The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 12

FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

I had met Ceann back before I assumed captaincy of the Fyana.  For years, that day I laid eyes on her had seemed like one of the the pivotal moments of my life.  Now, looking back, I was no longer sure what, exactly, that day had meant.

Ceann's despondency had cast my every assumption about the two of us into doubt.  It actually made me ask myself  if she had ever loved me, or even whether I really loved her.  Why should that be?  Our years together seemed to have lacked nothing, but had something actually been missing?  Why had she turned away from me in her sorrow, instead of toward me, as I would have wished her to do?  I did not know. 

That troubling conversation made me think.  What did I still feel about Ceann, really?  I loved being with her.  But was this, the thing I felt, the love of lovers? 

I knew -- or rather sensed in my gut -- that what we still had wasn't the all-consuming passion that poetry likes to build its air castles around.   Somewhere along the road, we two had started to treat one another as dear friends, not soul mates.  The realization of this had only slowly crept in.  It had come upon us subtly, like a mouse moving inside a wall.  I hadn't thought a great deal about the matter, considering it merely a passing mood that would soon right itself.  When I had been wounded, I had been so overwhelmed by Ceann's display of devotion that it had caused me to see her once more as the object of my celestial love.

But true love, as I envisioned it, true love was immortal; it could not fade away in the face of a person's day to day adversities.  What made me wonder whether my own love ran deep was my lack of intense grief at the possibility of losing her.  I almost would have preferred to be devastated.  Instead, I was thinking that, should she leave me, I could go on, albeit with a heavy heart.

Had I grown cold?  Had she?  If what I had had with Ceann never amounted to true love, then what was true love?  I was at a loss to know.  We loved each other; of that I had no doubt.  But could it be that not every kind of love, no matter how wonderful seeming, could make true lovers of friends. 

I tried to force myself to see what she must have been seeing.  Ceann had to have suffered a terrible shock when confronted by my change.  Whatever she had once believed lay ahead for the two of us, it would have crashed at that moment.  Her desired future, no matter how vaguely or how hopefully conceived, could no longer exist for her, not even as a remote possibility.

Wasn't it natural that a young woman, looking at her life in the long term, would to start to think about where she had come from, where she now was, and where she might wish to go?  I had to face the prospect that Ceann soon no longer be a part of my life.  She loved freedom, she hated Harouck, but that wasn't enough to keep her at my side.  The simple fact was that the vital thing that had enabled her to endure the strange, harsh life of the woodlands was her bond with Rodin.  Did she see, even more clearly than I could see, that Rodin was, in fact, gone, even though I was still resisting that idea strongly?

I couldn't fully get my mind around the current situation, so I thought back to the first day that I had met Ceann.  She might have lived as the commonplace daughter of a minor nobleman, except that her beauty had attracted Sir Fultur, an odious creature beholding to Harouck.  Her parents supported her rejection of the brute, but the man obviously had gone running for help from the chancellor.  The latter's idea of rule was to dictate every detail of every other person's life.  Success had made Harouck expect that his every whim ought to be flattered with instant obedience.  He presumably thought that all the Trybalids needed was a minim of arm-twisting to make them see reason.  But the man's touch could never be subtle.  His clerks obliged him by finding -- or inventing -- anomalies in the grant of title by which the Trybalid family had held its ancestral property rights. 

The lord took the challnge to court, but the regime obstructed the family's legal defense.  Forgeries and destruction of archival documents had been suspected by Lord Trybalid's attorneys, but the papers sought from the government were withheld.  When the lord's family still did not yield to his conjoling on behalf of Sir Fultur, his response was again in character.  A hundred armed militia men appeared at the family's townhouse in Moyarien and escorted Ceann, her parents, and her siblings into the public street.  Royal agents took possession of their country estate at the same time.

Sir Fultur visited the clan at a city inn and strongly intimated that he had such influence with the chancellor that he could intercede.  All Ceann had to do was set a date for their nuptials. The maid gave him no certain answer, but asked for more time while she consulted with her father. 

She didn't have to.  The girl's parents were now certain that their family had become a playing piece in a game of rogues.  They saw no future for their clan in a kingdom so debased.  For that reason, they urged Ceann to go with a servant who would hide her with a friend's family.   The Trybalids hoped that if Ceann were not with them, the chancellor's spies would cease their watch.  They intended to take the rest of the family out of the country, to a place where the lord held investments enough to save them from a mean and disgraceful existence.  Once secure, they would send loyal retainers back to Arannan to guide their daughter back to them.

At the friend's house, Ceann soon heard that the entire Trybalid family had been murdered early in their flight, by “bandits.”  As horrifying as that was, it was further made known that “any surviving family members” would be taken under the wing of chancellor and become his ward.  To make matters worse, the family friends whom the girl was staying with grew fearful in the face of what was obviously a political assassination.  A servant of the house came to warn her that she would soon be turned over to the chancellor's care.  That moment changed Ceann.  It hardened her, made her willing to take unladylike risks.  Thus is was that a gently-reared maiden, one not yet twenty, fled alone into the night.

Ceann surprised everyone, and most of all herself, by managing to live, mostly by theft.  She displayed a knack for burglary and found a rogue to teach her the cutpurse's art.  Among the people she met, some thought that the Fyana might agree to champion her.  So, with the help of someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, word came to our band regarding the fugitive lady in the woodlands.

I had not been Fyana leader that far back, and the cautious man who then held that honor thought that there was nothing to be done and that it would be best to steer clear of the wayward girl.  But the rumors, as I received them, had described a minx of allure.  That I could believe, insofar as it had been the curse of beauty that had first aroused Sir Fultur's unwanted attentions.  As for myself, I had been finding the forest camps socially stifling, and was curious to meet this intriguing the Cutpurse Coleen.  She sounded like a heroine from the rousing old stories.

I sought out Ceann and met her at cottager's home; that moment was like magic for me.  The fascination I had already been feeling not only continued, it achieved an even firmer grip upon my heart.  One customarily won a fair lady by lending her assistance, and so, when the lady suggested killing Harouck and Sir Fultur, how could I say nay? 

Despite my zeal to win the maiden's favor, assassinating the chancellor was obviously too tall an order; everyone in the Fyana had wanted him dead without result.  But the loutish Sir Fultur was another story.  We learned his pattern of movements, his moments of vulnerability.  At last, we took him between taverns.  Even without his assumed complicity in the murders, Fultur's other notorious deeds as a henchman for Harouck merited execution.  Neither of us felt any need to question the man. What could be gained?  What if he had been able to, say, implicate the chancellor in murder?  What if he had been an actual eyewitness to Harouck's riding along with the false bandits and striking down the maiden's parents with his own blood-stained hands?  In a kingdom like ours, accusations against a man who stood mighty in power were worth nothing at all.

How had Arannan come to this?  When men hear that a beggar has killed and robbed, they are instantly incensed and howl for his life.  But when these same paragons of righteousness hear about even worse crimes committed by a lofty official, they do not react at all.  Cawdour had told me that such passivity was not the result of mere fear.  People are flawed creatures.  They have difficulty imagining that those who hold the levers of power, who are charged with punishing crime themselves, could, or even should, be held subject to that same law.  The higher men of government stood, the less the people wanted to hold them accountable.

The mighty are, in fact, looked upon as if they were gods, and gods can do no wrong.  If persons of rectitude think this way, imagine the cynicism of those who have never been aught but scoundrels, rascals who benefit handsomely from a lawless regime.  Such persons -- Sir Fultur being one -- were willing to sacrifice any number of other peoples' lives in order to keep their benefactors in power.

It is an age-old concern.  When those who govern do evil, who can hope to punish them?  Who but a daring assassin as any hope at all to exact justice against the fortress of their power?  King Cathmor, a mere cipher, would never act against his over-mighty servant, and, in fact, he lacked any real authority to do so.  It would have been certain doom for him to make some vain gesture in the cause of decency, which is an undervalued thing.  So, Harouck's life was safe.
Sir Fultur alone could be made to account for his deeds.  Ceann asked for my dagger, but I knew that killing a man changed a person, and I did not want my bandit girl to be changed, not by one wit.  So I did her a knightly service.  Some men slain by me I have deemed to have honored my blade.  But running Fultur through was like dispatching a rat; his blood did naught but befoul it.

Ceann was not much cheered.  What did it matter that some small beast had been hunted to the kill if the great beast still prospered?  But what was more immediately important to me was that Ceann should not go back to thievery.  For that reason, I supported her as best I could, which was an uneven and spotty venture.  Sometimes I was spent down to the very lint in my purse, and I worried that poverty would drive my lady to do something unwise.  About that time, our leader's death brought about my election to the captaincy. 

Rank has it privileges, but I did choose to bring the maid into the Fyana at once.  I had to show the band that their captain had a brain, not just emotion.  I got them used to Ceann by letting her accompany me when I gathered with rebel friends.  After I accepted the lass's offers to spy for the Fyana in places where a man could not easily go, she proved her worth.  Little by little, Ceann affirmed to one and all that she was not like the women whom the stalwarts of the Fyana hand known before.  She reminded them of the adventurous goddesses of myth.

At last, before I even realized it, my beloved had become as much a part of the band as any man in it.  When she started attending the gatherings, we wisely refrained from sharing a bed.  We were already known to be lovers, but we respected the moment when important matters needed to be discussed.  Flaunting my mistress would have affronted my comrades, who would themselves have liked to keep their women with them. 

In those days, Ceann and I took daft chances and survived.  It seemed as though our companionship was blessed.   It was a magic time and I thought that naught but the death of one of us could end our happiness.  I was wrong.  All too soon, time would teach me that, just like there are many types of love, there are many types of death. 

At Bronell's inn, the crisis had come and, apart from the obvious, I didn't know why.  If a maid can love a prince bewitched to be a forest cat, as might happen in the old stories, why couldn't Ceann love me now? 

On the other hand, what else should I expect?  Who could stay with such a creature as myself?  Stories are stories and life is life.  When I stand back and take a look at myself, I have to ask what can I possibly offer to anyone?  I see in the mirror a misfit, one that can scarcely hope to love or be loved again.  It seems that all that is left to me, before the book of my life closes, is the chance to work for vengeance.  And if vengeance can only come at the cost of my life, that is something that I am willing to accept.

But I want to go to the Western Isles only after I have arrayed everything that I possibly can in my favor before casting the dice.  It is not so much that I want to live, I simply believe that it would be too galling to fail.

* * * * *

The Opposite of Victory

Just Christopher For Now

Don't get me wrong, I love having Christopher's stuff continue to bring in readers and views and all that other good stuff but I haven't really found anything else I like in ages.  If anyone has suggestions, please let me know. 

SEND ME LINKS!

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 11

By Christopher Leeson

FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

My life was changing incrementally; every day I became more aware of my inexorably strengthening link to the world of magic.  I had never asked for such a life and having to accept it was a daunting prospect.  Did this reversal of fortune bode aught but ill, or did it offer valuable opportunities?  During that cold night in Moyarien, I was nowhere ready to answer such a question.

Looking back, I realized that Cawdour had lived long and well by magic, but he ultimately died at the hands of his enemies for having become a magician to be feared. 

Should I have pitied the man for his being cursed with magical skill?  Without magic, he would have died at least a century before I had ever come to know him.  And I had to ask myself, what would his life have been if he were born into to an ordinary life?  I could, perhaps, see Cawdour as an officeholder of some sort, possibly a magistrate striving for fairness and justice, or, even more likely , a pedagog at an academy, fashioning the young minds that were destined to inherit the future.
  
What would Cawdour have taught?  Alchemy?  Perhaps; I understood that most alchemists were not wizards, but scholars of well-schooled intellect.  Or, more likely still, Cawdour would have excelled as a philospher.  Everything that he cast his gaze upon, he seemed to see deeply, more than the visible surface showed.  I envied him for his acumen and wished that I could, one day, discipline myself do the same.

“Are magic and alchemy brothers,” I suddenly asked my patron one afternoon as we lunched in the roofless court at the heart of the ministerial palace.  “Or are the two studies entirely different?”

He nodded thoughtfully.  “Ahh, my boy.  That is an interesting question.  I would gauge that the difference between alchemy and magic is even greater than the difference between magic and sorcery.”

I blinked in surprise, but held steady.  He was playing with me, trying to make me ask, “What are the differences between magic and sorcery?”  He had, time and again, admonished me to focus, like an archer concentrating on a target, and thereby avoid irrelevancies.  Even so, the possibility that sorcery and magic were not the same fascinated me.  I wished to please my patron, however, and so refused to take the bait.

“Then the difference is small?” I ventured.

“No, not small.  I would say it is fundamental,” the mage replied.  “Think of magic as the application of a diverse body of knowledge that the best minds have compiled, knowledge regarding the forces that energize the world.    Alchemy, on the other hand, is a philosophy which focuses primarily on the properties of materials and how to change them into nobler substances.  It is, by comparison with magic, quite a much young discipline.”

He paused, as if expecting some sort of a response.  “In other words alchemy has grown from its origins as a subset of magic?” I offered.

“Not precisely.  Magic and alchemy together seek all wisdom.  But neither can discover it all.  One study goes where the other does not, and so both are needed in order to understand the entire working of the spheres.”

“Then you say they are compliments?  How do they comprise the whole?”

“Understand that two forces rule the universe –- what is chaotic, and what is orderly.  Man's spirit is an ember of the gods' spirit, and his will is like the will of a god, though on a diminutive scale.  The willful spirit is, by its very nature, chaotic.  It tries to channel the free energy, the original creative force, to is own end.  But while the gods at the beginning of the world sought for order, they used the power of chaos to achieve it, and whim follows no set rules.  What you must remember is that the primordial creative essence still exists and that the magician seeks to channel it, like the gods once did, to bend reality to his own desire.

“This is to say, though the gods created order, they did so by disorderly means.  Paradoxically, the world they forged could not exist unless it existed on the basis of established rules.  Rules were needed because the workings of the world is vast and the gods did not want to be bound to it, forced to create every new horse, or pig, or insect by a new act of will.  They instead established a dictum for how the world and the creatures in it would develop and interact.  That is, how animals would breed, how plants would grow, germinate, and flourish. 
 
"They made rules governing how the weather and the other elements would come together, like the working parts of a finely crafted machine.  The interacting properties of the world produce wonders, but they are wonders that follow an established pattern.  They operate so predictably that mankind has come to call them Nature and overlooks how wonderful the patterns is.  He considers Nature a given and sees no marvel in it.  It is the alchemist who knows better and studies all his life to ascertain what the rules of the world are, and he strives to bend these rules to his own ingenious ends –- for example, how to plate base metals with copper.”

“So the magician works by understanding chaos, and the alchemist by understanding order?”

“Approximately.  But any scholar, however learned, is doomed to go adrift if he obsessively embraces his own field of endeavor and ignores –- or, worse, derides –- the other field.  Both are valid, both have much to teach us, and together they comprise the team that pulls the cart of intellectual discovery.”

* * * * *

Custin the Magician

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 10

 By Christopher Leeson

FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

The old struggle continues; I see no end to it.  All that has changed is the manner of the fight.  Over the last few months, I've had to learn to use different weapons, and I'm still learning. 

There was a time when I lived in a different kind of world, when the Fyana would start upon a raid with no more than a kit of bread and a skin of wine.  After the first night, we very well might be dependent on the generously of supporters along the way for even our most basic provender.  Sometimes we had no recourse but to tighten our belts and chew a plug of bitterroot to slay the gnaw of our appetites, trusting that our excitement would give sufficient strength to our limbs at the crucial hour.

We experienced misery and fear in great quantity, but the most fearful in the land were not the Fyana but its supporters.   The loyal, generous people who opened their hearts and homes to us did so at an awful risk.  Too often we would learn that a yeoman's family had been massacred by a militia patrol for having given us aid.

Occasionally, the peril would come down on their heads even while the warrior was lodged with them.  More than one Fyana swordsman had laid down his life on the very threshold of his host.  And when the victorious militia tramped over his dying body, the family sheltering behind him would be put to the sword...

*****
The Speaker in the Shadows

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 9

By Christopher Leeson

FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL


Once I asked Cawdour why he supposed that the chancellor had been able to seize so much power with so little effort.

"The secret of Harouck's success," Cawdour told me, "is a thing that goes beyond his command of sorcery.  He is a consummate politician.  Sorcery combined with worldly self-interest weaves a dangerous spell.

"Most magicians are impractical dreamers.  Try as they might, few of them amount to anything, as men rate achievement.  The stories of accomplished spellcasters living meanly in forest huts are sometimes true.  But while most wizards scorn the tedium of bureaucratic labor, Harouck thrived on it.  He put both his political savvy and his sorcery to work for the fulfillment of his ambitions.

"Before long, those who stood in his way were being dismissed on charges of corruption, or were taking ill and retiring before their time.  Whenever he confronted a more skilled politician, he relied on sorcery; when confronted by a superior wizard, he used political trickery.

“Harouck eventually rose to First Secretary to the chancellor.  Hardly had the old king died before his superior was being confronted by accusations.  Nothing was proven, but Harouck had a pivotal ally in Prince Cathmor, the heir apparent.

"For years, he had been flattering the youth for his devotion to a dissolute lifestyle and, whenever he could, enabled it.  The old chancellor too much reminded the prince of his own stern father.  He was only too ready to advance a crony whom he supposed would continue on as a servile underling.

"Harouck wasted no time in putting his own minions into power, so that the whole government soon became naught but an echo of one upstart's iron will.  Only a strong king could have checked him, but I do fear that had King Cathmor become Harouck's opponent, he would have fared no better than any other enemy of the new chancellor.  But the young king is absolutely surpassed in the politics of power.  The sad truth is that he has always lusted for the empty pomp of kingship, not its taxing duties. 

"Harouck reigns as a virtual regent while the king dwells in a countryside palace.  Instead of consulting with his ministers, Cathmor is surrounded by mistresses and sporting companions. No doubt Harouck has selected the king's bodyguards and watches him with spies that report his every word and deed.

“A usurper craves popularity until his power is unchallengeable, and never doubt that Harouck is popular.  He has robbed the exchequer to buy favor with the landless masses, men without shops or trades.  The more wastrel they are, the more likely they will be to cheer the munificent statesman for the dole he bestows. He is beloved by the drunkard, the gambler, and the thief in the streets.

"The military distrusted him from the first day, of course, but the chancellor has used bribery and blackmail to retire the most troublesome of the commanders.  Every year he has further reduced the size of the army.  Its last units now languish in scattered barracks, while militiamen, many of them foreign hirelings, have been empowered to secure the internal order.
  
"They carry out orders that knights of the realm, men of the people, would not have countenanced.  Harouck's sorry militia could not win a war, of course, but they are effective enough in keeping down an unarmed population.

“Remember this, Rodin:  a nation is rarely brought low by invaders from without.  Foreign oppression, in fact, unites a people in resistance, forges their love of country into a mighty weapon, leading to popular revolt and a robust revival.
  
"But native-born despotism is a demoralizing thing; it puts each subject at the throat of every other. Each one clambers over one another to snatch for the oppressor's handouts.  The allure of gain is ever corrosive to the love of country.  Harouck has won over many who should have known better.  It is not just the wastrel, but also many a person of rank and office, who will welcome in a tyranny for no more than the promise of a few favors.”

*****

The Liar's Smile

The Family Tree

By Christopher Leeson

Revised 08-01-19
 

John Roth's grandmother had been a wild flapper during the Roaring Twenties -- an orphan born out of wedlock to a mysterious great-grandmother, one whose name was not known.  John often wondered about his roots in childhood and as a young man worked hard in his spare time to fill in what was a short and very sketchy family tree.

John studied genealogy books to learn how to research difficult cases such as his.  He eventually went to the town where his grandmother had grown up in an orphanage, but they would tell him nothing until he bribed an official.  What he found out from the sealed records was that the woman who had left his grandmother Rose at the foundling home in 1906 had called herself "Maddie Smith" and had given a San Francisco address.
  
The city was close by, and so he soon traced the address to the old Barbary Coast district.  There John discovered that the original building at the address was still standing, preserved as a historical site.  But anyone would have realized that this was no home -- it was a place of work.  The sign outside revealed that it had been a high-toned bordello whose operation had ended with the 1906 earthquake.  It was not currently open for tours, being temporarily shut down for repairs.  After a visit to the managing office at city hall, John received permission to explore the edifice, accompanied by a tour guide who knew the very property well. 
 
The edifice that had been called home by Maddie Smith turned out to be a priceless time capsule from an era of opulence, extravagance, and sin, when men were dashing rogues, women seductive sirens, and the well off lived for ostentatious pleasure.

Had his ancestor actually been a made there, or was she an employee in such an establishment, a fille de joie?  John should have felt embarrassed thinking that, but instead he reacted with amusement and a bit of pride.  It came as a relief to learn that his unknown ancestor had not been some uneducated immigrant servant, nor had she been a drab turn-of-the-century housewife. It seemed like a positive thing that she could have been a flashy bad girl, one who had perhaps liked handsome men and pretty things.

As he and the guide went through the house, a strange certainty developed in his breast that Maddie must have been very attractive to have found work in an upscale brothel.  It came as no surprise that a harlot enjoying the high life would have given up her child for adoption.  John wondered what what Madeline Smith would have thought if she could have only knew that she would become an important branch on her family tree.  John himself thought that his life was unexciting, but something must have been responsible for the red-hot had blood that seemed to animate most of the family.  Maybe Grandma Rose had inherited her wild ways from having a shady lady for a mother.  With that possibility in mind, John closed his eyes and meditated on his exotic surroundings, trying to get the feel for the gay and wicked lifestyle that his progenitor had obviously flourished in. 

In all his genealogical research, John had never visited any building with such a powerful ambiance. The past seemed to vibrate in every drape, in every piece of furniture, the very paper on the walls.  Even the glittering sunlight on the windows evoked a kind of magic.  He found himself guessing -- usually correctly -- what was around each corner.  He got such strong impressions from what he saw that he started thinking about writing a novel about his fantasies about Maddie Smith. It seemed amazing that John felt such an identification about how cat-house girls lived so long ago.  John felt started to fantasize that he had actually visited this bordello in the past, perhaps as one of its rakish customers reincarnated.

Coming to an upstairs door, something made him stop in front of it.  John guessed -- knew -- what he would find behind the door that seemed to beckon him.  He lifted the latch and saw that he had been right!  It was a colorful bedroom done in the late Victorian style, preserved and renovated by the Historical Society.  He then made the leap of faith, though he couldn't say exactly why. In his gut he felt that this had been the very room where Great-granny once Maddie lived and worked.  In fact, if she had been been occupying up until the hour of the quake, she would have been the very last person to dwell there.  That might have been why he felt closer to Maddie inside that room than he felt anywhere else inside the cat-house.

When the guide went off to the restroom, John slyly checked out the closet, filled with the daring clothes of a sex-obsessed era.  Saloon girls in Technicolor Westerns had worn similar garments and he tried to imagine the living, breathing girl who could have done these colorful designs justice.  It filled him with pride to think that his own great-grandmother could have been that very girl.
  
It was then that John noticed the glint of a small bejeweled pin on a bed-stand.  The odd thing was that it was laying in the shadows, a place where there should have been no light for it to reflect.  It actually seemed to bit giving off it own light.  Was it part of the exhibit?  If so, why hadn't it been stolen any one of the many people who must have toured this room?

He picked it up; the jewelry felt warm and made his fingers tingle.  At the same time, he felt an enhanced impression of being elsewhere -- somewhere other than in his own time and place. And with that impression came the thought that Maddie Smith must have been a fun girl to meet.  "Great-grandmother," he suddenly murmured, "I wish I could have known you."

With those words, old-time music filled the house.  John turned, to find out its source, and found himself looking into the face of a beautiful young woman.  Her hair was blonde and wavy; she was wearing long gloves and an old-time corset, black and trimmed with red lace.  His first thought was that he'd run into a historical reenacter who was working here.  He opened his lips for an apology for his surprised stare, but just then he heard a man's booming yell, "Madeline!  Get back here!"  The shout had come from the hall outside, and John heard distinctly the mutter of many voices underneath that music -- ricky-ticky piano music from the Gay 90's.
 
As John continued to stare admiringly at the girl, he suddenly realized that he was in fact gazing into a mirror in front of him.  It was like he was looking at his own reflection, and that made no sense, not unless he was dreaming.  He leaned closer to the glass and the girl moved, too, pressing her face up close to his.  Amazingly, he thought he knew what she was thinking.  He hadn't had much contact with psychic science outside movies, but what he was experiencing was like a psychic link from the past. 

Was this a dream or not? When he experimentally touched the bedpost, it felt solid, not ghostly.  He next placed his palm against the cold, hard mirror glass and felt something that combined a cold-flash and an electric shock.  He staggered back and fell on the bed.  Looking up dazed from that position, he could see his feet and saw, to his amazement, a pair of silk-stockinged legs and a lower body that seemed to be wearing a lacy corset.  

He thought for a moment that the girl from the mirror had fallen into bed with him. He couldn't resist touching the bare thigh that looked so lovely, trying to reassure himself that there really was a girl under him and that the vision more than an illusion. What he felt was warm and soft.  But not only his hand felt the touch, but so did the leg, as if it were his own.  A second later he noticed that the arm that he had reached out with was not his own, but was slender and covered to the elbow by a black velvet glove.
  
At that moment, too, John realized that Madeline had not really been named Smith, but Dunbar -- a name that meant nothing to him.  Had she used a false name, like so many cat-house girls had done?  And why had that name leaped into his thoughts so strongly at a moment when he had so much else on this mind?  And why was John was sensing -- remembering actually -- other anomalous things that should have been no part of his own memories? He was envisioning faces of people whom he had never known but seemed like people whom he should be intimately aware of.     

"Get out here, Madeline," the man with the foghorn voice yelled again, "or I'll come in and drag you out by the hair!"
 
Jacob -- that loudmouth bastard, John thought.  But who was Jacob? he suddenly asked himself.  Something -- ancestral memory, perhaps -- seemed to be warning him that Jake was a bastard's bastard, a person that one didn't dare cross.  But, at the same time, John felt a profound impression of displacement, as if the year was 1905, not 2019.  What made him so sure of that?  Had Maddie's ghost reached out and made a psychic connection with him across more than a century of time?  

But it seemed much more than that. Without embarrassment, he could vaguely imagine that he was himself Madeline Dunbar. Another mad idea came to mind -- that he was, and always had been, the reincarnation of a cat-house girl in the Nineteenth Century. John had had erotic dreams before often enough before wasn't so straight laced that he couldn't  had enjoy them. But no earlier dream had ever thrilled him so much as this was was doing.

John, savoring the lifelike quality of this dream, ran his gloved fingers over himself.  He was till feeling a solid body, a warm body. This sensation should have been mind-blowing, but what he mostly felt was satisfaction.  Why did this exotic place suddenly feel like a welcome return home after a long absence?  The breast of the girl he was touching held a beating heart, he smelled perfumed air being drawn into his lungs, and he shivered a little from the draft coming in from a partially-open window and wafting over a good deal of exposed skin.

There came the sound of a shattering bottle and some raucous laughter from the hall.  The noise broke John's train of thought and gave rise to another thought -- a mad thought. What if he was not the reincarnation of one of Maddie Dunbar's customers, but of Maddie Dunbar herself?  With that thought came the impulse to meet the dream-people who were filling the corridor outside Maddie's door.  The trouble with lucid dreams, he knew, was that one woke up from them the instant that he realized  he was dreaming. He wanted this dream to continue longer.  He wanted to experience more of it.  He left the bed, born along gracefully by a pair of lovely, stockinged legs.  

Just before he opened the door, some whimsical instinct caused him to strike a pose, the sort of come-hither pose that he fancied some naughty girl of a hundred years ago would have assumed before she presented herself to a crowd of admirers.  He put his hand on his hip, stood straight, and raised his chin with pride. The smile that came to her lips was not planned; it seemed to come naturally to the jovial spirit that was animating her.  She was still wearing that alluring smile as she went out the door and and joined the crowd.

The tour guide returned to an empty room; John Roth was soon reported as a missing person.

END

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 8

By Christopher Leeson 




FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

During my first days in the Fyana, I found the men living by the maxim "to the bold goes the crown."  It validated what I knew intuitively and I stood by the rule after I was voted to the leadership.  By that same rule, I fought and died.  So did many of our comrades.  Boldness has its downside.

So does leadership.

The tactics of the Fyana could not mimic those of the standing army.  We lacked the weight of numbers to prevail in large-scale actions.  Likewise our scanty resources ruled out extended operations.  Instead, the Fyana made sudden thrusts against the enemy and then vanished before their reactive blow could be struck.  Our warfare became more like assassinations than set-piece  battles.  Courtliness fell by the wayside.  One the the earliest lesson that a new recruit learned was to stop being a gentleman and to fight as a scoundrel fights -- with ambushes and strikes from behind.  We told ourselves that anyone who would serve the usurper deserved it; that had to justify the harsh manner in which we fought them.

Fortunately, the Fyana didn't have to build its tactics from the ground up; the basics of such war-craft came from the occasional deserter with specialized skills, especially the Royal Rangers.  This was an elite troop that specialized in scouting, skirmishing, leading the enemy astray, and in covering retreats.

Our favorite opponent was the mercenary dastard who ran  when the first arrows flew.   Our band didn't have the luxury of paying curtsey to a valiant chancellor's man.  If he survived, he could become a rallying point for fainter hearts, thereby increasing our casualties.  Whenever possible, we marked the stouthearted warriors for death, trying to drive home the lesson that only those who fled or surrendered lived.  

If an opposition hero fell into our hands, our idea of mercy was to send him back to Harouck in humiliation, so that he would become a laughing stock instead of a leader.  Sometimes that ploy wasn't feasible, so we would instead offer a brave fighter the choice of losing his right hand or losing his head.  Some of best of them chose to lose their heads.  It was an ugly war and it turned warrior's hearts ugly, too.

Between gatherings, each man had to be his own commander, dependent upon his own ingenuity.  To stay together in a cohort would have depleted the poor march lands that we inhabited .  Worse, a multitude, either in camp or on the move, would have left behind so much spoor that even a mediocre tracker could have followed us.  For safety’s sake, men separated after each foray.  

We foraged for our own supplies and lived by our wits.  Fugitive life damaged the character of many a man, but it also made him watchful, alert, and self-reliant.  Such a one seldom lost his head and was usually equal to any emergency.  How easy it would have been to desert the Fyana between gatherings.  How surprisingly few men we actually lost in that way.

Still, we had taken casualties.  Too many of them.  When a fighting men shares one's own cause, when men live so interdependently, it is easy to regard a comrade-in-arms as a brother.  And it was our lot to mourn fellow warriors as dead brothers.

*****

Bannog Tower