The Sword of Bheleu
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PRIA: Fourth among the Lords of Eir, Pria is the goddess of love, friendship, and peace, and of beneficial emotions generally, the exact opposite and counterpart to Aghad. She is one of the most popular deities.
REGVOS: The more popular of the two aspects of Andhur Regvos, sixth Lord of Des, Regvos is the god of blindness, ignorance, stupidity, and folly.
SAI: Fifth among the Lords of Dûs, Sai is the goddess of pain and suffering. Where her brother Aghad dominates the actively negative emotions, Sai is the ruler of the passively negative: despair, sorrow, acquiescence, masochism. She is secretly worshipped by those with a sadistic streak throughout the world, since physical pain is within her province.
SAVEL SKAI: Arkhein god of the sun; the name means “the bright shining one.” Popular to swear by, but not seriously worshipped by civilized people.
SNEG: Sneg is god of the winter, one of the four Arkhein falling into the subcategory of Yaroi, or gods of the seasons. He is worshipped only by those who depend upon him, such as ice-cutters.
SIM: Arkhein god of cold, usually closely associated with Sneg.
TEMA: Seventh of the Lords of Dûs, Tema is the goddess of the night and its creatures. She is the patroness of most of the population of Dûsarra and much of the rest of Nekutta as well.
WEIDA: Arkhein goddess of wisdom, Weida is worshipped by scholars and seers everywhere.
Appendix B
A History of This Novel
The Sword of Bheleu is the third volume in the four-part “Lords of Dûs” series. There are no published spin-offs or related series outside the four volumes, nor are any presently in the works, but the possibility of adding more eventually hasn’t been ruled out.
I described the origins of the series as a whole in the appendices to the previous volumes, so I won’t repeat that here, but I will explain where The Sword of Bheleu came from.
There were four major sources. Three of them were stories in my original series outline, back when I thought Garth would be the hero of a series of short works—stories I never wrote.
In my original plans most of the stories were intended to be about Garth running various errands for the Forgotten King, but there were two that were not. These two were instead going to center on other people reacting to Garth’s actions and the Forgotten King’s plans.
One of them, “Skelleth,” would have dealt with the Baron of Skelleth learning that there’s a powerful overman running errands for a mysterious magical character in his village, and wanting a piece of the action.
The other, “The Decision of the Council,” would have dealt with the other magicians in the world responding to the discovery that someone is upsetting, stealing, destroying, or destabilizing various important magical artifacts.
Another story, “The Fall of Fortress Lagur,” would have involved Garth running an errand, but would also have included material about the relationship between Garth and the City Council of Ordunin.
The actual impetus for what became The Sword of Bheleu, though, was the way The Seven Altars of Dûsarra had worked out. In writing the novel I had made the Sword of Bheleu more powerful than I had originally intended it to be, and had thrown in a bunch of background that all fit in with what I’d planned, but which wasn’t part of the scheme I’d started with. The system of ages, the identity of the Forgotten King, the vendetta by the cult of Aghad—that had all been added, and once I’d set it up I couldn’t really ignore it. It was obvious that the third book in the series had to deal with the Sword, and with Garth’s relationship to the gods—and it made sense to me to take those three stories about Garth’s relationships with other powers and add them to the mix, combining everything into a single package.
So I did. The Sword of Bheleu starts off with a blend of what would have been “Skelleth” and “The Fall of Fortress Lagur”—though I completely removed Lagur itself, and the errand the King would have sent Garth on—and then segues into “The Decision of the Council” to finish out the book. The working title was, in fact, The Decision of the Council, partly because I thought calling a fantasy novel The Sword of [invented name] was a dreadful cliché, but Lester del Rey was of the very definite opinion that that “Sword of” formulation had become a cliché because it works, and that The Decision of the Council was static and dull. Thus, The Sword of Bheleu it became, even though nobody can pronounce “Bheleu.” It is, in fact, the only one of all the hundreds of names I’ve invented that I invariably have trouble pronouncing correctly.
A few quick notes on obscure sources for details in the story:
The name “The Council of the Most High” was inspired by a Jefferson Airplane song called “War Movie” that contains a line, “Call high, to the Most High Directors!” I liked the sound of that, and in the earliest part of the very first draft my magicians were “The Council of the Most High Directors.” I quickly shortened it to something I thought was more appropriate, though.
There is a formula Bheleu recites a couple of times: “I am Bheleu, god of destruction! Death and desolation follow me as hounds; cities are sundered at my touch, and the earth itself shattered! Who are you that dare to affront me thus?” This was inspired by a recurring line in Sapir and Murphy’s early novels in the Destroyer series: “I am created Shiva, the destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds, the blind night tiger made whole by Sinanju. What is this dog meat that stands before me?” I thought that was a neat gimmick, giving a superhuman hero a ritual introduction like that, so I swiped the idea. The Destroyer’s version is in turn based on a line from the Bhagavad Gita, one of the Hindu scriptures; the same line in a somewhat different translation was quoted by Robert Oppenheimer on the occasion of the Trinity test in 1945, the first man-made nuclear explosion: “I am created Death, the shatterer of worlds...”
My own copy of the Bhagavad Gita has a completely different and far less poetic translation, by the way.
The name Saram—I should have mentioned this in previous volumes—is shortened from Saram-Silva, the name of the character played by Keith Bass in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran when I was in college. I have no idea where Keith got it; I assume he just made it up. My character is nothing at all like his, not even the same species; I only borrowed the name.
Speaking of people I knew in college, at least one old friend accused me of basing the Baron of Skelleth on him. The Baron of Skelleth actually was partially based on someone I knew in college—but not him. I had a heck of a time convincing him, though. I learned my lesson from that, and have never since consciously based any of my characters on my friends or relatives. If you’re an old friend and think you recognize yourself anywhere in my work—you’re wrong. (Well, unless you’re the guy I really based the Baron of Skelleth on, and I haven’t heard from him in twenty years.)
Chalkara of Kholis, while not based on a real person, was deliberately written as someone I’d like to meet.
There’s one other major source I was drawing on in writing this series, but I think I’ll leave that explanation for the final volume.
The Sword of Bheleu was first published January 1983 by Del Rey Books, ISBN 0-345-30777-1. The original cover art was by Laurence Schwinger. There were at least five Del Rey printings. The novel has been translated into German, Spanish, and Italian.
The Del Rey edition went out of print in the early 1990s, and I reclaimed the rights. In 2001 I signed a contract with Wildside Press to publish this new edition.
In preparing the Wildside Press edition I’ve generally followed the Del Rey edition. A few typos and other small errors have been corrected, but no significant editing has been done.
The only significant differences are in these appendices, and the new map. The map in the Del Rey edition, although based on my own original map, was drawn by Chris Barbieri, and Wildside was unable to obtain the rights to it. We are therefore using the revised map I drew for the new edition of The Lure of the Basilisk, a
s adapted by Alan Rodgers at Wildside.
Appendix A was in the Del Rey edition; B and C are new.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Gaithersburg, MD
February 2002
Appendix C
The Histories of Garth of Ordunin, Written and Unwritten:
The original 1974 plan for the Garth series was for twelve stories, ranging from 3,300 words (“The Dragon of Orgûl”) to novel length (The Lady in the Jewel). In chronological order, they were to have been:
1. “The Master of Mormoreth”
2. “City of the Seven Temples”
3. The Lady in the Jewel
4. “The Scepter of Dor”
5. “The Eyes of Kewerro”
6. “The Dragon of Orgûl”
7. “The Decision of the Council”
8. “The Fall of Fortress Lagur”
9. “Skelleth”
10. “Return to Dûsarra”
11. “The Jungle by Night”
12. “The Last Quest”
“The Master of Mormoreth” was to start with a prologue explaining the series premise, and “The Last Quest” would end with an epilogue wrapping the whole thing up. The theory was that these could eventually be gathered into two volumes—a collection and a novel. Or possibly, if they ran longer than expected, two collections and a novel.
All the stories except “Skelleth” and “Return to Dûsarra” were begun; four of the first six were completed, but never published.
In 1975 or early ‘76 the plan was modified slightly—”The Decision of the Council,” “The Fall of Fortress Lagur,” and “Skelleth” were to be combined into a novel called The Decision of the Council.
In 1976 I decided that I should focus on novels, and the list was revised again, becoming primarily a series of novels. The first, The Overman and the Basilisk, incorporated “The Master of Mormoreth,” but expanded and extended the story, and was completed in 1978. The other novels were left unwritten until the first sold.
In 1979 The Overman and the Basilisk sold and was retitled The Lure of the Basilisk, and the series was continued, now planned as five volumes:
1. The Lure of the Basilisk
2. The City of Seven Temples
3. The Eyes of Kewerro & Other Stories (short story collection)
4. The Decision of the Council
5. The Last Quest
The Lady in the Jewel was dropped from the series as no longer really fitting in properly; the possibility of inserting it somewhere later was kept open.
The proposed novel version of The Last Quest would combine “Return to Dûsarra” and “The Last Quest.”
The second novel, The City of Seven Temples, was written, expanding the 12,000-word novelet “City of the Seven Temples.” Lester del Rey was not satisfied with it, and felt that it was too slow in getting to any sort of action or magic, so it was extensively revised, incorporating a piece of “The Eyes of Kewerro” into an early portion of the novel, resulting in The Seven Altars of Dûsarra.
That also resulted in rethinking some of the series structure, since there were loose ends in The Seven Altars of Dûsarra that were to be tied up in The Decision of the Council, and waiting an entire volume to address them seemed to be a mistake. Besides, the intended title story of the collection had been cannibalized and was therefore no longer available.
The revised plan was this:
1. The Lure of the Basilisk
2. The Seven Altars of Dûsarra
3. The Decision of the Council
4. The Dragon of Orgûl & Other Stories (short story collection)
5. The Last Quest
The Decision of the Council was written in 1981, and retitled The Sword of Bheleu. Its resemblance to the original fragment from 1975 was very faint, and although much of the intended plot of “Skelleth” did wind up incorporated into it, virtually no trace of “The Fall of Fortress Lagur” remained. In fact, by that point I think I’d forgotten “Fall” had ever existed, though one or two minor elements survived.
And after that was done, I looked at what I had left to work with, looked at the short fantasy markets, thought about how the series had developed, and decided that the only short story I still cared about at all was “The Dragon of Orgûl,” which could hardly be a fourth volume all by itself.
So it was expanded into the first four and a half chapters of The Last Quest, which was retitled The Book of Silence, and the series was completed in four volumes, rather than five.
The astute observer will have noticed that this means the following stories were not included anywhere in the final version: The Lady in the Jewel, “The Scepter of Dor,” “The Fall of Fortress Lagur,” “The Jungle by Night,” and a fraction of “The Eyes of Kewerro.”
“The Fall of Fortress Lagur” and “Eyes of Kewerro” could still have fit into the series reasonably well; the other three just didn’t belong in Garth’s adventures as they eventually developed. I may yet re-use some of the premises, though.
Here are quick summaries:
The Lady in the Jewel: The Forgotten King wants a sorceress named Sharatha, who rules the city of Ilnan, removed from the world. Garth initially assumes that this means she must be killed, but learns that in fact she is from another universe, a world inside a magical gem, and was exiled to Garth’s world by her enemies. He agrees to escort her home, but finds himself entangled in the same web of feuds and power struggles that caused her exile in the first place.
The link to the main story arc of the series was to be that the Forgotten King could not carry out his plans for Garth’s world as long as beings from other worlds lived in it; thus, he demanded that Sharatha be removed.
“The Scepter of Dor”: The Forgotten King wants a magical scepter that’s in the possession of Dor, Lord of Therin. Dor has no intention of giving it up while alive, and Garth discovers that Dor is very hard to kill—he has multiple bodies sharing his consciousness.
“The Fall of Fortress Lagur”: The heavily-fortified port city of Lagur, Ordunin’s major trading partner, is one of the magical keystones holding Garth’s world safe; the Forgotten King wants it destroyed, so Garth raises an army of overmen to attack it. Frankly, I think I abandoned this one because it was such a boring premise. Another fantasy siege—big deal.
“The Jungle by Night”: Garth is passing through the jungles of Yesh, far to the south of Eramma, on an errand for the Forgotten King, and trespasses on the tribal lands of the Kikoru, who decide that an overman’s hide would make a good trophy. The Kikoru are fierce, and the tribe’s shaman is a formidable wizard, so the result is an impressively bloody sword-and-sorcery battle. This one had some nice cultural details for the Kikoru, but was very short on actual plot.
“The Eyes of Kewerro”: Kewerro is the Arkhein god of the wind. In order to locate certain items the Forgotten King wants the Eyes of Kewerro, magical gems that allow their owner to see anything, anywhere in the world, that’s touched by the wind. These gems are sealed in a tomb on the uninhabited polar continent, and Garth fights his way through various menaces in order to rob the tomb. About half of these menaces wound up guarding the village of Weideth in chapters 4 and 5 of The Seven Altars of Dûsarra.
And that was the whole thing as originally planned back in 1974.
Later on, as the series developed, a couple of other possibilities emerged—novels I might yet write someday, though I’m not planning to any time soon.
First, there’s A Handful of Gold. Early in The Lure of the Basilisk Garth, ignorant of how highly humans value gold, grossly overpays a stable-boy. Later on it’s mentioned that the stable-boy used that gold to buy a share in a caravan headed south. At one point I desperately wanted to tell the tale of that boy’s adventures as he makes his way to Kholis, seeking his fortune, while Garth’s actions are altering the familiar world around him. I nev
er found the time for it, and eventually the enthusiasm faded.
And second, I have never ruled out the possibility of sequels, describing Garth’s adventures (and Frima’s—she’s a character introduced in The Seven Altars of Dûsarra) after the end of The Book of Silence. I plotted two of these, but then got busy with other projects and never wrote them, or seriously proposed them to a publisher. One would have been called Skelleth, and would have concerned control of that increasingly-important town; it would not be the same as the never-written ninth story in the original series outline.
The other sequel’s title is a spoiler for the ending of The Book of Silence, so I won’t mention it here, and it would have been about certain people seeking vengeance on Garth for events in the first four books. I could have written these two sequels in either order, since the outlines were still vague.
Every so often readers ask me if I’m planning to write any more about Garth or his world, and the answer is no, I’m not planning it, but it might happen someday.
And that’s all there is to the series.
—Lawrence Watt-Evans
About the Author
Lawrence Watt-Evans is the author of more than two dozen novels, and more than a hundred short stories. Further information can be found on his webpage at www.watt-evans.com/.