Isaak Wissinger was one of the main reasons I wanted to write The Young Sorceress. I had already written The Two Dragons, in which Wissinger is a minor character. When I was thinking up characters, I created a background for him that I really liked. It just seemed like a shame not to write that backstory into a book.
Wissinger also gave me a chance to set part of the story in Freedonia. Freedonia was my stand in for Germany (something of a cross between WWI under the Kaiser and WWII under the Nazis). I got the name from the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, though my country bears little resemblance to the one in the movie.
Wissinger is a writer and so he has some of my own traits. He is a member of the Zaeri minority in Freedonia and therefore ends up in the ghetto. He escapes with the help of Zurfina (herself a Zaeri) who has a fetish for creative types.
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.
Hertzal Hertling is one of the characters in Senta and the Steel Dragon. He and his two sisters arrived in Birmisia from Freedonia in book 1, victims of the anti-Zaeri racism in their homeland.
City of Amathar 