“Seriously?”

Franny’s voice sounded surprised and possibly irritated in response to the girl’s words. Then the girl said something else, and Franny shrugged and muttered something in French that Jason was pretty sure was obscene.

“His name is Jason, and he studies Mycenean stuff. Mostly those stupid tablets. You know those Linear B things.”

The girl smiled and her mouth moved some more.

“She says to tell you that her name is Katerina, and she hopes you will come on the dig with me. Sacrebleu! This isn’t a dating service. And besides, I think all the places are filled. So there. Now I am going to get something to eat.” She pulled one of her earplugs out. “Do you want to talk to her?”

She offered, waving it a Jason. Ooh. Sharing earplugs. Not very sanitary! Jason was unsure how to respond to the offer. The girl hadn’t seemed to mind him butting in. On the contrary, she had asked who he was, which was a distinct plus. Most girls just looked at him blankly and then went back to whatever they had been doing before he had impinged upon their consciousness. He decided he didn’t want to presume on Franny’s good nature, so he declined the offer, although he indicated that he was interested in getting to know the girl on the screen too. Before he could get all this across, she clearly said something else, to which Franny threw up her hands.

“Now she says she is running late but that it was nice to meet you. Bye, Kat.” And the girl’s image disappeared from the screen.

Franny packed up and they headed down to the Refectory near their building while she told him about Katerina Raeburn, who Franny had met through an online archaeology forum a couple of years before. She had Livonian and Scottish parents and was currently at the University of Newcastle in her second year of post-grad studies in Roman history.

Jason couldn’t decide if the girl had actually been that interested in him or had responded that way just to annoy Franny. He had never had a girl show an immediate desire to get to know him like that ever before, so he was pretty sure it had been a prank aimed at Franny. Being a nerd meant girls largely laughed rather than drooled, or mostly they simply ignored him. Occasionally they said something to the boyfriend Jason hadn’t realized they had, which often proved painful! Not that he was a complete nerd. He had done a bit of karate in High School and played football as a third-string linebacker in his senior year, although he hadn’t made the cut for the College football program. Still, he was in reasonable shape for a nerd, or so he felt. he immediately resolved to start a more regular exercise regime. It was the second time he had made that resolution just this year!

Lunch was spent talking about the adventures they each had enjoyed during the break, although Jason refrained from mentioning his strange visitor, so he told them about the Con mostly. Franny wasn’t really into Cons but liked hearing about some of the costumes people wore, although she couldn’t see the point in spending all that time and effort to make a good costume. She had spent a large part of her break with her boyfriend, who had taken a week’s leave from his work to spend time with her. Ah, the course of true love! Jason kept that thought to himself.

Next book out will be Ostraya – planning on 27th April
Currently finishing up The Princess & The Gangsters – aiming for late June or early July release
That will be followed by Taroniah at Bay (Sept-Oct) and then Kyron the Rescuer (Dec-Jan)
After that The Kelad Onslaught (New Fed – Aprilish)
Then Taroniah at Risk and Kyron the Savior
after that – hmm
Probably my new alternate history/time travel story set in Maine/New Hampshire area about the survivors of Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd’s expedition to the west with his brother Prince Rhiryd – Madoc found a land – left the first party there and returned to Wales to collect more settlers and supplies, sailed west once more and was never seen again.
There are lots of fanciful tales many centered on Alabama but it would seem unlikely that people traveling west from Wales in medieval vessels of the late 11th century type would sail south to miss Florida then north to finish in Alabama without hitting the east coast first.
My story concerns a modern man sailing his boat off Portsmouth when he is sent back in time by some strange event and finds the first group of Welsh under Rhiryd barely hanging on in the face of hostile locals and still hoping the Madoc will return with reinforcements etc before they get overrun.
It gives the modern guy a challenge while leaving open the fate of Madoc and therefore possible settlers in Alabama.

Opinons?

“Hi, Sharyn. Have a good break?”

The other girl put down the tome she had continued reading the whole time since Jason arrived and smiled at the newcomer.

“Franny! Good to see you. I had a shit break. Family. You know. But I’m glad you’re here as I need help with this bloody text.” She indicated the book she had been studying.

“But of course, my friend,” Franny said, moving over to Sharyn’s desk.

The two girls were soon immersed in whatever Sharyn had been having a problem with, and Jason turned his attention back to his computer. By the time he was ready to break for lunch, he had finished the last of the thirty-one tablets from the supposed box and also translated four of the separate lower group of tablets. He was about to call up the only publicly released translation of the tablets when he decided food was more important, especially given that he had finished his self-imposed translation task in a few hours instead of the weeks he had anticipated it would take back before his strange weekend encounter.

John Henderson the Third, an African American from old money, something he always reminded those around him of if the opportunity presented itself, had entered the room at some point without Jason realizing. While Sharyn was in her second year and Franny her third, John was in his first year of post-grad studies. Along with Alicia Franklin, who had so far failed to put in an appearance. Henderson was a specialist in Ancient Greece, especially Athens, as was Sharyn. However, her interest was in a later period compared to John’s interests and extended more into the Hellenistic period after Alexander. Franny and Alicia were Roman specialists, and Franny was going on a dig in England during the summer break. Lucky shit!

“I’m taking a lunch break, people. Does anybody want to come?” He packed up his things, slipping his laptop into his backpack before standing up.

“Hang on a sec; I’ll come too,” Franny said and returned to the conversation she was having with someone on her computer.

She had been speaking so quietly that Jason hadn’t even noticed she was talking to someone. He moved over to where he could look over her shoulder and saw a rather attractive young lady on the screen comparing notes with Franny about something to do with Hadrian’s Wall. Seeing they were deep into talking Roman stuff, He couldn’t help himself.

“Bloody Romans. So, what did the Romans ever do for us, eh?”

It was old, it was lame, but you know, the opportunity had presented itself. The girl on the screen had seen him appear behind Franny but hadn’t said anything until he had failed to resist the urge to open his mouth.

Franny swung round.

“Hey, this is a private conversation! Do you mind!”

Jason winked at the girl on the computer, who didn’t appear to be that upset at him listening in from the crinkling of her eyes and grinned at Franny.

“Don’t mind at all, Franny. Who’s your friend?”

He wasn’t sure if Franny was about to hit him or merely verbally abuse him, but the girl said something which arrested whatever retribution she was about to undertake.

Sorry guys – a lot on this week

He sat back in his chair and just stared at his screen in shock. Then it dawned on him that it had to be something to do with Urasmian! The sorcerer had thrown a spell on him, which the sorcerer had said would enable Jason to understand the language Urasmian had spoken. It had allowed Jason to understand both languages, at least to an extent. The Greekish one and the other one that was used for spells. Urasmian had done it because the old man had claimed it made it easier for him to communicate since Jason’s language had far too many terms that Urasmian had no frame of reference for and was struggling to understand. Jason had taken that to mean that Urasmian could make out the words Jason was saying, but too many of them were so tech-heavy that Urasmian, or his translation spell, had not been able to determine their meaning from context. So Urasmian had put a spell on Jason that he claimed would enable Jason to understand Urasmian’s language and thus make communication easier for the old man. And indeed, it had enabled him to understand the transdimensional sorcerer after a period of adjustment.

The main language used by Urasmian was the Greekish-sounding language of the Hellandios, which Jason had decided were the ancient Greeks of Urasmian’s world. Cultural shifts had changed the language over the millennia, although not as much as he had assumed due to the sorcerers keeping written texts and basic literacy alive. Combined with the apparently global dominance of the Hellandios people on the back of their magical ability, it meant that while the language had spread pretty much everywhere, it had remained relatively pure due to the sorcerers. The Hellandios language was fundamentally the same as the Mycenean Greek of Jason’s Earth. That similarity had helped him learn it from Urasmian plus, of course, the magic spell. Not that Jason intended to dismiss magic anymore, not after Urasmian’s visit anyway! And now Jason was able to read Mycenean! Whoot! Franny L’Henney wandered in at that point and plopped her backpack onto the desk next to Jason’s. “Bonjour, monsieur.” She offered.

Jason had needed to read a good number of French academic articles over the years, although he had never developed any ability to speak French. Until now. “Bonjour, Demoiselle.”

Franny smiled before giving him a little clap and spoke some more in French. “So, my friend, you have decided to study a little French?”

Jason shook his head, more at himself than anything, but he understood her fine! He summoned up some courage and answered in French.

“A little, perhaps. I must have retained more from those horrible French articles I had to read for my Honours dissertation that I realized!”

With that, he smiled at her, and although she had frowned at the horrible allusion, in the end, she smiled back.

“It would appear so. Good.”

She turned to Sharyn and changed to English which she spoke with only a mild French accent. It was just enough to be attractive and exotic without making it hard to understand what she was saying. Jason always found it delightful listening to her talk in colloquial American but with the tinge of a French accent. Most non-English speaking foreign students and academics tended to speak a more formal style of English, at least until they’d been in the States for a few years.

He unloaded his laptop from his backpack and started it up. While waiting for the computer to start up, he pulled a couple of other bits and pieces out of his bag while mentally getting himself back into academic mode, which was surprisingly hard after the previousweek’s tumult. His laptop was neither the fastest nor most capable of machines, being several years old and relatively cheap at that, so it took a few moments to load up. After waiting, with growing impatience, he was finally able to connect to the University’s net and pull up the files he needed to be able to continue his doctorate thesis on aspects of the Mycenean conquest of Crete.

It took him longer than usual to get himself back up to date on where he had been before the break, and then he made an astonishing discovery. He had been working through a collection of Linear B tablets found recently in Crete at Chania or Kydonia, as the locals and ancient Greeks called it. The find had consisted of the very faint remains of a typical Mycenean storage box which had held approximately thirty Linear B tablets. The more interesting discovery had been that underneath this box, the archaeologists had found a small cache of twenty other tablets, ten Linear B and ten Linear A.

The entire collection of tablets had been found in a fire-affected layer and were virtually intact as the collapse of the building they were in had formed a rubble barrier that had then been built over very soon after the original destruction and fire. The rapid rebuilding resulted in minimal disturbance until a modern building was to be built on the site, and a team of archaeologists was employed to comb the site before site works commenced. It was possible the lower collection of tablets pre-dated the later one by a considerable margin, or maybe not. The two types of tablets being found together meant that the tablets were almost certainly from the period when the Myceneans swept in and took over Crete, which was the period he was studying. Almost certainly. Hopefully!

He called up the images of the tablets and determined where he had reached in his decipherment of them. Other, more experienced scholars had produced translations already, but he had chosen to do his own translation and only then check it against the ‘experts’ version. Translations were always subject to the translator’s biases. There were numerous examples in the world of classical studies where this occurred. The Roman words for spear were often translated just as the word spear, but they all described different weapons with different uses, and it meant that the different troop types were used differently despite them all being armed with ‘spears’. Such nuances were important and could lead to a faulty understanding or a misinterpretation of the facts. When dealing with a poorly understood period, nuances were even more important.

 He had managed four of the tablets before the term break, so he called up the enlarged, hi-res version of the fifth and started translating. And found it much easier than before when it had taken him most of the day to struggle through one tablet, constantly referring to reference books to check his interpretation of this word or that. Then he did the next tablet, and translating that got even easier! It was like the more he read and looked up translations of words, the more he understood. The next one was even easier to translate, and before he knew it, he found he had translated four in no time at all. By the time he finished the fourth, he was essentially just reading them like he would if they had been written in German, which was the only foreign language he knew well. Wait, what? He could read Mycenean? What the, huh!

Jason just stood there, staring blankly at the spot in the middle of the road while considering the reality of the old man actually, truly being a sorcerer from another Earth. Fucking wow! Then he saw the broom handle lying in the road, and he dashed to retrieve it before heading for his car with many things to think about! What he really needed was a coffee! Fortunately, he spotted a Xendo drive-through coffee place and satisfied his craving.

He returned home, sipping his drive-through coffee while he thought about everything and then thought some more. He ran the recording again and could still follow every word, so the spell Urasmian had thrown on him so he could understand other languages was certainly still working! Well, he wasn’t magic himself, so he couldn’t make the spell work but imagine if he could! There really was a multiverse. Multiple versions of Earth where things had gone differently. And he couldn’t do anything about seeing them. Oh, man! But at least he knew! And magic! Like fucking hell, man!

Chapter 4

Study, study, study… wait, what?

Jason strolled into the post-grads study room or office and was surprised to find he wasn’t the first one there, despite how early he was. The title of the room varied, depending on who was describing it and for what reason. When the denizens were interviewing students about tutorial papers and such, the room was the post-grad office. If a senior academic or any university administration staff referred to the room, it was the post-grad study room.  Sharyn Williams was never usually early, so it was with some astonishment that he saw she had beaten him to school for once.

As he walked in, she glanced up from from her left-hand corner desk, where she was reading something that was large and heavy looking. She smiled at him briefly while giving him a small nod of recognition, and then she returned to the tome she was studying. As Sharyn wasn’t usually one to get in so early, he was tempted to ask the reason for this unusually bright and early start to her studies. In the event, he refrained from interrupting her, noting the intentness she was displaying in whatever it was she was perusing. He hated being interrupted when he was deep into some complicated tome, and he refused to inflict unnecessary distractions on his colleagues.

He flopped down into the chair at his desk and surveyed the small area he called home during the days he spent at the University. It was kind of nice to be back to the usual University round after the unsettling and very strange break he had experienced. Nothing seemed out of place from how he had left it two weeks before, which was just as it should be. The cleaners knew better than to touch anyone’s desk! Even so, he always left a few specially placed items here and there whenever he left his desk at the end of the day, which meant he’d know if anyone did anything at his desk. A bit paranoid, but he had once been on the receiving end of someone pinching a book he was responsible for and then leaving him to pay for a new copy when he could not produce it for the irate library people!

“Do you remember where you arrived?”

Urasmian grunted assent. “Very near where you found me. I will know it when I see it.”

This left Jason imagining they would spend the next hour slowly driving around a succession of downtown blocks, looking like a pair of drug dealers trying to score. He actually wasn’t sure he could remember where he had met the old man until they got to the near vicinity and then had no trouble finding the spot again! Urasmian made him pull up, and they piled out, looking around.

“That way.” Urasmian said and started walking.

Jason jumped back in the car and found a spot a hundred yards up the road where he could legally park till six am and then followed Urasmian on foot.

The sorcerer turned a corner and looked around for a minute, and then he stepped into the middle of the street! He studied the buildings on either side and moved maybe twenty feet further along and slightly towards the right-hand sidewalk.

 “Here.” He announced.

“It has to be exactly there?” Jason asked, eying a car coming down the road towards them.

“Yes!” Urasmian exclaimed, and then he saw the reason Jason was heading for the sidewalk, so he followed suit to let the car swoosh by where they stood. “I need to return to the exact spot I was sent from.”

Jason shook his head as they moved back out into the road again. “Is that some trans-dimensional requirement or something?”

Urasmian snorted. “No. It just means I am sure that area is clear of obstacles and the ground level is the same as here. Actually, it is a little higher. Quick, go find something I can stand on that is maybe a hand width in height.”

In his agitation, the old man’s request was more of a demand than a request. Jason was put out by the peremptory nature of the command but headed up the road where there was a likely-looking alley. A bit of searching turned up a brick about the right height, and he returned triumphantly with it to the impatiently waiting Urasmian. After retiring to the sidewalk to let another car go past, they got themselves set, and Urasmian, balanced on the brick, looked at Jason and smiled.

“You have been a good friend Jason. I wish you well in your future. Maybe one day I will return to your strange world, but now I must go. I will cast the spell and when I drop my hand like this.” He paused to hold his hand up vertically in front of his chest before dropping it dramatically. “When I do that, say the spell words I gave you while aiming the staff at me. You understand?”

“Yes, sir. All set. Good luck.”

We’re going to look pretty silly if this doesn’t work, he thought to himself. He should know better than to fall in with the plans of someone who could simply be deranged or a charlatan of some sort.

“Thank you.” Urasmian offered.

Then he composed his features, took a deep breath, and began the spell in a subtle, almost whisper. Jason watched fearfully, and then the sorcerer dropped his hand, and Jason said the words to trigger the spell in the makeshift staff. Almost immediately, there was a rush of displaced air, almost a wind, and Urasmian was gone. Jason had not really been expecting anything to happen and the broom handle slipped out of his hand as he stood there gaping for a minute before the toot of a car horn recollected him to his surroundings, and he grabbed the brick before scooting over to the sidewalk.

The structure of the language was more Russian than Greek, he decided, and the guttural slant to the sounds made it sound even less like Greek, but the more he listened, the more he was convinced it was somehow related to Greek although with a lot of Slavic additions or perhaps an underlying ancient Slavic base. Maybe there was a small Slavic population overrun by ancestral Greeks or the reverse, and the end result was a Mediterranean equivalent of English in the way English was like French or Frisian but not really all that similar. Regardless of the history, it was long before he understood the whole thing from start to finish, thanks to the spell Urasmian had thrown on him.

The spell was in a sort of rhyming meter. The closest thing he could think of was a limerick, only it was several limericks long, and the limerick analogy only went so far. Basically, what the spell did was to collect the power of the four winds, combine that power with the power of the earth, and use that combined power to move the object defined fifty Earths to the east. Presumably, the original version that sent Urasmian here sent him fifty Earths to the west. Finally, he gave up as he was becoming mentally exhausted from struggling with the strange language, and after checking Urasmian, he staggered upstairs and went to bed.

He hardly seemed to have closed his eyes before Urasmian was shaking him. “Wake up, young man. We need to go.” Came his deep voice in Jason’s still asleep ear.

“Huh? What? Ugg. What? It’s still dark!”

“Yes, yes, my boy. But this is the right time. We need to return to the exact spot I arrived at, and if we leave it till later, the whole area will be far too busy! All those metal vehicles you people love. So, come on now. Get yourself dressed.” The man’s urgent tones were reflected in his earnest expression.

“Mmm.” Jason struggled to sit up. “Yes. Yes. All right.” Causing Urasmian to back off and give Jason some room. After throwing the covers off, he swung his legs out of the bed and stood up.

“Give me a minute, and I’ll be right with you.”

Urasmian took the hint that Jason wanted privacy, and with Jason now sitting up and clearly awake, the old man left the room. After a visit to the bathroom, he replaced the boxers he had slept in with fresh clothes and then  Jason wandered down to the lounge room where Urasmian was impatiently waiting. Jason would have preferred to make himself a coffee, but the agitated look on the old man’s face convinced him that he could survive till this matter was dealt with, so he grabbed his keys, and Urasmian followed him into the garage with the broom handle. Jason’s family all used the garage to enter or leave the house as the formal front door was set back and away from the road. Out in the street, he unlocked the car, and after clambering in and starting it up, he checked the garage door was back down before heading off downtown.

Sorry – late again. My apologies.

Urasmian seemed quite happy with the converted broom handle once the aluminum was attached to both ends, and he settled on the couch, cradling it. He began to recite a long thing in the guttural Keftios that he said earlier was used for spells. As soon as he began saying the spell, Jason turned on the video camera on his phone. He wasn’t sure how much would show up on the camera, but he would be damn sure to record the words of the spell. The Keftios words were almost making sense in his head by the time Urasmian ran through the spell three times. If the sorcerer hadn’t been half muttering to himself, Jason thought he might have actually started to understand the words! Then Urasmian stopped muttering and motioned Jason over. He put his hand over the back of Jason’s right hand.

“You will hold the staff in this hand and repeat this spell.” The man commanded.

Jason took a firm grip, and Urasmian then enunciated three words and waited for Jason to repeat them. Jason reached for the staff, but Urasmian grabbed his wrist and stopped him.

“Not yet. I am not ready to release the transport spell. Just repeat the words.”

Jason nodded and repeated the words as he thought Urasmian had pronounced them.

“No. No. Like this.” And Urasmian said the three words again.

Jason could almost understand them. Like listening to a short sentence in French that used a lot of similar words to their English equivalent. He repeated the three words.

“Better.” Then Urasmian said them again, and Jason was sure the three words meant

“Release the spell.”

He repeated the three words again, and this time Urasmian smiled.

“Yes. That will do for now. Embedding the spell in the wood has taken its toll, and I am not as young as I once was. I need to lie down for a few hours before trying to cast the spell myself. Thank you for doing this for me, Jason.”

The old man smiled and looked as if he would hug Jason but then turned and took himself off to the couch he had slept on the night before and lay down. In seconds he showed the truth of his statement by falling fast asleep.

Jason went into the kitchen for a drink and sat there listening to the video he had made of Urasmian casting the spell into the broom handle. His hurried placement of the phone had managed to get him a lovely view of the other side of the room and part of Urasmian’s right shoulder, but that didn’t matter as the words came through clearly. He ran them through three times before the words started to make sense. He broke for a snack, and then he rested by relaxing in one of the lounge chairs, but unlike Urasmian, he couldn’t fall asleep. Giving up, he returned to the recording about an hour later. Every time he ran it through, the meaning of the words became clearer in his head.

“You see, the problem is power. Even though I am more powerful than either of them separately, I am not twice as powerful, certainly not as powerful as the two together. And I am fairly sure I would need a second person to help me cast the translocation spell strongly enough to get me home. But!” And he smiled with a fanatical gleam in his eyes! “If I crafted a wooden staff and then imbued it with the spell, reinforced several times over, anyone could trigger it! Even you!”

He smiled wolfishly over at Jason, who struggled with this idea.

“I’m not magic.” He muttered.

Urasmian’s eyes gleamed. “No. Well, actually, even you have a little magical ability, everyone does. But you don’t need to be powerful or trained! There is a trigger spell that is tied to whoever the sorcerer wants that enables that person to activate the spell in the staff and make it discharge. The low-magical person just has to say ‘geroos’ which is the Keftios word for release or launch, and the spell in the staff is released. All I need is a long shaft of well-seasoned timber, and I can imbue the spell into the wood. Do you have any long wooden poles around?”

Chapter 3

Real magic

Jason thought fast and held up a hand. “Perhaps in the garage. Give me a minute.”

He stood up and headed that way. He vaguely remembered that there had been an old broom handle leaning up against the wall in one corner amongst other odds and ends, and, once he’d moved some crap out of the way, he saw that he was right. He grabbed his trophy and returned to the sorcerer.

“Will this do?”

Urasmian held out his hand for Jason to hand the wooden pole to him and then appraised the broom handle.

“It’s a bit short. If we had some metal to cap the ends, I would be happier. Stops the spell from oozing out, you see.” He pointed at the top end.

Jason thought about that for a minute, then headed into the kitchen and returned with the aluminum foil box. He pulled out a long piece, folded it a couple of times, and then wrapped it around the end of the broom handle, making a silver cap.

“Will that work?” He asked the old man, who watched his actions with fascination.

It was clear from his boggled expression that thin metal stuff that could be rolled in a tube and ripped by hand was beyond his experience. The sorcerer felt a bit of the aluminum foil and studied the pole.

“This is a metal I have not seen before, but it feels magically inert, so it should do. Do you have some way of securing it to the pole?”

Jason nodded and raced out to the garage to grab a hammer and some nails from his dad’s work area. He saw a plastic container with tacks and grabbed them instead. Returning with his prizes, he quickly secured the foil to the top of the pole and then repeated the process for the other end finishing with a nice silvery capped broom handle like something out of someone’s el-cheapo costume for a fantasy con. It was the sort of cheaply made thing you frequently saw at conventions, particularly the smaller ones, and it had always made him cringe. Many years ago, at his first con, he had seen someone wearing a pathetic cardboard Cyberman outfit, and he had made a firm promise to himself that if he couldn’t afford a realistic costume, he would not wear one!