Sorry this is late people:


“The destruction of Theru combined with the damage to Keftu and the death of Drathmios left an opening for the people of Hellandu, who swarmed the island and overthrew what was left of the Keftios government. Eumanix decided to avoid contesting the invasion and moved to Rhodu, where he began testing the broth on people. Most simply became various degrees of ill. It really does make a good purgative. Perhaps two or three in a hundred died, but he found a daughter of a local healer who developed magic. She was only in her teens at the time, but she knew the language of the Keftios, her family being part Keftios, and he taught her the basics of magic as were known at that point using his remembered observance of Drathmios.”

He paused and studied Jason. “The Book of Sorcery ends there, but he wrote down many of the spells Drathmios developed and which are studied to this day by students of magic. In fact, it is traditional that once a student has mastered the letters of the language of the Keftios, then his first task is to transcribe his own copy of the Book of Sorcery.”

Jason shook his head in amazement. Both at the magic stuff, he still wasn’t entirely convinced about, but also at how texts could not only last that long but be faithfully copied time after time.

“I find it interesting that this information has lasted for so long unchanged. Not many stories have come down to us in this world from so long ago without many mythological additions to the point where it is hard to tell what is based on fact and what is a total fabrication.”

Urasmian nodded. “Apart from the Book of Sorcery, it is much the same in my world. We have many tales of famous sorcerers and sorceresses and the fantastic deeds they accomplished, the ferocious monsters they fought or in some cases, made, and such. A lot of the stories are simple fabrications, although many have a kernel of truth. Then again, many describe real events, exaggerated or conflated with other events but at this distance, it is very hard to discern the truth of any of them. Very often, the time they were supposed to have happened is contradicted by some other version of the tale, or indeed, by some other tale that told of something else happening at the time of the first tale. Of course, the observed results of some of the tales lend a certain verisimilitude to this one or that one. The dragons living in the Stoney Mountains to the east of Shcathor come to mind quite forcibly.”

“Dragons?” The word translated in his head as dragons anyway.

“Yes. They are large flying lizards that were created, so the story goes, by Horanios the Terrible as a dying curse upon Emperor Huan when the Huan armies overran the territory claimed by Horanios, and the three court wizards of Huan overwhelmed him. According to the historian Petrocales, who traveled to the court of the descendent of Huan about three hundred years after the event, that is how dragons came to be. The story goes that Horanios had a collection of lizards and bats, and he somehow used magic as he was dying to merge the two types of beasts together and thus created the dragons. How true the story is, at three hundred years remove, anyone’s guess, but Petrocales went out of his way to check the sources of the stories he recorded. I have copies of a couple of his scrolls in my library.”

“So, can you get back if it took three of them to send you here?”

Urasmian smiled smugly again. “My two sort of relatives are not as strong as me, and it needed both of them to attack me with combat spells to overcome my shield. Then the third person, Drexos, was the one who managed to stun me once my shield went down. Even though the stun spell didn’t work properly, it was enough to keep me befuddled. Otherwise, I could have disrupted their spell or even killed them.”

He paused and sneered. “Definitely killed them. Ungrateful scum. I gave them the chance to become sorcerers as well, giving them a lot of training, and this is how they repay me!”

Jason considered this information and noticed something.

“You gave them the chance to be sorcerers? How?”

Urasmian grinned. “Ah. With no magic here, you don’t know, do you? Ha!”

This seemed to amuse him. He studied Jason for a moment and then smiled.

“Well, the story goes like this. Some three and a half thousand years ago, on the island of Theru, there was a plant used locally for chewing. It had a limited waking dream effect.” Jason understood he meant it was mildly hallucinogenic. “Then, one day, it was discovered that boiling the leaves briefly made them into a good purgative that helped heal stomach upsets quite well. Most people were violently ill after drinking the stuff but almost always recovered from the original illness within a day or two. The story goes that when one of the local Keftios nobles fell deathly ill, his wife started boiling some of the leaves but was interrupted, and the leaves boiled for nearly two hours. Their servant, who was tasked with refilling the pot with water, continued on with that task, mindlessly following the last instructions of the mistress while the mistress was otherwise engaged. Because her husband was so ill and she was feeling poorly herself, she decided that both of them needed to drink the concoction regardless. Both she and her husband became violently ill, and she died. Her husband, however, recovered after being sick and weak for many days, and his name was Drathmios. The broth that killed his wife made him the first sorcerer.”

 “Three and half thousand years is a long time for such a record to exist,” Jason stated carefully.

Being a history major, he could think of very few stories from fifteen hundred BC that had come down as clear as that. Some official things, such as the tablets of Hammurabi, had survived it was true, but most stories had devolved into the mythical and the very unlikely, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Urasmian sighed. “It is part of the training in learning the language of the Keftios that the account of the founding of Sorcery must be studied. The Keftios had a large empire in the middle sea, and the advent of magic provoked a civil war between the government and that first sorcerer, Drathmios, along with the small band of warriors which he had raised. He swept ashore on Keftu, where they found that none could stand against his magic, and he conquered the empire. But that success was short-lived because soon after, the island of Theru exploded, and a giant wave swept over most of Keftu. It is assumed Drathmios was asleep at the time, like most of the people on Keftu, and drowned. The warrior Eumanix happened to be on high ground with a pot containing a cutting from the magical plant, and this allowed magic to survive. The explosion obliterated all the other sources of the plant, which grew solely on Theru. He wrote the first account and passed it on to his successors.”

Kyron the Invader is next (April hopefully)
My editor is going to finish Ostraya after she finishes Kyron so it can be handed to Pam Uphoff before publishing – hopefully in June or early July
The Princess and the Gangsters will follow
Then Taroniah at Bay followed by Kyron the Rescuer
These two will be followed by The Kelad Onslaught – the next New Federation book
The Taroniah at Risk and Kyron the Savior
By rights they should be followed by the next Princess book but I thinking I switch to my new Time Travel series involving a guy shipwrecked on the Maine Coast by a storm like the one in the movie The Final Countdown only he gets deposited in the 12th century in time to meet the Welsh colonists of Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd and his brother Rhodri. Madoc returns to Wales to gather more people and supplies but is never seen again.
The 21st century American – Rick Metsov – finds a medieval motte and bailey type wooden fort besieged by the local natives.
I am open to a vote for the next Princess book or the first book int he time travel series – let me know which you’d prefer…

Urasmian cocked his head slightly to the left while he considered this information and possibly Jason’s request. He didn’t really believe this shit, did he?

“No magic. Hmm.” He stared off into the distance for a moment, then his eyes re-focused, and he became alert again. “No. It is too strange here. I will return to Shcathor and deal with my enemies!”

He paused and smiled at Jason. It was the smile of a shark or perhaps a crocodile.

Chapter 2

Tales of elsewhere

“There are three of them. Garnios, his cousin Klimnos and that idiot Drexos. The three of them thought that by acting together, they would be strong enough to take me, and in truth, they were right, just. Mostly because I wasn’t expecting the attack, and they managed to get a spell through that sort of stunned me.” He paused and shook his head, looking more rueful than angry.

“Then my stupid sort of nephew mucked up the spell they used to transport me here. Because he was bound to me magically, he couldn’t kill me outright nor could he consciously help someone else do it. But they came up with this clever idea to transport me fifty klidak or herakios out over the ocean while I was stunned. Because the world is curved, I would have then fallen into the ocean from a great height, and if that didn’t kill me outright, then the stun spell would stop me from using magic to save myself, and I would consequently drown unless someone came to my assistance, which would be unlikely that far from shore. The whole plan was pushing the limits of the magical bond, and it may still have resulted in harm coming to him if I had actually died. I am not sure.”

He stared off into the distance for a moment, obviously considering the matter.

 “Be that as it may. Their stun spell didn’t quite work as they had planned, although it rendered me insensible for a sufficiently long enough time for my sort of nephew to work through the transport spell and send me away. Stupid klutz. The Keftu word for a klidak is very similar to their word for the whole world, and he got confused. Probably panicking, trying to get the spell off before I regained my power when he saw the stun spell hadn’t worked properly. Your people know the world is round?” Jason nodded, not wanting to interrupt the old fellow. “So, once I sort of got my senses back, I ran through the spell dopey Garnios used and realized he had used the word for the whole world, Herakias, instead of the word for the distance herakios, and so I came here, fifty Herakias to the west instead of fifty herakios. And then one of those metal chariots hit me, which knocked me senseless besides throwing me into that spot where you found me.”

It took Jason a moment to understand what the old man was describing, and then he started when it sank in what the old fellow meant. Fifty worlds, Earths, whatever. Seriously? He’d read lots of stories about there being a Multiverse, with alternate Earths, but like, they were stories, you know. If it weren’t for his suddenly acquired understanding of the Greekish language, he wouldn’t have believed a word of the tale. As it was, he had to consider the truth of the man’s claims, even if they did involve magic and multiple Earths.

Sorry its late – Had to get an MRI and forgot all about this

“Foreigner, hey. So how did you end up next to mugged near the Convention Centre? Were you at ARCon? Do you have a phone? Where are you staying?”

His words gradually slowed down and got louder in the way people frequently do when talking to foreigners, although he had no idea why speaking like that would make it easier for people to understand. And yet now he found himself doing it anyway.

The old man shook his head.

“I follow you speak, I think. Not sure what say you.” He snarled. “Too old this for.”

At which point he muttered something in what sounded like a different language again and flicked his wrist in Jason’s direction.

“Now my speak, you learn.” He muttered in the odd accented broken English he seemed to have picked up just now. He then went back to speaking in the language that Jason thought sounded rather Greekish. He immediately became aware that almost imperceptibly, the gibberish began to become understandable words! What? Now Jason was spooked!

The old man smiled. “Yes, I can see from the look on your face that you are starting to understand what I am saying. It is a spell. A very complex spell that allows you to understand and also speak any language. It works best when you have a speaker of the language in your presence. The spell draws the information from the other person’s thoughts and transfers the understanding to your own brain. Reading is a lot slower way of learning. It is not perfect, but it works well normally. Your language had too many terms I did not understand, so I threw the spell on you so I can now talk to you.”

Jason choked. A spell. Right! Haha! He’d brought home a looney! But he found he could understand more and more of the Greekish language the man was speaking, which was very happening very quickly and kind of scary!

“A spell, eh? Are you a magician?” he asked.

Then he realized with a start he had used the same Greekish language the old man was speaking to ask the question. Shit! Could he still speak English?

“This is scary!” He muttered, trying for English, and was relieved when the words he spoke were obviously English!

He found he could change to the Greekish stuff just by thinking about it. Right. Now he was scared!

The old man grinned. “I am the sorcerer Urasmian. And I am a powerful sorcerer. I rule the city of Shcathor and the surrounding lands and have done so for many years.”

Yeah right. Perhaps the old man had taken a knock to the head and thought himself to be a character out of a fantasy novel. Except how did Jason account for now being to understand and speak the Greekish stuff? Hmm. Jason couldn’t stop himself from saying.

“So, how did you end up here?” He immediately wished he hadn’t sounded like a smart-arse!

The sorcerer glared but then shrugged. “Family, of a sort. Do you have sorcerers here?”

Jason shook his head. “No one who can really do magic. Lots of charlatans and believers in lots of silly gods and stuff. But no. No real magic. How do you become a sorcerer?”

He decided that bacon, eggs, and toast were a good mix and hoped the fellow wasn’t a vegetarian. He was just dishing up the bacon when he heard the oldster stirring in the other room, so Jason wandered in to tell him about breakfast and showering, as the smell was a bit overpowering. The stranger was looking around in a bleary-eyed manner, but then suddenly, he jerked upright and said something in a language Jason didn’t recognize. Jason shook his head in negation to show he didn’t understand before pointing into the kitchen and miming putting food in his mouth. The fellow studied him for a moment, stood up, wandered over to the doorway, peered somewhat warily into the kitchen, and nodded. Then pointed to his groin and raised his hands in the universal sign for a query.

Jason nodded and led the fellow to the small bathroom, which was on the ground floor, where he showed the old man the toilet. The oldster peered at it and looked back at Jason, causing Jason to wonder if he came from some third-world place as he seemed to not know what a toilet was. Jason lifted the lid.

“Do your stuff in here, and then press that button.” He explained, pointing at the button on the wall in front of the hidden cistern.

The old man looked unsure but nodded, and Jason left him and hoped he wouldn’t be cleaning feces and piss off the bathroom floor later. He finished organizing the breakfast and moved the food onto the dining table, added knives and forks, buttered the toast, and was just returning the butter to the fridge when he heard the toilet flush.

The old man came slowly into the room and saw the food on the table. He smiled happily, didn’t wait for permission, and plonked down in front of the nearest plate. He studied the utensils carefully, lifting up the fork and peering at it as though not sure what it was used for, so Jason sat down, grabbed his knife and fork, quickly sliced a bit of bacon off the half-length of rasher, then used the fork to propel it to his mouth. The old man smiled and soon mastered the same task, and they ate in happy silence for a few minutes. The glass of orange juice was apparently enjoyed as much as the bacon, and as they finished, Jason felt surprisingly satisfied that he had done a major good deed. Of course, he still had the problem of what to do with the old fellow, but hopefully, the strange man would now be able to direct him to wherever it was that he lived, or at least stayed if he was in town for the convention as seemed most likely from the attire the fellow was dressed in.

“So, where are you from again?” Jason asked after satisfying his immediate hunger pangs.

The man cocked his head questioningly, peering across the table, saying something Jason couldn’t make any sense of though it sounded Greekish. Sort of like how Portuguese sounded like Spanish but wasn’t.

Back from my Holidays partial make up post

About half the way there, he managed to swap sides to give his arm some rest before continuing the laborious trip back to his vehicle. The old man had sort of become more aware of his surroundings at some point and tried to walk but was so unsteady on his feet that hobbling along half-leaning on Jason proved to be the best method of locomotion they could manage along the wet and dismal streets.

At one point, some people came hurrying along the street, sheltering under a couple of umbrellas, but they studiously ignored Jason and his burden while passing by like ships in a stormy sea. The sleety rain finally started to ease off a little, just as they reached the underground car park entrance, of course! Jason had considered trying to continue on toward the shelter he knew was not too much further, but it was now so late in the evening, and he was feeling so tired, wet, and worn out that he decided to get home and worry about what to do with the old man in the morning.

The descent into the car park was surprisingly much harder than the slogging along the wet footpath, but once on the flat, the going proved much easier, and they soon reached his car. Jason manhandled the semi-conscious oldster into his old Mustang, and from that point, it wasn’t long before he was on the freeway headed home. The old man seemed to pass out once more as soon as Jason had positioned him in the passenger seat. He didn’t even try and get the seat belt on the fellow, and he had to give the old man a good shake to get him moving when they arrived back at Jason’s house. Well, his parent’s house, but it was his home.

With his parents away overseas and his sister at college, he had the place to himself and, after some careful maneuvering, managed to get the fellow onto the lounge in the family room at the back of the ground floor from which a door connected to the garage. The house was still warm from the central heating, which Jason adjusted back up a little after he had positioned the old man on the sofa there. By the time he came back from the heater controls, the oldster was sound asleep, snoring a little and looking very old and frail. Jason was so exhausted he gave up worrying about leaving the fellow alone in the house and retired to his room upstairs. A quick change into pajamas, a visit to the john after which he collapsed into bed and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. He awoke in the morning, and for a moment or two, he lay there still half asleep, but the call of nature soon had him up and into the bathroom. There he remembered his unwanted guest while doing the necessary and moved downstairs warily, in case his good deed was going to be punished. The old man was lying on the couch, seemingly still out of it, so Jason left him for the moment and headed into the kitchen to make coffee and think about breakfast. It was already light outside, but the sun was still not fully up in the now cleared skies that he could see out the back window, and looking at the clock on the microwave, it informed him that the time was a little after six. Ugg. He briefly thought about going back to bed, but as a rule, he was one of those people who, once he woke up, really woke up. Besides, he had the old man to worry about, and he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, regardless, he suspected, with a stranger in the house.

“Where do you live?” He asked the wet, begrimed face of the surprisingly tall oldster.

The man’s face was lined and drawn from age and, Jason guessed, from whatever had befallen him. His hair was grey and scraggly, falling limply in a sodden tangle around his head. His eyes appeared glazed and unseeing, or perhaps seeing somewhere Jason couldn’t see. Concussion was a strong possibility, Jason thought, looking into the man’s eyes, which weren’t entirely tracking.

“Where do you live?” he said again, a little more urgently, giving the man a small shake.

The man’s eyes seemed to focus on his face for a moment. Perhaps he’d fallen and hit his head, Jason thought, studying the disheveled figure in front of him. The cosplay-style clothes meant he wasn’t one of the city’s many homeless, so concussion or mugging seemed the likely cause of the fellow’s condition.

“Shhcathor.” He muttered bleakly, his voice slightly slurred.

“Where?” Jason replied, not understanding what the figure before him had said.

The old face stared at him for a moment, then lost focus as he mumbled something unintelligible, his body starting to shake in cold or shock, perhaps both. Perhaps he was just a drunken bum after all. Every city had them, Jason knew, so maybe he’d stolen the fancy clothes he was wearing under the dirt-smeared coat.

“No home, huh? What about I take you to one of the homeless shelters.” He suggested.

He had a vague idea there was one a few blocks over, not that far beyond where he’d parked his car in the basement car park of his friend’s unit complex. It was handy that Joe did not have a car at the moment and didn’t mind Jason using his allocated parking spot whenever Jason needed to come into the city proper.

The fellow shook his head, then seemed to focus, but as he did so, he became agitated, muttering something. He then grabbed Jason’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip and jabbed Jason in the chest with his finger saying something Jason couldn’t understand as he did so. The language sort of sounded like Greek or maybe Jewish? What was certain was that Jason had no idea what the fellow was trying to tell him, except he didn’t seem keen on the Shelter thing.

“All right, no shelter.” And the fellow lost some of his agitation but then jabbed Jason in the chest with his finger a couple more times, accompanied by some grunting words

“Oh. No way, man, not taking you home with me!” He spluttered as he finally realized what the old man was trying to get across to him.

The man wobbled, jabbed Jason’s chest feebly a couple more times, and then the oldster’s eyes rolled up, and he slumped limply against a surprised Jason, who somehow managed to hold on to the fellow rather than dropping him on the ground.

“Oh hell,” Jason muttered, desperately holding the old fellow up.

He maneuvered himself into a position where he could get an arm around the relatively thin old man and hold him up by having him half lean against Jason. A quick glance around showed a couple of unsavory-looking types a bit further down the road, but, fortunately, they were on the other side of the street and seemed content to stay there. He found he couldn’t bring himself to abandon the old man in his current state, so Jason began hobbling up the road towards where his car was parked while supporting the old man, who sometimes helped and other times dragged, making it slow work getting his car.

NOTE: This story needs to be edited and there are changes that need to be made before it is published.

Chapter 1

Strange encounter

An old man was feebly moving his arms and legs while lying in the dirty little alcove where the Convention Centre ended, and the next building started. The sprawled figure appeared to be cold, worn, wet, and disorientated.  Jason Lerner paused in the cold, wet sleet for reasons that would be hard to explain. Afterward, he decided it was the fact his great-grandfather had frozen to death in Boston just after the war that had motivated him to stop, although, at the time, this reason did not consciously register. In truth, it was simply the sight of an old man who appeared to be in trouble that brought out feelings of benevolence towards his fellow man. Plus, the fact he looked to be dressed like one of the cosplay participants at the convention may well have had something to do with it. There was practically no one else in sight this late, and the traffic swishing past in the wet conditions had declined to merely a steady trickle rather than the daytime charging herd.

“Hey, man. You been mugged or just slipped over in the wet?” He asked, moving to the huddled figure and bending down to lend the moving and, therefore, not yet dead oldster a hand.

The huddled figure tried to brush his hand away rather weekly and muttered something doleful Jason couldn’t catch.

“Come on, old man. You can’t stay here. You’ll freeze to death by morning!” He said loudly and took firm hold of the huddled form.

Still muttering, the old man relented enough to allow himself to be pulled up with the sodden and battered-looking coat he was wearing falling open to reveal black trousers made of some shiny synthetic-looking material that was obviously expensive but now rather begrimed, plus he had on dark, elaborate leather boots. His shirt was some silken material, a dark grey with silver flecks forming some sort of pattern that was too hard to make out in the dim light afforded by the street light a little further along the boulevard. The silver filigree, or whatever it was, almost seemed to writhe on its own as if it was alive. Must have been at the convention for sure, Jason said to himself, seeing the rich and strange clothing underneath.

ARCon wasn’t one of the real big conventions, but it was one of the better ones, or at least Jason thought it was. It was one of the few literary-themed conventions still running these days, rather than being movie franchise or pop culture based. Or at least it had been. The comic book superhero juggernaut was slowly overwhelming the more traditional literary aspects of the convention, which he supposed was to be expected in this day and age, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. With the recent changes to its coverage, it now attracted a more diverse crowd, and the cosplay people could be anything from a hobbit to a Marvel character to something really obscure.