It has been one month since Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess was released as a free ebook. So far it has been downloaded 741 times at Feedbooks and Smashwords. Get your free download now. It is not yet available in bookstores, but you can purchase a copy of the paper book by clicking on the appropriate link at the right.
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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 I 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.
Note: I just approved the store copies of Princess of Amathar and Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess, so they should be available at Amazon in a week or so. You of course can purchase them now by clicking on the links to the right.
The Pell are spider-like creatures who live in a colony in the forests of Ecos. They range in size from a large tarantula to larger than a pony, the speak, and they eat any creatures they come across– including Amatharians.
Horrible alien monsters are of course a staple of pulp adventure tales and that is what I was going for in Amathar. The Pell make a brief but hopefully memorable appearance early in Princess of Amathar.
“Sister Auni here is just the person to set you right again.”
Images Copyright 2009 by ClipArt.com
Though he was quite as busy the next day as he had been the previous, Zeah had little thought for anything he was doing and much for that night’s supper. He took a fine haddock from the first load of fish brought in on the new fishing boat. Though Mrs. Colbshallow was not available, he found a Mrs. Finkler among the Freedonian immigrants, who by all accounts was a wonderful cook. He paid her two marks to prepare roasted fish. She proved to be as good as her reputation, and at the appointed time delivered not only two beautifully roasted fish fillets, but a large plate of potatoes, seasoned in a way that was completely new to former butler but was delicious, and roasted leeks covered in sweet butter.
Borrowing a small round table, Zeah covered it with a make-due tablecloth that was actually a short scrap of baby blue dress cloth lost from someone’s luggage. He pulled out a decorative bud vase, one of the few pieces of household glass that had survived since his wife’s death, filled it with water, and stuffed a handful of white wildflowers inside. He made this the centerpiece. Though it was far from the fancy porcelain that graced the Dechantagne table, it made his chipped plates and old silverware look very sad indeed. He was happy that at least he owned two nice chairs. They too were purchased long ago by his wife.
A knock at the door announced Egeria’s presence and he hurried her in to sit down. Though she seemed completely recovered, he still treated her as though she was as fragile as the bud vase. He had yet to spend an entire night without his mind flashing to her lying on the floor of Miss Dechantagne’s tent covered in blood. On several occasions he had awakened from a nightmare version of those events.
“Well, you’ve outdone yourself, Mr. Korlann,” said Egeria, looking at the food. “You must have been cooking all day.”
“I… didn’t cook it.”
“I know, silly,” she laughed. “Even if cooking was one of your many talents, I doubt you would have prepared Potatoes Kasselburg.”
“Is that what they are?”
“Yes. I had them last time I was in Freedonia.”
“Last time?”
“Mm-hmm. I’ve had to travel Kasselburg and Bangdorf several times.”
“I’ve never been to Freedonia,” mused Zeah. “I guess I’m not very well traveled.”
“Are you kidding? Look where we are. We’re in Birmisia, for heaven’s sake.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
The fish was excellent. All in all, Zeah thought the meal could have rivaled Mrs. Colbshallow’s cooking, maybe not Mrs. Colbshallow at her best, because at her best she was unrivaled, but Mrs. Colbshallow on an average day. He thought that he could become used to the Potatoes Kasselburg, sliced and baked and layered with cheese and pepper and some spices that he wasn’t familiar with. It was a more than satisfactory meal. They drank water with dinner, but near its end, Zeah uncorked a bottle of fine red wine.
“I was thinking,” said Egeria as she brought the red wine to her red lips. “The day after tomorrow would be the appropriate day to become engaged.”
“Why is that?” asked Zeah, not really realizing what she had said.
“You know. It’s the twentieth. It’s the traditional day of starting new tasks. It would be a fine time to become engaged.”
“Engaged in what?”
“Engaged to be married.”
“Muh… muh… married?”
“It was good enough for the Bratihns.”
“I wonder… I wonder if Corporal Bratihn went off to fight alongside Master Terrence?”
“Don’t change the subject,” she said.
“I’m not trying to…”
“We don’t have to get married right away.”
“We don’t?”
“No. We can be engaged just as long as you like. We need to announce our engagement though so that all of the other men will know I’m taken.”
“Uh… Other men?”
“Many other men. They’re hovering around everywhere. They’re like bees.”
“Bees?”
“Yes. They’re like bees, and I’m the honey. I can see them just waiting to get their stingers into me.”
“We have to announce our engagement,” he said.
“You have to ask me to marry you first.”
“Will you…”
“Not now.”
“No?”
“No. You have to think up some very romantic way to propose marriage to me. You have two days.”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Good,” she said. “Now that that’s out of the way, we can enjoy our wine.”
Zeah ran over this conversation in his head again and again the next day, and was never quite sure how exactly Egeria had maneuvered him into agreeing to ask her to marry him. He knew that jealousy had been the key, but who could blame him for being jealous. She was young and beautiful, and he was… well, him. He also knew that she was way too smart for him to outsmart her. She had said it herself. She was the most intelligent person in the colony. So after twenty four hours he was forced to go from wondering how it had happened and how to fix it, to trying to think of a romantic way to propose.
Gyula Kearn is in a single scene in The Voyage of the Minotaur. He is a line cook in Cafe Carlo in the great city of Brech. When he can get away with it, he likes to give food away to Senta and the other orphans who work in and around the cafe.
Gyula makes a second appearance in Book 5 of the series, when he arrives as an immigrant to Birmisia. Nine years have passed and he is hired on the be the head chef in one of the colony’s new restaurants. It is still a small part, but he may have a larger one in a later book.
I don’t remember where I got Gyula’s name. I do remember that just on the spur of the moment I decided that he had lost his arm in an industrial accident. I wanted to stress the number of accidents in an industrial revolution world, and a one-armed cook makes the character stand out a bit.
I’ve only played Rock Band and Guitar Hero a few times with my own kids and with my kids at school, but I have got to get The Beatles Rock Band. I haven’t wanted a game this bad ever.
City of Amathar 