Titanic Post

When I first met J. Warren Emerson at a dinner party, I thought, “Man, I wish I could cook like this guy!” As I got to know him better, he showed me some of his writing. Now I say, “Man, I wish I could write like this guy!” Since that first dinner, we have become friends, meeting regularly for breakfast and a motorcycle ride. A remarkable man, J. is a philosopher and a writer of fantasy and philosophical books and essays. Here is the forward and first chapter of his first book, which can be purchased at Amazon.com

The Heart of Magic
by J. Warren Emerson
© 2007 all rights reserved

Forward

The Heart of Magic is an extended exercise in reflective imagination—what I call a philosophical fantasy. The three books tell a long story spanning fifty years; a story of lovers, families, friends, villains, mysteries, and intricate riddles. Book One, The Tears of Night, describes the dimension worlds created by the Earthlings of the ark-ship King Arthur, together with their Cetean friends on the planet Mirreau, in the Tau Ceti star system. The story involves two young lovers and their struggle to break the most diabolical magical spell ever conjured. In Book Two, The Magical Children, the Tears of Night riddle is finally solved, and through a man-made wishing well, contact is established between the dimension worlds and the outside universe. Book Three, The Journey to Shambhala, is a wild roller-coaster ride featuring abundant humor, youthful exuberance, inter-species sex and love, disembodied consciousness, and much more.

My first love has always been philosophy, and this series invites the reader to speculate about a number of philosophical questions. Such speculation in a novel is certainly nothing new; it’s as old as the first novel ever written, for every novelist is a philosopher. But not every philosopher is a novelist, and of the few who are, hardly any write in the fantasy genre, and of the few who do.well, actually, I don’t know of any who do except me.

The inspiration for the story in The Tears of Night came primarily from a movie called Ladyhawk, in which a man and woman are separated from each other by a very cruel magical spell. The young lovers in The Tears of Night are faced with the task of breaking a similar but much more complex and paradoxical spell. Book 1 also borrows a few ideas from the M.Y.T.H. Inc. fantasy stories written by Robert Asprin. In those books, the idea of dimensions is used to add interesting twists to the stories. I have borrowed the term dimensions, although I use it in a completely different way. I have also borrowed the use of “hoppers” (which I call Mariners) to move between dimensions. Finally, I borrowed Asprin’s idea of huge bazaars, where virtually anything can be found for a price.

 

Part One

The Runaway and the Peasant

One

You’re Just in Love with My You-Know-What

Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove.
P. G. Wodehouse

It was mid-morning on Calderan, and the cloudy sky was breaking up over Kingstown following the brief shower earlier. The day would be mild, as days usually were. There were no real seasons on the Calderan dimension, which the people took for granted since it was the same with every other dimension world. It never snowed on Calderan, except in the wilds of the north where no one ever traveled. It never became unbearably hot or freezing cold in Kingstown; the days were usually sunny, and the evenings cool. The air was fresh and clean except when crop stubble was being burned, and the water in the myriad lakes and rivers was as clear and delicious as anyone could wish.

Eleron Tanner was on his way from his home in the outskirts of Kingstown, the castle city, to the saddler’s shop near the castle where he worked as an apprentice. It was a well-paying job, and he’d been lucky to get it. He lived in one of the older stone apartment houses in the city with his older brother Alaine, who was apprenticed to a metal-smith. Eleron was average in height for his age, but on the skinny side. His straight brown hair hung down to just past his ears, as he liked it, and he walked with a characteristic loose gait. His face was regular and nice-looking, but ordinary and quite forgettable; he would never stand out in a crowd.

He’d never thought of himself as special in any way, except that he was smarter than most people and a gifted story-teller. There was also something about him that girls seemed to like (beside his stories). He wasn’t exceptionally strong, and he didn’t think he was very brave, but he was adventurous and adaptable. He didn’t carry a knife or sword, trusting to his luck and his quick-thinking to get him out of trouble. He had a happy disposition, and all in all he made the best of the life he had.

Eleron was raised in a small, typical farm village twenty miles from Kingstown, and like all the children there, he’d never been to school. Schools were for the aristocracy and the middle-class, not peasants. As a child, he spent his years helping his father and his brother work the land, growing corn and beans on Lord Somerset’s large tracts of farmland. Eleron was raised in a small, typical farm village twenty miles from Kingstown, and like all the children there, he’d never been to school. Schools were for the aristocracy and the middle-class, not peasants. As a child, he spent his years helping his father and his brother work the land, growing corn and beans on Lord Somerset’s large tracts of farmland.

It was Eleron’s pretty cousin Gerty who taught him about sex. Gerty had gained quite a bit of experience thanks to a handsome, jovial traveling peddler of household goods, a man in his thirties who roamed the kingdom in his one-horse wagon selling all sorts of useful items to peasants in rural villages. The peddler and young Gerty looked at each other one day and liked what they saw. She was blond, with a winning smile and a shapely, lithesome body, and she stole the man’s heart right away. He paid Eleron’s aunt twenty-five gold tarents to let him have the girl for a day, which was enough to keep her family well fed for three weeks. He was a nice man whom Aunt Tara had known for years, so she agreed. After that, the man came by every two weeks, and always paid well for his day with Gerty.

Three months went by in this fashion, then Gerty took her favorite cousin to the loft in the barn and showed him what she’d learned from her peddler. Eleron, who was only a little older than her, fell instantly in love that very first time, which made Gerty laugh and say, “you’re just in love with my you-know-what, Eleron.” Eleron made up wonderful tales for her, which allowed her forget for a while that she was just a poor peasant girl. He had a natural gift for story telling, a rare talent among any social class, but especially so among peasants. Gerty dearly loved listening to his stories of beautiful maidens in great danger, rescued by shining knights and enchanted animals. Two or three times a week over the next few months, Eleron would spin Gerty a tale for anhour, then she would make his own fantasies come true.

It was the happiest life imaginable for a peasant youth like Eleron, but it ended abruptly one day when the peddler unexpectedly bought Gerty from her parents for fifteen hundred tarents—a very large sum for a peasant of either sex. Nobody asked how a peddler came to possess such a fortune, because one didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but Gerty’s family lived in comparative luxury for many years afterward. Eleron cried when she went away, but he knew Gerty was very happy with the peddler. Not long after Gerty left, he worked his story-telling magic on two other girls on the farm, who may or may not have been cousins, since no one kept records on peasants, and thus he gained a good deal of craftsmanship in story-telling as he fulfilled his growing male desires.

It was unspoken knowledge, but known to everyone, that the prospect of selling their children was one of the two main reasons peasants had offspring, aside from the instinctive urge to procreate. The other reason was the obvious necessity for helping hands in tending crops and keeping up the farms. Having children wasn’t easy for women in the dimensions, however. Because of the biology of women in the worlds, there were only one or two days each month in which a woman could conceive, and their ovulation cycles fluctuated widely, so they never knew when they were fertile. Therefore, a woman wanting a baby had to try very hard in order to have a chance of being impregnated, and even then her efforts rarely succeeded. That had at least three consequences for people on all the populated worlds: First, simply because getting pregnant involved such effort, fertile females of every age, from the lowliest farm girls to nobles and aristocrats, had more than a passing interest in sex; it was closer to an instinctive biological obsession. Second, large families were virtually unheard of. Most couples, be they royalty or peasants, managed to have no more than one or two, or at most three children, no matter how hard they worked at it. That central fact of life made children one of the most valuable of economic commodities simply because there weren’t very many of them. And third, the population size never really grew in any of the dimensions. Kingstown’s population of seventy thousand, for instance, hadn’t grown in three hundred years of record-keeping.

Like his brother Alaine, Eleron was apprenticed to a craftsman when he was old enough. A portion of their wages was sent each month, by the king’s law, to their parents. Eleron worked diligently learning saddlery, and he was happy living with Alaine. The two of them went drinking together when they had money, and they always enjoyed themselves. Unlike Eleron, Alaine was tall and well-muscled, but he and Eleron were good friends, and Alaine knew that Eleron was twice as smart as he was.

As soon as he’d saved enough of his earnings, Eleron began paying a retired schoolteacher he’d met, a very kind woman named Mrs. Nottingwood, five tarents a week to teach him to read and write. His fondest dream was to someday be able to write down all the stories he’d made up over the years, with the hope of getting them published. That was a very lofty dream for a saddler’s apprentice, but it enabled him to tolerate the dreary sameness of ten-hour work-days. He was very good at saddlery, but he knew he’d never really enjoy the work.

After a year of tutoring under Mrs. Nottingwood, Eleron could read anything, and he could write fast enough so that he was no longer constantly frustrated. Then he began writing down some of the many stories which had blossomed in his head over the years, hoping to someday leave the leather trade behind and support himself with his imagination.

But on this particular day, Eleron’s life was about to change drastically. He was soon to run afoul of the most famous and powerful magician in all the dimensions, Lord Falcion himself.

Magicians were found in all the populated dimensions, but especially in the six middle dimensions, which were the most populous of all. Magicians, though, had varying degrees of talent, and there weren’t many who were good enough to work for a noble or a royal. Most magicians worked for whoever would hire them, and earned a living making small repairs to things, casting useful spells, hiring out as bodyguards, and so on.

The difficult thing about magic, which non-magicians could never understand, was that it wasn’t simply a matter of skill or talent. Conjuring a powerful spell took hours, and sometimes days. It involved using a special metal-alloy wand, adding special and often rare ingredients in just the right order to a special alloy cauldron, and, most important of all, letting the powerful magic which existed naturally in the dimensions work through them to prepare the spell. If you needed magic in a hurry, you were usually out of luck.

The middle dimensions, where the largest kingdoms were to be found, were ruled by powerful monarchs who needed a powerful magician in their court. Royals didn’t like magicians as a rule, but they were a necessary evil. Without at least one powerful magician, a king’s or queen’s enemies would find it much easier to invade their realm, or a neighboring kingdom might cross their borders and confiscate farming lands.

On the Calderan world, there were three kingdoms very near each other, and they were normally at peace with one another. The middle kingdom of Kingstown, under King James, was the largest and richest in all the dimensions, and employed the most powerful magician, Lord Falcion. King James hated Lord Falcion, partly because he paid him an outrageous wage to retain his services, but also because Falcion was temperamental, egotistical and quick-tempered. On the other hand, James knew his kingdom would never be invaded while Falcion was on his side.

Lord Falcion wore black and silver magician’s robes adorned with magical symbols. He was a vigorous sixty-year old man with fierce black eyes and a permanent scowl on his face. His long white hair and short grey beard made him look both distinguished and intimidating. Falcion’s father and grandfather had been magicians, and they saw great promise in Falcion as a child. By the time he was apprenticed to one of the Magi on the Kra dimension at age ten, Falcion could already transform simple objects, repair almost anything, and conjure some of the more difficult spells. The Magi were a small, elite community who dedicated their lives to the study of magic for its own sake. They wanted for nothing, but they had no desire for wealth or fame. They took on individualapprentices, who earned their keep by making Mariners – used by everyone to travel between dimensions – which were then sold in bazaars. In his years on Kra, Falcion became a very powerful magician, and when there was nothing more the Magi could teach him, he traveled among the dimensions making a name for himself until he found a position as court magician for a minor king.

His career as a magician was spotty over the next several decades. Falcion had a reputation as being a very powerful but unruly, even unstable magician, but he never failed to produce results, and he set his fees accordingly. By the age of fifty, he’d acquired sufficient wealth to buy himself a lordship in Kingstown on Calderan. There he settled down to a life of luxury in his large stone mansion. With a lordship came vast tracts of land, peasants to work them, and an enviable income. His skills as a magician were still sought out by those who could afford to hire him, but he had few serious offers from royals because of his temperament. Then one day, not long after becoming a lord, King James, in desperate need, called on Falcion and persuaded him – with an even larger estateand a great deal of gold – to help him defeat his warring neighbor. Falcion became his court magician and led James’ army to a resounding defeat of the enemy. In the process he killed his counterpart in a well-known battle. The man he killed had been thought to be the most powerful magician anywhere, and thus Falcion earned that title for himself.

On the fateful morning in question, Lord Falcion was pursuing a young runaway aristocrat girl. Falcion didn’t normally take on such trivial jobs, but the lord who owned the girl pleaded desperately with him, so he agreed to find her and put her under a spell to prevent her running away again.

Kirin Hollender was an extremely unhappy young maiden when Lord Blackstone purchased her. It was the culmination of a long-standing agreement between Blackstone and her parents, minor nobles at the court of King James. Lord Blackstone had never married, but he’d been friends with Kirin’s parents for many years, and he’d wanted Kirin for his own since she was only a little girl of five, for Kirin was a rare beauty even then. As she grew older, her parents showed her off at court in fine silk dresses, knowing her worth would rise as word of her beauty spread throughout the dimensions. It was unusual for nobles to sell their own children, and it was a practice looked down upon by the aristocracy, but it was not unheard of, and not forbidden in most kingdoms. The agreed upon price for Lord Blackstone was fifty thousand gold tarents – a king’s ransom on any dimension.

Kirin had long, flowing hair of fiery red which hung down in lovely tresses to past her shoulders. Her young face was angelically beautiful, and her dimpled smile made both boys and men weak in the knees, but it was her eyes that were the envy of every woman at court, and of every other girl who saw her. They were a startling emerald green, and they glowed with an inner light that no male could resist. No one on any dimension had ever seen true, natural green eyes before; they were as rare as the fabled Djinn of Mirreau. Lord Blackstone, in his sixties, had no interest in Kirin sexually, but he was a collector of rare and beautiful objects, and he wanted such a fine beauty as Kirin to belong to him. Kirin would make him known far and wide, and he greatly desired the adulation of others.

Lord Falcion had warned Blackstone that young Kirin would bring him nothing but trouble. Her beauty would attract both royal suitors and nobles to try to steal her away, out of love or covetousness. She was also very high-spirited, like a wild filly, and might run away…to be rather less diplomatic, she could rant and rave with the best of them, and her temper was fearsome. Unfortunately, Lord Blackstone had all the loving manner of a cross-bow; she would never be happy with him. But Blackstone shrugged off Falcion’s warning. Who cared whether the girl was happy? He would own her, and that was all that mattered.

Kirin had always hated Blackstone, who looked at her as though she was nothing more than a prize sheep to be purchased. She swore to kill herself if her parents let Blackstone buy her, but they knew that was pure bluff. They didn’t tell her about their deal with the lord until he actually showed up in his carriage one day, at which point she ran as fast as she could in the other direction, but well-placed guards caught her and brought her back kicking and screaming. Blackstone’s own men trussed up the struggling little bundle of fury and unceremoniously dumped her in the carriage. Blackstone was well-pleased with his purchase as he set off for home.

For the first six months, the lord couldn’t take her anywhere because she misbehaved so badly. Like all aristocrats, she’d been tutored and educated all her life, and her education continued in Blackstone’s care, but at her age, her freedom meant infinitely more to her than whatever future she might someday realize in which her training would be of benefit to her. She tried running away several times, but the guards were always right there to catch her before she’d gotten fifty yards. They would simply throw her over a shoulder and haul her back as she raged. Blackstone appealed to Falcion for help – a spell to make her docile – but Falcion refused; he had, after all, tried to warn the fool that she would be trouble. Blackstone tried starving her, beating her, and reasoning with her, but nothing worked. Still, he was determined to win the battle of wills.

Finally, in desperation, he offered her a deal. If she would change her ways, and be the dutiful and beautiful ornament he so desired to display in the company of the nobility, he would set her free, and provide her with a gift of gold, after four years.

Kirin thought it over and said, “I’ll only do it if the king himself signs the contract in front of witnesses.”

Lord Blackstone appealed to the king, who chuckled at the lord’s predicament, but agreed. At a Royal Ball one night, King James announced the contract to the gathered nobles. “I call you to witness, my dear friends, that the esteemed Lord Blackstone has come to an agreement with that fairest flower in all the dimensions, the beautiful if somewhat temperamental Kirin. Few have gazed upon her sublime beauty in the past year, or seen the mystery of her jewel eyes because…well, she’s been a bit disagreeable with our friend, Lord Blackstone. But now he has agreed to set her free in four years, and she in turn has agreed to be the charming angel we’ve all been waiting to see. I’m signing this agreement for her to vouchsafe that the lord will honor it when the time comes.”

Kirin gave the king a smile that set his heart fluttering, and the people clapped politely as the king signed his name.

Kirin tried her best to keep her end of the agreement, though she hated every minute of it. Lord Blackstone became the envy of rich society as Kirin grew more beautiful with every passing month, and he considered his investment in her one of the best he’d ever made.

Kirin, however, grew even more miserable. She begged Lord Blackstone to set her free, but he would have none of it. She simply couldn’t face four more years of the cold and unfeeling lord, but if she successfully ran away and was later caught, the agreement would be nullified and the lord could then do with her as he liked. She decided finally that she would flee anyway, but she planned carefully, hoping she could find a way to escape to another dimension, where Blackstone would find it difficult to catch her.

She slipped out of the depressing stone mansion at midnight, carrying a small bag of peasant clothes and several hundred gold tarents stolen from Lord Blackstone. A few hours later it began to rain, and by eight o’clock, when she was almost at the castle city of Kingstown, she was wet, hungry and exhausted. Leaving the muddy road, she changed into the ragged but fortunately dry peasant clothes she’d brought with her, being careful to cover her bright red hair with a scarf. She walked into Kingstown tired and very hungry – she had not thought to bring food with her.

Entering the first open tavern she found, and keeping her eyes lowered, sheordered breakfast and tried to think where she might locate a magician. She didn’t know that peasants dressed in rags never went to taverns early in the morning, if at all, but she never noticed the looks she received because she kept her head down to hide her eyes. When she left the tavern, the rain had finally stopped and the sun was peaking through the clouds. Very tired now, but with renewed courage, she set out toward the great bazaar in the center of the city, determined to find a magician brave enough to help her.

And thus it was that fate brought together the apprentice, the magician, and the maiden. It was a seemingly chance encounter which would change the destiny of an entire kingdom and, sixteen years later, open up the dimension worlds to the outside universe, a universe that people had never imagined might exist.