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!

I have a German translation of a sample chapter from my first book, On The Rocks, and I am hoping I can find someone who can read German to give it a quick read and tell me how good a job they did translating the chapter. Even if you just know a German speaker can you ask if they would be will to read the chapter in both the English and the German to compare them for me.
Any assistance greatly appreciated

In other news – I have nearly finished Kyron the Invader and we are hoping for an early April release.
The editor will then attack Ostraya and I hope to be able to get that to Pam by late May or early June for a July release or earlier if things go quicker.
The Princess and the Gangsters is the next book which I will be starting next week I expect.

“I can see from your expression that you doubt, but it is true. My wife was from the island of Tainiou, and her family keeps up their contact with the old mainland states, if only on an irregular basis. We hoped our children would be magical, but alas, none of our four proved to be sorcerers. At least none of them died in the testing process.” He paused. “Hence my agreeing to train my sort of nephews. Actually, in truth, one is only the son of a second cousin on my father’s side, and the other is the grandson of my maternal uncle’s brother-in-law. Not even real family at all.”

This seemed to dispirit him considerably. Jason left the old man to his ruminations while Jason considered the information he had been given.

“So, am I right in saying that everyone on your world is a little magic, but the descendants of sorcerers have a higher chance of being affected by this broth?

“Yes.” Urasmian nodded. “It was only in the last thousand years that this effect was noticed, but it is true. The more magical antecedents one has, the better a person’s chances of becoming a sorcerer. And the chance of them dying seems to stay much the same so proportionally the magical families give rise to far more sorcerers than the ordinary population does.”

Jason nodded. Perhaps it was genetic. He supposed that the broth of the plant could contain some enzyme or something that alters a person’s genes, although he had never heard of such a thing on his Earth.

“Right. So, what about my world? Nobody here can do real magic stuff, at least as far as I am aware, but is that because we simply can’t or because we don’t have access to the broth?” Jason cocked his head a little to the side as he waited for the old man to reply.

Urasmian closed his eyes and mumbled something. Then he opened them again and smiled at Jason.

“It would seem that the people in this world are no different from those in my world. Well, you, at least, are no different. You have a very low magical glow, just like an ordinary person on my world would. That seems to indicate that if we gave the broth to enough people here, sooner or later, we’d find a sorcerer. Or at least someone who could be trained to be a sorcerer.”

Jason thought about this. He gathered from the names and the description that Urasmian had been referring to Santorini as the island where the plant grew. That island had blown up in a huge volcanic eruption in antiquity. On Urasmian’s Earth, people had discovered the plant before the volcanic eruption, whereas on Jason’s Earth, the magical features had not been discovered before the eruption, and the plant was presumably wiped out. Damn. Jason decided he was looking too glum and changed the topic.

“So, what’s next? You zap back there and surprise them?”         Urasmian glowered at him. Jason wasn’t sure whether it was from Jason’s glibness or, Jason suddenly realized, to his embarrassment, the fact that if it took two sorcerers to get Urasmian here, there was little chance the fellow could ever get back! But then Urasmian’s focus shifted to some point in the distance over Jason’s right shoulder for a few moments. Jason nearly held his breath as he refrained from saying anything to disturb the old man, who was obviously having an insight of some description. The man’s attention snapped back to Jason.

Better late than never

Jason thought of Herodotus and wasn’t convinced of the veracity of the story but then realized what Urasmian had so casually said.

“You really have dragons living near you?”

Urasmian nodded. “Oh yes. They have spread around the globe in all the high mountainous regions. They are quite the pest in some areas, although a good sorcerer or two can deal with them easily. Fortunately, although they were created by magic, they are not themselves capable of doing magic.”

He paused and seemed to focus inwardly on some thought that he didn’t share with Jason. He suddenly jerked alert again.

“Much knowledge gained over the centuries has been lost, rediscovered, and then lost again as far as I can tell. Sorcerers and historians try to conserve scroll books, but many are lost every year as people die, and their property is ransacked and sold off by uninterested descendants. Others are lost through accidental fires and deliberate acts of destruction, especially in wars. In fact, so much has been lost that I am surprised at how much has survived!”

“So, spells are in the language of the Keftios?” Jason asked to clarify what he thought was the case.

Urasmian nodded. “Yes. That is how it has always been done.”

“But you speak something else in normal conversation like this?” Jason was intrigued by the language difference.

“Yes. We speak the tongue of the Hellandios who spread out and conquered most of the world, bit by bit. Even the Zhongquin were defeated and taught to speak Hellandios eventually. They lacked the sorcerers to stop the armies that ravaged them and eventually succumbed like everyone else. Over time the Hellandios conquerors are slowly being absorbed into the local peoples in many areas despite the magical families trying to keep their bloodlines pure. In a lot of areas, it is hard to find anyone who is purebred Hellandios. Some people set great store by having pure Hellandios lineage, you understand. Most of us are just happy to have some Hellandios blood.”

Jason considered this. “So, you have magical families then?”

Urasmian waved a hand to acknowledge this. “Yes. Not that magic isn’t found in practically everyone, understand. If enough people are given the broth to try, then sooner or later, you’ll get a trainee sorcerer. On the other hand, the long-established Hellandios families that arose from the conquered Keftios, before spreading out to conquer first the lands surrounding the Middle Sea, and eventually, the whole world, make an effort to try and keep magic within their own ranks as much as possible. And those bloodlines have a higher incidence of Sorcerers than normal people do. It has been noted for centuries that the children of magical parents, even if neither parent is actually a sorcerer but merely the son or daughter of one, have a higher chance of proving to be sorcerers themselves. Amongst the very old families still living in Keftu and Hellandu, the chance of getting a sorcerer is sometimes as much as one in ten, or so it is claimed.”

Jason was puzzled by this because even if the broth was doing something to people, presumably to their brains, which then allowed them to do magic, surely it wouldn’t be an inheritable genetic change. Would it? Very strange. But Urasmian seemed certain of his facts.

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?”