The Synopsis Treasury (20 page)
Read The Synopsis Treasury Online
Authors: Christopher Sirmons Haviland
Tags: #Reference, #Writing; Research & Publishing Guides, #Publishing & Books, #Authorship
Some of these half-breeds are like Ven, with dragon legs. Others have dragon arms. Some have a dragon arm and a dragon leg, while some are almost all dragon. All are immensely powerful in the dragon magic and they know how to use it.
Draconas finds some of the women who are “serving” the dragon. They are all pregnant, looking forward with terror to a birth that will probably kill them. Very few of the mothers survive. The daughter of the couple who sheltered him died many years ago. The letters are fake.
Draconas locates Ven and takes him to the cave, where he introduces Ven to his brothers and sisters. Ven is shaken to the core of his being. He looks at them and he sees monsters, then he realizes that he is looking at them with the eyes of the human world—the same eyes that see him as a monster. He is welcomed by his siblings, who treat him with near reverence, for they have been told that he is to be their leader.
Ven is impressed by the fact that these half-dragons have a pride in themselves which he lacks. They are not ashamed, but, in fact, view themselves as being better than humans. They have been raised to feel disdain even for the wretched mothers who bore them.
Ven likes the fact that, for the first time in his life, he doesn’t need to be ashamed of who and what he is. Yet, he sees that these half-dragons have a warped and twisted view of the world. He sees the women who are going to be forced to bear the dragon’s children and he sees his own mother. He cannot reconcile the conflicting feelings and he wonders what to do—whether to join them or to continue with his plan to slay Grald, then flee Dragon Keep.
Draconas understands Ven’s confusion for, in a way, Draconas is wrestling with the same issues. Draconas understands better than the dragons that humans pose a threat to dragons, yet he does not believe that it is the dragon’s right to make humans their slaves. He must also make a choice between humans and his own kind.
He tells Ven that the humans cannot withstand the might of the dragon army that is set to conquer them and that, one after another, human kingdoms will fall. There will undoubtedly be more half-dragons born, as dragons use them to further impose their will on humans. Is this what Ven wants? Is this something he believes is right?
Ven isn’t sure. He’s leaning toward joining his siblings and conquering the world, when he is summoned before Grald in the Abbey.
Ven can’t see Grald, who is in shadow, but he hears his voice.
Grald says that he is planning to retire and that it is time for Ven to take his rightful place as ruler of Dragon Keep. Ven refuses. He doesn’t want to be ruler. He doesn’t want the responsibility. Grald says not to worry. Ven won’t have any of the responsibility. Grald is going to be the true ruler. Ven always wanted to meet his dragon father. Well, here he is. He’s going to rip out Ven’s heart and take his body.
The dragon emerges from the shadows, having already ditched Grald’s body. The dragon thinks Ven will be easy prey, but Ven holds his own. Ven is starting to succumb, however, for he never learned how to use the dragon magic. Suddenly Marcus is there with him, fighting the dragon mentally, as Ven battles it physically. Between the two of them, they slay the dragon.
Draconas has been watching from the shadows, ready to intervene if necessary, but deeming it right that Melisande’s children have the chance to avenge their mother. He comes to the aid of Ven, who is critically wounded, and heals him.
Draconas tells Ven that only he can help save his brother’s kingdom and his life. There is a city in the mountains called Seth, where his mother and Bellona were born and raised. If Ven and his siblings can convince the people of Seth to help them, the sisterhood has the power to use their dragon magic against the army and the dragons who will accompany that army. Maristarra, the dragon who rules Seth, will not pose a problem, because she will have to lead the army now that Grald is dead. Ven and his siblings can enter the kingdom unopposed.
Ven refuses to commit himself.
Draconas has done all he can do. He leaves Ven to wrestle with his problem. Draconas has seen into Marcus’s mind and he realizes that Marcus is in deadly peril.
PRINCESS ROWENA
Evelina and Marcus arrive in Idylswylde. Evelina is welcomed by the King and Queen, who, however, see quite clearly that, despite her efforts to appear genteel, Evelina is not the sort of woman they want for their son. As fate would have it, a lovely young woman has arrived from the neighboring kingdom of Weinmauer to spend a few weeks with them in the palace.
Princess Rowena is educated, attractive, and attracted to Marcus. He is smitten with her and thinks that, at last, he has found the woman of his dreams. Evelina is, of course, bitterly jealous. She plays every crude trick she knows against her rival, which only makes the charming and sweet-natured Rowena look better by contrast.
Princess Rowena is, in fact, Anora in disguise. The dragon is now acting as a spy on the king and Marcus. Anora cannot find out anything about Draconas from Marcus, but she does come up with a plan to once and for all end the human’s use of cannons and the like. When the cannon is fired, Anora is going to cause it to explode with a blast so powerful that it will level not only the castle, but will wipe out the city and most of the surrounding countryside. Thousands of humans will die. Humans will be so appalled at this destruction that they will never dare touch gunpowder again.
And, of course, the dragons will be around to see that they don’t.
Meanwhile, Evelina is making plans to deal with her rival, completely unaware of the fact that her rival is a dragon.
VEN IN SETH
Need to add this section.
THE DRAGON ARMY
As the romance between prince and princess blossoms, Marcus fights in the battle against Grald. Marcus tries to reach out to his brother, only to be repulsed. Ven will pay his debt to his brother for helping to save his life. Ven warns Marcus about the dragon army that is on its way to conquer Idylswylde.
Marcus thanks his brother for the warning and asks what Ven means to do—will he be part of the army?
Ven replies that he will go his own way and his brother will go his. Ven has lived up to his name.
Marcus and his father prepare the kingdom for battle, readying the splendid cannon, when they receive news that the dragon army is on the march.
Edward and his knights and his army go forth to meet them on the plains. He leaves Marcus behind with a force to guard the city.
The soldiers are horrified to discover the true nature of the dragon army. The army is made up of both men and women, who fight in pairs. The men use offensive magic, the women use defensive magic to shield them from attack. The spells they cast are devastating.
Unaccustomed to facing magic, most of the foot soldiers simply fling down their arms and turn tail. Many are destroyed by the powerful magicks and, before long, the entire human army is retreating in panic-stricken terror.
Edward barely escapes with his life. His loyal knights surround the king and protect him until they can make their way back safely to the city walls. As they are fleeing, they look up to see a dragon (Maristarra) swooping down on them. They are in despair, for they cannot hope to defeat a dragon. Two other dragons appear in the sky. Draconas and Lysira challenge Maristarra, who decides that the time is not right to fight both of them. She disappears. Unaware that they have just seen Draconas in his true form, Edward and his men cannot understand what they have witnessed. Edward is convinced that all three dragons were in on the attack.
Once back in his city, Edward believes that their only hope lies in his artillery. The dragon army is only a day’s march from the city. That night, he plans to test-fire the cannon. Anora makes her preparations to destroy the city. (She has to destroy it before the dragon army comes too close and might get caught in the blast.)
They all sit down to dinner that night. Princess Rowena (Anora) takes a drink of her wine and suddenly clutches her throat and starts choking. Anora realizes that the human body she inhabits has been poisoned. Anora has no choice but to flee the dying human body, revert back to her true form.
Marcus is shocked and horrified to see his beloved writhing on the floor in the throes of death. He is even more shocked to see her turn into a dragon, who attacks all of them. He fights the dragon using his magic and manages to drive Anora outside the castle. Here, Anora finds Draconas waiting for her. She warns him that if he slays her, the Parliament will fracture and the dragons will be at war again. Humans will develop powerful weapons and become capable of wiping out dragons forever.
Draconas says that this is far better than dragons destroying themselves, which is what they will do if they try to become slave masters. They will shrivel up and die from within. He and Anora and Marcus fight and Draconas, and Marcus slay her.
There is yet the battle to be fought, and this is one that the kingdom of Idyswylde cannot win. The dragon army marches on, led by Maristarra. Draconas is wounded from his fight with Anora and he doubts he has strength enough left to take on Maristarra, but he will do his best.
The dragon army surrounds the city. Edward and Marcus hopelessly prepare to deal with them, when, under the cover of darkness, Ven arrives. He has with him the sisterhood of Seth and his siblings. He tells his brother that they will join with them to fight the battle against the dragons.
The women of Seth use their magic to destroy Maristarra, while Ven and his siblings and Marcus use their powerful magic to help defeat the dragon army.
The men and women of Dragon Keep are determined to fight to the death, but Ven goes before them and tells them that, if they surrender, the people of Seth are willing to take them in and give them shelter for, after all, they are their children.
The people of Dragon Keep agree to this and the city is saved. The dragon’s children leave for Seth. Marcus asks Ven to stay with him, but Ven refuses. He tells Marcus that he plans to live in Seth with his siblings, where they are accepted. The half-dragons will, eventually, die out, or so he believes. Ven and Marcus part.
THE SURVIVOR
Evelina manages to come through all of this unscathed. She knows she has lost Marcus, who finds proof that she was the one who poisoned Rowena. He tells her that she should be brought to trial and punished for her crime of poisoning the princess. Evelina, naturally, claims that she knew all along the princess was a dragon. Marcus doubts this, but he very well cannot refute it. And, whether she meant to or not, Evelina did save them from the dragon.
Marcus can’t very well turn Evelina loose on an unsuspecting public, however, and he and his guards escort her to a nunnery. He makes it plain that if she escapes from here, she will be pursued and captured, and this time she will be executed.
Evelina plans to escape anyway, willing to take her chances. Then she sees how wealthy this nunnery is. There are golden candlesticks on the altar, jeweled chalices, etc. The sisters are warm and well-fed and, despite such inconveniences as having to pray all the time and wearing black, shapeless clothes, this really isn’t a bad life. Evelina meets the Abbess and is impressed by the woman’s power. Evelina can see herself in that role quite easily. Sure, she’ll have to act the part, but she’s used to acting.
Meekly, Evelina folds her hands and kneels down to pray.
EPILOGUE
Draconas appears before the Parliament. The dragons have been thrown into chaos. Three of their number are dead, including their leader. Tales of half-dragons and humans who have dragon magic, stories of humans fighting dragons and winning, has sent the Parliament into a state of shock.
Draconas tries to reason with them, but some of the dragons want to immediately declare war on the humans. Other dragons furiously oppose them and swear that they will go to war against their kin if that happens.
Draconas realizes that he can do nothing. No one is listening.
The Parliament of Dragons disbands. War is declared among dragon kind.
Draconas changes back to his dragon form, deeply saddened, for he realizes that the world teeters on the brink of a war that could prove devastating to both human and dragons. He and Lysira depart, hoping to do what they can to avert this catastrophe.
***
Judith Tarr
(photo by Lori Faith Merritt)
Judith Tarr’s first epic fantasy novel,
The Hall of the Mountain King
, appeared in 1986. Her YA time-travel science fiction/fantasy/historical novel,
Living in Threes
, appeared as an ebook from Book View Café in 2012, and will debut in print this fall. Her new novel, a space opera, will be published by Book View Cafe in 2015. In between, she’s written historicals and historical fantasies and epic fantasies, some of which have been reborn as ebooks from Book View Café
*
and audiobooks from Audible
**
.
She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, two dogs, and a herd of Lipizzaner horses.
When I was in graduate school, my professors often despaired of me. I was a fair to middling scholar, but too often, rather than focusing on proper and academically correct historical or literary analysis, I was likely to take a single line from one of our good grey sources and spin it into a story.
His Majesty’s Elephant
was one such story. By now my seminar papers and even my doctoral dissertation are forgotten, but this small excursion into a different world is still in print and still drawing in the occasional reader.
—Judith Tarr
Proposal:
His Majesty’s Elephant
(YA Fantasy Novel: 50,000 words)
By Judith Tarr
His Majesty’s Elephant is Abul Abbas, gift of the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid to his friend the Emperor Charlemagne. Along with him, history tells us, came many other wonders, including a golden Talisman containing a fragment of the True Cross. This talisman was found by Napoleon, according to tradition, on the breast of the Emperor in his tomb, and hangs now, a gleam of gold at the end of a long corridor, in the Tau Palace in Rheims.
This much is history, or at least interesting tradition.
Suppose that the Talisman was more, and that the Elephant had a part in its magic.
As the novel begins, the Emperor’s daughter attends the high court in the newly built palace of her father in Aachen. Her name is Theoderada. When she was young, one of her father’s more fanciful poets gave all the princesses pretty nicknames, and hers, by which everyone knows her, is Rowan. Rowan is not quite fifteen. Her mother, who has been dead since she was a child, was known as a witch, but Rowan does not want to believe the stories. She calls them malice and envy, and harbors dislike of the Empress’ strong will and firm ways.
Her father is indulgent to all his many daughters, except in one thing: He will not let them marry. Too many bulls in a herd, he likes to say, are not wise husbandry. His daughters react variously to this prohibition. Most have lovers, and even children. Gisela, the Emperor’s favorite of all his daughters and commonly agreed to be the beauty of the family, has inclinations toward the cloister, but her father will not let her go. Rowan herself wants chiefly to be away from the crowding and the intrigues of the court. She loves to ride and to hunt, but she has no desire to be a boy or to learn the warrior’s arts. She is not called to the religious life. She thinks that maybe she could be a plain man’s wife, and keep his house and bear his children, and be happy as simple women and princesses can seldom be.
On this day of Pentecost in the year of Our Lord 802, she stands with her sisters and their women, watching the presentation of the Caliph’s gifts to the Emperor of the West. The elephant astounds and delights her. The Talisman disturbs her.
As soon as she comfortably can, she slips away to see the elephant. She finds the stable in an uproar and the elephant in the middle of it. A pavilion has been raised in the corner of the yard, to make do until a suitable pen and shelter can be built, but the beast is having none of it. Its handler, one of the watchers tells Rowan, has died of a fever, and the monster has been difficult, if not impossible, ever since. Before Rowan can do anything about it, one of the stableboys—or at least one who seems to be a stableboy, in ragged plain clothes—approaches the elephant and, after a tense few moments, persuades it to enter the pavilion.
The boy’s name is Kerrec. Rowan finds him insufferable. He is hardly older than she, hardly taller, and he addresses her as if he were the prince and she the stablehand. She wants to be nobody in particular, but if she must be a princess, she prefers to be treated as one.
Shortly after Rowan’s meeting with Kerrec, she happens to discover her sister Gisela in the company of a young foreigner, Michael Phokias, a member of the embassy from Byzantium. The Byzantium empress is infamous in the West: a sorceress who blinded her own son to keep him from the throne, ruler of a nation of sorcerers. She has sent a proposal of marriage to the Emperor of the West, desiring, she says, to unite their empires into the one that was Old Rome. The Emperor, who fears neither the woman nor her fabled magic, is minded to accept her suit.
Michael Phokias seems intent on securing a royal alliance, or least dalliance, of his own. Neither notices Rowan. As she watches from concealment, Michael Phokias asks Gisela to obtain the golden Talisman. Gisela resists, but all too quickly she gives in.
When the two have gone their separate ways, Rowan bolts from her hiding place. The refuge she finds is the elephant’s tent, empty for once of the elephant’s keeper. Kerrec appears soon enough, however, and he is more insufferable than ever. Gisela, he declares, must not get the Talisman. He will not—may not—tell Rowan why. Rowan is ready to insist that Gisela get the thing, if only to spite this arrogant elephant-boy, but her own instincts are powerfully against it. She knows that if Gisela has the Talisman, Byzantium will take it; and Byzantium could do terrible things with a Talisman given by the Defender of Islam to the Defender of Christendom.
Rowan is unable, however, to convince her father that he should not indulge his favorite daughter. The Emperor gives Gisela the Talisman.
And nothing happens. Rowan begins to think that she has been a hysterical fool. She already knows what Kerrec is, and that is nothing complimentary. In the middle of the quiet, Rowan creeps out at night to the Emperor’s baths: the enormous, ancient Roman pool and villa. It is deserted at night, but she has found a way in, and she often goes there when the weather is warm, to paddle in the warm water and to think thoughts of her own away from the chatter of the woman’s palace.
This time, however, her sanctuary is invaded. Of course it would be Kerrec, as insolent as ever. As she stands outraged in the light of her single lamp, with the moon’s light slanting through the louvers in the roof, she realizes that he is in a sort of trance. He reveals to her that he is not a commoner; that his mother was a great witch of the Bretons, his father a lord of the House of Roland. His father fought for the Emperor against the Saxons, and died in battle; but he gained no glory in it, for it was believed that he had died in flight, slain as a coward. That enemy, who had been running away when Kerrec’s father stopped him, cast the accusation of cowardice upon the dead man and the shame upon his family, and took the dead man’s glory to himself. This man is now dead, and Kerrec has been cheated of proper vengeance. He can still labor, however, to restore his father’s good name, but first he undertakes to prove himself in anonymity; hence his pretense of common blood and low position.
Then, under the moon’s influence, he makes a scrying glass in the water of the pool, for he is as much a witch as his mother ever was, and he describes what he sees. And Rowan knows what his visions mean. The Empress of the Byzantines is dead; Michael Phokias is an agent of her murderer, the new emperor, who is no friend to the Emperor of the West; the Talisman is meant to be not a weapon but a ward, and in Byzantine hands it is a deadly danger to the Emperor. There is more power in it than anyone but its maker knows; it can, once and once only, if the bearer be pure of heart, endow the bearer with his heart’s desire.
Rowan cannot bear to know so much, or to know that it is not only Kerrec who is a witch. She also is born to magic.
She runs away from the knowledge. Then, in deep doubt—of herself, of her father, of her sisters, of Kerrec—she decides to run away properly. She determines to seek out the aunt for whom her sister is named, Abbess Gisela in her cloister, and ask for sanctuary.
Riding alone, protected—with irony that she recognizes, and loathes—by her own waxing magic, she comes to her aunt’s abbey. The abbess takes her in, clearly not crediting her story of a sudden urge to penitence, but choosing to accept it, for the moment. Rowan settles in to prayer, penance, and a concerted attempt to purge herself of magic.
She reckons without Kerrec. He comes to her in the cloister, calls her coward and abandoner of her kin, and hauls her back. She, fighting him and striking to wound, cries out that if he calls her a coward, then he must know whereof he speaks. For a moment she knows that he will kill her, but his response is quiet. One would think so, he says.
They return just in time. Michael Phokias has the Talisman, and with it Gisela. He works a sorcery to weaken the Emperor and subvert the Emperor’s ministers. Rowan and Kerrec struggle to prevent him, but they fail.
The Emperor is ill. The elephant, Abul Abbas, is none too well either. Its will and its strength are bound somehow to the Talisman; Kerrec is not sure how, although he has driven himself to exhaustion in trying to find out. Rowan, who has become fond of the huge, wise beast, is beside herself with worry for both her father and the elephant.
She and Kerrec, united in a wary truce, decide at last upon a plan. They will try to find Michael Phokias, who has not been in evidence since he worked his sorcery, and with him find the Talisman. They will also do what they can to free Gisela from his spell.
The hunt ends where to an extent it began, in the stable near the elephant’s pavilion. In the confrontation, Rowan rescues Kerrec, who has set himself against a sorcery far stronger than his own, and offers herself to Michael Phokias. He needs one of the Emperor’s blood in order to wake the Talisman to its full power. Just as Michael Phokias accepts, Abul Abbas bursts his bonds and overwhelms the sorcerer. Rowan seizes the Talisman. As she touches it, all her will and desire pour out of her without any conscious volition: to see her father well and the beast likewise, the sorcerer cast far away and stripped of his power, the empire safe and the land quiet and Kerrec, who she fears is dead, alive and well and driving her to distraction.
In the final scene, Gisela is free of the sorcerer’s binding, and ready at last to go into her beloved cloister. The Emperor is in splendid health. Rowan is distraught that she has “used up” the Talisman, but the Emperor reminds her that it is still a very holy thing, and it has power yet and always to guard his spirit. He agrees to keep it and to wear it, and never to put it off again.
There remains only Kerrec. The Emperor wishes him to receive a great reward. He asks only to serve the Emperor as the servant of Abul Abbas. Such modesty becomes him, as all agree and as Rowan finds somewhat difficult to credit. She taxes him with it. He grows angry, and in his anger reveals his true name and house. In the ensuing uproar, Rowan corroborates his statements, and one by one others come forward with their own tales of the battle in which Kerrec’s father died. At length all is settled, and Kerrec is confirmed in his lands and his title, with no taint of shame. He asks, however, to continue as the elephant’s servant. He is not looking at Abul Abbas when he speaks, but at Rowan. She pretends not to notice. But she is very much aware of both his meaning and his intent; and not, when she thinks about it, displeased.
***