Murder by Magic

by Rosemary Edghill

  Glen Cook provides an archetypal hard-luck hard-boiled gumshoe, also (coincidentally) named Garrett. Garrett has appeared in ten novels since 1987 and doesn’t seem to have a first name as of this writing. The difference between Garrett and the classic mean-streets private eye is that Garrett hangs his hat in another world: the city of TunFaire, a decaying outpost of the Karentine Empire, a corrupt (in all senses of the word) city populated by elves, giants, centaurs, pixies, wizards, and just about anything else that ever escaped from a fairy tale. In a tip of the hat to Rex Stout, Garrett shares his lodgings with The Dead Man, a massive creature who isn’t a man but is certainly dead. And quite grumpy about it. Philip Marlowe would certainly recognize Garrett’s problems, if not their packages.

  Anita Blake, vampire executioner, is the creation of Laurel K. Hamilton, and has appeared in nine novels since 1993. Anita lives in a world where vampires and other supernatural creatures have come “out of the closet” and into the mundane world, much in the tradition of Dean R. Koontz’s 1973 classic, The Haunted Earth. Anita, who has the innate ability to animate the dead, executes rogue vampires for the state of Missouri. And to her surprise, she finds that the supernatural community has begun coming to her to investigate crimes.

  And that brings us to the modern day, and the wonderful assortment of choices, both traditional and nontraditional, awaiting the connoisseur of the O.D., many types of which you find represented in these pages.

  But all of this really doesn’t quite explain how the anthology Murder by Magic came to exist. For that I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Debra Doyle, because without her, you would not be holding this anthology in your hands at all. A few years back, she and I were both guests at a DarkoverCon together, discussing, as writers will, the Great Unwritten Stories we wanted to write and never would, simply because there just didn’t seem to be a home for stories that blurred the lines between fantasy and mystery. She mentioned a story she’d always wanted to write, about a “country-house” murder set in the Mageworlds universe, where magic was a fact of life. A mystery that—literally—could not have occurred—or been solved—anywhere else.

  “But who would publish an occult mystery set in an SF universe?” she said, shrugging.

  “You write it,” I said. “I’ll edit the anthology.”

  And so Murder by Magic was born. Thanks, Debra. I owe it all to you, and to the other fine writers who came along to play.

  —Rosemary Edghill

  Chez Edghill, January 2003

  About the Editor

  Rosemary Edghill’s first professional sales were to the black & white comics of the late 1970s, so she can truthfully state on her résumé that she once killed vampires for a living. She is also the author of over thirty novels and several dozen short stories in genres ranging from Regency Romance to Space Opera, making all local stops in between. She has collaborated with authors such as the late Marion Zimmer Bradley and SF Grand Master Andre Norton, worked as an SF editor for a major New York publisher, as a freelance book designer, and as a professional book reviewer. Her Web site can be found at http://www.sff.net/people/eluki.

  1 Deni Tavaet sus-Arial: For Teliau’s original readers, the names in this passage would carry a considerable weight of implication. The “sus-” prefix to the family name indicates birth membership in the higher nobility—either the old (and at the time of the story, still powerful) land-based aristocracy, or the newer, and newly ascendant, star-lords. Inquestor-Principal syn-Casleyn is himself identified by the “syn-” prefix as a member of the lesser nobility; the prefix could also serve (though not in Jerre’s case, as other tales in the series make clear) as an indicator of adoptive membership in a hypothetical sus-Casleyn family. (back to text)

  2 Etaze is the traditional title accorded to one of the ranked Mages in a working Circle—those who are, in the vulgar usage, “Magelords.” The title is loosely equivalent to “Master” or “Mistress” among Adepts, though not all Mages will carry the rank. Rasha Jedao of the Center Street Mage-Circle is Jerre syn-Casleyn’s regular consultant on cases involving Magecraft. (back to text)

  3 Teliau’s choice of setting here can be taken as an indication of his political sympathies. The Court of Two Colors, in its heyday perhaps the best, or at least the most notable, hotel and restaurant in downtown Hanilat, would have been in operation for perhaps five years at the time of this story. For Teliau’s readers, the Court—having been largely destroyed by an incendiary device in 1142 E.R. as part of the ongoing power struggles among the star-lords—would have signified nostalgia for the older regime of land and merchant aristocracy, and would have stood as a covert rebuke to the ruling fleet-families. (back to text)

  4 Rasha Jedao’s family ties and Circle life are explored in depth in the second Jerre syn-Casleyn novel, An Unkind Corpse, which introduces the Center Street Magelord to the series as a continuing character. (back to text)

  5 Aiketh (pl. aiketen): Prior to the pacification of the Mageworlds in A.F. 980, the people of the Eraasian Hegemony made extensive use of these robotic servitors. The aiketen relied upon quasi-organic components rather than silicon for their computational power, making them difficult to mass-produce but capable of handling instruction sets of great subtlety. Whether or not an aiketh could achieve true sentience remains unknown; no aiketen have been made or instructed in the classical manner since the fall of the Hegemony, and even the savants of Eraasi’s own golden age disagreed on the theoretical possibility. (back to text)

  6 Uffa: a mildly stimulating herbal drink, similar in its effects and social uses to cha’a, and like cha’a, usually served hot; it comes in dark and pale—or “red” and “yellow”—varieties. (back to text)

  7 Of all the practices of the Mage-Circles, the raising of power through ritual combat—always real and sometimes fatal—is the one most alien to the rest of the civilized galaxy. It is a common misconception, even today, that those Mages who meet their deaths in this fashion are unwilling sacrifices. In fact, such duels for power are consensual and (as Jerre syn-Casleyn obliquely points out in this passage) one of the known hazards of life in a Circle. (back to text)

  8 Once again Teliau’s unstated political agenda makes itself apparent, this time in the attention paid to the autonomy and strong local focus of the Lokheran Circle. Teliau wrote during the Early Transitional period; he would have been a witness (perhaps even a participant—see Hithu and Bareian, Survey of Eraasian Literature, for a good summary of the arguments pro and con in the Teliau-as-Magelord controversy) to the struggles out of which came the Classical and Expansionist tradition of hierarchical structure and of shared and subordinated power. (back to text)

  9 Mages in the pre-Transitional period for the most part dressed in the garments customary to the region or community they served, donning the already traditional black robes only for Circle meetings and group endeavors. Nor did the Circles yet work masked; the geaerith, or full-face hardmask, did not become universally worn until well into the Expansionist period. Then as now, however, a Mage and his or her staff were inseparable, and the black wood cudgels—formidable weapons even without a Circle’s intention to add strength to the blows—were worn even with everyday garb. (back to text)

  10 The so-called great workings—those endeavors and intentions where the combat results in the death of one or more participants—are much less common than popular opinion in the Adeptworlds (and sensational fiction on both sides of the interstellar gap) would have us believe; available statistics (see, once again, Hithu and Bareian for a concise summary) confirm that a Mage in an ordinary Circle could reasonably expect to see only one or two such workings in the course of a lifetime. (back to text)

  11 Domestic and financial arrangements among the Mage-Circles have always been subject to considerable variation. Even in Circles tied to a particular area or institution, it was and is not uncommon for individual Mages to have occupations and business interests of their own, separate from the affairs of the Circle proper. Some
Circles, of which the fictional Lokheran Circle was apparently one, live communally; others have only a meeting place in common and—in this latter day—may never have seen one another unmasked. (back to text)

  12 Much of what is known of Circle practice in the pre-Transitional period comes from passing references made by outsiders. Then as now, working Mages preferred to pass on their teachings through personal instruction, and entrusted very little to the written word or to any other archival medium. (As inconvenient as their reluctance may be for interested scholars, it should come as no surprise to anyone on this side of the interstellar gap; the Adepts’ Guild has always been similarly unforthcoming about its own history.) The reliability of popular fiction as a source of information on the subject remains a matter for considerable debate. (back to text)

  13 On Eraasi and elsewhere, Mage-Circles interact with the universe through the manipulation of a complex of quantities and characteristics for which “luck” is the simplest and most usual (though perhaps not the most entirely accurate) translation. The luck is most commonly described, by those Mages willing to speak of it to outsiders, as complex patterns of silver, gray, or iridescent thread, which they call eiran; Eraasian philologists trace the word’s origins to an unattested pre-Archaic root ei or ai, meaning, roughly, “to live.” (back to text)

  14 The typical meditation chamber, as described here by Teliau, has changed little over the intervening centuries. Similar circles were in use aboard Eraasian trade and exploration vessels, and in the hidden bases that made possible both the First Magewar and the Second. They are not, however, indispensable. During periods of conflict and repression—such as the Occupation following the end of the First Magewar, or the long struggle in the immediate pre-Classical period between the so-called Old Tradition and the rising power of the New Circles—Mages have often done their work without the use of these obvious and betraying diagrams. (back to text)

  15 Such deaths, according to statute law in most of the modern Eraasian Hegemony, still count as “by natural causes” provided the deceased is truly a Mage. Since the end of the second Magewar, the precedent has also been applied elsewhere; see Citizens of Gyffer v. Calentyk, 1009 A.F. (back to text)