The Synopsis Treasury (15 page)

Janny Wurts

(Photo by Don Maitz)

Janny Wurts is the author of fourteen novels, a collection of short stories, and the internationally best-selling Empire trilogy written in collaboration with Raymond E. Feist. Her title
To Ride Hell’s Chasm
is a stand-alone fantasy novel, with the newest in her Wars of Light and Shadows series,
Initiate’s Trial
, available as she finishes the penultimate volume,
Destiny’s Confict
. She has published twenty-nine short stories and has been translated into thirteen languages.

A central focus of her career, her ongoing Wars of Light and Shadows series are the culmination of more than thirty years of carefully evolved ideas. The cover images on her books, both in the U.S. and in most translations abroad, are her own paintings depicting her vision of characters and setting.

Through her combined talents as a writer/illustrator, Janny endeavors to create a seamless interface between words and pictures that evolve into a resharpened perception of the familiar. Her lavish use of language builds a crafted realm of experience, with characters and events drawn with exacting intensity. Her research includes direct experience, lending her fantasy a facet of vivid realism. A self-taught painter, she draws directly from the imagination, creating scenes in a representational style that evolve directly from pencil drawings to finish in oil paint.

Beyond writing, Janny’s award winning paintings have been showcased in exhibitions of imaginative artwork, among them a commemorative exhibition for NASA’s 25th Anniversary; the Art of the Cosmos at Hayden Planetarium in New York; and two exhibits of fantasy art at the Canton Art Museum and the Delaware Art Museum. The Delaware Art Museum also has one of her paintings from its collection on display in the current illustration exhibit.

This outline was produced in a burst of white heat for my agent’s presentation of this novel idea to my editors at HarperCollins in Great Britain. I had mulled over the basic concept for years, tinkering and toying with “what if” an affianced bride should vanish before her formal wedding announcement, and not for the predictable reason. Stories about arranged royal marriages and their posited reluctant partners have been around for ages, as have stories of princesses in peril, and errant captains of the guard. But the bit that first piqued my imagination was the twist that this disappearance would pose a mystery. The pending threat to the kingdom which emerged under inquiry would not turn out to be based on a mismatch of discontent.

The driving engine that developed the novel, evolved from the central character of the garrison captain, whose personality and background unfolded spontaneously in the telling. Mykkael’s angle took hold of this story to the point where I rushed to put down each chapter. The waves of inspiration came on faster than I could write. Even better, all of the supporting cast came alive with the same explosive creativity. I have seldom had so much fun writing a novel. This one gifted me with a rollercoaster ride of intensity from the moment the setting became established. It has since become my husband’s favorite, and a signal moment of career satisfaction for me.

—Janny Wurts

To Ride Hell’s Chasm

A fast paced, stand-alone fantasy moving between political intrigue and thriller adventure, with a developed system of magic, and a wide range of characters with background and depth. The action takes place over the course of five days, and occurs in a detailed setting with court intricacy and rough cut outdoor challenges. The young princess of a kingdom is shadowed by threat, and her rescue turns upon the individual integrity of two very different fighting captains, and their directive to act, set under the disparate agendas and principles of those men and women who hold the power of rule. The plot and characters continue to unfold and develop, with a haunting past tragedy that heightens suspense interwoven with and in parallel with the present, immediate dangers. Denouements occur up to the very last scene. Current resolution and the main character’s unresolved past sorrow will converge at the end, with no loose ends left dangling.

Storyline

The adventure opens in a small, near impregnable mountain kingdom, when Princess Anja of Sessalie fails to show up at the banquet in celebration of her betrothal ceremony. She is the beloved second born child, pledging to marry the heir of a wealthy neighboring kingdom. The match to the handsome, engaging Prince of Devall will bring her people inestimable good fortune, and tariff free access to a low country port city. Leading up to this evening, the high spirited princess has always embraced her prospective suitor with a willing, even ribald, good cheer.

When the princess disappears on the hour of her ceremonial presentation, the court explodes into political mayhem, as multiple characters and parties all scramble to explain her absence. Some think she has run away to avoid the marriage, though her apparent love for her suitor refutes this. Others believe her kidnapped for ransom by unknown, unnamed enemies. Her rakehell older brother, the heir, who is exasperated and enamored of her, insists she is pulling another embarrassing, prank. Her royal suitor, a wealthy and intelligent young man, spares no effort and expense, offering his private array of retainers to seek her abductors in his anguished desire to recover her.

The distraught, aged king dispatches all his horses and men to seek his daughter’s safe recovery.

A disparate array of characters arise to encounter the crisis, from Sessalie’s court ladies, to a flamboyantly colorful array of common country folk, to an educated pair of resident foreigner healers.

Two others act in the line of royal duty:

Taskin, the captain of the palace guard, who is smooth, sophisticated and deadly with weapons. His old family connections, forceful reason, and impressive past record in Sessalie’s service lends his opinions telling weight, and everyone’s deep-seated respect.

Mykkael, the rough cut young captain of the city garrison, a tough, scarred veteran with an impressive record of mercenary service. A deadly, competent field officer who took his post when a wound stiffened one leg, and forced him to retire from hired warfare, he is a foreigner who eschews high born ways, is annoyed by the frivolous assignment, and for reasons of prejudice against his outsider’s origins, finds himself running counter to the mores of court opinion. He has come to the case with no prior agenda or prejudice. In cool insolence, resignedly shouldering a distasteful job, he begins to pursue the princess’s fate. Investigating by interrogation in the back streets of the city, assembling bits of evidence from a mysterious death among the unwashed populace, and his impressive store of background experience with sorcerer’s wars, he gradually unravels a tangled thread and hearsay evidence, that planning for the princess’s disappearance began the same day her suitor arrived at court.

As theories abound, and the better heeled search parties draw blanks on a trail that leads out of the gates, and then vanishes, the court factions coalesce, with the garrison captain left suspect, due to his outsider’s background, and circumstantial assumptions surrounding two additional deaths in the city. Mykkael stands all but unsupported in his view that an unprecedented danger stalks the Kingdom of Sessalie. For sake of the princess’s safety, he must go out on a limb to prove his conviction. His quest becomes ever more stringently opposed by the king’s council, the prince and the suitor, who claim he has become corrupted, or bought, to create a false trail and allow the true perpetrator to undermine the stability of the kingdom. He’s a lamed swordsman with no prospects for retirement. Gold could buy him, and the princess, they argue, could be a pawn to be used to break a long-standing tradition of independence and destroy the profitable and popular alliance of marriage with the low country Kingdom of Devall.

Only Crown Commander Taskin’s fair mindedness and the shrewd ruling of the aged and failing king leaves the garrison captain free to prove out his controversial conclusion: that the princess was not taken under coercion, but fled the palace of her own free will.

In fast paced scenes with hard action, bar fights, and fur ripping arguments as political factions clash outright, the disparate parties pursue their agendas with dedicated passion. The suitor and prince, and the politically polarized council, become balked by frustration and dead ends, and at last challenge the integrity of the garrison captain. They launch a search of his past mercenary service, suspecting him as a hired sword in cahoots with the princess’s unknown abductor.

Their findings surrounding an attempted assassination lend damning evidence, and the irony of an honor that once demanded a breached oath throws Mykkael’s innate honesty into question. The high council is at last swayed to issue a warrant for his arrest.

Taskin of the royal guard is dispatched to carry out the king’s writ. By then, the garrison captain, Mykkael, has unraveled his final clue. It is evident that he knows the princess is alive and in hiding. He dares not say where she is, without setting her into worse jeopardy. She and the kingdom itself lie under threat of conquest by sorcery, a menace he alone has the background to understand. He pleads in vain to defer his arrest until he can secure her protection.

The captain of the royal guard has no proof in hand to determine whether Mykkael’s word, or the council’s accusations are true. Impasse results as Mykkael, the garrison captain, refuses to share the dangerous scope of his knowledge for fear greater harm will result. Alone in Sessalie, he has the experience to recognize the dreadful perils of a sorcerer’s war. Yet the hidden enemy has recognized him as a threat, and already swayed the high council. The prevailing opinion at court is too strongly set against him. Mykkael knows he dare not be taken into custody. His life would be called forfeit before he could establish his innocence, or be cleared by a writ from the king.

A sword fight ensues between the two captains when the garrison man does not submit to arrest. Taskin falls with a crippling wound.

Now a criminal renegade, with his reputation at court irretrievably undermined, Mykkael takes flight alone. Aware he holds the last hope to stave off Sessalie’s conquest, and that the princess’s safe recovery is the only thing that can clear his ruined name, he bears out his investigation and finds her.

Yet with Sessalie’s enemies now poised to strike, it is inconceivable for Princess Anja to return.

She is a resourceful, determined young woman, aware she is caught in dire straits, but alone and without worldly experience. Her reason for flight holds the last answers Mykkael needs to understand that an invasion by sorcerous shapechangers is seeking to conquer the kingdom. This terrible foe seeks a foothold in Sessalie to enable an assault by a sorcerer’s minions: demonic winged predators who can fly over the mountains. Control of this tiny, mountain kingdom has become key to the defeat of the powerful alliance of kingdoms to the west. The suitor, and the crown heir are already corrupted by the sorcerer, replaced by shapechangers who have taken their form in disguise. Together, the pair only wait for the legal title bound over by the princess’s marriage. Barring that, they will next seek the old king’s death to seal their nefarious plot, and open the borders to bring in troops for a surprise invasion to the west.

Time is of the essence. The king and his most loyal retainers are now beseiged, under open assault by the forces of sorcery. Only days remain to save Sessalie’s threatened independence. The princess has been hiding in the hills, with six horses trained to a specialized peak of fitness. She planned the desperate course of riding to solicit aid from the neighboring alliance of kingdoms, which has successfully stood off invasion by sorcerers for centuries. Given Mykkael’s insight, she realizes she cannot escape by road. The only way left is to try the impassable ravine of Hell’s Chasm. The allied kingdoms on the other side have trained troops, and shamans with powers to combat this deadly threat. They will have no choice but to respond in support, since control of Sessalie would provide their ancient enemies a new foothold to expand their unresolved war on two fronts.

Though of opposite backgrounds, the royal born girl and the rough cut veteran captain shoulder the attempt to save the kingdom together.

Their climactic ride will borrow upon the factual trials and tribulations of our Tevas Cup, which is a cross country equine endurance test, in which riders go 150 miles over mountainous, desert terrain in the course of 24 hours. While the impasse at court reaches confrontation by the brash bravery of the city’s noble ladies, and the handful of common garrison soldiers with the bravery to stay loyal to their captain, the attacking sorcerer’s hand is forced. Its minions must now bid for conquest at all costs. The shapechangers give up their false cover, and show their evil hand. Now made aware of the terrible threat, the king’s hapless subjects watch the launch of a horrific chase, where the crown heir and the suitor throw off human disguise and fly out as monsters to take down the princess and her staunch, commonborn protector.