Spoiler Alert.

The character than made me rethink even writing this book was Yuah Korlann.  She is at her high point in Book 3, and then is revealed in her lowest in Book 5.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to write the details of that fall.  In the end though, I think that it worked out.  In this scene we find that Yuah has become a user of the same drug that so afflicted her husband.

Yuah Dechantagne peered out through the large window at the front of Mr. Parnorsham’s Pfennig Store.  Her eyes narrowed as she watched Senta talking to her brother-in-law across the street.  That witch was evil.  She had seen it with her own eyes.  Yuah’s husband Terrence had been addicted most of his adult life to White Opthalium.  The drug was not readily available in Birmisia, and for a time Yuah thought that he had managed to defeat his addiction.  Then she had followed him and had seen Senta and Zurfina supplying poor Terrence.  What kind of person would sell such a horrible substance to another?  Now Terrence was dead, but Yuah’s hatred for Zurfina and her ward was alive and well.  And what the hell was she wearing?  That dress looked as though it was made from the same thing as steam carriage tires.

“Can I help you with something, Mrs. Dechantagne?”

Yuah started, but it was only Mr. Parnorsham.

“What?”

“I was just wondering if there was anything else you needed.  I have the toiletries and notions from your list all gathered.  What else can I get for you?”

“If there’s anything else, I’ll send a lizzie for it.”  Yuah’s tone sounded harsh in her own ears, and the look on Mr. Parnorsham’s face confirmed it.

She glanced quickly out the window again and saw that Senta had left.

“Good day.”

Outside her steam carriage was waiting.  Marzell Lance, her driver, had stepped to the rear of the vehicle to add coal to the firebox.  When he saw her, he quickly wiped his hands on a handkerchief and hurried around to help her climb up into the passenger seat.

“Be a dear and get my crate.”

Marzell dashed into the store and returned with a wooden crate filled with her purchases, which he put in the back seat.  He paused briefly before climbing into the driver’s side to look at a pair of teenage girls walking by.  This made Yuah click her tongue.

“Sorry Mrs. D,” said the chastened driver as he maneuvered the car out of the square and down First Avenue toward the Dechantagne estate.

Marzell drove through the open gate of the Dechantagne-Staff property.  The huge, stately house was still one of the largest buildings in the colony, featuring a large portico supported by four two-story columns in front, a double gabled roof, and more than a dozen stone chimneys.  Every side of the house was covered with large dual-paned windows.  The young driver brought the steam carriage all the way around the left side of the home, to the shed in the rear.  Jumping down, he helped Yuah to the ground.  She walked quickly to the back door.  Her snapping fingers were the only signal for the lizzie standing by—she thought it was Garrah but wasn’t sure—to fetch the crate from the car and to bring it inside.

In the kitchen two more lizzies were cleaning but the crowd that she had expected was not there.  Just past the kitchen, Yuah almost ran into Mrs. Colbshallow.  The former cook now occupied a position in the household akin to a dear aunt.

“Shouldn’t they be preparing tea, Yadira?” she asked.

“It’s already on the table.  I was just about to summon everyone to the dining room.  How was your shopping trip?”

“Barely acceptable.”

Mrs. Colbshallow paused and peered over her glasses.  “Then I’m barely glad to hear it.”

Neither Iolanthe nor Radley were at home for tea.  Yuah had expected as much of course, since she had just seen the latter in town and seldom found the former at home during the day.  Mrs. Colbshallow was seated on one side of the table next to Iolanthe’s daughter Iolana.  Yuah, between her two children, sat opposite them.  Augie was now almost two and a half and had mastered the intricacies of family dining, though he had to sit on a stack of books to reach the table.  He looked so much like his father it made Yuah’s heart ache to look at him.

“Good afternoon Mama,” he said.  “Did you bring me a tin soldier?”

“Of course I did.  You may play with it after you eat.

“Mine?” asked Augie’s little sister Terra.

The girl was a less than a year younger than her brother.  She had a round little face framed by thick black hair and brown eyes.  She was unusually thin for a child her age.  This along with her pale skin and scratchy little voice made her mother constantly worried for her health, despite the best medical opinions which said she was completely fine.  She, like her brother, was quite advanced for her age.

“I brought you some blocks.”

The girl tipped her head back, opened her mouth, and shrieked.

“I want a soldier!”

“Girls don’t play with soldiers,” said Augie.

“I want a soldier!”

“No they don’t,” said Yuah, brushing the little girl’s hair.  “Boys play with soldiers because they grow up to be soldiers.”

 Terra shrieked again.

“What is it now?”

“I don’t want to be a block!”

“Quit crying!  You’re going to grow up to be a princess.”

“The warrior-priestesses of Ballar were soldiers,” offered Iolana from across the table.

“You be quiet,” snapped Yuah.  “I won’t have any of that nonsense in this house.  You’re five years old.  How come you talk like a college professor?  No man’s going to want to marry a know-it-all.”

Iolana slumped down in her chair.  Terra climbed out of her high-chair, still crying, and into the lap of the seventh diner, who was quietly sitting on the other side of her from Yuah.  Though many humans might not have been able to tell Cissy from the other lizzies in the Dechantagne home, she occupied a special place there.  She was slightly less than six feet in height, about average for members of her sex and species.  Her skin was smooth, without the mottling and scars of many of the reptilians.  Her face and the top of her head were a deep forest green which down her back, punctuated with darker stripes just below her shoulders.  Beneath her long powerful jaw, on her dewlap, and extending down her front, was a lighter, pale green.  Her chair had been modified so that she could sit without discomforting her long, powerful tail.  She reached out a scaly hand and picked up a cucumber sandwich, which she fed to the tiny human now curled up in her lap.  Terra was forced to stop crying to eat.

Yuah scarcely paid attention to what she ate, but not because the food wasn’t good.  Mrs. Colbshallow was known far and wide for her culinary skill, and while she no longer cooked herself, she still supervised the kitchen.  There were cucumber and cress sandwiches, chips, sliced tomatoes, a cold noodle and cheese dish, and no less than three types of fruit salad.  But Yuah cared less about food now than she ever had, and she had never cared over much about it.  She picked at her food and then got up, throwing her napkin on the table.

“Children, take a nap when Cissy tells you.  I’m going to go lie down.  I have a headache.”

“Help with your dress?” asked Cissy.

“No, I’ll get one of the lizzies.”

At the top of the stairs, Yuah found one of the new lizzie servants, a female named Narsa.  She had already been trained to help the women don and doff their clothes and now she helped Yuah remove her dress and then to unlace her corset, though once loose, Yuah left it on.  She shooed Narsa out of her bedroom and locked the door after her.  Lying down on the bed, she took three deep breaths, and then retrieved a small wooden box from beneath her mattress.  Opening the box, she pulled out one of three small indigo bottles and pulled off the stopper.  She could just detect the florid smell of the contents.  Placing a finger on the tiny open mouth, she overturned the bottle to moisten her finger with the milky white liquid inside.  Then she reached up and rubbed it directly onto her left eyeball, and then her right, quickly recapping the bottle and tossing it next to her on the bed as the room suddenly drained of color. 

Iolanthe is in the background far more in The Young Sorceress than in any other book, but she’s a presence that can’t be denied.  Here Iolanthe is visited by Senta, who is standing in for Zurfina as the colony’s magical power.

Not hungry, despite not having eaten since the previous day at noon, she grabbed the small black purse that had been her previous year’s birthday present from Zurfina, and set out.  The colonial government was constructing a new office building about halfway between Town Square and the train station.  Though only the foundation and part of one wall had been completed thus far, it was clear that it would be a massive building.  Just behind it was a small single story structure that had been designed as a carriage house, but which temporarily housed the Governor and her administration.  Once inside, Senta spotted Governor Dechantagne-Staff immediately, but was intercepted before she could reach her by the Governor’s secretary Mrs. Melody Wardlaw.

Mrs. Wardlaw, an attractive woman in her thirties had arrived in Port Dechantagne two years before as Mrs. Lanier.  She had been a widow and remained single only a few months before marrying a law clerk turned ornithologist.

“Are you here to see the Governor?”

“I can see her now,” pointed out Senta.  “She’s right over there.”

“And did you wish to speak with her?”

Senta narrowed her eyes.  She raised her finger to her lips and then slowly pointed it at Mrs. Wardlaw.  “I don’t know… I could just talk to you.”

The secretary paled.

“I’m sure she has some time for you.”

“There you are,” said Mrs. Staff when she saw the young sorceress.  “I suppose you’re given to sleeping in all day.  No doubt Zurfina has failed to provide you with the structure of which young people are so in need.”

“No doubt,” said Senta.  “What was it that you needed?”

“Come walk with me.”

Mrs. Staff led Senta out of the building and down the cement sidewalk.  A lizzie work crew was paving the road.  Back in the great city of Brech, most of the streets had been paved scores or even hundreds of years before and so cobblestone was the norm.  Here, streets were covered with a layer of red bricks, carefully pieced together.  A single human foreman leaning on a shovel quickly stood erect when he saw the Governor.

“That’s one of the things I need you for,” said Mrs. Staff.

“Punishing lazy employees?”

The Governor pursed her lips. 

“The lizzies.  As you are no doubt aware, hundreds have moved into the city limits and are occupying that land just west of the train depot.  People are already calling it…”

“Lizzietown,” interrupted Senta.  “And it’s more like thousands.  I’m surprised you allow it, considering what happened two years ago.”

“One should keep his friends close and his enemies closer.  I want you to make sure that there is nothing going on there that would threaten us.”

“All right.  What else?”

“I’m concerned that we may have agents of Freedonia in the colony again.  Zurfina has in the past performed security checks for us.  I believe we need something along that line again.”

“Any idea exactly what she did?”

“You’re the sorceress, not I.”

“Seems like pretty much the same kind of job—just a matter of which direction I’m looking.  I’ll give it my best shot.”

“Of course you will,” said the Governor.

“I’ll be on my way then.”

“One more thing.  My husband was interested in hiring someone to magically look for coal—just as your Miss Jindra did.”

“She’s not my Miss Jindra.  I barely know her.”

“As you say.  In any case, with Zurfina indisposed as you say, you seem to be the only purveyor of magic at our disposal, so you should stop and see him.”

“Zurfina isn’t already being paid for that too, is she?” asked Senta.

“No.  This would be business between you and Mr. Staff’s coal company.”

“Ace.”

Mrs. Staff said goodbye and turned back toward her temporary offices.  Senta cut through the block, still forested but now criss-crossed with pathways made by people and lizzies.  The offices of M&S Coal Company were just outside of Town Square on the south side, across the street from Mr. Darwin’s shop.  She was less than fifty feet away when she suddenly ducked behind a tree.  Coming out of the front door of M&S Coal was Mr. Radley Staff, and with him was a fifteen year old blond girl.  With the exception of her clothes, which consisted of a long, confining rubber dress that went to her ankles and matched a pair of long black gloves, she was an exact copy of Senta.

“Kafira’s fanny!  She snaked that job right out from under me!”

The sorceress Zurfina gets a bit more spotlight than usual in book 4 of the series.  In The Young Sorceress, she magically transports herself to Freedonia and helps Zaeri writer Isaak Wissinger escape  the ghetto.  We get to ask ourselves is Zurfina acting out the role of a hero, or is she just manipulating things for her own gratification.

Isaak Wissinger sprang suddenly from his cot, motivated by a particularly enthusiastic bedbug.  He was immediately sorry, as the pain in his back was exacerbated by the sudden movement.  He looked back down at the vermin filled, inch thick mattress, a few pieces of straw sticking out of a hole in the side, sitting on an ancient metal frame.  It was a sleeping place not fit for a dog.  Then he laughed ruefully.  That was exactly how he and every other Zaeri was thought of here—as dogs.

The Kingdom of Freedonia, like the rest of the civilized world was divided in two.  There were the Kafirites, who ruled the world.  And there were the Zaeri, who had long ago ruled it.  Two thousand years ago, Zur had been a great kingdom, one which along with Argrathia, Ballar, and Donnata ruled the classical world.  Then a single dynasty of kings, culminating in Magnus the Great, had conquered the rest of the known world, and made Zur civilization the dominant culture.   Zaeri, the Zur religion, with its belief in one god, had replaced the pagan religions of the civilizations that Magnus and his forebears had conquered.  Even when Magnus’s empire had splintered into many successor kingdoms, the Zaeri religion had remained dominant.

Then a generation later, a Zaeri imam named Kafira had begun teaching a strange variation of the religion in Xygia.  Kafira had taught the importance of the afterlife, an adherence to a code of conduct that would lead one to this afterlife, and a general disregard for the affairs of the world.  Her enemies had destroyed her, but in so doing they had made her a martyr.  From martyr, she rose swiftly to savior and then to godhead of a new religion, one that had spread quickly to engulf all that had been the Zur civilization.  In the following millennia, the Kafirites had converted the remaining pagans to the creed of their holy savior, thereby making it the only religion in the world of man—the only religion in the world of man save those who held onto the ancient Zaeri belief.

Now here in Freedonia it was no longer safe to be a Zaeri.  First it had become illegal for Zaeri to be doctors or lawyers, then actors or publishers.  Then laws had been passed which made it illegal for Zaeri to own businesses or property.  Finally entire neighborhoods became forbidden to Wissinger’s people and they had been pushed into ghettos, segregated from the other Freedonians.

Wissinger spent the day picking up garbage on the street.  That was his job here in the ghetto.  He had been an award winning writer when he had lived in Kasselburg, but here in Zurelendsviertel he walked the street, a silver zed pinned to his jacket, picking up refuse.  At least people didn’t treat him like a garbage man.  The other Zaeri knew him and respected him.  They asked his opinion about things.  They called him “professor” when they spoke to him.  It was not like that at all with the Freedonian soldiers who occasionally made a sweep through the ghetto.  They would as soon kick an award winning writer to the side of the road as they would a street sweeper.

Back once again in his room, he pulled his tablet and pencil from its hiding place behind a loose board and continued writing where he had left off the day before.  He could not live without writing.  He wrote down what had happened that day, what he had seen, what he had heard.  He wrote about the death of Mrs. Finaman, brought on no doubt by lack of nutrition, and he wrote about her husband’s grief at the loss of his wife and his unborn child.  He wrote about the sudden disappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Kortoon, and the speculation that they paid their way out of the ghetto.  And he wrote about the disappearance of the Macabeus family, and the speculation that something sinister had happened to them.

That night on his uncomfortable cot, Wissinger had a wonderful dream.  He dreamed that a beautiful woman was making love to him.  She licked his neck as she rubbed her naked body against his.  She whispered to him in some foreign language—he thought it was Brech.  When he managed to pull himself out of the fog of sleep, and he realized that it wasn’t a dream, that the woman was really here with him, he tried to push her off of him.

“Don’t stop now lover,” she said, a noticeably Brech accent to her Freedonian.  “I’m just starting to really enjoy myself.”

Wissinger pushed again, and slid his body out from under her, falling to the floor in the process.  She stretched out, lying on her stomach.  He stared at her open-mouthed.  Her long blond hair didn’t quite cover a fourteen inch crescent moon tattoo at the top of her back.  Another tattoo, an eight inch flaming sun sat just above her voluptuous bottom. 

“Who are you?  What are you doing here?”

“I would have thought that was obvious,” she replied in a sultry voice.  “I’m here to warn you.”

“You… uh, what?”

“I’m here to warn you.”

She rolled over and stood up, revealing six star tattoos all over her front.

“In a short while, maybe a few weeks, the food supply to the ghetto will be reduced.  It will be reduced a lot.”

“They barely give us enough to survive on as it is.  They can’t cut it back anymore.”

“They can, and they will.”  She stepped closer to him.  “They are going to try and starve the Zaeri to extinction.”

“They won’t be able to.”

“No, it’s true, in the end they won’t.  But they will try and many will die.  Even worse things will follow.  Do you know how to get out of the ghetto?”

“I can’t leave.  People need me here.”

“No they don’t.  People like you, but they don’t need you and they won’t help you when things get very bad.  You have no family and when it comes to eat or starve, you won’t have any friends either—no one will.  I ask you again; do you know how to get out of the ghetto?”

“They say a Kafirite named Kiesinger will get you out if you can pay, but I don’t have any money.  I didn’t have any before I came here.”

“Here.”

The woman handed him a small leather pouch, though he had no idea where she could have had it hidden.  He looked inside.  There was a small roll of banknotes and twenty or so gold coins.

“Brech marks?”

“Gold is gold.  I don’t know if the banknotes are worth much, but they’ve got to be better than Freedonian groschen.”

“No doubt,” said Wissinger.  “Why?  Why are you helping me?  I mean, me in particular.”

“You need to survive.  You need to leave Freedonia and make your way to Birmisia.”

“Birmisia?  That’s on the other side of the world.  How could I get there?  What would I do there?”

“Live.  As for the how, we’ll deal with that later.  Now you’ve wasted all my time talking when we could have been doing something far more satisfying.”

“You’ve only been here a few minutes.”

“Yes, but I have much to do.  Go see this man and get out of the ghetto.  I’ll find you again at a later date, hopefully in a more hospitable mood.”

“Who are you?  What are you?  Are you my guardian angel?”

The woman smiled.  “That is exactly what I am.”

Then with a wave of her hand, she disappeared with a pop.

Despite the fact that the series carries his name, Bessemer the Steel Dragon usually plays his part in the background of the story.  In The Young Sorceress, this changes quite a bit.  He not only gets to play a big part in the plot, he gets to engage in some violence.  In this bit, Senta has to wait for him while he eats.

“I don’t like sitting here with them staring at me like that,” said Senta, as she brushed her hand through her hair, blond once again. 

She was perched on a large rock twenty feet from Bessemer, who was stripping great pieces of flesh from the body of an adolescent paralititan.  Fifty feet from them, two large tyrannosaurs watched, their ugly black heads bobbing up and down as they shifted from one foot to the other.

“Piss off, you!” Bessemer shouted at them.  “This is my lunch!”

“I don’t think that’s going to do it,” said Senta.

The steel dragon turned toward the two monsters and roared, a massive gout of flame shooting more than half the distance toward them.  The dinosaurs roared back, but then turned and stalked off across the great field toward the herd of triceratops in the distance.

“I guess you showed them,” said Senta.

“It’s not the size of the dragon in the fight.  It’s the size of the fight in the dragon.”

The young sorceress thought that his philosophy must be correct, as either one of the black and red predators was easily twice as big as the dragon.  Then again, maybe it was the fire.

“You’re not frightened of them?”

“I used to be.  I suppose if one actually got a hold of me, I’d be in for it.  That’s not going to happen though.  And when I get a little bigger, there’ll be no creature on this entire continent for me to fear.”

“There’s always the other one—Hissussisthiss.”

“Yes, there’s always him,” said Bessemer.  “I wonder about him sometimes.  He must be lonely with no other dragons around.”

“Are you?  Lonely, I mean, with no other dragons around?”

“I’ve got you, don’t I?”  He took another big bite of dinosaur meat and chewed it.  “Someday I think I’ll meet other dragons.  There are bound to be some around somewhere.  Humans can’t have wiped them all out.”

“What makes you think it was humans?”

“You know it was,” he said.  “You lot are always wiping out other creatures.  Look at the stories.  Rendrik of the North, and those other barbarians—they were out slaying dragons all the time.”

“I suppose,” said the girl.

“Maybe they are all gone.  Maybe humans did kill them all off.  Maybe it is just me and that great green brute.”

Senta just shrugged.  She didn’t have any answers for herself; certainly none for the dragon.

I had a lot of fun with Senta in The Young Sorceress.  I just read it again and I enjoyed it more than I remembered.  I tried a couple of things in this book that I don’t think worked as well as I wanted them to, but that being said, I think it works well within the overall story arc.  I had written The Drache Girl and The Two Dragons almost 4 years before The Young Sorceress.  In The Drache Girl, Senta is a happy-go-lucky kid.  In The Two Dragons, she is a sorceress whom everyone is afraid of.  In this book I get to show how she changed.  Here she deals with two would-be attackers.

She strolled north toward the park, walking between the warehouses rather than following the road because she wanted to avoid lookie-loos in general as well as a few specific individuals.  She was just about to exit the narrow passage between one of the governor’s warehouses and a private one when two men stepped into her way.  They were both at least six feet tall and broad shouldered.  They both looked to be in their early twenties and they both dressed poorly. 

“It looks like we’ve found our little bird,” said one of the men to the other.

“I think you owe us a good time, little girl,” said the other.

Senta took the last bite of sausage and threw the stick on the ground.

“How about it?  Are you going to show us a good time?” the second man continued, though the first man’s face showed the first hint of confusion.  Why wasn’t the girl showing any sign of fear?

“Here’s a good time for you,” she said.

Reaching out, she touched the second man with her index finger.  He let out a bloodcurdling scream and dropped to the ground clutching his crotch.  He continued to scream and scream.  The first man looked from his friend to the girl and back, panic slowly crawling up his face.  At last his gaze stopped on the girl.

“Here’s an oldie, but a goodie,” said Senta.  “Uuthanum.”

A blue cone spread from her finger to engulf the man.  His skin turned blue as frost formed on his skin.  Within a few seconds, he was frozen solid.  The sorceress stepped over the prone man, still screaming and holding his privates, and around the standing man, still completely stiffened.

“How much fun are you going to have now, I wonder?”  Then she continued on her way to the park.