Melanthrix the Mage

by Robert Reginald

  He strode off with Kérés in his wake.

  A few moments later the trio emerged at Saint Ióv’s Church in Kórynthály, and exited out the back door onto a boulevard that extended well into the distance, lined on ei­ther side with the stately tombs of the Tighrishi. All three carried a torch, for the moon was now hidden completely behind clouds that dribbled down a constant haze of light mist. Everything glistened with the wet, reflecting back a myriad of small points, as if a thousand eyes were watching them avidly from the dark. Far down the avenue Arkády could see the flicker of a single light. He had a pretty good idea of where they were going.

  The newer mausolea were located at the end of the Boulevard des Tombeaux Tighrises, and it was there that they found King Kipriyán, prostrated before the great mon­ument to his father. In the flickering light of their torches Arkády could see the inscription etched in Greek onto the marble façade:

  “Makarios Vasileus Kôrynthias”

  “Father!” said Princess Arrhiána, concern etched in every syllable, “whatever are you doing here? You’re soaked right through. You were badly hurt today. You should be in bed recovering your strength. You’ll catch your death.”

  Slowly the old monarch crawled unsteadily to his feet, using the tomb as a prop. Pain lined his face as he turned to face them.

  “I, I must talk to him. I have to know. He must tell me what he did. He knows.”

  “Knows what, father?” Arkády asked.

  “He knows about the Dark-Haired Man,” Kipriyán said, looking wildly around in all directions. “So does Grandmamá. He did something naughty during the war, but I can’t tell you what it was, oh no. And Grand­mamá, she and Great-Uncle Víktor told me about it after­wards, and they said they had taken care of it, but that I’d have to watch myself all the time, have to watch for the Dark-Haired Man. I’ve been a good little boy, haven’t I? I’ve been very, very careful, just like Grandmamá said. But they didn’t tell me where to look, and so I have to know what they did. I have to know!”

  His eyes suddenly went very wide.

  “Father...,” Arrhiána said.

  Arkády motioned silence with his left hand, slightly jerking his head back at Kérés, who was standing respect­fully to one side.

  “Captain,” he said, “please wait for us in the church.”

  “Yes, sir,” was the muted reply, and the soldier trotted back down the avenue.

  “Father,” Arkády said, sighing deeply, “does this have anything to do with Aunt Mösza or her visions?”

  “Ayyy!” Kipriyán said, shrinking back along the face of the tomb.

  He made the witch sign with the fingers of his right hand.

  “That bitch! That ingrate! She was never anything but trouble.”

  Then he seemed to regain some of his composure.

  “What did she do, father?” Arrhiána asked.

  He leaned heavily against the stone fronting of the monument.

  “I was told that she dabbled in arcane lore, that she refused to marry the man she was promised to, and, finally, during the great war, that she killed someone for no good reason. They banished her from Kórynthia forever on pain of death. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. Grandmamá wouldn’t even talk about her after she left.”

  Kipriyán lurched to one side, favoring his left leg, and nearly fell; Arkády immediately leant him a shoulder.

  “Oh, God, I don’t know what I’m doing here, son,” he said. “I had to get out of that tomb, and this seemed like the only place to go. You know, I’ll be in­terred here soon enough myself, sleeping with the rats.”

  “Oh, father!” Arrhiána said, “don’t say such things.”

  “Daughter, I can feel the world closing in on me.”

  The king wiped his hand across his eyes, clearing away the mist dripping from his bushy brows.

  “Everywhere around me are plots and counterplots. I know there’s someone behind all of this. I can sense it in my heart. My father could tell me, if he were here. My grandmother knew. But I was too young. And now he’s coming after me. Is it not written, ‘The gods visit the sins of the father upon the children’?”

  “Come, father, it’s time to go home,” Arrhiána said. “Come with us and we’ll take you back to the warmth of your own hearth and family.”

  She tugged on his arm.

  Like an old, bedraggled sheepdog, limping and damp, the king docilely followed her back down the boule­vard to the church, where Kérés was waiting for them.

  “Take him back through and get him settled down, Rhie, if you please,” Arkády said, before turning to his other problem.

  “Captain,” he said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to tamper with your recollection a bit. You under­stand why.”

  “Yes, sir, of course, sir, that’s no trouble, sir,” the soldier said, eager to please his master.

  “All you have to do is relax, Kérés,” the prince said. “Just relax and allow me to touch your forehead, here.”

  After several moments’ work, Arkády saluted the guard officer.

  “Good work, captain,” the prince said. “I don’t see any sign of the intruders now, but I do appreciate being in­formed about the situation, and I’ll see that you get a com­mendation for your initiative. We can’t have any of the tombs being defaced, now, can we?”

  “No, sir!” Kérés said, saluting in return.

  “Carry on,” the prince ordered, and returned to Paltyrrha.

  But in the darkness among the tombs another pres­ence strolled down the broad avenue of the dead, looking neither right nor left, but stopping at the same place where Kipriyán had briefly rested. One hand reached out to trace the name cut into the cold stone facing, leaving a faint glow behind.

  “Makáry!” came the faint cry.

  “Makáry!” the surrounding tombs echoed back.

  But to the question or to its reply, nothing was ren­dered, nothing set by.

  EPILOGUE

  “WHO ARE THEY

  OFFERING ME THIS TIME?”

  Anno Domini 1241

  Anno Juliani 881

  Queen Grigorÿna looked up from her desk and said, “Yes?”

  “I’m very sorry to disturb you, Your Majesty,” the Majordomo Baron Kornik said, “but the delegation from Polonia is here. What are your instructions?”

  “Concerning the usual business, I presume,” she said. “Who are they offering me this time?”

  “Prince Iwán, I believe—although I don’t really know that for a fact,” he said.

  “King Amorek’s second son, eh? Well, at least we seem to be moving up the list. They must be desperate.”

  “The Polonians would very much like to annex Kórynthia to their realm. It would give them access to the Southern Sea.”

  “Indeed,” the monarch said. “Well, of course, we would also like to add Polonia to our realm. Perhaps I should tell them that. No, on further consideration, you can inform our dear northern friends that we are highly insulted—even scandalized—to be offered only a second son, and not the heir to the throne himself; and that therefore we will not meet with them until the offer is appropriate to our station and rank.

  “Now, is there anything else?”

  “Minister Donatos would like a moment of your time later this afternoon, if that’s possible, Madam,” Kornik said.

  She glanced over at a notepad filled with nearly indecipherable scribblings. “Yes, we can see him just before afternoon Prayers. Please pass along the message. Now, you may leave us.”

  “Yes, Majesty,” and he bowed out of the small room.

  Grigorÿna sighed as he closed the door after him. She’d only been Queen for three years, but already the burden seemed almost unbearable at times. And always there was that lingering question, permeating every discussion, every briefing, every Council meeting. She had to keep stringing them along until it was too late to turn back.

  She returned to the manuscript that she’d been reviewing, her unfinishe
d history of the Great War. If only she’d had her father’s wisdom, or even her grandfather’s—well, at least up until the.... There was just so much about the period that she didn’t remember and couldn’t know. After all, she’d only been a child of eight then. Most of the principals were gone now, and those that weren’t rarely wanted to discuss what had happened to them during that awful year. Some horrors simply can’t be resurrected.

  This was her life’s work, not the day-to-day matters of state, however important they might be. Those who forgot history were doomed to relive it, over and over again; and she was determined to record the events of the war exactly as they occurred, whether or not they reflected well on her forebears. This particular conflict must not be fought again. Not ever.

  But what to do about Killingford? That was the real problem: how to relate the events of the greatest battle ever fought in Eastern Nova Europa fairly and succinctly, without bias to either side—although there was enough blame left lying on that blood-stained field to spatter the souls of everyone involved, even those whose motives had been relatively pure, like her father.

  She hesitated to take the next step, because of the risks involved. Not that she was afraid for herself, oh no. The Queen Grigorÿna had lived a very long life during her short, four decades of existence, and had seen too much of real evil to be frightened of mere death. She shuddered even now at the thought of the more tainted members of her own family, several of whom she had herself planted among the royal crypts—or in special places even further removed from the world of man.

  No, the problem, as always, came back once again to the matter at hand. At this time, and in this place, there was no one yet groomed to succeed her, although the number of would-be candidates seemed to proliferate almost daily. She had someone in mind, of course, but still....

  Well, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

  She would have to try the “Working of Recollection” if she wanted to get the details right about Killingford. It was so very important, both to her and to history (she believed), to do this one thing correctly, to preserve the story of those events so that others would never have to walk those killing fields themselves.

  But even to attempt the spell was risking the loss of one’s persona. She needed knowledge, and she needed help.

  And suddenly she knew just where to get them!

  AFTERWORD

  “THE WAY TO NOVA EUROPA”

  This was my first extended work of fiction. It poured out of my soul in a flood of enthusiasm and joy, and remains one of the most pleasurable creative rushes that I’ve ever experienced. That the book exists at all is due to Katherine Kurtz, who’d bought my idea for the Codex Derynianus, and later suggested that I try my hand at writing a novel set in the Deryni universe.

  For a variety of reasons that reflected the beginning of the changes that have since taken place in the world of publishing, that project never materialized in the way that either of us had hoped; and the result left me with a finished manuscript that remained floating in Limbo for a great many years. It would be “on” again and then “off” again, on and off, off and on, and neither I nor she could do much about the situation. Finally, after many years of waiting, it became obvious to me that the book would not be published as written—and at that point I recast it as a novel in my own created fantasy world, Nova Europa.

  Ultimately, I did three rewrites of the book. During my hospital stay in 2003, I had a great deal of time to think about “Life, the Universe, and Everything,” and I told my dear wife, during the five-minute intervals that “they” would allow her and my daughter to visit, that if I didn’t survive, I wanted my three long fantasy novels to be published “as is.” Well, it obviously wasn’t my time yet; when I walked out of CCU three weeks later, barely ambulatory, I was determined to preserve what I could of my creative work.

  The Dark-Haired Man and The Exiled Prince, as they were then called, were polished and published in 2004, and Quæstiones followed a year later. All three books were humongous creations, 600 printed pages in length in trade paperback, or about 183,000 words each. My dear friend and academic colleague Dr. Jorun Johns agreed to handle them at her imprint, Ariadne Press, bless her. And then the books pretty much vanished without any trace whatsoever, despite my best efforts.

  Two of the fantasies received glowing notices from Tom Easton at Analog, and all three books garnered a scattering of other reviews that added some very flattering comments, but to no obvious effect. I started a fourth novel, O Infinite Smile, but (so far, at least) it has never managed to progress beyond the first few chapters. Then, too, in subsequent years my limited energy for creative writing was eaten away by the other assignments I received—to pen two Phantom Detective novels, and to write a trilogy of novels, the first of which was loosely adapted from H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. These too made very little impression upon the world of letters; they were left as mere litters of words.

  Finally, however, I had an idea for another Nova Europa volume, The Fourth Elephant’s Egg, which I finished in the Spring of 2010 after two years of intermittent work. It emerged from its shell at a size slightly larger than the first three novels in the sequence. But there were some distinct differences.

  The looser, more collequial style that I developed for the Wells’s pastiches and for my short YA SF novel, Knack’ Attack, seemed very suitable for Egg, So, in spite of the serious themes explored in that novel, I managed to maintain the skein of humorous interplay that I found so winning in several of these other works. Thus, Egg was both like and unlike the earlier books in the Nova Europa series.

  Even so, my agent felt that it was too long to market in the present publishing environment, and so passed on pushing the book. Another one of my major creative efforts was left an orphan, and I was left wondering what I should do with this novel—and with all of my other long fictions.

  After months of discussing the matter with Mary (my life companion) and several of my literary buddies, I came to the conclusion that the only way to make these novels viable again was to recast them into shorter pieces, as trilogies.

  I started with Invasion! (the Wells project), which had originally been written as three novels, but had only been published in omnibus form. It was a fairly simple matter to break the book apart, and issue the pieces as they were originally penned—as separate books. John Betancourt kindly agreed to publish these and my other works through Wildside Press.

  Next up was Egg, which, like ancient Gaul, could also easily be broken into three parts, under the titles The Cracks in the Æther, The Pachyderms’ Lament, and The Fourth Elephant’s Egg. I added new Prologues and Epilogues as needed to provide additional continuity. That left me with the three previously published long fantasies.

  I started anew with The Dark-Haired Man. This was the most tightly plotted of the early books, but I could see several fracture points where the original narrative could be divided into sections, provided that I added the appropriate bridge material. However, I’d moved in a very different direction with my fiction in the intervening years since penning the first draft of this novel, and that left me in a quandary. Should I recast the book, or simply re-edit it? I decided upon the latter course.

  Even at this early stage in my career as a purveyor of tales, I tended to write in discrete, three-to-five-page scenes, usually separated from the surrounding text by a row of asterisks. In later works I made these into actual chapter breaks—and I’ve now done so here as well. I also headed each of the dozen chapters in the original text with quotes from classic literature; I’ve dropped those in this version. Finally, the chapter titles themselves were all taken from chess terms or themes; I’ve instead employed lines of actual dialogue, which is my current practice in the other fictions.

  The result, I think, helps break up the very dense sections of text that filled the original book, which should make all three parts of the reconstituted trilogy (now called The Hieromonk’s Tale) more accessible to pres
ent-day readers. I certainly hope so. I also edited the text lightly throughout the book, but chose not to mess around overmuch with the actual plot, which still unfolds (I firmly believe) with overtones of Greek tragedy. The King of Kórynthia is a deeply troubled, even doomed, character.

  My dear friend and creative writing teacher, Fran Polek, lived long enough to see the manuscript but not the published book; we visited him and his wife, Jan, at their home in Spokane, Washington, in the Summer of 2001. He maintained a profound interest in my work as writer and editor, and I owe him more than I can say for the words of encouragement that he offered me at Gonzaga University during 1965-1969.

  When I started my first book, Stella Nova (which later became Contemporary Science Fiction Authors), in the Fall of 1968, it was Fran and several of his English Department colleagues who scraped together some money to help support my efforts. Their boost at that time was a key element in my subsequent development as a writer and editor. So I rededicate this novel to Dr. Polek, with a reminder to all educators everywhere: what you say to impressionable young students does make a difference.

  And now, gentle readers, I hope you enjoy my very first incursion into the wilds of Nova Europa. May it not be your last!

  —Robert Reginald

  San Bernardino, California

  4 June 2011

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert Reginald was born in Japan, and lived in Turkey as a youth. He starting writing as a child, and penned his first book during his senior year in college. He settled in Southern California in 1969, where he served as an academic librarian for forty years. He currently edits the Borgo Press Imprint of Wildside Press, and has also penned more than 125 books and 13,000 short pieces. His recent works of fiction include twelve Nova Europa historical fantasies (2004-11); six science fiction novels: The War of Two Worlds Trilogy: Invasion!, Operation: Crimson Storm, and The Martians Strike Back! (2007/2011); two Human-Knacker War SF novels: Knack’ Attack (2010) and “A Glorious Death” (2011); and Academentia: A Future Dystopia (2011); two Phantom Detective period mysteries: The Phantom’s Phantom (2007) and The Nasty Gnomes (2008); a comic mystery, The Paperback Show Murders (2011); a horror novel, Hell’s Belles (forthcoming); and four story collections: Katydid & Other Critters: Tales of Fantasy and Mystery (2001), The Elder of Days: Tales of the Elders (2010), The Judgment of the Gods and Other Verdicts of History (2011), Dead Librarians and Other Shades from Academe (2011). He has also edited the SF anthology, Yondering (2011) and the mystery anthology, Whodunit? (2011). You can find him at: