My son, my daughter, and I used to enjoy playing D&D, sometimes with one or more of my nephews and my son’s best friend. The story of Queen Elleena of Aerithraine came right out of our D&D campaign. Aerithraine was the most powerful country and one of the few relatively safe places in a world full of ogres, dragons, monsters, and demons.
I even had a little figure of Queen Elleena, though she had been designed as a character from an official D&D game. She’s sitting on the shelf just to my left as I write this, just beneath a dragon and a little left of Darth Vader.
I’ve never thrown away any piece of story that I’ve come up with. I still have a few of them from our game that may end up in a future Eaglethorpe Buxton story and pieces of my other stories will become parts of my new books.
I put away my knife and then climbed back into the saddle. The orphan had regained his feet and I reached down, took his hand, and lifted him back into his spot behind me. He reached around my waist and held on tight.
“Thank you,” he said.
“All is well,” said I. “A few goblins are no match for a trained warrior.”
“Then how did they manage to prevent Prince Jared from becoming the King of Aerithraine? Did they catch him asleep and murder him?”
“One might have supposed that under ordinary circumstances.” I continued my story. “These times were not ordinary. Goblins are not only small and stupid and smelly; they are disorganized. But every once and so often, there comes along a goblin who is big enough and just smart enough to unite the goblin tribes and lead them on the warpath against the civilized lands of humans.”
“I had always heard that none of the human lands were truly civilized,” said he.
“What an odd and unorphanish thing to say.”
“Um… oh. I’m just discombobulated from the incident with the goblins.”
“Even so,” I agreed. “Well, at the time my story takes place, there was one such goblin king, who came to power by killing and eating his many rivals. And as happens when the goblins become unified in such a way, they experienced a population explosion. The mountains of the Goblineld were teaming with the little blighters. When the mountains could no longer contain them, they swept out across the southern third of the Kingdom of Aerithraine, destroying everything in their path.”
“Frightening,” said the orphan.
“Quite frightening.”
“Still…”
“Still what?”
“Humans are so large and goblins are so small. You vanquished three pairs of goblins, and did it quite handily too.”
“Thank you.”
“And you don’t seem particularly skilled or particularly bright.”
“What?”
“I just wonder that an entire human kingdom could not put together an army to destroy even a large horde of goblins,” said the orphan. “I would imagine that even a well-trained militia could do the job. I once heard the story of the Calille Lowain who held off five thousand goblins at Greer Drift.”
“I don’t know that story,” said I.
“Perhaps I will tell it to you sometime,” said he. “But what about it? Couldn’t the humans defeat the goblins?”
“There were tens of thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Thousands of thousands. But you are right. In other times, such hordes were sent packing, back to their mines and tunnels in the Goblineld. This time though, the goblins had a hidden ally. Far to the east, the Witch King of Thulla-Zor, who is always looking for ways to cause destruction and chaos, saw this as an opportunity. He supplied the goblin king with magic and weapons, and sent trolls and ogres to strengthen his ranks. None of these facts were known to King Justin when he rode forth with the Dragon Knights to meet them.
“King Justin, his three younger sons, and all of the Dragon Knights were slaughtered—to a man. Prince Jared, who had been in the north fighting sea raiders, hurried his forces south, only to meet a similar fate. The goblins were waiting for him. The entire southern third of the kingdom fell– and remained in the goblins’ filthy little hands for almost twenty years. And the Goblin King feasted on the spoils of war, sitting on his throne far below the surface of the mountains, drinking his disgusting goblin wine from a cup made from the skull of King Justin.”
“How horrible,” murmured the orphan.
“Yes indeed,” I continued. “And I think the worse part of the story is what happened to Queen Beatrix.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died. She died of a broken heart. And her unborn child almost died with her.
“Unborn child? It didn’t die?”
“No, the court physician cut the child from the Queen’s belly. It was a tiny baby girl.”
“Queen Elleena!” snapped the orphan.
“She should have been,” said I.
“What do you mean?”
“She should have been Queen the moment she was birthed, but that wasn’t to be. There were too many competing interests at court. Too many nobles wanted the throne for themselves. And in the chaos that followed the fall of the south lands, they might have done it, had it not been for the church. Little Princess Elleena Postuma was whisked off to the temple in Fall City, where she stayed for the next fourteen years, and Pope Bartholomew became the regent of the kingdom.”
“Did they keep Elleena prisoner in the temple?” wondered the orphan.
“Of course they didn’t,” said I. “Though I will wager she sometimes felt that she was in a prison. She could go anywhere she wanted to as long as she stayed in Fall City and under constant protective guard. In the meantime she was given all the training and education that was necessary for one who would one day rule.”
“It is like prison,” said the orphan.
“Neither you nor I will ever really know the truth of that.”
At that moment, I spied a light in the distance. The story, or at least this chapter of the story over, conversation ceased. I urged Hysteria forward, which is to say I encouraged her onward toward the distant light, which turned out to be a small cabin on the side of the road. Yellow light spilled from its tiny windows onto the snow.
Not having had the best of luck so far that night with regard to welcomes, which is to say that I had been attacked three times already that night, two times of which I have already described for you here, I dismounted and crept around to the side of the cabin to the window and peered inside. Lying on the floor in a pool of blood was a man in common work clothes. The single room of the little cabin had been ransacked. And dancing around, or sitting and singing, or drinking; were more of the little, round-headed blighters, which is to say goblins.
Hysteria clomped along slowly down the snow covered road for some time. The orphan was so quiet that for a while I thought he must have fallen asleep. But at last he stirred and shifted a bit in his seat, which is to say upon Hysteria’s flank. I myself had been quiet as I remembered the events of that horrible night.
“What are you thinking about?” asked the orphan.
“I’m thinking about that horrible night,” I replied.
“Did you never find your family?”
“No, though I searched for weeks. My mother was to make me a blueberry pie that night, and I not only have never seen my mother since, I did not get to eat that pie either.”
“I’m sorry I brought up such a painful memory,” he said, then paused. “Do you suppose that the purple drops on the floor could have been from your blueberry pie?”
“Fiends!” said I. “To rob a man of his mother and his pie in the same night!”
“Perhaps it were best that we think on something else,” said he.
“Perhaps,” I agreed.
“If you are really such a great story-teller…”
“The greatest in the world.”
“And if the story of the Queen of Aerithraine is a great story…”
“Wonderful. Exciting. True. Profound.”
“Well, maybe you could tell me the story.”
“I get half a crown for that story in Illustria,” said I.
“I have a shiny penny,” said he.
“The story begins in Aerithraine, far to the west, along the coast of the great ocean sea. From storied Illustria, its capital, to Cor Cottage just outside Dewberry Hills in River County, Aerithraine has been a great and powerful country for some seven hundred years more or less. By more or less, I mean that it has been more or less seven hundred years that Aerithraine has been a country and that it has been more or less great and more or less powerful during those seven hundred years. But about fifty years ago, it was less. That was when the old king died, and as is the way of kings, a new one was crowned. He was King Julian the Rectifier.
“He was called Julian the Rectifier because he was chiefly interested in rectifying. He spent most of his time rectifying. He rectified all over the place. And he was good at it. He rectified like nobody else.”
“It means setting things to right,” said the orphan.
“Of course it does and that is just what he did. Under his reign, the kingdom was prosperous and wealthy. And, as he wasn’t so interested in warring as in rectifying, there was peace throughout the land. King Julian had only one son, and he passed to that son the strongest and wealthiest kingdom in all of Duaron, and if it had only remained so, Elleena would have become nothing more than a minor princess perhaps.”
“Which would not have made a half-crown story,” pointed out the orphan.
“That is so.”
“Carry on then.”
“King Justin was the son of Julian. I hear tell that he was once called Justin the Good and Justin the Wise, though now when story-tellers refer to him, they usually call him Justin the Weak or Justin the Unready.”
“What do you call him?”
“I just call him King Justin,” said I. “Though I truly believe he may deserve the title Justin the Brave, it is not what the listeners want to hear.”
“Go on.”
“King Justin married a princess from the faraway land of Goth. The Arch-Dukes of Goth, which is to say the rulers of that land, have for generations, maintained power through a tightly woven web of treaties with its mighty neighbors. Their chief barter in this endeavor is the marriage of the many female members of the family. I hear the current Arch-Duke has but four daughters at least as of yet, but his father who was Arch-Duke before him had seventeen, and his father, which is to say the grandfather of the current Arch-Duke had nineteen.”
“That hurts just thinking about it.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“It must have been quite a coup of diplomacy for the Arch-Duke of Goth to make a match with the King of Aerithraine, but he did, marrying to the King his daughter Beatrix. And though I hear that the women of that country wear too much make-up, she was never the less accounted a great beauty. She had pale white skin, raven hair, smoldering eyes, and a gold ring in her nose, as is the fashion in the east.
“King Justin and Queen Beatrix had four strong sons, the eldest of whom was Prince Jared. He was particularly beloved of the people. I saw him once when I was a child of four or five, sitting on my poor old father’s shoulders as the Dragon Knights passed on their tall white steeds. That is to say, I was seated on my father’s shoulders and the Prince was not. Neither were the Dragon Knights or their steeds. I don’t remember why the Prince and the knights were in River County. It was too long ago. He would have grown to be King upon his father’s death if it was not for…”
“Goblins!”
“Yes, that’s right. You didn’t say you had heard the story before, though I’ll warrant it wasn’t told as well…”
“No!” screamed the orphan. “Goblins! Right there!”
He pointed straight ahead, and sure enough, stepping out of the shadows and into the moonlight were a half dozen creepy little man-things. They were no more than three feet tall, their over-sized round heads, glowing eyes, and gaping maws giving away their identity. As they came closer those mouths widened into grins filled with jagged little teeth, looking far too much like the teeth on the blade of a cross-cut saw for my taste. They brandished what weapons they had, mostly things they had picked up from the ground—a stick, a length of cord with a knot in it. But a couple of them carried old, discarded straight razors.
“You are almost an orphan?”
“Indeed.”
“How can you be almost an orphan?”
“Why couldn’t I be?” I demanded. “If anyone can be, I could be.”
“What I mean is…” He took a deep breath. “How can one be almost an orphan?”
“Oh. Well, it’s only that my parents aren’t dead.”
“I see,” said he.
“But they were kidnapped,” I confided.
“Are you sure they didn’t just run away?” he asked.
“It was a stormy night and I had been away from my parents’ home, which is to say my former home, which is to say Cor Cottage just outside Dewberry Hills, and I was returning for a visit. As I approached I heard a disturbance, though at first I attributed it to the sounds of the storm. Then I looked up at the cottage window to see figures silhouetted on the shade, locked in a grim struggle.”
“What did you do?”
“Why, I rushed forward to aid my poor old mother, who as I recall smells of warm pie, and my poor old father, and my sister Celia, and my aunt Oregana, and my cousin Gervil, and my other cousin Tuki, who is a girl cousin, which is to say a cousin who is a girl, which makes sense, because whoever heard of a boy named Tuki.”
“They were all struggling by the window?”
“They may all have been struggling by the window, or some of them may have been, or perhaps only one of them was struggling by the window. I don’t know, because when I burst in through the front door, they were all gone. The back door was open wide and the rain was splashing in.”
“What happened to them?”
“I know not.”
“Were there any clues?”
“Indeed there were.”
“What were they?”
“The table had been set for nine, which was two places too many.”
“Three places!” said the orphan triumphantly. “You thought I wasn’t paying attention. There was your father, mother, sister, aunt, and two cousins. That makes six.”
“They would also have set a place for Geneva.”
“Of course they would have. Who is she?”
“She’s my other cousin, which is to say Gervil’s sister, only she’s imaginary, but she wasn’t always imaginary, which is to say she died, but Gervil still sees her, so Aunt Oregana always sets a place for her.”
“What other clues?”
I listed them off. “There was a knife stuck in Gervil’s bed. Floorboards had been loosened in several rooms. There were drops of purple liquid leading out the back door. And someone had hung bunches of onions from the rafters of the dining room. Most mysterious of all was the fact that the tracks led away from the house only fifty feet and then disappeared entirely.”
The orphan gripped me around the waist and squeezed. “How terrible,” he said, in a tiny voice.
Spoiler Alert
What this shows is that I am terrible at writing mysteries. My inspiration for this little bit was Lemony Snicket in a Series of Unfortunate Events, who has his own mystery inside the mystery of the orphans in the story. I originally thought that I might slowly reveal more about the mystery of Eaglethorpe’s family, but as it turns out, Eaglethorpe was lying about the whole thing.
I spurred Hysteria forward, though truth be told
I did not spur her precisely because I do not wear spurs. Spurs seem unnecessarily mean and pointed and Hysteria is possessed of something of a fragile ego. If one speaks harshly too her, she is likely
to go into a mope for weeks on end and jabbing her haunches or belly with pointy metal objects could send her into a serious downward spiral of depression. It would be a sad thing to see. So I encouraged her forward. I urged her forward. I coaxed her forward. I asked her to go forward and she went forward, which now that I think about it, is the direction that she is usually most likely to go.
Hysteria, as a name for a warhorse, just came to me. I just love it. Hysteria is of course not something you generally want your horse to have, but there’s more to it of course than that. The word hysteria, is such a gender biased word, hysteria being a supposed female weakness, hence its connection with hysterectomy. I haven’t named any other horses in the series, at least until book 4, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Amazons, in which there is a horse named Susan.
“All the country knows the name of Eaglethorpe Buxton and it knows that he is not one to harm children or ladies, nor old people or the infirm. Rather he is a friend to those who are in need of a friend and a protector to those who are in need of a protector and a guardian to those who are in need of a guardian.”
“So long as it is not a pie that needs guarding,” said he.
Unlike my other stories, I don’t plot Eaglethorpe Buxton. I just let it go. Some may think that’s obvious. So, I never expected as I was first writing the story that pie would play such a huge part, but after the first story, there just had to be pie in all the others.
The last character I want to talk about from The Young Sorceress is Pantagria– the angelic demon who is the embodiment of addiction. I love writing Pantagria in The Voyage of the Minotaur, but had written Brechalon, The Dark and Forbidding Land, The Drache Girl, and The Two Dragons without being able to include her. The Young Sorceress was my last chance.
I love the dialog between Yuah and Pantagria in this story. They have a complex relationship, one having loved Terrence and the other having been loved by him, and lovers with each other. Of course my favorite line between them is when I get to steal my favorite line from Hamlet.
“Don’t speak of him!” Yuah’s hand became a claw with which she threatened to lash out. “Don’t you dare say his name!”
“I loved Terrence,” Pantagria hissed, her eyes taking an evil gleam. “Forty thousand dressing maids with all their quantity of love could not equal my sum!”
I hope you enjoyed my few thoughts about these characters. To all of you who have taken your valuable time to read this book, you have my thanks.
I had been traveling for through the snowy forests of Brest, which of course one might associate with a nicely roasted breast of chicken, but that is not necessarily the case. To be sure I have had one or two nicely roasted chickens during my travels in this dark, cold country, as I traveled from one little hamlet to the next. I would say though that I’ve eaten far more mutton and beef stew than roasted
chicken breast. I suppose this has to do with the fact that eggs are dear, though I’ve seldom found an inn that didn’t offer a fried egg of morning. In fact,
in distant Aerithraine, where I was once privileged to spend a fortnight with the Queen, I have had some of the finest breast of chicken dinners than any man
has ever enjoyed. But notwithstanding this, there was a pie.
“In fact, in distant Aerithraine, where I was once privileged to spend a fortnight with the Queen…” I threw in this line as a tribute to Baron Munchausen, who was one of the inspirations for Eaglethorpe– probably the primary inspiration. A great story-teller who is also a liar, the Baron frequently compares women to “Catherine the Great, empress of all the Russias, whose hand in marriage I once had the honor to decline.”
The Queen of Aerithraine had already been created in our old D&D game. I knew her whole history, but I never expected her to become a pivotal character in Eaglethorpe’s story. But she does.
I should stop and introduce myself. I am Eaglethorpe Buxton, famed world traveler
and story-teller. Of course you have heard of me, for my tales of the great heroes and their adventures have been repeated far and wide across the land.
Yes, I am sad to say that many of my stories have been told without the benefit of my name being attached to them. This is unfortunate as my appellation, which is to say the name of
Buxton and of Eaglethorpe would add a certain something to the verisimilitude of a story, which is to say the truthfulness or the believability of the
story. But such is the jealousy of other
story-tellers that they cannot bear to have my name overshadow theirs. In truth I am probably better known in any case as an adventurer in my own right than as a teller of the adventures of others. But in any case, there was a pie.
I started writing Eaglethorpe Buxton in early 2009 just as a bit of fun. I wanted a story with an unreliable narrator, set in a fantasy world, but I wasn’t to worried that the world be believable or even make sense. I used the world that my kids and I had created to play D&D in, but played pretty fast and loose with the geography.
City of Amathar 