading this, in the coming year, are those inner changes that bring you closer to the person you were meant to be: a person with agency, a person with dreams and goals so exciting that you break through whatever has held you back (if anything has; some of you are full steam ahead already.)   I hope for all of you an environment that enables your growth.  Friends that care for you, and you for them.  Health, physical and mental, and health care for those times when health needs help.   Mentors, and mentees (if that’s the word): people who help you expand your lives and people who need your help to expand theirs.  Beauty, whatever beauty is to you–a view, a particular mug, a flower, a color that lifts your heart whenever you see it–indoors, outdoors, everywhere.   Enough of what you need, whatever that is.   More than enough, of love.

I am grateful for you, for others, for the natural world, for the cultures that lie behind us.  This world, this–as one of our prayers says–“our fragile island home.”

Let 2016 begin on the stroke of midnight in whatever time zone you’re in…but a new year begins every day.   May it be a good year for you. Read the rest of this entry »

NewBook is now over the hump in rough draft, having crossed the 60,000 word midpoint for this book.   Its first 40,000 words or so have been reworked to improve characterization (which will lead to smoother progress later on. )   It’s unusual for me to have the mid-book slow-down due to characterization problems, but so it was this time.  I expect another slow-down period transitioning over the 2/3 to 3/4 finished problem area, but–if I fixed the characterization problems–that one will be plot related and usually means a mistake made between now and then.

Read the rest of this entry »